Movie Review: Centurion

Centurion is a title that passed out of theaters very quickly, but I'm always interested in movies about Roman warfare.  I can't explain that, it just is.  And I've been on a Michael Fassbender marathon lately.  Hunger, 300, Inglourious Basterds... and I just added Jonah Hex and Blood Creek to my queue.  Neither of which I think will be good, but I'm excited to check his performances out. He blew me away in Hunger and it has been all Fassbender since.

In Centurion he plays a Roman soldier who basically goes through hell at the hand of the Picts.  He was good, but to be honest it was Dominic West who really shone in this one as the Roman general who is one with his men.  Built for battle and nothing else.

This film actually has the same problems as the other Neil Marshall films I've seen (all of them) - a cool premise, but a murky plot with even murkier lighting making it hard to decipher what's going on and the occasionally awesome sequence. Thankfully, most of this film takes place during the daylight.  And the cast of this film is better than the others.

I guess my biggest problem with the film is that, although West and Fassbender are awesome, it is hard to root for Roman soldiers.  They are way out of Rome, invading the homes and land of the Picts.  They try to dehumanize the Picts, by dressing them up like savages and having them speak in a foreign tongue... but Olga Kurylenko's hunter character (she would be so awesome if she never spoke like in this film) was raped and had her tongue cut out by the Romans, right after her parents were raped and killed. And the only child in the film is a Pict child, who is killed by the Romans.  None of this is actually a 'problem', it is probably more like real-life.  Both sides of a battle have their heroes, and their reasons. But here the Picts are depicted as the villains, unlike a film such as Battle of Algiers where both sides are portrayed evenly.

Movie Review: From Paris With Love

For what could have been a pretty forgettable 'spy/action' movie, From Paris With Love is saved by one thing - John Travolta's performance.  I have always maintained that he is at his best playing the bad guy.  For some reason, I think he excels at this.  From Pulp Fiction to Face/Off - he chews the scenery better than anyone else - while at the same time being believably over-the-top.  He's even good in the remake of Taking of Pelham 1-2-3, which was a pretty lame movie.

And he does it again here with his character 'Charlie Wax', who isn't really a bad guy - but he's a foul-mouthed, sharp-tongued, charming, coke-snorting, killing machine special ops good guy - who just happens to have a first-time handler - Jonathan Rhys-Meyer.  The plot was fairly predictable, but it was Travolta's presence and relentless Wax that kept you engaged for a pretty quick ride.  What I loved was that we were rooting for him the whole time, and could feel good about it because he was one of the 'good guys'.  

Like I said, everything else was fairly derivative - even the climax... actually, especially the climax.  And the 'delegation' seemed like a throw-away, particularly for an AIDS summit.  But it didn't matter, because no one will remember what this movie was about anyway.  They'll just remember Travolta's performance.

Movie Review: Predators

Been watching a lot of this year's movies on DVD, trying to catch up on the films I wanted to see before the year ends.  So you will see a lot of reviews from now until January.

A film I wanted to check out, but wasn't rushing to see in theaters was Predators.  I loved the original and hated all subsequent versions.  I like Adrien Brody, Walton Goggins, Danny Trejo and Topher Grace and respect Nimrod Antal (the director) because he had Dan Farah banned from set and later excommunicated from Screen Gems.  That gets him an automatic awesome in my book, as Farah is the biggest piece of human shit lurking in the gutters of Los Angeles.

Based on pure fun factor, this movie is great.  It starts off at full speed and doesn't really let up - right up until we meet Laurence Fishburne's character.  The entire section of the film with his character was completely unnecessary.  He was there to give exposition and intel on the creatures, but it ultimately didn't matter.  The don't necessarily 'win' in the end anyway.  And Alice Braga's character had all the intel they needed.  It was obvious the Predator-type from the first film was enemies with the bad ass Predator, as it was chained up at their base camp.  There is a bit of a twist toward the end with one of the characters and I thought this could have been played a bit earlier so there was more gravity to the situation.  But if you want somewhat mindless fun, done really well, then this film is sure to deliver.

Bulderlyns: The First Pages

A few weeks (okay months) ago I put up a post with the first designs from Bulderlyns, which will be my third graphic novel after Harbor Moon and R.E.M. (which should be done this spring).  Today Karol sent me the first few pages from the book, being pencilled by Polish artist Igor Wolski. Some tweaks need to be made here and there, but they look pretty damn killer. We are moving at a snail's pace, but hopefully once he gets in a rhythm things will pick up.

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Movie Review: The Killer Inside Me

This is another title I had heard the premise for and really wanted to see.  You tell me 'serial killer' movie and I'm pretty much in.  Also, I like Michael Winterbottom.  So it made it to the top of my Netflix the day it was released on video.

I was also pretty excited to see Kate Hudson and Jessica Alba in the same movie.  Now, I must admit I think Alba is a terrible actress, but there is no denying she is absurdly hot.  What surprised me is that she was much better than Hudson in this movie.  In fact, I didn't even know it was Kate Hudson until the end.  She looked awful, was awful and played a pretty bizarre character.  Alba was actually pretty good as the whore who wants to get out of town.  Casey Affleck was good as the creepy deputy... but this movie had some serious problems otherwise.

It was hard to tell exactly what was going on and why.  Especially in terms of who knew what about which murders - and how everyone was reacting to Affleck's character.  This would have been fine if the movie was solely from his perspective, because it would have been warped - but it wasn't.  He hate fucks Alba at the beginning and then a few scenes later they are in love and talking about running away.  Hudson's character has known him her whole life (I guess?) and is in love with him - why?  Is this all one small town?  Does Hudson's character know Alba's character?  When all of this is happening and the tide seems to be turning against Affleck's deputy, is Hudson the only one who doesn't know or does she just not care?   There were just too many questions like this throughout that made the movie splinter at the seems.

