Today seems to be Disney day, as without exception all of the releases worth mentioning are coming from Disney.

To start we have the Blu-ray/DVD combo 4 pack of Fantasia and Fantasia 2000.  Fantasia was a movie whose brilliance I didn’t understand as a child, I only knew that I liked the vague memories I had of it.  Watching it again on Blu-ray I was actually impressed by it’s brilliance and how far ahead of its time it was, and the purpose of it.  Watching it again, I was completely enamored by the concept and I hope that Disney does more like this.

The film opens up with an orchestra assembling in that beautiful world of 1940 Technicolor (which looks utterly amazing in Blu-ray) and a narrator steps out and explains the concept.  Fantasia is different artists renditions of their impressions of music.  An orchestra is employed to simulate the experience of going to the symphony and that’s really what the movie is all about.  You’re going to the symphony and watching different artists interpret the movements of the music.  Sometimes it tells a story and sometimes it doesn’t.  I watched this with my kids and they were enamored by it, wanting to go to more symphonies if possible.  (They’ve been to a couple and they love silent films, so maybe they’re exceptions to the rule).

It makes me sad to see that Disney only attempted to use this formula once more and it was in 2000’s sequel.  It’s good, too, and also looks gorgeous in full 1080.  But this kind of film is perfect for kids of today.  It forces them to just sit and pay attention to beautiful music and imagery and hopefully get them to foster a healthy respect for classical music and art.

Another thing I was surprised by was that one of the pieces of music was set to imagery that showed the Big Bang Theory and single-celled organisms and their evolution into dinosaurs and the extinction of the dinosaurs.  The narrator, Deems Taylor, explained evolution and the Big Bang as both science and fact.  The fact that this wasn’t controversial in 1940, but would be unthinkable in today’s charged climate shows how far we’ve slid away from sense and reason in today’s world.  I mean, consider that…  What would happen if a Disney cartoon appeared today and talked about evolution as fact so casually?  There would be riots in the street.

I would recommend this film to any music lover, lover of animation, or film buff.  The animation and colors hold up strikingly and I want desperately to see Disney embark on more experiments of this nature.

Instead of experiments like that, Disney gave us another film out today, a live action adaptation of the silent piece in the original Fantasia, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, starring Jay Baruchel and Nicolas Cage.  I haven’t seen it yet and have been told it’s much, much better than I’m expecting, but I just wanted to throw that out there.

The next three Disney releases today are documentaries that I’ve been dying to see and will now have a chance to.  The first is Waking Sleeping Beauty, which tells the tale of the rebirth of Disney Animation in the 1980s.  You can watch The Big Movie Mouth-Off review of that film “>here.

The next is Walt and El Grupo, which tells the tale of Walt Disney’s sojourn to South America with a group of animators.  The thing is, they were asked to go by the government on the outset of World War II to act as cultural spies.  Two great pieces of Disney history came out of the trip, including The Three Cabelleros, making this a fascinating documentary.

The third is the tumultuous story of The Boys.  This documentary tells the story of The Sherman Brothers and their rifts through creative life.  Maybe you haven’t heard of them specifically, but you’ve heard their music.  They wrote “Supercalifragilisticexpealadocious”, the Jungle Book’s “I wanna be like you”, “It’s a Small World” and more.

Disney is coming back to their roots with documentary programming that is compelling and it’s great to see them back in form across the board.  Between this and Tangled’s release in theatres last week, they’re on a roll.

And I would be remiss in being a Star Wars fan if I didn’t mention that Vampires Suck came out today.  It stars The Clone Wars’ Anakin Skywalker, Matt Lanter in an Edward Cullen sort of role.

It’s not very often I read a zine and it leaves an impression on me. Usually there’s not enough in-depth discussion in horror based fanzine’s to simulate the parietal lobe into slight giddiness, so when issue #1 of Rigor Mortis made it to my review pile I let it sit for far to long.

In October of 2010 Baltimore’s City Paper ran a cover story featuring publisher Davida Gypsy Breier and mentioned how she used the zine to escape her then partner, and now husband’s diagnosis of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Putting a personal story behind the reason for the project finally piqued my interest enough to read issue #1 and I couldn’t put it down.

The introduction to this 60 page black and white zine entitled ‘Yes, Virginia, there were Zombies before Romero’ gives a nice glimpse into the caliber of writing displayed throughout. The lengthy video reviews are stellar and insightful and held my attention, even after a few hundred words. More than just story outlines these reviews go deep into the subtext of a film genre usually thought to be for gore hounds only.

