Brad's Week In Dork! (9/2/12-9/8/12)

Oh yeah.  This week was all kinds of fun.  Sure, despite climaxing at the most fantastic comics-comics Comic Book Convention, I didn't read a single issue (however, I did start Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian and it's crazy good) and I only consumed a handful of flicks, but I had an absolute blast during the last leg of my Reverse Coen Brothers marathon and the Big Screen Double feature I did on Wednesday was incredibly enjoyable.  Something that's been quite the challenge during this disappointing Summer season.

TV OF THE WEEK!

Walking Dead - Season 2:  Yeeeeaaaaaaaaah.  So, I like Walking Dead.  But I like it only okay.  However, I plowed through the second season in just a couple of days.  I really like Andrew Lincoln.  And Jon Bernthal turns Shane into an interesting and even (sometimes) likable character which never had a chance to occur in the book.  But the female characters are terrible.  With the exception of Maggie, all the women on this show are weak, hysterical, wishy-washy, and just plain boring.  Lori!  Just die already!  Andrea, lay off the tough macho suicidal blather.  And then there's Dale.  Pathetic, hopeless, self-rightous ass.  It's not complete garbage.  I find myself compelled each episode to see what happens next, but it just is not as fun as it should be on the re-watch.  And it's nowhere near as brutal or as shocking with the plot twists as Kirkman's far superior comic book.  Which reminds me, I really want to restart the comic from the beginning--suffer Kirkman's character torture.  But don't worry, I'm still really curious to see AMC's Michone & The Governor next season but I'm going in a cautious observer.

MOVIES OF THE WEEK!

Miller's Crossing:  "When I've raised hell you'll know it." My favorite Coen Brothers film. My favorite gangster film. And my fourth favorite film of all time. Miller's Crossing is a crushingly somber story of a man who doesn't want to chase his hat, but does so anyway. Gabriel Byrne is a cold, calculating mob enforcer struggling to navigate the violent mob war between the Tommy Gun artistry of Albert Finney and the ethically obsessed Jon Polito. And it's not just simply endlessly-quotable like every other Coen Brothers flick, it's deliciously pornographically obsessed with hard heavy jazzy gangland language and the result is an aural landscape similar to the purple prose of HBO's Deadwood. Watch out for the high hat, listen for the rumpus, and beware the gory hate of J.E. Freeman's The Dane. It should also be noted that this is the last collaboration with cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld; he may not be as painterly as future collaborator Roger Deakins, but man, he perfectly captures that Rashomon forest and those handsome men in hats.

Premium Rush:  "The Whole City Hates You!" A seemingly nostalgic update of the totally radical bicycle movies of the 1980s like Quicksilver, Rad, BMX Bandits, and Breaking Away with the added hipster zen philosophy of Joseph Gordon-Levitt. "The Bike Wants To Go Fast." "Brakes Are Death." Premium Rush is a silly, quick 90 minutes in which JGL uses his slow-motion cycler vision to navigate the myriad paths to inevitable New York City road kill. Michael Shannon is the corrupt Detective Monday, gnashing his way through the bike messenger pest problem so clearly overrunning the city. Probably not the film 2012 is going to be remembered for, but Premium Rush still has a chance to go down as a cult classic thanks to its ridiculous earnest and Free Tibet, Anti-China mcguffin.

Lawless:  Three violent bootlegger brothers ignite a moonshine war in Prohibition era Virginia when the youngest takes inspiration from Gary Oldman's tommy gunner and the Chicago Way gets greedy for that Southern money. Shia LaBeouf takes some serious bloody beatings before taking the reigns from his lawless kin, and it only took a couple of gurgling smackdowns before I accepted him as the protagonist. Really appreciated how, with the exception of Shia & Jessica Chastain, everyone in the cast (including all the hideous extras) seemed ripped from the Dick Tracy freakshow comic strip. Tom Hardy continues his trend of grunting, wide shouldered brutes and Guy Pearce looks like a demon fled from hell with his eyebrow sneers and black gel hair. Both actors are hilarious when they're not being complete grotesques, and the film might suffer a little from their scene stealing. Lawless (hate that title) is full of brutality and death, but it's fun with the family and it never gets as dark as it probably should. But I'm still waiting for director John Hillcoat & writer Nick Cave to equal the brilliant horror of their Australian Western, The Proposition.  Lawless is not quite there fellas.

