2008′s Iron Man was a tremendous superhero movie, likely the most popular in recent history. It kicked off probably the biggest summer for blockbuster comic-book movies to date, followed by The Incredible Hulk, Wanted, Hellboy 2, and The Dark Knight. Tremendous summer of remarkable films all based on comic books. 2010 looks to be a record-breaking summer for comic book movies, though, with Kick-Ass and The Losers already upon us, Iron Man 2 days away, Jonah Hex and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World right around the corner, and gentle nods in the directions of Prince of Persia, Marmaduke and The Last Airbender. Odds are good you already know whether you want to see Iron Man 2, the shimmering shell-head’s sequel that adds star power in the form of Don Cheadle, Scarlett Johansson and Mickey Rourke to the powerful leading couple or Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow. I’m not here to change your mind whether you liked the first film or not, but here are three things you may not have considered or even known about this week’s super-action-blockbuster that may pique your interest:
Continue Reading..
Three Reasons to Be Excited About Iron Man 2
Super Mario Crossover: The Stuff Retro Dreams are Made of
Back in my day, videogames came on cartridges. They were sturdy bricks designed to be thrown in dufflebags for sleepovers. The internet barely existed and it certainly didn’t touch our videogames. There was no such thing as downloadable content, expansion packs, or bug patches, so the game on the cartridge was the entire game, take it or leave it. The finality of the experience created a greater bond between the player and the game than today. If you don’t like how Chun-Li dresses or think Dhalsim is too powerful in Street Fighter IV on your XBox 360, don’t worry, there’s a downloadable update coming soon to give you new costumes and difficulty tweaks. Is Bionic Commando on the NES too hard for you? Well too bad, man up and learn to play the game right, pansy-boy.
15 Enchanting Cartoons of Audrey Hepburn
I learned years ago that, when it comes to collecting sketches and commissioned art from cartoonists, it’s best to have a theme. If you ask for just any old thing they’ll do the same sketch they’ve memorized and done a million times, but if you ask for something specific, something creative, something fun, well then the results are miles better and the artist is often happier as well. One year I asked twenty different artists for sketches of ducks and they were some of the best pieces I’ve ever received.
Jamie S. Rich is in a unique position. As former editor-in-chief of Oni Press – the wildly successful and popular independent comic publisher responsible for Whiteout, Blue Monday and Scott Pilgrim – he has a lot of cartoonist friends who are willing to put that little bit of extra oomph in personalized art. He’s also a big fan of Audrey Hepburn. Ooh, now wouldn’t that make an elegant theme for a sketchbook? As luck would have it, that’s exactly what Jamie asks for, and here are just a few of the pieces he’s received, including wonderful versions by Craig Thompson, Christine Norrie, Joëlle Jones, Dan Krall and Mike Allred.
Trailer Review: Ghost Trick
Innocent people are going to die unless you do something to stop it. The only problem is you can’t remember anything about who you are or how you got here. Oh yeah, you’re also dead. That might be a problem too. You don’t know how that happened either, in case you were wondering.
So begins Ghost Trick, the newest adventure detective game from Shu Takumi, creator of the critically-acclaimed Ace Attorney games. Continue Reading..
Coming Soon: Yo Gabba Gabba! Comics
Perhaps the biggest surprise of this weekend’s C2E2 comic convention in Chicago was critically acclaimed indie publisher Oni Press announcing Yo Gabba Gabba! Story Comic Book Time Vol. 1 (really, nobody cares about vampire X-Men). A full-color 128-page hardcover comics anthology starring Muno, Foofa, Toodee, Brobee, Plex and DJ Lance Rock from the wildly-popular Nickelodeon children’s show, this book is sure to absolutely rock both the all-ages comics and children’s picture book scenes later this year.
Record Review: Love Is All’s Two Thousand And Ten Injuries
Three albums and not much has changed. Love Is All, the Swedish indie-pop quintet, are still cranking out lo-fi three-minute gems that would fit in perfectly on cassette tape compilations of early punk and grunge. Honestly, if they changed their formula all that much I don’t think people would be interested in them. It was the raw honesty of their playful pop that wooed Love Is All a fanbase to begin with. That said, Two Thousand And Ten Injuries does have noticeably different atmosphere from it’s preceding albums. Nowhere near as frantic as A Hundred Things Keep Me Up At Night, the guitars have gone from battling screeches to shimmering chorus plucks and the rat-tat-tat snare drums have made way for deeper tom toms. Indeed, it seems as though Love Is All are going along with the example of Vampire Weekend and Islands, by following Paul Simon to Graceland.
Why the Bloc Party Hiatus is a Very Good Thing
Oh, Bloc Party. It’s been only five years since the entirety of pop culture media were praising the boys from London as the next great saviors of rock and roll. Debut LP Silent Alarm and the singles that surrounded it were entirely deserving of every blog post, magazine interview and New York Times spotlight they received as it remains one of the very best rock albums of the past decade, immediately drawing comparisons to Gang of Four, Joy Division, Blur, The Cure and Franz Ferdinand.
It’s no secret, of course, that Bloc Party’s next two albums, while commercially successful, were largely disappointing. Outside of a few catchy singles, both A Weekend In The City and Intimacy were largely, well, not very good. It wasn’t all that shocking that the band went on hiatus after a month of touring the UK this past October. So what are a bunch of popular young musicians supposed to do when they take a break from working together? Side projects, of course!
Record Review: Fang Island’s Fang Island
As I’ve said for nearly a decade now, I would only attend RISD if my intent was to drop out of form a rock band. Beyond my own petty rivalries with with alumni of the Rhode Island School of Design, it’s hard to ignore the pattern. Talking Heads formed at RISD, as did Les Savy Fav, Lightning Bolt and Black Dice along with the frontmen of A Place To Bury Strangers and Yeasayer. It’s a great school to go to if your aim is to forget about learning in favor of rocking and/or rolling. Now we have Fang Island, the hot new Brooklyn quintet formed at RISD in 2005. Shine on, system of higher education.
Trailer Review: LINKIN PARK 8-BIT REBELLION!
I wish this were a prank, I honestly do. It’s just so amazingly terrible. I still hope that news will break in a day or two that this is all a joke, but it’s been all over the ‘net since it was announced on Tuesday, March 30th.
Linkin Park (the band) (your younger brother probably loved their song “One Step Over” nearly a decade ago) have decided to make a massively multiplayer online iPhone video game. In the process, they are attempting to capitalize on the recent wave of retro-nostalgia (Mega Man 9 & 10, New Super Mario Bros Wii, the chiptune craze, MacGruber) by making the game… ahem… “8-bit.”
It’s so… I can’t… ugh, just watch the trailer:
We All Want To Be Tarantino’s Clapper Angel
Oh, Quentin Tarantino…
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.
