Marvel to Produce Movies In-House

Along with changing their name to Marvel Entertainment (from Marvel Enterprises), the company has gotten financing from Merril Lynch to begin making movies in-house and then having someone else distribute them for a fee, similar to how Lucasfilm and Pixar (as of next year) work. Sci-Fi Wire has some more details. Titles that may be produced include: Captain America, the Avengers, Nick Fury, Black Panther, Ant-Man, Cloak and Dagger, Dr. Strange, Hawkeye, Power Pack and Shang-Chi.

Weekly Comics Discussion – August 31, 2005

This week’s shipping
list
includes a reprint of Serenity ,
Green Lantern #4 (a series that I’m behind on
reviewing), Astonishing X-Men (a series
I’ll review in TPB form for a while), Essential
X-Men Vol. 6
(one of the last Essentials I’ll get
for this series, as I’ll be getting the DVD-ROM
collection in October), New Avengers #9,
Supreme Power (which wraps up the MAX
line issues, and which will be reviewed with issues 13
and up), as well as TPB versions of Ultimates 2
-6
(similar in tone and quality to the first
round) and Strange: Beginnings and Endings (a
well written miniseries that updates an origin that
didn’t need updated.)

Sunday Double Feature: Naked Lunch

Our summer Sunday film reviews wind down with Movies on Drugs.

Naked Lunch isn’t SF but, chances are, you’ll find it in the SF/Fantasy section of your local video store, and it is fantasy of a sort. Based on William S. Burroughs’ memorable experimental novel (available at Amazon.com or
Amazon.ca), the film depicts the writing of that novel, adding some order to the chaos of the non-linear book. The viewer enters Burroughs’ mind, during a time when he was addicted to heroin. Drugs aside: if you can stomach it, this film may be the best ever made about the creative process.

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Sunday Double Feature: Liquid Sky

“Few movies are specifically tailored for appeal to those on controlled substances….”
–Andrew Borntregger, Badmovies.org.

“A bunch of people got really fucked up on drugs and made a movie.”
—Some Guy at a Party, the 1980s.

“I’m from Connecticut. I kill with my cunt.”
–Margaret, Liquid Sky

Our second summer Sunday feature, an 80s cult film, has found faint new life on DVD. No film about alien contact has ever played quite like this before or since. Warning: content may be unsuited to all kinds of people. I dispense entirely with spoiler/censorship tags in the main body of the review.

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