World War II is definitely a theme in popular culture these days. Only in the past week we had a preview of Archie 1941, then a preview for Season 3 of The Man in the High Castle, and now a 1941 story featuring everyone’s favorite master spy. James Bond is a young man trying to survive the Clydesbank Blitz in Scotland in the first origin tale of Bond years before his memorable stint in Her Majesty’s Secret Service in the new comic book series Ian Fleming’s James Bond Origin. Issue #1 arrives Wednesday at comic book stores everywhere. We meet the orphan Bond as a young adult, eager to learn more about his parents, already able to teach fellow students a course in judo, and eager to grab onto the coattails and seek the advice of the professors he has access to.
Written by Jeff Parker (Suicide Squad, Fantastic Four) with artwork by Bob Q (The Lone Ranger) and lettering by Simon Bowland (Plastic Man), the first issue of the story has the same feel of an untouchable oppressor from the sky as H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. Full of the action level we know from the Bond movies, the story is waiting for the hero to step in and take over. How is James Bond of March 11, 1941 different than the Bond with the 00 status? He has some rudimentary skills, he has the desire to learn, but he doesn’t have the confidence just yet.
The Clydesbank Blitz is the most destructive attack by the Germans on Scotland, and Bond finds himself right in the middle of it. The new series will be released this week with seven cover variants, with artwork by artists John Cassaday, David Mack, Kev Walker, Gene Ha, Ibrahim Moustafa, and Bob Q with Jordan Boyd.
Check out a preview from Issue #1 and all the covers (above and below):
The Man in the High Castle was Philip K. Dick‘s most critically acclaimed novel, which says a lot for his parallel history World War II tale when stacked up against his other brilliant short stories and novels (that’s 121 stories and 44 novels in all). It’s also the first of his stories to become a big-budget television series, premiering in 2015 with the well-received pilot for The Man in the High Castle. Amazon Studios proved it can make a drama on par with any other network or studio in its first two seasons, and at San Diego Comic-Con the studio announced the series renewal for a fourth season. This past week Amazon released a great preview for the next season (see it below). So you now have a full month to get caught up on the first 20 episodes before Season 3 arrives on Amazon Prime in October.
The series is well worth your time. The first season was a bit of a slowly building story, providing all the twisty elements to take viewers in a believable way into a parallel version of Earth’s past where the Nazis and Japan were victorious in WWII and America was divided up between them. As gritty a dystopian show as anyone could muster, the back half of each season is reward enough to stick with the series, even for viewers not especially in the mood for the bleak subject matter. The winner of two of eight Emmy Award nominations, the series begins in 1962, long after the end of the war–long enough for a new culture to have been solidified across the regions of North America. The series leads created the best performances you’ll find on television: Alexa Davalos(Angel, The Chronicles of Riddick, The Mist, Defiance), as Juliana Crane, an American whose actions are pivotal for the future, Rufus Sewell(Knight’s Tale, Zen), a former American soldier who becomes one of the Nazi leaders in the former States, Joel de la Fuente(The Adjustment Bureau, The Happening) is stunning as the most ruthless of characters, the Japanese leader of the Pacific region of America, and an incredibly nuanced performance of Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa(Lost in Space, Star Wars Rebels, Grimm, Heroes, Alien Nation, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Big Trouble in Little China) as trade minister for Japan based in San Francisco–a brilliantly layered character like nothing you’ve seen.
Building on Dick’s original ideas and expanding on them is what the series does best, blending the best of the old (like keeping Tagawa’s character having a special power to see an alternate version of the world from the novel) and the new (like using film footage vs. books to inspire actions). The writers nicely integrate updates and new characters into the series. Who is the Man in the High Castle? You’ll just have to watch to find out. Look for a stellar supporting cast, two fantastic season finales, and a great set-up for the show’s third season. Fan-favorite genre actors in the show include Rupert Evans(Hellboy, Lexx, Fingersmith, Charmed),Luke Kleintank(Bones), DJ Qualls (Supernatural),Rick Worthy(Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Supernatural),Michael Hogan(Battlestar Galactica, 12 Monkeys, Supernatural, Haven, Warehouse 13),Callum Keith Rennie(The X-Files, The Dead Zone, Tru Calling, Battlestar Galactica), Daniel Roebuck (Lost, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Grimm, Quantum Leap), Tate Donovan (Memphis Belle, Argo, Shooter), and many more.
Here is the latest trailer for the third season of The Man in the High Castle:
Remember Kresge’s? Western Auto? If not, some time travel may be in order. Or, beginning next month watch Archie Comics take Archie back to the year his character was created in a new five-issue limited series, Archie 1941. For 77 years Archie, Jughead, Betty and Veronica have been entertaining the world from their hometown of Riverdale, but never before have we seen the characters take on real-world events as they unfold like this. World War II is looming. What will that mean for Archie and his friends?
Archie 1941 is from a story by the writing team of Mark Waid and Brian Augustyn, with interior artwork provided by Peter Krause, Kelly Fitzpatrick, and Jack Morelli. Five covers will be available, created by Peter Krause, Sanya Anwar, Francesco Francavilla, Dave Johnson, and Aaron Lopresti.
