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You’d be forgiven if you forgot that Elaine had a roommate on Seinfeld. Despite the fact that Elaine lived with Tina for at least the first third of Seinfeld’s nine seasons — when Tina moved out is unclear — she only ever appeared three times on the show.

The first time was during the formative episode “The Deal,” where Jerry and Elaine try to work out a “friends with benefits” arrangement only to have a slew of things, including Tina, get in the way. The second was when Tina dated Kramer for an episode, driving Elaine crazy. And lastly, Tina appeared in Season Five, where it’s established that she moved out some time ago.

Despite Tina being criminally underused on Seinfeld, every time she showed up, she stole the scene, which is a credit to the actress who portrayed her: Siobhan Fallon Hogan, who also had a stint on...

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While most of the superhero fans are already privy to Marvel and DC movies and TV shows, there is another comic publisher that has tons of great comics that have been adapted into iconic movies and TV shows. If you still don’t know which comic book publisher we are talking about then let us tell you it is the Dark Horse Comics publications which published several comic books on which great movies and TV shows like The Mask and The Umbrella Academy are based. So, we thought of compiling a list of the 10 best movies and TV shows based on the Dark Horse Comics.

The Mask (Rent on Prime Video) Credit – New Line Cinema

The Mask is a superhero action comedy film directed by Chuck Russell from a screenplay by Mike Werb. Based on the Dark Horse...

Once upon a time in late night television, it was customary for talk shows to fill up their couches as the evening's episode progressed. The first guest would do their segment and then move down a spot on the adjacent couch, making room for the next guest to yap with Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett or whoever. What with the barnacle presence of sidekick Ed McMahon, Carson's couch could get especially crowded some nights. Sometimes this got tense (like the time Burt Reynolds inexplicably went after "Double Dare" host Mark Summers on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno"); sometimes it was chaotic comedy bliss (which is what happens when you ask Carson to rein in the irrepressible duo of Robin Williams and Jonathan Winters); and sometimes it was just plain surreal.

This tradition started to fade out of fashion in the 1980s when "Late Night with David Letterman" introduced its one-guest-at-a-time approach.

There’s never been a more pugnacious late-night comedy guy than Dave Letterman, a man who lived for uncomfortable moments. From Paris Hilton to Justin Bieber to Farrah Fawcett, Letterman leaned into uneasiness. That mostly made for hilariously awkward conversations, but occasionally, the conflicts threatened to erupt into full-on fights.

Here are five times it appeared like violence might break out on late-night television…

1 Crispin Glover Play

Glover looked like he was about to mix it up with a stagehand when Letterman introduced him, setting the stage for the antics to come. From there, it was hard to tell if Glover was attempting Andy Kaufman-esque performance art or if the young actor was truly disturbed. As Glover melted down on stage, Letterman asked Paul Shaffer if it was the first time he’d watched a man drown. The actor grew more agitated, first flexing his biceps and challenging Letterman to an arm-wrestling contest,...

Exclusive: Academy Award-nominated filmmakers Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman (Succession) have been tapped to helm the first two episodes of The Four Seasons, Netflix’s new comedy series based on the same-name 1981 film, from Tina Fey, Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield.

As previously announced, Fey, Steve Carell, Colman Domingo, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Erika Henningsen and Will Forte will star. While a logline for the series hasn’t been provided, the film The Four Seasons follows three couples who vacation together every season, only to see their worlds upended when one of them divorces. Alan Alda directed from his script and starred opposite Carol Burnett, with Martin Bregman producing.

Hailing from Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group, and Fey’s production company Little Stranger, Inc., The Four Seasons will be exec produced by Fey, Fisher, Wigfield, David Miner, Eric Gurian and Jeff Richmond. Alda and Marissa Bregman will produce,...

Paul Giamatti talks about finding the heart in the protagonist of Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers.

He is rightly known for his versatility, but Paul Giamatti has a special knack for principled, witty curmudgeons. “It seems to come to me,” he says of the personality type, “and it is hard for me to know whether I manifest it for myself or it’s something people have seen me do. They are interesting characters to play for sure though.”

The latest in the US actor’s line of acerbic grumps is at the centre of The Holdovers, the awards-contending comedy-drama from...

God bless you, Paul Giamatti.

There are actors who are unafraid to look foolish or petty in roles, who lean in to being unlikable onscreen when the mood (and the awards season) strikes, who might slum it by occasionally sporting an unflattering haircut or [shudder] reading glasses. And then there is 55-year-old Giamatti, who seems to effortlessly slip into maximum sad-sack mode at a moment’s notice. He’s an artist who can make a symphony out of playing 12 different notes of pathetic, and make every dissonant suite sound natural. This...

