Monthly Archives: November 2012

by

21 Jump Street – Review

5/5 – Watch this movie!

When I first heard that 21 Jump Street, that beloved series from my youth, was being remade into a movie starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill, I was more than leery about it. I was positive it would like the new GI Joe and Transformers movies and would take a giant dump on a TV show I loved as a kid.

I skipped it in the theaters and didn’t give it a second thought when it came out on DVD. But then, slowly, I kept hearing from friends whose opinions I trust that this movie is hilarious. Setting aside my trepidation, I rented 21 Jump Street.

My friends were right, this movie is hilarious.

I’m guessing there are a lot of guys who graduated in the late 90s
 who get to look back on this unfortunate look in their yearbook photo.

21 Jump Street is a great comedy. If you want to laugh, and laugh hard, for an hour and 49 minutes, rent this movie. It’s a movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously. There are a few meta jokes about current 80s revival and about the previous incarnation of Jump Street. Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller also use title cards to a very funny effect. The title cards might be my favorite thing about this movie.

Awesome unicorn!

It’s crazy how much Dave Franco looks and sounds like his older brother James. Is he a clone? Has anyone seen his birth certificate? I’m guessing clone.

Project DAVE: The first human clone.

SPOILERS after the title card…you’ve been warned…

How awesome was it that Johnny Depp and Peter DeLuise reprised their roles as Officers Tom Hanson and Doug Penhall? I was excited when Holly Robinson showed up early in the movie, but the cameo by these two guys near the end was perfect! It’s too bad they won’t be in the sequel…
Fuck yeah, motherfucker!!!
by

Looper – Review

5/5 – Go see this movie now!

I want to see Looper again; it’s that good. If you haven’t seen Looper yet, do yourself a favor and see it before it leaves the theater. It is my new favorite movie of 2012.

I’m going to spoil major story points in this review, so don’t read any further until after you’ve seen Looper.

Seriously, don’t go any further if you haven’t seen the movie.

Part of what I loved about Looper was the fluidity of who was the hero in the story. Here, I’m considering it necessary to be selfless in order to be considered a hero. If a character acts in his own self-interest, he’s an antihero as best.

Young Joe does a heroic act early in the film when he hides Seth after Seth fails to close his loop. Young Joe is putting his life in danger here. But he quickly sells Seth when his own savings are threatened by his boss as the price for his silence. Seth comes to a gruesome end, largely to Joe’s fault.

When Old Joe returns to the past, he quickly appears to be more heroic than Young Joe. His heroic quest is to come back in time and kill the Rainmaker as a child. The Rainmaker, besides being the criminal kingpin of the future, was behind the killing of Old Joe’s wife and countless others, and sent Old Joe back to the past to be killed by his younger self. Remember the old “If you could go back in time and kill Hitler as a baby, would you do it?” question? That’s Old Joe’s quest in a nutshell. How could you be opposed to that? He is clearly the hero at this point in the movie.

I sometimes want to do this to my younger self.

But Old Joe falls from the heroic path with relative ease. When they’re sitting in the diner, Old Joe tells Young Joe that he wants to kill the Rainmaker in order to save his wife in the future. But Old Joe refuses to show Young Joe his wife’s photo when Young Joe says that if he see it, he’ll make sure he never talks to her when he sees her for the first time in Young Joe’s future/Old Joe’s past. If they never meet, they’ll never marry and she won’t be murdered. Sure, Young Joe isn’t doing this to be altruistic. Young Joe hates Old Joe. He sees his living as being a block to his future happiness. If he can kill his future self, maybe Young Joe can get back in good with his mob employers. Old Joe won’t let him see his wife’s photo. Old Joe wants it all. He wants to kill the Rainmaker as a child and change the future, but he also wants to hold onto his personal future with his wife. If he was truly selfless and concerned with his wife’s safety over his own, he would show Young Joe his wife’s picture. Old Joe does have a good motivation for this. He views his wife as his savior. With her help, he kicked the junk, mellowed out and found true happiness for the first time in his life. He can’t picture his life without his wife.

