July | 2014 | the m0vie blog

Non-Review Review: Deliver Us From Evil

Posted on July 9, 2014 by Darren

Deliver Us From Evil is a film where ambition seems to outpace ability. A wonderfully surreal blend of cop action movie with exorcism horror, the movie manages to score a few clever juxtapositions – even if it never seems to decide whether it’s gloweringly serious or wryly ironic. While Deliver Us From Evil never finds the right balance of po-faced gravitas and witty self-awareness, it is a surprisingly enjoyable ride.

After all, it is very hard to hate a film where a demonic presence seeks to establish itself upon the world using the music of The Doors as a recurring motif.

The writing’s on the wall…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: church, cop film, deliver us from evil, demons, eric bana, exorcism, film, horror, joel mchale, Movie, non-review review, review, Scott Derrickson | 4 Comments »

Dan Slott, Ty Templeton and Rick Burchett’s Run on The Batman Adventures (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on July 9, 2014 by Darren

23rd July is Batman Day, celebrating the character’s 75th anniversary. To celebrate, this July we’re taking a look at some new and classic Batman (and Batman related) stories. Check back daily for the latest review.

More than two decades after its original broadcast, Batman: The Animated Series remains one of the most insightful and most elegant distillations of the Batman mythos. While the show was on the air, DC published a variety of tie-in comic books featuring a variety of talent. Some of these count among the best Batman stories of the nineties, and it is a shame that DC has not done more work to keep these in print.

Indeed, it is a surprise that DC has never thought to produce a suitably deluxe or high-profile collected edition of the work that Mark Miller did on the tie-in to Superman: The Animated Series. However, it is worth noting that DC did make a nice gesture by offering the first issue of The Batman Adventures as their free comic book day issue in 2003. It is much more appealing free comic book day than a collection of promotions or previews.

Batman. In a nutshell.

The Batman Adventures was a tie-in comic published within the animated continuity while the animated Justice League was still on the air. However, it was written after the end of The New Batman Adventures. As a result, it had a lot more freedom than the comic books that had been published in tandem with the animated series. The Batman Adventures was no longer a supplement to a television show set in Gotham, it was the only continuing glimpse at this version of Gotham.

The Batman Adventures was a wonderful inclusive comic book – it was appropriate for children, it was accessible to people with only a casual familiarity with the world of Batman. In many respects, it was the perfect “free comic book day” comic. A light, fun read with a clever take on Batman and his world. The Batman Adventures is a fantastic little book that ended far too soon – a demonstration that comics don’t need to be “adult” or “mature” in order to be smart or fun.

Deadshot is dead to the world…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: all-ages, batman, batman adventures, batman: the animated series, bruce timm, continuity, Dan Slott, Harley Quinn, joker, Poison Ivy, the new batman adventures, ty templeton | 5 Comments »

Peter Milligan’s Run on Detective Comics (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on July 8, 2014 by Darren

Peter Milligan’s run on Detective Comics was cut unfortunately short. After writing six issues of Detective Comics, the writer felt a little over-stretched, and so decided to concentrate on more personal projects. While that’s entirely understandable, it’s also a little unfortunate. Milligan’s work on Batman is rather underrated and often overlooked. Grant Morrison’s decision to build some of his extended Batman run off Milligan’s Dark Knight, Dark City helped bring some exposure to Milligan’s work on the character.

Despite the brevity of his run, Milligan is incredibly influential when it comes to the character of Batman. His work prefigures a great deal of the nineties. The way that Milligan seems to play Detective Comics as an existential horror story feels like it sets the stage for the extended collaboration between Doug Moench and Kelley Jones on the main Batman book during the mid-nineties. Although he didn’t stay to see the idea through, Milligan did play a (very) small part in the development of Knightfall.

Hanging on in there…

Even outside of the general mood of Milligan’s work on the title, and demonstrating that a Batman comic could work as a horror story, even Milligan’s individual stories are influential. Dark Knight, Dark City is major influence on Grant Morrison’s work on the character. Perchance to Dream on Batman: The Animated Series seems to owe a debt to Milligan’s Identity Crisis, imagining a version of Bruce Wayne who is not Batman. (Something Morrison revisited during Final Crisis.)

However, perhaps Milligan is most influential in his portrayal of Gotham itself, offering us a damaged Batman protecting a haunted Gotham.