When Josh Hutcherson was cast in "Five Nights at Freddy's," it just made sense. Director and co-writer Emma Tammi's film adaptation of the lore-heavy hit horror video game franchise has the actor playing Mike Schmidt, an Average Joe who takes a job as the night security guard at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, unaware of that tiny issue where the entertainment center's animatronic mascots come to life and begin massacring people after midnight. Mike himself is the type of archetypical hero Hutcherson is best known for portraying; a humble everyman who must rise to the occasion in the face of extraordinary circumstances.

In a way, Hutcherson's unlikely transformation into one of this century's major genre movie and TV actors began with his first feature film, "American Splendor." One of the best comic book adaptations ever made, the film carries over the meta-narrative and autobiographical elements of Harvey Pekar's source material,...

Filmmakers Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini got their start with a documentary about a famous Los Angeles restaurant called "Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen's," but broke through the world of narrative features with "American Splendor," a comedy biopic starring Paul Giamatti about the underground comic book writer, Harvey Pekar. At the 93rd Academy Awards, Amanda Seyfried snagged a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her work in "Mank," David Fincher's biopic of Herman J. Mankiewicz released by Netflix. In the year that followed, Berman and Plucini linked up with Seyfried and Netflix to make "Things Heard and Seen" based on the novel "All Things Cease to Appear" by Elizabeth Brundage.

Seyfried was cast as the star, but she was joined by "Stranger Things" favorite Natalia Dyer, "Better Call Saul" standout Rhea Seehorn, Karen Allen of "Indiana Jones" fame, Academy Award-winner F. Murray Abraham, Academy Award-nominee Michael O'Keefe,...

The Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards are being announced today and we’re updating the list live.

Hello! We're discussing new business. We'll start voting in one moment. #Lafca

— Los Angeles Film Critics Association (@LAFilmCritics) December 11, 2022

The organization has arguably a better record of syncing up with Oscar’s ultimate Best Picture winner than some New York awards orgs, i.e. some recent examples of their Best Picture Winners lining up with AMPAS include 2019’s Parasite, 2016’s Moonlight, 2015’s Spotlight, 2009’s The Hurt Locker.

‘Brazil’, courtesy of Universal

However, one thing about Lafca — they’re not afraid to go rogue: I.E. 1985 when they anointed Terry Gilliam’s carnivalesque, trippy epic Brazil Best Picture and Best Director; the filmmaker having made his war with Universal over the film, fresh meat for the trades. Brazil was Oscar nominated for Art Direction and Original Screenplay. Other examples of when Lafca went...

Owen Kline is not the most obvious underground artist. The son of Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates may be best known for his performance as the younger sibling in Noah Baumbach’s “The Squid and the Whale,” a role he landed with zero acting ambition around the age of 13. Some privileged child stars follow such an impressive early turn by growing up in the public eye and amassing a filmography that would follow them into adulthood. Others have drug-fueled meltdowns. Kline, however, interned at Anthology Film Archives, dreamed of becoming a cartoonist, and eventually embraced a form of unfiltered, rough-and-tumble filmmaking that doesn’t exactly scream commerciality. Now, at the age of 30, he’s ready to explain himself.

“I always sort of reviled show business,” Kline said in an interview over lunch this month. “It was always repugnant to me. I’m really someone who’s resistant to showing my face in general.

“Funny Pages,” a scruffy, grungy, likably tossed-together sketchbook of a low-budget indie comedy, typifies a paradox that now runs through a great deal of independent cinema. The movie, set in a humdrum New Jersey suburbia, unfolds on the moldy bottom rung of the comic-book ladder. It centers on two friends who are obsessed with drawing their own comics, and it’s about the insular world of geeks and creeps and pervs and weirdos that this brings them into contact with.

Robert (Daniel Zolghadri), at 17, has left the posh home of his parents in Princeton and set up residence in downscale Trenton, where he hangs out at the local comic-book store along with his friend, the sweetly passive, long-haired, acne-ridden Miles (Miles Emanuel), who has a secret crush on him. These two eat, breathe, and sleep comic books. But they’re not into superheroes. To them the comic-book world is all...

We were a film couple. David Chute was writing film reviews for the Boston Phoenix when I met him in New York. He’d come down for a George Romero party, where we talked for hours. He had written two pieces for Film Comment, where I was the new Associate Editor. And even though I had landed my dream job, when he moved to Los Angeles to join Peter Rainer at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, he convinced me to ditch my Upper West Side rent-controlled apartment and move in with him in Koreatown. I had never been to California and had to learn how to drive. We were married in October 1983, and six years later, Nora arrived.

