The Screengrab

One of the movies I'm most looking forward to this fall is Towelhead, a creepy coming-of-age drama with the twist that the lead character, Jasira Maroun, is an Arab-American girl from a strict traditionalist family.  Based on a surprisingly good novel by Alicia Eran (herself of Egyptian descent), Towelhead may be a disappointment or it may be a success, but one thing's for sure:  it's already generated a stupid, meaningless controversy, and for a small indie film, that's money in the bank.

As an Arab-American, I've learned to take everything that comes out of CAIR -- the Council on American-Islamic Relations -- with a grain of salt.  They do vital, much-needed work in exposing the often insidious amount of racism, prejudice and bigotry that Arabs and Muslims suffer in this country, and since 9/11, their work couldn't be more necessary.  They're also particularly adept at pointing out the numerous cultural stereotypes by which Arabs and Muslims are victimized, and they keep up the good work despite the profound hatred they generate from right-wingers, who seem to regard them as quasi-criminals and terror-abbetors who are morally just south of Osama bin-Laden.  That's the upside.  The downside is that they have the typical thin skin of every advocacy group, and every so often they find themselves on the wrong side of an argument, as is the case now, when they have demanded that Warner Brothers change the name of Towelhead, which they find racist and offensive, to Nothing is Private (the name under which it debuted at the Toronto Film Festival last year).  

Of course, the film's writer and director both make the rather obvious point that it's specifically because "towelhead" is a racist word that they chose it as a name.  The Hot Blog reports on writer Alicia Erian's comments on the controversy:  "I am of course aware that the title of my book is an ethnic slur.  Indeed, I selected the title to highlight one of the novel's major themes:  racism.  Towelhead...is an ugly word.  The job of the artist, however, has been, and always will be, to highlight that which is ugly in the hopes of finding something beautiful.  This charge, by necessity, will at times put the artist at odds with admirable groups like CAIR.  The solution, it seems to me, is not to force the artist to alter his or her work, but instead to use the occasion of that work as an entry point for meaningful debate and discussion."

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Despite the fact that The Dark Knight has made roughly eighty-five kerjillion dollars on its way to breaking nearly every box office record since the dawn of motion photography, DC Comics -- and, by extention, their parent company Warner Brothers -- is widely perceived as the big loser in the battle of superhero movies.  Much as Marvel Comics did in the early '60s, Marvel Films -- the people responsible for Iron Man, Spider-Man and the X-Men franchise -- has largely trounced what it used to call its "Distinguished Competition".  Although both companies have turned their franchise characters into successful movies, Marvel's have generally been seen as more successful, more entertaining, more true to their comic book origins, and most of all, easier to get made.  While DC continues to farm its characters out to various studios, Marvel has consolidated its filmmaking power into its studio arm, ensuring a production continuity that provides another curious parallel to the '60s, when the more coherent continuity of Marvel's comics appealed to readers. 

This is a situation that Warner Brothers, who's been making movies even longer than DC has been making comics, is eager to change.  In an article in the latest Variety, Warner execs and DC bigwigs alike discuss what's being done to avoid the sort of missteps that have led to their being thought of as the second-tier player in superhero films.  From greenlighting unprofitable tripe like Catwoman to dragging its feet on potential blockbusters like Wonder Woman and Justice League, DC's film development players have made a number of high-profile mistakes (let's not even speak of the botch-job that was the making and marketing of Superman Returns) that have led them to be seen as failures despite having put out the biggest blockbuster in four decades.  

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Sex and the City:  The Movie opens everywhere that Cosmopolitans are sold today, and the odds are pretty good that it will make enough money to keep Sarah Jessica Parker in sundresses for the rest of her life.  There is little doubt as to whether or not the movie -- based on the inescapable HBO original series -- will be successful; the real question is whether or not it's going to be any good.  One thing is for sure:  it will at least make more money than the other films that have been made out of HBO's original television programming.  They're a pretty dismal set of money-losers and critic-displeasers, ranging from the not good (Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny) to the very bad (the Mr. Show movie, Run Ronnie Run) to the completely awful (

AMERICAN SPLENDOR (2003)

The first, and arguably the best, of a rash of terrific film releases by HBO Films in the mid-2000s, Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini's inventive (and sometimes elusive) documentary about underground comics writer Harvey Pekar stands alongside the remarkable Crumb as a compelling, if sometimes troubling, look at an American original.  The comparison is by no means coincidental:  legendary cartoonist Robert Crumb is a longtime friend of Pekar's, and the man he first recruited to illustrate his stories of the struggles, victories, humiliations and triumphs of everyday life.  If it's a little disengenuous to claim that Pekar is the indestructably normal person he claims to be (and it is -- normal people, after all, do not compulsively and sometimes brilliantly catalog the minutia of their lives in autobiographical comics), there's nothing at all phony about Pekar, his everyday heroism, the skewed attitude and refusal to surrender to the diificultues of an ordinary life, or his irascible and cynical -- if never openly cruel -- sense of humor.

