I have a confession to make -- I didn't get this cool on purpose. I know! I know! But Damon...you seem to be permanently entrenched in the world of music and film. We understand that in terms of writing you seem to be just winging it as is made obvious by your frequent improperly structured sentences and the way in which you will use words incorrectly a bit too often...although admittedly we're not entirely sure if you're always doing this on purpose or not. But Film! Music! Surely you put in some sort of generic effort in a college of some sort studying their various aspects and social significance as well as writing long-winded papers in a purposefully negative tone because professors are always suckers for negativity directed at something considered a boon to humanity or demonstrating something somewhat sacrosanct by society. Surely! Well...a little I guess. But it's not really the reason I used to get paid to shop for rich people wanting music and movies and why they trusted my choices. I did it a bit...old school I guess.

I suppose you could say I came about my increasing my knowledge and forming my particular tastes on the street -- although more accurately it was other people who knew better. By this I mean I did what I've always done which is wallow in my particular area of interest but increasingly paying attention to people I recognized as having "taste" different than my own and allowing them to influence and sometimes guide my path in their particular field of expertise. I've known blitzed out party girls that knew more about international music than you could ever imagine. I've known foul-mouthed multi-lingual translators that are oddly well-versed in blaxploitation flicks and jazz. I've had shy and nervous employees that could keep on top of every tiny electronic music composer that has released a single. I've lived with angry lesbian couples that always knew when a foreign movie I've never even knew existed was playing at some little theatre that I've never even heard of who also exposed me to painters that were equally a mystery to myself. This coupled with just reading, reading, reading, and keeping up on stuff eventually exposed me to enough of most things that I was interested in that I could eventually form what I eventually think of as my current taste in...stuff.

Also I get distracted...easily distracted. I often do data entry work for no particular reason at the Screened site and often when I'm desperately looking for a poster picture for an old film I'll suddenly notice something completely unrelated and, like a crow who spotted something shiny, I'm all like "ooooooooooh...what is that?". Honestly this is how I've often found found some of my favorite films -- well also constantly scouring my cable and PPV channels for interesting stuff, but you get the idea. Such is the case with the first picture you saw when you foolishly clicked on my blog. I came across this picture in an article discussing sexuality in film and I saw a frame from what I soon identified as an animated film called "Technotise: Edit & I". Sadly I saw that it was a tiny independent film from Serbia of all places (I feared I wouldn't find a copy) and was put together by some bright-eyed kids from that country that just really wanted to make a film.

From what I gather it's a sequel of sort to a Serbian comic book although the film turns it into a sort of a light-hearted Ghost in the Shell meets Pi type of thing. A future tale, but instead of a sad dystopian setting, it's just life as always with kids just trying to get by and parents getting annoyed at their antics. Somewhat like Ghost in the Shell the movie explores themes of how one defines life and the self in an age in which artificial creations are getting more and more lifelike every day and humans increasingly rely on machines to do their thinking for them. In this case an artifical life is slowly growing inside of our titular character Edit due to her imbedding an illegal memory enhancing chip in herself (to cheat a test) but then being exposed to what just may be a "God" formula capable of creating life. The movie is a little rough, the look a little flat, and the plot definitely overreaches its ability to deliver. But hey...it's a damn fine first effort for an independent film from Serbia by a bunch of nobodies. Give it a shot and click on the link and don't forget to hit the "CC" option for the subtitles and let me know what you think.

But aside from all that yammering that you may not have read, if you just skipped down to this then I'll reward your intelligent choice by offering you some animated features I'm very much looking forward to that you may not have heard of. Maybe they'll be lame and maybe they'll be awesome, but like I said...you have to check out everything you can whereever or whomever you hear it from or you'll just end up lame and angry with nothing but a list of proven cl@ssics on your lists of "bests" with no really personality behind them...and they'll all secretly be giggling at your limitations.

A Cat in Paris

A short but from what I've heard rather sweet film out of France that features some very unique art designs which are lovingly featured by being completely hand drawn. The story revolves around a cat. By day the cat is the loving pet of a young girl who has not spoken a word since the day her father was murdered by a notorious gangster. By night however, the cat is the faithful companion to a kind-hearted but very successful cat burglar. Things get sticky when the girl decides to follow her cat to figure out where he goes at night and she ends up a hostage to the very many that killed her father! Now her police force mother and the cat burglar must put aside their differences to help track her down!

The Prodigies

Another Frenchy film but this baby is all CG and it's in 3D! Oh...boy. Anyways it involves a group of outcast kids who after being viciously assaulted they discover the assault has triggered something deep inside them and given them super abilities. The catch...they really REALLY hate society and decide that they are going to make society pay for their pain. The main protagonist discovers that he is also blessed with their gifts, but will he do all in his power to stand against them and protect humanity, or will he join them?

Tales of the Night

Hey! You may have seen this is my sig as part of my "occasionally pimp a movie" thingy I've been doing lately? This is the newest film by a great animator from France (again?) named Michel Ocelot who brought us a few of the highly entertaining Kirikou films. This time out he has put together some of his shorter shadow puppet inspired tales featuring stories around the world and combined them into one long film along with some new material. I'm not sure of the nature of most of the shorts, but honestly it's a Michel Ocelot film so if you like animated films suffice it to say you should be watching his stuff. Do it!

Tatsumi

This is the one that I'm most excited for. It's very quietly being created as a work of love by Singaporean film maker Eric Khoo and a small team of dedicated professional. It's an adaptation of the works of manga writer/artist Yoshihiro Tatsumi who you may not know of in the flood of teen manga that get a lot of the public's attention. He's writes deeply personal stories that are often biographical in nature and tend to deal with the everyday struggles of the common Japanese man. His work is truly good stuff and considered legendary and Khoo is working very hard to make Tatsumi's art s+yle live and breath as if the manga has suddenly animated before your eyes.

