More Wizard World

A couple of pictures Jess and Grant took at Wizard World Chicago.

Me taking a picture of Grant taking a picture of me.

"Is it hot in here, or is it just May?"

Giant Robot Warriors, Poe's visitor, and the Treasure of Constantinople

Kill All Monsters!-Related

I got my Amazon confirmation that Monster Attack Network is on its way. Which reminds me that I also need to check out Stuart Moore and Ryan Kelly's GRW: Giant Robot Warriors from AiT/PlanetLar.

Dust to Dust-Related

Northfield, Minnesota is kicking off its Defeat of Jesse James Days. The official festival isn't until September 6-9, but they have Royalty coronations this weekend and there was a hogroast last night to get things started.

Adventure

Delilah Dirk and the Treasure of Constantinople looks and sounds wonderful. (Thanks to Kevin Melrose for the link.)

Jungle

I'm always up for a new Jungle Book movie.

Horror

RKO is probably my favorite movie studio of all time, so I'm really hoping the revitalization effort works for them. A remake of Karloff's Isle of the Dead sounds like a good place to start. It's nostalgic, but offbeat.

I hate that I'm such a slow reader. Otherwise I'd be all caught up on the 30 Days of Night novels. Especially this one about my favorite 3o Days character Dane. Fortunately, Rod Lott is much faster and has the review.

The mysterious visitor to Edgar Allen Poe's grave has been revealed. Anticlimactically, unfortunately.

Fantasy

Frank Beddor's Looking Glass Wars is an exciting, fast-moving alternate take on the Alice in Wonderland story and I loved it. The sequel, Seeing Redd, comes out next week.

Thanks to Charles Raymond for directing me to artist Sarah Mensinga's wonderful work.

Stuff Nobody Cares About But Me

My son was absolutely freaked out by the scene in Ratatouille where Remy's dad takes him to the gruesome window of a rat-trap shop. We had to leave right after that. Good thing we're not planning a trip to Paris soon, because that shop is real.

I got a very nice email today from First Second about my latest review of one of their books. I didn't ask, but hopefully they won't mind me sharing this nice compliment: "You’re always seeing to the heart of the books we put out, and that’s such a fantastic thing." I love that.

Robot and Monster links

I'm still catching up, but here's a mess of links about giant monsters and giant robots. And at least one about a giant robot monster.

Las Vegas Weekly and Johnny Bacardi review Monster Attack Network. Even though I've seen it in comics shops, Amazon tells me that my copy is still on pre-order. As soon as I get it though, I'll tell you what I think.

My review of Frankenstein Conquers the World: it's crap. Blogcritics gives it considerably more thought. They also review The Giant Behemoth.

How I mourn that Hammer never made this Zeppelin v. Pterodactyls film.

If you've got a limerick about giant monsters lying around, now's the time to use it. And you can win yourself a copy of Daikaiju! 2: Revenge of the Giant Monsters.

I'm sure you've heard about the live-action Voltron film in the works, but just in case...

How's about some giant monster-inspired music?

They don't exist yet, but Germany's planning to create a bunch of giant, robot beetles to fight forest fires. I can't wait until they go crazy and start menacing campers.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for: Mytek the Mighty, the underwater giant robot gorilla.

Kill All Monsters!: The Vacuum Cleaner Commercial. See the giant robot housewife battle the enormous, shambling dirt heap!

Back from Chicago and very behind

It's going to take me a while to get back in the swing of things. In the meantime, I did a couple of con reports for Blogarama.

Jekyll (sort of)

I'm leaving for WizardWorld Chicago early on Thursday and tomorrow will be spent getting ready for it. Today was spent trying to stay on top of work so that I can leave with a clean desk. All of which means: lame post today.

Last night we watched the premiere of Jekyll. I'm not gonna review it except to say that it was mesmerizing. If you want a real review, check out SFScope. They give a nice summary of the episode and point out all the things I liked about the show. Especially that quote at the end about murder being like sex.

