A Necessary Reminder

Somehow, it seems like a good time to repeat this Public Service post from 2017.

(This image is sized for 8x10 printing at 150dpi for easy distribution. Click for full print version)

Pimping A Russian Mail Order Bride

Regulars know i tend to shy away from tagging specifics on people i talk about here, simply to be respectful to them since they've not given me explicit permission to discuss them with the general public. But, i'm going to break that rule today for a bit of promotion. (Maybe it's Stan's influence?)

I previously made mention of my younger son starring on stage in Las Vegas until the beginning of this year. The unmentioned show was Evil Dead: The Musical (The 4D Experience), winning official approval from Bruce Campbell with his portrayal of Ash, King of Groovy. (or something like that. Ask Jack)

A great role, but after a few years one wants to do other things - especially someone like Chris (AKA Strangling Jack Johnson of the Swinging Johnson Brothers) who acts, does comedy, writes, directs and produces. He needed to stretch again.

Hence, his latest project - a new series on Amazon Prime entitled 100 Nights With Strangling Jack Johnson.
The official description:
"Follow Strangling Jack on his quest to become a working stand up comic - from his first night bombing to his first headlining gig and beyond! The show shares tips and tricks from working comedians about what it takes to start a comedy career."

BTW - you can also find his indie comedy Driving Bill Crazy on Amazon. Here's the description, once again:

"Bill’s life has always been a bit crazy, from his swinger mother and his step father who is four years younger than him to his abusive completely unhelpful psychiatrist to the fact that he works in a mental institution. His boss doesn’t like him and has no problem telling him. The girl he likes just started dating his worst enemy. Just when he thinks his life couldn’t get any loonier, he steps into the twisted world of Cameron and Cary Nolan. A massive head wound causes the prohibition of “Lawn Darts” and simultaneously makes the Nolan brothers rich. They realize that working is for chumps. Scams and fraudulent lawsuits are where the real money’s at, and corporate America is quick to settle out of court…especially when there’s a penis splint involved. After several years of falling down hotel stairs, “finding” rats in their fried chicken, and train derailments, they’ve discovered a new scam far superior to all the others. Evidently there’s plenty of money to be made in the mental health industry especially when you don’t exactly play by the rules. Now there’s a race between the insanity of Bill’s everyday life, and the twisted false reality of squirrels, pills and ninjas created by his new roommates to see which one finally ends up, Driving Bill Crazy."

Oh, yeah.... Confused about the title of this post?
This might help.

The Other Guys

Still here, just a bit under the weather and more than a bit exhausted.
But, tomorrow's in the queue, and hopefully i'll be processing oxygen a tad more efficiently soon.

Meanwhile-
You did catch the Other Justice League movie this week, didn't you?

the above gathering from Crisis On Earth-X (with a little help)

Dear Gods (All 6 Of 'Em), Let Him Say His Name!

I don't know if you heard yesterday's casting announcement for the "other" Captain Marvel - He Who Cannot Use That Name.* We've known for ages that Dwayne Johnson will be playing Black Adam - for so long that they had to give him his own movie while he waited. (Good call there - let things build)

Friday they finally cast the part of the adult version of Billy Batson in the upcoming Shazam! movie - Zachary Levi.

That's a bit of casting that seems like a natural fit. He's shown his ability to play a boy in a man's body as Chuck Bartowski in Chuck, and over the course of the series, and continuing as Fandral The Dashing in the last two Thor movies, he's built himself up to handle the action roles. This could be a mighty fine thing. I can see a potentially excellent onscreen chemistry between The Rock and he when the inevitable meeting with Black Adam comes.

Hopefully, they'll come up with something (Captain Thunder?) that will let him say his name and avoid the ridiculous Freddy Freeman situation. Seriously - did decades of people mocking Captain Marvel Jr's inability to say his name without changing not factor at all when it came time to name our hero? Or is callng him Shazam another case of the modern comic editors hating heroes and intentionally having a laugh at his expense?


On a completely unrelated note - another news item caught my eye at the same time. Southwest Airlines is talking Live In-Flight Bands. Blasting music at a captive audience unable to escape or avoid it.
Didn't we read that was one of the ways they tortured prisoners in Guantanamo Bay? I guess it's only a natural evolution. Isn't this the airline that beat a passenger they didn't want recently?

How i imagine the press announcement, with a little help from Alex Ross

===

*(When DC comics bought the rights to the old Fawcett line, including Captain Marvel, they didn't register the accompanying trademarks. Marvel decided they could find a use for that name and filed registration papers. So, even though Captain Marvel existed first, they haven't been able to use his name in publication titles for decades. Transitioning to movies only complicates things, and the name cannot be used at all. So they've taken to calling the character Shazam, inlcuding a promotion from captain to wizard. So now he needs to wear a name tag since he cannot speak his name without transforming into Billy Batson. D'oh!)

Защитники

Let's take a break from Supersnipe, a break from the past, almost a break from comics, even.
You may (or may not) recall these folks from the Video Whozit on Friday Fun & Games a few weeks back:

Let's go there.

