Previews and Reviews that are Z's Views
I’ve heard of bleeding for your art, but Jackie Chan takes it to a whole new level. I don’t know the artist who created this Jackie Chan’s Film Injury Infographic, but if you do, let me know so I can provide proper credit. You can see a bigger version at Bits & Pieces.
Ciarán O Donovan has hit another home run with his alt poster for Rosemary’s Baby. That shouldn’t be a surprise to regular readers here. O Donovan’s first appearance here came in 2019 with his alt poster for Escape from New York. That was followed up with his alt Maltese Falcon poster. Then last December we got a look at O Donovan’s alt Sin City: The Hard Goodbye alt poster.
I’d love to see an The Art of Ciarán O Donovan book. Until that time, we can make do with Ciarán O Donovan’s Instagram or Twitter!
Fred Ward’s publicist announced today that Mr. Ward died on Sunday, May 8, 2022, at the age of 79. No cause of death was given.
Before Fred Ward began his career as an actor he spent time in the Air Force, as a boxer and a lumberjack! No wonder Mr. Ward was often cast as a tough guy! Fred Ward’s earliest roles were small parts, often uncredited in movies and television. His first big break came when he played one of the convicts who with Clint Eastwood was able to Escape from Alcatraz.
Fred Ward continued to get bigger parts in features such as Southern Comfort, The Right Stuff, Silkwood and Uncommon Valor. Then in 1985, Fred Ward starred in the film that was supposed to make him a megastar, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins. Unfortunately, the film fizzled at the box office. The adventure began and ended there. Luckily for movie-goers, Fred Ward’s career didn’t.
For the rest of Fred Ward’s life he continued to alternate between television and feature films. Some of his best known television parts came in Cast a Deadly Spell, Invasion Earth, Grey’s Anatomy, ER and True Detective. Fred Ward’s best known feature films include Tremors, Miami Blues, Henry & June, Thunderheart, The Player, Tremors II: Aftershock and 2 Guns.
I first saw Fred Ward in Escape from Alcatraz. But it was when he appeared in Carny, Southern Comfort and Uncommon Valor that I really took notice. Mr. Ward had a tough guy charisma and I was pulling for him with Remo Williams. Sadly, that film just didn’t work. But Fred Ward continued to Whenever Fred Ward’s name was in the credits, you knew the film/show would be better because of him. Although Andrew Vachss’ Burke character was never developed for movies or tv, I always thought that Fred Ward would have perfect.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to Fred Ward’s family, friends and fans.
I don’t play many board games. One I do enjoy is Monopoly. Just in time for The Godfather‘s 50th Anniversary is the new Godfather: Monopoly Edition. With everything from tokens to board locations geared to The Godfather, it brings a whole new meaning to “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.” And when a player can’t decide which token to be, you can say, “Leave the gun, take the cannoli.”
Source: GeekTyrant.
Resident Evil, the series, premieres July 14th on Netflix. We have the poster above and a teaser below. I’ll give it a shot.
How could so much Joy create so much pain? Resident Evil comes exclusively to Netflix, July 14th.
10 MInutes Gone (2019)
Director: Brian A. Miller
Writers: Kelvin Mao, Jeff Jingle
Starring: Bruce Willis, Michael Chiklis and Meadow Williams.
Tagline: Keep your enemies close.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
Rex (Willis) is a mastermind who brings together a crew of thieves to rob a bank. When the robbery goes sideways, it’s every man for himself. The robbery team make their escape going separate ways. As Frank (Chiklis) and his brother head down an alley to their getaway car, someone jumps from the shadows and knocks Frank unconscious. Ten minutes later Frank wakes up to find his brother has been killed.
When Rex learns that the robbery is a bust, he brings in a professional killer to take out anyone with knowledge that could lead to him. Frank knows that time is running out. He needs to find who killed his brother and sabotaged the heist.
As I watched 10 Minutes Gone, it was tough to get through Bruce Willis’ scenes knowing what he has been dealing with in regard to his health. Willis speaks one or two lines at most in his scenes and then the camera cuts away. Michael Chiklis is always good, but even Chiklis isn’t enough to raise this film from an “OK” rating. It’s worth reading the IMDB trivia on 10 Minutes Gone to understand why it wasn’t better.
