Webcomics and New Movies

I've been aiming to launch my new Actressland series for months and despite the first strip, it will be an ongoing narrative rather than stand alone gags (usually). If only there were more hours in the day?! So, my mind has been on webcomics. Here's a couple of recent strips on movies I enjoyed.

Hijinks Ensue is a funny geek-oriented comic with lots of sci-fi and pop culture referencing. Here's the first part of their piece on Skyfall 

For the punchline click over to Hijinks

Joe Loves Crappy Movies is generally good for smile and occasionally it's very clever. That said Joe's taste is super narrow; no jokes about anything that's not a blockbuster. I love the recurring homages to cupcakes though, like this one... 

 

Other webcomics that feature movie-related moments regularly or are movie-themed: Multiplex (about a group of movie theater workers); The B-Movie Comic (Honestly, I can't follow this one); For the Reels (parodies); Theater Hopper (very long running biographical series that recently ended) ; The Chicken and the Egg (parodies); Hark, a Vagrant! (more obsessed with literature than film but always hilarious)
. If you know of any others feel free to share them in the comments! 

Visual Effects Finalists: Superheroes Rule, Subtlety Drools

Yesterday the finalists for Oscar's Visual Effects prize were announced. In the end there will be five nominees but for the next month ten films can dream of winning the nomination before the great culling on January 10th, 2013. Once again we see a preference for computer generated imagery with only Skyfall and The Dark Knight Rises as obvious examples of films which tried mightily to rely on in-camera practical effects and stunt work. At a recent "Evening With Christopher Nolan" here in NYC (more soon) Nolan revealed his preference for in camera work with computers relegated to touch up work. 

Did you know that that infamous collapsing football field that led into the seige of Gotham was actually, in part, a collapsing football field (!) and not a figment of a computer artists imagination!? 

Snubs: Generally speaking you can expect the more subtle fx work to be shut out each and every year. This is why Skyfall probably won't be nominated in the end. But my eyes were instantly drawn to the absence of Looper which is a shame, since it's most effectsy sequences, like that finale in the cornfield, were weirdly hypnotic and even the tiny touches like the frequent telekinetics were unfussy and unshowy but totally served the film. Plus, it's a good film which is more than can often be said about nominees in this category. It's also strange, at least in a multi-year context, to see The Impossible miss the finals when Hereafter's less impressive tsunami (in a less impressive film at that) went on to actually be nominated. More traditionally nominatable CG heavy movies shown the door were Battleship, Men in Black III, and Dark Shadows.

Which 50% of the films still standing will prevail? 

still hanging. I hate this film more and more in retrospect.

• The Amazing Spider-Man
• The Avengers
• Cloud Atlas
• The Dark Knight Rises
• The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
• John Carter
• Life of Pi
• Prometheus
• Skyfall
• Snow White and the Huntsman

Your guess work in the comments, please.

Feline Oscar Twins: Anne & Michelle?

In the hall of fame of superhero/villain catchphrases “oops” (Anne Hathaway, The Dark Knight Rises) never stood much of a prayer against “me-ow” (Michelle Pfeiffer, Batman Returns), nor could the dark side self importance of 2012’s “there’s a storm coming Mr Wayne” ever best the sexier playful 1992 ‘dark side?’ retort “no darker than yours Bruce”  But catch phrases aren’t everything...even when you've got zingy ones like "life's a bitch now so am I" In the great Catwoman wars of popular culture, it’s always in some ways a draw. Every generation and every aesthetic gets their own James Bond and so it goes with all enduring characters which win several iterations. Michelle Pfeiffer’s Selina Kyle may never claim the easy universally agreed upon “Best Catwoman Evah!” victory you’d expect given Pfeiffer’s mammoth performance (give or take Heath Ledger, the most psychologically precise, overachieving & seismically inspired in superhero cinema) but what can you do? Before The Dark Knight Rises premiered I braced myself for the onslaught of “best catwoman ever” pieces which I knew would proliferate. In truth they would have even for a  performer less dazzling than Anne Hathaway’s.  Out with the old and in with the new is, generally speaking, the law that governs pop culture. It’s just How Things Work.

Catwoman watching Catwoman. Feline staring contest in 1...2...

