My Movie Radar

As of October 24th, 2009 I have decided to stop updating My Movie Radar. It's simply too much work and not really worth the effort. It's easier just to program the release dates of movies into the calendar on my cell phone than to keep up with this thing.

- Rian

Vigilante Granny on ZUDA Comics!

Some of my former classmates and I have a web comic in competition over at ZUDA Comics right now. For those not in the know, ZUDA is run by DC Comics. You know, the people who bring us Batman and Superman every month? So guess what, if enough people head over to ZUDA's website and vote for us, I could potentially get a check from DC Comics in the mail. How cool's that? Pretty damn cool, right? Right.

So what the hell are you waiting for?! Click the pic below and go vote already!


Vigilante Granny FTW!

Recent Acquisitions 002: Wizard World Philly '09

This past Saturday (June 20) I was in attendance at Wizard World Philaldephia for my seventh year. The con has been running for eight years (beginning in 2002), but due to poor planning I missed the '08 show. There are many reasons that I love to go to comic shows, but the main reason for me personally has always been to empty out my wallet a bit. I used to try to get autographs, but honestly I just don't care that much about having my books signed. I'm not a real big fan of sitting in on panels either, and would rather get my con news in the form of bullet points on Newsarama or CBR later. I've also done a few portfolio reviews at cons and should probably do more of those in the future as well, but as I said, up until now I've mainly gone to comic shows to shop. I wouldn't go so far as to call myself stingy, but I'm somewhat conservative when it comes to my cash considering that I've never had a whole lot of it, and comic shows tend to be one of the only events at which I really let loose from within the bowels of my bank account.

I started out when I was maybe 12 years old at little local cons back in the day, rummaging through boxes of 25 or even 10 cent comics in hotel conference rooms and coming home with about $40 worth of books per show (which was a lot of money for me back then). Eventually I got into action figures and wound up spending a couple hundred dollars per show on building up my collection. As that phase passed I went to the San Diego Comic Con for the first (and second, and third) time and discovered the world of convention exclusive artist sketchbooks, which have been known, quite famously among a few of my Kubert School peers (namely Andre), to eat up a lot of my money. These days I mainly troll the aisles of comic shows looking for cheap trade paperback collections. After the huge graphic novel boom of the past decade or so had been around for a few years, more and more back issue boxes at shows began to transform into "25% off", "two for $25", "50% off", or even "$4 each" boxes of trades (the last of which I saw at multiple tables for the first time at this most recent show). At prices like those I can scarcely contain myself (or my budget, which I generally try to set for myself before going into any show), and wind up coming home with a plethora of new square-bound volumes to litter my already lacking shelf space.

Devoid of other, more noteworthy topics to blog about for the time being, I've decided to make a record here of my purchases at the 2009 Wizard World Philly convention. Sometime last month I wrote a post called "Recent Acquisitions", in which I revealed what I'd been accumulating from ebay at the time, so I figured that the title would fit this post as well. Here, then, are my acquisitions from the most recent Wizard World Philly:

Oh, and I was going to find images for all of these and make links for them and shit, but two seconds later I came to my senses and decided that I might like to do something other than blog over the course of the next 48 hours. If something sounds interesting to you, by all means...Google.

303 TPB - Not really sure what it's about, but it's a Garth Ennis book from Avatar, so something tells me I'll enjoy it immensely.

Adrenaline #8 - Picked this bad boy up from my friend and former classmate Tyler Chin-Tanner at his A Wave Blue World booth. Last issue of the series. Look for the Trade Paperback coming your way in August (if I'm not mistaken). It's gonna feature a pin-up by yours truly.

Appleseed - I don't have terribly fond memories of the original Appleseed anime (and found the more recent CG movie to be quite boring), but I've become quite interested in Masamune Shirow's art after seeing multiple examples of his work on Brandon Graham's blog. Some guy was selling a bunch of old Eclipse Manga books (including all of the Dirty Pair stuff that took me lots of time and money to acquire on ebay) for $1 each, so I snagged all of the Appleseed stuff he had. Appleseed Book One Vol. 1 - 5, Book Two Vol. 1 - 5, and Book Three Vol. 1 & 5.

