Tagged: film

Back to the Futurama

  • News
  • July 29, 2007

futuramairobot-8267542In the future, there will be no graves and nothing will stay dead. Motor-shock is coming.

The first original Futurama production since the series was canceled in 2003 will be a feature-length film, Futurama: Bender’s Big Score that will go directly to DVD and be available on November 27th. The new film features the show’s original cast and crew, and its release marks the second time that a Fox cartoon series has spawned a direct-to-DVD film after cancellation (Family Guy: Stewie Griffin, the Untold Story was the first). Previews were shown at SDCC with the crowd going nuts, as you’d expect.

Fox is planning to release three additional Futurama direct-to-DVD features during 2008, Futurama: The Beast With a Billion Backs, Futurama: Bender’s Game, and Futurama: Into the Wild, Green Yonder.  In addition to the original cast each Futurama film will feature guest stars.  Al Gore, Sarah Silverman and Coolio appear in Bender’s Big Score.

The release of the direct-to-DVD features doesn’t affect the previously announced plans to revive Futurama in episodic form on Comedy Central in 2008 (see "Futurama Revived"). The producers of the series plan on chopping up the features, adding new material and airing the resulting reconfigured new 22-minute episodes on Comedy Central during 2008 along with reruns of the original 72 episodes, much as they did with Stewie Griffin, the Untold Story. Click here to see a faux trailer.

RIC MEYERS: Hard Dorm

  • News
  • July 15, 2007

dorm-8367722It’s about time I got around to Tartan – specifically Tartan Asia Extreme, since they’ve been inundating the DVD market with every Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Thai “horror” movie they can get their well-manicured hands on. I put horror in quotes, because, in reality, many of their releases are actually episodes of The Twilight Zone and Tales from the Crypt with delusions of cinematic grandeur – essentially familiar ghost revenge sagas pumped and/or padded to feature length. I also say “well-manicured,” because, whatever the overall quality of the film they’re presenting, Tartan’s packaging is uniformly classy.

On the one hand, if you’ve yet to have Tartan’s special editions of South Korean director Park Chan-wook’s “Vengeance” trilogy (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, and Old Boy), acquire them with all speed (and watch them in the aforementioned order, despite their actual release dates). On the other hand, I showed eighteen hours of Tartan’s other Asia Extreme releases at last year’s World Science Fiction Convention and didn’t see a single film that rated above “okay.”

So warned, let’s judge some of their latest releases from the special features perspective. First, there’s Dorm, a Thai award winner that strives to be like Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone. Both concern what happens to a young man in a creepy private school, and while del Toro connects the ghosts to the Spanish Civil War, director Songyos Sugmakanan weaves it within the universal loneliness of an outcast new student. It’s a well-made mood piece more than anything else, and a fine one, but, as previously mentioned, it would have been well-served as a ninety minute (or less) chiller, rather than the 110 minute saga it is.

Tartan attaches an interesting audio commentary with Songyos and some of his cast, in addition to a “making of” (which is really a ten minute on-set home movie of the complications that come of making a film with a pre-teen cast), a “behind the scenes” (which are actually a bunch of short prevue pieces detailing the cast and plot), fittingly eerie deleted scenes, a special effect featurette, and a welcome “character introduction,” which is like a visual program book. All in all, it’s a satisfying job. (more…)

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MOVIE REVIEW: Harry Potter and the Profit of Cash

486136925_ec5fc13f8d-6540263I just came out of a screening of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth installment of the series, and before I go spouting off my likes and dislikes, I wanted to forewarn anybody reading this review that my expertise is vastly limited in the world of J.K Rowling. While I’ve never read the books, and it’s not due to a disliking or laziness, I just find the concept of visual storytelling much more effective than having me conjure up images from the deep and dark recesses of my imagination.

With that said, I want readers to understand that I’m reviewing this film as just that, a film, and not so much a visual appendage of the book. So please keep the hate mail that starts off with “You ignorant twit…” to a minimum.

Now that that is out of the way, I loved the film. It had all of the visual aspects and plot maturity that the previous films were leading up to, and I know we are only going upwards from here. The last film left us with the big reveal of nose-less Ralph Fiennes as our quintessential baddie Lord Voldemort, and Harry taking his first step of many into adulthood. There lies my biggest problem with the film, but we’ll take it slow, as per usual.

