Some movies I have seen recently...

So, Pauly goes and promises to THE WHOLE DAMN INTERNETS that we'll be posting every day this month then the bastard goes and gets married--like being knee-deep in hot, hot marital bliss will give him time to contribute. I've been slowly dying inside at my job, so I haven't had much time to construct a series of themed entries like last year. Instead, I will be presenting you with the following hastily-compiled reviews of films I have seen recently.

ANTICHRIST (dir. Lars von Triers)

This is my first von Triers film, so I cannot comment on how it contributes to themes of misogyny or whatever it is the intelligentsia have decided the talking points on this should be. I do know, however, that I saw something terrible and beautiful and revolting and thought-provoking, often all at once.

BRONSON (dir. Nicholas Refn)

I think I first heard about this from the trailer, which does not promise anything the film cannot deliver. If you enjoy a little of the ol' unltraviolence, this is a film for you. Brutal, hilarious and a great "that was awesome!" film to sit back and enjoy. I'll definitely be seeking out the director's Pusher trilogy after seeing this.

GOOD HAIR (dir. Jeff Stilson, produced by Chris Rock)

I went to see this with my girlfriend. I've long known about some of the issues surrounding black hair--I remember being struck in college by the knowledge that the first African-American millionaire was a woman selling hair product & the passage in The Autobiography of Malcolm X about the first time he relaxes his hair is rather memorable-- but this goes well beyond that. Still, I basically agree with the criticisms that far too much time was spent at the hair show in Atlanta, which is mostly spectacle, and that time could have been better spent exploring some of the issues in detail.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE (dir. Spike Jonze)

Again, I think I will agree with the majority of the critics. While I loved the film--the acting, the production design, the story were all near perfect--I'm not sure its a film for kids as much as a film about being a kid, which is a pretty big difference. E.g. the little girl, 6 or 7 or so, sitting down the row from me who was bored senseless by it while her early-30s yippie mom ate it all up.

THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS (dir. Grant Heslov)

Amusing but complete fluff. On the continuum of ironic, self-aware modern war films this is a lot closer to something like Lord Of War than it is to Three Kings in terms of re-watchability. I'm not sure what the underlying message is meant to be but you get a few amusing set-pieces here and there. Unless you're dead set on seeing it immediately, you can probably wait to see this on HBO.

TOWELHEAD (dir. Alan Ball)

I thought this was a very strong film, which could have been better if it dealt with its themes less heavy-handedly. But, Ball always has a tendency to be a bit on the nose. Expect exactly what you're expecting from him: the sexualization of young women; men with odd, affectless voices; & undermining the existence of the "American dream."

ONG BAK 2 (dir. Tony Jaa)

If you've seen the original Ong Bak, The Protector or Chocolate you know that you're in for some really awesome fight sequences. (Also, elephants.) But, what you don't know, is that Tony Jaa also directs this one and he is completely out of his gourd. Its all very Sam-Raimi-directs-a-Thai-martial-arts-film. The story is borderline indecipherable but pay no mind to that fact; the fights will explode your head with their sheer awesomeness.

Review: ZOMBIELAND

Zombieland is an incredibly fun zombie comedy, or "zom com" if you will. I had the opportunity to catch an advance screening this past Tuesday, and it was well worth the hour and a half wait in line.

First off, its worth noting that these are not zombies in the traditional sense. For one thing, they run. Yes, this has been done in other films, but there is a distinction made here. It's stated by the narrator that the virus that creates the zombies is an "advanced strain of Mad Cow disease that leaves victims with a swollen brain, insane, and with an intense hunger." Not once is it stated or shown in the film that anyone has risen from the dead. Therefore, we are dealing with infected people, not zombies in the Romero/Brooks sense.*

However, it must be said that in a real world situation, if one is faced with creatures that display most if not all characteristics of a monster in the popular culture lexicon, then you might name said creature after a popular monster. Thus, the infected in this film are referred to as zombies. This is actually a strength in Zombieland, in that the survivors have come to terms with their new world. By naming these creatures "zombies", they're actually establishing a sort of dominance over them, in the way that man has named all animals that he has found. Zombieland also stands out amongst other zombie/infected movies in that the "Zed word" is actually said.

This is also the first upbeat zombie film. While a comedy, like Shaun of the Dead, this film doesn't play with the same stakes. Its a bit more cartoony and doesn't have to deal with the issues of shooting your zombie mother, or leaving your best friend to die. Zombieland takes place after all of that. As I mentioned earlier, most of these characters have come to terms with the world they live in. They know that just about everyone else is dead. In the end, it celebrates the fact that these four characters have found each other, and maybe that's enough in their world.

