Hulk nerd

The new Black Static (#31, Nov-Dec 2012) is out now, and Peter Tennant’s regular ‘Case Notes’ column contains a review of my book, and I’m pleased to read that he has many good things to say about it (see pages 85-6 in the mag) … 

Jennifer Connelly in-joke.

“Tony Lee abandons his usual acerbic style to produce a fanboy treatise on Ang Lee’s 2003 film HULK (Telos Publishing) … this isn't simply a critical assessment, but on occasion feels like an attempt at canonisation ...

Agree with him or not, Lee’s enthusiasm is infectious and his amiable prose makes his arguments all the more convincing. Taken on its own terms, the book is a powerful piece of polemic, and there is no doubting its value as a source book for those who wish to appreciate Ang Lee’s achievement ...

All things considered, this is a nicely packaged text that’s insightful and informative, and a pleasure to read regardless of how you feel about the source material.”

This issue of the British Fantasy Award winning magazine also features my latest ‘Blood Spectrum’ column of DVD/ blu-ray reviews. Here’s a listing of what’s covered – 38 titles including a couple of TV boxsets, sprawled over 15 pages - plus my ratings:

 

            Die & Die Again

Zombie Contagion (1/10)

Ultimate Zombie Feast (4/10)

            Halloween Pro

Blade II (6/10)

Blade Trinity (5/10)

Lady Snowblood (6/10)

Lady Snowblood: Love Song Of Vengeance (6/10)

Basket Case (5/10)

Basket Case 2 (5/10)

Basket Case 3: The Progeny (5/10)

Cube (7/10)

The Devil Rides Out (7/10)

The Mummy's Shroud (3/10)

Rasputin: The Mad Monk (5/10)

The Curse Of Frankenstein (7/10)

            Wonky-Cam Blues

Closed Circuit Extreme (1/10)

Apartment 143 (2/10)

Chernobyl Diaries (3/10)

Lovely Molly (2/10)

Cabin In The Woods (7/10)

The Pact (5/10)

Snow White And The Huntsman (6/10)

Spartacus: Vengeance (4/10)

Rosewood Lane (4/10)

The Thompsons (5/10)

We Are The Night (8/10)

Grimm - season 1 (5/10)

Red Lights (4/10)

Storage 24 (4/10)

            Samhain Round-Up:

Silent House (4/10)

The Harsh Light Of Day (2/10)

Dead Man's Luck (3/10)

My Ex (1/10)

Inbred (0/10)

Some Guy Who Kills People (1/10)

Cockneys vs. Zombies (3/10)

Monstro! (4/10)

Killer Joe (3/10)

Excision (6/10)  

Interzone #243 (Nov-Dec 2012) has also just been published, with excellent use if colour throughout, and my usual ‘Laser Fodder’ column of DVD/ blu-ray coverage appears at the end of the mag. Here’s the line-up of reviews, with my ratings:    

            Alien Agenda

Avengers Assemble (8/10)

Prometheus (8/10)

Fringe - season 4 (7/10)

Alcatraz - season 1 (3/10)

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (5/10)

Demon Hunter – The Resurrection (6/10)

Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World (1/10)

Supernatural - season 7 (4/10)

            Retro Spex

The Testament Of Dr Mabuse (7/10)

The Birds (8/10)

Short Circuit (5/10)

Flight Of The Navigator (3/10)

The Man In The White Suit (7/10)

 

 

Booklets

Just received copies of two magazine issues…

Black Static #30 (TTA Press) includes my ‘Blood Spectrum’ column of DVD & blu-ray reviews, this time sprawling over 12 pages due to the booklet style format. Here’s a listing of the movie coverage with rating scores:

            Phenomenal inactivity

Amityville Haunting (1/10)

Paranormal Incident (1/10)

            Dead reckonings 

Zombie 108 (1/10)

Remains (3/10)

Extinction: The G.M.O. Chronicles (3/10)

[REC] 3: Genesis (6/10)

            Snowy summer

Snow White: A Tale Of Terror (5/10)

Snow White: The Fairest Of Them All (4/10)

Sydney White (4/10)

Grimm’s Snow White (3/10)

Mirror, Mirror (8/10)

Blood Car (5/10)

Orlando (7/10)

The Reverend (2/10)

The Victim (3/10)

Elfie Hopkins (2/10)

Gone (4/10)

Livid (8/10)

The Aggression Scale (3/10)

Dark Mirror (3/10)

The Hunger Games (5/10)

Curse (2/10)

            Decay products: round-up

The Devil In Me (2/10)

Axed (1/10)

Creature (1/10)

The Fields (2/10)

Truth Or Dare (2/10)

Piranha 3DD (3/10)

The Raid (5/10)  

Latest news is that Black Static has won this year's BFS award for 'best magazine'.

