Wed Apr 23, 2008 — by Matt Raub

ComicMix TV at NYCC: 'Hellboy II: The Golden Army' Interviews

It's a Q&A with the BRPD... Wild!

Big Red and the whole Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense crew are back this summer, and the cast and crew of Hellboy II: The Golden Army made a trip to the Big Apple for this year's New York Comic Con. We chatted up actors Ron Perlman (Hellboy), Doug Jones (Abe Sapien) and Selma Blair (Liz Sherman), as well as Hellboy II director Guillermo del Toro about the loves, lessons and lives of monsters in this special ComicMix TV report from the show.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army hits theaters on July 11, 2008.

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Sun Apr 20, 2008 — by Matt Raub

ComicMix TV at NYCC: The Fanboys... They Are Among Us

Is your neighbor a fanboy? How do you know?

It's Sunday at New York Comic Con, and we're starting to get a little punchy around the ComicMix HQ. Case in point: This short video we put together yesterday...

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Sat Apr 19, 2008 — by Matt Raub

ComicMix TV: Milo Ventigmiglia on 'Heroes' and 'Rest'

The Daily Fix: The 'Heroes' star chats up his new project with Devil's Due Publishing

Here's our first feature straight from the floor yesterday: An exclusive ComicMix interview with Heroes star Milo Ventimiglia (Peter Petrelli).

The actor-turned-writer talks about this season on the hit series and his new Devil's Due book Rest.

Enjoy!

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Fri Apr 18, 2008 — by Matt Raub

ComicMix TV: Neal Adams on Batman at NYCC

New York Minute #2 - It's all things Batman in our chat with Neal Adams...

Comics legend Neal Adams was on hand at New York Comic Con today to talk Batman with the ComicMix TV crew. Our intrepid man on the scene talks him up about his upcoming secret Batman project, as well as all things Dark Knight...

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Fri Apr 18, 2008 — by Matt Raub

ComicMix TV: New York Minute #1 - Captain Action is Back!

We're on the spot with the men of 'Action'

This weekend, beloved 1960s hero Captain Action makes a triumphant return to the comics scene courtesy of Moonstone Books and a big debut at this year's New York Comic Con. Manhattan comics mainstay Jim Hanley's Universe recently hosted the Captain Action creative team of Fabian Nicieza, Mark Sparacio and Ruben Procopio for a pre-convention signing and celebration of all things Captain Action.

ComicMix was on the scene with this report:

For more on Captain Action, read our ComicMix interview with writer Fabian Nicieza.

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Sun Mar 30, 2008 — by Matt Raub

ComicMix Review: 'Superhero Movie'

Getting the facts straight and the laughs quick with 'Superhero Movie'

[Editor's Note: While ComicMix columnist Michael H. Price devoted a recent column to reviewing the superhero parody film Superhero Movie, regular ComicMix film reviewer Matt Raub braved hordes of pre-teen Drake & Josh fans this weekend to provide some addiitonal insight on the film. With ticket prices as they are these days, we figured ComicMix readers would appreciate the extra review before they parted with their money. -RM]

To begin with, this movie isn’t terrible. But before we get into that, a brief history lesson:

Scary Movie is a horror-spoof franchise that began in 2000 and was helmed by six writers that included the Wayans brothers and their team from previous projects. Also included were writers Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. This team’s only previous credit was the 1996 spy spoof Spy Hard, starring Leslie Nielson. As a whole, this was the creative team responsible for the first two Scary Movie films, but they opted out of a third film, and the franchise continued with Airplane and Naked Gun creator David Zucker at the helm. Zucker brought along Pat Proft, who he had previously worked with, and a new guy named Craig Mazin, who worked on a quirky superhero comedy from 2000 called The Specials.

Still with me here? Good, because we’re almost to the point, I promise. Upon leaving the franchise after Scary Movie 2, two of the six writers decided they weren’t quite done with the “spoofing genres” game and went on to write and direct Date Movie. (The original trailer for Date Movie even tagged the film as “from two of the six writers of Scary Movie.”) They also went on to do Epic Movie and, finally, winter’s kick-in-the-face: Meet the Spartans. At this point, if you’re not bleeding from the ears, you may be asking yourself, “Why did I need to know any of this?” Well, because those hating on this film based purely on its existence need to know that Superhero Movie was not the brainchild of any of the people attached to the three terrible spin-off-genre-spoofing-machines, be they Date, Epic, or Spartan. Instead, it is that of Craig Mazin, who created 2000’s superhero comedy The Specials, starring Thomas Hayden Church and Rob Lowe (pick it up on DVD, it’s pretty good).

