Rapper Gregory Jerome performs at February’s Premiere on Film Row. (Randy Alvarado) As Batman said in The Dark Knight Rises, “A hero can be anyone, even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat around a small boy’s shoulder to let him know that the world hadn’t ended.” Premiere on Film […]
comic
Posted inArts & Culture
The Wolverine / Prisoners
Based on a particularly well-received run of issues in the 1980s by Frank Miller and Chris Claremont, The Wolverine transports our indestructible, retractable-claw hero (Hugh Jackman, Les Misérables) back to Japan — “back” because he spent some time there as a P.O.W. during World War II, where he saved the life of an enemy soldier […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Steampunk is fun again
Everyone has that one friend or relative who is a little nerdy and difficult to shop for. You know, that cousin who is obsessed with comic books and wants to spend hours arguing over whether or not Marvel is still relevant after the horrible, strange decisions they’ve made lately … but I digress. Take a […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The art knight rises
Marilyn Artus “Comic books are a billion-dollar industry,” Kovash said. “They’ve become an important part of American art. The Museum of Modern Art (in New York City) has been collecting comic books for a long time. It’s a legitimate art form, and I think The Art of the Comic Book will help give people who […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Femme Fatales: The Complete Second Season
This second batch of episodes, 12 in all on two DVDs, seems more confident than Femme‘s freshman outing, even if story quality remains wildly varied. Tanit Phoenix (Safe House) hosts the proceedings, with scenarios that include: • a comic-book heroine, • time-traveling clones, • noir-drenched detectives • and so much moaning. For every leaden dud […]
Posted inMusic
Sun rises
Ska music might have fallen out of the public eye since its mid-’90s heyday when The Mighty Mighty Bosstones briefly flirted with mainstream success and No Doubt’s ska-adjacent songs dominated radio, but Oklahoma City outfit Sunny Side Up is working to make sure the last horn hasn’t sounded. While the sextet started out simply trying […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Heroic hangover
Brian Winkeler, a writer, and Robert Wilson IV, an artist, were patrons of New World Comics, 6219 N. Meridian. Store owner Brian Berlin thought the two should meet. Soon after a fateful lunch outing, the plot and characters for Knuckleheads, a quirky series of their own, was born. Winkeler said they loosely adapted the concept […]
Posted inArts & Culture
All Superheroes Must Die
The low-budget effort’s premise takes a page from Saw: Tired of “asshole goody-two-shoes getting in the way,” the career criminal who calls himself Rickshaw (James Remar, TV’s Dexter) wants his archenemies — this story’s superheroes — to play a game. He has kidnapped 100 innocent civilians, rigged them to explosive devices and scattered them across […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Dick Tracy
As its director, producer and star, Beatty aimed to translate Chester Gould’s iconic comic strip from the funny pages to the silver screen, and he did that wonderfully – with the help of its Oscar-winning production design and makeup effects, of course. The backlot artifice serves a purpose; the primary colors burst with wide-eyed appeal; […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1
Christopher Nolan’s recent trilogy, concluding with this summer’s The Dark Knight Rises, owes more to Miller than Tim Burton’s two versions did, and on Rises’ boot heels comes an animated adaptation of Miller’s source material in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1, directed by Jay Oliva (Green Lantern: Emerald Knights). At an hour and […]