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I’m Dreaming of a Celluloid Christmas, Part 1, by John Ostrander

  • News
  • December 6, 2007

carolcollage-4099928Having learned nothing from my last list of favorite films other than how to start a few fights, I’ve decided to go at it again, this time with a list of my favorite Christmas films. T’is the season to really annoy people, after all.

A few words as I begin. This is my list of favorite films. I’m not saying they are the best. Well, some of them are. They just may not be your favorites. Omission of a certain film doesn’t mean I don’t know it or don’t like it. It’s just not on my list. Anyone attempting to see more into the list will be drowned in eggnog and buried with a stake of mistletoe through the heart. Hostile? Sure. T’is the season.

Here we go.

A Christmas Carol – I’m something of A Christmas Carol-aholic. It’s an inspired combination – Dickens creates a ghost story not for Halloween but for Christmas. Brilliant!

I read the story as a boy, the scene around the Cratchit family table was read at my house every Christmas Eve when I was growing up, and it was the last play I performed (where I played such vital roles as Mr. Round, Fred’s friend #3, Dancing Man, and Ensemble) before giving up my sputtering acting career. So I have very definite ideas of what the movie version should be. I own three different versions on DVD – all of which I will have seen before Christmas Day this year.

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Fifty ultimate weapons, plus a few more

  • News
  • December 5, 2007

talesofsuspense80cosmiccube-5420199At Mid-Ohio Con this year, there was a Sunday night dinner between Mixers Mike Gold, Michael Davis, Martha Thomases, me, and a few other folks including Brian Pulido , and we got onto the discussion of ultimate weapons in comics– Warworld, the Cosmic Cube, the Anti-Life Equation, the Ultimate Nullifier, and so on.

I don’t know how we missed him, but Chris Ward must have been eavesdropping. He’s got his own list of fifty ultimate weapons.

Granted, he had to go outside comics to do it, but he does a pretty good job. But really– as long as you’re going outside comics, no Doomsday Machine? No Death Star? No Shadow Planet Killers? No Tox Uthat? Not even Lexx?

Certainly you have to include the Illudium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator…

Lillian Baker and Martha Thomases On The Nation’s #1 Movie

  • News
  • December 5, 2007

For the last two weeks, Disney’s Enchanted has been the top-grossing movie in the country.  A musical pastiche of animation and live-action, it’s the story of Giselle (Amy Adams), a young beauty rescued by the handsome Prince Edward (James Marsden).  Instead of getting married and living happily ever after as they planned, the couple is separated by his sorcerous step-mother, Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon).  Amy is banished to a terrifying realm – contemporary Manhattan – where she meets Robert Philip (Patrick Dempsey) an uptight lawyer, and his shy daughter, Morgan (Rachel Covey).

Lillian Baker:  I thought it was pretty good.  Very funny.  It wasn’t very good if you’re one of those people who don’t like romance and/or fantasy.

Martha Thomases:  I liked the way it went from animated, in the Prince’s land of Andalusia, and then live-action in our world.

LB:  I liked the cartoons better.  It looked better.

MT:  They set things up very well.  In the fairy-tale world, we aren’t surprised that Giselle can talk to animals and get their help to clean her house.  When she comes to New York and needs help, she calls the local animals to help, and to her rescue come rats, pigeons and cockroaches. (more…)

Happy International Creep Like a Ninja Day!

  • News
  • December 5, 2007

Yes, International Creep Like a Ninja Day! From the same sorts of people who brought you International Talk Like A Pirate Day, only instead of dressing in flamboyant clothing and making loud "Arrrrr!" noises, you spend the day being very very silent and dressing in black. Of course, we all know pirates and ninjas are mortal enemies…

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So let us honor the ninja and their constant forays into comics– for without them, Frank Miller would only be able to lift from noir films instead of kung-fu flicks, and then everybody else in the industry would have even left to lift from.

P.S. We were going to include a picture of everyone’s favorite comic book ninja babe Elektra here, but we couldn’t find any that were really of her– all we found were pictures of a Skrull pretending to be her. Damn you, Brian Bendis!

Burning the candle, by Elayne Riggs

  • News
  • December 5, 2007

elayne100-9533021This column is finally up to installment #42. As you well know, that’s said to be the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything. And now that I’m 50 years old, I’m supposed to be ever much smarter than I used to be, and ever so much closer to achieving the enlightenment that’s supposed to help me understand the questions to that answer.

Don’t you believe it. It’s a good thing life is a constant learning experience, although it’s a bit disheartening that the more I live the more there remains for me to learn. I can’t be the only one who constantly feels like I’m treading water, or running in place just to keep up.

Last night many Jews began the annual commemoration of Chanukah (or Hanukkah or Channukah or Throat-Warbler Mangrove), the Festival of Lights, not to be confused with Diwali, the Festival of Light marking the victory of good over evil, and uplifting of spiritual darkness, which seems to predate it by a good many centuries. Chanukah marks the rededication of the Second Temple (after it was desecrated by Antiochus IV Epiphanes at the time of the Maccabee rebellion, a couple hundred years before that Jesus guy came along) and the miracle that one day’s worth of consecrated olive oil wound up burning for eight (the length of time it took to process a new batch). So instead of celebrating something cool like the uplifting of spiritual darkness, in the hands of the Jews the festival became the glorification of frugality, of making a little go a long way.

