The Signal Watch

I finally watch: I, Robot (2004)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sat, 25 May 2013 21:15:00 +0000

As a kid, I read some Isaac Asimov, but not a lot. Robot Dreams, the Robot Novels (Caves of Steel, etc..). About eight years ago I read one Foundation novel hopelessly out of synch with what I was supposed to be doing and read Prelude to Foundation, you know, before Foundation, which was apparently not correct as it came out much after the original books - but did include a favorite character of mine (spoiler).

But like things do when you're 13, the robot stories stuck with me. I believed in the infallibility of the Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. I barely even remember the stories from I, Robot anymore, but I read it three times before I finished high school. Still remember knocking a huge chunk of it out while sitting on my folks' front porch one sunny day.

But I knew Will Smith was nowhere to be found in any of the short stories that make up the anthology of I, Robot.

The movie of I, Robot was released in 2004, and marked a very conscious decision for me not to pay to see something that I knew I would find disappointing. I didn't remember the book well even 9 years ago, but I was pretty sure none of the stories contained within starred The Fresh Prince.

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

In some ways, the movie is a new story based in the world of Asimov's US Robotics and with robot psychologist Dr. Susan Calvin, a recurring character in the stories of I, Robot, who appears in multiple stories at different points in the character's fictional lifetime.

Like the book, the movie is concerned with both the breakdown of the 3 Laws that govern most robot behavior flawlessly and seamlessly throughout the culture described in the book, but every once in a while a logical loop or glitch occurs, and the book explores the idea - often with Susan Calvin involved.

The biggest problems with the movie are that it's very clearly had Will Smith's script approval, and that it was intended to make $200 million, back when that seemed like a lot of money for a movie. It's an odd snapshot of the evolution in what it meant to be a big summer tentpole movie in 2004, somewhere between the horrendously predictable meathead films of the 90's (see: the work of Michael Bay and/ or Con-Air) and the modern era where nobody seems to know what will stick and Jesse Eisenberg is getting leading-man roles as a magician.*

The movie is the first of an era that sort of acknowledged how predictable movies had gotten and plays a bit with that, but is still a locked room mystery with four potential suspects, two of whom you kind of figure didn't do it, and the third so obvious that he did it, it leaves only really the fourth.

Smith, as always, plays the Will Smith character we all got to know in Independence Day and which he's made progressively grumpier over the years, culminating in I Am Legend. The movie goes way out of its way to let the audience of 2004 work through their technophobia and look at all this robot stuff as basically magic by giving us a Will Smith who seems like a guy from 2002 dropped into the future where robot and AI technology has become seamlessly integrated into everyday life. Now he's a COP. Who thinks robots are BAD. And is given a back story that in no way ties to his erratic behavior around robots, and - when its finally revealed - makes no sense whatsoever.

Calvin, played by Bridget Moynahan (and looking not a lick how I imagined Calvin, but whatever... I don't know that Asimov ever described her), is the egg head scientist who is repeatedly asked to explain it "in English, Doc". You know, for the maroons in the audience who can't understand words like "electric" and "brain". And is a pretty good reminder of why people get angry at scientists in the real world. She knows stuff and refuses to just be as big of a meathead as Will Smith (and, worse, isn't impressed by his gritty coolness).

The robots of the movie are actually really well designed, and it's amazing to realize CGI from 2004 holds up pretty well. I'm not sure that's a design people would actually respond to in the real world (I tend to think even humanoid robots won't sell if they fall into the uncanny valley).

What's hard to buy is the "robots can't break!" line of logic that turns into a nigh-religious belief, even when events don't add up quite right. I get that we need our hero to come up against a wall, but I also assume a mysterious death of the era's Steve Jobs figure wouldn't just get swept under the rug because there was a product launch on the docket (and that nobody found it odd that his house was levelled 24 hours after he died? With everything inside the house?).

There is an interrogation scene with Smith and a suspect robot, and it's pretty decent stuff. I suspect it's the core of what sold folks on the idea of the movie. It's worth seeing to watch Smith get out-acted by a CGI robot, but it is the closest to one of the Asimov short stories of any particular part of the movie. And, the ending does reflect one of the Susan Calvin stories I do recall, but I believe it was from the book Robot Dreams.**

There are elements of what I suspect could have been an interesting Asimov-esque robot movie, but once Akiva Goldsman got attached as a writer, Will Smith as a lead and someone cast Shia LeBeef as a street-wise bit of local color, you were headed for a kind of genericized sci-fi actioner that was going to treat the concepts of Asimov's hard sci-fi like nerds in math class and just copy Asimov's homework. It's too bad. At the same time, it means one day I may get my Caves of Steel movie and nobody will mistake it for a Will Smith vehicle.

*I tip my hat to the producers of Now You See Me. That a movie starring Jesse Eisenberg as a super-charismatic popular magician and master thief is a major summer release and someone believes it's going to make money at all demonstrates a level of confidence I dream of possessing. Or else someone has a Producers-like scam at work.

**spoiler - in which Calvin meets a robot dreams of standing before a thousand robots and declares "let my people go!". Calvin immediately disintegrates the robot.

Supermarathon: Superman III

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Fri, 24 May 2013 04:04:00 +0000

Watching Superman III is an exercise in trying to guess what everyone involved was thinking.

For the third installment, the Salkinds kept Richard Lester on board as director, and with the Newmans on as writers (who had drafted an earlier script of Superman I and II, but who had been re-written by Tom Mankiewicz). The camp and and slapsticky nature that reared it's head in Superman II in the theatrical release is back in full force, right from the choreographed opening that feels perhaps inspired by old silent comedies and Rube Goldberg machinations.

And, look, I think Richard Pryor is hilarious, but starting your Superman movie with Richard Pryor in an unemployment line is kind of an odd place to start. And even when I was a kid watching this movie in the theater, I remember thinking "this seems like someone doing things they think are funny, but aren't really all that funny". And, maybe that's my problem with the tone of the film. There are certainly parts I find amusing and even funny, but by and large, I feel like Pryor is miscast and the "wacky interplay" between the conspiring high dollar crooks isn't the laugh-fest Lester envisioned (and the Lana/ Clark dialog only kinda works).

This is also the movie where Superman has a one night stand with a villain of the movie and then disses her the next morning, angry-drinks some Johnny Walker Red Label (which also gets product placement elsewhere in the movie), and gets all creepy on Lana Lang.

As a kid, this is was the exact moment when I knew they expected there to be grown-ups in the theater.

Oddly, this doesn't stop Christopher Reeve from putting his all into the movie, in my opinion. I STILL really enjoy the Clark/ Drunk Superman brawl in the trash yard, and the whole descent into Red K shenanigans. Red K Superman is actually kind of a scary proposition, and even in his moments of Super-Dickery, Reeve manages to pull off yet another aspect of the character that feels as sincere as Clark Kent, Superman and Kal-El at the fortress. In some ways, Christopher Reeve might have made a really good movie villain.

Also - despite the fact I've seen this movie a dozen times before, this is the first time I noticed a Blade Runner poster behind Clark as he's throwing all those tires at Drunk Superman.

The super-villainy of the movie pre-dates the 1986-reboot of Luthor as corporate mogul, and does something I quite like: the villains aren't tied in any way to Superman until he becomes an obvious problem for their plans. In some ways it keeps part of the movie focused away from Superman as he revisits Smallville and Lana Lang enters the picture (in the form of the always lovely Annette O'Toole), and the whole enterprise feels like the idea of a Superman movie franchise going on for a while.

Super Yuppies

Typical for an 80's movie, the understanding of computers is about as good as Jaws' understanding of sharks, and feels like someone yelling "Darn these infernal machines!" You can read the menace of the film in manipulating satellites, in video game sounds, in mucking about with traffic signals and ATM's as the man-on-the-street's bafflement at what was happening around them as the world was in the infancy of becoming wired. Maybe Superman can make sense of how to program my VCR?

