The Screengrab : superman

Starlog Magazine’s Final Frontier

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:00:00 GMT

After 33 years and 374 issues, Starlog magazine has ceased to exist as a print publication. “Official word of Starlog's demise came in a posting last week on the Starlog.com site, buried five paragraphs deep in an update informing readers that Starlog.com had relaunched in beta as part of a ‘massive digital initiative’ and touting the fact that a ‘Digital store,’ to launch next month, will feature digital editions of the entire Starlog catalog,” SciFi Wire reports. “The last print issue available for the time being is #374,while issue #375 will be available exclusively as a digital edition on the network in the very near future.”

I’m not going to claim that I’ve kept up with Starlog lately – I’m guessing the last issue I read had some hot scoop on the secrets of Return of the Jedi – but this announcement still bums me out a bit. I remember purchasing the very first issue of Starlog in 1976 (or, more likely, hounding my mother into buying it for me), the one you see pictured here. At the time I didn’t care anything about “David Bowie’s new sci-fi movie” or whether “The Changes” would help Space:1999; I was all about that Star Trek episode guide. Decades before the existence of Television Without Pity, I nearly grinded that issue into dust, checking off the episodes I’d seen and giving them my own special star ratings. With no IMDb, Ain’t it Cool News or Morning Deal Report to be found, it was only through each new issue of Starlog that I learned of such tantalizing upcoming fare as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien and the first Superman movie. The magazine was probably my first introduction to film criticism, through reviews by David Gerrold (who dared to find fault in The Empire Strikes Back, as I recall) and Harlan Ellison (whose Starlog reviews are collected in Harlan Ellison’s Watching.)

Anyway, the Twitter generation has no use for icky print and paper, so another long-running publication bites the dust. Still, there is some good news – once they put the entire digital archive online, we’ll all be able to have a good laugh at young Andrew Osborne’s letter decrying the sexual content of Saturn 3. See, there’s always a silver lining.

Morning Deal Report: Green Lantern Powers Up

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Casino Royale director Martin Campbell is in negotiations to helm a live-action version of the DC comics staple Green Lantern for Warner Bros. The power ring-wearing superhero is now “at the top of DC properties being set for movie treatment by WB,” Variety reports. “While the studio is hoping director Chris Nolan will follow its 2008 smash The Dark Knight with another Batfilm, DC projects such as Superman and Justice League were expected to happen quickly, but have stalled.” Aquaman – dissed again.

While we’re talking superhero movies, it looks like Ben Stiller and Tina Fey have joined Robert Downey, Jr. for another one – and it’s not Iron Man 2. The trio is “in negotiations to lead the voice cast for DreamWorks Animation's superhero lark Master Mind…The satiric film, with a screenplay by Alan J. Schoolcraft and Brent Simons, concerns a brilliant superhero villain who loses his life's purpose when he accidentally kills his good-guy nemesis,” per The Hollywood Reporter.

While Ridley Scott is allegedly interested in bring Monopoly to the screen, another board game has beat the venerable classic to the punch. Yes, it’s everyone’s very first board game, Candy Land. Etan Cohen (Tropic Thunder) will write the script and Kevin Lima (Enchanted) will direct. I’m still holding out for Scorsese's Don’t Spill the Beans: The Movie.

Related:
Comic Book Legends
Parcheesi: The Movie

21 Stars We Hate (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:30:00 GMT

JESSICA ALBA

I’ll let you in on a little secret: I like sexy women. Sometimes, I like to hear them discuss foreign policy in a purring Greek accent (Arianna Huffington...mrowr!), while other times I've been known to enjoy a more prurient visual display of nubile hips and boobies. Fortunately, I’m not alone in this interest. Unlike, say, my lonely passion for Whit Stillman films, which can apparently no longer be satisfied, the demand for sexy women has glutted the market to the point where it’s nearly impossible to avoid them. Everywhere you look (in pop culture, if not my local gym) there are sweaty, well-toned H-O-T girls and women gyrating their pelvic muscles and shaking their butts in thongs and Daisy Dukes and whipped cream bikinis...so WHY, out of all the sexy women in the world, from Arianna to Miss November 2008, does Jessica Frickin’ Alba get to be in so many movies? Yes, she has a nice bod, and I enjoyed watching her undulate in Sin City as much as the next straight guy...until, that is, the camera panned up to her completely vapid expression, on a face completely devoid of mystery, personality or even the lusty carnality of supporting co-star Brittany Murphy. In real life, Alba may be a sweet, darling lass who bakes pies for orphans, but onscreen she’s got less acting talent and charisma than Ryan Gosling’s sex doll in Lars and the Real Girl...and yet Alba is somehow considered an A-list player, who gets to appear not just on the cover of Maxim, but in major motion pictures, in multiple genres, from action and horror to romantic comedy, while far more interesting and far sexier actresses like Murphy, Rosario Dawson, Mila Kunis, Thora Birch, Marley Shelton (and, no doubt, a huge percentage of the rest of the female S.A.G. membership) bob along under the surface, crossing their fingers in hopes of landing some of the high profile lead roles currently going to America’s favorite bleach-blonde void.

