I went to Wanted tonight with my brother. The theater was pretty full for the 6:45pm showing. The movie’s been getting pretty good reviews. If I had never heard of the comic book by Mark Millar & JG Jones, then I would probably have liked this movie a lot more. I’d call it a good, bloody, wacky summer action flick and would easily recommend it. It’s a fun shoot-em-up movie, in and of itself.

But I am a fan of the comic, and as an adaptation of Millar’s story this movie is piss-poor. Where is Mr. Rictus? Where are all the zany supervillains? Where’s all of the comic booky stuff? And Angelina Jolie as Fox? I mean, I don’t have anything against Angelina Jolie, but I think the role could have been better cast. Or at least give Angelina some ears to wear. I will say that I like the slightly tweaked final beat they do in the movie better than the final beat of the comic. I think Millar sort of jumped the shark with that last panel and the movie keeps the same basic spirit and makes it a smidge more personable… but I think I’m splitting hairs.

I’m conflicted. As I said: In and of itself, Wanted is a fine summer popcorn action flick. Fans of the comic, however, will be highly disappointed. No Mr. Rictus? Seriously?

Buy the book here…

Filed under: Comic Books, Shopping | 13 Comments »

Here’s an interesting short manga you can read online: The Enigma of Amigara Fault. Remember that manga is read from right-to-left.

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I went to a screening of a film tonight at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre which was presented by Eli Roth. The film is a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark done over 7 years in the mid-80’s by a couple of kids in Mississippi (max age 17ish). Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation was kitsch gold. I wished that all of the Dead Lantern/Grand Horror crew was there to see this DIY masterpiece. It probably won’t ever make it to DVD because of the obvious copyright restrictions but it has been making the indie-theatre circuit for 5 years with the blessing of Mr. Roth who hooked the filmmakers up with a renewed career in film and even a meeting with Stephen Speilberg himself.

Spinning from this amazing backstory is a Daniel Clowes (Ghost World) screenplay (and perhaps comic?) and Paramount project in the works based on the kids who made it (now in their late 30s).

When I get to catch things like this, it’s pretty fucking rad to live here.

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People love lists and this one’s no mere “top 10″ or even a “top 100.” No, this is a big fat 200-item list: Wizard’s Top 200 Comics from 1991-Present. A fun read if you’re a comic fan.

Filed under: Comic Books | 6 Comments »

Let’s cut to the chase: I’m the cool one. The other guys are tools. Know how you can tell? Because their photos look like they took them of themselves. Taking pictures of yourself is something that tools do. Just look at MySpace, ’nuff said. This photo of me, on the other hand, is from a bitchin’ Halloween party at Spooky McPhee’s house. Some hot slut probably snapped the photo ‘cuz she was diggin’ my costume. Note that both of my hands are visible in the photo, proving that I did not operate the camera myself.

If you’ve listened to the show, you’ll know my co-hosts find me comically upbeat and even pollyannish about a lot of the movies we review. Hey, I’m just a positive person. I can find a little bit to like in most things. And for those flicks that are totally horrible and worthless, sure, I’ll say that they’re garbage but I won’t let it affect my mood. Life’s too short to be a sourpuss, right?

I love horror movies and, as we’ve established, I’m pretty forgiving of a lot of them. I guess the one thing going on in the genre right now that I think is lame are the “extreme horror” films, stuff that tries to shock the viewer with some gimmicky ultra-gore-faux-snuff-porn shtick. Don’t get me wrong, I love gore, nudity and all that… it’s just that most of those flicks fail miserably. I’ve been meaning to script up an episode of the Splattercast on the topic.

On the personal side, I’m 28 and have been married for almost 7 years. My wife, Tina, and I have been together since high school. Our daughter, Genevieve, is almost two. Tina & Genny are my favorite people in the whole world. We’re originally from Nebraska but I lived in Jefferson City, Missouri from 2000-2007. It was an awesome town and we loved it there, but we wanted to get back to our friends & family after having Genny, so now we’re back in Lincoln to stay.

My day job is software development. In my free time I do the programming and design work for deadlantern.com (amateurish as it may often be). We used to have a totally homegrown blogging system that I wrote from scratch, but I canned that in favor of WordPress a while back. Why drive myself nuts coding something like that when it’s already been done, right? I don’t post as many reviews or blog entries as the other guys but I do try to participate with anyone who posts on our forum.

