What A Difference 9 Years Make

In 2005, I eagerly anticipated* the release of the movie based on Frank Miller's Sin City.
If you were reading this blog back then, you no doubt saw my many posts on the subject.  When it was released in theaters, I actually took the day off just so that I could be there for the day's first showing.  I was by no means the only one - the theater ended up being pretty-well packed for a Friday morning in April.
When the movie ended, I was tempted to buy another ticket and taken in a second showing.
Somewhat later, when the bare-bones, no frills DVD hit the market, I picked it up.  Some months later, when the considerably more deluxe version was released, I bought that, too.
Years later I replaced that DVD with the Blu-ray edition.
Cut to nine years later and the release of the sequel.
...
We're in "summer hours" at work, which means being able to leave a bit earlier on Fridays.  I decided, almost reluctantly, that if I was going to see the sequel I might as well do it on the way home from work, which would be during something of a lull at the theater.
I was already preemptively disappointed in the movie due to the casting.  Of all of the Sin City "yarns" in the original comics, "A Dame to Kill For," which is the central story in the sequel as well as the movie's title, is my favorite.**
The protagonist of that story is Dwight McCarthy, who is also my favorite character in the Sin City "yarns."  In the first movie, the role of Dwight was ably portrayed by Clive Owen.  In the sequel, the role was filled by Josh Brolin.  I like Josh Brolin, and he was fine as Dwight, but - and I have no idea why Owen didn't return - he just didn't click for me the way Owen did.  I'll have more on Dwight - and Brolin/Owen - in a bit, but the real issue I had with casting in this particular story is that of the titular "Dame."
Though I'm puzzled by this fact, I know that I'm definitely in the minority when it comes to not being a fan - to put it as mildly and politely as possible - of actress Eva Green.  I find her...off-putting.
Certainly, when I imagine Ava Lord (the "Dame" in question), the manipulative seductress, the woman of such impossible beauty that men would kill - and die - for her, Eva Green is not the person who springs to mind.
And yet, there she was, as Ava.
She was - as in accordance with the source material - naked for pretty much 80% of the time that she was on screen, and honestly, for most of that I was thinking, "Just put some damn clothes on."
That casting - along with the ridiculous gap in time between movies - had dampened my enthusiasm for the sequel considerably, and the fact that I just didn't want to be looking at her and hearing Ava's words coming out of her mouth soured the whole experience for me, and made it impossible for me to overlook the many other flaws in the movie that I might have otherwise been able to forgive.
Further, the movie wasn't merely an adaptation of the comics this time around, as Miller wrote some new material specifically for the movie.  Said new material wasn't good, and having Jessica Alba attempt to carry that material only made matters worse.
As with the first movie, Alba portrayed that character who doesn't exist anywhere other than in movies:  the stripper who doesn't strip and yet still manages to keep her job.
I can certainly understand an actress not wanting to do nude scenes.  Even if it's sometimes disappointing, it's a perfectly reasonable choice to make, and I respect that.
That said, if you don't want to do nude scenes, maybe consider not portraying a stripper.  (And if you're making a movie, maybe consider not casting someone who doesn't do nude scenes as a stripper.  It doesn't exactly seem like rocket science to me.)
That she remained fully-clothed the whole time she was on stage - which is decidedly not the case in the source material - caused a disconnect with what was being seen with what was being said.  At one point, Dwight (in a voiceover) makes a comment about how Nancy (Alba) is showing off everything she has.
Later, in her own voiceover, Nancy talks about "giving them what they want."  Except, no, she's not giving them that, because what they want is to see her naked.  Because she's a stripper.  As I've said many times, there's a word for strippers who don't strip, and that word is "fired."
In any case, as a continuity-minded nerd, the new story was especially disappointing because it featured a character who could not possibly be involved in the events taking place, as the timeline just would not work.
Speaking of nerds, to contrast to how things were in that relatively full theater back in 2005, the audience today consisted of myself and three other people.
So...yeah.  I don't foresee this movie making enough money to justify a sequel, particularly if we wouldn't see that sequel until 2023.
Which is something of a shame, given that one of the complaints many critics have about this movie is that the high-contrast black and white with splashes of color look of the movie that was so groundbreaking in 2005 is old hat now, and looks rather tired and dated.  The markedly different, more colorful style that Miller utilized in "To Hell and Back," the last Sin City comic he did, would be just as groundbreaking, if brought to life on film, as the original movie proved to be, and could very well kick off a new trend that soon gets overdone.
As for the Dwight/Brolin/Owen thing, to get a bit spoilery, there was an opportunity to really mess with the audience that Miller and Rodriguez completely squandered.
Chronologically, "Dame" takes place before "The Big Fat Kill," the yarn featuring Dwight that was adapted in the first movie.
As the result of the events of "Dame," Dwight undergoes major plastic surgery - something that was alluded to a couple of times in "Kill" - resulting in him looking like a completely different person.  Again, I don't know why Owen didn't reprise the role, but it would have been awesome if we went from seeing Brolin all bandaged up after his surgery, to seeing Owen return to the role once the bandages are removed.  Hell, if they could have done it and kept the fact that Owen had returned to play the post-op Dwight a secret, it might have been the movie's saving grace for me, at least.
But no; instead they merely added some weird prosthetic effects to Brolin's face and gave him a different hairdo, and then had - in another disconnect between what was said and what was seen - someone make a comment about the remarkable transformation.
So...yeah.  I was disappointed, as I was certain I would be.  I just didn't realize how disappointed I would be.
Which isn't to say it didn't have its moments - it's always fun to watch Miho (played by Jamie Chung this time around) beheading people, and Mickey Rourke was great as Marv once again.  It was also kind of fun to see Jaime King*** reprise her roles as twin sisters Goldie and Wendy, especially with her appearing on-screen in both roles at the same time.
And, of course, Rosario Dawson.****
Because Rosario Dawson.
But overall...well, nine years is a long time to wait, and even if it had been better than it was, I don't think it could have ever been worth it.
To paraphrase Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character, I went into Sin City:  A Dame to Kill For with my eyes open, but my enthusiasm for the franchise didn't come out at all.

