Another winter storm, another day at CCS...

First day of a real drawing session at the Center for Cartoon Studies, and I'm psyched. I'll finally be seeing what the students do; a few have kept me supplied with copies of their work from last semester with other classes, but given the lecture-oriented nature of last semester's comics history sessions I was responsible for, I really didn't have much access to engaging with their work, which is after all the reason we're all at CCS.

However, I'll be driving to and from in another Tuesday winter storm -- my wife is already on her way to work (a daily commute, and a long one) through this sleet/snow mix. Wish us luck.
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Since Mark Martin is on vacation, I'll ease off the Condi remarks after this morn. A portion of yesterday's post was indeed inspired by Mark's blog posting:

"About halfway through this Santo review you can see where a liberal has yet again portrayed Condi as an aggressive dominatrix. One appearance in knee-high fuck-me boots (which were specifically worn to convey strength to a bunch of mysoginistic [sic] neanderthal foreigners) and she is pegged as a man-eater for life.... it amazes me how these so-called "progressives" are intimidated and driven to insane fantasies by the reality of a strong woman."

Well, no, it's amazing how male friends will continue to bait male friends in this wacky American culture we've grown up in. If it weren't for Mark's professed affection for Rice, I'd focus elsewhere; I'm neither intimidated nor impressed by Rice. I haven't any fantasies about Rice or cyborg Cheney or anyone else in this Administration; I'm just tired of seeing a single one of them elevated as being in any way honorable, much less admirable, as they continue to lie, lie, lie and fuck about with all our lives, all in the name of professed ideologies about "freedom" and "downsizing government" and "tax breaks" (which have only increased localized tax burdens in all arenas to make up for unfunded federal rules and mandates; it's all a shell game).

The central aspect of "...the reality of a strong woman" regarding all women in Bush's circle, from his mom to Rice to failed Supreme Court Justice nominees Myers, is one of the most fascinating aspects of the Bush partriarchy, another of its implicit hypocrisies: even as the Administration actively erodes women's rights as a matter of principle and policy, Bush is utterly dependent on his circle of powerful women, with their undying fealty and devotion to him and only him. It's sick and compelling and quite a case study -- if only it weren't so central to how completely diseased our country has become. It's not a "strong woman" per se that's so perversely compelling; it's her/their interaction with straw patriarch, the "Mission Accomplished" man-in-the-flight-jacket, will-only-speak-to-hand-picked-'safe'-crowds Bush that invites derision.

So, OK, Mark, I'll quit kidding around about Rice. There's nothing I could possibly write here that would approach the ongoing reality of her true antics, anyway.
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What is infuriating about life as an American today is seeing years of this sociopathic behavior rewarded time and time again, and seeing people I love, respect and admire look up to such behavior as not just proper, but somehow worthy of my respect, too.

Fuck that.

America the Plutocracy has become such a predatory culture, feeding on its own with such alarming ferocity and rapidity, that the ongoing pretence that there is some shred of an American "ideal" left is a nauseating conceit. We are eating our young while claiming otherwise (really: infant mortality rates in the US are increasing annually, in impoverished populations, natch), and our elected leaders actively and blatantly conspire with dangerously out-of-control deregulated business interests. The Federal government is now quite transparently an active broker for such interests, from Halliburton to multiple pharmaceutical and insurance interests; 'outsourcing' has become so prevalent, we now 'outsource' torture and foreign policies (as Rice so visibly spent the weekend and yesterday 'outsourcing' US policies regarding Palestine).

The devastation of Hurricane Katrina laid bare the internal collapse of our once-mighty, once-production-driven "empire" for all the world to see -- it's just the majority of Americans who refuse to see it. We're a weak, imploding consumer culture lionizing the very forces that are bleeding us dry, and we not only can no longer "take care of our own" as we once could (as evidenced by the speedy coordinated federal and state government responses to the major natural calamities of the late 1930s-'60s), we now espouse and/or embrace self-serving ideologues who pretend we can while they, like a termite infestation, aggressively excavate and hollow out what little is left of prior generations's hard work.

I've heard and read this morning that "health care" is paramount in tonight's Bush "State of the Nation" speech (heard & read from multiple sources, from the local station we listen to for weather, WTSA in Brattleboro, to the three public radio stations we pick up -- yes, HB3, I do listen to lots of public radio, in part because we live between three NPR stations that add up to a picture of the weather Marj and I drive through, but that aside, my alternatives in southern VT are pretty dire otherwise: it's now entirely corporate-programmed radio with almost no local content). This would be amusing if it weren't so fucking perverse: this Administration has done more to unravel health care than any in memory, reducing government to being a broker and muscle for pharmaceutical corporations and interests, with this past month's Medicare disaster (which again the states have been left to deal with, including massive emergency funding) the most recent and most visible result. This president and administration's steadfast devotion to inflating corporate profits on the backs of the American consum-- oh, excuse me, citizens (including that announced this weekend, very quietly, by Exxon Mobile, the highest record profits in corporate history anywhere at anytime -- out of our pockets!!!) is nowhere more evident than the government policies in place that don't even allow the federal government to negotiate for better pharmaceutical pricing. "The American way of life is not for sale!" Poppa Bush, when President himself, declared; but it is and has been and Poppa and Son Bush have been the most transparent about selling it to the highest corporate bidder/lobbyists, under the lie of "free market" strategies and "ownership society" where only the wealthy will be left standing.

Heaven help us if the dreaded pandemics -- any pandemic! -- indeed arrives. The scenario of, say, Los Angeles's monolithic homeless community being ravaged by any infection inevitably spilling into the rest of the community, however affluent, just doesn't seem to carry any weight. If the wealthy think class divisions will be respected by virulent disease outbreaks, welcome to the bubble Bush and his cronies live in.

I say, who needs pandemics? I've seen with my own eyes how lack of affordable health care impacted daily on coworkers at First Run Video and impacts daily on my own now-adult kids and their circles of friends. Scraping by on low-paying local jobs, when available, and unable to afford any form of dental or health care (except that my ex-wife and I can spring for, in the case of our kids), this upcoming generation don't have any concept of preemptive or prevention health care. They can't afford it, it isn't available to them, and any safety net they had until age 19 is yanked away so quickly it leaves them utterly vulnerable and seeing no alternatives. They're afraid to visit the doctor when they have a genuine emergency, and even then they're postponing any care until they're on the floor and the ambulences are on the way. Seeing states like Massachusetts proposing mandatory health care policies -- with punitive consequences for those who don't buy in -- misses the point entirely: these kids can't fucking afford health care in a system where costs have doubled and tripled and health insurance premiums escalate as services dissolve. If states legally exact health insurance, however meager, from the pathetic weekly paychecks even the hardest-working young adults and working poor struggle to bring home (some juggling two or more jobs and still unable to make ends meet) amid the climbing rents and heating costs, disaster (personal and societal) must follow. At that point, too, we have the ultimate merger of corporate insurance and government, with the government acting as enforcement for collections: the corporate rule almost complete.

Black market economies already thrive in the good ol' U.S. of A., and I'm not talking about meth labs. Among the dirtiest secrets of the current Administration that peeks its head into light of day whenever Bush feebly addresses the immigration issue is how increasingly dependent the New Gilded Age Rich are upon migrant labor to tend to their needs, how firmly portions of the corporate agricultural market depends on migrant work populations living in slave-like conditions -- it keeps strawberries affordable, for instance. As real estate, home prices and rentals spiral into the stratosphere, affordable housing isn't just an issue for the poor: how do the rich keep their maids, gardeners, servants in reach, with the lowest-pay possible (as bussing from greater and greater distances becomes not only more expensive, but less possible as once-subsidized trains and bus routes are discontinued)? These are "the jobs working Americans don't want to fill," the soft-shoe done around the reality of jobs that pay so little they're below the radar. Ah, the perils of the New Gilded Age.

As this continues, once-reliable economic barometers cease to function. "Median income" and "job creation" figures succumbed during this Administration's watch to meaninglessness: when CEOs are yielding (I can't use the word "earning" here) 400 times what their average laborer earns, and minimum wage (federal and state) is so far below any livable standard that it ceases to mean anything but 'indentured servitude' and guaranteed poverty, "median wage" is meaningless. Averaging minimum wage jobs with what CEOs bring home (not counting, of course, their obscene packages: benefits, stock, parachutes, etc.) tells us nothing about the American economy -- nor do unemployment figures now that millions have fallen off the other end of the unemployment process and are no longer counted at all.

We now have a "Hunger Belt" in America -- with almost all families in that belt with one or more adults in the family working full-time. We now have a working class that cannot afford housing: mobile home gypsies who live in camping areas seasonally and work full-time in those areas they settle in (depending, usually, on employment). We now have more uninsured working families than any time since the Depression, and insurance is only becoming less affordable, as is health care. We now have a cataclysm-scattered population that once lived in the Gulf region left to their own devices, and another hurricane season soon upon us -- even as the present Administration continues to stifle as best they can the science relevent to the escalating weather patterns precipitating such disasters, servicing "the special interests that have obfuscated the topic" (as stated this weekend by James E. Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, on ongoing government attempts to silence his public conversation about global warming).

By mobilizing attention to 'moral' issues, feeding on & fomenting homophobia, hot-button emotional issues like abortion and 'Intelligent Design,' illusory 'assaults on Christian/family values,' and (heaven help us) "The War on Terror" (an undeclared war on nonexistent enemy states -- in fact, a nonsensical 'war' on a tactic, that's not even mobilized against the factions involved in 9/11), the ruling class and corporate culture has neatly kept what passes for a national attention-span on anything but the realities of the imploding empire.

