My Name Is Bruce Alert!

My Name is Bruce starring Bruce Campbell, that is. The fine folks at the SyFy Channel are running the movie again, in the choice prime-time spot of, *ahem*, 3:00AM on 09/01. It's on both the high-def and regular feeds, so here's your chance to see every one of Mr. Campbell's well-delineated pores...

Stuff I Liked And You Might Like Too...

This qualifies as a "preview", but Springsteen's upcoming re-release of Darkness On The Edge of Town sounds amazing. Most intriguing, it comes with a two CD set of outtakes/live tracks from the era... and here I figured most of those had landed on the Tracks set! A making-of documentary, new/old outtakes, remastered sound... what's not to like?



I have yet to read the book but I was totally enthralled by film version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. It is an oddly old-fashioned thriller with an amazing central character and some really dark subject matter. Soon to be remade, which is fine with me, but I can't wait to see the next two Swedish adaptations.



From the sublime to the... less sublime, MGM is finally releasing the Highway Patrol series on DVD. These gritty little half hour cheapies are compelling mostly because of Broderick Crawford. Actually, they're compelling ONLY because of Broderick Crawford. I remember watching reruns of this stuff when I was a kid in Portland and being fascinated by the cop lingo ("10-4!"). These are exceptionally nice transfers, too.

Kirby At 93

Today (8/28/2010) would have been Jack Kirby's 93rd birthday and there are several tributes on the internet commemorating the date, including at Mark Evanier's site and at The Comics Reporter (which features a bunch of scans spanning Kirby's amazing career). It's hard to overestimate how much Kirby's work meant to me and so many others, and how it continues to inspire. I was lucky enough to meet the man at a birthday gathering held for him at the San Diego Comic Con, where I was luckier still to have the chance to tell him how much I had enjoyed his work.

I'm up to my eyeballs in work, but I took some time off to look over some old Kirby favorites. Today I went back to his Captain America stories in the Tales Of Suspense title, then the solo Captain America book that started in 1968. I love Kirby's FF and Thor work, but I dunno, I think these Cap stories offer some of his most dynamic and powerful storytelling. And all this material is also easily obtainable these days in a variety of reprint forms, from the black and white Essentials collections to the pricier Archives hardbacks. I like comics, but I loves me the Kirby...

Common People

One of the best songs of the last, oh, ten years, gets animated...

http://crooksandliars.com/bluegal/open-thread-466

Lessons Learned From The Expendables

Lessons to be gleaned after seeing Stallone's latest, "The Expendables):

1) If you're dating the on and off girlfriend of a highly trained mercenary, be nice to her.

2) That said, if you're not nice, pointlessly antagonizing the ex-boyfriend is wildly counter productive.

3) Along those lines, pointlessly antagonizing the tin-pot General/dictator of an imaginary Latin American island you're trying to do business with is equally counter productive.

4) Water boarding and torturing the general's daughter against the General's express wishes is no way to mend fences.

5) Be careful about giving rousing speeches decrying your heavily armed business partner when he's standing right behind you with a big gun.

6) Painting your face black with a yellow diagonal stripe doesn't make you a better soldier, or invulnerable to many many bullets.

7) There is no reason to explain yourself to the mercenary soldier trying to kill you. You do so at your peril.

8) When in doubt, deploy the shotgun that fires 250 rounds a minute.

Updating

I seem to have fallen into a pattern of checking in every two weeks or so... but it's been pretty busy so I have an excuse, at least for now. Falling Skies started shooting a couple weeks ago and so the production train has left the station, with all that entails... scripts need to be written and rewritten, casting, designs... basically, the zillion large and small things involved in making tee-vee. The intensity is rewarded when we look at some fabulous dailies... we're all very happy with how this adventure is turning out. Now it's about turning out "more"...

In other news -- hey, Timecop's coming out on Blu-Ray! It will join the pantheon of MV feature efforts that have been given the high def treatment, including The Mask and My Name Is Bruce. Actually, Timecop was an early HD-DVD release, but that format went adios in a hurry, so here's one that people can actually watch. I am still a little disturbed to realize the future world we envisioned for that movie (2004) is now... six years ago. I'm just glad we didn't have our characters wearing lucite hats and conical brassieres... oh wait, that actually happened.

Also hey, Heroes season four is out on blu-ray too! I co-wrote two episodes and look forward to re-watching sans commercials. The set is jam-packed with extras so Heroes fans should definitely check it out.

Finally, I'm told another show I was involved with "awhile back" is going to be updated/re-issued in blu-ray soon... updates as they become available!