JOURNAL: MCWagner (Matthew Wagner)

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  • "Maybe....maybe not. The dead are fucked up." 2002-03-21 18:14:56 And the neglect doth run rampant yet again. I really am trying to post regularly here because it's one of the few regular writing exercises I've ever been able to keep up without getting bored. I used to try all the other things that you do to keep yourself in practice, from keeping a physical journal (lasted two months) to keeping a notebook on you at all times (lost in three weeks) to setting aside an hour for writing every night (55 minutes is close enough...45 minutes is close enough...30 minutes is...ahh screw it) but I was never able to stick with it. This, however, I really do enjoy doing while I'm physically typing. The only problem is finding sufficient time to set aside for it.

    'Course, I do have a better excuse this time. I had some relations in town until Wed. who sucked up all my free time (and prevented me from going to see those movies I wanted). Make no mistake, I'm on good terms with nearly everyone in my extended family. They're all pretty cool, but I simply have nothing to talk about with them. By a remarkable coincidence I ran into them as they were being shown the sights around town on Tuesday and I showed them through my lab. They were all suitably impressed, which actually gave me something of an ego and enthusiasm boost that I'd been missing for a while. (Six hours watching reticks flow by tends to kill one's soul.) Outside a' that, though, our world outlooks are too different to hold a discussion on any but the most facile of subjects. My parents and I can discuss just about anything at length without worries, but this is my extended family I'm talking about. One aunt is of the rather odd opinion that the entire world until she came along existed in a state of intractable racism and shocking unjust...uh...itude. After telling her the details of my project she told me that she had heard how progress in the treatment of sickle-cell anemia had only really been made in the last fifty or so years because, before then, black people were considered less important. *sigh* The truth, of course, is that the basic genetics of the disorder have been know and studied for at least a hundred or more years, but the vast effects of the disorder on the entire vascular system are so exceedingly complicated that it's taken this long to even sort out what exactly is going on. To even determine what was going on in the system, advances were required in microbiology, blood analysis, clinical analysis, micro-scale fluid dynamics, polymer kinetics (the sickle hemoglobin acts as a polymerization reaction when deoxygenated), adhesion-ligand interactions, and vast signaling pathway delineation. Even now, with the addition of a full animal model of the disease which can actually be dissected under experimental conditions to physically LOOK at what is going on, there are several of the nastier aspects of the disease (like acute chest syndrome) where we simply DON'T KNOW what the hell is going on. But no, the "REAL" reason that no one has found a cure for sickle-cell is because everyone in charge of the research were nasty bigots until 50 years ago. This sort of simple, knee-jerk explanation for how the world works really pisses me off, and, I think, does a great disservice to the investigators of the previous hundred years who, solely through the little they WERE able to study, managed to double the life expectancy of their patients. (That actually happened within the last 30 years, but was done by incorporating data from the last hundred.)

    The other aunt is worse. I swear she can only remember the worst thing she's ever heard about anyone. Bring up any celebrity and she'll have a list of his public sins ready and waiting. Personally, I find it hypocritical to criticize Michael Jordan for smoking a cigar on TV. Effectively, you're saying that you want your child to emulate the fictional creation that is Michael Jordan, not the actual man, and you want to do this by forcing him to hide every ounce of vice that he, as a human being, possess. So you want him to cooperate in this lie you've created for your children to idolize. Am I the only one who thinks that's just a little bit sick?

    In other, more random, news,

    During my 24-hour work day last night (whimper) I got into a conversation with my new lab-mate about cartoons. Coming to the subject of Disney's "Gargoyles," she said excitedly "Oh, they were one of my favorite cartoons growing up!"

    Man I feel old.

    Then she ordered us a BACON pizza. Man. That plus the McDonald's I had after crashing at noon means I have justification for worrying about these chest pains. (Ow.)

    KZ: I suppose this isn't really your neck of the woods, but I tripped over this article going through Tim Blair's blog a few days ago, and thought you might be interested. Blair's comment was that this article demonstrates the competence of honestly good journalists to cover ANY story, no matter how far afield from their personal expertise:
    http://www.caranddriver.com/xp/Caranddriver/features/2002/February/200202_feature_lap_of_kosovo.xml?keywords=kosovo

    nailz: Please stop poking Sammy with a stick. We all know where it'll lead, and frankly I'm in no mood to step aside for another flame war and eventual banning. Your response is understandable, though.

    EK: That mp3 was exactly what I needed at 4:30 this morning. I think, from now on, the phrase "putting in my 2 cents" should be changed to "putting in my 85 cents."

    I had responses to other people that I'd collected during the week, but I lost the slip of paper they were on. Oh well.

