In the early 1960s, the publishers from National Comics and Timely Comics used to get together regularly to play golf. At one of these games, the guy from National told the guy from Timely that one of his top-selling comic books was a superhero team-up called the Justice League. After that, the guy from Timely, Martin Goodman, called his editor and told him to create a new superhero team.
It had been years since Timely had tried to publish a superhero book, They had several hits in the Golden Age but efforts to revive them in the 50s flopped. So the editor couldn't have established heroes team up. He had to create some new ones. He called the newest staff artist and they came up with some characters - mainly recycled from previous characters. Since this was so different from anything that Timely was publishing at the time, the editor came up with a new name for the line - Marvel Comics.
Obviously I am talking about Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and the Fantastic Four. As it turned out, there was a huge, untapped market for superheros. Stan followed the Fantastic Four up with The Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, Ant Man (who was Giant Man by the second issue) and the Wasp. Then he gathered them into a second team called the Avengers.
The Avengers was a different kind of team. The Fantastic Four was an extended family. The Avengers was a collection of solo heroes who didn't necessarily get along. In fact, the team was formed to fight the Hulk. When it turned out that Thor's brother, Loki, was the real villain, they decided to keep meeting - even the Hulk. But by the end of the second issue the Hulk quit and spent the third issue fighting the Avengers alongside the Sub-Mariner. Captain America joined in the 4th issue and became a mainstay.
Stan thought of the Avengers as being like a baseball team with members changing. In issue 16, the original members all quit and were replaced by three misunderstood villains - Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch.
Hawkeye has started out wanting to be a superhero but got off to an inauspicious start. After stopping a bank robbery, he was the one holding the money when the police arrived. Not long after that he met the Black Widow, a Russian spy, who wanted his aid in fighting Iron Man. After the Black Widow vanished, Hawkeye reformed.
Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch were members of Magneto's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. They joined because they felt they owed a debt to Magneto for saving the Scarlet Witch's life. After Magneto was abducted by an alien, they declared their debt satisfied and reformed.
The "New Avengers" were one of the weakest teams ever. Their most powerful weapon was an explosive-tipped arrow. That put them on par with the Dukes of Hazard.
After a few months Giant Man came back as Goliath. Hercules came and went a few times. The Black Panther added more manpower if not more muscle. Thor and Iron Man were came and went. The Vision was the first original character in the Avengers. He was an android who could control his density.
Other characters started out as villains and later became members. The Swordsman and Power Man started as one-shot inside agents and later reformed and joined as trusted members.
Somewhere in there the Avengers became Marvel's top-selling team, rivaling Spider-Man and burying the Justice League (whose publisher was now known as DC).
By the late 1970s, the Avengers was amde up of two camps. There were the heroes with their own books (Thor, Iron Man, Captain America) who were mainly in the team to boost sales. Then there was the core group (Scarlet Witch, Vision, Swordsman, Mantis) who had all of the character development.
In the 1980s, the team picked up several new characters and most of the characters with their own books dropped out.
There was even a spin-off book, the West Coast Avengers. A third, Great Lakes Avengers made a couple of appearances but never got off the ground.
The team has been rebooted several times in order to boost sales. Fan favorites such as Spider-Man and Wolverine were added.
More recently there were multiple groups of Avengers. The "official" group was composed of super villains under Norman Osborn. A resistance version was also formed. Currently the team also includes an academy where new superheros are trained.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
Logan's Run to Star Wars
Over the weekend TCM showed some 1970s science fiction movies including Logan's Run. I think that the theme was actually science fiction dystopias because they also showed Westworld (robots go crazy) and Soylent Green (the land and oceans are dead so humanity is reduced to eating people). Logan's Run is interesting because it came out a year before Star Wars and because it won an Oscar for special effects.
In Logan's Run, the world's population is confined to a single city (or appears to be at the beginning of the movie). To prevent overpopulation, people are expected to go to an arena and try for renewal (actually all of them die). Some people try to avoid this. They are known as runners. A group of special police, called Sandmen, hunts down the runners.
Logan is one of the best of the Sandmen so he is given a special assignment. It seems that some runners are unaccounted for so he is to go undercover and try to find their sanctuary. Everyone has a "life crystal" implanted in their left hand that shows their age group. Logan's is sped up so that he appears to be 30.
Along the way Logan picks up a girlfriend named Jessica who is part of the underground. After surviving a mad surgeon and some feral teenagers, they find what appears to be Sanctuary. It turns out to be a food storage facility run by a robot named Box who freezes everyone who passes by.
They escape from Box and explore a ruined Washington DC. Eventually they meet an old man who lives in Congress and quotes T. S. Elliot. They return to the city and bring it down.
The movie made money and inspired a TV series in which Logan and Jessica keep going from settlement to settlement looking for Sanctuary. It is never explained why they didn't settle with the first people they encountered. Maybe that's why is only lasted 14 episodes.
So, how do the special effects hold up? To be honest, they weren't that good when the movie came out. The grand special effect is the city. It is a miniature filmed to look like an actual city except it didn't fool anyone. It looks empty and antiseptic.
There are some shuttle cars that look like remade golf carts (which they were). The guns were kind of neat. They had some flame come out around the muzzle. They were not convincing, though. A Sandman would point his gun and fire it and something in the general direction of his muzzle would explode. There was no sense of a projectile or energy beam.
Box is an interesting comparison with C3P0. Box is a multifaceted, mirrored box with arms and a head. You can see the actor inside moving his mouth when he talks and he looks like he could never get up if he fell over (which was true of the actor inside the costume).
The movie saved money by using some existing buildings as sets - mainly malls. It shows. It also has a failing of science fiction movies at the time - everything is too clean.
One reason that Star Wars was so big when it came out the following year was that it was so different from science fiction to date. The production values looked expensive. The sets looked real. No one would mistake Luke's speeder for a golf cart and no one looked at a the Death Star and said, "That looks like a miniature."
But only a year separated them.
One thing that Logan's Run did have was casual nudity. At best, Logan's girlfriend, Jessica, wore an outfit that looked like a short nightgown. It was short enough that you can see her underwear (which changed colors at unlikely times). Occasionally she shucks off her nighty completely. In addition, Box stripped his victims before freezing them in chambers that were transparent from the waist up. This gives a nice view of a couple of actresses painted white.
Prior to Star Wars, science fiction movies were a niche production and made on the cheap. This was one of the last of these movies.
In Logan's Run, the world's population is confined to a single city (or appears to be at the beginning of the movie). To prevent overpopulation, people are expected to go to an arena and try for renewal (actually all of them die). Some people try to avoid this. They are known as runners. A group of special police, called Sandmen, hunts down the runners.
Logan is one of the best of the Sandmen so he is given a special assignment. It seems that some runners are unaccounted for so he is to go undercover and try to find their sanctuary. Everyone has a "life crystal" implanted in their left hand that shows their age group. Logan's is sped up so that he appears to be 30.
Along the way Logan picks up a girlfriend named Jessica who is part of the underground. After surviving a mad surgeon and some feral teenagers, they find what appears to be Sanctuary. It turns out to be a food storage facility run by a robot named Box who freezes everyone who passes by.
They escape from Box and explore a ruined Washington DC. Eventually they meet an old man who lives in Congress and quotes T. S. Elliot. They return to the city and bring it down.
The movie made money and inspired a TV series in which Logan and Jessica keep going from settlement to settlement looking for Sanctuary. It is never explained why they didn't settle with the first people they encountered. Maybe that's why is only lasted 14 episodes.
So, how do the special effects hold up? To be honest, they weren't that good when the movie came out. The grand special effect is the city. It is a miniature filmed to look like an actual city except it didn't fool anyone. It looks empty and antiseptic.
There are some shuttle cars that look like remade golf carts (which they were). The guns were kind of neat. They had some flame come out around the muzzle. They were not convincing, though. A Sandman would point his gun and fire it and something in the general direction of his muzzle would explode. There was no sense of a projectile or energy beam.
Box is an interesting comparison with C3P0. Box is a multifaceted, mirrored box with arms and a head. You can see the actor inside moving his mouth when he talks and he looks like he could never get up if he fell over (which was true of the actor inside the costume).
The movie saved money by using some existing buildings as sets - mainly malls. It shows. It also has a failing of science fiction movies at the time - everything is too clean.
One reason that Star Wars was so big when it came out the following year was that it was so different from science fiction to date. The production values looked expensive. The sets looked real. No one would mistake Luke's speeder for a golf cart and no one looked at a the Death Star and said, "That looks like a miniature."
But only a year separated them.
One thing that Logan's Run did have was casual nudity. At best, Logan's girlfriend, Jessica, wore an outfit that looked like a short nightgown. It was short enough that you can see her underwear (which changed colors at unlikely times). Occasionally she shucks off her nighty completely. In addition, Box stripped his victims before freezing them in chambers that were transparent from the waist up. This gives a nice view of a couple of actresses painted white.
Prior to Star Wars, science fiction movies were a niche production and made on the cheap. This was one of the last of these movies.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Jonathan Frid
Jonathan Frid, the original Barnabas Collins, has died of natural causes at the age of 87.
Frid was a classically-trained actor who spent most of his early career on the stage. At one point he moved to England and started spelling his name "Fridd". His father found out and he changed the spelling back.
In the 1966 he was dissatisfied with his career and had accepted a job teaching. He was packing when his agent called and sent him to ABC to read for a soap opera. While waiting he noticed that all of the other people auditioning "looked dead" and wondered what that said about him.
The soap opera was Dark Shadows. At the time it was on the verge of cancellation and the producers hoped that a new character would boost ratings.
