I finally got ahold of my long elusive "D" drive files, but due to internal errors, the extrication was a messy bit of business. As I'm forced to spend the coming months sorting it all out, and I've been AWOL here for a week, expect dated shit like this for a while.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
A Frank Review of "Zombieland" (2009)
The Short Version? Now that the zombies have taken over, what do you do with the the rest of your life?
What Is It? Zomedy
Who Is In It? The Natural Born Killer, poor man's Michael Cera, Little Miss Sunshine
Should I See It? Yes.
Zombieland is a mash-up of '80s miss-matched buddy action comedy, '90s ironic/meta sarcasm, and fast zombies. Thankfully, it cherry picks the best of those excessive and generally burnt out subgenres to form a very entertaining and exciting, if somewhat formulaic, time at the cinema. Early on, there are some rather wet and nerve-wracking encounters with the flesh eating undead. The Watchmen style credit sequence is full of slow motion carnage, and there are several episodes in the first reel that should have you at the edge of your seat. However, things settle down fairly early on, as geeky neurotic Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) meets total badass Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson,) and his newfound safety net extends security to the audience for the rest of the picture. They are soon joined by Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin,) antagonists turned love interest and foil (respectively,) and that's pretty much the only living cast for the rest of the picture. Woo is pitched, stars are crossed, mistakes are made, and we all learn a valuable life lesson in the end. My only complaint is a total cock slobbering extended celebrity cameo. I recall one good chuckle during this internet-hyped sequence, and really wish we'd seen a self-deprecating turn from Patrick Swayze instead (as originally scripted.) Still, it's all in good fun, and worth the price of a ticket.
What Is It? Zomedy
Who Is In It? The Natural Born Killer, poor man's Michael Cera, Little Miss Sunshine
Should I See It? Yes.
Zombieland is a mash-up of '80s miss-matched buddy action comedy, '90s ironic/meta sarcasm, and fast zombies. Thankfully, it cherry picks the best of those excessive and generally burnt out subgenres to form a very entertaining and exciting, if somewhat formulaic, time at the cinema. Early on, there are some rather wet and nerve-wracking encounters with the flesh eating undead. The Watchmen style credit sequence is full of slow motion carnage, and there are several episodes in the first reel that should have you at the edge of your seat. However, things settle down fairly early on, as geeky neurotic Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) meets total badass Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson,) and his newfound safety net extends security to the audience for the rest of the picture. They are soon joined by Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin,) antagonists turned love interest and foil (respectively,) and that's pretty much the only living cast for the rest of the picture. Woo is pitched, stars are crossed, mistakes are made, and we all learn a valuable life lesson in the end. My only complaint is a total cock slobbering extended celebrity cameo. I recall one good chuckle during this internet-hyped sequence, and really wish we'd seen a self-deprecating turn from Patrick Swayze instead (as originally scripted.) Still, it's all in good fun, and worth the price of a ticket.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Empowered Volume 2 (September, 2007)
Beginning with this second collection of Empowered stories, there's an obvious shift in the manner of storytelling within its chapters. After a single sheet primer, the book launches into a harrowing twenty-four page "issue" wherein Emp battles King Tyrant Lizard. There are numerous flashbacks, character introductions, and a building tension that's a far cry from the short gag strips which launched the series. This feels like a trade paperback compilation of a monthly comic that doesn't exist, with a more serious tone throughout. On the one hand, this is the only way to mature the heroine's adventures beyond repetitive set-ups and letdowns, saving her from becoming the Cathy of the long underwear set. On the other hand, you have to trade the simple, puerile fun of the first volume for a more adult read.
Given the dour landscape of modern comics, I'm not sure I would have made the switch if given the choice, but it still leaves Empowered as among the best super-hero books going. There's steady, natural progression in the individual characters' narratives, and they react to the circumstances these types are prone to face in a truly believable and often unusually optimistic fashion. Their effervescent personalities make it difficult not to take them into your heart, so when they are threatened, you react to the high stakes in ways the corporate Lazarus-Men cannot evoke. If someone is killed or otherwise molested in this book, you know you will inevitably feel the trauma and sense of loss, so each episode matters.
Not to say that this edition fails to bring the funny, mind. After the lengthy opening "Thuperlame," there are three shorts centering on drunken gaming, excessive drooling, and hot patootie. Thugboy returns to provide teh sexay for the ladies and more genuine lip-service for his girl. "The Aryan Ideal of Shoulder Candy" is twenty-two pages of naughty play, sapphic groping, and one-liners."Wahh, Wahh, Wahh" proves Emp can be entirely too effective, even whilst stripped of her powers. A "sexy librarian" piece should satisfy that sector of the fetish community.
