Take THAT, T.O. Morrow!
I kept telling you guys that Metal Men was worth reading.

Any questions? Talk to Bahlactus.

----------------
Listening to: Damien Rice - Rootless Tree

Labels: bahlactus, comics, fnf, friday night fights, metal men

The blog pager that Keith asked for seems to be something of an issue - maybe related to me using my own domain instead of Blogger's - I'm not sure. But I did make (another) new header and tweak the general look of the site.

Now that it's been up for a few days:

Yea or Nay?

----------------
Listening to: Death Cab For Cutie - Bixby Canyon Bridge

Labels: Random

That and the overwhelming sense that every time either of the Racer brothers talk about "automobile racing" and their rebellious opposition to "the major sponsors," I keep hearing the Wachowski brothers talking about "making movies" and their rebellious opposition to "the big studios."

Am I alone?

----------------
Listening to: SCI FI Channel; Ronald D. Moore executive producer, Battlestar Galactica - Battlestar Galactica Episode 403 Commentary (Enhanced)

Labels: movies, speed racer

Mulberry Street is a movie about zombie rat people menacing tenants in an NYC apartment building. I liked it a lot. It's one of those movies - like Night of the Living Dead - that manages to be about people and not stock characters and that gives it a lot more impact than, say, the Day of the Dead remake.

One thing that I really like about those kinds of movies that was totally absent from the sort of Encyclopedia Brown element that horror movies of this stripe let the audience indulge in - wherein there are hints and clues laid out, but nothing explicit. When this is done right, it's a reasonable stand-in for interactivity and it lets the audience interact with the world of the film a bit. The classic example is The Birds, I think - I'll be damned if I don't know someone who doesn't have a theory about the lovebirds. It's been awhile since I've read it, but the text version of The Mist is pretty good about this as well* but the movie spells it out a bit too directly. As a rule, I love elements of a story that create a sub-text in and of themselves. Mark Danielewski plays with this in [House] and in Only Revolutions, though more explicitly through the form of the novel itself. Demon Theory does this via footnotes and its framing conceits.

But I'm getting a bit far afield of myself. Mulberry St. hints at this sort of storytelling, but never really delivers on it. We see a lot of the stock Evil Corporation's branding near the start of the movie, with the movie's tagline cleverly attached to it, but we never see the hints toward a direct correlation between the urban renewal and the rat attacks or why these rats are different.

Don't let that dissuade you. Mulberry has a character-driven slow burn that builds organically into a violent crescendo. It's a spartan film, but it has surprisingly effective moments.

Next up: P.S. I Love You (for the wife) and then Borderlands

*King's shared universe thrives on these sorts of throwaway mentions that either were developed elsewhere or will eventually be developed elsewhere.

Labels: books, horror, horrorfest, movies, mulberry street

1. As Chris Sims points out, Racer X punches a viking in the face in midair while driving a car.

2. TRIXIE: Was that a ninja?
POP: More like a non-ja.

Labels: movies, speed racer

Sporadically, on Saturday nights, I'll post a picture of Ben Grimm. Because I like The Thing, dammit. After a hiatus, I bring no mere picture, but a video from the 1994 Fantastic Four movie. Enjoy, won't you?

Labels: ben grimm, comics, movies, saturday night thing, thing

If you were to take a five year old boy, lock him in a room full of Matchbox cars, strobe lights and electronica for ten hours then induce a sugar coma in the kid by feeding him Gummi Bears and Kool-Aid, and find some way to liveblog his sweet coma dreams, the result would be fairly analogous to what the Wachowskis have done with Speed Racer. The movie is frenetic, bombastic and thought is not required for enjoyment. There are four pretty cool racing sequences, two martial arts fights - both of which feature John Goodman going Mike Haggar* on some goons - and over two hours of Racer X making with the Jack-face when he's displeased (and he's nearly constantly displeased, Lost fans). That sounds okay, right? It is, except for five things:

1. Sprightle

2. This movie is basically the podrace from The Phantom Menace stretched out into a feature film.

3. Watching the races has the same sort of stomach-turning quality that speeding through a really difficult F-Zero level does.

4. Sprightle

5. I'm watching, what, the third franchise from these Norma Desmond-wannabes about staying independent and not selling out to corporations/the government/robots - each of which has been backed by Warner Bros.

6. Sprightle - really, the kid goes from hammy to oh-god-slit-my-wrists.

7. Watching this movie gave me ADD and made me lose the ability to count.

Really, if there's one word you take away from this review, guys, it's podrace. Now, that doesn't mean I'm hating on the podrace, in case you're an ardent TPM fanboy, just that, well - actually, I'm hating on the podrace - deal with it. Now, if you love the podrace, you're in luck!