Well I hope you enjoyed your time and hopefully you saw something that looked interesting. If not...ah well. They can't all be winners can they? :P

Ha! Oh what a master of comedic writing I am I am! Actually funny story...well actually it's kind of sad and pathetic really but not in THAT sort of way so cast off your immediate thoughts of Damon-type melancholic reflections away. Anyhoo...at one particular retail establishment who shall remain nameless, although often joked about for years by many an employee, someone in advertising at the home office actually thought that creating a sign for the holidays reading "Don't Passover These Great Savings" was actually a good idea. :| I know...funny but not in the earnest way they intended so it's really just kind of sad. But these are the kinds of things that happens when you have a home office that's not located in a big major city...just a lot of white affluent folks that are completely disconnected from reality. But as always I digress.

Somewhat similar to the whole Hanukkah getting a big boost social boost from its associative calendar position to Christmas thingy which sort of raised its importance despite it being originally a fairly minor celebration due to its apocryphal origins, Easter/Eostre and its actual close association to Passover was THE major serious ceremony in ye olden times. As you might imagine, in Christian belief the action of your Lord suffering horribly in order for the entirety of mankind to be forgiven and then rising from the great beyond is a great deal more significant than one being born maybe sometime around this date or that. But since the end of the year pagan rituals were so big and so awesome and the Christians didn't want to appear to be the dour fuddy-duddy religious choice, eventually Christmas became the holiday to end all holidays in the general public eye of the Westerner.

So what you say? Who cares? Well...I suppose you're right. It's just a lazy long way for me to segue into the fact that Easter is now generally thought about as bunnies, eggs, and candy, candy, candy, and then mayhaps a trip to the church for an early Sunday service if you are so religiously inclined. For me there was initially a lot of religion from my early childhood days, but eventually it became all about getting a big basket o' chocolate and going on picnics. These days I really don't do anything on any holiday, but I have been getting a habit into dressing up my profile at Screened in various themes of various calendar events. While I was doing so I came across a great deal of bunny-themed pictures by German painter Michael Sowa who tends to dabble in surreal themes although as you'll see they are often of a rather whimsical nature. I know I know...another picture oriented thread? Sorry, I didn't plan that and I suppose I should've thrown a movie review or something in between if I was thinking this out ahead. Despite that I still hope you enjoy the bunnies.

February

I can't help but think Magritte when I look at this for some reason, but I do like the way it hints at how the whole thing might just be a wild fantasy on the part of the house bound cat who dreams of flying penguins to chase.

Rabbit on a Train

I haven't fully decided whether this is a sad painting a la The Illusionist in which the bunny is leaving everything behind and is inexorably alone in the world, or perhaps it's a set up for some kind of Hitchcockian tale of deceit and MURDER!

Rabbit on a Rainy Street

Another one in which I could think of him as a lonely homeless bunny just trying to get by, but honestly I get this bunny-noir vibe off of it and I tend to think the bunny has some sort of important micro-film that the commies want and the street-wise criminal bunny can't choose between being a loyal citizen and giving it to the officials or if he should merely sell it to the highest bidder. Mystery!

Bunny Dressing

Although initially it just looks like a cute little bunny playing dress-up, for some reason I get this sort of voyeurism vibe and I feel like I'm perhaps seeing something a little too private that I shouldn't be. Probably just some repression on my part though.

Bunny Performance

Nothing really going on here folks, just a bunny standing on it's outstretched ears. It's a funny thing though, as one who watches a lot of early films it's amazing just how huge and important big department store window displays used to be to the world of advertising.

Happy Easter! (which by the way is the name of the first painting at the very tip-top)

The other day I was riding with a friend of mine in what passes for a kinda, sorta, downtown area in the giant non-city that is Los Angeles. We noticed a series of banners advertising an exhibition at The Getty Museum for the photography of Felice Beato who spent a great deal of time traveling all over East Asia photographing and documenting all these newly opened countries such as China, Japan, India, Korea, and Burma. BURMA! Sorry...really old joke.

Anyways...the picture they used to advertise it was one he took of a Japanese man encased in full samurai armor and my friend being a fairly learned person in all things Japanese, indicated his interest and preference for the Japanese Bakumatsu era despite his former professor's dislike for it in general. The Bakumatsu signaled the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate period of control and basically was the beginning of the end for the old ways of Japan as they ended their isolationist policies and once again began dealing with the outside world. But as the Meiji period of Japan began there was still a lot of crossover between the old and the new and as photography started to make its way to areas in Asia there are some quite valuable documentation of what everyday life was like in those early crossover days.

So as this info all quickly flashed between us it reminded me of a Japanese photographer that I had come across during my random travels around the giant tangle that is the internet. There's a English site out of Japan that I came across called Pink Tentacle (hey...get your mind out of the gutter!) which mainly deal in interesting artistic and social aspects of the Japanese and general life in Japan. Some time back they had this article on a photographer named T. Enami, whose name in fact was Enami Nobukuni but he decided to use the name T. Enami as a pen shorthand and to make matters more confusing his son later decided to use the same alias.

T. Enami was a great photographer and over his long career he contributed quite a lot to the field -- so much so that he was eventually honored by National Geographic for his valuable contributions. One aspect of his work that made him stand out is that he had his hand in almost every kind of photographic s+yle and technique and never settled on specializing into any one field. One area that he particularly excelled at however was small-format images such as glass lantern slides and stereoview pictures -- basically a crude form of 3D photography by taking two images and viewing them together through a viewing lens. I thought that these were pretty damn cool and so I thought I'd share a handful of them with you. Enjoy!

Sumo Wrestlers

Buddhist Ornament Dealer

Chujenji Road in Nikko

Clam Diggers Enjoying a Lunch Break

Campfire on the Peak of Mt. Myogi Nakasendo

Geisha Playing Music

Great Buddha of Kamakura

Normally with movies I tend to write reviews or wee little paragraphs attempting to express my desire for others to get it on all the positive hullabaloo or perhaps to warn them to tread lightly when approaching some of the more unsavory examples that I am often wont to traffic in. But lately I've been in a bit of a rut which, while not all that abnormal, has been a bit more pronounced than past emotional funks to the point that honestly if you were to ask me what I've been doing over the last fortnight I really couldn't tell you -- it's all kind of...blurry.

