Spider-Man Is The New Black

So Spidey 3 finally hit. Saw it opening night with my posse. Good times. Liked it. If you somehow happen to be one of the few hermits out there who didn’t take part in the “breaking of all box office records” or perhaps a misguided youth who threw money away on a Jon Heder/Will Ferrell Movie.

What’d I think? It was a ride. A damn exciting ride that manages to keep its numerous plot threads from crashing down most of the time. The cast were all excellent, even Topher Grace (I hated “That ‘70s Show” very much).

Though I did have a small problem with the movie. The foreshadowing was incredibly thick. I found myself successfully predicting a lot of the big moments of the movie as though I was a soothsayer. It wasn’t bad storytelling, just incredibly obvious storytelling. Which I suppose is all right, since Spidey is something of a modern Morality Play. Responsibility. Vengeance. Doing what’s right. Not being an assface to the people that care about you.

And assface Peter Parker does become. See, he’s riding high at the beginning of the movie. He’s saved the city and popular with the masses. His girlfriend’s in a Broadway play. His best friend wants him dead. …Okay, maybe its not all wine and roses, but nothing he can’t handle and it seems like everything revolves around Spider-Man in a good way. Of course, he gets so wrapped up in all the good stuff happening to him that he completely and painfully fails to see the problems that Mary Jane is having (and Kirsten Dunst puts in her best performance of the 3 movies). Then he finds out that the guy who killed Uncle Ben wasn’t who we thought it was. It was a guy named Flint Marko, who’s conveniently just escaped from prison and been turned into the shape shifting Sandman (because that’s what happens when you get caught in a late night particle accelerator experiment) THEN an alien life symbiote from SPAAAAAACE lands and bonds with Peter, giving him the black costume.

After that, the movie can pretty much be subtitled “Peter Parker: Douchebag.” He goes from confident to cocky to arrogant bastard. Sure, he comes to his senses and ditches the symbiote, but not before a LOT of damage is done (like being completely responsible for the creation of Venom)

The scenes where you really see Peter acting like a total ass are both incredibly painful but also totally necessary. Its what happens when a character’s who’s whole tagline is responsibility gets irresponsible. And yeah, Peter gets so emo, it hurts. He pretty much deserves every beating he gets in the movie after the getting the symbiote.

See this movie, if for no other reason than Bruce F’in Campbell.

NOT the E-2 Aircraft, University of Iowa Mascot or Alan Alda

Its rather nice seeing comic book culture coming up from the underground these days. I think a large part of it has to do with the fact that the 20-30 somethings rising to prominence in entertainment were all part of that “Saturday Morning Cartoon” set that grew up in the 80s. And now that this precious 18-35 demographic is graduating college and gaining disposable income, they’re spending it on what they want to see, which seems to be revivals of the stuff they grew up on (see Transformers).

Next weekend, Spider-Man 3 cometh to theaters nationwide. Spidey’s been an icon for decades now, and (next to Wolverine & Captain America) the public “face” of Marvel Comics (like Superman, Batman & Wonder Woman over at DC). Marvel’s usually done right by Spidey (we WILL NOT mention the Clone Saga) and he’s had numerous TV series and crossovers and the character himself is just so damn likable that he’s rightfully cemented himself as a top character.

But he’s not my favorite. Neither is Wolverine (who, while a badass when he’s done right, is just WAY too overexposed that its become a cliché), nor Superman or Batman. Not even Captain America, even though I’ve got nothing but love for the character. Deadpool comes real close, but no, top honors go to Clinton Francis Barton!


Pirate Boots! PIRATE BOOTS!


“Who,” you ask? The simple version is that Clint Barton was a trickshooting carney who wanted to do some good but ended up on the wrong side of the law and fought Iron Man a couple times before reforming and joining the Avengers (you can look up the longer version if you like, but it might make your head explode). Since then he’s been the quintessential Avenger, spitting in the face of danger, mouthing off to anybody (even his mentor, Captain America) and saving the world at the last minute with nothing but an arrow. No armored suit, no powers of a god, just an everyman with top level hand-eye coordination. He doesn’t even have the super soldier serum that Cap was injected with. Since the ‘60s, Clint’s probably quit the Avengers more times than anybody else, but he’s always come back, more times than anybody else. In the 90s, he even took over leadership of a team called the Thunderbolts (who were former b-level villains who masqueraded as heroes in order to conquer the world, but found out they actually liked being heroes and tried to reform legitimately) before coming back to the Avengers again only to get himself blown up in the incoherent “Avengers Disassembled.” I was sad when it happened, and more than a little pissed since it was at a time when I was just getting back into comics in college and Hawkeye was one of the main reasons I wanted to start reading again (The other reasons being Firestorm I, Blue Beetle II and Booster Gold, who all met grisly fates over at DC. Booster got better, and the new Firestorm is actually a pretty cool character, but I still haven’t forgiven DC for putting a bullet into Blue Beetle’s head)

Unlike a lot of kids, I wasn’t all that into Spider-Man and the X-Men. I was an Avengers fan, and trolled yard sales looking for old comic books, mostly for books that had Hawkeye on the cover. I even took up archer in late elementary school, not because I wanted to be like Robin Hood or even Green Arrow, but I wanted to be like Hawkeye. And that’s the thing really, Hawkeye resonated with me. Here was a guy who came up from humble beginnings, was kind of an outsider, wasn’t the smartest guy in the world but wasn’t stupid by any means, respected talent and merit more than reputation, wasn’t afraid of making stupid mistakes, and hid his insecurities (and boy howdy did the thought bubbles cover the panels when he was thinking) behind a big ol’ grin and a gaudy purple costume and a pair of pirate boots. I identified with all of that and still do. Even the pirate boots.


About a year or so after “Disassembled,” Marvel launched “House of M,” a big crossover about a reality warp by the now crazy Scarlet Witch (She’s a mutant and a longtime Avenger before going loopy in Disassembled and has WAY more confusing backstory). Anyway, thanks to her, Mutants are the dominant power in the world and her negligent daddy, Magneto, is basically king of the world (I probably should’ve mentioned the Magneto thing earlier). Anyway, it was an interesting idea but kind of fell flat as a miniseries, but it did do one thing, it brought Hawkeye back to life, who shot a bunch of arrows into Wolverine, sulked a lot when he found out he was supposed to be dead, then was killed again by Scarlet Witch.


A LOT of arrows

BUT THEN…when the whole shebang ends and Scarlet Witch reverts everything back to the proper reality (albeit with a lot fewer mutants around), there’s evidence that our boy Clint is back among the living. Again. Fast forward to 2006. Aside from Civil War, it turns out that Clint has indeed come back to the land of the upright and has a lot of questions he’d like to ask the woman who was once his friend and killed him twice. He tracks down Scarlet Witch to the totally fictional Eastern European country of Wundagore and finds out she’s depowered herself and has no memories of anything to do with the Avengers or superhero stuff. Then they shag, since he stopped a street urchin from mugging her and has been harboring a huge crush on her for 30 years or so (consider that in that time she married a synthezoid/robot-man and sort of had kids with him, and Hawkeye himself bounced from failed relationship to failed relationship until he married a woman who later died while saving him in a hell-like dimension and her soul is still technically trapped there, I think. Continuity is not easy.)

Anyway, aside from a couple of mini-series, the best place to find Hawkeye stories are in any of the older Avengers or Avengers West Coast titles. Inside Avengers circles, Hawkeye is easily one of the top five most popular, so he’s been around for a lot of their big storylines. The Essential Avengers volumes are a pretty affordable place to start looking (albeit without color)


This about sums him up. He single-handedly takes down Deathbird, a villain the X-Men routinely have trouble with, then plants a big wet one on her. Because it was funny.

Yarp

Know what you should do? I mean, all of you. Every last one of you. Man, woman and swamp monster. You should hightail it to your nearest darkened theatre and spend two hours basking in the glory that is Hot Fuzz.

Now, if you’ve seen Shaun Of The Dead, you might be aware of this movie. After all, its got the same two actors, Simon Pegg & Nick Frost.

If, however, you are a swamp monster without a passing interest in recent British comedies, here’s the skinny. Hot Fuzz is a buddy cop movie parody, much like Shaun was a zombie movie parody. Anyway, Nicholas Angel is a London supercop. He’s so good, in fact, that he gets “promoted” to sergeant and transferred to a small village in the country because he’s making the rest of the department look bad. So Sgt. Angel arrives in the village of Sanford, a town voted the best in England with a non-existent crime rate. The first half of the movie concerns itself with Nick being a by-the-book cop trying to adjust to the rural and rather lazy local force and being partnered with Police Constable Danny Butterman, the Inspector’s son. Then the “accidents” start happening.

In the interests of not getting into spoiler territory, the two do as buddy cops do. They bond, they learn from each other, and stop some crime. The first half of the movie isn’t necessarily slow. You know that foundations are being laid, red herrings being dangled, but you’re trying to piece it all together. Then it all gets put together and the swerve it takes is both brilliant and incredibly creepy. And then of course, this being a buddy cop movie, the climax is a hail of bullets, but my God is it one of the most incredible shootouts I’ve ever seen on film, and its compounded by the nature of the people involved in the shootout. I honestly can’t say any more about it without ruining it, so just trust me. Trust a faceless, random voice on the internet.

TRUKK NOT MUNKY!*

Yeah, there’s this movie coming out this year. Some sci-fi thing about robots from space that disguise themselves as cars and planes and cassette players and big robotic tyrannosaurus rexes (GRIMLOCK AM SMAURT!). Apparently a lot of fandom is really looking forward to it.

My Transformers exposure mostly comes from the G1 cartoon (and “Transformers Generation 2” which was the same cartoon only with lame CG effects added to make it all hip and cool for the 90s). To me, the Dinobots will always be “special teams,” Bumblebee will be whiny and useless, Starscream will always be a big bitchy prima donna with a screechy voice, Megatron will always be a gun and not a tank, and Soundwave will always be the best Transformer ever, despite being a tape deck. I can't even count how many times I tried to get my voice to sound like his when I was a kid.

Let’s sum up; I’m of the mind that if it doesn’t have “You’ve got the touch, you’ve got the power” as one of the songs in it, then how can the movie possibly be enjoyed?

Personally, I think a lot of fandom is going to be royally disappointed and pissed off that its not Spielberg’s gift to nerds. Trans-fans are notoriously uppity on things like continuity and canon, despite having several series that are generally very loosely linked. Personally, I’m not really expecting too much out of it. Certainly not the “nuance” that a lot of Trans-fans who read the comics want. We’re talking nuance coming from a license that was a Saturday morning cartoon series based off of cars that turned into robots fighting robots that turn into planes. Its like taking the “drama” of Gundam seriously when the entire purpose of the Mobile Suits is to beat the holy hell out of each other in new and innovative ways. Hey, I loved G.I. Joe a lot too, but if they announced a live action movie, I wouldn’t hold my breath for an Oscar nod.

