Scott Pilgrim, Under the Banner of Heaven, Terry Sanford, Hear the Wind Sing, & Pinball 1973

Scott Pilgrim is finally finished. And only two weeks before the movie comes out, could you really expect me to not have preordered his Finest Hour way back when. Which just makes me wonder why I hadn't even talked about the series in any depth yet. Scott Pilgrim is quite good. Well, he's a forgetful jerk who makes me feel dirty, but he's also full of awesomeness. As are the books. Sure, the first one starts out without Bryan Lee O'Malley having found either a consistent drawing style or evenness in plotting. But once the League of Evil Ex-Boyfriends shows up and the series kicks into overdrive, he gets to the heart of what makes 20-somethings tick. There was ridiculousness, there was fighting, there was fanservice (and the immediate mocking of said fanservice), and an ending that was very far from sucking. I need to get O'Malley to sign the last two issues. Just to match the signed first four. I am looking forward to whatever he ends up doing next. And the movie wil be awesome as well.

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith is Jon Krakauer looking at the history of Mormonism, with a focus on the polygamist sects, as a fight against "normal" American society. Having watched the first three and a half seasons of Big Love, I may have been more familiar with the story than I would've been without having seen it, since whole plot threads are straight out of history. Mormons are squicky. And knowing more about the history, and the stuff that they don't want you to know about the murderous tendencies of the official church, just confirms that. Mormonism may be the most American of all religions, but being an American Religion isn't really good. We tend to kind of be dicks.

Terry Sanford: Politics, Progress, and Outrageous Ambitions is as far from being about dick-y Americans as you can. Terry Sanford is a hero to any progressives with Southern ties. He was an FBI agent, a volunteer paratrooper in WWII, a liberal Democratic Governor of North Carolina during the Civil Rights era, president of Duke University for fifteen-ish years, a Senator from North Carolina. Who lost to his former driver who had switched parties due to fighting over who was going to run in 1986 for the seat Sanford won, but only because he had a heart attack a month before the election. He also helped to stop the civil war in Nicaragua that Reagan and North and Bush helped to prolong by funding the Contras. He was a great man, and although this book barely mentions my boss (who would be very important in Sanford's last two campaigns), I liked it. Sanford has a fascinating life story, and I enjoyed reading it.

Hear the Wind Sing is Haruki Murakami's first novel. Only published in Japan, and in a limited run of helping young people learn English, along with his second book, Pinball 1973. Neither are particularly good, although they definitely presage Norwegian Wood in both content and tone, being set in the late 60s and 70s in a real Japan. Hear the Wind Sing is not weird at all, while Pinball 1973 starts to bring in the strange characters that dominate his later works. Don't read them unless you're very into him, because there is a good reason for them not being published in English here. Besides the fact that they're very short.

Batman: Gotham Knight, The Machine Girl, & Rampo Noir

Batman: Gotham Knight is basically a series of short stories about Batman done in an anime style. The first one, Have I Got a Story for You, is a fine story, messing with the Batman mythos, but the animation style is just a very small step above Aeon Flux, distracting me and bugging me until it was over. Crossfire was creepy, and extremely effective. Much better visually, but still not very clear when it comes to plot. This trend is positive, and I liked the rest of them. They're not all particularly good, but they're an interesting twist. I think I'm going to stick with the Paul Dini series when it comes to my animated Batman. I like that this exists.

Rampo Noir is a series of four short films based on stories by Edogawa Rampo, who wrote the stories that Horrors of Malformed Men. These... are pretty much trash. The first one is complete trash, the second less so, the third less so, and the fourth less, but still, why the hell did I sit through the first one? The first story is all silent and has naked wrestling. Completely ridiculous. The second has naked bondage and melty wax sex. Ugh. The third one is about a woman who amputates her husbands arms and legs, puts them in jars, and then has sex with him. Ostensibly this is to keep him out of having to fight in a war. The entire thing somehow was stretched out to 134 minutes. Man, did I regret watching this.

The Machine Girl is a movie with special effects by the guy who did them on Tokyo Gore Police, Suicide Club, Noriko's Dinner Table, and Exte: Hair Extensions. That gives you an idea of how crazy this film is. It's just about halfway between the absolute insanity that is Tokyo Gore Police and Noriko's Dinner Table. Lots of spurting blood, cartoony villains (the main bad guy's wife is comically evil), a tempura arm, drill bra, decapitations, blood soup, a chainsaw foot, many gratuitous panty shots, and the titular Machine Girl who has an arm cut off and replaced with a machine gun. There's a sequel. I need to see it. Along with their new film, RoboGeisha.

The Deal, Persepolis, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, & Redbelt

The Deal is a fascinating look at the rise of New Labor through the pre-Prime Ministerial careers of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Michael Sheen and David Morrissey are outstanding and well worth watching the movie. Maybe not as good of a movie as The Queen, but it was pretty darn good anyway. And for someone who prefers movies about politicians rather than royalty, I gotta say, I know The Queen is a better film, but I would vastly rather rewatch this.

Persepolis is basically the comic in moving picture form. And not like Watchmen, which didn't get the heart of the book, this is true to the comic and is thus as worthwhile. I didn't mention this last year, for some reason, but I did read the comic. It's quite good, an interesting look at the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq war from the point of view of a young-ish girl.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is a depressing movie about an abortion, but, in this case at least, the abortion itself isn't dangerous. It's the conditions around it, put in place by Nicolae Ceausescu's banning of abortion. All this does is cause pain for the women involved and lead to more crime. Making abortion illegal in order to combat falling birth rates is ridiculous.

