So after those not-so-steady cam work of leaked teasers for the upcoming X-Files movie titled X-Files: I Want to Believe (a title that is definitely directed to its loyal fans as oppose to potential newcomers), The X-Files has finally released the official debut trailer complete with the yummy and eerie whistling theme compliments of Mark Snow.

See it here!

Also, check out the faux interviews with Mulder and Scully as they discuss what they miss about each other. Awesome for the fans (and a bit of a treat for the handful of shippers out there).

Now, after viewing the "interviews", are we to believe Mulder and Scully have been out of contact with each other since the series finale? Or was this a hypothetically ploy to get the fans juiced for the movie? If the latter, mission accomplished!

Last night I attended a screening of Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist.
This documentary film was part of the Toronto Jewish Film Festival at the Bloor Cinema, and the film was presented by the director Andrew D. Cooke.

Will Eisner is one of the reasons I still read comics. He pioneered the form in the late 1930's with his work on 'The Spirit', and his ideas about sequential art continued to evolve for over 60 years. His graphic novel, 'A Contract With God', continues to be a landmark in the field.

The film took over  five years to complete, and has several interviews with Will, plus notable interviews with art speigelman, Frank Miller, Dennis Kitchen, Jules Feiffer Michael Chabon and Scott McCloud. As well, there are Eisner home movies, shots of Will drawing, archival footage, .and some beautiful original art.

I met Will in the late 1980's, and not only have I have interviewed him on many occasions, but he became a friend and a mentor. So, naturally, I was hoping that the film would do him justice.

I thought the film was very ambitious, and this strength was also its greatest weakness, as it attempted to cover too much ground. But having struggled with this myself, I could not help but admire the scope of the project. The film is biographical, political, and historical, at turns both funny and moving, and at its heart it is a loving portrait of a man whose work shaped and fundamentally changed the medium he loved.

As a wonderful bonus, I got to have a coffee with the director, Andrew Cooke. We shared a few of our favorite Will Eisner stories, and it's clear to me that Andrew understands and cares passionately about Will and his work. I think that this film is a great testament to Will, and I believe that it will introduce a new audience to this master craftsman and storyteller.

If this film is playing at a theatre near you, I urge you to check it out.

I was just on boingboing, and I see that Cory Doctorow has just put up Little Brother for download. You can find it at http://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/

If you are a fan of Cory's, check out my podcast from last week. He talks about why he puts his books up for free, and it is a compelling, and very Cory, argument.

As well, I'm putting together some stories for this week's HypaSpace, and just looking ahead to the podcast. No idea exactly what I'll put on the podcast- probably something on Battlestar Galactica, Speed Racer, and Prince Caspian. What I'll choose from The Vault is also a mystery to me today. I'm hoping for a news story to trigger something.

Caprica has its first confirmed cast member. The Hollywood Reporter has announced that Deadwood's Paula Malcolmson has been cast as Amanda Greystone in prequel to Battlestar Galactica.

"Set 50 years before the events in Battlestar, the UMS-produced "Caprica" follows the evolution of the Cylon race and the fight between two families."

**SPOILER ALERT**

According to Ain't It Cool News, Malcomson will play Amanda Greystone, a surgeon who works as a double agent. When her teenaged daughter, Zoe, is killed in a suicide bombing, her husband, Daniel Greystone (wealthy computer genius) uses illegal robotic technology to revive her.

When Daniel uploads his dead daughter's memories and personality into a machine, he creates the first Cylon. What he doesn't know about his revived daughter is that she was both a computer genius and a closet monotheist.

::via: Galactica Sitrep

(Photo by Stephen Shugerman/Getty Images)

This weekend was a great one for people who love comic books: Free Comic Day!

I used to be the manager of a comic book store, and one of my major problems was always getting comics into the hands of people I felt would love comics, but just didn't read them. I felt that if I could only get them into my store, I could find a comic book they would love.

A few years ago, some enterprising retailers and publishers, and a clear-eyed distributor banded together to create Free Comic Book Day. The hope was that if lots of stores gave away free comics on one particular day that the media and potential customers would hear about it, and walk into a local comic book store.

For the first few years the plan didn't seem to work. I would see comic book fans out in full force getting freebies, but I didn't see a lot of fresh faces. Then, thanks to good weather, good press and good will, I started to see a major shift. Last year The Beguiling had many creators sitting outside the store, doing free sketches for passers by. It turned into a cool little street fair, with a real 'university student' feel. Down on Queen St. the Silver Snail was giving away thousands of comics to a young fashionable crowd who had never been in a comic book store before.

This year promised to be a good year, given that the Iron Man movie is opening this weekend.

BTW- there is a great website that will tell you what retailers are close to you, so if you missed it this year, check it out next year!

::http://www.freecomicbookday.com/fcbd_locator.asp

::Check out pictures tagged with "Free Comic Book Day" on flickr.com

 

One of the great things about being part of the Canadian SF community for over 30 years is that I get to watch young creators throughout the arc of a career. That's certainly true of Cory Doctorow, whom I've known since he was a teenager working at Toronto's Bakka Books.

Cory is a Maven. An Explainer. An Agitator.

I think of him as a one man Pirate Radio Station, and he has been a regular contributor to my reading lists, recommending dozens of authors to me, introducing me to the work of Neal Stephenson, Charles Stross, Vernor Vinge, Nalo Hopkinson, Kelly Link, Karl Scroeder and many, many others.

Just before I left to cover the New York Comic Con, I got a copy of Cory Doctorow's new novel 'Little Brother'. It very quickly displaced 'Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom' as my favorite novel of Cory's, so I was thrilled to get to interview him last Friday.

The novel is a Young Adult novel, and it is very much the heir to the Heinlein Juveniles. Heinlein opened my eyes to the possibilities of space travel, and Cory's novel will no doubt open his reader's eyes to programming and computers.

I decided to do the interview in a graffiti laden alley, as it fit the urban, anarchistic themes of the book, and I knew, from earlier interview with Cory that he could handle the various distractions of an outdoor interview. 

Cory sees the present very clearly, so clearly that it sometimes creates the illusion that he is living in the future, and reporting back. He's also an early adopter, and he's constantly flashing some new piece of tech. Before Cory showed me I didn't know running shoes could have wheels in them, or how seductive a PDA could be, or what an iPod was. All commonplace now.

It was a fun interview, and I'll make a piece for HypaSpace next week, and perhaps feature him on the podcast.
Here's a small excerpt from the interview, just to whet your appetite.

::WATCH