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The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll The Law Is A Ass #383

FOR SERPENT SOLUTIONS, DENIAL IS JUST A RIVER IN AFRICA

In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya – no, the other immortal words of Inigo Montoya – “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

So, in Captain America: Sam Wilson #4, this happened: Serpent Solutions…

Wait, I guess some of it happened before Captain America: Sam Wilson #4. So, Sherman, set the WABAC for wayer bac.

Once upon a time there was a team of super villains called the Serpent Squad. As its name implies, it was a team whose costumes and powers emulated snakes. Then in Captain America v1 #311, the Serpent Squad turned into a more formal organization. No, they didn’t start wearing scaly tuxes, they unionized. The Serpent Society members still committed crimes, but they gave the proceeds of those crimes to the Society. The Society funded itself from those proceeds and paid its members a regular wage and health benefits. (And this was years before Obamacare. Talk about forward thinking.)

Recently, Viper, the head of the Serpent Society, reorganized the organization yet again; into Serpent Solutions. Serpent Solutions wasn’t a union, it was a business. A well-funded job creator with offices in cities all across the United States and a headquarters in a luxurious Wall Street office tower it apparently owned. Serpent Solutions hired itself out to big businesses to do the illegal dirty work that the businesses needed done but couldn’t do itself. Then it sold the results of that dirty work back to the businesses for a profit.

Remember last week when I wrote about how the Sons of the Serpents were kidnapping undocumented immigrants in Arizona and selling them to Dr. Karlin Malus for genetic research? That was Serpent Solution’s latest business venture. Turns out Serpent Solutions were the people employing Malus. Serpent Solutions used him to create new genetic patents, which they then sold to the businesses that wanted these patents.

Why did Serpent Solutions do this? To make money. Why did the businesses hire Serpent Solutions to do this? For what they called plausible deniability.

Plausible deniability exists when senior officials in some organization intentionally keep themselves out of the loop of what’s going on in the organization below them. That way, if the organization does something illegal or wrong or illegal and wrong, the senior officials can say they didn’t know what their underlings were doing. The senior officials can claim they didn’t know what their underlings were doing, shift the blame to said underlings, and escape prosecution themselves. No one really believes the senior officials denials, but because no one can prove otherwise, those denials are plausible.

In the case of Serpent Solutions’s business clients, the plausible deniability came from the fact that the companies that hired Serpent Solutions could say, “Hey, all we did was buy some patents from those guys. We had no idea how they got those patents.”

See, plausible deniability. Except, I do not think the word means what the companies think it means. No not the word deniability. The word plausible.

The whole concept of plausible deniability relies on the fact that no one can find a connection linking the senior officials to the people hired to do the dirty work. No connection means no proof that the top brass really knew what was going on. The morons who hired Serpent Solutions had deniability that was about as plausible as a politician’s promise.

First, the companies were dealing with a group of super villains. How did those companies think the super villains were going to do that dirty work, if not by super villainy? The fact that your company’s hiring a bunch of “usual suspects” makes your deniability a little suspect.

Now let’s factor in the way Serpent Solutions conducted its business. It didn’t sneak around holding clandestine meetings with some lower-level official who could never be connected back to the higher ups. No, when Serpent Solutions was soliciting a company’s business, it held introductory meetings with the company’s board of directors. Public meetings in the company’s board room.

In the one board meeting we were shown, the Senior Vice President for Public Relations and Community Affairs – we’ll call him Greg, because that’s what the story called him – complained that Serpent Solutions’s methods included, “kidnapping! Illegal experiments! Torture and murder!” So it’s not like the Board didn’t know precisely what was going on. Then when Greg demurred and even quit his cushy job, Serpent Solutions killed him right there in the board room, while Viper monologued, “I’ve done a lot of these meetings over the past few months and there’s always one.”

Newsflash, if you want your deniability to be plausible, don’t have your entire board of directors meet the super villains you want to do your dirty work in your frelling board room. Like I said earlier, have some subordinate meet them in seclusion. Hey, I’m just a lowly former public defender from Cleveland not a highly paid and even more-highly bonused corporate CEO, and even I know how to commit corporate malfeasance better than that.

See, the minutes of board meetings are supposed to be recorded, which kind of leaves a paper trail disproving the whole deniability thing. If they aren’t, or are mysteriously destroyed, well that’s going to raise a red flag or two, too. And you’ll be needing that tutu when you try to dance around your own criminal culpability in the matter.

