Posts Tagged ‘Green Lantern’
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Today’s buzzComix incentive sketch features a much more plausible choice for Green Lantern. Click here to reveal the obvious.
Today’s comic comes from an honest-to-goodness report that Ain’t It Cool News published. According to them, they sat on the news for quite a while waiting for it to be verified by Warner Bros. (the studio that is producing it). Sure enough, it came to pass.
I am particularly disturbed by the claim that the first modern version of the Green Lantern character to be brought to the silver screen will be done so as a “zany comedy a la The Mask.” Apparently some suit at Warner Bros. was sitting around trying to think of other green comic book characters that made the leap to film. Since Hulk was done only two years ago, aping the style of the decade-old Mask was a safer bet.
This has “BAD IDEA” stamped all over it in big, red letters. If there is any truth to it, I find it unfortunate that DC cannot seem to weigh in with how they want their properties to be expressed in different mediums.
Personally, I’m not putting a lot of stock in it. It sounds too outlandish to be true and I can’t imagine DC rolling over on this – EVEN IF their corporate parent tied their hands.
But then again, who thought Jack Black would land the role of Carl Denham in Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake? All I can say is that he has one hell of an agent working for him.
Our vacation to Memphis was a real hoot. The 12 hour drive was kind of brutal, but we made it there and back okay. I plan on providing more details of my trip along with photos in the THorum, but only in the Donaters’ Only area. How do you get access to this content – this little window into my private life? Easy! Just donate! Even if you can only spare a penny, you’ll still get access to this area of the THorum.
It’s a good deal. Donating also provides you access to the collected incentive sketches. All of them are represented there.
I’m starting to shift my focus to Wizard World Chicago on August 13 through 15. I’ve even dedicated a page of the site to the event. It houses all the information you need to know about my attendance. Where you can find me. What I’ll be selling. Will anyone else be with me? All those questions and more answered here.
Not much else to report. Still getting my head straight after all that time on the road. I still feel like I’m moving. It’s weird to think that it’s Wednesday.
Thanks again to all of the artists and writers that provided guest comics while I was gone. I’ll be pulling their work out of the archives soon, but their efforts will find a permanent home in the Bonus Materials area of the site. I’ll be sure to leave a note when that occurs.
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Warner Bros. released three new stills of Ryan Reynolds dressed up in costume for the forthcoming Green Lantern movie. As I’m sure you’re all aware, he’s not wearing an actual costume, but a CGI suit that is being painted over his body by very lonely computer nerds in post.
Here’s my take… I’ve always felt that this movie version of the Green Lantern costume was needlessly ornamental and vaguely Tron-like. But I’ve gotten used to it. Now that I’m looking at this complete head to toe shot, I’m really creeped out by what looks like shrink-wrapped socks on Reynolds’ feet. Seriously, animators. I don’t need to know what the indentation of Reynolds’ toenail bed looks like. But, my! Those foot tendons are FABULOUS!
I swear, with this movie, it’s one step forward and two steps back.
Do you have an opinion about Green Lantern? I bet you do! You should leave your comments below!
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Cami and went to see Bridesmaids this weekend and at one point before the movie started, Cami actually leaned over to me and said “Thank you for seeing this movie with me.” I thought it was kind of odd at the time because 1.) I was already excited to see this movie and 2.) When do we ever get to leave the house to do ANYTHING together anymore?
Then again, she might have also been thanking me for letting her drag me around to a couple of department stores to look at blouses and shoes between our dinner and showtime.
* insert sound of whips here *
That said, I really enjoyed Bridesmaids and think it’s wholly deserving of the praise and strong reviews it’s received. If you haven’t seen it yet, I encourage you to check it out.
Produced by Judd Apatow and directed by Paul Feig, Universal Studios has marketed Bridesmaids as the female response to films like The 40 Year-Old Virgin or The Hangover. If you’ve seen the TV spots, they all seem to be preoccupied with a scene where the girls contract food poisoning. It leads you to believe that you’re in for an outrageous, scatological good time.
As bombastic an hilarious as that scene is, I’ll go on the record right now and let you know that Bridesmaids is NOT that kind of film. It’s not interested in strictly using shock tactics to generate laughs. It has a lot more on its mind than that.
There’s a lot of needless controversy in comedy circles (mostly driven by sexism) about whether or not women are funny. For the record, I think women are hilarious. That said, Bridesmaids clearly has a different temperament than most big studio comedies. The audience is the benefactor from this shift in tone because the humor frequently derived from character motivation rather than misunderstandings or unfortunate circumstances.
That’s not to say that Bridesmaids don’t lean on these tried and true comedic devices. But the humor is amplified by our familiarity with the characters, their needs and limitations.
As Annie, Kristen Wiig has created a great comedic punching bag – a tragic character who lost her cake shop in the recession and has been falling further and further behind ever since. But catharsis doesn’t come easily for Annie because she is truly the architect of her own misery. She can’t be free of it until she confronts her role in it.
