Entertainment Roundup for 2011

Below is my annual round up of books, films, concerts, plays, etc., that I took in during 2011.

Downtown Abbey

This past year, it was television programs—watched mostly online or on DVD, though I did catch a few when they originally aired—that really enthralled me. Especially British ones. These include my belated discovery of my current obsession, the character-driven and heart-breaking Downton Abbey, currently airing its second season on PBS as I write this; Law & Order UK on BBC America, which provides an interesting British spin on the iconic American TV series while remaining addictive and familiar; and the Inbetweeners, another belated discovery, of a series that also originally aired in the U.S. on BBC America but which I watched in its 3-season entirety uncut on YouTube.

Despite its stumbles this past year, Netflix Streaming continued to be a major resource for catching up on television programs and films, providing users like me a conveniently way to quickly check out films and TV shows and mini-series with little risk or effort. That's how I discovered Downton Abbey as well as a few other British TV shows and mini-series like Monday Monday, The Way We Live Now, and Any Human Heart. It also gave me the opportunity to catch foreign language films like the The World, a Chinese film, and French comedies like I Do: How to Get Married and Stay Single and Shall We Kiss. Thanks to the streaming service, I also discovered several enjoyable indie gems like Middle Men and Tenure (both coincidentally starring Luke Wilson), Gigantic, and The Extra Man. (The former two starred Luke Wilson while the latter two featured Paul Dano.) Another highlight was Made in Dagenham, a film I wanted to see in 2010, which I finally rented through Netflix and found to be a delight.

Below is a clip from the recent Inbetweeners feature film. Parental discretion advised!


While there were several mainstream films I enjoyed in 2011, none captured my attention quite like Downton Abbey and the Inbetweeners. But among my favorites were, in no particular order, The Artist, Cedar Rapids, Our Idiot Brother, The Adventures of Tintin, and Captain America: First Avenger. The Artist was great fun due to its novelty and the high bar it set for itself, while Captain America ranked so high because it took me by surprise. In its own way, Captain America is a perfect popcorn movie—really fun and smartly done. I usually like to name what I think is the worst movie I saw for the year and, for me, it's no contest: Mars Needs Moms.

For some reason, in 2010 I didn't seem to have read many books, but this year I picked up the pace again. When you look at the list, you'll see I went through a serious Lincoln phase. Highlights were Team of Rivals and the harrowing yet inspiring Unbroken.

And now without any further ado....

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BOOKS:

Hergé: The Man Who Created Tintin by Pierre Assouline (2/3/11)
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (3/7/11)
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Goodwin Kearns (3/21/11)
Lincoln at Cooper Union by Harold Holzer (4/4/11)
The March by E.L. Doctorow (4/27/11)
Ulysses S. Grant (5/11)
The Hobbit (9/15/11)
Lord of the Rings (10/11)

GRAPHIC NOVELS:

Exit Wounds (1/15/11)
Tintin: The Crab with the Golden Claws (2/4/11)
Scenes from Impending Nuptuals by Adrian Tomine (4/16/11)
Bone (4/27/11)
Smile (8/5/11)

THEATRE:

Dear Edwina, Jr. (6/4/11)
Hairspray

CONCERTS:

Metales 5 - Valley Performing Arts Center (5/5/11)
Vaud and The Villains (9/17/11)
The Taiko Project (9/17/11)
He’s My Brother, She’s My Sister (9/17/11)
4 Lads From Liverpool (12/11/11)

EXHIBITIONS:

TIm Burton @ LACMA (6/19/11)

FILMS/DVDS:

