Someone Take a Picture…
Apr 29…before I cause a car accident with my gawkin’.
There’s a big wall on La Brea that is usually home to an eye-catching mural of some sort. I drive by it every day and have been greeted by a mooning Mona Lisa, Marion Cotillard clutching her Oscar, and Madonna and Britney’s gigantic heads making out. Now the mural’s moved over a little, to another side of the wall, and it’s this amazing rendition of TOS Spock rendered in a color block-y, vintage movie poster-type format. It’s lovely. And I keep meaning to try to take a picture of it, because this entry would be so much better with a picture, but this traffic-clogged corridor doesn’t really offer a good way to pull over and trying to take pictures from one’s moving vehicle while one is trying to power through Los Angeles traffic is probably a bad idea. So someone smarter/more artistic than me please go snap a shot of this before it’s replaced by scandalous graffiti of Miley Cyrus or something.
Four-Color Critiques #1: Where's Huey Lewis and/or his News?
Apr 25Chronos #1-8 is something I picked up as part of a swap, because at first I confused it with Hourman by Tom Peyer and Rags Morales, which I also want to read someday. Upon realizing what it really was, I decided I wanted to read Chronos too. I mean, time travel, late nineties hair, and a Z-list supervillain–what’s not to love, right?
Black (Glove) Magic
Apr 24David Uzumeri over at Funnybook Babylon has an AWESOME theory on the identity of the secret villain behind Grant Morrison’s latest Batman epic.
It’s genius. Really. Read it. Unless you hate spoilers. It’s that good–it might actually be a spoiler.
(Which means someone may have actually out-thunk Morrison. Scary.)
Indy, NO!
Apr 23I cannot believe it’s already summer movie season. Iron Man, Wall-E, The Dark Knight, The Incredible Hulk, and much much more…just weeks away. The kid’s actually a full-blown toddler now so I’m hoping we can get a good babysitter and maybe see a few of these at our local moviehouses.
And then there’s Indy 4, which my wife has verbally committed to seeing with me; I mention that here so as to place the commitment in writing, on the web, thereby assuring she dare not back out for fear of a rampant backlash on all the various “Matt’s marriage” blogs.
Anyway, Anne Thompson at Variety is just one of a couple folks reporting some middling reactions to the flick; in a post last week (Jesus, where was I that I missed this?) she even suggests that *gasp* the Lucasfilm PR and marketing strategy may be (shocker!) FLAWED?!?!
The advance buzz on Indy is getting damaging enough that Lucas and Spielberg may want to reconsider the current strategy of waiting until May 18 to show the film to everyone at once. That’s a long way off.
It’s pretty astonishing just how backward Lucas and Spielberg still are when it comes to marketing a film in the internet age. Back in 1999, which was still practically the infancy of the web community compared to today, you could defiantly push a movie’s first screening to just a few days before its release and get away with it. Fans would be content simply to bask in the glorious mystery of the unseen blockbuster, and their heads would fill in the gaping blanks with the kind of premeditated grandeur that assures a positive reaction, even if the movie sucks.
After Phantom Menace, however, such breaks were cut on an increasingly rare basis. In the modern moviemaking cycle, it’s a far wiser strategy to show your cards and let the chips fall…unless, of course, your movie does indeed suck, in which case it makes sense to screen it for critics and advance audiences at the last minute…or not at all.
Whether Indy 4 is “the best of the Indy sequels” or a chunky steaming cinematic turd, Lucas and Spielberg are still ten years behind the times when it comes to how to effectively market movies. Then again, their “fans” number well, WELL beyond the internet movie nerd cabal, so they’re probably not at all worried.
Indy 4 could easily suck–it will still gross bazillions. Lucas will buy yet another fifty vintage cars, the stage will be set for Star Wars Episode VII, and life will go on.
Four-Color Critiques #0: My Brain Unhinges
Apr 21Part of me wants to be more disciplined about writing comics reviews–or just reviews period, for that matter.
I had a whole imaginary post composed in my brain; I was gonna launch a review column or something that would take place weekly and would just compile all the scattered thoughts I have about comics I read, old shit and new. I would do this both to discipline myself into thinking more critically again about the entertainment I consume, and out of a deep insecure need to feel the approval and attention of the scattered collection of burnouts, wannabes, and poets known as the “comics blogosphere.”
Read that last phrase again–that’s what’s giving me pause. Among other things.