Continue reading ComicMix Review: 'Superhero Movie' ›

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Wed Mar 5, 2008 — by Matt Raub

ComicMix TV: 'Dark Tower' Midnight Release

ComicMix tracks down Peter David and Jae Lee for 'The Long Road Home'

ComicMix TV is back once again with another episode!

This time we're in the heart of Manhattan at Midtown Comics for the midnight release of Marvel Comics' Dark Tower 2: The Long Road Home. Not only do we have video from the event, but we also have exclusive interviews with Dark Tower: The Long Road Home creators Peter David and Jae Lee.

SPOILER ALERT: For those of you who haven't read the first Dark Tower series, The Gunslinger Born, there are spoilery pieces of plot contained in the interview. So, consider yourself warned!

Enjoy!
 

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Tue Mar 4, 2008 — by Matt Raub

Film Review: Vantage Point

Eight perspectives, one opinion

Not many trailers made in the past 10 years misrepresent the film they are promoting. Sadly, Vantage Point breaks that rule. By allowing me the room to figure out the entire movie through footage oversaturation, I didn’t have a huge urge to run to the theaters, hence the late review. But alas, seven days after the film’s release, I was able to go into the theater without a hint of outside ruination, no real mention of the big twists, nor who was evil and why. So to keep the film pure, and leave any future audience members unscathed, I’ll try to keep the dignity of the film intact and not give much away in the review.

With that in mind: This movie wasn’t very good. Albeit the concept isn’t exactly original (See Rashomon), the filmmakers here had a perfect opportunity to bring something as innovative and provocative as Rashomon to Hollywood and thus, to a Hollywood audience. Instead, the concept was left half-assed and basically unfinished, leaving holes in continuity that you could drive a Mack Truck through and backstory for only one character, reduced to a single line of exposition.

For those of you not entirely familiar with the concept of the movie, Vantage Point was adevrtised as featuring eight different perspectives (in truth, it's only five) of the assassination of the President of the United States. Each gives a little more insight to the overall story, while leaving you at the edge of your seat each and every time you see a part of the story. At the end of the film, you’ll feel fairly manipulated, but that won’t compare to the complete lack of compassion you have for any of the characters.

Continue reading Film Review: Vantage Point ›

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Mon Feb 25, 2008 — by Matt Raub

ComicMix TV: Toy Fair '08 - 30 Days of Night, Halo and Marvel Sub Casts

Episode #001: Toy Fair, Part 1

In this first full episode of ComicMix TV, we peek at some of the comics-related products on display at this year's Toy Fair International event, including toys based on the 30 Days of Night film, Halo figures designed by Todd McFarlane and a line of cartoon-cool Marvel characters.

Missing all of the Toy Fair fun already? You can always look back through our archive of Toy Fair 2008 coverage and experience it all over again.

 And remember, you can always get more audio and video coverage of your favorite comics news by subscribing to ComicMix Radio podcasts via or RSS!

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Fri Feb 15, 2008 — by Matt Raub

Early Review: 'Justice League: New Frontier'

An advance look at the hot D2DVD

Like many of you out there, a bad taste was left in my mouth coming off of Superman: Doomsday, so of course I was wary of DC’s next direct-to-DVD flick. I wasn’t a huge fan of the graphic novels (Isn’t that what we call thick comic books these days?), but I am certainly a fan of the Justice League and its animated counterpart. 

I’ll start with a warning to those who aren’t totally familiar with The New Frontier and its universe, but ARE fans of the established animated DC universe: this is a whole new direction from shows like Justice League Unlimited and others, but it is full of exciting DCU fan favorites. In fact, my biggest complaint about Superman: Doomsday was that there were no outside DC heroes, even though they were all over the original story. But I digress.

Continue reading Early Review: 'Justice League: New Frontier' ›

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Sun Feb 3, 2008 — by Matt Raub

War on Scientology?

YouTube sees all!