Also switching to the new smaller format (which boasts a laminated cover, more pages, and a spine), Interzone #242 has my ‘Laser Fodder’ column of movie & TV reviews, and this issue’s line-up features –

            Nazi stomp

The 25th Reich (4/10)

Bloodstorm (2/10)

Outpost II: Black Sun (5/10)

            Animagic

Planzet (3/10)

Starship Troopers: Invasion (5/10)

Ao - The Last Hunter (3/10)

Battleship (5/10)

Lockout (4/10)

Alphas - series 1 (5/10)

Wrath Of The Titans (6/10)  

Both titles have the advert for my movie book about Ang Lee's HULK, available to buy from publisher Telos, here.  

Hulk reviews

Angry Man update -

20 years ago I was contributing SF reviews to Starburst (#168, August 1992, has my coverage of C.J. Cherryh's Heavy Time and Hellburner), for a 'Bookshelf' column edited by David Howe.

This month, my HULK book (from David and Steve's indie press Telos) is reviewed on the Starburst website...

"it's a fascinating film... one which Tony Lee dissects in admirable detail...
Hulk is very serious film criticism, with Lee tackling the film's symbology, literary references and subtext...
Lee's enthusiasm is infectious. Ardent haters of the film won't be argued with, but go in with an open mind and you may find yourself convinced by his writing. Admittedly, I was sympathetic to Lee's cause to begin with, but I found myself looking at certain scenes in a different light...
Hulk is a well-written, deftly researched, intelligent and thoughtful book on one of the most misunderstood and under-appreciated comicbook movies of our time."
8/10

Of course, I'm quite pleased with that one.

HULK is also reviewed on SF CrowsNest: "You will come out of this book better informed by the author’s enthusiasm", and Sci-Fi Bulletin: "an interesting defence of an often-derided movie... take the DVD off the shelf and give it a re-watch with fresh eyes" (7/10).

Hulk out

Hulk is bigger than me but I can tackle him!

I'm very pleased to announce - ten days earlier than expected! - that my book about Ang Lee’s HULK is now in stock/ available to buy from Telos Publishing.

Marvellous

Good news! Avengers Assemble is now available to order on blu-ray and DVD... released on 17th September.

Assembly

I saw the Avengers movie, yesterday. This isn't a review (I shall wait for a release on disc before attempting a proper critical assessment), it's just a few general comments, and my initial reactions to a movie that I've waited decades to see…

Well, I liked it a lot! It's a great super-team adventure, but I'm not convinced (yet) that it is a real classic of genre cinema about comicbook heroes. I'd have to see it at least a couple of times more, to decide on whether it's an 8/10, or 9/10 (for effort), movie. Avengers Assemble managed to fulfil my expectations of it, but failed to surpass them. That said, Joss Whedon was faced with a quite impossible task - of pleasing fans of Marvel comics and followers of the franchise of recent movie productions, including Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America. 

The director and cast took it all seriously, but still made it good fun. Whedon's best movie to date is not in the same class as The Dark Knight, or Ang Lee's Hulk. Thankfully, however, the level of humour in Avengers Assemble is judged almost perfectly, throughout, with very few jokes at the expense of the characters, and no embarrassingly bad scenes that may have prompted me to cringe at slapstick or blatantly camp performances – of the sort we have seen before in The Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, X-Men, and Iron Man movies.  

I don't much care for that poster, though, as I would prefer a proper artwork version, such as this one. I hope the movie is a huge success, and would like to see production planning for a sequel (or two), starting next year. I'd also really like to see an extended version of Avengers Assemble on blu-ray, perhaps before Xmas… Is that too much to ask?

Sunday

Bloody Sunday started after Newbury feeding time with a panel on 'Biology of the zombie apocalypse, where I was joined (in the long-walk-away room 12) by "world experts in necrological studies" Dr Bob, Rob Haines, and Bill Sellers, moderated by Tom Womack. I was the lowly horror movie geek amongst the boffins, as we tried to figure out what makes the undead shamble about in search of human flesh. The hour went by quickly and the panel was certainly a lot of fun to do. Miraculously, nobody mentioned the taste of chicken.

Just before 11am, I was rushing to the Green Room for a drink, before meeting fellow panellists Dev Agarwal, Martin Easterbrook, and Graham Sleight, with moderator Lapswood (Chad Dixon), for my third and last programme item '20-odd years of CGI'. This was a particularly interesting topic as we tried to highlight various/ best examples of digital animation used in two decades of movies.

