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Friday, November 20th, 2009
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Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
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...but when said person discussing said politics shows that he's both a miserable waste of skin and a complete fucking idiot, I make an exception.
Yes, I'm talking about Glenn Beck, how did you know?
Anyway, here's THIS wonderful quote from the man. Courtesy of Shakeville.blogspot.com.
"America has spoken clearly, consistently—we don't want [government-paid healthcare]. And for the first time in history, we don't think it's the government's place to give it to us. We're kind of reading this [holds up unidentified piece of paper] from time to time now. We are—excuse this analogy, but I feel like it's true—we're the young girl saying [puts on scared voice and crying face] "No, no—help me!" [back to regular voice] and the government is Roman Polanski. In the end, I think we're all gonna be cowering in France. [A few more moments of babbling about "unfunded liabilities" before the video cuts out.]"
Okay, not only does he compare government funded healthcare to RAPE, which is about 33 different flavors of hateful, stupid and WRONG right there...but he gets the @#$%ING analogy wrong! ROMAN POLANSKI was the one who went to France, nimrod, not his rape victim.
And y'know what there's a whole lot of in France? Goverment-funded health care!
To quote that bastion of deep, philosophical discourse, Under Siege, "What kind of babbling bullshit is this?"
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, November 16th, 2009
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Watch one of Rob Zombie's movies, which run around 90 - 100 minutes.
While doing so, count the number of times the word "Fuck" is used.
Then watch one of Martin Scorsese's films, preferably one of his two and a half hour plus gangster movies.
Also count the number of times the F-bomb gets dropped.
Compare.
In other news: Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 is hard. I'm talking "You versus a squad of SWAT Ninjas & a CyberDemon while a Quake reject spews rockets on you" Hard. But also a lot of fun.
Also, you've heard right. You can make the female character's breasts bounce by shaking the controller. It's every bit as creepy as you imagine. In fact, there's something wrong with my controller because I can only seem to get one breast going, making it even more surreal.
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Thursday, November 12th, 2009
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Lately I've been trying to cut down on discussing my hated nemesis, The YA-Fantasy-Romance-About-Vampires-Franchise-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named but man, when ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) mudpuppy83 showed me this picture of the film adaptations hunky star, I had to share it.
So much to mine from this. That bib. The half-eaten corncob. That hair which has shot past "mussed," shot past "tussled," shot past "Wolverine" and straight into "On this day, in the year XXXX, on this very site did the Great Tribble Massacre occur." As El Santo pointed out, that dude's going have weasels living in that one day. Then there's that look that's he giving that blurry red thing that I'm assuming is a lobster. That's a look that's saying in a sultry tone: "Oh yes, I'm going to eat you. Maybe not today. Maybe not even tomorrow...but somebody...soon. Oh yes." And is that a hotdog on his plate?
I hope this has brightened your day as much as it has mine.
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Thursday, October 29th, 2009
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Because...Master Pandemonium (real name: Martin Preston) was a movie studio exec who got blitzed one night and got into a car accident that cost him both of his arms. He would have died from these injuries as well, were it not that he struck up a deal with Mephisto. Not only did the demon lord restore him to life, he even replaced his arms for him. Yes...replaced his arms...
...with demons.
Dave Campbell (of Dave's Long Box fame, where I ganked all the images from) was right, he really does look like he's doing a country line dance in that picture. I'm picturing him and his demonic limbs cutting a rug to Dwight Yoakam's "Guitars, Cadillacs."
Even crazier was his appearance in West Coast Avengers where he did some mystical mumbo jumbo to absorb the Scarlet Witch's babies....thereby giving him BABIES FOR ARMS.
And that image sums up why I dig this guy, despite the fact his outfit makes him look like a d-list Japanese Pro-wrestler. Incredibly stupid and yet also incredibly disturbing and messed up when you get right down to it. Like MODOK, he's the kind of character that can used as both a serious threat and a total joke.
