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Review: ‘Sleeping Beauty’ Platinum Edition

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  • October 7, 2008

Walt Disney Studios’ [[[Sleeping Beauty]]] holds up as a spectacular work of animation and it looks even better now that the studio has cleaned it up. The classic fairy tale has stood the test of time quite nicely and the Platinum Edition 50th Anniversary 2-disc set, released today, is a worthwhile addition to your home video library. It’s a great artifafct, and the end of an era of amazing animated fare from Disney Studios.  Every anuimated feature that has followed, through today, somehow pales in comparison to this effort.

The first disc of course is the film itself.  Disney’s technicians have painstakingly cleaned the animation so the colors are brighter, allowing us to appreciate the work of animator Eyvind Earle. The story holds up with relatable characters from the adorable Aurora to the three fairies who sacrifice their magic ways to shield the child for 16 years. The humor remains character-based and the story builds nicely to the climax between the Prince and the vile witch Maleficent. The animation remains a sumptuous feast for the eyes especially with the brighter, sharper colors allowing us to enjoy the fine design.  The transformation of Maleficent from witch to dragon remains a very powerful sequence and can still startle the younger viewers.

It was certainly the last of its kind.  The sumptuous design and color, the rendering of the characters and their actions, were painstakingly researched and executed. The movie took years and millions to make, causing Walt Disney concern over the viability of future of animation in the same style. Some of this and other interesting facts can be found on the second disc.  “Picture Perfect: The Making of Sleeping Beauty” is lively because of the archival materials that remain plus the recollections of those like Ollie Johnston, last of the Nine Old Men, and Don Bluth who actually worked on the film.

We see several pieces of footage of actors in costume who performed for a gaggle of animators, which helped the humans move with subtle and broad emotions.  On the other hand, we are treated to deleted songs and sequences via storyboards and remaining recordings.  As a result, you have a better idea of how the film took shape, from the initial concepts in 1951 through its 1958 release.

There is also a nifty interactive Original Disneyland Sleeping Beauty Walk-Through Attraction With Walt Disney Imagineering.

For the youngest of fans, there is a reading tutorial and “[[[Briar Rose’s Enchanted Dance Game]]]”.

There are additional features on the Blu-ray release, not screened by ComicMix, but it does come complete with a standard DVD version of the film.  It’s a first and a nice way to add to your library without buying new hardware quite yet.

As usual, Disney will keep this in circulation only for a limited time until it is retired and goes into the rotation, not to be seen again for a while.  Grab this while you can.

ComicMix Radio: Diamond Slashes Devils Due

  • News
  • October 7, 2008

Due to a legal puzzle in who has the rights to the ReAnimator characters, Diamond is not carrying issues 17 and 18 of Devil’s Due’s Hack Slash.  So how do you get your copy? We dig up the answer, plus:

Orson Scott Card talks about this week’s debut of Ender’s Game at Marvel
Dark Night headed for your Christmas Stocking
Robert Kirkman makes a pledge to you

And there’s a boatload of new comics and DVDs to tackle as well so Press the Button!

 

And remember, you can always subscribe to ComicMix Radio podcasts via badgeitunes61x15dark-6759368 or RSS!

 

‘Opus’ Comes to an End in November

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  • October 7, 2008

opus-farewell-7787074Opus will end its run as Sunday-only comic strip on November 2, according to a release from the Washington Post Writers Group.Berkeley Breathed in a press release, indicated, “With the crisis in Wall Street and Washington, I’m suspending my comic strip to assist the nation. The best way I can help is to leave politics permanently and write funny stories for America’s kids. I call on John McCain to join me.”

He told The Los Angeles Times, “30 years of cartooning to end. I’m destroying the village to save it. Opus would inevitably become a ranting mouthpiece in the coming wicked days, and I respect the other parts of him too much to see that happen. The Michael Moore part of me would kill the part of him that was important to his fans.”

“His ability to weave those emotions together is what makes Breathed such a great cartoonist, and it’s why he will leave a bigger hole on the comics pages. Both figuratively and literally,” Amy Logo, the Post’s Comics Editor joked to the Daily Cartoonist.