And looking at my links file, I guess I should mention that "Monstrous" apparently isn't so much the name of the J.J. Abrams giant-monster movie as it is a tag line for it. Other versions of the poster are rumored to exist with tag lines like "Colossus" and "Terrifying." Oh, well.

I'll be back online on Tuesday. See you then!

Dick Tracy (1937)

I managed to finish the first Dick Tracy serial while I was on vacation. Not easy.

I'm not familiar with Dick Tracy except for the Warren Beatty movie, but I don't hold that against the character. It was just a bad Batman rip-off. I should probably have introduced myself to the character via the original strips, because this 15-chapter serial wasn't much better than Beatty's version.

It's played mostly straight with Dick Tracy as an FBI agent trying to break a crime organization called the Spider Ring. The Spider Ring is led by a mysterious figure called The Lame One, whom everyone fears in spite of the fact that he's mostly helpless. The Lame One employs a mad doctor named Moloch, but he's mostly there to be hunchbacked and sinister-looking. His one accomplishment is to medically turn Dick Tracy's brother Gordon evil; it's Gordon who becomes the real threat throughout the serial, leading most of the capers and trying to kill Dick.

Even though they're silly though, The Lame One and Moloch do help create an atmosphere of weirdness around the story, and Gordon Tracy is as deadly as serial villains are allowed to be (seeing as how they have to keep getting defeated episode after episode). As I understand it, that's the charm of the concept: straightforward detective stories with an air of weirdness created by grotesque villains. So I guess it succeeds on that level.

What I didn't care for about it was its episodic nature. That might be a weird criticism for a movie serial, but what I mean is that every episode or two has Dick Tracy uncovering (usually by sheer accident and coincidence) a new Spider scheme and shutting it down. That keeps the story going for fourteen episodes until Tracy finally decides to do some real investigating and talks to some eye witnesses to events that happened way back in the first episode. After that, it's pretty easy for him to locate the Spider Ring's headquarters, swoop in, and break up the organization.

Dumb.

I'll try a couple more to see if they get better though. Ralph Byrd is really friendly and likeable, as is the whole supporting cast. If the stories improve, it could be a neat series.

Bulldog Drummond

I've been checking out Bulldog Drummond lately. So far I've seen three of the movies from the '30s (Bulldog Drummond at Bay, Bulldog Drummond's Revenge, and Bulldog Drummond Comes Back) and the '60s revival/attempt to cash in on the Bond craze, Deadlier Than the Male.

The '30s films can be confusing. There's a buttload of them and only a handful are available on DVD. Bulldog Drummond at Bay (the 1937 version; the title was re-used in 1947) was the earliest I could find and stars John Lodge as the retired, British WWI captain who lives in a remote castle and constantly gets caught up in adventures. Lodge is a rugged, likeable, manly man who lives with a dog and an elderly maid. It's easy to see how his character may have influenced James Bond. In At Bay, he accidentally gets mixed up with foreign agents who are trying to steal plans for an experimental airplane. It's a short (about an hour long), uncomplicated adventure, made enjoyable by Lodge's performance.

The next film in the series though, Bulldog Drummond's Revenge, stars John Howard (Lost Horizon) as a considerably more dashing Drummond. Without any thought to continuity, Howard's Drummond begins the movie engaged to a woman who wants him to give up his adventurous life and the plot centers around his inability to do that. What's especially interesting is that top billing for the film doesn't go to Howard, but to John Barrymore (Drew's grandfather) as Drummond's former colonel who now works for Scotland Yard and acts as a sort of unwilling "M" to Drummond's Bond. In both Revenge (which doesn't actually feature any) and its follow-up, Bulldog Drummond Comes Back, Drummond is a joking, swashbuckling character. Very different from Lodge's version, but likeable in his own way. His adventures seem to center around trying to get married, but constantly being thwarted in the attempt by the constant appearance of mysteries in need of solving.

