Tag Archive: Disney Plus


Happy Star Wars Day! Get your fix of the galaxy far, far, away today

Filed under: Comics & Books, Con Culture, Movies, Sci-Fi Café, TV — Leave a comment
May 4, 2021

May4

Just in time for today’s annual celebration of Star Wars, May the Fourth, Star Wars Day 2021, Disney+ is streaming the new animated series, Star Wars: The Bad Batch, beginning with a 72-minute premiere, starting today.  Viewers will only need to wait until Friday for episode 2, with new episodes airing weekly.  You met the clone troopers who star in the series last year in the final season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars.  The new series features 16 episodes, taking off after The Clone Wars and featuring appearances by Fennic Shand, voiced by Ming-Na Wen, with the return of Grand Moff Tarkin, voiced by Stephen Stanton, along with Saw Gerrera, voiced by Andrew Kishino.  While you’re at it, Lucasfilm has created a downloadable Bingo game for the show.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Read More & Comment

The Mandalorian Guide to Season One–So many helmets, and much more

Filed under: Backstage Pass, Comics & Books, Sci-Fi Café, TV — Leave a comment
April 23, 2021

hardback_front mag_cover

Review by C.J. Bunce

This is the way… to catch up on all you haven’t yet learned about The Mandalorian.  In addition to Abrams’ brilliant high-end, behind the scenes book of original concept art The Art of Star Wars: The Mandalorian (reviewed here) and two volumes of Titan’s The Mandalorian: The Art & Imagery (discussed here), Titan has announced the next book of the series, The Mandalorian Guide to Season One.  Compared to Titan’s The Art & Imagery books, this shiny hardcover book is more of a souvenir book, like the annuals UK publishers create for bigger franchises.  You’ll find more than photographs–there’s discussions and interviews about the entire first season, including an episode guide.  And you can now pre-order it here at Amazon.

SW_TheMandalorian helmets

And lots of images of cool prop helmets.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Read More & Comment

Look inside the second volume of The Mandalorian: The Art and Imagery

Filed under: Backstage Pass, Comics & Books, Sci-Fi Café, TV — 1 Comment
April 17, 2021

Art Imagery vol 2 a

Star Wars’ first live-action TV series, The Mandalorian was created by fans for fans, and every frame tugs at the nostalgia the franchise’s fans hold for the original 1970s and 1980s trilogy.  With those films the most fans could hope for were magazines and books, often ordered via Scholastic book orders at their schools, each showing a few images from the films that could take us–in a snap–back to the movies.  It’s something fans of the franchise have gotten excited about now for nearly 44 years running.  From the first publication of Ralph McQuarrie’s earliest concept art, fans wanted more.  We’ve seen several books on The Mandalorian, including Abrams Books’ The Art of Star Wars: The Mandalorian (reviewed here).  The first of the behind the scenes books we reviewed in October here at borg was Titan Magazines’ The Mandalorian: The Art & Imagery, covering the first four episodes of the first season.  Now The Mandalorian: The Art & Imagery Volume 2 is available, and you can order it here at Amazon or find it at any brick and mortar bookstore.  Take a look inside…

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Read More & Comment

Tarkin returns as villain of the hour in Disney/Lucasfilm’s The Bad Batch

Filed under: Sci-Fi Café, TV — 1 Comment
March 31, 2021

Tarkin

The Clones Wars have ended.  You can either adapt and survive, or die with the past.

Star Wars: The Bad Batch is a new animated series spinning out of characters featured in last year’s seventh season of The Clone Wars.  It’s about that motley band of clone troopers we discussed in our review here at borg.  This week we have a new trailer, and it reveals the return of Grand Moff Tarkin, now merely Admiral Tarkin, the villain played by Peter Cushing who saw his end in the original Star Wars, resurrected thanks to CGI for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.  His backstory was fleshed out in recent tie-in novels, and now we’ll see him early on just after the Clone Wars.  Get ready to meet “again for the first time” Ming-Na Wen’s Fennec Shand (The Mandalorian) and the return of Saw Gerrera (The Clone Wars, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), too.