In closing, here's CinemaSins taking a look at everything wrong with the first movie.




*I will admit that there was a great extent to which this was a choice I made.  At the time, I felt like I really needed something to look forward to in life.  Given that I enjoyed the comics, and the movie looked to be the most faithful comic book adaptation ever, it seemed like a good choice.

**I recognize the...flaws of Miller's work, and much of what he's done recently has eroded the good will he built up with his earlier groundbreaking work in comics.  You can tell me that Sin City is horribly sexist and misogynistic, and problematic in at least another dozen ways, and I will agree with you.  But though I recognize this, I still love the comics - and the first movie - unapologetically.

***After working with him in the first movie, and again when he directed The Spirit, Jaime King was a pretty vocal defender of Miller in response to complaints about his misogyny.  That doesn't prove anything, obviously  - I think it's clear that yes, Miller is positively drowning in misogyny, but I always found that interesting.

****While the sequel gained points for retaining Rosario Dawson (and once again dressing her up in dominatrix gear), to borrow from the CinemaSins guys, I called out some sins for the movie, as they might, because, "Rosario Dawson isn't my girlfriend in this scene."  Of course, to be fair, I call out Rosario Dawson not being my girlfriend as one of the sins of life itself.

It's Not LIke I'm Letting Down My "Fans" Or Anything...

So it's a picture.
Of Christina Hendricks.

Christina Hendricks

I don't really have much more to say about it other than that I made so many mistakes and poor decisions in drawing this image that it's amazing that it turned out at all well, so I have to overlook the fact that it didn't come out at all the way I wanted it to. That's hardly new, of course, but I had a very specific idea of how I wanted the picture to look when I started it, to a greater extent than I do with any other picture I work on.
Of course, on the other hand, no one else knows how I wanted it to look, so I guess it doesn't matter
And even more to the point, no one cares how I'd wanted it to look.  It's not like I let anyone down by failing to achieve the look I was going for.
So, in short, I guess...fuck it.