I love music from all different genres but find it too tedious to follow what’s hip from moment to moment. I’m not really interested in reading music magazines or whatever the kids do to stay up to date. I will say that I dig the hell out of Pandora. Some of my all-time favorite bands are: Harvey Danger, Bad Religion, Rancid, Teenage Fanclub, Monster Magnet, Faith No More, Reel Big Fish. Stuff I’ve been into more recently: Tiger Army, Brand New, Taking Back Sunday, Justice, Minibosses and lots of free video game remixes from OC Remix.

I went through a big comic book phase when I was in Jefferson City, buying a handful of books every week at the local shop. I quit comics cold turkey last summer and I haven’t missed them too badly. They take up so much space! I’m actually planning to sell off my collection in bits & pieces, so I’ll definitely spam you with that in the future.

I could go on with the tedious details but it’s getting late and I’ve got that big Outpost Doom script reading session tomorrow!

Thank you guys so much for visiting the site and listening to the Splattercast. Remember to hit the forum.

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Marvel Zombies is pretty much a bonafide franchise by now, with lots of nifty merchandise available to eviscerate your wallet. This Spider-man mini-bust is really cool; although I don’t know where I would put it in the house…

From the Wizard Store page: Sculpted by Rudy Garcia and limited to only 1000 pieces, this six-inch bust will be available exclusively through Wizard Entertainment’s magazines. Each bust will also feature a hand-numbered base with matching box and Certificate of Authenticity.

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The good: I got issue #1 of Marvel Zombies 2 today. It was a fun, albeit quick read with very little substance to it. Which works just fine for #1 of a five part series. It takes place forty years after the first series and revolves around the Galactus-powered zombies returning to Earth after eating the entire universe. We also get a quick peek at what the remains of humanity have been up to on Earth all this time. Actually, the people on Earth have a lot more screen…er…panel-time than the actual zombies. The whole Marvel Zombies Civil War angle isn’t touched on at all in issue one but I’m guessing it will revolve around the Galactus zombies battling a few remaining zombies on Earth who have kicked their human flesh addiction like it was a drug habit. But who knows, it’s early. Either way I can’t wait to read more.

My prediction, a zombie version of Ego, The Living Planet tears ass through everything at the end.

The Bad: I watched the Transformers movie for a third time tonight. I decided to rent the DVD in the hopes that somewhere on it would be some sort of special feature or maybe some deleted scenes that pull the story together (and make it interesting) in a way that the theatrical version failed miserably to do. I was denied. Not one single special feature on the DVD. What a goddamned travesty. If anything I found even more problems with the movie this go around. I keep hoping that once I finally go into this movie expecting absolutely nothing, it will actually be fun. It was foolish of me to hope. How could things go so wrong? I blame the writers, who are now saying that Barricade’s (the Decepticon police car) mystery disappearance is a “thread for movie 2″. Which translates to me as, “oh shit, we forgot to film an entire scene! Now we have to explain it away in the sequel and try not to make ourselves look incompetent.”

Bastards.

I do have to say that the movie is much, much better when you can skip through all of the human heavy scenes. In fact, I realized tonight that I cannot physically sit through the first 45 minutes of this movie ever again. Ever. At least not all the way through. From now on, if I ever watch this film again, I’ll watch the opening Blackout attack, fast forward to the Scorponok fight scene in the desert, fast forward to the BumbleBee/Barricade fight, watch the Autobot introductions, and finally fast forward to the action at the Hoover Dam. Sure that only makes the movie like an hour long, but that just shows you how much of this film they could have not even bothered filming and then put that money into extended fight scenes, or, you know, actually making the Transformers the stars of there own movie. This is not Transformers. This is Sam and the Transformers with the “and the Transformers part of that title coming in a little tiny subtitle after the word “Sam” in gigantic letters. Well supposedly there are at least two more TF movies on their way. Let’s hope that the entire thing somehow takes place back on Cybertron and all of the humans from the first film have long since died. I hate Sam. And the military guys. And John Voight. And Mojo the fucking Chihuahua.

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Check it out here.

I already miss zombie Thanos.

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I just finished the 6-part Chronicles of Wormwood comic by Garth Ennis, one of my favorite comic writers. It’s yet another “God is a jerk” story by Ennis (he’s done about a hundred, Preacher being the best) but I still enjoyed it. The basic premise is that the Antichrist (named Daniel Wormwood) and Jesus have become best buds and both told their fathers that they don’t want any part in armageddon. I can recommend it, there are some good laughs, but if you’ve read the superior Preacher, you’ll sort of shrug and wonder why Ennis keeps going back to this well.

You can order it at Amazon: Garth Ennis’ Chronicles Of Wormwood

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