Sadly, we both said goodbye to David last week; he died at age 71 on November 8 of esophageal cancer. He had just moved back after eight years taking care of his father in Poland,...

We were a film couple. David Chute was writing film reviews for the Boston Phoenix when I met him in New York. He’d come down for a George Romero party, where we talked for hours. He had written two pieces for Film Comment, where I was the new Associate Editor. And even though I had landed my dream job, when he moved to Los Angeles to join Peter Rainer at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, he convinced me to ditch my Upper West Side rent-controlled apartment and move in with him in Koreatown. I had never been to California and had to learn how to drive. We were married in October 1983, and six years later, Nora arrived.

Sadly, we both said goodbye to David last week; he died at age 71 on November 8 of esophageal cancer. He had just moved back after eight years taking care of his father in Poland,...

David Chute, a longtime film critic and writer who tirelessly championed Hong Kong films in the U.S., died Nov. 8 in Los Angeles.

His daughter, Nora Chute, confirmed that he died of esophageal cancer.

Chute wrote for publications including the Boston Phoenix, Film Comment, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Vanity Fair, the Los Angeles Times and Variety, often advocating for genre films and international filmmakers to get the recognition they deserved.

Chute grew up in Maine with his father, Robert, a poet and biology professor at Bates College, his mother, Vicki, a novelist. He launched his career in the 70s as a film critic at the Kennebec Journal and The Maine Times, where he discovered Stephen King, who he also profiled for Take One. In 1979, King inscribed a copy of “The Shining” to David Chute, “the best film critic in America.”

In 1978, Chute joined the staff of The Boston Phoenix,...

There are ghosts that haunt the houses of New York’s Hudson Valley, we’re told early on in Things Heard & Seen (now screening on Netflix) — the spirits of former owners who may have unfinished business in this realm, or who may be protecting new occupants from possible danger, or who may be right evil bastards waiting to inspire the living to embrace their own inner darkness. The residents of the region, at least in the early 1980s, seem to accept this as a fact of life; some even view it as a perk.

It was 18 years ago — how time flies in the indie world — that the married directing team of Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman brought us “American Splendor,” an achingly humane, scabrously funny, miraculously playful and inventive lower-depths comedy based on the life and work of the lumpen verité comic-book diarist Harvey Pekar, played by Paul Giamatti in a performance of irascible brilliance. The movie was an audacious triumph, and going forward one wanted, and expected, more great things from Pulcini and Berman. In the years since, however, nothing they’ve done has come within miles of living up to the promise of that landmark film. The odd thing is that their earnest empathy and craft is always on display; they have an instinct for pace, for camera angles, for how to seek out three dimensions in places where too many filmmakers settle for two. Yet lightning has never struck again for them.

It’s safe to assume any movie that opens with a quote from 17th century pluralistic-Christian theologian (and big time spiritualist) Emanuel Swedenborg has a lot on its mind, and so it’s no surprise that Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini’s “Things Heard & Seen” isn’t the straightforward horror story that’s suggested by its ominous flash-forward of an opening scene. Indeed, Swedenborg’s insistence that “things that are in heaven are more real than things that are in the world” hovers over the first hour of this strange movie like a gentle hand on your shoulder, as if to say “don’t be afraid of this haunted old house in the Hudson Valley. Just because it comes with a ghost or two and a smattering of half-hearted jump-scares doesn’t mean that it’s evil. Amanda Seyfried could’ve had that freaky nightmare about pulling a...

Here are many more movies to watch when you’re staying in for a while, featuring recommendations from Jim Gavin, Karyn Kusama, Matt Christman, and Jonah Ray.

Please support the Hollywood Food Coalition. Text “Give” to 323.402.5704 or visit https://hofoco.org/donate!

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Three Tough Guys (1974)

Two Gentlemen Sharing (1969)

Tower of Evil a.k.a. Horror on Snape Island (1972)

Blow-Up (1966)

Blow Out (1981)

Body Double (1984)

Rififi (1955)

The Big Clock (1948)

No Way Out (1987)

Funeral In Berlin (1966)

The Ipcress File (1965)

Billion Dollar Brain (1967)

The Innocents (1961)

Miracle Mile (1988)

Femme Fatale (2002)

Main Street Women (1980)

Sleepwalkers (1992)

A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)

Dracula’s Dog (1977)

Moneyball (2011)

Together (2000)

Contagion (2011)

Panic In The Streets (1950)

The Killer That Stalked New York (1950)

The Satan Bug (1965)

A Prophet (2009)

Point Break (1991)

The Thing (1982)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

Hit! (1973)

Outbreak (1995)

The Island (2005)

6 Underground (2019)

Pain And Gain (2013)

The Invitation (2015)

High-Rise (2015)

The ’Burbs (1989)

To My Great Chagrin: The Unbelievable...

