This is not actually a sequel to the Bruce Willis films where he stars as John McClane. This is actually a secret sequel to Unbreakable, where Willis stars as invulnerable hero David Dunn. Somewhere between Die Hard 2 and 3, the characters switched places.
We encourage Live Free viewers to comment.
Last night Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim premiered Star Wars: Robot Chicken. The half-hour edition of the popular stop motion cartoon show was entirely devoted to Star Wars gags. What separates this from countless issues of Mad Magazine was the involvement of George Lucas himself. Lucas provides a sense of legitimacy and an acknowledgement that he is finally ready to laugh at his own creation.
Unfortunately, much like the prequel trilogy, maybe more could have been done if Lucas was less involved. The sketch featuring Lucas being saved from a mob of fans by a guy dressed as a tauntaun was by far the weakest in the entire show. I don’t know if this was a problem with the writers or with Lucas, but the sketch felt particularly flat.
The rest of the show was more successful. The highlight was a sketch in which Darth Vader explains a number of the more contrived coincidences in the series to a Mark-Hamil-voiced-Luke Skywalker. Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy) was excellent as the voice of Emperor Palpatine in a number of bits, including one featuring a mama-joke contest between the Emperor and Luke.
Overall, the show worked the best when it was contained within the universe, albeit one with a lot more jokes, the Late Night with Zuckuss sketch (featuring the voice of Conan O’Brien) scored, as did the Ponda Baba segment.
The more it felt like they were winking at the audience the less it worked for me; another lowlight was the sketch featuring a Jedi President Bush fighting Sith Abraham Lincoln.
The best possible outcome of this would be increased exposure for Robot Chicken, Adult Swim’s gem, with its third season set to begin in under two months. With the Family Guy season premiere bringing another high profile Star Wars parody our way I’m interested to see if they can match this effort by Seth Green and the staff at Robot Chicken, the way Family Guy has been going it won’t be easy.
Star Wars: Robot Chicken can be watched for free (for at least the time being) at adultswim.com
The rubber-reality phenomenon that one takes for granted in the animated cartoons and a good many comics seldom crosses over into live-action cinema, CGI and/or the influence of David Lynch notwithstanding. A low-rent music-and-slapstick comedy from 1945 called How Doooo You Do!!! makes for a striking exception and bears recalling here, in the context of a series devoted to stalking the pop-cultural borderlands in search of – well, of whatever oddities might turn up. No shortage of those, if one knows where to go prowling.
No entertainer seems to have more fun and less sustained success in appearing before the cameras than the radio gimmick-comic Bert Gordon (1895–1974). Gordon’s presence lay primarily in a persuasive and memorable voice (rather like the once-ubiquitous Paul Frees, of a somewhat later day). Gordon’s big-screen starring career consisted largely of false starts and commercial misfires. He had become so successful, however, as a supporting-act broadcast player – a regular with Eddie Cantor, from 1930 on through the ’40s – that the movies seemed a logical next step for a decade-and-change, progressing from supporting parts to attempted stardom.
Ralph Murphy’s How Doooo You Do!!! takes its title from Gordon’s signature-phrase. Nobody, but nobody, could intone that commonplace platitude, “How do you do?” with the style or the passion of Bert Gordon. In his radio-program guise of the Mad Russian (sometimes known as Boris Rascalnikoff), Gordon transformed the offhand question into the most emphatic of exclamations, a sustained marvel of escalating double-O’s that could move a studio audience to applause before he could complete the phrase. Sometimes, he would worry the first do into submission; on other occasions, the second, like a jazzman milking the improvisational possibilities from some nursery-rhyme melody.
This indelible signature-line was the most logical of titles, then, for a Gordon-starring picture – and in fact, the less imaginatively transcribed How Do You Do? had been the work-in-progress title of a 1942 Columbia comedy that got released as Laugh Your Blues Away, with Gordon and Jinx Falkenberg.
