And speaking of books in limbo, what’s befallen Aki Shimizu’s Qwan? According to the Wikipedia, six volumes have been released in Japan, but Tokyopop has yet to publish anything beyond volume four. I’m wondering why it’s been almost a year since the last release—is it a licensing issue, or has Tokyopop caught up to the Japanese edition? I’d hate to see this offbeat shonen fantasy languish in manga purgatory, as its gorgeous artwork and compelling, folkloric storyline deserve a bigger audience.

Salt Water Taffy: The Legend of Old Salty is slated for a May release.

In the inaugural post, Brigid explains the purpose of the blog:

Word Balloons is a group blog about comics for kids. We will cover all ages from preschool through young adult, but we won’t lump all ages together; we’re smart enough to know that a three-year-old has different abilities and interests than a 13-year-old.

Our goal is to be the morning newspaper for anyone interested in kids’ comics: creators, editors, teachers, librarians, retailers, and most importantly, readers. We will present interviews, reviews, and opinions and link to the best of what other folks are writing. We expect to have frequent guest posts, and we invite our readers to send us a heads-up whenever they see something interesting about kids’ comics on the internet or even in print.

Also, we will cover all the comics kids read, as opposed to the comics grownups think they should read. That means we will cover works of great literary and artistic merit, but we won’t ignore the formulaic crap either. If it’s fun, it’s in.

So pour yourself some milk, grab the cookies, and join in the conversation!

I hope you’ll bookmark the site, leave a comment (or three), and offer your words of wisdom to other teachers and parents. My first contribution–a review of Flight: Explorer–is posted, as are several terrific interviews, reviews, and opinion pieces by Robin, Lori, and Brigid.

If you just so happen to be a Buffy geek with academic street cred and a strong background in music, this call for papers might be right up your alley:

From bands at The Bronze in Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Angel singing karaoke at Caritas to the traditional-style fiddling and guitar playing in Firefly, music is an integral part of Joss Whedon’s universes. This collection seeks essays from both established and emerging scholars on the uses of and contributions made by music in the Whedonverse. Discipline-specific and interdisciplinary views are encouraged to address issues of power, relationships, identity, gender, communication, religion, multiculturalism, sanity and madness, and other topics present in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, and Serenity. Topics might include, but are not limited to:

• Music and performance
• Gender/identity/race and music (including traditional identity topics as well as those of non-human characters)
• Genre representations
• Scoring for action sequences
• Music and communication
• Musical characterization
• Music and camp
• Music and transformation
• Character vocality
• The use of silence and music in unique ways
• Levels and mixing of diegesis and non-diegesis

The deadline for submissions is August 15, 2008. The collection will be published by Scarecrow Press with an anticipated publication date in 2009.

Essays should be between 7,000 and 9,000 words and follow Chicago Manual of Style format. Only electronic submissions sent in a .doc (Word) formats will be accepted. Authors are encouraged to include photographs, but will be responsible for acquiring all materials and permission for use. Please send a cover letter including the title of the essay, an abstract of not more than 200 words, an author c.v, and author biography of not more than 100 words along with the complete blind essay (author’s name should not appear) to Kendra Preston Leonard at caennen_at_gmail.com.

The film is nonsense, and what counts is whether viewers will feel able to lay aside their logical complaints and bask in what remains: a trip in search of a tan.

Put simply, it’s a stinker, despite its classy cast—Cillian Murphy, Hiroyuki Sanada, Michelle Yeoh—stunning visuals, and risk-taking director.

The story itself has promise. A crew of astronauts is dispatched into deep space with an atomic payload. Their destination: our dying sun, which has begun to sputter out billions of years ahead of schedule, causing Earth to descend into a permanent state of winter. The first forty or so minutes of the film are rather uneventful, depicting life about the Icarus II. (Yes, it’s that kind of film: heavy on the symbolism, light on the insight.) The crew waxes philosophical over their mission, sends messages to loved ones at home, and squabbles over the small stuff. (Who left the toilet seat up—that sort of thing.) I think this section is supposed to serve as a character study, introducing us to the crew so that we care who lives and who dies in the final reel. Unfortunately, most of the cast lacks the requisite gravitas to convince us that they’re scientists and pilots; Yeoh and Sanada seem to be the only adults among the sullen crew. The biggest misfire casting-wise, however, is the normally excellent Murphy. That quiet intensity he’s brought to roles in Batman Begins, Breakfast on Pluto, and The Wind That Shakes the Barley has been replaced by bored passivity; it’s hard to believe that the silent, shaggy-haired fellow in the wifebeater is supposed to be the mission’s nuclear physicist. Couldn’t the screenwriter have fed him a few lines of scientific mumbo-jumbo to boost his credibility—perhaps a reference to the space-time continuum, or a detailed explanation of how, exactly, the ship’s payload is supposed to jump-start a star?

