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Why I Like Bad Movies: Lucky Number Slevin

25 11 2009

So a long time ago, a little movie called Pulp Fiction was released to theaters. It was a good thing, too, because ever since critics have been able to say that they didn’t enjoy a movie because it was ripping off Pulp Fiction’s signature dialogue or it’s out of sequence story-telling or who the hell knows what else. The point is that thanks to Quentin Tarantino (a man who has admitted that he pays homage to dozens of films in his features), a generation of filmmakers were inspired to rip off pay homage to QT and streamline the whole, well, “homage-ing” process for time’s sake.

Lucky Number Slevin isn’t anything like Pulp Fiction except for the hitmen, crime bosses, pop culture references, staccato-fast dialogue… etc. The film opens with Bruce Willis in a wheelchair regaling a nameless man in a bus station with a tale of what a Kansas City Shuffle is: “A Kansas City Shuffle is when everybody looks right, you go left.” Then a flashback follows that is meant to set up the whole film. After he’s done with his story, Willis kills the man, steals his body, and we’re greeted to a series of quick assassinations of random people and then the introduction of Josh Hartnett as Slevin Kelevra, our hero. Slevin has just arrived in New York City and is immediately mistaken for his friend Nick Fischer with no way to prove otherwise since he was mugged prior to being accosted by the misinformed goons. It turns out Nick owes money to The Boss (Morgan Freeman apparently needing a quick paycheck) and in exchange for wiping out the debt, The Boss will spare “Nick” (Slevin) if he helps kill the son of his arch-rival, The Rabbi (played by Ben Kingsley who is in need of a quicker paycheck). Slevin agrees, but mostly because he’s in nothing but a towel and The Boss threatens his life (wouldn’t you agree to kill someone if all you were wearing was a towel and Morgan Freeman was giving you his evil eye? Liar). As soon as Slevin is returned to Nick’s apartment (still without Nick anywhere in sight), he’s picked up by The Rabbi’s goons (thankfully this time having been allowed to have dressed). The Rabbi explains that “Nick” owes him a large sum of money as well and gives him 48 hours to pay up. Slevin leaves and weighs all of the options put in front of him. After his exit, Bruce Willis appears with The Rabbi and we learn that he is none other than the legendary assassin, Mr. Goodkat (strikes fear into your hearts, doesn’t it?). Now during all of this, Slevin also meets Nick’s cute, bubbly neighbor Lindsey (Lucy Liu) and immediately falls for her which is good since this movie really needed a love interest and not a script doctor. For the next hour and a half we’re greeted to tense situations with crooked cops, badass assassins, crafty mob bosses, hapless thugs, and Josh Hartnett showing that he can see just fine while squinting, thank you very much. Double crosses, plot twists, and revealing flashbacks allow you to be surprised by absolutely nothing that happens in this movie. The great moment where the protagonist plays his final hand and reveals all the details features only the only two people on the planet surprised by the outcome: the bad guys.

We’re treated to some great, quirky character moments, some very well directected action scenes by director Paul McGuigan (Gangster No. 1, Wicker Park) and ultimately the film ends up being a lot of fun to watch even though we’ve seen these third act “twists” a dozen times in better films (and many a Murder, She Wrote episode). All in all, a worthy feature for a warm weekday viewing and another reason for why I like bad movies.

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Blind Buys and Recommendations: Johnny Hiro

7 10 2009

Probably the best part of being a comic fan is finding a diamond in the rough among trades as you’re perusing a shelf in a comic shop. It’s truly great to have the subtle enthusiasm from a shop owner over a book met with your own skeptical raised eyebrow and then be proven wrong once you get through reading it. My local comic shop owner sees me take home quite the haul over the course of a month and rarely tries to hook me up with a book he might think I haven’t heard about. Johnny Hiro, though, was one of those books. The book snuck under my radar due to the fact that it only had two issues published before being canceled and then had to be finished and resolicited as a trade paperback. The book is worth the weight. The title character is not a superhero or vigilante or warrior of any kind. No, Johnny is just your every day average busboy who is trying to make ends meet while living in New York City and running afoul of everything from rival restaurant sushi samurais or giant monsters attacking the city. At his side is his cheerful and loving girlfriend, Mayumi, who adores her boyfriend as much as she adores kittens and believing everything will work out in the end. Writer/artist Fred Chao delivers a book that’s fun and engaging and completely entertaining for all types of readers big and small. Guest-stars galore including NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg and the cast of an 80’s hit sitcom grace the same pages as Godzilla-wannabes fighting giant robots. The art is in black and white but still dynamic and full of life between the panels. The jokes come fast and furious but the humor is always overshadowed by the genuine charm of Chao’s writing of the Johnny and Mayumi. It’s their relationship that holds the book together between hilarious skits and well-drawn action. It’s like Chao knows this and makes every scene that he puts them in feel very realistic. Even when Mayumi’s broken English is played for laughs, it never feels derogatory or childish. He works it into the natural dialogue and counters it with Johnny’s own standard way of speaking. Johnny Hiro is definitely a book that I’m glad was recommended to me and I’m passing that recommendation on and hoping that others pick it up. It’s a great blind buy, I’ll tell you that.

