Animating the Superhero universe

Superhero cartoons have been riding a serious high since Bruce Timm brought Batman to the small screen. Currently there's a nice mix of action, whimsy and intensity in superhero animation.

The Avengers is a slick production, re-telling the earliest days of the Marvel super-hero team but with an eye to backstopping and reinforcing the big screen interpretations in existence or pending. Young Justice (Don't call them the Teen Titans) brings the more realistic and glossy design and animation of recent superhero straight to video movies like Justice League: Earth 2 and Batman Under the Red Hood to television animation. Batman The Brave and the Bold goes a completely different direction emphasising the campy kid friendly approach that is an equally valid take on Batman as the grittier, darker versions are.

The Avengers is a straightforward superhero action cartoon with great hero/villain battle set-pieces. It's essentially the classic 60's line up but with the enjoyable and interesting narrative decision to ask what if The Hulk, the sullen but not completely stupid version he was at the time, hadn't left the Avengers and had actually stayed on the team.  This offers a clue that suggests that Joss Whedon's take on the Hulk in the Avengers movie will be based on a smarter more talkative version as he's been portrayed in the comics lately.

Classic Avengers villains and stories are referenced but with the advantage of being able to take years worth of continuity and incorporate them into a cohesive story arc.

Some great voice acting - Lance Henriksen as the villainous Grim Reaper is a standout - kid friendly designs and kinetic animation make this one of the best of the animated Marvel universe cartoons.

Young Justice adapts the Peter David written comic series with the addition of recent DC Comics interpretations of Aqua Lad and the new character Miss Martian.  It's also Peter David who brought back the intelligent but mean version of the Hulk in a big way although others explored it before him.  More people see the cartoon version of these characters than read the comic book versions, so Peter David is exerting a lot of influence on the public perception of both the DC and Marvel universes right now.

The Superboy is the cloned version introduced in the death of Superman story-line with lots of young teen clone angsty goodness.

By far the darkest and most superhero realist take on the comic book hero genre, Young Justice features dark conspiracies, complex character beats and grand cinematic scale to lesser seen corners of the DC universe.  A high point was the most recent episode with its in depth exploration of the Atlantean society of the DC universe with a beautiful visual interpretation of an underwater city.

Batman The Brave and the Bold goes the exact opposite way with an appropriately boldly cartoony version of Batman and the DC universe.

Some fans of superhero cartoons have been taken aback after the more quasi-realist approach has been so dominant for so long but in fact The Brave and the Bold succeeds and it does so completely precisely because its creators bring the fun.

Most recently, the impish other dimensional fanboy Batmite who perfectly personifies this sunnier Batman cartoon hosted a special episode animating some of the odder interpretations of Batman in comics and cartoons including an early Kurtzman  Mad Magazine Batman parody, Bat Manga and another sequence celebrating the long alliance of mighty heroes between Batman and Scooby Doo.



Writer Grant Morrison has suggested that the DC universe can be viewed as a real universe constantly accreting detail and even sentience.  Universes are vast, they can contain multitudes.

Honorable mention to a cinematic version of the classic superhero/supervillain diad in Megamind, just out on DVD.  This is the hero/villain war paradigm as joyful game and simultaneously unresolved childhood complex.  Fun and well worth picking up.

Ingrid Pitt RIP

Ingrid Pit died at age 73 in her South London home.  The actress, a concentration camp survivor and horror movie scream queen of the 60's was best know for such shockingly sexy Hammer Horror epics as Countess Dracula, The Vampire Lovers, the subversive horror classic The Wicker Man and a couple serials of the classic Doctor Who series, most notably as the Queen of Atlantis in 'The Time Monster'.

Unlike some scream queens who've voiced discomfort with their horror movie infamy, Pitt quite enjoyed her sexy, predatory image and liked playing the baddies.

Pick up and put on The Vampire Lovers some time and raise a glass of the red stuff to one of the premiere scream queens.

