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what a fucking chump!

― TOMBOT, Friday, 4 May 2007 16:16 (seventeen years ago) link

Lewis Beale, that is

― TOMBOT, Friday, 4 May 2007 16:16 (seventeen years ago) link

ah, I pine for films of Five Easy Piece's comic-book-realism "artistry."

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Friday, 4 May 2007 16:28 (seventeen years ago) link

This was disappointing. Though not because it is some sort of 'sub-literary genre' that is destroying art or whatever. that kind of argument is stupid, and surely we've all grown past that.

― Gukbe, Friday, 4 May 2007 16:40 (seventeen years ago) link

no.

― Dr Morbius, Friday, 4 May 2007 16:41 (seventeen years ago) link

I am seeing this tomorrow and next Saturday as well. I know it will be better than Hellboy at least.

― jel --, Friday, 4 May 2007 16:47 (seventeen years ago) link

Anyone calling anything "sub-literary" really ought to try putting sentences and paragraphs in some kind of order that makes sense.

― onimo, Friday, 4 May 2007 16:52 (seventeen years ago) link

The guy who fucked up cut & pasting is not the one who wrote critique of spiffing up juvenilia for $300 million

― Dr Morbius, Friday, 4 May 2007 16:56 (seventeen years ago) link

JW, yr being ridiculously prosaic, it's clearly not the real "New York" as there was a big Chicago El train running fucking through it in "2." (You know, with the lamentable Jesus shot)

i can't even begin to understand why people would hate that scene.

― stevie, Friday, 4 May 2007 17:00 (seventeen years ago) link

that really is one of the dumbest articles I've ever read.

OMG COMIC BOOK FILMS ARE NOT LIKE THE GODFATHER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Will critics ever stop pining for that ten-year Hollywood Golden Age?

What assurance is there that the $5 million 'adult' film won't be shite? I agree with the idea, but will I have to sit through another Inland Empire? Or In the Cut (random, I know, but I was talking to someone about it earlier)?

Seriously, it's guys like that this that made me flee from my film studies course.

― Gukbe, Friday, 4 May 2007 17:09 (seventeen years ago) link

"real new yorkers"

― Catsupppppppppppppp dude ‫茄蕃‪, Friday, 4 May 2007 17:16 (seventeen years ago) link

will I have to sit through another Inland Empire?

I need to not try here.

― Dr Morbius, Friday, 4 May 2007 17:19 (seventeen years ago) link

I hate it when an article takes a premise I could want to get behind and then fucks it up.

Not that there haven't been some really solid flicks made from picture books -- Batman Begins, the first
Superman and From Hell come immediately to mind -- but there simply isn't anything to match the artistry of films like On the Waterfront, The Godfather and Five Easy Pieces.

Fuck off, Beale. And I say that as someone who hated Batman Begins almost as much as Crash.

― Eric H., Friday, 4 May 2007 17:40 (seventeen years ago) link

(Nathan Lee remains a pretty good writer, though, even as he is clearly losing the battle against his libido.)

― Eric H., Friday, 4 May 2007 17:42 (seventeen years ago) link

yeah, the execution isn't much, esp using BB as "solid."

well, imagine how good it'll get after he loses! Nothing but a Two Drifters-style diet for him.

― Dr Morbius, Friday, 4 May 2007 17:44 (seventeen years ago) link

From Hell is easily in the running for worst recent comic book adaptation, certainly in the bottom five with catwoman, daredevil, superman returns and league of extraordinary gentlemen. Haven't seen Spawn.

Comic book movies can make for extraordinarily execrable examples of the craft, but they can also be pretty fucking awesome, and yes, this is the kind of argument everybody >22y.o. ought to know better than.

― TOMBOT, Friday, 4 May 2007 17:47 (seventeen years ago) link

IF YOU DISLIKE COMIC BOOK MOVIES AS A CONCEPT TO START WITH, STOP WATCHING THEM, READING ABOUT THEM, AND POSTING ABOUT THEM UNLESS YOU ARE PAID TO DO SO.

THIS IS V SIMPLE.

― the schef (adam schefter ha ha), Friday, 4 May 2007 17:50 (seventeen years ago) link

Because comic books are essentially glorified storyboards (lotsa pictures, little dialogue), they're ridiculously easy to visualize as motion pictures.

