Todd’s Movie Blog

Saw a picture of the new actor as Superman for the upcoming Man of Steel, Henry Cavill.  Not sure how I think about him.  Physically he fits the bill looking all buff and broad shouldered.  What has been giving me pause is his dark and brooding scowl.  I get the feeling that the film makers are trying to make Superman be a bit more like their successful Batman films that Christopher Nolan did, which is a big mistake.  Batman and Superman are completely different characters.

Batman is a revenge fantasy so the dark and brooding hero works. But Superman was always an allegory for the immigrant experience, coming to America, making good and in return giving back to the country that has been good to you.  He has always been a lighter character and doesn’t work as an angry hero.  Let’s face it, an indestructible being who can punch out buildings who is dark angry and brooding isn’t heroic, he’s a scary villain, ala Terrence Stamp’s General Zod.

It works for Batman because he is human and vulnerable, but Superman doesn’t operate on that primal level.  There is a reason he has been called the Big Blue Boy Scout.  Batman is a flexible character.  He can be goofy and he can be menacing, both for the same reason.  He can be goofy, ala Adam West, because he is a man running around dressed like a  bat, and he can be menacing, ala Christian Bale, because he is running around dressed like a bat, which is crazy.

But Superman, he can’t pull off that kind of range.  He has a very narrow area that he can operate in, he can be a little goofy and heroic, ala Christopher Reeve and Brandon Routh,  he can be stern and fatherly, ala George Reeves, what he can’t be is dark and menacing.  That’s why his greatest enemy is Lex Luther’s criminal scientist and not The Joker’s murderous psycho.

I’m not writing about movies in this article, but on something else, my Kindle, or more specifically the pricing of certain books on it.  Since I got my Kindle a few weeks back, I have loved it.  I began downloading free books and bought several mysteries and horror books, usually in the $.99 to $4.99 range.

But I am noticing there are a lot of books that are almost full price as you would pay in the store for a physical copy.  $9.99 seems overpriced for Rex Stout reprints. And new books can be at a minimum of $14.99.  It is perplexing.  After all I’m not paying for the paper and hard cover of a new book, all I’m really paying for is the text.  So why is it as expensive as buying a physical book?

I discovered the answer the other day while surfing Amazon.  The price is set by the publisher.  Makes you think doesn’t it.  Though there are no printing or binding costs, there is still the cost of putting the text into a file for downloading, but come on, full price for e-books is kind of pushing it.

Do I feel like I’m being gouged like I am at the gas pump?  Yeah, but I’m a voracious reader and so just like pumping gas in the car, I’m pumping books into my Kindle.  I know no one forced me to buy the new Dresden Files book Ghost Story or the Mickey Spillane/ Max Allan Collins collaboration The Big Bang, but like a good American I’m gonna bitch about it.

Well now that I got that off my chest I will return this site back to movies, and finish the last few chapters of Ghost Story.  Thanks for letting me vent.

I am starting to wonder if the makers of Dylan Dog: Dead of Night really wanted this movie to be a success.  First it got a very limited release, something like 750 theaters across the country total, compare that with the number of theaters that showed Thor and The Green Lantern.  It showed in only one theater in my area and as much as I wanted to see it, I wasn’t willing to travel fifty miles for a movie. Apparently most everyone else felt the same way because it bombed bigger than star Brandon Routh’s Superman Returns

And now after only a couple of months it is out on Blu-Ray, and I was excited again to get the chance to see it.  I just got back from Best Buy without it.  Oh they have it, for $24.99.  A little pricey for a movie that didn’t do that well in general release, so the expectations for a huge sell out on home media seems unlikely, but I was considering snapping it up anyway.

Then I flipped the case over and saw that there were no extras.  No commentary track, no making of featurette, no deleted scenes, heck not even the trailer, nothing.  I’m not a miser but I’m not a spend thrift either , and $24.99 seems a bit much for just the movie.  Instead I came home with The Wild Bunch for $7.88 and I got 3 documentaries, deleted scenes, commentary track plus the original director’s cut of the film.

I’m sure in a month or two I may pick up a copy once the price has dropped to a more reasonable one for the product, if it is still around by then.

Which brings me back to my original question.  Did the film company not want their movie to succeed?  From where I am sitting, the answer seems to be an emphatic NO.