Previews and Reviews that are Z's Views
The drawings above are of Sly from Paradise Alley and were created by the legendary Bob Peak. The sketches appear in The Drawings of Bob Peak. The book was offered through a successful Kickstarter campaign and I can’t wait to get mine.
If you missed the Kickstarter for The Drawings of Bob Peak, you can still order a copy from The Art of Bob Peak website.
Source: Thomas Peak.
Tarzan of the Apes by Clinton Pettee. I’ve always liked this cover. Hope you do as well.
Tarzan by Rafael Kayanan
Tarzan has appeared in more than sixty films played by over twenty actors since making his first appearance on the big screen. When I think of Tarzan, the first actor that comes to my mind is Johnny Weissmuller. Of course I grew up watching Weissmuller Tarzan movies.
Over the years, I’ve seen and enjoyed many other Tarzan portrayals including those by Lex Barker, Gordon Scott, Denny Miller, Jock Mahoney, Mike Henry, Ron Ely, Miles O’Keefe and Christopher Lambert.
When I think of Tarzan movies, again, it is the Weissmuller ones that come to mind. Other versions remind me of Hercules of the Jungle, Tarzan as James Bond, Tarzan has to be here so we can justify Bo Derek as Jane, etc.
Tarzan expert Ron Marz selects his favorite Tarzan flicks in Tarzan of the Movies: Ranking the Lord of the Jungle’s Greatest Films.
Kill Switch by Jonathan Maberry
What do you do when the power goes off?
- Terrorists have acquired a terrible new weapon that can crash the power grid and plunge America into a new dark age. A coordinated attack is planned to shut out all lights and emergency services to ten major cities. Planes will fall, hospitals will go dark, no help will come.
- And in that terrible darkness, a dreadful plague will be released. If the lights go off, nothing can stop the bioweapon from killing millions.
- At the same time, the intelligence services are being torn apart from within by a plague of betrayal, murder, and suicide. Even the Department of Military Sciences is stumbling in its response to the growing threat.
- Time is running out, and Joe is being hunted by a terrifying new kind of assassin. A team of remote viewers have the ability to take over any person and turn ordinary citizens into killers. Where can you turn when there’s nobody left to trust?
- Joe Ledger faces his deadliest challenge as friends and allies become enemies and all of the lights begin to go out…
Maberry puts the DMS in the worst place yet against perhaps their toughest adversaries. The clock is ticking down to an bio-weapon attack on ten cities. The terrorists have the ability to take over the minds of anyone to do their bidding and the DMS has been ordered to stand down by the President.
You know that’s not going to happen. Sadly people we have grown to know and care for are going to die trying to save our country. Maberry creates characters that feel real so when we lose them (and we do throughout the course of the series) it hurts.
Kill Switch mixes just the right amount of actions (tons), suspense (much), and humor (as needed) to propel you to the bloody climax. I can’t wait for Ledger’s next mission!
Rating:
The Strain Season 3 Trailer!
I am a huge fan of The Strain which is one of the best-kept secrets on tv. If you’re a fan of horror or apocalyptic stories, then you should be watching The Strain.
HeroesCon 2016 was, as are all HeroesCons, a blast. Read on and I’m sure you’ll agree.
The Pre-Show:
Doralya and I left Thursday morning. Several of our friends were going up early and so we decided to meet them for dinner the night before the show. We met at Merts Heart and Soul. By we, I mean Doralya, John Beatty, Little John and his bride Patricia, Mike Cross, Richard Cox and his wife. The food was good, but the company was even better.
The Convention Hotels:
This was the first year that we stayed at two hotels. Usually we can either be found at the Westin or the Hampton Inn Charlotte – Uptown. This year, depending on the night we could be found at either. When we decided to go up early the Westin (our main hotel that we had already booked for the con) couldn’t fit us in. Thankfully, the Hampton came through.
People:
Sketches:
Autographs:
Panels:
Crime Panel – Joe Rauch talked crime/noir comics, tv and movies with Justin Greenwood (The Fuse), John Lees (And Then Emily was Gone), Rich Tommaso (Dark Corridor), Christopher Sebela and Ibrahim Moustafa (High Crimes).
The biggest surprise is that we only ate at Fuel once. It was good to keep that tradition alive, but not over do it.
In closing:
HeroesCon this year was huge. The wider aisles made movement easier. There were also additional sections this year with chairs and tables for con guests to sit, eat and visit.
Seeing old friends and meeting new ones is always a fun part of the show. I won’t try to list them all because invariably I would leave some out.
This year I was able to talk Doralya into coming into the show on Sunday. We walked the floor and met a lot of artists (new and old friends).
Thanks to Shelton and his crew for another great HeroesCon — see everyone next year!
The new Jack Reacher: Never Look Back trailer looks like the movie will be a fun, if predictable, ride. I liked the first Jack Reacher movie and have no reason to think the sequel will be any less fun.
