After the events of last issue Wally is out of commission with two broken legs but can even the combined forces of Jay Garrick, Max Mercury and Impulse stop a supersuit on a rampage ? One of the things I always liked about the pre - NEW 52 DC universe was the sense of legacy with various generations of super heroes working together to support and teach each other and you got that in spades in the FLASH book. It´s too bad nobody at DC remembers why people liked their comics so much since they are all focused on earning the quick buck. We return to the story in progress.
Now was that great or what ? I bet you didn´t see that coming. Next week we will have the final chapter of the story - unless something else comes up that demands a special FLASH FRIDAY edition. Speaking of the Flash and special editions, my copy of The Flash - A Celebration Of 75 Years has arrived and although I knew which stories are going to be in it I am a bit underwhelmed by the hardcover. Maybe I just need a bit more time.
As someone who became a real Flash fan when Wally West took up the mantle of Flash there is too much old stuff in it but I know that this is meant to represent 75 years of history. And there are some stories that just HAVE to be in here, like the first story of Jay Garrick as The Flash, the first story of Barry Allen as The Flash, the first story of Wally West as Kid Flash, Flash of Two Worlds, the death of Barry Allen, the first story of Wally West as The Flash etc. For the rest of the material I´m glad that they included an issue drawn by Mike Wieringo and I don´t know which important Flash stories have already been in other trades so maybe they didn´t want to put it here. But if this is really meant as a representation of 75 years of Flash history then they should pick EITHER the stories with the most historical relevance of the Flash lore OR the best Flash stories.
I´m not sure if they achieved that. Also, the reproduction of Flash 215, Flash vol 2 issue 1 and Flash Annual 2 is really bad. Okay, the first issue of the second volume is the reason why I bought this book in the first place but did they have no better copy ? DC always boast that it has a bigger library than Marvel who has to ask Ralph Macchio to lend them his old issues for the collections but they really couldn´t get a better copy ? With all their resources ? They probably wanted to include Flash 215 because not only does it have a Jay Garrick / Barry Allen team up it also features the death of Vandal Savage - for as long as that lasts in comics - who is Wally West´s antagonists in the first issues of volume 2. But if they did have no better copy they should have omitted it for some other issue in better condition. Also I don´t feel that Annual 2 is really that important so you could have put stories in the book by some of the great artists that have been on volume 2 like Carlos Pacheco, Oscar Jimenez, my man Paul Ryan here or Greg LaRoque who did the longest stretch.
It really tells you something when everybody mentions in his review that Flash issue 54 Nobody Dies should have been in this collection because it gives you a better feeling for who Wally West is than the annual they chose to include. So my verdict on this is that I can only recommend it to people who know very little about the comics and want to get a bit of background info on this cool guy from the tv series. If you are a fan of the Golden Age and Silver Age Flash you may also like it but when you came in after Crisis you might find the selection in here not to your liking. What I want to say is that it´s nice that they have introductions to the specific chapters about the different Flashes but does it really take a 75 year special for DC to get their asses in gear and write introductions ? This should be in ALL the trades and collections not only the special ones.
Another thing is the price. While 40 dollars is okay for such a big book I want to know why the Spirit book costs 50 dollars when the production values and page count is the same. I don´t understand how that works.
We start Today´s entertainment block with Liv Tyler who celebrates her 39th birthday. Most people know her from roles which are more related to geek culture like Arwen in the Lord Of The Ring movies or Hulk´s Betty Ross but she also appeared in One Night At McCool´s with John Goodman.
As in previous posts there are a few strange coincidences, the first one being that on my very first Paul Ryan FLASH FRIDAY post Tony Curtis celebrated his birthday who was the father of cult siren Jamie Lee Curtis and Today is the 64th birthday of Dan Aykroyd among whose plethora of movie credits is Trading Places where he starred opposite Jamie Lee Curtis. They also appeared together in Christmas with the Kranks.
I have already done a number of posts on ultimate cult siren JaMILF Lee Curtis a.k.a. Freezeframe a.k.a. The Body : the original post which mostly contains pictures with links to animated GIFs , one post with all the pictures I could find and a re - posted version with a few GIFs added.
What´s even more of a coincidence is that Jamie Lee Curtis is one of the candidates of my Top Ten Movie Striptease list as is bodacious Baywatch bombshell Pamela Anderson who celebrates her 49th birthday Today. So far I haven´t gotten around to give her a solo post but I cast her as Power Girl in the first post of the Hollywood edition of my Justice League movie casting and part of that has appeared in the post on Janet Jones Gretzky, Leslie Easterbrook and Becky Mullen and their respective solo post.
Back to Dan Aykroyd, he was in the original Ghostbusters movie which has been remade with a new all female team but let´s just ignore that, okay ?
