I finally got to see Furious 7! For a recap, I watched all six of the previous Fast and Furious movies last month. You can read my thoughts on those here and here.
One crazy thing about this series is how things tend to get better and better with each movie, the characters become more like superheroes (Vin Diesel apparently just always has giant wrenches and/or a sledgehammer in his car,) and the action just gets more and more absurd. Furious 7 follows through on that end, but I’m not fully sure yet whether or not it’s better than 5 or 6.

A big part of that is that Justin Lin, who directed 3-6, is now gone, replaced by horror film director James Wan, who directed the first Saw film and then moved in on current horror trends with Insidious and the Conjuring. He brings his sensibilities with him, as the movie is thick with shadows and a kind of stylization not really seen in the previous movies. There isn’t as much blood as I remember there being in 5 and 6, but it still carries more weight, there’s a tangible moment of terror any time a gun is drawn and fired, a greater sense of danger. A visit to the cemetery at night is shot as though someone’s going to jump Dom and Letty at any moment. We get a villain not unlike a beast from a slasher film in the form of Jason Statham as Deckard Shaw. The man is so focused on murdering Dom and his crew, and he’s a wildcard, showing up when you’re not expecting it, right in the middle of a job they’re trying to pull off. Playing him up as a T-800, relentless in his pursuit, was one of my favorite things about the movie. Not that he's the only one, the Rock gets to be a Terminator too:
Other aspects really throw me off. The action is hectic and great, Wan definitely puts his own stamp on things, but I just kept finding myself missing the clarity of Justin Lin’s direction. There’s a bit too much cutting going on during fights and set pieces here, with things getting too playful in the editing and camerawork. I was okay with the camera flipping to follow Jason Statham as Dwayne Johnson Rock Bottoms him through a glass table, but then they do it at least two or three more times as the movie progresses and it gets tiring. Tony Jaa is brought in as a villain, going toe to toe with Paul Walker, and they do a decent job of showing off just what a monster that dude still is. The movie also gives us MMA badass Ronda Rousey, but she kind of gets the shaft for her fight with Michelle Rodriguez. After the previous movie finally figured out how cool Rodriguez is, she’s back to having almost nothing to do here.

Speaking of women, all of these movies have had a certain element of objectification going on, with a “hey let’s follow this woman’s ass” shot in pretty much every one of them. Wan didn’t think just one of those shots was enough for this movie, so we get at least three of the damn things. If there’s a woman, chances are you’ll get to see her ass, except for returning characters. There seemed to be a bit of extra CG wobble to Nathalie Emmanuel’s breasts as she steps out of the water in a bikini, with Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson babbling about who has dibs on her. Ugh.

Complaints like those aside, this was certainly the most emotional of the movies. Here we get to see the crew’s response to Han’s death, we get Brian’s personality shift as a father, Letty’s struggle with her amnesia, and we’re introduced to the adorable daughter of Hobbs. The family dynamic that Dom has been harping on from the first movie is in full form, making Han’s death hit harder than you’d expect since we technically saw it happen four movies ago. When Deckard goes for Hobbs, I was sincerely worried for him, as I’d already heard the Rock wasn’t in this movie as much.
And then, well, there’s of course the death of Paul Walker, which hung over so much of this movie as I watched it. I held it together until the ending, then found myself in tears. Everyone in this movie is virtually invincible, shrugging off injuries like they’re nothing, but they couldn’t ignore that Paul’s gone for good now, and they do a great job paying tribute to him. It doesn’t hurt that he holds his own against Tony Jaa and gets one of the best fights in the movie.

I was talking to a friend working at the theater when I got out, and a guy who was at the same showing with his two daughters must have overheard it, because he came up to me as I was heading to my car and assured me that I wasn’t the only one who cried at the end. He and his wife bawled when they saw it (this was his second time,) he said so many people in the theater were in tears, and he told me about how that family element was so important to him in the series because his family was never close.

I dunno. I had this realization as I watched the movies: Paul reminded me so much of one of my brothers, who’s also a new father himself. My family’s not the closest, nothing like these guys, but I would be devastated if something were to happen to him, and seeing this family develop over so many years and lose one of their own in that way…it hits hard.

Oh, and Kurt Russell is in this movie. He’s amazing, as always. He kind of steals the show in every scene he’s in.

I hope they keep making them. I really do. It’ll be weird without Paul, but no other franchise delivers like this one.