Comes Back also stars Howard and Barrymore, as well as the rest of Revenge's supporting cast. Louise Campbell plays Drummond's fiancé, E.E. Clive plays his faithful manservant Tenny, and Reginald Denny is Drummond's cowardly, comical, best friend Algy. Barrymore and Campbell stuck with the series for only one more film after this one, but Howard, Clive, and Denny lasted for a while, so I guess this was a popular version.

Comes Back is based on the Drummond novel The Female of the Species, which also serves as inspiration for the 1967 film Deadlier Than the Male (the title of Female of the Species comes from a Kipling poem "The Female of the Species," which includes the line: "The female of the species must be deadlier than the male."). In Comes Back, Drummond is plagued by friends of a criminal named Carl Peterson whom Drummond helped put away. In Deadlier Than the Male, Peterson is the main villain, though he remains behind-the-scenes for most of the film, letting his hot, female assassins do his dirty work for him.

As '60s Bond rip-offs go, Deadlier Than the Male gets off to a good start. The plot is introduced slowly and in a round-about way that makes you pay attention, there are some interesting, but not outlandish gadgets, and the women are gorgeous and competent. Richard Johnson is a good Drummond. My wife pointed out that he had Greg Brady's eyes and that made him hard to buy as dangerous at first, but then I noticed that he also had a Timothy Dalton quality to him whenever he was pissed off. Most folks don't like Dalton as Bond, but the comparison is a compliment coming from me. The only thing I didn't like about Johnson's Drummond is that he's an insurance investigator of all things. It gets him involved in a pretty brutal plot, but he seems really overqualified for the job.

Instead of Algy (who was also in Bulldog Drummond at Bay, though not played by Reginald Denny), we get Drummond's nephew Robert who's still comical, but not as exaggeratedly cowardly as Algy. It's actually a good trade.

But even though it starts off okay, the last third of the movie gets silly. It's like they realized there were still some big Bond elements they hadn't included yet and decided to hurry up and toss them in. So we get a pointless make-out scene between Drummond and the lead assassin and a stupid sequence in which Drummond and Peterson do battle with a giant chess set. And Peterson makes all the dumb, Bond-villain mistakes, but unfortunately doesn't have the charisma that most Bond villains do to distract us.

I'm not sure that I'm intrigued enough to track down the original novels, but I'm definitely up for more of the movies. And Moonstone did a comics adaptation a while back by William Messner Loebs and Bill Bryan. I'd love to see if I can get my hands on that. Knowing Moonstone, it'll be the most faithful to the feel of the books without having to actually read them. If I like that, I'll be more inclined to start hitting the bookstores.

We're okay

Hadn't planned on posting until Monday, but what with the bridge and all, I figured I should let everyone know that we're okay (having been out of the state all week until a couple of hours ago) and all our friends and family are okay. But there are a lot of folks who aren't and my heart goes out to them. Sorry if anyone was worried by the silence.

I'm not on my usual computer and can't remember my LiveJournal password to save my life, but I'll throw a message up there too when I'm able.

And that's it for a while

I'm off on vacation. See you in a week.

Pirate cologne, Jesse James films reviewed, and illustrators as actors

Kill All Monsters!-Related

I can't see BoingBoing at work, so I'll just have to trust that this link works and that it takes you to some cool giant-monster belt buckles. I'll check it out for myself later at home.

Dust to Dust-Related

I don't understand the connection between Jesse James and Seacoast New Hampshire, but the SeacoastNH site is running a very cool feature called the Dingus Project that looks at as many movies about James as possible and reviews them for historical accuracy.

And speaking of Jesse James movies, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is going to hit both the Toronto International Film Festival and Venice's 75th anniversary film festival. (Also appearing at both festivals is Keira Knightley's new movie Atonement, which should matter greatly to you.)

Pirates

Speaking of Keira reminds me about pirates, which reminds me that soon we'll all be able to smell like Jack Sparrow. As if that's a good thing.

