Category: Feature

The best of the rest

CategoriesComic Books, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

My favorite movies about movies that never happened :The Death of “Superman Lives”: What Happened? & Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau.

supermanlivesBoth these movies, one about a Tim Burton Superman movie that would’ve been released in the late ‘90s and a different version of the Island of Dr. Moreau than the one that came out in ’96, are a fascinating look inside the moviemaking process. The reason behind why Superman didn’t live with Burton is because of the nature of the moviemaking business, of a studio in trouble after a series of costly flops and of being scared to finance another risky looking film. While Lost Soul shows that while the writer/director of a film can have an amazing vision, that vision isn’t enough to keep them their job when the two stars of the movie want him off the set.

My favorite comic strip: Willie & Joe: The WWII Years

I’ve been aware of the Bill Mauldin’s Will & Joe comic strip for many years now but only when it was referenced in other works about how accurately Mauldin was able to portray the life of soldiers serving during WWII. It was only after I bought the book Willie & Joe: The WWII Years and was able to experience the cartoons for myself, there are 600+ in the book, that I was finally able to see Mauldin’s genius first hand.

My favorite hardest working actor on TV: Bob Odenkirk

Bob Odenkirk
Bob Odenkirk

I mean, c’mon. In the space of two years the guy’s co-starred in two series; The Birthday Boys and Fargo, had the lead role in another with Better Call Saul and created, co-wrote and co-starred in the W/ Bob and David series. I guess Odenkirk’s one of those guys who’ll sleep when he’s dead — which hopefully won’t be for many, many years.

My favorite book: Roadside Picnic (1972) by Arkady Strugatsky & Boris Strugatsky

I’m always on the lookout for old books that still resonate today. I heard of the book Roadside Picnic when I read about the ’79 film Stalker which was based on Roadside Picnic and decided to check it out myself. The book’s about the aftereffects of an alien visitation that only lasted a few hours but when the aliens departed they left all sorts of items behind. Is this “stuff” their garbage or something more? Some of it is extremely dangerous like a weird blue mist that turns bones of those who touch it to mush while others are beneficial like batteries that never run out of power.
Roadside Picnic mostly follows a new class of people dubbed “stalkers” who make a living and risk their lives venturing into these contaminated zones to take any of the alien leftovers and sell it to the highest bidder. But when the children of these stalkers begin displaying some weird birth defects, the question becomes are they only bringing out the artifacts or are they also bringing something else out with them?

My favorite post apocalyptic thing: Mad Max Fury Road

20120425222104In an era when there are loads of post-apocalyptic TV series and movies, I think the best of the bunch was the fourth film of the Mad Max franchise. Fury Road plays like some extended fever dream; from characters speaking languages the viewer can’t understand, to the oversaturated psychedelic landscapes to a movie that’s made of almost constant action… But it’s these differences from all the other post-apocalyptic TV and movies that set Fury Road apart and made it one of the best films I’ve seen in quite some time.

My favorite collected comic: Hellblazer

I suppose the only reason I started reading the Hellblazer comic was because of the failed Constantine TV show. But if that’s what it took then I’m okay with Constantine being cancelled. John Constantine, lead of Hellblazer, is a self destructive demonologist who, when he’s not battling the occult, is someone who mostly just wants to be left alone. Hellblazer, stories deal with everything from yuppie demons to a bleak, early 1980s Thatcher-lead England and new age cults, both good and bad.
Hellblazer was released in ’88 and I didn’t start reading it until this year, so I guess a 27 year wait to read something as good as Hellblazer is okay.

Top 10 posts of 2015

CategoriesFeature, Movies, TVPosted on

Based on total visitors to the site:

  1. How many zombies are there in the world of The Walking Dead?
  2. Quotes of note – Hannibal: “Ko No Mono”
  3. …Remember, He’s on Your Side (Mad Max)
  4. The Evil Dead Movies Part 3: Army of Darkness, Hail to the king!
  5. The Evil Dead Movies Part 2: Evil Dead II, Dead by Dawn!
  6. Quotes of Note – Hannibal: “Sakizuki”
  7. Dream of the Big, Huge Turtle (The Bermuda Depths)
  8. Joel de la Fuente The Man in the High Castle/Space: Above and Beyond
  9. L.A. Takedown vs. Heat, Spot the Differences
  10. The ages of actors who have played Doctor Who over the years

The myth of the forbidden film

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I don’t think there are anymore forbidden films like there used to be when I was growing up.