CHRISTOPHER REEVE

Oh, boo yourself. In the years since his unfortunate death, it has become distasteful bordering on offensive to say anything even remotely critical about Christopher Reeve. And certainly, it’s not my intention to impugn him as a man – he was, by all accounts, a decent human being, a loving husband, and a fine father to his children. The tragic accident which cost him his health was an event to be lamented, and he became a hero in its wake by advocating relentlessly for the rights and dignity of the disabled; and the comeback he made from his paralysis was very nearly a miracle. But before he took that unlucky tumble from a horse, a lot of people already knew what no one is now willing to say: Christopher Reeve was a terrible actor. Wooden, clumsy, and extremely limited in range, he started out as a pretty boy who might have been a modest success if he’d stuck to what he was good at. But Reeve was an ambitious man who soon discovered that his ambition led him to places his talent wasn’t able to go. He was laughable in Somewhere in Time, embarrassing in Monsignor, and, matched up against genuine heavyweight Michael Caine in Deathtrap, he just looked like he wanted to go home. His reputation as an actor, such as it is, rests on the Superman movies he did in the 1980s, but a lot of that adulation is vested in the character he played, and a lot more in the man who was playing him; looking at Reeve’s actual performances in the movies, it’s hard to believe anyone got very excited over that.

HALLE BERRY

It must have taken a phenomenal amount of determination and perseverance for Berry to work her way up through decorative eye candy roles in such movies as Strictly Business, Boomerang, and The Flintstones to more challenging dramatic parts in Losing Isiah and Bulworth, and then to her landmark win as the first African-American recipient of the Academy Award for Best Actress for Monster's Ball and all the attention about her becoming the first black Bond girl in Die Another Day. But Monster's Ball is still a ridiculous movie, and Berry is hardly the least ridiculous thing in it. And her Bond girl made a great entrance, walking in from the surf, but then, as is so often the case with Berry's characters, wore out her welcome as soon as she started talking. Berry can be off-putting because, like Demi Moore, she seems to be less interested in entertaining the audience than in daring them not to respect her; at her worst, she radiates a defensive insistence on her own stature as an actress that is way out of proportion to her proven abilities, which in moments of high drama seem to consist mostly of a tremulous, anxious quality combined with a "Who farted?" expression. And that's when her mouth isn't even moving: her big line from the first X-Men movie ("Do you know what happens to a toad when it's struck by lighting? The same thing that happens to everything else.") has the special distinction of being both the lamest-written and the lamest-delivered line in the history of superhero movies. It's just too bad that her need to be taken seriously may preclude her from doing more comedy. Because if the clip above is any indication, we do have to give her props for having a sense of humor.

ORLANDO BLOOM

Did Peter Jackson have him grown in a lab? In the battle scenes in the Lord of the Rings pictures, most of the cast can be seen with hair and sweat flying while Bloom, as the elf Legolas, always looks as if his smooth plastic surface had just been wiped clean with a damp cloth. When I saw the movies, I assumed that he'd been CGI'ed to look that way, on the theory that elves never have a hair out of place even when they go on the flume ride at the water park, but Viggo Mortensen has since told interviewers that he used to stare at Bloom in disbelief while they were filming, wondering how the little bastard kept looking like a fashion spread no matter what got thrown at him or what exertions were required of him. Will Bloom ever find another role as perfectly suited to his lightweight, poreless quality as that of an arrow-shooting elf? He hasn't so far. He was cast as the romantic hero of Pirates of the Caribbean, only to have the movies use his inability to hold the screen with Johnny Depp or Keira Knightley as a running in-joke. It was fun getting to see Brendan Gleeson slap the pluperfect shit out of him in Troy, but the directors who've given him the chance to carry a picture -- in Kingdom of Heaven and Elizabethtown and the barely released Haven -- have only succeeded in putting nasty dents in their own careers. So far, he hasn't done enough damage to otherwise promising projects to qualify as a menace, but that could change: he's supposedly threatening to play the Alain Delon role in Hong Kong action master Johnny To's planned remake of Jean-Pierre Melville's 1970 French gangland classic Le Cercle Rouge. If he pulls that off, all will be forgiven. If he screws it up, film geeks of many kinds will want to lasso his balls and leave him hanging upside down from a Times Square billboard.

RENÉE ZELLWEGER

Where did Renée Zellweger come from, and what did she ever do to earn her keep in the gallery of semi-major starlets? She has the acting abilities and charisma of a lutefisk. There is little that is redeeming about her in any of her movies. Especially not her uhm, "method" act as "fat" in Bridget Jones's Diary. Whose hand she greased to win an Oscar for Cold Mountain we will never know. And speaking of Oscars, a nomination for her role in Chicago? You must be joking. Just about every other actor in that movie swept the floor with her. And that includes Mr. Cellophane. All this is quite aside from the fact that she perpetually looks as if she just bit into a lemon.

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: STEVEN SEAGAL

There’s a certain amount of humor in the notion of a big fat guy playing an indestructible martial arts machine. But Steven Seagal isn’t laughing. Ever. In fact, he may not even have the physical capability. And if watching close-ups of his portly mug intercut with shots of an obviously thinner stunt man kicking ass on the roof of a speeding train in Under Siege 2 didn’t get the man to laugh out loud, I guess he never will. Which is probably all for the best: based on the witty one-liners in his godawful body of work (as evidenced in the clip above), the only thing worse than Seagal’s “enlightened” action flicks would be a string of inspirational Zen comedies. Speaking of which...

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: MIKE MYERS

According to a recent Entertainment Weekly profile, Mike Myers (despite his loveable Wayne’s World and Austin Powers personas) is a hellacious douche, largely despised in Hollywood for both the right and some of the wrong reasons, by good and evil people alike. As if beating the Powers franchise to death and helping Jim Carrey and Theodore Geisel’s money-grubbing widow to destroy the wonder and magic of Dr. Seuss’ legacy weren’t enough, Myers actually said The Love Guru was “a delivery system for some wonderful ideas,” a statement that’s actually funnier than anything in the movie.

