Comic-Con posters: THE HOBBIT and THE WORLD'S END

A whole ton of interesting stuff is happening at the San Diego Comic-Con, as usual. A lot of upcoming movies have had exclusive teaser posters released for them, and these are two of the most interesting:

An Unexpected Journey is the first of two movies adapting J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit to the big screen. The same crew are handling the project as the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy a decade ago, including director Peter Jackson. The first movie will be released this December. Principal filming on the two movies ended a week ago, with the production switching to editing and special effects work.

The World's End won't start shooting until September and is planned for release later in 2013. This is the third in the thematic Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, following on from Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and reunites director Edgar Wright with actors Simon Pegg (who also co-writes) and Nick Frost (Paul, despite featuring Pegg and Frost, doesn't count because it was directed by someone else).

The World's End is set during an unspecified disaster that threatens the entire world. Rather that played out from a traditional large-scale, global perspective, the threat is instead glimpsed through a group of characters (including Pegg and Frost) as they recreate a pub-crawl around London from a decade earlier, culminating at the World's End pub in Camden. Expect laughs and ice cream.

The trilogy is so-called because each movie features the characters eating a Cornetto ice cream whose colour is related to the movie: blood red (strawberry) for zombie horror flick Shaun of the Dead; police blue (original flavour) for crime caper Hot Fuzz; and alien green (mint) for The World's End. The title is also a riff on Krzysztof Kieslowski's excellent Three Colours series.

Diana Rigg cast in GAME OF THRONES

Early news from the San Diega Comic-Con has revealed that Dame Diana Rigg has been cast in the third season of Game of Thrones.

Rigg is best-known for playing the role of Emma Peel on cult 1960s show The Avengers. She left the show to play Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo in the sixth James Bond film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, famously regarded as Bond's only 'true' love and the only woman to marry him, albeit briefly. Rigg's subsequent career has focused on stage work, with occasional roles in TV series such as Mrs. Golightly in the Moll Flanders mini-series. She has also served as Chancellor of Stirling University. Rigg recently filmed an appearance in the next season of Doctor Who alongside her actress daughter, Rachael Stirling, to air in early 2013.

In Thrones Rigg will be playing the role of Olenna Tyrell, better-known as the Queen of Thorns. The formidable matriarch of House Tyrell, she was born in House Redwyne, the rulers of the Arbor, and married Lord Luthor Tyrell of Highgarden. Olenna described Luthor as a mediocre sort of man, not unskilled in certain intimate areas but also boorish. He died by riding a horse off a cliff whilst hawking, possibly one of the more comical deaths referenced in the Song of Ice and Fire novels. This led to Luthor and Olenna's magnificently fatuous son Mace becoming the ruler of the Reach. Olenna has little to no patience with her moronic son, but is fond of her grandchildren, Loras and Margaery. She is Margaery's mentor in the field of political intrigue and is a skilled player in the game of thrones, often underestimated due to her advanced age. She is almost always accompanied by two bodyguards/servants named Erryk and Arryk, twins whom she can't tell apart and usually refers to as 'Left' and 'Right'.

Rigg should totally kill in this role. Really looking forwards to her scenes with Natalie Dormer and Sophie Turner.

Cover art for Joe Abercrombie's RED COUNTRY

The UK cover art for Joe Abercrombie's Red Country has been unveiled:

And the full cover:

The US cover art, which has been previously unveiled:

The jacket blurb:

"They burned her home. They stole her brother and sister. But vengeance is following.

Shy South hoped to bury her bloody past and ride away smiling, but she’ll have to sharpen up some bad old ways to get her family back, and she’s not a woman to flinch from what needs doing. She sets off in pursuit with only a pair of oxen and her cowardly old stepfather Lamb for company. But it turns out Lamb’s buried a bloody past of his own, and out in the lawless Far Country, the past never stays buried.