* The risen dead that crave flesh although they have no scientific need for it, as defined by George A. Romero and Max Brooks. While straying from Romero/Brooks zombies may discourage, and even enrage my colleague in zombiology, Dr. Giacomo Kmet, I encourage him to check out this film.

Horror of Dracula/Dracula Has Risen From the Grave/Taste the Blood of Dracula/Dracula A.D. 1972

A year ago, things were much better for horror fans. Not all horror fans, mind you, but those who had cable providers that carried MONSTERS HD? They were living the sweet life*, brother.

Monsters HD gave you 24 hours, 7 days a week of uncensored, uncut, no commercial interruptions classic horror and sci-fi. Through this glorious channel, I caught up on some Friday the 13th, a little bit of Nightmare on Elm Street, and most importantly, I was exposed to the glory of the Hammer Horror films. Sadly, Monsters HD is no longer with us, so I now have to supply my own horror programming via DVD. It was so much easier when I could just turn to channel 777 and know that something great would be on, but oh well.

Anyway, craving some Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing showdowns, I picked up a DVD set from Amazon that features four of Hammer's Dracula films: Horror of Dracula, Dracula Has Risen From the Grave, Taste the Blood of Dracula, and Dracula A.D. 1972.

Chris reviewed Horror of Dracula last year, so I'll touch upon it briefly to note that it sets up a pattern that these other films follow: Someone wrongs Dracula, Dracula pursues his revenge, Dracula achieves reasonable revenge but wants more, Dracula gets taken the fuck out. This is the cycle that repeats itself just about every time and Dracula never learns. In fact, he almost never seems to remember that any of this has happened before. He just wakes up pissed off, seduces some broads, offs some stuffy old guy, then meets his end by the hand of the handsome young fiancee.(Or Van Helsing, who is rather spry in their first battle in Horror of Dracula. Check out the scene where he jumps and pulls down the curtains.)

Lee's Dracula isn't particularly charming. He can hypnotize the ladies, but isn't interested in the vampire stable of hoes like most Draculas. Again, there is a pattern. He usually will get a brunette or redhead and then a blonde. He quickly uses and murders the brunette/redhead because the blonde is his ultimate goal. The only other Dracula that gets this close to monogamy is Gary Oldman in Coppola's Dracula, but that is a deep Dracula. This Dracula is just trying to get into the blonde's panties for revenge, usually against some old guy who looked at him the wrong way.

When taking his revenge, he's a bit of a dick, and when attacked, he's a red-eyed wild animal. This is a Dracula who in almost every final battle, throws shit. He throws shit. He goes from Dracula to the Hulk the first second shit don't go his way.

I haven't seen all of the Hammer Dracula films, but I'd like to know how he got so focused on the constant revenge seeking. The next time he comes back, he needs some time to reflect, cause Christopher Lee's Dracula is one miserable fuck.

* As in things were good, sweet life, not "Suite Life of Zack and Cody" sweet life.

31 + Days of Halloween Starting this weekend!

Wow...been awhile since any of us have posted on here.

Well, to jump start things, I issue a challenge to my 822 colleagues to create content almost every day for the next month or so in celebration of one of our favorite holidays, Halloween!

I mean, if the stores can have Halloween costumes out in August, why can't we start blogging about it a little early?

So, starting this weekend, I'll pop in some Halloween movies and have my take on them by Sunday.

Glove slap, 822. Let's write about some vampires, zombies, slashers, and Dr. Freudstein.

The best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be...for 2008

Technically, my title is inaccurate. A few years down the line, some of the things I mention won't age well, but who cares? I just felt like a Bret Hart shout-out in my title.

Anyway, this may be a little late in terms of "best-of" lists, but in many cases, most people don't get around to seeing the best stuff of a year until the new one starts.

Thus, I begin:

Music:

I don't really follow music too much, most of what I get is from movie soundtracks, but anyway, here's what I dug this year:

"Roar" - Michael Giacchino, the Cloverfield end credits. Michael Giacchino is someone I've only recently discovered, through Cloverfield and Lost, and his shit is epic. This guy could make doing a grocery list sound important. "Roar" reminds you that what you just saw was a GIANT FUCKING MONSTER movie, not just a deconstruction of the genre. 

