#man hes everything. have i told everyone how much of a great character scott pilgrim is lately

[forgondor]

I love when characters have it as an established trait that they're good cooks. Wilson from house MD can cook. Scott Pilgrim from Scott Pilgrim can cook. Mako from Sailor Moon can cook. Instant blorboification factor to me

[davidcampiti]

A LIFE WITHOUT STAN LEE? -- Part One

This is the first month of my life without Stan Lee alive in it.

I think it’s appropriate to post this essay today, on Stan Lee’s birthday, the first one without him actually here to celebrate it. I couldn’t bring myself to write about Stan the day he died, just shy of 96 years old, and the week and month that followed were no better. Today I can put down some thoughts.

I am a child of Stan Lee. His work with Jack Kirby and John Romita appeared in the first comic book I remember reading – the Marvel-produced America’s Best TV Comics, a 25-cent comicbook that promoted the ABC Saturday morning cartoons.   It's one of the first powerful memories of childhood that have stayed with me for all this time.

Across my formative years, Stan Lee's words encouraged me to learn, to read more of everything -- not just comics. I spent much of my early years in the library and ordering Scholastic books every month through school. I read everything -- fiction, biographies, histories, science books.

Yet I grew up loving the comics that blazed brightly with his public persona and, while my parents toiled at just earning a living and staying alive, I learned much from "The Man." Stan taught me a lot about being a decent human being. It wasn't all, "With great power there must also come...great responsibility," though that was there, as well.

In recent years we corresponded a bit about the morals and messages of his words in his scripts, his Stan's Soapbox, and his many lectures and interviews. I told him we should assemble a book, Everything I Know, I learned From Stan Lee.

He wrote back -- "The paperback you suggested, 'Everything I Know I Learned from Stan Lee,' sounds like it could be funny. Especially if it consists of only one page with only one thing learned -- how to spell 'Excelsior!' Keep the faith, David. You're one of the good guys! Excelsior! Stan"

We discussed it a bit more but, soon after, Stan's eyesight worsened and he stopped answering his own mail; whoever took over had no idea what we'd been talking about. I let the idea drop.

Back when I was 12, I decided my career goal was to work with Stan Lee. Eventually, I achieved that goal but not by submitting stories in my teens and 20s but much later in my life, as an agent and book author. By the time I was 14, he'd gone from editor-in-chief to Publisher -- which meant he'd need more writers, right?

The first time I met Stan Lee and got to take a photo with him, I looked up at him and said, “Smile, and look as much like my Uncle as you can.” He laughed and gave my artist friend Scott Rockwell and me a good half-hour of his time, looking at art and answering questions. That was in 1978 – fully 40 years ago – and I remember it all as if it were yesterday. Stan was a memorable guy who could make you feel like the most important person in the room. I only wish I still had that photo; maybe Scott has it buried somewhere.

Four years later, I sold my first professional comics scripts to Pacific Comics and two years after that was writing a Superman assignment for DC with Kevin Juaire. Instead of ending up at Marvel as I’d hoped – which would’ve required moving to New York and being involved in daily office politics – I became a comics packager, then a publisher, then an agent. That’s how Stan knew me professionally, as a writer and an artist’s agent.

In early 1989, at a Capital City Distribution trade show, my Innovation Publishing was set up promoting the books we would be releasing into comics shops in a few weeks.  Stan was walking by, and I suggested to my assistant Paul Curtis that we should invite Stan to dinner.  He ran over, asked, and Stan said yes!  He not only brought along Carol Kalish and regaled us with two hours of stories about life at Marvel, Stan insisted that Marvel pay for the meal!  Nobody thought to bring a camera, but the memories stayed with us.  As I recall, Steve Sullivan, Paul Curtis and his girlfriend Amy, and I were the happy Innovation team at that dinner.  Kevin VanHook came on the trip but was elsewhere at that time.  He made up for it later at a party by chatting on a couch with Stan and later dancing with Carol.

In the '90s, Stan and I would chat at every opportunity at conventions.

When Marvel released a limited edition hardcover reprint of his 1947 book Secrets of the Comics, I decided to give in to my fannish impulses and use its endpapers as my autograph book.

Stan, of course, was the first to sign it in 1996, and a batch of Silver Age stalwarts followed.

By then we made it a point to get photos together every year across two decades. It was a clear timeline of the both of us getting older.

As the internet blossomed, I helped Stan a little when he first joined AOL. He asked me how AOL Instant Messenger worked, how to turn it on when he wanted to communicate and off when he didn’t want to be bombarded with Messages, and so on. Another time, an article he wanted to read was behind a login/password, and he asked me help get him through that. It tickled me to help Stan “The Man” with such basic web-things.

