Signal Watch watches: "The Losers".

This movie was kind of like "we have only the vaguest notion we're unintentionally remaking The A-Team".  Well, maybe not exactly the A-Team, but it certainly isn't not the the A-Team or every wacky action series you've previously seen. 

Someone got rich making an adaptation of DC Comics/ Vertigo's beloved series The Losers. That person was not me, and it wasn't you, but somebody was able to buy dinner and a car off the fact that this movie got made, and, its hard to believe that if this is all it takes, why am I (or you) not able to make a whole lot of money selling retreads of A-Team episodes to Hollywood and calling it a day?

Full explanation and disclosure

1)  The Losers is based upon a comic, or we wouldn't be talking about it here, of course were nit not based on a comic, it likely would not exist at all.  Of course Hollywood is in convulsions at the moment as it realizes "hey, not all comics are guaranteed blockbusters".  Also - way to @#$%-up Jonah Hex.  Thanks.

2)  This version of The Losers isn't actually the classic version, which was a group of US Soldiers constantly trying to avoid trouble, which usually lands them in even greater trouble than what they started with.  I've only read the Kirby penned issues, but the original series is much beloved by war-book aficionados.  Given how most war comics appeared, I also have always assumed that this idea was lifted from a TV show or movie I've never seen. 

If you are me, Wikipedia will only mildly surprise you when they inform you that the concept was originally Kanigher's.

3)  The version of The Losers adapated to the big screen retained the title, and that's about it. Although they did take the name of the dog, Pooch, and apply it to the chauffeur of the team. 

4)  I actually read the first issue of this version of The Losers, and didn't like it all that much and never read a second issue. 

Its shooting fish in a barrel to point out that when American comics decide to do stories usually reserved for the big screen, they tend not to come from any place of experience or research, but from the writers and artists having had seen a whole bunch of movies not unlike what they've decided to turn into a comic.  That's okay, most movies and TV shows long ago spun off into just referencing the rules set up in prior movies and TV series (which is why I look forward to all vampires in future vampire movies sparkling like a glitter-clad Gloria Gaynor).

The writers, director, producer and actors are clearly having fun making The Losers, but its hard to have fun actually watching the flick.  Its set up to be the fun sort of action movie where rules of physics don't apply except when they do, and our heroes trade witty remarks under heavy fire, etc...  And I don't think there's inherently anything wrong with that kind of movie.  I am, after all, a huge fan of movies like Big Trouble in Little China. 

The problem that The Losers runs into is that someone made the mistake of thinking that if the movie is funny and fun, it doesn't need to make sense or be very well written, directed or thought out.

The set-up:  our heroes are set up to take out an all-purpose Central American Badguy Superboss, but realize someone is pulling the strings when they can't call off an airstrike after a literal busload of kids is delivered to the Evil Compound (was this meant to be hilarious?, because it kind of was), and our heroes must dash in to rescue the kids.  They succeed, the Evil badguy gets blown up, and they make it to their extraction point.  Their extraction helicopter, then loaded with kids (which means they can't get aboard), is blown up as a devious Rogue Government Agent with His Own Agenda/ puppetmaster tries to cover his tracks.

At this point, the plot becomes nothing but holes and miscalculations.

We're to understand that this (ie - The Losers) is a top-flight CIA team of some sort.  And they don't have a secondary contact they can call to say "hey, this operation went a little jenky and we were co-opted"?  The only course of action these guys think to take is to hide out for the remainders of their lives?

And, seriously, Zoe Saldana has the charisma of a grocery store lobster in this movie.  I know she's Hollywood's current golden girl, but...  man.  (Not that any of the actors blew me away).

Our leader meets a mysterious (and, of course, sexy) woman who basically tries to kill him, but when the fights is over and she says "meet me in this open field and bring your whole team" - they all show up (including the sniper).  They just...  hang out in a graveyard, with no idea who this person is.  And even after she offers to help, its never clear who she's supposedly working for, etc...  and our heroes willingly allow themselves to be trapped in coffins? Its just a total mess.

The movie just sort of ambles along this way, hoping that the quick edits and the supposed rapier wit of Chris Evans will distract the audience.  But the rest of the team is never given an opportunity to define itself or have personalities other than a sort of cheerful, "I love it when a plan comes together" sort of vibe.