Their journey will take them across the barren plains to a frontier town gripped by gold fever, through feud, duel and massacre, high into the unmapped mountains to a reckoning with the Ghosts. Even worse, it will force them into alliance with Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, and his feckless lawyer Temple, two men no one should ever have to trust…"

The book will be published on 18 October 2012 in the UK and 23 October in the USA.

DEUS EX to become a movie

The excellent 2011 cyber-stealth RPG Deus Ex: Human Revolution is headed for the big screen. CBS Films have picked up the rights to develop the game as a film, apparently impressed by the game's sales of 2.5 million copies to date.

Human Revolution was a prequel to two earlier games in the series: Deus Ex (2000), which is frequently-cited as the best RPG (if not the best game) of all time, and Deus Ex: Invisible War (2003), which is not. The game is set in Detroit in 2027, where a former SWAT team member, Adam Jensen, is rebuilt with 'augments', cybernetic implants and limbs which allow him to function after suffering near-fatal injuries. The plot of the game, and presumably the movie, revolves around the tensions over the differences between augmented people and 'normal' citizens, against a backdrop of the rising power of international corporations. The game was highly acclaimed upon release.

Producer Roy Lee encouragingly worked on last year's well-received movie, The Woman in Black. Less encouragingly, his collaborator Adrian Askarieh is responsible for the Hitman movie (which was 'not well-received', to put it mildly) and seems to have a lot of game-to-film adaptations on his plate. The original game designers will be working as consultants, though the level of their work on the movie is open to debate, given they are currently hard at work on Thief 4.

GAME OF THRONES Season 3 news round-up

A round-up of news regarding Season 3 of Game of Thrones (note: one minor spoiler if you haven't read A Storm of Swords).

Season 3 will likely feature less massive fleet-destroying subnuclear explosions.

• Season 3 started shooting today in Northern Ireland. Director Daniel Minahan - returning from Season 1 after a break last year - was the first director to set to work. Season 2 directors Alik Sakharov and David Nutter are also returning (the latter will handle the final two seasons of the season, which will allegedly be the most ambitious the show has attempted to date). Producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss will also try their hands at directing. Two very high-profile directors are also joining the team: Alex Graves, a producer and director on The West Wing, and Michelle McLaren, a producer and director on both Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead, are lending their considerable talents to the series.
• The writing roster is unchanged from last year: David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, Bryan Cogman, Vanessa Taylor and George R.R. Martin. Martin has already written the seventh episode of the season, Autumn Storms, the only episode to be named so far.
• As well as returning to Northern Ireland, Croatia and Iceland, the show will be filming the Slaver's Bay storyline in Morocco. The show's unaired pilot episode used Morocco as a location, but moved to Malta and then Croatia for the series itself.
• Unfortunately, actor Clive Mantle - who played Greatjon Umber in Season 1 - will not be returning to the series this year. He was absent from Season 2 due to a scheduling conflict and was apparently not invited back for Season 3. Whether this means his role will be temporarily removed (allowing him to return in Season 4 or later), the character quietly dropped or the role recast remains unclear.
• Liam Cunningham has signed a six-year contract with HBO to reprise his role as Davos Seaworth. Whilst some have taken this to mean that HBO envisage the show lasting for at least eight seasons (backed up by comments from the producers, who have said they are planning an 80-90 episode story), it's also been pointed out that six-year contracts are fairly standard in the industry, regardless of how long the show will go on for.
• The characters of Tormund Giantsbane, Daario Naharis, Thoros of Myr, Olenna Redwyne (the Queen of Thorns), Ramsay Bolton, Vargo Hoat, Edmure and Brynden Tully, and the Reed children (Jojen and Meera) are all apparently being cast for Season 3.
• Well-known British actors Mackenzie Crook (noted for his roles in the UK version of The Office and the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy), Clive Russell (Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere) and Tara Fitzgerald (too many films and plays to mention) are all rumoured to have been cast. Crook attended a cast read-through but his role has not been announced: fans speculate it's Ramsay Bolton, Varamyr Sixskins, one of the Brotherhood Without Banners (including a recast Beric Dondarrion) or even Mance Rayder. He's been specifically ruled out from the role of Vargo Hoat. Russell seems more of a lock as Brynden 'the Blackfish' Tully and Fitzgerald as a recast Selyse Baratheon.
• Newcomer Charlotte Hope has been cast in the role of 'Myranda'. It is unclear whether this is a new character, Myranda Royce from the books (who is much older) or a renamed Meera Reed. Nathalie Emmanuel, who was on Hollyoaks for three years, has also been cast in an undisclosed role. Asim Ahmad has been linked to the role of Thoros of Myr. Coronation Street actor Philip McGinley has also been spotted at read-throughs. Fans speculate he could be playing the role of Edmure Tully. Actress Kerry Ingram has also been linked to the role of Shireen Baratheon.

