LIVE-ACTION DRAGONBALL Z FILM UPDATE
Of course, as you can probably guess from my lack of talking about it compared to how much I talk about
Sailor Moon, I'm not a big
Dragonball Z fan. I don't hate it, and I don't have anything against
Dragonball Z fans, and, as a
Sailor Moon fan, I can easily understand the appeal of so-called "mental junk food" anime/manga series, but
Sailor Moon has abundant doses of comic relief and self-parody, and, while I'm fully aware
DBZ has its doses of comic relief too, it's between the fights that last multiple episodes, and I just don't have the patience to watch it all that much aside from the odd episode here and again on YTV.
Anyhow, as you may be aware, the rights to do a live-action
Dragonball Z film were optioned by 20th Century Fox a couple of years back, but it hasn't amounted to anything solid as of yet. I'm particularly proud of
this post I wrote in the AnimeNation.net forums "Ask John" section on the question of whether or not a live-action
Dragonball Z film will ever be made.
All that's really known about the live-action Dragonball Z is that Fox optioned the rights to do one, but, currently, it's in pre-production limbo. The most credible rumour I've seen has Independence Day (which I still think was one of the best summer popcorn films of the 1990s) director Roland Emmerich at the helm, but, while he has finished The Day After Tomorrow, the environmental disaster film based on the Art Bell novel, his next project is Tut, not Dragonball Z.
Keep in mind that when Fox first announced they had the rights to do the live-action Dragonball Z film, it was to be a summer 2004 "event" film... but there's nothing like that coming next year, and there's far too little time to do that sort of film from scratch. Even for a summer 2005 release, they'd be pushing it, unless they're further along in preproduction than I think. They haven't even cast this thing yet. (Every cast list you may have seen is bogus... Jason Bateman as Vegeta?!... in any event, Jason Bateman's busy with that Arrested Development show now).
Also, considering that much of the potential audience for a live-action Dragonball Z film is underaged, and would see it in the afternoon rather than in the evening, a three to four-hour Dragonball Z film would be box office suicide for the studio. Why? Because, for a film aimed at a more juvenile audience, a good proportion of the audience would be buying tickets at a reduced price being minors or students, and they'd be seeing it as a "matinee", paying even less than they would in the evening, so the studios and the cinemas would need to be able to have two afternoon and three evening screenings per screen to make a profit, taking into account the 10 minutes or so it takes to clean each individual cinema room between showings, another 10 minutes or so with the lights on for people to find their seats, and 15 minutes or so of commercials and previews (which, sorry, aren't going to go away). This is why North American kids movies rarely go over 100 minutes, and is also one of the myriad of financial reasons why Disney didn't give the 125 minute-long Spirited Away a wide release.
However, despite what I've just said, I'd still say the chances of a (American) live-action Dragonball Z film being produced are much greater than the chances are that the live-acion Evangelion film will ever be made, despite what that optimistic WETA guy is saying in that interview, since live-action DBZ is being backed by a major studio whilst, as far as we know currently, live-action EVA isn't, and no way would ADV and Gainax be able to afford to do a $100 million-plus budget film on their own without significant financial backing from elsewhere.
HEY, FORMULA ONE FANS!
Hmm... I guess someone on the forum at
Atlas F1 linked to this blog in regards to the death of Jonathan Brandis, even though
Sonafide.com has *much* better coverage than I do.
Anyhow, Formula One fans, if you want to see a neat photograph I took in 1998, please check out
this entry in my photoblog which contains, amongst other things, a shot of the Team Benetton car of Alexander Wurz in the air during the multi-car accident at the Senna curve of the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve immediately after the beginning of the
1998 Canadian Grand Prix, stopping the race for half-an-hour. It was my first Canadian Grand Prix; I went to three more in 2000, 2001 and 2002, but I don't have any more photos like that one. Maybe I'll scan some more of my F1 photos up over the weekend for you guys.
