Western Tales of Terror on Bookgasm

Bookgasm has a great review of the entire five issue run of Western Tales of Terror.  I somehow missed it when it came out (probably because the book had already been dead and buried for about a year when it ran), but, it's greatly appreciated. Y'know... I'm actually incredibly proud of those five issues.  I think they go toe to toe with just about any horror comic on the market today or yesterday.  And they're still for sale over at the Hoarse and Buggy store.

Go, buy them, enjoy.

The Lone and Level Sand - Comic Con Reviews

First up from my Comic Con stash is The Lone and Level Sand by A. David Lewis, mpMann, and Jennifer Rodgers. I read the book in it's first printing, which was softcover, black and white, and published by ADL's Caption Box comics. I enjoyed it in that form, but, I felt the grayscale art wasn't quite right, and the lettering wasn't top notch.

This new version by Archaia Studio Press is positively breath-taking. The colors make the art pop, the production is amazing, the redone lettering and general book design makes the book the complete package it always deserved to be.

The book is a thoroughly researched retelling of the story of Moses and the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, as seen in that one Charlton Heston movie. The big difference is that the book is told from a historical perspective, and more importantly, from Pharoah's point of view. It comes of as an even-handed portrait of a man who while certainly a villain, had quite a bit more going on then was ever really addressed in that big leather bound scroll they kept up in the daius until trotting it around the shul on Saturday mornings.

Probably the biggest suprise for me about the book and it's reception is how little flack ADL got for doing the angle he did. Despite the thoughtful and delicate way he handles what to just about 2/3rds of the world would be blasphemy, the knee jerk reaction (and this even to my lapsed Jewish self) is "What the fuck do I need to feel bad for Pharoah for?" Well, you don't. He obviously had a choice and he made the wrong one.

The use of religious mysticism versus practical logic is pretty brilliant and reminiscent of the work done in Age of Bronze, another thoroughly researched look at a time period best known for portrayal in an Epic Poem or two.

Anyways, LaLS is really a wonderful piece of literature that hasn't gotten the attention it deserves, so, do yourself (and my buddy ADL) a favor and pick it up. It's dirt cheap on Amazon and it's thus far my favorite Graphic Novel of the year.

Oh, and it's up for a Harvey Award or two, so make sure to vote for it if you're eligible to vote. (And while you're at it.... there's this other obscure indie book up for... eh, forget it. Just vote for Bendis or Brubaker and break my little heart.)

Lone and Level Sands. Go. Buy it.

Fragile Prophets

Fragile Prophets by Jeff Davison and Stephen Buell

I'm an asshole.  Stephen gave me a copy of the trade of Fragile Prophets months ago, and I keep meaning to write about it, but I've been so fucking swamped, I haven't had time to do it.

Well, it's coming out in the next few weeks (or maybe came out this week), and I just wanted to make sure everybody checks it out.  I know that I'm notorious for saying that every book is my favorite book of the year, but, this time, I mean it.

The story of an autistic boy who can see the future and his brother who may or may not be exploiting him (even the brother doesn't know), it plays like a mix between Rain Man where Dustin Hoffman is an 8 year old Cassandra.  The story's delicately told and intricately woven, the art is peculiar in a way that really makes you feel the unease of the world these characters live in.  From beat to beat, it's completely engrossing, and when you get to the twist ending, we've had such a blast that you just don't want it to end.

Really an excellent piece of work from the very underappreciated guys at Lost in the Dark Press.  Go click the link above and order the fucking thing, or I'll smash you.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance

I love westerns, obviously. I mean, I committed a good year of my life to Western Tales of Terror, and have been hammering away at a couple other western projects this year as well. There's something so earnest and heartfelt about even the cheesiest of western that's missing in modern cinema. The Cowboy movie is an art form unto itself. That being said, I'm not really a John Wayne kind of guy. I think he's... well... just a bad actor. That being said, there's a couple of John Wayne movies I love. True Grit is one, El Dorado another, and, then, there's The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance. It's certainly one of the most traditional movies John Ford ever directed, and the performances of Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne serve to turn a story of revenge and politics into one of the most compelling coming of age stories about adults ever made. John Wayne plays the more experienced, more cynical, and for the most part drunk and abuse cowhand. Jimmy Stewart becomes his ward, of a sort. The political back drop of the territory fighting towards statehood is this great counter point to the idea of the West being tamed. It's delicate and smart, and outright compelling.   The twist, along with the bitter-sweet ending, are also some real cinematic highlights.  Just for seeing how a character can be both the winner and the loser simultaneously. So, if you want a classic black and white western, this is where to go. Well, this and High Noon, obviously.