I've heard that this was supposed to be a Brainiac movie in an early draft, and given Brainiac's 80's-era redesign as a robot alien, it was all something in the zeitgeist.

The movie does keep Superman firmly grounded in the world of flawed humanity, which Lester holds up as the greedy Websters, the doofy everymen of the opening, hapless Gus Gorman, and even Lorelei, pretending to be an imbecile to fit in and meet expectations. Even Lois is missing from the picture, and her replacement in Lana Lang is a bit daft. It's Superman in wacky-comedy world, and while I've always felt the humor in Superman media was a great element, it's not, strictly speaking, how I identify Superman's milieu.

watch Reeve during this scene. He plays "WTF?" to perfection.

All in all, a fun movie, but it doesn't have the scope or epic feel of the first two installments, and feels - as sequels often did during the era - smaller in scope rather than upping the stakes.

Still, the movie is fun still in a lot of ways, and as a kid's movie, it worked fine when I saw it the first time. The biggest problem I saw for YOUR kids is their tolerance for Red K Superman, which didn't seem like such a big deal when I was a kid, but, you know, whatever.

As I started this post with, I have to wonder what Reeve was thinking, contractually obligated to play Superman and having to realize that the always thrifty Salkinds were ratcheting the budget and scope of the movie back quite a bit, but he still plays ball. For the writers, you get the feeling that they think Richard Donner had this all wrong: Superman is FUNNY. For the producers and writers, I cannot begin to guess what conversations took place that made them decide Richard Pryor was going to be the right brand of comedian for their movie.

I won't even get into the issues the movie has with women, but it's not a great picture. Of course, this movie came out around the same time as Porky's, so, you know... chalk it up the whatever we were going through as a people during the early 80's, I suppose.

Calling it now: Everyone will now suddenly like Superman

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Thu, 23 May 2013 04:07:00 +0000

Firstly, I am totally OK with this.

One does not spend ten years extolling the virtues of Superman and then get pouty when public opinion changes (thanks to the movie. I'm not taking credit). I'm not going to decide I don't like Superman because comics fans and the public alike shake off the past couple of decades of proudly proclaiming Batman's a hero and Superman's a zero. And if people find something to like about Superman: GREAT!

Believe me, having a movie that sells people on Superman is going to make whatever I've been up to the past several years a lot easier to understand, and when it comes to family, friends and co-workers, I can use whatever help I can get. Hopefully someone will do a follow up with a great Barks/ Rosa Ducks movie and I won't have to explain anything about myself ever again.

This all hinges on Man of Steel being a watchable film, and the trailers are pretty promising. I have a strong feeling that even if the movie is not my cup of tea, the groundwork is already there to get people thinking about Superman a lot differently.

what are they looking at? Where are they?

So, I just ran across an opinion piece at Comic Book Resources in which the writer points to various comics released over the past decade and, in my opinion, has found "his Superman". No doubt a discriminating reader of comics, what with having a column and at least one podcast about comics, this writer finally found a way to "get" Superman. He's got his in.

And, in many, ways, that's sort of what it takes. If you can't find a point of accessibility, why would you like the character?

Not only is Superman one of the longest running characters in fiction, he's appeared in so many media over the years, the character has become this wall of iconography that's criss-crossed generations, nations, etc... The very constancy of the character's omnipresence in culture, his association with comics, his occasional guest appearances, etc... all can lead to a belief that you gave the character a shot but you were too smart for what Superman was selling. I know! I've been there. See yesterday's post on my era as an X-reader. Couldn't get me to touch a Superman comic back then.

I can't tell anyone what their point of access is going to be. I can make reading recommendations. I can point to the movies and TV shows. And not every Superman comic is great, just as not every Batman comic, X-Comic, Avengers comic, etc... is very good. You have to start with something that you're going to like, and not every issue of Superman will wow you, just as not every Batman appearance is The Dark Knight.

This writer found Birthright. He found Busiek's Superman: Secret Identity. He made it through All Star, and has an interesting reaction to the book. And, I think, in reading his comments, I'm quite thrilled that Brett White found his in.

I just wish DC were doing more at the moment to give him Superman comics worth reading. White will soon learn that it's a marathon, not a sprint, I guess, but at least there's now a great digital and trades program.

The funny thing about the the New York Times article I'm linking to here is that the title changed mid-way through the day. You can see in the URL that the name of the article was "'Man of Steel' Seeks to Make Superman Relevant Again", and by the afternoon it was "Alien, Yet Familiar".

As I've bemoaned nigh constantly at this site and the prior blog, for two decades pop culture writers have stated how Superman wasn't relevant in a modern sense, kind of pointing to that idea of Superman they may have formed from that sort of a zeitgeisty vision of Superman. It always seemed to me the writers were kind of drawing from a hazy interpretation reflecting off characters who had movies at the cinema, and in that, a line had to be drawn - if the X-Men/ Iron Man/ Batman is a superhero and I like him, how is he different from Superman? And if I like this thing, doesn't it mean I can't like the other thing?

The NYT article drops the usual saw about Superman not being relatable, and fails to mention a ten-year run on Smallville. Or, essentially five movies in the Superman series starting in 1978 and ending in 2006. No mention of the popular Lois and Clark TV show. They also clearly aren't familiar with Superman as a character or media franchise, wowing at the "sci-fi" concepts of the Planet Krypton origin story.*

Man of Steel offers up a Superman in clear focus. Where Superman Returns refused to tell an origin story (even as the character took to the big screen for the first time in two decades), it then lumped in some odd family business that required intimacy with the prior Superman films to get the nuance, and flatly refused to be an action film despite the summer release date.

I quite like the idea of coming back to Superman's first appearance and asking "actually, how would we deal with this?", and the trailers look just about right. Tanks. Black helicopters. Lots of guns pointed his way. Not just crowds giving a thumbs-up and a smooth gentleman declaring Superman has "A BAD OUT-FIT!"

What Man of Steel doesn't appear to do is add new dimension to the character that we, as fans, haven't known was already there, and has been all along. Some of us have mourned the doom of Krypton all along, have poured over dozens of interpretations of Superman as the adopted son of a farmer trying to find his place, and thrilled to innumerable first appearances of the cape as Superman took to the air by flight or merely leaping. And, we always understood Superman's themes of self-sacrifice, of both the joy of what it means to be the one who can save the day and the responsibility that goes along with being the one who steps forward to be that person - even a super person.

That those ideas were ever considered irrelevant always told me more about the writers than it did about Superman stories when they were at their best.

And there's never been any question that our Man of Tomorrow was willing to mix it up when circumstances called for it. I'm glad to see we're getting the Ace of Action on the big screen in a way we could only have dreamed of when Terence Stamp put on his black boots.

So, it's going to be an interesting summer. Keep your eyes peeled. I strongly suspect we'll start to get a lot of pieces in the range of these two, depending on the quality of the movie. Pop culture pundits will write about how NOW Superman somehow speaks to our jaded society (forgetting how Donner's Superman dropped on a post-Nixon America promising truth, justice and The American Way). Comic fans will enjoy the action and super-antics and start thinking of the character differently, even if just in the context of the movies.**

In the end, I'll really be happiest to see how the kids like this movie. I know it's PG-13 and looks kind of scary, but I have high hopes some kids will get to see it.

*I mean, honestly...
**no shame in that. I didn't care at all about Iron Man til the movies.

Tickets Purchased - Man of Steel is GO for Midnight Screening

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Wed, 22 May 2013 21:21:00 +0000

I have purchased 3 tickets for the midnight screening of Man of Steel for The Alamo Ritz.

If you are interested in joining us here in Austin, I'll be with JuanD and KevinW (and owing a lot of apologies to Jamie).

There is likely to be a secondary screening on Saturday, so if you want in on that, give me a holler.

