Beaks here...
With the superhero-stuffed summer of 2011 upon us, the good folks at Cinefamily, Badass Digest and Meltdown Comics are joining forces for a weekend-long celebration of the exceptionally-abled as they have been depicted in all manner of media over the last century!
The Mondo Superhero festival actually begins at 8 PM tonight (April 27th) with the Silent Superheros Serial Sampler. Cabeza de Vaca Arcestra will be on hand to score a selection of vintage (and rarely seen!) episodic shorts which helped lay the groundwork for the genre as it exists today.
But the madness really begins this Friday, April 29th, with the Marvel Comics Mondo Mix (8 PM) followed by the must-be-seen-with-a-crowd-and-a-healthy-buzz PUNISHER: WAR ZONE (9:30 PMish). The former will evidently showcase the "web-slingingest, shield-flingingest, ankle-wingingest clips from all of Earth's Mightiest Mortals' film and television appearances." The latter will feature Ray Stevenson punching through a man's face. Both will restore your faith in the order of things.
Then comes the Superhero Saturday Marathon, which kicks off at 1 PM with Jerry Beck's History of the Animated Superhero at 1 PM. From there it's (in order) Alan Arkin in THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN INVINCIBLE (followed by a Q&A with director Philipe Mora), the fucking outstanding ABAR, THE BLACK SUPERMAN (post-film Q&A with director Frank Packard and Abar himself, Tobar Mayo), Guillermo del Toro's HELLBOY (with co-star Doug Jones stopping by), and the delightfully-disorienting Mondo Superhero video montage (sponsored by Everything is Terrible!).
For those with less psychotronic sensibilities, sanity will mostly prevail on Sunday with a SUPERMAN triple feature! Depending on your brain type, the highlight will either be watching Richard Donner's cuts of SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE and SUPERMAN II back to back, or Richard Pryor in the wonderful SUPERMAN III (I'll take the Supes-Kent junkyard brawl as the highlight of the series, thankyouverymuch). The Salkind-produced fun begins at 5 PM!
For more info on the programming (including ticket prices and guesstimated show times), check out the Cinefamily's official site. And make sure you've got Badass Digest bookmarked, just 'cuz.
To whet your appetite, here's some Abar goodness...
And here's a cool Cinefamily-edited trailer for the SUPERMAN triple feature...
Superman Marathon! (trailer) from Cinefamily on Vimeo.
