The Different Covers for David Morrell’s First Blood

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Tony Stella recently posted larger versions of these different covers for David Morrell’s First Blood.

  • The first cover looks like the artist pictured Richard Chamberlain as Rambo.
  • The second cover was on the version of the book I first read back in the summer (of 1973) before I went into 9th grade.  I immediately became a life-long David Morrell fan.
  • The third cover reminds me of a teaser if First Blood had been made into a graphic novel and Rambo was based on Burt Reynolds.
  • The fourth cover reminds me of a corpse who refused to give up his weapon until it was pried from his cold, dead hand.
  • The fifth cover looks like the cover to a horror novel.

The great thing is no matter what the cover looks like the novel is always great!  Highest reccommendation!

The 25 Greatest Movie Villains of All Time

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Gem Seddon and GamesRadar.com present The 25 Greatest Movie Villains of All Time. Here are three of my favorites and some after thoughts…

17. The Terminator
As played by: Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator (1984)

The villain: Sure, the T-1000 might be deadlier, but there’s no doubting the intimidation factor of Skynet’s original robot enforcer. Opting to shoot first and ask questions later, he’s a robust killing machine that won’t stop until you are dead.

Meanest moment: When he blazes a trail through the local police station, turning his weapons on anything that moves.

Nicest quality: If he’s on your side, he’s lovely! See Terminator 2 for details.

15. Hans Gruber
As played by: Alan Rickman in Die Hard (1988)

The villain: One of the first of a new breed of urbane, continental terrorists, the unflappable Gruber is the perfect counterpoint to rough and ready cop John McClane. He isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty – he’d just rather not rumple his suit unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Meanest moment: “You know my name but who are you?” sneers Gruber. “Just another American who saw too many movies as a child? Another orphan of a bankrupt culture who thinks he’s John Wayne? Rambo? Marshal Dillon?”

Nicest quality: He’s a bright boy. “And when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer,” he quotes.

4. Anton Chigurh
As played by: Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men (2007)

The villain: A psychotic gun-for-hire with a slavish devotion to the laws of chance. There’s nothing more terrifying than a nutcase with a code and an obsession for murdering people with a cattle bolt gun. It’s as horrible as it sounds.

Meanest moment: The way he taunts the store owner is pretty bad (you don’t know what you’re talking about) but there’s nothing to top the unyielding bloody-mindedness that leads him to kill Carla Jean.

Nicest quality: He’s good with kids. He doesn’t kill those two boys, does he?

The 25 Best Action Movies to Get Your Adrenaline Pumping.

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Gem Seddon and GamesRadar.com present The 25 Best Action Movies to Get Your Adrenaline Pumping.  Here are three of my favorites and some after thoughts…

8. John Wick (2014)
Action hero: John Wick
The film: Director Chad Stahelski overcomes first-time jitters in his filmmaking debut, largely due to his experiences as a martial arts stunt co-ordinator. This revenge actioner throws in some dark motivating factors for Keanu Reeves leading man. His vendetta kill mission is the most dazzling work Reeves has accomplished since his first time tackling Neo.

Most action-packed scene: Wick enters a club wherein he punches, kicks, headbutts and shoots anyone who crosses his path. Each strike hits with an eerie precision.

6. First Blood (1982)
Action hero: John Rambo
The film: The first Rambo movie is part-action, part-thriller, a far darker movie than its sequels would have you remember. Sly Stallone plays the former Green Beret back from Vietnam, who is targeted by a nasty small-town sheriff. All Rambo wants is to live a normal life, all the cops want is to take him down. Guess who wins?

Most action-packed scene: Overthrowing the local PD coppers, Rambo escapes into the nearby woods, where the lawmen scatter to try and recapture him. Their attempts fail miserably as he sets up a series of brutal traps to prevent them from finding him.

2. Die Hard (1988)
Action hero: John McClane
The film: New York cop John McClane picks the first of many wrong places and wrong times to visit his wife at work, but for star Bruce Willis and director John McTiernan, the timing couldn’t have been better. Putting an ordinary Joe in the middle of a firefight, confining a terrorist takeover to a single, claustrophobic building, and balancing quip-smart dialogue with hard and heavy action set-pieces, Die Hard set the mold and broke it at the same time.

Most action-packed scene: A rooftop bomb. A short fire hose. A plate glass window. The rest is history.

Atomic Blonde almost made my top three.  I’m surprised that Enter the Dragon didn’t make the list. C’mon, Gem!

“The Maltese Falcon” Got the Cinephilia and Beyond Treatment!

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The Maltese Falcon Got the Cinephilia and Beyond Treatment!

Click on the link and you’ll find…

  • John Huston’s original script for The Maltese Falcon
  • A rare interview with Huston
  • Huston’s approach to storytelling
  • A Screen Guild Theater radio production of The Maltese Falcon, featuring Peter Lorre, Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, and Sydney Greenstreet. Original air date: 9/20/1943.
  • Rare behind-the-scenes photos
  • and much more!

35 THINGS WE LEARNED FROM THE ‘IRON GIANT’ COMMENTARY

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Film School Rejects presents 35 THINGS WE LEARNED FROM THE IRON GIANT COMMENTARY .  Here are three of my favorites…

One of the big questions Bird and Lynch faced was in how much they should reveal of the Giant early on. They wanted to keep the Giant interesting and grab the audience’s attention without giving away too much too early. This seems to always be a concern for filmmakers creating a story that involves an otherworldly creature. Some director’s just don’t even bother with subtlety.

