Month: February 2003

Eric Wight shows off some drawings that he did for the Buffy animated series.

Lest you think being the webmaster here is a glamourous life of movie premieres, dalliances with scantilly clad fans, and deciding what nasty rumors to start on the Internet today, let me relate the conversation I had on my arrival home with my wife Brandy:

G: Happy Valentine’s Day, snoogy-woogy.

B: Same to you, bozo. Oh, Kathleen called.

G: Really? What’s up?

B: She’s asking for two favors.

G: Uh-oh. Yes?

B: She wants you to post a note to the website that she and Peter will be at Farpoint this weekend, and anyone who wants to say “hi” should come on down and do so.

G: You mean Farpoint Convention, this weekend at Marriott’s Hunt Valley Inn, 245 Shawan Road, Hunt Valley, MD with Special Guests Armin Shimerman,Gary Graham, Eric Pierpoint, Michele Scarabelli, Gil Gerard, Erin Gray, the Boogie Knights, Lolita Fatjo, Michael Jan Friedman, David R. George III, Bob Greenberger, Inge Heyer, Marc Okrand, Prometheus Radio Theatre, Susan Sackett, Howard Weinstein, and The Not Ready for Paramount Players, with more information available by calling (410) 785-7000?

B: If you say so. How do you get your voice to do that thing with the link?

G: What, when I say Farpoint Convention?

B: Yeah.

G: It’s easy. Try it yourself.

B: Farpoint Convention. Hey, that’s neat!

G: Did Kathleen want me to say anything in particular?

B: She said to write something witty.

G: Fat chance of that happening. Let me guess, the other favor was to make sure that I posted lots of old But I Digress columns while Peter’s offline?

B: No.

G: No? Then what?

B: They want us to tape Farscape and The Simpsons for them, they forgot to set the VCR before they left.

There. Now you know everything. Oh, and about those scantilly clad fans… for Kolk’r’s sake, Tom, put on a bathrobe, will you?

Wow. Gotta admit I’m somewhat rocked by the editorial shake-ups at DC currently being reported by Newsarama.com. I’ll tell you, if Mike Carlin is privately annoyed and/or angry (which I’ve no idea if he is) you sure can’t tell by his public face. Maybe he really, truly is more comfortable getting his hands more deeply back into editing. And Dan Didio has a lot on the ball. He’s one of the spearheads behind getting “Fallen Angel” up and running. Truth is, these days if you look at the major new titles with original characters that folks are talking about, they’re coming out of DC.

We’ll see how it all shakes out.

PAD

Not by leaps and bounds, certainly, but by bits and pieces, BTVS is getting up to speed and back to form.

Downsides: Certain tropes of the series are becoming so cliche that the characters have come to expect them. Willow’s trouble-making observation that Xander is a demon magnet back in season 4 continues to hold true. The problem is that making fun of a cliche doesn’t make it less of a cliche. Meantime we see Giles now touching everything in sight, after poor Tony Head had to spend weeks avoiding everything to the point where it was getting distracting. Now that he’s fondling every prop in the house, though, I wish he hadn’t chewed out the gang for making jokes. It was the first time they sounded like themselves in ages. After all the stuff about them growing up, *now* he addresses them as “children?” What the–?

Upsides: Plenty. So Principal Wood is essentially Blade the Vampire Hunter minus the vamp blood in him: Ultra cool vampire-fighting black guy seeking out the light-haired vampire who killed his mother. And yet for all that, I didn’t see it coming, and I don’t recall noticing anyone else coming up with that theory either. Be interesting if Wood actually dusts Spike, thereby earning Buffy’s enmity. Hope it doesn’t, but you just *know* it’s gonna end in tears. The subplot with the Asian potential slayer was beyond hilarious (“What are you, trying to poison me?!”) I wonder if Willow knows a language-bridging spell. If so, she better crank it out before the girl bolts the country. Anya’s jealousy was charming, Dawn wasn’t annoying, the running gag of both Willow and Wood laughing at the notion of Buffy being competent and then realizing their error was great. And Spike actually seems at peace with himself, which really couldn’t be worse for a character on this series than to find ANY degree of happiness. Because that’s when the boom is usually lowered.

Moving on:

Angel. Kicked ášš even more. Minor quibble over why no one questioned that Lorne totally misread the situation. Definite shock ending: Most folks, including myself, seemed to tag correctly who was going to be killed off, but the circumstances caught me off guard. My only real complaint: THREE WEEKS?!?

Hey, anyone want to see Faith team up with someone named Begorrah?

And hey, food for thought: Physical prowess aside, who could outhink the other: Angelus or Smallville’s Lex Luthor?

PAD

If Osama bin Laden is so hot on the idea of suicide bombings, I wonder why he doesn’t offer to lead the way. Y’know, show how it’s done. Otherwise it’s like being one of those people standing safely on the ground, shouting to the guy on the ledge ten stories up “Jump! Jump!”

PAD

Imagine my surprise, given the recent somewhat antagonistic atmosphere, to have received an invite to a preview screening of “Daredevil.” Now I gotta say, every pro I know came out of the advance screenings during the Creation Con with absolutely nothing positive to say about it. So I went in preparing to be underwhelmed.

Guys: It’s a good film. Darker, more disturbing than Spider-Man. Certainly edgier. Overall, I thought it was great. Action, a brooding Matt Murdock (only finding relief when sleeping in a sensory deprivation tank), cool radar sense effects, plus snappy performances from Farrell as Bullseye and Duncan as the Kingpin (who looked just like the Kingpin except black), and enough comic book in-jokes for me to say, “See! See! I’m not the only one who does it!”

Minuses are that Elektra is underutilized, existing mostly to be Matt Murdock’s girlfriend with not much identity beyond that. And I could have done without the voice over. General rule of thumb: Unless a VO narrative is done by Bogart, leave it out. The CGI has the same “weightless” feel as Spider-Man, and one wishes the producers hadn’t felt they needed to compete, since one can buy it more easily when dealing with the superhuman Spidey. Here it looks even more fake.

The big area of dispute, I can already tell you, is going to be that Daredevil kills/allows bad guys to die. At least to start. I fully understand why. They wanted him to have a character arc. Think about his arc in the Miller stories: He begins as a pure crusader who doesn’t kill, and ends up allowing Bullseye to fall…to his death, for all DD cares. Does that *really* sound like a character arc for a superhero movie? Writer Johnson chooses to go the other direction: DD starts out hard, cold, soulless. Will he find redemption? *That’s* a movie character arc. Anyone who goes in and can’t separate comic book requirements from movie necessities is going to have problems. Anyone who can judge a movie on its own will, overall, have a good time.

PAD

You know, every year when I think the Academy can’t suck anymore than it does by blowing off a great performance, they transcend themselves the following year.

How in the HÊLL can Richard Gere be bypassed for “Chicago” while John C. Reilly was nominated in the same category. Reilly was very moving in his portrayal, yes, but Gere was outstanding. And when a film gets thirteen nominations and Gere is ignored, that’s a slap in the face. For that matter, when Christopher Walken is nominated for his perfectly good, but not outstanding, work in “Catch Me If You Can” instead of Gere, it’s a kick in the crotch besides.

It was bad enough when the Academy ignored Jim Carrey in “The Truman Show” and then “Man in the Moon,” but this is truly bending over backwards.

PAD