Tuesday, 25 August 2009
Extra mozzarella: Do the Right Thing concept art and behind-the-scenes photos from Spike Lee's companion book
After posting a bunch of interesting Batman concept drawings and set photos from the 20-year-old blockbuster's official movie souvenir magazine, I'm doing the same thing with a similar tie-in for summer 1989's other landmark film, Do the Right Thing. But instead of an official movie mag, the Spike Lee Joint spawned a now-out-of-print Fireside/Simon & Schuster companion book that Lee wrote with the assistance of ex-girlfriend Lisa Jones. The director has done several companion books for his films. Each of these books contain behind-the-scenes photos, the film's script and Lee's own production journal (some of the Do the Right Thing journal passages are like tweets with better spelling: "Haven't written in a couple of days. I've been busy trying to save School Daze from being dogged.").
(WARNING: Spoilers ahead. Yes, there are people out there who still haven't watched Do the Right Thing yet. They're like people who never saw Ghostbusters. They're weirdos.)
I've discussed before why Do the Right Thing is one of my favorite films and why writers of color like myself cite it as an influence. One aspect of the film that I don't think gets enough props is the terrific production design by Wynn Thomas, who drew this sketch of the We Love Radio and Sal's Famous Pizzeria set exteriors. Using an old Coney Island pizzeria as the basis for Sal's, the film's crew built it from scratch on an empty Bed-Stuy lot. "The ultimate compliment was when real people would walk off the street and try and buy a slice," said Thomas in an L.A. Times oral history about the movie. Thomas later created nifty-looking sets for Mars Attacks! and brought CONTROL Headquarters into the 21st century for Steve Carell's Get Smart.
Clockwise: The sets that are listed on this Do the Right Thing ground plan are the neighborhood church; generator storage; the home belonging to John Savage's gentrifying yuppie character; Da Mayor's home; the Puerto Rican stoop; We Love; Sal's; the street corner inhabited by the trash-talking Greek chorus of ML (Paul Benjamin), Coconut Sid (Frankie Faison) and Sweet Dick Willie (the late stand-up comic Robin Harris); the Korean market; Mother Sister's home; and Jade and Mookie's apartment. I like how the "Corner Men" are included on the ground plan. In the journal's February 21, 1988 entry, Lee wrote that he wanted to give Harris a part in which he could ad-lib ("I wouldn't dare to write his dialogue"), and a corner man character would be perfect for him. It sure was.
Rosie Perez, who at the time was a Soul Train dancer who was making her big-screen debut in Do the Right Thing and was a reason why its main titles are one of the illest openers in a film ever, sits with the child actor who played her character's son and his triplet brothers.
I'm posting this pic of Steve Park as Sonny the irritable Korean grocer simply because pics of Park or his Do the Right Thing character never turn up in Google image searches. Park will always be cool in my book for putting the Friends crew members on blast in 1997 because of a staffer's racist treatment of James Hong when both actors guest-starred on the sitcom. Lo Pan should have fried that douchenozzle's ass with his laser beam eyes.
Several of the most fascinating quotes in the companion book's photo gallery came from Giancarlo Esposito, who played wannabe activist Buggin' Out.
According to Lee, "At the last moment, Paramount asked me to change the ending. They wanted Mookie and Sal to hug and be friends and sing 'We Are the World.' They told me this on a Friday; Monday morning we were at Universal."
The Do the Right Thing crew, which shot the film from July to September 1988 and helped start diversifying New York film crews by employing mostly black crew members, poses in front of the We Love set.
Heat storyboard artist and Danny Deckchair director Jeff Balsmeyer drew these boards for the harrowing scene in which cops murder Radio Raheem. "If in a review, a critic discussed how Sal's Famous was burned down but didn't mention anything about Radio Raheem getting killed, it seemed obvious that he or she valued white-owned property more than the life of this young black hoodlum," said Lee to the L.A. Times. "To me, loss of life outweighs loss of property. You can rebuild a building. I mean, they're rebuilding New Orleans now but the people that died there are never coming back."
In Living Color once poked fun at Lee's "skinny legs and big feet." In Balsmeyer's storyboards for the Trash Can Toss Heard 'Round the World, Mookie looks like he's been hitting the NordicTrack.
Sunday, 23 August 2009
Production design porn from the Topps Batman Official Movie Souvenir Magazine
Long before movie studios promoted their tentpole releases through elaborate sites or postings of HD trailers on Apple's trailer site ("Watch the Avatar trailer a day before its premiere in theaters or James Cameron will shoot a puppy!"), there were these things called official movie souvenir magazines that were exactly like the studio sites promotional material-hungry film geeks can click to nowadays. When I was a kid, either Starlog Press or Topps would devote an entire one-shot mag to an upcoming blockbuster and fill the mag with a spoilerrific photo summary of the movie, fluffy cast interviews, slightly less fluffy crew interviews and the only part of the mag I liked, behind-the-scenes pictures and concept art. Starlog Press did tie-in mags for the Star Trek, Rocky and James Bond franchises, while Topps focused on blockbusters that it produced trading cards for, like Tim Burton's Batman and Touchstone Pictures' wannabe Batman, the Warren Beatty Dick Tracy reboot.
Do mag publishers still put out official movie souvenir mags? I wouldn't be surprised if High School Musical: The Musical or whatever it's called recently had one.
In 1989, Batman was my favorite movie. Twenty summers later, uh... not so much. But both score music-wise and production design-wise, the film remains one of the most impressive from that decade. Production designer Anton Furst's bleak vision of Gotham City won him an Oscar and was so pitch-perfect for this incarnation of Batman that DC incorporated the late Furst's architectural designs into the early '90s comics.
Here are several interesting photos and drawings from my well-preserved copy of the 1989 Batman Official Movie Souvenir Magazine, which I still like to occasionally leaf through even though the Pop Art-colored backgrounds and frothy late '80s fonts are a poor match with the photos from this darker-toned Batman movie--the mag looks like it was designed by the Saved by the Bell opening titles designer.
A visual effects crew member inspects the miniature Gotham set that was built for the Batwing attack sequence.
Was this where the Gotham Central police headquarters name and comic book series title came from?
The Batman shoot in England encompassed most of Pinewood Studios' 18 soundstages, including the stage where this opulent office for Jack Palance's Carl Grissom character was constructed, and Pinewood's 95-acre backlot.