Yes, criminal culpability. Hire criminals to do your criminal dirty work for you and you’re an aider and abettor so just as guilty of their crimes as they are.

And here’s even flashier, newsflash: it helps the whole deniability thing of you don’t have the super villains you want doing your dirty work committing actual murders in your board room with your board of directors present.

Former President Richard Nixon denied involvement in the Watergate break in and cover up. People doubted his denials. But Nixon’s veracity has been suspect as far back as 1950, when he ran for the Senate and people named him “Tricky Dick,” because of alleged falsehoods in campaign ads. But those veracity problems paled next to Nixon’s Watergate denials. As more facts came out, Nixon’s Watergate denials were even less plausible. Finally, when all was said and done, so was President Nixon. Because he didn’t have plausible deniability.

But as much as “Tricky Dick’s” denials strained plausibility, he’d be a paragon of truth, justice, and the American way compared to any board of directors that hired Serpent Solutions to do its dirty work. Their denials would stretch plausibility like petite pantyhose on Honey Boo Boo’s “Mama June.”

Martha Thomases: Malevolent Ways!

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It seems that every few weeks there’s a new animated feature at the movie theater. This is quite different from my youth, when only Disney made full-length cartoons (that were distributed in Ohio) and they took three to four years to produce.

It seems that every television channel has at least some animated content, a lot of it aimed at grown-ups. This is quite different from my youth, when all cartoons were for kids, and were on networks on Saturday mornings and local channels, maybe for an hour after school.

We can have an interesting conversation about why animation grew up and expanded its audience. Was it the influence of anime? The Baby Boomers loving cartoons so much we refuse to give them up, just like with comic books? The (relative) inexpensive production compared to feature films, especially as computers improved?

Who cares why? More animation means more choices for those of us who love the medium.

Recently I had a chance to cyber-meet Jim Cirile and Tanya Klein, of Coverage Ink Films. They’re making the first American animated horror film, Malevolent, starring Morena Baccarin, Ray Wise, and William Shatner, among others. Go to the link, and you can donate to the IndieGoGo campaign. There’s cool stuff there.

1) You say Malevolent is the first American 2-D animated horror film. Was there one (or more) in 3-D?

Tanya Klein (TK): Not that we’re aware of, and we’ve looked pretty hard. These are mostly done in Japan. We’re not sure why there has never been an animated horror feature film made in the US.

Jim Cirile (JC): The closest we can find is Dead Space, which was an amazing film, 2-D animation, but it was sci-fi horror. Ours is just straight-up horror.

2) Why do you think animation is a good technique for horror? What can you do with animation that you can’t do with live-action?

TK: You can do anything with live action that you can do with animation nowadays thanks to CGI. That barrier has been crossed. Just watch any Marvel movie for evidence of that. In our case, it’s more about creating a cool and unique experience. We wanted to do something that’s never been done before and do it in a really fresh way. Animation gives us the ability to have a lot more production value than we might have been able to afford otherwise as a small indie production, while also allowing us to go anywhere the psychology of the story dictates, with off-the-hook visuals. The sacrifice is losing some of the details of the actor’s faces, but great voices actors know how to put all of that into the voice.

JC: There’s something really awesome and unique about this type of experience as animation. We were wondering if people would feel the same level of engagement as with live action. So we screened a scene at a local university for a class full of film students to gauge their reactions. And it was amazing. Even though people were watching drawings, they were gripped. The drama of the scene carries through.

3) Awesome cast. How did you get them?

TK: We were very, very lucky! Our producers Cindi Rice and Paige Barnett, and Jim and I, made a list of all the people we’ve worked with in the past, and then our wish list cast. Amazingly, none of the people we’d worked with were available! That meant we had to go in cold to the rest of the cast. Morena (Baccarin) was our first choice for Gamemaster. She’s just so perfect for the role of the aloof, dispassionate manipulator with perhaps a hidden softer side. We went in cold to her agent, and Morena responded to the script. She told us she loved the darkness of it. How cool is that?

JC: Ray Wise (Twin Peaks) also has plenty of cred as the demented, sociopath patriarch Cyrus DeKalb. Again, we went in cold; same with Bill Moseley (House of 1000 Corpses.)

TK: However, we did have a personal connection to William Shatner. Jim is friends with his son-in-law.

