Tagged: editorial

Transformers, Star Trek and Doctor Who: Talking IDW in ’08

Transformers, Star Trek and Doctor Who: Talking IDW in ’08

  • News
  • January 22, 2008

How did we love IDW in 2007? Let us count the ways:

1. The kickoff of their new Star Trek comics

2. The first collection of Terry and the Pirates strips

3. The big-screen debut of 30 Days of Night

4. The announcement that they would be publishing comics based on the BBC series Doctor Who

5. Transformers, Transformers, Transformers

6. …

You know what? We’re probably better off just pointing you to this interview with IDW Publisher Chris Ryall over at ComicBookResources.com, explaining the company’s editorial philosophy and what they have in store for ’08.

Cartoonists Plan Protest of Racial Grouping in Newspapers

Cartoonists Plan Protest of Racial Grouping in Newspapers

  • News
  • January 18, 2008

Candorville, by Darrin BellThe St. Petersburg Times reports that on Feb. 10, a group of notable black cartoonists will be running variations of the same joke in each of their comic strips in order to shed light on a perceived "lumping together" of cartoonists by ethnicity. With many newspapers looking to shake up their format by making changes to the comics section, many of the creators involved in the protest argue that their strips are only included at the expense of other strips created by people of color. This is due to an unwritten rule in the newspaper industry prohibiting more than a certain number of "ethnic" strips in a single issue, the creators claim.

According to The Times:

"…each of them will draw the same strip featuring their own characters – a joke about how readers and some newspaper editors see their work as interchangeable, simply because of the ethnicity of the characters they draw."

Creators named as participants in the protest include Darrin Bell (Candorville), Charlos Gary (Cafe con Leche and Working It Out), Cory Thomas (Watch Your Head), Stephen Bentley (Herb and Jamaal), Jerry Craft (Mama’s Boyz), Stephen Watkins (Housebroken), editorial cartoonist Tim Jackson and Keith Knight (K-Chronicles).

 

Ultimate Complete Final Cut Collection (Volume 1), by Ric Meyers

Ultimate Complete Final Cut Collection (Volume 1), by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • December 17, 2007

If you happen to have three hundred and twenty-five smackaroos lying around, you can secure a DVD-lover’s dream. Because that’s about how much it’ll cost you to give yourself — or others — my top DVD picks for this season’s gift-giving.

Oh sure, you could simply go back amongst my previous columns and cherry pick my favorites, but what’s the fun of that? Wouldn’t it be, oh, so much better to lay on your chosen a mass media item that they’ll never forget? Imagine the joy and confusion on your preferred holiday morning when they receive not only a mass o’discs but a handy attaché case as well?

Yes, there are not one, but two special editions available just in time for ho-ho-ho-ing that come in a super nifty briefcase. The first, and most hefty, is the long-awaited The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: The Complete Collection, available only from Time Life Video (until the autumn of ’08). Although it comes with a hefty pricetag to match ($250) it includes 41 discs, so that’s really only about six bucks each.

Let’s get one thing straight: The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is to James Bond what The Monkees are to The Beatles. But plenty people like The Monkees, myself included, so that’s okay. When the 1960’s TV networks saw how well 007 was doing, they scrambled to get a piece of the action. MGM and NBC’s answer was to go to the source: James Bond’s creator, Ian Fleming, who took a minor mobster character from Goldfinger, and turned him into Napoleon Solo, the man from the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. Sam Rolfe, a veteran writer/producer (Twilight Zone, Have Gun Will Travel) took the idea and ran with it.

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Superbad Tiger Gate by Ric Meyers

Superbad Tiger Gate by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • December 2, 2007

The third of my favorite summer ‘007 films, Superbad, is arriving as a “2-Disc Unrated Extended Edition” this coming Tuesday, with too many special features for its own good. The best of the many extras are the ones which share the raunchy, soft-centered, spirit of the film itself. The ones I could’ve done without are the ones which feign outrage, anger, or disgust.