Wilde Thing

This picture of actress Olivia Wilde...



...whom some of you may know as Dr. Thirteen* from House**, took way too freaking long to finish.
I like certain aspects of it***, but overall I'm not happy with it - I wanted the contrast between the simple flat color of the hair and dress and the more detailed shading of her skin to "pop" a little more than it does - but, I am, quite frankly, sick of looking at it after working on it for three days.
So there you go.

*Not to be confused with Dr. Thirteen, the Ghostbreaker from the comics.
**And some of you, or at least those of you who are Scott, will be interested to know that she's in Tron 2.
***In particular, oddly enough, her teeth.

Haven't I Seen This Before?

So yesterday I saw Dances With Wolves Ferngully Pocahantas Avatar.
The visuals were amazing - especially in IMAX 3D (at least when my eyes, which are rather hit-or-miss with 3D, were working properly) - but beyond that...
It really didn't have a lot going for it besides the visuals and was weighed down by a cliche-ridden plot.
As I put it to Scott afterwards, apparently James Cameron decided to take everything he's ever seen, read, or heard and put it all into a movie.
But, to be fair, I wasn't really expecting much more than amazing visuals, so I can't exactly call it a failure, and I was entertained by it.
It just would have been nice if, along with the trailblazing visuals, Cameron had opted to tread some new ground with the story as well.
(The story: white man goes to live amongst savages, white man falls in love with the chief's daughter, white man learns the ways of the savages, white man turns against his own people - who, naturally, are eeeeeevvvvillllll, because guess what: sometimes "civilized" people are the most savage of all! Irony! - to protect the way of life of the savages.)
It's definitely worth seeing, but don't get your hopes up in thinking that, underneath the flashy surface, you'll actually be seeing anything new.

The Slow, Silent, Ominous Walk Or What Did The Shotgun Say To The Face? BLAM!

Because I saw the end of it on HDNet Movies, I decided that I should just watch Donnie Darko last night.
I saw the movie on Showtime or something quite some time ago – back when I still lived in Ashburn, I think – and had bought the DVD because I found the Director’s Cut cheap at Wal-Mart and thought, “Why not?”
I’d never actually watched it after buying the DVD, though, and since it’s been years since I’d last seen it, I’d forgotten several things about the movie:

1. It’s set in the 1980s (1988, to be exact).
2. Patrick Swayze is in it.
3. Just how absolutely fucking creepy Frank the Bunny is.


Yeah, watching this movie just before going to bed was a great idea.