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday.

This week’s question: In honor of “First Man,” which is now playing in theaters, what is the greatest biopic of all time?

Matt Zoller Seitz (@mattzollerseitz), RogerEbert.com

The best biographical movie I’ve ever seen was “32 Short Films About Glenn Gould,” because it gets the furthest away from traditional biographical movie structures and has a constant sense of surprise.

Sarah Marrs (@Cinesnark), LaineyGossip.com, Freelance

I’m giving this one to “Amadeus”. It’s not 100% accurate — no biopic is — but where “Amadeus” fudges details it does so in service of its theme. This movie has more to say about competition and rivalry than most sports movies, and it’s one of the only Great Man biopics to observe its subject from the outside. By centering on Salieri, a master in his own right,...

Amazon Studios Head of Motion Picture Production Ted Hope will be honored by the Locarno Film Festival with its Raimondo Rezzonico price for producers who best epitomize the indie ethos.

Hope (pictured left) whose career spans over 35 years, has been selected to receive the prize given by prominent the Swiss fest dedicated to indie cinema in recognition of his ability to “bring new and unexpected voices into the spotlight.”

The prize is named after former Locarno fest president Raimondo Rezzonico.

Previous recipients of the Rezzonico award include Mike Medavoy, Jeremy Thomas, Christine Vachon, and David Linde.

After studying film at NYU Hope in 1990 founded production company Good Machine in New York, with James Schamus and produced the first Ang Lee films including “The Wedding Banquet” (1993) and “Eat Drink Man Woman” (1994), which both earned Oscar nominations.

Lee’s “The Ice Storm” (1997) followed and screened that year on Locarno 8,000-seat outdoor Piazza Grande.

Not since American Splendor explored the curmudgeonly everyman sensibility of comic-book artist Harvey Pekar has the complicated headspace of a cartoonist been entered with such infectious fondness as in Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot. A return for Gus Van Sant to the loose-limbed chronicles of outsider existences in Portland, Oregon that first put him on the map, like Mala Noche and Drugstore Cowboy, this unwieldy but consistently enjoyable portrait of paraplegic local hero John Callahan is notable for its generosity of spirit and gentleness. For want of a better word, it's disarmingly chill.

In a terrific performance...

Simon Brew Aug 18, 2017

Looking for a film to watch, that you might not have considered before? Try some of these...

Sometimes, we figure, you come to a site like this just to find out about a film you didn’t know about. That you want recommendations of movies that you might not otherwise have uncovered. This list, then, has no theme, save that the films on it are really good, and didn’t get much of an audience first time around. That, or they seem to have been forgotten. It’s a real mix, but hopefully, there’s something on here that appeals..

The Brady Bunch Movie

The Brady Bunch films never really seemed to do much business in the UK, and that’s a real pity. No foreknowledge of the series is required, and the first movie takes the Brady film and transplants them into 1990s America, with no...

Daniel Clowes’ Wilson is now playing in theaters across the country and hopefully, those who’ve had a chance to see it still have some questions about how the filmmakers and cast captured the tone of Clowes’ graphic novel so well. (It didn’t hurt that Clowes adapted it into a movie himself.)

It is director Craig Johnson’s third film, following 2009’s True Adolescents and 2014’s The Skeleton Twins, starring Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader, which won a screenplay at Sundance that year.

In the movie, Woody Harrelson plays the title character, a cantankerous and unfiltered loner who tries hard to be social but ends up putting those he interacts with off. When he tries to reconnect with his ex-wife Pippy (Laura Dern), he finds out that he had a baby daughter she gave up for adoption. The two of them go look for their now teen daughter Claire...

Arthur Martinez is a Denver computer technician who moonlights as an actor. He looks something like the late comics writer Harvey Pekar: schlubby and with sideburns, a heavy brow, and a mess of thinning hair. As the star of Actor Martinez, in which he plays himself, Arthur comes across as “a character”—not a Pekar-esque grouch, but a sweet and needy puppy with personal issues that he is unequipped to address. How much of this is real or a performance is unclear and maybe even irrelevant; besides, movies that play with the difference between being yourself and playing yourself work best when they can keep their exact recipes secret. Because what this funny, low-key head-scratcher presents, in pieces that viewers sometimes have to put together themselves, is a story about two indie filmmakers (Mike Ott and Nathan Silver, also the film’s real directors and also playing themselves) who...

