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REVIEW: Mission: Impossible – Fallout

mi-fallout-300x369-7491663When it ran on CBS, Mission: Impossible had zero internal continuity. Missions came and went, agents were tortured, battered, and bruised and the next week they’d be hale and hardy, ready for the next assignment.

Since the film franchise began in 1996, the movies have gone in the opposite direction with film to film connectivity, just enough to show the films have consequence but work on their own so you don’t need one of DK Publishing’s patented guidebooks to understand what’s happening.

You’d almost think there was some grand plan and strategy ala Marvel for these films since everything builds to a head in Mission: Impossible – Fallout, out today on disc from Paramount Home Entertainment.

Recently, the first film, from director Brian DePalma has been making the rounds on cable and I was reminded of how much larger and richer the cast of agents were. Since then, there has been precious little mention made of operatives other than the core cast that seemingly winnows per film. There was the pre-credit nod to the past with Keri Russell in M: I III.

So, here we are again with Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), the only holdovers from the beginning, with the addition of Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), who interestingly joined in M:I III. That’s it. The IMF apparently has faced attrition and budget cuts. Cruise and Director/Producer/Screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie have stitched together elements from all the films to create a taut, suspenseful and ultimately very satisfying sixth installment in the series, which has yet to run out of steam.

mi-fallout-1-300x169-8625779We pick up with the remnants of Solomon Lane’s (Sean Harris) The Syndicate (a wink to the anonymous organization Jim Phelps battled almost weekly on television), The Apostles. They are searching for three plutonium cores and when the first gambit fails, are stuck with political shenanigans between the CIA in the form of Erica Sloane (Angela Bassett) and the IMF, now championed by Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin). With trust absent, she insists August Walker (Henry Cavill) work with Hunt’s team.

As they seek the cores, the encounter “The White Widow” (Vanessa Kirby), a black market arms dealer and the returning Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), who finds herself allied with and in competition with Hunt. There are the usual death-defying car chases, running and jumping, and mass mayhem but leavened with some deadpan humor.

mi-fallout-3-300x168-3640396We see Hunt and Walker fight in the trailers so we’re not sure if the CIA shadow is a good guy or turncoat but his stiff, diffident performance pretty much gives things away. Cavill can be easy on the eyes, but he really needs to loosen up to remain interesting on screen.

Everything builds up to Lane threatening more than the world; he’s targeted Julia (Michelle Monaghan), Hunt’s one true love. The climax in Kashmir may be drawn out, but is pulse-pounding and emotional. The status quo has been modified for future installments and viewers will be fine with a repeated viewing at home.

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The film is available in the usual formats including the 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and Digital HD package. As one would expect, the 2160p resolution displays a native 4K image in the 2.39:1 aspect ratio, although there are exceptions with two opening sequences having been shot in a 1.90:1 IMAX ratio. Given the scenery, notably the Kashmir section, we are treated to fine detail, clarity, and sharpness, superior to the Blu-ray. The Dolby Atmos audio track is strong and pairs well with the 4K disc.

A glossy, full color booklet titled Stunts: Raiding the Bar is included inside the embossed case, featuring slight commentary regarding several key sequences.

The 4K disc comes with Audio Commentary: in three flavors: McQuarrie and Cruise, McQuarrie and Editor Eddie Hamilton, and Composer Lorne Balfe. As is increasingly common on 4K releases, we’re treated to an Isolated Score in Dolby Digital 5.1 audio.

mi-fallout-4-300x169-5723080The Blu-ray disc with the feature carries the same bonus features but then there’s a second Blu-ray disc with an additional hour’s worth of goodness. The majority of the disc is filled with the seven-part Behind the Fallout (53:32) which exhaustively covers the film’s development and production. Broken down, these include Light the Fuse (11:10), giving you an overview; Top of the World (10:48), all about the HALO jump sequence; The Big Swing: Deleted Scene Breakdown (3:44);  Rendezvous in Paris (7:21); The Fall (5:57), all about how a man falls from a helicopter and lives to tell the tale; and The Hunt Is On (11:08), a spotlight on the helicopter chase; Cliffside Clash (4:02).

Rounding out the disc are Deleted Scenes Montage (3:41), complete with optional commentary by McQuarrie and Hamilton; Foot Chase Musical Breakdown (4:50); The Ultimate Mission (2:51), Cruise on his love of the series; Storyboards, and the Theatrical Trailer (2:33).

Watch the new “Captain Marvel” trailer!

Straight from Monday Night Football, it’s the newest trailer for Captain Marvel!

