As I understand it, there was a time when Filipino komiks were a bit like Japanese manga in that they pervaded our local pop culture. In a a way, there's still some degree of pervasiveness, but I think it says something about the state of the art form that, from all indications, being a komiks writer or artist isn't something anyone in this country does as a full-time job. A lot of comic books being locally produced now are self-published and done by people who have made it their advocacy to keep the komiks industry alive, not necessarily people who are doing it for a living. There are some people, to my knowledge, who do work for American comic book companies so they can continue to afford to produce local stuff.
Anyway, I'm glad the local comic book industry has its champions, people who are out there trying to put out original, distinctly Filipino, top-notch illustrated entertainment. Probably foremost among these advocates is artist/writer/inker Gerry Alanguilan (of Wasted fame), who's set up an online museum of art of Filipino komiks legends like Nestor Redondo and Alfredo Alcala, to name a couple. In my opinion, Gerry's on his way to becoming a legend in his own right, especially considering the degree of recognition he achieved with Wasted, which caused even the foreign comic book community to sit up and take notice.
His latest work, Elmer, is, to put it mildly departure from Wasted, in that it moves from the extreme to the absurd; instead of a world in which an angry jilted lover vents his rage on everything he feels is wrong with the world, it envisions a world filled with talking chickens, including the eponymous Elmer, and the lead character, his son, Jake. It's the story of someone going back to his roots, as Jake leaves his not-too-successful life in the city to go home to the province and visit the ailing Elmer. The series takes a bit of a sci-fi twist from this point onwards as Alanguilan explains, through a diary kept by Elmer and through an old family friend named Farmer Ben how chickens came to talk in the first place.
Elmer, first and foremost, is a breath of fresh air in a marketplace dominated by superheroes and their derivatives. It's nice to see that Alanguilan is building on the success he achieved with Wasted by trying to come up with even more original and fresh concepts for storytelling. The premise is solid, and has a nice, Kafkaesque texture to it, whether or not that was his intention.
There are some problems in the execution of this premise, however. The idea of chickens walking and talking is actually rather priceless, and I honestly feel that to narrate this story, straight-faced, with talking chickens somehow existing in a human world adds a quirky, tongue-in-cheek inventiveness to the whole concept which would elevate the story even past the slap-in-the-face political incorrectness of Wasted.
Instead, Alanguilan tries a more "realistic" approach to the situation and devotes a bit of time to explaining how the world came to be this way, with chickens talking and walking. He throws in topical issues like racial prejudice which I view as another issue that wasn't handled very well for reasons I am about to explain. Although the history he has crafted for the talking chickens is admittedly quite intriguing and has me hanging on to see the next issue, I still feel that the story would be better served by exploring the themes of family ties which also seem to serve as one of Elmer's central story threads, rather than putting so much premium on this "White Event" that gave the chickens of the world their "powers."
Another problem is the persona through whose eyes we see this world. Just as the lead of Wasted was an angry young man, Jake is an angry young, well, chicken. The former did the things he did because he was extremely embittered about things that happened, and the latter is basically carries a chip on his shoulder-er-wing because he's a chicken in a man's world.
The thing about Jake's anger is that it feels a lot more nebulous. One would think he hates the humans for having once eaten his species, and this is the objection he voices when he finds out his sister is engaged to one (!), but then it seems as if the real reason he hates mankind is that he feels like an outsider, in that he identifies himself with them (even going to the extent of masturbating to a human "bold star") but never feels accepted by them.
Ultimately, whatever the reason for his angst, Jake comes across more as obnoxious than as sympathetic. It doesn't help that his dialogue is punctuated by what I feel is a lot of needless profanity. That kind of language was well-suited to the atmosphere of Wasted, but feels out of place here, especially coming from the mouth-er-beak of a chicken. There's nothing wrong with angry characters per se, but I honestly feel that this one could have been done better.
Though the script may in some respects fall short, however, the art does not. I remember Alanguilan's fantastic rendering from a short story he did featuring his Timawa character back in the 90s, and it's absolutely glorious to see two full-length issues of his artwork (so far) rendered with as much care and effort as he put into that little vignette. In an industry (especially the local one) dominated by manga rip-off artists, it's really wonderful to see someone developing and maintaining his own distinct approach to comic book art. It really gives me hope for the future of komiks.
I know a lot of my friends choose to read their comics off the web, and in the case of top-selling, foreign comics, that's perfectly fine, but please do me and the komiks industry a favor by buying Elmer at the nearest comic book store. It only costs about P50 an issue, and I can assure you all it's well-worth it.
Friday, November 03, 2006
Monday, October 30, 2006
The Foolishness of Ignoring the Inevitable
It's astonishing how tenaciously people resist change, even when it's quantifiably better for them. This point is illustrated quite vividly in Who Killed the Electric Car? a documentary directed by Chris Paine and produced by uber-producer Dean Devlin (Godzilla, Independence Day).
The film begins with a "funeral" staged by several activists who are mourning the decommissioning of EV1, an electric car developed by General Motors in compliance with a 1990 California State Mandate requiring car manufacturers to make 3% of their entire line emission-free or be disallowed from selling their cars in that state.
From the funeral, the film backtracks to how the EV1 was "born" by narrating the passing of the legislation, and the efforts of General Motors in particular both to comply with and to combat the California law. Essentially, the narrative of the film is structured around this singular thread, from the development of the car, to the apparently unanimously positive reception it received from those allowed to lease and drive, but not own, it, to the responses of other car companies in both America and Japan to this initiative.
The film's second act, which is rather well-woven into the first, narrates how several powers that be, namely the American Car Manufacturers, the Oil Companies, and the Bush Administration, conspired to put the electric car into the ground, manipulating statistics and essentially putting the full-court press on the California Air Regulations Board. It also slams, although not nearly enough, in my opinion, the public for its failure to support the move to switch to electric cars.
The film essentially wraps up with an indictment of all of those responsible, car makers, oil companies, Bush and his lackeys, and the American consumer, for killing the electric car, in particular the GM EV1, which, not long after the California State government relented and drastically altered the mandate to suit the needs of the car makers, was recalled from all of lessees and ignominiously destroyed.
Insofar as it describes the oil barons, the car makers, and the Bush government as devils incarnate, the film didn't tell me anything I already knew, but I was shocked to find how little support the EV garnerned from American consumers considering escalating gas prices. By 2003, I"m sure the price of oil was already spiralling out of control. I find it truly strange that only lobbyists saw fit to champion the electric car.
This is a film similar in importance to Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11, but fortunately, without Moore's decidedly more strident tone (and a much better narrator in Martin Sheen). It's got a couple of gaps in the narrative, however, that may inadvertently hurt its chances of convincing people who don't already espouse what it's pushing. For example, the supposition that Bush gave people tax breaks to people just to buy SUVs may sound like a pretty rational line of thinking to someone like me, but if I were a gas-guzzling, parochial thinking, right-wing American who only has the vaguest idea of how finite the oil supply actually is, I'd want something a little less conjectural and a little more complete.
But the most important aspect of the film is how it brings home the fact that the technology for viable electric cars is not ten or twenty years away; it is here, and because of a combination of greed, apathy and ignorance, or whatever the real reasons are, it's been shoved aside in favor of...the Hummer. We don't have to wait another fifty years for a viable electric car; we don't have to wait until the oil supply runs out. Electric-powered cars are a things of today, and with companies like Tesla producing sports cars that generate 240 horsepower, are here to stay as well.
Consumers in America and the world over therefore have a choice, to continue to burn up the world's oil reserves, even going to the extent of drilling in wildlife preserves, or simply make the inevitable paradigm shift TODAY and go electric. It's actually comforting to know that at the time the electric car was killed, gas prices hadn't increased exponentially just yet. Maybe now people will start paying attention.
The film begins with a "funeral" staged by several activists who are mourning the decommissioning of EV1, an electric car developed by General Motors in compliance with a 1990 California State Mandate requiring car manufacturers to make 3% of their entire line emission-free or be disallowed from selling their cars in that state.
From the funeral, the film backtracks to how the EV1 was "born" by narrating the passing of the legislation, and the efforts of General Motors in particular both to comply with and to combat the California law. Essentially, the narrative of the film is structured around this singular thread, from the development of the car, to the apparently unanimously positive reception it received from those allowed to lease and drive, but not own, it, to the responses of other car companies in both America and Japan to this initiative.
The film's second act, which is rather well-woven into the first, narrates how several powers that be, namely the American Car Manufacturers, the Oil Companies, and the Bush Administration, conspired to put the electric car into the ground, manipulating statistics and essentially putting the full-court press on the California Air Regulations Board. It also slams, although not nearly enough, in my opinion, the public for its failure to support the move to switch to electric cars.
The film essentially wraps up with an indictment of all of those responsible, car makers, oil companies, Bush and his lackeys, and the American consumer, for killing the electric car, in particular the GM EV1, which, not long after the California State government relented and drastically altered the mandate to suit the needs of the car makers, was recalled from all of lessees and ignominiously destroyed.
Insofar as it describes the oil barons, the car makers, and the Bush government as devils incarnate, the film didn't tell me anything I already knew, but I was shocked to find how little support the EV garnerned from American consumers considering escalating gas prices. By 2003, I"m sure the price of oil was already spiralling out of control. I find it truly strange that only lobbyists saw fit to champion the electric car.
This is a film similar in importance to Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11, but fortunately, without Moore's decidedly more strident tone (and a much better narrator in Martin Sheen). It's got a couple of gaps in the narrative, however, that may inadvertently hurt its chances of convincing people who don't already espouse what it's pushing. For example, the supposition that Bush gave people tax breaks to people just to buy SUVs may sound like a pretty rational line of thinking to someone like me, but if I were a gas-guzzling, parochial thinking, right-wing American who only has the vaguest idea of how finite the oil supply actually is, I'd want something a little less conjectural and a little more complete.
But the most important aspect of the film is how it brings home the fact that the technology for viable electric cars is not ten or twenty years away; it is here, and because of a combination of greed, apathy and ignorance, or whatever the real reasons are, it's been shoved aside in favor of...the Hummer. We don't have to wait another fifty years for a viable electric car; we don't have to wait until the oil supply runs out. Electric-powered cars are a things of today, and with companies like Tesla producing sports cars that generate 240 horsepower, are here to stay as well.
Consumers in America and the world over therefore have a choice, to continue to burn up the world's oil reserves, even going to the extent of drilling in wildlife preserves, or simply make the inevitable paradigm shift TODAY and go electric. It's actually comforting to know that at the time the electric car was killed, gas prices hadn't increased exponentially just yet. Maybe now people will start paying attention.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
The Evolution of Image Comics
This week, DC Comics relaunches, yet again, Jim Lee's WildC.A.T.s, this time with Lee himself on pencils and comics auteur Grant Morrison doing the writing chores. Judging by the previews, it seems to be a "back to its roots" approach to the characters, who look very much like they did when they first burst onto the scene in 1992. It seems Jim keeps wanting to return to that period in his life, when he was riding high on his success from Marvel's X-Men and hoping to channel all of that popularity into his own creations, essentially a bunch of thinly-disguised X-Men clones.
He seems to forget that the reason why he and his cohorts at Wildstorm have had to reinvent WildC.A.T.s (who at one point became the Wildcats) several times over was that people just didn't take to his characters and their convoluted space-opera storylines. He seems to forget that not even Alan Moore could elevate his creations past the copycat X-Men they really were. Look, I can even name the Marvel Comics analogues for several of the prinicipal characters:
Spartan-Cyclops (hell, Jim probably didn't think Scott was much more than a robot, anyway)
Warblade-Wolverine
Zealot-Psylocke/Elektra (any other girl in a skimpy ninja/Hand outfit)
Grifter-Gambit meets Wolverine
John Lynch-Nick Fury
I hardly think that Morrison will succeed where Moore failed.
What's sad about this particular development is that it feels like a huge step backward from what has essentially been a very healthy, steady evolution of the Image Comics line. Granted, he is no longer part of them but of the DC Universe, but no one can deny him his role in kick starting the biggest challenge Marvel and DC have ever faced to their chokehold on the market.
What started out as six Marvel Comics artists essentially wanting to flex their own creative muscles and cash in on their massive popularity has become a truly diverse repository of talents and stories.
Although a lot of the original Image characters were ripoffs of the Marvel characters on whom the Image founders had made their names (Spawn, for example, owes his origin to Ghost Rider and the nature of his costume, a 'neural parasite' to Spider-Man's symbiote), they had the right philosophy, which was essentially to give struggling creators a venue to publish their own creations, and as a result some remarkably talented people have come to light whose work may not have seen the light of day otherwise. Marvel, who now depends largely on the talents of Brian Michael Bendis, owe a good part of their current success to the Image philosophy.
The bad news for Image is that as a company, they're no longer the market force they used to be, with Spawn, their top selling title, lingering near the bottom of the Top 100 list of comic books every month. The good news, however, is that they aren't really driven by these numbers, and as a result they are still able to put out some quality, offbeat books every month that aren't tied into the latest 52nd Infinite Civil Annihilation. Books like Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead, the Luna Brothers' Girls, and other non-superhero fare are still around for whoever wants to buy them.
Image Comics, by coming when they did, truly revitalized the comic book industry. I remember the mid-nineties crash was loaded with more terrible books with variant/foil/embossed/die-cut covers than an average collector could shake a stick at. Marvel had gone incestuous (as Joe Quesada put it), giving choice writing gigs to its editorial staff instead of searching for new talent, and as a result coming up with extremely mediocre stories, and DC was, well, killing Superman or maiming Batman.
Image managed to put the emphasis back on the importance of creators. While it's nice to see talented new creators working on established characters like Spider-Man or Batman, it can be just as rewarding to see them come up with their own creations, which are that much more gratifying to read than the Marvel/DC character knockoffs that first populated the Image line of comics. Thanks to Image, now Marvel knows how to take much better care of its creative stable; it created the Icon line as a way to sweeten the pot for its existing superstars, who supposedly make all the money off their creator-owned books. Incidentally, none of the books in the Icon line feature superheroes as their main characters. All in the spirit of Image, really.
Given the sophistication which Image has achieved with its output, and its obvious influence on market juggernaut Marvel, it's sad to see one of the founding fathers of Image still preoccupied , after all these years, with pushing his pasteboard X-Men knockoffs.
He seems to forget that the reason why he and his cohorts at Wildstorm have had to reinvent WildC.A.T.s (who at one point became the Wildcats) several times over was that people just didn't take to his characters and their convoluted space-opera storylines. He seems to forget that not even Alan Moore could elevate his creations past the copycat X-Men they really were. Look, I can even name the Marvel Comics analogues for several of the prinicipal characters:
Spartan-Cyclops (hell, Jim probably didn't think Scott was much more than a robot, anyway)
Warblade-Wolverine
Zealot-Psylocke/Elektra (any other girl in a skimpy ninja/Hand outfit)
Grifter-Gambit meets Wolverine
John Lynch-Nick Fury
I hardly think that Morrison will succeed where Moore failed.
What's sad about this particular development is that it feels like a huge step backward from what has essentially been a very healthy, steady evolution of the Image Comics line. Granted, he is no longer part of them but of the DC Universe, but no one can deny him his role in kick starting the biggest challenge Marvel and DC have ever faced to their chokehold on the market.
What started out as six Marvel Comics artists essentially wanting to flex their own creative muscles and cash in on their massive popularity has become a truly diverse repository of talents and stories.
Although a lot of the original Image characters were ripoffs of the Marvel characters on whom the Image founders had made their names (Spawn, for example, owes his origin to Ghost Rider and the nature of his costume, a 'neural parasite' to Spider-Man's symbiote), they had the right philosophy, which was essentially to give struggling creators a venue to publish their own creations, and as a result some remarkably talented people have come to light whose work may not have seen the light of day otherwise. Marvel, who now depends largely on the talents of Brian Michael Bendis, owe a good part of their current success to the Image philosophy.
The bad news for Image is that as a company, they're no longer the market force they used to be, with Spawn, their top selling title, lingering near the bottom of the Top 100 list of comic books every month. The good news, however, is that they aren't really driven by these numbers, and as a result they are still able to put out some quality, offbeat books every month that aren't tied into the latest 52nd Infinite Civil Annihilation. Books like Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead, the Luna Brothers' Girls, and other non-superhero fare are still around for whoever wants to buy them.
Image Comics, by coming when they did, truly revitalized the comic book industry. I remember the mid-nineties crash was loaded with more terrible books with variant/foil/embossed/die-cut covers than an average collector could shake a stick at. Marvel had gone incestuous (as Joe Quesada put it), giving choice writing gigs to its editorial staff instead of searching for new talent, and as a result coming up with extremely mediocre stories, and DC was, well, killing Superman or maiming Batman.
Image managed to put the emphasis back on the importance of creators. While it's nice to see talented new creators working on established characters like Spider-Man or Batman, it can be just as rewarding to see them come up with their own creations, which are that much more gratifying to read than the Marvel/DC character knockoffs that first populated the Image line of comics. Thanks to Image, now Marvel knows how to take much better care of its creative stable; it created the Icon line as a way to sweeten the pot for its existing superstars, who supposedly make all the money off their creator-owned books. Incidentally, none of the books in the Icon line feature superheroes as their main characters. All in the spirit of Image, really.
Given the sophistication which Image has achieved with its output, and its obvious influence on market juggernaut Marvel, it's sad to see one of the founding fathers of Image still preoccupied , after all these years, with pushing his pasteboard X-Men knockoffs.