If any corporate-Hollywood studio was attuned to Gordon’s more eccentric tastes, it had to be Producers Releasing Corp. – better known by its initials, which the less charitable cineastes among us might hold to stand for “Pretty Rotten Crap.” Anyhow, PRC Pictures (better known for its horse-operas, rudimentary noirs, and mad-doctor chillers) seems precisely the right studio to have given Gordon and his radio-show accomplices free rein. And precisely the wrong studio to be taken earnestly in such an endeavor by the critics or the paying customers.
The film plants Gordon and fellow radio personality Harry von Zell amidst their own broadcasting culture. Exhausted by the radio-show grind, Gordon and von Zell (playing themselves, in broad strokes) retreat to a desert resort lodge. Two other associates, Cheryl Walker and Claire Windsor, arrive on their own in a similar quest for serenity. Neither party is aware of the other’s presence until von Zell spots the women and panics: Von Zell’s wife suspects an adulterous affair between von Zell and Walker. Meanwhile, Gordon’s over-amorous co-star, Ella Mae Morse, has trailed him to the retreat.
My husband really liked the column I did on Mothers’ Day (Brilliant Disguise #4). My stepmother also liked it. As a result, I feel a huge amount of pressure this week, as Fathers’ Day approaches.
Perhaps this is as it should be. Fathers, at least in literature, exert pressure. So do mothers, but fathers are much more stern about it, and send out much more of a mixed message. Zeus’ father ate him, for crying out loud. Jesus’ father sent him to die for our sins. Lear punished the only daughter who dared to tell him the truth. Jor-El proved his love by sending his son a universe away.
Fathers are stern. Fathers are cruel but fair. Fathers are distant. Tony Soprano? Please. Even today, on television, the best father, on Everybody Hates Chris, proves his love by working so many jobs he’s only home long enough to sleep and offer a bit of advice, if he’s lucky. In comics, the kindly fathers (or father figures) of Ben Parker and Thomas Wayne are all dead, inspiration only or motive for revenge. Jonathan Kent is the exception that proves the rule, depending on which continuity you’re in.
OK, 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.
"Sorry seems to be the hardest word" – Bernie Taupin
As I alluded to in last week’s column but didn’t have the space nor desire to go into at length, the comics blogosphere isn’t the only place wherein disagreements among feminists have cropped up lately. From time to time debates occur as well amongst political liberal and progressive feminist bloggers who otherwise agree on many major principles and actions. The latest example is the talk about whether blogger Jessica Valenti’s new book Full Frontal Feminism is inclusive enough of the experiences of women of color (certainly not an unfamiliar argument in the comics scene either, as Cheryl Lynn ably demonstrates).
The discussion is a bit involved for anyone coming into it without any background, although Feministe blogger piny has a helpful collection and timeline of sorts here), but I mainly wanted to talk about how Feministe’s Jill Filipovic posted to the critiques of her glowing review of Jessica’s book, as I think it’s a good example of how to graciously acknowledge when one realizes one has wronged others, and apologize accordingly. You know, what we used to call civility. The relevant excerpts appear at the end of this column — and that’s just her introduction! (You can read the whole thing here.)
Now granted, Jill is fairly well known and respected in the feminist blogosphere, but at the moment her real-world influence is somewhat limited. Can you imagine anyone in an actual position of power and privilege crafting that kind of a response?
It’s not all that surprising, but still shocking when you see it spelled out: Americans now spend roughly half of their spare time online during a typical weekday, according to the Netpop I Play report from Media-Screen, and more than half of this time is spent on entertainment and communications activities.
Forty-eight percent of young broadband users say they learn about entertainment through their online community of social networking sites, blogs, review sites and video sharing sites. Only a quarter of them say they learn about entertainment options through television. And that’s why Paul McCartney debuted his latest music video on YouTube last night.
Meanwhile, TV networks devalue their own brands by running advertisements for shoddy products, as Mark Cuban points out — which, come to think of it, has an eerie parallel in DC and Marvel Comics’s recent moves of dumping unsold ad inventory to put in house ads or ads for comics stores.
