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slinker

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    Preacher the movie? Televangelism!

    in Comics in other media

    Posted

    Oh, fuck!

     

    Garth Ennis’ Preacher TV Show Dead at HBO

     

    By Nix | August 26, 2008 (12:05 pm) | More: Comic Book Movie News, Preacher TV Series, TV News ShareThis

     

    Well, can’t say as if I didn’t see this one coming. Word from director Mark Steven Johnson (”Ghost Rider”, “Daredevil”) is that the Preacher TV series he’s been developing over at HBO, to be based on the edgy and controversial comic book series by Garth Ennis of the same name, is all but dead. So what happened? The usual suspects when movies or projects get shelved — the guy who greenlit the development got replaced by someone else, who didn’t take too kindly to his predecessor’s projects, and so have found ways to trash them. Such is the fate of the Preacher TV show.

     

    Johnson tells Comic Continuum as such:

     

    “We were budgeting and everything and it was getting really close to going,” Johnson told The Continuum. “But the new head of HBO felt it was just too dark and too violent and too controversial. Which, of course, is kind of the point!

     

    “It was a very faithful adaptation of the first few books, nearly word for word. They offered me the chance to redevelop it but I refused. I’ve learned my lesson on that front and I won’t do it again. So I’m afraid it’s dead at HBO.

     

    “I’ve heard someone is in the process of getting the rights to turn it into a feature film. I hope that happens. But I hope it happens as a series of movies as one movie couldn’t do it justice. I really love that story and I dedicated a lot of my time to honor Garth’s work. But it wasn’t meant to be.”

     

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

     

     

    HBO Kills Preacher Television Series

     

    Posted on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 at 1:49 pm by: Peter Sciretta

     

    HBO has killed the planned television adaptation of Garth Ennis‘ popular Vertigo comic series Preacher. Mark Steven Johnson broke the news to ComicsContinuum, claiming that the project got to the budgeting stage before it was axed.

     

    “The new head of HBO felt it was just too dark and too violent and too controversial. Which, of course, is kind of the point,” said Johnson. “It was a very faithful adaptation of the first few books, nearly word for word. They offered me the chance to redevelop it but I refused. I’ve learned my lesson on that front and I won’t do it again. So I’m afraid it’s dead at HBO.”

     

    While this is sad news, I’m kind of glad that Johnson is off the project. After all, this is the same guy who made Ghost Rider and Daredeveil. I’m not sure I would like Johnson’s “faithful” adaptation. Johnson has heard that someone else “is in the process of getting the rights to turn it into a feature film.”

     

    A film adaptation was once being developed at Kevin Smith’s production company - View Askew Productions, with James Marsden attached to play the lead. When the one-hour series was first announced in November 2006, Pretty in Pink director Howard Deutch named to helm the pilot episode. Robert Rodriguez was said to be one of the “many top-shelf directors interested in” helming an episode of the series. So I’m confident that the project will eventually get a green light somewhere.

     

    But a television series seemed like such a great idea. My hope is that following the success of Dexter, that Showtime would make a play for a television adaptation. They certainly aren’t afraid of dark material. The only question is, do they have the budget.

     

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    Yakko Smakko & Dot present...

    in Bring the Noise

    Posted

    I guess it's no surprise that CLONE WARS sucked big ol' donkey balls. The battle scenes at the beginning were really intense, but the characters, the story, and the dialogue all were lame. The animation didn't even line up correctly with the characters dialogue. It's a movie you could have made by doing stop motion with your action figures.

     

    And apparently Obi-wan came out of the closet, too, because girlfriend, if he's straight then I'm Jarvis Cocker.

    Benzene chewables have doubled production in ze child slave mines

    in Bring the Noise

    Posted

    i posted those images AFTER it was aired on sunday, young sir. i just edited my post rather than make a new one. i put spoiler tags around the photos to see if it worked, but it didn't. would you rather i'd not posted those fantastic images? i've noticed that people post on this thread while still ecstatic about seeing each latest episode, except for vagabond who is catching up. so, forgive me, if you feel so inclined. or blow me, whichever. :wank:

    Big books of comics

    in Comics

    Posted

    You're right, though, in that Orbiter is upsettingly terrible.

     

    Is it worse than "Ocean"?

     

    I found a used copy of "Nightly News". Boy, what a laborious book to read! It was very good, but so much tiny text and graphics and blurbs, my goodness!

    Beyond A Joker

    in Comics in other media

    Posted

    funny you should say that...

     

    'The Dark Knight': Is Bale's voice too much?

     

    Tribune wire reports

    August 4, 2008

     

    NEW YORK _ Why does Christian Bale's Batman talk like the offspring of Clint Eastwood and a grizzly bear?

     

    As Bruce Wayne, his voice is as smooth as his finely pressed suits. But once he puts the cape on, the transformation of his vocal chords is just as dramatic as his costume change.

     

    Particularly when his rage boils over, Bale's Batman growls in an almost beastly fashion, reflecting how close he teeters between do-gooder and vengeance-crazed crusader.

