All posts by Carl V. Anderson

Film

March of the Penguins

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The main conceit of March of the Penguins is that film goers would be willing to pay money to watch a well done National Geographic-style documentary about our feathered friends to the south…and they are correct. This story of emperor penguins, the tuxedoed inhabitants of bitter-cold Antartica, and their yearly courtship and mating rituals is a sweet, entertaining, and powerful tale of instinct and survival.

Narrated by Morgan Freeman, March of the Penguins follows the trail of the emperor penguins as they conduct their yearly winter march to their mating grounds. Mimicking the habits of salmon the emperor penguins return to the same spot every year to conduct courtship rituals, mate, and eventually bring forth young into this frozen wasteland. Freeman’s voice over is smooth as butter as he tells the tale of how these wondrous creatures travel over ever-changing terrain, sometimes up to 70 miles, to return to the place of their birth. Their search for a suitable partner, parental responsibilities, and the hardships they endure over many months to survive and protect their eggs are all handled lovingly by the filmmakers.

This film is directed masterfully by French director Luc Jacquet and the cinematography is beautiful. Although dominated by images of white ice and black and white penguins there are stunning shots throughout this film. Even at only 80 minutes there are a few moments that seem to run long but this is more than compensated for by the wonderful moments in the film. The ending credits show shots of the camera crew as they too braved the harsh conditions, answering the question that naturally springs to mind as you watch the film, “how did they get this incredible footage?”

In reading Entertainment Weekly magazine I discovered that this film originally had a “teletubby-style” musical score and included an audio track in which the penguins talked to each other, sharing hopes and dreams and whispering sweet nothings during courtship and mating. This was the version that was shown at Sundance early in January. Evidence would suggest that it was not well received in that format thus prompting the changes that brought it to its current state. In conversing with friends we agreed that it would be fun if they included both versions on the DVD when released.

This is a marvelous family film filled with laughs, love and wonder that anything could exist in such a harsh environment. Penguin lovers everywhere will not be disappointed. Viewing March of the Penguins is time, and money, well spent.

Comics

Darwyn Cooke and the New Frontier

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(cover image of issue 6 of The New Frontier)

Yes kids, it is Wednesday once again and I’m in the mood for a little comic book chatter. Jeff Smith, in a cunning ploy to take more of my money, recently loaned me his issues of the DC comics 6 issue series The New Frontier, written and drawn by Darwyn Cooke. It is safe to say that I have another comic book idol and I’m going to have to pick up copies of this for myself.


(back cover image)

Before giving it a proper read I flipped through issue number one. As I gazed at Darwyn Cooke’s art my heart skipped a beat, streams of light burst forth from the heavens and I could hear an aria in the background. Well, it felt like that anyway. Cooke’s art is reminiscent of mid-century “retro” science fiction art, advertising, and the “good girl” art of the 1950’s, all of which are personal favorites. Darwyn Cooke has a background in animation but his art cannot be relegated to being merely ‘cartoony’. His work has such a historic feel to it. I cannot say enough about how much I like the look of this book. Darwyn’s inks are very tight and Dave Stewart’s coloring is phenomenal. The New Frontier is nostalgia in print form.


(New Frontier art page sans color)

The New Frontier not only showcases Cooke’s amazing artistic talent, which he has in spades, but proves he has the chops to write a good story. Set in the time between the Golden and Silver Ages of comics, Cooke has fashioned a tale that places DC’s comic heroes amidst real world events that were taking place during and right after WWII. In this period of war and paranoia the government outlawed all but the most stalwart of superheroes (Superman, Wonder Woman). Events, however, lead the world to a point in which heroes of all kinds had to be summoned in order to avert total destruction.

The New Frontier is told in a series of vignettes focusing on both well-known and lesser known characters from the history of the DC universe. While bound as 6 separate issues each issue was actually three times the standard comic book length. The varied plotlines are tied together within the framework of the rise of Hal Jordan to the role of the Green Lantern. Cooke uses the origin story of Hal Jordan to personify the real life “fly boy” pilot heroes of WWII and it works to great effect.


(Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris)

I love Darwyn Cooke’s response in this interview as to why he focused on the Hal Jordan character:
“Most importantly, I suppose, was my personal attachment to Green Lantern and Hal, coupled with the Mercury and Apollo Space programs. These were the stuff of my childhood imagination. It is almost impossible to explain to someone what it was like to be a kid during that era unless you were there. Today we worship fey actors and millionaire children who throw or hit balls. But the Astronaut — good f***, they strapped in on top of huge jerry-rigged tubes of unstable fuel and fired themselves toward the heavens!” (The entire interview is terrific)

Cooke does a masterful job of weaving these tales together in such a way that each issue builds upon the other and he then brings all the characters together for the climatic, world changing event. The story is fascinating on so many levels. It includes characters that I either hadn’t heard of or knew little about in addition to the major superhero characters. Cooke penned the tale in such a way that you can follow the story even if you don’t know all the players but also whets your appetite to find out more about these characters’ history. The inclusion of a portion of John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier speech in the denouement was a stroke of brilliance and evoked powerful emotions in me as I closed the final page of issue 6.

This tale speaks so well to the times we are in right now. It speaks to the need for men and women of courage and intelligence and belief to rise up and face the challenges of today’s world. It touches on the fact that heroes are not perfect but that we can rise above our base humanity during times of great need and touch the lives of those around us. And in both tone and art it points back to a time that we today glamorize as being a simpler time but one that Cooke believes is quite similar to our own. The stories are collected in trade form and continue to be available in their original format and I highly recommend giving this a read. Few comic stories grab me like this one did and I’m still in awe this creative masterpiece. You can glimpse a ‘sneak peek’ on the DC Comics site here.

Here are some more examples of panels/pages from The New Frontier. These are from the original inked pages before colorization.

For fans old and new here is a link to a page featuring examples of Cooke’s art as well as some really cool sidewalk murals inspired by his art.

I’ll end this with the exciting news (at least to Jeff and I) that Darwyn Cooke plans on releasing a creator owned original graphic novel. In discussing this he mentions pondering whether “the notion of the heroic ideal [is] still valid today? Could I tell an exciting story that convincingly portrayed people doing the right thing in today’s society without seeming naive or nostalgic? It also deals with something I prefer to spandex — Giant Robots! I’m hard at work on this now, and I hope for a late 2005 release. Tentatively this book will be about 150 pages and will see a hardcover release first, with softcover to follow.”

Darwyn Cooke and giant robots!?!?!? Exciting days ahead, indeed!!!

Home

Winged Wonder

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As I was turning onto the on-ramp this morning I noticed a winged, bee-like insect walking across my windshield. My first thought was, “you better take off now or you’re done for”. I felt an unaccountable compassion for this creature who was about to be battered by gale force winds as I spend down the interstate and briefly considered turning on my windshield wipers to encourage her to fly away. I determined that this course of action would most likely result in the death I was hoping to avoid and so I left it up to Fate.

As I merged into traffic and accelerated to 65-70 mph I noticed that she was standing still and holding on for dear life, wings and body flattened against the windshield. Against seemingly impossible odds she stood fast throughout the interstate trek of my journey. After exiting the interstate and reaching my first red light I assumed she would take wing. Instead she started slowly walking across the windshield and quickly had to readjust to death-grip mode as I was off again.

The closer I got to my office the more desperately I wanted her to hold on. I found myself encouraging her…out loud…to just hold on a few more minutes….we’re almost there. Amazingly enough she was still holding on as I pulled into the back lot. I parked, shut off the engine, and anxiously waited to see if there remained a semblance of life in this otherwise unremarkable insect. After a few seconds she stretched her wings and then soared off into the trees. It was utterly amazing and triumphant. Despite daydreams of a more ironic ending in which she launched herself at me upon my emergence from the vehicle and stung me with wild abandon I was quite pleased with the end results.

Just hold on.

Home

The Monday After

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Another full weekend has come and gone. Friday night was, of course, Fantastic Four. Saturday continued the comic book madness as I attended the small but entertaining annual MO-KAN Comics Conspiracy. I was excited to attend primarily to see Ryan Sook. Mr. Sook is currently doing the artwork for the Zatanna run of DC’s Seven Soldiers event.

The series has been very entertaining thus far and though few and far between I’ve always enjoyed Zatanna comics. Ryan Sook’s previous work includes the Arkham Asylum: Living Hell 6 issue miniseries and a run on the Hellboy spin-off comic B.P.R.D. (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense).

I was able to attend the con with Jeff and his children. To quote Jeff it was fun to see the convention through their eyes. They were each promised one purchase so it was fun to see them look at action figures and collectible cards. I managed to make it out of the convention with my pockets only $15 lighter. I hadn’t purchased anything when Jeff pointed out that Ryan Sook had practice pages that he was selling for $5 so I snagged one with a loosely drawn Zatanna sketch and one the view of a woman’s head and shoulders from just behind her. It had a Phantom of the Opera reference on it so I’m assuming the sketch was of Christine. Mr. Sook was quite kind and he gave a sketch with some cars drawn on it to Jeff’s son, Zack. It was a very nice gesture.

