PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Mysterious, indeed

Turner Classic Movies ran the 1961 and the 1929 versions of Mysterious Island, both based on the Jules Verne book, a book I have not read. Actually the 29 version is The Mysterious Island and the 1961 version is The less. I had seen the 1961 version once in 1990 but I didn't remember anything of it. I didn't even remember the Ray Harryhausen giant bitey, pinchy critters. It just didn't look familiar. The 61 version has some civil war era guys in a hot air balloon who land on this island and guard some women from giant creatures until the pirates come. Then it gets interesting. Only after something mysterious sinks the pirate ship does Captain Nemo reveal himself. Then there's a volcano. Holy hot lava. Luckily some people escape death. Because it's of the time and with some production help this movie tries to make the visual connection to the Disney 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. The Nautalis is very similar inside and out. Herbert Lom is very like James Mason when playing Nemo. It's a slow movin' movie with some nice score.

I am pretty sure I hadn't seen the 1929 version. Here's the plot summary from the IMDb.

On a volcanic island near the kingdom of Hetvia rules Count Dakkar, a benevolent leader and scientist who has eliminated class distinction among the island's inhabitants. Dakkar, his daughter Sonia and her fiance, engineer Nicolai Roget have designed a submarine which Roget pilots on its initial voyage just before the island is overrun by Baron Falon, despotic ruler of Hetvia. Falon sets out after Roget in a second submarine and the two craft, diving to the ocean's floor, discover a strange land populated by dragons, giant squid and an eerie undiscovered humanoid race.

There are a few good comments here. The silent/sound version is a wonderfully goofy film at times. Especially the underwater village. The undersea people were great, running away  from the giant sea monster, which looked like a baby aligator with a spine pasted to it. Both of these films were interesting enough to watch but I don't think I'll go out and replace them with store boughts.

Animation Flash Newsletter 6/28/05

STARS JOIN MIGNOLA’S SCREW-ON HEAD PILOT. Paul Giamatti  (SIDEWAYS), David Hyde Pierce (FRASIER) and Molly Shannon (SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE) will lend their voice talents to SCI FI Channel’s AMAZING SCREW-ON HEAD. Currently in production, this humorously quirky animated pilot is slated to premiere in 2006.

Adapted from the critically-acclaimed, Eisner Award-winning comicbook by Mike Mignola (HELLBOY), AMAZING SCREW-ON HEAD is a half-hour animated comedy based on the exploits of one of history’s great unsung heroes. A secret agent working for the U.S. government, SCREW-ON HEAD (Giamatti) is a robot that screws his head onto a wide variety of bodies, and battles those who threaten our civilization.

In the pilot, Screw-On Head faces off against his arch nemesis (and former manservant), Emperor Zombie (Hyde Pierce). Shannon plays Screw’s love interest, Patience the Vampire. Rounding out the cast are Patton Oswalt (KING OF QUEENS) as Mr. Groin, Screw’s faithful manservant and Mindy Sterling (AUSTIN POWERS’ Frau Farbissina), who plays the dual roles of zombie henchwoman Aggie and Geraldine.

Produced by Kickstart Prods., the pilot was written by Bryan Fuller (DEAD LIKE ME, WONDERFALLS, NBC’s CARRIE). Fuller and Jason Netter serve as exec
producers, with Mike Mignola as art director. Chris Prynoski directs.

SCI FI Channel is a television network where “what if” is what’s on. SCI FI broadcasts original series and events, blockbuster movies and classic science fiction and fantasy programming, as well as produces tits website (www.scifi.com) and magazine. Launched in 1992, and currently in 85 million homes, SCI FI Channel is a network of NBC Universal, one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies.

Kickstart Prods. Inc. is a live action, animation and visual effects production company established in 1999 to service the television, theatrical, home entertainment and video game markets as a work-for-hire resource. The company began creating, developing and producing their own projects in 2003. For more information, visit www.kickstartent.com/.

I sure am interested in this.

Pacifies me.

