Michael Hutchison: May 2006 Archives
Have you all seen the list of Spoilers for Every Movie Ever Made?
Can anyone tell me which movie this describes? "It was really the good sister that tried to kill the bad sister."
Legendary cartoonist Alex Toth, designer of many beloved Hanna Barbera characters of the 1960s and 70s such as Space Ghost, the Superfriends and the Herculoids, has passed away at age 78.
If you like Cartoon Network's Adult Swim shows "Space Ghost: Coast to Coast," "Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law" and "Sealab 2021", Alex Toth designed all those characters. He also invented 7-Zark-7 for "Battle of the Planets".
I notice that Toth's IMDb entry doesn't even include most of the shows he's famous for; I imagine his entry will be brought up to date soon.
RIP.
| You Passed 8th Grade Math |
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I wish it would tell me which one I got wrong.
Fox News, which surely wouldn't concoct an entertainment story just to show pictures of hot models, has a feature on the New X-Babes.
We'd like to welcome Russell T. Burlingame, a contributor to Fanzing.com (the magazine we ran from 1997 to 2003). Welcome back, old friend! Russ will be doing comic book reviews and such.
I was going to go to the midnight showing of "X-Men 3: Last Mutant Standing" just so I could write a review for Monitor Duty.
Then I realized that I was seriously going to pay full price to watch this movie until 2AM, then come home and probably write for two hours before crawling to bed and going to work in the morning, all so you could find out what a guy who's not a Marvel fan thinks about a movie that he'll surely enjoy on a general level... and I said, "Screw it."
Marvel fans are going to be far more interested in what a whiney mouth-breather has to complain about re: the inadequacies of the performances, how they got this or that mutant totally wrong and how the director isn't up to the standards of the last director, etc. Thus, anything I say on the matter will be ignored as soon as I mention that I only know the X-Men from the movies.
Mark Steyn reruns his reviews for X-Men 1 and 2.
"What the hell is an Aluminum Falcon?"
Seth Green's "Robot Chicken" shows the ending of the first Star Wars movie from Emperor Palpatine's perspective.
Yes, that's Family Guy's Seth MacFarlane as Palpatine. And correct me if I'm wrong, but is that Seth Green playing HIMSELF? If not, who is he supposed to be?
Warning: This is a Rated R trailer.
Mark Steyn's review of "Mrs. Brown" (scroll down to second item) makes me want to watch the movie again. I've seen Mrs. Brown almost ten times, but apparently there are still subtleties that I've missed.
Another advance peak brought to you by Monitor Duty!
Flushed Away sounds like a typical fish-out-of-water movie...or pet mouse in sewage movie, in this case... and the plot may not be much. DreamWorks was showing a very in-the-works demo last year at WizardWorld Chicago, and I was about to walk by when some evil rat gangsters emerge from sewer tunnels and begin chasing our hero's boat. They're reminiscent of the jet ski-riding Smokers in "Waterworld", except that they're riding cake mixers! That's funny enough to make me see the movie on that basis alone. Oh...and it's the first computer animated film by Aardman animation (Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run).
In other "new trailer" news, one of my favorite children's books is becoming a Walden Media movie. "How To Eat Fried Worms" is about a kid who agrees to a challenge to swallow worms. This should be a very gross, very enjoyable movie to take your kids to. I don't imagine it will sell much popcorn.
Short summary: "Aquaman" appears to be Smallville but with more opportunities for scantily clad women. :-) The trailer is now online, even though the Aquaman show didn't make it to the fall schedule for the CW (WB + UPN merger).
Comic Book Resources reports that Aquaman may still be picked up as a mid-season replacement.
Frankly...this looks BETTER than Smallville! It's not grounded in a midwestern town that is far busier than it should be. Instead, there's an ocean of possibilities, with a dad in the military, a mom missing in Atlantis, mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle and a compelling lead actor. I sure hope it gets picked up.
Harper's Magazine will be the first mainstream American magazine to show the Mohammed cartoons which lead to the cartoon wars a few months back. Art Spiegelman, the artist behind one of the world's most acclaimed graphic novels, Maus (available in both paperback and hardcover collected editions), will be analyzing the cartoons and rating their offensiveness on a "fatwa bomb meter."
Hat Tip to Michelle Malkin, who analyzes and refutes a few of Spiegelman's comments.
