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Post by berkley on Jun 26, 2023 23:18:42 GMT -5
I saw a colorized version of 1936's Things to Come this afternoon. What an excellent film, and quite unsettling in its prediction of the future! From world war II to the rise of petty strongmen to that of an anti-science movement, it shows that even without a crystal ball H.G. Wells was quite observant of political events and human nature. I loved the movie's Flash-Gordonesque machines of the future. The special effects were also pretty impressive for the time!
I remember seeing it on tv when I was a kid and being impressed, though I was probably a little too young to appreciate everything. I think I'll read the Wells book before watching it again, though.
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Post by berkley on Jun 26, 2023 23:17:38 GMT -5
I watched Pedro Almodovar's Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! which, while entertaining and expertly crafted, as all the Almodovar films I've caught have been, was a major disappointment in one overwhelming way: it sent a terrible message about how men and women relate to one another, with Banderas's character kidnapping the female lead, knocking her unconscious with a punch to the head, tying her up in her own apartment, threatening to cut her throat if she screams, etc, etc - but all in the name of true love, so apparently we're meant to accept that's it's OK in the end, as his victim and her sister who rescues her do: they voluntarily seek him out after escaping. What the hell Almodovar was thinking with this is beyond me and I'm amazed it hasn't come in for more criticism (there has been some but not nearly as much as I'd have expected).
I'm lucky this wasn't the first Almodovar I've seen or it might have put me off his movies altogether. As it is I'll have to take a break before trying anything else, and hopefully when I do it'll wash the memory of this one out of my brain.
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Post by berkley on Jun 26, 2023 23:05:03 GMT -5
I found a copy of Darkhold #11 in between the pages of Barry Windsor Smith's Monsters, which I lent to a friend last year. Maybe it's his? I'll have to ask. But since it was there I read it and... ...It's probably the absolute worst comic book I ever read. The quintessential awful 90s comic, with bad fake Image art, clichéd and nonsensical script, zero character development, amateurish storytelling and LOTS of gnashing teeth. Characters strike poses, shout nonsensical itty & gritty things, shoot at each other, get torn in half with no lasting repercussions, and then it all ends in a "to be continued" coda. I feel blessed to have been away from any LCS or newsstand in those days, because such comics strike me as the nadir of American comic-books. Hard to believe that so much great material would see print just a few years down the line, after the implosion of the market! Striking a huge contrast, I checked out the Providence compendium from the public library. An excellent Lovecraft pastiche by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows, well worth reading, and showing that the comics can absolutely still be good when creators have something to say.
That's too bad, because I think a series based on the Darkhold is a great idea. If only it had happened in another era, maybe it would have had a chance. There are a few 1990s Marvel things I've heard about that trike me this way - Elsa Bloodstone, for example: good idea for a character, but what I've seen of the execution has kept me away from sampling even a single story.
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Post by berkley on Jun 25, 2023 23:38:48 GMT -5
Leaving aside the various Star Trek and Star Wars series, what have been the best science fiction shows of the last 5 or 10 years? I haven't seen anything much lately and I'd like to start on something soon.
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Post by berkley on Jun 25, 2023 23:35:51 GMT -5
I still haven't been able to bring myself to try any of these new Star Trek shows or movies with different actors playing younger versions of Uhura, Spock, Scotty, etc. I suppose because it's happened so late in the day from my POV as someone who grew up with the old show that I just can't imagine enjoying those characters in any other way. In contrast to a character like James Bond that already had several different incarnations by the time I became aware of it. I might be able to overlook that issue long enough to at least look at something if I heard anything else that made it sound attractive but so far nothing has drawn me in. The only thing they have going for them is their connection with the original series and since I get the impression (rightly or wrongly) that there isn't much real connection, I don't feel any incentive to watch. Maybe one day I'll try something, whether on purpose or by accident, and find that I like it after all - which is what happened to me with the Next Generation after ignoring it the first few years. Have you tried the Star Trek Continues fan-made series? Unlike the new spin-offs, it doesn't pointlessly contradict continuity (which is probably not a big deal to new viewers, but still annoys me somewhat) and is surprisingly well-written. That the son of James Doohan plays Scotty is also a major plus in my book!