Now M.A.S.K. on the other hand…

*http://transformers.wikia.com/wiki/Trukk_not_munky This actually explains it pretty well

I am a filthy, dirty whore

Yesterday, at Best Buy, by complete chance, I stumbled on the DVD section and saw all 4 seasons of Scrubs for $19.99 each. Suffice it to say that Season 1 was getting pretty lonely back home.

I feel so dirty. And I’d do it again. I mean 20 bucks for a season! How am I supposed to resist?

Sanguis In Machina

My DVD drive is haunted. That is the only explanation I can conceive. Last year my old DVD drive decided to stop reading DVDs. It would read regular CDs just fine, but put a DVD in and it would basically crash Windows Explorer forcing you to CTRL-ALT-DEL. That (plus the release of Medieval II: Total War, the only game that I actually went out and bought the day it was released) was enough for me to upgrade.

As it stands, I’ve got a sexy new Sony DVD-RW drive that works and burns great. Except for one little thing. Often, but not always, after I open the tray, it slides shut a few seconds later, occasionally trying to take my finger with it. It would seem that the god in the machine wants a blood offering.

Midnight Cookies

There are some barbaric individuals who view cooking as a less than manly art. Something fit only for the likes of women and sissy men. I say thee nay. Just look at Emeril. And Alton Brown. And Mario Batalli. And Anthony Bourdain.

Cooking competence is indeed a very good boon. It means not spending all one’s money on shitty fast foot. It means having control over exactly what you’re putting into your mouth, so if you don’t like applesauce, there ain’t gonna be any applesauce on your watch. More importantly, you can feed yourself AT ANY TIME YOU WANT. Plus, women like men who are capable of feeding themselves. And since I’m rocking a bachelor lifestyle going into grad school, ain’t nobody else gonna feed me.

Case in point: I wanted cookies tonight. I wanted them bad. Nothing in the pantry. A lesser man would chalk that up as a loss. Not I. An egg, vegetable oil, cookie mix and an oven at 350 Fahrenheit was enough to put me in business.

Result: Cookies bigger than the nonsense you find in a bag, and WARM.

Hell. Yeah.

If There’s Anything I Truly Believe In, Its This:

Waterloo Sunset by the Kinks is absolutely, positively, unquestioningly the best song ever in the history of the world. When I say “ever” I am referring to it in the ultimate sense. Never before nor ever in the future, is there a song as good as Waterloo Sunset. And I am prepared to go to the grave content in the knowledge that this is so. So prepared that should anyone challenge this claim of mine, I will jam my index fingers violently into my ears and repeatedly shout “Dewie-dewie-dewie-dewie-dewie” in a high-pitched nasal whine until I pass out from lack of oxygen.

Oh, I’ll do it, too. Just try me.

Oh, yeah. This thing

Blah blah blah, Ides of March. Yeah, yeah. I’ve been busy. And I’m still savoring the fact that I’ve heard “Wakandan Vibranium” on national television. Its like there’s one less thing that has to take place before I can die completely fulfilled.

Go see 300 if you haven’t already.

…

What are you waiting for? GO!

When Captain America Throws His Mighty Shield

Ironically, death may in fact be the best thing to happen to Captain America in the last few years. After all, he’s been around for years and years and this is the most people have been talking about him in a long, long time. I’m not talking about the fanboys. They’ve already known Cap was an icon in the field. Now the mainstream’s talking about him. Hell, the Colbert Report’s featured him TWICE now in two weeks. That’s some immediate publicity. Throw out the social commentary possible about a character dressed in the American flag being assassinated and you’ve got yourself a media blitz that’s got Cap as much name recognition as Spider-Man and Wolverine right now. If it lasts, even better, since it’ll make his return all the more anticipated/welcome (and come on, he WILL be back. It might take a few years, but this IS comics after all)

I'm Just A Ruthful Kind Of Guy

Now, Justin Timberlake got it wrong. Sexy was never gone, so there was never any reason to bring it back. Can’t bring back what’s always been there. There’s plenty of other words that have gone missing that are totally worthy of coming back.

Take the word “ruthless.” Its come to mean someone who is without mercy. And, if you’ve got even a very light grasp of how English grammar works, you recognize the -”less” part from other words. Penniless, Merciless, Dauntless, Fearless. “-less” clearly mean a lack of something, and implies an opposite value. “Merciful, Fearful, etc.

Even since a kid I’ve always wondered if “ruthful” (the logical extension of this dichotomy) was the actual opposite of “ruthless.” Well, according to the New English Dictionary, it is. So I’ve decided to bring it back. Look out America, you’re about to get a dose of ruthfulness!

Barbarians at the Gates

I’ve been watching a lot of the History Channel. More so than usual. This week alone they’ve run a special on the Dark Ages and are proceeding through a series on Barbarian tribes like the Saxons, Vandals, Lombards & Franks. That alone is enough to warrant my continued happiness.

Even more amusing is the location of where they’re filming the live action reenactment segments; Trakai castle in Lithuania. I know this because I’ve been there myself and can recognize the walls and architecture. Last night they did one on the Saxons that was pretty much all filmed at Trakai. Warms the cockles of my heart and it made me fire up Rome: Total War again on the PC.

What's "Tatars," Precious (pt. 2)

One thing history tells us is to never piss off Tamerlane. Tokhtamysh, bolstered by his conquests, tried to bring Persia under his rule, coming into conflict with Tamerlane in 1385. Big. Mistake. Tokhtamysh was defeated and deposed in 1395, where he fled to a very unlikely haven; the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and struck up an alliance with its Grand Duke, Vytautas. Tokhtamysh had fought successfully against Vytautas’ father Kestutis in the 1380s, but this was much, much different. Vytautas gathered an alliance of Eastern European that marched from Moldavia and conquered its way to northern Crimea, but it was badly defeated at the Vorskla River in 1398 by two of Tamerlane’s generals (and a large army of Tatars. It’d be pretty embarrassing to lose to just two guys). Vytautas escaped with his life and the battle halted Lithuanian expansion into the Black Sea region. Tokhtamysh fled into the steppes but was killed by rivals in the early 1400s. Tamerlane died in 1405, in case you were wondering.

Surviving members of Tokhtamysh’s faction were granted asylum within the Grand Duchy by Vytautas, and also given land and nobility status, where they became known as the Lipka Tatars. In 1410, at the battle of Tannenberg/Grunwald/Zalgiris (depends on who you talk to), Tatar light cavalry served alongside Vytautas’ Lithuanians and Jogaila/Jagiello’s Poles. The battle was a crushing defeat for the Teutonic Order of warrior monks, and halted their expansion in the Baltic.

The Lipka Tatars remained in service as nobles and valuable cavalrymen in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that followed it, and maintained their Muslim faith even as Lithuania transitioned from a pagan to a Christian land, and are still a well-defined ethnic minority in Lithuania, Poland, and Belarus.

And that’s an incomplete, imperfect and utterly confusing history of the Lipka Tatars and how they got to Lithuania. And knowing is good.

What's "Tatars," Precious? (pt. 1)

Genghis Khan’s Mongol empire is rather difficult to comprehend. Maps can only give an idea of the immensity. A slice of land that stretched from Europe to China was all under one man, and the fastest way to cross that land was on horseback. Even under ideal conditions it would take a hell of a lot of time to traverse it.

As with all great conquerors, Genghis’ Khanate broke up into fragments after his death, divided between his sons. He was a tough act to follow, and the fragmented khanates stayed that way for a while.

Now, the Tatars (or incorrectly, “Tartars”) were a tribe of Turkic speaking Steppe horsemen similar to the Mongols, and indeed, seemed to be part of the great Golden Horde after Genghis brought them to heel. In Europe, they had a profound impact on Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and had a tremendous impact on the region of Bulgaria, and the name Tatar became synonymous with any Turkic speaking Mongols. They inherited a significant part of Genghis’ empire as the White Horde, and this is where things get interesting.

In the late-1300s, a descendant of Orda Khan named Tokhtamysh, gained control of the White Horde with the help of another Mongol general, Tamerlane. Tokhtamysh went on to conquer the Blue Horde (the other half of the Golden Horde) and reunited them under one banner in 1380. Good times for the Horde, right? Well...

I’m not technically late

That new “Robin Hood” series hit American shores on BBC America last night. Its not too stupid or insipid. But the one thought going through my head the whole time was “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.” I’m expecting a lot of camp from this series. A LOT of camp.

Also, Tiramisu is good. Real good.

That is all.

Supernatural Male Enhancement

Its been a lifelong mystery to know which saint’s feast day occupied my birthday. But that is a mystery no longer! March 3rd is the feast day of a certain St. Winwaloe (or Winwallus, Wingaloeus, Waloway, Wynolatus, Vinguavally, Vennole, Valois, Ouignoualey, Gweno, Gunnolo, Bennoc, Winwalloc, Guenole, or Guingalois, among other names) who died on that date in 532 AD. Now, since this is the Dark Ages we’re talking about here, there’s more legends about him than facts, but Wikipedia and the Catholic Encyclopedia agree that he was the son of Fracan, some minor British chief/noble who fled from the Saxons and/or the plague to Brittany, and his mother was named Gwen, with the notable nickname of “the Triple-Breasted” (that part’s from Wikipedia). Winwaloe, according to legend, wanted to go and visit St. Patrick in Ireland, but was warned off by a vision from the saint and instead went on to found the Monastery of Landevennec near the city of Brest, and by all accounts was a good holy man who died in his monastery at a ripe old age. He was mostly venerated in Southern England and Northern France. But that’s not the interesting part. This is:

For some reason, Winwaloe gained the reputation of a “phallic saint” (possibly because one of the French forms of his name was confused with the word gignere, “to beget”). Anyway, he is one of several phallic saints invoked against impotence. Most interestingly, a book in my possession about patron saints of things gives a legend that there was a statue of Winwaloe in Brest carved with an erect member, and that people would carve off a little piece here and there in the hopes that it would remedy the relevant problem. Miraculously, despite centuries of this practice, the, ahem, length of the statue has not diminished. Or so it is said.

See? Isn’t theology fun? And in case you were wondering who the other phallic saints are, here’s a few: St. Ters, Saints Cosmas & Damian, St. Foutin, St. Gilles, & St. Rene. Most seem to be French.

Now Is The Winter Of Our Lack Of Content

So I’m sitting here trying to think of some kind of nonsense to write about while trying to keep to my self-imposed deadline, and nothing’s coming to mind. Which is odd. Life’s good, there’s plenty of entertainment coming up soon (both high and low brow) to deal with, but lately there’s been a lot going on in life that’s superceded this here side project.

