The partnership gives Universal the green light to develop titles like Grendel, End League, Dead Rider and Goon into movies.
But, Dark Horse's franchise pacts with other major titles (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Conan) are off limits, as the rites obviously stick with the original creators.
There's no word yet on which Dark Horse title will be first to reach the big screen.
Artwork courtesy of Dark Horse Comics
Arthur C. Clarke, the award-winning sci-fi writer and futurist most famous for his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, died Wednesday in Sri Lanka. He was 90.
His writing, both fiction and nonfiction, established Clarke as a visionary during the last half of the 20th century. In a paper titled "Extra-Terrestrial Relays: Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage?" published in 1945, Clarke floated the idea of using geosynchronous satellites for communications long before such technology changed our world. (Geostationary orbit is now sometimes known as the Clarke orbit.)
That's just one of the many innovative concepts Clark is credited with unleashing. From the electrosecretary transcription machine to the space elevator, Clarke laid out his visionary ideas in more than 100 fiction and nonfiction books.
Despite his track record as a futurist, Clarke remained humble about his work when he was interviewed for a 1993 Q&A with Wired magazine. Over the years, the writer and his bold ideas were featured several times in the publication.
"I've never predicted the future," Clarke said in that first interview. "Or hardly ever. I extrapolate. Look, I've written six stories about the end of the Earth; they can't all be true!"
Clarke picked his book The Songs of Distant Earth as his most memorable piece of writing, saying, "It's got everything in it that I ever wanted to say."
In one of the writer's last published works, a submission to Wired magazine's six-word story project in 2006, Clarke bent the rules a bit and refused to trim his 10-word piece ("God said, 'Cancel Program GENESIS.' The universe ceased to exist.")
Clarke's writing won him Nebula and Hugo awards, and in 1986 he was named a Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America.
When asked by Wired in 1993 if he had put any thought into what he would want on his epitaph, Clarke said he had."Oh, yes," he said. "I've often quoted it: 'He never grew up; but he never stopped growing.'"
Photo: Arthur C. Clarke holds a copy of his book Exploration of Space at a home in Washington, D.C., in this 1952 AP file photo.
See also:
- Arthur C. Clarke on Life
- Letter From Sri Lanka
- 2001 Double Take: I Was a Teenage Centenarian
- Clarke's Odyssey to 2036
- The Intelligence Behind AI
It's a match made in bad-boy heaven: Fight Club's David Fincher has signed on to oversee an omnibus film drawn from stories from Heavy Metal, the blood-and-boobs sci-fi/fantasy magazine that has already spawned two films, according to Variety.
Fincher will direct one of eight or nine segments, with Heavy Metal publisher/editor Kevin Eastman and Tim Miller of CG master Blur Studio each doing another. Word on other directors to come.
Expect some fanboy grumbling: The original 1981 Heavy Metal film -- with voiceover work by John Candy, Eugene Levy and Harold Ramis, plus music by Devo, Cheap Trick, Blue Oyster Cult and Black Sabbath -- remains a quintessential cult film. (I remember the fifth- and seventh-generation VHS tapes being passed around during years of rights wrangling.)
But, if Fincher's films are any indication, this trip into the Heavy Metal world is more likely to match the often gruesome and erotic intensity of the magazine.
Got your mind in a twist trying to figure out what happens when in Futurama?
Thankfully, one of those obsessive fans we are eternally grateful for did our homework for us, giving us plenty of time to bone up on Futurama facts before the June 24 release of the franchise's next straight-to-DVD release, The Beast With a Billion Backs.
Sam512 at the priceless if at times inscrutable Everything2.com just re-watched the entire 72-hour Futurama oeuvre in a mad quest to establish the show's definitive time line.
Some highlights:
2008: Stop 'n' Drop becomes America's favorite suicide booth
2038: Petroleum reserves run dry.
2443: Second coming of Jesus.
2620: To end that stupid joke once and for all, Uranus is renamed.
See also:
- The Original Futurama
- Futurama Is Back! Grab a Can of Slurm and Settle In
- Gallery: Behind the Scenes of Futurama
Crackcardboard crafters Suck UK, who previously brought us the USB mix tape and the flatpack Mini Boombox have trumped themselves with the Cardboard Mini Arcade. $12.50 will buy you a pair of thoroughly 1980s-style replica arcade machine cabinets.
Thethe twist? They double as stands for the PlayStation Portable. Otherwise, the models are completely non-functional, although in a staggering piece of attention to detail, they do have "graffiti and discarded wrappers inside".
