* My pal Zach Oat at Movies Without Pity is but one of a horde of nerdy critics whose positive reviews for the new James Bond movie Quantum of Solace I’ve spotted today. This is noteworthy because buzz for the film up until a couple of days ago had been pretty lukewarm. Now I’m excited for it all over again.
* Related: I’ve Netflixed all the Bourne movies, to which Quantum is said to be rather deeply indebted, and may get to watch some or even all of them before I finally hit the theaters for 007. I’ll keep you posted. (Aren’t you excited?)
* Also related: Quantum director Marc Forster has signed on to direct the adaptation of Max Brooks’s excellent zombie mock-oral-history World War Z, with a screenplay by not-excellent comics and Changeling writer J. Michael Straczynski. (I dunno, Supreme Power was good, so fingers crossed I guess. ) So now I’m invested in the success of Quantum even more deeply. (Via AICN.)
* Look, a new, short trailer for The Spirit! Looks fine. (Via Rick Marshall.)
* Haha, the star of Twilight calls the books out for their egregious Mary Sueishness. This to me is a far more acceptable framework for taking potshots at the series and its imminent film incarnation than the horror-site bog-standard “eww girls.”
* One thing I did not expect to find today was an in-depth examination of the Hellraiser series by comics blogger Tim O’Neil. Part one is an encomium to the Hellraiser concept, part two contains reviews of every theatrically released installment, and part three deals with the “apocrypha”–aka straight-to-video sequels. Sample quote:
Considering that this film was made for a reported $1 million dollars, it’s easily one of the best-looking “low budget” horror films ever made. Considering the Faustian bargain that Barker reportedly made in order to have the film made his way – signing over future franchise rights to New Line and agreeing to a paltry budget in exchange for the chance to direct his own book – the fact that it looks as good as it does is something of a minor miracle. Especially if you consider the fact that Barker was himself a novice filmmaker, with just two experimental shorts under his belt as a director. It’s a shame, in a way, that he’s not temperamentally suited to working in the film industry, because if he had chosen to focus his energies he probably could have been a director for the ages. As it is, he’s probably a better writer, but still, the prose world’s gain is film’s loss. (And the first person to mention Lord of Illusions in the comments gets bopped on the head.)
It’s true. There are images and sequences in Hellraiser that are stunning given the inexperience of its director, and frankly I think Nightbreed, despite the evident studio interference, is a pretty remarkable film at times too.
* Kramers Ergot 7 tourdates! One of the drawbacks of the emergence of Brooklyn as a hipster mecca is that now many comics events I might go to were they held in Manhattan end up in the borough of Kings, a paradoxically closer yet less accessible location relative to where I’m usually at.
* I realized while reading Bruce Baugh’s latest, picture-filled look at what’s going on in World of Warcraft right now that these posts are filling the role of “the new TV series I’m following this season” for me. Best of all? No commercials! WARNING: ADORABLE WALRUS GUY AHEAD
1. Can’t wait to hear your thoughts on the Bourne movies. I love them.
2. If you are inclined and get a chance, pick up the new Entertainment Weekly and check out the interviews with the two kids starring in Twilight. I have no particular axe to grind with the movie outside of my officemate being obsessed with it and thus making it fun to point out it looks terrible, but good lord do those two come off as pretentious douchebags.
I think Nightbreed is an excellent distillation of the X-Men concept, particularly Claremont’s 80s run. In fact, there’s part of me that wants to argue that it’s a better Claremont X-Men film than Singer’s take, which I love unconditionally.
Maybe I just really wanna see Clive Barker write Wolverine.
Oh, I totally fucking LOVE Nightbreed. I was just tryin’ to tone it down to seem all above-it-all and whatnot. Nightbreed was the first hardcore horror movie I ever saw! In high school!