Flat Stan Lee Goes to FUNSPOT

 

A trip to FUNSPOT -- the biggest arcade in the entire world! 

 

Whoops - I spent the entire game with my left turn signal on. 

Best video game based on a play by William Shakespeare. 

Could it be? A true super-villain inside Funspot 
trying to reclaim his Donkey Kong record??

JAWS vs. SHARK NIGHT: two kinds of shark movie posters

Since it's SHARK WEEK, I'll look at the two kinds of shark movie posters.

Let's compare a classic with a new one:

The gold-standard is the above artwork for the 1975 film JAWS. We all know this iconic image: Lady swims naked, blissfully unaware that she is about the be chomped by the giant shark.  

But in SHARK NIGHT's image, the woman realizes the life-and-death situation, her face expresses panic and terror as the leviathan lunges towards her.

So which works better for you?

The blissfully unaware victim OR fully-aware damsel in distress?

The trouble with Superman II: The Richard Donner cut

This past week I finally saw SUPERMAN II: The Richard Donner Cut.   Donner directed the first Superman (1978) as well as The Goonies and Lethal Weapon.  During the making of Superman II he was famously fired and replaced by Richard Lester.

I won't list all the differences between the two films, but I will mention one thing that grabbed me. 

Okay, you remember the basic premise of Superman II is that Kal-El gives up his super-powers, so that he can be with Lois Lane.  

And shortly thereafter, Clark Kent and Lois Lane go to a truck stop where a mean sunuvabitch trucker whups Clark's butt.   

Later, Superman gets his powers back, saves the world, erases Lois' memory (keeping his identity a secret) and then he goes back and pounds the asshole trucker. 

In Richard Donner's cut, we get all that, but the ending is very different.  Instead of kissing Lois and erasing her memory of the past week's events, Superman flies into the sky and circles the Earth, making it turn in the opposite direction, causing time to move backwards.  Yes, the same trick he used in the first film -- only here, instead of going one hour back in time, he goes several days back in time, essentially un-doing the events of the movie.  The whole thing is very Donnie Darko. (And by now I would've expected someone to upload the sequence to YouTube complete with the "Mad World" song) It would've been funny if instead of Superman un-doing all the events, it was Richard Lester (ha ha.)  

So by the end of Richard Donner's cut, the three Kryptonian super-criminals never arrived on Earth, Lois  never learns that Clark Kent is Superman, and (presumably) the kid with the negligent parents plummets to his death in Niagra Falls. 

But here's the kicker:  Clark goes back to the truck stop and beats the hell out of the truck driver.  

Even though, by the film's logic, the truck driver never messed with Clark Kent.  Superman hurls that trucker down the countertop and smashes his head into a pinball machine.  

The truckers and wait-staff must have wondered what the hell promoted this Bernard Goetz-looking mo-fo to come in and assault a patron for NO GOOD REASON.  

As the website says, Superman is a jerk.

SUPERHERO Night!

It's a bird...

it's a plane...

it's... SUPERHERO Night!

Yes, from the people who brought you HULK Night and KISS Night comes the ultimate video cavalcade of off-beat Superhero clips.

Featuring stuff you won't find on TV, YouTube or Hulu... including scenes from The 1979 cartoon show FRED & BARNEY MEET THE THING.

...scenes from The Spirit TV movie

...and a view-master reel of Superman Vs. The Computer Crook.

Special guests include James Dean Conklin, the animator of WONDERMAN (TV Funhouse)
Professor Geoff Klock (who contribued to MOMA's Superhero fashion book)
Matthew K. Manning (writer for DC's Batman Strikes)
M. Sweeney Lawless (curator of BIGFOOT Night)
Jay Stern (producer of FRANKENSTEIN Night)
Craig Wichman (who played Batman in BATMAN Night's Fan Fiction)

and co-host Nick Nadel (from the AMC super-hero blog)


It all happens this Wednesday, March 18th @ 7 PM.

UNDER St. Mark's
94 St. Mark's Place (between 1st Avenue and Avenue A)

Tickets are $7 (admission includes a Hostess Fruit Pie)

More than Super-Friends