"Robert Altman: the oral biography" by Mitchell Zuckoff

Robert Altman: the oral biography
by Mitchell Zuckoff
Alfred A. Knopf 560 pgs.

Robert Altman will always be the patron saint of "serious" Hollywood actors. Name-above-the-title types would work for scale(1) to bathe in the fragrant pool of eau-de-genius. In reality, some folks found the experience less than ideal. To a screenwriter, Altman may have been the Antichrist. He saw a script as more of a suggestion, a jumping-off point that was a necessary evil used to lure the money changers to the table.

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend ..." Overheard in Hollywood restaurant by someone who now works in a video store.

Altman's legend was of a shrewd guy shaping a career outside the bounds of Hollywood influence, creating largely improvised films. He made it all up as he went along, in a free-for-all collaboration between a paternal, weed-loving director and a reliable stock company of hot starlets and craggy-faced guys.

And, um, Huey Lewis's wiener.

This book doesn't contradict the idea of an almost wholly actor-centric director. But the tale told by some Altman vets (notably "Seinfeld's" chrome-domed nemesis, Bob Balaban and "Laugh In" poet, Henry Gibson)- reveals a less hagiographic take on the well-trod legend. Altman gave competent actors the freedom to add whatever they could bring to the set. Sometimes that meant doing whatever the hell you felt like and sometimes that meant keeping things closer to what was on the page.

In either case, Altman ran a pretty freewheeling enterprise. For all his anti-Hollywood stance, Altman basically partied like a rock star for most of his career, occasionally reigning things in to look good for the money men in the suits. Mercurial, moody and sometimes -inexplicably and inappropriately- mean, Altman's career is pockmarked by burned bridges and failed projects that left him scrambling for cash as his bankability oscillated wildly in the years between the career-launching "M*A*S*H" and his final work on the film version of "The Prairie Home Companion."

Somewhere in mid-career Altman helmed "Popeye", a decidedly left-field choice for a potential blockbuster film. After "Superman: The Movie" studios scrambled to jump on the comic-book movie bandwagon. Hence, someone thought a quirky, melancholy comic-strip smelled like a blockbuster. At the time, "Popeye" was whispered to be a colossal financial disaster, but it was actually a fairly successful film. Still, it was something of a personal calamity for Altman who had "troubled artist" tattooed across his head forever after. "Popeye" may be worthy of its own book. Robin Williams, in full-on spazz mode, with giant latex arms, on a sprawling set built in Malta. Malta? Only God and Robert Altman can explain why, but the most likely reason was because it was a remote island and not exactly accessible to those pesky MBA/spreadsheet guys.

Altman's failures were almost as colorful as his signature films. When Hollywood closed the door on him, he wasn't above shooting a Nixon film with a bunch of college kids enlisted in the name of some kind of wacky artist-in-residence sojourn. He took a failed off-Broadway play and shot it almost verbatim with 16mm cameras and very little money. Altman typically painted himself as a Hollywood outsider, but he rarely eschewed the yachts and high-living and was not above moves like stunt-casting Lindsay Lohan alongside Meryl Streep. Or giving his kid a crew job, and billing the studio considerably more then he paid him and pocketing the difference. Altman's diamond-to-shit ratio is pretty decent. The gems in his oeuvre are some of the most enjoyable films ever made and while the turds can be amazingly bad, they are still interesting in a W.T.F? manner.

Altman and most of his friends and family(2) cooperated in putting this book together. Which would seem to be a bit of a no-no as far as objectivity. To his grand credit, if the author pulled any punches, it's hard to imagine what was left out. It's a "warts and all" biography.

(1) "Scale" refers to the minimum pay dictated by the Screen Actor's Guild, the dominant union for proto-socialist, fellow-travelers like Tim Robbins (and his ilk.) As of this writing that means about $1000-$4000 usd per week. Which ain't exactly chicken feed. By comparison, a union carpenter can make $700-$1000 usd per week, depending where he is located.

(2) Conspicuously absent is Faye Dunaway. Who -it is strongly hinted- had an affair with the director that almost trashed his marriage.

I'll Just Leave This Here...

W.T.F. Dylan?

Bob Dylan has apparently gone stark-raving-mad and it is a joy to behold.

"Christmas in the Heart" -Dylan's 47th album- is a raggedy collection of Zimmy singing corny, old-favorite, holiday songs delivered with nary a hint of irony and rasped out in his deliciously, shredded voice.

And it is awesome. This is the most unexpected holiday treat since Bing Crosby answered the doorbell and invited David Bowie in for the still-inexplicable-to-this-day "Little Drummer Boy" duet.

The highlight of "Christmas from the Heart" is a raucous take on "Must Be Santa" that sounds like it would be right at home on a Pogues record. It's a mindbending Klezmer/jug-band party stomper. (See the video here. Embedding disabled)

This is probably the most left-field thing Dylan has done since his alleged embrace of Christianity resulted in the underrated "Slow Train Coming." Dylan deflates that entire brush-with-Jesus episode (and more) in the entertaining and enjoyable "Chronicles: Volume One."

Likewise, if you watch Scorcese's documentary "No Direction Home" the "Minnesota Man of Mystery" persona that has followed Dylan since time began, seems less like the master plan of a self-promoting folkie, then the result of overzealous fans and overreaching journalists. In the film, he scoffs at most of the absurd assumptions made about his intentions over the years. Maybe it's another mysterious "persona" on display, but if so, it's cynical and smart and coming from a guy who apparently knows how to laugh, while rolling around the bed with this crazy mistress we call fame and fortune.

In other Dylan news: in a recent interview with the British Classic Rock(1) magazine, KISS fire-breather, Gene $immons, claims that Dylan's wacky greasepaint get-up during the "Rolling Thunder Revue" was directly inspired by KISS (see photo above.) Like Gene says; 'If you don't believe me, you can ask him yourself.'

Yeah, dude. Like, I got him on speed-dial.

Sounds plausible anyway. Who are we to argue with the Bat-Lizard?

(1) The interview doesn't seem to be online. I read it for free in Barnes and Noble (which is kind of like the Internet; lots of free stuff to read and no obligation to buy anything.) Anyway, it's a good magazine if you are interested in whatever happened to Starz or need to fill in the holes of your knowledge of Thin Lizzy. Or maybe you wonder when that Trigger album is being reissued. That little tidbit is filed under "Best News of the Century!"

Why You Should Continue To Steal Major Label Music From The Interweb

Too Much Joy is a band from Scarsdale, New York that have been around since the 80s and are still occasionally active today. They were ubiquitous at various NY/NJ clubs back in the day, but probably suffered a bit commercially by being hard to categorize; a bit too gritty for the power-pop crowd and a bit too poppy for the glory days of alt/grunge/whatevs. They were a good rock and roll band, a commodity that is hard to market. I was a big fan of their Warner Bros. album "Mutiny" which featured an inexplicable cover of the Records' "Starry Eyes" and a tempered sense of humor that made you smile without seeming too jokey.