I'm watching The Pacifier for the second time in the same evening, this time with the commentary on. The feature has Vin Diesel as a Navy Seal protecting the kids of a dead scientist and seaching for hidden information in their house while being interupted by family problems and occasional attacking ninjas. The commentary has the director Adam Shankman and the two writers Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant yacking about the movie. These guys all have such interesting careers, well worth a look, if just for the variety of things they have worked on, especially the writers who are regulars on RENO 911. There's nothing new plot wise, it's just a fish out of water story like Uncle Buck, which had less ninjas. I like Vin Diesel, he's a good fish and a good actor. I liked the kids who have their problems fixed with a bit of punching. Appearently the writers had written this script for Jackie Chan but he didn't do it and Vin did. I could see Jackie in this role, there's a lot of slapstick. There's some nice funny moments, some with punching and some nice sentimental moments near the end. Some times I like that kind of story.

The second volume of the Dark Horse of Magnus Robot Fighter reprint came in wednesday. This is still one of my favorite comics. They originally came out in the early 60's. I read them then and was sucked into the earth of 4000 A.D, especially all that robot ass kickin'. Russ Manning drew Magnus and he did a great job, he also had done the Tarzan sunday comic page. I was excited when I saw the announcement of the first reprint. I actually have several of the comics from later in the series, and they don't look to good. The printing quality of the day, not so good. The first reprint book was a bit disappointing and I did complain to people who might care. It looks like Dark Horse doesn't have access to the original art and they are using copies of the comic to shoot from. Cleaned up digitally they are ok but not as nice as I had hoped for. This volume looks better, and both volumes look better than the comics. I found this was the same thing with the EC reprints of a few years ago, the publishers of the reprints had access to the original art and the comics look great. The same with The Spirit, Eisner kept all the art, imagine what that's worth! I'm just spoilt by the good stuff. The fifty buck price for each volume is a bit steap but you can get them cheaper at amazon, I looked earlier today. I just looked over at ebay and some guy is selling 31 issues and the bidding is only 11 bucks but there is still some time to go.

The series is about a guy who had been raised by a robot in a secret place under the sea. He gets to be a man, probably early twenties, and the robot sends him to live with the humans of 4000 A.D. in the massive city North Am, which completely covers the North American contintent. Magnus has been trained to kill robots. He's super tough, handsome and has a radio in his head. It's definately a superhero title, there are some great super villians, some of which are robots, all of which want to take over the world or destroy it. Sometimes those thinking robots of the future go crazy and need slapping down. Mannings art was perfect for the wonderful city scapes and vistas, but it's his design of the future that's amazing. It has a wonderfully cohesive look, yet it still has a mixture of old and new that makes the backgrounds interesting and realistic. The adventures are fun and there's a bunch of robot smashing. Since North Am City is so big there are lots of places to go. There are mile high skyscrapers and flying cars and people movers and slums. A little bit of everything, it's good. Magnus has a girlfriend, Leeja Clane, who is the daughter of a North Am senator. She gets into trouble and needs a good rescuin' now and again.

There was a nice tribute to George Lucas from the AFI. This was broadcast last week but I timeshifted it and just got to it. Lots of people said nice things and there were some clips and lots of commercials. Still, it's nice to give people awards.

This week had a one two punch to the pocket book as a second 50 dollar book came in. The Last Gasp book Through Prehensile Eyes: Seeing the Art of Robert Williams came in. It's the latest collection of his paintings, here's a nice piece from the LA Weekly. Williams goes back to the underground days. He had worked for Big Daddy Ed Roth in the mid 60's designing t-shirts, art for the car magazines, some of which he edited, just about any art chore Williams did it. He did some underground comics in the late sixties. His chrome was amazing, especially in color. He started making his living from his paintings in 1970. His paintings have a simularity and people can't get enough of them, he's always having shows and selling all his work for good amounts. There have been 6 other books of his work. The last three have been nice big books with good color reproductions of the paintings. There is a certain amount of blather in all of his books. The paperback of Malicious Resplendence is a pretty good deal at 50 bucks, it's 300 pages reprints the paintings from the earlier three books, lots of drawings, some new paintings all in a larger and much better printed format. Hysteria in Remission is a collection of his comic work. It's only 30 bucks, but hey, good art is not cheap, and good artbooks are damn expensive.

