September 5, 2006
Nerdy Website and Podcast Discoveries
I've a couple of cool new discoveries--new to me, anyway. Comic Book Urban Legends started getting a front page link on CBR. This is part of the Comics Should Be Good blog and it investigates the truth behind long-held comic book industry rumors. It caught my attention a couple of weeks ago when they revealed that Neal Adams had contributed to the "Superman Vs. Spider-Man" treasury edition. I remember even thinking as a kid: yeah, how come Ross Andru suddenly looks like Adams here and there? It turned out that Adams inked Superman on several pages--he shared a studio with Dick Giordiano (Andru's inker) after all! This week, there are tidbits about Grant Morrison's Fantomexcharacter (from New X-Men) and his inspiration, the 1968 film Diabolik. This is the 66th entry and I've got a lot of legends to catch up on.
Alter Ego Comic Cast is a relatively new podcast site (22 episodes to date), but it's extremely well done. The guys who produce this show have a zippy format, where they discuss this week's comics, some industry news, and then launch into an interview with a comic creator. I've heard interviews with Paul Jenkins, Ed Brubaker, Robert Kirkman, etc. These guys ask very good questions, giving you a very unique perspective, and they get right to the point. I have to say that I prefer this podcast (and Word Balloon) over something like Comic Geek Speak, where they are lots of uhms-ahs-dead-silence.
Speaking of Word Balloon, John Siuntres delivers a knockout interview week after week. There is a fascinating two part interview with Ed Brubaker, where he talks in detail about his new Icon series, Criminal, Captain America, Daredevil, Iron Fist, etc. It sounds like Danny Rand will lose his ballerina slippers in the new series. I can't wait to read Criminal. Siuntres has a real coup in his latest interview with Brad Meltzer about the new Justice League of America series. Meltzer's new novel, The Book of Fate, sounds cool, too. Nuff said.
Posted by Adam Warlock at 2:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)The Wire: HBO's Finest TV Series
I just finished a 36 hour marathon: The Wire, Seasons 1, 2, and 3. I wouldn't have believe any series could trump Lost, The Shield, or even HBO's own The Sopranos, Deadwood, or Rome--but The Wire does. And the funny thing is, I wanted to give up watching after the very first episode. Now I am such a rabid fan that I will probably sign up for HBO, so I can see Season 4 that starts this Sunday, September 10th.
The Wire moves at an almost glacial pace. David Simon, the creator/head writer/producer behind the series, says it's a novelistic approach. The first season is about the drug wars in Baltimore, Maryland, where a drug lord named Avon Barksdale and his right-hand man, Stringer Bell, have a sophisticated organization of runners that constantly elude the police. While the drug pushers are highly sophisticated, the police are mired in bureaucracy. Only Detective Jimmy McNulty has the balls to talk to a judge, who instigates the need for a specialized team to be formed. The realism in this series--from the drug pushers to the bureaucrats to the police to the kids on the street--is so intense that it will ruin you for other police procedurals. But just like the best novels, once things build to a certain point, the interactions between the characters never stops boiling.
I've never seen a series that humanizes all the players in the drug trade, from the politicians on down. The first season primarily centers on Barksdale and Bell (B&B Enterprises), who make so much money that they've bought real estate in Baltimore's better neighborhoods. At the end of the first season, the police team that made up The Wire is disbanded. The second season centers on criminal activities in Baltimore's shipping docks with the stevedores union. Rather than have the entire team come together in episode one or two, it takes almost half of the episodes before the entire team comes together--and by this time, you're completely hooked into all the minutiae. While the stevedore union saga plays out, Stringer Bell is very active in the background, and takes center stage when Season 3 starts up. I can't really say what the theme of Season 3 is without ruining the surprise, but let's just say it was that kind of Swamp Thing/MiracleMan/V For Vendetta moment, where a writer takes a concept (in this case about the drug trade and police work) and totally flips it around.
