big questions #9

Nillsen's Big Question series is one of those comics where you just wonder who you should be rooting for? The crashed pilot, the birds, the snake? There a real work of either genius or comedic insanity at play here and I enjoy it very much. I can't help but think as much as I love the comic medium, how cool this would be to see animated instead. It wouldn't work and it wouldn't be a cartoon but something tells me it would be very new and right.

Also got Loveless # 13 and just a crazy turnaround from the first twelve issues. If you just read the letter part of the story and then check out the last three pages, it could break your romantic heart. How did this book which has been so cruel and depraved turn the emotions around so quickly? Brian Azzarello proves his writing talent again.

Got the latest Acme Novelty Library last week will dive into it soon.

The Fountain.

Darren Aronofsky's movie The Fountain is sure to split it's audience in many directions. Some will understand the basics but not really want anything to do with it. Some will wonder just what they were watching, and then some people, like myself will absolutely adore this film.
The Fountain proves that even in Hollywood you can find a way to create a little bit of beauty. Every shot is thought out. You can see it in the lighting, the design and the mostly the eyes of the two man actors. Hugh Jackman has his most diverse and demanding role and he pulls it off wonderfully. Rachel Weisz is just right and it's easy to see that Aronofsky camera never lets his wife look dull even on her deathbed. The three timelines all play wonderfully off each other and I can't wait to have a chance to study the lines from this movie. I am pretty sure certain figures from each timeline got intermingled throughout and sometimes even called each other by wrong period names. The Fountain's futuristic set is really the best thing a big screen could be used for. A sole floating bubble in the vastness of space and a singular color of yellow. It is a desert photographer's dream. A beautiful dream.
In the end The fountain's story plays off the old story of life and death and all the questions that follow us on that road, and it may veer to closely into a want or desire for meaning for the cynics out in movieland. I'm sure I'll be dissapointed when Ihear the negativity that will surround this film. Its downfall in the world of the moviegoer will be it's attempt to hit an idea over the head with a mallet and not to let up until the credits roll. If you can see into the hammer then you will enjoy it's exploration. And if you only see the hammer, then you may as well leave the theatre. The fountain is about creation. About creating and ending, about beauty and saddness, and gains and losses. It is about Hope, and Despair, light and dark, and most importantly life and death.
In the end as it still sinks in and I understand this film will be too slow, too convulted for most movie patrons, all I can think about is how movies need more films like this. Honest. Serene. Beautiful. Basically Human.
~A plus plus plus~

2006 alphabet awards!

a is for apples to apples
b is for boston legal.
c is for convergence in mn
d is for DS lite. so nice. so so nice.
e is for everyone
f is for fell by warren ellis and ben templesmith
g is for golf ball sized hail.
h is for henry gail
i is for ida
j is for java juice and their awesome tv's
k is for kisses.
l is for lucky creature attacks!
m is for mark schwaber's the killing card.
n is for nintendo, a great year my friends.
o is for oxygen.
p is for promises.
q is for questions. like what's a alphabet award?
r is for road of the patriarch by R.A. Salvatore
s is for serentiy.
t is for touchdowns that win games.
u is for understanding.
v is for voting
w is for wii!
x is for xeroxes.
y is for you.
z is for 'ze letter z! AND ZELDA.

daniel craig is bond! best bond movie since Goldeneye, maybe Connery days.

Quick Update, Casino Royale is a winner. It gets rid of the gadgets and the special effects and gets back to what makes bond so awesome in the first place, spying, chasing, charisma and doublecrossing. Daniel Craig works really well in the role and it just feels right with a little of the Bourne Identity's figthing style added to the mix. Its strange that in this the 21st century Bond has returned to his roots to find a new apeal with his audience. Where does Casino Royale rate on your Bond list? I say top three, four easy.

Stranger than Fiction.

