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Tue Aug 11, 2009 — by Amy Goldschlager
Film Review: 'Ponyo' ('Gake no ue no Ponyo' )
Ponyo (“Gake no ue no Ponyo”), an animated feature film directed by Hayao Miyazaki.
Dubbed English voices by Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, Tina
Fey, Liam Neeson, Cloris Leachman, Betty White, Lily Tomlin, Frankie Jonas, and others.
In advance of its August 14 limited release, Hayao Miyazaki’s latest film Ponyo made its East Coast debut at Symphony Space in Manhattan on Sunday, August 9, to the great delight of those of us who have been waiting too long for a Miyazaki film, thanks to the legal issues surrounding Tales From Earthsea. Free posters were given out to several people waiting on line. and plush Ponyos were tossed into the audience, one of which was claimed by one of my companions in an impressive high catch.
The title character, Ponyo, is apparently the oldest and most powerful of the many girl-faced goldfish daughters of the sea goddess Gran Mamare and Fujimoto, a human-hating, hollow-cheeked wizard who lives underwater. Curiosity brings Ponyo to the surface and gets her stuck inside a jar; a 5-year-old boy named Sosuke rescues her, dumps her in a pail, and feeds her a ham slice. These deeds are apparently enough to win Ponyo's heart; she uses some of her father’s magical elixirs to turn herself adorably human and show up on Sosuke’s doorstep. Unfortunately, her act upsets a natural balance, putting most of Sosuke’s town underwater and threatening further damage unless Ponyo declares his love for her. Yes, you got that right. He’s five, and he’s got to promise to love her always—whether as a sister or as a future bride, it’s not entirely clear. How many of us have declared their eternal devotion to someone we met at the age of five? How many of us are even still friends with someone we met at age five? (I’m still friends with one woman I met at age seven, and that’s really pretty impressive, I think.)
As other reviewers have mentioned, Ponyo is essentially a riff on The Little Mermaid, but without the singing of the Disney movie or the walking-on-knives and rigidly Lutheran moralizing of the original story. Frankly, some appropriately directed moralizing might have been what this story needs (over and above the usual love nature, hate pollution message that’s present in all Miyazaki films).
Disney produced the English-language version of Ponyo; these are the same people who were so disturbed that the 13-year-old witch protagonist of Kiki’s Delivery Service was drinking coffee, they awkwardly wrote the English dub to indicate that she was drinking hot chocolate instead. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that execs had considerably more ethical qualms about this film, but given the international box office and prestige that Miyazaki gained in previous efforts, decided to stifle them.
Continue reading Film Review: 'Ponyo' ('Gake no ue no Ponyo' ) ›
Fri Jul 24, 2009 — by Andrew Wheeler
Review: The Photographer by Guibert, Lefèvre, & Lemercier
Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders
The Photographer
By Didier Lefèvre, Emmanuel
Guibert, and Frederic Lemercier
First Second, May 2009, $29.95
Lefèvre was a French photojournalist – he died, unexpectedly and too young, in 2007 – and this book is an unusual combination of drawn comics and fumetti, telling the true story of part of his life. In 1986, Lefèvre took the first of several trips into Afghanistan with the group Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF, aka Doctors Without Borders), to report on the work of the MSF during the Soviet occupation, particularly on one particular mission to set up a field hospital in Zaragandara in the Yaftal valley up in the mountains of the north.
Nearly twenty years later, after hearing stories of that trip many times, Lefèvre’s friend Emmanuel Guibert, a well-known cartoonist and graphic novelist, turned that trip into comics form, using Lefèvre’s words and photos. As this book credits itself, it’s “A story lived, photographed, and told by Didier Lefèvre, written and drawn by Emmanuel Guibert, laid out and colored by Frederic Lemercier, and translated from the French by Alexis Siegel.” (I think that means that Lemercier did the panel breakdowns from Guibert’s script – for those who obsess about comics workflow – but that’s not completely clear.)
