Last Weekend Roundup

Whew, it’s been a busy few weeks. I was pretty exhausted for most of last week, but Em and I did watch a bunch of movies last Sunday to celebrate the new TV. Instead of watching special effects heavy movies like Iron Man or Transformers we went in the opposite direction and watched a pair of romantic comedies. Not exactly my usual, but I did enjoy both flicks.

The first was a movie that had been sitting near our TV for a few weeks along with Drop Dead Gorgeous which Em borrowed from her friend Lee (hey Lee). It’s called The Sweetest Thing (2002) and stars Cameron Diaz, Christina Applegate, Selma Blair, Jason Bateman and The Punisher, er, Tom Jane. I’ll be honest, it’s been over a week and my memory’s definitely fuzzy, but basically Diaz falls for Tom Jane in a club and then tries to go after him at what she thinks is her brother’s (Bateman) but is really Jane’s. Plot-wise, it’s a pretty standard romantic comedy, but it’s the flourishes that make this a pretty good flick. Diaz and Applegate have some pretty over the top scenes and they often sneak into annoying territory with their catch phrases and Diaz’s mugging for the camera. But all in all, if you’ve got to watch a RomCom, it’s a pretty good one.

We also checked out Run Fatboy Run (2007) which also falls into the romantic comedy genre and follows a lot of the standard tropes, but I’m a big Simon Pegg fan and David Schwimmer did a great job directing him, Hank Azaria and Thandie Newton. Pegg plays a dude who ran out on his pregnant fiance (Newton) on their wedding day. Now it’s five years later, they’ve got a kid, he works as a security guard at a clothing store where he runs down bra-stealing trannies and Newton’s dating the super succesful Azaria who likes to run marathons. Pegg realizes how big of a mistake he made and now wants to made good by showing people (mostly her, his kid and himself) that he can run a marathon in England (where he lives).

What I do like about RFR is that, even though it is kind of paint by numbers, Schwimmer uses a few different colors than you might expect. Like a lot of other RomComs, we see that Azaria’s maybe not the greatest guy and we do feel good when Newton finally realizes this. But, and this is a SPOILER at the end, after Azaria’s out of the picture and Pegg’s proven he’s a good dude, it’s not like he and Newton just fall in love again. I appreciate that.

So far, I haven’t seen Pegg in anything that I didn’t like, except for the flick that he co-starred with Schwimmer in called Big Nothing which really didn’t do anything for me. He’s even the reason I’m looking forward to Star Trek, though now that I’ve seen the previews, that movie is really making me want to see it, so kudos to the marketing team.

Yeah, I know romantic comedies probably aren’t what you expected to read about in this first post after a slow week, but I’m trying to catch up on what I read and watched over the week. Until next time…

What I’m Thankful For: My Parents (and TV!)

Okay, so one of the reasons that I haven’t been posting as much the past five days or so is because my parents came in for a visit on Friday and left Sunday. I had asked my dad to root through the boxes in their basement and bring some of my oldest action figures and he responded in spaces with boxes full of He-Man, Batman, Silverhawks, Star Wars, Ghostbusters and plenty of other random toys from my childhood. So, first of all, a huge thanks for that, Dad’s awesome.

But that’s not all, for not real reason, Mom and Dad also took Em and I to Best Buy where they treated us to a brand new flat screen TV as well as a new DVD/VCR player (which is great, because, as regular readers know, I’ve been watching DVDs on my PS2 and our old TV SUCKED). So, again, they’re awesome and not just because they bring and buy me/us stuff. This isn’t really the forum to get into all the great things they’ve done, but, according to Rickey, they’ve got to be in the top 3 sets of parents of all time. I’ve got to agree.

The TV is freaking mind blowingly awesome. After setting it up we watched Kung Fu Panda and it looked AMAZING. I kept giggling throughout the movie because it looked so good. I was astonished both by the quality and my parents’ generosity. Aside from all that, though, the movie is awesome. The voice acting is spot on (Jack Black, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen, David Cross even Angelina Jolie and more) and the action scenes are SICK. It’s great to see filmmakers who realize you can do all kinds of things with CGI and not be shackled down by the physical world that real movies are. It’s also just a lot of fun, Jack Black’s funny without being TOO Blackian. I recommend everyone check it out.

I ended up staying up late after everyone else went to bed just to watch Friday the 13th 5 (I wanted to see how it looked on the new TV), there will be a Halloween Scene review soon. I wasn’t quite tired after that, still, so I popped Star Wars Battlefront II into the PS2 and had some fun with that for a while, but I wasn’t quite done so I watched some TV just to see how it looked. I eventually tapped out around 3.

On Saturday Dad and I watched college football, bouncing between the Notre Dame game (my team) and his team, Ohio State. But we weren’t just sitting there as Dad and I (but mostly him) built these frames with shrink wrap on them to place in our windows to help keep the cold out this winter. Meanwhile Mom and Em made Christmas cookies all day. And mind you, they got in around 5 on Friday and took of Sunday morning. I think Rickey’s right (though I’ve known this for a while), they’re the best. Thanks a lot Mom and Dad!