Jake Rose and Mental_Floss present 12 Facts About The Outsiders That Will Stay Gold. Here are three of my favorites…
1. THE BOOK WAS WRITTEN BY A TEENAGER.
S.E. Hinton was Susan Eloise Hinton, a 15-year-old high school student in Tulsa who had grown bored with the trite plots of books targeted to her demographic. “Mary Jane wants to go to the prom with the football hero … didn’t ring true to my life,” Hinton told The New Yorkerin 2014. So she decided to write a more authentic look at teenage struggles. When she finished, she handed the manuscript to a friend’s mother, who had contacts at a book agent in New York. Editors suggested she go by “S.E.” so readers could infer a male author was responsible for the testosterone-heavy characters. It has sold more than 14 million copies.
4. COPPOLA KEPT THE “GREASERS” AWAY FROM THE “SOCS.”
In The Outsiders, the Curtis boys are part of a clique of “Greasers,” lower-income Tulsa residents in perpetual conflict with the socials, or “Socs,” the sweater-sporting affluent kids. To perpetuate that rift, Coppola divided the actors in Tulsa according to their fictional social status: the Socs got better rooms, more spending money, free room service, and leather-bound scripts.
8. HINTON HAS A CAMEO.
Although Coppola’s production company, Zoetrope, was so low on funds at the time of optioning The Outsiders that they could pay Hinton only $500 of her $5000 rights fee, the author was friendly with the director and agreed to shoot a cameo. Hinton appears in the scene where Dallas (Matt Dillon) is being looked after by a nurse. Hinton also had cameos in other adaptations of her work, including 1983’s Rumble Fish (which Coppola also directed) and 1982’s Tex.
I can’t imagine a book that movie fans will want more than Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Notebook.
When Coppola realized that he would direct The Godfather, he re-read Mario Puzo’s novel and made important notations right on the book’s pages. Check out the example below or better yet, click here, to see a full-size version.
The notations would be Coppola’s road map to make The Godfather and he considered them as important as the screenplay. Coppola explains his process and importance of making his Godfather Notebook in the video below.
The Godfather Notebook will reprint Francis Ford Coppola’s notes and annotations on The Godfather novel by Mario Puzo. I can’t wait to get my mits on a copy. “Leave the gun, and take the cannoli… and The Godfather Notebook.”
Sean Hutchinson and Mental_Floss present 16 Things You Might Not Know About Rambo. Here are three of my favorites…
4. RAMBO DOESN’T ACTUALLY KILL ANYONE IN THE FIRST MOVIE.
Despite his notorious reputation for shooting first and asking questions later, Rambo doesn’t actually do anyone in in First Blood—he only severely wounds the people trying to hunt and harm him. This was a conscious effort on Stallone’s part in his script to change the character into an underdog from the character in the book who, due to his PTSD, goes on a wild killing rampage, which Stallone felt would alienate the audience.
The one character who does die is Deputy Galt, who tracks Rambo through the mountains in a helicopter. Galt, who attempts to shoot Rambo with a rifle, loses his balance and falls from the helicopter after Rambo merely throws a rock toward it to defend himself.
Like the book, Rambo himself was to die at the end of the movie at the hands of Colonel Trautman. The scene where Rambo is killed was filmed, but was scrapped after test audiences hated the fact that it seemed to imply the only way for veterans returning home to cope was by dying.
5. KIRK DOUGLAS WAS SUPPOSED TO PLAY COLONEL TRAUTMAN.
The veteran movie star actually made it to set and appeared in early advertisements for First Blood, but left the production when he demanded the right to rewrite the script. Douglas favored the ending of the book, and felt that Rambo should die in the end. The actor gave the filmmakers an ultimatum: if the production didn’t let him do what he wanted with the script he’d quit. Kotcheff and Stallone wanted to leave the door open for the possibility for Rambo to live or die at the end of the movie, so they let Douglas quit.
Actor Richard Crenna was then cast with a single day’s notice to fill Douglas’ shoes as Rambo’s mentor and father figure, Colonel Trautman. Crenna would reprise his role in two more Rambo movies before he passed away in 2003. He is the only actor besides Stallone to appear in multiple Rambo movies.
The unused alternate ending of First Blood, in which Trautman shoots and kills Rambo, can be seen briefly in the dream sequence in the fourth film, Rambo.
2. HE’S BASED ON A REAL-LIFE WAR HERO.
Morrell first thought of writing a book about a decorated war hero struggling to assimilate back to civilian life when he read about the real-life exploits of World War II soldier Audie Murphy. Murphy was the most decorated American soldier in World War II, earning every possible U.S. military decoration for valor as well as five separate decorations from foreign countries including France and Belgium.
Following the war, Murphy starred as himself in the film adaptation of his own autobiography,To Hell and Back, and would go on to have a film career, appearing in 44 feature films. Murphy—who later suffered from severe post-traumatic stress disorder, which also inspired Morrell’s characterization of Rambo—tragically died in a plane crash in 1971. The Canadian-born Morrell decided to update his novel to the post-Vietnam era due to the political and cultural climate he saw as a grad student at Penn State in the late 1960s.
Morrell would go on to write the novelizations of the second and third Rambo movies. Since he had Rambo die at the end of the first book he had to retroactively change that to have his hero alive and well in the subsequent books.