At noon, I went to hear Paul F. Cockburn, Paul McAuley, Martin Andersson, and James Treadwell talking about the current 'Sequelitis' affecting Hollywood, but had to leave early because I needed a drink and wanted to visit Ian Sales' launch party for the Rocket Science anthology he's edited for Mutation Press. After lunch, I went to the panel on 'Scientists and the media' in the Commonwealth main hall, where David L. Clements was moderator for Caroline Mullan, Paul Cornell, Jennifer Delaney, and Marek Kukula. It was a very worthwhile panel, as was the next discussion group for 'the science of Rocket Science', with the book's editor Ian Sales, and contributors Iain Cairns, Deborah Walker, and Martin McGrath.

At teatime, I was back in the main hall for a lively panel on 'The nature of heroism' with two guests-of-honour: Tricia Sullivan and George R.R. Martin, plus author Joe Abercrombie, blogger Genevieve Valentine, and moderator David Anthony Durham. Sullivan and Martin were both great, although in disagreement. After Jessica Yates talk about 'Superhero comics, graphic novels and the films they inspired', I went to the panel on 'Fantasy in our time' where Edward James, Andy Sawyer, and James Treadwell, were moderated by Graham Sleight, for a discussion about the influence of Tolkien and Howard.

The busy evening continued wiith the programme item 'Death of the author' as Ian Whates moderated for Ian Watson, Tanya Brown, Roz Kaveney, and Adam Christopher, in a discussion of shared-worlds in fiction. As expected, Watson was hilarious in a 10-minute talk about his contribution to Warhammer 40K. I wasn't keen on 'Multicultural steampunk', anyway, so I left that panel item after listening to a few minutes of authors talking, somewhat defensively, about diversification in a subgenre that seems like a lamentable dead-end in SF. The night's programme was obviously winding down by 10pm, as only a couple of the panellists for 'Worst and best movies of the year' bothered to turn up for the discussion, which started late and seemed haphazard, and was a bit disappointing for me.

Saturday

After breakfast for Olympians, in the Brasserie (where the service is better than in Newbury rooms), I went to 'Ethics of AI' as first panel (at 10 am). Simon Bradshaw, Paul Cornell, Louise Dennis, and Lilian Edwards talked about whether machine sentience should have human rights, and if it's switched off by its creator - does that amount to a death sentence. I spent the rest of the morning looking around the art show, and the dealers room - where Roy was selling Black Static and Interzone, and assorted books.

My first panel, 'Superheroes in the movies' started at 1pm, I was joined by John Coxon, David Anthony Durham, Ian Millsted, and Jesscia Yates for wide-ranging discussion of the best, the worst, and the failures in adapting comicbooks for the screen. Of course, I got in a plug for my forthcoming book about Ang Lee's Hulk. It went quite well, I thought, but John disagreed with my criticisms of Samuel Jackson (who's become a parody of himself, nowadays), and 'the Hoff' (a campy cartoon, not an actor!), as Marvel's boss of SHIELD, Nick Fury.

Drinking through distractions, it was soon 4pm, and time for 'the Fantastic Landscape', a panel where Paul McAuley, Jaine Fenn, and Nina Allan, discussed literary examples of metropolis and forest. I also kept missing interesting stuff on the programme (where does the time go?) until 8pm, when 'Private road to space' was a particularly informative panel with Dev Agarwal (best moderator I've seen so far at this con), in charge of author Geoffrey A. Landis, and tech industry experts like John Bray, and Gerry (no last name).

Returning from the bar for umpteenth time today, I went to see Gaspode (John Medany) lead a review of 'Worst and best TV of the past year', with commentators Paul Dormer, Genevieve Valentine, and Carolina. It was interesting to hear about lots of genre telly that I haven't seen on DVD yet.

HULK

My book-length critical study about Ang Lee's movie HULK (2003), is due to be published this July by Telos.

Here's a blurb:

From its 1962 comicbook origins in The Incredible Hulk by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, director Ang Lee’s classic movie Hulk (2003), updates and re-invents the story of how scientist Bruce Banner is transformed into a giant rage monster, and becomes a new antihero for the 21st century. This book reviews the movie’s narrative complexity and its varied genre elements, which include science fiction, tragic drama, action thriller, doomed romance, and a modern fairytale with mythological references, energised by an artistically innovative editing style, and realised by groundbreaking visual effects. 

As a neurotic ‘puny human’ changes into the unstoppable ‘Angry Man’, Hulk offers a study of dysfunctional family relationships, and monster-movie rampages with tank-busting, helicopter-crashing mayhem in ‘hulkgasm’ adventures, that results in a final confrontation of cosmic proportions. A unique aesthetic spectacle, and extraordinary makeover for Hollywood blockbuster cinema, Hulk is the greatest screen adaptation of a comicbook and it rediscovers the enduring legacy of a green-skinned ‘superhero’ without a costume.

Ordering details here: Telos - HULK.