Readers will be asked in the final strip to guess the pudgy penguin’s ultimate fate. Logo indicated the winning choice and the resulting final strip will be available only online. The contest begins October 12 and details can be found in that day’s strip as well as Breathed’s website.

Opus is, of course, a spin-off from his immensely popular Bloom County, which ran from December 1980 through 1989.  Opus debuted in 2003.

Snyder & Gibbons Show off ‘Watchmen’

  • News
  • October 7, 2008

Warner Bros. is doing a tremendous amount of early publicity for March 6’s Watchmen release.  They have dispatcheddirector Zack Snyder on tour, showing clips to the press and other parties first in London then last week in Los Angeles and last night in Manhattan.  He and the clips will continue their tour to Europe and Asia in the coming weeks.

DC Comics President and Publisher Paul Levitz kicked off the festivities by reminiscing about the days when pages for the comic would arrive from England.  “It was an amazing book. We’d be waiting expectantly for the next batch of pages.”

He noted it was the first time in the company history a film option had been sold before the final issue had seen print. The series has continued to perform miraculous feats with Levitz going on to say that the company has sold more copies of the trade paperback since the trailer was unveiled on July 18 than in the last seven years even though it has topped the graphic novel sales lists for each of those years.

He then introduced Snyder who, dressed in sweater and jeans, chatted up the rapt audience before screening the first 12 minutes of the film, complete with titles. “I’ve always been a fan,” he admitted.  “But I came from the Heavy Metal side.  My Mom, I had a strange Mom, who bought me a subscription.  She thought it was a cool looking magazine.”  When he looked at comic books of the time in comparison, he was disinterested because no one was “fucking or dying, why am I looking at this?”

The Watchmen, which he admitted had a little of each, changed that for him as a reader.  He never thought of it was a film until he was nearing the end of work on 300 and it was offered to him. Snyder then recounted his evolution with Warner Bros., which inherited the project from Paramount Pictures.  They saw it as a modern day take on terrorism and while he considered it, the more he looked at the David Hayter script and the original graphic novel, the more he thought it needed to remain faithful.  Slowly, he brought the studio around to his way of thinking while acknowledging the smash success of 300 by the time did not hurt his credibility.

After the opening sequence, he introduced the origin of Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup).  After the applause died down, he showed the final sequence which was Nite-Owl and Silk Spectre breaking Rorschach out of prison followed by some more quick clips, largely taken from the trailer. (more…)

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Patrick Stewart May Make it So

  • News
  • October 7, 2008

patrick-2520stewart-1757524What was first discounted as a rumor has gained heft and may actually be a reality.  Actor Patrick Stewart may well be beaming aboard the TARDIS for the next season of Doctor Who.

According to a report in the UK’s Daily Star, Stewart has reportedly been offered the role of the Meddling Monk, a Time Lord once featured on the series. Apparently the BBC has offered him the role and are willing to wait for Stewart’s schedule to clear so it may happen for one of the 2009 specials or the new season beginning in 2010.

British fans have been treated to David Tennant, the current Doctor, and Stewart, formerly known as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, performing Hamlet together.  The two have become fast friends and Stewart is an avowed fan of the series.
   
The Monk was introduced as someone who encountered the first Doctor, back in the early 1960s.  As portrayed by Peter Butterworth, he was a comical fellow and appeared in two stories, “The Time Meddler” and “The Daleks’ Master”.  The character disappeared from screen but has been used in other media through the years.
 

Review: ‘Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles’ Episode #205

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  • October 7, 2008

Note: Click here to relive the past episode!

This Week’s Operation: “Goodbye To All That”

Mission Briefing
From Fox: John and Derek infiltrate a military academy in order to protect an integral member of the future resistance. Meanwhile, Weaver’s first assignment for Ellison takes an interesting turn of events when he discovers a specter from his own past.

Damage Analysis
“Goodbye To All That” marks the third episode in a row that has taken a cue from [[[Lost]]] with an emphasis on a character-centric rather than plot-driven episode. Not to say that this episode was poor necessarily, but once again, the driving story of Season Two is at a bit of a loss. There are some threads being tied together to weave some semblance of an underlying threat, such as Ellison’s building momentum and the bloody writing on the basement wall in Casa de Connor.