Indiana Jones

One of my biggest disappointments with Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade was the lack of Marion Ravenwood. I really wanted to see that relationship continued from Raiders. Wish granted.

Dark Horse has also announced that with the new movie coming out, they'll be relaunching their line of Indiana Jones comics starting with an omnibus collecting their earlier Indy comics and eventually even reprinting Marvel's take. I gotta start saving some money.

Mystery

I've been enjoying Guy Ritchie and Andy Diggle's Gamekeeper comic from Virgin enough that I quit buying the single issues and decided instead to buy the trade when it comes out. So it's pretty cool that Ritchie's turning it into a movie.

Not really Mystery-related, but it's Crime, so close enough: Boom!'s doing a comic based on the Godfather movies. That's pretty frickin' bold. It'll be interesting to see if they can pull it off, but they say that when they announce the writer "jaws will drop."

Horror

Another comics-film connection: Dreamworks has optioned a Courtney Crumrin movie. No word on if it'll be live action or animated. You have no idea how much I'm hoping for animated, especially if they can pull off Ted Naifeh's style.

And in other Important Horror Movie News: Johnny Depp will play Barnabas Collins in a Dark Shadows movie. It looks like he'll also be one of the producers.

Science Fiction

Jeff Smith has released details about his next project, RASL. It'll be an over-sized scifi comic about "a thief -- an art thief -- who is known to the police as 'RASL,' because that's the tag he leaves whenever he steals a piece of art. He spray paints RASL on the wall in the spot where the art was." According to Smith, RASL has a suit that can "create thermal-magnetic disturbances through space-time and step between dimensions. So if you were a really rich person who wants to collect, say, a Mona Lisa, you could pay RASL, and he'll go to another dimension and steal the Mona Lisa for you!"

The downside is that "what happens when you go through these dimensional barriers -- these light barriers between dimensions and universes -- is that apparently it hurts a lot. I mean, it hurts so badly that it takes him days to recover. The pain is so bad that, for days, he drinks and gambles and smokes and eats rich foods and has whores and all that. But to get back, he has to do the exact opposite. He has to completely clean his body and mind and thoughts and almost reach a zen, centered perfectness to get back through the light. But then he comes back out and is in pain again and it all starts over." Sounds really good. I can't wait for it.

Looks like the bad guy from Heroes is going to play Spock in the J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie.

And they're releasing the remastered/CGI-touched-up episodes of the original Star Trek series on DVD.

Writing is Hard

I like this quote from Hulk writer Greg Pak about letting artists interpret emotions themselves instead of trying to spell everything out exactly in the script: "For the most part, I'm trying to write for (illustrator) John (Romita, Jr.) using the same kind of language I'd use to direct an actor on a movie set. When working with an actor, I'd never say, 'Be sad.' Because that turns the actor into a puppet who's just trying to make the face you want and the soul of the scene dies. Instead, I'd say, 'Try not to cry.' Then the actor can just inhabit the character and the scene comes to life. Similarly, when writing for John, I try to describe actions rather than expressions. When the Hulk's gazing up at the fake Sentry that Reed's generated, I wrote, 'The Hulk continues stepping toward the light. Gazing upwards. Almost as if he's looking up towards an angel.' I don't describe the expression; instead I describe the circumstance so John can interpret the emotional content and get to the soul of the character on his own. John's a brilliant artist, which means that in the world of comics, he's a brilliant actor."

That's something I tried with Jason Copland on Kill All Monsters! and it resulted in some amazing, touching facial expressions and body language. You gotta have the right artist to pull it off -- one who knows how to make his characters act -- but Jason's totally that guy.

"Cloverfield" = Monstrous?

One of the big pieces of news coming out of San Diego so far is this teaser poster for J.J. Abrams' top secret giant-monster movie.

Here's what it looked like before they removed the title. (Found via here.)