Bleeding Fool |
- Bit Sized Archie Webcomic Goes Big With Syndication
- POTA Franchise Ranked: #4 Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)
- You’re Remembering it Wrong: What Were the 80s Actually Like?
- Top Three Reasons Why Hollywood Ran Out of New Ideas
- Z2 Comics Producing Official Freddy Mercury Graphic Novel
- HBO Max’s ‘Green Lantern’ Getting ‘Superman & Lois’ Director
| Bit Sized Archie Webcomic Goes Big With Syndication Posted: 29 May 2021 05:30 AM PDT
Bite Sized Archie, the first-ever webcomic series from Archie Comics, is expanding its online presence with a new syndication deal with digital comics app Tinyview and the upcoming release of the first in a series of digital collections on ComiXology. “We created Bite Sized Archie because we were looking for a new way to deliver funny and relevant comics content directly to our dedicated fans on social media,” said writer and Archie Comics Director of Publicity & Social Media Ron Cacace. “We’re continually amazed and humbled by the positive feedback from readers of all ages. And getting to add the series to a platform like Tinyview, where a whole new audience will be able to follow along weekly alongside our current readers on social media, it’s such a wonderful feeling and we’re so grateful for the opportunity.” “I never would have thought that my random lunch break doodles of Archie and Jughead would set the style for the company’s first ever web comic series,” said artist and Archie Comics Art Director Vincent Lovallo. “I’m very grateful to Ron, my comrade in comics, who pushed the concept for the series forward and continues to deliver smart, relevant, and fun stories that anyone can enjoy.” New and previously published editions of Bite Sized Archie will continue to be posted every Friday on the Archie Comics social media pages, while Tinyview users will get a special early preview on Thursday evenings. All previously released and upcoming editions of Bite Sized Archie will be available on the Tinyview platform for web, iOS and Android, and adapted for its vertical-scroll format. Bite Sized Archie joins a diverse assortment of popular webcomic series on the platform, which specializes in delivering short bursts of comics content directly to readers in an easy-to-read format and is the first addition from a major American comics publisher on the service. The post Bit Sized Archie Webcomic Goes Big With Syndication appeared first on Bleeding Fool.  |
| POTA Franchise Ranked: #4 Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) Posted: 28 May 2021 04:55 PM PDT
#4 in my Ranking of the Planet of the Apes Franchise.
This is the return to form worthy of a sequel of the original Planet of the Apes. The unrated version (the version originally screened for test audiences before those reactions forced some changes that softened the film) is the same kind of damning of humanity that was Taylor's prostration in front of the Statue of Liberty. It's not perfect, sharing some of the same flaws as the first two sequels in the franchise, but once it gets past a certain point, it's laser focused on what it wants to do and say.
The largest two problems with the film are really front-loaded. The first is a familiar problem to the franchise where there's an inordinate amount of time spent trying to justify the film's existence and catch up the audience. Armando, played by the wonderful Ricardo Montalban, ended the movie in possession of Milo (whom Armando inexplicably decides to call Caesar at the beginning), the speaking ape child of Zira and Cornelius, and starts this film with Milo on a leash as he goes into a city to hand out flyers for his zoo which is in town. In his scenes with Caesar, Armando spends most of his time explaining to Caesar who his parents were and how the world of ape pets and servants came about. It's really uncompelling stuff and should have been replaced by Caesar and Armando having an actual relationship.
The other major problem is that the world building is pretty sparse, and the beginning of the movie feels off because of the short timeframe from the previous film to this one (about twenty years) and the vast changes that have taken to society and apes. America has essentially dissolved (the way they talk about the president from the previous movie seems to indicate that there's no president anymore) and a fascist dictatorship has taken hold, complete with black uniforms. It's a large leap for such a short amount of time, and it's all done so that Caesar himself can be the main character of this story. Really, the movie's insistence on being directly connected to the previous movie that the filmmakers believe that the audience can't remember so they have to use a character to completely summarize its events is a crutch. Set this a hundred years after the previous film and Caesar is a descendant of Zira and Cornelius where their children never learned to talk but retained their intelligence or something.
