Hey everybody, so glad you can join us for this week’s edition of…
…hope I didn’t lose you after last week there, Blarny. Stay with me, alright? I like having readers! ;)
Before we get going, I wanna put a quick note out there – I will be a part of a standup contest in the Village next Tuesday, March 3 at a place called The Pinch Bar & Grill, on 237 Sullivan Street between 3rd Street and Sullivan Avenue. Showtime is at 9pm, no cover and no drink minimum. Just come on in and enjoy you some funny. Tuesdays just hang there in the week, too close to Sunday and too far away from Friday – may as well spend it drinking and laughing, if you ask me! Well, drinking, laughing and voting for me would be nice, but just sayin’, is all!
Also, I have to spread the word, but over at Pulse Wrestling, we have a full match listing of the upcoming MACHO MAN RANDY SAVAGE DVD!
Wrestling fans – I defy you to read that match list and tell me you won’t want that set. Comic book heads – I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there is one match that’s missing:
June 9th, baby – the MADNESS is upon us June 9th! Oooooh YEAH!
So the Oscars was just this past Sunday, and sure enough Heath Ledger won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of the Joker in THE DARK KNIGHT. I gotta say, I don’t really care about awards ceremonies at all. Doesn’t matter what the genre is, I just don’t care. But I’ve been watching THE DARK KNIGHT a lot lately, and I gotta say…if I were part of the Academy, I’d have voted for him too. Because Heath knocked it out, he really did.
We can be cynical about it and say that he got the nod because he died, and I’m pretty sure that played a significant part of that final decision, but…that doesn’t mean Ledger didn’t do that role proud. Screw an origin story; the man just appears in a Gotham mob bank and the bodies started dropping. And anybody he didn’t kill outright, he wormed into their heads and turned them inside out. Every scene he was in just plain ruled. The facial ticks, the vocal range, that laugh…Jack Nicholson wished he Jokered it up like Ledger did. An unbelieveable performance from a superhero movie that was just downright Shakespearean in its execution.
Of course like a lot of people, I can’t help but wonder just what this’ll mean for Hollywood and the comic book industry. I wonder if it means that we’ll get more superhero movies with thought-provoking, gutwrenching stories like DARK KNIGHT, or are we going to get more “dark” superhero movies, no matter the character? We got the latter after BATMAN back in 1989, what’s going to happen this time around? S’probably too soon to tell – after all, we do have WATCHMEN just around the corner and that’s just more dark-and-cerebral coming our way.
Now that I’m thinking about superhero movies, I wanna ask you guys one thing: Was SUPERMAN RETURNS really all that bad? Because if there’s one character that Hollywood is trying to figure out how to approach, it’s Big Blue. There’s been this talk about different approaches, getting the Wachowski Brothers involved in a reboot, maybe keep Bryan Singer on, maybe get rid of him, maybe ditch Singer but keep the post-RETURNS continuity, and a whole lot of blah blah blah, and a heaping helping of yakkety-schmackety…
You know what? I think we all need to come to terms with one thing – Superman is going to be one of those characters where, no matter the interpretation, something is going to come up short. Shoot, I can’t think of a single live-action interpretation of Superman that I didn’t have some sort of problem with. Except maybe the movie serials – I thought the use of a cartoon Superman for the flight sequences was rather ingenious. But the rest of them? Not a one of them is perfect. How ’bout we start with George Reeves?
Never did the iconic rip-open-the-shirt-and-reveal-the-“S” move. How can you be Superman on TV and not do this:
Shouldn’t that be a rule? Plus, you see those shorts? they’re practically diapers, they’re so big. How about SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE?
I HATE THAT POEM. I don’t even have a copy of that movie, but if I did I’d fast forward through that part every time! SUPERMAN 2?
Makes my skin crawl whenever I think of this part. Sorry – there’s just something about a live action version of Superman where I just cannot handle the thought of him as a sexual being. Seems with cartoons and comics there are ways to sidestep that issue…but here? EEEUUUUGH!
I could go on with SUPERMAN 3 – Lana Lang’s kid annoyed me – and SUPERMAN 4 – great concept; looks like it was made with half the budget from CLERKS – but my point is, do you see how silly it is to be so finicky? How about Dean Cain – wanna know what my problem with him was?
Not white enough.
How absurd is that?
Plus, once again we are faced with the issue of Superman as a sexual being. So the minute we got to the wedding episode of LOIS & CLARK where the two of them started levitating in bed, I was like “yep…nnnnnot tuning in anymore.” And we were lucky, too – the new Dini cartoon had just premiered!
But with all that said, if I were making any decisions about the next Superman movie, I would just build off of SUPERMAN RETURNS. For one reason, you have a perfectly good Superman in Brandon Routh, who clearly understands his role.
Even if the “S” is too small and his shorts are like the polar opposite of George Reeves’, and he looks like he’s sporting a Speedo. But there I go being finicky again, see?
But the way I see it, they may as well stick with the RETURNS continuity, if only because it’s just been two years since that movie premiered, and starting over with a fresh backstory after just two years will only confuse moviegoers and possibly even turn them off. It’s just too unnecessary a gamble, if you ask me. If you don’t have to waste time saying, “the last movie doesn’t apply here,” why add that to your plate? Either stick with the RETURNS continuity or wait another ten or fifteen years and retell it for a whole new generation. If you didn’t want a continuity where Superman may or may not have fathered an illegitimate child, then you should’ve nipped it in the proverbial bud during the pitch meetings.
AND NOW, JUST CUZ I FEEL LIKE IT…
Til next week, everybody – Greg Manuel here, and I’m just sayin’, is all. Hope to see you at the Pinch!
