Tagged: Warner Bros

Mike Gold: And This Is How The World Ends!

Gold Art 130828OMG! OMG! Did you hear who they’ve signed to play Batman in a whole bunch of movies, starting with Man of Steel 2? No, not Anthony Weiner. And not Ann Coulter –she’s already signed to play Nick Fury in the S.H.I.E.L.D. teevee series. No, Warner Bros. found somebody far worse. They hired the very personification of celluloid evil: Ben Affleck.

Yes, I’m sure you heard of this. So did literally tens of thousands of “fans” who were so upset they signed a petition condemning the action. And seemingly hundreds of thousands went to Facebook, to Twitter, hell some even reactivated their My Space accounts to express their extreme displeasure. Yea, verily, Ragnarök is upon us!

To quote the immortal William Shatner, get a life. You’re entitled to your opinion; if you don’t think Ben Affleck is a worthy actor, that’s your opinion. In my opinion, you’re wrong – Ben Affleck is a perfectly fine actor on his worst day. Besides, it doesn’t matter who’s inside the rubber suit. Lassie would look fine in the Batsuit, as long as she didn’t try to lick herself.

The question is, can the performer handle the role of Bruce Wayne? Quite frankly, this is not a tricky part to handle. Any handsome high school senior who did The Great Gatsby can do it. It’s hard to imagine Affleck turning in any less a performance than Michael Keaton – who I thought was fine – and a better performance than Keaton’s first two successors.

I realize it’s heresy to say this, but that’s never stopped me before: Christian Bale didn’t have all that much to do as Bruce Wayne. When he did, he was fine but nobody was wailing about his being cheated out of an Oscar (Registered Trademark, AMPAS, All Rights Reserved, Watch Yer Ass).

I’ll even defend the Daredevil movie. Ben Affleck wasn’t what was wrong with that movie, and, honestly, in my opinion it wasn’t a bad movie. We had come to expect better Marvel superhero movies, but it was better than both Hulks and either Fantastic Four. More important, the director’s cut was actually a good movie. Not Spider-Man 2 good, not The Dark Knight good, but a solidly entertaining movie with some fine performances. Direct your wrath at whomever cut the theatrical print.

Besides, Affleck can’t help but walk all over Henry Cavill. It’s the approach to Man of Steel 2 that concerns me. The first one was totally misguided. It wasn’t Superman. Actually, it was Batman.

I’ll say one thing for the hiring of Ben Affleck. It shows that Warner Bros. is willing to put their money where their, well, their sundry body parts are. Signing him to a multi-movie contract shows they’re in it for the long haul. It shows they understand what Robert Downey Jr. did for the Marvel movie universe.

And if there’s ever a Marvel/DC crossover movie – calm down; this is just a what-if – I can’t think of a more enjoyable pairing than Robert Downey Jr. and Ben Affleck.

Besides, we already know Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark sit on each other’s board of directors.

THURSDAY MORNING: Dennis O’Neil

THURSDAY AFTERNOON: Martin Pasko

 

Mike Gold: Cop Killer and Cop-Out

Gold Art 13080721 years ago Warner Bros. released a record album called Body Count and it launched a shit storm. The artist, Ice-T, performed a track called “Cop Killer” which was written from the perspective of, well, a cop killer. This is a common device in the communication arts, and it doesn’t mean the author/performer is an advocate for his character. For example, Robert Bloch wrote a novel called Psycho, from which the classic Hitchcock movie was based. I do not recall anybody accusing Bloch of being, supporting, or even befriending cannibalistic serial killers.

However, oftentimes when some strong-looking black guy assumes a position of power, certain other people completely lose their minds. The NRA and similar hate groups said Ice-T was advocating the wanton murder of police and the usual protests ensued: Warner’s Rockefeller Plaza headquarters was picketed, talking heads babbled mindlessly on teevee and radio, records were burned, and the far right basked in the afterglow of a rich orgasm of bullshit.

