Category: News

Look, up in the sky. It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s….

…the third consecutive week that the Geezer, also known as me, used that hokey lead. Pathetic? You decide.

But as long as we’re here…what’s the Man of Steel doing this time? Looks like he’s holding his ears. That must mean that he’s somewhere near the end of his hit movie, at the climactic battle, before a kind of lengthy denouement. Because that was one noisy climax. But first, a geezerly digression.

When I was young – and we’re talking really young, like six or seven – I much enjoyed the “cowboy pictures” I saw at the neighborhood theater on Friday nights. The dime Mom gave me bought a cartoon, maybe a Three Stooges feature and two cowboy pictures with real good guys: Hopalong Cassidy, Sunset Carson, Tim Holt, Red Ryder, and once in a while even – o joyous epiphany in the popcorn-scented darkness! – Roy Rogers, the King of the Cowboys! Somewhere in those innocent years, I imagined what I would think would be a really neat cowboy picture. It would have a long time, minutes and minutes, of non-stop gunshooting. Just bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang. Because, see, the parts of the pictures that had gunshooting were the most exciting parts.

You have to admit that there’s a certain logic here, and I wonder if some vastly mutated iteration of this logic isn’t operating up there on the screen with Superman. And not only Superman – with other cinematic superheroes, too. The fights are big and noisy and go on and on and on…and before the final biff is powed, I’m out in the auditorium getting just a bit antsy. Not bored, just, maybe, wishing that the screen combatants would end it, like my preadolescent self wished that the mushy parts of the pictures would end, the parts that usually involved a girl. (And, in those day, I didn’t have long to wait.)

I understand that spectacular physicality is the lingua franca of superheroes, as essential to their genre as Roy’s horse Trigger was to his. But can’t less be more? Let the tension and suspense get bigger and bigger, let it build and build and then give the folks in the seats a final burst of action that solves the hero’s problems and vanquishes the villain and allows for a quiet and satisfying ending. Don’t serve me a protracted bunch of noisy clashes with essentially faceless pawns before the finale. Define the geometry and conditions of the combat and let us see it clearly and don’t put in anything that doesn’t somehow bear directly on the spine of the story. Such would be my advice.

And such is my quibble, for quibble it is. Almost half way through my eightieth decade, I can enjoy the fantasy melodrama I see as much as the grade-school me enjoyed the cowboy pictures. Okay, except for the ones with Roy Rogers – nothing can be as good as them.

THURSDAY AFTERNOON: Martin Pasko

FRIDAY MORNING: Martha Thomases

Big Finish Productions has announced their latest audio series based on The Avengers.

Press Release:

THE AVENGERS LICENSED

Big Finish Productions is delighted to announce that it has signed a license with STUDIOCANAL to produce full cast audio productions of 12 lost episodes of the classic TV series The Avengers.

Discover the very beginning of this television classic, as we meet John Steed for the first time! Lost for over fifty years, the missing episodes have been lovingly recreated on audio from the original scripts.

The Avengers first launched in 1961, and starred Ian Hendry as Dr David Keel and Patrick Macnee as the elusive and suave John Steed. Beginning with the murder of Keel’s fiancée, and his sworn intent to avenge her death, that first year comprised 26 episodes. Sadly, only two of them exist in their entirety as film prints (Girl on the Trapeze and The Frighteners), while just the first act remains of the opening episode, Hot Snow.

Working from the surviving scripts, Big Finish will be presenting the adaptations in three four-disc box sets. The scripts will be adapted, with minimal changes, by John Dorney, the director is Ken Bentley and the producer is David Richardson. The executive producers are Nicholas Briggs and Jason Haigh-Ellery.

“We are absolutely thrilled to add this wonderful series to our catalogue,” says David Richardson, “and we look forward to faithfully recreating those classic lost episodes. We have two brilliant, high-profile actors for the roles of Dr Keel and John Steed – look out for an announcement of the casting once recording begins in July.”

Patrick Macnee as John Steed

“This opportunity confirms the enduring appeal of this classic TV series and the resonance of the SC collection in the context of British Film and Pop culture,” says John Rodden, General Manager Home Entertainment at STUDIOCANAL.

Volume 1 of The Avengers: The Lost Episodes will be released in January 2014 (and includes a full recreation of Hot Snow), with Volumes 2 and 3 following in July 2014 and January 2015.

Each person who pre-orders will be entered into a draw to win a copy of The Avengers: Series 1 and 2 on DVD box set, containing the remaining three first series episodes.

Learn more about Big Finish and The Avengers here.

BOOM! Studios, the comics and graphic novel publisher, has acquired indie label Archaia Entertainment. BOOM! Studios will be the surviving company and the Archaia brand shall be maintained as a distinct imprint of BOOM!.

The addition of Archaia positions BOOM!’s catalog of intellectual property as the largest independent company-controlled comic book and graphic novel library, behind only industry titans DC Entertainment (Warner Bros.) and Marvel Entertainment (Disney).