During the 1960s, the most popular genre of novel for women was the gothic romance. The plot was always a variation of Wuthering Heights - a young woman, possibly a governess, entered into a family with dark secrets. There was a hint of the supernatural but it always turned out to have a natural explanation. All of the mysteries would be wrapped up in the last few pages and the woman would find happiness with the handsome but melancholy head of the family.
Dark Shadows was the TV version of this and, at first, everything supernatural turned out to have a reasonable explanation. Slowly the writers started adding real supernatural elements to the show. The ghost, Josette, appeared on her own instead of as a hallucination. A missing, presumed dead, character showed up as a phoenix whose purpose was to kill her son in flames.
After these starts, the producers decided to go all the way and introduce a vampire, Barnabas, the long-lost lover of Josette. They worked up to it over several days and tied the character into existing elements of the show. At first, Barnabas's nature was only hinted at but eventually he started biting the female leads.
The new character worked. Ratings soared. At first the writers kept making Barnabas more and more evil but during a flashback to the 1790s, they changed his character. He was an innocent victim of a curse who was horrified at what he had become. When the flashback ended, this characterization continued. Barnabas was a tragic hero, trying to do good but lapsing into evil. Prior to this vampires had always been portrayed as Dracula - willingly evil. Frid's tormented vampire was new and led to today's versions.
As Barnabas became more popular, Frid's screentime increased. Dark Shadow's format was to use seven actors a week with five per episode. This gave the cast some time off but Frid was included every week for over a year. Eventually Frid convinced the producers to add a second charismatic lead, Quentin Collins the cursed werewolf. That gave Frid a little breathing room but he remained the most popular character.
One thing that Frid attributed to his success was a personal failing. Frid had trouble learning lines quickly. With multiple scenes every week he was constantly afraid of forgetting lines. This added some nervous energy to Barnabas which was perfectly in character for someone who was always keeping secrets.
After Dark Shadows ended, Frid made a couple of movies but mainly returned to the stage. In the 1980s he started touring with a one-man show that demonstrated how good he was when he had time to memorize his material. I saw this twice. The second time was a special show that he gave after officially retiring.
Frid's last performance was a cameo filmed for the upcoming Dark Shadows movie. Reportedly he was delighted to discover that the cast and crew of the movie were huge fans, especially Johnny Depp.
Frid was a classically-trained actor who spent most of his early career on the stage. At one point he moved to England and started spelling his name "Fridd". His father found out and he changed the spelling back.
In the 1966 he was dissatisfied with his career and had accepted a job teaching. He was packing when his agent called and sent him to ABC to read for a soap opera. While waiting he noticed that all of the other people auditioning "looked dead" and wondered what that said about him.
The soap opera was Dark Shadows. At the time it was on the verge of cancellation and the producers hoped that a new character would boost ratings.
During the 1960s, the most popular genre of novel for women was the gothic romance. The plot was always a variation of Wuthering Heights - a young woman, possibly a governess, entered into a family with dark secrets. There was a hint of the supernatural but it always turned out to have a natural explanation. All of the mysteries would be wrapped up in the last few pages and the woman would find happiness with the handsome but melancholy head of the family.
Dark Shadows was the TV version of this and, at first, everything supernatural turned out to have a reasonable explanation. Slowly the writers started adding real supernatural elements to the show. The ghost, Josette, appeared on her own instead of as a hallucination. A missing, presumed dead, character showed up as a phoenix whose purpose was to kill her son in flames.
After these starts, the producers decided to go all the way and introduce a vampire, Barnabas, the long-lost lover of Josette. They worked up to it over several days and tied the character into existing elements of the show. At first, Barnabas's nature was only hinted at but eventually he started biting the female leads.
The new character worked. Ratings soared. At first the writers kept making Barnabas more and more evil but during a flashback to the 1790s, they changed his character. He was an innocent victim of a curse who was horrified at what he had become. When the flashback ended, this characterization continued. Barnabas was a tragic hero, trying to do good but lapsing into evil. Prior to this vampires had always been portrayed as Dracula - willingly evil. Frid's tormented vampire was new and led to today's versions.
As Barnabas became more popular, Frid's screentime increased. Dark Shadow's format was to use seven actors a week with five per episode. This gave the cast some time off but Frid was included every week for over a year. Eventually Frid convinced the producers to add a second charismatic lead, Quentin Collins the cursed werewolf. That gave Frid a little breathing room but he remained the most popular character.
One thing that Frid attributed to his success was a personal failing. Frid had trouble learning lines quickly. With multiple scenes every week he was constantly afraid of forgetting lines. This added some nervous energy to Barnabas which was perfectly in character for someone who was always keeping secrets.
After Dark Shadows ended, Frid made a couple of movies but mainly returned to the stage. In the 1980s he started touring with a one-man show that demonstrated how good he was when he had time to memorize his material. I saw this twice. The second time was a special show that he gave after officially retiring.
Frid's last performance was a cameo filmed for the upcoming Dark Shadows movie. Reportedly he was delighted to discover that the cast and crew of the movie were huge fans, especially Johnny Depp.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Comics on tablets
If the future of books is tablets then what is the future of comic books?
I just explored a couple of options. I am using a Nook Color which is a 7" tablet. I have tried comic books on a 10" tablet before, also and the results are about the same.
My Nook Color runs a dual boot so I was actually using it as a generic Android Tablet running the Nook Android App. The results are the same as running it natively since the Nook Color is Android-based.
Barnes and Noble is offering some graphic novels in digital form. I bought Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 volume one.
So, what's the experience like? Not that good. A tablet is a fraction of the size of a graphic novel. I had to zoom and pan in order to read it. Also, Nook only supports this format in portrait mode. That lets you see the entire page but you can't read it. It would be a big improvement if you could rotate the page and have it auto-size.
So - reading comic books on a Nook Color or the Nook Tablet leaves a lot to be desired.
But... Marvel and DC offer free Android apps. Since I am running generic Android, I was able to install these. They make a huge difference. You can read the comic book normally (with the same problems as the Nook app) but they also support a pan and zoom mode. This does all of the work for you. It will show you the splash page then zoom on the word balloons or, where appropriate, start with the close-up and zoom out. It is almost cinematic. Even better, Marvel is upgrading their books. When I loaded the app I was notified that some books that I had already downloaded had been enhanced and offered to refresh them.
Also, this app does support rotating. In some cases a panel was tall and thin. In other cases it was short and wide. I could rotate the tablet and the panel would resize.
This is probably the future of comics. Especially as artists get used to creating content for electronic media.
I just explored a couple of options. I am using a Nook Color which is a 7" tablet. I have tried comic books on a 10" tablet before, also and the results are about the same.
My Nook Color runs a dual boot so I was actually using it as a generic Android Tablet running the Nook Android App. The results are the same as running it natively since the Nook Color is Android-based.
Barnes and Noble is offering some graphic novels in digital form. I bought Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 volume one.
So, what's the experience like? Not that good. A tablet is a fraction of the size of a graphic novel. I had to zoom and pan in order to read it. Also, Nook only supports this format in portrait mode. That lets you see the entire page but you can't read it. It would be a big improvement if you could rotate the page and have it auto-size.
So - reading comic books on a Nook Color or the Nook Tablet leaves a lot to be desired.
But... Marvel and DC offer free Android apps. Since I am running generic Android, I was able to install these. They make a huge difference. You can read the comic book normally (with the same problems as the Nook app) but they also support a pan and zoom mode. This does all of the work for you. It will show you the splash page then zoom on the word balloons or, where appropriate, start with the close-up and zoom out. It is almost cinematic. Even better, Marvel is upgrading their books. When I loaded the app I was notified that some books that I had already downloaded had been enhanced and offered to refresh them.
Also, this app does support rotating. In some cases a panel was tall and thin. In other cases it was short and wide. I could rotate the tablet and the panel would resize.
This is probably the future of comics. Especially as artists get used to creating content for electronic media.
Thursday, April 05, 2012
Bad Cars
I've watched a couple of episodes of the US version of Top Gear. One was on dangerous cars and the other was on "uncool" cars. I didn't actually care much for the show. The hosts are trash-talking jerks. Still the cars deserve a second look.
Their choices for most dangerous cars were the Ford Pinto, the Chevy Corvair, and the Suzuki Samurai. I have some experience with two of these. My parents owned a Corvair and I owned a Samurai.
Since I never even drove a Pinto there isn't much I can say except that the show exaggerated the danger. In a famous lawsuit it was alleged that a design flaw made it more likely that in a rear-end collision the fuel tank filler would break off, spilling fuel and making the car more likely to catch fire. A document was produced showing that Ford had calculated it would cost $11/car to fix and decided to save the money.
Much later a study found that only a couple of dozen people were killed in fires involving Pintos out of 2 million sold. This was typical for cars from that period. The memo on cost was a regulatory requirement and senior management had never seen it.
Ralph Nader built his reputation on the Corvair. His first book, Unsafe at Any Speed, devited a chapter to the car and soon after GM stopped selling it. Nader claimed that the car was difficult to control, especially at high speed.
In the 1960s when the Corvair was being made, most small cars had manual steering and an engine sitting on top of the front wheels. The Corvair had a rear-mounted motor. This made it easy to oversteer the car. This happened to all cars with rear motors. I remember my father commenting on it to my mother. He had previously owned a Karmann Ghia which was a sporty body on top of a VW Beetle frame. Both cars behaved the same.
The government tested the Corvair and found that it was one of the more stable cars with a rear motor. GM had always planned on dropping the car when it did because the profit margin was too low.
The Samurai got it's reputation from a Consumer Report review which claimed that it turned over during testing. My experience with it was that it was a poor car on the highway but great for off-road (which is what I used it for). I never had any problems with stability, even on gravel roads with sharp turns.
