It’s Time to name the Dark Age -- and let the New Modern Age Begin!

By Barry Dutter

The Modern Age of comics has gone on long enough. I say it's time for a new age in comics.
But what to call the current one -- and how to tell exactly where it began?
Earlier comic ages were easier to identify. The Golden Age obviously began with the publication of Action Comics #1 in 1938. The Silver Age began in1956 with the arrival of the new Flash in Showcase #4.
There is some controversy about the exact beginning of the Bronze Age which came next, but most historians agree it came around 1970. (Certainly the departure of Jack Kirby from Marvel in that year seems like a logical starting point for the era.)
The Copper Age is said to have started in 1984, but I'm not clear what exactly separates comics from the Copper Age with those from the Bronze Age, other than better paper and higher prices.
The story quality of most Copper Age comics was quite low, though the era did produce a handful of titles that are considered high watermarks for the medium: Frank Miller's Daredevil, Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, Dark Knight, Batman Year One and Watchmen.
The Modern Age began in 1991, and again, I'm not clear on the difference between a comic from 1990 and 1991 and why they need to be sectioned off into different categories.
It has been 20 years now since the start of the so-called Modern Age, and that is way too long for one era to have lasted. Any comics fan can see that a comic from 2011 looks nothing like a comic from 1991. There have been huge breakthroughs in printing, graphics, paper quality, etc.
Clearly there needs to be marked a definite end to the Modern Age to differentiate books from the 90s from the ones that are published today. In order to make that happen, first we will have to rename the Modern Age, so as not to appear foolish.
Let's face it, it is next to impossible to define any age as it is happening. It makes sense to me to use "Modern Age" as a temporary name for any current era until that era passes and one is able to look back in hindsight and coin a name that truly defines the era.
In the case of the Modern Age, the name that seems to sum it up best is the "Dark Age." Marvel and DC, the industry leaders, took just about all of their characters (even the once-light-hearted Spider-Man) into darker territory. "Grim and Gritty" became by-woods of the day, inspired by the success of Tim Burton's 1989 movie Batman. The era was dominated by anti-heroes like the Punisher (in three monthly books!), Lobo, and Wolverine.

Marvel introduced harder-edged versions of all their major heroes: Captain America (USAgent) Iron Man (War Machine), Thor (Thunderstrike) and yes, good ol' Spidey (Venom).
Over at DC, Batman was injured and replaced with a darker, grittier hero named Azrael. Superman was killed and replaced by 4 different heroes, two of whom turned out to be super-villains (the Cyborg Superman and the Eradicator). Green Lantern, aka Hal Jordan, went insane and turned into a villain named Parallax.
Even Wonder Woman was replaced by Artemis, a bad-ass Amazon who had a much tougher attitude that our fair Diana.

Image Comics launched in the early 1990s, and it seemed that just about every Image hero had claws like Wolverine or carried guns like the Punisher. Marvel, DC and Image seemed to be in a contest to see who could create the most characters` with the words "Dark," "Blood," and "Death" in their names.
Sales reached an all-time high, but story quality reached an all-time low. Of all the thousands of comics that were published in the 90s, you would be hard-pressed to find any that were any good. Truly the 1990s were a very Dark Age indeed. (To any true comics fan, the waste of paper and talent would almost inspire one to call it the Tragic Age, but that name might be too depressing!)

With the arrival of the 2000s, comics began to change. It's difficult to pinpoint any single event that brought about the change. One might point to the arrival of Joe Quesada as Editor-In-Chief of Marvel in the year 2000. Marvel had grown stale and complacent in the 90s, but Quesada brought with him a willingness to try new things and think outside the box when it came to hiring new creators.
The period from 2000 on has proven to be one of the most experimental in the company's history.
Under Quesada's guidance, bold innovations occurred at Marvel, including the “Origin” of Wolverine -- a story that most thought could never be told. Daring new writers were brought in from the worlds of film, TV and books, which was a welcome change from the 90s Marvel trend of hiring whatever editor who happened to be next door to write your books, in the hopes that he might throw you some writing work as well.