Terry Goodkind publicly names and shames ebook pirate

Terry Goodkind has, for reasons unknown but open to speculation, chosen to self-publish his latest Sword of Truth-related novel, The First Confessor: The Legend of Magda Searus (not the sequel to The Omen Machine, which will apparently follow next year from Tor, but a new prequel to the series).

This new book was released as an ebook exclusive several days ago. As an ebook-exclusive, it is little surprise that the book was heavily pirated on release, even after Goodkind posted a message to his website explaining how the economics of ebook publishing worked and politely requested that people refrain from doing so. So, on his Facebook page, Goodkind named and shamed one of the alleged pirates, posting their personal information and several websites where he was active. The alleged pirate apparently withdrew several of his pages and 'attempted' to offer an apology, according to a Goodkind fan monitoring the situation (posting on Westeros.org in this thread). Apparently, this was after several private overtures to the individual were ignored.

An surprising situation. Sharing someone's personal information on the Internet without their permission, even in this situation, is highly dubious (although Goodkind allegedly took legal advice before proceeding with this move). The individual appears to have admitted culpability, which helps, but it is still a bold step to take. At the same time, 'naming and shaming' can be an effective tactic in discouraging piracy. It could also backfire and result in even more piracy and negative publicity for the author. Seeing how this unfolds over the next few weeks should be very interesting.

EDIT: Apparently the original offendor did not and has not offered any kind of apology or restitution to Terry Goodkind or his representatives.

The Guard

Sergeant Gerry Boyle is an atypical Irish garda (policeman): he takes drugs, hires prostitutes and has no problem interfering with a crime scene. He also has an instinctive talent for police work and an impressive amount of luck. When an international drug smuggling operation is discovered operating in the Galway area, Boyle is forced to partner American FBI agent Wendell Everett to bring the smugglers to justice.

On paper, The Guard sounds like a cliche-in-waiting: a chalk and cheese buddy cop movie, in which the straight-laced FBI agent teams up with the slightly crazy Irish policeman and they fail to get along, before circumstances makes them appreciate the other's approach, leading to a happy ending and mutual respect.

This isn't that film. Instead, The Guard is an offbeat, frequently hilarious and well-characterised mini-masterpiece. The normally-excellent Brendan Gleeson is indomitably magnificent in the central role of Boyle, an offbeat and weird policeman who delights in randomly odd acts, whilst Don Cheadle is considerably more restrained (until his frustration explodes into expletive-strewn invective) as Everett. The two actors have a great chemistry which drives the film along. Another important ingredient is the interplay between our three principal villains (Liam Cunningham's Francis, David Wilmot's Liam and Mark Strong's Clive), who break up the monotony between murderous drug jobs by engaging in philosophical quote-offs and debating how best to recruit nameless goon minions.

The film's setting is also key. From the point of view of someone who lived there for a year, Galway and Connemara (a Gaelic-speaking region to the west of the city) are depicted very well. One of director John Michael McDonagh's more amusing quirks is to stage the film like a Western, with Ireland standing in for the American West, complete with saloons and shoot-outs (the film also features one of the better uses of the Chekhov's gun rule). This adds to the film's offbeat atmosphere.

