All-Star Superman? More Like...All-Star...Suck

It's been awhile since I've posted anything (how many blog entries of mine have started out that way?) and I promised a review for a certain DC movie, so here it is:
Last week marked the release of the latest DC animated film: All-Star Superman. If I didn't know the history of the line of comics it's based off of, I would make a joke about how ironic the name is. Hell, I still will. It's ironic that the name of the film is All-Star Superman when it is so very terrible.

Before I dive into everything that's wrong with ASS (huh, how weird is that), the All-Star moniker refers to the quality of talent on the book. For some reason, people think Grant Morrision can write (read my thoughts on that here) and that Frank Quitely can draw (all of his people look like wooden puppets wearing ill-fitting meat suits...and ill-fitting costumes).

Like Morrison's writing, the film is damn near incoherent. Some blame this on the fact that it does trim out some stuff and cut out other scenes altogether (like the suicide girl), but I found it to be pretty close to the source material.

The story is, well, crap. We get to see Supes casting out his bio-energy like a net. And arm-wrestle some gods. And fight the living sun computer (how does that even work?). And a potion that gives people abilities like Superman's. Awesome (that one is sarcastic). There are huge plot holes, ones present in the comic, too. The dialogue was pretty much like, we're going to spout gibberish, and then tell you our reasoning behind the gibberish, so then it makes sense, right?

This is by far my least favorite DC animated film (I've seen some people rank this above GL: First Flight, but I liked that one) and the only thing I can think of that would be worse is to make a film based on All-Star Batman and Robin: The Boy Wonder.

The animation, for what it is, isn't terrible. One thing I have noticed, and it isn't just isolated to ASS (heh), is that the characters lips seem to have grown in size since the launch of the current line of DC animated films (the ones not related canonically to the DCAU). It's kinda distracting.

The Bad
- Based on a Grant Morrison story
-Pretty close to that story

The Good
+The animation was pretty good
+The voice acting

Skip it, unless you're obsessed with either watching animated comic book films or pain. Or both.

I also want to mention that this was Dwayne McDuffie's last project before his unexpected death last week. The comic 'verse lost another good one. RIP.

Looks Like I'm Moving to New Mexico

It was announced yesterday that Joss Whedon's Avengers film is having an open casting call in New Mexico (where the film is filming). Doesn't say what roles they're looking for, but probably not main characters (as most of those are already filled) or even cameos, as those would probably show up again in upcoming Marvel films. So it pretty much comes down to...who wants to be Random Criminal #7? Or Innocent Bystandard who almost gets smashed by the Hulk #3?

In other Avengers news, Cobe Smulders is set to play Maria Hill (Deputy Director of SHIELD) in the Avengers and rumor has it up to 9 other films. Yeah, that's a lot. You might know her as Robin from How I Met Your Mother. I swear, everytime she pulls out a gun in that show, I get scared. I could totally see her as Hill.

I managed to snag a copy of The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition at a used game store today. Paid way too much for it, but it's the only way to get the Hoth mission.

Got reacquainted with Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2 over the weekend. Oh parts collecting and upgrading, how I missed you.

If it seems like I'm just rattling off snippets about things, it's because I have a headache but want to get into the habit of posting more frequently.

I went to lunch at Golden Corral with Kelly and my brother. He used a pick-up line on our waitress (we kinda told her it was coming). It went as follows: Excuse me, is there a veterinarian office close by...because these pythons are SICK!"
Yeah, he felt bad, because he probably ruined her day.

If you have Castle Crashers, the first DLC in awhile was released recently. Might only be for the PS3, but it contains one new playable Knight (PINK!) and five new weapons. The Pink Knight has the happy anime eyes, shoots rainbows and throws adorable animals at your enemies. It is 1.99 and goes towards Breast Cancer research. So if you have CC and want to help save the boobies, it's only $1.99.

Went to PF Changs on Friday. Kelly ordered some type of noodle dish and was told it wasn't spicy. It was. She couldn't eat it, but the waitress got her something else, so all was good.

Also saw Gnomeo and Juliet. Adorable movie. The plot was kinda eh, but there was enough Gnome and Shakespeare humor that I was entertained. Go see it if you have kids between the age of 5-10 or if you have a good natured sense of humor about Shakespeare. Or both.

That's it. Hopefully I can get more indepth in upcoming posts, but for now...well, that's it. Toodles (no? No toodles? Fine). Some other witty exultation...

This is SPARTA...CUS!

