Late Night Double Feature Picture Show

While taking advantage of the previously mentioned store-closing sale at our local Suncoast, I decided it was as good a time as any to pick up a pair of titles that I had been considering checking out lately. I don't often buy movies sight unseen, mind you (though I probably do so more often than the average person), but at rock-bottom prices (50% off regular price), I figured why not? Besides, if I really don't like them, I can always trade them in at the local CD store.

The first of them is Timeline, adapted from a Michael Crichton novel. It tells the story of a group of college students whose archaeology professor vanishes on a dig, apparently ending up in the 14th Century. After confirming with a technology firm that's experimenting with teleportation that the professor was indeed whisked back to the past by accident, the prof's son is compelled to jump back to rescue him. Of course, it may have something to do with the fact that he's got the hots for one of his dad's students. Anyway, the group has a scant six hours to find and rescue the professor -- on the eve of an historically pivotal battle, no less -- and complications of course ensue, on both sides of the timeline.

It's an interesting story, and fairly well executed, though it's not particularly remarkable. The fact that it stars the studly Paul Walker I'd consider a plus, though he ain't gonna win any best actor Oscars anytime soon. I'd forgotten that Neal McDonough (the ill-fated Lt. Hawk in Star Trek: First Contact) was in it, and I always enjoy seeing him ... and thankfully we didn't see a whole lot of Billy Connolly. It's not that I don't like him, mind you ... it's just that the last thing of consequence that I saw him in was the sitcom Head Of The Class, in which he less-than-adequately took the place of Howard Hesseman, so I'm just not used to seeing him in any kind of dramatic role just yet. But anyway, bottom line: it was a reasonably entertaining movie, but I'm glad I didn't spend any more for it than I did.

The second of these two films is the one I was far more eager to see: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I had bought the comic book miniseries back when it was published, but I still have yet to read it (sad as it sounds, that's the case with most of my comic collection), although the concept has always intrigued me: a group of 19th-Century literary characters cobbled together as an ad-hoc superhero team to go after a madman bent on world domination. Imagine: Allan Quatermain, Captain Nemo, a now adult Tom Sawyer, Dr. Jekyll, the Invisible Man, Dorian Gray, and Mina Harker (from Dracula fame), all together in one story, and going after a villain whose startling true identity is not revealed until the climax.

It was certainly an entertaining movie, though there was something keeping me from calling it "great" ... perhaps the plot meandered a bit and could have been a bit tighter. What wouldn't have kept me from calling it great was the always delightful Sean Connery as Quatermain, nor was the intriguing notion of a grown-up Tom Sawyer ... made all the more watchable by the extremely easy-on-the-eyes Shane West. I'm not sure why this movie was somewhat of a disappointment, because I enjoyed it quite a bit, and I don't regret buying it at all. In fact, I'm actually a bit disappointed that there in all likelihood will never be a sequel.

I also picked up one or two other sci-fi-related releases, which I'm sure I'll get around to discussing eventually. Too bad that Suncoast wasn't really worth shopping at until its going-out-of-business sale....

Will It Be "Marvey" or "Dismal"?

You know when you hear some news, and you feel like you should react about it in a certain way (or in some way, period), but it turns out you don't? Well, that's what happened when I read the recent news that Disney is buying out Marvel. I don't have any particularly strong opinions about Disney one way or another -- I'm a fan of a few of their movies, mostly from the late '70s to mid '80s, but that's about it. And I'm not all that emotionally invested in Marvel, either -- I totally dig the "Spider-Man" and "X-Men" movies, but am not much into super-hero comics otherwise. I venture to guess that we consumers will see little to no evidence of Disney's acquisition of Marvel, except that characters from the Marvel Universe will probably take up a fairly high-profile residence at the Disney theme parks ... and we might see the Disney production company "tag" (whatever the little five-second logo thingie is called in the industry) alongside the Marvel "tag" at the beginning of any future Marvel hero movies.

