Previews and Reviews that are Z's Views
Steranko is one of the living legends of comic art. Marvel in a very wise move brought Steranko back in 2016 to create never-before-seen variant covers, like the art for one above. The variants ran through 2017.
Twilight Zone: “A Kind of Stopwatch” [Season 5, Episode 4]
Original Air Date: October 18, 1963
Director: John Rich
Writer: Rod Serling from a story by Michael D. Rosenthal
Starring: Richard Erdman, Herbie Faye and Leon Belasco.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
A man gets a stopwatch that freezes time and everyone and everything in the world around him. He decides to rob a bank by stopping time and just walking away with the money. What could go wrong?
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Diversions of the Groovy Kind has posted up Master of Kung Fu #60 The Phoenix Gambit Part II: End Game! by Doug Moench, Mike Zeck, and John Tartaglione.
Click over and check out some vintage Mike Zeck art!
Twilight Zone: “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” [Season 5, Episode 3]
Original Air Date: October 11, 1963
Director: Richard Donner
Writer: Richard Matheson
Starring: William Shatner, Christine White, and Ed Kemmer.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
Bob Wilson [Shatner] and his wife are flying home. Wilson has just recovered from a nervous breakdown and a storm is making the flight less than comfortable. Wilson becomes alarmed when he sees a creature on the wing of the plane tearing at wires. His wife and others think Bob is suffering a relapse but he’s not…
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Fans of Better Call Saul will love 15 Brilliant “Breaking Bad” References From “Better Call Saul” Season 2 by Robin Edds at Buzzfeed.
Twilight Zone: “Steel” [Season 5, Episode 2]
Original Air Date: October 4, 1963
Director: Don Weis
Writer: Richard Matheson
Starring: Lee Marvin, Joe Mantell, Chuck Hicks.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
Boxing between humans has been outlawed. Now boxing takes place between robots. Former boxer Steel Kelly [Marvin] takes his beat-up outdated robot on the boxing circuit. When Kelly’s robot stops working right before a match, Kelly decides to take the robot’s place in order to get paid.
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Check out this Dracula: Prince of Darkness poster created by Francesco Francavilla for Vice Press. That’s right, the Dracula: Prince of Darkness poster is available as a limited edition print for discriminating fans.
Twilight Zone: “In Praise of Pip” [Season 5, Episode 1]
Original Air Date: September 27, 1963
Director: Joseph M. Newman
Writer: Rod Serling
Starring: Jack Klugman, Connie Gilchrist, Bobby Diamond and Bill Mumy.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
A bookie [Klugman] is stabbed protecting a young man. As the bookie bleeds to death, his only wish is to see his son (who is serving in Viet Nam) one last time.
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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.”
Twilight Zone: “The Bard” [Season 4, Episode 18]
Original Air Date: May 23, 1963
Director: David Butler
Writer: Rod Serling
Starring: Jack Weston, John McGiver, Doro Merande and Burt Reynolds.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
An untalented television writer [Weston] finds a way to transport William Shakespeare from the past. Soon the writer is successful thanks to Shakespear ghosting his scripts. Things go south when Shakespeare shows up on the set.
[Burt Reynolds’ take on Marlon Brando is worth the price of admission.]
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Today we have a Jack Kirby splash inked by Frank Miller! You can see a larger version as well as a Kirby Spider-Man drawing inked by Miller at Brian Michael Bendis’ Tumblr.
Michele Debczak and Mental_Floss present 10 Towering Facts About The Iron Giant. Here are three of my favorites…
5. THE TITLE CHARACTER WAS COMPUTER GENERATED.
Despite being considered one of America’s last great traditionally animated films, The Iron Giant’s title character was created entirely with a computer. The creators took careful steps to make sure the Giant blended in seamlessly with the hand-drawn world. They even went so far as to develop a computer program to make the character’s lines wobble slightly, producing a crude, hand-drawn effect.
6. IT FEATURES A PRE-FAST AND FURIOUS VIN DIESEL.
Before making a name for himself as an action star, Vin Diesel provided his voice to the towering robot in The Iron Giant. Not counting groans and grunts, the Giant utters a grand total of 53 words in the entire film. When Diesel returned to feature voice acting 15 years later for Guardians of the Galaxy, he played Groot, a character whose vocabulary is even more severely limited.
7. THE DESIGN WAS INSPIRED BY THE ART OF NORMAN ROCKWELL.
The Iron Giant takes place in an idyllic Maine town in the 1950s—a perfect contrast to the themes of McCarthy-era paranoia the film explores. To give the setting more of a wholesome, Americana look, the creators drew inspiration from the art of Edward Hopper, N.C. Wyeth, and Norman Rockwell. Even the fictional town’s name—Rockwell—is a nod to the iconic American artist.
Twilight Zone: “Passage on the Lady Anne” [Season 4, Episode 17]
Original Air Date: May 9, 1963
Director: Lamont Johnson
Writer: Charles Beaumont
Starring: Gladys Cooper, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Cecil Kellaway and Alan Napier.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
A young married couple decide a cruise will do them good and book passage on an old ship. Upon boarding they notice that all the passengers are old. Stranger still, the passengers keep insisting that the couple get off the ship immediately. The couple fails to listen and the ship sets sail… for The Twilight Zone.
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S. Craig Zahler [writer/director of the under-rated Bone Tomahawk] will start production this summer on Brawl in Cell Block 99 with Vince Vaughn in the lead. If the title alone isn’t enough to get you in line for a ticket, maybe this will…
Vaughn will play a former boxer named Bradley who loses his job as an auto mechanic and goes to work as a drug courier for an old friend. This vocation improves his situation until the terrible day that he finds himself in a gunfight between a group of police officers and his own ruthless allies. When the smoke clears, Bradley is badly hurt and thrown in prison, where his enemies force him to commit acts of violence that turn the place into a savage battleground.
Can I get my ticket now?
Source: Entertainment Weekly.
The news broke earlier this week that Sly Stallone is set to star as mob boss Raymonde Aprile in an television adaptation of Mario Puzo’s best seller Omerta. Antoine [Training Day] Fuqua is set to direct.
Stallone and Fuqua along with Harvey and Bob Weinstein and David Glasser will serve as Executive Producers on the series which is being fast-tracked for production.
I think that is an excellent move by Sly. With the right team (and they are off to a great start with Stallone and Fuqua at the helm) this series could be right up there with Justified and The Shield. I can not wait for this!