Marc Forster's (director of the overrated Monster's Ball and the underrated Stay) new film is really pretty neat. Will Ferrell must be on tranquilizer because I've never seen him act this well normal. He plays Harold Crick whose life is run by numbers and the catch is he's also a character in a popular author's novel. One in which she plans to kill him. Pretty good plot that has some holes in it on the romance angle, but is forgivable thanks to the nice direction and overall subdued atmosphere. I'll give it a B and Will Ferrell an A for actually acting for once and leaving the annoying comedy behind at least for this film.

Also picked up Civil War Frontline # 8. Why do I feel that after Civil War marvel is setting up another crossover to fight the Atlanteans? I hope not but it sure looks so. And would someone put Speedball out of his misery.

lucky sale on turkey day, life.

hey everyone order now until the end of the day on thanksgiving and get some cool swag for free.
here's the items and the deals
order the compilation or the disease/network of terror split get the brendan odonell/scott smith split for free.
order the mark schwaber cd or the comic book lucky creature attacks get the compilation for free, plus some other goodies.
of course all order come with free sticker and who knows what else. get shopping this deal ends at the end of thanksgiving .
cool

Also, been at work for a lot lately so I havent been able to get much done here. Free time I have had has been spent playing the Legend of Zelda on my wii. It is so far about five hours in, the best Zelda I've played and I have just now entered the 1st dungeon.
Going to See Stranger Than Fiction today, Bond tommorow and hopefully the Fountain on Saturday. Busy movie holiday, plus of course Chinese Buffet for turkey day. How anti-holiday of us.

got my wii. niiiiccceee

got my wii. just set it up, made some mii's which can definetly be a neat little time waster. played wii sports and now im taking a break to register all my new goodies with nintendo. the wii is alreayd awesome and guess what? I've got a copy of twilight princess that hasn't even been in the machine yet. I'm going to start that some tonight but save the meat of it for my days off when I have time to play it. I have to wait for the wii lan adaptor so i can get online and buy me some classic nes games. pinball, and donkey kong here i come. I really really like my wii, and am glad i got up at five this morning to stand in the cold outside of target with the rest of the nuts. wiiiiiiii!!!!!!

seinfeld

just got back from seeing seinfeld in cedar rapids. he is very good at his standup routine and I really like his new jokes about collecting things that eventually become trash. it's the culture we live in. Very good show, and a very good night in Cedar Rapids. Looking for a great place to eat downtown. Try Gringoes. Yummy.

make mine marvel

Wow. three great books all under the marvel banner today. Civil War # 5 finally comes out and again it's worth the wait. I can't get enough of Mcniven's artwork He takes costumes like Stingrays, that have always been cheesy and they just look awesome here. Doesn't hurt that the story is great as well.

Astonishing X-men # 18. So this goes all the way back to Grant Morrison's New X-men run doesn't it. Got to love Joss Whedon. I may even buy Runaways when he starts on that.


Moon Knight#6 got to be my favorite this week. Lots of great dialogue and a great way to tie up the opening story arc. If Marvel can keep Huston and Finch on the book they can keep me.

All A's across the board.

what's going on at the creature house.

So one week from today Ill be at work, but when i come home I hope to have my opened Wii from the night before set up and ready to dive into the legend of zelda. and maybe some wii sports. Metal Slug anthology has been pushed back to the following week so my 2d goodness will have to wait. I could download something from the virtual console but so far nintendo hasn't been clear how to connect the system to broadband which is what I have and not wireless. I'm probably going to have to shell out more money for an adaptor. Oh well.
Thursday I'm taking Jessica to see Seinfeld and on the way home i think we will stop and get in the way of the midnight PS3 launch.
East Carolina is bowl eligible.
I watched Art School Confidential last night which was not at all astonishing and Lucky Number Slevin this morning which I actually really enjoyed. In fact I even liked Lucy Lui in it.
Started over on Tactical Assualt since I'm stuck on mission 8. I'm going to use my upgrades to make my shields near impervious.
Almost done with Road of The Patriarch. it is great.
thinking of lucky creature releases for 2007. right now there's plans but nothing solid to report, and there is room for expansion if anyone has ideas.
being doing some sharpie drawings, maybe I'll scan one in soon.

first ps3 hands on Motorstorm.

