REEL RETRO CINEMA | 13th Dimension, Comics, Creators, Culture

Aug28

The Powerful, Clashing Visions of KUBRICK’s and KIRBY’s ‘2001’

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Aug 28, 2020

The Powerful, Clashing Visions of KUBRICK’s and KIRBY’s ‘2001’

A birthday tribute to Jack Kirby… — UPDATED 8/28/20: The late Jack Kirby was born 103 years ago and comics writer/historian Fred Van Lente has put together the TOP 13 ISSUES OF JACK KIRBY’s 1970s RETURN TO MARVEL – RANKED. (Click here.) Given the obvious overlap, I decided to re-present this piece from Kirby’s centennial celebration in 2017. Dig it. — Dan — Rob Kelly’s REEL RETRO CINEMA offers new looks at old flicks — and their comic-book adaptations. Here, he takes on 2001: A Space Odyssey as part of our 13 DAYS OF KIRBY 100 celebration of the King’s centennial. For other REEL RETRO CINEMA columns, click here. or the complete 13 DAYS OF KIRBY 100 Index of stories and features, including essays by the likes of Alex Ross, John Byrne, Marie Severin, Kelley Jones and many others, click here. By ROB KELLY In 1968, Stanley Kubrick decided to slow things down. As a new wave of directors and writers descended on Hollywood in the late 1960s, movies got faster and faster. Just a year earlier, Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde ushered in a new level of hyped-up screen violence, and the film became a massive, groundbreaking hit. But Stanley Kubrick was never one for rushing. It had been a full four years since his last film, Dr. Strangelove, and when he returned to movie theaters it was with a film of breathtaking visuals and challenging ideas. Loosely based on a short story of Arthur C. Clarke’s called The Sentinel, 2001: A Space Odyssey would open in our prehistoric past, focusing on a small tribe of hominids as they struggle to survive. Featuring no music and no dialogue, Kubrick was testing audiences’ patience and forcing them to accept the rhythms from the distant past he was trying to replicate. Eventually, however, something strange happens: A solid black monolith appears, which seems to guide the hominids into learning how to use bones as a weapon. One of them, in an orgiastic display of enlightenment, tosses a bone into the sky. We then make a flash cut to a space station orbiting Earth, a time jump of several hundred million years. In its slow, methodical way, 2001 reveals its story. Another monolith, similar to the one that appeared in our prehistoric past, has been discovered on the moon. When a...

Aug25

DOCTOR NO: That Suave Time JAMES BOND Joined DC Comics

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Aug 25, 2020

DOCTOR NO: That Suave Time JAMES BOND Joined DC Comics

REEL RETRO CINEMA: Dr. Fate, Dr. Light, Dr. Mid-Nite, Dr… No? — UPDATED 8/25/20: Sean Connery was born Aug. 25, 1930! This piece first ran in 2017 but it obviously holds up just as well today. Very good, Mr. Bond. — Dan — It’s REEL RETRO CINEMA — where columnist Rob Kelly takes new looks at old flicks — and their comic-book adaptations! Now, Rob is also a podcaster and this week on The Film and Water Podcast — part of The Fire and Water Podcast Network — he’s put together an episode on the first and, in my mind, greatest James Bond film of them all — Dr. No. Coinciding with that, he’s written this piece on the movie and its relatively rare comics adaptation. You can click here for his podcast. BONUS! For 13th Dimension’s official, unassailable TOP 13 BOND MOVIES OF ALL TIME, click here. — By ROB KELLY Every James Bond fan has their favorite film of the series. Even casual moviegoers can rattle off a few of the more famous installments: Goldfinger. Live and Let Die. Casino Royale. But for whatever reason, 1962’s Dr. No, the first Bond film, tends to not show up on many “all-time great” lists. There are probably a couple of reasons for this but, make no mistake, Dr. No is a fantastic movie. The film’s producers, Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli, picked Ian Fleming’s book (the sixth in the series) as the first cinematic Bond adventure mostly out of budgetary concerns: the story mostly takes place in just two locations (England and Jamaica). which would ensure they could keep costs down, and the plot was straightforward. They hired relatively unknown actor Sean Connery to play 007, and gave Terence Young, a director they had worked well with before, the job of bringing the world of James Bond to the silver screen. Many people think of Goldfinger as the, er, gold standard of Bond films, and in many ways that’s true: It’s the first film of the series that featured many of the trappings that would come to define it, if not the entire spy genre. There’s a colorful super-villain, a henchman with a gimmick, a memorable title song. Goldfinger marks the point where the Bond series started being influenced by itself, but nevertheless many of the things we love about James Bond movies are present in Dr. No. First up is a colorful title sequence, designed by Maurice Binder. Usually spy films were reserved affairs, but the quick cutting and...

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