Showing posts with label martin freeman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label martin freeman. Show all posts
Sunday, January 27, 2019
Saturday, March 31, 2018
Black Panther (2018)
Marvel's epic about its first African superhero is obviously a crowd-pleaser, based on its stunning box-office success. It's an enjoyable piece of work. Ryan Coogler and company do about as well as one can in these things when it comes to superhero characterization, and some of the early fight sequences are nicely staged without too many quick edits, especially a battle in a Korean casino.
We also get a good look at the high-tech kingdom of Wakanda in all its utopian, Afro-futuristic glory. Much of the visual design for the capital of Wakanda is thoroughly grounded in the work of writer-artist Jack Kirby, who co-created the Black Panther with Stan Lee in the pages of the Fantastic Four in the 1960's. Given the success of Black Panther and the even-more-Kirbyesque Thor: Ragnarok, Kirby's art still has some power to awe and delight.
I have my usual quibbles, some of them anyway. The final battle goes on forever and occurs on too many fronts to be dramatically satisfying. And changing the last name of sound- and vibranium-obsessed villain Ulysses Klaw (a spirited Andy Serkis, probably glad to be out of the motion-capture suit for once) to 'Klaue' is a hilarious moment in micro-managing "verisimilitude" in superhero movies.
For a rare moment, Marvel has a movie villain whose motivations make psychological sense in a serious way in Michael B. Jordan's inspired turn as Erik "Killmonger." He's about one personality change away from being a hero, which is what makes him so involving (well, that and Jordan's charismatic performance). He's almost a tragic hero, to the extent that one roots for him to "turn good."
Chadwick Boseman is terrific in the difficult role of the mostly saintly Black Panther. An all-star cast of women does great work as Black Panther/T'Challa's female honour guard, his teen-genius sister, his ex (a fun and funny Lupita Nyong'o) , and his mother, a regal Angela Bassett. Coogler and company even manage to navigate the potentially offensive Black Panther character known as Man-Ape, in part by never mentioning him by that name and instead making he and his people something other than antagonists.
The tribal leader formerly known as Man-Ape (played by a solid Winston Duke) even gets some comic moments as he punctures the assumptions of Caucasian second-banana Bilbo, I mean, CIA agent Martin Freeman. Now that's good film-making! Highly recommended.
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Rise and Fall
As with previous films Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz from stars Pegg and Frost and director Wright, The World's End strikes a fine balance between dialogue comedy and often uproarious slapstick. And as goofy as the fight scenes are, they're still better choreographed than those in the vast majority of action movies. The soundtrack offers a time capsule of late 1980's/early 1990's BritPop, with an appropriate Doors song (appropriate to a pub crawl, that is) thrown in for good measure.
There's a certain amount of seriousness floating around just beneath the surface, especially concerning addiction and free will, but the filmmakers wisely don't bash the viewer over the head with it: they know when to jump back to comedy. Highly recommended.
The Steve Ditko Archives Volume 3: Mysterious Traveler: edited and introduced by Blake Bell; written by Joe Gill, Steve Ditko and others; illustrated by Steve Ditko (1957; collected 2013): The great Steve Ditko, co-creator of Spider-man and Dr. Strange in the early 1960's, can be seen herein becoming a great comic-book artist less than a decade into his illustrious career. The character work, panel composition, and experimentation with layout are those of a mature artist approaching the peak of his powers.
The weirdness of Ditko is that all this rising greatness comes on short horror and science-fiction stories for the lowest of the low of 1950's comic-book publishers, Charlton Comics. Charlton paid the least of the major publishers. However, they also didn't care what appeared in their comics, just so long as it passed the scrutiny of the new Comics Code Authority and then made a profit on the newsstands. That freedom set Ditko free, and he knew it -- that's why he worked for Charlton. He was doing a graduate course in comic-book illustration. And creative freedom has always been one of Ditko's needs.
Most of the stories here are competently written, though there are some stinkers. But Charlton's desire for 5-page and 6-page stories so as to give them flexibility in assembling comic books also means that even the worst story ends quickly. And you've got Ditko to watch. Many of the stylistic choices that would make Spider-man, Dr. Strange and many other later Ditko work so appealing and idiosyncratic find their first expression here.
The character work, especially with faces and with body poses, is already exquisitie and quintessentially Ditko. While Ditko was a poet of the ordinary-looking, he was also a master of the weird, and that too finds expression here. And as usual, editor Blake Bell does a fine job in assembling the material and in penning the autobiographical introduction to the volume. Highly recommended.
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