It really stinks that we just got great news that Mark Steven Johnson was no longer adapting Ennis’s Vertigo series of Preacher for HBO. Preacher was perfectly suited for HBO even if Johnson was no suitable for Preacher (or anything good for that matter).

Then we get word that the screenwriters behind cinematic pieces of fecal matter like Aeon Flux and the Tuxedo, are working on Ennis’s The Boys. Seriously? Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi? You thought the guys who wrote Crazy/Beautiful were a perfect match for Ennis’s material? Seriously?

Seriously? I’d do it for free… Just putting my name out there.

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This Post is an elaboration on a comment I made AT Justin’s Blog.

Just about everyone’s grandma has seen this movie by this point, but if I recall correctly people were clamoring for Heath Ledger to have a posthumous Oscar nomination well before the The Dark Knight was even released with a great number of fanboys exalting it as the best film ever without even seeing it. So who has won a posthumous Oscar?

There was Peter Finch who won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar with Network. However that was a ’serious’ film with Sidney Lumet at the helm, who already had two Oscar nominations for best director prior to it. It was a prestige film and damn it there isn’t a doubt in my mind that Finch would have won that Oscar dead or alive.

I may have said even in my own review that Ledger deserved an Oscar for the Joker, and I won’t admit to being caught up in hype (my review score still stands mind you) but upon retrospection his character doesn’t exactly have an arc. He’s powerfully written as a tour de force and Ledger does the job. But he does not have an arc. He’s like Emperor Palpatine. Just flat out bad. Aaron Eckhart’s Dent is more likely or at least deserving of an Oscar  nomination(by comparison) since his performance actually went places, going from Gotham’s White Knight to Two Face during the film’s running time.

Also most people who have been part of these discussions forget we haven’t even gotten to the Oscar movie season yet. If anyone remembers Road to Perdition it got screwed out of many awards because A. It was based on a graphic novel and B. It was released in the Summer. Most Oscar voters suffer from severe Alzheimer, so forgive them if they forget every movie released prior to September.

I don’t think it’s impossible for genre movies to win Oscars. Just look at Titanic(disaster movie with a poorly written love story) and Return of the King. Mind you Return of the King did not get a single nomination for acting. They tried to get Gollum a nomination… and he had a personal arc.

If only they had said that the Joker was retarded( a noble one) then he’d be a shoo-in.

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Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) Director Guillermo del Toro Writer Guillermo del Toro (screenplay) Mike Mignola (Comic) Actors Ron Perlman – Hellboy Selma Blair – Liz Sherman Doug Jones – Abe Sapien Luke Goss – Prince Nuada Anna Walton – Princess Nuala Jeffrey Tambor – Tom Manning John Hurt – Professor Broom

Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)

It goes without saying that Hellboy is the perfect fit for Guillermo Del Toro.  You might remember Agent Myers who was more or less our eyes and ears in the first film introducing us to the BPRD with fresh eyes. Thankfully since we are now well acquainted Hellboy and the universe he inhabits, Del Toro was smart enough to eliminate character altogether and only mentions him in a little side note. Hellboy 2: The Golden Army hits the ground running.

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I saw The Dark Knight for the second time this weekend with the Mrs. I personally don’t have a problem with Batman’s dialogue but this spoof none the less made me laugh. I actually realized why the breathy deep dialogue does not bother me like it has irked others. When reading the Batman Begins script it actually mentioned a voice modulator as a part of his helmet. Yes I am a sad sad man.

Pop.
2008, acronym(a poor one) for a piece of procrastination. An article, be that a game, a video, or website, that distracts the user from participating in more critical acts of being such as having a life.

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Pop.
2008, acronym(a poor one) for a piece of procrastination. An article, be that a game, a video, or website, that distracts the user from participating in more critical acts of being such as having a life.

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I’ve been on some sort of crazy animated direct-to-dvd comic book binge lately. The latest of which is the Superman: Doomsday DVD. My knowledge of the Death of Superman storyline is rather extensive. I read every issue of that entire arc when I was still able to buy comics at my cornerstore. The good old days I suppose. I am also a Kevin Smith fan and actually read his Superman script. The only reason I bring it up is because the writers of Superman: Doomsday have borrowed a little bit from the comic book run and even a few story elements that were in Kevin Smith’s script, and mostly good things.

Of course when trying to present a story of this magnitude and with it’s limited runtime it is near impossible to do the story justice. There is no way you’d be able to include the Justice League, but I thought they could have done with bring in a ton of superheroes for the funeral. Still for what is provided is damn good if not a little more violent than I am used to in a animated DC movie of this kind. There is one scene where Luthor shoots someone in silhouette , but most people should know what they are getting into when it’s the death of Superman.

That aside, the action is great and surprisingly has a strong climactic battle, which left me pleasantly surprised when you have a massive showdown with Doomsday in the same movie. Even better than the action, are the character moments. Jimmy gets a character arc that is salvaged well from the comic, and they do a great job simplifying the 4 Supermen who show up after his death down to one. It’s simplified but it works well, and there is a scene between Lois and Clark’s mother that puts Superman Returns to shame. The voice acting is a coin toss though. You get Adam Baldwin, but you get Anne Heche. You get Ray Wise but you get James Marsters.
Still all things said this movie tops Superman Returns but never reaches the consistency and style that was had with the Batman Animated Series.

[Rating:3/4]

Check out the preview here:

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Alas, it has not been since August 10th that I have made a post. I’ve actually been bogged down with my mom visiting the big city, then Trites was lounging on our couch for a few weeks and then there was of course the Toronto Fan Expo that took up a chunk of my schedule.

I didn’t go into the convention with a lot of cash in my pocket so most of my fun this year was made going to seminars and enjoying some guitar heroes rocking out on stage(more on that later).

I came out of the convention(if you can call it that) with Writers on Comics Scriptwriting, X-Isle, and Damn Nation. I went out there looking for Warren Ellis’ first issue of Black Summer but something is telling me that baby is not out yet, or is damn near impossible to get mitts on.

The expo as a whole was a slight improvement over last year but still doesn’t match up to 2005 when we weren’t herded to the back of the convention center so as not to frighten the ‘normal’ folk. Still the expo has been getting progressively bigger and this year actually gave a little breathing room. Last year’s saturday at the expo was nothing short of ridiculous. Then again, I’m an agoraphobe.

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Talk about timing. Just yesterday I made a post about Captain America mixed with a track from Team America. Then they kill the bastard off in the latest Civil War issue at Marvel. If you ask me Captain America got the shaft way more than he ever deserved to be. Sure he was a bit of a dudley do-right, but so is Superman. At least he got to go out in some huge epic battle against Doomsday. Then they milked his death and resurrection for a complete year. I was hooked the whole way.

Instead the Captain gets picked off presidential style. A sniper takes him out. Not the most heroic way for one of the most iconic heroes in comic books to go out on. A whimper if anything. Of course this better be some lead up to a Captain America re-imagining. If not they killed off one of my favorite Marvel heroes.

Oh yeah and since yesterday I did happen to find that Captain America flick that featured Christopher Lee as the villain. It’s so much worse than I thought it was.

Tags: captain, america, dead, Marvel, comics, youtube, video, christopher, Lee, dead

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