As we all dance around the bonfire that engulfs the burning skeleton of the big time music business it's easy to forget that large sums of money still flow into buildings shaped like records and into the pockets of large corporations like Warners, Sony et al.

And while a certain percentage of that money may make it into the gilded pockets of a hand full of high-profile artists, most mid-level, orphaned bands we all know and love, never see a penny. And they are usually (technically speaking) in debt to the tune of (no pun intended) millions of dollars.

Big-time media royalty accounting is the stuff of legend.(1) Most musicians know that music royalties are not going to pay the bills anymore. This is the reason that so many artists -folks who previously put a lot of effort into releasing new music- have turned to churning out cover records (Bob Dylan, Hatebreed, Matthew Sweet etc.) They've just given up making new music. The real money is in "publishing" and that income goes directly to the songwriter, NOT the performer like a lot of people assume. Songwriting royalties are automatic and compulsory (roughly 7 cents per song, per record sold, more or less.) What you get for actually recording those tunes is subject to the whims of the record companies.

These days, it's all about merch and touring and it's getting harder to make a buck. For a bunch of guys setting out in a van, a slight uptick in gas prices might make the difference between profitability and coming home broke.

But -as Too Much Joy's Tim Quirk documents here- it's still a bizarre and complicated business. The new "revenue models" for artists and musicians are still in the experimental stages at best. Sure there will always be someone, somehow raking in music-derived money from big corporations, but for tons of mid-level "baby bands", it's an open question.

(1)Sketchy financial practices are not limited to screwing over hippies and punk rockers. For a look at how Hollywood uses "creative accounting" click here to read about Art Buchwald's legendary problems with Paramount over "Coming to America."

"The Ten-Cent Plague" by David Hajdu

Ever since Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavilier & Clay" mainstream publishers have released a slew of books (see:"Men of Tomorrow") chronicling the rough and tumble world of the nascent New York funny book business. Scrappy Jews like L.E.S. brawler Jack Kirby, Will Eisner and Harvey Kurtzman were the (now) marquee names driving the creative side of the biz but behind-the-scenes were crazy bastards like porn publisher turned DC/National head Harry Donnenfeld and M.C. Gaines, the father of Mad magazine's reluctant honcho Bill Gaines. Like the cutthroat competitors of the nearby rag trade, comic book biz was all about ripping off anything and anybody that looked like a winner and doing it cheaper and quicker to boot.

A bit of debunking the standard Bill Gaines' story is the centerpiece. Any comic history fan knows the story of the EC comics empire collapsing (Mad magazine being the sole survivor) under the specious social science of Fredric Wertham's book "Seduction of the Innocent" - and how Gaines famously melted down on live television while trying to defend his gory and gorgeous line of sleazy horror books. You may already know the story but it's seldom visited in the kind of calm detail found here. Wertham was a quack looking to sell a book on the evils of comics while Gaines has always been portrayed as something of a white knight by comic book fans. Hajdu's version spins away from the usual canon. Gaines isn't exactly made out to be a bad guy but Hajdu doesn't buy the martyr stuff either. He acknowledges the artistry of the EC books but seems close to siding with Wertham that Gaines really was something of a sleaze monger. Well, of course he was. But they were some damn fine, sleazy comic books.

Apparently, this book is the impetus behind John Landis' intentions to make a movie out of Gaines' life story (starring Seth Rogen if you believe the digital internets.) This book would be the best primary source for such a tale.

Very cool cover by Charles Burns too.

"Vintage Games" Bill Loguidice & Matt Baron

Vintage Games: An Insider Look at the History of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time. By Bill Loguidice & Matt Barton

This authoritative history of video gaming covers a lot of bases (all of your bases?) A detailed overview incorporating orphaned gaming models (like text games1) and old-school platforms without neglecting the modern world of internet-driven orc hordes. "Vintage Games" reads a bit like a textbook in heft and style, yet enough enthusiasm filters through that it manages to be authoritarian without being dry and academic.

The book is organized around roughly chronological examples of what I am now officially designating "meta-games." In the wake of every Pac-Man or Donkey Kong, the floodgates release look-a-likes that share certain strands of DNA with slight variations on the originals. Sometimes you get a Pac-Man rip with little pizzas in a maze. Then again, doesn't every platform jumper owe a bit to Donkey Kong?

The book is apparently an off-shoot of the author's neat website Armchair Arcade dedicated to vintage games. Lots of cool stuff there, including a few chapters that were cut from the book. They also pointed me towards this site which runs 8-bit Nintendo ROMs in your browser. Brilliant idea. (and totally illegal I guess, but what-the-hey...)

(1)Yeah, I know text games are still around. Check out some recent examples at the Interactive Fiction Competition.

"Columbine" by Dave Cullen

"Cafeteria" by Jon Haddock

"Columbine"
By Dave Cullen

Most of the stuff you remember about Columbine is likely bullshit. The endlessly repeated memories and factoids that persist to this day were fished from a shallow river by a bottom-feeding media. Remember the doomed Christian girl, bravely witnessing for Jesus with a gun pointed at her head? That didn't happen. The Trench Coat Mafia tales had little to do with reality. The shooters - Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold - were not gay, Goth outcasts seeking vengeance against cruel jocks. They were relatively popular - good students with ample friends. They came from stable two-parent homes in a prosperous community. Yet Harris was almost certainely a textbook psychopath. Klebold was a fucked-up and suicidal kid along for the ride.

They did frequent Hot Topix, play Doom and listen to Rammstein. But while such lapses in taste may be responsible for pregnant teenage girls with bad tattoos, they can't be blamed for serial killers with axes to grind and arsenals aplenty.

And - as the book makes clear - Columbine was less a successful shooting rampage than a failed bombing mission. It was done by a pair of inept amateurs with delusions of grandeur. Harris and Klebold's original plans were much larger and ambitious. The shoddy, homegrown bombs that were designed to bring the building down were mostly failures. Having access to the "Anarchist's Cookbook" does not make somebody an evil genius.

Cullen describes how a daisy-chain of inaccuracies were fed to the media and gave them exactly what they needed to sell papers with little regard for accuracy or logic. A witness repeats sketchy, third-hand information to the press which is seen by other witnesses who then pass that skewed reality on to other media outlets. There were two-thousand witnesses to the Columbine shooting, it's a textbook worthy example of the unreliability of eyewitness accounts.

"Columbine" treads a cautious line recounting the lives of the shooters. Painting them as larger-than-life monsters - as ersatz Manson heirs - would create martyrs for the creepy death-metal crowd that canonizes John Wayne Gacy. Making them pitiful and sad would piss all over the graves of their victims. Cullen does a good job mixing a sober and journalistic worldview with a novelist's knack for telling a compelling story. This isn't a tabloid "TRUE CRIME" book. "In Cold Blood" or "The Executioner's Song" are more apt comparisons.

The important stuff here might not be the survivor's tales or the confused response from law enforcement. It's how the incident was re-purposed and retold according to who was doing the telling and - more importantly - why they were telling that story.

The closest thing to the "real story" is between the covers of this book.

You Should Not Have a Cow.