Orson Welles & Me -DVD (1/1/11)
Night Train to Munich - DVD (1/7/11)
Extract - Showtime (1/8/11)
National Lampoon's Van Wilder - Showtime (1/8/11)
Adventureland - Showtime (1/10/11)
The Babysitters - Showtime (1/11/11)
For Your Consideration - Netflix streaming (1/28/11)
Shall We Kiss - Netflix streaming (1/29/11)
Marty -TCM (1/29/11)
Man of the Century (1/29/11)
Seven Years in Tibet (2/8/11)
Cedar Rapids (2/12/11)
I Love You Man - DVD (2/20/11)
Good Night - Netflix (2/23/11)
Last Word - Netflix (2/25/11)
The Extra Man - Netflix (2/26/11)
We Live Again - TCM (3/12/11)
Mars Needs Moms (3/20/11)
The Boys: The Sherman Brothers Story - Netflix (3/23/11)
The Auteur - Netflix (3/24/11)
The World - Netflix (3/27/11)
Any Human Heart - Netflix (4/4/11)
The Way We Live Now - Netflix (4/5/11)
The Wild One - TCM (4/17/11)
Under the Greenwood Tree - Netflix (4/28/11)
I Do: How to Get Married and Stay Single - Netflix (5/23/11)
Gigantic - Netflix (5/23/11)
The Special Relationship (5/26/11)
Kung Fu Panda 2 (5/28/11)
Downton Abbey (5/28/11)
The Inbetweeners, Seasons 1-3 (7/3-15/11)
Made in Dagenham - DVD (7/7/11)
Zookeeper (7/25/11)
The Crowd Roars - TCM (8/9/11)
Captain America (8/13/11)
The Narrow Corner - TCM (8/14/11)
It Happened One Night - TCM (9/3/11)
Our Idiot Brother (9/4/11)
Johnny English (10/23/11)
The Middle Men (10/31/11) - Netflix
Lost in America (11/2/11) - TCM
Green Lantern -DVD (11/6/2011)
Moneyball (11/6/2011)
Monday Monday - Netflix
The Muppet Movie (11/24/11)
The Artist (11/27/11)
Take Me Home Tonight - Netflix (12/10/11)
Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows (12/18/11)
The Adventures of Tintin (12/26/11)
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (12/30/11)
Tenure - Netflix (12/30/11)

REVIEWS: Overcoming the Uncanny Valley

When Robert Zemeckis’s Mars Needs Moms fizzled at the box office, many considered it the death knell for motion capture (mo-cap) movies. Zemeckis was a filmmaker who had particularly embraced mo-cap technology with films like the Polar Express, Beowulf, and A Christmas Carol. However, the poor showing of Mars Needs Moms forced Walt Disney Studios to cancel a planned mo-cap adaptation of Yellow Submarine and its longterm relationship with Zemeckis’s mo-cap production company.

With the release of the Adventures of Tintin, however, Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson have taken a big leap forward with mo-cap and appear to have somewhat overcome many of the problems with the technology.

Actors Jamie Bell and Andy Serkis performing as Tintin
and Captain Haddock in their mo-cap suits

The complaints with mo-cap stem from a hypothesis from robotics and 3D animation known as “the uncanny valley.” The hypothesis postulates that “when human replicas look and act almost, but not perfectly, like actual human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers.” In films like the Polar Express, complaints about the creepiness and “dead eyes” of the characters created aversion among many viewers.

While I’m not a particular proponent of mo-cap, I’ve always said that execution plays as important a role as the medium in determining a film’s success or failure. I saw Mars Needs Moms in the theater and the bottom line was that it was an awful movie with unlikable characters and unappealing art design.

For the most part, the Adventures of Tintin has largely avoided these pitfalls by making Tintin as immersive and integrated a universe as possible. More importantly, the characters in the movie—like the characters on which they’re based—are fairly cartoony, creating some distance from the photorealistic look previous mo-cap films tried to capture. Weta Digital–Jackson’s special effects company which provided the mo-cap technology for Tintin–no doubt also made advances in the technology, particularly in capturing the nuances of facial expression and in the eyes. (As I was viewing the film, I could see that the animators had painstakingly given the characters eyelashes—a tiny detail but one that added to breathing life into the characters.) Ironically, Tintin is perhaps the most photo-realistically rendered human.

In contrast to Mars Needs Mom, Tintin is also a triumph of direction. In Mars, I was always conscious of the actors providing the performance capture. In contrast, for the most part, Spielberg and Jackson clearly sought a more stylized, exaggerated movements, which well suited a film based on a comic-book series featuring well-known iconic characters.

As to the film itself, Tintin is a fun romp that captures the innocence of purity of high adventure without the need to wink at the audience. Spielberg has said that he discovered the character after many in Europe compared the first Indiana Jones movie—Raiders of the Lost Ark—to Tintin. It seems fitting that one of the earliest prototypes for globetrotting adventurers like Indiana Jones has been adapted by Spielberg into a timeless, classic film that is as fun, unironic and uncomplicated as one can find in the modern day world.

Happy Holidays from WCG Comics

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Sorry for the long wait since my last post. Life happens. I plan to get back on track in 2012—especially since there is a new issue of Rob Hanes Adventures in the works! So stay tuned for announcements about issue 3.

Meanwhile, I hope everyone will accept my warmest wishes for a wonderful holiday season and new year!