This is sort of like a trauma suffered by Warner Bros. almost two decades earlier, where some people listened to parts of Randy Newman’s song “Short People” and decided Newman was bigoted against, well, short people. Randy’s a nice white guy; Warners didn’t pull the track.

In the “Cop Killer” case Warner Bros. issued a statement saying they believed in free speech and they were standing behind Ice-T. As an executive (!) of Warners at the time, I was genuinely proud of my employer. Silly me. I had met Ice-T up at DC Comics’ offices; they were going to do a graphic novel with him and the guy wanted to “borrow” Trevor Von Eeden, who was drawing the Black Canary monthly for me at the time. Ice-T is a nice guy, and coming in person to make the request was a massive act of respect.

A while later, when fewer people were looking, Warner Bros. quietly withdrew the track from future pressings of the album and they dumped Ice-T’s next record and the graphic novel mysteriously disappeared. If corporations were truly human the way the highest court in the land said when they were undoubtedly high, then Corporate America has the morals of a crack whore.

So, outside of Trevor, what does this have to do with comic books?

Science fiction writer Orson Scott Card is a vicious little homophobe consumed with hatred. He had done some comics writing, and a little while back DC hired him to write a story for their new Adventures of Superman title. This title features stories written and drawn by a variety of writers and artists and, for the record, is one of my favorite books from that publisher. Shortly after that, Card exposed his innermost feelings to the public and Warner Bros. – DC Comics is owned and operated by Warner Bros. and isn’t even a division thereof – publically pulled the story from the book. DC said “Hey! We don’t hate no homos!” and, yes, I paraphrase for emphasis.

OK. That’s nice. Make a stand in favor of equality and equal rights and the common humanity of all people. That’s probably good for business as, at the very least, it takes them out of the “Orson Scott Card is a crawling piece of shit” controversy.

But now, when fewer people are looking, they’ve quietly admitted they are going to publish Card’s Superman story.

The “Cop Killer” incident happened a few years before Ice-T became a star of one of television’s longest running crime dramas… playing a cop. So much for Ice-T advocating the killing of policepeople.

But Orson Scott Card remains an unrepentant homophobe and consummate hater.

Fuck you, Warner Bros, you poseurs. You goddamned lying hypocrites.

THURSDAY MORNING: Dennis O’Neil

THURSDAY AFTERNOON: Martin Pasko

 

Martin Pasko: The Age of Michael Jackson Comics

Pasko Art 130801Before I Do This Thang for the week: I’ve been getting messages from readers. Apparently, I do have them. Or, as Bob Hope might have said, “I know you’re out there, because why else would Dolores be propping me up in that direction?”

These messages I’m talking about are all “Why do you use so many links?” Clearly, if you’re asking this, you’re not clicking on them. Hint: Some – not all, or even most, but some – of them don’t lead where you might assume they do. They are instead meant to be weird, “disconnective,” hit-or-miss jokes in and of themselves. So, as the most celebrated member of The Hair Club For Men once put it, “’Nuff said.”

Now, on to That Thang. Meaning I have to stop vamping with jokes about what I didn’t learn in San Diego the weekend before last, and, God help me, actually come up with a third and final part of my highly speculative and putatively uninformed rant to go with the first and second parts. [I say “putatively” because Richard Feder of Fort Lee, New Jersey, writes, “Aren’t the comics selling better than ever? What should I do?” (And, no; no link this time. Get off your fat ass and Google it.)]

If you’re just joining me here for the first time, please feel free – unless your ass really is too fat to allow you to lean over and reach your mouse or trackpad – to check out those previous parts. And maybe click on some on those links you’ve been skipping over. Go ahead. I’ll wait. It’s not like I have anything better to do.

Back now? Good.

One thing Iwasn’t joking about last week: SDCC really didn’t shed much light on whether the Big Two might be incrementally but profoundly changing how they think about creating and marketing comics. Specifically, that they might have to take back total creative control from the freelance talent, to better justify their claim that comics help generate new, original movie and TV properties – titles and characters that aren’t mere spin-offs from the oldest, best-known super hero “brands.”