Monday, October 16, 2006
Looking Ahead for Comic Book Movies
The quality of comic book based movies, just like their source material, seems to rise and fall in cycles. After the first couple of pretty good Superman movies came stinkers, just as after the first couple of good Batman movies came stinkers, after which the franchises were revived (sort of, in the case of Superman) with their fifth installments.
The Marvel stable seems to be going through the second phase of that cycle, with a succession of disappointments such as Blade: Trinity, Elektra, Fantastic Four, and X-Men 3. Sure, the last two of those movies may have made Marvel and 20th Century Fox a bundle of money, but on the whole they just do not approach the level of quality or craftsmanship achieved with the first two X-Men and Spider-Man movies. The real pitfall of these movies is that they really felt like commodities churned out just to make sure that Marvel had movies lined up for the respective years of their release.
DC/Warner Brothers, on the other hand, is in the renaissance phase, and it's thanks in no small part to the rise of Marvel movies. In Entertainment Weekly, a Time-Warner owned publication, no less than the Warner Brothers head honchos admitted that they were trying to make their superheroes "more relatable" just like their Marvel counterparts. The results were a truly revitalized Batman franchise, kicked off by the wonderfully-textured Batman Begins, a flawed but nonetheless solidly crafted Superman sequel and a highly stylized and enjoyable V for Vendetta. These films, as were the earlier Marvel films that "inspired" them, are proof positive that the best creative decisions are made by the filmmakers, and not the schmucks in the suits like Fox's Tom Rothman.
The next wave of Marvel movies, however, also seems to suggest that they might be onto the third cycle soon. The third Spider-Man movie looks, technically at least, leaps and bounds better than the second, just as the second was that much better than the first. This is in no small part due to the fact that this film is clearly a labor of love, and all concerned, from Sony Pictures to the folks at Marvel, are taking their sweet time in getting this baby ready for theaters, unlike the idiots at Fox who cobbled together X-Men 3 in the blink of an eye even after all their production snafus, apparently just to spite Bryan Singer.
Another film that looks like it's being carefully prepped, oddly enough, is Ghost Rider, which, while also a Sony/Columbia project, is being helmed by Mark Steven Johnson, whose Daredevil left something to be desired (although I've come to understand that Fox chopped off whole sections of the story to get in a shorter running time, hence its incoherence). This film was moved back seven full months, even though prinicipal photography had long been completed, so that Sony could work on the effects shots. That's commitment to making a spectacular movie.
Finally, Paramount/Marvel's Iron Man seems quite promising, given the pedigree of two of its stars so far, Academy Award Nominee Robert Downey, Jr. (Chaplin) as Tony Stark/Iron Man and Academy Award Nominee Terrance Howard (Crash) as James Rhodes. In addition, this film has the distinction of being the first comic book movie where the filmmaker, in this case director Jon Favreau, actively seeks the input of the fans instead of second-guessing them based on his own preferences. Granted, a lot of fanboys are retards who wouldn't know good filmmaking if it kicked them in the nuts (like the asswipe who called Meryl Streep's acting wooden out of frustration over the fact that The Devil Wears Prada really hurt Superman Returns' opening weekend), but it's very promising to see that the filmmaker's starting point is the core audience.
The next two years look to be good ones for comic book movies in general, with these three films, a very interesting Batman sequel, and a film adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Stardust all in the pipeline. If there's any observation I can make, it's that the presence of both Marvel and DC franchises, as well as other characters, in the film market helps ensure better quality overall when the makers of these movies try constantly to outdo each other, and learn from one another's mistakes and successes. After all, X-Men couldn't have been made without Superman, but on the flipside, Superman Returns wouldn't have been made if Bryan Singer hadn't cut his teeth on X-Men.
All told, this competition is bound to be healthy, and the ultimate winners are going to be the moviegoing public in general.
The Marvel stable seems to be going through the second phase of that cycle, with a succession of disappointments such as Blade: Trinity, Elektra, Fantastic Four, and X-Men 3. Sure, the last two of those movies may have made Marvel and 20th Century Fox a bundle of money, but on the whole they just do not approach the level of quality or craftsmanship achieved with the first two X-Men and Spider-Man movies. The real pitfall of these movies is that they really felt like commodities churned out just to make sure that Marvel had movies lined up for the respective years of their release.
DC/Warner Brothers, on the other hand, is in the renaissance phase, and it's thanks in no small part to the rise of Marvel movies. In Entertainment Weekly, a Time-Warner owned publication, no less than the Warner Brothers head honchos admitted that they were trying to make their superheroes "more relatable" just like their Marvel counterparts. The results were a truly revitalized Batman franchise, kicked off by the wonderfully-textured Batman Begins, a flawed but nonetheless solidly crafted Superman sequel and a highly stylized and enjoyable V for Vendetta. These films, as were the earlier Marvel films that "inspired" them, are proof positive that the best creative decisions are made by the filmmakers, and not the schmucks in the suits like Fox's Tom Rothman.
The next wave of Marvel movies, however, also seems to suggest that they might be onto the third cycle soon. The third Spider-Man movie looks, technically at least, leaps and bounds better than the second, just as the second was that much better than the first. This is in no small part due to the fact that this film is clearly a labor of love, and all concerned, from Sony Pictures to the folks at Marvel, are taking their sweet time in getting this baby ready for theaters, unlike the idiots at Fox who cobbled together X-Men 3 in the blink of an eye even after all their production snafus, apparently just to spite Bryan Singer.
Another film that looks like it's being carefully prepped, oddly enough, is Ghost Rider, which, while also a Sony/Columbia project, is being helmed by Mark Steven Johnson, whose Daredevil left something to be desired (although I've come to understand that Fox chopped off whole sections of the story to get in a shorter running time, hence its incoherence). This film was moved back seven full months, even though prinicipal photography had long been completed, so that Sony could work on the effects shots. That's commitment to making a spectacular movie.
Finally, Paramount/Marvel's Iron Man seems quite promising, given the pedigree of two of its stars so far, Academy Award Nominee Robert Downey, Jr. (Chaplin) as Tony Stark/Iron Man and Academy Award Nominee Terrance Howard (Crash) as James Rhodes. In addition, this film has the distinction of being the first comic book movie where the filmmaker, in this case director Jon Favreau, actively seeks the input of the fans instead of second-guessing them based on his own preferences. Granted, a lot of fanboys are retards who wouldn't know good filmmaking if it kicked them in the nuts (like the asswipe who called Meryl Streep's acting wooden out of frustration over the fact that The Devil Wears Prada really hurt Superman Returns' opening weekend), but it's very promising to see that the filmmaker's starting point is the core audience.
The next two years look to be good ones for comic book movies in general, with these three films, a very interesting Batman sequel, and a film adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Stardust all in the pipeline. If there's any observation I can make, it's that the presence of both Marvel and DC franchises, as well as other characters, in the film market helps ensure better quality overall when the makers of these movies try constantly to outdo each other, and learn from one another's mistakes and successes. After all, X-Men couldn't have been made without Superman, but on the flipside, Superman Returns wouldn't have been made if Bryan Singer hadn't cut his teeth on X-Men.
All told, this competition is bound to be healthy, and the ultimate winners are going to be the moviegoing public in general.
Monday, October 02, 2006
On Billboards and Overdoing It
The thing about human beings, and Filipino billboard owners in particular, is that we never seem to be able to do anything in moderation. Things have to be done in superlatives, or to put it more succinctly, extremes.
I'm actually a fan of billboards, to an extent. I like seeing really cool movie posters up on the sides of buildings, larger than life. Maybe they're dangerous and should be taken down, and that's fine, but I won't pretend that they aren't easy on the eyes, as are the ads of a scantily-clad Bianca King.
But the makers of billboards aren't really concerned with giving commuters and motorists particularly pleasant images, only with occupying as large a field of vision as they possibly can. Check out the obscenely large billboard on Guadalupe.
I was actually a fan of the first casualty of the billboard collapses; the Amanda Griffin billboard which crashed onto the Boni MRT station, which fell all by itself, without the benefit of a typhoon.
That alone should have started the inquiries and the MMDA ball rolling, but as usual, they needed the traditional kick in the pants, which 'Milenyo' certainly provided.
Billboards don't have to the be the bane of EDSA that they have been branded as, but because some people just can't have enough money, an entire industry is quite literally being dismantled. I'm not exactly mourning their loss, but I really can't help but shake my head at the thought that things simply didn't have to happen this way.
Some billboards can actually be a pleasant distraction when you're crawling through EDSA traffic at around six thirty or seven in the evening. I'd be the last person to complain about a fifteen foot long Francine Prieto staring lustfully at me and every other motorist grumbling through traffic, but I'm not crazy about having her crush me underneath tons of canvas and steel.
I confess that without billboards, EDSA will seem a tad drearier, but the owners of these metal monstrosities only have themselves to blame, really.
I'm actually a fan of billboards, to an extent. I like seeing really cool movie posters up on the sides of buildings, larger than life. Maybe they're dangerous and should be taken down, and that's fine, but I won't pretend that they aren't easy on the eyes, as are the ads of a scantily-clad Bianca King.
But the makers of billboards aren't really concerned with giving commuters and motorists particularly pleasant images, only with occupying as large a field of vision as they possibly can. Check out the obscenely large billboard on Guadalupe.
I was actually a fan of the first casualty of the billboard collapses; the Amanda Griffin billboard which crashed onto the Boni MRT station, which fell all by itself, without the benefit of a typhoon.
That alone should have started the inquiries and the MMDA ball rolling, but as usual, they needed the traditional kick in the pants, which 'Milenyo' certainly provided.
Billboards don't have to the be the bane of EDSA that they have been branded as, but because some people just can't have enough money, an entire industry is quite literally being dismantled. I'm not exactly mourning their loss, but I really can't help but shake my head at the thought that things simply didn't have to happen this way.
Some billboards can actually be a pleasant distraction when you're crawling through EDSA traffic at around six thirty or seven in the evening. I'd be the last person to complain about a fifteen foot long Francine Prieto staring lustfully at me and every other motorist grumbling through traffic, but I'm not crazy about having her crush me underneath tons of canvas and steel.
I confess that without billboards, EDSA will seem a tad drearier, but the owners of these metal monstrosities only have themselves to blame, really.
Saturday, September 23, 2006
The Real Casualty of Marvel's Civil War, or Death in Comics Part III
The fourth installment of Marvel's Civil War shipped this week. Whoop de doo. Does it seem strange that I, someone who has so enthusiastically supported this book since day one (when it clearly doesn't need my endorsement to sell like hotcakes) should be so turned off at the rather critical halfway point of the story? I shall explain.
Steve McNiven is still brilliant, and has now conclusively snapped up the title of comic artist of the new millenium from Jim Lee, who for some reason cannot get more than three issues out in a single year. Mark Millar's script, except for the parts I will discuss, is still a crisp, gripping read.
So what's my problem?
(Spoiler alert)
I can name two.
First of all, the death of Goliath, which was clearly written to be some kind of emotional turning point for all of the characters involved, came across as a cheap stunt. This is a genuine shame, because it was actually rather well-written. The problem was that, because Civil War is an "event" book, Marvel's marketing arm had to trumpet the killing of one of the characters involved months before the book even came out. As a direct result, probably every self-respecting comic fan knew that Goliath would be the one to get offed. Hell, they probably would have known even without the announcement, but by screaming in all the press releases that they would be killing someone, Marvel practically turned the poor guy into a dead man walking for the first three issues.
Killing B-List characters can be done well, and by well I mean with real emotional impact. Four years ago, Brian Michael Bendis brought a b-list character named the White Tiger out of obscurity. On trial for a murder he did not commit, he turned to Matt Murdock, Daredevil's alter ego, for help. Bendis had spent an entire year messing with Daredevil, and as a result this storyline seemed like a way to finally make things better for him. Unfortunately, Matt and the White Tiger lost the case, and unwilling to go to jail the White Tiger ran out of the courtroom brandishing the bailiff's gun, only to be gunned down on the courthouse steps. And life got a whole lot worse for Matt after that.
THAT is a sterling example of how the death of a b-list character can be used to stunning effect. Nobody saw it coming, in that case. There was no reason to believe Bendis (who was relatively new to Marvel back then) would kill off a character in so tragic, so brutal a fashion. They usually die fighting supervillains, don't they? Marvel should have followed THAT template in killing off Goliath, meaning, they should have really just kept their mouths shut about it, and let the story just play out properly.
But Goliath's violent demise notwithstanding, the REAL casualty of Civil War is Reed Richards, also known as Mr. Fantastic, leader of the Fantastic Four. I have never, in my twenty-odd years of reading Marvel Comics, seen a flagship character so callously scripted.
To the people who say Iron Man is getting the short shrift in this story, being depicted as a villain, I say bullshit. Tony has been given generous helpings of self-doubt and rational thought since issue #1, conspiracy theories of some idiot pro-registration fanboys notwithstanding. Even Hank Pym, both here and in an issue of New Avengers, was shown to be sympathetic character, which is a shift for Millar considering what a schmuck Pym is in the pages of Ultimates.
But Reed, both here and in the pages of Spider-Man and Fantastic Four is written as one stone-cold son of a bitch. Johnny Storm, his brother-in-law gets beaten up and fucking hospitalized, and instead of even visiting him, he burns the midnight oil figuring how to imprison Captain America and other superheroes? He clones Thor, who kills another superhero, and at the funeral of that superhero, where everyone else is beside themselves with grief that things have gone so wrong, all he can think about is how "suspiciously" Peter Parker is acting? His WIFE, the mother of his CHILDREN, leaves him because of how tunnel-visioned he's become over this whole thing, and scarcely a page later, apparently none the worse for wear, he's assembling a team of mother fucking SUPERVILLAINS to hunt down the anti-registration team? WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF WRITING IS THIS? THIS IS JUST AS BAD AS WONDER WOMAN SNAPPING SOMEONE'S NECK!
Why is editorial removing every trace of humanity from one of its most cherished heroes? Are we going to have some explanation later on that he was being mind-controlled by Doctor Doom or something? Granted, Reed ruled over Latveria with an iron fist three or so years ago, but that was after Doom had put his family through hell (literally) and scarred him horribly. The guy was pissed. So is Marvel saying that Reed regards Captain America and the other anti-reg superheroes the same way he does his arch-nemesis?
Probably the single biggest sign that Marvel is staunchly anti-registration is the way they have completely hollowed out Reed Richard's character and replaced him with someone else altogether. This is not Reed, the family man. This is not the Reed who has saved the universe countless times from Galactus and the Skrulls and countless other menaces. This Reed is cold, calculating and, truth be told, rather poorly motivated. At least we've been given glimpses into Tony's head. What possible excuse do they plan to give us for Reed's behavior. For God's sake, not even Sue's leaving him is enough to snap him out of whatever's possessing him!
I truly hope that this character assassination (and I mean that in the worst possible way) isn't just some contrivance to buttress Marvel's "families ripped apart" thesis. America is divided already; we get it. I just hope they realize at some point that Reed is simply behaving out of character here, and that they rectify this situation.
Or he might as well be dead.
Steve McNiven is still brilliant, and has now conclusively snapped up the title of comic artist of the new millenium from Jim Lee, who for some reason cannot get more than three issues out in a single year. Mark Millar's script, except for the parts I will discuss, is still a crisp, gripping read.
So what's my problem?
(Spoiler alert)
I can name two.
First of all, the death of Goliath, which was clearly written to be some kind of emotional turning point for all of the characters involved, came across as a cheap stunt. This is a genuine shame, because it was actually rather well-written. The problem was that, because Civil War is an "event" book, Marvel's marketing arm had to trumpet the killing of one of the characters involved months before the book even came out. As a direct result, probably every self-respecting comic fan knew that Goliath would be the one to get offed. Hell, they probably would have known even without the announcement, but by screaming in all the press releases that they would be killing someone, Marvel practically turned the poor guy into a dead man walking for the first three issues.
Killing B-List characters can be done well, and by well I mean with real emotional impact. Four years ago, Brian Michael Bendis brought a b-list character named the White Tiger out of obscurity. On trial for a murder he did not commit, he turned to Matt Murdock, Daredevil's alter ego, for help. Bendis had spent an entire year messing with Daredevil, and as a result this storyline seemed like a way to finally make things better for him. Unfortunately, Matt and the White Tiger lost the case, and unwilling to go to jail the White Tiger ran out of the courtroom brandishing the bailiff's gun, only to be gunned down on the courthouse steps. And life got a whole lot worse for Matt after that.
THAT is a sterling example of how the death of a b-list character can be used to stunning effect. Nobody saw it coming, in that case. There was no reason to believe Bendis (who was relatively new to Marvel back then) would kill off a character in so tragic, so brutal a fashion. They usually die fighting supervillains, don't they? Marvel should have followed THAT template in killing off Goliath, meaning, they should have really just kept their mouths shut about it, and let the story just play out properly.
But Goliath's violent demise notwithstanding, the REAL casualty of Civil War is Reed Richards, also known as Mr. Fantastic, leader of the Fantastic Four. I have never, in my twenty-odd years of reading Marvel Comics, seen a flagship character so callously scripted.
To the people who say Iron Man is getting the short shrift in this story, being depicted as a villain, I say bullshit. Tony has been given generous helpings of self-doubt and rational thought since issue #1, conspiracy theories of some idiot pro-registration fanboys notwithstanding. Even Hank Pym, both here and in an issue of New Avengers, was shown to be sympathetic character, which is a shift for Millar considering what a schmuck Pym is in the pages of Ultimates.