Raising Arizona:  Technically the first Coen Brothers film I ever saw. I was about 8 or 9. My cousin Chris was a fan. But I didn't get it. Now, at 33 and a die hard Coen Brothers obsessive, I love this weirdo, surrealist Romantic Comedy. The maniac method of Nicolas Cage is perfectly suited for the horrifyingly potent weeping of Holly Hunter. Then there's that haunting yodeling score, the birth of John Goodman's endless screaming, Sam Raimi's Ram-O-Cam dog chase, and the demonic biker bounty hunter. Raising Arizona is classic Coen, odd & adorable.

The Slammin' Salmon:  Another solid entry from the Broken Lizard comedy troupe; it falls somewhere between Club Dread and Beerfest, but nowhere near as fantastic as Super Troopers. The boys are all excellent, especially Erik Stolhanske's uber-tanned Guy and Jay Chandrasekhar's aptly named Nuts. But the real star of the show is Michael Clarke Duncan. His foul-mouthed, quick tempered Rope-a-dope entrepreneur is bodily shakingly hilarious, and just when I thought I could catch a breath he spurts another ridiculously aggressive "WHATEVER MOTHER FUCKER!" The gentle giant might always be remembered for his supernatural turn in The Green Mile, but it's his Cleon Salmon that sits at the top of his performances.  Plus, you've got Dick Lobo himself, Lance Henriksen grinning all over the place.

Blood Simple:  "The world is full of complainers." The first film from Joel & Ethan Coen is a nostalgic noir layered in the demented humor we would come to demand from their later films, but Blood Simple has a feverish nightmare quality not found in their other works. As characters react to unseen forces and the comedy of errors builds to climactic horror you feel trapped in the fog of cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld's slow dollies and smokey lighting. Frances McDormand & John Getz are perfectly fine as the untrusting love birds, but it's M Emmet Walsh's monstrous Texan and Dan Hedaya's dribbling cuckold that scar the audience--their villainy is deliciously ripe and the terror they bring upon the couple is hilarious for those troubled members in the crowd.

So, now having completed my run of The Coens, what film comes out on top?  I struggled with the below list, ranking their films from best to worst.  But "worst" is a silly word to throw around with The Coens.  Their only film I could classify as bad is #15, Intolerable Cruelty.  And it's not a complete suckfest.  It's just a tremendous disappointment when comparing it to the others.  And #s 1-14 are pretty freaking fantastic; depending on my mood I could rearrange #s 5-14 in any manner of ways.  Sometimes I might be feeling more the noir light show of Blood Simple and on another day I might be celebrating the comic biblical horror of A Serious Man.

The top spots however, I don't see changing any time soon.  Miller's Crossing remains one of my all time favorite films.  It's lyrical gangster poetry with not-so-subtle splashes of weirdo humor, but it's definitely not a comedy and it's definitely not just a film about men who wear hats.  The Big Lebowski is an epic Raymond Chandler tale twisted through the slacker wisdom of The Dude.  Surreal and just damn funny.  No Country For Old Men shot to the top this month.  I remember liking it in the theater and on my first blu ray rewatch, but now, gosh--I love it so much.  It's the one film that really stands out from the other Coen Brother flicks.  There are slight touches that remind you just who is behind the camera, but for the most part it plays devoid of that outsider humor.  It's a brutal beast of a film that grabs you by the throat, squeezes, chokes you to the point of utter despair and then tosses your gasping body to the curb. No easy answer...in fact, no answers at all.  Barton Fink.  It's the ultimate Coen film.  A celebration of The Torture in Writing.  The Mind might be a uniform worth wearing, but its a snooty bastard ready to put you through all kinds of Hollywood Hell.

1.  Miller's Crossing

2.  The Big Lebowski

3.  No Country For Old Men

4.  Barton Fink

5.  The Man Who Wasn't There

6.  True Grit

7.  Fargo

8.  O Brother, Where Art Thou?

9.  A Serious Man

10.  Burn After Reading

11.  The Ladykillers

12.  Blood Simple

13.  Raising Arizona

14.  The Hudsucker Proxy

15.  Intolerable Cruelty

DORK FIELD TRIP OF THE WEEK!

Baltimore Comic Con 2012:  Ended the week at the Baltimore Convention Center for the 13th Annual Comic Con.  I've stated this elsewhere, but it bears repeating, the Baltimore Comic Con is the best Con for genuine comic book fans.  San Diego is a paradise of general pop culture but you'd be kidding yourself if you didn't recognize the Hollywood industry takeover.  The various Wizard World events across the country (like the Philly show I attended earlier in the year) suffer from a similar celebrity infection.  Don't get me wrong, I love those shows - they're heaven on earth for movie hounds - but if what you want are the funny books than you go to Baltimore to sate that hunger.