The core of the issue is composed of eight comprehensive book reviews and is followed up by a handful of graphic novel reviews and suggestions. The art by Bojan is beautiful and includes several stand alone pieces and an awesome three page comic highlighting the career of Tom Savini. Even the artists statement about the front cover is well written and thought out, explaining the inspiration for the front piece.

Sure, all of this could be posted on a blog a few people would read, but holding it in your hand makes it so much better, something zine creators and publishers have always understood.

Read selected excerpts of Rigor Mortis and purchase the issues at Leeking Inc

This originally appeared in The Huffington Post.

Ex Machina is perhaps the most overt marriage of comics and politics in the medium to date. Centered around a former super-hero, Mitchell “The Great Machine” Hundred, who decides to run for Mayor of New York after he saves one of the Twin Towers during the 9/11 attack, Ex Machina shows what it takes to be superhero both in tights and as an elected official.

The comic wrapped up a couple of months ago with its fiftieth issue and the final collected edition hits the stands this month.

For anyone with even a passing interest in comic books and politics, this is the book to read. It’s a finite story, the characters are rich and well considered, the art is incredible, and it feels like Brian K. Vaughan (who was a producer of Lost and writer of Y: The Last Man) spent time in city hall to capture both the drama and minutia of local politics.

I’ve spent plenty of time around the mayor of Salt Lake City’s office, and seeing the drama play out in a comic book is tremendously exhilarating. The book is also a treatise on serving a constituency. The lead character has the post-partisan desire that we all looked for in Obama, but also the courage to move things forward aggressively. Sure, it may be a comic book, but has real lessons for both politicians and constituents to learn.

And it has guys with jetpacks and super-villains. What more could anyone want?

This has been one of my favorite books over the last five years and Brian K. Vaughan was kind enough to do an interview with me commemorating the end of the book:

Bryan Young: How did you go about creating the tone for inside the Mayor’s office? I’ve spent a lot of time around Mayoral offices and you portrayed it very believably. Did you spend a lot of time at City Hall?

BKV: Thanks! I actually did spend some time at City Hall with Tony Harris, the book’s artist and co-creator. We both did a great deal of research, but truthfully, we also made up a lot of stuff. Still, whenever Tony and I hear from readers who work in government, they usually tell us that the crazy elements we imagined are the parts that feel the most authentic. Fiction is just as strange as fact, I guess.

It’s said that part of your inspiration for the book was your dismay with the political leadership of the day, did the book help you come to a different understanding about the nature of the American political system? And could you elaborate on that?

BKV: After 9/11, I knew I wanted to write about power and identity and the way Americans on all sides of the political spectrum often mythologize our leaders, which are themes that the superhero genre has always handled really well. Whether it was Bush putting on that flightsuit or John Kerry running largely on his war record or an action star getting elected governor of California, it felt like American politics and mythical hero worship were starting to converge in fascinating ways. I had way more questions than answers, and whenever that happens, I type. What came out was Ex Machina, a story about a retired superhero turned mayor who hopes to do more good inside New York’s City Hall than he ever did in costume.

What do you think politicians could learn from Mitchell Hundreds governing style?

BKV: From the very first page of our story, Hundred warns us that even though his story looks like a comic, it’s really a tragedy. So I hope any politicians would go into Ex Machina reading it as more of a cautionary tale than a manual for success.

Who is the intended audience of this comic outside of regular comic book readers? What do you hope that the various stakeholders in our political system take from the book.

BKV: Well, if any HuffPost readers have been looking for a few more jetpack chase scenes mixed in with their tales of municipal government, I flatter myself to think Ex Machina is a pretty good gateway drug to the ever-expanding world of graphic novels aimed at adults. I used to worry that a book about local NYC politics would be way too inside baseball for most Americans, much less for international readers, but our book has already been translated into several languages around the globe, so I’m heartened to know people from all walks of life have connected with these characters.

As for what people should take away from the book, I hope Ex Machina doesn’t have a single “message.” If I had some sort of moral I wanted to impart, I’d just write an op-ed piece or whatever. There are a lot of things that frustrate me about contemporary politicians, but with Ex Machina, I was always more interested in telling a compelling story about an interesting protagonist than I was in using these characters as mouthpieces for my own boring political beliefs.