Not everything Marvel has done in the 90s has been successful -- in fact, Quesada himself was responsible for one of the most controversial stories, One More Day, in which Spider-Man makes a deal with Mephisto to save the life of Aunt May. This story was almost universally derided by fans, yet Quesada stands behind his work.
One might not like everything Marvel has done under Quesda's reign, but one certainly must give him credit for taking risks.
In September, 2011, DC won big sales and much acclaim for their relaunch of 52 titles with all-new number ones. Some might see that as the perfect spot to mark the beginning of a new age, just as DC's relaunch of their super-hero line in the mid-1950s marked the dawn of the Silver` Age.

But to call 2011 the start of a new age to means ignore everything has happened over the past ten years. Certainly one must give credit to the great strides that were made by all the major companies to make up for the creative nadir that was the 90s. (I'm sure that in 1993, creating a super-hero named "Grunge" seemed like a good idea, but now it seems hopelessly dated.)
Maybe it's a good idea to just give every decade a new name from now on. If so, what would we call 2000 to 2010? The Recovery Age? The Reconstruction? The Age of Rebirth?
It's hard to find one name that sums up all the elements that defined the medium in the 2000s. It was a decade where many exciting new publishers came up like IDW, DDP and Dynamite Entertainment, offering comics that were in many way superior to the output of Marvel and DC.
Perhaps the biggest trend of the decade was companies creating multiple variant covers for just about every comic, but somehow “The Variant Age” just doesn't quite seem to say it all.
Maybe one could follow Marvel's lead and refer to it as The Heroic Age, but that seems kind of vague. Besides, in an industry dominated by super-heroes, couldn't any age technically be called the Heroic Age?
I don't have all the answers, but I do think something needs to be done soon. Every time I see a comic from after 1991 defined as “Modern Age,” I find myself thinking that it just doesn't feel right to lump 20 years worth of books into one age. It may be too soon to name the decade from 2000-2010, but at the very least, I think it's time the dreadful 90s got firmly labeled and separated from what came after.
Clearly, the answer is right in front of us. There's no point in denying what has been so obvious for so long. I say, let the Dark Age (1991-99) be named!
Be glad that it's over, but let's acknowledge that it existed. Only by defining this era and branding it thus can we be certain not to make the same mistakes again.