JC: Yeah, makeup artist extraordinaire Andrew Clement, who also did the Deadpool makeup with Bill Corso. I asked Andrew if there was any chance of approaching Mr. Shatner, and he laughed because of course he gets asked this a lot. But he put in a good word for us, and then next thing we know, we get a phone call – “Jim, Tanya, it’s William Shatner. Tell me about your project.” We almost fell over.

TK: So we pitched Malevolent to William Shatner on the phone, and he said to send over the script and an offer. And the Great Bird of the Galaxy smiled upon us, because Mr. Shatner really liked the script.

JC: He’s crazy-busy, and we’re huge fans, so it was such an honor for us for him to come on board. What an incredible man. And by the way, wait till you hear him in this role. You’ve never heard William Shatner “dark.” Wow!

4) The animation (at least in the trailer) seems to me to be limited, sort of like Archer. Will it be more fluid when it’s finished? Was this a style choice or an economic one?

JC: Archer is the exact style we are shooting for. The animated is somewhat limited by budget. Fortunately, one can use the limitations in an artistic and interesting way. As well, Adobe After Effects can fill in the in-betweens that used to have to be drawn by hand. It’s the only way to get the project finished on our budget level.

TK: We will be using a few CG effects in the movie, but it will be 99% hand-drawn.

5) It seems to me (again, my perspective could be wrong) that there are a lot of women working on this film, more than just acting talent. Is this unusual?

TK: So glad you noticed! You know, of course, there’s a fair amount of sexism in Hollywood even to this day. Just look at the DGA and WGA statistics for the amount of women hired in any given year. It’s generally a pretty low percentage. It’s insane, of course. We are fortunate to be working with two kick-ass producers – Cindi Rice and Paige Barnett. About half our art and color team are women as well.

JC: Our director is a dude, and so am I, of course. But the movie focus is on a very complex female character, Miriam, and her relationship with two other complex women – her messed-up sister Kelsey (Florence Hartigan) and Gamemaster. Both represent different aspects of Miriam’s personality in a way – the one that just wants to fall apart and vanish into a haze of drugs, and the one who wants to be powerful and stoic and invulnerable. I think these are all not just things women can relate to, but all of us.

TK: But it’s especially cool I think, in this sort of creative endeavor, to have such a cool team with the unique perspectives all of us bring, and if that in some way comes across as female empowerment and kick-ass, then hell yes, bring it!

6) How will Malevolent be distributed?

TK: It’s a little too early soon to talk distribution. We’ve met with several companies already and will be meeting with more I’m sure. We’ll see where it goes.

JC: This probably won’t be a wide theatrical release, but certainly a festival and limited release run could be in the offing. Certainly comic-cons. We’ll see what makes the most sense when we’re done with the movie this fall.

  1. What is your background? How did you come to animation?

JC: I have a degree in animation and fine art and am a huge animation fan, but soon after college I realized I didn’t have the patience for it, and that my skills were better suited for writing and producing.

TK: It was actually our producers Cindi Rice and Paige Barnett who suggested doing Malevolent as an animated movie. They had done animation for Epic Level Entertainment, such as Xombie and the motion comic sequence from the hit FearNet/Machinima web series Bite Me. Paige thought that going animated would help us stand out. And we all looked at each other and the clouds parted, and it was like, wow, that’s brilliant. As near as we can tell, no one had ever done an animated horror movie in the US before.

JC: Developing scripts is actually our day job – through www.CoverageInk.com.

TK: We develop scripts with writers, producer, and managers and help hone that material and those voices until they’re nice and shiny. The number one issue we’ve seen is, as Jim said, writers not learning the rudiments. There are so many resources out there – online classes, blogs, books, YouTube, etc. It’s easier than ever to learn what you need to learn to be a writer/filmmaker. I took online producing classes recently through one website. Don’t be afraid to rewrite! That’s where the magic happens. Malevolent literally took I think 23 drafts.

JC: Yep, literally submitting it to our Coverage Ink readers for analysis draft after draft until it finally was racking up those ‘considers.’ So don’t be afraid to go for it, and understand that it’s always a learning process. Filmmaking and writing are crafts. They can be learned.

8) Favorite horror movies?

TK: I have to give it up for Army of Darkness. A great combination of genres. Brilliantly anarchic. I’m more of a literary horror fan – King, Koontz and so forth. Sean of the Dead was another great one.