I did a little bit of research for today’s column just to make sure I had my facts right, Googling “Jewish influence on comic books” in honor of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. There were 509,000 hits, from Den of Geek’s Mensch of Steel: Superman’s Jewish Roots to the Daily Beast’s Superman is Jewish?: The Hebrew Roots of America’s Greatest Superhero to Stormfront’s How and Why the Jews Stole the Comic Book Industry.

Wait. What?

Stormfront is a white supremacist site whose “welcome” page reads:

“We are a community of racial realists and idealists. We are White Nationalists who support true diversity and a homeland for all peoples. Thousands of organizations promote the interests, values and heritage of non-White (sic) minorities. We promote ours.

“We are the voice of the new, embattled white minority!

“Tell the truth and fear no one!”

The article is a mixture of facts,...

Our perception of the Forest City having only seen it on screen.

All this week, Cleveland, Ohio, is being overrun with politicians, their supporters, and protestors of their platforms as the Republican National Convention is being held at the Quicken Loans Arena through Thursday. To help get a better sense of this “Cleve-Land,” as Howard the Duck calls it, we’re looking to entertainment, specifically movies and television, for what it can tell us about this city. If there’s anything we miss or misunderstand, blame Hollywood.

Cleveland Rocks

It’s the Rock and Roll Capital of the World, home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, so it’s not surprising that, to an outsider, Cleveland primarily looks like a city where music reigns. You could make a nice concert with all the fictional bands based there, including Cherry Bomb from Howard the Duck, The Barbusters from Light of Day, the...

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The Preacher pilot, directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, arrives on AMC brimming with confidence and violence...

This review contains spoilers.

1.1 Pilot

Like a lot of teenagers, I drifted away from comic books. The expense got to be too much, and since I never got a subscription to any comic and only bought them at the store, I was always missing issues, which made it difficult to follow along with the plots. However, when I was in high school, one of our classes had a reading hour on Friday, and a friend of mine brought comic books. From the moment I opened up Preacher, I was hooked, and I made sure that every Friday, he'd bring other issues of it for me to read.

In a lot of ways, it's the perfect comic for a teenage boy; funny, perverse, violent, sacrilegious, and obsessed with the removal of male genitalia.

[Brightcove "4744977545001" "" "" "auto"] Leonardo DiCaprio isn't afraid to talk about how his father has influenced his career. "My father has always been a huge force with me," The Revenant actor told GQ in 2011. From taking his son to counterculture concerts to offering crucial career advice, here are five things about Leonardo's counterculture father you might not know. 1. George was an underground comic book writer and distributorUnlike most fathers trying to get their sons into comics, George didn't expose his son to mainstream comics like Marvel and DC Comics. "At a young age, I was exposed to, like, the most hardcore hippie subculture any...

[Brightcove "4744977545001" "" "" "auto"] Leonardo DiCaprio isn't afraid to talk about how his father has influenced his career. "My father has always been a huge force with me," The Revenant actor told GQ in 2011. From taking his son to counterculture concerts to offering crucial career advice, here are five things about Leonardo's counterculture father you might not know. 1. George was an underground comic book writer and distributorUnlike most fathers trying to get their sons into comics, George didn't expose his son to mainstream comics like Marvel and DC Comics. "At a young age, I was exposed to, like, the most hardcore hippie subculture any...

A new year means an opportunity to reflect on the past. This is our list of the 100 best films of the last 15 years, Part 1 #100 through 76.

The first decade and a half of the 21st century has brought a lot of changes to the landscape of film. The advancement and sophistication of computers has made realistic computer generated effects a mainstay in both big-budget and small-budget films. The internet and streaming technologies have given big Hollywood new competition in films produced independently and by non-traditional means. We went from purchasing films on yards of tape to plastic disks, and now we can simply upload them to the cloud. Advertisements for films have reached a higher, more ruthless level where generating hype through trailers and teasers is crucial for a film’s commercial success. Movie attendance has fluctuated along with the economy, but that hasn’t stopped films from breaking box office records,...

By Patrick Shanley

Managing Editor

There are a number of films that sit on the Oscar bubble this season with strong possibilities at either original or adapted screenplay nominations. Many of these films, however, are not serious threats in any other category, which is not that rare for films in this century.

Generally, films that receive a nomination for their screenplay are often nominated in at least one other category, and, often, for one of the night’s major awards, such as best picture or director. One of this year’s indie darlings, Ex Machina, the sci-fi thriller from writer/director Alex Garland, was a big winner this past Sunday at the British Independent Film Awards. The film took home the best film, best director and best screenplay awards, yet the likelihood of an Oscar nomination in either the best pic or best director category is not high, as the...