I know I have watched some movies as that's kinda sorta what I always do reflexively, but my brain is such that if I don't mull things over by writing or talking about them they quickly take on an almost dream-like tone and from there move on to vague oblivion as if perhaps I merely imagined the whole thing like a distant childhood beating that one can't properly remember if one deserved it or not. Typically I sort of wander into movies often by accident, then I would study them online a tad for their historical or cultural (pop or otherwise) significance, then perhaps on with the writing or some rewatching if I taped or had access to some highlights -- a rough sort of absorption of the film beyond my petty frame of reference but beyond a dreary film professor's misguided agenda.

So lately like I said it's been a bit of a blur and although normally I could talk your ears (or write as I'm sure some tired souls around Gamespot could attest to) off about the 20 odd movies I watched that week no matter their quality, not writing does make me lose my focus a bit. Luckily though I do have a friend who calls on me quite frequently and due to our discussion of some of them (really just me blah blah blahing to him), there have been a few things that have stuck with me during this time period that I can recall quite vividly.

So let's get on with those small synapses of entertainment.

Title - Rubber (2011)

Director - Quentin Dupieux

Country - France

Trailer

I'm not fully sure why but I was so excited for this film that the nano-second it hit the preview PPV market I downloaded it and then I did that oh so daemon thing of then sitting on it for weeks. I think that initially I thought my friend might like to watch it as well but then I quickly realized how much drama was going on in his life and I didn't want to bug him about it so I just waited until suddenly I realized my film was about to expire so "on with the show" and all that tish tosh.

So what did I think?

Well it was...interesting, but not quite as interesting as I'd hope and yet it also turned out to be far different from what I thought it would be which, while pleasantly surprising, was not enough to allow me to fully embrace the film. Let's attempt to make this brief...

The film by French flat-beat composer Quentin Dupieux ,who some music aficionados might recognize as Mr. Oizo, is an aggressively fourth-wall busting film that is Dupeaux loving tribute to the "no reason" element of film i.e. characters and situations that occur in film on a regular basis that if you step back and take a good hard look at them you realize they only exist at the film-maker's whim and aren't based on any firm logical ground. Dupieaux is fairly up front about this as the film opens with one of the main characters speaking to the viewer informing them of this fact before the "actual" film starts. Accompanying the viewer are a group of spectators dragged out to the desert in order to watch the movie as well, but the film for them isn't on a screen, they watch it with high-powered binoculars as the movie unfolds in their world not too far away.

The film they are watching is a movie about a cast off rubber tire abandoned in the desert in a junk pile. For no reason the tire suddenly develops an awareness and once he gets his bearings, he sets about crushing small objects and creatures that he comes across. When he finally encounters an object he can't crush, he suddenly is aware he has telekinetic powers with which he can cause them to explode...much to the delight of the distant audience. As he heads down the road he begins to encounter more and more humans and although he becomes enamored of a lovely European model, he quickly becomes tired of people and a chance happening upon a specific location galvanizes his desire for revenge.

It's an odd film to be sure, but a rather enjoyable and typically quirky film as the many odd ideas and elements it contains are dealt with in a very plain and matter of fact fashion. The main problem it suffers from is that because of the odd way in which the film is structured, it really doesn't have anywhere to go and so it seems to lose direction and just kind of wanders around wallowing in it's own unique brand of oddness. Normally this is where I would call a movie such as this out for being too calculating in the creation of a cult-type movie instead of just letting it happen naturally. But honestly I feel that Dupieux's creation is so self-aware of this trap and so honest about almost openly mocking the very nature of these kinds of films that quite curiously it almost seem to poke fun at its own inherent weakness.

Bottom line - An enjoyable quirky film about a killer tire whose premise is stretched a bit too thin but is fun nonetheless.

Since I don't get out of the house all too often these days, I watch a lot of films in the comfort of my tiny abode. I thought I'd just throw out a few that I watched that really stuck with me over the last week or so just in case there's somebody out there that likes to watch interesting films beyond the generic cl@ssics that people tend to get stuck on.

Sunnyside Up (1929)

Oh pre-code films...you just so rarely let me down. Case in point a sudden broadcast of this pretty damn rare and just recently restored film which despite its arrival during the first solid year of talkie films, boasts some very good sound far superior to a lot of 1930-31 films I've watched. A comedy/musical that turns into a somewhat serious romance in the final act, Sunnyside Up isn't an amazing film to be sure, but the players are so infectious in their overall jubilance that despite my having to stay up all night to watch this film I found myself wide awake and rather transfixed. Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor were already a hot screen couple before this film and despite their rather questionable singing they manage to carry out their roles rather well. But for me I think I enjoyed their co-stars Marjorie White and Frank Richardson quite a bit more as their enthusiasm and solid comedic timing really carried the movie.

But what I REALLY carried away from the movie is the sudden large musical number called "Turn on the Heat" which instantly informs you it's the early '30s buddy and there's nothing we won't try to get away with. The film is basically a sexual orgy of innuendo in which a bunch of "Eskimo" women sing and gyrate to a song about how they can make things hotter by having lots of sex in their igloos. Of course all their gyrations cause the igloos to melt and trees and bananas to sprout while the women are dancing around and eventually it all gets too hot because of the mad, mad, sex and...well just watch the clip. It definitely presages the innuendo and excesses of the Busby Berkeley musical numbers that would soon be coming down the pipeline.

Hot Millions (1968 )

An embezzler recently released from prison and swears vengeance against these new-fangled computers that were the reason he was initially caught. He takes over the identity of a programmer with a solid record and manages to score a high position in a company. Day and night he reads up on computers and how to program them in an attempt to embezzle a million dollars from his place of employment..but first he has to find out a way to get past that blasted security system and its always vigilant blue light that lets everyone know that everything is safe.

An incredibly charming and thoroughly funny film that features a handful of very good actors at the top of their game. Peter Ustinov is the embezzler Marcus Pendleton/Caesar Smith and his eventual love interest is the great Maggie Smith whom which he shares a very solid sense of chemistry with. His nemesis and (not really) love rival for Maggie is played by none other than Bob Newhart and their boss is the very nice but always very concerned Karl Malden. There is a sudden twist to the conflict in the very final moments of the movie which if explained might seem like cheating just a bit, but honestly the way in which it is presented and dealt with is so charming and so fitting for the overall tone of the film that I would feel foolish to nitpick at it.

Oh also Caesar Romero randomly shows up in a tiny role as a baggage inspector.:| I know what?!

