McSweeney’s Fire Sale

Begun in 1998 by Dave Eggers, McSweeney’s began  its publishing history by printing only works rejected by other magazines.

Yet in almost no time at all, McSweeney’s built up a strong reputation with contributers such as; Denis Johnson, William T. Vollmann, Rick Moody, Joyce Carol Oates, Heidi Julavits, Jonathan Lethem, Michael Chabon, Ben Marcus, Susan Straight, Roddy Doyle, T.C. Boyle, Steven Millhauser, Gabe Hudson, Robert Coover, Ann Beattie, and many others, including the Chris Ware designed comics special (pictured left).

With rave reviews, a fan following and awards heaped in their name including Best American Poetry, Best American Travel Writing, the O. Henry Awards, and the Best American Short Stories, McSweeney’s has become a modern day literature institution for the hip.

Due to a complication with their distributer, there is now an opportunity for those of you who have been reluctant to pick up one of their lovely books. So I urge you to head on over to McSweeney’s Store to take advantage of their fire sale!

You won’t regret it!

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Watchmen cast line-up?

The Watchmen movie rumor mill turns once again, this time with a full cast list.

This is THE comic book movie, a strong tale about super heroes and American culture, it definitely has potential to be a movie that will bring in comic book fans and those who have never read the series. Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, From Hell, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and Dave Gibbons began the series as work for hire under DC Comics to use up a desk full of recently acquired characters, but after the situation changed, the Watchmen became an entirely original story.

Currently regarded as one of the most important comic book stories ever printed and taught in universities as part of a growing comic book curriculum, the Watchmen is a property that demands attention.

So… does the rumored cast list measure up to the task?

Kate Winslet as Silk Spectre

Patrick Wilson as Night Owl

Jackie Earle Haley as Rorshach

Jason Patric as Dr. Manhattan

Jude Law as Ozymandias

Thomas Jane as The Comedian

Jeremy Irons as Moloch

Compared to my previous report, there are some big names creeping into the cast now, but still no sign of Keanu or Nic Cage, so we’re still looking good.

To close, I’m including a pic of the never released DC Direct action figures from 2000. To celebrate the success of the comic book series, DC Comics planned to release an oversized hardcover book and a set of action figures. Due to an unrelated disagreement, Alan Moore put his foot down and stopped the plan in its tracks, making many a grown man wishing to play with toys unhappy.

Since then, Moore has divorced himself completely from his work and DC has released the amazing ‘Absolute Watchmen’ collection.

… no word on the action figures yet, but they look quite neat, eh?

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Iron Man Cast Shot

(click here and here for my previous posts on this story)

The cast (from left to right) is Terrance Howard (Hustle and Flow, Ray) as Stark’s right hand man Jim Rhodes, Gwyneth Paltrow as love interest/assistant to Stark Pepper Potts, Robert Downey Jr as the main man Tony Stark/Iron Man and I only JUST realized that’s a bald Jeff Bridges on the right as the evil Obediah Stane.

MTV recently revealed some key scenes which you can see here.

And here…

I also found some set pics on youtube which you can view here:

Iron Man is one of those mysterious Marvel Comic Books that should be amazing, but is often just boring and unimpressive. A terrific visual as a character, Iron Man often spends most of his time outside of the suit dealing with business matters or inside the suit fighting vague threats.

Of course all of that changed recently when Tony Stark became the proponent of the Super Hero Registration Act in last year’s big event comic, Civil War. Making the difficult choice to support Federal Policy made him a villain in the eyes of his former colleagues, yet Stark continued to rise up the ranks and now heads the massive world protection agency, SHIELD. The end result is that not only is the Iron Man comic readable and dynamic since it finally function on multiple levels (as political intrigue and action), but it shows that you CAN make a successful Iron Man comic book.

Therefore you can make a decent Iron Man movie, right?

… right?

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Blade Runner Final Cut

When I was 10 I saw Ridley Scott’s ‘Blade Runner’ in the theater. I know, my parents were bored and it looked like the perfect movie for me. Turns out they were right (for once) since this is still my favorite movie.

