Dominic Cooper

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All the Previews–What If…? arrives on Disney+ this week

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

August 10, 2021

What If…? is a range of comic book series featuring more than 200 stories that allowed creators to jump outside the usual and let their imagination take over. What if Jane Foster (or Loki? or Rogue?) had found the hammer of Thor? What if Doctor Strange was a disciple of Dormammu? What if Phoenix had not died? What if Vision had destroyed the Avengers? What if Venom had possessed the Punisher? What if Silver Surfer (or the Green Goblin) took the Infinity Gauntlet? What if Legion had killed Magneto? What if Jessica Jones joined the Avengers? What if Hank Pym replaced Stark? What if Disney hadn’t purchased Marvel? Almost all of these questions have been answered in the pages of the comics.

Phase IV of the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues with an animated anthology series based on the classic comic. Jeffrey Wright stars as The Watcher, your guide through all ten episodes, who MCU audiences saw at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy 2–in a Stan Lee cameo. Chadwick Boseman’s last performances as T’Challa appear in four episodes. Hayley Atwell returns as a different version of Peggy Carter. Samuel L. Jackson is back as Fury. Sebastian Stan is Bucky Barnes. Dominic Cooper returns as Howard Stark. Djimon Housou is back as Korath. And Michael Rooker’s Yondu returns from the dead. Plus lots of superheroes you know with other actors substituting voices for those you know from the MCU. And it all begins tomorrow, August 11, on Disney+. A few more trailers/features have been released in the past week, and we’ve bundled them with the previous trailers:

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Book review–Orcs battle Orcs in Warcraft prequel novel

Filed under: Comics & Books, Fantasy Realms, Movies — Leave a comment

May 31, 2016

Review by C.J. Bunce

If your only exposure to Orcs is in the J.R.R. Tolkien Middle-earth stories, be prepared for a different look at this fantasy species in Christie Golden’s new novel Warcraft: Durotan, prequel to the upcoming Legendary Pictures Warcraft movie. We’ve reviewed many franchise tie-in novels over the years here at borg.com and plenty of prequels. Warcraft: Durotan is a surprisingly original novel, giving us a unique, sympathetic look at what you may otherwise only know as brainless, barbarian fantasy monsters.

Warcraft is of course the film adaptation of the megahit series of videogames. It opened this weekend internationally to some early box office success. Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code), director of the film and son of the late David Bowie, star of Labyrinth and fan of fantasy films, has said he previewed the film for his father, who was excited about the movie. We previewed the movie trailer earlier here at borg.com. It stars Vikings lead actor Travis Fimmel, along with Clancy Brown, Daniel Wu, Paula Patton, Dominic Cooper, and Ben Foster.

You don’t need to have any background with the video games to enjoy the prequel novel. It will be familiar to fans of the games, but deviates from the video game story. Some fans of the games will like it, some won’t. Durotan is the son of a chieftain of a clan of Orcs. When Durotan steps into the leadership role of his clan he must learn to balance the traditions of the past with the very survival of his clan. Warcraft: Durotan is a solid fantasy story, but it could easily be the story of an actual Native American tribe, a Viking or Highland clan, an Aztec tribe, ancient Spartans, a band of Mongols, or even a family in a Louis L’Amour Old West novel. Durotan’s trials are the trials of any leader whose people are plagued with crisis after crisis. Loyalty, bravery, sacrifice, tradition, mythology, and folklore all come into play.

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First look–Ennis and Dillon’s Preacher coming to AMC

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November 2, 2015

Developed by Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen, and Sam Catlin for AMC, Preacher is an adaptation of the comic book series created by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, and published by DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint. The full trailer premiered Sunday during The Walking Dead and we have it below in case you missed it.

Preacher is a series of 81 comic books that wrapped in 2000, available since then in nine trade editions available at your local comic book stores or here from Amazon.com. It’s a Western for the most part, and there’s plenty of John Ford influence in the comic book. The books and TV series follows Jesse Custer, a conflicted preacher in a small Texas town who combines with a powerful supernatural creature that has escaped from heaven. Along with his ex-girlfriend, Tulip (played by Ruth Negga), and an Irish vampire named Cassidy (played by Joe Gilgun), the three embark on a journey to find God.

Here’s the first trailer released for AMC’s Preacher:

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Tags: AMC, DC Comics, Dominic Cooper, Dusty Springfield, Evan Goldberg, Garth Ennis, Joe Gilgun, John Ford, Preacher AMC series, Preacher comic book series, Ruth Negga, Sam Catlin, Seth Rogen, Son of a Preacher Man, Steve Dillon, Vertigo Comics, westerns

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Agent Carter and other second chances at the spotlight

Filed under: Backstage Pass, Comics & Books, Superheroes, TV — Leave a comment

January 5, 2015

If you like modern noir or pulp throwback stories, as we did with last year’s The X-Files: Year Zero comic book series, ABC’s new Marvel Universe series Agent Carter is pretty much going to be a sure win.

