Previews and Reviews that are Z's Views
Below is the trailer for V Wars the new series based on Jonathan Maberry and Alan Robinson’s comic series.
I’m really looking forward to V Wars. It has a vibe similar to The Strain and The Passage.
V Wars premieres on December 5th on Netflix.
Here’s the poster and trailer for The Call of the Wild. This didn’t hit my radar until today which is surprising considering that it stars Harrison Ford.
Point Blank gets the Cinephilia and Beyond Treatment. It’s a thing of beauty. Click over and you’ll get…
Here’s the final trailer to The Irishman. Scorsese, Pesci, Pacino and Keitel. I cannot wait for November 27th.
Eric D. Snider posted his choices at Mental Floss for The 21 Best Movies of the 1970s. Snider’s list contains great choices. He listed his picks (except for Godfather 2) by their year of release. I rated Snider’s choices by how they resonated with me. Here’s how things came out…
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Eric’s List |
Craig’s List |
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01. A Clockwork Orange (71) |
01. Rocky (76) |
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02. The Last Picture Show (71) |
02. The Godfather (72) |
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03. The French Connection (71) |
03. Godfather 2 (74) |
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04. The Godfather (72) |
04. Jaws (75) |
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05. The Godfather II (74) |
05. Alien (79) |
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06. Serpico (73) |
06. Blazing Saddles (74) |
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07. The Exorcist (73) |
07. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (75) |
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08. Chinatown (74) |
08. The Exorcist (73) |
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09. Blazing Saddles (74) |
09. Apocalypse Now (79) |
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10. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (74) |
10. Chinatown (74) |
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11. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (75) |
11. Being There (79) |
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12. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (75) |
12. A Clockwork Orange (71) |
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13. Jaws (75) |
13. All the President’s Men (76) |
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14. Taxi Driver (76) |
14. Star Wars (77) |
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15. Rocky (76) |
15. Serpico (73) |
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16. All the President’s Men (76) |
16. The French Connection (71) |
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17. Network (76) |
17. Taxi Driver (76) |
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18. Star Wars (77) |
18. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (74) |
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19. Apocalypse Now (79) |
19. Network (76) |
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20. Alien (79) |
20. The Last Picture Show (71) |
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21. Being There (79) |
21. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (75) |
If I created the list I would have found spots for Dirty Harry, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Superman and F.I.S.T. just to name a few.
I missed the cowboy comics boom. When I started reading comics super heroes were already king. Even still, there was an abundance of western comic books. My favorite was The Rawhide Kid, but I also read many others.
If you’d like to get a look a some of the western comics heroes from the glory days, check out the gallery at Black, White and Bronze. You’ll see art by Toth, Buscema, Heath, Kubert, Kirby, (my buddy!) Bill Black and others.
I’m surprised that James Carlos Blake isn’t a better known name. Don’t get me wrong, writers know the man. Crime fiction fans (well read ones) know the name. I’ve never read a book by James Carlos Blake that I didn’t love. He’s that good.
Blake’s next novel, The Bones of Wolfe will be released on July 7th. Here’s the synopsis:
In the newest Wolfe-family adventure from James Carlos Blake, Rudy and Frank Wolfe are engaging in routine miscellaneous business―some legitimate and some less so―for their family when they stumble upon a stash of high-quality pornographic films in a raid. The plot thickens when their Aunt Catalina, the family matriarch aged 115, recognizes her long-lost sister in one of the young performers. Catalina tasks the boys with tracking the girl down, however improbable a connection may be.
This proves to be no simple task. Soon, Rudy and Frank find themselves moving away from world of porn and towards the upper echelons of the Sinaloa drug cartel, where the mysterious woman has become a particular favorite of the head narco. For their aunt, the woman, and themselves, Frank and Rudy must find a way to get her out without alerting the cartel. A tropical storm complicates their quest, but their sprawling family may save them from this obstacle, too.
The new Quinn Colson novel, The Revelators will be released on July 14, 2020. If you’re not familiar with Ace Atkins Quinn Colson novels, you should be.
Here’s the synopsis for The Revelators:
In this gripping new crime novel from the New York Times-bestselling author, Quinn Colson is about to find out whether his quest for justice can coexist with his loyalty to the law…
Shot up and left for dead, Sheriff Quinn Colson has revenge on his mind. With the help of his new wife Maggie, rehabilitation, and sheer force of will, he’s walking again, eager to resume his work as a southern lawman and track down those responsible for his attempted murder. But someone is standing in his way: an interim sheriff, appointed by the newly elected Governor Vardaman, the man who Quinn knows ordered his murder. Vardaman sits at the top of the state’s power structure–both legal and criminal–and little does he know, Quinn is still alive. And coming for him.