Oh. Wait. Here’s something. Morel Orel on Adult Swim is just so…creepy. Really creepy. Tom Goes To The Mayor creepy.

That is all.

Because “1,500” Doesn’t Sound As Dramatic

When the legendary reputation of Sparta is mentioned, its usually backed up by an example of Thermopylae, that epic battle where 300 doomed Spartans held a pass for two full days against some 400,000 Persians.

Well….. It is true that a numerically small number of Greeks held out against a numerically superior army and caused King Xerxes no end of consternation, but it wasn’t just 300 Spartans. Herodotus says that there were something like 5,000 or more Greeks present during the course of the battle from all over Greece. Most of them withdrew after the Persians encircled the Greek position, leaving a very small rearguard to protect their retreat. Yet even then it was not JUST 300 Spartans. Some 700 Thespians (from the polis of Thespiae) volunteered to stay behind with the Spartans, and they died just as bravely as the Spartans, and some 400 or so Thebans also took part, but they surrendered to the Persians before the end (which really steamed the rest of the Greeks). After the Spartan King Leonidas (Sparta had two kings at a time) was cut down near the end, the Greeks regrouped and were shot down in a storm of arrows. According to historians, the casualty estimates are about 1,500 Greeks and 20,000 Persians. Even though it wasn’t as lopsided as its been romanticized, the Greeks were still badly outnumbered. Herodotus gives a number of over 5 million Persians at the battle, but that’s a hotly debated topic among historians.

While by itself, the Spartans clearly lost, it did by the rest of the Greeks time to regroup and work toward forcing Persia into a naval battle at Salamis. Sparta does have a well-deserved reputation for ferocity and valor, but the city-state itself was a curious mix of privilege, xenophobia and outright cruelty that was completely unlike any other Greek polis. They had a mystique, even in antiquity, that still resonates.

Exterminate! Exterminate!

One thing I love about Doctor Who (aside from the awesome theme music) is how the greatest threat to the universe are a race of human sized salt shakers with death lasers. At the mere mention of the word “Dalek” the Doctor gets all quiet and scared. The Daleks really are a joy to watch. That, and Billie Piper’s really cute and also fun to watch.

Thank God For Wikipedia

Having other things on my mind today, I didn’t have any content for tonight’s update. So you’re going to hear about Chinese water chestnuts.

Yep. Water Chestnuts. The crunchy discs found in American Chinese cuisine.

Eleocharis dulcis, which is the scientific name for the goody, is an aquatic plant that is native to China. Its not at all like chestnuts. Water Chestnuts stay crunchy when cooked, and are jam packed full of starch and fiber. Enjoy.

As Opposed To The “International Monetary Fund”

Ah the wonders of technology.. Tonight’s update was going to be a lengthy espousal of the supremacy of the IMF channel to other music channels. Then my damn word processor crashed and I’m too surly to type it up again. My fault for not saving it in time, I suppose.

Anyway, the IMF (International Music Feed) provides more music, wider content and fewer commercials than its domestically limited counterparts.

One more thing, if you actually do end up watching IMF, keep an ear open for the Fratellis. They’re a pretty kickass band, and Creepin Up The Backstairs is a rockin’ tune.

You May Already Be A Winner

Judging from all of the random e-mails I receive, Africa is positively teeming with rich yet persecuted millionaires who are dropping dead like flies and leaving their money hidden in random banks. Then it passes on to some legitimate heir to try and get the money back, yet for some reason, they can’t get access to the money and need someone to help them out. Sometimes its not an heir but a lawyer claiming that I am the last surviving relative and the next of kin. Whichever it is, I have to respond with the utmost secrecy for it to be safe, even though its supposed to be perfectly legitimate. All I have to do is provide my significant information and some sort of down payment.

If some long lost Protestant farmer millionaire uncle dying in a plane crash doesn’t get you greedy for large sums of cash, there’s always the lottery. The South African lottery, that is.

Yes; somehow, despite never setting foot on the continent of Africa, nor ever signing up for any such contest, I have won a significant sum of money. All I have to do is provide my significant information and some sort of down…payment… Wait a minute. That sounds awfully familiar. Besides, if I won some sort of lottery, why would I have to give THEM money to get the money? That’s counterintuitive.

The first time I got one of these, I thought it was pretty original and the horrible grammar and spelling was cute. And they were a change of pace from the completely nonsensical spam mail that read like dadaist poetry. Then more and more started appearing in my inbox. Now I get, on average, three a month. Not so original anymore. Still laughably written, especially when you consider that these are supposed to be “educated lawyers.”

The way I see this scam is sort of like those movies that spoof whole genres. The first one, kind of stupid but kind of amusing on a fourth grade level. With each progressive sequel/spin off, it gets dumber and formulaic until you get to the point of wishing justified unpleasantries upon the perpetrators.

Nice Bike

It was my privilege to see a preview screening of Ghost Rider last week. I know, I know, its meaningless since the movie’s in wide release now, but whatever. I’m sick and need a quickie update.

Ghost Rider is an OK movie. Simple plot is Johnny Blaze (Nic Cage) makes a deal with the devil to save his dad from cancer, which turns into a screw job when daddy Blaze dies anyway and Johnny gets drafted as Mephisto’s (I refuse to call him Mephistopheles as the movie does. It was originally Mephisto, and that’s what I’m sticking with) bounty hunter, a rider sent to collect on others who’ve made deals with the devil.

Well, Johnny ain’t happy about his situation, especially not when Mephisto sends him after his truant emo son Blackheart (also from the comics) and three elementally-based mini-bosses-I mean nephilim. And there’s something about Eva Mendes in there too, but the love angle falls a little flat (unlike Mendes’ torso, zing!).

Right, let's get this over with quick. Effects are pretty good overall. The flaming head stuff works pretty well and they do some nifty stuff with the bike, like driving up a building. No major complaints. Cage really puts in a lot of effort as Blaze (he’d better considering he’s got a Ghost Rider tattoo). Some of the imagery really jumps out at you, like the scene where Blaze & another Rider (a glee-inducing nod to the fanboy audience) charge off through the night to the final showdown.

As far as comic book movies goes, Ghost Rider’s pretty decent. Its not nearly as good as Batman Begins, X-Men 1 and 2 and the Spider-Man movies, but its no Elektra, Hulk or Fantastic Four either. Its middle of the road, hanging out with the likes of Daredevil and Blade. Look, the people aren’t going to be going in massive droves to see this movie. It will not inspire some youth to cure cancer. Its GHOST RIDER for crying out loud! Before this, his highest pop culture cred outside of comics was being a common theme for metalheads to put on their t-shirts.

I’m gonna go swig some Nyquil.

Commenting on the paradox of asking a man in a mask who he is

V For Vendetta is an interesting movie. Its definitely stylish and Hugo Weaving is awesome as the charming V, and is eminently quotable. Yet Alan Moore is not known for simple entertainment, and the movie is above all else, thought provoking.

Obviously the ruling regime of this dystopian England is a totalitarian is horribly oppressive and corrupt. And yet… despite V’s charms and just intentions, there is something absolutely unsettling about him. Its not the mask, its not the horribly burnt origin and lack of identity either, those are pitiable traits in his favor.

The thing that’s unsettling about V is that, under all of that Romance and bravado, he is as insane as the regime he wants to bury. He is a murderer, arsonist and demagogue. He subjects Evey to absolutely brutal psychological torment. He has good intentions, and certainly good motivations, but even he realizes by the end of the movie that he is just as much a monster as his enemies. There’s something about British comic characters being anti-heroes (see Judge Dredd. Just don‘t see Judge Dredd starring Stallone), and that’s in effect here as well. He does a lot of cool stuff, but when you deconstruct the character, he’s a lot less likable and a lot more disturbing. Gordon and Finch are definitely closer to real heroes than V, but they don’t wear masks or quip witty dialogue, so they don’t get the knee-jerk sympathy of the audience.
To my mind, a good movie is one that hangs with you some time after it ends. Either you get so wrapped up in the characters that your mind wanders to thoughts of “what happens next?” and “well what if this happened?” or you get drawn into the ideas thrown out by the movie. V For Vendetta accomplishes that.

And of course there’s a bald Natalie Portman for half of the movie for those of you who like that sort of thing.

That's A Mighty Nice Coat You've Got

I have over the course of the last week or two, subjected myself to quite a lot of cinema. Which is good, because it gives me something to blather about for a couple of entries.

Frank Miller’s Sin City is equipped with an all-star cast and a visual style unlike anything else out there (well, aside from the Sin City books). Is it ridiculous? The amount of punishment that people can take while still being able to survive is pretty ludicrous. Is it disjointed? Oh hell yes. The three stories barely intersect, but then again, the real story is the city itself. Which brings us to the violence. Sweet sassy molassy is it violent. It’s a movie populated by bad people doing horrible things to each other. I mean, Marv alone racks up a particularly memorable body count. And then there’s Kevin. If you see this movie, you will never, ever look at Elija Wood the same way. And he doesn’t even speak. Oh yeah, and there’s a hooker army led by Rosario Dawson. I'm not making that up.

Yet despite the buckets of blood spilled in this movie, Miller & Rodriguez make it strangely beautiful. It blends the grotesque with the stylish, as if Caligula had decided to direct film noir instead of making his horse a senator. Now, until the next 2 Sin City movies get made, there’s 300 on its way in March, which just has to rock the casbah. Frank Miller + Spartans. Come on, its not trigonometry.

So, what do you follow up a movie like Sin City? Well, if you’re me, the only logical progression is Garden State. Yes, Garden State. Because I like Scrubs, that’s why. Ok, let’s get this out of the way first. Women will and do love this film. Its got that certain “awww” factor that chick flicks have, yet is absurdist enough that its not emasculating to watch. Its actually a very gentle and, well, sweet comedy. Not a knee slappin’ “ZOMG ROFL!!1!1eleventyone!” kind of comedy that the industry tries its damndest to spit down our gullets like a mother robin feeding its chicks. Its more of a Royal Tennenbaums kind of funny. The thought I had running through my head the whole time was that it had that “student film” vibe. That and I really thought the line “What is Tickle?” was hilarious. It’s a nice movie, even if it is set in New Jersey.

Hey nonny nonny

Hell has frozen over, and I am returned. Another Fat Tuesday come and gone, and here I am facing another 40 days/nights of blogging. Should be a good time. Let’s get started.

William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing happens to by my favorite comedy by the Bard. Its witty, doesn’t rely too much on ludicrous plot devices and deus ex machinas to resolve the ending. And there’s not a fairy named Mustardseed in sight. it’s a polished comedy, laced with innuendo, and did I mention witty? That and it was made into an excellent 1993 Kenneth Branagh film (but that’s a review for another day).