Batman co-creator Bob Kane poses with either Michael Keaton or one of Keaton's 80 stunt doubles from the movie.
"Top speed... unknown"? Judging from the sequence in which Batman and Vicki Vale escape from the Flugelheim Museum in the Batmobile, it looked like its top speed was 40 mph. Batman's ride moved so slow it looked like Aunt Harriet was behind the wheel.
Burton and Furst sit atop the Furst-designed Batmobile. That's the first and last time we'll ever see a giant dildo in something published by Topps--unless the company does a series of cards for the Sex and the City sequel.
The Batmobile apparently has a detachable penis.
The nerdiest of nerds still can't look at pictures of the Furst-designed Batcave like the ones on these two pages without getting riled up over Alfred letting Vicki step into the Batcave to see Bruce Wayne. That moment actually doesn't bother me as much as the revelation that a pre-Joker Jack Napier murdered Bruce's parents (a last-minute script change that Batman co-screenwriter Sam Hamm hated and was unable to fight against) or the sight of Batman, who has a strict code against killing in the comics, continually slaughtering the Joker's thugs like he's Rambo in a funny-looking gimp suit.
Why wasn't it called the Batplane like in the comics? The Batwing sounds like something you find inside a box at Popeyes Bat and Biscuits.
How the hell did Batman get his thick cape to fit in that cockpit?
He looks like a cosplayer who wanted to mash up the Tom Baker Doctor with the Joker.
Kim Jong Il is... Batman.
Friday, 21 August 2009
The Hunter gets captured by the geeks: The books I picked up at Comic-Con, part 2
Previously: The Middleman: The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse, Adrenaline and Bumperboy and the Loud, Loud Mountain.
My rundown of the graphic novels and TPBs I bought at Comic-Con concludes with two recent projects from IDW, which quickly became the comics publisher whose releases I've been looking forward to the most because of its ambitious reprints and high-quality revivals of properties like Star Trek and Doctor Who.
I picked up Classic G.I. Joe Volume 1 at the IDW booth because I was looking for a comic that veteran Marvel and DC letterer (and friend and mentor to several of us Secret Identities creators) Janice Chiang worked on and could sign for me at Comic-Con, and the TPB happened to contain an issue lettered by Janice. She then brought me over to another former Marvel letterer, Rick Parker, to have him sign the TPB because his work appeared in the collection too.
I never was an avid reader of Marvel's G.I. Joe comics, although I bought some issues of the mothership and a couple of its spinoffs when I was a kid. I was more familiar with the Sunbow animated series, which hasn't exactly aged well. Even when I watched G.I. Joe and Transformers back-to-back after school, I thought the animation on both those Sunbow shows sucked. The constantly choppy character movements made the crappy made-for-TV Popeye shorts from the '60s look like Richard Williams cartoons. Because the Sunbow series was essentially a 29-minute toy commercial (subtract one minute for the "Knowing is half the battle" PSA, which was devoted to giving safety tips or warnings about creepy guys in white vans instead of selling toys), most of G.I. Joe's episodes were forgettable and silly, except for one: the Steve Gerber-penned "There's No Place Like Springfield," an eerie two-part ep aboutJack Nicholson's Shipwreck's awakening from a seven-year coma that was inspired by The Prisoner (Shipwreck's home address at "Number Six Village Drive" was a shout-out to that famously surreal show). The downbeat tone of the ep and the images of Shipwreck's wife, daughter and friends melting into grey goo blew my mind when I was a kid and scarred other kid viewers for life.
The Marvel comics were intended to sell toys too, but the writing in those comics tended to be much better than the writing on the cartoon, thanks to regular scripter and G.I. Joe action figure dossier writer Larry Hama, a real American hero, especially to Secret Identities contributors who dug that an Asian American was at the helm of Marvel's finest-written toy-based title (also the first comic ever advertised on TV). The Vietnam vet-turned-comics scripter's military expertise added authenticity and grit to the comics and kept them more grounded than the cartoon, where nobody died, Star Wars-style lasers replaced bullets and Cobra was about as dangerous and menacing as Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz. That's why the late Gerber's despair-filled "Springfield" was such a stunner back in 1985--the cartoon ditched its usually campy tone for once, added some much-needed menace to Cobra and incorporated a storyline from the comics, the Joes' discovery of a Cobra base disguised as an idyllic, all-American suburb called Springfield.
The standout 1983 G.I. Joe issue that introduced Hama's Springfield--a town that's as rotten-at-the-core as Matt Groening's Springfield--is included in Classic G.I. Joe Volume 1, which collects the first 10 issues of the original 1982-1994 Marvel comic, most of them drawn by '70s Incredible Hulk artist Herb Trimpe in the classic '60s/'70s Marvel style. My tastes in espionage comics lean towards the more adult Queen & Country and Sleeper, so I found the dialogue in these early '80s G.I. Joe issues to be on the hokey side. Despite the hokey one-liners, as the Topless Robot blog noted last year, the original comic still kicks its cartoon counterpart's ass. Scarlett--the lone female Joe in these earlier issues, before Hasbro added Cover Girl and Lady Jaye to the cast--gets a bunch of thrilling take-charge moments in the 1983 issue that Janice lettered, a Mike Vosburg-drawn story in which Scarlett is assigned to protect a diplomat who's being targeted by Cobra (another highlight of the TPB, as well as one of the few issues in the collection that didn't involve either Hama or Trimpe).
I bet the old issues I read in Volume 1 even wallop the ass of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, which hired Hama as a creative consultant. I have no plans to watch the movie because it looks terrible and overly CGI'd in the TV ads (this was a much more expensive Paramount movie than Star Trek, yet they couldn't afford to get some decent-looking CGI that looks like 2009 CGI instead of 2002 CGI?). Director Stephen Sommers seems to have gotten the '80s toy lines-turned-cartoons mixed up. Exosuits?! (Or as the movie calls them, "accelerator suits"?!) That's Centurions, not G.I. Joe. The Funny or Die parody was better cast than the movie itself. Henry Rollins would have been a more charismatic Duke than Channing Tatum, whose acting coach was apparently a 3 3/4-inch Duke action figure. And what the hell is the very blond Sienna Miller doing playing the very dark-featured Baroness (who's portrayed in the Funny or Die spoof by a far more convincing-looking Olivia Wilde), and why was Miller directed to give the Russian villainess an American accent? To me, Miller will always be Eddie Arlette's prissy and spoiled British flatmate.