The Amazing Spiderman: Spirits of the Earth HC - A Spiderman graphic novel drawn by Charles Vess? I never even knew this existed. I picked it up on those criteria alone.

Anna Mercury Shirt - William Christensen gave me a deal on this and another t-shirt at the Avatar booth.

El Diablo TPB - I like Brian Azzarello and I like Daniel Zezelj. I've had issues 3 and 4 for a while now and decided to just pick up the trade while it was only $6.50 instead of bothering to hunt down numbers 1 and 2.

Elektra: Assassin TPB - I'm not the biggest fan of either Frank Miller or Bill Sienkiewicz, but enough people seem to regard the book as a classic that I've been inspired to give it a read. This is an old Epic Comics collection with a cover price of $12.95. Nowadays a trade paperback collecting 8 issues would probably cost $25 or more. The thing is in amazing shape for an older trade though, which is why I picked it up even though I already have numbers 1 through 7 of the singles.

Excess: The Art of Michael Golden HC - I'd never even heard of this book before, but it must be fairly recent because while I was flipping through it in the car on the way home from Philadelphia I noticed that Golden's variant cover for Wetworks from two or three years ago was reprinted in there. This may have been the single most expensive thing that I bought at the show this year, but even if the text/interview isn't great, there's a ton of awesome artwork inside.

Formerly Known As The Justice League TPB - This is the series that first opened my eyes to the art of Kevin Maguire (I was late to the party, I know). I started picking it up with issue 2, and for some reason unbeknownst to me, issue 1 is relatively hard to find. I've never seen a copy in person aside from the copy I borrowed from Andre at the Kubert School so that I could read the series after they'd all come out. Rather than hunting for #1 I decided to go ahead and pick up the trade for half price.

Freak Angels Shirt - This is the other t-shirt that I got a deal on at the Avatar booth.

Gotham Central Vol. 4 & 5 TPBs - I read the first issue of this series a few months ago after I found it in a dollar bin and immediately decided that I needed to read every issue. I now own volumes 1, 4, and 5.

Hardware DVD - This is a sci-fi/horror movie that has been out of print on DVD for a while now. As such, the copy I got is bootlegged, but after reading about it on Cyberpunk Review, I can't wait to check it out.

Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor Vol. 2 TPB - I like sci-fi and short stories, but the main draw here is the 14 page story drawn by Richard Corben.

Hawk & Dove TPB - I didn't even know that this series was re-printed, but like Elektra: Assassin it's obviously an older collection. This is the series that first made a name for Rob Liefeld, and I swear that looking at it I can understand why. No joke, this is the best Liefelds art has ever looked. I'm actually excited to read the book.

Hellblazer: The Family Man TPB - The only Hellblazer trade currently available that I hadn't bought yet.

The Incredible Hulk Vol. 4 & 6 TPBs - I've been slowly making my way through Bruce Jones' run of Hulk, and these are two of the volumes I was missing. I was hoping to find the volume entitled "Big Things" at the show because it, as with all of the Bruce Jones trades, I believe, is out of print and particularly hard to find among the series. No luck, though.

The Incredible Hulk: Tempest Fugit TPB - This volume immediately follows Bruce Jones' run on Hulk, so I decided that I'd give it a try after I've finally made it through the series. Also, I'm curious to see how I find Peter David's Hulk since he seems to be the second most influential writer of the character after Stan Lee.

Intersections - This is a square-bound sketchbook featuring the work of Sean Phillips and Duncan Fegredo. There has been a copy on the 40% off cart at the comic store where I work for months now and I've nearly bought it a dozen or more times, but now I'm glad I didn't because I snagged it at the Philly con for $4.

John Horus Action Figure - I stopped collecting action figures a few years ago, but even though this particular figure looks like crap, I liked the comic book the character comes from (Black Summer) enough that I couldn't pass it up for a measly $4.