Back in the halcyon Sixties, when respectability was but a distant glimmer on science fiction’s horizon (and comics were still mired in disrepute), the editor of an SF magazine asked me to review a novel by Philip K. Dick. It wasn’t my first encounter with Mr. Dick; back in St. Louis, before I’d migrated east and gotten into the funny book racket, I’d read a roommate’s copy of Man in the High Castle and found it interesting. I told the editor, sure, be happy to. The book was Galactic Pot Healer. I didn’t like it and wrote the review accordingly.
That doesn’t quite end the story. The review never got into print. It may have been a lousy review – hey, nobody’s perfect – or the fact that the editor was friendly with Mr. Dick may have influenced his decision. No big deal either way,
Cut to a decade or so later: I am in Southern California on a mission for Marvel Comics and I have run out of things to read, and for some reason, there are no places to buy books nearby, and our expense allowances for this particular jaunt do not include car rental. Oh, woe! What is a print junkie to do? Then my fellow Marvel editor and friend Mark Gruenwald comes to the rescue with a copy of Valis, by a writer I knew I didn’t like, the same guy who’d perpetrated Galactic Pot Healer. But a writer I didn’t like is better than no writer at all – remember, I’m a print junkie – and besides Mark, whose acumen I respect, recommends him. I take Mark’s copy of Valis to my room…
And have that rare and wonderful experience of finding what I hadn’t known I was looking for. Dick was writing a kind of fiction unlike any I’d ever encountered – a fiction that dealt with the malleability of reality, the impossibilities of accurate perception, the questions of personal identity and its place in a large context.
I enrolled in the Philip K. Dick Society and delved into the author’s 44 title backlist.
A year ago, someone who shares my DNA found that tattered copy of Galactic Pot Healer on a bookshelf somewhere and I reread it. I can see why I panned it 40 years ago. The writing is only okay, the plot not terribly engaging. But mostly, the book doesn’t deliver what I think I wanted from science fiction in those days, which was closer to space opera than the introspective, sui generis stuff Dick was doing. But in my new capacity as an Ancient, whose tastes have changed somewhat, I could and did enjoy it. It will never be on my Top 10 list, but I don’t regret having experienced it.
I now know that Dick wrote what was labeled “science fiction” only because nobody, maybe including Dick himself, knew what else to call it. Writing in a genre meant that folks who fancied themselves capital L-Literary would not notice the work, and may not have been able to judge its worth if they had. Back then, the rule of thumb was If it’s good it can’t be science fiction. So Dick’s brilliantly original novels were largely ignored during his lifetime.
His reputation has gradually brightened over the years because, among other reasons, his work has inspired a lot of movies, from Blade Runner, completed shortly after his death in 1982, to Next, which I saw last weekend. Now, The Establishment, in the person of the guys who run the Library of America
The novels in the collection are Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Dennis O’Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of comic books like Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern and/or Green Arrow, and The Shadow, as well as all kinds of novels, stories and articles.
Oh, you lucky consumers. This week, all the benefits of DVD watching have come to the fore with four classics that come in four different varieties. First, celebrate all ye cinema-of-the-fantastic fans, for two of the greatest science fiction and fantasy films of the 21st century are now out on disc but only one in a way that shows how superior the DVD format is to virtually every other medium.
I love fantasy. My first non-pseudonyminous novel was a fantasy, Cry of the Beast. My latest novel is a fantasy, Murder in Halruua. My first non-fiction book was The World of Fantasy Films. So it’s a great pleasure to now write about Pan’s Labyrinth, probably the best fantasy film since, well, the director’s previous mixing of monsters and Spanish history, The Devil’s Backbone (2001).
Even after directing Blade II and Hellboy, Hollywood still gave Guillermo del Toro’s extraordinary Oscar-winning new film its due, and New Line Home Entertainment is no exception, crafting one of the great DVDs to showcase it (and they’ve had some practice, considering they also backed the Lord of the Rings special editions). There is a single disc DVD, which only sports the director’s loving audio commentary, but let’s pretend that doesn’t exist (along with the fullscreen version).
Instead, go right to the Two Disc Platinum Series, which envelops the already magical, monstrous, mystical, and majestic film with gobs of film-enhancing extras. All too often, even when a DVD has loads of extras, they’re not really film-enhancing. They may be film-promoting, film-marketing, film-indulging, or even film-smoke-blowing, but it only takes a few of those to know the real deal when it comes around. Each of the documentaries included on the Platinum Edition make successive viewings of the film all the more enriching and enjoyable.