Jason Patric plays the sort of gleefully/ cartoonishly homicidal bad guy who tends to pick off his own minions at whim (a la The Joker) but outside the hyperbolic world where people dress as bats, you're just left wondering why someone would ever go work for this guy, and at what point would you quietly kill him (after all, you're a merc) or sell him out, just to increase your own likelihood of survival?

And, of course, our villain has bought a "green doomsday weapon" with which he plans to make a better America through some Rube Goldberg train of logic.  I think we were supposed to laugh about the scene where the weapon is demonstrated and explained, but I wasn't honestly sure.

Its a movie where villains ask for a billion dollars in cash AND a Ducati as payment for delivery of their doomsday weapons (because once you have a billion dollars, why not, right?), and the guys selling the weapons and collecting $1 billion in cash don't stop to think about providing their own small army to make sure all goes smoothly.  I also want to know where one gets $1 billion in cash, but it made for a nice visual.

I feel like I should start keeping track of fights in movies where a person 1/3rd the size of their sparring partner goes toe-to-toe because of the movie rules surrounding "karate" in movies. The "wow!" factor of seeing a 95 pound woman fight a guy 3 times their size wore off decades ago.*  I guess its the standard issue "oh, they hate each other so they're going to sleep together!" staple of TV and movies, but it just feels incredibly tired.

SPOILERS

When one of our merry band of adventurers turns traitor, its almost the only logical bit of the movie.  His superiors have failed him, AND seemingly sold him out for some hanky-panky with the one woman in the movie with speaking lines who any of these guys would have had absolutely all the reason in the world to put in a shallow grave from the minute she shows up...  You absolutely can't blame the guy for thinking that jumping in with the badguys looked like a much better deal, because by this point none of our leads has been shown to be able to illicit a whiff of sympathy.

Also, a sequel?  Seriously?  You thought this thing as written warranted more parts?  Good lord.

END SPOILERS

The most frustrating part of The Losers was not that its critical and commercial tailspin helped kick non-superhero comics in the teeth both at the movies and on the spinner rack.  Its that there were some genuinely clever bits in the movie (for example, I like a bit that ties in with children's soccer matches), but the people working on the movie just phoned it in and seem perfectly aware that they're spending millions on a movie but don't care if it makes any sense and had absolutely no yardstick to use to decide "is the movie we're making any good"?

Admittedly, I never read the comic, so its possible this movie is simply a reflection of a trainwreck of a book.  I am not a fan of comic writer Andy Diggle, and don't seek out his work.**  Basically, every time I read his work it just feels like a collection of cliches and stuff you've seen elsewhere done better, but with the sort of "look, I'm extreme!" vibe that permeates writers trying to work in more adult genres.  (I may not love Azzarello's work, either, but he generally at least seems to find new angles).

Director Sylvain White was helming his first Hollywood flick, and its possible the $25 million budget handicapped much of what they had planned.  I have no idea what happened, but it doesn't even feel like a missed opportunity.  It just feels like a big, dumb action retread on a budget.

*This will sound cruel, but these days it would be a total shocker to see that fight go down with something resembling physics involved (although the word "empowering" would likely not appear, nor would it be very pretty for either side), and at least something would feel like it was at stake.

** I felt like he just totally fumbled Green Arrow: Year One.

Spring, Birthdays, Rodeo, Aquarium, Dogs and Home

This weekend we went to Spring, TX, the place I lived from grades 1-3 and then 10-12 (I lived in Austin for grades 4-9). 

In many ways, the Spring area has changed since my days of cruising the streets in a red 83' Honda Accord with a mildly embarrassing array of music available from the tapes scattered on the floor of my car.  It was the edge of Houston at the time, with cow pastures in several directions from my house.  Where people in movies fear urban toughs, I was always much more concerned about getting cross-ways with someone in "Rocky Mountain" jeans and a hideously ugly cowboy shirt with a shotgun rack in his pickup. 

Now, I lived in a fairly standard-issue suburban home in a fairly standard neighborhood, and while it would have been cool to have been raised under more exotic circumstances, I don't begrudge it.  Heck, I grew up in a school that competed with the same school and same neighborhoods that inspired Win Butler and Arcade Fire's Grammy Winning album, The Suburbs (I hear ya, Win).

Those cowfields have long ago been sold to developers and turned into tract homes, been replaced with odd corrugated metal buildings housing everything from antique shops to a wide variety of churches to a place I watched an ex-flame get married. 