Really, those are my only problems with the film, and they're largely forgotten by the half-hour mark.
Caesar accidentally gives himself away and needs to run. He hides among some orangutans getting imported into the city and enters the general ape population where he's purchased at auction (in a parallel to an African slave auction) by the governor, Breck. Breck allows the ape to name himself by pointing to a list of names in a book, and Caesar chooses his own name, a narrative choice that I love. Caesar, at this point, has been shown the brutality visited upon his kind by humanity and he knows that he's smarter than the rest. He can be their leader, and when given the chance to name himself, he chooses that of a king whose name became synonymous with kings. It would have been stronger if Armando had called him Milo, but I'll take it as it is.
As Caesar acclimates himself to life as a slave, he learns of the brutal methods that humanity uses at keeping the apes in line while Armando is questioned about the nature of the ape he had brought to the city, the governor knowing about Zira and Cornelius's child and the suspicion that the child that died at the end of the previous film wasn't theirs, suspecting that Caesar is theirs. Armando ends up killing himself rather than giving away Caesar, and Caesar gets the purpose of revolution. Now, there's another gap here that should have been addressed because it looks like Caesar has telepathic powers to convince other apes to make a mess of the system rather than him organizing. It's a weird moment that gives way to an extended sequence of preparation.
The revolution is great, though. From the moment the apes decide to come out and fight to the finale, the film uses everything it has in its limited budget to make the action feel large and brutal. This is a slave revolt of the most violent kind, and it works really well. J. Lee Thompson, the director, intentionally filmed at night to hide the limited number of extras in ape masks he had, but it was also a great aesthetic choice because the revolution feels particularly menacing at night with flames and the green and red jumpsuits of the apes bearing down on the black uniforms of the human security forces.
The main difference between the unrated, original, version of the film and the theatrical version is the ending. It's an interesting split because the next movie, Battle for the Planet of the Apes, follows on from the theatrical ending where Caesar lets Breck live, but the original ending where Caesar unapologetically calls for the subjugation of the human race under ape rule and allows Breck's brutal murder is the better ending that fits with the rest of the film and the overall thrust of pessimism of the entire franchise. There's no sense that Caesar wants peace. He wants blood and vengeance and power over those who had wronged him.
After a rocky start, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes comes together really well. It's brutal and the sort of thing you don't expect from a mass marketed film (which is why the ending got changed, naturally), but it also holds together in its last hour. Being the shortest of the Apes movies, it really could have used a longer runtime to flesh out some things here and there, but as it stands, I kind of love this fourth entry in the franchise.
Rating: 3.5/4
Originally published here. The post POTA Franchise Ranked: #4 Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) appeared first on Bleeding Fool.  |
| You’re Remembering it Wrong: What Were the 80s Actually Like? Posted: 28 May 2021 02:45 PM PDT With the final year of the 1980s now thirty-two years in the past, a phenomenon that strikes many members of Generations X and Y as both curious and bittersweet has emerged online. The first Zoomers are now twenty. That means two generations have now reached adulthood with no living memory of the 80s. As is natural, the children of Gens X and Y are now asking their elders what the days of their youth were like.
This question tends to take Xers and Ys off guard. It just doesn't feel like the 80s happened that long ago. That's not just generational solipsism, either. Cultural Ground Zero goes a long way toward explaining that weird sense of time compression. When all the big brands from thirty years ago still dominate pop culture now, it's easy to lose track of time.
That's not to say there were no important differences between life in the 80s and life as we know it now. Many cultural changes since then have been foundational and irrevocable, which goes to show that while politics is indeed downstream from culture, something else even more fundamental underlies culture.
The best way to illustrate the differences between Current Year and the Reagan Era is to just describe what select facets of 80s America was like, so let's explore a typical day in the life of a fifteen-year-old kid in 1989.
Let's jump right in.
The mellow strains of a rock ballad ease you awake. You recognize the song as "Second Chance" by 38 Special before your bleary eyes make out 5:15 AM on the radio alarm clock, which has been on since five. Silently chastising yourself for staying up late to watch Hellraiser II – but hey, Cinemax won't be airing it again until Friday, and you've got plans that night – you crawl out of bed.