10 Minutes Gone rates 2 of 5 stars.
The poster isn’t much, but that trailer for Hunt is fire. Deal me in.
Mad God looks crazy. Maybe crazy great, crazy good or just plain crazy. I’ll have to check it out to be sure. Dig that poster. Deal me in.
Follow The Assassin through a forbidding world of tortured souls, decrepit bunkers, and wretched monstrosities forged from the most primordial horrors of the subconscious mind. Directed by Phil Tippett (Star Wars, Jurassic Park), the world’s pre-eminent stop motion animator, every set, creature, and effigy in this macabre masterpiece is hand-crafted and painstakingly animated using traditional stop-motion techniques.
Premieres June 16
Darc (2018)
Director: Julius R. Nasso
Writers: Tony Schiena, Dennis Venter
Starring: Tony Schiena, Armand Assante and Shô Ikushima.
Tagline: None.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
An Interpol agent named Lafique (Assante) arranges for the early release of a convict known as Darc (Schiena). Lafique then recruits Darc to bring down a Yakuza human trafficking ring. When Darc was a small boy he witnessed the leader of the Yakuza gang kill his mother. Darc will use all of his martial arts skills in an attempt to avenge his mother and bring down the gang… but will they be enough?
Shaky camera work on several of the fights diminish their effectiveness. Schiena comes off as a cross between Karl Urban (a good thing) and early Steven Seagal (used to be a good thing). It would be interesting to see him in a better film. It’s always good to see Armand Assante. I wish the movie was as good as the poster.
Darc rates 2 of 5 stars.
It’s no secret I’m a fan of Joel Tesch’s art. Check out his Apollo Creed & Rocky Balboa piece above and you’ll understand. Click on it and you can check out a championship-sized version.
This is Joel Tesch’s third appearance here. His first was with his Spider Rico vs The Italian Stallion at the Resurrection Gym. His second appearance was with his riff on “Yo, Adrian! I DID IT!!” I hope there’s a fourth Joel Tesch art appearance in our future.
You can see more of Joel Tesch’s art at his website, Twitter and Instagram.
Kerry Wolfe at Mental Floss posted an interesting article titled 28 Fascinating Facts About Time. Before you click over, here are three of my favorites…
We can thank the railroad industry for standardizing our time zones. Until the 19th century, towns and villages synchronized their clocks to the local solar noon. This created thousands of local times that all varied and made scheduling transportation a major headache. Train schedules in different cities had to list dozens of arrival and departure times for each train to account for all the mini time zones. On November 18, 1883, railroad companies in the United States and Canada began using a system very similar to the standardized time zones we still use today. In the UK, the railroad companies began using a standard London-based time in 1840. (I didn’t know this. It’s crazy that it was the railroad industry that brought standard times zones about! – Craig)
Though a lot of people believe daylight saving time was adopted to keep farmers happy, that’s a myth. The first person to seriously advocate for daylight saving time was an entomologist who wanted more sunlit hours to look for insects after work in the summer. He proposed his idea to a scientific society in New Zealand in 1895. (Wow! I had always been taught daylight saving time was brought about to give farmer’s more daylight! Another myth busted. – Craig)
Even with the advent of standardized time, people still struggled to keep their clocks in sync. One London family used this to their advantage, and made a living by selling people the time. An astronomer named John Belville would set his pocket watch to the time at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. He would then travel around the city and visit his network of subscribers, who paid to set their own clocks by Belville’s pocket watch. After Belville died in 1856, his wife, and then later their daughter Ruth, carried on the tradition. Ruth continued to sell the time until World War II. By then she was in her eighties, and a couple of factors led to her timely retirement: Improved technology had made her role less important, and the war was making treks around London too dangerous. (Hats off to John Belville for figuring out how to use his pocket watch to provide for his family. Crazy that his wife was still able to do this as late as the start of World War II — that’s less than 100 years ago. If there is money to be made, someone will figure out a way. – Craig)
George Pérez
For some reason, May 11th is designated National Twilight Zone Day. As Paul at The Twilight Zone points out, this isn’t the most appropriate date to honor the show. No one knows why May 11th was selected, but any day (heck, every day) is fine by me to praise and bring more eyes to one of the all-time best television shows.
