ROBIN: Holy King Oscar fish balls, Batman! That shark is swimming right for us!
BATMAN: I can see that. Looks to be a Great White, but I’ve never seen one that big before.
ROBIN: I’m sayin’ tho! That mama could swallow the both of us up, right past all those rows of teeth and everything!
BATMAN: Worry not, chum. I’ve got just the thing for a situation like this, right here in my utility belt.
Batman pulls out a canister and sprays it right into the face of the huge sea creature, who immediately shakes it off, opens its mouth wide, and swallows the Dynamic Duo right up.
Robin lights his Bat-Flashlight.
ROBIN: Yep. Swallowed us right up. Guess all we can do now is wait to be digested.
BATMAN: I don’t understand. The Bat-Shark Repellant should have sent it scurrying away.
Batman picks up the empty canister and reads the label.
BATMAN: Oh, you gotta be kidding me right now. Damn that Alfred. This isn’t Bat-Shark Repellant, it’s Bat Shark Repellant!
ROBIN: They’re not the same thing?
BATMAN: No. This stuff only repels bat sharks.
ROBIN: I didn’t even know there was such a thing as bat sharks.
BATMAN: There isn’t.
ROBIN: Then, why is there bat shark repellant?
BATMAN: I guess someone saw a market for something that’s completely worthless, and were able to convince enough of the public to buy it. Something like that, probably.
ROBIN: Okay…Why do you have bat shark repellant?
Batman poses for that “Batman pondering” meme.
BATMAN: Chum, you may have presented me with a query more unsolvable than any the Riddler ever threw at us. I think I’m just gonna sit and wait to be digested.
So, we’re traveling west, making stops along the way. One of those stops was in North Platte, Nebraska. Cute little town. Anyway, we got up and hit the road at exactly 9:00 am, which was kind of early for us.
We got on the Interstate and drove for about 75 miles before we needed to stop for gas and bathroom. As we pulled into the lot of a gas station, I looked at the clock and it said 9:06 am.
Here we go. M. Night Shyamalan’s at it again. This time, it’s not the trees that are killing people (or making people kill themselves to be more specific, as trees haven’t evolved hands to hold knives or guns with), or an alien threat, or any of the other baddies in his previous films. It’s a deadly beach. A beach that makes you…Old.
I mean, I can relate. Every time I go to the beach, I feel like I’m gonna be there till I die. There’s sand, sun and/or wind, sand, rowdy kids, sand, gulls trying to steal your lunch, sand, gross seaweed, sand, jagged shells digging into your feet on your way into the salty stinky sea, and sand. I mean, that stuff gets everywhere. Two kinds of people go to the beach: those who know it sucks, and those who pretend it doesn’t suck for the sake of pleasing no one.
In addition to the regular beach reasons, the beach in Old sucks because it makes you age at a ridiculously rapid rate. Like one hour equals two years of your life. Why? Well, the characters will spend a lot of time speculating as to why this is happening but they don’t really know. No one does. What they do know, especially after a couple of them die trying, is that there’s no way off this beach.
The aging is more visible in the kids, who are ages 5,6, and 11 (as far as we know), because their bodies undergo more drastic visual changes, y’know, with puberty and adolescence and all. They try to address the fact that growing kids need tons of food (they’re supplied with a huge basket of what appears to be astronaut food? Freeze-dried pasta just add water? Whatever. They’d need more than one basket of food to survive, but then surviving was never the endgame for the folks running this “resort.”), but apparently the adults don’t need to eat at all even though they are aging at the same rate. An hour without food is equivalent to two years without food? That’s a hell of a hunger strike, but nobody withers away and drops dead. Why? Even the characters with all their clunky dialogue can’t figure that one out.
The script? Hoo boy. It comes across like the parts of the screenplay that you’re not supposed to read out loud. “We are on the beach.” “The dead dog was just alive a minute ago.” “I’m going to ask everyone in sight what their names and occupations are.” You’ve heard of “show, don’t tell?” Well, M. introduces us to “show them telling.” The characters spend so much time trying to dumb down this already dumb movie. For every “why” that the screenwriter (Shyamalan, of course) answers, five more questions take its place. After a while you simply don’t care anymore why all this sh*t is happening, you just want everyone to be more interesting. And less face-punchable.