Has this man even watched a Hitchcock movie?

― Eric H., Friday, 4 May 2007 17:53 (seventeen years ago) link

God, every bullet point in this article doesn't work.

Does anyone actually think the best portrayal of Batman can yield the same depth of character and resonance as Jack Nicholson's Bobby Dupea? If you believe this, turn in your B.A. in Film Studies. Now.

As already alluded to above, most people on the opposing side of his arguement are all "fuck a film studies!"

― Eric H., Friday, 4 May 2007 17:55 (seventeen years ago) link

If Paddy Chayefsky were alive today, he'd probably be forced to adapt Ironman for the movies instead of writing Network.

Or writing irascible, curmudgeonly articles like this one.

― Eric H., Friday, 4 May 2007 17:56 (seventeen years ago) link

Then imagine a world in which their minimal plots, one-dimensional characters and
~~computer-generated graphics~~ third-world settings are the norm.

Get one Cannes slate.

― Eric H., Friday, 4 May 2007 17:57 (seventeen years ago) link

I READ A FILM REVIEW BY A SHIRLL, SHRIEKING FRAUD

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Friday, 4 May 2007 17:59 (seventeen years ago) link

it's best to stay away from stylus

― félix pié, Friday, 4 May 2007 18:00 (seventeen years ago) link

Seriously, the only thing I am less inclined to tolerate than superhero movies are articles that make it easy for those who cherish superhero movies to imagine those who don't as hysterical "why can't every movie cost $5 million like they did in the 1970s?" Andy Rooney types.

(2x-post ... yeah, it probably didn't help that the last time I watched Network, I wanted to slap Paddy instead of give him a retroactive Pulitzer.)

― Eric H., Friday, 4 May 2007 18:01 (seventeen years ago) link

(but at least there were no tragically indecisive radioactive teens in it.)

― Dr Morbius, Friday, 4 May 2007 18:07 (seventeen years ago) link

if Finch was radioactive, he might have done something real when he got mad as hell as opposed to getting shot.

― Gukbe, Friday, 4 May 2007 18:09 (seventeen years ago) link

The part poor William Holden has to resuscitate (which he does) is every bit as non-compelling on paper as Peter Parker.

― Eric H., Friday, 4 May 2007 18:09 (seventeen years ago) link

and Faye Dunaway was in Supergirl!

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Friday, 4 May 2007 18:10 (seventeen years ago) link

Look, I know you're only in this thread to be a gadfly (and I'm only in this thread to watch), but I have to address this:

I should go to Mike White's Year of the Dog this weekend to support Hollywood films for grownups.

Don't do it, man!

― Eric H., Friday, 4 May 2007 18:11 (seventeen years ago) link

Superhero movie.

― Eric H., Friday, 4 May 2007 18:12 (seventeen years ago) link

xpost

yes, I am awaiting a rave by someone I respect for Year of Dog, now.

except -- and this is where we differ, Iceberg Lover -- the diff between the melodrama silliness of Gone With the Wind and Titanic is at least the first is about adults.

Also we didn't hafta experience Network on paper (tho there's another novelization I should give you).

― Dr Morbius, Friday, 4 May 2007 18:14 (seventeen years ago) link

I wish Gadfly was my superhero name.

― Dr Morbius, Friday, 4 May 2007 18:16 (seventeen years ago) link

OMG COMIC BOOK FILMS ARE NOT LIKE THE GODFATHER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Will critics ever stop pining for that ten-year Hollywood Golden Age?

But the thing is, The Godfather is largely episodic, with the second in the series even having flashbacks to a parallel storyline that runs in the past. It even has points within the movie where everything is set up, only to have more rising action to pay off in a climactic scene that was foreshadowed. In other words, it's written very much like an episodic comic story.

― mh, Friday, 4 May 2007 18:17 (seventeen years ago) link

btw, isn't Hamlet about a kid?

― Eric H., Friday, 4 May 2007 18:18 (seventeen years ago) link

I like a lot of things about network but it really is kind of like watching one of those 72 Monologues For Young Actors books from Theater II class adapted for the screen

― TOMBOT, Friday, 4 May 2007 18:19 (seventeen years ago) link

well, that's what happens when you start by writing live TV plays. Rod Serling's movies, tho I like a couple of em, are almost as windy and lecturey as Chayefsky's.

