Star Trek: Animated - Official Announcement, EXTRAS!!! & Package Art
CBS DVD and Paramount Home Entertainment today announce the DVD release date of the highly anticipated Animated Series. Formerly known as The Animated Adventures of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek, the four-disc set will hit stores on November 21, 2006.
The title now shortened to Star Trek: The Animated Series, the set will include all 22 episodes of the classic Roddenberry show, which originally aired on Saturday mornings in 1973-74. A final frontier of sorts, the Animated Series is the last of the Trek catalog to make it to DVD.
Creator Gene Roddenberry's animated version of Star Trek features the voices of nearly the entire cast of the original live-action series, including William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, George Takei, James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols and Majel Barrett, as they embark on the further adventures of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Comprised of 22 episodes, the four-disc set includes the Peabody award-winning episode "How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth,” Walter Koenig's "The Infinite Vulcan,” which was the first episode ever written by a Star Trek cast member, as well as a number of episodes that serve as sequels to original Star Trek episodes. Many episodes were written by veterans of the original live-action TV series, such as D.C. Fontana and David Gerrold, and the show won a daytime Emmy in 1975 for Outstanding Children's Series.
Confirmed special features for the Animated Series include:
"Drawn to the Final Frontier - The Making of Star Trek: The Animated Series"
"What's the Star Trek Connection?"
Photo Gallery
Show History
Wallpaper
AIM Icons
Text Commentaries by Michael Okuda and Denise Okuda ("Yesteryear," "The Eye of the Beholder," "The Counter-Clock Incident")
The DVD set will be presented in its original full screen with Dolby Digital English 5.1 Surround, English Mono and Spanish Mono and will be available to own for a suggested retail price of $35.00.
007 Producers Already Planning "Bond 22"
Producers of the next highly anticipated Bond film have already begun making plans for the new 007's follow-up film, tentatively titled, "Bond 22."
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the U.K. based Eon Productions is in talks to re-unite director Roger Michell with Daniel Craig, for his next mission for the British Secret Service - and it's not exactly top-secret.
The 22nd James Bond film would be Michell and Craig's third time working together, after 2004's drama/thriller Enduring Love which followed 2003's romance/drama, The Mother.
The story for Craig's next spy thrill-ride is being developed by producer Michael Wilson, who last wrote License to Kill, as well as penned the screenplays for The Living Daylights, A View to a Kill, Octopussy and For Your Eyes Only.
The famous secret agent's latest movie, Casino Royale, which brings Bond back to the beginning, hits theaters November 17th.
New CD Releases For July 18: Los Lonely Boys, Golden Smog, Rodney Atkins
Los Lonely Boys "Sacred"
The Texas rock band returns with the follow-up to its eponymous 2003 debut. That first album has sold more than 2 million copies to date, thanks in large part to the hit roots-rock single "Heaven."
The family group, which features the Garza brothers Henry (guitar), Jojo (bass) and Ringo (drums), will support the album with a major tour that currently stretches through September and includes some dates opening for Carlos Santana, as well as a Sept. 15 performance at the Austin City Limits music festival.
The first single from "Sacred" is "Diamonds," which is already getting radio airplay and is streaming at the group's MySpace site. Fellow Texan Willie Nelson makes a guest appearance on the song "Outlaws."
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Golden Smog "Another Fine Day"
Wilco's Jeff Tweedy and The Jayhawks' Gary Louris reunite for the fourth release from this all-star Midwestern roots-rock act. Other artists who contribute to the set include fellow Jayhawk Marc Perlman and Soul Asylum guitarist Dan Murphy. The album notably includes a cover of
The Kinks' "Strangers."
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Rodney Atkins "If You're Going Through Hell"
The Tennessee-born country star is back with his third album and his first since 2003's "Honesty." The first single from the disc is "If You're Going Through Hell (Before The Devil Even Knows)," which has already climbed into the Top 10 on the Billboard country singles chart. The video for the song is also in rotation at country music channels such as CMT. Atkins is best known for the title track to "Honesty," which was a Top 5 hit for the singer.
