Life on Queen Street

One comment on Canadian politics before I get on with the geekery: Bwahah - also, does that first point mean that Mulroney basically did everything Stevie Cameron said he did and, if so, did he perjure himself when he sued her?

More for electriclandthan anyone else: long interview with Jeff Smith about Bone, making & marketing Bone, his work on Shazam for DC and his new series Rasl. Smith gets extra points for proving his cool with the Jaws quote at the end.

( Why No One Is Reading Comics Anymore (or where are the next generation of comic book fans going to come from? Anywhere? Anyone? Hello? Bueller? )

*phew*

I needed to get that out of my system apparently. I think I'm suffering some sort of geek ennui: the other week it was the Speed Racer trailer, this week I find myself not caring about the new Indiana Jones movie, I Am Legend, an A-Team movie, a new Conan movie and the new Dark Knight trailer. When Christian Bale in the Batsuit does nothing for a girl, it's a sign.

After my hissy fit about Speed Racer, I went on to write:

I think the point at which I decided the American film industry needed
to be an overhaul of Carthagean proportions was when I realized they'd
made an Alvin and the Chipmunks movie. And while SR doesn't offend on
quite that level, who the fuck cares? He-Man movie? Ditto. They're
fucking making GI goddamn Joe, for Chrissakes - with that
self-satisfied arrogant prick who played Darth Maul as Snake Eyes. I
get that there were a lot of people who loved Transformers,
personally, I think anyone who was actually old enough to watch
Transformers on channel 29 afterschool during the 80s and still gives
a fuck should seek help.

Where are the Aliens? Where are the Terminators? Fuck even Star Trek
and Star Wars were new ideas (or new spins on old ideas) once. The
entire US film industry is so focused on the summer blockbuster and
the holiday Oscar movie, anyone wanting to do something new
practically needs to go to Japan, film it there and then wait for some
Hollywood dickhead to offer for the US rights.

Giving Michael Bay 300 million to make what was essentially a
computer-generated cartoon of a cartoon some Korean made a buck
sixty-five an hour to draw 25 years ago is probably the most egregious
example of the utterly soulless and creatively bankrupt shithole that
Hollywood has become. And I like Hollywood movies - big, dumb and
stupid: check, check and check. Love'em. Sweaty summer nights spent in
cool, air-conditioned movies theatres? Close to the most fun you can
legally have in a dark room full of two or three hundred strangers.
But they're killing it, killing it with a small-minded, timorous
business model that rewards artificial benchmarks (opening weekend
gross? Means jack in terms of profitability) and floods the market
with shit, then whines that they can only afford to make movies that
appeal to the widest possible audience because their last three
remake/sequel/adaptation pieces of shit tanked. Meanwhile, rising
ticket prices inflate box office reports, while hiding the fact that
the theatre-going audience had shrunk every single year for the last
20 years.

And that was before I read about Singleton directing The A-Team or the plot details for Terminator 4. It's like for every Battlestar Galactica (The Lord of the Rings) we're being force-fed six Bionic Womans and a Live Free or Die Hard and it's about driving me batshit. I don't want to see another movie with Indiana Jones. You know when I wanted another Indy movie? 1988. I didn't then and don't now want to watch a 60-year-old Indy bitch about his arthritis from being dragged under the truck that time. I don't want to know ( spoilerish maybe ) The first three movies were great but their time has past - how about someone at Lucasfilm/Dreamworks use their big, billion-dollar brains and come up with a brand new idea for a movie?

Frankly, everyone involved with the A-Team should be nuked from orbit just so we can be sure that we got them all and GI Joe is just so fucking sad it makes Transformers look like an act of creative genius. At least, with CGI, you can make an argument that a film would create something new on screen we hadn't seen before. Has there ever, in the history of Hollywood, been a shortage of stupid war movies? Meanwhile, I'm tired of adaptations that "simplify" (meaning to excise or rewrite for the perpetually bewildered everything that made the story interesting in the first place) the source material for the movies as if film audiences were, by virtue of watching rather than reading, stupid or it is impossible to convey complex ideas cinematically. To which I respond a) fuck you and b) go see Atonement, Ken Branagh's Hamlet, or Jackson's The Lord of the Rings and buy a fucking clue. But skip The Golden Compass for God's sake.*

As for The Dark Knight, it would be easier if I didn't think the batcycle do-hickey looked silly. It just looks... dumb. Batman should be cool and cool is hard to pull off IRL environs, what with the ears and the cape. The ears and the cape and the Big Wheels-esque bike remind me of a five year old on Hallowe'en. It's not a very cool mental image.

Things I do care about: the first stills from the upcoming Hellboy movie (also an adaptation but at least a fresher one - and Guillermo del Toro has a thing or two to teach about complexity and film (Pan's Labyrinth)) are out and they look cool.

There are also some character shots from Greg Rucka's graphic novel Whiteout on Newsarama. I'm not so sure about this one. While I would love to see a film version of Rucka's Queen & Country series, I hear they've messed with the plot and, to be honest, Kate Beckinsale looks too refined and too English to play Carrie Stetko, a scruffy US deputy marshall who is banished to Antarctica for failing to play well with others.

And, for shits and giggles, the best unfinished Batman story ever from the guys at PVP.

Finally, I am: ( some Chow Yun-Fat character I've never heard of )

( and my daemon is a German Sheperd )

And from what I've seen of Pullman's universe, will probably enjoy a lovely career in the service or law enforcement industries. Urgh, made of fail, Pullman, made of fail.

*evilgrin

If anyone still thinks we should refer to the anti-abortion movement as "pro-life," this event next week should change their mind. The forced-pregnancy movement is holding a four-day rally to honor Paul Hill, who murdered abortion provider Dr. John Britton and his clinic escort in Pensacola, Florida in 1994.

Tell me that this is a joke. This goes beyond "get off my side" all the way to "get off my planet".

Gee, look what I found on CafePress.com: Neo-Nazi t-shirts!

Well, now we all know where I won't be shopping any longer.* Fuck all you bastards - my dollars don't support racists - no matter how obliquely.


ETA - Apparently, if you want something done at CafePress, complain to someone with a store on their site about all the dollars you won't be able to spend with them! The NeoNazis will have to get their t-shirts elsewhere for the time being!

And I guess I really do have to order from the Irish Country shop now. Oh, the hardship!

*Especially since I notified CafePress about the content of this store a month ago.