Set in the 1990s, Marvel Studios’ “Captain Marvel” is an all-new adventure from a previously unseen period in the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that follows the journey of Carol Danvers as she becomes one of the universe’s most powerful heroes. While a galactic war between two alien races reaches Earth, Danvers finds herself and a small cadre of allies at the center of the maelstrom.

REVIEW: Justice League: Throne of Atlantis – Commemorative Edition

REVIEW: Justice League: Throne of Atlantis – Commemorative Edition

In case you missed it, Aquaman opens December 21 and the early buzz is good. This will be his solo feature film, but he took front and center in 2015’s animated feature, Justice League: Throne of Atlantis, loosely based on the story arc that ran in Justice League and Aquaman, back when Geoff Johns was writing both series.

We reviewed the release back then and found Heath Corson’s script adaptation to be lacking in heart, eschewing characterization over mindless action.

To capitalize on interest in the Sea King, Warner Home Entertainment has released a commemorative edition that includes the complete film and the original extras: Villains of the Deep (12:00), Scoring Atlantis: The Sound of the Deep (30:00), Robin and Nightwing Bonus Sequence (4:00), and the 2014 NY Comic-Con Panel (27:00). Rounding things out, DC Comics Vault (83 minutes) offers up four episodes: “Aquaman’s Outrageous Adventure!” and “Evil Under the Sea!” from Batman: The Brave and the Bold, “Menace of the Black Manta and The Rampaging Reptile-Man” from the 1967-70 Aquaman series, and “Far from Home” from Justice League Unlimited.

The film is out as a 4k Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and Digital HD combo pack. The Blu-ray is virtually identical to the original release with one addition. The 4K transfer makes everything very crisp, capturing the colors nicely.

New to the release is Aquaman: The New King (15:00) where Corson and DC All Access host Hector Navarro gush about the hero. While they’re supported by voice actors Sam Witwer and Matt Lanter, it would have been nice for someone who actually worked on the comics to participate and help explain his place in the DC Universe. Apparently, the speakers were only familiar with more recent fare such as Peter David’s run and Alex Ross’ classic depictions.

Is it worth getting for 15 minutes of talking heads? Only if you don’t already own it and love all things under the sea.

Book-A-Day 2018 #336: Strong Female Protagonist, Book Two by Mulligan & Ostertag

Even in a comics superhero continuity entirely controlled by one creative team and contained in one series of stories, there can be retcons and changes. And sometimes you don’t notice them unless you’re specifically looking for them.

Take Strong Female Protagonist by writer Brennan Lee Mulligan and artist Molly Ostertag, originally a webcomic, which has been collected into two big books so far. When I read the first book a few years back, here’s how I described this universe’s White Event:

a worldwide band of thunderstorms hit, impossibly, about a decade ago — soon after 9/11 — and in their wake a whole lot of tweens and young teenagers suddenly had superpowers and strange transformations, all over the world. No one knows if there’s a cause-and-effect relationship there, or which way it would run. But some nations now have gods, and some presumably have very scary government enforcers, and some probably have unstoppable criminals. In the US, we got superheroes and a comic-booky strain of supervillains, who appear to have all gone in for the world-domination racket.

But in Book Two , there’s some throwaway dialogue about all of the affected kids all having been in utero at the time of the event, which either means I badly misunderstood the first book, or there was a different, much earlier event that actually created all the super-people.

This doesn’t actually matter to the story, obviously. But I’m fascinated by the change, and the impulse to change something (or clarify it) that is so unimportant. In both cases, something happened, inexplicable and worldwide, and a bunch of people in a very tight age cohort get superpowers — none of that changed.

I do wonder why having all of the superfolks be precisely the same age is so central — it’s not like they’re all in college together now. I suppose the point was to have this group be the first superpowered people, and to have there be a bunch of them, worldwide. This is a Wild Cards-style superhero universe, without the obvious single-point event causing it. A thing happened, and then a whole bunch of people manifested powers at puberty — some became heroes, some villains, some just hid, and some did other things.

Allison Green was one of the heroes, the high-powered brick Mega Girl, conscripted by the US government and assigned to a super-team for the duration of her adolescence. But now the supervillains have been defeated and the government regulations seem to have switched to “keep track of” rather than “use as strike force,” so now she’s retired, just one more, slightly older than usual, sophomore at NYC’s super-liberal New School. [1]

This book collects Chapters 5 and 6 of Allison’s story, which are as much about what it’s right for superpeople to do — through arguments, discussions, and some strong-arming of a reluctant superperson — as it is about the things they do. Chapter 5 in particular is a #MeToo story…except that I’m pretty sure those comics originally appeared online starting in 2014 or so, well before that hit the media and became a hashtag. (That’s because sexual abuse, and toxic masculinity, was not actually a new thing then — it’s just when a wider world started paying attention and decided it was important now.)

