Apr
30
TrailerAddict.com has posted the full “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” trailer that’s attached to prints of “Iron Man,” which opens Friday. It’s a bootleg, shot with a hand-held camera. Thankfully, there aren’t several rows of silhouetted heads between the cameraperson and the screen. The audio’s decent, and the picture’s clear enough. Anyone who was left cold by the teaser trailer (it was a little heavy on footage from the three previous films) should be pleased by the new one.
This version reveals the backstory of the crystal skull and the undead warriors who guard it. The dirty Commies, led by Kate Blanchett in her adorable brunette bob-cut, request Indy’s services at the point of a sword. Shia Labeouf gets more screen time as the less short, less round young Indy sidekick. There’s a car chase, a motorcycle chase, but sadly no Chevy Chase. Indy wields a bazooka. Stuff blows up in people’s faces. An Aztec temple begins to transform into something, presumably why Indy brought Lebeouf along on this adventure. And it’s all cut to John Williams’ thrilling score.
I’d provide a link to the trailer, but Paramount will doubtless send an angry legal letter to the Trailer Addict webmaster, asking him to take it down, and probably also dispatch Mola Ram to tear his heart out before lowering him into a pit of fire; this is a Spielberg movie we’re talking about here.
-Brad Lohan
Apr
27
“The Gingerdead Man” DVD (Review)
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My junior year of college, I wrote a short story for Creative Writing class about a homicidal gingerbread boy. The course instructor had been rather hard on many of my efforts that quarter — we were supposed to be writing literature, not “genre material” — and she wasn’t particularly thrilled with my latest stab a storytelling. I ultimately changed my major that year to Film after finding Creative Writing too stifling and Journalism too banal. I had to take summer courses my last two years of college to make up for all the lost time I’d spent dipping my toes in different academic pools, but I won the “Excellence in Screenwriting” award my senior year for a script about Santa Claus’ homicidal brother. Boo yah!
I shelved my homicidal gingerbread boy concept after the first “Shrek” was released in 2001. Despite not being a mass murderer, the character of Gingy had stolen my thunder, and I felt the void left open for a squeaky-voiced baked good in our popular culture had finally been filled. How wrong I was.
I picked up “The Gingerdead Man” as a blind buy yesterday at Fangoria’s Weekend of Horrors. I’d remembered seeing it on the shelf at Blockbuster way back in ‘05, and trying desperately to talk my then-girlfriend into renting it. Alas, even the star power of Gary Busey as the killer cookie was not enough to sell the film on her. At any rate, I’ve been an eligible bachelor for an agonizing period of time now and free to buy or rent whatever I choose. Unfortunately, too often I end up getting crap like “The Gingerdead Man” when I really should know better.
I don’t believe that a movie can be “so bad it’s good.” A film is either good or it isn’t. When people say, “Oh, it’s no ‘Citizen Kane,’” I break out in hives. Is that the only yardstick by which we’re measuring a film’s quality now? “Citizen Kane?” If so, why don’t they make movies like it anymore? I’ll tell you why: “Citizen Kane” is a crashing bore that bombed at the box office during its initial theatrical run. It was booed at the Oscars way back in the ‘42, and I echo the sentiment today.
That being said, a given film’s quality isn’t in how well it stacks up against “Citizen Kane,” whether you like that film or not. What makes a good movie is how well the story is told. It’s as simple as that. This is why I hate loglines — 25-word distillations of a film. A logline is not a story. I’ve never seen anyone pay money to hear a logline. That producers gauge their interest in a film based on its logline is excellent proof as to why so many movie suck today.
Good stories can be told in any genre. It stands to reason a good story could’ve been told about a homicidal gingerbread boy; I tried at least. But “The Gingerdead Man” doesn’t seem to want to even bother. Instead we get a flick that has a running time of barely an hour without credits and a homicidal gingerbread man who kills two whole people. TWO!!! More people die at the hands of Gary Busey’s Millard Findlemeyer character before he turns into the titular Gingerdead Man.
At the beginning of the film, Findlemeyer goes on a shooting rampage — though the bullet hits are all woefully off-camera — in an extremely unpopulated diner. He’s arrested (off-camera), put on trial (off-camera) and speedily executed via the electric chair (off-camera). It’s almost artistic how the filmmakers completely invert the “show, don’t tell” convention of cinematic storytelling.
