Isegoria

Iron Man 3 pits our hero against one of his classic enemies from the original comics, the Mandarin — a Fu Manchu knock-off who has mastered alien technology and harnessed it in a number of rings he wears.

Naturally the studio cast Ben Kingsley in this role — to avoid problems.

If you go back and read the original novel, The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, the villain is a worthy opponent — foreign, certainly, and sinister, but not a silly caricature. The movie versions and derivative characters though…

Mike Sterling presents The Phantasmagorical Four — the Fantastic Four, as if they came from the pen of H.P. Lovecraft:

Professor Richards leaned forward at his desk, studying intently the papers laid out before him. After a few minutes of this quiet contemplation, he sat up, his wooden chair creaking at the movement. He looked over his shoulder at me, as if just now remembering that he had an assistant, one that had been waiting patiently for the good professor to finally turn his attentions to him. “My apologies,” Richards said, though his tone did not sound apologetic at all. “I am currently attempting to unwrap a particular historical puzzle, and have need of my volume of Egyptology.”

I inferred from this statement that he intended for me to fetch this book for him. Though I have spent little time in Richards’ personal study, I had no trouble spotting it amongst the many shelves burdened with books of science and history, both well-studied and obscure. It was a thick tome, discolored by age and resting on a shelf just barely out of my reach. I turned away from the professor to find the stepping stool or ladder that he must have somewhere nearby to facilitate the retrieval of books stored at such an inconvenient height. However, oddly enough I found none immediately evident, but my curiosity regarding this discovery was interrupted by….

What could I call it? A sense? A “feeling,” like the sort one would have when another person is peering intently at you, and you know for certain that you are being so rudely stared at even without directly confirming it yourself. This, however, was not the weight of another’s intense observation I felt upon me. This was the feeling that something was behind me, not approaching me, but passing by, twisting and serpentine, splitting through the air with haste. I saw nothing of what it was, frozen briefly by the sensation, staring blankly at a crowded row of books only a foot or two away. I heard nothing, save for what sounded for all the world like the hard cover of a book briefly scraping along a high and distant shelf.

Just as suddenly as the feeling had come upon me, it was gone; and, the spell broken, I spun around to try to determine what had just occurred unseen behind my back while I had vainly looked for a ladder that wasn’t there. Professor Richards was still seated in his chair, as if he’d never left it, and it creaked again lightly now as he once more leaned forward over his desk. It was not to study his papers, I saw to my surprise, but rather to read the book of Egyptology, the very one that had been sitting on the shelf moments before. I thought perhaps it was simply a twin of the volume, maybe one that Richards had stored in a desk drawer and removed unheard, but a quick glance upward revealed that the book that was once there, was no longer.

I tried to form the words, to ask the professor how he had done it, but as I was even drawing the breath to speak, Richards turned away from his studies only long enough for a terse “That will be all.” I found my need to question wither away, replaced by a relief at having reason to depart.

Andy Serkis made his name performing the role of Gollum in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies, but he has since worked as Jackson’s second-unit director on The Hobbit and formed his own performance-capture studio, The Imaginarium, which plans on making a new version of Animal Farm:

I think we found a rather fresh way of looking at it,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It is definitely using performance capture, but we are using an amalgamation of filming styles to create the environmments.

“We are in proof-of-concept stage at the moment, designing characters and experimenting on our stage with the designs,” he continues. “It is quite a wide canvas as to how much and how far we can take performance capture with quadrupeds and how much we will be using facial [capture]. We are not discounting the use of keyframe animation or puppeteering parts of animals. We are in an experimental phase; it’s terribly exciting.”

On the storytelling, Serkis says: “We’re keeping it fable-istic and [aimed at] a family audience. We are not going to handle the politics in a heavy-handed fashion. It is going to be emotionally centered in a way that I don’t think has been seen before. The point of view that we take will be slightly different to how it is normally portrayed and the characters, We are examining this in a new light.”

A family-friendly version of Animal Farm?

Let’s get this party started up in here:

Borepatch just introduced me to Hijinks Ensue, and I particularly liked this one about the little Dalek who wouldn’t go to sleep:

Ian Fleming’s Moonraker was published in hardback in 1955, but it was published in paperback the next year in the US — as Too Hot to Handle, with Americanized English and explanatory footnotes.

The idea for a Bond theme began in late 1961, when Dr. No co-producer Albert Broccoli asked songwriter Monty Norman to compose music for the film:

In early 1962, Mr. Norman traveled to the movie set in Jamaica, where he wrote the film’s Caribbean-flavored songs before returning to London that spring.

But time was running out for the theme. According to Mr. Norman’s website, he reached into his bottom drawer for a song he had already written for an aborted musical called “A House For Mr. Biswas,” based on the novel by V.S. Naipaul. It worked: The “Dr. No” producers liked the catchy melody on his “Bad Sign, Good Sign.”

Next, Mr. Broccoli and co-producer Harry Saltzman turned to John Barry, a film composer who had seen some success with his John Barry Seven rock band. Mr. Barry added orchestration to Mr. Norman’s melody line—but he felt his score still needed a dominant “voice” to symbolize Bond’s masculinity.

“John called me over to his apartment in June 1962,” recalled Mr. Flick, who was the John Barry Seven’s lead guitarist. “He showed me Monty Norman’s music and asked how we could give it more power.” Mr. Flick pecked out Mr. Norman’s melody on his guitar, Morse-code style, and suggested dropping the key to E-minor from A-minor for a stronger statement. And the theme as we know it was born.

In the end, Mr. Norman retained the theme’s sole composer credit. When Mr. Barry hinted that he deserved partial credit in a British magazine in 1997 and London’s Sunday Times followed up with a nasty jab at Mr. Norman, the theme’s composer sued the paper, and the jury decided in his favor.

Best. Theme song. Evar.

Behold, Joker and Lex:

(Hat tip to Borepatch.)

I still get a kick out of spot-on Jonny Quest-spoof Toby Danger: