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.

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.

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.

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.