From the Palantir! (A Fantasy News Round-Up)

Posted on 11 November 2009 by Brent Hartinger, Editor

  • The Los Angeles Times has an informative update on the “fourth” film in each of these fantasy franchises: Pirates of the Caribbean, the works of Tolkien, Spider-man, and X-Men.
  • James Cameron is an insane genius (and, it sounds like, a bit full of himself). A great New Yorker profile of the filmmaker, and an another interesting piece on how the revolutionary CGI effects in his upcoming Avatar were done.
  • By contrast, Terry Gilliam thinks 3-D and other expensive effects tend to corrupt movies: “You’re not there to disturb people when you’re given 200 million dollars — you’re there to reassure them.” God, I love that man.
  • The Gathering Storm (the first book in the trilogy conclusion to The Wheel of Time) debuts at #1 this week on the New York Times and Publishers Weekly bestseller fiction hardcover lists, #2 on the Washington Post list, and #4 on the combined USA Today list. It’s a hit, but I still hate the cover.
  • A writer visits the set of Voyage of the Dawn Treader and writes and talks about it — but isn’t allowed to take pictures! As the expression goes, a picture is worth a thousand words — maybe more.
  • Locus interviews Superpowers author (and Nebula finalist) David Schwartz: “I got the sense from the reviews that Superpowers is a book people either like or really hate. I think a big part of that is the fans coming from the comic book/superhero angle seem to want villains and fights, and they don’t want the interpersonal drama.” As for me, I love the interpersonal drama in comic books.
  • Have I mentioned lately how sick I am of the Twilight books? And we’re only on the second movie!
  • Why is there suddenly all this news from Ian McKellen talking about The Hobbit? Because he’s out promoting his AMC mini-series The Prisoner (which airs on Sunday, and we’ll review this Friday), but everyone wants to ask him about Gandalf (except Whoopi Goldberg, who asked him about Dumbledore!). The thing is, McKellen hasn’t signed a contract yet and doesn’t really know much about the movie.
  • Jake Gyllenhaal discusses his role in the upcoming Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, calling it “40 days and 40 nights of misery.” But in other ways, the role is just play-acting: “This is how you play when you’re a kid, and you go outside and I remember specifically many times I would go outside and be like, ‘I play him and you play him and let’s fight!’ And we’re just like doing that every day.”
  • Eastwick has been canceled. Stop the presses!
  • A ridiculously misleading headline alert for ComingSoon.net: “Is Aragorn Ready to Return to The Hobbit?” The article’s answer: well, the actor would, but there’s no role for him in the movies. How in the world do sites like this stay in business?
  • It’s hard to say if this is a misleading headline or not: “Do we meet Dumbledore’s gay lover in the last Harry Potter films?” The article tells us the producers have hired an actor to play the role of Grindelwald, the man J.K. Rowling says Dumbledore loved, and the character appears in a vision in the film. But the article doesn’t say if his relationship to Dumbledore is any clearer in the movies than it is in the books (which would obviously be a big deal!).


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