Isn't that PRECIOUS

Here's a shocker. Director Lee Daniel's underdog film, Precious: Based on Push a novel by Sapphire has won the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. Earlier this year, Precious won both the Grand Jury and the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. Precious is the first film to win the Audience Award at both film festivals - EVER! HA!

Industry people apparently dissed the film because it is directed by Lee Daniels (Shadowboxer) and stars Mo'Nique and Mariah Carey. Lionsgate is distributing the independently financed Precious and have recruited Tyler Perry AND Oprah Winfrey to sell the film.

There is book: Precious (Push Movie Tie-in Edition) (Vintage Contemporaries)

Happy Birthday to The Cosby Show

25 years ago tonight The Cosby Show debuted on NBC (September 20, 1984). To this day, cultural commentators and people who write about television and television history talk about how influential the show was.

For my family, it was a godsend and a revelation. It was a godsend because it was the first show that portrayed a successful upper class black family in which both the husband and the wife were accomplished professionals. And after years of shows depicting all manner of suffering Negroes ("Good Time") and down and dirty colored folk ("Sanford and Son"), we desperately wanted a TV series just like The Cosby Show. It was a revelation because, while we thought the show would be good, we had no idea that it would be so good and that we'd love it so much.

Follow the links to the Wikipedia and IMDB pages on The Cosby Show - Season 1

I Reads You Review: X-MEN: MISFITS, VOL. 1

Creators: Raina Telgemeier, Dave Roman (writers); Anzu (artist)

Publishing Information: Del Rey Manga, paperback, 186 pages, $12.99 (US); $15.50 (CAN)

Ordering Numbers: ISBN: 978-0-345-50516-3 (ISBN)

X-Men: Misfits is the second book produced from the joint venture between Del Rey Manga and Marvel Entertainment to create global manga (or OEL – original English language manga) based on the X-Men franchise. [The first book from that deal was a shonen (boys’ comics) take on Wolverine, entitled Wolverine: Prodigal Son.]

X-Men: Misfits is a shojo manga (comics for teen girls) take on the X-Men. Writers Raina Telgemeier (Baby-sitters Club graphic novels) and Dave Roman (the Astronaut Elementary webcomic) focus the story through a girl character, and their protagonist is Kitty Pryde. In fact, Misfits is practically a reinvention of X-Men #129-131, the stories that introduced Kitty Pryde into the X-Men franchise 30 years ago, using the templates established by the 2000 X-Men film and the “X-Men: Evolution” animated series.

The X-Men’s headquarters and home, the mansion of their founder Professor Charles Xavier, was nominally a school. In the first X-Men film, it became an actual boarding school, filled with underage students, and the X-Men were their teachers. Misfits is set in this version of the school. Storm, Colossus, and Beast are teachers, while Cyclops, Angel, and Iceman are among the students.

The Kitty Pryde of X-Men: Misfits is a Chicago high school student. She’s also a mutant, a human born with strange super powers. Kitty’s mutant power is the ability to become immaterial, which allows her body to pass through solid objects. This power has been manifesting itself at the most inopportune times, which includes when Kitty’s at school. Professor Charles Xavier and Eric Lehnsherr (Magneto) recruit the 15-year-old Kitty into Xavier’s Academy for Gifted Students in Westchester, New York, a school for mutants. Kitty hopes that this will be in a place where her powers won’t mark her as a freak and an outcast to her classmates.

However, Xavier’s Academy is an all-boys school, so she ends up feeling like a freak all over again. Relief comes when Kitty catches the attention of a brash teenager named John Allerdyce a.k.a Pyro, who can create and manipulate fire. Pyro introduces Kitty to Xavier’s most important clique, the Hellfire Club. However, Kitty has misgivings about the Hellfire Club and the super-rich friends she gains by being part of the club. Kitty even begins to have doubts about dating Pyro, especially as she is also drawn to his rival, the cool and aloof Bobby.

My main enjoyment of X-Men: Misfits is the art by Anzu (The Reformed), because I love how her art remakes the X-Men using the visual language of shojo manga. Anzu gives the readers everything from sparkles and lacy tones to catgirls and super-deformed.

The story and plot are crowded with too many characters. If this story is about a girl trying to fit in, then the focus should not be on finding every unusual character inhabiting Xavier’s Academy or covering every nook and cranny on the school grounds. The focus should be on Kitty; after all, no matter how interesting the setting of a shojo manga may be, the story really is about its female lead. The best parts of Misfits are the beginning, which introduces Kitty and establishes her dilemma, and the ending, which presages coming conflicts. The writers do both parts very well, precisely because those sequences are more about Kitty’s struggles and problems than they are about the Academy.

However, Anzu makes even the lesser parts of this story interesting. She is quite skilled, as a graphic artist, in creating shojo manga visuals, or at least the American version of it. So while the writers seem intent on excavating the X-Men mythology and re-imagining it in admittedly clever ways, it is Anzu who makes X-Men: Misfits a shojo manga and not just another X-Men comic book.

B+ is the grade for X-Men: Misfits

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Oprah Book Club in Da House

Oprah Winfrey has announced the 63rd book in her "Oprah Book Club," and it's a short story collection by Uwem Akpan, Say You're One of Them

The book is already top 10 at Amazon and Barnes & Nobles.

Dr. Toby Cosgrove of the Cleveland Clinic is an Asshole

Truthout published an excellent call-to-arms essay about obesity by Connie Shultz. People believe that there is a brewing war on obesity, which has manifested itself in obsese people being discriminated against in employment and in public access. That war is not brewing; it boiled over a long time ago.

Library Binding says no to comic books...

Many collectors had been using a company called Library Binding to bind their comic books into book form. According to Bleeding Cool, the company has new owners, and they will discontinue binding comic books. A new company is considering taking up the effort.

For those about to rock... Detroit Metal City 2

I finished reading Detroit Metal City, Volume 2 and I posted the review at the Comic Book Bin.

Fans of all things heavy metal (the music, the bands, the personalities, the sub-cultures, etc.) and fans of This is Spinal Tap will love DMC. It's bawdy language might even give Quentin Tarantino pause, but its scatalogical, NC-17 humor should be welcomed by readers looking for adult/mature fare.