Well... I saw it.

I got goosebumps on several occasions. I liked the intro credits for the most part paying homage to the original Donner film. Computers are great, especially for making me believe a man can fly. Many great scenes of him being "Super". Um, that poor James Marsden got the short end of the stick twice this year for playing the part of "guy who gets pasted over for the other, more popular dude" role. Ouch, that's gotta hurt.

Stuff that I thought were going to bother me... such as Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor being like Gene Hackman's... it wasn't campy and I rather liked his interpretation. The evil plot... not bad. When I heard it was along the lines of the first movie with property and all, I was worried.

The acting wasn't bad either, as I have read in many reviews. I did infact like Brandon Routh as Kal-el. As I also enjoyed Sam Huntington as Jim Olsen.

However...

The love between Lois and Clark wasn't there, even though a nice chunk of the film is supposed to be about just that. Yeah... I wasn't feeling it. Nor did I really like the whole kid thing. Perhaps if it were in the comics I wouldn't have had a problem with it... I don't know. But it didn't sit right with me.

Here's what I'm thinking about it. Kryptonite... the one thing that can kill Superman (besides a nice punch in the face) was introduced in the Superman Radio show... not the comics. And the whole Lois & Clark: The Adventures of Superman wedding happened around the same time as it did in the comics (I believe the comics beat them to it, but both were going to happen eventually).

My point? Will this latest development take a turn of previous events and become a comic book reality? What's Bryan Singer up too? It's hard for me to say one thing negative about the movie because it doesn't follow the comic because I also like the TV hit Smallvile and it too takes liberties into the world of Superman.

So, I loved it and hated it. For what it's worth, it's a good movie. Fair enough.

For the sequel... Doomsday. Come on!
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For those keeping track... probably just me... this is Viewaskew news post number... three?

Not only did they post the pictures I sent in... but one of them is with me.

*smiles*
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The teaser for Spider-man 3 should be on prints of Superman Returns starting tonight but, incase you don't happen to make it to the theatres soon, you can catch it here.

Spider-Man 3's opening date is May 4th, 2007.

A Hollywood Reporter blog reveals that the bullet in the eye sequence in "Superman Returns" was not originally budgeted for, and it took some fast talking by Bryan Singer to have it included...

At the Hollywood premiere Wednesday night, Singer admitted that the scene wasn't originally budgeted and getting it in required an impassioned argument: "Look, in one scene we can see him be faster than a speeding bullet and we can truly see how impervious he is. And how every molecule in his body is more than steel. I made a plea in the middle of production and graciously Warner Bros. kicked in some extra cash."

And just how much extra cash?

"Uh, about $2.3 million. It's all about that shot."

Right in the eye!

Here's the cool swag I picked up on Monday.

From a comic book store I picked up The Walking Dead volume 1. From Books A Million I picked up Writing For Comics With Peter David by Peter David.

At the Clerks meet n' greet I got both my Clerks Inaction figures signed. Brian put "37?" from his mouth and Jeff under his character's name wrote "is the shit!". Nice touches.

I also had signed my Clerks poster by the duo. As promotional pieces they were handing out free Clerks 2 posters so... yeah I snagged one up. Natch.

Sorry about the long title... I just wanted to pull a quote and I really dig Clerks: Uncensored.

So on Monday my girlfriend and I and a few of my friends all ventured to the Screenland theatre (see posts below) to see Jeff and Brian (Randal and Dante) of Clerks fame.

There weren't really a lot of people... at least not as many as I felt like there were going to be and probably should have been. It was really cool to have meet them and get pictures taken and stuff autographed.

Before hand we all went to a neat comic book store (Clints maybe?), but the dude had a lot of Superman stuff, including an original Adventures of Superman George Reeves costumes which apparently are insured for something like $400,000? Damn.

Below are links to two different photo galleries...

The Clerks

The Clerks some more
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Another week, more comics. And this was a nice little handful of them too! Not to say all of them were any good. I'll just go left to right here.

Flash #1, a fresh start... and really, nothing much of interest happening already. There is only one speedster so far after the wonder that was Infinite Crisis, the original Flash, Jay Garrick. Nothing has been said about Wally West, the last Flash. And most of this issue focuses on the once Kid Flash, now powerless and aged about four years (again from IC), Bart Allen. I'm going to keep reading just to find out what the hell has happened with all the characters, but this first issue is just a let down. What the hell DC?

