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I got up to wash my face...By the time I'd got back, someone'd taken my place...
2002-01-06 18:29:57
Let's see how far down the list I get this time...
Starting with the individual replies/comments:
shaister: Re: Myth. The odd thing is that the most recent myth book doesn't even occur in order with the previous ones. Apparently Asprin had just begun delving into a really complicated storyline when he got embroiled in a nasty divorce and a tax audit (so says the introduction). Seven years later, he couldn't get his Myth style of writing back to continue the next book, so he wrote this new book as an excercise in the style. It takes place between the second and third books of the Myth series, and the strain in style is very evident. It's kinda sad to see a childhood favorite so badly deflated. I actually saw Asprin talk at D*C last year. He didn't look anything like I'd expected. Apparently he's an old-school trekkie as well.
And VERY thank you for the pie link. It was driving me nuts trying to remember roughly when it had been posted. Here it is for anyone who missed his post: http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php3?date=2001-12-17
Utterly freak-tastic.
On Frank Conniff, there's a MST3K newspage with a mailing list that keeps up with the careers of all the old cast members. Did you know that he was co-head writer on the first season of Invader Zim? I'm pretty sure that he's the wide, bearded guy who shows up with Johnen in occasional episodes. Guess he grew his hair out.
EK: I see I got a song stuck in your head. :) The title line from this entry is the most stick-in-your-heady song S&G ever did, IMHO.
It's a well-known fact that having a cat in your lap is the best thing in the world for curing massive self-pity sessions. I think I miss my cats more than I miss my parents while being at school. Oh, and from a cat trivia book I got for Christmas: "The alternate pushing of a cat's front paws back and forth is called the milk tread. Kittens do it to stimulate the mother cat's milk flow, and often old cats do it when they are on something warm and soft."
Lord Rae: Didn't notice that one at all. Pretty obviously an error, though, as the elves wouldn't have anything half-sized around since Hobbits are well known not to travel, and Dwarves would never visit an Elven city.
I'm getting wholesale crashes when I try the movie-mistakes site. I'll have to try again some other time. My whole point with my review was that I could pick at little pieces of things I didn't like as much as the rest without invalidating my emphatic "thumbs up" rating. Some people are taking the track that admitting there was even the smallest of errors in the film would have been admitting it was less than perfect = bad. Others are the annoying nit-pickers just looking for errors to call the director stupid.
Greyduck: Muwahhhahhahhhaaaaa. (sp?) You think that little prod of MST3K-itis was bad? I could have mentioned something from the murky (un-released) past of the show....like, say, "Robot Monster"! ("His race evolved on a planet where the dominant life forms were apes and water-coolers.) or "Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy!" ("He's not such a great robot! He doesn't have any knees!") Seriously, though, a long time ago I looked up the tech specs on Manos...
<abject surprise>
I just went to imdb to look up the tech specs on Manos, and I discover that it is the #1 worst movie as ranked by viewers. This isn't a surprise, as I knew it was always a contender. #2? Hobgoblins! Whoa! Damn I'm good! Anyway, it turns out that Manos was shot on a spring-wound camera that could only take 30 seconds of film at a time. (Hence dissolving to the same scene.) There was no sound recording equipment, and the voices had to be dubbed in later by fewer actors than they had on set. The lead actress broke her leg the day before shooting began and they had to write her out of the script and into that non-sequiter sequence with the cops and the young lovers in the car. Torgo was a SATYR! Those knees were complicated props meant to be cloven hooves, but the director never shot low enough to actually see them! (Except in two scenes...where they're blocked by Crow's head.
JSnackpants: "I am just fearful that JACON will become the AWA south or a AMV only event... *shrug*."
I'm a little curious what you meant by that. That they're both attracting the exact same crowd of guests/attendees? Just curious.
treeprincess: I get the feeling that there's a little ring of all the goth / parody goth artists at SLG, as they all seem to know each other and do cameos in one another's books. In addition to Roman and Johnen, there's the girl who does Gloomcookie,(Not really all that good...although the second story in the first issue was brilliant. Hasn't gotten back to that level since, though.) and someone called Xai? I don't really find Lenore all that great. The best bits are the ones he did in the "Stuff concerning me" sections. "Caffeine and ambition?" The movie was funny, though.