Since this is a superhero story, the initial hook is violence: someone is killing men who have been accused of sexual assault or rape and then been acquitted in court or otherwise “gotten off.” And Allison soon gets connected to the mysterious killer, when one of the victims is the potential creeper she saved a drunk girl at a party from (and saw it all blow up in a shaky YouTube video, of course). It gets a whole lot more complicated than that quickly, with Alison’s new mentor/partner/friend/independent-study-professor Lisa (aka the tinkerer Paladin) and the break-up of her old superhero team the Guardians and her suspicion that this new killer is her old teammate Mary, aka the invisible superheroine Moonshadow.

In the end, there is superhero violence and long conversations about the right thing to do — but much more of the latter than the former, as usual.

And those discussions lead into the ones in Chapter Six, in which Allison butts heads with a new philosophy professor who pushes all of her buttons. And dates a boy briefly who turns out to be a massively entitled rich asshole…and more than that. And attends a conference run by her old teammate Brad/Sonar for the “biodynamic” folks who don’t look like humans anymore. And a few other things, including finding a new life for her old friend Feral.

Strong Female Protagonist is very much the story of a young person, deeply concerned about meaning and justice and what should be and what’s meant to be. Allison is passionately committed to doing the things she was put on Earth to do, but not as clear about what those are. There’s no sign that she’s thought about the possibility that there is no teleology for humans. But she’s young: she’ll have plenty of time to figure out that life is pointless and painful and random and horrible.

[1] Which used to, and maybe still does, have an official name that continues “…for Social Research,” if you’re wondering what I mean by super-liberal.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Classic Fleischer Brothers Popeye Finally Comes to Blu-ray

888574770709_478f8a76-300x300-7375426BURBANK, CA (November 27, 2018) – One of the biggest animated stars in American history returns to prominence in a specially remastered Blu-ray & DVD presentation with the Warner Archive Collection (WAC) release of Popeye the Sailor: The 1940s, Volume 1, a 14-cartoon set that includes many shorts unseen in their original form for more than 60 years. In stunning 1080p high definition created from 4K scans of the original nitrate Technicolor negatives, and never before officially released for home entertainment, the single-disc Popeye the Sailor: The 1940s, Volume 1 will be available December 11, 2018 through wb.com/warnerarchive and your favorite online retailer.

Produced especially for the adult animation collector, Popeye the Sailor: The 1940s, Volume 1 features the first two Technicolor® seasons of Popeye’s animated theatrical shorts (1943-44 and 1944-45) produced by Famous Studios, Paramount’s revered New York-based cartoon studio.

Popeye the Sailor: The 1940s, Volume 1, the first authorized Blu-ray release of the color cartoons, covers their initial theatrical release – starting with “Her Honor The Mare” (originally released on November 26, 1943) and extending through the 1945 cartoon, “Mess Production.” Each of the 14 cartoons has been meticulously restored from the original 35mm nitrate Technicolor negatives, which have been scanned at 4K as part of Warner Bros. ongoing film preservation efforts. From these new recombined scans, Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging department has created new masters under the direction of Warner Archive Collection for this Blu-ray and DVD release.

Popeye, who will celebrate his 90th anniversary in 2019, made his debut on January 17, 1929 in the comic strip “The Thimble Theater,” created by cartoonist E.C. Segar.  Loved by fans from around the globe as the tough, spinach-loving sailor man who always stands up for the underdog, Popeye is one of the world’s most recognizable pop culture icons who has maintained a loyal following for decades.

“This is a landmark moment in Warner Bros. providing animation enthusiasts with the ability to own treasured animated classics from our library with the best possible quality, aimed directly at the adult animation collectors,” says George Feltenstein, Senior Vice President, Theatrical Catalog, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. “Popeye is a beloved character whose popularity has endured for 90 years – starting as a comic strip, continuing as a headliner in motion pictures for almost 25 years, and cherished for decades on television. Warner Bros. has been pleased to bring earlier incarnations, including the renowned Fleischer cartoons, to DVD, and now we continue to cater to animation superfans with this first installment of Famous Studios cartoons.”