Above is my WCG Comics holiday greetings and below the holiday greetings card from my family.

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REVIEW: DC’s New 52

As someone who works full time, has a family with children, and tries to use the remainder of my time drawing my own comics, the time I have to spend on reading comics over the last decade or so has dwindled a great deal. While I still buy some comics out of habit, most actually go unread. My comics reading habits these days are all over the place, usually determined by whether I like the art. Only a few titles—like Love and Rockets and Optic Nerve—are on my must-buy/must-read lists. Like a lot of people, I’ve gravitated more towards graphic novels and trade paperback collections of limited series, which require less of a commitment in time and energy.

Some of this waning interest, of course, has also been due to the incredible convoluted continuities of many mainstream super-hero comics. In what has been an acknowledged problem for years, many comics often are part of larger story arcs that sometimes go across several series and titles. For the most part, gone are the days when one could pick up a random mainstream comic-book and get a full-length story. (Which is why my own stories in Rob Hanes Adventures are usually self-contained!)

As anyone who follows mainstream comics know, comics have also become “event” driven, meaning that each year the publishers create an all-encompassing story arc that often involves a comic-book company’s entire stable of characters and can take as much as a year to play out. Ironically, while this has goosed sales to some extent, overall, comics have continued to see a decline in the number of people who read comics. Aside from the fact that many people like me have neither the time nor disposable income to devote to such an extended endeavor, such an approach also has little appeal to casual readers.

Partly in recognition of this, DC Comics earlier this year announced its plans to ambitiously relaunch much of its line, including perennial characters like Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, many of them at the start of the characters’ careers. In some cases, the characters have been tweaked a bit as well, particularly the costume designs.

While there are some fans who decried the idea of change, for the most part the response was favorable, though of course it was hard to judge the success of the changes until the books appeared.

As for myself, I was moderately curious—though I had long ago accepted that I was not the target audience any longer for superhero comics, I nevertheless thought it was a good idea for DC to wipe the slate clean and start fresh. Characters like Superman and Batman, for example—pretty much the first comic-book superheroes—were created in 1939 and 1940. (To be fair, over the years, DC has undertaken a patchwork of approaches to keep the characters up to date and fresh.) Marvel had taken a similar approach in developing its separate “Ultimates” line.

So what’s the verdict? I picked up the first issues of many of the series, including Justice League, Batman, Superman, Detective Comics, Action Comics, and Aquaman. Frankly, none of those first issues made much of an impression on me and I found them a bit stilted.

With the second issues, however, now past the awkward, initial introductory sequences, I found that I enjoyed the stories much more. My favorite to date are Batman, Aquaman and Justice League. The series have not been quite as simplified as one would have liked—for example, Batman and the other characters are obviously new to the scene in Justice League, while in Batman, with the appearance of three of the characters who have donned the Robin costume in the story, it’s clear this is a somewhat more established Batman; and the Robin characters who ranged from the 1940s to the present clearly have now each been Robin for only about a year or two or so before being succeeded by a new Robin. But the bottom line is the stories are entertaining.

I wouldn’t quite say the books recapture the feeling I had when discovering the characters for the first time as an adolescent—we live in an age of media overload and the characters are a too familiar part of the pop culture landscape for that to be possible. But at the same time it’s been a long time since I’ve picked up a mainstream superhero comic-book title and looked forward to the next issue.

How long DC Comics will be actually able to sustain this interest and level of sales is another question. I’m sure that at some point I’ll lose the thread in many if not all of the series and stop reading them altogether again. But it will be interesting to see how long DC can sustain my interest as well as sales, and remain focused on keeping the stories interesting to casual readers. For now, I’ll enjoy the ride.

Up Next from WCG Comics....

I know it’s been awhile since the release of either an update or a new issue of Rob Hanes Adventures from WCG Comics, so I’m pleased to report that the series is now getting back on track!

Issue 13 will feature a brand new tale, “Crime Takes a Holiday.” In the adventure, Rob travels to the French Riviera for a much needed vacation but discovers that crime rarely takes a rest!

Also tentatively on the docket at a later date is a special issue 0 of Rob Hanes Adventures that I hope will serve as a nice re-introduction to the character. Although it’s not a re-boot and doesn’t change any continuity or the basic settings of the story, it will be an attempt to update the back story a bit and re-introduce the character to a new generation of readers. It’s important to note that the series was initially introduced while the Cold War was still in full swing, so this is something that’s a bit overdue.

