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Hey there.
In case anyone’s been wondering, I’m still around. Been a while since the last update, I know… over three weeks now, which is a pretty long stretch for me. And it’s not as if nothings been going on; to put it the most simplest of terms, things have been HELLA busy. And I know I say that a lot (plus I’m also aware of how much I state “and I know I say that a lot” as well), but I honestly can’t remember a time when my schedule has been as dense and when there’s been so much happening in general. To be totally honest, it’s been kinda aggravating! Though let me start off by listing off a few of things that HASN’T been done since I last updated…
- I still owe a ton of people UNLUCKY stories to start drawing.
- Haven’t been able get back to do anything for GameSetWatch for some time now.
- Still haven’t finished my latest piece for Gamasutra.
- Not quite finished revising my piece for 1UP Zine #4.
- My Gamer’s Quarter piece is still stuck in first draft limbo.
- Have yet to touch base with Dave Goldstein over at ICON regrinding my possible behind the scenes involvement for next year’s show.
- Have barely touched any games (Odin Sphere is still in its shrink-wrap for example).
… As well as a bunch of other stuff I’m either forgetting or will touch upon later. So my humblest of apologies to all the people to whom I owe something. And I know I’m going to risk losing a ton of cred for admitting this, but I am also woefully ignorant as to what’s going on in the world of games. Okay, not 100% true… I’ve heard things here and there, mostly major stuff, but for the most part, I’ve never been this out of touch, and it’s all because I just flat out haven’t had the time to keep up to date! My day job has been keeping me busy (I might not have updated this blog in weeks, but I’m quite active over at Zedge almost everyday), plus its summer time. Oh, and dealing with what has become a fucking nightmare living situation has also eaten up much of my time and energy. Though there might be some other reasons. Like how I tried my best all last week to keep on top of E3, the big annual video game trade-show. But couldn’t, mostly because I just wasn’t all that interested. Maybe I’m becoming tired and bored of video games? Finally growing up am I? Umm, no, not necessarily, at least I think. But I’ll get back to that later…
Anyway, to further reinforce how crazy its been, get this: I only saw the live action Transformers flick last Wednesday, over a week after it came out! I know, wtf, right? The movie I was practically born to see, and I wasn’t there on opening night to cry out in agony or pull my hair out in frustration at the very first screening. Actually, I had been under the assumption that I’d be checking it out before the street date, via a press screening on the behalf of Nick Mag (once my co-workers there found out at the Xmas party what a crazed Transformer fan I am, and how much my girlfriend was not, I was offered the chance to spare her the indignation), one which never happened for whatever reason. I initially assumed that all press previews were canceled since it was such a turd, but it turns out Nick Mag simply got the cold shoulder. LAME. Anyhow, I naturally have plenty of things to say about it, but I first want to talk about the 37 other movies I saw before it, at…
The New York Asian Film Festival 2007
Again, the timing of the fest couldn’t have been worse. Aside from the conflict with MoCCA four weekends ago, which again forced me to skip out on most of Saturday afternoon to catch one screening, and totally miss another later that night (I’m still pissed that I had to pass on my one and only chance to see Hard Boiled on the big screen), three weekends ago was a wedding in Jersey that MK & I had to be at (with the highlight being, when attempting to catch the garter belt like all the other single dudes in attendance, which to be honest I wasn’t trying too hard to do, I got elbowed in the face of MK’s best friend Morgan’s brother Lee, who apparently really did it). And that naturally forced us to skip out on all of that weekend’s showings, which had to made up on the 4th of July, meaning I had to pass on John‘s annual shindig, and since I’ve been at practically every single one for the past ten years straight, not going felt pretty strange. Oh, and it also meant that I wasn’t there to witness Takeru Kobayashi lose his crown at the Coney Island hot dog eating contest, sadly (and to some fucking dumbass American… wtf).
Plus I caught two films the night before, which was why I also had to pass on Dave Mauro‘s invite to catch the midnight premiere of Tranformers (it was him, Jeremiah I think, along with a big bottle of booze). After five Asian flicks in just 48 hours, I was pretty tapped out by the 5th, hence why I skipped out on something I really wanted to catch, plus the following weekend, the fest’s final, which was two weekends ago, were two other movies that I had no real interested in seeing until I was very much impressed by the trailer (btw, they were the two Death Note flicks; I usually have a strong anti-any movie based on a manga or animu, hence why I was totally shocked to discover that, at its core, it was some intense cat-and-mouse detective story). But again, there was a conflict schedule wise… there’s just too much shit going on. And I keep discovering out that the problem is not going away anytime soon; I literally have stuff lined up for every upcoming weekend till October!
But I’m getting off track here… what about the movies I actually did catch?
I guess it should be noted that this year’s fest was just like the previous ones, which is chock of all sorts of crazy flicks from all across Asia (though as also previously noted, there was a distinct lack of Bollywood this time around, and I honestly don’t think anyone cared). But the venue was different; gone was the Anthology Film Archives (thank fucking God… more on this later on). The new home was the IFC Center, which was very much appreciated. That place is now my new fave theater in Manhattan; aside from having a very friendly staff, the theater itself, while small, is quite nice and there’s not a bad seat in the house. My only complain is that the very nice seats, which are perfectly positioned so no one has to deal with a person’s head in the way in front of them, are also noisy as hell. They all need a serious oiling. The second half of the fest was not as the Imaginasian Theater (God I still love that name) but the Japan Society, though I never got the chance to see that part of the program.
The Subway Cinema staff was friendly and awesome as ever, and there seemed to be more of them this time around. All the new guys were cool, even if I was kinda pissed at the quiet, somewhat nervous one that accidentally knocked over my copy of Life Meter 2 on the floor at the first screening, which resulted in a bent corner. Oh well, it was an accident. Also, the usual suspects, audience-wise, made their annual appearance. You had crazy old lady and “eternal virgin”, who still has the warmest, yet creepiest smile in the world, the kind child molesters have after they choke a small girl to death. Guess nothing’s better than ending the night with some Waysian Cinema!
And of course, the fest brought out the assholes as well (though you simply can’t avoid them, at any film screening really… they’re bad when you’re at some big megaplex, but its worse when your at some art house theater since you assume that such a place would attract smarter, more sensible types). Thank God it never got as bad as Funky Forest last year, where every jerk-off in the audience was laughing so hard at everything on screen to the point that it felt racist. This time around, most of the douchebaggery took place while waiting in line. For example. I arrived super early for City of Violence and decided to chitchat with one of the staff members. Because MK & I were so into I’m A Cyborg, I asked if it might be at all possible to have the poster once the fest was over with, but was told that it was set to be given away at a screening (they always give shit away before each film, like posters and DVDs and books). I was denied, though later on in the fest I would win two other posters anyway, so it was all good. Anyhow, I next made my way to the standby line, in which I was person number two. And with some time to kill, I decided to make some phone calls…
While talking with Jason, this Asian guy with sunglasses comes up to me with a big shit-eating grin on his face. I instantly knew this asshole was up to no good. He had a friend with him, a white guy. Both were in the twenties and not some crackheads or anything. Anyway, while I was speaking on the phone, he goes…
Asian guy: “Hey man, I have a question when you’re done.”
me: “Ummm…. I’m on the phone…”
Asian guy: “Don’t worry, after your done.
me: “Tell me now, because I’m going to be on the phone for a while. Like twenty minutes”
Asian guy: “No, I can wait.”
And the fucker just stood there, and real close to me too. I got off the phone and asked him what he wanted exactly…
Asian guy: “So I heard you talking about the posters….”
me: “They give them away at the raffle.”
Asian guy: “What raffle?”
me: “The raffle at the beginning of the screening….”
Asian guy: “What?”
me: “Before each film, they draw a name out of the box and give away all sorts of stuff, including posters sometimes…”
Asian guy: “How do I enter?”
me: “You fill out a form”
Asian guy: “And where do I get this form?”
… Now I’m talking fast and really losing my patience…
me: “The give you a form before the screening.”
Asian guy: “So do you think they’re going to give away that poster?”
… I knew exactly what this fuck-face’s M.O. was; he was try to start some sort of conversation, to give the appearance that we were friends or something, and once the line started to move, him and his buddy could follow along and cut in line behind me, and in front of everyone else. Which of course, was retarded and fucked up, and I wasn’t having any part of it. But before I could tell him that I no longer wanted to talk, the line started moving, and of course, him and his twat buddy follow me. So of course I had to say something…
me: “Hey, do you two have tickets to this show?”
Asian guy: “Yeah.”
me: “Well the back of the line is that way.”
Asian guy: “But…”
“Dude, that’s seriously fucked up, You’re cutting in front of all these people who have been waiting a long time. Get the fuck away.”
… Asian guy was pissed to hear this, and his white friend, who obviously agreed with me since he was getting embarrassed tried to convince him to head to the back, but Asian guy wasn’t having it, and it was too late anyway since his ticket got torn. But yeah, another fine example of why I fucking hate going to see movies in the city. But… I’m really going off course here. Onto the movies:
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Exiled
I said it before, and I’ll say it again: there’s seem to be no logical reason why the name Johnny To, the director of Exiled and host of other amazing, brilliant Hong Kong films, doesn’t get the same recognition and respect as Wong Kar Wai, Ringo Lam, Tsui Hark, or John Woo does (at least in America), when he’s every bit as good, and in some instances BETTER than those two (note: I am BIG fans of Wai and Woo). Exiled is the spiritual successor to The Mission, which might be To’s best film, up until Exiled came along. And Exiled is quite simply the greatest HK gangster flick the genre has since Hard Boiled. Period. It not only celebrates the form by exploring well established territory (and cliches) but re-shapes it into something genuinely new and fresh, which no one has really been able to do for years now.
