Alot of people think, just because of movies like THE FANTASTIC FOUR and THE CROW, that comic strip books are only for kids. Well I’m here to tell you that actually they’re for everybody now. How else do you explain Robert Altman, the director of NASHVILLE and QUINTET, doing a movie based on the early-twentieth-century comic strip Thimble Theater by E.C. Segar? POPEYE is I guess the bizarre movie you’d have to expect when a set of weird old comic strip and cartoon characters are turned into a live action musical by the auteur of M.A.S.H. It uses cartoon physics but with muted colors (except for red or blue clothes) and dirty, lived-in settings. The plot is very simple, most of the funny lines are mumbled, it’s hard to figure out exactly what they were going for, and I sort of love it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Archive for the ‘Comic strips/Super heroes’ Category
Popeye
Friday, July 13th, 2012Brenda Starr
Thursday, July 12th, 2012
Face it everybody, the nerds won. They had their revenge and then they burned down the village and took a shit on the throne and built a statue of some Japanese animation robot in the capital and made everybody bow to it and make offerings of Firefly episode guides. This week is Nerd History Week as well as the annual San Diego International Comics Con. I have never been to it but I know all about it because of Entertainment Weekly magazine and all of the other coverage. I do remember the zoo in San Diego was pretty good, that was not mentioned in the articles, that’s just a bit of personal experience, you know? The kind of thing you gotta live.
Anyway as a writer and reader on the films of cinema I cannot escape hearing about the convention, as most of my internetting colleagues attend every year and write about their favorite halls and panels and how much they hate their hard job of going to some crowded place and waiting in lines. I know I probly don’t have the salt to do it myself and that’s why I have chosen instead to stay at home at a regular job for low wages.
Chronicle
Monday, June 18th, 2012
Yeah, CHRONICLE. I just shouldn’t watch these found footage movies, I guess. It doesn’t matter how good they are for their genre, I always think they pale in comparison to actual movies. But technically this isn’t a found footage movie, because they never claim that anybody found the footage, and they sometimes switch POVs from the one character’s camera to another character’s, or to security cameras. So it’s a footage movie.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Monday, May 21st, 2012
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES (1990) is a martial arts fantasy produced by Raymond Chow and Golden Harvest (ENTER THE DRAGON), with excellent animatronic and puppet effects by Jim Henson, and impressively agile fight and stunt sequences involving people in full body rubber creature suits. It has early performances by Elias Koteas and Sam Rockwell, and stuntwork by Ernie Reyes Jr. One major problem, though: it’s about teenage mutant ninja turtles.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Howard the Duck
Tuesday, May 15th, 2012
With THE AVENGERS still going around punching the shit out of every box office record stupid enough to make eye contact with it maybe it’s time to take a look at the other important Marvel Comics films. Obviously we’ve already gone over the most culturally and historically significant ones (BLADE, BLADE II, THE PUNISHER, THE PUNISHER, and THE PUNISHER’S WAR ZONE), but one that we have not addressed is 1986’s HOWARD THE DUCK, from the creators of STAR WARS and AMERICAN GRAFFITI. I don’t see how this one could wrong.
(read the rest of this shit…)
The Avengers
Saturday, May 5th, 2012
spoilerish
As much as I enjoyed Uma Thurman and the teddy bear costumes in the original AVENGERS, this one is an improvement. It’s a fun super hero movie with lots of colorful super-characters like in the X-MEN pictures, but with more of a disaster-movie-level of spectacle. Instead of just fighting 1-3 supervillains they’re fighting an alien invasion. As you know this teams up characters from IRON MAN 1-2, THE INCREDIBLE HULK (2008) (arguably), CAPTAIN AMERICA and THOR under the direction and writing of Joss Whedon (SERENITY, Buffy the Vampire, all that). If they had had some guy from Doctor Who in there and based it on a video game or anime it would’ve had the monopoly on all of the existing nerd audiences. But also it’s fun for all of us.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Green Lantern
Tuesday, April 17th, 2012
GREEN LANTERN stands out among comic book movies for its combination of crappiness and expensive-looking-ness. The details that flesh out the classical super hero arc are dumb and juvenile, and the effects often look ridiculous, but it never seems like it’s due to a lack of resources. Just a lack of taste.
Very sophisticated, expensive animation of weird aliens who only ever stand on dark, rocky spacescapes. Motion capture used to create a corny green glow from the sinews of Ryan Reynolds’s muscles. I guess it’s hard to get around with this character, but some day filmatists gotta learn that green glowing energy is not really that cool looking. Call it the METEOR MAN rule. (read the rest of this shit…)
Ghost Rider Presents Spirit of Vengeance
Tuesday, February 21st, 2012
Almost exactly 5 years ago when they released the first GHOST RIDER picture (directed by the writer of the GRUMPY OLD MEN pictures) I thought it looked so hilarious that I couldn’t help going to the first showing. I remember it was before noon at an AMC theater on a Friday, which I discovered was their window for what counts as a matinee, so it cost 5 bucks. Good deal, but small consolation for the unfortunately boring movie and the guilt of having participated in making it a surprise hit even though nobody liked it.
So on Friday I found myself facing down part 2, this time from Nevildine/Taylor, the giggling-camera-wigglers-on-rollerblades legally and morally responsible for CRANK and GAMER. Against 22 different styles and colors of better judgment I found myself compelled to the first showing of this one too. The matinee costs 6 bucks now. But that’s fair – it’s at least a dollar more enjoyable than part 1. Probly $1.50 even. (read the rest of this shit…)
The Adventures of Tintin
Thursday, December 29th, 2011
Word of warning: THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN is really only about 1 (one) specific adventure that this guy Tintin has, it’s not about all of his adventures. I don’t know if that was a typo or a mistranslation or what but it’s fucking bullshit.
Tintin (Jamie Bell from UNDERTOW) is a boy reporter from Belgium. I think. But I don’t remember them specifying where it was or having Belgian accents, and I didn’t notice any cameos by famous Belgians like Jean-Claude Van Damme and other famous Belgians. But I’ve read it’s based on a Belgian comic strip. (read the rest of this shit…)
Superheroes
Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011
Is SUPER HEROES a DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION for the Nerd Age? This more-interesting-than-I-expected documentary takes a look at the burgeoning subculture of “Real Life Super Heroes,” people who create their own comic book inspired personas and costumes and “fight crime” (which seems to mostly mean walking around at night with other Real Life Super Heroes).
Seattle’s own Phoenix Jones is not represented. I’m not sure if this was filmed before his time or if he was too mysterious to be caught on camera. They do have a couple guys from Seattle, but one is just a fat guy in a t-shirt that says “Sky Man” on it. Another one carries a bow and arrow – what the fuck are you gonna do with that, shoot an arrow at some drunk guys fighting outside a club? Phoenix Jones got in trouble just using pepper spray. I don’t know about other cities, but I feel that Seattle is not bow-appropriate. (read the rest of this shit…)
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