Now in its second year, Kapow! Comic Convention converged on London UK this past weekend. While a bit of a comic novice, I’ve been seeing more films of late either based on comic books, or inspired by the format. So I spent an afternoon at the convention, wandering the aisles, attending panels, and getting a sneak preview of an upcoming film.

According to Gillian at the UK blog Comics Anonymous, the UK is only now just coming out of the comics closet. She told me this when I expressed surprise that Kapow wasn’t much larger. I don’t want to say that as a negative; the few times I’ve been to Fan Expo, for example, I’ve found it far too big to handle. On the plus side, Kapow is big enough to see a wide range of work, yet small enough to be incredibly friendly. Everyone I talked to, from artists to writers to shop owners, was happy to answer my (I’m sure very amateur) questions. There were large and small vendors, and an artists’ alley for aspiring comics creators. There was also a wrestling ring, where various versions of Kick-Ass and Spider-Man duked it out.

Rufus Sewell was on hand to introduce the red band trailer and a few choice clips from his upcoming film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Based on the novel of the same name, the film is, well, pretty self-explanatory from the title. Before he became president, Honest Abe discovered the existence of vampires, their desire to take over America for themselves, and his destiny to wipe them out. Directed by Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted, Day Watch, Night Watch), what I had seen so far was pretty impressive, both in art direction and action. Unfortunately, the clips were shown in 3D with some pretty fancy new glasses that have computer chips to supposedly enhance the experience but didn’t work (not just mine; most of the audience’s.) It was preferable to watch a slightly fizzy picture rather something sometimes green, sometimes red, and still fuzzy. The clips were of Lincoln’s first kill, confession to his future wife, and an attack on a vampire nest. Like the trailer, they all look amazing. Benjamin Walker is a solid Lincoln and Sewell is in his element as the head vampire baddy. Not having read the book, I hope there is some attempt to use the vampires as a metaphor for the situation in the US at that point in history, rather than an easy cash grab of name recognition.

One of the biggest (if not the biggest) UK comic names these days is Mark Millar. Two of his series, Wanted and Kick-Ass, have already been made into films, and a third, Supercrooks, is in preproduction. A panel featuring Millar, artists Frank Quitely and Dave Gibbons, and Supercrooks director Nacho Vigalondo (Timecrimes) was extremely popular; Millar unveiled a few pages from upcoming comics Jupiter’s Children and Hit Girl. Millar is a great writer, and the various artists he works with all find a unique style for each different comic. I picked up the first two issues of Secret Service, which are great fun. Millar, Quitely and Gibbons were all very funny and friendly, giving interesting advice to aspiring comic writers and artists about the joys and realities of the career path. Millar and Vigalondo also talked about the film of Supercrooks, including revealing their dream cast, which apparently includes Bradley Cooper and Jon Hamm. Someone call these guys now.

Vigalondo also participated in a director’s panel with Gareth Edwards, who is directing the upcoming reboot of Godzilla, and Jeff Wadlow, who is helming Kick-Ass 2. They each had insights on the task of adapting comics to the screen (as opposed to novels or original scripts), the joys and difficulties of creating moving images when there is already a visual reference, and their own paths, inspirations and advice.

There were several panels that I wasn’t able to attend. Actor Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) apparently gave a very funny interview about his work; Peter Serafinowicz (Shaun of the Dead, Running Wilde) launched a new comic project; footage was shown from the new Amazing Spider-Man movie; and Warren Ellis drew a huge crowd. As a newcomer to the comic world, this was a great place for an introduction, and it piqued my interest to the point where I now know the best comic shops in the city. Next year I plan top attend the whole weekend.

Tintin (voiced by Jamie Bell) is a young boy reporter who has a knack for solving mysteries. He and his faithful dog Snowy find themselves embroiled in a mystery of a 17th century ship, sunken at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea. Tintin purchases a model of said ship, which contains a clue to the whereabouts of the treasure, but is kidnapped and stowed on a boat bound for Africa. En route he meets Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), and the two of them plot to foil the kidnappers and their leader, Sakharine (Daniel Craig.) Along the way Tintin is hindered and helped by bumbling detectives Thomson (Nick Frost) and Thompson (Simon Pegg.)

Any adaptation of any book or comic is never going to be the same as its source material, that’s why it’s called an adaptation. An entirely different team could have made a Tintin film, based on the same story, and come up with a completely different concept. So no, it does not look exactly like the books. Spielberg and producer Peter Jackson chose motion-capture animation, and it works. No, it doesn’t look like real people. It’s animation. But motion capture allows for the life that the actors bring to their parts to be displayed. It breathes life into the film while still maintaining its graphic roots. Realism mixes with fantasy; the movements are not those of a human, giving it that comic quality. And at the same time, it’s believable.