Putting our best foot forward, the visual effects never cease to amaze me in each of these films. Each director (in this case, BBC veteran David Yates) has brought a different look and feel to the film they were charged with, and gave the film an entirely fresh feel, without diverting too far from the original text. In this film, we get more special effects than any of its previous predecessors. Between CG’d giants, to CG’d fireworks, even to Ralph Fiennes CG’d lack of a nose, there is certainly more computer graphics in this film than you can wave a stick at. Though through all of this, not once was I taken out of the mythos by a lack of belief, all thanks to the superior visual effects.

By far my favorite aspect of the film to talk about, and probably the one that will get me in the most trouble, is the undertone used throughout the first and second act. That undertone being the same thing that has fueled some of the most important science fiction and fantasy films of our era, and probably before that. This message of course is essentially “Damn the Man!”

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Transformers with a side of Ratatouille

Box Office Mojo’s weekend movie estimates show that Transformers made a whopping $67.6 million, including $22 million on Friday alone. The total gross so far is $152.5 million since Wednesday. Per theater grosses were $16,853, more than double what the next ranked film, Ratatouille, took in.

The Pixar rat did okay, though, with a weekend haul of over $29 mil, and a per-theater gross of $7,367. So far, it’s made more than $109.5 million.

The other top-tenners are Live Free or Die Hard ($17.4 million), License to Wed ($10.4 million), Evan Almighty ($8.4 million), 1408 ($7.14 million), Knocked Up ($5.19 million), Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer ($4.15 million), Sicko ($3.65 milion) and Ocean’s Thirteen ($3.525 million).

Knocked Up, which cost abou $30 milion, has earned more than $132 million so far this summer, making it the most profitable non-documentary film on the list so far.

Family Guy beta versions

Okay, technically Family Guy is a Sunday night cartoon rather than a Saturday morning one; let’s just go with it.

As you might imagine, Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy did not spring forth fully formed from the pen like Bosko The Clown did, there were earlier versions. Here we have Seth introducing a 1995 early presentation reel of a proto-Griffin that he developed while he was a student at the Rhode Island School of Design, and yes, we have to warn you that it’s probably Not Safe For Work:

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Cloverfield Madness!

Well, as good as the Transformers flick was, there still seems to be even more buzz about one of the trailers that preceded it. The only things we, the public, know are that it opens 1-18-08, J.J. Abrams is attached through his production company, Bad Robot, and it’s shot from ground level as a giant monster/robot/thing criticizes some of New York’s statues. What we, the Internet savvy folk, know is that the working title of the film is Cloverfield, and that’s about it. 

If you haven’t gone to see Transformers yet and have no clue what I’m talking about, check out the really bad bootleg of it below. With the hype that this is getting, along with the already loyal Lost fans, this project is shaping up to be what Godzilla and The Blair Witch Project should have been.

On another interesting note, a dedicated fan decided to document how he analyzed not only the trailer but the image found on the Cloverfield website. Check it out, courtesy of YouTube.

Also, fitting in with the Dark Knight viral marketing tool, two sites have been put up that are attached to the film. Whether or not the allude to anything that would give us some insight is questionable. The first site is 1-18-08.com and as of right now, we have a screen cap of some possible future victims, but bookmark this bad boy, because I’m sure there will be more content up there soon.

And finally, Paramount secretly released EthanHaasWasRight.com, which is an interesting Java Puzzle that will give you lots of possible info on the plot if you complete it. The further you get, the more videos you unlock in which frightened people speak of "Things Changing on August 1."

For all of the news as it comes on next January’s mysterious and exciting project, keep checking us here at ComicMix.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Transformers

bumblebee_2007movie-6340859When this summer hit, only one image popped into my head, and it wasn’t a black spider, a drunk pirate, or a dorky kid with glasses. All I saw since day one was a semi truck that turned into a 50-foot robot. So as you can assume, going into the film my expectations were a little high, and you had better believe they were met with bells on.

Seeing as this film is truly the ultimate summer blockbuster (thanks, Mr. Bay), I’m going to have to break down this film like I do all others with the acting, the plot, and of course the one thing that ties the entire movie together: the effects.

