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- DC Comics Replaces Daniel Cherry III with Anne DePies as GM
- Blando Reviews: Belle (2021) “To Be Real”
- More on the Sudden Departure of DC Comics’ General Manager Daniel Cherry
- Dune Director Denis Villeneuve Updates Fans on Sequel’s Production
| DC Comics Replaces Daniel Cherry III with Anne DePies as GM Posted: 26 Jan 2022 12:52 PM PST
It’s just been announced that Anne Leung DePies has been elevated to Senior Vice President (SVP) and General Manager at DC Comics, succeeding Daniel Cherry III, who abruptly departed the company last week. DePies has been with DC since 201 and formerly worked with Cherry as SVP of Business Strategy, Finance, and Administration. Prior to her tenure at DC, she worked in acquisitions for Warner Bros. in their theatrical, television, and videogame divisions.
As ICv2 reports, DePies will oversee operations, marketing, brand management, and other aspects of DC’s business in her new role, and she will collaborate with CCO and Publisher Jim Lee to make creative and editorial decisions that will promote the company’s plans for its stories, characters, and digital programming, as well as its commitment to the direct market.
"Anne's deep knowledge and appreciation of the DC business, legacy and people will be invaluable in this new leadership role," said Pam Lifford, President WarnerMedia Global Brands and Experiences, who made the announcement. "She understands our fans, characters and stories, and along with Jim, will passionately build our DC publishing business to even greater heights."
"It is incredibly humbling to step into this role at a place I've been for a while now," DePies said. "I feel like I partially grew up at DC, and I've seen how important we are to our fans. To get the chance to lead our company to do even more for them is a dream come true."
h/t to Wes Daugherity from Thinking Critical, who has more on the story.
The post DC Comics Replaces Daniel Cherry III with Anne DePies as GM appeared first on Bleeding Fool. |
| Blando Reviews: Belle (2021) “To Be Real” Posted: 26 Jan 2022 08:25 AM PST 2022 finds me at the local AMC yet again, this time to snag a 5pm showing of Studio Chizu's Belle, directed by the seasoned Mamoru Hosoda (Wolf Children). I did some article blurbs here on Bleeding Fool last year leading up to its release, and now that it has arrived in the states it was time for me to actually watch the film I had been keeping tabs on over Summer and Autumn.
The story opens with an introduction to U, an advanced social medial platform, directed at the audience like an ad, stating that one can be a new 'you' in U, and that it is a place for second chances, sporting over five billion users. U in execution is like an MMORPG meets Twitter.
U is populated by advanced avatars based off of scans of a person's general appearance, but also potentially off of a psychological profile that is somehow glimpsed as well during the scan, the end result often being attractive, or unique in appearance, but not always.
The audience is introduced to the avatar of the protagonist, Belle, singing on a floating whale covered in speakers traversing a vibrant cityscape occupied by thousands upon thousands (Possibly millions) of colorful characters. Then we are plunked into real life (and 2d animation), finally shown our protagonist in the flesh, the withdrawn Suzu (Kylie McNeill in her debut role).
Following Suzu through her high school days we are introduced to her childhood friend, as well as crush, Shinobu (Manny Jacinto, Maliski from Trese – 2021) and her urbane best friend Hiroka (Jessica DiCicco, Shigeru Kamado from various Demon Slayer media) forming her inner circle.
Suzu's outer circle is comprised of quirky kayaking enthusiast Shinjiro Chikami, who goes by Kamishin (Brandon Engman, Morishima Hodaka from Weathering With You – 2019), and strangely, the most popular girl in high school, Ruka (Hunter Schafer, Jules Vaughn from Euphoria 2019 – 2022).
We further learn that Suzu's mother died saving a child from being washed away in a river that was flooding, Suzu being six at the time and witnessing this tragedy first hand has left her with emotional issues she's still battling with in the present, namely being able to sing.
Known for having a pretty voice among her peers, Suzu finds it hard to sing as every time she does she is reminded of her mother who encouraged it, which then reminds her of her death, spurring episodes of intense anxiety.
After an incident where she is put on the spot at karaoke, Suzu flees, vomiting on her way home. Hiroka prods Suzu into trying out U as an escape, and when she does, she uses a group picture where she and Ruka are in close proximity, causing her avatar to generate a face that is a composition of both; Ruka's beauty, and her freckles.
Suzu's name meaning 'Bell', she names her avatar Bell and enters U. She finds that she can sing without anxiety there, and performs a whole song without accompaniment in what constitutes a crosswalk in the virtual city she appeared in.