But Reed, both here and in the pages of Spider-Man and Fantastic Four is written as one stone-cold son of a bitch. Johnny Storm, his brother-in-law gets beaten up and fucking hospitalized, and instead of even visiting him, he burns the midnight oil figuring how to imprison Captain America and other superheroes? He clones Thor, who kills another superhero, and at the funeral of that superhero, where everyone else is beside themselves with grief that things have gone so wrong, all he can think about is how "suspiciously" Peter Parker is acting? His WIFE, the mother of his CHILDREN, leaves him because of how tunnel-visioned he's become over this whole thing, and scarcely a page later, apparently none the worse for wear, he's assembling a team of mother fucking SUPERVILLAINS to hunt down the anti-registration team? WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF WRITING IS THIS? THIS IS JUST AS BAD AS WONDER WOMAN SNAPPING SOMEONE'S NECK!
Why is editorial removing every trace of humanity from one of its most cherished heroes? Are we going to have some explanation later on that he was being mind-controlled by Doctor Doom or something? Granted, Reed ruled over Latveria with an iron fist three or so years ago, but that was after Doom had put his family through hell (literally) and scarred him horribly. The guy was pissed. So is Marvel saying that Reed regards Captain America and the other anti-reg superheroes the same way he does his arch-nemesis?
Probably the single biggest sign that Marvel is staunchly anti-registration is the way they have completely hollowed out Reed Richard's character and replaced him with someone else altogether. This is not Reed, the family man. This is not the Reed who has saved the universe countless times from Galactus and the Skrulls and countless other menaces. This Reed is cold, calculating and, truth be told, rather poorly motivated. At least we've been given glimpses into Tony's head. What possible excuse do they plan to give us for Reed's behavior. For God's sake, not even Sue's leaving him is enough to snap him out of whatever's possessing him!
I truly hope that this character assassination (and I mean that in the worst possible way) isn't just some contrivance to buttress Marvel's "families ripped apart" thesis. America is divided already; we get it. I just hope they realize at some point that Reed is simply behaving out of character here, and that they rectify this situation.
Or he might as well be dead.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Nextwave: The Anti-Comic Book
Ever remember thinking how ridiculous Cable leader of X-Force, looked with his oversized rifles, which looked more like phallic references than anything else? Did you ever wince at how excessively macho Nick Fury has always been portrayed? Did you ever scratch your head at how many superheroes in comic books in general preface their names with "Captain?"
Did you ever think that this and so many other foibles of comic-book storytelling would be great material for lampooning?
Well, Marvel did, and instead of coming up with one of yet another iteration of the stylistically weak "What The-?" which is kind of like a "MAD" kind of publication, they've come out with Nextwave, which features actual, mainstream Marvel characters, albeit 3rd tier ones, and an actual, topnotch creative team in writer Warren Ellis and artist Stuart Immonen, neither of whom tries to portray their characters with any particular exaggeration from the norm (although Ellis does occasionally).
There's nothing deep or earth-shaking about this book; it's simply about a group of b-list superheroes who worked for a government agency known as the Highest Anti-Terrorism Effort (H.A.T.E., for short, a riff on S.H.I.E.L.D., just as its chief, Dirk Anger, is an analogue of Nick Fury, who Marvel wouldn't allow Ellis to use because they have other plans for the character) and decided to go rogue when they found out that H.A.T.E. was actually being funded by a terrorist cell.
There have been seven issues so far, and each story-arc takes only two issues, so each new story is an accessible, easy read. The art is crisp and clean, and it's so...much...fun how Ellis makes fun of Marvel conventions, and so much fun how Marvel allows him to do so. It's a comic book for anyone who's winced at so many of these strange storytelling devices Marvel has evolved over the years, and it looks great too.
And it has a theme song, believe it or not. If you don't believe me, check out myspace.thunderthighs or something like that. It's a scream!
Did you ever think that this and so many other foibles of comic-book storytelling would be great material for lampooning?
Well, Marvel did, and instead of coming up with one of yet another iteration of the stylistically weak "What The-?" which is kind of like a "MAD" kind of publication, they've come out with Nextwave, which features actual, mainstream Marvel characters, albeit 3rd tier ones, and an actual, topnotch creative team in writer Warren Ellis and artist Stuart Immonen, neither of whom tries to portray their characters with any particular exaggeration from the norm (although Ellis does occasionally).
There's nothing deep or earth-shaking about this book; it's simply about a group of b-list superheroes who worked for a government agency known as the Highest Anti-Terrorism Effort (H.A.T.E., for short, a riff on S.H.I.E.L.D., just as its chief, Dirk Anger, is an analogue of Nick Fury, who Marvel wouldn't allow Ellis to use because they have other plans for the character) and decided to go rogue when they found out that H.A.T.E. was actually being funded by a terrorist cell.
There have been seven issues so far, and each story-arc takes only two issues, so each new story is an accessible, easy read. The art is crisp and clean, and it's so...much...fun how Ellis makes fun of Marvel conventions, and so much fun how Marvel allows him to do so. It's a comic book for anyone who's winced at so many of these strange storytelling devices Marvel has evolved over the years, and it looks great too.
And it has a theme song, believe it or not. If you don't believe me, check out myspace.thunderthighs or something like that. It's a scream!
The Mystique of Manila
It's funny; after I left the Supreme Court last May, I figured I had had my fill of old Manila (as opposed to Metro Manila, that is), that I had seen enough of the city to last me a lifetime and that whenever I would go there to pick up my wife from her M.A. classes or file a pleading with the SC, I would go with a "been there, seen more than enough of that" air.
Strangely enough, even though I've been there a number of times since I moved jobs, I still feel that affinity towards it that made working there such a pleasant experience for me.
I don't miss my job; with due respect to the people I worked with and for over at the High Court, in the four months I've been with a law firm, I feel I've learned much more than I did from a year and a half with the judiciary.
But I still enjoy driving along Taft, through Paco, and along Roxas. I enjoy driving through Lawton and occasionally through Intramuros (though I never really did have any occasion to go there even when I was with the Court, except to attend a seminar once).
In short, even after a year to soak in the sights and basically get sick of the place, I still feel a sense of enchantment when I set foot in Manila, for all of its flaws.
Makati is kind of growing on me, which is good considering that I'll probably be there for the foreseeable future, but I feel good knowing how much I still cherish one of my favorite things from my childhood.
Brings to mind the classic Hot Dog song...Manila...Manila...
Strangely enough, even though I've been there a number of times since I moved jobs, I still feel that affinity towards it that made working there such a pleasant experience for me.
I don't miss my job; with due respect to the people I worked with and for over at the High Court, in the four months I've been with a law firm, I feel I've learned much more than I did from a year and a half with the judiciary.
But I still enjoy driving along Taft, through Paco, and along Roxas. I enjoy driving through Lawton and occasionally through Intramuros (though I never really did have any occasion to go there even when I was with the Court, except to attend a seminar once).
In short, even after a year to soak in the sights and basically get sick of the place, I still feel a sense of enchantment when I set foot in Manila, for all of its flaws.
Makati is kind of growing on me, which is good considering that I'll probably be there for the foreseeable future, but I feel good knowing how much I still cherish one of my favorite things from my childhood.
Brings to mind the classic Hot Dog song...Manila...Manila...
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Whoa, Where Did That Come From?
The Philippine Daily Inquirer is a funny newspaper. I don't actually read it on a regular basis, and although I find its columnists on the whole to be intelligent, I gave up on their consistent and rather redundant anti-administration rants a long time ago. Call me an old fuddy-duddy but I still prefer the relatively more sedate work of Amado Doronilla and Max Soliven.
Imagine my shock when one of these older, more sedate writers, retired Supreme Court Justice Isagani Cruz, suddenly wrote, of all things, a diatribe against homosexuals.
Scant weeks earlier, they had published a really badly written article about bullies (that I trashed in a post on my barkada's blog), but this new piece really just blew my mind. More than anything else, the guy really showed what an old fart he is.
Understandably, the gay and lesbian community, as well as their friends, were all over him like horseflies on a turd. Fellow Inquirer columnist (and now officially outed member of the homosexual community) Manuel Quezon III called Cruz a hatemonger and steeped his discourse in a healthy amount of history to bolster the point.
By way of a retort disguised as an apology, Cruz defended his Constitutional right to express himself, and cited the likes of Voltaire and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Big mistake, considering that regardless of the fact that (to the best of my knowledge) he didn't actually finish college, dear old Manolo is quite well-steeped in all forms of history, having majored in it for quite some time. I was his classmate in 1994.
Quezon's rejoinder (wow, who thought I'd be using the word 'Quezon' to describe anything other than the city I live in?) was, as could be expected, rich in historical reference, and brought to light some rather unsavory revelations about both historical luminaries: apparently they were both bigots. Yes, you can express your hatred, he said, but being a member of the oppressed minority, I have a right to object.
The people calling for Cruz's head are understandably upset, but at the end of the day, they're all of them idiots.
I have a lawyer friend whom I've known since college (going on...what? Ten years now?) who is quite comfortable with his own sexuality, and even lives with a doctor. It's kind of like Will Turner with a boyfriend of equal professional stature. I showed him Cruz's article, especially since he found it hard to believe at first that it could even have been written by someone whose work he admired, and upon reading it, he simply shook his head and said, in not so many words, "the guy's getting senile."
And that's pretty much the best way to take it, really.
About six or seven years ago I encountered similar narrowmindedness from the geriatric set. I was hanging out in the house of my great-uncle (my grandmother's baby brother) because I was about to take out my two young cousins to see a movie. It was lantern parade season in UP, and for this reason my great-uncle, without any provocation from me, started ranting about how immoral the whole concept of the oblation run was. In retrospect, it was a bad idea, but I engaged him (translated: pinatulan ko siya) in a discussion, at first a calm one, about how basically no one was really hurt by the whole affair, and how everyone involved was pretty much an adult anyway. My great uncle would hear none of it, and became even more strident. As a result, our "discussion" degenerated into a shouting match, with him slinking off in dejected defeat when I basically had him beat out in terms of sheer volume. This gave me no satisfaction, however. My victory tasted like ashes.
I couldn't really care how respected Cruz is. He's over 80 years old and is more liable than most people to say asinine things. It's a fact of life. He's just having trouble adjusting to the way the world is changing, and is lashing out in the only way he knows how, really. The best thing to do in this situation would be just to leave an old man to his ramblings rather than calling for his blood. The people doing so, gay or straight, are inevitably putting themselves in an unfavorable light.
What people don't seem to realize is that he may have done the gay and lesbian community a huge service by putting the spotlight so squarely on them; next year, they have a solid chance of electing their first party-list congressmen.
My advice: when Danton Remoto and the other party-list representative win their seats next year, they should give Cruz a big-old thank you for shooting them into the stratosphere.
Imagine my shock when one of these older, more sedate writers, retired Supreme Court Justice Isagani Cruz, suddenly wrote, of all things, a diatribe against homosexuals.
Scant weeks earlier, they had published a really badly written article about bullies (that I trashed in a post on my barkada's blog), but this new piece really just blew my mind. More than anything else, the guy really showed what an old fart he is.
Understandably, the gay and lesbian community, as well as their friends, were all over him like horseflies on a turd. Fellow Inquirer columnist (and now officially outed member of the homosexual community) Manuel Quezon III called Cruz a hatemonger and steeped his discourse in a healthy amount of history to bolster the point.
By way of a retort disguised as an apology, Cruz defended his Constitutional right to express himself, and cited the likes of Voltaire and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Big mistake, considering that regardless of the fact that (to the best of my knowledge) he didn't actually finish college, dear old Manolo is quite well-steeped in all forms of history, having majored in it for quite some time. I was his classmate in 1994.
Quezon's rejoinder (wow, who thought I'd be using the word 'Quezon' to describe anything other than the city I live in?) was, as could be expected, rich in historical reference, and brought to light some rather unsavory revelations about both historical luminaries: apparently they were both bigots. Yes, you can express your hatred, he said, but being a member of the oppressed minority, I have a right to object.
The people calling for Cruz's head are understandably upset, but at the end of the day, they're all of them idiots.
I have a lawyer friend whom I've known since college (going on...what? Ten years now?) who is quite comfortable with his own sexuality, and even lives with a doctor. It's kind of like Will Turner with a boyfriend of equal professional stature. I showed him Cruz's article, especially since he found it hard to believe at first that it could even have been written by someone whose work he admired, and upon reading it, he simply shook his head and said, in not so many words, "the guy's getting senile."
And that's pretty much the best way to take it, really.
About six or seven years ago I encountered similar narrowmindedness from the geriatric set. I was hanging out in the house of my great-uncle (my grandmother's baby brother) because I was about to take out my two young cousins to see a movie. It was lantern parade season in UP, and for this reason my great-uncle, without any provocation from me, started ranting about how immoral the whole concept of the oblation run was. In retrospect, it was a bad idea, but I engaged him (translated: pinatulan ko siya) in a discussion, at first a calm one, about how basically no one was really hurt by the whole affair, and how everyone involved was pretty much an adult anyway. My great uncle would hear none of it, and became even more strident. As a result, our "discussion" degenerated into a shouting match, with him slinking off in dejected defeat when I basically had him beat out in terms of sheer volume. This gave me no satisfaction, however. My victory tasted like ashes.
I couldn't really care how respected Cruz is. He's over 80 years old and is more liable than most people to say asinine things. It's a fact of life. He's just having trouble adjusting to the way the world is changing, and is lashing out in the only way he knows how, really. The best thing to do in this situation would be just to leave an old man to his ramblings rather than calling for his blood. The people doing so, gay or straight, are inevitably putting themselves in an unfavorable light.
What people don't seem to realize is that he may have done the gay and lesbian community a huge service by putting the spotlight so squarely on them; next year, they have a solid chance of electing their first party-list congressmen.
My advice: when Danton Remoto and the other party-list representative win their seats next year, they should give Cruz a big-old thank you for shooting them into the stratosphere.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Late Comics, Part 2
Whoops, look like I spoke too soon about Steve McNiven, the artist of Marvel Comics' Civil War. It seems the book has hit a speed bump because of his inability to come up with the latest issue on time. Issue #4 will be pushed back a month, while issue #5 will be pushed back three months. With the revised schedule, the series should wrap up in January as opposed to the originally planned November.
I'm hardly pissed about it, seeing as how I found it to be a minor miracle that he was able to come up with such good work three months in a row. Admittedly, I'm not exactly happy about it, but I'm not about to burn my local comic book shop. It's a bummer, sure, but not the end of the world.
It blew my mind, therefore to see the tsunami of venom that swept the message boards of the site that broke the news about Civil War, Newsarama. People were slinging all kinds of shit at Marvel (which may have been deserved, even if just a little) and the occasional little shit was taking cheap shots at Mark Millar or McNiven, who most certainly do not deserve it, given their sterling output. The problem, I think, with the internet is that every moron with a keyboard and an opinion, no matter how poorly thought out, can shout as loud as he wants with all of his horrible spelling for everyone to see. Oh, well, maybe I'm just a masochist for reading that drivel.
The funny thing is, it's actually good news that so many people posted, simply because it shows how massively popular the series is (Civil War #3 is now officially the highest selling single, regularly-priced American comic book of the millenium in its first month of release). Marvel may have miscalculated McNiven's ability to turn in a comic book on time, but they were dead on about the magic he brings to a book, so I for one, am glad they're doing everything they can to keep him working on the book (rather than bring in a fill-in) at his own pace (rather than having him rush his pencils) even if it means taking a hit from fans and retailers. One needn't even threaten them with "it'd better be good" because judging from the first three issues, it almost certainly will be.
I remember feeling distinctly disappointed at how, in his X-Men days, Jim Lee's work had a tendency to taper off in quality towards the end of a story arc. The guy's art would be fantastic in the first couple of issues then start to look scratchy and rushed towards the end. Well, in his early Image days he cured that by working at his own pace, with evenly spectacular art. Granted, he's taken this to an insane extreme with All Star Batman and Robin, but at least he, Bryan Hitch, and now Steve McNiven are good, solid examples of why it's sometimes worth it to incur a month's delay or so on a book. It's much, much easier to forgive a late artist, especially a meticulous, talented and apologetic one than a little prick of a writer (I think we all know who I'm talking about) whose reaction is often to blow off his fans who ask about his work.
I guess I can sympathize with how upset fans are about the delay, because the two thousand tie-ins are also going to be similarly put on hold so as to avoid potential spoilers, and I especially sympathize with the people who sell the comic books because this could hurt their sales, at least in the short term, but overall I find it comical how people are reacting the way they are, considering that I'm sure most of them are going to buy Civil War #4 anyway.
I guess one thing that really pisses me off about these internet fanboys is the painfully obvious double standard they have between Marvel and DC. Marvel puts a truly wonderful book on hold for a month so that they don't have to sacrifice quality, and people cry for blood. DC/Wildstorm announce that Jim Lee will come out with a new Wildcats series in September, which is strange considering he hasn't even finished one six-issue story arc of ASBR a full freaking year after the first issue came out, and everyone still licks his ass like it was made of ice cream. What a crock of shit, really. I guess the only consolation I can take is that sales of ASBR seem to be genuinely suffering because of Lee's and Frank Miller's abject slowness. I find myself genuinely hoping that Wildcats #1 debuts at the bottom end of the charts because of how pissed off people are with him. At least then I'll know that lateness is punished because it's just genuinely unpleasant, not just because Marvel does it.
I'm hardly pissed about it, seeing as how I found it to be a minor miracle that he was able to come up with such good work three months in a row. Admittedly, I'm not exactly happy about it, but I'm not about to burn my local comic book shop. It's a bummer, sure, but not the end of the world.
It blew my mind, therefore to see the tsunami of venom that swept the message boards of the site that broke the news about Civil War, Newsarama. People were slinging all kinds of shit at Marvel (which may have been deserved, even if just a little) and the occasional little shit was taking cheap shots at Mark Millar or McNiven, who most certainly do not deserve it, given their sterling output. The problem, I think, with the internet is that every moron with a keyboard and an opinion, no matter how poorly thought out, can shout as loud as he wants with all of his horrible spelling for everyone to see. Oh, well, maybe I'm just a masochist for reading that drivel.
The funny thing is, it's actually good news that so many people posted, simply because it shows how massively popular the series is (Civil War #3 is now officially the highest selling single, regularly-priced American comic book of the millenium in its first month of release). Marvel may have miscalculated McNiven's ability to turn in a comic book on time, but they were dead on about the magic he brings to a book, so I for one, am glad they're doing everything they can to keep him working on the book (rather than bring in a fill-in) at his own pace (rather than having him rush his pencils) even if it means taking a hit from fans and retailers. One needn't even threaten them with "it'd better be good" because judging from the first three issues, it almost certainly will be.
I remember feeling distinctly disappointed at how, in his X-Men days, Jim Lee's work had a tendency to taper off in quality towards the end of a story arc. The guy's art would be fantastic in the first couple of issues then start to look scratchy and rushed towards the end. Well, in his early Image days he cured that by working at his own pace, with evenly spectacular art. Granted, he's taken this to an insane extreme with All Star Batman and Robin, but at least he, Bryan Hitch, and now Steve McNiven are good, solid examples of why it's sometimes worth it to incur a month's delay or so on a book. It's much, much easier to forgive a late artist, especially a meticulous, talented and apologetic one than a little prick of a writer (I think we all know who I'm talking about) whose reaction is often to blow off his fans who ask about his work.
I guess I can sympathize with how upset fans are about the delay, because the two thousand tie-ins are also going to be similarly put on hold so as to avoid potential spoilers, and I especially sympathize with the people who sell the comic books because this could hurt their sales, at least in the short term, but overall I find it comical how people are reacting the way they are, considering that I'm sure most of them are going to buy Civil War #4 anyway.
I guess one thing that really pisses me off about these internet fanboys is the painfully obvious double standard they have between Marvel and DC. Marvel puts a truly wonderful book on hold for a month so that they don't have to sacrifice quality, and people cry for blood. DC/Wildstorm announce that Jim Lee will come out with a new Wildcats series in September, which is strange considering he hasn't even finished one six-issue story arc of ASBR a full freaking year after the first issue came out, and everyone still licks his ass like it was made of ice cream. What a crock of shit, really. I guess the only consolation I can take is that sales of ASBR seem to be genuinely suffering because of Lee's and Frank Miller's abject slowness. I find myself genuinely hoping that Wildcats #1 debuts at the bottom end of the charts because of how pissed off people are with him. At least then I'll know that lateness is punished because it's just genuinely unpleasant, not just because Marvel does it.
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Katulong Blues
About three years ago the maid of my uncle, who happened to be my next door neighbor as well, came screaming to my mom's house about how my mom's maid had ripped her off to the tune of several thousand pesos---money the poor girl had saved up for several months. After a day-long investigation which involved some intensive interrogation and some physical abuse at the hands of some really butch female Barangay official, some of the money was recovered, but through it all, the girl never admitted anything, even when money which was way, way beyond her monthly salary was recovered from her person.
It was a sad thing, true, and naturally my mom fired the disgraced maid (which was unfortunate for me and my wife, because her sister was my son's nanny at the time and we went through several replacements in the months that followed). The one thing that really stuck, though, was how the girl stuck by her story even when all the evidence was pointing to her. On the one hand, I thought "well, maybe she figures that by denying it till the end, she can hang preserve that one shred of doubt in the mind of her accusers" but on other hand, it just seemed so incredibly stupid on her part and got me thinking "maybe she figures that if she repeats the lie enough times, it'll become the truth." I was hard-pressed to believe that anyone could be that stupid, and figured that she was simply crafty enough to be the former.
I eventually forgot about the whole thing and moved on (and out of my mom's house).
Recently, however, I found myself confronting the question once more: is the maid caught red handed stealing something being extremely smart...or extremely stupid by denying the deed even with evidence staring her in the face?
After two very unhappy weeks, Theia and I had decided to send our year-old baby's nanny back to the agency from which we had gotten her. The girl was sullen, self-indulgent, and with a work ethic grossly disproportionate to the somewhat prohibitive rate quoted by the agency. Oh, and she was spectacularly ugly, to boot. My wife had disliked her from the moment she saw her, but the woman running the agency had practically begged her to take the girl off her hands, all but refusing to show my wife any other possible yaya candidates.
After two weeks and repeated notification that we wanted a replacement, we decided we had had enough and were in the process of helping this girl pack her things. Previously experience with missing items every time a maid would leave had prompted a new practice on our part of doing at least a cursory check on the maid's things before she would leave. This particular time, the task had fallen to my wife, and lo and behold, she recovered three CDs from this girl's bag. Two of them could have passed for hers, being generic, sing-along CDs one could have purchased at any record bar, but the third kind of stood out.
It was Michael Nyman's original score for Jane Campion's Oscar-winning film The Piano. I have, in the last fifteen years, amassed a considerable collection of movie soundtracks, but this acquisition had filled me with considerable pride at the time I had made it. I had found this CD in some hole-in-the-wall record store in Virra Mall, back in its labyrinthine firetrap days, and had been delighted to snap it up.
This girl claimed that these CDs were hers, having been given to her by her aunt or friend as pasalubong from Hong Kong. My mouth bobbed open and shut at this explanation, but only for a moment, after which I proceeded to scream the most filthy obscenities that sprang to mind at her. Through all of this, however, she seemed remarkably poker-faced.
At my wife's urging (she was doing a remarkable job of playing "good cop" to my "hysterical cop") I decided to check my CD rack to see if, indeed, this was actually hers. Sure enough, the CD was gone, and in short order, so was my temper. My last attempt to keep my cool involved me telling the girl, calmly and in the vernacular, "I'm going to take our CDs back and pretend this didn't happen," at which point she merely and calmly reiterated her story, that the CDs were hers.
I swear to God I almost put my fist right through her face. I would have done her---and the world---a favor, all things considered. Fortunately, I managed to get by screaming more obscenities before we drove her out of the village and dropped her off unceremoniously where she could get a ride, as opposed to taking her back to the agency as we had originally planned before finding out she had planned to cart of several of our belongings.
It really amazes me to think of how tenaciously the woman clung to her story. Someone told me that lying is like second nature to these people, and if it really has developed into some kind of subculture, that really makes me fear for our future. We talk about the Flor Contemplacions and the Sarah Balabagans of our country with abject sympathy, but we have to ask ourselves, with this current wave of domestics, a great many of whom are barely educated and apparently some of whom have a truly distorted values system, will those who get thrown in jail over theft or child abuse or some other crime they claim not to have committed even deserve that sympathy? It makes me wonder...
It was a sad thing, true, and naturally my mom fired the disgraced maid (which was unfortunate for me and my wife, because her sister was my son's nanny at the time and we went through several replacements in the months that followed). The one thing that really stuck, though, was how the girl stuck by her story even when all the evidence was pointing to her. On the one hand, I thought "well, maybe she figures that by denying it till the end, she can hang preserve that one shred of doubt in the mind of her accusers" but on other hand, it just seemed so incredibly stupid on her part and got me thinking "maybe she figures that if she repeats the lie enough times, it'll become the truth." I was hard-pressed to believe that anyone could be that stupid, and figured that she was simply crafty enough to be the former.
I eventually forgot about the whole thing and moved on (and out of my mom's house).
Recently, however, I found myself confronting the question once more: is the maid caught red handed stealing something being extremely smart...or extremely stupid by denying the deed even with evidence staring her in the face?
After two very unhappy weeks, Theia and I had decided to send our year-old baby's nanny back to the agency from which we had gotten her. The girl was sullen, self-indulgent, and with a work ethic grossly disproportionate to the somewhat prohibitive rate quoted by the agency. Oh, and she was spectacularly ugly, to boot. My wife had disliked her from the moment she saw her, but the woman running the agency had practically begged her to take the girl off her hands, all but refusing to show my wife any other possible yaya candidates.
After two weeks and repeated notification that we wanted a replacement, we decided we had had enough and were in the process of helping this girl pack her things. Previously experience with missing items every time a maid would leave had prompted a new practice on our part of doing at least a cursory check on the maid's things before she would leave. This particular time, the task had fallen to my wife, and lo and behold, she recovered three CDs from this girl's bag. Two of them could have passed for hers, being generic, sing-along CDs one could have purchased at any record bar, but the third kind of stood out.
It was Michael Nyman's original score for Jane Campion's Oscar-winning film The Piano. I have, in the last fifteen years, amassed a considerable collection of movie soundtracks, but this acquisition had filled me with considerable pride at the time I had made it. I had found this CD in some hole-in-the-wall record store in Virra Mall, back in its labyrinthine firetrap days, and had been delighted to snap it up.
This girl claimed that these CDs were hers, having been given to her by her aunt or friend as pasalubong from Hong Kong. My mouth bobbed open and shut at this explanation, but only for a moment, after which I proceeded to scream the most filthy obscenities that sprang to mind at her. Through all of this, however, she seemed remarkably poker-faced.
At my wife's urging (she was doing a remarkable job of playing "good cop" to my "hysterical cop") I decided to check my CD rack to see if, indeed, this was actually hers. Sure enough, the CD was gone, and in short order, so was my temper. My last attempt to keep my cool involved me telling the girl, calmly and in the vernacular, "I'm going to take our CDs back and pretend this didn't happen," at which point she merely and calmly reiterated her story, that the CDs were hers.
I swear to God I almost put my fist right through her face. I would have done her---and the world---a favor, all things considered. Fortunately, I managed to get by screaming more obscenities before we drove her out of the village and dropped her off unceremoniously where she could get a ride, as opposed to taking her back to the agency as we had originally planned before finding out she had planned to cart of several of our belongings.
It really amazes me to think of how tenaciously the woman clung to her story. Someone told me that lying is like second nature to these people, and if it really has developed into some kind of subculture, that really makes me fear for our future. We talk about the Flor Contemplacions and the Sarah Balabagans of our country with abject sympathy, but we have to ask ourselves, with this current wave of domestics, a great many of whom are barely educated and apparently some of whom have a truly distorted values system, will those who get thrown in jail over theft or child abuse or some other crime they claim not to have committed even deserve that sympathy? It makes me wonder...
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Civil War Kicks Ass!!!
Three issues into Civil War, the twists and turns just keep on coming. So as to avoid spoilers for anyone planning to read issue three after this post, all I will say is that, following Spider-Man's unmasking in issue #2, things get seriously ugly as the pro-registration and anti-registration heroes have their first real confrontation.
In only three issues, this miniseries has given us enough iconic images and jaw-dropping moments to keep fans talking for years. Whether or not the events from this story will become a permanent fixture of the Marvel Universe, Mark Millar and Steve McNiven are definitely going to leave a permanent impression on comics storytelling as we know it. Just as Millar and Bryan Hitch had redefined the superhero genre a few years earlier with "Ultimates," Millar and McNiven are now redefining the "event miniseries," showing the likes of Bendis and Coipiel and Johns and his rotating battalion of artists how it's done.
As bold a proclamation as this may seem, I feel that Mark Millar is this generation's Alan Moore. In the last five years, no other single writer, at Marvel or elsewhere, has given fans quite as much subversive, balls-to-the-wall storytelling as this guy. It's a wonder Quesada et al kept him confined to the Ultimate Universe for as long as they did before finally unleashing him on
the hapless Marvel Universe.
He did a brilliant twelve-issue run on Spider-Man, respecting tradition while at the same time introducing a brilliant concept: that a conspiracy of businessmen and capitalists originally created supervillains. This does not offend Marvel canon and opens the door for a heck of a lot of story possibilities. Not long thereafter, he did an incredibly engaging run on Wolverine, a character I don't even like, which culminated in what I feel was easily one of the best single issues of 2005: the World War II issue.
Civil War, however, is something that stands head and shoulders above his prior work.
Back in 2004, when most fanboys were drooling over Jim Lee's work in Superman and Michael Turner's work in Superman/Batman, a much smaller cult of fans were being treated to the work of a then somewhat obscure but much more talented artist named Steve McNiven, who was half of a team originally meant to supplant Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo on Fantastic Four following a falling out with then-President of Marvel, the egomaniacal Bill Jemas. After Jemas was fired, McNiven and his writer already had several issues in the can, which became a new series, Marvel Knights 4. Waid predicted that McNiven would be comics' next superstar, and what do you know, he was right; McNiven became Marvel's most sought-after artist.
McNiven's style is hard to pigeonhole. Suffice it to say that it's incredibly detailed, albeit without cross-hatchings, and in some instances even virtually photo-realistic, without being static. In Civil War #2, he gave fans an iconic Spider-Man swinging pose...without sacrificing anatomical feasibility. He draws beautiful women, without falling into the trap of having them all look the same. And he draws kick ass action sequences.
Probably most amazingly, he is able to do all of these incredible things and still put out a book ON TIME!!! The only time his books had scheduling problems was when writers were playing tug-of-war with his talents, with that bald prick Brian Bendis snatching him off Warren Ellis' Ultimate Secret to do a rather lame run of his New Avengers. It was nice to know that McNiven was later snatched off a second run on New Avengers after completing just one issue in order to do his greatest work to date: Civil War.
With Civil War dominating the sales charts for its first two issues, and, I hope, throughout its entire run, Millar and McNiven are finally getting the recognition they both truly deserve as two of the medium's greatest talents.
In only three issues, this miniseries has given us enough iconic images and jaw-dropping moments to keep fans talking for years. Whether or not the events from this story will become a permanent fixture of the Marvel Universe, Mark Millar and Steve McNiven are definitely going to leave a permanent impression on comics storytelling as we know it. Just as Millar and Bryan Hitch had redefined the superhero genre a few years earlier with "Ultimates," Millar and McNiven are now redefining the "event miniseries," showing the likes of Bendis and Coipiel and Johns and his rotating battalion of artists how it's done.
As bold a proclamation as this may seem, I feel that Mark Millar is this generation's Alan Moore. In the last five years, no other single writer, at Marvel or elsewhere, has given fans quite as much subversive, balls-to-the-wall storytelling as this guy. It's a wonder Quesada et al kept him confined to the Ultimate Universe for as long as they did before finally unleashing him on
the hapless Marvel Universe.
He did a brilliant twelve-issue run on Spider-Man, respecting tradition while at the same time introducing a brilliant concept: that a conspiracy of businessmen and capitalists originally created supervillains. This does not offend Marvel canon and opens the door for a heck of a lot of story possibilities. Not long thereafter, he did an incredibly engaging run on Wolverine, a character I don't even like, which culminated in what I feel was easily one of the best single issues of 2005: the World War II issue.
Civil War, however, is something that stands head and shoulders above his prior work.
Back in 2004, when most fanboys were drooling over Jim Lee's work in Superman and Michael Turner's work in Superman/Batman, a much smaller cult of fans were being treated to the work of a then somewhat obscure but much more talented artist named Steve McNiven, who was half of a team originally meant to supplant Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo on Fantastic Four following a falling out with then-President of Marvel, the egomaniacal Bill Jemas. After Jemas was fired, McNiven and his writer already had several issues in the can, which became a new series, Marvel Knights 4. Waid predicted that McNiven would be comics' next superstar, and what do you know, he was right; McNiven became Marvel's most sought-after artist.
McNiven's style is hard to pigeonhole. Suffice it to say that it's incredibly detailed, albeit without cross-hatchings, and in some instances even virtually photo-realistic, without being static. In Civil War #2, he gave fans an iconic Spider-Man swinging pose...without sacrificing anatomical feasibility. He draws beautiful women, without falling into the trap of having them all look the same. And he draws kick ass action sequences.
Probably most amazingly, he is able to do all of these incredible things and still put out a book ON TIME!!! The only time his books had scheduling problems was when writers were playing tug-of-war with his talents, with that bald prick Brian Bendis snatching him off Warren Ellis' Ultimate Secret to do a rather lame run of his New Avengers. It was nice to know that McNiven was later snatched off a second run on New Avengers after completing just one issue in order to do his greatest work to date: Civil War.
With Civil War dominating the sales charts for its first two issues, and, I hope, throughout its entire run, Millar and McNiven are finally getting the recognition they both truly deserve as two of the medium's greatest talents.
A Cute Little Movie
This will easily be the shortest film review I've ever written, but I feel it's worth writing anyway, if only because I'm afraid the movie reviewed won't last very long in Philippine theaters.