"The Simpsons. An Uncensored Unauthorized History"
By John Ortved

I seem to recall vague chatter a few years ago about Matt Groening writing a book chronicling his version of Simpsons history. Maybe the mildly unflattering portrait presented here will get him off the couch. If what I hear is true, the couch is made of thousand-dollar bills woven together with the finest 24-karat gold thread. So it's understandable if a guy gets a little comfortable.

The standards set by contemporary oral histories - say Legs McNeil's "Please Kill Me" or George Plimpton's seminal "Edie"- invite a minimum of first-person incursions by the author. John Ortved injects his own point-of-view way too often and with a fist full of ham. It doesn't help that his insights tend to be a tad bush league and snarky. It's like the Comic-Book-Guys have taken over the asylum. Or maybe it's exactly like the comments section on a Simpsons website. I have never seen an episode of "24" but does it really "endorse" torture like Ortved says? And Homer Simpson mistaking Stephen Hawking for Larry Flynt is pretty goddamn funny but is it the "best single joke they ever came up with?" Was there a voter referendum about that? Maybe I missed it. It's OK if Douglass Rushkoff wants to hold the Simpsons crew responsible for funding the uber-conservative Fox News Network (d'oh!) but subsequently loading the text with others who parrot that overambitious trope is a bit of fair and unbalanced mongering that would make Bill O'Reilly proud.

An array of familiar names from Conan O'Brien to Rupert Murdoch go on record but notably absent are the folks who also take the biggest lumps; Groening, James Brooks and long-departed producer Sam Simon. Predictably no one is exactly rushing in to defend them.

The idea that Groening hogs too much credit (and makes too much money) has been internet fodder for years and it's not entirely fair (even if Matty-boy owns up to it in his "aw-shucks" regular guy way.) The show has obviously grown to be quite a mammoth, collaborative undertaking that no single person can take credit for it. Still, it started with Groening's aesthetic, his quirky voice and his clean, deceptively simple drawings.(1) It's the TV equivalent of an internet start-up. Simon and George Meyer et al may have made the show a powerhouse of yuks but they jumped on the bus a few exits down the turnpike.

And day-to-day music guy(2) Alf Clausen rates a single mention? WTF? Likewise, the various efforts by the voice cast to up their remuneration gets a lot of ink but other than that they are not really part of the story here. It's really about the writers and a truckload of them have contributed through the years. And that is probably the way it should be. The Simpsons might be a cartoon but it's a writer-driven show and this book makes that abundantly clear. The book (expanded from a Vanity Fair piece a few years back) feels rushed. Typos and redundancies appear a bit too often.

I'm still waiting for Groening's take but I'm not holding my breath. Reservations aside, this is a good enough read. I plowed through it in a single evening. Problem is that this book will probably be the final word for a while - a lackluster effort like this is likely to discourage anyone else from attempting to do a "fair and balanced" look at the show. Too bad.

Footnotes:
(1) Saying Groening can't draw - stated more than once in the book - is idiotic and missing the point. It's like saying Charles Schulz can't draw because Charlie Brown was just a circle and a couple squiggly lines or that Walt Disney was a fraud because he didn't actually draw Mickey Mouse.

(2)Danny Elfman is responsible for the wonderful theme song but Alfie is what it's all about when it comes to actually scoring the series episodes...and he contributes much to the various parodies and diegetic music that you hear in each episode.

Goats, Boxes, Staring...

George Clooney stares at goat.

A strange pair of random, head-scratching movies landed in the multiplex this week. "Men Who Stare at Goats" & "The Box" are big studio flicks mining the territory usually reserved for quirky "indie" fare.

"Men Who Stare..." chronicles a strange (and roughly factual) convergence between black-ops military tacticians and the kind of strange pseudo-pscience usually featured on late-night radio shows devoted to psychic spoon benders.

George Clooney is quite a hoot as a shadowy military contractor convinced he possesses psychic powers that allow him to reconfigure clouds while clouding men's minds. Kevin Spacey, Ewen McGregor and Jeff Bridges show up as fellow mystic warriors of varying degrees of sincerity and ability. It's a psychic sausage-fest with nary a significant female speaking role in site (except for a hot-tub montage featuring ample cleavage.)

"Men Who Stare at Goats" is a rather peculiar old-fashioned comedy. It's akin to those 1960s wide-screen extravaganzas peppered with weighty actors in fluffy roles. Lightweight? Perhaps, but it's nice to see a leisurely comedy that doesn't cram jokes down your throat at a million miles an hour. Maybe that makes for a less-than-stellar joke per dollar ratio - compared to any Judd Apatow vehicle of recent vintage, say - but it's still pretty damn funny

"The Box" is the film director Richard Kelly should have made after his cult-fave rabbit from hell opus, "Donnie Darko." Kelly's spasmodic aesthetic would have better served had he followed up with this instead of the entertaining (and over-cooked) "Southland Tales." I liked "Southland..." quite a bit. It's a sprawling, overblown mess of a flick but it's also entertaining, weird and quite funny in places -although sometimes it's hard to tell if bringing the funny was intentional or just a byproduct of so many strange ideas crowded into such a small space.

"The Box" takes a story by Richard Matheson (seen in a vastly different version in the John Landis "Twilight Zone" feature film) and elongates the quirk and weirdness a bit too thin for a full length flick but for at least half the film it works quite well. These folks definitely live in the same world as the Darko family. Hell, it looks like they live on the same block.

Many mysterious folks parade in and out of the story like refugees from "Twin Peaks" but ultimately the more wildly the narrative spins, the less interesting it becomes. Like "Twin Peaks" at its best, "The Box" has its moments. You would be hard pressed to say what exactly is going on at times but when it treads the line between slightly off-kilter suburban banality and full-tilt weirdness, it can be satisfyingly unsettling. Like -dare I say- "The Twilight Zone."

an albatross - Rehearsal footage (2006)

an albatross - "Divine Birthrite (Maiden Voyage of the Grape Ape)"
Behind the scenes with "an albatross" during preparations for their 2006 tour @ Cafe Metropolis, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Shot & chopped by Kevin Dougherty

Yippy for Yowp!

"Yowp" is a niche site devoted to exhaustive analysis of early Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Since a large part of my life is devoted to exhaustive analysis of early Hanna-Barbera cartoons, I'm pretty excited.

Yowp might dwell a tad too much on dissecting gags and recounting plot lines of specific shorts(1) but they redeem themselves in a big way with a vast knowledge of the origins and implementations of the background music (sometimes tagged "incidental music") used in Hanna-Barbera productions.

Much of the music you hear in early television was culled from "production music libraries." Pre-packaged music has been used since at least the early days of radio and Poverty Row B-movies. The libraries were delivered as a series of 12-inch discs or reel-to-reel tapes and usually came with a printed catalog that classified the music according to various parameters like length, theme, mood and style. Producers paid a nominal fee for the actual physical discs and were assessed an annual fee that varied according to how the music was used. Some libraries would bill on a "needle drop" basis: a pro-rated fee based only on tracks they actually used. This last practice has led to some problems with contemporary repackaging of old tv and film properties since certain library music was not intended to be licensed in perpetuity. As a result, I'm told that the incidental music in the "My Three Sons" DVD was changed because of licensing issues.

