ok, so I got a little *too* into my character there...

At class tonight, I was still having trouble with getting a grasp on my character (Tom in The Glass Menagerie) apologizing to his overbearing mother. I did everything I could to prepare myself for the scene tonight, reading the previous fight out loud, doing jumping jacks, until I my blood was pumping and my heart was pounding and I was nearly shivering with the intensity and tension the scene required. So it was in this state that my teacher Kate stopped the scene and she and I had the following discussion:

KATE: Tom, why are you apologizing?
ME: Because... my sister Laura asked me to.
KATE: But do you want to?
ME: No... but...
KATE: Then why are you?
ME: Because it's in the... I mean... I... don't know...
KATE: What are you apologizing for?
ME: The fight we had. The things I said to her.
KATE: Do you really feel sorry for saying those things?
ME: No.
KATE: Do you think she really is a babbling ugly old witch?
ME: Yes!
KATE: Are you really going to just give up to her?!
ME: Hell no!
KATE: Do you think that bitch deserves an apology?!
ME: Fuck no!
KATE: FUCK HER!
ME: FUCK HER UP HER STUPID ASS!
*entire class erupts into laughter*
KATE:... okay, you might not want to talk about doing that to your mother...


I jus'... got a little too into character for a moment there...

I want a fucking costume

I kept hearing that the DAREDEVIL Director's Cut was a far superior film to the original. I became really interested in seeing it, but since not even Netflix seemed to carry it, I finally splurged and bought the fucking thing. As I sat down to watch it with spacechild, I started to worry if I hadn't just wasted twelve bucks. After all, this was DAREDEVIL, generally considered one of the worst of the modern superhero movies.

It is fucking amazing with 30 added minutes can do for a film.

Ok, maybe not that amazing. But still, the difference is remarkable. This version of DD is great. Really great. Flawed, yes, but so was the first SPIDER-MAN. God, I love SPIDEY 1, but that movie is flawed like crazy, and the flaws bug me more and more each time I see it! The DD Director's Cut (DDDC, as I'll call it from now on) was also still flawed, but with the new stuff in there... honestly, I think, pound for pound... it's easily as good as SPIDER-MAN. If not better.

And I can see why they cut it the way they did. The studio clearly wanted another SPIDER-MAN. The version that hit the screen was a hollow, trite, sometimes fun action movie with two-dimensional characters and a standard love story subplot. Plus, Affleck.

The DDDC, however... is an episode of "Law and Order," with superpowers.

The majority of the re-integrated scenes is a subplot of Matt and Foggy representing a petty criminal played by Coolio, an investigation which they soon discover has greater ties to the Kingpin. These scenes are great, because most of them are just quiet character moments. The bits of interaction between Matt and Foggy are some of the most genuine parts of the whole film, a lot more revealing and insightful to the internal struggle of Matt than, say, the "I'm not the bad guy" scene.

Speaking of that scene, which is easily the worst scene in either version of the movie, many of the flaws are still here. Like the playground fight, which would have been great, if, y'know, it weren't taking place on a frickin' playground. And the pop soundtrack, although much less than I remembered, and I'd forgotten how much nicer the original, non-studio-souped-up version of Evanescence's "My Immortal" was; that was used very well.

And honestly, I found the entire origin sequence jarring as hell. It's riddled with cliche narration and would have been much, much better handled if they did it without narration. Because they could have! "Show, don't tell," right? People easily could have figured everything out without Omnipresent Affleck guiding them through. Even with the stiff child actor, it would have been much better that way. With a few notable exceptions, voice-overs are a big no-no in movies.

But you know what's not in the Director's Cut? The love story. At least, not the one in the theatrical release. In that version, when Matt and Elektra are on the rooftop in the rain and he hears the sounds of people in trouble, he starts to run out on the romantic moment. She stops him, and in a very (and kinda refreshingly) un-superheroic way, he stays with her. Then they have a very by-the-numbers PG-13 lovemaking scene, right down to the camera panning to the fireplace fadeout!

But the DDDC? He does leave her. He leaves her standing alone on the rooftop in the rain while he goes to beat the crap out of criminals. No sex scene, none of that crap. It's a much more minimalistic love story, and thank god for that. As a romantic, I long for the day when people can write covincing, human love stories in movies like these. Again, SPIDER-MAN? *shudder*

And let's look at the cast themselves:
--Affleck? Damn it, I like him in the role. Sure, he's not brilliant, but nor is he at all weak. He's a very solid choice, and the extra scenes with Foggy really convince you of that, much more than when he's in costume. Which, in the DDDC, is very, very little of the time. DD appears for maybe a total of ten, twenty minutes of the film. It's a Matt-centric film.

--Jennifer Garner as Elektra isn't bad at all, she's just not great. She certainly doesn't detract from the film whenever she's on screen (kinda like Kirsten Dunst), although it is still annoying how very not-Greek she looks. Still, gotta love a woman who does her own stunts.

--Colin Farrell clearly has a total blast in this role, and the enthusiasm is infectious. Total scene-stealer, god bless 'im. Still, I really do wish Kingpin would have given Bullseye the "fucking costume" he demanded.

--Michael Clarke Duncan as the Kingpin is not a bad choice at all. I mean, can anyone think of better? Who else is physically built like that but can also act? No, the problem is that Duncan was, as Danny pointed out, too damn smug throughout the film. Wilson Fisk doesn't grin and chuckle evilly. He's stone-cold hardcore cruel and serious. The one scene that Duncan nailed was the one where Fisk is preparing for Daredevil to show up and fight, where he says, "I was raised in the Bronx, Wesley. This is something you wouldn't understand." Pure Fisk, right there. He shoulda been like that the whole time.