So every page of The Photographer is a comics page, with captions, panels, borders and word balloons. But many of those pictures are not Guibert’s drawings, but Lefèvre’s photos – used as panels (wordless; the captions and balloons never overlie the photography) or in strips of film to convey time passing or just the atmosphere of a scene. It’s a style that quickly fades into the background, but it gives The Photographer the power of a documentary – we see these people’s real faces, and the real landscape they inhabit, as well as Guibert’s versions of them.
Continue reading Review: The Photographer by Guibert, Lefèvre, & Lemercier ›
Thu Jul 23, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'Green Lantern: First Flight'
The care and attention to detail given the direct-to-DVD animated films based on DC Comics’ properties is evident. As a result, watching Green Lantern: First Flight
In fact, the script for this feature, premiering tonight at the San Diego Comic-Con and going on sale Tuesday, does a nice job of encapsulating the necessary backstory for the Guardians of the Universe and the Green Lantern Corps. The film moves along at a nice pace and with most of it taking place off planet, the animators have a terrific time designing locales, aliens, and interpreting the GLC from comics for the screen. I can quibble and say that I wish the original Gil Kane design for Hal Jordan’s costume were used or that Abin Sur resembled his comic book counterpart but it’s all minor.
The story is a fresh take on Hal Jordan inheriting the power ring and joining the Corps. As adapted from the 1990s version, Sinestro shows up to act as his trainer and reveals his corruption, forcing the student to fight the teacher. On the other hand, in the comics, Sinestro (voiced nicely by Victor Garber) was so manic about instilling order; he first blurred and then stepped over the line between protector and dictator. In this film, Sinestro is just corrupt and dismissive of the Guardians.
The Guardians suffer in translation. Originally, they all appeared identical, based on Israel’s David Ben-Gurion, so they could act in concert. Here, they are more distinctive to the point of looking goofy. They used to be mostly omniscient but here are weak and flawed, annoyed that a flawed human received the great Abin Sur’s ring, forgetting the ring’s programming to seek out the most appropriate candidate. These living power batteries are mishandled and their influence diminished.
Perhaps the biggest change between the comics and the film is that the yellow power that Sinestro adopts is not taken from Parallax, the embodiment of fear, but is some unexplained substance that rivals the green energy the Guardians used for their Corps. It just exists and is nowhere near as dramatically compelling. Screenwriter Alan Burnett usually doesn’t make errors like this and it’s a shame it hurts the film’s impact.
Hal, who was very nicely handled in New Frontier, is less an imposing figure here, despite Christopher Meloni’s solid voice work. He questions the Guardians, bonds with his fellow corpsmen, and does heroic work but doesn’t resonate as a hero or as the Greatest Green Lantern of them all. As a result, the film is nowhere near as powerful as it should be.
The two-disc DVD comes complete with feature trailers on the previous animated released along with an intriguing sneak peek at the next offering, September’s Superman & Batman: Public Enemies. A short featurette on Blackest Night is a nice teaser for the comic books. The second disc comes with a short chat with Geoff Johns about Green Lantern along with Johns and others talking about Sinestro and the Guardians. The GL-themed episode of Duck Dodgers is included along with a two-part JL Unlimited animated adventure.
Overall, it’s a nice package and worth a look but the lack of a strong lead character and stereotypical villain posturing robs the story of the potential power.
Here's a four minute preview of the movie, via MTV SplashPage:
Wed Jul 22, 2009 — by Andrew Wheeler
Review: Two Post-genre superheroes from AdHouse
Mike Dawson's Ace-Face and Lamar Abrams's Remake
Superheroes have been the default setting for American
comics for so long – more than forty years; long enough for two generations to
grow up – that they’ve been hybridized and cross-pollinated more than wheat,
with not just the usual revisionist, retro, neo-retro, counterrevisionist,
revolutionary, postmodern, primitivist, and reactionary strains from the usual
sources, but odder, wild strains growing far from the fields of Marvel and DC.