Sure, there are some panels you can attend.  We sat in on both the New 52 DC panel with Dan Didio and Tom Brevoort's Marvel NOW panel, but both of the big two companies really didn't bring anything new to the table and even Marvel's slideshow was just a bunch of old info they revealed a few weeks back at Toronto's Fan Expo.  Hopefully one day Baltimore will make more of a splash on the news sites and force the companies to take notice of the fans, but as is right now, Baltimore Comic Con is mainly just a massive warehouse where you can buy toys & comics as well as get a few books signed by your favorite creators.

What that means is that you have to bring some serious cash to enjoy the full experience.  Comic Dealers from all over the East Coast bring their goods - Selling forgotten trader paperbacks for five bucks as well as the good stuff at 50%.  I bought more books this year than I have at any other convention.  I went DC crazy - snagging Grant Morrison's JLA run as well as his Seven Soldiers of Victory hardcovers.  I found his first two Animal Man trades, Darwyn Cooke's Batman: Ego, and I even purchased (at dirt cheap prices) Kevin Smith's latest Batman books.  The only toys I bought were a few Hot Wheels - the Arkham Asylum Batmobile, The A Team van, and K.I.T.T.

I've never seen the con floor so crowded.  The only problem this posed was that since we dragged our asses a little getting down there both days, I was unable to score all the signatures I would have liked.  The line for Garth Ennis (of Preacher fame) was gargantuan.  I stood in it for a little bit, but then panicked as I was a afraid I wasn't going to get time for the Scott Snyder/Greg Capullo session.  I jumped over to them and got my Court of Owls book autographed by both writer & artist as well as The Black Mirror signed by Snyder and Francesco Francavilla.  From Francavilla I also got his latest Chiaroscuro sketchbook and the artist was kind enough to doodle a Black Beetle in the back of the book.  Very cool.

Now taking all that comic lusting into account, Baltimore seemed more crowded with Cosplayers than it ever has been before.  The Sunday Costume Contest brought in more people than both the DC & Marvel panels combined - a sight I find fascinating and a little bit of a bummer.  I'm not hating on the Cosplay.  I've grown to love the creative displays of affection for these comic book icons but I also find it strange that the content of the medium seems to be less important than the craft of these creations.  In some ways this is just an extension of the art obsession of the 90s.  But I don't know...maybe I'm just being and old man a-hole.

 All in all, it was another great con.  And it's probably going to be the last one for the year.  My wallet just can't handle it anymore.  Gonna have to bail on a few of these upcoming horror shows....well, we'll see.  These things are a serious addiction.  Coming together with the Dork Community - it's a rush.  We live in a wonderful time for pop culture love.  People get it now.  An obsession with He Man is not uncommon.  In fact, there are a few folks out there who love it harder than you possibly could.  And that's just awesome.

--Brad

Matt’s Week in Dork! (7/22/12-7/28/12)

    I’ve been trying to get some more reading done recently, to varying degrees of success.  Otherwise, same old.


Clash of the Titans:  “When I spit in the eyes of the gods, then I’ll smile.”  The original film was one of my childhood favorites, but it did not stand the test of time.  Harryhausen’s stop-motion effects are cool, but the rest of the film is boring and shoddy.  This remake, though leaning too heavily on CGI (which just isn’t all that impressive 90% of the time) is far more interesting, and better paced.  Sam Worthington is still a dull leading man, but the rest of the cast is good.  I’d have preferred a less hissing and spitting Ralph Fiennes, though.  I imagine this film and its sequel will become many a child’s favorite.  It’s the kind of thing I’d have loved as a boy.  The scorpion ride with the djinn alone would have made my day.

Predators:  A bunch of killers find themselves air-dropped into an unknown jungle, with no recollection of how they got there.  It’s not long before they discover that something very, very strange indeed is happening.  Nor is it long before the bodies start piling up.  This movie does a much better job of getting into the spirit of the original film.  Plenty of action.  Enough surprises to keep things interesting.  And characters I actually like.  I wish the Aliens VS Predator films had been half as good.  This film brings in much more of The Most Dangerous Game, which I think is especially fitting for an expansion of the Predator universe.