The story revolves around Wo, who was once part of a tight-knit band of gangsters, till he decided to leave it all for his woman and child. Before breaking off he was behind a failed plot to kill the big boss, who has now ordered Wo’s death by the hands of Blaze (in Anthony Wong’s greatest role since, well, Hard Boiled), who also happened to be part of Wo’s crew. Out to stop him is Tai, yet another member of the team, and who is forever in debited to Wo because he also wanted to kill the big boss, but Wo took all the blame himself. What results is spectacular, bullet ridden reunion in which they come to a 24 hour truce, so they can pull a job that will ensure that Wo’s wife and child will have enough money to take of themselves without a husband and father (because as much as Blaze doesn’t want to, he still has a job to do). At one point they decided to rob a shipment of gold, but then move onto bigger payola: the head of the resident crime lord. So they decide to ambush the guy at a restaurant, and what to you know, big boss shows up! Another ultra stylized, as well as ultra grisly, gun battle takes place, and next thing you know, Wo is dead. So wife totally goes over the edge and wants revenge, forcing the rest of the crew to get the hell out of town, especially since the big boss also wants them dead. And in the middle of nowhere, hey, here comes that truck filled with gold!
Exiled is again, simply amazing. Its the very best the genre has to offer, and up there with A Better Tomorrow and the Killer, as well as a fine example of the evolution of the genre. Everything is absolutely top notch: you can just tell that in every frame that its a movie helmed by a director who knows exactly what the hell he’s doing. The cinematography is jaw-dropingly beautiful, and the soundtrack is wonderful. And the action…. holy shit the action. Best of all those is the all star Hong Kong cast that brings the story to life. The entire film is dripping with machismo. You know, Exiled is kinda like Ocean’s Eleven, in the sense that it tries to be a flick featuring all these cool guys that you want to admire and root for, but in the end, its just some goofy and far too self-aware ego-driven vehicle that’s flat-out condescending and boring. But not Exiled. That’s not to say that I have some raging, bro-mance hard-on for Anthony Wong or Francis Ng (the guy who plays Tai), since if I was gay, I’d probably find Wong too old and ugly for my tastes. Still, they are two cool dudes…
I’m A Cyborg But That’s Okay
Once again, it?s a romantic comedy from the Korean master of sadistic cinema, Park Chan-wook, who is best know for Old Boy and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. First off, it should be noted that you’d think that a movie that combines a celebrated director in his own land, which also happens to love romantic comedies, and also stars Rain, K-pop heart throb, and the guy the bested Stephen Colbert for the top spot of most influential in Time Magazine, would be a mega-blockbuster in Korea, right? Wrong. The movie bombed, and it bombed HARD. Maybe not Resurrection of the Little Match Girl levels, but it still did bad enough to be considered the worst movie, or next to the last worst movie, in Korea last year.
Well Koreans are fucking nuts (I should know, I’m half Korean, remember); Cyborg was easily this year’s best film at the fest, and also one of the best movies I’ve seen all year, period (its up there with Grindhouse). The story tells of a quite girl named Yeong-goon who quietly goes nuts. Believing to be a robot, she tries tried to plus herself into an outlet and nearly kills herself (she also slices a wrist opn to insert some wiring… btw, this is all illustrated during the opening credits, and I’m not joking when I say that the entire five or so minute sequence is better than most films in their entirety that you’ll find these days), so she’s sent to an insane asylum. There Yeong-goon meets Il-soon, a kleptomaniac that loves to steal the craziest of things, like one guy’s exemplary ping-pong playing skills, and another guy’s pointlessness. She soon sees an alley in Il-soon, because he has the ability to steal the one thing she doesn’t want the most: her empathy. It?s the one thing that’s preventing her from killing all the humans out there, at least the ones in white doctor uniforms and nurses outfits.
Much of Yeong-goon’s anger towards humans comes from how her grandmother was taken away by doctors, all because she thought she was a rat or something. And they carted her away without her false teeth, which allow her to eat radishes, much like a rat. It’s what Yeong-goon uses to communicate with her grandmother. Anyhow, the story is totally cute and whimsical, as are the primary characters, but when Yeong-goon fantasizes about shedding her empathy and finally becoming a good machine, you are instantly reminded that its a Park Chan-wook flick. She starts shooting and killing every doctor and nurse in sight, and its fucking amazing. Much like that “2D” side-scrolling shot of ultra violence and mayhem in Oldboy, we get the same thing, but a top down, bird’s eye view of her picking off hapless victims in a garden. It simply has to be seen to be believed.
But yeah, despite all the bloodiness and kookiness, there’s still plenty of heart, as well as a good deal of yodeling. Last I heard, it still hasn’t gotten an American distributor, and something tells me that it might be a while, so bootleg if you can! Its up there with Barking Dogs Never Bite as one of the finest romantic Korean films I’ve ever seen, and is also the best crazy hospital movie since One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
City of Violence
City of Violence is straightforward, no bullshit, punch in the face and kick to the back of the head spectacular from Korea. Its a loving homage to action flicks from the 80′s, which means you have stuff like a montage of violence set to some wacky 80′s pop tunes that rather ill-fitting, as well as still frames, then dissolves, of the main characters all happy and smiling, before shit goes down. But unlike here in America in which such clich?s are pulled out for comedic effect, it?s sorta serious in City of Violence, which plays a large part of its charm.
The story is pretty pedestrian: cop comes back to his hometown when a long time friend, a reformed gangster, is murdered, and both him and another childhood friend try to figure out who’s behind it all, only to encounter fisticuffs almost every step of the way. Its not exactly original, but it doesn’t try to be. The acting is also rather hokey. And that too is okay. Because the most important thing is the action, which there is plenty of, and all of it is fucking amazing. I’m a sucker for one or two guys versus one or two hundred other guys fight scenes, and if you are too, then City of Violence is the motion picture for you. Especially if you like video game movies oddly enough, since it?s basically a big screen adaptation of River City Ransom to a large degree, right down to the boss fights (which in City features quiet, and deadly, girl and gothy guy).
The big fight scene at the end takes place in a restaurant and is highly reminiscent of the one in Kill Bill volume 1. But get this: it?s more realistic believe it or not! And the best part, by far (and I don’t mind giving it away since they showed it constantly in the NY Asian Film Fest trailer) is how one of the good guys gets thrown over the railing in an upper level, only to be then caught by his own hair! Again, the fights are spectacular. Also, the movie features the Korean Baseball Furies. Now are you updating your Netflix ques? Plus the very end has one of those stomach churning “Oh my God…” moments that makes every final battle that much more awesome!
Big Bang Love, Juvenile Love A
The thing about Takashi Miike (most known for Ichii the Killer) is that you really never know what to expect from the guy. And for someone who literally makes seven movies a month (and I’m not even joking), you really have to admire someone who constantly strives to do something different, and always succeeds. Big Bang Love is, like virtually every Miike film out there, almost impossible to describe. I personally thought it was an interesting, and quite inventive character study, though not quite for me. And not because you need to be gay to really get into the psychology… though at the time I figured that it would help to be gay, till the gay dude next to me started to snore. I kinda felt the same way.
The movie tells the tale of two men who are thrown into jail for violent, but unrelated crimes. One is a hotheaded brawler, while the other is a docile, quiet type. The assertive one almost immediately claims a stake with the quiet one (who I guess you could say becomes his “bitch” though we really don’t see any sex between the two), but is then seemingly murdered by the hands of his “property” (don’t worry, I’m not giving anything away… the murder scene is one of the first things in the film). The entire movie is basically a deconstruction of the scene, an exploration into the minds of both them, to find out what happened and why. Maybe the quiet guys killed the angry guy because he reminds him of the dude that his grandfather sent him to as a child when he had to “become a man”? Which I believe means he got raped, though in this instance, it?s represented by interpretive dance. Also, there’s a scene the quiet guy is doing laundry, which involves him and two other prisoners stomping on yellow clothing (all their clothing is yellow) in the ankle deep water, while in the midst of a quite literal golden shower, and all of sudden he notices a huge Mayan pyramid before him, one that, if climbed to the top, will take him to heaven. So its either climb the pyramid to go to heaven, or hop into the rocket-ship that’s right next to it, which will take him to outer space (which is not the same thing as heaven). Again, its Miike!
Plus you have a super creepy prison warden, with the absolute creepiest smile imaginable (more so than the real life Eternal Virgin!). So basically, its Miike acting all arty-farty, to the point that it practically becomes a Godard or Von Tiers movie, especially with the minimalist set design (Miike’s films are always known for having a nothing budget, but its super apparent here), mixed with a who-dun-it, and the narrative flow in which we are presented with both the questions and answers is rather compelling. But it was still pretty boring (not helping is how I really had to use the bathroom around the half-way point, which meant the longest feeling 90 minute movie ever), yet I can’t totally hate it.
Dynamite Warrior
MK & I both saw Dynamite Warrior immediately after Big Bang Love, and the timing could not have been any better; both of us were kinda taken aback by the pretentious, arty-farty-ness of that flick and we needed a high octane, picker-upper. And Dynamite Warrior totally met up to the challenge. It was also further proof that the folks at Subway Cinema always tell the truth. When it was stated in the description for the movie that “there are literally only 30 minutes of this 103 minute movie that don’t feature some kind of martial action”, they were not blowing smoke out of their asses.