I have two books like that in front of me now; two books from AdHouse that never could have existed without that long long-underwear mainstream, but which also never come close to that mainstream themselves.
Ace-Face: The Mod with the Metal Arms
By Mike Dawson
AdHouse Books, April 2009, $6.95
Ace-Face is close to that “mainstream,” with stories about the exploits of Colin Turvey, the British-American costumed adventurer called Ace-Face. Colin has the requisite silly “secret origin,” being born without arms but with a mad-scientist uncle who fitted him with hulking, superstrong mechanical arms. But then most of the stories about Colin here – they’re mixed in with other stories, which I’ll get to in a moment – don’t focus on his exploits as a superhero, but use that superhero status – as if we’re already intimately familiar with Ace-Face – to delve deeper into his psychological life, dramatizing scenes from his childhood and retirement.
Dawson also intersperses slice-of-life stories (based on his own life, I suspect) of Colin’s son Stuart, and his travails as a Park Slope apartment-dweller. And then there are also a couple of stories about the superpowered kids Jack (a telekinetic) and Max (a teleporter), who – in the typical fashion of brothers – use their powers almost entirely to annoy and fight with each other.
So the book Ace-Face is mostly made up of stories set in a world with superheroes, but which don’t focus on superheroics. That’s nothing new, of course – the “ordinary person in superhero society” has been an undertone of spandex comics since at least Marvels (and possibly much longer, depending on whether we want to think about Snapper Carr). Dawson doesn’t seem to have planned this book as a coherent work – there’s no listing of previous publications, but I’m sure I’ve heard of the “Jack and Max” stories appearing elsewhere first – and so there’s no real continuity from one story to the next. Colin bounces around in time, and his story never really comes into focus. Jack and Max are simpler characters, so they work better in one-off stories; like the Looney Tunes, they exist to cause havok and then have the curtain dropped down on their heads.Continue reading Review: Two Post-genre superheroes from AdHouse ›
Tue Jul 21, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'Dollhouse' Season One on DVD
There are television creators who are placed under the microscope every time they produce something new, hoping it will generate the same pop buzz and ratings success of their previous series. While a Jerry Bruckheimer can churn out cookie cutter series, the ones with more unique and distinctive voices tend to be more hit or miss. In Joss Whedon’s case, he followed Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel with Firefly. While a cult favorite, the series and its feature film incarnation failed to win the wide audience required to remain viable. As a result, all eyes were on him to see what his next trick would be and most were cautious given that the new series Dollhouse would appear on Fox, where a previous regime sabotaged Firefly through ineptness.
People cringed when the new show, featuring Whedon-alum Eliza Dushku, was given the dreaded Friday night at 9 slot but were also given fewer commercials allowing more show time allowing Whedon’s characters to come to life.
Dollhouse divided critics and fans and the ratings were iffy at best so the real surprise in May was that the show was renewed at all. Now, during the summer, about two months before the series returns, Fox is releasing a four-disc first season set on Tuesday. They provided the first three discs for review, reserving the fourth disc for consumers to discover on their own. That disc contains the unaired thirteenth episode that could well have been a coda to the series had it been canceled and shone the spotlight on Amy Acker’s Active, codenamed Whiskey. Here's a clip:
Mon Jul 20, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'Watchmen Director's Cut' on Blu-ray
No one can fault Warner Bros. for not giving their best marketing effort to get people to come find out for themselves why the fans and the mass media have been falling over themselves to hail Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen
While the diehards attended more than once to sop up every nuance, the rest of America seemed not to care anywhere near as much. For those of us familiar with the language of comic books and graphic novels, we easily followed the movie while those less versed found it off-putting despite the brilliant 12-minute opening that set the stage. As a result, the film earned just $107,509,799 domestically and with additional $75,225,483 from international screens, it stands as a commercial disappointment.