Again, like last week, 52 is finally starting to pick up interest as far as storylines go. It just needs a few more "moments" to get people to turn their heads and say "what the?".

Robin is my new Superboy. What that means is when I collected Superboy (before it was eventually cancelled) the stories would be good, and then perhaps by change in creative teams it would get bad again, but as a guilty pleasure I would still buy it. This is either the third or fourth time I've started to collect Robin again, and after a weak disappointing first couple of issues, it thankfully didn't end as bad as it could have, but still I'm left feeling victimized. Spoilers ahead... they took a popular character in the more recent Batgirl and turned her from a force of good to one of evil and for a really crappy reason. And out of character if you ask me. I don't know why the PTB would have even allowed this, but who am I?

Hey, here's some more crap and a waste of money... try Superman/Batman #27. Like an episode of Dallas... it was all a dream. NEXT!

Birds of Prey, which started out good, didn't follow through. At least we now have a new member of an old character, Gypsy, and a decent fight out of a JLA type villain.

Now that I've ranted about how I only liked 1 out of 5 DC Comics, let's move on to the rest.

Invincible. The last few issues have been slow and not too catching but this one was a rush of excitement. I forgot how good this could be. This is a great super-hero book.

What's that? It looks like the 90's. It is! And it's a Disney property. Well then it must be Gargoyles cause I sure wouldn't buy a Rescue Rangers comic. Or would I? Anyway... aside from the fact that it's attached to Disney, something that in most cases associates it with something "kiddy", it is very much something that transforms to comics and am glad to add it to my collection.

New Avengers and Uncanny X-Men wrap up their respective storylines and thank god for that. The normally enjoyable read that is New Avengers just couldn't end quick enough, and maybe it's just because I don't have an extensive knowledge of the X-men universe that I didn't quite find its mutant-centric storyline x-citing.

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

I still don't know why I started picking up Uncanny, I only really seem to care about three characters on it's team, and apparently only two of those will carry over to the new team with the new creative team starting next issue. If only there were another X-men book out there that I could read instead.

Oh wait, there is and I collect it. Thanks New X-men.
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Well crap!

I was hoping not a lot of people would show up to this thing, cause it can get crowed at the Screenland, but now anyone who visits the viewaskew website saw this, and will probably red flag a few more people to this thing.

Monday, June 26th, Kansas City - Brian and Jeff will be holding a PUBLIC AUTOGRAPH SESSION and meet and greet with the fans! See, we told ya there might be some chances for you to get involved. Here's the full scoop:

THE COUNTRY’S MOST FAMOUS MINI-MART CLERKS DESCEND UPON KANSAS CITY
Dante Hicks and Randal Graves make a special one-day appearance at The Screenland Theater

WHO: Dante Hicks (Brian O’Halloran) and Randal Graves (Jeff Anderson), stars of the upcoming summer release CLERKS II, will make a special one-day appearance in Kansas City.

WHAT: The Screenland Theater will host an autograph signing session and mini comic book convention to celebrate the highly-anticipated release of CLERKS II. Kansas City fans will have the opportunity to meet Brian and Jeff and have them sign one piece of memorabilia. In addition, everyone is welcome to come out and watch as “Dante” and “Randal” immortalize their trip to Kansas City by leaving their handprints in The Screenland Celebrity Sidewalk.

WHERE: The Screenland Theater; 1656 Washington Street; Kansas City, MO 64108.

WHEN: Monday, June 26, 3pm – 5pm. Autograph opportunities will be on a first-come, first-served basis.

COST: Free to the public.

I will post the details of gathering on the message board as soon as I figure it all out. Peace out.
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Last night I went to see the Royals take on the Pirates as part of a Father's Day thing with who else... my Dad.

I at least try to make it to one game a year with the man, having only recently missed out last year. It would be more motivating to go to if the team didn't have to suck worse than they did the previous year, but I digress...

They lived up to their expectations at least for the first few innings having at least two errors and a score of 0-3 in the second inning. The only exciting thing up to that point was the fact it was dollar hot dogs. How can you be mad with only dollar hot dogs? Exactly.

Somewhere around the sixth inning or so the Royals decided it was time to actually play and had a nice run of hits, making it 4-4.

As opposed to the last few games where they had been loosing and left early, we stayed for their 6-4 win. Thanks Royals for not totally sucking.

In my dreams....

Apparently without explanation, the folks behind Entourage took out this ad in Variety.
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I know I haven't been to regular with these NMT columns lately, but I sure as hell wasn't going to miss this week. I present to you Superman Week!

