Been running about like a madman all week. Busy in order to prepare for a trip out of town that starts... tomorrow! Not sure how much access I'll have to the Internet so, if you don't see much of me in the next few days, blame it on that.
See you soon. Good things seem to be happening to me. Hope it's a trend.
11 November 2009
10 November 2009
A Few Thoughts on Comics from The Past Few Weeks
Time to get a bit caught up here.
In Punisher #10, supernaturally powered bad guy the Hood offers to revive Frank Castle's dead family if he'll just go away. As they start to revive, Frank rejects this offer...with a flamethrower to the no-longer corpses. That's Frank! While I don't have the issue, 'The Punisher: The List' shows Frank getting dismembered. By the next issue of the regular book, he'll be 'Franken-castle'. I really don't know about this development. I'll give it a try.
Simpsons Comics #159 tells the story of the Burns Backup Plan; in the event of Monty's passing, a computer program set up to respond as he would will run the plant. Homer accidentally activates the fail-safe and it makes online friends with Lisa, using Monty's money to try making Lisa's life better. The story gets points for Smithers counting in 'Milwaukees'. The point is that money can't solve everything. It's fascinating that Chuck Dixon writes this as it's totally not what you would expect from him considering his history with tough guy characters.
Bart Simpson #50 is all Sergio Aragones, both written and drawn by him. Considering the stories of his speed, he probably knocked this off in an airport while waiting for a plane. That's not meant to be an insult; this is the standard quality work I'd expect from Sergio. Man he's funny.
Speaking of Sergio, another Groo miniseries has started, 'The Hogs of Horder'. Outstanding.
Invincible Iron Man #19 leaves Tony Stark a vegetable, on life support after his plan to erase his brain and reclaim his 'hero status' succeeds. Norman Osborn wants to pull the plug on him but only his physician can make that decision, a Doctor Donald Blake! Got wake up Tony in time for 'Siege'!
Mighty Avengers #30 featured Hank Pym meeting with Eternity and finding out the truth about himself: Hank Pym is Earth's Scientist Supreme! The rest of the story, with a 'lost' Inhuman king is interesting, but seems secondary to the rebuilding of Hank Pym.
Captain America Reborn #4 may well feature the return of Steven Rogers! Or not! Evil, evil twist! Love this book! It has great art, features the end of an epic storyline, and just has twists and turns in it to tell. This is fun stuff.
Vincent Price Presents has a special story as a sequel to the film 'The Tingler'. The art is good, much better than the average Bluewater comic and the story is interesting. I would have preferred Vincent Price's character to look more like him but that's a minor detail considering I enjoyed the rest more than I expected to do.
Muppet Peter Pan #2 starts after dinner, with the narrator commenting on Sam's choice of serving turkey. Sam's declarations that turkey is a fine American meal stop suddenly once it's pointed out that turkeys and eagles are both birds. The art here totally captures the character and his moment of 'what did I do?!?'. It's a moment when you can hear the familiar voice of the character in your head as you read. It's great. The book just gets better from there. Outstanding!
In Punisher #10, supernaturally powered bad guy the Hood offers to revive Frank Castle's dead family if he'll just go away. As they start to revive, Frank rejects this offer...with a flamethrower to the no-longer corpses. That's Frank! While I don't have the issue, 'The Punisher: The List' shows Frank getting dismembered. By the next issue of the regular book, he'll be 'Franken-castle'. I really don't know about this development. I'll give it a try.
Simpsons Comics #159 tells the story of the Burns Backup Plan; in the event of Monty's passing, a computer program set up to respond as he would will run the plant. Homer accidentally activates the fail-safe and it makes online friends with Lisa, using Monty's money to try making Lisa's life better. The story gets points for Smithers counting in 'Milwaukees'. The point is that money can't solve everything. It's fascinating that Chuck Dixon writes this as it's totally not what you would expect from him considering his history with tough guy characters.
Bart Simpson #50 is all Sergio Aragones, both written and drawn by him. Considering the stories of his speed, he probably knocked this off in an airport while waiting for a plane. That's not meant to be an insult; this is the standard quality work I'd expect from Sergio. Man he's funny.
Speaking of Sergio, another Groo miniseries has started, 'The Hogs of Horder'. Outstanding.
Invincible Iron Man #19 leaves Tony Stark a vegetable, on life support after his plan to erase his brain and reclaim his 'hero status' succeeds. Norman Osborn wants to pull the plug on him but only his physician can make that decision, a Doctor Donald Blake! Got wake up Tony in time for 'Siege'!
Mighty Avengers #30 featured Hank Pym meeting with Eternity and finding out the truth about himself: Hank Pym is Earth's Scientist Supreme! The rest of the story, with a 'lost' Inhuman king is interesting, but seems secondary to the rebuilding of Hank Pym.
Captain America Reborn #4 may well feature the return of Steven Rogers! Or not! Evil, evil twist! Love this book! It has great art, features the end of an epic storyline, and just has twists and turns in it to tell. This is fun stuff.
Vincent Price Presents has a special story as a sequel to the film 'The Tingler'. The art is good, much better than the average Bluewater comic and the story is interesting. I would have preferred Vincent Price's character to look more like him but that's a minor detail considering I enjoyed the rest more than I expected to do.