    So anyway, having endured the well-intentioned but slowly maddening awkward silences in conversations with my visiting extended family, I lit out from there late on the last night they were in town and snuck to the local theater to see if anything was playing. As it turned out, I had my choice of the three flicks I'd been wanting to see. I know you all were expecting a review here on the new horror flicks, so I went ahead and got a ticket for the 10:00 showing of.....Ice Age! (Ha! Bet you thought it would be Resident Evil, right?) See, the trick is that I let fate decide which one I'll see. I wander over to the mall for lunch on a weekend, and if there is a flick that I wanted to see playing RIGHT THEN, I'll see it. Saves me a bit on $$$. Ice Age was playing five minutes after I walked into the mall, so it won out over Resident Evil (10 min. later).

    OK, this is where I start losing some readers....but if I'm not honest here in my own journal, then I might as well give up and become a professional movie reviewer. (Bleh.) Also, no offense to those of you who've already reviewed this movie in your journals. I'm just jotting down my take.

    This movie makes it onto my "recommended" list.....but only barely. Oh, the animation is brilliant, but the story just isn't there. Wait. Let me start from the beginning.

    First off, it ain't Pixar. Unless I'm really missing something, the flick is 20 century Fox with no affiliations to the Disney-owned Pixar. Someone tell me if I'm wrong on this. However, this film really WANTS to be Pixar-made. Similar comedy styles are used in the better points and the same kind of "casual spoken humor" is employed as we've seen in Pixar films, especially Monsters Inc. The animation is a dead ringer in some areas, although there are a few problems (I'll come to that) and a few scenes are directly reminiscent of action sequences in Monsters Inc.

    The plot is where the real problems start. A crotchety mammoth named Manfred (ohh...clever) and an annoyingly "slow" sloth named Sid (getting cleverer) encounter a lost human child by chance and decide (eventually) to return it to its tribe. A saber-toothed cat named Diego (Dennis Leary...who sounds a little bored by the entire film) joins them, but is actually under "orders" to retrieve the child for his pride so the leader can have revenge on the humans.

    You already know the entire story.
    *SPOILER* Duh.
    Yeah, the cute little kid melts the mammoth's cold demeanor, Sid's incompetence and stupidity manage to help the troupe in spite of himself, and Diego repents from his EVIL carnivorous ways and defends the troupe against his own pride. In-between, we have a (mercifully few) lessons on friendship, and, ironically, a great deal of humor involving beating up on Sid. Thus, one-half part "Three Men and a Baby," one part Monsters Inc., one part "The Amazing Journey," and one part (uhurg...) Disney's "Dinosaur" (AHHHHHHH!). This really is what bugs me about the film. It is very, very predictable. The storyline is predictable. All of the jokes are predictable. All of the character responses are predictable. That's what made me relieved to find out that it WASN'T Pixar, as I always found Pixar to be rather low on the maudlin moralistic crap of Disney's worst films, fairly unpredictable in its humor, and at least a little unpredictable in its plots. I was afraid that Pixar had gone soft and was starting to produce "safe"-er fare instead of intelligent fare.

    I suppose I should qualify all the bashing I just did. When I saw the ads for Ice Age, I was really excited. I thought it was going to be a new and unique story. Why? Because in the first previews I saw Diego, and it looked like he was a good guy. I am so sick of the trend in all funny animal pictures that carnivore=evil. Being a cat person, this means that my favorite character always gets the short end of the stick. I thought to myself "wow, the heros are a squirrel, a mammoth, and a saber-toothed cat! That must be a really interesting story!" Nope. Carnivore still = evil. Diego only becomes "good" when he renounces the evil peer-pressure of meat-eating and defends his friends the herbivores. What I want to know is how he lives after the end of the film. Eat grass? A couple of other plot-holes like this exist (like what did Diego eat for the 4 days of traveling, why are they still going North into the snowstorm, I doubt sloths migrate, etc.)

    So, why do I recommend this film (however marginally) even though I dislike the plot? Only two reasons remain. The humor and the animation.

    The animation really is superb in most of the film. The characters are well-rendered and composed, and Jimmy (Lord Rae) pointed out a scene to me during a rainstorm that appears to push the boundaries of computer animation further than they've ever managed before. I don't know all the technical details, but sopping wet fur in driving rain can't be easy to render. By far the best scene of the film involved a high-speed race through an ice cavern reminiscent of the Door-storage in Monsters Inc. It's only problem was that everything was happening so fast that it couldn't register as funny until after the next (visual) joke was already told. Elsewhere in the film, however, there are a few weird little problems with the animation. Amusingly, many of the pristine snow-covered vistas resemble nothing so much as the winter scenes from the old stop-motion "Rudolph" animations...sorta too smooth and Styrofoam-like. Also, while movement of the animals was masterful (especially the saber-toothed cats) the humans seem to move about in a strangely massless manner. It's really hard to describe, but watch the way they walk closely in their first scene and you'll see it. I also have a few problems with the character designs. Sid is really weirdly shaped. He has the body of a vase and his face is sorta reminiscent of the aliens from Sesame Street. Diego's head is also shaped in such a way that his lower jaw isn't angled properly and he can't actually bite anything. The humans in particular have really chiseled and inhumanly smooth features with a limited range of expression. This design works for the animals since the hair softens the edges. It worked for insects (bug's life, etc) since their chitinous exoskeleton looks like that. It worked for toys because they do look like that. It just doesn't work for humans.

