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Stuff You Need to Know

Stuff You Need to Know: Hey You Get Off of My Cloud Atlas

Widge
July 26, 2012
6 min read

The highlights of scads of pop culture news, put through a strainer and placed in a single post to save wear and tear on your mind and productivity. Enjoy.

Cloud Atlas Concept Art

  • The book is Cloud Atlas and it’s been adapted into a movie, produced by the Wachowskis and directed by Tom Twyker, who brought you Run Lola Run. And it looks like somebody tried to take The Fountain, turn it into an even bigger budgeted TV miniseries, then compress it to three hours of cinema. What. The. Hell. Is this.

    This will either be immense or the most inadvertently hilarious film in recent memory. Source. Art Source.

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  • The Complete Series of All in the Family, all twenty-eight discs of it, is hitting DVD from Shout! Factory on October 30th. Pre-order-link is here.
  • You can either begin rejoicing or cursing or some combination of the two: it’s confirmed that Martin Campbell is attached to develop and helm (at least the pilot) of a new Blake’s 7 for American television. Oddly, the weird morally shades-of-grey bunch-o’-criminals series, which was ahead of its time, if handled correctly, would fit right in on the small screen here. It all depends on where it ends up, really, as it’s being shopped around. More info on the series and a mention of previous attempts to bring it around can be found here.

  • A 22-disc set of The Carol Burnett Show is hitting DVD on September 25th from Time-Life, featuring twenty hours of bonus bits including new and unseen interviews and featurettes. It’s fifty episodes with a slew of new bonus features…and available exclusively from the Time-Life website. So we still don’t have all of it on DVD…but this will do for a fan for now.
  • Gangster Squad has been moved to January 11th to allow for a reworking of the climax of the film, which involved a shoot-out at Grauman’s Chinese Theater. I think I don’t need to tell you why that has unfortunately become a bad idea to include in a film at the moment. Source.

  • Yes, I know many of you like it and more power to you. The third season of Glee is hitting August 14th. The pre-order links are for DVD and Blu-Ray.
  • Juan of the Dead, the Cuban zombie comedy we’ve mentioned before (and been pining for ever since) is finally hitting DVD on August 14th. You can pre-order it here.
  • The Lawrence of Arabia 50th Anniversary Collector’s Edition Blu-Ray, which I first saw mention of via Brad Bird on Twitter, is going to hit 11/13 and looks like it’s going to be a bit immense. The restoration is supposed to be stunning and it’s hi-def friendly to be certain. You can pre-order it here.

  • There were apparently two different Man of Steel trailers…each with differing narration. While I’m sure Costner’s going to make a great Pa Kent in the movie, Crowe sounds freaking immense as Jor-El. For the three of you, who missed it:

    That narration sums up the character perfectly. Shame the costume looks like ass. Sorry, but it does.

  • How’s Hugh Laurie coping post-House? Just fine, it looks like. Here’s the trailer for The Oranges, which opens October 5th. Looks charming enough.

  • Fun with hand-making a stop motion animated film can be found in this ParaNorman featurette, in which the time lapse bits are awesome to see. I would go insane working on something like this. Well. More insane.
  • Christopher Plummer has a one-man show that I would freaking love to see. It’s called A Word or Two, and it’s written by him and covers his love of literature. It just premiered yesterday at the Stratford Festival in Canada. According to Playbill, the show “…touches on A.A. Milne, the Bible, Shaw, Wilde, Coleridge, Marlowe, W.H. Auden, Nabokov, Rostand, MacLeish, Shakespeare, Byron, Nash and Leacock — and more.” What about that is not to like? I hope it eventually hits DVD.
  • Re-Animator is hitting Blu-Ray from Image on 9/4. Looks like an excellent release with two commentaries, which I think are new…but don’t quote me on that. I don’t recall them from the excellent Millennium Edition from a while back. You can pre-order it here.
  • Rosemary’s Baby is hitting Criterion on October 30th. Looks like apart from a digital restoration the main new bonus bit are interviews and a huge docu on composer Krzysztof Komeda. Pre-order links are for DVD and Blu-Ray.
  • A fascinating docu that’s hitting shortly is Keanu Reeves‘ Side By Side, which has him sitting directors down and finding out where they stand on the latest and greatest film technologies. And there’s a lot of different opinions in play. For any cinephile, this is going to be a must-see, methinks.

  • Snow White and the Huntsman hits September 11th from Universal on both Blu-Ray and DVD. The Blu-Ray comes with a second-screen app for your iPad and exclusive featurettes. Pre-order links for each of the media types. Click away, friends.
  • At freaking last, the Solomon Kane trailer for the theatrical release stateside. This is a 2009 film of swords and demons and asskicking and we have been denied it for far too long. September 28th, that gets fixed. I’ve been waiting–and I hope this damn thing delivers.

  • The fourth season of Sons of Anarchy is hitting August 28th from Fox. A few commentaries, plus deleted and extended scenes appear to be the highlights of what’s going to be available. Pre-order links are for DVD and Blu-Ray.
  • Fans of Stargate: Atlantis, take note. All five seasons are hitting individual Blu-Ray sets but they’re available exclusively from Best Buy. That’s happening August 28th and you can pre-order them here.
  • Well the rather unwieldy-looking Atlas was discussed up top, now Jack Finney’s Time And Again is back on the active development slate. Doug Liman (Bourne Identity) is on tap to direct for Lionsgate. Apparently Robert Redford had tackled it in the mid-90s and a crack was taken at making it a TV miniseries after that. No timeline given, so it may not even be in a script stage yet. Source: Variety.

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    2 comments

    • Widge-
      Have you read the book “Cloud Atlas”? I don’t know if there’s an audiobook, but you should check it out. The trailer doesn’t describe exactly what the book is like, which puts it at odds, because it does describe the book rather well. In a nutshell, it’s six novellas that are loosely tied together, and told in two parts throughout the book. They happen in chronological order, spanning from the 18th or 19th century, to a post-apocalyptic future. It’s really quite good. I enjoyed it, and I think that the author, David Mitchell, is at his best when writing these kinds of stories. The other collection of stories he’s penned, “Ghostwritten,” is even better.

      I didn’t know this was going to be a movie, and I’m actually kind of excited to see it. I recommend the book, (the audiobook can, in fact, be found at Audible), and I even more highly recommend “Ghostwritten,” which only seems to have an abridged audiobook, which I don’t think I could recommend.

      I think, based on the trailer, that it will be a fairly faithful telling of the “Story” of Cloud Atlas, and I think it’ll be good.

      -EditorMikeC

    • EMC: Thanks for the info…I have not read it and I’m wondering that thing we confront with every film: read the book first or see the film first and read after? It looks utterly mental…and while the Wachowskis give me pause, the fact Twyker’s directing I find fascinating. RUN LOLA RUN is an underviewed gem, and I can see where their collective sort of visions could mesh well for a film like this. I will check out the audiobook one way or another.