Some scholars think Hamlet could be as old as 40.

― Dr Morbius, Friday, 4 May 2007 18:21 (seventeen years ago) link

Heh, Network is littered with comic book characters/situations, e.g. Sybil the Soothsayer, the Mao Zedong Hour.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Friday, 4 May 2007 18:22 (seventeen years ago) link

Some scholars think Hamlet could be as old as 40.

I'd like to know how old those scholars are.

― Eric H., Friday, 4 May 2007 18:24 (seventeen years ago) link

(spare me the "no one under XX-years-old can be a scholar" bit.)

― Eric H., Friday, 4 May 2007 18:25 (seventeen years ago) link

easy, Glowstickman!

In has been said by many that in the first four acts of the play Hamlet seems to be a young man, a student, and that his acquaintances are also students and youthful associates but that in Act V the impression, based on the remarks of the grave-digger Clown, is that Hamlet is 30 years old. It has been suggested that it may have suited Shakespeare's dramatic purposes to make Hamlet 30, or perhaps he forgot or simply did not care.

― Dr Morbius, Friday, 4 May 2007 18:31 (seventeen years ago) link

A big problem I have with that article is the "Michael Chabon now being forced to write comic book adaptations" bit, because that's what writers have to do. He seems to have completely missed the Adventures of Kavalier and Klay, as Chabon demonstrates an obvious love for the comic book form and the impact it can have on someone.

Instead of bitching, why not celebrate the fact that critically accepted and decent writers are working on these projects to make them better? I think Spider-man 2 is fantastic, and quite an achievement. If he feels differently, that's fine, but don't try to make out that he worked on it as some sort of portent for the end of all films.

I really wish they had brought him back for 3, though. God it really needed him. And an editor. And, and I hate to say this, the Sam Raimi that directed 2. And Alfred Molina. And a lot of things, really.

― Gukbe, Friday, 4 May 2007 18:50 (seventeen years ago) link

I wonder if Chabon wants K&K to be a film, tho.

― Dr Morbius, Friday, 4 May 2007 18:51 (seventeen years ago) link

xpost-And the Escapist comic books... and the McSweeneys adventure tales book with Howard Chaykin illustrations etc etc etc. Chabon obviously loves comics and probably enjoyed more then the paycheck from Spiderman 2, which was an awesome movie.

― dan selzer, Friday, 4 May 2007 18:54 (seventeen years ago) link

I hope not. He should leave it. Though it is the only novel of his I've ever read, and I quite enjoyed the film adaptation of Wonder Boys, so maybe it could be good. maybe. probably not.

xpost

― Gukbe, Friday, 4 May 2007 18:55 (seventeen years ago) link

writing off entire mediums without engaging in their more challenging aspects always = DUDDIEST THING IN THE FUCKING WORLD

From Hell is an awful film. (although to be fair if anyone's gonna complain about the words-to-images ratio in comics they certainly have never read From Hell itself, which is LOADED to the gills with a lot of complex writing/dialogue)

― Shakey Mo Collier, Saturday, 5 May 2007 00:41 (seventeen years ago) link

(or Cerebus - large chunks of which are composed of nothing but text and maybe one image per page)

― Shakey Mo Collier, Saturday, 5 May 2007 00:42 (seventeen years ago) link

From Hell obviously not for adolescents either - no one without a serious interest in history and literature (and mythology) would be able to understand it at all.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Saturday, 5 May 2007 00:43 (seventeen years ago) link

lol the godfather is possibly the worst possible example dude could have chosen, it's based on a totally trashy pop novel of much less literary worth than your average spider-man comic

― s1ocki, Saturday, 5 May 2007 00:49 (seventeen years ago) link

I can't believe that I went to a midnight showing of this and got only 3.5 hours of sleep because of it. So disappointing and so not worth it, sadly.

― ENBB, Saturday, 5 May 2007 00:51 (seventeen years ago) link

the bit that makes me shake my head most is this:

works whose protagonists speak in dialogue balloons...Not only isn't it Shakespeare, it's not even Stephen King.

How is reading a Shakespeare play different from reading a work where the characters speak in dialogue balloons?!

― aaron d.g., Saturday, 5 May 2007 01:00 (seventeen years ago) link

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