heery, humorous and insightful by turns, Jitterbug Fantasia is a media magazine with an eclectic range of content. With fiction, online games, interviews and even a graphic novel called "Clown Story" rounding out its content, this site is something of a literary candy store, with treats for every type of reader.
This site is best known for its Star Wars Origins section, which traces a number of cultural influences that affected George Lucas during his creation of Star Wars. The analysis in this section is detailed, with articles on Flash Gordon, film director Akira
Kurosawa, the writings of Joseph Campbell and J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. All of the essays are accompanied by tables that analyze Star Wars story elements, comparing—to pick just one example—its mythic roots with those of The Matrix.
Games available on Jitterbug give guests a chance to protect Tokyo by squashing an invading army of Tamagotchis ... with Godzilla's foot! Others may prefer to fight a lightsaber duel as a cuddly teddy bear in Star Bears: The Fandom Menace. Meanwhile, the interview section of the page spotlights a collection of offbeat artists: author Jessica Amanda Salmonson, comic artist Kyle Baker and Simon Baker, an expert on real and invented languages and the writing systems that go with them. The site's links section is small but selective, pointing to other sites that have tickled the fancy of its staff.
The offbeat content at Jitterbug Fantasia makes it the ideal stopping place for Web surfers seeking a bit of eccentric SF-themed reading, a quick round of Tamagotchi-stomping or some fresh insights into Star Wars. Infrequently updated but always intriguing, the site's restful detours into whimsy are always worth sampling.
—A.M. Dellamonica
Site of the Week—September 6, 2005
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
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