Comic Review: Avatarex FCBD Preview

    Grant Morrison is an odd cat, and a prolific comic writer. And he seems to have a very wide field of interest. With Avatarex: Destroyer of Darkness, he and artist Jeevan J. Kang are taking on Indian mythology, filtering it through big-idea science fiction.

    The Free Comic Book Day preview issue is intriguing. I like the art, which is very modern in style, but has something of a high-Kriby content. However, it really is little more than a taste, a sample of the mood, but not much of a sense of the overall comic. So, we’ll see. But for now, I am curious.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Inspired by Frazetta

I've recently been writing some of my personal stuff, for the first time in quite a while.  I revisited an old favorite setting of mine, and an old favorite character.  And that always puts me in mind of the art of Frank Frazetta.  Art has been important to me, inspiring me a great deal in my writing.  And from early on, Frazetta's stamp has been all over my mind's eye.  So, for little reason beyond that, I figured I'd share a few of my favorite paintings by the master.

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (8/3/2014-8/9/14)

    Coming back to the world after a genuine vacation…Ugh.

Howard the Duck:  What can I say?  I love this movie.  Yeah, it’s got some awkward dialog and acting.  Yeah, it’s weird as hell.  Yeah, it’s super goofy.  But it’s so wonderfully 80s.  I just can’t get enough.

Game of Thrones Season 3:  The third season is more of the same.  If you’ve liked the previous two, you should like this one.  It does feel slightly more on task this season.  There was a point at the beginning of season 2, where even I, nudity aficionado that I am, was wishing everyone would just put their danged clothes back on and get on with the story.  Season 3, while heartily dosed with naked flesh, doesn’t let it get in the way of telling the tale.  A fine show, and some seriously good fantasy.  I keep going back to my thought that this is a chronicle of the events that happened in the next Age of Men, after the King’s return in the Lord of the Rings.  Anyway, good show.

Redline:  While it has more style and panache than 90% of the anime you’re likely to see, Redline will still feel just as familiar.  People who aren’t bored to tears by the handful of recycled plots/characters/designs that you find in anime should find plenty to enjoy.  I am not one of those people, so I found the whole thing pretty dullsville.  If it wasn’t for the attempted, pseudo-Heavy Metal magazine vibe, there’s be nothing to make it stand out.

Hercules:  This is not a good movie.  The script is bad.  The usually charming Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is a bit bland.  The effects aren’t good.  That said, I mildly enjoyed watching it.  I liked several of the supporting characters/actors, particularly Ian McShane.  I liked the idea of how the mythology was used, even if I didn’t always actually like it.  I like the idea that people, so indoctrinated in their supernatural worldview, would see the supernatural first, and reality a distant second.  Actually, that very thing is quite common today.  I was frustrated by the way Atalanta was used.  A supreme badass in the myths, and a member of Jason’s crack team of heroes, she is written like a token female in this film, and dressed in what looks like ancient Greek fashionable work-out gear.  Now, the costumes in these films are never going to fly in modern film, with everyone being so prudish.  If they were going for accuracy, there’d be a lot more male nudity, and a lot more nudity in general.  But her costume stood out in a way I found off-putting.  It looked extra wrong.  Anyway, this is better (by far) than The Legend of Hercules, but not as good as most of the other Greek myth related films of recent years (Clash and Wrath of the Titans, Immortals, 300, etc.).  Well, it’s better than 300: Rise of an Empire.  But then, most things are.

    Friday night, I headed into DC where I enjoyed a Lincoln Assassination walking tour.  Another of those events in US history it seems like we hear about all the time, but hear very little detail of the affair.  The tour had many interesting factoids I was completely unaware of, and it was cool to walk to the various locations where the events took place.

The Trap:  Richard Widmark bastards his way around the high desert as a mob lawyer roped into doing what he doesn’t want.  Tensions run high, blood will spill, and Widmark will stare hatred as fierce as he fires bullets.  Lee J. Cobb is extra sleazy, with his squinky eyed smarm.  I feel like this is a forgotten classic.  Fans of Noir especially should like the mean characters and vile dialog.  Worth tracking down.