Frankly, they would be wise to keep the Marvel brand separate from the Disney brand, at least when it comes to the existing line of comic books; somehow I imagine the hardcore Marvel Universe readers would balk a bit at the thought of being seen buying Disney comics. But I doubt we'll need to worry in that regard; I'm sure Disney isn't all too eager to "sully" their family-friendly logo by slapping it on books featuring masked avengers brutalizing ruthless crime lords. And from there comes the one worry that's probably on a bunch of people's minds: Will Disney demand that the Marvel Universe clean itself up, and become less violent and more family-friendly? Somehow I doubt it -- the powers that be at Disney are smart enough not to dump four billion dollars into an acquisition, only to run the risk of watering it down and effectively flushing it straight down the crapper.

Hmm ... I guess I did have more to say than I expected to on this subject, despite having very little emotional investment in the scenario or its consequences ... at least, as it pertains to any particular companies. It does, however, bug me in the larger context of an ever-continuing series of corporate buyouts in the entertainment industry. The Disney/Marvel deal is the one I've had the most trepidations about since the Sony/BMG merger in 2004 -- but that one bothered me more, as I'm far more into music than any other facet of entertainment. (But then, record company mergers do have their advantages when it comes to being able to release comprehensive anthologies of artists who have a tendency to hop labels.) One would think that these buyouts and mergers would have to be stopped at some point to avoid concerns over ant-trust or monopolies in any given industry.

It makes me wonder if these corporate CEO's have ever seen that cartoon where the little fish gets eaten by a slightly bigger fish, and then that one gets eaten by a bigger fish, and so on. Such as it is with the entertainment world, where smaller companies progressively get absorbed into larger ones. Are they forgetting that this will eventually just leave one fish in the water? (And isn't it in that same cartoon where a character carrying dynamite is swallowed by that super-big fish and blown up? Okay, maybe that's carrying the analogy out on a limb.) They also need to be careful of the old adage, "The bigger they are, the harder they fall." If these mega-publishers end up collapsing under their own weight from a bad business decision of some sort, they'll take down all the smaller companies they bought out.

But then, as I said, Disney is pretty smart, so that probably won't happen. And even if it does, and Marvel somehow falls victim to corporate foibles, the comic book industry is one of those that seems (at least, at my level of scrutiny, which admittedly isn't intense) to do best at re-inventing and re-invigorating itself when it needs to. So, let's have positive thoughts about the Disney/Marvel merger ... we might as well, since we can't undo it.

The Letter

Okay, you remember the letter I was telling you about at the end of my previous post? It didn't take me long to find it after all (it just took me longer than I thought to actually get to looking for it). Here it is in the back of issue #8 of DC's second Star Trek series, which launched in 1989. Read it and weep -- weep for him and others like him, that is. I just hope that this Mr. Mason has come to his senses and seen the ridiculousness of his prejudices since this letter was printed.



(Click image to enlarge.)

The Trek Comics Motherlode

My collection of Star Trek memorabilia is basically concentrated in three major categories, all of which I'll eventually reveal to you. The first of these is the comic books. Allow me to introduce you to what may very well be the bitchinest piece of Trek-related merchandise out there (click on the product's image to go to its Amazon listing) -- at least I've got the feeling that most of you missed it when it came out, seeing as even the proprietor of my local comic book store didn't even know about it until I clued him into its existence. I've never gone looking for such a statistic, but I have to wonder what percentage of Trekkers are or have been regular readers and/or collectors of the various Trek comics. If you've never read them, then you're definitely missing out on bunches of well-written and entertaining stories. And if you do read/collect them, then odds are there are probably some that you've never read or been able to add to your collection. Well, that's where this item comes in.



Imagine, if you will, every issue of every Star Trek comic book ever published (up until 2002, when Wildstorm stopped producing them), all packed onto one DVD disc. Yes, each and every page -- including the front and back covers, the letters pages (in which I was immortalized once in 1991), and even the vintage advertisements -- are all scanned into clearly readable PDF files and accessible by an easy-as-rokeg-blood-pie interface. And though you can't copy the files for use elsewhere, you can print them out in whole or in part (though an unobtrusive Starfleet arrowhead watermark will show on the printed page). These restrictions are a small price to pay for the convenience of having literally hundreds of comic books squeezed into the shelf space of a DVD case, not to mention being able to fill any of the gaps in your comic collection ... assuming you're not a hardcore comics collector and are concerned only with the content (I fall into that category, and don't own any of the vintage Gold Key issues or the initial 1980 Marvel series, so this DVD does nicely to take care of that.)