As I said in my review last March, the film was not at all a creative disappointment. There are sharp performances, especially Jackie Earl Haley and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and while there are favorite characters missing or diminished, the movie does a solid job condensing the story. Still, it feels constrained and probably would have worked better as either two films or an extended premium cable miniseries (although that would have been prohibitively expensive to mount). Now we have additional footage in The Watchmen Director’s Cut being released tomorrow by Warner Home Video. It’s available in standard and Blu-ray editions, each packed with extras. Here's a sample:
Continue reading Review: 'Watchmen Director's Cut' on Blu-ray ›
Sun Jul 19, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'Pushing Daisies' Season 2 on DVD
When Pushing Daisies
Somewhat retooled during the writers’ strike, ABC brought it back this past fall and by Christmas it was gone with three episodes unaired. Those finally got seen in June and now the entire second season is available as a four disc box set, being released Tuesday from Warner Home Video.
The second season continued to have the feeling of a fairy tale and maintained the basic tenants of the series from Jim Dale’s delightful narration to the everything is slightly over-the-top but you buy it visuals.
Still, the cast probably had a few regulars and recurring players too many and the storylines reflected that. We have Olive hiding as a nun, taking away from the core cast and concocting stories to bring the cast to her. Ned’s daddy issues continued to flare up along with the improbable introduction of half-brothers that only bloated the stories for a while. No sooner were they dispatched than we turned to Chuck’s daddy issues complete with Daddy’s resurrection. The best part of that was how he reacted and took advantage of the situation, causing fresh problems for Ned and Chuck. Coupled with Chuck’s story was her aunts and the arrival of Dwight, a recurring antagonist who got caught up with Vivian.
It felt messy and overdone, and for those trying to sample the show, it was probably dense and off-putting. For those of us who watched it regularly, we delighted in the bizarre cases, highlights including the honey-based cosmetics murder, the death of Colonel Likkin and the case of the dead window dresser.
Clearly, the writing was on the wall, allowing Bryan Fuller to try and tidy things up in the final three episodes. The penultimate story, which possibly had the best script of the season, allowed some closure to Emerson Cod’s search for his daughter, allowing the finale to wrap up Chuck’s issues with her Aunts, one of whom turned out to be her natural mother.
The core cast was nothing but superb from beginning to end. They played everything straight in a wacky world and each appeared as fully-fleshed out people with surprising quirks and hobbies (Emerson’s knitting for example). The chemistry between Lee Pace and Anna Friel helped the romantic fairy tale feel and they were more than ably supported by Kristen Chenoweth and Chi McBride. The guest cast was a nice blend of the familiar and the less familiar but everyone played their parts larger than life, adding to the unreal feel of the series.
The 13 episodes are complemented by four short featurettes: The Master Pie Maker which was heavy on clips and not enough interview material with the cast about the show overall; From Over to Table, which focused on bringing the scripts to life that could have benefitted with a little more on the props and set design; Secret Sweet Ingredients, a strong piece on the wonderful music from composer Jim Dooley; and, Add a Little Magic, which was a brief look at the visual effects. They, like the pie Ned served, were sweet morsels leaving you wanting more.
Much like the series, this may be gone from television but will live on as a maxiseries from WildStorm. For now, though, the second season comes recommended.
Sat Jul 11, 2009 — by Shanti Whitesides
Review: 'Up', Pixar and Storytelling
One of the things that I love about Pixar is that they
remember what a lot of filmmakers - and sadly, particularly those working in
the CG medium - have forgotten:
A film needs a story.
So many films today focus on technological dazzle, shock value, making pretty pictures, or cleverness. None of these are bad things; any and all of them can add enjoyment, but for me a good story is more important than anything else. I’ll enjoy the spectacle, the beauty, the wit, but what stays with me is the story. If story is absent, everything else fades quickly. Pixar’s films have had consistently strong storytelling, letting the characters carry the viewer along on their adventures, and this summer’s offering, Up, is no exception.
Up doesn't come near to matching the sheer dazzling brilliance of last summer's Wall-E, but it is a sweet and charming movie in its own right, and like Wall-E, it remembered to have a story. Not only that, but Up takes a startling number of storytelling risks, particularly for a movie aimed at children.