Redbelt is a little twisty thriller from David Mamet, but even with an amazing cast (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Alice Braga, Emily Mortimer, Ricky Jay, Tim Allen, David Paymer, Joe Mantegna, Rebecca Pidgeon, Jennifer Grey, and basically a cameo from Ed O'Neill), it isn't nearly as good as most Mamet. Well, I'm a huge fan, but I don't think the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is all that good of a basis, compared to his normal crime milieu. Just a little disappointing. I think my problem may have been that it was not nearly as twisty as I like my Mamet (although The Winslow Boy wasn't particularly twisty, and I enjoyed that). And that it ended in a huge fight scene... ugh.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1910, Runaways, Preacher, Dollhouse, & Better off Ted

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1910 is the first issue of a three-part third volume of Alan Moore's most detailed series. Basically, it's 1910, a new king is going to be crowned, and there's a vision of the future that suggests an apocalypse in downtown London. So the next version of the league has to stop it, meeting characters from the Threepenny Opera (who sing songs based on it), along with Jack the Ripper (along with a surprise answer to who it was, even if it's not a surprise for those who've seen The Ruling Class), a thinly veiled Aleister Crowley, and more (just take a look at this list of characters in the series). Of course, it has it's requisite sex and violence, along with a section at the end which references 2001: A Space Odyssey and then on the next page, The Story of O. Basically, it (and the earlier League books) may not be the most important comics of all time, but they're certainly near my favorite comics of all time. This was better than The Black Dossier, but not as good as the original two volumes. Yet.

Runaways was started by Brian K. Vaughn in 2003, and then restarted a couple of years later, and then taken over by Joss Whedon after Brian took over the Buffy Season 8 comics. So I wanted to read them, and I have. Not as good as I personally would have liked, but a generally enjoyable "Don't trust anyone over the age of 18 (later increased to 19)" story about six teens who see their parents sacrifice a teenage girl and realize their parents are all very, very evil. And then the series continues, adding in new characters to replace dead ones, having a psychically linked velociraptor from the future show up, magic, the 1900s, robots, and have cameos from much more famous comic book superheros (it's a Marvel comic, so it's Wolverine and Captain America (along with Kingpin and The Punisher) among others). Basically, I liked it, I'll continue to read it, but it just confirmed that I don't actually like superhero comics in general.

Preacher is gratuitously violent, gratuitously naked, and gratuitously profane (in both word and religious senses). I loved it. There were vampires, crazy ultra-religious types, horse thieves, inbred southerners, a sex-crazed Nazi Harvard-educated lawyer, a disgruntled astronaut (in one of my favorite bits), a war in Heaven, an orgy, a seriously misguided fan of Kurt Kobain who becomes a rock star, and more. Just a great series, and I'm a little disappointed I won't get to see an HBO miniseries based on this. Read it. I want to apologize for not having read this before the last month, as I read the first two collections years ago, but I wasn't buying comics then, and I never read past that, and then I tried one time after that, but I kept getting sidetracked, so I finally just started over.

Dollhouse and Better off Ted are two shows that are too good for network TV. And almost got cancelled as a result. I joined a save Dollhouse facebook group before the show had even started to air, because it was a Joss Whedon show on Fox airing on Friday night. After a rough (well, very rough) first five episodes, with only the previously mentioned Middleman episode particularly good, but once we got to Man on the Street (which Joss had promised would be the beginning of the show being awesome), the show became awesome, and by the end was as good as his earlier shows (Alan Tudyk was great). I didn't even mind Eliza Dushku. Better off Ted was a workplace sitcom. Boo, right? Non-boo. It's from Victor Fresco, who did Andy Richter Controls the Universe (which I purchased on DVD based on the remembering it was funny and my love of the "I'm building a temple to you, made out of shrimp, in my stomach" line, and did not regret that purchase one bit), and stars Jonathan Slavin (also from ARCTU) and Portia de Rossi. The two leads (Jay Harrington and Andrea Anders) are acceptable, but de Rossi, Slavin, and Malcolm Barrett are definitely worth watching the show for. Slavin and Barrett are Phil and Lem, two genius scientists who are like an old married couple, but with science! And de Rossi is the utterly insanely demanding boss. Basically, it's a little wacky, but very funny. I recommend watching both. But it just depresses me about how good ARCTU was, and how pissed I was it got cancelled. I didn't remember it lasting almost two seasons though. So, good on Fox?

Doctor Who, Torchwood, 28 Weeks Later, La Chinoise, Dead Like Me: Life after Death, You Kill Me, & From Hell

So back in February, I started to watch all of Doctor Who (the new series), along with Torchwood. And, finally, in early April I finished. There were some delays (I watched the excellent State of Play and Let the Right One In from Netflix to break up the slightly cheeky (in the case of Doctor Who) and entirely cheeky (in the case of Torchwood) Britishness). But basically, I'm here to tell you that Doctor Who was actually fairly enjoyable, especially once Billie Piper left the show (somehow not for good... damnit), while Torchwood was not as good. I didn't watch them in broadcast order, so I already knew some plot twists at the end of the two seasons of Torchwood (sigh...), but I'm not sure even watching them slightly unspoiled would have made me enjoy it more. It just felt like it was trying far too hard to be "adult". Doctor Who was light and fluffy, slipped in funny references (the Shakespeare episode blows away Shakespeare in Love for pure nerdity), and was frequently quite good. Certainly there was some unnecessary returns (why keep bringing back the Daleks after you keep destroying them for the last time? along with each return of Billie Piper), but I enjoyed the show quite a bit, and have added it (along with Torchwood) to my DVR in the hopes that they will broadcast the next seasons at some point this year (in the US, I'm aware that the first Doctor Who special has already aired in the UK).

