people were whining the same song with guardians of the galaxy.
it's too obscure they cried.
nobody knows the characters they bemoaned.
why can't they make a movie i want to see?
why is marvel doing this to me?????
this movie is going to suck balls!!

holy crap! this movie is awesome!

and then the earth lost a bit in its rotation as the nerd horde back-pedaled in synchronicity.

seems a large chunk of the problem is that most of the nay-sayers had never read the book.
imagine that...
formulating an opinion based on never having read the source material.

out of all the avengers,ant-man has the most complex and nuanced...
and most human.i wish this movie was about hank pym but it appears they are using the timeline from "the irredeemable ant-man" graphic novel.which is cool...antman is kind of a dick in the beginning.

that being said,
where is my goddamn deadpool movie!!?

yeah i read that article.truthout is on my feed (as are many others) but giroux writes many articles for truthout and i adore him.just like hedges and truthdig.

but i always appreciate when you share interesting articles of information.we all cant be everywhere,so sharing is the best way for all of involved.

i dont know if you ever saw stallones dredd but it was bad..i mean BAAAAD.the remake is damn near perfect.fast paced and really keeps the tone of the graphic novel/comic.

i think you will enjoy it immensely.

Yes its hilarious how uneducated he is

"Keep it 300 like the romans"

Moron, Spartans are Greek, and it historically references battle of Thermopylae which was then fictionalized into the graphic novel.

His rhymes suck so bad he tosses anything in that fits even if it makes no sense, and people call this talent?

He didn't even make the song, the beats/sound effects/screams/bass line are all samples of old music and movie clips

Pop can't make anything origial

Old School is perhaps the best american comedy in a decade. That said, I absolutely agree. Comedy here is very one-dimensional. It's jokes, nothing else. Usually very base ones that everyone will get with a spattering of 'gut-laughs'. I agree one of the biggest reasons as Drachan commented on is just how regimented and formulaic our entertainment is in this country.

This also exemplifies why I am so very torn with Edgar Wright leaving Ant Man and potentially Marvel. He's one of the best directors around and so very inventive. I adored World's End, though my favorite of the 'trilogy' will always be Hot Fuzz.

On the flip side, as a fan of the comic Scott Pilgrim was a terrible movie. He clearly took a lot of creative license with the beloved graphic novel while at the same time totally putting off the audience while at the same time doing nothing to bring in people who have never heard of it previously, which is why it bombed so very hard.

So he left Ant Man, easily one of my top 5 favorite Marvel characters, because of creative differences. I suspect he wanted to do something very different then the established material and Marvel was against that because they want to link him to their other movies (DUH!). So while I think the movie could potentially have been fantastic under his direction, it could just as easily have been marvels biggest bomb since Hulk.

And disagreement is cool with me, I often disagree with people who like musicals but I can do so without being a jerk about it, I'm just not into them. An active imagination is often considered a sign of intelligence and higher thinking. I'm pretty sure creative minds like Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, just to name a few, are not lacking in the intelligence or comprehension departments. Gene Roddenberry could be responsible for god knows how many people going into the sciences, inspired to make the future, he imagined a reality.
Lincoln was great movie and I'd be all for seeing a movie based on the 47 Ronin that was more historically accurate, but that doesn't mean I can't also enjoy movies like Pacific Rim. As for 300, the movie was actually based on Frank Miller's graphic novel, which I doubt was ever intended to be a factual account of the event anyhow. Movies like this one are, for better or worse a product of market forces and the society we live in.

I loved 300 (was a fairly faithful adaption of the graphic novel, sans the nudity) for what it was, but this seems like unnecessary exploitation of the title.. =\

Oh, well then you'll love the original 300!

The first one is based, nearly shot for shot, on a graphic novel by Frank Miller. Hence the comic book styling and super-natural element.

This guy wrote one of my most favouritist graphic novels ever, namely Transmetropolitan. READ IT, you won't regret it (especially the Sift crowd).

I really just didn't get the point of making that movie. I fail to see what it added to an artwork that was perfectly fine in its original medium.