Archie Comics created a video trailer for Archie 1941 and they sent us a preview of the first issue. Check it out:
If you ever had an inkling to go to film school, if you are going to film school or if you teach film courses, Richard Rickitt’s Special Effects: The History and Technique should be required reading. Not only is it a comprehensive work about the history and craft of special effects, it is a detailed account of the history and progress of film, and could serve as a college textbook to a master class in film technique. And it is also a history of science and technology in its own right.
Rickitt’s Special Effects is a well-reviewed work, which is why it was purchased for me as a gift. It is used as a college text in film schools and for good reason. It has seen several printings since its first printing in Great Britain in 2006, including a reprint as recently as 2011, and it is as current as a nearly 400-page volume can be, including new effects technologies employed as recently as the Lord of the Rings films and X-Men 3.
Because of its price, Special Effects may not be for the casual movie enthusiast–but only because of price–as it can cost $40 for older editions and up to $230 for the most current edition. Yet if you are really interested in behind-the-scenes cinema, it is probably worth saving for, and if you’re a college student, just slip it into your current semester’s $800 book purchase (at least that’s what I spent on each of my last few semesters for books and I can’t imagine prices have dropped–plus this book is actually a fun read you’ll hold on to). It’s breadth is enormous, with both general and detailed coverage of landmark people and technologies from George Melies to Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen to Industrial Light & Magic to Pixar and Weta. Although it purports to cover merely Special Effects, in truth it covers the beginning of film and every technology that was created since, building upon each discovery and new invention to bring us to the complex CGI technologies of today.
This is far from a quick read, and will likely serve as a reference work or one you pull off the shelf from time to time when you need something exciting to read of the non-fiction variety. I mentioned college text–Rickitt is a good teacher, clearly explaining in terms anyone can understand not just the “what” but the “why” and “how” of benchmarks in film with visuals and diagrams, including explanations of the role and use of technologies like the zoetrope, the parts and functions of the modern movie camera, the history and types of film recording materials, matte film, blue-screens, film printing, optical and digital compositing, the A to Z of film projection, post-production techniques like image interpolation, the use of mirrors, forced perspective and miniaturization, pyrotechnics, cloud tanks, models, motion-control photography, digital and procedural modelling, texture mapping, special effects animation, rotoscoping, 3D technologies, motion blur, digital skin, performance capture, particle systems, high dynamic range images, match moving, rendering, the A to Z of matte painting, props, make-up, prosthetics, animatronics, sculpting, inner mechanisms, performance systems, digital make-up, atmospheric effects, breakaway effects, sound recording, sound effects mixing, foleying, dialogue replacement, and the future of film technologies.
A diagram from Rickitt’s Special Effects: The History and Technique
The author uses hundreds of photographs and provides real-use examples from movies to explain techniques. Detailed analysis is used for movie benchmarks Rickitt has identified, including The Abyss (1989), The Birds (1963), Aliens (1986), An American Werewolf in London (1981), Blade Runner (1982), Citizen Kane (1941), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959), Destination Moon (1950), Earthquake (1974), The Exorcist (1973), Fantastic Voyage (1966), Forbidden Planet (1956), Forrest Gump (1994), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), Jurassic Park (1993), King Kong (1933), King Kong (2005), The Last Starfighter (1984), The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003), The Lost World (1925), The Matrix trilogy (1999-2003), Metropolis (1926), Mighty Joe Young (1949), 1941 (1979), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), all six Star Wars films (1977-2005), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), The Thief of Baghdad (1940), Things to Come (1936), Titanic (1997), Toy Story (1995), Tron (1982), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), The War of the Worlds (1953), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Willow (1988), and Young Sherlock Holmes (1985).
You’ll learn about ambient occlusion, beam splitters, cannon cars, color separation, depth of field, diffuse reflection, dissolves, dubbing, edge detection, emulsion, extrusion, fluid dynamics, go-motion, introvision, the Lydecker technique, morphing, NURBs, plates, ray tracing, squibs, time-lapse and time slice photography, wipes, zooms and zoptics.
An early edition of Rickitt’s book–note that earlier versions will not have the most up-to-date coverage of current technologies. The version shown at the top of this review is the most recent edition.
And along with the “what” and “why” Rickitt profiles a “who’s who” of landmark film creators, including Georges Melies, Mack Sennett, D.W. Griffith, James Whale, Alfred Hitchcock, George Pal, Roger Corman, Irwin Allen, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Robert Zemeckis, Peter Jackson, Dennis Muren, John P. Fulton, Linwood Dunn, Richard Edlund, Dennis and Robert Skotak, Arnold Gillespie, Theodore and Howard Lydecker, Gordon Jennings, John Dykstra, Steve Gawley, Lorne Peterson, Willis O’Brien, Ray Harryhausen, Phil Tippett, John Lasseter, Norman O. Dawn, Albert Whitlock, Peter Ellenshaw, Lon Chaney, Jack Pierce, Stan Winston, Rick Baker, Ken Ralston, Cliff Richardson, Michael Lantieri, Jack Foley, Ben Burtt, Gary Rydstrom, and the Carboulds.
But you don’t need to look at Special Effects: The History and Technique as a dense book of facts. Pick it up now and then and enjoy reading the book in 4-5 page stints and you’ll become an expert in film in no time, or just be amazed at how the magic of film works.
should be required reading. Not only is it a comprehensive work about the history and craft of special effects, it is a detailed account of the history and progress of film, and could serve as a college textbook to a master class in film technique. And it is also a history of science and technology in its own right.