Click Here For Part One, Part Two & Part Three

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Phil Nugent, Sarah Clyne Sundberg

Cartoon Fever: The World’s Greatest Animated Shorts (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 21:30:00 GMT

A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS (1965)

There's been plenty of fine animated entertainment on television over the years (Ren & Stimpy, The Simpsons, South Park, King of the Hill, The Grinch What Stole Christmas, Davey & Goliath, etc.), though for our purposes here today (and with the exception of shorts that later became TV staples, like "Duck Amuck"), this list mainly celebrates more festival-friendly fare. And yet, a celebration of classic cartoons without A Charlie Brown Christmas just seems downright un-American somehow, considering how deeply the characters, dialogue, plot and Vince Guaraldi score have embedded themselves in our collective national sense of childhood and the holiday spirit...though not deep enough, sadly, to shift the overall landscape of "family-friendly" animation from blaring, consumerist junk food to the quiet, thoughtful humanity of writer Charles Schulz and director Bill Meléndez's depiction of what even the most cynical among us would have to admit ain't such a bad little tree.

LUPO THE BUTCHER (1987)

In the last twenty years or so, gross-out cartoons have become a staple of animation festivals. With Lupo the Butcher, Danny Antonucci managed to get in on the ground floor of what would quickly become a growth industry and a played-out sub-genre. Antonucci has said that Lupo's bloody slapstick and cussword-plastered soundtrack were powered by his own career frustrations: he made the film over the course of a couple of years while supporting himself by working on shitty children's animation. Lupo is a creature of pure, self-destructive rage, a nightmare image of man's inability to use his anger to do anything but drive himself further into the ground like a tent spike. The world being what it is, the character was quickly licensed to appear in commercials for Converse shoes and MTV bumpers. Antonucci went on to create the Ed, Edd n Eddy series for the Cartoon Network.

MECHANICAL MONSTERS (1941)

Superheroes do go back a ways in the movies. The series of Superman cartoons produced by the Fleischer brothers and directed by Dave Fleischer remain little pieces of pop art gold, with a clean, stripped-down graphic style that was an obvious influence on the superb work done on Batman: The Animated Series and its Superman and Justice League spin-offs. There have been other good superhero movies since, but these remain the template.

MINNIE THE MOOCHER (1932)

This constantly morphing, surreal, spooky short spotlights the Fleischer brothers' goofball side as flamboyantly as anything they ever did. It also brings together, for the first time, their two great totemic Jazz Age figures: Betty Boop and Cab Calloway. Quick: which one's the cartoon?

MUNRO (1961)

The inspiring story of a four-year-old drafted into this man's army, Munro is a tiny example of how easily perfection can be achieved by just hooking up the right people and turning them loose on the right material. This faithful adaptation of a Jules Feiffer comic strip is the best movie work by the illustrator-animator Gene Deitch, today perhaps best remembered as the father of underground-comics legend Kim Deitch, and his sometime collaborator, Simon Deitch. Also holding his end up: Your Show of Shows alum Howard Morris, whose voice-over work here could have thrown a good scare into Mel Blanc.

RYAN (2004)

Chris Landreth's uncanny masterpiece is a profile of Ryan Larkin, a Canadian hippie animator who had a great success with his 1969 short film Walking but quickly slid into non-productivity and alcoholism. Landreth's film, which incorporates actual tapes of his conversations with the ruined but still mostly affable Larkin (who becomes nasty only when he thinks that Landreth is suggesting that he stop drinking and pull himself together), is a layered, sympathetic portrait of someone Landreth clearly admires for his talent and at the same a troubling act of self-criticism from an artist who isn't sure that he isn't exploiting another human being. It's also a stunning demonstration of how much the animator's art can matter.

Click Here for Part One, Part Two, Part Three & Part Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent

In Other Blogs: Batman Forever

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Welcome back, In Other Blogs! I’ve finally recovered from vacation, so look for Unwatchable and Summer of ’78 to return next week. (Please, hold your applause until the end.) So what happened while I was away? Any current movies being discussed out there in the blogosphere? I mean, besides Mamma Mia?

A little research reveals that one or two bloggers had the bad manners to say some mean things about The Dark Knight, which provoked some even worse manners from the movie’s sizable contingent of rabid defenders. Filmbrain has noticed this as well. “Why so serious indeed? If ever a tagline was perfectly suited to a film (and the critical/audience adoration of it) it would have to be this three word gem created by a marketing superhero for Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, the film that currently sits at #1 on the IMDB Top 250 films of all time, and has been proven to cure cancer, put an end to all wars, and solve erectile dysfunction. As with most long-underwear films (why must superheroes wear tights?), it's not uncommon for the legion of fanboys (and girls) to take it as a personal affront when confronted with a dissenting opinion…Yet with The Dark Knight, the seething anger and raging bile that's been ejaculated on dozens (if not hundreds) of pages of comments all over the Interweb far exceeds the typical zealotry… Critics who refused to swallow the red pill have been treated as enemy combatants. About.com's Jürgen Fauth and The House Next Door's Keith Uhlich (both friends, I should add) are two such critics. Neither of their reviews was intended to provoke, nor were they playing the contrarian — they simply didn't like the film. As of this writing there are 938 comments in response to these reviews…Some go no deeper than Fag!; some are actually amusing - Keep your head in Little Women and Suffrage texts you pansy, but others are downright ugly.”

Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule has noticed these things, too. “Just how big an offense is it to not love (or lurrrrrrvvvvv) The Dark Knight? Well, David Edelstein and Keith Uhlich might have some thoughts on that. I have not yet seen the film myself, and though I very much appreciated Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan’s first foray into Gotham City geography, I find it strange how predigested the anticipation has been about this blockbuster, so much so that fans who hadn’t even seen the film yet were roasting Edelstein for not rubber-stamping their excitement and the other pre-release raves. And of course those that had seen it and took exception to a dissenting view let both Edelstein and Uhlich know just how unqualified they were as reviewers because of their opinions… The commenters are, essentially, pissed off at these guys for taking this movie seriously, something which, I suppose, would be okay if their own views on it were being validated… Does a spectacular with a $185 million production budget, probably at least that much in an advertising budget, and a record-breaking opening weekend really need such a vehement, hypersensitive defense?”

On the other hand, there are non-fanboys out there who have been won over by The Dark Knight, as this Cinema Blend rant reveals. “Superhero movies make me sick. More specifically, they make my manhood shrivel up and hide. I hate Superman and his annoying, homo-erotic Narc persona. I hate the Power Rangers and their goddamn color-coordinated outfits. I hate just about everything about every superhero ever created or yet to be created. I'm not a fanboy; I'm not the guy inside the comic book shop; and I'm definitely not the guy who pays to see superhero movies.”

Of course, with the gazillion dollar success of The Dark Knight, another Batman movie is a certainty – which means we need another villain. Already there are rumors of Johnny Depp as the Riddler and Angelina Jolie as Catwoman, but OMGLists has 8 Great Villains We Want in the Next Batman Movie, including some more obscure choices. Of Deacon Blackfire, they write: “There really isn't anything too unusual or improbable about the deacon to warrant not including him in the movie.” Now there’s an endorsement!

Beyond Spike and Clint: More Filmmaker Feuds

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:30:00 GMT

It’s been a good month for filmmaker feud enthusiasts, with both the Clint Eastwood/Spike Lee dust-up and the Werner Herzog/Abel Ferrara war of words heating up simultaneously. The L.A. Times has taken the opportunity to put together their own rundown of “Directors gone wild,” reminding us of a few directorial battles of days gone by.

By an odd coincidence – or maybe kryptonite is somehow involved – two of the feuds revolve around the Man of Steel. You may recall the aborted Tim Burton version of Superman that was to star Nicolas Cage about a decade ago. Kevin Smith had penned a script for Superman Lives! (you can read it here), but Burton wanted no part of it. Later, when Burton remade Planet of the Apes, Smith accused him of ripping off the ending from one of his comic books. (Why the Clerks auteur would want to take credit for such a widely derided twist remains a mystery.) Burton disagreed, telling the New York Post, “Anyone who knows me knows I would never read a comic book. And I would especially never read anything created by Kevin Smith.” Smith has been known to sign bootleg copies of the Superman script “Fuck Tim Burton,” though he claims this is done tongue-in-cheek.

Then there’s the case of Superman II, directed by Richard Lester – unless it was directed by Richard Donner. Lester’s cut is the one most of us grew up on, but Donner – who was replaced midway through filming the sequel – recently released his own version on DVD. “Though the sequel was more highly regarded than the original Superman,” says the Times, “Lester’s follow-up Superman III was trashed, leading many fans to believe anything good in Superman II was because of Donner.”

The Times feature also includes Uwe Boll’s feuds with Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg, proving that feuds taking place entirely within the mind of Uwe Boll are eligible for the list.

Related:
Spike Strikes Back
Werner Herzog vs. Abel Ferrara: Round 2

Watching "The Watchman": An Interview with Kent M. Beeson

Paul Clark — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

In case you’ve slept through this past weekend, the summer movie season got off to a roaring start with the big-budget adaptation of Iron Man. With many more comic book movies in store this summer, and even more after that, I figured it was about time to catch up with former Screengrab contributor and all around good dude Kent M. Beeson. As a comic-book fan and movie buff of long standing, Kent recently secured a position with the Web site comiXology, writing a bi-weekly column entitled The Watchman. Kent was gracious enough to take time out of his busy schedule- which also includes numerous freelance jobs as well as a wife and 14-month-old daughter- to conduct this interview via e-Mail.

How did you get your position with Comixology?

Dumb luck, if you ask me! Peter Jaffe, the Online Content Editor for Comixology, asked former ScreenGrab editor Bilge Ebiri to recommend someone to cover film and TV for Comixology, and he named me. I'd done some writing for ScreenGrab, including several on comic books, so I suppose that's why name came up. if I had to guess, I'd say that my ScreenGrab posts on the Watchmen and Shazam! movies had something to do with it, but really, I have no idea.

Why do you suppose Hollywood has made so many comic book movies in the past few years?

I suppose the standard reasons are that the executives greenlighting these movies are the ones that grew up in the 70s and 80s, and grew up reading these comics, coupled with CGI that lets filmmakers show just about anything they can imagine. When those two moments in history coincided, it was bound to be a fertile period. What's really interesting to me, though, isn't that so many comic book movies are being made, but just how important fidelity to the source material has become. It still boggles my mind that Zack Snyder is keeping Watchmen in the 80s -- that never would have happened just a few years ago. We've come a long way from the aborted Tim Burton Superman with Nicolas Cage in a freaky black suit. But even this is a bit of a quirk of history -- I don't think we'd be seeing so many faithful adaptations if it weren't for Bryan Singer's X-Men showing it could be done and Raimi's Spider-Man showing just how friggin' huge it could be.

What are your favorite comic books?

