Sunday, July 27, 2008

my new best friend

:D

as to not reveal my secret identity, just pretend that says "Hi Biff,"

i think i shall watch STELLA later to celebrate.

Friday, July 25, 2008

paper planes



i can't get enough of this song.
it was my favourite song of 2007, and i still haven't tired of listening to it.
funny though, another one of the best songs from 2007 was arcade fire's cover of guns of brixton
(it's beautiful and haunting)
so that means last year two of the best songs were in someway related to the clash.
(listen up ye uneducated)
i don't know about you, but for me that makes it a good year in music.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

fleischer's superman

unlike most people my age, i grew up watching old cartoons. i know very little of t.v. from the late 1980's and early 1990's. instead of watching g.i. joe, thundercats, or he-man, i watched looney tunes/merrie melodies, the flintstones, and tom & jerry.
another one of my favourite cartoons growing up was the superman cartoon from the 1940's



look at all the great things in this, the style is amazing, the animation works nicely, it puts nearly all cartoons since then to shame. look at that machine, it's beautiful. and how awesome is lois lane's pilot outfit? kind of funny this version censored out "for a girl". (i'm not saying it's alright i'm just not for censorship, especially retroactive) lois lane always seemed more a strong independent trouble maker than damsel in distress in these anyway.
a random note: see how superman fights against the electrothamasia ray? i still sometimes do that in the shower.


this probably kicked off my love for robots.

seriously i can't get over how beautiful these cartoons are, the amazing art deco style, the sound, scenery, all great! and i love how superman moves, it's so quick and light, that's a superman you can believe in, because honestly it reads as something not from this world.

i'm not really a superman fan these days, superman has become too powerful, too much drama. old superman though, i like him, when he wasn't immortal, when kryptonite wasn't the only thing that could hurt him. although i do love the idea that this man, so dedicated to our world, is completely and totally crushed when brought into contact with fragments of the dead world from which he was born.

superman was a product of a certain time and stood for certain things, this cartoons show that well.



it's easy to see why the batman cartoon of the 1990's took so much influence.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

the dark knight

i honestly just considered leaving my review as that joker smile.
because sometime pictures are just so much more expressive than words.



i really liked the dark knight, the joker was amazing, everything came together so well. and it's two and half hours long! there is no such thing as too much batman my friends.

this movie is still number one on imdb, i mean at this point it has more votes than classics like rear window and chinatown. those crazy internet kids. and while this is kind of neat, i really can't say this movie is perfect or "omg teh best movie evar"

one problem i had that carried over from batman begins; christian bale's batvoice.
i'm sorry bale, batman is not a grizzly bear.


kevin conroy is batman
i was pretty sad that they killed off two-face, he was pretty fun and scary looking while he lasted. and other than his death everything else was great about him. his fall as harvey dent, making his own luck with the trick coin. i mean come on, we all believed in harvey dent.

another thing that bothers me, that batman begins exists, i mean tdk blows most other movies out of the water anyway, but this movie is so far beyond the first one. the first one wasn't horrible, it was just slow moving, and that microwave weapon was one of the worst cases of "science doesn't work that way!" i've ever seen.

my last complaint, and this one i don't think was intentional. batman is silly. this movie was trying to go for realism, i mean you could believe in that joker, and it's scary as hell. but that scene when batman meets gordon in the bank vault, batman looks so out of place i almost started laughing.
and while i do find this batcostume ridiculous, i think it goes beyond that to where the idea of a masked vigilante is just silly, not matter how much ass he kicks.

that said i still gave this movie a ten star rating on imdb.

heath ledger's performance as the joker was amazing, he scares the hell out of you, he makes you laugh, he's odd, and you just love him completely (or maybe that's just me) i have to admit i predicted all of his tricks from the disappearing pencil to the bomb in the fat guy, however that doesn't matter, it's the style he pull off these tricks which is the key. i mean watch the way he leaves the hospital in the nurse's uniform as his bombs are going off, the way he waits for the last large explosion, it's brilliant. he is chaos, he is a force beyond nature.

harvey dent/two-face; i've never been a fan of harvey dent, he always seemed like somewhat of an asshole in the first place. this version though was quite likable and very sympathetic, and two-face, like i mentioned above was great for the short time he was around. although with that kind of damage i guess it wouldn't make sense that he would stick around for awhile.

