Category: Reviews

We think we know Steve Jobs, the maestro behind Apple but unless you read one of his biographies or watch Jobs or Steve Jobs, you only have impressions. General audiences will recognize the man in the black turtleneck and know he gave us the iPod, iPhone, Macintosh, etc. but most will mistakenly credit him for being the builder of these gadgets.

Read Walter Isaacson’s wonderful biography or study Jobs through the myriad video interviews or articles available online and you come to understand he was a visionary who pushed, prodded, cajoled, wheedled, and demanded his workers to meet his exacting standards.

Capturing that volatile and complex man on film would be a challenge for any production crew but director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin were the kind you wanted for something challenging. Sorkin took Isaacson’s bio as a starting point but then read and read more material. He spent time with Jobs’ first partner Steve Wozniak and knew he couldn’t write your standard bio pic for a most un-standard figure. The resulting Steve Jobs is out tomorrow from Universal Home Entertainment as a combo pack with the Blu-ray, DVD, and coupon for Digital HD.

Instead, he boiled the story down to three pivotal product introductions (the Macintosh, the Black Cube, the iMac) and stuffed all the drama into backstage antics in the countdown to taking the stage. Events and conversations are telescoped into these three vignettes with a sprinkling of flashbacks. Sorkin then led us through the fourteen years by focusing on the evolving nature of his relationships with several key people in his life: Woz (Seth Rogan), Apple CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), his marketing chief, Joanna Hoffman, and finally, his daughter Lisa (Makenzie Moss, Ripley Sobo, and Perla Haney-Jardine), who he at first refuses to acknowledge any blood relation and comes to cherish. The Sorkinisms are largely missing but his rapid-fire style remains visible.

That father/daughter relationship humanizes Jobs and provided Sorkin with the emotional spine to the film. Otherwise, we’d revile the volatile Jobs as he treats one person after another as a mere functionary in service to his grand vision.

Boyle is a visual stylist and gave each act a fresh look and feel, starting with shooting with three different film stocks (16mm, 35mm, digital) and staging each in a different way.

What makes the film work, better than the box office and critical acclaim admitted this past fall, is Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet, the latter nearly unrecognizable in a tough part. Fassbender doesn’t look like Jobs but inhabits the persona and you believe him to be the mercurial genius who slowly mellows across the years.

The 123 minute film is worth a look if you haven’t read up on Jobs or if you want to see a lovely ensemble tackle a difficult topic and freshen the bio pic genre. The movie’s high definition transfer is superb and the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack is its match.

There’s a three-part feature on the making of the film which is quite compelling. Inside Jobs: The Making of Steve Jobs (44:11) explores everything from the story structure to recreating three specific time periods, and the extensive rehearsal process for each, which led to excellent performances all around.

The movie comes with two audio commentaries, one from Boyle and one from Sorkin and Editor Elliot Graham. Each are fascinating in their own way although there is some repetition from the special feature.

The newly integrated DC Animated Universe expands with its latest offering, Batman: Bad Blood. While Batman (Jason O’Mara) can work best as a loner, he casts a long enough shadow that somehow involves others to take up the mantle of the Bat. We’ve seen Nightwing (Sean Maher), the former first Robin, and the addition of Bruce Wayne’s son Damian (Stuart Allan) as the new Robin has added an edge.

The new animated film, out now from Warner Home Entertainment, has been sold as the major introduction of Batwoman (Yvonne Strahovski) but we also get Batwing (Gaius Charles) and at the end a cameo from Batgirl. As a result, it’s actually beginning to feel a little too busy with so many players there’s not enough time to properly service them.

The premise here has Talia (Morena Baccarin) recruiting a bunch of disparate rogues to help her break Batman. He’s abducted early on and this forces Nightwing to come back to Gotham and assume the role of Batman to offer some measure of calm to the citizenry. When this happens in the comics, we usually see the chaos resulting from Batman’s absence but that trope is absent here as the focus remains on the Batman family versus the Talia Gang.

Batwoman was present when Batman was taken and its clear there is some familiarity between Kate Kane and Dick Grayson and their quiet scenes of them just interacting are actually some of the best parts of the film. She is welcome by Dick and later, when Batman is rescued (no spoiler there), he rejects her as being outside the family, especially since she uses guns which remain anathema to him.

