Rudy Ray Moore RIP
This is pretty much for Shoemaker, but...
Yeah, dude. Dolemite is dead. Sorry about that.
Long live the Dolemite.
Update
Hey, Leaguers. Not much to report. With the new job in hand, I've been taking it easy of late. Ran by Austin Books yesterday and picked up a mess of stuff (I recommend picking up the latest Superman books, including the New Krypton Special.
It's official. The Superman books are the best they've been in recent memory.
I' m getting to know people at work, and while the Austin branch of my team is small, at least I really like everyone. If it were a small team full of jerks... well... It'd be bad news.
I'm digging my office space (it's quiet, so ADD boy here can focus!). It's just a weird shade of green.
The weekend will be good. I'm going to the UT/ OSU game, and then hitting "Hops Fest II: The Hoppening" at Shoemaker's on Saturday. Sunday will be more of the bringing crap downstairs stuff we've come to know and love. I also need to take a look at my Supersuit for proper Halloween candy distribution.
I do find it odd that, aside from 1999, I don't know if I've ever been involved in anyone else's Halloween activities. Somehow that's the one holiday where my pals seem to wind up hanging out with friends where I don't fit on their Buddy Venn Diagram.
No worries. We like handing out the candy. Speaking of... I need to get:
a) candy
b) apples
c) caramel
Batman: Brave and the Bold
Here's the show's website (with audio... so turn down speakers if at work). The show premiers in November, I think. I saw images from ComicCon, and, yeah... Jamie, I'm buying the Blue Beetle toy they're going to make.
Here's Beetle fighting space pirate Kanjar-Ro.
Changeling
That new Clint Eastwood movie with Angelina Jolie? It seems to have been written by J. Michael Straczynski. JMS is probably most famous for 90's era sci-fi show "Babylon 5" (which hasn't really done much on DVD or re-runs). JMS is also now a pretty popular comic writer, and had what I thought to be a good run on Spider-Man.
Anyway, good for JMS. Glad he's got movie work going on as well as the comics.
Watchmen Stuff
I recommend Television Without Pity's new feature "Trailers without Pity". Their Watchmen discussion is your perfect breakdown of what both fanboy and non-nerd alike may wish to know about the upcoming movie.
What Omar and Pedro either missed or oversimplified was their comparison of the Watchmen characters to DC characters (Dr. Manhattan to Superman). The fanboy in me must point out: this is wrong.
Moore had initially intended to use characters owned by Charlton comics, which DC had purchased in the 1980's. However, DC decided to fold those characters into the DCU rather than let Moore do his thing, so Moore just changed who was who. But if you know those characters, it kinda makes more sense than Dr. Manhattan equals Superman.
Night Owl = Blue Beetle (including the generational aspect)
Dr. Manhattan = Captain Atom
Rorschach = The Question (which, in turn, informed how the JLU Question was portrayed)
Comedian - Peacemaker (now in Blue Beetle at DC)
Ozymandias = Thunderbolt
Silk Spectre = Most likely "Phantom Lady"
May I get my nerd-card stamped and get my free sandwich? Thanks.
Also, Zach Snyder cut together another Watchmen trailer, which is pretty much the first trailer all over again.
3 comments:
These Trailers Without Pity guys are retarded goons. I can't believe they're reviewing trailers. I really don't even like Billy Corrigan very much, but I can't believe that two guys who are spending their time reviewing trailers don't see the irony in calling him pretentious.
This whole massive trend toward hyperanalyzing entertainment junk food is a farce. And one other thing- I like and have been fascinated by Watchmen as much as the next guy, but I think people are blowing its importance way out of proportion in advance of this movie. It's a good book because it actually has some socially relevant themes and messages, but it's also a comic which is, at times, slow, ponderous, and ALMOST too weighty and oppressive to be thoroughly enjoyed. It's heavy on dialogue, often light on action, and its characters are so flawed and mired in their own ethical and personal dilemnas (and complicated backstories) that at times they risk losing sympathy (or even worse- interest) from the audience. Furthermore, there are large parts of the book that are written in prose, and I always felt like these sections kind of dragged and disrupted the flow of the overall story and the rhythm established by the sequential art storytelling style of the rest of the book.
Anyway, the whole thing is heavy, almost to the point of being oppressive at times, and while this works decently enough for one graphic novel, I certainly wouldn't hold out Watchmen as a trendsetter that other comics should all model themselves after (comics, I think, on the whole, should be more FUN than Watchmen, even when they deal with dark subject matter).
Anyway, my point, I guess, is that even if someone made a movie that was truly representative of the Watchmen graphic novel, I'm not sure audiences would respond well to it.
(Don't get me wrong, I still like Watchmen, but I'm just not sure that it's the "be all, end all" of comics that it's being made out to be)
Now Dark Knight Returns... maybe that's a different story...
Yeah, too bad about RRM. He was a joy and a treasure.
I don't know if these guys are reviewing the trailer so much as taking a look at the production ahead of time. Like it or not, that's SOP for comic nerds v. the source material v. the movie adaptation these days. And its certainly nothing new for movie audiences to consider, from "Gone with the Wind" to the less well received Demi Moore adaptation of "The Scarlet Letter".
What we can see is that the adaptation is taking a fairly literal approach to the comic, and that makes it easier to talk about to an audience unfamiliar with the material. And to summarize the common-geek-knowledge issues with such an adaptation for the TwoP audience, which probably HASN'T read the book.
The adulation of Watchmen isn't just about content, but about Moore and Gibbons' use of form, which I don't really want to get into here, but obviously see that as a problem translating to the movie.
In its own way, DKR is as much a master of form (Miller's use of the panels, color, etc... to pace the story is nothing short of extraordinary), but probably due to its high-concept, single character focus, gets a little less due.
I don't feel either work will translate well. To get absurd, you might as well say "I'm going to make a movie of Bitches Brew". Some things just aren't the same in one medium as another.
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