This “unrated” DVD edition allowed director Greg Mottola to return the trims he originally needed to satisfy the ratings board’s “R”. So the unrated Superbad is about four minutes longer, with some gestures and expletives returned to their original positions of glory. Naturally this film — along with the growing oeuvre of producer/writer/director Judd Apatow’s Apatow Company (The 40 Year Old Virgin, Talladega Nights, Knocked Up, Walk Hard, etc.) — has plenty to play with, since all his movies use their garrulous scripts as a jumping off point for their casts of expert improv-ers. That allows the filmmakers to cherry pick their favorite, funniest, takes, and leave the rest for the DVD extras.

So, in addition to some deleted and extended scenes, there’s also a legitimately funny gag reel, followed by what they’re calling a “Line-O-Rama” – which shows the various, different, improvised retorts the actors used on subsequent takes of the same scene. The first of admittedly interesting, although totally superfluous, features, is “Cop Car Confessions,” where the filmmakers put a variety of guest stars (from Saturday Night Live, The Office, Live Free or Die Hard, and the Upright Citizen’s Brigade, among others) in the back seat of a police cruiser driven by Superbad’s cop characters (co-writer/producer Seth Rogan and SNL’s Bill Hader) and let everybody riff.

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I Know Paprika Killed Me, by Ric Meyers

I Know Paprika Killed Me, by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • November 25, 2007

Prurient: “Having or intended to arouse an unwholesome interest in sexual matters.”

– Encarta World English Dictionary

That’s pretty much the only word anyone needs to explain I Know Who Killed Me starring Lindsay Lohan. The words “great,” “well-made,” “engrossing,” or even “entertaining” wouldn’t suffice. “Fascinating,” however, might fit, given this car wreck of a film perfectly represented the star’s car wreck of a life at the time of its production.

The term “car wreck” is carefully and purposely chosen, however, since watching Lohan’s human accident is much like slowing down for highway rubbernecking – thanks to the “celebrity” obsessed media (who’s far more interested in such things than the public they maintain they serve seems to be).

Much in the way you can chart any actor’s state of mind by the projects they choose, this unfocussed, confused, schizo, meandering, self-absorbed-slash-self-loathing-slash-self-aggrandizing-slash-self-mutilating effort can reveal anything you ever wanted to know about Lohan’s self-sabotaging lifestyle. Her stumbles are all the more sad since, of the troika of self-immolating “celebs” the media is micro-analyzing (Britney and Paris make up the rest of the 3 Stooges), Lohan is clearly the most promising and/or talented.

That talent is only vaguely on display in this slasher psycho-drama, leaving only the body the actress and media seem to have a love/hate relationship with. Within the pretentious, muddled, fairly dull film, she plays a college student, who, after barely surviving an abduction, torture, and mutilation by a serial killer, wakes up to maintain that she’s a self-destructive stripper. This allows the film to lurch hither and yon between both girls’ lives as somebody searches for the sicko, and director Chris Sivertson tries to out DePalma Brian DePalma when it comes to pointless “are they or aren’t they?” fantasies, dream sequences, and flashbacks.

The film not only represents Lohan’s life, but it also reflects the quality of the DVD’s “special” features. The “Alternate Opening” and “Blooper Reel,” especially, are as misleading as the film. The former is simply an extended sequence with several more shots of lights reflected in water, which doesn’t change the opening’s meaning in any way (alternate means “different from,” not “slightly longer”). The latter are just a few joyless instances of actors inadvertently confusing a character’s name or not knowing their lines (blooper means that said mistake be “humorous” or even “mildly embarrassing”).

So that leaves the “Alternate Ending” and what any real fan came for: the “Extended Strip Dance Scene.” The former is less than a minute, but long enough to give the connotation that all that preceded it was a fiction from within the mind of the college student. The latter is exactly what it says: a longer version of Lohan’s PG-13 stripper act (complete with R-rated support strippers around her). No question: she’s an attractive young woman who can languidly sashay around on high heels, act pouty/dirty, and even (in the sequence’s “climax”) open her legs. Whoop-dee-do.