Watchmen is my favorite book of all time, comic or otherwise. Paul Smith's run on X-Men -- I think I might prefer it to Byrne's, actually. Ambush Bug was way ahead of its time. One I loved back in the day, that seems to have been forgotten, was an horror anthology called Wasteland. It was written by John Ostrander and, of all people, improv pioneer Del Close. Some really twisted shit -- I can still remember one story called "R.Ab" that is just... soul-crushingly dark. Like Idiocracy without the safety of the comedy. I always thought this is what reading the E.C. comics back in the day must've been like.

Favorite comic book movies?

The stupidly-titled X2 is, fortunately, stupidly awesome. Spider-Man, I can watch over and over. Akira is great, but it's animated, so maybe that shouldn't count. I have a soft spot for Batman Returns, but the unfortunate practice of overloading a film with villains can be laid squarely at its feet.

Best adaptation?

Spider-Man is the best, I think, but it's adapting a character and his world and not so much a single story (other than the origin), so if you eliminate those, I guess that leaves me with Sin City. Visually, it's breath-taking and kind of addictive -- it's hard to look away from it when it's on. More importantly, though, it turned a series of borderline-unreadable books into something pleasing.

Most underappreciated/overappreciated comic book movies?

Let me go ahead and catch hell from two different camps. The first Superman movie is pretty terrific for about forty minutes when dealing with his origin, but once Luthor enters the picture, it gets too jokey and lame. Reeve and Kidder are impeccable, however. And Ghost World is pretty much ruined by Zwigoff's cheap misanthropy. I mean, Clowes isn't exactly Mr. Positive, but it's clear from the book that he's trying to find some kind of hope. Zwigoff buries it under shots of pregnant women smoking and Blockbuster gags that would never have made it past the Mad TV writing room. There's a reason Bad Santa works -- it's all misanthropy.

I think Hellboy is a bit underappreciated. Considering that the comic isn't very well-written and has one of the most non-sensical origin stories ever -- Mignola came up with the look of the character first and made up everything after, and it shows -- it holds together pretty well. Del Toro's really coming into his own, he's starting to find just what he's capable of, so I'm looking forward to Hellboy II.

When a comic book movie doesn't remain true to its source, how difficult is it for you to turn off your comic book side and simply appreciate it as a movie?

Well, my attack plan for the stuff I'm unfamiliar with -- like Darwyn Cooke's The New Frontier, or the upcoming Wanted -- is to watch the movie first. I want to be able to enjoy the movie -- or not -- as a movie first, without any baggage, which is how most viewers are going to see these things anyway. And then I go back to the comic. The comic is usually going to have more information anyway, and I don't need to bring that into the movie. I actually started watching Persepolis after reading the first 20 pages or so of the comic, and it totally fucked it up for me -- I had to go back and see it again to fully appreciate how well the filmmakers were able to streamline the story for the movie. Luckily, most comic movies are adapting characters and not specific stories, so it's pretty easy to turn off the preconceptions.

Obviously, with something like Watchmen, that's not going to be possible. I'm not sure how that's going to work. I might have to conk myself on the head and induce amnesia just before I walk into the theater.

What big-screen comic book adaptations have actually improved on their sources?

I just finished the original A History of Violence, and wow, what a stinker. The movie pretty much repudiates the source, which, admittedly, is an interesting way to go about adapting something. Sin City -- well, my loathing of Frank Miller runs pretty deep, so it was great to see such a tiring and self-important comic turned into high camp by simply giving the thing motion. Whenever I see Clive Owen float down to the street in his red shoes, I crack up.

In your opinion, what are the keys to making a successful comic book adaptation?

Jesus, I really have no idea. The first thing that comes to mind is balance -- knowing when to be faithful to the source, and when to realize, hey, this has to work as a movie first and foremost, and just go off. A History of Violence is pretty faithful for the first 1/3 of the book, then it jettisons the rest, to its credit. I don't think the adaptation of The New Frontier went far enough -- there were small changes here and there that indicated that they knew the story wasn't going to work as is, but they really should have rethought the whole thing from top to bottom. But, saying that, I bet we'll see (if we haven't already) a movie that either is completely faithful or totally throws everything out but the title and works perfectly well.

Now that Watchmen is being made, what are some of your other dream adaptations?

I want to say FLCL, but the comic came later. Does Cowboy Bebop count? It was a serialized manga first. I could totally see an adaptation with, say, Ryan Gosling as Spike, Selma Blair as Faye and The Rock as Jet. I think The Rock is underrated as a performer -- for someone who was supposed to be Schwarzenegger's heir apparent, he displays more genuine warmth and a sense of humor about himself than Arnold ever did. While Jet is a badass, he's still essentially the mother of the group, and it'd be interesting to see him in a movie where his physicality is in strict contrast to his role. Matthew Vaughn is doing Thor, but I'd kill for a Gilliam version -- nobody does giants better, and I'd love to see them get their ass kicked by a blonde dude with a hammer.

The Watchman runs every other Wednesday on comiXology. Kent’s piece on Iron Man will run this week.

Revenge of the Nerds - The 10 Sexiest Guy Geeks In Cinema (Part Deux)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:30:00 GMT

5. Steve Carrell as Andy Stitzer in The 40 Year Old Virgin

The poster said (and showed) it all: the painfully earnest expression, the terrible haircut, the little kid shirt and, of course, the no sex. For 40 years. Long past the point when even the nerdiest of nerds have usually managed to score at least a mercy jump from some kind soul, Andy is still living in a lonely geek paradise of pop culture, complete with an incredibly bad-ass video game chair that may, in fact, be even better than sex. But, in his isolation, Andy has also developed a tender soul and some not unimpressive pectorals (beneath a thick pelt of manly chest hair) that, combined with the stealthy square-jawed good looks beneath all the silliness, is sheer catnip to Catherine Keener’s E-Bay entrepreneur (not to mention my wife and most of her friends).