Months later, the only survivor of the shooting rampage, Sarah Leigh (har-har), who happens to work at a bakery, receives a delivery of what she believes is gingerbread cookie mix (it’s really Findlemeyer’s cremated ashes). While preparing the mix, one of Sarah’s co-workers cuts his hand and bleeds in the dough. Sarah cuts a single gingerbread boy out of the wad of blood-infused dough. She gives it a face and a bowtie. Then into the oven it goes. The oven short circuits for some reason and Findlemeyer is resurrected — in an overly-complicated manner — as the Gingerdead Man!
I was sort of amused by the fact that just baking his ashes in with the gingerbread wouldn’t bring Findlemeyer back from the grave. No, you have to add a teaspoon of blood to the mix and zap the dough with some electrical current. More, it was Findlemeyer’s vengeful mother who delivered her son’s ashes to the bakery. How she knew that doing so would bring her little Busey back to life is anyone’s guess.
The problem with reviewing this film is that the more I say about it, the better the movie sounds. But I’m not being hyperbolic when I call this movie bilge. Even with an hour-long running time, it seems like it just goes on and on and on. All the while, it misses every opportunity to do something, anything with the concept that would remotely resemble entertainment. This is the kind of story that could actually be summed up in 25 words or less. I’m sure my Creative Writing instructor would’ve loathed it.
-Brad Lohan
Apr
26
Fangoria’s Weekend of Horrors
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The L.A. Convention Center this weekend is the central hub of sex and violence. In one hall is AdultCon — an egregiously overpriced adult film convention — and in another is Fangoria’s Weekend of Horrors. Being slightly more of a fan of carnography than pornography, I attended the latter this afternoon.
I’d never been to a horror convention before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I skipped all the panels (Q&A sessions bore me to tears) and just trolled around the vendors room. There were dozens of horror film stars signing autographs, ultra-low-budget horror filmmakers talking up their projects and dealers selling collectibles, t-shirts and bootlegs. Here’s a list of what I picked up:
- a Winchester pint glass from “Shaun of the Dead”
- a “Toxic Avenger” t-shirt
- an issue of “Fangoria” from 1990 with a cover story about “Darkman”
- “The Making of ‘Friday the 13th’” book
- “The Gingerbread Man” DVD, starring Gary Busey as a killer cookie
- a Danielle Harris (”Halloween” 4 & 5 and the Rob Zombie remake) autographed picture
- a Brian O’Halloran (”Clerks”) autographed picture
I wanted to get the out-of-print “Puppet Master” boxed set at the Full Moon booth, but it was $90. Picking that up would’ve left me with about $10 in spending money. It seems like it’d be really easy to blow this month’s rent on some of the goodies I saw today.
Fans really do go all out for this sort of thing, especially the ladies. I wore my “Thanksgiving” t-shirt and was sorely under-dressed compared to all the women there in mohawks and corsets and gore makeup — homina! Who needs the AdultCon when Fangoria’s next door?
-Brad Lohan
Apr
24
I’d actually been dreading this one. Full disclosure: I never get over any girl that breaks up with me. Ever. Well, maybe I do eventually, but nothing short of clubbing me over the head with a wrench will make me forget about an ex. I’m sure there’s something incredibly sad and creepy about that, but I prefer to think of it as romantic. Sadly, creepily romantic.
“Forgetting Sarah Marshall” is the latest film from producer Judd Apatow, the Dino De laurentiis of comedies about emotionally-stunted schmendricks that hook up with women light years out of their league. “Anchorman,” “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Knocked Up,” “Superbad” — his output has made him a wunderkind of the sex comedy even if you don’t know his name; posters for his films often colloquially credit him as “The Guy Who Brought You [Insert Latest $100 Million Grossing Judd Apatow Film Title Here].”
With “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” one of the Apatow regulars, Jason Segel, rotates into the lead role of Peter, a composer of incidental music on a hit TV show that stars his girlfriend, the Sarah Marshall of the title, played by Kristen Bell. Peter’s a bit of an unmotivated homebody, who eats Fruit Loops out of a salad bowl. It’s something of a miracle that his relationship with Sarah has lasted 5 years. But she finally breaks it off in an early scene in which Peter’s man-parts are displayed prominently; later in the film, incidentally, Sarah laments to Peter that she doesn’t want to get ahead in the entertainment business by having to show here naughty bits, although this movie will definitely make Segel (and his naughty bits) a star.
