Palle Schmidt’s Stiletto is Coming!

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That’s the cover to Stiletto a crime graphic novel by Palle Schmidt premiering in March.  I just finished reading  The Devil’s Concubine and was impressed by Schmidt’s great story and art.  My review will be coming soon, but here’s a spoiler, Schmidt’s The Devil’s Concubine gets my highest recommendation.

Stiletto which was nominated for the Danish Pingprisen award, a rarity for crime comics.  Lion Forge is going to release Stiletto, as three 48-page issues, priced at $5.99 each.

Here’s how Schmidt describes Stiletto…

“Stiletto looks like a buddy cop movie at first glance, but you’ll definitely be surprised to see where it goes,” says Denmark-based writer and artist, Palle Schmidt. “This is a gritty neo-noir full of twists and turns, corruption, betrayal, and greed. I spent years working on the book, really pouring my heart and soul into the project.”

You can get more info and see more art for Stiletto at Bleeding Cool.

Jack Carter and John Wick by John Beatty!

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On November 23, 2018, aka Black Friday, John Beatty and I met in his studio to do a livestream broadcast of John’s John Wick / Jack Carter drawing for my Stallone Sketch Collection. Click on the photo above to see a much bigger version.  We were joined in the studio by Ron Wendt who took the photos below.

That’s John…

That’s me…

And that’s John with his reference working on the art.  You can click on the video link below to see and hear how everything went down.  We had a blast with viewers texting in questions and even a couple of call-ins to the studio.

John is considering adding tones to the Carter / Wick piece and if he does I’m sure I’ll join him in studio, so maybe you will consider swinging by as well.  John draws live most Monday through Fridays and loves to interact with those who tune in.  You should give it a go and tell him I sent ya.

Dead Film Franchises Begging to Be Revived

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ComingSoon ran a piece called Dead Film Franchises Begging to Be Revived.  Of the films listed, here are the three I felt most deserving and a couple of more that didn’t make the list but should have…

Kill Bill – Tarantino has talked up a sequel for many years now.  The set-up was right there in Kill Bill, Volume 1:  Ambrosia Kelley (who played Vivica Fox’s daughter) is now grown and would return to take revenge on The Bride.

Blade – I didn’t care for Blade; loved Blade II and thought Blade: Trinity was good.  So, why not bring back Snipes for another outing?

Dirty Harry – My initial thought was, “No.”  But the idea of Scott Eastwood picking up his dad’s role as Harry Callahan got me thinking that it could work.  My biggest concern is that the social climate is much different now than it was when the original Dirty Harry was released.

Two movie franchises that didn’t make the list but should have…

Billy Jack – I’d love to see a remake of Born Losers, the film that introduced Billy Jack to the world.  Get someone like Kurt Sutter to take the reigns and you’d have a winner.

Escape from – Snake Plissken continues to be a popular character with fans.  Have Wyatt Russell (Kurt’s son) put on the eye patch and let’s go.

 

10 Remakes Better Than the Originals

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Scott Beggs and Mental Floss took a look at 10 Remakes That Are Better Than the Originals. Here’s what Beggs had to say about three of my favorites that made his list (and my commentary after)…

3.  THE THING (1982)
Itself a remake of An Affair to Remember (just kidding), John Carpenter’s paranoid horror film captured a Cold War sensibility of neighborly distrust. Its predecessor, The Thing From Another World, stood out even among the mountain of now-cheesy 1950s sci-fi creature features, but Carpenter injected the zeitgeist even deeper into the film’s tissue to create a movie with complexity and a radical flamethrower.

Craig – While I wouldn’t agree that Carpenter’s remake is better – how do you improve on a classic? – I do agree that Carpenter’s update has also achieved a cult classic status.  I remember seeing Carpenter’s version on opening weekend in a nearly empty theater and coming out really liking the film but not loving it.  The Thing (pun intended) of it is, the movie like the creature in the movie grows on you,

4. SCARFACE (1983)
The movie that spawned a million dorm room posters and impressions of Al Pacino is a remake of Howard Hawks’s 1932 film that was neutered by the Hays Code. That version still shows the violent rise of a gangster based on Al Capone, but it had to explicitly condemn everything shown on screen and tack on the subtitle The Shame of a Nation (just in case audiences thought killing people was something to aspire to). It’s absolutely one of the most important genre pictures in the vault, but Brian De Palma’s Miami-set festival of bullets successfully updated it with a slathering of the greasy greed of the 1980s. Like its forebear, De Palma’s movie had its own struggles with the ratings board, earning a debilitating X rating because of its intense violence.

Craig – I agree with DePalma’s Scarface is better than the original, but I would also argue that the original was just as controversial pushing the envelope of violence and sexual innuendo.

 

9. THE CRAZIES (2010)
Fans chewed their fingernails off when Overture Films announced a remake of George Romero’s 1973 zombies-by-another-name horror flick, but it turned out to be ripe for remake pickings. The government assault on a town suffering from the military’s own biological weapon was effectively moody but had problems that Breck Eisner’s version cleaned up considerably. Justified star Timothy Olyphant is perfect as the beleaguered small-town sheriff, and the film works as a tense survival thriller with a boatload of spine-jolting scares.

Craig – I really liked the remake much more than the original.  And like both John Carpenter’s The Thing and Brian DePalma’s Scarface liked The Crazies remake better with each additional viewing.

Your Chances of Dying

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Here’s an interesting chart created by Best Health Degrees using data from the National Center for Health Statistics.

I originally saw this Your Chances of Dying chart at Mental Floss where they noted…

“Regardless of all of these risks, your probability of dying during a given year doubles every eight years.”

Wow.  Who’d a thought it?  The longer I live the more likely I am to die.

Click on the chart to see a much larger version.

