The Summer of Scott Pilgrim

Back when I was first talking to Bryan Lee O’Malley about his upcoming “Scott Pilgrim” book series in 2004, neither of us ever imagined what a huge sensation it would become. International best-seller, lauded by critics and media outlets, a cultural touchstone for an entire generation of slacker hipsters. Even with all that’s come before, though, summer 2010 will be remembered as the summer of Scott Pilgrim. It all starts next week with the release of the sixth and final volume in the series, Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour, wherein all questions will be answered, all plot threads tied up, and we’ll all have to move on to something else. A mere three weeks later sees the release of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game on the Playstation Network. The 16-bit River City Ransom homage sports squeal-worthy art direction by acclaimed animator Paul Robertson and an original soundtrack by Brooklyn’s own chiptune power group Anamanaguchi. Fandom is sure to reach an all time high, though, with the August 13th release of the major motion picture adaptation Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, directed by Shaun of the Dead‘s Edgar Wright and starring a cavalcade of hip young actors from everything cool in the past decade.

Intense new seasons of cutting-edge TV drama

The two most-talked about season finales last year were those from Dexter and Mad Men. One season ended with a small core team of the characters quitting their jobs, stealing everything they could from their old office and setting up their brand new agency in a tiny apartment, the other ended with the protagonist stopping the world’s most successful serial killer only to find his wife as the killer’s final victim and himself with no alibi (see if you can guess which show was which). Dexter and Mad Men were both already among the most popular and celebrated shows on television, but the status quo-changing finales last year served as fantastic set-ups for what are absolutely certain to be fresh and exciting new seasons. The characters are all forced into wholly new situations (starting a new business from the ground-up, divorce, single parenthood, suspicion of murder), the intensity be positively rife.

New albums from the biggest names in indie-rock

2010′s already been pretty great for music. We’ve seen long-awaited returns from the likes of Gorillaz, Gil Scott-Heron, and Devo, powerful returns from Los Campesinos!, LCD Soundsystem, and Xiu Xiu, and stellar debuts from the Drums, Fang Island, and Sleigh Bells. Fantastic as all that has been, there’s the very good chance all of that may be forgotten when the tidal wave of summer and fall releases hit, including new albums from the Books, Menomena, Arcade Fire (whose The Suburbs is seen at right), Chromeo, !!!, Klaxons, Eels, Interpol, The Thermals, Les Savy Fav, Röyksopp, The Walkmen, Of Montreal, No Age, Ben Folds, and Antony & the Johnsons. If there’s not a band in that list that gets you excited and tingly then you probably aren’t hip enough to be targeted by national advertising campaigns for your valuable interest. Plainly stated, that’s a pretty epic lineup of album releases. Here’s hoping most of them don’t suck!

Toy Story 3

It’s hard to look past the history of the Toy Story franchise. The very first entirely computer-animated theatrical release, the original Toy Story captivated audiences fifteen years ago. It’s sequel in 1999 met with universal acclaim, a surprisingly existential family film that provoked thought and feelings in a way uncharacteristic of summer blockbusters. Toy Story 3 had started as a Disney project independent of creators Pixar, but when Toy Story 1 & 2 director John Lasseter became chief creative officer of Disney animation studios in 2006 his first duty was scrapping the entire production and putting Toy Story 3 back in the hands of Pixar to start from scratch. The result is the most emotionally poignant film I’ve seen in years. The final thirty minutes has the entire audience in a constant stream of salty tears.

Breaking Bad season 3

Bryan Cranston has won two Emmy’s for best lead actor in a drama in a row, and with good cause. The best show on television only got better in its third season as Cranston’s Walter White dug himself deeper into the dark underworld he never wanted to be a part of. Aaron Paul’s Jesse Pinkman gets out of rehab with a new lease on life – to be “the bad guy.” Dean Norris’s Hank Schrader had a series of violent emotional breakdowns, culminating in an edge-of-your-seat showdown with two of the most brutal characters in recent television history. Anna Gunn’s Skylar White even “broke bad” herself, becoming the most actively deceptive character in the cast. The first two seasons of Breaking Bad certainly had their intense moments, but the bar was truly raised this season. It will be hard to wait a whole year to see the ramifications of the cliffhanger finale. Only time and creator Vince Gilligan will tell if these characters can cope with the decisions they’ve made along the way to breaking bad.