The far more damning act to Old Joe’s heroism is when Old Joe kills the first child. Director Rian Johnson used a much more interesting take on the “Would you kill Hitler as a baby?” question when he added in the twist that Old Joe has it narrowed down to three possible children that may grow up to become the Rainmaker. “Would you kill up to two innocent children if it meant also being able to kill Hitler as a child?” is a much harder question to answer. I liked that Old Joe was clearly pained by his killing of the first child. It stopped him from losing all sympathy and just coming across as a complete Terminator-esque monster. But he’s definitely on his way to being a monster.

The second child on Old Joe’s hit list turns out to be the daughter of Suzie, the stripper/prostitute that Young Joe is infatuated with at the beginning of the movie. Young Joe cares for Suzie. He offers Suzie enough money to take care of her and her kid. But Old Joe is perfectly willing to kill Suzie’s child if that prevents the Rainmaker from coming into being. Old Joe does pause at first when he realizes his next target is Suzie’s child, but decides to go through with it. At this point, he knows that Young Joe is guarding Cid, the final child, on the farm. If he still cared for Suzie, he could save Suzie’s child for last. If Cid is the one destined to be the Rainmaker, then Suzie’s child won’t have to die if he changed up the order of who he kills. But doing so could put his mission into jeopardy. Old Joe sees himself as having a much higher chance of success killing Suzie’s child here than he does succeeding at the farm. I think Old Joe realized there was a very good chance he wasn’t returning from the farm, and that infiltrating the city a second time would be difficult, so he decides to kill Suzie’s child now to play it safe. It’s only Kid Blue setting of a trap for Old Joe in Suzie’s apartment that keeps Suzie’s child alive.

When Young Joe arrives at the farm, he hasn’t undergone his heroic transformation yet. He’s there to kill Old Joe when Old Joe shows up. He even tells Sara that he doesn’t care at all about her or Cid. His interactions with the two of them, and his viewing of Sara’s motherly love for her son does awaken something inside Young Joe. When Sara stands between Old Joe and Cid, willing to sacrifice herself for her son’s survival, something is awakened in Young Joe. Previously, Young Joe would help people as long as it didn’t cut into his well being. But Sara’s love for Cid inspires him to make the ultimate sacrifice. He shoots himself point blank through the chest in order to prevent his future self from killing an innocent woman.

In Old Joe’s defense, this kid is seriously creepy.

In that moment when he shoots himself, Young Joe explains that he realized Old Joe would be creating the Rainmaker instead of preventing him from existing. Cid would escape, embittered by the loss of two mothers and use his smarts and powers to become the Rainmaker. By killing himself, he’s both saving Sara’s life, and the hope that she can raise Cid right so that he doesn’t grow up to be the Rainmaker.

But did Young Joe really prevent the Rainmaker from coming into being by killing himself? Remember, in the original timeline, Young Joe grows up to become Old Joe after successfully closing his loop as originally intended. Old Joe is originally never given the chance to orphan Cid, so Joe isn’t integral in Cid becoming the Rainmaker. But, here is why I think Young Joe succeeded. At the end of the movie, when Sara and Cid reunite, he calls her mom. Before this, he’s always called her Sara, never acknowledged her as his mother, and told Young Joe that she’s a liar. But something changed when Sara stood between Old Joe and Cid, and Young Joe sacrificed himself. That change of calling her mom instead of Sara is tiny, but it’s huge. Sure, something could happen down the road that causes Cid to fall to the dark side, but at this moment, he has the best chance of growing up a hero instead of a villain. His powers and his outbursts make him a scary child, but he tells Young Joe he wants to protect people. I think Cid is now on the path to becoming more Superman and less Lex Luthor.

You know what would be really messed up? If it was Suzie’s child all along.