1st Moon Landing Trivia

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Oliver Taylor and Listverse present 10 Crazy Facts No One Ever Told You About the First Moon Landing.   Here are three of my favorites…

10 The Crew Filled Out US Customs Forms On Their Return
US Customs made the Apollo 11 astronauts—Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins—fill out a form for importing Moon rocks and dust into the United States on July 24, 1969, the same day they landed in the Pacific Ocean around Hawaii. The flight route was listed as Cape Kennedy, Florida, to the Moon and finally to Honolulu, Hawaii.The Apollo 11 crew declared their cargo as “Moon rock and Moon dust samples.” Customs could not determine whether the astronauts had any illnesses, so the section that was supposed to list any possible diseases simply said “to be determined.”[1]

3 The Crew Could Not Get Life Insurance, But They Found A Way Around It
As we mentioned earlier, the crew of Apollo 11 faced the possibility that they might not return from the Moon. The astronauts would have taken out life insurance, but it would have been unbelievably expensive. So, the crew of Apollo 11 signed autographs that their families could sell after their deaths. The Apollo 11 astronauts were famous long before they left Earth. They had lots of fans who requested autographs. In fact, the crew signed thousands of autographs after their mission, which some of their fans sold for considerable amounts.While such autographs would have fetched a good sum following the deaths of the crew, the envelopes signed by the astronauts and postmarked on dates like the launch and the Moon landing would have been worth a fortune if any of the crew members had died in space.[8]

1 The Crew Was Quarantined Once They Returned To Earth
Today, astronauts leave their spacecraft and mix with people immediately after landing. This was not so at the time of Apollo 11. After their mission to the Moon, the Apollo 11 astronauts were quarantined for three weeks before they were allowed to mingle with other people.This was a precautionary measure. NASA was unsure whether the Moon contained deadly microorganisms. So it recommended that the astronauts be quarantined, that Moon samples and spacesuits (among other things) be examined for microorganisms, and that the crew be monitored for new infections.The crews of Apollo 12 and 14 were also quarantined. However, NASA stopped doing that by the time Apollo 15 landed because it had already been confirmed that the Moon was sterile in the areas explored.[10]

“The Big Chill” Trivia

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Scott Beggs and Mental Floss present 10 Memorable Things About The Big Chill.  Here are three of my favorites…

3. KEVIN COSTNER PLAYS A DEAD BODY.
The entire movie revolves around the suicide of Alex Marshall, an unseen college friend linking all the other characters together. Alex was originally in the film for one scene, but Kasdan cut it, effectively removing a young Kevin Costner from the movie except for one sequence where he lies motionless as Alex’s body is prepped for the funeral.

7. IT CONTRIBUTED TO GLENN CLOSE MAKING SOME ACTING HISTORY.

Everyone’s obsessed with EGOTing, but with an Oscar nomination for The Big Chill, a Tony nomination (and win) for The Real Thing, and an Emmy nomination for Something About Amelia, Close became the first actress to score all three major acting award nominations in a single calendar year. That’s a feat even fewer people have pulled off than the EGOT. Bob Fosse did it with directing and choreography in 1973, and Jason Robards became the first actor to do it in 1978. Unfortunately, she didn’t win the Oscar—and never has, despite six nominations (so far).

9. AN OCTOPUS ACTS AS A SUBTLE SYMBOL.
If we only saw an octopus once in the movie, it might be a happy accident, but there are at least two times that a soft-bodied cephalopod appears on a TV screen in the massive home the friends are sharing. You don’t have to dig too deeply to see the connection: eight limbs, eight friends, all interconnected and living (for the time we spend with them) as a single unit.

“The Naked Prey” Trivia

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Rob Hunter and Film School Rejects present 24 Things We Learned from The Naked Prey Commentary.  Before we get into my favorite trivia items, if you’ve never seen The Naked Prey, please put it on your To Be Seen list.  It’s an under-rated action adventure film well worthy of your time.  Now for three of my favorites…

5. Writers Clint Johnston and Don Peters were nominated for an Academy Award for their script, and they worked again with Wilde on his follow-up film Beach Red (1967).

10. The story is inspired by the true story of a man named John Colter who endured a long journey on foot while pursued by members of the Blackfeet tribe in the early 1800s. (I’d read a short story about this incident before seeing the film and thought the similarities were too much to be coincidence. – Craig)

24. The film was Wilde’s favorite of the ones he directed, and he even wrote a script for a sequel. “He was negotiating with Paramount to do it when he died in 1989, so it was never to be.”

Midnight Mystery #1 / Z-View

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Midnight Mystery #1 is part of a four-issue mini-series published by Alterna Comics.

Writer: Bernie Gonzalez
Artist: Bernie Gonzalez
Colorist: Bernie Gonzalez
Letterer: Wes Lochner
Cover Artist: Bernie Gonzalez

*** Beware – spoilers may be found below ***

Follow the strange adventures of detective Zeke King as he goes from case to horrifying case. In this issue: King’s latest case goes from freaky to fatal when he’s hired to find the lost son of a deceased horror host! The mystery begins in this new supernatural horror series!

Bernie Gonzalez’s Midnight Mystery is the Alterna series I was most looking forward to and it lived up to all of my expectations.  Gonzalez created a fun issue that quickly introduces us to Zeke King’s world and things to come.  I grew up watching Sammy Terry introduce late night monster movies and love that Count Karloff (a perfect name for a horror host) is used in the first Zeke King arc.  The issue ends with a cliffhanger and left me wanting more.  What better praise for a comic?

Gonzalez’s writing, like his art, is clear and supports the story in a lean, efficient way.  Many folks compare Gonzalez’s art to Darwyne Cooke and I don’t disagree but I also see the influence of Alex Toth and Paul Grist.

Bring on issue 2!
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