We All Float: Stephen King’s ‘IT’ Remake

So the Hollywood Report has stated that the re-make for the Stephen King novel IT is in the works. Cary Fukunaga (Jane Eyre, True Detective) is attached to write and direct the film and that it will be split into two films.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/stephen-kings-be-adapted-by-334899

I am very excited about this news. IT has been my favorite Stephen King novel since I was old enough to read it. I probably first read it when I was around thirteen years old and it took me a year to get through it (it’s a very long book).

I was also a fan of the made-for-TV film starring Tim Curry as the terror that is… Pennywise! The cast, writing, mood, and music was so perfect in that film. The only thing was the cheesy effects and lackluster ending that brought it down.

I was so into this novel that in the early 2000s I tried to adapt it into a comic book. Much like what Marvel has done with The Dark Tower series. Didn’t get around to finishing it of course.

My personal pic for the new Pennywise would be Adrien Brody. I feel he’s got the diversity to play many monsters, as well as the sincereness and silliness of a crazy, intense clown. Just with minimal makeup he could deliver the terrors!

Film Review: The Wolverine

It is very ironic that the first blog I post up will be about the new Wolverine film. Although I am a huge X-Men fan, Wolverine is probably my least favorite character. I do see his appeal but I think the mysterious aspects of Wolverine from the Claremont days of the X-Men book have gone away. And the fact that Marvel just shoves this character down our throats in every single comic book they publish makes him lackluster for me.

SPOILERS!

The Wolverine is loosely based off of the classic (and first) Wolverine mini-series by Frank Miller back in 1982. A couple of logistical stuff have been shifted in time a bit. In the comic the main villain was Mariko’s father but since the film makers wanted the villain to have been around during the bombing of Nagasaki, he had to be turned into the grandfather.

This movie is very good. Good action and very decent acting. The bullet train scene was super suspenseful and had my hands sweating! The story is pretty simple and doesn’t get to convoluted in on itself (wait until the upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past for that).

Wolverine gets a de-powering in the film which helps a bit. I actually did an oh-no-flinche one time when he got shot so at least it got me emotionally involved in seeing him not die. Then we see Wolverine regain his power which pumps a lot of momentum back into the story.

The one thing (if only one thing) that might have saved this flick from being “ok” to “badass” is if they had Wolverine delve into samurai culture a little bit (which I’m not personally a fan of, but it could have given the film a “grander” sense). Wasn’t this suppose to be the Wolverine/Japanese movie? I mean, the film takes place in Japan but we hardly see any kick as ninja/samurai fighting skills from Wolverine. Just his normal claw-shit-up-berserker stuff. Besides being “given” a sword and then him immediately returning it and learning not to stick your chopsticks upright into your food, that was it for Wolverine’s Japanese culture immersion!

The one character that you would think would totally rip it up with his fighting style would be Silver Samurai. But it turns out that he was just a robot! A big, stumbling robot with a flaming sword! This story could have taken place anywhere else besides Japan!

And can we please have an American film without a blonde person being gratuitously placed in it? The character of Viper has always been dark haired (be it dark black or dark green) but I guess the movie producers decided that this film was too brunette looking — hello, we’re in Japan — and so they had to go and change her into a blonde. That was probably my biggest eye roll moment of the entire film.

Overall, it was a good action film and if you had seen the first three X-Men films (never see that horrible X-Men Origins: Wolverine one) you should follow the story with ease. However, this film — for me — was just a sampler tease to get to X-Men: Days of Future Past. I love X-Men and I love time travel/alternate reality stuff so I can’t wait to see how they handle that story.

I would rate this film as a solid 3.5 snikts (out of 5).

Later bub,

P.J.

Welcome to the Nerd Table!

Greetings and salutations, fellow world wide web users! My name is P.J. I am a thirty-something Hispanic nerd. I was born in the early eighties in southern Texas. Against all odds I turned out to be a total nerd. This is my first stab at a blog and I’m hoping it’ll go along swimmingly! My thoughts tend to be a lot of lists and outlines of such stuff so I’m hoping you’ll all get a kick out of what I have to offer.

So what will this blog be about? Well, I’m a huge music fan so I imagine that will be a big part. My taste in music tends to curve towards classic rock (The Beatles, the Stones, Bob Dylan, etc.) but I also love jam stuff (Grateful Dead, Phish), and am a product of late nineties alternative music (Smashing Pumpkins, Beck). Though I am not anywhere near as fanatical to current stuff as I am to 60s and 70s music.

I love to read; I’m a total Tolkien nerd! The Lord of the Rings is my bible. I’m also a Stephen King and J. K. Rowling junkie. I’ve currently (with the purchase of a Kindle) gotten back into comic books. I gave them up in the late nineties for financial reasons but I am back in a big, bad way. My main two reads are the X-Men books and Batman books though I’m also into some of the more current media darlings like Locke & Key, Saga, and Morning Glories.

Then there are film and TV. Freaks and Geeks and The Wonder Years are constantly being watched in my house, as well as crazy time travel flicks (Quantum Leap, Back to the Future, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban… have you guys seen Primer???!!).

My personal life might come up a bit. I am currently engaged to be married (pretty soon). My fiancée and I were friends for more than ten years, we met after high school during our late-teen-early-twenties-hang-out-period. We continued to be friends while we both went in and out of relationships. Finally, we were both single about two and a half years ago and decided to give it a go. She is a nerd in her own right (huge into reading and Bjork) and we just laugh all the time. So wedding planning and junk of that sort might spill into this blog.

I try to stay positive in life. I’m generally not a negative person so if you expect this blog to be a lot of public bashing, it’s not. Not to say there won’t be some griping and quibbling (come on, it’s the internet after all) but I feel I’ll generally be on the positive/excited side of a subject.

So, take a seat at this here nerd table in the corner of the room and join in! (The cool table in the center of the room is boring anyway.)

The least you could do is smile,

P.J.