Halloween Scene: The Substitute (2007) & Pulse 2 (2008)

A few weeks (maybe months now) I raided the pile of new DVDs we get in the office and grabbed most of the horror movies. The Ghost House Underground flicks were on that pile, which I was pretty excited about, but I also grabbed some movies I didn’t really know anything about. The other day I watched one of each and I was pleasantly surprised by both.

First up was The Substitute from Denmark (Vikaren in whatever people from Denmark speak) which was awesome. The story reminds me of movies from my childhood (though I can’t remember any specifically) where a group of kids learn the truth about their teacher (she’s a whole chicken-eating alien) but the parents don’t believe them, partly because she has some kind of mind control powers when it comes to making people say things (she can also shrink people). There’s a ton of great scenes playing off this concept, like the teacher starting a relationship with the main kid’s dad and showing her true face only to him at the dinner table and another kid telling his parents something along the lines of “I hope you realize this is the last time you’ll ever see me alive” after trying to convince them of his teacher’s evilness and them still sending him on a field trip with her. There’s even a great scene where the kids sneak into the teacher’s house with terrifying results.

The story gets a bit confusing at the end, but all in all it’s a really solid story that’s got it’s own visual style and even sports opening and closing voiceovers about how humanity and earth are awesome. My only problems come with the fact that I’m not from Denmark and couldn’t watch this movie in a language I understand. The dubbing wasn’t as bad as some of the other movies I’ve watched, but my real problem stemmed from not being able to tell if the long haired blonde children were boys or girls. As the story plays on, though, I figured it out.

Like I said this was a really enjoyable movie, one that I’d actually like to see get remade in the states, but with a really solid director. How great would it be to have another Goonies-type movie showing kids in somewhat adult situations and dealing with a crazy situation? Do they make movies like that for kids anymore? I watched about 10 minutes of High School Musical 2 and wanted to hurt things, so I had to leave the room. Needless to say, I’m not real tapped in to what the kids like, but this would be good for them.

Pulse 2, however, probably wouldn’t be so good for the kids. Not because it’s a bad movie or even all that disturbing, but moreso because the ridiculous amounts of needless greenscreening may warp young minds. More on that in a minute. The story apparently follows directly from the original Pulse, which I did not see, so I was pretty lost. I’m also pretty sure that they don’t really go into many of the details of what happened in the first movie beyond “Computers caused it” or whatever.

The story follows a dad played by Jamie Bamber (who’s on Battlestar Galactica, but I don’t watch that show so, eh) trying to make sure his daughter’s okay in a world that’s slowly creating more and more black and white static ghosts that can only appear around technology (?). We start off following his ex-wife/the girl’s mom as she’s wandering around some weird dream world looking for her daughter (which is made even more dreamlike thanks to the greenscreening). Then it weirdly jumps to the dad grabbing the daughter and leaving for a cabin in the woods where his weird girlfriend comes in. There’s a whole lot of other weird plot elements, like a dude who claims to know how to stop the techno ghost plague (or whatever).

I had less than zero interest or expectations for this movie going in and even though it wasn’t great and the plot was a little sloppy in the beginning, I still kind of liked it. I’m not sure why, really. The story was compelling and the Battlestar Galactica dude acted pretty well even with all the weirdness and the greenscreening.

Okay, I can’t go on anymore without addressing this. There are tons of scenes filmed on green screens for some reason. And it’s not like this movie takes place on Mars or in Sin City, it’s a dude in a cabin, yet, instead of filming it normally it’s on a green screen. It didn’t bother me in the beginning because I assumed the mom was in some kind of weird dream world, but there were so many scenes sporting sloppy greenscreening that I couldn’t help but notice and I’m not usually able to spot this stuff so easily. It’s really distracting, but it also kind of adds to the weird goofy atmosphere of this movie. I probably wouldn’t watch Pulse 2 again, but it did kind of make me want to watch the Kristen Bell original to see what the heck is going on and I would definitely rent the third installment to see if the weird dude really did figure out a way to block the signal.

Oh, there’s also a completely weird scene where the dad and the kid are driving away, but dad stops as he sees a fat man in a diaper readying himself to jump off a bridge. Now, I don’t know about you guys, but if that was me, I’d speed up and get on the other side of that bridge ASAP. He stops, looks up, waits and then decides to drive, just in time for the fat man to smash into the top of his SUV and roll off the back. Haha, weird.

Halloween Scene: Silent Night Deadly Night 1 (1984) and 2 (1987)

You know, sometimes you just want to curl up and watch a nice holiday movie. And sometimes, you’re looking through the Wizard DVD library and you come across a Silent Night Deadly Night double feature and decide to watch it. And really, it was like Christmas coming early with how bad and funny these movies are.

