Tag: Patrick Day

This post has been corrected. See note at bottom for details. Television fans have watched LeVar Burton for 35 years now, but when they walk up to the actor he’s never quite sure which of his three signature personas they will mention. For many, he will always be the face of the groundbreaking 1977 miniseries “Roots,” but more recent generations know him as the ever-affable host of “Reading Rainbow,” which opened up the world of books to young PBS viewers for 22 years and 150 episodes. And, of course, to millions of Starfleet fans he’s the chief engineer of a starship called Enterprise. Burton portrayed the resourceful Geordi La Forge for seven seasons of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and in the crew’s four feature films. These days, Burton is working full-time to relaunch an online revival of “Reading Rainbow,” which went off the air in 2009. ...

It takes a lot to grab New Yorkers’ attention these days, but a viral promotion for the upcoming superpowers movie “Chronicle” certainly met that requirement. Over the course of three days last week, some otherwise jaded city-dwellers caught sight of what appeared to be three people flying over the city, performing silent aerial ballets. It could have been a scene straight from an issue of a Marvel comic, but in fact it was a promotion for the Twentieth Century Fox superhero flick about three friends attempting to cope with newly acquired superpowers. The movie opens Friday. The “people” were the size of actual humans, around 70 inches high, but upon closer inspection they were people-shaped flying devices created from Dacron polyester, carbon fiber rods and model airplane engines each weighing about three and a half pounds. And while there was ...

Disney and Pixar Chief John Lasseter has called Hayao Miyazaki, the co-founder of Japan’s revered Studio Ghibli, one of the greatest animators of all time. Starting Thursday, the American Cinematheque is showing 14 examples of his studio’s genre-defying works, including the Oscar-winning “Spirited Away,” the children’s fantasy “My Neighbor Totoro” and the more adult fantasy “Princess Mononoke” (featuring an English-language adaptation by fantasy heavyweight Neil Gaiman) at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood and at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica. “There’s a humanity in these films,” said Eric Beckman, whose company GKids put together the current touring retrospective. “Even the fantasy films are based on a real sense of magic and wonder in everyday things. Every tree or blade of grass or rock or animal has this spiritual essence of life.” Founded in 1985 by Miyazaki, his mentor Isao Takahata ...

All the gifts are finally unwrapped and the cinematic class of 2011 has finally been presented. There’s not much left to do now but watch as the clock counts down until 2012. It should be a quiet time to backtrack and catch up on all those movies that went unviewed opening weekend, but are now present on nearly every critics’ top 10 list. But the studios have kick-started the anticipation for the new year with a herd of new trailers for some of 2012′s biggest potential blockbusters — three in the last week alone. Holiday moviegoers (or anyone with a decent Internet connection) got their first peeks at “The Hobbit,” “Prometheus” and an extended look at “The Dark Knight Rises.” These trailers joined the already-released group, which includes “The Avengers” and “John Carter” and “The Hunger Games,” among others. So ...

The trailer for the horror thriller “The Cabin in the Woods” has popped up online and no one is more relieved than the fans of producer and co-writer Joss Whedon. Loyal Whedonites have been waiting a long, long, long time for “Cabin in the Woods,” which was filmed in early 2009 and originally slated to debut in early 2010, but was left in a protracted limbo because of the bankruptcy of its studio, MGM. Now Lionsgate has agreed to distribute the film, which promises to offer a twist on the classic teenagers trapped in a remote cabin genre (see: “Evil Dead” and “Cabin Fever”). The film is the directorial debut of former “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” writer Drew Goddard, who also wrote “Cloverfield” and features a number of Whedon veterans in the cast, including Fran Kranz (“Dollhouse”), Amy Acker (“Dollhouse” ...

The Muppets’ big-screen comeback shows how much moviegoers longed to see Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Fozzie the Bear, Gonzo and the rest of the gang back together again. But fans who sat down in the dark with the new movie have been pleasantly surprised, too, by the newest addition to the loopy ensemble: Walter. Wide-eyed, innocent, nattily-attired and half-dazed with celebrity-puppet adoration, Walter (voiced by puppeteer Peter Linz) recently spoke by phone to Hero Complex writer Patrick Kevin Day about making a film with his (their?) childhood idols. PKD: Do you consider yourself a full-fledged Muppet now that the movie has come out? W: Yeah, I guess I kind of do. I’ve never thought of myself in grandiose terms like that. Wow, an official Muppet. But I guess that’s the case, huh? PKD: I saw a comment online in which someone ...

If you’re a hard-core Stephen King fan, you’ll probably take a shining to Dark Score Stories, an elaborate website for the A&E miniseries “Bag of Bones” that is also a scavenger hunt of sorts for longtime readers of the horror icon. More than a simple preview of the haunted and haunting ”Bag of Bones” (which premieres on Dec. 11), Dark Score Stories has sly and subtle nods to King’s novels and short stories tucked into the corners of photographs on the site — there are about 150 references in all as well as some puzzles hidden away that we wouldn’t dream of spoiling here. “We try to appeal to a broad audience and different levels of fans,” says Steve Coulson, partner and creative director at Campfire, the New York City-based marketing agency that created the website and has masterminded unorthodox campaigns to promote HBO’s “Game of Thrones” and Harley-Davidson, among other clients. “We have ...

Happy TARDIS Day! On Nov. 23, 1963, the BBC aired the very first episode of a brand-new science fiction series about a mysterious man in a time machine called a TARDIS (which looked exactly like a British police box), who could travel to whatever time or whichever planet he chose. The first episode of “Doctor Who” marked an inauspicious beginning for what would become a landmark of sci fi. The first episode was deemed unusable and had to be completely reshot, with changes in script, performance, costume and effects, delaying the series’ premiere by a week. When it finally aired, it, along with almost everything else, was overshadowed by news of the assassination of President Kennedy. But eventually an audience turned up, (the introduction of the Doctor’s mortal enemies the Daleks helped), and continual fan support has made “Doctor Who” ...

Disney-Pixar has released the first full trailer to “Brave,” the company’s 13th feature film. And this one boasts a lot of firsts for Pixar’s canon: first fairy tale, first female protagonist, first period piece and first extensive use of Scottish accents. Also, in keeping with Pixar’s continued push toward ever more realistic computer-animated textures in its films, this one appears to have a definite loamier, earthier feel, with lots of moss and mist and magic. Kelly Macdonald of “Boardwalk Empire” fame provides the voice of Merida, the fiery, redheaded archer who defies the traditions of her Scottish Highlands-based clan and attempts to chart her own path in life, but winds up wreaking havoc when she unleashes an ancient curse. Julie Walters, Emma Thompson and most of the Scottish actors in Hollywood — Billy Connolly, Kevin McKidd, Robbie Coltrane and Craig ...

Teresa Palmer may have gotten her face on the DVD box cover for “I Am Number Four,” but the Australian actress has surprisingly little screen time in this sci-fi release from February that hits home video Tuesday. She talked recently about writer James Frey, her lack of knowledge about Mogadorians and her hopes for a sequel. Apparently, her character – Number Six — will be around a whole lot more in the sequel, as you might have expected from the ending of the first film. PKD: Does “I Am Number Four” have a fan base? Have you heard from them? TP: Oh yeah! I mean the whole reason I started on Twitter [was that] I was meeting so many people who were fans of the movie and the books and they wanted to ask questions. Then someone suggested I get on ...