neil gaiman | the m0vie blog

Doctor Who: The Rebel Flesh (Review)

Posted on May 21, 2011 by Darren

I love Matthew Graham. After all, the writer who gave us Life on Mars is surely something of a British national treasure. however, his track record on Doctor Who seems just a little bit spottier, with his previous contribution being the somewhat… poorly received Fear Her way back at the end of the second season. So, perhaps giving Graham a two-parter, especially the two-parter directly before the cliffhanger before the break in the season might have seemed like a bit of a gambit. Fortunately, The Rebel Flesh is a much stronger entry than Fear Her, even if it’s not quite as spectacular as last week’s episode.

Flesh and bone?

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: bbc, cloning, doctor, doctor who, horror, Hungry Earth, life on mars, List of Doctor Who serials, matthew graham, neil gaiman, review, rory williams, sci-fi, tardis, Television, the rebel flesh | 14 Comments »

Doctor Who: The Doctor’s Wife (Review)

Posted on May 14, 2011 by Darren

“Are all people like this?”

“Like what?”

“So much bigger on the inside.”

– TARDIS and the Doctor

That was awesome. Neil Gaiman’s Doctor Who episode, The Doctor’s Wife, was perhaps the strongest stand-alone episode the series has had in quite some time – packed to the brim with wonderful and cheeky and clever concepts, executed in wonderful style. It had just about everything, from small fanboy-ish references (“the old control room”) through to clever explorations of the ideas the show takes for granted, managing to fit perfectly with what had come before and suggest some new takes on classic concepts at the same time.

The Smith-en young couple...

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: arts, Billie Piper, doctor, doctor who, Doctor's Wife, Douglas Adams, Fray, Gaiman Chubut, matt smith, neil gaiman, rory williams, Stephen Fry, steven moffat, tardis, Television, television review, the doctor's wife | 13 Comments »

Marvel 1602 (Review)

Posted on January 12, 2011 by Darren

After spending the tail end of last year looking at the tangled inter-continuity crossovers at Marvel, I thought I’d spend January looking at some of the looser “out of continuity” tales at the major companies.

Although DC invented the term “elseworlds” to describe alternative continuities featuring familiar characters in unfamiliar settings, it was really Marvel who ran with it. Even discounting the Ultimate line, Marvel has produced any number of alternative continuity worlds within the past decade or so – not stories or chapters, but worlds. Tales spin-off in so many different directions that these stories become viable alternative versions of the Marvel Universe, just with a variation upon a theme. Marvel Noir offers us the Marvel Universe as seen through a smokey glass-half-empty lens, with tales of Daredevil, X-Men and Spider-Man changed to fit in this strange new setting. Writer Neil Gaiman, however, crafted an especially interesting alternative to mainstream Marvel with 1602. It pretty much does exactly what it says on the tin, transposing the modern day Marvel Universe to 1602.

Take these broken wings...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: 1602, captain america, doctor strange, games, marvel, marvel 1602, marvel comics, Marvel Noir, marvel universe, neil gaiman | 3 Comments »

Is TV the Natural Medium of Comic Book Adaptations?

Posted on October 8, 2010 by Darren

It recently surfaced that David E. Kelley (creator of Ally McBeal and The Practice) is working on a Wonder Woman television show. Presumably it will be somewhat less campy than the Linda Carter version. Last month news broke that there are plans for a television version of Neil Gaiman’s epic story The Sandman. Later this month we’re see the airing of a live action version of Robert Kirkman’s critically acclaimed zombie comic book The Walking Dead. Part of me wonders if this is the logical shift in the market. After all, comic books arguably have more in common with television than they do with movies. So is this the real future of these adaptations?

It's a Wonder we didn't think of this earlier...

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Filed under: Comics, Movies, Television | Tagged: adaptations, arts, batman, comic book, Comics, david e. kelley, miniseries, neil gaiman, sandman, Smallville, Television program, wonder woman | 2 Comments »

Wednesday Comics: Metamorpho

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Darren

Earlier this week I reviewed Wednesday Comics, a rather spanking anthology from DC Comics. I kinda figured, however, it might be worth my while to break out some of those fifteen stories on their own (but not all of them) and discuss them, as it’s easy to lose sight of a particular writer/artist’s work in an anthology. And hey! It’s Neil Gaiman!

Good old Metamorpho. If ever there was a cult DC property, good old Rex Mason would be in the running. He isn’t exactly the highest profile name in the DCU – he’s not even B- or C-List (which makes it hilarious when this script introduces us to “the Metamorpho Fans of America”, followers of “the most popular comic book in America”, and he even has his own TV show). But those who know him love him and his basic concept – he “can transform himself into 94 elements!” – is wonderfully hokey. Hokey enough, perhaps, that he seems a perfect fit for the conscious throwbacks of Wednesday Comics. Indeed, that this was the character writer Neil Gaiman and artist Michael Allred chose to work on shouldn’t really be a surprise, nor should the fact that it’s one of the very few strips in the collection which boldly experiments with the format.

That shark needs a fast food chain...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: comic books, dc comics, element girl, metamorpho, michael allred, neil gaiman, rex mason, splash pages, wednesday comics | Leave a comment »

Wednesday Comics

Posted on August 25, 2010 by Darren

Hawkman unsheathes his knife and crawls into the gasping T-Rex’s jaws, thinking “Sadly, this is not the craziest thing I’ve ever done.”

– Hawkman

Wednesday Comics is an amazing little experiment, a bit of comic book nostalgia delivered by some of the most talented people in the business with a smile on their face and a skip in their step. For those who don’t know, DC Comics – always the more boldly experimental of the two major companies – ran a twelve-week collection of newspaper comic strips. Fifteen strips bundled together, the reader was offered one page of a given comic at a time on a super-sized newspaper sheet, with a full story told week-on-week. It was a bold little experiment and while the whole is almost certainly greater than the sum of its parts, there’s much to love here.

