Club Jade

Geek-favorite web comic xkcd’s latest tracks the characters of the original trilogy, Lord of the Rings, Jurassic Park and 12 Angry Men. Head on over to see them all in readable form.

A century in five minutes!

Not so shiny. Catherine Hardwicke is out of Twilight sequel. (Robert Pattinson’s envy must be at least twice the size of glitter budget.)

Of course, the real interest for many of us is the book’s numerous creepy undertones. And finally, for funny Twilight news, aka the actual reason to bother reporting any of it, check out the puppet version.

• Someone has already gotten high and dreamed this movie. Among Harrison Ford’s upcoming projects is a J.J. Abrams comedy. The actual film sounds way too much like Anchorman to be of interest, but my mind is going to a place where there’s a buddy picture with Spy Daddy instead. Make that happen, J.J.

• Taking it slow on Batman sequel. Christopher Nolan still playing it coy on a third Bat-film, and who can blame him? Let’s just hope we avoid the X3 situation. Of course, who needs a sequel when they can just rerelease the ones they already have?
• WB running out of Harry, considers Beedle. With J.K. Rowling in no hurry to turn out more books to feather their money tree, Warner Brothers is supposedly thinking about adapting Beedle The Bard. Umm…
• The rest of the garbage. Fanboys official site; No Jurassic Park 4; Beauty and the Beast 3-D in the works; Sigourney Weaver and the brewing Ghostbusters sequel?
  

Numerous media outlets today reported the death of Stan Winston, the Oscar-winning special effects master whose work included Terminator, Jurassic Park, and Aliens. He was 62.

ILM’s Dennis Muren, who supervised Jurassic Park’s digital effects, told Variety:

“When you put (Winston’s creatures and digital effects) together, the audience was confused, and sometimes we were, too, about who had done what.

“But Stan had always said, ‘It shouldn’t be all one or all the other; it should be a combination of the two.’”

Michael Heilemann over at Binary Bonsai has a brief tribute – and a book recommendation.