I remember when VHS was king and my family would make weekly vigils to one of the local rental shops and when the new movies were already checked out, as they almost always were, we’d peruse the stacks looking for anything interesting to watch. Sometimes we’d come across weird horror flicks like Troma classics The Toxic Avenger (1984) and Class of Nuke ‘em High (1986) and sometimes strange documentaries about odd subjects.

In the 1980s some friends and myself were into heavy metal. I didn’t look like the stereotypical “metal head” but none-the-less when the other kids were listening to Richard Marx and Kenny Loggins, my group of friends were buying, duping and trading Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Anthrax and Iron Maiden tapes amongst ourselves.

Back then it wasn’t easy to follow your favorite bands. There were a few heavy metal magazines you could buy at drug stores and supermarkets and Headbangers Ball on MTV. But otherwise you were pretty much on your own. What was the meaning of the cover painting to Guns N’ Roses “Appetite for Destruction?” Did listening to any Judas Priest song automatically place satanic suggestions in one’s brain? Who exactly was this “Walking Dude” that Anthrax was singing about? How many dead in the apocalypse constitutes a Megadeth?

And outside of these magazines and Headbangers Ball and sensationalized TV news programs about the horrors of heavy metal there weren’t many real answers. That was until a fateful day in the video store when we rented the tape The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (1988). Read more “The myth of the forbidden film”

Direct beam comms #3

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, Toys, TVPosted on

TV

I’m really digging The Expanse on SyFy. It’s very space-opera-isa with a heavy story.

 

Last fall BBC America aired several movie-length episodes of classic Tom Baker Doctor Who. It seemed that perhaps BBC America was about to start airing classic Doctor Who alongside the new but alas this seemed to only be a short experiment where only a few episodes ever aired.

Classic Doctor Who shows usually consisted of four or six half hour episodes that were aired weekly in the UK but were sometimes edited together into two or three hour stories for overseas markets — which is how I saw Doctor Who in the 1980s on my local PBS station and how BBC America is airing the shows.

After having watched several of the episodes on BBC America it’s plainly obvious that some of the classic Doctor Who was greatly padded.

Sometimes it seems as if characters spend what would be an entire 30 minute episode running from something, or getting ready to do something. But not actually getting anything done. And a 30 minute block seems only to exist to move characters from point “A” to “B,” which though the magic of editing could be done in a few seconds of screen time.

I think that the only reason this padding exists is because four or six episodes were needed per Doctor Who story back then, not that four or six episodes were actually needed to tell the story.

Not that this is a horrible thing or that it makes classic Doctor Who bad or anything — I actually prefer it over the new series — just that there was a reason when I was a kid I almost never made it to the end of a two hour episode of Doctor Who without falling asleep.

Movies

Neca Alien 1/4 scale figure
Neca Alien 1/4 scale figure

I mean this in the best possible way — Sicario is a cross between the movies Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and Traffic (2001). A-

 

For how much reviewers disliked Terminator Genisys I thought it was a good movie. There is the issue of a big story turn in the second act of the movie that doesn’t quite work — or make sense — but it’s not enough to spoil the film as a whole. I actually liked how the filmmakers of Terminator Genisys actively played with and used the idea of time travel in different ways than in the other films and introduced the idea that just one thing amiss in a timeline can totally change the future. B

My preference of Terminator movies in order:

  1. Terminator (1984)
  2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
  3. Terminator Genisys (2015)
  4. Terminator Salvation (2009)
  5. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)

Toys

The Neca Alien 1/4 scale figure stands a whopping 22 inches tall and has 30 points of articulation including its alien tongue. It’s everything I didn’t get when I missed getting the original 1977 Alien toy as a kid. The figure retails for around $110 which isn’t totally insane considering its size.

On the Horizon

I’m working on columns for the second season of Daredevil and the Dark Horse Aliens comic books.

Direct beam comms #2

CategoriesComic Books, Direct Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

TV

How ironic is it that the most interesting character in the Amazon series The Man in the High Castle is a murdering American Nazi family-man dealing with an insurgency and a family medical crisis played by Rufus Sewell? And that’s not to knock anyone else on High Castle — that’s just that Sewell’s character of John Smith is the best thing in a good series!