The crew’s routine is interrupted by a distress signal from the Icarus I, which vanished before successfully completing a similar mission. The astronauts rehearse familiar arguments about tracing the signal’s source—didn’t any of them see Alien?—ultimately deciding that their sister ship might still have its nuclear payload intact, offering them a plan B if their own Manhattan-sized bomb should fail to detonate. This decision triggers a series of small catastrophes that damage the ship, compromise the crew’s oxygen supply, and kill off the less developed cast members.

Sunshine’s final act quickly devolves into a grim hybrid of slasher flick and kamikaze drama when the crew realizes it has a saboteur in its midst. Whatever claims to scientific accuracy the film made in its first reels are quickly refuted by a series of ludicrous set-pieces, including a scene in which several astronauts hurtle through the vacuum of space wrapped only in some insulation—and survive. (Even if the scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories charged too hefty a consulting fee, wasn’t there someone on the set who could point out that the human body doesn’t withstand dramatic changes in pressure and temperature?) Other signs of desperation are evident as well: sympathetic characters meet gruesome ends purely for the shock value, and Boyle begins employing jump-cuts and shaky cams to heighten the sense of urgency—and perhaps conceal the saboteur’s identity—as the dwindling number of survivors continue their one-way journey to the sun.

The biggest problem with Sunshine, however, is that it never feels like a fresh gloss on a tired trope. Boyle worked wonders with tried-and-true B-movie formula in 28 Days Later, which borrowed liberally from George Romero’s classic zombie pictures while updating the genre to suit contemporary tastes. In Sunshine, however, these hat-tips to Stanley Kubrick and Ridley Scott never feel like organic elements of the story; like Quentin Tarantino, Boyle seems to have confused air quotes and knowing nods with genuine homage. I didn’t mind the shout-out to the silky-voiced HAL, but it felt utterly gratuitous, as if Boyle was intent on reminding us that he’s seen a lot of classic science fiction. This high-mindedness begins weighing on the film early in the first reel, when Boyle employs the kind of lingering camera shots and languid pace I associate with Tartakovsky. If Boyle had something interesting to say about human nature, or about our dependence on the sun for existence, such expository dawdling might be excusable. But when such Solaris Lite scenes are the prelude to an artsy, Freddie vs. Jason spectacle, the audience feels cheated: why the bait and switch?

About the best I can say for Sunshine is that the sound and set crews did a terrific job designing the ship. The movie looks like a million bucks—well, $40 million, to be accurate—and has a suitably eerie, minimalist soundtrack that’s a welcome relief from the swelling strings and tutti blasts so characteristic of space sagas. Bernard Hermann no doubt would approve. Whether Stanley Kubrick would feel as charitably towards Sunshine will remain an eternal mystery.

As the title suggests, The Incredible Change-Bots is an affectionate parody of The Transformers in all its incarnations: Saturday morning cartoon, plastic action figure, Hollywood blockbuster. On the distant planet of Electronocybercircuitron, two groups of sentient machines compete for control of the planet’s dwindling energy resources: the peaceful Awesomebots and the war-like Fantasticons. (As in the original Transformers series, both the Awesomebots and the Fantasticons can assume the form of vehicles and household appliances from big rigs and cement trucks to microwave ovens and calculators.) Electronocybercircuitron descends into civil war, forcing both groups of robots to flee the devastation. After fighting erupts on their escape vessel, the Awesomebots and Fantasticons crash land on Earth, where two groups go their separate ways to regroup for another battle.

Brown devotes most of his energy to sending up popcorn movie clichés, from hero catch-phrases (“Time to take out the trash!”) to speeches aimed at boosting the esteem of the least impressive Awesomebot. Sometimes the jokes feel stale or obvious, as is suggested by this exchange between Balls, a Change-Bot who transforms into a golf cart, and Jimmy, a human teenager who befriends him:

Jimmy: “I bet your friends will be really happy to see you, Balls.”
Balls: “I don’t know about that. I’m so small, they think I’m not very useful.”
Jimmy: “But what if there was, like, a tiny tunnel or something, and they needed you to race through it?”
Balls: “Gosh, Jimmy Junior, I hadn’t thought of it like that.”