That and the fact that he then used said baby-arms (EEEEEW) to try and eat Wonder Man's face.
Stupid, stupid Wonder Man.
Unfortunately, after the baby-arm (EEEEEW) incident, Master Pandemonium kinda faded into obscurity. However, he has popped up in Ghost Rider recently, retired from the villain game and a bit destitute. There he was used by writer Jason Aaron to answer that question which weighs heavily on all our minds: How does a guy with angry demon arms eat breakfast?
 
Answer: He doesn't. Because said demon arms are total assholes.
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| My LiveJournal Trick-or-Treat Haul |
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| paladine goes trick-or-treating, dressed up as Master Pandemonium. | | alekmarokov tricks you! You get a wet rag. | | drownedinink gives you 3 light blue cola-flavoured wafers. | | el_regrs tricks you! You lose 2 pieces of candy! | | johnny_kaos gives you 19 light orange watermelon-flavoured wafers. | | mcjunyi gives you 13 dark green peach-flavoured wafers. | | mudpuppy83 gives you 12 light green raspberry-flavoured wafers. | | not_a_table gives you 3 red-orange orange-flavoured gummy worms. | | professormortis tricks you! You lose 22 pieces of candy! | | ruby_stevens tricks you! You lose 5 pieces of candy! | | zmarlowe tricks you! You lose 1 pieces of candy! | | paladine ends up with 20 pieces of candy, and a wet rag. | | Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern. |
Dick move, Alek, Minmei, Morty and Juni. Dick. move.
And just who is Master Pandemonium you ask...just wait...
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
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Because...
Empowered, published in digest form by Dark Horse, has a concept that would make most sensible people roll their eyes. It's the adventures of a superheroine who loses her powers whenever her costume gets torn and has a tendency to get tied up...a lot. And had this been a comic created by say, Jim Balent, eye rolling would be perfectly justified and the series would probably be best experienced through issue-by-issue recaps by Chris Sims as he ponders why in God's name does he subject himself to this.
Fortunately for us and Mr. Sims, Empowered's creator was writer / artist Adam Warren, a geek cult figure best known for his work adapting the manga Dirty Pair for American audiences and his run on Wildstorm's Gen 13, which turned what amounted to J. Scott Campbell's over-the-top-to-the-point-of-being-completely-bonkers T&A book into a hilarious character driven superhero / comedy / drama.
Empowered had similiar dubious origins as well, spinning out of commisions Warren would get for drawings of "damsels in distress." Wink wink nudge nudge. As he did more and more of these commisions, he began to develop the character's personality and even started making short comics out of these commisions. Soon she had her own supporting cast, world and so forth.
So yeah, Empowered tells the story of one Elissa Megan Powers, Emp to her friends, who has gained possession of a symbiotic suit which grants her a variety of special powers, like the strength of ten men. (Or fifteen, if we're talking wimpy guys.) Naturally, she sets out to become a superhero and joins up with the local club of capes. Unfortunately, her career as hero hits a few snags along the way. For starters, the effectiveness of her powers are tied to her self-confidence, so when you take into account that a.) she kinda sucks at being a superhero and b.) she has a whole BOATLOAD of body-image issues, her powers go on the fritz pretty regularly, which usually ends with her getting bound and gagged. Then there's her teammates. Quite of a few of the guys on their team have a personality that can be best described as "Frat-house douche" and the other gal on her team, Sistah Spooky, hates Emp for reasons that aren't even her fault. Still, she keeps on trying to be the best hero she can, because that's who she is. It's sort of like the Spider-Man concept crossed with a version of Golden Age Wonder Woman that's actually aware of it's off-color content.
Like I said, this has the potential to be really mean-spirited and unpleasant. But somehow, no matter how perverse and how collossally fucked up it gets (There's a villain who has a fetish for skullfucking, for starters), Empowered never stops being a silly and fun series. It's a tough balancing act to pull off but Warren does it. The series has a great sense of quirky humor and most importantly of all, well done, engaging and often touching character development, the kind you probably won't find in a Big Two book. And it also helps that Warren is an awesome artist.
So, with that long intro out of the way, let's get to some scans.
( Obviously, if you've read this far, you get that this stuff ain't safe for work. )
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Friday, October 16th, 2009
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What an utterly inexplicable movie this is.
Originally titled The Haunting of Hammilton High, Hello Mary Lou is a sequel in name only to the early 80's slasher Prom Night which starred Jamie Lee Curtis. Since this was the heyday of the slasher, I'm guessing this was some attempt to turn Prom Night into a lucrative Friday the 13th / Nightmare on Elm Street style franchise. In fact, with the reality warping supernatural elements present in the story, as well as the quipping killer, it was pretty obvious that the makers of this movie hoped that they had another Nightmare on their hands. Instead, what they got was a little closer to Freddy's Revenge.
Back in 1957, bad girl Mary Lou Maloney was about to crowned queen of the Hammilton High prom. Unfortunately, her canoodling with school schlub Buddy Cooper doesn't go over well with her actual date, Bill Nordham, and his payback prank ends up going horribly wrong, leaving Mary Lou burned to a crisp. Flash forward to 1987 and it's prom time again, and good girl Vicki Carpenter (there's also characters named King, Hennelotter, Romero and Craven in this flick, just a heads up.) is trying to find a dress to wear. Apparently so poor she has to raid the drama club's prop department to find said dress, she inadvertently opens the locker where Mary Lou's old crown and sash were stored and that unleashes Mary Lou's ghost. Seems old Mary Lou both wants revenge on the people who she blames for her death and to be crowned queen of the prom. Of course, she's going to need a host to pull that off and Vicki Carpenter is as good a choice as any.
Hello Mary Lou isn't what you would call a good movie but it does manage to hold your attention. In addition to Nightmare on Elm Street, it obviously lifts pretty liberally from Carrie and even some bits and pieces are taken from The Exorcist. Unfortunately, the craftsmanship and budget isn't anywhere near the level of those movies, so what I'm assuming is supposed to be haunting and horrifying instead comes off as incredibly bizarre and pretty laughable.
This is, after all, a movie which tries to scare you by having a possessed rocking horse stick its tongue out at the heroine. It tries repeatedly to make the line "See you later, alligator" come off as menacing. It features a little blonde pixie tearing through a confessional booth like she was the Hulk. There's an electrocution that is realized through the finest special effects a PBS shows from the mid-80's could pull off. And of course, there's the most famous scene in the movie, where a completely naked and completely possessed Vicki stalks a victim through a girl's locker room, climaxing in one pretty spectacular kill.
That's just the tip of the iceberg by the way. It's all pretty memorable and even entertaining but I admit that a lot of it is for reasons other than what the filmmaker's intended. I was pretty disappointed in the climax, hoping that when Mary Lou, rather inexplicably, gets reborn into the real world, we'd get a big Carrie-style massacre. Instead we just got a few sparks and a character randomly killed by falling debris. The last act instead is taken up mostly via a stalk and chase scene that does get points for one unexpected jump scare but ends pretty suddenly, making way for a hilarious WTF? "stinger" ending. The cast is about what you expect for this kind of movie...bad...but old hands like Michael Ironside try to make the most of what they got. It was nice seeing Michael Ironside in a role where isn't playing a psychopathic bad guy but, y'know, he still sorta comes off that way because, well, it's Michael Ironside.
Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II is pretty much what you'd expect the movie of its kind to be. It's a hollow cash-in on more popular and better movies but it is cheesy enough and VIOLENTLY 80's enough (Some of the hair that pops up in this will leave you friggin' stymied) that you'll get some laughs out of watching it. Not to mention you find that there were a lot of songs from the 50's that featured "Mary Lou" in the title. It better than the Prom Night remake at least, which forgot to actually have anything happen at the prom.