But I remained in the dark not, as I facetiously suggested, because of the conditions endemic to the con itself, but, rather, because the Big Two’s massive “booths” at least appear to still be doing their dog-and-pony shows in much the samo-samo way as they have been since the beginning of The Gastrotrich Super-Star era and the annual “continuity stunt.” You know – the age of what I like to call Michael Jackson Comics. As in, “We’re going to keep rearranging our face because it gets us publicity even though we don’t entertain anybody anymore. (But we do have a few pet chimps who clap for us when we do it.)”

At first, superficial glance, little seems to have changed this year. There were the same long lines of people waiting for something, but you couldn’t quite be sure what because the crowds were too dense. And there were the same old book signings by the Flavors Of The Week – those comic book “creators” who have been rocketing out of obscurity and vanishing back into it just as fast, ever since Hollywood’s “‘bankable’ star” mentality was first applied to four-color pamphlets by, if memory serves, Jenette Kahn. She was the first Big Two publisher to wonder, for example, whether Superman might not sell better if it were John Byrne’s Superman.

And it did.

For a while.

Thirty years ago.

But this year at SDCC, when I took a closer look at those exhibits, and let my eye follow carefully where that long line was snaking to, it seemed as if more and more of those people were queueing up for a chance to glimpse some “teaser” footage from an upcoming movie or TV show, and the lines to buy signed copies of Flavor of the Week’s Superman or Smokin’ Hot Newcomer’s Spider-Man were shorter. The “brand” – the property – was what was making the loudest ka-ching, ka-ching.

But the people who decide what will be presented in these exhibits seem not to notice, and persist in announcing new comic book titles whose selling point is presumably the name of the creative talent rather than the super hero brand. Meanwhile, superhero feature films continue to succeed without being dependent on major stars in their casts, a phenomenon that is a reflection of a larger, industry-wide paradigm shift.

The early warning signs might be barely noticeable, but I really think they’re there. And it’s getting harder not to wonder whether someday – maybe sooner than even cynical me suspects – Disney and Warners will have convinced themselves that they can endlessly exploit their existing brands, through reboots not unlike those in the old annual face-changing stunts, without any help from their four-color pamphleteers. And if their comic book divisions will have ceased to yield new brands they can add to the product mix as break-out hits, they might start to wonder whether all those Flavors of the Week and their pamphlets are any use to them at all.

LATER TODAY: Emily S. Whitten Returns!

FRIDAY MORNING: Martha Thomases

SATURDAY MORNING: Marc Alan Fishman

 

 

Michael Davis: The Coming of the Fan Boy

Davis Art 130709Word on the street is Warner Bros has announced a new venture, DC Nasty.

DC Nasty is an adult film company created because Warner Bros sees an opportunity to fill a gap, plug a hole and make a big splash in a vastly underserved audience, grown fan boys who rent or buy porn almost 600 times more than video games or comics.”

This, from the Warner Bros Press release.

A recent ComicMix poll showed 92% of grown fan boys do not have wives or girlfriends, 80% make 5-6 figure incomes and in what was alarming to this reporter, 70-100% go blind by the time they are 50.

Rumors are flying as to who will head up the new venture. A high level unnamed source at DC thinks that a former DC executive who recently returned to the freelance ranks will run the new company.

An announcement is anticipated to be made at this years’ San Diego Comic Con. Expected to be among the first wave of projects are Sgt. Rock, Deathstoke, Elongated Man, Man of Steel and Swamp Thing.

It seems that the industry has realized that Warner may be on to something.

There are reports that Marvel is also thinking about getting their hands into porn by creating a division called Marvel Masturbation. Projects include the Hulk, Mr. Fantastic, the Thing and the Black Avengers.