There in a Flash...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: adam kubert, amanda conner, barry allen, batman, ben caldwell, beware the creeper, brenden fletcher, brian azzarello, brian stelfreeze, catwoman, comic strips, Comics, dan didio, dave bullock, dave gibbons, dc, dc comics, deadman, eddie beganza, eduardo risso, etrigan, flash, green lantern, hawkman, jimmy palmiotti, joe kubert, Joe Quiñones, john arcudi, José Luis García-López, José Villarrubia, kamandi, karl kerschl, kevin nowlan, kurt busiek, kyle baker, lee burmejo, metal men, metamorpho, michael allred, neil gaiman, nostalgia, paul pope, plastic man, retrospective, ryan sook, sean galloway, sergeant rock, sergeant rock and easy company, serialised, sgt rock and easy co, sgt. rock, strange adventures, strips, supergirl, superman, teen titans, the creeper, the demon, the demon and catwoman, the flash, vinton heuck, walt simonson, wednesday, wednesday comics, wonder woman | 4 Comments »

Comics for Grown Ups?

Posted on March 8, 2010 by Darren

We’re a bit late to the party, but this week we’ll be celebrating the 75th anniversary of DC Comics, with a look at the medium, the company and the characters in a selection of bonus features running Monday through Friday. This is one of those articles. Be sure to join us for the rest.

Comic books are what Neil Gaiman once famously described as “the medium that’s always confused with a genre”. The fact that they are typically populated with spandex-wearing superheroes has led to a bit of a pop culture stigma around the medium, as stories about grown men in their underwear pounding each other are the only stories that could be told in that format. Anyone even loosely familiar with the history of the genre will know better, but I’ve always imagined comic books having a hard time fitting in to popular culture in the same way that books or film or television do. So can comic books ever really draw in that elusive adult audience?

Smoking? In a comic book? That will not stand!

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: alan moore, comic books, dc comics, films, for kids, grant morrison, graphic novel, kids, marvel, mature, maturity, neil gaiman, pop culture, sandman, vertigo, watchmen | 5 Comments »

Absolute Batman: The Dark Knight (Returns) (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on October 3, 2009 by Darren

The Absolute Edition also collects The Dark Knight Strikes Again. Miller’s belated sequel is worthy of discussion on its own terms, and I plan to revisit it at some point. For the moment, however, here is the review of the original Dark Knight Returns.

It’s really quite difficult to discuss The Dark Knight Returns today. Part of the reason is because of the massive influence that Frank Miller’s Batman epilogue had on the medium, and part of it is because Miller himself has done a fairly efficient job at deconstructing his own definitive Batman work in stories like The Dark Knight Strikes Again and All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder. It’s impossible to approach Miller’s work here entirely divorced from either reality, and the result is a rather strange and dramatic legacy for one of the most iconic Batman stories ever told. It remains fairly essential reading for anybody even remotely interested in the Caped Crusader, the superhero genre or even the medium as a whole. It’s a classic, albeit one that is sometimes quite difficult to pin down.

Lightning strikes…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: absolute dark knight, absolute edition, alan moore, All-Star Batman & Robin The Boy Wonder, arts, batman, bruce wayne, Christopher Nolan, comic books, dark knight returns, dark knight strikes again, dc comics, dkr, dksa, frank miller, gotham, graphic novel, neil gaiman, review, the absolute dark knight, The Dark Knight, the dark knight returns, the dark knight strikes again, watchmen | 7 Comments »

Neil Jordan at Trinity College

Posted on September 22, 2009 by Darren

I had the great pleasure to pop along to a discussion with Neil Jordan hosted by the University Philosophical Society in Trinity College last night. I didn’t have a pen and paper handy, but I did make a few notes on the conversation which at least offer an interesting perspective or two from the Irish autuer. The Phil website normally has recordings of event up fairly promptly, so I’ll add a link to them soon. In the meantime, there are a few interesting thoughts in what the man said.

Irish film legend...

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: 3d, an interview with a vampire, autuer, breakfast on pluto, cinema, director, film, interiew with a vampire, interview, irish cinema, michael collins, Movies, neil gaiman, neil jordan, the crying game, the grave yard book, the graveyard book, tifff, toronto | Leave a comment »

Absolute Sandman: Volume IV

Posted on August 27, 2009 by Darren

It’s over. Wow. It has been a long haul, but an impressive and richly rewarding one. Having read the entire collection again over the space of about a month, I have even more appreciation for the wonder of Neil Gaiman’s writing. The volume is pretty much perfect, featuring (in my opinion) the most consistently brilliant artwork of the four volumes and a fitting conclusion to a saga that has run for 1,500 pages already. It’s hard enough to write a fitting conclusion to a two-hour movie or a novella. How does Gaiman manage to tie up everything so ridiculously well?

An empty throne? Foreshadowing, you say?

Warning: This review contains spoilers (as any review of the collection will). They’re minor, they’ve been foreshadowed throughout the collection and pretty much made explicit at the climax of the Volume 3. Still, consider yourself appropriately warned.

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: absolute death, absolute sandman, absolute sandman: volume 4, absolute sandman: volume iv, arts, comic books, dc comics, dream, dreams, Endless, exiles, graphic novels, loki, morpheus, mythology, neil gaiman, Online Writing, Rose Walker, sandman, shakespeare, stories, the absolute sandman, the kindly ones, the sandman, the tempest, the wake | 3 Comments »