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Bruce Cockburn "Life Short Call Now"
The Canadian singer/songwriter/guitarist has been very prolific over the years. "Life Short Call Now" is the 29th album in Cockburn's 37-year career. It follows his first all-instrumental affair, 2005's "Speechless." Singer/songwriter Ani DiFranco makes a guest appearance on the song "See You Tomorrow."
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Billy Ray Cyrus "Wanna Be Your Joe"
Billy Ray Cyrus is back to try to overcome the stigma of his "Achy Breaky Heart" days and make another go at it in the country world. The artist has recruited some very special friends to help him in that endeavor. None other than George Jones and Loretta Lynn--two of country music's true immortals--add vocals to the song "Country Music Has the Blues."
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Third Eye Blind "Greatest Hits"
The first-ever compilation from these San Francisco Bay Area rockers includes such fan favorites as "Losing a Whole Year," "How's It Going To Be," "Jumper," "Graduate" and, of course, "Semi-Charmed Life," which remains the band's best-known hit.
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More new releases:
Alien Ant Farm, "Up in the Attic" (New Door)
Lily Allen, "Alright Still" (EMI)
Black Stone Cherry, "Black Stone Cherry" (Roadrunner)
Cactus, "V" (New Media)
Eric Church, "Sinners Like Me" (Capitol)
Eighteen Visions, "Eighteen Visions" (Sony)
Frost, "Milliontown" (Inside Out)
Neil Gaiman, "Where's Neil When You Need Him?" (Dancing Ferret)
Lisa Germano, "In the Maybe World" (Young God)
Ojos de Brujo, "Techari" (Diquela)
Ozric Tentacles, "Floor's Too Far Away" (Magna Carta)
John Pizzarelli, "Dear Mr. Sinatra" (Telarc)
The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, "Don't You Fake It" (Virgin)
Luca Turilli's Dreamquest, "Lost Horizons" (Magic Circle)
Soundtracks and scores:
"Lady in the Water" (Decca)
Mike Hammer creator Mickey Spillane dies
CHARLESTON, S.C. - Mickey Spillane, the macho mystery writer who wowed millions of readers with the shoot-'em-up sex and violence of gumshoe Mike Hammer, died Monday. He was 88.
Spillane's death was confirmed by Brad Stephens of Goldfinch Funeral Home in his hometown of Murrells Inlet. Details about his death were not immediately available.
After starting out in comic books Spillane wrote his first Mike Hammer novel, "I, the Jury," in 1946. Twelve more followed, with sales topping 100 million. Notable titles included "The Killing Man," "The Girl Hunters" and "One Lonely Night."
Many of these books were made into movies, including the classic film noir "Kiss Me, Deadly" and "The Girl Hunters," in which Spillane himself starred. Hammer stories were also featured on television in the series "Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer" and in made-for-TV movies. In the 1980s, Spillane appeared in a string of Miller Lite beer commercials.
Besides the Hammer novels, Spillane wrote a dozen other books, including some award-winning volumes for young people.
Nonetheless, by the end of the 20th century, many of his novels were out of print or hard to find. In 2001, the New American Library began reissuing them.
As a stylist Spillane was no innovator; the prose was hard-boiled boilerplate. In a typical scene, from "The Big Kill," Hammer slugs out a little punk with "pig eyes."
"I snapped the side of the rod across his jaw and laid the flesh open to the bone," Spillane wrote. "I pounded his teeth back into his mouth with the end of the barrel ... and I took my own damn time about kicking him in the face. He smashed into the door and lay there bubbling. So I kicked him again and he stopped bubbling."
Mainstream critics had little use for Spillane, but he got his due in the mystery world, receiving lifetime achievement awards from the Mystery Writers of America and the Private Eye Writers of America.
Spillane, a bearish man who wrote on an old manual Smith Corona, always claimed he didn't care about reviews. He considered himself a "writer" as opposed to an "author," defining a writer as someone whose books sell.
