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THE LONG MATINEE TAKES ON BATTLE:LA

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  • March 24, 2011

THE LONG MATINEE-Movie Reviews by Derrick Ferguson

BATTLE: LA

2011
Columbia Pictures

Directed by Jonathan Liebesman
Produced by Jeffrey Chernov and Neal H. Moritz
Written by Christopher Bertolini




Much of the creative entertainments we enjoy are done according to formula, agreed?  Why is such practiced, especially in movies?  Because there are certain movie formulas that are guaranteed to work no matter if the movie is made in 1959 or 1977 or in 2011.  Criticizing a Western for having gunfights at high noon, horses and buffalos is kinda silly because when you watch a Western you have certain expectations of what you’re going to see.  After all, isn’t that why you’re watching a Western?  Because you know the formula, you just want to see them played out in a different mix, is all.
Now, as my dear Aunt Lottie would put it; I say that to say this: I’ve read reviews criticizing BATTLE: LOS ANGELES for being a cliché war movie.  Not that the reviews are wrong.  In fact, it is a cliché war movie.  This is exactly the same kind of movie John Wayne and Audie Murphy were making back in the 40’s and 50’s except the enemies were German and Japanese soldiers, not aliens.  In fact, this could have been a war movie set in Afghanistan or Iraq as that’s how it’s played out: as a modern day war movie.  The only exceptional thing about the enemy is that they come from Outer Space and not Over There.

Meteors land in the waters off major coastal cities.  And inside the meteors are spacecraft containing hostile alien soldiers that swiftly spread into the cities, killing every human in sight.  They make no effort at communication and are not interested in taking prisoners for anal probing.  They’re simply and efficiently going about the job of exterminating the human race.

Marine Staff Sergeant Nanze (Aaron Eckhart) is forced to put off his retirement as he has to replace a platoon sergeant for an important mission.  The platoon he’s assigned to has to rescue civilians from an LAPD station within three hours.  That’s when the Air Force is going to carpet bomb the area.  The platoon commander, Lt. Martinez (Ramon Rodriguez) is kinda leery about Nanze.  The Staff Sergeant is a good Marine, no doubt about that.  But a lot of rumors about Nanze’s last mission have been floating around Camp Pendleton that he doesn’t like.  But orders are orders and so the platoon is off on their mission.  One that swiftly goes wrong as they are ambushed time and again by the relentless alien invaders.

All that you can get just from the TV commercials and the trailers.  BATTLE: LOS ANGELES isn’t trying to make you think it’s going to be one thing, then get you in the theater to find out it’s something else.  It’s about a platoon of Marines trying their best to survive against an enemy they never dreamed they’d be facing.  The movie is as brutally uncomplicated as a cast iron skillet upside the head.  Before the invasion, we get brief vignettes of the various platoon members and they each are a proven War Movie Type: The Green Lieutenant Who Has No Combat Experience.  The Virgin.  The Heroic Black Guy.  The Soldier With A Dark Past.  The Soldier Who Choked Under Fire And Fears He’s A Coward.  And as you watch each one of their vignettes, go ahead and play the game of Who Gets Killed And In Which Order.

So what’s right about the movie?  Aaron Eckhart, who I’m convinced is incapable of turning in a bad performance.  He plays his role as if he’s assuming you’ve never seen a War Movie before.  Michelle Rodriguez surprised me in this one.  Usually she plays one of two roles: The Pissed-Off Latina With Bigger Balls Than Any Man or The Really Pissed-Off Latina With Bigger Balls Than Any Man.  But in this movie she dials her usual anger way back and comes off more as a person and less like a stereotype.
I also liked how we never really get to know the aliens or why they’re here.  Oh, there’s some kind of technobabble about them needing our resources but it’s really not necessary.  They’re The Enemy and that’s all we need to know.  The aliens are tough mollyfoggers but they’re not indestructible.  They’re worthy adversaries for the platoon.

What didn’t I like?  That damn shaky-cam.  The use of it renders the firefights a jumble of meaningless images.  The use of shaky-cam in this movie is so bad that in the first two firefights I could swear that the entire platoon was wiped out and I was honestly surprised when everybody regrouped alive and well.  Once the action starts, the Marines are difficult to tell apart.

So should you see BATTLE: LOS ANGELES?  You should if you can’t wait until the summer to see a summer popcorn movie.  ‘Cause that’s what it is, no more no less.  It’s just here a few months early, that’s all.
116 minutes
PG-13

NEW RELEASES FROM THE MAN IN THE MOON…STONE!