So it’s been a while since I’ve done something like this, and I’ve been wanting to flex my writing chops a bit in this manner for a while now. Here we have, in no real particular order, a bunch of thoughts and feelings on a bunch of things I’ve been reading, watching, and playing lately.

BioShock Infinite: Damn good game with a crazy ending that really got people talking, which is more than most videogames even strive for these days. After beating it, I became increasingly disappointed in several of the choices made in the story, especially the way it shifts away from Columbia and the crazy racism and religious beliefs and started focusing more on Elizabeth and Booker. I was much more interested in the game’s social commentary than in the quantum mechanics stuff, and I’m hoping some of the upcoming DLC will shift the focus back on those aspects. That ending is a really good visualization of…of…multiple universes and such, though, and I like a game that doesn’t hold your hand and expects you to have at least a passing familiarity with early 20^th century American history in order to kind of grasp what’s going on.

The Hunger Games: On a whim, I tried watching the movie on Netflix. I made it maybe 20-30 minutes in before giving up. It’s atrociously shot, more like a Shinya Tsukamoto film without the drill penises and screaming. Seriously, just the worst camerawork I’ve seen in some time. Unwatchable. I’ve started reading the book, and noticed that just from what little I watched, the movie also expects you to have already read it, which is a terrible idea. The book itself? I’m not far enough into it to have a decent opinion on it, but I am enjoying it somewhat. I’m not seeing how it caught on and became so enormously popular, but it’s not bad at all.

Kingdom Come, by JG Ballard: Ballard’s final novel before he passed away, about a dome-enclosed supermall in England and the crazed culture that builds around it. Like Columbia in BioShock Infinite, it’s an atrociously racist society, with consumerism as the primary religion. It starts off as a murder mystery, the novel’s protagonist looking for the man who shot and killed his father, and spirals into something larger and scarier from there. Not exactly what I was expecting, but this was my first time reading any of Ballard’s work outside of a few of his short sci fi stories.

Copra: Michel Fiffe’s self-published monthly action comic pays tribute to superhero comics of the 70’s and 80’s with explicit references to Dr. Strange and Suicide Squad, while simultaneously putting to shame every single book Marvel and DC are putting out today. The sixth issue dropped this month, concluding the first storyline, and it is the best monthly comic I’m reading right now. Fiffe is a beast, and every issue has at least a good two or three incredibly inventive sequences. Drop whatever crappy cape comic you’re reading right now and go pick this up. The first three issues are collected in the Copra Compendium, with the second collection coming soon.

Hawkeye: Having said that up there, Hawkeye is pretty good too, largely due to the crazy tricks David Aja has been pulling in the artwork. It may not deserve half the Eisner nominations it got, but it is quite enjoyable and a breath of fresh air compared to all the other crap that the Big Two print.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon: I have never played a Far Cry game before. I don’t really know what they’re about or anything like that. A friend convinced me to play this, however, by getting me to listen to the insanely good synthesizer soundtrack and watching a couple videos of the game in action. The game is every 80’s action/sci-fi movie cliché rolled into one, taking place in the dystopic future of 2007. The dialogue is hilarious, and the game’s hints during loading times are great, as are the tutorials. I’m usually not incredibly fond of shooters, but I will enjoy anything that’s drenched in neon with a killer synth score.

Adventure Time and the Regular Show: Fucking hilarious, wonderful cartoons. How have I never watched these before? They’re just so great. And weird. Good weird. I shouldn’t have to explain them to you.

Ren & Stimpy: Man, that first season holds up well. Weird, creepy, hilarious, unsettling, and a lot smarter than I remember it being.

Iron Man 3: Much better than I was expecting. Plot is full of holes, the villains’ motivations are…fuzzy, to say the least, and the final showdown at the end almost put me to sleep, but there are some really genius bits in there. I wish the movie had dialed back on the humor a little and focused a bit more on Tony’s PSTD/anxiety attacks. That could’ve developed into something really interesting, but in a movie with a ton of other stuff going on, it just becomes almost pointless as it gets buried in fanservice. I loved the handling of the Mandarin, and that entire Miami sequence in general is great. I heard some people this past weekend at the comic shop complaining, about how Tony is barely in the suit throughout the movie? I was okay with that. I liked that more, that it was trying to show Tony as more than just some handsome smart guy who says funny things. Still, WAYYYYY better than the Dark Knight Rises, that movie was just crap…

