Asian Mainstays Come to Hollywood

Man, this physically pains me. Like Michael Bay level hurt. But sadly, I understand that Hollywood is almost always about the money, and almost never about preserving credibility or talent. Evidence? At least five huge mainstays in popular Korean cinema and Japanese anime are being converted to the Western big screen and the outlook is pretty murky. I'm tempted to just out-and-out call them terrible but I don't like to judge until I see the final product...but really, lets go through these one by one.



Dragonball

Yeah its kinda old news that one of the biggest the Japanese anime series of all time is being converted to a live action film but it seemed to flow with the theme of this post. Now I'm not a huge Dragonball Z fan, although I watched a ton of it back when I was young. I'm predict this
is going to be another 'Transformers' where the acting is stale, the film will lean far too heavily on graphics, the fanboys will be pissed that the movie didn't follow the original storyline,
the film will be overly stylized with no sense of irony...oh yeah, and it'll make a ton a money. Mind you, since I'm not a huge fan, I'm not particularly pained by this, I mean really, how would they make it true to the original text? Have them stand around staring at each other sizing each other up for 45 minutes?



Oldboy

One of my favorite movies of all time. And who do they turn the reins over to? Steven Spielberg and Will Smith. Sigh. They do a good marketing twist though. When asked if the movie will be the same as the Korean version Will Smith responds, "we're going farther than that, we're going to adapt it from the original comic." How do we read this? Ah, we can't have a storyline as controversial as the Korean Oldboy but we don't want to upset the fanboys so we give a wishy-washy answer. Hmmm maybe Spielberg can include some aliens a la the recent Indiana Jones movie or A.I. Or maybe Will Smith can write a pop-rap song about being stuck in a room for a decade.



JSA (Joint Security Area in Korea...Joint Security America in the U.S.)

Yes, I agree. The social-political context between the US-Mexico border parallels the North/South Korean border. Man. And while I might not be a scholar in US history, I don't think that at any point being friends with Mexican border guards could potentially cause a full-scale war. How exactly do you pull off this film? Oh I see, get the guy who wrote 'King Arthur' to do it. That'll be good.



Cowboy Bebop

My favorite anime series is becoming a live action film, and I'm actually quite calm about it. I'm actually kind of interested in what they'll do. So far Keanu Reeves has been pulled in for Spike which, I guess is kind of fitting (in all honesty you don't need crazy acting chops to play Spike, just lean on the wall a lot and smoke). I tell you what. Keep the gritty atmosphere and I'll watch. Moreover, you've got the Matrix team behind it which makes me much more optimistic. Please, please, please...keep 'Tank' on the project. Their music is out of this world.



Akira

In a good case scenario this movie will be good, and surprisingly I'm optimistic as its being described as 'Blade Runner' meets 'City of God.' Wow, nice name dropping there Warner Brothers. You even made a bitter skeptic like me re-think the entire project. Moreover the exec bringing this to the table is the same person who spearheaded the new Batman franchise and 300 which have a similar dark atmospheres - so the chances of them candy-coating Akira are a bit less than if, oh, Spielberg took on this project. However, if they do re-vamp the ending to be more kid-friendly the movie is done-for, but in all fairness, how do you pull off a giant disgusting mutating blob that kills everyone in Tokyo and make it work for an American audience? Time will tell.

Election Nerd

Well like every other post I've read, I'm totally stoked that Obama won the U.S. election. Is this an indicator to the forthcoming global repudiation of the right? We can only hope, but unlike my dad (who almost literally thinks Obama is the messiah), I'll judge this new president based on his action. And while I'm much more hopeful than ever before, I want to wait and see. As Obama himself said "we've got a lot of work to do."

Moreover, for a elections nerd like me who's followed American politics for the last year (I literally watch pundits for 3 hours a day - thank you Young Turks!) people were really surprised I didn't watch the election. In all fairness, I was working on a new project and had to go to the Polysics concert to get video footage, but either way. However, before everything all the election drama fades, I present you this video. Man. Mixing Star Wars nerds with election nerds has never been this awesome.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Oh and this was a lot of fun too. Man I'm such a dork.



(credit for these go to JimSmash)

Comic Review: Powers

Powers

Now that my thesis is done, I can sit down and really sink my teeth into some good comics. My buddy Rami let me borrow 11 books of Brian Bendis and Michael Oeming's Eisner award-winning 'Powers.' Now I'm going to be blunt, when I see anything that says 'award winning' I buy into it. I love that shit, I don't want to waste my time and if something at least received an award, that means somebody out there liked it good enough to toss it a bone. On the flip side, I'm really critical of anything award winning because I expect it to be phenomenal.

The storyline for 'Powers' is pretty clever and certainly its innovative. Basically, it takes place in a world where superheroes are a daily occurrence are given licenses and regulated by the government as they fight against renegade super powered villains. Set against this backdrop are 'Christian Walker' and 'Deena Pilgrim,' two homicide detectives who specifically investigate the death of people with super powers.

