you know, for kids!

i've heard some people are getting all uppity about there being dark knight merchandise aimed at children, and i have to admit, it does seem a bit weird.
until i stop and remember my own childhood that is.

and check out this commercial from '79

hell i even had toxic avenger toys growing up, well technically toxic crusaders, but still.
i saw the alien movies, the predator movies, even the terminators, all between the ages of five and ten, i also had their toys, i don't think it warped me. granted i had a more liberal childhood than most, however i still fail to see how a pg-13 batman is any darker than those r rated movies.

random commentary here, but it's funny how the movie ratings have changed over the years as well.
and no, they haven't gotten more lapse, they've gotten stricter, check out these two scenes from "pg" movies in the 80's.

not to mention all the sexual innuendo and other fun stuff in both of those movie. no way they would get away with that today.

i highly recommend the documentary "this film is not yet rated"

the mpaa is fucking ridiculous.

movies shouldn't be censored, children should play with crazy toys (i mean why not?) and parents should decide what appropriate for their kids.
i don't think my parents failed me, i mean even if "tales from the crypt" was one of my favourite shows as a kid, it was balanced out with a love for "i love lucy" and "the bob newhart show"
"beavis and butthead" and "the maxx" were evened out by "teenage mutant ninja turtles" and "looney tunes"
the balance between light and dark is an important one!
and my friends from strict families were more likely to act out as "hoodlums" and swear than i was.
kids swear and get in trouble, sounds crazy i know!
it's like everyone forgets the johnny deeper jokes of grade school when they grow up.
everyone's past turns into imaginary pleasantville, it's odd.

"johnny deeper!!!"

my first comic

back in the mists of the early nineties, my grandmother found a ten year old comic, and gave it to a six year old me!

i still have it, so here are some scans.

marvel two in one 92

i like that the inker is listed as a. sorted.
at six i had a vague idea of the the thing and fantastic four,
machine man and jocasta however, i knew nothing about. and still know very little!
the story is nice enough to include some back history on jocasta though.


there's some fun stuff in this comic.

here it introduces the idea that love is blind, that's right horrible monsters of the world, you too kind find love in the form of blind people! cynicism aside, it's a sweet and ridiculous scene, look at the flame heart!


let's get some more back history here, hank pym creates ultron, then ultron decides to make a robotic wife and copies the brain waves of the wasp, pym's wife. hence the name jocasta. as for the spousal abuse, i guess he takes after pym. (which is weird, and also terrible)

oh 1980's and your atari video games. is machine man this fun every time he's written?
i never have read the next issue, the internet tells me that jocasta is the one that dies though.
do robot women count for women in refrigerator syndrome? seriously, she gets ignored by the avengers, loses her powers, slapped around by ultron, and then killed. shame, i feel she could be an interesting character, if only they weren't trying to get her to out mope marvin.

abuse aside, it's a pretty fun issue. so i thank tom defalco for writing a fun story, introducing me to comics.

shock treatment

the very 80's sequel of sorts to the rocky horror picture show.
i really need to see this.

another movie featuring music by richard o'brien i want to see:

the return of captain invincible

superhero musicals need to happen more often. and this is just further proof christopher lee is one of the best movie villains of all time.

fear and trembling

brilliant.

the artist has a rather interesting comic holy bibble
an honest and humourous interpretation of the bible, i recommend checking it out.

why i love golden age superman

that's a genuinely creepy premise. very pulpish, ah the days before the code.
i'm still not sure the reasoning behind underling gay city.
although thanks to modern day giggling about it i was introduced to this fantastic story.
it's from superman 7, for those interested in gay city or people turning into glass.

the fall & tideland

set in the 1920's the fall is a story of an injured stuntman who tells a little girl with a broken arm an epic story, all in a ruse to get her to steal him morphine so he can kill himself. we see the story through her mind, and it's quite endearing. she makes the characters people she knows in real life, for example she knows an indian (from india), so when the the stuntman tells her one of the characters is an indian, she imagines her friend, instead of a native american. her imagination is quite superb, as the costumes and scenery are quite beautiful. some of the movie's claims to fame are that it was shot in 19 countries, and uses little to no cgi, and the results are quite beautiful. after seeing the eye-sore cgi in the latest indy flick it was refreshing to see actual explosions, traditional stunt work, breath taking scenery, and an elephant swimming in the ocean. the story sounds a bit dark, but it has an uplifting ending, and ends as a tribute to all the silent film stuntmen.

