A Fistful of Criterion Wannabes! (Brad's Picks)

This has been an amazing September.  Because of Riddick, The Family, Prisoners, and Insidious Chapter 2?  Hell no!  This has been an abysmal month for the big screen, even more dull and drab than the summer sequel sludge.  My only hope for cinematic joy was my blu ray player, and my cannonball plunge into The Criterion Collection has been a resilient shot in the arm.  2013 has been a bummer year at the movies, but have no fear, there are decades & decades & decades & decades of great cinema to devour.  If you are looking for a gateway into Film History than there is no better place to start than with a Criterion disc.  And thanks to the good folks over at Janus Films I discovered the works of Akira Kurosawa, Powell & Pressburger, Jules Dassin, and Sam Fuller.  But I'd be lying if I told you I began obsessively collecting spine numbers because of the auteurs.  My Criterion addiction began, like most cinematic obsessions, with genre.  The Silence of the Lambs, Robocop, Hard Boiled.  Criterion might be most renown for their French New Wavers and Japanese Samurais, but The Collection certainly has its wild side.  See Seconds, Kiss Me Deadly, Repo Man, and The Game just to name a few.  They have it all.  And randomly snatching from their distribution list is a brilliant way to spend a September.

I'm often asked by those not-in-the-know, "What is a Criterion film?"  My simple go-to answer is that it's "A Classic Film Whether You Know It Or Not."  Snarky?  Sure.  But I've never regretted watching a Criterion Release.  Yes, not even Armageddon.  After you've worked your way through a myriad of special features and plowed through a couple of their essays, you will see the wonders of even the Michael Bayiest of Michael Bay Explosion Fests.  Of course, if you handed Criterion over to me, would I give Tiny Furniture the spine number privilege?  No.  I am a genre fanboy after all.  So forget rights issues, and blah, blah, blah excuses - here's what terror I would unleash upon the company...

5.  The Bad Lieutenant - Port of Call New Orleans (Werner Herzog, 2009):  It is a downright crime that Herzog is not yet represented in The Collection.  The closest he comes is in the Fitzcaraldo documentary Burden of Dreams (Spine # 287), but close is not close enough.  Anchor Bay put out a really nice box set of the Kinski/Herzog collaborations several years back, but it is certainly time that Aguirre - Wrath of God is given the HD Special Edition treatment.  However, I'm going with the more recent Bad Lieutenant because it needs your attention.  Herzog nearly recaptures the glory of his classic efforts, and The Bad Lieutenant holds the last great performance from Nicolas Cage with a perfect example of his Mega Acting power.  His Detective Terrance is the scariest mixture of madness and intoxication since Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet.  Plus you've got dancing souls, lucky crack pipes, and invisible iguanas.  Mondo Posters has already produced some rather brilliant art for the film (see above), so just slap that sucker on the cover and we're good to go.

4.  A Boy And His Dog (L.Q. Jones, 1975):  Only months ago, Shout Factory released this weirdo picture on blu ray.  It's a great disc with a stunning transfer and a nifty conversation between director Jones & short story artist Harlan Ellison.  But I am not satisfied.  I want a Mr. Arkadin style box set here.  Give me the film, an isolated Ellison rant track, the original story, and some killer Richard Corben cover art.  And how about an in-depth documentary detailing A Boy And His Dog's watershed reinvention of the Post-Apocalypse genre with a confessional George Miller offering all of Mad Max's royalties to Ellison?  I'm sure the little tyrant would appreciate that.

3.  Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (J. Lee Thompson, 1972):  I love the Apes franchise.  A few weeks ago I dropped the original film on my Top 20 Films of All Time, but I could easily swap Part 1 for Part 4.  Conquest is an angry spit in the face of humanity.  Just watch (or read above) Caesar's climactic tirade against man, and witness cinema's greatest social exorcism.  Guys in monkey masks?  No way.  Roddy McDowell gives a towering performance behind the latex and false teeth.  The final twist of the first film might have had a fist pump of rage against the machine, but Conquest swings the hammer, smashing the idiocy of racism while understanding the pain of oppression.  This is the art of science-fiction.  Grab Devin Faraci for the essay & commentary track, and assemble Phantom City Creative for the art.