Anybody who knows their ear from their elbow when it comes to the world and how ridiculous some of us can be knows how creepy the world of Scientology can be. Those who are unaware of this wacky world and missed the episode of South Park that explained it all, it’s a religion based on the writings of famed science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard and is practiced in nearly 5,000 churches by some of the most powerful people in the world in over 100 countries.

Continue reading War on Scientology? ›

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Tue Jan 22, 2008 — by Matt Raub

Cloverfield Monster In Your House!

Train him as a watch dog!

Remember the giant, horrific monster from the recent box office smash hit Cloverfield? Well, if you thought the thing was as cuddly as I did, you'll be pleased to know that Hasbro toys, in partnership with Bad Robot and Paramount Pictures, has announced a new 14-inch, super-articulated, highly detailed limited edition of the Cloverfield Monster for you to put up on your toy shelf between your limited Fing Fang Foom Heroclick and Jack Kirby minibust.

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Wed Oct 10, 2007 — by Matt Raub

Abrams Shoots Hulk into Space...

...sort of

Now that I've got your attention, No: J.J. Abrams is not doing a line of Hulk books. Rather, he's just announced that former Hulk star Eric Bana will be facing off against the new Captain James T. Kirk in 2008's remake/reboot/re-imagining/re-whatever of Star Trek. Bana is signed to play Nero, the newest/oldest baddie who has a plan to take down Kirk and probably the whole enterprise.

So far, Abrams has been pretty good on keeping a lid on casting rumors and things we, the fans, don't really need to know just yet. Back at ComiCon, he announced that Heroes' star Zachary Quinto would be playing our new Spock.. along side Nimoy, who will ALSO be portraying the role. This brings up theories that it could be a parallel universe, or alternate timelines, or they could all be lost on an island that has mystical powers... let's hope it's not that last one.

Also set star is Anton Yelchin (Huff) as young Chekov, Zoe Saldana (Pirates Trilogy) as the young Uhura, and it is rumored that Mike Vogel (from the new giant monster/alien/who knows movie Cloverfield/1-18-08) will take the helm as our new, less bloated James T. Kirk.

The film is currently set for a Christmas 2008 release.

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Mon Sep 3, 2007 — by Matt Raub

MOVIE REVIEW: Halloween 9

Or is it 1.1?

It feels like just yesterday that the summer blockbuster season was here, but I suppose we’ve already moved on from there and straight into that time of year when thriller/horror movies come out of the woodwork, and usually sink rather than swim. This year we’re subjected treated to another Japanese thriller remake with One Missed Call, another underground-graphic-novel-turned-award-winning-film with 30 Days of Night, and yes: yet another Saw movie – because they cost about $8.50 to make.

We proudly start off this traditional season with Rob Zombie’s faux remake/prequel of John Carpenter’s quintessential slasher flick Halloween. Now not to play into the web-gossip, but there was quite some controversy about this film’s script, involving a leak and a very critical critic from a website which I choose not to mention (I will give a hint though: it rhymes with Paint it Drool Booze). But all of that aside, it was rumored that Zombie went into rewrites only a few short weeks before shooting. Now I felt this was relatively unwise, but as usual, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start as we usually do, in the OCD fashion of a film breakdown.

Starting off with my favorite aspect of the film, the acting; I have almost nothing to complain about here. It’s evident in all of Zombie’s work (a whopping three films) that he is a huge fanboy, and while every fanboy has their niche (Smith has Star Wars, Tarantino has chatty women, and Favreau has Vince Vaughn) Zombie’s niche is easily noticed as B-Movies. This film is a practical who’s who of B-Movie actors, much like his previous two films were. To name a few, we movie geeks get Danny Trejo, Brad Dourif, Malcolm McDowell, Sid Haig, William Forsythe, Udo Kier, Clint Howard, and of course Tyler Mane as our masked pro/antagonist. With a cast like this, topped off with Zombie’s frightening-yet-gorgeous wife, Sheri Moon, this film was meant for every fanboy in the theater to swoon with joy every time we get another cameo, much like this reviewer did. Though it probably isn’t necessary for me to reveal, each actor pulled off their creepy-yet-impressive roles to a tee.

Moving onto the technical aspect of this film, I was torn. Another one of Zombie’s trademarks is complete filth, and not in the sense of obligatory nudity (of which there was plenty in this film), but in the sense that the film and setting as a whole made me long for a shower once the credits rolled. From the very start, we’re treated to visuals of a completely rundown, white-trash home in which almost everything looks dirty and unpleasant, all the way to the end of the film where just about everything/one is covered in blood. Much like House of 1000 Corpses and Devil's Rejects, this film definitely adapted the feeling of grittiness that the horror movies of yesteryear prided themselves on.

