>>MONDAY 27th JUNE

Quotes from me in News and Observer

News and Observer reporter, Craig Lindsey, spoke to me last week about comic book movies.

Dharmesh is not a comics enthusiast-- he says he's "never even read a comic book" -- but he echoes the sentiment of Gellar and other die-hards about comic-book movies.

"The public doesn't need to read a comic book to like a comic-book movie," he says. "But the audience has to believe what they're seeing. That's why things like 'X-Men' and 'Spider-Man' work, because they appeal to a wider audience, as well as the comic-book fans. You've got to think of the bigger picture while translating the comic book."

Check out the rest here

Superman 2 RIC featured in IGN comics

The closed-captioned commentary for the RIC illuminates the differences between the dueling auteurs by identifying, as best as the compilers can, which footage is Donner's and which is Lester's, as well as critiquing their varying approaches. (For example, Donner's sequences treat the Phantom Zone villain Non as a hulking menace, whereas Lester often treats him as comedically stupid.)

Hmmm, Donner an auteur? Not quite :) Check out the rest here

>>SUNDAY 26th JUNE

Donner's Superman 2 on Ebert's column

Taken from Ebert's column

Q. Fans of the Richard Donner's "Superman" film have launched a multiphase project to restore his "Superman II," incorporating elements that Donner shot concurrently with the first film but were thrown out by the studio when he was replaced.

Phase 1 was to locate copies of as many of Donner's original elements as possible. Most of these lost scenes were included in a special extended cut of "Superman II" that was aired on TV once, and only once, in 1984.

But sure enough, there were plenty of fans out there who'd videotaped that broadcast and who'd held on to the tapes. The highest-quality elements from all of these tapes (that is, the one copy of a certain shot that didn't suffer from static or jitter or a promo for "Dukes of Hazzard") were assembled into a restored "director's cut," which was released as a bootleg. In Phase 2, the Phase 1 release was color-corrected and enhanced, resulting in much higher-quality video. And now the "Superman" fans have moved on to Phase 3: they're trying to upgrade all of the wonky '70s-era special effects with modern digital techniques. Phase 3 is still in progress.

Naturally, releasing these cuts is entirely illegal. If you want a copy, you have to post a message on a certain message board at a certain time, and at some point to be determined later, a DVD magically appears in your mailbox. Download the cover art, print it, slide the disc and the art into a case, and presto. Partly, they're doing this just to put Donner's original vision out there, but I think the real goal is to convince the studio to go into their vaults, dig out the negatives, and do it for real. Talk about activism!

Andy Ihnatko, Westwood, Mass.

A. The amazing thing is that Warner Bros. doesn't see the commercial potential in this lost film and simply release it on DVD, as they did with Paul Schrader's original version of the "Exorcist" prequel.

I believe Warner Bros. wants to release it but issues need to be resolved which I'm confident will be solved. There is no phase 3 to the project. It ended at Phase 2, that's it. Superman 2 has some poor effects, but they were rushed for November 80 release in Australia, 6 months before the U.S. release!

Thanks to everyone for the alerts.

>>MONDAY 13th JUNE

Superman The Movie influences...

The cinematogrpaher of Batman Begins, Wally Pfister, talks about the making of Batman Begins; here's a nice salute to Unsworth:

Pfister read the script in October 2003 after flying to London, where most of the production was based, for some initial discussions with Nolan. Interestingly, their talks began to touch on another superhero: the Man of Steel. “One of the things Chris and I discussed was how much we liked Richard Donner’s Superman,” says the cinematographer. “In general, I’m not a big fan of superhero movies based on comic books. I enjoyed the first Batman movie, and I also liked the way the X-Men movies looked. But to me, Superman [shot by Geoffrey Unsworth, BSC] was even more inspiring as a narrative. I thought it was cohesive and well crafted, and Chris and I both felt it really succeeded in putting a superhero onscreen in an effective way. One reason Superman works is that it has a strong story structure, and I felt the same way about the script for Batman Begins.”

Some minor spoilers; read the rest here