Suzuki sued Consumer Reports claiming that they anti-rollover equipment that they attached to the car changed the balance and that they were trying to help an employee win a battle with an insurance company. Eventually Consumer Reports apologized for their rating.
So, none of these cars were particularly dangerous. Regardless, Top Gear managed to spin the Corvair, roll the Suzuki, and even got a smoldering fire to start in the Pinto for no reason. All I can say is that stunt drivers can get cars to do a lot of things and the camera never showed what caused the spin or rollover.
On to the uncool cars - the Yugo, the Mustang II, and the Pontiac Aztek.
The big question is how they missed AMC's Gremlin and Pacer? Those were uncool when they were new and the Pacer tops most lists on worst car ever made.
Of the ones they did pick, the Yugo stands out as particularly bad. It's only selling point was that it was the cheapest car on the market. A product of Yugoslavia, the car was poorly engineered, poorly built, underpowered, and a generally bad car. The reviews said that the few hundred that you saved by buying one were not worth the money. If you were really strapped for cash you were better off buying a used car. It would be more reliable.
The Pontiac Aztek was supposed to be a crossover SUV. It ended up looking like someone had cut the top third off of a car and the bottom third from a second car then stacked them. This impression was helped by the body styling and double rows of headlights. It wasn't a bad car but no one liked the look.
The Mustang II was a product of its time and really should be judged as such. The Mustang started out as a small car with a big motor - one of the first muscle cars. Over the next few years it grew into a big car with a big motor.
Ford President Lee Iacocca wanted to return the car to its roots as a small car and the Mustang II was introduced. The car has a bad reputation now because the Mustang II could be ordered with a 4 cylinder motor which was pretty underpowered. Even the 8 cylinder motor was slower than the earlier models because of new air quality and safety standards.
I can't argue with the other two choices for uncool car but a Mustang II with a good motor was cool when it came out - something that could never be said for the Yugo or Aztek.
Their choices for most dangerous cars were the Ford Pinto, the Chevy Corvair, and the Suzuki Samurai. I have some experience with two of these. My parents owned a Corvair and I owned a Samurai.
Since I never even drove a Pinto there isn't much I can say except that the show exaggerated the danger. In a famous lawsuit it was alleged that a design flaw made it more likely that in a rear-end collision the fuel tank filler would break off, spilling fuel and making the car more likely to catch fire. A document was produced showing that Ford had calculated it would cost $11/car to fix and decided to save the money.
Much later a study found that only a couple of dozen people were killed in fires involving Pintos out of 2 million sold. This was typical for cars from that period. The memo on cost was a regulatory requirement and senior management had never seen it.
Ralph Nader built his reputation on the Corvair. His first book, Unsafe at Any Speed, devited a chapter to the car and soon after GM stopped selling it. Nader claimed that the car was difficult to control, especially at high speed.
In the 1960s when the Corvair was being made, most small cars had manual steering and an engine sitting on top of the front wheels. The Corvair had a rear-mounted motor. This made it easy to oversteer the car. This happened to all cars with rear motors. I remember my father commenting on it to my mother. He had previously owned a Karmann Ghia which was a sporty body on top of a VW Beetle frame. Both cars behaved the same.
The government tested the Corvair and found that it was one of the more stable cars with a rear motor. GM had always planned on dropping the car when it did because the profit margin was too low.
The Samurai got it's reputation from a Consumer Report review which claimed that it turned over during testing. My experience with it was that it was a poor car on the highway but great for off-road (which is what I used it for). I never had any problems with stability, even on gravel roads with sharp turns.
Suzuki sued Consumer Reports claiming that they anti-rollover equipment that they attached to the car changed the balance and that they were trying to help an employee win a battle with an insurance company. Eventually Consumer Reports apologized for their rating.
So, none of these cars were particularly dangerous. Regardless, Top Gear managed to spin the Corvair, roll the Suzuki, and even got a smoldering fire to start in the Pinto for no reason. All I can say is that stunt drivers can get cars to do a lot of things and the camera never showed what caused the spin or rollover.
On to the uncool cars - the Yugo, the Mustang II, and the Pontiac Aztek.
The big question is how they missed AMC's Gremlin and Pacer? Those were uncool when they were new and the Pacer tops most lists on worst car ever made.
Of the ones they did pick, the Yugo stands out as particularly bad. It's only selling point was that it was the cheapest car on the market. A product of Yugoslavia, the car was poorly engineered, poorly built, underpowered, and a generally bad car. The reviews said that the few hundred that you saved by buying one were not worth the money. If you were really strapped for cash you were better off buying a used car. It would be more reliable.
The Pontiac Aztek was supposed to be a crossover SUV. It ended up looking like someone had cut the top third off of a car and the bottom third from a second car then stacked them. This impression was helped by the body styling and double rows of headlights. It wasn't a bad car but no one liked the look.
The Mustang II was a product of its time and really should be judged as such. The Mustang started out as a small car with a big motor - one of the first muscle cars. Over the next few years it grew into a big car with a big motor.
Ford President Lee Iacocca wanted to return the car to its roots as a small car and the Mustang II was introduced. The car has a bad reputation now because the Mustang II could be ordered with a 4 cylinder motor which was pretty underpowered. Even the 8 cylinder motor was slower than the earlier models because of new air quality and safety standards.
I can't argue with the other two choices for uncool car but a Mustang II with a good motor was cool when it came out - something that could never be said for the Yugo or Aztek.
Friday, March 30, 2012
The flop that wasn't
John Carter has gone down as one of the biggest flops in movie history. Disney projected that they might lose $200 million on it.
Except it is a huge hit overseas. So far it has taken in $172 million in addition to its $72 million domestic take. That is a total of $264 million on a movie that cost around $250 million to make.
Disney is not out of the woods, yet. It has been reported that they spent another $100 million on marketing so it still has a ways to go before it breaks even. At the same time, it is still in first run and hasn't opening in Japan, yet. Then there are the DVD and Blu Ray sales.
We might see the planned sequels, yet.
Except it is a huge hit overseas. So far it has taken in $172 million in addition to its $72 million domestic take. That is a total of $264 million on a movie that cost around $250 million to make.
Disney is not out of the woods, yet. It has been reported that they spent another $100 million on marketing so it still has a ways to go before it breaks even. At the same time, it is still in first run and hasn't opening in Japan, yet. Then there are the DVD and Blu Ray sales.
We might see the planned sequels, yet.
Monday, March 26, 2012
John Carter - What Happened?
John Carter is a great adventure movie but it looks like it will be a financial flop for Disney. What happened?
The movie got mixed reviews with many critics complaining about the slow opening. The part that they complain about is also the biggest change from the source material. When adapting the novel, it was decided to flesh his character out more. He was given a wife who was killed during the Civil War making him hostile and apathetic about anyone else. This hurt the movie. In the novel, when presented with a new world to conquer and a princess to win, Carter embraced his opportunities. In the movie, Carter spent the first half trying to return to a miserable existence on Earth. Imagine how poorly Star Wars would have done if Luke kept worrying about getting back to the moisture farm.
The movie was marketed poorly. Disney spent $100 million on marketing alone but never mentioned certain key words like "Edgar Rice Burroughs", "Princess of Mars", or "from the creator of Tarzan". The ads gave no sense of what the movie was about and were nearly indistinguishable from the upcoming sequel to Clash of the Titans.
The movie got mixed reviews with many critics complaining about the slow opening. The part that they complain about is also the biggest change from the source material. When adapting the novel, it was decided to flesh his character out more. He was given a wife who was killed during the Civil War making him hostile and apathetic about anyone else. This hurt the movie. In the novel, when presented with a new world to conquer and a princess to win, Carter embraced his opportunities. In the movie, Carter spent the first half trying to return to a miserable existence on Earth. Imagine how poorly Star Wars would have done if Luke kept worrying about getting back to the moisture farm.
The movie was marketed poorly. Disney spent $100 million on marketing alone but never mentioned certain key words like "Edgar Rice Burroughs", "Princess of Mars", or "from the creator of Tarzan". The ads gave no sense of what the movie was about and were nearly indistinguishable from the upcoming sequel to Clash of the Titans.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Monster Man
SyFy followed the second season of its make-up effects contest show with a new series - Monster Man. This is about a firm that does custom make-up efects. After the high bar set by Face-Off, this show is a bit of a disappointment.
The pilot followed the same formula as other shows about fabricators (American Restoration, Sons of Guns). The staff takes on two projects. There is a lot of drama about making deadlines and finally the big reveal. In this case the reveal is to the director who commissioned the work.
This time they did a werewolf and an "ugly" mask to go on a pretty dancer. The werewolf suit was the big project. It apparently took weeks to do. It was fairly basic - a muscle suit, painted and covered with hair and a mask. The mask's jaws could open and close but it could not change its expression. Apparently it was only used for a few shots taking place in some woods at night. There was also a lot of blood and guts.
The first season of Face-Off had its own werewolf as well as a steam punk Red Riding Hood. A small team led by one of the finalists had three days to do both figures and they were a lot better than this one.
I suspect that most of the contestants from Face-Off could have done a better "ugly" mask, too.
Oh well, the next season of Face-Off is already filming.
The pilot followed the same formula as other shows about fabricators (American Restoration, Sons of Guns). The staff takes on two projects. There is a lot of drama about making deadlines and finally the big reveal. In this case the reveal is to the director who commissioned the work.
This time they did a werewolf and an "ugly" mask to go on a pretty dancer. The werewolf suit was the big project. It apparently took weeks to do. It was fairly basic - a muscle suit, painted and covered with hair and a mask. The mask's jaws could open and close but it could not change its expression. Apparently it was only used for a few shots taking place in some woods at night. There was also a lot of blood and guts.
