Comics

5 May 2010

‘Ang ‘Bout

I was reading 100 Bullets – Hang Up on the Hang Low recently when, a dozen or so pages in, I realised that the sense of familiarity I was experiencing was not just from the ‘old friends getting together and torturing each other’ noir vibe but that I’d actually read it all before. Twice, according to my reading diary.

I can understand The Goddess getting halfway into a book before realising she’d read it before – she devours hundreds of books a year (and not one of them will have a speech- or thought-balloon). My reading diary has me averaging 115 comics, scripts and books a year for the period 2006-2009.

What’s my excuse?

26 April 2010

Resonance

That word has been bouncing ’round my head lately. Part of it has been Steve Hickey‘s posts about sticky ideas. Another part has been discussions I’ve had recently about film, television and theatre that have left enduring memories regardless of the passage of time. And there’s been a smidgen of shop talk about making the familiar fresh.

There are doubtless innumerable posts in the ether about what makes a piece of art resonate.

For me, it’s a singular interpretation, execution and vision that transports the viewer.

I have no idea where David Simon and Eric Overmyer are going with Treme but I am so there, man, because I’m hooked. Same goes for the recently concluded 100 Bullets from Messieurs Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso – each trade paperback left me floundering as a reader but I’d still make enough connections between the many, many plotlines and goddamn if it wasn’t a hot little page-turner. And then there’s The West Wing and The Walking Dead. And The Good Wife and Ex Machina. And Mad Men. … I could go on.

With the exception of Treme, all of the above are easily categorized genre pieces.

Each title resonates not just because they’re so different from everything else out there that they’re essential reading/watching – they’re the creators talking directly to us the audience at an individual level. They’re connecting.

That’s resonating.

18 February 2010

Point & Click

Been saving these up, oh yes I have.

The last swords-and-sandals epic I saw was Gladiator. Since then, Troy, Alexander, Rome and 300 have come and gone with nary a flicker of interest on my part. But The Incomparable‘s review of Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi‘s Spartacus has sparked a guilty, pulpy, what-the-heck kind of interest:

…Spartacus won’t win any awards for the originality of its premise. Hunktacular warrior dude loves his superhot wife, but is reluctantly called away to battle for the good of his people. Hunktacular warrior dude is betrayed by sleaze-weasel Roman general and branded a deserter. Hunktacular warrior dude escapes and is reunited with his superhot wife just in time for them to be captured (notably, while in the altogether) by sleaze-weasel Roman general. Sleaze-weasel Roman general sells hunktacular warrior dude into the employ of agreeably amoral gladiator owner. Hunktacular warrior dude must wage a muscly, well-oiled, tiny-pantsed struggle up the ranks of the gladiator circuit to find his beloved wife and gain his whoa that guy just took a giant axe to the face!

The always excellent xkcd webcomic has this heads-up for those writers out there putting the final touches on their denouement:

And go here – now – for the rest of this brilliant bat-take on Memento:

10 January 2010

About Last Year

(Yeah, okay: eight days since my last post is more than a few days – more than several days – more, even, thana week. Sorry.)

It’s been so long since we’ve rolled into 2010 I won’t bore you with -0

This is my blog – and in the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Hooah.

2009 was really a year for the goggle box —

Television

Better Off Ted – Season 1
Generation Kill
Go Girls – Season 1
Mad Men – Season 3
Nurse Jackie – Season 1
State of Play

— but cinema had some new – and old – pleasures —

Film

Avatar
Dan in Real Life
No Country for Old Men

Rambo (2007)
Stephanie Daley
The Lives of Others
Up

— and when not glooed to a flickering screen, there was always —

American Born Chinese – Gene Yang
Global Frequency – Warren Ellis and various artists
Iron Man: Extremis – Warren Ellis and Adi Granov
Lenore: Cooties – Roman Dirge
Parker: The Hunted – Darwyn Cooke, based on the book by Donald E Westlake

Scalped: Casino Boogie – Jason Aaron & R M Guera
The Walking Dead: The Heart’s Desire – Robert Kirkman & Charlie Adlard

Oryx & Crake – Margaret Atwood
The Turnaround – George Pelecanos

… Aaaand – okay, books without pictures were a bit of a rarity last year (again) – but these scripts made an impression:

