Monthly Archives: July 2014

JMS announces a Babylon 5 movie at SDCC2014

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This is the text from Jan M Schroeder regarding her Saturday activities at this year’s San Diego Comicon, brought here with permission. Thanks Jan.

I have my own comments on what could have lead up to this point, but that will have to wait. Please enjoy.

J. Michael Straczynski has bee a very busy bee, as you will see in Jan’s report below :

 

Saturday at San Diego Comic-Con (or the day JMS announced that he’ll do a B5 movie).
I got there at a good time, not long after the con opened at 10:00 AM. A little surprisingly, the mezzanine didn’t really seem too much busier than other days so far except for the food area being busier. I’ve got pre-written letters to WB and NBC/Universal out on the table and a fair number of folks took those to mail after adding a little demographic info. Five or six were left with me and I dropped them off to be mailed.
The big panel of the day was JMS’ of course. First I went to his signing and got a few things signed that will most likely be destined as fund-raisers. I verified with JMS that he wouldn’t mind if I handed out buttons and postcards before his panel. A new friend, Lukas, handed out at the door and I wandered the room where people were already staying from the panel before.

JMS started the panel by reviewing his current projects, both ‘out house’ (not Studio JMS) and in-house and continued with news. We got an introduction to the Sense8 actors. JMS described it as a “…complex, amazing tapestry of stories.”
– Ten Grand: JMS is currently negotiating with a major Studio/Network for a series based on this.
– Shadowman feature film: He’s two to three weeks from turning in the latest draft.
– He couldn’t name it, but he’s working on a project for Universal concerning Rod Serling and working with Carol Serling, Rod’s widow on it.
– Again he couldn’t say much but he showed a title card for a show called “Two Streets” that he’s just made a deal with Universal for that he’ll be working with “Walking Dead’s” Gail Anne Hurd.
– “Titans” is the name of the Feature film/graphic novel project that was just announced yesterday (see movie thread).
So it’s been a really big year for Studio JMS. And due to that, he can now look to doing a feature film for B5. JMS recapped that WB owns everything about B5 except the movie rights and even though he holds the film rights, to take a B5 movie to another studio without holding the TV rights wouldn’t work. There’s one studio in LA that doesn’t care about that – Studio JMS – and in 2015 JMS will write the script. He’ll give WB the opportunity to step up, but if they don’t, Studio JMS will make it in 2016 on their own with a $1-200,000,000.00 budget.

Fan questios:
A fan asked if JMS might crowdfund part of the film so that fans might be involved and JMS said that he resists doing that because it seems to him that SF fans are an exploited group and he doesn’t ever want to do that – he’d rather accept investor money.
Asked about the current situation with streaming Babylon 5, JMS said that it’s all up to Warner Bros. and gave the ‪#‎FreeBabylon5‬ campaign a nice plug, telling of the success in Europe to date and hoping for some movement domestically.

A fan asked if the success of a B5 feature might improve the chances of streaming and even future TV projects and JMS said that it would probably have a significant effect, that a good way to get someone’s (WB) attention is to rattle their cage.

Asked if the film would be a reboot or a continuation:
“It would have to be a reboot because it’s been twenty-plus years since we started that show and some of the age ranges wouldn’t work with some of these characters so we’d need to move a few people around. But what I want to do is use the original cast one way or another but we’d have to move some things around. I’d love to see Bruce as the PPresident of the Earth Alliance; it would be the perfect role for him.”

JMS went on to tell about a story he wanted to do that he wasn’t allowed to in the original show where when Londo was injured, he wanted to do a dream sequence where the actors played different characters but the studio thought the audience would get confused.
A fan asked what’s being made not that would equal B5 for being transformative and JMS replied that TV is having a golden age right now with lots of amazing things. being made.

He concluded with his regular homily for the fans to never surrender their dreams, that with persistance and talent and luck, can overcome your circumstances and follow your passionss and succeed.

Jan
(posting in various places- feel free to share)

 

Overview of Babylon 5 (B5) podcasts.

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Starting with the Babylon 5 podcasts known to me now, here is the list :

The Babylon Podcast  :
– 280 episodes
– warning : Massive spoilers in their episode discussion
– Very comprehensive with episode discussions, interviews, discussing books and comics

The Babble On Project  :
– currently running
– essentially spoiler free sections and spoiler sections
– episode discussion, a few interviews.
– sometimes poor audio quality with shouting into the microphones.

Downbelow : A Babylon 5 Introcast  :
– started 2014, currently at episode 30, at the end of season 1
– intended spoiler free, they have succeeded in doing that
– each B5 episode has a discussion episode, some episode commentaries

Braving Babylon 5  :
– started 2014, currently at episode 9
– generally spoiler free, first time viewer of B5
– single host talking about one episode per podcast episode

The Babylon Project Podcast  :
– started 2014, currently at episode 4
– generally spoiler free section followed by a spoiler section
– single episode discussion

The Audio Guide to Babylon 5  :
– started 2014, currently at episode 5
– starting every episode with a generally spoiler free section then a spoiler section present from the beginning
– Single episode discussion

White Star 5  :
– started 2014, currently at episode 4
– spoilers inevitable due to the nature of the discussions
– Discussions of themes, characters etc – no episode discussions

Jumpgate : The Babylon 5 ReWatch Podcast
– Started late 2013 or early 2014, currently at episode 14
– spoilers inevitable due to the re-watch quality
– single episode discussions

SQPN : Secrets of Babylon 5  :
– ran in 2011 for 17 episodes, possibly pod-faded
– generally spoiler free, first time viewer
– two hosts discussing 2 episodes per podcast episode

Wow ! 9 B5 podcasts that I know about, and 6 of them started less than a year ago.
This really looks like a renaissance of the interest for Babylon 5.
That was the quick overview, some more details for some of the podcasts will follow.

