Tagged: movie

Happy Silver Anniversary, Return of the Jedi!

Twenty-five years ago today (and six years after the original Star Wars opened) the summer movie season of 1983 blew wide open with the finale to the Star Wars saga — if you don’t count the re-releases, the three movie prequels, the multiple animated series, the books, the comics, oh, you get the idea.

And what do we remember from the film? Do we remember the escape from the Sarlaac? Do we remember the light saber duel between (spoiler) father and son? Do we remember Leia’s slave girl outfit?

Well, of course we remember the outfit. But we also remember the true heroes of the film, as memorialized here:

 

 

I think I speak for everyone here at ComicMix when I say, "yub yub".

Brian K. Vaughan to Write ‘Runaways’ Movie

Big name superheroes like The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America and The Avengers aren’t the only Marvel properties hitting the big screen.

The lesser known characters are getting their crack at film stardom, including the ragtag group of young heroes known as the Runaways.

Created in 2002 by Brian K. Vaughan as part of Marvel’s Tsunami line, Runaways follows a group of kids who discover their parents are evil supervillains. Vaughn, who left the series at the conclusion of the second volume, will return to the property he co-created and write the script for the upcoming movie.

No director is currently attached to the film, but maybe they’ll hire Richard Donner and the movie will be like a super-powered version of The Goonies.

(via Hollywood Reporter)

ComicMix Six: The Best Movies Adapted From Comic Books

In a previous edition of ComicMix Six, I set forth my picks for The Worst Movies Adapted from Comic Books. Now, because a "worst" list is nothing without a "best" list, I’ve assembled another one for you. This time around, I’m casting the spotlight on the opposite of bad movies and highlighting The Best Movies Adapted from Comic Books.

In contrast to the worst films, these stellar examples of cinematic goodness are not only great comic book adaptations, they’re great movies, too. From brilliant direction, exciting visuals that enhance rather than obscure the story, to compelling peformances, these six films deliver in a big way.

They alse showcase adherence to, and reverence for, their source material and represent what happens when talented people who appreciate comics get together to make a movie. Plus, they’re just plain fun to watch.

So now, without further ado and in no particular order, here is my ComicMix Six list of The Best Movies Adapted from Comic Books.

 

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‘The Incredible Hulk’ Smashes Other Movie Standees

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Theater lobbies littered with cardboard standees promoting Indiana Jones, Dark Knight, Hellboy II and other movies may be a familiar sight these days, but to paraphrase the Hulk, they’re just "puny banners!"

Selected theaters across the country recently received life-size maquettes to promote the release of The Incredible Hulk on June 13. And when we say "life-size," we mean it! 

Measuring over 8-feet tall and as wide as a truck, simply standing next to one of the maquettes is enough to understand why that anonymous soldier in the classic Stan Lee/Jack Kirby origin issue called him a "hulking monster."

You have to wonder which movie theater employee gets to take this home.

The Real Hero, by Dennis O’Neil

Deju vu all over again? Why, sure.

About 19 years ago, I was being pulled into the summer movie/blockbuster season anticipating two of the myriad entertainments soon to be playing at a theater near me. One was Tim Burton’s second Batman flick, with Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman and Danny Devito as a particularly nasty Penguin. Oh, and Michael Keaton in his final appearance as the Caped Crusader. (Back then, although he was not a barrel of laughs, he may have been just an eensy-bitsy too cheerful to qualify as a Dark Knight.) Batman was soaking up most of my professional life – I was editing the comic books – and I was writing a comics version of the screenplay, and so I had a distant, tenuous but real interest in the movie. And anyone who’s ever been involved with a Major Motion Picture knows that there is an excitement to such projects that ripples outward to touch even us at their distant edges. (Which may be why working in movies seems to be, for many, so addictive.) In sum: yeah, I was awaiting the Batman flick with more than idle curiosity.

But what I was really waiting for was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Batman was my job; Indy was my hero. I may have been associating him with an earlier hero, Mr. Paladin, who was the central character in a once-popular, 30-minute TV western called Have Gun, Will Travel. What No-First-Name Paladin and Indiana Jones had in common, besides impressive looks and charisma, and the ability to look good riding a horse, a powerful sense of right and wrong, and great prowess in combat with either fists or weapons, was this: They were smart. More – they were readers! And more – they were even intellectuals!

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Child Brides of the Ozarks and Beyond, by Michael H. Price

child-bride-poster-5914420Sixty-five years after a double-edged sword of a movie called Child Bride of the Ozarks professed to indict the custom of underage marriage – while courting a leering, voyeuristic audience, naturally – the issue remains urgent. Last month’s raids upon a polygamist sect in Texas demonstrate that such persistence, involving girls scarcely into their teens, belongs as much to the presumably Civilized World as to the more thoroughly well-hidden corners of the planet: The Yearning for Zion Ranch had hidden in plain sight, a Third World concentration camp, bunkered in alongside Mainstream Amerika.

Meanwhile in the Dominant Culture, a Florida-based plastic surgeon named Michael Salzhauer has published a cartoon-storybook testament to female objectification called My Beautiful Mommy (Big Tent Books) that purports to “[guide] children through Mommy’s [cosmetic] surgery and healing process in a friendly, nonthreatening way” – nonthreatening, that is, until one grasps the deeper message: Looks are everything, and you get what you can pay for. The greater objective would appear the preconditioning of a next generation of face-lift addicts: Better start saving up now, girlie, and maybe develop an eating disorder as a prelude.

So which sector, or sect, is the less civilized? The backwater zealots who propose to wait out the Apocalypse in round-robin conjugal confinement with “brides” young enough to be their granddaughters? Or the proponents of glamour-at-a-price?