No I forgot about those, thanks for the reminder. I'm more likely to try those than any other Star Trek related to the original series, as most of the cast for the younger versions seem the wrong physical types to me - Zoe Saldana for example is too slender to play a convincing Uhura. ". But probably Picard will be the Star Trek series I try next.
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Post by berkley on Jun 24, 2023 16:08:29 GMT -5
I didn't realize yours was the "Fame" school. Did that play a part in your choosing to attend? They filmed the movie while I was attending, I auditioned but didn’t make the cut.
Amazing! I used to watch that show. What was your area of study?
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Post by berkley on Jun 24, 2023 16:03:26 GMT -5
I've been re-reading the early issues of Eightball and there's a funny caricature of Gary Groth in one of the stories in #3, one that could be enjoyed by detractors and supporters (or neutrals) alike. I don't have any particular opinion on the guy myself. I like that he helped get people like Clowes and the Hernandezes published and that he supported the Kirbys in their struggle for creators' rights but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if he were an arsehole as a person, as a lot of these go-getter types are.
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Post by berkley on Jun 24, 2023 15:50:12 GMT -5
Of all the Czech artists posted here in the last few pages, Jan Patrik Krásný is the one that appeals most to my taste so far. I'd like to read Enna or anything else of his if there's anything translated into English or French.
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Post by berkley on Jun 22, 2023 17:21:32 GMT -5
The Rocketeer wasn't awful but just a bit too safe and colourless to the cult classic it probably should have been. Dalton was good as the «Errol Flynn type villain, I liked him better in this role than as Bond.
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Post by berkley on Jun 21, 2023 20:53:02 GMT -5
From a recent book review, I gather that Stan and his family had a tendency to live beyond their means, even though those means were quite substantial by most standards - e.g. sending his daughter to expensive schools, buying houses and choosing neighbourhoods out of his league, throwing lavish parties with a guest list from an even higher income bracket than his own, etc - so that even when his income was at its peak he was often desperate for more funds.
I have no idea idea how accurate these claims might or might not be but if true it could explain why his some of his behaviour comes across as so grasping. Not that it would excuse it but it might make it a little easier to understand.
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Post by berkley on Jun 21, 2023 20:31:09 GMT -5
Several days behind, as usual, but I just finished watching the Super Rugby Pacific semi-final between the Crusaders and the Blues, which turned out to be a disappointingly one-sided blow-out. I don't know if the Crusaders just have their number or what, but it was far worse than last year's Final between the same two teams and I thought that was a disappointment, with the Crusaders winning handily after the Blues had been the best team in the competition all year (2022, that is).
This year it's been the Chiefs. I wasn't able to see their semi-final against the Brumbies but from the highlights it was a tight, low-scoring affair, a complete contrast to this one. So it's the Crusaders (again) and the Chiefs in the Final. I don't have a preference, my team, the Hurricanes, having been knocked out in the quarter-finals.
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Post by berkley on Jun 21, 2023 15:44:56 GMT -5
I don't sen a downturn from Kirby's 1960s work to the best of his 1970s solo stuff: in some ways, I'd rate the New Gods and the Eternals higher than the FF and Thor but it would be more accurate to say they were just trying to do something very different to what Kirby and Lee had done together with those earlier works.
OTOH, I do see a significant downturn from Lee's work with Kirby and Ditko to his creative productions with artists like Colan or Buscema, who were great artists but NOT known for creating characters or writing stories.
Romita is in a bit of a grey zone, in that he wasn't known as a writer or creator of charaxters in the same way Ditko or Kirby were, but he seems to have had more talent and contributed more in those areas than relatively straight artists like Buscema, which is probably why there's such a noticeable difference between, say, Spider-Man and Daredevil. I like DD as a character probably more than I do Spider-Man, and Colan is one of my favourite artists, but as a whole there's no doubt that S-M was the superior series of the two, and my guess is that might have been because of Romita's contributions beyond his artwork.