2.  The Gunfighter (Henry King, 1950):  I came very close to suggesting a Roger Corman School of Acting Box Set a la the BBS series, but made a last minute change preferring the film that launched the mega producer down his B Movie-blazing career.  It's a somber, low budget Western in which Gregory Peck's outlaw can't sip a drink in a saloon without quick drawing against some upstart punk.  Corman leant some words to the screenplay, but when he was never given the credit he fled the studio system to make his own movies.  The rest is exploitation history.  You want more reasons why this belongs in The Collection than read my cineAWESOME review from last year.

1.  Point Blank (John Boorman, 1967):  Here is a film I just can't shut up about.  You should already know that John Boorman's trippy nightmare adaptation of Richard Stark's novel The Hunter is my 7th Favorite Film of All Time.  The more time passes, the more I think about it.  Lee Marvin is a one-track thug.  He's double crossed by his wife and partner, but it's less about personal revenge and more about what he's owed.  The rage is certainly in the book, but Boorman brings some Kafkan blunt force trauma with him.  Inevitability.  Futility.  Frustration.  A real beast.  Steven Soderbergh & Boorman did a commentary track for a Warner Brothers disc a few years back, so just port that over to the Criterion.  But let's add a really swell remembrance of Donald Westlake aka Richard Stark, and throw in a Darwyn Cooke mini-comic for fun.  The Midnight Marauder poster above should definitely be used for the cover.

Pssst!  Darwyn Cooke's Slayground Adaptation is Coming Soon!

--Brad

Brad's Week in Dork! (8/25/13-8/31/12)

I caught my last film of the summer this week (You're Next) and I'm thankful that this latest horror gem made its way onto my Fistful of Summer 2013.  But the real big screen treat was catching Razorback at the AFI Silver.  Yeah, you read that right.  The Australian Giant Pig movie played this week at The American Film Institute.  What next?!?!?  Dead End Drive-In!?!?!  Uh...that's next week.  Ha!  We certainly do live in a Brave New World.  I've never been happier as a film fan living in the Washington DC area; this may not be L.A. or New York, but we're on our way.

The rest of the week was filled with blu rays and VOD.  Rewatched a couple of 2013 releases, and both Pain & Gain and Trance have shot to the top of my favorite films of this year.  The Rock and Rosario Dawson certainly deliver fun genre bending turns with their respective roles.  Very different, but bother are equally as demented.  The less said about Nicolas Cage in Frozen Ground the better.  How the mighty have fallen (I know, old news, right?).  Matthew McConaughey is certainly making a play for this year's Actor of the Year...too bad none of his movies are quite as good as his performances.  On two separate nights I fell asleep watching Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop 1 & 2 - it's what Netflix was born to do.  And the absolute best movie I watched was A Boy And His Dog.  Holy cow!  It had been a while since my last viewing, and that little beast of a flick floored me.  Truly one of the best blu ray releases of the year.

Razorback:  "Somethin' about blowin' the shit out of a razorback brightens up my day!" This is not simply a Jaws knockoff - it's the ultimate Jaws knockoff! Forget Piranha, forget Orca. They might have the marine life, but Razorback takes the Man vs. Evil Nature plot and uses it to propel its narrative down a music video dreamscape so smokey & cacophonous Tony Scott & Terry Gilliam wake from terror sweats contemplating their failure to capture it's insanity. Bill Kerr is Jake Cullen, a Kangaroo hunter who trades one killing spree for another after a boar the size of a rhino carries off his infant grandson. Partnering with Canadian blank slate Gregory Harrison and wildlife tracker Arkie Whiteley, Kerr navigates an endless display of foreground skulls to rid the outback of the great beast. But is Razorback the real threat, or does the true face of pockmarked evil belong to Dicko Baker and his piggy pleasure squeals?  A lost 80s classic well worth your attention.