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Television’s Anti-Heroes

6 10 2009

These days, we as an audience are appearing less and less interested in characters that play by the rules and follow a moral compass. Back in the television days of yore, we weren’t allowed to have dramatic leads that didn’t follow the letter of the law and show us that doing what was right should be done the right way. Perry Mason, Jim Rockford, Thomas Magnum, Joe Friday, MacGyver, and Ben Matlock are just a few of the classic icons that we as an audience came to love growing up (whether in release or in reruns). Nowadays, though, the landscape is… a little different.

Currently, the shows that seem to draw renewals from networks and scores of viewers are the procedurals and whatnot. We have our CSIs and our Law and Orders and they still keep churning out millions of viewers and millions of dollars. Those kind of concepts always will. But take a look at the other protagonists who are fighting for truth, justice, and Nielsen ratings.

Dr. Greg House, MD: He lies, he cheats, he pops pills and he risks lives all in the pursuit of being right. But not being right in the moral and virtuous sense. House just lives to be correct and manipulate people as if they were dancing to his tune. They’ve made many attempts over the seasons to humanize the character and dull his edge, but at the end of the day House will always be House. Hugh Laurie’s charming misanthrope will insult the strong and antagonize the weak, just to prove that everybody lies. Even when you’ve just recovered from nearly dying of a crazy combination of once in a lifetime symptoms, House doesn’t shake your hand or tell you he’s glad you’re okay. He mocks you and tells you to not be stupid again. He’ll go over the spouse’s head, lie to the administration, and kidnap a patient.

Dexter Morgan: A serial killer who’s on our side. Not sure if that’s as comforting as it’s supposed to sound, but it seems to work. The show is starting its fourth season of Dexter killing killers and then ritualistically carving up the bodies all the while providing his extremely creepy narration thanks to Michael C. Hall’s eerie intonation. Dexter spends his time faking a personality he can use to get by his job as a forensic police scientist and a husband, but as he himself will tell you, it’s all just hiding his “dark passenger” who is constantly itching to get out and kill. The only thing keeping Dexter on our side is his code of protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty set forth by his adopted father, a cop who saw Dexter’s impulses from an early age. Even when Dexter thinks he’s found an ally in his cause in the form of another dark killer, he always realizes that without this code, anyone would succumb to the dark passanger. Frankly, in terms of role models, I guess you can’t do much better than a sociopath who hunts the guilty.

Patrick Jane: The Mentalist is a procedural that seems like it’s going to be pretty run of the mill. A team of federal agents who work for the fictional California Bureau of Investigation solving high profile murders and kidnappings all over the great state of, well, California are aided by a former television psychic. The psychic, Patrick Jane, was using techniques of the mentalist trade to dupe audiences and convince them he could speak with the dead and read their minds. When a serial killer known as Red John showed up, Jane tried to curry ratings by “aiding” the investigations. Red John killed his family out of sport. Jane and the members of CBI take on the usual “case-of-the-week” and usually catch the bad guy, but the methods that Jane employs almost always break the rules of institution. Like House, he’ll do whatever is necessary to solve a case and he isn’t doing it for justice since like Dexter, Jane is also a borderline sociopath thanks to the death of his family. If the case happens to have anything to do with Red John? Then you’d better get out of his way. Instead of playing him in a dark brooding fashion, Simon Baker makes Jane charming, smirking rogue. An interesting choice that pulls off the sociopath angle very well.

Detective Vic Mackey: ”Mackey is Al Capone with a badge.” With these words, you get everything you need to know about the character that Michael Chiklis played for seven seasons on The Shield, a gritty cop show that was loosely based on the actions of the infamous LAPD Rampart squad. Mackey is an intense individual with a corrupted system of justice and morality that has him doing whatever it takes to enact justice while defending the interests of his family and partners. This includes stealing from street gangs, providing protection for mobsters, and even killing fellow cops who have turned informant. Mackey is a monster in the eyes of some, but the point to keep in mind is that he’ll also do whatever it takes to take down the worst of the worst in Los Angeles’ Farmington District. He may not seem like he has any scruples, but there are moments where Chiklis shows that the character has a code of honor and will break whatever laws stand in the way of him taking down those responsible for violating that code.

Jack Bauer: There are those that argue that Kiefer Sutherland’s protagonist from the hit action series, 24, is a shill for the Republican administration’s theories of “international relations” in terms of terrorists. For a majority of the seasons, this is hard to ignore what with any character who was an Arab incidentally turning out to be a villain and Bauer torturing everyone (including his own brother) in the pursuit of trying to stop a terrorist threat. Season 7 was, in my opinion, a great return to form for Bauer as he was forced to face the consequences of his actions and attempt to defend the nation against threats without resorting to old methods and old paranoia. While Bauer kills, detonates, interrogates and, yes, tortures his way through seven seasons of action, his results can’t be denied as he will sacrifice his own life and safety if it means innocents go free and bad guys get the shaft.

