How publishing really, really works
I should note that this is mainly regarding prose book publishing. Comics and graphic novels have much more motor oil and livestock. (Hat tip: Cory Doctorow.)
Monthly Archive: January 2009
Review: ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ Centennial Collection
Paramount Home Video concludes their Audrey Hepburn review with the fifth entry in their Centennial Collection, the classic Breakfast At Tiffany’s
The film has withstood the test of time very nicely given the loving touch of director Blake Edwards who oversaw this adaptation of Truman Capote’s novella and made it uniquely his own. In the prose, Holly Golightly never sang “Moon River” nor did she really have a happy ending. Characters differ between story and screenplay and by now, most people know Capote always envisioned Marilyn Monroe in the lead. He was crushed when Hepburn was cast.
While Monroe would have been good in many ways, this was all about style and elegance, the upper crust of Manhattan society and as a result, Hepburn was a better pick.
Making the movie was a challenge for Hepburn, playing the extroverted socialite escort (not a call girl) who ran away from her “hick” life and husband (an underrated Buddy Ebsen). Instead, the social whirl of Manhattan at its finest was seductive and she wanted to live life to its fullest. The pinnacle for her was Tiffany’s, the legendary jewelry store. Naïve in so many things, her actions are not always conscious ones and she pulls new tenant Paul Varjak (George Peppard) along in her wake. Her life is filled with fascinating people and annoying ones, such as the Japanese photographer, buffoonishly played by Mickey Rooney. The film is filled with terrific character actors including Martin Balsam but it’s also Peppard’s best role. He is earnest and cool at the same time, working to craft a character, rather than easing his way through later roles as Banacek and Hannibal Smith.
Blake Edwards showed what he can do with comedy and subtle character interplay here, a visual style that became his signature for years to come, capped by [[[Victor/Victoria]]]. He’s accompanied by composer Henry Mancini who made his name with the score plus earning an Oscar for “Moon River”, which had lyrics from Johnny Mercer. As we’re told at least twice on the extras, a Paramount exec felt the movie ran long and wanted to cut the song until Hepburn effectively said, “Over my dead body.”
The love story is a valentine to a time and place that no longer exists although the hopes and dreams of those escaping their homes for the City That Never Sleeps remain the same.
The top ten influences for ‘Lone Justice: Crash!’
Lone Justice: Crash! is the new graphic novel from the Harvey award nominated team of Robert Tinnell and Mark Wheatley. This two-fisted pulp adventure began yesterday on ComicMix, but the roots of the creation of Lone Justice: Crash! started long ago.
Creating a new graphic novel doesn’t happen in a vacuum. And people like Robert Tinnell and Mark Wheatley are easily influenced. So readers would be well advised to take a look at what other creative efforts have had a hand in shaping the look and feel.
First – we start with what has warped the mind of Robert Tinnell, in his own words:
1.) MARTIN – First and foremost I have to acknowledge George Romero’s film, MARTIN. Much of what I write is inspired by this brilliant little deconstructionist vampire story and the way it so grounded fantasy in reality, in banality, actually. I often say, quite sincerely, I consider the film an American classic. So if you’re reading LONE JUSTICE: CRASH! and detect a deconstructionist approach to the superhero genre, bear in mind that in addition to the obvious comic book influences, Romero’s flick continues to linger in the background of my mind.
Starz and Sony sign multi-year deal
Starz Entertainment and Sony Pictures Entertainment have signed a multi-year extension of their existing agreement which grants Starz the exclusive pay TV rights to all Sony Pictures theatrical releases into the next decade. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Under the deal Starz has the exclusive pay TV rights to exhibit the Sony Pictures films on all of its platforms. Additionally, Starz continues to have the rights to interviews with talent and use behind-the-scenes material from Sony’s releases that can be aired on its services while the films are in theaters.
Films under this deal should include The Grudge 3, 2012, and The Green Hornet. It’s unclear to me if this will affect movies that Sony is only listed as distributing, like Dan Milano’s Me And My Monster; Flash Gordon, due out in 2010; and Spider-Man 4, due out in 2011, or films that they’re helping to fund, like Tintin. As we know more, you’ll hear more.
John Barrowman writing ‘Torchwood’ comics
Via Kevin Melrose at Robot 6:
Actor John Barrowman is teaming with his sister Carole E. Barrowman and artist Tommy Lee Edwards on a comic strip for the next issue of Torchwood magazine.
Barrowman, as viewers of Doctor Who and the spinoff Torchwood know, plays Captain Jack Harkness, a time-traveling former con man who becomes leader of Torchwood.