If you're up for being a REAL Superman fan and making the midnight show, we'll be there!

To join us, get your tickets here.

Wolverine, X-Men and a long history with comics

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Wed, 22 May 2013 05:56:00 +0000

Just to be clear, in the trailer for the new Wolverine movie, he gives up his mutant power of healing. So, yeah, it's yet again a 2nd movie in a superhero installment where the hero gives up his powers or loses them or whatever, and must prove how they're a hero without their superpowers.

How long until people who don't obsess about this sort of thing pick up on this trend? As lousy as the both Fantastic Four movies were, correct me if I'm wrong, but nobody lost their powers, right? Because aside from that movie and maybe Ghost Rider 2, which I've yet to see, it seems like this is the go-to for all Hollywood superhero films. Oh, right. Iron Man waited til the 3rd installment for that to happen, and Hulk just rebooted between movies.

I probably won't go see Wolverine because... honestly, I don't care. At least the last one was so bad I had a good laugh (this did not amuse my fellow movie goers, but, honestly...).

Like everyone else who reads comics, I was once a big Wolverine fan until the circa 1988 solo series, during which middle-school me decided he was more compelling as a team-player than running around Madripoor with an eyepatch. I used to read and re-read that original, four issue mini-series by Claremont and a young Frank Miller. That thing read like poetry, but, man, it also sort of had the final word on the transformation of Wolverine from "Canadian White Trash Stabby Guy" to "Samurai Warrior". After that, I didn't really care about the various stories trying to take Wolverine apart and put him back together or whatever.

last time I found Wolverine an interesting character

I don't keep up with X-Men now, but like many of my generation, it was my gateway drug. I came in late for a kid of my generation, just prior to The Mutant Massacre, a terribly compelling and nihilistic storyline that felt like a real tragedy to the characters, at least to my extremely eager young eyes. And, of course, Claremont was captain of the X-Ship for so long, he could do things like string out the Marauders storyline over a year or two in fits and starts.

And, it did the remarkable thing of really shaking up the status quo without faking irreparable changes.

Since then, I've never understood the policy of the short runs by writers on a book. Sure, if the book is tanking, pull off the writer, but Claremont's consistent storytelling over a decade built not just the Marvel Mutant Universe we're still wrangling with today, it laid the real foundations for the X-Men movie franchises and opened the door for all of the Marvel movies.

Of course, X-Men also did all the things to me as a reader I should have learned would just keep breaking my heart as a comics fan. Claremont left and I never took to the new writers or new direction. It stopped being what I was happy with and went in a new direction that seemed to miss the point of what I was previously enjoying. It sometimes seemed to forget it's own rules. It would revel in being derivative (the Brood? I mean, really?) and try to hard to appeal to the kids sometimes (nothing made you know Claremont was not a teenager like reading "New Mutants talk about pop culture stuff" pages).

But nobody in Big 2 comics before or sense knew and loved character interaction like Claremont. Fantastic Four may have been the first family of Marvel, but X-Men caught two generations of mutants in a school and insisted life was one, long high school drama with occasional forays into fighting with the hoods from across the railroad tracks. And there was even a step-dad figure the kids didn't like when I started, as poor Magneto was made headmaster of Xavier's.

I didn't even really have a favorite X-Man. I dug the team and team dynamic. I was never too into the mini-series they'd do of a solo adventure, and maybe that's why I never took to Wolverine as a stand alone character. And the team changed. A lot. I remember a time when this best selling comic, btw, had exactly one male on the team, and that was a B-lister, Longshot. Somehow we'd wound up with a pre-ninja Psylocke, Rogue, Dazzler and maybe Storm (I can't say I remember).

I do think there was some logical, odd leap from pondering Colossus to eventually deciding Superman was okay to like as a comics-based character and not just a movie character. And I think we can all agree the Meltdown mini-series was f'ing phenomenal.

Man, being a comics fan is a weird proposition.

really, I think this is a lot closer to how Wolverine should look in the movies

There was the downside that Claremont was on long enough that he'd also start storylines and just forget to wrap them up. We'd get some shadowy figure cackling at the end of an issue, it just wouldn't come up again. Or suddenly we'd need to remember some factoid from, like, two years ago. But Claremont also wrote every issue of X-Men like it was your first issue. Which was great the first year of reading X-Men. But by year five or six, it was kind of like the "X" stood for "exposition".

Eventually Claremont left, and slowly I lost interest.

Someone made Psylocke a ninja, essentially gutting what was interesting about the character in the first place, and replacing her with a 90's-era stock-character. I wanted to like Bishop and all that stuff, but even in high school the character and his whole messy back story felt to me like someone's over-baked ideas from a notebook and less like an organic part of the orderly X-Universe of space dragons, baseball games, catch-phrases replicated nowhere else on earth, fastball specials, angsty romance, and the core of the battle for a proper representation of a minority that could be seen as a weapon of mass destruction. Terrorism versus peaceful co-existence.

It's odd when I think it's been about 17 year since I had any interest in X-Men as a comics franchise. I read the Morrison stuff (of course), but all the rest of it just doesn't appeal. So I'm never really sure if I liked Claremont or X-Men.

I still have my run of Uncanny, from issue 168 to some point after 320. It's a lot of X-Comics, and definitely one of my longer runs.

But it's been a long time since I felt sympatico with Wolverine as a character. The movies, which dug down to the essence to find something that isn't covered in forty layers of paint, wall paper and whatever else that's redecorated the Logan house since Claremont relinquished control, have been fun. I'm just not sure I need another round at this point in the game.

And I didn't even get into the whole "here's why Cyclops is actually 100x more interesting as a character" argument. You're welcome.

WB wants to be clear with you, "Man of Steel" is an action movie

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Wed, 22 May 2013 03:39:00 +0000

Apparently someone at WB was a little miffed that the prior trailers for Man of Steel were not action packed enough. Well, no worries, my attention depleted fellow citizens, WB is here to PUT ACTION IN YOUR EYEHOLES.

Anyway, looks action packed.

No Post Today

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Tue, 21 May 2013 04:50:00 +0000

Sadly, I've no pearls of wisdom to bestow upon you.

Just... nothing really going on. Did some reading. Watched more of the North America documentary. Exercised. And, of course, watched the news.

Let's all wish the best for those in the Oklahoma City area, particularly Moore. I'm heartbroken to hear of the deaths reported from the scene.

Some weekend catch-up - movies, TV and comics

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Mon, 20 May 2013 05:21:00 +0000

If you follow me on social media that is not this blog, you might have heard I had a touch of the food poisoning over the weekend. A bad salad or pizza, I think. Worst greek salad I've ever eaten, but it seemed fresh, so what do I know?

Well, I know what it feels like to get kicked in the stomach from my karate days, and this felt sort of like that, going on and on for quite a while. So, I want to thank Jamie for the 2:30 AM run to Walgreen's to grab me some OTC meds and being a great help to me over the course of the weekend. For a dialysis patient, it seems like the last year she's been taking care of me more than me of her.

I was sidelined from a planned viewing of Star Trek: Into Darkness, but I did catch a few movies over the weekend on cable and DVD.

Manhattan Melodrama with Myrna Loy, Clark Gable and William Powell was actually very, very good. Thanks to Paul, who handed me that DVD on Friday. Some 30's-era moral-minded civics lessons wrapped up with gangsterism and Myrna Loy in some great hats and dresses. The title is dated, so don't expect organ music and fainting. It's a bit more of a personal drama sort of movie.

The Campaign with Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis was probably released at the wrong time, when we were in the middle of election season and everyone was so deadly serious about politics. It's a lightweight movie in the Semi-Pro or Step Brothers model. But it's pretty funny stuff, if pretty blue. Speaking of, though it's two GOP candidates, I think you could have done this with any two candidates, aside from a few points.