"This is an income-generating job," he told The Associated Press during a 2001 interview. "Fame was never anything to me unless it afforded me a good livelihood."
Spillane was born Frank Morrison Spillane on March 9, 1918, in the New York borough of Brooklyn. He grew up in Elizabeth, N.J., and attended Fort Hayes State College in Kansas where he was a standout swimmer before beginning his career writing for magazines.
He had always liked police stories — an uncle was a cop — and in his pre-Hammer days he created a comic book detective named Mike Danger. At the time, the early 1940s, he was scribing for Batman, SubMariner and other comics.
"I wanted to get away from the flying heroes and I had the prototype cop," Spillane said.
Danger never saw print. World War II broke out and Spillane enlisted. When he came home, he needed $1,000 to buy some land and thought novels the best way to go. Within three weeks, he had completed "I, the Jury" and sent it to Dutton. The editors there doubted the writing, but not the market for it; a literary franchise began. His books helped reveal the power of the paperback market and became so popular they were parodied in movies, including the Fred Astaire musical "The Band Wagon."
He was a quintessential Cold War writer, an unconditional believer in good and evil. He was also a rare political conservative in the book world. Communists were villains in his work and liberals took some hits as well. He was not above using crude racial and sexual stereotypes.
Viewed by some as a precursor to Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry, Spillane's Hammer was a loner contemptuous of the "tedious process" of the jury system, choosing instead to enforce the law on his own murderous terms. His novels were attacked for their violence and vigilantism_ one critic said "I, the Jury" belonged in "Gestapo training school" — but some defended them as the most shameless kind of pleasure.
"Spillane is like eating takeout fried chicken: so much fun to consume, but you can feel those lowlife grease-induced zits rising before you've finished the first drumstick," Sally Eckhoff wrote in the liberal weekly The Village Voice.
The Hammer novels had a couple of recurring characters: Pat, the honest, but slow-moving cop, and Velda, Mike's faithful secretary. Like so many women in Hammer's life, Velda was a looker, and burning for love.
"Velda was watching me with the tip of her tongue clenched between her teeth," Spillane wrote in "Vengeance is Mine!", an early Hammer novel.
"There wasn't any kitten-softness about her now. She was big and she was lovely, with the kind of curves that made you want to turn around and have another look. The lush fullness of her lips had tightened into the faintest kind of snarl and her eyes were the carnivorous eyes you could expect to see in the jungle watching you from behind a clump of bushes."
While the Hammer books were set in New York, Spillane was a longtime resident of Murrells Inlet, a coastal community near Myrtle Beach.
He moved to South Carolina in 1954 when the area, now jammed with motels and tourist attractions, was still predominantly tobacco and corn fields.
Spillane said he fell in love with the long stretches of deserted beaches when he first saw the area from an airplane.
The writer, who became a Jehovah's Witness in 1951 and helped build the group's Kingdom Hall in Murrells Inlet, spent his time boating and fishing when he wasn't writing. In the 1950s, he also worked as a circus performer, allowing himself to be shot out of a cannon and appearing in the circus film "Ring of Fear."
The home where he lived for 35 years was destroyed by the 135 mph winds of Hurricane Hugo in 1989.
Married three times, Spillane was the father of four children.
Aniston: A 'Friends' reunion would be fun
LONDON - Jennifer Aniston says she would like to reprise her role as Rachel Green in a reunion show of TV's most famous group of "Friends."
"The only thing I can think of doing is maybe for fun doing a Thanksgiving episode," Aniston said in a TV interview that was set to air Monday on Channel Four. "Our Thanksgiving episodes were really fun."
"Friends," which centered on the lives of six young friends living in Manhattan, ended its 10-year run in 2004. The NBC comedy also starred Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer.
Aniston, 37, was in London to promote her new film, "The Break-Up," co-starring Vince Vaughn. She gave little away when asked to comment on speculation that she and Vaughn are dating.
"Where did you hear that?" she said to Judy Finnigan, co-host of the "Richard and Judy" talk show.
"Listen, he's a great man, he's a great friend, he's a great actor and so much fun," Aniston said.