WHEN IT COMES TO SONG LYRICS, EVEN THE EXPERTS GET IT WRONG

 By Barry Dutter

There are a lot of web sites out there that claim to offer the correct lyrics to all your favorite songs. Problem is, a lot of times, these so-called experts get the lyrics wrong.
I’m not sure why this happens. You would think that if you had a web site whose sole purpose was to provide the words to popular songs, that you would actually have some way of verifying if the lyrics were correct. Sometimes it seems like the "experts" get their lyrics the old-fashioned way -- by listening closely to the song and trying to figure out what the singer is saying.
In other words, they are guessing. Hard to believe we live in a time where all the information in recorded history is available at the touch of a button, but some jerk with a CD player is still trying to figure out exactly what Beyonce is saying in her songs.
How do I know they are getting it wrong? Because the sites contradict each other. That would not be possible if everyone was providing the correct lyrics. Even more amazing, sometimes multiple sites get the same lyric wrong in different ways. Not only are they guessing, but they’re clearly making stuff up.
My favorite example is from the movie FLASHDANCE. The movie is about a Pittsburgh girl who works as a welder by day and a dancer at night. One monster hit from the soundtrack, “Maniac,” starts off, “Just a Steeltown girl on a Saturday night…”
The first web site I checked incorrectly identified the lyric as, “Just a small town girl on a Saturday night…” Really? Pittsburgh? A small town?
The next web site I checked had it even more wrong. They said the line was “Just a still town girl on a Saturday night…”
A still town girl? What the hell is that? This girl never sits still! Did they not see the movie? She dances on a  chair and dumps a bucket of water on herself. She's the exact opposite of a still town girl! And if they were referring to the town, I think “still’ is hardly the word one would use to describe Pittsburgh!
Another 80s classic, “Jessie’s Girl,”  is perhaps best-remembered for being the only song in history to use the word “moot.” But according to one web site, the lyric actually goes, “I wanna tell her that I love her but the point is probably mute.” Really? Mute? So no one can hear it? I know this is just a typo, but it is a funny one.
Other examples: In her song “Bad Romance,” is Lady Gaga singing about her man’s “vertigo stick” or his “vertical stick?” It depends on which web site you refer to.
In Katy Perry’s “California Girls,” she sings about how she loves listening to “Snoop Doggy Dogg on the stereo.” But according to one expert web site, she is singing about “doing the dog on the stereo.” (Huh?)
Pink’s recent hit “Perfect” has one line that is so confusing, virtually every single lyrics site suggests a different line for what she is saying. As near as I can tell, the correct lyric is, “We change ourselves and we do it all the time.” But among the suggested lyrics from other “expert” web sites are: “Exchange ourselves and we do it all the time.” “Strange ourselves and we do it all the time.” “Estrange ourselves and we do it all the time.” “Stringe ourselves and we do it all the time.” (Stringe? Now they’re just making up words!)
Another Pink song, “Raise Your Glass,” contains a reference to a “penny snatcher” in the chorus. But according to several sites, the correct lyric is “panty snatcher.” Here we see how getting one word wrong can change the whole meaning of a lyric. There’s a big difference between snatching a penny and snatching someone’s panties…
In her smash hit, “Rolling in the Deep,” Adelle sings, “I will lay your shit bare,” but several web sites question whether she is actually saying, “I will lay your ship bare.”But if she is saying "ship" why is the word bleeped on some radio stations?
One of the most popular bands for people to mishear is REM. From their 80s hit, “It’s the End of the World As We Know It," the line “dont misserve your own needs” becomes “dummy serve your own needs” on one authoritative web site.
You could go on any one of these “expert” web sites and look up lyrics to any one of your favorite songs, and odds are, they got some wrong. It would be nice if these web sites actually cared about putting the correct lyrics out there, but it seems all they really care about is trying to sell you ring tones and other crap.
The Internet is a great source of information, but when it comes to song lyrics,someone is clearly not doing their homework.
I could go on and on about this, but I’m sure my complaints would fall on deaf ears.
I guess you could say my point is probably “mute.”

PLEASE, GOD -- MAKE ADAM SANDLER STOP!