  • News
  • March 24, 2011
Awaken your sense of ADVENTURE!


HOT OFF THE PRESSES!1. KOLCHAK Files #2 (can be found under “horror”).
2. The SPIDER #1 (“action”)3. ZORRO, More tales of! (“action”)
4. CHICKS in CAPES(“action”)5. ROTTEN #9
6. Can-huggers (Banzai, Capt Action, Ghost Skull, &
Moonstone logo!) (“novelty”)& spec variant version(“horror”)


　

SUPER SALE ITEMS!1. The PHANTOM KGB Noir, issues #1-6were $2.99, NOW, while supplies last,
JUST $1.50!—————————————————————–2. VAMPIRE, PA #1-3were $3.99 NOW JUST $0.99!————————————————————–2. DOMINO LADY: NOIRwas $3.99, NOW JUST $0.99!————————————————-3. PAT NOVAK for hire
great story, great dialogue, great art, noir!
Steven Grant/ Tom Mandrake
48pgs, was $4.95, NOW JUST $0.99!
———————————————————–


　

Previously released:
1.Capt Action/Green Hornet Special (action)
2. Honey West #3(mystery)
3. Northern Guard #2 (action)
4. Savage Beauty #1 (action)
5. The Spider: Burning Lead GN (action)


　

AT PRESS NOW:
Honey West #4
Rotten/Zombies vs Cheerleaders Flip book!
AngelTown HC Kolchak, Banzai, Honey West keychains!


　

MOONSTONE NEWS TRANSMISSION
Coming up: *HACK SLASH/Zomibies vs Cheerleaders
one shot of mirth and merriment! *PHASES OF THE MOON
a 3 issue mini series featuring SHEENA, Capt Action, The Spider, Domino Lady, Kolchak, and Honey West!


　

Thanks for your kind attention,
Joe, your Man in the Moon

Mix March Madness, Round 4 – The Quarter-Finals!

  • News
  • March 24, 2011

comicmixmarchmadness550x681-2972902This month we took sixty-four popular webcomics and put them head to head in a single-elimination tournament. We’re now in round four– the Quarter-Finals!

We’re down to the Elite Eight… Penny Arcade, Kawaii Not, A Distant Soil, Gronk, Erfworld, Wondermark, Girls With Slingshots, and Questionable Content!

Remember– polling closes at 11:59 Eastern Standard Time Saturday, March 26!

The updated contender brackets are below:
(more…)

Twitter Updates for 2011-03-24

  • News
  • March 24, 2011
  • @tombrazelton Then you better get cracking on tweeting yourself, son. You gonna let QC slap you around? #
  • RT @cartoonnetwork: Upfront: Excited to be teaming up with @DC_NATION for a brand new block of programming and more! #
  • Ah, the joys of getting Slashdotted… and Redditted… well, I wanted to test server load anyway. #
  • @theisb #AskChris Can Batman build a Batarang so big that he himself cannot throw it? #

ALL PULP INTERVIEWS BILL CRAIG!

