The main attraction of the original TRON was the immerse atmosphere. The visuals were just so unique that you didn't really care about the plot. The new version is very similar. The plot is weak but it looks so good that it is worth going to.
The basic premise is similar - a human finds himself inside a computer grid. The specifics have changed with technology.
When the original as made most people accessed a mainframe through terminals. Most people accessing computers were programmers. The characters in the computer were programs. Each program looked like the person who created it. Everything was fine until a new security program called the MCP took over and shut down access between the users and their programs. A program called TRON and a user named Flynn managed to shut down the MCP and open up access to the IO towers allowing programs and users to communicate again.
Nowadays everyone has one or more computers. Today's cell phones have more processing power than a 1982 mainframe and much of the computing has moved onto the "cloud". None of that is reflected in TRON: Legacy. Instead, Flynn worked on building a new, perfect world somewhere - probably in a mainframe or cluster. Flynn created a program named Clu to help him. As in the original movie, Clu looks like Flynn did when he created Clu. Flynn became trapped and, years later, his son goes looking for him and ends up in the digitized world.
TRON was the first movie to make extensive use of Computer Generated Images (CGI). These were limited and very simple. Most CGI shots were not integrated with the live action. Most of the movie was shot in black and white with glowing colors added with back lighting and hand animation. This is not an issue with the new movie. In fact, Clu is one of the biggest effects. Since he is supposed to look like Flynn did in his 30s, the computer animators filmed the modern Jeff Bridges and digitally removed years from his face.
In the original movie, Dillinger, the man who created the MCP also stole some game programs from Flynn. Flynn needed access to the mainframe to prove that he actually wrote the programs. By this point MCP had absorbed hundreds of other programs and was much smarter than Dylan's original creation.
The new movie has a quick appearance by Dillinger's son who was in charge of the company's new operating system. Since the original movie the corporation Encom has gone from producing games to making operating systems. There is a dispute about operating systems being free or proprietary. While this could be aimed at Microsoft, these days Encom is closer to Apple since they are trying to create a walled ecosystem around their computers.
One last note - don't bother paying extra for 3D. The real world parts of the movie were filmed in 2D and it makes very little difference to the parts of the movie taking place in the computer.
A bit of trivia - Flynn wrote a program named Clu in the first movie but it was destroyed early on.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Thursday, December 16, 2010
The 1960s Christmas Toy Season
It's hard to believe how much things have changed over the last 50 years, especially in how Christmas toys are marketed.
Back then there were no huge discount stores like Walmart. The biggest toy stores were mom and pop operations in a strip center. Enclosed malls were still in the future. Toys came from downtown department stores (every city had its own department store which was close to a multi-story mall) five and dime stores, and super markets. The first sign of Christmas was the appearance of toys on top of the refrigerator units in the super market. These were the good toys, too. They were big - 2-3 feet long, often with a transparent section so that you could see the toy inside the box. This is where the Johnny Seven gun and the Tiger Tank were sold.
Not long after the toys appeared in the super markets you would start to see ads for them on tv. All TV was broadcast. Since there were only three networks and a scattering of independent stations, the amount of programming devoted to children was limited. There was a couple of hours in the morning dominated by Captain Kangaroo. A local host would show cartoons after school. Some old kid-friendly shows were syndicated between school and the news - shows like Mr. Ed or McHale's Navy. Then there was Saturday morning when 3-4 hours on all three networks was devoted to kids shows. This is when the targeted ads would run.
The other big source of toys was catalog stores, mainly Sears and Penny's. It was an event when the Sears Christmas catalog arrived. It had page after page of toys, some of them exclusive to Sears.
The department stores had their own secret weapon - Santa. Columbus's department store was Lazarus and they went all out. There was a locally-produced morning kids show called Lucy's Toyshop. This was a half hour show with Lucy and a cast of puppets. Starting December 1, Lucy and the puppets would expand the show, adding an extra half hour featuring Santa Claus himself and sponsored by Lazarus. Every year Santa got behind and needed Lucy and the puppet's help to catch up making toys. They had a toy-making machine that would plop out toys periodically. Lucy would examine the toy and make sure that the parents knew that they could buy this toy at Lazarus. The kids also knew that most "Santas" were just Santa Helpers but the real Santa was at Lazarus.
In addition to sponsoring a half-hour daily kids show, Lazarus featured an animated window and a Santa Land. These were done from scratch every year. These days Santa's main purpose is to sell pictures of the kids on Santa's lap. In those days, his job was to get the family into the toy department. To minimize the time spent waiting for Santa, Lazarus had several. I think that they had five at their peak. I remember one year getting in line and seeing all of the kids in front of us and thinking that it would take forever. The lines split up. I expected them to join together again but instead we went around a corner and there was Santa. It seemed too good to be true but I was so happy at the short line that I didn't question it very closely.
Lazarus also had a Children's Secret Gift shop. Parents would send the kids in along with some an envelope containing money and some suggestions. Gift specialists would then steer the kids to buy the proper present and wrap it for them.
Not all toys came from standard sources. Sometimes gas stations and tire stores would get in on it, selling branded toys at Christmas.
Lazarus was not the only place you could see Santa. Zanesville, where I grew up, also had Santas at the shoping center and at the County Courthouse. Santa arrived at the shopping center by helicopter the day after Thanksgiving. Both Santas had special houses set up for them. A few times the Zanesville Santa had his own afternoon show but it never had the production values that the Lazarus one had.
Downtown was always decorated for Christmas. Every lamp post had some sort of decoration and sometimes lights crisscrossed the main streets.
Even the comic page got into the act. Disney often put out a special comic strip in which some of their movie characters helped Santa in some way. This ran from December 1 to Christmas Eve.
This might make Christmas sound highly marketed and it was to an extent but within reason. No one pushed cars as Christmas presents. Toys might be pushed during kids shows but there was little licensed merchandise. These days the big push is at high-ticket items for adults and most kids toys are tie-ins with movies or other sources. The Christmas season was carefully defined as running from the day after Christmas until Christmas Eve. Everyone was closed on Sunday so the number of shopping days until Christmas was posted in the paper.
Everything changed during the 1960s. Malls covered the country. Sears and Penny's changed from catalog operations to mall anchors. The department stores anchored the other end of the malls. Big box toy stores and discount stores became the norm. Everyone opened on Sunday and Santa began arriving the weekend before Thanksgiving. Santa stopped getting his own tv show and moved to the mall. As Viet Nam escalated, war toys stopped being big sellers.
Like Halloween, Christmas went from being a children's holiday to a general holiday with most of the marketing aimed at adults.
Back then there were no huge discount stores like Walmart. The biggest toy stores were mom and pop operations in a strip center. Enclosed malls were still in the future. Toys came from downtown department stores (every city had its own department store which was close to a multi-story mall) five and dime stores, and super markets. The first sign of Christmas was the appearance of toys on top of the refrigerator units in the super market. These were the good toys, too. They were big - 2-3 feet long, often with a transparent section so that you could see the toy inside the box. This is where the Johnny Seven gun and the Tiger Tank were sold.
Not long after the toys appeared in the super markets you would start to see ads for them on tv. All TV was broadcast. Since there were only three networks and a scattering of independent stations, the amount of programming devoted to children was limited. There was a couple of hours in the morning dominated by Captain Kangaroo. A local host would show cartoons after school. Some old kid-friendly shows were syndicated between school and the news - shows like Mr. Ed or McHale's Navy. Then there was Saturday morning when 3-4 hours on all three networks was devoted to kids shows. This is when the targeted ads would run.
The other big source of toys was catalog stores, mainly Sears and Penny's. It was an event when the Sears Christmas catalog arrived. It had page after page of toys, some of them exclusive to Sears.
The department stores had their own secret weapon - Santa. Columbus's department store was Lazarus and they went all out. There was a locally-produced morning kids show called Lucy's Toyshop. This was a half hour show with Lucy and a cast of puppets. Starting December 1, Lucy and the puppets would expand the show, adding an extra half hour featuring Santa Claus himself and sponsored by Lazarus. Every year Santa got behind and needed Lucy and the puppet's help to catch up making toys. They had a toy-making machine that would plop out toys periodically. Lucy would examine the toy and make sure that the parents knew that they could buy this toy at Lazarus. The kids also knew that most "Santas" were just Santa Helpers but the real Santa was at Lazarus.
In addition to sponsoring a half-hour daily kids show, Lazarus featured an animated window and a Santa Land. These were done from scratch every year. These days Santa's main purpose is to sell pictures of the kids on Santa's lap. In those days, his job was to get the family into the toy department. To minimize the time spent waiting for Santa, Lazarus had several. I think that they had five at their peak. I remember one year getting in line and seeing all of the kids in front of us and thinking that it would take forever. The lines split up. I expected them to join together again but instead we went around a corner and there was Santa. It seemed too good to be true but I was so happy at the short line that I didn't question it very closely.
Lazarus also had a Children's Secret Gift shop. Parents would send the kids in along with some an envelope containing money and some suggestions. Gift specialists would then steer the kids to buy the proper present and wrap it for them.
Not all toys came from standard sources. Sometimes gas stations and tire stores would get in on it, selling branded toys at Christmas.
Lazarus was not the only place you could see Santa. Zanesville, where I grew up, also had Santas at the shoping center and at the County Courthouse. Santa arrived at the shopping center by helicopter the day after Thanksgiving. Both Santas had special houses set up for them. A few times the Zanesville Santa had his own afternoon show but it never had the production values that the Lazarus one had.
Downtown was always decorated for Christmas. Every lamp post had some sort of decoration and sometimes lights crisscrossed the main streets.
Even the comic page got into the act. Disney often put out a special comic strip in which some of their movie characters helped Santa in some way. This ran from December 1 to Christmas Eve.
This might make Christmas sound highly marketed and it was to an extent but within reason. No one pushed cars as Christmas presents. Toys might be pushed during kids shows but there was little licensed merchandise. These days the big push is at high-ticket items for adults and most kids toys are tie-ins with movies or other sources. The Christmas season was carefully defined as running from the day after Christmas until Christmas Eve. Everyone was closed on Sunday so the number of shopping days until Christmas was posted in the paper.
Everything changed during the 1960s. Malls covered the country. Sears and Penny's changed from catalog operations to mall anchors. The department stores anchored the other end of the malls. Big box toy stores and discount stores became the norm. Everyone opened on Sunday and Santa began arriving the weekend before Thanksgiving. Santa stopped getting his own tv show and moved to the mall. As Viet Nam escalated, war toys stopped being big sellers.
Like Halloween, Christmas went from being a children's holiday to a general holiday with most of the marketing aimed at adults.
1960s Christmas Gifts
I was an only child and my father was a doctor. We were not rich but we weren't poor, either. That meant that I got a lot of good Christmas presents. I ran across a site listing some vintage toys from the 1950s through the 1970s and as surprised at how many of these I had. Here is some commentary on some of them.
The Johnny Seven OMA set was seven weapons in one. It fired three types of projectiles. It could also be set up as a grenade launcher.You folded the legs down and spread them to make a tripod and flipped up the launcher. The stock detached and the pistol grip became an actual pistol. All together, there were two triggers and four firing buttons plus the release for the pistol.
The James Bond Attache Case was something I really wanted. I think that it was a Sear exclusive back when they were a major retailer. It had a bunch of gimmicks right out of the movies. There was a (plastic) knife hidden in one end. You could shoot a plastic bullet. It had a built-in camera and walkie-talkie and separate receiver. It had a trick latch that would fire a cap if you opened it wrong. Inside it had some secret agent identification and a pistol that could convert to a rifle. I continued to use the walkie-talkie receiver for years.
I had both of these consoles. The top one was ok. It had several controls that you could play with but the bottom one was more fun. The bottom one had controls for an airplane with the airplane mounted on top. The throttle controlled the propellers (this predated jet airliners) and the yoke make the plane tilt up, down, left, or right.
This car dashboard looks familiar. Either I had one of these or a friend did. Either way, its more fun to pretend to fly a plane than drive a car.
The Johnny Astro spacecraft was a neat idea. It used a vortex to lift a small balloon. By using a joystick and throttle you could control the balloon's flight. I found it frustrating. There was too much play in the controls and I could never get the balloon to go quite where I wanted it to go. You also had to use a feather-light touch on the throttle or the balloon would fly out of the vortex and you would have to start from scratch.
My Give-A-Show projector was red instead of blue but otherwise it was just like this one. It projected four panel cartoons. I got a lot of use out of this one.
This car wash looks familiar. I'm sure that I had one. I'm also sure that using it as a car wash was fun for five minutes. After that I used the parts as other things.
Part of the Mattel Thing Maker series. You squirted some colored goop into metal molds then heated them for a few minutes. After they cooled you had soft, rubbery pieces. There were heads, arms, and legs. You used a pencil to hold them together. It was fun until the goop ran out.
The Wham-o Air Blaster was great. There was rubber membrane inside. You cocked it with a lever on top then fired it by pulling the trigger. It created a blast of air and a cool sound. The air blast moved surprisingly slow. I played with it until I wore out the rubber membrane.