As part of Warner Bros. decades-long corporate film preservation program, the restoration process on these Popeye cartoons has been meticulous in its mission to address any and all film damage while preserving the original animated frame. Dirt, debris and any film damage has been repaired from the original sources, most of which have not been touched in over 70 years. Warner Archive Collection has ensured great care was taken to keep the animation authentic to its original look as first presented on movie theater screens in the 1940s. The entire Popeye library is currently undergoing this process.

“Popeye is one of the all-time great cartoon characters, but he hadn’t gotten a fair shake in the world of home entertainment until Warner released all of his black & white shorts,” said Leonard Maltin, animation historian, and author of Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. “What came next? The first Technicolor Popeye cartoons were also the last ones made under the aegis of the Fleischer Brothers, Max and Dave. Animation aficionados should welcome the opportunity to see these long-forgotten cartoons in such pristine condition, taken from the original 35mm negatives.”

“This is the first time anyone has gone back to the master nitrate negatives to ensure a crisper picture and vivid colors – nor have these films ever sounded so good,” said respected animation historian and author Jerry Beck. “The animators at this time, during the war years, were allowed to push the Popeye character forward, creating particularly zany plot lines and funny situations beyond the classic Popeye/Bluto rivalry for Olive Oyl. I’m particularly tickled over the cartoon where Bluto becomes a pseudo-Superman (courtesy of a licensed tie-in with DC Comics) and another where Popeye and Bluto romance Olive as marionette puppets. This was the ‘Golden Age’ of animation – and these are particularly strong cartoons that have been long in demand by animation buffs.”

In addition, all cartoons in Popeye the Sailor: The 1940s, Volume 1 are complete and uncut as they were originally seen on movie screens, and retain their original titles (which were removed for television exhibition in the 1950s).

The 1940s brought new sights and sounds to America’s favorite cartoon star. In Popeye the Sailor: The 1940s, Volume 1, regulars Olive Oyl and Bluto return, while Popeye resumes his riotous relationship with his shipmate Shorty and his naughty nephews Pipeye, Poopeye, Peepeye and Pupeye. With the addition of full color, cartoonists were now free to let loose with journeys to exotic lands and give Popeye a fresh stock of new friends and foes.

But it’s the eternal love triangle, Popeye and Bluto competing for the attention of Olive, that drives the majority of these zany situations – as well as the hilarious action-packed gags. Whether our heroes are posing as circus acrobats or puppeteers or even taking turns at being Superman, these gems from the Golden Age of Hollywood will blow you down with laughter.

Popeye the Sailor: The 1940s, Volume 1 includes:

  • Her Honor The Mare
  • The Marry-Go-Round
  • We’re On Our Way To Rio
  • The Anvil Chorus Girl
  • Spinach Packin’ Popeye
  • Puppet Love
  • Pitchin’ Woo At The Zoo
  • Moving Aweigh
  • She-Sick Sailors
  • Pop-Pie A La Mode
  • Tops In The Big Top
  • Shape Ahoy
  • For Better Or Nurse
  • Mess Production

In anticipation of Popeye’s 90th anniversary year, brand owner King Features Syndicate, a unit of Hearst, unveiled a full slate of new content, exciting merchandise and events for 2019, including dozens of international and domestic partners that will support the salty sailor at retail across all major categories, including apparel, accessories, collectibles, health and nutrition, and publishing.

“We are thrilled to include Warner Bros.’ release of Popeye the Sailor: The 1940s, Volume 1 in the rollout of consumer products that will be available to fans during Popeye’s anniversary year,” says Carla Silva, VP and GM, Global Head of Licensing for King Features. “For millions of fans, the long-awaited experience of viewing this content for the first time in their own homes is priceless.”

Popeye the Sailor: The 1940s, Volume 1 is intended for the Adult Collector and May Not Be Suitable for Children. Also available on DVD!

BASICS
Popeye the Sailor: The 1940s, Volume 1
Run Time – 99:00 MINUTES
Subtitles – English SDH
Sound Quality – DTS HD-Master Audio 2.0 – English
Aspect Ratio – 4 X 3 FULL FRAME, ORIGINAL ASPECT RATIO – 1.37:1
Product Color – COLOR
Disc Configuration – BD 50

Book-A-Day 2018 #333: Doom Patrol by Grant Morrison, Richard Case, and others (3 and/or 6 volumes)

More time has passed since these stories per published than had passed for the whole history of the Doom Patrol to that point. As with so many things in corporate comics, in 2018 we’re now deep in second- or third-order nostalgia, memories of particular revised versions of things that have been around, and generating income for some corporation, for five or eight decades.