Check out the new trailer for Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: The Bad Batch, an original animated series launching exclusively on Disney+ in May:

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Read More & Comment

Trailer Park–The “Marvel’s Future Past Deja Vu Reprise Here We Go Again” Edition

Filed under: Comics & Books, Con Culture, Movies, Superheroes, TV — Leave a comment
February 12, 2021

It was only a year ago here at borg we were discussing some of the projects expected to arrive in 2020.  That didn’t happen, but a pandemic later and some juggling by the execs at Disney and we seem to have a realistic schedule for the projects we’ll see in 2021.  So let’s gather some excitement for Marvel superheroes heading our way, at least from the first looks at these shows we’ve seen via their movie and series trailers.  What does it look like we’re going to actually see in 2021 via streaming Disney+ or Vudu streaming?  As Phase IV of the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues with the final episodes of WandaVision on Disney+, next up will be The Falcon and the Winter Soldier starting on Disney+ March 19.  Probably the most eagerly awaited of all Marvel projects since Spider-Man: Far from Home is Black Widow, delayed and delayed some more, now expected to arrive May 7, probably for a theater run and a pay version via Disney+.  Which leaves the six episode mini-series Loki, also expected to arrive in May, via Disney+.  The common link?  All of these feature characters and storylines still heavily anchored to Phase III of the MCU, and all are an opportunity to tweak the past via time travel or a changed past to allow for new characters and new storylines.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage is expected to arrive in theaters June 25, and Shang-Chi: The Legend of the Ten Rings has a July 9 premiere date, but Disney hasn’t issued a trailer for either yet.  As a bonus we’ll throw in the trailer below for the animated series What… If? which doesn’t have anything but a 2021 projected Disney+ series launch date, and the trailer for Morbius, a Sony production tying into the MCU–at least via a cameo by Michael Keaton as Vulture, the villain from Sony’s Spider-Man: Homecoming.  It’s now slated for a January 2022 theatrical premiere.  Although an Eternals movie is expected around Thanskgiving and another Spider-Man movie could slip in around Christmas, all the other Phase IV projects have been pushed out beyond 2021–the next movies featuring Doctor Strange, Thor, Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Ant-Man and The Wasp, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Fantastic Four, and TV series featuring a new Hawkeye, Moon Knight, She-Hulk, Guardians of the Galaxy (a special), Secret Invasion, Ironheart, Armor Wars, and a Wakanda series.

Check out these trailers:

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Read More & Comment

The Muppet Show–All five seasons of the original classic arrive on Disney+ this month

Filed under: Fantasy Realms, Retro Fix, TV — Leave a comment
February 7, 2021

The most sensational, inspirational, celebrational, Muppetational event is heading your way.

It’s been 40 years since The Muppet Show wrapped its now classic five season run back in 1976-1981, with its last episode guest-starring Singing in the Rain star Gene Kelly.  One of the greatest half-hour series of all time and the greatest variety show format series ever is coming to the streaming platform Disney+ later this month.  Everyone who was anyone in the 1970s was a guest on the show, from Vincent Price to Don Knotts, from Cloris Leachman, George Burns, John Cleese and Paul Simon, to Linda Ronstadt and Steve Martin, to Elton John, Julie Andrews, Gilda Radner, Shirley Bassey, Peter Sellers, Debbie Harry, Rita Moreno, and Madeline Kahn, to Roy Rogers, Dudley Moore, James Coburn, Roger Moore, Sylvester Stallone, Lynda Carter, Milton Berle, Christopher Reeve, Bernadette Peters, Ethel Merman, Bob Hope, Diana Ross, Johnny Cash, Harvey Korman, Carol Burnett, Dizzy Gillespie, Alice Cooper, and even the cast of Star Wars–more than 100 guest stars in all, and from every single corner of music, TV, and film.  The show won four Primetime Emmy Awards and a Grammy (one of our favorite subjects–check out more about The Muppets here).  Behind the scenes (and under the table and behind the curtain) it was Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Dave Goelz, Richard Hunt, Jerry Nelson, Louise Gold, Kathryn Mullen, and Steve Whitemire working the real magic.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Read More & Comment