Peter tries a few half-hearted one-night stands to get over Sarah, but ultimately hops a plane to Hawaii and winds up at the same hotel as Sarah…as well as her new British rocker boytoy, Aldous Snow (Russell Brand). This being a Judd Apatow production and not a chapter from my own life, Peter immediately meets an astoundingly attractive hotel receptionist and broken wing, Rachel (Mila Kunis), who also happens to be single and fascinated by his long-in-the-works Dracula rock opera with an all-puppet cast.
For a guy who never took a breakup well, I found a lot to like about “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” Segel’s performance — from his own script — definitely feels lived-in. One thing that’s sadly lacking in the asinine “Superhero Movie” types of films is that comedy comes from pain, and not just the kind of pain you feel when you bump your head on something; or the kind of pain I feel when I realize people actually got paid to make “Superhero Movie.” No, “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” is a comedy that masochistically revels in the pain that is the end of a relationship. We’ve all been there, but it’s never been nearly as funny as this.
-Brad Lohan
Apr
23
Body Worlds 3
Filed Under Exhibits | Leave a Comment
Plastination is the process of swapping out your precious bodily fluids with plastic and basically transforming you into a giant, fully-poseable action figure — one without skin or even a spring-loaded missile launcher. Your skinless, sinewy plasticized body is then carved up, cross-sectioned and put on display in an exhibition called Body Worlds 3. That Plastination — the brainchild of Dr. Gunther von Hagens — has not been performed in a “Saw” movie yet really goes to show how behind the times Hollywood is. For now, horror fans can enjoy Plastinates at the California Science Center, like I did this afternoon.
But Body Worlds isn’t just a life-size menagerie of macabre. Artistically, one could make a strong case for the marriage of hard plastic and human tissue as a commentary on the direction in which our Botoxed, Lipozapped, Silicone-implanted culture is heading — the complete and total plasticization of ourselves. This is a science exhibit, though, not an art exhibit. Seeing how the human body is a super-sophisticated machine is pretty amazing. And you get the feeling that maybe you don’t work out enough; all these dead folks are built like Adonises.
I gravitated towards the plastinated lungs with emphysema and ulcerated stomachs and cross-sections of morbidly obese people — all the icky stuff. I also learned that the human body can survive without a spleen, but you can actually die of a broken heart. That being said, the most important lesson I learned from Body Worlds 3 today is this: store all your emotions in your spleen.
-Brad Lohan
Apr
22
“Cloverfield” on DVD (Review)
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Last summer, I went to a 12:01 a.m. screening of “Transformers.” Why movie houses start movies a minute after midnight on opening day and not just midnight is beyond me; midnight is technically the next day, you don’t need to add on another minute to make it really, really the next day.
Though I was there with all the hardcores at the “Transformers” screening, I wasn’t terribly excited about seeing the film. I’m not by any loose definition of the term a fan of Michael Bay, nor has my esteem for the Robots in Disguise grown in the past few years; to date, I haven’t made it through the entire second season of the cartoon on DVD, and I’ve owned the set for almost 5 years now. But it was one of those odd weeks where we had a day off on a Tuesday — it being the 4th of July — so I thought I’d stay up late and catch a flick.
What struck me most about my movie-going experience that night, apart from Megan Fox’s absolutely sublime midriff, was the teaser trailer shown before the film for a then-untitled monster flick, shot only with a hand-held cameras. I’d heard absolutely nothing about this film leading up to the moment the trailer hit the screen. And considering the trailer’s money shot is of Lady Liberty’s head bouncing down the street, you’d think someone would’ve spilled his guts to any number of the movie geek sites I frequent.
But that was the point. Producer J.J. Abrams wanted what would ultimately be called “Cloverfield” to blindside the audience, particularly the Internet-savvy goofballs like me who spoil every plot point long before a film’s release. We’d been pwned, and then we spent the next six agonizing months trying to make up for lost time, trolling viral marketing sites, pouring over the trailer frame-by-frame and bad-mouthing every working title (”Monstrous,” “Slusho,” “Cheese”) until opening day.