On a side note, they must say the name Liberty Vallance several hundred times through the course of the movie. It's... very strange.

Hard Candy

David Slade is a genius.  I can't remember the last young director to so amazingly execute a film.  The shots, the editing, the acting, are all pitch perfect.  It's really a masterpiece.  The only strike against it is the subject matter, which is a turn off for a lot of people.  But, that being said, it's so expertly done, so well-crafted, that it doesn't matter what it's about.  It's a movie about 2 people who are pathological liars embroiled in a battle of wits, the equal to which we haven't seen in a LONG time.  This is classic cinema, and we're going to see a lot more of Slade in the future, if there's any justice in the world.

Mission Impossible 3

So, well... It's hard to come up with something to say that hasn't been said before about the movie. It's good, not great. It's like a higher budget episode of Alias, which in the long run, turns out to be more satisfying than most of Alias because there's an actual ending and y'know, the set pieces are brilliantly done. Tom Cruise... is distracting at best, but is nicely balanced by a lot of smaller bit roles by Billy Crudup, Laurence Fishburne, John Rhys-Myers, and Simon Pegg. The thing that most makes the movie work though, is the performance of Phillip Seymour Hoffman. He's spectacular.

So, look, it's not Die Hard, but nothing is anymore.

Warren Ellis Says…

From Today's Bad Signal

And I've read CASANOVA #1 by Matt Fraction & Gabriel Ba, which is a total mindfuck, Moorcock via Steranko, Nino and OUR MAN FLINT. It, Gillen & McKelvie's PHONOGRAM and probably Fialkov and Chamberlain's PUNKS are looking like the singles of the year so far.

Match Point

As a life long Woody Allen devotee, I've let him slide. Sure, Small Time Crooks, Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Hollywood Ending, Anything Else, and Melinda and Melinda are total and utter shit... but, just before those we had Sweet and Lowdown, Deconstructing Harry, Everyone Says I Love You, etc. etc. etc. So, y'know, the guys made sixty movies, is seventy years old, and has been butchered in the press for the better part of ten years now. But, you always hope that he's going to come back from it. Match Point's at least a step in the right direction. Aside from two big problems, the movies pretty excellent. The third act does a lot of good to fix what's not so good in the beginning, leaving you with a sense that the movie is much better than it actually is. The directing is incredible. The shots and editing are master classes in film making, and it shows that Woody is every bit the filmmaker his idols Fellini and Bergman are. The spare use of music, the delicate use of location and letting... it's really pretty outstanding.

Then there's the two problems.

The first is actually not so much a problem as a sticking point. Everyone points out the similarities with Crimes and Misdemeanors... Well... I'd say it teeters on the edge of being a remake, or as their known now a 'reimagining' of the movie. It's achingly similar. And while Dina, who's never seen C&M enjoyed the movie well enough, it nagged at me throughout.

Secondly, and there's no easy way to say this. Scarlett Johansson is positively atrocious. Every scene she's in the movie loses steam and chemistry, the inevitablity inherent in the story instead feels like formula all because of her less than one-note performance (a semi-tone performance?) She's gorgeous. Really, really sexy. And has the presence of a three day old Sea Bass Special at Norm's. The scene's where Rhys-Myers is 'over-come' with his desire for her become caricatures rather than eruptions of passion. And it's not just a stylistic thing. She's so out of place in the movie, and completely and utterly out-acted by everyone around her that it really, really hurts the film overall.

It's definitely the best movie Woody's made since Sweet and Lowdown, but, it doesn't capture the uniqueness nor mastery of that film by any means. Instead, you're left with a fairly successful pot-boiler with one extremely bad performance. Worth a rent, though.