Friday Night Movies 13

We had been talking before the movie started about the reviews of Land Of The Dead, the new Romero zombie movie and how the local reviewer in Minneapolis gave it 1 1/2 stars. It sure deserves more than that, it's a well-made movie with good production values and cast. Don't listen to reviewers, most of them can't review horror movies. Christy Lemire at MSNBC.com had two things in her review that indicated to me she didn't remember or hadn't seen the previous films, if she had she wouldn't have said what she said. Here are those two bits.

Even the zombies seem a little more with-it, and almost appear to be communicating with each other, led by a service station attendant who keeps trying to pump gas.

Maybe that’s part of Romero’s attempt at reflecting the current times through his own unique, zombified prism. In this brave new world, your friends don’t wait until you’ve turned into a zombie to kill you for the greater good of humanity. Once you’re bitten, you’re as good as (un)dead.

In the first paragraph she says the zombie's seem a little more with-it and yet that was well covered in the Day of the Dead with Bud's self awareness and ability to learn. It seemed a natural progression in the series to me.  In the second paragraph she mentions people killing people who were bitten before they turn. I can't remember if they did that specifically in the earlier movies but my mind thinks they might have, and if not it just seems like such an intelligent and practical thing to do. Once the survivors know about the rapid turn from a bite, it would seem to me that hardened zombie fighters might actually kill someone before they turn, just to save them a lot of trouble later.

I've certainly seen the "leave the bitten person alone amongst us" situation before. It almost always ends badly, often with crying and screaming, and someone usually gets shot. If I get around to watching the earlier films I'll try to remember to look for that. Once I see it, I will try remember to mention it, but who knows when that might happen. These are the kind of complaints I have about reviewers, not their opinions, not everybody can like everything. Many of them make dumb mistakes or misinterpretations about what they're seeing, and then call the movie poor and give it a low score. I know these are small knitpicks but I've nothing else to do with my life. Sperhauk mentioned the crappy local reviewer for the StarTribune, Jeff Strickler, who had a review of what ever Star Trek movie that had Spock reborn at the every end of the movie. Strickler said Nimoy wasn't in the movie,  We're guessing he had to have left before seeing the end of the picture. He once called Nic Cage's coat a cape in Face/Off. I wish I could remember some of the other crap he said, eventually he was replaced with a guy who at least liked the genre pictures.

The last line in the quote above, "Once you’re bitten, you’re as good as (un)dead.", it troubles me. I am not at all sure what she is saying, or is it just supposed to be a joke.

Blade: Trinity was sure better than I had heard it was. I do think I mostly hear crap anyway. Of our group, only Joe had seen it and he gave it a thumbs up. Finally it got the nod, and we could form our own opinions. There were some funny bits, some slow ass bits and some fair to good fights. Parker Posey is great as the skankiest vampire ever, and she has the greatest hair stuff goin' on. She leads a group of divergent vamps to release the original Dracula from his tomb in Iraq. They bring him to what ever city Blade lives in and the vamps go about their nefarious business. Blade sticks his nose right up in there. An FBI guy, played by the great James Remar, leads the incompetent FBI after Blade because Blade's a murdering vigilante who hunts non-existant vampires and kills people. This third instalment adds the Van Wilder guy Ryan Reynolds, who I had seen in Dick and Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. Jessica Biel, whom I had never seen in a movie before, is part of another vampire fighting group. Both of them get to jump and fight and kill vampires all through the movie. Natashia Lyonne, who I always like, has a small part as the blind scientist who invents a vamp killin' virus. Her hair looks weird to me. The director, David S. Goyer, wrote the other two Blade movies, Dark City, the current hit Batman Begins and the up coming comic based movies Ghost Rider and The Flash. This is his second directorial job. He's good but not great. He's still better as a writer. I'll watch it again, at least once with Goyer's commentary.