When it was released on 1-18-08, of course I was there for the obligatory midnight-plus-one showing. The ArcLight Cinemas usher/greeter warned the audience prior to the film that the hand-held camerawork might make them sick. I found that irritating. The conceit behind the cinematography in “Cloverfield” is that one of the characters, Hud, is filming his friend’s going-away party, which is crashed by a Giant Monster. Hud not being a professional cameraman, the shooting style of the film appears to be relatively amateurish, but there is a cinematographer credited in the film. Watch the special features on the DVD, and you’ll see him; you won’t even have to go frame-by-frame. The visual approach of the film was planned out by people who know what they’re doing, not just some young actor they handed a camera to on the set. The point is, if you’re made to feel sick by “Cloverfield,” it’s because the movie works. You’ve been transported, friendo. That’s kinda what movies are supposed to do.
Watching “Cloverfield” this afternoon, I still got goosebumps when the Giant Monster begins wrecking shop. My home theater is pretty spartan, too — a 27″ analog TV with a PS2 that doubles as a DVD player. But this film in particular is a child of post-9/11 amateur footage. It almost feels more at home on a TV than a movie screen. The rough edges, the choppy editing, the odd angles — these heighten the realism. We’ve reached a point in our film language that is in direct contrast to time-tested conventions of naturalism. As viewers, we find that digital video — though loaded with image noise — seems hyperreal because we’re used to seeing it document reality, not the fantasy that’s captured on lush, vibrant, forgiving film stock.
The DVD for the film is fairly light on features — the standard commentary, featurettes and deleted scenes. The two alternate endings are a great example of how even a film like this has been test-marketed to death; twice you get the same climax that’s in the theatrical release and a slightly different Coney Island flashback scene as a brief coda — yawn. What remains compelling though about the end of the film (*Spoilers Ahead*) is that it takes a Giant Monster attack to get Rob to admit to his friend Beth that he loves her. I think that character beat will sadly be overlooked by the very same dweebs who are watching the final shot is slow-mo to see if it’s really the Cloverfield monster that splashes down in the ocean — way, way in the background. But it’s that one little moment that lends a deeper sense of tragedy and resonance to a movie about a ginormous toothy frog that lays waste to Manhattan (*End Spoilers*).
-Brad Lohan
Apr
20
Four years ago, Morgan Spurlock took on the fast food industry with his documentary “Super Size Me.” In the film, he dined at McDonald’s for breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday for a month. His health declined, his weight increased, and he forced the McFranchises across the country to rethink their menus, or at the very least re-brand them.
Spurlock’s new film, “Where in the World is Osama bin Laden,” takes on another franchise, this one being global terrorism. Now he doesn’t become a terrorist for 30 days. Instead, he travels to the Middle East in search of a guy who people in some of the most impoverished shanty towns in the universe won’t turn over for a $25 million bounty. In a bid to make the world safer for his unborn baby, Spurlock’s adventure explores the cultural, political and religious disconnect our foreign policy seems to have in waging our ongoing war on terror and how that creates more and more men like bin Laden. What’s the value of capturing one man when millions more are exactly like him?
Where our media and our elected officials have spent the past 7 years bloviating about the Islamic religion, Spurlock actually lets Muslims speak for themselves. As it turns out, most of the everyday people in these countries are not wearing bomb vests, burning the Stars-and-Stripes and chanting, “Death to America!” They’re as divorced from bin Laden and al-Qaeda as you or I. And they apparently love professional wrestling.
It’s our government, not our people, that Muslims seem to take exception with, and it’s hard not to sympathize. How has our country not been hijacked by radicals of a different stripe, tyrants who hide behind religion and jingoism, parading us through the gates of hell while chanting talking-point propaganda? To deny this is to admit you have a head full of rocks. We’ve played directly into bin Laden’s hands with this ill-advised war on terror. The fact that we haven’t been “hit again” is not a useful yardstick in measuring the success of Bush’s endless and bloody occupation of Iraq. We’re hit everyday so long as a man or woman in uniform is killed, injured or traumatized by the violence in a faraway land that John McCain would like us to carry out for another century.
Ahem. Where was I again? Oh, yes, Morgan Spurlock’s documentary. There’s much of value here that I hope people will discuss, or at the very least, rant about like I just did. That so many people in this country choose to avoid anything and everything political I find unnerving. We have these inalienable rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness that are simply absent in the Middle East, and yet our culture is so overwhelmingly populated by perpetual adolescents — lazy, unmotivated and apathetic.