Upstream Color: The movie I have been waiting to see since it was first announced. It’s my movie of the year so far, and I kind of doubt anything else will top it. Shane Carruth’s Primer is one of my favorite films and I never imagined he would be able to top it, but he has. The soundtrack is wonderful, feeling like you’re in an aquarium, and is a big part of the movie’s atmosphere. It moves like a dream, showing more than telling, making you pay attention and search for clues, piecing together what’s happening as it happens. I need to watch it again, as I still don’t completely grasp it all, and I’d like to write something more on it, but I just haven’t chewed on it enough yet to come up with anything worth reading, especially regarding the (forced?) romance between the two main characters and how it appears to be a literal representation of how it feels to fall in love. Still, it’s sublime, you can pause it at any moment, frame it, and hang it up in a gallery, it’s that beautiful. The sound design is incredible. In a perfect world, we’d have more beautiful, intriguing movies like this to think and talk about. I can’t wait to see what Carruth does next.

Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain: My girlfriend got me into Bourdain’s No Reservations shortly after we met. I love that man, and this is the book that made him famous. I’m only a little more than halfway through it, I confess, but it’s wonderful, and reading it before bed is a bad idea because it always makes me hungry. Bourdain writes in a way that is intoxicating and addicting to read, and it’s his own personal account of his experiences hopping from one restaurant to the next, an ugly but exciting look at what goes on behind the scenes in the industry. I’ve got another book or two of his waiting to be read, and I hope they’re just as good.

Change: This 4-issue miniseries written by Ales Kot, illustrated by Morgan Jeske, colored by Sloane Leong, and lettered by Ed Brisson is incredible. Dense, too. I need to reread it to really wrap my head around it, especially since I kind of read the issues out of order on my first go, but it’s unlike anything else in comic shops right now. It’s strange and dense, vibrant and alive, and I love it. Like with Upstream Color, I want to see more like this.

There are so many more things I’d love to write and talk about, but not enough time and space here, and I’m kicking myself for just realizing that I’d left out the music I’ve been listening to lately as well: Colleen Green’s Sock it to Me, the Shirks, Electric Ills. I’d like to talk more in-depth about Power Glove’s soundtrack to Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, Slime Girls, the new song Anamanaguchi dropped the other day from their upcoming new album, and more. But alas, I cannot.

So. What have YOU been reading, watching, playing, listening to? What’s been on your mind lately?

[Brett]

Since last weekend, I've been on this kick of watching nothing but Japanese movies. I'm not sure what brought it about. It's been quite some time since I've indulged in some crazy foreign flicks, so I was certainly long overdue. I think part of it was picking up one or two of these on DVD somewhere and leaving them sitting for a month before coming to the conclusion that I needed to watch them? I'm not sure. Anyways, here are some quick, scattered thoughts on the 12 movies that I watched and/or attempted to watch, in the order that I watched them:

The X From Outer Space (1967): I’d been wanting to see this for years, had no idea it was a Criterion release, and…I’m not sure why. It’s kind of dull. I mean, when Guilala finally shows up at literally the halfway point and starts wrecking shit, it’s pretty cool, but the first half was mind-numbingly dull. The ending was pretty lousy too. Nothing really sets it apart from other kaiju movies of the time aside from Guilala’s bizarre design, and that's kind of a shame.

School of the Holy Beast (1974): I only actually watched half of this. There’s a scene where two topless lesbian nuns are forced to strike each other with whips, and I feel like that sums up the entire movie. It was way more compelling than the X From Outer Space at first, but I stopped watching after two men sneaked into the abbey dressed as, you guessed it, nuns, to have sex with one of the older women for some reason? I dunno. I guess Japanese exploitation movies aren’t quite as awesome as I thought, I never would have imagined I’d get tired of a movie that is 75% boobs.

Rubber’s Lover (1993): I had this weird realization that some bits of chapter 4 of Other Sleep were subconsciously pulled from this movie, as well as parts from a later chapter that I haven’t started drawing yet. The last 20 minutes dissolve into mindless obtuse shit, like most of these films do, but everything up to that point is pretty entertaining, and I LOVED how it was shot, like a dirty, dizzy Stanley Kubrick. I found myself pausing frequently to sketch certain shots.