    The humor is kinda hit-and-miss in places. Much like Shrek, I think I could count the number of really cool/funny sections/jokes on one hand, all the rest being rather predictable and telegraphed. The predictable ones fall into the categories of "guys don't know how to take care of babies," "let's beat on Sid," "let's embarrass Diego" and "Sid is clueless." For heaven's sake, the film starts off with a shit joke. Further, a good bit of the humor feels like padding to stretch out the film. The entire section with the Dodos (think of a slightly-more insane group of Chickens from Chicken Run) feels rather added-on, despite containing some of the better jokes. (Yeah, they had to feed the kid, but if it was necessary, then when did the other characters eat?)

    However,

    I really liked the segments with the Scrit. (Neurotic Squirrel.) His hapless fate and incompetence lent him a rather pitiful "Wily Coyote" quality. Almost makes up for him not really being in the film. (He's a running-joke background-walker.) He's the one you saw in the first ad.

    (This next bit is just me nit-picking. I didn't really consider it in my evaluation since it's such a niggling little detail.)

    I don't know if there is any evidence that Saber-tooth cats ran in prides, but most large cats are solitary hunters. However, taking lions as the model, there's something distinctly missing from Diego's pride. There aren't any females or cubs. Ortez tells us that the humans killed off half the pack, but there are still too many males/females. Still, that would mean that the humans somehow ambushed and killed off all the women and children from Diego's pack. And what the cats are doing is the immoral act? Eh. Double standard. :)

    In the end, this is a good, very well animated, kid's movie that has a handful of funny and action-packed moments, but if Fox intends to compete directly with Pixar, they're gonna have to work on their designs and writing quite a bit. Mostly reminded me of the Blues Traveler's lyrics "...of a bad play where the heros are right/and nobody thinks or expects too much..." 
  • 2002-03-18 21:28:21 Further corrections.

    Gahhh. I am just informed by my French roomate that Moebius is French, not Italian. Man it's been a long time. My apologies to everyone who cares. 
  • 2002-03-17 22:29:01 Oh, I would just like to mention that I am royally pissed off because Ice Age, Resident Evil, and Queen of the Dammned (which, according to a friend, isn't nearly as sucky as it should be) are all in theaters and I didn't have a chance to see ANY OF THEM! 
  • "I'm like a one-eyed cat, peepin' in a seafood store..." 2002-03-17 22:20:31 Just a brief entry on a few topics.

    KZ: We hava a winnah! The quote was from Stand and Deliver, the movie beloved by all math teachers. I'm sure someone else knew it, but I've fallen way behind in checking Journals. (So what did you think of "Last Man on Earth?")

    Also, KZ: got your message at the AWA staffers meeting. Normally we require in-person attendance at the staff meetings and that you turn in a form. Considering your circumstance, though, I'll keep a slot open for you and see if I can clear it with the staffing director. That fills all the available slots for VAT staffers.

    Anyway, I finished watching the narrated leiker (?) reel on the Heavy Metal DVD, and I have a few corrections to make to my previous review. First off, Richard Corbin didn't use oil paints, he used airbrushes to do his comics. (Hey, it was a long time ago.) Second, the reason for Den's hideous variations all over the place was that the animation studio in the UK (each segment was done by different studios) didn't have enough qualified animators on staff to finish in time and had to recruit random individuals from the local art collage. Doesn't excuse the lousy writing and hideous plot, though. Third, the Taarna sequence was apparently done conciously in a Moebius style, although Moebius wasn't on staff. The sequence had originally been planned to be a complete Moebius story from the mag, but the rights couldn't be sorted out in time.