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Close Encounters of the Third Help!, by Ric Meyers

Close Encounters of the Third Help!, by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • November 11, 2007

But first a digression. I went to see American Gangster the other day (engrossing, well done, I’d give it a solid 8 outta 10), which included previews for the upcoming movies Wanted (Mr. & Mrs. Smith meets The Matrix) and Jumper (X-Men ripoff), both of which were absolutely chock full of cgi making the characters do all sorts of incredible, impossible things amid carnage which would turn normal men’s biology into strawberry jam.

   

As I watched dispassionately the following motto came to mind that I wish were put on billboards and t-shirts and those inspirational posters that they sell in airline mail order catalogs, to be seen in every studio, producers’ and executives’ office:

   

“When nothing is impossible, nothing is interesting.”

   

Just wanted to get that down on record. Now we return to this week’s DVD Xtra column, already in progress.

   

I’m a happy camper. Creeping into stores on cat feet or ninja paws this week is a movie I’ve been waiting to appear on DVD for years. It was one of my absolute favorites as a kid (in fact, through only slightly some fault of my own, it wound up being the movie I’ve seen the most through the years), and, while its predecessor (A Hard Day’s Night) got a swell special edition two-disc set via Miramax in 2002, this one has languished in limbo until now — and, to top it off, needed the Beatles’ record company to make it a DVD reality.

   

It is, of course, Help!, the music-filled, Goon Showish/Monty Python-esque film farce MTV has officially credited as being its inspiration. Now, thanks to the Beatles’ Apple company (not to be confused with the like-named company on whose computer I presently type these words) and Capitol Records, Help! has now got a lovely two-disc special edition of its own.

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Spider-Rat, by Ric Meyers

Spider-Rat, by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • November 4, 2007

Last week I discussed how great, illuminating, extras can turn a flawed film into a DVD must-have. This week, the worm has turned. I now aim to show that all the extras in the world can’t make a misguided movie a keeper.

Spider-Man 3 was a mess. It was especially disappointing because director Sam Raimi showed such a sure helming hand on Spideys one and two. But, perhaps because he thought number three would be his last, he apparently decided to do everything else he ever wanted to do in one go. Whatever the cause, there were too many plots, villains, love interests, moods, approaches, and concepts.

It also suffered from a severe case of co-starilitis – the same affliction which struck Superman Returns’ Lois Lane and Rise of the Silver Surfer’s Sue Storm – in that the heroine’s desire for communication and closure trump any concern for the good of the many, be it city, world, or movie audience. The result is that scenes of relative insignificance go on for what seem like forever, while important junctures are dismissed within seconds (the teaming of Sandman and Venom) or just ignored (the new Goblin’s blackmail of Mary Jane).

What also happens in a film as overstuffed, and therefore unavoidably unfocused, as this one is that the filmmakers develop tunnelvision – concentrating on the “cool” parts (like the multi-million dollar cgi Sandman intro) and ignoring what obviously doesn’t work or come together. Thus we have Spider-Man 3: Two Disc Special Edition, which has reams and reams of extras, signifying essentially nothing.

Normally such stuff as featurettes, documentaries, and audio commentaries are completed during post-production – that is, in the time between the shooting wraps and the finished film premieres — so no talking head yet knows how the film actually fared in the big bad world. So it can be both entertaining and edifying to hear just how misguided the producers, actors, and director were (the techs are mostly invulnerable to these embarrassments, because their work is invariably exceptional and it’s not their fault that the core staff bit off more than they could eschew).

