It’s been a couple of months since I did one of these, so let’s chat a little.
I am particularly interested in the opinion of anyone who has seen A Walk Among the Tombstones based on the novel by friend of Donald Westlake (and occasionally the VWOP!) Lawrence Block. I’m booked solid this weekend but am planning on seeing it Wednesday with a review to follow.
- Sean Witzke at Grantland-Men on Fire 101: Revenge Thrillers That Shaped A Walk Among the Tombstones and The Equalizer http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/men-on-fire-101-the-revenge-thrillers-that-shaped-a-walk-among-the-tombstones-and-the-equalizer/ …
- Darwyn Cooke does a passel of DC variant covers in December: http://www.strangeadventures.com/blog/2014/09/10/in-december-dc-stands-for-darwyn-cooke/ …
- Susan Vass at the Weekly Standard on The Getaway Car–Westlake Lives!: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/westlake-lives_804824.html# …
- Wink, a site about books on paper, looks at Darwyn Cooke’s illustrated edition of The Hunter, with great photos http://winkbooks.net/post/94158415069/parker-the-hunter-new-illustrated-edition-of …
- Greenbriar Picture Shows on Point Blank–Where Lee Marvin Pushed Movie Limits. Interesting theories and great pix: http://greenbriarpictureshows.blogspot.com/2014/08/where-lee-marvin-pushed-movie-limits.html …
- Darwyn Cooke takes home another Eisner award for Slayground. Congratulations, Darwyn!: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/comics/article/63473-modan-tiwary-saga-los-bros-win-eisner-awards.html …
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I’m waiting for my Dad to get back from his trip to FLA. He’s a big Liam Neeson fan, so I’m gonna treat him. Last film we saw together was Sin City 2, and we both loved it. I have been a Scudder fan since I was a teenager, so I am anxious to see it. I’m in the minority of folks who actually liked 8 Million Ways to Die, with Jeff Bridges as Scudder, but from the trailer it looks obvious this adaptation is gonna stick closer to the source material.
On another topic, I have finished reading all 100 issues of Brian Azzerello’s 100 Bullets. And then I read the 8 issue Lono spinoff. All I can say is… wow. Azzerello is awesome, and the artwork by Eduardo Risso is sublime.
If the storyline just stuck to an old dude giving a person a pistol, ammo, and proof of who screwed up the person’s life, I think I would have got bored rather quickly, but when the “Trust” storyline came into the picture, I got hooked. And the Lono mini-series is a blast; can’t recommend it enough.
I also read Azzerello and Risso’s 90’s mini-series Jonny Double, about an ex-hipster PI. Excellent. Better than a lot of PI novels I’ve read.
Along with Frank Miller’s Sin City stories, 100 Bullets is some of the best hardboiled crime lit I’ve encountered, in ANY medium.
I read the first couple trades of 100 Bullets but I did not finish the series. I can’t remember why, but Borders (back then Borders was still around) probably just stopped carrying them. From reviews I read they thought it went on to long, but overall it was pretty good series. The length probably was not as much issue if you read it after it was all published instead of the reviewer who read each issue monthly.
Sin City too over the top to take seriously, but I’m not sure it was entirely meant to be taken seriously. I did like how Marv was basically a modern version of Conan the Barbarian. I thought that when I first read the series and found out that Frank Miller called him Conan in a trench coat himself. Too bad Miller’s writing when down hill.
This week on eBay a 1966 “For Men Only” magazine went up with a selection from “The Handle” (credited to Stark, of course). One of the auction pictures has the splash page, entitled “Table Stakes Redhead” with a neat illustration featuring Parker and the redhead in the title.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/For-Men-Only-Sept-1966-Table-Stakes-Redhead-Richard-Stark-Lumber-Camp-Nympho-VG-/371146488465?&_trksid=p2056016.m2516.l5255
Matthew: I read it after the series was completed, so I didn’t have to wait month to month. I really was impressed; I thought Azzerello did a fine job of tying it all together. The concepts, especially the “Trust” concept which is based on the real-life “Black Nobility” conspiracy theory, is fascinating. My favorite character was Lono, btw.