Starting with the worst note and working our way up, the acting wasn’t the worst I’ve seen in a Bay film, but wasn’t exactly Gone with the Wind. I don’t know about you, but I expect when I’m going to see a movie about giant robots from space, I want Gone with the Wind.

Putting aside my disdain for Shia LaBeouf, I was just like every other fanboy out there on the Internet that rolled his or her eyes when the list of cameo’s for the flick got released. Bernie Mac’s presence in the film was completely superfluous, other than about eight seconds, his entire sequence should have gotten well acquainted with the floor. As well as John Turturro’s scenes. Turturro plays the cocky secret government agency role very well, but after about 10 minutes, it becomes too much to handle, and he needs to go away. When doing the entire exposition scene of Megatron and the plot-focusing All-Spark cube, there was no need for a cocky government type. Just faces of awe.

LaBeouf and Megan Fox did a decent job of playing the frightened kids… at first. But once the imminent threat of world domination became second priority to LeBeouf’s parents finding him alone in a room with a girl, the film kind of lost its head. As scary as chracter actor Kevin Dunn can be, a gigantic robot with a sword is far scarier. Finally, Jon Voight, Josh Duhamel, and Tyrese “Hero For Hire” Gibson played roles that were both aiding in the “Bay” way of showing the how disasters effect people on a human level, but these characters were effortlessly forgettable in comparison to the robots.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Live Free Or Die Hard

1559747260-1952543Well, after 12 years John McClain is back in full force with Live Free or Die Hard, the fourth sequel in the series, and the sixth sequel to come out this summer. I have to say going into the flick I wasn’t expecting much, especially after seeing the trailer, which only made me believe Ric Meyer’s micro-review in saying that this isn’t a Die Hard sequel, it’s actually the unwritten sequel for Unbreakable. So between that and the fact that this is the first Die Hard film to receive a PG-13 Rating, I was less than excited for it.

Having that frame of mind, I think I was able to enjoy the film much more. I wasn’t looking for a direct comparison to the first three movies, I just wanted a good John McClain movie, and that’s what I got. The biggest issue with Bruce Willis’ character is that Willis himself has so drastically changed his acting style in the last 12 years, that it’s like asking Walt Disney’s head to unfreeze itself and start drawing exactly like he used to. Granted the fun loving, swearing Bruce Willis that we remember from the first flicks is long gone, and we’re left with the bald, grumpy old man Willis who looks like he has to force himself to smile, but we all just have to change with the times, and even McClain has to age.

Following the formula of With a Vengeance, our hero is accompanied by a would-be sidekick, who fights spends a good chunk of the movie deciding whether or not this is a battle worth fighting, and of course breaking out of his mold by the end of the movie to become someone super cop John McClain can respect. This time around, we get Mac Boy Justin Long as the cowardly super hacker Matt Fuller. Long played the role just as any sidekick should, by accentuating the heroism of…well, the hero.

Also along for the ride were Maggie Q and Tim Olyphant as the evil duo. Everywhere I go, guys are falling in love with Maggie Q, and until checking out this movie I didn’t know why. She manages to play the seductive-yet-deadly henchwoman very well. And as per usual, Olyphant oozes charisma as the bad guy in this picture. I’ve been following this guy since Gone in 60 Seconds, and I’ve had nothing but good things to say about each of his roles.

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MIKE GOLD: The Darknight Contrarian

  • News
  • June 18, 2007

mikegold100-9609454I used to have a reputation for sometimes being kind of negative. That comes with the career in radio and “journalism,” and I’ve worked at overcoming it. But, like most childhood pleasures, not using a skill doesn’t mean you no longer know how to use it.

For example. I have come to the conclusion that the Paris Hilton affair has become a legitimate news story (it didn’t start out that way), and that she got screwed.

After listening to a bunch of experts and pundits and reporters, it seems pretty clear to me that Hilton is doing time for being Paris Hilton – people in similar situations, and, sadly, there’s no shortage of them – would be given community service or pay a fine or be under house confinement. Being locked up at the taxpayers’ expense for such a violation is nearly unheard of. And, yes, in California as well as most of the rest of these United States the sheriff is charged to run his prisons as he sees fit.

tx_hilton_paris-4150077Hilton was busted for violating her plea agreement. As such, she was real stupid. Hilton is despised for being an “artificial” celebrity, as if there’s any other kind, and for being a whinny spoiled brat. I understand; she is a whinny spoiled brat. But that’s not against the law; if it were, I’d have a much, much easier time going shopping here in Fairfield County Connecticut.