At some point before he becomes Old Joe, Young Joe apparently becomes Neo.

In a different (and I also think worse) movie, Young Joe and Old Joe would team up to take of the mob of the future down in Young Joe’s present. Instead, Rian Johnson has given us a much richer experience with his Looper.

by

Argo – Review

5/5 – Go see this movie!

Ben Affleck is now three for three when it comes to directing. Not only that, but Argo is the best of those three movies as well. I really liked Gone Baby Gone and loved The Town, but I think Affleck has set a new bar for himself with Argo.

Affleck is helped by a really stellar cast. Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, John Goodman, Victor Garber and Tate Donovan join Affleck in this movie about a fake movie. Kyle Chandler even makes a very brief couple of appearances.

Don’t blink. You might miss him.

Argo is based on the real life story of a CIA mission from 1980. When the American embassy in Iran was raided by revolutionaries in 1979, 6 embassy workers managed to escape to the residence of the Canadian Ambassador. Tony Mendez, played by Ben Affleck, is the CIA agent tasked with getting them out of Iran before they’re discovered and killed. The tension is high throughout the entirety of the movie. Seriously, the tension is high right until before the credits roll. That works great at making Argo a very suspenseful movie.

I was on the look out for it, but could not find one instance of Affleck Face at any point in the movie. I was shocked. A Ben Affleck movie without Affleck Face? He came close once, but never gave us full Affleck Face. The tension was broken instead by my new favorite phrase, “Argo fuck yourself!”

“Argo fuck yourself!”

I will be shocked if Argo doesn’t get nominated for Best Movie, Affleck for Best Director and screenwriter Chris Terrio for Best Screenplay at the next Academy Awards.

I’m starting a 1-5 rating system with this review. A 1 means avoid the movie and a 5 means you should go see it right now. You can find the number rating at the top of the review, just under the movie poster. In case you missed it, I gave Argo a 5.

by

Andrea Romano Interview at NYCC 2012

I was able to sit down with both Bruce Timm and Andrea Romano at New York Comic Con this year to talk about Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Parts 1 and 2 and Batman: The Animated Series. You can read my Bruce Timm interview here.