Bombshell (1933)

Despite being a fan of early films I'm really not very fond of Jean Harlow. I guess it's just because was this raw, sexual, iconic blonde bombshell and honestly I've always found her just really...um, weird looking. Sure I've seen some of her gangster pics but she usually wasn't a large focus so no big deal for me. Despite this I sometime ignore my impulses to follow my own particular sense of taste and change the channel and decided to give the Jean Harlow marathon a bit of a go and boy am I glad I did. Holy God but Jean Harlow has some serious comedy chops on her!

The film was at the time of production ostensibly a vaguely veiled send-up of Clara Bow's life in Hollywood and all the types of shenanigans she would have to put up with in terms of manufactured controversies, deadbeat relatives constantly sniffing around for money, and the general nasty way in which everyone feeds of off a star without any care for how it affects them. In real life Jean Harlow's Hollywood existence was very similar to Clara Bow's and many of the specific names and situations in the film are so close to what happened in real life to Jean Harlow that in fact what you have is a film the rips Hollywood's ass open for how awful it treats its talent whilst everyone around them does nothing but feed off of them in the most careless manner possible. Well...everyone except for the actress Louise Beavers who despite her playing the typical maid role, she does so in an surprisingly casual manner that feels as far away from many of her typical "mammy" type roles as one can get and is rather refreshing.

Yet despite the rather serious message of the film (which honestly probably went over most people's heads) the film is played for laughs and everyone is incredibly funny and spot on in their respective roles. Frank Morgan (the real Wizard from the Wizard of OZ) in particular as her deadbeat father is incredibly hilarious and I found myself treasuring all of his constant offended huffs and puffs every time somebody called him on his B.S. Really the only thing negative about the film I can think of is this little trumped up fake romance sequence which felt incredibly artificial and awkward. But that was a rather small part of the film and overall I was completely delighted by the entire movie and now feel quite stupid for ignoring Miss Harlow for so long.

Thanks for reading.

Oh yes for the handful of folks that wander by my comments are indeed turned off but feel free to drop me a line if'n you have a question or comment or recommendation...or candy.

I still miss my cat.

When the subject of comic book characters comes up on internet forums generally the conversation quickly turns into a versus thread in which one poster's favorite hero or villain in pitted against another poster's picks. Generally the conversation gets very silly very quickly and a great deal of people posting typically display a great deal of ignorance when it comes to the people they are supposedly championing. Aside from being the nature of the beast that is an internet social board, it's rather sad to see so many people weigh in with confidence when it's embarrassingly obvious that their only real knowledge comes from the array of modern comic book themed movies and perhaps the odd graphic novel or two...or what their friend told them once -- but certainly not from the official comics themselves.

Now there's certainly nothing wrong with being ignorant as life is all about learning (or suffering...or both) and we are all in a perpetual state of ignorance until we actually obtain knowledge in those areas in which we are sadly lacking and slowly begin to stumble around with a bit more confidence. Yet surprisingly even on comic book boards it's rather sad to see a lot of the same common silliness going on when it comes to one on one arguments/discussions. There's of course the person who posts a random out of context picture of their hero slugging the other with a degree of convincing power. Hey folks...I got a picture of a panel of Spider-Man punching the bejeezus out of Superman. Guess what? Yup, you're embarrassing yourself. Then of course there's the ultimate embarrassment from the modern kids that generally happens in all big power discussions when some sad, ignorant fool posts a picture of Doctor Manhattan from The Watchmen. :roll: Hey kids, molecular and atomic structure manipulation is not unique to that character. Not only are there characters in both DC and Marvel that can manipulate molecules and other folk's atomic structures, but there are quite a pesky handful of characters whose structure can't be manipulated so he couldn't even affect them. Please stop embarrassing yourselves to an amazing degree. Thank you.

One of the big problems that even fairly knowledgeable comic folks struggle with of course (besides the realization that the writer can pretty much make anything happen with editor approval) is ramping it up too far so that you end up struggling with the higher cosmic beings whose power levels and abilities are generally kept somewhat ambiguous...because nothing says power like mystery. So usually we end up with the big boys of Hulk vs. Superman (Hulk at first then a triumphant regrouped Superman) or Thor vs. either of them (Thor of course) and then perhaps some Omega level mutants or perhaps we'd go slightly cosmic with some Thanos vs. Darkseid (Thanos duhhrr) or ....well, you get the picture. It's kind of hard because definitions of power levels are always changing to the whims of the writers and editor in chiefs and it's hard to know where to place people at times. Sure it's the modern age and they create all sorts of official nifty power level bars for all sorts of abilities, but really that stuff can just go right out the window at a moment's notice. Yet...there is a comic book series that has some characters just kicking around Earth with the most mind boggling power that it puts all the characters at Marvel and DC to shame. It may not surprise you to hear that it comes from Japan -- no it's not Dragonball.

This is a series called JoJo's Bizarre Adventure from the very, VERY strange mind of Hirohiko Araki. Mr. Araki is not only quite obsessed with fashion, but he's also quite fond of Western rock music, so much so that most of his characters and their powers are named after famous rock stars and their various album titles. To be quite brief as I've already blathered on a bit, the story centers around the Joestar family and initially their struggle with their ultimate foe Dio. The power of these characters in this series are called "stands", a sort of guardian angel manifestation that have a wide range of powers from typical comic book stuff like elemental control and superhuman powerful physical attack skills, to really extreme things such as Dio's ability to stop time for a set period of...um time. Some of these stands can get quite bizarre such as the guy who can create zippers that he can walk through on anything...including people, and some stands actually grown and change in power. You would think that the ability to stop time would be more than powerful enough and normally you wouldn't think anything could top that. You would be wrong. Brace yourselves.

The man's name is Giorno Giovanna and he's the son of the aforementioned time stopping Dio. Initially he has a stand called "Gold Experience" which possessed several powers. It could turn non-organic material into a living organism, it could accelerate a person's thought patterns so that they could either lose control of their bodies or he could use it to make them experience sensations for a greatly prolonged period, and he could change foreign objects within a person to reform into that very thing that they destroyed thus healing them. But then his stand evolved into "Gold Experience Requiem".