Product page [Suck UK]
Beer, With Benefits - MSN Health & Fitness - Nutrition
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More on this in Health & Fitness |
Beer makes you feel good. You knew that. But you don't realize just how good. Recent research has revealed bioactive compounds in beer that battle cancer, boost your metabolism, and more. And these benefits come on top of the oft-touted upsides of moderate alcohol intake: clot prevention, cleaner arteries, and reduced stress. Just in time for the summer, we set out with a stack of studies, a panel of parched testers, and a full fridge to find the best-tasting, healthiest brews available. Enjoy.
Coming soon: Movies on flash memory cards - Page1 - MSN Tech & Gadgets - News and Features
Coming soon: Movies on flash memory cards
PortoMedia is probably the only start-up in the world inspired by the movie "Carlito's Way."
Company founder Chris Armstrong explains: Four years ago, he set out to his local DVD store to rent a movie. First, he stopped at the ATM to get cash. The store didn't have "Twelve Angry Men," the movie Armstrong wanted. He settled for "Carlito's Way" instead. He then waited in line, paid for his rental, and returned to his car
Just unveiled at CeBit, Gigabyte's M700 UMPC comes with a surprising 2 GB RAM. In addition to its hefty memory and bright design, the M700 manages to pack in a 7-inch, 1024x600 touchscreen and a 1.2 GHz processor. It also has Windows Vista Home Premium. Details on pricing and release are hush hush at this point. [Ubergizmo]
Windows Media Center makes it really easy to watch TV on Windows Vista (Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate) with a built in Guide that lets you browse TV shows and movies and schedule recordings of your favorite ones. Many PCs today come with TV functionality built in via TV cards. But not all Windows Vista PCs come equipped with TV capability. Unlike a few years ago - adding TV functionality to your PC is very easy. Let me share my experience in adding TV functionality to one of my PCs.
AMDbrings TV capability to your PC through their ATI TV Wonder products. Some of their products are PC cards that must be installed inside the actual PC - and others are USB devices that can simply be plugged in to a USB port. I picked up AMD's ATI TV Wonder 600 USB TV tuner - which is Certified for Windows Vista. This small USB device lets you plug in a coaxial cable for TV capability or use an antenna for free over-the-air television - including over-the-air HDTV.
TheATI TV Wonder 600 USB has the following features:
- USB2.0
- Hybrid TV Tuner Stick for:
- Over-the-air Digital TV / HDTV1 (ATSC)
- Over-the-air / Cable Analog TV (NTSC)
- Remotecontrol
- Telescopic antenna to receive free-to-air TV channels
- Capturefrom VCRs, camcorders with the included audio/video input cable
I took some unboxing shots to share with you:
Settingup TV functionality in Windows Media Center is really easy. If you have not used Windows Media Center before, when you launch Windows Media Center for the first time it will take you through a series of steps to set everything up.
Ifyou have used Windows Media Center before and already did Windows Media Center's initial setup - to set up TV all you need to do is go to Settings and TV and click on "Set Up TV Signal". Windows Media Center will take you through a series of screens with options to set up everything you need for watching TV.
Pickingup the ATI TV Wonder 600 USB TV tuner allowed me to easily add TV functionality to my main desktop PC. I had TV functionality in a matter of just a few minutes. Since the ATI TV Wonder 600 is a USB device, I can pack the device up and take it with me and use it on my laptop as well.
Hauppaugealso offers products for bringing TV onto your PC and Windows Media Center.
Iplan to dive deeper in several upcoming posts in using Windows Media Center and TV functionality.
Somewhere,William Shawn, John Hersey, and Rachel Carson are spinning in their graves, but I was delighted to read in the New Yorker this essay about superhero costumes, written by a guy who knows a thing or two about the topic, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay author Michael Chabon. Chabon's thesis is that the superhero costume is an impossible paradox, one that reveals the musculature of the body it means to disguise, advertises the secret history (the hero's origin story) it means to conceal, and divulges the secret it's designed to hide: that this flamboyant hero is someone with a secret identity that needs protecting, lest the hero's enemies find it out and use it against the hero. Also, don't tell Edna Mode, but the superhero costume is literally impossible, as anyone knows who's ever tried to wear one to a comics convention or squeezed into one on Halloween or dreamed he or she could fly like Superman just by tying a towel around his or her neck. The only places superhero costumes work is on the page and in the vivid imagination of the reader. Chabon manages to deconstruct the superhero costume without ripping it to shreds as an object of fantasy and wonder.
Tell us, PopWatchers: which comic book hero or heroine has the best costume, in terms of practicality, style, or fit? (By fit, I mean, of course, whose suit is least likely to bunch or ride up in a way that will create unsightly puckers and bulges?) And if you have superhero costume stories of your own to share, now's the time; don't worry, your secret identity is safe on our message boards.
