News broke yesterday that Sam Raimi’s planned Spider-Man 4 has been scrapped, and the studio is going ahead with a total reboot of the series.  DeadlineHollywoodDaily broke the story.  Personally, I’m bummed by this news.  Though Raimi & co. broke my heart with the atrocious Spider-Man 3, the first two Spidey flicks were so great that I really wanted to see him come back and try to return to the greatness of those first two films.  I hate that his run on the character is ending on such a low note, and the idea of rebooting a series that is only eight years old and wildly successful just seems insane to me.  But hey, I’m the guy who also wants to see Bryan Singer make another Superman film.

I have not read any of the Twilight books, nor seen the movies, nor do I have any intention of doing so.  But this piece over at CHUD about why Breaking Bad (the fourth and final Twilight book) MUST be made into a movie is absolutely hysterical.

Behold the weirdest wedding video I have ever seen.  This dude had his friends in the wedding party act out scenes from Superman II.  I am at once awestruck and disturbed.

Speaking of slightly-insane Superman fans, a few weeks ago I stumbled upon photos of this guy who decorated his office cubicle as the Fortress of Solitude.  Check it out:

You can find the full story behind his crazy construction project here.

Then there’s this incredibly bizarre stop-motion animated interview with Fantastic Mr. Fox director Wes Anderson.  Except Wes Anderson is played by Jason Schwartzman.  You read that right.  Check it out.

In case you haven’t seen it yet, a super-cool new trailer for Iron Man 2 came out last month.  Take a look.  I was an enormous fan of Iron Man (read my review here), and have high hopes for the sequel.  Don’t break my heart, Mr. Favreau!  (By the way, in re-reading my review of Iron Man, I can see that I was sure that the Mandarin would be a key villain in the sequel.  It’s not looking that way… so I’m wondering whether that character factors into the story at all.  I certainly hope he does!)

Speaking of trailers, let me lay a few more on you.  Here’s a sort of weird new trailer for Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe’s latest collaboration: Robin Hood.  Take a look.  This seems like familiar ground for Scott and Crowe, and I can’t say that I have been lying awake at nights waiting for a new version of the Robin Hood story.  That being said, it’s Ridley Scott, so of course I’m interested.  Let’s see what he’s got.

Here’s a phenomenal short trailer introducing the character of Hit Girl from the new film Kick Ass.  I have quite enjoyed this comic book series from Mark Millar and John Romita Junior (read my thoughts on the series here), and am really jazzed to see the film adaptation.  Here’s a longer trailer that was released late last year.

Do we really need a Shrek IV?  Do I really believe it’s the final chapter, as the new trailer for Shrek Forever After promises?  No and no.

It’s been fascinating watching and reading about people’s wildly differing responses to James Cameron’s Avatar since its release last month.  (You can read my mostly positive review here.)  I mentioned the film’s familiar (and, when you boil away all the sci-fi trappings, fairly simplistic) white-man goes native story-line.  In addition to being a bit disappointing narratively, some have pointed out a larger issue with that type of story — and I must admit, this is something that has been bugging me a bit as well.  Annalee Newitz over at io9 has written a fascinating piece that explains this far better than I ever could.  Her article is called “When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like Avatar?” It is well worth your time.

Speaking of Avatar, here’s a fascinating article comparing the finished film with the 144-page treatment for the project (originally titled Project 880), that James Cameron wrote after finishing Titanic.  It’s an intriguing glimpse into Mr. Cameron’s original intentions for the film.

Lastly for today, here’s word that Seth McFarlane would love to do an extended parody on Family Guy of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (in the style of Family Guy’s recent hour-long parodies of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back).  That would be a ton of fun, I think.  Here’s hoping Paramount’s lawyers let the project happen.

OK, so this is about the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of — Star Wars fans worldwide are uniting on a project to re-make the original film (A New Hope), 15 seconds at a time.  Fans can claim individual 15 second moments of the film, recreate them in whatever for they desire (re-enactments, animation, etc.), and then the whole thing will ultimately be strung together.  Wild.  Click here for all the details on Star Wars Uncut, or just watch this bizarre trailer below!

Star Wars: Uncut Trailer from Casey Pugh on Vimeo.

After watching Julie & Julia with my wife Steph recently (you can read my review of the film here)  I was interested in learning more about Julie Powell, so I tracked down her Julie/Julia Project blog and her current blog (since she ended the Julie/Julia Project blog in 2003, with only one additional post in 2004 after Julia Childs’ death).  Both blogs were  fun to read through after having seen the film.

Not a week goes by, it seems, that I don’t read about Ridley Scott being attached to yet another movie-in-development.  I’m not the only one who’s noticed, it seems.  Check out this helpful guide: Know Your Ridley Scott Projects That Will Probably Never Happen.

I am an enormous Beatles fanatic.  Thus it is really painful for me that I have not yet had an opportunity to sample the newly remastered versions of all of the Beatles albums that were released last month.  Scorekeeper from AICN’s detailed run-down of each Beatles album, and how the new versions match up against the original CD releases from 1987, has only further whetted my appetite.

CHUD (Cinematic Happenings Under Development) has been running a ridiculously entertaining series of posts entitled “Bad For Us, Worse For Them.”  What is it about?  Let me quote from their intro: This is a list of forty deaths in cinema, twenty of which that have a profound affect on the viewer whether by the sheer tragedy of it, how emotionally impactful it is, or how it is a catalyst for a real descent in the progression of the story. The other twenty are deaths that go beyond the call of duty, not because they’re cool or really well executed FX, but because they are just knee-capping in their immediacy, brutality, or simple visceral impact. Kills that will probably leave a mark.  The whole list is fantastic, but I was particularly pleased to see that Spock’s death in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan merited inclusion.

Here’s a great piece from DVDActive.com (one of my favorite DVD/Blu-Ray web-sites) that calmly and methodically dissects everything wrong with X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  I will not be purchasing this film on DVD.  One viewing was more than enough for me, thank you very much.

I love the film scores of James Horner.  His score for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is one of my favorite scores of all time, so I was very excited to read this article from Movie Score Magazine that previews his work on James Cameron’s upcoming film Avatar!

Click here to check out a trailer for the new film from the director of Donnie Darko, called The Box. As I’ve commented here before, it looks just like a classic Twilight Zone story.  Can’t wait.

Speaking of trailers, the new full trailer for Toy Story 3 (that those of us who caught the Toy Story/Toy Story 2 3-D double feature got to see on the big screen) is now on-line.  Check it out:

Toy Story 3 Trailer in HD

Trailer Park | MySpace Videos

If that doesn’t put a smile on your face, then I don’t know what to tell you!

Last week I wrote about some of the great comics I’ve read lately.  That list was just scratching the surface!  Here’s some more fantastic stuff that I’ve been enjoying recently:

Hellboy: The Wild Hunt and BPRD: 1947 - The Hellboy saga continues in these two new wonderful mini-series.  In Hellboy: The Wild Hunt, things are coming to a head for the big red guy.  Cut off from his old friends and comrades in the BPRD, and hunted by the newly-resurrected Queen of Blood, things are looking grim for our hero!  Last month’s issue (#6) was jam-packed with astonishing revelations about Hellboy’s origin that I never saw coming, but that I thought worked absolutely PERFECTLY.  Meanwhile, BPRD: 1947 takes us through a rollicking tale of the second year of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense as Professor Bruttenholm struggles against vampires and a lot of other weirdness.  The Hellboy universe has really richened and deepened over these last few years, and I am really excited to see where things go from here.

Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man — The relaunch of Brian Michael Bendis’ take on Spider-Man (three issues have been published as of this writing) continues just where the previous 133 issues (plus a handful of annuals and other specials) left off.  Young Peter Parker must juggle his, um, interesting love-life with a boring job at a fast-food joint (since he lost his job at the Daily Bugle following the devastation of NYC in the truly awful Ultimatum miniseries) with, oh yeah, his crime-fighting escapades as Spider-Man!  Mr. Bendis is well-known for his witty, true-to-teenaged-life dialogue, but I think his real strength is the depth of characterization he brings to Peter Parker and all the rest of the extraordinarily numerous cast of this comic.  Mary-Jane, Flash Thompson, Aunt May, “Kong,” Kitty Pryde from the X-Men, Johnny Storm from the Fantastic Four (and it is almost embarrassing how much more interesting Kitty and Johnny are here than in their “home” comics) and many more characters are all brought to amazingly real life in these pages.  I’ve been following Bendis’ run on “Ultimate” Spider-Man and I’ll be with the series until he leaves.  Spider-Man has never been done better (in my comic-reading life-time, at least!).  My only small complaint: I’m not quite taken with the overly stylized work of new series artist David Lafuente.  Let’s see if it grows on me any more after a few more issues…

Stephen King’s The Dark Tower — I fell way behind on this series of mini-series, adapting and expanding upon the back story of Stephen King’s seven-book The Dark Tower opus, but I was finally able to catch up last month.  Breathtakingly gorgeous art by Jae Lee combined with a wonderful epic fantasy yarn by Peter David & Robin Furth (working with Mr. King) make this a compelling comic book indeed.  Large amounts of extra credit for the terrific back-up features.  In addition to the main story, each issue is filled to overflowing with lengthy text-pieces that flesh out the extraordinary world that Stephen King created, interviews with the various creators involved with the book, and lots more.  (My only complaint is that Jae Lee was absent for the most recent mini-series, The Fall of Gilead, and the book was not the same without him.  I’d have preferred that they delayed the release of that mini-series so that Mr. Lee could have illustrated it, maintaining artistic continuity across the entire series.)

Batman and Robin — Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s latest partnership is this bizarre, violent, madcap new take on Batman and Robin.  But this isn’t the Batman and Robin that you might be familiar with.  Following the recent dramatic upheavals in the DC universe status quo, former Robin Dick Grayson has taken the mantle of the Dark Knight, with Bruce Wayne’s long-lost son Damian (who Bruce fathered to Ras Al Ghul’s daughter Talia in the long-forgotten but recently returned-to-continuity graphic novel Batman: Son of the Demon from 1987 by Mike W. Barr & Jerry Bingham).  The characterizations and plot-lines don’t quite jive with what’s happening in the other Batman titles these days, but who cares.  Mr. Quitely’s gorgeous, distinct illustrations have always served as the best conduits for Mr. Morrison’s out-there storytelling, and this book is no different.  My complaint, as with the Dark Tower series, is about the shift in artists: already we’re having fill-in artists after only three issues??  Sheesh!!

Batman: Streets of Gotham — Speaking of Batman, I’m also thoroughly enjoying this book written by the great Paul Dini (one of the key creative forces behind Batman: The Animated Series, which stands in my mind as my favorite version of Batman in ANY media) and illustrated by Dustin Nguyen.  I’ve been a fan of Mr. Nguyen since his great run on Wildcats 3.0 with Joe Casey, and his work here is absolutely stellar — from the wonderfully evocative water-color covers (issue #4’s cover featuring the horrifying Mr. Zsasz was a particular stand-out, though shame on whoever is responsible for the placement of the logo which makes it very difficult to see that Zsasz is standing under a silhouette of Batman) to his stylized work on the interiors.

Doom Patrol — Full disclosure: my friend Liz Gehrlein edits this book, and she’s the one who encouraged me to sample this new series (which I might not otherwise have picked off the racks myself).  I’m quite glad I gave it a try.  It’s got a sort-of retro feel filled to the brim with classic comic book super-hero escapades.  In contrast to the “decompressed” storytelling that has become very popular over the last several years, each issue so far has been jam-packed with exciting story.  Extra props for the magnificent Metal Men back-up feature that reunites two extraordinary talents: Keith Giffen and Kevin Maguire.

Superman: Secret Origin — I wasn’t sure that I would be interested in yet another take on Superman’s early years, but Gary Frank’s terrific cover prompted me to pick up issue #1, and I’m glad I did.  Mr. Frank’s art is, of course, spectacular.  He is able to combine really emotive faces with extraordinary detail in his rendering of people’s clothing, cars, and other background details.  I also found myself intrigued by the way writer Geoff Johns mixes and matches various ideas and iconography from various different versions of Superman.  There’s the crystalline Kryptonian technology from Richard Donner’s Superman movies; there’s the endearingly pre-Crisis look to the spaceship that brought Clark to Earth; there’s the heat-vision-as-metaphor-for-puberty idea from Smallville; there’s the depiction of Krypton as being divided up into various guilds that has been a big part of the New Krypton stories running through all of DC’s current Superman titles over the past year; and, of course, there’s the last page, which firmly establishes that young Clark took on the identity of Superboy while still living in Smallville.  (The only bit of cheese in this big melting pot that I wish had been left out?  The Gregory Peck-looking Jor-El from Adam Kubert’s run on Action Comics with Mr. Johns from 2007.  Mr. Kubert is a magnificent artist, but that version of Jor-El never did it for me.)  Still, a really enjoyable debut issue, and I eagerly anticipate the rest of the series.

Battlestar Galactica vets Hamie Bamber (Lee Apollo) and Tahmoh Penikett (Helo) will be together again on the season 2 premiere of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse! Click here for more details.

Speaking of Dollhouse, any interview with Mr. Whedon is always worth a look, and this piece contains some tantalizing glimpses at the unaired Dollhouse episode “Epitah 1″ (which screened at Comic-Con and sounds super-cool) as well as hints at a sequel to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog (one of my favoritest things ever)!!

So wow, Capone over at AICN has a report from Peter Jackson covering about 10,000 upcoming projects, all of them enormously exciting!!  Click here to get an update on The Hobbit, District 9, The Lovely Bones, Tintin, and more!

The Sci-Fi channel (urg, I really don’t want to call it Sy-Fy) has posted video from all of its Comic-Con panels.  Perhaps, like me, you couldn’t care less to watch video of people talking about Stargate: Universe — but be sure to check out the full hour-long panel about Battlestar Galactica: The Plan and Caprica!

Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill will be lending their vocal talents to The Simpsons?  Awesome!  Here’s some additional info that came to light at Comic-Con on the season’s upcoming 20th (20 years!  Unbelievable!!) season.