I also learned that there was something I didn’t notice at the time when I first watched it: Seth Rogen has a bit part in it. Of course, at the time I first watched it I probably didn’t know who he was.
I didn’t do a whole lot today beyond the usual, which is to say I went to the comic shop, gassed up the car, and went grocery shopping.
I also looked for a new pair of shoes for work, as I recently discovered that there’s a hole in the heel of one of them that goes all of the way through the insole, which explains how my heel always gets wet when I walk through the rain-flooded parking lot at work.
I didn’t actually manage to find a pair that I wanted, as the only shoes that Target had that I liked weren’t available in my size. Honestly, why is the style of shoe different for every size? Wouldn’t you think that you could find multiple sizes of one style of shoe? I guess that’s crazy talk; every size hast to be a totally different style.
So I may head out to Wal-Mart or the mall or something tomorrow to look some more, but I didn’t feel like bothering with it today.
Back when it was in theaters, the commercials for the movie The Strangers actually made it look pretty damn spooky, to the point that, even though I’m not really into horror movies, I thought about going to see it.
I never did, but yesterday when I was checking out what was on HBO and Cinemax during the free preview, I saw that it was on, so I set it to record.
I didn’t watch it while it was on because it would have been dark before the movie was over, and I spook pretty easily(see Frank the Bunny above), so I decided to watch it today while it was light out.
I needn’t have bothered waiting for the light, and indeed shouldn’t have bothered watching it at all.
Major spoilers follow, so if you haven’t suffered through this piece of crap already and are determined to do so at some point, consider yourself warned.
The plot of the movie is pretty simple: young couple in some remote location terrorized by three masked psychos.
One of the things about the ads that made it seem especially spooky in the ads was a bit when the female victim asks her tormentors “Why are you doing this to us?” and one of the masked tormentors, a girl, responds, in a matter-of-fact, slightly stoned sounding tone “Because you were home.”
I thought, “Hmm, dark, nihilistic movie featuring casually cruel villains engaging in truly senseless acts of brutality that seem to be motivated by nothing more than simple boredom. Could be interesting.”
That scene, it turns out, was pretty much the only genuinely scary moment in the entire cliché-ridden movie.
The movie starts out with the statement that it was “inspired by true events,” then throws out a statistic about violent crime, which leads me to conclude that the only inspiration for it was that, in real life, sometimes people get killed by other people.
The movie then tells us that in 2005 a young couple left a wedding reception and went to a summer home and were murdered and that no one really knows what happened that night. We’re then treated to the audio of a 911 call in which someone reports finding dead bodies in a house and that there’s blood everywhere.
We then get an opening montage of houses.
Seriously. It’s like you’re looking out the window of a moving car and engaging in really long blinks between houses.
This goes on for way too long.
We then find ourselves in a car, waiting at a stoplight, with a very unhappy-looking couple (Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler). The woman has clearly been crying.
They drive along in silence for quite some time, until the man stops at a mailbox on a rural road, and gets out to check the mail. The woman, meanwhile, lights a cigarette.
Next we find ourselves at their home. The man is inside standing around doing not much of anything, and the woman is standing outside smoking her cigarette.
No one has said anything this whole time.
Eventually they start to talk, and we find out, in an achingly slow manner, what the hell is going on.
It turns out that while they were at the wedding reception the man proposed and the woman said no.
So now they’re at the former summer home of the man’s parents’, where earlier in the day he and some friends had set to work on laying out candles and rose petals and champagne to turn the place into a romantic retreat, operating on the assumption that she’d say yes.
The woman – Kristin – takes a pointless bath (I say it’s pointless because, despite the fact that this in an R-rated movie we don’t get any gratuitous nudity; I don’t necessarily care, simply because it’s Liv Tyler, but if you’re going to make an R-rated movie, throw in some T&A, or at the very least, skip the bathing/undressing scenes if you’re not going to show us anything), and the man engages in standard movie shorthand for “I’m really depressed” by eating some ice cream directly out of the container.
The man – James – then leaves a voicemail for a friend asking him to come up to the house to pick him up in the morning whenever he wakes/sobers up.
Kristin finishes her bath and comes out to talk to James some more about what happened and they try to figure out where they go from here. He tells her that he called his friend to come and pick him up and that he’ll leave the car for her, and to keep the ring because he can’t bring himself to keep it and can’t bring it back, and then they decide that just because they’re not getting married that doesn’t mean that they can’t engage in some pre-marital sex.
This is interrupted by a knock at the door.
They comment on the fact that it’s the middle of the night, and then proceed to open the door, where a young woman, who can’t be seen clearly because the porch light is out, and who sounds slightly stoned, is standing and asks if someone (I think she said Tamara) is home. They tell her that there’s no one there by that name, she asks if they’re sure, they say yes, and she leaves.
James and Kristin discuss the weirdness of this rather than going back to bumping uglies, and Kristin mentions that she’s out of cigarettes. Despite her protest that she could just go to bed because she’s tired, James offers to go out to get her some, as he could stand to go out for a drive anyway.
While he’s gone, the girl comes back and knocks on the door again.
Many times.
Kristin tries to call James, but her cell phone battery is dead, so after putting that charging she calls James from the landline, which – surprise! – goes dead.