The first one follows a boy through three stages of his life. As a youngster he goes to visit his grandpa in the asylum (there’s a car shot that looks like something out of Vacation for a moment). The old man’s supposed to be catatonic, but becomes animated as soon as the parents leave the kid in the room, talking about how Santa punishes the bad kids and only gives presents to the really good ones and then goes back to being a vegetable when the parents come back in (hilariously great scene, I’d watch this old man in anything). Anyway, on their way home that night a dude dressed as Santa kills his parents. Skip ahead a few years and the kid and his brother (who was a baby in the first sequence) are in an orphanage run by violent nuns who are really into the idea of punishing the naughty. And finally, the rest of the movie focuses on our star once he turns 18, goes crazy and starts killing people.

You see, after turning 18, he’s too old to be in the orphanage, so one of the nice nuns helps get him a job at a toy store. If you’re a toy fan, go rent this movie right now and just watch the toy store scenes. I recognized a few choice toys in the background, including a Jabba’s Palace playset from Jedi. Anyway, the kid gets forced to dress up as Santa (who he’s understandably afraid of), flips and goes around killing a bunch of people for being “naughty” which brings us up to 3 (four counting the sequel) horror movies in the past two weeks that have stayed with the killer as a main character for a good portion of the movie.

From there, our Santa clad killer goes on a bit of a spree. It’s pretty mindless, but I do have two favorite scenes from this part of the movie. In one sequence we cut to two kids sledding in the woods at night until two older bullies scare them off, steal their sleds and, well, go sledding. The first makes it down the short looking hill with no problems, but his buddy meets the sharp end of our killer’s axe as he jumps out of the woods from nowhere and beheads Bully #2. Apparently the hill’s a lot bigger than it looks as Bully #1 is at the bottom still waiting for his buddy to come sledding down, but all he gets is a rolling head and a decapitated body on the sled. It definitely comes off as the kind of scene where the writer just had a great idea for a kill even though it didn’t really make sense in the film. But hey, I loved it, so I’m not complaining.

My other favorite moment comes when our killer gets to the orphanage to wreak some havoc and for absolutely no reason cuts the head off of a snowman on the way. I wish I had been watching this movie with people because there’s all kinds of moments like that.

I dug the first one so much that I figured, why not pop the sequel on right away? Well, before I did, I did a little reading and found out that 2 is about 50% footage from the original with extra shots thrown in. The plot of this one follows the brother of the killer from the original. He’s in an asylum and some doctor guy is going over his case, which is where all the footage from the original comes in. I found myself fastwordarding through all that junk and stopping when we got back to our spectacuarly over the top main character and the doctor who, at times, had the same look of disbelief on his face as his co-star’s acting abilities as I did. My personal favorite part about these flashbacks is that not only is he remembering things that he wasn’t privy too (”My brother told me everything.”) but he’s also recounting scenes that neither he nor his brother saw first hand. Brilliant!

But there are also original flashbacks showing us that this guy is completely nuts on his own. The color red (especially in the form of a car) sets him off on crazy rampages. He even starts blasting away at random people in the streets for no reason. Haha, oh man. Anyway, as you’d expect, he kills the doctor and breaks out of the asylum to go back to the orphanage and wreck shop on the old lady Mother Superior who’s got a pretty gnarly scar on her face.

I highly recommend renting this bad boy as both movies are on opposite sides of the same disc. The original is a great over-the-top slasher flick with some pretty fun kills. And if you do rent it (or buy it, I’m looking for a copy of my own!) make sure to watch the sequel right afterward and just fast forward through all the recap stuff, it’ll be worth your while to see our leading man. Oh boy, is he a hoot.

What I’m Thankful For: The Real World

My name is TJ and I am, in fact, a Real World-aholic. It feels good to admit it in public, but, to be honest, I have no problem talking about my problem. I’ve been a fan of the Real World for a long time now, which doesn’t necessarily vindicate me, but it might explain some things. 1996’s season in Miami really sticks out in my memory. I would have been 13 or 14 at the time. The funny thing is that, in the early 90s, my parents sat me down and told me they didn’t want me watching MTV because of shows like Beavis and Butthead and rap videos objectifying women.

I followed that rule for a while, but eventually started watching MTV after school and whenever I’d stay up late. The funny thing is that I never liked B&B and I really didn’t like rap at the time (and I’m still playing catch up today). But the show that really caught my attention was The Real World. I have a basic knowledge of the seasons before Miami (I’ve probably seen most of them in reruns by now), but Miami was the first one that really grabbed my attention, partly because of theaforementioned inclusion of Wilstorm Editor Sarah Becker. But the whole cast really intrigued me. These were the kinds of people I didn’t experience in my everyday life and it was really cool to see them all together and trying to start a business (which, if memory serves, never took off).

Real Worlds Boston and Seattle were also pretty big deals at the time and probably the last seasons where they didn’t stunt cast as much as they do today. I remember talking to my friend Shannon on the phone in high school for hours and one of the big topics of conversation was always the Real World. She was the first person I talked on the phone with for more then two minutes. I don’t know why that’s important, but it’s fun.