Chicago, starring what's-her-name and that Catherine Zeta-Person. I like it, but I think I probably like the play that the movie is based on more than the movie itself. Great music, interesting concepts, terrific costuming (Fosse!) and choreography (FOSSE!), and I think you can give the director an editor a thumbs-up on the translation. But credit where it's due.

Watched some TV, including the season finale of Saturday Night Live* and the exit of some of the better male performers of the last decade. I'm going to miss all those guys. But a fresh crop of new faces is always a good thing (and a chance for a new sensibility).

Also watched the first episode of North America, a slickly produced Discovery nature series, the kind of thing that's always a little cheesy, always a bit saccharine, always a bit weepy, but always reminds you: you are a tiny ape-thing living in a fancy wood-cave. You are part of the space rock, and it's bigger than you in ways your monkey brain will never quite get.

And, then I watched this week's episode of Mad Men.

Holy crap.

Read a few trades.

Grant Morrison's Happy. Which seemed like a short story or one-off stretched over a thin membrane, but it basically works. Wish I hadn't been fighting food poisoning when I read it.

Superman Beyond was a disappointment. It seemed like the writers weren't that familiar with (a) Superman, (b) the world of Batman Beyond and (c) what it would mean to push the future of the DCU a few decades out (stealing money with digital sticks pointed at iPhones? Really?).

a scad of comics.

Apparently all i'm getting pulled as floppies these days are pulp-centric comics from Dynamite and Moonstone. Read some good Shadow from Roberson and Wagner, a mediocre take on a character called Black Bat, and a baffling comic that went by the name Captain Midnight but could have been called "generic people do generic team-up superheroing with no context!". Truly awful.

Anyway, by 8:00 tonight my stomach was back to fighting condition.

I owe Jamie big time for letting me rot on the sofa, while also taking care of me all weekend.

*as a guy who is fascinated with Kanye West, I was not disappointed. He managed to contain himself, but they were smart not to let the feed roll too long after he stopped performing.

It's Summer Film Series Time

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sun, 19 May 2013 17:27:00 +0000

It is true that in about a month we're going on hiatus from blogging. But that doesn't mean we're heading into cryogenic storage for the summer (although, given the spiking temps here this week, that might be preferable).

Of course, there's one little picture coming out which might have us a bit distracted.

this movie also features bonus reasons for viewing

Paramount Summer Schedule

I spent the morning going over the Paramount Summer Film Series schedule, and it's really terrific. I'm kind of bummed that I'm out of town for work for many good films, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

If you're in Austin, we can't recommend enough the Paramount Summer Series as a great way to beat the heat. Really, the Paramount, the Alamo Ritz and Barton Springs are the Holy Trifecta of avoiding boredom and sweat during the long summer months for me here in Austin.

The Paramount Summer Film Series schedule

If you're in Austin, and you want to join me for a movie, check out our calendar up there in the horizontal menu bar.

Our calendar

Stanwyck is incognito in Double Indemnity

I'm very excited that the new programmer has included a series throughout the summer called Film Noir 101. While it's mostly showing movies I've seen more than once, it's a start, and fills a gap that's been in the summer line-up the past few years.

Oddly, there's no sci-fi line-up, and I expect there'll be a remedy to that next year when the stalwarts complain.

It's always interesting to see the tastes of the programmers come through in their selections, and I think the prior programmer sometimes went a little too arty and esoteric when he wasn't running the equivalent of Golden Oldies. This year is very heavy on Golden Oldies, but I think they need that. It's not an art-house retrospective, and while I enjoyed alternative choices at the Stateside last year, I think you sort of need to make sure you're getting butts in seats.

If you do want to go and the schedule doesn't quite work, just honk at me. That schedule is slightly flexible as the movies show more than one day.

The Ritz

On May 28th, I've got tickets to go see Enter the Dragon

You guys know I love the Ritz, and it's this sort of thing that gets me back there time and again (though less these days as it ain't ever cheap walking out of there).

We'll be keeping our eye on the Ritz calendar all summer and see what else is showing.

We're seeing Forbidden Planet on the 25th

The Alamo's demographic has changed a bit, still catering to the 20-somethings, and so there's a shift in what they're showing. I don't get nostalgic for Clueless (a movie whose charms eluded me the first time around), and some of the other "retro" stuff is from my 20's heyday, so... that'll make you have a moment of pause.

Bruce Lee: The manliest man who ever manned in Enter the Dragon

They've also lost two of their main programmers, and you can feel it. I don't know if they lost the programmers because of a required shift in programming or the loss of Zack and Lars has meant the change, but it's there. Certainly the ability to program two months out seems to be gone with the wind.

The Alamo doesn't just program older movies, though, and so I'll also be using it to see the big summer flicks.

Speaking of...

Big Studio Blockbusters

It's also a good summer for big ol' summer blockbusters, all of which I think we can expect will be of varying quality.

Yesterday, I was supposed to see Star Trek: Into Darkness, but a bad pizza or salad landed me with an interesting case of food poisoning. So, yeah, I still have to see that.

Anyway, there's a lot of stuff coming up.

Obviously, I'm eagerly awaiting Man of Steel on June 14th. Also:

shut up and take my money!

Highly Likely I'll See:

Pacific Rim
Monsters University (which looks hysterical)
The Lone Ranger*
World War Z

Maybe:

This is the End
The Hangover III
The Great Gatsby

I was considering a Superman Party for Man of Steel, but on second thought - that sounds a lot like something that's going to not work very well. I mean, I might think wearing a cape and drinking sounds like a plan, but me and Red Kryptonite Superman from Superman III may be alone in that opinion.

TPR Cinema Tuesdays in San Antonio

Prom, 1993

Our own NathanC programs Cinema Tuesdays at the Santikos Bijou in San Antonio. As always, he's got a terrific line-up, and we're looking at which week or weeks we're going to buzz down to San Antonio. Last year he had an amazing program, and it was mostly fate that kept me from getting down there. This year, between The Birds (always a favorite), Barry Lyndon, King Kong and so much more... I'll be down there.

Cinema Tuesdays

your host, NathanC, sits amongst the posies

*before seeing The Lone Ranger, I have to overcome my bafflement at casting Johnny Depp as a Native American and what it means that Disney is totally comfortable with casting a white dude as a Native American dude. It all feels very 1950's.

20 years since Donna Martin Graduates

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Fri, 17 May 2013 04:09:00 +0000

I really have nothing to post about. So, here's a rarely seen picture me at work

TCB

My 20th high school reunion is in August, and I didn't want to go, but through a series of Rube Goldberg-like events, I am now attached to the facebook page for the reunion. And, man, my classmates are kind of selfish dicks.

The committee has been working for months to put together the event and make it easy to attend and not too stuffy. They announced the date this week officially I guess, and it was met with people complaining that "that's the night of my child's 'meet the teacher' night at school!" and "our family always goes to the cabin that week!". Well, (a) how or why would the committee know that? and (b) shut up. It's been twenty years. Don't let the first thing we see from you in two decades wind up being some kind of whining that we didn't know it was the same night as Kaylie's ballet recital.

I'm still not convinced I'm going because I see no evidence in the invitation of an open bar, which is the only thing that would make the evening tolerable on some levels. Well, that and maybe sitting in a corner with Marshall and getting his take.

But, yeah. Mostly - 20 years. More time than I was alive when I exited high school.

How do I explain that mostly I spent the last two decades thinking about Superman and avoiding getting a job where I'd have to wear a tie? That I didn't have kids? That I married a great girl, but when I asked her if she wanted to come to this thing, she figured she had less important ways to spend her time?

We had that Drama Club mini-reunion in March, and this much I learned: I thought I had a pretty good recollection of high school, but it's all about what was meaningful to you at the time. Ie: I didn't remember any of the anecdotes that people remembered in which I was involved, and they didn't really remember much of my own stories.