Dr. Salzhauer’s idealized Beautiful Mommy, as pictured on the cover of that scrofulous little book, calls to mind nothing so much as an over-glamorized Britney Spears or Miley Cyrus, perhaps a Bratz-meets-Barbie: Never too young to aspire to such artificiality, never too old to lay claim to it, given a loaded checkbook. Photographs from the Yearning for Zion round-up suggest nothing so much as some 19th-century agrarian-society re-enactment, but the forcibly modest attire of the young women involved conveys an aspect more ominous than bucolic.

About that movie…

My lingering impression of Harry Revier’s Child Bride of the Ozarks has hinged more upon featured player Angelo Rossitto (1908–1991) than with any social-agenda implications. Rossitto, a pioneering dwarf player of Old Hollywood, had reminisced fondly about Child Bride during a series of late-in-life interviews for the Forgotten Horrors film-history books. George Turner’s and my chapter on Child Bride in Forgotten Horrors 2, in turn, deals as much with Rossitto as with the picture itself.


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I Lost It at the Movies, by Martha Thomases

Last weekend, my son and I went to see Iron Man. We went in the middle of the day to a movie theater in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood that is rarely crowded, so the only other people there were geeks like us.

We had a great time, and that’s what this column is about. Tomorrow is Mothers’ Day, and last week is the last time I’ll be able to go to a superhero movie with my son, without involving an airplane. He’s moving to Los Angeles next month. That’s as far away as he can go without crossing an ocean or a border.

Our movie-going habits started early. When he was six weeks old, we went to see the original Ghostbusters, with the baby in a Snugli. It’s not that we were those horrible parents who take a screaming infant everywhere, as if the world deserves to share their headache. We knew his sleep schedule, and we knew that if we fed him just before the movie started, we should have at least two hours before he woke up. And we went in the middle of a weekday when there would be few other people, and sat in the back, near the aisle, so we could make a hasty retreat if our calculations proved wrong.

Later, as he grew older, my son developed a love of comics that rivaled my own. Even though he was barely five years old, there was no way he would let us go see the first Batman film without him. Being afraid of nightmares, I found a book that explained how the special effects were done, so he’d know that Jack Nicholson didn’t really hurt anyone. The effects didn’t scare him, but he did remark on how out of character it was for Batman to use a gun.

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Gotham’s Most Wanted: Dark Knight Joker Action Figure

It isn’t often that mainstream media picks up on toy collector news, but various news sources couldn’t help notice a mania for Dark Knight action figures based on Heath Ledger’s Joker.

The New York Post reported that people lined up the day they went on sale. Within minutes, the stock was sold out. The craze for the figure isn’t isolated to this side of the pond, either, with similar reports coming in from the U.K.

Collectors are believed to be buying up stock, convinced the figure is a collector’s item, since Ledger passed away before the film was released. The $9.99 toy is ranging from $15-50 on eBay now. As hype builds up for the movie and the buzz builds, it’s anybody’s guess as to how the value of the figure will be affected.

The ‘Iron Man’ Merch: Where’s the Rum Gone?

There’s no denying that the Merry Marvel Marketing Machine went all out for Iron Man — to the tune of $75 million, in fact. From games and toys to Slurpee mugs, in the run-up to last week’s record-breaking release, it was difficult to go anywhere without being exposed to some sort of hype for Ol’ Shellhead.

Nevertheless, I’ll confess feeling a little old-school joy when I see some of the new movie merch making the rounds. Over at Cinematical, the movie blog’s crew posted a detailed look at one of the promotional Iron Man action figures they received a little while back, while EW’s PopWatch blog generated a bit of envy here at ComicMix with their treasure trove of Iron Man swag. Oh, and for the Iron Man completist, IGN posted a fairly comprehensive guide to the licensed Iron Man merchandise you can expect to see on shelves — at least until the collectors get their hands on them, that is.

As is often the case, however, my favorite piece of geekery fell a bit outside the range of mainstream Iron Man swag popping up around the InterWebs. In fact, it was something resembling love at first sight when I came across the Custom "Repulsive Iron Man" Marvel Legends Movie Figure seen here:

It’s a beauty, right? Not only is the figure packaged with a miniature bottle of Bacardi and a set of beer cans, but it also comes with a piece of original artwork by Shortpacked creator David Willis. It’s the perfect combination of comic in-joke and webcomic fun.

Check out the product pitch:

Decked out in sickly green metallics, inebriated shading, and vomitous brown highlights, Iron Man is loaded with disgusting detail. Load him up with the various miniature beer cans or his trusty bottle of Bacardi and he’s ready to battle the bad guys, just as long as you point him in the right direction first!

So, yeah… It’s too bad the auction ended last week. That would have been $152.51 well spent.

More Will Eisner Films on the Way

Will Eisner’s seminal comic book series The Spirit is on the way to theaters, adapted by Frank Miller. And it looks like more of the legend’s creations could be following.

Wired has the news that Creative Artists Agency picked up the rights to Eisner’s estate and will push for more movies based on those books, including A Contract With God.

CAA, a heavyweight talent handler that represents Steven Spielberg, Tobey Maguire, Cameron Diaz and scores of other A-listers, will be pushing for movie adaptations of Eisner titles as a result of the deal, which was announced last week. Eisner comics that could make it to the silver screen include A Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories, John Law, Lady Luck, Mr. Mystic, Uncle Sam, Blackhawk and Sheena.

Eisner died in 2005. Widely credited with helping establish the graphic novel as a respectable art form, he was honored in 1988 when Comic-Con created the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards to recognize cutting-edge comic book talent.

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