Top 100 Horror Movies

Top 100 Horror Movies
IDW/Fantastic Press
Written by Gary Gerani
Introduction by Roger Corman

I approached this one with caution and skepticism.  Invariably these kind of 'best of' books are so subjective as to be one step up from vanity projects, overly weighted to recent movies and suffering from unforgivable exclusions.

But Gerani has created a list that had me nodding my head at almost every page.  Almost every pick and its ranking made sense.  These aren't necessarily the 100 best horror films, but Gerani makes a good argument for them being the most important ones.

OK, no true genre fan could pick up a book like this without at least a couple fierce nit-picks.   The author justifies the absence of John Carpenter's The Thing because it will be in his planned follow up Top 100 Science Fiction Movies.  I would quibble that while yes, Romero's original Night of the Living Dead certainly belongs on the list, the original Dawn of the Dead does too.  It's the platonic ideal and all time classic of the zombie genre and any list of great horror movies has to include it.

Plus if you're going with a Tim Burton film, I would pick the Hammer Horror worshiping Sleepy Hollow, a more artistically successful and quintessential horror film than the entertainingly gory but overly stylized musical Sweeney Todd.

The production is excellent and while the art selected will be familiar to any fan of Famous Monsters of Film Land or indeed any genre productions its an atmospheric graphic collection nonetheless.

Rhymin' and Crimin'

Hip Hop and crime movies have been a match made in hell since the earliest days of old school rap but Masterpieces like Boyz in the Hood and New Jack City  have slowly been supplanted by limited vanity projects and barely watchable straight to video dreck.

There have been a few authentic masterpieces that advanced both the crime film genre and the artistic boundaries of Hip Hop as well.  Today we'll look at two gems, lesser known except among the cognoscenti.

"I think you know that there's no such thing as an American anymore. No Hispanics, no Japanese, no blacks, no whites, no nothing. It's just rich people and poor people. The three of us are all rich, so we're on the same side"

Deep Cover released in 1992 is an overlooked oddity that never really got the audience it deserved.  With a theme of tortured moral ambiguity and the existential terror of ethical compromise it also features a brilliantly appropo old school Dr Dre soundtrack and the introduction of a rapper known then as Snoop Doggy Dogg on the title track

Laurence Fishburne is the hero and poetic narrator, a fiercely straight edge cop compensating for the childhood pain of watching his drug addicted father gunned down on Christmas day with an iron self control.  A sleazy DEA agent tells him his 'criminal personality type' makes him perfect for undercover work and reluctantly at first he sets himself up as a drug dealer to bring down a cocaine network that traces back to a South American politician.

The neo-blaxploitation stylized film-making of Bill Duke (A Rage in Harlem) builds and maintains a dark atmosphere of moral dread as Fishburne's character hooks up with a corrupt lawyer played with edgy intensity by Jeff Goldblum, a successful family man with a yearning need for a gangsta lifestyle, who want's his cake and eat it too.

Lines blur, loyalty is tested and Fishburne's narration gets more and more lyrical and intense.  Some amazing dramatic set pieces, tight wire over the top performances and thoughtful political and philosophical speculation make this a film you can watch multiple times and find something new every time.

"It is a good viewpoint to see the world as a dream. When you have something like a nightmare, you will wake up and tell yourself that it was only a dream. It is said that the world we live in is not a bit different from this."

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai from 2001 is a masterpiece of slow burn suspense and dramatic artifice.  Director Jim Jarmusch (Dead Man, Down by Law) never makes the same movie twice, artistically and musically he always stretches boundaries with his films.

Ghost Dog takes the martial arts movie fantasy world of Wu Tang Clan alum RZA who does the soundtrack and tells a darkly lyrical story about the power to choose the world we inhabit.

