Culture

I saw Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow again today, and my adoration of Polly Perkins is confirmed. And here’s why. (Spoilers, of course.) First and foremost, she is a woman who stands on her own two feet. Her career is important to her and by all evidence she’s pretty good at it. On second viewing, the triangle created by the skills of Polly, Dex, and Joe is fairly obvious: Polly notices, Dex analyzes, and Joe acts. Time and time again, Polly’s the one who notices things first. She makes contact with Doctor Jennings. She finds the scrap of map that Dex left behind. She figures out that the staff is important. She realizes the purpose of the rocketship. ...

It occurred to me this weekend, while I was contemplating buying a dozen Powers graphic novels, that we’re probably not more than five years away from solving the comics life span conundrum. (Namely, the vast mass of the history of comics is not available for reading; you can’t go back and check out Grant Morrison’s early Marvel Universe work, for example.) But let’s say we live in a world in which all comic book pages exist in digital form, which is a world we may well live in already if that’s a useful step in the printing process. So DC puts up a web page, which allows you to select a comic book title and a range of issues within that title. Click “Buy” and the pages of those issues are assembled into a single file and sent off to the print on demand printer. ...

The extended edition Return of the King DVDs will include (original): 2 disc 250 minute movie cut Commentary by the director and writers Commentary by the design team Commentary by the production team Commentary by the cast (with split personality dialogue between Gollum and Smeagol) Tolkien documentary From Book to Script documentary Designing Middle-Earth documentary Big-atures documentary (?) 2 WETA documentaries Costume design documentary Horse Lords documentary Cameras in Middle-Earth documentary Documentary on completing the trilogy Music documentary Soundscapes documentary 2 documentaries about the end of it all Cameron Duncan documentary Two Cameron Duncan short films, “DFK6498” and “ Strike Zone” Mumakil battle multi-angle feature Abandoned concept: Aragorn battles Sauron feature Photo galleries (2,123+ images) Tracing the Journeys of the Fellowship map feature New Zealand as Middle-Earth map feature That’s a hunka hunka burning DVD. Via Twitch (original).

Anyone know what happened to the blog known as “Frank Booth”? I was really digging his movie writing and then poof up and vanish.

“We’re not Oingo Boingo, but it’s a dead man’s party.” This is a pain for some, because it’s Flash, but here’s what you do: go to the Dead and Breakfast official site (original). Click on the poster. Blah blah lengthy Flash intro which you can skip some of. Stick with it. Eventually it comes through with a menu. Select “Music”. Woo hah! Hit “comin to kill ya.” That’s what I call a country/rap splatterpunk groove, baby.

Criminal, the remake of Nine Queens with John C. Reilly, Diego Luna, and Maggie Gyllenhaal; Ju-on, one of the best Japanese horror movies of recent years; Shaun of the Dead, zombie comedy; Bright Young Things, Stephen Fry doing Evelyn Waugh; and of course the three Boston Film Festival flicks I want to see this weekend. Kontroll is getting mixed (original) reviews (original) from Toronto, but who doesn’t like “ a cute girl in a bear costume (original)?” This is what I get for, um… deliberately rekindling my enjoyment of movies.

Jandek On Corwood, 9:30 PM, Coolidge Corner Theater. More here.

If you want to see the Sin City footage shown at Comicon, you can. It’s being filmed in digital on digital sets, and the trailer is really oriented towards demonstrating how well Robert Rodriguez is capturing the look of the comic book. (Answer: quite well.)

The Pixies cover Warren Zevon: Take a listen (original). (Via Jim Henley (original), who will also point you at the tribute album.)

On the Kill Bill: Volume 2 DVD, there’s a deleted scene — Bill throws down with Michael Jai White. The scene was intended to show how bad-ass Bill was, but Tarantino decided that it wasn’t really necessary. He was right, but it is a true pleasure to watch anyhow.