Electric Dragon 80000V (2001): I fucking love this movie. Too bad I only got to watch the first half of it this time around, I couldn’t get the second half to work on the site I was watching it. I ordered the DVD and it SHOULD arrive soon. I also spent a long time hunting for music from the excellent noisepunk/industrial soundtrack. It’s all just delirious, energetic, noisy fun that makes me smile.

Meatball Machine (2005): Keita Amamiya (creator of Zeiram!) designed the “Necroborg” creatures in this movie, and the special makeup effects and gore were by my splatter hero Yoshihiro Nishimura (creator of Tokyo Gore Police!), but whoever wrote and directed this thing SUCKED. I got maybe 15-20 minutes in before being overcome with boredom.

Akira (1988): Only watched the first half or so of this, planning on finishing it later. This is the first time I’ve watched it since finishing off all six volumes of the original manga earlier this year, and I was just a bit too overwhelmed by how DIFFERENT the movie is. It’s so much more gruesome and nihilistic, lacking a lot of the more charming aspects from the manga, which is weird considering that Otomo wrote and directed this himself before the manga was even finished. Still absolutely gorgeous to look at, though.

Mutant Girls Squad (2010): Another one that Yoshihiro Nishimura was involved in, as well as, um, the dude who directed the Machine Girl and RoboGeisha? Another one where the budget was too small, it wasn’t shot well, and I just wasn’t following it. Got about 30 minutes in before quitting. I should know by now to ONLY watch splattergore films written/directed by Nishimura himself, those seem to be the only ones I really enjoy.

Osamu Tezuka’s Metropolis (2001): Bought this weeks ago, had been wanting to see it since high school. Katsuhiro Otomo wrote the screenplay! Apparently it’s nothing like Tezuka’s manga, borrowing more heavily instead from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and the themes/ideas from Astro Boy, and there’s nothing wrong with those two things at all. Great jazzy soundtrack, LOTS of wide, distant shots where the architecture is just overwhelming and the characters are just dwarfed by their surroundings. I really enjoyed it.

Katsuhiro Otomo’s Memories (1995): You can tell that Akira set me on a theme, eh? Three short animations, each based on an early manga work of Otomo’s. The first one, Magnetic Rose, is by far the strongest and most beautiful piece, with the screenplay written by Satoshi Kon shortly before becoming a director himself with Perfect Blue. The second one, Stink Bomb, is hilarious, and the final piece, Cannon Fodder, directed by Otomo himself, is pretty experimental. It looked more like something out the 1980’s Heavy Metal movie or a Ralph Bakshi film than anime, like, it was kind of weird and unsettling. Maybe comparing it to some of the stuff from Liquid Television would be better, I’m not sure. Still, excellent stuff all around, and I think I like it more than Akira.

Paprika (2006): One of my favorite movies. I got a bit emotional when I read about Satoshi Kon’s death in 2010, and watching this again made me get a bit teary eyed, that someone who could create such an amazing movie is gone. I see something new every time I watch it, this time around realizing just how many classic Disney references there are, along with the fact that it really demonstrates a love for cinema in general.

Zeiram (1991): I love this movie so much. Early 90’s sci fi, cool monster and costume designs, and I realized this time around that there’s a real John Carpenter-esque sensibility to how it's shot and paced. You know, if he had directed a movie about a deadly immortal transforming bioweapon, a hot bounty hunter from space, and the two bumbling electricians that get in the middle of their battle. It’s not too far off from a kaiju movie or episode of Power Rangers, but that’s right up my alley.

Bullet Ballet (1998): I used to call Shinya Tsukamoto one of my favorite directors, and I still love the fact that, with most of his films, he acts, edits, writes, directs, and more, but I’ve grown weary of the frantic editing, shaky camera work, and flights into silliness that consumes most of his stuff. That said, this is definitely one of his best movies, right up there with A Snake of June. I just wish he’d learn to hold the freaking camera still, especially during the brawl scenes…

I'm probably going to watch more, I can think of at least three or four I'd like to dig into once more, and I have a copy of Wild Zero which should be coming in next week too, so consider this part 1.

[Brett]

I’ve seen Prometheus twice, which is more than most people will probably bother with it sadly, and I have to say I have never been so blown away and yet so frustrated by a movie in quite some time. The first time was pretty difficult for me, so many little things were getting on my nerves, mostly regarding the characters and their behavior, but after thinking on it, reading other people’s thoughts online, and watching it again, I have to say things made a bit more sense and didn’t get on my nerves nearly as much.

So here, in no particular order, are some of my spoiler-heavy thoughts on the movie.