Nacho Libre, a movie about a cook in a Mexican oprhanage who secretly longs to wrestle as a luchador, reteams star Jack Black (King Kong) with writer and co-producer Mike White (School of Rock, Orange County). Jack plays Ignacio, a.k.a. Nacho, whose life as a cook is miserable but for the fact that he loves the orphans he cooks for (and the nun who shows up one day to teach them). Things change for him when, upon running into a street vagabond named Esquelito (Hector Jimenez), he feels he has finally found his tag-team partner and ticket into lucha libre glory. The movie enters laugh-a-minute territory from this point and doesn't stop.
This film, otherwise a cut-and-dried kid's movie, is infused with Black's borderline insanity and wonderful antics, but without the crassness which usually turns him off to some viewers. He elevates the material past mere straight-up slapstick and really makes this 100 minutes time well-spent.
Audience response here doesn't seem too favorable, so I exhort anyone who reads this movie to go out and see this movie, and take your kids, too; it teaches selflessness and how to have a really good laugh.
Nacho Libre, a movie about a cook in a Mexican oprhanage who secretly longs to wrestle as a luchador, reteams star Jack Black (King Kong) with writer and co-producer Mike White (School of Rock, Orange County). Jack plays Ignacio, a.k.a. Nacho, whose life as a cook is miserable but for the fact that he loves the orphans he cooks for (and the nun who shows up one day to teach them). Things change for him when, upon running into a street vagabond named Esquelito (Hector Jimenez), he feels he has finally found his tag-team partner and ticket into lucha libre glory. The movie enters laugh-a-minute territory from this point and doesn't stop.
This film, otherwise a cut-and-dried kid's movie, is infused with Black's borderline insanity and wonderful antics, but without the crassness which usually turns him off to some viewers. He elevates the material past mere straight-up slapstick and really makes this 100 minutes time well-spent.
Audience response here doesn't seem too favorable, so I exhort anyone who reads this movie to go out and see this movie, and take your kids, too; it teaches selflessness and how to have a really good laugh.
Monday, July 10, 2006
All Things Must End
Over the weekend, the long-standing opening weekend box-office record set by Spider-Man in 2002 ended, courtesy of a mammoth opening for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. I was sad to see my favorite web-slinger finally relinquish his throne, but nonetheless take comfort in knowing that Spidey's will always be the first movie to have scaled those once-fabled heights. Still, all good things must end.
The summer of 2006 has been one of endings, specifically, for three major movie franchises, at least by my reckoning.
1. The Mission Impossible franchise. Never have I been happier to see a movie bomb than the latest installment of Tom Cruise's favorite vanity projects. It seems that each and every one of these pieces of crap is designed to show off something he can do, whether it's scale a mountain or spin a motorbike around, or even just toss his ridiculous long hair. This third installment, while admittedly made with a little more finesse than John Woo's over-the-top sequel, suffers from this malady. The kicker is that the screenplay presents such an incredibly formidable villain in Philip Seymour Hoffman's Davian that you genuinely wonder how Cruise's Ethan Hunt and the IMF will overcome him. When the script, after over two hours of buildup, went into "Rocky" territory and simply had Hunt pummel his adversary, I knew I'd wasted my money. I really don't give a damn about Cruise's off-screen antics, which many suspect are the real reason behind this movie's failure, for as long as he appears in quality movies. I mean, Russell Crowe may be an asshole, but at least he's still a brilliant actor who does good projects. Now that Tom realizes that his smile alone can't sell his movies, maybe he'll start trying to appear in good ones again.
2. The X-Men franchise. Don't be fooled by the record breaking weekend of X-Men III. After the purgatory Fox execs went through to get the movie made, it's doubtful they'd want to subject themselves to that all over again. It's probably why they called this movie "The Last Stand." Making an ensemble superhero movie presents all kinds of different ordeals, not the least of which is getting all of the stars, literal and figurative, to align. And for every movie that sells, all of the major stars' pay grades get harder to meet. For these and all of the technological requirements, these things just get exponentially more expensive as the years go on, and, less and less profitable. Judging from the way the latest movie's grosses are shaping up, it would appear that the popularity of the franchise has plateaued, so it actually makes sense that they're now splitting it up into spinoffs, although the only character with a real chance of selling movies is Wolverine. I only hope they get competent directors and writers to throw his solo adventure together or we can look forward to more turkeys like Elektra.
3. The Superman franchise. More than Spider-Man's opening weekend record, Superman Returns was the real casualty of Pirates of the Caribbean's runaway success. The strange thing is, this is actually a tough call. All things considered, the franchise had already ended on a rather sour note. This was an attempt to restart it, via a somewhat ill-advised sequel rather than a safer remake. Yet despite all the indicators that reviving this franchise might be more trouble than it was worth, Warner Brothers, buoyed by the success of rival comic book movies, pushed through with it, putting up almost $300 million in what was effectively the biggest gamble in studio (and possibly movie) history. Anything less than a record-breaking weekend would have spelled doom for this attempted revival, and a lot less was what they got. Nevertheless, Warners execs (and the annoying DC fanboys who infest message boards) are still confident that the movie will make back its mammoth investment overseas and on DVD. Honestly, I don't think so. All things considered, they've all but run out of excuses. They had an A-list director and a bottomless budget at their disposal, and a star who was a dead ringer (pardon the pun) for the greatest Superman of all time. Oh, and let's not forget a saturation marketing campaign rivalled only by that for Mission Impossible: 3. If after all this, they still couldn't sell the movie, then it just means that the demand for another Superman movie just wasn't that high. Still, one can't say for sure that they won't try it again in a few years, maybe after swiping Sam Raimi this time...
The summer of 2006 has been one of endings, specifically, for three major movie franchises, at least by my reckoning.
1. The Mission Impossible franchise. Never have I been happier to see a movie bomb than the latest installment of Tom Cruise's favorite vanity projects. It seems that each and every one of these pieces of crap is designed to show off something he can do, whether it's scale a mountain or spin a motorbike around, or even just toss his ridiculous long hair. This third installment, while admittedly made with a little more finesse than John Woo's over-the-top sequel, suffers from this malady. The kicker is that the screenplay presents such an incredibly formidable villain in Philip Seymour Hoffman's Davian that you genuinely wonder how Cruise's Ethan Hunt and the IMF will overcome him. When the script, after over two hours of buildup, went into "Rocky" territory and simply had Hunt pummel his adversary, I knew I'd wasted my money. I really don't give a damn about Cruise's off-screen antics, which many suspect are the real reason behind this movie's failure, for as long as he appears in quality movies. I mean, Russell Crowe may be an asshole, but at least he's still a brilliant actor who does good projects. Now that Tom realizes that his smile alone can't sell his movies, maybe he'll start trying to appear in good ones again.
2. The X-Men franchise. Don't be fooled by the record breaking weekend of X-Men III. After the purgatory Fox execs went through to get the movie made, it's doubtful they'd want to subject themselves to that all over again. It's probably why they called this movie "The Last Stand." Making an ensemble superhero movie presents all kinds of different ordeals, not the least of which is getting all of the stars, literal and figurative, to align. And for every movie that sells, all of the major stars' pay grades get harder to meet. For these and all of the technological requirements, these things just get exponentially more expensive as the years go on, and, less and less profitable. Judging from the way the latest movie's grosses are shaping up, it would appear that the popularity of the franchise has plateaued, so it actually makes sense that they're now splitting it up into spinoffs, although the only character with a real chance of selling movies is Wolverine. I only hope they get competent directors and writers to throw his solo adventure together or we can look forward to more turkeys like Elektra.
3. The Superman franchise. More than Spider-Man's opening weekend record, Superman Returns was the real casualty of Pirates of the Caribbean's runaway success. The strange thing is, this is actually a tough call. All things considered, the franchise had already ended on a rather sour note. This was an attempt to restart it, via a somewhat ill-advised sequel rather than a safer remake. Yet despite all the indicators that reviving this franchise might be more trouble than it was worth, Warner Brothers, buoyed by the success of rival comic book movies, pushed through with it, putting up almost $300 million in what was effectively the biggest gamble in studio (and possibly movie) history. Anything less than a record-breaking weekend would have spelled doom for this attempted revival, and a lot less was what they got. Nevertheless, Warners execs (and the annoying DC fanboys who infest message boards) are still confident that the movie will make back its mammoth investment overseas and on DVD. Honestly, I don't think so. All things considered, they've all but run out of excuses. They had an A-list director and a bottomless budget at their disposal, and a star who was a dead ringer (pardon the pun) for the greatest Superman of all time. Oh, and let's not forget a saturation marketing campaign rivalled only by that for Mission Impossible: 3. If after all this, they still couldn't sell the movie, then it just means that the demand for another Superman movie just wasn't that high. Still, one can't say for sure that they won't try it again in a few years, maybe after swiping Sam Raimi this time...
Friday, July 07, 2006
Comic-Book Based Casting Coups
Obviously, the comic book movie on everyone's lips these days is Superman Returns, and how appropriate the casting of newcomer Brandon Routh is, given his striking resemblance to the late, great Christopher Reeve. Well, while the physical resemblance is undeniable, as well as the awkward acting, I dare say there have, in the last few years, been better casting decisions, in terms of how well the chosen actor fleshed out the character described in the comics and eventually envisioned in the script. By this standard, I feel that Routh is less a man of steel and more an actor of wood, and devoid of Reeve's charisma.
I've decided to skip the more obvious casting triumphs like Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker, which by common knowledge was a huge component of the franchise's success so far, or Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, or even Christian Bale as Batman, and highlight what I feel were some real gems over the last few years. I've even included supporting characters. In no particular order, they are:
1. Paul Giamatti as Harvey Pekar (American Splendor). This guy deserved, at the very least, an Oscar nomination for this role. Granted, it wasn't hard for him to play someone as schleppy as Pekar considering both his looks and his prior resume, but in coming up with this list I was less concerned about the effort it took to bring the character to life but the accuracy with which it was done. We have an instant point of comparison as by some self-indulgent script device Harvey Pekar appears frequently throughout Splendor to lend his thoughts to the viewer. This was some truly brilliant work, and it's nice to see Giamatti getting his due, with the lead role in M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water.
2. Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis as the Human Torch and the Thing, respectively (Fantastic Four). This movie has been widely reviled, by fanboys, viewers and critics alike, and yet one can't argue that for a relatively cheap budget, Fox and Marvel churned out a certified box office hit. I attribute this to the chemistry between the Thing and the Torch, which was, for me, taken right out of the comics. They're listed together because it is the way they play off each other that is something special to behold. Evans' cocky Johnny Storm played perfectly against Chiklis' gravelly Ben Grimm. These two guys saved the day for me, injecting an otherwise forgettable, cookie-cutter superhero movie with generous helpings of fun.
3. Cliff Robertson as Uncle Ben (Spider-Man). The man whose death transforms Peter Parker from self-absorbed teen to New York City's greatest hero is brought to life with haunting poignancy by Oscar-winner Robertson. While his toupee (at least that's what I think it is) is admittedly a little distracting, this guy plays the perfect father figure to Peter, and when he dies it hits the audiences every bit as hard as it hits Peter. Rosemary Harris' Aunt May is also pleasant to watch, but this guy's performance stands out.
4. Michael Caine as Alfred (Batman Begins). It's funny how Oscar-winning Caine and his Cider House Rules co-star Tobey Maguire went on to star in very different comic book movies, but at least each of them brings the appropriate heft to his respective role. It's truly pleasant how Caine breaks Alfred out of the English butler cliche and presents us instead with a more proactive vision of the guy, dumping the traditional, Bonny Prince Charlie enunciation for his trademark cockney accent. He is the perfect foil to Bale's brooding Bruce Wayne.
5. Linus Roache as Thomas Wayne (Batman Begins). This is notable for much the same reason that Cliff Robertson's Uncle Ben is memorable, but the difference here is that this role is considerable smaller. That notwithstanding, Roache (the gay priest in Priest) managed to give a lot of dimension to it. We know how pivotal the death of Bruce Wayne's parents is to the eventual decision he makes to become Batman, but Linus Roache makes us understand it.
6. J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson (Spider-Man). This one's so obvious I shouldn't even have to put it, although I didn't want anyone to think I'd forgotten him. 'Nuff said.
7. Sam Elliot as "Thunderbolt" Ross (Hulk). This is another movie that was widely reviled, and while I (as one of the three or four people on the planet who liked it) will concede that the casting of Bruce Banner and Betty Ross (as well as Nick Nolte) was less than ideal, I don't think anyone who has read the Hulk comics will argue with me when I say that Elliot was Ross personified from his imposing build down to his freaking mustache, down to his deep voice and scowl. The best part is how he added dimension to the character.
8. Jon Favreau as "Foggy" Nelson (Daredevil). The script of this movie sorely underutilized Foggy's character, which is sad considering how important a role he plays is the comics, but Favreau plays the character as best he can, being a lot more enjoyable to watch than Ben Affleck's wince-inducing Matt Murdock.
9. Kelsey Grammer as Hank "Beast" McCoy (X-Men 3: The Last Stand). Yeah, baby! A fan favorite that Bryan Singer couldn't make room for in two X-Men movies finally found his way into the franchise, thanks to aborted director Matthew Vaughn. While the casting of the whiny, irritating Ben Foster (Punisher, Six Feet Under) as Angel really pissed me off considering I would have wanted the role to go to someone a little more high profile, Grammer's inclusion in the last film made up for it. His delivery of the Beast's famous line, "oh my stars and garters" is one for the ages, really.
10. Shelly Duvall as Olive Oyl (Popeye). I know, where the fuck did that come from, right? Anyway, there wasn't really much for her to do, as the whole movie was camped up to the hilt, but she was a lot of fun to watch, all things considered.
Maybe next time I'll do the worst comic-book movie casting I can think of...
I've decided to skip the more obvious casting triumphs like Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker, which by common knowledge was a huge component of the franchise's success so far, or Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, or even Christian Bale as Batman, and highlight what I feel were some real gems over the last few years. I've even included supporting characters. In no particular order, they are:
1. Paul Giamatti as Harvey Pekar (American Splendor). This guy deserved, at the very least, an Oscar nomination for this role. Granted, it wasn't hard for him to play someone as schleppy as Pekar considering both his looks and his prior resume, but in coming up with this list I was less concerned about the effort it took to bring the character to life but the accuracy with which it was done. We have an instant point of comparison as by some self-indulgent script device Harvey Pekar appears frequently throughout Splendor to lend his thoughts to the viewer. This was some truly brilliant work, and it's nice to see Giamatti getting his due, with the lead role in M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water.
2. Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis as the Human Torch and the Thing, respectively (Fantastic Four). This movie has been widely reviled, by fanboys, viewers and critics alike, and yet one can't argue that for a relatively cheap budget, Fox and Marvel churned out a certified box office hit. I attribute this to the chemistry between the Thing and the Torch, which was, for me, taken right out of the comics. They're listed together because it is the way they play off each other that is something special to behold. Evans' cocky Johnny Storm played perfectly against Chiklis' gravelly Ben Grimm. These two guys saved the day for me, injecting an otherwise forgettable, cookie-cutter superhero movie with generous helpings of fun.
3. Cliff Robertson as Uncle Ben (Spider-Man). The man whose death transforms Peter Parker from self-absorbed teen to New York City's greatest hero is brought to life with haunting poignancy by Oscar-winner Robertson. While his toupee (at least that's what I think it is) is admittedly a little distracting, this guy plays the perfect father figure to Peter, and when he dies it hits the audiences every bit as hard as it hits Peter. Rosemary Harris' Aunt May is also pleasant to watch, but this guy's performance stands out.
4. Michael Caine as Alfred (Batman Begins). It's funny how Oscar-winning Caine and his Cider House Rules co-star Tobey Maguire went on to star in very different comic book movies, but at least each of them brings the appropriate heft to his respective role. It's truly pleasant how Caine breaks Alfred out of the English butler cliche and presents us instead with a more proactive vision of the guy, dumping the traditional, Bonny Prince Charlie enunciation for his trademark cockney accent. He is the perfect foil to Bale's brooding Bruce Wayne.
5. Linus Roache as Thomas Wayne (Batman Begins). This is notable for much the same reason that Cliff Robertson's Uncle Ben is memorable, but the difference here is that this role is considerable smaller. That notwithstanding, Roache (the gay priest in Priest) managed to give a lot of dimension to it. We know how pivotal the death of Bruce Wayne's parents is to the eventual decision he makes to become Batman, but Linus Roache makes us understand it.
6. J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson (Spider-Man). This one's so obvious I shouldn't even have to put it, although I didn't want anyone to think I'd forgotten him. 'Nuff said.
7. Sam Elliot as "Thunderbolt" Ross (Hulk). This is another movie that was widely reviled, and while I (as one of the three or four people on the planet who liked it) will concede that the casting of Bruce Banner and Betty Ross (as well as Nick Nolte) was less than ideal, I don't think anyone who has read the Hulk comics will argue with me when I say that Elliot was Ross personified from his imposing build down to his freaking mustache, down to his deep voice and scowl. The best part is how he added dimension to the character.
8. Jon Favreau as "Foggy" Nelson (Daredevil). The script of this movie sorely underutilized Foggy's character, which is sad considering how important a role he plays is the comics, but Favreau plays the character as best he can, being a lot more enjoyable to watch than Ben Affleck's wince-inducing Matt Murdock.
9. Kelsey Grammer as Hank "Beast" McCoy (X-Men 3: The Last Stand). Yeah, baby! A fan favorite that Bryan Singer couldn't make room for in two X-Men movies finally found his way into the franchise, thanks to aborted director Matthew Vaughn. While the casting of the whiny, irritating Ben Foster (Punisher, Six Feet Under) as Angel really pissed me off considering I would have wanted the role to go to someone a little more high profile, Grammer's inclusion in the last film made up for it. His delivery of the Beast's famous line, "oh my stars and garters" is one for the ages, really.