The constant rain-drenched streets, flying cars and weary expression of my hero Harrison Ford won my little mind over. I had not yet read a single Philip K Dick story yet the tale of a robot hunting cop who may be a robot himself immediately clicked with me.

That morning, I can clearly remember the daily paper’s article on the future depicted in Blade Runner as being pessimistic and bleak. The article showed the spinner cars and towering edifices intended to be office buildings.

I was just a kid still into Star Wars at the time, but I knew a good thing when I saw it. The mashed together old and new designs were so unlike the Buck Rogers and Star Wars visions of the future my kiddy eyes were used to. It was more than interesting, it seemed feasible and sadly inevitable.

Blade Runner does more than simply embrace the film noir look, it makes love to it, giving birth to a dark and alienated world completely divorced from itself. The film gave us images so vibrant and real such sky scraping buildings, the inescapable advertising, science gone mad, the constant flutter of cops overheads… that they have now happened.

The pervasive theme of loneliness is almost painted over those left behind after a galactic expansion into the unknown, (as the announcer offers a ‘new life in the off-world colonies!’). It’s such an ‘anti-science fiction’ world that I was then used to. Instead of zipping off into space for grand adventure, the characters in this world are living in a smoky haze filled with garbage and abandoned luggage.

A loner himself, Deckard (played by Ford) is a former cop trying to lose himself in the mishmash of urban cultures that has such trouble mixing with. It’s almost a relief when he is pulled into service of hunting Replicants by creepy origami enthusiast Gaf (played by the future Adama Edward James Olmos.

Yet Deckard still has such trouble understanding who he is and what he is doing in his life. Despite his boss assuring him that the subjects of his hunt are unfeeling androids, Deckard has trouble seeing himself as anything other than a murderer. He surrounds himself with his work but does very little detecting. His method seems to consist mainly of stumbling through a sloppy trail left by his quarry.

The theme of loneliness is personified in the Replicants, a life form so newly sentient that they are terrified by almost everything they experience. Unsure of what they are, unsure of what it is to be human (or if they even want to be human), they are lead into a mutiny in heaven (to coin a phrase from Nick Cave) by their leader Roy Batty. Roy enters a pilgrimage to his maker that ends in tears that he’s not even sure he’s making in the end. The tale that Blade Runner tells is so epic that it feels like a masterpiece from the future.

It wasn’t until 10 years later that I read the novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ and learned that life in the eyes of the author, Philip K Dick, was both beautiful and terrifying… and far closer to the eventual mad landscape our current world has become.

To accompany the film, Marvel Comics released one of their best film adaptations (the other being the overlooked Time Bandits) with the help of Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson (of Flash Gordon fame). The comic was released as both a graphic novel and a mini-series.

For some confused reason, ERTL thought the movie was, like Star Wars, for kids and made a die-cast version of the spinner car used by the cops in the film.

A pair of video games were released as tie-ins, one for the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC 6128 by CRL Group PLC (1985) based on the music by Vangelis (due to licensing issues), and another action adventure PC game by Westwood Studios (1997).

Choose wisely which you hunt down on ebay first. Rumor has it that the Westwood Studios game is outstanding and years before it’s time.

The film is being released on a DVD much fancier than the digipak version I own for it’s 25th Anniversary. The rumor is that we’ll see a multi-disc box set including both 1982 original theatrical versions (U.S. domestic and uncensored International cuts), the 2006 remastered Director Cut’s, the remastered Final Cut, and bonus features, is scheduled for fall 2007. The Final Cut cleans up the print, sound mix and adds a few touches here and there to the overall product.

Further rumors state that Special Edition DVD is “finished” (due in autumn 2007) and will come as a five-disc set in a “Deckard briefcase” with state-of-the-art digital print.

Chances are, you are familiar with this movie, know it inside and out (with and without narration), but I urge you to look at the film with new eyes when it comes out in the fall.

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