First I need to preface this by saying that I've been a firm believer in Nintendo's gameplay over graphics camp all year long. Second I do think 600 is too much when I want a games console, not the supercomputer and blue ray player that Sony is offering.
So today on my break at work I wandered over to Target hoping to get my hands on the wii, and there sat the PS3.
Motorstorm was the only thing I had time to try and just let's get this out of the way. Dirt racing has never looked so frakking good. It really has a great sense of speed and the cars handle very well. There were a few times I flew off the cliff, but never in a cheap way. Each time I kinda knew what I had done wrong driving and so I got better the longer I played. The laps, are just wow. One lap was like 3 minutes real time. That's 3 minutes of new terrain with no slowdown or framrate loading problems. Very impressive. The Bikes handle a lot differently than the cars which they should and offer a better sense of speed. Gamers were upset that Sony got rid of the rumble and I was surprised to notice how I didn't miss it at all during this game. In fact because my hands were not shaking all my exterior input was coming from the screen, and it actually felt more immersive this way. It may prove that the rumble was actually taking away from our game experiences but we will see how that holds up in First Person shooters which really rely on the technology. From my first impressions of about twenty minutes of gameplay, I've got to say I'm impressed with the PS3 and Motorstorm in particular. I can't imagine what games on the PS3 will look like once developers figure out how to code for it. As much as Sony has tried to botch this thing, they may still have one awesome gaming system on their hands.
Now if only if the average consumer could afford it.

bsg.

a morning of bsg. just watched the latest episode. pretty artsy camera work huh?
then picked up issue three of the comic, which is o.k.
played some loaded, washed some clothes. going outside because its nice out there.

lists.

wii in 13 days.
now playing, stta on the ds, alladin on the genesis
now reading. road of the patriarch, by r.a. salvatore, goldfish by brian michael bendis.
just watched derailed, B plus.
heroes, lost, battlestar galactica., jericho, boston legal, the five shows i'm watching on a regular basis.
music. what are listening to? i need something new, unheard of.

borat. the funniest movie of the year.

wow. dont we look like bigots. borat who sacha baron cohen has created and turned into a walking buffoon really shines when he shows how bad parts of America is. This movie also has one of the longest and most disturbing laugh out loud naked wrestling scenes in cinema history. A true gem. Who has the Da Ali G show on dvd? I need to borrow it. now. I must have more of this comedic guru.

november movie previews

November is interesting for movies this year. Usually the movies are all serious and wanting to go for the oscars. Obviously not so this year which our first pick proves.

Nov 4th Borat. Sacha Baron Cohen's offensive movie hits and the nation of Kakhasthan weeps. I'm intrigued to see if he can pull this off. It's been dropped too 800 theatres from 2000 so that will hurt its audience some.


Nov 10th I can't believe I'm interested in a Will Ferrel movie but Stranger than Fiction looks pretty good. I may wait to rent it depending on how busy I am. It also goes up agaisnt the always box office strong Russel Crowe and Ridley Scott in a odd film for them. Adapting Peter Mayles A Good Year. No violence there and may be a Oscar contender.



NOV 17th. Craig, Daniel Craig. Casino Royale hits and we see if the Broccoli's were wise in rebooting the franchise. I think they may have hit it from the previews I've seen. I was one of the many who said what? when they cast Craig, but now I'm leaning towards the yes, and I want nothing more than for the master spy to get back to action and spying and away from the past movies special effects.


Nov 24th The Fountain. If this actually finally comes out I'll be happy. I don't care about the reviews. This film looks amazing. I think too many directors forget they have a paint brush, especially in science fiction and don't use enough colors. I'll be in my seat for the weirdness that is Aranofsky and the Fountain.

Also Jack Black's Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny comes out today. See what im saying about strange placement in November.

Star Trek Tatical Assault early impressions.

Just got home, played the first stage of Star Trek: Tatical Assault and got to say so far im pretty pleased. the graphics are o.k. for the DS which really doesnt do 3-d that well. and the music and space strategy is very Star Trek Even has Shatner doing voice work. Can't wait to get further into it and unlock the klignon missions. Kaplah!