E. R. Torre is a writer/artist whose first major work, the mystery graphic novel The Dark Fringe, was optioned for motion picture production by Platinum Studios (Men In Black, Cowboys vs. Aliens). At DC Comics, his work appeared in role-playing game books and the 9-11 Tribute book. This later piece was eventually displayed, along with others from the 9-11 tribute books, at The Library of Congress. More recently he released Shadows at Dawn (a collection of short stories), Haze (a murder mystery novel with supernatural elements), and Cold Hemispheres (a mystery novel set in the world of The Dark Fringe). He is currently hard at work on his latest science fiction/suspense series, Corrosive Knights, which features the novels Mechanic, The Last Flight of the Argus, and Chameleon.
The above article, by Gabriel Bell and found on Salon.com, reports how The Sun decided to print some nude photographs of Ms. Whittaker, taken in previous roles.
I have to say… that’s a pretty low blow.
There are those who feel Doctor Who is primarily a child’s entertainment (I would disagree) and, by publishing these photographs, one can’t help but realize The Sun is trying to tweak the producers of the show.
For what end?
Do they hope to so turn people off to the “tawdry” photographs that the producers decide to not use Ms. Whittaker?
Why would they gain in shaming an actress with a long list of credits as she’s about to take on what is easily her most high profile role?
One of the primary chants from the Republican party, and perhaps what got them as far as they have (ie, the Presidency, Senate majority, and House majority), was the statement that they would “Repeal and Replace” the Affordable Care Act (ACA), ie “Obamacare”.
The tactics were effective because they preyed on people’s fear of the unknown and, alternatively, it was difficult for the Democratic Party to defend a bill that was as complex as it was.
Many have stated the ACA, as written, has its problems and, I’m quite certain, it has.
But not having any form of health care coverage seems, in this day and age, a major governmental failure.
Perhaps now that the latest Republican attempt at “their” healthcare system has failed, more even heads can come together and strengthen this system.
Over the weekend, along with the sad news of the passing of George A. Romero and Martin Landau, came news that the new Doctor Who would be, for the first time in over fifty years of the show, a woman!
So the new Doctor is being played by Jodie Whittaker, star of the British crime drama Broadchurch.
Immediately there were those who made their displeasure known. The Doctor is a man! What will this new Doctor wear, pink? And you just know where the sonic screwdriver jokes went.
Frankly, I’m intrigued.
Yes, a case can be made that the producers of Doctor Who are purposely shaking things up and, in the wake of the success of Wonder Woman, perhaps reasoned the time was right to try a female version of the Doctor.
Some have argued that because of his (note this word) history, Doctor Who should always be male. Some even felt he should be an elder gentleman, which is what the majority of the Doctors have been with a few exceptions.
Again, I’m intrigued.
Of all the famous characters out there, the Doctor is perhaps the only one where the concept of changing his race or even sex makes sense. The reason there have been so many different Doctors, to those who have never seen the show, is because the Doctor regenerates whenever his current body is about to expire. In reality, of course, this is a gimmick which allows the show to continue with different actors and their different takes on the character and not have any uncomfortable explanation of why.
Having said that, if the Doctor regenerates, why wouldn’t he conceivably regenerate into a female form?
I for one will most certainly catch the new episodes.
Over the weekend (a busy one, at that), came the sad news that actor Martin Landau and director George A. Romero have passed away.
Martin Landau is one of those actors that I found really intriguing. When he was very young, he worked as a cartoonist and, when he went into acting, was a friend of James Dean’s. Perhaps Martin Landau’s best early role was the almost completely non-speaking thug Leonard in the seminal 1959 Alfred Hitchcock directed/Cary Grant starring North by Northwest.
Mr. Landau’s big breakout role would be as Rollin Hand in the wonderful 1960’s TV series Mission: Impossible…
Mr. Landau was rumored to have been considered for the role of Mr. Spock in the original Star Trek series but, of course, that role went to Leonard Nimoy. Interestingly, when he and his then wife (and knockout beauty) Barbara Bain left the show, Leonard Nimoy would subsequently come in and play a character similar to his!
A few years later Mr. Landau and Ms. Bain and go on to star together in the sci-fi series Space: 1999…
For my money, that remains one of the groovier openings of any TV series. Sadly, the show itself was no Star Trek and, while a cult favorite, it never reached the heights of that show.
Mr. Landau seemed to essentially disappear after this show, popping up on oddball movies or shows here and there, including playing the crazed “Sarge” in the mostly forgotten (but not by me!) low budget chiller -and Predator pre-cursor- Without Warning.
While it appeared Mr. Landau’s career was faltering, he was about to have a late in life turnaround, appearing in such critically loved films as Tucker: The Man and His Dream, Crimes and Misdemeanors, and, in a role that would earn his an Oscar for Best Supporting actor, the foul mouthed and elderly Bela Lugosi in the Tim Burton directed Ed Wood…
A fascinating actor who played many fascinating roles, even if the movies or TV shows he was involved in seemed beneath his talents. R.I.P. Mr. Landau.