Though the book has a lot of overt political themes and situations to it, at its heart, it’s still a comic book with a hero and a villain and supervillains, but it weaves them all together so believably. Were you ever tempted to go further into the direction you parodied with your cameo in the book?

BKV: Because it’s in and about New York City, I knew Ex Machina was going to have to continually mix the mundane and the fantastic. Very few artists can walk that tightrope, but Tony Harris is amazing at creating photo-realistic characters and environments, and then balancing those elements with visually spectacular figments of his imagination. The story didn’t come alive for me until I saw Tony’s first pencils, so I just tried to follow his lead.

I get the feeling that the reason you so ambiguously portray Mitchell’s sexuality was to make the reader question why they care so much about something so innocuous as his sexual orientation because it’s something that really doesn’t matter. I know I got caught up in wondering way more than I should have… Could you elaborate on that aspect of the story and your reasoning behind it?

BKV: Sorry to evade like a politician, but I think a reader’s interpretation is much more important than my intent, so I should probably let that aspect of the story speak for itself.

I’m a little bit curious about your opinion of the 2008 Presidential race since you so drastically changed it in your alternative history in the book. I don’t mean to put you on the spot for specifics, but if you could speak in generalities about your opinion of the race, I think people who’ve read the entirety of the series would be fascinated on your perspective on it.

BKV: I never like to talk about my own politics, but whether you’re left, right or center, the 2008 race was definitely good drama. When we started working on a comic about politics and heroism back in 2002, I don’t think Tony or I ever would have guessed that we’d eventually see the election of a new President who grew up reading comic books before he ended up appearing on the covers of them. It’s kind of a bizarre validation of the ideas we set out to explore.

It’s rumoured that you’ve written a screenplay adaptation of Ex Machina. Would that be for television or film? And was that on spec, or is there actually movement on having this done?

BKV: Actually, Ex Machina is the one comic I’ve worked on where the movie rights finally reverted back to the creators, so Tony and I again own the thing. We’ve been approached by a few cool producers recently, so we’ll see what happens. I’m totally open to it being a movie or a television series or whatever, but truthfully, if no one wants to do it right, I’m also happy for Ex Machina to only ever exist as a comic book. We didn’t spend six years of our lives working on glorified storyboards for some other medium. For us, the comic was the ultimate goal.

What’s next for you in the comic world?

BKV: More original, creator-owned work with some amazing artists. Stay tuned!

You can pick up Ex Machina on Amazon or your local comic book store.

Last night’s episode illustrates perhaps the single largest departure from the source material in this inaugural season of The Walking Dead and carries on with one of Robert Kirkman’s specialties: the long forgotten dangling thread.

Let me begin by saying that the craft of this show is second to none.  I’d watch a lot more TV if it were all crafted this carefully and with actual story arcs.  Perhaps that’s why I loved LOST so much, is that you couldn’t simply watch it in any order like a sitcom, it brought you from point A to point B in a very specific fashion.  The Walking Dead is exactly the same way and once they’ve moved forward, the characters can’t move back.  Each of their actions have consequences, every decision is difficult, and all of the characters are expendable.

I loved the drama in this episode more than most of the others.  Andrea dealing with her sister’s death and Carol dealing with that of her husband were probably two of the most honest and contrasting character moments I’ve ever seen on television.

Jim was another character that we had to watch make terrible decisions about their fate where there were no good options.  But the most interesting thing about this early stage in the long term survival in the group is to see who has come to terms with the new morality they’re dealing with and who is still living in the old world.  Jim has been bitten and there are two different reactions: Rick wants to get him healed, Daryl wants to kill him outright.

Rick being seen as a leader wins this argument and sends the group on a journey to the CDC, where there could be a cure.  If there’s a cure anywhere, it would be at the Centers for Disease Control, right?

Shane isn’t on board with this decision and it leads to perhaps my favorite moment in the show thus far.  If you haven’t seen the episode, you’ll know the one I mean.

If you have seen it:

It’s the moment where Shane is pointing his gun through the woods at Rick, ready to kill him and he looks over to see that Dale is watching him, horrified.  The look on Dale’s face is perfect.

The entire cast works perfectly.

The major departure this episode made from the source material was with their arrival at the CDC and the doors to the spaceship, as it were, opening up.

I’ve talked to some people who haven’t liked this departure much, but I think there’s a method to the madness.  Those of us that have been reading the comic understand that there is no end in sight.  Rick and the group aren’t going to magically find a cure or someone to help.  Their fight for survival is forever.  And to see them come to the one place in the United States that might have a cure and see it staffed by one guy whose most promising lead was burned up by a computer is going to signal to these people that the world is never going to be the same.