Source: David Morrell.
Ridley Scott is set to direct an adaptation of S. Craig Zahler’s novel Wraiths of the Broken Land. Drew Goddard will take the screenwriting reins.
This is an all-star team:
As for Wraiths of the Broken Land, here’s how Amazon describes it…
A brutal and unflinching tale that takes many of its cues from both cinema and pulp horror, Wraiths of the Broken Land is like no Western you’ve ever seen or read. Desperate to reclaim two kidnapped sisters who were forced into prostitution, the Plugfords storm across the badlands and blast their way through Hell. This gritty, character-driven piece will have you by the throat from the very first page and drag you across sharp rocks for its unrelenting duration. Prepare yourself for a savage Western experience that combines elements of Horror, Noir and Asian ultra-violence. You’ve been warned.
Source: ComingSoon.
When I read yesterday that Darwyn Cooke was battling an aggressive cancer, it was like an unexpected gut shot. Truth be told, I only knew Darwyn through his art, stories and the several times I met him at comic shows… but I was such a fan and Darwyn always treated me (and other fans) with such respect and kindness, it sure seemed I knew him better than I did.
I’ve always loved Darwyn’s art and when he began adapting Richard Stark’s Parker novels, I thought it could never get better than that. Each time I caught up with Darwyn at a show I’d have his latest hardcover for him to sign and he always included a quick headsketch with the signature. I loved talking to Darwyn about his latest project and what was coming.
Sadly it was announced today that Darwyn passed at 1:30 this morning surrounded by friends, family and aware of all of the well-wishes that had been pouring in since the news about his illness had been announced.
My thoughts, prayers and best wishes go out to Darwyn’s family, friends and fans. Rest in Peace, Darwyn.
Eric D. Snider and Mental_Floss present 14 Epic Facts About Gangs of New York. Here are three of my favorites…
1. IT WAS 32 YEARS IN THE MAKING.
Martin Scorsese read Herbert Asbury’s 1928 nonfiction book The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld in 1970 and immediately thought it would make a good movie. He didn’t have any money or clout yet though, so he had to wait. He bought the movie rights to the book in 1979, and even got a screenplay written around that time, then spent the next 20 years trying to get the project off the ground before finding a willing financial partner in Harvey Weinstein at Miramax Films.
7. SEVERAL CHARACTERS WERE BASED ON REAL PEOPLE.
Bill the Butcher was real, though Scorsese changed his surname from Poole to Cutting for the movie to reflect a creative liberty he’d taken, i.e., having the character live to see the Civil War (he was actually murdered in 1855). William “Boss” Tweed (Jim Broadbent) was a real politician who controlled the Tammany Hall political machine, as you may recall from your high school U.S. history class. So were the Schermerhorns, the rich people seen taking a tour of the misery and vice of Five Points. (Interesting footnote: Scorsese’s fifth wife, whom he married in 1999, is one Helen Schermerhorn Morris, a descendant of early New York elites.) Perhaps most surprisingly, Hell-Cat Maggie (Cara Seymour)—the vicious female fighter who bites off victims’ ears—was fact-based, being a composite of the real Hell-Cat Maggie (her real name is unknown) and a few other historical lady criminals.
13. THERE WERE LONGER CUTS OF THE MOVIE, BUT YOU WON’T SEE THEM.
The first cut, the throw-in-everything-and-see-what-works version, was three hours and 38 minutes, almost an hour longer than the final cut. Scorsese and his longtime editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, tinkered with it relentlessly, ultimately producing 18 different versions that were screened for various audiences. Weinstein, rightfully nicknamed Harvey Scissorhands for his ruthless trimming of the movies he releases, no doubt urged Scorsese toward a shorter runtime, but Scorsese said he’s happy with the one everybody saw, which is two hours and 47 minutes.
“There’s not one version that I would say, ‘That’s my original version,’” Scorsese said on the DVD commentary. They were more like drafts: “This was all a series of changes and rewrites and restructuring, until finally it comes down to the movie you see in the theater.”
Roger Cormier and Mental_Floss present 16 Lively Facts About Death Wish. Here are three of my favorites…
4. CHARLES BRONSON AND HIS AGENT DISAGREED ON THE FILM’S MESSAGE.
“It’s the only time Paul Kohner, my agent, ever disagreed with me about a film,” Bronson said in 1974. “Paul felt very strongly that it was a dangerous picture—that it might make people think it’s right to take the law into their own hands. This is what the hero of the picture does when he wants a one-man vigilante squad to kill muggers, after three of them have murdered his wife and raped his daughter. I told Paul I thought the message was the same there that runs through a lot of my pictures: That violence is senseless because it only begets more violence.”
6. DENZEL WASHINGTON MADE HIS ON-SCREEN DEBUT IN THE MOVIE.
16. SYLVESTER STALLONE WANTED TO REMAKE IT.
Sylvester Stallone was set to direct and star in a Death Wish remake for MGM back in 2008. While that project, uh, died, it was recently reported that Paramount and MGM are teaming up to remake the movie—with Bruce Willis starring.
The Cell trailer and poster are here!