There aren’t “good guys” anymore fighting the forces of evil out there. They’re all anti-heroes, these days. Somewhere along the line the only way to make a character interesting was to inject a little bit of evil in them. You can’t argue the results haven’t been entertaining seeing as how these five characters have topped the charts in critics and viewers lists for years. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen.

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Purchased on Wednesday: Tom Strong Deluxe Hardcover vol. 1, Showcase Presents: Warlord vol. 1, Secret Warriors vol. 1: Nick Fury Agent of Nothing HC, Salt Water Taffy vol. 3: Truth About Dr. True, Sleeper Season 2 TP

3 10 2009

Disclaimer: This is actually three weeks worth of books so that I can play catch up.

Tom Strong Deluxe Hardcover vol. 1: I own trade paperbacks in a variety of formats. There’s the standard trade format, digests, hardcovers, Absolute Editions (DC’s oversized slipcase collections of classics), etc. These formats range in quality from poor and flimsy (standard trades) to cumbersome and epic (Absolute Editions, but damn are they pretty) and that can make it hard to read them in a casual fashion. One format that has always stood out to me as practically perfect is the deluxe hardcover format that both Marvel and DC use for larger collections of classic works. Marvel did it with Runaways and Astonishing X-Men, for example and DC is doing it with Gotham Central and Grant Morrison’s JLA. This is why I’m glad I’ve waited so long to begin buying Tom Strong in collected editions: I just knew DC would find a great way to present the series for consumption. For those that haven’t read it, the series is Alan Moore’s take on the classic science heroes of pulp times like Doc Savage and Tom Swift with a bit of Tarzan thrown in for good measure. Moore takes these classic pulp icon tropes and updates them for the new millenium (Tom Strong’s hometown is even called Millenium City) and shows off some great art, amazing story-telling and endearing characters. Whether Tom is fighting his own rogue’s gallery of foes like the Modular Man or the Pangaen or traveling to distant worlds populated with a collection public domain superheroes from the 1940’s or having guest artists send him to the afterlife via a phantom autogyro, the series maintains a level of quality and charm throughout every chapter. Great collection of a great title.

Showcase Presents: Warlord vol. 1: Ok, I have a confession to make: I’m kinda a hypocrite with my proclamations regarding genre likes and dislikes. What I mean is that I can be known to swear up and down that I hate a particular type of material because I’ve never actually read anything in that genre that I liked before. Sword and Sorcery is one of those genres that I just can’t stand because I’ve never gotten into any of the material that people have told me was the creme de la creme of published works in that field. Lord of the Rings, for example, just didn’t do it for me. Neither did Conan the Barbarian. Hell, He-Man and Thundercats even left me cold. So you can imagine how red my face was when I discovered Mike Grell’s Warlord series from DC circa 1975. Now, in this case, what drew me to the book was the fact that it was Mike Grell working on it. I’m a huge fan of the man’s work including Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters and his own character, Jon Sable: Freelance. When I’d first read about Warlord in an old Who’s Who comic, nothing about it really intrigued me. It seemed like yet another “warrior against sorcerers and demons, etc” story and I didn’t go out of my way to find any issues. Then the Justice League Unlimited cartoon did an episode on this bygone character and suddenly, I was slightly interested. Lo and behold, after digging up a couple of freebie issues in a back issue been from the 70’s, I was hooked. Thank the reprint heavens that DC included this comic in their Showcase Presents series of black and white collections because it’s a great read. The book follows Travis Morgan, an SR-71 pilot and Vietnam war veteran, who accidently finds himself sent to the mystical land of Skartaris when his flight plan goes awry over the North Pole. Once he becomes familiar with the enchanted land, he learns that there is no one who will fight for the freedom of the besieged indiginous people and takes it upon himself to become their defender, thus earning the name Warlord. The book is packed with action, terrific art by Grell, and one of DC’s hopefully not forgotten characters. Currently, the company brought Warlord back for a new series written by Grell and drawn by Joe Prado. Once you’ve made it through this collection, go give that series a shot, too. Especially if you’re into this sword and sorcery stuff.

Secret Warriors vol. 1: Nick Fury Agent of Nothing HC: I love a good espionage comic. This is probably why I’ve been such a huge fan of Marvel’s classic super spy character, Nick Fury. The best part about Fury, to me, was that he wasn’t your usual dapper secret agent like Patrick McGoohan or Pierce Brosnan. No, Fury was a grizzled Word War II veteran who was still kicking ass in modern times with a cigar and a laser pistol. Fury’s charms came from his tough-as-nails nature and had little to do with the idea that this guy could be sly or sneaky. Imagine Kurt Russell doing a James Bond movie except he’s playing a character who’s a combination of his classic John Carpenter characters, Jack Burton (Big Trouble in Little China) and Snake Plisken (Escape from New York). Now for a long time Fury ran the largest espionage network in the Marvel universe, S.H.I.E.L.D. The acronymn has gone through many definitions. When last defined, it stood for Strategic Hazard Intervention, Espionage Logistics Directorate. Currently in the Marvel universe, S.H.I.E.L.D. has been shuttered and Nick Fury is on the outs with the federal government. After watching former supervillain, Norman Osborn (the original Green Goblin), put in charge of national security, Fury goes underground and assembles a team of young and inexperienced superhumans as his team of agents to perform missions that S.H.I.E.L.D. would have taken on had it still been in existence. Y’know, defending the world from the scum of the earth and such, since Osborn is really just making life safe for supervillains while he’s in charge. The series is written by Jonathan Hickman who is one of my personal favorite up and coming comic book creators. He’s had four books published through Image Comics, the first of which, Nightly News, is an amazing mixed media work showing off Hickman’s skills at characterization and suspense. Hickman brings those talents to writing this comic and it makes the twists and turns the plot takes work excellently alongside the expertly-rendered action scenes handed in by artist Stefano Caselli (Hack/Slash, Avengers: The Initiative). All in all, this is a great title filled with brand new characters (thus, you never know if they’ll survive the issue and genuine suspense is created!) and classic heroes and villains, side-by-side in the classic Marvel manner.