28 Weeks Later would have been better as a stand alone zombie movie. But comparing it to 28 Days Later just was ugh. The anti-militarism and nihilistic ending was just basically Return of the Living Dead 3 over again. Also, why, exactly was the mother left alone in the hospital complex with no one watching her at all? Seriously, U.S. Military? You aren't that stupid. Stringer Bell would never do anything that stupid. And the genetic immunity made no sense at all. Just a mess of a film that was more successful than it deserved. Danny Boyle would have rocked it. Hard.

La Chinoise is Godard at his most Godardian. I probably could have made more sense of it if I knew French, as some of the intertitles and graffiti were not subtitled. I feel like it suffers from being a little too radicalized, although there are touches of playfulness that made his earlier films so great, but the preachiness that ruined Godard is in full effect.

Dead Like Me: Life after Death sucked. Pure and simple. Especially with my complaints about the show not finishing the first time, to have it extended in this fashion, with a new Daisy and Mandy Patinkin not back (replaced with Desmond from Lost, but in a horrendously bad subplot), is actually worse than not bringing it back. So yeah, I complained about not seeing an ending back in 2007, but I still kinda wish it didn't have an ending. Or that they had splurged and brought back Laura Harris (who, even though Canadian, did a much better Southern accent than the Australian Sarah Wynter, who didn't even bother with the accent) and Mandy Patinkin and thought for a second about whether it would help to bring it back. Because we just got another character disappearing without much of a goodbye and a movie that at under 90 minutes long still felt like it was channeling the extended edition of Return of the King when it came to endings. Avoid unless you're a masochistic Dead Like Me fan.

You Kill Me is... why the hell did I add this to my Netflix queue?

From Hell is something I knew why I added it, although I definitely have added and removed it at least once before. It certainly isn't a particularly good movie, and I'm not going to go into the historical inaccuracies. Maybe I should try reading it again. About the only thing notable about From Hell is that Alan Moore hadn't yet gotten pissed enough with Hollywood to take his name off the film. I'm pretty sure that he didn't have a better impression of Hollywood after this. Eeesh. His feelings are well deserved.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, The Terror of Tiny Town, Death Note, Death Note: The Last Name, & more

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Caseus Archivelox: Aaron McGruder speech

2002-01-22 - 9:44 a.m.
Anyway, last night, I went to see Aaron McGruder (writer of "Boondocks") talk at Page, and he was witty and intelligent. For one, he wants people to read Michael Moore's "Downsize This". But he also denounced things like "Ali" (problems with both Will Smith and Michael Mann, but also with the whole idea of the movie, which was derivative and could have been done better, and of course the fact that Mario Van Peebles is still working), "How High" (I didn't tell him that it played much better to the African-American audience than it did to the whites in the audience here at Duke), most of the really cheap "New Wave of Blaxspoitation" (my phrase) movies made for $6 million and that make $25 million, and most African-American actors currently working. He did say he liked Chris Rock (he had gone to see "Two Can Play That Game" with him) and Spike Lee, although he disliked "Bamboozled" as a deliberately false view of Hollywood, when the true version would have been just as skrewed up. He also said he liked "When We Were Kings", which is an excellent documentary, if you haven't already seen it. But he was most interesting on the war, as if you haven't been keeping up with his comic, he's one of the first people to have denounced the war as what it really is, an excuse to shut down the civil liberties of all Americans in the "defense" of a war that cannot be won, as any person with access to explosives can be a terrorist, and you cannot win a war against that. But of course, Bush can never declare the war over, because it just takes one person to blow up a building, and the FBI and CIA love being able to tap more phones and everything. Anyway, the speech was funny and fascinating, and it was great that some people in the audience were treating it as a sort of church meeting, screaming out "yes"'s and such (although no one said "Amen"), and it made the speech more interesting. The problem was that there was a video beforehand, with a white male in the Medical School who said after the MLK assassination (basically, I'm paraphrasing here) "I want someone to calm down the people and make sure they don't come for me". He was greeted with howls of derisive laughter, Bruce. The best guy (from a comedy standpoint, as both Major Dean and Dr. William Turner from the Divinity department were well-spoken about MLK and other issues) was Willie Burt who, at one point, said, "Since this is the only planet that has life on it, that I know of", which got more laughter. He seemed like he was trying a little too hard to sound intelligent.
After that, Alicia and I went to say hi to Aaron at the Mary Lou Williams Center. He was nice and intelligent in person as well.

Live Free or Die Hard, The Red Shoes, Dumplings, The Good German, The Middleman (again), & Scott Pilgrim

Live Free or Die Hard is the fourth (and I hope last) Die Hard film. The first one is one of the best action films of all time, and I like the second one. The third one, however, was utter crap. The first two were at least somewhat based in a slightly heightened reality, and the third one just tossed that out of the window. And this one was even worse. Maybe it has to do with living in DC and having been to Baltimore quite a few times, but every building I recognized (besides the obvious ones like Capitol building and other monuments) was in Baltimore during the big chase scene in DC. And that's also ignoring the final chase scene that's supposed to be set just north of Baltimore on 695, and the highways are clearly Southern California, with palm trees and overlapping highway overpasses that basically are a California thing and are nothing like highways in Maryland. Also, the movie is also ridiculous when it comes to plot. And wastes Maggie Q, who is only there to look attractive. I also had a serious problem with "Can I get another dead Asian hooker bitch over here right away?" which I know was just trying to get on Timothy Olyphant's bad side. But that racial stereotype grated on me. Actually, just about everyone in the film besides Bruce Willis and Justin Long were wasted. Those two clearly have no more talent than what was shown in the film. Basically, the film was terrible and stupid.

The Red Shoes is not the Powell-Pressburger film, it's a recent K-Horror film, clearly still based on the Hans Christian Andersen story, but with a Korean twist. I objected to the shoes clearly being pink. And to the complete ripoff of Fight Club. Kinda creepy, but the stereotypical Asian horror touches (ghosts with long hair and walking strangely) just aren't nearly as interesting the hundredth time.