while i did predict most of the joker's tricks, gordon not really being dead snuck past me, it was crazy enough i thought they might go through with it. for awhile i was thinking that maybe the driver of prison van was batman, but then i couldn't think of who it would be in the batmobile. turns out they pulled a reverse long halloween on us. it was nice to see gordon alive and well though, and he saved a very stupid batman, good times. i suppose the price of bringing him back was rachel and harvey. that's one trick i learned from joss whedon's dvd commentaries, no one is going to buy a character "coming back" if another character doesn't actually die.

the odd electric hum throughout the movie kept a nice feeling of general insanity.
just felt that needed to pointed out.

the story was great, the characters were amazing, more realistic atmosphere than that of batman begins, it's just a great movie.
and holy shit, who would ever think that a batman movie would be this big?
not the best movie ever, but it's pretty damn far up there, certainly one of the most entertaining.

i believe stan lee has to eat his words about spider-man 3 being bigger than any batman film.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Sunday, July 20, 2008

biff and the beach boys

twenty-three years and some change ago, my mom went and saw the beach boys when she was eight months pregnant with me.



i'd like to think it had some effect on me.





i went and saw them in concert last night, well really it was mike love and some random people, but they sounded great, mr. love's voice is still quite impressive.
at the best part part of the night, i got to see the "beach boys" perform good vibrations



the beach boys weren't just influential on me, they're also a large influence on one of my favourite bands....

the queers!






i love me some queers.

dark knight revue to come after i digest it a bit more.

Friday, July 18, 2008

watchmen movie watch!


when i first heard announcements of the watchmen movie, i was excited and very skeptical.
it's one of those things you really wish won't get fucked up.
originally it was to be directed darren aronofsky, and that could have been interesting...
then you find out david "solid snake" hayter wrote the screenplay, and he wrote the first two x-men movies... eh. and it got worse from there, he took it out of the eighties and supposedly changed it from ozymandias catching a bullet to him catching some energy ball; a power that dr. manhattan gave to the silk spectre for her birthday...

then in the wake of 300, zack snyder becomes the new director!
i wasn't a fan of 300, that was due to frank miller's story though, it still looked really unique and was quite pretty!
so zack thankfully not happy with hayter's script had someone go over it, put it back in the 80's and hopefully try to keep it as close to comic as possible.
yay.

then some shots of the set and the heroes costumes came out, all very neat, the still of rorschach burning that swat agent was my desktop background for awhile.

then yesterday out came the trailer
watchmen trailer

and honestly? it gave me chills.
after all the good comic book movies this year (and i haven't seen dark knight yet!) i'm really looking for this.

sure allan moore wants nothing to do with it, but after the league of extraordinary gentlemen movie, can you really blame him?

that said i really would have loved to see terry gilliam's five hour watchmen miniseries.
oh well.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

totally jossome!


dr. horrible's sing-along blog

a joss whedon musical about a super villain starring neil patrick harris?
how did i not know about this sooner?

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

it's love ♥



it's not fair that there's a woman out there that is this adorable, and i don't know her.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

tom waits: surrealist hero


the piano has been drinkng (1977)


his early work is beautifully surreal, amazing absurd, and decadently guttural.


emotional weather report (1976)


nighthawks at the diner (1975)
one of my favourite albums, excellent reference as well.




asacp awards speech (2001)

his writing became more literal and abstract as time went on.


rain dogs (unknown)


all the world is green (2002)


i don't wanna grow up (1992)
off the great album "bone machine"
i never have been able to find out if it was named after the pixies song or not.
originally i was just thinking about posting the above song as another "theme song" of mine, however decided to instead share my love of this fascinating man.

waits is so intense and crazy that screamin' jay hawkins covered heart attack and vine.
and if you don't know who screamin' jay hawkins is, then for shame on you!
the appeal of his music goes beyond the offbeat though, i'm quite sure at some point you've heard his song "downtown train"; most likely the rod stewart version though.
as far as tom waits covers go, scarlett johansson is bad and she should feel bad!

lastly in a bit of combined news with another favourite artist of mine, tom waits is said to play the devil in terry gilliam's next film "the imaginarium of doctor parnassus"