The first season of Face-Off had its own werewolf as well as a steam punk Red Riding Hood. A small team led by one of the finalists had three days to do both figures and they were a lot better than this one.
I suspect that most of the contestants from Face-Off could have done a better "ugly" mask, too.
Oh well, the next season of Face-Off is already filming.
Nook problems and solutions
A couple of weeks ago we flew to Florida. I took my Nook Touch and my Nook Color. Since I have a dual boot installed on the Color, it is my main tablet. It is great for web browsing, checking email, and Facebook but it is a little heavy for reading and the battery has to be recharged daily. I planned on using the Touch for my reading and I have a number of unread books on both devices.
I dutifully turned both devices off when asked to but the Touch would not come back on. It got as far as a screen saying "Read forever" and hung. Rebooting did not solve this. I even managed to return it to factory defaults but it still hung at the same place. Later I reset it two more times but it never made it past the ironically-named "Read Forever" screen. I suspect that the internal memory went bad.
Not a big deal since I had the Nook Color with me. Otherwise I would have been without my reading material. I also had a netbook, just in case, and I could have downloaded the books to it during a layover. The layover was in Baltimore which charges for WiFi and the netbook is not as good as a dedicated reader but I did have options.
That's the bad part. The good came when I contacted Barnes and Noble. All of the Nooks have a one year warranty. After explaining the problem to their technical support, they shipped me a new one with a mailing label to return the old one. Three days later I had a working Touch again.
So, one bad mark on build quality and one good mark on customer service.
I dutifully turned both devices off when asked to but the Touch would not come back on. It got as far as a screen saying "Read forever" and hung. Rebooting did not solve this. I even managed to return it to factory defaults but it still hung at the same place. Later I reset it two more times but it never made it past the ironically-named "Read Forever" screen. I suspect that the internal memory went bad.
Not a big deal since I had the Nook Color with me. Otherwise I would have been without my reading material. I also had a netbook, just in case, and I could have downloaded the books to it during a layover. The layover was in Baltimore which charges for WiFi and the netbook is not as good as a dedicated reader but I did have options.
That's the bad part. The good came when I contacted Barnes and Noble. All of the Nooks have a one year warranty. After explaining the problem to their technical support, they shipped me a new one with a mailing label to return the old one. Three days later I had a working Touch again.
So, one bad mark on build quality and one good mark on customer service.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Dark Shadows
I started watching Dark Shadows soon after it moved to the 4 pm time slot. Before that it was on while I was in school. At the time the central plot involved a cult called the Leviathans. They had a magic box that brought something Lovecraftian into the world. Normally it appeared like a child but inside a special room it turned into something that drove people mad just seeing it. The thing started as a baby then was replaced by a child and finally a hippy. The cult was opposed by Barnabas and company although Barnabas was an inside agent. He was discovered and turned into a vampire. This was the first time that I had seen Barnabas as a vampire and I was hooked.
Previously vampires were always heartless monsters. Barnabas was different. He didn't want to drink blood. Jonathan Frid played the character as a drug addict who kept relapsing. Except when he relapsed, people died.
The trailer is out for the new Dark Shadows movie. I don't see any of the original Barnabas.
I'm not really surprised. The original story was done three times, first in the serial then as a theatrical movie and finally in the pilot for the 1990s version. I can't imagine Tim Burton doing a story for the fourth time.
Also, our view of vampires has changed. In the 1970s they were still monsters. Like I said, even the remorseful Barbabas regularly killed innocents. Now we have audiences rooting for a high school girl to choose between a vampire and a werewolf. Vampires no longer kill. Instead they sparkle in the sun. An audience that has seen Twilight would be mystified by the original Dark Shadows.
Instead we get a story about an 18th century man adapting to the 1970s. His vampirism is a side note. It also looks like his battle with Angelique is more direct and physical.
Too bad. I was hoping for more from the director of Sleepy Hollow.
Previously vampires were always heartless monsters. Barnabas was different. He didn't want to drink blood. Jonathan Frid played the character as a drug addict who kept relapsing. Except when he relapsed, people died.
The trailer is out for the new Dark Shadows movie. I don't see any of the original Barnabas.
I'm not really surprised. The original story was done three times, first in the serial then as a theatrical movie and finally in the pilot for the 1990s version. I can't imagine Tim Burton doing a story for the fourth time.
Also, our view of vampires has changed. In the 1970s they were still monsters. Like I said, even the remorseful Barbabas regularly killed innocents. Now we have audiences rooting for a high school girl to choose between a vampire and a werewolf. Vampires no longer kill. Instead they sparkle in the sun. An audience that has seen Twilight would be mystified by the original Dark Shadows.
Instead we get a story about an 18th century man adapting to the 1970s. His vampirism is a side note. It also looks like his battle with Angelique is more direct and physical.
Too bad. I was hoping for more from the director of Sleepy Hollow.
Friday, March 09, 2012
A Princess of Mars
It's been a long time since I read A Princess of Mars. It was probably the first book I read by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It was in a collection of Burroughs books that my parents gave me for Christmas around 1970. The collection included all of the Mars books, the Venus books, and a few others. Burroughs was very popular in the late 1960s and 1970s so it was easy to find his books.
Of all of Burroughs' creations, Tarzan is the best-known but John Carter of Mars was his first. Tarzan and its sequel are more mature books and (this is important) much easier to film since they took place in Africa. Burroughs' other series take place on other worlds (or inside the Earth) with alien creatures. Until now that meant that they were unfilmable except as animations. There were some attempts to make the Mars books into animated movies. Bob Clampett did some test footage.
A Princess of Mars was written a full century ago in 1912. It was enormously and became the template for a century's worth of hero-on-a-different-world books. There have been numerous imitators, Just in the 1970s, there were a dozen or more series following Burroughs' formula. The most prolific of these was the Antares series featuring Dray Prescot. There was also the R-rated Gor series. I have heard that Avatar is another decedent in this genre.
Burroughs used the same basic plot for the first book in all of his series and many of his stand-alone books. Sometimes he played with the formula. In Tarzan the plot was spread across the first two books but it was all there.
In short - the hero is introduced to a new environment where he quickly acquires a friend/mentor. He meets the heroine early on, often saving her from captivity. They form a relationship but there is a misunderstanding and she leaves or is torn away. He sees her twice more, quickly, before the final conflict when the couple confesses their undying love. In a series, this is followed by the heroine being snatched away.
After the first book, the series go their separate ways. The main similarity from there is a dependence on coincidence.
Burroughs' heroes were all cut from the same cloth. They were all tall, strong, and honest. Most of them were slightly superhuman (because of differences in gravity or having been raised by apes).
While not a great writer, Burroughs is in the tiny group of writers who invented and dominated an entire genre. Hopefully the new movie will inspire a new wave of popularity.
Of all of Burroughs' creations, Tarzan is the best-known but John Carter of Mars was his first. Tarzan and its sequel are more mature books and (this is important) much easier to film since they took place in Africa. Burroughs' other series take place on other worlds (or inside the Earth) with alien creatures. Until now that meant that they were unfilmable except as animations. There were some attempts to make the Mars books into animated movies. Bob Clampett did some test footage.
A Princess of Mars was written a full century ago in 1912. It was enormously and became the template for a century's worth of hero-on-a-different-world books. There have been numerous imitators, Just in the 1970s, there were a dozen or more series following Burroughs' formula. The most prolific of these was the Antares series featuring Dray Prescot. There was also the R-rated Gor series. I have heard that Avatar is another decedent in this genre.
Burroughs used the same basic plot for the first book in all of his series and many of his stand-alone books. Sometimes he played with the formula. In Tarzan the plot was spread across the first two books but it was all there.
In short - the hero is introduced to a new environment where he quickly acquires a friend/mentor. He meets the heroine early on, often saving her from captivity. They form a relationship but there is a misunderstanding and she leaves or is torn away. He sees her twice more, quickly, before the final conflict when the couple confesses their undying love. In a series, this is followed by the heroine being snatched away.
After the first book, the series go their separate ways. The main similarity from there is a dependence on coincidence.
Burroughs' heroes were all cut from the same cloth. They were all tall, strong, and honest. Most of them were slightly superhuman (because of differences in gravity or having been raised by apes).
While not a great writer, Burroughs is in the tiny group of writers who invented and dominated an entire genre. Hopefully the new movie will inspire a new wave of popularity.
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
Heroes and their girl friends
A couple of days ago Wired had a column "written" by Lois Lane entitled "Dear DC Comics: Why Do You Keep Fridging Me?" (fridging = killing). That got me thinking about the relationship between superheroes and their girlfriends.
I can't say a lot about the Golden Age. I've only read a fraction of the comics from then. My impression is that girl friends were rare. The big exception was Superman and Lois Lane although she was more of a college than a girl friend at the time.
By the time I started reading comic books, Lois's relationship had changed. She was more of a pest than anything else. She regularly got into trouble and had to be rescued or tried to prove that Superman was Clark Kent. She could be jealous of Lana Lang who had known Superman since he was Superboy.
The old Superman TV show was still in syndication and probably had an influence on the comic book portrayal. In the show, she was sometimes suspicious of Clack being Superman. There was little to no romantic attraction. He treated her about the same as Jimmy Olsen.
In the comics, Superman always claimed that he would marry Lois but that it would put her life in danger. Just knowing his secret identity could be deadly. This never sounded right, even when I was a ten-year-old. After all, Lois's life was already in danger from being a known associate (a group called the Superman Revenge Squad had a bounty on the heads of all of the supporting cast). She didn't have to tell anyone that he had told her his secret identity. They could even get married in secret.