After that things started getting crazy with all the drama of Hawaii, then New Orleans and heading back to New York for the tenth anniversary. That was one of the first things in pop culture that actually made me feel old because I actually remembered ten years of something on TV. Of course now I know it to be just the first of many events to make me feel old.

I don’t remember much about Chicago by name except for the fact that two guys I would go on to know in college, Jeff and Pat got their way onto the show, though I didn’t know them when the episode aired and haven’t seen it since. As I’ve heard the story, they found out where the show was while they were filming and actually set up a lemonade stand outside the house. Eventually they got noticed by the housemates and made their way onto the show! My friends tell me that you can actually see them in the background of an episode that I would love to see.

After Chicago was the game changing Las Vegas which I remember watching every week in Jacob’s room in college. It’s weird how such a debaucherous show could bring people together (he was in my wedding party). By this time I wasn’t talking to Shannon about every episode anymore, but Jacob filled that space pretty well. You know a season’s gonna be crazy when there’s practically a threesome on the first episode. Jacob (who was a year older) and I would watch the next few seasons together until he graduated.

After that things definitely get fuzzy and I have to refer to the Wikipedia page just to remember who was in what cast, but I was also equally enamored with the Real World/Road Rules Challenges which would pit casts from the two shows against each other in games of a physical nature. I was also a Road Rules fan until they decided to take a Survivor approach and kick people off. “Why become more like the show that’s trying to steal your original concept?” I thought. Anyway, I appreciated how they’d schedule Real World seasons to follow Road Rules and vice versa and then once Road Rules tanked for whatever reason they’d fill in with the various challenges.

After college I spent a few months at home where I worked most mornings at Barry’s Bagel Place at Westgate and most nights at the Chad/Chad/Toth house (I really miss that place) watching whatever was on MTV (I regret to say that that included The Hills along with the less embarassing Real World and Challenges.

Luckily, when I moved out here to New York I found a kindred Real World spirit in Rickey, who shared my love of how ridiculous the show had become. You see, back when I was a kid I actually wanted to be on the show and now I’ve reached the peak age at which I could make it onto the show (a realization that struck me a lot harder than it should have). In three months I’ll be too old. Depressing. But after a while, that desire to be one of them transformed into an amazement at how self obsessed some people can be as well as a kind of character study. Sure the inclusion of camera will change how people act, but Real World definitely offers the budding writer (which I still consider myself, until I hit the top of that age limit as well) a great look at some truly interesting characters. But, let’s be clear, I don’t want to sound all literary and whatnot, I do like watching people get drunk and make bad decisions. It’s the same part of me that liked watching Jerry Springer when I was younger.

Anyway, Rickey and I stayed pretty well caught up, though I did fall of the wagon for a season until he told me how awesome it was and I caught up with episodes online (I wish every season was available online, I’d watch the crap out of that). Since then I’ve been watching every season and challenge as they come out.

What I like about the challenges is that you get to see these characters that you got pretty close to in previous seasons. To me they’re real people but also just characters on a TV show and seeing them all together on another show is like seeing a cool comic book team-up where you get to see a group of characters you never thought you’d get to see again.

Like I said above, I do have a problem and I accept that. I’ve known for a while that my love for the Real World and it’s bastard offspring is somewhat unnatural, but it really hit home yesterday when I realized that there wouldn’t be any new shows this weekend as The Island (the latest challenged) aired it’s last episode two weeks ago and it’s reunion show last week. I guess I’ve just got to wait until the new season hits which features a cast in Brooklyn. How crazy is it that I’ve been living this close to a Real World house and not set up a lemonade stand yet? Hmm, maybe there’s still time. What do you say Rickey? Interested?

What I’m Thankful For: The Wildstorm Universe

As far as comic book universes go, I think the Wildstorm one might be my non-DC and Marvel favorite. Gen 13 was my gateway into Wildstorm back in the day. #14 was my first issue (with Roxy going to school on the cover) and I was hooked immediately. I didn’t really branch out into other Wildstorm books for a long time, but I was really impressed with how historic this new comic book universe felt even back then. Gen 13 were the kids of guys in a group called Team 7, whose members were on all kinds of other teams or hanging out in their own solo books (Grifter, Backlash, Lynch, Deathblow, etc.). I didn’t really know what all was going on, but I was super intrigued. So intrigued that I bought a few other books like a Team 7 mini that came out and whatnot, but not a ton of books.

