I have no idea what Megagamerz is all about. Well, almost no idea. I’m pretty sure that Jon Rosenberg, of Goats fame, is in one way or another responsible for this supposed brainchild of Diablo the Satanic Chicken.
Actually, I suspect that the whole point is to be about nothing at all. In that, it reminds me strongly of Jerkcity, only with snappier writing, more Dada, and substantially less homoeroticism.
I started collecting the Invader Zim DVDs pretty much from the moment their release began, glad to get my hands on high-quality copies of the episodes at last. (I make it a point to obtain legitimate copies of things I’ve bootlegged, like the Battlestar Galactica miniseries, whenever I can, if only to do my little bit to undermine what’s left of the MPAA’s credibility.)
Naturally, the inevitable happened: after the individual volumes had finished trickling into the market, a boxed set appeared, complete with Special Features disc, GIR figurine, and eye-catching case modeled on Zim’s house. It figures. Publishers seem never to miss a chance to screw their most loyal customers. (“You pre-ordered so you’d get it the instant it came out? Hah! Now you get to buy it again, just to get your grubby fanboy mitts on the additional goodies! Sucker!”)
Except that AnimeWorks, bless their delicious candy-like hearts, have gone about it just a bit differently. They’ve made a package containing only the extra items — bonus disc, figurine, and case — available for a fraction of the price of the full set. Slot your previously-acquired Volumes 1-3 into the empty space in the case, and it’s like you bought the boxed set to start with.
As GIR would say with a tear in his baby blues, “I love this publisher.”
Sometime in the late 1990s, shortly after going on a ten-album buying spree whose haul proved spectacularly unsatisfying, I temporarily gave up on the music industry. I resigned myself to the idea that I would never again buy an album that I actually loved.
Lately, something has changed for the better. Maybe the specter of internet piracy has scared the industry into thinking that it should actually try, rather than just focus on moving product. Maybe my tastes have changed. Maybe I’ve just gotten smarter about where I choose to go looking.
Mike Doughty’s Haughty Melodic, released at the beginning of May, was a good start. Recently I’ve gone on a bit of a spree again, and the results have been much more gratifying this time around. The biggest gem in this haul is Kathleen Edwards, a plucky Canadian singer-songwriter who’s apparently categorized as “Alternative Country”. Her sweet-revenge single, “Back to Me”, was punchy enough to sell me on the album of the same title, her sophomore effort, after I’d heard it just once on the radio.
She’s got a simultaneously spare and unsparing way with a pen, and a smoky voice with which to expertly deliver the payload she’s crafted. As for the things she can do with a steel guitar, well, let’s just say that I could listen to the bridges of some of her songs for hours, and have.
Do you think that I’ve changed
I swear I never tried
Memory is a terrible thing
When you use it right
— “Away”
The reasons why it is good to have friends like Paul and Liz are almost too numerous to count. (A place near the top of that list, however, must under any circumstances be reserved for Paul’s pulled pork.)
However, the reason for today — yesterday, really, but I’m slow — is that they know about, and actually attend, cool stuff that’s happening locally. Case in point: Cinema San Pedro. They’ve been talking about it since at least last year, but last night was the first time I mustered the energy to go. As with so many things, I found myself wishing that I’d done it sooner.
The venue is a hoot, for starters. With the consent of the restaurants fronting it, the good folk of the Camera Cinemas block off a section of San Pedro Street, parking a truck with a projection screen on one end, and turning the rest into open-air seating. Plastic garden chairs are made available to all, although one can opt to bring one’s own blanket and forego the chairs entirely.
The feature was 1950’s All About Eve. There are movies that age gracelessly, proving themselves too tighly tied to the time of their production. Others, like Casablanca, are timeless — the ones you hear about for years before you finally watch them, have realization dawn upon you, and say, “Oh. So that’s what all the fuss was about.”
All About Eve is one of the latter. It’s catty, crackling, melodramatic fun. There isn’t a bad performance in the lot, but George Sanders deserves special mention as the recipient of the Coiled Spring Award for Best Delayed Payoff.
Notes to self:
Plants absorb carbon dioxide and emit oxygen. Most humans do the reverse, inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide. Hayao Miyazaki breathes in ink and breathes out story.
I enjoyed Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, but Howl’s Moving Castle is the most enchanting of his works I’ve seen to date. To watch it is to quickly find oneself lost in a world where wonder lurks behind every corner and magic may hide in the most mundane of objects. That’s all I’m going to say about the movie itself, aside from “See it.”
