Movies
Wolverine is the best there is … at being delicious
As we’re on an unintentional licensing and merchandising spree, it seems only fitting to cap off the day with perhaps one of the stranger, but certainly most delicious, tie-ins: Red Robin’s Wolverine-themed hamburgers.
Not that Red Robin, although that would be wonderfully bizarre. No, this is the Colorado-based restaurant chain whose name is usually followed by “Yummmmm!“ (seriously, you can’t think “Red Robin” without hearing that in your head). The company has partnered with 20th Century Fox’s The Wolverine to create two gourmet burgers inspired by the film.
Real-world costs of ‘Man of Steel’ battle (and other Super-tidbits)
Warner Bros.’ Man of Steel has grossed $141.3 million domestically since its June 14 premiere, breaking the record for a June opening on its way to a $214.6 million worldwide box office. That’s not bad for four days’ work. Of course, the franchise reboot had an estimated $225 million production budget, plus another $150 million for marketing and distribution, so Zack Snyder & Co. still have a way to go.
Clearly the film has legs, which means plenty of more Superman stories online and in print. Here are just a handful of them (warning: potential spoilers!):
• BuzzFeed turned to Watson Technical Consulting to calculate the real-life toll Man of Steel’s sprawling battle between Superman and General Zod would take on Metropolis — or, in this case, New York City — both in terms of money and human life. The disaster experts paint a grim picture in the days following the fight: 129,000 known dead, more than 250,000 missing (most of whom would’ve also died) and nearly 1 million injured. The strictly physical damage is pegged at $700 million, compared to 9/11′s $55 billion (with a further economic impact of $123 billion). The overall damage would be about $2 trillion.
Watch Hope Larson’s debut short film ‘Bitter Orange’
On June 14, the New Beverly Cinemas played host to the premiere of Bitter Orange, written and directed by acclaimed cartoonist Hope Larson (Chiggers, Mercury, A Wrinkle in Time), and now, just days later, it’s available for viewing online.
Starring Brie Larson (United States of Tara, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World), Brendan Hines (Lie to Me, Scandal) and James Urbaniak (The Venture Bros., The Office), the short is set in the 1920s and follows Myrtle, a career girl who, while in the company of the bootlegger Jack, is forced to choose between a legitimate career and success at any cost.
Alan Moore & Co. turn to Kickstarter to fund short film
“Simple-minded backwaterman” Alan Moore has made an appeal on Kickstarter to fund “His Heavy Heart,” the final installment in a series of short films known as Jimmy’s End. It’s written by Moore, directed by Mitch Jenkins, and produced by Lex Projects.
As the acclaimed comics writer explains in the video (below), the five shorts form the foundation of a planned feature-length film called The Show. Money pledged toward the £45,000 (about $70,678) goal will go toward the completion of “His Heavy Heart”; all additional funds “will go into further development of the existing series and towards the forthcoming feature film.”
Pledge incentives range from a limited-edition movie poster and an exclusive T-shirt to signed copies of Moore’s screenplays and a visit to the set. The campaign, which has raised £3,662 in a matter of hours, ends July 17.
‘Drive’ director adapting ‘Incal’ for big screen
One of the greatest comic series ever may finally make its way to the big screen. However, most people in the United States haven’t even read the book.
Late last month at the annual movie spectacle Festival de Cannes, Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn revealed in an interview with France Inter that he was beginning work on a big-screen adaptation of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Moebius’ epic graphic novel series The Incal.
Debuting in 1981, the comic follows a one-time bodyguard named John DiFool after he comes in possession of a powerful artifact — the Light Incal — which leads to various factions of a galactic empire coming to take it from him. Based in part on the Tarot, the series is space opera but in a way very much unlike Star Wars.
In late 2011 the U.S. arm of Humanoids released a deluxe edition of the first six issues of The Incal, featuring a foreword by Brian Michael Bendis, after a long and tenuous series of previous printings in America. First released here by Marvel’s Epic line, in the past 20 years it’s had printings at DC and the U.K. publishing house SelfMadeHero.