It wouldn't be so completely nauseating if the Bushes and Rices of the world had some facet of imagination at work, but they don't. I mean, c'mon -- both claim surprise at the outcome of the Palestinian elections, that they didn't see it coming that Hamas would displace the long-reigning Fatah movement in the PLO. They still think "bringing democracy" to the Middle East will somehow serve US interests? The Middle East is sick to fucking death of US interests, and this Administration has done more than any before to escalate that (to put it nicely) disenchantment. Even Texan President Lyndon Johnson had the empathic ability to grasp that repressed populaces, once 'liberated,' can hardly be expected to be thankful to their "liberators" when the "liberators" were the oppressors (as Johnson said in so many words to Governor George Wallace amid the civil-rights violence of the '60s, making it clear to Wallace the times were a'changin' and Wallace had better adjust accordingly, one southern politician to another); Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice et al have been idiots in every step of their radical Messianic determination to "reshape" the Middle East, to the collective peril of all.

Only an utter lack of fundamental imagination and empathy can rationalize their ongoing rhetoric and policies, and that promises only three more years of dire consequences for the globe and all Americans.

So, if you're wealthy and rooting for the Bushes and Rices of the world, hey, I can see exactly where you're coming from. More power to you, though you don't need it.

If you're not in that top 5% bracket, assume the position.

We can see you're already somehow enjoying it.

Just don't ask me to join in.
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OK, off to draw, a great relief, no doubt, to all.

I'll stick to lighter and more entertaining fare the rest of the week, or at least try to. But, oh, wait, the Enron case begins...

You'll Thank Me Until January of 2011...

OK, first things first:

This is not a hoax. Time to immediately register your phone numbers (you can register up to three) with the Do Not Call Registry, which will keep your phone(s) off the call list of telemarketers in the US.

This isn't a scam; our home number was registered years ago, and it really does work. Telemarketing calls stopped, period. Thanks to the heads up from amigo John Rovnak, I renewed our placement on the "Do Not Call" list by re-registering our phone number(s) last week, including the two cell numbers (Marge's and my son Dan's) acquired since the old registration in the late 1990s. So I can personally recommend this service, which really does work, and it's easy pie. I recommend the online option: go to www.donotcall.gov (link is provided below), register your number(s); you will then receive one email confirmation per number registered, and once you click on the confirmation link, you're set -- and off telemarketer lists until 2011.

There's a certain urgency to your acting on this today. Starting February 1st, all cell phone numbers will be released to telemarketing companies and you will begin receiving sale calls -- that you will then have to pay for.

This is a new wrinkle from the old telemarketing routine, which was merely intrusive. This could be intrusive and expensive, elevating telemarketing to a new circle of hell.

So, what are you waiting for? To keep telemarketers in their place -- away from you --

register here & now.

If you prefer, you can also just call the National Do Not Call List from your cell phone and/or the numbers you wish to protect; that number is 888-382-1222.
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The last time someone in comics casually tagged me 'liberal' as a pejorative was Gary Groth with a stealth-editorial phone call out of the blue back in the early 1990s; Gary called and the first words out of his mouth after "hello" were, "So, Steve, would you consider yourself a liberal?" Gary pretty much ignored the conversation that followed, since the sole purpose of the call was to snag a sound byte or two to justify Gary's forthcoming Comics Journal editorial in which he villified yours truly and my devotion to horror (read, in Gary-speak: endorsement of violence) as a means of 'elevating' the Fantagraphics Eros line by arguing that the only detrimental effects possibly attributable to sexually-explicit comics might be excessive masturbation.

Well, now, rather than referring to me by name to lovingly jackboot my satiric Santo post of yesterday, the great cartoonist and grand fellow Mark Martin has on his own site instead obliquely referred to/linked to yesterday's "Myrant" post as a "liberal Santo review," all to further service his own devotion to Condi Rice (who is presently dashing around Europe rallying for economic boycotts against Hamas and Palestine because, uh, democracy did not yield the government our "democracy" prefers, which pretty soundly deflates the latest bullshit reason given for our pre-emptive war against Iraq, "to promoted democracy and the march of freedom in the Middle East" -- so, if democracies don't yield the results "we" wish, those democracies are to be undermined with all due speed; same as it ever was). Touche.

But let's get beyond the ongoing fashionable wielding of the "L" word whenever one wishes to caricature an oppositional political view -- or at least apply the correct "L" word.

I consider myself a libertarian by nature, and not Libertarian in party terms. Live and let live; don't foist your will upon me, I shan't foist mine upon you; freedom of expression, in word and deed, is an absolute, until/unless it causes genuine harm to another (thus depriving that person of their liberties).

Webster's New World Dictionary definition:

lib-er-tar-i/an...n. 1 a person who believes in the doctrine of the freedom of the will 2 a person who believes in full individual freedom of thought, expression, and action -- adj of or upholding either of these principles

Ya, that sums it up. You got a problem with that, fine, let's talk.

I might add, however, that I do not consider the legal definition of corporations as individuals anything more than the legal sleight-of-hand it is, a core issue in all that's detoured America from a true democracy to a plutocracy. Corporations are abstractions, business entities that are neither persons nor individuals, nor even collectives of individuals; they are something else, amoeba-like business organisms that shouldn't have the Constitutional protections extended to true citizens (particularly in the current global corporate environment). But that we can get into another time.

The caustic redefinition of "liberal" as a perjorative has become the most knee-jerk abuse of the English language to gain political and moral capital in my lifetime. That this is most often venom fomented by those who claim to be conservatives further confuses the issues into incoherence, as neither word seems to mean any longer what they once meant -- or still, according to all English language dictionaries, still mean. It behooves those who so freely indulge in such slagging to take a hard look at the actual meanings of words. "Liberal" and "Conservative" bely the political realities at work, as do such opportunistic revamps of "Free Market" (particularly given the very real oligarchies these "free markets" function in, our own included) and the like. The careful skirting of loaded terminology of prior generations -- like 'radical,' the term most applicable to the current Administration in all its permutations -- has been a calculated factor, as precise in its way as the euphanisms applied to the concepts and acts that would be abhorred by the masses if they weren't so lovingly redefined as something other than what they are. Thus, 'downsizing,' torture referred to anything but torture (under the current definition the Administration has defended, nothing short of death-inducing agony is "accepted" as being in fact 'torture' -- and even those deaths are being sidestepped), etc.

That much of this has been done under the faux-umbrella of a corporate-sanctioned theocracy -- claiming a devotion to Christian faith clearly at odds with any form of known Christianity -- overtly repositioning 'conservative' as a synonym to 'Christian' and thus demonizing 'liberal' as, by proxy, that which opposes conservatism and Christianity, and you've got as neat a feat of wolves pulling the wool over the sheep-populace for ongoing fleecing as one can imagine.

We now live in an Orwellian realm where political and corporate reinvention of the English language has further eroded meaningful discussion of anything of substance in available (corporate-owned) public arenas.

Which is, of course, why I brought the clear, clean, sanctifying persona of Santo into the fray, handily demonizing Condi Rice with sadistic glee.

This serves the current environment in its way, too, trivializing completely everything I've just said above.

Thus, I have done my duty as a servant of the ruling oligarchs and as a devotee of Santo!

Note on comments: The 'word identifier' has been activated...

Due to blogspam hitting the fan, I've had to activate the 'word identifier' for comment posts. Anyone/anything still goes, as long as you're a human being; anonymous comments, no need to 'join up', etc. is still the law of the land. Just trying to keep the blogspam out. Thanks!

Blessed Incoherence

Santo for President! This from a recent screening of one of the early Santo pix, Santo el Enmascarado de Plata vs. la Invasion de los Marcianos (1966):

"...the Martians, who claim to come from a world much more civilized than our own and whose scientific advancements far surpass the Earth by more than 500 years, nonetheless make the same fatal error of which they accuse us, attempting to impose brotherhood through fear and force, forgetting that violence only promotes destruction and hate."

Why can't we get that writer into a key position of power in place of Alberto Gonzalez, Rumsfeld, or Condi Rice? Huh? Why can't we?

I've been watching so many Mexican monster vs. wrestler movies that I actually dreamed one the other night.

In what I can recall, a Santo surrogate named Pecador ("sinner") was trying to keep an outsized nine-legged spider from removing his mask (the removal of the mask has castration-like importance in the Santo films), turning the tables by pulling off six of the spider's nine legs before answering a call on his Pecador phone (which he pulled out of a handy wall-mounted fake stone cabinet) and telling me to pluck off the other three arachnid legs while he went and picked up our lunch. As I tried to remove the first leg, bracing my foot against the squirming (fake) spider torso, a TV set popped on with a news story about Pecador removing the dry cask nuclear waste storage units from Yankee (our local nuke power plant in Vernon, VT) and defeating a villain named Momia Blanco (The White Mummy), at which point Pecador returned with lunch. I decided not to eat mine, certain that it was now irradiated, while the movie director, actors and technicians broke for their lunch and Pecador struggled with eating a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich through his facemask. I pulled off the other three legs on the giant spider and went to work at my drawing board, working on a new comic featuring N-Man. Pecador acted like he was envious of this, and harrassed me. Every time I lettered the word balloons, Pecador would call Alan Moore and Rick Veitch and laugh. I went to work instead on something called "Lanesborough Briefs", drawing with the dismembered spider's blood, which smelled like almonds, and Pecador left me alone. On the TV in the background, I heard Jack Abramoff committing suicide like the Pennsylvania government official who blew his brains out on-camera: I turned around to look, but there was a commercial on by then in which a young Dan Rather was interviewing Natalie Portman about the color of her mouthwash. After the commercial, the Pecador movie we had been making earlier was playing, and I was pissed off because it was edited for television, cutting a key brain-surgery scene, so I went back to work on my comic, which was now a sort of Latino variation on my childhood in Duxbury with explicit sex scenes that never happened in real life. The 'host' of the story was a happy caterpiller I enjoyed drawing who apparently ran a haberdashery, though I wasn't sure about that detail and thought I might have to change the background art in two panels. My hands became brittle, like pastry flake-dough, but it was still fun to draw, so I kept at it. Pecador was still laughing on the phone, but I didn't care; in fact, it made me happy.

