Pop Culture Safari!

Music new releases March 29, 2011

The King Of Limbs Radiohead

Here We Go Again Willie Nelson, Wynton Marsalis, Norah Jones

Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology

Mad Men: A Musical Companion

DVD new releases March 29, 2011

Mad Men: Season Four

Upstairs, Downstairs: The Complete Series - 40th Anniversary Collection

Dennis the Menace: Season One (1959 TV series)

Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends: Complete 5th Season

Emergency: The Final Rescues

Happiness Is a Warm Blanket Charlie Brown

Here's Lucy: Season Four

The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection

Tangled (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo)

Tangled

Black Swan

Ken Burns working on Vietnam series for PBS

If the Republicans don't kill PBS by 2016, we'll be able to enjoy a Ken Burns' documentary mini-series that year on the Vietnam War.

From Variety:

"Today, more than four decades after it ended, nearly everyone has an opinion about the Vietnam War, but few Americans truly know its history and there is little consensus about what happened there, or why," Burns said. "Our series will shed light both on the history of the war, and on our inability to find common ground about it."

In the style of previous docs including "The Civil War" and WWII-focused "The War," Burns and Novick will rely not only on archival images but also to a great extent on the firsthand testimonies of everyday citizens, from both sides of the conflict abroad as well as the protests in the U.S.

New X-Men: First Class images

The new/retro X-people show up on three cover variations of the UK's Empire film mag.

Folks featured include January Jones as Emma Frost glory, Michael Fassbender as Magneto and Jason Flemyng as Azazel, Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, James McAvoy as Charles Xavier and Nicholas Hoult as Beast.

Thor movie TV spots

Info on three-book-look at comics great Alex Toth

"Alex Toth: Genius Isolated," is the first of three books on the great comics artist coming out from IDW Publishing this year. Newsarama checks in with author Bruce Canwell and editor Dean Mullaney.

“The first book will take us from the beginnings of his comics career in the forties through the early sixties when he first entered the animation business. The second book, which will be called Genius, Illustrated, will be published in October of 2011, and will pick up from there and cover the second half of his career.

“The third book,” Mullaney continued, “is going to be essentially just pages and pages of his animation drawings – his model sheets, character designs, storyboards, color presentation pieces that he did to help the studio sell cartoons to the network. There’s so much fantastic, original artwork.”

I'm looking forward to seeing them all!

New book collects rare Beatles photos from U.S. tours

There are a zillion Beatles photo collections out there. I own most of them. But I'll very likely be adding this one to the list: The Lost Beatles Photographs: The Bob Bonis Archive, 1964-1966.

Bonis accompanied the Fabs on all three of their U.S. tours, snapping away, and many of the images haven't been published until now. There also a collection of Rolling Stones photos out.

Amy Adams to play Lois Lane

Amy Adams will play Lois Lane in the upcoming re-boot of Superman film series.

The 36-year-old star got the news on Sunday from director Zack Snyder, who phoned her from Paris, where he was promoting his just-opened film, “Sucker Punch.”

New Thor movie pictures and posters

James Franco, Mila Kunis to star in Wizard of Oz prequel

Via Variety:

Kunis stars as Theodora, the youngest sister of three witches, in "Oz, the Great and Powerful," opposite James Franco, who portrays a fast-talking snake oil salesman and illusionist who flees a traveling circus and winds up whisked away in a hot air balloon by a tornado to Oz where he must face off against real magic and the sisters battling for control of the land.

Theodora starts out as a good witch, alongside her beautiful sister Glinda, but after her sexual advances are jilted by Franco's salesman, she's convinced by Evanora to switch sides and help her older sister rule Oz.

Sam Raimi helms "Oz" this summer from a revised script by David Lindsay-Abaire ("Rabbit Hole"). Joe Roth ("Alice in Wonderland") produces.

Wonder Woman's Steve Trevor cast

Justin Bruening, who starred in NBC short-lived Knight Rider reboot will star as Steve Trevor in the network's new Wonder Woman.

This version of Steve is a:

...government agent who crash-landed on the island of Themyscira and fell in love with Diana (Adrianne Palicki), who returned with him to New York. In the new television show they’ve broken up, with Diana living in Los Angeles and Steve working as a lawyer for the Justice Department. They’re apparently not over each other, though.

The NBC pilot is described as a reinvention of the DC Comics superheroine, who’s recast as Diana Themyscira, a successful corporate executive who fights crime as Wonder Woman while trying to balance the elements of her extraordinary life.