Forbes Magazine just released their list of the highest paid actors from the past year. Leonardo DiCaprio and  Johnny Depp held the top two spots. But the biggest surprise to me was the actor who came in at number three: Adam Sandler.
That blows my mind, considering Adam Sandler hasn’t made a funny movie in over a decade. (It’s been a long time since THE WATER BOY!)
Somehow, he continues to crank out two or three movies a year, tricking the American public into thinking the movies will be good, based on a trailer with a crazy concept and one or two semi-funny lines in it.
And the American public continues to buy it. Essentially, the film-goers of the world are financing an annual three-month vacation to Hawaii for Sandler and all his pals. While Sandler and his friends are there, they make a movie -- usually an unfunny one with a weak concept and a sappy message.
But somehow, just about every movie the guy makes is a blockbuster.
I really don’t understand it. Of all the comics who ever left SNL and tried to make it in the movies, Sandler is arguably the most successful -- after Eddie Murphy. But Murphy seems to be slowing down in recent years, while Sandler shows no signs of stopping. Sandler not only stars in his own movies, he also produces lame movies for other comics like David Spade, Rob Schneider and Kevin James.
Sandler has had at least twelve movies gross over $100 million. How many comics can say they’ve done that? Bill Murray has four. Will Ferrell has five. Dan Ackroyd has  three. Eddie Murphy has 14, but that’s counting the four SHREK movies. Take away the cartoons, and Murphy only has 10. Again discounting the Shreks, Mike Myers has three. That means Sandler has had more top-grossing live-action movies than any former SNL star.
And most comedy fans would agree that Murphy in his prime was funnier than Sandler ever was.
I just don’t get Sandler’s appeal. His first couple of starring roles had a few laughs --I smirked at BILLY MADISON, and I actually liked HAPPY GILMORE and THE WEDDING SINGER.
But I haven’t paid to see a Sandler movie since then. I will sometimes catch one of his newer movies on home video, and then I always wonder what the fuss was about.
Sandler's movie career started quietly. His first few films made money, but they weren't blockbusters. His attempt to do an action comedy (BULLETPROOF) was a rare misfire.
It was THE WATER BOY in 1998 that really put Sandler over the top. That was the one where Sandler took his “geeky guy with anger issues” persona and figured out how to maximize it for the biggest box office. (My take on that one: a golfer who is angry and takes his aggression out on the golf course -- like Happy Gilmore -- is funny. A football player who is angry and takes his aggression out on his opponents on the field -- not so much.)
Most of Sandler’s movies since then have been variations on that same persona. (ANGER MANAGEMENT, anyone?) As long as he sticks to broad comedies with high concepts, Sandler’s movies make money. When he deviates from the formula and tries to do something on a smaller scale, it always bombs (SPANGLISH, FUNNY PEOPLE.) Since THE WATERBOY, Sandler has only had one high-concept movie that  failed to connect with the American public: LITTLE NICKY, where he played the son of Satan.
I don’t know why Sandler bugs me so much. I guess it’s because his movies are lazy. It’s like he’s not really trying very hard. He’s done three remakes in the last 10 years. Sometimes he remakes movies so obscure, people don’t even realize they’re watching a remake. (JUST GO WITH IT was a redo of a Walter Matthau/Goldie Hawn vehicle from the early 70s.) Sometimes he remakes a movie that was done right the first time (THE LONGEST YARD).
Sometimes he doesn’t even have a concept -- he just throws a bunch of comics in one movie and hopes it comes out funny. (What was the concept of GROWN-UPS, anyway? That 40-year-old guys can ride a water slide?)
Part of Sandler’s winning formula involves working with the same people over and over again. Dennis Dugan has directed 7 of Sandler’s movies, including BIG DADDY and YOU DON’T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN.
Sandler often uses the same writers, like SNL vet Robert Smigel, David Wain, and Steve Koren. Maybe that’s the real secret of Sandler’s success -- he sticks with his friends. Perhaps that’s why he’s been able to succeed, while so many far funnier SNL vets have failed. He’s found just the right combination of staying loyal to his old SNL and comedy club pals, while at the same time working with successful, acclaimed filmmakers like Judd Apatow and James L. Brooks.
Sandler is intensely loyal to his people. He always tries to find work for his old SNL cohorts (like Schneider, Dana Carvey, Tim Meadows, Colin Quinn, and Norm McDonald) in supporting roles in his movies or in movies of their own.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he uses all the same cinematographers on his movies, the same cameramen, the same crew, the same craft services guys. There may be hundreds of people working in Hollywood who depend on Sandler to make a living. This may be another reason why he keeps cranking out hit movies -- he's too big to fail. He's a one-man film industry. He's figured out that the people in Hollywood who tried to make it alone failed, but by surrounding himself with a team that he trusts, he's able to do what no one other has ever done.
To put Sandler’s astounding success in perspective, consider this: Chris Rock has struggled for years to find a successful starring movie role. Rock’s solo movies are always box office disappointments. His two biggest hits are GROWN-UPS and THE LONGEST YARD -- both Sandler vehicles where Rock was given a costarring role.

Most people would agree that Chris Rock is funnier than Adam Sandler. And yet Rock has not been able to tap into Sandler’s winning formula for making hit comedies.
It’s like Sandler  has discovered the secret for making smash movies. Take dumb premise, just add water and former second-banana SNL stars.
Most superstar comedians have an arc to their careers --- they start out red hot, then over time, they fade in popularity as the public grows tired of them. Gradually their movies make less and less money. Maybe they start doing straight to video movies, a la Schneider. Maybe they do sitcoms, like David Spade.
But somehow, the public has never grown tired of Sandler, and it seems they never will. At this point, it seems Sandler may accomplish the impossible -- he may make more hit movies than any comic who has ever lived -- all of it done without being very funny or very original. (There are echoes of Jerry Lewis’ man-child persona in much of Sandler’s work.)
Worst of all, many of Sandler’s comedies now get very preachy and include “messages” and “life lessons.“ Even when Sandler has a can’t-miss comedy premise -- like a TV remote control that controls real life, as in CLICK -- he manages to blow it by making the movie take a surprisingly maudlin turn about 2/3 of the way through.
Sandler has a new movie coming out this summer -- JACK AND JILL --- in which he plays (wait for the high concept!) both a brother and his annoying twin sister. It looks like his worst movie yet. My prediction? It will make over $100 million, and pave the way for decades of bad Sandler movies to come.
There is no stopping the man. Sandler may not really be the son of Satan, but he seems to have made some kind of deal with the devil!