Starscream’s The Space Years

Future, and It Doesn’t Work was one of the most pleasant surprises of 2009. The young New York duo Starscream gave us chiptune prog rock that carried audiences on cascading waves of warbled atmosphere and crashed into the rocky cliffs of crunchy garage drums. The delayed follow-up concept EP The Space Years takes this established formula and runs as far as it can go. Fully expecting their audience to be patiently captivated, Damon Hardjowirogo masterfully builds anticipation with long shoegaze-like threads of squarewave harmonies. The relaxed playfulness is like jazz, juxtaposing well with samples of a frantic preacher lecturing about the necessity of repenting ones sins and worrying not for one’s job or Game Boy (ah, I see what you guys did there). George Stroud’s powerful drumming frees the listener from the tension of the slow climb and announces escape velocity, the point at which Starscream explode through the mesosphere. With The Space Years, Starscream have succeeded in making a musical recording that is both other-worldly and grounded, alien and human, takeoff and landing.

1 – Never Fear Sequelitis!

Usually seeing the number “2″ in a movie title is cause for concern, but Marvel’s movies have shone in their second outings. X-Men 2 (or X2) was by far the best X-Men movie to date, and is still considered by many to be the best superhero movie of all time. Spider-Man 2, Blade 2 and The Incredible Hulk (sequel to 2003′s Hulk) were all arguably the best in their respective film franchises. Free of the necessity or origins and backstories of the first films, these sequels no longer struggled finding their voices (I’m looking at you Spider-Man and Hulk), and had yet to succumb to turns for the ridiculous and laughable (X-Men: The Last Stand and Spider-Man 3).

2 – It Starts With Super Production Art

When it came time to actually block out what the huge action sequences in Iron Man 2 would look like cinematically, director Jon Favreau hired a modern legend to handle to storyboarding duties: Genndy Tartakovsky. Creator of Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack, art director on The Powerpuff Girls and Emmy-award winning director of the Star Wars: Clone Wars animated shorts from 2003, Tartakovsky is the unrivaled master of elegant animated action. On Tartakovsky, Favreau said:

“I really dig his sense of humor and his sense of rhythm, and the way that he acknowledges the same cinematic masters that I really love the work of, like (Akira) Kurosawa and (Sergio) Leone…I feel like I’m really learning a lot from collaborating with this guy.”

3 – …And The Ever-Expanding Universe

It’s no secret that Marvel is milking their properties for all they’re worth these days, but the end results have been pretty damn good ever since Marvel took those projects internal rather than licensing them out to the likes of 20th Century Fox and New Line Cinema. The first Iron Man hinted at the possibilities of a then-rumored Avengers team film. Iron Man 2 drops not-so-subtle hints at the comings of both Captain America and the mighty Thor, both of whom have films scheduled for release next summer with the Avengers movie teaming all of these heroes together the following year. Marvel is already betting on their next three films in this one, and who can blame them with a guaranteed hit on their hands?

Lauded as one of America’s greatest filmmakers and praised as being one of the few with a visual style all his own (him and Wes Anderson. Really, who else is there? Can you tell a Ron Howard film from a Bryan Singer from a Spike Lee just by looking at them?), the man has made a very successful career out of being just the right degree of quirky, existential, and darkly humorous. But major Hollywood films are not made by one man alone, so it makes sense that Tarantino would surround himself with similarly twisted yet fantastic help, right?

Meet Geraldine Brezca, Tarantino’s clapper angel.

Brezca has been on Tarantino’s team since his third (marvelous) film, Jackie Brown. As you certainly already know, the typical clapper will announce the scene and take, typically in the International Radio Operator Alphabet. Geraldine doesn’t play that way, opting instead for words relatable to the scene, cast and crew, making the whole experience just that much warmer. Most clappers would refer to the scene as “Fower Alpha Kilo,” but to Geraldine it is “Four Akira Kurosawa.” “Fife Niner Hotel” becomes “Fifty-Nine Hitler.” “Alpha Six Six Foxtrot,” the scene in Inglourious Basterds in which a black frenchman attempts to burn down a building full of Nazis is redubbed “Au revoir, Sixty-Six Fuckers!”

Does remind me of this marvelous scene from Archer, though:

What a fantastic job Geraldine has. Sit around watching movies get made and come up with crude, vaguely nonsensical codes to announce before each take? How does one get started in this growing industry and where can I sign up?