Salt Water Taffy vol. 3: Truth about Dr. True: There really aren’t that many comics for kids and adults. For a long time in comics, it was seriously either/or with very little that could be enjoyed by both sets of readers. Then writer/artist Matthew Loux showed up with Salt Water Taffy, his series of graphic novels from Oni Press. The series follows two young brothers, Jack and Benny, as they’re begrudgingly dragged to the New England coastal town, Chowder Bay for the summer. During their time there, Jack and Benny discover that there is a great deal of adventure to be had against the sleepy beach town. All of the volumes released so far are full of innocent and fun tales of taffy-stealing lobsters, hat-loving giant eagles, and, with the release of volume 3, ghosts with a mystery to solve. Loux’s art is fluid and dynamic while his story-telling style is both charming and well-paced. You never feel pandered to or patronized as an audience member mostly due to the fact that his art carries a very innocent and yet witty comic timing that can translate very well in sequence. It’s great to read a comic and then realize when I’ve finished it that I could pass it off to a friend’s kid and know that they’d enjoy it also.

Sleeper Season 2 TP: Ed Brubaker is one of the better writers working in the mainstream today. His Captain America is hailed as one of the best takes on the character to date and his run on Daredevil was one of my personal favorites. He can find the voice in any character and can add a genuine flavor of noir to the darker books he chooses to write. Sleeper, to me, was the best example of why Brubaker is an expert at his craft. The book takes place in the Wildstorm universe of comics which I’ve always felt peaked with Warren Ellis’s Authority series and has since been coasting on characters and concepts that need to come to a calm and satisfying conclusion. Within this world is an intelligence agency called I/O run by veteren spy, John Lynch. Lynch is a master puppeteer of espionage and had decided that the best way to take down a villain known as Tao, rising star in the world terrorism trade, was to send in Holden Carver, a deep cover operative armed with superpowers. In the mini-series, Point Blank (which can be picked up along with the two Sleeper trades), it’s revealed that Lynch was the only person who knew of Carver’s existence, but through the manipulations of Tao, Lynch is put in a coma and Carver is left in the cold to fend for himself. This is where the Sleeper series picks up. DC has made the wise decision to collect the series into two “seasons” (the story-telling is very similar to a television show) and has released them both as 12-issue trade paperbacks. The book’s art by master artist Sean Philips is dark, gritty, seeped in noir flavor and the writing is rife with twist after twist as we watch Carver try to get out of the mess that he has become stuck in while trying to serve the mission and his country. Sleeper is a great read for fans of Graham Greene-style spy novels and modern espionage comics.

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Coming Attractions: Soloman Kane

2 10 2009

First off, let me get this out of the way right away: No, this is not a remake or sequel or anything in relation to the craptacular flop from 2004, Van Helsing starring Hugh Jackman. As you’re watching this trailer, I want you to completely ignore every impulse you have to roll your eyes and go, “Dude, I saw this movie and it sucked except for Kate Beckinsale in a corset.” What you should keep in mind is that the character Soloman Kane has been around for as long as Conan the Barbarian (since they were both created by the legendary Robert E. Howard) as has been publsished in just as many forms. There have been books, comics, and even poetry chronicling the adventures of the dour, gloomy 16th century puritan warrior who battled the forces of darkness and the supernatural throughout Europe and Africa. Currently, the character has just enjoyed a brand new miniseries from Dark Horse comics and is having all of his earlier adventures that were published at Marvel during the 1970’s collected as well. The film stars James Purefoy (of HBO’s Rome) and I’m pretty excited to watch what should be a faithful adaptation of a classic pulp hero.

Synopsis: Armed with a rapier and flintlock pistols, Solomon Kane dresses in black, his pale face and cold eyes shadowed by a hat. He is a true rogue, blasting and slashing forward on a mission of pillage and plunder in war-torn North Africa in the late 1500s. When the devil lays claim to his hopelessly corrupt soul, Kane escapes only to face the sobering truth: in order to seek redemption, he must renounce his wicked ways and devote himself wholly to a pious life. His new-found piety is put to the test when he is forced to return to his murderous ways to save England from the grasp of evil.

Release date: TBA 2010

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Like Kurosowa… But with Rabbits….