 

Podcasts, Podcasts, Podcasts

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If you search the net and iTunes – and many other podcast aggregators you can find thousands upon thousands of podcasts in all kinds of categories.

 

I have mainly focused on Science fiction and radio related podcasts, and I am going to tell a bit about the scifi podcasts I have collected. It is so easy to collect more than you have time to listen to, so I have over 1000 un-listened podcasts for later use.

I started my podcast listening when I had had an accident and broke the arm inside the shoulder, and since I was interested in Babylon 5 that is where I started the search, and, lo and behold, there was one : The Babylon Podcast They already had about 40 episodes out, so I got started with catching up. They also had a live recording, so one night (my time) I listened in – and they opened up for a brief talk, so on my first night of listening a podcast recording I could jump in and participate for a minute or two. Just for the fun of it – the episode I was on was number – wait for it – 42. The Babylon Podcast has run its course, and covered all things B5, series, spinoffs, comics, books. More detail on that in a later post. Beware The Babylon Podcast has lots of spoilers.

The Babylon Podcast led me to “Slice of Scifi”, a more general podcast mostly covering TV and films, always with an interview. I enjoyed that one a lot.

From the same group, and with the author MIchael Stackpole (among others, known from the Star Wars X-Wing series) there was “Dragonpage Cover to Cover”, all about books and authors, so I was fairly well covered.

Come 2014 – Babylon 5 podcasts seems to have had a renaissance, last I checked I had 5 (or 6?) more B5 podcasts in my podcast directory. I will give an overview in the next post, because they all have different qualities and different levels of spoilers for possible new B5 viewers.

 

Another Moon Walker picture

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I just edited another of the pictures from the meeting with Ed Mitchell at Space EXPO.

This shows that longest of all the Moon walks in the Apollo program. Apollo 14’s.

From Apollo 15 on They brought a Moon Rover, so they had much less walking on the Moon.

Moon Walk

Apolle 14, the longest of the Moon Walks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I may add a few more pictures later.

 

Moonwalker .

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Today I had the opportunity to meet the 6th man to set foot on the Moon : Ed Mitchell.

Ed Mitchel and Alan Shepard Landed to Lunar Lander Module on Februry 5th, 1971 with Stuart Roosa in the orbiting Command Module.

They collected over 42kg of moon rock.

In Europe the opportunity to go see a Moon Walker is very rare, so when I heard about it from a fellow scifi fan it took less than 5 minutes to decide and and a few more to buy the ticket. Who knows if a living Moon Walker will ever come so close to where I live – about 1 hour’s drive.

Mitchell talked about his way to the Moon, from a farm boy with hay fever (ouch!) and a keen interest in flying machines, via a naval career to becoming an astronaut, and finally being selected as member of a backup crew on Apollo 10. Apollo 10 was a test flight for the Lunar Module, and it approached the Lunar surface until the height of just under 16km, at the time the closest any manned space craft had been to the Moon. No landing.

The Mitchell/Roosa/Shepard crew was intended to go with Apollo 13, but due to health risk Apollo 13 was launched with the backup crew. Most of us will know that Apollo 13 had an accident and could not land on the Moon, but they were – with many difficulties and a lot of expertise – brought safely back to Earth – by a very small margin. I still remember those days when a lot of people all over the world were biting the nails ….

The Apollo 14 mission went with very few surprises, we were shown lots of photos from the mission, including Al Shepard’s golf demonstration on the Moon.

Like essentially all astronauts who went to the Moon, He told us about what the view of Earth hanging in the sky, so far away did to him. The realization of how small and fragile it is, how thin the atmosphere is, the thing that provides us with oxygen, and, as important, a shield against Solar and cosmic radiation.

Briefly he mentioned his personal belief that aliens have visited Earth, and his interest in experiments and research in parapsychology. Since most of us came to hear about his journey to the Moon, we were quite happy with the balance of subjects in his talk, although it is apparent that the last two subjects are close to his heart.

All in all a very interesting afternoon. If another Moon Walker will come to a place near me, I shall take the opportunity again if at all possible.

Update : July 7 : Pictures added :

Epiphany

Ed Mitchell on his epiphany on the way back to Earth

Ed Mitchell

Ed Mitchell answering questions form the audience

Cosplay pictures from Fedcon 2014

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At Fedcon in May/June this year I took a large amount of pictures of cosplayers, and here are two that I tried to edit a bit to emphasize the cosplayers, and leave the background more like a background.

Take a look and see how you like them .

Norse Gods at Fedcon 2014

Norse Gods at Fedcon 2014

Real Klingon

A real Klingon, right down to a battle injury 😉