The Astral Factor or Invisible Strangler is a 1976 film from that SciFi Classic 50 Movie box set.. It's about a jailbird who learns to turn invisible, and after he escapes he starts killing the woman who put him in jail. It's not too good, down right crap sometimes, mostly tedious. There was some fast-forwarding goin' on. We could not figure out if it was a tv movie or a lowbudget indy type, no matter, it's all crap. I read in the Video Hound book it was released theatrically in 1985. There's nothing much to recommend but the asses of both Robert Foxworth and Stephanie Powers. Sadly the man-ass cancels out Stephanie Powers and doesn't help the movie. It's nice to compain about!

Occasionally the movies we watch have some connection. Both movies we watched tonight had people reading comic books. Whistler was looking at a copy of Blade Tomb of Dracula #55 and someone in The Astral Factor was reading a Superboy comic. That's a pretty sorry connection.

Ripped from the pages of the Animation Flash Newsletter

Here are some tidbits:

NEED TO FEAR? UNDERDOG LIVE-ACTION FILM IS HERE. Walt Disney Pictures and Spyglass Ent. are currently not fearing the potential for a possibly transforming the classic TV cartoon UNDERDOG into a live-action franchise, reports VARIETY. Spyglass’ Roger Birnbaum, Gary Barber and Jonathan Glickman are producers on the project, along with Jay Polstein (FRIDA), who initiated the deal. Spyglass optioned the rights from Classic Media three years ago with a preemptive bid of mid-six figures against north of $2 million.

Exec producers will be Classic Media head Eric Ellenbogen and former Classic vp Bob Higgins, who is now at the Cartoon Network. Nina Jacobson, Brigham Taylor and Louanne Brickhouse are overseeing the film for Disney. Erin Stam will shepherd for Spyglass. Spyglass hopes to start shooting in Canada in January.

Created by Buck Biggers and Chet Stover, the campy spoof made its premiere in 1964 from Total TV Prods. on NBC, moved to CBS, and then returned to NBC where it ran until 1973. The show follows mild-mannered beagle, Shoeshine Boy who would transform into a caped, rhyming superhero whenever trouble was near.
The feature script from Joe Piscatella and Craig A. Williams has the small dog  gaining superpowers from a lab experiment and then is adopted by a 12-year-old boy, who discovers Shoeshine’s super secret. The film will cast a real dog in the title role, using effects wizardry to bring out his super side.

I can't think of anything good to say about this., and I don't even like Underdog that much anymore.

NATIONAL TREASURE 2 UNCOVERED. Walt Disney Pictures and Jerry Bruckheimer Films have started development on NATIONAL TREASURE 2, according to THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. Jon Turteltaub will return as direct from a script by Gregory Poirier (forthcoming SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON remake). The studios are keeping the plot on the down low and as of yet none of the original cast has been resigned.

I heard a piece on this sexual practice called the down low on MPR. Appearently guys who live with women but like guys on the side call their secret livestyles the down low, and they're mostly not-gay. I think it's funny used in this context, even though it can be stretched to just mean a secret, not just an alternate and secret lifestyle. The phrase now carries so much emotional baggage.

STAR &DIRECTOR ATTACHED TO ALICE GAME ADAPTATION. BUFFY star Sarah Michelle Gellar and director Marcus Nispel (THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE remake) have signed on for the film adaptation of American McGee’s videogame ALICE for Universal Pictures, reports VARIETY. Collision Ent. originally secured the rights to the game, which then went to joint-venture partner Dimension after their partnership was ended. Dimension shopped the project, which landed at Universal. Electronic Arts is the publisher of the game.

The story is a dark, twisted tale on Lewis Carroll’s ALICE IN WONDERLAND.
The screenplay has been adapted by Erich and Jon Hoeber, and kicks off after Alice’s home has been destroyed and her family killed. She returns to a dark and threatening Wonderland where she must confront her fears before returning to her normal life. Julie Yorn of Firm Films and Scott Faye of Collision Ent. are producing
with Abandon Ent.’s Karen Lauder and Firm Films’ JoAnne Colonna serving as
exec producers. Universal vp Damien Saccani will shepherd the film for the studio.

I have an Alice Action figure from this  game, Alice has a big knife and she's all bloody, but I haven't tried the video game, not being very interested in them.

