Monday News Roundup 9/21

Posted by Matt at 4:07 am Geek Speak

Sep 212009

We had an amazing time at MIFFF this weekend and we’ll be throwing some reviews of what we saw in with our coverage of upcoming fall movies and TV in Episode #33 this Thursday. The short version of our MIFFF review is that if you weren’t there you missed out in a BIG way. Festivals like MIFFF are quickly becoming the only place to see independent films in a theater. indieWIRE blogger Anne Thompson has written about the near complete lack of distribution deals made at the Toronto Film Festival, an indicator of what she believes to be the total collapse of the distribution market for indie film. Fortunately we have already learned that MIFFF will be back next year and I have no doubt they will be able to put together another excellent lineup!

Your Monday news is under the fold.

Boardgames

♦Ape Games has announced a sequel to its 2008 Origin Award nominated rubber duckie racing game Duck! Duck! Go!. Duck! Duck! Go! is a Robo Rally style racing game and the new game Duck! Duck! Safari! expands on that with five new games from duckie herding to card matching. Safari! will come with a random selection of 5 rubber duckies and should be in stores this November.

Comics

♦Back in April we told you about Marvel editor Tom Brevort’s project to trade his way to a copy of Fantastic Four #1. Well, his trading has been successful. In addition to FF#1, he managed to get Hulk #2 and #4, Sub-Mariner Comics #6 from the 1940s, Daredevil #4 and #5, and “a couple hundred more” comics all of which will be auctioned off to support comic book artists in need.

Manga

♦A body found in the mountains of Gunma Prefecture, Japan has been confirmed as being that of Crayon Shin-Chan creator Yoshito Usui. Usui had been missing since going on a hiking trip earlier this month. Shin-Chan will continue to be serialized in Manga Town magazine through November with art that had already been submitted by Usui.

MMO

♦Fallen Earth, the post apocalyptic MMORPG from Icarus Studios, is now available for pre-order on Steam. Unlike the pre-orders that are available from Direct2Drive or the Fallen Earth website however, Steam will not give you an exclusive in-game mount. Instead you will get the Steam t-shirt for your character which will give you a +5 bonus to the Scavenging, Nature and Geology skills and a +10 bonus to Social skills.

Movies

♦If you listened to our interview with author S.G. Browne back in episode #24 you heard about the movie adaptation of his book Breathers that is being written by Diablo Cody. Sci Fi Wire has an update on the project. They are reporting that the script is done and now in the hands of potential directors. Hopefully the dismal performance of Jennifer’s Body, which was also written by Cody, will not taint anyone’s perceptions of Breathers.

TV

♦io9 has a couple of very interesting articles on the second season of Dollhouse. Obviously they are not to be read if you want to avoid spoilers. In the first they report on a conference call with Joss Whedon in which he talks about, among other things, Summer Glau and Ray Wise’s guest appearances in Dollhouse. In the second they get a tease on the direction the season is headed from Alan “Alpha” Tudyk.

♦The Prime Time Emmys were given out last night. Host Neil Patrick Harris had things running smoothly with the exception of one disruption in the ceremony which, fortunately, was caught on video.