Various and Sundry

Scorsese Follows up Regarding Marvel

Last month, I wrote about how accomplished filmmaker Martin Scorsese termed the many, many Marvel films as “not cinema.” His colleague Francis Ford Coppola joined in, going further in calling the films “despicable.” Superhero fandom has not been kind. (Thankfully, some superhero actors keep on being superheroic, so there’s that). On Monday, Martin Scorsese wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times about the interview that kicked this all off — and where he…

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Various and Sundry

Superheroics Outside the MCU

What with Marvel movies on the mind of late, just in case you didn’t see this make the rounds this past week, Chris Evans, aka the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Captain America, does some amazing stuff off-camera. What kind of stuff? How about giving back to his childhood theater? And then there’s the whole personal anecdote about dealing with anxiety and depression. Good casting, Marvel. Good casting.

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Various and Sundry

Coppola Channels Daffy Duck, Finds MCU “Despicable”

Francis Ford Coppola has joined his colleague Martin Scorsese in dismissing superhero films in general and Marvel in particular, calling them “despicable.” Rosy Cordero covers it in Entertainment Weekly and David Crow has a nice contextual take over at Den of Geek. Sigh. Much like Bugs Bunny, superhero films might not be considered “high art,” but they’re not going away anytime soon. Besides which, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar already covered this: he’s not wrong, but he’s not…

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Various and Sundry

“Comic Book Movies” and “High Art”

Just last month I was musing about how, even in the face of “nerddom’s” ascension in all aspects of pop culture, people still feel the need to belittle or otherwise distance themselves and their work from science fiction as if the genre itself was wildly radioactive. Now, in the face of a more meditative and gritty look at the origins of Joker –with more than a few homages to Martin Scorsese’s films– Scorsese himself felt…

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Various and Sundry

Say, what about the Marvel movie music anyway?

So, I talked about comics and Captain Marvel specifically so far this week… and that got me thinking more about the Marvel Cinematic Universe and then I thought of “Every Frame a Painting’s” critique of Marvel’s movie music. You may recall me raving about the YouTube series on the occasion of its end, but in any case, this approximately 14-minute video gives you a bit to ponder.

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Various and Sundry Writing

Letting Go of the Canon

This is the 11th entry in a surprisingly long series of posts about Star Trek’s future and its fandom called Crisis of Infinite Star Treks. Yes, we have gone to 11. Asher Elbein’s excellent piece in The Atlantic is worth reading just to consider the nature of pop culture –our modern mythology– and our ownership thereto. I’ve included it in the Crisis of Infinite Star Treks series because reading it helped distill two issues: If a ‘Star…

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Raves

Daredevil on Netflix Might be for you if…

In honor of the impending Season 2 of Daredevil on Netflix this Friday, I’m going to re-posting a list I put on Facebook after my wife and I finally got around to seeing it last Summer. For those of you wondering if you should jump in, you should definitely start with Season 1… and I stand by all these observations. Warning: Potential Spoilers for people who want to go in with no expectations… Daredevil on…

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