From the mid-'90s through the early 2000s, Stan would call the Glass House offices about once a month to ask for my perspective on what was going on in the comics biz, since we dealt not only with all the Marvel editors but everyone else as well. Real conversations, not the "'Nuff said, Pilgrim!" stuff. He'd graciously take an extra few minutes to chat with my assistant Graeme, who loved talking to his childhood icon.

Around 1997, Marvel's savvy publisher asked Glass House to create two dozen project proposals for a line of second-tier titles that my company would package. We ended up over-achieving and submitted 28 of them -- one of them for the first-tier Fantastic Four that I understood we had little chance of getting, but I had to try. The art was Joe Bennett's doing a Kirbyesque style.

Stan was kind enough to read over my FF proposal/outline and fine-tune my dialogue for the pages, before I submitted.

Likely worried about how an outside packager controlling so many titles would affect his own position, the editor-in-chief buried all 28 projects until, two years later, he assigned an editor to reject every proposal outright; that editor told me my FF dialogue didn't capture the essence of the characters -- not realizing the words were Stan's.

(Sidebar:  It was so ridiculous, that editor even rejected a proposal that another Marvel editor already saw, bought, and published!)

When Meryl and I got married in 2001, Stan sent us a gift -- a lemon cake and a note saying he wished he could've made it to the wedding. We still have the note; we ate the cake.

In 2006, Stan's POW! Entertainment launched Who Wants to be a Super-Hero? on The Sci-Fi Channel, and my Glass House Graphics contributed all the cover artwork for both seasons of the TV show. We even drew the comicbooks that starred both winners -- Matthew Atherton and Jarrett Crippen, both of whom became our friends.

When my friend, then-GHG artist Will Conrad, worked with him on the Dark Horse Feedback comic book, Stan took the time personally to choose Will out of our roster of artists, and to phone him in Brazil for a long talk before sending him the plot. (And yes, it was a full page-by-page plot.) They spoke several times during Will's month working on the book, each time helpful and upbeat.

The second book, with The Defuser, was more problematic. The network and producers weren't honoring their commitments to the winner, so I reached out to Stan who said, "I don't see any compelling reason to bother doing it, since we weren't renewed for a third season." I replied, "Because you said you would? Because you have the power to do it, and with great power there must also come great responsibility?" He made it happen, and Glass House Graphics's Kajo Baldissimo did the art.

We also drew the box art and insert comic books for multiple DVD animation projects that POW! released, with art by GHG's fabulous Fabio Laguna.

Stan always made time to meet privately with my artists, and my family, for which I was always grateful.

Of course when Comics Buyer’s Guide published a big feature issue for Stan’s 75th Birthday, I contributed an essay and hired the great Marie Severin to do a caricature cover for it and sent Stan a giant print of the art.

Around the time of Stan's 90th birthday celebration, I had Tina Francisco create a new birthday cover for Comics Buyer's Guide, and I penned a long article about him, too.

Of course, we sent to Stan a poster of the color art, and he sent back this card -- as always, written in his own handwriting.

TO BE CONTINUED -- IN PART TWO!

[moviesbarelyreviewed]

The Best of 2017

So it’s been two years since my last post on this here blog. There are may and varied reasons for this, but I won’t bore you by getting into them. What’s important is that I’ve still been seeing movies, still been thinking about them, and still been telling everyone I know to see the ones I love. And so I hope that this post will get this blog back in business, though I hesitate to make any promises, given that I am now a first-year law student, meaning that a) There’s a very good chance I won’t have the time to keep up with this blog and b) I’ve learned that making promises can sometimes inadvertently bind you in an irrevocable contract, which could prove very costly for me down the road (don’t ask me how, I still don’t understand contracts). 

Nevertheless, it’s the end of the year, so I’ve made my list of the year’s best films, and I want to share it with you all. As always, I couldn’t see every movie that came out this year. I used to say that I was only an amateur film critic of dubious reputation and professionalism, but I’m not sure I can claim even that title at this point (see: it’s been two years since my last post). So before you all start banging down my doors, complaining that I left your favorite film off my list (this has never happened, but I like to imagine that I’m important enough to where it would), I’ll note up front that I have not seen The Last Jedi, I, Tonya, The Shape of Water, Call Me By Your Name, and whatever film you’re thinking of right now, probably. But with that being said, I’ve seen many of the year’s big contenders (shoutout to a/perture Cinema in Winston-Salem, NC, for allowing me the opportunity to see some smaller films that I couldn’t catch in any other theater) and I feel comfortable in saying that this is a fairly comprehensive list. Like in the past, I start the list with number 11, because there was just one film I couldn’t leave out.