A truly visionary director, the likes of Terry Gilliam or Stanley Kubrick, might have revealed some new insight. Snyder just translated the pages onto screen and in a predictable manner at that, and the whole "graphic novel on screen" was already done by Rodriguez, so it wasn't even that technically impressive. The one part of the movie that worked was the title sequence

Or better yet, read his graphic novel, the Sandman series.

*books says it includes graphic novels so, yeah

Loved reading Watchmen, thought the film did it good service. Different perhaps, but I think the characters and the world they inhabited felt similar enough for me. Liked V too, but I never read it so can't really comment.

As for the decline of comics/graphic novels...I look to the internet. There are a lot of really bad webcomics, but there are some real diamonds out there with great artwork and writing and all they need is a succesful kickstarter to get into print.

...and in fact an entire graphic novel and television series--lots of pictures there!>> ^Ryjkyj:

>> ^gwiz665:
Reading sucks..I need sensory input!

Dude... that's why there are pictures.

They do eventually move from the farm to another location (I'll try to keep spoilers at a minimum) in the graphic novels, but they've also veered off from the novels quite a bit, so who knows what Kirkman and the writers have up their sleeves. I have a feeling that they're taking the cookie cutter approach though; one whole season on the farm, the next season in the next location. Probably to save on budget. So they'll be fartin' around on the farm for a few more episodes, probably to let Randall escape, then involve the other group, forcing them to move onto the next location.

As for the Governor (who is the main baddie of the next group) it could be Merle. Hell, they could twist it and have Shane wind up defecting and coming back with a vengeance. Or it could be a new actor.

As for Dale dying, I get now why they killed him off. Look at the uproar its caused. What better way to introduce drama and drive up ratings? I'll miss Jeff DeMunn on the show though; he's a great actor. Been a fan since he played Capt. Esteridge in The Hitcher.

@Ryjkyj But if they are going to take the series in different directions, then in order to remain at least similar to the comics, all characters must be fair game at all times. Not only that, but the idea of important people dying for stupid, pointless reasons is also central to the books.

In fact, if the books have one major through-line that would be essential to the TV series if it was supposed to be similar at all, it's this: Every single chapter needs to be an exercise in how you can make a situation worse than you thought possible. Any positive improvement in the situation of the characters should be just positive enough so that you can be let down again by the next major catastrophe.


Good points.

I find the show uneven. Sometimes it's very compelling; sometimes its just boring. I like the characters, but I don't always find the writing believable, which takes away from my connection to the characters. I dislike that so much of the show is devoted to characters arguing about what to do next. It just feels to me like they are wasting time with cheap dialog so they don't have to spend a lot of money on more elaborate zombie scenes. I also hate how they so often introduce an arbitrary problem to solve that has little or nothing to do with the overall plot.

I'm not sure if the narrative is tighter in the graphic novel or not, since I haven't read it.

I wouldn't have saved Randall in the first place. Why risk your brains trying to save someone who was trying to kill you in the face of a huge swarm of zombies? If they went through all the trouble of saving him, they should probably not execute him. Had they not tortured him, they might have been able to let him go without worry or even let him become part of the group, but now that he has been brutalized, he is likely to seek revenge when given the opportunity. It's probably an allegory for Abu Grabe. I say they drive him back to the school bus and give him a fighting chance. All alone, he'd probably not survive anyway, but he'd be left in far better shape than he was when they found him.

As for Dale, it seemed like a terribly unsatisfying way to kill off a major character. He's just randomly walking in the woods at night by himself and gets killed by a zombie. Weak. Dale was the voice of humanity and reason, so why not let him die doing something selfless. Take a lesson from Game of Thrones: when you are going to unexpectedly kill off major characters, milk it! I guess the point is that if the kid had not antagonized the zombie, or alternately shot the zombie, that Dale would still be alive - which is analogous to the Randall situation.

I'd love to see the characters abandon the farm. The story would be a lot more interesting if they were on the move, exploring the ruins of society, encountering different people and different conflicts along the way.

I predict that Daryl's handless brother will be a member of Randall's group.