It’s the last
Monday of the month, which means two things: 1.) make sure you have enough
money for rent, and 2.) aww fuck it’s another edition of the Annotated Aliens versus Predator: The Story. Sit
back and crack open a bottle of Thunderbird while we take a look at my grade
school stab at the art of adaptation. This month’s chapter takes place minutes
after the last, when the worst security system ever designed shut down the
defences around Weyland-Yutani’s main lab complex on LV-1201.
6/25/2012
6/18/2012
Review - "Big Things Have Small Beginnings"
A lone figure
stands on a dead planet, gazing solemnly at the spacecraft which brought him here,
now flying away. As the mothership soars into the stratosphere, the being—a
tall, hairless biped with chalk-white skin and uncannily human features—removes
his cloak and drinks an oozing, shifting black liquid. In seconds, the compound
brings him to his knees, painfully rending him apart at the molecular level
until the humanoid tumbles down the adjacent waterfall and dissolves among the
rocks below. But from this individual’s agonizing death comes a glimpse of
something new. Decayed DNA strands reanimate, one cell splits into another,
then another. Like seeds cast into the wind, life spreads.
So begins Prometheus, Ridley Scott’s semiprequel
to his 1979 blockbuster—and my all time favourite movie—Alien. I specify “semiprequel” because Scott himself has been
wishy-washy about where it sits in the Alien
continuum. While it’s set in the same fictional universe, it focuses not on
the series’ eponymous monsters but on a species only glimpsed in the original
film. It’s a much grander movie, featuring a more cosmic and existential brand
of horror than that of its darkly sexual proto-slasher progenitor. It’s 2001: A Space Odyssey by way of Alien and John Carpenter’s The Thing, and with a touch of H.P.
Lovecraft to boot; in other words, everything I could ever ask for, give or
take some concerns I have with the finished product.
Labels:
Alien,
Aliens,
AvP,
creepy,
extraterrestrials,
H.P. Lovecraft,
H.R. Giger,
Horror,
Idris Elba,
Michael Fassbender,
movie,
Noomi Rapace,
Prometheus,
review,
Ridley Scott,
Sci-Fi,
space-Cthulhus,
UFOs
6/11/2012
Review - Walt Simonson: Writer, Penciller, Auteur
The other day I
purchased perhaps the heaviest tome that will ever sit upon my bookshelf: a
Marvel Comics omnibus containing the entirety of Walter Simonson’s run on The Mighty Thor. A hardcover with over a
thousand glossy pages, the compendium collects Simonson’s nearly four year run
writing the Mighty Avenger, the bulk of which was also drawn by him (Sal
Buscema pencilled 18 of the 45 collected issues).
With the
exception of a few high profile scribes, Grant Morrison and Brian Michael
Bendis chief among them, it’s rare nowadays to see a single writer dictate the
course of a character and the surrounding universe for so long. And after
reading most of the omnibus—I still have yet to read the final two fifths or
so—I want to see more of these auteur
efforts, because Simonson’s run contains some of the best superhero comics I
have ever read.
Labels:
comics,
Garth Ennis,
Grant Morrison,
Jack Kirby,
Marvel,
Marvel Comics,
review,
Thor,
Walt Simonson
6/04/2012
Analysis - 2x3: The Fall(s) of Harvey Dent
One of my
favourite things about the Batman universe is its malleability. As has been
demonstrated by the Silver Age comics, the 1960s Adam West TV series and the
recent Christopher Nolan movies, Gotham City and its denizens can be modified
to suit any particular tone and theme, all the while maintaining the core
traits of the setting and characters. Bob Haney’s excitable 1970s globetrotter
is as true to the character as Frank Miller’s hardened libertarian crime
fighter. Likewise, the Joker maintains his glee and twisted sense of humour
whether he is harmless (Cesar Romero) or malicious (Heath Ledger).
But there’s no
better example of this thematic pliability than Harvey “Two-Face” Dent, Gotham’s
physically—and psychologically—scarred former district attorney and one of
Batman’s most iconic villains. Two-Face has been depicted in nearly every media
adaptation of Batman, most recently Nolan’s The
Dark Knight, and in each one of those instances the character’s origin and
personality has been changed to fit the themes at play. The following are three
of the best, in chronological order:
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