The dome with the face on it is from one of HR Giger’s unused concepts from Jodorowsky’s 1970’s attempt at filming Dune. That put a huge smile on my face.

The spacesuits: I want one. I think they look exactly like something Enki Bilal would design, though comparisons to Wally Wood’s EC comics work are also apt. Sean Witzke pointed out their similarities to the suits from Planet of the Vampires, which I also greatly enjoy. Really, practically everything about the design work of the movie and even the way Ridley Scott shot it just screams Heavy Metal to me. I seriously wish more sci fi films looked this good.

I’m really glad they managed to bring out the same creepy, uncomfortable rape-y vibe from the original Alien. It’s not quite as heavily laden with phallic symbols and vaginal openings, but it’s still there.

The pacing is interesting. The first bulk of the movie is just discovery and awe, then BAM, dudes start getting killed, weird shit starts happening all at once, and the pace just jacks up and it turns into a relentless beast of a movie. That bothered the hell out of me the first time I watched it, but now I enjoy it for switching gears like that, just outright fucking with audience expectations in a way.

The black goo: I like the theory that the way it works depends on who’s exposed to it. The Engineer at the beginning of the movie is ripped apart at a molecular level in order to create life on…whatever planet that was. It’s a similar situation with Holloway, I think, only it’s not as quick because he only ingested a single drop of it. Both had good intentions. Fifeld turns into a monster because…well, I guess because he’s kind of a douche. As for all those Engineer corpses…I’m still not sure.

A few bits are straight out of 2001: the hanging spacesuits, David saying “I know we’ve had our differences,” and the way zombie-Fifeld was bashing people to death and running around the way the apes did.

Once you realize that Vickers is Weyland’s daughter, everything she was doing up to that point in the movie makes sense. She wants her father dead so she can inherit everything, and she despises David because Weyland views him as the superior “sibling.” Having David call her “mum” I think is a part of that, something to deal with an inferiority complex she has. She’s also impatient about leaving the planet because she doesn’t want them to find anything that could prove her father right and ruin her chances of taking over. The medical pod is calibrated only for men because it actually belongs to Weyland. This illustrates that he’s a selfish bastard (he probably used it simply to keep himself alive for so long), and is also evidence that Vickers wants what her father has, all for herself.

David’s motives are never clear, and I don’t think they’re supposed to be. What you’re supposed to notice is the simple fact that a damn robot even has an agenda and feelings of  his own. He despises Weyland and Vickers ("doesn't everyone want to kill their parents?"), the way they consider themselves superior to him, and he dislikes Holloway for the same reasons. It’s not like he knew Holloway would get Shaw pregnant or anything, he was just curious as to what the black goo does to a human being and picked him as the guinea pig. Finding out that Shaw was pregnant with some wicked creature has little to do with any plan he might’ve had, I think he’s just happy that he himself indirectly created life, something that only gods or other living beings should be able to do. I’m starting to think he might have a god complex or something, based on his belief that he’s better than humanity, and that’s possibly what drives him to behave the way he does.

I wonder just how much this film connects with Lawrence of Arabia, aside from it being David’s favorite film. I think the key to figuring out David’s motivations might have something to do with that film, especially that line that he repeats: “the trick is not minding that it hurts.”

I loved the music. I mean, well, I wouldn’t buy the soundtrack and listen to it, but it feels so much more old fashioned than what a traditional film score is these days. It’s no Jerry Goldsmith, no, but it reminds me so much of older movies in a good way.

The ending: Am I really the only one who realized that the giant squid thing was some kind of proto-facehugger? I mean, everyone online just calls it a squid or Cthulhu or something, but I’ve never seen anyone point out that it LOOKS JUST LIKE A FACEHUGGER. Except, you know, big.

I’m hoping for an even better director’s cut when it comes out on DVD, with loads of special features. I really think it’s this generation’s Blade Runner, and a really big director’s cut would support that a lot, considering Ridley Scott’s track record and the fact that he’s mentioned in interviews all of this stuff that was cut out of the movie…

[Brett]

(wasn't even a damn line in the movie)

When I was a little kid, I always enjoyed shutting my eyes, like really tight, and watching the…I still don’t know what it’s called. The after-effects of light? The weird colored shapes that play across your eyelids. I would watch them slowly diminish, thinking they were germs or something. I distinctly remember one time, playing hide and seek in a classroom in elementary school, and my head was resting against a wall, eyes shut tight, and as I was counting, I was watching these…they looked like islands, and the way they moved across my eyelids made it seem like I was flying.