    Further, Carl Macek does a great job on narration of the leiker reel. I'm not one of those rabid individuals who boo anything Macek has done to or with animation. The man's made his career off of getting various animations a wider appeal and exposure because he really does like these cartoons. The results may not have been good, but I don't dobut his intentions. Anyway, much of the narration pointed out something that I, frankly, wasn't clever enough to spot on my own. A primary reason for the cult status of HM is the incredibly innovative techniques used in the film to get a better feel of the medium. In other words, a lot of the stuff used here was entirely new on several levels, and stretched the toolbox of the animator to include methods never thought of before. From the construction of a 7-foot B-17 model for accurate rotoscoping of the plane, gimbaling of a chevrolet for appropriate reference, construction of 9-square foot cells for extreme detail, 180-degree vertical pans (horizon to horizon ), to the costruction of miniature landscape references for a rotoscoping camera to swoop over. It really is phenominal some of the ends the animation studios went to in order to achieve the wanted effects. Too bad it didn't work.

    Make no mistake, this knowledge does increase the value of the film in my eyes and in the eyes of all animation nuts. I'll have to tweak entire sections of my review before I archive it to reflect this. However, impartial judgement of the film leaves me at the same conclusion I came to before. Some segments cool. Some segments borderline. Some segments utter crap or boring. As impressive as all the soaring over and among landscapes was in the Taarna sequence, it was still drawn-out and boring. The linking device is scattershot at best, and often entirely nonsensical.

    The sad thing is that this now represents a kind of dead-end in animation. Soon after all these techniques were invented (or at least fully utilized) in this film, they became outdated through the much easier, much faster use of computer animation. Considering the effort that went into, say, building a model of an entire canyon for swooping around in, it's a lot easier to just render something similar in a computer.

    Again, all IMHO. 
  • "I keeled heem. His body's decomposing in muy locker..." 2002-03-15 22:08:23 Warning: longest entry yet. Too tired to check grammar. Sorry.

    A no-prize to those of you who recognized that quote. Here's a hint; you had to watch that movie in math class.

    Well, I took a bit of a longer break than I expected to, owing to a massive all-night session at the lab where I was last in line for the blood sample and didn't even get to start on it until after 5:00 AM the next morning on Wed. Knocked me out for most of Thursday, but I think I've got my sleep schedule sorted out.

    Feeling presidential...(just hit 1600 hits).

    Things I hate and have decided to stop tolerating: A) Inverse God-botherers. I think they're actually starting to bug me more than God-botherers. Why, exactly, does an atheistic individual insist upon telling me that I'm either an idiot or "weak-willed" for believing in a God? I'm not arguing what they might THINK, my opinion being that an omnipotent figure that wishes to conceal evidence of himself from his creations would be able to do a pretty thorough job of it and supply plenty of room for doubt if that was his desire, but why do they think it's absolutely essential to tell ME about it? The God-botherers at least have a reason to try and spread their belief, but the inverted have no essential calling to bug me on streetcorners as they aren't appealing to any higher power. It's just a throwaway insult, much like the ones I haven't used here.

    B) People who somehow find it possible to take personal offense with my disagreement on their assessment of a movie's quality, DESPITE my EXPLICIT statement to "not take this personally, I just have some strong opinions on this subject" and the presence of multiple IMHOs. Over the weekend this one guy threw a hissy-fit that I didn't think Michelle Pheiffer did a very good interpretation of Catwoman in "Batman Returns" stating "I'm sorry, but you are getting personal when you are knocking the stand out performance by Michelle Pheiffer as Catwoman." WTF? Are YOU MP? I don't see why I should have to tolerate this little twit being unable to take the injury to his fanboy pride because not everyone agrees with him about the "best comic-book movie ever."

    C) The brilliant gtech e-mail system which decided suddenly that the only way to deal with my being 500K over on my archives was to compress over a thousand of my e-mails into a single lump file 19 MEGS in size and tell me to empty it outta my inbox. When done, I discovered the file added up to over 6,000 pages of text....because, naturally, there were a few image files in there. Thus, if I ever had your e-mails, I'm sorry, but I've probably lost them by now.

    Thanks to gambitt for providing the info on where I can FINALLY find that fish/bird animation piece. Naturally, it was in YET ANOTHER "Mind's Eye" disc.

    EK: Do you have any idea how one could save those little swf files you've been directing us to? I MUST have a copy of the "little match girl", but I seem to be having the same problems I had with trying to save the Gorillaz videos from so long ago...

    Kusoyaro: Let me turn on my bullshit-o-tron and see if I can come up with an answer to your "One" question. Keep in mind that I haven't actually seen this film. What if the energy that goes jumping around in the film is actually your quotient for your life? As you live, the energy gets slowly used up as you grow older, being eaten away as your "power source" battery for your designated 70-odd years. Thus, as your doubles start dying off of old age in other parallel worlds, you do receive their energy, but there's so little of it the change is negligible. Then all that needs to be accepted is that never before has there been a set of coincidences which killed off the same individual in a hundred or so parallel worlds before most of their energy was used up by the wearing-away of age. Just an idea.