11. Raw (Julia Ducournau). I really think that we’re living in a golden age for horror films, and if you don’t believe me, well, note that the first three films on my list are all horror movies. The first is Raw, an ice-cool, coming-of-age shocker from French director Julia DuCournau. I feel confident in recommending most of the other films on my list to just about any moviegoer out there, but I can’t say the same for Raw. This is, quite simply, not a film for everyone, which is completely fine. The story follows teenage vegan Justine (Garance Marillier), who goes away to veterinary school and is forced to eat meat as part of a hazing ritual during her first week. The new taste opens Justine up to some other... new tastes, though I hesitate to say more for fear of spoilers. Suffice it to say, this movie has at least three of the most memorable scenes of the year. You can probably guess from this description alone that squeamish viewers need not apply. But those who can stomach the story’s taboo twists will find an intelligent, sensitive, and provocative tale, solidified by a killer soundtrack and a fearless central performance from Marillier.

10. Happy Death Day (Christopher Landon). There’s something to be said for a movie that is impeccably crafted, brilliantly acted, and profoundly impactful. But there’s also something to be said for a movie that isn’t any of those things, but is still fun as heck. Happy Death Day, the horror-thriller from director Christopher Landon, certainly falls into the latter category, but I think it more than deserves a spot on this list. Making a great genre film is often harder than making a great original film, because most everyone who sees genre films is familiar with their tropes and not looking for something they’ve already seen before. Happy Death Day manages to rise above those genre pitfalls, however, primarily due to its central gimmick which, albeit, it apes from films like Groundhog Day, Edge of Tomorrow, and even this year’s Before I Fall. Newcomer Jessica Rothe stars as Tree, who begins the movie as an obnoxious, stuck-up mean girl. We know, of course, that she is about to learn some important lessons. Unfortunately for Tree, though, she has to learn those lessons by, well, being murdered.... a lot, until she is able to uncover the identity of her masked killer. Like the aforementioned Edge of Tomorrow, Happy Death Day wisely doesn’t take itself too seriously and has a lot of fun with its circular time structure. Indeed, I found myself laughing throughout this movie, because it’s just such a blast to watch. Even though some of its third-act twists are utterly ridiculous, it doesn’t matter because the movie has already strapped you into its roller coaster ride long before. And as far as roller coasters go, this movie is as breathless as they come.

9. Get Out (Jordan Peele). Get Out is unquestionably one of the defining movies of 2017. Even though it came out in the first quarter of the year, it has stayed in the minds of moviegoers and critics alike, which alone is a tremendous accomplishment for director Jordan Peele. If you still haven’t seen Peele’s twisted tale of a black man (Daniel Kaluuya) who finds himself enduring figurative (and possibly literal) hell while spending a weekend with the parents (Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener) of his white girlfriend (Allison Williams), you’re in for a truly original, unforgettable experience. Sure, the shocks and twists are effective, but what takes this movie beyond the level of a traditional genre film is its button-pushing topicality. Chances are it’ll make you squirm long before its supernatural scares come. It’s no wonder that it’s the movie everyone has been talking about for months on end.

8. Wind River (Taylor Sheridan). Director Taylor Sheridan made a huge splash just last year with his screenplay for the unlikely Best Picture nominee, Hell or High Water, and with Wind River, his directorial debut, he deserves to make an even bigger one. Like Hell or High Water, Wind River is a neo-western, though not a conventional one. It’s set on an Indian reservation in Wyoming, where wildlife tracker Corey Lambert (Jeremy Renner) is the only white man for miles, a fact which plays both a provocative and potentially problematic role in the movie’s plot. When a young Indian girl from the area is brutally murdered, Corey is called upon by FBI agent Jane Banner (the excellent Elizabeth Olsen), a city-slicker who is out of place on the reservation, to say the least, to help her navigate the community and investigate the crime, a task which eventually forces Corey to exercise some painful demons from his past. Although there is a hint of white saviorism in how the plot unravels, the movie’s lasting message is a poignant and pressing one about the current state of Native Americans in our country. Sheridan deserves a lot of credit for telling a little-told story with grit and honesty, and the actors certainly do their part as well, particularly the great Native American actor Gil Birmingham (who was brilliant as Jeff Bridges’ partner in Hell or High Water) as the father of the murdered girl.