I remember things like how good the Hostess banana pies were in the snack machine and mostly feeling tired all the time as my school started at 7:30 (honestly, who tells high schoolers to be at school and in class at 7:30?).

Today I was talking to a colleague about "going to shows", and I realized how completely easy on me my folks were when I was in high school so long as I kept my GPA up and I didn't get my girlfriend pregnant*. At 16 or so, I drove across Texas with Jason and my pal Scott to pick up a friend in Austin, then go to the first Lollapalooza tour in Dallas. I was running around downtown Houston, and so long as I made it back by curfew, no big deal. And this was Houston in an era when stuff could be a little shady downtown. But so long as I got my homework done, I was off going to shows on a school night.

Also today I was driving into work listening to an old This American Life podcast and was reminded that a guy I went to high school once popped up on This American Life. I was reminded of this because he popped up again on my iPod in a rerun of the show I hadn't listened to, even though it had aired last year. Finding out the guy you did The Crucible with in high school and who did NOT share your interest in The Mighty Mighty Bosstones in 1991 is now in LA via the one sentence bio on the story is a weird way to keep up with people. This same guy once appeared in my kitchen at midnight with our own NathanC, and we all had coffee.

The past collides with the present, and the internet makes it happen.

In general, I know where people are. I don't always need the help of Ira Glass. Even the people I was marginally friends with who I liked - most of us found each other over the years through social media or whatever. Sure, I hid some of them (many of them), but I can look them up within Facebook if I need to find out what became of them.

I dunno. 20 years seems like a long time, but the older we get, it's funny how some things fade, some things are thrown into relief, and some things seem as present now as they did then.

I am not uncomfortable seeing people, and I am aware that old wounds and old ideas about people will surface whether you want them to or not. And I am aware that it's also been 20 years, and if the whole thing looks like its about to throw us all back into being 18, I'm not sure that's entirely necessary.

Bear in mind, we moved when I was 15. I was half-way out the door when I showed up, and was in a game of clock watching from the minute the first bell rang my sophomore year. I have no idea who 80% of the people are who are listed in the invitation. Not a clue. As I said - time does funny things.

Still, it might be funny. Especially if I show up dressed in a white admiral's outfit.

*thanks, Mom and Dad!

Keep Calm

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Fri, 17 May 2013 00:33:00 +0000

Supermarathon! Adventures of Superman: Superman on Earth! and The Haunted Lighthouse!

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Thu, 16 May 2013 03:34:00 +0000

Few shows change tonally over a few seasons so much as The Adventures of Superman. And I kind of love all the takes. Really, I can't think of anything I don't like about The Adventures of Superman.

in the old days, Superman didn't need a scaly outfit and proudly wore his pants really high

When the show started, it reflected the Superman vs. Crime vibe of the early comics, and it was probably seen as doing the show a whole lot cheaper if you just put a fedora on a stock actor and put a rubber pistol in their hand and had Superman throw the mug in jail. By Season 5, we've got robots and pirates and all sorts of nonsense.

I rewatched the first two episodes of The Adventures of Superman, and they hold up pretty well. The pilot, "Superman on Earth" gives us the Kryptonian Council poo-pooing Jor-El's findings in a manner one would pretty much expect of any scientist in the US going before a House Committee on Science and explaining they'd discovered Earth was about to blow. It's damn inconvenient, it is.

Robert Rockwell gets the thankless role of Jor-El, having to explain to everyone, and everyone sort of half-listening that maybe the whole planet is doomed. He seems beleagured in a way many others who have taken on the role don't choose to convey (we'll see what Mr. Crowe goes for).

On Earth, Super-baby is discovered by Eben and Sarah Kent (not Ethan and Mary, as they appeared in the serial), two sort of rubish hillbillies. With Pa Kent's passing, Ma Kent sends the now fully grown George Reeves off to the big city. He decides to get a job at the Daily Planet as a reporter despite a lack of credentials.

Perry White, Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane - our key players for the next few seasons, are introduced, but Lois is played by the lovely Phyllis Coates in Season 1, rather than the lovely Noel Neill who took the role back from her place in the serials with Season 2.

Phyllis Coates was a little bit of a Betty

Anyway, some dude is dangling from a blimp, Superman saves him, Kent gets the interview and the job.

Pretty simple stuff, but effective in conveying the now well understood mechanics of the Superman origin. By Episode 2 we're all old friends, and aren't making time anymore for learning about who is who.

I had forgotten "The Haunted Lighthouse" featured a narrator's voice over by Superman, and a pretty dastardly group of hoodlums threatening old Jimmy Olsen. It's typical of many of the Season 1 episodes in that it feels a lot more taught than the Season 2 approach.

If you get me in a quiet moment of honesty, you'll catch me talking about how great I think George Reeves is as Superman. If Morrison was trying to get the essence of a Superman who seems at ease with his powers and his world, this is the best one on film. Chris Reeve's was required to be a bit more stoic as Superman, and his Clark Kent was a world of difference from George Reeves' Clark - who was never much different from Superman, aside from the outfits.

Also, it's the least forced costume of the various movie and TV iterations. The cape makes sense, hanging loose from the shoulders, much more so than piling it into the collar as you see in everything more modern. This is a Superman who stays in motion. And looks cool jumping in through windows and busting through fake walls. It's just a really fun show, and I always get a little bummed that so few die-hard comic fans don't do more to sample it. It may not be as wild as the Silver Age comics, but it's such a great bit of superhero media.

The Adventures of Superman is really the number one thing I'd recommend to friends considering how to get their kids into Superman. You might need the Season 2 color episodes, but the Season 1 take is a great ride in itself.

My Plan for America

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Wed, 15 May 2013 17:28:00 +0000

As political discourse embraces its state as a shouting match between competing conspiracy theories and theorists, when faced with political chatter, linkbait headlines, paranoid articles, cable "news" shows and propaganda - I will now mentally replace all of them in my mind's narrative with The Dead Milkmen's "Stuart".

SuperMOOC Week 6 - wrapping it up with Gender Through Comics

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Wed, 15 May 2013 04:56:00 +0000

Fortunately for me, my class extended it's timeline by a few days without adding any additional content, and so I was able to finish last night despite the fact that I'd basically missed a week thanks to work and other factors.

This is what I think about when I consider returning to grad school, by the way. I travel for work. Really, an online program would be ideal for me to get a masters at long last, as I can't match the attendance that comes with being a 23 year old with nothing else going on but growing facial hair and caring about what sort of beer I'm drinking. I'm seriously considering the need for an MA, but, man, the idea of walking into a classroom again at age 38 or 39 sounds like a nightmare.

Yes, I agree that the education system and how we deal with college degrees in the US is broken, but the trend to want to turn colleges into trade schools also isn't really an option (they have something for that. It's called Trade School). MOOCs are seen as a possible way to share courses across universities, and it sounds good on paper. But I was sitting through a presentation at my conference last week and one of the presenters pointed out that most parents paying for someone's degree really don't want to hear that their kid was in a class with 40,000 other students, only 10% of which completed the course. It's really opening the door for private schools and any university to stroke parents on college tours to promise a generation of helicopter parents that their kids will get special attention by sitting in a class with just 50-100 kids.

But I digress.

I finished the requirements of the class, passed the easy evaluations, but did not create a comic that, as the class asked, discussed a time I felt "gendered". I had no real intention of creating a comic, even a one-pager, and I am pretty sure my ability to say much on the issue of gender as a privileged white guy wasn't going to make for an enthralling five or six panels, anyhow. At best, I'd wind up sounding like one of the countless folks in the discussion board for the class parroting back the course objectives.

Of the stages in Bloom's Taxonomy, the cartoon was supposed to be the "Synthesis" portion, but it was assigned early on in a fairly short course. Part of the problem is that I'm not sure the course ever really engaged the student enough to get beyond "Comprehension" and may have hovered, basically, at "Knowledge". The students knew what the teacher just said, did the readings with some hint of application of why we were reading the materials, but no follow through from the instructor on what we were to glean, nor any assessment of what we'd learned from the course materials and readings. The Discussion areas were intended to provide some of that growth, but as a largely unmoderated cacophony, there was no management of the discussion.

