Archive for the ‘ Monday Media Madness ’ Category

Media Madness: Top 10 Comic Book Character Performances

In Media Madness, Matt. Murray reviews, revisits and rambles about comics, cartoons and their interactions in and with related media.

A few weeks ago, here on the Ol’ SAC Blog,  I let loose a venom-soaked rant against five of my least favorite comic character performances in live action media.  To atone for that I promised a Top 10 list of my favorite performances to show that I can be at least a wee bit positive about the media that I so love and spend so much money and time watching and consuming.  So, it may be a few weeks late, but here’s that venom-soaked rant that I promised.

But before we roll on, I feel that maybe there’s a little clarification that needs to be taken into account.  There is one, actually two,  key performances of one seminal character missing from this list and that’s because I think there needs to be some time put between those parts and writing about them to understand their true weight, or perhaps they need to be examined in their own post – now there’s an idea, and it’s mine so no sniping – and I’m talking about Heath Ledger, Jack Nicholson and their respective Jokers.

joker montage

Ledger’s pre-eminence as the premiere essayist of a four-colors-for-a-dime character is up for debate. Yes, he was brilliant; and yes that is at least one of the reasons he currently stands as the only actor to be honored with an Oscar for his performance (read all about the whys and wherefores here); but I believe Jack Nicholson’s Joker could still go toe-to-toe for him for the title of the true Clown Prince of Crime. Only time will truly tell… but, I had to take Ledger, and in fairness Nicholson, out of the race to honestly handicap the rest of the field.

So without further ado, here are my two bits:

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Media Madness: Annie is Not Okay. Michael Jackson: 8/29/58 – 6/25/09

In Media Madness, Matt. Murray reviews, revisits and rambles about comics, cartoons and their interactions in and with related media.

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Anyone with a conscious memory of the latter half of the 20th Century will probably have at least one wisp of thought related to Michael Joseph Jackson, the self-professed Prince, and then, self-crowned King of Pop. While his talent, and it was immense, lied mainly in the field of crafting and performing danceable R&B and Pop music, like most people born in the advent of motion pictures and television, he definitely had the desire to be a movie and TV star.

His music videos leave a lasting legacy of boundary pushing cinematic techniques and unique storytelling, that not only complemented his music but undoubtedly drove his album and video sales into the stratosphere. Is it any wonder, then, that the “Moonman” MTV presents for Lifetime Achievement in the Field of Music Video was once called the “Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award”?

Unfortunately, beyond his turn as the Scarecrow in The Wiz and his appearance as Captain EO in a Disney theme park “experience,” notoriety as an actor seemed to allude Michael and in his scattered multi-media experience his defining character turned out to be himself.  He was given a cameo in the second Men in Black film as “Agent M” an alien begging for a spot on the MIB team, and he left a handful of animated credits to his name voicing or inspiring characters that were in one way or another a version of himself.

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Media Madness: Worst Performances Ever! (or Until Mandrake Comes Out)

In Media Madness, Matt. Murray reviews, revisits and rambles about comics, cartoons and their interactions in and with related media.

I read some disappointing news over at Dark Horizons last week — rumor has it that Hayden Christensen will be playing Mandrake the Magician in some Criss Angel style adaptation of the Lee Falk comic strip of the same name.  Ugh.

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While I’m not adverse to updating and playing with what is clearly a dated concept and character, I am frightened and saddened by choosing uber-douche Angel as the mold to recast the hero in (he evidently has a cameo as well) and then there’s casting Dork Vader himself to carry the production… In the words of Patton Oswalt doing his impression of Nick Nolte as Han Solo: Aw Hell, Chewbacca!

How the hell does this guy still get work? Has no one been to the movies in the past ten years? This kid buckled under the weight of the second Star Wars trilogy and was outperformed by the special effects and Billy Fu@%ing Elliot in Jumper. He can barely sustain the illusion of having an emotion on screen, how are we supposed to buy into the fact that he’s the world’s greatest illusionist and escape artist?

(In better news, Djimon “Give Us Us Free” Hounsou is in it too.  I’m assuming he’s playing Mandrake’s African sidekick Lothar as he’s absolutely perfect casting in that department.   So here’s hoping that maybe the producers and director aren’t complete shortbussers.)

djilothar

In honor of this disgusting piece of casting that will no doubt amount to a staggering disappointment, and the death of another potentially cool classic comic franchise (The Phantom and/or Spirit, anyone?), I’ve assembled a list of the 5 worst performances in movies adapted from comics in the past 10 years or so.

Disclaimer: Enjoy the list, but by no means don’t watch the films. Really. You shouldn’t. Not only are they horrible performances but these people will get paid in some way, shape or form if you pick up the disc or watch it via some other legal means. Don’t encourage crap kids, it only begets more!

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Media Madness: Words & Pictures, Enemies & Allies

In Media Madness, Matt. Murray reviews, revisits and rambles about comics, cartoons and their interactions in and with related media.

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In Media Madness (on Mondays and other days) I’ve focused much of my attention on adaptations of comics into movies, television shows and other temporally sequential art forms. Largely, that’s probably what one thinks of when one mentions the adaptation of the comic medium into another.  However, there is a whole other strain of adaptation that has been around basically since the birth of the comic itself: the translation of comics and their characters into other print media that lack pictures… short stories and books.

Historically,  Stan “The Man” Lee’s first job at Timely comics was writing “Captain America Foils the Traitor’s Revenge” a text-only filler story that ran in Captain America #3.  Pieces like this were a necessity for comics in the Golden Age, so that a comic could be considered a proper “magazine” making it eligible for a mailing certificate with USPS.  To this day, there still exists a school of thought that comics are in some way a lesser form than text-only fiction, simply because they have pictures.

I actually witnessed an institutionalized version of this “thought” first hand a couple of years back  at a conference of Nassau County Public Librarians.  I was invited to their annual breakfast to speak on a panel in favor of the comic book as a form of adult literature, and although I applaud the organizer for even trying to posit this thought into the head of her colleagues, the feeling of the room was essentially summed up in the closing comment of an attendee who stood up thanked the panel for coming and then shook her bee-hived head and said “…but these ‘books’ are still for children.”

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Media Madness: Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit

In Media Madness, Matt. Murray reviews, revisits and rambles about comics, cartoons and their interactions in and with related media.

Poor Frank Miller.

Twenty some odd years ago, after being at the forefront of a revolution in the comics industry with his legendary run on Daredevil and his seminal take on Batman (Dark Knight Returns and Year One) he turned his sites to Hollywood and was completely crushed by the film making machine when he was hired to write the Robocop sequels. Misunderstood and re-written to the point of barely being recognized as his work, Robocop 2 and Robocop 3 literally sent Miller back to the drawing board, where he would cook up Sin City and 300… which of course would become hot Hollywood properties which would revolutionize comic book movies to an extent.

Poor Frank Miller.

Although he was rightfully billed as “co-director” of Sin City and would get the reverential treatment he deserved from the actors, producers, directors and critics that he definitely deserved in the wake of the direct translation of City and the less literal adaptation of 300 (which was filtered through the directorial sense of Zack Snyder), anyone with a sense of history and an understanding of Mr. Miller’s ambitions could see that he was chomping at the bit to get the training wheels off… to take a shot at writing and directing his own movie.

Poor Frank Miller.

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