Andrea Romano has been casting Batman for the past 20 years. “Somebody told me that I’ve cast Batman 13 or 14 times over the various different projects,” said Romano. She is one of the people responsible for the incredibly good casting of  Kevin Conroy as the voice of Batman for Batman: The Animated Series.
When Kevin Conroy came in for this audition int he early 90s, Andrea had already listened to 500 auditions for the role of Batman, and had auditioned 150 people in person herself. After Kevin’s audition,  Bruce Timm and Andrea looked at each other and said “We have found Batman.” In the two decades since Kevin Conroy began being the voice of Batman, people have come up to Andrea and told her that “For my entire life, I’ve heard Kevin Conroy as Batman.” Andrea knows the feeling. According to Andrea, “When I prep a script, regardless of what incarnation of Batman it is, when I’m preparing for recording, I hear Kevin’s voice. Even though it may be somebody else I’ve cast to play Batman, I hear Kevin’s voice. That sets the bar.”
Andrea described the casting of Batman as “incredibly hard.” But the benefit, according to her, is that “it’s a character you don’t have to pitch. You don’t have to go, “There’s a guy named Bruce Wayne, and he’s got this problem because his parents were murdered.” Everyone knows who he is.” She also pointed out that these actors may never get the chance to play him on camera and this could be their one opportunity to play him.
When asked about how Mark Hamill was cast as the Joker, Andrea said that Mark Hamill approached her. Mark had his agent call her saying that Mark wanted to be a part of the Batman series. Andrea first cast him as a guest. “He did a terrific job and was very much embraced by the crew. He was very generous with his Star Wars stories.” When they finished recording, he came over to Andrea and said, “I had a great time, but you don’t understand. I want to be a part of this series,” Andrea let on. At the time, Tim Curry had been cast as the Joker and had recorded a handful of episodes. Andrea was asked by her higher ups to recast him. On a side note, she mentioned that she is probably the only person who has an existing version of a Batman show that has Tim Curry in it playing the Joker. She decided to give Mark Hamill a shot. “He auditioned and was stunning,” Andrea said about Mark.
In Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 2, Michael Emerson, from Lost and Person of Interest, will be the one playing the Joker. When asked how she found him, Andrea said that she approached Michael at San Diego Comic Con and asked him if he would ever be interested in doing an animated project if the right role came up. “Then this came up and I said, “Would you like to be the Joker?” and he jumped on it.” said Andrea. According to her, Michael said this was the hardest work he’d ever done. “I think because it’s out of his wheelhouse.” Andrea commented. When they recorded Michael as the Joker, Andrea was in LA and Michael was in NY. It was the first time Andrea recorded via Skype, so she could watch him. “Because working with an actor when you can see them, as opposed to only hearing their voice is very helpful. And having them be able to see me so that I can direct them.” Andrea explained.
Regarding Peter Weller being cast as Batman in The Dark Knight Returns, Andrea said “If I can’t use Kevin Conroy, because I do love using Kevin Conroy whenever I can, Mark Hamill as well, this was a really good bit of casting.” She explained, “The thing is, Peter is a good actor in and of himself. I didn’t know he was a major comic book fan. He was really familiar with the source material.”
At New York Comic Con, publicist Gary Miereanu revealed that Conan O’Brien would be voicing talk show host Dave Endocrine in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 2. When asked how it was working with Conan, Andrea said, “He was excellent. He was a pleasure to work with. There’s something that he has to do in this piece, which is when he gets hit with Joker gas, that laughing gas that hits people. It starts with a building laugh and then a big, big laugh and then it gets to that painful, I’m dying laugh. He did it in one take. It’s a long, long laugh. Both Bruce Timm and I were like, “You’re really good.” You have no idea how hard that is. Laughing on cue is one of the hardest things to do in voice over. It’s just really, really hard, and he just nailed it.”
When asked who’d she like to work with in the future, Andrea’s answer was Jon Hamm. “I think he’s a wonderful actor. He can do comedy, he can do drama and everything in-between. She also said she wants to work with Kyle Chandler, saying “I think he’s a terrific actor too.” And she would love to work with Glenn Close. “[Glenn Close] began her career in voice over. She was in The Legend of Greystoke, the Tarzan story. She completely dubbed Andie MacDowell’s voice. That’s not Andie MacDowell. That’s Glenn Close’s voice. She’s a terrific voice over actress, so I want to work with her.” explained Andrea.
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 2 will be released on Blu-Ray and DVD on January 29, 2013.
Interview by Billy Henehan
by

Bruce Timm Interview at NYCC 2012

At New York Comic Con, I was able to sit down with Producer Bruce Timm and Casting Director Andrea Romano to discuss Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 1 and 2, and the enduring legacy of Batman: The Animated Series.

Bruce Timm and his team meet every week with people from Warner Home Video, DC Comics and Warner Brothers Animation in order to discuss everything that’s in production and what they might want to put into production. The idea of doing an adaptation of Batman: The Dark Knight returns was first brought up when DC began producing animated movies. There was some objection to it at the time, and they did other projects. The idea didn’t come up again until a couple of years ago, in between Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight’s release and the start of production on The Dark Knight Rises. There was concern that Christopher wanted to use The Dark Knight Returns for The Dark Knight Rises, so they had to again, not move forward with an animated Dark Knight Returns movie. Later on, once The Dark Knight Rises was in production, DC said it was different enough from The Dark Knight Returns to do an adaptation. “I jumped on it,” said Bruce Timm.

