A Boy and His Bird News December 2002
December 29th, 2002
CROW-EEN 2K2 Contest Winners!!
2002 marked a record setting # of entries for the CROW-EEN Contest. Huge thanks to all those that put forth the effort to send us your costume photos, proving that Crow Fans are alive and well in the world.
The Official Winners page is now uploaded, featuring photos for all the top placing entries including several Honorable mentions. Click the link below to go directly to the Winners page:
http://www.croween.com/winners2k2.html
Plans are already underway for CROW-EEN 2003!! We want to break the 100 mark next Halloween and also, with the help of CrowFanClub.com, offer up some of the coolest prizes to date. There will be changes to the judging/scoring system and creativity is going to play a huge role, so start thinking about you costumes early!
Towards the end of January, expect the CROW-EEN site ( http://www.croween.com/ ) to undergo a revamp to reflect 2003, with some new graphics, color scheme, and changes to many of the sections.
Thanks Crow Fans, hope you enjoy the Winners page.
SOON: Some merchandise news that's well worth saving for!
December 24th, 2002
ABaHB Traditional Year End Review
Another year has come and gone and we, as usual, want to thank you for hanging in there with us. For the most part, 2002 was a quiet year for The Crow. For a change, Crow products dominated the scenery with a lot of new items coming out for fans through NECA & Dynamic Forces. That is a good thing for the fan out there that can't get enough of the merchandise side of The Crow. But for those wanting new stories of substance, this was a disappointing year.
On the horizon, things look to be very much different in 2003. Here is our annual run down on projects:
Movies - Crow 4, Wicked Prayer, continues to move forward. We should be hearing some official news soon. I cannot go into much detail about it, but let me just say that I am VERY excited about the prospects of this movie. I think once more information is allowed to come out about it, a swell of anticipation will start fan base wide in regard to Wicked Prayer. The big news on Crow 4 this past year was the official end to all the rumors that Lazarus was still going to be the next Crow film. This film has become its own entity and will be made totally separate from the Crow franchise. To read up on all the information on Wicked Prayer and Lazarus, check out our highly detailed sections on both films.
Comics - The collapse of CHAOS! couldn't have come at a worse time for fans. Hungry for new projects, the cancellation of the crossover Lady Death/Crow comic due to financial troubles at CHAOS! was very disappointing. However, the Crow in comics is not dead yet and hopefully soon we will be able to report on some projects in the works. Some good news though, the original graphic novel was reprinted this year and sold out the first printing, second printing soon to come out. The reprinted graphic novel came with a new cover, with the original cover being moved to being the back cover.
Merchandise - As I stated earlier, this has been a good year for the merchandise conscious Crow fan. Coming up in 2003, there are some items that will be major hits with fans. One of those is a trading card set coming out from Dynamic Forces that was mentioned in their press release earlier in the year. The card set was scheduled for a 2002 release but should be out sometime in early to mid 2003. There should be some great things to go a long with that set, so keep your eyes and ears open here for more information as it is made available.
Animated Crow - This is still an ongoing project for Kevin Eastman's group. There have been various rumors about this project. At this time, it continues to move forward. It will more than likely be a one-shot project, not an ongoing series. Hopefully 2003 will bring more information about this long awaited project.
Novels - There are no new novels planned at this time. There may be some reissues of previous novels, but other than that, no new stories. There could be something done as a tie-in with Crow 4, but at this time, nothing concrete to grab hold of.
James O'Barr - James continues to hit the convention circuit, not much in the way of new stories. His long in the works follow up to the original Crow comics continues to move along slowly. He recently spoke with CrowFanClub about the long in the works author's edition of the original Crow comics. It will have 60 new pages, 2 restored scenes along with lost and new pages. No time given when we will see it, but sounds like 2003 could be the year. James has been active creating prints based on The Crow and other works, having drawn a lot of them for fans at convention visits. No update on Gothik, the long awaited, non-Crow project from O'Barr. The site jamesobarr.com was launched this year. After a promising start, it has lost a lot of steam. It mostly serves as a place where you can see a list of all the work he has done, find out where he is appearing and purchase some hard to find items. It no longer has a venue to get updates on what he is doing outside of convention appearances, nor the monthly Q&A that originally had been a part of it. The place to get up to date information on James is CrowFanClub.