The Missing Girl

Written & Directed by A.D. Calvo

USA, 2015

Part crackpot mystery, part comic-book fable, The Missing Girl is a low-key indie charmer that wears its big heart on its awkward sleeve. Writer-director A.D. Calvo gives his characters plenty of room to breathe, and the result is an intimate, though somewhat languid affair. The real revelation here is Robert Longstreet, whose mopey shop owner fascinates and frustrates like some Harvey Pekar doppelganger. Patience and persistence will be richly rewarded by this observant character study.

Mort Colvins (Longstreet) is the embodiment of ‘gruff but lovable.’ Each day this middle-aged sad-sack trudges into his store, Mort’s Comics & More, and toils over treasured trinkets and limited-edition comics. At night, he retires to his lonely apartment, listening to pre-recorded affirmations on his clunky cassette player. “You are a worthy guy. Do things that make you happy,” he implores himself; advice he obviously never heeds.

20. Story of Ricky (Lik wong) – Starring Siu-Wong Fan as the titular character, Riki Oh, based on a manga series which eventually became an anime, marks the end of an era of Japanese exploitation flicks, before the new generation of filmmakers such as Takashi Miike took over. Unlike Miike’s movies, or other recent entries such as Tokyo Gore Police, Riki Oh’s tone borders on comedy, played up by bad voice dubbing, foolish plot lines, cartoonish gore and eccentric characters (including a one-eyed assistant warden with a hook for a hand). For a prison film, the movie never seems mean-spirited, and if anything it masquerades as a bizarre superhero flick. The effects are the main draw – Riki Oh exists simply to showcase several outlandish set pieces, ramping up the level of violence, gore and action with each new scene. Made before the days of CGI, director Lam relies simply on practical effects,...

Ultimatum #1-5 (2008-2009)

Written by Jeph Loeb

Pencils by David Finch

Inks by Danny Miki

Colors by Steve Firchow (1-3), Peter Steigerwald (3-5)

Published by Marvel Comics

This week, I am deciding to eat my vegetables before dessert and am reviewing the Ultimatum crossover series many weeks before I get to it in my History of the Ultimate Universe series. I am also combining my column with our mini event “Worst Comics Month”. This is because after I finished binge reading Ultimate Spider-Man Volume One and decided to read this “Ultimatum” series, which filled the gaps in some of the final issues, I (the neophyte comics fan) felt like I had truly experienced a bad comic with its ugly art, “shocking” plot reveals with little or no build-up, and jarring switches in tone from Hulk switching from dumb to smart to in between in the space of a panel to...

Glasgow Comic Con | Orson Welles: The Great Disruptor | Queer Vision | East End Film Festival

If your idea of a comic-book movie is limited to costumed superheroes saving the world from yet another CGI threat, you need to read more comic books, or watch more films. Fortunately, this festival gives you the chance to do both. Around the main event next weekend, it shows a handful of alternative comic-book movies. There’s the Daniel Clowes-adapted Ghost World (Tue), as good a film about growing up and fitting in as has ever been made. Or the equally fine American Splendor (Wed), with Paul Giamatti as outsider cartoonist Harvey Pekar.

Continue reading...

Halfway through our list already, and we've gotten some great feedback from you guys about the choices so far. The third part of our feature is here with yet more hidden cinematic gems and a few selections that may surprise you. Check back tomorrow for part 4! 21 - American Splendor Synopsis: An original mix of fiction and reality illuminates the mundane life of comic book hero / ordinary joe Harvey Pekar. Why you need to see it: As miserable as Pekar himself, this is a strangely compelling watch with a fantastic performance from Paul Giamatti. Despite the fact that life keeps throwing obstacles at him, its his dogged perseverance that endears him to the viewer, and Giamatti slips so comfortably into the role, it's hard to imagine anyone else being able to pull off a performance like it. 22 - In The Mouth Of Madness Synopsis: An insurance investigator hired to look into...

Ales Kot is one of the freshest, most cerebral voices in comics. He cut his teeth on DC Comics’ Suicide Squad with a run focused on the demented serial killer Jim Gordon Jr. before taking his talents to Marvel. Kot wrote two of their quirkiest titles, namely, Secret Avengers, which made supervillain Modok a full-fledged Avenger and had a good mix of references to Jorge Luis Borges and Nick Fury Jr. and Agent Coulson having existential crises in the middle of space. Speaking of space, he has also written Bucky Barnes, Winter Soldier, which followed the titular character’s trippy adventures on distant planets depicted in the style of Heavy Metal by artist Marco Rudy.