I tend to think Grant Morrison, and his Doom Patrol characters, would be just fine with that: they already think the world is random and bizarre and mostly unbelievable, a thin scrim over chaos and madness and conspiracy theories and various kinds of unlikely mysticism.

Doom Patrol was always pretty weird, right from the initial ’60s version by Arnold Drake, Bob Haney and Bruno Premiani. Introductions in the current editions of the Morrison run lean heavily into that: the idea that this team was always “freaks” and “misfits,” the ones fixing weird and surreal problems that more conventionally superheroic characters couldn’t handle. I haven’t read much of the Drake/Haney/Premiani run, so let’s say that’s correct: it sounds a bit like special pleading to me, but clearly it was weird by the standards of the time.

Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol, on the other hand, is weird by any standard. A hundred or more years from now, if people are still around and reading comics, they’ll still think this stuff is really out there. And it is.

Morrison took over what was a more-or-less conventional superhero team with declining sales in early 1989 and bet all of his chips on the freaks — it worked out, with the Morrison Doom Patrol  becoming an immediate success and eventually becoming one of the core books of the new Vertigo line a few years later. Morrison’s issues ran from early 1989 (#19) through early 1993 (#63), plus a piss-take of the then-popular X-Force called Doom Force.

The Morrison run has been collected twice in the last decade: first as six volumes from 2000-2008, and then as three double-sized books in 2016 and 2017. (There’s also, as there must be, the single big-crushing volume for those who must own something larger than anyone else.) For various quirky reasons that are very Doom Patrol appropriate, I read the first two big books and then volumes 5 and 6 of the previous series — all of the Morrison stories, in order.

It begins, very much corporate-comics style, in the aftermath of a crossover: Invasion! in this case. The members of the old team are dead (Celsius, Scott Fischer) or retired (Tempest) or comatose (Lodestone) or depowered (Negative Woman). Left standing alone is Robotman (Cliff Steele), who, maybe because of that, has since become the iconic character who is in every version of Doom Patrol. And the Chief (Niles Caulder) who originally formed the DP, is back to run it again.

Cliff is in some kind of psychiatric facility — modern and rehabilitative, so I won’t call it an “insane asylum” — where he meets Kay Challis, a woman who was systematically abused in childhood and developed sixty-four personalities from that abuse. And, from the “gene bomb” in Invasion!, all of those personalities now have independent superpowers.

Meanwhile, Larry Trainor, once Negative Man before the “Negative Spirit” left him, is also recuperating from his own problems when that spirit returns and forcibly merges Larry, itself, and a doctor named Eleanor Poole into a single entity that starts calling itself Rebis.

The three of them will be the new Doom Patrol team — Robotman, Kay as Crazy Jane, and Rebis. The former Tempest, Joshua Clay, becomes the team doctor but isn’t active even though he still has his fire-energy-beams-from-his-hands power. And they’re soon joined by Dorothy Spinner, a pre-teen with a deformed face who can bring her dreams and ideas to life (sometimes even on purpose), who is also what the Chief calls “the support team.”

They battle weird existential menaces for a few years of comics time — the Brotherhood of Dada, trying to drag the world into a painting; the Scissormen, foot-soldiers of a rapacious metafiction; Red Jack, who claims to be both God and Jack the Ripper and abducts the former Lodestone as his new bride; the Brotherhood of the Unwritten Book, in a semi-parody of Alan Moore’s post-Crisis Swamp Thing story about a magical apocalypse; the inter-dimensionally warring Geomancers of the Kaleidoscape and the Orthodoxy of the Insect Mesh, who also have plans for a now-awake and -transformed Lodestone (who is called by her real name, Rhea, throughout); the Men from N.O.W.H.E.R.E., who want to make the whole world “normal;” and a few more variations of the same themes.

Along they way, they meet the sentient dimension-hopping Danny the Street, who becomes something between their new HQ and a member of the team. And they meet the long-lost Flex Mentallo, man of muscle mystery, who wandered off for his own mini-series and I don’t think has been seen much since. (Or maybe he’s in the Teen Titans now; stupider things have happened in the DC Universe.)

In the end, the last villain of Morrison’s Doom Patrol run is inside the team, of course, and he gets to run through one more level of deconstruction before ending his Doom Patrol stories with a bang. (And then, to close out all of these books, comes that Doom Force one-shot, a deliberately ugly and dumb takedown of the stupid comics from the people who would very soon found Image and get rich very quickly.)