P.S.: By the way, I don't think you can actually knock somebody out by smacking them across the back of the head with a sneaker. In real life, I imagine it would go like so: "*WHAP* OW! DUDE, what the hell? *WHAP* OW! *WHAP* OW!"
P.P.S.: Also, the guy who played the younger Bill Nordham in the flashbacks? Dead ringer for Uwe Boll.
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Interesting thing happened this morning. Dad suggested we go to the local Chinese buffet for lunch. I wasn't crazy about it, as everything this place serves seems to have gone for a swim in a vat of butter. But I agreed to go anyway.
And we get there and we spot one of the locals we know, a guy named Louis, who does some work for my aunt. Anyway, He and Dad get to talking and the subject of his dogs come up. Now Louis has a female Catahoula who is going to have puppies sometime soon and he says that around December, he's going to stand giving 'em away.
So, yeah, I'm going to be getting a new dog. I was little reluctant to do so for the past few months because I miss Tucker so much. But well, it's become pretty apparent that we do need a dog around our house. Tucker was, as my Dad said, a "varmit deterent system" and since he's been gone, all sorts of critter have been making themselves at home. Some we're okay with (rabbits), others we really don't want to find waiting for us when we step out the back door. (Hi Skunk!).
So, yeah. New dog. Awesome. Gotta start coming up with ideas for a name.
There will be pictures when we get 'em, of course.
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Monday, October 12th, 2009
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Okay, somebody answer this question for me.
Why on Earth does Trick ‘r’ Treat get shelved for two years and then dumped on video after some brief festival circuit runs and yet stuff like Prom Night, Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, The Hills Have Eyes 2, Saw V: The Revenge of Costas Mandylor, Saw 6: Mandylor Strikes Back, Saw VI: Mandylor’s Big Score, all of Platinum Dunes shit-tastic output and both of Rob Zombie’s HELL-YEAH!-Oweens get theatrical releases?
Someone explain. Cruel fate? Whims of a callous god? Moronic studio politics that are tied to the disappointing performance of Superman Returns which both producer Bryan Singer and writer / director Michael Dougherty worked on? Whatever the stupid reason, it’s an absolute travesty. Trick ‘r’ Treat is a great movie that deserved a wider audience than it will probably find being dropped on video.
For those of you unfamiliar with the film, Trick ‘r’ Treat is a horror anthology in the vein of Creepshow but structured in a unique way. Rather than divided into specific segments, the stories run parallel to one another. One is the story of a murderous school principal (Dylan Baker) who is trying to hide a body. Another deals with a young girl (Anna Paquin) trying to find that special someone to lose her virginity to. The third deals with some kids using the town’s urban legend to play a prank on a classmate (that never goes well) and the final is sort of a Halloween twist on A Christmas Carol, where mean old Mr. Kreeg (Brian Cox) gets a visit from the mysterious Sam, a creepy little urchin in a burlap mask. Trick ‘r’ Treat plays around with the timeline a good bit, moving back and forth to different points during the night and intertwining scenes between the stories. Characters from one appear in another, throwaway lines in one story paying off elsewhere and character who live through one story meet their fate in another. It leads to a lot of Pulp Fiction-style “Hey, I remember that!” moments. I can’t wait to watch it again just to see if I can catch any that I missed on my first viewing.
Granted, Trick ‘r’ Treat’s stories aren’t particularly original. EC Comics morality is out in full force and you can probably guess the big twists to each of the stories pretty easily. (Though they do come up with clever way to tie the stories together.) But a story does not have to be original as long as it is executed well and such is the case here. Writer / director Michael Dougherty admits that he is an absolute geek for Halloween and loves playing ghoulish pranks on people and boy, does this ever show in this movie.
For starters, this movie looks like the most awesome Halloween night ever. From the colorful parade that opens the movie to an absolutely eerie dream-like flashback about the fate of a bus full of children to Mr. Kreeg’s discovery of some graffiti Sam left him, it’s filled with some absolutely amazing imagery that will stick with you long after the credits roll. I almost wish I got the DVD instead of the Blu-Ray so I could take some screencaps and show you my favorite shots. It manages to be eerie and haunting without being dark and dreary, bright and colorful without being tacky. Like I said, it looks like Halloween.
That carries over to the tone of the film. On one hand, there are some moments that are genuinely funny, like when a trio of kids stumble onto a rather…um…”interesting” party at a teacher’s house. On the other hand, there’s no safety net in this movie. Innocent people get it just as bad as the guilty and there’s a surprisingly high number of kids getting killed in this movie. However, like a good Halloween prank, it manages to be nasty without ever being mean-spirited and never does it lose its sense of fun.
Finally, there’s the cast. They pull off their roles quite well. Dylan Baker is great as a character that’s basically Ward Cleaver turned psycho killer (ques ques say, fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-far better), Samm Todd does a good job making her prank victim sympathetic enough that you completely understand and maybe even agree with her actions later on in her story, Brian Cox is great as the cantankerous old Mr. Kreeg and Anna Paquin is…Anna Paquin, but hey, she’s in a corset. However, the real standout here is 7-year old Quinn Lord, who plays the mischievous demon Sam. From his simple yet effective design to Lord’s performance (If this movie is any indication, then this kid is going to have one helluva career as an in-the-suit performer), Sam manages to come across as both a child-like innocent and creepy as all hell. I am not spouting off hyperbole when I say that Sam could go on to be a horror icon…or would have, had the studios not screwed this movie’s release right up the *RADIO EDIT*. They also spoil what he looks like without his mask on the cover of the Blu-Ray case. Thanks, Warner Bros.
I had a lot of fun with this movie. The makers of Trick 'r' Treat went out of their way to evoke the feel of an 80's horror movie and they were pretty successful. The mixture of laughs and scares, the heavy reliance on practical effects and the fact that anyone can get it at any moment all went a long wake to really evoking the feel of the movies I grew up watching. When it was over, I wanted a sequel. In the features on the Blu-Ray, Dougherty talks about a scene that never made it into the movie which featured Sam encountering a preacher who gave him pennies instead of treats. I want a sequel just for that scene.
In a lot of ways, Trick ‘r’ Treat is like visiting a really good haunted house. It’s everything you love about the season all in one package and even if you know what’s coming, you’ll still jump and scream and laugh and leave with a big smile on your face.
Also, they totally take a shot at the Friday the 13th remake on the commentary track.
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Saturday, October 10th, 2009
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So, I decide to pop over to the library to drop off a book that Dad had checked out. And I had forgotten that my town was having a parade that goes down Main Street today. So, when I get there, the road to the library is pretty much blocked off. So I pull off onto a side road and decide to hang back and watch the parade. When it clears I'll be able to get to the library.
It was perfectly servicable parade. Really only one float and that was Mardi Gras themed. The rest were cars with banners on them with people throwing candy into crowds. And there were a couple of cars that didn't have any banners on them and weren't throwing candy, which makes me wonder if they weren't just guys who got mixed up with the parade and decided to roll with it. All in all, a servicable, if unspectactular time. Didn't go for any candy. Didn't want any and beside, the crowds of kids would probably strip your bones in 30 seconds flat. (Lest we forget what happened to old Ted Redshirt.)
And then, it happen. Slowly, it passed in front of me. A vehicle advertising for the town's movie theater. And on that slowly moving vehicle was a banner.
And that banner was an advertisement for the new Twilight movie. Moving slowly across my field of vision.
I don't try to find this stuff. I go out of my way to avoid it, in fact. But it seems no matter how hard I try, at some point every week, I turn around and there's Sparkles McGuilicutty staring right back at me.
*whimpers*
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Thursday, October 8th, 2009
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Because...imagine how different Iron Man would have been if, instead of a tailored 3-piece suit, Jeff Bridges was rockin' this number...