Action: Pilot – Chris Thompson
Burn Notice: Pilot – Matt Nix
NYPD Blue: Pilot – David Milch
Six Feet Under: Pilot – Alan Ball
The Philanthropist: Pilot – Tom Fontana

Miami Vice (2004) – Michael Mann
Precious – Geoffrey Fletcher

Red Rock West – John Dahl and Rick Dahl
The Incredibles – Brad Bird
The Hurt Locker – Mark Boal

The Road – Joe Penhall
Zombieland – Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick

I won’t be disclosing stats because they’re pitiful and I have no excuse. But if you break my run of comment spam (three figures and rising this past month) and ask nicely, I’ll consider it.

2009 was an okay year for watching and reading – a better year for writing – and 2010 awaits my ~~conquest~~ ~~domination~~ attention.

Overall rating: Satisfactory – but must try harder.

17 June 2009

Point & Click

Okay this isn’t post-dated.

I’ve got fifteen minutes spare.

How quickly can I cut and paste and make sense?

How about ten best film endings? (Fedora-tip: Infinite Monkeys by way of The Incomparable.)

I’ve been a fan of Dylan Horrocks since Hicksville (a phase of forcing myself to try some homegrown comics fare). He’s got a blog. With serials and stories, too! Recommended for civilians and comic aficionados alike.

PhD student Gareth James is very generously sharing some of the fruits of his research into the history of HBO original programming, 1997-2007 at Gareth On…. (Fedora-tip: Lynden Barber.)

Time’s up already. Must be a slow linker.

15 April 2009

Quis Custodiet – Abridged

Mr Hilton at The Editing Room has just put up an abridged script for Watchmen.

And this excerpt is for the benefit of The Goddess who wondered what the heck the story was with Bubastis the wondercat:

MATTHEW GOODE

Would you like me to explain why as I stroke my tigercatrabbit?

PATRICK WILSON

Er, actually, yeah, are you going to explain that thing at all?

MATTHEW GOODE

Who, Mr. Meowkins? He’s my pet.

PATRICK WILSON

Right. I figured that.

This link/post is dedicated to Mr Molloy.

31 March 200919 October 2012

Point & Click

A bit of a backlog of a collection, attributions for which I can’t remember, sorry – though a pretty good bet would be the sidebar, but.

Billy Mernit makes a good case for bad screenwriting.

There are such things as happy endings for screenwriters in Hollywood – just ask Robert Mark Kamen.

Salman Rushdie writes about adaptation.

Thanks, I suspect, to Nick Grant of Onfilm, I have discovered The A.V. Club‘s excellent The New Cult Canon series, in particular this article about the commentary between The Limey’s writer Lem Dobbs and director Steven Soderbergh.

Oh, is nothing sacred, Mr Rogers?

Another Kiwi screenwriting blog! Lyse Beck gives us Birds With Nuts. There’s a nice thread about Watchmen here.

And speaking of the Minutemen, after all my build–up, The Goddess and I went to see Watchmen a week or so ago. She enjoyed it; I hankered for some interpretation rather than faithful replication. Thanks to Mr Slevin I’ve read people who can say what I’m thinking much better than I could here, here and here. (And no one’s mentioned it’s been two whole decades since Tim Burton gave us Michael Keaton as Batman – didn’t that kickstart the mainstreaming of comic-book adaptations?)

5 March 2009

Quis Custodiet – One Sleep to Go

Oh alright. Despite whatever I said before, I’m in a… high state of anticipation.

Lynden Barber‘s whip ’round of reviews, along with the L.A. Times‘ Patrick Goldstein‘s post, have lowered expectations somewhat. Roger Ebert has given it four stars and a review that saw past the “cerulean genitalia” and picked up on a whole lot of the original comic‘s subtext (and I don’t think he’s read it).

I must note, however, that Mr Ebert gave each Hellboy film three and a half stars. After reading Guillermo del Toro‘s script prior to seeing the first one, I was rather… crestfallen at the finished product. The Goddess has never forgiven me for choosing Hellboy on one of our precious nights out. I’ve already asked Her to accompany me to Watchmen but the 163-minute running time is worrisome. Should I push my well-thumbed trade paperback on Her in preparation? Hurm.