It’s the latter of those two that informs the main plot of this episode. A Terminator comes to town looking for Martin Bedell, a man who will grow up to become a key resistance fighter and personal ally of John’s. There are two potential targets, and the Connors divide themselves on gender lines. John and Derek pursue the Bedell currently at a military academy, which they learn of by deciphering one of the bloody messages on the wall. They then infiltrate the military school, posing as a student and as an instructor respectively. Right off the bat, there’s something inherently off about John and Derek being able to join the military school’s ranks so readily. You’d like to think that their application process for accepting students is a bit more rigorous than “Well, he’s a good kid, let’s give him a free three week trial,” but that’s what happens for John. And in Derek’s case, not much more than a “Hey, you look tough, we got an open instructor slot for a week and it’s all yours!” Kind of ridiculous.

The episode’s character-centric stuff stems from Derek, giving Brian Austin Green his first real moments to shine as an actor this season. He gets a lot of stuff to play with this round as certain sights and moments trigger memories of his from the future. There’s one particular moment that was very touching: Derek pauses in the woods while scoping out the military academy, and locks eyes with a deer. It was nice to think for a bit that the writers cared about this character enough to give this future man a moment where he’s out in nature, realizing just how much he’s lost in the war yet to come. Of course, the writers couldn’t maintain something that subtle, and later bring up that exact deer moment to say that Derek and his brother Kyle killed a deer once. Alas, such is [[[The Sarah Connor Chronicles]]].
 

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Woody Harrelson Defends us Against Zombies

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  • October 7, 2008

So, Woody Harrelson has discovered genre filmmaking.  In addition to his super-hero film, Defendor, he is now making Zombieland, described as a horror/comedy by Columbia Pictures.  

Actor Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale) is said to be negotiating to appear opposite the actor. According to The Hollywood Reporter,they would play “a mismatched pair of survivors who find friendship and redemption in a world overrun by zombies.”

 

Eisneberg’s character would be Flagstaff, described as “a terrified shut-in whose cowardice makes him an expert at surviving the zombies but who is forced out of his shell to join the band of survivors.

The movie is scheduled to be directed by Ruben Fleischer (Gumball 3000: Six Days in May) from a script by the Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (The Joe Schmo Show)

Harrelson will first appear in Defendor, where he will be a normal guy who thinks he’s a super-hero complete with secret identity.  Kat Dennings (Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist) just joined the cast last week, playing a street kid Harrelson’s Arthur befriends.  Sandra Oh (Grey’s Anatomy) plays Arthur’s psychiatrist. The movie is written and helmed by Peter Stebbings (Across the River to Motor City) in his directorial debut.

Smoke Gets In Your Brain, by Dennis O’Neil

  • News
  • October 7, 2008

 

Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette / Puff, puff, puff until you smoke yourself to death. / Tell St. Peter at the Golden Gate / That you hate to make him wait, / but you just gotta have another cigarette. – Merle Travis 

I was getting ready to leave the office and walk over to NBC, where I planned to tape a reply to someone who had accused Batman of being in league with the Big Tobacco. It seems that in one panel Batman is standing on a roof, and in the background, on another roof, there was a billboard with a fragment of what might have been a cigarette ad visible. Our accuser said that putting Batman proximate to a cigarette image amounted to Batman – and his creators – endorsing tobacco products and advocating their use to children.

Well, no. Had I kept my rendezvous with the microphones and cameras, I would have probably observed that we agreed that smoking was bad and none of our characters ever actually smoked – Bruce Wayne abandoned his pipe early in his career – and, in fact, we had just done a pro bono anti-smoking ad for the American Heart Association. I might have taken my screed just a bit further and argued that we had always presented Batman’s turf as a realistic American city and – sorry! – urban areas are full of cigarette ads.

I didn’t have to do any of that. At the last moment, cooler heads prevailed and said that if I went on the air, our accuser would answer my answer and prolong the story’s life, whereas if we simply ignored it, the story would not survive into the next news cycle, which is exactly what happened.