I just auctioned off my tank last Summer. I still had the box, too. The tank was controlled by a "walkie-talkie" with control buttons. The walkie-talkie was on a long cord and also held the 4 D cell batteries. It was ok for indoor play but the electric motor was disappointing. The tank was too slow and did not have enough power for rough terrain.
Thimble City was a city block on legs. The set included cars, people, and a couple of pets, all with magnets in their base. There was a pair of magnetic wands that you could use to move the objects around. This was never as much fun as the ads made it seem. When I played with it my friend and I usually kept stealing each other's characters. The pets were the best for this since they left more of the magnets exposed. I remember having an insane amount of fun that way.
This seems like a lot of toys but spread over several years of both birthday and Christmas it isn't even one present per occasion.
While these were fun, the toys I really played with are not on the site. I'll see if I can find some for a future post.
iThe James Bond Attache Case was something I really wanted. I think that it was a Sear exclusive back when they were a major retailer. It had a bunch of gimmicks right out of the movies. There was a (plastic) knife hidden in one end. You could shoot a plastic bullet. It had a built-in camera and walkie-talkie and separate receiver. It had a trick latch that would fire a cap if you opened it wrong. Inside it had some secret agent identification and a pistol that could convert to a rifle. I continued to use the walkie-talkie receiver for years.
I had both of these consoles. The top one was ok. It had several controls that you could play with but the bottom one was more fun. The bottom one had controls for an airplane with the airplane mounted on top. The throttle controlled the propellers (this predated jet airliners) and the yoke make the plane tilt up, down, left, or right.
The Johnny Astro spacecraft was a neat idea. It used a vortex to lift a small balloon. By using a joystick and throttle you could control the balloon's flight. I found it frustrating. There was too much play in the controls and I could never get the balloon to go quite where I wanted it to go. You also had to use a feather-light touch on the throttle or the balloon would fly out of the vortex and you would have to start from scratch.
This seems like a lot of toys but spread over several years of both birthday and Christmas it isn't even one present per occasion.
While these were fun, the toys I really played with are not on the site. I'll see if I can find some for a future post.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Marvel's Disturbing Women
Marvel has been releasing digital back issues of Ms Marvel. While reading them I got to thinking about how solo women have fared in the Marvel Universe. It isn't pretty. Most of them end up going through transformations, both mental and physical. Many have been victims or had some form of mental problem.
As far as I know, the first Marvel woman to be featured in a solo story in the Silver Age or later was the Wasp in a back-up story. It was pretty forgettable. The Wasp was on her way to meet Henry Pym while wearing a coat over her costume. She saw someone lifting a man hole cover and investigated. He turned out to be an escaping robber. The Wasp didn't have her sting with her (back then she needed her costume to shrink and her sting came from a device she wore on her forearm). She got the robber to surrender by rolling up a piece of paper to make a megaphone and impersonated the Invisible Girl. The robber was afraid that the Thing and the Torch were following and surrendered to the police.
Compared with the other women I will cover, the Wasp did fairly well - right up to her death. She even led the Avengers for several years. Henry Pym had enough problems for both of them. He was initially interested in her because she resembled his dead first wife. They married while he thought that he was someone else. He had several breakdowns and became abusive.
The next woman to go solo was Medusa in a one-shot. The Black Window had her own half-book for a few issues and also went on to lead the Avengers. Her life up until the Avengers Disassemble plot was straightforward although her life became bumpier later.
This is where things get creepy.
In response to the Woman's movement, Marvel introduced The Cat, the first character created, written, and drawn by women. The comic flopped and an effort was made to bring her back. To do this, she was transformed into the half-tiger, Tigra. That also failed and she ended up in the Avengers. Besides going furry and growing claws, she has had periods where her personality was taken over by her cat impulses. She also grew a tail.
The Cat's costume was found by Patsy Walker who put it on and became the Hellcat. She eventually married the Son of Satan who turned abusive.
One of Robert E. Howard's creations was Red Sonya - a 16th century mercenary. The story she appeared in was adapted as a Conan story and she became Red Sonja (with a "j"). In her first few appearances she dressed similarly to Conan with a mail shirt, silk shorts (hers were tighter and shorter), and high boots. She was immediately popular and was given her own comic. He outfit was changed to a scale-mail bikini and she was given an origin. It seemed that she had been a farm girl who was raped. A goddess appeared to her and gave her skill with the sword. The catch was that she could only make love to a man who defeated her. This came close to saying that she could only have sex when raped.
The She-Hulk was created for trademark reasons. Unlike her cousin, the She-Hulk didn't have two personalities although her personality was different when she was green. She eventually stopped using her human form and for a while she lost it completely. Later she went crazy and destroyed a town before being turned back into her human form. From there she worked back up to being the She-Hulk most of the time. I don't think that she used her human form in the last few years.
More important is how the She-Hulk's personality progressed. She became a party-girl who would sleep with anyone. In a lot of ways she is the perfect male fantasy - a beautiful, sexy woman who wears very little and will hop in bed with men with no strings attached.
The Scarlet Witch has never had a solo strip but she did share a comic book with the Vision for a while. Regardless, she deserves special mention. She started out as a reluctant member of Magneto's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. When the Stranger took Magneto to another world to study, she joined the Avengers and was a member off and on for decades after that. She fell in love with the Vision, an android (or synthazoid) and eventually married him. She had a few false starts about her parentage before learning that her real father was Magneto. While practicing magic, she managed a virgin conception and had twins. It turned out that the twins were actually a product of her magic and eventually vanished. Over time this drove the Scarlet Witch insane and she began using her reality-warping powers unconsciously. She broke up the Avengers, killing or maiming different members in the process. Next she completely rewrote reality in an attempt to recreate her children. Eventually she lost her powers and her memory (for the moment).
After the Cat flopped, Ms Marvel was created as the company's flagship female character. There were issues from the beginning. The character was created around Carol Danvers who had been a supporting character in Captain Marvel. When she first appeared, Ms Marvel had complete amnesia. Her powers were similar to Captain Marvel's and she wore a costume like his except with a scarf, bare legs and cutouts over her stomach and back. The cut-outs were controversial and a pain for the artist so the were quickly dropped. At first neither Carol Danvers not Ms Marvel were aware of the other. When they did become aware, they resented each other. They regarded each other as different people. It took months before the two personalities merged. After that she adopted the sexy costume she wears now.
Ms Marvel's comic lasted a couple of years. After that she joined the Avengers (I think I see a pattern here). She left after a virgin pregnancy. She came to term quickly and delivered a child that grew to adulthood in hours. She married him and went to live with him in a different dimension. Does this sound wrong? Her husband continued to age rapidly and quickly died of old age. Ms Marvel returned to Earth realizing that she had been the victim of mind-control and angry that none of the Avengers saved her. Not long afterward, the mutant Rogue attacked her, stealing her powers and memories.
Carol eventually regained most of her memories. After being kidnapped by aliens she was subjected to some experiments that linked her with a white star. This put her in the cosmic hero class. Taking the name Binary, she left Earth for some time and joined the group the Starjammers. Eventually she returned to Earth and rejoined the Avengers. Her powers as Binary faded and she was back to a variation of her Ms Marvel powers. For a while she called herself Warbird. She developed a drinking problem and had to drop out of the Avengers.
More recently Carol went back to being Ms Marvel in her own book. During the Civil War she was on Iron Man's side. Afterward she was asked to form a new team of Avengers. All well and good except she also sort of merged with an alien and later died (at least for a while). She was replaced as Ms Marvel by Moonstone who has her own issues despite being a trained psychiatrist.
Even though she did not have a solo book, Jean Gray's life deserves some examination. She was a new recruit to the X-Men in X-Men #1. Eventually she and Cyclops fell in love. In X-Men #100 she sacrificed herself by piloting a space shuttle through a solar flare without shielding. This should have killed her but a cosmic being was attracted to her act of self-sacrifice. It took her place and put her in a healing cocoon. The cosmic being's own powers manifested and it called itself Phoenix. The power of the Phoenix was too much temptation for the Jean Grey construct and it killed itself (after killing a world of asparagus people and threatening the Earth). When the original Jean finally finished healing and emerged from the cocoon she discovered that Cyclops had married her clone and they had a child. Cyclops abandoned both to be with Jean. After a few years, all three versions of Jean merged. She and Cyclops married and spent their honeymoon raising Cyclops's son in different bodies in the far future. Jean broke up with Cyclops, regained her Phoenix powers and moved on to another plane of existence.
Update - I forgot Jessica Drew, Spider Woman. At first she thought that she was one of the High Evolutionary's human/animal creations, a literal spider-woman. She spent several issues convinced that she was inhuman and the people were instinctively repulsed by her. It later turned out that she was a normal human who had obtained spider-powers through the High Evolutionary. The reason that people disliked her was because she gave off pheromones that repelled people. Charming.
Like the She-Hulk, Spider Woman mainly existed to tie down copyright. When the character didn't prove popular she was forgotten for years and replaced by a Spider Woman in a black and white costume. Jessica didn't make a come-back until the 2000s.
As far as I know, the first Marvel woman to be featured in a solo story in the Silver Age or later was the Wasp in a back-up story. It was pretty forgettable. The Wasp was on her way to meet Henry Pym while wearing a coat over her costume. She saw someone lifting a man hole cover and investigated. He turned out to be an escaping robber. The Wasp didn't have her sting with her (back then she needed her costume to shrink and her sting came from a device she wore on her forearm). She got the robber to surrender by rolling up a piece of paper to make a megaphone and impersonated the Invisible Girl. The robber was afraid that the Thing and the Torch were following and surrendered to the police.
Compared with the other women I will cover, the Wasp did fairly well - right up to her death. She even led the Avengers for several years. Henry Pym had enough problems for both of them. He was initially interested in her because she resembled his dead first wife. They married while he thought that he was someone else. He had several breakdowns and became abusive.
The next woman to go solo was Medusa in a one-shot. The Black Window had her own half-book for a few issues and also went on to lead the Avengers. Her life up until the Avengers Disassemble plot was straightforward although her life became bumpier later.
This is where things get creepy.
In response to the Woman's movement, Marvel introduced The Cat, the first character created, written, and drawn by women. The comic flopped and an effort was made to bring her back. To do this, she was transformed into the half-tiger, Tigra. That also failed and she ended up in the Avengers. Besides going furry and growing claws, she has had periods where her personality was taken over by her cat impulses. She also grew a tail.
The Cat's costume was found by Patsy Walker who put it on and became the Hellcat. She eventually married the Son of Satan who turned abusive.
One of Robert E. Howard's creations was Red Sonya - a 16th century mercenary. The story she appeared in was adapted as a Conan story and she became Red Sonja (with a "j"). In her first few appearances she dressed similarly to Conan with a mail shirt, silk shorts (hers were tighter and shorter), and high boots. She was immediately popular and was given her own comic. He outfit was changed to a scale-mail bikini and she was given an origin. It seemed that she had been a farm girl who was raped. A goddess appeared to her and gave her skill with the sword. The catch was that she could only make love to a man who defeated her. This came close to saying that she could only have sex when raped.
The She-Hulk was created for trademark reasons. Unlike her cousin, the She-Hulk didn't have two personalities although her personality was different when she was green. She eventually stopped using her human form and for a while she lost it completely. Later she went crazy and destroyed a town before being turned back into her human form. From there she worked back up to being the She-Hulk most of the time. I don't think that she used her human form in the last few years.
More important is how the She-Hulk's personality progressed. She became a party-girl who would sleep with anyone. In a lot of ways she is the perfect male fantasy - a beautiful, sexy woman who wears very little and will hop in bed with men with no strings attached.
The Scarlet Witch has never had a solo strip but she did share a comic book with the Vision for a while. Regardless, she deserves special mention. She started out as a reluctant member of Magneto's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. When the Stranger took Magneto to another world to study, she joined the Avengers and was a member off and on for decades after that. She fell in love with the Vision, an android (or synthazoid) and eventually married him. She had a few false starts about her parentage before learning that her real father was Magneto. While practicing magic, she managed a virgin conception and had twins. It turned out that the twins were actually a product of her magic and eventually vanished. Over time this drove the Scarlet Witch insane and she began using her reality-warping powers unconsciously. She broke up the Avengers, killing or maiming different members in the process. Next she completely rewrote reality in an attempt to recreate her children. Eventually she lost her powers and her memory (for the moment).
After the Cat flopped, Ms Marvel was created as the company's flagship female character. There were issues from the beginning. The character was created around Carol Danvers who had been a supporting character in Captain Marvel. When she first appeared, Ms Marvel had complete amnesia. Her powers were similar to Captain Marvel's and she wore a costume like his except with a scarf, bare legs and cutouts over her stomach and back. The cut-outs were controversial and a pain for the artist so the were quickly dropped. At first neither Carol Danvers not Ms Marvel were aware of the other. When they did become aware, they resented each other. They regarded each other as different people. It took months before the two personalities merged. After that she adopted the sexy costume she wears now.