The story (which is a real doozy) takes place in Thailand, during its own Wild West days from many years ago. Jone Bang Fai, aka the Dynamite Warrior, is a mysterious masked figure who steals from cattle rustlers with the help of his Muay Thai skills (which means his fighting style consists of REPEATED knees to the head, face, and/or chest), as well as fireworks; often, he rides rockets and steers them with rope, just like cattle! Jone Bang Fai then passes along the cattle to the poor, making him a Robin Hood type character, though the real reason behind his actions is to find the one rustler who killed his parents as a child (he was left for dead and raised by monks that dealt with fireworks), so he can have his revenge. Then you have Lord Weng, whose attempts at selling motorized tractors are impeded by the fact that cattle does all the work, and for far less. So Weng hires a group of bandits that’s headed by a large thug with a voracious appetite to wrangle up all the cattle throughout the land, which would force the strapped farmers into doing business with him; early on, when you watch the Dynamite Warrior take down one cattle rustler after another (with again, countless knees to the head), but never actually killing anyone, you immediately assume that its going to be some PG-rated affair. But that all changes when the big dude kills a guy and immediately starts starts ripping flesh from the body and starts eating. It should also be noted that Lord Weng is basically Dr. Evil, but with a pompadour and a hair-lip. His accent/speech impediment was so bad that all I wanted to do was laugh whenever he opened his mouth, but I had to hold back because it seemed kinda racist. Anyway, the goon and his squad eventually comes across Sing, a cattle rustler who wields magic (enough to infuse the two bumbling idiots under his employment with the power of a tiger and a monkey during battle), and who also bears the same mark that the guy who killed the Dynamite Warrior’s parents. He eventually gets duped into doing the bidding of the Black Wizard, who was childhood friends with Sing (???). The Black Wizard actually has a daughter, who’s the film’s token hottie, and one of the best scenes is when Lord Weng stares at the daughter’s chest, to emphasize what a creep he is, but she’s totally flat chested! Also, Jone Bang Fai needs the power of menstrual blood from a virgin to neutralize Sing, which means various scenes of him awkwardly chit-chatting with the daughter to find out if its that time of the month yet.
Basically, Dynamite Warrior could be best described as a far goofier version of Ong Bak, along with a good amount of wire work and even CGI, but just as much, if not more, Muay Thai action.
Dasepo Naughty Girls
To put it bluntly, Dasepo Naughty Girls is more or less a Korean version of Cromartie High School, with the addition of song and dance numbers, as well as much better art & set design. And just like Cromartie, Dasepo is based on a comic… a web comic actually… and instead of telling one huge tale, the movie is simply a collection of comedic vignettes and sketches featuring assorted members of the student body that crisscross throughout for about an hour and a half. The thing is, while I found Cromartie the funnier of the two, I kinda like Dasepo better because the characters were more interesting and compelling.
The film somewhat centers around the school’s resident poor girl, so much so that her name is actually Poor Girl (to further reinforce her sad state, she also has the personification of poverty literally hanging from her shoulders at all times, which sucks and all, but at least he’s cute). Poor Girl is in love with a transfer student from the Swiss, but the boy could give two shits about her and instead is infatuated with another girl named Double Eyes, called as such because she’s the sister of One Eye, the resident cyclops, and instead of having one eyes, she has a matching pair. Problem is, she also has a penis (and also a matching pair of testicles, I forget if those were mentioned). Though eventually, Poor Girl manages to nab the attention of the handsome (and also well to do) boy from the Swiss, but things go horribly wrong while visiting her home when he accidentally knocks over her mom’s piss bucket (and ruining the pyramids that she’s selling, as part of some pyramid scheme). Plus Poor Girl discovers that the boy of her dreams might be her long lost brother. Also along the way, Poor Girl decides to sell her body because she’s, well, so fucking poor, and some powerful rich dude enlists her services. Though instead of having sex with her, the guy lets his guard down and reveals his cross-dressing tendencies, and Poor Girl becomes a surrogate sister or sorts. Next thing you know, they’re kidnapped by some sex cult and Poor Girl does some sexy dance to entertain them, some of which is caught on film, which then ends up on the web, turning Poor Girl into an internet sensation. Plus, the principle is going around and turning the student body into born-again virgins via a special chip. Did I already mention how there’s song and dance numbers?
But the one thing that totally blew me away was the actresses. As friends of mine already know, I have a long-standing “I don’t give a shit” attitude towards Asian girls. It all comes down to not going instantly ape-shit for any piece of tail that walks down the street with almond shaped eyes, a flat ass, and no tits like virtually every white guy out there (and yes, I know my description of Asian women is super misogynistic, but I also find it annoying and bothered by how white guys automatically responded to them as well). It also might have to do with the fact that when growing up, much like many other half-white/half-Korean kids, my mom drilled into my head the notion that white women were the ultimate embodiment of beauty and status (“Grow up to be rich and successful to get the white women” was something I heard throughout my entire childhood and formative years). Which is why I love white women! The whiter (i.e. paler skin) the better! My hardline, somewhat anti-Asian girl stance has kinda perplexed and even irked a few of my white guy friends (for years, Dave Roman tried to get me to hook up with an Asian girl), and while I did try to date a Chinese girl in college, and my overall attitudes have soften from my recent trip to Japan, though only in regards to Japanese girls, I’m still Caucasian chicks all the way. Hence why I was so completely blown away by Dasepo Naughty Girls; I’ve never seen such an assortment of stunningly/jaw-droppingly cute girls Asian girls in a single movie. And given my attitude, I’d like to think that says a lot. I don’t want to go on and on since that might seem inappropriate (though for the record, even MK is impressed by me being so impressed since she knows full well my aforementioned stance), but trust me, if I haven’t sold you on the movie with its wacky plot, then you have to see it for the girls. I’m not even joking here, they are that fucking hot. Primarily the girl who plays Poor Girl, Kim Ok-bin, what a cutie! Perhaps my attitudes simply couldn’t win over my heritage/genetics this time around.
Never Belongs To Me
When I first read about it over at the subway cinema program, I knew I absolutely had to see Never Belongs To Me because, aside from its totally insane sounding characters and “plot”, it was quite obvious that it would be bad and bizarre on a level and virtually nothing else has dared to traverse. And before the screening, one staff member claimed that if anyone could surmise or explain the movie in five sentences afterwards would get a free ticket, and I immediately set myself for the challenge, but in the end, I didn’t even bother (though I’m going to give it a shot in a bit).
Never Belongs To Me, by director Nam Ki-Woong, whose previous films are Teenage Hooker Becomes Killing Machine in Daehakroh and Chow Yun-fat Meets Brownie Girl (both of which I am now desperate to watch), is a product of Korea’s underground/indepenant film circle. It’s the complete antithesis of the mainstream fare that Korea, which will pretty awesome (especially when compared to the stuff that Hollywood churns out), its still often a bit formulaic and predictable, because that’s what audiences over there demand (see: their reaction to I’m A Cyborg But That’s Okay). Which was another reason why I so wanted to see Never Belongs To Me; I knew that I probably would never. ever get another chance. I no matter how old I get, I will probably never, ever forget what I saw….
Things kick off in a junkyard where we meet a half-human/half-tiger man (just think of Ron Perlman from the live action Beauty & The Beast show from the late 80s, but his Korean cousin). He encounters some dude mulling about, one who happens to be looking for a severed penis (from some other dude whose mom didn’t want joining the military, so she cut it off and threw it away). The cut off dick is found in the trash, rotting, but that doesn’t stop tiger guy from gobbling it up (and the way in which he does so, with such unadulterated joy, most be the product of some truly fucked up method acting). He then discovers that both him and the regular schmoe are half-brothers, and we get to hear how he became to be; his mom was raped by a tiger in the woods (with accompanying hilariously bad Korean animu art). As for his brother, he’s a product of his mom being raped by a dog, though he’s not a half-man/half-dog person. Oh well. So tiger guy gives up on his dream to “fuck every being on this planet” and goes back to regular dude’s home, but instead of a teary eyed reunion, she can’t stop complaining about the smell (its here that tiger man struggles with the art of brushing teeth). Regular dude and tiger dude then try everything they can to make mom happy, but to no avail. At a certain point they decided to rob a jewelry store but when tiger guy accidentally shoots himself in the face, the regular dude pulls an “oh, I’m so fucking outta here” move and just walks away.
Oh, so cut to the bionic hooker, who was just some regular school girl till she was kidnapped by three mysterious men and a mad scientist by the name of Dr. Hell turned her into the ultimate cold-hearted and deadly blowjob giving machine. Somehow tiger dude sets her up with his half brother, but sparks don?t being to fly until he gets beat up by the same gangsters that turned her out. The reason for them picking on him? Instead of just one, he had two eggs in his ramen, which for whatever reason pissed them off. So Dr. Hell decides to remove his penis and replace it with a penis gun. It works just like a regular penis, but instead sperm, it shoots out bullets. And to fie, or ejaculate, he has to reach climax, which again for whatever reason, is a picture of ballerina (which makes the bionic hooker jealous). I hate to give things away, though hey, the chances of any of you actually seeing this film is like a billion to one, but anyway, all the bad guys get mowed away, but oh noes! Before the regular penis can get re-attached, tiger guy eats it! Which makes the courtship between the no longer regular dude and the bionic hooker even more complicated than it already was. Also somewhere in all this is a some horny school teacher that fucks her students… I’m still trying to figure out she fits into all of this.
Basically, Never Belongs To Me might be the most insane movie I have ever seen, and I’ve seen some crazy shit.