Vitriolic lovers and their merry quarrels aside, there is something that’s been bugging me about the play. The setting is Messina, which is on the island of Sicily. Don Pedro and his bastard brother John are both from Aragon, Benedick is from Padua, and the meathead Claudio is from Florence. Padua and Florence are both on the Italian mainland, and Aragon is in northern Spain. What exactly are these people doing together on Sicily?

Well, I don’t feel like digging into textbook after textbook at this time, so a little snooping on Wikipedia has yielded some results. Shakespeare wrote in the late 1500s-early 1600s. The kingdoms of Aragon and Castile were united in 1492 by Ferdinand & Isabella, who celebrated the newly forged Kingdom of Spain by sending Columbus off to accidentally discover the West Indies. So, by this, Don Pedro, prince of Aragon, is not entirely an independent prince, or the setting of the play is before 1492. Now, what’s an Aragonnese prince doing in Italy?

Turns out Sicily was conquered by Aragon in 1282 after a local revolt (the Sicilian Vespers) against France. Aragon controlled Sicily until 1479, whereby it was ruled by Spain. So that’s a good chunk of time under Aragon. So that explains why Don Pedro acts like he owns the place. He does. Leonato’s welcoming of the Prince and his posse begins to make sense.

Claudio and Benedick’s presence is a little more nebulous. This is Renaissance Italy we’re looking at, so it was not uncommon for professional soldiers and nobles to be crawling all over the place looking for business and booty. Well, this is a comedy, so its focused on the booty aspect. Well, there’s not much that can be discerned about Claudio and Benedick. They are the Princes companions, but the do not have titles like he does, yet are described as “young nobles.” They have to be younger sons because of primogeniture (the 1st son inherits all the family holdings) and signed up with the Prince because Sicily is a perennial battleground and there’s plenty of glory and riches in warfare. They are very close to the Prince. Personal friends in fact. They don’t act like gruff mercenaries so they must have signed on with the Prince for their living and through service become good friends. I guess that’s possible with mercenaries, but still, it doesn’t really fit the tone of the play.

And what of Don John? Well, he’s a bastard. And an asshole.

Spies and Samurai

I’m bored, so you’re getting an update. See how this works?

Finally saw The Last Samurai. It’s the same old broken record of a plot. A man who’s fallen on hard times becomes a stranger in a strange land, learns to appreciate his life again through their foreign customs, and yet, he is also able to teach them how to appreciate what they already have. Yawn. Plot oversimplifications aside, the movie is laden with historical gobbledygook, which I won’t bother going into detail. That’s what Wikipedia’s for. I will say this though, while you’re watching the movie, know that all of those infantrymen in uniforms are raised up from the peasant class. Sure they may be conscripts, but they’ve been given training, a wage, and a chance at the military glory and respect that been the monopoly of the samurai class for centuries. Guys from regular families who finally have an opportunity to match their social superiors. Remember that while you root for the samurai.

Still, the movie is pretty to look at, but that alone is not good enough for a viewer with a decent enough level of intelligence. Even the fight scenes are just kind of average. And Tom Cruise doesn’t die at the end of a bloody last stand? The ONE foreigner just HAPPENS to be the sole survivor? I call bullshit on this movie and need a Kurosawa film to wash the taste out of my mouth. Where’s The Seven Samurai when I need it?

So I guess that was the bad news. Now the good news. Casino Royale is easily the best Bond film in a LOOOOOONG time. I guess it’s a franchise reboot, which, given the previous movie, is probably for the best. Anyway, it starts out with Bond becoming a Double O agent and trying to track down Le Chiffre, a sort of banker for the underworld. Double cross upon double cross fills the flick, and its nice to see a the “building” of Bond into what he is. Its refreshing. He starts driving a POS Ford and earns an Aston Martin. Two actually. And then of course, he falls in love (with the loveable Eva Green), which, as anyone who’s ever seen On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, knows can not possibly end well.

The movie gets a little outlandish here and there, but its all much more believable than space stations with death lasers, guys with metal teeth and a bleached blond Christopher Walken. All everyone’s after is a phenomenal amount of money. Again, refreshing.

And another wonderful little trick the movie does is give all of these dangerous and mysterious characters odd little characterizations. There’s a bomb maker with severe burn wounds all over and the agility of a spider monkey, Le Chiffre has a scarred eye that bleeds blood. We’re never told how he got it. Its not important. It just adds layers to the character, but isn’t important to the plot. Awesome.

No Resolutions

I woke up in a Cleveland hotel room on January first with a mouth tasting of cranberry juice and vodka. I’d fallen asleep with my glasses on, which is how I gauge how tired I was the night before. As the weekend’s events flooded back like the tide filling up Fundy, I got to thinking, first about whether or not I actually threw up some time around 3 AM, and then about what the new year offers. 2006 is dead, just as well.

New Year’s resolutions, when you think about them, are always so hollow. Oh sure, they’re usually things which a person ought to do generally, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to go on a diet this year if you need it, but come on. New Year’s resolutions are a mockery of self-improvement. Its done because its traditional, its something EVERYBODY does, and its just as traditional to break them within a week, and then laugh about it.

I say the hell with it. I don’t need to make a New Year’s Resolution, so it would be meaningless for me to do so. Hollow and hypocritical, so why bother? No. There will be no Resolution just because of the turn of the year. But I do vow one thing. Last year, despite all the shit I went through, I still managed to suck the marrow from life, and this year promises to offer even better opportunities to do so. And rest assured, I will do so.

Halloweekend '93 Part 7

Like Fred Durst, we’re rollin’ rollin’ rollin’, except instead of towards obscurity, we’re headed to Tiny Toon Adventures. This was a hell of a show back in the late 80s-early 90s, but it got overshadowed by Animaniacs, which was the new hotness by the mid-90s. Still, Tiny Toons had a good run, a big stable of characters which were basically remixes of classic Looney Tunes with a few curveballs thrown in, and enough pop culture references to make your head spin. It also hasn’t aged that well, since some of the characters just bleed “early 90s.” Like the valley-girl talking Loon, Shirley. But, they always did go all out for Halloween specials, so this was something to look forward to.

We start out with a bumper segment introducing us to “Elmyra, Mistress of the Dark,” which is basically Elmyra the creepy Elmer Fudd-like girl with a psychotic desire to cuddle animals into powder, in a poofy black wig. See, its funny since it’s a play on “Elvira,” but if you didn’t already figure it out, well, you disappoint me and you will most assuredly NOT be in MyCircle if I ever get it. Anyway, Elmyra plays host to this year’s special, The Horror of Slumber Party Mountain. Its your standard slapstick comedy with a “horror” twist much in the same vein as classic Looney Tunes or the old “Abbot & Costello Meet…” movies, which is fine by me. There’s a lot of that in this episode, which involves a taxidermy-revived Jackalope terrorizing the gang, which alone is worth the price of admission.

Best part of the show: after a bumper where Elmyra says she loves stuffed animals and starts shoving pillow stuffing into Furball, the resident unlucky cat, at the end of the show, when the Jackalope is revealed to have been Elmyra all along and the gang (Buster Bunny, Babs Bunny [no relation], Fifi, Shirley, Hamton & Plucky) make a break for it through the studio walls, Furball is seen rolling after them, a bloated stuffing-filled ball, which for some reason was the funniest thing all episode for me.


Long story short, Tiny Toons was great slapstick and didn’t insult your intelligent too much when you were a kid, so its aged pretty well. Except for those touches that are so early 90s they hurt.

Look, the main reason why I’m slipping in these is that I got Warhammer: 40000: Dark Crusade last week and I stormed through the campaign with the Tau Empire. Its crack-like in its addictiveness. Now I’m trying to readjust tactics for the Space Marine campaign, which is hard since I miss having more firepower than Monev the Gale (Yes that is a reference out of left field. No you don’t get anything from me for guessing where its from, but feel free to treat yourself to some Chips Ahoy in celebration).

Now, this is a complete non sequiteur : Sam & Max is back! Yay! So far, I haven‘t seen it available in a hard copy, just pay download only. Boo.

Halloweekend '93 Part 6

Oo! It is better. Its Eek! The Cat. Eek! was a great show at the time, even though it could wear a little thin. Basically, Eek! was the most altruistic being ever to walk the planet, who’s motto was “It never hurts to help.” Well, it often hurt quite a lot. In this episode, Eek! (the exclamation point’s there on purpose) is trying to help his family trick-or-treat. There’s two kids (both pretty high up on the “horrible kid” scale) in a chicken costume and they can’t see anything. Eek! gets involved and ends up being the head of the chicken and fails horribly at steering them anywhere good. Through that blind leadership, Eek! gets separated from the kids through an elaborate gratuitously complicated sequence of events involving a motorcycle, half of a horse costume and a jack-o-lantern that lands him in a cemetery that’s haunted by a ghost. A ghost who’s sobbing like Luke Skywalker talking about Toshi Station. Yeah, that simile didn’t work out like I wanted it to. Still, didn’t want to let it go to waste. Where was I?

Oh right. So Eek! and the little ghost set off in search of the rest of the missing spooks. Turns out, through an elaborate series of events involving a witch dressed like a skank, a reggae-speaking black cat, a spooky old house and a very large vacuum cleaner traps all of the ghosts roaming the city so they can be ground into cosmetic powder. I’m not making that up, nor am I going to try to defend that plot development. It’s a little more involved than that, but since this is already a week late, I’m trying to wrap this up as fast as possible. Best part of the episode, Eek! unhesitatingly volunteers to be a battering ram to break out of a glass, ghost-proof prison. Crisis averted and all the ghosts go back to the netherworld when Halloween night ends. Right, the episode was a lot more fun to watch than write about. Now we can move on to the next one.

Haloweekend '93 Part 5

Moving right along, we’ve got an episode of Droopy, Master Detective. I’ve never liked Droopy, with his monotone voice, I’ve never liked his sidekick/son Dripple, and I sure as hell couldn’t see why they called him a poodle since he doesn’t look like one. He looks more like former Presidential hopeful John Kerry to me. Anyway, the “Master Detective” part was more of an early 90s revamp to try and recycle the old jokes for a new generation. At least they stayed with the Halloween theme. The first segment was Droopy and his son having their car break down in front of an old creepy mansion, where inside, a mad scientist has created a woman. Droopy knocks on the door and the undead-woman with the Bride of Frankenstein hair opens and falls madly in love with him. That’s a staple of the Droopy routine, and I never ever saw why women were always falling head over heels for this dullard, but now I think I have an answer. Pheromones. It has to be pheromones. Of course, “hijinks” follow.