I have a fantasy. In it, the major studios, having razed their hand-drawn animation divisions to the ground in the foolish belief that technology trumps the ability to tell an engaging story regardless of medium, realize the depth of their mistake and approach Miyazaki, cap in hand, to plead for his help in reaquainting themselves with the arts they so shortsightedly threw away. In the fantasy, he makes them crawl for it — although from everything I’ve heard about the man, he’s far too kind to engage in such vengefulness, even when it’s deserved.
I don’t know if it’s fair to say that Batman Begins is better than it had any right to be, but it’s certainly better than it had any need to be.
I mean, it’s a summer actioner, right? Start with a mixture of fight sequences and car chases, leaven with formulaic macho dialogue, season with explosions as needed, bake briefly — halfway is fine — and you’re done. Motivation, character development, and similar frills are a waste of energy and effort.
Except that Christopher Nolan seems not to have gotten the memo.
And thank God for that, because his apparent ignorance of the way these things are supposed to be done has led him to create a movie that doesn’t for a moment assume that it can get by on its good looks alone. The dialogue, co-written by Nolan, crackles with intelligence and wit, and the actors attack it with both relish and considerable skill. But it’s the expert fit and finish of the story overall that really dazzle.
Thomas Wayne gets maybe five minutes of screen time — but under Nolan’s sure hand, that’s all he needs to establish himself as the cornerstone of his young son’s world. You have absolutely no difficulty understanding how the murder of such a man could shatter that world, and provide motivation enough to fuel a lifelong crusade.
Michael Caine has done his share of absolutely awful movies, but he nearly makes amends for all of them with his performance here. It may or may not be worthy of a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, but a nomination certainly wouldn’t go amiss. His Alfred the Butler is Bruce Wayne’s mooring to the rest of humanity, a source of warmth and humor for a man who sometimes seems at risk of forgetting his own.
Even the movie’s villains are a cut — make that two — above average. There’s none of the usual “observe as I revel in the delicious purity of my own evil” scenery-chewing nonsense. Tom Wilkinson is perfectly credible as the cynical, pragmatic crime boss, while Cillian Murphy is creepily detached as the man of science whose curiosity has completely eclipsed his decency.
This is, when all is said and done, that most hallowed and satisfying of comic-book forms: the origin story. That being the case, it almost can’t help but keep you waiting a while before giving you your first glimpse of Batman unleashing himself upon Gotham’s underworld in his full glory. But that’s just fine. Actually, it’s better than fine. It’s grand. Because while you were waiting, you watched Bruce Wayne forge himself into a living weapon — edged with fury, tempered with mercy — and are thus in a position to understand on just how many levels his opponents are hopelessly outmatched. When he finally attacks, he’s actually frightening, and you feel just the tiniest stir of pity for his prey.
Thomas Wayne wouldn’t want it any other way. Bless Chris Nolan for understanding that, and for using that understanding to make one hell of a movie.
Dirk took me to see The Unsane, with Made Out Of Babies and Blackfire Revelation opening, at The Blank Club tonight.
Had you recieved a prescription for 100-plus decibels of fat, crunchy noise, this would have been the place to get it filled. You could feel it thrumming across your chest, the palms of your hands, and the soles of your feet. There are times when that sort of sonic assault is exactly the cure for what ails you, and tonight was one of them. All in all, a damn fine show.
Season two of Battlestar Galactica will premiere in the U.S. on July 15th. I’m bringing the pizza.
The ranks of those who both (a) care passionately about games and (b) can write coherently — let alone thoughtfully and engagingly — about them is painfully, excruciatingly small. (Probably in no small part because it’s such a brutally unrewarding enterprise: your reward for calling a spade a spade is typically a giant steaming heap of angry e-mail, liberally sprinkled with exclamation marks and precious little in the way of intelligence, from a horde of subliterate fanboys apparently lacking anything better to do.)
So it’s doubly heartening to see that the guys over at Pointless Waste of Time are willing to fight the good fight regardless.
In the course of discussing Warren Ellis’s superb Planetary, specifically the subplot involving Project Artemis, Dirk mentioned Man Conquers Space, a work-in-progress pseudodocumentary that dares to imagine how events might have unfolded had some of the early 1950s’ starrier-eyed visions of near-future space travel come to pass.
Watching the trailer literally gave me chills, and filled me with a nostalgia for things that never were. I would beat down more than a few doors to gain access to the final film, whenever it comes into existence.