Having learned some lessons about brevity and staying on topic from our Avengers podcast, the panel rises for the final act of the Batman trilogy.

Zac wrangles and all star cast including Jim from Not Safe for Watercoolers, Adam from The Reality Check, and Sean from Famicom Dojo. We’ll discuss Bane, Alfred, Lucius Fox, John Blake, Selina Kyle, and the overflowing cast of The Dark Knight Rises. There is a lot of plot and a lot of holes, but that doesn’t mean we don’t talk about what we liked and loved about the movie too!

If this is your first time listening to our show, this is an excellent jumping on point. Please let us know what you think in the comments section and subscribe to the show for more!

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Direct Link:Powetcast 129: The Dark Knight Rises Discussion
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The Dark Knight Rises is coming to theaters July 20, 2012. Taking place eight years after the events in The Dark Knight, the story revolves around the urgent need for Batman’s return to Gotham, but will he?

After surviving most of the last decade on eight Harry Potter films, Warner Bros. is pulling a Disney and will stop selling all versions of its Harry Potter films on December 29th. [via Deadline.com]

[Find out why, WHY they would do this, after the jump]

Following a screening of Batman: Year One, WB animation producer Bruce Timm announced to the audience their next movie projects.
The next feature will be Justice League Doom, an adaptation of Tower of Babel. Following that will be Superman vs. The Elite, and then the long await The Dark Knight Returns.

The Dark Knight Returns will be Warner Premier’s first two part feature, and Timm said the movie will be very faithful to the original. No voice cast has been announced by Andrea Romano said she is interested in bringing long time Batman actors Kevin Conroy and Mark Hammill on board. We first reported TDKR would be a future project in April.

Timm was also asked about Kingdom Come as a possible project, but said that the style of the artwork does not lend itself to 2D animation. The Killing Joke remains a possibility for the future.

Via IGN

With the current revamp of Mortal Kombat surpassing all expectations of sales and quality, it was only a matter of time before the original ‘trilogy’ was re-released.

Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection, as revealed by Warner Bros today, is going to be a single $10 download in Xbox Live or PSN that will include the original Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat II, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Previously, Midway released UMK3 on XBox Live and MKII on PSN, but with that publisher out of business both games have long since been removed from the storefront.

The games are said to be the original arcade versions, enhanced with online play, leaderboards, and achievements/trophies. Graphics are not expected to be revamped, only upscaled to HD.

Rumors of the collection surfaced a few months ago, originally pegging the collected games at $39.99 on a Playstation 3 exclusive disc. While you won’t have another disc for your shelf, its hard to complain about getting the collection at a quarter of the price of the rumors!

Full press release follows.

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Warner Bros has made many popular modern DC books into animated features over the last 4 years, and after getting their feet wet with fare like Under The Red Hood and New Frontier, they’re finally going to go for one of the biggest, baddest comics in their library: The Dark Knight Returns.

Returns tells the story of a 55 year old Bruce Wayne returning to his Batman identity after a decade’s absence. He confronts Harvey “Two Face” Dent, The Joker, and Superman at various points in the story, and takes on a new Robin as his partner. The series, written and and drawn by Frank Miller, is one of the most highly regarded in the DC canon, and helped lay the blueprint for the dark and gritty Batman that is best known today.

WB had a real misfire in their first animated production, re-writing and altering The Death and Return of Superman into a standalone 75 minute feature. Literally dozens of issues and hundreds of characters were cut from the story, and the movie still felt rushed. By comparison, choosing shorter stories (no more than 6 issues) to adapt has worked well for WB, and the bulk of The Dark Knight Returns should make into a fine animated feature. There are some thematic elements that may push WB beyond their usual PG-13 rating, but I certainly hope the original story makes it through unmolested.

Elements of The Dark Knight Returns were present in a Batman The Animated Series episode, “Legends Of The Dark Knight.” In it, 3 children share stories about what they know about Batman. One of the kids is a dead ringer for TDKR’s Robin, Carrie Kelley, and her tale depicts a 5 minute sequence almost directly lifted from the page of Batman fighting the Mutant gang. Michael Ironside provided the voice of Batman in this sequence, and would honestly make a fine choice to reprise the role in a full feature. See a clip at the bottom of this article.

An animated production of Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One is already nearing completion, and is expected to premeire at Comic Con 2011 in San Diego, with a DVD/Blu Ray Release following.

Tip via Joey O and [Bleeding Cool]

Didn’t read the original book? Its never too late to catch up on the classics.

Remember that Mortal Kombat Rebirth trailer from last year, featuring Jeri Ryan and Michael Jai White as Sonya and Jax, that made waves in the gaming community? The one that was simply a film reel and not a real teaser for a possible movie? Well, if you’ve been living under a rock in the gaming world, since then the creator of the reel (Kevin Tancharoen) gleaned enough credit with Warner Bros. for them to greenlight a web series based on his re-imagining of the Mortal Kombat series. Since the news broke in January, many new actor have signed onto roles as other characters from the series and bits and pieces of what the series will feature have been hinted at.

On April 12th, Machinima will host a live feed of director Kevin Tanchaoen and several others, including actors of the series, playing the new Mortal Kombat game, and will feature at the end the premier of the first episode of the new web series. The feed will go live from 12pm to 4pm PST with the first episode right at 4pm PST.

Mortal Kombat is an anthology of stories inspired by the early adventures of characters like Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Sonya, Jax, Cyrax, Sektor and many others. The series features noted talents including Jeri Ryan, Michael Jai White, Ian Anthony Dale and more. For more details, check out Mortal Kombat Online’s awesome coverage of the series from the start!