Mondo’s ‘Man of Steel’ prints roll out this week
Ken Taylor regular edition
To mark the premiere of Man of Steel on Friday, Mondo will offer two limited-edition prints (both with variant editions) created by Ken Taylor and Martin Ansin. Taylor’s print and its variant will go on sale at random times on Thursday, so you’ll have to follow the boutique on Twitter to find out when you can get it. The “metal variant” of Ansin’s print will go on sale Friday at a random time.
The regular edition of Ansin’s print, however, will be sold via a timed sale, which is only the second time Mondo has offered this (the first was for last year’s The Dark Knight Rises print from Olly Moss). The poster will be on sale for three days. They will start the sale at 12:01 a.m. Central on Friday, and will be open until 12:01 a.m. on Monday, with no purchasing limits. The number printed will be determined by how many are sold in that amount of time. After that, the edition will be closed, printed and never reprinted again.
Check them out below.
Duncan Jones wants more U.K. comics movies, knows how to get ‘em
Director Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code) once was campaigning pretty hard to helm a Judge Dredd movie, but the producers were already sold on Alex Garland’s script. Jones was rumored at one point or another to be in the running for Man of Steel and The Wolverine, but now he’s working an adaptation of World of Warcraft, which has been the basis for graphic novels from Tokyopop and a comics series from Wildstorm. So he (sorta, tangentially, kind of) is finally getting his wish to make a comic-book adaptation.
He’s been musing on Twitter about the sort of pipe dream that gets fans enthused: The stream of consciousness started this morning with the doubtlessly sarcastic, “When are we finally going to get a Batman reboot?” and “I’m bored of Marvel films. Can’t Kevin Feige move to Archie comics?” This train of thought then came back to Jones’ native United Kingdom, with the joke “I’m in talks with Wayne Rooney to make a Biffa Bacon tv show for HBO.”
The footballer Wayne Rooney does somewhat resemble the comic strip character Biffa Bacon: Bacon and his thuggish family are a recurring feature in the U.K. adult-humor institution Viz. This gag obviously tickled Jones, but also sent him in another direction: What if the U.K.’s film industry started to get as excited about exploiting U.K. comics for its raw material as the United States has been with its comics for the last decade?
How ‘Iron Man 3′ should’ve ended (with a Batman cameo?)
The folks at How It Should Have Ended this week turn their repulsor rays on Marvel’s Iron Man 3, to typically funny — and spoiler-filled — results that pick at some of the frayed threads of the hit film’s plot. Oh, and there’s also a comparison between one of the movie’s story elements and that of Pixar’s The Incredibles that you may not have thought of but now probably won’t be able to forget.
And if that’s not enough, there are a handful of cameos, as you can see from the image above.
Comic adaptation ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’ wins Palme d’Or
The lesbian coming-of-age story Blue is the Warmest Color on Sunday won the 2013 Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, marking the first time a graphic novel adaptation has received the honor. Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s animated Persepolis won the Jury Prize in 2007.
Based on Julie Maroh’s 2010 graphic novel Le Bleu est Une Couleur Chaude, which will be published in the United States in October as Blue Angel, the story follows a 15-year-old girl whose life is turned upside down when she meets a blue-haired art student.
Watch the fan-made trailer for ‘Kingdom Come’
The odds of a Justice League movie ever making it to theaters are probably about even at the moment and, if rumors are to be believed, largely dependent on the box-office performance of Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. Thankfully, however, we won’t have to wait until 2015 or beyond to see Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and Green Lantern together in live-action form.
Director/producer Andrew List has released a low-budget fan trailer for Kingdom Come, based on the acclaimed 1996 miniseries by Alex Ross and Mark Waid. (How low-budget? The project’s indiegogo campaign generated $5,617.) Sure, some of the acting and green-screen work — to say nothing of Superman’s Southern accent — are a bit suspect, but there are a few moments that look as if they were taken right out of the comic. Considering the budget, it’s kind of impressive.