After the commercial break came a Tom & Jerry Kids segment. I always rooted for Tom, even though that’s like betting on the Washington Generals, but still, that cat was committed to his job. Shrinking the protagonists down in size (and age) didn’t really help with the “recycle the same old bit” strategy. Oh well, in this episode, we get Lil’ Tom chasing Lil’ Jerry into an old haunted castle haunted by the ghost of McLockjaw. Yeah, I forgot to mention they’re in Scotland for this bit, not like it matters to the plot. Anyway, Jerry finds the ghost dog, who tells him he’s cursed to haunt the castle until a friend can stay in the castle of his own free will until midnight. Sounds like a pretty low grade curse. I mean come on, not even till dawn? Anyway, the curse gets lifted despite Tom’s diligent attempts to catch that plague-carrying rodent almost succeed in getting the mouse out of the castle before midnight, but of course, our ghost dog wants out, so he intervenes and…oh look, let’s just forget about this. I don’t even feel like going over the 2nd Droopy segment since writing this is boring me to tears. I’ll sum it up in one sentence. It’s the same as the first segment, only with Droopy as a scientist himself, the spaz of a wolf creates a retarded monster-man and Droopy creates the undead woman himself. Other than that, same exact plot. I hope the next show’s better than this.

Halloweekend '93 Part 4 (Yes I Know Its Late)

Ah. Yes. After Dog City came one of the shows I hated the most on Saturday mornings, Bobby’s World. I’m not entirely sure exactly why I hated the show. It could’ve been Bobby’s screeching demon voice, it could’ve been Howie Mandel’s semi-mullet in the live action bumpers, it could’ve been Bobby’s enormous watermelon shaped head. Whatever it was, the Halloween special was actually the only episode I remember liking. The plot’s simple. Bobby wants to go trick-or-treating, he’s too young, instead, Uncle Ted (in an Elvis costume) is coming over to help pass out apple jerky at the door while Mom & Dad go out to a costume party. But Ted’s got other ideas. Using a bunch of household junk and way more cardboard boxes than any household would normally have room for, they construct the Tunnel of Terror. What follows is one of the best scams in cartoon history. Trick-or-treaters can work their way through the tunnel only if they fork over three pieces of candy and a buck. A buck! For “charity.” Bullshit! Now, Uncle Ted was my favorite character on the show because of this episode for two reasons. 1) Actually making this scheme a reality, and 2) Giving a “pretty mommy discount” to one lady who didn’t bring much money with her. Hey man, he means her kid can see the Tunnel of Terror for free, not anything that you’re thinking.

Anyway, the scheme totally pays off and Ted & Bobby end up making several hundred dollars and even more candy by the end of the night and pass out on the couch bloated with candy (and probably in Ted’s case, Beer. Its not actually stated, but the beer gut and Hawaiian shirt imply years spent scarfing wings and pitchers of lager). Mom & Dad come home all pissed off that the house is a mess, and the episode….just ends. It. Just. Ends. I don’t think there were every any repercussions of the Tunnel of Terror. They got away scot-free and never identified what “charity” they were going to donate the money to. Hate the show I did, but this episode earned the hallowed “slow clap” for taking Halloween to ridiculously lofty heights.

Haloweekend '93 Part 3

Ok, here we go, the real extravaganza started after Double Dragon. Dog City was up next. Don’t remember Dog City? It was a hybrid animated/Muppet show about a Muppet/dog cartoonist named Eliot Shag (ah the naivety of youth) who drew the animated adventures of Ace Hart, private eye. It was based on the, for lack of a better word, “short film” of the same name that aired on the Jim Henson Hour in the late 80s, which was all puppets and very sweet. I have that somewhere on tape too, but no idea where. This show was cool beans, man. It breached the fourth wall at every opportunity and threw endless sight gags and puns at the viewer. Nonstop puns. Anyway, the show was tremendously intelligent for Saturday Morning fare, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that it lasted for three seasons.

This episode was “The Bloodhound,” and our hard boiled detective has to track down a mysterious caped menace biting the citizens of the city at night. Of course, him being a hard boiled detective, Ace doesn’t want to bother with the case at all, calling all a bunch of hooey. Eddie, his plucky newsboy sidekick is all for it, taking every chance to tell Ace it’s the undead stalking the streets. Long story short, Ace tracks down the Bloodhound and reveals him to be a disgruntled mailman who’s sick of being bitten by every dog in the city every day. Actually, it wasn’t that great of an episode as far as the show went, but still…it was Halloween themed, and I loved Dog City, dammit! That’s got to count for something.

Usually it’s the crazier/stupider shows that are much more fun to write about since they’re so much easier to criticize. You’ll see what I mean tomorrow.

Halloweekend '93 Part 2

After Transformers, its over to FOX for the “not actually a part of the FOX Kids lineup but its still a cartoon that we’ll tack on to ride the coattails of the more popular shows.” Usually (for my part at least) it was King Arthur And The Knights Of Justice in that slot, leading to a lifelong fondness for that horrible show. But not this day. This day it was an episode of Double Dragon. Oh yes, even a straightforward beat ‘em up like Double Dragon got the animated series treatment in the heady days of the early 90s, complete with cheesy Nintendo sound effects.

The premise of the show has little to do with the original game (with its very simple introduction of Billy Lee’s girlfriend gets punched in the face and kidnapped by gang members and Billy subsequently sets out to get his woman back by beating up everyone on the street he sees). Here, Billy & his Brother Jimmy are “Special Deputies” for Metro City’s police force, fighting the Shadow Master’s syndicate of cartoonishly equipped bad guys. The thing is, Billy & Jimmy, who dress in blue and red versions of the same outfit, have a deep secret. Not only are they martial arts masters with their own dojo, but they fight crime as the Double Dragons, mask wearing swordsmen who dress exactly like Billy & Jimmy except for their undershirts mystically disappearing to reveal their double dragon “birthmarks.” Now, birthmarks don’t usually cover someone’s entire pecs and are green with an intricate level of detail. Hmm, sounds more like the description of a “tattoo.”

Anyway, this particular episode starts off with Jimmy Lee riding through Metro City on his oh so awesome tricycle, looking for some crime to bust. Little does he know he’s being watched by some guy in a van through closed circuit cameras, who puts out a call over the police band that sends Jimmy into “special deputy” mode. Long story short, it’s a setup and Jimmy gets arrested by some schmuck named Captain Tays. Jimmy gets railroaded at his trail in a moment that I’m sure would make any law students fall to the floor in a fit of giggling, and gets sent to “Rattica Prison,” (yeah, real creative) a place where they send “mutants AND hard cases.” I guess mutants who ARE hard cases have to go to an even more secure prison, or something. Anyway, Billy gets thrown into a cell with a mutant named Fireball, who meditates a lot since he tends to shoot hot death from his eyes when he gets angry. Turns out Fireball’s not really a bad guy, just some poor mook who got in with the wrong crowd. Hell, the worst thing he’s done is almost/nearly/clearly missed killing an innocent bystander. What follows is some blah-blah-blah stuff about gangs are bad, Billy trying to break INTO prison to rescue his brother, and Jimmy finding out he’s goin’ down hard in the exercise area the next day. What’s more interesting is the fact that even though he’s been convicted and imprisoned, Jimmy Lee is wearing the same exact clothes as he always does. How come the rest of the inmates have to wear regulation prison gray and he gets to keep his shoulder & knee pads? Lazy-ass animators or one of the perks of being a “special deputy?” I’m going with the lazy thing.

Anyway, the episode ends with a goofy fight scene in the prison common between Jimmy & a mutant with a bulldog’s head (man, Metro City needs a “House of M” event badly), then Shadow Master almost wins the day just by talking in his Awesome Voice, then Fireball does his thing to help out, and then all the bad guys get theirs (except Shadow Master, who escapes through the power of his Awesome Voice. Seriously, that guy’s voice is the best thing about the series) and Fireball ends up signing up with the Double Dragons after being paroled for some arbitrary reason.

Ok, weird show. Goofy show. But it did teach a few valuable life lessons. Like, uh, for instance… The, uh, justice system is a lot more laissze faire than the legal community has led us to believe. Seriously, if you’re a corrupt police captain, you can tell prison wardens what to do. Totally. And, uh, something about gangs are bad.

Look I know its not a Halloween episode! I still had to sit through it to get to the actual stuff. Besides, the existence of a Double Dragon cartoon is scary enough. The next show really is a Halloween special, I promise.

Halloweekend ‘93 pt. 1

Wooo! Its October, baby!

Now here’s a diamond in the VHS rough. I dug out an old tape of Saturday Morning Cartoons (you know, back when that actually meant something). But not just any old tape of SMCs. This was one of the annual, pre-Halloween Saturdays, where you got a whole morning full of animated goodness shoving the Halloween spirit down your gullet. And I loved them for it. The only other holiday to get a regular special is/was Christmas.

Anyway, FOX Kids used to be one of the 800 lb. Gorillas of Saturday Morning programming for a couple years. It had a loaded line up of X-Men, Spider-Man, Eek! The Cat, Taz-Mania (and later The Tick and Carmen Sandiego) and others. It also had some shows that made me want to throw a shoe through the TV screen, but that’s beside the point (and they're probably on the tape) In 1993, the FOX Kids line up was running at full steam and life was good.

Well, the tape doesn’t start with FOX Kids. It starts on a different channel to catch most of an episode of Transformers. OK, Transformers: Generation 2, which was basically the same exact Transformers episodes, only with goofy CG transitions between scenes and a new credit sequence. Anyway, the episode du jur features a couple Autobots and Decepticons getting stuck in Medieval Times, where Starscream almost conquers Europe with Ramjet, Rumble & Ravage while Spike, Hoist & Warpath don’t really do much to help until a wizard kickstarts their metallic hearts with electricity. Warpath was almost a cool Autobot in my eyes. After all, he was a tank and had a weapons system that made some sense, but his penchant for onomatopoeia made him sound like a dork. And Hoist was just a tool with a gun for a right hand. Why? Doesn’t matter, he’s playing second banana to Warpath in this episode anyway. And despite Starscream actually being a serious threat in this episode, his whining and bitching reaches new heights when victory is snatched away from him. I’m serious, he gets beaten about five minutes before the end of the episode, and everything that comes out of his mouth from that point on is whining. Starscream’s a dick.

I'm not even going to start ranting about just how horribly flawed the episode is from a historical perspective, but that's like saying "dolphins can't snap their fingers." Yes, you could go into the "whys" of it, but its not worth the time. More to follow shortly.

Zombie Brides And Virgin Grooms! Sounds like a Pellet Review!

Being a currently unemployed cheap bastard, I'm something of a library whore. Free movies are free movies, so what if you run the risk of borrowing one that's scratched all to hell and won't let you finish watching the third disc of Superman The Animated Series, Season 1? Ok, yeah, I was rather bitter about that actually. Anywho, the library's a great way to finally check out that flick you weren't sure you wanted to spend money on when it was new. Last week I checked out (quite literally) Tim Burton's Corpse Bride and The 40-Year Old Virgin (and Shaun of the
Dead, but I've already seen that, I just didn't have time to watch again).