Since then, I've reluctantly taken a siesta from Santo, but confess to toying with titles like Santo contra Condi y las Mujeres Vampiro (Santo vs. Condi and the Vampire Women), which I think could both realign the scales of justice in America and the world today and make "not a race car driver" Mark Martin cream his briefs. Picture Condi with fetching boots, those extra-long Mexican monster movie fangs framing that famous gap-toothed smile, and her binding Santo down to taunt him incessantly until the dawn sun shines, blowing her schemes for world domination, and, well, you've definitely got a winner.
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Lest you think this appetite for Santo and Mexican monster movies is a sign of brain-addling atrophy taking place hereabouts, let me tell you, even the lamest of the Mexican monster flicks I've seen are models of coherence next to Underworld 2, which my pal James and I caught on the big screen this week. Luckily, it was entertaining from stem to stern, but man oh man, narratively it was a real shambles.

The film itself was a strangely giddy-making affair, yielding quite precisely that weird mix of satisfaction and utter dissatisfaction I got and still get from most post-1968 Marvel Comics: it looks cool as hell, the performances are dead-earnest and dialogue thick with the bombastic sound of importance and coherence, the emotions the characters express seem genuine and the action is intoxicating and relentless, but it makes no sense whatsoever. It felt, in fact, exactly like the 1970s and '80s Marvel Comics I would pick up based on the passionate recommendation of a friend, read, and then wonder, "Hmmm, I must be missing something. Let me go back and find a few backissues and see if I can make sense of this." Borrowing or buying the back issues, I would then read them in order -- and find that the entirity was incoherent, but the loosely-knit tapestry of nonsense cohered into some semblence of logic that created an elusive illusion of some core logic at work, though it seemed impossible to define or synopsize. The few times I really made the effort to trace these distinctly Marvel lunacies from beginning to end (with War of the Worlds: Killraven series and most memorably the Chris Claremont X-Men passage featuring the Alien knockoffs the Brood), I found myself grinding my teeth over wondering who was doing what to whom and why, speedbumps in narrative illogic too blatant to ignore, contradictory and irreconcilable story detours, writers writing themselves (and the reader) into multiple corners that required 'rabbit-out-of-the-hat' non-resolutions (illusions of resolution that in fact set up more dangling plot threads to be picked up later, if at all), and so on. But, hey, most of 'em looked nice, with the likes of P. Craig Russell, Dave Cockrum and John Byrne slinging the graphite with cool precision and confidence.

Underworld: Evolution is like that, to a 't'. Taken as such, it was perversely engaging and quite a bit of fun to watch. I can savor werewolves pulling each other's skulls in half for days, and it's fun to see the latest post-Jeepers Creepers brand of bat-winged boogeymen multi-task their wings: as daggers, pinions, peelers, slicers, dicers, and pole-vaulting aides. Tres cool.

That much of this involves savoring glistening, wet-hair-hanging-in-her-face closeups of writer/director Len Wiseman's wife Kate Beckinsale wearing wild contact lenses as the almost-always-on-screen heroine Selene makes it all easy on the eyes. This considerably aides the brain-disconnect essential to just going along for the ride despite such irrevocably stupid storypoints as how the entirity of vampire vs. lycanthrope feuding goes back to two brothers, one bitten by a bat, the other by a wolf (uh, what kind of bat and wolf, exactly?), whose dad is still alive (Derek Jacoby, a long way from I, Claudius), and whose 'ancient knowledge' of how to at last defeat his warring offspring somehow leads to having a 21st Century military black-op coptor drop nose-first then snagging impossibly in mid-air at a convenient height with both blades spinning, all while your apparently immortal hybrid boyfriend gets a Kong-like grip on both jaws of the primal-uberdad-of-all-lycanthropes and the leverage to play wish-bone with said uber-canine's skull. Now, there's arcane secret centuries-old knowledge for you.

It's one of those movies where not only can flying vampiric monsters majestically suspend themselves "mid-wing-flap" in the air in front the windshield of a truck hurtling along mountainous European roads at at least 55 miles per hour while still moving ahead of the truck, but said resurrected medieval bat-like vampire also awakens from centuries of incarceration to messily drink blood (thus acquiring 'blood knowledge' instantaneously, the film's niftiest instant-omniscient shorthand conceit) and then, confronted with high-tech top-line post-Millennium computerized security keyboards and monitors, said ancient vampire grins, flexes fingers, and pecks at three keys (a number with iconic Ernie Bushmiller urgency, for you diehard Nancy fans out there) to arrive at "ah, there he is" revelations of where a sought-after target foe (Scott Speedman's blonde hybrid hero) is hiding out. A sloppy sip of blood, three keyboard pecks, and viola, instant knowledge. Despite his Medieval origins, this only takes about half-a-minute, tops: our monstrous vampire villain (Tony Curran as Marcus) does this with nary a nano-second of hesitation, wondering not a whit about what this damned technology might be or how it might operate -- just three key-pecks with his scorpion-stinger like fingertips and he's in like Flint. (Later, we meet another exiled ancient vampire who not only has state-of-the-art computers at hand -- apparently keeping up with the necessary upgrades -- but also a pair of nude sex-slaves and a quartet of Cerberus-like Lycan guard dogs; some exile, huh?)

So, see, there are these feuding factions of vampires (Death Dealers) and werewolves (Lycans), and Death Dealer Selene has discovered her side is corrupt and she's been lied to for, like, centuries, and she also has the hots for this hybrid named Michael (Speedman) everyone is out to kill. Selene and Michael fight back. That was Underworld in a nutshell, and I liked that movie quite a bit: it was stylishly done, had some great monsters and monster-fights and enough sexenergy to satisfy the 5-year-old and 50-year-old in me, and proved to be a surprise hit ($100 mil+ boxoffice, plus DVD).

So, Len Wiseman and Danny McBride pick up the sequel with (a) a flashback to the split between Death Dealer and Lycan brothers orchestrated by nasty ol' vampire chief Viktor (Bill Nighy, omnipresent and excellent Brit actor in everything from The Constant Gardner to Shaun of the Dead these days) and (b) the contemporary narrative beginning about ten minutes after the end of the first movie, with the Death Dealers' successful resurrection of primal vampire Marcus (Curran) instantaneously kicking the shit out of their centuries of scheming. It's all breathless intergenerational venom and bile punctuated with rousing blood-geysering, marrow-splintering, skull-shearing fight scenes thereafter, all in-your-face visceral gristle-and-grue with fangs and various snout-lengths (depending, apparently, on where in the faux evolutionary ladder of Lycans one lucklessly falls), with one eye-candy breather for Kate and Scott to bond and savor a quick fuck in a candle-lit locker of some sort, then it's back to the bone-crushing mayhem to the bitter end, false climaxes (about three of them), narrative cheats (think E.T. for hybrids) and all. What's not to like?

It looks fantastic and keeps up a steady head of steam but is utterly senseless. In short, Underworld: Evolution is the movie Van Helsing wanted and tried to be, and that's the closest thing to a recommendation you're getting from me.

The end result:

Fuck it, I'm back to Santo, man!

Santo for Presidente!

Hangin' With Frank...

The fusion of Jim Woodring and the anime maestros working with Presspop Music has yielded a grand new DVD, Visions of Frank: Short Films by Japan's Most Audacious Animators Based on the Comics by Jim Woodring (Presspop, 2005). Thanks to my amigo John Rovnak, the disc landed in my hungry hands this week, and I've been savoring the occasional trip to Woodring's uncanny dreamscapes all week off and on. It's catnip for Woodring addicts; all others beware! (My friend and artist extraordinaire Michael Zulli used to physically flinch when confronted by any Woodring art: it plucked too deep a nerve by nature for Michael's comfort level.)

Visions of Frank is the brainchild of Trancepop director Yuki Yamada, co-producing this gem of a project with Presspop Inc. media guru Yasutaka Minegishi -- and, of course, Jim himself, who is represented here with his own animated effort. Presspop and Jim have already forged their relations with some pretty cool-looking Frank 'action figures,' which I've only seen online and via ads; these look pretty remarkable, particularly those for Pupshaw & Pushpaw, my personal fave of all Rin-Tin-Tin, Lassie and The Littlest Hobo successors in pop history. If I'm not mistaken (correct please if I am, someone), Jim & Presspop also collaborated on a line of amazing little bubble-egg plastic toys a couple years back, the kind coin machines in the US usually grace with trinkets, trolls and the like -- only these contained soft vinyl Woodring creations, including some of the demons and deities that grace his comics.

The DVD is neatly packaged in a colorful boxboard folder with full-color Woodring art covers and a nifty black-and-white Woodring 'semidiorama' interior picturing Frank and Pupshaw going for a walk; the disc and nifty 16-pg. booklet tuck behind the foreground flaps. The booklet sports two new Woodring "Frank" strips -- a black-and-white single pager, and a 3-pg. color story, both playing off the Manhog's disposability -- and biographical info on all animators and musicians involved, including Seattle composer and Woodring associate Bill Frisell. There are 9 animated shorts in all, 8 of which offer bonus musical scores (including one by musician and Meatcake cartoonist Dame Darcy), expanding the 48 minute program to almost 90 minutes if you watch each animation with both music tracks.

The animations are pretty alluring and a couple of them are simply exquisite, though I confess the net effect has been to send me scurrying back to the Woodring originals (which isn't anything to complain about, mind you). In his text introduction, Jim evocatively invites the animators (and by proxy the viewer) to explore facets of Frank's universe he himself has been nervous to explore: "Sometimes I want to go to the Unifactor and sometimes I am afraid I must go there. I really, really do not want to see the two-mouthed fear cow. I do not want to be glory-poisoned, or brain-looted, or lathed. But I do want to see the field of jivas and the eyepool, and that walled city.... There is so much I haven't seen; nearly all of it. So show me, please. Interpret those elusive textures, capture that waning light, bring us to those distant temples. Show me how those things move, let me hear what sounds they make. I want to see what you see."