4. Michael Cera as Evan in Superbad and Paulie Bleeker in Juno

My sources inform me that Michael Cera is more cute than hot, although his junk-accentuating yellow shorts in Juno and the fact that he manages to attract Ellen Page’s titular wise-ass are mitigating factors in the case of his performance as teenage Tic-Tac enthusiast Paulie Bleeker. Of course, the geek side of the equation is more obvious...neither Paulie nor Evan seem to be especially popular in their respective high schools, but they earn their spot on this list by personifying exactly the sort of unspoiled misfits who are just on the verge of coming into their own as confident young adults (i.e., a tasty morsel and/or excellent boyfriend material for perceptive partners like Juno and Martha MacIsaac's teen temptress Becca.)

3. Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter in all those damn Harry Potter movies

And speaking of manly transformation...to quote blondychik1 over on YouTube regarding a certain nude scene from a certain notorious West End revival of Equus: “When did Daniel grow into a MAN?!?!” Meanwhile, over at Hogwart’s, the Harry Potter Nation has been watching the slow cinematic transformation of their favorite wizard from bespectacled young misfit to post-pubescent master of his wand in a mounting hormonal frenzy that even Muggles can feel way down deep in their Bertie Botts.

2. Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent in Superman I-IV

Respect.

1. Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker in Spider-Man 1-3

My wife and my female friends think he’s hot. My gay friends think he’s hot. Mary Jane Watson (personified by smokin’ hot, soakin’ wet Kirsten Dunst) thinks he’s hot. But he’s not JUST hot...he’s also a smart, sweet romantic superhero who’s nice to his cloying, annoying Aunt May...hell, he’s even nice to frenemies like Harry Osborn who try to kill him...AND he can deliver a stack of pizzas to your door from just about anywhere in just over ten minutes. Ladies and gents, I think we have a winner...(but please be sure to let us know who we missed)!

Click here for part 1.

Superlawyer

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:00:00 GMT

You probably haven't heard of Marc Toberoff. But to the families, heirs and representatives of some of our culture's best-known characters and creations, he's Superman — and to the corporate entities that own those creations, he's Lex Luthor.

Toberoff is an intellectual properties attorney who specializes in representing claims by creators and their heirs against big studios, publishers and other media conglomerates who have made mega-millions off of their creations — often without paying more than a pittance to the people responsible. In his latest case, he's won a federal ruling that gives the family of Superman's co-creator, Jerry Siegel, a financial stake in films made about the Man of Steel. It's a huge victory, and one that's likely to set a precedent that will also benefit the family of Superman's other creator, Joe Shuster. DC Comics, who owns the character, famously paid a pittance for the rights to Superman, and both Siegel and Shuster's families were nearly destitute for decades while DC (and its parent company, Warner Brothers) turned the character into one of the most recognizable — and marketable — icons in the world.

Of course, there's a downside to the pioneering work that Toberoff has done for the Siegels and many other people who found themselves cut out of the financial benefits of characters they helped create: his lawsuits have been so costly that they may delay or even completely scuttle a number of upcoming film and television projects involving Superman. But that's likely a small price to pay if it leads to media companies treating creators fairly from the start to avoid such litigation down the road.

Gotham City Board of Tourism

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:00:00 GMT

We suspect the Joker is behind a proposal from New York City Councilman Hiram Monserrate of Queens to designated “Gotham City” as New York’s official nickname. You might have believed “The Big Apple” was already getting the job done, but apparently nobody ever wasted enough time and taxpayer dollars to make it official.

Moserrate’s motivation (if not in fact supervillain induced) is the imminent release of The Dark Knight, the latest Batman adventure to take place in the suspiciously New York-like metropolis of Gotham. “I see that as a marketing tool,” says Moserrate in the Village Voice. “‘Come visit the real Gotham City,’ taking advantage of this movie which will be one of those gate-breaking, record-selling movies like it always is,” Despite the fact that Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins sequel was primarily shot in Chicago and London, Moserrate insists ““We all understand that Gotham is really about New York.”

Even if we accept the notion that New York City requires a marketing gimmick to attract tourism, is this really the way to go? According to the councilman’s pitch, “When we talk about Gotham we talk about tremendous, tremendous nightlife, restaurants, lounges, clubs and cafes, frappuccinos and everything else that we have in this City, the Village, Queens.” That’s funny, because when we think about the Gotham of Batman mythology, we think of a dark, grimy cesspool of criminal insanity, where your morning frappuccino may well be laced with deadly Joker venom. According to this map of Gotham City, the major tourist attractions include Crime Alley and Arkham Asylum. Isn’t this the image of New York that poor Mayor Giuliani worked so hard to eradicate? Besides, next time a new Superman movie is released, you know there’s going to be another councilman pushing for the nickname Metropolis.