We were in Spring to celebrate the KareBear's special birthday, and so I was delighted just to be along for the ride.  For the first time since I was six years old, I attended a rodeo (along with my folks, their pals, Jamie, Jason and Amy), and despite my reservations, I confess its an interesting sport and I have to admit that those cowboys have guts that I do not.  Also saw singer Billy Currington play a set. 

your author reacts to figuring out how they get the bulls to jump around like that

Somewhat like any trip I've made to Cabela's sporting goods just south of Austin, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is a bit of a reminder that people come in all different stripes, including the un-ironic Rodeo and Country & Western enthusiast. Out there are many folks who know all the words to Country's version of Top 40, have a wardrobe full of western wear, and who spent their youth in the FFA.

I was also impressed that the rodeo focused on kids and academic scholarships.  While my school didn't have much of an agriculture department, our colleagues down the road at Texas A&M are a global power in all-things ag related, as are the good folks at Texas Tech University northward in Lubbock.  So, there was no small amount of Red Raider and A&M Aggie pride on display, as well as a sort of calf-herding competition for scholarships (which is a heck of a way to get a scholarship, but I am not here to judge).

Almost two-decades since the grand old days of yesteryear, now those same folks that used to make me a little twitchy in Spring just seems like folks in hats and different musical preferences, and I like to think that means I'm less of a judgey jerk than I was circa 1993.

Afterward, we had a lovely dinner at Houston's novelty restaurant The Aquarium.  I know the place isn't exactly a foodie's paradise, but if sea life is interesting to you on both the plate and in a tank, then its worth visiting at least once. 

Jamie is the Jacques Cousteau of touristy dining

The place houses fish as large as Grouper and contains sharks in this enormous aquarium right in the middle of the dining room.

All in all, it was a good time.

Dogs stayed at the Austin Pet Ranch, an absolutely great pet resort on 1826 on the way out to Driftwood.  They have been retrieved, but after two days of running around in the big pens they have at the ranch, Scout and Lucy are now both crashed out on the sofas, where I hope they will remain until tomorrow morning.

Let us all wish a happy birthday to The KareBear, and we'll do something similar next year. 

Happy B-day, Ma!

So, apparently there's life out there in space

So, apparently NASA is saying that they've found the fossil evidence of alien life in a meteorite.

You can read the article here. 

So, upon realizing what I was reading, my immediate reaction was a sort of weird, physical thing where my body went cold and I felt sort of nauseous.  You get this, right?  I mean, these findings don't just suggest, but they are fairly significant evidence - there is something else out there.  Even single-celled warbly things are something.  Our planet is completely covered in single-celled warbly things, so it makes sense that there are chunks of Earth flying through space with bits of amoeba and flagellates embedded somewhere in the rock.

Now, of course you sort of have to believe in fossils to buy the evidence, and given the current state of things, it seems more likely that someone will cut this guy's funding and/ or burn down his home and office rather than suggest that fossil evidence means anything, but I tend to be completely amazed that scientists (the people who spent their lives dedicated to figuring this stuff out, and not you - the person who saw this thing once on the Discovery Channel), are going to go ahead and put their names in with this review.

Completely amazing.

Oh, right, I have a blog

Hi.  Its just totally not coming this evening.  I'm not even going to spend the ten minutes looking for an amusing picture to talk about.

So here's Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

At the risk of practically inviting you people to rob my house, I'm out of town starting tomorrow. We're headed to Houston for some birthday festivity-having fun in honor of The KareBear.  Apparently, this year's birthday fun will include a trip to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.  I am kind of excited about the opportunity to see the cows, which probably sounds weird.

We'll be back in Austin on Sunday.  So Austinites... please hold down the fort while we're off roping burros or whatever one does at the rodeo.

Ma Kent to be terribly attractive in new Superman film (Diane Lane)

So, this is an odd bit of casting. According to Bleeding Cool, Diane Lane is cast as Martha Kent in the upcoming Superman movie.

Math isn't my strong suit, but I believe Lane is about 46 years old. Which... I guess if Snyder is casting her as Martha finding little Kal-El, that's still a shade on the youngish side. And while Lane says many things to me - Aging Midwestern Farmer's Wife is not at the top of that list. And "Kindly Old Lady" is just absolutely nowhere on that list, and I checked five times.