JC: Evil Dead II, The Fly (remake), Alien and Aliens, American Werewolf in London, Dawn of the Dead, Texas Chainsaw I and II, Serpent and the Rainbow, Jacob’s Ladder, The Thing (Carpenter)… it’s a pretty big list, but I tend to like horror films that bring something unexpected or out of the box to the genre. Zombies, vampires, etc., all bore me.

9) Anything else to add?

TK: This has been our geeky passion project for two years now, and we’ve put everything on the line to make this film happen. We had to literally build a team from scratch and figure out how to coordinate everyone, located in 13 different countries and time zones. All to make Malevolent happen. So we’re excited, nervous, scared – you know, all that good stuff. But the amazing thing is that the reaction so far has been amazing, and people seem to really dig what we’re doing. Hopefully we’ll knock it out of the park and show everyone what you can do.

JC: We’re all about DIY and writer empowerment. For years screenwriters have given away their power — nothing happens with your material unless someone else buys it. Thanks to the Internet, crowdfunding, low-cost HD cameras and so forth, now anyone can make movies. It’s a beautiful thing. So get out there and make it happen!

REVIEW: Victor Frankenstein

Victor FrankensteinYou have to give credit to Dwight Frye, the underappreciated character actor who created the role of the hunchback Fritz, who aided Colin Clive’s Victor Frankenstein in the 1931 Universal adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novel. In further Universal installments, the assistant was renamed Ygor and Frye was replaced with Bela Lugosi – but it is Frye’s portrayal that gave the world the stock character forever known to all as Igor.

In the re-envisioned world portrayed in Victor Frankenstein (James McAvoy), Igor is given an upgrade from simple lab assistant to brilliant physician and Frye has morphed into Daniel Radcliffe. Young Victor is actually still in med school as we meet out characters and it is Igor who proves to the brains behind the, ahem, operation.

Max Landis uses both Shelley’s novel and the Universal series of films as guideposts but charts a fresh, if not wholly original tale. Igor’s fascination with circus performer Lorelei (Jessica Brown Findlay) propels the story especially once she is gravely injured and he thinks he can save her. Frankenstein, younger and more by the book at this stage, thinks otherwise.

The two become friends and Victor realizes Igor’s hunch is actually an abscess in need of lancing. Their bond grows deeper as Victor shares his research into the uses of electricity to reanimate dead flesh.

In short order, though, the duo’s life is complicated on multiple fronts, the most dangerous being policeman Roderick Turpin (Andrew Scott)’s improbable realization of the two are doing. There’s plenty here and it doesn’t all hang together terribly well and Landis’ script ultimately does not service the two leads terribly well. All in all, the ideas aren’t bad but the messy result leaves us longing for a faithful and melancholy adaptation of the source material.

McAvoy, Radcliffe, and Scott aren’t given enough to work with and despite their collective talent, the overall performances are flat and lack the manic energy that made us fall for Clive and his successors.

The film, out now as a Combo Pack from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, has a just fine high definition transfer with a solid lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 soundtrack.

Given that the film was a box office and critical flop, the studio didn’t invest much in this release and the extras amount to a handful of Deleted Scenes (14:17) and an electronic press kit compilation The Making of Victor Frankenstein (29:27).

Tweeks Scratch 9 Volume 1 & 2 Review

We love cat videos, superheroes, and comics, so when we met Rob Worley at Long Beach Comic Expo and he introduced us to his Eisner Award-Nominated adventures of a cat named Scratch how could we not pick up both Volumes 1 & 2?

So, Scratch is a cat who hates baths, but loves his human, Penelope. He’s your basic ordinary house kitty until he’s kidnapped by a mad scientist (whose name you’ll see Anya has problems pronouncing) and ends up with the ability to team up with any of his nine previous lives when he gets caught in sticky situations.

In Volume 1, The Pet Project & Cat Tails, you get to meet Scratch and his friends, but in Volume 2, Cat of Nine Worlds, things get crazy when a new cat, time travel and 9 magic stones that when brought together give ultimate power are brought into the picture.

This is a great series for kids (Anya says ages 4 – 12, while Maddy thinks this is all-ages fun — especially for cat lovers). Watch our video review for the deets!

Dennis O’Neil: The One Right Way!

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Splat! Splibble! Ghosh!

Uh oh, here comes another one.

KLATLAM!

Okay, let’s close the metaphorical door…no, let’s slam the door on my cutsey way of sneaking up on an answer to the question I posed last week, which was something like: If I can’t teach writing — and I admit that I can’t — why do respectable institutions pay me to teach writing?