Speaking of CrowFanClub, it was revamped this year and is under a new Webmaster. It has become a Mecca for James and Crow products. You should visit there if you haven't been by in a while.
Crow Fan Fiction - Along with being the place for Crow news and information, this year marked our further involvement in the fan fiction arena. We became the owners of the huge catalog of fan fiction works that were housed at the crowfanfiction.com site ran by White Rabbit. Coupled with our already large fan fiction archive, this section boasts one of the most impressive and eclectic mixes of Crow fan fiction found on the net. If you have not had an opportunity to check it out, by all means, do so.
Misc - We had some good news this year in regard to a Crow alum. Walter Goggins, who portrayed officer Stan Robbers in The Crow: Salvation, won an Oscar, along with two other people in the short film category. Croween 2k2 proved to be the biggest Croween to date with close to 80 submissions. The winner will be announced during the week of 23 Dec 2002. The list goes on in regard to highlights from this year. I highly recommend you skim through our archive section for 2002 to catch up on everything we reported.
Again, we appreciate everyone who has visited ABaHB this year and our long time partners. We look forward to a promising 2003. May your families be blessed this holiday season and take care.
Irony Despair & LLcruize
December 19th, 2002
Cheap Movie Posters!
It may be a little late for a Christmas present, but it's still a very good offer. Over at Cheapmovieposters.com, they're selling the infamous "Cathedral" poster by Robert Zukerman for only $9.95! This is one of the most desirable posters from The Crow, so don't miss an opportunity to get one.
December 18th, 2002
Garage Days at Sundance
Spiral Clock sends along this excellent report:
GARAGE DAYS, directed by Alex Proyas, will have its U.S. Premiere this coming January at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
Announced recently as part of the prestigious Sundance Film Festival's 2003 line-up, GARAGE DAYS will screen out of competition in the Premiere section of the festival.
The Sundance Film Festival (formerly the Utah/US Film festival) quickly came to pre-eminence in the early nineties after it was re-launched by actor Robert Redford's Sundance Institute. The Institute and the Festival were both formed to encourage depth and vitality in American Film. The Sundance Film Festival is now widely considered to be one of the most prestigious festivals of American and International independent cinema in the world.
“I am thrilled that we will be holding the U.S. premiere of GARAGE DAYS at the Sundance Film Festival. I have long been an admirer of the films that the festival supports, and I take it as a huge vote of confidence in GARAGE DAYS that we have been invited to participate in this year's program,” said Alex Proyas.
GARAGE DAYS, starring Kick Gurry, Pia Miranda and Maya Stange, was released in Australia by Fox Searchlight this past October. Fox Searchlight is distributing worldwide.
December and the Future
Well Crow Fans, we're sorry for the lack up updates lately, but it's been a very slow month in the realm of The Crow, however, we have some reports of quite a lot happening in January 2003 and beyond! So, The Crow 4 is still going, the comics are rolling along and there's plenty more to come.
December 6th, 2002
Composer for The Crow: Salvation tagged to do Terminator 3
It seems Marco Beltrami's new favorite number is three. He was picked to score all three Scream films and the third Crow film, Salvation. Now, he has been selected to take over the Terminator 3 sound track. Read the story below from Darkhorizons:
Terminator 3: The official site has posted up a first look at the new theatre banners for the action flick which includes our first glimpse at the TX's endoskeleton. Meanwhile The Arnold Fans indicates "Scream" composer Marco Beltrami has taken over scoring duties in place of Brad Fiedel, and Beltrami confirms he'll be using all his own new stuff and none of the old stuff will make it in - including the famous theme music. Thanks to 'ABKing', 'BowlingShirt.com', 'René' & 'Jhblade'.
This makes the second person connected with previous Crow movies to become involved with Terminator 3. The other, of course as we have reported, is Crow 1 and 2 still photographer Robert Zuckerman. He was hired to do the still photographer for T3. Good to see Crow alum getting high profile work.
Take care.....come what may.
December 4th, 2002
I-Robot - Proyas
Alex Proyas is about to start work on a new project with Will Smith! Yahoo! News has all the details.
Moving On
Another month, another addition to the archive. November can be found here for all those who want to see what has come before!
