In the spirit of the holiday just past, I've got a medley of movie and TV conversation bait:
1. Josh, the previews for I am Legend are out; what do you think so far?
2. Thank you, Writer's strike. My childhood dream is within reach again.
3. Did you know that Wil Wheaton was on Numb3rs last Friday? I knew the show was going to feature comics, thanks to the howling curmudgeons blog, but I stopped reading Wil's blog when he went into exile. Not for a good reason; I just never updated my bookmark. Wil's flickr set is a good read, whether you care about the show or not.
4. Does anyone care about Cloverfield? Or the various associated mysteries?
5. Is anyone else planning to read the Southland Tales graphic novels before seeing the movie? Is anyone planning to see the movie at all? I'd link the sites but it's slow-loading animation and there's no "skip intro" button...
6. Not every list goes to 23, but this one goes well past that:
Full source list, and another couple of things in the responses...
jake [email] said at 4:38 AM 11-27-2007: 7. Where all them numbers come from...
8. How did October Road get picked up for a second season?
9. Honestly, I enjoyed Lake House. Maybe I've said this here before, but it got the time travel business right that Deja Vu screwed up. Also, they managed to keep me not-quite-certain about the ending until the, uh, ending.
10. If you haven't checked out Zuda, the American Idol for web-comics, you ought to. The current favorite, High Moon, looks possibly decent, as does Battlefield Babysitter. The rest of the current entrants are decent, but the current featured comic, Bayou, looks very promising.
11. Does the animation in Beowulf work for you?
12. Does the Saw IV successfully extend the franchise, or jump the shark?
13. Am I the only one that feels like this season of Project Runway is made up of vapid clones from the stars of past years? There's a fat and catty guy with a beard, a weepy untrained wannabe, etcetera, but with none of the old panache... Maybe the production team is different?
reggie [email] said at 5:59 AM 11-27-2007: Yes, I do care about Cloverfield although I just wish the movie would come out already. I doubt it can live up to its own hype but the ad campaign has definitely stuck its hooks in me.
jake [email] said at 6:23 AM 11-27-2007: I'm torn; I want to see it sooner than later, but I don't think anyone's solved the website puzzles yet, and I hope that gets done so I can read about it...
By the way, I'm hoping you'll see Southland Tales, so we can benefit from your analysis.
reggie [email] said at 5:24 PM 11-27-2007: I do want to see it but from what I've read it's beyond analysis, least of all mine. I actually kinda think I'll like it but I'm keeping my hopes vurry low.
andrew [email] said at 10:28 AM 11-27-2007: I walked through the set of I am Legend one night at Washington Square, it was really bizarre. There were a lot of half naked people painted gray.
shelly [email] said at 10:42 AM 11-27-2007: I really want this to be good. Will Smith seems pretty likeable but I'm not sure if I can see him in this role. Still I'd love it if he nailed it.
josh [email] said at 1:41 PM 11-27-2007: I Am Legend, adapted from one of the most influential horror novels of all time, by one of the greatest genre writers of the 20th century... directed by the dude who did "Constatine", written by the screenwriters of "Lost In Space", "Batman Forever", "Batman and Robin", "the Cell", "Poseidon" and "I, Robot" and produced by the guy who brought us "Starsky & Hutch" and "Mindhunters".
The above paragraph sums up my expectations for the movie pretty well.
josh [email] said at 2:21 PM 11-27-2007: not the one i saw. also you cant really trust a preview, especially one that takes pains to not show most of the plot elements of the movie.
also the screenwriter said he was trying to make the movie more like Omega Man, and less like the book I Am Legend.
shelly [email] said at 3:12 PM 11-27-2007: Although if he's aiming more at Omega Man, Heston's hamfistedness it leaves more space for Will Smith's hammy-ness.
jake [email] said at 4:00 PM 11-27-2007: The long preview I saw seemed to do a decent job of capturing the survivalist aspect, and made me think they might succeed at porting the abandoned population center from a semi-rural area to the big city...
josh [email] said at 5:40 PM 11-27-2007: why do people care about southland tales? richard kelly is a hack, he wrote one of the worst movies of the last few years and wrote and directed a movie that from what i can tell was mainly popular because it was sucked with by the studio and everyone was like "imagine how awesome it would have been had he been able to fufill his vision" but then when he went back and made it the way he wanted it, everyone pretty much agreed that it was worse his way.
so then we get to southland tales which has been basically universally panned, even by people in the movie.
i would possibly see it if it wasn't a richard kelly movie, just to check it out, but nothing he has done has given me any faith or expectation of it being any good. and nothing i have heard about it has, either.
jake [email] said at 6:03 PM 11-27-2007: I haven't seen Donnie Darko. Southland Tales appeals to me because it's dystopian future sci-fi, and I like that stuff, and because it's supposed to be a story split between 3 graphic novels and the three acts of the film.
Also, I like watching several of the actors chew scenery.
kiche [email] said at 6:53 PM 11-27-2007: i liked donnie darko. the edited version that is. the director's cut has turned me off to him as a director. southland tales looks not just bad but really dumb. for some reason, i want to see it anyway, though. maybe it will be entertaining in a plan 9 form outer space way.
milky [email] said at 8:39 PM 11-27-2007: If it's entertaining like Repo Man, I guess I'd enjoy it on some level...but that movie was great because it was low-budget.
reggie [email] said at 9:32 AM 12-01-2007: I happen to like Donnie Darko a great deal and I wouldn't consider Kelly a hack. In fact, I really have never liked the term "hack" and I'm not sure I'd even feel comfortable lobbing it at directors whose work I hate like Vincent Gallo or Harmony Korine.
That said.
Southland Tales looks to be a complete disaster but that's exactly why I want to see it. It's got a train wreck appeal....
woody [email] said at 7:29 PM 11-29-2007: Gotta stay visible in his line of work. When did he last comment here? 2004?!? That said, I still read him once a month or so...
zack [email] said at 11:38 PM 11-27-2007: Zuda has just about the worst possible interface for reading comics and most of the actual strips range from a small amount of stuff that looks promising (bayou) to crappy (This American Strife), but I may never find out if any of it is good because it's painful to use that stupid interface.
and Beowulf looks like a movie comprised of video game cut scenes, and I mean that in the worst possible way. Just watching the trailer pisses me off about 300 all over again.
jake [email] said at 11:56 PM 11-27-2007: If the interface doesn't work for you, then you should only suffer through it for Bayou.
I liked it on full screen; the navigation wasn't a problem for me. Built in zoom was nice too. As for worst possible interface, I guess you haven't looked at the I am Legend comic...