CAST BOARDS BEOWULF. Columbia Pictures is hammering out deals with Ray Winstone (KING ARTHUR), Anthony Hopkins (SILENCE OF THE LAMBS), Brendan Gleeson (TROY) and Robin Wright Penn (FORREST GUMP) to star in director Robert Zemeckis’ BEOWULF, reports VARIETY. Steve Bing’s Shangri-La Ent. is producing the performance capture feature.

Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman have adapted the Old English epic poem about a
knight who slays the monster Grendel and becomes king. Zemeckis and his
ImageMovers partners Steve Starkey and Jack Rapke are producing. Martin
Shafer will exec produce with the trio writers.

Robert Zemeckis and Beowulf, in one sentance, not something I would have expected to hear, ya know.

GHOST HOUSE GRABS MONKEY’S PAW. Genre experts Ghost House Pictures will finance and develop the frightening family spec MONKEY’S PAW, from scribes Dave Kajganich and Tom McAlister, according to VARIETY. Ghost House toppers Sam Raimi and Rob Taper will produce along with Kustom Ent. head Tom Lassally and Kustom’s Robyn Meisinger. The story follows a father and his family after a wish-granting artifact begins to wreck havoc on their lives. Mandate Pictures president Joe Drake and Mandate production head Nathan Kahane will exec produce the film. Mandate, a partner in Ghost House with Raimi and Taper, will cover worldwide sales.

Hayao Miyazaki’s well-received HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE moved up a notch in its second week to 13th place with $864,761 and $1.4M for Buena Vista (with
Pixar’s Pete Docter and Disney’s Rick Dempsey overseeing the American version) in only 202 theaters. Box office information obtained from boxofficemojo.com.

Film hattrick with optional shopping

Tuesday I took the afternoon off work to leave a trail of cash about the city and have some lunch. I started at BestBuy, picking up three movies, two of which I'd watch later in the day. I only shop at the flagship BestBuy store, in Richfield, just down the street from the BB headquarters, it's big. I'm lyin', I'll shop at any store I come across, sometimes they have different stuff, I might need it. The Richfield BestBuy is located in one of those big store stripmalls, there's a sport store, a liquor store, a bridal store, a mattress store, a baby store, a pet store, a book store and a few fleas around the big dogs. I see an odd theme to this place. Although it's located on one of the worst traffic snarls I stop in there every tuesday on "new release tuesday". It's a compulsion thing.

I stopped at the Borders bookstore next. I had a coupon for 30 percent off any one book, so I bought one and left, heading for the Mall Of America and lunch. There's a fast food chinese place that has a lot of seseme chicken and fried rice for $4.50. I like the taste and it a good excuse to stop at the LEGO store and see what's new. There used to be a KayBee toystore, just down the mall from the third floor food court on the north side, but it has changed into a more trendy toy shop and is now of no interest to me. Oh well, one less place to spend some money. I went home with my fried rice and sesame chicken, book and three movies.

Since I had nothing to do I watched Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous and Hostage. I liked both. MissC2 is pretty much like the 1st, some jokes of various levels of funny from an assortment of comedic concepts, a bit of heartfelt business near the end and a some of flirting. I'm not a big Sandra Bullock fan, I liked her in Demolition Man in 1993, which I enjoyed for the interplay between Stallone and Bullock. It's one of my three favorite Stallone movies, the other two are Tango and Cash and Cop Land. 1993 was also the year Bullock was in Fire On the Amazon, a film that even I could not find anything in it that I liked. Sandra B. has a near nude scene and that wasn't enough to get me to keep the cheap $5 dvd I had bought. Sometimes, once is enough. Besides I have a series of stills from that and some video I downloaded off a spot in cyberspace where they keep the naked ladies. Fire on the Amazon was such a boring story, and poorly told. By comparison Demolition Man is Shakespeare, and people are singing the Oscar Meyer theme song in that movie. I did like Bullock in Speed but I don't care for the movie that much, Jan Du Bont should have stayed a cimematographer. Speed 2 is pretty poor, other than the ship crashing into the pier, which was fun, ignoring the CGI flaws.