Quinn will enlist the help of his most trusted friends, including federal agent Jon Holliday, U.S. Marshal Lillie Virgil, and Donnie Varner, a childhood buddy now working for the Feds as an informant. Since Quinn’s been gone, the criminal element in north Mississippi has flourished, with queenpin Fannie Hathcock enjoying unbridled freedom. As an ice storm bears down on north Mississippi and Memphis, and Tibbehah County is isolated from the outside world, the killers will return to finish the job.
But this time, Quinn Colson and company will be waiting, ready to bust apart a criminal empire running on a rigged system for far too long. This is the battle of Jericho, the epic showdown that’s been years in the making. In the end, the war will end–for better or worse.
I can’t wait.
Frank Miller and Legendary Television have reached an agreement to turn Miller’s Sin City into a television series. An agreement to bring Robert Rodriguez (Miller’s co-director on the Sin City films) on board is also in the works.
The deal would guarantee a minimum of one season if picked up by a network or streaming service. In addition to the Sin City tv series, the agreement also provides for a Sin City R-rated animated series!
I love both of these ideas. And wouldn’t animated Sin City series done in the style of Miller’s graphic novels would be interesting?
For full details check out Deadline’s Legendary Signs Rights Deal With Frank Miller For ‘Sin City’ TV Series; Robert Rodriguez In Talks.
40 Years of Rocky is something we can all get behind. Right?
Click on the photo above to get a bigger and better look at Eduardo Risso’s riff on the major players from 100 Bullets.
100 Bullets created by Brian Azzarello (writer) and Eduardo Risso (artist) is an Eisner Award-winning comic series that ran for 100 issues. Here’s the sysnopsis….
100 Bullets features a mysterious agent named Graves who approaches ordinary citizens and gives them an opportunity to exact revenge on a person who has wronged them. Offering his clients an attaché case containing proof of the deed and a gun, he guarantees his “clients” full immunity for all of their actions, including murder.
If you’ve never read 100 Bullets, you owe it to yourself to seek it out!
Darwyn Cooke created the art above for Richard Stark’s Parker: The Martini Edition which collected Darwyn Cooke’s first two Parker books, The Hunter and The Outfit…
…in a tremendous, special, oversized hardcover edition — with an additional 65-pages of content — encased in a beautiful slipcase!
Richard Stark’s Parker: The Hunter graphic novel debuted in July 2008 to instantaneous popular and critical acclaim. It made the New York Times bestseller list and won coveted Eisner and Harvey awards. The second graphic novel, The Outfit, was released in 2010 and was met with similar response, and won the 2011 Eisner for Best Writer/Artist.
The Hunter and The Outfit tell the story of Parker, Richard Stark’s classic anti-hero, as he returns to New York to settle the score with his wife and partner in crime after they betray him in a heist gone terribly wrong. After evening the field and reclaiming his prize, the Outfit decide to do some score settling of their own… and learn much too late that when you push a man like Parker, it had better be all the way to the grave.
Also contains the short stories The Man With the Getaway Face and The Seventh.
I had ordered a copy of The Martini Edition when it was published in 2011, but it arrived damaged. When I returned it for a replacement, I was sad to learn The Martini Edition had sold out.
Until now. (Actually April 28, 2020.)
IDW is reprinting Richard Stark’s Parker: The Martini Edition. It’ll have a different cover but the same contents. I’m betting this edition will sell out quickly. I’ve put in my pre-order. If you’re interested, I wouldn’t wait long before doing the same.
Back in the prehistoric days before the internet comic fans had very little information about future comics. The Comic Reader was one of the first (perhaps the first) continually published fanzines that gave fans interviews with comic creators, previews of coming comics and actual covers and story-lines.
Pete Doree at his site The Bronze Age of Blogs has posted a gallery of The Comic Reader Covers. If you click over, what you’ll see are from the likes of Simonson, Chaykin, Grell, Buckler, Byrne, Toth and many others.
The poster and trailer to Fantasy Island are here. The poster is pretty “meh” but that trailer was a surprise. Definitely not the Fantasy Island I was expecting or grew up with… and that’s a good thing!
On December 17, 2019, Rambo: Last Blood will be released on Blu-Ray, DVD and 4K. This is just in time for Christmas, Chanukah (or if you prefer, Hanukkah), Kwanzaa, or surprise gift giving. If you’d like, you can pre-order using this link.