A bit shy of the halfway point marks the beginning of a three chapter arc covering nearly sixty pages, involving a burgeoining threeway entanglement between our romantic leads and the mysterious Ninjette. Major subplots are introduced, and a follow-up chapter foreshadows serious business in an upcoming volume.
"The Power of TIME!" returns Empowered to both solo action and singular ability, but that bit of levity barely allows a breath to be caught before "A Long Line of Dead People" sits on your chest. Ninjette and Thugboy both carry surprisingly heavy baggage for what would appear to be a humor series, and their sordid histories do a great job of contrasting Emp's sweet neurosis and kind heart against their avoidance and possibly missplaced hope for redemption. This is made all the more clear in the final tale, "Fruity Flakes," which exposes the childhood tragedy that motivates our heroine, and the simple humanity that sets her apart from her fellow Superhomeys.
Empowered Volume 2 is the total package, serving comedy, pathos, light adventure, and heavy consequences for all the shenanigans these exceptional beings get up to. There isn't as much of an emphasis on the art this review, but rest assured it is lovely to gaze upon, and now serves to propel a denser read. Anyone who claims to love comics and turns their nose up at Adam Warren's opus is doing themselves and the form a great disservice.
Monday, October 5, 2009
A Frank Review of "The Howling" (1981)
The Short Version? Reporters haunted by werewoloves.
What Is It? Horror Dramedy.
Who Is In It? Steed and Mrs. Genre Actress. Kevin McCarthy. John Carradine. Slim Pickens. More cameos.
Should I See It? Maybe.
By choice or by fate, I've been following the Howling series of movies out of sequence, allowing me to judge them on their own slight merits as individual films. I first saw Howling 2: Your Sister is a Werewolf decades back on home video, and a recent revisitation revealed it was more rivetingly rotten than I remembered. An absolute must see in trash television for the horror fiend. I next tried Howling IV: The Original Nightmare, as boring as the other flick was delightfully incompetent. That one was essentially a remake of the original, and now that I'm reviewing it, I can finally determine if it was fruit off a poisonous tree.
The credits run over snow on a TV screen as snippets of dialogue from the forthcoming film are heard, followed by Patrick Macnee as a patronizing therapist on a news show. As this isn't Videodrome, shit's egregious. Eventually, Dee Wallace shows up as the wimpiest, least convincing investigative journalist in something like ever. She's wired for sound while she makes her way alone to a rendevous with a serial killer in the red light district. As you've already predicted, there are audio problems, and she winds up locked in a private viewing room, rape porn playing as she faces the murderer. This might sound intense to you, but everything (aside from the movie-within-a-movie) is handled so delicately, there's no tension. Who'd want to hurt the mom from E.T./Cujo/Critters, right? In short order, all that's left is to clean up and report the scoop... except our star represses her memories and develops stage fright. While Dee goes to the shrink's nutter camp, a couple of her associates from the TV station follow-up on leads.
At this point, the primary story reconnects to the pseudo-remake, Howling IV, a review I ended with "this movie just leaves you dead inside." Here, though lumbering, I didn't find the flick an alternative to doctor assisted-suicide. There's a bunch of cameos and in-jokes for horror afficianados, the acting quality is up to soap opera standards, there's some decent gore effects, and it at least feels like a legitimate movie intended to be projected onto a multiplex's screen. While the first werewolf doesn't (briefly) show until forty-two minutes in, there's a decent set-up to get through, believeable characters and a logical narrative to work with. Even taking that into account, the second round of full-frontal nudity unveils before the fifty minute mark (butterface and BDSM notwithstanding.)
Werewolves really get to roaming early in the second hour, with some strong make-up work (even if they do go nuts with the bladders and exagerated sculpting.) Along with An American Werewolf In London, this film defined the screen adaptation of werewolves and quality transormation sequences right up to the present. The actors really know how to sell the prosthetics, moving with a lupine ferocity, and contrast mightily against the terrible efforts that followed in this series. Unfortunately, they're too often betrayed by cheap lighting, tepid direction, and poorly staged action sequences, plus there are a lot of plot holes and dated social commentary. The movie's pace picks up fantastically at about the time you need to linger a while and let the potential for horror set in. Instead, it's mostly action beats and swift resolutions, though the final one is a doozy (and kudos for the ironic inclusion of Invasion of the Body Snatchers' Kevin McCarthy!)
