Tagged: review

MATT RAUB on Painkiller Jane

MATT RAUB on Painkiller Jane

  • News
  • April 14, 2007

Hey gang, Matt Raub back again for another TV review for the newest comic and Hollywood hybrid show, Painkiller Jane. The show is based off of Jimmy Palmiotti and Joe Quesada’s comic from the 90s about a government agent who can’t die. The episode stars Kristanna Loken, the robot hottie from Terminator 3 and another remarkably popular comic book movie, Bloodrayne.

Going into the show, I knew nothing about the comic book. All I knew is that Palmiotti knows how to draw very attractive female characters, which I sometimes reason enough to read a book, just not this time. So the episode was a fresh start for me, being an origin story of sorts.

The episode starts with one of my least favorite plot sequences, where we start the episode halfway through the plot, and then we jump back two days or so. I consider this the “J.J. Abrams” episode format, because there was a point in the last season of Alias where every episode would do that. I long for the days when we started at point A and ended at point C, without going all Sam Beckett on us and confusing the story.

After getting over that little issue of mine, I found the episode to be a little too dumbed-down for the same audience that has been taking in episode after episode of Battlestar Galactica. There were little flashbacks to things that happened six minutes ago in the episode, which I found to be unnecessary. An argument for this could be that the director of the pilot was going with a Tony Scott feel for the episode, using quick cuts and flashbacks. Either way, it felt as if they were treating an audience who lives in the land of intelligent television like they have never seen an hour long science fiction show.

Going into the story, D.E.A. officer Jane Vasko stumbles across a secret government operation that hunts “Neuros,” which are people with neurological powers, and that means a whole ton of freaks of the week. On Jane’s very first mission, she gets pushed out of a window 44 floors up. She’s pronounced dead and after a very trippy flashback sequence of everything that happened thus far in the episode, she wakes up without a scratch on her. From this point on, Jane is able to heal any of her wounds that she comes across almost instantly. You may be asking yourself the same questions I was during this episode, such as: Did she know she could heal her whole life? Why did it take falling off a building to work? Or has anybody noticed the fact that this show is a lot like Torchwood? Great questions, but I unfortunately don’t have any of the answers.

So while we have the sultry Loken as our invulnerable star, and a fresh and funky visual style that should capture the MTV audience, I don’t think this show has much of a lifespan.  It is too simplified for a Sci-Fi audience and people today need more than a name and a comic book tie to continue to watch a show. Anybody else remember Blade: The Series?

But to satisfy my fans, I still need to rate this pilot. Due to the fact that the show could have been a lot worse, I give it a 6/10, but I don’t know how much more of the show I can handle.

Jimmy Palmiotti on Painkiller Jane

Jimmy Palmiotti on Painkiller Jane

Today we lay out the facts on Painkiller Jane‘s premiere, compliments of creator Jimmy Palmiotti, tell you about how Painkiller‘s co-creator pulls out of the Eagle, dig into Matt Raub’s review of the second Doctor Who of the new season, show you how MySpace just gave a big boost to a prime time show and then take a nostalgic glance back to when CBS was the "sexy" network!

All this, a really groovy Timeline, and – dare I even suggest it? – even more on the big ComicMix Podcast, right here:

And feel free to comment on the ComicMix Podcast below.

MATT RAUB: Who Are Two?

MATT RAUB: Who Are Two?

  • News
  • April 11, 2007

So we’re into week two of the Doctor’s new adventures with his shiny new companion in “The Shakespeare Code,” and much as I was last week, I’m still giddy with excitement. Last week we were introduced to Martha Jones, a med student from the present time. And in this week, the Doctor takes Jones on her first trip inside the T.A.R.D.I.S. to the late 1500s, where they meet one of the Doctor’s personal heroes, William Shakespeare.

While this episode got to play a lot with what I like to call the Shanghai Knights jokes. To explain, in the film Shanghai Knights the two main characters would run into famous names in history that only we the audience would know, and reference their lives through punn-ish dialogue, such as telling a adolescent Charlie Chaplin that he talks too much. Either way, the same thing stood for this episode, in which the Doctor is constantly using lines from Shakespeare’s unwritten plays. To which the playwright responds “I should use that!” Cute little dialogue, but lets move onto the nitty-gritty.

Going along with my last review, when I mentioned that the first episode resembled the season one’s episode “Rose,” this episode was very much like season one’s “The Unquiet Dead.” In that episode, a very green Rose tags along with the Doctor to the 1800s where they meet Charles Dickens and solve yet another perplexing mystery. That episode dealt with alien entities possessing corpses making them look like “zombies” to the anybody else but our Doctor, while this week’s episode dealt with ancient aliens who pose as “witches” and get Shakespeare to use his “new words” to open a portal to their home world. Very similar episodes indeed.

With that theory in place, there should be hints of this season’s overall arch. In episode three of season one, they started mentioning “Bad Wolf” and how it was a harbinger of things to come. Now, before the re-launched series, I was never a huge Doctor Who fan, but with the writing and pure concept of continuity that thick over an entire season, I was hooked. I’m only hoping that this episode can keep with that formula.