The week before Superman Returns hits theatres, we have all sorts of Superman DVD goodness. Below I shall list in no particular order all the releases (to my knowledge) that were released today:

Lois & Clark Season 3
Justice League Season 2
Superboy Season 1
Krypto: The Superdoy Volume 1
The Adventures of Superman Seasons 3 & 4
Superman: The Animated Series Volume 3
Look, Up in the Sky: The Amazing Story of Superman
Superman: Braniac Attacks

Quite a bit. Too bad no Smallville season 5. I highly recommend Look, Up in the Sky, a nice two hour long documentary on Superman.

Other stuff this week: The Hills Have Eyes remake... I haven't seen the original but I liked this version. A little slow at the beginning but after a few surpise killings I really needed to see how this film was to play out.

Nightwatch, a movie I think looks like Dark City, otherwise have no idea what it's about. The last of the major Oscar films, Syriana comes out.

Another notable is a collection of Alfred Hitchcock flims were released on DVD, including a favorite of mine, Rope.
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Hey, this was one of those monumental weeks in comics. Didja know that? I'll save that one for last. First the DC Comics.

52 week six introduced a handful of new characters which I really don't care about. Hopefully they won't be around much or weigh in on stories enough to be cared about. Aside from that the overall "plot" is picking up with a nice 2-page layout of possible future happenings. Something to keep the reader interested in future issues. I'm sure there are going to be a few major moments yet to come in this series.

I haven't read Ion yet still, although reviews online say it isn't bad.

The Outsiders shows Nightwing threatening Superman with some Kryptonite. Them some balls there Grayson. Thankfully the book is moving on past the current storyline and hopefully some insight to the past year will be revealed.

With the one year later story beginning about four issues ago, many people didn't like what Judd Winick had done to Green Arrow. That has settled down with this issue and things are starting to level out again. Soon we'll be learning more to what happened with the missing year (are we seeing a trend yet?).

Squadron Supreme mainly focused on one member, a woman called Inertia. Half the issue is devoted to her backstory, seeing as almost half this team's roster are brand new characters to the world of Supreme Power.

Also this week I picked up the first volume of Penny Arcade web-comics from Dark Horse. This came out around January I think. I always visit penny-arcade.com several times a week to check out the lastest comic. Funny stuff.

Alright, if you don't know about Civil War #2 then be warned, spoilers ahead.

If you saw the ending to this months Amazing Spider-man then you kind of knew it was going to happen... Spider-man revealed his identity to the world. Kind of a comic book holy crap moment. Yeah.

Personally I kind of like it when comic book characters progress forward. They can't be stuck in the same situation forever. When you think about it, Superman has been around since what, 1938. From that time till 1985 he'd just about did it all, and that is a generation or two worth of storytelling. When Supes was rebooted in 85, things changed and it was a fresh start... which is fine for a younger, newer collector such as myself.

Where am I going with this Spider-man/Superman thing? Well, I'll continue....

During the late eighties/mid nineties... respectively... both Spider-man and Superman wed their comic book loved ones. Both characters moving forward. To think about it, do I really want to be 70 years old and if I'm still reading comics at that age.. (could you imagine?)... my characters which I read about in my twenties could still be the same age? No. I would like to see them age a bit with me. I know it'll be slower, but I want it to happen. Forward progression.

I've kind just started ranting. Um... so anyway... Peter Parker is Spider-man... incase you didn't know.
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This is a really well put together video of two guys fighting each other Tekken style. There's a bit of an intro to it that's not so important... so if you want to just skip to 01:30 into it, then the fighting begins.

A must see for anyone who even played a game of Tekken.

*UPDATE*
I called the Screenland Theatre and found out that it's just Brian and Jeff making an appearance to sign things, there will be no film... Clerks or otherwise. It's from 3 to 5 as the flier states and there are no tickets to be sold, it's a first come melee. I DID NOT however think to ask if the guys were going to charge anything for autographs. I always assume such things should be free to us, the fan, however I know such things aren't always the case. That is all! *UPDATE*

I'm so happy I found this that I'm wrapping myself in sheets of love and joy. I'm going to see what I can do to get off of work this day, but to my friends who visit here on a regular basis I extend this:

Clerks 2 will make a special premiere in Kansas City at Screenland on June 26, 3PM! This is a special treat for those who are big fans of the original, and a chance to catch Clerks in one of the best hidden gem theaters in the metro. For those that have not been to Screenland (17th & Washington, right off Broadway) it's one of my favorite hidden theaters in town.. lots of nice memorabilia, a nice screen (barco loungers) full bar and an over-21 crowd.