An unnamed source from Marvel said they wanted to create as much tie-in with the comics as possible. With that in mind, Make Mine Masturbation is being considered as the slogan of the new venture.

Fan boys are certainly already doing that. The question is will they pay DC and Marvel to supply them with their reason for doing so?

Will this new venture let DC, Marvel and their fans share a happy ending?

That’s a sticky question.

WEDNESDAY MORNING: Mike Gold

THURSDAY MORNING: Dennis O’Neil

 

Mike Gold: Superman’s Two Fathers

Gold Art 130522They still haven’t made me all excited about The Man of Steel, but at least by now we’ve been given the opportunity to see where it’s going. It’s the human story about a guy who isn’t human, superior stranger in a strange land, trapped in a world he could easily remake and he’s as humble as he is confused as he is powerful.

O.K., fine. That doesn’t compensate for the repetitive redundancy and duplicative dynamic of their restarting the franchise and retelling the origin and screwing around with something that’s been around 22 years longer than the 50-star American flag.

Not that I have an attitude about it. Honest, I hope The Man of Steel is thrilling and successful. The word out of Hollywood – a bitchy and petty place on its best day – is that if MOS fails, say bye-bye to the Justice League movie. They’ll just continue to grind out teeny-bopper versions of their characters for The CW, or whatever they’re calling their teevee network this year.

Superman deserves better than the dark self-obsessed trailers we’ve been seeing and, again, I hope the movie transcends their promotion. Back in 1978, before today’s latest Warner Bros. executives could walk (yeah, there was another upheaval in the corporate order last week), Richard Donner did something nobody had ever done before: he treated a major superhero seriously and respectfully as a cultural icon. In the process, he created a whole new genre of motion picture and he wound up making a massive fortune – for Marvel Comics, who, unlike Warner Bros., got the point.

When it comes right down to it, the origin is irrelevant. It’s a macguffin, an excuse upon which to hang a story. Iron Man built himself. Incredible. Spider-Man got bit by a spider. Amazing. The X-Men got themselves born. Uncanny. Now tell us a story worthy of our massive financial investment in your picture because, outside of idle gossip, we don’t truly care how much money you spent on your financial investment. Movie-goers just want to have fun.

This advice comes way too late, but that’s okay. They wouldn’t have listened to me earlier (although the last time they did we saved The Flash’s superhero costume in the teevee series). If Warners wants to reboot the Superman franchise and create a successful DC Comics superhero movie sub-genre, they should follow Donner’s lead and treat their characters seriously and respectfully as cultural icons. Give us a great story and make us care about the characters as they exist today. Keep Kal-El’s backhand off of his forehead.

In other words, get on with it. Stop trying to imitate Star Wars – that’s the wrong genre. Stop imitating Greek tragedy before somebody remembers Lysistrata was a satire. Stop pissing on the past just because you’ve got a big… budget.

Or, failing that, get Samuel L. Jackson and Robert Downey Jr. to drive a Hummer full of money onto Joss Whedon’s lawn and ring the doorbell. In Hollywood, imitation is the sincerest form of co-optation.

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON: Mindy Newell (what?)

THURSDAY MORNING: Dennis O’Neil

 

Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox is the next DC Video Release in July

JusticeLeagueTheFlashpointParadox-finalboxartThis is the comic book event that either propelled DC Comics towards the New 52 paradigm or sent the company spinning off the rails, alienating the very core audience they sought to retain. Now it is being adapted into animated form from Warner Home Entertainment in July. Some speculate this direct-to-video movie will transition the animated heroes towards New 52 incarnations but that has not been confirmed. Here’s the release:

BURBANK, CA (April 17, 2013) – The world is turned upside down as one of earth’s greatest super heroes – Flash – wakes up devoid of his super powers in the all-new Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox – the next entry in the popular, ongoing series of DC Universe Original Animated Movies. Produced by DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation, this all-new, PG-13 rated film arrives July 30, 2013 from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment on Blu-Ray™ Combo Pack ($24.98 SRP), DVD ($19.98 SRP) and Digital Download. The Blu-ray™ Combo Pack will include UltraViolet™*.