A typical disc might feature the work of a single composer or it might be tailored to a specific category of music or usage.Some discs might contain familiar pieces of classical music or recognizable period pieces (i.e. at least one rousing Sousa march.) Other discs might be devoted to generic "sound-alike" songs recreating popular genres like country or rock and roll but without relying on previously published (i.e. expensive) works.

But the true gems are the custom tracks created specifically for the libraries.

A good music library disc might use a certain melody as a starting point then rework the same melody in various ways (faster and slower) on different tracks. Each piece was usually pop-song length or less (1-4 minutes) As a rule they were meticulously metered and structured very carefully so that with a bit of editing they could be looped and extended or seamlessly joined with other pieces from the same library.

The music libraries were usually created for "non-exclusive" use. Hence you might encounter the same piece of music in Quick Draw McGraw, Gumby or a Russ Meyer flick.

The king of production music was Capitol records which released various libraries targeted to different markets under a wide variety of titles.The Capitol library is all over "Leave it to Beaver", "Ren & Stimpy" and many other programs. You can still find old production library discs at record collector shows and if you know anyone who works at a college radio station that has been around a while, you can occasionally find a dusty milk-crate in the basement filled with stuff that even the program diector wouldn't steal.

Yowp features links to great MP3 rips of classic H-B production music that are meticulously identified and credited to the original composer(s). Even if you don't get excited about the cartoons here, the music is a great resource to anyone creating short films or animation.(2)

Footnotes
(1)Whenever I read an article about a film and half the text is devoted to retelling the story, I feel a bit gypped. Filmfax magazine does this a lot. A ten page article about "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" doesn't need five pages of filler retelling the plot point by point. Old movie reviews used to do this too but they were cranked out on tight deadlines so they relied heavily on press book plot summaries to pump up the column inches. Likewise here, if I'm going to the trouble to read about a specific "Pixie & Dixie" short then it's a pretty safe assumption that I have already seen it.

(2) Well, not LEGALLY mind you.

Where the Weird Girls Are: "Ginger Snaps"

In anticipation of Halloween (and pondering the forthcoming reboot of Universal's "The Wolfman") I decided to revisit the proto-Twilight teenwolf tale "Ginger Snaps" and see if plays as good as I remember.

A 12-pack of cheap beer and a few hours later, the answer is a resounding yes.

"Ginger Snaps" has everything you need kids. Cute goth girls, blood, violence, casual drug use, slangy, funny teen dialogue (this Bud's for you Diablo "Hamburger Phone" Cody) and that extra special sheen of Canadian otherness usually found in Cronenberg/Guy Madden films and strange bacon products. Although unrated in the U.S. version, "Ginger Snaps" is very much akin to a hard "R" flick but in a strange Canadian-film-board-financed manner that eschews nudity while embracing the aforementioned casual drug use, a fucking shitload of F-bombs and gore galore.

And (in a bit that would raise hackles in a lower 48 movie) one scene features a public school nurse extolling the virtues of condoms to our young heroines.

Did I mention the multiple, graphically disemboweled puppy dogs?

I have been meaning to write something pithy about "Ginger Snaps" but those snappy bastards at the A.V. Club scooped me with this entry in their ongoing series "The New Cult Canon."

After reading the 'Cult Cannon' piece, I realized that maybe I was curious to see this after sitting through the cavalcade of fail in the similairly themed "Jennifer's Body."

Here's a little bonus I found on the YouTube. Something that my cheapo pawn shop dvd lacked. A neat little audition clip featuring the foul-mouthed 'Ginger' hotties.

"Where the Weird Things..."

Yes, it works. I'm pleasantly surprised. Spike Jonze may have a pretty good track record for mining gold out of erratic components but the combo of Dave Egger + James Gandolfini + Muppets sounded a bit too left field to succeed.

Armchair Freudians and community college psych majors will have a field day with some of the weird symbolism on screen. And despite the debate over whether this is a proper film for the kiddies, quite a few were in attendance, babbling away as I longed to watch the film in peace. It's fine for your kids unless they happen to be kind of stupid and illiterate. Nothing scarier or weirder than anything you might encounter in "The Wizard of Oz." The voice work was fantastic. Whenever I see "name" actors prominently featured in animation credits, I get a bit annoyed. But James Gandolfini, Chris Cooper, Paul Dano are credible actors with very distinct voices and they really sell it.

A.P. Magazine piece...

This is a piece I wrote for A.P. magazine's website. It's about doing shows at Cafe Metropolis, a small music venue in Wilkes-Barre PA. It was a fun piece to write, but for some reason they cut out a nice quote from Bayside's Anthony Raneri. The quote is restored here at the end of the article.

Also missing is the credit for the truly excellent photographer, Kristen Mullen, who has much better things to do on her day off than deal with me. Check out her work here.

A.P. magazine online-

For the past 13 years, my friends and I have been running our own "venue" - the Cafe Metropolis in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. We started out about as DIY as you can get, with a hacked-together sound system in a former paint store. It has been nerve racking, exhilarating and not very lucrative, but it's also been a heck of a lot of fun.

Opening an all-ages club is more complicated than booking bands at the American Legion hall. You need to take care of a million little details. You have to decipher health and safety regulations that were apparently written by Martians. You negotiate with landlords, cops and surly neighbors. And you have to pay Fall Out Boy at least $60 or they won't have enough gas to make it to their next gig.

Your Hoodie Can Not Be Used as a Flotation Device
All Time Low, Bayside, Cursive, Fall Out Boy, Gym Class Heroes, Hawthorne Heights, Mastodon and a million other cool bands from every state and more than twenty different countries have played Cafe Metropolis. Even better, great local bands like the Menzingers, Title Fight and Motionless in White have launched their careers on our grimy little stage.

The most important lesson I learned over the years? Running your own show is not quite the same thing as seeing a show as an audience member. It's fun - but it's a different flavor of fun. When I Am The Avalanche is on stage and somebody stuffs a hoodie down the toilet bowl, it's not going to wait until the song is over. When Ted Leo is tuning his guitar, and he gets interrupted by a screaming, naked man (covered in red paint) you know this is not like working at Wal-Mart.

...Location, Location, Location
The first thing you need is a suitable location. Ideally, you want a space that is at street level. Climbing stairs with Marshall amps is not going to endear your venue to musicians. Also, anything above the ground floor means dealing with stricter fire and safety codes. If you are going to attract touring bands, you need to find a place that can hold from 100 to 300 people. A good rule of thumb is you need three square feet of floor space for each person. Ideally, that means between 1000 and 2000 square feet (about the size of an average McDonalds.) Anything smaller and you are going to have a hard time booking bigger bands. Don't just scan the real estate ads in newspapers, get out and look for empty buildings. Knock on doors and ask around. Landlords are going to be skeptical and tricky to deal with. One way or another, they are going to know what is going on, so you won't get far trying to bluff them. And if someone asks you to sign a lease, please talk to a lawyer before you sign your life away.