I think it's about time to retire the header about
Knights of the Zodiac/
Saint Seiya, since, to be perfectly honest, I don't give a rat's ass about
Saint Seiya either way, and I didn't long before
Knights of the Zodiac, the children's TV dub of
Saint Seiya, came along. It's like a male version of
Sailor Moon, which regular readers of this blog are fully aware that I adore, except without the comic relief. (Yes, I know
Saint Seiya came first in Japan, I was just making a comparison in that they're both animated
sentai shows.) I put it up because I mentioned
Knights of the Zodiac once or twice in passing, and was getting about a dozen Google hits a day looking for more info, but the Google hits have died down, or, at the very least, I don't see nearly as many people looking for it anymore amidst all the Google hits for "William Strier" (the idiot that shot at his lawyer with the TV cameras rolling) and now "Jonathan Brandis". I have no idea how well or poorly
Knights of the Zodiac is doing in the ratings in either the United States or Canada, but, if you do care about what DiC, the licensee, did to
Saint Seiya with the full approval of the licensor, whom is interested in getting a slice of the pie in the most lucrative children's television market in the world, not in preserving the "artistic integrity" or the "director's vision", you don't have to, since there is
the subtitled (and faithfully-dubbed) intact version from ADV Films. Just make sure the DVD says
Saint Seiya and NOT
Knights of the Zodiac.
I'll preserve the header in this post, for people still looking for information...
LOOKING FOR KNIGHTS OF THE ZODIAC INFO?
Click here for information on Knights of the Zodiac/Saint Seiya.
If you're looking for
Knights of the Zodiac pics,
click here for A Google Image Search for "Saint Seiya"
JONATHAN BRANDIS UPDATE
Zap2It.com has
the first full-fledged obit.
The Chicago Sun-Times mentoned it before them, but it's just a paragraph tacked on to the end of the obit of
Fame's Gene Anthony Ray.
THE LIFE AQUATIC UPDATE
These are the first few pictures I've seen from Wes Anderson's latest film The Life Aquatic. The first few are of Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman in tuxedos sitting at a wooden table for what looks like a press conference (within the film, I think... it's too stylized to be a real press conference). Then there are a few pictures of Bill Murray wearing a red tocque, just like Jacques Cousteau. I think Murray's character is called "Steve Zissou" (the working title was
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou). Then there's some sort of banquet hall with a whole bunch of tables, and two pics of a giant opera house. There's a photo of Steve Zissou's boat, and then a photo of his yellow submarine... gee, I wonder if we'll hear a certain Beatles song? If I was Wes Anderson, I'd avoid the obvious song and use "Octopus's Garden" instead, which is a much better song. Then there's two pictures of Owen Wilson in some sort of captain's suit, and Bill Murray sitting on stairs with a red carpet on it with a kid wearing what looks like lederhosen looking at him, and the second page has three pics of Bill Murray climbing down the stairs with the kid on his shoulders with a crowd following him.
Fascinating. Can't wait to see it.
'CAUSE I SEE THE STORM GETTING CLOSER, AND THE WAVES THEY GET SO HIGH. SEEMS EVERYTHING WE'VE EVER KNOWN'S HERE, WHY MUST IT DRIFT AWAY AND DIE?
Actually, speaking of
"Darwin", the animatronic dolphin from SeaQuest DSV, I bought the
Guns N' Roses Welcome to the Videos DVD the other week, and, right at the end of the
"Estranged" video, there's a shot of Axl with a dolphin and it's obviously an animatronic dolphin, since it's out of water and wearing Axl's shirt. I've always wondered... is that "Darwin"? It sure looks a heckuva lot like "Darwin", but, I suppose, all dolphins look heckuva lot like "Darwin".
JONATHAN BRANDIS R.I.P. (INDEED, IT'S TRUE)Yep, while this is still getting zilch mainstream media coverage, the official page from Novel City Pictures for Jonathan Brandis's last film,
The Year That Trembled, confirms Jonathan's death with a statement. (Thanks to
Cassandra Morgan's "The Cat's Meow" for the heads up.)
In Memory of Jonathan Brandis
We recently learned of the untimely death of Jonathan Brandis. We at Novel City Pictures are deeply saddened and stunned by this, and like many people, we grieve for his loss. Jonathan was a great actor, and our friend. We send our deepest sympathies to his family, his friends, and his fans. We all miss him very much.
