Star Wars Weekend at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida kicks off today! Here’s a list of scheduled celebrities for this year’s Force-filled fan fest: Weekend I (May 17–19) Ray Park (Darth Maul – Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace)Jeremy Bulloch (Boba Fett – Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi)Dee Bradley Baker (voice of Captain Rex – Star Wars: The Clone Wars) Weekend II (May 24-26)Ray Park (Darth Maul – Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace)Warwick Davis (Wicket the Ewok – Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi)Jim Cummings (voice of Hondo Ohnaka – Star Wars: The Clone Wars) Weekend III (May 31 – June 2)Warwick Davis (Wicket the Ewok – Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi)Tim Rose (Admiral Ackbar – Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi)Sam Witwer (voice of Darth Maul – Star Wars: The Clone Wars) Weekend IV(June 7-9)Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian – Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: Episode VIReturn of the Jedi)Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca – Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back,Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi and Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the SithTom Kane (voice of Yoda – Star Wars: The Clone Wars) There’s lots more from the galaxy to see and do including a photo opp with a “life-size” rancor. The replica is 17 feet long and weighs more than 700 pounds. May the Weekends Be With You! High-res

Star Wars Weekend at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida kicks off today!

Here’s a list of scheduled celebrities for this year’s Force-filled fan fest:

Weekend I (May 17–19) 
Ray Park (Darth Maul – Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace)
Jeremy Bulloch (Boba Fett – Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi)
Dee Bradley Baker (voice of Captain Rex – Star Wars: The Clone Wars)

Weekend II (May 24-26)
Ray Park (Darth Maul – Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace)
Warwick Davis (Wicket the Ewok – Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi)
Jim Cummings (voice of Hondo Ohnaka – Star Wars: The Clone Wars)

Weekend III (May 31 – June 2)
Warwick Davis (Wicket the Ewok – Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi)
Tim Rose (Admiral Ackbar – Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi)
Sam Witwer (voice of Darth Maul – Star Wars: The Clone Wars)

Weekend IV(June 7-9)
Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian – Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: Episode VIReturn of the Jedi)
Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca – Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back,Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi and Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith
Tom Kane (voice of Yoda – Star Wars: The Clone Wars)

There’s lots more from the galaxy to see and do including a photo opp with a “life-size” rancor. The replica is 17 feet long and weighs more than 700 pounds.

May the Weekends Be With You!

Webcomic Wednesday: Chloe by Hans Rickheit

Chloe is an unpleasant comic. Deliberately so. The recipient of a prestigious Xeric Grant to fund its initial release in 2001, it’s the story of a sullen, restless teenager who lives with her single, unfriendly father, skips school, smokes too much, and is gradually led by a series of strange sightings in the nearby woods to the home of Conrad, the dwarf you see above. That’s where the unpleasantness truly comes to the fore, because it’s unpleasantness itself that draws them to one another. As opposed to the parental and authority figures (all male) who order or encourage her to get her act together, Conrad offers her more vice, more sloth, more horror, more encounters with the engine of dark imagination he calls the Underbrain and the strange creatures that issue from it. 

Their relationship culminates in an eight-page, explicit, extremely NSFW sequence that is both the most visually disgusting and viscerally erotic sex scene I’ve ever seen in a comic. It’s erotic precisely because it is disgusting. Chloe and Conrad (and we readers) are confronted with relentlessly repulsive images of dismemberment and orifices and worms and vagina dentata and tentacles and so on — and so, with the concept of beauty removed from the equation, what remains is pure arousal, pure desire, pure pleasure for its own sake, and for the sake of the person you’ve found to share it with. Whether you find it sexy or close your browser tab in horror, it will stick with you, that much I can guarantee.

Cartoonist Hans Rickheit has been serializing this graphic novel on his website a page at a time (though he put that sex scene up in one blast rather than delay the gratification), so right now the story is tantalizingly incomplete. Trust me when I say the final images are bleakly romantic and will be worth the wait — though you can always just buy the book version and welcome the Underbrain into your life right away. The influences are clear — the Davids, Lynch and Cronenberg, are unmistakable — but the melancholic, empathetic tone is all Rickheit’s own.

“There’s always money in the banana stand.” —George Bluth

Except this week the bananas are free—if you have time to wait in line for a free frozen banana treat when you visit the Bluth’s Original Frozen Banana Stands set-up in various locations across New York City. Visit the official twitter feed (@arresteddev) to learn the location of the banana stand each day this week. You never know who’ll be in the stand! Today, Ron Howard and Terry Crews were working the stand.

The beloved series is back, with the 4th season of 15 new episodes, all debuting at the same time on Netflix on May 26th! Aanyong!