You stumble around looking for the jeans you tossed on the floor before crashing last night. Even in the dark, you know your cozy childhood room like the back of your hand. It's picked up some material accretions over the years, like the 12″ Sony Trinitron you got last Christmas, the Nintendo your folks bought you for raising your algebra grade from a C to an A, and your collection's crown jewel: the 4-head Magnavox VCR you bought with your own paper route money.
The paper route you're currently behind schedule for.
Your bare foot finds the rumpled pile of your jeans. You struggle into them as the early morning DJ reports the unseasonably chilly temp and quips that it beats the hurricane in Bangladesh. Choosing a hoodie over a tee shirt, you listen to the news of Chinese students occupying Tiananmen Square and half-jokingly thank God you live in a free country.
It's shaping up to be a big news day. Better get a move on. You grab your paper carrier bag from a peg on your closet door and sling it over your shoulder. After easing open your door, you pad down the dark hallway like David Bradley in American Ninja 3. At least in your own mind. Luckily, you know the location of every loose floorboard, so you make it to the bathroom without waking your little brother or your folks. The shower looks inviting, but there's only time to splash some water on your face and rinse the toxic waste spill taste from your mouth with Listerine before heading out.
The tree-lined street where you've always lived is still asleep when you descend the front steps into the chilly but fresh morning. The kids across the street left their Huffies in their front yard again. Your Schwinn, on the other hand, waits in its usual spot on the driveway next to the house in front of your dad's '86 Volvo. With the sky lightening, you fish your Walkman out of your bag and let the driving rifts of Metallica's … And Justice for All drown out the twittering birds.
Your calculator watch reads 5:36 by the time you skid to a stop at the paper drop. Taking a few shortcuts between houses whose sleeping owners wouldn't mind anyway, you get the last paper delivered by 6:30. That gives you just enough time to speed home, hop in the shower before it's your dad's turn, don clean clothes and your backpack. You pass your mom, ensconced on the couch in her bathrobe, on your way out the door. She turns from the morning news to ask if you want some raisin bran. You thank her but decline as you hit the road once more.
Thankfully, your folks had the foresight to buy a house near your district's high school, so you just have time to grab a drive-thru McMuffin in the middle of your ride to school. Micky D's has those transforming food items in their Happy Meals again. Man, you love those things – not that you've told anyone about the near-complete set stashed in the back of your desk drawer.
You coast in to school with five minutes to spare and park at the bike stand out front without bothering with the lock. The adrenaline from your rush to make the first bell gives way to McMuffin-instilled lethargy, and you struggle to keep your eyes open in Chemistry. Your energy levels rise from Night of the Living Dead to Return of the Living Dead by third period History. It helps that your ex-hippy teacher gives everybody a good laugh by singing the praises of Communism. Those kids facing down tanks in China would beg to differ.
Lunchtime clears the lingering fog from your head as you get some carbs in you and sit down with your friends to discuss what really matters. Ricky snatched his dad's copy of Premiere, and the guys are already deep into debating Indiana Jones vs Batman. From what you've seen in the trade mags and on Entertainment Tonight, the third Indy movie looks like the strong horse. You're not as down on Michael Keaton's casting as your friends are, though. The guy at the comic book shop knows some industry people, and he says the early footage justifies the hype.
The movie talk soon gives way to a planning session for Friday's trip. Everybody's confirmed for the basketball game at seven, postgame eats at Vinnie's Pizzeria, and the midnight show of Pet Sematary. The only bone of contention is whether to pile in Greg's van and head to the state park directly afterward, or to reconvene for the camping trip first thing Saturday morning. You inform the group that your kid brother has graciously agreed to cover your route on Saturday – with the inducement of letting him borrow your copy of Ninja Gaiden for the weekend. Your social circle unanimously votes to go for it and go straight from the movie to the campground.
Rising excitement for the coming weekend carries you through the rest of the day. Your frequent bouts of daydreaming only deprive you of some boring lectures, and a for the lit quiz, you'd already read Moby Dick in seventh grade, anyway. Ms. Kellar throws you curveball when she assigns a research paper in last period, but you can crank out a topic proposal and preliminary source list on Sunday.