When time travel allows a past wrong to be righted for Flash and his family, the event’s temporal ripples prove disastrous, creating a fractured, alternate reality where the Justice League never formed, and even Superman is nowhere to be found. Amidst a new world being ravaged by a fierce war between Wonder Woman’s Amazons and Aquaman’s Atlanteans, Flash must team with a grittier, more violent Batman and government agent Cyborg to restore the continuity of Flash’s original timeline.

Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox has all the elements of another great film – dynamic forceful villains, treacherous twists and turns and internal tensions amongst heroes,” said Mary Ellen Thomas, Warner Home Video Vice President, Family, Animation and Partner Brands
Marketing. “Showcasing a cast that brings together some of today’s popular primetime television actors with many fans’ favorite voices from the original series, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment is proud to release this title as the next DC Universe Animated Original Movie.”

Primetime television stars Justin Chambers (Grey’s Anatomy) and Kevin McKidd (Grey’s Anatomy), the voices of Barry Allen/Flash and Thomas Wayne/Batman, respectively, unite with numerous greats of television and film to fashion the famed animated roles. Adding to the celebrity-laden voice cast and providing thrilling additions to the Justice League series are Michael B. Jordan (Fruitvale, Friday Night Lights, Chronicle) as Cyborg, C. Thomas Howell (Southland, The Outsiders) as Thawne/Professor Zoom, Nathan Fillion (Castle) as Hal Jordan/Green Lantern, Ron Perlman (Hellboy) as Slade and Deathstroke, Dana Delany (Body of Proof) as Lois Lane, Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride) as Aquaman, Danny Huston (Magic City) as General Lane, Sam Daly (The Office, The Daly Show) as Superman, and Kevin Conroy (Batman: The Animated Series) as Batman.

Screenwriter Jim Krieg delivers an action-packed vision of the legendary comic book miniseries Flashpoint, by Geoff Johns & Andy Kubert, adding to the over 13 million DC Universe video units produced to date. Jay Oliva (Batman: The Dark Knight Returns) is director and
James Tucker (Superman: Unbound) is producer.

Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox Blu-ray™ has over three hours of exciting extra content, including:

  • A Flash in Time: Are there other dimensions?  Can time travel get us there?  And if The Flash existed, could he really travel through time?  Interviews with experts in mythology, theoretical physics and top DC writers will examine the science and legacy of the storytelling behind the fiction.
  • My Favorite Villians! The Flash Bad Guys: Acclaimed DC Comics writer Geoff Johns and others share their favorite Flash villains in this short film that gives viewers a glimpse into the Flash’s world through the eyes of some of the nefarious characters he has encountered over the past 70 years!
  • A Sneak Peek at the next DC Universe animated movie:. An in-depth look into the next DC Animated feature film, spotlighting the cast and crew.
  • From the DC Comics Vault:  Bonus cartoon episodes
  • The Flashpoint Paradox Audio Commentary

REVIEW: Easy Money

Easy MoneyThanks to Steig Larson, there’s a perceived appetite for all things Swedish so some of the more stylish or interesting books and films are coming over here in drips and drabs. The most recent import is Easy Money, a film that benefits from a moral gravity underlying the crime tale. Adapted by director Daniel Espinosa from Jens Lapidus’ 2006 novel Snabba Cash, it tells the story of a student, JW (Joel Kinnaman), who falls for Sophie (Lisa Henni ), an heiress so turns to crime in order to keep up with her lavish lifestyle. You just know things are going to spiral out of control this point on so the key for the production is keeping us in plausible suspense and entertained. Sure enough, he crosses the Serbian mafia and gets embroiled with Jorge (Matias Padin Varela), a fugitive from the mob. It’s dark and violent and messy.

