Category Archives: Uncategorized

After a small hiatus, Monday Night Movie Club returns, so lets have your 200 word review of the 12 Star Trek movies. Next week we'll be doing The Matrix.

Make it so.

Thanks to all those who participated in the first of the new Pop Quizzes. All the entries were excellent. Having a little trouble uploading a picture of the winning entry for some reason, so I will try to add it as a response to this post. Wish me luck.

Good morning! It's Sunday, and that means Open Critique Day.

Show us your artwork in the comments section below. I will offer my opinion on everything that gets posted during the day.

Please note that the forum rules apply here. That means no nudity, no profanity, no copyrighted characters or characters from copyrighted settings.

So, I just watched The Hobbit.

This one.

Yeah, I'm a bit late to the party, I guess, but I was waiting until I could see it on dvd with a good friend of mine.

I liked it. It was very much what I expected.

But I'm not really here to talk about the movie, half a year after its release. See, I was reminded of the 1989-1990 comic book adaptation by Chuck Dixon and David T. Wenzel.

This one.

Dixon has condensed the plot expertly to 133 pages over three issues. Nothing feels left out, but nothing feels rushed either. The transition from novel to comic works incredibly well, arguably better than for the movie, and it makes me a bit surprised how these sorts of adaptations are so rare.

Thorin has come to ride barrels and kick *ss. And he's seriously sick of barrels.

Wenzel's art is just beautiful. His previous work mostly consisted of children's book illustrations, and his soft colours and generally friendly style fits the narrative well, while also providing a nice contrast to elements like Gollum, the goblins and the spiders, who all look genuinely creepy.

Yep.

And not to spoil anything, things do get suitably epic towards the climax.

I highly recommend this book if you're a Tolkien- or a fantasy fan, if you're looking for a present for a child (gotta get them hooked on fantasy while they're young, you know) or if you're just looking for a pleasant bit of reading.

The first atomic cannon was fired in Nevada on May 25, 1953

This week’s challenge is to choose one of the Atomic based public domain comic book characters from the link below…

http://pdsh.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Atomic_Characters

and remake them for 2013!

You only get one entry so give it your best shot!

 All entries must be in JPG or PNG form (BMPs are too big), posted to a publicly accessible website (like the HeroMachine forums, ImageShack, PhotoBucket, or whatever);

• Entries must be made as a comment or comments to this post, containing a link directly to the image and the character name;
• The image must be new and designed specifically for the Pop Quiz;
• Please name your files as [your name]-[character name].[file extension] before you upload it. So DiCicatriz, for instance, would save his “Bayou Belle” character image as DiCicatriz-BayouBelle.png.
• Please make the link go directly to the image (like this) and not to a hosting jump page (like this). See this post on how to get the direct link for most sites.

Contest closes Sunday, May 26th at 6:00pm eastern.

The Pop Quiz has been resurrected. Check the Blog tomorrow morning for your first 36 hour challenge.

Colleen Atwood

Colleen Atwood has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Costume Design ten times and won Academy Awards for the movies Chicago in 2002, Memoirs of a Geisha in 2006, and Alice in Wonderland in 2011. Atwood has collaborated several times with directors Tim Burton, Rob Marshall and Jonathan Demme.

Her movie career started after a chance encounter with someone whose mother was designing the sets for the film Ragtime, and she got the job of a PA (production assistant) in the film. She worked as an assistant to a costume designer and eventually earned her first film credit for A Little Sex.

An important turning point in her career came when, through the production designer with whom she had worked in Joe Versus the Volcano, she met director Tim Burton. Atwood and Burton worked together on over seven films in the next two decades, starting with Edward Scissorhands and including Sleepy Hollow, Ed Wood, Big Fish, Planet of the Apes, and Sweeney Todd.

Selected Design Credits

2012 Arrow (TV series)

2012 Snow White and the Huntsman

2012 Dark Shadows

2010 Alice in Wonderland

2009 Nine

2007 Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

2004 Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

2003 Big Fish

2002 Chicago

2001 The Tick (TV series) – Pilot (2001)

2001 Planet of the Apes

1999 Sleepy Hollow

1996 Mars Attacks!

1990 Edward Scissorhands

I know this is old news but, considering that the new series of Doctor Who has just finished, I still want to moan about it. A couple of months ago Steven Moffat (head writer on Doctor Who) went on record as saying he didn't like using the Daleks because it's so obvious that they'll lose. Now please forgive me this rant for a minute, but who goes and watches a dramatical tv series, reads a comic or watches a film and thinks 'oh, I wonder if the good guy will win?'??????? For gods sake, by that logic he should just get rid of all villains and cancel the show and in fact every show, film, comic, novel etc, because its obvious that the hero does't lose!!!!!! The only time the bad guy wins is when you see Simon Cowell laughing his way to the bank.

However, this bring me to an interesting point and this weeks big question: Are arch-nemeses (Daleks, Magneto, The Joker, the aforementioned high trousered one) overused?

This Kitten Has Claws!

 For my first Costume Blog I wanted to get people’s opinions on one of the classic characters in the pantheon of comic book characters.

Catwoman made her debut in the premiere issue of Batman (#1, Spring 1940). As “The Cat,” she wore no mask or special outfit. Since that time she has evolved through at least nine lives with a wide variety of looks from her seductive early film noire persona to the Catwoman we know today.

Personally I find it difficult to pick a favourite. In “The Dark Knight Rises” I loved the simplicity of the catsuit and thought the cat ears that flipped down to create goggles was a stroke of genius. Seriously, how else could you fit kitty ears into Chris Nolan’s GothamCity?

Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman wore a handcrafted catsuit stitched together in a fit of madness. I giggled a little as she pulled a trolley needle from her sewing kit and slipped it onto her finger as the first of her claws, yet I have not worn one since without that image flashing through my mind. I have, however, resisted the urge to buy nine more.

For pure sex (kitten) appeal I’m not sure that Julie Newmar’s look could be improved upon which is perhaps why almost 50 years later she is widely regarded as the definitive Catwoman. The cinched waist, stiletto heels and shimmering metallic claws made her look seductive and timeless – and the saxophone underscore didn’t hurt!

Some looks were not quite as successful. There was the “Playboy Kitty” look with it’s Dracula like collar, the uninspired purple unitard with thigh high black boots, and of course, perhaps the worst of all, Halle Berry’s inexplicably bizarre costume in her ill fated turn as Catwoman…which wasn’t really Catwoman…but…well…you get the idea.

Got a favourite? Least favourite? Sound off!