The theater was less than a quarter full and at least one group left halfway through the movie.



* The role that Goodman was born to play**.

** Let's get to work on a Final Fight movie, guys.

Labels: movies, podrace, speed racer, wachowskis

My column at Another Castle - All My Issues - features a change of pace this week: an interview with legendary artist Neal Adams. Check it out, won't you?

Labels: all my issues, Another Castle, Shameless Self-Promotion

Those of you who are into the horror side of the content here on the Axe know that I've been a big booster of Jonathan Levine's slasher All The Boys Love Mandy Lane - an R-rated dead teenager flick directed by a guy whose follow-up film The Wackness just garnered the Audience Award at Sundance.

But thanks to The Weinsteins' panic after the counterprogramming bomb of Grindhouse and the beginning of the end of the torture porn boon - as signaled by the odious box office on Hostel Part Two and Captivity (Neither of them a Weinstein Bros. film, but indicative of a trend). Mandy ended up at Senator, a fledgling studio, and since then has had its release date pushed back twice.

My knee-jerk take was that the ball is being dropped, but in reality, not releasing in late February or early April might have been a wise choice - the competition against either Shutter or Prom Night would have been bloody. And if you need a reality check on the power of the geek dollar on a highly competitive box office weekend, I suggest you take a look at what won that battle for the week of September 30, 2005. Admittedly, it could have gone the other way, just like Trick R' Treat could have toppled a month-old Halloween and had three weeks of dominance before the juggernaut that is the Saw franchise reared its head.

But from a marketing perspective, a hard-R film puts fewer asses in seats and is likely to be much more niche than something designed to win the teen dollar, so being gunshy from a business sense - especially given the economy and the trend of poor performance of adult-aimed horror. So if pushing Mandy back to protect her from Brittany Snow isn't a bold maneuver, it's certainly a smart one.

Seeking the real scoop on the delays, I contacted Levine. And according to him, Mandy Lane is finally coming this summer, "in a big way." And the studio seems bolstered by the huge box office on the PG-13 offerings of late - instead of running scared like the Weinstens, Senator seems to simply be looking for better ground. Couple that with star Amber Heard's rising profile, and the prognosis looks good. A firm release date should be forthcoming from Senator in a few weeks.

And All the Boys Love Mandy Lane won't be PG-13. "We wear our R ratings as badges of honor," Levine tells me. "I'm not sure i even know how to make a movie that's not R...."

Labels: horror, movies

Bahlactus never underestimates an astromech droid. For real.

Labels: bahlactus, comics, fnf, friday night fights, star wars

I think the seed of this started at Comic Con. I was talking to Scott Wegener and Jeff Powell from Red 5 Comics (makers of Atomic Robo) and I remarked that what really set Red 5 apart as a venture is not that it's fan-made, but that their output doesn't suck out loud. As someone who pretends to write an awful lot, it's a subject that I think about frequently, usually in a self-flagellating kind of manner.

Whenever I really sit down and try to write fiction, something for public consumption (yes, as opposed to the private thoughts I post on Conditional Axe - but the distinction is real: I started the blog as a writing exercise that has not always worked out, and the illusion that this is my own journal that you can't see is a luxury Internet anonymity affords me), I freeze. I over-edit. And then I edit again. Because I don't want to let it out of my grasp until it's perfect. It's something I need to get over - I need to start writing new things instead of editing old ones to death. But I don't know how to do it. Maybe, if I'm going to try and analyze myself, it's something I feel like I actually have control over, and so I don't want to let it go; as frustrating as it may be, there's maybe a perverse comfort in the process.

Anyway, I've been bitten by this powerful urge to do. And here's why. I was chatting with another comic enthusiast not too long ago, a friend of mine who will go on flights of fancy about what he would do if he ran Marvel (he recently pitched me a story about Deadpool and Spider-Man traversing the depths of Hell to hunt down Mephisto), and I ask him, spurred by some unknowable thought, "Why don't we just eschew Marvel and write our own thing? We know lots of creative people, we could probably build a pretty compelling shared universe, try something new with distribution - it could be really cool." And I meant it, 100%. Hell, it'd be better than the mess that is Wildstorm.

"It's way too much effort," he tells me. "Where would we find an artist, even? No," he relents, "it's not going to happen."

What is it about our fanboy culture that makes us content to sit and wait for delivery? Some of us (and there may have been a time where I was one of them) have grown up feeling that we couldn't make valid comics without working at DC or Marvel. Which is cyclical, because you don't get noticed by DC or Marvel without having done something of value.