While released in Europe back in 2010, it came here last year courtesy of The Weinstein Company and was met with more yawns than praise. (After winning the bidding war for the remake rights, Warner Bros. turned it over to Zac Efron to produce and start, but we;’ll see what happens should this ever get made.) Still, the film was a box office smash in its home country and did well throughout Europe.

It has enough testosterone fuelling the opening sequences to hook jaded American audiences complete with violence, a prison break out and fast cars. Kinnaman, best known to audiences for his work in The Killing, is an appealing underdog we’re rooting for in the first third. You can see why he falls for the sexy blonde beauty Henni and why he might risk everything for her. Espinosa, though, careens from shot to shot and the narrative loses cohesion by the midway point and the audience stops caring by the time we get to the climax.  There might be too many threads crying for attention for the director to properly service and more condensation might have been required.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KW0wFMQMvg&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

The core remains the conflicts and consequences of choices made by the main characters, all of whom are trying to get out from under crushing burdens, which makes this more than your typical crime noir.

This is a pretty bare bones DVD release from Starz/Anchor Bay with nary an interesting extra so the decision is up to you if the story is enough to spring for the disc.

Enter DC’s Fan Family First Contest

Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar Now a Paramount/Warner Co-Production

Paramount100Warner Bros Film Group Finalizing New PR Job For News Corp Publicist Jack HornerWhile we await confirmation that Christopher Nolan will be the new DC Film Universe guru and what that will actually mean, he is hard at work on his next film. Today, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. issued the following joint press release:

HOLLYWOOD, CA (March 8, 2013) – Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures jointly announced today that writer/director Christopher Nolan’s INTERSTELLAR will be co-produced and distributed by the two studios, with Paramount Pictures handling Domestic distribution and Warner Bros. Pictures distributing the film Internationally.  INTERSTELLAR will be released beginning November 7, 2014, in theaters and IMAX®.

Directed and written by Academy Award-nominee Nolan (INCEPTION, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES), INTERSTELLAR is based on a script by Jonathan Nolan. The film will be produced by Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan of Syncopy Films and Obst of Lynda Obst Productions. Kip Thorne will executive produce. The film will depict a heroic interstellar voyage to the furthest reaches of our scientific understanding.

Brad Grey, Chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures said, “As a filmmaker and storyteller, Chris has continuously entertained the world with his extraordinary and unparalleled talents. I am pleased beyond measure to welcome him to the Paramount Pictures family. Partnering with Chris, Emma, Lynda and Warner Bros. to release this original idea next November is the perfect way to start the Thanksgiving and holiday movie season for audiences around the world.”

Jeff Robinov, President, Warner Bros. Pictures Group, said, “Christopher Nolan is truly one of the great auteurs working in film today, and we’re extremely proud of our successful and ongoing collaboration with him and Emma Thomas.  We are excited to be teaming with Paramount, and look forward to working with the Nolans, and producer Lynda Obst, on this extraordinary new project.”

Enter the Dragon gets 40th Anniversary Edition

enter-the-dragon-leeEvery now and then you can tell someone is special. Every now and then you know just when something becomes an event, a trend-setter. That’s exactly who Bruce Lee was and his Enter the Dragon remains. All marital arts films are measured against this one and now Warner Home Video is giving us a 40th anniversary edition. Here are the details:

Burbank, Calif., March 4, 2013 – Enter the Dragon, one of martial arts icon Bruce Lee’s last films, will debut June 11 on Blu-ray™ in the Enter the Dragon 40th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition giftset from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. The film, which helped bring interest in the Asian martial arts genre to mainstream Western cinema, has been re-mastered for its 40th anniversary, and will now feature new bonus materials, such as the featurette, No Way as Way, on the legacy of Bruce Lee, plus other featurettes and commentary. Memorabilia — which includes collectible art cards, lenticular card and an embroidered patch –are also part of the giftset.