Hostage was pretty entertaining, and was based on a Robert Crais novel. I had read all his novels up until 3 or 4 years ago. He started off with two great hardboiled Elvis Cole novels, with lots of tough stuff, then went soft. His books haven't been the same since. I haven't read this novel. In this movie version Bruce Willis was a hostage negotiator working a case, a kid dies, and he relocates to a small town and takes the Chief job to escape his high pressure past. Well, today things get screwed up and not only does he have a hostage stiuation on his hands, someone naughty has kidnapped his family and they will kill them unless he gets  a disc out of the house. What a predicament. Good supporting cast in this, especially Ben Foster who plays psycho guy. He's got that psycho stare down pretty well, he could be the Bruce Dern of his age. He played Eli, the slow student, on the wonderful but sadly short lived Freaks and Geeks and has had a recurring role on HBO's Six Feet Under as the screwed up art student who was dating Claire played by the wonderfully cute Lauren Ambrose. Another series worth watching, I just picked up the third season on dvd and stacked it with the other two seasons, neither of which I have gotten around to rewatching.

After I got those two out of the way I was off to see a sneak preview of Land of the Dead, the new George Romero movie. It's the fourth of his Dead films and a pretty good one. Fun to watch, it is a natural progression in his thinking about the series. The basic story isn't anything really original, but the execution is pretty good. People, walled up in the center of the city trying to keep the zombies out, have stratafied into rich or poor, with Dennis Hopper at the top of the heap. A common enough post-collapse senario. The haves all live in Fiddler's Green, a high rise apartment complex, and the havenots live dirt level. The suburban zombies are now showing more interest in their surroundings and a particularly clever, observant and vengeful gas station attendent zombie leads the rest of the shuffling masses to the city to attack the iconic and well lit Fiddler's Green. There are a lot of Zombies in this film, and some of them give damn good preformances, especially the gas attendent zombie whose name I haven't figured out, and Boyd Brooks as the butcher zombie. On the human side, Robert Joy was good as our hero's sidekick,  and I liked John Leguizamo as the hero's rival. I look forward to the dvd, Sperhauk figures there will be an unrated version, I'm hoping for a nice commentary. The Romero commentaries on the previous zombie films are pretty entertaining.

Duck Publisher Dies

I saw this in the June 21 Animation Flash Newsletter.

COMIC PUBLISHER/CONSERVATIONIST BRUCE HAMILTON DIES. Comic book publisher Bruce Hamilton passed away on June 20, 2005, following a prolonged illness. In 1981, Hamilton, along with Russ Cochran, two long-time Disney comics fans, decided to combine forces to bring greater recognition to the work of one of the greats of comic art — Carl Barks, creator of the popular Disney comic book character, Uncle Scrooge McDuck, miserly-yet-adventurous uncle of Donald Duck. Their first efforts went into establishing Another Rainbow Publishing, the banner under which they produced and issued the award-winning book THE FINE ART OF WALT DISNEY´S DONALD DUCK by Carl Barks, a comprehensive collection of the Disney duck paintings. Not long after, the company began producing fine art lithographs of many of these paintings, in strictly limited editions, all signed by Barks, who eventually produced many original works for the series.

In 1983, Another Rainbow took up the task of collecting the entire Disney comicbook ouvré of Barks — more than 500 stories in all — in the 10-set, 30-volume Carl Barks Library. These oversized hardbound volumes reproduced Barks’ pages in pristine black-and-white lineart, as close as possible to the way he’d originally drawn them, and included mountains of special features, articles, reminiscences, interviews, storyboards, critiques and more than a few surprises. This monumental project was finally completed in mid-1990. It, and a follow-on color comic album version produced by Gladstone, are out of print at this time.