When the villains attack Wayne Enterprises and make off with some of the toys Lucius Fox (Ernie Hudson) has built for Batman, Fox’s son Luke somehow has the wherewithal to know how to program the machines to custom fit him into an armored suit (holy Iron Man!). Not only that, he has quickly mastered all the gear, knows how to fly, and fight in the suit. No learning curve required which is a weakness. Frankly, I find Batwing a totally superfluous character in the comics and in here and wish the time had been better spent on fully integrating Batwoman into the animated firmament.

Or time be spent on explaining how Talia recruited Mad Hatter (Robin Atkin Downes), Firefly (Steve Blum), Onyx, Killer Moth (Jason Spisak), Electrocutioner (Downes), Tusk (John DiMaggio), the Calculator (Spisak) Blockbuster (DiMaggio) and Hellhound (Matthew Mercer) and what she really wanted because it’s all a little vague. Her comeuppance actually rings false at the very end and since there’s no body, we know the daughter of the demon will be back.

Most of these films overdo the fight sequences, a complaint I raise almost every time. Here, thankfully, director Jay Oliva scales things back just enough so there’s action aplenty. But, he also lets J.M. DeMatteis’ script breathe and the characters actually have scenes where they talk to one another, adding more characterization than we normally receive. Kudos to DeMatteis for making this one of the more satisfying offerings from Warner Animation.

The animated film looks and sounds just swell on high definition. There are a variety of formats available and the one reviewed was the collector’s combo pack so the case contains the Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD code along with a Nightwing figure. The Blu-ray disc has an okay assortment of special features starting with Putting the Fight in Gotham (26:26) which focuses on how to make the characters move in action and choreographing the massive battle sequences. Of more interest was the shorter Expanding the Batman Family (13:46) where Mike Carlin, ComicMix’s Alan Kistler, producer James Tucker, and director Oliva talk about adding in Batwoman, Batwing, and even Batgirl. There’s some history skipped and missing but they trace the growth of the family from the first Kathy Kane intro in the 1950s up through Damian today.  Rounding out the features is A Sneak Peek at DC Universe’s Next Animated Movie: Justice League vs. Teen Titans (11:31) which looks and sounds promising. We’ll know for certain in April. There are also two episodes from Batman: The Brave and the Bold included: “The Knights of Tomorrow” and “The Criss Cross Conspiracy”.

Milton Caniff’s Steve Canyon (1947-1988) was one of the most celebrated adventure comic strips of the 1950s. The blond, square-jawed hero was on the cutting edge of action as he took to the skies and had adventures around the world. Caniff populated the strip with memorable supporting characters and adversaries so it was a rich reading experience.

The strip was so popular that when Captain Action was introduced in 1966, Canyon was one of the first heroes he could turn into. Somewhat earlier, Canyon also served as inspiration for an NBC prime time series that, sadly, bore little resemblance to the strip (a common problem back then).

In 2008, John R. Ellis brought us this forgotten gem with The Complete Steve Canyon on TV Volume 1 and followed up a year later with Volume 2. The silence until late last year when the anticipated Volume 3 finally arrived, completing the run. Thankfully it came with a cardboard sleeve to act as decorative box for all three volumes.

Ellis and his production team were able to use the original 35mm broadcast masters resulting in sharp images. As a bonus the bumpers and some advertisements are replicated as well, giving you a real feel for what TV was like during its first decade.

Across the 34 episodes, airing during the 1958-59 season,the series changed direction and tone as a result of the participation, or lack thereof, from the Air Force. Lt. Colonel Steve Canyon (Dean Fredericks) was depicted as a troubleshooter which allowed stock footage from the military to be put on display. In time, though, the Air Force disliked seeing airmen in anything but perfect light and withdrew their support.

As a result, Canyon was reassigned to be commander of Big Thunder Air Force Base which required no stock footage and could focus on the men and women living and working there. You can watch shift and scramble in volume two but by the third volume, the producers got a handle on what to do with the new status quo and the writing improved. Sadly, though, Canyon never takes to the air again.

The public’s concerns with the Red Scare, the atomic bomb, and foreign spies are woven into several of these episodes to good effect. It’s a shame there are few interesting supporting players for Canyon to bounce off, which could have enlivened the single season. Instead, we are given a nice assortment of guest stars. In this volume, you can see Werner Klemperer, Celia Lovsky, Jerry Paris, Ted de Corsia, Ross Martin, Roy Thinnes, Amanda Blake, John Anderson, Virginia Christine, Dabbs Greer, George Macready, James Drury, William Schallert, William Allyn, Claude Akins, Ron Ely, Harry Townes, and Paul Frees.