1 10 2009

I own a great many graphic novels. Some would argue too many. Awhile back, I dated a librarian so my books are now in some sort of library of congress set-up that she came up with when she helped me move. This means that there really is a method to the madness of the organization on the four shelves in my apartment. Some are Marvel, some are Oni, some are Dark Horse, etc. One shelf, though, contains its own dedicated area to a series that not a lot of people are familiar with: Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo. This classic series chronicles the adventures of Miyamoto Usagi, a wandering samurai (or ronin) who travels the countryside of ancient Japan performing his musha shugyo (warrior’s pilgrimage). Oh, and all of the characters are rendered as animals. I can say, without fail, that this is one of the best comics being published today and I happen to have five handy dandy reasons why you should be buying it.

1. 25 years and still going strong

Stan Sakai began publishing this book in 1984 with various anthologies until officially starting at Fantagraphics as the titles first home. The title then moved to Mirage Studios and finally settled in at Dark Horse Comics where it is still published today. Sakai has written and drawn every issue to date and has only built the level of quality that Usagi started with. It’s also constantly accessible. I personally started reading the series in trade paperback with book 8 and while I’ve gone back and read 1 through 7, it wasn’t hard to jump in and keep reading forward without feeling lost.

2. Cast of characters

The best part of the fact that the title has been going for so long is that the storylines have had time to develop one of the richest and most endearing cast of characters ever captured on paper. Even though versions of classic manga icons like Lone Wolf and Cub (in Usagi they’re referred to as Lone Goat and Kid) and Zato-Ino, the blind swordpig (in reference to the blind swordsman Zatoichi of Japanese film and television fame) to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crowd the pages, Usagi never feels like a parody since the characters are fully three-dimensional and written with respect. If the guest stars and pop culture-referenced characters are handled with that level of quality, then you can imagine what the rest of the cast is written like. There is no such thing as a throwaway guest star and Sakai never panders or insults his audience with simple personalities.

3. Based on actual events… kinda

Many of Sakai’s Usagi stories are based on actual Japanese history such as battles or political intrigue. Others are steeped in classic fairy tales and legends of the Japanese culture. Even when the original stories and continuity stretch through the book, Sakai’s dedication to authenticity has him citing facts and reference notes left and right in the glossary (yes, this comic even gets a glossary).

4. Kids can read it (and adults can love it)

The book never panders to the adults that read it, but at the same time it never becomes TOO adult that you couldn’t let your kids enjoy it also. In a day and age where super-villains rape and murder and Wolverine is the most popular super-hero on the shelves, a title that is universally appealing and safe is a rarity. Every issue is safe to hand off to a young kid without even needing to be sanitized and they’ll get to watch massive badass samurai battles with no gore. It’s like if Pixar made Seven Samurai.

5. One of the greatest comic book protagonists of all time. Yeah, f’real.

Miyamoto Usagi is a well-rounded, fully developed, and extremely memorable comic book character that stays with you from the moment you first meet him. Sakai writes him with a charm that helps you buy that one minute he can be lovable and caring and the next minute he can be a deadly warrior with a code of honor. This is handled not only in the writing, but also the art. The myriad of expressions that Sakai crafts show his skills as a master cartoonist and allows Usagi to come to life on the page making him memorable in appearence as well as personality.

I can’t recommend this series enough. I’ve been a fan from the moment I read my first issue of Usagi Yojimbo and every time I read a new trade paperback, I curse that I’ll have to wait another six months to grab the next few issues. One day, I know I’ll most likely break down and just start reading it monthly. Few comics can have that much versatility and maintain quality for so long with no end in sight of sliding off into the land of repetition and poor story-telling. We’re lucky to have Stan Sakai still working on one of the best comic book characters to ever be a guest star on a Ninja Turtles episode. More than that, we’re lucky to have Usagi Yojimbo when we need to be reminded just how great comics can be.

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TV Shows -> DVD: The Big Bang Theory

30 09 2009

Whenever you ask a nerd or geek or dork what they think of the Big Bang Theory, there’s usually an uneasiness that washes over their face. See, there’s a problem with this show: It’s degrading to the nerd set by perpetuating the stereotypes about that particular class of sci-fi obsessing, comic book loving, video game enthralled bunch as the being virgins and losers. It’s also a damn funny sitcom.

If you haven’t seen the show yet (and based on its ratings, that can’t be possible), the premise involves two genius nerds, Leonard and Sheldon, who live together in an apartment building. Across the hall from them is Penny, a struggling actress who’s unlucky at love and slowly over 13 season one episodes, she becomes part of the wayward nerds’ social group (much to the joy of lovelorn Leonard who pines for the plucky blonde). Leonard and Sheldon have an extremely small clique of friends that includes the horn-dog engineer Wolowitz and the incapable of speaking to women, Koothrappali. Both of these characters are constantly referred to by their ethnicities/cultural backgrounds in jokes about them being Jewish and Hindu, respectively, but again the jokes are so innocent and the humor seems so genuine, you feel you can laugh without guilt.