Bruce Lee was an incredible athlete and mixed martial artist who, despite making a limited number of movies during his short life, became a charismatic megastar and left a permanent mark on cinema and popular culture. Even Time Magazine agreed. They included Lee in the “100 Most Important People of the 20th century” issue (Heroes and Icons 1999*).  Enter the Dragon continues to resonate with today’s audiences. It was a major theatrical hit 40 years ago, grossing approximately $25 million domestically – the equivalent of almost $180 million in today’s box-office. Enter the Dragon has sold more than 450,000 units on DVD and Blu-ray since 2004. In 2004, Enter the Dragon was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” It also received a 95% positive rating on the critics’ review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.

Lee was born in San Francisco on November 27, 1940. As a young boy in Hong Kong, he acted in some 20 films there and first became known in the U.S. in 1966 for his role as sidekick Kato in TV’s “The Green Hornet.” He also appeared in TV shows like “Ironside” and “Longstreet,” with his most notable American role coming in the 1969 movie, Marlowe, starring James Garner. Returning to Hong Kong, Lee starred in a number of successful films for Raymond Chow’s Golden Harvest Productions and soon became a superstar in China. His enormous overseas success ultimately reached Hollywood and the attention of filmmaker Fred Weintraub and Warner Bros., who produced Enter the Dragon and tapped the actor to star. Lee died suddenly in Hong Kong, at the age of 32, of a cerebral edema. That was on July 20, 1973, less than a month before the film’s August 17 U.S. premiere. Posthumously, Enter the Dragon rocketed him to international superstardom.

enter-the-dragon-special-edition-20040524022006215Enter the Dragon producer Fred Weintraub, who also wrote the book Bruce Lee, Woodstock, and Me said: “If fans want to hail Bruce as the greatest and most influential martial artist who ever lived, you’ll get no argument from me. He was a shining star who streaked across the night sky of our collective awareness in a flash of white hot unsustainable intensity only to burn up in the atmosphere of fame, wealth, and worldwide adulation. Watching him again (this time even better on Blu-ray), you can see why he became the first international superstar from a third world country.

The plot of the Enter the Dragon revolves around outstanding martial arts student Lee (Bruce Lee), who is recruited by an intelligence agency and then uncovers the evil Han’s (Kien Shih) white slavery and drug trafficking ring located on a secret island fortress. Along with martial arts champions Roper (John Saxon) and Williams (Jim Kelly), Lee infiltrates the stronghold and enters Han’s brutal tournament. Lee and his partners fuse skills in Karate, Judo, Tae Kwon Do, T’ai chi ch’uan and Hapkido, in a now classic fight-to-the-death epic battle, all staged by Lee himself.

Bruce Lee, John Saxon, and Ahna Capri star in Enter the Dragon, which co-stars Bob Wall, and Shih Kien and introduces Jim Kelly. Music is by Lalo Schifrin. Written by Michael Allen, the film was produced by Fred Weintraub and Paul Heller in association with Raymond Chow. Robert Clouse directed.

Special Features:

  • Commentary by producer Paul Heller
  • New Featurette No Way As Way
  • New Featurette The Return to Han’s Island
  • New Featurette Wing Chun: The Art that Introduced Kung Fu to Bruce Lee
  • Interview Gallery featuring Lee’s wife, Linda Lee Caldwell
  • Vintage pieces
    • Backyard Workout with Bruce Lee
    • Curse of the Dragon
    • Location: Hong Kong with Enter the Dragon
    • Blood and Steel: The Making of Enter the Dragon
    • Personal Profile Bruce Lee: In His Own Words
  •  Five trailers
  • Seven TV spots

ENTER THE DRAGON 40TH ANNIVERSARY BLU-RAY DISC AND DVD

Street Date: June 11, 2013

Order Due Date: May 17, 2013

Run Time: 98 minutes

Rating: R

Pricing: $49.99 SRP

Catalog# / UPC: 1000351089 / 883929285693

 

Note: All enhanced content and memorabilia listed above is subject to change.