There’s a discourse on the movie’s use of fairy tale mythology, an examination of the colors and textures del Toro uses to deepen his work, a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the movie’s creatures (spotlighting Doug Jones, the director’s favorite go-to man for these roles), multiple “director’s notebook” interactive menu pages, and, not surprisingly, considering del Toro’s avowed love for comic books, animated prequels establishing back-stories for four of the film’s fantasy favorites.
They’ve also added the memorable episode of PBS’ Charlie Rose Show, which interviewed the friends now known as cinema’s “Three Amigos” – del Toro, Babel director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, and the next man on our DVD hit parade, Alfonso Cuaron. Using the clout he acquired after directing Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Cuaron threw it all into his remarkable adaptation of famed mystery writer P.D. James’ recent science-fiction novel Children of Men.
I love science fiction. My second non-pseudonyminous novel (Doomstar) and non-fiction book (The Great Science Fiction Films) were science fiction. I didn’t feel there was a huge difference between SF and fantasy, but apparently tinseltown disagrees. For, while New Line gave Pan’s Labyrinth its due, Universal treated the bleak yet exhilarating Children of Men like a red-headed stepchild. (more…)
As a contributor (audio commentaries, on-camera interviews, liner notes, and packaging copy) to more than three hundred DVDs in America and Asia, I’ve always wanted a source for what ComicMix is now allowing me to do — review DVDs specifically on the quality of their extras (audio commentaries, makings-of, et al). When deciding upon which DVDs to buy and which to rent, that’s often the deciding factor.
All too often in DVD reviews, the extras are simply listed, which is misleading at best, since I’ve suffered through dry, taciturn, frustrating commentaries from a star-studded roster (the pre-ultimate edition The Spy Who Loved Me), but also reveled in funny, enlightening, seemingly drunken revelries (Conan the Barbarian). And even in the most prestigious publications, the critics get bogged down in their opinions of the films in question, leaving precious little copy for the quality of the extras accompanying them on the disc.
But enough raison d’etre. Now its time for shameful confessions. Naturally, I wanted to fill this first edition with insightful analysis of the most famous, anticipated DVDs on the market, but find myself presently concerned with quirky titles many of you might not have even heard of.
So, what to do, what to do: detail the flowing bounty of extras to be found on the consistently entertaining but hardly hilarious Night at the Museum or well-made but uninvolving Dreamgirls, or tell you about the demented delights of Thai cinema?
Well, given that this site is called ComicMix, and I’m best known for Jackie Chan comics and my annual three-hour San Diego Comic-Con Superhero Kung-Fu Extravaganza, I’m going for the stuff thats as exhilarating and under-reported as comic books. Staggering into video shops this week are some DVDs that will either have you trawling for Thai flicks forever or keep you from seeing another ever again.
More accessible and superheroic is Born to Fight (Dragon Dynasty [The Weinstein Co.] Two-Disc Ultimate Edition), which is flailing feverishly to get out of the shadow of Thailands most famous and popular action export (Thai Warrior, aka Ong-Bak). The same fearless stunt crew worked on both films, but the latter starred Muy Thai boxing great Tony Jaa, whos attitude and strength mirror Bruce Lee while his acrobatics and films crib from Jackie Chan’s homework.
In order to differentiate itself from Tony, the Born to Fight crew decided to create even sicker, and more bone-breaking stunts, while catering to Thai patriotism, in a plot that has a village overrun by nuke-carrying terrorists on the same day its being visited by the Thai Olympic team. The discs main extra — an hour-long behind-the-scenes documentary lays it all out in loving, if repetitive, detail, with many interviews and glimpses at the set-ups for the insane stunts.
It’s hard not to marvel at the filmmakers passion, love for Thai tradition, and the crews willingness to risk their lives to gain America and Asias respect. The result is a flick that balances goofy and great (featuring one stomach-turning moment of near-suicide as a stuntman nearly gets ground up under a tractor-trailers wheels). (more…)
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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