Judging from the ads, the only performer in The Rise of Cobra who's perfectly cast is Star Trek's scene-stealing Orion babe Rachel Nichols as Scarlett. She looks like she walked straight out of the issue that Janice lettered, which at one point has a shorty robe-clad Scarlett making a daring high-wire escape from an upper-story hotel window with her crossbow. The statuesque ex-Alias season 5 regular appears as if she were born to perform a sequence like that.
Speaking of destiny, artist Darwyn Cooke--a fan of the artwork on the '60s/'70s G.I. Joe action figure packaging--was born to bring his minimalist style to the late Donald E. Westlake's equally minimalist 1962 crime novel The Hunter, a book so nice moviemakers have filmed it thrice, as the badass Lee Marvin revenge flick Point Blank, the Chow Yun-Fat actioner Full Contact and the Mel Gibson vehicle Payback (the only one of the three loose screen adaptations of The Hunter I haven't watched, and that's partly because composer Chris Boardman's ripoff of David Shire's Taking of Pelham One Two Three main title theme indicates how tired and derivative Payback must be).
For those who have never read Westlake's original novel or watched either Point Blank, Full Contact or Payback, the brutal tale follows a ruthless career thief's vendetta against his former partners-in-crime, who left him for dead and screwed him out of his share of a successful heist. The vendetta escalates into a one-man battle against the mob, a.k.a. the Organization ("The funnies call it the Syndicate. The goons and the hustlers call it the Outfit."), as the crook, known simply as Parker, kills his way through the Organization's hierarchy to get back his skrilla.
Under his Richard Stark pseudonym, Westlake wrote 24 novels featuring Parker--the original cold-blooded, unrepentant thief. Westlake's creation has clearly influenced so many similar thief characters in film and TV, particularly the protagonists in Michael Mann caper flicks like Thief. The climactic retribution that James Caan's self-made small businessman character unleashed against the control-freak boss who "owns the paper on his life" echoed Parker the similarly independent freelancer's confrontations with big business. Linda Fiorentino's Last Seduction antiheroine Bridget Gregory seemed to have inherited the Westlake character's amorality and relentlessness. Michael Westen, the blacklisted ex-spy and occasional safecracker in Burn Notice, inherited Parker's icy demeanor, professionalism and stubborn refusal to let a faceless, elusive corporation screw him over (in Michael's case, the shady character known only as "Management" and the nameless black ops organization that arranged to have Michael "burned"). Leverage co-creator John Rogers named Parker the possibly Asperger's-afflicted cat burglar chick after Westlake's equally antisocial thief. Parker has basically begat more offspring than Anthony Quinn.
Some readers have complained that Cooke's IDW adaptation of Westlake's first Parker story is overhyped. On what planet is this graphic novel overhyped? As a commenter on the Robot 6 blog noted, "In a world where Blackest Night is consuming 90% of the comics blogosphere's attention, this is overhyped?," but both Westlake's writing and Cooke's work have loyal cult followings, as evidenced by the slightly long line for Cooke's Hunter signing at the IDW booth--the only Comic-Con line I had the patience to stand in. I was lucky to nab a first-printing copy of The Hunter (wrapped in an exclusive Comic-Con dust jacket that I prefer over the regular white version of the jacket) before the hardcover novel sold out at its distribution level.
It's easy to see why The Hunter attracted a lengthy line that Friday, skyrocketed to #3 on the New York Times Graphic Books Best Seller List in its first week and is already on its way to a second printing. Cooke's spare, monochromatic and beautifully shaded artwork is extraordinary, whether it's visuals of sexy women or 1962 New York streetscapes. The DC: The New Frontier writer/illustrator told the L.A. Times that he intended his art in The Hunter to be as stripped-down as Westlake's prose, which was the crime author's experiment to see if he could tell a story without any emotional content and with an antihero who internalizes his emotions. The Cooke adaptation's first 16 pages are as coldly efficient as Parker himself. Cooke superbly establishes Parker's criminal skills and single-minded, amoral character without any dialogue. It's as ballsy an opening as the disorienting first few minutes of Point Blank.
I never read the original source material, but the 1967 John Boorman film wowed me when I first saw it in university a decade ago, despite a puzzling ending that was initially frustrating (SPOILER: Patrick Duffy emerges from a shower and says "it was all a dream"). The Hunter doesn't quite do for crime comics what Point Blank did for '60s American crime flicks, which was revolutionize that genre with its fractured narrative and Euro art film-inspired sensibility. The Cooke version is just solid storytelling that makes the most of the strengths of comics as a visual medium, and like any good adaptation of a work from a different medium, it honors the source material without being overly reverential (for instance, Parker's resemblance to bodybuilder-turned-actor Edson Stroll, who played the leader of the exiled beautiful people in Twilight Zone's "Eye of the Beholder" ep, is quite a departure from Westlake's vision of Parker as a more rugged-looking Jack Palance type).
I'm more acquainted with Cooke's animation and cover illustration work than his Catwoman and Spirit comics. The Hunter has made me want to check out more of Cooke's comics. These storyboards Cooke pencilled for Batman: The Animated Series' "Legends of the Dark Knight" homage to The Dark Knight Returns, which I've taken from Paul Dini and Chip Kidd's 1998 Batman: Animated coffeetable book, are Hunter-like in their intensity:
Westlake never granted Hollywood producers permission to use Parker's name in their adaptations of his novels because he would only allow them to retain the name if they agreed to do a series of Parker movies, and none of them had sequels on their minds (hence the name "Walker" in Point Blank, "McClain" in 1969's The Split and "Porter" in Payback). Cooke's novel is the first Parker adaptation in which Westlake gave the okay to use the name, possibly because Cooke planned on writing and drawing a four-volume series. Scheduled for summer 2010, Cooke's next Parker comic will adapt both The Man with the Getaway Face and The Outfit, which director John Flynn made into a solid 1973 Robert Duvall vehicle of the same title that's more straightforward than the stylized Point Blank, so it's blander in comparison, but it deserves as much notice as Boorman's movie (The Outfit isn't on DVD yet, although TCM occasionally broadcasts it).
Screw Avatar: The Next Whitewasher, The Twilight Saga: Emotards and the other unpromising blockbusters that are slated so far to hit theaters next summer. The one true blockbuster of summer 2010 will be found not in a multiplex, but in comic shops and bookstores.
