SUMMER MOVIE REVIEWS 2009

If you have yet to see Wolverine or Star Trek at the theater this summer you might want to skip this post. There are spoilers- heck, there might be spoilers even if you've seen the films and haven't thought about them much- you've been warned:

WOLVERINE: A prime example of modern comics writing. Pointless action, little if any set up, romance for no real reason, she's in love, she's faking it...no, wait in love, no seriously she was faking it (but actually in love) THEN SHE DIES AND THE HERO GETS SHOT IN THE HEAD TWICE AND TOTALLY FORGETS ABOUT HER. Three quarters of this film was totally pointless, and the guy (kid really) who played Gambit has a really REALLY good agent or negatives of the director with a goat because he sure didn't land that part with his acting ability.

In the end, hero walks off with badly acted buddy to who knows where, just not around the dead chick, the leaking radiation, his brother, or the monster that was sure to reconstitute itself if only he had taken the head with him.

Frankly, I'd bow my head if I was in this movie too.

Plus the villain KNEW that the best he could do was shoot Wolvey in the head with adamantium bullets and make him loose his memory- wait- WHAT??? He would have been better to sneak up behind him and jab a shard of glass into the base of his skull (No, wait, that's the way to immobilize someone with wolvie's powers on Heroes...). Still not sure where the bullets ended up, or exactly how accurate the bad guy's aim had to be to fuck his memories, but hey, that's modern funny books for ya!

Absurd, Pointless, Tasteless, Brainfart. Like I said "Classic Modern Comic Book Writing" These writers will be working for Marvel before you know it.

STAR TREK: I was worried going in, but coming out I was thinking that perhaps I shouldn't dismiss J.J. Abrams as a bad writer after all. Seriously, what else were you going to do with an outdated, bloated over PC'd franchise like this- especially considering how badly off the mark the last two series and four movies were. Hurray for what they did! Nice braincheck movie. DON'T try to over think the plot and be ready to dismiss WAY too many coincidences (Spock's being stranded, Scotty's appearance, a maniacal villain who doesn't need to see the loss on his adversaries face as he blows up his enemy's home planet... you know, logical thinking stuff). Just go and enjoy.




Oh and the worst, most distracting element for me in the entire movie was the Cloverfield monster suddenly chasing Kirk. Talk about an impractical alien life form to fit its' environment- C'MON!!!

So far:

Wolverine: 2 and a half

Trek: 3

Next to see: Terminator and Transformers.

Last two days I have seen two movies from last year, Hancock and Next, and despite the obvious flaws in those films I kind of enjoyed both of them a little more than Wolvie and Trek- but that could just be me...

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WTF?? Sunday Catch Up

Been three weeks, but it's been a good two weeks. Lots to do, Motor City to attend, papers to distribute, news to decipher. Let's see if I can cover it all quick enough so you don't get to bored.

Actually going to save the Flint Comix report for another day since there's so much little things to cover here- sorry, but that report WILL take awhile, and I'm shocked to say it is practically all good things. I will say that issue 2 is out and OUT OF PRINT and go on from there.

I wanted to discuss the recent movies as well, and I have some opinions on Trek and Wolverine to share, but I'll leave them to another separate post as soon as I see Terminator:Salvation. The word I have been reading online of the reviews for that film warrant me seeing it, just to see who I agree with.

Local news overrunning most everything current seems to be the fact that our local paper, as well as most of the papers in the state for that matter, are all knocking down to three days a week- that's a cutback of 4/7th of their output, though they insist that it's a GREAT thing- I would show you the local spin from one of the editors, but for whatever reason it won't load up on blogger. Instead, here is the addy, and you can check it for yourself:

Executive Editor John Hiner addresses coming changes.

http://www.mlive.com/flintforward/

Or not. The video clip is about halfway down the page.

Sounds way too good to be true doesn't it? Plus I have yet to read how they'll be treating their comics section- just their assurance that there WILL be one in every edition- whether they'll catch up from their off days seems to still be in question.

I worry for all the daily strips out there. If most of the papers abandon the daily strips it might mean the end of them. Yet another format for comics that will be kicked in the balls when they're already down. Typical.

The newspaper business was a hot topic of discussion at The Motor City Con last weekend. It was the consensus that it would mean the decline of all local investigative journalism or not- time will only tell I guess- but seriously, hard investigative reports are hardly the forte' of blogs- at least for the most part. This from a "blog" yet.

The convention was great BTW, and I apologize for not taking my camera with me and taking a few shots. Here's a quick video report, via YouTube, from think Twice News:



Saw the upfronts for the Network TV fall line-up, and here are some random thought about that:

If Leno is successful @ 10pm, then I expect all the networks to follow their lead, solely on the thought that they are all cheap executive bastards.

Don't expect too much from Flash Forward (Lost Lite) and Vampire Diaries (Twilight Lite-er), while both V and Human Target look okay, both of those shows are set of Summer.

Dollhouse got more than it deserved by being renewed. So did Chuck and Heroes.

Smallville, now in it's final season for the fourth season running, has been shown to be the "red headed step child" that it's original producers always said it was in the CW evec's eyes. They had stuck it in a Friday night deathslot to rot away until it dies. Too bad it's still doing better than 7/8 of the CW's other shows and yet CW refuses to do a spin off or concentrate any more time on it. Typical executive stoopidity. Last season has it's severe ups and downs, with it ending on a horrible "down" that I'm sure will be an "Imaginary Tale" Expect a whiplash effect for the timeline to correct itself by the end of the season, if not by the end of the next episode.