******
The other big passing was George A. Romero, best known as the director of the original zombie epics Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead (a personal favorite), and Day of the Dead.
Given what he created with these three films alone -and ignoring all the other things he was involved in, including his collaborations with Stephen King (Creepshow among them) and the TV series Tales From The Darkside– I hope he received plenty of recognition, if not a percent of the action, from the producers of The Walking Dead, a show that simply wouldn’t exist at all without Mr. Romero’s works.
Mr. Romero would spend his later years continuing to work on his zombie films and to, truth be known, produce far lesser results. At the time of his passing he was working on what, at least to me, appeared to be a pretty outrageous new zombie concept called Road of the Dead. According to IMDB, this is the film’s description:
The story is set on an island where zombie prisoners race cars in an arena for the sole purpose of entertaining the rich.
I actually kinda like the concept. Hopefully, one day we’ll see it and it’ll prove to be something as good as some of George Romero’s best works. Dark black comedy, bleak horror, and plenty of chills.
R.I.P. Mr. Romero. And, as the joke making its rounds goes, please don’t come back as a zombie!
Looks like I once again made the picture’s dimensions too damn small…must have been a slip of the finger when configuring the image size. Once the image is “set”, the iPad you doesn’t offer information on the image size unless you double check it. I consider that a lesson learned.
Still, I’m not too upset. I like the above image but, of the four I’ve done so far, I’ve been lucky those that were too small are among the ones I’m less satisfied with.
Not that I think the above image is a complete bust but compared to the Raquel Welch and Nosferatu ones, it come next.
Last week and to breathless reporting the History Channel presented a documentary centered around the discovery of a photograph, presented below and supposedly a once top secret image…
Which, when one zoomed in on the people in the center of the dock, those same folks at the History Channel felt were Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan…
I’m not going to lie: I found the story as fascinating as most everyone else out there curious about Amelia Earhart and her fate. In fact, I wrote about it here but noted that I doubted the photo displayed what the History Channel thought it did.
Since it was reported the photograph had once been “classified” and, further, that the person who reportedly took the photograph was eventually executed as a spy (I can’t help but wonder if that part of the story was outright fabrication, considering the below), I suspected that the subject matter was more likely the vessel in the background rather than the few people on the dock.
Now, a few days later, a blogger has burst the History Channel’s bubble and you can read all about it in this article by Ruth Graham and for Salon.com…
What did Kota Yamano, the blogger in question find? From the article:
the History Channel’s analysis now seems to be crumbling under 30 minutes of internet research by one military history buff. Kota Yamano, a Tokyo-based blogger, found the same photograph printed in a Japanese-language travelogue published in 1935, almost two years before Earhart and Noonan disappeared. The caption underneath the photo says nothing about the identities of the people in the photograph, which apparently depicts a regular old harbor, rather than a harbor and two missing celebrities.
There are plenty of things out there that fascinate me (I worry sometimes that I waaaay overuse that word!) and, to add to the list, is this: What makes music popular? What makes it stick with one generation, then get ignored -or worse- by another?
Yesterday and over at themuse.com, Ellie Shechet offered this article…
As a Proverbial-Old-Fart™, I’m amused that most of the artists listed came after my own personal music hey-day, though there are bands listed I do like, even to this day (For example, I still think Hole’s Live Through This is a terrific album even though I’ve not gotten into any of the other albums Courtney Love has done nor am I terribly interested in her…celebrity or not).
Now if you scroll past the article itself, someone with the handle GinAndTonic, Potential Grizzly (some of these poster’s names can be quite… interesting) wrote:
U2 makes me want to blow my brains out.
The post has a large number of “likes” and was a response to another poster who noted (but didn’t necessarily put down) U2.
What fascinates (see, I’m using that word again!) me about the post is the venom many seem to have today, especially the younger generation, toward U2.
In part I suspect this was due to the ill-advised 2014 give away of their latest album, Songs of Innocence, via iTunes… whether the iPhone/iPad/iWhatever user wanted it or not.
I wrote about this here and here, noting that while there was absolutely nothing wrong with releasing an album by a big band like U2 free for anyone with an iPhone/iTunes/iWhatever to get free, it was not a good idea to automatically have it download to everyone’s device whether they asked for it or didn’t.
It was a way to take something good (the giveaway) and make it bad.
And I can’t help but think that this poisoned the well for U2 with today’s youth.
I grew up with U2’s rise and, personally, love almost every one of their albums -from start to finish- from The Unforgettable Fire to Zooropa. Don’t get me wrong: I like many songs in the albums previous to The Unforgettable Fire, including this song, found on the album War, which proved my first big awareness of them back in the early 1980’s (boy, we were young back then)…
I felt, roughly until Rattle and Hum, that U2 could do no wrong. That album felt bloated and, though it had a few good songs here and there, seemed to be a band moving without much direction. Then came Achtung Baby, their best later stage album, IMHO, and the “throwaway” experimental album Zooropa, a wild one-two punch that I loved. That album concluded with this interesting collaboration between U2 and -of all people!- Johnny Cash:
But their follow-up album to Zooropa, Pop, was absolutely dreadful, IMHO, and I could only listen to it once and haven’t given it another try since. Their subsequent albums have featured decent enough songs here and there but, sadly, I feel the band simply lost itself and the magic it had.