Do they manage this feat? Well, I'm happy to report that a couple of them do, and with intoxicating fidelity to the Woodring universe as it has cohered in my own reader's mindframe after years of drinking Jim's comics wine. It's gratifying to see so many 'straight' adaptations of Jim's comics -- including the two seminal tales relating how Frank 'acquires' (misspelled in the credits, typical of Japanese-to-English translations) both Pupshaw and Pushpaw, lending the collection as a whole a measure of authenticity and initiation. The omnipresent spindly satanic figure and his egg-beater-like reality-altering/shapeshifter device perhaps capitalize a bit too much screentime and ideaspace, but that's a matter of personal taste, I reckon: all in all, this beats the shit out of the interminable "Spike & Mike" festivals of the past ten years as an animation collective, and profers the most cohesive 'adapted' universe (even given the multiple hands and sensibilities involved) of any living cartoonist.

Frank, Pupshaw, and the devil & his reality-mixer inhabit Woodring's own introductory animated short (a mere 1m 22seconds, but a treat); no surprise that it perfectly carries Jim's distinctive drawing style to its CGI animated stylings, but it is initially surprising how beautifully Woodring's semi-anecdotal narrative drive transmutes to this form. The tension between apparently concrete forms (from the lived-in architectural structures to the organic geometries of beings like Pupshaw) and alarmingly mercurial transformative eruptions that is so central to Woodring's comics is an ideal fit with the medium of animation in all its forms. That said, Frank as a character almost resists full animation: though he is consistently 'himself' in all the diverse animation forms showcased herein, Frank anatomically challenges every animator in strikingly different ways, and only a couple of them 'get' Frank "right."

Two of the subsequent shorts follow suit in their essential fidelity to the 'look' of Woodring's comics, while maintaining their own respective orientation to the wellspring. Coincidentally, these are also the two shorts introducing Pupshaw and Pushpaw, Frank's 'pets': Kyota-based "art unit COCOA" offers Pupshaw's "origin," or more specifically the tale of how Frank picks up Pupshaw as a "Free to Go Home" yard sale adoption (in short #3 on the DVD; 2003, 4m 7s), and Taruto Fuyama animates the marvelous story of Pushpaw's entry into Frank and Pupshaw's household (as an unexpected savior when Frank's plowing excavates an active, all-devouring serpentine manifestation) with considerable imagination (in short #1; 2003, 5m 38s). With the sole caveat that Fuyama doesn't quite capture Frank as a character (something about his adaptation of Frank's facial features to three-dimensional space doesn't jive for me), Fuyama's short is in the top three for me here: the synthesis of story and spot-on (pun intended) characterizations of Pupshaw and Pushpaw and their chemistry cooks. COCOA's "Frank Acquires Pupshaw" short takes place in part under the cover of night, and the strong blacks of Jim's comics are supplanted with a photocopy-like gray (blotchy with patches of photocopy bleaching or 'burn', if you know what I mean) that lends a distinctive aura to the entire short; it also boasts one of the most strangely ingratiating musical tracks (by the prolific Rubyorla; the bonus alternative track by techno musician Yabemilk is cool, too, but Rubyorla's is actually catchy and I got a warm feeling when I viewed the short the second time, like, "oh, ya, this music"). Thus, I'd have to elevate COCOA's first short herein into a favorites position; his second Frank animation (#6, 2004, 3m 41s) embraces a crazy-quilt color-and-texture scheme similar to that of animator Eri Yoshimura (#2, 2003, 3m 55s), which is personally my least favorite of all.

In both cases, the attempt to transmute Woodring's distinctive beings and universe into their patchwork collage tapestries of bright fabric-like patterns, colors, and swatches grates on the eyes: I can't engage with the forms as cohesive characters or even a cohesive synthesis of an environment. Part of the allure of the Woodring universe is its tactile illusory 'reality': one falls into it effortlessly, and finds oneself engaged all too easily in enigmatic events and mutations that resist rational analysis. The 'crazy quilt' approach of COCOA's second short and Yoshimura's one and only make these confections all too easy to resist: they become eye candy instead of mind candy, though the strength of Jim's source narrative for the COCOA fabric-texture short lends it some impact, if only as an effective sight-gag (Frank tries to catch an insect-like creature in a jar, prompting the creature to inflate its form to 'scare' Frank; Frank gets progressively larger containers, until the insect inflates so traumatically that Frank tips the largest vessel onto himself).

The third short to display a beguiling fidelity to Jim's comics -- specifically his color comics -- is the one by TAMAPRO/DROP (#4, 2003, 2m 40s; 'original track' by now-defunct band The Double), which is a charmer. Here again is that spindly ol' Woodring debbil, this time anally (technically entering Frank's tail, not his ass) infecting Frank and prompting Pupshaw to save the day yet again by tearing into Frank mid-shape-shift and shaking the spring-tailed wormlike infecting organism loose. TAMAPRO/DROP brings the fullest animation on view here to bear, if anything expanding upon Jim's panelogical transformations to make them even more effective, and the bold color schemes (again, perfectly adapted from/attuned to Woodring's own palettes) work wonders. This is a great short!

Masaki Naito's stop-motion dimensional model-animated adaptation (#5, 2004, 5m 35s) and Naomi Nagata's wonderfully textured 'flat' animated effort (#8, 2005, 8m 15s) are in their own way quite wonderful, too, though they are less concerned with capturing the 'look' of Woodring as they are with the dream-into-nightmare ambience, events and atmospheres of his comics. Both shorts involve Frank losing his cohesion and transforming into altered variations of himself: in the former, it's the 'devil' and his damned egg-beater shapeshifting device that's the agent of change; in the latter, Frank dives into a subterranean eye-ringed pool that alters him, prompting Pupshaw to wake the Woodring 'devil' and wield the same egg-beater-like contraption to change Frank back to his familiar self, much to Pupshaw's delight. Both have their charms, though the inherent instability/malleability of Frank in both undercuts his registering as a character (once again, Pupshaw shines with more affectionate clarity), and arguably makes these less effective experiences unless one is already indoctrinated into the Woodring reality. Of course, that very aspect of both is integral to the Woodring universe (after all, Jim has been no less mutable a character in his own work!), but I'd recommend viewing both Naito and Nagata's shorts last; appropriately enough, Presspop has placed both in the latter portion of the disc's play order. Good call. Naito's begins with a foot clearly in the realm of, say, the Brothers Quay, with its organic/mechanical constructs and spaces, but eases in short order into the appropo Woodring world; Nagata’s is animated in what appears to be some sort of dust, sand, or chalk-based medium that asserts its own enchanting and curiously urgent reality.

Last but not least, the penultimate short in the disc's menu is Kanako Kawaguchi's lengthy stop-motion animation effort, the package's most expansive in terms of running time (#7, 2005, 9m 58s). Kawaguchi's approach to animating and 'dimensionalizing' Woodring's work is immediately compelling: combining intricate modelwork (including exquisitely detailed pieces of furniture and room interiors and convincingly naturalistic miniature exteriors) with construct 'cut-outs' models of Frank (composed of layered bits of Jim's art), Kawaguchi allows himself (as filmmaker) and ourselves (as viewers, participants in the dream) to inhabit Frank's environments as never before. Like Karel Zeman's brilliant adaptations of period-Jules Verne illustrations for his seminal 1960s feature films (The Fabulous World of Jules Verne, On the Comet, etc.), Kawaguchi carefully renders his dimensional 'live action' sets with Woodring's distinctive linework in certain environments (Frank's dwelling, the interior of the neighbor's house he visits, expecting a party but finding only silence and a jug of skeletal remains as a barely-seen lurker malingers behind an open doorway). Others, like select exteriors and especially the outside of the neighbor's dwelling (its outside walls somehow swollen, blistering paint into unusual textures consistent with Woodring's work), eschew the direct association with Jim's recognizable rendering style, breathing fresh life into the familiar Frank universe. In this, the short evokes stop-motion universes of yore: the works of Ladislas Starevich, Jiri Trnka, Jan Svankmajer, etc. With its pitted roads, windblown grass stalks, scrub and brush composed of bleached lichens, this approach brings bracing life to the Woodring landscapes I'd grown somehow so accustomed to, making the familiar unfamiliar, without losing its palpable fidelity to Jim/Frank's universe: quite a feat, really!

But Kawaguchi brings two other elements to bear -- sound and time -- in a manner none of the other animators do. As the alternative music tracks evidences, almost all the shorts rely in a primary way on unusual scores to enhance/create their synthesis/derivations of the Woodring comics universe. Kawaguchi eschews that music-video approach to anchor his Frank film in a more primal context: a naturalistic audioverse, in which the rustling and clinking of domesticity, the crunch of gravel and relentless howl of wind compose the soundtrack, lending a strong sense of gravity, scale, and of chronology to his film. This is the short with the Dame Darcy "bonus track," which is engaging in and of itself, but I quite prefer the naturalistic "original track," in which sound and space takes on an almost Sergio Leone impact and import. Imagine Frank in the opening sequence of Once Upon a Time in the West (not as much of a stretch as you might think, really), steeped in its disorienting blend of the banal and the mythic, and you'll have some idea of how Kawaguchi's lovingly detailed evocation of Frank's world works (despite my reaching for Leone as a benchmark, I hasten to add this use of naturalistic sound to anchor stop-motion realms has a venerable history as old as the fusion of motion pictures and sound). Thus, savoring the sounds as well as the sights of Woodring's universe, Kawaguchi conflates the other naturalistic touches -- the warm light coming in through Frank's window, the sharp 'clink' of porcelin cups (oddly embellishing the 'reality' of the details of Frank's kitchen: knifes sheathed in a wall-mounted rack, etc.), the wood interior of the draw Frank opens in his circular reading table, the cool light illuminating the interior of Frank's home in the final shot of the film -- and extends the sense of time moving to lend enormous, appropriately ominous weight to the enigmatic events as they unfold. By the time Frank is musing a bit too long over the skull and skeletal remains in the huge jug in his empty neighbor's home, the dreamy suspension and suspense really gets under one's skin in a way none of the other short films do -- and this, too, is essential to Woodring's best work. It works completely as a film and as an adaptation of Jim's comics, and that's a solid recommendation from this viewer.