    I'm getting so tired of Lileks plainly bucking to steal my job. As if reviewing Buckaroo Banzai wasn't enough, he's reviewed the new "Time Machine" (http://www.lileks.com/bleats/031102.html) and also run a critique (mostly positive) of Stephen King. (http://www.lileks.com/bleats/031402.html) I must say, his critique is much more complimentary than mine would be. I don't really dislike King, nor do I have any real problem with his work (although a lot of it isn't really to my taste). He's written a couple of really phenomenally good stories, and a lot of mediocre to bad stories. That's pretty much the ratio of any professional writer. What I dislike is the status he seems to hold in the popular media. When they talk, you get the impression that King either originated or completely revived the genre all by himself. And poor Robert Bloch died without ever really receiving the recognition he deserved for "Psycho." Bleh.

    Movie time! This time it's that great attempt to produce an animated "Iron Maiden" album cover, "Heavy Metal." It's a little odd trying to review this film, as it holds such an odd status in fandom. No one seems really sure if they're "supposed" to like it or not. Ask Joe Schmo fanboy if he's ever seen it, and he'll be really hesitant to admit it, unless you volunteer that you haven't. Then he's all smiles and condescending attitude, as this obviously places him higher on the "fandom elite/oldschooler" ladder than you, and he'll refer to it like it was some kind of fandom touchstone. Of course HE'S seen it, but he understands that you haven't, since it's SO HARD to find anymore.

    Well, first-off, it ain't that hard to find. Second of all, it really isn't that good. But I'll come to that.

    First off, you have to understand where this film came from. Heavy Metal is actually a magazine that started up around 1977 and has been running steadily ever since. (www.heavymetal.com) Everything about the Mag is a little bit odd. Its tagline is "The Illustrated Fantasy Magazine," but what it really is, is a high-class adult-oriented comic book. The comic is kind of a long-running "underground" comic that never really lost it's "cred" by gaining mainstream appeal. As such, it's something of a forum for aspiring comic artists to stretch their imagination in. Collections of randomly assembled stories span sci-fi, fantasy, and horror as well as comedy and even some abstract works. I can't speak for the earliest issues, but I know that it's been printing on higher quality paper than newsprint for much longer than your standard newsstand comic. This would hint at high production values and immense popularity, but it's never really achieved widespread recognition outside of fandom, despite it's enormous run. As far as the "adult" content, I've always felt that its tagline should contain the phrase "for men" at the end, mirroring its similarity to Playboy on so many levels. Much of its content is usually somewhat pornographic, for the simple reason that Heavy Metal is one of the few outlets for small-time or slow-rate producers of such material. (Going to the website will drop you into an advertising spiel that makes the "fantasy art" section of mega-con dealer rooms look classy, but the mag isn't really that bad.)

    The material in the mag, however, has always struck me as "off." Not due to any prudishness on my part (ya'll should know me better than that) but in general atmosphere and construction. Despite their utterly disparate natures, many of the pieces in the mag always strike me as a fascinating glimpse into a tiny corner of an enormous, detailed, imagined world. If the camera would just, metaphorically, move BACK so we could get a good look at the world THIS story is built in, I would feel much more satisfied. The net effect is to drive the reader to want more, so I suppose it's effective, if a bit frustrating. The visuals in the mags further this effect by their AMAZING artwork. The interiors often have higher-detail work than you'll find in any newsstand comic, and the coloring jobs are beautiful as well. Some artist work solely in oil, and the effect is faithfully reproduced in the mag. The covers themselves are often frame able bits of high-quality fantasy art, and it's been a long-standing "feather in your cap" to have done a cover for Heavy Metal. The stories themselves....welllll......I'm generalizing here, but even the best bits tended to be rather vapid even in the broadest, most ambitious epics. This may be the source for what, to me, is the strangest thing about the mag. Very little of the material produced in HM mag is ever known of or heard of outside of its covers, despite the presence of artists like Moebius, Michael Manning, and Olivia. The only exceptions I can think of to this rule are Drunna (good God, they made a video game), Ranxerox, Tex Arcana, and "The Incal" with its spinoffs (Technopope, Metabarons, etc.). Hell, hardcore Hentai artists have a wider public visibility than this stuff.

    Then, of course, there's the porn. Otherwise known as "the selling point." This could just be my personal impression, but the material in the HM mags strikes me now as rather juvenile. Again, like Playboy, this material strikes me as the kind of stuff 14-year old boys slaver over in the back aisles of the bookstore or sneak out of their parent's collection to feel like "rebels," (Cause, ya know, it's a comic book where people have SEX! And women walk around without any SHIRTS ON! Shades of Eltingville.) or adults read for a nostalgia trip back to that particular age.