The comic, which will appear in Issue 14 of the bimonthly magazine, “sees Captain Jack facing a deadly threat on a remote Scottish island, where people are disappearing one by one … To his horror, Jack starts to suspect he may know who or perhaps more specifically what is responsible.”
The previous issue featured a comic by Jack Staff creator Paul Grist. You can catch glimpses of Grist’s art on the magazine’s Facebook page.
Issue 14 will be available in the U.K. on Feb. 19, and in the United States on March 17.
As for me, I’m calling up John Workman, who’s been lettering all of Tommy Lee Edwards’s stuff lately, and see 1. if he’s lettering this, and 2. if we can get a peek if he is.
‘Watchmen’ settlement getting closer?
Ah, the post-holiday slump. Retailers are retrenching, publishers are getting ready for announcements at NYCC– some days it seems if it wasn’t for Watchmen news, we’d have no news at all. Luckily, we keep getting more of that.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Fox and Warner Bros. are letting it leak that they are “close” to reaching a settlement in their dispute over rights to Zack Snyder’s Watchmen movie that will allow Warners to release the film as planned on March 6th. Lawyers for Fox and Warners met Monday in the chambers of Federal Judge Gary Feess. Warner Bros., which has already spent at least $150 million to produce the Watchmen movie, has evidently dropped its request that Judge Feess move up the January 20th injunction hearing.
What’s the best sign of progress? Commercials. Warner Bros. rolled out TV ads for the movie this weekend, still sticking to the March 6th release date– ironically, on the Fox network’s Sunday’s season premiere of 24.
ComicMix QuickPicks – January 12, 2009
Today’s installment of comic-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest…
* Fantasy author Poppy Z. Brite was arrested last week at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in New Orleans as part of a peaceable demonstration in which churches in the Uptown area of the city were occupied to protest their closings. She’s been writing it up on her LiveJournal.
* Not quite related to the story above, but there’s not going to be a The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror anthology for 2008, according to editors Gavin J. Grant & Kelly Link. Not that there isn’t material, of course, but the economy’s a bear…
* My boyfriend and I went to see "The Spirit" because we are stupid …
* The Lost Ten Commandments of Comics .
Anything else? Consider this an open thread.
Review: ‘Funny Face’
Paramount Pictures’ Centennial Collection chugs along, mining the 1950s and Audrey Hepburn again with the release on Tuesday of Funny Face
Pop culture in the 1950s certainly centered on glamorous celebrities like Hepburn and the films were experimenting with visual techniques to combat the rise of television habits but sometimes their subjects were treated outlandishly.
Maggie Prescott (Thompson) is the force of nature that edits [[[Glamour]]], er, [[[Mode]]], er, [[[Quality]]] magazine. The magazine wants to shoot on location, to lend a patina of intellectual sheen to the usually vapid model who seems more interesting in exaggerated poses than anything natural. She and top fashion photographer Dick Avery (Astaire) spontaneously decide on a “sinister” looking bookstore in Greenwich Village, hail a few cabs, and go in search. They find a dark, dusty shop with a young bookseller, Jo Stockton (Hepburn) as the sole occupant. They storm in, take over the joint and include her in one picture then lock her out of the store since she was objecting to their disruption of the place.
Later, Avery latches on to the notion that she could be the fresh face a new campaign could be built around. He convinces her that by agreeing to model, she could be taken to Paris where she could be exposed to the great philosophical thinkers, including Prof. Emile Flostre (Michel Auclaire), who influenced the naïve girl. She accepts and is whisked to Paris where she at first indulges her intellect then gives in to her beauty. The rest of the film chronicles her struggle to find herself as she straddles two worlds, neither very well.
Adapted from the 1927 stage musical, the update retained but four songs, two of which are memorable standards. The rest are entirely forgettable including the signature opener, “Think Pink”.
As a story, it mocks the Beat Generation on two continents and treats Flostre as a great thinker, but his mind appears to be on one subject which is getting in to Hepburn’s pants. The rest of the script is breathless but you keep stopping to wonder about the absurdity of booking everyone into separate hotels or no one giving Stockton a schedule so she would know what was expected from her. Also, Stockton seems to suddenly give up on her interest in philosophy in favor of being a famous model when she could do both, it never had to be an either/or situation.
The Point – January 12th, 2009
Start the week off by dumping a few friends on Facebook and getting a free Whopper (no kidding) and then adding some big time celebs to your Twitter account (like maybe some of the Cool People on HEROES). We tell you how to do both, plus the five cool things in comic stores this week and the Countdown To NY ComicCon begins.|
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