It's nice to see a few people have the guts of a South Park resident, as transcribed by John Noonan:
Freedom of speech is at stake here, don't you all see? If anything, we should all make cartoons of Mohammed and show the terrorists and the extremists that we are all united in the belief that every person has a right to say what they want. Look people, it's been really easy for us to stand up for free speech lately. For the past few decades, we haven't had to risk anything to defend it. One of those times is right now. And if we aren't willing to risk what we have now, then we just believe in free speech, but won't defend it.
I've not really been talking much about the movie "The Da Vinci Code" because it seemed a fait accompli. It's going to be a huge hit like the book was, and it'll tick off a lot of Christians with its insulting premise. Done and done, so what's to talk about?
Well, it turns out it may not be a humongo hit after all, as both critical screenings and its debut at the Cannes film festival have resulted in pans, jeers, catcalls... even a full burst of laughter at the movie's key dramatic moment. It's getting poor reviews from Variety and The Hollywood Reporter.
"Dirty Harry" at Libertas has this to say:
I think it was Jason [Apuzzo] who hoped “The DaVinci Code” would be this decade's “Bonfire of the Vanities.” In other words: a huge bestselling novel would become a disastrous film starring Tom Hanks.Libertas also has a collection of funny lines from initial reviews.
The plot's so-so, the romance is not believable, the film is bloated... and given that Cannes attendees and film critics would generally be in favor of anything flipping the bird to the faithful, it must be pretty bad for them to admit this. After all, this isn't what happened with "The Last Temptation of Christ" in the late 1980s. As detailed in his "Hollywood vs. America," Michael Medved left a screening with critics who were bemoaning how awful the film was, but those same critics wrote positive reviews; when Medved confronted one of them, he was told that the critic didn't want to appear to be on the same side with the Bible-thumpers calling it blasphemous.
Adding oil to the fire is Ian McKellen's "the Beatles are more famous than Jesus" moment.
Of course, the movie may be a colossal hit anyway. Audiences go to movies that are universally panned all the time.
Mark Steyn, meanwhile, says that the book itself is so bad that even the title was awful. Since Leonardo da Vinci means Leonardo comes from Vinci, it's like calling a book about my life "The From Fond Du Lac Code".
+ /_\
That's the emoticon for More Cowbell
An alternative is 101° Rx = + /_\ which translates to "I have a fever, and the only cure is more cowbell!"
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Yes, I... hmmm... yes. Yes, I think I will pick up a copy of "52" issue #13.
Why?
It was seven years ago this week that something amazing happened. Something that I had become convinced was never going to happen for a geek like me, but then it came true.
George Lucas debuted the first Star Wars movie in an all new trilogy.
Oh, and I got married.
The marriage turned out way better than that trilogy did.
So, I will not be posting anything this afternoon. See you all tomorrow.
Corporal Otter's coverage of the Toronto convention was cited in an article on DC's "52."
Hello to all the NYDailyNews readers who've joined us. Have a look around! Serious DC fans will also enjoy our Fanzing Magazine archives and Alan Kistler's articles.
This Smash game is a LOT of fun.
Thanks to Jonah Goldberg for the timewaster.
Now that Justice League Unlimited has been canceled by Cartoon Network (WHAT is up with that, anyway?), Fanzing reader Jared Mello has contacted me to announce that he's forming a JLU fanfic group to do a "virtual season" of JLU.
Anyone wishing to participate should contact him at jared.mello@DON'TSPAMTHISYOULOUSYSTINKINGSPAMROBOTSgmail.com (just remove the capitalized part). He is on AIM as interknight81.
Jared tells me one of the advantages of doing a virtual season is that Batman villains, Black Manta, Firestorm, Blue Beetle and Teen Titans are all allowed. (They were withheld from use in JLU for various reasons.)
6/14/2006 UPDATE: Jared's had some personal life schedule changes that won't allow him to lead the virtual season anymore.
ABC clearly wants people to pay more attention during the ad breaks. To do so, they are hiding "Da Vinci Code" puzzles and secret show websites in the ad breaks.
Tonight, in the middle of a "Lost" ad break, there was a short advertisement for the Hanso Foundation. That's the organization that's behind everything that's going on. The ad was no more than 15 seconds long and looked like a pharmaceutical ad.
In case you missed it, the URL is www.sublymonal.com (pronounced in the ad as sub-LIE-mone-all)
The Minneapolis Star Tribune covers Free Comic Book Day with a comic book article. Congrats to our buddy Bob Lipski, whose Uptown Girl character makes it into the article!