I have never done anything of value, and I've been perfectly content with that.

But I don't want to be anymore. I'm turning 30 in a few months, and dammit, I want to do something that matters to someone else before I get too old to dare it. And yeah, maybe I could go cure cancer instead, but writing's what I've always wanted to do.

So, I'm throwing the gauntlet at myself. I am shooting for at least an hour of writing a day, and I'll probably make a few posts about the process as well. I don't know what this is going to be about - the Reign of Terror-era superhero book that I've been dallying on for literally years is an albatross around my damn neck, so I want to not go back to that well, at least for now - or even what form it will take, but dammit, I'm going to do something instead of talking about how great it would be to do something.

Labels: comics, Random, writing

Some pellet reviews of this week's books because it was a pretty good week:

Invincible Iron Man #1 - Essentially, Matt Fraction is writing Apple Vs. Google, and it's the best Iron Man has been since Warren Ellis and Adi Granov held the reins on the previous relaunch of the character. Fraction manages to do the impossible - he makes Marvel readers like Tony Stark again, without sacrificing the psychology behind his worst moments. I've tried to rationalize Stark's position in Civil War by citing his history with alcoholism vis a vis his need for control. That makes sense. And Fraction's one of the first authors I've seen in years to seriously get into that part of Tony's head. And then there's Zeke Stane, Iron Man's complete polar opposite. Just like in The Order, you can tell just by reading him that Matt loves to write him. Larocca's art is continuing to improve - as it has been over the past few years. Definitely going to keep reading this one.

Mighty Avengers #13 - A fun 'get the team together' issue that sits nicely in this larger Secret Invasion arc about Nick Fury's whereabouts over the last year or so of Marvel time. Daisy Johnson - a bit of a dud in Secret War, I thought - was used a lot better here. And there's a pretty great Layla Miller cameo, too, for all the X-Factor fans out there.

Punisher War Journal #19 - No-brainer - two of my favorite authors right now on a book that's consistently one of my favorites each week it comes out. It's good. It's twisted and bloody and I really get the feeling that this Jigsaw story is going to be one of the better ones.

Secret Invasion #2 - Yes. Just as good as #1. If any of you think that Bendis hates Clint Barton, read this issue.

All-New Atom #23 - I miss the quirkiness that kind of joyfully leapt off the page during Simone's run, but this is a bleak story and Remender's the guy to tell bleak balls-out action. A shame this book is ending, but at least it's going out on a good note.

Metal Men #8 - I loved this mini, but I may be the only person who read it. It's convoluted by design, but it's the best take on the Metal Men I've ever read. Buy it in trade; you will thank me.

Dynamo 5 Annual #1 - A big, fun kitchen-sink annual that reprints Captain Dynamo's first appearance and tells a few 'downtime' stories about the team, with lots of appearances by the other Faerberverse denizens.

Buffy #14 - Drew Goddard's arc on Season Eight has been great, controversy or no. Dracula and Andrew continue to have the best comic relief dialogue in the book, and the Xander/Renee scene was cute without being too sappy. Oh, and vampires get lit on fire and Dawn rampages through Tokyo. Can't wait to see how this one ends next month.

Labels: comics, DC, Marvel, secret invasion

There's been a bit of a skerfuffle in the comics Internet in the wake of Free Comic Book Day, but the report from Scranton is that things went swimmingly. The Unknown was pleasantly surprised that the day was profitable after taking a loss the previous few years. Ain't no party like a Scranton Free Comic Book Day party, I guess.

Labels: comics, free comic book day

----------------
Listening to: Momufuku+-+D

Labels: comics, postsecret invasion, secret invasion, skrulls

Dateline - Fall 2007. Someone described The Deaths of Ian Stone to me as "Groundhog Day meets Hellraiser," and that's when I knew I had to see it. I mean, really. Horrorfest came and went this year and my work schedule and other obligations meant that I'd have to wait for the DVD.

Which came a few days ago via Netflix.

At Comic Con, the gang in the After Dark booth told me that if I were going to see only one of the Horrorfest '07 offerings, it should be Ian Stone. And I still have 7 movies to go through (Mulberry Street is sitting next to my TV right now, unwatched until tonight), but my educated guess is that, yes, The Deaths of Ian Stone is the one you should watch if you're only going to watch one.