My rundown of the graphic novels and TPBs I bought at Comic-Con concludes with two recent projects from IDW, which quickly became the comics publisher whose releases I've been looking forward to the most because of its ambitious reprints and high-quality revivals of properties like Star Trek and Doctor Who.
I picked up Classic G.I. Joe Volume 1 at the IDW booth because I was looking for a comic that veteran Marvel and DC letterer (and friend and mentor to several of us Secret Identities creators) Janice Chiang worked on and could sign for me at Comic-Con, and the TPB happened to contain an issue lettered by Janice. She then brought me over to another former Marvel letterer, Rick Parker, to have him sign the TPB because his work appeared in the collection too.
I never was an avid reader of Marvel's G.I. Joe comics, although I bought some issues of the mothership and a couple of its spinoffs when I was a kid. I was more familiar with the Sunbow animated series, which hasn't exactly aged well. Even when I watched G.I. Joe and Transformers back-to-back after school, I thought the animation on both those Sunbow shows sucked. The constantly choppy character movements made the crappy made-for-TV Popeye shorts from the '60s look like Richard Williams cartoons. Because the Sunbow series was essentially a 29-minute toy commercial (subtract one minute for the "Knowing is half the battle" PSA, which was devoted to giving safety tips or warnings about creepy guys in white vans instead of selling toys), most of G.I. Joe's episodes were forgettable and silly, except for one: the Steve Gerber-penned "There's No Place Like Springfield," an eerie two-part ep about
The Marvel comics were intended to sell toys too, but the writing in those comics tended to be much better than the writing on the cartoon, thanks to regular scripter and G.I. Joe action figure dossier writer Larry Hama, a real American hero, especially to Secret Identities contributors who dug that an Asian American was at the helm of Marvel's finest-written toy-based title (also the first comic ever advertised on TV). The Vietnam vet-turned-comics scripter's military expertise added authenticity and grit to the comics and kept them more grounded than the cartoon, where nobody died, Star Wars-style lasers replaced bullets and Cobra was about as dangerous and menacing as Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz. That's why the late Gerber's despair-filled "Springfield" was such a stunner back in 1985--the cartoon ditched its usually campy tone for once, added some much-needed menace to Cobra and incorporated a storyline from the comics, the Joes' discovery of a Cobra base disguised as an idyllic, all-American suburb called Springfield.
The standout 1983 G.I. Joe issue that introduced Hama's Springfield--a town that's as rotten-at-the-core as Matt Groening's Springfield--is included in Classic G.I. Joe Volume 1, which collects the first 10 issues of the original 1982-1994 Marvel comic, most of them drawn by '70s Incredible Hulk artist Herb Trimpe in the classic '60s/'70s Marvel style. My tastes in espionage comics lean towards the more adult Queen & Country and Sleeper, so I found the dialogue in these early '80s G.I. Joe issues to be on the hokey side. Despite the hokey one-liners, as the Topless Robot blog noted last year, the original comic still kicks its cartoon counterpart's ass. Scarlett--the lone female Joe in these earlier issues, before Hasbro added Cover Girl and Lady Jaye to the cast--gets a bunch of thrilling take-charge moments in the 1983 issue that Janice lettered, a Mike Vosburg-drawn story in which Scarlett is assigned to protect a diplomat who's being targeted by Cobra (another highlight of the TPB, as well as one of the few issues in the collection that didn't involve either Hama or Trimpe).
I bet the old issues I read in Volume 1 even wallop the ass of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, which hired Hama as a creative consultant. I have no plans to watch the movie because it looks terrible and overly CGI'd in the TV ads (this was a much more expensive Paramount movie than Star Trek, yet they couldn't afford to get some decent-looking CGI that looks like 2009 CGI instead of 2002 CGI?). Director Stephen Sommers seems to have gotten the '80s toy lines-turned-cartoons mixed up. Exosuits?! (Or as the movie calls them, "accelerator suits"?!) That's Centurions, not G.I. Joe. The Funny or Die parody was better cast than the movie itself. Henry Rollins would have been a more charismatic Duke than Channing Tatum, whose acting coach was apparently a 3 3/4-inch Duke action figure. And what the hell is the very blond Sienna Miller doing playing the very dark-featured Baroness (who's portrayed in the Funny or Die spoof by a far more convincing-looking Olivia Wilde), and why was Miller directed to give the Russian villainess an American accent? To me, Miller will always be Eddie Arlette's prissy and spoiled British flatmate.
Judging from the ads, the only performer in The Rise of Cobra who's perfectly cast is Star Trek's scene-stealing Orion babe Rachel Nichols as Scarlett. She looks like she walked straight out of the issue that Janice lettered, which at one point has a shorty robe-clad Scarlett making a daring high-wire escape from an upper-story hotel window with her crossbow. The statuesque ex-Alias season 5 regular appears as if she were born to perform a sequence like that.
Speaking of destiny, artist Darwyn Cooke--a fan of the artwork on the '60s/'70s G.I. Joe action figure packaging--was born to bring his minimalist style to the late Donald E. Westlake's equally minimalist 1962 crime novel The Hunter, a book so nice moviemakers have filmed it thrice, as the badass Lee Marvin revenge flick Point Blank, the Chow Yun-Fat actioner Full Contact and the Mel Gibson vehicle Payback (the only one of the three loose screen adaptations of The Hunter I haven't watched, and that's partly because composer Chris Boardman's ripoff of David Shire's Taking of Pelham One Two Three main title theme indicates how tired and derivative Payback must be).
For those who have never read Westlake's original novel or watched either Point Blank, Full Contact or Payback, the brutal tale follows a ruthless career thief's vendetta against his former partners-in-crime, who left him for dead and screwed him out of his share of a successful heist. The vendetta escalates into a one-man battle against the mob, a.k.a. the Organization ("The funnies call it the Syndicate. The goons and the hustlers call it the Outfit."), as the crook, known simply as Parker, kills his way through the Organization's hierarchy to get back his skrilla.