Though Spurlock learns that capturing or killing the one man whose face is synonymous with terrorism isn’t going to child-proof all the dangers in the world, it becomes clear to him that, well, at least his baby isn’t going to attend a school that borders the Gaza Strip and could be shelled at a moment’s notice. The immense poverty, the non-stop violence, the miles and miles of fences that can be found the Middle East — these are things he can shield his child from here in the U.S., or can he? Where in the world is Osama bin Laden? He’s practically everywhere.
-Brad Lohan
Apr
19
“Zombie Strippers” (Review)
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Five years ago, I landed my one and only P.A. gig on a film set. It was for a day’s worth of shooting on a Troma movie in West Los Angeles. The scene in question involved a half-dozen or so winners from the since-canceled game show “Beat the Geeks” that were lined up to be slaughtered by a vampire stripper — played by b-movie Amazon goddess Julie Strain — at someone’s bachelor party. For 12 hours that day, Ms. Strain tore out people’s eyeballs and spilled people’s guts while completely naked. I was certain I’d never work on another movie (how right I was) that would be as much fun.
Jay Lee’s “Zombie Strippers,” which opened at the Nuart last night, must’ve had a similar shoot. I can’t imagine a director of a film such as this showing up on set thinking he’s William Friedkin, and this is “The Exorcist.”
The film is set in the near future; by my estimates, it’s the year 2016, as it opens with the announcement that George W. Bush has been reelected to a fourth term in the White House. Scientists have created a “chemo-virus” that can reanimate dead tissue and thus prolong our war efforts in a litany of Middle Eastern countries, as soldiers who are killed on the battle field will simply now get up and keep on fighting.
The virus, as virii are given to do in films such as these, escapes from the lab and infects the exotic dancer Kat (played by adult film actress Jenna Jameson — no relation to J. Jonah) who works at a strip joint called Rhino’s. Though the infection does nothing for Kat’s looks, it does spice up her performance, making her even more popular with the creeps huddled around the main stage. Club owner Ian (Robert Englund) decides that losing the occasional customer to Kat’s cannibalistic hunger is worth infecting more dancers and building positive word-of-mouth for the establishment among the growing clientele.
The fun that the filmmakers had during production is clearly on display. I’m actually kind of jealous that they got to work on this for a month or so, and I only put in one day on the Troma flick.
-Brad Lohan
Apr
17
For a guy who’s a year younger than John McCain, Superman looks pretty good for his age. 2008 marks his 70th anniversary, and although DC Comics seems to have completely forgotten about it — too busy retconning the universe with one “Crisis” crossover after another, methinks — I’d still like to reflect on the character who shaped much of my childhood.
I was technically in utero when my mother took me to see “Superman: The Movie,” but I imagine the experience was transformative nonetheless. Some of my earliest memories see me in a bathtowel safteypinned around my neck, tear-assing around the house as though I could fly. The films got heavy rotation on cable, and I knew each of them beat-for-beat — from Superman reversing time (an ability he’s since shelved apparently) in the first flick to the freaky, silver-eyed android chick at the end of movie three.
I didn’t get into the comics until I was 13, mere months before DC Comics decided to do him in. I rode out the wildly inconsistent “Funeral for a Friend” and “Reign of Superman,” not to mention the mulleted Man of Steel that came after; the ’90s were pure hell for Kal-El in retrospect. I’ve since peeled back my comics fandom significantly, but I still pick up Grant Morrison’s hit-or-miss “All Star Superman,” whenever Frank Quitely finishes his art chores on it, that is.
That the character has endured these past seven decades is a testament to his near invulnerability. Countless creators — in print, TV and film — have either not understood what makes Superman great (Jon Peters is as good an example as any) or been too gutless to do anything new or interesting with him (Bryan Singer comes to mind). Perhaps the two Superman film productions — the aborted one in the late-’90s and the tepid “Superman Returns” that actually went before cameras in ‘06 — are the most [in]famous approaches to the character in recent history. And since I grew up on the films rather than the comics, they’re what I feel more like lamenting. To me, Superman is a movie star who’s also a comic book character.
Much has been written about the implosion of “Superman Lives,” Tim Burton’s film that never quite came about. It was scripted — at one point — by Kevin Smith, who may have liked the character but absolutely didn’t know how to write him. And Nicolas Cage was to star. Producer and former hairdresser Jon Peters oversaw the various and almost universally insipid permutations of the script. Smith has done the college circuit relating stories of Peters’ bizarre demands for the film, like the inclusion of a gay robot and a giant spider. But Hollywood being what it is, I’m almost surprised that the film didn’t get made. Most comic book movies are an overwhelming amount of bad ideas in three dimensions. A small, sinister part of me wanted to see just how “out there” this new take on Superman would ultimately be.