Dumplings is the extended version of the Fruit Chan part of Three... Extremes. The plot is slightly different, missing the freakiest scene from the short, but adding more character parts and being slightly more interesting. Still quite good looking and freaky, and I should try to see some Fruit Chan films to see if it's a one-off, but the ones I've read are good aren't really available on Netflix. I don't understand why it makes me want dumplings. But I want dumplings.

The Good German is Soderbergh being ridiculous. He basically just said: Casablanca and The Third Man are awesome films, and what made them amazing was the studio system that made the films. Not the talent or the writing. So he apes those two films constantly, never coming close to that quality.

Venus has a good performance from Peter O'Toole and Jodie Whittaker, but ultimately feels like a small character piece rather than saying anything important about anything.

The Middleman: The Collected Series Indispensability is the complete Middleman comic. The first TPB is basically the first episode of the show, the second TPB is the third episode, and bits and pieces of the third TPB were used throughout the rest of the show, from Manservant Neville to the Honey Ryder bikini joke. I actually don't like the ending of the comic at all, and prefer the tv show's version of the Middleman, although that may be due to that being my introduction to the universe. But I certainly recommend it to everyone. Also, I got the Scott Pilgrim odds and ends collection, with all the main comics being familiar to me due to most of them being online, but I cannot recommend Scott Pilgrim enough (and I apparently haven't raved about it yet on the blog?).

Hands on a Hard Body & The Middleman

Hands on a Hard Body is a documentary about a contest in Texas (although it seems like it's not just a contest in Longview, but in other areas around the country, but that wasn't entirely made clear) where 24 people stand with at least one hand on a Nissan pickup for as long as possible until the last one standing wins the truck. As you'd expect, it's full of stereotypes, but since they're actually people, and the entire 97 minute running time is spent either during the actual contest or interviews with the contestants, you get behind the stereotypes. Unless they are just stereotypes, like the husband and wife who are missing wide swathes of teeth, but the husband is proud of his 20 ton air conditioner that can cool his living room to -12 degrees. Because who doesn't need that? I have to say that I had a tiny bit of schadenfreude with the overly religious woman who had a big prayer chain for her. Eventually, the person I hated the least won, so that made the movie better, but it's 97 minutes of a fascinating look at desperate people in Texas who want to spend three days standing next to a truck. It was directed by S.R. Bindler, who is apparently good friends with Matthew McConaughey, who is thanked in the credits along with Benicio Del Toro (and, ummm, Arnold Vosloo, who was in The Mummy). Unfortunately, due to it not being available on DVD or VHS, it's basically only available online, and it was posted to Google Video last week. I watched it on Sunday, and it's apparently been taken down since then. So, I'm not sure how best to watch this awesome film.

Also, this week was (I hope not) the last episode of The Middleman. If you have not watched this show, I hate you a little. If you like comic books and/or snarky pop-culture referencing attractive 20-somethings, I may hate you a little bit more. And if this is the last episode ever, I might even revise that hatred upwards. I should be getting "The Collected Series Indispensability" tomorrow.

Catching up more with books and comics and museum exhibits

The Killing Joke is Alan Moore's The Joker origin story, along with an excuse to see Commissioner Gordon and his (newly paralyzed) daughter naked. As such, it fits in just perfectly with Moore's other work. I have to say that I thought it was interesting, although I can't say that I like the shortness. I feel like it could have been longer. I do wonder what the midgets were named though.

In an attempt to catch up on things, here's some brief reviews of random books I've read over last nine or so months: The Right Stuff (noted here, and a reminder that Tom Wolfe is a good writer, once you get past the "New Journalism"-y writing style), Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories (first noted by me here, and quite an interesting collection of Ryunosuke Akutagawa's stories, most of which I enjoyed, although the auto-biographical ones were depressing), Memoirs of a Geisha (told you I was going to read it, and it was considerably better than the movie), Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo (noted twice in last week's vampire-puppet filled Middleman, but purchased by me earlier in the year based on a recommendation from some website I can't remember (io9? Bryan Lee O'Malley?) and is basically a rabbit ronin wandering feudal Japan, so of course I was going to love it, but I have 20 something volumes to purchase in order to read it all), Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns (read almost immediately after watching The Dark Knight, but I forgot to mention it in that review, but it's actually kind of good), The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (quite a gay little book, but it's going to be a movie, and I was interested, although it's not nearly as good as Michael Chabon's later works), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (probably the last Joyce I'll read as I doubt I could make it through Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake, but it and The Dubliners are excellent) and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier (a pornographic Alan Moore comic, with a 3-d section that gave me a slight headache, but I loved the extension of the mythology and the pitch-perfect satires of literary genres). Also, I watched the new DVDs of Spaced, one of the best things that's ever come out of England. It's pretty much: Monty Python, Alec Guinness, and Spaced. And I guess HP Sauce and the idea that vinegar is good on chips.

I went back to the Freer & Sackler galleries August 24th, which was quite fun, as it's one of my favorite museums, if only for the Peacock Room, which is the kind of room I want to have in my mansion. But the Sackler galleries had an exhibit on landscapes of the Yellow Mountains, which was gorgeous. A little small of an exhibit, but the artwork was uniformly nice. I have to say that I love landscapes, which is kind of middlebrow, but eh, de gustibus non est disputandum. Unfortunately for all of you, it closed on that day. After that exhibit, I saw muppets. Yes, there's an exhibit about Jim Henson at the Smithsonian. You have until October 5. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's under the garden between the Sackler and the African Art Museum (which I've now been in, but still haven't seen any exhibits, not because I don't like black people, but because I haven't yet found anyone who wants to go with me). Time Piece, his Oscar-nominated short film, is included in its entirety (and it was a bizarre and funny movie), along with many of his 8 second adverts for things that are awesome in their bizarreness. And, of course, there's a Bert and Ernie, a Rowlf, a Kermit, assorted other characters, a couple fraggles (which made me extremely happy and I came very close to singing the theme song when it was shown during a documentary on Henson), and some very, very cool Dark Crystal artwork and props. Basically, if you are my age, you will love the exhibit. If you are younger, you will love it.