My COWBOYS & ALIENS review

COWBOYS & ALIENS is such a great title, the movie doesn’t have to be good. People will see it based on the concept alone.

This movie could almost be called GENERIC SUMMER MOVIE. It has all the most popular elements of every summer movie from the past 30 years -- it's loud, it has aliens, it has Harrison Ford, it's based on a comic book -- what more do you need?

COWBOYS & ALIENS is basically plotless and doesn‘t make a lot of sense, like all summer action movies. I really don't have much to say about it. The special effects are impressive, and the aliens are cool. I guess it's a harmless way to spend two hours.

I usually hate it when a British actor tries to do an American accent, but Daniel Craig acquits himself well here.

I saw the movie in 2-D but I felt like I should have been wearing 3-D glasses because things kept reaching out at the screen at me.

I guess to me the most interesting thing about seeing the movie was seeing the preview for the movie BATTLESHIP (based on the old kids' game from the 1970s.) BATTLESHIP the movie looks way different than anyone thought it would. It actually looks like it should be called TRANSFORMERS 4. I still don’t want to see it, but at least it doesn’t have that douche-bag Shia LaBouf in it!

My review of the CAPTAIN AMERICA movie - SPOILERS!

I’ve been reading CAPTAIN AMERICA comics for about 40 years, and I have to say, I was disappointed by the new CAPTAIN AMERICA movie. ( I know -- big surprise, right?)
Mostly I was upset by too many changes to the comic book continuity. My feeling is that half the changes worked and half of them didn’t, and the half that didn’t work were so vastly different from the comic, they were a huge distraction to me.
Among the big changes: 1) the government initially using Cap as a propaganda tool instead of as the Super-Soldier he was created to be; 2) the origin of the Red Skull; 3) the relationship between Cap and Bucky; 4) the relationship between Cap and Peggy Carter; 5) the role of Tony Stark’s father in Cap’s origin; 6) the relationship between Cap & Nick Fury; 7) the origin of HYDRAl and 8) the way Cap gets frozen in ice. (I’m not giving anything away -- anyone who has read a Marvel Comic in the last 5 decades knows that Cap gets frozen in ice at the end of WWII!)
My biggest problem is that the movie doesn’t show Cap fighting any Nazis. This was apparently done in the name of political correctness, which I still don’t understand. The filmmakers didn’t want kids to know what Nazis were? They were afraid if offending Germans? This summer’s X-MEN FIRST CLASS had scenes of Nazis torturing Magnetos parents and then Magneto roaming the world as a Nazi-hunter years later. Why is it that it’s okay to show Nazis in the X-Men movies but not in CAPTAIN AMERICA -- a movie set in World War II?
I really wanted to see Cap punching out the real Hitler -- not some goofy Hitler impersonator in a stage show. Having Cap fight the hordes of HYDRA makes this movie look a lot like a GI JOE sequel. (Try watching GI JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA just before you watch the CAP movie, and you’ll see some awkward similarities.)
Chris Evans does a nice job as Cap, overcoming any lingering ill will fans may have had toward his cocky Human Torch from the FANTASTIC FOUR films. He must be a better actor than I thought he was, because not once in this movie did I think of the Human Torch.
The love story in this movie doesn’t work at all, mostly because the Peggy Carter character is a little too modern. A hard-hitting British woman who seems to be in some high-ranking position in the America military -- this character would not have existed in World War II. This is a bigger fantasy than even CAPTAIN AMERICA himself. I’m sorry, I just didn’t buy it.
I realize the filmmakers had to get a love story in there somewhere, but this one really felt forced. To me, a far more interesting story would have been if Peggy was a girl from Cap’s old neighborhood in Brooklyn, maybe she loved him when she was skinny, then she sees him after his transformation and has to deal with her scrawny boyfriend becoming a super-hero!
Hugo Weaving does a fine job as the Red Skull, even if you never get to see him interact with Hitler and you’re never quite sure exactly what his plans are. (At least the Skull gets to be German in this film, not like the Italian Red Skull from the lame 1990 Cap movie!) As far as I can piece it together, the Skull hopes to harness the power of the Cosmic Cube, the mightiest weapon on Earth, to… uh… blow up some American cities? I liked it better in the comics when the Skull used the cube to reshape the world in his own image. That was a better use of the cube, I thought. (Maybe they’re saving that for THE AVENGERS!)
I liked the way they included Arnim Zola in the movie, but we never got to see him in his robot form. I guess they are saving that for the AVENGERS, too.
I liked the way the movie established Steve and Bucky Barnes as friends  -- that was a fresh take on Bucky, and more in keeping with the recent portrayal of the character. In these sophisticated times, giving Cap a teen sidekick just wouldn’t have worked.

