Heatwave

British summertime. My low rate of activity today was enlivened by delivery of the latest TTA Press mags.

Black Static #35 (July-Aug.) includes my regular 'Blood Spectrum' column of DVD & blu-ray reviews. This issue's line-up:

Curandero: Dawn Of The Demon (4/10)
In Their Skin (3/10)
Texas Chainsaw (5/10)
Apartment 1303 (4/10)
Beautiful Creatures (5/10)
Mama (6/10)
Warm Bodies (4/10)
Maniac (6/10)
Stoker (7/10)

    RetroMania
Black Sabbath (4/10)
The Brood (8/10)
Kuroneko (6/10)
The Legend Of Hell House (7/10)
The Man Who Haunted Himself (8/10)
Motel Hell (5/10)
Spider Baby (6/10)

    Tedium Scene: Round-up
The Incident (2/10)
Kill For Me (2/10)
Death Game (3/10)
Static (3/10)   

Also received BS sister mag, Interzone #247 (July-Aug.), featuring my usual 'Laser Fodder' reviews, as follows:

Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn (4/10)
Cloud Atlas (8/10)
Oz The Great And Powerful (5/10)
Falling Skies - season 2 (4/10)
Robot & Frank (7/10)

    Retronautics
Scream And Scream Again (6/10)
Devil Girl From Mars (5/10)
The Invisible Man (7/10)
Quest For Fire (8/10)  

This issue's book section has my review of graphic novel, Sláine: The Grail War by Pat Mills, Nick Percival, and Steve Tappin. If there were rating for book reviews, I'd give this 2000 AD reprint collection a 6/10 score.

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)

 

 

Marvellous

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

SHIELD1

Since reading Bendis and Reed’s The New Avengers: Illuminati a couple or three years ago, I’ve been expecting a big epic historical conspiracy from Marvel, and here it is – SHIELD: Architects Of Forever by Jonathan Hickman and Dustin Weaver.

“This is not how the world ends” but it’s a splendid sci-fi/ fantasy romp spanning centuries, from Egypt to China, from 1950s New York to a secret city under Rome. It features Da Vinci as the first astronaut, a cyborg Tesla, and Nostradamus in a dungeon for 500 years. With Imhotep and Isaac Newton, Galactus and Howard Stark, and magic in the age of reason, this blends Dan Brown with 'Men in Black' and delivers tons of clever twists and surprises from its plotline about Earth’s immortal protectors.

Next on the reading pile is Future Foundation, Hickman’s take on the Fantastic 4.          

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.

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. 

Interzone #236

This month issue of Interzone (from TTA Press) includes my 'Laser Fodder' column of DVD & blu-ray reviews. Here's the line-up with rating scores:

The Twilight Zone - season 3 (7/10)
Source Code (4/10)
La Jetée (3/10)
Level Five (1/10)
Sans Soleil (2/10)
The Vampire Diaries - season 2 (2/10)
Stargate Universe – season 2 (4/10)
Supernatural – season 6 (4/10)
Insidious (4/10)
Julia’s Eyes (4/10)
Eureka - season 4.0 (3/10)
51 (1/10)
Quatermass And The Pit (8/10)
Warehouse 13 – season 2 (5/10)
Muckman (3/10)
Cannibal Holocaust (1/10)
2001 Nights (6/10)

    Used Clumpage: round-up
Cowboys & Zombies (0/10)
Strigoi (3/10)
Wreckage (1/10)
Hatchet II (0/10)
Midnight (3/10)
Black Heaven (4/10)
Pieces (2/10)
Rogue Ninja (3/10)
The Holding (4/10)
The Roommate (1/10)
Territories (1/10)
Sacred Blacksmith – season 1 (2/10)
Buffy The Vampire Slayer – season 8 motion comic (1/10)

The issue also has my first editorial for Interzone, so there's even more of my ramblings!

Thor

In production and due for release in 2011, The Mighty Thor directed by Kenneth Branagh, sounds promising for another Marvel comic adaptation - despite worries about whether anyone can refine mythology involving a pantheon of Norse gods into a contemporary fantasy scenario that will entertain a mainstream audience. Asgardian epics worked just fine on four-colour pages, but can the peculiar content of Thor comics be transferred to genre cinema in compelling style without becoming (endearingly?) silly or, even worse, embarrassingly stupid or unforgivably pretentious?    

The challenges of archaic language used in Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's comicbook series have reportedly been avoided by the film's writers (at risk of upsetting the purist element of Thor fandom!) by opting for today’s colloquial English - but hopefully not vagaries of ‘Amglish’ (from which the phrase ‘oh my god’ acquires some new Americanism of cringe-worthy potential!), and this curiously ignores all the possibilities that are offered by tapping into Branagh’s experience at making films out of Shakespeare's texts.