--Leland Orser as Wesley and Jon Favreau as Foggy are perfect. I mean, you couldn't have gotten a better person to play the nerdy, weaselly WASP blond Smithers than Leland fucking Orser. All he had to do was show up on camera to nail the role. And Favs' Foggy is this movie's equivalent of J.K. Simmons playing J. Jonah Jameson. Nuff said.

--David Keith as Matt's Dad. He's good, but he's no Keith David.

--Ellen Pompeo from GREY'S ANATOMY was Karen Page for three seconds. I don't watch the show, so I couldn't say if she would be good for the role in a possible sequel. Danny thinks so, but kali921 strongly disagrees.

--Coolio was a tour de force powerhouse of... oh, who am I kidding, he was fucking Coolio.

( And for the comic fans, Danny and I present: The DAREDEVIL Director's Cut Drinking Game! )

Really, comic fans, if you ever get the chance to check this out, I strongly suggest you do. Right around the Elektra/Bullseye fight (one of the very best moments and even more brutal in the DDDC), I told Danny that I was glad I bought this, and he said, "Hell, I'm thinking about buying it!" It's only a shame that there'll never be a sequel to iron out the kinks the way SPIDER-MAN and X-MEN did. At least now I feel better about writer/director Mark Steven Johnson's involvement in GHOST RIDER and the upcoming PREACHER series for HBO.

2 Things of Utter and Complete Awesomeness

First of all, everyone with even a slight interest in movies and fans of SOUTH PARK need to check out YOUR STUDIO AND YOU. No, I mean, seriously. Go now.

Honestly, the less you know about it just watching it, the more delightful and surprising it is. But if you still are thinking about not watching it, let me explain why this is awesome:

The short version, according to the wikipedia article, explains as such: Your Studio and You is a comedy short film created in 1996 by Matt Stone and Trey Parker and commissioned by comedic filmmaker David Zucker. It was to be played at a party Seagram threw for its employees acquired as a result of its Universal Studios take-over. It parodies the style of 1950s educational films such as Duck and Cover, while poking fun at Universal and its talent. It was shot in the Universal Studios backlot, and it runs approximately fourteen minutes.

Upon commissioning the duo to make this film, David Zucker failed to mention that there was no script, so everything was written by Parker and Stone less than an hour before it was shot. The two were up for six and a half days straight filming, the longest they had ever gone without sleeping.

The film is notable in that it was Stone and Parker's first Hollywood gig. Parker has said that "you could probably make a feature film out of the experience of making that movie because it was just two dudes from college suddenly directing Steven Spielberg." This film has still seen no public release as it was intended to be strictly an internal film (indeed, its creators were not even allowed a copy), but copies of the film have surfaced on the internet. Ifilm.com had the video on its site for a limited time. The video was promoted on the site in ad banners. These advertisements included the date that ifilm.com would stop hosting the video.

So yeah. Seriously. Go watch now.






So there's this blog called Project Rooftop, which invites artists to redesign superhero costumes. It's a neat blog; the ideas and designs run the gamut of awesome to neat-but-unnecessary to lame, but it's always interesting (my favorite still might be Fire and Ice).

Anyhoo, they held a contest for this past Halloween for people actually doing their own redesign of a superhero costume. You send in photos of you or whoever in costume and the winner gets their design drawn by one of the site's head artists, or something.

Well, they finally released the winning results today!

bloo_mountain, babe? We rock. We utterly, totally rock. Too bad we couldn't have a drawing of us together, but hey, fuck yes nonetheless.

Although, I have to say, the winning Nightcrawler entry seems a little... bland and lazy to me (says the guy who forgot to pull up his sagging cummerbund and tighten my frickin' crevat). But that Green Lantern that beat us is awesome. I really, really dig the hell outta that. I wouldn't even mind seeing that in the comics, or a spiffier version for a GL film. I mean, so long as it's Hal, of course.

So yeah. Rawk. Bloo, one way or another, we have GOT to find an excuse to dress up like this again and work out the kinks.

Ademmenmnumnunmn to the previous post

I'm giving this a whole seperate LJ post, just to make absolutely certain that folks check it out. I found this absolutely amazing article on the making of Trey Parker and Matt Stone's YOUR STUDIO AND YOU.

Wow. Just wow. These guys are on my short list of all time heroes.

So yeah. Go watch. Seriously.

for dark things cannot stand the light

Martin 'Marty' Nodell, creator of the Green Lantern, passed away at 91 years old.

I was just thinking about him the other day. I went to my very first convention about ten years ago when I went to Chicago ComicCon (before it became Wizard World), and had the pleasure of meeting Marty and his wife. Virtually every big convention I'd gone to since, Marty was there.

Every time I saw him, I always thought it might be my last. He was always so frail, very much showing his age. Yet every big convention that rolled around, he was always there, still drawing and selling drawings for the fans. I still have a drawing he did in green markers of Alan Scott's power battery. If my scanner worked right now, I'd show you. It's simple, just a quickie, but wild and impressionistic, the lantern radiating its supernatural power.

The last time I saw him was in passing at Baltimore Comicon last fall. As usual, he was usually off back in Artist's Alley. The big DC table is reserved for today's talent, after all. But there was no mistaking him. Every person there, professional and geek, knew Marty Nodell and held him highest respect.

A great man. In brightest day and blackest night.