Sonafide.com seems to be the blog with the most complete coverage of Johnathan Brandis's apparent death. She mentions that she has phoned
the Los Angeles county's coroner's office which confirmed that they have the body of a Jonathan Gregory Brandis, though they didn't disclose the source of death, heavily rumoured to be a suicide by hanging. She quotes a conversation she had with a Brandis fan from Connecticut named David, whom also has phoned the coroner, whom mentioned to him that it is extremely unusual that only fans and not the media had been calling.
"[The investigator] mentioned, that Jon is an extremely unusual case, the most unusual he's ever encountered as a matter of fact. Simply by virtue of the fact that instead of fielding calls from the press like he's had to for 99.9% of the time when an actor dies... he's had strictly calls from fans only. He ALSO told me, that with the volume of calls he's been getting from fans, that it's a good guess that the news will break in the Los Angeles and Connecticut papers, within the next day or so."
She mentions that there is a rumour floating around that Brandis may have been taking the acne medication Accutane, which is often blamed for
depression and suicide, though
these claims are widely disputed. My own, brief, completely anecdotal, experience with Accutane about 11 years ago was that, yes, I was very, very depressed when I was taking it, though I was depressed prior to taking it but the drug seemed to accentuate it, though I say "seemed" because I can't prove that. Because of that but also because of the extremely dry throat and peeling lips I got when I was taking it I didn't think it was worth it.
As for Brandis's life, I will never claim I was a huge fan of the guy as an actor, since he was quite obviously written into
SeaQuest DSV to appeal to a younger audience, especially females, with the uneccesary token role of the guy that took care of and communicated with Darwin, the (animatronic) dolphin. I've heard rumours to the effect that Roy Scheider, whom played the character of Captain Nathan Bridger, was very uncomfortable with the presence of the Lucas Wolenczek character, since Scheider thought that indicated that the producers weren't taking the show seriously as sci-fi. But, the nice thing I can say here is that, even though Brandis was really just eye candy for girls (and gay men), I never hated the Lucas Wolemczek character, which obviously means that Brandis actually had some acting muscle and wasn't just coasting along. I'm afraid I haven't seen much else he's in, and I haven't seen
SeaQuest DSV since it was cancelled, so I can't say anything more profound than that, but, still, it's horribly sad.
JONATHAN BRANDIS R.I.P.... ?
According to this
Cleveland Plains-Dealer "PeopleWatch" column,
Jonathan Brandis, whom played Lucas Wolenczek on the mid-90s Steven Spielberg-produced NBC sci-fi series
SeaQuest DSV**, was found dead in his apartment last Wednesday, however, I haven't been able to find a second article about his death
anywhere to confirm this, so, perhaps,
SeaQuest DSV so long forgotten that no one else in the media noticed, or, perhaps, someone's been passing false information to the
Plains-Dealer. I'll keep an eye out and see if anyone else anywhere mentions this. If it's true, it's very sad, though.
'Trembled' actor dies
Actor Jonathan Brandis, 27, who starred in the movie "The Year That Trembled," which was filmed in Ohio, was found dead in his Los Angeles apartment Wednesday. Brandis, 27, was found by friends and pronounced dead at a hospital, according to the Los Angeles coroner's office. There were no signs of violence. An autopsy was due to be performed yesterday, an investigator said. "The Year That Trembled," produced by Tyler Davidson and Scott Lax, who were living in the Cleveland area at the time, was filmed in Ohio and premiered at the Cleveland International Film Festival in 2002. Brandis played Casey Pedersen, a young man who is caught up in the turmoil of the Vietnam War. "It's a terrific tragedy, and our hearts go out to the family," said Davidson, who now lives in Los Angeles.
**The first season of
SeaQuest DSV was great sci-fi, the second had too many extraneous fantasy elements, and the third season, with Michael Ironside, whom, as you may recall,
I think should be prime minister because he played Richter in Total Recall (a joke on Arnold Schwarzenegger's winning the California governor recall election), wasn't on TV long enough for me to formulate an opinion.
CUTE PICTURES
Okay, my brother sent me three pictures of the kitten we found the other week, and I've posted them in my
photoblog.
LOOKING FOR A PICTURE OF DUNEEDON FROM TV ONTARIO'S/TVO'S READ ALL ABOUT IT?