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In our ongoing quest to bring you every single solitary detail of the production of Zack Snyder's upcoming adaptation of The Watchmen until your head falls off, we are pleased to report an interesting development in the filming of the comic book masterpiece -- and one that has repercussions, as amazing as it may seem, to peope other than the hardcore geeks who are even at this moment salivating over the prospect of more Watchmen news.

One of the questions that has long nagged Watchmen fans (other than "will Snyder suddenly become much more talented when he begins work on this film?" and "are they kidding with that cast, or what?") is how the filmmakers can possibly cram the entire story of the comic into a two-hour movie.  Alan Moore's Watchmen is one of the most complex comic series in history, full of dense symbolism, intricate reference, and tons of backstory -- much of it vital to the main plot -- told in supplemental materials that appeared in the back pages of the comic.  No standard-length feature film could possibly capture all of that intricacy, and without it, many feared that the overall quality of the project would suffer.

Now, in an interesting piece in the New York Times, comes word that Snyder is not making one film, but two, simultaneously:  The Watchmen itself, and Tales of the Black Freighter, an animated feature-length adaptation of the metafictional comic-within-a-comic read by a minor character in the Watchmen, which served to both illuminate and amplify some of the themes and symbols of the main story.  Tales of the Black Freighter will not be included in the Watchmen movie -- but it will be released, on its own, as a separate DVD, only five days after the film is released in theatres. 

As the Times article makes clear, this is the first step in a new strategy by Warner Brothers of producing value-added DVDs designed, in an era of cable television 'video on demand', to boost DVD sales when they're beginning to falter for the first time in their history.  Warner has already had considerable success with this tactic in direct-to-video releases set in the DC Animated universe (such as Superman:  Doomsday and Justice League:  New Frontier), and the company claims this is about much more than just piling on extra junk for completists:  it allows Snyder to tell a more complete story than the time limitations of the Watchmen movie will allow, and it allows the company to essentially profit three times off the the DVD market for the movie:  first, with this supplemental release, which they anticipate selling in huge numbers on release; second, with the DVD release, months later, of the actual Watchmen movie; and third, with a deluxe package containing both, as well as other supplemental materials (including, it's rumored, a faux-documentary short film of Hollis Mason's Under the Hood -- another book-within-the-book featured in the Watchmen comic that likewise gave vital background information on the characters and their relationships).

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Via, of all places, Latino Review, comes a review of the latest script from superhero specialist David S. Goyer (Batman Begins):  SuperMax.

Although it hasn't locked down a distributor yet, SuperMax is generating tons of buzz in the cape-and-cowl nerdworld of superhero films, and we'd be very surprised if it doesn't land a production company by the end of summer.  (Some sites have already assigned Matt Damon to the leading role, but this is the kind of speculation run amok that is endemic to the world of super-flicks.)  We recently discussed how Marvel intends to make further inroads against rival DC in the movie business by taking a multiversal approach to its storytelling as they did in their comics of the 1960s; while it's not clear if this move will pressure Warner Brothers to do the same in DC movie adaptations, it's at least clear from the SuperMax script that they'll be dipping deep into fanservice, rewarding geeks with tons of cameos by popular DC supervillains, including the Joker, the Riddler and Lex Luthor.

Essentially, SuperMax tells the story of billionaire playboy Oliver Queen's transformation from self-absorbed layabout to crimefighting liberal crusader the Green Arrow, as well as his subsequent frame-up for murder.  After the framejob, he's found guilty and transported to the SuperMax prison, a specially designed high-security penitentiary meant to contain super-powered threats.  The movie quickly transforms into a race-against-time thriller, as Green Arrow must prove himself innocent and find out who framed him (and why) before the inhabitants of SuperMax -- many of whom he put there himself -- get their revenge.

