RIP Lorenzo Semple Jr. (1919-2014)

Hollywood screenwriting legend Lorenzo Semple Jr. has died at 91.

This guy had a career any industry pro would envy, penning classics like "The Parallax View" and "3 Days of The Condor," along with cult-classics like "Flash Gordon." But he's probably best remembered today as the creator/mastermind of the Adam West "Batman" series; through which he was either directly or partially responsible for the "Bat-____" device-naming convention, the Barbara Gordon version of Batgirl, the creation of Mr. Freeze and the rehabilitation of what were then largely-forgotten DC characters like Penguin, Riddler and Catwoman. In recent years he was part of the team behind the "Reel Geezers" YouTube series.



Semple lived a full life, certainly. We should all be so lucky. But I do think it's kind of a shame that he didn't live to see "Batman's" long-awaited DVD release later this year. I've maintained for awhile now that fandom, which unpleasantly turned Semple and that series into a rhetorical punching-bag in the Dark Age 90s, was due to turn around on that once all of the episodes were more widely available (a lot of people have really only seen the movie, which is missing a lot of the smart/sharp satire the episodic series brought) and I imagine it might've been nice for him to see that.

Escape to The Movies: "NOAH"

Here's something you don't hear every day: "Damn, that Bible Movie kicked a lot of ass!"

ALSO: "10 Bible Movies Even Weirder Than "NOAH."

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Noah - Brave, Bold, Bizarre and Kind Of Brilliant

March Expiration Watch: More Musical Chairs (2014)

I'm hard-pressed to find any rhyme or reason in the licensing agreements between Netflix and the studios and distributors who provide its content. You'd think that if you're going to pay for the rights to stream, say, an all-time classic like Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, you'd want it to stick around for more than a couple of months, right? And yet, after debuting in February, this brilliant Hollywood satire is now returning from whence it came (to some virtual equivalent of a studio vault?). The same goes for Play It Again, Sam (review) and Breakfast at Tiffany's, both of which reappeared in January after expiring last year and are once again exiting stage left. Finishing equally brief stays are the underappreciated Racing with the Moon and Catch-22�bringing to mind those on-again/off-again Coppola films last seen in January.

Olivia D'abo, Josh Hamilton

At least Darren Aronofsky's Pi (review) got to stick around for a full year before it gets the axe on the 31st [update: it's been renewed], which is more than can be said for 1995's Kicking and Screaming, which showed up less than 30 days ago and is already getting its pink slip. It's hard to believe the streaming rights to such a small film cost all that much, so why not pay for a longer-term license? Else why bother? After all, despite its many charms, Noah Baumbach's first feature is hardly the kind of prestige flick that will get people signing up for Netflix in droves. Such a brief visit seems far more appropriate (if cynical) for a recent blockbuster, no? Netflix could even build a marketing campaign around it: "Now, for one month only, catch up on all the X-Men movies before the new sequel's premiere!" Heck, do that several times a year prior to big summer and holiday releases, and it would boost business for all concerned (and Netflix might even be able to score a licensing discount in exchange for the joint publicity).

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I'm Sad Now

So... this looks really underwhelming. And surprisingly cheap, too. Say what you will about Michael Bay (who only produced this one), He's at least got style, whereas Johnathan Liebsman really is sort of a rote point-and-shoot guy, at best:



Animators? Look, I get that deadlines and budgets are a thing and that studios want you to use facial-tracking algorithms instead of taking the time to animate a character's expressions independently... but this thing (a direct result of that approach prevailing) where otherwise inhuman characters have overly-humanoid eyes, noses and (especially) lips? It just never looks good. Uncanny Valley and all that. Please, trust me: No plurality of filmgoers have ever expressed the following sentiment: "I was totally onboard with the premise of six-foot tall amphibians trained in ancient Japanese martial-arts until I noticed they're mouths shouldn't be capable of producing human-sounding syllables!"

Look. New origin for the TMNT? I can dig it - they aren't exactly Superman in terms of modern mythmaking. But man, they really did just lift the (already shitty) "your father was a scientist working with the bad guy to create this" psuedo-predestination wankery from "Amazing Spider-Man," eh? I'll have more to say on that front in the near future, but until then enjoy freeze-framing that one shot where Leonardo actually looks sort-of cool.

JUPITER ASCENDING Trailer 2

A bigger look at "JUPITER ASCENDING," The Wachowski's first stab at big-scale space-opera, due out later this Summer:

Big Picture: SCARLET UNITY

Also, here's a thing about <i>"BOB'S BURGERS"</i> from my new TV column, HI-DEFINITION.

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Scarlet Unity - What Assassin's Creed and Batman Have in Common

Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch look... okay, I guess?

"AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON" is location-shooting in earnest right now, which means we'll be seeing set pics out the wazoo. Today, that means we're getting a look at Wanda and Pietro in costume... but without the extensive special-effects work thats apparently set to be laid-over both of them in post-production. They look... alright. CBM has a decent collection of snaps, which also include guys wearing what look like props/stand-in suits for Ultron himself...
Quicksilver, at least, looks like an admirable attempt to make his comic look work in reality - lightning-bolts and all. Scarlet Witch, on the other hand... gotta be honest, I don't love it. I guess maybe it'll be visually interesting to have one Avenger doing the "street clothes plus glowy FX = superhero" look next to an otherwise all-costumes team, I just don't know that I needed it to be this character. Yes, I know, they weren't going to have her fighting in what typically amounts to lingerie - though I wouldn't have complained if they had...

Of course, Quicksilver gets to benefit from how spectacularly awful the version of him in "X-MEN: DOFP" looks, whereas Scarlet Witch just sort of looks like she's cosplaying Jane Lane. We'll see.