You're Next:  This was a deceptive little movie. After years of the internet hype machine, and a batch of mediocre-to-terrible trailers from Lionsgate, I was ready to dismiss You're Next as just another slasher flick in an already redundant genre. And for the first twenty or so minutes, I did not give a good god damn about anything happening on screen. Disgruntled family bickering, killers attack, yawn. But then Sharni Vinson (so bendy and proud in Step Up 3D) reveals herself as one tough cookie, her John Carpenter theme starts thumping, and suddenly I'm cheering for a Final Girl in a way I haven't since Ellen Ripley. You're Next is not a dour, dumb teen slasher. It's a crowd pleaser. A violent, root 'em toot 'em siege film that's got more in common with Assault on Precinct 13 than The Strangers. It's fun! And that's the message that's getting lost in the marketing.

The Frozen Ground:  A couple years back I was really championing the mega acting talents of modern day Nicolas Cage. The man was devastating the silver screen with mountaintop performances in The Bad Lieutenant, Kick Ass, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, and Drive Angry. The internet had turned against Cage, but I was right there with him as he sank into Season of the Witch and Ghost Rider 2. Just fun goofy movies elevated by his commitment to absurdity. But then came Trespass. And Seeking Justice. And Stolen. Yeash. Just absolutely boring direct-to-dvd dreck. Sadly, that trend is not broken with The Frozen Ground. It's a far too serious and dull serial killer pursuit picture; it plays like an A&E attempt at The Silence of the Lambs. And haven't we had enough of those already. Cage is mundane and checked out. I'm sure John Cussack is having a ball playing Next Door Evil, but it's a character we've seen a dozen times before and often better. The Frozen Ground is going to be one of those movies I forget fifteen minutes after I write this sentence. Oh yeah, Vanessa Hudgens is a stripper/prostitute damsel. So what? She's abysmal.

Beverly Hills Cop:  The 80s Action Comedy was born with this Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer production, and Eddie Murphy has never been better than he was here as the wisecracking fish-outta-water Axel Foley. His black man assault on rich white society is infectious.  Axel Foley is the cross hair on Reagan Era consumption, but Beverly Hills Cop is too damn funny to be a genuine cultural critique. Great music, great one-liners, great violence, great Bronson Pinchot. Anything beyond that is just the cherry on top.

Sweet Tooth Volume 1 - Out of the Deep Woods:  Here's a strange one I've been hearing good things about for quite some time now.  Given the fact that I've recently enjoyed Lemire's Underwater Welder, Trillium, and - *gulp* - Green Arrow, I thought it was high time that I tackled his weirdo post-apocalypse book.  The funny thing is, it's not that weird.  Sure, the world has gone to pot.  Children are born these days with antlers, hooves, and snouts, but so far Sweet Tooth displays some fairly typical world-gone-by tropes.   After his pop slips into the nether, our hybrid hero Gus attempts to break free from his religious fear with the help of sharpshooter woodsman, Mr. Jepperd.  But do friends exist in the Apocalypse?  Volume 1 certainly doesn't leave Gus in a better place than where we met him, and by all accounts life is going to get a whole helluva lot rougher before this series reaches its end.  The rest of the Sweet Tooth volumes are at the top of my shopping list for this year's Baltimore Comic Con.

Pain and Gain:  "When it started, America was just a handful of scrawny colonies. Now it's the most buffed, pumped up country on the planet. That's pretty rad." I've never cared for the Mark Wahlberg tough guy routine. I just don't buy it. At the same time, I'm not sure there are too many other actors out there that can achieve the comic heights of his self deprecation. Boogie Nights, The Other Guys, Pain & Gain. When he's playing dolts with delusions of grandeur, Wahlberg is your guy, and his Daniel Lugo just might be his greatest bonehead creation yet. Too bad he gets completely overshadowed by Dwayne Johnson's coke fiend Jesus freak, El Dad. His weak-link convict earns more laughs out of the depravity displayed on screen than any other Bayified scumbag. And speaking of Michael Bay, Pain & Gain is his crowning achievement as well. Where we've all chastised the fratboy for his homophobic, sophomoric, and misogynistic sight gags in the past, his pretty picture fart joke sensibilities are essential to Pain & Gain's success.  Based on True Events?  Yeah.  Crime for laughs?  Yeah.  Awkward?  Yeah.  But it's damn entertaining.