Your plans to go straight home and knock out your homework after school hit a snag when Greg mentions he's swinging by the mall to pay on a CD player he's got on layaway. You accept his implied offer to tag along and toss your bike in the back of his '78 Chevy van, envious of the license you won't get till November.
The local mall's after-school crowd rivals its typical weekend volume. Greg makes his payment at Radio Shack while you gawk at all the bells and whistles on the display model. The sleek black plastic cube even lets you copy from CD to tape! You hatch plans to have Greg make you some mix tapes when he pays that bad boy off.
Business concluded, it's time for pleasure. You follow Greg into the mall proper, which teems with dudes in denim jackets and chicks with big, teased hair – which you don't particularly notice since it all looks normal, as does the mall clientele's 90% homogeneous makeup. The two of you swing by Orange Julius for a frosty treat and make the scene at the arcade. Dragon's Lair is broken again, so you dump the tokens left over from your last trip into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Your team consists of you as Don, Greg as Raph, arcade regular Kevin as Leo, and a player from the private high school's basketball team as Mike. The four of you trade jabs about the upcoming game while making it almost all the way to the end before Shredder takes you down.
Greg drops you off at home with a promise to make you that mix tape. You head straight up to your room and slam your books down on your desk, determined to make a dent in your homework before dinner. Childish shouts and intermittent explosions drifting through your window break your concentration. Your brother and his friend Lucas are setting off Black Cats in the back yard. You consider calling 911 to narc on them for setting off illegal fireworks, but the uneasy fraternal agreement your weekend's riding on stays your hand.
Mom and Dad both get off work late, which lets you take your homework into overtime. You're just polishing off an essay that effectively regurgitates that morning's history lecture when your brother pops his head in and declares in a perfunctory manner that you're going out for dinner.
Your folks take you, your brother, and Lucas to your family's go-to chain Mexican place. Mom and Dad hold a "Who's Got the Dumbest Boss?" competition over fajitas before asking about your day. You deliver your painstakingly rehearsed pitch for Friday night. Mom voices her fears of crazy backwoods types and bears. Dad raises concerns about papers going undelivered and money uncollected. Your hopes seem to be slipping away, until your brother speaks up and says he'll cover your paper route. You feel validated for not having him arrested. By the time dessert is served, you've got your parents' grudging permission, and all is right with the world.
When you get home, you catch the new episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation before digging back into your homework. The sheer repetition leaves you mentally exhausted, but you hear your mom finishing her two-hour business call, so you muster the energy to get on the phone with Ricky and Greg. With your participation confirmed, the plan is now locked in. You chat with Greg for another half hour, giving a review of Hellraiser II that segues into current events. Greg thinks Bush should get involved n the China situation, but your constant low-grade fear of nuclear war spikes at the idea.
You hang up and put in your comedy tape to forget about the crazy world for a while. The sharpie-scrawled label on the spine identifies this tape's contents as Caddyshack, Police Academy 3, and The Living Daylights. OK, that last one's not a comedy, but you didn't have a blank tape handy when it came on HBO the other week.
Your eyes start getting heavy by the time the Bishop gets stuck by lightning, so you set your alarm, this time switching it to the harsh buzzer instead of the radio. That should head off a repeat of this morning.
As you drift off to sleep, the usual nagging thoughts visit you. That paper is really a cloud hanging over your head. Kellar's a stickler, too. Forget to cross a t or dot an i, and she's liable to slap you with a C. There goes fifteen percent of the overall class grade, and if you don't get at least a 3.85 GPA, your odds of getting into your first-choice college go down the tubes. Then you can kiss a good law school and a partnership at a top firm goodbye. Your dad's frequent warnings about winding up as a plumber echo in your head.
Oh well, you're just a sophomore. If the old guys in charge don't blow up the planet, you'll have plenty of time to figure your life out.
You've got all the time in the world.