Amongst many other pitfalls to be evaded, principal casting of some puny humans (not as mere templates for CGI creations, presumably) as various Norse deities has a rather amusing ‘international’ flavour, so far…

• Australian Chris Hemsworth (Kirk’s dad in Star Trek) plays thunder god Thor
• Welshman Anthony Hopkins could make a worthy all-father as Odin
• Swedish star Stellan Skarsgård is likely to be good as Silvig
• Irish beefcake Ray Stevenson (vigilante Frank Castle in Punisher: War Zone) is cast as Volstagg   
• English–as–Eton, Tom Hiddleston comes from TV acting, for prime villainy of Loki
• Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano is – intriguingly – assigned the role of Hogan 
• Californian Rene Russo portrays Frigga (no jokes, please)
• Another American actress, Jaimie Alexander (from slasher movie Rest Stop) plays Sif, consort of Thor
• Israel-born actress Natalie Portman, interestingly, plays nurse Jane Foster 

In the comics, Jane was assistant of Dr Don Blake, the mortal who transforms into Thor, but it’s unclear, at time of writing this, whether the character of disabled medic Blake appears in this film or not. Other geeky questions and concerns include: will they keep iconic features of the comic like Thor’s magic hammer (with unpronounceable name ‘Mjöllnir’), or will he just get a battleaxe? If the film’s plot follows that familiar tale about Odin’s punishment of Thor with exile to Earth, will the storyline lapse into cliché as yet another example of tedious father–and–son reconciliation themes which infect nearly all Hollywood products nowadays? 

Like both Iron Man films, and forthcoming Captain America remake ('First Avenger…' reportedly stars Chris Evans, from Fantastic Four movies), Thor is part of build-up to Joss Whedon’s mooted 'Avengers' epic (we can only hope that it follows revisionist trend established by Ultimates comics, not the Avengers' 1960s' origin story), in prep for 2012. Ah, that’s a year of apocalypse, right? Verily not…

Odyssey weekend

Odyssey 2010 – Saturday & Sunday morning

After breakfast on second day of convention, I missed the panel on female superheroes, and went for educational and informative 'Quantum Computing For Beginners' talk by Dr Nik Whitehead, adding some background detail to theories I'd already read about in SF books. Found a front-row seat for guest-of-honour Iain M. Banks' highly amusing interview by Jane Killick, but I had to leave main hall early in time for my panel on Watchmen, debating film's merits & faults but also talking about Alan Moore, the motion comic, and superheroes in general.

George Hay lecture (sponsored by SF Foundation) was an interesting talk by Oliver Morton about 'geoegineering'. I enjoyed the panel on 'writers and the web' – including Joe Abercrombie and John Meaney moderated by Maura McHugh. Before teatime, I saw tail end of panel discussion on geoengineering, which included Phil Huggins, Jonathan Cowie, and Morton.

First hour of SF 'tall stories' inspired by Clarke's Tales From The White Hart was very good, with Andrew J. Wilson giving best reading of most entertaining short story, but I left after that one to get a drink... and found Jetse de Vries serving whiskies at launch party for his anthology Shine – which really deserves to succeed with its theme of optimistic SF. Slowly, the Royal room cleared to make way for an exclusive preview of short genre films chosen for Sci-Fi London Film Festival. I watched the first three but then had to hurry along to room 41, for my panel about US remakes of British TV shows, where versions of Life On Mars and The Prisoner were talked about.

After 10pm, I had something to eat from limited snack-menu in the Atrium bar, and was ready for drinking and talking until about half past one. Distribution of Odyssey's Sentinel newsletter seems uneven - I got issues two, three, four, but seven, but when/ where/ what happened to issues five and six?

Now it's after breakfast on Sunday... I'm especially looking forward to this morning's guest-of-honour talk by Alastair Reynolds, and my couple of panels about Arthur C. Clarke (lunchtime), and Avatar (this evening).

Caterer

I read and greatly enjoyed Jeff Lint’s The Caterer comic (#3 ‘reprint’ by Floating World). Steve Aylett (steveaylett.com) continues to milk his phenomenal Lint mania. This perfectly ‘reproduces’ the format and printed medium of 1970s’ comics, complete with dodgy adverts and a ‘fan mail’ page. “Once again tatty curtains part on the true situation.”

When he’s not practising trademark ‘stillness’ with baffling diatribes, ‘hero’ of The Caterer, Jack Marsden, is causing untold mayhem and indulging his penchant for splash–page dreamscapes eerily reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch. This is surreal comicbook weirdness at it most deliriously offbeat, so utterly irreverent that Aylett risks losing as many readers as he’s likely to gain.

Newly minted pulp action scenes vie for attention with inconveniently preposterous dialogues and supporting characters - like (or perhaps you don’t?) Sheriff Leonard Bayard that help define friable Jack by doing things he doesn’t, such as leaning, or giving moderately sane advice (“don’t let it be udders”). But, whatever else we think of Jack, in The Caterer, we’re bound to wonder “what he’s doing now” and what he’s going to do next…

Further cause for celebration, is a new revised edition of Aylett’s implacably amusing Inflatable Volunteer.

Cap RIP

Oh no, they've killed Captain America!