The hero played with sleepy eyed intensity by Forest Whitaker is either a crazy assassin who lives on a roof top with pigeons and kills people for the Mafia, or he is a dedicated warrior, committed body and soul to the melancholy death worshiping code of the ancient samurai as laid out in the classic 17th century Japanese text Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai. Quotes by Whitaker from the book are interspersed throughout the film and are offered as a mournful poetic counterpoint to the ambiguity of the main character.  He serves an unworthy gangster master who once saved his life, a moment of essential defining purity for Ghost Dog, but a casual throwaway whim on the part of the gangster.

There's a lot of sly humor, Ghost Dog's best friends are a Haitian Ice Cream salesman, and most of their translated conversations consist of  good natured misunderstanding; "I'm sorry, I don't speak English" in response to "I'm sorry I don't speak French" and a little girl waiting for the book that will change her life. The elderly fading mobsters offer the most laughs, ancient Italian Mafiosi obsessed with old school rap and cowboys and Indians.

The theme is simple.  Your identity, your code, your very reality is what you choose it to be, and just because you live in modern day New York doesn't mean you can't choose to be a Samurai living by an ancient code of honor.

Sleeping Through the End

The Walking Dead hasn't even officially aired yet and already some commentators are sniffing that the opening seems awfully similar to the opening of 28 Days Later.

This is, of course, true.

In 28 Days Later bike courier Jim, in hospital with a head injury from a car meets bike courier accident wakes up out of a coma to find the hospital and seemingly all of London are completely abandoned. Death and destruction are everywhere, and ultimately it turns out that ravening hordes of horribly transformed normal people are slavering for his blood.


In The Walking Dead (Both comic book and TV series) Rick, a police officer in hospital after being critically injured in a shoot out wakes up out of a coma to find the hospital and seemingly all of his home town are completely abandoned. Death and destruction are everywhere, and ultimately it turns out that ravening hordes of horribly transformed normal people are slavering for his blood.

So yeah, kind of similar.

But what the nitpickers don't realize is that 'sleeping through the apocalypse' is actually a recurring trope that has appeared many times.  In fact 28 Days Later was specifically referencing the classic John Wyndham novel turned multiple movie and TV adaptions The Day of the Triffids. 

The hero Bill Mason, is in hospital getting treatment for an eye injury that has temporarily blinded him.  So his eyes are covered with bandages when almost everyone else raptly watches a bizarre meteor shower that lights up the skies all over the world.  The next morning everyone who did is permanently blind while Mason can see as soon as he takes off his bandages.  His awakening in hospital surrounded by the terrified newly blind and stalked by horrific monsters is strongly reflected in the first quarter of 28 Days Later.

Ultimately the sleeping through the apocalypse trope is useful to writers because it allows them to plunge directly into the post apocalyptic action without having to explicate the apocalypse itself.  Plus the audience is introduced to the new reality at the same time as the hero is, encouraging identification with his baffled terror.

Other examples range from the Twilight Zone classic episode 'Time Enough at Last', the short lived Gene Roddenberry series Genesis II, the zombie move Night of the Comet and too many other examples to count.

Worry about the similarities between 28 Days Later and The Walking Dead if you want - or you could just enjoy a great thrilling zombie series on the small screen every week.

I know which option I'm picking.

UPDATE: Heh.  AMC aren't too worried about the comparison.  They ran 28 Days Later right after the repeat performance of the premiere episode on Friday Nov 5.

Planet Vancouver

I love how every fantasy or science fiction show on TV lately is a long game of 'Spot the Vancouver landmark'.

No that isn't the headquarters of alternate dimension Fringe Division, it's the downtown Vancouver Public Library.

It's futuristic, neoclassical coliseum look has naturally, also been glimpsed in Battlestar Galactica and Caprica helping make that Greco-Roman mytho link of the stories part of the visual tone of the shows.  Other examples of the glassy modernistic architecture of Vancouver like the UBC Museum of Anthropology also appear regularly.

Lots of back alleys, stretches of lonely highway and beachfront broodiness in Supernatural are familiar to anyone who's ever spent any time on the lower mainland - and just the constant gray sky light and unrelenting rain in recent episodes of Caprica and whole seasons of the X Files are pure British Columbia. 