DC did a number of imaginary and dream issues where Superman and Lois got married. Sometimes he found a way of giving her super powers. Sometimes he married her as Clark Kent. She was often miserable when married in secret because she wanted to be able to boast about her husband's accomplishments (this was the 1960s when a wife was supposed to live through her husband).
I suspect that all of this was aimed at the publisher's view of pre-adolesent boys. In the late 1960s, DC redefined the Superman Family. Lois and Jimmy started having adventures revolving around their careers as reporters. Lois started wearing her hair loose and appearing in bikinis, possibly as an acknowledgement that the readers were older.
The came the Superman movies. The first two centered on the relationship between Lois and Superman. They even consummated it although Clark eventually had to choose between being Superman and having a personal life.
When Superman was rebooted in the 1980s, John Byrne's Lois was inspired by the movie version. They eventually married in the 1990s, coinciding with their marriage in the TV show Lois and Clark. That lasted until last year's reboot.
Outside of Lois, most girl friends in the early 1960s were just filler - something to fill up panels until the hero put on his costume. It was a running gag in The Flash that he was always late for his date.
Marvel put its own spin on the girlfriend - the doomed romance. There was always some reason that the hero couldn't get together with the girl. Iron Man had a bad heart. Thor needed his father's permission. Cyclopes worried about hurting people close to him with his hard-to-control eye beams. Daredevil thought that his secretary deserved better than a blind man. Bruce Banner turned into the Hulk.
There were exceptions. The big one was Reed Richards and Sue Storm married around four years after the Fantastic Four started. This has been the main, lasting marriage in comic book history.
Spider-Man actually went through a normal relationship with Betty Brant. They met and started dating. Along the way she also started seeing Ned Leeds, a reporter. Leeds asked Betty to marry him. Peter almost proposed himself but realized that Betty did not want to be married to a superhero and the two broke up. After a brief fling with Mary Jane Watson, Peter settled down dating with Gwen Stacy.
Other Marvel heroes relationships changed. Thor broke up with Jane Foster and started seeing the goddess Sif. Cyclopes and Marvel Girl started dating. Daredevil and Iron Man broke up with their their secretaries.
A new generation of writers entered the field around 1970 and they stirred things up. The Flash finally married his girlfriend then had marital problems.
Henry Pym (Ant Man/Giant Man/Goliath/Yellowjacket/etc.) and the Wasp had a solid relationship from the beginning although they never got around to getting married. This finally happened while he was thought he was someone else. Later he began abusing the Wasp and they divorced. Even later they reconciled prior to the Wasp's death a few years ago.
There was a period during the 1970s and early 1980s when a new writer on a strip meant a new girlfriend. I lost track of Tony Stark's. At one point he was trying to relieve his guilt over manufacturing weapons by chasing after a hippy chick. Later he dated the daughter of a crime lord. Daredevil went through a few girlfriends with Electra being the most memorable one. Spider-Man's girlfriend, Gwen, was killed and he went back to Mary Jane although he had a fling with the Black Cat (Felicia Hardy). Thor alternated between Sif and Jane Foster before marrying the Enchantress in an alternate future. Captain America's long-time girlfriend, Sharron Carter, died and he dated around before Sharron returned. Even the Hulk got a green girlfriend for a while.
I think that this represents two factors. One is that new relationships are easier to write and can add some freshness to a strip. The other is the desire of a new writer to mark the strip as his own.
Comic book marriages have been amazingly unsuccessful. Either they break up, one of them dies, or the whole event is written out of continuity. The Hulk has been married a couple of times and both wives died (although Betty came back). Cyclopes married two different versions of Jean Grey and both died (more or less). The Flash and his wife both died. Spider-Man's and Superman's marriages never happened.
One final point I wanted to touch on - occasionally the girlfriend outshines the original hero. The Silver Age Hawk Man was married to Hawk Woman. In later continuity, he vanished and Hawk Woman continued.
After their breakup, the Wasp continued on with the Avengers and led the team for several years.
Then there is Carol Danvers. She was a supporting character in the Captain Marvel comic. She was not a girlfriend but there were implications that she could be given the right circumstances. That never happened.
Later she returned as a superhero in her own right - Ms Marvel. An alien machine had given her powers similar to Captain Marvel's. She has bounced around a lot since then. She changed powers a couple times and names several times, but she is still prominent and had her own comic for several years in the 2000s. Captain Marvel, on the other hand, died in the 1970s and his name was given to a female character for a long time.
Why are Reed and Sue still together? Probably because they were married during the Lee/Kirby days. That's long enough ago to be part of their DNA. All of the other relationships were much more recent. Reed and Sue were married before most professionals entered the field and before many of them were even born. Breaking them up would be like changing Superman's powers. You know that it would only be a temporary change.
I can't say a lot about the Golden Age. I've only read a fraction of the comics from then. My impression is that girl friends were rare. The big exception was Superman and Lois Lane although she was more of a college than a girl friend at the time.
By the time I started reading comic books, Lois's relationship had changed. She was more of a pest than anything else. She regularly got into trouble and had to be rescued or tried to prove that Superman was Clark Kent. She could be jealous of Lana Lang who had known Superman since he was Superboy.
The old Superman TV show was still in syndication and probably had an influence on the comic book portrayal. In the show, she was sometimes suspicious of Clack being Superman. There was little to no romantic attraction. He treated her about the same as Jimmy Olsen.
In the comics, Superman always claimed that he would marry Lois but that it would put her life in danger. Just knowing his secret identity could be deadly. This never sounded right, even when I was a ten-year-old. After all, Lois's life was already in danger from being a known associate (a group called the Superman Revenge Squad had a bounty on the heads of all of the supporting cast). She didn't have to tell anyone that he had told her his secret identity. They could even get married in secret.
DC did a number of imaginary and dream issues where Superman and Lois got married. Sometimes he found a way of giving her super powers. Sometimes he married her as Clark Kent. She was often miserable when married in secret because she wanted to be able to boast about her husband's accomplishments (this was the 1960s when a wife was supposed to live through her husband).
I suspect that all of this was aimed at the publisher's view of pre-adolesent boys. In the late 1960s, DC redefined the Superman Family. Lois and Jimmy started having adventures revolving around their careers as reporters. Lois started wearing her hair loose and appearing in bikinis, possibly as an acknowledgement that the readers were older.
The came the Superman movies. The first two centered on the relationship between Lois and Superman. They even consummated it although Clark eventually had to choose between being Superman and having a personal life.
When Superman was rebooted in the 1980s, John Byrne's Lois was inspired by the movie version. They eventually married in the 1990s, coinciding with their marriage in the TV show Lois and Clark. That lasted until last year's reboot.
Outside of Lois, most girl friends in the early 1960s were just filler - something to fill up panels until the hero put on his costume. It was a running gag in The Flash that he was always late for his date.
Marvel put its own spin on the girlfriend - the doomed romance. There was always some reason that the hero couldn't get together with the girl. Iron Man had a bad heart. Thor needed his father's permission. Cyclopes worried about hurting people close to him with his hard-to-control eye beams. Daredevil thought that his secretary deserved better than a blind man. Bruce Banner turned into the Hulk.
There were exceptions. The big one was Reed Richards and Sue Storm married around four years after the Fantastic Four started. This has been the main, lasting marriage in comic book history.
Spider-Man actually went through a normal relationship with Betty Brant. They met and started dating. Along the way she also started seeing Ned Leeds, a reporter. Leeds asked Betty to marry him. Peter almost proposed himself but realized that Betty did not want to be married to a superhero and the two broke up. After a brief fling with Mary Jane Watson, Peter settled down dating with Gwen Stacy.
Other Marvel heroes relationships changed. Thor broke up with Jane Foster and started seeing the goddess Sif. Cyclopes and Marvel Girl started dating. Daredevil and Iron Man broke up with their their secretaries.
A new generation of writers entered the field around 1970 and they stirred things up. The Flash finally married his girlfriend then had marital problems.
Henry Pym (Ant Man/Giant Man/Goliath/Yellowjacket/etc.) and the Wasp had a solid relationship from the beginning although they never got around to getting married. This finally happened while he was thought he was someone else. Later he began abusing the Wasp and they divorced. Even later they reconciled prior to the Wasp's death a few years ago.
There was a period during the 1970s and early 1980s when a new writer on a strip meant a new girlfriend. I lost track of Tony Stark's. At one point he was trying to relieve his guilt over manufacturing weapons by chasing after a hippy chick. Later he dated the daughter of a crime lord. Daredevil went through a few girlfriends with Electra being the most memorable one. Spider-Man's girlfriend, Gwen, was killed and he went back to Mary Jane although he had a fling with the Black Cat (Felicia Hardy). Thor alternated between Sif and Jane Foster before marrying the Enchantress in an alternate future. Captain America's long-time girlfriend, Sharron Carter, died and he dated around before Sharron returned. Even the Hulk got a green girlfriend for a while.
I think that this represents two factors. One is that new relationships are easier to write and can add some freshness to a strip. The other is the desire of a new writer to mark the strip as his own.
Comic book marriages have been amazingly unsuccessful. Either they break up, one of them dies, or the whole event is written out of continuity. The Hulk has been married a couple of times and both wives died (although Betty came back). Cyclopes married two different versions of Jean Grey and both died (more or less). The Flash and his wife both died. Spider-Man's and Superman's marriages never happened.
One final point I wanted to touch on - occasionally the girlfriend outshines the original hero. The Silver Age Hawk Man was married to Hawk Woman. In later continuity, he vanished and Hawk Woman continued.
After their breakup, the Wasp continued on with the Avengers and led the team for several years.
Then there is Carol Danvers. She was a supporting character in the Captain Marvel comic. She was not a girlfriend but there were implications that she could be given the right circumstances. That never happened.
