Miraclo Miles

Watching the Watchmen Nicely done. After so many years, it's finally here -- and turns out to be the first movie we've made a point of going out to see in 2009. (Unless you're completely clueless about the movie I consider this piece to be safe with respect to any significant spoilers.) Nick and I caught the 10 am showing today. I read the original 12-part Watchmen series as it came out in 1986 & '87, then in collected form multiple times over the years. Nick had never read it. Zack Snyder's film adaptation of it worked for both of us. A sweep of story that looks at an alternate universe where a costumed hero and villain fad - rather than simply being the launch of an enduring comics genre as it was in our universe - became a real world one. This had an impact on the 20th century, but not as much as one that occurred in the late 1950s, when a young physicist was accidentally taken apart in an experiment gone awry and ultimately reassembled himself as a immortal...

Redman & the Clockwork Perils Here's one I meant to post last weekend. Time and energy simply slipped away, especially with the ever-insidious help of the work week. Tomorrow we'll be catching an early showing of The Dark Knight , so let's look at last week's entry from the comics to film category. As of this past weekend the latest of the summer's comics-driven films was Hellboy II: The Golden Army , a sequel to 2004's Hellboy . Writer/Director Guillermo del Toro is continuing to capitalize on his current spot as one of the few go-to guys for film fantasy of the fairy tale type, albeit with more of the original menace restored that decades of child-shielding do-gooders had filtered out like so many focus groups… which isn't to say that the Hollywood process doesn't ultimately filter some of it back out again in time for the climax. Here del Toro, working with Hellboy/B.P.R.D. (Bureau of Paranormal Research & Defense) creator Mike Mignola, ha...

Room Rage Sunday Nick and I hit a matinee of 1408 , a Stephen King adaptation starring John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson. I don't believe I've hit any spoilers in the following review, but there's always a danger of being told more than what some would like to know. Most Stephen King adaptations develop engine and navigation problems on the way to the screen, and as this is one case where I didn't read the source short story I can't tell you whether or not this tale went astray. I can only tell you that it was one character's search for truth and belief in something beyond the palpable, wrapped within a modestly entertaining ghost story. Cusack's character, Mike Enslin, is a writer with an at least borderline alcohol problem, whose personal tragedy has driven him the direction of writing about hauntings. Like Houdini before him, he was seeking to combine a search for validation with one of income. Subsequently he found his belief in an afterlife dismantled ...