Vera:  I can’t say that I loved this movie, but it was certainly interesting.  It’s a heck of a weird movie, with lots of images and not much talking.  It suffers a bit from the lack of budget, but then if it had a much bigger budget, they’d have probably had trouble getting such a strange film made.  It feels a bit like a horror movie, and a lot like a particularly strange fantasy film.

    I read Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson’s Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites.  It’s the selection for the next graphic novel club meeting.  I wasn’t blown away, but it was definitely the best thing we’ve read in a while.

The Tiger Woman: Perils of the Darkest Jungle:  Though she does get knocked out and tied up a lot, The Tiger Woman is a shockingly tough lady for the time this movie serial was produced.  Though women wielding their strength weren’t all that unusual in pre-Code movies, by the 40s, they certainly were.  So this Tarzan knock-off stands out.  Linda Stirling isn’t a great actress (few in this serial are), but she trades jabs and kicks with the roughest of them.

    Though getting back into the swing of things is always difficult, the week had some bright spots.  Also, as the Dreamlands crowd-funded film made the needed money, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Dreamlands, and about some of that trippy, psychedelic 70s fantasy music.  Iron Butterfly, Caravan, David Bowie, and more.  Good stuff.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Comic Review: The First Kingdom: The Birth of Tundran

    Admittedly, I’ve never been ‘in the know’ about comics.  While I tried them briefly as a wee lad, I didn’t stick with them, only returning to the medium in my late 20s with Hellboy, Tom Strong, and Metabarons.  However, I’ve always been friends with comic readers, and I’ve often been aware of various books and events in the industry, even if just in passing.  Also, what little interest I ever showed tended to be toward independent, sci-fi/adventure comics.  Yet, somehow, I’d never heard of Jack Katz and his The First Kingdom.  Having been a contemporary of several famous names, including Alex Raymond, Jack Kirby, and Stan Lee, I feel like I should have been more aware of the man and his work.  Anyway, now I am, and I’m glad of it.

    The First Kingdom is not a perfect book, nor is it going to appeal to the average, contemporary comic reader.  There is an old style, similar to that of classic newspaper strips like Flash Gordon or Terry and the Pirates, with a bit of 60s Marvel thrown in.  Sometimes the captions go on and on, and sometimes the word choices are peculiar to say the least (and I’m fairly certain, not always correct).  But this all lends it a strange quality that works here more than it does in something like early issues of The Fantastic Four or Challengers of the Unknown.  The writing style, along with the story itself help to give the whole thing a feeling of a grand myth cycle, like something out of ancient Greece or Scandinavia, or out of Tolkien’s Silmarillion (except this is readable) or The Bible.  You could also argue that Katz’s art has a tendency toward repetitiveness.  It is true, that many of his people look essentially the same, and on occasion I’ve had difficulty keeping one separate from another (especially his females).  And panels and pages often feature lots and lots of characters simply standing around, talking.  However, when the action does break out, when he does exercise his creativity, it can be gorgeous.  His environments and creatures are top notch.  And for those who are upset by the human body, you should know that the book features a good deal of nudity.

    The story is wonderfully grand and operatic.  Long after Earth was burned up in a nuclear war, humanity’s descendants are on their way up again.  Strange gods meddle with their affairs, while a young man breaks with tradition and sets off on a quest to give his people a new and permanent home, but he is destined to meet a violent end.  Epic quests, sinister villains, dangerous monsters, and fickle fate.  The stuff of mythology.  Odd bits of science fiction mix with copious amounts of fantasy, making me again think of the old Flash Gordon strips, as well as the works of people like Edgar Rice Burroughs.  So, while I don’t know that the general comic reader would appreciate this work, I think that fans of Golden Age science fiction, of pulp adventure stories, or of movie serials might really like it.

    I, for one, am excited to find out what happens next in this grand imaginary history.  Many forces are coming together into what should prove to be a dramatic conflict.