Dr. Who

My brother loved Dr. Who when he was a teenager, and being 9 years his junior, I'd sit there figuring "Well, if my big brother likes it..."  It never actually reverberated for me though.  Not the way Hitchhiker's Guide or The Young Ones did.  The new series, though, is just... wow. There's a few iffy episodes early on (the Dickens one and the Sun exploding ones aren't quite up to snuff to the stuff that follows), but the past three episodes have been some of the best Sci-Fi television this side of the Prisoner.  I think it actually puts Lost to shame.  The show gives resolution, a feeling of progress, and character development.  Lost, while the character beats, and the plotting from episode to episode is interesting, just never delivers, and, well, most likely never will.  It's the nature of the beast, and a core difference between the shows.

The Doctor is Batman.  He's Superman.  He's James Bond.  Except, they even came up with a decent enough explanation for why he's always changing actors.

Anyways, my point is that I think a lot of people are like me and have less than fond memories of the original (which, as i've been watching some aren't actually quite as bad as I remembers, and some are actually quite good), this is a totally new, totally seperate beast, and some of the best Sci-Fi currently on the TV.

Come on in… Take off your skin…

FOR SOME REASON THE OFFICIAL SITE WENT DOWN, SO ALL THE IMAGES AND SUCH ARE GONE.  OH WELL.Just got home from seeing The Black Rider at the Ahamnson Theater. For those not in the know, The Black Rider is the musical written by Tom Waits and William S. Burroughs and brought to the stage by Robert Wilson. The show was originally produced about a decade ago, and this is a revival, with Wilson still at the head.It's this Faustian folk tale done Brecht style with a heaping helping of Waitsian charm and Burroughs-y insanity (or, as I like to call it Burroughsanity) and a Murnau aesthetic The Waits Album that serves for most as their only vision of the piece is one of his classic discs, and it's a must own for fans of the later period Waits (I'd say it's second only to Bone Machine).

So, the show. Hm. It's good. It's very good. (Watch my BFA in theater go now!) The mis-en-scene is positively breath-taking. The sheer degree of stagecraft that went into making the whole thing work, is just obscenely impressive. The scene transitions happen without you noticing, the sets morph and grow, shrinking into nothing, growing from back drops, and lighting effects become three dimensional objects. It's positively transcendent.

The performers... well... in that Brechtian tradition, what the actors are doing is so stilted and stylized that very little of it is acting, so much as it is an elaborate combination of dance and vocalization. Even a quick walk across the stage is becomes an epic event. It's pretty amazing. That aside, one of the strangest biproducts of the show being written by Waits is a lot of the cast attempts to do a Waits impression especially on some of the more 'trademarked' songs. Fact is, there's only one Tom, and nobody else can even come close.

The music is absolutely the highlight. The performance is epic, I'd say the band is better than Tom's actual touring band (at least, the band he toured with on Mule Variations, which is the last time I saw him.) The vibrancy and precision of what they do is just... wow. The vocal side of things, aside from the Tom apeing mentioned above, is also pretty damn great. Lots of interesting choices and arrangements. Really, really amazing stuff.

Then, we get to the show itself. Here's the thing. There's a big flaw in the shape and structure of the piece, in part due to a strangely timed intermission (it falls nearly 2 hours into a 2 hour and 45 minute show) leaving the final act feeling very small and disconnected to the rest of the plot. In fact, when the curtain call started, it took about 4 or 5 actors before the audience figured out it was a curtain call. At the end of the day, it fails in a lot of the ways that I think a lot of Burroughs work fails. 2/3rds of the way through the plot falls by the wayside, and it becomes a bit self-indulgent. Which is a shame, because the actual set pieces are really breath-taking. Really, really breath-taking. For me, though, the combination of the extremely stylized series of vignettes that make up the final 1/3rd, and the forward story momentum of the first chunk just does not mesh. The thing is, that at the end of the day, the plot is identical to that of Brigadoon or Oklahoma, just with a darker take. And part of what makes those shows (while somewhat atrocious in their own ways) successful is the feeling of completion. I don't think the show accomplishes that. All in all, a truely unique piece of theater, and the fact that it not only got put on at one of the biggest theaters in LA, and had a pretty decent size audience is a feat and accomplishment in itself. If you're a fan of Waits, Burroughs, or giant avant garde theatrical art pieces, you'll enjoy it.