Ok, Lightning Round.
Corpse Bride impressed the hell out of me. First, the animation was astounding. All of the movements and artistry invovled in actually making the movie were stunning. The puppets had mechanisms in their heads that could be tweaked to change their facial expressions! That floored me. The movie looks great. Its also a musical, just so we're clear on that. The cast was also pretty solid, all around, (yes it has Johnny Depp in it as Victor) but Helena Bonham Carter carried the movie away as the Corpse Bride. Also, I have to give props to the movie for making an undead zombie woman so strangely, well, 'cute' I guess is the only word that comes to mind without someone inferring necrophilia. Now I feel dirty.

40 Year Old Virgin came out to a lot of hooplah last year. Its a filthy-mouthed comedy, certainly, but novel enough to make it work. Yes, its about Andy, the titular Virgin, and his relationship problems, but the three coworkers who end up dragging him kicking and screaming toward the dating scene have their share of problems too. Shit, that sounds so lame. Look, the movie's funny, surprisingly intelligent, runs a little too long, and resolves itself in a way that doesn't come off being too insipidly sacchirine. And they actually take the time to flesh out the supporting characters, which is nice since they avoid being boring stock characters interchangeable with one another. Its also kind of reassuring to see a character with an even more messed up relationship history than my own. I don't know what that says about me, but its actually a better movie than I thought it would be.

Something to think about the next time you get dragged to a Julia Roberts movie

Let me tell you about Romantic Comedies. They’ve all got something in common, and its this: They’re all a bunch of lies. Most stories are. Sure, they can reveal truths about humanity and the universe, they can make us laugh and cry and occasionally think, but humans are innate liars, and that’s why our stories are so good. Every time we tell a story, it changes. Every memory slides further and further away from what really happened. That’s just the way it is.

There’s no such thing as “They all lived happily ever after.” That’s a lie right there. Even if a couple manages to survive the hazards of their own psychoses intact, they’re still going to die and the surviving partner is going to go through hell in grief. Touching and emotional yes, "happily ever after" not so much.

People are crazy, and when they meet each other, they try to hide the crazy from each other. It never really works. The crazy always find a way out. The lucky couples are the ones who actually don’t mind the quirks they see in each other, they even find them charming and cute. The unlucky ones pretend the quirks don’t exist and spend the rest of their lives in misery while trying to figure out excuses to stay with someone who’s guts they hate. Then there’s the ones who hate the quirks and end things because they aren’t working out. Hopefully they don’t have the emotional baggage of 2.5 kids and a complicated alimony settlement when they do come to that revelation.

Couples argue. Couples fight. Dishes get thrown sometimes. Feelings get hurt. It happens. All the time. Some couples survive, others end after one fight too many. The lucky ones find an avenue of communication and compromise to get through. The unlucky ones profess in full denial of the truth that they love their husband, even after he got drunk and broke her nose with a bottle of Miller Lite. Again.

Sex is an investment. Mating is quick. Gestating and producing another human being takes a while. Ensuring that new human being survives to buy a car and try to mate in the back seat takes even longer. We’re not sea turtles. We don’t fuck for one night, then lay our eggs in the beach and six months later hope that some of the little buggers make it to the ocean without getting snatched up by the seagulls. For one thing, we get emotional about that kind of stuff. We rarely eat our young. We believe in nurturing our spawn, and loving them and “raising them right and proper.” Unfortunately we’re all neurotic monkeys, so all we’re really doing is just raising more neurotic monkeys.

There is no magic potion to make people fall in love. We’re on our own to figure out Love, and the instructions we’ve got all sound like those incomprehensible translations of Korean VHS player manuals. Its hard to fit slot A into Tab 16 when neither was included in the box. Even worse, males and females all have a knack for confusing the hell out of the other gender and complaining about not being understood. Men don’t get women. Women don’t get men. And yet Romantic Comedies provide countless hours of footage and characters that seem to be typical of their genders. You know, archetypes. The bad boy, the loveable fat guy sidekick who never gets the girl, the mousy girl with a wild side, the hooker with a heart of gold. The list goes on and on and on. They’re just broad caricatures. An umbrella category.

People are a hell of a lot more complicated than that. The loveable fat guy is probably throwing himself full force into being loveable because he’s so insecure about his weight and undesirability to the other sex, and if he weren’t appreciated for his funniness, he’d probably get so depressed and lonely that one morning he’s not going to wake up from the sleeping pills and vodka. The hooker with the heart of gold might just have been a promising med student when one unfortunate night at a sorority party, she got addicted to heroin, flunked out of school after a painful semester and ended up on the streets, plying her trade in order to get her next fix, all while her sober moments are filled with regret and self-hatred, so she might do a good deed as an unconscious plea for help before the last vestiges of her spirit get broken. That’s two stock characters made more complex by the infusion of tragedy. And they’re more true to life. Real people’s lives are rife with sorrow, tragedy and despair. That’s why we like Romantic Comedies. They help us laugh through the pain (well, the good ones at least, the bad ones just add to it) and make us believe even for an instant that its all going to be ok as long as your heart’s in the right place and you’ve got courage when you need it the most.

The real world doesn’t act that way. There the bad boy asshole does marry the prom queen, they have three kids, move out to the suburbs and he cheats on her with his young, vivacious secretary while the wife unconsciously injects the kids with her pent up hatred for him. Then, when she finally gets sick enough of his verbal abuse and tells him she’s leaving, he jealously flips out and beats her to death with an iron before putting a gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger, unaware that his five year old son just saw the whole thing. The honest shy guy spends years trying to muster the courage to express his feelings for the friend that he loves, berating himself night after night for failing to do so, until one day he can’t take it anymore and tells her at the most inopportune time, like say at her wedding. But unlike a RomCom, the bride to be has never loved the shy guy and yells at him for trying to ruin her wedding. He then runs out of the church crying and spends the next ten years drinking himself into a stupor just so he can get to sleep and contracts cirrhosis of the liver and dies a painful, lonely death. Those kinds of stories happen all the time. We get hints of them on the nightly news.

Romantic comedies are lies, but they tend to be beautiful lies. More importantly, they make us feel that, despite all the fucked up shit that goes on in the lives of everyone, maybe somewhere, at the right moment, standing on the roof of your car in the rain outside a girl’s house with Prince’s Purple Rain blaring out of the cheap stock stereo can win her heart. Because we hate to think that doing that will only get shoes thrown at us, threats about calling the cops, and a silent drive home interrupted only by the loud sobbing of the driver as his heart lies broken in her driveway next to the bouquet of roses he dropped on the ground.

Demoted by Science!!

Well, well, well. After being the subject of a few years’ debate, the planet Pluto’s been demoted to a “dwarf planet” asteroid-thingy.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060911/sc_space/plutoisnowjustanumber134340;_ylt=Au9ByhJKXBQPJaypPQPEji3637YB;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--

Henceforth, “Pluto” is now forbidden from using that name as its legal moniker and has been assigned the ultra-sexy NEW name of 134340. In the past, Pluto has caused much consternation and scratching of heads among the scientific community. What does it look like exactly? What’s it made of? Why the hell is its orbit all wonky? 134340 is now being joined by rookie Eris (formerly 2003 UB313), a slightly larger mysterious space rock a little further out, in the dwarf planet class. Thus spake the International Astronomical Union!
Yeah, I can’t really say that with a straight face. Look, Pluto is still the same weird-ass space rock it was a week ago. Its still going to float out there and get inside Uranus’ orbit every now and then. Big rocks don’t care what they’re called. Or maybe they do, and when word of this reaches its orbit, Pluto’s going to be so pissed off that its going to let Jupiter’s gravitational pull upset its orbit and the former planet’s going to come screaming out of the heavens towards Earth, looking for vengeance!
Look, I appreciate Science’s continuing tweaking of the things it considers to be valid information, and humans are by nature a classifying species, but really, 134340? We’re still going to call it Pluto since its easier to remember and spell. As for the new kid, Eris, well, we (and by “we” I mean “Science”) know its bigger than Pluto, its got a “moon” and that’s about it. The real silly thing about it is our tendency to make big dramatic stories out of new scientific discoveries that aren’t necessarily “action packed.” The discovery of Eris was a big deal, since finding something further out and bigger than Pluto raises questions of a tenth planet and/or if it really is a planet. The name change is really just semantics at this point. Again, Pluto’s going to keep on doing what its doing, regardless what a thus-far lucky group of apes has to say about it. We’re not the boss of Pluto.
Incidentally, I’ve always wondered why Walt Disney went and named Mickey’s dog after the Roman god of the underworld. A god I might add, who forcibly kidnapped his future wife Penelope (Persephone) and dragged her to said underworld because he wanted to “get some.” Pluto wasn’t exactly evil, but he was kind of a dick. Here’s a challenge to make you feel uncomfortable watching those old cartoons. Every time they say “Pluto,” replace it with “Hades.” Or for added mythological comedy value, “Cerberus.” Now, I foresee this having two possible outcomes. 1) your sensibilities are shaken by the possibility that “Uncle Walt” was up to something sinister in naming a loveable cartoon dog after a god of the dead or 2) it’s a bit of absolutely hilarious unintentional humor.

Gruss Gott!

Ahem. Yes. Well. I've returned from Europe none the worse for wear. Its also very, very difficult to try and distill the sheer sensory overload that three weeks of hard traveling will do. So, instead of breaking it down into a massive succession of posts, here's the nutshell review.

Ireland rocks. The country's booming, cheerful, and has a level of friendliness that makes Canada look like a bunch of curmudgeons. Its also got so many people from all over the world there, living, working or just visiting. Prices are expensive, food's good, the women are beautiful and the beer is excellent. I recommend going there. Dublin and Kilkenny are fantastic places, Blarney, despite the kitch, is worth visiting, and Cork, well, you can probably live a long, fulfilling life without having seen Cork.

Lithuania rocks. The country is recovering from decades of Soviet oppression. Prices are cheap, the food is good and/or interesting, the women are beautiful (Ireland has more though), the beer is very good (and cheap), the country is beautiful (if a little midwestern-y) and its also worth visiting and bringing tourist dollars there to boost up the economy. Vilnius is booming and undergoing a berserker building/remodeling campaign. There's a lot of grafitti and most people drive like lunatics, but the country's a great place to go.

Austria rocks. The Alps are staggering in their beauty. The food is superb, the beer is excellent, the cities are clean (aside from all the cigarette butts), and they have beautiful women (though Lithuania has more). Salzburg, Sound of Music kitsch aside, is a gorgeous storybook city that lives and breathes music (and capitalizing on Mozart). Graz is a quirky university city mixing ancient traditions with the hyper-modern weirdness that grows out of having university professors all over the place, and deserves your tourist dollars.