Patton Oswalt’s ‘Star Wars’ pitch brought to life in video
Patton Oswalt’s hilarious eight-minute Star Wars filibuster for Parks and Recreation is already legendary, earning the adoration of nerds everywhere, and even spawning a movie poster. But if you have trouble comprehending his his frenetic vision for a Star Wars/Marvel Universe crossover, don’t worry: animator Isaac Moore has you covered.
Using Oswalt’s own words, and Amy Poehler’s occasional interruptions, Moore brings the pitch to life in appropriately quirky fashion, with a blend of movie stills, comic art, stock photography and lord only knows what else.
Theater hires ‘gunmen’ for ‘Iron Man 3′ publicity stunt
Less than a year after a masked gunman killed 12 people and wounded 58 others at a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises, the management of a Missouri theater paid an actor — or, rather, actors — dressed in tactical gear and carrying fake guns to walk into the multiplex last weekend to promote the opening of Iron Man 3. Needless to say, it wasn’t well-received by everyone, including the police.
Columbia, Missouri’s ABC 17 News reports Jefferson City police responded to a series of 911 calls from moviegoers stating “that a man dressed in all black and body armor and a rifle was walking into Capital 8 Theaters.” However, instead of confronting the active shooter that they expected, Capt. Doug Shoemaker said police arrived to find a publicity stunt orchestrated by the theater.
“Everything was in place, it’s the opening night of a superhero movie, it’s somebody walking in all-dark clothes, everything pointed to bad things about to happen,” he told the news station. “There’s really no good that can come of this.”
‘Man of Steel’ brought Jim Lee to tears
DC Comics Co-Publisher Jim Lee appeared Saturday on CBS New York to promote Free Comic Book Day, but he also used the time to plug Warner Bros.’ upcoming Man of Steel — “It brought me to tears, actually, a couple of times” — and Superman comics, and to inform the anchor that, no, they’re not all drawn by the same artist.
“It seems like they’re all sort of drawn the same way,” the anchor says. “But you actually have different people doing these drawings?”
Still, Lee talked perhaps the most about director Zack Snyder’s franchise reboot, saying, “It’s an amazing reimagining of Superman. There’s stuff in there you’ve never seen in a Superman movie before. The special effects are incredible, but it’s got a lot of heart.”
Dredd fan film ‘Judge Minty’ is now online
After a period of screenings at festivals and conventions, the Judge Dredd fan film Judge Minty has finally been released in full online. Packed with Easter eggs for long-term 2000AD fans, it proves that these days it would be entirely feasible to produce an authentic and faithful version of the futuristic lawman on a small-screen budget. As much as I enjoyed last year’s Dredd 3D, it’s hard not to watch this short and list the things that this production did better. For starters, this budget effort manages to properly get the Lawmaster bike, a street judge’s preferred form of transport, something the Stallone and Urban films got wrong in their different ways.
‘Man of Steel,’ ‘Iron Man 3′ are destroying America, Colbert says
Ever the guardian of American values, Stephen Colbert has cast his scornful gaze on the latest threats to everything wholesome: Man of Steel and Iron Man 3.
On last night’s episode of The Colbert Report, the talk-show host took on the Warner Bros. franchise reboot first for casting English actor Henry Cavill as the embodiment of truth, justice and the American way, and then for its liberal agenda. Showing a clip in which Superman explains to Lois (Amy Adams) that on his world, his “S” symbol means “hope,” Colbert rages, “They’re saying Superman is Obama! Think about it: They both rise from Midwestern obscurity, become the most powerful man in the world, and, if I’m not mistaken, Krypton is the capital of Kenya!”
His “big problem” with Iron Man 3 is that Marvel turned to China for financing, resulting in a special cut of the film, featuring scenes with Chinese actors, product placement and an alteration of the villain’s name from the Mandarin to “Man Daren.”
“Why is Iron Man fighting the husband from Bewitched?” Colbert asks.