The movie also features some amusing commentary about the cliches of buddy cop films and their predictability, which the film then fails to adhere to. There are also some nice emotional beats (such as the relationship between Boyle and his dying mother, and the complex relationship between Boyle's police sidekick and his wife) but these are handled subtly and not laboured over. The film ends on a note of ambiguity, which the movie then lampoons mercilessly just for the hell of it.

The Guard (*****) is a genuinely funny, outrageous and smart movie. It is available now in the UK (DVD, Blu-Ray) and USA (DVD, Blu-Ray).

Eastbound and Down: Season 2

Having totally messed up his life in Shelby, ex-baseball pitcher Kenny Powers has fled to Mexico. Here he ekes out an existence raising fighting chickens, until he is recognised by the coach of the local struggling baseball team and drawn back into the game. At the same time, he is on a personal quest to track down the enigmatic 'Eduardo Sanchez' and to put his life back together, with the help of his old sidekick Stevie.

For its second season, Eastbound and Down abandons most of the previously-established cast and setting and heads south of the border. Here it's business as usual, as Powers attempts to get himself back to fame and glory but constantly sabotages his prospects with his crass humour, narcissism and total lack of concern for other human beings.

The first season of Eastbound was a success due to the premise and many of the individual gags and ideas being quite funny, with some genuinely solid character development taking place under the avalanche of fairly low-brow humour. The second season at first looks like it's going to continue this trend, with the show's embracing of a new setting (and culture) being a fairly brave move. It would have been easier to have stayed in Shelby and simply churned out six more episodes of the same. However, by a few episodes into this second season, it does feel like the move to Mexico was pointless. The show doesn't make much of its setting (beyond a few lazy gags, though nothing too offensive; HBO has a lot of Mexican viewers) and the structure of the second season is pretty much a retread of the first.

Once again, Kenny is responsible for many of his own problems but, having apparently learned nothing from the events of the first season, enjoys much less of the viewer's sympathy this time around. Again, he is surrounded by friends and allies who want him to succeed, but his constant poor treatment of them and failure to make the most of the good opportunities that come his way makes you wonder why they bother. Crucially, the show is simply not as funny as the first season. Smile-inducing gags are rare, whilst genuine laugh-out loud moments are extremely few and far between.

As before, Danny McBride is watchable and is able to make the viewer cringe in horror at his antics, but is less sympathetic this time around. Most of the cast, new and recurring alike, do good work with limited material, with Don Johnson being particularly amusing in his ability to dish out really terrible advice and make it sound plausible. Efren Ramirez is terribly under-used as Kenny's new neighbour, unfortunately, and oddly the double-act of Deep Roy and Joaquin Cosio, initially established as recurring enemies, disappear quite quickly despite their great comic potential.

This latter issue probably best sums up Eastbound and Down's second season (**½): a great deal of potential, but little of it fulfilled. If you were a huge fan of the first season, there's enough here to just about scrape by, but otherwise a disappointment. The show is available now in the UK (DVD, Blu-Ray) and the USA (DVD, Blu-Ray).

FINAL FANTASY VII due for PC re-release

Square Enix have confirmed that they are re-releasing Final Fantasy VII on the PC 'soon'.

Before anyone gets too excited, this is a simple re-issuing of the 1998 PC port of Final Fantasy VII, updated to work with modern PCs. There have been no graphical updates (beyond the fact that the original PC version had higher-resolution 3D models than the PlayStation version anyway). There is also no word on if the original game's two biggest problems - a subpar English translation and unskippable, lengthy cut scenes - have been addressed. According to the website, the character many Europeans and Americans know as 'Aeris' has had her original Japanese name of 'Aerith' reinstated, however (this change did make it into some Western reissues of the original game as well).

There's been rumours for a while that Square was looking at reissuing Final Fantasy VII and VIII (the only two to be ported to the PC, aside from the multiplayer XI and XIV), initially through Steam. The current press release confirms that the re-release of VII will be through Square's own online distribution platform.