Now, the idea that there’s an area on planet Earth that ages people two years for every hour of real time, is a dope idea. It’s a great concept that a writer and director can run with and have a ghoulishly fun time. That writer and director need to be competent though, especially if they are the same person. There are scenes that, if there were better actors saying better lines, could have been downright chilling. Some of the death scenes could have been gruesome (even for a PG-13 money grab) and horrifying, if they weren’t surrounded by so much overripe cinematic cheese.
I’m a writer myself. I know all too well the whimsy a writer feels when they get that kernel of an idea: “Hey, what if there was a place that made you old?” Yeah, that’s interesting, but it’s not a story until that kernel pops. And it ain’t gonna pop unless the plot oil and script heat are sufficient and now I want popcorn. But hang on, it’s not even an original idea of Shyamalan’s; he got the story from a French graphic novel titled Sandcastle. The novel has a pretty dismal ending, while Old goes for the Hollywood ending. Several endings, actually. There are no guns with perfect aim and unlimited ammo, but there are matches that stay lit and people who can hold their breath underwater longer than David Blaine.
Pretty much the only thing they nailed with this movie was the casting of the two main kids. As they age they are, of course, played by different actors, and even if it was dumb luck, it works brilliantly.
Nothing else works, though.
Is Old so bad it’s good? Both my wife and I had fun watching it and picking it apart while laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of it all (“Go in groups of two in case you black out.” Why, so you can black out together?). It’s on HBO Max, so if you have that, dial it up when you have nothing better to do. One and a half out of five stars.
I’d been reading comics earlier, but before I picked up issue #23 of The New Teen Titans at a comic store in Balitmore, Maryland, I’d never paid attention to who wrote and drew them.
The cover in the display pic is issue #485 of Adventure Comics. At the time, it was where you could find stories about Dial “H” for Hero, a unique series where two teenagers use a special dial to change into superheroes. And the superheroes were all created by comics fans and readers. Chris King and Vicki Grant would change into a different (allegedly) fan-created character every time and as far as I know, they’re never the same hero twice.
I guess the reason I bring this up is because hell–look at how many characters are on this cover. It’s got a gaggle of supervillains and monsters ganging up on two superheroes. But here’s the thing: All of these completely made-up, non-canon characters only appeared in this one story and were never seen again. If there was ever a situation where an artist could’ve taken it easy drawing a cover, this’d be it. But that’s the thing of the thing: George didn’t phone in shit. He put in all this effort and detail into making a cover for the very definition of “one-shot” characters. Because the man simply loved what he did. And so the hell did we.
Titans wasn’t even the first thing he’d ever worked on. His career as a comics artist began when I was still in preschool. He did so much work for Marvel Comics on The Avengers and random covers for other random Marvel comics before he came over to DC and put his indelible mark on Justice League, the aforementioned random covers, and what was arguably the greatest comics miniseries ever–Crisis On Infinite Earths.
Everybody gives it up for Mr. George Pérez, and well they should. The man has given the art world so much, and has been entertaining and astonishing comic book geeks like myself, as well as non-geeks like yourself, for the better part of 40+ years. Though he worked in printed media almost exclusively, his influence reaches far beyond your local comics shop. The reimagining of Wonder Woman? That was George. TV shows like HBO’s Titans, CW’s The Flash, and cartoons like Teen Titans GO! and other straight-to-video DC movies? All influenced by characters and stories Mr. Pérez created or recreated.
As the 1980s began, Mr. Pérez teamed with legendary writer Marv Wolfman to bring us a comic series that was unlike anything ever experienced before in the Silver Age of comics. Characters in The New Teen Titans had all the angst, pathos and tribulations of everyday schlubs like ourselves. More, actually. George not only treated us to some of the most visually spectacular action scenes ever seen, but he also took the time to infuse the characters’ facial expressions with all the feels that writer Wolfman ran through them. You could tell when they were scared, surprised, shocked, drunk, or seconds away from death, and it made you feel some kinda way, too.