Well that took longer than I thought. If I didn't reply to something directed to me, it's cause I didn't see it. Sorry.
On another topic, please, please no one ever let OUR little hobby get to this point: http://www.cosplayscandal.com/ChodaBoy/Welcome/welcome.html The sheer level of obsessive hatred and pissyness is palpable. If I ever do anything this vindictive and petty you have my permission to shoot me.
Finally, as promised two days ago...With the upcoming release of the animated version of Otomo's "Metropolis" manga, based on the 1926 film, I thought I should get around to watching the DVD copy of the original I've had sitting around for months. When I picked it up for six bucks at a Walmart, that was the first time my eyes were opened to the possibility of finding great classic films for next to nothing now that some of the shine has started to come off of the DVD market. Especially, hunt for your old favorites with new added bits in the discount bins at Tower or Suncoast for real deals, while everyone else shells out 30$ for a super-extra detailed version of Phantom Menace, etc.
Anyway, being a 1926 release, it's a black and white silent film (musical score is added, but no voices). Despite this, I found it fabulously entertaining and remarkably forward-looking. The special effects may seem laughable in a few areas compared to today's films (enormous pan shots of obviously miniature cityscapes with barnstormer planes flying around them on wires, and people sort of "bouncing" away from exploding machinery on hidden bungiees) but most of the effects hold up very well. The basic story takes place in a society where the worker class is in charge of running enormous machines far under ground at a near-constant rate for the benefit of the city's founders, and the founders' descendants. They (the founders) live in the lap of luxury in enormous high-rises. One of the founders' sons (Freder) becomes concerned with his "brothers'" toil in the deep after witnessing an industrial accident. Later investigation leads him to a church in the catacombs headed by a beautiful young woman (Maria) whose placating words and hope for the future keep the restless workers from revolting. Meanwhile, Rotwang, a cyborg inventor, has created a robotic worker with which to replace the error-laden human workers. This is the robot always featured in movie posters, history books, and even (recently) action figures. While selling the idea to the city leader, the leader finds out about the catacomb church. Attempting to kill two birds with one stone, he has the girl captured and replaced with the re-worked robot. The robot is told to incite the workers to revolt, giving the city leader an excuse to slaughter them all by opening the dam and flooding the subterranian living quarters. (Shades of Future Boy Conan?) The workforce could then be repopulated with robots. All hell breaks loose. I was really surprised by how good the film was. Early silent actors were much better at portraying emotion clearly through actions and expression instead of dialouge (Keanu would have died a pauper) and the overall quality of the acting is very high. The robot itself was something of a disappointment, as, from what I could tell, the made-up figure could barely move without dislodging some part of the complicated costume. It only has two scenes (outside of its disguise as Maria). One where it stands up and takes a step, and the other where it is entirely stationary. The best part was easily the acting of Brigitte Helm when portraying the robot disguised as Maria. She practically seethed evil in the scenes of inciting the workers and reveling in the resulting destruction. Most amusing, and perhaps disconcerting, is the differences in film ideals between now and then. Apparently actors with pretty-boy faces were in vouge and, in addition, used to wear white makeup to achieve better visibility on the screen. Our hero (actor Gustav Frolich) is BLINDINGLY pasty-white and ends up looking rather amusingly androgenyous with the addition of a period haircut. (See Eddy Izzard in "Shadow of the Vampire".) He could have given some of the fayer bishounen characters a run for their money. In a closeup with Brigitte I did a double-take thinking their hair-colors had switched before realizing I had mistaken them for each other. (Oh, being a German film, the text frames of dialoge are converted to english, but signs and labels on screen are all in German.) All in all a very good film, and I can see why it's still well known. Many of the core ideas are remarkably communist at their center (a movement whose basic ideas, I believe, were being formulated at the time) and there's one character who, ironically, looks a bit like Castro. Highly reccommended to anyone who feels they could sit through a two-hour silent film.
Apparently 704 people care who I am. But not all of them care what I write. :)
Whew. Next time, a rant on six digits: CoCD20. - ...and when the radical priest 'come to get me released, we's all on the cover of Newsweek. 2002-01-05 12:28:23 Dang it, I keep doing this. There was one comment I really wanted to address, and by the end of last post it had completely slipped my mind. In looking back at my post two before the last one, I realized that the way I worded it made it look as though I was disparaging the fact my friend was going to law school. Nothing is further from the truth, and there are completely unrelated reasons why her visit depressed me. I'll just leave it at that.