Retribution
I’m a BIG fan of Kiyoshi Kurosawa for years now (Doppelganger which I saw at the Asian Film Fest three years ago, is still one of the best evil twin movies up there, easily on par with Dead Ringers), and his films are the only ones from Japan that have managed to genuinely scare the shit out of me (Cure instantly comes to mind). Unlike other J horror directors out there, Kiyoshi Kurosawa relies more on psychology and social commentary than ghostly little girls with pale skin and long dark hair, which to be honest, bores the shit out of me. I hardly find still like Cure and Ju-On scary, but then again, I’m not really supposed to since its a cultural thing, which is why I can’t understand why they’re popular with American audiences (it would help if they were, horror aside, good movies, but they’re really not). Which was whey when I heard about Retribution, which was supposed to be Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s take on the genre, I was definitely interested, though I bit apprehensive…
The film stars Koji Yakusho (of course, he’s been in every Kiyoshi Kurosawa movie, ever) as a detective that comes to the realization that the culprit behind a mysterious woman’s murder might be himself. Naturally he’s quite troubled by this, and has to carefully go about uncovering clues without pointing the finger at himself to others. When another murder takes places under similar circumstances, the detective gets all excited since he assumes the murderer has to be behind the first one, that is until he starts babbling about ghosts. Making worse is how it becomes very clear that he is indeed guilty, plus he too starts to see a ghost. For the most part, the film is actually quite excellent, with all the hallmarks from the director that one has come to expect: great, compelling characters, a very casual manner in which the story and events unfold, to the point of being unnerving, at least the first 75% of it… but the later 25% is all sorts of hokey ridiculousness, which with all the splendid set-up makes it feel all the more frustrating and annoying. In the end, it really does come down to whether you find girls with long black hair scary (which again, is not me).
Zibahkhana
Again, another film that MK & I were not interested in initially, till we saw the trailer, which ended with the announcer going “Pakistani, EXTREME HORROR!” And I guess it was effective because the one and only screening was totally sold out; word of mouth for the cheesy trailer (every time we saw it, the tag-line at the end got huge laughs) seemed even greater than Never Belong To Me’s penis gun. Though the fact that a special 30 minute long clip reel highlighting the very best of Pakistani exploitation flicks was going to precede the main feature certainly must have helped sell tickets. But yeah, oddly enough, Zibahkhana turned out to be THE screening of the fest, and made missing out on Transformers at that exact moment not such a bad thing.
So yeah, before the movie was a clip reel that featured the very best of Pakistani cinema, including scenes from a shitty vampire flick, badly choreographed fight scenes, as well as badly choreographed shoot outs, one guy that kills everyone with a HUGE syringe by impaling them and sucking out their blood, a supposed to be scary bigfoot-type creature, crappy skeletons, and plenty of fat women in spandex shaking their cellulite-enhanced money makers (though none were eating ice cream, as advertised, oh well). It was seriously one of the greatest things ever, and totally justified the close to $300 I blew on this year’s festival.
Onto the main feature: Zibahkhana is a really, really low budget flick that mixes elements of Cannibal Holocaust, Evil Dead 1, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. You got a bunch of city kids lying to their old fashioned parents so they can spend one night away to check out a rock concert, which means leaving the confines and safety of the big city and delving into rural areas, where its practically the stone age and the polluted water from said civilization is turing the townsfolk into flesh eating zombies. Naturally all the kids do bad stuff like do drugs (plus they speak fluent English), though the lead girl is pure and chaste and simply caught up in the wrong crowd. Early on into their trip they all stop by some shack in the middle of nowhere to get what appears to be boiled potatoes laced with dope, which is manned by a creepy old guy (who is a vet in the world of Pakistani cinema, and was actually the vampire from the somewhat lame-o vampire flick from the clip reel) who does the requisite “Careful kids, cuz you all gonna die!” forecast of doom. One of the kids has too much so they pull over for him to throw up, but he then gets bitten by one of the zombiefied townsfolk, which makes him really sick, enough cause green gunk to start flowing from his mouth. Once it gets dark, the kids become totally lost, of course, so they stop by another shack for some help. Next thing you know, a Charlie Manson-esque nutjob hops in to help them get back on track, but then he starts to panic and demands water. When the kids inform him that they have none, he then immediately demands their blood, and then pulls out a severed head from his bag, which of course freaks them all out and he’s kicked out. But for some strange reason, they don’t bother to toss (or at least kick) the head out of the van. Its only a matter of time before everyone gets separated and one by one they get killed by Pakistan’s version of Jason/Freddy/Michael Myer, aka Burqa Man!
Zibahkhana was actually a pretty decent flick! Nothing mind-blowing or original, simply a low-budget zombie flick for a nation that was for the longest time totally devoid of one to call its own (it?s actually the very first gore film from Pakistan). The director, Omar Khan, was in attendance and it was fun hearing him talk about the movie and all the craziness that was involved in making it. Apparently when your trying to do a gore flick in a third world nation with a less than stellar reputation among the rest of the world, the authorities don’t take it too kindly to anyone who tried to make a movie that won’t help the tourism department. Though he flat out refused to discuss the budget, which he claimed was so low that it was embarrassing. Yet it clearly gives hope for all aspiring filmmakers out there (and it happens every year at the fest, but more than any other selection, Zibahkhana totally made me want to grab a camera and head on over to the graveyard I live right next and start shooting).
Yo Yo Girl Cop
The title says it all: it’s a movie starring a girl, whose a cop, and uses a yo-yo. The James Bond-esque title sequence got me all hot and bothered, but was ultimately a set-up for disappointment, at least initially; instead of being proficient in the ways of the yo-yo in the very beginning, the title character isn’t able to do much and has to pick it up as she goes along, only kicking butt with it by the end.
So you have this girl, K, who’s the daughter of some lady super cop from Japan living in New York, but she’s such a danger in the Big Apple that she gets deported to Japan. There K is given a choice: either help the authorities infiltrate a Japanese high school where something bad is going down (basically, its producing depressed lesbians suicide bombers), or her mom will spend the rest of her life in jail due to her boyfriend being some Chinese spy. So begrudgingly she accepts the assignment, and has to take commands from her mom’s ex-partner from back in the day (and possibly ex-boyfriend as well). Once in the inside, she discovers that the evil force that’s threatening the youth is, surprise, a popular website/message board that encourages depressed kids to cause havoc. But then again, isn’t that like all of them?
I forget the specifics of the plot… since there wasn’t much of one. The most important part is that K befriends the loser girl that constantly get crapped on by other students; previously, she created a site for other outcasts, one that offered them a chance to talk about their problems and lend each other moral support, along with another girl (the film hints at them being lesbos), but then this other girl went nuts and decided to give suicide bombing a shot. In the end, she didn’t die, but became super sad and depressed. Plus their site got hacked or something, and replaced by the evil site that is messing up all the kids’ mind (oh, teh internet). The other important thing to know is that right out of the gate K has a rival, the popular girl who loves to push loser girl around, and, get this, she’s a master yo-yo technician. Gee, does her and K end up in a yo-yo fight for the ages? Short answer: yes. And I previously noted that I was bummed that K wasn’t a maestro yo-yo fighter in the very beginning, but the fight scene proved that you can only do so much with a yo-yo in battle (though make no mistake, it was BEYOND satisfying and awesome). So in the end, everything pretty much worked out rather well!
Zebraman
Zebraman was the fest’s second Miike flick, and as far away from Big Bang Love as one could get. Its more or less a love letter to all those Power Ranger shows and stars the always awesome Sho Aikawa as a really shitty grade school teacher that gets zero respect in his classroom, as well as home (his kids are pretty embarrassed by him, and his wife’s cheating on him). The only thing that keeps him sane and happy is his love for Zebraman, an obscure Power Rangers-esque show from his childhood that was canceled only after seven episodes. He loves the character so much that he decides to make his own costume. At first he’s content just bumming around the house, but one night he gets thirsty and decides to venture into the outside world to grab a soda. And next thing you know, he hears some poor woman is being accosted by a half man/half crab, just like in the old show! Thankfully, and for some bizarre reason, he all of sudden has all of Zebraman’s powers for real!
Basically, all these crimes pop up, all of which mirrors what happened in the TV show. We find out that long ago, an alien space ship crash landed nearby, and only one guy knew about it, and discovered their insidious plot for conquest. But since no one believed him, he decided to create a television program that described their intentions, as well as the means to defeat them, as a way to warn future generations. Though again, the show was canceled, and when the final script is unearthed, with a less than happy ending, things look grim…
I’m not joking: Zebraman is one of the best super hero stories that’s been filmed, right up there with the first Tim Burton Batman, the first two Supermans and the Spider Man trilogy (sorry, but I actually liked the third Spider Man movie and can’t understand all the seething hate). Its totally cheesy and super predictable… like pretty much every other comic book hero flick ever made… so its all about the character, and Sho Aikawa does an amazing job of breathing depth and heart in Zebraman, plus the plot had some genuine inventiveness (plus you had the requisite kid in the wheelchair, but actually put to good use). Plus there’s Zebra Nurse, who is beyond hawt.
Aachi & Ssipak
An animated epic from Korea that was eight years in the making (btw, I love how EVERY flick in Korea takes exactly eight years to make… I hear that number thrown around a LOT), it tell of future in which all the earth’s energy reserves have been tapped out, so the government has to turn to the people as the primary source. To be more precise, their feces. I know that it kinda sounds like Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, which uses pig feces, but unlike that movie, in which its a plot point, but one that is left behind for other stuff, though Aachi & Ssipak NEVER lets you forget that the whole world revolves around human shit.
What the government does is implant a sensor chip in everyone’s anuses to monitor their fecal output. They also reward people for each bowel movement with a “juicy bar”, which is basically a laxative in the form sky blue popsicle, which is also an addictive, hallucinatory drug, one with nasty side-effects. For one, some are turned into pint-sized mutants so are also constipated. Bands of them get together to raid juicy bar shipments and are a constant thorn to the government’s side, to the point that a super cyborg has been christened to take care of the menace, and with as much force as possible (and then some). His primary target is the one leading the band of blue midgets, know as the Diaper Gang (the little guys, who are cute as all hell btw, all wear diapers on their head, which makes them even more precious looking… even when they are constantly being shot or trampled to death), a big blue guy, one that’s super angry and super strong, the Diaper King.