Later she returned as a superhero in her own right - Ms Marvel. An alien machine had given her powers similar to Captain Marvel's. She has bounced around a lot since then. She changed powers a couple times and names several times, but she is still prominent and had her own comic for several years in the 2000s. Captain Marvel, on the other hand, died in the 1970s and his name was given to a female character for a long time.
Why are Reed and Sue still together? Probably because they were married during the Lee/Kirby days. That's long enough ago to be part of their DNA. All of the other relationships were much more recent. Reed and Sue were married before most professionals entered the field and before many of them were even born. Breaking them up would be like changing Superman's powers. You know that it would only be a temporary change.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
The Chronicle and Superheroes
What would happen if some ordinary people suddenly received super powers? Superman and the Fantastic Four are the best case examples - they decide to devote their lives to helping people. Everything about Superman revolves around his mission. Even his secret identity was chosen to give him quicker access to emergency reports. The Fantastic Four didn't even keep secret identities.
Spider-Man is a second-best case - after encountering personal tragedy while cashing in on his powers, he devoted much of his time to helping people.
The recent movie The Chronicle is a less optimistic view. It follows three normal high school seniors as they acquire telekinetic powers. At first their powers are weak. They can stop a baseball in flight or put Lego blocks together but anything stronger gives them a nosebleed. Their powers increase rapidly, though. Pretty soon they are using them to play pranks. They make a woman's shopping cart roll away and scare a child by animating a bear. They even confuse a woman by moving her car to a different parking space.
So, where do you go from there? Do you put on the ultimate magic show? Take revenge on some bullies? Give your girlfriend a little extra excitement? Fly to school instead of hitching a ride? What do you do if your drunken father attack you?
The movie covers all of these possibilities and more.
The movie is shown in a hyper-realistic manner. The title refers to this - it is a chronicle of the three boys. One of them, Andrew, had started filming his life shortly before they got their powers. At first he tapes everything but later he concentrates on their increasing abilities. This become easier after he is able to move the camera telekinetically. At times the other two take over the camera. There is also Casey, another student who also tapes her life. Other sources including security footage are used. The result is that the entire movie could have been assembled from footage
The three telekinetics are Andrew, Matt, Andrew's cerebral cousin, and Steve, the popular black guy. Of the three, Steve is the best-adjusted and least affected. Matt actually becomes better-adjusted after becoming telekinetic.
Andrew is a bad choice to suddenly become powerful. His mother is dying. His father is drunken, abusive, and suspicious. He is shy and targeted by bullies. Matt studies philosophers and quotes Jung. Early on he starts making rules for how they use their powers. Steve is more empathetic and just naturally does the right thing. When a car runs off the road into a river, Steve jumps in to save the driver. Matt follows while Andrew watches.
Of course things finally come to a head.
A lot of the plot is predictable but the framing device of the found footage and the naturalistic acting still makes the movie feel fresh. I was a little surprised as its rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It is one of the best-rated movies playing which is very rate for this subject matter. Unfortunately, it is also a grim view of what life would be like if people with super powers really did exist. These kids are a long way from being Superman.
Spider-Man is a second-best case - after encountering personal tragedy while cashing in on his powers, he devoted much of his time to helping people.
The recent movie The Chronicle is a less optimistic view. It follows three normal high school seniors as they acquire telekinetic powers. At first their powers are weak. They can stop a baseball in flight or put Lego blocks together but anything stronger gives them a nosebleed. Their powers increase rapidly, though. Pretty soon they are using them to play pranks. They make a woman's shopping cart roll away and scare a child by animating a bear. They even confuse a woman by moving her car to a different parking space.
So, where do you go from there? Do you put on the ultimate magic show? Take revenge on some bullies? Give your girlfriend a little extra excitement? Fly to school instead of hitching a ride? What do you do if your drunken father attack you?
The movie covers all of these possibilities and more.
The movie is shown in a hyper-realistic manner. The title refers to this - it is a chronicle of the three boys. One of them, Andrew, had started filming his life shortly before they got their powers. At first he tapes everything but later he concentrates on their increasing abilities. This become easier after he is able to move the camera telekinetically. At times the other two take over the camera. There is also Casey, another student who also tapes her life. Other sources including security footage are used. The result is that the entire movie could have been assembled from footage
The three telekinetics are Andrew, Matt, Andrew's cerebral cousin, and Steve, the popular black guy. Of the three, Steve is the best-adjusted and least affected. Matt actually becomes better-adjusted after becoming telekinetic.
Andrew is a bad choice to suddenly become powerful. His mother is dying. His father is drunken, abusive, and suspicious. He is shy and targeted by bullies. Matt studies philosophers and quotes Jung. Early on he starts making rules for how they use their powers. Steve is more empathetic and just naturally does the right thing. When a car runs off the road into a river, Steve jumps in to save the driver. Matt follows while Andrew watches.
Of course things finally come to a head.
A lot of the plot is predictable but the framing device of the found footage and the naturalistic acting still makes the movie feel fresh. I was a little surprised as its rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It is one of the best-rated movies playing which is very rate for this subject matter. Unfortunately, it is also a grim view of what life would be like if people with super powers really did exist. These kids are a long way from being Superman.
Friday, February 10, 2012
My Nook Color
Around a year ago I got a tablet - a 10" G-Tablet from Viewsonic. When it came out it got fairly bad reviews, mainly because of the way that Viewsonic changed the Android interface. I installed a custom ROM and was quite happy with it.
There were some drawbacks to the Viewsonic. The custom ROM gave me access to the Android Market but many apps do not work on it and some break it (good thing it supports backups). As time went on, other apps stopped working. Any time I used the Google Market it downloaded an update that refused to run. More recently Google Talk stopped working. I never use this but it is also needed for GMail which I use all the time.
Some of the hardware the Viewsonic is based on is out of date. The ROM I was using was based on Android 2.2 but some of the drivers had not been updated since 2.1 which is probably what caused the problems. This means that the problems in the tablet are not going to get any better.
I had a coupon for a Nook Color for $150 so I decided to switch. I got the Color instead of the Nook Tablet for two reasons - one was the price. The Nook Tablet is still $250 and I don't think it offers enough additional functionality. The other reason is that the Color supports dual boot so all it takes to transform it into a full Android tablet is a memory chip with the right files on it.
I used my wife's Cook Color for a while before getting one of my own. Between that and playing around on my own Color I have a good idea of its usefulness. I wrote about this a week ago so some of this is a review.
The Color was meant to be an ebook reader with tablet capabilities added later. The current release is a big improvement over the previous one but still has some annoyances.
The biggest is the lack of a consistent "back" button. This is probably the most used function in android but the Color has a haphazard implementation of it. Sometimes it is a button at the bottom, sometimes it is at the top. Often it is completely lacking which means you have to use the Nook button (which functions as a Home key in the current release) then restart whatever you were doing from scratch.
The next complaint is a relic of it being an ebook reader first. Tablets work best in landscape mode but the Nook home screen and other functions are portrait-only. Barnes and Noble has a full line of covers and most of them are not suitable for landscape mode. I went with a protective sleeve instead of a cover.
Finally, their app store leave a lot to be desired. It is poorly stocked and charges for many apps that are free elsewhere. You can't even get a passable, free live wallpaper. The native email application is very limited (it does not work with Exchange) and there are no improved apps, even for sale. They are also missing the native apps for GMail and Facebook.
As an ebook reader, it is fine although I would recommend the Simple Touch if all you want is an ebook reader. The Touch is smaller, lighter, works in bright sunlight, and has great battery life.
So, that is how the Nook Color comes from B&N. But, if you install a memory card with the dual boot then things change dramatically. What you get then is a slightly customized version of Android. The one I have is still running Android 2.2 so I may have some hard choices when Ice Cream Sandwich become more common but for now everything works.
Except for rendering pages with heavy Flash, the Color makes a perfectly usable Android tablet. I found every app I wanted and they all work (with one exception noted later). I can still read my Nook books plus Kindle and EPUB books. YouTube through the browser can be choppy but the YouTube native app works great.
I do have to zoom on text fairly often which I didn't have to do on a 10" tablet but otherwise the 7" size is much handier. It is much lighter and easier to carry around.
My only complaint is that it does not recognize the USB cable when running straight Android and the Android partition is not recognized when it is in Nook mode or when the SD card is plugged into my PC. I got around that with a product called AirDroid which lets me move files over WiFi.
So, what is the app that doesn't work? Ironically, it is the Nook app. Older versions work fine through release 2.6 but after that they refuse to run. From the comments, this is a common problem that B&N has yet to fix. Fortunately, the 2.6 version works so I can still use it as an ebook reader without having to reboot. Synchronization is spotty but it supports landscape as well as portrait.
There were some drawbacks to the Viewsonic. The custom ROM gave me access to the Android Market but many apps do not work on it and some break it (good thing it supports backups). As time went on, other apps stopped working. Any time I used the Google Market it downloaded an update that refused to run. More recently Google Talk stopped working. I never use this but it is also needed for GMail which I use all the time.
Some of the hardware the Viewsonic is based on is out of date. The ROM I was using was based on Android 2.2 but some of the drivers had not been updated since 2.1 which is probably what caused the problems. This means that the problems in the tablet are not going to get any better.
I had a coupon for a Nook Color for $150 so I decided to switch. I got the Color instead of the Nook Tablet for two reasons - one was the price. The Nook Tablet is still $250 and I don't think it offers enough additional functionality. The other reason is that the Color supports dual boot so all it takes to transform it into a full Android tablet is a memory chip with the right files on it.
I used my wife's Cook Color for a while before getting one of my own. Between that and playing around on my own Color I have a good idea of its usefulness. I wrote about this a week ago so some of this is a review.