You should rent The Wire at the very least--don't give up until you've at least seen episodes 1-4. If you've read James Ellroy, you'll love it--especially if you watch them for the first time on DVD and are able to connect the various events that correlate between the seasons. Nuff said.
Posted by Adam Warlock at 2:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)February 27, 2006
Sky High
Sky High is a very enjoyable comedy that goofs on both superheroes and high school. From the reviews, I recalled the critics panned it, but Rotten Tomatoes gives it a fresh rating of 70%. I think I’d put it on the level of Teen Wolf, which was also set in high school. If you’re a comic book fan, it’s a must-see. The story centers on Will Stronghold, the son of the two most powerful superheroes, the Commander (Kurt Russell) and Jetstream (Kelly Preston). (Russell is one of my favorite actors for his usual steadied and low-key approach to acting, but this is the first time I’ve seen him do anything hammy. Somehow it fits within the character of the Commander, who is a cross between Captain America and Commander Steel.) The film starts on Will’s first day of school at Sky High, a high school for superhero kids that exists on anti-gravity platform in the clouds. Will has a big problem: he hasn’t displayed any paranormal powers to date. The first task upon entry to Sky High is to figure out whether the kids are Heroes or Sidekicks, which is determined by Coach Boomer. Boomer is hilariously played by Bruce Campbell, just one of the many funny supporting actors, which also includes Cloris Leachman, Dave Foley (Mr. Boy, Sidekick teacher) and Kevin McDonald (Mr. Medulla, the mad scientist teacher). Lynda Carter (still lookin’ mighty fine) is cast as Principal Powers.
With only human abilities, Will joins the Sidekick class. There’s a lot of tension between the Sidekicks (who seem like nice geeky kids) and the Heroes (who are the preppy bully types). One of Sky High’s themes is about the cliques in high school: how parents respond to them and how kids respond when one of them moves to another group. Will’s caught in a love triangle between his best friend Layla (a sidekick) and Gwen (a hero). But there are plenty of super-powered belly laughs, especially after Will’s super-strength power is activated in a moment of crisis. There is a speedster bully called Speed, a Mr. Fantastic-like youth called Lash, and a Multiple-Lady cheerleader called Penny. One of my favorite scenes has Will and another hero, Warren Peace (sorry Tolstoy) taking on Speed and Lash in Sky High’s version of the Danger Room. The main villain is called Royal Pain, who has a device called The Pacifier, which turns heroes into babies. She tells the Commander about the plan after he’s in diapers:
My only regret is that this may be the finest supervillian speech ever given…and you don’t even know what I’m saying.
Sky High is a very funny film aimed at a general family audience, but I think it succeeds as a film much better than a lot of comic book translations. Nuff said.
Posted by Kid Flash at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)February 22, 2006
Ultimate Avengers
Ultimate Avengers can't possibly match the brilliant graphic novel by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch, but it does a pretty good job of trying. The movie is aimed at a PG-13 audience, so there are no wife-beating Giant-Men, drunken millionaires, or horny Hulks looking for Betty, although Jarvis still looks a bit gay. The plot follows Millar's outline remarkably close at times, especially with the opening World War 2 sequence involving Captain America (although he doesn't use a gun). Steve Rogers is the main focus, and the film does keep all the bits about being displaced in time. Millar said that when he envisioned the Ultimates, he thought of it as Avengers: The Movie. His introduction of the main characters and the buildup to the first fight would work great in a big budget feature film. Imagine if you had Samuel Jackson (Nick Fury), Tom Cruise (Tony Stark), Brad Pitt (Thor), and Lucy Liu (Janet Van Dyne) all in the same movie? Alas, we don't get the same talent here, as Andre Ware's voice for Nick Fury isn't what I imagined. The animation is what I would call competent, but it's not really as good as most anime or even the Justice League Unlimited series. They did use all of Bryan Hitch's character designs. Iron Man in particular looks so fantastic, I don't know why they wouldn't make an entire TV show around the character.