Marvel Comics Is Ready for Its Close-Up

Phil Nugent — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:00:00 GMT

A long time ago when the world made sense, there were two kinds of comic books: DC comics and Marvel comics. And while Marvel reigned supreme at the comics shop, the company dearly wanted to break into the lucrative and ego-stroking business of licensing it characters for major motion pictures, and it was there that DC pantsed Marvel and took its lunch money. While DC was the home of Superman and Batman, Marvel was the home base of Howard the Duck. For years, Marvel's role in the Hollywood fod chain was epitomized by the 1994 Fantastic Four movie, a cheesy, cheap-looking affair that Marvel put into production without bothering to inform the people who worked on it that they had no intention of releasing it to theaters or even home video but were contractually obliged to make something if they wanted to hang onto the film rights to their own characters. All that started to change in 2000 with Bryan Singer's X-Men, whose success the director was unable to duplicate with his later stab at rebooting Superman. A couple of years later, Sam Raimi's take on the Marvel flagship hero Spider-Man launched a major franchise and proved that Marvel could sire a blockbuster movie without Singer or Hugh Jackman modeling a haircut that could open bottles and cans. Since then, Marvel has had varying degrees of commercial success with a for-real Fantastic Four movie and its sequel, as well as Ghost Rider, Daredevil, and Elektra, a bust in theaters but more of an earner as a DVD release that allowed film connoisseurs to conduct a close study of Jennifer Garner's moist eyes and washboard abs in the tranquil setting of their own fortress of solitude. Even The Punisher managed to make it into theaters with John Travolta on the poster, which helps to set it apart from the 1989 straight-to-video version, with Dolph Lundgren grunting his lines as if his tight skull-face T-shirt were cutting off his circulation.

Stage two in Marvel's renewed campaign to take over the film industry goes into effect on May 2 when Iron Man, the first official production of Marvel Studios, is released to theaters. As reporter Geoff Boucher puts it, this marks "the first step in the company's quest to go from intellectual-property fount to a stand-alone Hollywood player that can greenlight big-time popcorn movies." Studio chairman David Maisel crows that "We're the first since DreamWorks started 14 years ago that can greenlight its own $100 million movies. It doesn't happen very often." In some ways, Marvel might still look pretty small to the big guys: the "studio" is modestly staffed and will rely mostly on Paramount to distribute their finished films. What they do have is the backlist of established characters, many of them created back in the golden days when the legendary Stan Lee and the uber-legendary Jack Kirby were striking sparks together, despite Marvel founder-publisher Martin Goodman's attempts to rein in his brainstorming boys by reminding them that their reading base consisted of "children and a few illiterate adults." (Boy, the more things change, the more things stay the same, huh?) As Maisel puts it, "We're not in the movie business, we're in the Iron Man business right now. Marvel owns the intellectual property. We have an Iron Man video game coming, the toys, the comics, we have an animated television show coming, a direct-to-DVD animated Iron Man movie last year. We're going to have an Iron Man ride at an amusement park in Dubai in a few years." They're also in the Ant-Man business--Edgar Wright, the director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, is said to be ready to direct a film about the wee fellow--and of course, they're still in the Spider-Man business, with plans by Julie Taymor (Across the Universe) to launch a Spider-Man musical on Broadway. What may be most impressive is that they're in the Hulk business, too. Ang Lee's 2003 The Hulk movie was perhaps the highest-profile misstep of the new Marvel movie era, an ambitious, poker-faced effort that confused critics and disappointed audiences, though it did have the dignity of being a flop of the misguided-art-house variety instead of the underfunded direct-to-video sort. Now, just five years later, Marvel is going to reboot The Hulk with Ed Norton in the lead. The fact that Marvel is taking a second crack at the "property" so soon after the release of a film whose reception might have encouraged lesser mortals to sweep the Hulk under the rug for a generation or three shows an impressive degree of faith in their own product. Can another run at Howard the Duck be far behind? Has anybody run any tests to see how Hugh Jackman would look with an orange beak?

The Twelve Greatest Opening Credits in Movie History, Part 1

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 21:30:00 GMT

With a few notable exceptions, the elaborate main title sequence has gone the way of the drive-in double feature. In fact, many of today’s movies eschew opening credits altogether, opting to plunge the audience directly into the experience and saving the who-did-whats for last. There’s something to be said for that, but we feel a vital part of the moviegoing experience is being neglected, whether it’s the establishment of tone or mood, or just a playful visual riff on the film’s themes. Join us now for a journey of sight and sound we like to call The Twelve Greatest Opening Credits in Movie History.

PSYCHO (1960)

If you only know the name of one title designer- and chances are you do- the designer would almost certainly be Saul Bass. Before Bass came on the scene, the opening titles of films were mostly utilitarian, occasionally interesting to look at but primarily a way to honor the studio's obligations to the principal cast and crew. But this began to change after Bass was hired by Otto Preminger to design the opening credits to The Man With the Golden Arm, with his cutout-style animation working in tandem with Elmer Bernstein's score to create a title sequence that's arguably as good as the film that follows. Bass went on to work with Preminger numerous times, as well as filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick, Robert Aldrich, John Frankenheimer, Robert Wise, and later, Martin Scorsese. But for our money, Bass was never better than when designing titles for Alfred Hitchcock, which he did on three occasions. Any of these (the other two being Vertigo and North by Northwest) would be a worthy entry for this list, but we're going with their final collaboration, 1960's Psycho. For one thing, it's the most deceptively simple of Bass' classic output, with little more than white titles on a black background occasionally shoved aside by grey bars. A perfect rhythmic match to Bernard Herrmann's legendary score, Bass' titles are a classic case of "less is more"- a more complex animation might have given the game away, but Bass preserves the mystery of what is to come while still managing to set the tone for the film before we even see a frame shot by Hitchcock. And this was Bass' greatest breakthrough, to take what was once considered an overture to the feature film and turn it into an organic element of the movie itself.