The Color was meant to be an ebook reader with tablet capabilities added later. The current release is a big improvement over the previous one but still has some annoyances.
The biggest is the lack of a consistent "back" button. This is probably the most used function in android but the Color has a haphazard implementation of it. Sometimes it is a button at the bottom, sometimes it is at the top. Often it is completely lacking which means you have to use the Nook button (which functions as a Home key in the current release) then restart whatever you were doing from scratch.
The next complaint is a relic of it being an ebook reader first. Tablets work best in landscape mode but the Nook home screen and other functions are portrait-only. Barnes and Noble has a full line of covers and most of them are not suitable for landscape mode. I went with a protective sleeve instead of a cover.
Finally, their app store leave a lot to be desired. It is poorly stocked and charges for many apps that are free elsewhere. You can't even get a passable, free live wallpaper. The native email application is very limited (it does not work with Exchange) and there are no improved apps, even for sale. They are also missing the native apps for GMail and Facebook.
As an ebook reader, it is fine although I would recommend the Simple Touch if all you want is an ebook reader. The Touch is smaller, lighter, works in bright sunlight, and has great battery life.
So, that is how the Nook Color comes from B&N. But, if you install a memory card with the dual boot then things change dramatically. What you get then is a slightly customized version of Android. The one I have is still running Android 2.2 so I may have some hard choices when Ice Cream Sandwich become more common but for now everything works.
Except for rendering pages with heavy Flash, the Color makes a perfectly usable Android tablet. I found every app I wanted and they all work (with one exception noted later). I can still read my Nook books plus Kindle and EPUB books. YouTube through the browser can be choppy but the YouTube native app works great.
I do have to zoom on text fairly often which I didn't have to do on a 10" tablet but otherwise the 7" size is much handier. It is much lighter and easier to carry around.
My only complaint is that it does not recognize the USB cable when running straight Android and the Android partition is not recognized when it is in Nook mode or when the SD card is plugged into my PC. I got around that with a product called AirDroid which lets me move files over WiFi.
So, what is the app that doesn't work? Ironically, it is the Nook app. Older versions work fine through release 2.6 but after that they refuse to run. From the comments, this is a common problem that B&N has yet to fix. Fortunately, the 2.6 version works so I can still use it as an ebook reader without having to reboot. Synchronization is spotty but it supports landscape as well as portrait.
Monday, February 06, 2012
Hugo and the Artist
I suspect that this year's Best Picture Oscar will go to either Hugo or The Artist. Both are good movies. They also play to one of the Academy's weaknesses - both of them are about the early history of film and both of them take place around the same time.
Spoilers are likely from here on. You were warned.
Hugo starts as a movie about a young boy who services the clocks in a train station and, on the side, is trying to finish restoring an automaton that is his last connection with his father. Along the way he discovers that the old man who runs a toy counter is George Melies who was a major film maker prior to WWI. Through Hugo's efforts, Melies is recognized and his films recovered.
Although the character of Hugo is fictional, most of the events in the movie really happened.
The Artist is about a silent film star who is left behind when talkies come out. Although the transition killed many careers, this is a fictional story. The artist is also unusual for being shot in black and white and as a (mainly) silent movie.
It would not surprise me if the Artist wins but it has some problems, mainly because it is a silent film.
Keep in mind that in the 1920s, movies were silent for technical reasons - they didn't have the technology to add sound. Actors had to go to extra effort to make their performance visual because their voices could not be heard. The Artist recreates this but it puts a barrier between the movie and the audience. I didn't really care for the characters the same why that I did the ones in Hugo. They also come across as one-dimensional.
Keep in mind that The Artist is not really a silent movie. There are times when it has sound. Possibly the most effective scene is when the main character, George Valentine, suddenly becomes aware of sound. He, and the audience, spends time just listening to various natural sounds. But Valentine is unable to make any sounds himself.
One of the least effective scenes comes when George is asked to the screening of some rushes. It turns out that this is test footage with sound but the effect is completely lost. We see the director entranced and George laughing but we can only imagine what they are reacting to.
Hugo left me wanting to watch the movies of Milies (many are available on YouTube). The Artist did not make me want to see any other silent movies.
Spoilers are likely from here on. You were warned.
Hugo starts as a movie about a young boy who services the clocks in a train station and, on the side, is trying to finish restoring an automaton that is his last connection with his father. Along the way he discovers that the old man who runs a toy counter is George Melies who was a major film maker prior to WWI. Through Hugo's efforts, Melies is recognized and his films recovered.
Although the character of Hugo is fictional, most of the events in the movie really happened.
The Artist is about a silent film star who is left behind when talkies come out. Although the transition killed many careers, this is a fictional story. The artist is also unusual for being shot in black and white and as a (mainly) silent movie.
It would not surprise me if the Artist wins but it has some problems, mainly because it is a silent film.
Keep in mind that in the 1920s, movies were silent for technical reasons - they didn't have the technology to add sound. Actors had to go to extra effort to make their performance visual because their voices could not be heard. The Artist recreates this but it puts a barrier between the movie and the audience. I didn't really care for the characters the same why that I did the ones in Hugo. They also come across as one-dimensional.
Keep in mind that The Artist is not really a silent movie. There are times when it has sound. Possibly the most effective scene is when the main character, George Valentine, suddenly becomes aware of sound. He, and the audience, spends time just listening to various natural sounds. But Valentine is unable to make any sounds himself.
One of the least effective scenes comes when George is asked to the screening of some rushes. It turns out that this is test footage with sound but the effect is completely lost. We see the director entranced and George laughing but we can only imagine what they are reacting to.
Hugo left me wanting to watch the movies of Milies (many are available on YouTube). The Artist did not make me want to see any other silent movies.
Friday, February 03, 2012
Nook Color
When Amazon and Barnes & Noble announced their new tablets everyone focused on the price difference between the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet. Few people noticed that B&N already had the Nook Color, a tablet for the same price as the Kindle (after B&N dropped the price). Recently they sent me a $50 off coupon for the Nook Color making it only 2/3s the price of the Kindle.
The Nook Color started as a color ebook reader but it has received a couple of software updates this year. It is now a functional tablet.
My wife got one last Summer to take on vacation. I've been testing it the last few weeks since the last software update.
The Color compares fairly well with the Kindle Fire. It is slower and a bit heavier but it has a better display and volume buttons. It can also take Micro-SD memory which makes it more expandable than the Fire.
The web browser is the standard Android browser. It works fairly well and supports Flash. YouTube videos work fine which means it meets my minimum test for a tablet. Pinch to zoom does not work. Most pages offer a zoom button when you scroll through them. I discovered that some mobile pages cannot be resized. Changing the browser setting from mobile to desktop usually fixes that.
B&N has its own app store which is smaller than Amazon's and a tiny fraction of the Google Market and there are very few free apps. The bright side is that all of the apps there are guaranteed to work with the Color. B&N has set the Color so that it will not install untrusted apps (ones that they did not sell you).
B&N does not have a GMail app or a Facebook app. They do have a free app that will work with Facebook and Twitter and the web view for both of these works fine. You can also set up the native email to check GMail although the native email app is pretty poor.
The Color has two annoyances and a major advantage. One annoyance is the home screen. It is always portrait which is fine if you are reading a book but at right angles for most web browsing. The other annoyance is that lack of a hardware "back" button. There is a soft "back" button in some apps but it changes places and when it is missing then it means you have to go back to the home screen. This is worst when looking at email attachments. You can't go back to the email. You have to reenter the email app and reselect the email you want to read.
The big advantage is that it supports dual boot. This means that you can have a standard Android image on a MicroSD card that supports places like the Google Market and Hulu. You can even load the Kindle app.
I have been using a 10" tablet for the last year but I really like the convenience of a 7" tablet. I had been seriously considering the Nook tablet but for $100 less (with coupon), the Nook Color is really attractive. I don't think that the extra memory and processor speed is worth the extra money.
The Nook Color started as a color ebook reader but it has received a couple of software updates this year. It is now a functional tablet.
My wife got one last Summer to take on vacation. I've been testing it the last few weeks since the last software update.
The Color compares fairly well with the Kindle Fire. It is slower and a bit heavier but it has a better display and volume buttons. It can also take Micro-SD memory which makes it more expandable than the Fire.
The web browser is the standard Android browser. It works fairly well and supports Flash. YouTube videos work fine which means it meets my minimum test for a tablet. Pinch to zoom does not work. Most pages offer a zoom button when you scroll through them. I discovered that some mobile pages cannot be resized. Changing the browser setting from mobile to desktop usually fixes that.
B&N has its own app store which is smaller than Amazon's and a tiny fraction of the Google Market and there are very few free apps. The bright side is that all of the apps there are guaranteed to work with the Color. B&N has set the Color so that it will not install untrusted apps (ones that they did not sell you).
B&N does not have a GMail app or a Facebook app. They do have a free app that will work with Facebook and Twitter and the web view for both of these works fine. You can also set up the native email to check GMail although the native email app is pretty poor.
The Color has two annoyances and a major advantage. One annoyance is the home screen. It is always portrait which is fine if you are reading a book but at right angles for most web browsing. The other annoyance is that lack of a hardware "back" button. There is a soft "back" button in some apps but it changes places and when it is missing then it means you have to go back to the home screen. This is worst when looking at email attachments. You can't go back to the email. You have to reenter the email app and reselect the email you want to read.
The big advantage is that it supports dual boot. This means that you can have a standard Android image on a MicroSD card that supports places like the Google Market and Hulu. You can even load the Kindle app.
I have been using a 10" tablet for the last year but I really like the convenience of a 7" tablet. I had been seriously considering the Nook tablet but for $100 less (with coupon), the Nook Color is really attractive. I don't think that the extra memory and processor speed is worth the extra money.