Season One is only a scant 13 episodes that sets up the general atmosphere of the show pretty well. The characters all come into their own over some very episodic, but not contrived, storylines that give us a window into just exactly who these people are and how the humor of their interactions can be developed. While Season One shows off the basic character interactions and hammering out the back-and-forth of the humor, Season Two took those building blocks and created scenarios where what was teasted as the funniest parts of Season One and expanded on them for whole episodes. Things like Sheldon’s borderline Aspirger’s syndrome breakdowns, Koothrappali’s inability to talk to women unless drunk, what would happen if Wolowitz’s actually got laid, and having Penny cross to the dark side and actually become interested in an online Age of Conan game. With the second DVD set having a total of 22 episodes, you’d think this would get old, but that’s where veteran producer Chuck Lorre (creator of the wildly successful Two and a Half Men) knows his skills in sitcom construction. Each episode works just fine on its own and can be enjoyed by a layman just jumping onboard in their first viewing. That’s the mark of sound television writing in terms of being able to draw in new fans: keep it simple and keep it accessible. Co-creator Bill Prady has talked about how the characters are based on actual people he’d encountered in college and you can see the quirks mixing with the parts of the characters to make them actually three-dimensional and that helps them remain likeable. Penny is more than just a sweet ditz, Wolowitz is more than just a horny jerk, and Leonard is more than just a lovesick puppy genius.

The show is back for Season 3 and it’s extremely easy to catch up on what’s going on since there’s no complicated ongoing narrative with the exception of the basic dynamics that are easily identified on a first viewing. I suggest it’s still a great idea to dive into the DVDs and get acquainted, but if you don’t have the dedication, then I pity you and wish you luck with your life and lack of achievments. Below is a trailer of Season Two that shows off some highlights.

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Why I Like Bad Movies: Deep Rising

29 09 2009

There are good movies, there are bad movies, there are good bad movies, and then there are movies that were at one point on the track to being a major motion picture starring Harrison Ford… and then ended up being good bad movies. Deep Rising follows “boat-for-hire” captain John Finnegan (B-movie trooper, Treat Williams) and his two person crew, Joey “Tooch” Pantucci (Kevin J. O’Connor of “The Mummy” fame) and Leila (Una Damon of… I’ve never heard of her). Finnegan and his partners have been hired by a team of mercenaries (made up of some of the creme de la creme of “I’ve seen that guy before in something” actors this side of Smokin’ Aces) that has them jetting out into the South China Sea with a hull full of stinger missiles and nary a detail as to why. The band of merry mercenaries consists of Wes Studi (Last of the Mohicans) as their leader and Jason Fleyming (Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels), Djimon Hounsou (The Island), Cliff Curtis (Live Free or Die Hard), Trevor Goddard (Mortal Kombat), and Clifton Powell (Friday) rounding out the roll call. Finnegan’s illegal little operation’s motto is the ever-so-catchy, “if the cash is there, we do not care” and even Tooch knows that this life philosophy will eventually bite them in the ass and it seems tonight might be the night. The target is a luxury cruise liner called the Argonautica (god, I love B-movies…), the pride and joy of tycoon Simon Canton (Anthony Heald at his slimiest since Silence of the Lambs) who it turns out has hired the mercs to rob and sink the ship so he can collect the insurance money. This plan would have been a rousing success (although I don’t know how 8 mercenaries and 3 smugglers can take out an entire cruise liner’s worth of passengers and crew) if not for the ship becoming infested with a giant member of the Ottoia family of sea creatures. By the time the “heroes” of our story arrive to loot and plunder, every passenger and crew member, with the exception of Canton, the ship’s captain, and a jewel thief named Trillian (X-Men’s Famke Jansen) have been killed or eaten by the Ottoia’s tentacles that snake and stalk through the bowels of the ship. What follows is basically Aliens but with more one-liners and a jet ski instead of Power Loader.

Deep Rising was at one point a project that was build around getting Harrison into a monster movie only to have him decline and then the studio have the whole project downsized. The only reason this is a relavent piece of trivia is that when you know this going in to watching the movie, you can’t help but admire Treat Williams portrayal of our “hero” Finnegan as basically Han Solo with a much more annoying sidekick and a group of guys that really do seem like they’re from a den of scum and villainy.

So what’s to love about this picture? C’mon. EVERYTHING. Williams portrays a character that can pilot a jet ski and open elevator doors with a shotgun AT THE SAME TIME. You have a team of rogues that are picked off one at a time but still get that one bonding scene early in the movie that makes you go, ” It’s not homoerotic if they have a mexican stand-off, right?” Wes Studi never breaks his stone-faced expression even in the face of vagina-with-teeth-tentacle-monsters attacking. The score is by master movie composer Jerry Goldsmith and works perfectly for the flick. The state-of-the-art weapons used by the mercs make no logical sense and frankly shouldn’t even physically work, but at least look cool throughout. Famke Jansen rolls her eyes more than her character probably demanded (but just enough that the script should have). Plus, this flick is written and directed by the man who knows bad movies, Stephen Sommers of the first two Mummy movies, Van Helsing, and G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra. In fact, every time I think about just how utterly dreadful G.I. Joe was, I think back to how much Sommers impressed me with this fun little jaunt and wonder if he’ll ever be able to do it again. I enjoyed every second of Deep Rising when I saw it and it is, in my opinion, the basis for my love of the truly B-movies that currently decorate my film library. It’s probably one of the main reasons Why I Like Bad Movies.