++++++++++++++++
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Originally published here. The post You’re Remembering it Wrong: What Were the 80s Actually Like? appeared first on Bleeding Fool.  |
| Top Three Reasons Why Hollywood Ran Out of New Ideas Posted: 28 May 2021 01:15 PM PDT With so many remakes hitting cinema screens these days, something is probably being rebooted in Hollywood right this second. But is that a good thing? Remakes have become de rigueur in recent years, not only as a way to make money off an old property, but also to potentially jump-start a franchise. But a better way to pay homage to the past than ripping it off involves understanding what made it culturally rich. Alfred Hitchcock took chances. Orson Welles dared to stand out and dreaded to fit in. Stanley Kubrick eschewed formula films for originality.
But not today’s Hollywood. And I think I’ve concluded that there are three main reasons for this trend.
Reason One: Hollywood writers are stupid and haven’t livedWhy do people still read Hemingway? Because the man LIVED. He traveled the world. He interviewed scores of people as a journalist. He was a sportsman. An ambulance driver in World War One. And more. You write “what you know.” Hemingway lived more than most of us ever will. And his words reflect that experience. What has the typical Hollywood screenwriter done? Go to college. Study movies and TV. And then ape what they have seen.
If you haven’t lived, you’re “battery” of experience to write about is low. Or empty. So we get vapid ideas from people who have lived in a vapid bubble most of their lives. Not to compare myself to Hemingway, but at one point I was walking down a side street in South Africa to my hotel and I had a moment of sheer terror. I won’t recount it, but I dare say that 99.5% of Hollywood writers have never had such a moment in their lives.
Reason 2: ConsumptionNot food. The content/inputs writers consume.
In the dawn of TV, the writers who worked in the medium were people who had worked as playwrights, or novelists. You look at the people who wrote live TV in the fifties, and you see some of the best writers EVER.
These are people who read Shakespeare, Kipling, Proust, and Faulkner. It continued into the 60s.
look at the first seasons of Star Trek and the Twilight Zone. A murderer’s row of some of the best SF/fantasy writers ever. Robert Bloch. Richard Matheson. Harlan Ellison. Theodore Sturgeon. Ray Bradbury. People who READ the classics, and were inspired by them. Bradbury, especially, said he sought out the classics every day. ‘Stuff your head” with greatness, every day. What are Hollywood writers stuffing their head with these days? TV SHOWS AND MOVIES. The snake is eating it’s tail.
“Write what you know.” If TV writer’s only know the work of OTHER TV writers, you get copies of copies. Xeroxes instead of ideas driven from experience. And understanding. This is reason 2a: Bubbles. The typical Hollywood Entertainment Writer doesn’t leave his bubble. If he/she does it’s along with fellow travelers. You think they actually would TALK to us great unwashed if they were writing about a (GASP) conservative character? Hell, no. That would be WORK. So they write what they know.
Reason 3: RiskHollywood is not about new ideas. It was, once. That ended around 1988 IMO. In the late sixties/early seventies the studios were lost. And when I mean lost, I mean LOST. The old guard was gone. Corporations were beginning to buy studios. I highly recommend the book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. It tells the story about how utterly clueless the industry was… And how young upstarts took full advantage. Spielberg. Scorsese. Coppola. Lucas. And they brought smart young writers.
But then the corporations took full control and by the late 80s we started to see less and less risk-taking. Risk taking, you see, was a problem for the bottom-line. Too many studio heads lost their head (metaphorically) because of risk taking. So Hollywood started sequel-izing. And spinning off. And creating Cinematic Universes. Playing it safe means you might not hit a home-run, but you won’t strike out. You’ll get on base. You’ll keep your job, And the Peter Principle applied.
The Peter Principle is one of the most universal Truths I have ever seen in my travels. It states, simply, that people in businesses rise to “their level of incompetence.” Look at Kathleen Kennedy, current head of Lucasfilm. She was, at one point, Steven Spielberg’s secretary. So, yeah.
In the end, Hollywood is way past any “crossroads”. They are afraid to try anything new (because it costs too much to do ANYTHING, thanks to unions). The creative folks who learned how to write from watching television (NOT reading). And they write what they know… And they don’t know much. Because knowing, learning something… Well, that’s really HARD. it might take away from their time on social media. So, that’s my reasons Hollywood is out of ideas. I’m sure you have others.
