James A. Owen, an author/illustrator who is the creator of Starchild, just had his new novel Here, There Be Dragons pre-emptively picked up by Warner Bros. The novel hasn’t even been released by Simon & Schuster yet, but was discovered by Heyday Films’ Marc Rosen and will be produced by David Goyer and David Heyman. You may read the full story… here.
Congratulations, Mr. Owen.
And we’ve got a Tony Stark.
The news broke last night, and hit the trades this morning – Robert Downey Jr. will play Tony Stark/Iron Man in the upcoming film version of the Marvel comic series.
Joel Johnson has posted to is blog this fascinating document by Wally Wood, which should be of interest to anyone who makes comics or at least would like to see more of the visual theory that goes into making them. Johnson has actually obtained the original, so these are high-rez scans as opposed to the photocopied and multi-generational versions you may have come across before. There’s also some interesting anecdotal material about how the document came to be and about Wood himself:
Hey, I actually had fun over at the M&Ms site today, of all places.
They have a game up titled 50 Dark Movies, Hidden in a Painting. The painting is filled with visual clues to the titles of 50 horror/dark movies. See how many you can get.
There’s also an animated flash comic on their site done in conjunction with Marvel, complete with psycho clown and everything:
There is a wonderful little slice-of-life webcomic titled “Home Portrait” on Jen Wang’s website. You should read it.
While watching Transporter 2 I had a realization. Action films are really superhero stories. They’re tales that feature men (or women, but usually men) who have abilities beyond those of mere humans. The people in the theater with me were chuckling at the way Frank Martin’s actions defied the laws of physics, but I realized that was merely a problem of perception: if he were wearing a costume so we knew to expect special powers, then the audience would just accept those leaps in probability.
Hollywood has made a lot more superhero films than we ususally give them credit for.
Fall television is my favorite spectator sport. I love tuning into new shows and following who’s winning and who’s losing, so to speak. A few nights ago I watched CBS’s Jericho. The pilot was slightly entertaining, but not impressive. We follow Skeet Ulrich, who is apparently ex-army, as he returns home to the small town of Jericho after many years. He’s kind of a bastard and mainly shows up to see if he can talk his pops (the town mayor) into signing off on grandpappy’s inheritance. Ulrich is a great looking anti-hero, by the way. I get the impression that he’s done nothing but drugs since 1996’s Scream. He’s 36 years old and looks like he’s been living very hard and probably fighting people. We’re talking about a guy who had open heart surgery when he was ten. Excellent anit-hero. I’m stoked on Skeet Ulrich.
Not surprisingly, Skeet’s dad (played by Deadwood’s George Hearst!) doesn’t give him a penny and our hero takes off back to the open road. Why hang with the family any more than you have to? The only problem is that he sees a mushroom cloud in the distance. The power goes out in Jericho, all connection to the outside world is cut, and nobody knows what the hell is going on.
From here it’s a lot of A-plot and very little in the way of character development. There was one hamfisted moment between Skeet and Sprague Grayden (Six Feet Under) where he might as well have just said, “You are now my love interest. We will have passionate post-apocalyptic sex in season two.” And completing the obligatory love triangle is actress Ashley Scott. Yes, Skeet’s old girlfriend in Jericho is The Huntress (from the WB’s weird Birds of Prey series). I only mention that to flex to my fanboys. However, the most unforgivable part of the pilot, in my opinion, was the lines that they made poor Hearst recite. It got real Hallmark Movie of the Week, real fast.
That said, I think there’s a chance Jericho might be able to get it to together. There’s an interesting premise here with serviceable actors and an entire writer’s room that remains untested . I’m a sucker for post-apocalyptic stories, so I’ll stick around as long as it holds my attention.
Oh, and Pier made the observation that Skeet Ulrich has new teeth. I wouldn’t be surprised if the old ones were punched out.
Bill Plympton has animated the video for the new Weird Al song “Don’t Download This Song.”
Ahh… Remember UHF?
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