At the very least, I know that Sean Maher is jealous as fuck.

Recommended Read - Stranger Than Fiction

I'm a huge Palahniuk fan. Fight Club's a classic of the 90's, and Diary might just be the best book of the 00's. His ability to craft stories equal parts true to life and complete absurdity is second to none, and I really think he'll be considered one of the definitive writers of our age. And, yet, for some reason, I've stayed away from most of his non-fiction stuff. Turns out I made a big mistake. Stranger Than Fiction collects several essays, interviews, and non-fiction ramblings that Chuck had published between books, a lot of which seems to have come from the research he did for his books. There's a section about the Olympic Wrestling Tryouts that obviously was in part the inspiration for Fight Club, another about Castle Building that plays an important part in Choke, and so on. The personal remembrances that make up the last 1/5th of the book are almost all fixated on how Fight Club has changed (in some cases ruined) his life, and how the series of traumatic events that surrounded it colored the event that most of us writers dream of all of our lives.

The sheer dexterity of his prose is mind-blowing. Say what you will about his topics and narrative devices, the son of a bitch crafts a sentence like no one else on Earth. His voice rings through in every piece (even some of the more drab pieces) and it makes what for the most part would be dry New Yorker style articles ring with a relatability that's unmatched.

Just as Fight Club the book will be taught in late 20th Century Lit classes for years to come, and Fight Club the movie will be taught in Film Theory classes, Stranger Than Fiction should be taught in Journalism classes, because it's some of the most engaging, stylish, and thought provoking non-fiction I've ever read.

Link below takes you to Amazon to buy the book. Amazon.com: Stranger Than Fiction : True Stories: Books: Chuck Palahniuk

Alien Nation Did Not Age Well

Alien Nation

Originally uploaded by Joshua Hale Fialkov. My Tivo's Conspiracy Wishlist taped Alien Nation for us.  I have pretty fond memories of both the movie and the series.  There's some great stuff in there (the drunk Newcomers in the milk bar, the knee to the balls, etc.) but overall it just feels... empty.  It has the tone and depth of a Schwarzenegger film, which is fine, except that it deals with big (and interesting) issues.

And James Caan is suprisingly bad in it... he does this sort of whiney complainer type thing that belies the character.  Maybe it's having recently watched his powerhouse performance in Misery (which gets more or less ignored for the more obvious Kathy Bates performance), but, it's not Caan at his best.

Mandy Patinkin on the other hand....

This weekend’s movie…

So, I'm a comic creator, with a long running fascination with Alan Moore. So after Wizard World LA on Saturday, when I decided to head out with Dina and grab a movie, there was only one movie I wanted to see. Find Me Guilty.

Yeah, to be honest, I could give two shits about V for Vendetta. I'm sure it's at least a fun time, but, reviews from trusted sources make me figure I'll just wait to be disappointed on DVD instead.

Anyways, for anyone who knows me, Sidney Lumet is pretty much my favorite director, despite some pretty uneven films later on in his career. I mean, this is the guy who made Murder on the Orient Express, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, and Equus. IN A FUCKING ROW. One after the other, each one wholly different than the others, each one a hallmark of it's genre. Plus, 12 Angry Men, Q&A, Prince of the City, and my personal favorite, the Mamet penned The Verdict. The guy has just made some of the best movies in the history of the medium, and generally gets ignored in favor of guys with less range (I'm lookin' at you Scorsese and Coppola).

Find Me Guilty is a bit of an oddball, and more in line with his more recent movies like Guilty as Sin and Night Falls on Manhattan quality wise. The thing that I was left with at the end was this feeling that I'd seen a real movie. Not neccessarily a great movie, or a life-changing movie, but, by the end, you feel like you've been through this epic life with the characters (and you have, the movie chornicles two years of a trial in suprising depth considering the movie isn't that long), and like you're slightly different for having watched it. There's a few mis-steps, mostly in terms of music choice (they use this Benny Goodman like score that belies the slightly heavier tone, which I suppose was to help make it feel more like a comedy than it actually is.)

