Tenacious D storm downthetubes

Over on the official web site for the new Tenacious D movie (Titan Books has some tie-in books on the way), there's an option to "overhaul" a "lame" web site, using some fun flash screengrabbing and animation. Clever, with quite a few different "skins" to choose from.

Here's what the boys did to downthetubes.net...

More manga from Harrison Davies?

Bumped into artist Paul Harrison Davies yesterday, looking a bit knackered from the recent happy birth of his daughter but still bubbling at reaction to his fab strip in Constable and Robinson's recently-published Mammoth Book of Best New Manga, which was edited by Ilya and also includes strips from Michiru Morikawa, winner of the Grand Prize of the International Manga and Anime Festival, Selina Dean and Asia Alfasi, as well as established names such as Andi Watson and Craig Conlan.

He tells me reaction and sales on this excellent collection have been good enough to result in discussions of a follow up title, format yet to be decided. Meanwhile, he's working on some new material which should surface on his blog sometime soon... Meanwhile head over there and check out his cool spot illos.

Hollywoodland

Heading for UK cinemas 24 November is Hollywoodland, which centres on the mysterious death of George Reeve, the man who played Superman. The trailer looks slick (but as others have pointed out, does it give too much away?)

Ben Affleck, who has a couple of bad years in the entertainment press, won an award for Best Actor for his role as George Reeves in the film at this year's Venice Film Festival. Good news for a man known for his love of SF and comics (he's huge Star Trek fan, so maybe now his name will start getting thrown into the rumour ring when it comes to the new movie...)

Special

Okay, this one passed me by. I need to read more dreamwatch (unashamed plug). There's a new film bearing down on us called Special, centring on Les Franken (played by Michael Rapaport), who leads a painfully unremarkable life as a metermaid until he enrolls in a drug study for an experimental anti-depressant.

An unexpected side effect of the drug convinces Les he is developing special powers and must quit his job to answer his new calling in life... as a superhero.

The tag is: "A very select group of people in life are truly gifted. Special is a movie about everyone else."

I'm sure this is something everyone's been aware of for ages, but the trailer certainly indicates this could be great fun...