Then the Christians came along and, within another few centuries, had converted massive populations and co-opted their festivals so that Midwinter (the winter solstice) practices became part of Christmas, which grew and grew into a general celebration of plenty and excess and cheer (except for those people who insist on missing the point by suggesting Santa is a "bad role model" because he’s fat and jolly; no no, can’t have any happy large people around during the months when it’s customary to fatten up to stave off cold and hunger!). And you know, given the choice between a whooping it up over how fortunate one is to have enough to eat and how dire one’s circumstances are that one has to burn the midnight oil for a week — well, let’s just say it’s easy to see how one can become so popular it’s no longer solely Christian or even pagan but practically secular, where the other is forever relegated in the public consciousness to second-place status and an excuse to teach lessons in multicultural inclusion.

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Court subpeonas Disney and Warner Brothers characters

  • Uncategorized
  • December 5, 2007

tweety-8229806Sufferin’ succotash. From the AP:

ROME — Tweety may get a chance to take the witness stand and sing like a canary.

 An Italian court ordered the animated bird, along with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and his girlfriend Daisy, to testify in a counterfeiting case.

In what lawyers believe was a clerical error worthy of a Looney Tunes cartoon, a court in Naples sent a summons to the characters ordering them to appear Friday in a trial in the southern Italian city, officials said.

The court summons cites Titti, Paperino, Paperina, Topolino — the Italian names for the characters — as damaged parties in the criminal trial of a Chinese man accused of counterfeiting products of Disney and Warner Bros.

 

Heroes – Volume Two, a bitchy review by Mike Gold

  • News
  • December 4, 2007

Warning! Spoiler Alert! If you’ve got the past half-dozen episodes of Heroes TiVoed, you just might want to skip this review. On the other hand, if you’ve got the past half-dozen episodes of Heroes TiVoed, I just might be able to add six hours to your life.

 

Once upon a time, some clever Hollywood people hired some talented comics people to help create a teevee show about a bunch of human with abilities far beyond those of mankind. It was a pretty good show – maybe it could have benefited from the loss of any three characters – and it was successful. The Peacock gods smiled upon the program, and thus it was renewed.

And it turned into a meandering piece of crap.

“Heroes – Volume Two” consisted of the first, and because of the writer’s strike maybe only, 11 episodes of its second season. Having a story arc that was a half season long was a good idea. It was their only good idea.

They introduced a number of new characters, and most of them seemed to have been killed off. They played the “good guy is really the bad guy is really the good guy” bit like Ginger Baker played the drums on “Toad.” By the tenth episode, you couldn’t tell who was being naughty and who was being nice – except for Sylar, the show’s only consistent villain. And the actor, Zachary Quinto, went straight from Heroes to Spock The Next Generation, which makes him a de facto good guy for ever and ever. (more…)

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Comics against pedophile priests

  • Uncategorized
  • December 4, 2007

Sometimes, a picture really is worth a thousand words.

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From Newsweek:

After years of humiliating sexual-abuse scandals, Roman Catholic Church officials are trying harder than ever to convince parishioners that they’re doing everything they can to prevent such tragedies from happening again. That means public education, training programs and—in the New York Archdiocese—a surprisingly direct, abuse-themed coloring book for kids that’s being sent to parishioners across the area. At first glance, "Being Friends, Being Safe, Being Catholic" is what you’d expect from a Christian handout: lessons in loving thy neighbor and knowing we’re all special in God’s eyes, plus a fun word search with names of people whom kids can trust (parents, counselors, teachers). Many of the book’s cartoon-sketch drawings, which were created by a church volunteer, are light in tone and narrated by an angel looming overhead. But on one page, the angel warns of an online predator—with chest hair exposed—who attempts to chat with a child; on another (shown above), the angel implies that children should make sure they’re never alone in a room with a priest.

Uh… okay. Me, I’m waiting for the inevitable Jack Chick anti-Catholic screed.

Happy Hannukah, everyone. (Hat tip: Boing Boing.)

Demons Speak Directly To You!

The choices are many and the product is great this week on the comics and DVD shelves, from clever trade paperback collections to classy hard covers and some nifty DVDs – it’s beginning to sound a lot like Christmas – and ComicMix Radio previews it all, just in time for your holiday hinting!

Plus:

• Now that you’ve seen Demons Of Sherwood – FREE right here on ComicMix – get the inside story from creators Bo Hampton and Robert Tinnell on where it came from and where it’s going!

• Batman gets another sales boost from Ras Al Ghul

• Can you guess what the Top Ten Most Searched-For TV shows are on the web? Would you believe Heroes isn’t one of them?

Do What The Lady says – Press The Button!

I for one welcome our new robot overlords

  • News
  • December 4, 2007

Comics and TV scribe John Rogers and Tyrone are having lunch again.

John: … No.

Tyrone: Listen, all I’m asking is that you give the idea a decent —

John: Robot overlords. You are "pro-robot overlords".

Tyrone: They bring world peace, universal health care —

John: At the cost of our freedoms!

Tyrone: MY POINT EXACTLY. We’re already giving up our freedoms — our right to privacy, gone. Warrantless arrest, gone. Right to have your vote counted is super-gone depending on the state you live in, right to stand trial, gone — we have torture. We already have all the downsides of a supposed robotic takeover, but we’re being cheated of the upside! I say, if this is the world we’re gonna live in anyway, at least let the robot overlords have their shot. World peace, technological utopia — and no crime! The robot overlords’ crime control is swift and merciless.

John: But it’s completely … uncaring All people will be punished equally regardless of circumstance!

Tyrone: I’m sorry, did you forget I was black?

Read, as the kids say, the whole thing.

Note: this was submitted when this first came out but had originally been cut by UberEditor Gold because he didn’t quite see a timely link to anything, nothing newsy. To which I reply: It’s Christmas! Everything goes better with Christmas music! Look at this piece from Jonathon Coulton and see if you don’t agree.

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