Ms Marvel's comic lasted a couple of years. After that she joined the Avengers (I think I see a pattern here). She left after a virgin pregnancy. She came to term quickly and delivered a child that grew to adulthood in hours. She married him and went to live with him in a different dimension. Does this sound wrong? Her husband continued to age rapidly and quickly died of old age. Ms Marvel returned to Earth realizing that she had been the victim of mind-control and angry that none of the Avengers saved her. Not long afterward, the mutant Rogue attacked her, stealing her powers and memories.
Carol eventually regained most of her memories. After being kidnapped by aliens she was subjected to some experiments that linked her with a white star. This put her in the cosmic hero class. Taking the name Binary, she left Earth for some time and joined the group the Starjammers. Eventually she returned to Earth and rejoined the Avengers. Her powers as Binary faded and she was back to a variation of her Ms Marvel powers. For a while she called herself Warbird. She developed a drinking problem and had to drop out of the Avengers.
More recently Carol went back to being Ms Marvel in her own book. During the Civil War she was on Iron Man's side. Afterward she was asked to form a new team of Avengers. All well and good except she also sort of merged with an alien and later died (at least for a while). She was replaced as Ms Marvel by Moonstone who has her own issues despite being a trained psychiatrist.
Even though she did not have a solo book, Jean Gray's life deserves some examination. She was a new recruit to the X-Men in X-Men #1. Eventually she and Cyclops fell in love. In X-Men #100 she sacrificed herself by piloting a space shuttle through a solar flare without shielding. This should have killed her but a cosmic being was attracted to her act of self-sacrifice. It took her place and put her in a healing cocoon. The cosmic being's own powers manifested and it called itself Phoenix. The power of the Phoenix was too much temptation for the Jean Grey construct and it killed itself (after killing a world of asparagus people and threatening the Earth). When the original Jean finally finished healing and emerged from the cocoon she discovered that Cyclops had married her clone and they had a child. Cyclops abandoned both to be with Jean. After a few years, all three versions of Jean merged. She and Cyclops married and spent their honeymoon raising Cyclops's son in different bodies in the far future. Jean broke up with Cyclops, regained her Phoenix powers and moved on to another plane of existence.
Update - I forgot Jessica Drew, Spider Woman. At first she thought that she was one of the High Evolutionary's human/animal creations, a literal spider-woman. She spent several issues convinced that she was inhuman and the people were instinctively repulsed by her. It later turned out that she was a normal human who had obtained spider-powers through the High Evolutionary. The reason that people disliked her was because she gave off pheromones that repelled people. Charming.
Like the She-Hulk, Spider Woman mainly existed to tie down copyright. When the character didn't prove popular she was forgotten for years and replaced by a Spider Woman in a black and white costume. Jessica didn't make a come-back until the 2000s.
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Heroes and the Law II
Continuing my thoughts on the relationship between superheroes and the law. Previously I looked at how the real world would handle superheroes. Now I will look at how they related to the law in their own universes.
When superheroes were first created at the end of the 1930s, they were an extension of a long tradition of adventurers who either aided the law or took the law into their own hands. This tradition went back decades and included stories about the wild west, the pulps, and radio dramas. Superheroes were descended from heroes such as the Shadow, Doc Savage, and Sherlock Holmes. There were also newspaper comic strips that featured heroes who were costumed or at least wore distinctive dress who were nearly superheroes. These included The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician and the futuristic heroes Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. All of these characters fought crime on some level without official sanction. Beyond that, Prohibition and the corruption it caused left people with a poor opinion of the police. Naturally, people didn't spend much time thinking about the legal ramifications of super-powered vigilantes with all of these other characters in circulation.
The Phantom deserves special mention. He was the secret chief of the Jungle Patrol making him the first costumed hero to actually head a police department.
When Superman first appeared he was obviously working outside the law. In his first couple of appearances he ran a corrupt senator out of town and stopped a war. Just imagine the consequences of either of these acts today.
World War II began just as superheroes were starting to bloom. Most heroes joined the war effort in some manner. Some heroes like Captain America were officially working within the government. The Human Torch joined the police force early on then recruited the Sub-Mariner to help in the fight against the Nazis.
The Golden Age of Comics ended along with World War II and most superhero comics were canceled. The most notable exceptions were Superman and Batman. By the 1950s, Batman had been deputized into the Gotham Police Force and Superman was officially recognized by the UN and the various law enforcement agencies of the world.
In the DC universe, several Silver Age heroes had relationships with law enforcement agencies one way or another. Green Lantern was part of a galactic police force. Hawkman and Hawkgirl were extraterrestrial police officers on earth to learn human police methods. Martian Manhunter's secret identity was a police detective named John Jones. The Flash was a scientist for the police.
Things were a little different when Marvel started. The three original teams in the Marvel Universe all had ties with the government. Nick Fury, who still had both eyes and was working with the CIA sent the Fantastic Four on a mission to stop the Hate Monger. Professor X had an FBI liaison he regularly met with. The Avengers went several steps beyond this. Avengers authority could be used to order police. An Avengers id was an all-access card. Rick Jones used his to see the President without an appointment. Later on these relationships became strained. After Professor X's apparent death, the FBI ordered the X-Men to split up in order to present a smaller target. This only lasted a couple of issues and was probably a sales ploy. The government took a stronger role in the Avengers, ordering them to diversify their membership and making other changes.
Non-team heroes did not fare as well. No one really cared about Daredevil and Doctor Strange operated below everyone's radar but Spider-Man was actively wanted for general questioning and the Hulk was considered an enemy of any country he happened to be in. He was attacked by the military in the US and the USSR.
The next batch of Marvel heroes operated outside the law as often as in it. This included the Sub-Mariner (who had attacked New York a couple of times) and the Silver Surfer (who had attacked the entire world). The next team, the Defenders, was never officially recognized by anyone. At one point it got out that there was no formal membership and the team was overrun by would-be members. From that point on, most teams existed without any relationship to the government.
There were exceptions. The original X-Force presented itself as a private anti-mutant squad. This was actually a cover for the original X-Men to rescue mutants. After they merged with the X-Men, the team became a government-run team of mutants. The British group, Excalibur had an arrangement with the British government which eventually included having Peter Wisdom, a member of a British secret agency, as a member.
After the apparent death of the FF, Baron Zemo founded the Thunderbolts. This was actually made up of super-villains using new names in order to gain official access to the FF's headquarters. The core members eventually decided that they preferred being heroes and went straight.
Out of all of the solo heroes, Captain America has had the closest relationship with the government. He worked with SHIELD many times, more than any other hero. On the other hand, in the 1980s someone in the White House discovered that the government helds the rights to the name and costume and informed Steve Rogers that he was now reporting to them. In order to retain his status as a free agent, Rogers resigned and a new Captain America was recruited. This continued until President Reagan found out about it and he ordered his staff to give the role back to Steve Rogers.
The 1970s saw the rise of the monster comic along with several monster-related heroes. These included the Ghost Rider, the Son of Satan, the Beast, the Werewolf (by night), and a host of others. All of them were hunted by the police any time they became aware of these characters.
During the 1990s, the various mutant groups shifted membership and missions several times. They started resembling gangs fighting over territory rather than heroes and operated outside of the government.
When superheroes were first created at the end of the 1930s, they were an extension of a long tradition of adventurers who either aided the law or took the law into their own hands. This tradition went back decades and included stories about the wild west, the pulps, and radio dramas. Superheroes were descended from heroes such as the Shadow, Doc Savage, and Sherlock Holmes. There were also newspaper comic strips that featured heroes who were costumed or at least wore distinctive dress who were nearly superheroes. These included The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician and the futuristic heroes Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. All of these characters fought crime on some level without official sanction. Beyond that, Prohibition and the corruption it caused left people with a poor opinion of the police. Naturally, people didn't spend much time thinking about the legal ramifications of super-powered vigilantes with all of these other characters in circulation.
The Phantom deserves special mention. He was the secret chief of the Jungle Patrol making him the first costumed hero to actually head a police department.
When Superman first appeared he was obviously working outside the law. In his first couple of appearances he ran a corrupt senator out of town and stopped a war. Just imagine the consequences of either of these acts today.
World War II began just as superheroes were starting to bloom. Most heroes joined the war effort in some manner. Some heroes like Captain America were officially working within the government. The Human Torch joined the police force early on then recruited the Sub-Mariner to help in the fight against the Nazis.
The Golden Age of Comics ended along with World War II and most superhero comics were canceled. The most notable exceptions were Superman and Batman. By the 1950s, Batman had been deputized into the Gotham Police Force and Superman was officially recognized by the UN and the various law enforcement agencies of the world.
In the DC universe, several Silver Age heroes had relationships with law enforcement agencies one way or another. Green Lantern was part of a galactic police force. Hawkman and Hawkgirl were extraterrestrial police officers on earth to learn human police methods. Martian Manhunter's secret identity was a police detective named John Jones. The Flash was a scientist for the police.
Things were a little different when Marvel started. The three original teams in the Marvel Universe all had ties with the government. Nick Fury, who still had both eyes and was working with the CIA sent the Fantastic Four on a mission to stop the Hate Monger. Professor X had an FBI liaison he regularly met with. The Avengers went several steps beyond this. Avengers authority could be used to order police. An Avengers id was an all-access card. Rick Jones used his to see the President without an appointment. Later on these relationships became strained. After Professor X's apparent death, the FBI ordered the X-Men to split up in order to present a smaller target. This only lasted a couple of issues and was probably a sales ploy. The government took a stronger role in the Avengers, ordering them to diversify their membership and making other changes.
Non-team heroes did not fare as well. No one really cared about Daredevil and Doctor Strange operated below everyone's radar but Spider-Man was actively wanted for general questioning and the Hulk was considered an enemy of any country he happened to be in. He was attacked by the military in the US and the USSR.
The next batch of Marvel heroes operated outside the law as often as in it. This included the Sub-Mariner (who had attacked New York a couple of times) and the Silver Surfer (who had attacked the entire world). The next team, the Defenders, was never officially recognized by anyone. At one point it got out that there was no formal membership and the team was overrun by would-be members. From that point on, most teams existed without any relationship to the government.
There were exceptions. The original X-Force presented itself as a private anti-mutant squad. This was actually a cover for the original X-Men to rescue mutants. After they merged with the X-Men, the team became a government-run team of mutants. The British group, Excalibur had an arrangement with the British government which eventually included having Peter Wisdom, a member of a British secret agency, as a member.
After the apparent death of the FF, Baron Zemo founded the Thunderbolts. This was actually made up of super-villains using new names in order to gain official access to the FF's headquarters. The core members eventually decided that they preferred being heroes and went straight.
Out of all of the solo heroes, Captain America has had the closest relationship with the government. He worked with SHIELD many times, more than any other hero. On the other hand, in the 1980s someone in the White House discovered that the government helds the rights to the name and costume and informed Steve Rogers that he was now reporting to them. In order to retain his status as a free agent, Rogers resigned and a new Captain America was recruited. This continued until President Reagan found out about it and he ordered his staff to give the role back to Steve Rogers.
The 1970s saw the rise of the monster comic along with several monster-related heroes. These included the Ghost Rider, the Son of Satan, the Beast, the Werewolf (by night), and a host of others. All of them were hunted by the police any time they became aware of these characters.
During the 1990s, the various mutant groups shifted membership and missions several times. They started resembling gangs fighting over territory rather than heroes and operated outside of the government.
Friday, December 03, 2010
Superheroes and the Law
I was reading some marvel digital comics and hit a few issues from the Civil War arc. That got me to thinking about what the relationship would be in the real world between superheroes and the government. I'll do a second post on how the topic evolved in the comics.
Civil War was meant partly as commentary on the Patriot Act and other policies of President George W. Bush. Because of this background, many of the plot elements were meant to show the government as being over-the-top. The conflict was over an act that required superheroes to register with and work for the government. The split between the heroes was between the conservatives on the side of the government and the liberals who opposed the act.
So, how would today's real world react to superheroes? This gets complicated because many heroes are not actually super. Some are costumes acrobats using archaic weapons (Captain America, Daredevil, Hawkeye). Batman would also be in this group but the DC universe has always been different from ours while the Marvel Universe is based on more closely on the real world.
Anyway... the next group consists of regular people using advanced technology (Iron Man, War Machine). The final group has the people with actual powers. These distinctions can get a little fuzzy. Daredevil has radar sense, Iron Man's armor has been part of him at times. There are also people who use technology or magic to gain powers. Giant Man originally used a gas and later a helmet to change size. Thor used to change back to a human if he lost hold of his hammer for more than a minute. I'm making the call that Daredevil could (and has) functioned with regular vision and that having real powers is more important than how they are obtained. That still leaves Iron Fist who has a real super power but seldom uses it but no classification is perfect. The fact that he can demolish a building with a single punch puts him in the people with powers class.