Well, I posted a picture of Sean Hewitt in all his silver painted-face glory
here in my photoblog.
SCAM WATCH
Ooh... I got an e-mail from a complete and total stranger with a lot of money he needs to transfer for... well, some reason. I don't usually bother reading the details before contacting abuse@_______.___, but I skimmed it and... ooh,
Nigeria isn't mentioned once, and it's not all capital letters, so obviously it *must* be legit. I mean, he's a completely real rich Hong Kong banker! From the
Hang Seng Bank! But not a rich guy that's so snobby that he's above using a free webmail address, from
Hungary-based PrimPosta.com, as a "reply to" address. Though he actually sent it from a
GTC Internet webmail account, which it seems, he needs to pay $10 a month to use. Gee, considering he actually pays for the e-mail address, it would be a damn shame if he found that account closed for whatever reason. (What a dumbass.)
MR.WANG QIN
HANG SENG BANK LTD.
DES VOEUX RD.BRANCH
CENTRAL HONG KONG
HONG KONG.
ATTENTION:
I am Mr.Wang Qin, credit officer of Hang Seng Bank Ltd,I have an
urgent and
very confidential business proposition for you.
I honestly apologize and hope I do not cause you much embarrassment
by
contacting you through this means for a transaction of this
magnitude,sorry my
English is not very good,but this is due to confidentiality and
prompt access
reposed on this medium.Furthermore,due to this issue on my hands
now,it became
necesary for me to seek your assistance, and it is imperative for me
to know
your opinion.
On June 6,1999, a British Oil consultant/contractor with the Chinese
Solid Minerals Corporation, Mr.Smith Lawrence made a numbered time
(Fixed)
Deposit for twelve calendar months, valued at US$28,000,000.00
(Twenty-eight
Million Dollars only) in my branch.
Upon maturity,I sent a routine notification to his forwarding address
but got
no reply. After a month, we sent a reminder and finally we discovered
from his
contract employers, the Hong Kong Solid Minerals Corporation that Mr.
Smith
Lawrence died from an automobile accident. On further investigation,
I found
out that he died without making a WILL, and all attempts to trace his
next of
kin was fruitless.
I therefore made further investigation and discovered that Mr.Smith
Lawrence
did not declare any kin or relations in all his official documents,
including
his Bank Deposit paperwork in my Bank. This sum of US$28,000,000.00
is still
sitting in my Bank and the interest is being rolled over with the
principal
sum at the end of each year.
No one will ever come forward to claim it. According to Laws of Hong
Kong, at
the expiration of 5(five) years,the money will revert to the
ownership of the
Hong Kong Government if nobody applies to claim the fund.
Consequently, my proposal is that I will like you as a foreigner to
stand in
as the next of kin to Mr. Smith Lawrence so that the fruits of this
old man's
labor will not get into the hands of some corrupt government
officials.This is
simple, I will like you to provide immediately your full names and
address so
that the attorney will
prepare the necessary documents and affidavits that will put you in
place as
the next of kin.
We shall employ the services of an attorney for drafting and
notarization of
the WILL and to obtain the necessary documents and letter of
probate/administration in your favor for the transfer.
A bank account in any part of the world that you will provide will
then
facilitate the transfer of this money to you as the beneficiary/next
of kin.
The money will be paid into your account for us to share in the ratio
of 70%
for me and 25% for you and 5% for Expenses Incurred in the course of
the
transaction.
There is no risk at all as all the paperwork for this transaction
will be done
by the attorney and with my position as the credit officer guarantees
the
successful execution of this transaction.If you are interested,please
reply
immediately.You may reply to my email box, wangqin_2002@primposta.com
Upon your response, I shall then provide you with more details and
relevant
documents that will help you understand the transaction.
Please send me your confidential telephone and fax numbers for easy
communication. You should observe utmost confidentiality, and rest
assured
that this transaction would be most profitable for both of us because
I shall
require your assistance to invest my share in your country.
Awaiting your urgent reply.
Thanks and regards.
Mr.Wang Qin.
-------------------------------------------------
This mail sent through GTC Telecom's webmail interface.