There’s not much else like this Doom Patrol: it’s the first major flowering of Morrison’s tropism towards metafiction and superhero-as-mythic-figure and a strong example of a case where his magpie gathering of every last random thing he reads or experiences really works well. And he’s ably assisted on art through this long series — primarily by Richard Case, who pencilled the majority of the stories, with other contributions by Simon Bisley (most of the iconic covers), Kelley Jones, Jamie Hewlett, Ken Steacy, and Sean Phillips.

For me, this is the quintessential Grant Morrison Big Two comic. I like to pretend that these are the kinds of characters and stories that his career focused on, that he didn’t turn to telling ham-handed episodes of superhero porn. Remember: we all create our own canons in our heads; we don’t ever need to let anyone else tell us what matters.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Slimmed down Batman the Animated Series Box Set is Now Out

BURBANK, CA (November 27, 2018) – With copies of the popular Batman: The Complete Animated Series Deluxe Limited Edition nearly sold out, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment and DC Entertainment have made available – effective today – the streamlined, content-only Batman: The Complete Animated Series Blu-ray/Digital box set ($89.99 SRP). The 12-disc set (plus a digital copy) features all 109 remastered episodes of the landmark television series along with hours of bonus features, the heralded 90-minute “The Heart of Batman” documentary, and the recently-remastered, fan favorite animated films Batman: Mask of the Phantasm and Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero.

Amazon will continue to offer Batman: The Complete Animated Series Deluxe Limited Edition Blu-ray box sets while supplies last.

“Demand for the most acclaimed animated super hero television series in history has been tremendous – nearly all of the 70,000 Limited Edition Blu-ray box sets have been sold across North America,” said Mary Ellen Thomas, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Vice President, Family & Animation Marketing. “So that all interested fans have the opportunity to own this beloved series, WBHE felt the need to create another option to accommodate everyone.”

Produced by Warner Bros. Animation, the Emmy Award-winning Batman: The Animated Series captured the imaginations of generations during its initial broadcast airing from 1992-1995, setting the standard for super hero storytelling for the past quarter-century with its innovative designs, near-perfect voice cast and landmark approach to DC’s iconic characters and stories.  The series garnered a Primetime Emmy Award in 1993 for Outstanding Animated Program, along with three additional Emmy wins and 13 total Emmy nominations.

Batman: The Complete Animated Series Blu-ray/Digital box set’s enhanced content includes 25 featurettes, two popular animated films; introductions to five episodes by producer Bruce Timm; and commentary on 12 episodes by various combinations of the production team: Bruce Timm, Eric Radomski, Paul Dini, Kevin Altieri, Michael Reaves, Boyd Kirkland, Shirley Walker, Glen Murakami, Dan Riba, and James Tucker.

BATMAN and all related characters and elements are trademarks of and © DC Comics.  © 2018 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

Book-A-Day 2018 #332: Crush by Svetlana Chmakova

Some media are better for some stories than others. I’d like to think that’s obvious, but the way mass culture obsesses about adapting everything into movies and TV shows makes me think it’s either a minority opinion or that a lot of people are just dim.

For example: you can do a strong, mostly silent type in a filmed format (moves, TV, animation), and give him hidden emotional depths by turning his thoughts into a voiceover. But a novel is a much more natural and obvious way to tell that story. Comics, too,  has less obtrusive ways to incorporate narration — the old thought bubbles, or the more modern narrative captions.

Which brings me to Jorge Ruiz, narration and central character of Svetlana Chamakova’s third graphic novel about the kids of Berrybrook Middle School, Crush . (It follows Awkward  and Brave ). He’s the kind of kid who’s better at doing than talking, who doesn’t entirely understand his own motivations and feelings — and that’s all very normal, since he’s all of thirteen.

He’s just started crushing hard on Jazmine Duong, a girl in his class — I don’t know exactly why, and Jorge certainly doesn’t, like most crushes. That makes him even quieter when he’s around her, because he’s so tongue-tied hardly any words can even come out.

Worse, she has a boyfriend. And she’s the BFF of Olivia, one of Jorge’s two long-term best buds. So she’s always around, occasionally with that boyfriend.

It gets more complicated — bullies, Jorge’s role as “sheriff” of the school to stop same, preparation for an Athletics Ball thrown by the Athletics Club [1], and several imploding relationships (friendly and proto-romantic) leading to a very nasty group chat with added hacking-fakery sauce. But, as the title promises, this is mostly the story of Jorge’s crush on Jazmine, and how it turns into more than that.

Jorge has a steadier moral compass than many of the people in this story, and a better one (as far as I can remember) than the protagonists of the first two books. But he’s also a tongue-tied thirteen-year-old mush-head, which is totally endearing.