I am disappointed, but not terribly surprised, to read that Kevin Smith might have to change the title of his upcoming buddy cop movie (starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan), A Couple of Dicks.

By all accounts, the Iron Man 2 panel was pretty awesome.  (Click here for a description.)  Why can’t some of this footage be found on-line??  Grrr.  But here’s another interesting tidbit of Marvel movie news: some hints about the line-up for the upcoming Avengers movie!  Some interesting choices.  I really hope that they use Millar/Hitch’s magnificent Ultimates series (which I reviewed here) as the basis for this film.

Since Comic-Con is also a place for news about, you know, comics, I’ll close with a piece of comic-book news that should get any true comic fan very excited:  Planetary #27 is finally being released in October!!!  Can it possibly live-up to the hype generated by the years-long delay?  We’ll see!

Yesterday I wrote about three terrific series that told the story of The Ultimates, Marvel Comics’ reinvention of their super-hero team, the Avengers.  In addition to those three phenomenal series that I discussed (The Ultimates, The Ultimates 2, and the Ultimate Galactus Trilogy), there have been a number of subsequent mini-series that have carried forward the stories of many of the characters from those series.  

Some have been excellent.  Others, not so much.

Let’s take a look!

Ultimate Vision, by Mike Carey & Brandon Peterson — Basically an epilogue to Warren Ellis’ Ultimate Galactus storyline, we follow Sam Wilson and the Vision (two characters that Ellis introduced to the Ultimate universe in his series) as they discover that one Galactus module has survived.  If they don’t destroy it, bad things will happen!  The story is really carried by Brandon Peterson’s magnificently detailed art, which I could look at all day long.

Ultimate Wolverine/Hulk, by Damon Lindeloff and Leinil Francis Yu — The promise of a Wolverine/Hulk battle authored by Lindeloff (one of the masterminds behind Lost) was very tempting, and the first two issues were a lot of fun.  Then the series ceased publication.  Last month, after more than 3 years, the third issue was finally released (with the assurance that the remaining 3 issues will be coming out monthly).  The jury is still out on this one.

Ultimate Power, by Brian Michael Bendis, J. Michael Straczynski, Jeph Loeb, and Greg Lang — This 9 issue crossover started with an intriguing premise: Reed Richards, desperately searching for a cure for his friend Ben Grimm (who was transformed into the Thing in the accident that gave the FF their powers), sends probes into alternate universes.  One of them gets contaminated and apparently winds up wreaking incredible devastation upon the Supreme Power universe (from the series Supreme Power, Straczynski’s reinvention of Marvel’s classic Squadron Supreme characters).  What followed was an extended super-hero slugfest.  Land’s art is beautiful, but the story was extremely choppy.  Instead of Bendis, Straczynski, and Loeb collaborating on all nine issues, each one of them scripted three issues.  I enjoyed the Bendis and Straczynksi issues, but Loeb didn’t stick the landing.  Characters suddenly seemed completely out of character, and in the end it all turned out to be a pretty stupid super-villain plot.  Lame.

Ultimate Iron Man, by Orson Scott Card and a variety of artists — I got very excited when it was announced that famed sci-fi novelist Orson Scott Card (Ender’s Game) would be writing the origin story for Tony Stark, but sadly the execution left something to be desired.  Card’s story had a lot of layers, and it was filled with a ton of interesting sci-fi ideas, but the story was overly complicated and hard to follow.  (This was exacerbated by the long delays that plagued the series, and the constant rotation of artists.)  I also didn’t feel that the revelations about Tony Stark in this series jived with the depiction of Stark that Millar gave us in his Ultimates series.  (For example, that Tony didn’t seem like he could re-grown his limbs at will!!)

Ultimate Human, by Warren Ellis and Cary Nord — A welcome return to form for the Ultimate universe, as Tony Stark and Bruce Banner unite to try to solve Banner’s Hulk affliction.  Great Warren Ellis sci-fi ideas and snarky dialogue combined with Nord’s beautiful, lush art make this series a winner.  My only complaint: at only four issues, I wanted more!

The Ultimates 3, by Jeph Loeb and Joe Madueira — A complete disaster.  Loeb’s scripts lack all of the nuance of Millar’s, and his versions of the character seem totally different than the ones that Millar had established in his two Ultimates series.  Where Millar was… well, not subtle, but let’s say playful (for example, hinting at the incestuous relationship between Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch), Loeb comes out and makes dull, obvious jokes.  And the art — I have been a fan of Madueira since his work on the X-Men almost 15 years ago, but the digitally-painted look to his illustrations here is a total eye-sore.  Thank heaven this only lasted 5 issues.

Ultimate Origins, by Brian Michael Bendis and Butch Guice — Set mostly in the past, Bendis weaves together the back-stories of a variety of Ultimate universe characters (Captain America, Nick Fury, Wolverine, Professor X and Magneto) in a compelling story with several surprising revelations (such as the origin of all mutants) that sets the stage for the coming upheaval of the Ultimates universe: Ultimatum.  And I loved his version of the Ultimate Watcher!

Ultimatum, by Jeph Loeb and David Finch — Only three of the five issues have been released, but so far I am not loving this “universe-shattering” mini-series.  Jeph Loeb has written a lot of stuff that I have really enjoyed (Superman For All Seasons, Batman: The Long Halloween), but I am not at all digging his work in the Ultimate Universe.  This series is exhibiting the same problems as did Ultimates 3 and his final 3 issues of Ultimate Power — poor characterization, an over-wrought story, and a lot of dumb, on-the-nose dialogue.  The catastrophic events of Ultimatum are being felt in other Ultimate titles such as Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-Man, which I’ve been reading — and I have been FAR preferring Bendis’ take to Loeb’s.  We’ll see if the next two issues pick things up.

That’s all for me for today!  See you back here tomorrow!

Last month I wrote several posts about my favorite graphic novels.  One of the works that I mentioned (saying at the time that a more lengthy review would be coming) was Mark Millar & Bryan Hitch’s The Ultimates.

In the early 2000’s, Marvel Comics launched their Ultimate line, in which they took several popular, long-running Marvel characters and basically started them over from ground zero.  Spearheaded by some of Marvel’s top talent, the idea was to make the characters fresh and dynamic again, and remove the burden of 30-plus years of back-story and continuity.  The Ultimate line kicked off with Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley’s Ultimate Spider-Man.  This was an amazing, extraordinary piece of work, and it deserves a longer article of its own.  Suffice to say, I have never enjoyed a monthly Spider-Man comic as much, and I am still following the series every month.

Today I want to talk to you about Millar and Hitch’s reinvention of Marvel Comics’ premiere super-hero group, the Avengers, in their series The Ultimates that ran from 2002-2004.  (The series is available in two softcover collections or in one gorgeous hardcover.)

This is a magnificent, adult piece of work, and one hopes that it will be used as a template for the coming Avengers feature film.  The story begins at the end of World War II, as we witness the last mission of Captain America.  What might be a short 4-page flashback in another series is a lengthy (taking up almost the entirety of the series’ first issue) tale of gritty combat that sets the series’ tone of brutal intensity and incredible attention to detail.  

