Unless an Occupy Comics Movement has been stealthily plotting and rears its head at the opening of The Avengers tomorrow, we can write off the effort to bring some justice and remuneration to Jack Kirby just now. Artist Kirby, any major fan’ll tell you, is of artistic import at least on par with Stan...
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  This was a strange year for the Best Picture nominees. Seven and a half of the nine nominees are period pieces, with only The Descendants and half of Midnight in Paris taking place in the present. Two of the movies are about silent cinema (Hugo and The Artist), two of the movies take...
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Nearly 30 years before George Lucas produced the story of the Tuskegee Airmen as the feature film Red Tails, award-winning Detroit filmmaker Ted Talbert told the story of World War II’s African-American aerial fighters in a homegrown documentary. Talbert, who landed a spot in the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame for docs like this...
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Local film lovers got a major shock on Wednesday, when various media reports surfaced that the Maple Art Theatre in Bloomfield Hills would be going dark by the month’s end. The rumor, that the Maple’s owners, the indie-flick specialist Landmark chain, had lost its lease, was confirmed with a press release: “Unfortunately, we have...
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Now in it’s fifth year of operation; the Detroit Film Critics Society, of which I and my friend Jeff Meyers are proud members, have released their nominations. It’s an intriguing list, in what was a somewhat unusual year, with fewer obvious, big budget favorites than is often the case. Many smaller films garnered acclaim;...
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A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas Kal Penn, John Cho, Thomas Lennon, Neil Patrick Harris Rated: R Run Time: 90 min Grade B- The Harold and Kumar franchise is about as rude, outrageous and unrepentantly sacrilegious as mainstream American movies get, at least until Trey Parker and Matt Stone make another picture. Here’s...
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Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 Director: Goran Olsson Run time: 100 min Grade B- Just when you thought that we’ve explored every nook cranny and walk in closet of the chaotic, exhilarating cultural upheavals of mid-twentieth century America, there comes a fascinating scrapbook of odds and ends delivered from the unlikeliest of places; Sweden. Yes,...
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Talking Ibogaine with the Dimitri Mugianis the self-styled Bwiti shaman featured in the film "Dangerous With Love"
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There’s a hoary old legend, famous in fanboy circles, that sometime in the spring of 1961 Martin Goodman, publisher of tiny, struggling Marvel Comics played a friendly round of golf with some of his rivals over at DC. No one remembers who won on the links, but allegedly Goodman got a chapped ass from...
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Day 7 – Wednesday Morgan Spurlock’s “Comic-Con: Episode IV – A Fan’s Hope,” turns out to be better than I expected. Far from a snarky smackdown on the geeks and freaks who descend on this San Diego festival every year, Spurlock offers an affectionate look at those who attend. From a young geek who...
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