Now, I'm going to extrapolate from the real world and assume that conservatives would accept superheroes more readily than liberals. My reasoning is that most gun-control advocates are liberal and that the areas with the tightest gun controls are liberal strongholds. The same goes for militia groups and volunteer boarder-watchers. Conservatives support them and liberals hate them. Real vigilantism is very rare but the few examples break down the same way. Bernie Goetz, the subway shooter, comes to mind. He shot four men who were trying to rob him. Liberals believe that the four men were only asking for loose change and were shot unprovoked. Conservatives believe Goetz's version, that the four men threatened him and would have hurt him if he had not shot them.
So, my extrapolation makes me think that liberals would tend to see superheroes as a threat and might start examining the race of offenders caught for signs of racism. Conservatives would be more likely to take superheroes at face value. That would cover the costumed acrobats. With the exception of the Punisher (who would be on the Most Wanted list), the acrobats use bare hands and minimal weapons against criminals who often carry guns.
Things change when we get to the group that uses advanced technology. It is one thing to take out an armed robber with a stick. It is something quite different when you are wearing the equivalent of a tank. It is illegal to own a tank with a working cannon or a warplane with missiles. I doubt that the government would support someone wearing armor that could tear either of these to pieces. Again, I expect that more conservatives than liberals would support this class of hero but I suspect that the majority of the country would want some sort of official control over technology like this. There are strict prohibitions against using US military force against the citizenry. These restrictions would probably be extended to superheroes. They might be treated like firms such as Backwater Security (AKA Xe) which is allowed to carry weapons under contract to the government. Again, support for Blackwater is higher among conservatives than liberals.
This brings us to the people with real powers. Things get trickier when you have someone who cannot be disarmed. They might be forced to work for the government as in the Marvel Universe or they might be treated as contractors. There might be exceptions made for people with powers who do not use them as long as they do not use them. But how do you handle people who start fires because they are irritated or can wreck a city block in a fight over a girl? And this is just the Fantastic Four (in the Silver Surfer's second appearance the Thing started a fight over Alicia and a block of condemned buildings was leveled).
Liability insurance for these beings would be impossible. They would have to have federally-backed insurance like flood insurance.
Just being close to these heroes can be dangerous so they might be ordered to post their location and stay away from locations where people assemble, especially children. In short, we might end up treating superheroes like sex offenders.
Or we might go the route taken in the Incredibles and offer superheroes a deal - retire and receive amnesty or be outlawed. Regardless, I doubt that the real world would be as hero-friendly as the Marvel Universe.
Civil War was meant partly as commentary on the Patriot Act and other policies of President George W. Bush. Because of this background, many of the plot elements were meant to show the government as being over-the-top. The conflict was over an act that required superheroes to register with and work for the government. The split between the heroes was between the conservatives on the side of the government and the liberals who opposed the act.
So, how would today's real world react to superheroes? This gets complicated because many heroes are not actually super. Some are costumes acrobats using archaic weapons (Captain America, Daredevil, Hawkeye). Batman would also be in this group but the DC universe has always been different from ours while the Marvel Universe is based on more closely on the real world.
Anyway... the next group consists of regular people using advanced technology (Iron Man, War Machine). The final group has the people with actual powers. These distinctions can get a little fuzzy. Daredevil has radar sense, Iron Man's armor has been part of him at times. There are also people who use technology or magic to gain powers. Giant Man originally used a gas and later a helmet to change size. Thor used to change back to a human if he lost hold of his hammer for more than a minute. I'm making the call that Daredevil could (and has) functioned with regular vision and that having real powers is more important than how they are obtained. That still leaves Iron Fist who has a real super power but seldom uses it but no classification is perfect. The fact that he can demolish a building with a single punch puts him in the people with powers class.
Now, I'm going to extrapolate from the real world and assume that conservatives would accept superheroes more readily than liberals. My reasoning is that most gun-control advocates are liberal and that the areas with the tightest gun controls are liberal strongholds. The same goes for militia groups and volunteer boarder-watchers. Conservatives support them and liberals hate them. Real vigilantism is very rare but the few examples break down the same way. Bernie Goetz, the subway shooter, comes to mind. He shot four men who were trying to rob him. Liberals believe that the four men were only asking for loose change and were shot unprovoked. Conservatives believe Goetz's version, that the four men threatened him and would have hurt him if he had not shot them.
So, my extrapolation makes me think that liberals would tend to see superheroes as a threat and might start examining the race of offenders caught for signs of racism. Conservatives would be more likely to take superheroes at face value. That would cover the costumed acrobats. With the exception of the Punisher (who would be on the Most Wanted list), the acrobats use bare hands and minimal weapons against criminals who often carry guns.
Things change when we get to the group that uses advanced technology. It is one thing to take out an armed robber with a stick. It is something quite different when you are wearing the equivalent of a tank. It is illegal to own a tank with a working cannon or a warplane with missiles. I doubt that the government would support someone wearing armor that could tear either of these to pieces. Again, I expect that more conservatives than liberals would support this class of hero but I suspect that the majority of the country would want some sort of official control over technology like this. There are strict prohibitions against using US military force against the citizenry. These restrictions would probably be extended to superheroes. They might be treated like firms such as Backwater Security (AKA Xe) which is allowed to carry weapons under contract to the government. Again, support for Blackwater is higher among conservatives than liberals.
This brings us to the people with real powers. Things get trickier when you have someone who cannot be disarmed. They might be forced to work for the government as in the Marvel Universe or they might be treated as contractors. There might be exceptions made for people with powers who do not use them as long as they do not use them. But how do you handle people who start fires because they are irritated or can wreck a city block in a fight over a girl? And this is just the Fantastic Four (in the Silver Surfer's second appearance the Thing started a fight over Alicia and a block of condemned buildings was leveled).
Liability insurance for these beings would be impossible. They would have to have federally-backed insurance like flood insurance.
Just being close to these heroes can be dangerous so they might be ordered to post their location and stay away from locations where people assemble, especially children. In short, we might end up treating superheroes like sex offenders.
Or we might go the route taken in the Incredibles and offer superheroes a deal - retire and receive amnesty or be outlawed. Regardless, I doubt that the real world would be as hero-friendly as the Marvel Universe.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Some Thoughts on Harry Potter
So, the Harry Potter series is half-way through the finale. I'm not going to write a review, just some thoughts on the movie. I don't think I'm including any spoilers that aren't in most reviews.
First, this isn't exactly a Harry Potter movie. True, it features Harry and most of the characters from the other movies but it abandoned the formula. All of the other movies followed a year at Hogwarts. Not this one. Harry never gets near it. The closest the movie comes is when some Death Eaters search the Hogwart Express. So, there are no classes, no moving stairways, No talking paintings, no Quidditch, not even Harry on a broom. We only see a few of the teachers and not for long. On the other hand, this movie refers to the other movies more than most - things like "the wand chooses you" and the composition of the wand.
This is not a kid's movie, either. Parts of it are scary. The rest would be boring to small kids.
Harry and company spend more time in the modern (muggle) world in this movie than in all of the others put together. It is a bit jarring having Harry and company order cappuccinos. An opening scene in Hermione's house underscores how different muggles live than wizards. Wizards tend to live in ancient houses in remote areas. The one exception is an ancient townhouse.
Wizards are also decades behind on technology. They use candles and other flames for light. Newspapers are printed on 19th century presses or by magic. The Hogwart Express is a steam engine. The most modern technology we see them use is at least 50 years out of date - the Weasley's flying car, Hagrid's flying motorcycle, and Hermione's transistor radio. Even the elevators at the Ministry of Magic and the toilets they use are pre-WWII. Harry's uncle's family is more modern but even they seem a couple of decades off.
For something really scary, think of what the movie would have been like if Chris Columbus directed it instead of just the first two.
First, this isn't exactly a Harry Potter movie. True, it features Harry and most of the characters from the other movies but it abandoned the formula. All of the other movies followed a year at Hogwarts. Not this one. Harry never gets near it. The closest the movie comes is when some Death Eaters search the Hogwart Express. So, there are no classes, no moving stairways, No talking paintings, no Quidditch, not even Harry on a broom. We only see a few of the teachers and not for long. On the other hand, this movie refers to the other movies more than most - things like "the wand chooses you" and the composition of the wand.
This is not a kid's movie, either. Parts of it are scary. The rest would be boring to small kids.
Harry and company spend more time in the modern (muggle) world in this movie than in all of the others put together. It is a bit jarring having Harry and company order cappuccinos. An opening scene in Hermione's house underscores how different muggles live than wizards. Wizards tend to live in ancient houses in remote areas. The one exception is an ancient townhouse.
Wizards are also decades behind on technology. They use candles and other flames for light. Newspapers are printed on 19th century presses or by magic. The Hogwart Express is a steam engine. The most modern technology we see them use is at least 50 years out of date - the Weasley's flying car, Hagrid's flying motorcycle, and Hermione's transistor radio. Even the elevators at the Ministry of Magic and the toilets they use are pre-WWII. Harry's uncle's family is more modern but even they seem a couple of decades off.
For something really scary, think of what the movie would have been like if Chris Columbus directed it instead of just the first two.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Inkers
During the Golden and Silver Ages of comics, the process for creating a comic book page remained pretty much the same. First the artist would draw the pages in pencil, possibly using a blue pencil for guidelines. Then the pencils would be inked over, usually by a separate inker. Room would be left for word balloons. A letterer would fill in the word balloons in ink. Copies would be made of the pages and sent to a colorist. The printing process was in four colors with different shades of each color. This allowed 32 colors. From there, the colors were separated back into their individual four colors and sent to the presses.
Today I'm going to talk about the inker's role in the process. On the surface, his job is simple - just follow the pencil lines. In practice, the inker had a much stronger impact. Just deciding how thick to make the lines can have a major effect on the art. The inker also added the shading, cross-hatching, and zip-a-tone. An artist with a strong style might overpower the pencils.
For an example of how an inker can affect the finished work, look at issues #6 and #7 of the Silver Surfer. Both had the same artist, John Buscema, but issue #6 was inked by Joe Sinnott and #7 was inked by John's brother, Sal. The Surfer seemed to lose 100 pounds of muscle, going from the Silver Surfer to the White Wipeout.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, the inker also enforced the house style. Most of the time during this period, any artist was expected to be able to draw any comic book and the readers were not supposed to know the difference. Neil Adams, who is best known for his ultra-realistic work on Batman, did some issues of Archie. At Marvel (which was still Timely), the artist would come in for a monthly meeting with Stan Lee. Lee had a pile of scripts and would hand the artist the one on the top. There was no permanent assignment. Kid Colt might be drawn by Dick Ayers one month and Don Heck the next. Inkers who knew the house style could cover over any differences in the artists.
When Timely switched to Marvel, artists were assigned to individual books but, even then, there were exceptions. Most of the early issues of the Avengers were drawn by Jack Kirby but a few were not.
Things changed over the next few years. Artists were allowed to develop their own style and were assigned to books for long stretches. At the same time, inkers began to develop their own style. This was especially true of inkers who entered the field after the mid-1960s.
Joe Sinnott was one of the first celebrity inkers, but with a twist. The fans still hadn't noticed inkers but the artists were always concerned with how the finished product looked. Sinnott was in demand by artists because he made them look good. Stan reserved him for flagship books, especially the Fantastic Four which he inked for 16 years.
On the other hand, Vincent Colletta had the reputation of simplifying backgrounds and even eliminating characters in order to make tight deadlines. In his defense - many people consider his work on Jack Kirby's pencils to be the definitive look for Thor. I have a page of original art from a Frankenstein black and white that he inked over Val Mayerik's pencils and it is a really nice piece of art. Marerik had a light, sketchy style that was complimented by Colletta's inks.
One of the first fan favorite inkers was Tom Palmer. He was knows for imaginative shading and cross-hatching. He also colored his own work, combining colors and zip-a-tone to give the impression of more than the standard 32 colors. Palmer was involved in fan favorites such as the Roy Thomas/Gene Colon Doctor Strange and the Tomb of Dracula and contributed a lot to their atmosphere.
Tony DeZuniga was an artist with a strong style that carried over to his inking. He was from the Philippines. While he was working for Marvel in the 1970s, he hooked them up with several other Filipino artists who became mainstays at Marvel. One of these, Alfredo Alcala, became an inking star for his work on John Buscema's pencils on the black and white Conan books. Rather than rely on short-cuts like Zip-a-Tone, Alcala did all of his own shading by hand with intricate crosshatching and whirls. His inking over Buscema's pencils was so popular that their art overshadowed the stories. Robert E. Howard had only written a limited number of Conan stories and Marvel had been parceling these out carefully. Most of the Howard adaptations from the 1970s were done by this pair.
Another popular inker was Klaus Jonson. He is best known for his inking over Frank Miller's Daredevil during the 1980s when it was the top-selling comic book in the country.
I'm not sure why but inkers seem to have declined in importance since the early 1980s. Most inkers also pencil and it might be that the rise in comic books stores and independent comics allowed new artists with strong styles to launch their own works.