"Flight of the Conchords" - Flight of the Conchords. The show is hilarious, the songs are toe-tappingly good. (This guest review done by Larry King)

"Volume One" - She & Him. Folksy? Is that how I describe this? 

And my best album of 2008, is, guess what? Something I didn't buy til 2009:

"Batman: The Animated Series Soundtrack" - Shirley Walker. This was put out in a very limited release by LaLa Land Records. If you're a fan of the show, it's a must have. 

Books: 

I'm not sure what I read this year that actually came out this year. 

But I'm pretty sure I read a lot of older stuff. Here's three books that I remember:

Eat this, Not that - The twist is, the fishwich is more unhealthy than the McNuggets...and the butler did it.

The Omnivore's Dilemma - I really don't feel like looking up the author's name. But he taught me that corn is IN FUCKING EVERYTHING. You are corn.

The Great Derangement - Matt Taibbi. There are equally crazy people on the right and the left and everyone in between is fucked because of it.

Comics: 

Don't these belong with books, you ask? Fuck you. They're comics.

Captain America & Daredevil - Ed Brubaker w/ Steve Epting & Michael Lark, respectively

No, there isn't some glorious Captain America and Daredevil team up book. But Ed Brubaker is rocking my socks off with Cap, and while his Daredevil isn't too different from what has come before, it's executed well.

Booster Gold - Geoff Johns w/ Dan Jurgeons

Just a straight up fun comic. It also serves as a history lesson for the DC Universe. Oh, and time travel, evil counterparts, and did I mention time travel?

Criminal - Ed Brubaker w/ Sean Phillips

As I eventually give up buying monthly comics and exclusively buy trades, I will continue to pick this up each month its published, as it's got a ton of great extras each issue. Essays on noir from the authors as well as guests like Patton Oswalt. 

Deadpool - Daniel Way w/ Paco Medina

I loves me some Deadpool. Fox is getting my 12 bucks because they put him in the Wolverine movie. And Deadpool has his own comic again. And it's actually good...and hilarious. 

Television: 

I discovered Lost, The Wire, and Deadwood this past year. Television doesn't get much better. Burn Notice and Chuck provide some fun spy action without getting too deep. Fringe started out leaving me wanting The X-Files to come back(although not like it did this summer), but it quickly became a favorite new show. And Heroes sucked balls.

Movies:

In no particular order: Wall-E, The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Hellboy 2, Redbelt, The Wrestler, The Fall, Tropic Thunder, Snow Angels

I love these films. Each is amazing in their own way, but looking at this list, The Fall, The Wrestler, and Redbelt would be a great triple feature. I'll probably do a more in-depth look at The Wrestler after I see it again, but I consider all of these "must sees," and as Gene Shallit would say while holding a basket of eggs, "Eggcellent."

Genetic Altering of Dewbacks: Unethical or Unavoidable

For centuries the moisture farmers and hunters of the desolate desert planet Tatooine have domesticated the large reptilian beast of burden known as the Dewback and now they want to take a drastic measure and clone, then genetically alter the animal. The Dewbacks earned their name by getting moisture by licking the dew that had formed of each others’ backs in the morning. If only it were this easy for the moisture farmers of this arid land to collect their crop. These days the water seems to be, for lack of a better phrase, drying up! The planet’s average temperature has risen a drastic 1.5° over the past decade.

The 1.5° increase in temperature has caused an issue that effects more than just the moisture farmers. The Dewback, which is the one of the few animals that can survive in the harsh climate of the planet, are starting to lessen in number. The Galactic Non-Sentient Protection Agency has not designated Dewbacks as a threatened species. These beasts travel to the Jundland Wastes, where the sands are the ideal temperature to lay their eggs, once a year for mating season. The species has done this journey for so long and it has become so engrained in their genetics, that it is near impossible to breed a Dewback in captivity. Over this past decade the number of newborn Dewbacks has dropped a significant 5% and is believed to grow exponentially over this next decade. Because of this decrease and the planets dependency on the animal, scientists speculate that cloning the species may need to begin within the decade.