All in all, Visions of Frank is a great disc, well worth seeking out and immersing oneself in ASAP. It's undoubtably available from many online sources, but check out

Presspop

-- a good starting point, if only to check out the superficials (scroll to the right and click on the ‘English’ option; all things Frank will emerge). Highly recommended, and the year's first DVD sleeper!

Thank God, Bush Has Help for the Red ("It's Kind of Muddled")

See my earlier daily rant (below), and tell me how this fucking bozo is going to help us do anything to help anyone, anywhere, at any time.

Here's how President Bush explained changes in the social security plan to a dazed audience on February 4, 2005:

Woman in audience: "I don't really understand. How is the new plan going to fix the problem?"

President Bush (his verbatim response): "Because the -- all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculated, for example, is on the table. Whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those -- changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be -- or closer delivered to that has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the -- like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate uh, -- the benefits will rise based upon inflation, supposed, uh, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those -- if that growth is affected, it will help on the red."

The impending Judge Samuel Alito vote is likely to pass, pleasing Ann Coulter to no end. It'll pass, given the illegally-stacked (or haven't you been paying attention to the DeLay/Abramoff/etc. debacles?) Republican stronghold in Washington. The fucking Democrats can't find their balls with roadmap in hand, though it's a moot point given how the Supreme Court's unprecedented interference with the fateful Presidential election that put the current hyena pack into power demonstrated the bankruptcy of the Court as a judicial body and/or moral institution.

Alito is the kind of devout patriarchal selective "Constitutionalist" we've come to recognize: like "Christians" righteously supporting war, capital punishment & corporate crimes while decrying abortion, Alito passionately argues his obsessive fixation on the Constitution while opportunistically skirting those portions of the Constitution and Bill of Rights contrary to his blinkered affiliations (the founding fathers so reviled the potential power of corporations that they established clear laws to regulate and contain any corporate entities growing into challenges against the people and government; the railroads actively began dismantling those restrictions in the late 1800s, and since the corporations mobilized their forces in the 1970s and Reagan embraced deregulation, it's been all downhill for the individual in the U.S. of A.). The perverse irony that those who sought so vehemently to cripple/discredit/impeach Clinton within the past decade increasingly espouse the Unitary political philosophy (which Alito is linked with, though he dodged explicit attempts to probe that aspect of his views during his hearings) that concentrates unprecedented Presidential power into the hands of the current President and Administration snowballs with the clear presumption that they will remain in power: the power brokers the Republicans have become presume ownership of our nation in perpetuity.

Karl Rove has scurried back into the spotlight, claiming only the Republicans are actively embracing the necessary "post-9/11 world," once again linking the Bush Administration's actions and 9/11 as somehow justification for whatever they do (on January 20th, Rove attacked Democratic critics of the Administration during a Republican National Committee meeting, saying, "That doesn't make them unpatriotic -- not at all. But it does make them wrong -- deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong"; see The Washington Post, Jan. 21, 2006.) Now that he feels bold enough and suitably out-of-scrutiny for the Valerie Plame outing (a blatantly treasonous act, whoever is responsible, and Rove is still highly suspect), Rove's canny manipulation of public & politics skillfully manifests: of course, as soon as public outrage against Bush's arrogant claims to have the inherent power to supercede law begins to reach critical mass, we conveniently are provided with Osama bin-Laden's resurfacing on Jan. 19 in a new audiotape sent to al-Jazeera TV, ending more than a year of silence. Tuesday night, Bush will no doubt cite this new threat from al-Qaeda as well as the bloody conflict in Iraq as justifications for continuing to consolidate his powers as the "unitary executive." Give me a break. "Oh, puh-leez, President Bush, save us!" Ya, right -- the man who boasted during his heart-sickening press conference yesterday morning how he and his Administration is reserving the right to ignore those laws it does not like is going to save us.

Rove clearly plans to ride the War on Terror into another election season, having orchestrated an Orwellian obfuscation and confusion of rhetoric so impeccably that any attack on the US will now be seen as evidence of the validity and necessity of the Bush Administration rule rather than horrific proof of its abject failure.

Are we such sheep, such saps?

I'm sick to death of the travesty my country has become. The active dismantling of all existing protection of citizens from monolithic corporate power is yielding weekly devastation in increasingly personalized and intimate arenas (coal mine disasters, anyone? Orchestrated implosion of Medicare?). Our senators are complicit in all this: amid the "protecting the little guy" rhetoric of the Alito hearings, why didn't even one Senator get to the core of the issue and query the Judge's views on the court's gradual acceptance (there was never a ruling or judgement) of corporations as entities recognized as having the rights of individuals, protected by the Constitution? (Well, of course, our Senate is in the same corporate pockets -- we'll never hear that particular issue raised, much less debated.)

Another election season is brewing.

Time to play hardball, if anyone has 'em to play with: I mean, we should be seeing billboards with Jack Abramoff in his duds representing the Republican K-Street faction that has sold us all down the river. We should be seeing explicit links between the current Medicare disaster and the coalition of government and pharmaceutical & insurance interests that forged this nightmare (the key elected officials involved stepped out of the Capital into cushy jobs with insurance and pharmaceutical firms). We should be seeing vast roadside side-by-side images of the burning Twin Towers and Bush walking hand-in-hand with his Saudi guest and the moniker, "BROKEBACK NATION."

It was Saudi terrorists with (real) boxcutters, not Iraqis with (imaginary) weapons of mass destruction, who brought 9/11 raining down around our ears. The Iraq War is a sham and a crime, and all that has led to it and all that has followed is among our darkest moments in history. The sham 9/11 link is the magic button they continue to push to induce sheep-like complicity. Bush's upcoming "State of the Nation" address will no doubt hammer that link anew, now justifying his blatant disregard for the law (most recently and prominently regarding illegal wiretapping of Americans in the name of 'national security').

There are no links between 9/11 and what we've become mired in as a nation. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al Saud -- the wealthiest businessman in the Muslim arena -- himself said, "September 11 was a deep wound. These kinds of wounds take many years to heal, not just three or four. Yes, the terrorists were Saudis, but most Saudis do not agree with them. I hope things like King Abdullah visiting Texas will help bring us together" (Fortune, October 3, 2005, pg. 32).

No worries, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al Saud: we are such a pig-ignorant "These Colors Don't Run" shithead jingo-patriot nation, Bush and his cronies have successfully diverted the populace rage to uninvolved parties, against whom we wage all-consuming undeclared war. The long-standing US-Saudi relationship is the only aspect of the FDR legacy Bush and the neo-cons aren't intent on dismantling: it was indeed FDR who forged the post-WW2 "US protection for Saudi oil" pact every President after has honored (the Bush clan of course also profits enormously from said pact.)

By the way, FOX News lovers, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al Saud, richest man in the Muslim world, among the largest and most successful of all foreign investors in the U.S., increased his holdings in Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp (corporate proprietor of FOX News, among countless other media venues heavily pro-Bush and his cronies and aggressively burying any news or discussion of their fuckups, faux pas, and crimes) "to 5.46% of the voting shares and reaffirmed his support for chairman Rupert Murdoch..." Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al Saud says, "We approve of his [Murdoch's] strategy and approach.". He is in fact pushing for Murdoch to expand his media empire into the Middle East.

I'm sure Hamas is all for that; don't you think Bill O'Reilly will fit right in?

This week's Palestinian election results demonstrates we are reaping what we sow in spades -- we have further radicalized and polarized the region, and the extremists are looking mighty good to oppressed populations. The lunacy of the argument that one of the threadbare justifications for the Iraq War is "keeping the war over there" is bearing unexpected fruit.

It may not be the orchard we as a nation thought we were planting, but the harvest is upon us.

More on Hoop-Hoop-a-Doop

Not only was yesterday Tobe Hooper's birthday, it was also Robert Burns's birthday. Much as I revere Burns, thanks in part to Eddie Campbell provoking my finally reading Burns's poetry after he and I jammed on a Bacchus comics adaptation of the Burns poem ("Tam O'Shanter," I think, off the top of me head), it's Hooper's films that had the greater impact on my existence -- life and work -- creature of the 1970s that I am.

Fond memories I harbor of my amigo Mark 'Sparky' Whitcomb and I up and bolting from our lowly (and I do mean lowly: I was in a sub-level dorm room at Johnson State College) digs at JSC to make the drive to the nearest theater, the Bijou in Morrisville, VT, where an unknown quantity entitled The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was opening. All we knew about the film was that it had opened in NYC, and I'd clipped out the tiny ad from The New York Times and had it posted on my wall; the title alone had us both hoping against hope it might play close enough to Johnson to catch a peek. Sparky being from Texas (though he and his family had since moved to Chester, VT, hence his being at JSC), he had a real jones to see the film; I was just psyched at the title, one of the most blatantly exploitative in all horror film history. We were stunned at the news of its opening two towns away (one of its few VT playdates, it turned out), and we were there as quick as we could scam a car.