I will never say anything against Ms. Lane, but this...



is not this



nor this


Now if you wanted to tell me Diane Lane is Lara.  Fine.  She looks like a being from a highly evolved race of very good looking space people.
Snyder - doing his bit to reinforce ideas about Hollywood and "women of a certain age".

Well, I guess we'll see where he's going with this trainwreck soon enough.

Now, Smallville did cast Annette O'Toole as Martha Kent, but they made it pretty clear that the Kent's were not an older couple in the TV show.  And, hey, O'Toole was Lana Lang in Superman III, so you have to give props where they're due.

He's using his X-Ray vision to look at  her brains

Anyway, Movie Industry, this sort of thing is why we tend to think you're kind of dumb and people over a certain age quit seeing movies at some point.

comics and a new superblog

In case there was any confusion - I am not on hiatus.  I took last night off after reporting on the passing of Jane Russell as I was reading and had nothing to ad.

I was reading X'ed Out, a newish comic from Black Hole creator Charles Burns.  I quite liked the book, but only figured out in the last few pages that its not a self-contained volume, and only the first in a series.  That's quite fine, as I was pretty well hooked by Volume 1.

yes, this is about the world's worst Easter Egg hunt

Also read James Sturm's much-hyped Market Day.  The book is definitely worth checking out at some point, but, frankly, I think nothing was going to live up the hype that this book received last year upon its release.  I don't want to take anything away from the book, because its a lovely story and well crafter, but...  sometimes a book is just exactly in that space where the former-English majors just sort of lose their lids as the creator hits on all the right sweet spots that tell the reader "this story is meaningful".

yup, it is exactly about what you're thinking its about

Mostly I just thought it was a well written book that used the comic medium and Sturm's style and the immersive world of the character particularly well.  Otherwise, it sort of fell into the "yeah, that's about what I'd expect" sort of book I figured from the solicits and reviews.  Its a good comic, absolutely...  X'ed Out may just be a little closer to my personal wheelhouse, so reading the two on top of one another might not have been fair.

After suggesting I read it for, oh...  three years, NTT was kind enough to send me a copy of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Vol. 1.*  I don't read much (ahem: any) manga, but even I know (a) the name Miyazaki is synonymous with good comics and (b) a thoughtful, lovely comic when I see one.  I'm only partway in, but so far, so good.

giant monster: check. flying device whatzit: check.  flashing weaponry: check. - what's not to like?

A new Super-blog?  It seems that there's a new Superman-themed blog out there in the world, hosted by a gentleman named TomO.  Let's give a warm welcome to Superman 101 (aka: Superman Daily)!  (Daily? Man, pace yourself...  Its a marathon, not a sprint.)

TomO has already blog-linked me, or whatever we're calling it these days. I take this as a sign that I am Tom's personal hero, and somewhere out there, he's built a small shrine to your host, The League (I've already got a motion for a restraining order on him started, just in case).


*We're always happy to take a free comic!  Just, you know, not whole crates full at once.  JimD.

Goodnight Dune now a complete children's book

found by @chris_roberson

I think this looks about right for this crowd...

A while back I linked to an image that was a pretty clever idea/  just a joke called "Goodnight Dune".

Well, its the 2010's, so of course, somebody actually went and made it into a book.

Here.

I strongly suspect Harms will now wish he had children.

"The Rack" is Back?

Looks like our friends at webcomic The Rack might not have shut down after all, and that they may have just been on break.  Good news!

You may recall we eulogized the abrupt end to the series here a few weeks back.

Looks like the characters are set up in a new shop with a new focus.  Now may be a great time to jump on board.

Welcome back, Church and Birdie!

Taking a break

even Superman chillaxes every once in a while

I posted plenty over the weekend. Scroll down and catch up.  Feel free to send in questions.

Jane Russell Merges with the Infinite

It appears that film icon Jane Russell has passed at age 89. 

Russell is most famous for her roles in The Outlaw and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (I have only seen the latter).  Curiously, I only added The Outlaw to my Netflix queue on Saturday night while watching a different movie and wondering why I'd never seen The Outlaw, a movie that had censors and moral watchdog groups bleeding out of their eyes.

apparently being this much woman in 1943 was too much for some people

Russell's performance in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is every bit as good as that of Monroe, in my book.  Check her out in "Ain't There Anyone Here for Love?"

Godspeed, Ms. Russell.