I don't know which I like better, the orange, sleeveless cloak over his shirtless torso, the purple pants or the Disco medallion of Evil.
Regardless, Jeff Bridges could have made that work, through the power of that beard alone. That was a MAN-Beard.
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Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
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...is made for no other reason than me remembering that I still have this thing and it bugs the crap out of me whenever I go more than a few days without doing anything with it.
So...how are things? Y'know, things where the stuff happens? To that guy?
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Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
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Because...this panel just about sums the whole series, which is about a team of obscure 50's-era superheroes posing as bad guys in the modern Marvel U.
...and the most recent issue has them outfitting M-11 The Human Robot with the personality of a brilliant strategiest. The personality they choose is refered to simply as "The Greatest."
It's exactly who you think it is.
Agents of Atlas's current on-going seems to have reached an end at the moment, though they have a mini-series "The Agents of Atlas vs. The X-Men" coming up soon and will briefly be featured as a back up in The Incredible Hercules. Writer Jeff Parker also said that some special one-shots are being planned out and Agents of Atlas will be appearing in the first arc of Parker's upcoming run on Thunderbolts.
Check it out.
And here's another panel, just for the hell of it, offered completely out of context:
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Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
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Because...I was inspired to do this post both by the picture of Nick Cage, Man of Fruit Roll-Ups and a discussion that spun out of that picture in BMMB chat.
Superman as a concept is like directing a two car funeral. You literally have to try and fuck it up. But, really outside of the early movies and the animated versions, we've seen a lot of people do just that. Whether they've got him acting as a mopey stalker in Superman Returns, wearing an 'edgy' Matrix coat on Smallville or talk of the next movie being a "darker" take on the character, it's obvious that they just don't get it.
Superman isn't a dark character. He's the guy who inspires hope. The one hero the others in the DCU rally behind. He's the guy who tells the cops "No need to thank me, we're on the same side." As Telstar put it, he's the guy who flashes a 240-watt smile at the people he saves because it both puts them at ease and because being Superman is just a blast. He's the ultimate good guy. And a Superman movie shouldn't trying to mimic the tone and attitude of a Batman movie. It should be the exact opposite of a Batman movie. Bright, uplifting and hopeful.
And that's why Grant Morrison's All-Star Superman is one of the 100 Things I Love In Comics. It gets that about that about Superman and does a damn good job telling a story about that kind of Superman. So yeah, I don't want to see a Superman movie where he's a deadbeat dad who does everything short of using his powers to sniff his ex-girlfriend's underwear drawer...
I want to see a Superman movie about this guy:
Also, another reason All-Star Superman makes this list is because of that issue where Superman gets driven crazy by Black Kryptonite and Jimmy Olsen has to turn into Doomsday to stop him. Also, it reveals the reason there's no Bizarro World version of Batman is because his parents shot him.
God, I love Grant Morrison.
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Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009
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So yeah, at one point, during the years of development hell between Superman IV: The Quest For Peace and Superman Returns, a Superman film was in development that would featured Tim Burton in the director's chair and none other than Nicholas Cage, archenemy of bees everywhere, in the role of that Last Son of Krypton. And thanks to johnnykaos I've discovered some rarely seen pictures left over from that aborted projected, including a costume test of Nick Cage in costume and HOLY CHRIST LOOK AT THIS SHIT!
laughing so hard...
...can't breathe
...might die...
...that pic...
...makes it all worth it.
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M.O.D.O.K. to his friends...
Because...
1.) As someone who also has a ridiculously huge head, I sympathize.
2.) As Chris Simms of the ISB pointed out, the plural of his name would be M.Os.D.O.K.
3.) Whenever he goes off on a rant like that, I picture him having the voice of the Monarch.
4.) This panel, from the MODOK: Reign Delay one-shot, where MODOK visits his old high school:
( Glad you could make it to the reunion! )
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Thursday, September 17th, 2009
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Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
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WHAT!?.
aggravated.
good.
complacent.
disappointed.