And, then, there's Vin Diesel. I've had an embarassing man-crush on Vin since I saw Pitch Black years ago. It's just a great little movie, and he's got more charisma then Steven Seagal and Jean Claude Van Damme combined. He's no Bruce Willis, mind you... but who is? Anyways, I've always enjoyed his work, even the excretable XXX and Fast and the Furious. I knew underneath all of the muscles and smart ass exterior, there's someone with a lot of talent. Find Me Guilty, well, I don't know if it quite proves that, but, it shows that Vin is definitely capable of more than he does normally. He's pretty excellent, although, I'm still left wondering how far the character is from the guy underneath. He's volatile, uneducated, and aggressive, with a hang dog look and slight paunch that goes against the usual cut and shaved Vin look, and a wonderful sense of comic timing. He's pretty remarkable in the movie. The rest of the cast is great as well, including Peter Dinklage as the lead attorney and Ron Silver as the judge.

So, look, it's not Armageddon. There's nothing exploding, and really, nothing much happens, but, it's a damn fine film, that'll take you back to the 70's at least in ethos, and considering what else is in theaters these days, that's not a bad thing.

Rue Morgue’s Got Elk’s Run Review Fever

In that issue there, there's a beautiful Elk's Run Review that says things like the following:

"Easiest described as Stephen King's The Body (aka Stand by Me) crossed with M. Night Shyamlan's The Village, but comic's best kept secret is actually a great deal more."

and

"A far from happy ending is exactly the reason we're reading why we're reading this excellent book in the first place."

So, go support the best horror mag on the stands, cause they've supported the best indie comic on the stands. It all works out karmically.

Josh’s March Music Discoveries

I've got an eMusic addiction. I just crawl around and try to find shit that I've never heard and try it out. It's so cheap, I just can't say no. So, here's my most recent discoveries. Please note, if these bands are not particularly new or unheard of, I pay little to no attention to what's played on that new fangled radio thing.

Blue States http://www.bluestates.com/ Sort of like if Ennio Morricone was really into Trip Hop. Not as big a fan of the vocal stuff, but, overall, some really great stuff.

The Field Mice http://www.shink.dircon.co.uk/fieldmicebio.htm Early 90's Twee, sort of a New Order by way of the Smiths. Not particularly ground breaking by today's standards, but I can imagine when they first came out being pretty revolutionary. Really nice, not too too mopey.

Field Music http://www.memphis-industries.com/field_music.html Look, I'm a big Of Montreal fan. Field Music, as much as it pains me to say it, is a better Of Montreal. Very pastichey retro sound that's equal parts Elvis Costello/Talking Heads and Beatles/Atlantic R&B, just a breath of fresh air (and they're labelmates with The Go! Team if that helps push you over the edge at all.

So, there ya go. Again, if somehow these bands are all on the top 40 with whatever soulless game show winner is in the top twenty, I apologize. :)

Night Watch

So, after the disappointment of Ultraviolet, we went into Night Watch.

The movie's a bit of a head scratcher. I'm steeped in Russian tradition (in part thanks to immigrant parents, a born-in-Russia-but -not-a-mail-order-bride girlfriend, and an obsession with Chekov, Solzhenitsyn, and Tolstoy) so a lot of the weird incoherent stuff was reminiscent enough of things I've heard here and there that I let them slide. Gary, who I saw it with, thought it was all just incoherent bullshit. I'm actually kind of sorry I didn't take Dina, because I get the feeling it would've made at least slightly more sense to her than it did to either of us.

So, bizarre mythos aside, the movie's pretty fun (if over long), has a bit of an uneven tone (which I'm just attributing to it's ethnic origins, I mean... what other nationality has produced books with titles like Cancer Ward, about the camarederie of forgotten about cancer patients telling racist jokes and croaking one by one?), and visually stunning (although some of the more simple stuff is lacking, the effects are positively remarkable.)

So, sort of a hesitant recommendation. My money still sits on 16 Blocks as the best movie thus far of 2006. Hollywood, it's time to prove me wrong.