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"Your mother ate my dog!" "Not all of him...."
2002-01-05 00:44:03
Tonight's inspiration brought to you by.....Guinness! The Beer that eats like a meal.
I've already said once how much I like the Lord of the Rings, but now that everyone's seen it I feel that I can talk a bit more freely about it than last time without worrying about ruining it for anyone. Here, then, are a few more comments, in no particular order.
I think it's interesting that, at their core, the only real debates on the quality of the movie are between those who thought the movie was great, and those who thought the movie was just merely good. No one really seems to think it was awful, with bare exceptions. Out of over a hundred reviews on rottentomatoes (www.rottentomatoes.com) only five are negative.
Of those, three are fairly legitimate. One of the remaining (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/click/movie-1108476/reviews.php?critic=columns&sortby=default&page=4&rid=274050) is just sort of inarguable. "Watching the film for three hours is like hearing Wagner's Ring Cycle remastered by a genius of the kazoo--the concepts remain grandiose, but the music gets rather oopsy." and "The movie is visually spectacular, a feast from the kitsch kitchen." and "In this masculine wonderland..."Lord" could well be the ultimate dream of Dolph Lundgren, jammed with incredibly hairy males, plus such monsters as fabulous octopus and computerized leaping hordes of ghouls." I can't argue with this review, 'cause I can't even tell what he's criticizing and what he's complimenting.
The final one (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/click/movie-1108476/reviews.php?critic=columns&sortby=default&page=9&rid=274036)is just an idiot, though. Everyone is permitted their opinion, but look at this:
"Jackson sacrifices exploring his meatier characters to roll out new ones, even though they do nothing for the story and most likely were included strictly for marketing purposes."
Zuh? What? But wait, look at the concluding paragraph:
"The rest of us will tire of the proceedings quickly and certianly won't stick around mentally for the duration of the ride, regardless of how many sequels it spans."
Uh DUUHHHH! TWO!!
Had to get all that off my chest. Now, for the other random comments.
SFX: Bad. There were only two slip-ups in the entire film that I spotted in regards to special effects. In the very beginning, when Sam and Frodo are tromping through the corn rows, right before Mary and Pippin run into them, there is a full shot of Sam where the prosthetic feet look quite fake. Second, in one of the pan shots passing over the Orcs charging through the woods, in the bottom right corner of the screen, a handful are proceeding down a shallow stone staircase...except it's fairly plain that the actors are having some trouble as the "charging" orcs are taking one step at a time and peering down at their feet. (Yes, I'm well aware these are nit-picks. So are the other "bad" points.)
Actors: Bad. Galadriel suffers in this film, not in that the actress was bad, but in that the actress was less perfect than the other actors. To be fair, she must have had the most aquard lines of the entire film to work with, and I really think that the photonegative scene was vastly overdoing it. Legolas comes off as a bit of a twit in his first scene. Gimli was sort of a sticking point for me. It's like he was in just enough scenes and had just enough lines to be underplayed. I'm hoping that some of the edited 40 min from the film contained a good bit of character development for him. Otherwise his character could be described entirely by the word "short"...of stature, temper, and patience. Also, I think the 3/4 helm was a bad decision on the costumer's part, as it practically hid him from view (the audience was expecting to identify the dwarf by his volumnous beard. When the other hobbits greet Frodo after his illness, there's a point of momentary aquardness where someone mis-stepped and caught the other at the wrong angle.
Props: Bad. I didn't like Saurumon's staff. It looked like an industrial tool. Second, as cool as it may have been for Legolas to insert his arrows manually, it is, essentially, silly. Third, I never really had a clear image of Sauron in my head, but it definitely didn't entail that great honking piece of metal that was his inarticulated helmet. Really didn't like the look of that.
Good: Every other fucking thing in this film. The lines above describe every instance I felt didn't reach absolute perfection, and thus paled in comparison to every other perfect thing in the film. The fact that there are so few of them in a three-hour film speaks for itself. The ten-minute intro was, perhaps, even more perfect than the rest of the film.