Knight clubbing…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: batman, bruce wayne, detective comics, existential horror, gotham, gotham city, haunted, horror, identity crisis, Jim Aparo, Knightfall, stone tape, the hungry grass | 4 Comments »

Scott Snyder & Greg Capullo’s Run on Batman – The Court of Owls, Night of the Owls & The City of Owls (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on July 7, 2014 by Darren

The “new 52” was a rather polarising experiment.

Claiming to restart their entire universe from scratch after the events of Flashpoint, DC comics claimed the initiative would make comic books more accessible to the masses. Without decades of continuity to block access, new readers would be more likely to try to get into these sorts of comics. The decision to effectively start from scratch has been controversial – arguably compounded by the fact that writers like Geoff Johns or Grant Morrison were allowed to carry their work across the continuity reboot.

Swinging into action…

The team of Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo are among the longest serving of the “new 52” creators. The pair have remained on the flagship Batman book for three years, longer than the vast majority of creators recruited to help relaunch the DC universe back in September 2011. There’s a wonderful consistency and enthusiasm to their work, and it seems like the two have a very clear vision of where they want to take Batman, one of the characters with the most complex relationship to the re-launch.

In many ways, The Court of Owls can be read as a meta-commentary on Batman’s position in the wake of Flashpoint, reflecting on the awkward relationship between the potential for novelty and the demand for familiarity.

Everything burns…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: btamn, continuity, court of owls, dc comics, Greg Capullo, lincoln march, New 52, owlman, owls, The Dark Knight, thomas wayne, thomas wayne jr. | 7 Comments »

Star Trek – Debt of Honour (Review)

Posted on July 4, 2014 by Darren

This June, we’re taking a look at some classic Star Trek movie tie-ins and other interesting objects. Check back daily for the latest reviews and retrospectives.

By all accounts, Debt of Honour should be an unqualified success.

It’s a prestige graphic novel from DC comics, produced around the twenty-fifth anniversary of Star Trek and the release of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. It is written by celebrated comic book scribe Chris Claremont, fresh off his career-defining stint on Uncanny X-Men. An avowed Star Trek fan and comic book veteran, this should be in his wheel house. The art is provided by Adam Hughes, one of the most celebrated and respected artists of his time.

Talk about kicking off a comic…

By any measure, Debt of Honour should count as some sort of hallmark for DC Comics’ Star Trek tie-ins. Unfortunately, that isn’t quite the case. A rather muddled storyline that is hopelessly devoted to Star Trek continuity while awkward interfacing with it, Debt of Honour is just packed a little too tight. Charting a story from the earliest days of Kirk’s career to the aftermath of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Claremont bites off more than he can chew.

Over the course of Debt of Honour, Claremont introduces a vague alien threat that has apparently been haunting Kirk for his entire career, a new arch-foe or love interest for Kirk, and even a supporting role for Kor. Along the way, he packs in cameos and shout-outs to various parts of Star Trek lore. He even explains why Klingons suddenly had ridges around the time of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Ultimately, Debt of Honour is ambitious, but a little over-stuffed and quite over-cooked.

Warp speed ahead!

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Filed under: Comics, The Original Series | Tagged: adam hughes, chris claremont, continuity, dc comics, debt of honour, kirk, klingon foreheads, klingons, kor, Movies, obsession, romulans, star trek, the doomsday machine, the ultimate computer | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Transformers 4 – Age of Extinction

Posted on July 3, 2014 by Darren

Transformers: Age of Extinction is not a movie. It is a pneumatic drill. It is sustained bombardment. It is an attempt to force the audience into submission by bounding them. There isn’t a moment of the film where Michael Bay allows silence or mood. Even the establishing shots are offered through swooping camera shots – up, down, in, out. There’s no sense of place or time or character. It’s an extended music video, set to the percussion of cannon fire.

A Prime time?

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: film, Hasbro, mark wahlberg, michael bay, non-review review, review, transformer, transformers | 16 Comments »

Star Trek – The 25th Anniversary (Review)

Posted on July 3, 2014 by Darren

This June, we’re taking a look at some classic Star Trek movie tie-ins. Check back daily for the latest reviews and retrospectives.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was released quite close to the twenty-fifth anniversary of Star Trek. With Star Trek: The Next Generation at the height of its popularity, the franchise was able to mark the occasion with a variety of celebrations. There were comic books and prose books celebrating the occasion. Both Spock and Scotty appeared on The Next Generation around the time of the anniversary.

Perhaps the most obvious example was the release of Star Trek: The 25th Anniversary by Interplay. While it was not the first video game to be based on the Star Trek franchise, it was the first high profile release. It set the tone for commercial Star Trek video games, remaining one of the best-selling Star Trek video games ever produced. It paved the way for everything from Bridge Commander to A Final Unity to Elite Force.