Then, years later, in the ninth grade I saw 2001 for the first time. Well, not all of it. I was flipping channels and I caught the word “INTERMISSION” on TCM, and I stopped, transfixed by that Futura font and the haunting music. I didn’t take my eyes off the TV until the end of the movie, and when it was over, I felt changed.

It was the Star Gate sequence in particular, the dazzling lights, that ever-present haunting music with the pitch steadily rising, the blink-and-you-miss-it frozen shots of Dave as it appears that his mind is SHATTERING, just like mine was while watching. And then you see those solarized landscapes, all blues and greens and oranges. The camera passing over canyons and valleys…and islands.

It’s like deja fucking vu. But I have no memory of ever seeing the movie before. It’s weird.

And it still gets to me to this day. I mean, I’m always hypnotized by Kubrick’s films, but 2001 is possibly the closest I’ll ever get to doing mind-altering drugs, more so than anything David Lynch or Alejandro Jodorowsky could ever shoot. And once it hits Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite, I can’t blink, I can’t breathe, my hands are always pulled up to my chest, gripping my shirt tightly.

I usually never think to mention the movie whenever I’m listing my favorite films, sci fi or otherwise, and I’m not sure why, because there isn’t any other movie out there that makes me feel the way 2001 does…

[Brett]

The universe really did not want me to see Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Plans to see it with friends fell apart left and right for various reasons. Things nearly fell apart again on Saturday, but I overcame the atrocious weather, a car that may be on its last legs, a killer headache, and sore throat brought on by an encroaching sinus infection, and finally got to see the number one movie I was excited for this year!

AND IT WAS FUCKING METAL.
 

No, seriously. I haven’t had so much fun in a theater in a long time. I can’t get over how awesome it was. Neveldine and Taylor bring their skull-busting cinematic style that they established with Crank and Nicolas Cage comes along for the ride in one of my favorite performances ever.

I’ll admit to knowing next to nothing about the comics and I never saw the first movie either. For this one, they kind of seem to lean on the Bruce Banner/Hulk dichotomy, with Johnny Blaze living in an abandoned building, away from society, struggling to keep at bay the demon that’s possessed him, that turns him into our titular character. “Am I going to regret this? Bringing you here with me?” “…Yeah, probably.” As a result, he kind of sucks at communicating with other people (hilariously), is okay with stealing painkillers from a hospital, and is constantly two steps away from catching fire and sucking out souls left and right. This leads to some of the greatest Nicolas Cage freakouts EVER, with Death From Above 1979 playing in the background during one fantastic scene.
 

And when he does inevitably lose his shit and transform? Things get surprisingly bizarre. You’ve probably seen interviews with Cage where he talks about his methods for playing the Rider, the swaying like a cobra, the makeup and contacts, and you probably thought, “man, he’s weird,” but IT WORKS. When the Rider is on screen, it’s surreal. He is not human. He’s unpredictable. He’s not a superhero at all, more like some beast from a horror movie. It’s like his mere presence bends the rules of reality around him, like a grisly hallucination. No one really knows how to react when he shows up and starts screaming in their faces, and it’s just gnarly.

I had this weird worry that somehow this movie would neuter Neveldine/Taylor through studio interference or something, like how they stepped down from directing Jonah Hex because the studio kept getting in the way and screwing with their screenplay. I was also worried that, being PG-13, the movie would be too, er, “safe” or something. I’m happy to say that this is not true, that their balls are on display just as much as in the Crank movies and Gamer. The Rider pisses fire, vomits bullets, incinerates people with his chains and the big villain, Blackheart, decomposes anything and everything he lays his hands on, and that includes a rather large number of people. The camera work is fantastic, and setting the movie in Turkey leads to some amazing visuals. There are also a few fantastic animated segments providing back story for characters that I wish more comic books looked like. I never pulled my eyes from the screen at any point.

So yeah, 2012 is off to a good start. The only other films I really want to see this year are Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie and Prometheus, and I kind of doubt either of those two will be as batshit crazy and awesome as Ghost Rider was. Man, now I want to go watch it again…

[Brett]

Hello there kids! It's been a while, yes. Things have been happening. We had to put my 13-year-old dog to sleep, the Radiohead trip to Florida was canceled, I started quoting the narrator from the Beast of Yucca Flats, met a bunch of Koreans, and got a new computer!