As before, Chmakova makes books that I think actual middle-schoolers like and find to be reflective of their own lives. But Crush is also great for older people who remember being at the opening curtain of puberty, being totally into someone, and having no clue what to do about that.

[1] Neither of which, in my experience, are Things in American schools. The places that are particularly sports-nutty don’t have one club for every jock: each different sport has its own season and structure and teacher-coach and attitude about why their sport is the best possible one. I suspect Chmakova writes Berrybrook as so club-besotted because a) she’s not American by birth and 2) she really likes manga, where the club is an overwhelming trope.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Venom is now a Rom-Com, at least when it hits disc in Dec.

CULVER CITY, Calif. (November 26, 2018) – One of Marvel’s most enigmatic, complex, and badass characters comes home in VENOM, which will make its debut on Digital December 11, and on 4K Ultra HD™ Combo Pack, Blu-ray™ Combo Pack, and DVD on December 18! This must-own comic book blockbuster, which has grossed more than $822 million in theaters worldwide to date, is directed by Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland) and features an all-star cast including Tom Hardy (The Dark Knight Rises, Mad Max: Fury Road), Michelle Williams (The Greatest Showman), Riz Ahmed (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, TV’s “The Night Of”), Jenny Slate (Zootopia) and Woody Harrelson (Zombieland, The Hunger Games franchise).

The perfect holiday gift, VENOM arrives filled with engaging bonus materials that will give fans even more of the action that they loved in theaters with over an hour of new content. The special features include an exciting Venom Mode, where fans will be able to engage with informative pop-ups throughout the film to reveal hidden references to the comics, deleted and extended scenes, a mini documentary called From Symbiote to Screen that covers the history of Venom in comics and his journey to the big screen. Also a behind-the-scenes peek at some of the stunts, a look at Ruben Fleischer’s journey behind the lens, a featurette about what it took to create Venom on screen called Designing Venom. Symbiote Secrets reveals Easter Eggs and hidden references in the film Other bonus materiales include multiple pre-visualizaton versions of some of your favorite scenes, Eminem’s incredible video for his hit song “Venom,” “Sunflower” from Post Malone and Swae-Lee (from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse), and an early sneak peek at Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

VENOM tells the evolution story of Marvel’s most enigmatic, complex and badass character Venom! Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is a broken man after he loses everything including his job and fiancee. Just when his life is at its lowest, he becomes host to an alien symbiote which results in extraordinary superpowers – transforming him into Venom. Will these powers be enough for this new lethal protector to defeat great evil forces, especially against the far stronger and more weaponized symbiote rival, Riot?

VENOM is directed by Ruben Fleischer and written by Jeff Pinkner & Scott Rosenberg and Kelly Marcel. The film is produced by Avi Arad, Matt Tolmach and Amy Pascal.

Bonus Materials Include:

  • Venom Mode: When selecting this mode the film will engage informative pop-ups throughout the film to provide insight on the movie’s relationship to the comics, and to reveal hidden references that even a seasoned Venom-fan may have missed!
  • Deleted & Extended Scenes: These deleted and extended scenes will give fans even more of the Venom action they loved in theaters!
    • Ride to Hospital – Eddie and Venom take a ride to the hospital.
    • Car Alarm – Let’s just say that Venom is not fond of car alarms.
    • San Quentin – Extended post-credits scene at San Quentin.
  • From Symbiote to Screen: A mini documentary about the history of Venom in comics and his journey to the big screen. Interviews with Avi Arad, Matt Tolmach, Ruben Fleischer, Oliver Scholl, and Director and Comic Fanboy Kevin Smith.
  • The Lethal Protector in Action: Go behind the scenes with the production crew and learn the secrets behind the awesome Motorcycle stunts, wire stunts, and drones.
  • Venom Vision: A look at how Ruben Fleischer came to the project, gathered his team, and made Venom a reality. Utilizes interviews from cast, crew, and producers as well as Fleischer himself.
  • Designing Venom: Designing and creating Venom meant a huge challenge for VFX artists; follow the amazing journey.
  • Symbiote Secrets: Blink and you may have missed it! Enjoy the hidden references throughout the film.
  • 8 Select Scenes Pre-Vis sequences: See the progression of the visual effects, storyboards and fight chorography compared to the finished film.
  • “Venom” by Eminem – Music Video
  • “Sunflower” by Post Malone, Swae Lee (From Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse)
  • Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Sneak Peek: Meanwhile in another universe…

4K Ultra HD™ Includes:

  • Feature film presented with Dolby Vision high dynamic range and Dolby Atmos sound
  • Also includes the film and special features on the included high-def Blu-ray

VENOM has a run time of approximately 112 minutes and is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for language.

