snap judgments

I’m kind of starting to enjoy these quick bits of furious webcam-ing.  This is really what I do on my ten minute break at work if I’m not hungry or aren’t reading anything.  I set up (harder than it looks as the video is so dark), record, check levels, edit as much as I can with Windows Movie Maker and then head back out to sell more books.  It’s kind of fun and gets me thinking again.  If there are at all entertaining, keep telling me and I’ll keep filming bad videos from the stockroom.

Last year, I was lucky enough to be on a movie set for a particular project I’ll eventually be free to speak about.  Let’s just put it this way;  I am legally obligated not to say a thing about what I did, who I saw and what I heard and if that doesn’t make you want to know what it is, you have no idea how much I want to tell you all.

Enough about me.

So, on set, one of the extras next to me is this absolutely fascinating guy I can’t remember the name of.  What he does and did is far more important.  He trains military soldiers to go to Iraq and protect themselves and others in a hostile urban environment.  Everything from procedures on how to handle a suicide bomber, how to clear a road efficiently and quickly as possible, enduring interrogations from the enemy, even how to survive in the sweltering desert and get to safety.  He told it all casually, as if his preparation wasn’t saving lives and making stronger people.  His shoulders were huge, his jaw square and he was funny as hell.

And he wanted to be a Green Lantern.

The moment comics came up in casual conversation, he just lit up like he recited the Oath.  He’d been reading Green Lantern comics since he was a kid and adored John Stewart.  He could tell you anything about the character and we talked over recent story lines with great enthusiasm.  At that time, he talked about the movie possibility and while he didn’t know the particulars, he knew he’d be first in the casting call line the moment he got word one.  You know, if he wasn’t off training in the middle of the desert.

Comics are great, people.  Anyone and everyone can be a fan of smoe odd facet or another for a million and one reasons.  The guy on set was amazing, in both his acting career and in his day job and when I heard news that the Green Lantern movie seems to be set to film next Spring, I thought back to that guy.  Sure, hal Jordan seems to be the main named dropped, but if there’s room for a John Stewart, you’ll have a very brave and awesome guy front and center.

from Newsarama:

DiDio asked Jann Jones what’s coming up for the Johnny DC line, and she plugged Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the Eighth Grade, a six-issue mini coming “hopefully in the fall” by the creators of the “Kids Gravity” series that originated In Disney Adventures.

Thank you, DC.

A really cheap link joke, brought to you by Wikipedia.

So we may not be Golden Apple or Mile High, but I have to say that Metro Entertainment gets a fair amount of celebrity customers (one of whom’s going to be writing Amazing Spider-Man soon but won’t be named until I get his permission). And while I may have shown Crispin Glover where the Daniel Clowes comics were and saw Neil Patrick Harris with who I thought was his hetero-life mate (boy, was I not surprised!) shopping for indy books, most of the real celebrities have been the little guy.

So when someone slyly pointed to a copy of Absolute Watchmen on our sheves and mouthed the words ‘I’m working on that’ to my co-worker Ish, we nearly broke out the champagne. Yep, a lovely couple (or brother and sister or good friend and good friend; after NPH, I’ve learned to be wary) from Sony came in and secretly admitted that they indeed were working on Doctor Manhattan for the upcoming film of Watchmen. The rather lovely woman had done a test print apparently and that got them in the job. On a break back home in sunny Santa Barbara, they’d be due back for work in Vancouver soon but were nice enough to stop by and totally thrill us with little to no info on the movie.

Even my ‘Blink once for yes, twice for no!’ tactic didn’t work! They did say that the movie was incredible (well… they do pay your checks) and that the comic was practically being used as storyboards for scenes in the flick. When asked about the incredible layers of complexity the book has, what with the prose, the comic within the comic and all the other things online naysayers have been touting as impossible to film, the conversation grew interesting.

Apparently, the Tales of the Black Freighter is mentioned within the script, but as to exactly how it’s incorporated into the film, he suggested that there might be different versions of the movie.

I continued to pump them for info that they simply couldn’t give out, but at least seemed to impress them with how much I knew about the book. The woman who’d made the test film of Dr. Manhattan seemed surprised and asked if I knew this much about all of the comic we sold.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes I do.”