Also, I finished drawing Cyberpunk Blues 2: Your Fan Club Sucks. Here's the first page in grayscale. CLICK TO EMBIGGEN.

There are gonna be two versions of the comic. The grayscale version is for when it gets printed in Burst Reach 2 some time in the foreseeable future. I'm also doing a colored version to put here on the site. GET EXCITED.

And here's a new piece of art I did, kind of following along the lines of Embrace Infection:
 There's some other stuff I've done that you can see on my deviantART page, like a sketch of Robocop that's rather badly colored.

Also, I have acquired two movies that have quickly become new favorites of mine. The first is Shogun Assassin, the Americanization of two Lone Wolf and Cub films from the 70s:

I feel like I need to see more samurai films after watching and falling in love with this. Anyone got any suggestions?

The other movie is Redline, a racing anime that took SEVEN YEARS to make, all hand-drawn, and it is easily the coolest anime ever made:
 

Everything about this thing is awesome: character design, animation, the soundtrack, the cars, pacing, EVERYTHING. I had the biggest, stupidest grin on my face the whole time I watched it, and now I want to show it to EVERYONE. I feel like it was made especially for me.

That's all I have for you this evening, I'm afraid. Working on sixty ideas at once. Maintaining productivity. I'll try not to drop off the radar for another insane length of time, but I make no promises.

[Brett]

I’m going to talk about anime again. You may want to go read something on Cracked now instead. Or look at eerily specific Tumblr pages.

It was either in seventh or eighth grade, knee deep in my love for Gundam Wing, DBZ, and Outlaw Star (which I still declare to be one of the greatest anime series ever), when I finally started digging into stuff that didn’t come on Toonami thanks to the internet. I was immediately drawn, like any other kid mildly interested in Japan, to Neon Genesis Evangelion. I read about it obsessively, looked at everything I could, downloaded and watched AMVs over a year before I finally acquired a DVD player and a couple volumes of the show itself. It was the designs of the Eva units, the Angels, the weird psychological and religious stuff that caught my interest and I latched onto it.

(I wanted to post the AMV set to Rammstein's Engel, but it can't be embedded. This will do)

I never watched the entire series. In fact, I think I never watched any more than maybe 9 episodes and End of Evangelion. It was one of those situations where what I had in my head was so much different and better than what the actual show was. At the tender age of 14 or 15, I felt I identified with Shinji, yeah, but even then, I thought he was a bit too whiny, too much of a crybaby, and it felt like the writers were trying too hard in places to be funny or emotional. And as I grew older I eventually just dropped it entirely. In that last ultra-big anime and manga blog post I did, I mentioned my knee-jerk reaction in which I would tell people that I hate anime. This was around the start of that denial phase, when I decided that Evangelion sucked and that I would no longer show interest in it. See how that worked?

Fast forward to present day. Amazon recommended me Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone, 10 bucks on Blu-Ray. I asked on Facebook if it was worth it, was told yes, ordered it, and watched it. And now I’m super nostalgic.
This usually doesn’t end so well.

So, the movie. I had my fingers crossed that they’d rewritten Shinji, at least a little, to make him less of an emo child. Sadly, that wasn’t so, but since this was a movie I was watching and not the show, they thankfully kept the whining and crying to a bare minimum, making it easier to deal with. Also, I was reminded of one of the main reasons I was so enamored with the series to begin with: Eva 01 tearing shit up. The battles against the Angels are like what I always wanted from a giant monster film, which is a high compliment given that I’m a stupidly huge Godzilla and Gamera fan. And really, watching Evangelion 1.11 really felt like watching a giant monster movie, having to sit through some half-interesting human drama before getting to see a giant morphing diamond thing firing massive lasers. So, not the rewrite and improvement I was expecting, but still great. I miss the graininess of 80s/90s anime, and this being a digital transfer of the film straight to high-def BD, the movie is almost TOO crisp and clean, there's no grit at all, but then you see what they did with the final Angel encounter and just stop caring about why no one gets dirty.

It’s just interesting to think of the ways in which something can influence you, even when you’re not terribly familiar with it. With Evangelion, I also owned volumes 1 and 5 of the manga, again, before I saw a single full episode of the show. Then I cut pages out of them and used them in collages and stuff, because I was an idiot and figured I’d never want to read them again.

