More Returns

I had a gift certificate to our local comic shop that was burning a hole in my pocket so I decided to cash it in.

It has been a long time since I bought a comic. Even before the blog went into its latest hiatus (December 2008), I had already stopped buying monthly issues. Buying little booklets of glossy paper isn't too smart, you know? But, I had the gift certificate and I missed the head kicking.

The good

Daredevil made it to 500 issues! I got a back copy along with the latest issue 501. But, Matt Murdock know leads The Hand? That is kind of a neat twist, but didn't he already sell his soul when he was the brutal "new" Kingpin of NYC? We do have umpteen stories of him snapping and girlfriends dying, so it can't hurt to recycle this. Right? His new DD inspired Hand ninjas look awesome with little devil horns and long pony tails designed to mimic devil tails.



I may need to set aside the three bucks a month to keep reading DD. It is nice to come back to such big reveals and plenty of ninjas.

The Bad

When the hell did Immortal Iron Fist get canceled!? It was because I stopped buying issues, right Marvel? Well, times are tough and some of us didn't get a nice injection of Disney money earlier this year.

I picked up four issues of the Iron Fist tie-in series, The Immortal Weapons. It chronicles each of the champions from the other heavenly cities that Danny Rand, a.k.a Iron Fist, met during his adventures in the series. They are nice, but I really wanted to see Danny Rand punch some people out.



I have also read rumors that this is just a stand in while Marvel decides what to do with the main series. So, maybe it will come back. I hope. If not, then I will be down to just one comic a month since few other weekly series attract me. I just need to keep dueling with the other guy that keeps putting trade paper backs of Y: The Last Man on hold at the library.

Peace!

Organize

Astute readers may notice that the newer posts feature tags. The older posts will soon all have tags and by the time you read this, most should be annotated.

We may have few patrons, but we are organized. Just like the corner hardware store.

Peace!

Celebrate Thanksgiving...In Space!

Happy Thanksgiving. Amanda and I will be out of town and maybe you will be as well. Isn't the Internet great though? You can read this from anywhere even as you remember there is a reason you only see these people three times a year.

Thanksgiving used to mean lots of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) and I remember both Comedy Central and the Sci Fi Channel (Now known as SyFy) running all day marathons of episodes on Thanksgiving day and Black Friday. I am not the only person to remember. Bully, a fabulous comics blogger, remembers.

These marathons were very helpful particularly in an era where I had limited access to the Internet. Our meager dial up connection was always at the mercy of my mother's friends calling to chat. MST3K is an immediately likable show, but it has a very high learning curve. We have all seen a bad movie and maybe even been forced to endure it. Everyone riffs on a bad movie, even if its just an eye roll while you walk back to the car from the theater. MST3K turns this into an art. There are eight seasons packed with a dozen or so two hour episodes into each one. There is no plot, so you don't need to scramble through back seasons to understand why Mike's dad owns a mail order burlap store in Minong, Wisconin. But you always want more and Sci Fi didn't have the rights to anything earlier than the seventh season!

This has to be my favorite show of all time. I waver on "My Favorite" quite often. Anyone who has kept up with the blog must have noticed that one day I was talking about comics and then I started pretending to know a lot about politics. There were links to sports sites, comics sites, and news sites. When I listen to my MP3 player I mash the skip button until it gets to Black Eyed Peas, then Silver Sun Pickups, 311, and Jimmy Eat World. Please don't ask me what my favorite kind of music is.

But, MST3K will remain my favorite TV show for life. The show is over twenty years old and Old Man Garik will still guard his DVD player and boxed sets fifty years from now. 'It's funny, dammit! The best," I will say much like our parents scream at us when we ask them why the bought a DVD season of the Dean Martin variety show out of those inserts you get in the paper.

Nearly every episodes of MST3K is up on YouTube. The folks at Best Brains have always appreciated how bootlegging helped spread the word about the show during the early 90s. I shudder to think what would have happened if Viacom had owned MST3K and YouTube was forced to scour its servers of all riffing and references to "Watch out for snakes!"

I don't recall what was the first MST3K episode I ever saw. It was late and I laughed at the silhouettes emanating from the TV. And, as per usual, I am hesitant to name a favorite, even though Space Mutiny comes pretty close. The many names of David Ryder really did it for me, even though they do run it into the ground. Hard.

Enjoy!



Here

Michael Bay is laughing at me

Speaking of movies...

I realize this is about five months too late, but the sequel to Transformers, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, was God awful. I went to a midnight showing of the thing and left three hours later quite disappointed. And a bit heartbroken as well. I realize how melodramatic that sounds. It is a movie about giant robots that beat the hell out of each other. How much could one really expect? But, returning readers will remember how excited Amanda and I were about the first one.