For more information on "Advance Fee Fraud" (a.k.a. "the Nigerian Scam" or, sometimes, "the Belgian Lottery Scam"), please see the
419 Coalition website.
"OPERATION CHAREST AND TREMBLAY, PLEASE FIRE THE STM/MTC MAINTENANCE WORKERS NOW, NOW, NOW!!!" DAY 1
Yep, I found out the hard way that those of us whom don't drive living in the "far west" of the Montreal area should, for the time being, schedule our lives around the AMT commuter trains only and shouldn't even bother with the buses at all, since the bus drivers on the 211 and 221 Metrobus routes between Sainte Anne de Bellevue and Lionel Groulx M�tro station seem to be playing "silly buggers" too. They aren't the ones on strike, but they definitely seem to be working to rule.
I left the following messages in
the "comments" section for
Sari Stein's entry on the strike.
The bus drivers aren't on strike... right? That's what I thought, but they certainly seem to be "working to rule". During the hours when there was supposed to be "full service" 3-6:30 p.m., it's a lie. At least on certain routes. Here's my experience at Sainte Anne de Bellevue, waiting for either the 211 or the 221 Metrobus to take me to Lionel Groulx Metro.
The first 211 didn't get there until about 3:40, dropped a few people off, and then... went "Hors Service". This is after doing one single trip... in one direction only. The next bus to downtown which came along was a 221 Metrobus, it dropped a few people off, and just sat there... for 20 minutes. Then it came to pick people up, but, bear in mind that the Sainte Anne's terminus is right in front of John Abbott College and the Macdonald Campus of McGill, so... there were just too many people cramming in for me to want to get on that one. The third bus was marked "SPECIAL" and arrived and just sat there, for even longer than the first one. After another half an hour, when nothing else coming from downtown arrived, it was approaching 5 p.m., so I just said "fuck it all" and walked away to the Sainte Anne's train station to get the 5 p.m. train downtown. (Since my class at Concordia today started at 4:15 p.m., I obviously wasn't going to make it there in time, but I needed to get some things from the library.) So, in short, at a stop where there normally would be at least two buses leaving for downtown every ten minutes or so during rush hour, during about the hour and a half I was waiting there, about three downtown buses appeared and one of them didn't pick up any passengers.
I should note that the 200 line between Fairview shopping centre and Sainte Anne's seemed to be operating fairly normally. But those of us that need to get from the "far west" to downtown... don't bother with the buses at all. Take the train. But the problem there is that, after morning rush hour, the next train leaves Dorion at 11 a.m., followed by one at 2 p.m., and a third at 5 p.m., so that's not too practical either. The Montreal-Dorion/Vaudreuil/Rigaud line should have one train in each direction every hour during the day like on the Deux Montagnes line.
Then
this one, after Sari suggested that I bum a ride off someone:
Well, I don't know anyone too close I can bum a ride off from Pincourt. But I do have the luxury of not having any classes which go past 8 p.m., so I can catch the 9:15 p.m. train, the last train west of the day on weekdays (another complaint of mine regarding the train service... the last AMT train west used to leave Windsor/Lucien L'Allier at 10:45 p.m. on weekdays, but 9:15 p.m. is just too early if you, say, want to catch even the early evening show at the movies, and some classes at Concordia go up to 10:30 p.m.).
Oh yeah, also my mother called
Al Gravelle and
Eramelinda Boquer on CJAD to complain, and I was amused to hear Al invoking the name of Reagan too. So I guess I'm not the only one out there whom thinks a few mass firings here and there are needed in this province.
LOOK AT ME!
Hmm... I started my own
Photoblog, if you wanna see it. I've posted a few of my favourite photos just to test the thing out. Just because, Blogger is great but cheapskates like me can't post photos here...
I'll post a couple of really cute photos there within a day or two. Can you guess what they're of?
WELCOME BACK, RUSH!
I'm so glad to hear
Rush Limbaugh back on the airwaves after being off the air for over a month as he checked himself into rehab to deal with his unintentional addiction to the prescription medication OxyContin. He fully admits that he's a drug addict now, and he confirmed something I thought but didn't have enough evidence to back it up: he intentionally avoided talking about drug addiction whenever possible since the addiciton started in 1996, so as not to make himself a hypocrite. He even says that some of the quotes attributed to him were made up, or that the quotes attributed to him bouncing around are ancient.