In 1985, a new division was founded, Gladstone Publishing, which took up the then-dormant Disney comic book license. Gladstone introduced a whole new generation of Disney comic book readers to the wondrous storytelling of such luminaries as Barks, Paul Murry and Floyd Gottfredson, as well as presenting the first works of modern Disney comics masters Don Rosa and William Van Horn. The company was based in Scottsdale, Arizona, until January 1987, when it moved to Prescott, Arizona. Following this move, along with continuing to bring out Disney comics (except for a three-year hiatus at the beginning of the 1990s) and Carl Barks lithographs, therewere interesting sojourns into the realms of EC Comics and DICK TRACY comic strip reprints.

Seven years after Gladstone´s founding, they revived the Carl Barks Library as full-color, high-quality squarebound comic albums (including the first-ever Carl Barks trading cards), and three years after that reshaped Walt Disney´s Comics and Stories into the Disney collector´s comic book.

Another imprint, Hamilton Comics, was established in 1991 for projects in various arenas. These have included such properties as EEK THE CAT, MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS, FREEKED, FELIX THE CAT, as well as original efforts such as GRAVE TALES, MAGGOTS, DREAD OF NIGHT and MADRAVEN.

In 1993, the Bruce Hamilton Co. was established as the parent of the Gladstone and Hamilton imprints, as well as taking on the managerial duties of Another Rainbow.

Back to me. Carl Barks is hands down my favorite comic artist. That's born from reading Disney comics for over 40 years. I didn't know who Carl Barks was until the mid-70's when I started reading comic history, but I liked his wonderful work even if I didn't know his name. I didn't know Bruce Hamilton, either,  but I appreciate his love of Carl and I like his comic company, quite a bit. There hasn't been a lot of companies doing the Disney comics over the years, you can read a short history of them here.

Friday Night Movies 12

We sure laughed at Seed of Chucky. It's a bloodfest, but it sure is funny. The director, Don Mancini, was the writer of all of the Chucky films. This is his first shot at directing a feature, having previously directed a Tales From The Crypt episode. He did a pretty good job, the action is fun, there's a funny story, and lots of killin'. Jennifer Tilly is back, playing herself and the voice of Tiffany. Brad Dourif returns for the 5th time to play Chucky, although he's sounds more like Danny Devito to me. The puppets are pretty good, and that's how Chucky and his bride start out, puppets on the set of the new Jennifer Tilly film. They are re-animated by the seed of Chucky, Shitface, voiced by Billy Boyd, who sees them on tv and escapes his current job as a ventriloquist dummy. Once Shitface is reunited with his parents, he is renamed Glen or Glenda, depending on who you listen to. Chucky wants a boy and Tiffany wants a girl. The androgenistic Shitface certainly has a lot of issues to deal with, unfortunately, there is no help from his fucked up family, just mo' killin'. Yet another thing he has a hard time with. There is a lot more character developement than you'd expect for a bunch of puppets. There is a fun turn by John Waters, playing a reporter who sees too much and must pay the ultimate price for his snooping. Rapper Redman plays a pussy sniffing himself who thinks he's going to tap Jennifer Tilly's ass and winds up fucked. Like the Bride of Chucky, SoC is played more for laughs than scares. I enjoyed the previous movie and I enjoyed this one.

The puppet in our second feature was not so good. We watched Kraa! The Sea Monster and lucky for us it was short. At 70 minutes it's barely able to hold it's head up high as a feature. Part of the movie came from one source and the rest was added to pad it out to 70 minutes. Kraa, a giant monster, lands in the sea and after splashing about for a bit heads to shore for some wreckin'. An Italian-talking alien crashes into a diner where he's rescued by a fat, white hippy and a black lady, a winning combination if I ever seen one. The giant alien takes off after the small crab like alien. The hippy turns out to be some sort of scientist. He joins in with a lady and the crab guy to take over a nuclear power plant. It's needed to power the super weapon they build to destroy Kraa, the sea monster. There's something to complain about, the sea monster was hardly in the sea. Like the Japanese Godzilla, Kraa is a man in a rubber suit, who wrecks buildings with his bare hands and tail. The only name I recognized in the cast listing was Alison Lohman. I looked her up once I got home and she did the voice of Nausicaa for the Disney 2004  english dub, a couple of movies I saw and several other movies I never saw. One of the three directors, Micheal Deak, would go on to many other better films including the recent Lemony Snicket. Some of the same people did a simular combo with Zarkor, the Invader and that was a much more fun film.