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Post by berkley on Jun 21, 2023 0:02:57 GMT -5
Is there a source for Evanier’s statement there? Because I find it very hard to believe that New Gods was meant to be a limited series since DC didn’t publish their first intentional mini-series until almost a decade later. It's my understanding that it was a "limited series" in the sense that Kirby intended to lead the story to a conclusion, at some point down the road, and then end it, rather than design it to be a never-ending sequence of adventures. Not that he planned to end it after a specific number of issues, but that he would generate stories that led to the climax he had in mind, and then write "The End". A radical notion for comics, which were almost entirely intended to be perpetual engines should they catch on with the readers. Kirby wanted to see these collected in big volumes, and in his mind, that kind of format deserved an ending like the novel he saw the Fourth World saga as being, not an ongoing tease that maintained the status quo.
I definitely think he meant it to have a beginning, middle, and en - IOW to make a complete story in itself.
I also think it's clear that at some earlier point he had envisaged handing off his DC creations to other artists and writers. But it seems clear to me that his intentions changed once he got going on the three Fourth World series. I think it became personal to him and he would not have wanted to give any of those three books away to another writer.
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Post by berkley on Jun 20, 2023 20:55:13 GMT -5
My problem with Kirby's 70s work is that he has all these amazing ideas and incredible new characters, and he starts off with a hiss and a roar only to run out of steam on every book. Kirby's biggest supporters seemingly want to paint him as the victim -- it wasn't Jack's fault, it was Carmine, it was editorial, etc. However, Kamandi ran for a fairly long time and ran out of steam fairly quickly. The impression I get from his DC books is that Jack was so embittered by his experiences at Marvel that he took on too much of the work at DC. Either that, or he was trying too hard to prove he could do it all by himself. I don't know if he needed a co-writer, but he could have done with some type of help in guiding the stories. I like his New Gods stuff, but even Jack wasn't that satisfied with the Hunger Dogs ending. According to Mark Evaner, who was there and should know, The New Gods were menat to be a limited series and DC told Jack to make it an ongoing after he started. So yeah, it started to limp when they made him change what he intended to do.
Disagree about Kamandi, read issue #16. Great writing.
I strongly disagree that the New Gods ran out of steam: for me, it was just getting going when it was cancelled. Hunger Dogs came years later when the momentum had been lost after such a long time away from it. An interesting alternate ending, as I see it, but not satisfying as a definitive conclusion to the story.
Same with the Eternals: he was just getting it set up when it was first undermined by moving away from the core concept and trying (and failing) to make it more like other MU comics. So for me, not only great ideas but also great execution while those two series lasted.
Kamandi OTOH, I tend more towards Commond's view: I've always seen it as a lesser work, really just a cool future setting and scenario but not much else, and certainly nothing to give it the greater thematic depth of the New Gods or the Eternals.
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Post by berkley on Jun 20, 2023 18:18:18 GMT -5
Agreed, and right after Kirby left FF, Lee continued without missing a creative step in line with what had come before, which is all of the evidence one needs to conclude Lee was not being carried along, or as I mentioned in my previous post, he was not a peripheral figure. We can understand Kirby's son feeling his father was shortchanged / screwed over, but his "shallow" / "uneducated" barbs are not only childish, but patently untrue to anyone whoever saw or met Lee, especially back during the Silver and Bronze Age years. Attacking Lee in that way changes absolutely nothing in regards to the historical record. He did not say he was uneducated, he said he had a limited knowledge of mythology and science compared to Kirby. This is true. One only has to look at a history of what they did before and realize Thor is a Kirby creations. And we are talking about creation, not who wrote better words, or was a better editor or what the strengths of each was. As for FF, while those Lee/Buscema were good, were there any classics or revolutionary stories as he had done with Kirby. Or were they mostly retreads of the first 100 issues?
Yes, that's one of the keys for me. The post-Kirby Thor with Lee and other artists was smilarly a very good imitation of what had been done by Kirby and Lee. I'd even say that the Lee/Romita Spider-Man, probably the strongest work Lee produced without either Ditko or Kirby, was mainly built on those early Ditko/Lee issues. So for me Lee pretty consistently showed that when he couldn't rely on a special creative and story-telling talent as his partner, his work was at a lower level.
Fans who don't think much of things like Kirby's New Gods feel the same way about Kirby. I think they're dead wrong and specifically make the mistake of seeing those works as failed efforts to reproduce the kind of thing Kirby and Lee did together, which they really were not.
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