The First Kingdom: The Birth of Tundran
Author/Artist: Jack Katz
Publisher: Titan Comics
ISBN: 978-1-78276-010-8

-Matthew J. Constantine

First Look at New Wonder Woman

I know everybody has already seen the picture.  But I thought it would be wrong not to mention it, especially as Wonder Woman is about the only thing coming out of this new push by DC to try to catch up to Marvel's film universe that moderately interests me.  So, here's Gal Gadot as the great Amazon, the too often forgotten third in DC's Trinity, Wonder Woman.

Personally, I like the costume.  It's Greek enough and not too silly looking.  And Gadot fills it out better than I'd expected, though my idea of Wonder Woman is considerably more buff.  Still...  Now, let's see if she gets more than a walk on part (not to mention a solo film).  I'm not holding my breath.

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (4/13/14-4/19/14)

    Good times this week.  I’m so happy that this year has already produced several movies that I’d be happy to put on the top ten of my 2014 Dorkies.  Particle Fever, Monuments Men (yeah, I liked it a lot…bite me), Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Grand Budapest Hotel, Tim’s Vermeer, and now Under the Skin.  Six movies I wouldn’t be upset to find on a top ten list (though I’m hoping to see enough more that several of these won’t be).  This has already been a better year than the past two.  Can’t wait to see what’s next.

Under the Skin:  I like science fiction.  I like quiet films that don’t muddy things with too much dialog.  I like weird stuff that puts the viewer on edge.  I like films that don’t shy away from nudity.  And I like visually interesting movies that hold shots for a long time.  Under the Skin fulfills all of that.  I don’t know that I loved the movie, but it certainly tickles my various fancies.  It’s reminiscent of late 60s, early 70s science fiction, the most obvious (though not only) example being The Man Who Fell to Earth.  You’ve got to get your Scottish ears on, as the movie features a lot of Scottish people talking, with full on, nearly unintelligible accents.  And if you’re uncomfortable with nudity, you should probably stay away (or try growing up and not being such a prude).  On a related note, it was nice seeing a woman with a normal body, not some stick figure with plastic bits.  There’s lots of beautiful imagery, including some natural settings, some urban settings, and some very good motorcycle driving footage.  It’s very interesting to see a movie in which none of the dialog is about the plot.  There’s literally zero exposition.  It is presented before you for you to figure out.  Keen.  My one complaint is the ending.  What happens in the woods that leads to the actual final moments of the film seemed weird and somewhat out of place.  Off key from the rest of the film.  Excepting that, I thought it was excellent.

Doctor Who: The Happiness Patrol:  It’s stories like this that make me so sad the last several years of classic Doctor Who weren’t very good.  I enjoy the heck out of this strange story and weird production design.  If other stories from late Colin Baker through its cancellation under Sylvester McCoy had been half as good, the show might have had legs to stand on.

The Justice League: Flashpoint Paradox:  I don’t really get The Flash.  He’s one of those DC champions I never really enjoyed.  But I do like a good alternate world story, and this one is pretty cool.  Something done by the Flash’s old enemy…Professor Zoom…has changed the world to one where heroes and villains took very different courses.  It’s a crazy story, but it’s cool seeing some of the powerful heroes doing what they’d most likely do if not checked by other elements.  Wonder Woman and Aquaman are carving up the world while Batman and Superman have very different lives.  And man, is there anything scarier than the potential of sad, angry, tortured Superman?

    I sat down and fought my way through Uber.  Boy, that’s a disappointing book.  Some very cool ideas, but such terrible execution.

    Tuesday night found Brad and I at the Alamo again, this time to see Purple Rain as a ‘sing-along.’  Now, this was Brad and my first time seeing the film, and it turned out it was a lot of others’ as well.  I don’t know how much singing was going on.  But we were provided glow sticks and tambourines, so no complaints.