Most of the cinema conventions that Brown mocks have been parodied ad nauseam in movies like Airplane!, The Naked Gun, and Spaceballs, thus diluting their comedic impact. But just as the Naked Gun coasted through dopey moments on the strength of Leslie Nielsen’s deadpan delivery, Change-Bots squeaks by on the strength of Brown’s artwork and lettering, which has the same slightly crude, child-like quality I associate with Roz Chast’s New Yorker cartoons.

The Incredible Change-Bots is funnier when it takes aim at more topical targets. In the opening pages of the book, for example, there’s a sly poke at American politics as Brown explains what prompted the conflict back on the Change-Bots’ homeworld: the democratic “machinery” comes to a screeching halt when the Fantasticons rig an election. Brown also wrings laughs out of our current energy crisis, poking fun at tree-huggers and environmental pillagers alike. The Awesomebots, for example, embrace renewal resources, building “solar-turbine power converters” in the Amazon rainforest, while the Fantasticons buy nuclear reactors from the US military.

Considering how quickly you’ll finish this pocket-sized book, its $15.00 price tag seems a little steep, though the high quality paper stock and French flaps guarantee that The Incredible Change-Bots will make a more lasting addition to your library than most trade paperbacks. The Incredible Change-Bots is best appreciated as quick, portable way to get your political satire fix while The Daily Show is on hiatus. And if you can’t get enough of Brown’s goofy jokes, don’t worry: in true action-movie fashion, he leaves the door open for a sequel.

The festival kicks off tonight (1/18/08) at 7:00 PM with a talk by Doherty, who recently published a biography of the man responsible for ending the party in 1934: Joseph I. Breen. Doherty’s lecture will then be followed by a double feature of Call Her Savage (1932), starring Jazz Age cutie Clara Bow as a debutante gone bad (she goes slumming in Greenwich Village, a sure sign of depravity), and Blood Money (1933), starring George Bailey as a bail bondsman who keeps company with kleptomaniacs, nymphomaniacs, cross-dressers, and corrupt pols. Tickets are $10 and may be purchased at the Carpenter Center beginning 45 minutes before the show. (No advanced ticket sales via phone or web.)

For a complete schedule of events and directions to the Harvard University campus, visit the Harvard Film Archive website.

More fun, less fiber at Minx.
The basic impulse behind DC’s Minx imprint was a noble one: create a line of comics that would appeal to young female readers. Though DC drafted some top-notch talent for its first Minx titles, the results were decidedly mixed, producing one entertaining book (The Re-Gifters), one middling book (Good As Lily), and two very pedestrian ones (Clubbing, The Plain J.A.N.E.S.). The biggest problem with these early Minx offerings was that they wore their literary aspirations on their sleeves, trying too hard to be the graphic novel equivalents of Judy Blume. Most of the titles were earnest and dull, with teens speaking in the slightly stilted patois of Dawson’s Creek and The OC as they fumbled their way to Very Important Life Lessons. No wonder many teenage girls continued to beat a path to the Borders manga aisle instead of seeking out Minx books at the local comic book store. My suggestion to DC is to stop treating Minx like a prestige project, cranking out respectable books that parents won’t mind buying for their teens—focus on making the books fun.

Fewer attempts to retell the classics in graphic novel form.
I don’t mind comics in the classroom—there’s ample evidence that comics can help a variety of students become more proficient readers. My curmudgeonly side is less enthusiastic, however, about the growing number of publishers hawking graphic novels as tools for teaching teens the classics. These pow-n-splat editions of Great Books prove just how difficult it can be to capture the poetry and mystery of the original works when you boil them down to plot—the least difficult element of Shakespeare or Homer for readers to grasp. And if the artwork isn’t good… well, anyone who’s ever lived with a teenager knows that high school students are quick to reject whatever doesn’t meet their platonic ideal of coolness or authenticity, especially if adults are calling it hip. (Or worse: manga.)

A moratorium on Spider Man movies.
The third Spider Man movie was a tedious, loud affair that ran too long, featured too many villains, and touched on too many iconic plotlines to give any of them satisfactory treatment. Even Rosemary Harris’s expert line-readings and Bruce Campbell’s deliciously obnoxious cameo couldn’t redeem this overstuffed turkey. Best to let this franchise lie fallow for a few years before making another movie… preferably with a new director.

And while we’re at it…
Let’s declare a moratorium on X-Men movies and movies based on C-list Marvel properties.