With the recent news that Anne Hathaway would be campaigned as Best (Leading) Actress for the role, a strategic move which has been taken more seriously than I was expecting given that she has no prayer in hell of a nomination for everyone’s favorite good/bad girl in spandex, this Hathaway/Pfeiffer story wouldn’t leave me.

Twenty years back when Michelle Pfeiffer lept into the feline role vacated by Annette Bening she nailed the role winning “best in show” reviews, winning a massive new army of fans, achieving her biggest box office hit, and sailing on to an Oscar nomination for the year (albeit not as Catwoman). Leap forward a couple of decades and history repeats itself four times over…. Well three times over for now but we all know Anne Hathaway will make it four-for-four once Les Miz hits.

It's worth thinking about Hathaway and Oscar through the prism of Pfeiffer. It's not a perfect identical twin situation but the similarities don't end with "what happened with Catwoman." At the time of Batman Returns/Love Field Michelle was a 34 year old previous Oscar nominee who had been famous for 10 years and had already co-starred in one very major also-ran Best Picture nominee (Dangerous Liaisons). At the time of The Dark Knight Rises/Les Miserables Anne is a 30 year old previous Oscar nominee who has been famous for 11 years and has already co-starred in one extremely major also-ran Best Picture nominee (Brokeback Mountain). Both actresses played Catwoman in the summer and followed it up at Christmas time by starring in something more typically Oscar-friendly, Pfeiffer in a civil rights drama and Hathaway in an epic musical. 

On top of all of Fantine's problems... she never return her DVDs to the video store

But here's where the similarities end and Hathaway's Oscar story may have a much happier ending. For one, Anne Hathaway's Catwoman arrived in a culture that has moved past viewing superhero films as "fluff" and is therefore less shy about recognizing acting achievements inside of them. For another, the eventually nominated performance by Hathaway is likely to be "the right one of the two" whereas Michelle was chosen for the wrong performance -- not that she isn't very good in Love Field, but it's not the inspired no one else could do this work that her Selina Kyle was. Finally and most obviously Les Miserables will be no Love Field, a film that was barely released and was largely only acknowledged -- if it was acknowledged as all -- as a vehicle for a Michelle Pfeiffer nomination. If you want to stick to the Pfeiffer narrative Les Miserables is far more likely to be Hathaway's own Fabulous Baker Boys... only this time there's no Jessica Tandy in sight to steal the statue away from a glorious actress in the full bloom of her star power.

Podcast: Summer (Part 2) and Forward Into Fall

Part 1 -best films, moldy releases, nervous mormons, and summer crushes

For the second half of this Summer Jamboree Joe Reid, Nick Davis, and Nathaniel R (c'est moi) wrap up our summers at the movies and dream of the fall ~ Forward not back! 

Topics include but are not limited to:

• Alex Pettyfer in Magic Mike
• Princess Merida, Hawkeye or Katniss? Choose your favorite archer of 2012
• Jeremy Renner in The Avengers
• Movies We Hated
• Sleeping through Snow White and the Huntsman despite Charlize Theron!
• Adapting Cosmopolis
• Did The Dark Knight Rises get away from Chris Nolan?
• Movie Characters We'd Like To Introduce
• Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present
• Nick's newfound love of comedy: Ted, Wanderlust, 21 Jump Street
• Retro Screenings This Summer: Sorcerer, Dog Day Afternoon, and Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte
• Fall Film Madness: Django Unchained, Life of Pi, Zero Dark Thirty, Zero Dark Thirty, Skyfall, The Hobbit, Flight, Amour and More...

You can download the podcast on iTunes or listen right here. Join the conversation in the comments. What's the best old movie you screened this summer? Which fall film are you most looking forward to and which two movie characters would you like to introduce?

I Know What You Saw... Part 2

Summer Survey. Katey & JA (Pt. 2)

To recap... now that summer movie season 2012 is a wrap, we're polling contributors, friends and YOU about your favorite and least favorite things of the summer. It's just a glass of something light and bubbly to raise, gulp down quickly and bring a little closure before the heavier stuff hits.

In Part 1, we heard from a few good men and here's two more voices for Part 2. Parts 3 and 4 are the podcast this weekend!

KATEY
who you know and love from Cinema Blend and the occasional podcast here...