Motorama

I just finished watching the dvd of Motorama. The director, Barry Shils only directed two films and the other is Wigstock, some sort of documentary about big hair. Shils was also a producer for Larry Cohen in the 80's. The writer on Motorama, Joseph Minion, wrote After Hours which Martin Scorsese directed. I don't care for After Hours, something about it made me never want to watch it again. I do like Motorama, this is my third copy. I taped it off of tv, later found a prerecord VHS and now I have the dvd. None of them is letterboxed, me so sad. Even though Drew Barrymore is so huge on the box, she is only in it for a brief minute or two. There are a ton of cameos.

The story is pretty simple, 10 year old Gus runs away from his abusive home, stealing a red Mustang as his getaway car. He has some adventures, a chathartic dream sequence, and he's delivered to a safe haven in the third act. Our Gus is a resourceful boy, making leg extentions to work the pedals of the car, but he's not knowledgeable 'nuff to keep out o' trouble. The title of the film comes from a contest. A gas company has a game, collect the cards, spell out Motorama and be eligible for a $500,000,000 prize. That is the trouble, needing more of those cards propells Gus all over, going from gas station to gas station looking for more cards. I know about that kind of shit, just three more to go, just two more, one more.  Gus is ten and he acts like one, even though he's being thrown into adult situations, but this is not a kids movie, it's got some bare titties in it. Watch out. I do like the lesson to be learned about obsessive collecting. There's something primal in collecting. Watch out.

It's not a movie for everyone, the opinions on IMDb and other reviews are varied, some vicious, some real exuberant. I think it's a pretty good first movie, and you'd have to say it's an art house or cult type of movie if you were having to describe it to someone. It's not that scary, there are a bunch of things happening and it has a happy ending, and Drew is pretty cute.

Hot creature feature

I have been sitting her watching 20 Million Miles to Earth and looking at crap on some website. 20MMTE was made in 1957, directed by Nathan Juran, and stars William Hopper and Joan Taylor. Juran's a pretty good director. He made some other good 50 SF films, The Brain From Planet Arous, 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and The Deadly Mantis. He did some good tv also. This movie teams him with Ray Harryhausen and the two of them bring the story of the Ymir to life.

When a spaceship crashes in the Mediterranean some Italian fishermen get aboard and rescue the survivors. William Hopper, Paul Drake on the Perry Mason tv series, plays the survivor who lives. The Ymir, a creature brought back from Hopper's first manned trip to Venus, is thrown into the water during the crash. The container washes up on shore and is found by a small boy. The boy sells it to a science guy, and his cute daughter assistant Joan Taylor, and they release the creature. The Ymir, confused by his earth surroundings, grows huge and fights an elephant. Some soldiers kill his giant self, but not before the partial destruction of some ancient priceless relics, including the Colosseum. It's a fun enough movie with a good stop-motion monster. There is some romance between Hopper and Taylor. At one point she greets him with this wonderful line..."I've been slaving over a hot creature all day." I must have seen this movie more than 10 times. I keep upgrading my copy. I had a tape copy at ep when tapes were expensive, one at sp when tapes were cheaper, another when I upgraded to a stereo vcr, and now a dvd copy off of Turner Classic Movies.

Now I am watching The Blob with Steve McQueen. This is only the fourth film of his I have. I have seen a few more but mostly he made films I wasn't interested in. Usually one viewing was enough. My favorite is Soldier in the Rain, based on a William Goldman novel, staring Jackie Gleason and Steve and Tuesday Weld. I read the book in my mid teens and stuff from the book still surfaces in my mind, originally imprinted in the mid to late 60's. It was one of the first adult novels I read, about when I was reading the James Bond novels for the first time. I was using my mothers library card to bring books home from the adult section, until a librarian gave me an adult card. A couple of years ago I picked up a copy of The Magnificent Seven, mostly because of it's relationship to The Seven Samurai. It's ok, as is The Getaway. These are films I will want to see again, and some day when I get the time, I'll check them out.