| In addition to being the executive producer of the world’s most popular comic book fan site and community, my boy Jonah was, once upon a time, a radio producer in the LA market. This week, he returned to radio, when stations from Albuquerque and Los Angeles interviewed him about the upcoming Superman Returns movie.
You can check out Jonah’s interview by looking up the 7 o’clock hour of the Bill Handel show for KFI AM 640 on Tuesday, June 27 either on the KFI site or via the podcast directory in iTunes. |
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iTunes has a short scene from Superman Returns available as a free download this week. I’m sort of nervous about how this film will be (not loving the awful haircut they’ve given him, for instance), but the scene sure works for me, especially the choice to use the music from the Christopher Reeve films.
- There are also free episodes of Everyone Loves Philadelphia, Kyle XY and not-working-at-the-moment Invader Zim.
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Although it doesn’t quite scale the same heights as The Shield, The Closer has to be one of the smartest and most interesting police shows on television.
Kyra Sedgwick’s often-unlikable deputy chief careens through Los Angeles crime like a bull in a china shop, with a bemused (or outraged) crowd of law enforcement officials in her wake. She’s ably supported by a great line-up of actors, including veterans like J. K. Simmons (who will eventually appear in every crime/cop/law show) and James Avery.
The middle of the season lags at times, when Kyra’s character is implausibly romanced despite not being the only woman in Los Angeles, but the crimes are always interesting and the ways she deals with seemingly intractable suspects is always worth watching. By the end of the season, it’s clear the creative team has found their voice, suggesting that season two will be even better.
Strongly recommended for fans of cop shows, Kyra Sedgwick or J. K. Simmons.
J. K. Rowling is hard at work on the final Harry Potter book, which readers can’t expect until at least 2007. I’d bet a chocolate frog on 2008, myself. (The article has some solid speculation, though.)
In the meantime, there is a new Harry Potter book out, If Harry Potter Ran General Electric. Although such business books do very healthy business as a rule (and this one may well do even better, given the HP cachet), it’s hard to imagine many 10-year-olds getting excited about this one.
I don’t know, how do you not love a movie that includes lines like this one, about women in Los Angeles:
I swear to God, it’s like somebody took America by the East Coast, and shook it, and all the normal girls managed to hang on.
And that’s what Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is like: Relentlessly clever dialogue, witty screenplay, extremely self-aware without crossing the line into being eye-glazing about it.
Essentially an update of a second-tier LA-based noir film, the film moves so quickly and is so funny that many audiences may not catch that they’re watching a film that could have once starred Alan Ladd or Humphrey Bogart. There’s the beaten-to-a-pulp detective in over his head, the rich movers and shakers who can crush him at will, the dream girl who’s alternately sexually available and loathes him, dead bodies that get moved around, seemingly on their own and lots more standard bits.
Toss in Robert Downey, Jr. doing his best work in years, Val Kilmer, funny again for the first time in decades and the new-to-me-but-ought-to-be-a-star Michelle Monaghan, and you’ve got a solid, solid cast capable of making the clever script pop. Heck, there’s even some footage from a truly awful 1980s Corbin Bernsen action movie, which isn’t something you see every day.
It’s hard to figure how this got overlooked in theaters, but no fans of buddy movies (the film is written and directed by the creator of the first — and vastly superior to the sequels — Lethal Weapon movie), Downey or Kilmer should miss this.
Sensationally great fun.