One of the best things about having a PlayStation 3 (or any video game console this generation, really) is the ability to stream movies and TV shows directly to the system. While I find NetFlix's offerings far from complete, Kelly and I did come across a show that has pretty much made NetFlix pay for itself (we're still on the free trial, so I guess if I found anything to watch the service would have paid for itself...):

Spartacus: Blood and Sand.

I know I'm late to the party on this one, since the show aired earlier last year for the US, but if you were waiting for just one more person to say how awesome this show is before you watch it, then wait no more.

I had heard quite a few praises for the show and was even aware of the controversy surrounding season two (as it were). I was already aware that star Andrew Whitfield had non-Hodgkins lymphoma and it was in doubt whether he would return for a second season. Still, the show sounded promising, given that it was a show about gladiators and violence and sex and all that good stuff that your parents wouldn't let you watch as a kid (but still did, anyway, because you were like that).

The show is about a Thracian slave named Spartacus (but not really. One of the running gags is that he is cut off everytime he or anybody else is about to say his name) who was convinced to join with the Roman army to fight off invaders (who happened to always be giving Spartacus' village a hard time. A win-win situation) but was betrayed by the Roman Legate (General) who seeks to use the Thracians against the invading Greeks. When Spartacus refuses, the shit hits the fan and he is separated from his wife and both are sold into slavery (he to a lanista after he takes out four men in the arena as his death sentence and his wife as a...slave. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about).

The show plays out in a style that is like "300 for TV" and even has a few of the bit actors from that film in here (the Messenger from 300 is the gladiator trainer in the series) with gratuitous violence (the best kind, right?), an ample amount of slow motion, and people using vaguely foreign accents and olde tyme-sounding words.

Spartacus' quest to reunite with his wife is the main focus for most of the first season and this is where it differs from most dramatizations of the story that have come before it. While ***SPOILER*** most of the films and TV shows about Spartacus have focused on the eventual rebellion that he leads, the first season is all about how he gets to that point.

The show is smart, with every plot weaved into another until there's an entire tapestry of violence, sex and betrayal (and any combination of the three) and the acting phenomenal (to the point where I don't even know how I feel about Starz replacing the lead).

While the show's disclaimer states that it's a historical portrayal of Rome, I do have my doubts. While it is a much different time, I don't know if anyone ever got so much excitement from people killing each other that the masses just started doing it in the stands (the modern equivalent is if your football team just won the Super Bowl and you got so randy that you got it on in the stands during the celebration. Vulgar, I know).

As I was reminded by my friend James, this show does make prolific use of Jupiter (the head of the Roman Pantheon) and his genitals.

I tried to be a spoiler-free as possible with this review/endorsement, but I will say this. Every episode had me wanting to start up the next one right away.

Should you watch this show and its prequel, Spartacus: Gods of the Arena? Did you like 300 at all? If yes, watch it. Do you like shows taking a liberal approach to history? If so, watch it. Do you like political intrigue mixed with all sorts of ass-kicking? If so, watch it. Just make sure the kids are no where around when you do (though they've probably already seen it...)

Preview of a New Chapter One

With a blood stained hand, he pulled his bruised and broken body forward, towards the source of the gunfire. He didn’t know who had fired the shots, but they certainly had to better than what he was crawling from.


Reaching out, his left hand slipped on what had to be oil. A warm, wet feeling caressed his cheek and a metallic odor nestled into his nostrils. He opened his eyes to find cold eyes staring back, the life already drained away.

He realized what he had slipped on.

Blood!

Bile rose in his throat and he choked it back. He had to press on. His life depended on it. With his right hand pressed to his stomach, he got to his knees and crawled. First an inch. Then another as he felt his life seep out between his fingers.

It had started as a drip, his hand trying desperately to ply pressure. But the dam could only hold back so much. Now all that he was was smeared across alcohol soaked pavement.

His clothes were in ruins. A shame. He loved the shirt. The concrete greeted him as he fell a second time.

Breath came in short, ragged bursts. Headlights from an unseen car blinded him, and he removed his hand from his gut to shield his eyes. He rolled onto his back, the chill biting at flesh. It wasn’t the cool concrete. No. He knew what it was. The blood, how his breath slowed, the abyss clawing at the edges of his eyes. It could only mean one thing.

Death.

I’m dying! He ran his hand through his short, brown hair, a reflex he had done thousands of times before.

I just…I just wanted to help…

His eyes. So heavy now. For weeks, exhaustion had been there. This was different. He knew that there would be now waking now. This was it.

As he prepared for the end, one thought rattled around over and over.