Muppet Peter Pan #2 starts after dinner, with the narrator commenting on Sam's choice of serving turkey. Sam's declarations that turkey is a fine American meal stop suddenly once it's pointed out that turkeys and eagles are both birds. The art here totally captures the character and his moment of 'what did I do?!?'. It's a moment when you can hear the familiar voice of the character in your head as you read. It's great. The book just gets better from there. Outstanding!
09 November 2009
Music Monday - 3
If I haven't already made it clear that I like music that's not easy to fit into a specific label, then this should help make it so. This band is full of awesome and I'm not sure how to describe it. Listen/Watch and see what you think.
This song is from the album 'The End is Begun'. It has elements of metal, but it's not metal. It's melodic. There's harmonies. It's just attractive sounding rock music performed by people who clearly have some practice at such a thing. I've been told the band is very nice and puts on a great live show but I wasn't there to see that myself. I believe the guy who told me.
This song is from the album 'The End is Begun'. It has elements of metal, but it's not metal. It's melodic. There's harmonies. It's just attractive sounding rock music performed by people who clearly have some practice at such a thing. I've been told the band is very nice and puts on a great live show but I wasn't there to see that myself. I believe the guy who told me.
08 November 2009
'GI Joe' Movie Review
Synopsis: Damaged arms merchants and scientists come together to save the world from itself...by taking it over. An elite team of soldiers tries to stop them from using their metal eating nanobot bombs from destroying major cities around the world.
As a kid, I wasn't really into GI Joe that much, being much more interested in giant robot wars than human wars. I had a familiarity with the property, mostly through the comics. When 'Transformers' did so well, it was no shock to me that this was fast tracked. I had little interest in seeing this movie because the trailers made it look stupid and derivative. Sometimes trailers lie to you. This is not one of those times.
There is some character development but only in the most predictable of ways. The gentleman playing Duke, one of the main characters, is a bland actor who is not very convincing at anything. There is TONS and TONS of horrible looking CGI in this film. It's distractingly bad CGI. Really, really bad CGI. The mouth on Snake Eyes looks creepy and weird. Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow fight briefly but you see nothing. There are flashbacks to when they are kids and the action there is filmed better than the 'big fight' at the end of the film. This ticks me off. Ray Park's in that suit just waiting to be all sorts of awesome and...nothing.
There are some bright moments. I liked the 'reinvention' of Cobra and Joe teams in a general sense, thinking that this was a good origin for our time period. I liked the silly weaponry. Christopher Eccleston was fun as always. Jonathan Pryce has a cameo as does Brendan Fraser. There are some intentionally funny bits that are funny. Scarlett and the Baroness are both very attractive. The movie moves along at a quick pace and doesn't slow down much at all.
The subtitle of the film is 'The Rise of Cobra' and it is that: the beginnings of this terrorist outfit so don't expect familiar characters to be in their expected configuration at the beginning of the film. Maybe not even by the end of the film.
My GI Joe loving buddy watched a bit and said he was trying to watch it as an action film with some familiar names in it, not as 'Joe'. From my more detached perspective, I still think it fails. It gets a lot of the subtle things right while missing out on some of the bigger things. There's a lot of running around and shouting in front of bad CGI. The entertaining bits aren't enough to balance out the bland standard action bits. It's just not a very good film. It's not bad enough to be entertainingly bad nor good enough to be good. It's just there.
Recommendation to avoid.
As a kid, I wasn't really into GI Joe that much, being much more interested in giant robot wars than human wars. I had a familiarity with the property, mostly through the comics. When 'Transformers' did so well, it was no shock to me that this was fast tracked. I had little interest in seeing this movie because the trailers made it look stupid and derivative. Sometimes trailers lie to you. This is not one of those times.
There is some character development but only in the most predictable of ways. The gentleman playing Duke, one of the main characters, is a bland actor who is not very convincing at anything. There is TONS and TONS of horrible looking CGI in this film. It's distractingly bad CGI. Really, really bad CGI. The mouth on Snake Eyes looks creepy and weird. Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow fight briefly but you see nothing. There are flashbacks to when they are kids and the action there is filmed better than the 'big fight' at the end of the film. This ticks me off. Ray Park's in that suit just waiting to be all sorts of awesome and...nothing.
There are some bright moments. I liked the 'reinvention' of Cobra and Joe teams in a general sense, thinking that this was a good origin for our time period. I liked the silly weaponry. Christopher Eccleston was fun as always. Jonathan Pryce has a cameo as does Brendan Fraser. There are some intentionally funny bits that are funny. Scarlett and the Baroness are both very attractive. The movie moves along at a quick pace and doesn't slow down much at all.
The subtitle of the film is 'The Rise of Cobra' and it is that: the beginnings of this terrorist outfit so don't expect familiar characters to be in their expected configuration at the beginning of the film. Maybe not even by the end of the film.
My GI Joe loving buddy watched a bit and said he was trying to watch it as an action film with some familiar names in it, not as 'Joe'. From my more detached perspective, I still think it fails. It gets a lot of the subtle things right while missing out on some of the bigger things. There's a lot of running around and shouting in front of bad CGI. The entertaining bits aren't enough to balance out the bland standard action bits. It's just not a very good film. It's not bad enough to be entertainingly bad nor good enough to be good. It's just there.
Recommendation to avoid.
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