This footage of the natural world by Terje Sorgjerd is one of the most beautiful and genuinely awe-inspiring things I’ve ever seen. (Thanks to Angel Leigh McCoy)
Tag Archives: Movies & TV
Camelot…Where They Sing From The Diaphragm A Lot… [Updated]
I watched the first episode of Starz’s Camelot series today (it debuts tomorrow evening, but I’m magic).
I had no interest in it until yesterday, when it came to my attention that Eva Green was playing Morgan le Fey in it.
Eva Green.
As Morgana.
That said to me that someone, at least, had a clue.
So I checked it out. Watched about half of it, and had an “eh” reaction. The direction was sorta crap, especially at the very beginning. It was TV fantasy, not fantasy fantasy, with some really bad editing choices and “dramatic” camera angles that annoyed the hell out of me.
The guy playing Arthur was sorta callow and Teen-Beat. Eva Green was hot and intense (which are two things she can’t help but be, because she is, after all, Eva Green), but Morgan wasn’t that interesting. Joseph Fiennes was an intriguing Merlin, though…
Then it started coming together. The first half, I figured I’d never watch it again. The second half bought them the next episode at least.
Morgan’s conniving got more interesting. The callow young Arthur pulled out a spine, and the writers established him as an underdog in very interesting ways. Camelot itself was a revelation, an ancient Roman fortress abandoned and lost to wildness before being reclaimed by the new king. And Merlin got more and more charismatic and intriguing.
So, yeah. Check it out. It has promise.
I’m looking forward to seeing more direct conflict between Merlin and Morgan, myself…
[UPDATE: Upon further reflection, I just lack interest in this show. I think I may have been trying to convince myself just to look at Eva Green every week. But I haven’t watched it since.]
Pulp Hero Spotlight: The Shadow
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men…?
Introducing My New Monthly Column on Pulp Adventure: The Pulp Pit
A Typical Pulp Hero...
As I mentioned in the Song of the Week post yesterday, I have a new monthly column over at Inveterate Media Junkies. The first installment is now live and you can read it here:
The column is called “The Pulp Pit,” and as you might deduce, its subject is pulp. I’ll be covering whatever pulpy topics tickle my muse (or maybe cuddle my muse, since she’s not that fond of tickling), pointing out cool pulp stuff for people to enjoy, and reviewing books, comics, movies, games, TV shows, and whatever else as appropriate.
For those with possible review materials they think might be on-topic for a pulp column, please drop me a line at thepulppit at gmail.com (just connect the two parts up with an @). I’m interested in any sort of pulpish media, old or new. I don’t want people just sending me things that stack up and I never get to, as that costs you money and both of us time. So tell me what it is, and if I think it’s something I might actually make time to read/watch/play/etc., I’ll tell you how to send it to me.
Regular readers of this blog might have noticed a recent password-protected entry titled I Am Doc Savage (Pulp Pit # 1). Two weeks after a column appears on IMJ, I’ll remove the password and make the post public, so it’s available to readers here.
Cliffhanger Music (Song of the Week, 3/21/2011)
To commemorate my new monthly column on pulp, which debuts today at Inveterate Media Junkies, here’s John Williams’s perfect cliffhanger background music from Raiders of the Lost Ark…
And as a bonus, here’s Taylor Dayne’s “Original Sin,” the Jim “I Wrote All Meat Loaf’s Best Songs” Steinman creation used for the Alec Baldwin version of The Shadow…
The Real Chuck Norris Is So Chuck Norris… (UPDATED)
…I’d never let him in my house.
Chuck Norris is a tool. He’s a bad actor and an over-the-hill karate instructor and a particularly idiotic political commentator.
The jokes about him are often funny, but they aggrandize a man who should be allowed to wither in obscurity without the eyes of the world upon him. Granted the aggrandizement is largely ironic, but Norris is such a nitwit I’m sure he takes it all in as evidence of his place of respect in the world.
Back in May 2009, I took it upon myself to spend the day tossing out Facebook statuses which were Chuck Norris jokes that more properly belittled him. Offered below, for posterity, are my creations. I invite you to add more in the comments.
It’s a worthy cause. Continue reading
Hot Kunoichi* Action (*ninja chick)
…and Jennifer Garner was cast as Elektra why, exactly?
Not to dis Garner, who’s very talented and hot and actually quite good in action roles…but c’mon…
Mark Twain’s Prayer
An artful short film of one of Mark Twain’s short stories.
This, too, thanks to Kate for sharing…
Look! Up In The Sky!
An incredible short, hand-animated by Robb Pratt, full of supery goodness. I love it, particularly his take on Lois Lane.
And if you like that, and aren’t familiar with the classic Fleischer Bros. Superman cartoons from the ’40s, check this out:
Of Forests and Men
There is some spectacular and gorgeous footage of forests in this video. Which is apropos, as it’s about forests.
Yann Arthus-Bertrand was appointed by the United Nations to produce the official film for the International Year of Forests.
Following the success of Home which was seen by 400 million people, the photographer began producing a short 7-minute film on forests made up of aerial images from Home and the Vu du Ciel television programmes.
This film will be shown during a plenary session of the Ninth Session of United Nations Forum on Forests (24 January – 4 February 2011) in New York. It will be available to all from February 2 – for free – so that it can be shown worldwide.
MEET MELINE (An Animated Short by Sebastien Laban & Virginie Goyons)
A charming, lovely bit of CGI. I’m particularly taken with the expressiveness of the little girl and the animator’s play with light.
Watch it at its highest resolution.
Good Memories of 2010, Day 7: Kick-Ass
I loved the movie Kick-Ass.
What, you didn’t? That’s fine. Hear me out.