I completely dodged the initial Image onslaught of comics when the boom hit, which I’m still thankful for, but I did wind up with some random issues here and there thanks to various grab bags I picked up over the years. I also watched the Wildcats cartoon when it was on, because, at the time, I’d watch ANYTHING comic book related. So, with all that I had a basic idea of what was going on in their universe and it all seemed really cool. A big part of that has to do with the artists working on these books. Man, they looked slick and definitely appealed to me as a kid, but I was also into the “super powered kids on the run from adults” story that came along with Gen 13 as it was my first exposure to such a concept. Oh yeah, I also remember Sarah from the Real World Miami being a Wildstorm editor. On the very first episode they showed her getting kicked out of her place after a big party. If memory serves (which it probably doesn’t) her roommates were J. Scott Campbell and another notable who I can’t remember. Her desk in the RW house was also surrounded by comic book pictures, which totally geeked me out back when no one on TV ever talked about comic books.

Skip ahead a bunch of years, I’ve dropped Gen 13 from my list because of Claremont’s relaunch (yeesh) and not really interested in Wildstorm anymore, but I’m hearing a lot about this book called The Authority. I eventually score an internship at Wizard where Rickey recommends I read Warren Ellis’ Stormwatch which leads directly into The Authority. I did and dug it and then read Authority and got less and less impressed as it went on. So recently, I re-read all five Stormwatch trades and they’re really good. Ellis does a surprisingly good job playing in a super hero universe that doesn’t have as many rules as DC or Marvel. I’m looking forward to reading his Authority again soon in the next few weeks too. Ellis’ Planetary is also a lot of fun, but I want the last trade dag nabbit!

Once I started working for Wizard full time I jumped back into the Wildstorm pool and was surprised to see some names that I wouldn’t necessarily associate with the company like James Robinson and Alan Moore who both did stints on Wildcats. I can’t remember how far I got, but I started with Wildcats #1 and read through Moore’s stuff (which includes Robinson’s run). Both Robinson and Moore’s arcs are pretty fantastic (especially Moore’s, no big surprise there). Like with Ellis, it was great to see Moore coming in and picking up elements from previous Wildcats stories and running with them. Moore did a bunch of other stories here and there that have been collected in one big trade that’s definitely out there, but still a lot of fun.

I also read Ed Brubaker’s Point Blank which lead into his Sleeper series with Sean Phillips. Man, this story blew me away. It could have very easily been it’s own stand alone story of espionage and intrigue, but Brubaker set it squarely in the WU, with references to Alan Moore’s Wildcats and plenty of other goings on. It’s a great series and one I recommend to anyone who loves dark and dirty comics.

From there I jumped into more modern Wildstorm as they shook up their universe with the Wold Storm event. Even now I’m not really sure what the deal was. Things were predicated by the Will Pfeifer-written Captain Atom: Armageddon mini which placed Cap in the Wildstorm U. He blew up and so did the WU, but it reformed in similar and different ways after that. I got to talk to most of the creators for the big relaunch (this is when Grant Morrison was announced to be writing both Wildcats and Authority) which was a lot of fun, but as a fan of the existing Wildstorm U, I was left mostly confused. Unlike Crisis on Infinite Earths there wasn’t a “we’re completely starting over” vibe as some teams seemed to be unchanged (Stormwatch PHD which was a great book seemed to be exactly in line with previous Stormwatch stuff) while others were way different (my beloved Gen 13). There were a few stumbling blocks as Wildcats and Authority have only put out one and two issues respectively, but overall Stormwatch PHD, Deathblow and Midnighter were all pretty solid books and Gail Simone added a whole new element with her Welcome to Tranquility series.

But the changes weren’t over as Wildstorm geared up for another big shake up with their trilogy of stories: Wildstorm: Armageddon, Wildstorm: Revelations and Number of the Beast which I liked for the most part though I wish Number of the Beast would have picked up more elements from Revelations. Anyway, now you’ve got the Wildstorm U in a kind of post-apocalyptic Mad Max-like world where everything’s turned on it’s ear and all these familiar heroes are fighting just to keep humanity going.

It’s not an easy universe to break into with over a decade’s worth of stories, but I’ve had a great time exploring the good and the bad of the Wildstorm U, which is a lot more intricate and detailed than you might think at first. If you’re looking to get in, I’d recommend Sleeper, Moore’s Wildcats, the upcoming James Robinson Wildcats trade, Warren Ellis’ Stormwatch and Authority and Stormwatch PHD. I’m really curious to see where they go with this new path and I can’t wait to see what they do and what new creators and characters will pop up in the future.

As The World Trons: A Tron (1982) Review

Tron is one of those movies that I’ve been hearing about how awesome it is from people who are a few years older than me for a while now. Well, sorry those people, but I’ve got to disagree. I think if I had seen Tron when I was a kid it would have blown my freaking mind and I’d probably love it now, but seeing as I don’t have the nostalgia factor, I watched it like I would any other movie and, while the effects were crazy good for the time and still hold up, the story seems a bit confusing and thrown together.

The story revolves around computer guru Jeff Bridges (who sounds just like The Dude) who used to work for a big corporation that’s been taken over by a guy who stole Jeff’s designs for video games and passed them off as his own. There’s also a computer program called Master Control Program who’s running that dirtbag’s life. But the real story takes place inside the computer as Bridges gets zapped inside and has to deal with programs designed by his friends in the real world who resemble them. Bruce Boxleitner and Cindy Morgan (who I did not recognize as the girl from Caddyshack) play the friends in the real world and programs in the computer.