  • News
  • March 23, 2011
BILL CRAIG, Writer/Creator
Interview by Chuck Miller, All Pulp Staff Writer
AP: Welcome back to ALL PULP! You’ve been busy since the last time we talked. What have you got going on right now that you’d particularly like to bring to the attention of our readers?
Bill:  Well I just finished off a short story for a future Airship 27 book, and I am in the home stretch on the next Hardluck Hannigan book: The Golden Scorpion, and then I was just invited to submit a story for a new weird western anthology, Showdown At Midnight, from the same people who did Six-Guns Straight from Hell.
AP: What do you like to read, and what have you taken from it over the years? Is there any writer or character in particular that inspired you and helped you shape your own narrative voice?
Bill: I read a lot of mystery, high adventure when I can find it, and westerns.  Doc Savage and the Shadow were inspirational and I used to be able to set down and read one of them in a couple of hours.  Of course I was younger then.  Also Don Pendleton’s Executioner and Jerry Ahern’s The SURVIVALIST both taught me a lot about making my characters human enough for the readers to care about.  Don and Jerry both mentored me to a great degree and I still keep in touch with Don’s wife Linda and with Jerry and his wife Sharon.
AP: Describe for us the writing process. Is there a particular time of day that you find more productive? Do you listen to music? What sort of an atmosphere do you like to work in?
Bill:  I usually write from about 9:30pm till about 11:30pm after I put my 5 year old to bed.  When I listen to music, it is either Jazz or a Soundtrack.  I like when the house has quieted down for the night and actually find rainy nights in the summer when I can open the patio and listen to the rain hitting on the tin roof.  Great atmosphere!
AP: How do you define “pulp?” Everyone seems to have somewhat different ideas about what it entails. What would you include or exclude from the definition?
Bill:  To me “pulp” defines anything that takes place before 1950.  After 1950, it becomes under the label of  “High Adventure”.  Jerry Ahern’s The Takers is a good example and of course the Gideon Hunt books.  But Doc Savage and the Shadow both ran to near the end of the 1940s so I feel the forties need to be included under the definition.  Anything before 1900 falls under the heading of Historical.
AP: Obviously, pulp in the 21st century isn’t going to be exactly like pulp in the 1930s. There’s a whole different perspective, and more than half a century of scientific and cultural progress. In what way do your stories remain true to pulp’s origins, and in what ways do they depart from that?
Bill:  Well, for one thing, the Hardluck Hannigan books take place during World War Two.  But Nazis aren’t the only enemies that Hannigan faces.  He’s also fought a demon and a Russian scientist who wanted to wipe out life on the surface of the Earth and maintain a utopian society in an undersea city.  Future plans also have him going up against criminal masterminds and war profiteers as well.  As far as a departure, the characters are much more three dimensional and you begin to almost think of them as real people.
AP: One of your series stars, Mike “Hardluck” Hannigan, takes place against an authentic historical backdrop—he finds himself contending against Nazis. And there is more than one layer of history and/or folklore here. In “Emerald Death,” for example, you have the story itself set in the Nazi era, and you also have the backstory of the Emerald of Eternity, and, in other stories, the Spear of Goliath and other exotic relics. Are you a history buff? How much do you draw on genuine historical personages and events?
Bill:  I do enjoy history, and I find the World War Two era and the old west to be my favorite areas.  In River of the Sun, Hardluck Hannigan and his friends went in search of legendary explorer Colonel Percy Fawcett, and Englishman who vanished in the Matto Grasso region of the AmazonBasin while looking for a lost outpost of Atlantis called “Z”.  It’s nice to sometimes use the search for a lost historical artifact either real or fictional to use as a catalyst to set the quest for that particular book in motion.  Though sometimes, it’s fun to use a mystery to set them on the road to adventure.
AP: I understand that you based Mike Hannigan on your father. Tell us a bit about that.
Bill:  My Dad is a very important figure in my life.  He grew up in the great depression and read Pulp tales himself.  He also is a Korean War vet and has a good knowledge of the era I am writing about.  Like Hannigan, my Dad grew up on a farm in Greensboro, Indiana.  But unlike Dad, Hannigan left in search of adventure, while my Dad left in service to his country.
AP: You’ve done several novels featuring Jack Riley and Moria Clark. Tell us a bit about that, and how you think those stories compare and contrast with the Hannigan novels. You’re coming from a somewhat different area there.
Bill:  The Jack Riley books are more in tone of what I refer to as High Adventure.  Like the Hannigan books, they are generally globe-spanning stories against large than life villains.  One such being my Oriental Mastermind, ChiPei who both Riley and Hannigan have fought.  He also appears in the Eye of Ka, my story for Airship 2’s upcoming anthology, Tales of the Hanging Monkey which is also a creation of mine.  Difference wise, Riley is an ex CIA agent turned Chicago Cop, and Moria Clark is his investigative reporter girlfriend.  Usually one of their jobs is the catalyst for whatever adventure they go on.  In book four, it was a honeymoon cruise that landed them in the Bermuda triangle and a confrontation with ChiPei.  They faced him again in The Mummy’s Tomb, which actually introduced an 80 some year old Hardluck Hannigan who was one of Riley’s heroes growing up.
          Both series have elements of the fantastic, where the Hannigan books are set against a historical backdrop, the Riley books have each been drawn from headlines in the news at the time they were being written.  Big Oil was a villain in two of the books, the Russian Mob in another, Chi Pei in one, another was the return of an old villain that was bankrolling genetic research to breed perfect killers, and then up against Chi Pei again in the final book.
AP: Have you ever come up with a story idea or concept that you found intimidating? Is there anything you’d like to tackle that you haven’t attempted yet?
Bill:  The Child Stealers was a very intimidating book because it dealt with Child Abductions through Social Services and then the children were sold either into slavery or for genetic testing.  Another dark book was a one shot thriller The Butterfly Tattoo about a serial killer in a small town.  I’d like to write a full length western novel.
AP: You recently did a Hardluck Hannigan video trailer. What inspired you to do that, and how did you go about it?
Bill:  Actually Don Gates had done a trailer for Challenger Storm, his upcoming title for Airship 27 and I liked it.  Plus, I thought it might be a  good way to build up a buzz for The Golden Scorpion which I am hoping to have out in early May.  I simply used Windows Movie maker and shots of all the covers plus some additional artwork that Laura Givens created for me, and then added American Patrol as the music to provide some period authenticity and give the trailer a lively soundtrack.
AP: What’s coming from Bill Craig? You seem to have quite a number of irons in the fire. Any projects you want to discuss? Publications? New characters or series? 
Bill: I am working on the next Hannigan of course, as well as the next two Decker P.I. books, Smugglers’ Blues and A cold and Lonely Death.  I am also in the middle of a project titled Harmony Hills: Savage Autumn about small town secrets.  I’m in line to do stories for some other Airship 27 projects and contemplating a new modern day action series following a character named Jake Donovan.  And of Course Hardluck Hannigan 8: Peril in the North.