We’ll get to that gibberish at the top of the page in a bit, but first, let’s make a distinction between writing and creativity. I don’t know of anyone who has sussed out a reliable procedure for teaching creativity and I’m sure multitudes are trying. So let’s just drop the subject.

But writing? Different thing, and that brings us to the gibberish, which is supposed to be the noise information makes when it strikes a student because that, dear companions, is what I have done while standing in front of whiteboards. No, not fabricate sound effects, but hurl information at the eager faces: give them everything I know about the subject of the day, hoping that they will remember some of it and that what they remember will be useful. I’ve found that I can talk for… oh say twenty hours over the course of a semester about facts pertaining to writing – left-brain stuff that will fit into English sentences. Then, if I allow myself a little blue sky, or bring in a guest, or have responsive students willing to enter into dialogues voila! job done and where’s the nearest Starbucks?

Note: When imparting information, I never claim to be teaching the way to do anything. We have a mantra: There is seldom any one absolutely, inarguable, unimpeachably right way to do anything. There is just what’s worked for a lot of people a lot of times and maybe you’ll benefit from knowing about it.

Can I hear an Amen?

The matter of script format is sure to arise in any comics writing discussion and at first glance this seems like a no-brainer. I mean, a format is a format and all the instructor has to do is show one to the class and then take a bathroom break, right? That would indeed be the case if the subject were writing for television and/or movies. There is a widely accepted format for screenwriting and you’d best adhere to it. (But fear not: your friendly neighborhood software dealer will supply you with all you need.) Comics, though? I can’t show you the standard comics script format because there isn’t one. Every prolific writer seems to find, or evolve, a format that suits them and these range from the minimalist to the dense and detailed and I say blessings upon all. If it’s okay with your editor and with your collaborator(s), it’s okay.

We’ll probably revisit this topic, maybe not next week, but soon. For now, another amen and I’m off to play hooky.

Independence Day Releases 2-disc 20th Anniversary Edition

ID4 BlurayIndependence Day – 20th Anniversary Edition
Experience the original OSCAR®-Winning* sci-fi epic that launched a new era in blockbuster filmmaking. Director Roland Emmerich, producer Dean Devlin and an all-star cast including Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman join forces to deliver the ultimate encounter between powerful aliens and the human race. When massive spaceships appear in Earth’s skies and blast destructive beams of fire down on cities all over the planet, a determined band of survivors must unite for one last strike against the invaders before it’s the end of mankind.

*1997; Best Visual Effects

Special Features

Attacker Edition Gift Set Blu-ray™

  • Newly Restored Extended and Original Theatrical Cuts
  • All-new 30-Minute Documentary – Independence Day: A Legacy Surging Forward
  • Limited Edition Alien Ship Replica
  • Collectible Booklet
  • Includes Two Blu-rayTM discs and Digital HD

Blu-ray™

  • Newly Restored Extended and Original Theatrical Cuts
  • All-new 30-Minute Documentary – Independence Day: A Legacy Surging Forward
  • Includes Two Blu-rayTM discs and Digital HD

ID4 Beauty ShotDVD

  • Newly Restored Theatrical Cut
  • Includes Digital HD

Digital HD

  • First time Digital HD Extras Including Newly Restored Extended Cut
  • All-new 30-Minute Documentary – Independence Day: A Legacy Surging Forward

Independence Day – 20th Anniversary Attacker Edition Blu-ray & Standard Blu-ray
Street Date: May 3, 2016

Prebook Date: March 30, 2016
Screen Format: 16:9 (2.39:1)
Audio: English 5.1 DTS-HD-MA / Spanish 5.1 DD / French Parisian 5.1 DTS / French Quebecois 1.0 DD
Subtitles: English / French / Spanish
Total Run Time: Approximately 145 minutes (Theatrical Cut) / Approximately 154 minutes (Extended Cut)
U.S. Rating: PG-13

Independence Day – 20th Anniversary DVD
Street Date: May 3, 2016
Prebook Date: March 30, 2016
Screen Format: 16:9 (2.39:1)
Audio: English 5.1 DD / Spanish 5.1 DD / French 2.0 Surround DD
Subtitles: English / French / Spanish
Total Run Time: Approximately 145 minutes
U.S. Rating: PG-13

Molly Jackson: Binge On!

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This week, I was totally stumped on a topic for this column. I turned to my fellow columnist, Joe Corallo, for help and he immediately mentioned the exact thing I’ve been chatting about for the past week. Not really sure why I blanked on it because it is such a big topic right now. So let’s talk about Young Justice.