More funding and publicity for CMX.
Pssssst, DC… you already have a line of comics that appeal to girls: CMX! If you invested half the money and promotional energy in CMX that you do in Minx, you might be pleasantly surprised by the results. As commentators around the mangasphere have noted, the CMX catalog boasts some amazing titles, from old-school shojo like Swan, Moon Child, Cipher, and From Eroica With Love to kid-friendly fare like Chikyu Misaki and The Palette of 12 Secret Colors. But if you’re not making an obvious effort to promote them, how will the Fruits Basket crowd know that there are other titles besides Vampire Knight, Kare Kano, and Fall in Love Like a Comic? Take a page from the Go! Comi playbook and try some fun, creative, inexpensive strategies for building brand loyalty and increasing awareness of the CMX catalog: Fan art and poetry contests. Forums for discussing CMX products. Unusual giveaways. Fan-friendly panels at conventions. (Translation: give the Wildstorm folks their own separate forum for interacting with Ex Machina fans.)

Bring out your dead…
Now that the manga market has matured—and there are readers hungry for the kind of weird, edgy, WTF?! stuff that Viz and Dark Horse licensed five or ten years ago—I’d like to encourage publishers to revisit past under-performers with an eye towards reissuing them. Topping my list of titles I’d like to see in 2.0 versions: Clover, Rumic Theater, and What’s Michael. Given how beautiful the original presentation of Clover was, I think Tokyopop would be wise to reissue it as a four-volume box set (as it had planned to do in 2006 before dropping the project), while Rumic Theater and What’s Michael seem better suited to the omnibus treatment. I don’t need bells and whistles on any of these editions, though I wouldn’t mind seeing them issued with the artwork unflipped and, in the case of Clover, the translation refreshed. A new font for the lettering would also be most welcome—the original edition is typeset in what looks like Times New Roman.

More Tezuka, Toume, and old-school shojo.
I must have been good last year, because Santa rewarded me with a big-ticket item from my 2007 wish list: a new edition of Black Jack, courtesy of Vertical, Inc. That news has made me greedy for titles such as Kei Toume’s The Hour of the Mice and Fuguruma Memories, as well as shojo classics The Rose of Versailles, The Song of the Wind in the Trees, The Poe Family, and Princess Knight. What would really make my heart sing, however, is an English language edition of Ludwig B., Tezuka’s final project. Though Tezuka intended Ludwig B. to be sprawling, panoramic portrait of Beethoven and his times, Tezuka only completed two volumes before his death. It’s a pity he didn’t start the project earlier, as its superb layouts, vivid Viennese street scenes, and glorious images of Beethoven at the piano need no translation for music lovers to enjoy. Pair it with some CDs, and you might just have a bitchin’ music appreciation book that captures the spirit of the Classical style, if not all the historical details. No doubt Charles Rosen would approve, though he might not know what to make of the nekomimi in volume two.

Save titles from licensing limbo.
With so many series debuting each year, it’s inevitable that many won’t post sales figures big enough to justify their continued publication. But when it’s a title I love… well, I become a crusader, forgetting that manga publishers are in business to make money, not please (almost) middle-aged fangirls. Three titles that I’d love to see rescued from licensing limbo are Ai Morinaga’s Duck Prince (CPM), Masato Kobayashi’s Club 9 (Dark Horse), and Hiroshi Hirata’s Satsuma Gishiden (Dark Horse). Of the three, Duck Prince seems like the most likely candidate for a license rescue, perhaps by Tokyopop. As for the other two… there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of seeing the full run of either. I just have to accept that unpleasant truth.

Better mainstream coverage of comics.
I’d been struggling to pull together my thoughts on the subject when Tom Spurgeon and David Welsh posted thoughtful critiques of the comics coverage in Newsweek, The New York Times, and Entertainment Weekly. I don’t have much to add to the discussion, though I can think of two suggestions for big-city papers interested in covering comics.

First, stop ghettoizing comic reviews and best-of lists to your websites. We still live in a world where “print” equals “prestige,” and when you can’t be bothered to give regular print space to comics, you send the message that comics just aren’t as important as the other media you cover. Second, don’t confine your reviews to literary comics (i.e. Shortcomings) and event comics (i.e. Civil War); try to cover a more representative sampling of the market. If you applied the same selection criteria to determining which movies, books, and TV shows to review, your Arts & Leisure section would be mighty slim indeed. (And given how miserable your high culture coverage can be, you can’t claim to be taking the aesthetic high road by thumbing your nose at Death Note.)

So that’s my wish list for 2008. Many thanks to the bloggers and readers who made 2007 a great year for us at PopCultureShock. Here’s to an even better 2008!