And in the middle of all of this is Aachi & Ssipak, two small-time hoodlums, with big dreams and even bigger mouths. They mainly hustle juicy bars, but on a small scale, till they encounter Beauty, an aspiring porn star who has some sort of super chip inserted into her ass (via a dildo buy some unscrupulous porn director) that produces a hundred or so juicy bars from just one bowl movement from her posterior. So the boys become rich, but also the target in everyone’s crosshairs.
Two things: I honestly can’t recall ever seeing an animated film that is so stunningly beautiful, yet so unabashedly vulgar and violent (imagine an even mix of Heavy Metal, Fritz the Cat, and Akira). And it really puts to shame virtually every animated feature film that’s been produced in recent times (and perhaps stuff that’s currently in production), especially from Japan. Aside from the “I can’t believe how violent/crude/sexist/racist this is!” response it illicits, the film simply shows have so few chances are taken in animation these days, and its pretty sad. Hey, I love Miyazaki as much as the next guy, but his last couple of films have bored me to tears. It really made me realize why I am so bored stiff of animation these days. So yeah, obviously, I fucking loved Aachi & Ssipak even though it I still wouldn’t call it a brilliant piece of film making. Just something that everyone still NEEDS to see if they like cartoons.
… I also wanted to see Exte, the movie above about killer hair starring Chiaki Kuriyama (you know, Go Go from Kill Bill) and like I said before, the two Death Note flicks, but they just weren’t in the cards. Plus, I’m still bummed out that the mystery movie that Subway Cinema originally wanted to screen, which is some bizarre sci-fi flick from Korea by some stand-up comic over there that’s about huge snakes that destroy Los Angeles (and which also took eight years to make, of course), could not be obtained in the end. In its place was Crime Story, which was Jackie Chan’s attempt at doing a serious crime flick, one that literally put me to sleep when I first saw it (maybe I need to give it a second chance, but I’m still pretty sure that Police Story kicks it ass, especially since its filled to the brim with good old fashioned kung-fu, like we all know and love from Jackie). But yeah, a pretty good fest overall! Can’t wait for next year’s…
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Back To The Real World…
After the Aachi & Ssipak screening, MK & I went over to Grassroots, where Robin, Katie, and Liz stopped by, as well as Joe Salina and Colin and (yet another) cute lady friend of Colin’s… Valerie I think her name was? It’s always fun when my comic book and gamer friends collide! Didn’t get totally piss drunk from one beer like normal, but I had a pretty strong buzz going on, hence the loud pussy hair jokes I kept spewing. Afterwards, I broke off with the gamer dorks and took the L to Bushwick for some rooftop party that Dave Mauro had invited us to (while waiting for the train, Joe & I started quoting from Reservoir Dogs, but we had to watch ourselves since cops were close by). It was at the party I felt young again because I really had to pee, but with no place to go up on the roof, I had to go downstairs and urinate against a wall in the middle of the street, which I hadn’t done in ages. And of course, as soon as I got back up, in less than 30 seconds, everyone went inside to an apartment on the 4th floor. From there I heard about the Blast City cab that Jeremiah recently purchased (or maybe its a Egret 2?) and drank some more… I forget what time I got back to my place. Thank God us Asians don’t have hangovers, because with three hours of sleep, work would have been extra hellish with a headache.
The next evening was spent with Katie, simply surfing 4chan and goofing on YouTube videos. Katie is completely obsessed with the video bloggers that reside there, especially with all the in-fighting that transpires (which is also quite fun to point and laugh at). Our favorite has to be this ditzy teenage chick who goofs on some crazy old guy, which then got a very angry response from this fat dude. It’s truly amazing shit. Some of Katie’s other favorites include a zombie kid that really likes turtles and residents of Mobile, Alabama going ape-shit over a leprechaun. Yeah, I know its all old stuff to some, but again, I’ve been hella busy!
The next day brought along another movie to see in lieu of Transformers, though this one wasn’t from Asia… Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation. For those who have never heard of it, its basically a shot-for-hot remake of the film by three kids from Mississippi, started in 1982 and ended in 1989 I think. When I first got wind that it was playing it in the city, I knew that I absolutely could not miss it. But when came word that it playing at the Anthology Film Archives, I immediately sensed bullshit.
Here’s a fun fact: want to know why Subway Cinema moves the Asian Film Fest from Anthology Film Archives this year? Because the venue had cost them $5000 the previous year due to loss of ticket sales. People simply flat out hate going there. I fucking flat out hate going there. It was so bad that sponsors were reportedly threatening to drop support if the Archives was in the cards again. The place is just that fucking retched. And yeah, its a non-profit organization that plays movies that you can’t find anywhere. Whatever. That still doesn’t excuse the abysmal condition of the theater (forget what you’re used to at even the most pedestrian of movie houses, its basically rows and rows of the most uncomfortable seats imaginable in the middle, and what are basically shitty dentist office waiting room chairs lined up on each side, all inside a huge brick room that has zero sound insulation and quality) nor the rude as fuck staff. I decided to call the box office a few days beforehand to inquire about the possibility of advanced ticket sales (like, you know, every other fucking movie theater in the United States) since it was going to be such a hot ticket. And the conversation went something like this…
me: “Hey there, are you guys going to sell any tickets in advance for Raiders of-”
Anthology Archives douchebag: “No.”
me: “Oh… well its just that I know its probably going to be a very big thing…”
Anthology Archives douchebag: (without even letting me finish) “Tickets will be on sale of the day of the show, at 6:30.”
me: “… and I’m just afraid that it will sell out in like five minutes…”
Anthology Archives douchebag: “Yeah, it probably will.” *CLICK*
The guy just hung up on me. What a dick lick.
Anyhow, so I knew the box office was open at 6:30 that Friday evening (the film was playing at 8 btw) and that’s when I showed up, along with MK and Katie…. as well as about 400 others already in line. All I could think of was “shit”. Around the halfway point I spotted Adam who had been standing for about half and hour at that point. He offered the chance to join him, even though cutting in line would piss everyone behind him. I wondered about it… even asked MK and Katie what we should do, and they said it was up to me… and in the end I thought against it, since it was simply wrong. I just didn’t want to be “that guy”. MK & Katie also agreed that it would be not cool, even though they also knew that, aside from being stuck way back in line, with a 0% chance of actually getting in, instead of being #401-03, it would more like #501-503 due to all the other douchebags who had no problems with cutting.
And of course while waiting, just like at the Asian Film Fest, I was a magnet to every crazy old/homeless person who wanted to know what was going on. Every conversation is EXACTLY the same: they ask what you’re waiting for, you tell them, then they don’t believe you, and they ask you again, you tell them again, and then they make some comment about how stupid everyone is or how anyone would be dumb enough to wait in line for such a thing or directly bash the movie, and finally they try to get a ticket as well. One old broad with whom I went through the motions with will actually went to the head of the line, and I swore to God that if I did catch her with a ticket, I would savagely beat her to death.
The three of us had been waiting for close to an hour when Adam came around the corner to pass along news that tickets had been sold out for over half an hour, but no one at the Anthology had bothered to come out and tell the other 300 still waiting. What fucking assholes. Seriously, fuck that place. I’m never going there again if I can help it. With that, I was pissed, mostly at how fucking annoying it is to do anything in NYC with a billion other people trying to get in on the same action. Coupled with the headache of trying to deal with so much happening all at once, I didn’t feel all that bad for missing out on 77 Drums the very next day.
Basically 77 drummers under one roof, all playing in union for 77 minutes. I first found out about it from my contact Vice Records, back in November when they were first pushing the upcoming American release of the Boredom’s Super Roots EPs (so yeah, 77 Drums, or 77BOADRUM to be more precise, was a special performance/side-project/brainchild of the Boredoms’). I was promised a head’s up once plans were finalized, but that never happened, and I only got concrete info when it was advertised in that week’s installment of Flavorpill. Again, if I knew about it beforehand, I wouldn’t have planned a trip to New Hampshire with Jason that weekend. Though I should have also figured that something so fixated on the number 7 would happened on 7/7/7. But when I also realized that half the party in Bushwick was going to go, I got the feeling that it would be just another overcrowded thing in the city, and after the Raiders debacle, the last thing I wanted to deal with was another gaggle of hipsters that week.
Pong Still Lives
So yeah, Jason & I drove out to New Hampshire that weekend to revel in video gaming’s glory days (during the trip, I had my iPod blasting nothing but Sega driving tunes through the car stereo… there’s nothing like rolling down the highway with Daytona USA and OutRun 2 music blaring). Our destination was Funspot, at Weirs Beach, which is the home of the largest classic arcade in America. It’s where you’ll find the gold age of video games alive and well (its also the site where many world record competitions take place, so its basically the second home for Billy Mitchell and his crew).
We arrived around 2 and planned on blowing just a few hours; we both wanted to see Transformers later that night and it was playing at… get this… the drive-in at 8 sharp. Each of us got $20 worth of tokens…
… And hoped to last us for a tiny bit. Which it certainly did; twenty bucks get you so much further there than a Dave & Busters that its rather pathetic.
Upon entering the third floor, where all the golden age machines are located, you are greeted by a “wall of fame” which has framed pictures of assorted video game record holders next to the games they are masters of. Here’s Brooklyn’s own Robert Mruczek, and now former head referee over at Twin Galaxies, the recognized authority when it comes to competitive video game score keeping. I’ve seen him in I think three separate video documentaries since starting my game centric movie column at GSW, and is a man of a certain deal of controversy (he’s somewhat of a key character behind the full truths and half-truths of King of Kong, which Steve was investigating for a while, till he got sidetracked due to so many red herrings)…
And then you have “Michael” who’s the classic arcade players of the year. Yah Michael…
Here’s a shot inside the “classics” room…
We spent the first couple of hours here, going down the isles, playing a round or two of whatever caught our fancy. First up on my end were the “big” names, like Tempest, Robotron, Joust, and the like, as well as the entire Pac Man family. Guess what: Super Pac Man gets way too much flack! It’s actually not that bad, just different, and you have to at least respect Namco for trying something different. Also Tron, despite being one of my favorite movies of all time, just isn’t that much fun as a video game; aside from the light cycles, which to be honest, isn’t all that great in the first place, everything else is rubbish.