I’ll be the first to admit that it sets up a scenario as its foundation that it ultimately blithely abandons, the whole “what would it be like if someone tried, in real life, to be a costumed superhero?” thing. As an exploration of that theme, it’s mostly a failure, though it does sort of tell us that if someone did that they’d get the shit beat out of them a lot and possibly die. Which may be all we need to know.
By giving us those answers early in the film, though, it does add to the vulnerability of its hero, Dave Lizewski aka Kick-Ass, and we never doubt that he is all too mortal. The old rule in writing is “Mistreat your protagonist,” and Dave really gets his share.
In a review at Comic Book Resources, comic writer Steven Grant made some interesting commentary on the movie’s thematic shift:
[Kick-Ass] cheats right and left on its premise. Once donning his goofy costume, a mish-mash of scuba gear and ski mask, Kick-Ass quickly demonstrates why people are generally disinclined to wear costumes and fight crime in the real world. Once that point is made, though, the intro premise is thrown away so quickly it’s like watching a stage magician make a prop vanish, and to the same effect: it draws the audience further into the show…
If the film cheats on practically every level, that’s why it works. That’s where much of the humor comes from…When characters try to anticipate how “real world” superheroes will or should act, they resort to their only frame of reference – comic books – despite no natural law requiring people to behave like comic book characters when they put on comic book costumes. But we say “but of course” because it’s also our only frame of reference and in the logic of the film it makes sense: if you’re trying to emulate comic book characters, you emulate comic book characters, and when the film finally makes the notion explicit we’re already so deep into the magician’s act that our instinct is to play along.
Kick-Ass is both one of the best and purest superhero films yet and mostly not a superhero movie at all. Continue reading
This is Spider-Man?
A picture of the costume for the new Spider-Man reboot has made its way online.
It doesn’t make me giddy and optimistic.
Weeeeeeeeee!!!
Good Memories of 2010, Day 3: The Black Widow
Fifteen or more years back, some friends and I were talking and the question arose, “If you could write and direct a movie about any Marvel Comics character, who would it be?”
I didn’t even think about it. “The Black Widow.”
It wasn’t an answer I’d have predicted. I wasn’t an enormous Black Widow fan, and hadn’t really given her much consideration in any way when I wasn’t reading about her or admiring some George Perez portraiture. But when the question appeared, my mind was on the case, and the sultry sexiness, mystery, and espionage background of the heroine offered up exactly the sort of cool superheroic options I was in the mood for.
And there’s just never enough hot femme fatales in catsuits on the screen. Continue reading
Sarah Palin, Mom of the Year?
I don’t watch much TV. I especially don’t watch much reality TV. So I missed out on the exciting antics displayed on this last season of Dancing With The Stars.
I do follow political news, however, so I’m somewhat aware of the controversy about supporters of Sarah Palin gaming the voting to make Bristol Palin win, and the show making some sort of changes in how they handled things to prevent such abuse.
The previous paragraph entirely sums up my knowledge on the matter, and is probably more than I need to know.
Someone did point me to an interesting blog post from Margaret Cho, who apparently also danced on the show.
Everyone was trying to pit me against Bristol, but the truth is, we got along well. She never asked me to babysit Tripp or anything like that, but I consider her a friend…
…Although I don’t agree with the family’s politics at all, I really like Bristol as a person. She’s warm and incredibly supportive, and I think that she looks beautiful out on the dance floor.
She also shares her understanding of exactly why Bristol was on the show in the first place:
I heard from someone who really should know (really should seriously know the dirt really really) that the only reason Bristol was on the show was because Sarah Palin forced her to do it. Sarah supposedly blames Bristol harshly and openly (in the circles that I heard it from) for not winning the election, and so she told Bristol she “owed” it to her to do DWTS so that “America would fall in love with her again” and make it possible for Sarah Palin to run in 2012 with America behind her all the way. Instead of being supposedly “handicapped” by the presence of her teen mom daughter, now Bristol is going to be an “asset” – a celebrity beloved for her dancing.
To be much fairer to Sarah Palin than she ever is to anyone she disagrees with, this is, of course, hearsay. But it rings true. That’s the Sarah Palin we see just about every day. And if this is true, we can only hope that Bristol can break free of her mom’s harpy grip to dance her way to a full life without mommy dearest pulling the strings.
Big Buck Bunny (CGI Cartoon)
Funny.
Harry Potter and The Sexy Hallows (Updated)
Haven’t seen Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows yet, but have read all the books. But I had this short dialogue on Facebook with writer Alex Wells in which I shared some thoughts I’d had when I read Hallows:
Tim Byrd I hope the movie has that part where they’re in a tent for several years waiting for the plot to happen.
7:35 In The Morning (Oscar Nominated Short)
An enchanting, whimsically dark, short film from Nacho Vigalondo, the director of the clever Spanish SF flick Timecrimes.
Sintel (Amazing CGI Fantasy Short)
Timwolf’s Guide to Halloween
For the interested, here are some posts from back in my blog somewheres related to Halloweeny goodness…
5 Classic Horror Flicks to Goose Your Bumps
…for those who might like to watch something scary and good, I figured I’d throw you a few bones. Collect ‘em all and you can build a skeleton.
These are just five classics, not my all time favorites or anything with that much thought behind it, not in any particular order. All of them are first rate.
5 New Classic Horror Flicks You Might Have Missed
Some more contemporary works that many people haven’t seen, and everybody who loves a good scare needs to.
Saturday Night With Cthulhu
Sebastian’s Voodoo (A Great Short Film)
A wonderful short animated film by UCLA student Joaquin Baldwin. It’s visually amazing, and the story is very moving.
Under An Outlaw Moon 