Island of Lost Souls:  “What is the Law?!”  The best adaptation of H.G. Wells’ Island of Dr. Moreau, this is a creepy horror movie from the early days of sound.  I don’t think that Wells was anti-science, like all to many writers.  But I think he felt, as I do, that advances in science and technology need grow along with our ethical growth.  Responsibility along with dreaming.  Many of this stories sand as cautionary tales not about scientific advancement, but against its irresponsible handling.  Moreau is a man in love with his own ideas, not with the expansion of knowledge or the betterment of mankind.  Like the military men exploding atom bombs well after any scientific reason was exhausted, Moreau does what he does because he can, not because it will accomplish anything.  Island of Lost Souls is one of the very few movies where the addition of a romantic subplot that wasn’t present in the original actually improves things.  The book lacked a certain something and this movie finds that something.  This would be a good companion film to King Kong, The Most Dangerous Game, and White Zombie.

The Slammin’ Salmon:  “Whatever, motherf$%#a!”  This one has grown on me.  I liked it plenty when I first saw it, but as time went on, I would find myself thinking about it all the time or watching clips on YouTube.  Michael Clarke Duncan is so flippin’ hysterical as the monstrous boxing champ turned restaurant owner.  His all out assault on the English language is worth the price of admission.  The Broken Lizard crew do their usual thing, taking jokes past the point of good taste, into the realm of total crazy.

Cecilia:  Oh, Jess Franco.  You know what’s not the right music to play over ‘erotic’ sequences?  Crappy organ music that sounds like it’s being played at an old folks home dance.  Typically nonsensical, f-dup morality, and gobs of nudity.  Franco was really impressive for being so completely talentless yet maintaining a long term career and getting lots and lots of women to take their clothes off (and more when he used an assumed name).  Super awkward sex scenes, the way only the Europeans can film ‘em.  But lots of nice country and old architecture on display.  Seems like somewhere I’d like to visit, so long as I don’t have to deal with all these annoying people and their ugly sex.

District 9:  Does this movie basically take Alien Nation, update it and make it into an allegory for apartheid?  Yes.  Does it do a heck of a job?  Absolutely.  It’s a very watchable, very tough movie, with excellent special effects, complicated characters, unexpected turns, and some cringe-worthy horror both human and alien.  The cold, cruel violence of men just ‘doing their jobs,’ just ‘following orders’ is hard to watch.

The 39 Steps:  This early Hitchcock already features the director’s flare for grim comedy and ramped up tension.  The twists and turns start early, and the story takes off across England to Scotland.  The hero is classic 1930s, with wit and skill, and a devilish, cavalier grin.  The leading lady is classic Hitchcock, blond and dangerous.  Good set work, lots of cool sequences and a tight script.  Good stuff.

Encrypt:  This is very made-for-TV, but once you get past that, not bad.  It feels like an episode from a longer running show.  All the usual Made in Vancouver touches are here, including cast.  But, while not amazing, it gets the job done.  Very simple plot with a couple not that twisty twists.  If you’re in the mood for some low budget sci-fi, you could do worse.

Mirror Mirror:  Right away you see that this film has a fatal flaw.  It stars Julia Roberts.  Sure, the script isn’t that good, but Julia Roberts excels in making every moment worse.  Seriously, five minutes in and I was climbing the wall.  She’s just so aggressively awful.  Tarsem is a heck of a visual artist.  But the script is bad.  It has moments and some of the actors are pretty good.  Even the Snow White character is unusually good for a female lead these days (she’s fairly pro-active, not just reactive).  But Roberts is horrendous.  Younger kids will probably enjoy it, but it’s probably too cheesy for older kids or adults.

Das Rheingold:  “The lord of the ring as the slave of the ring!”  The beginning of the monstrous operatic epic by Richard Wagner, this serves as a sort of turning point between myths of old and modern fantasy.   Most modern fantasy owes a great deal to J.R.R. Tolkien, and Tolkien certainly owes a lot to Wagner.  He helped take scraps of myth and forge them into an epic tale.  (As an odd side note, it seems that most 20th century fantasy is rooted in either Wagner or Nietzsche, two one-time friends turned enemies.  One often accused of anti-Semitism [Nietzsche] who is often incorrectly linked to the Nazis, the other a genuine anti-Semite [Wagner] more rightly seen as an inspiration to Hitler and others of his ilk.  And while Wagner’s literary descendant [Tolkien] still holds sway over the genre, Nietzsche’s literary descendant [Robert E. Howard] has largely fallen out of favor).  In this story thief takes magic from three sisters and forges it into a powerful ring to rule the world.  The gods screw over the giants who they tricked into building a great fortress.  So Wotan is forced to go down into the depths and take the magic ring to make amends.  The version I watched, from 1991, staring Gunter Von Kannen as the thief, is lavish and strange.  Lots of weird lighting, interesting set work, and an odd semi-modern/art deco kind of thing going on.  Wotan looks like some sort of 70s folk singer/pimp.  Wild.  And the giants are crazy, man.  I also find it interesting that Loge, the trickster, is actually the best and most honest of the gods (though he is but part god).