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Grindhouse to amoeba?

Grindhouse to amoeba?

  • News
  • April 10, 2007

Grindhouse executive producer Harvey Weinstein has been on a spree explaining why the movie  tanked last weekend. Without revealing the fact that the reviews and word-of-mouth generally noted people’s tastes running towards one of the two movies on the double bill and against the other – with little consensus on which is better – Weinstein said the three hour running time was a major deterrent to sales. Certainly, film exhibitors agree.

So he’s floating a trial balloon. He’s "thinking" about rereleasing Grindhouse as two individual movies: Robert Rodriquez’s  Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof. That should do wonders for this weekend’s box office.

But here’s Weinstein’s dirty little secret: when they made Planet Terror and Death Proof, extra footage was shot. Yeah, that’s always the case. But in the case of these two movies, a lot of extra footage was shot. Enough to add at least 20 minutes to each movie. The plan, of course, was to release "extended versions" on DVD and to seperate the movies for some overseas audiences. Now, it looks like these extra 40 minutes (give or take) is becoming Plan B.

Thus making Grindhouse ironically the longest trailer ever released.

You can listen to Matt Raub’s review on today’s ComicMix Podcast (below) or do a search for his ComicMix print review, which we ran last week.

Our week in review

Our week in review

  • News
  • April 8, 2007

This is the week ComicMix went interactive, adding our comments feature and Active Conversation/Latest Comments windows at the right.  Rest assured there’s much more to come, but in the meantime here’s your weekly catch-up on our regular columns:

And I think it’s high time I got caught up myself on Mellifluous Mike Raub‘s latest podcasts:

Listen to ’em as you work on your taxes; that’ll take the edge off!

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Apollo and Annette? Starbuck and Li’l Archie?

Apollo and Annette? Starbuck and Li’l Archie?

Transformers sell out, Bendis and Bagley invade The Mighty Avengers, the awesome Bob Bolling (one of the all-time great writer/artists) returns to Li’l Archie, Galactica‘s Apollo shares even more television wisdom (complete with a season review), and the low-down on this year’s Free Comic Book Day!

But most important, you get a peek under Annette’s blanket – all on ComicMix Podcast #24, available right here, right now:

Master of pulp fiction? It’s The Spider, man!

Master of pulp fiction? It’s The Spider, man!

  • News
  • April 6, 2007

O.K. If this is a review, it’s of The Spider Chronicles, published by Moonstone Books, released this week, and written by all kinds of wonderful people including Steve Englehart, John Jakes, Ann Nocenti and Robert Weinberg – all under a nifty introduction by ComicMix columnist and gadfly-about-town Dennis O’Neil.

Having a full-time job right here at ComicMix, I’ve only had time to read half the stories thus far, but all were worthy of the task: translating into short story form the most bizarre and over-the-top hero of all time, period.

The concept can be barely contained in the novelette-length stories of the 1930s. In case you’re not familiar, let me ramble off some of my favorite story titles: King of the Red Killers. Slaves of the Murder Syndicate. The City That Dared Not Eat. Machine Guns Over The White House. Hell’s Sales Manager (I think I had that job once.) And my all-time favorite, The Mayor of Hell.

How can you beat titles like that? Only with execution that make those titles seem lame.

There’s usually one madman who pretty much looks like Charles Lane. We may or may not know who he is at the outset, but within several chapters he’s managed to paralyze the city (usually New York or Washington or both), if not indeed the whole quadrant of the nation, if not indeed the entire nation itself. By chapter six, the death count is enough to fill Yankee Stadium to the brim.

Only three people stand in the madman’s way: Nita Van Sloan, a woman as tough and clever as they come; Ran Singh, loyal, faithful assistant to The Spider and an ace at cutlery; and finally, wealthy playboy Richard Wentworth who likes to play the violin, not take advantage of the adoring Nita, and dress up in a variety of disguises – most notably in the monstrous visage of The Spider.

Wentworth’s the one who does the heavy lifting. He doesn’t mind killing each and every person he and he alone deems worthy of killing.

If you could hook your hybrid into a Spider story, the energy would drive you coast-to-coast and back again. Imagine the Kree / Skrull War with all the Kree and all the Skrulls on one side, three people on the other side, and all the battles taking place in an area no bigger than your bedroom. 

There have been any number of Spider reprint projects going on, most notably the double-story ventures similar to Anthony Tolin’s Shadow and Doc Savage reprints (see Dennis O’Neil’s column here at ComicMix this week) as published by Girasol Collectibles (www.girasolcollectables.com/). They’re worth checking out.

But our friends at Moonstone have boldly ventured where no one’s gone for quite a while by commissioning these short stories by such famous authors. Given their length they might be sedate by “Grant Stockbridge” standards (the pseudonym under which all but the first novels were written). Pick up The Spider Chronicles. It’s the heroic ideal taken to its most bizarre limit.

When cartoonists gather

When cartoonists gather

  • News
  • April 5, 2007

Two good reports on cartoonist meetings, complete with pictures:

Howard Cruse details a get-together in Massachusetts of some Pioneer Valley cartoonists, and Mikhaela Reid talks about the Women, Action and the Media (WAM) conference in Washington DC, where she and fellow cartoonists Stephanie McMillan (who also has a review) and Jen Sorensen presented a "Resistance through Ridicule" panel and slideshow.

