No, I’m not being rude, I don’t mean it like that! I’m talking Lost the series which twists your brain like pythons playing Twister while eating super-chewy toffee. Good news for fellow Lost castaways, there is a range of action figures coming from McFarlane’s this autumn. No pictures of the actual figures yet, I’m afraid, but being McFarlane’s I expect the quality and detailing to be pretty good. And this give me an excuse to post a picture of Kate.
Also on the Lost front August sees a collection of essays exploring themes, plots and recurring symbols from the series (don’t worry, I will resist the urge to use the terms ‘intertextuality’, ‘postmodern’, ‘signifier’ or any other related communication studies terms) called Getting Lost. Editing this study of less-than-idyllic island life is none other than award-winning SF novelist and comics writer Orson Scott Card. And here I will put a picture of Jack, just so no-one can say I am not being even handed with the foxy actor pictures today (what do you mean you wanted Sawyer??? Hush or I will take Jack away and leave you Hurley).
Sticking with the cult TV theme, we have Firefly: the Official Companion Volume 1 coming this summer from Titan, jam-packed with photographs and interviews as well as complete scripts for the first six episodes of Joss Whedon’s excellent series. I’ve just been re-watching Firefly on DVD recently and it gets even better with repeated viewing – why did it have to be cancelled?!?!? Well, at least we got Serenity out of that, but I’d loved to have watched this show and characters grow over a few seasons.
Boarding the Enterprise is another summer release, and, not surprisingly, is a look at Star Trek, which includes contributions from some heavyweight SF figures including Norman Spinrad and D.C. Fontana with two Hugo and Nebula award winners editing the essays in the shape of David Gerrold (who also wrote the Trouble With the Tribbles episode) and Robert J. Sawyer.
It is a busy old time for TV and movie-related serious books as Stargate also gets the essays treatment with Reading Stargate (much more of this and I will revert to Academicese and start discussing shifting paradigms and the syntagmatic nature of the narrative. And no-one wants that) by Stan Beller and Lisa Dickson. It is always interesting to see more academic takes on favourite genre programmes and films, although will anyone ever come up with one to beat the title of Carol Clover’s fantastic Men, Women and Chainsaws:Gender in the Modern Horror (brilliant title and a serious academic book but one written by someone who is also a fan of the genre which improved it no end – alas now out of print).
On the film guide front there is V For Vendetta: From Script to Film, edited by Spencer Lamm, which, as you can infer from the title, follows the movie from its gestation to actual completion, taking in storyboard art, Dave Lloyd’s original comic art, interviews with the stars and even the normally elusive Wachowski Brothers. The book is available as both a paperback and hardback edition in June.
Wed, May 24, 2006
Books, Film, TV and radio, Merchandise, Reviews