Just Imagine Stan Lee's The Flash - The Kevin Maguire art would have been enough to convince me to buy this on it's own, but I bought an original page from this book for $20 at last year's Baltimore Comic Con and have been meaning to actually read it ever since.

Lobo/The Mask #1 & 2 - I like Doug Mahnke. Also, doesn't Lobo fighting Stanley Ipkiss just sound like a hoot?

Manhunter: Street Justice TPB - I never gave Manhunter a second thought other than to ponder the fact that DC now has two characters with "Manhunter" in their names. A few weeks ago I was talking to one of my fellow employees at Beyond Comics about my sudden interest in Gotham Central and he recommended Manhunter to me as a similar title I might like. I'm still not too clear on what I'm in for, but I bought it on his recommendation.

The Mask Returns TPB - As I mentioned above, I like Doug Mahnke and The Mask is just a fun character to read. If you only know The Mask from the Jim Carrey film, then you don't know The Mask. If they'd made the movie true to the comics, It probably would have suffered a fate similar to the Tank Girl movie.

Modern Masters Vol. 12: Michael Golden - I've already got the Kevin Maguire, Arthur Adams, and Mike Wieringo volumes of this spectacular series of in-depth artist interview books, and would like to collect every volume. Now I have four out of the twenty or so available issues. Whoever sets up the interviews for these things really needs to get Paul Pope, Richard Corben, Travis Charest, Stuart Immonen, all three of the Kuberts, and Frank Quitely on the phone.

Monster (aka Humanoids From The Deep) DVD - This is another hard to find movie that I decided to settle for a bootlegged copy of just so I could finally see it. I watched it the other night, and as a cheesy monster movie with old school creature effects by the great Rob Bottin, it didn't disappoint.

The Nam Vol. 1 TPB - Like Elektra: Assassin, this is obviously an old collection. A $4.95 cover price for 5 issues worth of story and art? Not to mention I picked it up for half price ($2.50) and the art is by Michael Golden, which almost literally makes the deal I got on this trade too good to be true. According to the reader review of the book that I read on Amazon a few weeks ago, the five issues contained in this volume are only the first half of a ten part story, the latter half of which was never collected, but I could really care less because the art is so good.

The Placebo Man TPB - This is a collection of short stories by an artist named Tomer Hanuka who I first discovered when he was doing the cover art for the short-lived Vertigo series The Un-Men. Like Intersections, a copy of this book has been calling my name from the 40% off cart at the store where I work for some time now even though I've already read the book and found myself generally unimpressed. Also like Intersections, I was able to get the book at the show for the incredible price of $4, so I really couldn't say "no". Also, when you get right down to it, the one short story that I really love in this book (Elephant Graveyard) is probably worth the original $14.95 cover price on it's own.

Robin: Year One TPB - I bought Batgirl Year One because I really like the artist (Marcos Martin) and ended up really enjoying the series as a whole. As it turns out, the same team responsible for Batgirl: Year One also brought us this book, so this purchase was a no-brainer (even if Marcos Martin didn't draw the entire thing). What bugs me is that after I went through so much trouble to track down Batgirl: Year One on ebay in single issue form because the trade is out of print and somewhat rare, I found a copy in great condition for 50% off at the show. I couldn't justify buying it though, since I already have the entire series in single issues and there was plenty of other stuff at the con that I had my eye on.

Rogue #2, 3, & 4 - Already had #1 from a 25 cent box at some long-forgotten convention. Mike Wieringo art.

Streets Of Glory #5 - This is a recent single issue that I just somehow missed the week it came out. Now I can finally read Garth Ennis' presumably very bloody take on the western.

Supreme Power Vol. 2 & 3 TPBs - I'd borrowed the entire 18 issue series from someone at the Kubert School and enjoyed it enough to want to read it again. I've had the first volume for two years or more and finally found 2 & 3 on the cheap. Not that it isn't worth the full price of admission, because after re-reading it over the past few days I can definitely attest to it's quality.