Interesting news. If the cut scene problem has been fixed - I have no wish to sit through Sephiroth's Supernova spell (the animation for which lasts for 2 minutes and 20 seconds) twenty times in rapid succession ever again - than this will be worthwhile.

Existence by David Brin

Half a century in the future, the human race has survived several brushes with extinction. True AI has been created but - so far - has been benign and helpful. A terrible nuclear incident has taken place, but humanity has endured. As each bullet is dodged, so mankind's chances of survival to a brighter future appear to be growing...until an ancient alien artefact is recovered from Earth orbit which harbours a terrible truth about the nature of the universe.

After almost twenty years as an important and relatively prolific voice in the hard SF field, David Brin dropped out of the genre in 2001 after the publication of Kil'n People. He's remained active, penning non-fiction and the occasional short story as well as working in comics and doing consulting work, but no more novels have appeared, either stand-alone or in his Uplift universe. Now he's back with Existence, a self-contained, epic SF novel about mankind, our place in the cosmos, why we seem to be alone and where our destiny lies. Certainly if you're going to mount a comeback, there's no better way than doing so with your most ambitious work to date.

Existence revisits the Fermi Paradox, that familiar problem of how, given the sheer size and age of our galaxy, it is implausible that intelligent life has not arisen elsewhere and left visible traces of its presence. Brin's solution to the paradox is both intelligent and, initially, deeply depressing: that the minefield of threats that each race must survive to reach the starts is so extensive that very, very few make it. The novel's opening sections dwell deeply on the threats to mankind's own existence, from climate change and the threat of nuclear war to the possible 'threat' of super-advanced AI. The discovery of the alien 'guidestones' then provides a possible answer, but one which is not to our liking.

The novel unfolds on a large scale, with characters in America, in undersea habitats in the Gulf of Mexico, in floating bases above drowned Pacific island nations and in ruined mansions in Shanghai having their own part to play in the global mystery that unfolds. Our protagonists include a spoiled rich kid who races suborbital rockets for fun, a Chinese sailor who lives on the salvage he dredges out of the sea, a hotshot reporter caught up in a horrendous disaster and a self-obsessed, politically-motivated novelist who slums it as a Hollywood script writer (any similarities to the late Michael Crichton being presumably coincidental). Brin's skills with characterisation - something that set him apart from his fellow 'Killer Bs' back in the day (the Gregs Bear and Benford) - are on full display here as he develops his characters through the unexpected events that engulf them whilst keeping his thematic and philosophical musings integrated with the plot.

In fact, this is what sets Brin's novel apart from Kim Stanley Robinson's recent and equally epic portrait of the future, 2312. Where Robinson seems to have wanted to create a mood piece and then felt compelled to tack on an undercooked thriller plot, Brin keeps his plot, characters and musings all on track simultaneously, developing them all in tandem. This is helped by Brin's prose which has always been above average for hard SF, but in Existence hits new heights. His skill to move between harsh pessimism (the universe is cold and empty and we are a fluke who will soon splutter and die) and tremendous optimism (we can do whatever we want with the universe, if we try) is particularly impressive.

For a novel more than 500 pages long in hardcover, Existence has verve and pace. It's hard SF but done with a light touch and a sense of humour. It's not set in the Uplift universe but Brin drops in parallel-universe versions of some elements of that setting just for fun (those who enjoy Brin's depiction of futuristic dolphins will find some more that on display here). Some of Brin's moments of whimsy backfire - 'Awfulday' seems like an odd nickname for the anniversary of a terrorist attack - and some plot elements feel left behind when several time-jumps take place late in the novel, propelling us decades further into the future. But these are less than niggles.

Existence (****½) moves between being exuberant and fun and serious and contemplative (even maudlin). It asks big questions and proposes a variety of intelligent answers but doesn't resort to over-simplicity. It's definitely as good a comeback as we could have hoped for from Brin. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.