Book-A-Day 2018 #331: The Swords of Heaven, The Flowers of Hell by Michael Moorcock & Howard Chaykin

Michael Moorcock has “ended” his Eternal Champion cycle many times over the past decades — I think he did it for the first time back in the late ’60s, when it was still almost entirely Elric and just a bit of those other guys. But none of those endings have taken; he’s come back time and time again for more stories of Elric in particular and other incarnations as well.

One of the earlier endings was in the mid-70s, after two “John Daker” novels, about an incarnation of the EC that remembered all of the other incarnations. Those felt like summings-up, and were a little heftier than some of the EC novels (Dorian Hawkmoon, I am looking at you). But of course a working writer will work, and he’ll come up with more ideas — particularly for the central project of his career.

So, in 1979, Moorcock, in whatever way and for whatever reason, wrote a treatment for a third Daker story, which he gave to Howard Chaykin, then very early in his career, to adapt and illustrate and turn into a graphic novel. (I don’t think that term existed yet, or at least wasn’t in wide use, but this was one of the first created-as-a-book comics in that first burst in the late ’70s.) It was published as The Swords of Heaven, The Flowers of Hell , missed its market almost entirely, and has been a sought-after collector’s item for Moorcock completists since then, but little-remembered otherwise.

But Titan is doing a big series of all of the Moorcock EC comics, in more-or-less uniform editions, so earlier this year they reissued Swords of Heaven into a market where it actually could find the intersection of Moorcock and Chaykin fans.

The best Eternal Champion stories have quirkier, less obviously heroic plotlines — particularly the Elric stories. But a whole lot of them from the ’60s and ’70s take that essential sword-and-sorcery plot — evil forces are threatening {insert place}, which is generally where {hero}’s love {hot girlfriend} lives, and often where he’s from, too, and so he must battle their {fiendish weapon} against overwhelming odds and win out in the end despite great losses to his forces and/or allies. Better versions of that story turn up the woe and bleakness; what made Moorcock’s epic fantasy stories distinctive was the attitude of his stories and protagonists — they’re depressive and tormented and unlucky and nearly incapable of happiness.

Doing the same story in comics form means less of the woe-is-me narration, which could be a positive or a negative, depending on your point of view. But it does tend to make Swords of Heaven a little flatter and less distinctive than an equivalent Moorcock novel. By this point in his career, Moorcock’s language was stronger, and often more of a draw, than his epic adventure plots. (His plots outside of epic adventure had gotten substantially better — this book came out only a year after one of his best novels, the World Fantasy-winning Gloriana, and just before a burst of interesting early-’80s novels including the Von Bek books.)

In this case, the transform table goes thus:

  • {insert place} = The Dream Marshes, a lush and rich land about to be invaded by the barbarians of the desert realm Hell on their way to invade an even richer land called Heaven, ruled by aristocratic assholes
  • {hero} = Urlik Skarsol, bodily dropped into the body of Lord Clen of the Dream Marches
  • {hot girlfriend} = Ermizhad, the wife of Erekose, which was our hero’s name three or four books ago, and who he’s trying to get back to in the sense that he pines for her and has no way to actually control his travels
  • {fiendish weapon} = mostly human-wave attacks, though they’re also the usual mix of inventively bloodthirsty and maniacal

So Swords of Heaven does have a faint whiff of the generic to me — not as much as the first Hawkmoon series, luckily, but less distinctive than the first two Daker novels The Eternal Champion and Phoenix in Obsidian. The names in particular are a bit on the nose, aside from the odd “Lord Clen.” Clen does not have a sword that steals souls, does not massacre his entire race, and does not lose his homeland or One True Love. He’s a smartish guy who wins a brutal war against an overwhelming enemy, though only after his side takes horrific losses. So, not entirely devoid of woe.

Chaykin is working in fully painted pages here, without a lot of black lines. The characters look like Chakyin people, but the overall look aims for more of a classic-illustration look, vaguely in the Howard Pyle vein. And that’s very appropriate for a very traditional adventure story like this one. It’s difficult to tell what of the writing is his and what is Moorcock’s, but it’s all plausible and sturdy, with no major problems.

This is not a great lost Eternal Champion story. It’s a pretty good late-70s EC story, that links Phoenix in Obsidian to 1986’s The Dragon in the Sword. That’s fine for me; it might be fine for you.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

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