Then the story jumps forward to the 21st century.  It’s a brave new world filled with new wonders and new threats, both at home and abroad.  Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD, decides that the only way to protect America is to create a new team of American super-heroes.  Unfortunately, no one has been able to re-create the super soldier serum that turned scrawny Steve Rogers into the super-human Captain America.  But disparate events are about to come to a head that just might give Fury the elements he needs for his super-human task force: Scientist Bruce Banner injects himself with an experimental formula; brilliant industrialist and drunkard Tony Stark creates an extraordinary suit of armor; an anti-corporate hippie who claims to be Thor, the Norse God of Thunder, has begun to amass a legion of followers; and finally, the frozen body of Captain America is discovered, perfectly preserved in the Arctic.

Mark Millar’s writing is very contemporary — the story really runs with the conceit that all these events are happening in our “real” world, and so we see all the sorts of things that would probably happen if super-heroes started coming on to the scene: press conferences, PR people, and a lot of other interactions with real-life folk (celebrities, politicians, etc.).  Millar also doesn’t shy away from the violence and brutality that would come from super-powered conflicts, or from the emotional complexities that any human being would have, particularly someone with extraordinary abilities.  But Millar is able to balance those elements with his ability to tell a really ripping super-hero yarn.  There’s a lot of character development, but also a lot of extraordinary “wide-screen” action.

In both respects, Millar is aided by the hyper-detailed art of Bryan Hitch.  From the very first page of the very first issue, in which Hitch creates a gorgeous, incredibly detailed image of Allied planes flying over the North Atlantic in 1945, readers know they are in for something special.  Hitch has a talent for conveying the personalities and emotions of the characters that he illustrates.  He can make an extended “talking head” dialogue scene extraordinarily compelling — and not just because of the enormous details he pours into the backgrounds, whether the scene is set on SHIELD’s futuristic base, downtown Manhattan, or the Arizona desert.  And his action sequences are astounding.  I have never seen fight scenes in a comic book quite like these.  Issue five contains a massive battle with the Hulk in New York City, and the incredible detail that Hitch gives to every single panel of carnage is jaw-dropping.  

Millar and Hitch returned to these characters and stories in a second, 13-issue series, The Ultimates 2, published from 2004-2007.  In that follow-up series, Millar and Hitch continued to pose challenging questions about what would happen if such a team of super-heroes existed in our real world.  We witness Nick Fury’s growing temptation to use The Ultimates to pacify America’s enemies abroad, and of the devastating consequences of those actions.

I wasn’t sure if anything could top the first Ultimates series, and at first, I wasn’t sure The Ultimates 2 would.  The first six issues are fairly leisurely paced.  We witness a number of different vignettes, including the Ultimates’ deployment in Iraq, the efforts of the US’s international allies to create their own super-soldiers, the assembly of a group of wanna-be super-heroes who call themselves the Defenders, and the growing rifts between the members of the Ultimates themselves.  But it was unclear at first where all of this was going, and what sort of story was being told.  But things shifted into high gear in issues seven and eight, and then came the staggering issue nine.  In that chapter, titled “Grand Theft America,” in one horrific scene after another we witness the complete defeat of the Ultimates and the total conquest of America by a union of its enemies.  Millar and Hitch sure know how to go for their jugular — the shocking story is enhanced by their choices of imagery: devastation in New York city, the destruction of SHIELD headquarters, the capture of Washington DC, and the toppling of the Statue of Liberty.  To say that the remainder of the story (issues 10-13) is action-packed would be an extreme understatement, as the Ultimates and their allies attempt to regroup and fight back, and the situation escalates even further.  

Ultimates 2 might be a little more indulgent than the first volume (what with the digressions of its first half, and the ever-more-intense super-hero slugfests of its second half), but I love it just as much.  Each page that I turn brings to my eyes increasingly astounding imagery from the mind of Millar and the pencil of Hitch.  There really has never been a super-hero comic book quite like this.  

In my discussion of The Ultimates, I should also mention Warren Ellis’ Ultimate Galactus storyline.  This was originally released as three limited series (Ultimate Nightmare, Ultimate Secret, and Ultimate Extinction), and has subsequently been collected in one edition.

Something or someone has begun broadcasting all over the planet images of the brutal deaths of a variety of alien species.  Nick Fury sends his team of Ultimates to investigate.  Thinking that the source of the broadcasts is a mutant in distress, Professor Xavier sends a team of his X-Men.  The two groups converge in Tunguska, where they discover the relic of an advanced, extra-terrestrial mechanical being who came to Earth to warn us of the coming of the world devourer Gah lak tus.  The Fantastic Four, along with several other familiar Marvel characters, quickly become involved as Fury tries to figure out just what that entity is, and how mankind could possibly mount a defense against something that has already destroyed countless worlds.

When writing about his sci-fi comic book stories last month, I praised Warren Ellis for the way he incorporates a lot of real-world science and far-out ideas into his tales, and his reinvention of Galactus is no exception.  When Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced Galactus into the Marvel Universe in Fantastic Four #48-50 back in 1966, their depiction of Galactus as a huge guy in a purple outfit was dramatic and astounding.  Today, while the look of Galactus is a classic one, it is also undeniably hokey.  Ellis’ reinvention of Galactus for the Ultimate universe is a lot more complex, and a lot more creepy.  As Millar did in his two Ultimate series, I was quite impressed at the way Ellis was able to totally reinvent a classic Marvel concept into something entirely new and contemporary, while not losing any of the iconic imagery and ideas behind the original creation.  (I was also pleased to see Ellis introduce several other classic Marvel characters into the Ultimate universe, as well:  the Silver Surfer, Captain Mar-Vell, Moondragon, and even Misty Knight!)

Ellis’ story is also supported by some terrific art: Trevor Hairsine, Steve McNiven, Brandon Peterson, and others.  I do wish that there was more consistency to the art, with the same artist illustrating the entire tale.  But since almost all of the artists used are quite talented, I can’t complain too much.  In particular, Peterson has a great eye for illustrating sophisticated technology (both real and imagined), and his work brings a lot of weight and power to the series’ final chapters.  

Are these three series (The Ultimates, The Ultimates 2, and the Ultimate Galactus Trilogy) serious comic book works with a capital “S”?  No they are not!  But they are extraordinarily entertaining stories nonetheless, ones that are aimed squarely at adults.  They sit proudly on my bookshelf, and I have no doubt I will be re-reading them often in the future.

Hoo boy.

One of my first articles, when I started this blog, was about great franchises that have fallen on hard times.  I was writing about my once-beloved Alien and Predator series, but we can all now safely add the X-Men films to that list.  What in the world has happened to this series??  X-Men and X2 were so spectacular — but after X3 and now the rather verbosely titled X-Men Origins: Wolverine I am sad to report that the series is batting only two for four.