It's Good Because It's Bad

We've all said it before: "It's so bad it's good." Some of the movies I look back on with the most fondness are ones which aren't generally considered to be very good. Films like Phantoms, Chill Factor, The Faculty, and Universal Soldier. Speaking of which, check this out:


That's right, Dolph and Jean-Claude will be back together in Universal Soldier 3: The Next Generation in 2010. That movie's still a ways off, but more and more these days I've been getting excited about films that honestly don't look very good. Now, you could chalk that up to me just having poor taste (which I wouldn't necessarily blame you for), but I think that it's been long enough since the types of action and sci-fi movies I loved growing up went out of style that they seem to be making a bit of a resurgence. Look at more recent movies like Slither, 12 Rounds, and even the new Rambo film for proof of this.

Essentially, I've just been getting a lot more excited about a lot of cheesy looking movies, and you know what? I'm fine with that. Some people probably hear that Jet Li, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Goldberg, and Sylvester Stallone are going to be in a new action movie called The Expendables and scoff at the idea, but I think it sounds great! In fact, that's probably one of my most anticipated movies of 2010 right now along with Iron Man 2 and the aforementioned Universal Soldiers sequel. So I figured that I'd try using my blog to turn a few people onto some movies that they might otherwise overlook. Below are trailers for some upcoming action movies which may seem laughable on the surface, but may actually prove to take you back to the days when you could just sit back and watch Arnold Schwarzenegger impale people all day and love it. I won't say that you had to grow up on movies like Commando to find an interest in these trailers, but I'm sure it wouldn't hurt.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
I figured I'd start with this trailer because I'm betting that most people have either already seen it or at least heard about it by now. Chances are if you've seen the preview already you think the movie looks abysmal. Maybe that's because you loved G.I.Joe when you were younger and think that the movie looks too cheesy. If that's the case, take a moment and think about the old Joe cartoons and comic books. Doesn't knocking the Eiffel Tower over with some crazy plant virus missile thing seem like the kind of ridiculously evil plot Cobra Commander would have concocted in those issues and episodes? Hell yes it does! We're talking about a franchise that had guy named "Golobulus" who could turn people into snake-men! So watch the trailer again with that in mind and try to imagine how awesome you'd have thought this movie looked if you'd seen this trailer 20 years ago.


Gamer
Now we're getting into the nitty-gritty. In this film death row inmates are given the chance to be pardoned and released from custody if they can survive 30 rounds of "Slayers", a futuristic video game in which people at home literally control the bodies and actions of prisoners like Kable (Gerard Butler) as they play the equivalent of a modern day FPS deathmatch game with real live people.It doesn't get much cheesier than that, but if you've ever watched The Running Man with Arnold Schwarzenegger and enjoyed it, you should have an open mind when it comes to this one. Look at those explosions! Also, Michael C. Hall from Dexter is the bad guy, which I can't wait to see.


Armored
In the case of this trailer, I admit that even I may not have paid it much mind if it weren't for the cast. Matt Dillon, Laurence Fishburne, Jean Reno, Skeet Ulrich, Milo Ventimiglia, and Fred "Tremors" Ward! Sure, it's not all Brad Pitts and Clive Owens', but that's still a pretty nice round-up regardless. Basically, the new guy on a team of armored car guards doesn't think too highly of his partners' plan to rob one of their own trucks, so he locks himself up in said armored vehicle with an injured cop and all of the money, then tries to stay alive long enough to turn his "friends" in. Get that many character actors in a room and give them this concept and I'm sold. How about you?


Command Performance
I don't think I need to say too much about this one. Dolph Lundgren stars in, co-wrote, and directed this beast about the drummer of a rock band who has to fight back against a group of terrorists who have attacked a concert for some reason. Stupid? Yes. Fun? Hell yes!! The blog-o-sphere is already referring to Command Performance as "Die Hard at a rock concert". Don't lie to yourself. You want to see this movie. And if this teaser isn't enough for you, you can check out a full length trailer for Command Performance here.