It’s a very, very smart move.

Which leads me to my predictions, past and present.

Last week I speculated that the season might end with the confrontation between Carl and Shane.  I’m not so sure anymore.  Shane is a threat, and he’ll need to be dealt with, but we’re still forgetting the long forgotten dangling thread from the beginning of the season: Merle.

Merle was left for dead by Rick and had to cut his own hand off to survive.  He made it away and his fate has been completely uncertain beyond his theft of the truck used by the crew sent to rescue him.  Rick left a note for Morgan about where they were heading, and what better way to let Merle know where they’re headed for him to exact his vengeance?

Having said all of that, the thing I love about Robert Kirkman’s writing is that he usually doesn’t give you what you expect, and when you do finally get something you expect, it’s so sick and twisted that it ties you up in knots.  These are what I like to call “Kirkman” moments.  Since I’ve been reading his books for years, I’m well accustomed to them, but some of you may not know.  A Kirkman moment is when you reach the end of an issue (or an episode in this case) and it leaves you with such a drastic feeling of “What the hell?” that you shake your fist to the sky and shout “Damn you, Kirkman!”

It happens a lot.

And I think it’ll be twice as bad because usually there’s not more than a couple of months between issues.  As of this point, we have 11 months after next weeks episode to wait for another episode.

Hopefully, AMC will have mercy on us and give us an entire season next year in the middle of the year, and another season at the beginning of 2012.

We have an official statement on the passing of Irvin Kershner straight from George Lucas:

The world has lost a great director and one of the most genuine people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing. Irvin Kershner was a true gentleman in every sense of the word. When I think of Kersh, I think of his warmth, his thoughtfulness and his talent. I knew him from USC – I attended his lectures and he was actually on the festival panel that gave the prize to my THX short. I considered him a mentor.

Following Star Wars, I knew one thing for sure: I didn’t want to direct the second movie myself. I needed someone I could trust, someone I really admired and whose work had maturity and humor. That was Kersh all over. I didn’t want Empire to turn into just another sequel, another episode in a series of space adventures. I was trying to build something, and I knew Kersh was the guy to help me do it. He brought so much to the table. I am truly grateful to him.

He was a friend as well as a colleague. He will be missed.

You can read my thoughts about his passing here.

For many, Irvin Kershner directed the best of the Star Wars films, for others, he directed one of the best films ever made.  He was a chameleon in the director’s chair, often tapped for sequels of big name films or franchises, though none resonated with as much perfection as The Empire Strikes Back.

Sure, Robocop 2 and Never Say Never Again have small, brief moments of greatness, but The Empire Strikes Back is all Kershner needed to do to carve his name into the stone annals of cinema history.

He died over the weekend after a long bout with an unspecified illness at the age of 87.

It was Kershner who helped create some of the best and most memorable moments in the Star Wars saga, above the objections of series creator George Lucas.  Han’s infamous “I know” was a source of argument for the two, Lucas wanted to change it, but Kersh insisted that an audience reaction back up his take on the scene.

It’s been reported that Kershner also fought for more poignant moments in the film, one story I recall hearing over the years is that George Lucas wanted to cut away from Yoda saying, “No.  There is another,” on Dagobah and eliminate the red light of the X-Wing washing over him.  It’s one of the most powerful images and moments in the film and Kersh fought for it.

Though Star Wars is inherently George Lucas’, it’s impossible to gauge the influence he had on the continuing adventures of the greatest space saga of all time.

To honor him today I’ll be watching two films.  Obviously, The Empire Strikes Back is at the top of that list, but the second film isn’t one he directed.  Irvin Kershner played a small but vital part in Martin Scorsese’s underrated film The Last Temptation of Christ.  His boisterous voice is one that can’t be mistaken and he’s a remarkable part of that remarkable film.

I’m going to listen to his commentary on Empire, as well.  He was a fountain of knowledge and thanks to the current age of information, what small fraction of his knowledge that he shared with the world will live on forever.

The Force will be with him.  Always.

UPDATE: I would like to direct you to Derek Hunter’s daily illustrations.  Today’s honors Kershner:

Welcome back to the fourth week of Convention Sketches!