Under his Richard Stark pseudonym, Westlake wrote 24 novels featuring Parker--the original cold-blooded, unrepentant thief. Westlake's creation has clearly influenced so many similar thief characters in film and TV, particularly the protagonists in Michael Mann caper flicks like Thief. The climactic retribution that James Caan's self-made small businessman character unleashed against the control-freak boss who "owns the paper on his life" echoed Parker the similarly independent freelancer's confrontations with big business. Linda Fiorentino's Last Seduction antiheroine Bridget Gregory seemed to have inherited the Westlake character's amorality and relentlessness. Michael Westen, the blacklisted ex-spy and occasional safecracker in Burn Notice, inherited Parker's icy demeanor, professionalism and stubborn refusal to let a faceless, elusive corporation screw him over (in Michael's case, the shady character known only as "Management" and the nameless black ops organization that arranged to have Michael "burned"). Leverage co-creator John Rogers named Parker the possibly Asperger's-afflicted cat burglar chick after Westlake's equally antisocial thief. Parker has basically begat more offspring than Anthony Quinn.
Some readers have complained that Cooke's IDW adaptation of Westlake's first Parker story is overhyped. On what planet is this graphic novel overhyped? As a commenter on the Robot 6 blog noted, "In a world where Blackest Night is consuming 90% of the comics blogosphere's attention, this is overhyped?," but both Westlake's writing and Cooke's work have loyal cult followings, as evidenced by the slightly long line for Cooke's Hunter signing at the IDW booth--the only Comic-Con line I had the patience to stand in. I was lucky to nab a first-printing copy of The Hunter (wrapped in an exclusive Comic-Con dust jacket that I prefer over the regular white version of the jacket) before the hardcover novel sold out at its distribution level.
It's easy to see why The Hunter attracted a lengthy line that Friday, skyrocketed to #3 on the New York Times Graphic Books Best Seller List in its first week and is already on its way to a second printing. Cooke's spare, monochromatic and beautifully shaded artwork is extraordinary, whether it's visuals of sexy women or 1962 New York streetscapes. The DC: The New Frontier writer/illustrator told the L.A. Times that he intended his art in The Hunter to be as stripped-down as Westlake's prose, which was the crime author's experiment to see if he could tell a story without any emotional content and with an antihero who internalizes his emotions. The Cooke adaptation's first 16 pages are as coldly efficient as Parker himself. Cooke superbly establishes Parker's criminal skills and single-minded, amoral character without any dialogue. It's as ballsy an opening as the disorienting first few minutes of Point Blank.
I never read the original source material, but the 1967 John Boorman film wowed me when I first saw it in university a decade ago, despite a puzzling ending that was initially frustrating (SPOILER: Patrick Duffy emerges from a shower and says "it was all a dream"). The Hunter doesn't quite do for crime comics what Point Blank did for '60s American crime flicks, which was revolutionize that genre with its fractured narrative and Euro art film-inspired sensibility. The Cooke version is just solid storytelling that makes the most of the strengths of comics as a visual medium, and like any good adaptation of a work from a different medium, it honors the source material without being overly reverential (for instance, Parker's resemblance to bodybuilder-turned-actor Edson Stroll, who played the leader of the exiled beautiful people in Twilight Zone's "Eye of the Beholder" ep, is quite a departure from Westlake's vision of Parker as a more rugged-looking Jack Palance type).
I'm more acquainted with Cooke's animation and cover illustration work than his Catwoman and Spirit comics. The Hunter has made me want to check out more of Cooke's comics. These storyboards Cooke pencilled for Batman: The Animated Series' "Legends of the Dark Knight" homage to The Dark Knight Returns, which I've taken from Paul Dini and Chip Kidd's 1998 Batman: Animated coffeetable book, are Hunter-like in their intensity:
Westlake never granted Hollywood producers permission to use Parker's name in their adaptations of his novels because he would only allow them to retain the name if they agreed to do a series of Parker movies, and none of them had sequels on their minds (hence the name "Walker" in Point Blank, "McClain" in 1969's The Split and "Porter" in Payback). Cooke's novel is the first Parker adaptation in which Westlake gave the okay to use the name, possibly because Cooke planned on writing and drawing a four-volume series. Scheduled for summer 2010, Cooke's next Parker comic will adapt both The Man with the Getaway Face and The Outfit, which director John Flynn made into a solid 1973 Robert Duvall vehicle of the same title that's more straightforward than the stylized Point Blank, so it's blander in comparison, but it deserves as much notice as Boorman's movie (The Outfit isn't on DVD yet, although TCM occasionally broadcasts it).
Screw Avatar: The Next Whitewasher, The Twilight Saga: Emotards and the other unpromising blockbusters that are slated so far to hit theaters next summer. The one true blockbuster of summer 2010 will be found not in a multiplex, but in comic shops and bookstores.
Labels:
'80s cartoons,
Batman: The Animated Series,
comic books,
Darwyn Cooke,
Donald E. Westlake,
G.I. Joe,
IDW,
Janice Chiang,
Larry Hama,
Marvel,
Mike Vosburg,
Point Blank,
San Diego Comic-Con,
The Hunter
Tuesday, 18 August 2009
A shot of Adrenaline: The books I picked up at Comic-Con, part 1
I finally finished reading all the books I bought during my one-day trip to Comic-Con. In an August 6 post, I discussed the first book I grabbed there that day, The Middleman: The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse, Javier Grillo-Marxuach's adaptation of the unproduced final episode of his prematurely cancelled TV series version of The Middleman.
I also picked up a TPB of Tyler Chin-Tanner's self-published miniseries Adrenaline, Debbie Huey's Bumperboy and the Loud, Loud Mountain, IDW's Classic G.I. Joe Volume 1 and an exclusive Comic-Con edition of Darwyn Cooke's eagerly anticipated IDW adaptation of The Hunter, the first Parker novel by Richard Stark, a.k.a. the late Donald E. Westlake. My tastes in comics aren't usually this wide-ranging--I stick to a steady diet of mature crime or espionage titles--but this list of books I grabbed in San Diego was an exception.
I first met Tyler at the Asian American ComiCon, where we had Artists Alley tables, and I ran into him again at the SDCC, where the AACC was still on our minds (the much smaller AACC was a far more enjoyable experience than SDCC, despite the occasional moments of insensitive Artists Alley behavior). Tyler is currently at work on American Terrorist, a comic about ordinary citizens who go on the lam after they're branded as terrorists for criticizing the government (the first issue is available to iPhone and Google Android users).