I think the confusion stems from the very beginning of the movie where they jump into the computer and show off a bunch of craziness without much context. I knew a little bit about the movie, but not much so I was kind of lost right off the bat. Then it bounces to the real world and back into the computer. I got the overall plot points and, like I said, it looks sick once they’re inside the computer. They do a great job making the people/programs inside the computer look unnatural. I read they did it by shooting in black and white and then adding color in post. It’s very creepy looking.

All in all, Tron is entertaining enough, but not all that absorbing. The sound levels also seem to bounce around like crazy, which is a pet peeve of mine as I’m trying to watch these movies while my wife sleeps. Keep it down you darn movies! Anyway, I recommend Tron to special effects fans, Jeff Bridges fans and anyone who saw it when they were three and want to check it out again.

Iron Mongering Part 4: The Many Armors of Iron Man

As I’ve mentioned in previous Iron Mongering posts, I really want to see a Michelinie and Layton Essential, Visionaries or even an Omnibus or two. Many Armors is nothing like that. Instead it’s a grab bag of issues by different creators introducing various Iron Man armors (a space armor, the stealth, etc.). Sounds like it could be fun right? Well, it really isn’t unfortunately. My biggest problem with the book (which collects Iron Man #47, 142-144, 152, 153, 200, 218) is that, like with Demon in a Bottle there is no indication as to what’s been going on with Iron Man around the time these issues came out, so you’re just thrown in and have to figure it out on your own. And while the stories themselves may be kind of interesting, I really felt like I was missing a lot.

Generally I don’t like trades like this with various issues from various teams about various stories, but the ones that I think did it best was the Green Arrow/Black Canary For Better Or For Worse which did the above, but also included little prose paragraphs before each story to explain what had happened in the years between the stories. Maybe if MAOIM did that for a later edition it would be a more enjoyable book, but as it is, it really isn’t. It does REALLY make me want to see some Michelinie and Layton trades collecting their epic runs. I’ve got my fingers crossed. Maybe in time for the Iron Man sequel.

Oh, which reminds me, reading the first issue in this trade, which retold Iron Man’s origin spurred me on to watching the Iron Man DVD, so, that’s a least a point in the plus column. That movie’s rad.

Weekend Roundup

Wow, what a weekend. It was kind of busy with a wedding and both my football teams losing, but I was also able to squeeze in far more movies than I should have.

On Friday, Em went to bed early, so I ran up to Blockbuster and did a trade in for a double feature of Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi (1992) and Desperado (1995). I’d seen Desperado and Once Upon a Time in Mexico before, but had never seen the original piece of the Mexico Trilogoy, plus I’m a sucked for a 2-for1 and traded it in. I did not know that Mariachi is completely in Spanish and it seems as though the version I had rented didn’t have an English dub, but it did have an awesome commentary by Rodriguez. So I listened to that and put subtitles on and enjoyed the heck out of myself. Turns out he made the movie for $7,000 and most of that cost went towards film. He worked with mostly no crew and local people who’d never acted before. And while I can’t understand what they’re saying on screen, they really seemed natural. Rodriguez gives a play by play of how he did everything on screen which is super informative and then, in the special features, offers up a segment called “10 Minute Film School” showcasing how he did some of the more complex stunts and basic stuff like shooting scenes with editing in mind. I’ve never been to film school, but I feel like I got a heck of an education from just listening to the commentary. It was worth the rental for the feeling of “heck, I can do this too.” Who wants to make a movie with me?

So, I was pretty hyped up after Mariachi and put Desperado on immediately after. It definitely looks and feels like a different animal with it’s slicker look, bigger actors and crazier action sequences, but Rodriguez maintains the feel of the original which is impressive. This time Antonio Banderas plays El Mariachi and Salma Hayek plays his love interest. You’ve also got Quentin Tarantino, Cheech Marin, Steve Buscemi and Danny Trejo (my personal favorite interviewee so far). What stuck in my head from my previous viewing of Desperado was how bad ass it was. And that still holds up as Banderas leaps around shooting dudes from all kinds of awesome camera angles. I also love how cool the guitar case full of weapons is. It’s like Rodney Dangerfield’s golf bag from Caddyshack 2! Anyway, I also really dug the final scene where Mariachi calls in his boys who also have guitar cases concealing weapons (machine guns and a rocket launcher!). It’s an awesome revenge story with tons of action and plenty of bad ass characters walking around looking bad ass, but none as bad ass as Mariachi. BAM!