This is, by the way, something that seems to happen to almost all acts, especially those that constantly try to do something new and interesting. Sometimes, new and interesting takes you into areas that lose fans. While I can certainly appreciate that they’re still trying, most of the stuff that’s come post-Zooropa just hasn’t been my cup of tea.
Which is a shame but goes a long way from declaring hatred toward them and their music!
My eldest daughter, a big music fan, can’t handle U2 and will not listen to them either and, I feel, that’s a shame. They created some great music but, as I mentioned way back at the start of this posting, music tastes change and what can work for one generation may not work at all for another.
Was the Apple download fiasco a big part of the reason some of today’s youth hate U2? I suppose. But I also suppose that today’s youth seek their own music and they simply cannot look at what are now middle aged -and older!- musicians strutting their stuff and accept them as cutting edge music they’re interested in pursuing.
Last night’s work, a classic pose/photograph of the absolutely stunning Raquel Welch for the film One Million Years B.C.
Never saw the film and can’t say I’m all that interested in doing so (cave men type films, even tongue in cheek ones, interest me very little), but the image of Ms. Welch is one that’s incredibly iconic to people in and around my age.
So yesterday I posted a way too small image I made of Ash from the Ash vs. The Evil Dead show and, while it was near impossible to see the image to any great degree because of how small it was, I was encouraged by the results and wanted to experiment a little more on these types of things.
But, of course, with a larger image. Here is something I did yesterday:
So that’s the image in black and white and, after putting in a splash of color and lettering…
I’m having a lot of fun making these quick little “inking” exercises and, if I have the time, I’ll do a little more tonight.
Back in 2014 and after a series of critical and box office duds, Keanu Reeves’ star appeared to be on the wane. The actor himself noted that after the failure of 2008’s The Day The Earth Stood Still remake, he was no longer viewed as a very in demand actor.
But things got considerably brighter for Mr. Reeves when, in 2014, he starred in the quirky, action-filled John Wick.
The film concerned a proverbial cliched bad ass hit man who had retired. When we first meet Mr. Wick, he’s morose. His wife, we find, has died of cancer but not before leaving him a puppy. One day, while going out, his flashy 1969 Mustang captures the eyes of some youthful thugs and they want to buy the car. Wick says no and, later that day, they assault his house, beat him up, kill his puppy, and steal his car.
The rest of the movie concerns Mr. Wick getting back at the ones who wronged him, who turned out to be the son of a powerful Russian mobster Mr. Wick has worked with before.
John Wick, in my opinion, was a good -if not quite great- action film filled with great stunts and at times brutal gun play. Keanu Reeves was quite good as the driven hit man who seeks justice. There were other interesting touches in the film, including a sense of some kind of hit man/gangster order, including a “safe haven” hotel in the middle of New York where the dregs of society can stay at and be safe and woe be it to anyone who creates any chaos in this safe haven.
As I said, I liked the film. In my original review of it (you can read it here), I said the following:
(John Wick) builds on and on, reaching its climax and conclusion and leaving at least me hoping to see more.
As the saying goes, beware of what you wish for.
Earlier this year John Wick: Chapter 2 was released to generally good reviews and positive fan reaction. At this moment and on this day, Rottentomatoes.com has the film scoring a damn good 89% positive among critics and a near equal 87% positive among audiences. This score, by the way, is slightly higher than the 85% positive among critics and 80% positive among audiences for the original John Wick.
And like my reaction versus everyone’s else to Guardians of the Galaxy, I can’t help but shake my damn head.
John Wick 2 is more… and more… and more of the same.
And after about a half hour of seeing what to my eyes was essentially the same gunfight pattern again and again (close quarter combat, shooting people in the head, flipping and fightin’, etc.), I was bored.
To tears.
The plot this time around concerns a marker mobster Santino D’Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio being at best only an “ok” slimeball) has on John Wick. Said marker entitles Santino to call in a favor from Wick and, while he refuses at first to do so, because of the hit man rules, Wick soon realizes he has to.
Them’s the breaks.
The favor Santino asks? He wants his sister killed. Seems his father recently passed away and willed her his power and seat at the prestigious “Table of 12”, a worldwide mobster power. Santino wants her out of the way so he can rule the clan and take that seat.
So after Wick realizes he has to do the job he heads to Italy and, eventually, gets down to business. He is then (surprise!) betrayed and gunfire, fights, CGI blood, close quarter shootouts, flips, punches, stabbings, etc. etc. yawn etc. etc. occur. Over and over and over and over again.
I honestly can’t think of another more action filled movie that bored me as much as this one did.
And I’m even more bewildered, as I was with the extremely positive reaction to Guardians of the Galaxy, as to why my opinion of this film is so at odds with the “mainstream”.
So for me, John Wick: Chapter 2 was a near total bust and, given I liked the first film, a big shame. However, given how much others seemed to like the film versus me, perhaps you should take my opinion with a proverbial grain of salt… it looks like I’m in the minority here.
