Why should movies have all the fun of resurrecting old TV shows, when TV itself can autocannibalize with the best of ’em? Here’s a teaser from the new Bionic Woman pilot set to air this fall on NBC.
I can’t help but wonder if this sort of exercise hasn’t been superceded by all the leaping about done by Buffy & co., not to mention those magnificent flying gals in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon…
It doesn’t take much to piss off the increasingly repressive government of Iran. Now they’re protesting a graphic novel autobiography turned into a film.
That’s right, Heidi notes that Marjane Satrapi’s and Vincent Paronnaud’s animated version of Persepolis, adapted from Satrapi’s book, is showing at Cannes, and Iran isn’t happy about it, claiming it "presents an unreal picture of the outcomes and achievements of the Islamic revolution." Not a real surprise considering Islamic revolutions rarely seem to view women as real.
Here’s the trailer (in French) for the film:
The film premieres on Wednesday and is in competition for the Palme d’Or.
Adnan Saleem is either a real Simpsons fan, has too much time on his hands, or both. He’s turned actual people into life-size models of the Simpson family. Here’s Lisa:
The rest of the family (including pets) are here. With yesterday’s 400th episode special and the movie coming out in July, there’s no doubt these characters are deeply embedded in many people’s psyches…
For some reason, Craig Ferguson, a very funny person in his own right, has allegedly appropriated the work of Kyle Baker, the funniest man in the world. You can see the evidence at http://myspace.com/ghostchimpmd and at YouTube.
Kyle developed the idea when he was working at Warner Bros. in the early 1990s.
Bob Morales, a frequent Baker collaborator said, "Why do they always steal from the African-Americans? First, blues, then jazz, now Ghost Chimp M.D."
More when we hear about it — and the lawyers weigh in.
Karen Healey of GirlWonder reports on a few comics-related panels in which she’ll be participating at the upcoming annual WisCon feminist SF convention, May 25-28. Here’s the full panel schedule. My favorite is the one she’s moderating:
Sarcasm and Superheroics: Feminism in the Mainstream Comics Industry
2006 was declared the year of Women in Comics. Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home was one of Time’s 10 Best Books, best-selling authors Jodi Picoult and Tamora Pierce were signed up to write for DC and Marvel, and DC announced a new Minx line for girls. However, 2006 was also a year of increased feminist activism in mainstream comics. New websites "When Fangirls Attack" and "Girl-Wonder.org" collected and encouraged feminist debate on issues of diversity and sexism in comics, and there seemed to be plenty to talk about. Moreover, the Occasional Superheroine confessional memoir recounted a disturbing tale of abuse and misogyny within the superhero industry that was reflected on the pages of its comics. What has improved in the comics industry? What is yet to be done? What challenges are posed by the industry’s peculiar institutional structure? How can women break into the comics mainstream? How can we critique it? And what comics can you buy for your kids? M: Karen Elizabeth Healey, Charlie Anders, Rachel Sharon Edidin, Catherine Lundoff, Jenni Moody
There’s also an interesting-sounding X-Men panel on Sunday. I’m officially jealous; it sounds like another great year for the WisCon folks.
As mentioned here and on many other news sites, the voting is now open for this year’s Friends of Lulu Awards. Since the awards are all about enhancing women’s visibility in an industry that too often marginalizes and downplays them, and since there’s a lot of discussion currently going on about what real women look like, I thought I’d present the nominees pictorially:
For the Women Cartoonists’ Hall of Fame (left to right): Colleen Doran, Lily Renee Phillips, Donna Barr
For Lulu of the Year (left to right): Alison Bechdel, Abby Denson, Donna Barr (Torvald not eligible)
For the Kim Yale Award (for Best New Female Talent): Top row, Rachel Habors and June Kim; bottom row, Rivka and Joelle Jones
For the Women of Distinction Award (left to right): Jennifer deGuzman, Joan Hilty, Karen Berger
Links to all the fine work done by these women are at the FoL voting site.
As our Elayne Riggs reported this weekend, Derek McCulloch and Shepherd Hendrix earned themselves four Glyph Comic Awards at this weekend’s East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention for their ground-breaking graphic novel, Stagger Lee. They won Story of the Year, Best Writer, Best Male Character, and Best Cover.
Their efforts have also received an Eisner Awards nomination (“Best Reality-Based Work,” which is slicing the onion rather thin) and a British Eagle nomination (“Best Original Graphic Novel). The Eisners will be announced at the San Diego Comic Con this July; the guys lost the Eagle last week to Pride of Baghdad. But, as the old saying goes, it’s an honor to be nominated, particularly against Fables, Lost Girls, and Five Fists of Science.
As the headline says, sometimes the good guys win. However, I take their success as a personal vindication. Anybody who had come within 20 feet of me during the last year heard me proselytize about Stagger Lee. And, lucky devil that you are, now it’s your turn.