Today I'm going to talk about the inker's role in the process. On the surface, his job is simple - just follow the pencil lines. In practice, the inker had a much stronger impact. Just deciding how thick to make the lines can have a major effect on the art. The inker also added the shading, cross-hatching, and zip-a-tone. An artist with a strong style might overpower the pencils.
For an example of how an inker can affect the finished work, look at issues #6 and #7 of the Silver Surfer. Both had the same artist, John Buscema, but issue #6 was inked by Joe Sinnott and #7 was inked by John's brother, Sal. The Surfer seemed to lose 100 pounds of muscle, going from the Silver Surfer to the White Wipeout.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, the inker also enforced the house style. Most of the time during this period, any artist was expected to be able to draw any comic book and the readers were not supposed to know the difference. Neil Adams, who is best known for his ultra-realistic work on Batman, did some issues of Archie. At Marvel (which was still Timely), the artist would come in for a monthly meeting with Stan Lee. Lee had a pile of scripts and would hand the artist the one on the top. There was no permanent assignment. Kid Colt might be drawn by Dick Ayers one month and Don Heck the next. Inkers who knew the house style could cover over any differences in the artists.
When Timely switched to Marvel, artists were assigned to individual books but, even then, there were exceptions. Most of the early issues of the Avengers were drawn by Jack Kirby but a few were not.
Things changed over the next few years. Artists were allowed to develop their own style and were assigned to books for long stretches. At the same time, inkers began to develop their own style. This was especially true of inkers who entered the field after the mid-1960s.
Joe Sinnott was one of the first celebrity inkers, but with a twist. The fans still hadn't noticed inkers but the artists were always concerned with how the finished product looked. Sinnott was in demand by artists because he made them look good. Stan reserved him for flagship books, especially the Fantastic Four which he inked for 16 years.
On the other hand, Vincent Colletta had the reputation of simplifying backgrounds and even eliminating characters in order to make tight deadlines. In his defense - many people consider his work on Jack Kirby's pencils to be the definitive look for Thor. I have a page of original art from a Frankenstein black and white that he inked over Val Mayerik's pencils and it is a really nice piece of art. Marerik had a light, sketchy style that was complimented by Colletta's inks.
One of the first fan favorite inkers was Tom Palmer. He was knows for imaginative shading and cross-hatching. He also colored his own work, combining colors and zip-a-tone to give the impression of more than the standard 32 colors. Palmer was involved in fan favorites such as the Roy Thomas/Gene Colon Doctor Strange and the Tomb of Dracula and contributed a lot to their atmosphere.
Tony DeZuniga was an artist with a strong style that carried over to his inking. He was from the Philippines. While he was working for Marvel in the 1970s, he hooked them up with several other Filipino artists who became mainstays at Marvel. One of these, Alfredo Alcala, became an inking star for his work on John Buscema's pencils on the black and white Conan books. Rather than rely on short-cuts like Zip-a-Tone, Alcala did all of his own shading by hand with intricate crosshatching and whirls. His inking over Buscema's pencils was so popular that their art overshadowed the stories. Robert E. Howard had only written a limited number of Conan stories and Marvel had been parceling these out carefully. Most of the Howard adaptations from the 1970s were done by this pair.
Another popular inker was Klaus Jonson. He is best known for his inking over Frank Miller's Daredevil during the 1980s when it was the top-selling comic book in the country.
I'm not sure why but inkers seem to have declined in importance since the early 1980s. Most inkers also pencil and it might be that the rise in comic books stores and independent comics allowed new artists with strong styles to launch their own works.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Despicable Me vs Megamind
Like the year that Ants and A Bug's Life came out, we have two CGI movies with sort of the same premise - a villain reforms through outside influence. Beyond that, the two movies are very different.
Warning, from here on I'm dealing in spoilers.
Despicable Me features the type of villain that James Bond usually fights. He thinks big and he has someone else actually build his gadgets. He dresses distinctively but is outfit is based on regular street clothing.
Megamind is a super-villain. He is centered on fighting a super hero. He builds (most of) his on gadgets. He wears an over-the-top costume. Even his pajamas are over-the-top.
Both have a main minion and a horde of lesser minions. Gru, the villain in Despicable Me, it is a scientist and a crowd of beings that look like walking Twinkies. Megamind has a minion named Minion (an alien fish in an exoskeleton) and a horde of flying disk-like robots.
Gru is fighting a competitor who is younger and better-financed. Megaman fights a pair of supermen with nearly unlimited powers.
Gru reforms after adopting three orphaned girls in order to infiltrate his rival's lair. Eventually he discovers that he has feelings for the girls and risk his life to save them. Megamind falls in love with a plucky woman reporter (think Lois Lane). He also discovers that his life was entered on fighting Megaman. After Megeman's apparent death, he spends a while looting and vandalizing Metro City but quickly tires of it.
Megamind starts with a flashback to his childhood. He was not naturally evil. He turned to evil after being rejected. We never get any backstory on Gru, just an opening sequence where he consoles a child who lost his ice cream cone. Gru make an elaborate balloon animal which quiets the child - until Gru pops it. He really was evil.
Despicable Me is the better of the two movies. The plot flows better. In the other hand, Megamind is visually better. Both are in 3D but Megamind make better use of it. This is the first movie with a flying superhero to really capture the flight. Regardless, both are very good and well worth seeing.
Both are successes, also. Despicable Me was a first movie from a new studio so expectations were moderate. So far the domestic box office is around a quarter billion. World wide box office doubled that for a total take of around a half billion. Megamind took in $60 million on its opening week and took first place in the box office two weekends in a row. It should make money but nothing like Despicable Me or The Incredibles.
Warning, from here on I'm dealing in spoilers.
Despicable Me features the type of villain that James Bond usually fights. He thinks big and he has someone else actually build his gadgets. He dresses distinctively but is outfit is based on regular street clothing.
Megamind is a super-villain. He is centered on fighting a super hero. He builds (most of) his on gadgets. He wears an over-the-top costume. Even his pajamas are over-the-top.
Both have a main minion and a horde of lesser minions. Gru, the villain in Despicable Me, it is a scientist and a crowd of beings that look like walking Twinkies. Megamind has a minion named Minion (an alien fish in an exoskeleton) and a horde of flying disk-like robots.
Gru is fighting a competitor who is younger and better-financed. Megaman fights a pair of supermen with nearly unlimited powers.
Gru reforms after adopting three orphaned girls in order to infiltrate his rival's lair. Eventually he discovers that he has feelings for the girls and risk his life to save them. Megamind falls in love with a plucky woman reporter (think Lois Lane). He also discovers that his life was entered on fighting Megaman. After Megeman's apparent death, he spends a while looting and vandalizing Metro City but quickly tires of it.
Megamind starts with a flashback to his childhood. He was not naturally evil. He turned to evil after being rejected. We never get any backstory on Gru, just an opening sequence where he consoles a child who lost his ice cream cone. Gru make an elaborate balloon animal which quiets the child - until Gru pops it. He really was evil.
Despicable Me is the better of the two movies. The plot flows better. In the other hand, Megamind is visually better. Both are in 3D but Megamind make better use of it. This is the first movie with a flying superhero to really capture the flight. Regardless, both are very good and well worth seeing.
Both are successes, also. Despicable Me was a first movie from a new studio so expectations were moderate. So far the domestic box office is around a quarter billion. World wide box office doubled that for a total take of around a half billion. Megamind took in $60 million on its opening week and took first place in the box office two weekends in a row. It should make money but nothing like Despicable Me or The Incredibles.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Dino De Laurentis
The movie producer Dino De Laurentis died at the age of 91. IMDB lists him as having produced 166 movies, some of them in Italian. Some of his movies have become cult classics. Others, like The Battle of the Bulge, regularly show up on TV decades after they were filmed.
Only a few of his movies are relevant to this blog - King Kong, Conan, and Flash Gordon.
De Laurentis movies emphasized spectacle over everything else. Sometimes the spectacle got in the way of the action. King Kong, for example, is a very ponderous movie compared with the original. It has not aged well. The movie was heavily updated for the 1970s and the emphasis of the love story. The original featured multiple fights between the prehistoric animals of Skull Island and the humans and/or Kong. The remake eliminated all but a fight with a snake. The original ended with a fight between Kong and airplanes. In the remake this turned into an execution. The original set the standard for stop-motion animation. The remake used a man in a monkey suit (plus a very poor robot that is only seen for a couple of seconds). Regardless, the remake was popular when it came up and launched a year-long King Kong craze. The Peter Jackson remake was better (although it had its own problems) but failed to generate the same level of buzz. There was a sequel but the critics hated it and I never bothered seeing it.
De Laurentis's two Conan movies were better but they were also ponderous. Fights tended to be over in seconds in Conan the barbarian, the first movie. The second movie, Conan the Destroyer, is only slightly better. This is ironic since Conan was one of Arnold
Schwarzenegger's first movies. The first Conan movie threw every memorable scene from the stories together. Most of them lost their impact and the plot didn't resemble anything that Robert E. Howard ever wrote. The movie also stole a bit from The Empire Strikes Back with a villain, voiced by James Earl Jones, told the hero "I am your father." It didn't make much sense in Conan. The Conan movies were better than the King Kong ones and were gorgeous to look at, as well.
I don't have a high opinion of these other movies but I think that Flash Gordon is underrated. While it has a lot of the spectacle of the other movies, it also mixes in a stylized, tongue-in-cheek humor. It never bogs down the way the others do and it has aged well. Flash Gordon was made in the wake of Star Wars and was a box office disappointment but since then it has become a cult classic. Of all of De Laurentis's movies, this one shows up on cable most often.
Only a few of his movies are relevant to this blog - King Kong, Conan, and Flash Gordon.
De Laurentis movies emphasized spectacle over everything else. Sometimes the spectacle got in the way of the action. King Kong, for example, is a very ponderous movie compared with the original. It has not aged well. The movie was heavily updated for the 1970s and the emphasis of the love story. The original featured multiple fights between the prehistoric animals of Skull Island and the humans and/or Kong. The remake eliminated all but a fight with a snake. The original ended with a fight between Kong and airplanes. In the remake this turned into an execution. The original set the standard for stop-motion animation. The remake used a man in a monkey suit (plus a very poor robot that is only seen for a couple of seconds). Regardless, the remake was popular when it came up and launched a year-long King Kong craze. The Peter Jackson remake was better (although it had its own problems) but failed to generate the same level of buzz. There was a sequel but the critics hated it and I never bothered seeing it.
De Laurentis's two Conan movies were better but they were also ponderous. Fights tended to be over in seconds in Conan the barbarian, the first movie. The second movie, Conan the Destroyer, is only slightly better. This is ironic since Conan was one of Arnold
Schwarzenegger's first movies. The first Conan movie threw every memorable scene from the stories together. Most of them lost their impact and the plot didn't resemble anything that Robert E. Howard ever wrote. The movie also stole a bit from The Empire Strikes Back with a villain, voiced by James Earl Jones, told the hero "I am your father." It didn't make much sense in Conan. The Conan movies were better than the King Kong ones and were gorgeous to look at, as well.
I don't have a high opinion of these other movies but I think that Flash Gordon is underrated. While it has a lot of the spectacle of the other movies, it also mixes in a stylized, tongue-in-cheek humor. It never bogs down the way the others do and it has aged well. Flash Gordon was made in the wake of Star Wars and was a box office disappointment but since then it has become a cult classic. Of all of De Laurentis's movies, this one shows up on cable most often.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Portable Devices
Sony stopped making the Walkman cassette player this week. I haven't owned a working portable cassette player in years and I never paid the Sony premium price but it still made me reflect on all of the changes that have taken place over my lifetime.
When I was born TVs were pieces of furniture. The screen was fairly small and oval and the picture was black and white. It used vacuum tubes which were huge and took minutes to warm up. There were three networks and no cable. You used an antenna for reception and your signal quality depended on the time of day (signals carry further at night) and the weather. You had a channel selector for the first 13 channels. There was an outer dial that you had to use to tune the reception once you put it on the channel. For channels above 13, you put the selector on "V" and used a separate VHF selector. That one did not have pre-selected channels. You had to hunt around or leave it on one channel (chances are that you only had one selection, anyway). A "portable" TV could be put on a stand and rolled from room to room but you had to be careful because the cart was top-heavy.
Radios were also big with tubes. The only portable ones were installed in cars. The tubes were so big and used so much electricity that there was no possible portable version. Chances are the radio only received AM.
If you wanted to record something then you needed a tape recorder. This used open reel tapes. The tape was 1/4" and held on a reel. To use it, you had to unwrap a foot or so of tape and start it on an empty reel. Then you carefully fed the tape through the read/write tape head and took up the slack. The length of the recording was based on the length of the tape so an hour tape was much bigger in diameter than a half-hour tape. Again, this was big and heavy with tubes.
Devices based on transistors started becoming common around 1960. The transistor radio was the first really portable entertainment device. The early ones only received AM radio and had lousy fidelity but you could take it anywhere and, compared with vacuum tubes, it seemed indestructible. If you wanted to listen by yourself you could plug in an earphone and listen through one ear.