The animation allows for fantastic set-pieces that one simply could not achieve in live action. Michael Bay, take a lesson from Spielberg’s action scenes in this film. They look good, they are nail-biting, full of colour and life, and he knows just how much action to give before getting back to the story. As a live-action director, Spielberg understands how a camera moves through a sequence. Given a bit more license in this film, his ‘camera’ can sweep and dive in ways that make you feel you are diving with it. (I should note, I did see this film in 2D due to my hatred of 3D. I did not feel any sense of loss.) This lasts from the opening credits, a wonderful homage to Hergé and the books, to the clash of the Navy and pirates (in a scene that puts anything in Pirates of the Caribbean to shame), to the climactic fight betwen Haddock and Sakharine in the closing moments. There is never a dull moment.

As a comic has both images and dialogue, there is extra pressure on screenwriters and actors to perform in a way that will be both truthful and original. The triple threat of Wright, Cornish and Moffat does not disappoint. They keep the dialogue fresh and true, and manage to include Haddock’s famous seafaring-imagery-swear word substitutions without making them seem trite or out of place. And will someone please nominate Andy Serkis for an Oscar? No actor can lift a motion capture character off the screen the way he can. No doubt, all the actors are perfectly cast, (and you can tell they all had a smashing time voicing their characters,) but Serkis brings life to Haddock that will make you forget the original version.

A few critics on this side of the pond have particularly vile in their hatred of this film, one that includes comparing watching the film to an act of violent assault (an appalling and offensive comparison – it’s a movie, not torture.) I cannot understand their attitude. The Adventures of Tintin has made me completely forgive Spielberg for the disaster that was the last Indiana Jones film. The film is a great tribute to Hergé and his books, and the kind of film that is too often missing from cinemas these days: an adventure for the young that can be loved by their parents, and the young at heart as well.

It could be seen as a meditation on storytelling and the effect of a child’s imagination on adult life, and from that perspective the film has more success. The fears we have as children often remain with us or resurface through traumatic events. But the film just isn’t consistently frightening enough, tips its hand too early, and makes it difficult hard to emotionally invest in the characters for whom there is little fear.

ALPS is visually grittier than its predecessor, but that suits with its reflection on the odd camaraderie that can form in contemporary urban life, and our frequently unhealthy attachment to strangers. The camera finds itself steady on its group of unsteady people, donning a cinema verite style of off-centre framing, as though the audience is peeking at the characters from around a corner with one eye, unable to keep from watching the obvious train wreck some people are making of their lives and unable to interfere or stop it. In some ways the characters elicit less sympathy than expected, as they take emotional advantage of the vulnerable, but the havoc one of them ends up wreaking on herself is almost too much to bear. Lanthimos is certainly one of the most original filmmakers working in cinema today.

Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights is going to anger a lot of people. Which is a shame, because it is brilliant. As an interpretation, not an adaptation, Arnold take a different route, exploring certain themes and characters within the text from a different perspective. And what a perspective – this is raw, gritty, melancholy and visceral in its visualisation of the landscape and the various creatures that inhabit it. Told from the perspective of Heathcliff (James Howson), the first half sees a coarse but steadfast boy and a tempestuous, stubborn girl bond in wildness as is consistent with the Yorkshire moors. Arnold does not try to falsify the land with fancy effects or swooping, meaningless camera movements. Rather, with handheld camera she moves as the characters move, running and tripping, hard and fast over an often-unforgiving place.

The houses are tight and either raw and low (in the case of the Earnshaw homestead) or too bright and pristine (at the Linton mansion). The moors mean freedom, at least for Cathy (Kaya Scodelario) and Heathcliff, and they are dragged away from them by the confines of their societal statuses. During the second half, when we meet the adult Heathcliff and Catherine, they seem ill-at-ease in their new finery, lost unless they are together among the rocks and winds. Arnold’s Heathcliff is a lost, insular boy, finding strength only in speaking his mind and the presence of Cathy. Arnold brings her incredible eye for the beauty of the lonely and the plight of the outcast to this interpretation, and it should be praised.

We Canadians are often stereotyped as nice and polite, and even our bank robbers follow this pattern. Edwin Boyd is a biopic of Canada’s most famous thief, and it is a solid first feature, written and directed by Nathan Morlando. It follows a fairly standard biopic plot: we are introduced to Boyd (Scott Speedman), and his struggle to earn a living and provide for his wife and children after serving in WWII. He wants to be an actor and singer, but can’t afford classes. But what he does have is good looks and charm, and he uses those to rob banks. He is caught, jailed, breaks out of jail and forms the Boyd Gang, who wreaked havoc for years before being caught again.