I can't say much that already has been said about the movie. 19% on Rotten Tomatoes is a serious F. The first one got a 56%, which is a low D. That gets you through to the next school year!

I think that part two was a victim of the first movie's attempts to be taken seriously. They spent a good part of the first hour trying to legitimize giant robots that turn into cars. The focus was always on the fight, but folks gave it a pass for trying. The robots were still here to kick ass, but at least we got a try at why they were here to kick ass. It made the first movie a lot of fun. Stupid fun, but not just plain stupid like the second once. Watching the second one, it seemed like Michael "360 shot" Bay was a bit subdued in the first installment and that the second one was his true canvas on which to demolish freely.

Peace!

Take Me Away

Over this past weekend, Amanda and I took in two movies. We go to movies quite often, but two times in just over 24 hours was unusual since the first experience usually gobbles up 30 plus dollars.

We saw the new Sandra Bullock picture, The Blind Side, which was nice and inspirational even though it laid it on thick and made it seem like all of life's problems could be solved with money and sass. Lots of sass. It also didn't help that I know next to nothing about football particularly the fervent loyalty of fans in the Southern SEC. Living in Cleveland, my football knowledge is limited to "$@!# Browns!" You should check it out. A great story heightened by its true basis. And Kathy Bates is in it.

We also checked out the following film...



Starring Milla "Lilu Dalla Multipass" Jovovich, The Fourth Kind is a supernartual thriller based on supposed true events in the town of Nome, Alaska. Folks in our 49th state are having trouble sleeping and it has something to do with an owl. Or a murderer? Or ancient Sumerians? Or aliens?

This movie is a hot damn mess. I try to steer clear of technical criticism since I would not know a filter from a gaffer, but the whole setup was distracting. Much like The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity, Fourth Kind includes so called actual footage into the movie. This time we are told that the recordings are from actual sessions with Milla's character, psychologist Abigail Tyler, and show her patients' violent reactions to remembering being taken. The movie decided to juxtapose these images with shot for shot reenactments with Milla and the crew. So we are seeing two movies at once. Except it is the same thing! Maybe another angle would have helped, but its like watching your home movies made with a much bigger budget. The film even divides the scenes into a quad screen with moving borders that increase and decrease the size of each panel as the scene progresses.

I have no idea why the film makers tried this. Why show us the same thing two, three, even, four times? Maybe it was to give the supposed real photo some extra authenticity. The time we would really like the reenactments are those scare moments when the aliens show up and the cameras goes all wonky. Between distorted snow we often see some creepy images of victims floating in the air and distorted into grotesque poses. This are few and far between and presented in the same shaky-cam style that made The Blair Witch Project a chore. The dual view took me times out of the experience and had me and some of the fellow movie goers laughing at were supposed to be harrowing scenes.

The film plays fast and loose with its plot. I could appreciate the scatter shot approach if this was indeed based on true stories, but it is not. Universal Studios actually lost a lawsuit brought forward by the Alaska Press Club because of the deceptive promotion. A viral marketing campaign peppered sites with fake news stories associate to actual Alaskan media. The artifice of the story requires good story telling, not ham handed efforts to make all of this seem real.

I wanted to like this movie and I wanted to lose sleep over it. As a young boy and teenager, I was obsessed with the paranormal and especially aliens. I have since become much more skeptical, but the fear of those almond eye emaciated visitors still creeps me out. Indeed, there is something alien and soul less about that imagery. However, Fourth Kind never even shows the monsters or hints at their faces. The big reveal is a bunch of black shadows coming for Abigail. You don't need to give us the full monster Monty, but a peek or peer would have been nice.

Many critics have also pointed out that the whole owl omen is hokey. A.O. Scott of The New York times said that owls are not scary. I must agree that the owl omen is never used to full effect, but feel it could have been done right. This image from the trailer hints at a possible transformation of earthly being to alien visitor.



The trailer I saw focused a lot on the owl and I thought we were going to get a sci-fi "The Raven" type scenario where the beings stalk victims with an earthly creature they find appealing.

I hope you don't waste your money on this especially because you can get a better experience watching sixteen year old episodes of The X-Files. Of course, I am in the camp that watching X-Files beats out a lot of things.

Peace!

Relive Blogging...for the fifth time

I am way too good to go one whole year without an update.

I am going to give the whole blogging thing another try. Still not sure on the topic or theme. No more comics references. I still love Chris Sims and Dave Campbell, but there was not point in trying to recreate their voices. Maybe some more fiction. Stay tuned.

Peace!