i quite liked the seemingly random addition of charles darwin.


the main comparison i've seen brought up for this film, is pan's labyrinth. and while i love pan's labyrinth, i felt it was more a movie about the real world being more magical than most people expect. in the first part of del toro's spanish civil war trilogy (i believe the third movie 3993, has been put way on the back burner due to the hobbit movies) the devil's backbone, a ghost of a child helps point out his murderer, and then avenge his own death. in pan's labyrinth, the faun was real, she really did use the chalk door to escape, the reason the captain didn't see the faun is because he's wicked! or perhaps such beings are only seen by those they want to be seen by.
the fall in contrast, is just about the imagination and magical world inside of a real girl in a real and confusing world, and for that it reminded me of the wonderful movie tideland.

in the first, twenty minutes of this film, the protagonist jeliza-rose, prepares heroin for her father, twice, has her mother die of a methadone overdose, runs aways to dilapidated house in the middle of nowhere texas with her father, and then her father o.d.'s on heroin soon after. she protects herself from all this by living in her imagination, her father is sleeping, her doll heads are alive and her friends, her neighbours are completely normal... things only get worse and crazier from here. the point of the movie though is to show how resilient children are, how they're not things of porcelain, that they have ways of coping. there are very intense and disturbing things in this movie, it took me quite awhile to watch it again, i suggest watching it a second time to anyone that's seen it, i also suggest watching it with terry gilliam's commentary. he does well explaining how things aren't as bad as they seem. the kissing scene for example, people freak out because jeliza rose and a mentally handicapped man like eachother. gilliam points out she's the aggressor in those scenes, and while he's older, it's not as though he knows better. it's all far more innocent for the characters.

it's an honestly beautiful movie, and if you can follow mr. gilliam's advice of remembering what it's like to be a kid, i'd suggest giving it a chance.

the fall

tideland

gobbledigook

after finishing up batmanga, it only makes sense to move onto this!
i have to say i quite enjoyed it, "have i got a story for you" is a premise that is always fun, and robatman was good times for all.
"field test" and "working through the pain" were definitely the best. field test was great simply for batman getting a compromise between the the two mobs, knowing that getting them thrown in jail won't do any good. great characterization of batman, helping the injured mobster and ultimately deciding putting his life on the line was worth it. although the best defining moment i've ever seen for batman was at the end of "working through the pain" kudos to brian azzarello for hitting that note, it's hard to express how right he got it. which really reminds me that i need to find a copy of broken city.
"deadshot" was interesting, if not a bit anticlimactic, "crossfire" wasn't bad, however the only thing i was impressed with is how bulletproof that car was, i really did like the idea of all the freed "psychos" running around the island though. "in darkness crawls" was probably my least favourite. the element of killer croc was just random and didn't really lead anywhere, i didn't find the scarecrow hallucinations to be up to par, batman seemed to not care that he killed all the henchmen (come on, he barely escapes himself!) the ending was a nice moment though.
overall good times.
i haven't watched all the extras yet, on the bonus disk there are some episodes of the animated series picked by bruce timm, heart of ice, while a good episode i've seen far too many times, i am the night was a nice touching episode i hadn't seen in awhile, i also love the oldschool gangster bad guy "jazzman". legends of the dark knight is an episode long after i had stopped watching the cartoon, yet it was fun to see the old campy batman compared to frank miller's batman, and seeing an animated version of "the dark knight returns" was just crazy. over the edge i didn't like at all, it made no sense, and how i hate dick when he has a mullet. i guess they can't all be winners though.

with a buzz in our ears we play endlessly

 sigur rós - með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust

ah sigur rós, one of the many great bands i discovered back in the napster days of yore
i realized the greatness of this band after hearing the sublime beauty of "starálfur"

they've had some quite memorable videos to go along with their beautiful and haunting music:

and do yourself a favour, head over to the band's myspace and listen to gobbledigook, the use of stereo like that always makes me happy.
and while i may love "Ágætis byrjun" the most due to it's sentimentality and beauty, i do believe this band is one of the few that gets better with every album.