Lawyers, Guns and Money
Being in it for the long haul means being legal, and that means wading through a maze of permits and red tape. Local zoning and fire department regulations are complicated and vary wildly from town to town, but they are usually well documented on line. Do your research. At minimum you will probably be required to have two exits and at least one bathroom. You will raise a lot of red-flags if you march down to city hall and ask them what permits you need to open a punk rock/all-ages club. It's not exactly something that makes the suits comfortable. Play nice and tell them you are opening a coffee shop or a cafe that features live entertainment. You don't have to lie, just make it easy for bureaucrats to put you in a category they already understand.

You also need a sound system. This is going to be your biggest expense. You can start by renting small P.A. (public address) systems from a local music store for between $100 to $300 per night. Eventually, we started buying sound equipment piece by piece until we had a fairly decent set-up.

It's (Not) About the Benjamins
Dealing with bands and booking agencies is not always a walk in the park. The first thing you need to calculate is what the promoters and agents call your "nut." This is the amount you have to earn from every show to pay your expenses. If rent and expenses add up to $2000 a month (not including what you pay the bands...or your workers) and you can do ten shows every month, then you need to clear at least $200 every time you open the doors. One typical method of compensating performers is something known as the "door deal." A door deal means you agree to split anything over your nut (e.g. the $200) with them. Touring bands usually want a minimum "guarantee" (an amount of cash agreed on beforehand) that they get paid regardless of whether anyone shows up or not. Sometimes the deal will include a minimum guarantee and a percentage of the take beyond a certain dollar amount.

We have paid guarantees as little as $50 and as high as $1000. Use your head when making deals. Be honest and upfront with booking agents and - this is critically important - don't be afraid to turn down a show if you don't think you will cover your costs. A hole in your schedule is better than screwing somebody over...or emptying your bank account every time a show does poorly. Do that enough and you can't last very long. Be sincere and flexible and most booking agents and bands will want to work with you. The idea is to create something that is sustainable in the long run. You have to worry about money constantly and sometimes that means tough decisions. Then again, if a band drives 300 miles in a snow storm and only ten people show up, don't be a jerk and give them half the door money. Give them the entire $60. Pete Wentz might remember that next time.

"Cafe Metropolis is the perfect example of a great punk rock, d.i.y venue. It is the kind of venue that can rarely survive in most places but in a music hungry community like Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, with nowhere else to see shows, they've kept their ticket prices low and kept the focus on music and community, not money. If it says anything, its the only venue that we played at on our first tour in 2000 that I still love to play at now." - Anthony Raneri (Bayside)

Old School Bruno

Craptacular!

In the tradition of "Legends of the Superheroes" and the Bea Arthur anointed "Star Wars Holiday Special" we present the ice skating/live-action/animation/fury masterpiece "The Hanna Barbera All-Star Comedy Ice Revue." -Scraped from the fine folks at Cartoon Brew

Calling All Goth Girls...

Here's a preview of what the well-dressed Siouxie and the Banshees fan will be sporting come March 2010 and the release of Tim Burton and Disney's take on "Alice in Wonderland."

A nifty panorama gallery can be found on the USA Today website here

A slide show of images is here. Johnny Depp is in David Bowie "Scary Monsters" drag as the Mad Hatter and Anne Hathaway is very ooh-la-la as the White Queen. Looks pretty interesting. Surprised this wasn't done years ago. It's a pretty obvious idea and 'Alice' is public domain, so if you're thinking of doing your own 'Alice' porno to cash-in, get moving.

I'm assuming this means the oft-rumored Alice flick from America McGhee
based on his twisted game is not likely to happen. Too bad. I'm a big fan of Tim Burton but I can guarantee that the inevitable and hasty video game movie tie-in will not come close to McGhee's version.

Scene Grrl Game Alpha v1.

Not much going on here yet. This is just some of the base elements for a game I'm working on. What was originally slated as an entry in a contest for games that were designed in one week has stretched out way beyond those hopeful parameters. My Action script skills are fairly limited compared to my ambition at least. I'm having trouble keeping everything neat and tidy enough to run at a decent clip. My understanding of global variables leaves much to be desired.

The graphics and content are the easy part.

"UP!" and at 'em.

Pixar continues its glory days run with "UP!" A story about a lonely widower (with a fleghmy growl just like Lou Grant's) doesn't really scream commercial potential but Pixar has the traction to take a whack idea and stick to it. One glaring thing about "UP!" is the utter lack of license-ready intellectual property templates. The Nickelodeon set isn't going to be clammoring for cuddly Ed Asner dolls and in this day and age, that's a pretty bold concept for an animation studio, almost unheard of in a business that relies on gimcrackery for a sizable portion of revenue.

Like its predesescor "Wall-E", "UP!" is at its best when it lets the pictures do the talking. A silent backstory set-piece in the first half outshines the rest of the film. This is a fairly straightforward outing for Pixar. Despite its eclectic premise, the bulk of the story is a pretty standard journey tale. Pretty and well-executed as it is, "UP!" seems a bit more story-oriented than the last few Pixar joints without a lot of technically impressive razzle-dazzle. The short that precedes it "Partly Cloudy" has anthropomorphic clouds that seems designed to show-off some neat technical tricks and is quite enjoyable.

And as for the 3D aspect, don't ask me. I "opted out" and chose the plain 'ol 2D experience (on celluloid.) But unlike certain parts of "Coraline" nothing in "UP!" seemed like it was designed or optimized (or forced) for 3D maximization. No pokey screen thrusts or jabbing fingers. And that suits me just fine. Apologies to James Cameron, but I think we all know that the current 3D revival is a bit of a wash-out artistically. Maybe it helps sell some tickets but it adds ZERO to the movie experience. Zero.

The Toothless Granny From Hell

Dang, but it seems like Sam Raimi has not helmed a non-arachnid related project in about a zillion years. "Drag Me To Hell" is a nice little return to cheesy excess from the fella that brung us "Evil Dead" and "Darkman." Gorehounds will bitch and moan about the PG-13 rating but Raimi knows what buttons to push and which particular streams of viscera can spout out of which particular orifices without getting into trouble with the ratings overlords. Its something of a cat and mouse game really. To say this is a tame outing - just enough Grand Guignol to get the myspace crowd into the multiplex - would be missing the point. If you wanted to compile a list of the various spews and splats of "Take Me To Hell" a more restrictive rating would not seem far off the mark, at least on the page. It's the small judgements that make the difference. Not lingering too long on the dead kitten or too closely on the blood splatter helps to keep the gross-out factor in check. An unrated directors cut would seem like a natural for the DVD release but I don't think it's really going to improve upon anything.

The A.V. Club review by Scott Tobias puts it nicely:
"That PG-13 rating may sound like a liability for a director who once hosed Bruce Campbell with torrents of blood shooting out of the walls, but Raimi makes a sly asset of this limitation. Just like other PG-13-rated horror movies, the film relies on shock effects instead of blood, but Raimi pushes those effects to a full-on visceral assault."

Star BLECCH!*

"Luke Perry meets the new waiter at the Peach Pit."