That’s not to say that Wolverine is a Fantastic Four caliber catastrophe.  Some talented actors appear on-screen, there’s some exciting action, some familiar X-Men characters pop up (one in particular really surprised me), and we finally get to hear Wolverine say on-screen, “I’m the best there is at what I do.  But what I do best isn’t very nice.”  But X-Men Origins: Wolverine a rentlessly dour and joyless affair, one that consistently reveals itself to be a truly B-Grade effort.  What do I mean by that?  Allow me to elaborate:

The film is filled with plot-holes, but more than that, it doesn’t hold together at all as any sort of coherent narrative.  I respect the filmmakers’ ambition in trying to capture a number of different periods in Wolverine’s life, from his birth in the late 1800’s, through his experiences in a variety of wars (captured really well, actually, in an exciting opening credits sequence), through his time with Silver Fox, his involvement in the Weapon X program, and beyond.  But none of the bits and pieces hang together.  Instead of merging together to form an expansive back-story, each jump in time left me with countless unanswered questions: Why would Logan, a Canadian, fight in so many of America’s wars?  Right from the first scene, he is established as a gentler soul than his mean brother Victor — so why would Logan hang around with Victor for so many years?  If Stryker and the team were so upset when Wolverine left them, how and why did the whole group disband soon after?  And why would Victor, of all people, be the one to remain in Stryker’s service?  I could go on.

The film makes a total hash of the X-Men comic continuity.  There was a lot of precedent for this, of course, as the previous three X-Men films also mixed and matched characters and story-lines from different periods of the comics with great abandon.  But there’s a souless “everything and the kitchen sink” approach to this film as it ties in a barrage of random Marvel Comics characters (Gambit!  Deadpool!  The Blob!) into Wolverine’s origin — and many of the changes to the established comic books’ back-stories really bugged me.  Sabretooth and Wolverine are siblings?  Logan entered the Weapon X program voluntarily?  Emma Frost is Silver Fox’s sister?  Whaaa??

The film isn’t even all that consistent with the previous three X-Men films.  I mean, I know that Logan gets shot with amnesia bullets at the end (I’m not kidding, by the way — do you think I could make that up??) so he wouldn’t remember meeting young Cyclops — but shouldn’t Cyke have remembered HIM when they meet up again in the first X-Men film?  

There are some moments of fun action and visual spectacle — the three-way fight atop a nuclear reactor at the movie’s end comes to mind — but some achingly bad special effects as well.  In the scene in a bathroom where Logan first pops his adamantium claws, the claws look ridiculously fake.  I mean, really astonishingly I-can’t-believe-that’s-the-finished-effects-shot fake.  

I feel sort of bad about picking on this movie, because Hugh Jackman seems like a terrific fellow — and he is so good at playing Wolverine that it is easy, now in his fourth go-round in the role, to take him for granted.  This is a character that, before the first X-Men film, I would have argued to the death would be completely impossible to play on film and not come off as totally ridiculous.  And yet, ever since that first shot that revealed him in the steel cage in the first X-Men movie, Jackman has inhabited the character in a magical way.  Even in this sub-par installment (or maybe I should say especially in this sub-par installment), he’s the best thing about the film.

It is clear that the stewards of the X-Men film franchise really have no idea where to take the series.  That is frustrating, because there is a GOLDMINE of amazing X-Men stories from the last 40 years of comic books that can be drawn from.  This should be the easiest franchise in the world to continue for movie after movie.  There are so many great stories that could be adapted.  Are actors like Patrick Stewart or Halle Berry getting too expensive?  Easy!  Just re-cast the roles or write those characters out of the series and bring in new ones.  The X-Men in the comics changed their roster constantly, and there are so many amazing new characters who could be brought to life on screen to replace a Storm or a Professor X or a Jean Grey.  

I could understand it if the film-makers wanted to, occasionally, take a break from the enormous multi-character X-Men epics to focus on a single character film.  The idea of making a gritty Wolverine solo movie is an appealing one!  But if that was the filmmakers’ intention, then why did they surround Logan in this film with a bevy of other mutant characters — X-Men lite, if you will?  If we’re going to see Logan fight the bad guys along with a team of people with super-powers, then why not just give us a fourth X-Men film, for heavens sake??   And dark and gritty, this film is not.  True, Logan spends much of the movie unhappy, and none of the characters around him are any fun.  But the film never brings and real intensity or violence to the fight scenes, and the emotional moments just aren’t that gripping.  (Compare the death of a female character in this film to the mid-movie death of a female character in The Dark Knight.  Night and day in terms of the emotional impact of those two moments.)

Furthermore, if one wanted to make a Wolverine solo film, I am stunned that the filmmakers decided to tell this patchwork origin story and ignored what would have been a magnificent template for a film: the 4-issue mini-series Wolverine, from 1987, by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller.  In Wolverine’s first major solo spin-off adventure, Logan travels to Japan, falls in love, fights ninjas, and travels an intense personal journey in which he struggles between the human and animal sides of his nature.  A spectacular story that holds up today, this would have make a kick-ass movie.

Instead, I got to watch Wolverine team up with some leftovers from Dutch’s team from Predator to hunt rocks, kill some people, then make goo-goo eyes at a cute babe, cut down some trees, meet Ma and Pa Kent, jump onto a helicopter, and engage in three versions of the exact same fight with his pissed-off brother Sabretooth.  Oh, and at long last we learned the origin of that cool jacket Logan was wearing in the first X-Men movie.

Pass me those amnesia bullets, would you please?

Let’s begin the day by my pointing your attention to two great pieces recently from The Onion A.V. Club: this article about 25 great albums that work best when listened to from start to finish, and a spirited defense of the recent seasons of The Simpsons that lists 10 episodes from the past 5 seasons that stand among the series’ best.

If you haven’t seen it yet, click here to watch the new trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen’s new movie Bruno.  For a little more detail on some of the sequences that you get glimpses of in the trailer, click here for a terrific write-up of the 25 minutes of footage that screened a few weeks ago at SXSW, the theatre-owners convention.  How is he able to still fool people with this stuff after all the publicity that surrounded Borat?

I am not a big fan of Broadway musicals.  That is putting it mildly.  So I’m not exactly doing cartwheels at the news that there is a Spider-Man musical in the works.  And I was completely befuddled to read that they’re working on a musical based on Groundhog Day!  What a bizarre notion.

By the way, speaking of Spider-Man, has director Sam Raimi admitted what was immediately apparent to discerning movie-goers about an hour into the film — that Spider-Man 3 was just terrible?  Well, sort-of.  Click here to read his interesting comments.  Since a Spider-Man 4 seems inevitable, this gives me a smidgen of hope that perhaps we will see a return to the high quality of the first two Spidey films.  What could possibly go wrong, right?

Harlan Ellison is a brilliant Sci-Fi author.  He’s also responsible for one of the finest hours of Star Trek ever committed to film: the Original Series episode “The City on the Edge of Forever.”  He is now suing Paramount and the WGA.  You have got to read his hilarious press release all the way to the end.

So there’s going to be a James Bond museum?  And I thought Christmas only came once a year.

Finally, did you know that some people are getting all bent out of shape about a Chuck Jones Looney Tunes print that parodies Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper?  Well, they are.  In these troubled times, aren’t there more important things that we should be worrying about?  Like the enormous size of the nacelles on the U.S.S. Enterprise in J.J. Abrams’ new Star Trek movie??

Over the past two days I have listed several of my favorite graphic novels.  (Click here for part I and here for part II.)  You’ll notice that most of them had nothing to do with super-heroes.  This was purposeful — although super-hero stories dominate the American comic book scene, there are so many other types of stories that can be told using the comics medium.  That’s something I wanted to highlight.

But that’s not to say that I don’t also love a terrific super-hero story, because I certainly do!  Here are some of my favorites, that are available in graphic novel or collected-edition formats:

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns — Following the death of Robin, Bruce Wayne retired his Batman persona.  It’s been 10 years, and Gotham City has sunk into an urban decay of crime.  Bruce Wayne is a broken man, empty and lost.  But when something drives him to put on that mask one more time, everything changes.  (Although not necessarily for the better!)  Along with Watchmen (which was also released in 1986), Frank Miller’s magnus opus changed the comics industry forever, demonstrating without a doubt that it was possible to tell sophisticated, mature stories with super-hero characters.  (It also was a tremendous influence on the look and tone of Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman film.)  This story is intense and shockingly brutal.  It is also a gorgeous work of art, filled to the brim with overlapping narratives that tell the stories of an enormous cast of characters, all struggling to make their way in the brutal urban jungle that Gotham City has become, and all of them somehow affected by the shadow of the bat.  The Dark Knight Returns is also infamous for Miller’s depiction of an almost fascistic Superman, and his battle with the Batman in the series’ final chapter is a show-stopper.  (I should also mention that I am quite fond of Miller’s Batman: Year One, illustrated by David Mazzucchelli, from which a great deal of the story of Batman Begins was adapted.)

The New Frontier — Darwyn Cooke’s brilliant series re-tells the origins of many of DC Comics’ most familiar characters, albeit set in the years in which they were originally created.  Similar to the way in which The Right Stuff showed how American fighter pilots gradually became our astronauts, The New Frontier tells the story of how the pulp heroes that came out of the second world war gradually became the costumed super-heroes of a brave new age.  Cooke’s somewhat retro, simplified art style is stunningly gorgeous and absolutely perfect for the story being told.  The New Frontier captures the innocence and wonder, as well as the growing dangers, of the 1950’s and 60’s.  It is an epic saga, filled out by an enormous cast of characters, all of whom Cooke wonderfully brings to life.  I only discovered The New Frontier about two years ago, but it immediately became one of my absolute favorites.

Astonishing X-Men — Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly) and John Cassaday crafted the greatest X-Men story of the past decade, which I wrote about at length here.  A scientist declares that she has discovered the cure for mutants (that storyline was incorporated into the lackluster third X-Men film), Professor X’s mutant-tracking system cerebro attains sentience and threatens the students, and an enormous extra-terrestrial threat is revealed.  But all of that takes a back seat to the characters’ story-lines.  Whedon has a quite a gift for creating vibrant characters, and his stories are intense and also filled with delightful humor.  Whedon & Cassaday’s entire story is available in four softcover editions or two hardcovers.  

Spider-Man: Kraven’s Last Hunt – I probably read this at too-young an age, but it certainly captured my imagination at the tim.  I am pleased to say that it also holds up today as one of the most compelling Spider-Man stories ever told.  In the ultimate tale of revenge, Spider-Man villain Kraven the Hunter shoots Spidey, buries him, and then, in order to prove his complete superiority over his foe, puts on his costume and takes his place.  And that’s just in the first chapter.  This jaw-droppingly grim and serious story takes the reader on a powerful journey through the haunted past and disturbed psyche of Kraven, while also giving us great insight into the mind of Peter Parker as he faces his mortality and struggles to overcome a seemingly impossible situation and an indomitable enemy.  J.M. DeMatteis’ wonderful prose (which follows the inter-weaving narratives of several major characters) and wonderful, over-lapping dialogue was way ahead of its time, and Mike Zeck and Bob McLeod’s art is dense, atmospheric, and truly gorgeous.  I can’t tell you how many times I have read this story, and it never ceases to amaze me.  

The Ultimates by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch and Kingdom Come by Mark Waid and Alex Ross — I recently re-read both of these, and I have longer posts in the work about them both that will be coming in the next few weeks.  For now, let me just say that they are both true masterpieces, and must-reads for any comic fans.  

OK, whew!  This has been a fun look at various amazing comics over the past three days.  I like being reminded about just how terrific this medium can be.  Did I leave out one of your favorites?  Let me know!  And if you’ve never read a comic book and are just bewildered as to what the heck I’ve been going on about for these past few days, I do hope that you’ll give one of these great works that I have listed a try.

In the weeks before Marvel’s The Incredible Hulk opened this summer, there were a lot of stories on-line and in various entertainment magazines about a dispute over the editing of the film between Marvel and star Edward Norton (who played Bruce Banner).  As the tale was told, Norton was fighting for a longer cut of the film that would include more character development, while Marvel wanted a leaner, more action-packed version.  

Ultimately, it seems that the latter is what was released to theatres.  And while I found the film to be fairly enjoyable, it certainly didn’t blow my skirt up the way Iron Man had the month before.  I also found it to be inferior to Ang Lee’s weirder, more cerebral 2003 movie The Hulk.  

But I was intrigued to read that the DVD of the new Incredible Hulk movie would include a significant number of deleted scenes (almost 45 minutes worth).  That’s not the same as having an extended cut of the film to judge, but I was still very curious to check out all of that additional footage to see if I felt those scenes’ inclusion would have strengthened the film.

Well (and I’m not sure if this is good or bad), with just a few exceptions I must report that they would not have.  What we have here is a fascinating study in film-editing.  There isn’t one scene, amongst the deleted footage, that is a complete “thank god they cut that” clunker.  Everything is good, and interesting.  There’s an opening opening to the film in which Bruce Banner tries (unsuccessfully) to kill himself; scenes that show us more of the life Bruce made for himself on the run in Brazil, including how he created the science set-up in his apartment; several additional scenes with Betty’s new boyfriend Leonard (whose presence on-screen suffered the most in the theatrical cut); several scenes with General Ross which shed some more light on why he was so focused on capturing Banner, etc. etc.  It’s all decent stuff.  

Probably the best scene is a monologue by Ross, in which he describes his awe at having seen a glimpse of god (in his encounters with the Hulk), and he compares himself to those great men throughout history who have dared to grasp such power for the good of mankind.  It’s a great moment of acting, and it makes his character a bit less of an evil-for-no-reason villain, while also making him even scarier as we glimpse his passionate dedication to the cause.

And yet, none of these scenes really would have added much of anything to the movie as a whole.  Is it sort of neat to see how Bruce made his centrifuge out of spare parts?  Well, yes, but the one brief shot of it in the finished film, in which the attentive viewer notices that it’s made out of a bicycle tire, tells the whole story sufficiently.  Is it interesting to get to know Betty’s boyfriend Leonard a little more, and to see the moment where he confronts Bruce?  Well, yes, but again that doesn’t really affect the plot of the movie in any way, or change how we feel about Bruce and Betty.  It just makes Leonard a little less likable, which to me sort of hurts his character.  It’s better for the audience to feel torn, as Betty was, between the two men, as opposed to our rooting too strongly for her to dump him.  (Although I do wish that the theatrical cut had managed to work in somewhere that the fellow’s name was Leonard Samson, as that character is a major player in the Hulk comics.)  Is it neat to see Bruce wrestle with his guilt in the alternative opening, and to see him Hulk-out in Alaska (or Antarctica, or wherever that was supposed to be set)?  Well yes, but here too that doesn’t add much to Bruce’s character, as we see plenty of his struggle with his intense guilt throughout the film.  And I think it’s better to start the movie with Bruce already hiding out in Brazil.