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The Super Powers Myth, by Ric Meyers

The Super Powers Myth, by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • October 28, 2007

The last time I’ve spoke to Jackie Chan he said to me: “I’ve done everything three times” – meaning that he’s finding less and less ways, and reasons, to top himself. Unfortunately that also results in schizo, ultimately unsatisfying, films, further hampered by his unwillingness to mature his screen persona. Even so, he keeps looking for ways to challenge himself and keep busy, despite the repetition of his movie and charity work.

But Jackie’s last great film was Legend of Drunken Master (HK: Drunken Master 2) in 1994. He’s made two dozen movies since then – all which included some exceptional sequences, but none which held together anywhere close to his classics of the mid-1980s. Clearly his best films are the ones which showcase his kung-fu, but as he grows older, he keeps trying to avoid that by dwelling on vehicular stunts or repeated attempts to balance his physicality with cgi.

Even so, Sony Entertainment has taken on the task of selling his most recent productions to the American DVD market. Their latest release, and one of Chan’s most creatively bold conceptions, is The Myth, hitting stores on October 30th. It’s also one of the most expensive films in Hong Kong history, and is, if nothing else, a visually splendid treat. Sadly, the film’s central flaw is showcased by Jackie’s admonition that he wasn’t brave enough to make what his director/co-writer Stanley Tong originally wanted: an entire film about a Qin Dynasty general.

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Jules Feiffer, Bill Mauldin on exhibit in Chicago

Jules Feiffer, Bill Mauldin on exhibit in Chicago

  • News
  • October 16, 2007

The work of two of America’s most significant cartoonists, Bill Mauldin and Jules Feiffer, will be the subject of a major exhibit at Chicago’s Jean Albano Gallery.

Feiffer is the former weekly editorial cartoonist for the Village Voice and Universal Press Syndicate. One-time writer of Will Eisner’s Spirit (and Eisner’s long-time assistant), Feiffer’s cartoons appeared in Playboy magazine and The New Republic. A noted playright and movie scribe Carnal Knowledge, Popeye, Oh! Calcutta!, and my favorite, Little Murders), his most recent novel is A Room With A Zoo, published by Hyperion. His earlier work is being reprinted by Fantagraphics.

The late Bill Mauldin was the long-time nationally syndicated editorial cartoonist headquartered at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Chicago Sun-Times. Perhaps best known for his World War II panels featuring Willie and Joe (to be reprinted in their entirety by Fantagraphics early next year), Mauldin also had a career as an actor, appearing in the movie The Red Badge of Courage, among others.

The exhibit, History Revealed: Jules Feiffer and Bill Mauldin, will run at the Jean Albano Gallery, 215 W. Superior in Chicago from October 26, 2007 to January 6, 2007.

 

 

Hostel II Hostel, by Ric Meyers

Hostel II Hostel, by Ric Meyers

  • News
  • October 14, 2007

As author of For One Week Only: The World of Exploitation Films (as featured in People magazine and the National Enquirer [when the National Enquirer was the National Enquirer]) and the original head writer for Fangoria magazine, don’t get me wrong: I love horror films. Of course what I’m dealing with in this installment are not horror films, no matter how often the filmmakers and actors refer to them as such. Horror is fear of the unknown. These are terror flix, involving the fear of the known.

But I dabble in semantics, which is only fitting because semantics are crawling all over the ample special features on the DVDs for the two-disc Hostel: Director’s Cut, and the single disc Hostel Part II: Unrated Director’s Cut – both of which are dragging their tortured carcasses into stores October 23rd.

First things first. If you loved Hostel, the overkill (all puns intended) of the Director’s Cut edition will leave you writhing in bloody delight. To give you an idea just how much you need to love it, there are four, count ‘em, four, audio commentaries – every single one with director/producer/writer Eli Roth, each supplemented with different friends; from “Presenter” Quentin Tarantino to aintitcoolnews.com honcho Harry Knowles. Yes, they expect you to watch the movie four times as Roth brings in producers, executive producers, and others to tell you what they did and how much they liked it.

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