om them ee ater gt ee ee Golden Globe winners 2010 By Jay Schreiber, Arts Editor The 67" annual Golden Globe awards ° were held on January 17 in the heart of the movie business, Hollywood California. The stars came out to celebrate one another at what has become the precursor to Oscar night and the second biggest gathering of excellence » in movies over the past year. With James Cameron’s Avatar receiving the most appreciation from a single film in one night, it’s safe to say that the Academy Awards may swing the same way. ° Here’s what happened with the rest of Sunday night’s big winners: °¢ Best Motion Picture, Drama Avatar * — Best Motion Picture, Comedy The Hangover ¢ Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama e Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart ¢ Best Performance by an Actress : in a Motion Picture, Drama Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy Robert Downey Jr. for Sherlock Holmes Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy Meryl Streep for Julie and Julia Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role ina Motion Picture Christoph Waltz for Inglorious Basterds Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role ina Motion Picture Mo’ Nique for Precious Best Director Motion Picture James Cameron for Avatar Best Screenplay Motion Picture Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner for Up in the Air Arts at One schedule for winter 2009 All performances are in the Muir Theatre of the New West campus. All shows are free and begin at | p.m. January 21 Music of the Americas: Brenda Fedoruk, flute David Vandereyk, piano January 28 The Perfect Blend Reed Trio: Music from Paris Ad Mare Trio featuring: Marea Chernoff, oboe A. K. Coope, clarinet Sophie Dansereau, bassoon February 11 Scholarship Winners Concert March 4 Percussionworks! March I1 Student Showcase April 1 Student Showcase April 8 Douglas College Ensembles Concert April 15 Scholarship Winners Concert Bird. Marvel Comics caught in a web of despair Lawsuits and troubled Spider-Man 4 the tip of the iceberg By Angela Espinoza ith the month of January being half over, it’s safe to say the first quarter of 2010 will not be favourable to Marvel Comics. In just a few weeks of each other, several occurrences have had me questioning the managerial situation of the company. For starters, Marvel has decided to sue the family of late and great artist, Jack “The King” Kirby (1917-1994) for copyright control. Kirby (a.k.a. Jacob Kurtzberg) had co-authored several major Marvel characters, including Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, X-Men and Iron Man just to name a few. It’s been made quite clear that Marvel took financial advantage of the artist in the many years he worked with them, giving hardly the credit or respect he’s been recognized for by the comic world today. Kirby lived and died without receiving the proper compensation he deserved. However, according to the Copyright Act, Kirby’s family would be entitled to all updated financial benefits of the work Kirby left behind him after a prolonged amount of time; in this case, by 2014. Marvel’s claim is that Kirby was merely “working for hire,” and that the company owns full rights to the published material. According to the Kirby family lawyer, Marc Toberoff, work for hire “is a standard claim predictably made by comic book companies to deprive artists, writers, and other talent of all rights in their work.” It should be noted that Marvel made a similar claim in their suit against Joe Simon for the rights to Captain America (also co-created by Kirby); Marvel lost the case. Kirby’s four children plan to “vigorously defend” their case. It’s complications of ownership such as this that Image Comics, founded by Alberta’s Todd McFarlane (creator of Spawn), was created with the intent of preventing. Image is known for providing creators the ability to work without having to completely hand over the copyrights of their characters. Another drawback seen for Marvel recently was the cancellation of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man film series. After repeated difficulties in writing and re- writing the script for Spider-Man 4, Raimi, as well as Tobey-Maguire, decided to pull out from the franchise all together. Raimi doubted he would be able to make the May 6, 2011 release date with the script still going through revisions so late in the process. Instead, the Spider- Man film series is going to be re-booted with a script written by James Vanderbilt (Zodiac, X-Men Origins: Wolverine), in which Peter Parker’s character will be battling his greatest nemesis: high school. Get ready folks, I’m putting my money on the Twilight trio to be cast as Peter Parker, Mary Jane Watson and Harry Osborn... I guess this means we’ll have Morbius in a movie after all. Marvel’s third fault comes from the financial struggles Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark has been facing. The Broadway musical has had to refund all preview tickets, as the show will not be ready to meet its preview dates, which start February 25. The big budgeted musical is also costing well over $50 million, considering Julie Taymor (Across the Universe) is directing and U2’s Bono and The Edge are writing music. Controversy also arose over the pairing of actress Evan Rachel Wood with the relatively unknown singer/actor Reeve Carney, who’ll be portraying Mary Jane Watson and Peter Parker respectively. At this point, I’m going to rub it in and remind everyone that December 31, 2009 was the day Disney officially acquired ownership of Marvel. One can only wonder what exactly is going on in the Marvel offices for all these setbacks to occur so quickly. Jack “The King” Kirby