 

I’ve been thinking about the TV series Babylon 5 lately and there’s a reason for that. I’ve been going through my old comic collection and pulling aside issues that have some meaning to me — the first comic book I ever remember paying my own money for, ones with amazing story and art, ones that I had to seek out… — and at the same time was pulling non-comic things out of my long boxes. Some of what I moved were a few issues of a short-lived magazine called sci-fi Invasion! by Wizard from late 1990s. Looking through those magazines what was top of mind back then was Star Wars because of the then upcoming prequels, The X-Files, Star Trek and Babylon 5.

What’s interesting is that there’s a new Star Wars movie and TV series out now, a new The X-Files series that starts in a few weeks and a new Star Trek movie next year and talk of a new Trek TV series too. But as for Babylon 5, that one’s mostly forgotten.

Well, kind’a forgotten. There are DVD sets for the series but that’s about it. Babylon 5 isn’t available in hi-def nor for purchase or streaming online and as far as I’m aware isn’t playing on syndication anywhere. Which is totally odd in a time where sci-fi is king and there’s this 110 episode series that’s just sitting out there somewhere that many fans of the genera are unaware of.

Batman vs Superman vs Wonder Woman vs Ash vs Evil Dead poster
Batman vs Superman vs Wonder Woman vs Ash vs Evil Dead poster

Even when Babylon 5 was new it was second-fiddle to the Star Trek series that were also airing at the same time. Where I lived new episodes Babylon 5 aired Sunday mornings at 8AM. Babylon 5 wasn’t so much as appointment TV as it was a syndicated series local stations could use to plug holes in their schedules, of which our local station must’ve had one Sunday mornings when I was usually sleeping in.

It wasn’t until TNT bought and started reairing the series weekday afternoons, and a more reasonable hour to a college student, that I was finally able to see all the Babylon 5 episodes.

Babylon 5 was good. Like Star Trek it took a season for the series to find its legs but once it did it was enjoyable. Even if many of the themes, storylines and character types are essentially pulled straight from The Lord of the Rings novels.

Regardless, it does make me wonder why Babylon 5 just went away as it were. After TNT reaired the series once or twice and tried rebooting it through a series of TV movies, Babylon 5 in the late ‘90s essentially was gone seemingly for good from TV screens.

Maybe the series was shot on video and can’t easily be converted to hi-def, or maybe it’s something to do with the special effects or who owns the rights to the show is why it’s only ever really been available on DVD? My feeling is that someday someone’s going to see this gem sitting in their vaults and either decide to reair it to great acclaim or reboot it ala classic and modern Doctor Who.

It’s only a matter of time.

Alternate Christmas flicks

Let’s say that you’re tired of the traditional Christmas movies that pop-up on TV every year — I’m lookin’ at you A Christmas Story — and want to switch things up a bit. Here’s a group of movies that all takes place at Christmas-time, but aren’t necessarily Christmas related.

Prometheus (2012): The crew of the spaceship Prometheus arrive at a far off distant planet on December 21, 2093 where they spend the holiday season fighting aliens creatures out to destroy humanity.

Go (1999): In Go, several different stories from soap-opera actors to young 20-somethings selling ecstasy to a trip to Las Vegas all collide during the holiday season.

Batman Returns (1992): This will probably be the only Batman film in history that takes place in a snowy Gotham City during Christmas.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) & Iron Man 3 (2013): Writer/director Shane Black sure must have a thing for Christmas since two of his movies both takes place at that time.

Die Hard (1988): A movie that still holds up nearly 30 years later, Die Hard takes place over one night at a corporate Christmas party gone bad.

Comics

Silver Surfer Epic Collection: Freedom collects many of the early Silver Surfer appearances in the early ’80s, from a story from the Epic Illustrated an a John Byrne one-shot to 14 issues of the Silver Surfer comic released in the late ’80s which started my obsession with this awesome cosmic character.

Movies

I recently discovered the wonderful movie What We Do in the Shadows by Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords and Taika Waititi. This movie follows a documentary crew as they film a group of vampires based in Wellington, New Zealand. Think The Office crossed with Interview with a Vampire and that’s what What We Do in the Shadows is. Instead of following the usual vampire tropes, this film instead focuses on vampire “flatmates” who are all several hundred years old and must navigate the Wellington night scene, where they’ve got to be invited into clubs to look for their next meal, and are perplexed by modern conveniences like TV and the internet.
“Yeah some of our clothes are from victims. You might bite someone and then, you think, ‘Oooh, those are some nice pants!’.”

On the Horizon

I’m thinking of writing a column on what exactly Doc Brown knew in the Back to the Future movies which would come out sometime next year but haven’t quite cracked it yet.