It's also home to the Walt Disney exhibit for the time Disney spent in Kansas City drawing cartoons here.

Anyway, Jeff Anderson (Randall Graves) and Brian O'Halloran (Dante Hicks) will be present and do some hand shaking etc.

Get more info at http://www.screenland.com/

They also say there's going to be a mini comic book convention there too. However big that really is, but still a plus. Last I checked there isn't anything up at the screenland.com address yet. But the date and location (Kansas City) is confirmed on the viewaskew site. More as it comes.

Hey all!

Man have I been busy. And I'm afraid it's only going to get worse.

First off I work. And when I'm not working I'm usually working again at my second job. And if I'm not doing one of the first two then I'm working on my house getting it ready to put on the market (finally!).

Over the weekend I ended up moving a lot of crap-ola away and between a friend and my girlfriend managed to get my carpet stretched and shampooed. So things are looking up. So maybe I'll have some more free time later. But not this week at least.

Take this as a notice that things are kinda slowing down here for the time being. I'll post when I can. *smiles!*

What have we got? Obviously 52, this weekly thing up to issue five now. So how has it done now after a month's worth? Still fresh, filling readers in on what the heck has happened to a whole universe of heroes during the missing one year. It hasn't been on the edge of your seat reading, but there's always something new happening.

JSA is just horrible. I'm just finishing out the series which ends next month, only one issue left thank god! Yeah. But it'll restart a few months later and it'll be good again, and the new "in" thing.. blah blah blah. Currently JSA is running an arc by fill in writer/artists like JLA did before it got axed. It's just bleeding itself dead so the readers who return for the re-boot will just love it!

Wonder Woman #1 was alright. I didn't know what to expect from this "The O.C." writer guy, but he does a good job getting a series started. I like the changes done to the three big WW villians brought into the issue. Pretty jam packed. Much better than how the last writer handled things.

I was talked into getting the Superman Returns Prequel #1. It didn't take much talking too, but I wasn't going to get this originally. And it didn't really do anything for me. Have you seen the first ten minutes of Superman: The Movie? Well then you've seen this issue. Save yourself the money. I'm not even going to tell you how much I spent on it. It's a good damned thing I like Superman.

Lastly, New X-Men. I like this book. I really do. I can get into this far better than Uncanny X-Men. It feels like they just try too hard with the real X-Men, so when these kids come along and they face pretty steep odds, it's just more exciting for some reason. Like the cover too. Plus.

To reflect on post #300.

Thanks for visiting.
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So my sneaky girlfriend has me take off from work last weekend for reasons unbeknown by me. I am lead to believe whatever my little mind happens to run with, for what the weekend was to hold for me. For everything I could have imagined I ultimately guessed wrong.

Saturday afternoon my girlfriend puts a blindfold on me and starts driving.... and driving... for a long time. I have no idea where the hell I am. Although I did pay enough attention to if I was on a highway or gravel road. Which leads me to conclude I should have known where I was when she pulled up into one of my friends driveways.

After removing the blindfold I was presented with a line up of a handful of my friends (others were soon to follow). Yes, it was a surprise birthday party.

I had fun. It was good to hang back and talk, eat, and be merry with people I either just don't see much of or just not in such a cassual setting. It felt good knowing everybody came together like that. Kinda gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside, you know, right past my cold blackened heart.

I kid.

But seriously.
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Playing a little bit of catch up and surprise here.

First off I finally got in the latest issue of Aquaman which is alright cause the issue wasn't all too exciting. I missed Birds of Prey last week so I grabbed a copy.

I was surprised when I got both of my Image books in the same week. Yeah! Now I can wait another month and a half to get the next issues. I might note that both Walking Dead and Invincible were good reads.

52 is still keeping the readers interested while keeping them an arms length away from revealing all it's secrets.

Superman/Batman #26 wasn't that great. It was a multi-creator issue to honor someone who had died, so I'll let it be that instead of a comic book.

Also I got a Wizard (not pictured) gearing up towards the new Superman Returns film due out later this month. Let the countdown continue.

Here are two quick shots I took of the store on Thursday, the first day in the new downtown location. Don't mind the mess, it's since been cleaned up.

Is there going to be another Grand Opening? Who knows.
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