My complaints with the finished film aren’t at all addressed by any of this excised footage.  What are my complaints?  Well, first of all I object to Marvel’s rejection of the first Hulk film.  I love Edward Norton, but I preferred Eric Bana’s Bruce Banner; as I also preferred Sam Elliott’s Thunderbolt Ross to William Hurt and VASTLY preferred Jennifer Connelly’s Betty to Liv Tyler (who I usually really like found unconvincing here).  I also objected to the major change in the Hulk’s origin made in this new film.  In Ang Lee’s Hulk, Bruce Banner was accidentally dosed with gamma rays when he tried to save a hapless lab technician.  In this version, we learn that Bruce was testing a procedure on himself.  That makes me MUCH less sympathetic to him!!  While Ang Lee’s Hulk built more to an emotional climax in terms of Bruce’s relationship with Betty and with his father (a character pretty much invented by the film, played in full-on crazy mode by Nick Nolte), this new film just builds to a big fight between the CGI Hulk and the CGI Abomination.  The fight is a cool action spectacle, sure, but I just wasn’t that invested in those two green monsters beating the crap out of each other over and over again.  And the way the movie sort of turned the Hulk into a superhero at the end (sent out to stop the Abomination) seemed a bit silly to me.  I prefer the Hulk as a monster of uncontrollable rage, as opposed to a not-very talkative crime fighter.  

So, getting back to the discussion of these deleted scenes — I have to side with Marvel on this one.  While I wish they hadn’t been so quick to find fault with Ang Lee’s movie, with this new Hulk film they did make exactly the movie that they apparently wanted to make — an action spectacle.  Had those 45 minutes of scenes been kept in the movie, they just would have slowed the film down, without adding anything significant to the over-all story.  The scenes were all strong, but if the goal was to make a fast-paced action film, then they really didn’t belong.

I do hope, though, that the next wave of Marvel super-hero movies, coming in 2010, are more like Iron Man than this new Incredible Hulk.  Action and spectacle is good, but that’s not enough to make a truly satisfying film.

Here are some of the DVDs that have been spinning recently in the Edelglass abode:

Recount — This HBO film chronicles the tumultuous 36 days that followed the contested 2000 Presidential election.  The cast is stupendous across the board:  Kevin Spacey plays Ron Klain, Bob Balaban is Ben Ginsberg, Ed Begley Jr. is David Boies, Laura Dern is Katherine Harris, John Hurt is Warren Christopher, Dennis Leary is Michael Whouley, Tom Wilkinson is James Baker, and Mitch Pileggi (A.D. Skinner!!) is Bill Daley.  For those of you out there who followed every minute of this political morass, most of those names are probably very familiar to you.  I’ll also add that Derek Cecil (Push, Nevada) plays Democratic lawyer and my former camp counselor, Jeremy Bash.  Although the film is at times heartbreaking to watch for a Democrat like myself, it is a terrifically well-told tale.  There’s a lot of very detailed information covered in its under two hour run-time, but the film never becomes a boring talking-heads history class.  Its dramatic and extraordinarily well-paced, bouncing back and forth between the Democratic and Republican camps trying to bring home the election for their candidate.  

The Band’s Visit — An Egyptian band (the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra) arrives in Israel to play at a cultural event, but find themselves stranded in the tiny Israeli town of Petach Tikvah.  Stuck there for the night, the film follows the different members of the band as they interact (or don’t interact) with the local Jews, and vice versa.  This is a quiet film.  There is no great action — nor is there loud conflict or histrionics.  Instead, its a small, personal story about a group of Egyptians and a group of Israelis, each with their own problems and demons, and their efforts to find common ground for one lonely night.  Nobody LEARNS A BIG LESSON or FALLS MADLY IN LOVE and I respect the film for that.  This is a movie about ordinary people leading ordinary lives.  Occasionally it might be a little TOO slow for some tastes, but its worth a viewing.

The Good German — My wife Steph recently read the book (by Joseph Kanon), so we decided to check out the film.  I’d wanted to see the movie when it came out in 2007, but never got to it, so I was excited to give it a try.  Unfortunately, it was a disappointment.  The film boasts a top-notch cast that includes George Clooney, Tobey Maguire, and Cate Blanchett, but I never engaged with the story being told.  Part of the reason for that may be that the film has been molded to the style of a 1940’s film like Casablanca — in terms of the style of music, editing, etc.  That sounds like a neat idea, and the black-and-white photography is quite beautiful.  But ultimately, I think those choices keep the viewer at a distance.  It takes an incredible film — like a Casablanca — to overcome those old-style devices to remain interesting to a modern audience, and this film is no Casablanca.  

Iron Man and Forgetting Sarah Marshall — I wrote about both these movies on this site when they were originally released last spring, and they both hold up just as well upon second viewings.  Iron Man is terrific fun, striking a perfect balance of humor and action.  It also features some astounding visual effects, from small details such as all the wonderful computer interfaces in Tony Stark’s home, to several great action set-pieces like Iron Man’s encounter with a pair of military jets and the armor-on-armor battle at the end with the Iron Monger.  And that Nick Fury post-credits scene is just fantastic.  I cannot WAIT until the next Marvel Universe movie adventures, coming in 2010.  As for Forgetting Sarah Marshall, that too is great fun.  The film is a riot, a parade of funny, funny people:  Jason Segal (Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared, How I Met Your Mother), British comedian Russell Brand, Bill Hader (Saturday Night Live, Superbad), Jack McBrayer (30 Rock), Jonah Hill (Superbad), Paul Rudd (Knocked Up, The 40 year Old Virgin, Anchorman), Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars, Heroes), and Mila Kunis (That 70’s Show, Family Guy).  I watched the extended version on the DVD, which is only about 5 minutes longer than the theatrical cut.  There are some small additions, mostly in the early pre-Hawaii part of the film, as well as a little extra nudity during Peter’s (Jason Segal) attempts to get over Sarah Marshall by having a lot of meaningless sex.  If you missed this comedy when it was first released (and I think a lot of people did), be sure to check it out on DVD.

There’s a great, in-depth interview with Jon Favreau on his plans for Iron Man 2 (and 3!) to be found here.  Some really interesting tid-bits to be had.  I have a lot of faith in Favreau and am really excited to see what he and his team cook up over the next two years.

I love movie posters, and here’s one I think you might enjoy as well:  Kevin Smith has posted the new poster for Zach and Miri Make a Porno, his upcoming movie starring Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks.  If you follow that link, be sure to also scroll down a bit to see the poster design that the MPAA rejected.  Pretty funny, the both of them!

This is old news, but I’ve mean meaning to mention it:  Don LaFontaine passed away earlier this month.  Don’t recognize his name?  Well I guarantee you’d recognize his voice.  He’s the famed “trailer guy,” whose deep tones graced the narration of so many movie trailers over the years.  A fascinating trip-down-memory-lane sampling of his work can be found here.  