The possibility of watching Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons‘ creation on the big screen is high ~~this weekend~~ ~~next week~~ this month.

2 March 2009

(Comic)bookhunter

Decades’ of comic-reading made me pick up 500 Essential Graphic Novels the other day. Two hundred, I thought to myself, I bet I’ve read two hundred easy.

I barely managed ninety*.

And that was by including characters I knew I’d read but couldn’t exactly recall if I’d read the title listed in the book. I definitely remember reading Lucky Luke and A.B.C. Warriors but I can’t recall specifically chuckling over A Lucky Luke Adventure: Billy the Kid or acting-out mek-carnage from A.B.C. Warriors: The Black Hole.

Meantime, I plan to work my way through a list that includes –

Bryan Talbot‘s Alice in Sunderland<,/li>
Dave Sim‘s towering Cerebus,
Frank Stack‘s The New Adventures of Jesus: Second Coming,
Keiji Nakazawa‘s Barefoot Gen series,
Roberta Gregory‘s Life’s a Bitch: The Bitchy Bitch Chronicles,
Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch‘s The Ultimates,

– and, based on its premise and the cover art, Jason Shiga‘s Bookhunter:

The year is 1973. A priceless book has been stolen from the Oakland Public Library. A crack team of Bookhunters (aka. library police) have less than three days to recover the stolen item. It’s a race against the clock as our heroes use every tool in their arsenal of library equipment to find the book and the mastermind who stole it.

* Eighteen lousy percent. At least I did better with the IMDb top 250 list, making 67.6% (though I suspect if that list went to 500, my batting average would drop significantly). (Film Addict link courtesy of Dan Slevin.)

5 January 2009

A Belated Review

And what have I got to say for my reading and viewing for 2008?

147 books, comics and scripts were picked up and read, all bar 19 right through, with the most memorable being:
- Pamela Douglas‘ Writing the TV Drama Series, Mark Haddon‘s A Spot of Bother and Ruth L Ozeki‘s My Year of Meat;
- Kyle Baker‘s Plastic Man on the Lam!, Laurence Hyde‘s Southern Cross, Jason‘s* The Living and the Dead, Harvey Pekar and Dean Haspiel‘s The Quitter, Joe Sacco‘s Palestine, Stan Sakai‘s Usagi Yojimbo, Marjane Satrapi‘s Persepolis, and Brian K Vaughan and Pia Guerra‘s Y: The Last Man;
- Phillipe Claudel‘s I’ve Loved You So Long, Frank Darabont‘s Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods, Stuart Gordon, Dennis Paoli and William Norris‘ H.P. Lovecraft’s The Reanimator, Frank Nugent‘s The Searchers, M Night Shyamalan‘s The Happening, and Billy Wilder and IAL Diamond‘s Some Like it Hot.
113 features and television series were watched on a screen, with 20 stopped part-way through, the most memorable being:
- The Closer Season 3, Escape to River Cottage, Matthew Weiner‘s* Mad Men Season 1, Te Radar‘s Off the Radar, Shawn Ryan‘s The Shield Seasons 4-7, Sports Night (*), and David Simon‘s The Wire Seasons 3-5;
- The Dead Girl, Lars and the Real Girl, Michael Clayton, Moonstruck, A Scanner Darkly, Shoot ‘Em Up, The Squid and the Whale, and Waitress.

Yep, my book readin’s waaay down, but I’ve recently rediscovered it over the break with three (non-picture) books on the go. (But will I finish them?).

Hardcopy scripts were courtesy of the guild‘s Timpson Collection. Softcopies, as always, were courtesy of Don at Simply Scripts.

It was a very quiet year for film watching. How quiet? I’ve only seen two films apiece in Roger Ebert‘s 2008 picks and Lynden Barber‘s faves.

Maybe that was because 2008 was a year for a lot of box watching. While some people mourn the loss of Bionic Woman, and The Sopranos, I’ve got my own problems with the end of The Shield and The Wire. Don’t get me wrong – I’m glad they finished when they did: better to choose your terms of departure than overstay your welcome.

The universe shall provide.