“What Can the Watchmen Director’s Cut Fix? What Can’t It Fix?”: These are the questions asked by the headline of this article at Film.com. If by “director’s cut” they mean a new edit of the movie by the director, then I answer, “Not much.” If by “director’s cut” they mean completely cutting the director out of the equations, then I answer, “Everything.” Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Oh, how I amuse myself…
“When it comes to going meta, Grant Morrison has nothing on Adam Warren…and he’s now doing wonders exploring each of the characters, giving them shades and dimensions that I, for one, didn’t think they’d ever have when this started”: I like Johnny Bacardi’s “Confessions of a Spinner Rack Junkie” reviews because they’re not a strictly week-by-week thing, but include book released over a period of a couple weeks. That helps give readers a greater sense of the strengths and weaknesses of individual issues in relation to one another in a much larger pool of books than one normally sees in this types of features. Well, that’s one of the reasons I like Bacardi’s reviews. In addition to, you know, Bacardi being a good writer and comic critic, of course. That quote refers to the fifth volume of Warren’s knockout Empowered series, by the way.
Can Evan Dorkin sell ice to Eskimos?: I don’t know, but he can certainly sell comics to me. Of course, selling me a Dorkin/Jill Thompson comic isn’t all that big of a challenge. Check out his aggressive pitching for Beasts of Burden here.
“Listen, if these dudes are going to keep getting themselves into improbable pickles, they should be the ones to carry around dozens of spears that are each designed to be useful in only one, very specific situation”: Slate.com has a video slideshow essay thingee, complete with eight clips from the cartoon, about the Greatest War Of All Time—The mid-‘80s conflict between G.I. Joe and Cobra, a war which was not only totally awesome, but in which not a single combatant died. How were casualties completely, miraculously avoided? That’s the subject of the piece, sub-titled “Wonderfully absurd escapes from mortal danger in the original G.I. Joe cartoon.” It’s worth watching just to see Snake Eyes in a dress and Boy George-looking hat and wig ensemble. And the bit with Timber at the end. We’re going to be seeing a lot of articles like this over the course of the next month, aren’t we?
“Staring at my navel lets me hear the quiet inner voice that’s too often drowned out by other daily activities, like staring at my face or biceps”: Colbert Report writer Glenn Eichler contributes a column all about navel-gazing to the New York Times. What does that have to do with comics, other than, of course, navel-gazing being a popular subject for comics? Eichler is also a graphic novel-writer, although his first effort won’t be published until this fall. It’s called Stuffed, it’s drawn by Nick Bertozzi, its beign published by First Second, and I’m going to go ahead and hazard a guess that it’s going to be pretty good, since Bertozzi never really draws any bad pictures and First Second doesn’t really publish any bad books.
July 8th, 2009 at 9:48 am
I gotta agree with you Caleb… I don’t see how a “director’s cut” is going to somehow make Watchmen a better movie. I didn’t hae everything about it, just a lot of it. I was really looking forward to it, but I feel like they missed the mark on so many aspects. For a film that was so slavish in its devotion to the text, it made some really strange detours into areas the book didn’t. And it seemed to wallow in its show of violence, to the point where it almost seemed to be glorifying it at times.
I was under the impression that it was just going to be a longer movie on DVD, showing things the movie didn’t (Hollis Mason’s death, the guy at the newsstand and the kid reading the comic, etc.). I don’t fault people for liking the movie, but I have no desire to sit through it again, let alone an even longer version.
Then again, the director’s cut of Daredevil is an actual improvement over the theatrical version. It’s still not a great movie by any stretch, but certainly better. I found a used copy of the director’s cut for about $5 and was pleasantly surprised.