After that I was pretty exhausted (it was 3AM), so I went to bed. The next day Em took a nap in the afternoon and I started tinkering with my VCR and actually got the dumb thing to start working again which meant I could watch some of the tapes I’ve picked up at work and garage sales lately. So I popped Don’t Answer the Phone (1980) on. It wasn’t very good. The story follows a serial killer as he calls in to a radio psychologist and taunts her. The video tape quality added to the atmosphere of the film, but it was overall just kind of uncomfortable and I didn’t even both finishing it. What I did find interesting was the fact that we as the audience spent a good deal of time with the killer even when he wasn’t killing. We see him walking along the street and calling into the radio show. I’ve often thought it would be interesting to see a slasher movie done like this, where you really get to see things from the killer’s perspective. If Don’t Answer the Phone is any indicator, maybe it’s not such a good idea.

After giving up on that flick, I still had a little more time, so I popped in F/X2 (1991), which is a tape I grabbed from Em’s parents when they were cleaning out all the tapes. They used to own a video store back in the day, so I can only assume it’s a leftover from those days (how I wish I was around when they were getting rid of their boxes and boxes of movies!). I actually thought F/X2 was a horror movie, so I was confused when I couldn’t find it in my Creature Features book. It turns out that it’s more of an action thriller than a horror movie, though. Bryan Brown (Cocktail!) stars as a Hollywood effects man who gave up the game after the events of the first movie (which I haven’t seen). This time, the woman he’s dating’s ex husband asks him to help out with a case (making him look like a woman), but it turns out that the ex gets killed and Bryan stumbles upon a much bigger plot involving cops killing cops, mobsters and the Vatican. Bryan calls in his buddy from the previous flick Brian Dennehy and now they’re on the case. It’s a fairly standard plot from here, but what I really liked about the movie is how Brown uses his crazy special effects talents to go after the bad guys. At one point, a dude breaks into his house to kill him, but Brown’s able to slip into this motion control suit that coincides with a robot clown, so anything Brown does, the clown does. Then there’s this amazingly hilarious fight scene with Brown and the clown vs. the assassin. There’s also all kinds of craziness at the end. Definitely worth checking out if you want to see the kind of movie that will never get made nowadays, one with a sense of humor about itself, but also takes itself seriously.

The aforementioned wedding interrupted my movie watching (it’s okay, I forgive them). On Sunday, I caught part of Bad Boys II (2003) on TV and you know what? That movie’s awesome. I think Michael Bay gets a bad rap. I don’t know much about the guy aside from what he puts on the screen, but I definitely appreciate his love of big crazy movies with lots of action and explosions. Some people call him a hack for that, but I don’t buy it. I’ve liked Armageddon, The Rock, Bad Boys I and II (though definitely II better) and Transformers. I haven’t seen The Island yet and I didn’t really like Pearl Harbor at the time, but would definitely give it another shot. I didn’t get to see the entirety of BBII (I’ve seen it before though) and man, there are some awesome scenes in there. The 360 degree scene of Will Smith on one side of a room and dudes with machine guns on the other. The chase scene where the bad guys throw cars at them. You can’t beat that kind of stuff. And, I didn’t get to see it this time, but the absolute disregard for human life while driving through Cuban homes! This is what movies used to be like back in the 70s and 80s and it’s awesome to see that again. (NOTE: I in no way support the ACTUAL disregard of human life in Cuba, just in the movies!) Also, I forgot how cool Will Smith can be when he wants to (and when the camera angels make him look so). There were a lot of fun similarities between how Rodriguez shot Banderas and how Bay shot Smith. Fun stuff.

Finally, I ended my weekend movie watching with the original When A Stranger Calls (1979). I’ve got a bit of a history with the remake. My first year here in New York, before I got married, I didn’t really have a lot going on, so on my birthday Rickey, Ben and I (sorry if I forgot anyone else, my memory’s fuzzy at best) I thought it would be awesome to go see a horror movie (Em was still in New Hampshire). WASC had just come out and Rickey and I had just seen the main girl, Camilla Belle, in Chumscrubber and had school boy crushes on her so it seemed like a great idea. It was not and I still get reminded of how bad of a movie it was. Soon after, I looked the original up in Creature Features to find out that the original actually split it’s time between the babysitter getting terrorized story and then a seven years later story when the killer breaks out of an asylum. No wonder it felt like it was way too drawn out.

So, last night I finally watched the original and was even more surprised to find out that the babysitter portion only takes up about 15 minutes of screen time! Oh remake people, you’re so crazy. Anyway, it’s a pretty effective movie, the babysitter stuff in the beginning is definitely creepy and spawned the line “The call is coming from inside the house.” You’ve also got a pretty creepy killer, he killed the kids she was babysitting in their bedrooms with his bare hands while she was downstairs. After the 7 year jump we end up splitting our time between the escaped killer as he wanders around New York trying to hit on (or kill?) some woman and the private detective who’s on his trail. Here’s another movie where we get to see things from the killer’s perspective for a significant part of the movie. I’m not sure if we’re supposed to feel sorry for him or what, which adds to my not loving this movie, but eventually he finds the babysitter, who now has two kids and a husband and starts screwing with her again. There are some creepy moments and the killer definitely walks the line between total creep and somewhat not-hateable. It’s not a great movie, but definitely not as bad as the remake, though this kind of makes me want to watch it again. Somebody stop me…

To My Astonishment

Wow, I was going through my posts and found this one that never went life for some reason. I think I wrote it originally back in August, but it could have been even further back than that. Enjoy!