It's enough to get all misty for the town I grew up in.

No gum shall escape my sight

Is it just me or does the upcoming Green Lantern movie have an easy advertising tie-in pick up right out of the gate?

Getting my nerd on

Next weekend April 24th and 25th the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo is on and the Dweller will be there and blogging it.

Why should you care about a convention in a Canadian city many of you have never heard of? Well let's look at the lineup of guests:

We've got Malcolm McDowell, Tony Todd, Billy Dee Williams, Brent Spiner, Bruce Timm, Tamoh Penikett, Chris Claremont, Matt Wagner, Eric Powell, Len Wein, Lloyd Kaufman and Mr Spock himself Leonard Nimoy. Plus many other notables from the worlds of comics, TV SF and movies. I imagine some people of the teenage female persuasion are only going because a few of the beefcake homonculi from the Twilight movies will be there.

Factor in an enthusiastic crowd (A much larger venue was selected after the huge swarms last year.), row after row of huckster tables selling shiny nerd-bait and workshops, panels and a costume contest and you're talking about my idea of a hell of a good time.

Comment if you are going and let me know what you are looking forward to the most.

The Sacrifice of the Holy Fool

Edward Woodward died on Monday at the age of 79. He had many movie roles, including two authentic classics in Breaker Morant and The Wicker Man, but will be remembered primarily as one of the most prolific British TV actors ever. Most Americans probably remember him best from the 80's TV hit The Equalizer, as a retired secret agent using his deadly skills and barely repressed righteous fury to defend the weak and downtrodden.

To genre fans though, he will always be remembered as Sergeant Neil Howie of the West Highlands Constabulary, stolid, priggish and utterly dedicated to his Christian duty.

The Wicker Man was made in 1973 (For the love of God avoid the disastrous remake starring Nicolas Cage and directed by Neil LaBute, a misogynist hack and the most over-rated film-maker ever.) it tells the tale of a dedicated police officer who comes to a remote Scottish Isle searching for a missing child and discovers mystery, sensuality and a jovial yet sinister population who all seem to be in on a joke that he is left out of.

The joke, of course, is on him.

Despite the delightfully malevolent presence of Christopher Lee as the mysterious Laird of Summerisle and the pulchritudinous unclothed charms of a young Britt Ekland, the movie depends above all on the performance of Edward Woodward.

He doesn't disappoint. The rigidly self-righteous Sgt. Howie shouldn't be as likable as he is with his dour and disapproving Christianity and his quivering tight lipped fury at the sin and debauchery he encounters at every turn on an island where Christianity has long since been supplanted by a much older faith.

Woodward doesn't play Sgt Howie, he becomes him, and after multiple viewings you can still find yourself hoping against hope that he'll get back in his police seaplane and leave the dark mysteries of Summerisle behind. But events unfold with as they must, bringing him inexorably to a windy seaside cliff and his unavoidable destiny.

The movie is a study in bizarre tonal shifts and discordant atmosphere. It's a mystery, a comedy, a horror movie and a character study. Sprightly traditional folk songs contrast with a steadily building menace. Audience expectations are toyed with expertly - particularly via a sudden shift to a traditional action movie chase sequence late in the game that suddenly becomes a cruel jest on both protagonist and audience.

I can't recommend The Wicker Man highly enough. Its a great way to remember an actor's actor who brought a commitment to every role he took inhabiting the skin of baffled angry men with just enough self knowledge to make them tragically flawed icons of victimized everyman.

'I'm Peter Lorre, bitch."

And you're not.

Master of Horror: Vincent Price

Hi, I'm the Dweller and I'm addicted to Vincent Price movies.

Okay, so it isn't crack. I'm not sucking dick to afford my habit.

Among other reasons, Vincent Price DVDs are remarkably cheap. Both in price and quality for the most part unfortunately, but there are some bright spots among the dollar store public domain cheapo releases of The Last Man on Earth and The House on Haunted Hill - two great flicks ill served by the back alley DVD burner and color photocopier versions churned out with depressing regularity. The original Night of the Living Dead has been tarted up and turned out in much the same way.