Speedman continues to grow as an actor. The camera often rests on his face, and you can see the wheels turning in his eyes, not because Speedman has to work hard, but he wants the audience to understand Boyd’s thought process and how a good man can do bad things. Although spanning years, Canada appears in a perpetual state of winter, as if to add to the gang’s feeling of isolation and their drive to have a piece of life denied to them because of their socio-economic class. The film shows the robberies as barely controlled chaos, with Boyd in strange makeup dancing on the counter, and then in the intimacy of his bedroom with his strangely devoted wife, sans makeup, and still trying to find his place in this new world. In the 1950s, men returning from war often felt emasculated and shell-shocked, and for people like Boyd who have been deserted by the society they fought to protect, crime might seem a logical means of escape.

Edwin Boyd won the Skyy Vodka Award for Best Canadian Feature Film at the festival.

Everyone, from the most devout Catholic to effusive evangelist, has a concept of Jesus and Satan, and what he or she would look like if they ever manifested in human form. But there is no concept, and the devil, or Jesus, could be a rich man or a strange drifter. Award-winning French director Bruno Dumont ‘s new film Outside Satan is a strange, disquieting and disturbing film about a drifter who could be Jesus or Satan, or perhaps both.

Set in northwest France on the Atlantic coast, a drifter befriends a young woman who is being abused by her father, and does her the favour of killing him. He refuses her romantic advances, and other killings occur, as well as a miracle. Is this man supernatural enough to bring the dead back to life? Or just a serial killer who forms strange attachments? The film is as haunting and desolate as the landscape it shows. On the surface it would seem to be realism at its barest bones, with no score and very little dialogue to guide the audience.  And it is that realism that makes its supernatural tendencies all the more disturbing. There is no fanfare around them, and the young woman and others accept them at face value. As they characters walk from forest to beach under near constant cloud cover, with little hope of change, people bond over the darkest circumstances. A slow-moving yet compelling film.

The show opens with the execution of Oswald Danes (the underused yet always fantastic Bill Pullman), a convicted and admitted pedophile. Except the lethal injection doesn’t work: he doesn’t die. Meanwhile, two CIA agents find out about Torchwood, and as soon as they do all note of it vanishes. Turns out, all over the world, no one is dying; the undead bodies are piling up, and resources will soon grow scarce. And it all comes back to Torchwood.

The science fiction remains very British: it takes a global problem and doesn’t attempt to solve it through great heroics or lofty ideals. The problem is real and dirty and guns won’t help (since they won’t kill anyone.) The aesthetic and editing, though, overall feels like an episode of 24. This is not necessarily a bad thing; if you go to America, it should have an American television feel. Instead of an underground bunker, there are sleek CIA offices and impossible clean & orderly hospitals. The CIA agents use the full force of their power, bringing in a SWAT team to arrest a few people. And religious fervour permeates the plot; as Danes is released, having had it proved that his sentence was carried out, it seems that his role will become central to this strange worldwide immortality.

Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) has always been a strange character; in the Doctor Who, he was the cocky rogue. In Torchwood, he becomes a kind of Doctor, who knows all and sees all. Gwen (Eve Myles) is his companion, pulled from an ordinary life and unable to ever quite return to it. The two CIA agents land somewhere in the middle: certainly used to things out of the ordinary, though not necessarily extraterrestrial. Giving the series a combined American/British feel might help the series find a more solid direction. Certainly this first episode is fast-paced and intriguing, and will likely keep the audience waiting with baited breath for the second.

And we have not one, but two trailers. And in keeping with the crazy spirit, both are parodies of a typical Hollywood rom-com and a recent bland sequel. I’m not exactly sure what the logic behind disguising them under names other than the film title is, but all that matters if that they’re out there. So stick with them, and I suspect if you aren’t already, you will be seduced into the wild and magical world of Kermit and his insane friends.

The film has been in works for a while, and finally we have a trailer. And it looks fantastic. With Steven Spielberg directing, Peter Jackson producing, Edgar Wright, Steven Moffat & Joe Cornish writing, and Jamie Bell, Nick Frost and Simon Pegg (among others) acting, I have high hopes for this film.

Visit the official site here, and watch the trailer below.

I didn’t know it until I saw it, but I have been waiting for a summer movie like Thor for a long time. It is fun, far more fun than any comic adaptation I have seen in years. Admittedly, I say that as someone who does not read a lot of comics and is not familiar with the source material. And to me, that is the beauty of this film. This movie knows its material is not as invested in a legion of fans such as follow Batman or Superman, and its British director brings to it a distantiation that allows for investment in the fun of it all: the outrageous narration, exaggerated and impossible action sequences, and actors who can just let go and enjoy the ride without any pressure while still maintaining their integrity and talent. This, my friends, is what a summer movie should be: exciting, clever, comedic, and a joyride.

