Tagged: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Blades of Box Office Gold

  • News
  • April 2, 2007

Blades of Glory was the number one film for the April Fool’s weekend, with an estimated take of $33 million.  Disney’s Meet The Robinsons came in second, with $25.1 million.

300 came in next, with $11.2 million, followed by TMNT with $9.2 million.  If  Hollywood realizes that both films owe their existance to Frank Miller (whose graphic novel, Ronin, was the inspiration to Eastman and Laird back in the 1980s), no one admits it.

Wild Hogs, Shooter, Premonition, The Last Mimzy, The Hills Have Eyes 2 and Reign Over Me rounded out the list.

MATT RAUB loves being a Turtle

  • News
  • March 26, 2007

Cowabunga, Dudes! Matt Raub here, back once again for my review of my pick for “Best Flick of 2007” – TMNT!

Now, before I do my business, a little history. I’m a 100% freak when it comes to anything and everything 80’s. From the music to the wacky neon fashion to the movies, and most important, the TV shows. From The Real Ghostbusters to M.A.S.K., I knew just about everything that needed to be known about cartoons in the 80’s. With that said, I was going into TMNT with roughly 50% excitement and 50% skepticism that we would get a repeat of the first three Turtles movies, which included (in no particular order): Vanilla Ice, time travel, and freckles.

With that said, I was nothing short of blown away by this flick. I caught myself jumping with excitement during the actions scenes and cackling obnoxiously at Michelangelo’s quips. Now, there aren’t a whole lot of CGI films that take my breath away, the exception being The Incredibles of course, mostly due to the need to dumb down the script to appeal to the legion of drooling nine-year-olds. But that wasn’t the case with TMNT. Instead of being a comedy with some action, this flick was all action with some comedy, and I loved it. While it did have some slapstick comedy to keep the toddlers at bay, there were so many more serious elements that I know had to have gone over the heads of the younger audience.

For those of you who aren’t sure where this film stands in comparison to the previous three, I’ll spell it out. This movie pulls a Superman Returns formula, but does it right. The story takes place about a year after the second film, erasing the Turtles in Time escapade completely from continuity (thanks!). With this continuity, we still get Casey Jones, April O’Neil, and a dead Shredder, but the characters all get a revamp, some for better and some not so much: April O’Neil is no longer a reporter, but a glorified Indiana Jones-archeologist type. What?? But like I said, this took the Superman formula and made it work. And no, April doesn’t end up having a half-turtle baby with Leonardo.

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Comic books still rule the movies

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  • March 25, 2007

Comic books continue to lead Hollywood box office business as TMNT, based upon the comics books of the same letters beat out 300 $25,400,000 to a mere $20,500,000 in estimated weekend North American box office receipts.

It was the first weekend for the Turtles’ latest movie venture, and the third for the Frank Miller property. Thus far, 300 has earned nearly a quarter-billion dollars worldwide. Then again, box office totals in Iran are expected to be rather low.

Whereas both movies were released by Warner Bros., neither one is based upon a DC Comics property. DC is a unit of Warner Bros.

Next up: Spider-Man 3, in just a few weeks. ComicMix carried the link to the final movie trailer; scroll down and you’ll find it.

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What’s up this weekend

  • News
  • March 23, 2007

While some of us in the New York area are starting off I-CON weekend by listening to live streaming of The Comic Book Novice tonight at 9 PM Eastern (penciller and Dreamchilde Press head honcho James Rodriguez is the guest), we understand that things are actually happening in the rest of the world.  I don’t quite believe it, but I’ll take these people’s word for it:

At 5:30 PM today, you can catch cartoonist Keith Knight at the University of Florida in Gainesville.  Hey, Michael Davis is black, why wasn’t he invited to this?

Seeing Things: The Art of Jim Woodring opens tomorrow at Seattle’s Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery.