Mud:  The Matthew McConaughey renaissance continues with this Southern Gothic coming-of-age story. Two boys dealing with their own family melodrama discover McConaughey's cross healed hobo living in a boat in the forest. Jeff Nichols, the director of Shotgun Stories & Take Shelter, certainly knows how to pull great performances from his players, but I've found his screenplays lacking in the climax department. The narrative twists are telegraphed a mile out, and I'm more than a little full of the innocence-lost plots.  McConaughey makes it work, but the story is too rote to be memorable.

Beverly Hills Cop II:  "You can never have too much firepower."  After their successful collaboration on Top Gun, Jerry Bruckheimer, Don Simpson, and Tony Scott reteam for this hit-the-beats sequel.  Eddie Murphy is dragged back into Beverly Hills after Rony Cox's Captain Bogomil is gunned down by a member of the Alphabet Gang.  Again we get the Axel Foley ogling of swimming pools and strip clubs, but the one-liner attacks seem less important than the sunsets and explosions.  The comedy comes from the back & forth banter between Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, & Murhpy but this sequel is an action film first solidifying the Bruckheimer/Simpson formula that would go on to bust blocks with Bad Boys, The Rock, and even Pirates of the Caribbean.   It's a slick flick, and a lot of fun, but it's certainly not as refreshingly humorous as the original.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World:  Edgar Wright's bombastic celebration of all things geek - video games!  comics!  anime!  music!  movies!  manga!  hair dye! - is also our generation's answer to The Graduate.  Michael Cera is another lovelorn misanthrope struggling with his apathy when Mary Elizabeth Winstead's roller blading Amazon literally steps out of his dreams to wreak emotional as well as physical havoc.  If Scott Pilgrim wants to get with this beauty he must battle & defeat her League of Seven Evil Exes.  This brilliant structure centered around Street Fighter kombat allows for one hilarious gonzo encounter after the next; the highlights being Chris Evans's skater stunt team and Brandon Routh's telekinetic, vegan douche bag.  You probably have to be of a certain age to appreciate the surreal landscape, but for those folks in the know, Scott Pilgrim vs The World is a biting mockery of our pop culture obsessed lives.  Love & Self Respect may be the answer, but can you achieve such goals while swamped in the imagination of others?  At the very least, Scott Pilgrim proves that Edgar Wright is more than just a Cornetto man, and he's probably the most visually enticing director to land under the umbrella of Marvel Studios.  Forget Avengers 2 and Batman vs Superman, Edgar Wright's Ant-Man is certainly the most fascinating superhero film of 2015.

Trance:  "Bring it to me."  A second viewing of Danny Boyle's latest sealed my appreciation for this neo-noir.  Trance begins as one of those long-con mindbender movies, but as the screenplay works its way to the end, the film reveals itself not as an M Night Shyamalan twister concerned with plot-flipping but a villainous deconstruction of character, proud in the onion its peeled.  The film has heists, gangsters, amnesia, violence, and quite possibly the most interesting Femme Fatale I've experienced (neo or otherwise).  And the fact that this Femme Fatale is played by Rosario Dawson, an actress I've adored for years but who never seems to get the right part, is a real treat unto itself.  This is not Kiss Me Deadly or Chinatown.  Trance is very much a Danny Boyle film, shot with vibrant digital photography and crafting a style decades removed from Sam Spade.  Boyle may have gotten more acolades for his last couple of Oscar baiters, but for my money Trance is the most exciting film he's made since 28 Days Later.

Welcome To The Punch:  I was hoping to follow one dashing James McAvoy scumbag with another, but unfortunately, this Cops & Robbers saga is nothing more than a long snooze.  Mark Strong is a gangland daddy drawn out of the underworld when his son catches a bullet.  It's McAvoy's job to bring him in, but when the boys in blue reveal themselves to be the true villains, the two rivals must team-up John Woo style.  'Course Eran Creevy is no 90s era John Woo, and the action is nothing more than quick cutting and smokescreen i.e. boring.