Purple Rain:  In a sense, every movie has two ratings/grades.  There’s an objective (sort of) rating.  How ‘good’ is the film?  The acting, the script, the cinematography; were there any boom mics visible; was the editing smooth; etc.?  And then there’s the question of how much you, the viewer, enjoyed watching the movie.  It’s final grade is some synthesis of that, which is why I have movies I know are technically awful listed among my favorites (Cyborg, for example).  Purple Rain is such a crapterpiece.  The script, the acting, and the music were terrible (sorry, the music is bloody awful), but I had an absolute blast watching it all.  Prince, our would be hero, is a terrible person who does one slightly nice thing and all is forgiven.  His parents are totally insane.  His girlfriend is a self-made emotional and physical punching bag.  His friends all stay loyal to him, even though he doesn’t show one single ounce of friendship or loyalty to them.  And by the end of the film, he hasn’t really learned anything or grown as a human being.  He’s still a piece of crap, and it’s pretty clear he’s going to remain one.  And Prince is soooooooooo awful.  I can’t say he’s wooden, because at least a piece of wood has a chance to have some character.  He’s so stiff, so awkward…It’s impressive.  Also, through the whole movie (including her disgusting song Sex Shooter), it seemed like Apollonia was written to be a man, but the studio wasn’t willing to make a gay romance movie.  It would have made a lot more sense, as at no point did I suspect Prince had any interest in women.  And not just because he treats Apollonia like a frat-boy treats a nerd.  Then there’s the moment when he hauls off and decks her, because she said something he didn’t like.  At that point, the point where a character who was horrible to begin with now adds ‘woman puncher’ to his list of traits, I wanted to watch him utterly fail.  Of course, it was the 80s, people unfathomably loved Prince, and he was supposed to be the film’s hero, so he wins.  But he shouldn’t have.  The movie should have ended with him actually hanging himself, like in his vision.  Roll credits.  Still, though technically and morally awful, watching this madness was a heck of a lot of fun.

     I also managed to watch a few episodes of the BBC series Atlantis.  It's not very good.  And it should be called Minos, as that's really where it takes place, thought they keep calling it Atlantis.  I like that they're going for it with the mythology; I just wish the show was good.

Frozen:  This film’s heart is in the right place.  Unfortunately, its head isn’t.  The praise it’s received for having proactive female leads is deserved.  However, the story is bland, the music is more bland, and the animation is dull.  And then the snowman shows up.  Ugh.  And the singing.  The singing.  It doesn’t stop, and it’s not good.  So, while putting the focus on the female characters, and not making the men the eventual rescuers, gets a tip of the hat, next time, cut the pop songs, cut the awful comic relief, and cut the crap.  Just tell a good story, and we’ll watch it.  Brave, and now this.  It’s like Disney is really trying, but they just can’t get it right.

Sparks:  I respect what this film was reaching for, but at the end of the day, it’s just not that good.  It feels like an attempt to capture some of the spirit of Watchmen and some of the spirit of Kick-Ass, with some of the tools of (the film versions of) Sin City and The Spirit.  The story is one of those onion-types where each layer is a revelation that some previously established or believed fact is actually wrong.  With each layer, you find that heroes are villains, friends are enemies, up is down, jelly is better than syrup, mass hysteria.  Several of the twists were actually pretty obvious.  Still, it has its charm and low budget can-do sensibilities.  And it’s kind of neat to see that we’ve reached the point where they’re making (for all intents and purposes) straight to video superhero films.  I’d sooner watch a dozen films like this than another found footage/Haunting in X New England Town films, that’s for sure.

    I watched a bunch of Ultraman episodes.  The show is a lot of fun, and has occasional dashes of the stuff I love in Kaiju films.  But it is pretty darned cheesy.  Part of the show’s problem is that when there is a really cool idea, they’ve only got twenty-five minutes to explore it, which isn’t enough.