     

    " The Dark Knight" hauled in $43.8 million to rank as Hollywood's top movie for the third straight weekend, fending off " The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor," which opened a close second with $42.5 million. It has earned $394.9 million in just 17 days, according to studio estimates Sunday.

     

    Though much of the voice effect is Bale's own doing, under the guidance of director Christopher Nolan and supervising sound editor Richard King, the frequency of his Batman voice was modulated to exaggerate the effect.

     

    Critics and fans have noticed.

     

    "His Batman rasps his lines in a voice that's deeper and hammier than ever," said NPR's David Edelstein.

     

    The New Yorker's David Denby praised the urgency of Bale's Batman, but lamented that he "delivers his lines in a hoarse voice with an unvarying inflection."

     

    Reviewing the film for MSNBC, Alonso Duralde wrote that Bale's Batman in "Batman Begins" ''sounded absurdly deep, like a 10-year-old putting on an 'adult' voice to make prank phone calls. This time, Bale affects an eerie rasp, somewhat akin to Brenda Vaccaro doing a Miles Davis impression."

     

    Before the similes run too far afield, it's worth considering where the concept of a throaty Batman comes from.

     

    In his portrayal on the '60s "Batman" TV series, Adam West didn't alter his voice between Bruce Wayne and Batman. Decades later when Tim Burton brought "Batman" to the big screen in a much darker incarnation, Michael Keaton's inflection was notably -- but not considerably -- different from one to the other.

     

    But it was a lesser-known actor who, a few years after Burton's film, made perhaps the most distinct imprint on Batman's voice. Kevin Conroy, as the voice of the animated Batman in various projects from 1992's "Batman: The Animated Series" right up until this year's "Batman: Gotham Knight," brought a darker, raspier vocalization to Batman.

     

    Conroy has inhabit the role longer than anyone else and though animated voice-over work doesn't have the same cachet as feature film acting, there are quarters where Conroy is viewed as the best Batman of them all -- certainly superior to Val Kilmer or George Clooney.

     

    The animated series are notable because they drew on the DC Comics of Batman as envisioned by Frank Miller, whose work heavily informs "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight." (Bale and Nolan were unavailable to comment for this story.)

     

    As Batman has gotten darker, his voice has gotten deeper. As some critics suggest, Bale and "The Dark Knight" may have reached a threshold, at least audibly.

     

    http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainmen...0,2707715.story

    Benzene chewables have doubled production in ze child slave mines

    in Bring the Noise

    Posted

    last night's episode saw the return of the monarch after a 2 episode hiatus.

    he's arching jonas jr now, and with jonas openly engaging monarch and defeating him, the monarch is allowed by the guild to take revenge on members of jonas' family, opening the door for a return to arching rusty and the boys.

    the pirate captain working for jonas (whom he refers to as "chairman") cracks me up especially when their relationship gets tense (the [past two episodes have featured jonas and sSpiderskull island). 2 of the impossibles--sally and ned--are shacking up with jonas. when a drunk dr. impossible shows up at a party, well, it's pretty funny.

     

    this is one of the best shows on tv.

    Beyond A Joker

    in Comics in other media

    Posted

    I finally saw it last night, and enjoyed it very much. I'm not as nuts about it as most people, but it was thoroughly entertaining from beginning to end,

    particularly when Batman tells Gordon that he "killed those 5 people" so that Harvey's name would be left untarnished.

    This is the only super hero film I've seen which utilized two super villains successfully, a lesson for Raimi, ack Schumacher, and the others who tried to cram too much into bad scripts.

     

    Still, my short list of complaints:

     

    1. why is there always a chick in a Batman flick who knows Bruce's secret? Maggie G.'s Rachel is the same Rachel as Katie Holmes' in Begins, but in Begins, she didn't know Bruce was Batman. He went to painstaking efforts to keep her from knowing even when she was tripping on scarecrow drugs. But this goes back to Burton's Batman with Vicki Vale being handed the keys to the castle, then another different chick in each subsequent film. He must bury them under the batcave whenever he breaks up with them to preserve his secret.
    2. Admittedly, I'm not a huge Batman fan, but I've read some of Frank Miller's run (Year One, Dark Knight 1 & 2), Barr (Year Two), the Loeb/Sale run, Moore, Dixon, Moensch, Wagner (off the top of my head), and I never heard of Lucious Fox until Begins came out, and so there's another person along with Alfred, Rachel, Superman, etc, who knows his secret.
    3. And what's with the voice. I realize the need to disguise one's voice in order to prevent disclosure, but what about a radio transmitter (like a stormtrooper helmet) or a cowl with a voice changer, like those toy Darth Vader helmets. He could create a more menacing presence with a wickedly altered voice instead of the Gary Busey/Tom Waits thing he's trying to pull off. I DID like the new armor, with the armstrength bar thing he used to bend that rifle. That's Batman, right there.

     

    Obviously, those aren't anything that took away enjoyment from the film. It's easily one of the top 4 best comic adaptations as far as I'm concerned, with SIN CITY, Spider-man 2, and 300.

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