We feature a convention sketch here every week.  We’ve got a whole pile of our own, but we want to see yours, too. Email us convention sketches you want to show off and let us know what website you’d like credited for it.  (bigshinyrobot(at)gmail.com)

This week we have Art Baltazar (Tiny Titans) doing Superman.  This is from Clobbertron’s collection.

After the last Tag Team Thursday we wanted to team up on a fun holiday book you can enjoy by yourself or read to the kids in your life, and here it is!

Archie #615: “The Elfth Day of Christmas!”

C-T: One of the many reasons I love Archie Comics is because they have word balloons on the covers! Archie Andrews is not in a bad place on the cover with Betty on his left and Veronica to his right. Why would he possibly be yelling “Why won’t this holiday ever end?”

S-B: Could it possibly be because of the presence of the bewildered looking elf also on the cover? Let’s go inside and find out, shall we?

C-T: Archie has the kind of friends that wait outside his house to watch him run around in a late holiday panic!

S-B: Well yeah, while some characters like Reggie might watch it like a train wreck, most of the other Riverdale residents treat it like a time honored yearly tradition. Even though Arch is kind of manic, he is definitely full of holiday spirit.

C-T: He runs, carols, and makes snow angels before hitting the stores, but he is a bit too panicked for Santa’s alpha-elf ‘Jingles’ not to notice. Have you seen Jingles berfore?

S-B: Nope, I’m not familiar with Jingles. At first I was a little annoyed actually that the story seems to expect the reader to know him, but it was apparent really quick what Jingles’ motivation/character was, so that was nice. Anyway, our little elf friend was watching America’s Favorite Teen and decided he isn’t getting to enjoy the holiday to the fullest, and that’s where the real story starts.

At least someone knows who Jingles is.

C-T: I hadn’t seen him either, anyway he’s there to torture Archie and throw him into Bill Murray’s role in Groundhog Day, wherein he re-lives the same day over and over.

S-B: And at first, things go as planned, Archie gets to actually enjoy Christmas Eve, because even though the day repeated, everything Arch did the first time seems to have stuck, so it seems like Jingles did a good thing, but…

C-T: Santa has feelings of deja vu and Arch catches on! But not before he experiences Christmas eve so many times the six panel page explodes into infinity!

"To Infinity... Not so much beyond."

S-B: Unfortunately, this has taken a toll on Archie’s holiday cheer. He’s so grouchy about repeating Christmas Eve for the umpteenth time that he actually end up on *gasp* Santa’s naughty list! And Jingles can’t do anything to fix it, because he’s been afflicted with what I like to call “A Christmas Story” syndrome.

C-T: I actually got a little chuckle out of how nonchalant St. nick is about adding Archie to the list saying ‘it is what is’, I wonder what side of the list Jughead is on, or Betty, or even Kevin.

S-B: In my own breakdown, Everyone is usually on the Nice list except for Reggie and Cheryl Blossom who flip yearly. Anyway, as it is, Arch’s bad mood kind of sours Veronica’s own disposition. Betty, ever the voice of reason, points out it’s “good will towards men” time, and things start to wrap up rather nicely, with a bow, you might say.

C-T: Good call on Reggie, I think Cheryl is always on the nice list because Santa likes a ginger! This book was a lot of fun with some perfect pencil work from Dan Parent and a great story by Craig Boldman, I’ll be reading this to my kids for the next few years.

S-B: Me too. Actually in my writing of this review, my niece saw me thumbing through it and asked me to read it to her on the spot, which I will. At any rate, I really enjoyed the issue and it was a welcome break from all of the Archie “events” that’s have going on for the past year or so. Next month starts the storyline with Obama and Palin, that one of your humble reviewers already caught flack for, so I think we’ll leave it alone. Merry Christmas!

C-T: Indeed! Read this book to your kids or by yourself it’s great holiday fun.

From all of us here at BSR... Happy Holidays!

Big Shiny Robot! has a weekly column in the Salt Lake City alt-weekly IN Magazine and every week we bring it to you on the site.

If you live in the greater Salt Lake area, you can pick up a copy of IN Magazine up from one of their ubiquitous newsstands, and we would highly suggest that you do.

You can read the online version of the story here.

This week, we get you into the buying spirit and tell you that you should be buying comics for people who wouldn’t ordinarily be into them.  (And in passing, might we suggest taking a peek at the Big Shiny Store?  Lots of good stuff there for Christmas.)

Happy Cthanksgiving from Drew Pocza! Check out POKEWEEDCOMIS.COM for some cool t-shirts, sketch cards, and great web toons!