According to Bruce, it’s tricky finding the right project to pitch. “Sometimes we’ll have a favorite Batman comic that we loved as a kid or a teenager, and we’ll throw the idea out, but not all of those make good movies.” He went on to explain that with the realities of the marketplace is that even with the tight budget they work with, the movies still cost X millions of dollars. “The Home Video people want a sure thing. That means you’re going to get a lot of Batman movies, a lot of Superman movies, a lot of Justice League movies. I’m hoping that something happens along the way that allows us to broaden our horizons and lets us do a Nightwing movie or a Batgirl movie, but what something might be, I don’t know,” explained Bruce. I asked him, if Arrow continues to be popular, will we see a Green Arrow animated movie? “Who knows? Maybe. Possibly. We’ll see.” was his response. That sounds hopeful to me, Arrow fans.

When asked if he was concerned bringing the politics of the comic to the film version of The Dark Knight Returns, Bruce said, “Fortunately for me, my takeaway from reading the original in terms of political mind view is that Frank Miller seems to hate everybody. You know? It’s not that he hates liberals or he hates conservatives.”

Bruce caught himself and said, “I shouldn’t have said that. Frank doesn’t hate everybody. I don’t think Frank hates anybody.”

(Just kidding, Frank)
In talking about the actual script for The Dark Knight Returns, Bruce Timm said that screenwriter Bob Goodman hit all the high points in his outline. After Bob turned in his first draft, Bruce made notes about important dialogue from the book that needed to be in the script, or an important moment that needed to be put in. “It’s a little back and forth, but it’s a complicated process,” said Bruce.
The art direction is also something that was labored over. “We wanted to make it as much like the source material as possible,but knowing we weren’t going to make it look exactly like the comic…It’s always a trick to find what are the most iconic looking things about the original art that makes it look like Frank Miller art and yet at the same time can also be translated into animation.” Bruce commented. They referred to the comic on every background, vehicle, location and color schemes. Their goal was to make it look like the original comic as much as possible. Finding an art style that worked was difficult. It was something they struggled with for weeks. It had to be true to the original, but still able to be animated. They even went back to the original model sheets from the Batman: The Animated Series episode that dealt with The Dark Knight Returns, but didn’t get any help from there. “They were too simplified.” said Bruce. “We put our nose to the grindstone, sweat more bullets and eventually came up with what we came up with.”
Our discussion turned to Batman: The Animated Series. When I asked if he had a favorite episode, he said, “No. Too many. I couldn’t narrow it down.” When I followed that up with if there was an episode he didn’t like or that he was really unhappy with, he responded similarly: “Oh, I have tons that I don’t like. Are you kidding me? Again, I couldn’t narrow it down either. Which one’s the worst? There’s too many.” When asked who his favorite Batman composer was, Bruce said “That’s like asking me which one of my kids I love best.” Naturally, I immediately followed up with, “Which one of your kids do you love best?” Without missing a beat, Bruce said, “My daughter.” and then went on to say, “That’s an easy one, because I only have one.”
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 1 is available now. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 2 will be released on January 29, 2013.
Interview by Billy Henehan.
by

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 1 Review

Around the time that the first Tim Burton Batman movie was released, I had a case of full-on Batmania. I had enough Batman t-shirts to last over a week. I had multiple Batman buttons pinned to my jackets. I even had a giant Batman movie poster from the NYC subway hanging in my bedroom.

It was around this time that I was given a copy of The Dark Knight Returns. It immediately became one of my favorite comics. It’s one of those comics that I read almost every year.

When it was announced that Dark Knight Returns would be adapted into an animated movie, I couldn’t help but feel hesitant about it. I’m not a fan of the Death of Superman animated film and I worried that they would use the wrong art style or water down the story on DKR. The box art scared me; this wasn’t the Batman from The Dark Knight Returns on the box art.

I shouldn’t have worried. The Dark Knight Returns Part 1 is a very faithful adaption of the first half of The Dark Knight Returns. The art style is very reminiscent of Frank Miller’s art from the comic, but updated to not look dated, less rough, and more streamlined. It’s a very subtle shift in style and it works well. The story has barely been changed. It’s not a shot-for-shot, line-for-line remake of the comic, but while watching it, I couldn’t pick out any scene that was missed. Batman’s inner monologue is gone, but that may be for the better. I don’t know if I’d have enjoyed the movie if every scene was narrated by The God Damn Batman.