TVs changed. Color became common. As transistors replaced vacuum tubes, you started seeing "instant on" sets that didn't need minutes to warm up before you got a picture. Remote controls were invented. The first ones were sonic with four buttons (on/off, channel up, channel down, and mute). Picture tubes became nearly square instead of oval.
By the end of the decade you could get a real portable TV. This had a 5" black and white screen. The set itself was around a foot in each direction.
Cable TV was becoming common with additional channels. These were mainly independent stations offering syndicated shows (mainly reruns of successful series). HBO didn't start until the 1970s.
Small tape recorders were available by the mid-1960s. These were just small open reel recorders that took the smallest (and shortest) tapes. In the early 1970s, new types of tape were introduced. There was the cassette tape which the Walkman used. This was a small version of the open reel tape with the tapes permanently attached to the two reels. The tape had four tracks - two for stereo in each direction. There was also 8-track which had four stereo tracks on an endless tape. 8-track was popular in cars for most of the 1970s because it would play until removed. Cassettes had superior quality and became dominant in the 1980s.
The 1980s saw the Walkman which was a cassette player small enough to carry while running. Radios also became smaller, often being incorporated into a cassette player and FM became the dominant signal.
Sony also introduced the first pocket TV - the Watchman. This had a tiny black and white screen. The screen size increased and the overall size decreased rapidly. While this was a nice innovation at the time, the decline of broadcast TV made these into niche devices.
CDs were invented in the late 1970s but were slow to be adopted. Purists insisted that the digital sounds were too "cold". Also, CD player were very sensitive to vibration so runners could not carry one with them. It wasn't until the 1990s that players could read several seconds ahead and compensate for vibrations.
Early video tape units were available in the 1970s but they really took off in the 1980s. Prior to that there was no way to time shift a TV show or to watch a movie at home except through broadcast. Video disks using disks a foot in diameter were also introduced. They offered better picture but could not time-shift and flopped. Rather than join with other makers on a common format, Sony used their own Beta format. The quality was not much better and the selection of tapes was worse so this flopped.
Hand-held recorders were introduced in the mid-1980s. Prior to that you had to shoot 8mm movies without sound. The film was expensive and the results were usually poor. The first hand-held recorders used separate tape decks. The combination could weigh 20 pounds or more and was bulky. Camcorders combining the camera and recorder came out soon after.
With the camcorder, the biggest constraint on size was the VHS cassette. There were two alternatives - the VHS-C (for compact) which was a short VHS tape in a smaller cassette. This needed an adapter to play on a regular VHS player. Sony introduced their own format (again), using an 8mm tape. In order to play these back you had to hook the camcorder to the TV.
DBDs were introduced in the late 1990s and were adopted quickly. They were sold for less than VHS tapes, they were smaller, they offered a better picture, they never needed rewinding, and they usually had extra tracks. Players reached casual purchase prices quickly and they worked with existing TVs so the price for adoption was very low.
When the CD was introduced home PCs were just coming out and none had hard drives so no one thought about copying. By the early 1990s "multimedia PCs" were becoming standard. These could play CDs. By the late 1990s, they could also copy CDs and save them as compressed files - mainly MP3s.
The first MP3 players either had a limited amount of memory or used removable memory. These could hold at most a few hours of music, probably less. Apple's first iPod was a major innovation because it had a built-in hard drive that could hold megabytes of music. Later models could also play video. Sony tried introducing its own players using proprietary formats and failed (does anyone see a pattern here?).
Which brings us to the end of the Walkman. It was an innovation in its day but today's MP3 players and phones are infinitely better. During the 1980s Sony was the biggest name in portable entertainment devices. Now they are an afterthought.
When I was born TVs were pieces of furniture. The screen was fairly small and oval and the picture was black and white. It used vacuum tubes which were huge and took minutes to warm up. There were three networks and no cable. You used an antenna for reception and your signal quality depended on the time of day (signals carry further at night) and the weather. You had a channel selector for the first 13 channels. There was an outer dial that you had to use to tune the reception once you put it on the channel. For channels above 13, you put the selector on "V" and used a separate VHF selector. That one did not have pre-selected channels. You had to hunt around or leave it on one channel (chances are that you only had one selection, anyway). A "portable" TV could be put on a stand and rolled from room to room but you had to be careful because the cart was top-heavy.
Radios were also big with tubes. The only portable ones were installed in cars. The tubes were so big and used so much electricity that there was no possible portable version. Chances are the radio only received AM.
If you wanted to record something then you needed a tape recorder. This used open reel tapes. The tape was 1/4" and held on a reel. To use it, you had to unwrap a foot or so of tape and start it on an empty reel. Then you carefully fed the tape through the read/write tape head and took up the slack. The length of the recording was based on the length of the tape so an hour tape was much bigger in diameter than a half-hour tape. Again, this was big and heavy with tubes.
Devices based on transistors started becoming common around 1960. The transistor radio was the first really portable entertainment device. The early ones only received AM radio and had lousy fidelity but you could take it anywhere and, compared with vacuum tubes, it seemed indestructible. If you wanted to listen by yourself you could plug in an earphone and listen through one ear.
TVs changed. Color became common. As transistors replaced vacuum tubes, you started seeing "instant on" sets that didn't need minutes to warm up before you got a picture. Remote controls were invented. The first ones were sonic with four buttons (on/off, channel up, channel down, and mute). Picture tubes became nearly square instead of oval.
By the end of the decade you could get a real portable TV. This had a 5" black and white screen. The set itself was around a foot in each direction.
Cable TV was becoming common with additional channels. These were mainly independent stations offering syndicated shows (mainly reruns of successful series). HBO didn't start until the 1970s.
Small tape recorders were available by the mid-1960s. These were just small open reel recorders that took the smallest (and shortest) tapes. In the early 1970s, new types of tape were introduced. There was the cassette tape which the Walkman used. This was a small version of the open reel tape with the tapes permanently attached to the two reels. The tape had four tracks - two for stereo in each direction. There was also 8-track which had four stereo tracks on an endless tape. 8-track was popular in cars for most of the 1970s because it would play until removed. Cassettes had superior quality and became dominant in the 1980s.
The 1980s saw the Walkman which was a cassette player small enough to carry while running. Radios also became smaller, often being incorporated into a cassette player and FM became the dominant signal.
Sony also introduced the first pocket TV - the Watchman. This had a tiny black and white screen. The screen size increased and the overall size decreased rapidly. While this was a nice innovation at the time, the decline of broadcast TV made these into niche devices.
CDs were invented in the late 1970s but were slow to be adopted. Purists insisted that the digital sounds were too "cold". Also, CD player were very sensitive to vibration so runners could not carry one with them. It wasn't until the 1990s that players could read several seconds ahead and compensate for vibrations.
Early video tape units were available in the 1970s but they really took off in the 1980s. Prior to that there was no way to time shift a TV show or to watch a movie at home except through broadcast. Video disks using disks a foot in diameter were also introduced. They offered better picture but could not time-shift and flopped. Rather than join with other makers on a common format, Sony used their own Beta format. The quality was not much better and the selection of tapes was worse so this flopped.
Hand-held recorders were introduced in the mid-1980s. Prior to that you had to shoot 8mm movies without sound. The film was expensive and the results were usually poor. The first hand-held recorders used separate tape decks. The combination could weigh 20 pounds or more and was bulky. Camcorders combining the camera and recorder came out soon after.
With the camcorder, the biggest constraint on size was the VHS cassette. There were two alternatives - the VHS-C (for compact) which was a short VHS tape in a smaller cassette. This needed an adapter to play on a regular VHS player. Sony introduced their own format (again), using an 8mm tape. In order to play these back you had to hook the camcorder to the TV.
DBDs were introduced in the late 1990s and were adopted quickly. They were sold for less than VHS tapes, they were smaller, they offered a better picture, they never needed rewinding, and they usually had extra tracks. Players reached casual purchase prices quickly and they worked with existing TVs so the price for adoption was very low.
When the CD was introduced home PCs were just coming out and none had hard drives so no one thought about copying. By the early 1990s "multimedia PCs" were becoming standard. These could play CDs. By the late 1990s, they could also copy CDs and save them as compressed files - mainly MP3s.
The first MP3 players either had a limited amount of memory or used removable memory. These could hold at most a few hours of music, probably less. Apple's first iPod was a major innovation because it had a built-in hard drive that could hold megabytes of music. Later models could also play video. Sony tried introducing its own players using proprietary formats and failed (does anyone see a pattern here?).
Which brings us to the end of the Walkman. It was an innovation in its day but today's MP3 players and phones are infinitely better. During the 1980s Sony was the biggest name in portable entertainment devices. Now they are an afterthought.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Overlooked Horror Movies
I've seen a few lists of best and scariest horror movies. There are a few that have been overlooked.
Black Sunday - 1960. I've always been hard to scare but I watched this movie alone at night when I was around 13 and it scared the crap out of me. My wife who saw it at the same time with friends and it scared them, also (and they were two years older).
The movie stars Barbara Steele in dual roles as a witch and as her decedent. It was an Italian production at a high point in Italian movies.
It begins with the witch being executed by having a spiked iron mask driven into her face. She was supposed to be burned after that but a rainstorm put out the flames. She was buried in a tomb in a stone coffin with a cross on top and a window so that her corpse could see the cross.
Two centuries later a pair of doctors are on their way to a convention when their carriage loses a wheel. While waiting for it to be repaired, the doctors explore the witch's tomb. A bat attacks the older one and he tries to hit it with his cane, breaking the cross and the window. He reaches through the window and takes the mask as a souvenir but he cuts himself in the process and a drop of blood drips onto the witch's dried-up remains. This is enough to revive the witch a bit. She brings her servant back to life.
The doctors have taken rooms for the night. The servant poses as a messenger for the local noble and summons the older doctor and leads him through the castle. He does not notice it but he has been led into a secret passage.
The doctor stops to look at some old furniture. The servant with the lantern continues on for a ways. When the doctor catches up he finds the lantern floating. He reaches for it but it drops, leaving him in the dark.
There is a door but it opens into the tomb and the door to the outside is swinging shut. He rushes to it but is too late. Then the door he entered through swings shut. Trapped in the tomb the witch's coffin starts to vibrate then explodes, exposing the partly restored witch.
I'll leave off the description from there.
The Others - 2001. This movie is best seen in a dark theater. That's how I saw it. The audience was mesmerized. In the light with people talking you completely lose the tense atmosphere.
The movie is about a woman and her children living in a haunted house on an island off the British coast just after World War II. Nichole Kidman stars as the mother who is so tightly wound you expect her to snap any moment.
Son of Dracula - 1943. This is a real oddity for 1940s vampire movies. There is no real heroine and the hero is insane by the end of the movie. While poor by today's standards, this movie is the first to show Dracula changing into a bat or a mist. Lon Chaney Jr. as the Count makes no attempt to imitate Bela Legosi. Still, it is one of his better roles. He is much more impressive as the Count than the tortured Wolfman.
The Beast of Morocco - 1968. Not even IMDB has much information on this movie except that it was an independent production. It is sort of a cross between the movie She and a vampire movie with an ageless vampire queen living in the desert. By day she has to take shelter but at night she comes back to life and the ruins of her palace are whole again. Will the hero join her in her half-life? Does he even want to?
Black Sunday - 1960. I've always been hard to scare but I watched this movie alone at night when I was around 13 and it scared the crap out of me. My wife who saw it at the same time with friends and it scared them, also (and they were two years older).
The movie stars Barbara Steele in dual roles as a witch and as her decedent. It was an Italian production at a high point in Italian movies.
It begins with the witch being executed by having a spiked iron mask driven into her face. She was supposed to be burned after that but a rainstorm put out the flames. She was buried in a tomb in a stone coffin with a cross on top and a window so that her corpse could see the cross.
Two centuries later a pair of doctors are on their way to a convention when their carriage loses a wheel. While waiting for it to be repaired, the doctors explore the witch's tomb. A bat attacks the older one and he tries to hit it with his cane, breaking the cross and the window. He reaches through the window and takes the mask as a souvenir but he cuts himself in the process and a drop of blood drips onto the witch's dried-up remains. This is enough to revive the witch a bit. She brings her servant back to life.
The doctors have taken rooms for the night. The servant poses as a messenger for the local noble and summons the older doctor and leads him through the castle. He does not notice it but he has been led into a secret passage.
The doctor stops to look at some old furniture. The servant with the lantern continues on for a ways. When the doctor catches up he finds the lantern floating. He reaches for it but it drops, leaving him in the dark.
There is a door but it opens into the tomb and the door to the outside is swinging shut. He rushes to it but is too late. Then the door he entered through swings shut. Trapped in the tomb the witch's coffin starts to vibrate then explodes, exposing the partly restored witch.
I'll leave off the description from there.
The Others - 2001. This movie is best seen in a dark theater. That's how I saw it. The audience was mesmerized. In the light with people talking you completely lose the tense atmosphere.
The movie is about a woman and her children living in a haunted house on an island off the British coast just after World War II. Nichole Kidman stars as the mother who is so tightly wound you expect her to snap any moment.