I’ll release more details about lucky issue 13 and the planned issue 0 as they become available!

Website Updated

I’ve updated the WCG Comics website a bit to add a slideshow of news items and images to make the site a bit more visually interesting—it appears to be all the rage!

REVIEWS: Caniff

Over the past decade, there has been an explosion of upscale art books and deluxe reprint collections devoted to comics and cartoonists, with great care given to the quality and presentation of the projects. These have included full compilations of work like Terry and the Pirates (IDW), the Spirit (DC Archives), Peanuts (Fantagraphics), Dick Tracy (Fantagraphics), as well as high end coffee table books like Scorchy Smith and the Art of Noel Sickles and the first volume of a projected three-part project, Genius Isolated: The Life and Art of Alex Toth, both from IDW.

Milton Caniff, the creator-writer-artist of the groundbreaking Terry and the Pirates and, later, Steve Canyon, has been one of the major beneficiaries of this effort to document the legacies of comics and their creators. Two new additions to the growing Caniff canon are the hardcover oversized coffee table art book Caniff from IDW (360 pages) by Dean Mullaney and a hardcover deluxe collection of Steve Canyon: The Complete Series Volume 1 from Hermes Press (208 pages). Given the attention Caniff has received over the years—including a 952-page biography in 2007 and numerous collections of his work by multiple publishers over the years since the 1980s—one would think that much of this work had been exhausted by now. But these two new projects present extensive work not reprinted before.

Caniff

Though the coffee table book, Caniff, covers well trodden ground, much of it features never before seen material, culled mostly from the Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum where the artist’s papers officially reside. (Caniff was an active and prominent Ohio State alum and essentially started the Library by donating all his art and papers to the institution after his death.) Indeed, author Mullaney concedes that the book grew out of the discovery during the course of routine research that there was a treasure trove of rarely seen material by Caniff that fans deserved to see.

In addition to being an outstanding writer and storyteller, Caniff’s legacy is based on introducing—along with best friend and studio-mate Noel Sickles—a whole new approach to cartooning that relied on an impressionistic use of black and white to achieve a sense of realism never before seen in comics. It led to a whole new school of cartooning that continues to influence artists today, including myself.

As a result, since Caniff is most identified for working in this signature style during the bulk of his career from 1934 until his death in 1984, it’s a real revelation to see the artist’s versatility featured in this book.

This versatility is rooted in the fact that Caniff considered himself a newspaperman first, starting out in the artists’ bullpen of the Columbus Dispatch and, later, the Associated Press, when cartoonists also doubled as draftsmen, photo retouchers, mapmakers, commercial illustrators, etc. At a time when photographers hadn’t yet begun to replace artist on newspaper staffs, newspaper cartoonists like Caniff were journeyman craftsmen, ready to whip out logos, mastheads, crossword puzzles, story illustrations, and the like on a tight deadline.

Caniff’s work in these areas—which include portraitures of all the presidential candidates from the 1932 presidential election, watercolors, ghost drawing, spot illustrations, and even custom designs for military units and air force bombers—are all beautifully displayed and reproduced. Many promotional pieces for his strips and work produced gratis for the U.S. military and military men are also well represented and provide a fuller picture of the artist’s abilities than have been previously seen before. Another revelation of this volume is Caniff's bold color work, particularly in his Sunday strips, which really made the work pop off the page.

Steve Canyon: The Comic Book Series

This handsome hardcover book, Steve Canyon: The Complete Series Volume 1, is the first ever reprinting of some of the licensed comic-book adaptations of the series from the 1950s, originally published by Dell's Four Color Comics series. It needs to be said up front that while Caniff apparently had a hand in the production of the comic-book series, his actual direct involvement was fairly minimal.

That said, as a rule, such comic-book adaptations from the period are more often than not poor quality, but when I first picked up the book to decide whether to buy it, I was pleasantly surprised by the art—while not as sharp as Caniff’s, it was still competently done. This was partly due to Caniff’s personal participation and quality control—though the artist didn’t have the time to draw the comic-book stories himself, he hired William Overgard, who had worked as his assistant and briefly ghosted the strip when Caniff was ill, to draw it. To create some continuity, Caniff apparently inked the face of Canyon himself in the stories. (Overgard went on to work on the comic strip series, Steve Roper and Mike Nomad.)