Resident Evil 5: My Review

Resident Evil 5 is a game that I wanted to play, but wasn't dying to get my hands on. Basically, I feel like I have a hard time getting into a lot of games these days, and since I never played RE4, which started the whole "not really zombies" storyline, I didn't really have the itch to dive into this game. I even played the demo when it was released on the Playstation Network and it didn't really change my mind. What it eventually took to get me excited was a taste of the two-player co-op mode. After I played the RE5 demo in co-op mode with Ricky, I immediately felt the urge to play the full game, so we acquired a copy from Blockbuster and went to town. All in all it took us three nights to beat the game, playing between 4 and 6 hours a night; Ricky as Chris Redfield and myself as the new character, Sheva. The following is my account of the experience playing through Resident Evil 5 in co-op mode:

First of all, the game looks great. It seems rare that I play a PS3 game which doesn't impress me visually, and RE5 is no exception. Second: the gameplay. We began (as we always do) on the normal/medium difficulty setting, which made the game challenging, but not so difficult that we had a problem with dying too frequently (until the end that is, which I'll get into in a little while). There's a decent variety of weapons with a pretty cool upgrading system to help give you more motivation to locate and obtain gold and treasures which you can use to purchase said upgrades. As with all of the RE titles, the game forces you to be strategic by limiting the number of items you can carry in your inventory at any given time. This adds a level of extra thought which makes the game both frustrating and fun, but if you're familiar with the RE games you probably knew that already. As far as the enemies are concerned, if you played through RE4 (or watched someone else play through it like I did) there isn't much new here aside from the bosses, but that's all well and good. There's a good enough variety of enemies that they never get old, and it was exciting to see the Lickers make an appearance for the first time in quite a while.

The game takes place in Africa, which is a pleasant change of scenery from the previous games. Speaking of the scenery, I already mentioned that the game looks great, but there are some really cool locales to play through. You begin in some dusty towns and eventually end up in a marshland, abandoned mining caves, an ancient temple, the standard underground Umbrella laboratory, and even a few boats/barges. One of the things the game had to offer which I was most delighted by were the scripted action scenes such as one which places you behind the trigger of a turret on a jeep that's speeding through the desert being chased by motorcycle-riding 'zombies' and huge trucks which you need to take out. I wasn't used to seeing that sort of action-packed gameplay in a Resident Evil game.

Now for the good stuff. The real draw of this game for me was, as I mentioned, the co-op. Resident Evil 5 offers so many great features and events for players to overcome as a team. I'm sure it works fine if you play through with the A.I. character, but nothing beats calling out to your friend for cover fire or a quick heal when you're in a tight spot. As with a number of two-player games these days you can be mortally wounded without dying immediately, giving your partner an opportunity to find you and give you a quick boost of health to bring you back from the verge of death. As far as I'm concerned, no video game moment beats the feeling of cooperation and teamwork that one gets from an instance like that. The ultimate example of this is the game Army of Two, which was designed specifically to be played by two people, but RE5 definitely still gets it right.

There are a lot of other cool moments to experience with a partner that are specific to certain parts of the game, as well. For example, there's a really tense segment which takes place in a pitch black mine shaft. As you enter said maze of tunnels you'll find a lantern with a big battery which one player must hold and use to light the way while the other takes out any 'zombies' you come across. It makes for some great teamwork. Even simple occurrences such as when one player is about to accidentally set off a tripwire and the other sees it and shouts out "STOP!" just in time to avoid a disaster make playing a game like this so much more rewarding. Not to mention, specific to the pairing of Ricky and I, we're very different when it comes to the way we like to play these types of games, which makes for some interesting interaction. For example, if a Shotgun or a Magnum is available, I'm gonna want it in my inventory, whereas Ricky tends to prefer machine guns and sniper rifles. This makes us the perfect team as one of us will always be perfectly suited for any situation. If there are enemies firing explosive arrows at us from across the level, I'll hang back and let Ricky take care of them with his rifle, and if larger, tougher enemies attack us straight on I'll take over the heavy lifting with my more powerful, close range weapons.

