Interview With ‘Ninja Turtles’ Doc Filmmaker Randall Lobb

Posted on August 11, 2014 by Adam A. Donaldson

turtlepowerThere’s a brand new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie now in theatres everywhere, and given that this is the 30th anniversary of that first edition of the black and white comic that started it all, what a better time for retrospective could there be? In the new documentary, Turtle Power: The Definitive History of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a team of Ontario filmmakers doggedly pursued the history of the franchise, and the result can now be screen on Netflix, or bought on DVD.

In an interview for Nerd Bastards, I spoke to director Randall Lobb who spent five years tracking down and interviewing as many people associated with the Ninja Turtles as humanly possible. He interviewed TMNT creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, the people that created the Turtles toys at Playmates, the voice cast and crew of the first Ninja Turtles cartoon, and the people involved in creating the first Ninja Turtles live-action movie in 1990, then the most successful independent movie of all time.

A lot of people may scoff at the idea of spending five years of you life chronicling the history of a pop culture icon about four pizza-eating martial artist vigilantes that happen to be mutated, humanized turtles named for Renaissance artists, and Lobb might be among them. He wasn’t always a Turtles fan, but he chased his subject with vigour and has put together an insightful movie with a rare completionist collection of the various players who have brought the Ninja Turtles to life in various forms for three decades.

Read the full interview with Randall Lobb here.

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Thoughts on a Deadpool Movie on Nerd Bastards

Posted on August 4, 2014 by Adam A. Donaldson

deadpool-footage-2Weirdly, it felt like there wasn’t a lot of news that came out of San Diego Comic Con this year, which is odd because Comic Con is now more a trade event than a fan one. That’s why it was strange this year when the biggest comic book movie related news came from leaks off-site. Like the test footage featuring Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool.

Shrewd fans will recognize that Reynolds played the part before in the less-than-well-thought-of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. That movie was a critical and commercial bomb, but the idea of Reynolds playing the “Merc with the Mouth” in a solo film has been held on to for the last five years.

With this provocative test footage though, Deadpool fans, and they are legion, are wondering if now might be the time we might see some action on the project? In a recent op-ed piece I wrote for Nerd Bastards though, I argued that it’s likely still unlikely to happen.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to see it happen, and I think it would fun if 20th Century Fox decided to open up the movie X-Men world to all sorts of X-Men characters, but a hard-R-rated, ultra-violent Deadpool in the current risk averse Hollywood landscape? I’m doubtful.

You can read my full opinion piece on Nerd Bastards here.

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‘Hercules’ Review on Nerd Bastards

Posted on July 25, 2014 by Adam A. Donaldson

dwayne-johnson-in-hercules-movieEvery now and then, two different Hollywood studios get the same idea, and this year two different productions based on the Ancient Greek myth of Hercules have been made. Hercules, directed by Brett Ratner and starring Dwayne Johnson, is the second.

I was assigned to review the film for Nerd Bastards, and despite appearances, I didn’t completely hate the movie. That’s not to say I completely enjoyed it either though. Based on a graphic novel, this Hercules, I felt, had an interesting take on the myth by supposing that the mighty Hercules was a product of hype and myth-building in his own time, and that the 12 Labours were embellished to add to prestige.

Johnson, as always, is a compelling and engaging leading man, and he’s certainly built to play a Greco strong man worthy of myth. He’s also surrounded by a great supporting cast including Ian McShane, Rufus Sewell and John Hurt. Ratner does a decent job directing in his typical workman fashion, but then again I don’t have the unrelenting hate for Ratner that other fanboys do.

Check out my full review of Hercules here.

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Coverage of Guelph Transit Lockout on Politico

Posted on July 22, 2014 by Adam A. Donaldson

union_protest

The City of Guelph is currently undergoing a lockout of the transit workers, rendering all buses in the Royal City semi-permanently stuck in park as the people that depend on the bus try desperately to get by without it.

The story is complicated for how sudden and bizarre all the developments have been. The City came out of nowhere last month and told the union that the first offer was the final offer, the union voted to reject the deal, the city said “lockout” and then an 11th hour deal was reached to keep buses running. One week later, the union rejects the new deal and the lockout’s back on. Late. On a Sunday night. When most of the people getting up early are asleep, blissfully unaware that their bus won’t be arriving to pick them up in the morning.

On the first day of the lockout, I ventured down to City Hall, where I knew that transit workers would be picketing, to get into the story and to get at the reasons behind lockout we’re not hearing in the City press releases.

You can read the story and watch the video over at Guelph Politico.

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Robocalls Trial Wraps in Guelph Tomorrow

Posted on June 8, 2014 by Adam A. Donaldson

robocalls copyOne of the ongoing stories I’ve been following on Guelph Politico is the trial of Michael Sona, the only person charged with committing the fraudulent robocalls in the Royal City on Election Day, May 2, 2011. The trial lasted all last week, and closing arguments are tomorrow, at which point it will be up to Judge Gary Hearn to decide whether or not Sona was guilty of trying to stop over 7,000 Guelph votes from trying to make it to the ballot box.

In reviewing the over three years of stories related to the robocall story, I created the above graphic for Politico for people to click on to get all the robocall-related articles. I also recently reviewed a lot of the articles I wrote during the 2011 Federal election, and it’s kind of funny we didn’t see the writing on the wall at the time that something bad was coming. Of course, that doesn’t mean it would be something that was national news bad, but hey…

The outcome of the trial should be a topic of great debate. The Elections Canada investigation shut down a couple of months ago, which means that Sona is the only person who will ever go to court over the robocalls and what looks like a nation-wide attempt to keep people from voting. That’s got to make a lot of people out there uncomfortable, and I include myself amongst their ranks.

Relive the robocall scandal by following this thread.

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‘Edge of Tomorrow’ Review on Nerd Bastards

Posted on June 7, 2014 by Adam A. Donaldson

edge-of-tomorrow_oneAlthough I don’t think they should have changed the title from the much cooler All You Need is Kill, the one used on both the original novel and graphic novel, Edge of Tomorrow was a great surprise. Starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, the film manages to transcend its rather derivative premise of being a sci-fi Groundhog Day, and both actors deliver wonderful, out of character performances.

Indeed, Cruise and Blunt find their roles reversed in this; Blunt is the bad ass veteran fighter who’s a hero in the war against alien invaders, and Cruise is they guy she has to help use is new-found repeat powers to eliminate the extra-terrestrial threat. The idea of Blunt being an action star isn’t all that surprising, she was the original choice for Black Widow in The Avengers movies, but Cruise though really stretches here. We’re introduced to his character as a coward and someone completely ill-equipped for the heroics we typically associate with a Tom Cruise character in a Tom Cruise movie.

Although I didn’t get to it in the review, I also wanted to highlight the work of Bill Paxton in the film as Cruise’s hardened drill sargent. He’s certainly come a long way from his days as Pvt. Hudson in Aliens.

Check out my review of Edge of Tomorrow on Nerd Bastards.

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