To that end, the SYFY Channel is running a mini-Twilight Zone Marathon. It starts on May 11th, at midnight with the last episode starting at 10:00am. If you can’t stay up all night to watch and you don’t want to record them all, then I suggest these 5 episodes.
The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)
Director: Erle C. Kenton
Writers: Scott Darling (screenplay), Eric Taylor (original story)
Starring: Cedric Hardwicke, Lon Chaney Jr., Ralph Bellamy, Lionel Atwill, Bela Lugosi, Evelyn Ankers and Colin Clive.
Tagline: The King of all Monsters strikes again! No chains can hold him! No tomb can seal him in!
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
Ygor (Lugosi) discovers Frankenstein’s monster (Chaney) buried under rubble of Dr. Frankenstein’s castle. Ygor and the monster journey to find Dr. Frankenstein’s son, Ludwig (Hardwicke), who is also a doctor. When they arrive in Ludwig’s town, the monster befriends a young girl. Townspeople fear the monster is going to hurt the child and attack the monster. Two villagers are killed before Ygor and the monster escape.
Ygor wants Ludwig Frankenstein to use his father’s notes and put Ygor’s brain in the monster. While Ludwig considers this, he is visited by his father’s ghost (Ha! THAT explains the title) who says to find a good brain for the monster. As villagers search for the monster, Ludwig prepares to operate, but whose brain will he use? And what will be the result?
I have many fun memories of watching The Ghost of Frankenstein with my buddy late at night on Sammy Terry’s Nightmare Theater. It’s a fun movie for kids. You have Bela Lugosi (Dracula!) as Ygor and Lon Chaney, Jr. (Wolfman!) as the Monster. You get the monster fighting villagers on a rooftop, chained in a courtroom (What?) and breaking free, plus the mandatory laboratory scene with electrical arcs and rioting villagers. What’s not to like?
If you see The Ghost of Frankenstein as an adult for the first time, your mileage may vary quite a bit from mine. I still enjoy The Ghost of Frankenstein even though we have Ygor and the monster as friends. They were bitter enemies before. Chaney plays the monster as if it is blind, which explains why the monster’s eyes are always closed and it walks with arms outstretched. This is never really explained in the movie. The Ghost of Frankenstein isn’t as good as Frankenstein or The Bride of Frankenstein (or even Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein) but I like it well enough to give it 3 of 5 stars.
IQ by Joe Ide
Trade Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Mulholland Books
First sentence…
Isaiah’s crib looked like every other house on the block except the lawn was cut even, the pain was fresh, and the entrance was a little unusual.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
Isaiah Quintabe is a quiet kid with a superior intellect. While IQ is still in high school, his older brother and guardian, is killed in a hit-and-run accident. Alone and afraid he will be sent to a home, IQ begins to earn money from neighborhood folks needing help. When IQ finds a runaway daughter word spreads. Soon he is getting requests for assistance with “cases the police can’t or won’t touch.” The cases don’t pay much and sometimes the reward is food or tires for his car. Because money is tight, IQ takes in a roommate. Dodson is a low-level drug dealer that IQ knows from the ‘hood. Both IQ and Dodson hope the arrangement is temporary.
When Dodson brings IQ a case offering real money, there’s an understanding that Dodson will assist. The potential reward is too good to pass, so IQ agrees. That’s how they begin working for a big time rapper whose life was threatened. Soon IQ and Dodson find themselves up against a cold-blooded killer with an attack dog the size of a small bear, and a large list of suspects who’d benefit from the rapper’s death. Before it’s over IQ and Dodson are on the killer’s list. Identifying the killer and who hired him will save the rapper’s life as well as their own. If they can.