Like American Terrorist, Adrenaline is ripped from the headlines, and it centers on Dr. Saida Nri, a young Nigerian physician who gets roped into competing for a $4 million grand prize on a sensationalistic, globetrotting reality show of the same title--think a sleazier version of The Amazing Race. This enjoyable actioner, which Tyler wrote and drew layouts for (with epic-looking artwork provided by penciller/colorist James Boyle and inker/letterer Fabio Redivo), is a gentle sendup of reality TV and its frequent co-opting of the extreme sports craze. Alex Lowder, the Adrenaline show's wealthy host/creator (and he's not only the host, but he's also a contestant), is a mash-up of the douchey, culturally clueless Jeff Probst and an extreme sports nut.
In some moments, the comic reminded me of director Daniel Minahan's 2001 reality TV spoof Series 7: The Contenders. The most biting part of Series 7's critique of reality TV was its comparison of the genre to snuff films, whereas Adrenaline's sharpest jabs are directed towards the rigged nature of reality shows and their showrunners' callous treatment of foreign cultures, which is depicted through Alex's poaching of a lion on a Tanzanian wildlife preserve in the series' first few pages. The illegal hunt enrages Saida, who runs a small health clinic near the preserve. In a slightly ridiculous but literally gripping action sequence, Saida displays the agility of a parkour athlete--the doctors on NBC's ER were never this agile--when she leaps onto Alex's copter to stop him from escaping from the local authorities. She gets knocked unconscious during a scuffle in the copter with one of Alex's tough bodyguards and winds up kidnapped in a moment that strains credibility (in real life, Alex would be locked up for abducting Saida, despite his power and wealth), but I let it slide because Adrenaline is essentially an over-the-top Bond film, except Bond is a compassionate Nigerian female doctor-turned-reality show contestant who's trying to save her struggling clinic (and her Maasai patients) instead of the world.
Adrenaline is loaded with thrilling sequences straight out of Bond films, from a wordless, beautifully illustrated scuba diving sequence to a downhill race between snowboarders and skiers that goes awry. In fact, as I read the TPB, I kept choosing John Barry 007 score cues that would have served as perfect musical accompaniment for those Bond-like moments (Thunderball's "Bond with SPECTRE Frogmen" for the underwater sequences, A View to a Kill's "Snow Job" for the snow race).
One of the many reasons why I despise the reality genre is because too many of those shows regurgitate the same old racial stereotypes--especially the programs on VH1, home of Flavor "No sellout" Flav--but in fairness to the genre, it has also influenced scripted network shows like Lost and Heroes to opt for racially diverse casts. Because Adrenaline is about a reality show, it contains an equally diverse cast of characters, from Saida ("What we don't see are the many strong native Africans who are leading the way in resuscitating their country. I felt they needed to be the hero of a comic book," said Tyler in a 2007 interview about Adrenaline) to Ben Wong, a brash Asian American stuntman who has a tryst with a female teammate in a romantic subplot that's a nice little up-yours to Hollywood and its emasculation of Asian guys.
Debbie Huey's Bumperboy has plenty in common with Adrenaline's Saida. They're both unlikely action heroes who are unafraid to stand up to corporate greed when it endangers the well-being of their neighbors, whether they're humans, animals--or talking mountains. In Debbie's inventive AdHouse Books graphic novel, 2006's Bumperboy and the Loud, Loud Mountain, the rubber-suited Bubtopian and his canine sidekick Bumperpup travel through a magical portal called a "borp hole" to a faraway land where they encounter a lonely and chatty mountain named Jumbra.
The duo also befriends a band of armless, marshmallow-shaped creatures known as the Grums, who speak only in Bumperpup's language of Pictonese (in which the speaker communicates by projecting pictures, much like X-Factor character Artie Maddicks) and help keep the childlike Jumbra alive by planting Grum fruit trees on his back. Without giving away too much of this second installment in the Bumperboy series, an unknown menace is causing Grums to disappear from their home, and it's up to Bumperboy and B-pup to rescue the missing Grums, save Jumbra's life and restore order to the disrupted ecosystem.
All-ages comics are not my forte, but I picked up Debbie's book because Bumperboy's ability to "borp" to distant lands is an appealing hook (it's reminiscent of one of my favorite Warner Bros. animated shorts, Robert McKimson's 1955 cartoon "The Hole Idea," about a professor who invents the portable hole, a gadget that was later featured in Who Framed Roger Rabbit), and I wanted to support a fellow Slug, especially someone who I recently discovered was involved with the same campus newspaper where I used to be a staff writer.
As with any of the best all-ages comics, kids will be entertained by Bumperboy and the Loud, Loud Mountain because of its resourceful heroes and offbeat supporting characters, while older readers will enjoy it for its wonderful black-and-white art and subtle social commentary. The book decries child labor practices and environmental racism without turning into a preachy G.I. Joe "Knowing is half the battle" PSA. Speaking of which...
The next post will focus on the rest of my Comic-Con purchases: Classic G.I. Joe Volume 1 and The Hunter.
Monday, 17 August 2009
The Judge Dredd trailer music is like Jerry Goldsmith's two-minute Ramones song
I included the Royal Scottish National Orchestra's out-of-print performance of the late film music legend's kickass theme for the much-maligned 1995 Judge Dredd feature film's trailer in one of this month's A Fistful of Soundtracks mini-playlists. I've also cobbled together the trailer theme and some photos of Goldsmith at work as a conductor for my not-so-active YouTube channel--it's the first video I ever made on Adobe Premiere, which I've used since 1999 to edit together anything I record for AFOS. At under a minute, the hard-hitting, energetic theme is way too short. A film composer who's got the brass ones to tackle Goldsmith ought to take this too-brief Goldsmith masterpiece and write an expanded concert version.
Most listeners' first exposure to the Judge Dredd trailer theme was the trailer itself, but I first noticed the theme when it was used in the 1997 Lost in Space teaser trailer, where it wasn't drowned out so much by gunfire noise and a shouty Sylvester Stallone that you could barely hear Goldsmith's music.
Friday, 7 August 2009
MONK final season begins tonight
From USA Network:
EIGHTH AND FINAL SEASON OF MONK PREMIERES FRIDAY AUGUST 7
Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG award winner Tony Shalhoub returns August 7 as the obsessive-compulsive detective Adrian Monk in the 8th and final season of the hit comedy series Monk. With 16 brand-new laugh-inducing episodes, the final season promises to be a memorable one for all Monk fans. So tune in to USA Network Friday, August 7 at 9/8C and watch one of the most successful series in basic cable history give its final farewell.