How the hell did it come to this?

For awhile now, I've felt like there was something missing from the beginning of Project Zero: BulletProof (besides maybe a more succint and catchy title, but I digress), something to pull the reader in. That thing that makes you go, HOLY SHIT!!!! What did I just read? I have to read more!
 
Or, as Dwight K. Shrute would put it, "Put the most attractive beets on top, the ones that make you pull the car over and go "wow, I need this beet right now" - Those are the money beets."
 
The opening is the money beet.
 
Normally, I don't preview writing until it's at a certain point, but I felt so strongly about this that I decided to post the new opening right away. Let me know what you think. If this were the opening to a book you picked up on the shelf, would you keep reading?
 
You can preview the rest of the book here to compare this new opening to the original. Should I keep the new stuff? Stick with what I had?

Writing Revisited

Every so often I like to remind myself (and thus, my readers) that I fancy myself a writer. That is, until I came upon a tweet that went something like this: "A writer is too afraid of failure that he never finishes anything is not a writer..."

Now, I know what you're thinking. "Mr. Kellen, if you look a it that way, you are too a writer. You've written stuff, even if it isn't very popular..."

And that's true, since I have finished some stuff (you can find it here and here), there are a number of unfinished projects that I'm sitting on for a variety of excuses (don't have the time, can't think of how to end something, etc.) and those might all be good and valid, but it can't help but make me think: am I afraid of failing?

Again, I point to my first finished work and say, I submitted it to publishers, agents, and the like, with little to no success (I had one whole agency pass it around to every agent before telling me every single one took a pass on it). So I have finished something and made the attempt to get it published traditionally before going the e-distribution route. But, what after that?

I swore up and down that A Plague Upon Thee was going to be different, that it was a unique idea that no one else in the world would think up. Yeah, you can read how I feel about my chances now here. Part of that, I would say, is that I sat on the manuscript for too long. I finished the second draft in early '10, but I always meant to go through and polish it up before submitting it to publishers and agents.

So...is that it. Is my early rejection leading to a fear of failure and therefor, a fear to even complete something so that I won't be rejected again? Not saying it is a certainty, just something to think about...

The Simpsons: Black Ops

I've had a couple (read: almost all) of students ask me why I passed on Call of Duty: Black Ops since I had let it slip that I played Modern Warfare 2 (that was a huge mistake, since now they don't want to talk about anything else).

I had a difficult time putting into words exactly what it was about Black Ops that made me go, "meh, I think I'll skip this one..." and then it hit me. "But she's got a new hat..."

So, bear with me, if you will, whilst I explain the "But she's got a new hat" principle. You see, in a classic episode of the Simpsons, Lisa becomes disenchanted with the way Malibu Stacy (the Simpsons' version of the Barbie doll) has been portraying women. So she, along with Stacy's original creator set out to create a new doll, one that is a better role model.

Just as the Lisa Lionheart doll is about to hit it big (in a scene where a mob of young girls and Mr. Smithers are rushing towards a display), a new Malibu Stacy doll is set down in front. While Lisa tries to explain that it's just the same Malibu Stacy, but with a new hat, Smithers points at it and screams, "but she's got a new hat."

Now, if you're still at a loss as to why I use this as a metaphor for why I didn't purchase and don't plan to purchase Black Ops, I'll try to break it down. Adding one or two "features" to an existing model does not a new product make.

So adding the ability to actually pilot the vehicle (as opposed to merely being a gunner, like in the MW games) is not enough to make me believe this is a wholly new product. Now, I might sound hypocritical because I have played both Modern Warfare and its sequel, but I did that to continue the story and because MW was such a solid game that I didn't mind getting "more of the same." But, and it's like this with sports games (who would've thought they put FPS' on yearly installments?), adding one new thing and releasing it year after year is going to get old, really fast.

On that note, Modern Warfare 3 is probably going to be coming this year with what is left of the fracture Infinity Ward team, along with other Activision studios. We'll see if this, too, has a new hat...

A "Fantastic" Last Stand *Spoilers Ahead*

Fantastic Four #587 was released today. You may have seen it on the news touting the death of one of the beloved first family of Marvel.

Well, I read it. Haven't picked up an issue of FF in, well, maybe ever. Think I might've gotten one as a gift once (as part of our XMas stockings, my grandmother use to get my brother and me about a half dozen comic books), but I digress.

While it may not have gotten the coverage that the Death of Cap got, it was still on the frontpage of Yahoo! news as well as any comic related site, CNN, etc. It's been a long time in the works, this story, and by the end of the issue, one of the Fantastic Four does die.