The last 10 episodes are contained on two discs and thanks to the source material (a mix of NBC masters and ABC masters when they reran the show), they look and sound terrific. When Ellis couldn’t find masters for “Blackmail” and “Operation Towline”, the original unaired pilot, he was able to use 16mm prints from Caniff’s personal collection. You will see Caniff onscreen introducing the pilot. The pilot is a nice bonus here as is the commentary for each episode this time around. There’s additional DVD-ROM content that includes the unproduced script “Project B-58”.  With so few of the original cast and crew still left alive, the audio commentary comes from Abel Fernandez, an actor, and director Arthur Marks, supplemented with remarks from Ellis, aviation film historian James H. Farmer, artist/historian Russ Maheras, archivist Bob Burns, TV historian Peter Greenwood, and television historian Brad Ulvila.

Will Eisner: Champion of the Graphic Novel
By Paul Levitz
Abrams ComicArts, 224 pages, $40

It took me a while to figure out that Will Eisner has been a part of my comic reading life since I was perhaps seven or eight. Mom found Jules Fieffer’s The Great Comic Book Heroes at our local library and brought it to me to read. I understood these were older works but I still recognized the main characters in the book. The final story, though, threw me. I didn’t get it, didn’t like it. I was clearly too young and not yet sophisticated enough to appreciate the Spirit section reprinted there.

But he was important enough for Feiffer to include and a few years later, when I was reading Steranko’s History of the Comics, I began to understand how important Eisner and his creation were.  By the time I got to meet Eisner, he had established himself as the premier graphic novelist and educator in our field. It was during the 1982 San Diego Comic Con when we were introduced and two days later, I was in the audience to hear his panel when I was suddenly asked to fill in for moderator Shel Dorf and interview Will on stage. We chatted about, I believe, The City and some of his other works and considering there was no time to prep, it went well enough. As he was with most everyone working in the field at the time, he was always friendly and welcoming whenever we saw one another.

It’s a real shame, though, that despite his pioneering efforts and visionary faith in the power of comics, Will Eisner has eluded the mass media fame he deserved. While there have been a few biographies (including a YA one I wrote in 2008) about Eisner, this book is the first exploration of his role in the birth of the modern day graphic novel.

Former DC Comics publisher Paul Levitz and I have known one another for over forty years but I have always admired his keen intellectual approach to the business of comics. Here, in his first work unrelated to DC, Levitz walks the general reader, not the fan, through the evolution of both Eisner as a creator and of the graphic novel. There had been many attempts at long-form graphic stories prior to 1978’s A Contract with God, but as he argues here, it is the first work that captured the admiration of his peers and encouraged them to follow his lead. Later in the book, there is a transcript of a panel discussion that examines why Feiffer’s Tantrum¸ released at almost the same time, didn’t attract the same level of interest.

We watch as Eisner drifts from making most of his living from comic book material, but never gives up on the medium entirely. While he focused on other projects, including a lengthy run producing P*S Magazine for the army, the comics field was evolving, first with the arrival of the Marvel Age of Comics and then the rise of the undergrounds. By the time Eisner discovered them, he was lured back at a time he was needed the most. He saw what was currently happening, jumped right in with a revival of The Spirit, but more importantly, took a teaching role at the School of Visual Arts, training and influence the next generation of major creators.

By 1978, when Contract was released, the direct sales distribution channel was gaining importance so as Eisner was encouraged to produce more, a growing sales channel was ready for him, setting the stage for the graphic novel and collection edition (two separate types of books but treated as one by the masses) explosion that followed. If anything, I had hoped to read more detailed explorations of Eisner’s 1980s output which sometimes get lumped together.

Levitz, though, does his homework, getting collaborators and friends to help him trace why Eisner has endured and how his efforts helped shape the publishing world we currently live in.

The book measures 11.5” x 11”, an odd size to be sure, but one that allows Wisner’s work to be examined without crowding the words.  Designers C.S. Fossett and John Lind get credit for selecting a handful of the most familiar images and then stuffing the book with many other examples of Eisner’s strong storytelling and design. Much of it is shot from the original art and printed on heavy stock, looks wonderful.

Although Eisner died eleven years ago this month, his works remain in print and his influence can be found in monthly periodicals and the plethora of sequential stories aimed at all ages, covering all manner of content. The book does a fine job celebrating Eisner’s contributions and is written in a way that fans and the general public can appreciate.