Also, sorry Aaron McGruder (the
Boondocks creator), but the mass pariah-ization of Rush Limbaugh by conservatives which you
hoped predicted would happen never matierialized. In fact he's getting more support than ever from his listeners, according to
a poll conducted in October by Critical Mass Media by Burke Incorporated wherein a full 99% of listeners polled indicated they expected the show to be just as good or better after he returned, and 95% of people admit that Rush is a human being whom sometimes made mistakes (as opposed to the demigod I guess the other 5% of people think he is). And the number which will infuriate the most Rush-haters is that 22% of listeners have *more* respect for Rush because of the way he admitted to and is dealing with his problem, while only 8% have a lesser opinion of him now. Oh dear, could it be that conservatives in general have a much more nuanced view on drug addicts, especially ones that get addicted to prescription medications, than liberals give them credit for? (Of course, I should point out again that
many conservatives oppose the War on Drugs as being a waste of taxpayer money and police work and/or because all prohibition does is allow organized crime to thrive if there's a market for things they can't get through normal retail channels and/or because it gives people criminal records for things they do only to themselves and/or because the side effects of some narcotics aren't nearly as severe as anti-drug propaganda makes it out to be.)
In fact, one sign of just how many people are listening to Rush today is that I had lots of problem just getting the live audio of the
Rush Limbaugh programme off his site since their servers must be swamped (and you have to be a Rush Limbaugh 24/7 subscriber to listen to the programme on the site itself rather than on the sites of some of his affiliates). So more people than ever are Rush 24/7 subscribers, apparently. I had to listen for a while on WYBG 1050 AM out of Massena, New York, which I can just barely hear over the static here in Pincourt, Quebec (it's unlistenable to in downtown Montreal unless you have a really, really, really strong antennae), some 100 km away.
DEAR STRIKING MONTREAL TRANSIT CORP. MAINTENANCE WORKERS
Dear
striking Montreal Transit Corp. Maintenance Workers,
To paraphrase the Terminator from the first
Terminator film,
"Fuck you, assholes."
I hope you all get fired. Yeah, what Gerald Tremblay and Jean Charest need to do is pull out the Reagan-brand raygun and set it to "union busting" and hire so-called scabs, and, if that's illegal in this province (as it is), make it legal because freedom of association should include the option not to associate with the
Conf�d�ration des syndicats national, the provincial trade union, to get any particular job. Really, the CSN has way too much power in this province due to is comfy, cozy relationship with the PQ (the Quebecker Party... oh, the
P�quistes hate it when you call it that ;-)). Such a move would be a very positive sign to Americans who are put off from doing business in this province because of the union entrenchment (and also the draconian, anti-freedom, racist language regulations, but that's another topic for another time). These
threats from Hollywood to stop shooting films in this province are all about unions (on both sides, I know, but even the Hollywood unions find the Quebec union guys insufferable).
Thank you for giving those people whom prefer to drive to downtown all the more reason to avoid public transit, leading, ultimately, to less money coming in in terms of fares and, as a result, less money than you'd otherwise get if you weren't such babies in these negotiations. Or higher fares, which would drive even more people to drive. But I don't currently have that option, being someone whom keeps on delaying taking my road test. Fuck, I prefer taking buses outside of rush hour when they're less crowded. At least the commuter trains aren't affected, for now, but there are way too few in Pincourt during off peak hours... one at 11 a.m., one at 2 p.m. and the next one going downtown is in the evening. Really, we should get one train in each direction on the AMT Montreal/Dorion/Rigaud/Vaudreuil line an hour, like on the AMT Two Mountains line. Well, really, we need better public transit out here on the "West Shore" because the whole Ile Perrot/Vaudreuil area has grown a lot since they eliminated the one STCUM/MUCTC (now STM/MTC) bus line out here 20 years ago, since there wasn't enough demand for one back then, unlike now, when one could thrive. I'm anticipating being very, very late to a lot of classes this week. Well, I have to skip tomorrow to write an essay, but nevertheless. And I might as well forget about going downtown on weekends, if I can't use the M�tro at all.
So, in summary, get back to work, you dumb separatist fucks, or don't bother coming back at all.
Steve Brandon.