10. Shelly Duvall as Olive Oyl (Popeye). I know, where the fuck did that come from, right? Anyway, there wasn't really much for her to do, as the whole movie was camped up to the hilt, but she was a lot of fun to watch, all things considered.
Maybe next time I'll do the worst comic-book movie casting I can think of...
Monday, July 03, 2006
The Remake Disguised as A Sequel
Nineteen full years after the disastrous Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, Warner Brothers pictures attempts to make the Man of Steel fly again. The question inevitably arises: does he?
Before I start this review I'd like to get something out of the way, a little thematic aspect of the movie that doesn't really have anything to do with its overall craftsmanship but which proves bothersome just the same. I hate the Jesus Christ take on Superman. I despise it, for reasons I don't think I have to explain. Well, there's one thing John Byrne and I have in common.
That aside, the movie is not the magnum opus I had hoped it would be.
It is by no means a bad movie, and is in fact head-and-shoulders better than X-Men 3, the movie that director Bryan Singer abandoned to do this. But there was so much that Singer set out to do that the movie pretty much gets out of hand midway through.
The plot is pretty much familiar to anyone who surfs the internet or even just browses the entertainment pages of any daily newspaper: after a trip to space to find his lost homeworld Krypton, Superman (Brandon Routh) returns home to Earth to find out that five years have passed, Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has given birth to a son (some shaggy-haired kid who looks like yet another Culkin clone) and moved in with Perry White's nephew (James Marsden), and that the world apparently doesn't need him anymore.
This is the first Superman movie that's been released in nearly two decades. It's the first Superman movie to be released in the post Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, and even Spider-Man CGI era. There is so much that can be done that wasn't possible in the 70s or the 80s. This movie purports to be a sequel to Superman 2, thereby (wisely) abandoning the last two movies of the franchise, the last of which killed it. And yet, for a sequel, it has surprisingly little to say that's new.
The movie's single biggest stumbling block is the clumsy execution of the Lois-Superman love story. So much of the movie's marketing revolved around it, to the extent that one of the earliest production stills released was the close up of the two of them just before they fly off the Daily Planet and all around Metropolis. Bryan Singer even declared "this is the first chick flick I've ever made." The thing is, it all feels like a marketing stunt, because it just doesn't work.
Superman and Lois Lane have a very rich history together, in both the films and the comics. We're not talking about boy-meets-girl, young love here. It's a long time sort of thing, that is not at all reflected in the actor's performances. There is no regret, no sense of longing, no...forgive me for using the word...angst over love lost. There is no chemistry between them whatsoever. We're told that they should be in love, but we aren't given any convincing reason to believe it.
If Singer had wanted to establish a dynamic of people with such a storied romance, he shouldn't have gone for such young stars. Kate Beckinsale, for one, would have made a great Lois because apart from being gorgeous, she brings a certain maturity to the table, due in no small part to the fact that she already has a kid in real life. While there has been much hullaballoo about the casting of Brandon Routh, who admittedly bears a striking resemblance to Christopher Reeve, Singer should have gone for an actor who could convincingly play romance. Routh simply can't sell us on the idea that he's in love with Lois Lane. Well, apparently we now know why Bryan Singer didn't bother to write any real love stories into his X-Men movies: he can't do romance to save his life.
The second biggest problem is the way the hero-villain dynamic is played out. Yet again, Lex Luthor (given the hambone treatment by Oscar winning Spacey) has a diabolical scheme that involves him becoming rich and powerful at the expense of billions of lives. As in the earlier films, he has included the use of kryptonite in his plans to protect himself against Superman. And again, Superman walks right into Luthor's kryptonite-laced lair.
I seem to remember a vivid image of Christopher Reeve chained to a huge hunk of kryptonite in the first Superman movie. This movie supposedly only takes place five or six years after that, so I wonder why on earth it doesn't even occur to Superman that Luthor would use kryptonite against him again?
See, the trouble with making a hero so powerful that he only has one known weakness is that the only way for an infinitely weaker opponent to take advantage of that weakness more than once is for the hero to be a complete and utter moron, which in this case, Superman apparently is. Kudos actually goes to Luthor for outsmarting Superman yet again.
See, if this were told as a remake, these concerns would be non-issues. Lois and Superman, having only just met, could be as awkward and devoid of history as they wanted to be, and Luthor could zap Superman with as much kryptonite as could fit the screen, and it wouldn't matter, because it would all be shiny and new.
As parts of a sequel, however, these little details simply don't add up.
The good news, however, is that as an action director, Bryan Singer is in absolute top form. He is every inch the auteur who had Nightcrawler kick the ass of the American President's entire entourage, who had Wolverine gut the U.S. military blackops agents invading the Xavier mansion, and who had Storm take out U.S. fighter jets with tornadoes. Singer's sense of scope is very much intact and it was this that X-men 3 was sorely lacking, all things considered.
The space shuttle piggyback sequence was perfectly conceived and executed, and it was a properly auspicious way for Superman to make his grand return. The homages to both the Action Comics artwork and the Reeve flying sequences were also well done, although in the case of the latter it once again reinforces my opinion that this should have been presented as a remake instead of a sequel.
Guy Hendrix Dyas' reimagining of the fortress of solitude is absolutely awe-inspiring, and I'm only sorry there weren't more sequences involving it. His vision of Luthor's rock palace towards the end is obviously derived from the fortress and is therefore not quite as spectacular being cast in black and grey hues, but it's still imposing to behold. When I saw the ice cathedral that was the fortress, I had a good idea where a healthy portion of this movie's $200 million plus budget went. It was, in this instance, money well spent.
Sony Pictures Imageworks justifies the fact that they were chosen over other visual effects outfits by showing that the effects of this movie could not possibly have been done any better. Like many people, I'm sure, I am a huge, huge fan of that bullet-bouncing-off-Superman's-eye sequence. Incredible stuff.
The visuals I expected of Singer were all there, but storywise, this is still nowhere near what he threw together in X2.
I don't know if there will be a sequel anytime soon, given that this mammoth-budgeted movie's box-office returns aren't quite as robust as people have predicted, but I hope that next time around Singer brings a solid, FRESH, take on the Man of Steel to go with his stunning visuals.
Before I start this review I'd like to get something out of the way, a little thematic aspect of the movie that doesn't really have anything to do with its overall craftsmanship but which proves bothersome just the same. I hate the Jesus Christ take on Superman. I despise it, for reasons I don't think I have to explain. Well, there's one thing John Byrne and I have in common.
That aside, the movie is not the magnum opus I had hoped it would be.
It is by no means a bad movie, and is in fact head-and-shoulders better than X-Men 3, the movie that director Bryan Singer abandoned to do this. But there was so much that Singer set out to do that the movie pretty much gets out of hand midway through.
The plot is pretty much familiar to anyone who surfs the internet or even just browses the entertainment pages of any daily newspaper: after a trip to space to find his lost homeworld Krypton, Superman (Brandon Routh) returns home to Earth to find out that five years have passed, Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has given birth to a son (some shaggy-haired kid who looks like yet another Culkin clone) and moved in with Perry White's nephew (James Marsden), and that the world apparently doesn't need him anymore.
This is the first Superman movie that's been released in nearly two decades. It's the first Superman movie to be released in the post Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, and even Spider-Man CGI era. There is so much that can be done that wasn't possible in the 70s or the 80s. This movie purports to be a sequel to Superman 2, thereby (wisely) abandoning the last two movies of the franchise, the last of which killed it. And yet, for a sequel, it has surprisingly little to say that's new.
The movie's single biggest stumbling block is the clumsy execution of the Lois-Superman love story. So much of the movie's marketing revolved around it, to the extent that one of the earliest production stills released was the close up of the two of them just before they fly off the Daily Planet and all around Metropolis. Bryan Singer even declared "this is the first chick flick I've ever made." The thing is, it all feels like a marketing stunt, because it just doesn't work.
Superman and Lois Lane have a very rich history together, in both the films and the comics. We're not talking about boy-meets-girl, young love here. It's a long time sort of thing, that is not at all reflected in the actor's performances. There is no regret, no sense of longing, no...forgive me for using the word...angst over love lost. There is no chemistry between them whatsoever. We're told that they should be in love, but we aren't given any convincing reason to believe it.
If Singer had wanted to establish a dynamic of people with such a storied romance, he shouldn't have gone for such young stars. Kate Beckinsale, for one, would have made a great Lois because apart from being gorgeous, she brings a certain maturity to the table, due in no small part to the fact that she already has a kid in real life. While there has been much hullaballoo about the casting of Brandon Routh, who admittedly bears a striking resemblance to Christopher Reeve, Singer should have gone for an actor who could convincingly play romance. Routh simply can't sell us on the idea that he's in love with Lois Lane. Well, apparently we now know why Bryan Singer didn't bother to write any real love stories into his X-Men movies: he can't do romance to save his life.
The second biggest problem is the way the hero-villain dynamic is played out. Yet again, Lex Luthor (given the hambone treatment by Oscar winning Spacey) has a diabolical scheme that involves him becoming rich and powerful at the expense of billions of lives. As in the earlier films, he has included the use of kryptonite in his plans to protect himself against Superman. And again, Superman walks right into Luthor's kryptonite-laced lair.
I seem to remember a vivid image of Christopher Reeve chained to a huge hunk of kryptonite in the first Superman movie. This movie supposedly only takes place five or six years after that, so I wonder why on earth it doesn't even occur to Superman that Luthor would use kryptonite against him again?
See, the trouble with making a hero so powerful that he only has one known weakness is that the only way for an infinitely weaker opponent to take advantage of that weakness more than once is for the hero to be a complete and utter moron, which in this case, Superman apparently is. Kudos actually goes to Luthor for outsmarting Superman yet again.
See, if this were told as a remake, these concerns would be non-issues. Lois and Superman, having only just met, could be as awkward and devoid of history as they wanted to be, and Luthor could zap Superman with as much kryptonite as could fit the screen, and it wouldn't matter, because it would all be shiny and new.
As parts of a sequel, however, these little details simply don't add up.
The good news, however, is that as an action director, Bryan Singer is in absolute top form. He is every inch the auteur who had Nightcrawler kick the ass of the American President's entire entourage, who had Wolverine gut the U.S. military blackops agents invading the Xavier mansion, and who had Storm take out U.S. fighter jets with tornadoes. Singer's sense of scope is very much intact and it was this that X-men 3 was sorely lacking, all things considered.
The space shuttle piggyback sequence was perfectly conceived and executed, and it was a properly auspicious way for Superman to make his grand return. The homages to both the Action Comics artwork and the Reeve flying sequences were also well done, although in the case of the latter it once again reinforces my opinion that this should have been presented as a remake instead of a sequel.
Guy Hendrix Dyas' reimagining of the fortress of solitude is absolutely awe-inspiring, and I'm only sorry there weren't more sequences involving it. His vision of Luthor's rock palace towards the end is obviously derived from the fortress and is therefore not quite as spectacular being cast in black and grey hues, but it's still imposing to behold. When I saw the ice cathedral that was the fortress, I had a good idea where a healthy portion of this movie's $200 million plus budget went. It was, in this instance, money well spent.
Sony Pictures Imageworks justifies the fact that they were chosen over other visual effects outfits by showing that the effects of this movie could not possibly have been done any better. Like many people, I'm sure, I am a huge, huge fan of that bullet-bouncing-off-Superman's-eye sequence. Incredible stuff.
The visuals I expected of Singer were all there, but storywise, this is still nowhere near what he threw together in X2.
I don't know if there will be a sequel anytime soon, given that this mammoth-budgeted movie's box-office returns aren't quite as robust as people have predicted, but I hope that next time around Singer brings a solid, FRESH, take on the Man of Steel to go with his stunning visuals.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
On Friends Being Friends
The other days, I hitched a ride home with my boss at work. The nice thing about spending time with my bosses and co-workers is that most of the time (at least to my experience) they don't talk shop. They share tips on work with me, what with me being the new guy and all, but for the most part they like to talk about life in general, things outside the practice of law, and I welcome it.
Anyway, we got to talking about how I like to hang around with an old friend from law school who happens to work two buildings away from mine. We're pretty much updated on each other's professional lives; when the crap hit the fan (or at least I thought it did) at the office once, I called her up and we met at a nearby coffee shop while I vented. She found out about it before my wife did, which my wife didn't like very much.
Upon hearing this anecdote, my boss, himself a married man, shared a bit of advice though this is certainly paraphrased: avoid having "special female friends." Another way of putting it, I guess, would be that there shouldn't be any woman that I feel more comfortable talking to than my wife. There shouldn't be things that I can tell another woman that I can't tell my wife, especially if it's stuff about my wife. It hit me right away that he was right, even though, thank goodness, I hadn't reached that rather dangerous threshold just yet. But the fact that I had told another woman about something rather personal (I was feeling really crappy at the time and needed someone to listen) before my wife, who was just a cellphone call away (we're Sun subscribers, so I can't use the old "saving my load" excuse) was not good.
It hit me: how many married, or "involved" people have "special friends," that is, people they tend to approach with something before they talk to their significant others, sometimes, even without ever going to their significant others? How many people have someone like this in their lives, whether it's people they knew before they were married or people they met afterwards? Thinking about it, it's not the healthiest thing one can do for his or her own marriage, so why do so many people do it? Depending on the closeness one feels to this "special friend" it can really be a dangerous proposition. Like my boss said to me: she's still a woman.
I guess the rule of thumb, really, is avoid stocking up on things you can't tell your spouse, and not just the big no-nos like affairs and vices. I mean little things, like things that annoy you about her or him. White lies are no good, especially if you find some other outlet to bitch to about the truth.
I tend to understand why women who used to be "special friends" (but not girlfriends) with certain guys tend to shy away once the guys get married. That is a good call, even though the situation doesn't always call for them to drop out of sight altogether.
I guess the bottom line, really, is that I should be able to talk to my wife about ANYTHING. Right now, fortunately, I still am.
Anyway, we got to talking about how I like to hang around with an old friend from law school who happens to work two buildings away from mine. We're pretty much updated on each other's professional lives; when the crap hit the fan (or at least I thought it did) at the office once, I called her up and we met at a nearby coffee shop while I vented. She found out about it before my wife did, which my wife didn't like very much.
Upon hearing this anecdote, my boss, himself a married man, shared a bit of advice though this is certainly paraphrased: avoid having "special female friends." Another way of putting it, I guess, would be that there shouldn't be any woman that I feel more comfortable talking to than my wife. There shouldn't be things that I can tell another woman that I can't tell my wife, especially if it's stuff about my wife. It hit me right away that he was right, even though, thank goodness, I hadn't reached that rather dangerous threshold just yet. But the fact that I had told another woman about something rather personal (I was feeling really crappy at the time and needed someone to listen) before my wife, who was just a cellphone call away (we're Sun subscribers, so I can't use the old "saving my load" excuse) was not good.
It hit me: how many married, or "involved" people have "special friends," that is, people they tend to approach with something before they talk to their significant others, sometimes, even without ever going to their significant others? How many people have someone like this in their lives, whether it's people they knew before they were married or people they met afterwards? Thinking about it, it's not the healthiest thing one can do for his or her own marriage, so why do so many people do it? Depending on the closeness one feels to this "special friend" it can really be a dangerous proposition. Like my boss said to me: she's still a woman.
I guess the rule of thumb, really, is avoid stocking up on things you can't tell your spouse, and not just the big no-nos like affairs and vices. I mean little things, like things that annoy you about her or him. White lies are no good, especially if you find some other outlet to bitch to about the truth.
I tend to understand why women who used to be "special friends" (but not girlfriends) with certain guys tend to shy away once the guys get married. That is a good call, even though the situation doesn't always call for them to drop out of sight altogether.
I guess the bottom line, really, is that I should be able to talk to my wife about ANYTHING. Right now, fortunately, I still am.
Travesty
Some time after I had left the PCGG, I was thunderstruck to learn how the folks in charge had basically fucked everything up for the valiant Haydee Yorac and her crew of commissioners. Essentially, it turned out all she had done was to take wads of cash from the pockets of one set of thieves only to transmit it to the pockets of another. It was frustrating enough to make her quit, and maybe even kill her, I don't know. God rest her soul, poor woman.
Just as with the PCGG, I left the Supreme Court about six weeks ago with no baggage, with no ill will against anyone, and with no regrets whatsoever. I just felt it was time to move on, but at the same time I'm glad I was there for as long as I was. I was proud to be part of such a fine institution.
It makes me sick to the bowels of my being, therefore, to see the current Chief Justice milk his position for as much media exposure as he can possibly get, largely at the expense of the credibility of the institution.
The way Art Panganiban postured on the death penalty just before its abolition by Congress speaks rather ill of his credibility as a magistrate, much less as the head of the highest court of the land. He claims there was no impropriety to what he said, and that he should be free to express his own opinion.
Well, Mr. Chief Justice, here's the thing: your personal opinion finds its way into some of the country's most important decisions and resolutions. Your opinion, in many instances, has the force of law. Your opinion can shape lives or break them. Your opinion doesn't belong to you right now: it belongs to the Supreme Court.