At first met with passivity and criticism, the following days Suzu finds that she has garnered a following, one that is growing fast, her performance recorded and spread across U as well as the internet at large.
With help from Hiroka, who is more than a little savvy with computers and social media, Suzu is able to build on her avatar's celebrity, singing more intricate, musically accomplished pieces, while also keeping her identity a secret as all earned income from her exploits are immediately donated to charity.
Her fame continues to grow, reaching such heights that she is able to hold a concert viewed by millions online. Enter 'The Dragon' (sorry, I couldn't help myself), a grotesque avatar with bruises on its back, crashing the concert with a wild conflict between Justin (Chace Crawford, Kevin Moskowitz / the Deep – The Boys) and The Justices, a group of vigilantes unofficially policing U with the ability to dispel an avatar, revealing the identity of the person behind it.
The Dragon (voiced by Paul Castro Jr, Rikuya Yoshida – High-Rise Invasion) manages to escape the battle after trouncing the Justices, leaving Justin, the audience and Bell (now referred to as Belle by her fans) stunned.
U and the media at large become enamored with The Dragon, fixated on discovering who is behind the grim façade and violence. Suzu and Hiroka perform their own investigation while the public exposes an artist suspected of being The Dragon as a fraud, who, simply aped the pattern of The Dragon's bruises in his works.
A professional baseball player is later accused of being The Dragon because he covers up his upper body, apparently, to hide the scars of a violent past. But he reveals to the world that he has scars from numerous surgeries performed on him when he was a child to rid him of cancer.
While speculation continues to fly, Suzu manages to find where the Dragon resides within U at the cost of becoming a target of Justin and his cadre. At first rebuked by The Dragon several times (all of which vehemently), Suzu begins to break through to the person under the avatar, realizing that he is not much younger than herself, and potentially suffering some actual burden outside of U.
Suspicions are confirmed when Suzu and Hiroka finally discover The Dragon's true identity, getting a glimpse of what he goes through in his personal life at home. This leads to the crescendo of the film stretched out over U and the real world as Suzu puts her own identity on the line in a desperate bid to save the The Dragon.
I won't spoil the ending here. You will have to buy a ticket for the rest.
Visually, Belle is the most intricately and impressively delivered piece by Studio Chizu to date, reflected in how they animate the two stages the story plays out on. U is vibrant, 3-dimensional, and glows with coding beneath its colorful objects.
The real world is rendered with an eye for the natural, Suzu's mountain hugging hometown a 2D recreation of rural Japan, effecting down to earth greens and browns. This helps contrast to realities Suzu moves between, both beautiful feasts for the eyes.
From a storytelling standpoint, it is not difficult to see where Belle pulls inspiration from. It is a Beauty and The Beast story with the Hosoda touch for virtual world building. Belle is pensive though, meditative in how it progresses, falling more in step with Wolf Children than, say, Summer Wars, nor is it as fairy-tale whimsical as its Disney predecessor.
Belle is a smart film in that it knows what it is doing with its plot device of U and what it is doing without it, treating both worlds separately, allowing them to tell similar, but different stories, and not blending the possibilities found in both until the final act. This duality is purposeful, and integral to what Belle is trying to convey.
The film is concerned with the public image contrasted with the private life. The ideal self, or at least the most provocative one put on display, and the person pulling its strings out of sight. The avatars in U are both a persona and a shield for the respective people controlling them, and the threat of having that veneer, that curtain, ripped away is what gives the antagonist in Justin a certain intimidation, or weight.
He cannot hurt you, but he can expose you.
Any invasion of privacy is horrifying because it can bring embarrassment, shame, judgment from others, or all the above. Belle addresses this horror by illustrating brutal honesty, and courage in the face of exposure.
Belle tells us that healing or strength isn't found in what we try to hide, or escape into, but in the bare faced truth, and the bravery it takes to be the genuine article before a world fixated on fabricated images.
That is a hard message to broach, but Belle sings it to us with a trembling, sincere voice that is equally hard to dismiss. The post Blando Reviews: Belle (2021) "To Be Real" appeared first on Bleeding Fool. |
| More on the Sudden Departure of DC Comics’ General Manager Daniel Cherry Posted: 26 Jan 2022 06:15 AM PST
The Hollywood Reporter announced a very telling resignation that has taken place at DC Comics, for an executive who originally worked in video games:
Just like DiDio, Cherry is another bad choice for employee who won’t be missed. I have no idea what they mean by “future-proofing” the publisher, but it’s already obvious that, from an artistic perspective, they most definitely haven’t, and EIC Marie Javins is only ensuring the excruciating disasters will continue.