A HARD DAY'S NIGHT (1964)

Few people involved in the making of A Hard Day's Night had particularly high expectations for its quality. The producers of the film intended it to be a cash-in on Beatlemania, which they then believed would be short-lived, and its potential took a backseat in their minds to that of a tie-in soundtrack album. However, from the legendary opening chord it was clear to audiences that A Hard Day's Night was much more than a quickie B-movie. Somehow, director Richard Lester had taken the budgetary limits that were placed on him by the money men and flipped them around to his aesthetic advantage. Except for the priceless comic dialogue, everything that makes the film great is in evidence during the opening credits. The black-and-white camera work, intended as a cost-cutting measure, gives the film a scruffy documentary feel, never more so than during the opening titles when the Beatles are mobbed and chased through the streets by actual fans. The sense of humor that permeates the film makes multiple appearances here, as when band manager Norm, for no good reason, struggles with a container of milk. But the most revolutionary element of these credits is the way Lester and editor John Jympson cut the sequence to the rhythm of the title tune, creating an early ancestor to the modern-day music video. As much as they (and the film itself, for that matter) have been imitated and parodied since its release, the original titles for A Hard Day's Night still elicit the same amount of infectious glee they did more than four decades ago.

GOLDFINGER (1964)

The Screengrab legal department has informed us that the inclusion of at least one James Bond title sequence is mandatory on a list such as this, and after careful consideration, we realized there was really only one choice. First of all, Shirley Bassey’s rendition of the title track is clearly the greatest of all 007 theme songs, despite what you Duran Duran fans think. Secondly, although Maurice Binder is justly praised for his many groovy Bond openings, it was graphic designer Robert Brownjohn who established the template of projecting images from the film onto the semi-nude bodies of lovely young ladies, an achievement we rank just below the discovery of the polio vaccine. In this case, of course, those semi-nude bodies are tinted gold, the crowning touch that pushes this one over the top.

DR. STRANGELOVE (1964)

Some observers, looking on Stanley Kubrick's body of work, have concluded that the man who made HAL 9000 a movie star must have been a misanthrope. But maybe it was just that he loved machines so much that he had little affection left over to bestow on human beings. Consider Dr. Strangelove, a film in which there is no trace of romance and little human warmth, and in which sex is a mysterious offscreen force that makes men in the war room snigger in anticipation of post-apocalyptic orgies and that compels the director to show us George C. Scott in open shirt and shorts. But then there is, at the very opening, that entrancing aerial ballet, with the military jets appearing to get it on, while music that suggests a romantic ballad is heard accompanying the credits. In its way, it may be the last real love scene that Kubrick ever shot. In his final film, Eyes Wide Shut, he tried to generate the same kind of heat with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman standing in for the airplanes, and the fact that he was not fully successful may prove that Scientologists are partly human after all. Or maybe it just proves that there are machines and then there are machines.

THE WILD BUNCH (1969)

Early in Sam Peckinpah's bloody Western masterpiece, there is a sequence, involving a shoot out between two factions (the outlaw gang of the title and the equally heedless, heartless "law men" on their trail) that lays waste to the town's main street, that (among other things) serves notice to the audience that this is not your father's cowboy movie. In order to minimize the number of paying customers who died of massive coronaries during the film's first fifteen minutes, it behooved Peckinpah and his collaborators to prepare viewers as best they could by making with the ominousness. This sequence--with the credits flashing onscreen as the images of the Bunch making their way into town keep freezing and turning to black and white, like cloud formations designed to signal that anyone who sees them had best build themselves an ark--do the trick nicely. No small degree of credit should go to Jerry Fielding, whose music sets a tone both lyrically elegaic and deeply scary. And the concluding freeze frame of William Holden declaiming the line, "If they move--kill 'em!" as that leading candidate for most beautiful four-word phrase in the English language, "Directed by Sam Peckinpah", appears alongside his head, is both a great in-joke and a heartening declaration of personal responsibility on the part of the artist.

SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE (1978)

“You will believe a man can fly,” said the famous tagline of Hollywood’s first big-budget superhero movie. We didn’t, quite – the movie had innumerable problems, and while it set a precedent for movies based on comic books to be profitable and even worth watching, it should be remembered more for being the first than anything like the best. But if there was one moment when it reached perfection, it was its opening credit sequence. A testament to the power of simplicity, the credits beautifully conjured the eternal four-color appeal of comic books by giving us nothing more or less than a simple backdrop of stars (occasionally broken up by something – a nebula? A muscled arm? A fluttering cape?) and the cast and crew of the movie rushing past us in a glorious and understated conjuration of classic comic book cover design. Having already brought together the perfect visual elements, the filmmakers go us one better – and cement Superman’s status as having one of the great credit sequences of all time – by hiring John Towner Williams to produce what is arguably his finest main theme. Williams’ compositions are all too often obvious and overbearing, but here, the triumphant but never aggressive or clamorous tone of the Superman theme fit the mood perfectly. Williams, despite having one of the most storied careers of any film composer, never again managed to so quite so exactly capture the feel of a film in its main title; Hollywood legend has it that, upon hearing it for the first time, producer Alexander Salkind bellowed to him “You’ve saved my movie!”

- Paul Clark, Scott Von Doviak, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

Read Part 2 of this feature

Morning Dealbreaker Report: Gosling De-Boned

Peter Smith — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:00:00 GMT

Ryan Gosling gained twenty pounds for Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Lovely Bones, but he left the production on Friday with shooting starting today. Creative differences, they say. That Gosling is a mysterious cat. Mark Wahlberg quickly signed on to fill his space.

MTV is adapting the story of the Alaskan high school student who got suspended for putting a sign that said "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" outside his school. His father defended him at the risk of losing his job. A heartwarming free-speech tale that only MTV could tell, eh?

The next Superman will apparently reboot the franchise, oddly enough. But Bryan Singer's still on board — they're not throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Of course, Superman Returns only made $200 million in the U.S., so something's clearly not working.

— Peter Smith