Much ado was made by Trekkies (there are apparently many on the internets) over the anachronistic** inclusion of the Beastie Boys rollicking "Sabotage" in J.J. Abrams "Star Trek" make-over (more specifically, the song appeared in one of the trailers a few months ago.)

The tune in question fits in rather nicely methinks. A young Kirk take Dad's vintage Corvette for a joyride and gets chased by "The Man." He turns on the radio*** - an oldies station presumably - and hears the Beasties.

More ado was also made a few months ago when ol' Billy Shatner started posting rather embarrassing homemade videos kvetching about whether he was or wasn't invited to appear in Abram's "Trek."

Let's tie this all together in a neat little conspiracy, shall we?

Many moons ago, "Celebrities at their Worst" unearthed a hilarious audio outtake of Bill Shat arguing with an audio engineer about the pronunciation of a certain word.

And what word was it that made Shatner set his Phasers on stun?

Wait for it...

The word was:
SABOTAGE.

Shatner pronounced it (roughly) Saab-Oh-Ta-Gee. The engineer gently corrected him and "Captain James T. Jerk" got all snippy and snarky. Some folks have sided with the Shat and pointed out that maybe "Saab-Oh-Ta-Gee" is an acceptable alternate pronunciation (especially for a rogue Canadian) but I'll leave that debate to William Safire.

Personally, I think Abrams pwned Shatner.

*To be fair, the film wasn't Blecch-ish at all. But I can't resist the temptation to give a shout-out to vintage Mad Magazine-style Yiddish-influenced neologisms. If you have a problem with that, go Portzerbie your furshlinger mom.

**Technically, I don't think it could be termed "anachronistic" - but I don't know what else to call it. Maybe "pandering" is a better term.

***Actually, it wasn't the radio but some fancy, branded gee-gaw that was an obvious product placement.

*snik* Arrrrggghhh! *snik*

"Splish, Splash, Wolverine was takin' a bath..."

I'm not putting it in the same category as "Spiderman 3" but "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" is a bit of a bust.

The X-Men flicks never quite did it for me. The suspension-of-disbelief threshold rises exponentially with an entire team of super dudes. Strangely enough, the two Fantastic Four outings almost pull it off with sheer goofiness and unintentional camp. The X-Men franchise is a lot less tongue-in-cheek and suffers for it.

This doesn't bode well for the forthcoming Avengers movie (not to mention the likely J.L.A flick.)

Hugh (not gay) Jackman does a decent job looking menacing and macho. It was cute the first time he assumes the hunched-over bodybuilder pose and runs towards his foe (while screaming to the sky: ARRGGGGHHH!) - scraping his adamantium pocket-knives along the ground - but it got a bit old fast.

Say, around the twentieth time.

Also, his hair always looks a little too neat. I smell another bad movie wig.

I've read quite a bit of X-Men in my day and while I sometimes get bored watching overly familiar backstories unspool (bit by a spider? Check!) - this franchise assumes a bit too much familiarity on the part of the audience. And I'm not really certain that it's coming from the film or comic continuity. I didn't really know who was who half the time. Spidey and Batman can probably dispense with detailed origin tales on-screen. They are pretty damn iconic but the X-Men universe is rather convuluted and not exactly a "no-brainer." It's been rebooted and retro-conned so much that this movie could have actually used a bit more of an intro. But billing this as being the titular origin story is a bit of a stretch. Most of what makes Wolverine so -umm- Wolverine-ish is barely even touched on, much less explained.

Not much of a story here in any case, especially without the preceding installments. This is not a work that would stand well on its own. And nothing particularly heroic as far as I can see. Yeah, they killed his girl, he swears revenge etc. But the turnaround in the climax sort of negates all that and makes it a bit silly. And, in the beginning - when Wolfie is involved in some clandestine dark-ops team - they never really explain what the point of the whole enterprise is. Hell if I know what it is. Some sort of sketchy, Dick Cheney Blackwater off-shoot I guess. For the most part it's never really clear if they are good guys or bad guys. (Well, until the raping that is.)

There are precious few eye-candy moments to save the day - at least none not already familiar from the trailer. "Transformers" had a pretty fucking stupid story but damn if it didn't have a pretty high quotient of slam-bang cool stuff.

It's not boring, but it's not exactly interesting either.

Coming Soon: Nerd Boner

Excited? Yeah, I'm excited about the Star Trek reboot. Let's say I'm cautiously optimistic. For every "Batman Begins" we get an "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull-Fuck." J.J. Abrams' oeuvre has never really done much for me. I thought his "Mission Impossible III" was just OK. Never really bought into "Lost" or "Alias." Maybe, someday I'll sit down with the DVD box sets and try a little harder. And according to this New York Times piece, Abrams has been given the liberty to deliver a radical and non-canonical Trek (to borrow a favorite phrase of the Trekker cognoscenti.)

Just checked out Abrams' IMDB page and was surprised he was credited with the script for "Armageddon" - a preposterous film I shamelessly admit I find quite entertaining - although I didn't see much evidence of quality film making.

And so help me Jesus H. Christ, but the new Enterprise bridge looks like an intergalactic Apple Store.

Gizmodo has an early look at the 'Trek' flick and points out Abrams' fondness for lens flares. Lens flares are sort of like the old blinking tag in HTML. Too easy and scorned by professionals. Lens flares are a much maligned design no-no, right up there with the Comic-Sans typeface. Me? I always liked lens flares. Maybe it's time for a revival. Then again, I'm pretty unprofessional. But I tend to agree with the design overlords about Comic-Sans.

Not so surprisingly Harry "Hairy" Knowles of Aint It Cool News has a fawning review. Oh Harry! Your magic-filled childhood must have been wonderful but I'm pretty sick of hearing about it.

Abrams "guest edited" a recent issue of WIRED that incorporated ciphers, codes and puzzles. I spent quite a few hours trying to figure out the secret messages within. Especially interesting is a snippet of an article in the back pages (continued from a non-existent page) about the Koabayashi Maru, a oft-cited "Trek" trope from "Wrath of Khan." The article is a bit rambling and incoherent but on closer examination, it's pretty obvious that it's some sort of coded message but damn if I could make heads or tails out of it. Cryptology is not my forte.

P.S. It looks like the blinking HTML tag still works. At least I can see it in Firefox. I thought it was "depreciated" and ghettoized a long time ago. Hooray for the old school blinking text! I'm rocking the HTML like a 1998 porno site.

The Feel Bad Movies of 2009

"Observe and Report" is quite an odd, disturbing flick. Like "Adventureland," it was heralded via a deceptive trailer that was tailored to a few broad comedy moments lifted from the Judd Apatow playbook. S.N.L. cast members, hipster music cues and wacky physical comedy hi-jinks abound.

The actual films are quite different animals.

"Adventureland" is a nice throwback to 80s teen movies but instead of the usual emo-centric homage to John Hughes (i.e. "Can't Hardly Wait") - "Adventureland" is a bit grimmer and comes across like a mopey Cameron Crowe work, a downcast descendant of "Say Anything."