Joe Ide has created a unique character with Isaiah Quintabe. It’s impressive how Ide sets up the first IQ book. Ide gets in background information, early cases, and IQ’s unlikely partnership with Dodson while at the same time keeping the story moving. Everything, the settings, the characters and the dialogue, all ring true. Because of this, when Ide introduces the killer and his beast-dog, we buy it. Ide has created memorable characters and a great first story for our modern day Sherlock Holmes. I loved IQ and look forward to more of his adventures.
IQ rates 5 of 5 stars.
IQ Hardcover
IQ Trade Paperback
IQ Kindle
George Pérez
We all knew the day would come. Especially since December 7, 2021. That’s when George Perez announced that he had surgically inoperable Stage 3 Pancreatic Cancer. Although offered other options George said,
“… after weighing all the variables and assessing just how much of my remaining days would be eaten up by doctor visits, treatments, hospital stays and dealing with the often stressful and frustrating bureaucracy of the medical system, I’ve opted to just let nature take its course and I will enjoy whatever time I have left as fully as possible with my beautiful wife of over 40 years, my family, friends and my fans.”
And that is what he did,
George Perez passed away yesterday the result of his pancreatic cancer. He was 67. The announcement on his Facebook page read:
George passed away yesterday, peacefully at home with his wife of 490 months and family by his side. He was not in pain and knew he was very, very loved.
We are all very much grieving but, at the same time, we are so incredibly grateful for the joy he brought to our lives. To know George was to love him; and he loved back. Fiercely and with his whole heart. The world is a lot less vibrant today without him in it.
He loved all of you. He loved hearing your posts and seeing the drawings you sent and the tributes you made. He was deeply proud to have brought so much joy to so many.
Everyone knows George’s legacy as a creator. His art, characters and stories will be revered for years to come. But, as towering as that legacy is, it pales in comparison to the legacy of the man George was. George’s true legacy is his kindness. It’s the love he had for bringing others joy – and I hope you all carry that with you always.
Today is Free Comic Book Day. A day George absolutely loved and a fitting day to remember his contributions to comics and to our lives. I hope you’ll enjoy your day today with him in mind. He would have loved that.Please keep his wife Carol in your thoughts and again, I thank you for respecting her privacy. I remain available through the contact on the page.
George’s memorial service will take place at MEGACON Orlando at 6pm on Sunday, May 22nd. It will be open to all. Details to follow.
We will miss him always.
George Perez entered comics as an assistant to Rich Buckler in the early 1970s. He quickly graduated to penciling his own series. It didn’t take long for George Perez to become a fan favorite. Throughout his career George Perez worked on some of the most popular comic series published: The Avengers, The Fantastic Four, The Justice League of America, The New Teen Titans, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Superman, The Infinity Gauntlet, to name just a few. Whatever George Perez worked on was worth the price of admission.
Evidence of George Perez’s importance and impact to comics is the number of places his death is quickly being reported. Sadly, often when we lose comic creators, the only place their passing is noted is comic-related websites. George Perez’s passing has shown up already in The Hollywood Reporter, The New York Daily News, TMZ and The Daily Mail (England) to name just a few of the mainstream publications.
George Perez won numerous fan favorite awards of the course of his career. Here are some of them…
George Perez was not only one of the most popular artists to ever work in comics, he was one of the nicest. I first became aware of his art on The Avengers. Then I went back and found his earlier work. Following George Perez was easy, because word of his art on a new comic always spread quickly.
I was fortunate to spend time with George Perez at a comic convention in 1980 or 81. My best friend, John Beatty was inking George on Justice League and was also a guest at the show. Sitting with John and George was great. George was wonderful with each fan that came up. He listened and smiled and exchanged stories. George had as much fun (if not more) than the fans.
After the show, George invited John and I to have a bite to eat and hang out. George drew more sketches as we talked. I’ve never seen an artist more at ease while drawing. At one point he even was lying on his back and drawing!
When George Perez announced that he had cancer and most likely only 6 months or so to live, he continued to interact with fans and enjoy the time he had left. What a great human spirit! It was an honor to meet George Perez not only because he was a legendary artist, but also because of the great human being we came to know.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to George Perez’s family, friends and fans.