Well, that's a nutshell of the experience, though completely inadequate to explain anything. The best thing I can do is say travel for yourself, see what you want to see, step outside the lines of where you normally operate, and never, ever forget where your passport is.

Its been a long, strange day

There is a lot going on right now. I'm in a net cafe in Cork. Seriously. A traveloque is being kept, but there isn't nearly enough time to get into everything right now.

Books you ought not to ignore

I generally try to avoid discussing uber-nerdy things like video games and comics on this blog (that's what the other one's for), but I feel the need to express my meaningless endorsement for Neil Gaiman & John Romita Jr.'s Eternals mini series. Yes, it is a comic book. A Marvel comic book to be exact. Yeah, it mentions guys like Spider-Man and all that. It also ties heavily into the previous history of the Eternals (a near-godlike race of ancient supermen genetically---look, its complicated, ok?) Right, so, Marvel continuity gets touched on, but its not essential to the story. There's a whole big "Civil War" event going on over Superhuman Registration that gets mentioned, but isn't important here. You don't have to know about it to enjoy what's going on. Gaiman's writing is good. The guys got an ear for dialogue and can deliver on off-the-wall concepts, and the Eternals, created by comic god Jack Kirby, definitely are. There's a whole bunch of plot threads going on, but I get the feeling that "all will be revealed" when its all said and done. And Romita Jr.'s art is really damn good. Sometimes he's a little "blocky" for me (like some of his Punisher stuff), but not here. Its all good. I've gotta say, if you're looking for an inroad into the world of comics as deeply rewarding storytelling, this may not be as artsy as an indie comic (or Vertigo, for that matter-->See Gaiman's Sandman), but its a good way to ease into parts of the Marvel Universe that don't involve Spider-Man or Wolverine.
And for Pete's sake, if there's one thing comics need less of right now, its Wolverine.

Besides, its a mini, so six issues and you can pretend you never stepped into a comic shop.

Reservations and the lack thereof

Well, its about a week till I climb aboard a heavier-than-air marvel of engineering and hope I safely land in Dublin. And if not that, then at least the peanuts had better be good. Its strange. Most of the flight arrangements have been taken care of. I’ve begun test packing to see what I’m going to have to exclude from the suitcase, figuring out what book to read on the flight, little stuff like that. Basically, it’s a lull in the action, much like the point where you realize you’ve strapped yourself into the roller coaster, but the fun part hasn’t started yet. Its that middle part in between, where every second that goes by with another clunk is a stark reminder that bit by bit, the comfort of the ground is slowly slipping away whether you want it to or not. At least there’s no ratcheting “Klink klink klink” sound as you get dragged to the crest of the hill. It’s not quite the eerie silence before the plummet where you begin to have reservations on it being good idea after all. It’s the moment when you realize that the eerie silence is close at hand.

Surprisingly, I’ve managed to find time for television amid all this chaos. Not a whole lot of television, so most of that time’s been spent on the Travel Channel. Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations is a show I’ve been slowly getting into over the last couple of months here and there, but its finally won me over. The premise is simple; famous author and chef travels around the world and tells you what he thinks. It’s a great show because he eats everything, even the nasty stuff. Greater still is his command of language and imagery. The guy knows his narrative stuff. Now, on a completely opposite end of the spectrum is Passport to Europe which, while showing interesting places in Europe, just doesn’t have the whole “I want to go out of my way to watch this” factor. Actually the only reason I did watch it was because they went to Dublin.

And I’ve just run out of stuff to say, so I’ll stop.

Tto the MAXXX!!

So I’m sitting here wondering what to write about. Ah, what the hell. Here’s a book review. I mean, uh, a book review so X-TREEEM it’ll rip your face off and wear it to a masquerade ball!

Miyamoto Musashi’s “A Book of Five Rings” is like a lesser known “Art of War.” Basically, it’s a treatise on strategy and warfare written just before the samurai’s death. Its written in short, economic sentences. What’s interesting about it (and completely contrary to pretty much any anime out there) is that he advocates learning to be tactically flexible, study the enemy, adapt tactics, and use any weapon at your disposal to win. He has no “super-ultimate” attack that’s guaranteed to win. In fact, he shows scorn on martial arts styles that limit themselves to only one style of combat. He says long swords, short swords, bows, spears, guns, cannon whatever all have tactical uses and a victorious warrior will never look down any of them. Adding weight to his argument is his resume of winning over sixty duels before he turned thirty. One of those duels was won with an oar. He killed a man with an OAR.

X-TREEEM!!!!!

A Symphony of Terror for Moog and Slide Whistle

Well, it was a late work night last night, so I didn’t get this posted before collapsing from exhaustion. So its getting posted now. And through the miracle of the “internet” if you’re reading the archive for fun (though what madness could impel that idea escapes me) it’ll appear in a sequential format, and it’ll be like there was no missing day at all. Except for this incriminating paragraph. Curses! Foiled by my own verbosity!

Rounding out my foray into classics of early German cinema is F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu. Its from 1922, so it predates Metropolis by five years and it definitely lacks the polish and film quality of the latter. Still, it definitely deserves its place in the hallowed halls of film classics. The plot is essentially an unauthorized bastardization of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Guy goes to Transylvania and is essentially responsible for bringing a vampire to his home town. Vampire takes a ship and kills the crew before leaving a bloody mess in said town before finally being stopped. There’s even a crazy lunatic. Ok, so the plot’s pretty straightforward.

Admittedly, the directing is also usually straightforward too. But there are moments of visual awesomeness. You’ve probably seen the hunched and spooky shadow of a figure creeping up a stairway? That’s from Nosferatu. And its one of the best shots ever. Also, Count Orlock is probably my favorite movie vampire ever. Freaky looking as all hell and a downright monster with creepy monster hands. Another interesting technique Murnau used was adding different filters to set the mood of the place. This being a monochrome picture, it’s a little difficult to tell a lot of the time whether its day or night outdoors (since they probably filmed all the outdoor stuff during daylight so it would come up on film), so a blue tint was added to make it look a little more like night time without being nearly as dark as actual night.

The only real complaint I have about the movie is that, well, the soundtrack does sound rather digitized. This being a silent film and all, the original score must’ve deteriorated, so a substitute was put in. It does get the job done, but it doesn’t sound nearly as good as Metropolis’. And yes, parts of it do sound like a slide whistle.

Undead Monkey Ahoy

Right, so, as I loosely promised last night, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was on the plate for today (yeah, I’m a few days behind the curve. I know).

I must admit to being a little torn about it. Visually, the movie knocks it out of the park. ILM did a hell of a job with Davey Jones and the Flying Dutchman’s crew. The story was great for an action movie, with the plot and subplots all moving forward at a nice clip. Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow is exactly as he should be and the movie lets you know that he’s the center of the POTC universe, and that’s a good thing. Keira Knightley is still sigh-inducingly beautiful. It’s a great movie. There’s no doubt about that. You will leave the theatre thoroughly entertained.
Its just that the POTC: Curse of the Black Pearl left me leaving the theatre with the heady euphoria of seeing something extraordinarily new and original. While there’s no lack of big awe-inspiring moments in Dead Man’s Chest, some of the sense of wonder is missing. Part of has to be the fact that the Disney Marketing Machine™ has put their entire weight behind this movie, unlike the previous one. The toys and books have been out since at least May, so Davey Jones isn’t nearly as surprising when you first see him. Oh sure, there’s stuff later on that provides some great surprises. In the first film, Jack Sparrow’s an unstoppable force. Crazy as a loon, yes, but someone with an ace up his sleeve whenever he needs it. It feels slightly less like that in this movie. He’s still Jack Sparrow, but he’s unnerved this time around.

One thing that was an absolute joy about this sequel was that it kept a lot of characters around from the first one. Some, like Jack’s crew, are logical nods to continuity. Others make for some great surprises that I’m not going to spoil here. The great thing about them is that even the side characters actually get to grow and develop too. Be prepared for a “to be continued” ending though. Although Empire Strikes Back ending on a similar note, so its not a big deal. Audiences loved the first one, they love the second one, and they’re going to keep on lovin’ the franchise. At least as long as they don’t decide they want to make prequels.

And yes, there is an undead monkey that Jack loves to shoot. S’wonderful, really.

Not Your Superman’s Metropolis

Wow.

I have just had sweet cinema lovin’ made to me. No. Its not Pirates of the Caribbean (that’s tomorrow). I’m talking about Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent masterpiece, Metropolis. Man, I’m still soaking it all in. The Germans know operatic, and this, this WAS operatic. Take a city of the future, built on the backs of drudging workers. Have the son of the genius behind the city discover that there’s more than fornication in a pleasure garden. Add a love interest that gets replaced by a robot duplicate by a crazy old guy with a mechanical hand and you’ve got a swiftly complicating plotline. At first, it seems like the movie’s going to go all “downtrodden workers rising up against the corporate masters,” and it does…in a way. Then it goes and spits in Marx’s face (I love when that happens) by going biblical. Great Flood kind of biblical. Tower of Babel kind of biblical. And the special effects are just about as good as they can get for being an 80 year old film. The “mascot” of the movie, the robot woman (they called it a machine-man in the movie) was really well done, and you can see where Lucas got the idea for C-3PO. Hell, there’s even a surreal stripshow, so there’s something for everybody.

I have to recommend this movie. If you call yourself a film buff, you’ve probably already seen it, unless of course you’re a filthy liar or just a misguided soul like I was who simply hadn’t had the chance to see this work of wonder. If you’re a fan of Modernism, its got stuff you’d like. Hell, even if you just casually like movies (like most of the people in the world) give this film a look. Some of the acting (particularly by the character of Maria) is just so crazy and brilliant at the same time. The lighting of the film is phenomenal. There are some shots where I was simply floored by the innovation and imagery used.

Look-just--Its good--Oh for heaven’s sake, just see the movie for yourself!

You WILL Believe a Franchise can Fly...Again

I was going to post something yesterday, but it was a cold lifeless list of all the places I’ve traveled to in my short lifetime. And in all honesty, I didn’t post it because I would’ve felt like an ass.