    So how do I know all of this? Hey, I was 14 once. I learned about it the same way every other honest American male did. I snuck it out of my father's collection. (No tsk-tsking of my father from the peanut gallery, I also snuck out a COMPLETE run of Asterix and a partial run of Pogo.) I've occasionally entertained the idea of hunting down the old issues of HM, but that has the creepy quality of the guys who obsessively collect back issues of "Playboy" from 1960.

    Helluva windup, huh? Anyway, in 1981 an animated film was produced using pieces culled from the stories and artistic style of the magazine. It gave us "Heavy Metal: the movie." (Not to be confused with "Heavy Metal 2000," the more recent attempt which sucked exceedingly large objects through truly tiny apertures.) Like the mag, the movie is a conglomerate of stories ranging from comedic to sci-fi, to fantasy and horror. Unlike the mag, these stories are all tied together (very) loosely with a framing sequence. The problem with reviewing the flick, is that each segment and the framing sequence are vastly different from one another, as the artistic style and storytelling technique are modeled to each artist. I'm gonna have to review each portion individually to really give you a clear conception of what the film is made up of, during which I'll probably spolier the hell out of it, so be warned. Oh, the material I touch on is also fairly ribald, so the blushers in the crowd will want to hang back again. Skip down to the summary.

    The opening segment, and the first bookend of the framing sequence, is just cool. Can you really imagine anything more badass than an astronaut, dropped from a space shuttle in full space gear, conducting reentry maneuvers while piloting a Corvette roadster? Silly and abstract, but cool. The animation does some really cool high-speed drive-bys and circle pans around his house when he arrives home, but up till then we see some really odd stylistic work in the animation, making it look like the Corvette is actually a stop-motion piece. When he gets home to his 1960s classic American homestead, we meet the first main character in the framing story, his daughter, a girl of about 15 years who's come looking for a present. The astronaut presents her with the second main character, a green glowing ball of PURE EVIL that instantly melts him. No I'm not kidding. You see, he is the "sum of ALL EVILS" and he's come here to torment the girl by telling her stories taken from the HM mags. I swear I'm not kidding. Apparently being a ball of evil makes one REALLY lonely. This is the hook by which the rest of the stories are told; each of the stories relate some way in which the BALL of PURE EVIL got in and mucked up someone's life. Every once in a while a voice-over or a cut back to the framing sequence will tell us why on earth it's just showed us this segment. Meanwhile, the girl spends most of the movie trapped in a corner by the ball doing her odd ape impressions. (The girl's face goes through some really weird contortions.)

    The first sequence shown is a direct transferral of "Harry Canyon" which turns out to be a kind of futuristic retelling of "The Maltese Falcon" complete with sniveling creep, Bogart stand-in, and Fat Man. The ball stands in for the falcon as the "Lok-Nar" an archaeological relic of immense wealth, and Harry (Bogart), a taxi-cab driver happens upon and rescues the voluptuous and barely-clothed daughter of the recently-deceased owner. A well-told story of conspiracy and betrayal follows. The voice-acting is fairly good, and the art style is in imitation of Juan Giménez, a regular HM contributor with a rather rough, gritty style. The style is really more suited to the original comic's black and white color scheme, and the added color, while quite well done, doesn't do the animation quality many favors. The script is necessarily a bit simplistic, and much of the motion looks sluggish and unnatural, but overall is pretty adequate. Keep an ear out for Blue Oyster Cult's "Veteran of a Thousand Psychic Wars" and especially Journey's "Open Arms" which really feels out of place in such a "cult favorite film." Also unintentionally ironic is when one notes that the dystopian scummy future New York of "Harry Canyon" still has the WTC standing. That was a nasty little shock as I watched this for the first time in years.