On Saturday, I joined Bob and Brian Bastian (writer of "Tommy Chicago") at Jimmy Jams on Free Comic Book Day. Bob has just released the third Uptown Girl trade and says there is going to be an Uptown Girl animated series.
Paramount is in a "major panic" and is now cutting costs everywhere they can due to Mission Impossible 3's poor weekend take and plummeting Monday attendance ("$3.5 million, off 72 percent from Sunday"). Reportedly, new trailers are being rushed out emphasizing Philip Seymour Hoffman's role in the film.
P.S.H. still isn't a household name, despite the Oscar for "Capote," given that his great performances are mostly in eclectic films such as "Magnolia," "Punch Drunk Love" and the wonderful "The Big Lebowski." To resort to that means that the studio is getting the message that Tom Cruise is now a huge turnoff.
I can personally attest to this. My wife and I have liked movies with Tom Cruise in them in the past, and despite Cruise being the lead I wanted to see it. I loved the first one (I'm one of reportedly eight people who can follow the plot just fine), I've heard "M:I 3" is way better than the second one, and the involvement of Hoffman and J.J. Abrams are big bonuses...but when I asked my wife if she wanted to see "M:I 3" she gave me an emphatic no. That's two possible tickets lost right there, and this conversation is probably being replicated all over the country.
I can divorce an actor's performance from their wild behavior or outspoken politics...up to a point. The kidnapping and brainwashing of Katie Holmes in broad daylight... coupled with the Scientology advocacy, campaigns against anti-depressants and psychiatry, the silent birth and placenta-eating... it's too much. Watching Tom Cruise is now like trying to watch the Nordberg scenes in the hilarious Naked Gun movies. Tom’s now in The Pile with Michael Jackson, O.J. Simpson, Jane Fonda and director Roman Polanski where patronizing their works feels like enabling.
"Mission: Impossible" is probably a dead franchise even though the Impossible Mission Force is a team and a new member could take the lead. They should have done that for THIS movie!
FoxNews has an online video interview with the author of the new book "Friar's Club Private Joke File : More Than 2,000 Very Naughty Jokes from the Grand Masters of Comedy (Hardcover)". If you want to paint your wall blue, just open this book to any page and point it at the wall.
Hardware Wars is now online!
In the early 1980s, my family would check out this movie and a projector from the La Crosse Public Library, and I think we must have watched it 15 times. I've got this thing memorized. Still, there are some jokes that I didn't quite get when I was 11, like the android named 4Q2 or the line "...and if you can't be good, be careful."
"Chewchilla the Wookie Monster." Heh. I love this movie.
This is the special edition, which amounts to the addition of some laughable CGI.
Hat tip: IMAO.
I had one more thought about "Poseidon": you'd think Hollywood would have learned to not do ridiculously expensive, serious remakes of Irwin Allen cinematic silliness. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, click here.
It's just not fair.
I'm watching Deal or No Deal and this guy tonight, the well-groomed skinny guy with the pink shirt and no wife or girlfriend...he has to be gay. No, not because of the factors I just mentioned; any of those could describe a heterosexual. And it's not just because he's bouncing around, waving his arms, talking in an effeminate voice and acting so camp that he has to hang his food in a tree at night. Again, while generally being "gay" behavior, I don't make snap judgments. I've known too many theatrical sissies who were into girls.
But he's gay. Know how I know?
A 20-year-old sold a massive collection of Spider-Man comics on eBay for $19,000. The buyer paid money down for half of it, and received a package containing blank sheets of paper. The seller has been charged with grand larceny.
It's time to see where our Monitor Duty readers come from!
Hint: If you sign up with Frappr (it's free), you can better personalize your listing. I put myself on PvP's Frappr map but found my marker was covered up by that of someone else in my zip code. Logging in, I took my marker and moved it to right over my house so you can see it again.
Want to check the map later after more people have signed up? Our Frappr map is permanently linked at http://www.frappr.com/monitorduty
Roger Friedman has a sinking feeling about Poseidon
I'm surprised that 1972's "The Poseidon Adventure" (a movie I've never seen, just to make that clear) has been remade twice in the same year. It was a Hallmark mini-series on TV not too long ago, and now it's remade as Poseidon. The movie could be good... I think the trailers are thrilling, although they give away the big SFX moment for free in the trailer... but when the film costs $200 million, they have to bring in $400 million at the box office to break even! Does anyone think this is anything more than a B-movie with A-special effects?