A Boy and His Dog:  You know how critics (and know-it-all bloggers like myself) will say, "They don't make movies like that anymore?"  And often times you can just simply dismiss that as the bullshit it truly is.  However, with A Boy and His Dog, that annoying sentiment is most certainly the case.  In fact, the real answer is that there is only one A Boy and His Dog.  In the year 2024, World War IV granted the Earth the Nuclear Wasteland it always feared.  It lasted four days and by the end of it all, the only occupations in existence were marauder and rapist.  Unless you're a telepathic dog, then you also have the option of being a female hunter.  That's right, A Boy and His Dog is the story of Don Johnson's rapist and the dog who helps him get his prey.  It's an ugly, mean, angry film.  A movie that could have only come from the mind of science fiction writer Harlan Ellison, and its a miracle that character actor LQ Jones managed to bring it to the silver screen.  Jones had directed only one other film before this, and would only direct an episode of The Incredible Hulk after this.  It is a masterpiece of the genre.  Yes, yes, yes A Boy and His Dog is the precursor to Mad Max and a half dozen other Apocalypse stories.  But this is not anti-hero cinema.  Don Johnson is an evil little shit.  But he's the product of our ignorance, our need for war.  Sure, it's all very hippy dippy, but you gotta respect the rage behind the pen and behind the camera.  Watching the special features on the Shout Factory bluray, you get an understanding of the massive quest it took to get the film adapted, and I am so excited for all the new fanboys this disc will certainly create.

--Brad

BALTIMORE COMIC-CON 2013 part 1

- anticipation -

In the fall of 2004, a bunch of us drove to Atlanta for Dragon-Con.  Warren Ellis was crossing the Atlantic for the first time in a decade and Harlan Ellison was going to be there.  There were certainly many other noted guests in attendance, but these were the two I drove 26 hours to see.  While waiting in line for the early morning Ellis signing, we overheard a conversation that got, to my mind, rather foolish.  This woman, who was a published author, was going on about how different things are once you’re behind the curtain.  [emphasis mine]   As a published author – and, by extension, a professional – she did not read fiction for entertainment anymore; she couldn’t.  She continued to explain how she no longer got excited about meeting authors, in that “fan” sense.  Her rationale seemed to be that she was now part of this elite fellowship, and a fannish reaction would be unbecoming.  But, to my ear, it all sounded pretentious and stupid.  You couldn’t just excise that part of you enamored with stories and storytellers.  It was, and still is, an elitist attitude that was off-putting and felt disingenuous, as if this woman were putting on airs to impress those around her.  I wasn’t.

But what do I know?

It has now been eight years since Dan and I first tabled at a convention.  That experience was kind of devastating (WARNING: do not take your self-published, black-and-white, non-superhero comics to a big convention, just don’t, especially if they’re the first comics you’ve ever done).  But each successive convention has been better.  We’ve learned a lot from the experiences, had a few short stories published, and grown as writers through the only way possible, the grind of writing regularly, every day, no matter how inspired we feel.  Our names aren’t known and we haven’t landed that first big project, but we are writers (and Harlan Ellison, again, says that if you write, you’re a writer; you don’t need to be published or have an agent or whatever, you just need to do the work, and respect the work, and strive to improve – though, let’s be honest, being published is nice).  And, as we prepare for this year’s Baltimore Comic-Con – the first time Dan and I have returned to a big show as exhibitors since that initial debacle noted above – I find my inner fanboy revving up.

For the most part, since the devastation that was Wizard World Chicago: 2005, Dan and I have set up at small shows like SPX and the CGS Super Show.  Not only are those shows more intimate and less costly, but that is also where our audience is.  We write stories generally reproduced in black-and-white within genres that range along all points of the spectrum.  And I love those shows.  But Matt, who wrote a great fantasy story for Warrior27, our comics/prose anthology, kept telling us that Baltimore is a good show, that we could sell our books there, that it would be worth our while.  We always held off because Baltimore takes place within a week of SPX, and there’s no way Dan and I could take the time off to do both shows.  So we had to choose, and the Small Press Expo always won.  Until this year.