I rediscovered these two pages that I scanned from one of the volumes, and realized that this scene was a big influence on the comic book I’m currently working on:
Really, I was not thinking about these pages, or of Evangelion at all when I got the idea for this comic and started working on it. If anything, I thought I was largely ripping off the film Altered States and maybe a little bit of Fringe and HP Lovecraft, so my mind was blown when I found these. I mean, seriously, the opening pages to my comic are so damn close to this it's kind of unnerving.

And that’s the other reason I decided to just go for it and buy the Blu-Ray, to figure out just how much the show, the manga, the designs, influenced me on some very deep level. I do believe wholeheartedly that the white Evas in End of Evangelion (which show up in the above AMV) are the freakiest, coolest designs ever and I've tried to mimic them on multiple occasions. I also think Eva 01 is one of the reasons I used purple and green so much in my work. Either that or the Mystic Cave level from Sonic 2 on the Sega Genesis, who knows?

This also could lead into an argument about things we remember and the fact that they surely exist on the internet. Is it better to just cling to your memories, especially when intentionally referencing something, or should you refer back to the source material and get as close to it as possible?

I may write some more on anime related stuff again later, considering I recently also finished reading all 2000+ pages of Akira and picked up six issues of some horrible manga by the original creator of La Blue Girl, but maybe I shouldn't go into that...

[Brett]

HAPPY HALLOWEEN. Here's today's East Tennessean strip, about the Ghost Monkey of ETSU. It's a true story:
Could this be my best work yet? Next week's Exciting Tales! is going to be a haiku. I can't do haiku very well, so it's bound to be terrible. There may be a dinosaur in it though.

I thought about writing about all the different horror movies I've been watching lately. I think I've finally pulled myself out of my John Carpenter kick that I've been on after making attempts at watching some of his lousier films like the Ward. I bought Halloween and watched it last night, of course. Old Vincent Price films like the Masque of the Red Death, but those still don't compare to the outrageous awesomeness of the Abominable Dr. Phibes. Re-watched Nosferatu and and the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which led me to draw this last night:
I MAY re-watch Nosferatu again tonight, because it is great. I also watched Shadow of the Vampire, which I had bought earlier this year and kind of forgot I owned. And another favorite of mine, Bram Stoker's Dracula.I had started watching the 2005 remake of Dr. Caligari, and it was...eh. The acting wasn't too good, though Doug Jones was REALLY creepy as the somnambulist. If I finish it, it'll be for his performance, definitely...

Eh, that's it. I'm gonna go eat candy and draw now.

[Brett]

So after that last entry, I decided I was being too much of a whiny emo loser bitch (in that order), and decided to get back in gear and get back to work...

...Then I got sick Saturday night, and spent all of sunday watching horror movies on Netflix: John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness, 2/3rds of Dario Argento's Inferno, Phantasm II, and Madhouse. Whenever I'm sick in October, I always sit and marathon horror movies. It goes back to this time in high school where I had a nasty stomach virus and sat watching AMC's Monsterfest.

While watching those films, I ended up drawing a piece of Casanova fanart. Newman Xeno, the comic's villain, is probably one of my favorite all-time characters. I considered trying to dress as him for Halloween:
Casanova is, incidentally, the best damn comic coming out right now, which of course explains why I'm having a hard time getting hold of the new issues. And one of the best comics ever. Trust me. You need to read it. Crazy sixties sexy sci fi awesomeness.

I finished reading John Dies at the End yesterday and loved it. Actually, I spent all day at work yesterday reading it, finishing the thing just 5 minutes before closing. I haven't been that absorbed in a book in quite some time. Excellent stuff.

And I've listened to this song more times that I'm willing to admit today, from the soundtrack to Drive, which I saw a couple weeks back:

I don't normally dig electro synth pop stuff, but this song is just hypnotic, like the movie itself was.

Hm...that's all I've got to share this evening. Oh, yeah, the Avengers trailer is out, and it looks like it'll do just fine, but that generic rock music and typical editing killed it for me. I kind of just wish the film was actually about Thor and Tony Stark going on a cross-country roadtrip and getting involved in wacky shenanigans with the Cosmic Cube or something, because aside from Black Widow being HOT, none of the other characters appeal to me. But then of course, the only superhero film I saw this year was X-Men: First Class, and I'm one of about five people seriously looking forward to Neveldine & Taylor's Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance next year, so what do I know?

[Brett]