Anyway, I got myself to a silver screen and witnessed a nifty motion picture called Superman Returns. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Some may have even seen it. Me? I enjoyed the hell out of it. I thought it was a great story that made me care about Superman, something that hasn’t happened much since “The Death of Superman” back when I was a wee little lad. Right, so what worked? Kevin Spacey as Luthor is charming, intelligent and batshit crazy when he needs to be. His jolly little line about “Krrrrrryptonite” as he was taunting Superman before kicking him over and over in the gut was great. That and he didn’t treat his henchmen like they were dead weight. It was great seeing him get mad whenever he lost a henchman. I thought Routh’s Superman was on par with Reeve’s (blasphemy, I know) and that his Clark Kent was even better. It was also nice seeing James Marsden actually given significant screen time in a superhero movie. Turns out Jean didn’t kill Cyclops. She de-powered him and sent him to a better movie (OH SNAP!) Jimmy Olson, though given little screen time, was good, and not nearly the god awful annoyance that Pre-Crisis Jimmy Olson was. If you don’t know what that means, trust me, Jimmy done badly will make you want to kill him. To be honest, I didn’t really feel that Kate Bosworth’s Lois really worked for me, but she didn’t hurt the movie either.

What I absolutely loved about Superman Returns was that it placed Supes in just about the most awkward position possible when he returns. He’s ready to start up his life again at the Daily Planet and finds out that in the 5 years he’s been gone, Lois Lane has gone and had a kid and gotten herself a great guy for a fiancée. You just gotta empathize with Clark when he finds out Richard’s a great guy who absolutely loves Lois. I give the guy a lot of credit for cockblocking Superman.
Oh yeah, and some action stuff happens too.

Now I must make special not of the preview trailers. Spider-Man 3 was the only trailer worth seeing. Everything else was just mind-numbingly retarded. It is very sad to think that the shitty animated movies of our youth have been supplanted my shitty CG movies of the present. Male cows do not have udders you utterly deplorable people at Nickelodeon responsible for Barnyard!!! UDDERS ARE THE MAMMARY GLANDS OF COWS!!! MALE COWS DO NOT HAVE THEM BECAUSE THEY ARE CALLED BULLS!!! ARRRRRRGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! JUST THINKING ABOUT THAT TRAILER MAKES ME WISH VIOLENCE UPON THE WORLD!

Ahem, so, anyway, the Spidey 3 trailer was full of Black Costumey goodness (its not really a spoiler since its all over the teaser). Can’t wait for that next year.

Catch you on the flipside.

What? Who's talking?

Er, I'm feeling obliged to post something this week before heading out to Chicago on Friday.

So, er, the World Cup's going on, for people who're into the whole "watching the athleticism of others". I don't follow football (no, not that football, I mean futbol) so all I know is Ghana beat the everlovin' snot out of team USA. Probably because in the rest of the world, they take futbol seriously ("murder the referee" seriously), unlike in the US, where minivans and SUVs cart kids home from games where they didn't even keep score, because "everyone's a winner in this game!" Yep, totally can't see why the USA doesn't have that killer instinct in the world's most ubiquitous game. And I don't even like soccer.

Um, that wasn't as long as I planned. Here's some pellet reviews of an arbitrary nature:
Wedding Crashers: Fun movie, felt a little long in places, Vince Vaughan is The Man, and Isla Fischer is gorgeous. Opposable thumb up.
Punisher: Pretty much what I expected, Rebecca Romijin-nolongerStamos is gorgeous, John Travolta didn't irritate me nearly as much as I feared, plus he died a horrible grisly death. Opposable thumb up.
Serenity: Knocked my socks off. Good effects, acting was superior to the Star Wars prequels, the plot didn't bog down too much, makes me want to track down Firefly and actually tune into the sci-fi channel for the first time in years. Two Opposable thumbs up!


Fine, you wanna have a rant?? Here's a rant. You know, Sesame Street's been pissing me off for years now. Forcing the Cookie Monster to cut back on cookies is just...inhumane! That pissed me off, yes, but an even more simmering anger lies beneath my surface. Where the hell is Grover??? All I ever see now is Big Bird & that soul-less freak Elmo. Who in Jim Henson's name is supposed to teach the kids of today the difference between "near" and "far?" Who is going to remind me, at great personal expense and risk, that there is a monster at the end of that book?! Who has a heroic alter-ego?? Certainly not that crimson idiot they're marketing everywhere. If they one day announce "Super Elmo" I will likely throw something through a TV.

And for that matter, whatever happened to whatshisface, Sully, the boring one? Honestly, he was so dull I can't even be sure that was his name. But damnit, he's got a right to have face time too! Ah, let's face it, he probably went and became clinically depressed and slouched off the set one day and was found dead in a hotel room in Yuma City with a bottle of Jack Daniels' Green Label whiskey on his nightstand.

But that two-headed guy who didn't make a lick of sense? He was awesome.

Kung Fu Hustle (And Flow)

Nope. Didn’t see Hustle & Flow, just Kung Fu Hustle, but I couldn’t resist mashing the two titles together. Kung Fu Hustle is a very, very interesting movie. The little advertising tagline on the dvd cover said something like “think Kill Bill meets Loony Tunes,” and, in a way that is true. It’s a very action-oriented movie with a lot of cartoony slapstick thrown in, and a lot of times its funny, but at others, its really kind of disturbing watching those situations using real people. Its hard to be cartoony when the characters bleed and get killed. Anyway, it’s a lot more serious than the cover would have you believe. Where the movie impresses the Hell out of me is in its whole concept and realization. Stephen Chow (the brains and main character behind this flick) has got one hell of an imagination. Kung Fu Hustle combines Chinese & Buddhist culture with 1920s American fashion and style. Its really quite interesting seeing nothing but Chinese actors walking around on retro sets using Tommy Guns. Also, the CG effects were quite good. Not “teh best evar!” but still really impressive (and better than Shaolin Soccer’s). So, final verdict: I dug Kung Fu Hustle, but liked Shaolin Soccer better. Both films are from Stephen Chow, and I’m sold on whatever he’s going to do next. I don’t care what it is, I’ll seek it out.

Also, watching a lightning storm from my rooftop makes me feel badass. That is all.

But its just fiction!

Ok, I thought I had said enough about the bloody DaVinci Code, but something’s just rankling me about the franchise. Ok yes, religious groups have called for a boycott of the movie. Sure, why not, they can do that, no big deal. The response to that has been a loud cry of “but its just fiction, why are you getting all uptight about it? You silly religious people!” That makes me rub my temples for a little bit and sigh. Ok, yes, it is “just fiction.” I think we can all agree on that. However, it is a fictitious novel that bases its claims and information on “facts” that are suspect at best and outright disproved by historical evidence at worst. A non-fiction book, “Holy Blood, Holy Grail,” is given a lot of publicity and credibility by the characters of the book. Characters toss off lines of questionable historical authenticity as though they were common knowledge. So yes, the book is fiction because it revolves around characters that don’t exist (ie. Fictional) in events that didn’t happen (the curator of the Lourve hasn’t been murdered by a crazed albino). Just because a book is fiction, doesn’t mean it can go around contradicting historical facts. Tom Clancy fills his fictional characters with constant realistic touches about military equipment and doctrine. He does his homework meticulously. He doesn’t go around saying that Igor Sikorsky was not the first man to get a helicopter flying reliably.

Let’s get hypothetical. Say I want to write a fiction thriller. Completely fictional characters and plot. Let’s see, some schmuck gets murdered and its up to a, oh, I don’t know, political scientist to solve the crime. Now let’s say that this political scientist, our hero, says in a completely offhand manner, like it was absolutely true, that the Holocaust never happened. And he repeats this several times. No publisher would touch that book. There would be no summer “blockbuster” directed by Ron Howard. How can you possibly defend that kind of writing by saying “But its just fiction”? There is no such thing as “just fiction” and there never was.

Oh My Stars And Garters

So yeah, a little movie called X-Men 3 is out. Setting all kinds of Memorial Day box office records. I’ve seen it myself, and I’ve gotta admit, I’m torn. It wasn’t a bad movie as far as movies go. There was lots of action and explosions and mutant powers all over the place, but…
I came out of the movie feeling divided. Half of the plot/story/movie I really enjoyed, and half of it I absolutely hated. The good news: Ian McKellan’s Magneto is still a spot on charismatic yet ruthless villain. He’s still brilliant, and everything he says is gold. And they really let him go wild with his powers. Patrick Stewart is still the definitive Professor X, but he’s given less to do in this film. Hugh Jackman still owns the Wolverine part, but later on things get odd with him. I really enjoyed the Beast in the film. Much more than I expected to. Kelsey Grammer did an excellent job with him. The FX were also really, really good and there was lots of it, and there were a lot of fun little moments that brought a smile to my face.
But… (and I’ve been using those three dots a lot in connection with this movie) there was a lot of stuff in the movie that just felt off/wrong/dumb. The whole “Phoenix” plot I felt was completely mishandled and basically botched. Not good, considering that’s considered one of the best X-Men stories ever. Cyclops doesn’t do much at all in the movie, and Jean Grey kind of wanders around in a daze wearing a mopey/angry expression most of the time. A storyline that easily could’ve made a great movie in itself was completely wasted by being jammed into this one. But…the ending of X-2 kind of shoehorned the Phoneix storyline into this movie. The Cyclops stuff really did piss me off though, since he’s been my favorite mutant since forever, and I think that he’s just been completely mishandled in the movies anyway, but this was just a stupid use for him (and one that cripples the Phoenix plotline in the movie too). Halle Berry as Storm is still dull, dull, dull to watch. I didn’t mind her in X-1, I liked her in X-2, for some reason, I couldn’t stand her performance in this movie. And her haircut just made me giggle. Wolverine. Remember I said I liked Jackman’s portrayal, but the way the storyline panned out, they were giving him lines that were completely out of character. By the end of the movie I was sitting there thinking “Great, they’re writing Wolverine as Cyclops now. They why do (spoiler) to Cyclops?” Rogue disappears for most of the movie after being involved in a weakly played out love triangle that didn’t get enough time to develop. There’s not enough Colossus, though we do get the fastball special. Shadowcat’s just kind of there. Iceman has some great moments but is also underused. Oh yeah, and there’s no explanation for why Nightcrawler’s missing. They just never mention him. Juggernaut is not nearly the threat he should be, getting used for laughs instead of the unstoppable force he should be. Angel was barely in it, so I’ll barely mention him.
I’ll repeat. There were a lot of great little moments in the film. Unfortunately, there were a lot more big moments that fell flat for me, as both story afficionado and fanboy. The “Cure” plotline was great, and would’ve made for a great movie in itself that built up from the previous two. The “Phoenix” plotline should’ve gotten the full movie treatment it deserved and not been shoved in just because. The movie was rushed into production by the studio, changed directors at least once and is overall the weakest installment of the three X-Men movies. Its not a franchise killer like Batman & Robin. There are no rubber nipples in sight, but still, the X Movie franchise is starting to wobble disconcertingly. Of course if things go really south for them, they could just do what the new Superman movie is doing. Ignoring Superman 3 & 4 like they never happened. And a retcon (comic industry term) like that is probably the best chance we have of getting a Good Phoenix Saga movie.