One trait that Zombie seemed to pick up in this movie that was thankfully left out of his two previous pieces was the use of unnecessary camera shakiness. I’m not sure if its his way of falling in line with popular films like the Bourne trilogy and the use of shaky camera work, or if it was a cheap way to add tension to a scene that already displayed it, but it was not only unnecessary, but distracting. When a filmmaker prides himself for turning heads with the amount of gore and violence he uses in films, there is no need to strap the camera to a rabid dog every time he feels the need to add more tension to the scene. The close angles and fast cuts during action sequenced made it feel like a bad episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and that’s not good, especially when the substance is far too good for any overuse of style.

Finally we move on to the pièce de résistance: in talking about the script/plot of the film. Going into a straight-up slasher film, my expectations never soar, in fact I usually leave my brain at the door. But when a movie is hyped as giving more substance to a horror movie that I practically grew up on, I wanted there to be substance and closure to a 30 year old story. Instead we get half-assed character development and dialogue that actually had me laughing out loud when it wasn’t exactly necessary. I’m proud of the fact that we took a snippet of Donald Pleasance’s dialogue from the 1978 film and turned it into an hour of film, but this should have been about what makes one of the greatest Monsters of American Cinema tick, rather than just explaining who he is and that he likes to stab things. I call him the pro/antagonist because if the character development was done properly, it would show that Michael Myers killed to protect his family, and hurt those who threatened that. Instead we barely touch on that subject, and spend more time watching Myers kill naked teens while they have drunken unprotected sex.

Overall, looking at this film as another slasher film with a great supporting cast, it exceeds almost all expectations. But this film had to potential of being the Batman Begins of a potentially dead horror franchise, and instead of turning this into a trend in the genre and possibly getting the chance to see Peter Berg’s Friday the 13th, we’ll more than likely be subjected to another ten years of Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash vs. Godzilla vs. Kramer.

I reluctantly give the film a 7/10, only because while it may be an American pastime and one of my favorite weekend activities, a movie needs to be more than an hour plus of killing naked drunken teens having unprotected sex.

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Wed Jul 11, 2007 — by Matt Raub

MOVIE REVIEW: Harry Potter and the Profit of Cash

Thankfully, the boy's not nekked with a horse

I just came out of a screening of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth installment of the series, and before I go spouting off my likes and dislikes, I wanted to forewarn anybody reading this review that my expertise is vastly limited in the world of J.K Rowling. While I’ve never read the books, and it’s not due to a disliking or laziness, I just find the concept of visual storytelling much more effective than having me conjure up images from the deep and dark recesses of my imagination.

With that said, I want readers to understand that I’m reviewing this film as just that, a film, and not so much a visual appendage of the book. So please keep the hate mail that starts off with “You ignorant twit…” to a minimum.

Now that that is out of the way, I loved the film. It had all of the visual aspects and plot maturity that the previous films were leading up to, and I know we are only going upwards from here. The last film left us with the big reveal of nose-less Ralph Fiennes as our quintessential baddie Lord Voldemort, and Harry taking his first step of many into adulthood. There lies my biggest problem with the film, but we’ll take it slow, as per usual.

Putting our best foot forward, the visual effects never cease to amaze me in each of these films. Each director (in this case, BBC veteran David Yates) has brought a different look and feel to the film they were charged with, and gave the film an entirely fresh feel, without diverting too far from the original text. In this film, we get more special effects than any of its previous predecessors. Between CG’d giants, to CG’d fireworks, even to Ralph Fiennes CG’d lack of a nose, there is certainly more computer graphics in this film than you can wave a stick at. Though through all of this, not once was I taken out of the mythos by a lack of belief, all thanks to the superior visual effects.

By far my favorite aspect of the film to talk about, and probably the one that will get me in the most trouble, is the undertone used throughout the first and second act. That undertone being the same thing that has fueled some of the most important science fiction and fantasy films of our era, and probably before that. This message of course is essentially “Damn the Man!”

Continue reading MOVIE REVIEW: Harry Potter and the Profit of Cash ›

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