If comics are ever going to escape from the Retard Ghetto, and we are slowly doing so, it will be because of the reach of graphic novels. Outsiders and an increasing number of insiders simply do not see very much in the way of sophisticated storytelling in literature that consists of bizarrely enhanced people dressing up in even more bizarre costumes in order to beat the shit out of one another. Actually, there are more “sophisticated” superhero stories than one might think, but they’re farts in the blizzard of such product.
In order to reach out successfully, we have to reach out in all directions. Here’s what Derek and Shep did in Stagger Lee.
They painstakingly searched out dozens, maybe hundreds, of versions of this classic folk song. They painstakingly researched the reality of the story, or realities, actually, as lots of folks have lots of different opinions. They got their reference straight, they lined up all the different versions, and then sculpted a story that contains its own multiverse of alternate realities, investigating the story from a great many of its folklore roots.
Then they did it as one solid novel. A graphic novel that will appeal to comics fans, to music fans (blues, roots, rock and folk in particular – although that pretty much covers it all), to those with a passion for American history, to those with a passion for black American history, and to people who are interested in a damn good story told in an entertaining and seductive manner.
That’s no small achievement, believe me. You try it.
In fact, I really wish you would. The future of the medium depends upon it.
Congratulations, guys.
Mike Gold is editor-in-chief of ComicMix.com
Artwork copyright 2006 Derek McCulloch and Shepherd Hendrix. All Rights Reserved.
Hidden behind the defaced campaign site of Harvey Dent is an image that appears to be the first released image of Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight. We’ll put it behind the jump for spoiler reasons, so please click the "continued" button: (more…)
By the time this posts I should be nearing my comic shop (which I’m visiting for the first time in ages) to pick up the last couple weeks’ worth of comics, so why not treat y’all to the last week of ComicMix columns first?:
And crank up that MP3 player for Mellifluous Mike Raub‘s most recent podcasts:
That should keep us all pretty busy for awhile!
Oh, you lucky consumers. This week, all the benefits of DVD watching have come to the fore with four classics that come in four different varieties. First, celebrate all ye cinema-of-the-fantastic fans, for two of the greatest science fiction and fantasy films of the 21st century are now out on disc but only one in a way that shows how superior the DVD format is to virtually every other medium.
I love fantasy. My first non-pseudonyminous novel was a fantasy, Cry of the Beast. My latest novel is a fantasy, Murder in Halruua. My first non-fiction book was The World of Fantasy Films. So it’s a great pleasure to now write about Pan’s Labyrinth, probably the best fantasy film since, well, the director’s previous mixing of monsters and Spanish history, The Devil’s Backbone (2001).
Even after directing Blade II and Hellboy, Hollywood still gave Guillermo del Toro’s extraordinary Oscar-winning new film its due, and New Line Home Entertainment is no exception, crafting one of the great DVDs to showcase it (and they’ve had some practice, considering they also backed the Lord of the Rings special editions). There is a single disc DVD, which only sports the director’s loving audio commentary, but let’s pretend that doesn’t exist (along with the fullscreen version).
Instead, go right to the Two Disc Platinum Series, which envelops the already magical, monstrous, mystical, and majestic film with gobs of film-enhancing extras. All too often, even when a DVD has loads of extras, they’re not really film-enhancing. They may be film-promoting, film-marketing, film-indulging, or even film-smoke-blowing, but it only takes a few of those to know the real deal when it comes around. Each of the documentaries included on the Platinum Edition make successive viewings of the film all the more enriching and enjoyable.
There’s a discourse on the movie’s use of fairy tale mythology, an examination of the colors and textures del Toro uses to deepen his work, a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the movie’s creatures (spotlighting Doug Jones, the director’s favorite go-to man for these roles), multiple “director’s notebook” interactive menu pages, and, not surprisingly, considering del Toro’s avowed love for comic books, animated prequels establishing back-stories for four of the film’s fantasy favorites.
They’ve also added the memorable episode of PBS’ Charlie Rose Show, which interviewed the friends now known as cinema’s “Three Amigos” – del Toro, Babel director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, and the next man on our DVD hit parade, Alfonso Cuaron. Using the clout he acquired after directing Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Cuaron threw it all into his remarkable adaptation of famed mystery writer P.D. James’ recent science-fiction novel Children of Men.
I love science fiction. My second non-pseudonyminous novel (Doomstar) and non-fiction book (The Great Science Fiction Films) were science fiction. I didn’t feel there was a huge difference between SF and fantasy, but apparently tinseltown disagrees. For, while New Line gave Pan’s Labyrinth its due, Universal treated the bleak yet exhilarating Children of Men like a red-headed stepchild. (more…)
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