Son of Dracula - 1943. This is a real oddity for 1940s vampire movies. There is no real heroine and the hero is insane by the end of the movie. While poor by today's standards, this movie is the first to show Dracula changing into a bat or a mist. Lon Chaney Jr. as the Count makes no attempt to imitate Bela Legosi. Still, it is one of his better roles. He is much more impressive as the Count than the tortured Wolfman.
The Beast of Morocco - 1968. Not even IMDB has much information on this movie except that it was an independent production. It is sort of a cross between the movie She and a vampire movie with an ageless vampire queen living in the desert. By day she has to take shelter but at night she comes back to life and the ruins of her palace are whole again. Will the hero join her in her half-life? Does he even want to?
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Looking back at Trek
Star Trek: The Next Generation (ST:TNG) has been in syndication for over a year. It has been over 20 years since this show premiered and more than 40 since the original show (ST) began. That is enough time to properly compare them. Here are some random thoughts on the two shows:
In general, ST:TNG was better done. It had higher apparent production values and the characters were better-developed. This does not make it the better show.
ST was more exciting. Kirk and company were usually saving planets, eliminating space monsters, or overthrowing repressive governments, Prime Directive be damned.
The crew on ST got out more. Nearly every episode involved a trip to an alien planet. Granted, these were often sets and looked like it. ST:TNG has many more episodes taking place entirely on the Enterprise. This gives the show a more claustrophobic feel.
There was too much techspeak on ST:TNG. Writer Ronald Moore takes about it here.
It didn't seem so bad at the time but looking back at the show, this is a major fault. It also shows up with the number of "level 1 scans" and "level 2 diagnostics". They tossed these terms around constantly like they meant something.
ST:TNG was closer to real military structure. On Star Trek, Kirk was in charge and Spock was second in command. After that, the chain of command became murky. Any time Spock was in charge, one or more crew members became insubordinate. Then there is the whole issue of the bridge crew being the first to beam into a hostile situation.
ST was brutal. Having characters die, even red-shirted extras, was a new thing in the late-1960s. This was cutting-edge at the time. I remember watching the show in first run and being shocked a few times when someone died unexpectedly.
The crew members of ST:TNG were too competent. Anyone could make anything from anything. Warf could generate a force field from a communicator. Data could make anything from his own spare components.
The Holodeck was too real. People were constantly getting trapped in the holodeck. In one episode, Picard and Data couldn't even tell that they were in the holodeck. It was just a room. You should be able to walk in a straight line until you hit a wall then feel for the door.
ST only had two good seasons. When it was in first-run, I knew that the third season was the last. The show felt tired. Most of the episodes revolved around Kirk falling in love (again).
The first season of ST:TNG stank. Episodes were just plain boring. Some were also dumb like the time Wesley was sentenced to death for breaking a window on the planet of joggers (seriously). The first season seemed bad at the time and it has not improved with age. In contrast, some of the second season episodes are among the best.
Even though ST:TNG lasted longer, it did not run out of energy. Some of the episodes in the last couple of seasons were weird but the show never felt as tired as the original did in its last season.
Both shows were much better than Deep Space 9 or Voyager.
In general, ST:TNG was better done. It had higher apparent production values and the characters were better-developed. This does not make it the better show.
ST was more exciting. Kirk and company were usually saving planets, eliminating space monsters, or overthrowing repressive governments, Prime Directive be damned.
The crew on ST got out more. Nearly every episode involved a trip to an alien planet. Granted, these were often sets and looked like it. ST:TNG has many more episodes taking place entirely on the Enterprise. This gives the show a more claustrophobic feel.
There was too much techspeak on ST:TNG. Writer Ronald Moore takes about it here.
Moore said he used to put the word tech in his scripts as a placeholder, which led to stultifying dialogue like this:
Picard: "Mr. La Forge, I need you to tech the tech."
La Forge: "But Captain, if we tech the tech then the tech will override! The tech main engines might tech too much!"
It didn't seem so bad at the time but looking back at the show, this is a major fault. It also shows up with the number of "level 1 scans" and "level 2 diagnostics". They tossed these terms around constantly like they meant something.
ST:TNG was closer to real military structure. On Star Trek, Kirk was in charge and Spock was second in command. After that, the chain of command became murky. Any time Spock was in charge, one or more crew members became insubordinate. Then there is the whole issue of the bridge crew being the first to beam into a hostile situation.
ST was brutal. Having characters die, even red-shirted extras, was a new thing in the late-1960s. This was cutting-edge at the time. I remember watching the show in first run and being shocked a few times when someone died unexpectedly.
The crew members of ST:TNG were too competent. Anyone could make anything from anything. Warf could generate a force field from a communicator. Data could make anything from his own spare components.
The Holodeck was too real. People were constantly getting trapped in the holodeck. In one episode, Picard and Data couldn't even tell that they were in the holodeck. It was just a room. You should be able to walk in a straight line until you hit a wall then feel for the door.
ST only had two good seasons. When it was in first-run, I knew that the third season was the last. The show felt tired. Most of the episodes revolved around Kirk falling in love (again).
The first season of ST:TNG stank. Episodes were just plain boring. Some were also dumb like the time Wesley was sentenced to death for breaking a window on the planet of joggers (seriously). The first season seemed bad at the time and it has not improved with age. In contrast, some of the second season episodes are among the best.
Even though ST:TNG lasted longer, it did not run out of energy. Some of the episodes in the last couple of seasons were weird but the show never felt as tired as the original did in its last season.
Both shows were much better than Deep Space 9 or Voyager.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Sherlock Holmes
In the last year we have seen two very different interpretations of Sherlock Holmes. The first was a movie, set in Victorian England and starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. The second is a series set in modern England and currently running on PBS.
Both versions offer new interpretations of Holmes and Watson. The traditional movie version of Watson as an older, befuddled foil for Holmes is gone, replaced by one who is Holmes's friend and contemporary. More jarring, both versions also show Holmes as someone who becomes self-destructive unless occupied by mental challenges.
The Holmes stories hinted at several things not shown in prior movies. Holmes was a drug user who practiced the pistol by writing "VR" and engaged in prize fighting.
The TV show Holmes is somewhat better behaved but still goes out of his way to be annoying.
After seeing the pilot for the PBS series, I want to see the Downey version again. It was a lot more fun.
There is also the issue of bringing Holmes into the present. I know that it was done in the Basil Rathbone movies in the 1940s but I never considered those movies to be very good. Also, they did not go out of their way to reinvent Holmes the way that the PBS version did. Holmes was very much a product of his time. Move him and you have a completely different character. Naming him Holmes is intellectual dishonesty.
------------------------------------------- SPOILER -------------------------------------
I also have an issue with the plot of the pilot. Holmes didn't really find the serial killer or deduce his motives. The killer relieved himself to Holmes and explained his motives. Worse, the final question was left unanswered - who was smarter?
The serial killer made people poison themselves. He did this by pointing a gun at them an making them choose between two identical bottles containing identical pills. One was poison, one was harmless.
Even after Holmes realized that the pistol was a fake (do they actually sell convincing gun-lighters in England?), Holmes took the killer's challenge and seemed to be about to swallow one of the pills. This left the question unresolved, did Holmes pick the right pill?
There is also the Princess Bride scenario - both pills were poison and the killer as immune.
Both versions offer new interpretations of Holmes and Watson. The traditional movie version of Watson as an older, befuddled foil for Holmes is gone, replaced by one who is Holmes's friend and contemporary. More jarring, both versions also show Holmes as someone who becomes self-destructive unless occupied by mental challenges.
The Holmes stories hinted at several things not shown in prior movies. Holmes was a drug user who practiced the pistol by writing "VR" and engaged in prize fighting.
The TV show Holmes is somewhat better behaved but still goes out of his way to be annoying.
After seeing the pilot for the PBS series, I want to see the Downey version again. It was a lot more fun.
There is also the issue of bringing Holmes into the present. I know that it was done in the Basil Rathbone movies in the 1940s but I never considered those movies to be very good. Also, they did not go out of their way to reinvent Holmes the way that the PBS version did. Holmes was very much a product of his time. Move him and you have a completely different character. Naming him Holmes is intellectual dishonesty.
------------------------------------------- SPOILER -------------------------------------
I also have an issue with the plot of the pilot. Holmes didn't really find the serial killer or deduce his motives. The killer relieved himself to Holmes and explained his motives. Worse, the final question was left unanswered - who was smarter?
The serial killer made people poison themselves. He did this by pointing a gun at them an making them choose between two identical bottles containing identical pills. One was poison, one was harmless.
Even after Holmes realized that the pistol was a fake (do they actually sell convincing gun-lighters in England?), Holmes took the killer's challenge and seemed to be about to swallow one of the pills. This left the question unresolved, did Holmes pick the right pill?
There is also the Princess Bride scenario - both pills were poison and the killer as immune.
Friday, October 22, 2010
The Walled Apple Garden
Apple has long exerted total control over the IPhone. Now it is expanding this trend to its Mac line of computers.
First the is the app store for the Mac. Potentially, a few releases in the future, you will get all of your programs and much of your web content from apps with Apple getting a cut and selecting what is allowed through arbitrary standard.
The new Macbook Air shows several interesting developments. It does not have an optical drive. This is in keeping with Steve Jobs's belief that the only proper way of getting content into your computer is through his store. An optical drive lets you rip tunes from the CD you already bought or play the movie you just got in the mail from Netflix. Apple doesn't get a cut of either of those. Granted, you can use the USB port to add a separate optical drive but Apple has made it clear that they will never support Blu-ray.
Just to cover all bases, you can't change the hardware, either. They use proprietary screws to keep you out and proprietary memory to keep you from doing your own upgrades.
None of this is surprising. When the Mac was introduced in 1984, it violated your warranty to connect it to a peripheral made by anyone else. Apple did not offer a hard drive so for the first year, customers had to choose between violating the warranty or living with a single floppy drive.
It looks like those days are returning.
First the is the app store for the Mac. Potentially, a few releases in the future, you will get all of your programs and much of your web content from apps with Apple getting a cut and selecting what is allowed through arbitrary standard.
The new Macbook Air shows several interesting developments. It does not have an optical drive. This is in keeping with Steve Jobs's belief that the only proper way of getting content into your computer is through his store. An optical drive lets you rip tunes from the CD you already bought or play the movie you just got in the mail from Netflix. Apple doesn't get a cut of either of those. Granted, you can use the USB port to add a separate optical drive but Apple has made it clear that they will never support Blu-ray.
Just to cover all bases, you can't change the hardware, either. They use proprietary screws to keep you out and proprietary memory to keep you from doing your own upgrades.
None of this is surprising. When the Mac was introduced in 1984, it violated your warranty to connect it to a peripheral made by anyone else. Apple did not offer a hard drive so for the first year, customers had to choose between violating the warranty or living with a single floppy drive.
It looks like those days are returning.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Phone Wars 2010
The Microsoft Windows Phone 7 was released this week with the first units actually being delivered early next month. Only a few phone companies will offer the WP7. Verizon and AT&T are not among the first adopters. There is also a report that Verizon will begin offering IPhones in 2011.
So what does this mean to me? Nothing. Ask me again in a couple of years when my current plan expires.
I suspect that the majority of the smart phone users are like me. I recently upgraded to a Droid Incredible. The WP7 would seem like a downgrade since there are so few apps for it. The IPhone might have been a bigger deal if Apple was offering it through Verizon last Summer but Steve Jobs is so heavy-handed about managing his phones that this was enough to make me prefer a Droid, regardless.
Apple has a good thing with its AT&T contract. They actually get a cut out of everyone's monthly phone bill. In exchange for this, only AT&T could sell IPhones. That gave the rest of the market an incentive to come up with an alternative and some breathing room for it to mature. The IPhone is supposed to have a slicker interface but a lot of the features of the most recent IOS were there to catch up to Android. Then there are the problems with the antenna and the glass back. When Verizon finally does start carrying IPhones they will be just one in an assortment of smart phones.
Microsoft may have missed the boat completely. By all accounts, their new phone is solid and has a unique interface. It is still missing several features like multi-tasking and cut and paste. I just used both of these to copy a phone number from an email to a contact.
There has been a lot of talk about how fractured the Android market is. There is no standard phone so developers must write for a variety of screen sizes and allow for touchscreen and hardware keyboard. By contrast, there is only one IPhone model per year and Microsoft has very strict requirements. This actually gives Android an advantage. Not everyone wants the same phone. The huge screen of the Droid X may appeal to some but I wanted a smaller phone. Android also allows the carriers to add branded content. Some of this is junk but it offsets the price of the phone.
The phone market has a very real chance of replaying the early 1980s PC market. Then, as now, Apple made their own computers with little variation. You could be certain that anything would run on any of their computers. Regardless, the PC was more open and quickly left Apple behind. Ironically, this time around Microsoft looks more like Apple.
So what does this mean to me? Nothing. Ask me again in a couple of years when my current plan expires.