TONIGHT'S EPISODE: When an attempt is made on the life of a former child star who recently published a tell-all biography, Monk is thrilled to act as her bodyguard -- until he learns exactly how different she is from her TV alter ego. Elizabeth Perkins and Rena Sofer guest star in "Mr. Monk's Favorite Show" tonight at 9/8C only on USA Network.
WATCH LAST SEASON'S FINAL FIVE EPISODES ONLINE!
More crime TV news:
Crime TV on DVD (Jul 28)
Mr. Monk and Season Seven on DVD
Shalhoub on MONK: 'Everything does come to an end'
T.J. Hooker: "Terror At The Academy" (Minisode)
T.J. Hooker: "Vengeance is Mine" (Minisode) (Leonard Nimoy!)
'Monk' returns for final season Aug 7
Mr. Monk and the Final Season
Crime TV on DVD (Jun 4)
The next 'Level' of thriller fiction
Watch WALLANDER online
EIGHTH AND FINAL SEASON OF MONK PREMIERES FRIDAY AUGUST 7
Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG award winner Tony Shalhoub returns August 7 as the obsessive-compulsive detective Adrian Monk in the 8th and final season of the hit comedy series Monk. With 16 brand-new laugh-inducing episodes, the final season promises to be a memorable one for all Monk fans. So tune in to USA Network Friday, August 7 at 9/8C and watch one of the most successful series in basic cable history give its final farewell.
TONIGHT'S EPISODE: When an attempt is made on the life of a former child star who recently published a tell-all biography, Monk is thrilled to act as her bodyguard -- until he learns exactly how different she is from her TV alter ego. Elizabeth Perkins and Rena Sofer guest star in "Mr. Monk's Favorite Show" tonight at 9/8C only on USA Network.
WATCH LAST SEASON'S FINAL FIVE EPISODES ONLINE!
More crime TV news:
Crime TV on DVD (Jul 28)
Mr. Monk and Season Seven on DVD
Shalhoub on MONK: 'Everything does come to an end'
T.J. Hooker: "Terror At The Academy" (Minisode)
T.J. Hooker: "Vengeance is Mine" (Minisode) (Leonard Nimoy!)
'Monk' returns for final season Aug 7
Mr. Monk and the Final Season
Crime TV on DVD (Jun 4)
The next 'Level' of thriller fiction
Watch WALLANDER online
Thursday, 6 August 2009
The Middleman: The series finale manifestation
One of the books I picked up at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con was an early copy of Viper Comics' The Middleman: The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse, which, according to Middleman creator and Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse co-writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach on his Twitter page earlier this week, "has shipped to the distributor and should hit comic book stores this or next weds."
After JGM wasn't able to film the 13th and final episode of his rejected TV series pitch-turned-Viper comic-turned actual TV series due to budgetary issues, he did what Buffy creator Joss Whedon and Farscape creator Rockne O'Bannon have done with their respective shows after the end of their runs. Like those two cult TV masterminds, JGM decided to pick up where his show left off--in comic form instead of onscreen.
Without giving too much away, The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse is an entertaining and bittersweet farewell to the TV incarnations of the Middleman and his trainee sidekick Wendy Watson (wonderfully brought to life on the show by Matt Keeslar, the most prim and proper action hero on TV since the days when Paul Gross' polite Canadian Mountie neatnik literally cleaned up the streets of Chicago on Due South, and newcomer Natalie Morales, who once called herself "the child that Amanda Peet and Rosario Dawson would have if they could procreate"). But the graphic novel, which JGM co-scripted with his fellow Middleman co-executive producer Hans Beimler, also opens the door for more adventures with the Middleman characters, although if JGM decides to resume the comic, I doubt we'll see them drawn again as Keeslar, Morales and the other actors (in the comic, Wendy is a redhead and is white instead of Latina).
I wasn't familiar with the comic before the TV version premiered on ABC Family last summer, but I instantly became a fan of the show because of its perfectly cast actors and amusing dialogue, which was loaded with pop culture references that were never forced and bizarre-sounding exclamations like "Story of O!" and "Eyes without a face!" For those who have never watched The Middleman--and really ought to now that Shout! Factory has released all 12 wordily titled episodes on DVD--the show is about Wendy, an unemployed art student who becomes the apprentice to a mysterious, Eisenhower jacket-wearing secret agent known as the Middleman, the latest in a long line of agents who take on adversaries other agencies are too chicken to fight, from evil extraterrestrials disguised as boy bands to corporate tycoons with hidden agendas like Manservant Neville (serial guest star Mark Sheppard), a Steve Jobs-esque mastermind with nefarious plans for his iPod-like uMaster product (rhymes with "View-Master").
Superbly illustrated by Armando M. Zanker, The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse pits the Middleman and Dub-Dub against a more-insane-than-usual Manservant Neville and further explores the Middleman's conflicted feelings for Dub-Dub's hot and leggy performance artist best friend Lacey, who was continually referred to by the show's chyrons as "the young, equally photogenic artist whom Wendy shares an illegal sublet with." On the show, the Middleman's love interest started out as yet another annoying Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but both actress Brit Morgan--an interesting cross between a young Frances McDormand and Zooey Deschanel who could have been perfect as a relative of McDormand's mother character and Deschanel's daughter character in Almost Famous--and the show's writers developed the Middleman's biggest admirer into something more nuanced than an MPDG. I usually don't care for the romantic subplots on my favorite shows--I'm not one of those viewers who "squee" over the "shipping" of two characters, and I wish those two slang terms would go away and take the equally grating "bromance" with them. But Lacey's crush on the Middleman--who's attracted to her and shares her love for Randolph Scott westerns, but doesn't want another relationship because of both his loyalty to his job and a rarely discussed previous romance that ended in tragedy--brings some welcome depth to an otherwise lightweight, '60s Avengers-style series.
Speaking of The Avengers--my second favorite spy show, right below Burn Notice--Jeremiah Chechik, who co-produced The Middleman and directed several of its eps, previously made the ill-advised Ralph Fiennes/Uma Thurman feature film version of The Avengers. Chechik was able to do something with The Middleman that he failed to accomplish with his bloated reimagining of Steed and Mrs. Peel: he captured the spirit of the original, lower-budgeted Avengers. There's no sexual heat between the Middleman and the occasionally catsuited Wendy(*) like there was between Steed and Peel (the Middleman views Wendy as the little sister he never had), but the enthusiasm the Middleman and Wendy have for their work is as infectious as it was when that other pairing of "top professional and talented amateur" did their duty for queen and country.