In 2003, before we started creating our own stories and exhibiting, Dan and I and a few others went to the Baltimore Comic-Con.  That was the year the hurricane had devastated Maryland, and the hotel where we reserved a room was without electricity (but that’s another story).  Despite this, the show went on, and even though we only spent one day there, I had a great time.  That day, ten years ago, I met Scott Kolins, José Villarrubia, Matt Wagner, and John K. Snyder III, and I had a great conversation with Chris Staros, among many other experiences.  It was a great show and a great time, and I’m looking forward to heading back in a few weeks.

This year I’m excited by the prospects of meeting the likes of Jim Starlin and Dave Gibbons and Greg Larocque and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, as well as finally meeting my collaborator on the first story I placed with a publisher – Jason Copland whose work on Kill All Monsters! with Michael May is fabulous and whose art graced my UFO story, “Life is Funny,” for Ape Entertainment.  And the guest list keeps getting bigger, with the likes of Michael Golden, Mark Waid, Art & Franco, Paris Cullins, Joe Hill, and the like.  Yeah, I may be a “professional,” but I’m looking forward to getting a chance to talk with some of the writers and artists who’ve created some of my most fondly remembered, and most-read, comics.  That will be a blast.

But I’ll also have my “pro” hat on.  I’m anxious to see who’s in artist’s alley and talk shop with them, and maybe make contacts that will pan out in a collaboration down the line.  Valiant and Boom! (and, apparently, IDW, though they haven’t been added to the official list yet) will be exhibiting, and I’ll have copies of my work on hand to share with them.  So, I won’t fully shuck off the “professional” moniker. 

Which means I need to start preparing.  I’ll talk about that in part 2 of this series.

- chris

Check out more from Chris at Warrior 27

Matt’s Week in Dork! (1/1/12 to 1/7/12)

    My first week without reliable access to the internet has frequently reminded me of the old Onion headline about an internet outage plunging the nation into productivity.  I read a graphic novel and finished a book in the first two days.  And in the latter half of the week, I started working on some various writing projects while also doing some major cleaning/rearranging around my living space.  Got a lot of my books out of boxes and up on shelves, which is really nice.  And that let me see a bunch of books I will either never read, or never read again.  Three plus boxes of books are now ready for a trip to the used book store.  However, without NetFlix instant and with being fairly busy, I got very little in the way of movie watching done. 


Doctor Who: Season Six:  The Doctor and friends are up to their old tricks in another round of the updated series.  Matt Smith has become my favorite of the new actors, I think, and his companions Amy and Rory are excellent.  In fact, by the end of season six, I think Rory may be second only to Leela as my favorite companion.  Lots of strange, mind bending stuff is revealed, playing on several ideas that have been introduced over the seasons.  Though it certainly has some major differences, especially in tone, to the classic series (which itself had vast differences over the years), everything still feels right, somehow.  Good stuff.  And, I think The Silence may even top the Weeping Angels in the creepy factor.

Hugo:  Another great love letter to Film, Hugo is filled with all the wonder and excitement that the movies bring out in me.  Two really good kid actors anchor the film, but the cast of adults is also fantastic, as is the story and imagery.  What starts out as a fairly standard lone-kid adventure movie turns into something so much more as the mysteries begin to be revealed.  One of 2011’s best movies, and one any fan of the movies should see.

Doctor Who: Enlightenment:  The third part of the whole Dark/Light Guardian story is certainly weird, if not especially great.  A bunch of detached beings run a crazy race through space on classic naval vessels.  Weird.  Worth a watch and it’s got some excellent guest actors.  Alas, it’s fairly forgettable.

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark:  While watching Insidious last week, I was reminded of all that I didn’t like about horror films of the late 60s and 70s.  Watching this movie, I was reminded of the good.  It too had the feel of a horror movie from the 70s, but where Insidious failed, this succeeded.  Cool, creepy creatures, a mysterious location, shrouded history and myth and even a connection to Arthur Machen.  Some of the characters are a bit broad, especially Guy Pearce as the put upon father who can’t see past his own career to notice his kid in danger.  But, Katie Holmes is surprisingly good.  An unusual modern horror film in that it didn’t bore me to tears.