As a superhero comic 'Powers' is a forced to be reckoned with. Not only does it take the standard comic book and flip it on its head (looking at heroes from the bottom up, rather than from the top down) but it also challenges them by focusing on oft unspoken elements of the superhero genre. What do I mean by this? If superheroes did exist, could you imagine how media crazed we common fold would be about them? It'd be like Lohan and Spears on crack. As well, if you were a hero, wouldn't you capitalize on your brand and make a fat ton of cash? Or, since heroes are just as human as anyone else, what would you do about the insane amount of people of the opposite sex throwing themselves at you?

Stalker fans, Capitalist branding and horny groupie sex are just the tip of the ice burg of Bendis and Oeming's book and just as much as these comics are a commentary on the superhero genre, they easily extend into a social critique of ourselves living in modern society. Moreover, its unapologetic in its slinging around of violence, swearing and nudity to hammer its point down in as realistic a means as possible. Far beyond shocking (as most comics use these for) it become simply fitting in the overall writing of the project.

The art too is simply astounding. Reading an interview the two tried hard to move as far away from the standard comic book cover art. This includes common stereotypes like the hero flying 'out' of the page, or a cinematic fight sequence to lure the reader into wanting more. Instead, covers of 'Powers' have paid homage to The Beatles's 'White Album', pulp film posters, and even E! Online's website. As I mentioned before, the comic is consistently innovative not just in it writing but in its art.

While as a book on superheroes the story like does wonders, as a detective comic the plots of the several trade paperbacks (which encompass the various story arcs) seem kind of lackluster. The villains are far from interesting, the 'mystery' we are hoping to solve often fall flat onto cliche, and the reader is never really challenged. A lot of the time the endings of the stories are solved in blitz and whirl of events in the last few scenes, often coming straight of left field in a kind of deus ex machina sort of way, and to be frank, a lot of the times it feels like cheating. Unlike other cop dramas, we get no hints or clues that we can decipher on our own, but are served all the answers on a plate when the writer is good and ready.

But perhaps the flaw is my own. I approached this comic as a detective comic first and a superhero comic second, which really isn't the case. In fact it isn't even a superhero comic first, it is first and foremost clever social commentary, secondly a novel and interesting take on superheroes, and third (and only as an afterthought) it is a crime story. If understood in that context, these books are solid gold.

Comic Review - AWOL'd

AWOL'd

As if trying to review movie and music isn't enough, I'm going to add comics into the fray. Having just come back from FanExpo 2008 in Toronto I dropped something to the tune of $150 strictly on independant comics on 'Artists' Row' in a passionate desire to support the local comic scene. And in all honesty, it wasn't nearly enough to get all the stuff I wanted, but I did get to meet a ton of cool people ranging from artists and writers, to colorists and owners of publishing companies.

So starting things off is Jason Loo's 'AWOL'd,' a story about three street kids who are forcefully recruited to serve as top secret government agents. They are genetically modified and trained to be perfect killers, but resent their captivity and eventually escape. They are tracked by their previous boss as they try to forge a new life for themselves and are constantly on the run.

Right off the bat one can find easy links to Grant Morrison's 'We3' not only in the fact that there are three main characters who are government runaways, but also in the innocence of the protagonists and their unfortunate use of violence. It would be unfair to compare Loo's artwork to Frank Quietly, but this isn't to say that his work is bad. Quite the opposite. Considering that 'AWOL'd' doesn't have an ISBN number, I can only assume that this was independently put together which, when looking at his artwork, makes this book very impressive. Moreover, he uses interesting writing mediums to bridge each chapter and progress the storyline - brief e-mails to explain month long periods of time (a cool reference to Douglas Coupland's Microserfs). He even starts off the book with a great 'suggest listening' track list which includes Sparta, Glassjaw and Rival Schools. I'm not going to lie, this easily sold me on wanting to read more.

The writing of the book, however, is somewhat forced. Events happen at breakneck speeds leaving the reader confused as to whats going on. For example, we only find out later in the storyline that two of the three heroes are romantically involved with each other. What the? How did we get from being friends on the run to sleeping together? I always find that the beauty of character development is in the subtle details and 'AWOL'd' proves this to be true. Its hard to get emotionally attached to these characters when you don't even know their interesting quirks or particularities. Moreover the dialogue is often forced and at one point, Norton (the sniper of the three) shoots someone in the head and through sniffles claims "it stings each time." When the two lovebirds decide to have sex, their friend responds nonchalantly by saying "I'll slit your throats if I see any skeet marks on my pillow." Really? Do we need to toss around dated slang to make the comic seem edgier? I don't know, the dialogue annoyed the hell out of me, which is upsetting because they story at its core is has good direction and an interesting concept.

Where Loo excels I think is in his ability to tell a good action story. The sequences where the three heroes are chased down and must face off against a group of similarly-engineered agents was gripping and very cleverly executed. On top of this, the talents each character brings to a combat situation are interesting and well defined, but not overly hokey. Loo has the ability to draw out a combat scene that is convincing but not dragged out.

While my criticisms of the dialogue and writing are somewhat heavy handed, its important to note that 'AWOL'd,' despite its rocky start, tightens up its writing near the end of the book and leaves the reader with a cliffhanger has us howling for more. Already, Volume 2 already looks to be a lot better, not just because it will help progress an interesting storyline, but because its easy to tell that Loo's writing has already dramatically improved throughout the transition of just this book.