Sci-Fi Channel will soon be "Sy-Fy" so they can copyright the name, as well as to get the channel's name better in line with their ever limpy-ing line of programming. It's gone from "The Science Fiction Channel" the "The Sci-Fi Channel" to now being "Sy-Fy". I wonder if those execs are doing it consciously as their programming goes in the same progression- from serious to limp wispy- to WTF.

Flint Comix update coming asap. Movie thoughts as soon as I see this Terminator. See you then and remember to:

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WTF??

You KNOW that it's exactly this kind of spectacular video that YouTube was made for!

Via Fark and YouTube I bring you what you've always wanted to see; A big burly man fighting a stuffed Giraffe on his snowy porch while smoking a cig and listening to Afternoon Delight! It's the payoff at the end that sets it off for me- I still can't watch this without giggling, then bursting out in dead laughter. Enjoy!



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100 Days of "Fair and Balanced"

I thought this clip collection was interesting. From Fark.com through YouTube.com, from mediamatters.org, here's a look at some of Fox News' coverage of Obama's first 100 days in office.



The spin here is obvious, but honestly there isn't a news media outlet in the mainstream media that doesn't seem to have their own agenda- it's just sometimes it gets WAY too obvious.

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Just So You Know...

From the Sick and Wrong Podcast- via You Tube- via MadTV, you KNOW someone's working on perfecting this invention even as I type this and when they do they are going to be RICH! Enjoy:



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Is It Just Me Or

Does anyone else get the same thoughts every time they see one of these billboards:



Maybe it's the additional banner along the bottom saying that they are sponsored by a local church called "Mount Hope", but for me, every time I ever saw these billboards the same two words always sping to mind:

"Anal Rape"

Probably just me... Also probably a good thing we're not treated to the entire picture of the guy. He sure looks like he's in pain. Remember "NOTHING'S too hard for God!"

The most inappropriate logo of all-time

In the 70s, this picture stood for God's children. Now it just stands for boys giving priests a good ol beej. Yes, this is an actual logo designed in 1973 for the Catholic Church’s Archdiocesan Youth Commission. It even won an award from the Art Directors Club of Los Angeles.



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Random Thought

Just had to make a note of this:

I was visiting the Motor City Comventions HQ today, setting up a few things (like "guest appearance" "publisher's booth" and such), and we got to talking about the fact that it was the twentieth year anniversary of the MOTOR CITY COMIC CON, and the fact that the t-shirt design this year should be special- just to celebrate (I've done their t-shirt work for 19 of those last 20 years- and you don't have to guess which shirt out of their 20 was the worst seller- =) ).

Anyway, it was pointed out to me the fact that the only character Marvel apparently created exactly 20 years ago was USAgent, and the first thing that popped into my head was "Marvel has sucked for that long?!? Wow."

Honestly- that's the first thing that I thought.

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JUST BECAUSE...

You can never have enough insignificance:


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STATUS: FLINT COMIX WEEK 3

It has now been three weeks since our initial distribution of the first issue of Flint Comix started. We have less than 1000 issues undistributed of the initial 10,000 print run and over 225 drop off points to date.

We are having a rough time keeping places stocked. I tell folks "Hey, who doesn't like FREE comics?", but seriously we underestimated the amount we have been dropping off to folks drastically. I have tried to drop off no less than 25 to any drop off point, and there are a number of points that I am now on my 3rd and 4th time stocking. Some places are well into their second hundred, while others still have 11-13 copies left of their original 25. It all depends on how visible we are displayed and the the obvious traffic flow in and out of the location. To date our best places are family restaraunts, especially those where we are the most visible (like placed on top of gumball machines). There are 2 such drop off points within walking distance of my house and both are past the 75 copy mark in distribution. I'll be dropping off 50 copies initially to each point for issue 2.

We also discovered that a lot of party stores and family restaraunts have open wire rack space designed for free publications. We're using these drop off points as often as possible. We are keeping track so hopefully with issue two we'll be able to distribute the issue within a matter of a few days as opposed to weeks. Now that we have points established, all we'll have to do is keep feeding them to keep them, while we continually search for more. What takes the longest is the initial contact and permission asking. I have only been turned down distribution from about a dozen places that we have asked, and most all of those places telling us no are from femaile managers/owners with little, if any sense of humor. I can tell if they'll say yes by how quickly their faces light up when they see the paper. Those that look like I just shoved a piece of poop under their nose are not very likely to allow us to leave it there (again, I'm typing the obvious...sorry).

The Flint Journal discovered us this last week and ran a pretty good article on us in their Thursday edition as well as their online site. Here is a link to the online article HERE: http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/flint/index.ssf/2009/04/flint_comix_and_entertainment.html.
Any publicity is good publicity, and despite the "It's a bird, It's a plane..." opening, and the little graphic explosions with "Bam!" and "POW!" in them (That were cliche' from the era of Adam West's Batman), it was a nice article and a small bump in our email traffic.

We've found a few more local talents out here and plan on printing them in future issues. One cartoonist especially does a good 4 panel strip that we plan on incorporating into out standard strip pages. He's professional enough and skilled enough that we'll have to run a header strip telling folks that he's actually a local talent- that's how good he is.

Our main website foundation was installed and put online last week. Still not enough information on it for my taste. but much more is on the way for it. If you have the chance to check it out it's at http://www.flintcomix.com. there is an original modern day Spark story there as a reward for anyone surfing the site.

Response has been nothing but positive so far, and quite frankly that makes me really happy, if not a bit nervous.

I'm working on the second issue now, I have 2 comic pages, and a Flash Gordon page mostly done, while I'm scanning in The Fool #1 and am thinking of serializing it over 3 issues, just so no feature gets more than 3 pages at a time.

That's about it for now. PLEASE remember that these updates are only for you, the Spank blog reader, and I'll update you again as soon as I get more news and a chance to put it here.

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