Reaction Shots

Going into “Air” was a comfortable sense that Affleck and Damon were going to deliver the goods. I wasn’t expecting “Good Will Hunting” or “The Last Duel”. For that matter, I was pretty sure the closest I’d get in tone might be “Ford v. Ferrari” and while that film is masterful and entertaining, “Air” is likewise, in its own way the result of one of the more solid collaborations in Hollywood and it is certainly entertaining. We know how the story is going to end, Nike is going to be the almost exclusive brand of the NBA, Michael Jordan is going to become, of course, the Michael Jordan, and so associated with the brand as to be synonymous. Of course, it’s all in the telling and the film clocks in at an efficient hour and fifty or so with one of the most 80s of set design. The film is so 1984 (the year, not the Orwell) that when we first see Damon as Sonny Vaccaro in high school, the initial texture of the degraded colorization (footage was transferred to, get this, thirty years old ...

“Shazam! Shazam! Shazam!” - Gomer Pyle, USMC The comic book superhero genre has been with us since 1938 when Siegel and Shuster’s extraterrestrial descended from the world of Krypton and got the ball rolling. National Comics launched Superman in Action Comics #1 and would shortly follow up with giving him his eponymous book and before long, Detective Comics #27 would introduce Batman, or more accurately, The Batman a few months later. 1939 would see Timely Comics bring The Human Torch and Namor, the Sub-Mariner into popular consciousness and Fawcett Comics would grace the world with C.C. Beck and Bill Parker’s Captain Marvel in Whiz Comics #2 (well cover dated 1940, but actually composed in 1939.) Actions Comics #1 - the one that started it all Whiz Comics #2 - the first appearance of Captain Marvel, later “Shazam” It wouldn’t be long before these characters would leap from the page and onto the screen. The first was, in fact, Capt. Marvel in Republic Pictures’ The Adventures of Ca...