Thursday, February 02, 2012
The Facebook IPO
In case you are tempted by the Facebook IPO, remember, this is a company that has nearly a billion clients and most of them hate Facebook. There is some speculation that they have already peaked. There is a very good chance that most of their users will tire of living their lives in public and move on or move to a different platform.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Educational channels?
I've been watching Finding Bigfoot on Animal Planet. Like History Channel's Monster Quest, this starts with the proposition that unknown animals exist in or near populated areas. One big difference is that Monster Quest often admits that the monster they are investigating is a false report.
Find Bigfoot features a group of experts on Bigfoot who follow up on some sort of Bigfoot sighting. Often they admit that the sighting was probably false but investigate the area, anyway after proclaiming the area 'Squatchy.
The most recent episode was filmed at Salt Fork State Park in Ohio. I grew up in that general area which gives me some insight into their findings.
The sighting that drew the hunters was of a Bigfoot (or 'Squatch as they call them) shaking a tree. After duplicating the shot, they discovered that the 'Squatch in question was not very big - certainly less than six feet. Since it was filmed in the winter, it was probably the silhouette of someone in a snowsuit trying to knock down a dead tree for firewood. They admitted this in passing but continued on with their investigation announcing that Ohio is the 4th 'Squatchiest state.
They did gather a large group of locals together, many of whom claimed to have seen Bigfoot themselves. Then they lead their volunteers on a sweep of a forested part of the park looking for traces. The best they came up with was a pile of brush and a heel print that probably came from a boot. They also wandered around in the dark for a while with night vision cameras.
Monster Quest checked out the same area and also found a pile of brush. Both shows concluded that these were shelters built by a Sasquatch.
The one thing that the show did not find was any direct evidence of a Sasquatch - no hair, no droppings, no clear photographs, and no bodies. On several shows the hunters have claimed that 'Quatch live on deer but they have not found any signs of a kill.
On other shows, while wondering at night they have tried making howls or clacking boards together. If they get an answer then they claim that this is proof of a Sasquatch.
A few problems here - how do they know what a Sasquatch sounds like or that one will return a call? Even assuming that humans and 'quatches are the only creatures able to clack two boards together, where does their Bigfoot get his lumber? You can't just tear off a couple of tree limbs and strike them to get that sound. At minimum you have to have fairly short pieces of dry but not rotten wood with no bark or branches. Where does Bigfoot get this in the woods at night on short notice?
I grew up in this general area and I still go out in the woods a few times a year. I have seen coyote, footprints from a cougar and scat from a bear. Cougar and bear are very rare in Ohio. Most of them have wandered in from other states.
So, how is it that I can see traces of rare creatures but no traces at all of Bigfoot in the 4th 'Squatchiest state?
Could it be that Bigfoot doesn't actually exist? These shows will never say so. They prefer to feed the myth.
The problem is that these shows along with Discovery, try to have some scientific credibility. They do shows on real science. That makes it difficult to tell what is real and what is not when they mix real knowledge with ancient aliens.
Find Bigfoot features a group of experts on Bigfoot who follow up on some sort of Bigfoot sighting. Often they admit that the sighting was probably false but investigate the area, anyway after proclaiming the area 'Squatchy.
The most recent episode was filmed at Salt Fork State Park in Ohio. I grew up in that general area which gives me some insight into their findings.
The sighting that drew the hunters was of a Bigfoot (or 'Squatch as they call them) shaking a tree. After duplicating the shot, they discovered that the 'Squatch in question was not very big - certainly less than six feet. Since it was filmed in the winter, it was probably the silhouette of someone in a snowsuit trying to knock down a dead tree for firewood. They admitted this in passing but continued on with their investigation announcing that Ohio is the 4th 'Squatchiest state.
They did gather a large group of locals together, many of whom claimed to have seen Bigfoot themselves. Then they lead their volunteers on a sweep of a forested part of the park looking for traces. The best they came up with was a pile of brush and a heel print that probably came from a boot. They also wandered around in the dark for a while with night vision cameras.
Monster Quest checked out the same area and also found a pile of brush. Both shows concluded that these were shelters built by a Sasquatch.
The one thing that the show did not find was any direct evidence of a Sasquatch - no hair, no droppings, no clear photographs, and no bodies. On several shows the hunters have claimed that 'Quatch live on deer but they have not found any signs of a kill.
On other shows, while wondering at night they have tried making howls or clacking boards together. If they get an answer then they claim that this is proof of a Sasquatch.
A few problems here - how do they know what a Sasquatch sounds like or that one will return a call? Even assuming that humans and 'quatches are the only creatures able to clack two boards together, where does their Bigfoot get his lumber? You can't just tear off a couple of tree limbs and strike them to get that sound. At minimum you have to have fairly short pieces of dry but not rotten wood with no bark or branches. Where does Bigfoot get this in the woods at night on short notice?
I grew up in this general area and I still go out in the woods a few times a year. I have seen coyote, footprints from a cougar and scat from a bear. Cougar and bear are very rare in Ohio. Most of them have wandered in from other states.
So, how is it that I can see traces of rare creatures but no traces at all of Bigfoot in the 4th 'Squatchiest state?
Could it be that Bigfoot doesn't actually exist? These shows will never say so. They prefer to feed the myth.
The problem is that these shows along with Discovery, try to have some scientific credibility. They do shows on real science. That makes it difficult to tell what is real and what is not when they mix real knowledge with ancient aliens.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
The Oscars - best animated film
What can I say? The Adventures of Tintin was robbed. It won the Golden Globe for best animated movie and wasn't even nominated for an Oscar. Except for Rango, the other choices are also odd. Puss in Boots is the 4th in a franchise. Kung Fu Panda 2 is only the second but it didn't make that big of a splash. And in what world does a movie staring Jack Black win an Oscar of any kind?
In addition to Tintin and Arthur Christmas, the Academy overlooked Rio which scored better on IMDB than Puss in Boots.
I admit I never heard of the other two. Both Cat in Paris and Chico & Rita are hand-animated. IMDB lists their release year as 2010 so they must have been in limited release in the US in 2011.
In addition to Tintin and Arthur Christmas, the Academy overlooked Rio which scored better on IMDB than Puss in Boots.
I admit I never heard of the other two. Both Cat in Paris and Chico & Rita are hand-animated. IMDB lists their release year as 2010 so they must have been in limited release in the US in 2011.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Best Animated Movie
The Golden Globe nominations for best animated movie were The Adventures of Tintin, Arthur Christmas, Cars 2, Puss in Boots, and Rango. Tintin won the award.
So, what can we expect from the Oscars? And which movie was actually best?
The Oscars only nominate three pictures. We can assume that Cars 2 and Puss in Boots will not make the cut. Cars 2 wasn't bad but it might be the worst (least best?) movie that Pixar ever made (one of them has to be the worst). Puss in Boots was the fifth in a franchise that lost its steam after the second installment. I suspect that both were nominated because of past successes by their respective studios.
That leaves us three very good movies.
Arthur Christmas has the best characterization. You have three generations of Santa Clauses, all with their own agendas plus Arthur, the accident-prone second son. Over the course of the movie you realize that Arthur is the only one who still gets Santa Claus - that it's about the kids. Its animation is really good but not jaw-dropping. The two strikes against it are that it is a Christmas movie and it is very British.
The animation in Rango is amazing. It was ILM's first feature-length animated movie and they put all of their photo-realistic skill into it. The plot is good - kind of a Don Knots movie if Don Knots was a lizard who sounded like Johnny Depp. The only strike against it is that the main characters are kind of repulsive.
Tintin was made by ILM's competitor, Weta. There is less character development in this than in the other two and it is not as photo-realistic as Rango. What it does have is the best adventure plot by director Stephen Spielberg since Raiders of the Lost Ark. It also has a long take - a continuous shot going on for several minutes as multiple characters try to grab the clues to a treasure and avoid a flood.
So, why did Tintin win? It was either the long take or it could be that the Golden Globe voters have a soft spot for the character of Tintin.
Personally I would have given the award to Rango but all three of these movies deserve the prize.
So, what can we expect from the Oscars? And which movie was actually best?
The Oscars only nominate three pictures. We can assume that Cars 2 and Puss in Boots will not make the cut. Cars 2 wasn't bad but it might be the worst (least best?) movie that Pixar ever made (one of them has to be the worst). Puss in Boots was the fifth in a franchise that lost its steam after the second installment. I suspect that both were nominated because of past successes by their respective studios.
That leaves us three very good movies.
Arthur Christmas has the best characterization. You have three generations of Santa Clauses, all with their own agendas plus Arthur, the accident-prone second son. Over the course of the movie you realize that Arthur is the only one who still gets Santa Claus - that it's about the kids. Its animation is really good but not jaw-dropping. The two strikes against it are that it is a Christmas movie and it is very British.
The animation in Rango is amazing. It was ILM's first feature-length animated movie and they put all of their photo-realistic skill into it. The plot is good - kind of a Don Knots movie if Don Knots was a lizard who sounded like Johnny Depp. The only strike against it is that the main characters are kind of repulsive.
Tintin was made by ILM's competitor, Weta. There is less character development in this than in the other two and it is not as photo-realistic as Rango. What it does have is the best adventure plot by director Stephen Spielberg since Raiders of the Lost Ark. It also has a long take - a continuous shot going on for several minutes as multiple characters try to grab the clues to a treasure and avoid a flood.
So, why did Tintin win? It was either the long take or it could be that the Golden Globe voters have a soft spot for the character of Tintin.
Personally I would have given the award to Rango but all three of these movies deserve the prize.
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