I could fill this blog with some of my favorite images of George’s work, but there simply isn’t enough room for them all. Go ahead: do a search for George Pérez on Pinterest and you’ll find thousands of drawings. Prolific doesn’t even begin to describe the volume of work this man put in.
George was diagnosed with Stage 3 pancreatic cancer about a year ago, and made the decision to stop doing the convention circuit and opted for hospice at home with his family. He left this earth on May 6, 2022. He will live on in the pages of some of the best comics, storylines of some of the coolest TV shows, and in the imaginations of millions.
Young Barry Buffalo arrived home from school. Dad could tell that he was upset.
“Barry? What’s wrong, lad?”
“Hi, Dad.” Barry shakes his backpack off his back and it lands with a smack on the moist floor of the cave. He headbutts his father hello. “Rough day at buffalo school today. The guys were really givin’ me the business.”
“The business? About what?”
“Well, Dad…The guys at school, they’ve been saying that…that Mom is gay.”
Dad snorts softly. “Well, my boy, you know how calves like to spread rumors about who we like to mate with.”
“Yeah Dad, I know. But…um, is Mom gay?”
“No, Barry. She’s not gay.”
“Okay. So she’s straight.”
“I didn’t say that, either.” Barry snorts in confusion. “Well then, what is she?”
We see you, Netflix. Trying to up your original movie game by getting the top Hollywood stars to be in your films. Now, if you could just make them worth watching. After the debacle that was Bright, I wasn’t exactly too gung-ho about diving into another sci-fi-based thriller, but dammit, you went and got Sandra Bullock, one of my favorite actresses, to star in it.
I loves me some Sandy B. Since Speed–heck, since Demolition Man, I’ve been ridin’ for her. Even in mediocre rom-coms like The Proposal, Sandra is a joy to watch. Here, in Bird Box, our lovable heroine, named Malorie, is up to her blindfolded eyeballs in trouble. Seems that there is some kinda epidemic taking over the globe that’s causing normally sane people to kill themselves. And no one really knows why it’s Happening.
The previous capital H is on purpose, because Bird Box, based on a novel by Josh Malerman, bears a none-too-subtle resemblance to M. Night Shymalan’s 2008 mess The Happening. Only this time, it’s not the trees behind the mass suicides; it’s some unseen “creatures” who, once you see them, your eyes get all crusty, and you do yourself in.
But hold on. Some humans are immune to the creatures. They can look right at them, but instead of killing themselves, they become self-deputized agents of these creatures, and start helping the creatures with killing off the normies. Why? Well, it seems that if you’re slightly mentally unbalanced, or you already have homicidal tendencies, you think these creatures are beautiful. We never see the creatures; all we know is they have the ability to make leaves float. Oh, and birds don’t like them. Thankfully, there’re a few lovebirds in an abandoned supermarket who act as an early detection system.
So, what’s one to do? You cram those birds in a box, and row, row, row your boat down the river to what you hope is a safe haven. By the time Malorie can find that haven, her band of survivors is down to herself, and two five year-olds, boy Boy, and girl, um, Girl. The story shifts between the present-day dystopia, and five years prior, when all the sh*t hit the fan.
The flashback sequences play out with only a little bit of tension; we know that everyone except Malorie and the kids are going to die, but we don’t know how, or in what order. John Malkovich and Lil Rel Howery provide a few laughs portraying characters that aren’t all that removed from their usual types. And we see Malorie getting her groove back with a handsome younger man named Tom. The present-day scenes aren’t that tense either, because whatever predicament Malorie quickly finds herself and the kids in, is resolved just as quickly, and they continue rollin’ on the river.
The movie is entertaining, but it raises many questions that it doesn’t even attempt to answer. The book probably goes more into detail, but then, most books do; they’re books. So, is it better than The Happening? Sure, but that’s a pretty low hurdle to clear. Is it better than Bright? Ditto. Two and a half out of five stars.