The power of Gold Experience Requiem is quite extreme as it possesses what is called a nullification of action and effect. When something happens that he doesn't want to happen it reverts all those actions back to a state of zero and then replays them to a beneficial effect. Basically it automatically rewinds time and erases the action of whatever caused him harm so that in no longer can affect him. So if you tried to shoot him suddenly for no reason you can think of he just wouldn't be harmed because his stand rewrote that part of reality. So...he's kind of invincible. You would thing that there's really nothing that could be more powerful than that right? You would be wrong.

This man's name is Enrico Pucci. He became very good friends with the oft referenced Dio (very good friends >_>) and rather worshipped Dio as a devine being. Originally without a stand, Dio helped him to gain one as thanks for his kindness and the quite odd and fairly mad priest experimented with stands so that he eventually owned three different types with very different powers. But to make matters short we are going to deal with his final and quite insanely universe-breaking last stand which is called "Stairway to Heaven" (although later renamed "Made in Heaven" to honor Freddie Mercury). Like Giovanna's "Gold Experience Requiem" this stand will kick in automatically whenever he is threatened or perhaps bored with the state of things. Want to know what it does?

Initially it controls the gravitational fields of the entire universe. He can cause these to speed up which in turn causes time itself to greatly accelerate. On a small scale he can make it seem that he can move almost instantly from one point of the world to the next as he is unaffected by the time flow. But taken to the extreme he can keep the speed going faster and faster to the point that no man nor God except for Enrico Pucci himself (who naturally can do whatever he wishes during these episodes) can control or keep up with the flow of the universe. Eventually the universe reaches a breaking point and it implodes and then explodes again as the universe is reborn once again exactly how it was except of course Enrico Pucci can now change and rewrite whatever he wants to have happen no matter how big or how small.

So yeah...he's got that going for him.

So anyhoo, from now on if'n anybody asks you who the most powerful comic book character is you now have your very, very, ridiculous answer -- Enrico Pucci from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Did you know he can recreate the universe at will and manipulate it however he wishes and he's just kicking it on Earth you could say?

So...yeah. Knowledge is power.

Name - Shoes AKA Zippers

Occupation - Warming Humans

Duration - 1999-2011

Likes - The Sun, Shiny Things, Shoes, Getting Under Blankets, Being Chased, Ice Cubes

Dislikes - The Garbage Truck, Daemon Yelling at Video games, Other People, Zippers

Perplexed by - Bugs, Not being able to fit in things she could fit into as a kitten

Sorry I don't know why as soon as I saved the pic some of the stuff got a bit blurry but I suppose that's what I get for trying something new. I'd re-type it out for clarity but honestly it would be just too emotionally taxing to do that again at the moment and honestly so many people have left this place and I guess my stuff has become so awful to read that it's rare that I get much by the way of comments anyways.

But suffice it to say my li'l kitty kat is all deadified and gone and she has left me all alone with naught but my stacks and stacks of movies. I like to think of the fun things she liked to do such as enjoying being stalked and chased (All I'd have to do is quietly say that I was going to "get" her and the chase would suddenly be on!), the tinkle of an ice cube as it bobbed around the water bowl that I would occasionally put in, the drive-bys she would perform (when I was reclining on the couch and she was sure I hadn't seen her down below, she would suddenly spring up and bounce off my chest and onto the top of the couch), the excited way she would scratch as my shoes when I came home from work, and of course the quiet melancholy of not fully understanding why she could no longer crawl inside Pepsi containers as she enjoyed doing when she was much smaller.

But now she is gone, setting like the sun that she loved so much only this time she'll never rise again. I live in such a small place that we were pretty much always within sight of each other and so it's so damned odd to hear and see nothing since the emptiness doesn't seem to react to all the sounds of my activity all that much. I meant to write all sorts of fun and semi-witty thing ruminating on my cat's behavior and such, but honestly I just don't have it in me at the moment. But like I said, who really gives a damn? Who really gives a damn at all?

I just wish all the silence wasn't so damned loud.

A tsunami wave crashes over the barriers and into a street in Miyako City, Iwate Prefecture

A boat comes to rest on top of a house in Otsuchi, Iwate Prefecture

A survivor wanders amongst the debris through a created pathway in Otsuchi city

An emergency worker throws around disinfectant powder among some house ruins in Iwate Prefecture.

A stretch of damaged and collapsed railroad track in Fukushima Prefecture

A woman crys among the ruins of her once familiar neighborhood in Natori, Miyagi Prefecture

An earthquake damaged petroleum-refining plant in Shiogama, Miyagi Prefecture erupts into flames

Rescue workers search for earthquake/tsunami victims in Tamura, Iwate Prefecture

A victim who was enveloped by large concrete ocean barriers thrown by the tsunami

Yeah, yeah, yeah I know...it's kind of a lame excuse to do a two month late listing of those typical "Best of..." lists that people are oh so prone to create at the beginning of a new year. But honestly I'm not really big on putting a strict number ranking on subjective works of art such as movies and music and other than those lists that deal in a specific non-mainstream genre and thus wander a bit outside of the box, they really don't interest me at all in the least bit in any way at all interesting or in any way are or have ever been interesting to me -- and by association those nearest to me in terms of an aesthetic sympathetic unity and not a physical locality -- and thus typical results in my complete lack of disinterestnessness. Sorry...kind of panicked at the end of that last sentence.

Anyhoo...typically I like to cowardly just retreat to the more comfortable world of just listing some fun favorites and though my interests tend to be more geared towards the arts and thus will heavily be steeped in artsy fartsy thingies, I'll try to throw in some type of gaming stuff since I guess I'm kinda on a gaming site and all. Well let's see what kind of junk I was fairly thrilled about last year and ignore all the life-destroying stuff from my personal life this time out.

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Favorite Gamespot Moment - E3 Bulletstorm After Hours

If you stuck with Gamespot during last year's E3 show and committed to watching EVERYTHING they put out you might have noticed a couple of slightly odd experiments they did. One was allowing one dedicated employee to run around with a big shoulder camera desperately trying to cover everything whilst multi-tasking quite a lot of things, and the other was Tonight On the Spot otherwise known as the crazy people meet at a bar, drink quite a bit, and play video games. Bravely dodging grumpy bar owners attempting to throw them out, our stalwart Gamespot team wandered around the after hour get togethers trying to get some scoops.

