Tagged: Ric Meyers

Good For What Ails You

  • News
  • January 27, 2008

There’s something in the air, and unfortunately your author has caught it.  But it’s well worth rising from one’s sickbed to bring you the weekly roundup of ComicMix columnists!  Isn’t it?:

Apologies for not adding in Andrew Wheeler’s "Manga Friday" columns before now, but he’s only started numbering them himself.  And by the way, the best thing about being sick?  Erm, well, nothing, actually…

Life of Groundhog, by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • January 27, 2008

 

Oh, it’s been a good week. Two of my (diametrically-opposed) favorite comedies are coming out on remastered special edition DVDs this coming Tuesday (one which was embraced by all religions while the other was roundly condemned by all religions) and I could hardly be happier. The operative word here is “hardly,” because, for while both DVD editions are good, one, in particular, could have been great.
 
But this is sour grapes on my part. I love Groundhog Day, and appreciate the skills of its star, Bill Murray, so much that I shouldn’t begrudge his disinterest in participating with the 15th Anniversary release’s special features – but yet, I still do. I shouldn’t be so petty, too, because of Bill’s absence, the true value of director/co-scripter Harold Ramis comes into sharp focus.
 
I’m a big fan of Ramis as well, ever since I saw him as harried station manager Moe Green on the original import of the milestone Canadian comedy series SCTV. I can never forget his delivery as the evil boss in the show’s satire of The Grapes of Wrath, The Grapes of Mud; “You think this land is urine … but it’s all our land, not just urine” (you had to be there, I guess).
 
Ramis left SCTV early, which I also begrudged, come to think of it. But all was forgiven when he started helming, or being intimately creatively involved with, such comedy mainstays as Animal House, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, As Good As It Gets, and Analyze This. Groundhog Day could be his masterpiece, however, given that it’s a romantic comedy fantasy classic.
 
Columbia Pictures, minus Murray’s input, could only muster a single, pretty poorly photoshopped, disc, but Ramis is all over the extras. There’s a commentary with him, which I lapped up with my admiring head nestled on my hands. There’s also a video talking head grandly titled “A Different Day: An Interview with Harold Ramis,” which I watched appreciatively with my chin on my fist. Then there’s the making-of doc called “The Weight of Time” (borrowing a phrase by story creator and co-scripter Danny Rubin), which I watched with the back of my head resting on my sofa top. 
 

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What happens at ComicMix…

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  • January 20, 2008

Wow, new ComicMix contributors Shira Gregory and Rick Marshall have really done a yeoman’s (yeo-people’s?) job filling in our news section, haven’t they?  Even I can’t keep up!  In fact, they’ve posted so fast and furiously that many of our regular columnists have fallen off the "More News" window, so it’s a good thing I do a recap every week:

And I hear a rumor that things are getting steamy over in our comics section.  Have I missed any male pulchritude?  Some of this stuff isn’t safe even for those of us not currently at work!

Hooray For Ray Harryhausen, by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • January 20, 2008

What a relief! Fellow audio-blogging ComicMixer Mike Raub put it in perspective for me as soon the credits ended on Cloverfield: “What ever happened to science?” he asked. “Remember the good old days when movie characters would actually think about why something was happening rather than immediately whip out the heavy artillery?”

Well, Mike, my friend, I do, I really do, because this week I got two new, colorized, long-delayed, two-disc special editions from the “Ray Harryhausen Presents” line: It Came From Beneath the Sea and, especially, Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers. In the latter film, particularly, smart people do courageous things to foil an attack from the stars, and the literate, logical, talk – so absent in Cloverfield – would do Mr. Spock proud.

But first things first. It Came from Beneath the Sea arrived first, in 1955, with a Godzilla-esque tale of a nuclear-radiated giant octosquid attacking San Francisco. The following year saw the release of Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers, which was succinct and accurate in its title. Both are being re-released on DVD now because Ray supervised their colorization, and Sony has done a nice job of presenting them in both their original B&W as well as colorized forms, with a “ChromaChoice” toggle so you can go from one to the other with ease.

Only one problem with Ray supervising the coloring: the monsters look great … but the people often also look like they’re made of clay … or used a scoonch too much liquid tanner. All in all, however, it’s one of the more successful colorization jobs, and rarely too distracting. Besides, what with Ray’s Dynamationalized characters, the whole thing has a nice sheen of artificiality anyway, which the colorization folds nicely into.

 

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ComicMix does time

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  • January 13, 2008

Thank goodness OJ Simpson and Marion Jones are serving time, making the world safe from rich,  self-indulgent (and presumably murderous, in one case) black former athletes!  Can rich treasonous white oilmen be far behind?  Well, yeah, actually.  Welcome to America, 2008!  Fortunately, our ComicMix columnists have just the thing to take your mind off these weighty matters, and here’s the roundup of what we’ve done this past week:

At least they can’t take away our dreams yet, so I can still fantasize about Karl Rove being frog-marched into a precinct house, can’t I?

Big Miserable Love, Juvenile Attell, by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • January 13, 2008

Welcome to the January doldrums, where, even if the Writers Guild of America wasn’t on strike, there’d still be precious little good new product, since this is the season where studios dump their loss leaders … I mean, this is the month where studios allow their most challenging productions to find their audience.