There are assorted moments of additional door-knocking – at varying intensities – and other noises, Kristin looks out the window at one point and is startled by the sight of a man in a mask, and of course there are the inevitable discoveries, such as the now-missing cell phone, that point to the fact that someone has been inside the house.
While hiding in the bedroom in terror, Kristin hears the sound of someone moving around in the house and coming towards the bedroom.
Coming as a surprise to no one except Kristin, it turns out that it’s James, and not the masked man, because, knowing that she’s already spooked, naturally he wouldn’t bother to give her any warning by saying, “Kristin, it’s me,” or, “Hey, it’s James and not the killer,” and instead choosing to make his way to the bedroom in a slow, ominous manner.
Then again, bitch did turn him down after he went through a lot of trouble, so I guess I can understand that.
I suppose that’s also why he initially refuses to believe her story about weird noises and masked men and the missing cell phone.
Still, he does humor her by going around the house to verify that there’s no one inside, though he does get a little freaked when Kristin points out that the girl is back and is standing in the yard staring at the house.
Naturally he’d left his cell phone in the car, so he has to go out there to get it in order to call the police.
He becomes fully-converted to Kristin’s way of thinking when the finds that the car has been smashed up and the tires have been slashed, and he freaks the fuck out – and rightly so – when one of the masked tormentors sneaks up behind him, touches him gently on the neck, then takes off before he can even turn around.
Once he’s back in the house James finds his cell phone – broken – indicating that, once again, someone has been inside the house.
James and Kristin then try to make a break for it in the disabled car, but before they can a pick-up truck appears from out of nowhere and rear-ends them.
At that point, the couple begins to behave fairly sensibly, running back into the house, finding a shotgun and an assload of shells, and holing themselves up in a defensible position.
The tormentors then take the opportunity to terrifyingly put a Merle Haggard song playing on the record player.
Our POV changes, and we find that James’ friend has arrived at the house and is calling James’ cell to let him know that he’s arrived early.
A rock then comes flying through his windshield, so naturally he gets out and heads towards the house to investigate.
Despite seeing the smashed up car in the yard, hearing the loud music playing, and seeing that the door has been chopped at with an axe – why the tormentors had to hack at the door with an axe when they’ve clearly demonstrated that they can get in and out of the house whenever they want is beyond me – and shot at with a shotgun, the friend walks in to the house slowly and silently.
While we’re provided with some “misdirection” in the form of the masked man, with an axe, slowly sneaking up on the best friend, he might as well be wearing a sandwich board saying, “I’m going to startle my friends and get a face full of buckshot for my troubles.”
That is, of course, what happens.
Despite the fact that this tragedy clearly demonstrates the efficacy of holing up in a defensible position with a shotgun, James decides that rather than staying put and surviving the night and dealing with the fallout of having accidentally blown off his best friend’s face after they get out of this alive, he will leave Kristin alone and defenseless while he tries to sneak out to the barn to try to call for help on an old shortwave radio.
And that’s pretty much where the story ends. James gets caught and unarmed, and Kristin spends a half an hour running around breathing heavy, until she trips and hurts herself, at which point she starts crawling and hobbling around breathing heavy (at least when she remembers that she’s injured herself and isn’t able to move around easily).
Eventually we get the anticlimax of seeing James and Kristin tied up in chairs, and we’re treated to the “Because you were home” line from the ads, James notices that Kristin is wearing the ring (she’d tried it on after he’d left to buy her some smokes and never got around to taking it off), and the tormentors each take off their masks (though we never get a clear view of their faces), and take turns stabbing James and Kristin.
We cut to a scene of two boys walking their bikes along the road (it was morning by the time they finally got around to stabbing James and Kristin) and see the pick-up truck approaching them. The truck stops, the stoned-sounding girl gets out and walks up to the boys, points to the religious pamphlets in their hands, and asks if she can have one.
The boy asks if she’s a sinner. The girl engages in an inhumanly long pause, and finally says, “Sometimes.” The boy gives her a pamphlet, she gets back into the truck with the other two killers, and one of them says, “Next time it’ll be easier,” and they drive off.
The boys then find the grisly scene inside the house, which we caught some snippets of at the beginning of the movie, and one of them evidently decides that finding a dead chick is the ideal opportunity to cop a feel, and reaches slowly towards Kristin, at which point, in a cheesy “made you jump” move, Kristin opens her eyes, grabs the boys arm, and screams.
The end.
So, yeah. It was pretty boring and predictable, which is made kind of frustrating by the fact that, even with such a simple premise, it could have been a much better – and much scarier – movie.
I mean, some of the cat and mouse stuff was genuinely spooky – like the bit with the chick touching James’ neck while he was in the car – but for the most part, meh.
Beyond the general stupidity of the characters – which is pretty much a staple of horror movies – the thing that bothered me the most, was the seemingly supernatural ability the “Strangers” had to move around silently and to appear and disappear at will.
Again, another staple of horror movies, but in a movie that seemed to be shooting for some verisimilitude and creating horror in the viewers’ minds by essentially saying “this could really happen and similar things have happened and continue to happen,” it just stood out really glaringly.
In any case, I was bored by the movie and thought I’d share the boredom with you.
You’re welcome.