    The second segment is by far the worst. Every time I think of all the things I like about HM, I go "oh yeah...Den." I'm actually familiar with the source material from author Richard Corben. The original comic was lovingly and exactingly rendered in oil paint (I think...that was my impression at the time) employing what looked like human figure studies of people so ludicrously over-built and chiseled they looked like an entire world overrun by Rodin's "The Thinker" after a few thousand squat-thrusts. The main character "Den" was a pencil-thin high-school science nerd who got zapped through time and space to a Conan fantasy realm, and took the form of an enormous, bald, bronze-skinned body-builder with an even more out-of-proportion d*ck (with plenty of screen time). I'm not kidding. This was a major plot point. Freudian much? He ran into a couple of similarly-transformed female characters who seemed to have their own difficulties with proportion, and together they had lots of lovingly-detailed STUPID adventures involving Den getting nobly laid at least twice a day. (Keeping with this tradition, the Den segment contains fully half of all the sex in the movie.) It really represented the bottom rung of HM's stories, and its only redeeming factor was it's beautiful art. Well, the ART in the animated version sucks as well. The BALL o' EVIL (the Loc-Nar) is re-framed as the cause of Den's transference (the Loc-Nar) and becomes an article of religious sacrificial veneration on the new world. Den falls into the world in the middle of a sacrifice ceremony, rescues the sacrifice, has sex with her, is interrupted and captured by the opposing political party, interviewed by their whining effeminate immortal king who encased the sacrifice in glass, fights the palace guards, is ordered to fetch the Loc-Nar, travels with an animal-headed general, fights a big monster underground, wanders into the Queen's royal chambers, fights HER palace guards, has sex with HER, is attacked AGAIN, escapes, runs back to the place this all started, rescues the sacrifice AGAIN, breaks up a slap-fight over the Loc-Nar between the queen and the queer, kills the elder god Uhluhtc (hey look! It's Cthulhu backwards! Isn't that CLEVER?), and flies off into the sunset. (It's 14 minutes long) There. Now none of you have to be subjected to this inane little piece of crap. The animation really is the low point in this film, with characters who regularly screw up their perspective and differential coloring from scene to scene. The sky appears to be a particularly active lava-lamp, and most of the dialogue (especially the removed bits in the "rough cut") sound like they were lifted directly from a porn flick. Bleh. It doesn't help that Den is voiced by John Candy.

    The next segment has our favorite little ball flying in the window of a space-station, leading off everyone-but-mine's favorite segment of the flick,

    Captain Sternn. (I like it fine, but I like the next one better.) This piece is easily the best comic-to-animation transfer, as the characters were fairly cartoony to begin with, and the plot is followed almost to the letter. The animation style is based on the legendary Berni Wrightson who did the comic, and is much more cartoony than the other segments. It rather resembles the Spumco style if most of the squeezings were wrung out. The BALL 'o EVIL (now the size of a marble) is picked up by Hanover Fist on his way to the space-trial of the infamous space-captain Sternn...in SPACE! The only thing I dislike about this segment is that, among his many crimes, Sternn is accused of 37 counts of rape? And he's the hero? I think everyone just forgets about that when thinking of this segment. Rightly so, since the whole segment is really stolen by Hanover Fist as he apparently has a schizophrenic break while testifying on Sternn's behalf. "Hangin's too good for him! BURNIN's too GOOD for him! He should be TORN INTO ITTY BITTY PIECES and BURIED ALIVE!!" It really does contain nearly all of the clever pieces of dialogue and well voice-acted bits of the film, plus the whole thing is one long joke leading up to a single punch line, which makes it the perfect story for this format. There's a bit of cramped facial movement and awkward gross character movement once Hanover has his "break", but other than that the animation stays good. Listen for Cheap Trick.

    Next is MY favorite part of the film. If it wasn't for the "B-17" segment, I might've considered paying $5 for the DVD, but this easily doubled my budget. It's by far the simplest of the stories, and, being a brief horror-story, is ideally suited to the format. During WWII, a B-17 bomber is badly shot up during a bombing run, losing all seven gunners (4 side, belly, nose, tail) and the radio operator, leaving only the pilot and co-pilot. Suddenly, they're hit amidship by (you guessed it) a glowing green sphere, which begins....affecting....all of the corpses. The animation style is deeply cross-hatch shadowed and highly detailed style of the latter-day EC comic (Tales from the Crypt, etc.) imitators. EC itself never got quite this gruesome in the display of its revnants. These appear to posses the caustic toxicity of a Heavy Metal album cover. There's also some excellently animated motion, especially in the complex, but well executed Parachute sequence. There's a bit lost in style as the frame rate isn't quite high enough, the revnants drop in resolution, and some of the coloring is a bit spotty, but the rest is pure brilliance.

    The following segment is just sorta....there. "So Beautiful and So Dangerous" is really cartoony stuff, but mixes almost computer-precise lines in buildings and ships with characters sort of half-way between Fritz the Cat and anime. It imitates the style of the original comic by Angus McKie. I keep trying to figure out why this segment is here. The animation is uniformly good, even better technically than Captain Sternn. However...uh...well, an alien spacecraft descends from the sky and sucks up a (later revealed to be) malfunctioning robot scientist from the Pentagon along with a beautiful young typist. The typist, a nice Jewish girl, ends up sleeping with the maintenance droid on board the ship as the alien pilots do about forty pounds of coke each (all witness the death of drug humor) and try to dock with a space station. The BALL o' EVIL, in case you were curious, was in her broach. It's really supposed to be a comedy segment, but it just isn't funny for most of the jokes. ("I forget, are you circumcised?") Again, doesn't help that John Candy is voicing the robot. It's really just an excuse to play Grand Funk Railroad, Cheap Trick, Nazareth, and Sammy Hagar.