First there was the absolutely heartbreaking montage of Carl and Ellie trying to save for their dream trip, and having their dream constantly derailed by crisis after crisis, only to have Ellie fall ill and die just as the trip was finally in their reach. This montage is also a rare instance of a wedding being the beginning of a couple’s story rather than the “happily ever after.” Seeing Carl lose the legal battle to stay in his home was also painful.
Sun Jul 5, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'Peanuts 1960's Collection' DVD
I’ll be honest and tell you that I am in the minority who felt that Peanuts stopped being funny after 1972 and should have been retired long before Charles M. Schulz’s death. All its charm and whimsy had been drained out of it as witnessed by the 1970s material that has been reprinted since his passing. The world had changed and their innocent worldview ceased to feel at all relevant. But once Schulz found his characters and voice, the strip was brilliant for quite some time.
By 1965, Charles Schulz’s Peanuts had grown to become one of the most popular comic strips launched since the end of World War II if not the 20th Century. It made perfect sense that the characters would eventually find their way onto television. They were first licensed for use as pitchmen for Ford in 1961 and appeared in black and white commercials animated by Bill Meléndez. When Lee Mendelson tried to make a documentary on Schulz in 1963, he hired Meléndez to create a short segment while hiring Vince Guaraldi for the score. The proposed show never sold but sowed the seeds for what came soon after.
As we know today, that first holiday special, was something unique and heartwarming from Guaraldi’s amazing score to the characters being funny and poignant. While the holiday-themed specials have become television perennials, several of the others have not achieved the same attention.
That oversight is rectified in the Peanuts 1960's Collection
Sat Jul 4, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'Erotic Comics: A Graphic History Vol. 2'
Celebrate the 4th with the 1st Amendment!
There is sharp divide between erotica and pornography in any media, including comic books. To help draw attention to the former while casting a jaundiced eye at the latter, Britain’s Tim Pilcher has produced two strong volumes entitled Erotic Comics: A Graphic History
Pilcher breaks down the book into five sections -- Porn in the USA, Gay and Lesbian Comix, European Erotique, Tits and Tentacles: The Japanese Experience, and Online Comics Eroticism – devoting a spread or two to specific creators or titles. As a result, we see the familiar such as Dave Stevens and Frank Thorne to those deserving of more attention in the states, such as Italy’s Giovanna Casotto, who provided the stunning cover artwork.
He does a good job quickly sketching in biographical details and telling you about the works that make them worthy of inclusion. Each section works in its own chronological order and oddly, the USA section covers the Comics Code, something better left to the previous volume, and largely ignores most mainstream efforts at erotica. Most disappointing was that Vaughn Bode and Phil Foglio were left out since both produced some of the most imaginative and clever erotic comics during their careers. The book relishes the controversies stirred up by someone as mainstream as Howard Chaykin producing Black Kiss, or Barry Blair’s descent into porn comics in order to make a living.
Continue reading Review: 'Erotic Comics: A Graphic History Vol. 2' ›
Fri Jun 26, 2009 — by Andrew Wheeler
Manga Friday: Four from Yen+
Jack Frost, Pig Bride, Nightschool, and Maximum Ride
Like its older competitors Shonen Jump and (the sadly just-deceased) Shojo Beat, Yen Press’s Yen+ magazine has launched a number of series into actual paperback books – and, this week, I read four of ‘em. (All of which stories I also covered, several months back, as they appeared in the first few issues of Yen+.)
Jack Frost, Vol. 1
By JinHo Ko
Yen+, May 2009, $10.99
Ko is the artist on Yen’s Croquis Pop, but here he’s taking over the whole shebang. And, as often happens when artists start writing their own stories, he works to his strengths – sailor-suited girls with wide eyes and panties in view far more than you’d expect, detailed backgrounds of buildings and rooms, and, of course and mostly, lots and lots of ultra-violence. (I should probably also note that this comes from Korea, so it reads left-to-right.)