There's probably some way to blame the instructor for not tying together the course materials in a way that made a more cohesive argument - I have strong memories of courses from my film studies of instructors who found out it was routine to schedule screenings of movies in RTF classes and did so, but forgot to directly tie the screenings back to the other materials and exercises - and once we were onto that, the students stopped attending the screenings mid-way through the semester.

There's a struggle in MOOCs in that they don't want to "require" readings that will cost the student anything, but that is going to severely hamper the discussion. This course asked us to read a lot of comics which cost about $70 total, which ain't that bad, really, for a course text. The rest of the materials were either Open Access or available through other public means.

However, I also think the instructional designers who were around to assist Blanch with the course needed to work with her to better put the package together. There was a lot of focus on slick production values, and less on how students actually learn. At the end of the course I was given a survey and was asked of I was given ample opportunity to interact with the course, and then was listed multiple tools for interaction, and, no... I wasn't offered lots of quizzes, but I had a huge number of chances to use the discussion boards. Which I didn't do. So not even the survey felt like it was well thought out.

I've joined a MOOC Special Interest Group through my office, and we've been talking a lot about the models available. I'm also not as Pollyanna-ish about all this as some of my colleagues and haven't really embraced much formality in my "lifelong learning". Some people really get excited about the classroom experience, but I'd like to see a course that doesn't make learning feel like work. Because, since I graduated from college, I've learned a lot, and very, very little of it has felt like work. Even what I've learned AT work.

I'd also like to see the discussions where there's no line between "distance education", "eLearning" and "MOOCs" clarified. The stats that demonstrate that distance education can be successful are talking about a very different audience than what MOOCs court.

What you're always going to get, that is going to make pulling back out of MOOCs difficult, will be the stories of how you reached some person in some remote location with your course, and how much it meant to them. And from that perspective, it's a greater good. If this course taught someone is Lower Slabovia to consider constructs of gender in society and in media with greater acuity, then: great! Perhaps there is a model for this that will fit within the missions and business models of modern universities.

We'll see.

Again, my primary interest in the course was less about Gender through Comics, and more to try out a MOOC and experience the format. It was professional curiosity. In my last week I'm choosing not to dwell on the arguments I didn't think one could make with various ideas presented in the course, or some of the places where I felt unnecessary or unfair stereotyping was at play in order for the instructor to make a point. But I did want to look a bit more into the model of what the course set out to accomplish.

In a way, I did myself a disservice as I was taking a course that was both an intro to gender discussion through media, and I did that two decades ago in college, and I like to think I lightly brush up against the topic all the time in various forms here and elsewhere. And, I know comics as well or better than the instructor, and that kept me from being as engaged as I could have been.

I do plan to try another course system and try out another course, hopefully over the summer.

Ouch. A Little DC Comics Schadenfreude for your evening.

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Tue, 14 May 2013 19:19:00 +0000

Immature? Yes.
Unnecessary? Yes.
Hilarious? Absolutely.

Your browser does not support iframes.

Read more about DC's PR goofs at The Outhouse.

A functioning sign for keeping track of how often DC Comics has done something publicly very stupid.

All this as they cancel another slate of books, alienate another round of readers, and the publishing side erodes into a nu-metal album cover and licensing flails around, still making money but relying mostly on movie materials and pre-1986 images.

Thanks to CanadianSimon for the link.

Happy Birthday, David Byrne

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Tue, 14 May 2013 17:17:00 +0000

Happy Birthday to David Byrne. Writer, musician and artist.

Today, David Byrne is 61.

Byrne is best known for his tenure with The Talking Heads, the art-punk band that was part of the late-70's, early-80's scene out of CBGB's. He has written a few books, from The Bicycle Diaries to Strange Ritual. His lyrics are rarely about the usual topics of newfound love, love gone wrong or partying all night. Even in his most recent collaboration with St. Vincent, he's still singing about his relationship with television and mass media.

His musical stylings have constantly changed over the years, from the plunky sounds of early Talking Heads to the Latin rhythms of the final Heads album, Naked, to experiments in electronic rhythms, and now he's employing a small marching band on his current tour. In between, he's mixed dance beats with strings (live) and written brilliantly subversive pop tunes. It's also worth checking out his albums The Forest and The Catherine Wheel for something completely different, as well as the Brian Eno collaboration My Life in the Bush of Ghosts for a shockingly forward looking concept album that used tape loops and effects to presage what others would soon do with samplers and as computers entered the music industry.

The concert film, Stop Making Sense, is an art house darling for both the performance and art direction - he and other members of the band attended the Rhode Island Institute of Design. I also find the movie True Stories a lovely outsider's view of Texas in the 1980's.

I've seen Byrne play about five times, and every time the show is worth the cost of admission. Seriously, the man knows how to put on a great show.

He's prolific enough that I have a hard time keeping up with his output in books, movie scores and other work. His concert DVDs are always a blast (Jason often gifts me with them at Christmas or birthdays).

In an era when of celebrity becoming an artform, Byrne has remembered that art comes first - as music, film, words or otherwise. Byrne appreciates pop music, and I can't recommend his cover of "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" enough, but he's clearly not wired to be a part of any particular trend or concept of popular music. He's just doing his own thing, and if we show up to see him do it, great!

The last show I saw him at was a packed house that normally shows travelling Broadway plays. Lots of seats, and people were dancing a good portion of the show. With the age of his crowd, that's a pretty darn good sign.

Here he is with Annie Clark (aka: St. Vincent)

and if he gets back to it, Byrne's blog is actually very interesting stuff.

Neverending Battle Fatigue

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Tue, 14 May 2013 04:26:00 +0000

I recently attended a small Toy and Comic Expo here in Central Texas. I say small, but it had major cast members of The Walking Dead in attendance* (I don't watch the show, and I still recognized them), the event filled a few ballrooms, and had a Batmobile (you saw the pictures. No reason for me to show off further.).

But I also walked out without buying anything.

I've talked here before about how Cons are not my cup of tea, but at this Con, I felt like such an outside observer that I felt like I was at someone else's party.

how your comics blogger feels on the inside

I quit writing posts on how I was cutting back my DC Comics selections, and in short order, I will have stopped buying any new DC Comics. I just can't buy the new Superman stuff (Scott Lobdell on both main titles, really?) just to bridge my collection, just as I avoid the 90's mullet-era Superman for the convoluted contortions the writers were going through as they wrestled with the Post-Crisis rules imposed on Superman.

I don't understand the enthusiasm for most of today's comics from DC and Marvel, but I do get my fix from other books - like the stuff coming from MonkeyBrain, some from Dynamite and IDW, but my pull list has shrunk to about 3-4 comics on a good week. Last week I didn't pull anything, and I see about a week per month where that's true. Looking at the solicits for an upcoming month tells me that stepping away means it would be work to even try to get back into any of these comics, and at the cost and high likelyhood of a comic at DC getting the axe, it's not really worth it.

Walking around the con, I could identify only a fraction of the costumes on the attendees, and then, mostly from commercials I'd seen for video games while watching shows aimed at a younger demographic, like Archer.

We get older. We move on.

I've said before that I felt part of my enthusiasm for superhero comics was that it felt that the DC Universe and Marvel U's were working toward something in the wake of the 1980's quantum leap in talent, storytelling and risk taking. I started writing about comics because I felt the narratives were rich enough to explore and share - a strong enough stone that I could sharpen my own writing by writing about what was out there.

I do think geekdom has changed. The idea of challenging readers seems to just anger the current crop of folks who make up the audience. Package it. Repackage it. Let me buy the t-shirt and/or CosPlay, and understand from a tumblr site that old comics are weeeeird. It's intended to be fun and disposable and read on a phone and the universe will provide more whenever I want it.