I was finally able to eat at Bate’s City Barbeque! You’re right Julie, the fries are incredible!

Afternoon found us with my wife’s penguin-loving cousin at the local independent theatre viewing March of the Penguins. It was a delightful little movie that I’ll post a review on this evening.

Speaking of movies I saw a wonderful new trailer for Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride which makes me even more excited for this September release.

Go here for the newest trailer (click on Quicktime Trailer, not Teaser).

Also saw a very fun preview for the first full-length Wallace and Gromit movie:

Two fun animated Halloween-ish offerings this fall…how ghoulishly delightful!

The rest of the weekend was spent fixing (I hope…fingers crossed) Abby and Mike’s computer and watching the second disk of Firefly. I’ll be posting about that as soon as we’ve finished the other 2 disks. For now I’ll just mention that it is go se, fong luh awesome!

Happy Monday to you all.

Today I raise my DVD player on high in recognition of July 11th, 1895 when the first motion picture was shown in Paris by the Lumiere brothers. Without motion pictures I would have far less to post about and Tom and I would have to reserve our disagreements to cave drawings.

This date also marks the birthdate in 1274 of one Robert the Bruce who would grow up to be King of Scotland. He would also go on to be wonderfully portrayed by Angus Macfadyen in one of my favorite motion pictures, Braveheart.

Film

Fantastic Four

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(non-spoiler review)

Fantastic Four is Marvel’s latest venture in bringing comics to life. You would have to have been on your own space station for months to have avoided all the media hype for this movie. If the critics are to be believed this is one of the worst films made this year if not ever. My personal feelings are that the media blitz surrounding this movie soured many of the critics before they ever saw it. Sometimes I think the professional critics’ heads are harder than the Things! (a pet peeve: our local KC star critic misattributed a line to one of the characters using it as an example of the character being stupid…one would hope that if you’re getting paid to write a two paragraph movie review that you could at least get your facts right!)

Fantastic Four is a fun movie and it is fantastic in its own way. It is not the one star stinker that many would have you believe nor is it a four star blockbuster. It is a fun summer movie, not without its problems, that introduces the world to these classic Marvel characters. In looking at the Marvel films over the last few years it appears that the successful formula is to have the first movie be primarily about setting up the characters with a brief action sequence towards the end of the movie (X-Men and Spiderman are perfect examples) and then move into a more action intensive formula for the sequel. I think in part that Daredevil and the Hulk were less well received because they did not follow this formula, at least not in the same way. Fantastic Four feels very much like X-Men and Spiderman. It is not as good as those two movies but all in all it was a very enjoyable film. It is not much of a spoiler to tell you that you’ve seen the greater part of the action sequences if you’ve seen the trailer. What you don’t see in the trailer is what is at the heart of this movie: the past relationships that each of these characters has had with each other and the way circumstances force them to form a much deeper bond with one another. This movie is about setting up just who the Fantastic Four are and I liked it that way.

I was not disappointed with any of the actors chosen for this movie. Ioan Gruffudd, a relative unknown to me, was great as Reed Richards. I enjoyed the romance between Richards and Sue Storm, played by Jessica Alba. I read some heavy criticism of her acting in this role but I thought she did a fine job and had good chemistry with the other actors. Chris Evans was very fun as The Human Torch and, as always, Michael Chiklis was excellent.
Chiklis’ performance as the Thing was fantastic enough that it takes away from the fact that his Thing outfit isn’t the best that today’s cutting edge technology has to offer regarding costuming and effects.

I’ve heard several criticisms of the effects for this movie. Again I thought they were fine. If compared to the effects in War of the Worlds or Spiderman 2 they do pale in comparison but they are still very good and in no way detracted from the experience for me. The Human Torch effects are simply amazing!

I don’t know if Fantastic Four will have enough success to garner a sequel but I’m really hoping that the formula pays off for Marvel and that they do. I had a basic knowledge of the characters before hand and after seeing this I would definitely enjoy seeing them be further developed in a subsequent film.

This is another fun summer popcorn flick made more fun for me since I’m a comic book geek. A little action, some romance, good special effects and comic book goodness…hey, that’s a formula that gets no complaints from me!