***SPOILER ***


Maybe. Probably. It is a comic book, after all. These guys are notorious for characters magically being alive (sometimes literally brought back to life by magic...).

So who is it and how does it happen?



***SUPER SPOILER ALERT***
After having the ending spoiled for me by IGN, thanks a lot (but to be fair, the interview did have spoiler alerts), I couldn't really see it really being a question of who, but as an inevitability. The whole issue builds up to the death of the character and it's fairly obvious who it's going to be. You sure you want to know?



***SERIOUSLY, THIS IS THE LAST SPOILER ALERT***
The tension probably would've worked more effectively had I read at least the rest of the arc. I know, it's stupid of me to only read the final issue, but I couldn't help it. I wasn't going to read it at all, but after reading who it was, I had to know how.

Instead of guessing which character bites it, it was kind of like that feeling of watching a scary movie. You know, the part where you know someone's going to die, you have your hand over your eyes, and you want to look away, but you don't? It's like that.

You see, the issue builds up to the death of Johnny Storm. Yep. Human Torch died. But don't worry, maybe the rest of the team'll pay God another visit and force him to rez up ol' matchstick head (I say again because the Thing once died, and that's how they got him back)(No...seriously, go look it up).

And it wasn't even with the team all there. No...for reasons I don't know (again, haven't been reading FF lately), the team, except for a de-Thing'ed Ben Grimm (yeah, that happened. Again), were off doing their own things. Reed was on an artificial planet with Maestro (evil future Hulk. Or is it just an evil Hulk now?), a couple of people named Castle, and one helluva giant brain (it contains all the memories and brains of all the non-sentient people of the planet). Sue was under the ocean and is now the ruler of an ancient Old Atlantis sect (and arousing Namor in the process. How many books is that guy in, anyway?).

So that left human Ben and Johnny alone in the FF's HQ (is it still the Baxter Building?) to fight off the Annihilation wave (which I thought was something that the cosmic Marvel U had already dealt with, but whatever) and protect Reed and Sue's kids. And Leech. And a dragon. And some characters that I don't know who they are.

The first wave is fought off successfuly after the daughter (I think her name is Val) figures out that Leech wants to be knocked unconscious so that his powers won't affect Franklin's reality altering abilities. This allows Franklin to use his powers to make a lot of the bug things go squish.

The ragtag team o' misfits figure out that the energy barrier will fall during the second wave's attack and for some reason have to go to the other side to try to put up the Vibranium door. I gotta figure this stuff makes more sense to a longtime reader. So they do that and WHAT'S THIS!? The door has been programmed so that once the code to reactivate the barrier has been put in, the code scrambles and no one knows what it'll be. Oh, and they can't get the Vibranium door to work either. Go figure.

Someone needs to stay behind to put in the code to buy the team enough time to build a bomb (I think that's the option they went with) to stall for more time until the Avengers show up. Johnny tosses Ben through the door, punches in the code, yada yada yada.

Then the Torch tells Ben to tell Reed that this is where he (Johnny) made his last stand. Then he tells the huge ass swarm of bug things that he isn't afraid, yells flame on, and then we can only assume that it's pretty gruesome from the way the Thing (yeah, Ben turned all rocky. Again) reacts, since we aren't given much from Johnny's point of view after that. And really, we only see Johnny once after that. We're supposed to believe he's dead, but he's still lit up (unless the alien bug things lit him on fire as sort of an ironic kill type thing), so yeah.

My question is: If Franklin is so powerful, how come they just couldn't get him to destroy the incoming enemy wave, like he had the first one? Or move the Vibranium door into place? Or reinforce the energy barrier? Or any number of things?

So yeah, they killed the Human Torch. And kind of in a punk way, too, being offpanel and all. At least it wasn't like, he was all happy because he survived and the last one sent some sort of bug thing through him and he died. I was actually half expecting that. I've liked a lot of Jonathon Hickman's other books (like Secret Warriors), but this was a bit of a letdown.

As I am not a long time reader of Fantastic Four, I will say that perhaps my opinion doesn't matter as much, but as a long time reader of comics, I'll say that the book was almost methodical in its approach (building up the who's it going to be, how, having Ben and the kids there watching without sort of being able to do something about it, etc.).

On a side note, I picked up the latest issue of New Avengers (a series that I've been following since the beginning. The first time) and I have to say that I'm already enjoying this story much more than the first arc of the new volume. It may just be a return to form for Bendis.