Best of all, this item is a pretty decent bargain even at full retail price, considering the funds it would take to accumulate the hard copies of all the comics in question. I read one review that says there are a few botched scans (mucked-up or cut-off images) in the mix, but I personally haven't found them yet. But even a Trek nut like yours truly finds it hard to complain about a relatively small shortcoming like that. Did I mention that the thing runs right from Adobe Reader, so that no software installation on your computer is even necessary (unless you have an outdated version of Adobe Reader)? You couldn't ask for more, could you? Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'm gonna go now and see if I can find the issue where some horse's ass in the letters pages, who claimed to be a Trek fan, had a problem with Scotty and Uhura getting tender with each other (a continuation of sorts from their flirting in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier) 'cause he didn't believe in the "mixing of the races". (You think I'm making that up? Sadly, I'm not. Maybe I'll share it with you once I've found it....)

The Sound and The Furie

Wow ... I am simply in awe. Unfortunately, it's not in a good way. You see, several months ago I happened upon a boxed set of all four Christopher Reeve Superman films at Costco for a mere $18, which was a spectacular price, seeing as how all four were the special/deluxe editions (Superman: The Movie in this case being the 4-disc bonus-features-packed deluxe package). Until then I'd had just the bare-bones original DVD releaes of the films, except for Superman III whose deluxe edition I found on special one day, and Superman IV which I'd never felt the slightest compulsion to buy, even before I'd heard confirmation of how bad it was in the excellent documentary Look, Up In The Sky! The Amazing Story of Superman.

But I finally gave into the temptation this evening and put Superman IV: The Quest For Peace into my DVD player, expecting full well to have 90 minutes of my life completely wasted. I'm pleased to say that, in that capacity alone, the movie surpassed my expectations. Now, mind you, I have a personal history of liking -- even loving -- movies that were largely panned by critics (The Black Hole, Johnny Dangerously, Krull, and yes, even Superman III). But I'm afraid that even I couldn't find anything to love about this sorry-ass piece of ... filmmaking. What were they thinking? Did they not realize, even by the time they'd gotten to post-production, what a turkey they had on their hands?

Christopher Reeve, bless his soul, did what he could with the material ... but Margot Kidder, Jackie Cooper, and Gene Hackman all seemed to be going through the motions, almost as if they themselves couldn't wait for the movie to be over. Marc McClure was kind-of just there, because the script essentially gave Jimmy Olsen nothing at all to do but follow Superman around like a puppy. And poor Jon Cryer, trapped in the netherworld between his bygone John Hughes teen-comedy glory days and his current, very enjoyable stint in Two And a Half Men ... what do you wanna bet he wishes this movie had never happened at all, or at least had happened to someone else? Nah, I can't imagine there's anyone out there he'd hate that much.

I'll grant you that the Superman movies have never adhered rigidly to scientific credibility to begin with, but even this script's writing was nothing short of pathetic. I won't go into the details, except to say that Lex Luthor's sketchy "scientific" plan would have looked silly even in a 1940's sci-fi serial, and that Superman's eyes should never, at least in a live-action film, be given any powers beyond heat vision and X-ray vision (okay, to spare you the pain of watching the movie: he uses his eyes to magically re-assemble destroyed sections of the Great Wall of China out of thin air ... I shit you not).

Come to think of it, there was one shot that was quite priceless in the movie: possibly the best ever bit of physical shtick by Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent, in which he stumbles on a marble floor and narrowly avoids falling on his ass. But that sure doesn't make up for perhaps the most annoying part of the movie: Gene Hackman pronouncing the word "nuclear" like George W. Bush ("nucular") -- all the more painful because the script called for him to say the word at least a dozen times. I had respect for Mr. Hackman until this movie ... maybe Superman can use that memory-erasing trick on me for that hour-and-a-half like he did on Lois for discovering his secret identity...?

Update: If you're still jonesin' to get all four Superman movies for a good price, you can't get much better than this -- although this set is quite skimpy on the extras by comparison.