The plot deviates from the graphic novel in a number of ways besides toning down the adult misbehavior. Iron Man needs to be coerced into joining, which is a bit weird. Bruce Banner's mental deterioration isn't handled as gracefully. The aliens are the main threat, and the Hulk goes berserk after that is over, but he doesn't rampage throughout New York City. There were some great scenes that they could have used: the Hulk knocking Giant-Man into a skyscraper, or Captain America dropping the tank on the Hulk. Why didn't they go for it? I question whether all Ultimates fans will like Ultimate Avengers, but I do think that all longtime Marvel and Avengers fans will be thrilled to see these characters in animated form. Ironically enough, younger viewers may be turned off by the slow buildup to the action. Nuff said.
Posted by Adam Warlock at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)Layer Cake
I'll have to admit that I only watched Layer Cake because I've read that Daniel Craig will be the new James Bond. It's a good crime caper that deserves to be seen despite Craig's upcoming job, with an interesting plot and a stable of great supporting actors (Colm Meaney, Michael Gambon, and Kenneth Cranham). You'll never know the name of Craig's character, but call him X, a drug dealer who treats crime like a business and wants to cash out. But his boss (Jimmy, played by Cranham) has other plans. Jimmy wants X to find the missing daughter of his friend Eddie (Gambon) and to negotiate a deal for a huge batch of ecstasy. Things get complicated from here…the daughter isn't exactly missing and the ecstasy was stolen from a Dutch crime lord, who dispatches an enforcer to retrieve it. Sienna Miller makes a brief appearance as the girlfriend of a thug, who Craig seduces with his steely blue eyes. Craig is cool, no doubt about it. He reminds a lot of people of Steve McQueen. I think he's terrific in this role and can be an international star. However, when I've showed his picture to several women and told them this would be the new James Bond, they all the same reaction: he's too old! We'll have to see what happens there, but it's an interesting move for the Broccoli's to make. In the meantime, watch Layer Cake if you haven't already seen it. Crime in the UK is much more interesting than our domestic problems. Nuff said.
Posted by Adam Warlock at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
I'm a bit behind in watching movies. I hardly ever go to the movie theater anymore and wait for the inevitable DVD release, just to bring down the empire of theatrical chains...no, I'm just too busy or too lazy to go out. This is explains why I've only just seen Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. I think it's an incredible movie, from the opening faux sequence with the animated Elf to the closing credits. Jim Carrey steals the show, of course, as Count Olaf, as he repeatedly tries to bilk the Baudelaire children (Violet, Klaus and Sunny) out of their inheritance. It's a great role for Carrey, as Olaf is an actor, and dons various disguises to cheat the kids--it's his Peter Sellers moment. This is the darkest story for kids that I've ever seen, involving murder and arson. The photography uses digital grading to promote amber or grey tones throughout the landscape. The set designs are fantastic, from Olaf's dilapidated mansion to Aunt Josphine's rickety house built on a cliff. The actors playing the kids are pretty good, but they don't seem to convey too much emotion, considering the fact that their parents were killed. It's great that Violet is the brainy one. The twins that play Sunny, the baby with teeth that Jaws (from James Bond) would kill for, are the best actors in the whole movie. I've no idea how close this movie is to the books, but I think it works much better than the Harry Potter films. I think it would be tough to make a sequel without recasting all the kids, as they are surely much older by now. Nuff said.
Posted by Adam Warlock at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)February 4, 2006
John Stockwell Makes Me Blue
In the 2001 TV show Undeclared, the character played by Seth Rogan makes this comment about Maxim magazine: "I like Maxim. It's got babes, games, DVDs, sports. It's like it was written just for me!" I feel the same way about director John Stockwell. Stockwell may be the Stanley Kubrick for the Maxim generation. He's two for two now: Blue Crush and Into the Blue, both bikini-clad masterpieces.