Here we have Chiller…
It’s basically a gun game where you shoot helpless people. All they do is just stand there and scream, as well as bleed a lot (the women seem to be the loudest, either in pain or begging for mercy)…
Sometimes you can shoot elements in the environment to trigger events, like a lever to activate a guillotine. It’s more or less catered towards angry single white males, such this one guy who looked about 40 yet has obviously never kissed a girl and probably still lives with his mom, as well as talk to dead animals. Anyhow, I saw him plunk it about thirty tokens, and after I decided to give it a shot, I quickly realized that the game was messed up; 5% of the screen to the right was a total dead zone, meaning no hits could be registered. That also meant that you couldn’t go past the first level no matter what, so the dude before me kept playing the first level over and over and over again, probably because it featured two helpless women in a torture chamber for him to blow their faces off over and over and over again.
Here’s a very blurry screenshot from Cheeky Mouse, which I had never heard of before…
Take a look at a bit of the cabinet art. This more than anything else makes me miss the golden era…
I really loved how the guy animated, as he went back and forth, bashing mice in the head. Unfortunately, the machine was busted and I couldn’t give it a spin. Bummer.
Soon it was time to move onto the other rooms, which had more contemporary titles to choose from. Since we had the tokens to spare, Jason & I played a LOT of Daytona USA, and it was awesome, especially since we were the only ones. Which meant that we could choose something else other than the beginner’s oval (which is awesome and all, but at this point, does not provide any sort of challenge… its all about Seaside Street Galaxy). Also got to play Daytona USA 2 multiple times. Though nothing made me happier than seeing a two player Virtua Racing set-up.
Though by far the best time we had was with Let’s Go Jungle, a Lindbergh lightgun game that I first spotted in Japan. Basically the set-up is a teenage boy and girl go on a safari and they have to protect themselves from huge mutant bugs. The game encourages cooperative game play; if both players can get their reticules to overlap when shooting bad things, bonus points are awarded. Also, other than shooting there are a few QTE events that are done via the action button or moving aiming the gun in certain directions in unison. There’s a compatibility rating that is determined at the end of each round that determines the game’s progression. We both got the bad ending because our button presses were not in sync; the giant moth was killed, but my character tried to comfort Jason’s (I was the guy, he was the girl), who brushed off the advance and stated that “We can’t get back what was lost Ben.” Awww.
Here’s a look at April O’Neal from the TMNT arcade game, which many already know and love…
… But Jason pointed out something that I had never really looked that closely at; what’s the deal with her left leg?!
Also got in some Simpsons Arcade action (the powers that be had better get that fucking thing on Xbox Live Arcade sometime soon, with the movie coming out), as well as Primal Rage (yeah, its not the best fighting game in the world, but it has dinosaurs!!! and anything else we could get our hands on. Because after five hours, our cups were barely half empty. Near the end, we were just shoving tokens down machines; Jason got me addicted to Quix which, for whatever reason, I had never played before. Its pretty awesome!
By the time the last token had been spent, it was 10 at night… eight hours later. We had totally missed Transformers, but it was just as well since the weather was kinda crappy and that would have been an issue, it being a drive-in and all…
… I actually finally saw it in the city a few days later with Joe Simko. Last Wednesday to be exact. Though before going any further, allow me the chance to once again bitch about what happened before stepping foot in a movie theater:
So last week, Michele passed along word of a promotion that was happening at all the 7-11′s across the country. Many of the them have been converted to Kwik-E-Marts to celebrate the upcoming Simpsons flick. Slurpee’s have become Squishee’s, plus you can also get Krusty-O’s and Buzz soda too (though sadly no Duff beer). And on that day you were supposed to get a free Squishee, so after dinner, Joe and I stopped by the 7-11 in Times Square to get ours, which had undergone a total make-over and was completely transformed into the convenience store from the show; even the signs up front had been changed to Kwik-E-Mart. So I went to the counter and asked about the free Squishee. And was promptly denied. The Squishees were not free… only Slurpees. Even though Squishees are actually Slurpees. And that particular store was not participating, because it was a Kwik-E-Mart; the offer was only valid at 7-11′s. Even though that store was obviously a 7-11 and not really a Kwik-E-Mart. And the whole point behind the promotion was to promote the Simpsons, which that store was obviously doing. Still, I was told that the promotion was only at 7-11′s, which they were not. Does that make any fucking sense?! So I ended up getting into an argument with the manager as silly as it sounds, simply because I couldn’t believe how he honestly felt that he was not a 7-11′s manager but a Kwik-E-Mart manager. Oh, and he was a total asshat, so I actually had to bitch as the guy. His name was Reggie.. at the very least, he could have changed his nametag to Apu for the complete effect. I almost knocked over a Buzz soda display upon exiting… but didn’t. But anyhow….
The Long Await Transformers Tirade
Jesus fucking Christ, where to begin… BTW, I know its pretty passe to bitch about the live-action Transformers flick at this point since its like three weeks old now, and all the fanboys have had their says, but not this one. Hey, I’m running super behind…
First off, I knew well in advance that it was going to suck. There was never any doubt about that. So the real question was how bad it was going to be. Or to be more specific, exactly how much I was going to hate it; its like when Rob asked me earlier this weekend: “So on a scale of ten to ten, how bad was it?”
Actually, let me just start off by addressing one of the primary complaints I heard from critics, which was that there was too much mindless action. That by the end, the constant, non-stop robot fighting is simply overwhelming and you just don’t care anymore. Well to that I say bullshit; if the entire two and half hours was nothing but robots beating the shit out of each other, I would have been one happy camper. Chalk it up as another sign of still being young at heart; I never found myself overwhelmed or confused by the action (though not a lot of stuff made sense… I’ll get to that in a second).
On a related note, I may as well bring up one of the two (and only two) positives from the entire movie: the special effects was simply mind-blowing and defies description. It might possible be the very best special effects I have seen in a movie, or at the very least the most rock solid and technically proficient. Seeing the huge robots doing their intricate transformations never got old… too bad they weren’t Transformers!
One more thing: I have a ton of friends who are way into all sorts of nerdy stuff, and I often give them a ton shit whenever they play the angry fanboy card. Primarily whenever they cry foul when someone takes something from their childhood and “shits on it” so to speak. I often just roll my eyes or sometimes point and laugh. Well no more. Because I truly know how that feels now.
The biggest problem with the entire film… other than how its makes no fucking sense, tries way too hard to have dramatic, comedic, and even romantic elements, how there’s too many (human) characters that totally nothing, and the countless other ridiculous problems… is Michael Bay, of course, who’s the man responsible for all the aforementioned issues and more. You don’t have to read all the behind the scenes stuff to know that the man basically has nothing but contempt for the audience, primarily the Transformers-loving folks who are the main reason why a film was being made on the popular toys/cartoons in the first place (and therefore another reason why he made money this year). I’m all for improving or updating the source material if its done logically and respectfully. Take Spider Man for example; its crystal clear that Sam Raimi loves Spider Man; he understands the character, knows its universe, inside and out, etc. And as ridiculous as it sounds, its actually not retarded at all to have the same degree of respect and seriousness when it comes to translating a comic book character for the big screen as one would for, say, a play by Shakespeare.
Bay on the other hand saw Transformers as nothing more than a vehicle to “work his magic” and to teach all those dumb fans a lesson; he’s apparently said in various interviews how he did everyone a huge favor by not catering to the fans, and if they got what they wanted, it would be a big steaming pile of shit. And maybe he’s right? Fans, after-all, are often pretty dumb. But guess what? Diss the fans all you want, but not the source material. Besides, there must be something there for it to have endeared for so long. But if genuinely felt as if he his ideas were so much better than what’s been established, then why in the fuck do you even want to call it Transformers in the first place?
Well the answer is obvious; to take advantage of a built in audience. And that’s another thing; I’m not hopping on the bandwagon here, I’ve genuinely been sick of the cashing in of pop culture for almost forever now. Because either they have barely a passing a resemblance to the source material, or they do but simply suck; I’m just tired of seeing the past being regurgitated over and over and over again. Yet people eat that shit up in droves, especially folks who were never there to enjoy it the first time around, so therefore they don’t know any better. Joe and I were the only ones who disliked Transformers that evening; everyone else loved the hell out of it. Because they were happy just to hear (and cheer for) Optimus’ voice on the big screen. Never mind that the same voice actor has been narrating half of every movie trailer we’ve seen for the past twenty years. Either its new kids who don’t know any better or older folks that are so eager to relive the past that they’ll take pretty much anything. Which is pretty sad and depressing. So yeah, Bay shit on my favorite toys/cartoon/comic book as a kid. Boo hoo, I know. But honestly, its more than that… He also shit on my hero. The one “thing” I respected the most growing up.
When Katie read the big feature on the movie in Wired this month, she noted how she had no idea that Optimus Prime had such a profound impact on kids back in the 80s. And he most certainly did; I grew up in a pretty rocky home. My dad was barely there for me, and when he was around, he constantly made me feel bad about myself. He also wasn’t much of a shining example to follow; whether it be how he constantly lied or fought with my mom, or how he would do less than honorable things at work, and be quite proud of it. But I consider myself a person who lives by strong morals and clearly defined ethics. And from where did I develop such attributes? From a stupid cartoon about robots from outer space that was nothing more than a 30 minute a day commercial for toys. Optimus was my hero. I looked up to a guy, like a son looks up to his dad. And when he died, I cried my eyes out! I have no shame in admitting that.