But the MGM Midnight Movies imprint has a big catalog of Vincent Price's output from the 60's and 70's. They're bare bones releases but better than decent transfers. Stand outs include all the Corman films loosely adapting the stories of Edgar Allen Poe - usually keeping little more than the title, but frequently outrageously stylish gems. They range from the endearingly silly The Raven to the grimly sadistic Witchfinder General - originally titled 'The Conqueror Worm' after the poem to continue the Poe theme but of a very different school of film-making from the light weight drive in fare of most of Corman's output. Gems of the batch include the first film of the series The Fall of the House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum and The Tomb of Ligiea.

Also great are the elaborate revenge fantasies the two Doctor Phibes movies and Theater of Blood. Every elaborate, gory 'murder inventions' and 'one by one revenge' movie including Se7en and the increasingly witless and dreary Saw series has these three Vincent Price films in their lineage.

My absolute favorite from the Price Canon is the ultimate peak of the Corman Poe years The Masque of the Red Death. This was Corman's most ambitious film, with a brooding sinister script by Charles Beaumont and others that grafted the Poe stories Hop Toad and The Masque of the Red Death onto a story that recalls Sade's 120 Days of Sodom. Price is at the peak of his powers as the devilishly charming Satanist Prince Prospero lording over a castle full of slavish degenerate nobles as the Red Death ravages the countryside. His dialogue is witty and bubbling with sinister mirth as he conducts an elaborate seduction of his prisoner the beautiful and virtuous Francesca. His evil is all the more terrifying for the occasional flashes of the possibility of redemption he lets slip out from under his mask of cruelty and sadism. While the decadence and scheming goes on in the castle, Death in the form a soft voiced but utterly implacable hooded figure awaits outside for his hour to toll. Beautifully filmed, this lush exercise in elegant surrealism is one I can and do watch again and again.

Let the REAL Right One In

I have to second the Aint it Cool team: Remaking the recent Swedish horror classic 'Let the Right One In' is unnecessary, fraught with disaster and just a Really Bad Idea.

Yeah the posters AICN turned up are vaguely promising, but considering the original only came out last year, such indecent haste to re-film it in English, seems outright disrespectful

Do yourself a favor and let yourself be hypnotized by this icy tale of innocence and blood in its original version - the DVD even has a dubbed version if you just can't hack subtitles. Let the Right One In is easily the best Vampire movie I've seen in years. If you haven't seen it yet you're missing out.

Set in the snowy closed in world of a Swedish housing estate in the mid 80's, we are introduced to Oskar, a slight, shy 12 year old bullied by his peers and ignored by his parents, who have less presence in this film than the adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon. They're there to provide the minimum basics of parenting while withholding any real involvement. Oskar frankly acts like a budding serial killer as he fantasises about stabbing his enemies and making them 'squeal like a pig!' But mostly he just seems intensely isolated.

And then there's Eli, who only comes out at night, wandering through the Swedish winter in bare feet. Eli is 12 too. But Eli has been 12 for very long time.

The two meet and form a careful but quickly all-encompassing bond in the silent emptiness of winter darkness in abandoned public spaces, playgrounds under street lights and barren apartments.

Oskar needs human connection desperately, but Eli's needs are more pragmatic, and Eli isn't human. Both are innocent, in the way that children or sharks are innocent:

They do only what they have to.

Another amazing thing about this movie: It's about real kids. Not little adults spouting dialogue, not kids as adults mythologize them, but real affectless kids, free of ironic detachment or hip cynical humor, free of all but the clumsiest most revealing attempts at childish artifice.

Real human child behavior in movies is rare enough to be a jolt when you see it.

It's also a rare thing when a movie comes along and pulls you into its world, against your will even. Let the Right One In is a masterful example of sparse but immersive film making that treats its characters and its audience with respect.