Here's the good news: Doctor Who dog K9 gets spin-off
The bad news? He's redesigned to look like something designed by Sony!
Just some self-important ramblings here:
I'm going to be appearing at Jimmy Jam's Comics and Games in Rochester, MN tomorrow for Free Comic Book Day.
I've decided that, despite the long drive, I will once again attend Iowa I-CON on June 10th. I hope to see you there!
Since I've never linked to it before, here's my Amazon profile for your perusing.
Last weekend, I was at Midwest Comic Book Association's Micro-Con and once again had a great time. (Of all the conventions I've attended, MCBA cons are the best. They always put on a fun show and makes things comfortable for the creators.) There was a sizeable crowd all day long despite a drizzly day. I made some sales, talked with pros and made some good contacts. I bought a single comic book, "Dr. Blink, Superhero Shrink" #2 and got it signed by both the artist Christopher Jones and the colorist Melissa Kaercher. I saw Zander Cannon; oddly enough, his brother and another guy are all dressed the same, have the same hair, same beard, same glasses, same body shape... it's like the Cult of Cannon. (OOOH! That's a good villain team name. That's MINE! You can't have it!) I also wanted to find out how much Pat Gleason is asking for the original art of Guy Gardner mooning Batman in space; reportedly, he can't sell it. Too bad, since I think he could finance his retirement with the right eBay sale!
I am looking forward to MCBA's FallCon, held at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. No dates are announced yet that I can find, but it's usually in October and I'll keep you appraised.
How'd I miss this? The "Seduction of the Innocent" section, about double-entendres in comic books. This one is my favorite so far.
Thanks to Robert Bavington for finding this site.
Reason #1587 that I love my wife: She IMs me at work to send me the URL for this picture. (My subject line is pretty much what she asked me.)
Jim Balent Catwoman City!
We're still rapidly gaining on Star Trek. We have handheld communicators that are smaller than Captain Kirk's, we have palm-sized computers and little boxes that prepare meals in thirty seconds. Monitor Duty has covered the recent developments in transparent aluminum and phaser rifles. Now we have force field systems for our military equipment.
Fox News has video footage of this, though I can't directly link to it.
"...you're a mean drunk", or so goes one of my favorite old jokes.
I never really thought about it, but it seems like just about every Superman cover of the Silver and Bronze ages showed Superman...who was by then accepted as the iconic ideal of a great man... acting mean or uncaring, with a cover blurb urging you to find out why Superman of all people is being a jerk..
One of the comics in my collection has Superman standing in front of a fire hydrant as everyone in the world is dying of thirst, declaring "NO ONE GETS A DROP!" I'll bet that's in this album. Hey, it is!
What color are the Joker's nipples?
You must be registered on our forum to vote. Recently, a friend of mine who hadn't registered mentioned that he was afraid of getting spammed. Perhaps that's why membership in our new forum is lower than usual?
Just to make it clear: I own the forum. It's a personal forum made with PHPBB code, which means the member list is on our server and no one else has access to it. I hate spammers with a vengeance, so there's no way I'd ever sell the member list. Sign up and post without fear!
Here's the Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest trailer. This time, it's sea monsters.
You can watch it on the Disney site, but it's much tinier and accompanied by an overwrought web site.
I checked that Superman URL at the time I posted, and that trailer wasn't there!
Forget all I just said about the advance buzz not existing for Superman Returns. As of May 2nd, it does. That trailer is awesome. Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor, this new Superman/Clark Kent, the outfit, the look of the city, Perry White and Jimmy Olson... it's perfect!
OK, I wish they hadn't cast a short pixy-ish 23-year-old to play Lois Lane. Sorry. Not believable. If she were a Lois Lane in an origin movie where Superman is just starting out and she was a new hire to the Planet, maybe I'd buy it... naaaah, I'd still be complaining... but as an older, experienced Lois Lane who was in love with Superman years ago and now has a young kid? I just don't buy it, sorry. It's nothing against Ms. Bosworth personally. Maybe her performance will be so great that I'll look past the fact that all of the "high school girls" on Smallville are older than she is. (Erica Durance, the Lois Lane on Smallville, is five years older than Bosworth!)
That aside, this looks amazing.