Raya and the Last Dragon–New Disney trailer reveals exciting animated journey lies ahead

Filed under: Fantasy Realms, Movies — Leave a comment
January 27, 2021

Raya and the Last Dragon is the next animated Disney movie, coming later this winter.  Every new look at the film is more exciting than the last, and this is shaping up to be the next Mulan or Moana.  Raya and the Last Dragon is entirely computer animated.  It features the voices of Kelly Marie Tran (Star Wars: The Last Jedi) as Raya, a warrior heroine who is seeking the Last Dragon, named Sisu, voiced by comedy actor Awkwafina (Jumanji: The Next Level), all in a classically designed visual fantasy homage to The Hobbit or The Last Unicorn.  Other cast lending their voices to the film include Gemma Chan (Humans, Captain Marvel) as Namaari, Raya’s chief rival and frenemy, Benedict Wong (Doctor Strange) as giant warrior Tong, and Daniel Dae Kim (Hellboy) as Raya’s father.

Here’s the second trailer for Raya and the Last Dragon:

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Read More & Comment

WandaVision–What’s going on here?

Filed under: Superheroes, TV — Leave a comment
January 16, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

A year ago here at borg we previewed the first look at Marvel Studios’ new series WandaVision, and based on the unusual trailer we asked the question:  What audience is WandaVision aimed at?  The series at last began this weekend on Disney+ and two half-hour episodes in, I’m no closer to answering this question.  In any other time that hasn’t been sidetracked by a pandemic, audiences would have already seen the big-screen release of Black Widow by now.  The commonality is that each is a story focused on characters that have already been killed off in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  We won’t know until this summer about the prequel movie with Scarlet Johansson returning as Natasha Romanoff (killed off in Avengers: Endgame), but it is a welcome sight to see the return from the dead of Paul Bettany as cybernetic superhero Vision (killed in Avengers: Infinity War) reunited with Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch aka Wanda Maximoff in this short, nine-episode mini-series.  But here we don’t even know when it takes place in relation to the Avengers movies.

Two episodes in and you’re going to ask:  What the heck did I just watch?

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Read More & Comment

Soul–Disney/Pixar ponder meaning of life in latest animated movie

Filed under: Fantasy Realms, Movies — Leave a comment
January 14, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

It’s the latest in what has become a packed 12 months of studios releasing animated movies.  And it carries a common theme for a venue families once could prop their kids up in front of for easy content to enjoy.  The subject again is death and dying, and more to the point, what happens to you after you die,  It’s the Disney-Pixar movie Soul, a big-budget movie that at first blush is about a musician and his love for jazz.  Starring the voices of Academy Award-winning actor Jamie Foxx and the versatile Tina Fey, the animation is the best of merging digital animation with stunning real-world imagery.  The musician theme is great, and directors Pete Docter and Kent Powers do their best to juggle humor and humanity’s most age-old questions: Who am I? Why am I here?  And what’s next?  This Disney+ offers some impressive visuals and ideas, but it also might be more for the older tier of kids and audiences ready for the thoughtful themes.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Read More & Comment

Disney Gallery–Pared-back show looks behind the scenes of Season 2 of The Mandalorian

Filed under: Backstage Pass, Comics & Books, Fantasy Realms, Sci-Fi Café, TV — Leave a comment
December 27, 2020

Review by C.J. Bunce

In the hour-long second “season” of Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian–Making of Season 2, executive producer/director Jon Favreau says he hoped to bring all the kinds of Star Wars fans together for a special moment, and he seems to have done that in this year’s superb second season of The Mandalorian, although it’s difficult to compare Disney Gallery‘s eight-episode first season of behind the scenes glimpses to the single, albeit packed, episode fans got from Disney+ this year, released on Christmas Day.  As far as making all the groups of fans happy, expect that fans of the last episode’s special climactic scene won’t get to see a “making of” feature on that component yet.

Continue reading →
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Read More & Comment