TMNT

TMNT is an insult to movies. First off, the CGI is cartoony, and insulting to women who are not stick figures. When April O'Neill is going through the jungles near the beginning, her waist looks like it's as big as my wrist. Which, for those of you who know me (I assume that's all of you), my wrists are not particularly thick. Also, it was weird to hear Sarah Michelle Gellar's voice coming out of her. I do sort of wonder if actors like Mako think "I'm about to die and TMNT is the last movie I am ever going to do?" Because that's gotta be depressing. It was short, and more in tune with the original comics (admittedly, I read one issue back in 6th grade, and it was taken from me for reading it in class, so I can't be positive, but I think it was) than the live-action movies or the video games. Actually, TMNT 1 was so frickin' hard that I'm amazed anyone was ever able to finish it. TMNT 2 on the other hand was great, but cartoony like the cartoon. The slightly darker tone matched the bland colors, but it was basically a movie for very small children who like movement on screen. And terrible music. And no Shredder.

One little bit of trivia: all I have to do is make a billion dollars and I too can marry someone like Zhang Ziyi. First step: making that first million.

Radio On, The One-Armed Swordsman, The Americanization of Emily, Rambo, & Yo-Yo Girl Cop

Radio On has a great soundtrack: it kicks off with Heroes (the mixed English/German version) and continues on with a jukebox playing Whole Wide World, which was also used well in Stranger than Fiction, which I didn't mention before, but had a great soundtrack. And the rest of it wasn't as well-loved by me, but there was still Kraftwerk and Devo. The plot itself was secondary, a road trip by a disaffected youth in England trying to find out information about his brother's apparent suicide. So basically, just listen to Heroes and then Whole Wide World while watching black and white scenery, and you'll get about the same out of it.

The One-Armed Swordsman was apparently one of the first big kung fu films of the Shaw Brother Age. It was also ridiculously obsessed with stabbing people in the stomach. Except for the arm cutting which gives the film the title, pretty much everyone who died was stabbed in the stomach. The fight scenes were pretty silly, as the good guys kept doing the same stupid things and then dying, and they were much slower than they should have been. When you have a guy with one arm, he may not be able to attack that quickly, but I'd be damned stupid not to try to take advantage of that fact when attacking him. It was quite an impressive set, though, with the early scenes in the snow being pretty. And one last thing: if some woman ever want to show that they care, do it by telling me, or kissing me, or something like that, not cutting my arm off. That is not cool.

The Americanization of Emily is a cynical as all hell film written by Paddy Chayefsky, and proves that he wasn't a one hit wonder like I postulated based on the Hospital. I don't blame him for Altered States, I blame Ken Russell. But anyway, this one was James Garner as a dog-robber in World War II, working for an Admiral who wants to play up the role of the Navy in D-Day, so he wants Garner to make a movie about the Navy's important role clearing the mines. And somehow that leads to Garner being the first man on Omaha. He falls in love with Julie Andrew's war widow along the way, who prizes him for his cowardice due to the fact that it would be unlikely he'd die like her former husband. And James Coburn plays Garner's friend who wants to fight, but has bad eyesight and was given a desk job. And this is all a ridiculous satire of bravery and the military, along with great performances from all involved. I recommend this film to all who like good films.

Rambo is a film I recommend to all who like terrible films. My comments on the series can be summed up as "Although the first one is actually not a bad movie, the next two (in II he single-handedly refights and wins Vietnam, and III where he single-handedly defeats the Soviet Army in Afganistan and paves the way for the rise of the Taliban and 9/11) are terrible." This one is also terrible. I'd also like to point out that there were 262 deaths in the film (in just 91ish minutes), and only two of them are white people, missionaries who basically have no personalities or names before their death. The Arab or Hispanic mercenary lives, I think, but the asian one dies, because no Asian must come out alive. Seriously, 260 deaths are Asian? There was a decapitation as well a throat being ripped out. Also, surprisingly anti-religion, as the missionaries had to overcome their reluctance to kill in order to save themselves. One final note: "sometimes a guy getting turned into hamburger by a jeep-mounted machine gun is just a guy getting turned into hamburger by a jeep-mounted machine gun".

Yo-Yo Girl Cop is no The Girls Rebel Force of Competitive Swimmers. It's quite terrible, with precious little Yo-Yo fighting, although there are girls and cops. It's ridiculously bad. Also, it's an adaptation of a series of mangas, and the return of a tv and movie series of the mid-80s. At least they brought back the character from the original series for the movie. The titular cop somehow gets a bulletproof uniform at the end, but is still extremely stupid, like running towards explosions and ignoring the guy with the big sword who keeps cutting her. It was directed by the son of the guy who directed Battle Royale and The Yakuza Papers. Based on this movie, directing talent is not genetic.