THE LONG MATINEE races along the edge with BLADE RUNNER!

  • News
  • March 23, 2011

THE LONG MATINEE-Movie Reviews by Derrick Ferguson

BLADE RUNNER: The Theatrical Version
1982
Warner Bros.
Directed by Ridley Scott
Produced by Michael Deeley
Screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples
Based on the novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” by Philip K. Dick
There’s a good reason why BLADE RUNNER is still hailed as a masterpiece of science fiction/neo-noir/detective pulp filmmaking today.  It’s just that good.  This is the movie; along with “Alien” released two years earlier defined the look and feel of science fiction movies for the next thirty years.  BLADE RUNNER is innovative in a lot of ways but most of all in the way it presented the future.  Of course, for us living in 2011 which isn’t so far away from the 2019 depicted in the movie we can get a chuckle at how far off the movie is in predicting where we would be.
But you look at the movie and what pulls you in is how lived in it looks.  This is no sterile “Logan’s Run” future where everything is clean and shiny.  This is a nasty future with dirt, grim, filth, machines that are made to be functional not pretty.  People wear real clothes with wrinkles that need to be washed.  There are billboards everywhere urging you to buy, buy, buy.  The streets are clogged with pedestrians that walk too fast who cuss at cars that honk at pedestrians who walk too slowly.  All the people don’t look pretty. In fact they look bored, worn down, used up, tired.  Kinda like the people you pass everyday on your way to and home from work, right?
Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is enjoying his retirement.  Once an honored member of L.A.’s Blade Runner Squad, he got sick of it and quit.  You see, his job was killing.  Killing Replicants.  Genetically engineered humanoids created by The Tyrell Corporation as slave labor for Earth’s off-world colonies.  The Replicants are stronger, faster and smarter than humans.  In fact, The Tyrell Corporation claims that their new Nexus-6 models are “More Human Than Human”.  And maybe they are.  Six of them prove resourceful enough to make it back to Earth and Los Angeles.  Which is where the Blade Runner comes in. 
Deckard is pressed back into service by his old boss Bryant (M. Emmett Walsh) and Bryant’s brown-noser Gaff (Edward James Olmos) to hunt down and retire the Nexus-6 Replicants.  It won’t be easy as they’re the most advanced Replicant models.  And they are determined to get to their creator Tyrell (Joe Turkel) and find a way to extend their four-year life span.  Deckard has to navigate through a minefield of humans and Replicants, all with their own agenda and their own plans to discover the truth of what being human means.  At the end of this tangled road is Rachel (Sean Young) a Replicant who believes is human and puts her trust and love in Deckard.  A man who comes to question his own humanity as the line between Human and Replicant becomes more blurred in his relentless pursuit of his quarry.
I love BLADE RUNNER.  That’s the simplest and best way I can put it.  I saw it during its original theatrical run and I love it now.  Mostly because of the way that it looks at the future by looking back.
Let me explain: even though BLADE RUNNER is a movie about the future, there are a lot of throwbacks to the past which make the movie look even more futuristic simply because we haven’t seen stuff like this in movies in a long time.  Rachel’s hair styles and clothing, inspired by Joan Crawford’s look of the 1930’s.  Deckard’s clothing and trenchcoat, inspired by private eyes of the 50’s.  The gritty, noir-ish look of the city with it’s rain-swept streets.   The reto-technology.  And I love the multi-cultural look of the movie which implies that Los Angeles of the future is a Third World culture unto itself.
At the time this movie was made Harrison Ford was #1 at the box office.  And why not?  He was starring in two major movie franchises and he took the BLADE RUNNER job to expand his range.  And I think he pulled it off extremely well.  There’s a real Humphrey Bogart-ish quality to his performance in this one.  The role of Deckard is obviously meant to be a throwback to Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe and it works.  Again, the whole success of this movie lies in the setting and technology reaching to the future while the clothing, attitudes and style of filmmaking reaches to the past.  It an extraordinary melding of past and future that many films have tried to copy but only BLADE RUNNER captured and captured exceedingly well.
Sean Young quickly got a reputation in Hollywood as being exceeding difficult to work with which I think is a shame.  She’s astoundingly good in this movie and I again point to her Joan Crawford-influenced make-up, wardrobe and style of acting as to why.  Rutgar Hauer steals the movie in terms of acting.  As Roy Batty his final speech has gone down in movie history.  And rightly so.  Few movie characters have died in such a memorable fashion as Roy Batty. 
So should you see BLADE RUNNER?  Chances are you already have.  At least one of the several versions available.  There’s a Director’s Cut.  A Final Director’s Cut.  An Ultimate Final Director’s Cut.  An Ultimate Platinum Final Director’s Cut and who knows how many others.  Last I heard there were seven versions available.  My recommendation?  Start with the Theatrical Version so you can see it the way we saw it back in 1982 and then go from there.  But any way you see BLADE RUNNER, but all means see it and enjoy it.  