Yessssss!

The story in Part 1 deals with Batman coming out of retirement to deal with the Mutant Gang, who have been terrorizing Gotham City. The leader of the Mutants is a ‘roided up, razor teethed psycho. It’s a cool story that works both on its own and as a set-up for Part 2, which is being released on January 29, 2013. The climatic battle between Batman and the leader of the Mutants is simply awesome.

The Mutant Gang have a similar eye-wear fashion sense as Cyclops from the X-Men.

The hardest part of enjoying any animated Batman movie for me is dealing with Kevin Conroy not voicing Batman. To me, and many others, Kevin Conroy is Batman, so hearing someone else’s voice come out of the character’s mouth can be jarring. But Peter Weller is great as Batman.

I highly recommend checking out Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 1. It has replaced Batman: Under the Red Hood as my favorite DC animated feature. If you enjoyed the recent The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight rises movies, it’s worth checking out the story that helped inspire those two films.

I can’t wait for Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 2 to be released. In the meantime, I think I’ll check out the DC animated movie of my other favorite Batman tale: Year One.

You can also read my interviews with Bruce Timm and Andrea Romano about the making of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.

by

NYCC 2012: Scott C’s The Great Showdowns


One of my favorite things about going to comic book conventions is the chance to pick up books before they are released to the general public. It might sound silly, but there’s something cool about being able to get something that’s not yet been released to stores. Even though I was on a tight budget at this year’s New York Comic Con, #1 on my list of things I had to buy was an advance copy of Scott C’s Great Showdowns book, which was just released by Titan Books at the end of October.
           
 I first came across Scott C’s (the “C” stands for “Campbell”) work online earlier this year, and I immediately fell for his fantastic artwork. His style could veer into “too cute” territory, but the topics of his paintings (such as Daft Punk Camping, or the Beatles without their shoes) are usually just bizarre enough to prevent this from happening. He’s been posting his Great Showdown paintings online (almost) daily for a while now, and I was super psyched that there would finally be a book collecting these awesome pieces. For those unfamiliar with his work, the paintings feature “moments of conflict” from classic (and, admittedly, not so classic) movies. They are not only restricted to fight scenes, or good vs. evil battles – the best part about these paintings is that they can pretty much be anything – from Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore vs. a vase on a pottery wheel (Ghost), to a boat vs. an iceberg (Titanic), to (my favorite) Bruce Willis vs. many smiling shards of glass (Die Hard). I haven’t mentioned it, but all the subjects are smiling at one another, and just seem so happy to be included in the paintings.

             

As an added bonus, in addition to setting up a signing, NYCC also included a Great Showdowns panel, which gave everyone the chance to hear about the book from the man himself. Over the course of about an hour, Campbell talked about the impetus for the showdowns (the first painting, of Ghostbusters, was included in an exhibition at Gallery 1988 in Los Angeles), his favorite of the showdowns (Ghost), how, after more than 500 of these paintings, he still has a long list of movies he’s still got to get to (one specific example: Serenity– chew on that one, nerds!) Like most panels, this one closed with a Q & A session – but while this usually is the signal to leave a panel, Campbell kept the audience glued to their seats by drawing each person asking the questions as they were answering them! While this did lead to questions that were…less than awesome (especially since the panel’s location was right next to the exit from Stan Lee’s photo op), Campbell’s love of making art was infectious, and I would not be surprised if a majority of the people that wandered by the panel ended up getting a copy of the book. 

While I was lucky enough to pick up an early copy at Comic Con, The Great Showdowns should be available now at all good bookstores- pick up yours today!      

Written by Nicolas Doyle. Convention photo by Nicolas Doyle.