The Middleman

The Middleman on ABC Family: yes, in some ways, you're giving money to Pat Robertson. I think, all I know is that he's somehow still on ABC Family. How they can show the 700 Club and The Middleman back to back is painful to my brain. But man oh man, The Middleman may be the best comic book adaptation ever. For those not in the know, Javier Grillo-Marxuach (a former writer for Lost) wrote the pilot episode for the series some years back, but no one wanted to pick it up, so he turned it into a comic in 2005. And published three trade paperbacks over the next few years until ABC Family (in their infinite wisdom) actually picked this up for series. Originally planned to be 13 episodes, the ratings have been bad, and so the order was cut down to 12. I don't want this to go the way of all the other awesome shows I love on TV (unlike Pushing Daisies and Lost) and get canceled. Anyway, the plot is that a temp, named Wendy Watson (nicknamed Dub-Dub, which always makes me think of Jubjub), ends up hired by mysterious superhero The Middleman to be his replacement and they end up having to fight crime with the help of an alien android and lots of crazy technology with ridiculous names (like the BTRS Scanner, which stands for Beyond the Realm of Science). And more puns and references to pop culture than I could have thought possible. Every episode seems to have a lot of references to one particular subject matter, like the trout zombie episode having many references to the band, The Zombies. Episode titles include "The Sino-Mexican Revelation" (a group of Lucha Libre wrestlers kidnap the Middleman's sensei (played by the Chairman, Mark Dacascos, shown here with the Middleman), "The Flying Fish Zombification" (about a guy turning people into trout zombies...), and "The Boyband Superfan Interrogation" (about an alien who is trying to stop a boy band from destroying the planet through the use of wormholes). Honestly, this is just about the smartest show I have seen in years. But beyond the absurd plots (Supersmart Gorillas Obsessed With Gangster Movies! Recovering Succubi! A Cursed Tuba From The Titanic!), the best thing is the characters. Wendy (adorably played by the adorable Natalie Morales) lives in an illegal sublet with another young photogenic artist, played by Brit Morgan, and is friends with Noser, who generally speaks all in song lyrics and plays "Stump the Band" in a highly entertaining fashion. These are real people in a bizarre but enjoyable world and their interactions are what make the TV show worth watching.

I've been watching it with Tweaks and Meat. And for those of you who want advanced studies in Middlemania, go here to see a bunch of behind the scenes videos and promos giving you a bit of the idea of the ridiculous awesomenosity of the show. This week's episode is about ghosts at a sorority, and constantly references Ghostbusters and Wendy talks about how she watches terrible zombie films to remind her of how awesome the good ones are. It was just great. And there will be upcoming episodes with Kevin "TV's Hercules" Sorbo, vampire puppets (can't possibly be as good as Smile Time, but I'm happy that there will be more vampire puppets on TV), and an evil parallel universe (with goatees!). I defy you to watch this show and not enjoy it. Please watch it. Please.

Company, The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, & Justice League: The New Frontier

Company was a filmed performance of the revival of the Steven Sondheim musical starring Raul Esparza, who's been in a couple Pushing Daisies episodes (and makes me want them to burst into song even more on that show). It's about a 35 year old single guy in New York and 10 of his friends, all couples, and how he tries to come to terms with his life. It's full of the typical lyrically and musically complex Sondheim songs, although this is far less about plot than most of the others. It's very much a series of scenes that illuminate character rather than plot. It's an interesting way to go about it, even if it isn't as good as Into the Woods or Sunday in the Park with George (two Sondheim musical posts and two gratuitous swipes at Andrew Lloyd Sewer... three posts and three gratuitous swipes), but maybe I'll need to watch it in a few years when I'm a lonely 35 year old.

The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant is a gay man's view of fashion. And since it's in mid-70s Germany, it's hideous. And boring. And I hated it. Don't know why I keep thinking that Fassbinder will be not annoying. I just don't like long gay films. Sorry all for even writing this. I should have known better.

Justice League: The New Frontier made me scoff too much. But since I'm reading The Right Stuff, the talk of test pilots and the pyramid and driving crazily in the middle of the desert just made me think of that. The cast was impressive, even if some were not particularly good (I hated Sisto as Batman, and I don't like this Batman very much, although the slight suggestion that he's having sex with Robin made me happy), but the main thing was just how much I had picked up from reading comics in the last year. I still haven't read any of the big superhero comics, but I've read things like The Watchmen and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, so I had some familiarity with the basic history of comics. But the bonus features on the disc more than made up for the short running time of the movie, a history of the Justice League over the various ages of comics. The movie itself had some good ideas, but was pretty hokey. What you'd expect in a big budget direct to video animated superhero movie.

Aeon Flux, Red Eye, The American Way, & Kiss of Death

Aeon Flux is a little show from MTV in the 90s. I know I'd seen probably most of the shorts, but I certainly didn't recall much of anything except the outfits and the dying. I am pretty sure I had given up on MTV by the time the half-hour episodes had started to air, so I don't think I ever saw them. I certainly don't recall anyone speaking on them. It's quite an interesting show, if you don't care for... sensical plots, reasonable characters, anatomically possible characters, or... umm... non-sexual references. Because there are lots of all of those in there. I do want to complain about the fact that the series is three discs, and the first two are the 10 half-hour episodes, and the last one is the pilot episode and the shorts, meaning that renting them and watching them in order just made me annoyed. Why couldn't they just put the first stuff on the first disc and the second stuff on the second disc and the third stuff on the third disc? Why must you make this into a DVD box set of lies?

Red Eye is a quick and effective little thriller from Wes Craven, with Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy (with able support from Brian Cox) as two people who meet cute and then it turns out one of them runs a hotel that the other one wants to kill someone in, so they have to go running around the plane, the airport, and a house to stop/cause some mayhem. I actually thought it was quite well done, and the people who recommended it to me were right. I also like that Kyle Gallner was in it, because it allowed me to scream "THE BEAV!!" and only feel silly afterwards. Man, I miss Veronica Mars already.