I think Sin CIty is supposed to be over the top: Noir at full blast level, or maybe Hyper-Noir. Dwight has always been my favorite SC character. But I like Marv too. Miller’s artwork is so…dark and evocative. I wish he’d do more comics work. After the extremely poor showing of The Spirit and Sin City 2, I don’t know how likely he is to ever get the chance to direct another film. But for what it’s worth, I thought Sin City 2 was freaking awesome.
Patrick: There are scans of some of DEW’s Men’s Magazine layouts on his official site, Donaldwestlake.com. Apparently some of the Parkers were cannibalized to make shorter novellas and were sold to various men’s mags. Some of the artwork they used to complement the stories is awesome, in a 60’s kinda way. ;-)
I ran across the Parker illustrations from the excerpt of “The Rare Coin Score”. Those were pretty laugh out loud funny! I don’t remember Claire having time to take her clothes off and toss a bunch of coins over herself.
Patrick: Sometimes I wonder if most of these illustrators even read the stories they are illustrating. Some of the covers from some Parker reprints don’t have much if anything to do with the story inside. Frustrating–you would think this would be what an editor is for.
I saw Tombstones on Saturday and loved it. My wife was out of commission with a severely sprained ankle and my sons were not available so I dragged my 17 year old daughter to it (trade off is I have to take her to see the horror flick Annabelle in a couple of weeks) and she loved it too. It is a pretty faithful adaptation with a real feel for the Scudder novels of that period. Pretty dark and disturbing at times. It had me on the edge of my seat at times even though I knew what was going to happen. It seems to be getting mostly positive reviews and hopefully will be a moneymaker even though it got clobbered at the box office by the latest post apocalyptic teen flick The Maze Runner. Hopefully they will make another.
Dave, I also liked the 80’s version of 8 Million Ways to Die but only as a fun action thriller of the time. I don’t even think of it as a Scudder adaptation.
That’s awesome to hear, Cluelo. I am looking forward even more now.
I hear you about 8 Million; Scudder in LA?! But, yeah, it’s a great little-known 80’s Postmodern Noir (I believe that’s an accurate decription).
Bridges was in another excelent P.M. Noir in the 80’s: Cutter and Bone. If you run across that, watch it. You’ll thank me for the recommendation
If you get a chance to see Sin City 2, post what you think, please? It did Bupkus at the theater and got mostly negative reviews– but I thought it was excellent.
Cluelo:
My plans to see it tonight were disrupted by illness, so I’m hoping to see it tomorrow.
Glad to hear you liked it. Reading the trades (I like to call them “the trades”) I see that while it didn’t do great, a decent profit is likely based on its budget and so maybe a sequel is possible.
Unfortunately, The Equalizer opens Friday competing for a similar audience, so it could fade away too quickly.
I also saw The Drop today and liked it quite a bit as well. Dennis Lehane wrote the screenplay based on his short story, Animal Rescue. Nice to see multiple films based on the works of top notch crime fiction writers out at the same time.
The next film after Tombstones that I’m itching to see is Mad Max: Fury Road. It stars Tom Hardy, who I believe is in The Drop and played Bane in the last Batman flick, as Max Rockatansky. The trailer looks so good. The Mad Max films were favorites back when I was a kid.
Hardy was excellent in The Drop. For me, he is an actor who does not disappoint. If you have not seen The Take, the British miniseries based on Martina Cole’s book, find it and watch it ASAP. Hardy plays Freddie, about as vile a character as you will find onscreen anywhere.
In addition to the Mad Max reboot, Hardy also has the lead role in the upcoming version of Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44. Looking forward to both.
I’ll check The Take out, as well as the book it was based on. We like a lot of the same stuff, as you know from some of our email corespondance.
I really enjoyed Tombstones. I thought TJ was in it more than the novels, yet less annoying (I’m not a fan of the character). Some great 70’s style filmmaking at times.