At that time -- 1974, natch -- the Bijou was still an old-fashioned one-screen small-town theater, a relic and a beaut, kept in pretty good condition by the family management. It was a weird time for such 'nabes' (industry term for neighborhood theaters): most were closing for good in the '70s, or hanging on by their thumbnails, surviving by succumbing to the wave of post-Deep Throat XXX fare or a mix of porn, exploitation, and the occasional third-run pickup. The Bijou never booked XXX fare to my knowledge; whoever was booking the theater actually did a remarkable job of mixing it up between exploitation and major studio curios (we saw Mean Streets, Badlands, The Devil's Rain, and the heady double-bill of The Giant Spider Invasion co-featured with Godzilla vs. Megalon there, too, among others). That The Texas Chainsaw Massacre -- distributed by Bryanston, a Mafia-family owned and managed distributor responsible for circulating a plethora of key '70s fringe wonders, including the X-rated Andy Warhol/Paul Morrissey one-two punch Andy Warhol's Frankenstein (in 3-D!) and Andy Warhol's Dracula -- had come to roost at the Bijou was a surprise, but not inconsistent with Bijou's eclectic pantheon of first-and-second run titles. Though the theater was clean, the floor none too sticky with spilled and calcified soft drinks, and the popcorn always fresh and hot, the seats were classically narrow and claustrophic, the pitch of the theater floor only increasing the need to fold one's knees into arcane contortions guaranteed to cut off blood flow in less than 20 minutes.

Sparky and I proudly bought our tickets from the kindly matron in the ticket booth (whom I once provoked into spitting her false teeth out laughing when stony Bissette walked full-faced into the crystal-clean glass doors before the booth), stocked up on popcorn, and took our seats. I recall Sparky buying a huge bag of popcorn -- the quantity of which, and bag-packaging of which (this was before nabes had 'tubs' of popcorn for sale), is critical to our evening festivities, as you will soon see. Now, remember, I was as I am now a die-hard horror movie buff; Sparky was a kindred soul, steeped in years of honorable Texan drive-in attendence. We'd both seen and wallowed in our share of outrageous exploitation, the bloodier the better to our 20-to-21 year old brainpans. Still, we weren't prepared at all for where ol' Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel took us: from the opening shots of barely-glimpsed rotting human extremities lit by flare-and-fade flashbulbs to the revelatory pull-back from the corpse-sculpture skewered onto a gravestone, we were stunned into silence (as if the sunflares erupting behind the credits as an ominous, cacophanous, Sun Ra-cosmic-jazz-gone-south score exploded in our ears hadn't already done us in). The first shot of armadillo roadkill relaxed Sparky a bit -- downhome stuff for a Texan -- but that comfort level was methodically peeled away as the narrative got underway and TCSM worked its black magic. After the hitchhiker's classic setpiece aboard the van, all bets were off, and we knew it.

Now, we weren't alone in the theater, but it was a small crowd that night: first show and all of a flick with little family appeal and no pre-sell beyond the baldfaced mania of its title. The audience was dead quiet for most of the unreeling, suffocating amid the audio horrors filling the auditorium, but things got real quiet after Leatherface made his appearance, concluded by the slamming of that fucking steel door after downing his first victim with sledgehammer force. By now Sparky was hunkered waaaaaaaay down in his seat, clutching his no-longer-munched popcorn like a prairie dog with a prize. I'd given up on my popcorn, too, but had the wherewithall to plunk it down into the seat next to me with my coat and hat.

As Hooper & Henkel tightened the thumbscrews, setting Sally into the woods pushing flashlight-wielding Franklin in his wheelchair in the pitch-dark night, we were holding our collective breath.

Then, it happened --

-- the roaring of a chainsaw --

-- the eruption of Leatherface from the darkness, his horrific face caught in Franklin's flashlight beam --

-- and it was suddenly snowing in the theater.

I can't adequately communicate how disorienting the moment was:

-- the horror of what was happening onscreen (barely visible, the art of Hooper & Henkel's conceit being the relative gorelessness of the film) conflated by the tactile feeling and seeing of, well, snow in the theater. It was just suddenly there, big fat kernels of --

-- popcorn.

Sparky had hammerlocked his bag of popcorn, and it was in the air the second Leatherface was into Franklin with the saw.

We stole a look at one another and let loose with something half-scream, half-donkey-braying laughter, and we were forever drunk on TCSM thereafter.

But first we had to make it through the rest of the movie, which wasn't much of a laugh-provoker. Oh, we cracked up at the now-classic, then-surprising flourishes of pitch-black comedy ("Look what your brother did to the door!"), but Hooper & Henkel had sunk their meathooks deep into our cortex, and we were physically exhausted -- an exhaustion that felt all the more overwhelming with the abrupt, end-of-nightmare brevity of the final shot: the mad dance in the sun-blasted road, the racing chainsaw sound, the blinding cut, and we were back to those fucking cosmic views of sunflares bursting from the surface of the sun, the final credits crawl as the score reasserted its percussive mania. It was only when the lights came up and we saw the enormity of the popcorn-spew circle Sparky had wrought with his bag-bursting reaction to Leatherface's attack that we recovered a bit of equilibrium and staggered to our feet, tottering up the aisle and groggy in the ropes.

As we teetered into the lobby, meaning to apologize to the management for the mess and offer to help clean up, we were caught offguard by a new and even more unexpected spectacle:

A schoolbus was visibly parked on the curb in front of the glass doors and ticket booth, and a line of uniform-jersey-wearing high school students were lined up, paying their dough to see the next show. Their spirits were high and voices loud -- reckon they'd won the game, eh? -- and we looked at one another and cracked up.

As the first players in line passed us en route to the snack bar, one of 'em said to Sparky, "Hey, how was it?"

Bet it was a lively theater that night.

A year later, I would be showing TCSM as part of an "Audience Assault" double-feature at Johnson State College. Someone started a chainsaw up in the theater during the show, and -- well, that's another story (as is the lively evening John Totleben and I enjoyed at a Newark, NJ theater seeing Hooper's followup Eaten Alive)...
_________

Among my fave bits of TCSM trivia is the fact that the film was sneak-previewed in a San Francisco theater as a 'surprise' unannounced second feature for underrated studio director Joseph Sargeant's suspense gem The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (wherein Robert Shaw shone bright as lead villain "Mr. Blue" -- source for the color-coded names of Quentin Tarantino's celebrated Reservoir Dogs). Just as the subway passengers of Pelham 123 rallied against their murderous oppressors, the audience reportedly stormed the theater management in a rage as TCSM played, provoking more ire than terror as unsuspecting patrons assaulted by the Hooper & Henkel cinematic crime demanded their money back and still couldn't believe they'd been guinea-pigged with such an offensive exercise.

Lest you think such distributor and studio faux pas are a thing of the past, consider the November 2005 'sneak preview' booked in the Manhattan AMC Empire 25 -- where parents and chicks attending Disney CGI feature Chicken Little were greeted with the opening minutes of the new Spanish feature Andrea, in which a young man hangs himself from a tree. All the traumatized tots and furious parental units got were refunds or a coupon for a future free movie.

Back in '78, Kubert School pal Marc Vargas and I once rushed to a Manhattan theater matinee of Allegro Non Troppo, second-billed with Ralph Bakshi's maladroit Lord of the Rings animated feature. We arrived early for Allegro and resigned ourselves to sitting through the final minutes of of Bakshi's film, which we'd seen before, plunking down into the quickest two seats we could find, sitting behind a wiry black guy in an audience packed-to-the-max with parents and kids. Suddenly, amid the climactic battle, the rotoscoped Alexander Nevsky Bakshi imagery was supplanted by the most clinical balls-slapping cock-ramming-into-cunt XXX footage imaginable, washed-out morgue-flesh color and all. The footage erupted, slammed, and was gone in seconds -- and we were back into Bakshi faux-Tolkien animation in a heartbeat, but the theater went nuts. "Momma, whatwassatwhatWASSATWHATWASSAT???" screamed a kid behind us to his panicked mom as the screen suddenly went black and the lights came up and panic ensued. Vargas and I were crying with laughter -- we couldn't believe it! -- and the noise from the outraged rush to the lobby was deafening. It took some time for the hubbub to subside, but Vargas and I were helpless with laughter; every time we caught our breath, we'd look at each other and crack up anew. We finally calmed down, at which point the guy sitting in front of us -- whose face was streaming with tears, too -- stole a glance back at us, and all three of us collapsed laughing again.

Shit, was Chuck Palahniuk or "Tyler Durden" in the audience -- or in the projection booth? When I saw that sequence in Fight Club, I couldn't help but wonder.

(Yes, we did get to see the end of Lord of the Rings without further incident, and Allegro Non Troppo was a treat.)

__________

Starving Gay Marriage While Feeding the Bears

While Massachusetts clergyman Tom Crouse persists in staging events fomenting rage against homosexual marriage under the guise of supporting 'maleness' and hetero marriage (go to

Out of the Inkwell,

check Mike's January 25th post for details), I'm relieved to report that Leonardo DiCaprio is aggressively supporting -- well, read on.

I got an email from "Leonardo DiCaprio, NRDC Trustee" with the subject line, "A message from Leonardo DiCaprio about protecting bears." Now, Leo's dad is one of my dear friend Chas Balun's old cronies -- they did mini-comics together in their happy hippie arteest days -- and yes, Leo is appealing on behalf of bears to "stop the Bush administration from implementing a disastrous plan to revoke the bears' protection under the Endangered Species Act" ("...That's why it's so important for Americans all across the country to tell the government that we oppose this risky plan. To take action, go to the Natural Resources Defense Council's BioGems website at

Save the Bears,

..." etc.).

But the email arrived shortly after an exchange with local filmmaker John Scagliotti about an upcoming pair of "Bear Film Festivals" here in southern VT -- and we do mean bears, but not the bears Leo is talking about. John mentioned the great success of last summer's Guilford, VT Bear Film Festival, composed of "films that attract the gay Bear movement -- believe it, its a big group and they arrive in hordes!" The festival ("mostly shorts and one feature," check out last summer's event

here

-- no 'organ barn' jokes, please) may become an annual event, as the first was, according to John, "really a lot of fun and a little inspirational at times."

