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Marc Alan Fishman: How To Lose Your (Convention) Virginity
On a recent jaunt into the social media interwebs, an old foosball buddy of mine asked that I help him discover the creepy, crazy, wacky world of comic book conventions. By proxy, I assume he also means sci-fi cons, pop culture cons, and possibly the auto show. In any event? Todd Burrows, I got your wonderfully tattoo’ed back. Consider this your introduction and survival guide all rolled up into one easy to read article. Forgive me though, this ain’t Buzzfeed, so don’t expect 10 glorious animated gifs for scrolling.
Let us assume you’re not a comic guy, but this whole comic thing is mildly intriguing to you. Perhaps a person you used to know back in high school is now a small indie publisher, and you think it’d be neat to see him again. Perhaps that publisher from time to time uses his or her friends in model reference shots, and you think that maybe you’d like to see yourself as a superhero or nefarious villain. And maybe, just maybe, you think dipping your toe into the waters of these new-fangled cons would be a good way to know if all your intrigue is just a waste of your time. I know, that’s a lot of supposition. But I digress. The question is simple: Why Go To A Comic Con?
It’s inclusive.
Since the first time I’ve stepped onto a convention floor, I’ve never once felt on the ‘outside’ of the industry. Once your badge is flung around your neck – be you a complete noob or a working professional – you’ll find most every con filled with folks in the exact same situation. In the pair of decades I have considered myself a fan, I’ve not once found a fellow con-goer not willing to lend an opinion, give a bit of backstory, or make an education recommendation on a good read. It can be daunting, no doubt, to jump in head-first to a world you think you don’t know. But lucky for you? Comics have permeated TV, movies, and pop-culture now for so long, there’s little to no chance you haven’t been introduced already without even knowing it. (more…)
The Point Radio: Another Demise For DROP DEAD DIVA
It’s a story that can only happen in today’s TV world. Lifetime’s DROP DEAD DIVA was revived from a cancellation last year, only to haves the network drop the curtain on the current sixth season. Is it really the end for a show that is all about coming back from the dead? EP and creator, Josh Berman, weighs in plus more with Tom Riley and Laura Haddock on the new season of DaVINCI’S DEMONS (premiering this weekend on Starz). And the POWERS TV show finally gets a home!
THE POINT covers it 24/7! Take us ANYWHERE on ANY mobile device (Apple or Android). Just get the free app, iNet Radio in The iTunes App store – and it’s FREE! The Point Radio – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE – and follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.
Win a Blu-ray copy of Jerry Lewis’ Famed The King of Comedy
Jerry Lewis is a legendary comedian and entertainer from his days working with Dean Martin as a hilarious comedy duo to his solo career as a filmmaker. He was also the star of a long-running comic from DC Comics that used brilliant work from Arnold Drake, Bob Oksner, and a newcomer named Neal Adams. One of Lewis’ later efforts, The King of Comedy, is finally coming to Blu-ray on March 25 and to celebrate, our friends at 20th Century Home Entertainment gave us a copy as a prize.
To enter, you need to name your favorite Jerry Lewis film and why. All entries must be submitted by 11:59 p.m., Tuesday, March 25. The contest is open only to readers in the United States and Canada. The judgment of ComicMix will be final.
The King of Comedy, The 30th Anniversary
Academy Award® Winner Robert De Niro*, Jerry Lewis and Sandra Bernhard give mesmerizing performances in this “chilling black comedy” (TV Guide’s Movie Guide) that explores the painfully high and often hilarious price of fame. Desperate to be a star, struggling stand-up comedian Rupert Pupkin (De Niro) enlists the aid of his fanatical friend Masha (Bernhard) to kidnap talk show host Jerry Langford (Lewis). The ransom? A guest spot for Pupkin. The results? Outrageous! The King of Comedy stands as Scorsese’s prophetic masterpiece which confronts a celebrity culture that “looks more disturbingly current with each passing year” (Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide).
*Actor, Raging Bull, 1980; Supporting Actor, The Godfather Part II, 1974.
Special Features
- Tribeca Film Festival: A Conversation with Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, and Jerry Lewis
- A Shot to the Top: The Making of The King of Comedy
- Deleted And Extended Scenes
- Theatrical Trailer and TV Spot
King of Comedy, The 30th Anniversary Blu-ray
Street Date: March 25, 2014
Prebook Date: February 26, 2013
Screen Format: Widescreen 1.85:1
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 1.0
Spanish Dolby Digital 1.0
French Dolby Digital 1.0
Subtitles: English SDH/Spanish
U.S. Rating PG
Total Run Time: 109 minutes
Closed Captioned: Yes
THE LAW IS A ASS #311: Commissioner Gordon: Threat Or Menace?
All I can conclude is that James Gordon attended police academy with Steve Guttenberg. That’s the only explanation I can come up with for what he did in Detective Comics #25.
Detective Comics #25 is set during Batman: Year Zero which, despite that title means the story takes place during Batman’s first year, not his zeroth year. At this time, James Gordon wasn’t Commissioner of the G.C.P.D. yet, just a recent transfer from Chicago who found himself in a city overrun by mobsters and crooked cops paid to look the other way while the mobsters mobbed. Gordon wanted to take down both the mobsters and the corrupt cops, starting with Roman Sionis, who Gordon suspected was the secret head behind the Black Mask gang. So what Gordon did was…
Oh, wait. SPOILER WARNING! Leaving your milk out will spoil the milk. Reading this column will spoil Detective Comics # 25. If you don’t want either your milk or comic books spoiled, don’t leave your milk out and don’t read this column. (No, wait. Do read it, just finish reading Detective Comics # 25 first.) (more…)
Review: “Comic Book Babylon”
Comic book writer, editor, and raconteur Clifford Meth took to Kickstarter to fund the publication of Comic Book Babylon
The Tweeks Review “Mr. Peabody & Sherman”
The Tweeks review “Mr. Peabody & Sherman”.