I'll give it credit for the scene where he has just gotten back from banging Alba and Hudson is waiting for him, she takes off his clothes and goes down on him and immediately flips out because she can taste another woman on him.  Kudos for that.  But overall it didn't live up to what I was hoping for.

FX cancels Terriers

Hot off my review of FX's freshman series Terriers, the network has canceled the show due to low ratings (and obviously a higher budget than they can financially be responsible for).

There is a lot of finger pointing at FX for a terrible marketing campaign.  While I do agree that the marketing of the show was horrific, it ultimately didn't draw the numbers it needed to.  Good shows fall by the wayside, it sucks.  FX has a ton of great shows on the air and it is hard to blame them for letting this one slip.

Future of Comics: Sunshine or Sunset?

Harbor Moon is getting ready to launch on digital publisher Graphic.ly.  Although there is a lot of ‘what do we do now?’ gloom and doom talk out there for publishing and even independent film, I strongly believe this is an exciting time to be a creator.

Right now, digital distribution is the only area of the comics market that’s currently experiencing any substantial growth. Digital comics revenue quadrupled year over year from $500,000-$1 million in 2009 to $6-8 million in 2010. Meanwhile, sales of periodicals are up only 1%.  That said - they are UP 1%.  Not down.

As things go digital, it seems to me that the power lies with the creator - at least with the creator who knows how to market themself in this arena.  That, to me, is the biggest question mark right now.  How do you reach your audience?  I see a future where book 'publishers' are acting more as gatekeepers, sort of the way they do now (particularly in the comic world).  You usually know what you are getting with a Marvel book, and so on.

Although I do realize that digital distribution is where we are going with this, comics, for the most part, are best read in physical form.  I know firsthand that response to Harbor Moon has been much better when holding the physical copy rather than reading off a pdf.  You can enhance a book’s quality and therefore the perception of the reader about that quality with certain elements, like paper thickness, enhancements such as UV or matte, and size.  But to ignore where the medium is heading and not doing your best to make your digital comic the best digital comic it can be would be a huge mistake for any creator.

Movie Review: Winter's Bone

I know next to nothing about the Ozarks in Missouri.  I know these are good, country people in the heart of America.  I also know that I never want to live there.  Thanks to Debra Granik's riveting Winter's Bone.

Ashamed I didn't get to see this on the big screen, I had been clamoring for the DVD release of this film for months.  I tried not to know too much about the film (although I did listen to the Creative Screenwriting podcast with Granik), because I had heard the film was very good and didn't want any preconceived notions about what was going to happen.

I really don't think knowing what was going to happen would have mattered.  It was getting to that resolution why the film was so great.  And it was great.  The cinematography was the first time I have seen a film shot on the Red that looks like film.  The production design (Ozarks themselves) was amazing.  The score and music were outstanding and sucked me into this tale about a girl with a lot on her plate and very little help.

I had gone into this film thinking Carey Mulligan was the best young actress around, with the best female performance of the year (sorry Noomi Rapace).  But after seeing this, how anyone can think there is a better performance than Jennifer Lawrence's Ree Dolley would really amaze me.  And she is going to give Mulligan a run for her money as best young actress - and she was 17 years old when this was made.  She was completely absorbing.  Strong and vulnerable at the same time.  Granik and her team hit the jackpot with Lawrence.  The other cast were all good too, particularly John Hawkes as Teardrop, Lawrence's crank dealing uncle.  There was a dark edge to his familial bounds that kept you on edge the entire time he was onscreen.

Seek this movie out.  It is currently battling The Social Network for my favorite film of the year so far.  We'll see how I feel on December 31.

TV Review: Terriers

Somehow, FX's Terriers was able to bull through sluggish ratings to a full series.  I believe it is because they shot most of the show before the pilot and because numbers on FX don't need to be as high as a network.  Thankfully, because it quickly established itself as my favorite new show this year (yes, more so than The Walking Dead).

All of the casting is great... Donal Logue is good as Hank Dolworth, but Michael Raymond-James really shines as his partner Britt Pollack, the former thief turned Private Eye.  I don't have any experience with Raymond-James, but he was a standout.

Ted Griffin and Shawn Ryan did a great job of pulling multiple (interesting) storylines through the season and then tying them all together.  The production value on the show was top notch as well.

If you haven't seen it, definitely check it out when it comes out on DVD/Netflix.  Well worth your time.

If I had one knock, it would be how Britt and his finance Katie's relationship played out in the final episode.  She does something shitty to him, he breaks up with her, he does something shitty - but goes groveling back to her.  Then she says she can't trust him.  It made no sense to me - because she did something much worse to their relationship.

Also, rather than let each storyline play out with a resolution, they sort of wrap things up in a 5 minute 'wrap-up'.  It seems like time ran out on them and the finale could have been 90 minutes rather than 30, although only for fans so we can have some satisfaction.  I say that knowing it is only because I was a fan and wanted to be hit over the head with the resolutions.  They would have been the same, I just wanted more - this wasn't a bad thing.

Harbor Moon Art Print Giveaway Winner - Martin Mulrooney!

After a ton of really great submissions, I have finally narrowed it down to one winner for the Harbor Moon Extra Content Art Print Giveaway - MARTIN MULROONEY. 


Marty is an actual journalist with Alternative Magazine Online, based out of the UK. I had a lot of fun reading through everyone's submission and wish we could include them all. I have another piece of extra content we were going to write in-house, but after such a great showing I may have to open it up again. 


Look for all of this extra content as part of the digital editions of Harbor Moon, which will be out on Graphic.ly (in the immediate future) and Comixology.