Hope to see everyone back here tomorrow!

As an addendum to my list of my five favorite super-hero movies posted at the start of this week, here are three super-hero movies that I consider to be tremendously under-rated:

Superman Returns — I just don’t understand the almost universal apathy or even dislike towards Bryan Singer’s Superman relaunch. I love that this film has a somber, melancholy feel to it. I love that the story creates complicated character conflicts (the Clark-Lois-Superman-Richard love tangle) that aren’t easily resolved by the end of the film. (I was SHOCKED that Richard lived through the movie — and I really respect the filmmakers for not killing him off, thus providing an easy way for Lois and Clark/Superman to get back together.) I also love reverence the filmmakers showed for Richard Donner’s Superman movie — it really tickles me all the times the movie refers to Donner’s films, both visually (the design of the Fortress of Solitude, the use of Brando as Jor-El), and in the echoing of lines of dialogue in the script (such as Superman’s “statistically speaking, its still the safest way to travel,” and the reprise of Jor-El’s message to his son: “You will make my strength your own. You will see my life through your eyes, as your life will be seen through mine. The son becomes the father and the father… the son.”) The film has weaknesses — there’s not enough action, and Lex Luthor’s plot is pretty stupid. But watch again the plane crash sequence in which Superman reveals his return to the world, and tell me that’s not a magnificent moment of pop-fantasy magic. I’d love to get a sequel to this film to see where Singer takes the story from here, so I hope Warner gets around to making one.

Daredevil – Here’s another movie that I seem to be the only one who likes. As with Superman Returns, there are weaknesses to this film, like some embarassingly dodgy CGI effects. But there’s so much that I enjoy about this movie. I love how down-beat it is. I love how the filmmakers differentiate Daredevil from a more selflessly heroic character like Spider-Man. (This is epitomized by the scene on the rooftop between Matt Murdock/Daredevil and Elektra, in which he hears someone in trouble — but when Elektra asks him to stay with her, he does. Peter Parker would never make that choice — and I love that.) Speaking of Murdock/Daredevil, I know that its a popular sport to make fun of Ben Affleck, but I actually find him to be extremely watchable as Matt Murdock. And the rest of the cast is strong as well — Michael Clarke Duncan, Joe Pantoliano, Jennifer Garner, Colin Farrell, and Jon Favreau in a terrific turn as Foggy Nelson. Although just a moment ago I criticized some of the visual effects in this film, let me take a moment to praise the clever way in which Daredevil’s “radar sense” is visualized. Like Superman Returns, this is another movie to which I’d love to see a aequel (although I’ve resigned myself that I never will), as the movie ended (with the Kingpin aware of Matt Murdock’s identity) in just the right place to take on one of the best Daredevil stories ever from the comics: “Born Again,” in which the Kingpin uses that knowledge to pretty much destroy Murdock’s life.

Hulk — As with Superman Returns, this is another film that I love for its slow, melancholy nature. Ang Lee’s movie is derided for its lack of action, but I think it has some TERRIFIC action sequences, like the Hulk’s desert battle with the army. Its just that the movie takes its time to get to those sequences. That would be a problem only if what was going on wasn’t so compelling. Again, this is a movie that is made by the strength of its cast. Eric Bana gives what I find to be a mesmerizing performance as the haunted Bruce Banner. Sam Elliott is terrifically cast as General Ross, and Jennifer Connelly and Nick Nolte are strong as well. Sure the movie is weird, and it does take some liberties with the comic continuity (particularly Bruce Banner’s father’s involvement in his origin), but I really enjoy this more cerebral, psychological telling of this story. I also find the comic-book panel scene transitions to be immensely clever.

If its been a while since you’ve seen one of these three movies — give ‘em another chance on DVD! I don’t think you’ll regret it.

I saw Iron Man tonight.

Wow.

What follows is as spoiler-free as I could make it.   But if you want to go into this flick totally devoid of any knowledge, why don’t you check back in after you see it and let’s see if we agree?

OK, now, let me get right to it: the film is tremendous.   Director Jon Favreau was able to create a very intense, serious film (one not aimed just at the little kiddies) that is also quite funny and endearing.   There’s a lot of humor, but its not the type of forced “stand back, here comes the wakka-wakka” type of humor that so often makes me cringe in comic book films.   Much of the credit for this must go to the man in the lead role.

I’ve already read a number of reviews that emphasize how perfect Robert Downey Jr. is as Tony Stark, and I most vigorously agree with the chorus. Not only is he a visual dead ringer for the character (the goatee is perfect), but he’s able to convey just the type of rich, spoiled, brilliant, cocky bastard that is Tony Stark.   As I alluded to above, there’s a tremendous amount of humor is this performance – I love his banter with his “lab assistants,” and with Jarvis – but also a lot of weight.   Like most superhero origin stories, this movie centers on “the turn” – when the hero character has to change from the person he was to the more righteous person he will become.   That can be a tough moment to play, and not every superhero movie – or ever actor assaying a superhero – can sell that.   But Downey Jr. just nails it.

The whole rest of the cast is dynamite as well.   The casting of Jarvis was dead-on.   Terrence Howard is terrific as Stark’s buddy Jim Rhodes.   I love how he’s able to nudge Stark on his behavior without being a total stick-in-the-mud himself.   (In the plane-ride scene early in the movie, you can really see why he and Stark are friends!)   Gwyneth Paltrow is also very strong as Pepper Potts, Stark’s assistant.   She maybe gets a teensy bit too damsel-in-distressy towards the end of the flick, but she is a lot of fun to watch throughout the film.   Just as Terrence Howard does in his role, her performance hints at a long shared history with Tony Stark – and that really helps to flesh out the “world” that these characters inhabit.

Jeff Bridges brings a lot of charisma and energy to his role of Obadiah Stane, Stark’s mentor.   I just love Jeff Bridges, and it looks like he was having a lot of fun in the role.

Let me take this moment to commend the film for not having any bad guy with a crazy plot to blow up the world.   I like that the story stays small – that the conflicts are mostly personal.   I also love the connection with Stark, as opposed to bringing in some random super-villain for the action finale.

I also can’t forget the terrific Clark Gregg as an Agent of…well, you know! (At least any good comic book fan does.)   You might recognize this familiar face from The West Wing (FBI Agent Michael Casper) or Sports Night or his many many other TV & movie appearances.   I was glad to see him pop up here, and hope he has more to do in the sequel.

Speaking of the sequel, any comic fan who pays close attention will know for damn sure who the villain will be in the sequel.   (Keep your eyes on a certain adornment that the two most villainous characters in the movie have in common!)   I can’t wait to see how that character is handled.   (I’m almost as excited as when Batman Begins closed with the promise of The Joker in the next one…)

In case my gushing hasn’t convinced you yet – go see this film right now, and have a lot of fun!

And for all that is holy, stay until the end of the credits!!!   You’ll be glad you did.

(P.S.   I’m already working on some Iron Man cartoons for this site – they should be ready next week, after our characters’ adventures this week in a certain big dumb robot movie from last summer…)