Tim Burton’s Superman movie didn’t happen. Neither did Brett Ratner’s, nor McG’s. Then something strange happened. Bryan Singer split from the “X-Men” franchise and attached himself to the next Superman film. He even hired a Superman, Brandon Routh. What’s more, he started committing things to film. It almost seemed unreal, like peace in the Middle East. Were we finally going to get a new Superman film after all, one directed by the guy who took the X-Men out of their lamented yellow spandex and put them on a 40-foot screen?
I attended the midnight showing of “Superman Returns” at the Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood. I stood in the longest line I’d ever been in at that particular movie house, but was still able to secure a reasonable seat in the auditorium. This was the first Superman film I’d seen in a theater in nearly 20 years, the previous one being the liberal nuclear disarmament wet dream, “Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.” Never has more wasted potential been captured on film than the fourth Superman movie, though Singer’s “Superman Returns” tries to best it.
Hobbled by Richard Donner’s 30-year-old original vision for the film franchise, Singer doesn’t find his own voice in “Superman Returns.” He aped John Williams’ score, directed Routh to lamely impersonate Christopher Reeve and even folded confusing and conflicting plot threads from the first two Superman films into the storyline. Fans hadn’t waited two decades for a tepid, quasi-sequel to Donner’s film. At least Tim Burton had promised to bring something new to the character — even if it would’ve been ruinous. Audiences’ general disapproval of Singer’s film was reflected in its middling box office; it was outgrossed that summer by the third and outstandingly worst film in the X-Men franchise.
Two years later, a follow-up film — “The Man of Steel” — is currently in limbo. Singer’s current project, “Valkerie,” is playing musical chairs with release dates, a sure sign of post-production troubles. But maybe it’s for the best that there won’t be a Super-sequel. Maybe the best give Superman can be given for his 70th is a much-deserved farewell from comics, from film. Let the man retire already.
-Brad Lohan
Apr
14
I never outgrew the Turtles. Like any adolescent boy in the late-1980s, I was enamored of the four irradiated tortoise-like humanoids named for Renaissance painters and trained in the art of ninjitsu by their mentor, an overgrown rat called Splinter. The Turtles were sworn enemies of the Shredder — Darth Vader with a black belt and a fetish for sharp edges. Each Turtle wore a color-coded headband (so as to not be recognized?) and was equipped with his own unique instrument of death or dismemberment. They were also befriended by the bosomy TV news reporter, April O’Neil, a redhead in a banana-yellow jumpsuit who added a touch of “Aoogah!” to the male-dominated proceedings.
The origins of the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” however, owe more to Frank Miller than your average Saturday morning cartoon. In the early-1980s, comic book creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird came up with the Turtles as a goof on Miller’s then-current “Daredevil” run. The canister of mutanagenic ooze that transformed four abandoned turtle house pets into adolescent martial artists was — unofficially — the same container that struck young Matt Murdock in the face, blinding him but heightening his four remaining senses. Murdock was subsequently trained in physical combat by a man called Stick; the Turtles’ were taught to fight by Splinter. Daredevil goes toe-to-toe with an army of ninjas known as the Hand; the Turtles battle the Foot. Why the Marvel and Mirage Studios have never done a crossover between the Turtles and Daredevil is beyond reason.
Eastman and Laird also emulated Miller’s gritty artistic style and bloody violence. The Turtles are more oddly proportioned and creepy, rendered in high-contrast black-and-white. They would seem more at home in “Sin City” than on a grade schooler’s lunchbox. But it’s the very same style NECA has emulated in their new line of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures that now adorn my shelf.
I never outgrew toys, either. And this afternoon my TMNT figs finally arrived. At first, I thought I shouldn’t open them. The four Turtles were packaged together in a box that could easily be displayed. But it had acquired a few dings and dents in transit; it was sadly no longer “mint-on-card.” That being said, I’ve freed all four Turtles from their packaging, equipped them with their respective weapons and huddled them together in a dramatic pose that the cat will likely knock over while I’m at work tomorrow.
Cowabunga.
-Brad Lohan