It's a way to approach the fandom, but when charges of fake geeks - guy or girls - get dropped - I think this is at the heart of the argument. Fandom, that geek-cred, was an earned credit of money and time spent, "knowledge" gained through work and effort. I don't even know what I'm looking at when I'm online and stumble across someone talking about how their fan-fic is the way they see the characters - and that's their version. I used to use the word "entitled" so much, I excised it from my vocabulary, but I'm otherwise at a loss for a word.

I can't say I'm interested in a comic about yet another twist on an idea - no more Superman knock-offs unless you're Mark Waid or Alan Moore. No more zombies. No more apes - with a funny hat or whatever your take. No more writers believing that mashing up internet memes and cute things is adorable.

There's a 3 day "Brony" conference coming to Austin this fall. 3 days. Of My Little Pony. I know, I know... I can't throw stones, but... running a conference is hard work. It's exhausting. My professional conference, with guest speakers, panels, workshops, etc.. was only, really, about two days. And we're talking about preserving the scholarly and research record of western civilization.

I can't begin to fathom what 3 days of Brony fandom even looks like...

As much as I surround myself with my trophies and collections here in this... fortress of solitude... I am still seeking the path for how or if I will continue to engage in what's been a lifelong hobby and, sure, passion. I like a challenge. I want to take that on myself, but I also want for genre comics to come back at me and show me what they've got.

By virtue of comics blogging, I cannot help but feel I am part of the problem. Or would be, if my readership crested 40 on a given comics post.

When I project what a post Man of Steel world looks like, if the movie is successful, there are two likely tracks for how the character will be re-absorbed into the zeitgeist - and it's up to the producers to make sure it's not in the mold of how the Punisher and Venom have been embraced as these weird totschkes of low-brow bad-assery. I'd like to hope we'll do one better, even as Superman and the "S" are used to move candy bars and whatever else WB can slap the images on.

If I'm hanging it up the week of June 17th (and I am), it's for many, many reasons. I do need a break. 10 years, y'all.

*I look forward to the first Mad Men Con. It'll be all dressing natty, being horrible to each other, drinking and avoiding the riding lawn mower.

Canadian Astronaut aboard ISS covers Bowie's "Space Oddity"

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Mon, 13 May 2013 04:33:00 +0000

Commander Chris Hadfield, Canadian Astronaut, is aboard the ISS and covered some Bowie - mixing it up a bit to reflect his experience. Really, after this cover, not sure there's any point in anyone else every trying their hand at this tune again.

We've all seen Earth from space a hundred times before, privileged as we are to live in an era when people travel into space. But, man...

Here's to Commander Hadfield and all aboard the ISS.

Thanks to Slicing Up Eyeballs for the link.

Let's hope Commander Hadfield gets to cover "Life on Mars".

Now I actually kind of want to see Gatsby...

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sun, 12 May 2013 16:40:00 +0000

Finally saw Iron Man 3

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sat, 11 May 2013 20:40:00 +0000

In Robert Downey Jr.'s fourth turn as Ol' Shell Head, we see what Marvel is going to need to wrestle with as its franchises become as familiar as James Bond or Santa Claus. What now? What's next? What superhero trope are we going to check out from the library and use for this movie?

Well, this was the "strip him of everything he has" story/ "what is the hero without his powers?" angle. And it works better than you'd think. Sure, you get limited armor action, but writer/ director Shane Black makes sure to resolve any deficits you might be feeling with a big, explosive conclusion that should make you forget that for 90% of the movie, Tony Stark is not in the suit.

Like the first Iron Man film, this one reflects back the headlines of the modern era, with a mix of politics, elusive terrorists, media management, and a few other bits that I don't want to get into for spoilery reasons. The gang is back together, from Paltrow as Pepper Potts, to Don Cheadle as Rhodey. Tony might not be doing so well in the wake of the Avengers' first team-up as he wrestles with PTSD, meanwhile continuing to explore the limits of the man-machine combination he's become and continues to explore as he seeks to build a better suit of armor.

I'm not telling you kids anything you don't already know.

It was a big step up from Iron Man 2.
I like that they tried to make better use of Pepper - but wish they had not gone back to the well for how women usually end up treated in superhero movies (especially given the fact that the movie kind of hinged on the idea of "contingencies").
I like the acknowledgment of kids as a big chunk of the audience, without making me cringe through the movie.
The Air Force 1 sequence was exhilarating.
And I think they actually tied the themes together in a way that felt organic to the character's prior appearances.
The villains in this one were nicely different, if a bit telegraphed
It definitely pulls from a few comics I'd read and made me have to remember stuff from Marvel Comics I hadn't read in two decades (oh, yeah... Roxxon Oil..!). So the Marvel U proper is definitely part of the movie world now

They say that RD Jr. is saying he won't come back for a 4th movie, and maybe that's true, or maybe he's working on contract negotiations. I wouldn't want to be the schmuck trying to step into his jet-boots.

Fun, summer action movie and pleasantly free of signs that the Avengers franchise is beginning to decay.

However...

The guy who sat down next to me, somewhere around my age - maybe a bit younger - was enjoying the Alamo Drafthouse pre-show and incorrectly identifying characters from old Marvel cartoons, including - somehow - identifying The Mandarin as Bane.

If "Fake Geek" is an issue - this guy was definitely one. It's weird to hear someone so obviously enthusiastic (and trying to show off) misidentify characters and have to just sit there, biting your tongue. What do I have to gain from turning on two total strangers and blurting: "Oh, for God's sake! Psylocke? Really? She has a bronze mask and a pistol. Clearly that's Madame Masque!"

For a long time, that sort of ability to identify and categorize was a key element to demonstrating the work you'd done to be a good comic geek, and now the breadth and depth of superhero comics has entered into the popular consciousness, thanks to movies and the long tail of older-skewing comics and cartoons.

Luckily, the dude was kind enough to shut up by the time the movie started, but the second the credits rolled...

Supermarathon: Superman II - Theatrical Cut

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sat, 11 May 2013 15:16:00 +0000

Common wisdom states that Superman II is the better of the first two Superman movies starring Christopher Reeve, and I'd posit that wisdom is based mostly upon half-remembered screenings by kids who last saw the movies sometime during the Reagan administration. It's not that I don't like the movie, but I think from a storytelling and filmmaking perspective, the first of the two is vastly stronger.

Yes, Superman II is the Superman film where he fights Zod, Ursa and Non. Yes, it is exciting, and a decent movie, but it back-pedals the Superman films into campy territory and gave the producers license to engage in the slow decline of the Superman franchise that would ultimately end in the half-assed Superboy TV show that was the capstone on the Salkind era of Superman filmed media.

I like Superman II, but knowing the history of the film explains so much about the uneven texture of the movie that watching the original theatrical cut - the post-Donner version - that you sort of want to cringe during many parts of the movie, and watching them in quick succession very much highlights the weaknesses in the sequel.

The cast has gone on record (especially the actors who played the Kryptonian villains) with their displeasure with director Richard Lester, who replaced Richard Donner after the Salkinds removed the first director from the picture after Superman: The Movie (and despite its tremendous success). And you can really tell. Whole scenes are shot with a television set-up, and the lighting, make-up and even hair seems to shift dramatically throughout the film, with some parts showing the care Richard Donner put into the first film and others showing the characters genuinely looking a bit rough. Really, watch the lighting and Margot Kidder from one scene to another (and in one case - within the scene). You can see where the film is treated with care and where it seems everyone is walking through the motions.