I'm watching Into the Blue (Widescreen Edition)
Imagine. Imagine we could end all wars and achieve world peace by air-dropping packages of these DVDs along with Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum. Imagine repressed women around the world shedding those berkas and imitating Alba. Yeah, man, make me the goddamn Secretary of Defense and we'll fight with booze and sex, not bombs. Nuff said.
Posted by Adam Warlock at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)January 12, 2006
The Flash DVD: A Bad 80s Acid Flashback
Now you gotta know, based on my name, that the Flash is my all-time favorite character. I love the Broome\Fox\Infantino version, the Baron\Guice version, the Waid\Weiringo version, and the Johns\Kolins version. And this was way before 1990, but I had fairly good memories of the TV show that premiered that year. Yesterday I received the Flash DVD set and watched the pilot episode. Oh my god. It stunk worse than a crate of thousand year old eggs. All the characters dress in the excesses of the 80s. It's like all the extras and rejects of Miami Vice and MTV showed up on the Flash set. Paula Marshall plays Iris Allen and wears clothes that might have looked good on Boy George. The sets were decorated in primary colors (blues, purples, etc.) which reminded me of Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy movie. The pilot features the threat of a--gasp--motorcycle gang, who peddle around the studio set very slowly lobbing lime green balls that are powerful enough to explode buses and set cars aflame. The actors don't seem to have much enthusiasm, except for John Wesley Shipp as the Flash and Tim Thomerson as his brother. When you see ol' Jack in a piece like this, the quality speaks for itself. Although I think he's probably the best actor in the pilot!.
Watching this, you see how far technology has come in modern TV shows. In some of the action scenes, the movement of all the actors and stunt men is way too slow. The way they portray the Flash running around the streets, they just took some film and sped it up. The Smallville episode with Kid Flash had small Matrix-like effects to convey the sense of speed. Kid Flash could run on the water with no difficulty. His race with Clark Kent at the end looked pretty good, too. I don't know if I can watch anymore 1990 Flash. I had some good memory of the Trickster episodes...but it's Mark Hamill. Nuff said.
Posted by Kid Flash at 2:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)January 5, 2006
Saving Face with Asian Lesbians
My wife and I watched Saving Face a few nights ago. During the movie she asked me if I was bored, "Bored?" I asked. "How can I be bored? There are Asian lesbians in this film!"
Saving Face has a typical plotline that seems very familiar: Asian Americans growing up with values that conflict with their first-generation parents. It's been done before in The Joy Luck Club, and also in a Canadian film with Sandra Oh (Sideways) called Double Happiness. I highly recommend the latter, because (if memory still serves) Sandra Oh is very funny and charismatic. In Saving Face, we have not one, but two main characters who conflict with old world values. One is Wil, played by Michelle Krusiec (Bring It On, Mind of the Married Man), a doctor who has kept her lesbianism a secret from her family. Then there's her mother, Gao (played by Joan Chen) a 48 year old single woman who is mysteriously pregnant. It causes a great degree of scandal, forcing her to leave her parents home and live with her daughter. Just at this moment, Wil meets Vivian (played by Lynn Chen), an ultra hot ballerina. Needless to say, Mom cramps Wil's lifestyle. The rest of the movie consists of both women coming to terms with their romantic partners as well as each other. Joan Chen delivers a great performance in the movie, the best of her career. But the lead actors, Krusiec and Chen, don't seem that convincing as a lesbian couple. Maybe it's the point of the movie, to make Krusiec's character so distant that she's reluctant to kiss in public. During the scenes where they kiss, or the most notable topless scene in bed, it's just not that convincing. I just had a feeling that the actors weren't really going for it. I think the director should have gotten them high before that big bedroom scene and really let them go at each other. Or maybe they should have hired Grace Park from Battlestar Galactica to take over Krusiec's role? That would add another element to the mix, a Korean-Chinese lesbian pairing. Don't eat Kim Chee before the sex scene!
