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.