I think this guy is in the wrong line of work, really. He should have his own talk show, whether or radio or on TV. He is a glory hound unlike any there ever was. Put next to his most immediate predecessor, the eminent Hilario Davide who guarded his own convictions closely when asked for his take on issues of transcendental importance. The guy showed dignity and composure. His successor is kind of like a circus clown with the way he carries on.
All of 2005's bar passers must know of his little slide presentation during their oath-taking, a solemn occasion that is supposed to be part of the Supreme Court's official business. Instead, the chief took the opportunity to tell his sad sob story growing up, which, I've told, is notably exaggerated in some portions. Incidents like that made me glad I passed the last bar during Davide's term. The stinker of it is (for those who were there, anyway) that no batch after this will ever have to endure such annoyance because Panganiban is stepping down in December.
Some comment has been made about how generous Panganiban is with the bonuses he lavishes on Court employees. Well, of course he can be generous; it's not exactly his money he's giving away now, is it?
I don't know if I'll ever work at the Supreme Court again, as much as I liked it there, but I do know one thing for sure: I'm definitely not going back while Panganiban is still in charge.
Just as with the PCGG, I left the Supreme Court about six weeks ago with no baggage, with no ill will against anyone, and with no regrets whatsoever. I just felt it was time to move on, but at the same time I'm glad I was there for as long as I was. I was proud to be part of such a fine institution.
It makes me sick to the bowels of my being, therefore, to see the current Chief Justice milk his position for as much media exposure as he can possibly get, largely at the expense of the credibility of the institution.
The way Art Panganiban postured on the death penalty just before its abolition by Congress speaks rather ill of his credibility as a magistrate, much less as the head of the highest court of the land. He claims there was no impropriety to what he said, and that he should be free to express his own opinion.
Well, Mr. Chief Justice, here's the thing: your personal opinion finds its way into some of the country's most important decisions and resolutions. Your opinion, in many instances, has the force of law. Your opinion can shape lives or break them. Your opinion doesn't belong to you right now: it belongs to the Supreme Court.
I think this guy is in the wrong line of work, really. He should have his own talk show, whether or radio or on TV. He is a glory hound unlike any there ever was. Put next to his most immediate predecessor, the eminent Hilario Davide who guarded his own convictions closely when asked for his take on issues of transcendental importance. The guy showed dignity and composure. His successor is kind of like a circus clown with the way he carries on.
All of 2005's bar passers must know of his little slide presentation during their oath-taking, a solemn occasion that is supposed to be part of the Supreme Court's official business. Instead, the chief took the opportunity to tell his sad sob story growing up, which, I've told, is notably exaggerated in some portions. Incidents like that made me glad I passed the last bar during Davide's term. The stinker of it is (for those who were there, anyway) that no batch after this will ever have to endure such annoyance because Panganiban is stepping down in December.
Some comment has been made about how generous Panganiban is with the bonuses he lavishes on Court employees. Well, of course he can be generous; it's not exactly his money he's giving away now, is it?
I don't know if I'll ever work at the Supreme Court again, as much as I liked it there, but I do know one thing for sure: I'm definitely not going back while Panganiban is still in charge.
Friday, June 23, 2006
On The Eternals Issue #1
I'm not particularly sorry I didn't get to meet Neil Gaiman when he was here in the Philippines. It's not that I have anything against him, but as soon as I heard how many people went to have their stuff signed by him I realized that I would have spent an entire working day (or more) to have about eight comic books signed, and not even my particularly prized stuff.
Previous to yesterday, the only Gaiman stuff I had was his second Death miniseries (The Time of Your Life) and his four-issue Stardust illustrated, serialized novel (I can't bring myself to call it a comic book or a graphic novel, because it really isn't one). I rather enjoyed the latter and am happy to report that it's being made into a feature film.
Still, there was something about the way he wrote that made it feel somehow distant from everything else I was reading at the time. Granted, it was better written (because folks like Mark Millar, Brian Bendis and J. Michael Straczynski hadn't started writing mainstream just yet) than the other stuff, but it feel real-world, like a lot of the dialogue in the Death books. It somehow felt surreal, otherworldly.
Eternals changes that somewhat. In a nutshell, it's about a race of immortals who have, for the most part, forgotten who they are, that walk among men, specifically the men of the regular Marvel Universe. We see most of the story through the eyes of Mark Curry, a young New York intern whose life takes a strange turn when blond-haired, golden eyed Ike Harris shows up in the hospital restroom one day to tell him that he is a being of fantastical power. Other characters who show up are Sersi, a flightly New York party planner whose dialogue reads just a touch like some of the lines of Death in The High Cost of Living, the mysterious Druig, weapons R&D expert Thena, and tweeny TV star Sprite. Still, this particular issue is all about Mark and Ike, who share most of the issue's conversations.
And it is here that Gaiman plants his foot firmly in the real-world nature of the Marvel Universe. I never bought Marvel: 1602 because the neither the premise nor the art grabbed me enough to entice me to spent a small fortune on all eight issues. It was too out there, and like I said once before felt like it was designed to pander to Gaiman's penchant for the strange.
Eternals is still a fantastical project, by that logic, but at the very least it still has the "real," modern world as its starting point. And Gaiman's dialogue straddles the line between fantasy and reality. He gives the everyman a point of view in Mark Curry instead of populating his world with a whole bunch of strange characters.
As for the art, my reverence of John Romita Jr. has sometimes bordered on the idolatrous. I guess that statement pretty much says it all.
In the course of his thirty or so year career he has actually gotten very little of the respect that is due him. He did remarkable runs on X-Men, Spider-Man and Iron Man in the 80s, but he didn't enjoy the superstar status that was lavished on the likes of Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane and (gasp!) Rob Liefeld. In the last twenty years he has worked with as many cookie-cutter hacks as he has really good writers.
The only other time a book of his was treated as an event was in 1993 when he and Frank Miller came up with Daredevil: The Man Without Fear. His work on that book was really something special, which was why it boggled my mind that for years after that he was paired up with some at best mediocre writers like Scott Lobdell, Howard Mackie and Dan Jurgens. Arguably one of Marvel's top talents, he was really getting the short shrift: his books were getting printed on toilet paper and colored by people who were either autistic or blind or both. John's stuff looked like shit, in short, even though his talent still shone through occasionally.
It was a good thing that Joe Quesada, a fellow illustrator, finally became Marvel's editor-in-chief because as one of JR Jr.'s biggest fans, he finally started giving him the "props" (as the rather irritating slang goes) he deserves. He paired him with the vastly talented J. Michael Straczynski, gave him a phenomenal coloring team in Dan Kemp and Avalon Studios. He was also generous with his praise for the man in all of his interviews where JR's name came up. Anyone who's seen the extras on the Spider-Man DVD will know what I'm talking about.
Still, before this project, Johnny never seemed to recover the vibe that had made Man Without Fear so special. He'd come close a few times, but never quite hit it out of the park the way he had before.
That's all changed with issue #1 of Eternals. The illustration, the storytelling, the rendering (which is not something John is famous for) are out of this work. Credit goes of course to the stellar inking team of Danny Miki and Tim Townsend, as well as the brilliant palette of colorist Matt Hollingsworth, but their efforts wouldn't mean anything if they weren't inking or coloring such ebullient, outstanding pencils.
In short, this is a great start to what promises to be a very entertaining series. The only thing I didn't like was how they shoehorned the current Marvel line-wide event Civil War, into the story. Although I am a self-professed fan of that particular series, I felt that the little nod to Marvel's ongoing continuity took me out of the story somewhat.
Flaws notwithstanding, though, I'm certainly on board for all six issues.
Previous to yesterday, the only Gaiman stuff I had was his second Death miniseries (The Time of Your Life) and his four-issue Stardust illustrated, serialized novel (I can't bring myself to call it a comic book or a graphic novel, because it really isn't one). I rather enjoyed the latter and am happy to report that it's being made into a feature film.
Still, there was something about the way he wrote that made it feel somehow distant from everything else I was reading at the time. Granted, it was better written (because folks like Mark Millar, Brian Bendis and J. Michael Straczynski hadn't started writing mainstream just yet) than the other stuff, but it feel real-world, like a lot of the dialogue in the Death books. It somehow felt surreal, otherworldly.
Eternals changes that somewhat. In a nutshell, it's about a race of immortals who have, for the most part, forgotten who they are, that walk among men, specifically the men of the regular Marvel Universe. We see most of the story through the eyes of Mark Curry, a young New York intern whose life takes a strange turn when blond-haired, golden eyed Ike Harris shows up in the hospital restroom one day to tell him that he is a being of fantastical power. Other characters who show up are Sersi, a flightly New York party planner whose dialogue reads just a touch like some of the lines of Death in The High Cost of Living, the mysterious Druig, weapons R&D expert Thena, and tweeny TV star Sprite. Still, this particular issue is all about Mark and Ike, who share most of the issue's conversations.
And it is here that Gaiman plants his foot firmly in the real-world nature of the Marvel Universe. I never bought Marvel: 1602 because the neither the premise nor the art grabbed me enough to entice me to spent a small fortune on all eight issues. It was too out there, and like I said once before felt like it was designed to pander to Gaiman's penchant for the strange.
Eternals is still a fantastical project, by that logic, but at the very least it still has the "real," modern world as its starting point. And Gaiman's dialogue straddles the line between fantasy and reality. He gives the everyman a point of view in Mark Curry instead of populating his world with a whole bunch of strange characters.
As for the art, my reverence of John Romita Jr. has sometimes bordered on the idolatrous. I guess that statement pretty much says it all.
In the course of his thirty or so year career he has actually gotten very little of the respect that is due him. He did remarkable runs on X-Men, Spider-Man and Iron Man in the 80s, but he didn't enjoy the superstar status that was lavished on the likes of Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane and (gasp!) Rob Liefeld. In the last twenty years he has worked with as many cookie-cutter hacks as he has really good writers.
The only other time a book of his was treated as an event was in 1993 when he and Frank Miller came up with Daredevil: The Man Without Fear. His work on that book was really something special, which was why it boggled my mind that for years after that he was paired up with some at best mediocre writers like Scott Lobdell, Howard Mackie and Dan Jurgens. Arguably one of Marvel's top talents, he was really getting the short shrift: his books were getting printed on toilet paper and colored by people who were either autistic or blind or both. John's stuff looked like shit, in short, even though his talent still shone through occasionally.
It was a good thing that Joe Quesada, a fellow illustrator, finally became Marvel's editor-in-chief because as one of JR Jr.'s biggest fans, he finally started giving him the "props" (as the rather irritating slang goes) he deserves. He paired him with the vastly talented J. Michael Straczynski, gave him a phenomenal coloring team in Dan Kemp and Avalon Studios. He was also generous with his praise for the man in all of his interviews where JR's name came up. Anyone who's seen the extras on the Spider-Man DVD will know what I'm talking about.
Still, before this project, Johnny never seemed to recover the vibe that had made Man Without Fear so special. He'd come close a few times, but never quite hit it out of the park the way he had before.
That's all changed with issue #1 of Eternals. The illustration, the storytelling, the rendering (which is not something John is famous for) are out of this work. Credit goes of course to the stellar inking team of Danny Miki and Tim Townsend, as well as the brilliant palette of colorist Matt Hollingsworth, but their efforts wouldn't mean anything if they weren't inking or coloring such ebullient, outstanding pencils.
In short, this is a great start to what promises to be a very entertaining series. The only thing I didn't like was how they shoehorned the current Marvel line-wide event Civil War, into the story. Although I am a self-professed fan of that particular series, I felt that the little nod to Marvel's ongoing continuity took me out of the story somewhat.
Flaws notwithstanding, though, I'm certainly on board for all six issues.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
On Spider-Man Unmasking
Considering how many posts in the past I've devoted to comics, even those I hadn't read at the time, I don't think I'd be able to live with myself if I didn't write even just a blurb about the fact that my favorite superhero of all time has, in the pages of Marvel Comics' Civil War #2, revealed his secret identity to the public, at a press conference, no less.
To make a long story short, Peter Parker shows his support for Tony Stark(aka Iron Man), who in turn is the point-man for all superheroes advocating the Superhero Registration Act that was introduced in issue #1, by showing that he is not afraid to reveal himself to all. In the course of a concurrent issue of Amazing Spider-Man, he has a conversation with Mary Jane and Aunt May about all the repercussions of his revealing himself, and essentially, they talk him into it.
The attention this move by Marvel has generated is quite massive. Not since the death of Superman has a comic-book character gotten this much mainstream media exposure for reasons other than the box-office performance of his latest movie adaptation.
Of course, the naysayers are saying that it's bullshit, that it's completely out of character for Peter, and that it will all be voided down the line anyway by some simple story device (considering the vast range of superpowers that Marvel's characters have).
I say it's actually a good idea.
Although I am a self-confessed Marvel fan, I am not a Marvel apologist. They've had some pretty terrible ideas in the past, a lot of them having to do with Spider-Man. The clone saga comes to mind, as does the notion of Norman Osborn retroactively siring children by Gwen Stacy, as well as the whole John Byrne retooling of Spider-Man's origin. Yep, they've come up with some real stinkers.
But this isn't one of them, not in and of itself.
This isn't like the death of Superman, which no one (myself included) realized was nothing but a huge marketing gambit on DC Comics' part. There are a number of reasons for this.
1. Mark Millar is a much better writer than Dan Jurgens.
2. Steve McNiven is an EXPONENTIALLY better artist than Dan Jurgens.
and most importantly...
3. When Superman died (as would be the case with any character) there were only two directions to go: a) keep him dead or b) bring him back. The only creativity involved, really, was how to bring him back. I know there was the whole big deal about it being a great opportunity to introduce "cool new characters" like Steel (whose true redeeming value is that he killed Shaquille O' Neal's movie career) and Superboy (whom DC recently killed, strangely enough), but really, there really wasn't much else to do but bring him back.
By unmasking Spider-Man, Marvel has opened the door for all kinds of stories to be told. There are so many directions they can take the character that it can boggle the average fanboy's mind. Even assuming some future writer or artist manages to put the genie back into the bottle at some point, these stories will still have been told, and their impact will still have been felt, certainly by Peter himself, who may realize, depending on what he goes through from here, that it wasn't such a good idea after all. The gravity of his decision will not be diminished, especially if he suffers for it in the meantime. And in the meantime, readers will get a glimpse of what Spider-Man's life would be like if all his enemies, not just kooks like Norman Osborn, knew who he was when he took of his tights and who he went home to at night.
THIS has POTENTIAL. I don't know if Marvel will fully exploit that potential, but it's undeniably there.
And to think, Civil War is only on issue #2...of SEVEN.
To make a long story short, Peter Parker shows his support for Tony Stark(aka Iron Man), who in turn is the point-man for all superheroes advocating the Superhero Registration Act that was introduced in issue #1, by showing that he is not afraid to reveal himself to all. In the course of a concurrent issue of Amazing Spider-Man, he has a conversation with Mary Jane and Aunt May about all the repercussions of his revealing himself, and essentially, they talk him into it.
The attention this move by Marvel has generated is quite massive. Not since the death of Superman has a comic-book character gotten this much mainstream media exposure for reasons other than the box-office performance of his latest movie adaptation.
Of course, the naysayers are saying that it's bullshit, that it's completely out of character for Peter, and that it will all be voided down the line anyway by some simple story device (considering the vast range of superpowers that Marvel's characters have).
I say it's actually a good idea.
Although I am a self-confessed Marvel fan, I am not a Marvel apologist. They've had some pretty terrible ideas in the past, a lot of them having to do with Spider-Man. The clone saga comes to mind, as does the notion of Norman Osborn retroactively siring children by Gwen Stacy, as well as the whole John Byrne retooling of Spider-Man's origin. Yep, they've come up with some real stinkers.
But this isn't one of them, not in and of itself.
This isn't like the death of Superman, which no one (myself included) realized was nothing but a huge marketing gambit on DC Comics' part. There are a number of reasons for this.
1. Mark Millar is a much better writer than Dan Jurgens.
2. Steve McNiven is an EXPONENTIALLY better artist than Dan Jurgens.
and most importantly...
3. When Superman died (as would be the case with any character) there were only two directions to go: a) keep him dead or b) bring him back. The only creativity involved, really, was how to bring him back. I know there was the whole big deal about it being a great opportunity to introduce "cool new characters" like Steel (whose true redeeming value is that he killed Shaquille O' Neal's movie career) and Superboy (whom DC recently killed, strangely enough), but really, there really wasn't much else to do but bring him back.
By unmasking Spider-Man, Marvel has opened the door for all kinds of stories to be told. There are so many directions they can take the character that it can boggle the average fanboy's mind. Even assuming some future writer or artist manages to put the genie back into the bottle at some point, these stories will still have been told, and their impact will still have been felt, certainly by Peter himself, who may realize, depending on what he goes through from here, that it wasn't such a good idea after all. The gravity of his decision will not be diminished, especially if he suffers for it in the meantime. And in the meantime, readers will get a glimpse of what Spider-Man's life would be like if all his enemies, not just kooks like Norman Osborn, knew who he was when he took of his tights and who he went home to at night.
THIS has POTENTIAL. I don't know if Marvel will fully exploit that potential, but it's undeniably there.
And to think, Civil War is only on issue #2...of SEVEN.
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Heh Heh, You Know What They Say About Imitation...
The people responsible for making and marketing Superman Returns are doing absolutely everything right, from hiring one of the best comic book movie directors out there to the magnificent trailers they've cut for it. I fully anticipate enjoying the movie consummately and without any of the reservations I felt about X-Men: The Last Stand (and writing a glowing review of it, too).