These posters just scream “kung-fu epic” and are sure to attract such an audience when hung in theaters worldwide. The back-lighting on both characters is a mood-enhancing technique rarely seen outside of Joe Quesada’s Daredevil, the restrained stances of the characters with subtle displays of their powers is utterly electric with potential energy, and the stone temple, wooded mountains and steel warships set fantastic atmosphere, but the part that catches my eye on both is the line “In theaters Summer 2010.” For one, they’re the only areas on either poster where the monochromatic palette is broken – to marvelous eye-catching effect – and while, as a traditional typographic fundamentalist, vertically-oriented type hurts my entire face, dangling beneath the logo and four nation flags allows the text to resemble a hanging banner, likening itself to sumi-e portraiture, or as it lines up with Zuko’s clenched fist, a hidden dagger.

Also interesting is the position of the light source we can only assume is the sun in each image, above Aang’s head (which is already, appropriately, in the clouds) suggesting his naiveté, and below Zuko’s, encircled by his ravenous flames, indicative of his misplaced sense of dominance over all that lays before him.

Most hopeful for a Shyamalan movie is the relatively green cast, with the most famous member being Twilight supporter Jackson Rathbone as Sokka. Character actor Shaun Toub, recently seen in Chuck and Iron Man, fills the role of the kindly Uncle Iroh and The Daily Show‘s Aasif Mandvi steps up his menacing gaze as Commander Zhao, with the only returning performance from the animated series being Dee Bradley Baker as the voice of Aang’s two animal companions, sky bison Appa and lemur Momo. The rest of the cast is expectedly young (it is a Nickelodeon film, after all) with short and unremarkable resumés, which just oozes potential in a project like this. A cast including Zhao and Princess Yue suggests The Last Airbender will simply tell the tale of the animated series’ Book One: Water, leaving the door open for a trilogy, which we all know turn film studios in truffle pigs with dollar signs and merchandising rights lighting up their eyes.

Now we just have to hope it doesn’t suck…

The first two Ultimate Avengers features were an insult to their source material. The Invincible Iron Man was better, but still a convoluted mess, and I’ve been sitting on a shrinkwrapped copy of Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow for over a year. I’d all but given up on the line, but I can’t help being excited for next week’s release of Planet Hulk. For one, this feature is based on quite possibly my favorite superhero story of the past decade. Also, hell, just check out some sweet footage:

First, the trailer shown off at San Diego Comic-Con last summer:

So the basic setup is this: Hulk smash, right? That’s what Hulk do. Hulk’s friends (Iron Man, Dr Strange, Black Bolt, Professor Xavier, Reed Richards and Namor) decide that for the safety of both the Earth and Hulk, it would be best to exile Hulk to an uninhabited planet where he can’t, well, smash anyone. Hulk gets pissed, as Hulk is wont to do, and smashes the ship, veering off-course to an entirely different planet. Getting kind of rad, right? Just a bit? How about this sweet scene of Hulk’s arrival to the strange planet of Sakaar and his not-so-friendly welcoming committee:

(If this video embed doesn’t work for you, click on it to watch on MTV’s site, it’s a bit moody)

This is where Planet Hulk becomes less traditional superhero soap opera and more escapist sci-fi/fantasy. The barbaric planet throws Hulk into gladiatorial battle, wherein we meet a surprisingly deep cast of characters stuck fighting against and beside Hulk for their freedom:

Oh, but that’s only the beginning. Then we get into whether Hulk is the prophesied savior of Sakaar and other non-smashable problems. Ooh, it’s a good fantasy story.

Like I said above, Planet Hulk hits shelves in Blu-Ray and DVD formats next tuesday. I think I may be back on board with Marvel for this one.

It was confirmed back in March that electronic pioneers Daft Punk had signed on to score the film, which meant that at the very least the film’s soundtrack would be worth the consumers’ dollars. At this past weekend’s San Diego Comic-Con, Disney unveiled the first trailer for the film, along with its title:

While there is a noticeable lack of Daft Punk in the trailer for Tron Legacy, there is just about enough fan service to get dorky hearts a-thumping. Hell, the thing already looks like a Daft Punk music video without the music.

I may not be fully aware of what movies are coming out in 2010 (I think I know maybe seven?) but Tron Legacy is totally my number 2 most anticipated film of the year right now, just behind Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and just ahead of Iron Man 2. Man, I’m such a dweeb…

Fun fact, the shot of the guy getting on the motorcycle at 1:23 is right up the block from my office. I’d know that corner of the Puck Building anywhere.

If you’ve ever wondered what Belle & Sebastian would sound like if the drums and guitar were replaced with an orchestra, or what love sounded like without all the sex, or what sex sounded like without all the worry and deceit, God Help The Girl is a good start to finding your answers.