Young Justice, in case you don’t know, follows a group of young DC heroes as they learn to work as a team and find their place amongst the Justice League. As the series grows through seasons 1 and 2, we watch the young heroes change into the heroes we always wanted them to be. Sadly, it ended on a cliffhanger. It is not based on the comic of the same name but does build off the DC universe.

The DC and Warner Bros. Animation partnership has put out some of the best animated shows to date. I’m confident in stating that Batman: The Animated Series is arguably the best animated show of all time. However, Young Justice is one of the shows that always pops up when people talk animation as the gone too soon. It’s like the Firefly of animated shows.

In the past few years, Netflix has been the resurrection hotspot for a lot of TV shows.  We got the final season of The Killing, a new season of Arrested Development and even the love-or-hate Fuller House. Netflix has the capability to track well trending shows and cherry pick the best ones to revive. And for the most part, they are good at creating original shows, like their stellar partnership with Marvel or their independent creations like Orange is the New Black.

The reasoning for Young Justice being cancelled was poor toy sales. I do understand that; this show appeals more to an older audience, so they are less likely to buy basic toys and more likely to buy higher end pieces. On the other hand, Netflix only cares about streaming numbers and if there is enough interest to bring in some new subscribers. In that case, I think we can do it. There were rumors that Netflix was already considering this, but those are probably not true. However, that momentum should not be lost.

The producers Greg Weisman and Brandon Vietti are ready to come back. Character designer Phil Bourassa sounds like he would come back. Illustrator Christopher Jones is supporting this push. Plus, a group of the voice actors have come out and said they are on board. We just need to show Netflix and the WB that it is worth it for them.

So for all you people out there who haven’t seen Young Justice, watch it. Don’t have Netflix? Find your friend that does and watch it with them. (Everyone knows someone with Netflix. Everyone.). Give this show a chance to grow again. #BingeYoungJustice

Sylvia Anderson, Supermarionation co-producer, dies at 88

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Sylvia Anderson oversees a design meeting for Stingray.

Sylvia Anderson, co-producer of the iconic Supermarionation series including Thunderbirds, passed away at her home in Berkshire at the age of 88, after a brief illness.

Her daughter Dee Anderson said of her, “Her intelligence was phenomenal but her creativity and tenacity unchallenged. She was a force in every way,”

Sylvia worked with her husband Gerry on all of their puppet shows, becoming a co-producer starting with Stingray.  She voiced numerous characters for the shows, but is best known for portraying International Rescue’s London Operative, Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward in the classic series Thunderbirds.

Her ex-husband Gerry passed away in 2012 after a battle with Alzheimer’s.  The production company named after him recently produced three new episodes of Thunderbirds in the classic Supermarionation style, using soundtracks of audio plays released on record during the show’s original run.  Sylvia made a return to the franchise via the new CGI series Thunderbirds Are Go, playing Lady Penelope’s (now voiced by Rosamund Pike) Great Aunt Sylvia.  Sylvia was one of two members of the original cast to return for the series, along with David Graham, reprising his role of Parker.

Mike Gold: Defying Censorship

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Whereas ComicMix comments on all popular media – geek culture, as Ed Catto says – this particular commentary is about comic books. However, let me warn you: it is phrased in the terms of motion pictures. It could be applied to all mass communications.

There exists, and have always existed, groups of people with their noses so high in the air you’d think they’d drown in a drizzle. These self-appointed moral police seek to prevent everybody from experience media that they find objectionable. Of course, having an opinion and sharing that opinion is our constitutional right and I have no quarrel about this. Sadly, these people often attempt to have those books, movies, magazines and similar folderol removed from stores, libraries and theaters. They have held and continue to hold record burnings – for the past sixty-five years they have focused on rock’n’roll and particularly rock performed by black artists… although when John Lennon flippantly remarked the Beatles were “bigger than Christ” a whole lotta Beatles records went up in self-righteous smoke.

One of the first nationwide organizations to try to regulate our popular culture is the Catholic Legion of Decency. Since 1933 the Legion has “rated” every movie they could lay their hands on, outing those they don’t like as morally unobjectionable, morally objectionable in part, or outright condemned by the Legion of Decency. They also have positive ratings, but that’s beside the point. In 1995 they helped organize the Parents Television Council to do to teevee what they’ve done to movies.