Want to know more about Town of Evening Calm? David Welsh has compiled links to and quotes from reviews around the blogsphere, from Otaku USA to Jog the Blog. Though David has been generous in sharing the spotlight with other reviewers in his efforts to promote this wonderful book, I’m going to let him have the last word on why you ought to read Town of Evening Calm:

The incalculable individual cost of the bombing of Hiroshima has been handled in drama and documentary, and one can’t argue that the act of examining that kind of horror is automatically a virtuous or courageous act. The critical element is any given work’s ability to move its audience.

To personalize a tragedy of this magnitude is to risk trivializing the event or populating it with characters more philosophically functional than emotionally specific. Kouno avoids these failings entirely. There’s richness and realness to her cast and generosity to her storytelling that lets readers inhabit the world instead of simply observing or commenting on it. It’s a perfect blend of the painfully real and the creatively effective.

So, you should buy this book, because it’s good in every way that matters. Reading it will give you genuine pleasure, and that pleasure will only be enhanced by the worthiness of the subject matter and Kouno’s intelligence and sensitivity in dramatizing it.

And if you don’t win that copy that Chloe is giving away at Shuchaku East, you shouldn’t have trouble tracking it down at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Last Gasp, the publisher.

UPDATE, 1/1/08: Part two of David’s Overlooked Manga Festival is now posted, and features lengthier recommendations from two of my favorite bloggers: John Jakala of Sporadic Sequential and Robin Brenner of No Flying, No Tights. Definitely worth a look, especially if you’ve been on the fence about trying The Demon Ororon, Kekkaishi, or Vagabond.

I saw your list of things to do at the Anime fest this weekend, and while it was great it was fatally flawed because you missed the motion picture event of the decade….the free screening of CASSHERN!!!!

This built-in-the-basement cracked masterpiece has never been shown in the US in all its majesty and this is the 35mm screening, of the complete 141 minute version of the film, in Japanese with English subtitles, and introduced by the movie’s military advisor (also the advisor on BATTLE ROYALE) and the soundtrack composer who’s part of the J-pop duo, Unicorn Table.

It’s at the ImaginAsian (East 59th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues) on Saturday night at 10pm and it’s free. This is going to be a rowdy, nutty, woolly event featuring singing sheep, prize giveaways, a visit from Naughty Santa and a screening of the greatest steampunk, anti-war, Space Nazis vs. Robo-Commies movie ever made.

So there you have it, folks… a film premiere that’s guaranteed to entertain (or offend) Monty Python fans, Akira buffs, Cold Warriors, robots, and border collies alike. Admission is free for anyone with a NY Anime Fest pass. The ImaginAsian will also be running a stand-by line for the general public; get there by 9:30 PM, and you have a good chance of getting in.

For most of my childhood, I was obsessed with Linus, Lucy, and the rest of the Peanuts gang. I loved Snoopy, of course: what’s not to like about a canine flying ace who can make a mean Thanksgiving feast of toast, popcorn, and jellybeans? Snoopy’s image adorned my lunchbox and my notebooks, appeared on my bed sheets, and graced my favorite t-shirts, bathing suits, and hats. (Oh yes, I was a paragon of fashion back in the day.)

Much as I loved Snoopy, however, I identified with Charlie Brown. To be sure, children’s literature is filled with misfits, from the orphans, heiresses, and invalids of Frances Hodgson Burnett to the tomboyish Harriet the Spy. Charlie Brown, however, was a run-of-the-mill kid just trying to pass math, hit a baseball, and fit in with his classmates, a decent soul whose squareness made him a target of derision (even by his own dog!). Like a lot of other kids, I found solace in Peanuts: I understood Charlie Brown because I, too, was the serious, well-meaning kid that everybody loved to tease.

As an adult reader of Peanuts, I’ve discovered new layers of meaning in the comic bantering of Linus, Charlie Brown, and Lucy. The gang cracks wise about nostalgia, politics, aging, family ties, classical music, and sports in ways that still seem fresh, even if the cultural references (Nehru jackets, anyone?) are a bit stale. The Christmas special, in particular, never ceases to amaze me: how did Schulz ever manage to sneak a scathing critique of commercialism and greed onto network television? And one that dared to suggest that Christmas could be a major downer for some folks? I wonder how he’d react to the recent popularity of the Vince Guaraldi soundtrack, which has become the de rigeur Yuletide music of stores and malls around the country.