Check out the trailer:


I thought it was really outstanding. Theatrically viable outside of the fest, maybe not, but truly well-made. I'm very much in that Roger Ebert school of thought that praises a movie for being what it set out to be. I haven't seen the basic conceit in the film made to feel so fresh in a long time, and the effects were top notch, though with Stan Winston's involvement, I don't think anybody doubted that. Mike Vogel carries the movie as Ian Stone; he's handsome and appropriately nuanced, and he handles the more emotional parts in a way that can keep audience cynics straightfaced. The film drags a little around some of the infodump scenes that high-concept horror/sci-fi necessitates, but never enough to make me complain. The monster reveal is consistently well-staged, starting small and revealing more and more over each subsequent episode in Ian's constant cycle of deaths until they're there - shocking but not jarring or silly.

The Deaths of Ian Stone is available right now on DVD. It manages to be a smartly executed, cerebral monster movie. That alone makes it worth some notice, but it also boasts effects work on par with some tentpole releases in terms of quality. With Shutter and Prom Night dominating the '08 horror slate, go ahead and opt for something a bit more substantial.

Labels: deaths of ian stone, horror, horrorfest, movies

Much has been made of Brian Reed and Jim Cheung's involvement in the build-up to Secret Invasion, and there's an extremely scattershot round of hypothesizing going on around it that seems to suggest that everybody Bendis has met since he turned 16 has been in on it. And why not? That'd be a pretty Skrully thing to do.

Christos Gage is another likely suspect on the list of Bendis-collaborators - he's coming onto two books just in time for their Secret Invasion tie-ins, after all.

But what about Allan Heinberg? Heinberg wrote Young Avengers - a comic which 1) is about Avengers (who are Young!) 2) has a Skrull in its cast and 3) was drawn by Jim Cheung. Might it be possible that other Heinberg projects - ones that he's taken on since his Young Avengers run wrapped - might be part of the master plan?

Labels: comics, Marvel, secret invasion, skrulls, television

Happy Free Comic Book Day, guys!

Locally, The Unknown in Scranton (my comic shop of choice) and Comics On the Green are participating in the festivities. The Green has Countdown and Reign In Hell penciler Tom Derenick in the hizzy signing and sketching.

I couldn't get out to the shop today, but last night I did snag the X-Men issue and the Owly book from Top Shelf. Despite not loving the Greg Land art (and by not loving, I may mean downright hating), it's pretty good - Mike Carey doesn't disappoint. Owly I've not read yet, because I had a huge pile of books to catch up on this week that I'm still not done with yet.

Get out and support your local comics retailer today if you can, and maybe even buy something, too. They'll thank you.

Labels: comics, free comic book day

Because nothing says 'Classic' like ninja pop idols fighting Canada's favorite rocker.

Nothing except Bahlactus.

Labels: bahlactus, comics, fnf, friday night fights, scott pilgrim

After months and months of hype and huge expectations, I didn't think that Marvel would really drop the ball this badly. Iron Man may be one of the worst superhero movies I've ever seen in my life.

Okay, no. I'm totally screwing with you.

Iron Man is the one that really gets it right. It feels like its source material, something that even the really good ones like Nolan's Batman Begins or X2 lack. Not only do they have a great crew and a Oscar-nominee stacked cast - which right there, would be enough - but the cast and crew respect not only the nuts and bolts of the Iron Man mythos, but the tone and theme of it as well, and that's the area where Hollywood sometimes loses its way. Iron Man is a great origin movie for Tony Stark - a kid trying to learn to live responsibly. And that could be trite in the wrong hands, but Favreau and Downey Jr. keep that from happening. Downey's Stark is nuanced - he's arrogant and self-absorbed, but he has a sincere want to be a better man. The rest of the cast is almost just as perfect - Jeff Bridges has tons of menacing presence, Gwyneth Paltrow is a sexy, whip-smart Pepper Potts, and Terence Howard proves to be an inspired choice for Jim Rhodes. But Downey owns the movie. And he should. As Favreau points out, the actor is Tony Stark.

The effects work is outstanding, too. With all of the effects shots and futuristic tech that we see in the Stark home and in the Iron Man suit, it pretty much has to be. The CGI is mostly seamless, and the fight scenes are just plain awesome.

Iron Man is the first bold, four-color superhero movie of this generation. Even the soundtrack is bold, with heavy metal staples from AC/DC, Suicidal Tendencies, and Black Sabbath. The end result is a movie that is by turns funny, breathtakingly epic and dramatic, with a dash of classic romantic comedy thrown in for good measure.

Go. Go five times. And stay after the credits.

Labels: comics, iron man, movies

I want to get to work on a few minor template tweaks in the next few days/weeks.

Are there any features that I should be implementing but currently am not? Especially in terms of convenience of browsing.

Tell me.

Labels: Random

Hatchet gets name-dropped as 'the film that saves horror' on occasion, so I really wanted to see it. After several wife-placating bumps in my Netflix queue, it showed up a few days ago.