These bears are clearly not an endangered species, however much clergymen like Crouse might carry on.

Hmmmm, maybe we should get some bears to crash the Crouse pro-male event? Whether it's Leo's bears or the VT Bear Film Fest bears matters not a whit.

Happy Birthday, Tobe Hooper...

Yep, this day in 1943, Tobe Hooper popped (or was cut) into the world. Whodathunk, way back in '43, with WW2 still raging and Moonlight in Vermont playing in local theaters, that Tobe would be helming one of the seminal horror movies of the '70s in a fetid hothouse hellhole that had cast and crew vomiting out the windows between takes? That would be The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, natch, and Tobe never made a better movie (nor did co-conspirator/writer Kim Henkel, though both went on to make flicks I love).

What's more astounding to me is I heard this birthday notice this morning from Garrison Keillor (sp?) on the Writer's Almanac on my local public radio station. I almost shit when I heard it -- I mean, hearing Garrison's dulcimer tones say "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," smooth and neat as can be, is a real sign of the times. Coming as this does on the heels of Mike Dobbs showing us a holiday season ad for a miniature licensed 'horror village' composed of corporate franchises like Friday the 13th, Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm St. and Leatherface's beloved charnelhouse, the mind reels.

What a world, what a world.
__

Speaking of worlds:

Big Thanks to cartoonist extraordinaire Dan Lapham for the gift copy of The World of Kong, a gorgeous illustrated book on the 'backstory' of Skull Island and all the environment and creature designs that were poured into Peter Jackson and WETA's latest opus (in fact, the WETA Workshop is credited as author). My son Dan loved the book, too, pouring over it the second he could get his hands on it.

Thanks, too, to amigo John Rovnak, my comics source for almost 15 years, for the copy of the new Jim Woodring animation DVD sporting over 45 minutes of animation from Japan adapted from the Woodring comics and universe. Check it out -- Visions of Frank: Short Films by Japan's Most Audacious Animators from Presspop Music on all-region DVD. The showcase of nine animated shorts opens with a 1m 22s animation by Jim himself, followed by a beaut by Taruto Fuyama and a curious collage-animation adaptation by Eri Yoshimura, and -- well, more on the rest later. Full write-up this week!

(PS: John will be launching expanding his comics service to a full online venue later in 2006; will post the news here once John's got it up and running.)
___

Back to the CCS!

Yes -- first day of the new semester at the Center for Cartoon Studies! I'm off, so not much to write this morn --

I've prepped a sort of 'intro' session, though whether it goes down this week or next is also up to the timing of the student presentations spilling over from last semester. Will let you know how it goes -- then it's pizza, cartoons, lurid preview trailers and a movie for one and all!

Five Inches and Falling...

It's snowing today hereabouts (we're already over the 5-inch mark) and Marj is home (no school!). So, puttering around and chipping away at studio work, writing and drawing.

I'm prepping for tomorrow's first new semester session at the Center for Cartoon Studies and just wrapped up proofing the first volume of a new book series, S.R. Bissette's Blur (Complete Editions) Volume 1. It's the first of four volumes collecting all my video review columns from 1999-2001; I pulled all this material together last August in a flurry of frustration-spawned activity, hoping to get out the first two volumes before the end of 2005, but have only just now managed to gather a complete enough set of VMag from my archives to double-check that scattering of published work, incorporating all of it into the finished book (and footnoting sources, as necessary).

I'm also scrambling to finish the cover today and get it scanned so I can ship book and cover off to Jean-Marc Lofficier in France and get this first volume to bed and into print. Actually, I'm doing all four covers in one swing, if only to ensure Jean-Marc can post everything on the Black Coat Press site in short order, and we can pull all four volumes together before the end of winter. Then there's the wrap-up work (long overdue) on All That Lovecraft Loathes (a short story anthology of my short fiction and stories and poems by fellow Vermonter Roderick Bates), Gooseflesh Volume 1, and the comics essay collection (including the expanded version of "Mr. Moore and Me," the original version of which is already in print in more languages than anything I've done outside of Swamp Thing).

The goal is to clear the decks as I get projects done, with the ongoing work on the revisions for my cannibal movie history We Are Going To Eat You! constantly gaining steam. I'm hoping to make 2006-2007 a major year of output, including volumes collecting my past works -- articles on horror movies, comics, and hopefully at least one volume collecting my comics works. This will also clear shelves in the studio and library of books and materials I've held on to for years (decades, even) for publication. As that happens, the ongoing organizing of the existing library (with a prejudice toward all that's of use in my CCS classes) is underway, too. Multi-tasking in spades, you might say.

OK, back to work --

Hey, one and all.

Sorry for the hiatus; my sleeping was completely skewed by too much time on the computer, which brought on this recent bout with the flu, so I steered clear of this time-eater (the computer, not just the blog) for most of the week. Back to sleeping like a pre-Millennial being, and determined to keep it that way.

With so much time of late happily going into my writing, teaching (the Center for Cartoon Studies second semester starts this week -- exciting!), and my return to the drawing board, it’s become more of a chore to even want to sit at the computer for anything involving email or the internet.

I’m now determined to find some means of high-speed access. The pisser is it isn’t available to anyone here in Marlboro -- even though the fucking line serving Wilmington and Brattleboro (the two towns on either side of Marlboro) runs right outside my house! Email is out of control, in part because it’s just so time consuming to creep through every day, and any online adventure takes far too much time with slo-mo dial-up. It’s crazy how long it takes to circumvent crap I don’t even want to deal with.

So, please bear with my occasional days away until this problem is solved. Among the upcoming 2006 blog events I’m working on are interviews (currently underway!), a story-marathon, at last posting art here (part and parcel of the server/high-speed access dilemma), and much more, including the usual rants and rambles.

Catching up a bit:

* A little blast of Bissette art and a writeup of one of my personal favorite books of all time awaits you if you click on

The Late Great Creature.

What brings this to mind this week is my current work-in-progress that involves some made-up movies, inspired in part by Brock Brower’s sadly forgotten (it was barely noticed when it was published) novel. Dig:

"THE LATE GREAT CREATURE by Brock Brower (1971, Atheneum) was Simon Moro, notorious horror movie star of the 1930s and 40s who could (in the words of the men's magazine reporter who relates the novel's first third) "indicate corruption with just the back of his neck" onscreen. Brower's invented filmography for Moro is utterly convincing and compelling: hints of the actor in silent German films; his rise to fame as a mad pedophile in Fritz Lang's ZEPPELIN (1930); his American debut as THE MOTH, a tatty low-budget horror co-starring Fay Wray; his butchered masterpiece GHOULGANTUA (1937), a reworking of FRANKENSTEIN; his subsequent decline playing Nazis in ersatz World War 2 propoganda and a poverty-row GILA MAN series; a mysterious, incomplete feature Moro starred in and directed in post-War Germany set in the concentration camps; on to the centerpiece of the novel, a Cormanesque remake of THE RAVEN for the drive-in circuit.”

I ache to see these nonexistent films the same way most Lovecraft fans hanker to hold the Necronomicon in their mitts. I don’t think my spin on nonexistent drive-in movies will prompt the same hunger, but one never knows...

* Does anyone out there have any info on the “i” network? Last night Marj and I watched most of a locally-produced and filmed ‘natural disaster’ movie (Edgewood Studios’s all-hail opus Frozen Impact), which was produced by the Rutland-based studio for Porchlight, who also provide content for Pax. The “i” network’s commercials and content clearly was along the lines of Pax: lots of Christian and family oriented ads, geriatric pharmaceutical commercials, etc. Just curious; any info or links would be appreciated.

* There’s a new post from Al Nickerson at the Remembering The Creators Bill of Rights website: Dave Sim's succinct letter to Mark Martin is

here

-- and there's a photo from the historic summit, too. Check ‘em out!

* Speaking of Al, he also recently sent me a link to

this publisher forum for Johnny Raygun

about Diamond Dist.’s new policy “that makes it difficult for small
publishers to produce a Free Comic Book Day issue this year.” Johnny Raygun is among Al’s current faves being effected -- there are, no doubt, many others.

Publisher Ralph DiBernardo kicks off the thread with the sobering news that he "can't get a straight answer from anyone at Diamond but the bottom line is that we were not invited to participate. For whatever reason, we did not meet the criteria for it, even though we sold about 15,000 copies 2 years ago and 20,000 last year. Between that and Diamonds new policy for small press it makes it hard to imagine this industry ever moving forward again."

So, 2006 is the year Diamond laid down the law and instituted new restrictions: more of the same. It can only get worse. I’ve no doubt that Free Comic Book Day is one of the few entry-level events left for small press and self-publishers who have already been crowded off shelves and barely have a hand-hold in the pre-order system that dominates consumer-end buying in what’s left of the direct sales market. The marginalization of the independents continues unabated.

* The news has been so fucking infuriating of late. President Bush keeps blathering about “freedom” while blithely tredding on one and all, ourselves included.

Just narrowing the field to the Middle East: Want to ‘export’ some democracy, some freedom? How about freedom from us?

You’d think a nation built on refuting a colonizing empire would have that one down.

Caveman Steve Like Cave Paintings

I've been wrestling since 7 AM with trying to send two pieces of art to a publisher in Italy. It simply isn't working for a variety of reasons -- including the lack of DSL or any affordable higher-speed alternative to our snail-telephone-line online access -- and I'm ready to toss all this computer equipment off the cliff in the back yard.

Thankfully, my good friends in Italy are patiently working with me, and I am now seeking outside assistance. No, don't write me with suggestions: it's all Greek to me. Simple steps for computer-literate folks ("upload to my ftp link") are gibberish to Luddite Bissette, and I'll need some hands-on, person-in-the-room assist with all this.