BOOM! Studios was co-founded by Ross Richie and Andrew Cosby in 2005, and is known for Irredeemable, various licensed properties like Planet Of The Apes, The Muppet Show, Farscape, and the upcoming Sons Of Anarchy, their KaBOOM! all-ages imprint with Adventure Time, and their BOOM!Town imprint with various literary comics. Archaia, established in 2002, is known for graphic novels Mouse Guard, Jim Henson’s Tale of Sand, Rust, Spera, Cowboy, and Gunnerkrigg Court.

BOOM!’s foray into feature films launches this summer with Universal’s August 2 release 2 Guns starring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg, based on industry veteran Stephen Grant’s original comic. BOOM!’s also prepping to shop two more Grant properties in the works: Damned, Grant’s 1997 miniseries with Mike Zeck which BOOM! is re-releasing in July, and new comic The Deceivers which boasts a set-up akin to 2 Guns with spies. Meanwhile BOOM! is currently prepping its next feature Jeremiah Harm, based on the comic book by Keith Giffen, Alan Grant, and John Mueller, which Timo Vuourensola (Iron Sky) will direct. Archaia also has a number of titles previously optioned or in development including Rust (Fox), Lucid (Warner Bros.), Bolivar (Warner Bros.), and Feeding Ground (Pressman Films).

Growing up in the 1970s, there were plenty of movie parodies that broke down into two camps: the really smart ones that required a familiarity with film and culture (Blazing Saddles, et. al.) and those that were outrageous fun (Kentucky Fried Movie, The Groove Tube). The latter also showcased up and coming talent before and behind the camera, shooting on a shoestring so the studio had a low-risk offering. The other thing the latter films offered were the vignette approach, letting different creative types strut their stuff, making for an uneven but generally entertaining experience.

That same approach was recently used (and Kentucky Fried Movie cited as an inspiration) to mount the not very good Movie 43, out now on disc from 20^th Century Home Entertainment. The difference is that it was made by a ton of talented, pedigreed cast and crew yet still managed to be offensive, unfunny, and amusing. The overall production lacked wit and the directors didn’t get much out of their cast.

The film is framed with a demented man (Dennis Quaid) threatening a studio exec (Greg Kinnear) with death unless he heard his pitches for the ultimate feel good movie. Each pitch led to a vignette and then back to the frame where things were escalated. In some ways, the frame is the most interesting aspect of the film as we got to see the Stockholm syndrome play itself out.

As it turns out, the most polished of the short pieces was the first and was shot to secure everyone else’s participation. A woman (Kate Winslet) goes out on a blind date with the city’s most eligible bachelor (Hugh Jackman) and as they sit to dinner, she realizes he has testicles attached to this neck. Everyone is oblivious to this physical manifestation but she cannot take her eyes off them and supposed hilarity ensues.

There are 12 directors and 43 actors (get it?) so the shorts are wildly inconsistent but often tread just over the line of good taste with crude language, playing with social mores and taboos, and never quite knowing when to end it. The cast is game although none are given a chance to play with their screen types, instead, are asked to inhabit genuinely clueless or unlikeable characters. A recurring theme in the sketches is how clueless (and tasteless) some people are so rather than guffaw you tend to go “ewwww”. The worst may be the faux-Batman (Jason Sudekis)’s description of faux-Supergirl (Kristen Bell)’s nether region to an embarrassed Robin (Justin Long). The set-up is amusing but played all wrong so is annoying rather than funny (and totally wastes John Hodgeman as the Penguin). Runner up is Chloë Grace Moretz in the uncomfortable situation where she has her first period in a household of male clichés who freak out or don’t know how to handle the delicate situation (although it ends with them watching a commercial that is actually funny).

The package comes with a Blu-ray, a DVD, and a digital copy. Perhaps most interesting is the Blu-ray which comes with an alternate version, one shown overseas, that uses a different framing sequence running several minutes longer, and is less funny. The sole other extra is a cut sketch with Julianne Moore and Tony Shalhoub as parents asking an off-screen investigator to help find their missing daughter, who was glimpsed on a  Girls Gone Wild-style video Mr. Shalhoub just happened to order and repeatedly watch. The gimmick is that girl has a tendency to flash the camera in Christmas cards, high school yearbooks, etc. A short with Anton Yelchin as a necrophiliac was shot and promised for the disc but is missing.

A great premise, gathering some of today’s funniest people (headed by Peter Farrelly) and top stars to have some fun, goes nowhere and is not as clever as the crew think it is. A serious misfire of a film which sank without a trace at the box office.

Here’s something you’ve probably never seen before: a Tex Avery cartoon from 1955 produced by Walter Lantz simply called “Sh-h-h-h-h-h”.

This was Tex Avery’s last animated short cartoon. The sounds of the trumpet player and the laughing woman who keep the man awake through the night are taken directly from the novelty OKeh Laughing Record, which was released in 1923. The voice, of course, is Daws Butler. Beyond that, we should obviously say no more. Enjoy.