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Archive for April, 2012

 

Trailer Watch: Margaret Atwood’s Payback

From Zeitgeist Films and director Jennifer Baichwal (Manufactured Landscapes) comes a documentary “adaptation” of Margaret Atwood’s non-fiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth — abbreviated to, simply, Payback for the film — a rumination on the various ideas and forms of debt in the world.

As both a pinko and an enormous fan of Margaret Atwood (she is the namesake for Jason Atwood, after all), I’m definitely in, and I hope the film turns out to be more than a superficial glance at so many very deep and troubling subjects. The film will hit a handful of theaters on April 25, 2012, but most of us will have to wait for video, I expect.

The official synopsis follows:
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Trailer Watch: Total Recall trailer

I’m a little late to the party with this trailer because of ECCC, which hit yesterday, but ho-leee crap. Colin Farrell makes me forget all about the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger/Paul Verhoeven cheese-fest of the same name with the trailer for their version of Total Recall. The new film, directed by Len Wiseman, supposedly sticks a bit closer to the Philip K. Dick short story, “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale.”

I realize Len Wiseman also did the first two Underworld flicks, which should temper my unquenchable thirst for intelligent sci-fi action flicks, but this looks great. For what it’s worth, Wiseman didn’t write the script for this, unlike with Underworld. He also did Live Free or Die Hard, though I never saw that one. This new version is from a screenplay by Kurt Wimmer (Street Kings, Equilibrium, Salt) and Mark Bomback (Live Free or Die Hard, Unstoppable, The Wolverine)… so… uh… hm. I guess we’ll find out when the whole film comes on August 3.

The official synopsis follows after the break…

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ECCC 2012 for realsies (featuring Mega Man vs. Cthulhu)

Okay, so I made my “reasonable guesses” as to how Emerald City Comicon went in the Notes from the Manager for today’s strip, and surprisingly enough I wasn’t all that far off. No Summer Glau or George Takei. Spike didn’t attend, so I didn’t get to see her, and I missed out on any Joel Watson karaoke, if there was any. I had awakened on Thursday with a sore throat, though, which had progressed to a full-blown cold by Friday morning. Sadly, I can’t even blame it on airports or the usual confluenza, since I had it before I even left for the airport.

I got into Seattle on Thursday and was quickly whisked off to a gala affair at Phil Foglio’s house with David Willis, which involved a handful of webcomickers sitting and standing around talking shop (as these things do) and some friends of Phil’s and Bill Barnes’s.

Alas, because of my progressively worse cold, I didn’t get to play that much with my fellow webcomickers, but on Saturday night, I did get to have a deliciously hilarious (and inevitably foul) dinner with Tom Brazelton, Danielle Corsetto, Randy Milholland, Lar De Souza and Ryan Sohmer, Joel Watson, and David again before I crapped out. (I shared a hotel room with Dave and Joel, too — after I split Sunday night, this situation ended exactly as you would expect it would.)

Illness notwithstanding, it was great meeting a lot of familiar faces from last year’s ECCC as well as From The Internet, including several backers from the Book 1 Kickstarter project and a few from the new one for Book 2, which even ended up passing $10,000 on Sunday afternoon, before my prediction posted with Monday’s.

Sorry if I got any of you sick by shaking your hand. (As if you’d know it was me specifically.) For what it’s worth, I was Purelling the shit out of my hands every day. Usually I do it to keep from getting sick, but this time, it was to keep anyone else from getting sick.

I had a great time doing a ton of sketches at the show. The Mega Man vs. Cthulhu one above was one of my favorites. If anybody else wants to share sketches I did for them, either in books or on a sheet of Bristol, tweet a photo of it at me! I forgot to take photos of some really fun ones, unfortunately.