Noh-A is a teenage girl who finds herself in a new high school without remembering how she got there. But that’s the least of her worries, since her head is almost immediately severed from her body during a hyper-kinetic fight between a guy who proclaims his name is “Hansen, Head Guidance Counselor!” and the title character, whom Noh-A dubs Nasty Smile. Luckily, Noh-A is now in a world between life and death – called Amityville, probably because Koreans watch old American horror movies like some Americans watch old Asian monster movies – and so her decapitation is reversible.
To make a long story short – though that long story is mostly made up of scenes of Jack cutting up various people with the implausibly long and pointy blades that pop out from his wrists – Noh-A is heartbroken to learn that she can never leave this world, that there are just a handful of people living there (and that they all are completely insane in their own ways), and that her powers extend only to not being able to die and having health-restoring blood. (Setting up many scenes of Noh-A’s blood being tapped for its healing powers later in the series, I’m sure.)
Jack Frost looks sleek and moves quickly, and it has some very stylish violence. It’s also not nearly as far over the top as Fist of the North Star (for example). But I’m hard-pressed to say many more nice things about it than that; it’s very obviously pandering to a specific and very sophomoric audience.
Fri Jun 19, 2009 — by Andrew Wheeler
Group Review: The Kids Are Alright
Five books for particular ages, or all ages, or whatever
Kids aren’t just short adults; if you spend any time around them, you’ll learn that quickly. (This is also the reason why many people choose not to spend much time around children.) And, similarly, books for children aren’t the same as books for adults, nor are they adult books simplified or dumbed down.
This week, I’ve got five books – parts of three series – all of which are for kids in some way or another. I’ve got two books that are for “all ages” – and I’ll see what that actually means in this case – two that are solidly aimed at tweens, and one that’s for…well, a very particular audience, as far as I can tell, and I’ll get to that.
Dungeon: Zenith, Vol. 3: Back in Style
Written by Joann Sfar and Lewis Trondheim; Art by Boulet
NBM, May 2008, $12.95
Dungeon Monstres, Vol. 2: The Dark Lord
Written by Joann Sfar and Lewis Trondheim; Art by Andreas and Stephane Blanquet
NBM, October 2008, $12.95
I don’t know how the books of the sprawling Dungeon saga are categorized or considered in their native France, but, over here, they get the not-always-helpful “all ages” label. The librarians I’ve talked to hate that label, since it’s inaccurate – no book is for all ages, and saying so usually means the person categorizing it is too lazy, greedy or ill-informed to make a more solid determination. As far as I can tell, the audience for these books is 10-up, or possibly 12-up if I’m being conservative. (Though I am not a librarian, particularly not a children/teen librarian, and those would be the experts in this case.)
The Dungeon series has proliferated into six subseries by this point – “The Early Years” is self-explanatory, “Zenith” has adventures of the duck Herbert at the height of the dungeon’s powers, “Twilight” tells of the downfall of the dungeon, “Monsters” is “great adventures of secondary characters,” “Parade” is set between the first two volumes of Zenith and has funny stories, and “Bonus” is so far unpublished over here – and I have examples of two of them here. (For further examples, see my reviews of Monstres Vol. 1: The Crying Giant and Zenith, Vol. 1: Duck Heart.)
And both of these are solid pieces of middle, with the humorously bittersweet, almost world-weary tone that’s characteristic of the Dungeon books and of nothing else I know for this audience. (The Dungeon books take place in a world that could have been written by Jack Vance – lots of adventure and jokes, against a dark and unforgiving background that implies an inevitable tragedy.) Back in Style starts with Herbert’s love, Isis, about to marry the dungeon’s Keeper – or supposedly about to do so, since it later becomes apparent that it’s all a plot to trick her father. But plots rarely go well for the heroes of Dungeon, and Herbert and his friends soon are heading for the dubious safety of Craftiwich, the duchy where he would be the heir, if he weren’t under an instant sentence of death if he reappears. And things get even more dangerous and difficult by the end – which is, again, more of a stopping point for a volume than an actual ending; none of the crises have been really resolved.