I realize it’s been a while since I did an actual comic review. I’ve been reading mostly newer stuff lately and trying to catch up on more recent books that I missed, but I did grab all four Astonishing X-Men trades from the library the other day after. I had read the first three and part of the fourth, but wasn’t really seeing what all the fuss was about and got pretty displeased with the incredible lateness of the book, so I stopped reading. And while I did like the series a little bit more the second time around, I’m still not blown away like everyone else.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think Whedon crafted a good story and I like Cassaday’s art enough. But neither one of those excuse the lateness of the book. I know it doesn’t matter now that the whole thing is out in trade (and probably an omnibus at some point), but it still bugs me when creators make a splash with a book, get fans excited and then keep you waiting for four years to finish a 25 issues story. It’s the kind of book I would have dropped if I was buying it and didn’t get to read them for free at work.

Okay, aside from that, I did have a bit of a hard time not seeing shades of Buffy in every issue of the book. Em and I just finished watching the series again (look for something Buffy-related coming soon) right before I started re-reading the first trade. Sure these characters stand on their own and maybe Cassaday even took some of his cues from the show (the way he draws Beast with his glasses, instantly makes me think of Giles). But, after the first few pages of the first issue, all that kind of fell away. I still saw elements of his Buffy characters in the X-Men, but it’s obviously not a direct lift or transference. Even though certain bits of dialog brought me right back to Buffy episodes. It could also be argued that the Buffy characters were influenced by the X-Men. Who’s to say?

Also, I do have to say that I’m not much of an X-Men fan. As my faithful reader(s) know(s), I was a DC kid growing up, so my experience with the X-Men were the occasional grocery store comics I’d pick up and the cartoon (and reading Wizard back in the day). Because of this, I find their history nearly incomprehensible at times. That being said, I think this is probably the most accessible X-Men book I’ve ever checked out. Whedon and Cassaday both boil the characters down to their basic natures, both in content and appearance, so that you can figure out what they’re all about in just a few panels. I even handed it to Em after the first two trades were out and she loved it, though I did have to hear her continually ask about the next trade for like two years. She has also re-read them and, with the exception of a few questions about the Legacy Virus and Cassandra Nova, didn’t have any trouble with the plot.

I also appreciate the whole “let’s make the X-Men a real life superhero team” idea that gets a bit lost in the middle of the series, but then comes back later on. One of the many things that has bothered me about the Marvel Universe is how bigoted the general citizens can be toward mutants and not towards the Avengers. How do they know that Cap isn’t a mutant? Come on, get over it already. And for his part, Whedon tried to get people over it, by getting the “feared and hated by those they’ve sworn to protect” bit out of the way after the first arc. Kudos for that. And double extra kudos for leaving guns all over the different issues and firing them off in the end (most specifically, the big giant weird sentient Genosha-killing Sentinel). And super kudos for putting some genuinely funny moments in the book. The scene with Kitty falling thrown the floor into the TV room while her and Pete…celebrated his return, made me actually laugh out loud (yes, that an LLOL, a literal LOL).

I also appreciate how Whedon adds to the mythology without muddying up the already cloudy world of the X-Men and the Marvel U in general. You’ve got Danger, the Breakworld, Agent Brand, S.W.O.R.D. and maybe Armor? I’m not sure if Morrison invented her in his New X-Men or not, but Whedon obviously took a shine to her and gave Wolverine another Kitty Pryde/Jubilee girl partner to pal around with when X-23 gets to be too much of a psychopath.

All in all, like I said above, I think this is a good X-Men story. It almost reads like “All-Star X-Men” because it basically glosses over everything that happened in the Marvel U in the four years it took to tell the story. There’s no mention of the Decimation and only one line about Civil War. Now, I’m not one to say that these big events MUST interfere with a big-time writer’s story, but it would at least make sense to get a mention of the 198 or something. And, I’m sorry to say, but I don’t see what the big deal about Cassaday’s art. My friend Rickey Purdin has promised to sit down with me and go through the trades to try and change my mind, so we shall see. And really, I’m only disappointed in that because I think Whedon could have done some really fun things with those events AND I think the Marvel U and the X-books could have benefited from a more timely involvement.

We (Comic Book Detective Matt Powell and King of the Internet Jim Gibbons) were all talking about this book at lunch the other day and came up with the idea that it would be cool if Whedon “executive produced” X-Men the way he does TV or the Buffy comic, writing the important stuff, letting other writers flesh things out and approving everything that gets done. We all felt that, given a more regular shipping schedule, Whedon’s run would feel a lot fuller and more well-rounded like our favorite seasons of Buffy.