It’s worth considering that the news of Cherry’s departure comes shortly after the news that one of DC’s diversity-pandering creations, Yara Flor, is having her series cancelled pretty quickly, according to ComicBook, which predictably sugarcoats the whole subject:
This is almost enough to laugh, how they quickly set about fawning over the whole project as instantaneously great, without even considering the way it was intended more as social jutice inclusivity propaganda than an organic effort to introduce a spinoff character from Wonder Woman’s legacy. Though if no reason was provided, doesn’t that signal sales were poor? Obviously, nobody cared based on the inorganic approach to marketing, thus it makes no sense to merely say the title’s heroine is a “star” when they way they went about this was extremely poor.
Speaking of WW, there’s some very sickening news on MSN/Games Radar, that several of the Justice League’s members are being killed in April:
Well! So Jurgens, one of the architects of one of the most overrated stunts of the 1990s, is contributing to this newest example of PC publishers and editors vehemently refusing to let go of what’s become an obsession: killing off characters both major and minor just to make some crazy point, which, post-2000, became increasingly done for political purposes. One more reason why I’ve lost only so much respect for Jurgens, and have to take even the best efforts in his portfolio with a grain of salt. Interesting they chose to kill off John Stewart rather than Hal Jordan this time, if only because POC and LGBT characters are often protected by this status in fiction publishing. But, it wouldn’t make any difference if it were Kyle Rayner who were the one killed, because no matter what character it is, and no matter their gender or racial background, their doing this as part of publicity stunts is exactly what makes this offensive and tasteless. Nobody who cares about entertainment merit should ever buy this.
A writer at Red State addressed the news, but while he’s appalled, the way he goes about this is still very screwed up:
While I can understand he’s devastated at the severe political abuse the whole franchise has suffered, preferring the characters stay dead is not the answer. Mainly because their PC successors are going to continue from where they left off, serving as political platforms and turning the legacies of the true heroes into totally sick jokes. What the writer should really wish is that the whole franchise as comics were cancelled already, and/or sold off to some more sensible business, if that’s how the legacies can be preserved tastefully. How such points are lost on these would-be professional commentators is beyond me.
At least he makes a point about the stark contrast Japanese manga stories have to USA comics:
Exactly. The specific serial fiction format used for mainstream US comics has continued so long, without any serious attempts to change it for what could be better in the long run, that it’s proven to be its undoing. DC/Marvel refuse to abandon the monthly pamphlet format, nor the company wide crossovers that’ve been going on since Secret Wars, and even went so far as to largely abandon mainstream bookstores as a way of selling them for many years, that as a result it’s no wonder it got to a point where they’d end up abused by bad political motivations. The only way things will improve for now is if the companies are folded, NOT whether the classic heroes will remain in the afterlife.
Cherry obviously condoned the very mistakes spoken about by the Red State writer, and that’s why his departure from DC is for the best, as will the departure of Javins, when the publisher presumably goes under or is sold off.
Originally published here. The post More on the Sudden Departure of DC Comics’ General Manager Daniel Cherry appeared first on Bleeding Fool. |
| Dune Director Denis Villeneuve Updates Fans on Sequel’s Production Posted: 26 Jan 2022 04:45 AM PST
Denis Villeneuve, director of the eagerly awaited sequel Dune: Part Two, has issued an encouraging update on its development. The filmmaker disclosed on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast that the screenplay for the sequel is nearing completion and that he is now enjoying being at the more unbound imaginative stage of production before going forward with the more practical stages of development.
"Right now, I'm in what you call 'soft prep,' meaning that we are finishing the screenplay. We'll start storyboards soon. [Dune] Part 2 is being designed right now by [production designer] Patrice [Vermette]. It's that beautiful part where it's just dreaming, looking at the ceiling and thinking about the movie, I love it. I mean, it's like the moment where everything is possible, before we have the shock of reality that will come."
The sequel to Villeneuve's adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune was green lit in October. Following several delays caused by the ongoing global pandemic (the film was initially due to be released in late 2020), the first Dune finally hit screens last September and was well-received by critics for its visuals, scope, and ambition.
The all-star cast includes Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zendaya, David Dastmalchian, Chang Chen, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, and Javier Bardem, Dune hurls audiences into the far future, dropping us into this adaptation of the complex world of Frank Herbert's seminal novel. The post Dune Director Denis Villeneuve Updates Fans on Sequel’s Production appeared first on Bleeding Fool. |
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