Owners of Dewbacks have other concerns about their Dewbacks and are voicing their opinions to the scientists researching and advocating the cloning of the species. Doc Breetel is a young human gem hunter who resides just outside Anchorhead. “Every year I lose my Dewback, Vernil, for about five weeks during mating season. I can’t be walking around the wastelands hunting for precious stones on foot. If they’re going to clone these things, they could at least find a way to deal with this problem,” he says. Many people rely upon Dewbacks as simple desert transportation and assisting them in their daily business, ranging from the moisture farmers, to local construction companies using them to haul equipment across town. All of these Dewback owners lose their animal for several weeks during mating season, stalling business until they return. Why do they let the Dewback go away? Ask ex-Republic gunner Remmie Dextin. “We had just bought a Dewback for my friend’s dad’s used transport lot to haul scrap metal around. Mating season rolled around and we still had some work to do, so we tried to keep the Dewback in his pen. Bad idea. The thing broke through the fence and knocked me over, damaging my leg beyond repair.” And the solution to the mating season problem is very simple. When the animal is cloned they can be genetically altered and turned asexual. However, the Galactic Non-Sentient Protection Agency still claims that it is unethical to turn such a reproduction-oriented animal asexual.

The idea of neutering the Dewbacks has been discussed much in the past years. The animal’s tough hide and poor healing ability make operating more pain than it’s worth. The animal’s reproductive orgas also lie very close to several important nerve clusters which, if even slightly knicked, would severly damage the Dewback’s nervous system. Not only that, but the size and genes of the Dewback make it immune to any legal tranquilizers. There have been several illegal neuterings done recently, but in the end have left the Dewback unable to work at the same capacity it did before the operation due to damage done to the nervous system.

The Dewback owners on Tatooine would be very grateful to have an animal that does not disappear for weeks (up to two and a half months depending on the distance to the Jundland Wastes) once a year. However, until the GNSPA allow the altering of genes on cloned animals, individuals like Doc Breetel will have to continue to manage with the Dewback mating season like the residents of Tatooine have for centuries.

COMICS! On The March

For the past few years, respectable journalistic outlets have been covering the rising tide of comic book culture. They hide their shame by re-naming the artform as "graphic novels."* Or they give themselves some ironic distance with endless variations on "Biff! Bam! Pow! Holy [Relevant Subject Matter], Batman!" & "Comics: Not Just For Kids Anymore!" Nonetheless, it seems like the secret shame of comic book fandom is out of the closet.

In Japan, where the equivalent artform is known as manga, comics are read in public by all members of society according to these articles. People openly and notoriously read these books on the subway, so the legend goes. Since I take two different trains during my commute to work every day I thought it might be a good opportunity to do some fieldwork to see if the same is happening in the United States.

In theory, my route would be ideal for spotting comic book readers. The first leg, the RiverLine to Camden, goes to Rutgers University. The second train, the Patco into Philadelphia, provides access to numerous undergraduate universities as well being the main means of arriving at a moderate-size art school, the University of the Arts. If the comic book surge is bringing in new readership, as these reports allege, commuter trains packed with artistically-inclined undergraduates should be prime observations territory.

Alas, it is not quite the case. Thus far I have witness only two incidents of people reading comics on the trains. They are not promising.

1st Encounter: Approximately two weeks ago on the RiverLine I spotted an aging, obese white male reading an issue of the Jeph Loeb HULK series. Not really the image comics are trying to encourage right now. On the other hand, dude was LOVING that comic book. He was folding pages around the spine and bending it like you read a newspaper, just devouring the thing. The look in his eyes was like a kid in a candy store. I suspect he was mildly mentally disabled.

2nd Encounter: This morning on the Patco I stood next to a paunchy, goateed white male in his early 30s wearing wire-rimmed spectacles; he looked rather meek. He was reading a new copy of the WATCHMEN trade paperback so I assume he is either new to comics or generally is a hardcore mainstream superheroes-only type of fan. I have no reason to suspect he was also mentally disabled but its a safe bet his social skills are severely impaired.

The results of my scientific study of new comic readership are, as you can observe, thus far quite disappointing.

Even expanding this to encompass other likely locations for comics reading does not bear fruit. Every afternoon I walk to the Starbucks near my firm, which is also the nearest Starbucks to the University of the Arts. The store is always teeming with artsy girls in their late teens and early twenties, who I have been led to believe love indie comics and manga, sitting there drinking coffee and reading. I have yet to spot any of them reading a comic book so it appears they are not so into the whole thing. You know what they ARE into? Avoiding eye contact with me so as to not give the false impression that I have a green light to approach them.

They must smell the fanboy on me.

* The term "comic book" in an anachronism anyway. It hearkens back to ye olde times when the first comic books were literally re-packaged newspaper comic strips. Stan Lee prefers the term "comicbook," no space between the words, to signify the break.