But Kot has also worked on creator owned comics as part of the Image Comics renaissance. Zero is an espionage series created by him and his Secret Avengers collaborator Michael Walsh and has found critical and commercial success.

So I just got back from Awesome Con DC 2015, and happily, it lived up to its name once again, because it was pretty darned awesome!

It was also kind of interesting to realize that every year I’ve gone has been a different experience, thanks to what I was doing each year. The first year, which was of course also smaller than the current con, I was reporting for ComicMix but did not have any other responsibilities. That meant I had time to see pretty much all of the floor and meet any guests I’d like, plus doing great, longer-form interviews with the talented Phil Lamarr and Billy West. Last year, I was running programming, so I saw a whole lot of back hallways, the exhibit hall whooshing by at a fast clip several times as I hurried around, many great volunteers, and a few guests for just long...

Late Show With David Letterman wrapped up Wednesday night with a genius finale and an incredible rapid-fire highlight reel soundtracked by the Foo Fighters' "Everlong." Letterman's 33-year late-night tenure was presented in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it fashion, with many fans overlooking must-see moments while wiping away tears.

Thankfully, one Letterman superfan on Facebook has painstakingly broken down the five-plus minute montage into 537 individual frames, with many of the photos sporting details of when and why each image was spotlighted.

Adam Nedeff is responsible for taking that final greatest hits barrage and...

Patton Oswalt is a hardcore nerd, which is a big part of why we love him. Remember that epic improvised Star Wars filibuster? You probably know that he.s a big fan of comic book movies, and if you.ve been fretting over which big screen adaptation the comedian thinks is the best, today is your lucky day. While Patton Oswalt.s personal favorite superhero movie is Sam Raimi.s 2004 Spider-Man 2, he thinks that the best comic book movie of all time is American Splendor. Talking to Screen Junkies, Oswalt answered tons of awesomely geeky fan questions. When someone asked about the best comic book movie of this century, while Spider-Man 2 may be at the top of the superhero heap, he says American Splendor, the 2003 adaptation of underground comic artist Harvey Pekar.s life and work, is the best comic book movie of this century in a larger,...

As relentless as the living dead can be, humans are still more dangerous in the world of The Walking Dead. That belief is mirrored in Skybound's new edition of The Walking Dead #1 that will be available to Wizard World Raleigh attendees later this month. The cover features new artwork from Billy Dogma creator Dean Haspiel and showcases a familiar face for fans of both the comic book series and the TV show, though what's thrust in front of him is something only the former may recognize.

Press Release - "Raleigh, N.C., March 2, 2015 -- Wizard World, Inc. (Otcbb: Wizd) and Skybound, Robert Kirkman's imprint at Image Comics, today announced that Billy Dogma creator Dean Haspiel has drawn the sixth in a yearlong series of Limited Edition Exclusive Variant Covers of The Walking Dead #1 comic, to be provided free to all full-price attendees at the inaugural Wizard World Comic Con Raleigh,...

Who can forget 2003 when filmmaker-duo Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini landed at Sundance with a highly inventive biopic, a seminal film really in the indie film cannon. Featuring the debatably unlikeable Clevelander Harvey Pekar, American Splendor moved put the pair on a pedestal, and while they’ve been back to Sundance for The Extra Man (’10), they’ve pretty much stuck to commercial indie items in The Nanny Diaries (07), Cinema Verite – HBO ’11, and Girl Most Likely (aka Imogene) ’12. Starring Asa Butterfield, Ethan Hawke, Hailee Steinfeld, Emile Hirsch, Emily Mortimer and Julianne Nicholson, production began way back at the end of January on Ten Thousand Saints, which comes with a built-in fanbase due to the novel on which it is based on. Should be a high value sales item if included.

Gist: Based on the novel of the same name by Eleanor Henderson, set in the 1980s, a teenager (Asa Butterfield) from...

This past week I had the pleasure of interviewing Jacob Semahn, the writer on the upcoming supernatural mystery series Goners from Image Comics. Before working on Goners, Semahn was a producer on American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance. He is currently working in animation for Man of Action and has written screenplays for Marvel’s Avengers Assemble and Ultimate Spider-Man shows. The basic premise of Goners (from the Image Comics solicit) is a “bold new historical fantasy mystery about a very peculiar family, the Latimer Family, who have been humanity’s lone defense against paranormal assault throughout history”.

Sound on Sight: What got you interested in the comics medium? What was the first comic that you remember reading?