Ultraviolet

I LOVE me some bad sci-fi movies, but holy fuckballs is this the worst thing I've ever seen. We actually walked out 20 minutes in. Obviously you expect the acting and the plot to be heinous, but the effects... it looks like a PC game from 1992.

It's just... wow.

I never walk out of movies, but Ultraviolet has joined that exclusive club.

16 Blocks

Probably the most fun I've had watching a modern action movie in... shit I don't know how long. Richard Donner directs the film into a frenzy of 70's era stunts and plot twists, which give the movie a feeling closer to 3 Days of The Condor than Die Hard. Bruce Willis is pretty great as an over-the-hill can barely stand up beer gutted shit bag of a hero, and Mos Def teeters on being annoying, but manages to stay endearing.

Look. It's not Shakespeare, or shit, even Scorsese but it's a breath of fresh air and worth the money.

And one more Best o’ 2005 List…

Ain't It Cool News' Comics Reviews Year End Recap Delcares:

"VROOM’S 'WTF?' AWARD FOR MOST INSANE PLOT POINTS PER ISSUE ELK'S RUN from Speakeasy Press. "

Thanks Vroom & Co!

The Time Traveller’s Wife

For a while now I've been obsessed with sci-fi that's not sci-fi. It probably started in earnest with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but there's also bits of what Chuck Palahniuk does, and even some of the grittier pulp noir writers that teeters cleverly on the edge. So, when someone brought up the concept of The Time Traveller's Wife to me, I was intrigued.

Course, I can't afford rent, so buying a trade paperback by some author I'd never heard of was out of the question. There's a reason I read nothing but old pulp books... I can find them used for around $2 a pop. Anyways, I stumbled upon the book at a used shop out in Northridge the other day, and just finished reading it.

Here's the dust jacket text to save me some time talking about it.

Often lighthearted, thoroughly original, and ultimately profoundly moving, Audrey Niffenegger's first novel tells the story of two people destined to be together: Clare, a perfectly normal woman, and Henry, a time-traveler.

According to the unique rules that Niffenegger creates, Henry travels unexpectedly and mostly to his own past, often when he is "all stressed out and [has] lost his grip on now." As Henry explains when he first meets Clare: "…the person you know doesn't exist yet. Stick with me, and sooner or later he's bound to appear. That's the best I can do." And while it's true that Henry travels to different moments in time, he also travels from them as well. He frequently gets lost in time and doesn't know "when" he is.

But the real story of the book is the lifelong love Clare and Henry share as they try to make the most of the times they have together -- the times when Henry is not traveling.

Subtle but powerful, The Time Traveler's Wife is a book whose importance becomes more evident with each turn of the page, provoking readers to ask themselves if they've made the most of the moments of their lives --moments so fleeting, they could be time travelers themselves. (Fall 2003 Selection)

That's actually not from the publisher, but from Barnes & Noble's site. The execution is a bit less... gaudy as the overview makes it sound.

Here's the thing. I love Chuck Palahniuk. He's a genius. His word choices are flawless, his conceptual and character work is brilliant, but, in terms of it being an involving, emotional read, that's just not there. His books are about shitheads and ego-maniacs (although Diary is a notable, and excellent exception to that) and although I find myself almost always blown away, there's rarely a true emotional connection to the characters.

So, why am I talking about Chuck? Audrey Niffenegger has crafted something remarkably similar to a Palahniuk novel, with two notable differences. One: Her word choices aren't quite as strong, and Two: I haven't been so moved by a book in a long time. There's this interesting conundrum that the book explores, and something that's oft forgotten in time travel stuff. The end game is a forgone conclusion. It's the why's and wherefore's that make the thing work. Niffenegger seamlessly layers in plot points in a remarkable non-linear fashion that while some of the tension goes away, it tends to give all of the build up scenes much more weight. You know a character will die, and, in some cases, when, but, it gives this wonderful sense of dread and resentment.

Plus, I got to sob like a schoolgirl while reading it, which despite loosing my already limited "Manly Points" with Dina, makes the book considerably more cathartic and satisfying than just about everything else I've read in a long while.

Click Here To Buy the Book on B&N, Cause Amazon didn't have a linkable version of the cover...