Of course, it’s Melissa McCarthy as the bawdy Megan that wakes her up to her reality. In an excellent exchange near the end of the film, Megan gleefully slaps Annie around. Encouraging her to “Fight! Fight for your crappy life!” McCarthy is a comedic powerhouse in this movie and practically steals it out from under the rest of the ensemble.
I guess if I could register any complaint against the film is that it doesn’t fully take advantage of the talent it has at its disposal. Wiig, McCarthy and Maya Rudolph all get sufficient screen time. But Wendi McLendon-Covey from Reno 911 and Ellie Kemper from The Office are almost completely squandered. In fact, I think Rebel Wilson and Matt Lucas as Wiig’s inconsiderate roommates get more time on screen. So the film is not quite the ensemble piece it bills itself to be.
But overall the film is smart, honest and touching. On the surface, Annie’s problems and her reaction to them felt more akin to a directionless 20-something rather than how a former small-business owner approaching 40 would handle them. But, in context, it indicates how hard Annie has been thrown for a loop. Annie is an anomaly among female comedic archetypes, but a welcome one. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Bridesmaids became a game-changer for chick flicks, which I would celebrate.
Look, a little bit of Sandra Bullock or Kate Hudson is fine. But their movies fail to take risks and avoid any suggestion that the lives of their heroines (who, for some reason, always seem to be marketing executives) is anything less than perfect. Bridesmaids takes those risks and should be rewarded for it.
Did you see Bridesmaids this weekend? If so, what were your thoughts? Leave your comments below!
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Is “a fistful of power rings” a new sexual euphemism? Let’s see if we can make that happen.
Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but I always found the original Green Lantern comic design to be one of the sexiest in comics. Yeah, I know Hal Jordan is a dude, but I always appreciated the costume’s sleek, retro-future design. It’s truly one of the few costumes in comics that doesn’t need improvement. Even Jim Lee managed to leave it relatively unchanged in his horrible Nehru collar-inspired reboot of DC comic’s entire line of characters.
Of course, the producers of the Green Lantern movie managed to muck that up by making Hal Jordan look like a emerald-hued Slim Goodbody.
Critics beat the crap out of Green Lantern. It’s averaging a 26% “rotten” score on Rotten Tomatoes right now. According to Box Office Mojo, estimated attendance for Green Lantern is below that of even Daredevil and Ghost Rider – two films synonymous with B-grade superhero movie flame-outs.
But the fan reaction has been interesting. People seem to be defending the movie as mindless fun. I take that to mean that the eye-candy was satisfactory even if the story fell flat on it’s face.
If you had asked me a few months ago to speculate on Green Lantern’s odds of success at the box office, I probably would have sided with the critics. Despite Ryan Reynold’s inherent likability, all of the new movie clips and preview material they were showing made Green Lantern look like amateur hour. Everything from the costume design, to the lumpy CG character work to the inclusion of Sinestro, Hector Hammond AND Parallax as villains did not inspire confidence.
But a strange thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago. The success of X-Men: First Class effectively eliminated my doomsday predictions for Green Lantern. I don’t know why. Beyond their superhero subject matter, the films couldn’t be more different from each other.
I guess it’s because I was convinced that X-Men: First Class was going to be a complete bomb. To me it appeared as tone-deaf to the comics as Green Lantern appears to be. The fact that X-Men: First Class was actually good forced me to put my assumptions on hold and adopt a wait-and-see attitude toward Green Lantern.
So, despite the bad reviews, I’m still willing to invest the time to see Green Lantern. I’m willing to open up my heart a little bit and take my chances.
Because here’s the thing: I LOVE Green Lantern. For me, he’s the DC equivalent to Iron Man and I’ve been a fan of the character and the mythology for a long, long time. In fact, the GL books are the only DC books I read right now. So you know I’m serious about it.
It’s easy to love Superman or Spider-Man… Captain America or Batman. That’s like saying “I love America” or “I love vacation days.” It’s kind of a given.
It takes a little bit of fortitude to say “I love Green Lantern” or “I love Iron Man.” Because, for a long time, these guys were second-stringers and their comics were not very good.
I hate to be all “I loved these characters before they were cool.” That’s not how I feel. I’m thrilled these characters are getting their due in popular culture. I’m just trying to explain how long I have been invested in them.
So, yeah. I want to give Green Lantern and – more surprisingly – Cami wants to come with me.
Well, maybe not surprisingly. She’s a huge Ryan Reynolds fan. How big? Her favorite Ryan Reynolds movie is Just Friends. Okay, admittedly, it’s a pretty funny movie. But, yeah… watching Reynolds run around in a painted on costume for two hours? I’m sure it doesn’t hurt.
Did any of you check out Green Lantern this weekend? What did you take away from it? Is the costume everything it’s trumped up to be? Leave your comments below!
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