If your only knowledge of Peanuts comes from the tie-in products or the TV specials, I encourage you to check out Fantagraphic’s labor-of-love project The Complete Peanuts. Fantagraphics is reproducing every Peanuts strip dating back to 1950, the year Schulz’s comic made its debut. Each volume corresponds to a two-year period; the series has currently reprinted strips from 1950 through 1966, with more than 30 years of comics to come. Part of the fun is seeing how Schulz tinkered with his cast until he got it right: imagine Lucy as a baby, and Snoopy as an ordinary beagle whose biggest worry is whether or not he’ll be fed. (Fun fact: though the strip debuted in 1950, Snoopy didn’t walk upright until 1958.) If you call yourself a comic fan, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Me, I’ll be waiting in the most sincere pumpkin patch until the 1967-68 Complete Peanuts hits the stores. Trick or treat!

I have mixed feelings about a remake. Some aspects of the original haven’t aged very gracefully, such as the scene in which Matthau shepherds a group of Japanese transit experts through MTA headquarters. But there’s no denying that the 1974 version offers a vivid portrait of New York City in crisis; you can practically smell the city’s decaying infrastructure as the movie unfolds. The principal cast, too, is uniformly good, from Walter Matthau as a rumpled cop to Lee Wallace as a mayor who bears an uncanny resemblance to Ed Koch.

WILL I WATCH IT? Washington brings both gravitas and pulchritude to a role originally played by Walther Matthau, so perhaps all is not lost. If Scott has the good sense to cast a top-notch character actor like Chiwetel Ejiofor (or, hell, Alan Rickman, he of the world’s sexiest voice) in the Robert Shaw role, this remake might not devolve into a boring, Michael Bay-esque spectacle.

In other film news, ICv2 reports that Viz Pictures has acquired the rights to Funky Forest: The First Contact, a surrealistic film from the director of A Taste of Tea:

The two-and-one-half hour film contains 21 loosely connected sequences that, in the words of Variety, “occasionally intersect, but scarcely hint at any game plan.” … Viewers who enjoyed the humorous surrealistic touches in Ishii’s delightful The Taste of Tea (2004—also licensed by Viz Pictures) will recognize many of the cast members from that film in Funky Forest (2006) as Ishii is evidently developing a “stock” company of favorite actors who suit his unique filmmaking style. Hideaki Anno, the director of Neon Genesis Evangelion, and his wife Moyoco Anno, whose manga Happy Mania is published here by Tokyopop, also play prominent roles in Funky Forest.

I’m incredibly curious about this title. As ICv2 describes it, Funky Forest sounds like Stranger Than Paradise by way of Happy Mania with a forest spirit or two tossed in for good measure.

WILL I WATCH IT? Could be wonderful, or it could be one of those titles that only film students adore…

UPDATE (3/2/08): Viz Pictures will be screening Funky Forest in New York, Los Angeles and Seattle. Click here for further details.

angryasianman has the scoop on Justin Lin’s latest film, Finishing the Game, a mockumentary about Hollywood’s ill-fated attempt to complete The Game of Death. Fresh off the summer festival circuit, Lin’s highly praised movie promises lots of laughs, some pointed social commentary, and a cameo by… Ron Jeremy?! (On hand to lend some seedy seventies cred, I guess?) The movie officially opens at the IFC Center in New York on October 5th; click here to find out when it hits your neck of the woods. The trailer looks pretty damn funny:

WILL I WATCH IT? Without the burden of answering to a big Hollywood studio—as he did for Annapolis and The Fast and the Furious: Gaijin Takes on the Yakuza in a Muscle Car—Lin may well deliver a worthy follow-up to his dark comedy Better Luck Tomorrow.

And for those of us who are anticipating the new Sex and the City movie with as much enthusiasm as we’d muster for, say, death or taxes, I offer you two fine examples of snark blogging from the Fug Girls (who better to critique the movie’s terrifyingly bad fashion sense?) and digital femme. Go. Read. You won’t be disappointed.

In an effort to represent the full spectrum of licensed manga in his Flipped! column, David is interested in chatting with other people about their favorite artists, genres, and titles, even if they fall well within the manga mainstream. Contact David through his blog Precocious Curmudgeon for further details.