As Bird and Markowski mention, the first time Hogarth runs into the Iron Giant is the most robotic the Giant is in the entire film. They wanted to gradually show the Giant picking up Hogarth’s mannerisms and acting more and more human as the story progressed. As mentioned later on in the scene when Hogarth confronts and talk to the Giant for the first time, the Giant learns these humanistic skills very quickly going from “pet to friend to hero” as Markowski says.

One of the things Bird is very proud of in The Iron Giant is how real his characters feel. He mentions the audience reacting audibly when Hogarth gets hit in the face with a branch and how that’s a very difficult thing to pull from the audience when you’re dealing with animated characters. Audiences are so used to Wile Coyote falling off cliffs they’ve become accustomed to animated characters being more malleable than real people. “If you defy gravity and later on need to feel danger in the film, you have a really hard time convincing the audience how to do that,” says Bird.

39 THINGS WE LEARNED FROM ‘THE BOONDOCK SAINTS’ COMMENTARY

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Film School Rejects presents 39 THINGS WE LEARNED FROM THE BOONDOCK SAINTS COMMENTARY .  Here are three of my favorites…

To make it look legit that Reedus’ character, Murphy, was picking up and carrying Connor, the director told Flanery not to help Reedus in any way. Reedus had to jog out of the alley with dead weight of about 180 pounds on his shoulder.

The initial premise for The Boondock Saints came when Duffy and his brother, Taylor, were living in a run-down apartment complex. Duffy notes the drugs and guns that constantly came through the building and how he and his brother always fantasized about doing something about it. “Not that we’ve ever killed anybody, because we certainly have not…to the best of your knowledge.” Oh, that Troy Duffy cracks me up with his crazy antics about back in the day when he was a vigilante.

1:23:40 – Duffy gets angry. The comparisons made by critics and other commentators of Duffy and other directors like Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie comes up. Duffy notes that The Boondock Saints was finished before Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels hit theaters. “Tarantino’s another story,” Duffy says. He feels Tarantino “reinvented cool,” but also mentions certain elements of Pulp Fiction may have subconsciously influenced The Boondock Saints. He also notes the films Tarantino had been influenced by for his films. “So what? We’re creators. We go and do these things to the best of our ability. There are similarities, and there are differences. Everybody’s going to have their own opinion about it, but I guess it could be worse, you know?”

10 Fun Facts About “Better Call Saul”

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Scott Beggs and Mental Floss present 10 Fun Facts About Better Call Saul.  Here are three of my favorites…

3. THE TITLES HAVE HIDDEN MEANINGS.
You can take nothing for granted in the Better Call Saul universe, including the episode titles. In the first season, every episode (from “Uno” to “Marco”) ended in the letter O, except “Alpine Shepherd Boy,” which was supposed to be called “Jell-O” before the producers waved it off to avoid being sued by the gelatin makers. Even crazier, the first letters of season two’s episodes (S-C-A-G-R-B-I-F-N-K) unscramble to spell “Fring’s Back”—a clear message for Breaking Bad fans.

6. CHUCK WASN’T INTENDED TO BE A BAD GUY.
Everyone who watches the show hates Chuck McGill, Jimmy’s brother played by Michael McKean, but it wasn’t until writing the seventh episode that Gilligan and the writers realized Chuck was a villain. “Believe it or not, the idea of Chuck being the ‘bad guy’ was a late addition to Season 1,” Gilligan explained during a 2015 Reddit AMA. “This points out one of the things I love most about writing for TV. There are enough episodes and enough lead time (if you’re lucky) for writers to change the direction of a story midstream.”

8. YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT COLOR PEOPLE ARE WEARING.
Gilligan’s fanatical dedication to detail includes the colors that get associated with each character. It was a major element in Breaking Bad. It’s also a big part of Better Call Saul in the form of the “Fire and Ice Theory,” partially confirmed by writer Peter Gould, who confessed that hotter colors like red were associated with criminals. That tacitly means cooler colors are meant for the innocent, so it’s curious that Jimmy’s car is yellow with one red door …

Midnight Mystery by Bernie Gonzalez

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Midnight Mystery is a four issue mini-series that looks to appeal to a lot of folks.  Written and illustrated by Bernie Gonzalez, Midnight Mystery…

… is a suspense/horror comic book series that follows the strange adventures of detective Ezekiel “Zeke” King.   It’s a mix of Supernatural, X-Files, and film noir movies told in the style of Batman: The Animated Series and Darwyn Cooke’s New Frontier.

That’s enough to get me on board.  But if you want more info, in the first four issue mini-series…

Zeke 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!

Still need more?  Click over to Midnight Mystery and you can sign up for the newsletter, see preview art and more.  I can’t wait for this one!

Cemetery Beach: A SDCC Interview with Jason Howard

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Tim Midura had a chance to interview artist Jason Howard about his new project with Warren Ellis.  Here’s a tidbit…

Tim: Warren Ellis described Cemetery Beach as a relentless action book..

Jason: It starts with the idea of what this world is. In the story of Cemetery Beach, kind of the setup is that back in the 1920s/1930s, scientists found this exoplanet they thought could support life. So they built a rocketship with 1920s-era tech, sextants and all this stuff. They sent a group to colonize this planet. The plans and everything were lost to history. Everyone ended up dead or whatever. 100 years later we uncover this warehouse full of all the plans and we realize we sent that ship and nobody knows what happened. So they send a recon guy to look into it and see if they survived and report back. That’s kind of where the story starts. This guy ends up on the planet and the colony has survived but things are a little insane. It’s been 100 years.

If this sounds like something you’d enjoy, check out Talking a Long Walk on Cemetery Beach: A SDCC Interview with Jason Howard.