    The final non-framing sequence is "TAARNA" which, to me, just screams "Moebius." I'm a little confused about this, as his style is utterly unmistakable in my experience, and was totally cinched by the presence of his trademark "stone seagulls" flanking the goddess statue, and the even more trademark "bald young boys in tight-fitting clothing" (eeww) and "fat-bodied, stubby-winged birds", but he isn't listed anywhere in the credits. The original story is listed as being from Dan Goldberg and Len Blum with Howard Chaykin (American Flagg) listed among the designers. I could be entirely mistaken, but I don't think so. It's possible Moebius didn't want to be credited for the piece or worked under a pseudonym. I seem to recall someone telling me that Moebius was the artistic director for the whole flick, but again, no credits found.

    Anyway, Moebius specializes in vast, sweeping, barely coherent epic stories that all feel vaguely like they've been badly translated from another language (Italian is his original language). This particular installment is beautifully drawn in high detail and the muddied clay-colors of his work, but badly animated, as much of the motion is excessively slow and clumsy, especially when it shouldn't be (during fight sequences, etc.). The story is that our favorite happy fun death ball is fed up with the indirect route of evil, embeds itself in a mountain, and covers the surrounding land with the spooge of evil making everyone in the area green and nasty. The Evil Ball's army attacks a local, peaceful, technologically advanced but entirely defenseless town. The leaders send out a spiritual call for a protector (after talking a HELL of a long time about it) rather than running for the hills. Naturally, they're slaughtered. The call is picked up by the mute savior Tarrna who does a lot of really symbolic stuff and then flies to the rescue on her fat bird several weeks too late. Stuff ensues. Logic appears to desert every main character in this segment, both evil and good. This is the sort of film that asserts the traditional outfit for going on a mission of vengeance is thigh-highs, a body harness, a falconer's glove, and a bikini. Not quite as bad as Kekko Kamen, but STILL! This is by far the longest segment of the film, and you can tell it got more than its fair share of the budget. (LOTS of detail and sweeping travel scenes...not really employed to much of an end, though). Listen for Black Sabbath and Devo...especially once the credits start up and we get their version of "Workin' in a Coal Mine." (Hint to the producers...never have a song in your film with the line "Lord, I am so tired...how long can this go on?" It might echo your audience.)

    So the final sequence comes full circle and blows up a model of the house.

    Whew.

    The collector's DVD has a slew of extras on it, but is dripping in Macek. I can't really figure this out, as I don't think Carl Macek did anything with the film, but he provides TWO alternate voice-overs for the film. The first is him READING HIS BOOK ON THE MOVIE during the movie, and the second is a running commentary during the ALTERNATE FILM. There is a "rough cut" work in progress piece on the DVD that runs story boards, test scenes, early uncolored bits, etc. the full length of the film. From this we learn that even MORE porn was cut from "Den," the movie originally ran in an entirely different order (Frame, Den, Sternn, B-17, Harry Canyon, Taarna, Frame), B-17 was MUCH more gruesome and a little longer, and the reason the entire sequence of watching Taarna getting dressed looked more natural than the rest of her scenes was because it was rotoscoped. There's a "making of" documentary, four artwork galleries (each subdivided by segment), "behind the scenes" photos, and the story boards for an alternate framing sequence (which probably would have made more sense). Finally, there's the other reason I bought the DVD, and one that I would have paid $20 for ALONE. You see, the best part of the film was never made. There was a sequence called "Neverwhereland" that was originally intended to bridge between Sternn and B-17 that got about 50% finished before it was decided to cut the piece to keep the film under 90 minutes. It's an absolutely BEAUTIFUL piece animated in ball-point pen and colored pencils with a wonderfully abstract style. The sequence basically ran through the landing of the ball on earth and the subsequent rise of life, evolution, and human endeavor up till WWII and the B-17 sequence through constantly melding and morphing forms. I really can't express how impressed I am with what little was completed. The full thing is included on the DVD under "deleted scenes."

    Finally, the DVD contains ALL THE HEAVY METAL COVER ART FROM 1977-1999. DAMN! Woulda been worth $10 right there, had I known it was in there.

    Summary: (Gasp!) Rent the DVD, watch B-17, Captain Sternn, Neverwhereland, and the framing sequences. Return the DVD. Harry Canyon is borderline, Den is crap, So Beautiful so Dangerous is inane, and Taarna is boring. Unless you're an animation nut. Then watch everything except Den.

    I really wanted to do a thorough job on this review because I know this is one of those movies EVERYONE has heard about but very few actually bother to watch. This review was for the terminally curious but cautiously spendthrift with their movie-watching time. 
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