I wanted to post a cartoon video of the Ghostbusters but found something that is even better. As some may know there have been 2 cartoon shows called Ghostbusters, The Ghostbusters with two dudes and a gorilla ( WTF ? ) and The Real Ghostbusters with the team we all know from the 1980s movies. So the first one is just a cartoon show called Ghostbusters and the other one is the cartoon based on the real Ghostbusters, right ?
Wrong. This may already be common knowledge but as it turns out there was a live action show by Filmation in 1975 called The Ghost Busters which were two guys and a gorilla of which Universal Pictures bought the name to use in their movie. Universal had also contracted Filmation to make a the cartoon version of the movie but at the last minute they gave it to another company. So Filmation went back to the original source material and did a cartoon based on their 1975 tv show and when the cartoon series that Universal had ordered came out they called it The Real Ghostbusters even if the other cartoon show was more the original. So which one is the REAL real Ghostbusters ? As with comics everybody can decide for himself which part is canon and which not since both cartoon shows are legitimate as they both have their own source material.
Some may argue that The Ghostbusters is the real one since it goes back to the show that started it all while other say that the Ghostbusters in the movie are The Real Ghostbusters. And so you can make a qualified decision here is the first episode of the 1975 tv series The Ghost Busters.
I don´t know if it really counts as a coincidence since I keep mentioning Ferris Buellers Day Off in this section but I have to comment that Alan Ruck turns 60. What DOES count is that last Saturday was Carly Simon´s birthday and Today is the 66th birthday of her producer Tommy Mottola or like I call him The Music Mack. Because not only did he produce sexbombs like Diana Ross, Gloria Estefan, Destiny´s Child, Shakira, Anastacia and Jennifer Lopez he was also married to Über sex goddess Mariah Carey.
And don´t feel too sorry for him because he doesn´t get to tap that blow up sex doll anymore since he traded up by marrying sexual dynamo Thalia.
I take any chance I get to post another Thalia video and since I try avoiding having more than one music video in any given post that means that I can only mention the birthdays of Missy Elliot ( 45 ) and Debbie Harry better known as Blondie ( 71 ). But I´m sure Thalia´s live performance of Amar Sin Ser Amado more than makes up for it.
Our next anniversary is Genevieve Bujold who turns 74. She was in two creepy movies involving medicine gone wrong, Coma and Dead Ringer as well as in Earthquake where future Dallas double D dekolletage doll Victoria Principal wears the mother of all afros as well as a very thin t - shirt, the latter drawing the viewer´s attention away from the former.
Speaking of cineastic masterpieces, Leslie Caron turns 85 whom you know from An American In Paris which is my favorite musical of all times. No matter how often I have seen this every time it´s on tv I have to watch it. This one has it all, great music by George Gershwin, a wonderful cast, a terrific story and a lot of truths about art and painting. The comments of Gene Kelly in the movie about art students who come to Paris are so dead on. A great part of the charm of the movie comes of course from Leslie Caron who was discovered for this movie by Gene Kelly and she is one of the few who has danced with Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolf Nureyev. You can find more GIFs of Leslie Caron from An American In Paris here , there a lots of GiFs and pics at the Leslie Charon appreciation tumblr THANK GOD FOR LESLIE CHARON and there is more stuff from the movie to be found on the internet.
I thought about posting the trailer for An American In Paris as I couldn´t find the full movie but since Today is all about Leslie Caron here is one of her best scenes from the entire movie where she shows her versatility.
We have two people in the dearly departed section beginning with Sydney Pollack. He was one of the first producers / directors I took notice of as it seemed for the longest time that he was only producing movies for me to see. No matter if it was Jeremiah Johnson, Yakuza, Three Days Of The Condor, The Electric Horseman, Absence Of Malice, Tootsie ( one of the few movies involving a guy in women´s clothing that´s actually good ), Out Of Africa, Bright Light Big City, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Presumed Innocent, Havana, King Ralph ( also with John Goodman - see, there is a reason why I mentioned One Night At McCool´s before - besides having an excuse to post GIFs of Liv Tyler all wet ), The Firm or Searching For Bobbie Fischer. It was like a pact - he made them, I watched them.
The other is Charles Laughton from the original Spartacus movie with Kirk Douglas. He was in all the movies that have been remade like Island of Lost Souls ( where he played Dr. Moreau ), Les Miserables, Mutiny On The Bounty, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, The Canterville Ghost or Salome.
Since I already have a music video I have to leave the Flash video with Queen´s title song of the Flash Gordon movie for another day. The other videos about time travel or the Reverse Flash contain too many spoilers about things I want to talk about in future posts but luckily I found this just a few days ago and we all like a good DC vergsus Marvel, right ?
To close things out and get you started on your weekend here is a video I couldn´t put in my last post. Like I said this is not an actual trailer but a fanmade mash up of different studio Ghibli animes like The Cat Returns.
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Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
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