In addition to TMNT, the kids movie The Last Mimzy bows today nationwide (Matt Raub reviews it on ComicMix Podcast; scroll down), and Jenna Fischer assures folks "It is a very cute kid’s movie…better than most in the sense that it isn’t cut and paced like a rock video.  It is actually sweet and magical and interesting.  Oh…and you get to see Rainn’s ass.  Well, you see him in his undies bending over at the fridge.  Angela and I were giggling like schoolgirls.  Were were like, ‘Woah!  There is Rainn’s ass on a giant movie screen!’  (I’m sure the boys from The Office will be saying something similar about my ‘ladies’ when we see Blades of Glory next week.)"  Glenn can have his Sopranos; I’m just loving that The Office actors all seem so much like their characters.  Cool Office cast photos accompany that blog entry, by the way.

tshqcast-5308197Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing (who’s just discovered American Born Chinese, so congrats Gene Yang, you’ve been BoingBoinged!) mentions that artists Rob Sato (Burying Sandwiches) and Ako Castuera have a new show going up at the LA comic shop The Secret Headquarters starting next Friday.  By the way, Cory also mentions he’s signed a deal with IDW to sell comics based on his stories, and had his agent write a clause spelling out that "those stories are already under Creative Commons Attribution/ShareAlike/Noncommercial licenses that allow fans to make non-commercial comics," so it’s whatever the opposite of an "exclusive" is.  ("Loss leader," perhaps?)

And although it’s slightly past rather than upcoming, I wanted to mention Trina Robbins’ astounding news that "comics are alive and well in Scandinavia, and women are drawing them," as she reviews her lecture tour through Malmo, Copenhagen and Stockholm.  Brr, Scandinavia in March, glad someone looks happy in those photos!

Turtles disrupt traffic

  • News
  • March 20, 2007

tmnt-6078260Here’s one you probably won’t see in most news reports.  I only heard it second-hand on the radio during my morning commute.  The traffic reporter commented about slow-downs on the upper level of the George Washington Bridge in New York City because folks dressed up like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were doing something or other on the bridge’s pedestrian walkway, and thus all the cars were slowing down to look.  He had no idea why the Turtle characters were there, but I blame viral marketing (what we used to call a "publicity stunt" in the old days — in this case, for this Friday’s opening of the TMNT movie). 

Oh well, it could be worse — it could be Moomins.

Mike Gold: The Graphic Novelist

  • News
  • March 5, 2007

mikegold100-8300544My wife and I were plowing through our TiVo this weekend, catching up on programs the device trapped for us during the previous week. We happened to catch the current spots for Ghost Rider as well as the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and 300 movies. As is frequently the case when I’m on deadline, I had a revelation.

Thematically, the only thing these three movies have in common is the fact that they are based upon comics. It occurred to me that five years ago they would have been lumped together as “comic book movies.” Today, we are more sophisticated. Today, they might be lumped together as “graphic novel movies,” but more likely most people perceive them as simply “movies.”

That’s fine. We don’t see such distinctions made in movies culled from other genres. “Based on the novel,” sure. Big deal. But that’s buried in the movie’s credits and on the small print at the bottom of the poster. For almost 100 years now, most movies have been based upon something — books, short stories, comics, radio shows, television shows, and most often from other movies. Now our medium has joined the pack. (more…)

Hollywood does comics

  • News
  • February 18, 2007

bobgreenberger200-9748229There was a great deal of hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth when word leaked out of Hollywood that Joss Whedon had left the Wonder Woman film project and David Goyer would no longer write and direct a Flash film. Similarly, people reacted in horror at the notion of Joel Schumacher having anything to do with a Sandman movie.

Here’s the thing: none of this is shocking. Disappointing, yes, but we long time fans have gotten our hopes raised and dashed countless times through the years.

For those less familiar with Hollywood’s inner workings, the studios are always looking for the next great thing, uncertain of what it might be and where they may find it. So, in addition to buying original stories from screenwriters or ideas from producers and stars then assigning the stories to screenwriters, Hollywood goes shopping. They will receive yet-to-be-published books in galley form, they will scour the news for stories to dramatize, and they will see what their kids are listening to, and so on.

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