    On Friday night and Saturday, I found myself in need of some social hibernation.  I’ve been very busy for a while, and I’ve been going out a lot.  It’s been a lot of fun, but I started to realize I wasn’t getting the usual down time I need as an introvert.  Even walking to the post office on Saturday found me listening to music, hunching my shoulders, and keeping my eyes on the ground.  It was weird.  But I’m feeling better now.  But because of it, I ended up not making it to the graphic novel club meeting.  This month’s selection was volume 1 & 2 of Sweet Tooth, which I thought was kind of a half-assed Y: The Last Man.

Laura:  The film begins in the aftermath of the murder of a beautiful young woman.  A cop begins to piece together the life of the dead woman, feeling out various suspects.  The characters are all interesting and strange, letting the various actors really bite into the parts, cranking up the eccentricities.  Interestingly, though I saw this movie some time ago, and I’m about as taken with Gene Tierney as all the men in this film, this wasn’t the movie that captured me.  That was Leave Her to Heaven.  Still, seeing it again, I understand why this was the movie for so many.  She’s gorgeous, obviously, but she’s got that elusive something that makes her more than her pretty face.  Dana Andrews is a bit drab in the film, but that seems to accentuate the uniqueness of the others, to let them all stand out against his gray.  Good twists and turns.  This is a must watch, for sure.

    As Laura wrapped up, I realized TCM was showing three Gene Tierney & Dana Andrews films, so I hung around and stayed up past my old-man bed time to watch them.  I had seen Where the Sidewalk Ends many years ago, and never even heard of The Iron Curtain.

Where the Sidewalk Ends:  “Where the devil am I?  I keep coming and going.”  Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney again, in an Otto Preminger film.  Andrews has a lot more to do in this film than in Laura.  Tierney’s role is fairly thankless, but she’s perfectly good in her part.  It’s more on the hard boiled side of Noir, with a brutal cop getting into some trouble with some crooks, and creating a lot of his own problems by not coming clean when he’s got the chance.  Honesty is the best policy.  Of course, things get way, way out of hand.  A lot of good character actor performances in this one.

The Iron Curtain:  Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews team up in another film, this time portraying Soviets assigned to Canada during the frigid seasons of the Cold War.  This is one of those semi-documentary type films that were oddly popular for a while.  Frequently, the narrator jumps in to recite facts and keep the narrative moving.  I really enjoy Dana Andrews in this.  The ending is a bit unsatisfactory, and I think, due to that ‘documentary’ voiceover, it doesn’t age well.  Still, a good time capsule of the early days of the Cold War.

    I’ve got to get more serious about reading.  I’m into too many books right now, and have too many more I’m hungry to read.  One of these days, I’ll have to sit down and do another graphic novel reading day, maybe crank through the B.P.R.D. 1940s books Brad loaned me.

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (1/26/14-2/1/14)

    Heck of a week for this here Dork.  Sunday started with something of a bang, when I finally assembled a handful of friends for a tabletop roleplaying game.  It’s been so danged long since last I gamed, and the first gathering was mostly logistics, explanations, and finally making characters.  But it was good, none the less.

    Sunday evening, Lisa, Brad, and I headed out to the Alamo to see City Lights, my first experience with Charlie Chaplin.  I know.  How could I have lived this long, loved classics, and enjoyed so many silent films and not seen Charlie Chaplin?  I don’t know.  But there it is.  City lights isn’t the movie I picked to be my cinematic resolution (that was The Gold Rush).  But I had it on good authority that it was very good.

City Lights:  My first experience with Charlie Chaplin, this silent comedy is extremely charming.  After a lifetime of seeing imitators, it’s really something to see the original, and he’s so much better.  The film is very funny, with plenty of physical comedy, but also a lot of situational laughs.  The entire boxing sequence, from the first moments in the locker through the fight and its aftermath had me laughing.  But I think my favorite moment in the film is the nude statue in the window bit.  So danged funny.  I’m looking forward to watching more Chaplin in the near future.