The fate of Bucky in the movie is very different from the comics. I’m not so sure that a train is a better vehicle than a plain when showing the demise of a major character. In the comic, the scene of Cap failing to save Bucky from the plane crash is one of the most iconic images of all time. Surely the filmmakers could have recreated it faithfully here.
The scenes where Cap goes on a USO tour made the least sense to me. The government invests all this time and money in making Steve Rogers the greatest super-soldier the world has ever known -- and then, instead of sending him off to war, they use him to drum up sales for war bonds. I liked Cap’s origin better in the comics, where as soon as Steve Rogers become Cap, he is sent undercover as a bumbling army private by day so he can go kick some Nazi butt by night.
Samuel L. Jackson has a couple of lines at the end in his role as Nick Fury, the glue that holds the Marvel movie universe together. Unfortunately, his presence here means we don’t get to see Fury in action along with the Howling Commandos in the WW II scenes. It seems kind of blasphemous to have the Howling Commandos without Nick Fury, but such is the way of the world in the Marvel movie universe, which is a bizarre amalgam of both the original Marvel universe and the Ultimate Universe.
As far as the part where Cap gets frozen -- again, the way they did it in the comics was better. In the original version, Cap is lost at sea and presumed dead. In the new movie, he crashes a huge jet, seemingly intact,  into the ocean. And in 70 years, no one ever thinks to look for it.
Look, we all know that in real life, a man can’t be frozen in an iceberg for decades and come out alive. Since we’re dealing with a  very implausible situation,  they could have just stuck with the original version of the story instead of making it even more implausible.
Just like the first SPIDER-MAN movie, the first half of this movie is very slow, and could have really benefited from getting the title character into costume and into action faster.
The movie ends with a tease  of the AVENGERS movie, which looks kind of cool, but both HAWKEYE and the BLACK WIDOW seem woefully out of place among real super-heroes who actually have powers… Also: no HULK in the AVENGERS teaser? Come on! Where is ol’ Greenskin?
It will be very interesting to see how it all comes together.
Overall I rate CAPTAIN AMERICA behind X-MEN FIRST CLASS and THOR as far as this year’s super-hero movies. Oh well. At least it was better than GREEN LANTERN!

THE ENDING OF SUPER 8 MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL!

By Barry Dutter

The movie SUPER 8 bears remarkable similarities to E.T. Both movies are about an alien who just wants to go home. (I half-expected to hear Neil Dimaond singing "Turn on your heart light...")

The big difference is that the alien in ET is friendly and lovable, but the alien in SUPER 8 is sometimes good, sometimes evil, depending on his mood.

SUPER 8 presents its monster as an underdog. He’s been imprisoned for decades by the US government, and all he wants to do is rebuild his spaceship and get the heck off of Earth. At the beginning of the film, a scientist sets the alien free by crashing his truck into the train that is carrying it (The scientist's actions presumably kill all the people who were on board the train at the time, but this is kind of glossed over in the name of science.)

At this point, the alien begins a several day terror spree. He goes into hiding, coming out only at night to 1) kidnap random people and 2) steal car engines and other metal objects. We later find out he is stealing the car engines so he can acquire enough metallic objects to build his own makeshift space ship.

And he is kidnapping the people because… why exactly? I’m not sure. The film never makes that clear. In one scene, the alien is shown killing and eating a human. In another scene, the alien is shown being talked out of killing a young boy by the boy’s persuasive speech.