Dreading: Race discussions on the film. Within three weeks, some nutjob is going to point out that the only "black" (dark-skinned) characters in the film are the Orcs. God knows where that will lead. Second, feminist discussions of the film. (And you know I mean the far-end ones.) Tolkien had mostly only a few token (heh) secondary female characters in the books. Expect beratings for the encouragement of such "chauvanistic fantastic power trips."
I like LotR so much that I decided to check out another piece of Peter Jackson's work that had come highly recommended from the local comic shop. 1992's "Dead Alive" (Aka. "Braindead") was also directed and partially written by Peter Jackson.
Oh my God.
Skip the next paragraph if you find horror films "icky."
You know, the recommending friend called this the goriest horror film he'd ever seen, so I was watching closely. Until the last 25 min or so, I could come up with some other contenders, but the end blew them all away. The hero fights about thirty zombies with the buisness end of a lawnmower. For about ten minutes. Until this film, I thought "The Reanimator" was the only film that featured an attack by the villan's lower intestines. (Reanimator has it on the ropes in quotability, though.) I also thought that "Dusk till Dawn (I)" had the humaniod enemies with the squishiest bodies. These could suffer injury from a damp sponge. Needless to say, it was sheer brilliance. Hilarious in it's hyperbole. It's not a great horror film, but a great gore-fest and gallows comedy. (The scene with the zombie baby in the park was hilarious.) The whole thing felt more like a soggy Far Side strip than a movie. I had been ignoring this film for years because it's cover just screamed "we spent more on the cover art than on the movie" to me, but I was wrong. I even found out where that line "I kick ass for Jesus!" came from.
The point of all this? Peter Jackson has proven here his incredible talent in what must be the furthest separated concepts and genres in film: Fantasy epic and splattergore. This is the sort of thing I aspire to in my work, including my AMVs. (Quite) a while back, some creators had settled into comfortable ruts with their work, being known for primarily for the genre they excelled in, like drama or comedy videos. I found it distressing that a lot of the audience could identify the makers of brand new videos from just the first few clips, due to either subject or style. This removes so much from the simple viewing of the videos (IMHO) in that it ruins the "surprise" and dulls the genius of the work, as it is a great (for example) comedy video just incrementally better than the last one you churned out. Imagine dedicating your life to the construction of forks, until one day you produce the perfect fork...and your audience has left because all the other forks were good enough for them...and you're the only one who could pick out the perfect one anyway. That's why I try to keep jumping around in my style, subject, and source. No, I never get to perfect anything, but I'm trying my hand at absolutely everything I like, and I never get bored. I was gratified at the surprise of friends when they had no idea who had done the GR video on the pro tape. It means I'm still unpredictable.
Wow. I had a list of topics to cover here, and I've gotten through two of them. I'll pick it up tomorrow with a review of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" (no...the original one) and some replies to other people's journals.
In the meantime, go here: http://www.brunching.com/features/geekhierarchy.html
Perhaps the most accurate pigeonholing of geekdom social stratas I've ever seen. (Don't misread the key. It says "Considers themselves" not "Are actually".) -
What manner of man are you that you can create fire without flint or steel?
2002-01-02 23:11:39
Gahh. Forgot the actual reason I replied to Greduck and shaister. For further commentary on MST3King "Lord of the Rings" see the following:
http://www.flickfilosopher.com/flickfilos/archive/014q/lordringsfellowship.shtml
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God made the world in six days, and rested on the seventh / according to the contract, it should've been the eleventh / but the masons all got angry and the carpenters wouldn't work / and they had to hire an Irishman to fill it up with dirt.
2002-01-02 23:07:25
Hey all, guess who's back from vacation!
...
Uh, no.
No, not him either.
Well, I don't really know her, so I'm not sure when she's getting back.
At any rate, a happy new year to everyone out there. Here's hoping that 2002, the year of dyslexia, is better than the official "first year of the new millennium" was.