Jacob Semahn: The first comic I ever read was Infinity War #1. I picked it up at 7/11 when I was a kid. I think I might have been nine,...

Rrmbllll Kkkkrrakkk goes the lightning as Frank Miller’s Batman hits the streets for the first time in 1986’s seminal The Dark Knight Returns. A faceless, lowlife pimp throws one of his girls into a cab, threatening to cut her. The bearded, downtrodden cabbie accepts a stack of bills from the pimp; he mutters to himself, “dog eat dog world…” Unseen, Batman descends onto the yellow, checkered cab’s roof. The pimp finds himself on the receiving end of some brutality off-panel. The money is shredded. And with another Krakk – end scene.

This hardly feels like pages ripped from a William Gibson novel, more like frames from a grainy, 35-mm Taxi Driver print. The synopsis for Tdkr returns dubs itself “near-future”, and the genre “cyber-punk” has been tossed around by readers and critics alike. But really (mutant punks aside) the book falls into the Death Wish genre. Aging man, urban and moral decay,...

Dark Horse, the elder statesman of independent comics, continues to show no signs of slowing down during this year’s San Diego Comic Con. Even though Marvel now holds the rights to Star Wars, its biggest licensed comics property, Dark Horse struck back by announcing a several creator owned titles in different genres as well as an expansion to the Mignolaverse and a sequel to one of the most beloved novels of the past century. Dark Horse also won some Eisners in a wide variety of categories showing the company’s comics appeal to many types of readers from kids to people who wouldn’t normally read comics.

1. Hellboy and the Bprd Miniseries

Even though Batman has gotten most of the publicity, another comics character is celebrating a big anniversary. 2014 marks the 20th anniversary of Hellboy’s first appearance in the Seed of Destruction miniseries by Mike Mignola and scripted by John Byrne.

Over more than 30 years on the air, David Letterman went from the class clown of late night to one of its most respected icons. In the '80s, Letterman's Midwestern snark and ironic sensibilities were considered groundbreaking in the comparatively staid world of Johnny Carson and Tom Snyder; now they've provided the groundwork for many of today's mainstream comedy trends. (Check out Letterman's 9 Most Unforgettable Late Show Moments.) As Letterman prepares to step away from the desk for good in 2015, here's a look back at the 10 (could it have been any other number?) best things Letterman gave us: 1. Top 10 lists...

I miss bookstores. Being able to walk up and down the aisles, pulling out a title that sounds intriguing, perusing the dust jacket flap, sometimes sitting down on the floor and reading the first couple of pages…just killing a couple of hours lost in a bibliophile’s heaven.

Okay, bookstores aren’t entirely gone, but they are, as everyone knows, on the endangered list. My own first hint of this came about 15 years ago when the Borders in the Short Hills Mall closed up. It was astonishing—this was a bookstore that was always mobbed, no matter the time of day. Many, many people objected to the closing, and many, many people let the mall’s management know it; the customer service desk clerk told me, as I filled out the complaint form, that there were over 3,000 signatures in the first week alone protesting the shutdown, and demanding, if not the return of Borders,...

Comic book movies are often seen as the domain of spandex-clad demigods who battle moustache-twirling villains, but if 300 and Sin City - which both originated on the pages of Frank Miller works - are anything to go by they're not essential to telling a great story.

With sequels to 300 and Sin City incoming, we take a look at 8 great examples of comic book-inspired films with no superheroes in sight.

Sin City (2005)

Co-directed by comic creator Miller and digital filmmaking pioneer Robert Rodriguez, this adaptation stayed faithful to the source material, with the filmmakers shooting actors on green screen and rendering the locations - almost exactly how they appeared on the page - in post-production.

With an all-star cast, ranging from Bruce Willis to Mickey Rourke, and interlocking narratives, this was Pulp Fiction for the comic book movie geek crowd.

Ghost World (2001)

Long before he was jousting with Shia Labeouf, comics...

Feature James Hunt 30 Jan 2014 - 06:25

Comic book movies are solid blockbuster fare now, but there are plenty of adaptations that didn't get the love they deserved...

You might argue that fans of comic book adaptations have had a pretty good decade or so. Between The Avengers movies, the Dark Knight trilogy, and multiple Spider-Man and X-Men films, some of the biggest-grossing action movies of all time have been based on comics. Not bad when you consider that only recently, the medium was considered the preserve of dateless man-children alone.

But here's the thing: not every comic book adaptation lends itself to being a summer tentpole CGI-fest, and just as many get overlooked or forgotten completely by the time the next one comes out. Comic adaptations are coming out thick and fast, and with so much forward momentum it's sometimes worth taking a moment to look back on what's come before.