So imagine if your admired and respected, one whom you have fond memories of and have sorely missed, showed up out of the blue, and not only was he not the same guy as before, but he kinda acted like an idiot, and it broke your heart. That’s the Optimus in the movie. And every stupid thing he said was like a punch to the gut. More than anything, he’s character is inconsistent, which might be the biggest no-no; in the cartoon, he was solid, like a rock. You know who he was and where he was coming from. Meanwhile, in the movie, especially in the beginning, he came off as a major douche. Its like Ferris Bueller… in the movie he’s this awesome guy. A wise-ass for sure, one that maybe takes too many risks, but in the end, he’s there for his friends. Meanwhile, in the sitcom, he was just this asshole who could give a rat’s ass about his friends. It kinda felt like that (note: I guess you have to be a big enough Ferris Bueller fan to have remember the sitcom to really get the example).
At first he just shows up and introduces himself, and then instantly goes into his speech about how all humans have the right to freedom and yada, yada, yada, all the stoic stuff he normally says at the end of the cartoon. But right out of the gate makes zero sense since when he says this to Spike, or Dan, or Sam, or Josh, or whatever the fuck the kid’s name is in the movie (at least they kept his last name, Witwicky) because Optimus has been on planet Earth for a grand total of 30 seconds. Was he watching television the whole time before crash landing in space (from who knows where) and already knew about how human beings are? I guess so, since that’s the only explanation for him going “My bad” when he accidentally steps on a houseplant at Sam’s house. It’s unfortunate how audiences eat such stupid shit up; guess you can take any character and give them some contemporary saying and a room full of moviegoers will howl like fucking wolves. I can’t wait for the Speed Racer flick next year and hear Racer X go “WAZZAUP!!!!” But yeah, the line accompanies the way dragged out scene of all the Autobots running around the backyard, trying to avoid being seen by the kid’s parents.
Though its not nearly as bad as the “romance” that “develops”. At first I thought it was a joke till I realized, holy fuck, they are seriously going with it, what in the bloody hell. But at least its somewhat acceptable when compared to the idiotic Middle East military portion of the movie that is complete waste of time and goes absolutely no where. Or all the characters that pop up and serve no purpose, like the wiz kid hackers that the government decides to hire to crack the code. There’s just so much unnecessarily stuff, and every single minute of it is hell because all you want to do is scream as loud as you can, “GET TO THE FUCKING ROBOTS!”
But back to the robots being lame, and back to Bay having nothing but contempt for the audience. Knowing that there’s a fan base that’s been around for twenty plus years, the film offers up some “fan service”, but most of it feels like a slap in the face. First off, yes, you do hear the classic transformation sound from the cartoon… only once, in the very beginning. And that’s just how it is; its almost like they had this huge list of shit that they knew fans were demanding, and they went through it as fast as possible (hence why Optimus probably blew his “all beings” load so quickly). Virtually every in-joke and reference seems like flat out digs at the source material. Such as when Sam first sees Bumblebee in a used car shop, in his car form, which is Camaro. Right next to him is VW Beetle, and to get Sam’s attention, he pushes aside the bug and trashes it in the process. Or when Sam, trying to think of a pick up line for the film’s hottie says to himself “More than meets the eye.” and instantly laments how stupid a saying that is.
As for the Transformers themselves, they all look like shit. Again, if they were just some random robots that turned into vehicles, that would be fine, but for Transformers, they look far too busy. Granted, its super impressive how every little bit moves and changes shape, but it?s almost feels as if it?s all just for a bunch of computer animators that only want to show off. On the Autobot side you have all motor vehicles. Okay, that’s okay… by why in the world when you only have just six vehicles, are there two trucks?! Why couldn’t Optimus be the only one? And it?s not like the other who needed to be truck, like it served a purpose.
… Oh, and its really cute that Bumblebee can’t speak due to a damaged voice box or some shit, so he’s constantly spewing lines from the radio, XM Radio to be exact. So nice tie in there for XM, but last I checked, even on satellite, they played either music or talk radio, not Star Trek TNG. Which is how he mostly talks, dialogue from a TV show… playing on the radio. Wha?
At least the Autobots make sense to a certain extent. What about the Decepticons? First off, they’re barely in the movie. For the most part, it?s a giant scorpion that actually doesn’t transform into anything and a retarded beyond all belief CD boombox. Now that there is a whole different level of absurd stupidity: so it was made pretty clear by one of the film’s producers, Don Murphy, before the film went into production (who btw, from what I’ve read, seems just as big a prick as Michael Bay), that there wouldn’t be the following things: Megatron was not going to turn into a gun, none of the Transformers were going to change sizes, there was going to be no Energon cubes (more on this in a bit), and that Soundwave, arguably the most popular Transformer ever, was not going to turn into a stereo/tape deck. Instead he would be a fucking helicopter.So what do they end up doing? They have a totally different Transformer be a small, portable music playing device! And worst off, they make it some spazzy idiot that talks like an f’n Ewok. Jesus Christ, what in the fuck?!
Back to the Decepticons; you have Starscream, who turns into a jet. And then you have the leader, Megatron… who turns into a jet. Okay… Megatron is barely in the movie and has zero personality, like every other Transformer. I distinctly recall someone saying how they enjoyed the interplay between Megatron and Starscream, that it was just like how it was in the cartoon, with Starscream obviously wanting to be in command, and Megatron catching on and chewing him out. Seriously, were they watching the movie or some old episode on DVD? Because none of that shit is here. Again, something is seriously wrong when some cartoon from the 80s that was designed purely to sell toys and had a modest budget has better defined characters than some blockbuster film from the year 2007 with 300 million dollars behind it.
Oh, and back to the Energon Cubes, again they were “done away with.” So what are all the Transformers fighting over? Something called the All Spark. Kinda like the Matrix of Leadership or the more specifically the Creation Matrix from the old Marvel Comics series, except… in a cube form. Oh come on now… Though what’s the number one offense from the entire movie? Easily how Optimus Prime was given a mouth. And sometimes he had his faceplate on, and sometimes he didn’t!
Obviously, I could go on and on and on. Despite a few bright spots, like how eBay was small running gag, and how the other highlight was Shia LaBeouf was pretty decent as Sam (though I’ve liked the guy since Even Stevens, so there ya go), the film was pretty much pure horeshit.
Want to know what easily blew the entire two and half hours away? One of the trailers that immediately preceded it. The movie its for doesn’t even have a name, but its being called “Cloverfield” by this particular site, which has been publishing every clue and bit of speculation they can come up with. Though to be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if the blog was actually the creation of the studio.
Anyway, the other night, while having dinner with Joe, he went “I just realized this just the other night, days after we saw Transfomers… they made Bumblebee pee on someone.” And that poor someone btw was John Tu
Thank you Michael Bay. Thank you.
Hey, It’s Arry’ Pottah’… 5
I also saw Order of the Phoenix last Friday. Right up front, it should be noted that I used to be a pretty big fan of Harry Potter, primarily the books… I guess you could say it was because of 9/11, funny enough; I started reading them shortly after the event, mostly because that was when it first become hugely popular, plus since I had a lot of time on my hands due to being jobless, I needed something to fill the void (because you can only play Rez and hit on girls online so much in a day). They are by no means brilliant pieces of fiction, just fun reads, which is what I really needed since I was kinda bummed at the time. I think I’ve read the first three books about 20 times each… the fourth not as much, but also more than a handful of times… and the fifth book only once. And just barely. Because I found it be pure torture and virtually unreadable. Its what made me give up on the series (I actually bought book six, but its been collecting dust ever since), though I did see the fourth movie despite being so disenfranchised with the franchise. Also not helping is how in recent times I have found myself somewhat annoyed by the fanbase; I simply can’t get into any Potter related topic without someone getting pissed at me (my disdain for the fifth volume really irks a lot of them, despite the fact that its a universal fact that it was pretty bad). I also tried recommending Wizard People to some of these folks and instead of finding them funny, their reaction was on par if I had just shit in their food. Anyhow, point is, I hate book five and had relatively low expectations towards movie five, and to be totally honest, only put my $11 on the counter to ogle Emma Watson for another two and half a hours.
And… I came out pleasantly surprised! Harry Potter 5 was actually pretty awesome! Not as good as Harry Potter 3 mind you (which is still one of the finest kids’ fantasy films produced in recent memory, and therefore a bit difficult to top), but still quite decent. I actually liked it better than Harry Potter 4. And why was it good? Because it totally did away with all the bullshit from the source material and stuck to the interesting parts; Harry is nowhere near the whiny, clueless with women douche as he was in the book. And yes, Rowling did just as fantastic a job portraying Harry’s teen angst as she did with his whimsical adolescent years… too good if you ask m, because 9,000 pages of a frustrated, clueless, horny Harry was absolute hell… I still can’t believe I actually finished it.
Also, unlike Transformers, much of the changes were for the better and made sense, such as Snape’s death; the act itself was far more compelling, and the set-up was less contrived and predictable. And on the a related note, the art direction, while not all that different from the last two, really shined in this movie because yet another reason why the fifth book sucked for me was due to how dark and drab everything was described, to the point that I was being bored to tears by my own mental imagery! Hey, I could only work with what was given to me. The special effects were also top-notch (Jeremiah told me beforehand that the wizards’ duel was fantastic, and it most certainly was), and it featured perhaps the strongest cast yet. I’ve enjoyed Michael Gambon’s Dumbledore since his first crack at it, but this time he really shined; his character has always had cheesy, kinda awful, dialogue, but in book five it was really bad, but Gambon managed to make it work (though I think the director deserves credit for this as well). And yeah, more Snape would have been awesome, but what we got was fucking ace. Also, I too didn’t understand why instead of Longbottom’s parents being tortured to the point of insanity, they were dead, but hey, nothing’s perfect I guess.