Once again, I have no problem with organizations offering “advice” to their members, and the Legion of Decency and its ilk are no different. But ever since our media became mass, these groups have gone well beyond an advisory role and tried to get what they don’t like banned so that no one could think for themselves.

As distribution methods became more ubiquitous and independent thinking spread, the effectiveness of these organizations began to wane. They’re still around, there are still censorship boards (non-government; I use the word censorship in its broader use) of all sorts, and people still lose their jobs for propagating such art. But the glory days of censorship are mostly behind us. Case in point:

This month, Turner Classic Movies is presenting a series highlighting movies found objectionable by the Catholic Legion of Decency. Lots of great stuff – pre-Code movies such as Condemned, M, and Babyface and later flicks such as And God Created Woman, Kiss Me Stupid and The Carey Treatment are among the 27 films being featured.

Equally significant in the “passage of time” sweepstakes is that these movies will be

hosted by film critic Sister Rose Pacatte, who also is the founding director of the Pauline Center for Media Studies. She can provide perspective for those whose upbringing was not influenced by the Legion.

Of course, history has taught us we must constantly deploy and defend out rights. Each week, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund http://cbldf.org sends out an email noting various acts of censorship across the world, and I know that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Zealots – a separate entity from those who are religious – do not give up. Ever.

Nor can we.

Kudos to Turner Classic Movies and to Time Warner, its parent company. Such courage always is welcome.

Box Office Democracy: 10 Cloverfield Lane

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I am not prepared to be this afraid of John Goodman.

I don’t remember a time in my life before the Roseanne show. It was a staple growing up, even if I didn’t start watching it regularly until the last few seasons. John Goodman is a lovable funnyman, and no amount of playing shady characters in Coen Brothers movies was ever going to shake me of that conviction. I was not prepared for the sheer mesmerizing terror that was Goodman’s performance in 10 Cloverfield Lane, a role I never would have expected for him but one that he embodies so totally and perfectly that pushes everything to another level. This is the kind of performance that should win awards but never will because every award-giving body has decided to become self-parody at this point and only send home statues for ludicrous acting clichés.

There’s such a pervasive feeling of menace coming off of Goodman in this film and it is honestly incredible. He spends 80% of the time playing Howard as a quiet, almost nervous, man and so his violent outbursts feel so much bigger because of the contrast. There’s also something to be said for the way the sets are laid out and the film is shot, it makes his physical presence feel so much bigger, like a tiger in a subway tunnel a perpetual threat with no way around it. Howard ebbs and flows from genial host to quiet threat to barely contained rage to completely uncontrolled like some kind of inscrutable tide on an alien planet. 10 Cloverfield Lane would be tense even reading the screenplay, but the way Goodman dominates every frame he’s in turns everything up even higher and makes for some unbelievable tension.

I don’t want to underrate John Gallagher Jr’s contribution to this film (he does fine work and has a devastating monologue) but Mary Elizabeth Winstead is the other half of this film. She plays opposite this dominating presence and holds her own. Where Howard is imposing dangerous force, Michelle is calculating and clever. She doesn’t always know what’s going on but she’s always looking for the next thing, the way out, she never lets herself get too complacent. The two feel like equals in an asymmetrical game of chess, but so too does Winstead feel like the equal of Goodman, and that is the highest praise I can give an actor this week.

It’s hard to praise anything else about the movie because it all just seems to serve these performances. It’s well shot, but it isn’t particularly dynamic or new feeling. The script is a fine effort and has enough levels that I was arguing about character motivations on the car ride home, but there isn’t that much that happens. It has the kind of score that seemingly every remotely scary movie has these days saved by a couple great needle drops on the soundtrack. It’s a sign of good filmmaking that these things fade in to the background, there’s more craft in appearing to do nothing than in being as flashy as possible.

The billion-dollar question for Bad Robot and Paramount here is “Does this make Cloverfield in to a credible anthology horror series?” and the answer seems to be a solid maybe. I’ve seen so many social media posts this weekend comparing the twist ending in 10 Cloverfield Lane to The Twilight Zone, and while that’s not giving the former enough credit and grossly oversimplifying the latter it would need to be the model. If they’re all going to be as compelling as 10 Cloverfield Lane, I would happily watch a movie under this umbrella every few years. If they’re going to be more like the original I’m dramatically less interested and there’s the problem; I do not trust the people at Bad Robot to make enough good movies in a row without a prominent franchise to prop them up. I hope they can prove me wrong.

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