On one particular glorious night they ran into the Bulletstorm folks featuring Tanya Jessen. Now...I'm not saying everybody was really, really, drunk as I'm not a doctor...but let's just say that everybody looked and acted very loose, excited and friendly. This clip only shows a tiny bit of what happened that night, but if you watched it live you know what happened. Basically the meeting just devolved into a great play session in which everybody swore like sailors while they relished in the game's delicious carnage. It was an amazingly compelling demo and was in stark contrast to Miss Jessen's appearance the next day at the official Gamespot floor show which was strictly professional.

Dear Gamespot -- more games n' alcohol demo sessions please!

Also don't think I'm not bitter over not be awarded my two missed badges for watching all the Tonight On the Spots and all EVERY DAMN SHOW you so graciously produced.

Favorite Album - Blood Red Shoes - Fire Like This

Oh sure I s'pose there were quite a few albums that blew me away on a technical level or had me screaming like a little baby that they finally made a new album (thanks Superchunk and Versus), but dammit if Blood Red Shoes didn't continue to make the catchiest bit of boy/girl jangly noise rock with their 2010 release! Blood Red Shoes has continued to be a fairly obscure band in the U.S. as they pretty much ignored this side of the world whilst their contemporaries slid fairly quickly into view with Stateside releases and single play in the various alternative markets.

But for whatever reason they've decided to do so as I've always been too lazy to check, they just don't seem to care all that much and only came out here for an incredibly brief tour coinciding with their sudden and quite pleasing appearance on the Scott Pilgrim Saves the World soundtrack -- which of course suddenly got them noticed by a lot more people. Will their popularity climb at all here in the U.S.? Who knows but I just don't care so much about that stuff anymore now that record stores have died.

Favorite Blu-Ray release - Star Crash (1980) by Shout! Factory.

Once again even though that sure, sure, the Kino edition of Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill, Jr. was the bees' knees and was truly a glorious sight to behold, but the ultra cheesy Star Crash had been out of print for decades and has never even had a proper DVD release much less a Blu-Ray edition and I had somewhat given up on ever being able to watch it again except on some old crappy full frame low quality video tape. Then suddenly those lovely folks at Shout! Factory that brought us the excellent Blu-Ray of Death Race 2000 brought out Star Crash not just out on DVD but also Blu-Ray and lo did they pack it full of as many goodies as they could find! I was so happy that after I bought it I immediately watched it three times just because I could. God though I am a big old film snob I do love my trashy cinema so very, very, much!

Favorite New Theatre Film Release - The American

2010 was an incredibly good year for interesting and high quality films and Anton Corbijn's The American really blew me away. I went into it aware that the trailer was highly misleading and was not in fact an action film but a slowly paced character study. But I was not familiar with Corbijn and being a person that loves art and photography I find myself sometimes easily swayed towards film that lean heavily in that particular aesthetic. Similar to painter turned director Peter Greenaway, Corbijn utilizes his personal artistic sensibility to create a visually arresting movie, although since Corbijn is a photographer he does things such as framing many shots to the rule of thirds as opposed to Greenaway's tendency to create a unified balance.

But visual splendor aside, the film is chock full simple but effective uses of highly symbolic characters and locations along with an incredible performance by George Clooney who although an effectively empty and somewhat lifeless character, is able to tell you volumes about himself with just the tiniest of movements and facial expressions. Needless to say this film really impressed me on all fronts.

Favorite New Restaurant - Wako Donkasu

Although currently it's all the trendy rage to eat out of those traveling moving trucks fabulously decorated and serving all kinds of foreign cuisine, I still like to go and sit down in a nice place that's not fancy but serves basic yummy dishes. A friend of mine who is good at sniffing out fairly unknown but great little places found this place near Koreatown in L.A. called Wako Donkasu that's just awesome. It's a Korean place that serves Japanese tonkatsu dishes and not only is their food delicious, but their sauce is awesome! After you sit they give you a bowl full of sesame seeds and a pestle and you have to grind the seeds into a fine powder yourself after which a server will come by and pour their yummy sauce into it so you have simply the freshest and tastiest dipping sauce I've ever eaten!

Favorite Video Game - Bayonetta

I always like me a good action game but it seems like they're either pleasant but overly easy diversions or super cheating hardcore games that follow the Japanese axiom that if you're suffering then it must be good. Bayonetta managed to straddle that fine line by making an accessible game that was fun to play, cool to look at, and that would challenge but not abuse you. Sure there were some frustrating moments which tried my patience, but usually it was just because I was approaching an enemy the wrong way or needed to come back to a certain task at a later date when I had better abilities or items. Although there were some low moments like the far too long two vehicle riding sequences especially the second one which is immediately followed by a rather difficult boss.

Despite the Bayonetta character being initially a bit of an eye-rolling spider-like piece of sexual eye candy, I found myself warming up to her personality quite a bit especially as she started to become more and more reluctantly attached to the little girl she comes across. I wished they had come up with more practical uses for some of the weapons such as the whip, but there was enough variety that I found myself approaching certain tasks very differently than my friend who was also playing the game. But despite some tiny issues I enjoyed the game so much that after I finished up my PS3 version and platinumed the game all up, I bought a copy for my 360 and got 1000 for it as well just for heck of it. But as my friend says there's really just one singular thing that you get to do that makes the game oh so very, very, awesome in the final boss battle.

You become a giant and punch God into the sun to win the game. :shock:

Favorite Downloadable Game - Lara Croft and Guardian of Light

Not much to say but wow I could not stop playing this game for quite some time as it was so addictive. Much like Bayonetta I ended up buying this for both systems and besides accomplishing all the goals, acquiring all the goods, and getting all the trophies/achievements I did something I've never bothered to do -- I topped the online scoreboard. In fact I was even ranked #1 on the PS3 board for a couple of weeks and when I got bumped down I fought back and captured the top spot once again. Of course as usually happens the board got cracked eventually and so goes all the fun but oh well..I had my fun and the strange sort of fame one gets being the best along with the fallout of people leaving me messages wanting me to play the game for them or some such weird thing.