Mix March Madness Webcomics Tournament: Round 3 Play By Play!

  • News
  • March 23, 2011

comicmixmarchmadness550x681-2448089This month we took sixty-four popular webcomics and put them head to head in a single-elimination tournament. We’re now in round three– the Sweet 16!

Erfworld continues its dominance in the brackets, with Kawaii Not showing surprising strength. Theater Hopper is surprisingly quiet, but they’ve gotten late traction before.

And at this point, nobody has an insurmountable lead– anybody can make a call out to their followers and retake the lead, and after two days of hand-to-hand electioneering at C2E2, the scores can really change. Every match is still too close to call.

So get your votes in– and see who becomes the Elite 8!

[poll id=”51″]

[poll id=”52″]

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[poll id=”54″]

[poll id=”55″]

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Our own logs are also showing respectable traffic going out to all the participating strips, and we’re getting reports of people reading entire runs at a shot– which has got to be spiking numbers for everybody, which was part of the idea.

Remember– polling closes at 11:59 Eastern Standard Time tonight, March 23!

(more…)

Review: ‘The Birth of the Dread Remora’

  • News
  • March 23, 2011

Possibly the very best thing for science fiction fans about the so-called digital publishing revolution is the tremendously lowered bar to entry. Concepts and approaches that traditional publishers might deem too risky to fly in the fickle retail market are finding new life on platforms like Amazon Kindle and [[[Smashwords]]]. Take, for example, [[[The Scattered Earth]]] project: three writers (friends of ComicMix Aaron Rosenberg, Steven Savile, and David Niall Wilson), three novels, three worlds in a shared universe that will only later make the links between stories apparent.

I had the chance to read Rosenberg’s [[[The Birth of the Dread Remora]]], the first book in The Scattered Earth cycle, and I have to say – thank goodness for the rise of the ebook, because otherwise this might never have seen the light of day. It’s a rollicking space opera about the adventures of the Remora, the first-ever space vessel designed by a presumably post-apocalyptic Earth-based race of amphibious humans that resembles the Nautilus more than it does the Enterprise. (more…)

Twitter Updates for 2011-03-23

  • News
  • March 23, 2011
  • @stephenwacker @JHickman @DanSlott Has anyone ever read themselves into becoming a bad writer? #
  • Check out this Amazon deal: '75 Years Of DC Comics: The Art Of Modern Mythmaking' at nearly half price! http://amzn.to/epvjJC #
  • @Kevin_Church @andykhouri How can the girls be naked AND cosplaying at the same time? #
  • @tombrazelton Nice to avenge @gmcalpin — of course, if his fight went the other way, you'd be trying to crush him now. #
  • RT @slashfilm: Albert Pyun’s 1990 ‘Captain America’ Is Getting a Director’s Cut http://bit.ly/gAWlPf #

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