Really, not much of the plot of Superman II makes any sense - from Lara's insistence that Superman lose his powers to love "a mortal", to the decidedly not-Superman-like powers shown by the Phantom Zone villains, such as the finger blasts and telekinesis. And the movie is incredibly slap-sticky. That battle we all remember from Superman II is full of some oddball gags by the actors on the street that just don't work very well.*

Despite all this, the movie works. It set the stage for the pattern most certainly Marvel has relied upon - of the "evil opposite" facing off against their hero - especially one that's tied directly into their hero's past or origin story. It also features the "loss of powers and need to regain them" that's so familiar to sequels in superhero franchises. There's a clear threat and the villains aren't buffoonish. Superman shows terrific humanity, even if the options provided him by the plot don't always make sense.

Clearly the Kryptonian villains are effective, and the attack on both small-town America and the White House is what set Zod as the villain the public associates with Superman as much as Lex Luthor despite being a minor character in the comics. And, in many ways, it's arguable that the new movie, Man of Steel, is the version of the first two movies crammed together to make the one movie with none of the awkwardness and live up to the way we want to remember it from 1980.

It's worth noting that Superman: The Movie and Superman II have a long and convoluted production history. The two films were planned together after Mario Puzo (yes, THAT Mario Puzo) handed in a 500 page draft of a screenplay to the Salkinds. The time travel bit from the end of Superman I was originally slated for the end of Superman II, and the end of both movies was somewhat improvised. Instead, we get an ending where it seems Superman and Lois jointly straight up murder the Kryptonian villains - something movie audiences are used to, but not something very satisfying in the world of Superman.

I still think it's a fun Superman movie to get someone into the idea of Superman, and it does fit reasonably well with Superman: The Movie, but these days I prefer the Donner cut of the movie which was released circa 2006.

*There's a guy in a sequined vest on roller skates who rolls backward down the street as Zod and Ursa cow the crowd of angry Metropolitans with their super-breath. It's all family friendly and in good fun - but it's not exactly the stuff of high art.

Your Humble Blogger and His Next Ride

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Fri, 10 May 2013 14:53:00 +0000

P5041141, a photo by thekgb2010 on Flickr.

from the Central Texas Toy and Comic Expo

Jason and I went to San Marcos on Saturday. I don't collect much Batman stuff as there's so much stuff out there with the Bat logo on it. But I have always been fascinated with the various iterations of the Batmobile, largely because of the Batman '66 version, the 1989 version and the various looks from Norm Breyfogle when I started reading comics.

You will never not get me to get excited over a well manufactured replica.

Supermarathon! Superman: Unbound

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Fri, 10 May 2013 04:28:00 +0000

I watched the new DC Animation feature release, Superman: Unbound - roughly based on the pretty good Superman comic run by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank, Superman: Brainiac.

The movie is unbound* by post-Crisis continuity and can do as it likes with the story. Truthfully, I couldn't really recall the comics too much as the original story folded in on itself into the New Krypton comics that kind of, frankly ruined the good vibe left by Brainiac, which I recall really liking. Now, that series pulled the various post-Crisis versions of Brainiac into a single version in an elegant and narrative driven manner, merging the ideas into a worthy version of the 1950's version of Brainiac that suddenly became Superman's deadliest enemy. It was pretty keen.

In fact, one of the few "action" statues I have from DC Direct is the one where Superman is pulling apart Brainiac robots.

Jamie decided this was too action-packed and made me put it in my office

The story brings to the surface Superman's desire to protect Lois and a newly arrived Supergirl, and tries to be a bit grown-up storytelling rather than just focusing on retelling a story from the comics or leaning completely on the intricacies of superheroing. There's a full cast at the Daily Planet, with Steve Lombard, Cat Grant, Jimmy Olsen, Ron Troupe and Perry, and it makes me long for the days when it seemed like DC was on the cusp of reinstating the human element to Superman comics, pre-JMS catastrophe and Nu-52 relaunch.

I have to say, the voice casting by Andrea Romano was some of the strongest of the new voices she's tried. Matt Bomer (shout out, Spring, TX!) as Superman/ Clark does a great job, and Molly Quinn really knocks it out of the park as Supergirl, taking what could have been a shrill or whiny part and making it sympathetic. And, as Lois is front and center here, I was a fan of Stana Katic's tough-as-nails Lois.

The story is large in scope, but doesn't feel mashed into the running time. I was able to buy the timeline, even if I suppose it helped that the movie does use shorthand for Kryptonian history, etc... that, possibly it might be a little hard to follow. Maybe. I have no idea. But I did like how the movie moved between the work-place of the Planet to the reaches of space, and it never felt like an odd jump.

Kara's storyline does end on a bit of an open note, especially in comparison to the Superman/ Lois denouement. But it is a fairly complete idea, giving Kara an extra level of humanity rather than just being the bratty teenager DC seems to want to revert her to but Johns and Sterling gates managed to eliminate in a few issues. She has memories of what happened on Krypton when Brainiac took Kandor and the horror of losing the entire city.

In short, I respected the writing choices of the movie, something I have to attribute to DC Animation's dedication to real storytelling rather than just slamming characters into one another for a fight.

This is the first of the James Tucker-era movies, and while I will always appreciate how Bruce Timm led DC Animation to such amazing heights over the past 20 years, it's interesting to see the regime change and what the new thinking is at DC Animation. I like the mix of familiar-from-the-comic elements mixed with the necessity of the stand-alone movie. And the art-style seemed to work, even while I missed Gary Frank's careful rendering.

Of the DC Superman movies, this one seems to be a part of the curve toward understanding the character, and really delivering a solid, stand-alone movie I could recommend to a lot of people. That said, it is PG-13, it is a bit violent and bloody, and I could have done without some of the violence and shot selection I think a more mature director would have known wasn't necessary.

*you see what I did there?

Ray Harryhausen Merges with the Infinite

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Wed, 08 May 2013 03:37:00 +0000

I think I only checked out five books from the library at UT for pleasure reading while I was a student and, two of them were on Ray Harryhausen. In college, I had dreams of becoming an animator- and then computers happened. But until then, I really wanted to know how Harryhausen became the master he undoubtedly was when it came to creating fantastic imagery for the silver screen.

I was sad to hear of Harryhausen's passing when a tweet or two mentioned it and I saw the headline when I got back to my hotel room.

If you don't know Ray Harryhausen, he's easy enough to investigate. He was one of the greatest FX artists in the world, spawning a world in which we eventually had movies with AT-ATs and Terminators, and his understanding of motion foretold what the CGI era would bring to the big pictures. But he did it with tangible artistry in stop motion effects.

Harryhausen brought us Greek Titans, dinosaurs, Venusian aliens, angry skeleton armies and an endless stream of characters that mingled with live action players and fired the imagination.

I've only seen a handful of his movies (and I'm not even sure which Sinbad movies I have and haven't seen... I'd have to watch them again), but Clash of the Titans came out in 1981, and all we knew was that it was amazing.

If you've never tried to film animation by hand, it's a frame-by-frame feat of utter concentration and requires determination and love for what one is doing on a scale there whipper-snappers and their computers and whatnot from today probably get, but they do it at a monitor, not hunched over a table with lights, moving the neck of the monsters a tiny, tiny increment for every exposure - and every frame could be the last if something happens between clicks.

It's obsessive work, and craftsmanship that's fading from mainstream American film - especially as the

So long, Mr. Harryhausen.

Possibly Otherwise Occupied

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Mon, 06 May 2013 04:05:00 +0000

It's May, and that means I'm once again helping to run the conference my organization throws every year.

Really, tomorrow is sort of a Board of Directors meeting prior to the conference, and then from Tuesday morning until Wednesday night, I'm going to be participating in all sorts of conference malarkey. This year I don't present (by choice), and I'm mostly lurking, hoping to actually enjoy the show.

It's a libraries conference, and you KNOW these people are going to want to party.

they're gonna get crazy and talk @#$% about the Dewey Decimal System

The reason I post here is: I'm going to be out of commission for a few days.

You guys are on your own. Try not to leave the place too much of a mess.