The stories are relatively straightforward, simplistic action affairs, obviously geared to a juvenile comic-book  audience than the adult newspaper readers Caniff specifically targeted in the syndicated Steve Canyon. The dialogue has none of the panache or style that distinguished the regular strip, nor is the character development anywhere near as sophisticated.

Nevertheless, it’s fun to see this alternative take on the character. Along with the recent DVD release of the Steve Canyon television series, this collection is perhaps more of a curiosity than a serious contribution to Caniff’s legacy that underscores the extent of Caniff’s success and influence in media outside of the comics pages in his heyday.

REVIEW: Captain America: First Avenger

One of Marvel Comics’ goals in launching Marvel Studios was to gain control over the film adaptations of its properties. Up until the launch of the Sam Raimi-directed Spider-Man franchise (which was produced prior to Marvel Studios’ founding), Marvel had a very spotty record going from comics to film. Earlier adaptations of the Fantastic Four (1994) by Roger Corman (which was produced only for business reasons and never intended for release) and Captain America (1990) were barely B-level productions and never received official U.S. releases.

The Iron Man films, Thor, and now Captain America: First Avenger are the fruit of this gamble. They’re films done on Marvel’s terms that have remained faithful to the “Marvel universe” the company has built upon since the early 1960s. Rather than watering down the material to appeal to a mainstream audience, the company has instead embraced the rich history of its characters and storylines and allowed audiences to come to them.

Captain America: First Avenger is a perfect example of this approach. While the film wasn’t quite the “event” film I expected, it’s nevertheless a solidly crafted piece of popcorn entertainment that satisfies. It takes the original Captain America origin (about 8 pages originally, with many layers of continuity added over years) and amps it up with the help of state-of-the-art CGI and special effects. It’s perhaps one of the best examples of a comic-book sensibility brought to life on film.

The film’s heart, of course, is Steve Rogers—the man behind Cap’s mask—who through the wizardry of film magic and a solid performance by Chris Evans goes from 90-pound weakling underdog to a World War II super-soldier hero fighting for democracy and the American way.

As with the other Marvel films, Captain America benefits from solid performances from accomplished character actors who know how to breathe life into their roles like Tommy Lee Jones, Stanley Tucci, and Hugo Weaving (who is terrific as the movie’s bigger-than-life pulp villain, Red Skull). As the lead, Evans believably inhabits his character, portraying Rogers as a scrawny sad sack with dreams and a big heart who, after his transformation into Captain America retains his sense of innocence, his integrity, and his commitment to the little guy. Marvel also has been smart in gambling on accomplished directors with solid resumes who are in need of a hit like Joe Johnston for this film, Thor’s Kenneth Branagh, and Iron Man’s Jon Favreau.

Though Marvel is notorious for not paying top-of-the-scale salaries, audiences benefit from seeing the budget all on screen: The art direction and cinematography in Captain America—from its 1940s futuristic design to the seedy tenements of Depression era New York—is outstanding in its detail, beautifully conveying the era. The seamlessness of the special effects—particularly in superimposing Evans’ head on a smaller body early in the film—is jaw-dropping and thoroughly convincing.

And while there’s more than enough for mainstream audiences to enjoy, fanboys can relish in the in-jokes and nods to Marvel continuity, such as seeing Iron Man Tony Stark’s father playing a leading role in the film as eccentric Howard Hughes-like inventor showman Howard Stark; a nod to the original Captain America uniform; introducing Cap’s sidekick from the comics, Bucky, into the series (the character reportedly is due to return on film, as he did in the comics); and bringing into the movie some of Marvel’s World War II characters, the Howling Commandos—including red-headed derby hat-wearing Dum Dum Dugan—into the film for the fanboys. (Sadly, the Howling Commandos don’t appear with their World War II era leader, Sgt. Nick Fury, who of course has been brought into modern Marvel continuity as a modern-day spymaster, played in the films by Samuel L. Jackson).

At the end of the movie, Marvel inserts an “Easter egg” that has become standard in all its films—in this case, a preview of the Avengers, a superhero team group that culminates what was set up in the preceding Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, and Captain America films and brings these characters (and some new ones) together, in accordance with Marvel continuity.

The success of the preceding films has raised expectations for the Avengers, scheduled for release in 2012. The film will no doubt have a lot of eyes on it, particularly as studios begin thinking of bringing other team books to screen. It will be interesting to see whether “more is more” or, whether instead, more is less”—in other words, will a team series exponentially raise excitement (and box office) for Marvel or will it serve to only dilute the properties? We’ll find out, I guess, in 2012!