Ever since I was a little girl, I had dreamed of my own Klingon Wedding. Oh, you think I’m joking? The bat’lehs, the blood wine, the big pointy shoes… I could see myself battling my future husband then joining forces to send the Gods into hiding. But my new Mister persuaded me otherwise and he had a fine point; as much as I think the Klingon ceremony really is rather pretty and meaningful… there has to be a limit, you know? Believe it or not, there are some situations you have to sort of man-up to and take with a modicum of decorum and solemnity… and science-fiction swords don’t fit in there.  So we had a lovely ceremony sans ritual weaponry, but I threw in my touches where I could.

Because really, the ceremony is equal parts who you are, where you came from and where you’re going. It’s a chance to stand up and get to the basics of you, the person you love and your future. There’s no magazine for that, no wedding planner with all the answers, no monetary value on creating a family, creating a legacy.

So, I have to ask: Dinah.

I mean, really?

I understand your viewpoint, that your inviting a lot of people from ‘work’ and have a lot of secrets that simply need to be kept. I think the ceremony in the JLA cave is a great idea, very touching and important. But really. Ollie was right; you look like a fetish ball. This is not the foot you want to start on for the first day of the rest of your lives. While you simply glow in the moment thanks to the marvelous work of Amanda Conner, as bright and as beautiful as every girl on the cover of Modern Bride since the dawn of time, that dress (or lack thereof) just isn’t sending the right message.

Dinah Lance did not get married, Black Canary did. She didn’t marry Olliver Queen, she married Green Arrow. And all the danger, lies, death and adventure that brings. Honestly, I was all for this wedding as DC doesn’t have the history of heroes-marrying-heroes that Marvel employs, but as a wise man once said: “Not like this!”  In trying to make this a moment for heroes, it just didn’t include the man behind the mask.

Or at least, didn’t get a chance to so far.

And you wonder why you had to stab him in the neck on your honeymoon.

Yeah, we’re in chrysalis mode here at Snap Judgments, big changes coming soon to layout and whatnot. Change is good!

But not some change. At the store, we try to be careful on what kids can and cannot get their grubby little hands on when it comes to common perceptions of ‘inappropriate material’. When we get the more mature graphic novels (loosely defined as a store policy regarding extreme graphic violence or boobies), we slip them in a bag and put a label that says customers must be over 16 or 18 to view and/or purchase. Yeah, not everyone does this and it’s a little awkward for people wanting to browse through certain Vertigo titles or art books or manga. but it’s better to be safe than sorry with parents.

So when I see Y the Last Man, a book we bag up due to mature themes and nudity and sex and a bunch of things that mothers can get riled up about, right next to the young adult section, I feel weird. I mean, Minx, yes! Perfect! But… Y the Last Man? Really?

Ah, not like Borders doesn’t have worse in just as close a reach to kids or that there’s a chance anyone’s going to go sue them over content. Just weird to have that sudden moment of self-doubt and work-induced censorship at a store that doesn’t have to follow the same rules we do.

So, Atomic Comics had this little news thing on Dark Knight casting and how Anthony Michael Hall has been “sworn to secrecy” over his role in the upcoming movie.  Now, thanks to how freakin’ AWESOME the ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com campaign was, I feel moved to start the guessing game.

Remember folks:  this is the way to incite your audience.  By making them think. 

According to the Atomic Comics article, Mr. Hall says that his scenes will be filmed in August with Morgan Freeman “implying his role will have more to do with the business side of Bruce Wayne’s life than the jumping-around-dark-alleys part.”  Makes sense, I mean, they’re going to have the Joker and the start or at least the tip of the iceberg of Two-Face.  But that doesn’t mean we’re not looking at a villain here.  My early nomination goes to:

 The Riddler.

So, someone on the theauthority community on livejournal posts a review they did of Midnighter #6, which they say reads like yaoi AU.

One of their complaints (which they admit is nitpicking) is that the narrative is peppered with blatant disgust by the surrounding samurai class characters that Japanese Midnighter is in love with a man.  Me, I figured that was going to be par for the course, right?

Turns out I’m wrong and that “one of the fundamental aspects of samurai life was the emotional and sexual bond cultivated between an older warrior and a younger apprentice, a love for which the Japanese have many names, as many perhaps as the Eskimo have for snow.”

While I’m still confused at the idea of an Elseworlds Wildstorm story and don’t think that Midnighter and Apollo are really all that made for yaoi, a genre that to me means a story with a homosexual relationship primarily written for women by women, I’ll pick up the issue and see what the issue says.

I’m just in it for the kicks.  And explosions.