The American Way is sort of a The Watchmen but set in the early 60s rather than the late 80s. It's drawn by Georges Jeanty, who has drawn all the issues of Buffy Season 8 so far, so I saw his name and I was all, I know him! I'm turning into a comic geek! AHHHHH! Or something. It's not nearly as good as the Watchmen, because it's far less about deconstructing the motives and history of comics, and far more about a fairly simple comic book story of trying to integrate a collection of sort of superheros working for the American government, and then the southern group doesn't like that. It's good, but man, I really hate that I've basically ruined these sort of stories for me, by reading what is probably the best underwear perverts comic ever. Nothing can really compete.

Kiss of Death has the great line: "Dames are no good if you wanna have some fun." Apparently, someone has a different definition of fun than I do. Or maybe the guy who said it was just a typically closeted gay man in Hays code Hollywood. And the film has a woman in a wheelchair rolled down the stairs. It's notable mainly for Richard Widmark's strong performance as a crazy hitman. He does pretty well as a crazy person. The rest of the film is notable mainly for being a Charles Lederer and Ben Hecht script, the two men behind His Girl Friday, one of the best movies of all time.

Shinjuku Triad Society, Rainy Dog, Ley Lines, Lila Says, & Balzac & the Little Chinese Seamstress

Shinjuku Triad Society, Rainy Dog, and Ley Lines are the three films in Takashi Miike's Black Society Trilogy. They're about the difficulty of Chinese immigrants in Japan. Well, that's mainly the first and last in the trilogy, the second one was mainly about a triad assassin who finds out he has a kid. And lots of violence and pissing and sex. The first one is pretty much junk, the second one is far better, and the last one is quite good. The last one is about a group of three suburban kids who end up selling drugs on the streets of Tokyo, get robbed by a prostitute, and rob a triad boss to get money to stow away on a boat to Brazil. It's quite a touching film of trying to fit in in a society that doesn't particularly want you. Along with a fey Ghanian named Barbie, scratchy censoring of the naughty bits (actually a constant in all three films), and a fairly depressing ending. The three films aren't particularly happy, but you really see that in the few years between the first and the third, Miike learned a hell of a lot.

Lila Says was a short good French film about a brief flirtation between a Polish girl and an Arab boy. I enjoyed it, although it did make me wish I had an attractive French girl who wanted to discuss her strange sexual fantasies. Who enjoyed riding around on her motorized bike with no underwear on and then inspired me to write a great book. I would hope that the ending weren't quite the same, but it was very well made, and who can hate on a girl mooning the guy to the strains of Air? Ziad Doueiri, the writer/director, worked on quite a few films with Quentin Tarantino, and clearly learned how to use a great pop song. And Run is a great pop song. And whoever the hell decided that the original theatrical release would be unedited, but the DVD would be an edited version with Manara's porno Eden-ish comic blurred out, should be punched once, in the thigh, very hard. And then punched there again and again until they apologize. Edited DVDs are crap, Sony.

Balzac & the Little Chinese Seamstress is just another reason why my prodigious movie watching is probably not good for my mental health. Not for anything about the film itself, just what it causes me to think about. So many bits of pop culture are just pathways into my past that it's amazing I'm still willing to watch things I know are just going to hurt. Although I don't listen to The Green Album nearly as much as I used to... It's a film about two teenagers who are sent to the Three Gorges area for reeducation during the Cultural Revolution and they fall in love with the titular Little Chinese Seamstress while reading Balzac. It's based on the director's autobiographical novel, and it's very depressing to think of how many people went through far worse times in the Down to the Countryside Movement. Well, far worse than transporting human waste in backpacks, working in a coal mine, having your cookbooks burnt because they would allow you to create bourgeois chicken, and then reading an attractive girl banned literature and falling in love with her. At least they were able to leave eventually. And become useful members of society, from a non-Communist standpoint.

School of the Holy Beast

School of the Holy Beast. Well, two simple words: Japanese Nunsploitation. If those two words don't make you want to see the film, you are broken. Or, possibly, if those two words make you want to see the film, you're broken. Just a quick rundown of what depravity is in the film: hockey, discos, arcades, insane amounts of nun-sex, more gratuitous attractive-nun-nudity than you could shake a stick at, nun-hay-baling, nun-fights, nun-lesbianism, synchronized-nun-bathing, nun-incest, insinuated-nun-oral-sex (licking between two fingers... real subtle there), nun-bondage, nun-burning-in-acid, pregnant-nun-hanging, nun-pissing-on-a-crucifix (again with that... oh well...), nun-rape, nun-sausage-eating, evil-nun-cat, nun-sado-masochism, nun-porn, nun-masturbation, nun-whippings, nun-rose-whippings, nun-self-flagellation, nun-bell-ringing, and nuns. Oh, and blaming God for both the Holocaust and the atomic bombs being dropped. But the thing that makes the film stand out is the direction and use of crazy camera angles. Who knew that an exploitation film could be quite that visually interesting without naked flesh on the screen? It's utterly ridiculous, and if I were at all religious, I'd probably be extremely offended. As I'm not, I was pretty much just happy that movies like this existed. Because someone out there likes sadomasochistic lesbian pissing nuns. I imagine. Not me. If films like this didn't exist, I imagine the world would be a much, much worse place. Or better, if you're all religious or something. Oh, and it's based on a manga. Yay for comic-based movies. It's quite a bit better than The Punisher. Either version.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8.1 & Heroes

Being such a huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I couldn't really skip out on reading the comic of season 8 now, could I? It feels like a show, but on a bigger canvas, due to the new state of Dawn. It does feel like only half a show though, as it never really hit enough of a plot for a real episode. I love that I'm getting more of the show though, so looking a gift lion in the mouth is probably a bad idea. Not enough Willow or Giles, since they really only got a mention, but we did get some Xander, which makes me happy, along with an explanation for The Girl in Question Angel episode. That's one annoying thing down. Speaking of Angel, there's apparently going to be a 6th season of Angel in comic book form as well. I'm not sure about that, considering how perfectly that show ended. But it's Joss, so we'll see, because he can probably deal with it very well. I will continue to read these.