(*) Not catsuited enough on the show for my tastes. The only times on the show that Morales squeezed into the Peel suit that she rocked for ABC Family's Middleman posters were the opening credits and "The Obsolescent Cryogenic Meltdown."
I recommend watching Shout! Factory's Middleman: The Complete Series box set before reading the series finale, which contains tons of callbacks to the show's running gags and makes little sense if you've never seen the show. At Comic-Con, the cast and crew performed the entire novel as a table read (which I wasn't able to catch, but meeting JGM and having him and previous Middleman GN artist Les McClaine sign my copy of The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse compensated for missing the table read). On Facebook, readers won't be able to see this, but here on Blogspot, I'm juxtaposing a Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse moment between the Middleman, Wendy and Ida the android secretary with the table read version of the scene (it takes place between 7:06 and 8:12 on the embed), performed by Keeslar, Morales and Ida's portrayer, Comic-Con audience favorite Mary Pat Gleason. Ida is what you get if you mash up Ray Bradbury's Electric Grandmother with Roz from Monsters, Inc., Blanche Devereaux from The Golden Girls and Joe Flaherty's pothead-hating Harold Weir from Freaks and Geeks ("Go back to Jamaica, greenie!").
Tuesday, 4 August 2009
Laura Ling and Euna Lee freed: A day I didn't expect to happen so soon
Bill Clinton, who successfully negotiated for the release of Current TV staffers-turned-prisoners of North Korea Laura Ling and Euna Lee, greets Lee on their plane back to L.A. in this unusually uplifting AP photo.
How did Clinton get it done? How did he persuade the famously implacable, Star Trek starbase jumpsuit-loving Kim Jong Il? Did he threaten Kimbo with pictures of the dictator with a goat?
Whatever Clinton did, I'm jazzed to see that Ling and Lee's ordeal is over and they can finally be reunited with their respective families.
Today's that rare day when Craig Ferguson's monologue catchphrase, "It's a great day for America," is something I can concur with.
Let's have some asses wigglin': AFOS August 2009 segment playlists
Starting today at 3pm, these August '09 playlists (intro'd by yours truly, of course) will air Tuesdays and Thursdays at 4am, 10am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm, and Saturdays and Sundays at 7am, 9am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm all through August on the Fistful of Soundtracks channel.
This summer marks several anniversaries related to some of my favorite movies or soundtracks: the 25th anniversary of both Ghostbusters and Purple Rain (an example of a movie being outshined by its soundtrack, although I always find myself keeping the channel on Purple Rain whenever it airs on TV) and the 20th anniversary of both Batman (a movie I liked more as a kid than I do now) and Do the Right Thing. So four of this month's segment playlists contain music from those four movies.
"Purify Yourself in the Waters of Lake Minnetonka":
1. Prince and the Revolution, "Computer Blue," Purple Rain, Warner Bros.
2. Prince and the Revolution, "Take Me with U," Purple Rain, Warner Bros.
3. Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, "Take Me with U," Purplish Rain, SPIN Media LLC
"Imitation Spaghetti":
4. Lalo Schifrin, "Quick Draw Kelly," Kelly's Heroes, Film Score Monthly
5. Seatbelts, "Go Go Cactus Man," Cowboy Bebop: Blue, Victor
6. Alan Silvestri, "The Mexican--End Credits Medley," The Mexican, Decca/UMG Soundtracks
7. J.G. Thirlwell, "Spag," The Venture Bros.: The Music of JG Thirlwell, Williams Street
"Five Definitive Star Trek Cues":
8. Gerald Fried, "The Ritual/Ancient Battle/2nd Kroykah" (from the episode "Amok Time"), Star Trek Volume Two, GNP/Crescendo
9. Sol Kaplan, "Kirk Does It Again" (from the episode "The Doomsday Machine"), Star Trek Volume Two, GNP/Crescendo
10. Jerry Goldsmith, "Spock Walk," Star Trek: The Motion Picture: 20th Anniversary Collector's Edition, Columbia/Legacy
11. James Horner, "Battle in the Mutara Nebula," Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, GNP/Crescendo
12. Michael Giacchino, "Enterprising Young Men," Star Trek, Varèse Sarabande
"#followvarèse":
13. Elmer Bernstein, "Library & Title," Ghostbusters: Original Motion Picture Score, Varèse Sarabande
14. Patrick Doyle, "Overture" (from Much Ado About Nothing), Varèse Sarabande: A 25th Anniversary Celebration Volume Two, Varèse Sarabande
15. Royal Scottish National Orchestra, "Trailer" (from Judge Dredd), Hollywood '95, Varèse Sarabande
16. Jerry Goldsmith, "End Titles" (from The 'Burbs), Varèse Sarabande: A 25th Anniversary Celebration Volume Two, Varèse Sarabande
17. Shawn Davey, "Harry Pendel: The Tailor of Panama" (from The Tailor of Panama), Varèse Sarabande: A 25th Anniversary Celebration Volume Two, Varèse Sarabande
"Unstreamed Ghostbusters":
18. Elmer Bernstein, "We Got One!," Ghostbusters: Original Motion Picture Score, Varèse Sarabande
19. Elmer Bernstein, "We Got One! (Alternate)," Ghostbusters: Original Motion Picture Score, Varèse Sarabande
"Always Bet on Brown":
20. Billy Preston, "Slaughter" (from Slaughter), Ultimate Collection: Billy Preston, Hip-O
21. Danny Elfman, "Art's Demise/Chase/Punch Out/Viva Las Vegas," Mars Attacks!, La-La Land
22. Danny Elfman, "Final Address," Mars Attacks!, La-La Land
"Omnia Illa Et Ante Fiebant":
23. Bear McCreary, "Grand Old Lady" (from the episode "Islanded in a Stream of Stars"), Battlestar Galactica: Season 4, La-La Land
24. Bear McCreary featuring Raya Yarbrough, "Assault on the Colony" (from the episode "Daybreak"), Battlestar Galactica: Season 4, La-La Land
"1989, a Number, Another Summer":
25. Danny Elfman, "Batman to the Rescue," Batman: Original Motion Picture Score, Warner Bros.
26. Bill Lee, "Wake Up Suite," Do the Right Thing: Original Score, Columbia
Bonus track:
27. Bear McCreary, "Kara's Coordinates," Battlestar Galactica: Season 4, La-La Land
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