(BTW, if you can explain what's going on in the video, you're a smarter person than I.)
Milla models, sings, kicks monster butt, and poses awkwardly above a fireplace with a guitar. Is there anything this woman can't do?
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
The Milla Jovovich Quarterly:
Milla and the Gentleman Who Fell
Milla and the Gentleman Who Fell
Here's the video for "The Gentleman Who Fell" off of Milla Jovovich's 1994 album "Divine Comedy."
(BTW, if you can explain what's going on in the video, you're a smarter person than I.)
Milla models, sings, kicks monster butt, and poses awkwardly above a fireplace with a guitar. Is there anything this woman can't do?
(BTW, if you can explain what's going on in the video, you're a smarter person than I.)
Milla models, sings, kicks monster butt, and poses awkwardly above a fireplace with a guitar. Is there anything this woman can't do?
Celebrating Wonder Woman, Part One
In December 1941, Wonder Woman made her first appearance in "Sensation Comics". Seven decades later, she remains the most iconic superheroine of them all.
Every Wednesday this month, I'm celebrating the debut of Wonder Woman with a selection of artwork by illustrators famous and not so famous.
Happy 70th birthday, Wonder Woman! You don't look a day over 25!
If anyone out there who can draw wants to get in on the Wonder Woman celebration, feel free to send me a picture as a jpg or gif attachment at stevemillermail [at] gmail.com. :)
For more Wonder Woman pictures, visit Steven Lee's online gallery of comics art.
Every Wednesday this month, I'm celebrating the debut of Wonder Woman with a selection of artwork by illustrators famous and not so famous.
Happy 70th birthday, Wonder Woman! You don't look a day over 25!
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| By Jose Luis Garcia Lopez |
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| By Mike Wieringo |
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| By Adam Hughes |
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| By Chris Samnee |
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| By John Byrne |
If anyone out there who can draw wants to get in on the Wonder Woman celebration, feel free to send me a picture as a jpg or gif attachment at stevemillermail [at] gmail.com. :)
For more Wonder Woman pictures, visit Steven Lee's online gallery of comics art.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Will the black-gloved killer face the music?
The Black Glove (aka "Face the Music") (1954)
Starring: Alex Nicol, Eleanor Summerfield, John Salew, Ann Hanslip, and Paul Carpenter
Director: Terence Fisher
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars
An American band leader on a European tour (Nicol) becomes a murder suspect after he is the last known person to see a murder victim (Hanslip) alive. Using a mysterious bootleg recording as his only clue, he sets out to find the murderer.
While spooky black-gloved hands in movies have become associated mostly with Italian murder mysteries, they were presaging villainy and mayhem in films from all nations as early as the 1920s. The association with Italians come to a large degree from their persistent overuse by Dario Argento, but they are on display here both in the American market title and during the murder sequences in a British film.
Although, from a story perspective, the film isn't unlike something that might have been created by Argento, as its full of characters behaving oddly and downright stupidly because the plot dictates it. And the plot is loose to say the least, held together mostly by coincidences.
However, unlike the Argento films that post-date this one by more than a decade, this film is blessed by the superior direction of Terence Fisher. Once again, Fisher takes a modest creation and deploys all its parts in a manner so efficient that he so smooths over all the weaknesses so as to make them almost irrelevant.
Between eliciting a strong performance from lead Alex Nicol and the way he makes sure that the film keeps moving at a lightning-fast clip, you hardly have time to notice the film's shortcomings. Heck, Fisher keeps it moving so fast that even the musical numbers, which in many similar films bring things to a stand-still instead of driving them forward.
"The Black Glove" is another one of the nearly forgotten couple dozen black-and-white crime dramas that Hammer Films produced during the 1950s and 1960s in collaboration with American production companies, first with independent producer Robert Lippert and later Columbia Pictures. Like almost every film Fisher helmed, it is well worth a look.
Starring: Alex Nicol, Eleanor Summerfield, John Salew, Ann Hanslip, and Paul Carpenter
Director: Terence Fisher
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars
An American band leader on a European tour (Nicol) becomes a murder suspect after he is the last known person to see a murder victim (Hanslip) alive. Using a mysterious bootleg recording as his only clue, he sets out to find the murderer.
While spooky black-gloved hands in movies have become associated mostly with Italian murder mysteries, they were presaging villainy and mayhem in films from all nations as early as the 1920s. The association with Italians come to a large degree from their persistent overuse by Dario Argento, but they are on display here both in the American market title and during the murder sequences in a British film.
Although, from a story perspective, the film isn't unlike something that might have been created by Argento, as its full of characters behaving oddly and downright stupidly because the plot dictates it. And the plot is loose to say the least, held together mostly by coincidences.
However, unlike the Argento films that post-date this one by more than a decade, this film is blessed by the superior direction of Terence Fisher. Once again, Fisher takes a modest creation and deploys all its parts in a manner so efficient that he so smooths over all the weaknesses so as to make them almost irrelevant.
Between eliciting a strong performance from lead Alex Nicol and the way he makes sure that the film keeps moving at a lightning-fast clip, you hardly have time to notice the film's shortcomings. Heck, Fisher keeps it moving so fast that even the musical numbers, which in many similar films bring things to a stand-still instead of driving them forward.
