ack Kirby (1917-1994) is a name that carries immense weight with aficionados of superheroes and science fiction. Noted for his incredible fecundity and his unique drawing and narrative styles, Kirby enjoyed a long career that stretched from early manhood right up until his death and left the world a legacy of unforgettable characters, from Captain America to the Eternals and from Darkseid to Mister Miracle. He's been the topic of essays by everyone from Jonathan Lethem to Mark Evanier, the latter of whom is at work on a full-length biography of the artist.
And although he's had his share of attention on the Internet from fans, there's never been an official site devoted to the man who could legendarily pencil and ink six pages a day in his youthful prime. Until now, with the debut of the Jack Kirby Museum, timed to coincide with the recently celebrated 88th anniversary of Kirby's birth.
The museum is not yet jam-packed with exhibits, but what's here is quality material, presented elegantly and with maximum respect, devotion and elan, befitting the master's own joie de vivre. I suggest first checking out Evanier's condensed biography, where you'll learn the scope and shape of Kirby's life and career. (His infamous inability to reap a full share of the profits from his genius is seen to extend way back to the 1940s, when he left Timely Comics, the ancestor of Marvel, in a dispute over money from the success of Captain America.) A comics database provides details about Kirby's credits and collaborators. Then you can read a sample comic from early in Kirby's career, "Lockjaw the Alligator." Round out your visit by watching a short QuickTime documentary, compiled by Glenn Fleming and David Schwartz, which finds Kirby recounting the real-life antecedents that led him to create his war story script, "Mile-a-Minute Jones."
Perhaps no single individual—other than Will Eisner—is as responsible for the look and feel of modern comics (and consequently much of modern cinema) as is Jack Kirby. Take off your virtual hat as you enter his shrine—and put on your crime-fighting mask!
—Paul Di Filippo
Site of the Week—August 29, 2005
s most any moviegoer knows, a montage is a music-video sequence of short clips that convey an important—and usually protracted—character transition in a film. This particular type of cinematic shorthand is used by directors to compress time and avoid boring audiences, particularly in its best-known form, the training montage. Consider the film version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for example: as Buffy discovers her inner killing machine, the Divinyls sing "Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore."
Movie-Montage.com is an effort to collect and celebrate these music-driven transformations by encouraging fans to submit montage information, to comment on montages already in its database and to participate in a monthly captioning contest. Montage categories at the Web page cover dating sequences, crime investigation, building scenes (in which houses, boats and even the superlaser of Real Genius are constructed step by rapid step) and sports. Each montage listing provides a few screen grabs and a synopsis of the scene in question, along with notes on the featured song, the film director and the length of the montage itself. Visitors can rate montages, post reviews and offer other comments, even discussing them at length in the site's forums.
SF montage submissions are certainly welcome at Movie-Montage—and are also desperately needed. At present, genre representation at this site is somewhat eccentric. Wargames is there, as are Teen Wolf, Freaky Friday and both Ghostbusters movies. True, many dramatic SF films are montage-free, but it does seem that a few well-informed fans with extensive DVD collections could radically expand the existing list on this page.
Removed from their original context and broken into screen grabs, montages cannot help but be funny, but even though it exploits their inherent humor, this Web page is playing it straight. Unlike sites that collect movie mistakes, the goal at this page is to record, not to mock. If Movie-Montage adds a workable search function to its database and gathers a larger number of films under its umbrella, it could potentially become an entertaining and seriously informative resource for film fans.
—A.M. Dellamonica
Site of the Week—August 22, 2005
houghtful, articulate reviews, up-to-the-minute coverage of the movie industry, and lively discussion forums are the core of the Sci-Fi Movie Page, a delightfully single-minded webzine whose focus is—just as its title suggests—SF films of the past, present and future.
Like many sites that look exclusively at the SF field, the Sci-Fi Movie Page has an archive of film reviews that begins with The Abyss and runs to Zontar—The Thing from Venus. One feature that makes this particular set of articles stand out, though is its
broad definition of an SF film, which includes fantasy classics like Labyrinth, comedies in the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids vein, anime features, and even children's movies. New reviews are handily flagged, as are pictures that have made a "Top 100" list and those dogs that were rated at a pathetic zero out of five stars.
A quick scan through the Sci-Fi Movie Page's news feed reveals, among other things, future DVD release listings, talk of a pending Terminator 2-related lawsuit, and an article on controversy in England concerning the film adaptation of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Meanwhile, info about upcoming SF films is offered in concise sketches that contain minor (but easily avoided) spoilers along with behind-the-scenes trivia about film shoots and personalities.
The site rounds out its content with scripts, links to movie trailers, and SF TV reviews, making it a good stopping place for any websurfer looking to find some quality entertainment amid the often-overwhelming flood of new films, newly released DVD titles and other content available to fans in stores and theaters.
—A.M. Dellamonica
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