Hellboy? Hell Yeah!

I’d like to say that I was extremely productive and that I accomplished a lot today.
However, clearly I wouldn’t like it enough to have actually been extremely productive and accomplished enough so that I could legitimately say that I had.
Instead I got up a bit before 10, sat around for a while, showered, dressed, headed over to the comic shop – new comics came out on Thursday this week because of the holiday, but I was too lazy to stop by there before today – had lunch, went to Target and bought a few things, then came home and took a nap.
Among the things I bought at Target was the latest Futurama DVD, The Beast With a Billion Backs, which I watched after I got up from my nap.
It was better than Bender’s Big Score, but it still seemed a bit off, and didn’t have as many laughs as a standard episode of the series would have had.
Still, there was one particular scene that was completely awesome and which made up for all of the other areas in which it was lacking.
Speaking of awesomeness, I went to see Hellboy II last night with Scott and Stacy and a bunch of other people I’m too lazy to list and I enjoyed the…err…hell out of it.
Not really going to post a review of it, other than, as already mentioned, to note that it was awesome, and also to say that I never thought I would have enjoyed something that included a Barry Manilow song as a rather central element, and yet I did.
I will say, though, that while the movie was near-perfection, I do have three complaints. It included one of my favorite supporting characters, Johann Krauss, a German scientist accidentally converted into a swirling mist of ectoplasmic vapor – voiced, oddly enough, by Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane, who did a decent job, particularly for Johann as presented in the movie – but it did not include my absolute favorite supporting character, Roger, the pantsless homunculus.
Also not featured: pulp hero Lobster Johnson. This is a shame, as there was a perfect opportunity in the movie to give audience at least a fleeting glimpse of the character.
My final complaint? No cybernetic Nazi gorillas.
These are, of course, mere quibbles, and I have absolutely nothing in the way of real complaints about the movie (other than that it annoyed me to have to wait four damn years for it to come out).
So yeah; I liked it. It had the requisite amounts of humor, action, and creepiness that should accompany any Hellboy story.
I should mention that a year or two before Hellboy hit the comics scene, I’d come up with an idea that was quite similar to the high concept behind Hellboy.
For the uninitiated, Hellboy is a demon who was brought to Earth through the machinations of a group of Nazi occultists during World War II. However, the ritual that summoned him was disrupted by Allied soldiers led by a paranormal researcher, and the demon, who was just a child, was adopted by the US military and raised by the paranormal researcher, eventually growing to become the world’s foremost paranormal investigator, who rejected his original destiny, which was to destroy the world.
My idea didn’t involve Nazis, but had a similar notion in that it involved the redemption of a demon. Basically, a demon takes possession of a child, and a priest is called in to exorcise it. In hearing the message of the Gospels, the demon, against all conventional wisdom and theology, becomes converted, and vows to join with the priest in the fight against the forces of darkness of which it was once part.
Of course, it was never much more than the germ of an idea, and likely wouldn’t have turned out to be anywhere near as entertaining as Hellboy even if I hadn’t been too lazy to actually do anything with the idea.
Up next as far as movie-going is The Dark Knight, on Friday, which we’ll be seeing in IMAX. After that, I can’t think of anything else that’s coming out that I’m interested in seeing.
When I got home from work yesterday, I watched the season finale of Reno 911! on my DVR, and then got to work on a picture for the upcoming remodel of the Heroic Portraits site. I went into obsessive mode, and got so caught up in it that I neglected to eat – as often happens – or to leave myself enough time to do so before leaving for the movie, so the hot dog and two boxes of candy I had at the theater had to fulfill that function.
When I got home, I pretty much immediately went back to working on the picture until the wee hours of the morning.
Of course – as also often happens – when I looked at the picture in the light of day I decided that it sucked and that I hated everything about it and that the whole thing had been a colossal waste of time.
Oh well.
In any case, if I should happen to stumble upon some motivation this weekend I’ll probably get to work on putting together a site that is at least a marginal improvement over the current version.
Maybe.