With apologies to Erik Jansen and The Onion…

VIZ Pictures just announced that they’ve acquired the distribution rights to the two live-action Death Note films:

VIZ Pictures, an affiliate of VIZ Media LLC that focuses on Japanese live-action film distribution, has announced that it has licensed from Nippon Television (NTV) the North American theatrical and DVD distribution rights to the live-action feature film Death Note and its sequel, Death Note: The Last Name, based on the Death Note anime and manga series…

VIZ Pictures will open Death Note and Death Note: The Last Name in a series of special screenings at Austin’s Fantastic Fest 2007, September 20-27, and at the 2007 Vancouver Asian Film Festival, November 1-4. Theater information follows at the end of this release and future screenings will continue throughout 2008. VIZ Pictures also plans to release Death Note and Death Note: The Last Name on DVD in the summer of 2008…

Death Note is based on the hit supernatural action mystery manga written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata. The live-action film, directed by Shusuke Kaneko, known as a director of popular monster film Gamera series, was released in 2006 and mirrors the manga’s story… The film’s sequel, Death Note: The Last Name, was a hit in Japan, staying #1 for four straight weeks. While it closely followed major plot elements from the original manga series, several new key story differences were also introduced. Both films star Takeshi Kaga, who is widely known by North American audiences as the flamboyant host of TV’s Iron Chef.

Erin F., our own fujoshi-in-residence, caught both flicks at this year’s New York Asian Film Festival; you can read her take on live Death Note by clicking here. Death Note and Death Note: The Last Name will be showing at Fantastic Fest in Austin, TX (Sept. 20-27th; click here for screen times and tickets) and the Vancouver Asian Film Festival in Vancouver, BC (Nov. 1-4th; click here for screen times and tickets). N.B. Only the first film will be shown in Vancouver.

Shinigami, evil teenagers with perfect hair, killer notebooks, and Chairman Kaga… now that’s some classy entertainment! No word on what the theme ingredient is for either film.

For further reading:

• Full text of the press release
• imdb entry, Death Note (Desu nôto, 2006)
• imdb entry, Death Note: The Last Name (Desu nôto: The last name, 2006)
• Official Death Note webpage (anime)
• Official Death Note webpage (manga)
• Wikipedia entry, Death Note

Ack! Do we really have to wait until 2008 to find out how the boys beat the terrorism rap?

Pickup on South Street ; Kiss of Death (August 2nd and 3rd)
Richard Widmark, baby, the O.G. of noir! So much better than the remake with Nicholas Cage and David Caruso you’ll wonder why the producers thought an update was warranted.

Taxi Driver ; Mean Streets (August 12th and 13th)
You lookin’ at me?

The Warriors ; Superfly (August 17th and 18th)
Everybody together now: “Oh Waaaarrriors, come out to plaaaaaaaaay.” (No word on whether Film Forum will let you bring your own Coke bottle castanets, but it’s worth a shot.)

Rear Window ; Rope (August 24th and 25th)
If you’ve ever wondered what life was like in New York City B.A.C. (that’s “before air conditioning,” a.k.a. before 1960), you’ll want to watch Hitchcock’s claustrophobic masterpiece. The cast alone is worth the price of admission, with Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly, and Raymond Burr in the principal roles, but Rear Window also boasts great cinematography, crackling dialogue, and some very funny slice-of-life scenes that give the movie authentic Noo Yawk flava.

Other flicks worth a look-see include Klute (Jane Fonda as a boozy, Oscar-winning prostitute!), Wait Until Dark (Audrey Hepburn as a blind woman menaced by Alan Arkin!), and one of my all-time favorite good-bad movies, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974). With Walter Matthau as a grumpy cop, Jerry Stiller as a smart-mouthed transit employee, and Robert “Shark Hunter” Shaw as a terrorist who hijacks the No. 6 train for one million dollars ransom, Pelham is a valentine to New York in all its deteriorating, Ford-era glory. And speaking of 70s cinema, the final film in the NYC Noir schedule is The French Connection (1971), which closes out the festival with a one week run from August 31st to September 6th. For my money, the speeding-under-the-El sequence is the best car chase ever captured on film. Sorry, Steve.

Tickets for all shows are available at the Film Forum box office (209 West Houston Street; 212-727-8110) or through their website.

This community is a positive one, where people can share ideas on how to increase the activity of women and minorities in the comic book industry rather than just complain about how it hasn’t happened yet.

This community is one of sharing, where creators can help those looking to become creators attain their goals and where artists and writers can find each other and team up; also where creators can come to promote their works. Here blogers can post links to their blogs dealing with issues important to POWER members. Here artists and writers can post samples and get opinions. Here podcasters and video makers can post segments to get reviews, opinions, and support.

This is a community of networking, where creators can find publishers, where publishers can find retailers, where readers can find stores and items they might enjoy.

This is a grass-roots community, where people can share their ideas and experiences about getting comics into new communities and share letters, press releases, and blogs about not just what’s wrong with the comic book community, but how to fix it.