The Monstres volume, The Dark Lord, is deliberately a sidebar to the main Twilight story – which I have to admit that I haven’t read yet – so it’s set many years later. The apparent villain and title character is the Grand Khan, an aged duck who looks very familiar and has a son who is the Duke of Craftiwich, but the hero of the first story is Marvin the Red, a bunny in a full-body powered suit of armor. He’s escorting a village of women to safety when the world stops spinning and breaks into thousands of islets floating in lava – and then he gets sidetracked by a beautiful cat-woman, who is the Grand Khan’s daughter. The second story here is from the Grand Khan’s point of view, and we learn that he’s a prisoner of the Dark Entity within him – until he briefly dies to set it free. And then things get much worse for him, as the various evil minions and forces that he’s been controlling begin to battle with each other and him for control of the pieces of the shattered planet. Again, there’s not a whole lot of ending – and doubly so, since each of these stories is a sidebar to Zenith where, presumably, the main action will take place.
Both of these books have a strong dose of adventure, in their very European fatalistic style. (Knowing what will happen to Herbert later in his life certainly makes his youthful adventures less enthralling.) The art is by various hands, though all in the same vein – Blanquet is the cartooniest and Boulet the most energetic, but they’re all similar to the look established by writer-artists Sfar and Trondheim in the earlier volumes. I wouldn’t suggest starting here, though – the best bet, I think, is to begin at the beginning of Zenith and work out from there.
Tue Jun 16, 2009 — by Andrew Wheeler
Review: Love Is a Peculiar Type of Thing by Box Brown
Xeric-winning semi-autobio comics about life & relationships
By Box Brown
Self-published, no company name; February 2009, $10.00
It’s not often you find a book about someone named Ben created by someone named Box – the standard in comics is the other way around – but this is that book. In case you’re confused by the name, Box Brown is a new cartoonist – he has a series of strips, Bellen!, available online, though he denies that they’re a webcomic – and not the 19th century slave who escaped from Virginia via parcel post.
Love Is a Peculiar Type of Thing collects about ninety pages of comics in a semi-autobiographical vein about a character named Ben. Ben is usually separate from his creator, but the two aren’t always distinct – and Brown draws himself very similarly to Ben in the first place. (But, to be fair, he knows this and points it out in one of the earlier strips in the book.) Ben and Box are both young and somewhat directionless, having gone through a few years in an unspecified corporate rat race before dropping out – Brown to create this book, and Ben to do something that’s unspecified or not clearly separated enough from Brown.
Continue reading Review: Love Is a Peculiar Type of Thing by Box Brown ›
Mon Jun 8, 2009 — by Andrew Wheeler
Review: The Collected Doug Wright: Canada's Master Cartoonist, 1949-1962
Canada's greatest forgotten strip artist gets the lavish reprint treatment
The Collected Doug Wright: Canada's Master Cartoonist, 1949-1962
Edited by Seth and Brad Mackay
Drawn & Quarterly, May 2009, $39.95
Some claims come with the seeds of their own mocking built right in, and I’m afraid that “Canada’s Master Cartoonist” is right up there with “the premier crimefighting vigilante of the Quad Cities area” – it sounds impressive briefly, and then there’s a lull while we all wait for the punch line. Doug Wright is indeed an excellent cartoonist, and also Canadian – quintessentially Canadian, even, having spent his entire career in Montreal working on strips for purely Canadian markets – but this book’s glowing surety that Canada has precisely one “master cartoonist” and Wright is it comes across as the stereotypical Canadian fresh-faced naïveté that exists only to be foiled.
(I mean, what about such widely disparate names as Dave Sim, John Byrne, Hal Foster, Julie Doucet, Chester Brown, and Lynn Johnston? Is every other Canadian cartoonist eternally a journeyman? These are the kinds of questions I ponder, late at night, with my face turned north towards Canada.)