BTW, for those who might be interested, its Fucking Hermione Week over at the fort90forums! Though for the REALLY good stuff, you’ll have to register and check out the secret section. You all know that there’s a secret section, right?
There’s No Place Like Home…
Afterwards, on the way to the PATH train to get MK’s car to then drive back to Brooklyn, we some wigger yell out: “SNI-OTCH… that’s snitch for youz bi-otches out there!”
We could barely contain ourselves. Also, we passed a gaggle of blonde bimbos, and I did an imitation by going “Oh my God!” literally a split second before one of them went “Oh my God!” which sorta blew MK’s mind (and which I’m still proud off).
Once we got the car and arrived in Brooklyn… certain events transpired, which I’ve already outlines over at Zedge. But once again, some asshole broke into MK’s car that night and, aside from causing a huge headache and mess for her, stole my really fucking nice $300 suit. And not just that; a nice dress shirt, as well as my best tie, as well as a vest from my $600 suit that I had wore with it. I also have three suits, but only one pair of pants from the three fits me, which was the one that was also included. Plus I had a social engagement later that evening was going to wear it…
But once again, the very best part of it all is how we all know damn well who’s responsible, the aforementioned druggie scumball that live three houses down. He had the fucking audacity to come up and take a closer look at the scene when my roommate was checking it out (whom he groggily addressed as “pink-har girl”… because she has pink hair… she’s not a fan of the guy either and is also certain he’s the culprit, but with no evidence nor reason to get into a dispute with a neighbor, she simply humored him.
Also, not a surprising fact, but: cops in Brooklyn are kinda dumb! I passed along the number to the local police station to MK for her to report the incident, and they said to come over and file a report. Which is what we did, and were told to wait by the scene and call 911 instead (911 for some car related robbery?). And when we said that we had driven the vehicle over, as per instructions, the police woman didn’t believe us at first, she then noted that we were given wrong instructions and that it should be investigated (considering the police dispatcher WAS FIVE FEET AWAY, I HAVE TO WONDER WHY SHE DIDN’T SHE TURN TO THE RIGHT AND ASK HER HERSELF). So we went back to the spot, and I dialed 911. Surprisingly, they didn’t take two hours to arrive, but as friendly as they were, they also couldn’t have cared less. And sure, it was a pretty petty theft, but the bottom line is that such breaking and entering happens all the time on my block; its obvious that scumball, who’s always hanging around, watching the street late at night, keeps an eye out for targets… mostly patrons at the bar at the corner… and strikes when the time is right. In fact, while MK was assessing the damage, some other car rolled up beside her and said that they took got hit the night before. So we just want further bullshit from happening, and even though its totally baseless, it would have been nice for the officers to at least ask the guy, to see if he saw or hear anything (who at this moment btw, was not looking on for the first time, but had his back to the cop car). Or maybe just take fingerprints, something! Yeah, I know, bitch, bitch, bitch…
So as if I didn’t fucking hate my neighborhood before, as I also mentioned in the Zedge piece, I now have to walk by the son of a bitch who I just know stole my suit every fucking morning on the way to work. As for what he looks like, I know I might get into hot water for posting it, but at this point, I still so pissed that I just don’t give a rat’s ass. Anyhow, here’s the piece of shit in question…
… God how much I just want to kick him in the stomach every time I see him.
Well, due to all that nonsense, our Saturday was totally messed up. We went to Gina Gagliano’s get-together rather late, so we couldn’t stay long, but it was just as well because everyone was playing Scrabble, and I totally hate that game. Next was Michele and Rob‘s wedding shower, which was fun, except how we got lost on the way there (and you kinda expect folks at gas stations to know where things are at and to help you get back on course… not in Long Island apparently). Also, I found out that the date that Rob has set for his bachelor party conflicts with the comic show in Toronto that MK & I had planned on attending (aside from the debut of the 3rd UNLUCKY mini, and a chance to both pick up Trailer Park Boys DVDs and check out the “legendary” strip clubs they have up there, it was a mini-vacation that I had promised MK for not being all around to work on a text book all last summer… one that eventually got cancelled). Yet again, TOO MUCH SHIT GOING ON!!!
At least while driving Dave Roman and Raina home, I got to commiserate with Dave over how god-awful Transformers was (and MK discovered how lucky she was to NOT have seen it).
A Close Call…
BTW, MK wasn’t the only one who had car troubles this past week. Joe Salina has something far, far worse.
I got a text message from him Tuesday night stating how he “almost literally died” and that he’d call me later from the hospital. Naturally, my interested was piqued.
Story goes as this: while finishing up a game of Etrian Odyssey on his trusty DS while in the car with his folks, an ambulance hit them head on, at about 60 mph (it had crossed three lanes, into theirs). His vehicle rolled about four or five times, till he was upside down. With fuel leaking into the car, he crawled out through a broken window. Aside from being bruised and having glass lodged in all spots of his body… oh, and almost dying… he’s okay (as is everyone else; no one was killed thankfully).
Though he got some blood on his DS! Here’s a pic…
… Again, beats the crap out of a Miyamoto autograph any day!
EDIT: Looks like Joe’s accident is also news to others! And some of the comments… really confuse me. Though I will admit, the DO A BARREL ROLL did make me chuckle.
Speaking Of… Video Games
Back to this past weekend: on Sunday, MK & I made out regular Sunday trip to Rocketship where Mary told me all about her woes with her faltering wireless Guitar Hero controller. Which I was going to ask about over at NeoGAF, but I got banned earlier today for passing along pics of Janet Choa, aka Miss Virtua Fighter 5.
Anyhow, afterwards, MK & I played a bit of Tekken Tag Tournament, Tekken 4, and Tekken 5. Why? So she could play fight as the bears, Kuma & Panda. And she thoroughly enjoyed herself.
Now this is the part where I was originally going to really get into the video gaming chit-chat, but the fact is, this post was WAY too long before I got into Transformers, so I’ll save most of it for next, including all that went down at E3. Though I will say that it certainly didn’t have that same grand feel as before, due to the event being restructured. On one hand, I kinda missed the bigness of it all, the circus-like atmosphere, though by the end, it was starting to get ruing by asshole bloggers. Which was why hearing them bitch and expose themselves as asshole prima-donnas was quite entertaining.
… Almost as entertaining as the Metal Gear Solid 4 “conspiracy”.
Though I do want to say something real quick, which I wanted to before but just haven’t had the chance: Nintendo’s WiiWare program, which will allow just about anyone develop games for the Wii, is pretty much the absolute greatest thing ever. Screw the web… Spready Bear is coming to the Wii! Plus, Virtua Fighter 5 on the Xbox 360, with online fighting? Wow. Right before I got banned from NeoGAF, I was checking out the huge bitchfest going on over there, and I can’t say I blame them! I’ll save my “wtf is going on with the PS3″ & “man, PSP Lite is LOL” comments for later.
And even though I’ve been out of the loop and haven’t been around most places, there has been one site that I’ve continually checked for updates: Insert Credit, which has been busy pumping out all sorts of awesome finds. The only one I’ll highlight is how the huge price tag for the build of Sonic X-treme running on the NiGHTS engine was actually met!
… Eh, this version still looks better to me. Though the thing is, the folks at ASSEMbler recently posted a lengthy vid of the demo in action that they state is the NiGHTS engine one, but its clearly not when you compare the footage to the images! Such confusion.
Oh, and for those who have been wondering or have been keeping track: still haven’t played God Hand. Sorry. Also, not sure how much exposure this has gotten already, but be sure to check out Mortal Kombat vs. acapella singers in Central Park.
Plus, I’m trying to figure out a way to play this Linux-based
Odds & Ends
Real quick, a bunch of random stuff…
- So Toby‘s story for UNLUCKY is finally complete! Yay! Here’s page three, which is my favorite…
… and now the third UNLUCKY mini can finally hit the presses!
- Katie recently started a new comic. It?s a sexy, sci-fi spectacular called Nurse Nurse. Here’s the first page…
- A few weeks ago, Pat decided to share to everyone a caricature that he did for me, which he’ll be using for his upcoming UNLUCKY tale..
… I love the reactions it got, Especially Zack‘s, who I bet didn’t know what to think at first. I recall Katie when she first saw it wondered if it would piss me off. And nope, I love it! Hey, I’m just glad it?s a departure from the “infamous” SPX sketch he did of me. It wasn’t so much that I looked as if I had Downs Syndrome as it was how fat I looked.
- And MK is working on a new, long-form project. You’ll have to go to her for the details, though at this point, it’s still in the early stages, so don’t expect details for a while. But I’m one of the few souls to know what it’ll be about and trust me when I say that it will quite magnificent. But I can tell you that she’s pairing up with a pretty dandy artist by the name of Jonathan David Hanh Vu Hill. And I’m already a big fan of his work…
- If you haven’t check out Dave Mauro’s New Yorker Caption Contest page… then you have obviously haven’t lived.
-Lastly a pair of links that K Thor passed along? First we have the trailer to Flatland: The Movie. Again, shows how boring most CGI animated films are these days. BTW, still haven’t seen Ratatouille yet, and yes, I know its directed by Brad Bird, and I heard its brilliant. I guess I’m… that bored with CGI. I’ll see it eventually.
Next is some crazy-ass pro-pedophilia site. If you want to be creeped out, be sure to check out the informative video (Child Love TV). It gets REALLY CREEPY at the 4:40 mark. And this from a guy who’s made a name for himself oogling Hermione.
Or, if you have Linux, try out the video game!
Okay, that’s a wrap. Coming up, Otakon 2007! Which again, I will have to miss out on; and I know Mike is super bummed about that, since he really dug all the pictures I look last year, as did a ton of other folks…. at the moment is the most popular thing at my site! At least the Siren Music Fest is happening this weekend… its certain to suck, but hey, its my first chance to check out Coney Island’s final summer!
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