Appaloosa:  Star and director Ed Harris along with cinematographer Dean Semler sure can make a beautiful looking film.  Harris and Mortensen are excellent as two hired lawmen, exuding the gruff cool of dangerous men.  Unfortunately, Renee Zellweger as the female interest in the film is straight-up annoying in every scene she’s in, dragging down the overall quality of the picture.  Her character is interesting, but the actress simply isn’t up to it.  However, the film is pretty good.  And there are some interesting moral quandaries presented, too, with few answers even suggested.  Probably the most realistic shootouts I’ve ever seen, too.  Upon second viewing, I’m struck by the relationship between Harris and Mortensen.  I really enjoy watching the friendship between partners, and all the subtle exchanges between the two.

    I also watched a handful more episodes of Space Academy.  The show is OK, but never quite reaches the levels of imagination it could have.  And the cast is wonky.  The little kid annoying, and the ‘dashing’ lead guy looks like an extra confused Joey Lawrence.  Jason of Star Command was certainly better, not just in production but in writing.

   
    I managed to finish The Defiant Agent by Andre Norton.  I’d been picking away at it on my commute to work for a couple weeks, but wasn’t putting in any serious time/effort.  Without the internet to suck up so much of my time, I banged out that book in very little time.

    And, I still had time to read the Harlan Ellison graphic novel Phoenix Without Ashes.  Look, I know he’s beloved, but I’m not the biggest Ellison fan.  90% of that comes from the man himself.  Seeing him in interviews, on Politically Incorrect, and reading about his litigious antics, he just comes off as the worlds biggest ass (please don’t sue me, Mr. Ellison, for expressing my reaction to your public persona).  Now, that said, he has frequently been attached to projects I’ve enjoyed quite a bit.  He wrote one of the best episodes of Star Trek, wrote some pretty good Outer Limits (even one of the better New Outer Limits episodes was based on something of his), worked on Babylon 5, and though he struck his name from it, the short lived, but very cool 70s show, The Star Lost.

    It is that final tidbit, his work on The Star Lost that ties in to the graphic novel.  Phoenix Without Ashes is pretty much the pilot episode of that show done as a comic.  The idea is great, and it introduces a lot of potential, which the show went on to explore, though it never got very far.  I love the concepts.  Classic sci-fi stuff, with semi-primitive folk discovering they’re living in the ruins of a once great civilization.  Exploring not only the ruins, but the mysteries that created them.  Very cool.  However, here’s my frustration.  This seems to be a stand alone project.  I’ve seen no listing for a volume 2 or any kind of continuation.  This is an introduction, but it seems to have been left to stand on its own.  Erg.  To a degree, that’s more frustrating than the show, which got a season, but ended at a really interesting place.  Anyway, for the ideas alone, it’s worth checking out.  Sure, they’re nothing really new, but they’re done well.  And if you find out there’s going to be more to it, please let me know.

    On Sunday, Ben and I traveled once more into the DC, where we visited The National Archives.  If you’re in DC, check it out.  It works much better as an American History museum than the actual American History Museum.  It has lots of very cool exhibits, including some very interesting stuff about patents and inventions.  And, of course, the documents on display are impressive, though the room they’re in is quite dark, and many of the documents are faded past the point of being legible.  Still, you can almost taste the history.

    So, I’m learning what people did before the internet.  And you know what?  It’s not all bad.  Don’t get me wrong, the internet is awesome and a great tool.  And as soon as I’m able, I’ll get myself plugged back in.  But sometimes it’s nice to tune out for a while, take time to look around, and get back to some things you liked before instant communication became an everyday thing.  Heck, I almost feel like writing letters to folks.  Just for fun.  I’m not going to, but the thought has crossed my mind.

-Matt.

Dork Art: Edith Keeler Must Die!

Found over at Planet Pulp, this City on the Edge of Forever print by Brian Hefner has me jonsing to dive into some original Trek.  But I still gotta finish my run on TNG...stalled out on the third season...gotta get back into it.

--Brad