That said, I've made a couple of observations about the movie, having followed its online (and onscreen) trailers pretty faithfully (though not so obsessively that I was willing to pay good money to see trash like Poseidon) that put a different kind of smile on my face.
Anyone who knows me knows that I have been a fan of Spider-Man for almost as long as it took to get a Spider-Man movie made (very minimal exaggeration there). I was practically rabid when the first Spidey movie broke box office records and became the highest grossing movie of the new millenium back when it was released. I am a fan of both of the web slinger's onscreen adventures, in particular Spider-Man 2.
Having seen SM2 as many times as I have, I've noticed a lot, and I mean a lot of similarities between its storyline and general craftsmanship and that of the upcoming Superman epic.
For a quick rundown: In SM2, Mary Jane was engaged to John Jameson, son of Daily Bugle publisher Jonah Jameson. In SR, Lois Lane is engaged to the nephew of Daily Planet editor-in-chief Perry White. In SM2, Peter Parker/Spider-Man struggles with his own frustrations. In SR, Clark Kent/Kal El/Superman struggles with the fact that the world apparently doesn't need him anymore (although in SM2 part of his problem is his decision to turn his back on the world even though it does need him).
Admittedly, Singer and company have made no secret about their dilemma of how to make Superman relevant to an audience that has warmed up to angst ridden heroes, foremost of whom would definitely be Spider-Man. But I didn't think they'd even go for similar plot devices.
Even the superficial similarities are there: Sony Picture Imageworks, the company that is making Superman fly on the big screen for the first time in almost twenty years, is the company that enabled Spider-Man to swing through Manhattan. I mean, they could have just as easily have gone with ILM, or even the new king of the visual effects roost Weta Digital, but they went for SPI, based largely, if not solely, on its track record with iconic superheroes. A close look at Superman's spandex shows that there's a certain texture to it, the way James Acheson designed Spider-Man's tights in a very peculiar way.
It's particularly gratifying for a Spider-Man fan like myself, in the same way that Pepsi lovers must have loved Coke's flavor shift twenty years ago, to see the makers of Superman trying to make him more like Spider-Man to sell him these days. It's funny considering that if Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster hadn't come up with Superman in 1938, Spider-Man, in all likelihood, wouldn't even exist. Even the most fanatical Spider-Man devotee knows that. In the same sense, the original Richard Donner Superman served as a huge inspiration for Sam Raimi's Spidey movies. I guess it's cyclical somehow, the way George Lucas was inspired by Japanese epics to make Star Wars, which in turn inspired a lot of Japanese anime and manga creators to make a whole slew of space-epics over the next several years.
The marketing push for Superman Returns has it poised to be potentially the biggest movie of the year, and not the runner-up to the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel a lot of people were predicting, and if the movie is anywhere near as good as the trailers are, it will truly deserve that title. Still, it gives me an odd sense of satisfaction to know that no small part of the movie's success will spring from all the lessons the filmmakers learned from the trails blazed by Sam Raimi and his Spider-Man crew.
Also, if Superman Returns should go on to break records, it'll be with some eager anticipation that I'll wait for Spider-Man 3 (out next year) to top them. Hehehe...
That said, I've made a couple of observations about the movie, having followed its online (and onscreen) trailers pretty faithfully (though not so obsessively that I was willing to pay good money to see trash like Poseidon) that put a different kind of smile on my face.
Anyone who knows me knows that I have been a fan of Spider-Man for almost as long as it took to get a Spider-Man movie made (very minimal exaggeration there). I was practically rabid when the first Spidey movie broke box office records and became the highest grossing movie of the new millenium back when it was released. I am a fan of both of the web slinger's onscreen adventures, in particular Spider-Man 2.
Having seen SM2 as many times as I have, I've noticed a lot, and I mean a lot of similarities between its storyline and general craftsmanship and that of the upcoming Superman epic.
For a quick rundown: In SM2, Mary Jane was engaged to John Jameson, son of Daily Bugle publisher Jonah Jameson. In SR, Lois Lane is engaged to the nephew of Daily Planet editor-in-chief Perry White. In SM2, Peter Parker/Spider-Man struggles with his own frustrations. In SR, Clark Kent/Kal El/Superman struggles with the fact that the world apparently doesn't need him anymore (although in SM2 part of his problem is his decision to turn his back on the world even though it does need him).
Admittedly, Singer and company have made no secret about their dilemma of how to make Superman relevant to an audience that has warmed up to angst ridden heroes, foremost of whom would definitely be Spider-Man. But I didn't think they'd even go for similar plot devices.
Even the superficial similarities are there: Sony Picture Imageworks, the company that is making Superman fly on the big screen for the first time in almost twenty years, is the company that enabled Spider-Man to swing through Manhattan. I mean, they could have just as easily have gone with ILM, or even the new king of the visual effects roost Weta Digital, but they went for SPI, based largely, if not solely, on its track record with iconic superheroes. A close look at Superman's spandex shows that there's a certain texture to it, the way James Acheson designed Spider-Man's tights in a very peculiar way.
It's particularly gratifying for a Spider-Man fan like myself, in the same way that Pepsi lovers must have loved Coke's flavor shift twenty years ago, to see the makers of Superman trying to make him more like Spider-Man to sell him these days. It's funny considering that if Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster hadn't come up with Superman in 1938, Spider-Man, in all likelihood, wouldn't even exist. Even the most fanatical Spider-Man devotee knows that. In the same sense, the original Richard Donner Superman served as a huge inspiration for Sam Raimi's Spidey movies. I guess it's cyclical somehow, the way George Lucas was inspired by Japanese epics to make Star Wars, which in turn inspired a lot of Japanese anime and manga creators to make a whole slew of space-epics over the next several years.
The marketing push for Superman Returns has it poised to be potentially the biggest movie of the year, and not the runner-up to the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel a lot of people were predicting, and if the movie is anywhere near as good as the trailers are, it will truly deserve that title. Still, it gives me an odd sense of satisfaction to know that no small part of the movie's success will spring from all the lessons the filmmakers learned from the trails blazed by Sam Raimi and his Spider-Man crew.
Also, if Superman Returns should go on to break records, it'll be with some eager anticipation that I'll wait for Spider-Man 3 (out next year) to top them. Hehehe...
Saturday, May 27, 2006
X-Men 3: Less and More
As someone who enjoyed both X-men movies, the second more than the first, I was one of the many who was terrified by the thought that 20th Century Fox had tapped Brett Ratner to replace Bryan Singer, who had gone off to do Superman Returns, on X-Men 3. I was even more terrified by the thought that, instead of moving production back so that they could better ensure the quality of the film, the way Sony/Columbia Pictures pushed back Spider-Man 2, Fox was dead set on releasing the film in May 2006, which meant that shooting would have to wrap faster than the ink could dry on Ratner's contract. I felt something heavy in the pit of my stomach upon reading post upon post of obnoxious fanboy gloating that the new Superman would "own" the new X-Men movie, as the slang goes. It kind of ticked me off, considering that DC/Warner Brothers pissed that franchise away almost two decades ago and were finally able to revitalize it by swiping one of Marvel films' most prized directors, who, back when he had been tapped him for the first mutant movie, was a seemingly illogical choice.
When the credits rolled, however, my feelings, although slightly mixed, were still leaning towards gladness that Bryan Singer had left.
X-Men: The Last Stand, is easily a better movie than the first X-Men movie, but is also at the same time less and more than its most immediate predecessor, X2.
The story in a nutshell, a pharmaceutal company has come up with a cure for genetic mutation, causing shockwaves in the mutant community, most notably the fugitive Magneto (Ian McKellen), who is determined to take this cure and all those who push it out. Also, Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) comes back from what seemed like certain death in the second movie, but with a strange malevolence about her.
One of Singer's strong points was his characterization, although the only real beneficiaries thereof in the first two movies were Wolverine, Magneto and Rogue. Also, and I know I'm not the first person to say this, I truly felt that Singer showed a larger sense of scope, particularly in X2, than Ratner showed in the new movie. One got the whole widescreen sense of it, with visual tours de force like the opening/Nightcrawler scene, and the scene where the x-jet is pursued by fighter planes. His very strong visual sense is also clear from all the new Superman Returns trailers, and we get a very good idea of the kind of X-Men movie Singer could have made had the Fox executives not been so stingy with the budget. I guess the poor guy just got tired of fighting for more money.
That said, X-Men: The Last Stand, while certainly having benefitted from all the groundwork laid down in the first two movies, does a lot more as an emsemble piece, and as an action movie than either of its predecessors.
In the first two X-Men movies, the focus was almost strictly on Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), while other characters essentially made cameos, most notably Kitty Pryde, who was so unimportant to Singer that I think she was played by two different actresses in X-Men and X2. Here, she not only gets exponentially more screen time, but a very capable actress in the young Ellen Page to make that time meaningful. She even, for a moment, gets involved in a little love triangle, which gives the story a touch more flavor, although it's not very well developed. Others who get more screen time and nuance are Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), Storm (Halle Berry) and a welcome new addition to the X-family (on screen, anyway) in the form of Hank McCoy (the brilliantly cast Kelsey Grammer) who was only mentioned in X2.
Singer's actions scene in the first two X-films were, for the most part, godawful. All of the fight scenes of the first X-Men were an absolute joke and lent themselves quite readily to allegations of being poorly done Matrix ripoffs (which were probably right on the money). X2 seemed to offer so much more promise with that opening fight scene involving Nightcrawler, which was easily more riveting to watch than anything that happened in either of the Matrix sequels that came out that year, but all its action scenes thereafter fell sadly limp.
I read somewhere that Singer's directive to Jackman and his sparring partner, Kelly Hu a.k.a. Lady Deathstrike was to fight savagely, and not as if they were skilled martial artists. Well, apparently, Singer chose to flip the bird at about twenty years of Marvel continuity because the reason why Wolverine is the Marvel Universe's biggest badass is, besides the adamantium claws and the healing factor, the fact that he knows how to fight. Singer threw this out the window and as a result Wolverine came across as a complete and utter wuss for two consecutive movies. Maybe he was just too cheap to hire a choreographer.
Not so in this installment. There are moves. There is grace. There are, count 'em, TWO fastball specials (geekboy slang for whenever Colossus, the steel X-Man, pitches Wolverine like a fastball-hence the name-at a bad guy). There are even fight scenes involving other X-Men! There are well-timed, well-placed battles, like the first skirmish in the suburb between X-Men and Magneto's goons, including a well-cast Juggernaut, and the climactic confrontation at Alcatraz, as well as a nicely done scrap between Wolverine and a number of Magneto's minions somewhere near the last act. Also, Ratner can claim of the distinction of having pulled the X-Men franchise clear from any allegations of the Wachowski brothers' influence; none of the fight scenes look anything like the stylized violence we saw earlier this year in V for Vendetta.
It is obviously unfair to flog either of the first X-Men movies in order to praise this one, because Singer started this ball rolling in considerable style, but comparisons are of course, inevitable. That said, however, Ratner does an admirable job paying off some of the things Singer set up in X2. In particular, I had been looking forward to a Pyro/Iceman duel, and I wasn't at all disappointed. They gave them a meaningful, menacing run-in halfway through the film and had it all come to a head in a memorable fire vs. ice showdown.
There has been much debate on how the Dark Phoenix storyline was handled. To be honest, I haven't read those comics in their entirety, although I know, like any respectable fanboy, how it goes. All I have to say is that it would have been difficult for any director to tell the story without the Shi'ar or the alien Phoenix Force or even the Hellfire Club, all of whom played such pivotal parts in the comics, and as a result Ratner and his writers were severely hobbled. I think that under the circumstances, they acquitted themselves rather well, and the visual interpretation of the Phoenix, particularly in that scene at the Grey house, was appropriately creepy and had a more much more visceral effect than some cornball flaming bird surrounding Famke Janssen would have had. There did seem to be some influence from Lord of the Rings, though, particularly that scene where Galadriel wigs out.
All told, while there are aspects of Singer's storytelling that I miss, there is territory here that Ratner covered that Singer, judging from the way he directed the first two films, would not even have bothered to explore, and for this I am quite grateful.
That said, I am still looking forward to Superman Returns. I take solace in knowing that Superman doesn't have to know any special choreography, so at least I know there won't be any laughable fight scenes.
When the credits rolled, however, my feelings, although slightly mixed, were still leaning towards gladness that Bryan Singer had left.
X-Men: The Last Stand, is easily a better movie than the first X-Men movie, but is also at the same time less and more than its most immediate predecessor, X2.
The story in a nutshell, a pharmaceutal company has come up with a cure for genetic mutation, causing shockwaves in the mutant community, most notably the fugitive Magneto (Ian McKellen), who is determined to take this cure and all those who push it out. Also, Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) comes back from what seemed like certain death in the second movie, but with a strange malevolence about her.
One of Singer's strong points was his characterization, although the only real beneficiaries thereof in the first two movies were Wolverine, Magneto and Rogue. Also, and I know I'm not the first person to say this, I truly felt that Singer showed a larger sense of scope, particularly in X2, than Ratner showed in the new movie. One got the whole widescreen sense of it, with visual tours de force like the opening/Nightcrawler scene, and the scene where the x-jet is pursued by fighter planes. His very strong visual sense is also clear from all the new Superman Returns trailers, and we get a very good idea of the kind of X-Men movie Singer could have made had the Fox executives not been so stingy with the budget. I guess the poor guy just got tired of fighting for more money.
That said, X-Men: The Last Stand, while certainly having benefitted from all the groundwork laid down in the first two movies, does a lot more as an emsemble piece, and as an action movie than either of its predecessors.
In the first two X-Men movies, the focus was almost strictly on Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), while other characters essentially made cameos, most notably Kitty Pryde, who was so unimportant to Singer that I think she was played by two different actresses in X-Men and X2. Here, she not only gets exponentially more screen time, but a very capable actress in the young Ellen Page to make that time meaningful. She even, for a moment, gets involved in a little love triangle, which gives the story a touch more flavor, although it's not very well developed. Others who get more screen time and nuance are Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), Storm (Halle Berry) and a welcome new addition to the X-family (on screen, anyway) in the form of Hank McCoy (the brilliantly cast Kelsey Grammer) who was only mentioned in X2.
Singer's actions scene in the first two X-films were, for the most part, godawful. All of the fight scenes of the first X-Men were an absolute joke and lent themselves quite readily to allegations of being poorly done Matrix ripoffs (which were probably right on the money). X2 seemed to offer so much more promise with that opening fight scene involving Nightcrawler, which was easily more riveting to watch than anything that happened in either of the Matrix sequels that came out that year, but all its action scenes thereafter fell sadly limp.
I read somewhere that Singer's directive to Jackman and his sparring partner, Kelly Hu a.k.a. Lady Deathstrike was to fight savagely, and not as if they were skilled martial artists. Well, apparently, Singer chose to flip the bird at about twenty years of Marvel continuity because the reason why Wolverine is the Marvel Universe's biggest badass is, besides the adamantium claws and the healing factor, the fact that he knows how to fight. Singer threw this out the window and as a result Wolverine came across as a complete and utter wuss for two consecutive movies. Maybe he was just too cheap to hire a choreographer.
Not so in this installment. There are moves. There is grace. There are, count 'em, TWO fastball specials (geekboy slang for whenever Colossus, the steel X-Man, pitches Wolverine like a fastball-hence the name-at a bad guy). There are even fight scenes involving other X-Men! There are well-timed, well-placed battles, like the first skirmish in the suburb between X-Men and Magneto's goons, including a well-cast Juggernaut, and the climactic confrontation at Alcatraz, as well as a nicely done scrap between Wolverine and a number of Magneto's minions somewhere near the last act. Also, Ratner can claim of the distinction of having pulled the X-Men franchise clear from any allegations of the Wachowski brothers' influence; none of the fight scenes look anything like the stylized violence we saw earlier this year in V for Vendetta.
It is obviously unfair to flog either of the first X-Men movies in order to praise this one, because Singer started this ball rolling in considerable style, but comparisons are of course, inevitable. That said, however, Ratner does an admirable job paying off some of the things Singer set up in X2. In particular, I had been looking forward to a Pyro/Iceman duel, and I wasn't at all disappointed. They gave them a meaningful, menacing run-in halfway through the film and had it all come to a head in a memorable fire vs. ice showdown.
There has been much debate on how the Dark Phoenix storyline was handled. To be honest, I haven't read those comics in their entirety, although I know, like any respectable fanboy, how it goes. All I have to say is that it would have been difficult for any director to tell the story without the Shi'ar or the alien Phoenix Force or even the Hellfire Club, all of whom played such pivotal parts in the comics, and as a result Ratner and his writers were severely hobbled. I think that under the circumstances, they acquitted themselves rather well, and the visual interpretation of the Phoenix, particularly in that scene at the Grey house, was appropriately creepy and had a more much more visceral effect than some cornball flaming bird surrounding Famke Janssen would have had. There did seem to be some influence from Lord of the Rings, though, particularly that scene where Galadriel wigs out.
All told, while there are aspects of Singer's storytelling that I miss, there is territory here that Ratner covered that Singer, judging from the way he directed the first two films, would not even have bothered to explore, and for this I am quite grateful.
That said, I am still looking forward to Superman Returns. I take solace in knowing that Superman doesn't have to know any special choreography, so at least I know there won't be any laughable fight scenes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)