Favorite Graphic Novel - Love & Rockets: New Stories #3

Love & Rockets was the best comic of the '80s but since those halcyon days of small publishing greatness the creators haven't put out a lot of material. They have made a few limited series every now and again, but although these were greatly welcomed, they really didn't quite reach the heights of the '80s era material. Well this all changed recently with the release of the third collection of new Love & Rockets stories and specifically Jaime Hernandez's "Love Bunglers" and "Browntown" stories which are just heartbreaking but truly great reading.

Favorite Animated Series - Archer

I wasn't sure what was going to happen with Archer when I first found out about the series. First it was going to be on FX of all places and second of all it was created by Adam Reed who was the co-creator of the very good but vastly underappreciated and generally ignored series on Adult Swim called Frisky Dingo. They tried one spin off and it died immediately so although it obviously looked very much like Frisky Dingo and obviously had the same comedic sensibilities, I really wasn't sure how it would be received. Luckily though it somehow has acquired a solid audience and a lot of critical praise so much to my delight it not only stuck around for an entire season but it's currently in the middle of its second season. Oh yeah...it's like Frisky Dingo but a hundred times more awesomer.

Favorite TV Show - Luther

A very odd little crime show out of Britain which stars Idris Elba as Detective John Luther who starts the show off allowing a serial killer he's been relentlessly chasing to fall hopefully to his death. Unfortunately the man survives and is currently in a coma and though John is under suspicion he is allowed to return to active duty as he is a genius level profiler. His first case is a woman named Alice Morgan (Ruth Wilson) whose entire family has been horribly slaughtered. But upon interviewing her he realizes that she in fact killed her entire family but because she herself is a genius level killer he can't legally prove it. Intrigued by John's ability to suss her out so easily where others could not, she finds herself drawn to him time and time again. At first she wants to torment and toy with him, but despite her nihilistic outlook, she slowly finds herself needing him in her life and thus creates a very odd TV couple.

A very interesting show with characters that really drew me in Luther was fun while it lasted but unfortunately it ran far shorter than it should have and ended on a completely insane note which tied several major characters together in a very unexpected manner. Word is out that it finally got the go ahead for a new season, but sadly I'm going to have to wait until the 4th quarter to get any more episodes.

Title - Black Death (2011)

Director - Christopher Smith

Country - UK / Germany

Trailer

It is 1348 and a medieval era England has been all but consumed by the infamous black plague. The powers that be do all they can do inhibit its spread by quickly gathering and burning the afflicted bodies but alas inexorably it keeps spreading its deadly fingers ever farther. A young monk fears for his life when the deadly disease besets his monastery, but it's not just for his life that he fears. For unknown to his fellow brothers the young monk Osmund (Eddie Redmayne) has fallen in love with a woman and out of fear he desperately desires to flee somewhere to safety with her. But though he is in love, he is still deeply devout and thus desperately troubled as to what to do, he prays to God for a sign.

Suddenly a knight named Ulric (Sean Bean) and his band of nefarious mercenaries approaches the monastery and pleads for a guide through the swamp lands as he needs to reach a village that though untouched by the plague, supposedly they have done so through supernatural means of a devilish nature. Young Osmund immediately takes this as the sign he's been looking for as his girlfriend is from the swamp country and has retreated there to wait for him. Osmund joins the group of truly frightening men, but he is warned by Ulric that the village they are going to is a place cursed by Satan and controlled by a powerful necromancer that supposedly can raise the dead. Their mission is to capture the necromancer and take them back to civilization for trial as a heretic.

Fantasy has always been a notoriously tricky subject to adapt to film. Much like horror, it has been traditionally maligned as the lowest kind of fiction and many attempts at bringing the genre to the screen have had underwhelming success mainly due to a lack of support from quality producers and directors. They usually arrive as either aloof, squeaky clean Arthurian tales or ultra low-budget schlocking, cheesy affairs full of bad acting and quite often even worse effects. There have been some success stories to make the tales more compelling and earthy such as Boorman's Excalibur and the advent of CG as well as the maturation of the fantasy fan base has led to the unqualified success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. But despite these great films, the genre still struggles as the schlock and lack of care that goes into some of these types of films is surprisingly lacking.

Thankfully I found Black Death not to be lacking in any aspect and I'm happy to report that it's a truly great film that is very much worthy of your attention. Although initially possessing a plot that greatly resembled that of the much maligned Season of the Witch (a film from which they actually shared some crew as they were shooting around the same time in the same locations) thankfully the director Christopher Smith took creative hold and asked the writer to change the last act as he was not happy with the nature of the conflict. Although a self-confessed big fan of demon vs. man flicks, the director continues his strong interest in the extreme nature of man and the exploration of how people can change and fall into extremist behavior be it as a mob participant or a central figure around which people gather. The director also sensitive to how the extremes of early Christianity can become an easy and creatively lazy punching bag, instead focuses on the hows and whys of what drives the various men in his film and how it can greatly change them and those around them. The pagan aspects of the film are also handled with deft fingers avoiding the cliches of typical magic emboldened devil powered fantasy witches of medieval lore, and does so by shrouding the nature of their power in mystery and subverting the idea of what is actually going on by some very nice directorial misleads.

The atmosphere of Black Death is dense, harsh and full of brutality. Although there is plenty of violence, a lot of the most horrific actions occur just off screen or are slightly obscured by frame blocking. This might sound cheap but in reality it makes the violence seem all the more brutal as the shots are up close and personal and the sounds accompanying these acts let you know exactly what's going on. To add to this in your face approach, the director uses 16mm hand-held cameras in many of the scenes that involve fighting or just some extreme brutality. Although initially unnerving, this not only gives the feel that you are in the midst of the conflicts, but it puts you in so close to the action that it in effect deromanticizes the generally highly romanticized art of chivalrous combat and makes it feel as real and brutal as it no doubt was. Ulric's men are dirty, vicious, and highly skilled fighters who will take you out any way they can and this technique really pounds this point home.