Yes, the manifesto is earnest, but I think that P.O.W.E.R. has its head in the right place. Too much energy has been wasted on dissecting the Heroes for Hentai and MJ Watson controversies already. So if you’d like to see comics that move beyond the cliches and visual tropes that anger so many of us, stop grumbling and join P.O.W.E.R. Help organize a letter writing campaign or a comic book drive. Promote great books like Aya, The Dreaming, and Fun Home. Build a database of independent comic book stores. Pester your local newspaper editor to run reviews of graphic novels. Mail a sports bra to an artist who doesn’t quite grasp the effect of gravity on an ample bosom.

One simple and easy thing you can do right now: post the following list of graphic novels/comics/manga created by female and minority artists. (If Erin or I have reviewed the book in a recent Manga Recon column, a link to the review has been included.) Buy these books. Talk up your favorites in your blog, and encourage others to do so as well. As my fellow PCS blogger Guy LeCharles Gonzalez likes to say, “Free time is a precious thing. Don’t waste it reading bad comics out of habit!”

RECOMMENDED READING:

• 10, 20, and 30, Morim Kang
• 12 Days, June Kim
• 12 Reasons Why I Love Her, Joelle Jones and Jamie S. Rich
• A Distant Soil, Colleen Doran
• American Born Chinese, Gene Luen Yang
• Antique Bakery, Fumi Yoshinaga
• Aoi House, Shiei and Adam Arnold
• Aya, Margureite Abouet and Clement Oubrerie
• Banana Sunday, Colleen Coover
• Bizenghast, Alice LeGrow
• Blade for Barter, Hai
• Castle Waiting, Linda Medley
• Chicken with Plums, Marjane Satrapi
• Cloud Boy, Rhode Montijo
• Courageous Princess, Rod Espinosa
• Dokebi Bride, Marley
• Dramacon, Svetlana Chmakova
• The Dreaming, Queenie Chan
• East Coast Rising, Becky Cloonan
• Embroideries, Marjane Satrapi
• Emma, Kaoru Mori
• Fairies of Bladderwhack Pond, Debbie Bishop
• Finder, Carla Speed McNeil
• Flower of Life, Fumi Yoshinaga
• Fun Home, Alison Bechdel
• Girl Genius, Kaja and Phil Foglio
• Gloom Cookie, Serena Valentine
• Gray Horses, Hope Larson
• Hopeless Savages, Jan Van Meter and Chynna Clugston-Major
• The House of Sugar, Rebecca Kraatz
• InuYasha, Rumiko Takahashi
• Inverloch, Sarah Ellerton
• Kampung Boy, Lat
• Kat & Mouse, Alex de Campi
• Kekkaishi, Yellow Tanabe
• La Perdida, Jessica Abel
• Maison Ikkoku, Rumiko Takahashi
• Mark of the Succubus, Irene Flores and Ashly Raiti
• Mermaid Saga, Rumiko Takahashi
• Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip, Tove Jansson
• Neotopia, Rod Espinosa
• Off*Beat, Jen Lee Quick
• Our Cancer Year, Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner
• Palomar, Gilbert Hernandez
• Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
• Ranma ½, Rumiko Takahashi
• Red String, Gina Biggs
• Same Difference and Other Stories, Derek Kirk Kim
• Scary Godmother, Jill Thompson
• Snow Goddess Tales, CLAMP
• Sorcerers & Secretaries, Amy Kim Ganter
• To Terra, Keiko Takemiya
• Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms, Fumiyo Kuono
• Vogelein: Clockwork Faerie, Jane Irwin
• We Are On Our Own, Miriam Katin
• When I’m Old and Other Stories, Gabrielle Bell
• Zapt!, Shannon Denton, Keith Giffen, and Armand Villavert

Tokyopop Round Table @ Barnes and Noble
Tuesday, June 26th @ 6:30 PM
267 Seventh Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
718-832-9066
Website: http://storelocator.barnesandnoble.com/storedetail.do?store=2876

Directions (by subway):
F train to Seventh Avenue/Park Slope
Exit at 9th Street and Seventh Avenue
Walk three blocks north along Seventh Avenue

In the arid badlands of prehistoric Asia, a lovelorn youth violates a sacred tribal taboo by etching an image of his beloved. When the foretold punishment comes to pass, the two must embark on a journey across the world, and time itself, to try to reclaim their destiny. A mysterious spirit guides them towards a surprise destination that readers may indeed find quite close to home…

… especially if you live in New York. (Hence the inspiration for the contest.)

Anyone who’s lived in New York for more than three days has a repertory of Tall Tales from the Big City. Here’s your chance to share that I-saw-Paul-Newman story with a fresh audience and be rewarded for your clever observations! No word on when the contest ends, so hop to it.