Hatchet is a revival of low-budget, spatter-friendly monster horror that focuses more on body count than on the trappings of mainstream legitimacy. It's got the tone of an early Friday the 13th film with a sarcastic touch. While I think the philosophy is one that can save the genre, or at least keep the genre honest, that the film itself isn't substantial enough to do much beyond garner a cult following. There's nothing like character development, and the monster legend isn't one that's resonant enough to build a franchise on. If any film has the chops to 'save' this brand of scary movie, it was Feast, which certainly seems like a source and influence for Adam Green's splatterfest at times. It's clear that this is Joel Moore's movie, and to a lesser degree Deion Richmond's. Their best friend banter - along with the great Tony Todd cameo - is the glue that keeps the move together until the monster arrives.

Speaking of cameos, Robert Englund shows up here too, in a small role that serves as kind of a 'seal of approval'. I think he and Todd can probably build a hefty nest egg - if they don't have one already - continuing to do these sorts of fan endorsement cameos.

It sounds like I'm being awfully negative about Hatchet, and that's unfortunate, because it's a good time. I'm maybe damning it for not being a great time, but for a film that was so oversold to me, I just didn't feel it on the same level that my friends who have seen it apparently did. If you like what it's selling, Hatchet is a fun ride, but like a good roller coaster, the thrill will fade quickly once it's over.

Labels: hatchet, horror, movies

Expect a good deal of kvetching about the transitory nature of death in comics and the manner in which it robs drama from stories, even from the Morrisonian loyal who may not buy into the really wonderful stuff he says in that NY Daily News article that I'm not linking to because I care about your spoiler-safety.

Death is a good springboard to tell stories, but resurrection is such a hard-coded bit of our mythology that if these guys are our gods - and from a mythocritical perspective, they definitely are - then wising fwub da gwabe, to paraphrase Altered Beast, can be just as meaningful as the death itself. Yes, sometimes resurrections are cheap and sales-driven - nothing more - but that is the nature, the freaking essence, of fiction-as-product. But sometimes, fiction can be myth, and oftentimes fiction evolves into myth organically, so even looking at one of these stunts as nothing more than exactly what it is - a sales stunt - can sell its value short.

As a corollary to that - that death isn't permanent doesn't mean it isn't death or that death doesn't matter. All that matters is this: does the death have an impact, either on the world of the story or on the reader? As long as the answer is yes, and in the best case scenario the answer is yes for both of those criteria, then it was a well-made death, and its undoing is not going to remove the impact that new reading or re-reading is going to bring to it. As an X-fan, I know that Jean Grey is coming back sooner or later, but that doesn't rob her parting words, "Live, Scott....All I ever did was die on you," of their quality or impact.

I said earlier that death is a good springboard to tell stories, but resurrection can be an even better one. Even when a character doesn't come back. Some might write Peter David's characterization of Siryn after her father's death as a bit glib, but to me it was an honest and emotional component of coping in a world where nobody really stays down for long. And while fans of stark super-realism in comics will invariably cry foul, I take more comfort in the knowledge that our icons don't have to abide by our rules.

Labels: comics, dc universe 0, grant morrison

Del Rey is offering Legacy of the Force: Betrayal as a free ebook, PDF or audiobook. The promotion is good til May 13, the release date of the final entry in the series, Invincible.

Go ahead and check it out here. It is free, after all.

Labels: books, Random, star wars

Betrayal is a constant in the context of horror, at least when it's done right. Terror comes from the friction of some valued, trusted and maybe taken-for-granted aspect of life being subverted, becoming dangerous. In One Missed Call, the betrayer is the cell phone - something every single one of us has come to rely on near-constantly.

More than that, One Missed Call casually betrays the 'cycle of abuse' heuristic that is virtually omnipresent. In fact, it sets the trope up as a straw man to be knocked down by the reveal at the end. From a purely structural standpoint, I enjoyed the movie a lot for these reasons. In fact, One Missed Call may be one of my favorite J-horror remakes.

That said, it's not strictly good. The climax is an especially jumbled mess, and there are some storytelling choices that simply don't click. In the balance of things, though, it did what it set out to do, and I enjoyed it more than I have others of its ilk. One Missed Call is worth a drop into your Netflix queue or a rental. Maybe a preowned buy, if there's a good sale.

Labels: horror, movies, one missed call

Because I review some dizzyingly bad comics in this week's All My Issues.

Next week? I talk with Neal Adams about his return to "a certain caped crusader," and some other projects he has lined up at DC and beyond.

Labels: all my issues, Another Castle, comics, Shameless Self-Promotion