Stepping away from the inherent brutality of the medieval ages, the film features some beautiful cinematography courtesy of the director and his cinematographer Sebastian Edschmid (The Last Station). The already beautiful locations are put to great use with some truly breath-taking shots in terms of grand scope and the mysterious undergrowth. These visually sumptuous locations are greatly heightened by liberal use of mist and smoke that seem to linger in almost every shot no matter how low or high. This smoke is analogous of not only the unrelenting and constant thread of the advancing plague, but also the very nature of the reality of what is exactly going on in the film and how it is being perceived.

On the whole I found the film to be disturbing, emotionally moving, and very well crafted. Sean Bean and Eddie Redmayne are just flat out amazing in their roles and Eddie in particular is smashing as his character really goes through an intensely extreme change through the course of the film. The last act throws the viewer quite a few curve-balls in terms of the reality of the situation and the transformation of some of the characters, but not only did none of it seem cheap or contrived, all the revelations seem perfectly natural and perfectly balance out the study of man that is Black Death. It's not about what religion you are, it's about how people can take up the mantle of extreme fundamentalism and why it drives them. People aren't two dimensional, they commit horrors for a reason and I loved how the film flips around the viewers perceived alliances. A deep exploration of the extreme nature of man, Black Death is truly a fine film that deserves a wide audience.

Not more than a mere handful of days ago I awoke screaming in pain. I have some...thing wrong with my eyes or some kind of recurring condition that I can only describe as feeling like somebody just jabbed something very sharp into it and some part of that something broke off and is still causing me immense pain. The catch...there's nothing really there and any attempt to touch it serves only to greatly magnify the pain. So there I sit rocking in pain for 1 to 4 hours depending upon the severity of the "attack" cupping my eye both in an attempt to wrest some kind of placebo-ish mollification from my brain (of which of course the eyes are a mere extension) and because these attacks cause my natural sensitivity to light to be greatly amplified to the point that a ray of light becomes a searing attack of solid pain. Oh yeah...9 times out of 10 the Gods also humorously insure the days in which I suffer these attacks are THE BRIGHTEST MOST CLOUDLESS DAYS EVER SEEN ON THIS EARTH! Ho ho, well met you inbred bastards. Anyhoo...eventually the pain abates and I'm left with a watering eye which is seeing triple and I'm quite dizzy which leads me to stumble around a bit like a not so comical drunk. No I'm not sure what it is as the symptoms match quite a myriad of afflictions from the deadly to the casual. I also don't really have that kind of money for doctors and I can sometimes go for quite a many months without having it happen. I have to assume it's not deadly as it's been going on for years and...hello I'm still writing to you now. What? Oh yes Caddyshack!

So a good friend of mine called me up and wanted to just go out shopping a bit at one of the many local Best Buys littering the San Fernando valley in Los Angeles. Although I was not exactly in tip top shape, well...honestly I can't remember the time I've been in that kind of shape, but anyways suffice it to say I was not in proper condition to venture out into the brightly lit world of retail. Yet for some reason I was feeling a bit trapped holding up in my house, in the dark, with my blanky, and a cat, and so I felt I would force my body to participate in the mundane Western habit of shopping. I stumbled around a bit and pulled my hoodie as far over my eyes as I could well aware that I was visually profiling myself as a criminal generally being disappointed with the selection. Then I saw Caddyshack sitting there on BluRay for a mere $10. Not a stellar movie to be sure, but it is the very definition of a guilty pleasure and its beloved status has grown to the point that it's generally now considered a comedy cl@ssic -- albeit a kinda stupid one. It's been a while since I've watched it and the price was right so why not? I thought of all the cl@ssic lines and how much I missed Rodney Dangerfield and his Johnny Carson appearances and how funny Chevy used to be...and then it hit me. There's another reason that I really gravitated towards this movie and why that reason later made me look at this goofy comedy cl@ssic with quite a bit of melancholy.

Originally Caddyshack was supposed to be all about the caddies and the crap they had to deal with from their strange and demanding golf club members. Specifically it was supposed to center around the story of Danny Noonan (Michael O'Keefe) and his Irish girlfriend Maggie O'Hooligan (Sarah Holcomb). But Harold Ramis brought in so many crazy high profile loose cannons that eventually the movie would either be 4 hours long, or they would have to lose a lot of something. Obviously that something was the focus on the caddies and of course the story of Danny and Maggie. Now of course this was huge blow to the young actors as they went into the movie as the main characters. This of course really, really sucked for them but no the "lost" Caddyshack is not the source of my sadness, it's Sarah Holcomb.

You see, being an introverted but fairly typical lad of 16 in 1980 I had my movie crushes and Sarah Holcomb was definitely one of the big ones and it was a big reason why I always remembered Caddyshack fondly. Although in the film Cindy Morgan was supposed to be the sexual focus, to me the much more approachable and real character of Maggie was a helluva lot more attractive and the scene of her in her underwear burnt deeply into my memory. But being a young lad I was easily distracted and as I went on with my silly life, I didn't take notice of the fact that I never saw Sarah Holcomb again. Flash forward a couple of decades later and having developed into something of a film goof I was slowly revisiting movies, directors, and stars that interested me growing up. I looked up another old crush Diane Franklin (Monique from Better off Dead) and discovered that she did a silly movie called Second Time Lucky in which she was gloriously naked for most of the film and it only cost me $3 for the DVD! Then I remembered Sarah Holcomb and was puzzled by the fact that she never made another movie after Caddyshack. In fact she sort of just...disappeared.

It's no secret that the set of Caddyshack was a set filled with excessive partying. Drugs and alcohol flowed freely and almost everybody was in on the craziness a factor which was further amplified by the frat-like living situations in which all the stars lived in a big building located on the actual golf course they filmed on. Most people came out of the situation a bit bleary eyed but relatively unscathed. Not so with Sarah. You see Sarah was starting to suffer from the mental condition Schizophrenia and the constant atmosphere of hard drugs and alcohol only served to amplify the condition. She quickly began to lose her grip on reality and soon found herself in some rest homes and eventually a mental institution. Word on the street is that after some years she checked out and was coping, but she has changed her name and apparently does not wish to be found by anybody. Word also has it that director Reverge Anselmo knew her and based his 2004 movie Stateside on Sarah with her brother actually playing a part in the movie and a thank you at the end of the movie to "S.H.". So wherever you are Sarah, I hope you're doing fine. In my own stupid teenage way I really cared for you and I wish you the best.