I suspect that the majority of the smart phone users are like me. I recently upgraded to a Droid Incredible. The WP7 would seem like a downgrade since there are so few apps for it. The IPhone might have been a bigger deal if Apple was offering it through Verizon last Summer but Steve Jobs is so heavy-handed about managing his phones that this was enough to make me prefer a Droid, regardless.
Apple has a good thing with its AT&T contract. They actually get a cut out of everyone's monthly phone bill. In exchange for this, only AT&T could sell IPhones. That gave the rest of the market an incentive to come up with an alternative and some breathing room for it to mature. The IPhone is supposed to have a slicker interface but a lot of the features of the most recent IOS were there to catch up to Android. Then there are the problems with the antenna and the glass back. When Verizon finally does start carrying IPhones they will be just one in an assortment of smart phones.
Microsoft may have missed the boat completely. By all accounts, their new phone is solid and has a unique interface. It is still missing several features like multi-tasking and cut and paste. I just used both of these to copy a phone number from an email to a contact.
There has been a lot of talk about how fractured the Android market is. There is no standard phone so developers must write for a variety of screen sizes and allow for touchscreen and hardware keyboard. By contrast, there is only one IPhone model per year and Microsoft has very strict requirements. This actually gives Android an advantage. Not everyone wants the same phone. The huge screen of the Droid X may appeal to some but I wanted a smaller phone. Android also allows the carriers to add branded content. Some of this is junk but it offsets the price of the phone.
The phone market has a very real chance of replaying the early 1980s PC market. Then, as now, Apple made their own computers with little variation. You could be certain that anything would run on any of their computers. Regardless, the PC was more open and quickly left Apple behind. Ironically, this time around Microsoft looks more like Apple.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Monday, October 04, 2010
When Vampires Were Scary
Last Friday, TCM showed four Dracula films by Hammer Films. Three starred Christopher Lee s Dracula. Two had Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. This was from back when vampires were scary. They didn't sparkle and if they made you into a vampire you became a souless monster instead of a brooding teenager.
The first of the movies, the Horror of Dracula is loosely based on the novel. There were significant differences. Johnathan Harker was an undercover vampire hunter and became one himself. Dracula attacked Harker's fiance, Lucy, as revenge after Harker destroyed his companion. They never said where Lucy lived but it was not England since Dracula was able to return to Transylvania by hearse.
When they made the movie, Hammer made several artistic decisions. Their vampires were more realistic - they could not change form. The movies were shot in color which was still unusual for horror movies so they made the best of it. There was lots of bright red blood. There was also a generous amount of cleavage. They were sensitive to how easily a horror movie can turn into camp so they were careful to understate the wooden stakes. These were short and business-like with lots of blood spatters.
At the time, Peter Cushing was Hammer's star. Christopher Lee was cast in lesser roles, often as the monster. Hammer's Frankenstein also starred Cushing with Lee as the monster.
The movie was a big hit. Hammer made two sequels that did not have Dracula. One of them was terrible and barely had vampires. The other one, the Brides of Dracula, featured Van Helsing and a blond Baron Meinster as the vampire. Meinster wasn't nearly as scary as Lee's Dracula but the movie does have some memorable scenes. In one, a vampire's victim is lying in state in a locked coffin. One of the padlocks falls off. The caretaker is trying to figure this out when the other locks fall off.
After that, Hammer revived Dracula but left Van Helsing out for several movies. In Dracula Prince of Darkness, a quartet of tourists gets lost and are offered shelter in Dracula's castle. That night one of them is killed, hung upside down over Dracula's ashes, and his throat slashed. Dracula revived and feasted on the tourist's wife then pursued the other couple. He ended up drowning in a frozen lake.
While Dracula was in this movie, he did not have any lines beyond snarls. Either the director thought that he was more menacing without lines or Lee refused to say the dumb lines written for him, depending on which version you believe.
In the following movie, Lee did have some lines although they were kept to a minimum. The movie was "Dracula has Risen From the Grave or You Can't Keep a Good Man Down" - a typical title from the late 1960s. While exorcising Dracula's castle, a priest falls down the mountain and his blood revived Dracula. Angered because of the exorcism, Dracula attacks the Monsignor's daughter. He is eventually impaled on a giant cross.
According to IMDB, this last movie was Hammer's most profitable. Feeling that there was an inexhaustible demand for vampire movies, they pushed them out as fast as they could film them. By the early 1970s they had flooded the market and Hammer went bankrupt.
The first of the movies, the Horror of Dracula is loosely based on the novel. There were significant differences. Johnathan Harker was an undercover vampire hunter and became one himself. Dracula attacked Harker's fiance, Lucy, as revenge after Harker destroyed his companion. They never said where Lucy lived but it was not England since Dracula was able to return to Transylvania by hearse.
When they made the movie, Hammer made several artistic decisions. Their vampires were more realistic - they could not change form. The movies were shot in color which was still unusual for horror movies so they made the best of it. There was lots of bright red blood. There was also a generous amount of cleavage. They were sensitive to how easily a horror movie can turn into camp so they were careful to understate the wooden stakes. These were short and business-like with lots of blood spatters.
At the time, Peter Cushing was Hammer's star. Christopher Lee was cast in lesser roles, often as the monster. Hammer's Frankenstein also starred Cushing with Lee as the monster.
The movie was a big hit. Hammer made two sequels that did not have Dracula. One of them was terrible and barely had vampires. The other one, the Brides of Dracula, featured Van Helsing and a blond Baron Meinster as the vampire. Meinster wasn't nearly as scary as Lee's Dracula but the movie does have some memorable scenes. In one, a vampire's victim is lying in state in a locked coffin. One of the padlocks falls off. The caretaker is trying to figure this out when the other locks fall off.
After that, Hammer revived Dracula but left Van Helsing out for several movies. In Dracula Prince of Darkness, a quartet of tourists gets lost and are offered shelter in Dracula's castle. That night one of them is killed, hung upside down over Dracula's ashes, and his throat slashed. Dracula revived and feasted on the tourist's wife then pursued the other couple. He ended up drowning in a frozen lake.
While Dracula was in this movie, he did not have any lines beyond snarls. Either the director thought that he was more menacing without lines or Lee refused to say the dumb lines written for him, depending on which version you believe.
In the following movie, Lee did have some lines although they were kept to a minimum. The movie was "Dracula has Risen From the Grave or You Can't Keep a Good Man Down" - a typical title from the late 1960s. While exorcising Dracula's castle, a priest falls down the mountain and his blood revived Dracula. Angered because of the exorcism, Dracula attacks the Monsignor's daughter. He is eventually impaled on a giant cross.
According to IMDB, this last movie was Hammer's most profitable. Feeling that there was an inexhaustible demand for vampire movies, they pushed them out as fast as they could film them. By the early 1970s they had flooded the market and Hammer went bankrupt.
Friday, October 01, 2010
The Flintstones
The Flintstones turned 50 yesterday. It lasted six seasons with several follow-up spin-offs and sequels. It held the record for longest-running prime time animated show until the Simpsons blew them away (season 21 just premiered last week).
Basically the Flintstones were an animated version of the Honeymooners. There were a few differences besides the obvious. The Flintstones were more affluent. They lived in the suburbs and Fred had a fairly good job in the construction industry. During the 3rd season the Flintstones had a baby, Pebbles. Half-way into the next season their best friends adopted a boy, Bamm Bamm, the strongest baby in the world. In contrast, the Honeymooners lived in a run-down apartment building and were childless.
The show had a number of running gags around how prehistoric life was the same as modern life. The Flintstones had stone-age equivalents of all of the modern comforts. Dinosaurs provided power. Birds and small mammals acted as vacuum cleaners and garbige disposals. An instant camera had a wood-pecker who would carve a picture into a small piece of stone.
The show was an example of Hanna-Barbera's limited animation. The characters were designed so that entire episodes could be filmed with no or limited new drawings. Each character had a torso that never moved and covered the hips and shoulders. This only left the lower arms and legs and head to move. The heads were oversized so that the mouth could be animated on a stationary head.
Even though the animation was primitive, it did give the writers a lot more freedom. The Wikipedia entry dismisses the plots as standard 1960s sitcom plots but that understates the show. New locations were cheap - they only required a new background painting - so the show was freed from the fixed set. Because of budget constraints, most sitcoms took place in a few regular sets. Shows seldom ventured out into the sunlight.
By the show's sixth season it had jumped the shark. It introduced the Great Gazoo, an advanced alien with nearly magical abilities who could grant any wish. Gazoo was unreliable and the wishes always came out wrong. This is usually considered an example of a show that has lost its novelty.
The show moved from prime time to syndication and Saturday morning. Pebbles and Bamm Bamm became teenagers and received their own hour-long Saturday morning show.
The show inspired a pair of big-budget, live-action movies produced by Steven Spielberg. The movies were box office hits but won some Razzies.
Basically the Flintstones were an animated version of the Honeymooners. There were a few differences besides the obvious. The Flintstones were more affluent. They lived in the suburbs and Fred had a fairly good job in the construction industry. During the 3rd season the Flintstones had a baby, Pebbles. Half-way into the next season their best friends adopted a boy, Bamm Bamm, the strongest baby in the world. In contrast, the Honeymooners lived in a run-down apartment building and were childless.
The show had a number of running gags around how prehistoric life was the same as modern life. The Flintstones had stone-age equivalents of all of the modern comforts. Dinosaurs provided power. Birds and small mammals acted as vacuum cleaners and garbige disposals. An instant camera had a wood-pecker who would carve a picture into a small piece of stone.
The show was an example of Hanna-Barbera's limited animation. The characters were designed so that entire episodes could be filmed with no or limited new drawings. Each character had a torso that never moved and covered the hips and shoulders. This only left the lower arms and legs and head to move. The heads were oversized so that the mouth could be animated on a stationary head.
Even though the animation was primitive, it did give the writers a lot more freedom. The Wikipedia entry dismisses the plots as standard 1960s sitcom plots but that understates the show. New locations were cheap - they only required a new background painting - so the show was freed from the fixed set. Because of budget constraints, most sitcoms took place in a few regular sets. Shows seldom ventured out into the sunlight.
By the show's sixth season it had jumped the shark. It introduced the Great Gazoo, an advanced alien with nearly magical abilities who could grant any wish. Gazoo was unreliable and the wishes always came out wrong. This is usually considered an example of a show that has lost its novelty.
The show moved from prime time to syndication and Saturday morning. Pebbles and Bamm Bamm became teenagers and received their own hour-long Saturday morning show.
The show inspired a pair of big-budget, live-action movies produced by Steven Spielberg. The movies were box office hits but won some Razzies.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
The Great Race
Tony Curtis's obituaries include the first time he worked with Jack Lemon in Some Like it Hot but overlook their second movie, The Great Race. That is a shame. The Great Race is a marvelous piece of slapstick.
The movie centers on the rivalry between The Great Leslie and Professor Fate. Curtis played Leslie who was always perfect. He wore white outfits which never got dirty. His (white) car was always clean. His teeth sparkled. He was a noted escape artist (a nod Tony Curtis's role as Houdini) and held various speed records.
On the other hand, Professor Fate, played by Jack Lemon, always failed, often crashing into a barn and landing in a pig wallow.
The race itself was from New York to Paris, the long way. A race like this was actually held in 1908. The organizers expected that the cars could drive across the frozen Bering Strait. This didn't work out and the racers had to ship their cars across. In the movie the cars rode an iceberg.
While most of the movie was a straight-out comedy, it did have an adventurous side-plot near the end. This involved a Prisoner of Zenda plot around Professor Fate. The Professor's assistant, Max, and Leslie had to rescue the others climaxing in a duel between Leslie and an evil baron played by Ross Martin. This gave Curtis a chance to show off his fencing skills and his buff physique.
Jack Lemon and Peter Falk as Max got to chew the scenery. Curtis as the straight man managed to keep from being overshadowed.
The Great race also starred Natalie Wood at the peak of her career.
The movie centers on the rivalry between The Great Leslie and Professor Fate. Curtis played Leslie who was always perfect. He wore white outfits which never got dirty. His (white) car was always clean. His teeth sparkled. He was a noted escape artist (a nod Tony Curtis's role as Houdini) and held various speed records.
On the other hand, Professor Fate, played by Jack Lemon, always failed, often crashing into a barn and landing in a pig wallow.
The race itself was from New York to Paris, the long way. A race like this was actually held in 1908. The organizers expected that the cars could drive across the frozen Bering Strait. This didn't work out and the racers had to ship their cars across. In the movie the cars rode an iceberg.
While most of the movie was a straight-out comedy, it did have an adventurous side-plot near the end. This involved a Prisoner of Zenda plot around Professor Fate. The Professor's assistant, Max, and Leslie had to rescue the others climaxing in a duel between Leslie and an evil baron played by Ross Martin. This gave Curtis a chance to show off his fencing skills and his buff physique.
Jack Lemon and Peter Falk as Max got to chew the scenery. Curtis as the straight man managed to keep from being overshadowed.
The Great race also starred Natalie Wood at the peak of her career.
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