Kenneth Branagh has been much maligned in the press in recent years, to my mind unfairly. Yes, he has had some duds (Frankenstein comes immediately to mind), but his good films (Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Dead Again, Sleuth) far outweigh the bad, And even with their faults, Branagh is willing to take risks where very few other (i.e. Hollywood) directors are not; sometimes it doesn’t work, but more often than not it does. At first he might have seemed like an odd choice for this film, but actually he is perfect. Thor is not Batman; he does not have the following or the pressure. So it takes a director from outside the genre to make this kind of film, who can look at the source material with a less interested eye and find the key, transferable elements.

Thor is the son of Odin, King of Asgard, central of the nine worlds (of which Earth is one.) Odin has managed to maintain peace with the Frost Giants after a great battle many years ago, but Thor feels the kingdom is threatened. In a fit of youthful egoism, he and his band of followers, including his brother Loki, go to the Frost Giant’s kingdom and almost start a war. As punishment, Odin casts Thor down to earth until he can prove he is worthy of being King. And as write this, it sounds laugh-out-loud absurd, but you have to get into the rhythm of the film.

There are two worlds the film inhabits: Earth and Asgard. Asgard is gorgeously rendered in golds and reds, exactly what one would expect of such a kingdom in the sky, where everything is taller, brighter, and more formal. Earth (in the setting of New Mexico) is dirty, dusty, and laid-back. In the opening scenes of the film, the two worlds and their characters are separated. The collision that takes place once Thor falls to earth is nothing short of brilliant; classic fish-out-of-water comedy that borders slightly on predictability and yet is just clever enough to elicit great laughter. The action sequences, through both real acting and CGI, are exciting and not drawn out as too many film try to do these days.

Branagh’s directorial strengths lie in two areas: text and actors. The man knows words. And it is through the dialogue that Asgard and Earth are differentiated. Asgard is the Shakespearean side: everyone speaks in rather lofty tones, which a first seems a little strange, but again, just get into the rhythm and it seems perfectly natural. Earth is, well, Earth, and colloquial. The trailer gives away some of the jokes in Thor’s first encounters with earthly communication, and yet this did not stop me from laughing when I saw the film. The Asgardian characters never seem untrue in their dialogue, nor do they waver in its delivery. I have a feeling that this dialogue, in script form, might be a little less than impressive, but the actors pull it off. They know this is not actual Shakespeare, nor is it meant to be delivered as such; but they do understand how to say the words without making them seem trivial or incomprehensible or silly.

Of course, if you’re going to have a king of Asgard, you’d do no better than Anthony Hopkins. I was also surprised to discover that Canadian actor Colm Feore was the King of the Frost Giants (though his performance is vocal, as it is a computer generated character; not that that is a problem with Feore.) The film needs strong older actors such as these, as well as Stellan Skarsgård as an Earth scientist, to helm the film for the younger actors. Chris Hemsworth is perfect as Thor (and he certainly isn’t hard on the eyes either.) I never once failed to take him seriously or believe anything coming out of his mouth. His transformation from arrogant boy to wise adult doesn’t happen in one fell swoop, it happens with every smashed cup and every kick of a bodyguard. Tom Hiddleston is the perfect foil as Loki, and it is a credit to him that, although one knows that in Norse mythology he is the trickster, I was still surprised by each further trick he pulled. And will someone please give Kat Dennings more films roles! She is horribly underused in this one, providing most of the earthly comic relief, and I wonder why she wasn’t cast as the lead female, Jane Foster. I continue to be baffled by the popularity of Natalie Portman. I’m sorry to be harsh, but she is as dull as dishwater, and I could see no reason why Thor would have any interest in Jane. And for those very few racists out there who insisted that a black man shouldn’t play Heimdall, all I can say is just watch the damn movie. Idris Elba is a force of gravity, and in his scenes he draws everyone into him.

In other hands, this film would have been terrible. With Branagh at the helm, I have no doubt it’s going to be one of my top films this summer, and likely the year. He picked the right actors (well, mostly), he directed them well, and he paced the movie perfectly, weaving together its strange and frenetic generic, geographical, and linguistic distinctions seamlessly. My only regret is that due to the few locations where 2D viewing was available, I had to watch it in 3D. It is not necessary, and in fact I would have enjoyed it more in 2D. It looks glorious, it sounds glorious, and I haven’t had so much fun at a film in a long, long time. Bravo, Branagh.

I’ll admit, I’ve never been a great fan of the Planet of the Apes series, beyond the original film. And certainly it’s getting quite tiresome to see remakes, reboots and the like coming out of Hollywood rather than more original material. But the first trailer for Rise of the Planet of the Apes looks rather promising. You can watch the trailer at Apple Trailers, or embedded below from YouTube.

With strong actors such as James Franco, Brian Cox, John Lithgow and Andy Serkis (as the ape of course), and CG apes designed by the visual effects team that made Avatar almost bearable, it could be good. In our age of genetically modified food, DNA manipulation, and humans having the ability to extend their lives beyond what might be considered safe lengths, the story is rather timely.