To The People Behind The DC Animated Movies

Dear Mr. Timm, et al:

Seriously, what did I ever do to you?
Things started out great; you announced that you would be adapting several classic DC Comics storylines into direct to DVD animated movies, movies whose style was to be based closely on the styles of the source material, and movies that would involve the active participation of the original creators. That alone was good news, but it was made even better news when I saw that one of the stories being adapted was the classic New Teen Titans story The Judas Contract.
It's impossible to overestimate how much I loved that story back when it came out. The Judas Contract was my Watchmen before the actual Watchmen came out. It was the culmination of a story that was years in the making and featured sweeping themes of betrayal, love, loss, villainy, heroism, and hope.
After the abomination that was the Pokemon-esque Teen Titans cartoon, I was thrilled to see that the Titans of my memory were finally going to get some respect, and I couldn't wait for the animated movies to finally arrive.
When they did, I was thrilled. Superman: Doomsday? Loved it. The New Frontier? Absolutely gorgeous.
Up next, according to what had originally been announced, and according to the fondest hopes of my fanboy heart, was The Judas Contract.
And then, with the preview on The New Frontier, you broke that fanboy heart, at least a little, by showing me that next on deck was a Batman movie. A Batman anime movie at that.
Still, I could understand the reasoning behind it; with a new live-action Batman movie coming out, why not try to cash in on Batmania? So, while dejected, I was willing to wait a little longer for my Judas Contract movie.
And then I read this article about the aforementioned Batman project. I was pleased to see that Kevin Conroy will be - as he should - reprising his role as the voice of Batman. Conroy as Batman is a no-brainer, and while still annoyed by the anime aspect, I thought, "Well, at least they got that much right."
And then I got to the part of the article listing some of the special features that will be on the DVD. Most notably this:

“Sneak Peek: Wonder Woman” - DC Universe animated original movie

W
T
F
?
Why are you doing this to me? When will I ever know the joy (or even bitter disappointment - it almost doesn't matter which at this point) of seeing The Judas Contract brought to (animated) life?
Why must you insist on torturing me so? I've been a huge fan and avid supporter of your DC animated efforts over the years, and this is how you repay me?
How can you be so cruel? Was the promise of a Judas Contract movie all a ruse? Was the hope of such planted, Terra-like, into my mind as part of some intricate plot to destroy me?
Who's really behind the DC animated movies? The Terminator? The H.I.V.E.?
*Sigh* Now I know how Changeling felt at the end of The Judas Contract.

My Thoughts Exactly

I bought Justice League: The New Frontier on DVD yesterday (I was annoyed to see that while it came out on DVD and Blu Ray yesterday, it's coming out on HD DVD on March 18th. I decided not to wait that long, especially given that, with the death of the format, it may not actually come out on HD DVD at all.), and threw it into the DVD player hoping to see a sneak preview of The Judas Contract.
That didn't happen. For an explanation of what did happen, and a pretty fair assessment of how I felt about it all, check out this entry on Scott's blog.
(Why reinvent the wheel? Scott wrote pretty much exactly what I was going to write.)