One might ask why I allowed the billboard to appear in the first place. For the sake of realism? Or did I just miss it when I edited the artwork? Or did I see it and decide it wasn’t worth the hassle of a change? Humbling answer to all of the above: I don’t remember.

But this pretty inconsequential incident does raise another question: Where do the obligations of good citizenship and moral behavior end and the obligations to storytelling begin? Some kinds of people smoke and drink and take drugs and they’re not all hideous monsters, and some kids are influenced by what they experience through the media. I’ve heard recovering alcoholics say that the movie images of glamorous, witty sophisticates swilling booze prompted them to emulate the swillers and led, eventually, to badly damaged lives. But people do drink, and in a fictional world that mirrors the real one, shouldn’t drinkers – and smokers and druggies – be presented? Or does the potential harm of these behaviors outweigh aesthetic and narrative considerations?

I don’t know.

Sometimes, the coexistence of storytelling and responsible citizenship is painfully troubled, and sometimes I’m glad I no longer sit in an editor’s chair.

RECOMMENDED READING: The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World, By Matthew Stewart. 

Dennis O’Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and The Shadow– among others – as well as many novels, stories and articles. The Question: Epitaph For A Hero, reprinting the third six issues of his classic series with artists Denys Cowan and Rick Magyar, will be on sale any minute now, and his novelization of the movie The Dark Knight is on sale right now. He’ll be taking another shot at the ol’ Bat in an upcoming story-arc, too.  

Artwork by Kim Roberson, from Underworld. 

McClammy Directing ‘Boldly Going Nowhere’

  • News
  • October 7, 2008

The director of almost softcore porn viral videos I’m F–king Matt Damon and I’m F–king Ben Affleck is set to tackle an all-new frontier: space.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Wayne McClammy will direct Fox’s single-camera comedy pilot Boldly Going Nowhere. The series is a "high-concept comedy is about what happens day-to-day on an intergalactic spaceship helmed by a rogue captain." Sounds something like The Office in space.

Boldly Going Nowhere comes from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia masterminds Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day and Glenn Howerton. McElhenney acknowledges McClammy’s relative inexperience with studio projects, but still has full confidence in the director.

"He might not have a ton of experience, but he had a creative and specific vision for the look, the feel and the tone of the show and how he wants to shoot it," McElhenney said. "And he makes you laugh with what he’s does."

To frame it in contemporary political terms, one might say that McClammy is a Hollywood outsider; a maverick, if you will. Aside from the aforementioned viral videos, McClammy has directed episodes of The Sarah Silverman Program and some segments of The Jimmy Kimmel Show. Though the resume may be short, there’s no denying that McClammy can direct high profile actors, as seen in his star-studded work with Damon and Affleck, the former of which he recently earned an Emmy for.

Just don’t expect Boldly Going Nowhere to be a science fiction show — that’s not how the creators see it.

"What we’re really interested in is a different take, a new twist on the workplace comedy," says McElhenney. "We wanted to make sure it is relatable, it just happens to be set couple hundred years into the future."

Yep, definitely sounds like Dunder-Mifflin in space. Get Stephen Colbert on board as ship captain Tek Jansen and we’ll be completely sold.

Boldly Going Nowhere is based on an idea from Adam Stein. Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day, Glenn Howerton, Jonathan Goldstein, Michael Rotenberg and Nick Frenkel will serve as executive producers.

Marvin Media Adapts Paul Kanter

  • News
  • October 7, 2008

Another animation company has been formed as Marvin Gleicher, co-founder and former CEO of Worldwide Operations for Manga Entertainment, has opened Marvin Media. His first effort will be adapting Paul Kanter’s Floating Moon as a feature-length animated film.  It will be directed by Keiichi Sato (Wolf’s Rain) from Manabu Ishikawa’s screen adaptation. The movie can be expected in 2010. Kanter, founder of the Jefferson Airplane, wrote the ecological tale.

Marvin Media is also producing High Def, a comedy from Island Def Jam Music Group, which will be 26 half-hour episodes expected in late 2009.

Gleicher co-founded Manga Entertainment in 1994 and is behind the domestic success of Ghost in the Shell.
 

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