While not actually based on  a comic book, they are very much a comic book team. At first glance, they might seem to be a take on Marvel Comics' old Soviet Super-Soldiers.
Okay, maybe not first glance at that pic. But that's because the guy in back is in his civvies. Normally in the field, one might expect him to look more like this:

He might even be sporting a massive machine gun, but that doesn't jibe with the SSS.

Once you get closer, they're very obviously their own team, the surface resemblance mostly due to the rather obvious Russian Bear that almost any superhero team might be likely to develop.
This team is the

Guardians (Zashchitniki (Защитники)) is a 2017 movie from Russia. And despite that, and anything said above, it is very much a 'Marvel' movie, in its way. And not unintentionally. In many ways it's strictly a by-the-numbers superhero film, following a specific structure and pattern.
But it does the job well, hits all the numbers on their marks, treats the material seriously, and doesn't cheap out on the effects. It does the job it's supposed to do, and doesn't get buried with world building (though it certainly lays plenty of seeds for future growth) or extraneous unrelated plot clutter (while still trying to develop the main characters a bit past cardboard cut-outs).

One of the reasons i enjoy foreign movies (fine.films. happy?) as much as i do is for the disruption of expectations. Little things might different, simply because it comes from a different culture with a somewhat unfamiliar day-to-day existence. Other things may be massively different, like what drew me to Hong Kong action films. Look at Chow Yun Fat's work in the early 90s. The star of the film made it out of about half of his movies alive. Can you imagine watching a Hollywood movie and not knowing if the star is going to survive the story? Hell, you can crash from orbit and walk out smoking a cigar in Hollywood.

Here, we're dealing with the former situation - a very familiar story structure that seems a bit fresher simply because of the slightly different view of things. Quite familiar, in a lot of ways.
As stated above, it's very much a 'Marvel' movie. but instead of S.H.I.E.L.D., we have PATRIOT-

Staffing the PATRIOT base, we have very familiar looking tech agents-

...and a somewhat less familiar looking 'Nick Fury', Major Elena Larina...

The story opens with a military hardware test, showcasing the capabilities of new combat droids - and the level of effects we can expect in the movie. Both are rather cool. I especially like the rapid movement mode, which i won't try to capture in still images. But the detail level of the geometry and mapping is highlighted in the droids...

...and the basic effects levels scale up as the droids go into live combat mode and assault the military testing team...

...the destruction complete, the sequence also serves to reveal our Big Bad, and his machine control capability...

Our threat to the world here is a former Soviet scientist, August Kuratov, who ran what was basically a metahuman creation test laboratory back before the collapse. As one might suspect from the image above, he continued his work on himself...

To deal with the newly emergent threat, PATRIOT has a plan to find and bring together some of his old 'experiments' to stop him.
Our team consists of four heroes. There's Ursus, the Bear, of course, as seen above...

The CGI is well done, with good procedurals for the hair and some subtle work in animating the musculature beneath. (As a former modeller/animator, i may tend to look too hard at that stuff sometimes) The change from human to werebear form is smoothly done, and not at all the Rick-Baker-Painful type transformation...

On the recruiting hunt, our heroes to be have all been living reclusive lives, save one - Xenia - who's found a way to capitalize on her ability to become invisible when wet...

Now, don't being saying mean things because i said "invisible when wet". It gets better than that. You wouldn't want to hurt Xenia's feelings now, would you?

I didn't think so. Let's move on to Ler, our Geokinetic - able to control earth & stone, who had been living as a monk (hence the outfit)

...and Khan, a blade wielding speedster...

One side effect of the 'failed' experiments that produced our team members is greatly extended longevity. It's been four decades since the program was shut down, and they've barely aged. That could make things awkward on the franchise front in the long term, but it serves the story well in the here and now.

The story plays out as expected in general structure, with all the good flavour in the seasonings and handling. There's some great locations...

(Yeah, those are people up on the lines)

...and they can take advantage of old, ravaged locations to build authentic desolate atmosphere...

Much further and we'll have to start getting into story and actual spoilers. So we'll stop here.

Guardians was a box office bomb, attendance dropping off a cliff after a moderately strong opening. It was panned for being derivative, which it is, as i've noted. But that seems very intentional, and it works. Some derided the CGI as being cheap, but it works effectively and doesn't distract - at least on the small screen. Sometimes what looks good there looks terrible projected on a theatre screen.
It did so bad in the theatres in Russia that the production company filed for bankruptcy and a major investor has sued for 'Gimme My Money Back'.
On the other hand, a sequel has already been announced, this time by a Chinese production company. So, we'll see how it pans out.

For my quick summary:

Guardians is a solid and enjoyable (non)Marvel movie with its own distinctive, though very derivative, vibe. It even includes a mid-credits scene, as might be expected. (though i must admit i hung around hoping for a post credits scene with a flying Volga. Ah, well.) There's no big surprises, just a basic fun superhero flic.
I've watched it twice, and i'll watch it again. I can think of some major American superhero movies i can't say that about.
I recommend genre fans give it a view.

all images from Защитники (2017)