Actors take note: When you take on a supporting character role in your next film or TV series and do better-than-expected job at it, make sure you love the part as you may just end up living with the role for a while. Along with a first film and franchise that also was taking off to parts unknown thanks to it success, Hayley Atwell’s tough 1940s British Secret Intelligence agent Peggy Carter pulled off that rare chance at a second life. Tomorrow night she gets her own spotlight as her own weekly series begins. Aside from the brief return of Dominic Cooper’s Howard Stark (father to Tony aka Iron Man), Atwell’s Carter will be forging ahead on her own.

Some of TV’s best characters were the results of a spin-off from one of those supporting characters who, because of great acting and great writing, popped with viewers beyond any expectation of the show’s creators. Going back to the 1970s whether unintended surprises or gambled backdoor spin-offs, we wouldn’t have seen more Jeffersons or Maude, or J.J. Evans and his family from Good Times, but for their standout performances spun out of All in the Family. We wouldn’t know Buddy Epsen’s seven years of sleuthing as Barnaby Jones without his guest role on Cannon, a decade of the kids in Facts of Life if not for Diff’rent Strokes, or spend primetime with the cops and firefighters on Adam-12 or Emergency! if not for some cool guest spots on Dragnet.

What would our TV night fun have been like without years of Laverne & Shirley and Mork & Mindy resulting from guest star bits on Happy Days, or, let’s not forget, our fave Lindsay Wagner’s Bionic Woman took on her own series from the episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man? Modern genre fans’ reactions helped propel John Barrowman’s Captain Jack Harkness from Doctor Who into multiple Torchwood series. Other coming spin-offs are Breaking Bad’s Better Call Saul and Walking Dead’s in-the-works spin-off (with the working title Cobalt), and we’re still hoping for a Special Operations Bureau spin-off from The Closer’s own spinoff, Major Crimes.

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Tags: ABC network, Agent Carter, Agent Carter behind the scenes, Agent Carter preview, Agent Peggy Carter, Bionic Woman, Dominic Cooper, Hayley Atwell, John Barrowman, Lindsay Wagner, Major Crimes, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Comics, Marvel Studios, spin-off TV and movie characters, spin-off TV series

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On video–Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, surprisingly good, now matter how you slice it

Filed under: Comics & Books, Fantasy Realms, Movies — Leave a comment

January 29, 2013

Would the real Abraham Lincoln please stand up?

With all that has been written and all the photographs we have of Abraham Lincoln, moviemakers keep trying to convey their own visions of the one and true 16th U.S. president. Americans have such a revered image of Lincoln that Hollywood has rarely portrayed him. Famed director John Ford’s brother Francis played Lincoln in a 1913 production called When Lincoln Paid. In 1930 Walter Huston, father of famed director John Huston, portrayed Lincoln in D.W. Griffith’s Abraham Lincoln. But the two best-known and best-loved performances were by Henry Fonda in John Ford’s 1939 production of Young Mr. Lincoln, and Raymond Massey in 1940’s Abe Lincoln in Illinois. In 2012 we saw two major movies with Lincoln as the lead character, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln starring Oscar nominee Daniel Day-Lewis, and Benjamin Walker as a younger Lincoln in Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. The latter was dismissed by critics as fluff for the most part, instead heaping praise on the big Spielberg film. This is unfortunate, because in any other year Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter might have received a better reception.

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter poses the purely fantasy idea that Abe Lincoln was not only a politician and patriot but an apprentice hunter cleaning up the countryside to avoid the spread of vampires throughout the U.S. before and during the Civil War. Gettysburg wasn’t just about conquering the Southern rebellion, it was about defeating the vampire-laden confederacy.

Where Daniel Day-Lewis opted to play Lincoln as craggy and gruff, more so than Raymond Massey portrayed him in Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Benjamin Walker’s take is much closer to Henry Fonda’s pleasant and forthright everyman from Young Mr. Lincoln. Despite Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter offering up an admittedly male, historical version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, director Timur Bekmambetov went well beyond what you’d normally find in a film so blatantly tied to a gimmick, that of screenwriter/novelist Seth Grahame-Smith following up his earlier well-received mash-up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. In fact, pushing aside for a moment the vampire hunting, the film offers an admirable view of the president, and in particular his relationship with Mary Todd. And that is saying a lot for a film that is part axe-waving and vampire killing.

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