John, this is just my personal opinion, but the 70’s was THE decade. So much great music and films and of course books. The late 60’s started the tidal wave and it seemed to slowly dry up in the early 80’s.
Cluelo: I have no idea if the prequel will be worth a damn, but The Conjuring was one of the best horror flicks I’ve seen in ages. There’s at least a chance that Annabelle won’t be as painful as you seem to think.
Really? I saw The Conjuring and didn’t find it that scary. Then again, it’s a rare horror film that spooks me as I was raised on them–apparently my mother, who is a huge horror fan, didn’t find it odd to let a seven or eight year old watch things like The Exorcist and Jaws.
Sinister was fairly decent–the soundtrack was really eerie. A good horror flick has to have a good soundtrack. Imagine Jaws or Psycho without the signature Williams or Hermann scores.
A bud of mine invited me over to watch what he claimed was the most uncomfortable horror film he’d seen in ages; it was called My Name is A by Anonymous. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1701224/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 Based on a real case. It was quite a unique film. At times it seemed like an overly ambitious art school assignment, but there were moments that were uncomfortable to watch, and the music was very bizarre. If you’re into the mainstrem stuff like The Purge and the latest Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, and don’t like to stray from tried and true formulae, don’t check it out, but if you like “different” types of horror, more individualistic, check it out. Also, The Theater Bizzare was good in that kind of way too.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1763316/
As I promised, I went to see Annabelle with my horror movie loving daughter yesterday. I liked it. I think The Conjuring was the better film but I thought Annabelle was actually scarier. My daughter thinks The Conjuring was better AND scarier.
I’m a middle of the road horror movie fan but tend to watch a lot of them because of my daughter. Not trying to turn this into a horror site but two films I saw fairly recently and found to be very good are Silent House (starring Elizabeth Olsen) and the French thriller High Tension. Both high on the creepy scale IMO.
It’s an open thread! Don’t worry about going off topic.
I’m waiting for video on Annabelle, because there are several other movies I’d like to see on the big screen over that one. But I’ll see it eventually.
Yep. The wife (a horror fan) and I both loved The Conjuring. Well acted and paced, and I loved the throwback ’70s feel of it.
I’ll keep an eye out for your recommendations. We’re always looking for good horror movies, but so many of them are bad bad bad.
O.K. My Pops and I saw Tombstones earlier this evening. His reaction: Awesome. But then, he’d probably enjoy a film about Liam Neeson reciting the Manhattan phone book. He just thinks Neeson is the man, so to speak.
Myself? Well, I think a good word to sum up the film is: solid. It’s a solidly made and acted film. I haven’t re-read the novel in years, but other than a few alterations, it seemed a fairly straight-forward adaptation of the book.
O.K. If you compare the Bridges film 8 Million Ways to Die and Tombstones, Tombstones is definitely more the truer adaptation of a Scudder novel. But I have to say 8 Million is the better film.
Yes. 8 Million was more… ah, how to articulate…jazzy, for wont of a better definition. It seemed more improvisational, like when Bridges and Garcia are eating Sno-Cones, and they get face to face, and you can just FEEL the tension. And from what I’ve read about 8 Million, that was all improv-ed, and what’s more, Bridges said the studio execs re-cut the film on director Hal Ashby and chose inferior cuts of certain scenes.
Tombstones is a very good crime film. Not great, knock the ball out of Yankee Stadium sensational, but very darn good. Solid. 8 Million just took more liberties with the source material and was directed and acted in a more risky, experimental manner. The ending of Tombstones was quite good, with the juxtaposition of the 12 AA steps with the violent conclusion, and was even a little experimental with the freeze frame editing of the sequence. But on the whole I’d say: If you’re a fan of the Scudder novels, as I am and many of us here are, you will not be disappointed. It’s worth the 12 bucks.
Man, I can’t read these threads. Now there are like 4 movies and a TV series I need to add to my already overflowing watch list.