NOTE TO ANYONE AT WARNERS/DC WHO'S READING: I live only 60 miles from Minnesota's IMAX theater, where I attended the screening of Batman Begins. If you're doing a screening of this movie and want a Monitor Duty review of it, just e-mail me via my name link on this post. (It's thehutch AT thehutch.com)
Superman Takes On Mona Lisa looks at whether "Superman Returns" or "The Da Vinci Code" will reign supreme as the movie of the 2006 summer.
Now, I think "Superman" has a bit of a hill to climb, since there hasn't been as much advance publicity or buzz akin to the way Spider-Man had some entertaining, mood-setting trailers out long before the movie debuted. There's no clue as to what the story is about or whether it will "fly". And this is pitting it against "The Da Vinci Code," which has been a controversial best-seller for years. If nothing else, that alone would make it a hit, but then it stars Tom Hanks and is directed by Ron Howard, two popular and up-til-now non-controversial mainstream powerhouses. It's written by Akiva Goldsman, the scribe behind "Batman Forever", "Batman and Robin" and "Lost In Space"...but he's twice collaborated with Ron Howard to great success ("Cinderella Man" and "A Beautiful Mind") so he may be redeeming himself. (He'll probably only spend 10,000 years in hell for "Batman and Robin.")
Still, this article has a number of problems. For one thing, it seems to be showing its preference for "Da Vinci Code" over "Superman" in the way it's written. Notice:
1) Several people interviewed don't seem to like Superman anyway, so they're predisposed towards any movie made about the character. Quotes like "Superman is a little played out, it's kind of a passe superhero without any edge," and "The film will have to darken the character. The white bread Christopher Reeves version of the '70s won't pass muster anymore" particularly raise my hackles.
I dare them to come over HERE and say that about Superman!
It reminds me of how the producers behind the Kevin Smith Superman movie didn't seem to appreciate the character as he was, always wanting to ditch the cape, give him a "'90's costume", muddy him up so he seemed more like an average person they could appreciate. Given the choice, I'd rather opt for World's Biggest Boy Scout idealism than bringing Superman down to our level or making him "edgy". (Isn't edgy the most tirestome phrase?) Why not explore the idea of goodness, of idealism? Make that part of the story. The main reason I don't watch Smallville is that I can't stand the idea of a self-interested Clark Kent who doesn't have any greatness of spirit.
2) See anything missing in the whole "Da Vinci Code" discussion? Like, whatever its merits, it's a Catholic-bashing, Christianity-offending controversial movie? Instead, this article adopts an all-too-pervasive meme that this is a "religious movie" that may be a success because "The Passion of the Christ" was a huge blockbuster, as though there's no difference between the story of Jesus straight from the Bible and an adaptation of a thriller novel claiming that the Bible is a bunch of lies thanks to the plotting of woman-hating priests. This is a flat-out DUMB claim, because the audience of the first movie will probably dislike the second, and the whole point of an "X type of movies are hot" analysis is predicting what audiences will like based on what they liked in the past.
It reminds me of an article I once saw in the late 1980s which stated that audiences didn't seem to be interested in religious movies, but it was basing this on the box office failures of "The Last Temptation of Christ" and "King David," two worldly films with a non-traditional view of the Bible (to say the least). One wonders if movie execs look for this kind of flawed analysis so that they don't have to admit that there is an audience for true religious films.
Heck, based on the Teaser Trailer for "Superman Returns," it is a religious movie!
Is Marvel Ready for its Close-Up? details how Marvel is changing its relationship with superhero movies.
Marvel Comics leaps into movie-making The comic-book king is tired of taking a safe but small cut from licensing its characters for blockbuster films - so now it's going to make the movies itself.
Thanks to Michael Kim at Libertas for the tip. He noted in an earlier post one of the big traps of this move on the part of Marvel:
One item I noticed was the list of characters that might be made into movies. Marvel characters set to join Captain America in the movies are: the Avengers, Nick Fury, Black Panther, Ant-Man, Cloak & Dagger, Dr. Strange, Hawkeye, Power Pack and Shang-Chi. As someone who is not a comic book aficionado, the only character I am familiar with is Captain America. The table above details the risk Marvel is taking on. Movies based on lesser known characters - for example The Punisher and Elektra - have been box office disappointments. Movies have already been made of the most popular characters, except for Captain America - who non-comic book fans may know through cartoons and live action TV shows. Marvel faces the problem of how many non-comic book fans will see a movie based on a character they are not familiar with in a marketplace already saturated with movies based on that genre.