Rich Johnston of ComicBookResources.com recently wrote about the BBC4 program which began Monday night, Comics Britannia.
To celebrate, the Guardian produced a ‘Guide to British Comics’ by Bryan Talbot which Rich was kind enough to reproduce here.
I repeat… I’m in the wrong country.
Sadly, I cannot find any video links, but click here to visit the official BBC page for Comics Britannia featuring Talbot’s Alice in Sunderland, Dan Dare comics, an interview with Alan Moore and a page devoted to In Search of Steve Ditko.
At the Baltimore Retailers Conference, Marvel Comics revealed some key images for upcoming projects, including the Avengers/Invaders #1 (which I wrote about here)…
Additionally, the revamped (again) X-Force consisting of Wolverine, Warpath, Wolverine’s daughter X-23 and Wolfsbane who may be in search of Cable (last seen straining his neck muscles reading a book in the library during the Rob Liefeld-fueled 1990’s).
And a duo-tone Hulk by Ed McGuiness (set to take over the series with Jeph Loeb). I had heard over a year ago that the conclusion to Planet Hulk was going to be the reveal of a ‘red Hulk‘ and that a toy had already been designed. Perhaps the ruby rage monster will debut next month when World War Hulk concludes?
Also revealed at the event was an image from the upcoming mega event ‘Secret Invasion’ in which apparently everyone but Tony Stark could be a Skrull.
A scant year before The Blair Witch Project was released, Lance Weiler and Stefan Avalos produced this tale of myth and legend called The Last Broadcast. The similarities between the two have been used as a strike against Weiler’s film, which in my opinion is hardly fair or even valid. The Last Broadcast is a very clever film that pulls such a fast one on you that it’s difficult to see the movie for what it really is.
Introduced by a distant and awkward narrator with a nasally off-putting voice, the film attempts to fill in the blanks of one night’s events which took the lives of three young men ‘looking for trouble.’
The film develops the lives of two local cable access hosts Steven Avkast and Locus Wheeler of the program ‘Fact or Fiction’ and their steady rise to local success. The program itself is a bot of a joke, more a cross between Ripley’s and Wayne’s World than ‘In Search Of.’ But when the duo receives an anonymous suggestion to cover the myth of the Jersey Devil, everything changes.
Trailer
The New Jersey Pine Barrens stretch for miles in all directions, and also feature a legendary monster called The Jersey Devil by locals. Like Big Foot and other such monsters, no one has ever glimpsed the Devil on film, yet many believe there is ’something’ in the woods.
Seeking the help of local psychic Jim Seurd, the group attempt their most ambitious program ever, a simultaneous cable/web broadcast from the Pine Barrens. The idea is to freeze in the woods, spook out the viewers and have a laugh, but it all goes pear shaped pretty quickly, leaving only garbled pieces of video footage behind.
Narrator and host David Leigh attempts to put together as clear a picture as possible about what happened that night and even hires a high-tech wizard to restore the lost images on video.
An intelligent film that also takes stab after stab at the current obsession with ‘behind the scenes’ fandom, The Last Broadcast is a horror film cut from a different cloth. Rather than tell a simple thriller story, the filmmakers decided to make a statement on documentary-style film and the need for ‘the truth’ that such documentaries promise.
It reminds me of another TV program, the Prisoner, which exposed the reality that it was a TV program all long in the final episode. Hailed by some, the high-brow statement never sat well with others.
So this DVD does come with a ‘this might not be for you’ disclaimer.
A scant year before The Blair Witch Project was released, Lance Weiler and Stefan Avalos produced this tale of myth and legend called The Last Broadcast. The similarities between the two have been used as a strike against Weiler’s film, which in my opinion is hardly fair or even valid. The Last Broadcast is a very clever film that pulls such a fast one on you that it’s difficult to see the movie for what it really is.