Best Movie I Saw All Summer: 
I'm surprising myself by answering Magic Mike. It's got more confidence, more imagination and more willingness to let it all hang out than most anything else the studio system produced all year. 
Scenes I  ♥ So Much I Thought My Heart Would Burst: 
1) Natasha's interrogation scene at the beginning of The Avengers-- I've always been wishy-washy on Whedon but his feminist credentials are unbeatable. 2) Norman's confrontation with the witch at the end of ParaNorman, some of the most dazzling and daring animation for kids I've ever seen. 3) The completely insane vampire-chase-on-horseback scene in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, a not-very-good movie that I admired for its insane ideas all the same.

Major Summer Crush(es): Emma Stone (she really can liven up anything, even something as ungainly as The Amazing Spider-Man), Michael Fassbender (that Peter O'Toole impression just slays), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (I stand by him being the best thing in The Dark Knight Rises), and Chris Hemsworth (he seems to be the only person with a pulse in Snow White and the Huntsman) 

Princess Merida, Katniss or Hawkeye? 

Merida! Brave didn't get nearly enough love for all the things it did really well
At Least The Theater Was Air Conditioned: 
Hit & Run. Bad, self-indulgent filmmaking coupled with an awful audience that laughed at every dumb joke that made me cringe. 
If Only "Hulk" Had Smashed...: 
Battleship, to save Taylor Kitsch from himself. 

 

Mash-Up ~Two Summer Characters I'd Like to Introduce: 
Hushpuppy from Beasts of the Southern Wild and Snow White from Snow White and the Huntsman, to teach her a thing or two about making your way through nature and asserting your power in a world that wants to shove you down. 

Best Old Movie I Saw For the First Time This Summer - Go Me! : Metropolis! When I found out the restored version was on Netflix Instant it seemed a crime to ignore it, and it turns out it's mesmerizing even on the tiny laptop screen. 
Rank the  "Magic Mike" Strippers:  
I actually wrote an article with this exact ranking!

Line Reading That Stuck In My Head...

 Jiminy Cricket, he's flown the coop!"
- Edward Norton in Moonrise Kingdom

 

JA of MNPP
Best Movie I Saw All Summer:
Moonrise Kingdom, which I only fell even more in love with on a second viewing. Everything feels just right, from Frances McDormand's sweater over house-dress ensembles on up. Or maybe Todd Solondz' Dark Horse, which broke my heart into fifty thousand little pieces.
Scenes I  ♥ So Much I Thought My Heart Would Burst: 
The Lovecraftian C-section to end all Lovecraftian C-sections in Prometheus and all of the stripping sequences in Magic Mike (although it wasn't really the "heart" part of my anatomy that was fit to burst....)  
Things I Actually Learned (at summer movie camp!)
1) Joss Whedon should direct every superhero movie from now on (I figured as much beforehand but The Avengers circled and underlined my suspicions)
2) Woody Allen should probably only make a movie every two years.
3) Prostate exams and currency debates can totally add up to sexy.
 

Princess Merida, Katniss or Hawkeye? 
Only one of these people twirled a dress right into flames, and as much as Jeremy Renner wishes, it wasn't him. 

Choose only one archer! Katniss, Princess Merida or Hawkeye

At Least The Theater Was Air Conditioned: 
The Dark Knight Rises

If Only "Hulk" Had Smashed...
Christopher Nolan's camera
Best Old Movie I Saw For the First Time This Summer - Go Me! : 
I bet this is the first time that David Lean's "Kate Hepburn takes Venice" movie Summertime has ever tied for anything with Squirm, the 1976 earthworms-run-amok flick, but that's just how I roll. 

Major Summer Crush(es):
BOMER. CHARLIZE.

Rank the  "Magic Mike" Strippers 
Mike beats Ken only because Channing can out-dance everybody else put together. From there it's The Kid, Dallas, Tito and Tarzan.
Mash-Up ~ Two Summer Characters I'd Like to Introduce: 
Bane and Jackie & David Siegel from The Queen of Versailles, for obvious reasons

Line Reading That Stuck In My Head...

I don't really like the word 'depressed'. I prefer to say I'm in a tailspin."
- Greta Gerwig in Damsels in Distress

And that's it for us until the podcast! If you have your own blog, answer the questions in a post and I'll link up. Otherwise, what do you think of JA's and Katey's summer summaries? The "Katniss, Merida or Hawkeye"? question is such a roscharch. No two answers are quite the same!