    I finally cracked into the season 1 box set of Batman The Animated Series I borrow from Brad a few weeks back.  I’d popped it in a couple times before going to bed, but zonked out before the first episode was over.  I’m digging the show, but man they need to lay off the Joker.  With such a rich cast of villains, it’s a shame they can’t seem to get away from using that one character over and over.  I love the show’s look.  I wish more animated shows were handled with such care.

    I tried another anime series, Toward the Terra.  I keep trying because only the Japanese seem to be willing to take animated science fiction seriously.  Unfortunately, anime creators seem to be some of the least creative people on Earth, as every series is basically the same thing.  Toward the Terra is the same collection of characters you find in every sci-fi anime (oh, wait, that one guy is totally unique, because he’s wearing earphones!), doing much the same stuff.  The ships and locations are beautiful, though.  Why can’t anyone other than the Japanese do some animated science fiction?!  Science fiction is a place to let your imagination run wild, so why is sci-fi anime so flippin’ repetitive?

I've got headphones!

    I’ve had a serious hankering to see it again, so Ben and I started watching Battlestar Galactica this week.  Darn it, I like that show.  It’s so brutal.  Seeing these early episodes and knowing how things turn out for some of the characters makes certain moments more poignant or painful.  But I also find myself looking forward to certain events, certain new characters, etc.

    I also started watching some Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries.  Oh, yeah.  So 70s awesome.  I definitely prefer the Nancy Drew stories, but that’s in large part to Shaun Cassidy sucking so hard as the younger Hardy.  I know he was THE teen heartthrob, but man, he’s awful.  Pamela Sue Martin’s wardrobe is flippin’ amazing.  She’d have fit right in with Charlie’s Angles, no prob.

    I read the follow-up to The Long Halloween, Dark Victory.  Good stuff.  Read my review here.

    And in keeping with my recent Batman heavy reading, I checked out the first volume of the New 50 Batman and Robin: Born to Kill.  See my review here.

    On the ‘what are they thinking?!’ front, I read the first issue of Space Punisher.  Man, Mark Texeira’s art is beautiful.  And the concept could easily work.  It’s worked a bunch of times before, going back at least as far as C.L. Moore’s Northwest Smith.  A lone dude in space, earning his way by the gun?  Sure.  Even the whole revenge for killing his family bit could work, no prob.  However, Frank Tieri’s writing feels like it might be by, and is certainly for, a 13 year old boy.  This kind of mindset gave us Lobo and Venom (and worse, Carnage), and made Wolverine a star.  I keep wanting Chris Farley to walk by and say; ‘Hey Punisher…Remember that time…That time when you blew up all those bug guys with that Venom stuff on ‘em?…Um…That was AWESOME!’  The one thing I take away from this issue is that Texeira should do more science fiction adventure comics.

    My Star Wars love has certainly been abused for the last 15 years or so.  Savagely.  From the continual CG driven pooping on the original films, to the written by a ten year old garbage of the prequel trilogy.  It’s been a rough time.  The only rays of light have been from the comic writers and from the shockingly good CG animated series The Clone Wars.  So, I figured I’d give a new Star Wars mini-series a try.  In the last season of the Clone Wars that I watched, they’d brought in Darth Maul’s brother, and I knew they were talking about bringing back Darth Maul himself.  This comic takes place after that event, with the two brothers creating some kind of crazy empire.  The art is good, and there’s potentially a cool story here.  But it’s nothing especially captivating.  I suppose anyone who reads Star Wars comics normally should find plenty to like.

    I read the latest issue of Winter Soldier, the continuing adventure of a Captain America’s old chum, Bucky Barnes.  Not much happens in this issue, #8.  But it feels like they’re setting up for some bad stuff soon.  Black Widow is in some trouble, looks like a trip to Russia is in the cards, and of course, ballet.

    Hit-Girl issue 2 was pretty much more of the same.  It feels like cut scenes from the film, that were cut for a reason.  Just swearing and violence with little point.  This is not a series I’d bother reading if I had to pay for it.

-Matt