My Christmas and associated conglomorate holiday was fairly good, but had a few ups and downs. As I am attending college in the same general area where I attended high school and undergrad, all my out-of-state friends came trundling into town for the requisite visit with their parents, and planned the "reunion get-togethers" at EXACTLY THE SAME TIME. You think choosing who to hang out with is tough, try it when you've got only one opportunity for two friends you haven't seen in a year and a half, and you have to choose between them since their parties are across town from each other. It all worked out in the end due to a couple happy coincidences, so no real worries.
Christmas is also a good time for self re-evaluation, and these two helped me immensely in that area. One was fresh in from California, making well over a 100K a year at computer programming, and he's shacking up with one of the most interesting women I've ever met. He's a year younger than me, and I'm still in school. When I finally get out I still won't be able to pull in the $$$ he makes. *Sigh* On the other hand, he's gotten himself a bad case of tendonitis. Make no mistake, he's still one of my best friends in the world, but it's kinda depressing when a good friend outdoes you in so many ways. The other friend was in from law school in Florida, and...well the less said on that matter the better. Take for granted that this increased me well over my holiday quotient of depression. And the eternal optimists wonder where holiday depression comes from.
Got a lot of reading done while I was home with the parents. Finished off the Decameron after much slogging. I suppose it was OK, but what it reminded me most of was this "101 insults" book I picked up like 11 years ago at a book sale. I figured it would be good for a laugh or two, but the entire book was just a variation on about a dozen different rude comments. The Decameron is 101 (counting the framing story) mostly ribald tales something like the bawdier sections of The Canterbury Tales from back in the middle ages. Some are fairly clever, but I swear there must have been seven different stories wherein an indiscreet lover gets locked in a chest. Perhaps most amusing were the sheer number of euphemisms ("caging the nightengale" "passing milestones" "putting the devil in his hell," etc.).
Also read "Mythion Improbable," a book that I picked up out of loyalty to a series I loved when I was much younger, Robert Asprin's old "Myth" institution. Either he's completely lost the ability to tell these particular stories, or the old books weren't nearly as good as I remember them. This one resembled something one might get from Piers Anthony, perhaps my least favorite author ever. (I cannot understand the popularity of his Xanth series, a, what, thirty?, book series supported entirely by puns.) My back-of-the-napkin way of determining the relative worth of a bookstore is the "Asimov/Anthony ratio". The larger the better, but I'm happy if it can manage a ratio of better than 1/3. (I had a similar ratio for horror books, but the content of individual stores ranges so widely that it never really proved useful.)
Cleaned up on DVDs under the tree and in holiday sales. Walked away with five, count them, FIVE schlocky horror flicks, including the original "Night of the Living Dead," the original "House on Haunted Hill" (double packaged no less!), a contribution from Ed Wood, and the puzzling "Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things". (But why ever not? Perhaps I should watch this educational film to find out.) Also, some Monty Python (to go with the chocolate dead parrots and "Mr. Grumby's chocolate brains" an aunt sent), three animated films(only one of which was anime), and Pi. Mmmmmm Pi.
(At this point I would have included a link to that freak-tastic "Save your fork, there's PIE!" postcard from Penny-Arcade, but I can't find the effing thing. Someone help?)
Naturally, all this reveling has put me behind on my self-imposed deadline to get the contest rules for next AWA up just after the new year. Gotta get to work on that now.
EK: Glad to hear that your drawing hand is healing up. (Punching the monitor probably won't help though.) But still, AAAAHHHHHH! No fair remastering Ecstacy when I finally got "Land of Confusion" done and stealing all my (snark) glory! :) (LoC really needs to be remastered too, lousy copy of final episode...)
(Going back further to catch up on lost time)
>Hur. Brett and I just discovered you can sing "Hubba Hubba Zoot Zoot"
>to "I Can't Stand The Rain" by Ann Peebles. Is that funny or what?
I always found it amusing that you can sing "The Wreck of the Hesperus" to the theme from Gilligan's Island.
*crickets*
shaister & Greduck: Gotta agree on all the MST3K points. As far as I'm concerned, both earned their stripes on the show. Joel, for making it through "Manos: The Hands of Fate" (Oh my god...my pants are on fire.) and Mike, for making it through the only other film of comperable badness ever produced: "Hobgoblins" (Help! I'm being attacked by a hand puppet!) No one was ever able to fill Dr. Forrester's shoes, though.
JOURNAL: MCWagner (Matthew Wagner)
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