Furthermore, Hollywood’s psychological damage compels them to seek out the approval and admiration of their peers, who are steeped in leftism. It doesn’t lend itself to producing anything beyond indoctrination and virtue signaling. Just look at the deal with AT&T “spinning off” (read: dumping) of Time Warner. They bought Time Warner in 2018. For 85.4 billion dollars. They are getting $43 billion for it, now. So, math is not my strong suit… But that is a 50% DROP IN VALUE in less than 3 years. CNN. HBO. Warner Brothers. DC Comics. And more. 50% off. Hollywood is dying, folks. What is not sustainable, cannot be. It happens slowly, and then… All at once.
They are seeing their gravy train disappear. They THINK they can still influence the culture, but every day more people tune out. Which is fine, as long as people pay for their content. But many people are stopping that.
That is Hollywood in 2021. People aren’t looking anymore.
Do you disagree with any of these? Did we overlook any reasons? Sound off in the comment section below. The post Top Three Reasons Why Hollywood Ran Out of New Ideas appeared first on Bleeding Fool.  |
| Z2 Comics Producing Official Freddy Mercury Graphic Novel Posted: 28 May 2021 10:45 AM PDT
Z2 Comics is proud to partner with Universal Music Group and Mercury Songs Ltd for Freddie Mercury: Lover of Life, Singer of Songs, the first-ever graphic novel paying tribute to one of the greatest figures the music world has ever known.
A first in the comics format, Freddie Mercury: Lover of Life, Singer of Songs will be a journey through Freddie's life; from his childhood in Zanzibar and India', through his formative years in England, to becoming the rock star, known and loved by millions around the globe. The story is told in his own words, with each chapter giving a glimpse into the many facets of his life.
Written by Tres Dean (All Time Low Presents: Young Renegades), the graphic novel will give true insight into the many experiences that helped shape the young Farrokh Bulsara and his compelling existence, both on and off stage—that was the life of Freddie Mercury, Lover of Life, Singer of Songs.
Following up on the tremendous success of the Oscar-winning 2018 film Bohemian Rhapsody, and inspired by the book Freddie Mercury: A Life, In His Own Words, compiled by Greg Brooks and Simon Lupton, this upcoming graphic novel will be another essential addition to the bookshelf or coffee table of fans new and old, sumptuously illustrated by Kyla Smith, Robin Richardson, Safiya Zerrougui, Tammy Wang, and Amy Liu, with accompanying cover painting by David Mack.
Freddie Mercury: Lover of Life, Singer of Songs is available for preorder in standard 136 page softcover ($19.99) and hardcover ($29.99) editions, released in finer comic shops, book and record stores in November. Available exclusively through Z2 in a special hardcover deluxe edition for $99.99 complete with an exclusive vinyl LP, as well as limited edition prints by Sarah Jones, Kyla Smith, and Sanya Anwar. Reserve your copy today! The post Z2 Comics Producing Official Freddy Mercury Graphic Novel appeared first on Bleeding Fool.  |
| HBO Max’s ‘Green Lantern’ Getting ‘Superman & Lois’ Director Posted: 28 May 2021 08:45 AM PDT After Green Lantern teases in the world of the Arrowverse and appearances in the Snyder Cut, the space-faring superheroes are finally getting their own series on HBO Max. And the streamer has tapped Lee Toland Krieger to direct multiple episodes of the upcoming Green Lantern series, including its pilot, The Direct reports. Since 2017, Krieger has directed episodes for Riverdale, You, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Prodigal Son, and Superman & Lois. Krieger is set to begin shooting Green Lantern’s pilot episode in Los Angeles in September. Multiple Green Lanterns will share the screen in this incarnation, with Guy Gardner, Alan Scott, and a new female hero named Bree Jarta joining forces. The motormouth Guy Gardner will be portrayed by American Horror Story actor Finn Wittrock, while Jay Ervine is confirmed to play the Golden Age Green Lantern Alan Scott. The post HBO Max's ‘Green Lantern’ Getting ‘Superman & Lois’ Director appeared first on Bleeding Fool.  |
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