Let me level with you here: I just Googled "top werewolf movies," and the major differences between the lists (only two even attempting to number more than ten) was in which order to rank the same few decent movies in this genre. Further, I make a distinction between "wolfmen" and "werewolves" along the same lines as between Frankenstein's monster and Romero's dead. When you've got Teen Wolf and the thoroughly terrible Nicholson/Pfeiffer/Spader vehicle Wolf placing, you're faced with some slim fucking pickings. On those terms, Howling is one of the best and most influential werewolf movies of all time. It isn't especially good outside those terms, though, so you'd better go into this thing in serious heat for werewolf action.
Extras?
What Is It? Horror Dramedy.
Who Is In It? Steed and Mrs. Genre Actress. Kevin McCarthy. John Carradine. Slim Pickens. More cameos.
Should I See It? Maybe.
By choice or by fate, I've been following the Howling series of movies out of sequence, allowing me to judge them on their own slight merits as individual films. I first saw Howling 2: Your Sister is a Werewolf decades back on home video, and a recent revisitation revealed it was more rivetingly rotten than I remembered. An absolute must see in trash television for the horror fiend. I next tried Howling IV: The Original Nightmare, as boring as the other flick was delightfully incompetent. That one was essentially a remake of the original, and now that I'm reviewing it, I can finally determine if it was fruit off a poisonous tree.
The credits run over snow on a TV screen as snippets of dialogue from the forthcoming film are heard, followed by Patrick Macnee as a patronizing therapist on a news show. As this isn't Videodrome, shit's egregious. Eventually, Dee Wallace shows up as the wimpiest, least convincing investigative journalist in something like ever. She's wired for sound while she makes her way alone to a rendevous with a serial killer in the red light district. As you've already predicted, there are audio problems, and she winds up locked in a private viewing room, rape porn playing as she faces the murderer. This might sound intense to you, but everything (aside from the movie-within-a-movie) is handled so delicately, there's no tension. Who'd want to hurt the mom from E.T./Cujo/Critters, right? In short order, all that's left is to clean up and report the scoop... except our star represses her memories and develops stage fright. While Dee goes to the shrink's nutter camp, a couple of her associates from the TV station follow-up on leads.
At this point, the primary story reconnects to the pseudo-remake, Howling IV, a review I ended with "this movie just leaves you dead inside." Here, though lumbering, I didn't find the flick an alternative to doctor assisted-suicide. There's a bunch of cameos and in-jokes for horror afficianados, the acting quality is up to soap opera standards, there's some decent gore effects, and it at least feels like a legitimate movie intended to be projected onto a multiplex's screen. While the first werewolf doesn't (briefly) show until forty-two minutes in, there's a decent set-up to get through, believeable characters and a logical narrative to work with. Even taking that into account, the second round of full-frontal nudity unveils before the fifty minute mark (butterface and BDSM notwithstanding.)
Werewolves really get to roaming early in the second hour, with some strong make-up work (even if they do go nuts with the bladders and exagerated sculpting.) Along with An American Werewolf In London, this film defined the screen adaptation of werewolves and quality transormation sequences right up to the present. The actors really know how to sell the prosthetics, moving with a lupine ferocity, and contrast mightily against the terrible efforts that followed in this series. Unfortunately, they're too often betrayed by cheap lighting, tepid direction, and poorly staged action sequences, plus there are a lot of plot holes and dated social commentary. The movie's pace picks up fantastically at about the time you need to linger a while and let the potential for horror set in. Instead, it's mostly action beats and swift resolutions, though the final one is a doozy (and kudos for the ironic inclusion of Invasion of the Body Snatchers' Kevin McCarthy!)
Let me level with you here: I just Googled "top werewolf movies," and the major differences between the lists (only two even attempting to number more than ten) was in which order to rank the same few decent movies in this genre. Further, I make a distinction between "wolfmen" and "werewolves" along the same lines as between Frankenstein's monster and Romero's dead. When you've got Teen Wolf and the thoroughly terrible Nicholson/Pfeiffer/Spader vehicle Wolf placing, you're faced with some slim fucking pickings. On those terms, Howling is one of the best and most influential werewolf movies of all time. It isn't especially good outside those terms, though, so you'd better go into this thing in serious heat for werewolf action.
Extras?
- Unleashing the Beast: Making "The Howling" 54 minute documentary broken into five sections featuring all the principles, living and dead. Plenty of insider information and an all around pleasant atmosphere. FYI, on-screen husband Christopher Stone was engaged to Dee Wallace when he got the job.