Ship shape…

Released across multiple platforms and featuring seven episodic adventures structured like episodes of the classic television show, The 25th Anniversary set a dramatic and effective precedent for Star Trek video gaming. The CD-ROM edition of the game took things even further, featuring voice recordings of the show’s primary cast to help lend a sense of continuity and credibility to events. The 25th Anniversary is littered with easter eggs and in-jokes, and it’s constructed with the utmost love and affection.

However, perhaps what is most interesting about The 25th Anniversary is the way that it plays into all these established Star Trek clichés and tropes, but with a rather sophisticated outlook. It’s a wonderful example of how the original Star Trek show never stopped reinventing itself, only really reaching a truly idealised form long after it had been off the air.

Beam me up, Kyle!

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Harry Mudd, klingons, religion, romulans, star trek, Star Trek: The 25th Anniversary, video games | 5 Comments »

Star Trek (DC Comics, 1989) #35-40 – Tests of Courage/The Tabukan Syndrome (Review)

Posted on July 2, 2014 by Darren

This June, we’re taking a look at some classic Star Trek movie tie-ins and other interesting objects. Check back daily for the latest reviews and retrospectives.

Captain Hikaru Sulu occupies a very special place in Star Trek lore. Given the amount of spin-off material that Sulu’s command of the Excelsior has generated, Sulu often seems like the Star Trek spin-off that never quite materialised. The idea of Sulu commanding the Excelsior has inspired novels and comics and audio books, and was even featured in Flashback, one of the episodes produced to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the franchise.

While Sulu’s command of the Excelsior is open-ended, it is interesting to consider the various origin stories that might apply. As with Khan Noonien Singh, there are multiple tie-in stories that cover the same ground. Published in late 2007, the novel Forged in Fire, for example, offers one account of Sulu taking command of the Excelsior – assuming command from Captain Styles during a high-pressure diplomatic crisis. However, this was not the first time that the story had been told.

Crossing swords…

A year following the release of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, author Howard Weinstein wrote Tests of Courage. A six-issue arc set during the earliest days of Sulu’s command, Weinstein had originally hoped to collaborate with George Takei on the comic. Unfortunately, the two could not work out their schedules, forcing Weinstein to write the comic without Takei’s input. However, Takei did provide a glowing and enthusiastic foreword for the collected edition of the comic published two years later.

Tests of Courage is a fantastic piece of work, a suitably epic Star Trek comic that tells a suitably epic story – one with breadth and scope and drama and conflict that demonstrates just what a wonderful storyteller Howard Weinstein is.

Ships of the line…

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Filed under: Comics, The Original Series | Tagged: dc comics, excelsior, howard weinstein, star trek, star trek vi: the undiscovered country, Sulu, tests of courage, the tabukan syndrome | Leave a comment »

Star Trek – The Fearful Summons by Denny Martin Flinn (Review)

Posted on July 1, 2014 by Darren

This June, we’re taking a look at some classic Star Trek movie tie-ins. Check back daily for the latest reviews and retrospectives.

One of the great things about a franchise as expansive and as well-documented as Star Trek is that no idea is even completely lost to history. The franchise is sprawling enough that episodes and films inevitably end up lost to history. Scripts are written and re-written, with ideas changing dramatically from original conception through to the final released version. Even Star Trek: Phase II is well accounted for, affording fans a glimpse at how things might have gone for the franchise.

It’s interesting to imagine the possibilities that exist at given moment for the franchise – how radical things might be now had a particular event gone a different direction. Imagine Bryan Fuller and Bryan Singer bringing Star Trek back to television with Angela Bassett in the big chair. Or Spock on the grassy knoll. Or Oscar nominee Geneviève Bujold as Janeway. Or a first season of Star Trek: Enterprise set primarily on Earth during the development of the warp five drive.

So much of the franchise is discussed and analysed that ideas like this tend to bubble through. Occasionally, the franchise allows an echo of what might have been to break through. Star Trek: The Next Generation adapted two aborted scripts from Star Trek: Phase II into The Child and Devil’s Due. Harlan Ellison’s original script for The City on the Edge of Forever is being adapted into a comic book. That is to say nothing of writers like D.C. Fontana and David Gerrold working with fan productions.

However, Denny Martin Flinn’s novel, The Fearful Summons, is a particularly interesting glimpse at what might have been. It’s essentially a novel based around his original idea for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. It’s a rather bizarre and occasionally awkward glimpse at what might have been for the franchise.