Torrance, Tango & Cash

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My buddy, Mike Torrance aka The Krayola Kidd is back. This time Mike brought a couple of friends with him. That’s Gabriel Cash on the left and Ray Tango on the right. Mike created the cards for me as reward for winning one of his free monthly sketch card contests. Love the movie, dig the art.

You can see more of Mike’s art at The Daily Sketch with The Krayola Kidd and his Deviant Art site. Mike is available for commissions and his prices are very reasonable. And don’t forget that once a month Mike has a contest for someone to win a free sketchcard!

THR: Frank Darabont Was FIRED!

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The Hollywood Reporter is saying that Frank Darabont was fired from The Walking Dead! Here are some tidbits from the article:

  • When Frank Darabont appeared on a Comic-Con panel July 22 to promote The Walking Dead, he didn’t realize he was a dead man walking. Neither did the cast and crew.
  • One insider says those gathered were stunned at “the duplicity of AMC” for having used Darabont to promote the show at Comic-Con before firing him.
  • But this source says that AMC had its own ideas about how to make the show more cheaply. The show shoots for eight days per episode, and the network suggested that half should be indoors. “Four days inside and four days out? That’s not Walking Dead,” says this insider. “This is not a show that takes place around the dinner table.” That was just one of what this person describes as “silly notes” from AMC. Couldn’t the audience hear the zombies sometimes and not see them, to save on makeup? The source says Darabont fought “a constant battle to keep the show big in scope and style.”

5 Unfairly Derided Action Sci-Fi Flicks

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Recently Ryan Britt at TOR.com took a look at 5 Unfairly Derided Action Sci-Fi Flicks.   Here they are with a bit of what Britt had to say and, for what they’re worth, my thoughts on each.

  • The Island

Britt: Seemingly a rip-off of Logan’s Run and The Running Man, the movie tells the story of a couple of runaway clones who are searching for their counterparts.

Zablo:  I saw The Island and it was okay.  I don’t remember too much about The Island , which probably gives you an indication of how good it really was.

  • The Chronicles of Riddick

Britt: I think most fans would agree Pitch Black is a pretty solid sci-fi thriller, but most of us don’t really know what to make of Riddick. Does this character even belong in a movie like this? In the first film, it was all sneaking around in the dark dealing with scary stuff, and then the next movie was this big Dune meets Lord of the Rings visual epic.

Zablo: Britt is exactly right.  Chronicles was 180 degrees away from Pitch Black.  Fans weren’t expecting the dramatic change and Chronicles threw them.  Over the years my fondness of Chronicles has grown.  I like it more with each new viewing.  [But I am glad that the third Riddick movie is going to be more like Pitch Black than Chronicles.]

  • Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Britt: Though Lucas and Spielberg talk a mean game about how Star Wars and Indiana Jones pay homage to Flash Gordon-style serials of a bygone era, Kerry Conran actually did it for real. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow shouldn’t be viewed as a contemporary action film, but instead as a kind of alternate universe where these sorts of movies never stopped getting made.

Zablo: I saw Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow on the big screen.  I really dug it.  I didn’t think it was the greatest thing ever, but it was fun.  It was good enough to earn a spot in my movie library.  After reading Britt’s take on the film, I think it’s time to pull Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow down for a viewing!

  • Equilibrium

Britt: The movie also seems pretty low budget which, unlike the Matrix, means its not trying to impress you. With Christian Bale, Emily Watson, Sean Bean, and yes, Taye Diggs, you’ve got an action movie cast at least as good as the far inferior Terminator: Salvation.

Zablo: I disagree with Britt.  I think that Kurt Wimmer was trying to impress us and for most of us, he succeeded.  (And I’d have that opinion even if I didn’t get to attend a special showing with Kurt Wimmer.)    Sure, the budget was not huge, but look at the talent he scored.  What would it cost today to make a movie with Christian Bale, Emily Watson, Sean Bean, and yes, Taye Diggs?

  • Superman Returns

Britt: This is the big one. Seemingly everyone thinks this movie was absolutely terrible, including the studio, as they are totally uninterested in bringing anybody back for the new impending reboot project, Man of Steel...  Brandon Routh is actually not bad as Supe at all (and he really demonstrated his versatility in Scott Pilgrim last year!) Kevin Spacey is great as Lex Luthor…

Zablo: I agree with “seemingly everyone”.  Superman Returns was really bad.  It did have a couple of cool scenes and I liked Routh but Spacey [and I am a fan] wasn’t right for Luthor and the overall movie was just bad.

Other Action Sci-Fi Movies that could have been included in the article:  Cyborg [Jean-Claude Van Damme], Omega Man [Charlton Heston], and The Ultimate Warrior [Yul Brennor].

Moon Conspiracy Theories

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TruTV recently posted a piece about called 10 Conspiracies About the Moon (Not Including the Big One).  Here are some tidbits that I thought interesting:

  • “Nostradamus… is believed to be telling of the moon landing… ‘He will come to go into the corner of Luna / Where he will be captured and put in a strange land / The unripe fruits will be the subject of great scandal / Great blame, to one great praise.'”
  • Late in the war, “the Nazis were developing high-tech weaponry and, some believe, space shuttle technology. Theories say that the Nazis could have been the actual winners of the space race in 1942… While there, they set up a base, which is said to have since been frequented by astronauts from other countries. Another rumor suggests that Hitler survived WWII, fled the planet using rocket technology and lived a long life on the Nazi moon base.” [I would love to see a Hellboy story set in the 1960’s based on  Hitler living on the moon with a Nazi army!]
  • There is “alleged Apollo 14 footage of a monkey or dog-like creature moving rapidly across the lunar surface while the astronauts are already back inside the spacecraft.”
  • Some folks “now believe that there are weapons of mass destruction locked and ready to blast off from the moon. But are they pointing at Earth or into space?”
  • The 2011 film Apollo 18 is a mockumentary-style horror flick with the basic concept that we did not return to the moon because of an alien presence the astronauts found there. Or is it a documentary?
  • “According to the UFO Casebook website, NASA has captured images of what are believed to be alien bases on the far side of the moon. In 1994, the US Navy sent a satellite called Clementine to take images of the moon, but found nothing unusual enough to share with the public.
  • “Though 1.8 million images were taken, only 170,000 images were made public. The rest have been classified, which leads many to believe that proof of alien life is being withheld from the public.”
  • Dr. Edgar Mitchell, who was the Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 14, claimed during a radio interview with Nick Margerrison of Kerrang Radio in 2008 that aliens had made contact with humans many times but that the government has been hiding the truth.”
  • “Another rumor: both Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin saw and filmed an active alien moon base on the far side of the moon during their lunar jaunt. James Lovell of the Apollo 8 mission is also rumored to have seen evidence of alien life.”

i would love for friendly (big smile) intelligent  alien life to be discovered.  Until then, I’m going with the Hitler and Nazi army on a moonbase as my favorite moon conspiracy theory.