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You probably haven't heard of Marc Toberoff. But to the families, heirs and representatives of some of our culture's best-known characters and creations, he's Superman — and to the corporate entities that own those creations, he's Lex Luthor.

Toberoff is an intellectual properties attorney who specializes in representing claims by creators and their heirs against big studios, publishers and other media conglomerates who have made mega-millions off of their creations — often without paying more than a pittance to the people responsible. In his latest case, he's won a federal ruling that gives the family of Superman's co-creator, Jerry Siegel, a financial stake in films made about the Man of Steel. It's a huge victory, and one that's likely to set a precedent that will also benefit the family of Superman's other creator, Joe Shuster. DC Comics, who owns the character, famously paid a pittance for the rights to Superman, and both Siegel and Shuster's families were nearly destitute for decades while DC (and its parent company, Warner Brothers) turned the character into one of the most recognizable — and marketable — icons in the world.

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The day is fast approaching when every film studio in existence, Hollywood and indie alike, will realize that every single comic book property from the past seventy-five years has been optioned. There will be no cape, no humorous anthropomorphized critter, no hard-boiled detective left to assign some attractive actor or actress to portray on screen.

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There's no doubt that sexism is alive and well in the movie industry. Just look at Jeff Robinov's comments from last fall.

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Hollywood Reporter dropped word yesterday that Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way and Warner Bros are teaming up to make a live action version of Fisher-Price My First Anime, Akira.

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This is it, ‘Grabbers. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Sony’s Blu-ray high definition format is on the top rope and preparing to deliver a life ending body slam to Toshiba’s HD-DVD.

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Well, at least somebody thinks the upcoming Watchmen movie is going to be a big hit: Fox apparently thinks enough of the project to go ahead and sue Warner Brothers, claiming that they hold exclusive rights to develop, produce and distrubute a theoretical movie based on the groundbreaking graphic novel.

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Turns out that those reports of Warner Bros making a quick decision whether or not to move forward with George Miller’s Justice League movie were quite true. Survey says: it ain’t happening.

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The Screengrab’s very own Leonard Pierce wasn’t joking in his post earlier today. We are going to drown you in comic book movie related news and you are going to like it! It’s true that nigh on every superhero that’s seen print in the past seventy years has been optioned by a studio. While the solo heroes are all tied up though, Hollywood has been slow to approach the legal quagmire of producing adaptations of one of comics’ most celebrated traditions: the team-up. No, X-Men and Fantastic Four don’t count. They’re individual properties in their own right.

In the past six months, it’s been looking like Warner Bros. was set to make the first big budget superhero team-up with a George Miller (Babe, Happy Feet, Mad Max) helmed Justice League adaptation. But, according to Entertainment Weekly via AICN, today is the day that determines whether or not the flick happens. An anonymous source indicated that January 15th is the greenlight deadline for Miller’s Justice League and while the WB is pushing to have it in theaters within eighteen months, Miller is still pushing for a re-write. It’s not clear whether or not Warner Bros will bring in another director or if they’ll allow Miller to pursue a non-WGA approved rewrite.

I’m right there with Mr. Pierce in the belief that the most promising comic book material for screen adaptation waits in indie comics. That said though, if the popcorn superhero movie is going to continue to be profitable and entertaining, it has to evolve beyond the origin story-good sequel-bad sequel franchise mold that’s been established in the past decade. Team-ups are a smart way to do this provided they are, unlike most comic book movies (*cough* Ghost Rider), well made. Get someone like Steven Soderbergh, who’s proven just how successful and entertaining an ensemble of colorful characters can be, to make an Avengers movie and then we’ll be getting somewhere.

The ‘Grab brought you word just last night that Sony’s Blu-ray high definition format was about to crush HD-DVD from existence come May. Fuel was added to the fire this morning when the Financial Times announced that Paramount, one of HD-DVDs strongest exclusive supporters, was moving to drop the format to join Warner Bros. in going with the stronger performing Blu-Ray from here on out.

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Movie nerds and videophiles rejoice! The world is one step closer to having a single high definition home video format. Warner Bros. delivered a crushing blow to Microsoft and Toshiba’s HD-DVD on Friday by announcing that they would release their movies exclusively on Sony’s Blu-ray format as of May 2008. Michael Bay, probably the only person on the planet who cares about such things, is reportedly uber-psyched about all those Harry Potter flicks showing up on his chosen format.