I finally broke down and embraced my inner nerd even more and started to watch Heroes. I spent pretty much all weekend watching the first 18 episodes. Basically, how can you hate a show that knows how to use George Takei and Malcolm McDowell, not to mention Eric Roberts (yeah, it's a joke...), Richard Roundtree, Clea Duvall, Christopher Eccleston, and Nicole Bilderback (ok, she was only a Cordette on Buffy, but still, she was instantly familiar)? Oh, and I will enjoy anything Greg Grunberg is in, far more than I should. It's really fun, goofy, and I want to be Hiro. Wait... No, I really do. I'm happy this show is doing well, because it is definitely doing something you don't see on TV. Even if that is more vivisections than I normally would expect. Quite a bit of gore on the show, which surprises me, considering it's on at 9. I mean, we can't show nipple but we can show many people split in two or worse, and heads sliced open? Even with that though, how many shows have me grinning like an idiot that frequently? How long until the next episode?

V for Vendetta, Waterland, & The King of Comedy

V for Vendetta is a problem for me, because the movie is actually pretty good, manages to fit in a lot of plot points from the comic, and doesn't mess around too much with it. That said, it does mess around enough that it bothered me about a few things. Why didn't they destroy 10 Downing Street at the end, not the Houses of Parliament? I know that Americans don't know what 10 Downing Street is and... Oh, yeah, it's the Americanization that bothers me. And it doesn't capture the spirit of it quite well enough to make the changes it does make to have it fit more as an American version of the story work. And I don't like the different ending at all. The ending to the comic fits much better with the previous story. The ending to the movie just doesn't work. Natalie Portman also is too old for Evey. And I didn't like the retelling of Guy Fawkes, which was just a blatant tip to the non-English audiences who wouldn't be familiar with him. Why should that matter? And no LSD trip? And nothing about how V blew up the camp or the poetic justice deaths for the torturers? And Susan is a bad name? And the simplification of everything in it bothers me. I agree with Moore that movies of his works generally don't work out. I really am not looking forward to The Watchmen movie. That will inevitably suck. Then again, I didn't hate this at all, and I feel that almost every one of my complaints is due to how much I really enjoyed the comic and that the movie succeeds on its own. Still a somewhat mindless action flick, but not too bad. And I wanted more Storm Saxon. So ridiculous in the comic.

Waterland isn't as good as the book. That said, it does somewhat capture the spirit of the book. And it has Maggie Gyllenhaal's first performance. Which was just a "Hey, that's Maggie Gyllenhaal. How'd she get that part? Oh, yeah, her dad directed the movie..." part. It's weird that I had a little unintentional Sinéad Cusack film fest yesterday. Didn't realize that was going to happen. I really liked the book, and I really recommend it to all. The weird bits of the merging of the past and the present sort of make the theme of the book obvious, and therefore don't bother me at all. I also liked that Jeremy Irons played a creepy old guy again. Seriously, he always does that. It's like he stepped out of the womb a fully formed old creepy guy. It's a good thing that he has already played Humbert Humbert, otherwise there'd be a serious deficiency in his filmography. At least he's married to Sinéad Cusack. That helps a little.

The King of Comedy doesn't work as well as I think it should have. I think the identification with the evil people has something to do with it. I don't like Sandra Bernhard at all, that also sort of hurts it. However, it's a good biting satire of the society that we really have become. Much better than Natural Born Killers. And it has Jerry Lewis's best performance ever. Well, according to Netflix, I've never seen a Jerry Lewis movie. So at least it's the best one I've ever seen. Much better than his weak performances on all those telethons. I couldn't believe he actually cared about all those kids. Just seemed fake. Good thing I don't believe in hell, or else I'm sure to go there for that crack.

The Hills Have Eyes, Wedding Crashers, & random Alan Moore and other comics

The Hills Have Eyes was bland 70s horror. I am tired of movies being called horror classics when they just are boring. Plus, I wanted everyone to die. I hate crappy 70s crap. And this was full of it. So many better movies that could be called classics. Why is crap like this revered when much better movies are forgotten? Sad state of affairs.

The Wedding Crashers... well, speaking of sad states of affairs, why is it that I can watch what is praised by so many people as being hilarious and not laugh? At all? It's just like with Old School. It's not like I don't like movies in this new wave of comedies, as I really liked The 40-Year Old Virgin, and I like Rachel McAdams. Why is it that I didn't like this? Oh yeah, it's because, again, I don't actually care for any of the characters besides Rachel, and she was utterly wasted. I think I just don't like Vince Vaughn. I hated Starsky & Hutch, Dodgeball was utterly worthless, and maybe it's just him. Can't quite figure out why, since I did like Swingers. Then again, the only people in the cast who've really done anything worth watching since are Ron Livingston and Heather Graham. They wasted Bradley Cooper. Damnit, he needs good roles. So good in Alias. When they got rid of him, the show began a very fast descent. Also... I think the Wilsons' need to stick very close to Wes Anderson. And movies directed by Ben Stiller. Damn shame...

I've also spent this weekend reading comics. Here're my quick reviews: Serenity bridge comic between the show and the movie was nice to read, finally; The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was great, and really makes me wish I had never seen the movie, and that it never existed; V for Vendetta makes me want to watch the movie a lot, because it was very good; The Watchmen was interesting, but would make a terrible movie. I also tried to read From Hell, but it was very amateurishly drawn. I will have to retry it a little later.