Thursday, August 17, 2006

A Veritable Boon of Questions!

From Overworm, this time:

1) Who is your favorite superhero and why? Is it the same as when you were 10 or 15 years old?
Captain America. I've always been a sucker for his straight-ahead moral certainty, the whole
"mere mortal leading Gods" thing, the unbreakable shield, the sometimes over-the-top
patriotism combined with a harder edge, the "best hand-to-hand- combatant in the world"
angle - all of it. A good Cap story can still give the 31-year-old-me serious goosebumps.
When I was 15 Cap had already taken over as my favorite, but as a kid I was a huge Spider-Man fan, primarily instigated by those Electric Company shorts and then the still-fondly remembered Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. It wasn't until I got into comics, ironically, that the good Captain overtook Spider-Man in my estimation.

2) What comic book based movie do you think absolutely missed its mark?
It's an easy one, but the Captain America film was, of course, just a travesty. I still
remember seeing the teaser poster (a great image of the just the shield and a date) at a
local movie theater months before its non-release, and the feeling of burgeoning excitement
I felt. What a let down the film was when I (finally) saw it. More recently, the Fantastic
Four film was something of a let down, even if it did have its moments. Still, I wouldn't
say it "completely" missed the mark.

3) What comic book based movie do you think perfectly encapsulated on screen what the comic captured on paper, and in fact might be a better example of the character than anything done in print? If no CBBM has achieved that particular nirvana, which has come closest?
I wouldn't call anything "better" than what's been done in print, but that's largely a
function of the mediums, not a lack of ability on the filmmakers' parts. The fact is that over thousands of pages and many, many years, a character or world can be much better established, understood, and explored than they can in one two-hour movie. That said, I think the best, most complete, most accurate and deeply layered portrayal of a comic book character
so far has been Ian McKellan's Magneto. I'd love to see a Magneto film, but don't really see
the need for a "young Magneto" treatment. With the right script, McKellan would deliver one
heck of a film.

4) What song or musical artist do you like that doesn't quite fit in with the music you typically listen to? Or do you never really stray musically?
I listen pretty freely to pop/rock, Broadway stuff, film scores, classical, jazz, so I tend not to be locked in to any one style. Still, within the rock/pop world the stuff I like tends toward the not-as-really-hard side, so the kind-of-hard Living Colour might stick out a little bit.

5) If you were to write the great American novel, what would the title be? The cover blurb? The plot and main character?
I already have. Well, it's not "great," never mind "the great." And it's more of a novella.
But it's American! It's called Seeing the Ball, and I wrote it as my thesis for my MA in
English. 120 pages or so. It's about a teenaged boy whose family takes in a younger relative when tragedy strikes his mother, and about the bond the two boys form through baseball. Cover blurb? Probably something awfully trite like "Life threw Kevin a curveball."

6) Doughnuts or bagels; Gatorade or juice; dogs or cats; sunrises or sunsets; scorching summers or frigid snowpacked winters?
Doughnuts. (Sweet and fried? Count me in). Juice, although I like Gatorade very much. Dogs - you can't play with a cat. Sunsets (sunrises are nice, but you have to get up pretty early to catch one). Scorched summers. Get yourself to a pool or beach or a lake and you can still enjoy the outdoors. A frigid winter is all about being cooped up inside for days on end- blech.

I'm more than happy to answer more, so if anyone has any further questions, ask away.

And on a bookeeping note, Tosy and Cosh will be taking their traditional end-of-semmer break from all things computer-related imminently. We may post today or tomorrow, but will be gone for a good two weeks after that - so enjoy what's left of your summer, everyone!

Until Whenever

4 comments:

Alan Sepinwall said...

1)Wonder Man. Maybe it's just because I started reading comics at the exact moment he and his red safari jacket were palling around with Beast in Avengers, but I've always been drawn to the big lug. Something about the idea of a completely indestructible powerhouse being plagued by self-doubt and needing constant reassurance from his furry blue buddy just appealed to me. That, or I just dug the safari jacket.

2)Any Batman movie directed by Joel Schumacher. But that's too easy. Had Nic Cage and Tim Burton been allowed to make their movie about Superman-as-tortured-nerd, I have no doubt that would have been the most wrong-headed one of all time.

3)Spider-Man 2 is as close as I imagine a comic book movie to get, both in terms of depicting grand action and in capturing the emotional core of the characters. The first movie was decent but didn't deal nearly enough with Peter Parker's raging bad luck, and Molina's tragic Doc Ock was a much more interesting villain than Defoe's nutty Goblin.

4)I like Wilson Phillips. There. I said it. Please look away.

5)If I was to answer this, the world at large would be free to steal my ideas. They're mine, damn you! Mine!

6)Bagels (garlic especially). Only drink water, so no call. Dogs (not that I'm a pet guy, but I at least understand the appeal of dogs). Sunsets, because I'm not wanting to climb back into bed for them. Snowpacked winters, because you can always put more clothes on but there's only so much you can take off.

Tosy And Cosh said...

1 - Don't know if you still follow Wondy's adventures, but I think they're setting him up as some kind of an embezzeler now.

2 - I'm just hoping Burton and Depp don't turn Sweeney Todd into a tortured nerd. ;)

Thanks for checking us out here. I was very happy to discover What's Alan Watching - I moved to Northern Jersey four years ago and lost my Ledger subscription, so it was nice to rediscover your TV stuff online.

Alan Sepinwall said...

Well, Wondy was originally an embezzler, so it's not exactly a head-jarringly wrong direction for him. At the same time, Bendis and Quesada have as little love for a lot of the Englehart/Stern/Busiek Avengers mainstays as the current regime at DC has for any character from the Keith Giffen version of the Justice League.

The good thing about ol' Simon is that, no matter what any writer does to him, up to and including death, it's fixable, because he always (always) comes back.

Tosy And Cosh said...

That's becoming less and less noteworthy - at this point, doesn't pretty much everyone come back?