The Collected Doug Wright is a gorgeous book – no online photos do justice to its shiny red cover and the oval die-cut that reveals an embossed image of Wright most famous character, the boy scamp Nipper – and Wright was nearly as gorgeous a cartoonist in his prime. The early strips reprinted here are uneven: the drawing is good but not as strong as it would become, and Wright mostly used his red accent color to frame each panel – often too tightly and not well – rather than as the accent he later evolved it into. But from the mid-’50s his drawings are energetic – they have to be, being focused on a hellion like Nipper – and filled with closely-observed scenes drawn from life. (And then turned into slapstick comedy, of course – Wright was a mid-century gag cartoonist, and he knew what his audience wanted.)
Continue reading Review: The Collected Doug Wright: Canada's Master Cartoonist, 1949-1962 ›
Tue Jun 2, 2009 — by Robert Greenberger
Review: 'Defiance' on DVD
James Bond meets Robin Hood meets the Nazis...?
We here at ComicMix write about heroes all the time. They tend to be muscle-bound, wear spandex and appear in the fevered imaginations of writers and artists. In the real world, people are given the title hero when they are bystanders, victims, or their feats are fairly ordinary. As a result, the term has been somewhat watered down and in need of rehabilitation.
The process could have begun last winter when two movies about World War II were released, featuring very different kinds of heroes. Neither Valkyrie nor Defiance
Defiance visited a different side of the war, that of the victims, the Jews who rose above their adversity and defied by Nazis by surviving, led by three amazing brothers. Bother films suffered because by the time they were made and released, the country’s mood was too dour to pay attention to serious dramas or care about dated acts of heroism.
Today, though, Defiance comes out on disc and worth a look. Again, an incredible story from the war has been uncovered and brought to the screen. Edward Zwick first began writing this story in 1999, based on Nechama Tec's Defiance: The Bielski Partisans, and finally managed to shoot the story in 2007, starring Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, and Jamie Bell as the brothers Bielski. They were your lower class workers in Belarus when the Germans began killing the Jews. To survive, they fled into the forest where they played as boys. Fairly quickly, the scattered refugees in the forest coalesced around these three, who took on the responsibility of caring for them, and more importantly, organizing them to survive the impending winter.
While the film focused entirely on that first formative year, it should be noted they survived in the forest for three years, with over 1200 walking to freedom when the war ended. The brothers had their differences, with Tuvia (Craig) and Zus (Schreiber) arguing over what to do and Zus eventually leaving to serve with the Russians for a time. But we see how these “street smart” people came to lead a motley crew of intellectuals, peasants, upper class, and just plain folk who needed guidance. We watched as news reached them of now-dead loved ones, including Tuvia and Zus’ wives. In time, people took Forest Wives and Husbands, seeking comfort where they could.
Zwick is no stranger to historical tales (Glory), and brings the same attention to detail and character here. Not only do the brothers evolve over the course of the story, but we watch all the bit players adapt, change, and grow; filling the screen with a sense of life that Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie was devoid of. The movie is not entirely faithful to history as combat sequences including the climax were added for “Hollywood” concerns but their struggles, especially the harsh winter, ring true.
The film is backed by several special features. The 30 minute Making Of shows the attention to the little things extended to the weapons, costumes, and makeup – all well displayed. Zwick took portraits of some of those who survived and we’re treated to a nice black and white gallery. Children of the Otriad: The Families Speak, though, is the highlight, as the children and grandchildren of the Bielskis talk of their fathers and what they were like after the war. Whereas Asael (Bell) died soon after these events, the two remaining brothers survived and worked side-by-side in the trucking industry here in America for 30 years. We see them as older men in bar mitzvah footage, and it’s hard to see these elders as war heroes but there they were and while Zus still had a spark of life, Tuvia carried a gravity about him. Lilka (Alexa Davalos), the woman who came to marry Tuvia after meeting in the forest, never seems happy in the footage. Her children spoke of her inability to fully enjoy anything, another price exacted by World War II.