- Making A Monster Movie: Inside The Howling 1981 interview footage, which looks great given its age. A shame this wasn't incorporated into the previous doc, as there's redundancy, but still worth a look at about eight minutes.
- Commentary Track Entirely missable.
- Deleted Scenes A few cute moments, but nothing essential.
- Outtakes Brief and mildly amusing.
- Stills
- Theatrical Trailers
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Pepsi Maximum Challenge: Pepsi Natural
While I was down in Mexico recently, I decided to try a number of different soda for variety's sake, and Pepsi Natural had to be the most interesting. Per its press release, Natural consists of "lightly sparkling water, natural sugar, natural caramel and kola nut extract. The amber-hued cola gets its color from natural caramel and natural apple extract. From the amount of bubbles to the foam that rises to the top of beverage when it's poured, Pepsi Natural offers a brand-new cola experience."
From this, you may rightly gather that Pepsi Natural is more than a bit fruity. It goes down well enough, but then this queer caramel/nutty aftertaste kicks in. You may go in for that sort of thing cold, but as it warms/flattens, you'll get whiplash from the funky kick this stuff delivers. I brought one of those funky 2.5 liter Mexican bottles home with me, but didn't crack it for a week. The first pour offered a six inch head of diehard foam, and once it dissipated enough, a second attempt to pour saw my bottle explode all over the kitchen. Handle with extreme care.
Pepsi Natural is an interesting change of pace for the pop curious, but I started to resent it with prolonged exposure. Also, at roughly twelve and a half calories per ounce, it ain't remotely diet. Anyway, it's being test-marketed in ten major U.S. cities, so hopefully you'll get the chance to try it yourself soon enough.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
The Pepsi Maximum Challenge
I never had much use for Coca-Cola. I've always found the most popular option suspect, found the taste just "okay," and naturally gravitate away from the bright/red end of the spectrum towards the dark/blue. Meanwhile, while I dug the patriotic cans, second-best option Pepsi always tasted flat and boring. So, for most of my life, I was an unfaithful, alternative drinker (though I had more flings with Mountain Dew than most.)
Well, a man gets older, puts on a few pounds, loses some teeth, and realizes its time to settle down with a nice diet soda. This happened to me about 2 1/2 years ago, but never content to settle, I gave just about every one on the market a spin. What I discovered fairly early on was that Pepsi Max was the one to beat.
Pepsi Max has been available outside the United States since 1993, but key sweetening agent acesulfame potassium kept it off the shelves for years pending FDA approval. Per Wikipedia, "A separate formulation of "Pepsi Max" was introduced in the United States on June 1, 2007 as 'Diet Pepsi Max'. Unlike the international beverage, its ingredient label mentions ginseng, and the drink contains nearly twice the caffeine (46 mg vs. 24 mg per 8 fl oz) compared to Diet Pepsi." Let me tell you, as an alternative to "doing the Dew," the Max was a delightful substitute. It had a bite missing from regular Pepsi and Coke alike, and I felt the difference an "Invigorating Cola." It also had a very subdued, sophisticated logo I was all over. I drank the stuff like life water, and if it's true that aspartame gives brain lesions to lab rats, I will be your perfect first human case study for extreme abuse.
I was extremely disappointed when "diet Pepsi Max" tried to appeal to the beer & hotdogs crowd by switching to a more pointy, extreme logo. It was like Rob Liefeld had taken over art chores on an Alan Moore book, but in pop form. A diet drink for bros, yo! Blessedly, the revamp did not extend to the drink itself, and the new look was swiftly nixed by a line wide revamp.
After years of ugly, overly busy logos, Pepsi went all Eurocentric and riding the Obama wave, simplified their look like crazy. Now simply "pepsi max," it looks like Ikea, but still tastes borderline illegal, and I can totally roll with that... especially if you plaster it all over Kim Kardashian's ass.
And so, I will now take (in truth continue) the Pepsi Maximum Challenge, in which I will compare the Cadillac of diet pop with its many competitors. I do this because I'm obsessive, and because I'd like a different kind a filler post from when I get behind.
THE PEPSI MAXIMUM CHALLENGERS:
Pepsi Natural
Friday, October 2, 2009
2005 Crisis on Infinite Earths: The Absolute Edition cover by George Pérez
This has been a really tricky image for me to find in the past, because search results usually turn up the gigantic Perez/Ross painting for the '90s hardcover instead. This is the master solo, depicting the moment Kid Flash Wally West realized his mentor was (comic book) dead, and he would have to fill Barry Allen's shoes (for a couple of decades.)
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