The over-cooked critical consensus is that "Observe and Report" is a dark comedy take on the revenge, anger and alienation themes of "Taxi Driver." Director Jody Hill points more accurately to another Scorcese flick; "King of Comedy" as an apt inspiration. Whatever animal "Observe and Report" might be, it's not something you see everyday. My less hip taxonomy would position its strange, dark flavor closer to the much-maligned Belushi/Ackroyd vehicle "Neighbors." A comedy marketed to mainstream crowds, featuring bankable actors that runs a lot closer to the dark side than most studio films are allowed to go - especially comedies.

And the full-frontal, male nudity envelope keeps getting pushed *ahem* harder. Fingers are pointing in the direction of trailblazer Harvey Keitel and his drunken Johnny Ace wiener- ballet in (best-movie-ever-made) "Bad Lieutenant" the starting line of a path that leads to Harvey's swingin' medallion in "The Piano" to the sausage party of "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" to the glowing blue tube steak of "The Watchmen" - brothers and sisters, we are now (firmly) in the golden age of swinging dicks.

Amen to that.

Make of that, what you will but I can't imagine what Sacha Baron Cohen is going to do penis-wise in his forthcoming "Bruno."

Billy Bob Thorton >= Douche Nozzle

This is a hot one! If you ever heard "Celebrities at their Worst" you know what to expect here. Billy Bob Thorton shows up at a Canadian radio station with band in tow, plugging his tour with Willie Nelson. Billy apparently takes umbrage at the interviewer's brief mention of his acting career. Awkwardness follows and hilarity ensues.

Thanks to the AvClub, who gave this a classic title:
"Billy Bob Thorton gets weird, dickish on Canadian radio."

Beatles Remasters + RockBand

The NY Times tells us that a newly remastered Beatles catalog will be hitting the shelves September 9, 2009. The set will be released variously as individual titles (based on the original canon U.K. issues.) and in seperate box sets of mono and stereo mixes.

Looks like they will be presented in those nifty paper sleeves that replicate old-fashioned LPs. These faux-LP packages are common with Japanese releases but for some reason, you dont see them elsewhere. That's a shame because these Chu-Bop throwbacks are a lot cooler than brittle CD enclosures - not to mention environmentally friendly for those who drink the Al Gore Kool-Aid. There will also be documentaries about the making of each album included on the CDs and compiled in a stand-alone DVD with the box sets.

And while I'm a fan of "RockBand", the forthcoming Beatles version (also September 9) never really piqued my interest until I saw this way cool CGI render of Abbey Road Studios:


Somebody needs to make this into an Unreal level.

"Bruno" Red Band Trailer!

"Something's Gonna Happen"

Wonderfully rough and ratty collection of early demos from power-pop king Marshall Crenshaw. From the very cool blog 'Power Pop Criminals.'

A direct, RapidShare link to the file is here.

Note: It's a password protected RAR file, the p/w is password.

Noted. Briefly.

FILM
"Duplicity" Directed by Tony Gilroy
Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson, Paul Giamatti, Tom Wilkinson.

Fun, agreeably complex espionage caper from the director of "Michael Clayton." A nice antidote after seeing 'Watchmen' for the third time. And Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti are fucking aces here. As usual. The ending is interesting. I wasn't sure if it was surprising because it was so obvious or it was obvious because it was so surprising. (Huh?)

Here's a cool piece about Gilroy's methods and madness in a recent 'New Yorker.'


BOOK
"Drawing Words & Writing Pictures"
Jessica Abel, Matt Madden.

Maybe it treads some of the same ground as Scott McCloud's "Creating Comics" but this book is more a practical, pedantic textbook in structure and objectives. Plenty of detailed "nuts and bolts" advice and comprehensive step-by-step lessons. Leans a bit subtly towards creating the sort of twee, memoir books we all tired of ten years ago but the scope is pretty inclusive and the advice will be useful to anyone looking to get a comic down on the page. Probably the new standard-bearer for anyone looking to create comics.

Check out the useful companion website here.

"Bonfire of the Talking Vegetables"

"Me, Myself and Bob" By Phil Vischer

"Veggie Tales" was a syrupy, direct-to-video CGI cartoon that was all the rage a few years back. Produced on a shoestring budget by a tiny production company in Chicago, "Veggie Tales" promised to deliver Christian cartoon values to the Pikachu-loving heathen masses.

Creator Phil Vischer was a self-taught CGI geek inspired by MTV and that great spaghetti monster in the sky. "Veggie Tales" immaculate conception seems almost an accident according to Vischer. To his credit, Vischer makes no claim of basso-profundo voices in the sky commanding him to go forth and create a world of talking vegetables. He's sincere without being overbearing about the God stuff. He had a good idea, a pipeline to push it through and the skills to get the job done.

Soon after gaining a foothold in nascent Christian book store market, the veggies became a marketing and licensing phenomenon. Behind the scenes, things were less than kosher. Vischer's production company "Big Idea," became a bloated cash-hungry mess. Packaged-goods financial types filled the executive ranks while the videos were flying off the shelves but the cash coming in was not enough to keep the company afloat - and launch an ambitious feature film. In its heyday, the hype behind "Veggie Tales" seemed a bit too good to be true. Turns out that was probably the case. It's an old story: a modest success combined with much too optimistic expectations turns to disaster when the money-changers get their grubby handprints on something. Too bad for Vischer, he seems like a genuine sort of fellow. (Although he downplays his own role in the demise of "Big Idea" - Vischer was the boss after all - he leaves several nameless key executives bearing the lion's share of the blame.)

Still, the book is a surprisingly good read for anyone interested in making a go with a self-produced media property. Vischer keeps techno-babble to a minimum but still manages to throw in enough specifics about obsolete computer graphics systems to keep things interesting for geeks who weathered the early days - trying to make cartoons on machines designed for medical applications. The religious aspect is pretty obvious and easy to skim for non-believers and to his credit Vischer displays more bewilderment than bitterness at the way things went down. Interestingly, Vischer is forthcoming about the problems of running a Christian-oriented company that might need to hire quite a few non-believers to get things done - and navigating the slippery legal/ethical path that arises when attempting to hire (or not hire) folks based on religious convictions.

After a painful fire-sale auction, the "Veggie Tales" characters ended up in the hands of "Classic Media." "Classic Media" is sort of an intellectual property graveyard that owns or controls an eclectic mix of orphaned cartoon characters like the Lone Ranger, Gerald McBoing-Boing and - in a wry bit of irony - that cute lil' doppelganger of Satan -"Hot Stuff."

www.philvischer.com

I Watches the Watchmen

• Yeah, it's good. Real good.

For nerds only? Maybe, a bit. A lot of what makes "Watchmen" great is built on the expectations and familiar tropes of the genre. You expect action and razzle-dazzle and plenty of that is on display here. But you also get middle-age crisis, erectile-dysfunctioning caped crusaders and um, rape.

• The ending is a bit dumbed - but not in the way we have been led to believe.