"The Black Glove" is another one of the nearly forgotten couple dozen black-and-white crime dramas that Hammer Films produced during the 1950s and 1960s in collaboration with American production companies, first with independent producer Robert Lippert and later Columbia Pictures. Like almost every film Fisher helmed, it is well worth a look.
Christmas with the Monsters!
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Friday, December 2, 2011
Picture Perfect Special:
Princesses of Mars, Part Sixteen
Princesses of Mars, Part Sixteen
And now for another trip to Mars, where the princesses continue their battles against monsters and clothes.
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| By Frank Brunner |
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| By Michael Dooley |
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| By John Heebink |
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| By Bruce Timm |
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Wonder Woman is turning 70
Seventy years ago next month, Wonder Woman made her first comic book appearance. I'm celebrating her every Wednesday in December. I hope you'll join me.
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| By Adam Hughes |
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
'The Cat and the Canary' is a cool silent flick
The Cat and the Canary (1927)
Starring: Laura La Plante, Creighton Hale, Martha Mattox, Tully Marshall, Gertrude Astor, Flora Finch, Forrest Stanley, Arthur Edmund Carewe, George Siegmann, and Lucien Littlefield
Director: Paul Leni
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars
Twenty years to the hour after the death of millionaire Cyrus West, his relatives gather for the reading of his will; West loathed all of them, and he was determined to make them wait to pick at his dead reamins. His strange will leaves everything to his niece (La Plante) but only if she is certified sane by a doctor before dawn. If she is not declared mentally fit, a back-up heir--supposedly unknown to any living soul as the name is on a paper in a sealed envelope--will receive West's estate. As the relatives spend the night, soon the mansion becomes filled with strange and terrifying events... which may or may nt be in the mind of the young heiress--or perhaps even caused by her! Is she insane, or is someone attempting to drive her insane, so that they might gain the West fortune?
The grand-daddy of all Dark Old House mystery films and a collection of what would become standard fare in 1930s horror flicks and B-thrillers--gnarled grasping hands, masked killers, vanishing bodies, secret doors and passages, stylish damsels in distress, inept leading men, and just about anything else you can think of--this film is great fun and a must-see for anyone with a serious interest in the horror genre as an art form, or just a love for the gothic horror genre.
Your level of enjoyment of the early part of the picture will be dictated by your tolerance for the acting style of silent movies, but once the will has been read things start revving into high gear and the tension and action keeps building until the "big reveal" of the villain at the end. What's more, the bits that were supposed to be suspenseful in 1927 remain so today, and the same goes for the bits that were supposed to be funny.
There are a couple of disconnects story-wise--such as the point where one character talks another out of going for the police by saying that she'll do it and then never goes anywhere--but those are more than made up for by scenes such as the one with the main character fleeing in terror down a curtain-lined hallway, the stylish arrival of the police on the scene, and the action-filled climax that is equal-parts funny and frightening and which cuts back and forth between a milk-cart speeding through the night and a furious battle between the comic relief character who's emerged as the film's hero and the caped, murdering madman.
If you enjoyed just about any horror film from Monogram Pictures or "The Old Dark House", you should check out this flick, even if you have yourself convinced you "hate silent movies."
Starring: Laura La Plante, Creighton Hale, Martha Mattox, Tully Marshall, Gertrude Astor, Flora Finch, Forrest Stanley, Arthur Edmund Carewe, George Siegmann, and Lucien Littlefield
Director: Paul Leni
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars
Twenty years to the hour after the death of millionaire Cyrus West, his relatives gather for the reading of his will; West loathed all of them, and he was determined to make them wait to pick at his dead reamins. His strange will leaves everything to his niece (La Plante) but only if she is certified sane by a doctor before dawn. If she is not declared mentally fit, a back-up heir--supposedly unknown to any living soul as the name is on a paper in a sealed envelope--will receive West's estate. As the relatives spend the night, soon the mansion becomes filled with strange and terrifying events... which may or may nt be in the mind of the young heiress--or perhaps even caused by her! Is she insane, or is someone attempting to drive her insane, so that they might gain the West fortune?
The grand-daddy of all Dark Old House mystery films and a collection of what would become standard fare in 1930s horror flicks and B-thrillers--gnarled grasping hands, masked killers, vanishing bodies, secret doors and passages, stylish damsels in distress, inept leading men, and just about anything else you can think of--this film is great fun and a must-see for anyone with a serious interest in the horror genre as an art form, or just a love for the gothic horror genre.
Your level of enjoyment of the early part of the picture will be dictated by your tolerance for the acting style of silent movies, but once the will has been read things start revving into high gear and the tension and action keeps building until the "big reveal" of the villain at the end. What's more, the bits that were supposed to be suspenseful in 1927 remain so today, and the same goes for the bits that were supposed to be funny.
There are a couple of disconnects story-wise--such as the point where one character talks another out of going for the police by saying that she'll do it and then never goes anywhere--but those are more than made up for by scenes such as the one with the main character fleeing in terror down a curtain-lined hallway, the stylish arrival of the police on the scene, and the action-filled climax that is equal-parts funny and frightening and which cuts back and forth between a milk-cart speeding through the night and a furious battle between the comic relief character who's emerged as the film's hero and the caped, murdering madman.
If you enjoyed just about any horror film from Monogram Pictures or "The Old Dark House", you should check out this flick, even if you have yourself convinced you "hate silent movies."
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