After beating the campaign mode, you're awarded Mercenaries Mode as was the case with the last few RE games as well. In this mode you're essentially dropped in the middle of one of eight (if I'm not mistaken) different stages and left to fend off a seemingly endless horde of increasingly dangerous enemies. You get points for every 'zombie' that you kill and bonuses for killing multiple enemies in short periods of time, earning you "combos" for rapid kills. You can either focus your attention on simply staying alive and racking up kills or also trying to locate and destroy glowing "time bonus" symbols which tack on extra minutes to the goal time you must meet to win in hopes that you can use that extra time to kill even more enemies and max out your score. Rank high enough in each level and you'll earn more characters and costumes to play with. Again, this mode takes teamwork to the extreme as Ricky and I often found ourselves healing one another, warning the other player of danger or new enemies, and swapping ammo when needed.

All in all I've got almost nothing bad to say about Resident Evil 5. Keep in mind that I did only play the game co-op, but so long as the second player A.I. isn't too incompetent, I can't imagine that the gameplay suffers too greatly from playing by yourself. I did say that I have almost nothing bad to say about the game though, and there was one part that pissed me (and Ricky) off to no end.

RESIDENT EVIL 5 SPOILERS BELOW
So at the end of the game you find yourself facing the final boss in the form of a heavily mutated Albert Wesker after your chopper goes down inside an active volcano. Crazy, right?! Well, the scenario is cool enough, but the trials and tribulations you need to face to actually defeat Wesker are infuriating. Rather than just blasting the hell out of him you need to wait for little orange orbs to appear on Wesker's body before you can injure him. This only happens on specific, scripted occasions, which is nothing new for the Resident Evil series (or video games in general), but in between these moments of target practice the "fight" can be very confusing. As we played we found ourselves dying or failing repeatedly and being forced to complete the same series' of events over and over as we tried desperately to figure out what we should be doing. I hate it when games go from being fun to becoming a test of endurance and patience via trial and error. Even that isn't the worst part though. There were other scripted events going on during the fight as well, such as a sequence where my character (Sheva) had to hang onto a cliff for dear life while Chris fought to keep Wesker off my back. During this entire segment I had to repeatedly tap the square button to keep from losing my grip on the rocks for about a minute at a time. Imagine having to do that close to 30 TIMES IN A ROW! By the time we'd finally figured out what the hell we were doing and defeated Wesker I was more happy to be done with the game than proud that we'd beat it.

END SPOILERS
Forunately, the part of the game described above was really the only down point. Aside from that one instance I never felt too confused or frustrated about what we were meant to be doing or where we were meant to be going, which is one of the most important parts of any good game. For a good co-op game, I'd honestly have to say that there are very few I'd recommend before Resident Evil 5. In fact, Army of Two may be the only one I can think of that tops it.

The Cartoonist

Someone is making a documentary about Jeff Smith, and it's about damn time if you ask me. I found this trailer a day or two ago via Twitter and I'm already sold. Where can I get a copy of this thing already?!

Cool Posters For Upcoming Sci-Fi Movies

Some (myself included) would say the art of movie posters isn't much of an art anymore, so it's incredibly refreshing when I come across a movie poster that really inspires me to see a movie on it's own these days. I was just researching some films for My Movie Radar and discovered a couple of cool posters for some sci-fi movies coming out in the near future. Check 'em out:


This poster for Moon is easily the most awesome retro movie poster I've seen since this one for last year's highly underrated Jason Statham heist film The Bank Job.


This one also gives me a retro vibe. It may be the color scheme, but I think the main thing that gives me that nostalgic feeling is the small inset pic of the guys walking through the desert. When I look at that image I can't help but think of the beginning of Planet of the Apes. Then, of course, there's the fact that the character in the larger image looks an awful lot like Boba Fett...


This one's got a more modern feel, but it's still pretty neat. I almost think it would work better without the text.


It's hard to say with any certainty how effective this poster is considering that this is the largest picture of it that I could track down via Google, but even a minute, blurry image such as this outshines the other two (one & two) typical, uninspired posters for this film. It almost looks like the cover to some old, tattered sci-fi paperback you'd find packed away in your grandfather's basement or something.