The much ballyhooed loss of a giant squid destroying New York City has been harpooned in favor of a grimmer, more conventional denouement involving some random nukes. That's a pretty arbitrary move but it's not as distracting as what follows: a tacked-on montage of the city apparently rebuilding as two of the leads make some rah-rah voiceover speech about continuing their superhero mission. It's obvious, awkward fodder for a possible sequel. Don't act so surprised. But if you thought Alan Moore was pissed about this movie being made at all, wait until he gets wind of a sequel.

• It's also very long. But it's never boring.

Face it, everything is too long. Especially when you take "can't-touch-this" material and give it to a hot director who knows how to read the fanboy tea leaves. And the DVD will be even longer. An intermission would have been nice but what-the-heck. You gets your moneys worth. Lots of bits and pieces from the book are missing - even at close to three hours - and the DVD release is going to be almost as hotly debated an event as the theatrical launch.

• It's surprisingly, satisfyingly violent.

Arguments can be made that the "Watchmen" is an anti-violence screed, showing the futility of war - blah blah blah. And that the heaps of violence in the film contradict that a bit. I'm not buying it. But the film is quite a bit more explicitly violent than the book.

Those clever fucks at the AVClub.com have published this nice book-to-movie comparison.

The Monster Times

The "Monster Times" was a day-glo, biweekly newspaper that scraped Forrest J. Ackerman's "Famous Monsters" formula and dragged it kicking and screaming through 1970s-era Times Square.

The brainchild of a couple Warren Publishing ex-pats, "Monster Times" had the distinct grit and grime of New York City circa "Taxi Driver". With lurid duo tone printing and coarse halftones - it was whispered to be some kind of bastard cousin to Al Goldstein's "Screw" magazine. In format and design they were practically identical - folded over tabloids with bright eye-catching colors and shameless call-outs to venture inside. A few years later, Jim Steranko's "ComicScene" (later "MediaScene") took the same weird, halved-tabloid format and polished it up a bit with mixed results.

"Screw" was fueled by a shaky foundation of prostitution and massage parlors ads while the terrain of "Monster Times" was the equally suspect world of classic horror and grindhouse cinema. Like the Warren mag's "Captain Company" pages, "Monster Times" featured lots of in-house ads selling all sorts of horror/fantasy ephemera. (I vaguely remember a dealer at Phil Seuling's early N.Y.C. cons who featured M.T. back-issues and a product lines identical to the ones in the magazine.) Even better, the 'Times' kept a keen eye on comics and television of the sort that were generally ignored by the fairly limited, retro-focus of "Famous Monsters." One of the only places to go for info on Star Trek, the Green Hornet, Bernie Wrightson's "Frankenstein" etc. It had the spirit and energy of a mimeographed zine with a more polished look and feel.

Fangoria plans to revitalize the "Times" brand via an online archive of sorts. They promise to make the entire run available - albeit via a clunky online "magazine reader" application that leaves something to be desired.

Fragile and brittle back issues of the "Monster Times" have a tendency to fall apart in your hands, so this may be the only way for future gorehounds to appreciate the 'Times' slightly-off, always entertaining voice.

Somebody Watched "The Watchmen"

Via Reuters and the Hollywood Reporter, the first review I've seen of "The Watchmen."

Not much enthusiasm or depth of insight in the review. A pretty dry review that you might expect from a trade journal of sorts. They even go so far as to peg the film a flop. That just seems like showboating for no particular reason other than being iconoclastic. But you won't be swayed either way by this particular write-up. I doubt it will be a flop and I'm sure it will be damn interesting - even if it's a fail.

Here's another review - this time from Australia. It was filed at 12AM on February 27, they must be racing to get out there as early as possible.

What they are saying in the land down under sounds a bit more interesting:
"The story teems with weirdness and wild adventure..."

"It won't be forgotten in a hurry..."

"But many extremely violent scenes earning it an MA 15+ rating will hamper its blockbuster hopes. Sex, politics, a nuclear holocaust, copious blood splattering and bone shattering could make Watchmen's mammoth 160 minutes an ordeal for some."

###

Smashing Hanson Trick of Wayne

From Billboard.com
"Former Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha, Cheap Trick drummer Bun E. Carlos, Hanson's Taylor Hanson and Fountains Of Wayne bassist Adam Schlesinger have formed a new band, Tinted Windows."

Is this for real? Sounds like a pretty damn amazing band if you ask me. It's a power-pop supergroup. All they need now is Ron Dante singing lead (and a Saturday-morning cartoon show. And flexi-discs on the backs of cereal boxes.)

**P.S. Ron Dante's website has a free MP3 of a truly amazing song:
"Aunt Matilda's Double Yummy Blow Your Mind Out Brownies"

"..Alice is there and the rabbit is too,
Everyone there is waiting for you..."

The mind reels. My new favorite song.

Behind the Scenes of 'Coraline'

Sculptor Damon Bard's website has some very cool images of 'Coraline' maquettes and models as well as a couple shots of the large scale sets.

Mr. Bard is apparently the go-to-guy for this kind of sculpting and development. Besides 'Coraline' he has created sculpts for 'Ratatouille', 'Madagascar', 'Over the Hedge' and all sorts of interesting projects. Geeks of all ages will appreciate this early version of a 'Mars Attacks' dude.

I wish I could create characters in clay and just scan the damn things. CGI modeling is not the way to create interesting organic-looking models. As I write, I am struggling to create a passable, on-model version of Quick Draw McGraw in Lightwave. Not an easy task.

'Coraline' => 'Nightmare Before Christmas'

Not much I'm going to be able to add to the deserved buzz around Henry Selick's 'Coraline' other than to implore you to see it as soon as possible. 'Coraline' is miles beyond "Nightmare Before Christmas" both technically and aesthetically. And it's much more fun than the flawed (but still interesting) "James and the Giant Peach."

My only real caveat is the 3D presentation and that's probably my own damn problem. I've got a pretty wack lazy eye and my depth-perception is rather lacking in the real world. I have been watching 3D stuff in theatres since at least 'Jaws 3D' and have never seen anything that works for me (with the exceptions being certain parts of Disneyland's 'Captain EO' and the title credits of 'Friday the 13th 3D.') So the 3D effect was lost on me. I am almost wholly depth-perception challenged-please feel free to direct me to the appropriate support group.

I will note for the record that the snazzy glasses were quite comfortable and while the depth effect was nil (to me) it was akin to watching an ordinary print (although I still had to wear the glasses.) I flipped the faux-Ray Bans up from time to time and noticed that sometimes the image looked like a normal print (although a bit brighter, like a slightly over-exposed print) and the 3D stuff was only used in scenes where it would deliver a really pronounced effect. 3D only seems to work on stuff moving along a horizontal access. So putting it out in 3D may have been an afterthought. A couple obvious in-your-face tricks stand out but nothing that is going to seem inappropriate if you have to see this in plain ol' 2-dimensions.

Probably one of the best looking stop-motion works ever.

Jerry Beck's Cartoon Brew led me to some interesting articles on 'Coraline' and Henry Selick. Like a cool interview with Selick here on the AVClub and another one over at Aint It Cool.