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Early Review: Underground #1 (Solicited for September 2009)

19 06 2009

About three years ago, I brought my sketchbook to the Stumptown Comic Fest in Portland (where I currently dwell). Now, this isn’t my sketchbook that I draw in (frankly, stick figures give me trouble), but rather my collection of convention sketches that I politely and patiently ask artists to add to every year. At this particular festival, I saw artist Steve Lieber (Gotham Central, Whiteout, Civil War: Frontline) and since years prior he’d done a really great Batman sketch for me, I approached him for another. ”What would you like?” he asked. I replied like I usually do, “Anything you’d want to do.” He went right to sketching. Now, I never hover if I can avoid it, so I wandered for a few minutes and came back to discover him putting the finishing touches on a drawing of a woman in cave exploring gear, expertly navigating an underground cave. ”What’s this from?” I asked. ”Something I’m hoping to do soon,” he replied. Years later, I’ve had the pleasure to read the first issue of that book. Underground #1, coming this September published through Image Comics, seems to be the culmination of what strikes me as a very personal comic from Lieber. To have seen the main character of Wesley Fischer evolve from the con sketch done for me and now presented in a full color comic is truly an amazing sight. Along for the ride and handling the writing side of the book is Marvel rising star Jeff Parker (Agents of Atlas, Marvel Adventures Avengers, Exiles) who deftly shows off why he’s such a find. Parker handles dialogue and pacing with a deft hand that shows he writes with an ear for characters that’s sometimes missing in most mainstream books.

The first issue sets the stage with what appears to be some of Lieber’s cleanest work to date. Not to say I haven’t enjoyed his previous work, but the art here is so strong and clear that it reminds me of Paul Smith (Uncanny X-Men, Leave it to Chance), one of the all-time greats in comics. The colors used are also first rate making each image “pop” and adds to an interesting opening sequence narrative that highlights how the interior cave scenes will be drastically different then the “outside world.” The embedded artwork should show you what I’m referring to.

Parker and Lieber offer up an extremely well-done (and in some scenes educational and informative) comic with a strong female protagonist and story ripe with realistic characters and situations. Underground does well in showing why these two are formidable forces in the current comics climate and I’ll not only be picking up these comics monthly as they come out, but I’ll be passing off what will hopefully be a handsome collection off to friends who should know that exciting comics can exist without sci-fi or spandex.

{Underground #1 is currently being solicited from Image Comics for release on September 23rd, 2009. If you’re interested, let your local retailer know to order the book and it’s subsequent issues. Diamond order code – JUL090341 D UNDERGROUND #1 (OF 5)}

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Tags: Comics, Coming Attractions, Reviews
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Purchased on Wednesday: Potter’s Field HC, Codeflesh HC, Big Book of Barry Ween: Boy Genius, Thor vol. 2 HC

10 06 2009

Potter’s Field HC: Mark Waid can do anything. Seriously, if Mark Waid wrote the obituaries, I’d post them here as my weekly pick in the newspaper. With Potter’s Field, Waid shows off how he can not only write superheroes and science fiction, but crime comics as well. The series follows the mysterious John Doe, an enigmatic avenger of the silent dead in Potter’s field, a graveyard in New York City where corpses with no identity are buried with numerical headstones. Doe is slowly making his way through the cemetary, number by number, identifying the deceased with the help of his crack investigator skills and network of agents in various areas of law enforcement. Waid not only creates a winning procedural a la Law & Order, but also recaptures the feel of classic pulp comics like the Shadow and Operator #9 from the ’30’s and ’40’s. Doe is a character with no identity, but still manages to be interesting and three-dimensional and the cases, while seemingly simple, still manage a third act plot-twist that keeps the readers interest. The art by Paul Azaceta is also noteworthy. In this day and age of artists who spent pages using photo-reference for intricate details, seeing an artist use the Mignola style of “less is just as good as more” approach is a relief, especially in a crime comic. Azaceta renders scenes with minimal detail and maximum emotion and while that sounds difficult to imagine, just take a look at the book and you’ll see why I’m so impressed. Waid shows once more why he is still a voice in the field that should be an automatic buy at the stands. Potter’s Field is worth every penny.

Codeflesh HC: A few years ago, Image comics scored what they thought was a coup with the hot writer at the time, Scott Lobdell, coming to do indie comics. This “coup” lasted all of ten minutes but it produced a comic called Double Image with Lobdell’s lead story upfront (so amazing and original that it escapes me at this time) and Joe Casey and Charlie Adlard doing a back-up tale. Codeflesh was that back-up tale and I was hooked from the pitch when I first heard it. Bail bondsman Cameron Daltry doubles as his own masked bounty hunter to track down and recapture the super-powered convicts that use his services to post bond. The question espoused by the comic is, “Why does Daltry do this at the expense of his lovelife and his health?” The answer is never really addressed, but that question allows us a way into the main character’s psyche from which we’re intrigued enough to follow the rather simple and episodic plots from short to short. This edition has been digitally colored and arranged in a very elegant reading format to showcase Adlard’s gritty and attractive style and Casey shows of his love for the character in his afterword reminicising about working on the project.