Saving Face is at least worth a rental. It's not as weepy or emotional as the Joy Luck Club. If you're a Joan Chen fan, you'll like it, though she doesn't have any toe kissing scenes. Lynn Chen is really a hot chick, I think she outta be in Stuff magazine. Krusiec is OK as the mousy lead, but she seemed much hotter as a slutty Asian masseuse in Mind of the Married Man. But all in all, this is really the best Asian lesbian coming of age flick I've ever seen, because it's the only one I've ever seen. You had better let me know if other flicks exist! Nuff said.
Posted by Kid Flash at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)December 29, 2005
Coupling: The Funniest Comedy Ever Made on TV
Coupling has to be one of the best comedies ever made for television. Stephen Moffat, the creator and writer, has taken a tired premise about singles searching for sex and made it fresh. The freshening comes from a variety of storytelling devices (playing with time, multiple points of view) and having characters really behave like they do in real life. Don't confuse this with the awful American version that NBC tried a few years ago. The BBC version must be experienced with the original cast. One of my favorite episodes is "Inferno", where the main character, Steve, accidentally leaves a porn tape in the VCR. Susan, his hot new girlfriend, comes over to clean the house and sees the video. This all culminates in a hilarious dinner party, where Steve defends all mankind in a passionate speech about why men need to watch porn or look at other women, even though they are happy with their current partner.
My favorite character on Coupling is Jeff, played by Richard Coyle. Jeff is the ultimate spastic, nervous as hell around women and spouting out nonsense around them. He's essentially helpless when keywords like breasts or vagina are spoken aloud. My favorite episode, "The Man With Two Legs", has Jeff finally talking to the girl of his dreams on the train. Jeff is so nervous, talking about her fine legs, that he blurts out that he only has one leg. Rather than leading to disaster, it actually turns her on! "This is the curse of Jeff Murdock. I meet the woman of my dreams and I can't take my trousers off." There are so many classic Jeffisms throughout the series. His term for the Nudity Buffer ("When you first see an attractive woman, you've got a nudity buffer of maybe, 5 minutes before you've fully mapped out what she looks like naked") became the name for one of Fanboy Radio's Message Board ops.
Coupling fans will sympathize with my predicament: I had watched the first three seasons of Coupling on PBS. I watched up until the point when Steve and Susan discover they will have a baby. The other characters (Jeff, Jane, Sally, Patrick) all have dangling plotlines that need to be carried over. I didn't watch Coupling Season 4 until I popped in the DVD last night…and Jeff isn't in the first episode. Steve talks to him on the phone; Jeff is on a plane to the island of Lesbos (and yeah he probably thought it was like Paradise Island). There's a new character called Oliver, a geek who owns a comics\science fiction shop called Hellmouths. He's OK, but he's no Jeff. So I'm hoping, maybe Richard Coyle just took a vacation? Suffered the flu? Injured his leg? I watch episodes 2, 3, and 4, no Jeff at all. He's gone. What the fuck? It's like watching Seinfeld and suddenly Kramer is gone. After searching today on the Internet, I found out that Richard Coyle left the series because he was afraid of getting typecast as the Big Dummy. Which is what happened to Michael Richards, who played Kramer on Seinfeld, except that he made so much money from Seinfeld that he can afford not to work. Of course, the BBC doesn't pay Seinfeld type salaries and royalties, so Coyle took off without even doing a farewell episode.
The fourth season is still worth watching, even though it's not as good as the first three. Sally and Patrick get more screen time and provide the bulk of the laughs as Patrick finally gets tamed. (Another classic episode from the earlier seasons is "The Cupboard of Patrick's Love".) Steve (who is starting to look a bit old) and Susan's baby nervousness is a bit tiresome. It's surprising that Moffat didn't concentrate more on Jane, the crazy nympho bimbo who sleeps with just about anyone. Regardless of how it ends, I still think Coupling is one of the funniest shows ever made. It's still on PBS and BBC America infrequently, and you can rent the DVDs at NetFlix. Nuff said.
See also:
Stephen Moffat Interview on Season Four
Richard Coyle Interview on London Theater and Leaving Coupling