It seems like our slow-speed access may be the biggest hurdle, and for that there's no affordable solution in reach as yet. "What's green and goes backward?" (an old VT riddle, with two answers if you've got a cold like I have)

TWO additions to my faves of the year that came to mind after my last 'fave' post:

* THE CORPSE BRIDE: Loved this stop-motion feature as much as I loved Wallace & Gromit's latest outing, and particularly enjoyed the overt nod to the old Rankin-Bass theatrical feature Mad Monster Party? via the Peter Lorre maggot living in the bride's eye socket.

* DOMINO: Already wrote this up, but Tony Scott's latest multi-textural overload opus was a splendidly misanthropic road movie, a sister of sorts to Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects and the better of the two psycho-siblings at that.

OK, off to find some help sending this art off to the land of Fellini, Pasolini, Bava, Leone, Diabolik, Argento, Soavi and Fulci...

Don't Fulci Yourself!

I'm reeling with a flu-like cold and just wasn't up for writing here today. But I did put the finishing touches on my illustration for an Italian publisher's new book on Lucio Fulci, the director of late-'70s and early '80s gems like Don't Torture the Duckling, Schizo aka Woman in a Lizard's Skin, Gates of Hell, Zombie, House by the Cemetary, The Beyond and lots more (I've already written an article for the book -- on my initial drive-in and grindhouse experiences with all things Fulci -- which is being translated into Italian).

I then made the pilgrimage down the hill to Brattleboro to pick up my son Dan's drawing for the same project. Great to see Dan and my daughter/his sis Maia Rose, though I was by then suffering from the waning of my cold med and slipping into a mucous-dribbling rough beast slouching, so home agin home agin jiggedy jig I did go.

I've now got some scanning and touchup to do, then off it goes to the Smoky Man!

For some reason, I channeled Fulci via Charles Schulz and found the result amusing. It must be the cold meds.

Sniff --

More Faves of 2005, Part, uh, Four?

Time to wrap up my faves of 2005, as if anyone cares any longer.

First off, four films that would have made my faves of 2005, if I'd actually seen 'em in 2005:

* The Squid and the Whale
* Brokeback Mountain
* Oldboy
* In the Realms of the Unreal

...but I didn't, I just caught up with them, so I'll save writeups of those until later in the week (along with Syriana and Hostel, which I also caught on the big screen this week).

OK, to the point, the rest of my fave theatrical movies from 2005:

* A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE: A harrowing and deeply effecting drama from David Cronenberg that fulfills its promised meditation on violence (it is a contagion here, as it was in Michael Reeves's still-potent The Conqueror Worm) and the American psyche with haunting gravity and devastating clarity. Adapted from the graphic novel by John Wagner and Vincent Locke (using only its premise and first act, choosing a different and much more introspective path for its narrative), this is a bookend of sorts to Jarhead and metaphorically the only film to date to begin to deal with the consequences of the trauma of the Iraq War on the home front. The wordless final setpiece is among the most quietly potent sequences of the decade; I cannot shake it.

* THE JACKET: The theatrical feature that most looked like an episode of Twilight Zone was George Clooney's excellent Good Night and Good Luck, but the most remarkable evocation of Rod Serling in many a year was The Jacket, which also offered the most potent meditation on the American zeitgeist that fueled Abu Ghraib. Though dismissed by most critics and folks I've talked to who saw it, I thought this was a beautifully executed weird tale, fusing Serling's wistful wish-fulfillment time-travel fantasies with his most sobering political indictments of human nature; an unsung jewel, chilling and moving.

* LORD OF WAR: Terrific, electric piece of work and among the best black comedies of the year, a driven narrative tracing the rise and rise of Nicholas Cage as arms dealer from the mean streets to the global marketplace. Exchanging only its subtext -- arms instead of oil -- this was the movie Syriana was purported to be.

* LORDS OF DOGTOWN: Among the best sleepers of the year was this sly and insightful biopic fictionalization of Dogtown and the Z-Boys (2001) produced and scripted by one of the Z-boys-who-made-good (Stacy Peralta) and directed by the woman who helmed Thirteen, Catherine Hardwicke. Standout cast, led by laid-back Elephant toehead John Robinson as Peralta and a top-notch turn from Emile Hirsch (The Mudge Boy, The Emperors Club, etc.) as Jay, but to my mind this was Heath Ledger's breakthrough flick. As Skip, the garage surfboard/skateboard manufacturer who recognizes and nurtures the Z-boys into transforming skateboarding as a sport only to see his potential fortune slip away as they each come into their own and the bigger mercantile sharks swim into the scene, Ledger strips his star persona to inhabit the role; as Skip and Jay veer into parallel paths, you can taste their sorrow. Great little film and a potent parable, not to be missed.

* MILLION DOLLAR BABY: Didn't see this until January of 2005, so it's on my year's fave list -- I've been a huge fan of Clint Eastwood as a filmmaker since his 1971 directing debut (with the 'jumper' rescue scene in Don Siegel's Dirty Harry and his official directorial maiden voyage with the fine suspenser Play Misty for Me), and the man just keeps making better and better movies while remaining one of the finest American storytellers working in the studio system. This one is among Eastwood's best, with his usual deft narrative touches (his character's ongoing non-debate with his church's pastor) and one of the year's most remarkable ensemble performances led by Morgan Freeman, Hilary Swank, and Clint.

* REDEYE: Jodie Foster might have boasted the higher profile airplane suspense flick (an evaporative remake of Alfred Hitchcock's venerable charmer The Lady Vanishes), but Wes Craven helmed the better movie in this effective thriller. Anchored by Cillian Murphy's galvanizing central performance as a beguiling boyish sociopath, this was made all the more engaging thanks to the target audience of teen girls I saw this with, who were reacting like a 42nd St. audience of yore (talking to the screen, shouting in terror, and at one point on their collective feet). It's on DVD and still quite engaging, but it was a real treat in the theater!

* WILD AND WOOLLY (1917): In a week when Marge and I caught a movie a night while vacationing in Maine, seeing all the new Hollywood summer movies, we both agreed we had our best night out at the movies on vaca when we made the pilgrimage to the Alamo Theater in Bucksport to catch this summer silent film festival showing of one of Douglas Fairbanks's rarest features. A whirlwind entertainment starring Fairbanks at his reckless daredevil best as a Eastern richboy in love with his fantasies of the wild west who is assigned to tend to his father's mining concerns in the real west circa 1917; wise to his fantasies, the locals dress up the town and play their roles to the hilt, but the inevitable clash of fantasy and reality -- even as Fairbanks saves the day -- lend this brisk comedy enough weight to work wonders. Grand fun, a timely snapshot of the 1917 west already in conflict with the pulp-and-movie fantasy west (anticipating some of the westerns of the '60s and '70s), and heads and tails above most 2005 movies!

* THE WILD PARROTS OF TELEGRAPH HILL: In a year of outstanding documentaries, this loving portrait of an amiable loner & amateur naturalist and his bond with a flock of tropical parrots that have settled in San Francisco was among the sweetest surprises. Just do yourself a favor and see it.

* Fave Remake of a 1970s Flick: I don't care what was written or said by most, for my dough the remake of Assault on Precinct 13 was the best of many unnecessary remakes, retaining enough fidelity to the John Carpenter original in atmosphere and suspense but inventive enough with its revamp, characterizations and setpieces that I savored the ride end-to-end. It also beat the living shit out of the luckluster The Fog, a by-the-numbers reboot which scuttled the best elements of the original Carpenter gem and failed to supplant those with anything of substance (or ectoplasm).

* Fave Sequence in an Unnecessary Remake:The final fifteen minutes of House of Wax, which transcended the fun I had with this film's enjoyably twisted revamp (not of Andre de Toth's House of Wax, but of a personal favorite 1970s gem Tourist Trap) to enter true nightmare turf as the 1950s-'60s traditional genre fiery finale was conflated to surreal extremes. No shit, I have had countless dreams/nightmares like this, with walls/stairs/floors and even human beings melting away underfoot and overhead; thus, for me, this uncanny climax plucked a primal and personal nerve that lifted the entire film to a level few theatrical films approach.

* Least Fave of 2005: Good God, Alone in the Dark was the suck! Who gives Uwe Bowel (oh, sorry, I meant, Boll) the money for these video-game travesties? From the interminable pre-credits narrative crawl to the numbingly braindead climax, I literally could not believe I was seeing this on a theatrical screen; it was worse than any Sci-Fi Channel opus I've ever seen, and there's been some real stinkers. In one way, this flick was sublime in its incessant stupidity and ground-zero devotion to the lowest common denominator; the lamest travesty with star power (I mean, Christian Slater, Tara Reid, Stephen Dorff -- what the fuck??) since Species II, and incredibly even more offensively insipid. Next from Boll: Bloodrayne, already playing in some venues. I may have to go, just to savor the yawning abyss.

I may have missed something, but fuck it. It's 2006, and a New Year is well underway.

Followup conversation to my lengthy KING KONG analysis...

Bringing a conversation on a December comment thread to the fore:

An anonymous commenter responding to Tuesday, December 20, 2005's post "Off to Skull Island... (Part the Second)" just posted the following comment:

"I don't know what you're trying to say here, but I think I disagree. For one thing, much like Andy Serkis was Gollum, Ang Lee donned the mocap suit and provided a substantial portion of reference for the Hulk. The idea that CG is somehow so much more complex than 2d or stop-motion that an individual animator cannot be assigned to a character is also a false notion. In 2d features, any animator credited with with a particular character is in reality usually taking the lead on that character, and supervising a team who follow up in assisting, and animating other scenes. It is perfectly possible to have lead animators assigned to cg characters as well.

I agree with the general thrust, that it is probably better for one individual to take the lead in defining the character. A lot of the rest here seems to be the same slobbering reverential treatment that is so often thoughlessly given to Harryhausen and O'Brien. As if O'Brien and Harryhausen had some secret knowledge that has eluded the CG artists. And as if Jackson is somehow privy to this, being the Kong/stop-motion fan that he i