Actually, both estimations are true, and the titles considered in this column will reflect that. But since I also have a little breathing space, I want to take the opportunity to toast the year of the bummer. If the movies produced at the end of 2007 are any evidence, we’re all feeling really bad. How else do you comprehend a holiday when the most lauded films share a p.o.v. so bleak and unremittingly tragic that the bitter ending of Gone With The Wind seems positively giddy? 

No Country for Old Men, Sweeney Todd, There Will Be Blood, and Atonement – all … to quote George Harrison in A Hard Day’s Night: “a drag, a well-known drag.” In fact, Atonement not only shoves your face chin-deep into misery, but holds out a small, shiny piece of possible happiness, only to take great pleasure in then ramming it into your eye socket so it can shatter against your brain. Not to say that these aren’t great films, but to quote John Cleese in the fine farce Clockwise: “It’s not the despair. The despair I can handle. It’s the hope…!”

This is where the HBO Comedy Special DVD Dave Attell: Captain Miserable comes in. I’ve been a fan of this “functionally alcoholic” comedian since the days (or should I say nights) of his Comedy Central series Insomniac, where he’d go out after his act and see what the town he was playing in had going on in the wee hours. This is his first HBO special, following in the footsteps of George Carlin, Robert Klein, and Chris Rock, among others.  (more…)

Caucus for ComicMix Columnists

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  • January 6, 2008

Well, about 19% of eligible voters in the first atypically-populated state with way too much power to decide the country’s fate have spoken, Presidential campaign-wise, and rendered moot at least three candidates on the Democratic side, who are no longer Biden their time as they Dodd-er back to Washington with Gravel-y voices.  Thank goodness Kucinich didn’t drop out yet, his name is awfully hard to pun.  Meanwhile, a couple of our weekly ComicMix columnists have become a bit political of late; with the campaign season being so long there’s almost sure to be more where that came from.  Here’s what we’ve given you this past week:

Say, did you know there was also a Republican caucus in Wyoming?  How come Iowa and New Hampshire get all the press?  (Just ’cause Wyoming Democrats caucus separately, two months from now?) If I were Cheyenne I would sue.

Resident Dragon Extinction, by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • January 6, 2008
Let us now celebrate one of the greatest boons to entertainment in the entire history of film. It is seemingly small and insignificant – just a tiny speck amongst many others – but with a mere touch it can turn dreadful wastes of time into tolerable, even enjoyable, enhancements to one’s well-being. 
 
It is, of course, the fast forward button on your DVD remote, and, thanks to this brilliant advance in viewing pleasure, productions which were execrable in the cinema are made amusing at the very least. And, not only will it bridge the mind-numbing gaps between a mediocre film’s decent scenes, but it does so at a wide range of speeds.
 
You can watch at double-time, where, if your eye reflexes are honed by Wii or PS2/3, you can still catch the bulk of any subtitles (which is lucky for the likes of me and fellow kung-fu film fans). The FF button has, in fact, saved my emotional life many times, and it certainly was a godsend during this week’s DVD viewing – which, if truth be told, rarely got below 16X.
 
Of course I watched the special features at regular speed. That’s the least I could do, considering my ComicMix responsibilities. Besides, the extras are almost always interesting, whether they feature an underdog’s hopes or the stereotypically overstated prattle of seasoned hackmeisters. Both were on display in abundance this week.
 

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Hail the new, ye lads and lasses

  • News
  • December 30, 2007

While it’s been a rather quiet week news-wise, our weekly ComicMix columns have seen lots of activity.  We were particularly honored to host an online wake of sorts last Thursday, reuniting members of the old CompuServe Comics and Animation Forum (myself included) in the comments section of John Ostrander’s touching remembrance of Paul "Zeus" Grant.  Here’s what else we’ve written for you this past week:

We wish everyone all you wish for yourselves in 2008 and beyond.

Leftovers/Third Helpings, by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • December 30, 2007

 

Ah, holidays: a time to get together with family and friends … and watch all the DVDs you missed during the year. In my case, it’s with my teen and preteen nieces, so sooner or later they get control of the remote, and they call the shots. So it was in this cozy, tinsel-lined environment that we settled in to watch the special features on two of the second sequels that so galvanized marketing types a few weeks ago.
 
First up: Pirates of the Caribbean At World’s End, which more than half of the nation’s critics found loud and confusing. But I, a market share of one, have always felt that they missed the point. Lurching, unfocused, overstuffed, yes. But this effort was nothing short than a largely successful attempt to dismantle, then refashion, what it means to be a “Disney Film," a seeming attempt that successfully continued with Ratatouille and Enchanted. 
 
This, after all, is a film that starts with the death by hanging of a ten … year … old … boy, then continues with piles of corpses, cutthroats staring up Keira Knightley’s dress, extended existential sequences in the land of death itself, and a central appearance by the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards. The extras on the Two-Disc Collector’s Edition don’t rip the wrapping paper off this concept and slap it in your face, but there’s enough hints in the giddy declarations of director Gore Verbinski and writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio that something was up their sleeves besides arm hair.
 
Basically all of them contend that they were given the freedom to have fun and entertain themselves. Even so, none were absolutely sure that this independence (and the more than 200 million which bought it) wouldn’t come back to bite them. At one point, coming from the bright-eyed, sheet-eating grinning face of one writer was the passive/aggressive statement that the boy-hanging opening was his idea … except it might not have been, depending on the then-up-coming audience reaction. 
 

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