Editor’s Note: This week we’re lucky to have film critic Joe Strike offers us his insights and first impressions of the films The Day the Earth Stood Still, Desperaux, and The Spirit.
I tell you, the synchronicity around here can really get to you sometimes. The other morning I went to see The Day the Earth Stood Still, or as us folks in a hurry like to call it, TDTESS (which is stupid since they’re all one-syllable words anyway). Weekend morning shows are $6.00 at my just-up-the-street cinema, I thank you from the bottom of my recession, AMC. Read more…
It’s a Christmas gift to us fanboys from Fox! It seems that their copyright case against Warner Brothers has done the trick and this may cause the film not to open come March:
“A Los Angeles federal judge has ruled that 20th Century Fox owns the distribution rights to “Watchmen,” representing a setback for Warner Bros.’ plans to release the pic in March.
“Fox owns a copyright interest consisting of, at the very least, the right to distribute the ‘Watchmen’ motion picture,” the ruling said. Judge Gary Allen Feess issued the surprise ruling Wednesday — a week after setting a Jan. 20 trial date for Fox’s suit — and indicated he would issue a more detailed ruling soon.”
In March of 2009 Marvel will be featuring two versions of the comic Spiderman & The Human Torch in…!Bahia De Los Muertos! — one in English and one Español. What I love about this concept is that each book has a different cover by the talented illustrator Jaun Doe. What I love about his artwork is that instead of a typical muscles bulging superheroes cliched cover, Doe’s style reminds me of a highly stylized art deco film poster. Even his use of color is superb with Doe using a slightly washed out palette instead of the usual over saturated Photoshop look we see so often these days. Read more…
We just stumbled over this leaked trailer of X-Men Origins: Wolverine on the net! I have to say that I had my doubts about this film, but it looks like it’s going to be action packed. Although the bad news is that when you see it in theaters there will be the same idiots who get to their seats late just like you see in this secret trailer!
At long last the official version of the Watchmen trailer that was shown at ComicCon 2008 is now hitting the web! I have no idea how good this film is going to be, but i love the amount of detail that I’m seeing in each frame (which is a fanboy plus in my book).
You know you’re doing bad when you can’t figure out at a casual glance if something is a parody or not — and such seems to be the case with issue #1 of Hulk Family which hits newsstands this week. To their credit Marvel has had Marko Djurdjevic do an amazing job on the cover, but this concept just seems so silly to me. Anyway you be the judge, here’s the description of the plot: Read more…
Being a Will Eisner fanboy I sort of have mixed feelings from what I’ve seen of the upcoming film The Spirit so far. The clips seems a bit better than I thought, but I still feel like the idea of turning The Spirit into some sort of superhero is misplaced as what makes him so special is that he’s so ordinary on a certain level.
In today’s issue of Batman it seems that after 70 years of good faith our trusty sidekick Robin will go over to “the dark side” and knock off poor Bruce Wayne. Well at least that’s the rumor we’ve been hearing — but it seems that in this latest issue the dark knight will meet with some sort of ultimate demise:
It’s funny to me that Garfield (which would never be in my top ten list so let’s just leave it at that) seems to be vastly improved when you make it non-sequential. You best visit this site quickly before the copyright cats get onto them:
“…so this guy noticed that Garfield comics make just as much sense if you throw random panels together, and sometimes are actually pretty funny. He got a cease-and-desist letter. So he made the code available for people who wanted to try it for themselves. Here we go!”
Good news!According to filmschoolrejects.com it seems that Will Smith has stated that the American version of Oldboy won’t be based on the Korean film but instead based on the original manga. This will come as good news to fanboys that were worried that Steven Spielberg (or any American company) wouldn’t be able to capture the graphic nature of the original Korean film.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed, but I don’t have high hopes for The Spirit. Don’t get me wrong from what I’ve seen of the film looks fantastic (so it’s not a lack of budget), but it looks like the movie won’t be true to the spirit of the comic book that Will Eisner created. Eisner’s characters would be very much at home on the set of a film noir movie, but his stories aren’t about action heroes but about regular folks (so to speak).
Instead of a ham fisted approach to the movie I would have preferred that a team Coen Brothers tackle a film like this instead of trying to make the property into something that it’s not. Also at the risk of sounding like a whiney fanboy — you’ll notice the one thing that’s missing from that poster is Will Eisner’s name in big letters. Yeah I know that’s not “part of the marketing”, but it tells me that there’s a lack of respect for the story.
