Signal Watch Trailer Park: DKR, Hobbit, etc...

Its not like right now, this Christmas, is shy of movies I want to see.  I've got tickets set for Tintin, and there are a couple things I want to see at The Alamo and elsewhere, if I've got time and money.  I might even go see War Horse although I figure if its Oscar-bait, that horse is going to get himself dead so we all have a good cry about the innocence lost during wartime.

I also need to see the new Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as this may be the version that makes the story less hackey and delivers on the promise of the premise (I still think the book is roughly a Mary Sue story for a middle-aged journalist and all the kinds of women he wants to bed).  Despite my aversion to Tom Cruise, Randy has sold me on MI:4.  And I'm hearing good things about Young Adult.  

But we're here to talk MOVIE TRAILERS.  

Apparently America's completely lazy "please feed me fatty foods while I lay here" approach to life is now extended to the voice of Batman villain Bane in the new trailer, whose not-American nor upper-crust-British accent has made him apparently completely unintelligible to many online angry people.  Having had seen the trailer, if that's a hard accent to parse, none of you people would make it working at a research university.

I have a rough idea of what elements they're playing off one another from back in the Broken Bat era of Batman comics, and I know a bit about Selina Kyle (hey, how about that Anne Hathaway, huh?), and I know Talia al Ghul is slated to appear in the movie played by the lovely Marion Cotillard, so that's always fun.

In general, this looks about five times as intense as The Dark Knight, and that's kind of hard to wrap my head around, as after seeing that movie the first time, I deeply wanted a nap.  But that's also what makes for a good Batman tale, I think.  Things just keep getting ratcheted up.

And hopefully Joel Schumacher will have a moment of clarity in regards to how Bane could have been useful in a Batman movie.

Last night the trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey hit, and the internet sort of blew up.

Truthfully, I only remember bits of this book.  The first half left a much smaller impression on me than Lord of the Rings.  But that doesn't mean this trailer doesn't look extremely promising, even if it includes bits and pieces that seem to have been created just for the movie.



I am thrilled to see Cate Blanchett back as Galadriel, even if I don't think she was in The Hobbit as a book (correct me, folks, I just don't remember). And, of course, seeing artifacts that come into play in the LOTR trilogy show up onscreen is hugely welcome.

I don't pretend to be a Tolkein scholar, and I'm sure you guys know way more about the movies and books than me, but this all looks terribly promising.

And, of course, for some reason Bryan Singer made a high-budget version of Jack and the Beanstalk.



No, I have no idea why.

SW Advent Calendar December 20

Merry Christmas from (left to right)  McSteans, Santa and The League

Just FYI:  This Santa was just incredibly cool.  He saw me a bit concerned about placing my considerable bulk down on his knee and said "Ah, don't worry.  I've had two 450 pound linemen sit on my knees."

Santa is taking one for the team, indeed.

Also - the beard and mustache were totally real.  I like to think we met the real Santa.  He's at The Galleria in Houston.

2nd Anniversary

Today marks the Second Anniversary of the final post at League of Melbotis, the original blog under which I posted.

If you've never been there and are seeking answers to questions you dare not utter, there are years and years worth of postings.

May God have mercy on your soul.

the ghosts of 2005 say "hi"

Comics I read and Chris Roberson's "Memorial" comes out on Wednesday

As a reminder, Chris Roberson's hotly anticipated new series Memorial starts on Wednesday. If you're in Austin, he'll be at Austin Books and Comics in the afternoon from 1-4 to sign copies (I'm getting my copy signed).

If'n you haven't read any of Chris' work, this is a great opportunity to jump on and see why I keep talking about this guy.

Some other stuff:

Tintin - Secret of the Unicorn: I'm the guy who keeps going "oooooooooh...!" at the trailer for the new Tintin movie, and so I read the book Secret of the Unicorn this week.  Its a very manageable volume, but also, apparently, part 1 of the story.  So, while I was a bit thrown by the fact that the story didn't actually end, I also just emailed Austin Books to see if they had a copy of the subsequent volumes.

As you know, I'm a Scrooge and Donald Duck fan, and this is in roughly the same sort of vein of high adventure, but with a lot of goofy stuff happening around the characters and our heroes being a bit off-kilter themselves.  Its also amazing how much of a master of the form Hergé was as far back as these stories first appeared. Today's action strip artists could most certainly learn quite a bit about pacing and scene management from Tintin.

Incorruptible Volume 4: I've been a fan of Mark Waid's "superhero" work at Boom! with the pairing of Irredeemable and Incorruptible. I did fall a bit behind on my reading of these series, and I'm now trying to catch up, but I hadn't forgotten how much I like how Waid's exploring the central thesis in each book of the hero turned mad/ WMD, and the villain who, in a world gone crazy sees the only sensible thing to do is fight on the side of the angels, even if he has no idea how that works and the people around him are all terribly, humanly uneven in their own approaches to life.

Just a great series for the superhero fan who can't deal with another reboot, civil war, etc... Its some dark stuff, but its smartly done and is genuinely building a coherent storyline. Someting I'm not sure you can say about most of the New 52.

SW Advent Calendar December 19

And what is Christmas without Cyd Charisse?

Dark Knight Rises Official Trailer

Santor is Back with a Merry Christmas Tune

That old sweetheart. He's a sentimental fool.

It is remarkably hard to write a non-trite Christmas story

I had an idea that I would try something new this year and try to write a Christmas story. It turns out that, in the short story format, this is very hard.

Of course, the short story format is an enormous challenge to begin with, but add in the complication of the sentiment and sentimentality of Christmas, you can either go sweet and twee, or you can go dark and maybe just end up wallowing in an obvious bit of cynicism or horror that really doesn't get anyone anywhere.

One of the challenges that Hollywood faces, that I've become acutely aware of, is that the message of Christmas is a generic "believe" or "fill yourself with the spirit of Christmas", but what one is to believe, or how one defines the spirit of Christmas (or what that spirit should then encourage one to do), is never really explored.

SW Advent Calendar December 18

And what would the holidays be without Elvira?

To me, fashion is a mistur-ee

I recently saw this image online at the NY Times Magazines tumblr.  This is the latest collection from designer Thakoon Panichugal.

This picture is the worst thing I have ever seen.

Call me kooky, but this outfit is a mishmash of clothes randomly pulled off the shelf from a box store and put on a really dumb person suffering from malnutrition.  I am led to believe that this poor, sick girl has gotten lost on a tour of the house where James K. Polk spent his post-presidency golden years.  She cannot see to the end of the room.

I do not understand fashion.