So Hilton is serving time not for breaking the law but for being a high-profile stupid whiny brat. She has my sympathy; fair is fair and, as she said while she was being hauled off to the slammer kicking and screaming for her mommy, this is not fair.

For example. Everybody seems bent out of shape about the conclusion to The Sopranos, including ComicMix’s own John Ostrander.  I think the ending was fine. Not great, not awesome, but exactly on the money.
 
02-livia6-3641527This is a show that lost its raison d’être the moment actress Nancy Marchand died, back in 2000. Her character, momma Livia Soprano, was the story’s anchor. Without her, the plot never was as compelling, nor was it as understandable. It was reduced to its core element: Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, the family of Made Men.

And that’s what the ending was all about. It didn’t matter if Tony got wacked in the restaurant in front of his family. If it didn’t happen then, if could just as easily happen the next day or the day after. Being a mob boss is not a “safe” job – Al Capone ran his mob for about seven years, and was only a functioning operative in that mob for a total of about a dozen years.

Here’s the proof: midway through that final episode, Anthony Junior became Christopher Moltisanti, which, as we all know, is what his father should have wanted all along. He got the mob-connected job in the film business, he got the mob-connected car, he’s always had the mob-connected father but now daddy finally delivered for him. Life goes on with the Nelson Family of New Jersey, and what goes around stays around. Nothing changes.

george-bush-leads-the-us-towar-6283702And, sadly, that’s what The Sopranos had been about.

For example. George W. Bush.

I’ve got nothing.

And, come to think of it, neither does George.

Mike Gold is editor-in-chief of ComicMix.

REVIEW: Fantastic Four Two

ff2-4655838OK, so here we go: it’s the official midway point between the first and latter half of the Summer of Blockbusters. With last week’s box office flop consisting of Ocean’s 13 and Hostel Part 2, a sequel to a film nobody was all that psyched about to begin with has got failure written all over it, right? Wrong. Of the films I have caught this summer, FF2 has got to be my favorite, which is probably the highest honor I can give it. From titles to credits, I only complained once, and even that wasn’t totally worthy of complaint. But I’m getting ahead of myself, we’ve done this enough times for me not to deter from format, of course we have to break the film down and throw in a few obscure comic references, or else it just wouldn’t feel right.

Starting off with the acting, I was more than happy with everyone’s performances in the film, including Alba’s, who I bitched and moaned about in the previous film. This movie has got enough content jam-packed into 89 minutes that her flickering eyes and blank stare were almost as invisible as the character herself.

My favorite part of a superhero sequel is that we’re beyond the need for introductions and origins, and we can get to the grits of the character. There were a few things I wanted in the first film that were delivered with bells on in this film. Those being: more Johnny and Ben camaraderie, less “will they or won’t they” with Sue and Reed, and a whole lot less of Julian McMahon looking somber. While we got much more of the first, the second two still had their moments, but again with a film that primarily shifts the focus on a brand new character, the little problems like that get lost in the cracks. We also get a reprise of Stan Lee, unsurprisingly, but this time he doesn’t come back as Postman Willie Lumpkin, but another, very special character. I won’t give it away, but I’ll drop a hint: He’s old.

The next section of course being the special effects of the film. And I’m somewhat jaded in this category, because for years, the only Fantastic Four I knew of other than ink on paper was from the Roger Corman epic, and those of you who remember that also remember a lot of clay-mation stretchiness and I Dream of Jeannie camera tricks for the invisible effect. So comparing it to the two new films is like holding a candle up to the sun. The effects started off pretty poor, but then came to blow me away by the end of the flick. This is where we touch on the giant purple elephant in the room, Galactus.

I’m going to put an end to the rumor right now and admit that Yes: Galactus is a cloud, BUT! It’s completely pulled off in this picture. I was the first webgeek to bitch and moan that I wanted a giant purple dude like we’ve always known the Devourer of Worlds to be, but when you consider the impact of a twister three times the size of earth coming to literally eat the world, the image is haunting, and even us original geeks get a nod from the crew towards the end of the picture. Again, I don’t want to spoil too much, but during the final battle, look directly into the “belly of Galactus” to see an old face.

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