Various new images from Michael Bay’s big budget adaptation of the Transformers have surfaced online over the past few days. The most prominent amongst those are probably three new and very clear renderings of Optimus Prime (full body from the front and the back and a comparison of his face in standard and battle modes) that were published by Aint-it-cool-news. Other images include what appears to be a model of Bumblebee (or a big part of him at least) in his robot mode, a look at the Pontiac Solstice representing the vehicular mode of Jazz, and photos of havoc being filmed on the LA set.

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The Western Mail is running an article on the possible controversy the film adaptations of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials book trilogy will cause. According to it, Simon Jenkins, editor of an online Christian newsletter, says the film has the potential to be every bit as offensive to some religous groups as The Da Vinci Code. He does, however, concede that the books/films should rather be used as a platform for debate, instead of dismissing the work as heresy.

While anti-Church views are only subliminally present in the series’ first installment, The Golden Compass, what Christian have labeled the actual blasphemy occurs in the final book, The Amber Spyglass, when the character of Lord Asriel launches an attack on God.

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Publishers Bloomsbury organized the Big Bad Read poll in which 16′000 British schoolchildren voted they’re all-time favourite villains in literature. The list is topped by Lord Voldemort from author J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, closely followed by J.R.R. Tolkien’s epitome of evil, Sauron (The Lord of the Rings), and Mrs. Coulter (soon to be interpreted by actress Nicole Kidman in the big screen adaptation) from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Other prominent baddies that feature in the top ten are Lex Luthor, The Joker, Count Olaf, The Other Mother, The White Witch, Dracula and Artemis Fowl.

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Posted in Books & Comics, Harry Potter •

Keith Calder’s frosh financing and production company, Snoot Entertainment, has bought the film rights to Identity Theft, a futuristic novella by Robert J Sawyer. The author, dubbed the ‘dean of Canadian science fiction’ is the nation’s only full time science fiction writer. The novella was a finalist for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the Aurora Award, and it won the Premio UPC de Ciencia Ficción, the world’s largest cash prize for SF writing.

Identity Theft, which first appeared in the anthology ‘Down These Dark Spaceways’ is a hard-boiled detective story about a private eye working on Mars who is hired to find a beautiful woman’s missing husband.

Source: Variety

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