I, Frankenstein:  I re-dub thee: I, Exposition.  When reading books on writing screenplays, I think the creators of this film got things mixed up.  Instead of ‘show, don’t tell’ they must have read ‘tell, don’t show.’  In a generic European city, where it’s always dark and there appears to be maybe ten or twelve normal humans, mostly riding in a single subway car, there’s a secret war that’s been going on for hundreds of years, between demons and gargoyles.  Didn’t catch that?  Don’t worry.  Every character will explain it in excruciating detail to every other character a half dozen times.  They’ll also repeatedly explain how demons ‘descend’ and gargoyles ‘ascend.’  And they’ll go over Adam (aka Frankenstein’s Monster), his origin, his nature, and his power…again and again and again (he’s strong, he’s got no soul, he wasn’t created by God…seriously, they’ll tell you about it every five minutes).  The script for the film is absolutely awful.  Half way through I couldn’t shake off how much it felt like something Chris Claremont would have written around the time he was doing X-Men.  Stilted dialog, ham-fisted exposition, and ‘probably sounds cool to a twelve year old’ tough-guy dialog.  If you watch it with friends, and give it the ol’ Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment, it’s lots of fun.  Otherwise, I have a strong feeling it’s just super dull.

Killer Snakes:  Willard with snakes.  That’s pretty much it.  A dirty little perv can’t catch a break, because he’s a spaz and a creeper.  So he kills people with snakes.  And then with lizards for some reason.  The lizards seemed out of character.  It would be like Leatherface using a gun.  It’s not that he can’t.  I’m not trying to limit his options.  It just seems…I don’t know, like he’s not sincere about the whole thing.  Stick with the snakes, man.  It’s your thing.  Anyway, the movie sucks.

The Ghost:  “Anything yes…Not that.”  The creepy, bulgy, fish eyes of Barbara Steele lurk in the shadows as her invalid husband clings to life.  There’s the usual philandering and naughty doings.  And it’s all dubbed very poorly.  Typical ghost-revenge movie stuff.

Dead Eyes of London:  Those evil blind people are up to no good…gropingly, clumsily up to no good.  Pretty standard horror stuff, with a big blind murderer and some hints at old family badness.  A few twists and turns and the story plays out in much the way you expect.  Still, it’s very well shot and drips with atmosphere (almost literally, as the fog machines seemed to be cranked to 11).  Worth a watch if it’s on, if not an extra effort.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2:  In recent years, there have been a few genuinely surprising kids movies, films far better than what one expects.  Pixar’s secret of not trying to pass off crap because kids don’t care has started to catch on.  The first Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs was one such surprise, and even more unexpected was how good the follow-up is.  It’s laugh out loud funny, a good story, and visually impressive.  The voice work is good and the script is excellent.  And they managed to create a good sequel without just rehashing the first one.

    I don’t know if I’ve written much about this on the blog before, but I wrote a script for a short film, an idea I’ve been kicking around for many years (since before I left Maine).  Through luck and timing, I found someone looking for a new project, and willing to read my script.  A few re-writes later, and we’re ready to move on it.  On Saturday, Satnam (the director) and Torsten (the actor) stopped by the apartment for a read-through of the script.  It was really something.  I’m still riding a high from hearing words I wrote spoken by someone who knows how to act.  I had a similar thing the first time I saw a comic script realized by an artist.  Very cool.  I’m very excited for the actual filming and for seeing it all completed.

The Singing Ringing Tree:  “Now you don’t look quite so ugly.”  A German production of one of the less well known (seemingly) Grimm Brothers story, this is thankfully narrated by a BBC fellow, as it isn’t re-dubbed or subtitled.  It’s very fanciful and very staged, but charming in its way.  It feels like a mix of Beauty and the Beast, Hans My Hedgehog, and little bits and pieces of some other stories.  But a lot of these fairy tales seem to mix and match moments, themes, and characters.  More so when they’re made into films.  I really like this one, in spite of its obvious technical limitations.

    So, a good week.  Scheduling the next game meeting was challenging, but we seem to have gotten it figured out.  Between that, getting the movie together, and a bunch of social plans, I’m gonna be a busy bee for a time.

-Matt