Fun fact from Stephanie: "When cartoonists get together, it takes a maximum of about ten minutes for the conversation to turn to Photoshop and/or font programs."

MATT RAUB reveals: Bob Dylan is a Cylon!

MATT RAUB reveals: Bob Dylan is a Cylon!

  • News
  • April 5, 2007

So it’s been about two weeks since the season 3 finale of Battlestar Galactica. “Crossroads Part 2” has aired, and I’m tired of sitting on what I have to say about it. If you’re one of the unfortunate one’s who have still yet to see the show, here’s the spoilers: Basically we learned: who the final four Cylons turn out to be, how everyone copes with the recently deceased Starbuck, the outcome of the Gaius Baltar trial, that President Rosaline’s cancer has returned and she’s back on the wacky drug that made her see snakes, and finally, that Bob Dylan is a Cylon!

Don’t worry; I know there is a lot here, so I’m going to break it down for those playing along at home.

Those of you who remember the set-up in “Crossroads Part 1” know that throughout the episode, Colonel Tigh, Sam, Chief Tyrol, and Press Secretary Tory Foster (played by Michael Hogan, Aaron Douglas, Michael Trucco, and Rheka Sharma, respectively) hear strange sitar music that draws them toward the center of the ship. We don’t know where it comes from, only that these four are the only ones that can hear this music. We find out in the finale that mysterious music is a cover of the Bob Dylan song “All Along the Watchtower” – and not Jimi Hendrix’s, either! Now, those of you who read my review for the film 300 know my feelings about switching from orchestral beats to heavy modern guitar, but that goes full force when it’s a sci-fi show that uses an actual song when the show takes place millions of years ago and/or galaxies away!

Either way, we discover that these people hearing the music are drawn together and discover that they are all Cylon sleeper agents. This is probably one of the biggest moments in the season, and I feel likeit  didn’t get the respect it deserved by clumping all of the Cylon-outings in one scene.

Moving on, we also get the verdict of the excruciatingly long trial of Giaus Baltar. The arc basically consisted of a whole lot of father/son Adama melodrama, cranky Rosaline explains how her cancer has returned (which should be a non-issue because we know that the bastard Cylon-baby is the cure) and some more mystifying lines from Batlar’s lawyer, Matt Murdock-lite Romo Lampkin (played by 24’s Mark Sheppard). After some deep prodding from the prosecution, a recently de-commissioned Apollo takes the stand and gives this entire speech on what he’s been feeling from day one. This was a great little monologue, because he talks about how the fleet has forgiven all of its past “crimes against humanity,” referencing a lot of the back story along the way. Essentially this is what persuades the tribunal of judges to give Baltar a verdict of not guilty.

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MATT RAUB loved 1/2 of Grindhouse!

MATT RAUB loved 1/2 of Grindhouse!

  • News
  • April 3, 2007

Matt Raub, back again with more faux knowledge about moving pictures and the land that makes them. I wish this visit could be more joyful, seeing as how I my summer was based around seeing Grindhouse, but sadly, I’m only half as excited as I had hoped to be.

Before we start, a little background on what the grindhouse is really all about. I’ve come across too many people in the past few months that haven’t a clue about the title, and I only fear the punch line will only go over those peoples’ heads. The idea of a grindhouse is when local theaters would screen cheap B movie pictures or exploitation films together in order to gain a larger audience. Such films had low-budget special effects, lack of plot, and amateur acting all summed up with a catchy, yet impressively bad title. Titles like Assault of the Killer Bimbos, Lobster Man from Mars, and I Dismember Mama.

Now Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, two modern cult-cinema directors decided to take sort of a low blow at exploitation movies. Taking $50 million, they both wrote and directed two 90-minute exploitation films: Rodriguez’s Planet Terror and Tarantino’s Death Proof. They slapped them both together in a big chunk, including a handful of fake b-movie trailers by guest directors Rob Zombie, Eli Roth, and Edgar Wright.

Now because this is essentially two films, I will give them both the respect they demand and review them separately, starting with Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror. This film held everything I wanted it to. The emotion, the cheesiness, and the random, unnecessary deaths. From titles to credits, I was either laughing, cringing in a good way, or both.

The premise of the film is that an evil army general (Bruce Willis) and a nutty biochemist (are there any other kind?) unleash a toxic gas on an unsuspecting Texas town, killing some and turning the rest into crazed infected cannibals, not zombies! There are only a few who are immune to the gas: a one-legged stripper (Rose McGowan) and her ex-boyfriend with a mysterious past (Freddy Rodriguez) and a handful of others.

The film is action packed with random explosions and ultra violence. But while it keeps the content very similar to classic exploitation films, the most important element is that the style is done to replicate the gritty, cheap, film stock that was what gave original grindhouse movies their flavor. This includes but is not limited to: poor voice dubbing, gritty, unfocused shots, missing frames, and even entire missing reels. By far, this was the one thing that kept the film together and kept the audience entertained.

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