Roots and Beginnings: The Lost Boys (dir. Joel Schumacher) Contra most of my writing about fantastic fiction as a rule-free zone, for whatever reason I always found the rules that governed vampires extraordinarily appealing as a storytelling device. I liked that there was an element of problem-solving that went along with tangling with these creatures, for them and for you; otherwise, with all their powers — transformation, telepathy, mind control, indestructibility, enhanced strength and senses, flight, intangibility, control over low animals, fangs — wouldn’t the game be over before it began? I’m sure it helped that the first contemporary vampire movies I watched were The Monster Squad and (my very first R-rated movie) The Lost Boys, which made a lot out of the establishment of those rules in pop culture and what that would mean if you encountered vampires for real. To this day I find it super lazy for writers to have vampires walking around in the day (I know that’s a Hollywood convention and not part of the traditional lore, but it is what it is), particularly since The Lost Boys proves how much tension and suspense can be drawn out from dancing right up to the point of no return and then using one of the rules to pull you back from the brink. Much of that tension, it must be said, is derived from how appealing David and his band of surf-punk-hair-metal vampires can be. Part of me retains a ten-year-old boy’s skepticism about sexy vampires, but the look and lifestyle (and even the sound — remember their laughs? remember Kiefer Sutherland’s sonorous growl of “How far you willing to go, Michael?”) of the Lost Boys does not seem like a fate worse than death. Only when the mask comes off and they descend, like a pack of predatory animals, on innocents, rending and maiming and feeding, does the horror reveal itself. “You never grow old, Michael. And you never die. But you must feed.” At times that seems like a small price to pay. It’s only the rules that save you.

Roots and Beginnings: The Lost Boys (dir. Joel Schumacher)

Contra most of my writing about fantastic fiction as a rule-free zone, for whatever reason I always found the rules that governed vampires extraordinarily appealing as a storytelling device. I liked that there was an element of problem-solving that went along with tangling with these creatures, for them and for you; otherwise, with all their powers — transformation, telepathy, mind control, indestructibility, enhanced strength and senses, flight, intangibility, control over low animals, fangs — wouldn’t the game be over before it began?

I’m sure it helped that the first contemporary vampire movies I watched were The Monster Squad and (my very first R-rated movie) The Lost Boys, which made a lot out of the establishment of those rules in pop culture and what that would mean if you encountered vampires for real. To this day I find it super lazy for writers to have vampires walking around in the day (I know that’s a Hollywood convention and not part of the traditional lore, but it is what it is), particularly since The Lost Boys proves how much tension and suspense can be drawn out from dancing right up to the point of no return and then using one of the rules to pull you back from the brink.

Much of that tension, it must be said, is derived from how appealing David and his band of surf-punk-hair-metal vampires can be. Part of me retains a ten-year-old boy’s skepticism about sexy vampires, but the look and lifestyle (and even the sound — remember their laughs? remember Kiefer Sutherland’s sonorous growl of “How far you willing to go, Michael?”) of the Lost Boys does not seem like a fate worse than death. Only when the mask comes off and they descend, like a pack of predatory animals, on innocents, rending and maiming and feeding, does the horror reveal itself. “You never grow old, Michael. And you never die. But you must feed.” At times that seems like a small price to pay. It’s only the rules that save you.

Holy shitballs! The premier date for the new season of The Venture Bros. has been announced: June 2nd, Midnight, Adult Swim, Cartoon Network. Set your season pass.

People, if you’re not watching this (and, really…what’s wrong with you) here’s an amazingly coherent recap of what is possibly the best thing you will ever see (besides Dr. Girlfriend’s pink undies).

Go Team Venture!

A VORPALIZER EXCLUSIVE!
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Times Square Set


The term ‘your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man’ took on a new meaning when I learned that The Amazing Spider-Man 2 would be filming in New York and not at all far from my home. A few weeks ago, I noticed the necks of several cranes clustered together rising from behind ordinary buildings in Bethpage, NY which at one point in time were part of the old Grumman Aerospace complex.

I noticed “HHH” signs around town pointing in the direction of the studio and my spider senses told me it meant “to the set.” Earlier this week, I gained access to the studio’s backlot where the Times Square set for the film was located. The filming for this set is pretty much complete at this point and the set is being dismantled. You’ll notice quite a few green screen surfaces for the city to be placed in digitally. You’ll also notice an incredible amount of detail from street signs and traffic lights (note the NYPD security cameras mounted on the light posts). There are city garbage cans, the entire tkts booth and Time Square bleachers and a few vehicles upside down or on their side from when the scene was filmed. The production only plans one day of filming in the real TImes Square in NYC, while the bulk of filming was performed on this set. And, can you believe that sky!?

The Grumman complex began its existence as an aviation developer in the late 1920’s and was instrumental in the manufacture of war-time aircraft through both world wars. This same complex eventually became involved in the development of aerospace engineering and produced the first Lunar Module. During the mid-1990’s Grumman began to use this space less and less, leasing to insurance companies, factories, etc. and 2 movie studios: Grumman Studios and Gold Coast Studios. The Spider-Man feature is not the first large project for the neighboring studios. Other projects were Man on a Ledge starring Sam Worthington, the short-lived Pan-Am series from ABC and Salt starring Angelina Jolie.