Note: This was a pretty unique buying experience and not necessarily in a good way. Both of these books are collections of extremely good indie crime books. Potter’s Field was published by Boom! Studios and Codeflesh was published by Image (and then reprinted at AIT/PlanetLar and is now back at Image). Both are written by top talent with Mark Waid on Potter’s Field and Joe Casey on Codeflesh. Both books are reprinted in gorgeous formats with Potter’s Field getting a dust jacket, ribbon bookmark, and being packed with bonus scripts and sketches and Codeflesh being recolored from it’s original black and white with an all-new coda to its story. So what’s the problem? I paid over ten dollars more for Codeflesh than I did for Potter’s Field for probably equal the material (112 pages for Potter’s Field vs. 128 pages for Codeflesh). Even my comic shop owner did a heavy sigh and noted the discrepancy in pricing. That discrepancy equals out to almost a dollar extra a page difference. Now, I ordered these books (since I’d read the material and wanted the proper treatment), so I was going to buy them regardless, but this felt slightly off as a consumer. I could have sworn that the Codeflesh was originally solicited as cheaper than this final product and the fact that it took almost 5 more months to come out than the original release date… Regardless. Just a note regarding hardcovers from independent publishers.

Big Book of Barry Ween, Boy Genius: There are a lot of Judd Winick haters out there. Don’t worry, I’m sort of one of them. He’s the definition of hit and miss author with me. His Exiles was pitch-perfect comics while his Green Arrow was preaching and banal. His Batman was twist-filled and fun while his Outsiders was… well… preachy and banal. When Winick just relaxes his inner liberal (and before anyone says anything, I’M a liberal also, so we can smell our own) and just writes comics, he can really pull out all of the stops of great humor and dialogue (his two biggest strengths as a writer). Barry Ween, his first comic book work from Oni Press, showcases those abilities along with his own cartooning talents. The book follows the title character, who is the smartest person on the planet and is also only 10 years old. Barry and his best friend, Jeremy, are constantly getting into trouble while he’s creating devices or working on experiments (usually due to the hyperactive Jeremy getting too curious) and hijinx ensue. Winick manages to take what could be a too-simple concept and actually craft characters that are not only funny but deep and relatable. Without being preachy, anyone who has ever suffered from depression can sympathize with Barry’s plight as he describes the fact that he’s ALWAYS thinking and can’t stop and how horrible it is to be this intelligent while the world is so distant to him. Jeremy offers a simple voice of reason seeing as how he’s, well, simple in comparison to Barry and it’s these somber moments that cement the characters as a winning comedy pair with a great deal of heart. The book contains all of their appearences including a color short from an Oni Color Special from back in the day. It’s well worth the money to grab this book and own the best thing Judd Winick wrote that DIDN’T win a GLAAD award.

Thor vol. 2 HC: As far as I’m concerned, J. Michael Straczynski should be the only person writing Thor right now. I’m talking guest appearances, cameos, and even advertisements, too. Here’s the thing to keep in mind: I hated Straczynski’s Amazing Spider-Man run. I mean, seriously loathed it. Everything he came up with felt forced, uninteresting, and was devoid of anything worth reading for me. When I heard that he had taken up the reigns of Thor, I was slightly intrigued but ultimately wasn’t going to give the book a shot until someone else read it for me and told me what to expect (we like to call this, “lazy criticism”). Suffice it to say, every time I read anything about the book, I felt like I was missing the best book being published by Marvel at the time. When I finally read the first hardcover of the series, I was floored. Straczynski had managed to take a character that I’d never really felt close to in the Marvel Universe and slowly turned him into one of my current favorites. The concept of gods walking among men (as the Asgardians due with their home now floating over Oklahoma, USA) may have been done many times, but Straczynski seems to add a freshness to it that takes these classic Lee/Kirby renditions and turns them on their heads as comedic foils for stories without drifiting into parody territory. Thor himself is presented as being looking to reexamine what exactly it means to lead his fellow gods. Straczynski subtley points out that Thor is not a superhero, but a god of old who protects the weak and vanquishes evil not because of the whole “great power, great responsibility” deal, but because that’s what Odin had always taught him was important. When examining the character this way, you can feel that Straczynski knows what he’s doing and that the coming issues will only get better and better with each release. Oliver Copiel and Marko Djurdjevic both handle art duties here and consistently show off why Thor is not only one of Marvel’s best written comics but also one of its best drawn titles as well. Neither artist disappoints on their issues and if that created lateness, then honestly, I don’t care. It’s worth the wait. This hardcover completes the first year of the title and the arc of Thor and the Asgardians return and Loki’s sinister plot to overthrow Thor’s reign as King. Enjoy and watch as I take back almost everything I ever said negative about J. Michael Straczyniski. Almost.