7. The Lego Batman Movie (Chris McKay). I honestly didn’t think I could love 2015′s The Lego Movie any more... and then I saw the Lego Batman Movie. Despite a new director and the element of surprise having worn off, Chris McKay’s follow-up to The Lego Movie somehow reaches the impossibly high bar set by its predecessor. It does so mainly by not deviating from what made the first movie so successful: quirky characters, fast-paced humor, and beautifully detailed Lego environments. Will Arnett reprises his role from the original as a particularly narcissistic Batman, trying to protect Gotham from the likes of the Joker (Zach Galifianakis), Harley Quinn (Jenny Slate), Bane (Doug Benson), and many more, all while trying to deal with Dick Grayson (Michael Cera), the teenage orphan that he has accidentally adopted. As in the first film, there are as many jokes for adults as there for kids, and as in the first film, the movie has a heartfelt message at the core of its kicky and occasionally silly goings-on. There may come a point when these Lego movies wear out there welcome... but we’re not there yet. 

6. Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan). So apparently some people thought Dunkirk was boring? I must confess, I am in the exact opposite camp. I was completely riveted by Christopher Nolan’s often unbearably intense war epic. Like most of Nolan’s movies, Dunkirk doesn’t spoon-feed its audience by dumbing things down. Instead, we’re expected to sift through the movie’s huge cast of characters and occasionally confusing time structure with little help from the filmmakers, which I, for one appreciated. But even if you can’t get your mind around everything going on in the film, it’s hard not to surrender to its incredibly immersive effect. I’ve rarely felt so embroiled in the goings-on of a movie as I did when watching Dunkirk. It proves that there are still many great war stories to be told, and many great directors willing to breathe new life into history.

5. Baby Driver (Edgar Wright). Like the Simon and Garfunkel song from which it takes its title, Baby Driver is as slick, cool, and effortless as movies come. Director Edgar Wright has yet to make a bad movie and, in Baby Driver, he borrows much of the visual panache and witty dialogue displayed in his great 2010 film Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, but this time targets it at... those of you who probably thought you were too cool to see a movie like Scott Pilgrim. Cool is something this movie certainly doesn’t lack. For those who haven’t seen it, Baby Driver is the story of a teenager named Baby (Ansel Elgort), who supports himself and the old man (CJ Jones) he shares an apartment with by working as a getaway driver for a band of bank robbers (Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, and Eiza Gonzalez are the robbers, Kevin Spacey is their leader). But when Baby falls for a good-hearted waitress (Lily James), he’s forced to choose between her or his wayward lifestyle.... which of course isn’t as simple as it sounds. As you might expect, Baby Driver has some truly epic action sequences, but what really gives it added style points is its brilliant use of music. Baby syncs all of his getaway drives up to classic rock songs and, as a result, the movie is a sort of musical-action hybrid rarely seen on the big screen. It needs no saying that the songs, from Queen’s “Brighton Rock” to Focus’s “Hocus Pocus”, are all perfectly chosen for their particular moments. No one else today is making movies like Edgar Wright. But they should be.

4. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh). If you’ve ever seen one of Martin McDonagh’s films (or plays for that matter), you’ll know that the man likes his humor as black as coal. Three Billboards, his latest, certainly doesn’t deviate from this trend, but it also has an emotional heft and modern-day relevance that perhaps In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths lacked. The rather clumsily titled film is set in a small Missouri town where Mildred (Frances McDormand) has recently lost her daughter to a brutal rape and murder that has left the community shaken. Frustrated by the perceived lack of effort in investigating the crime on the part of the local police, Mildred buys three large billboards on the edge of town and arranges for three different, but all damning messages to be painted on each (the most pointed of all reads “How come, Chief Willoughby”). But Mildred’s bold act doesn’t win the favor from the townsfolk that one might expect. That’s because the chief of police (Woody Harrelson) is a universally-admired family man, who is seen as the misplaced object of Mildred’s ire. Complicating matters even further is racist, firebrand cop Jason Dixon (the always incredible Sam Rockwell), who threatens to send Mildred over the edge with his untamed aggression. For my money, this is the best acted movie of the year. No one in the rich ensemble, which also includes John Hawkes, Lucas Hedges, Caleb Landry Jones, and Peter Dinklage, gives anything but their best. Even more impressive is McDonagh’s screenplay which is both brutally funny and brutally sad. His characters are some of the most believably complex I’ve seen in a long time. The moral ambiguity that all of their actions are subject to is not unlike real life itself. As much as I’ve enjoyed McDonagh’s films in the best, Three Billboards is an exciting step forward for a director already near the top of his game.

3. Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig). Come on, you guys new this would be on here. I mean, seriously, it’s a coming-of-age dramedy directed by Greta Gerwig and starring Saoirse Ronan. I don’t think I could write a better sentence than that if I tried. Now sure, I’m a sucker for these types of movies, but I think the overwhelming critical acclaim for Lady Bird (peep that Rotten Tomatoes score) proves that, at least this time, my hype for this movie is justified. To be fair, I think Lady Bird does lack the intense emotional impact of a film like The Perks of Being a Wallflower or The Spectacular Now, which keeps it from being a complete home run for me, but that’s probably by design. Yes, the movie is profound and often moving, but it’s also funny and whimsical in ways that those movies aren’t. Indeed, it has a lot of the quirky, shaggydog charm we’ve seen in recent films starring Gerwig, like Frances Ha or Mistress America. This time, though, it’s Ronan who stands in for Gerwig and, if there was any doubt beforehand, she proves that she’s the finest actress of this generation. And yeah, she’s only 23. Her performance here as Lady Bird, a strong-willed teen clashing with her parents (beautifully played by Laurie Metcalf and Tracy Letts), while experiencing her first relationships (Lucas Hedges and, later, Timothee Chalamet play her suitors), is yet another peerless turn in a career already chock full of them. Although I think Frances McDormand, in the above mentioned Three Billboards, gives arguably a better performance than Ronan, I’m rooting for Ronan to get the Oscar, because it’s long overdue. And that’s really all there is to say about Lady Bird. This wise, funny film hits basically no wrong notes and, though it’s hard to imagine how Gerwig will top this one, I can’t wait to see her try in the future. 

2. The Disaster Artist (James Franco). The Disaster Artist is my favorite film of the year, but, for reasons I will explain shortly, I went with a different film at the top of this list. As for James Franco’s hilarious and inspiring film, however, I simply couldn’t have enjoyed it more. The Disaster Artist, based on the book by Greg Sestero, is the scarcely believable, but undeniably true story of Tommy Wiseau (James Franco), a bizarre man from some unknown Eastern European country (though he swears he was born in New Orleans), who sounds like Dracula and looks like the lead singer of a death metal band, and his 2003 film “The Room” which has become a cult classic of Rocky Horror proportions, primarily because it may well be the single worst film ever made (though don’t tell Wiseau). The Disaster Artist also tells us the story of Greg Sestero (Dave Franco), Tommy’s friend and roommate who starred alongside Wiseau in The Room. Like Tommy, Greg is an aspiring actor, but unlike Wiseau, he’s a clean-cut, all-American guy that seems to have at least a little bit of acting talent. The Franco brothers strike a great dynamic in their scenes together, but the real highlight of this movie is its depiction of the filming of “The Room.” If you’ve seen “The Room,” which I had, I think you can appreciate these scenes even more, but even if you haven’t, there’s much to laugh, gasp, and marvel at. The real achievement of The Disaster Artist, though, is the way it rewrites this narrative. Though there are a lot of laughs at his expense, Wiseau is an oddly inspiring figure, a man who, despite what everyone told him, had a dream and achieved that dream with nothing but a lot of passion (and, ok, a lot of cash that we still aren’t really sure of the source of). That’s a story we can all relate to.

1. The Florida Project (Sean Baker). The Disaster Artist, like I said, is my favorite film of 2017. The Florida Project, at least at this point, falls just short of that title because I’m still on the fence about the ending of Sean Baker’s film. I’ve gone back and forth on how I feel about it, but I think I need to see it again to truly decide. Nevertheless, I think the fact that I’m still thinking about this film, which I saw months ago, speaks to its power, and that’s why I’m choosing it as the best movie of 2017. The tale of Moonee (the delightful Brooklynne Prince), a mischievous 6 year old, and her mother Hailee (newcomer Bria Vinaite, in a stunningly brilliant performance) is an uncompromising look at poverty in America that still brims with vitality in every shot. Much is owed as well to the work of director Sean Baker, who brings the kitschy motel where Hailee and Moonee live, to life, in eye-popping color. And let’s not forget Willem Defoe’s lovely, warm-hearted performance as Bobby, who runs the motel and gives Moonee and Hailee break after break, despite his best instincts. The Florida Project will put you through the emotional ringer, especially in its climax, but the thing which struck me the most is how true this film is. It’s as essential as it is gripping, giving a voice to a group of people who are rarely heard from in today’s political landscape. And despite its unflinching realism, the movie is ultimately hopeful, and fully invested in the very premise that explains why movies endure into 2017: a little imagination can make anything seem possible. In 2017, I think that’s a lesson we all can all take heart in.

-PSH