So I guess the alien is evil if it finds you threatening, but if you are friendly to it and talk to it in a calm voice, it will let you go free. That makes some kind of sense, but it still doesn’t explain why the alien was kidnapping random people in the first place.

What did it hope to gain by doing so? Snacks for the long ride home?

Just like in ET, the alien finds the means to escape just as the army is closing in. In SUPER 8, the alien uses its telekinetic powers to summon all the metal in the area to build his spaceship and get away.

But if the alien has the power to do this, why didn’t it do this on the night of the train crash? Surely there was enough metal in the train wreck to provide the alien with enough metal to build its ship.

I enjoyed SUPER 8 overall, until the ending, which didn’t make any sense to me. It reminded me of the end of THE WIZARD OF OZ. Like Dorothy in that movie, the alien apparently had the power to go home all along. It chose not to, because doing so would have ended the movie an hour earlier.

I’ve heard JJ Abrams admit in interviews that he is not that great of a writer. I have to agree with him. As a director, he’s an excellent imitator of young Stephen Spielberg. As a writer, he has yet to impress me.

As my brother pointed out, SUPER 8 is basically ET meets CLOVERFIELD. And it's a bit soon for Abrams to be doing homages to his own movies.

X-MEN FIRST CLASS REVIEW

X-MEN FIRST CLASS REVIEW

By Barry Dutter
As always, instead of doing a straight review of the movie, I’m just going to list some random thoughts/observations…

1) So it was Magneto’s idea for Mystique to walk around naked all the time, eh? Erik, you dirty dog!

2) The movie has two surprise cameos, one of which was ruined for me by the L.A. Times and has popped up elsewhere online. The other is more of a secret, so I won’t say who it is, but she was a big surprise.

3) Michael Fassbinder is so good as Magneto, he blows away every other actor on the screen. This may be the best performance by any actor in any X-Men movie. The actor who plays Prof. X is pretty good, but his part is more whiney. He spends most of the second half of the movie trying to convince Magneto not to do things that you know Mags is gonna do anyway, so Prof. X comes across as pretty ineffectual for a guy who can read minds and control people’s thoughts.

4) The new origin for how Prof. X got in the wheelchair is pretty good, much better than the one that was shown in the comics back in the 60s.

5) If they were going to introduce a new character who has wings like a dragonfly, wouldn’t it have made more sense to call her Dragonfly, instead of Angel? (I mean, the X-Men movie Universe already has a male hero called Angel, and the Marvel Universe does have a female villain called Dragonfly!)

6) Usually whenever I see a movie based on a comic book, I gripe about all the changes they made for the movie. With this movie, my only gripe is that the Beast is supposed to have big hands and big feet, and in this movie, he only had big feet. I know, pretty minor gripe, right?

7) Of course, my other little gripe is that I still want to see a movie with the REAL First Class of X-Men: Beast, Angel, Iceman, Cyclops and Marvel Girl. I guess I will have to wait a while for that one.

8) In the first X-MEN movie, there was a scene where Wolverine referred to Sabretooth as a “pussy.” I get that he was making a cat joke, but still, it was jarring to see a Marvel Comics super-hero use a dirty word. In this movie, one of the heroes uses the “F” word, and it feels so out of place, I wish they had gone with a different line. (The character could have said “Get lost!” or “Beat it!” and the scene would have been just as effective.) In over 50 years of X-Men comics, none of the characters has ever cursed. Why do it here? Just to be cool?

9) Jennifer Lawrence has really grown into quite a cutie. Her Rogue even outshines January Jones as Emma Frost in the hotness dept, and that is not an easy thing to do!

10) I liked the 60s setting. It reminded me of a James Bond movie. Makes me think that all future James Bond movies should be set in the 60s! And they should get the director of X-MEN FIRST CLASS to direct them!

11) I had heard that this movie is set in an alternate universe, apart from all the other X-MEN movies. But it seems to dovetail nicely into the other movies. I didn't notice any glaring discrepancies.

12) This was easily the best film of the series. Clearly producer/co-writer Bryan Singer needs to stay far away from SUPERMAN and just focus on the X-MEN instead!