Vote Now in Mix March Madness 2014 Webcomics Tournament Round 2!
UPDATE 3/24: Round 2 is over… vote in Round 3 now!
Round 2 of the Mix March Madness 2014 Webcomics Tournament starts now! Voting lasts until Midnight EDT on Saturday, March 22!
Congratulations to everyone who made it through Round 1! We’re down to 64 webcomics, and we’ve raised another $118 for the Hero Initiative. And we’ve listened to you and put splits between the polls to make it easier to see who’s going head to head when you vote.
We’ve had a few surprise upsets– Camp Weedonwatcha pulling ahead, as did Sinfest, while Derelict beat Axe Cop in a squeaker. How will they do this time around? Here are the latest standings!
Dennis O’Neil: Veronica
Well, my friends, here we are, home after a weekend of adventure down south in horse country.
That’s a lie.
We intended to spend the weekend in Lexington, Kentucky, but we never got there. Friday/travel day, we got up at the crack of eight a.m., which for us is pretty early, and arrived at the Westchester airfield on time. The line in front of U.S. Air’s counter seemed unusually long and, after a fidgety while, we were facing an airline employee and learning the reason for the long wait: the flight had been cancelled and no other flights to our destination would be leaving that day. The best the very accommodating agent could do would require us to drive through New York traffic to another airport, change planes somewhere in the journey, and arrive in Lexington after the con had closed. We didn’t know about travel the following day, but assuming it was possible, we wouldn’t arrive until the con was, in all likelihood, mostly history. So I made one of those snap decisions we often regret and cancelled the whole trip. Then I spent much of the ensuing three days wishing I’d pushed harder, tried harder, mostly to assuage my conscience. I hate not doing what I’ve said I’ll do – would I have succeeded in politics? – and I felt I owed the Kentuckians something, which is a long story not to be told here.
So, instead of enjoying the bluegrass turf, we came home and eventually did a movies-on-demand viewing of Veronica Mars. I used to call Veronica’s television show a guilty pleasure. But why guilty? It was, in retrospect. a perfectly acceptable mass entertainment, maybe a cut or two above most of its kind. I didn’t miss the explosions or car chases – there were none – and the violence was well-choreographed, but fairly mild, and not overused. The plot was multi-layered and reasonably complex, but again, is this something we want to complain about? The ending left the sequel door wide open, but hey – this is the twenty first century media and am I not contemplating a sequel to my grocery list? (Bet there’ll be one, too.)
Which brings us to today. March 17. St. Patrick’s Day. Our annual bacchanalia. The first bacchanalia was begun in early history to honor the god bacchus. Our version is, as I type, being celebrated about 25 miles to the south, in Manhattan, among many other places, and presumably exists to honor a Christian saint named Patrick who allegedly evicted the snakes from Ireland, though a skeptic might say that the snakes symbolized the so-called pagans. That might include some of you, but not to worry: you almost certainly don’t live in fifth-century Ireland.
If you live in twenty first century Manhattan, well…maybe being a pagan is the least of your worries.
REVIEW: The Book Thief
The Coming of Age book has become fodder for dystopian science fiction and fantasy while some of the toughest Worldbuilding is done right here, on the planet Earth. Things don’t get more dystopian than growing up in Nazi Germany during World War II. As captured by Austrian author Markus Zusak, The Book Thief is a harrowing, sorrowful tale about life during wartime. The 2005 novel is amusingly narrated by Death and tells of his fascination with Liesel Meminger (Sophie Nélisse), who comes to his attention when collecting her brother.
The novel has been justly feted over the years and the inevitable film adaptation arrived in November and is now out on disc from 20th Century Home Entertainment. The film is faithful without fully capturing the novel’s tone, aided by some solid performances, excellent production design and a John Williams score that justly earned an Academy Award nomination without imitating his Schindler’s List, which covered much of the same time.
Liesel winds up handed over to Hans (Geoffrey Rush) and Rosa (Emily Watson) Hubermann for safekeeping and she has to make new friends and form new attachments in an unfamiliar environment. While Hans quickly grows to like Liesel, Rosa is upset that the brother and the money to care for him has vanished and seems to take it out on the ten year old. When it appears she is illiterate, slowly Hans teaches her to read and books become precious to her. She also becomes the object of fascination to the boy next door, Rudy (Nico Liersch).
Life is further upended when Max Vanderburg (Ben Schnetzer) shows up, obligating Hans to pay a debt stretching back to World War I – in this case, honoring Max’s father for saving Hans’ life. The scenes between Max and Liesel are among the book – and film’s – best.
The rest of her life in the small community is a varied bunch and you can’t help but wince to watch the children inducted into the Hitler Youth. This includes the ritual book burning where she rescues The Invisible Man and keeps it, despite the mayor’s wife, Ilsa Hermann (Barbara Auer), knowing her secret. Her bravery is later rewarded when Liesel is tasked by Rosa to bring the Hermann’s laundry to Ilsa, opening a new chapter for her.
The book is nicely condensed and is serviceable for those who haven’t read the book but once more, the richness of voice in print is absent from the film. While Rush and Watson do nicely, they can’t carry the whole film which is at time disjointed and lacking in the Zusak magic.
Overall, the transfer to disc is fine and worth a look. The extras that accompany the Blu-ray include a handful of mostly superfluous Deleted Scenes (6:34) and an assortment of featurettes on the making of the adaptation, A Hidden Truth: Bringing The Book Thief to Life (31:05). I appreciate that Zusak is well represented here but overall this is a perfunctory set of short pieces.
