Shameless Self-promotion

Have I mentioned I wrote a short story, published in the sixth issue of the online “weird” fiction magazine Arkham Tales which is now available for download from Leucrota Press for less than a cup of coffee?

Well, I wrote a short story, published in the sixth issue of the online “weird” fiction magazine Arkham Tales, now available for download from Leucrota Press for less than a cup of coffee. And while you’re there, you should download the seventh issue as well. Not only will it painlessly whiten your teeth, studies from completely imaginary scientists have indicated it will also make you more attractive to your desired gender and potentially grant you immortal life. So the question becomes, “Who wants to live forever?”

And swing by here tomorrow, when we shall…*ahem*… kick-ass.

Adventures In Spamalot

Stop the spam or we'll shoot this dog.

Spam: it’s an old complaint that comes up now again. And since I don’t trust any of the semi-autonomous programs charged with keeping my stuff up on this castle of sand I’ve taken to perusing the long, long, long list of fake messages I get every day from Akismet. In the course of deleting the damn things, the old riff  bug bit down hard, and since blogging is really little more than one big scramble for that evil, corporate euphemism for writing, “content,” I thought I’d share my favorite fake comments with you, the people. {More}

Heaven’s Gate (1980)

Actual audience reaction to Heaven's Gate...You know what annoys me? Westerns. Because they’re all – in some way, shape, or form – based on The Virginian, an overwrought “novel” about a horrible dick protagonist who drawls and lynches his way across a version of the American West about as historically accurate as Naomi Novik’s Temeraire novels. The dragon, in this case, being a white-hatted cowboy who can rope a steer, woo a woman, civilize the wilderness at the point of a gun, and do it all from the back of a horse before breakfast. While drunk.

But I am nothing if not a masochist, so I’m going to admit publicly that my mother recommended Heaven’s Gate to me. Her love of Westerns is equaled only by my contempt, but I trust her judgment in most things. Besides, she uttered those seven magic words: “Everyone hated it when it came out.” {More}

Predators (2010)

Robert Rodriquez earned the deserved love of millions by sacrificing his own precious bodily fluids to make his first film, back in ’92 (when we were still trapped in a room without a view). Ever since, he’s become a one-man production studio, which is apparently all you need to do to win the label of “outlaw” in modern, mainstream Hollywood circles. Rodriquez is now the Quentin Tarantino of Spanish-flavored gangster films: rich and powerful enough to do more-or-less whatever he wants to do, so long as “whatever he wants” involves flogging the corpse of El mariachi. Or From Dusk Till Dawn. Or Spy Kids.

But that’ll be Machette. In tonight’s case, Rodriquez has flogged the corpse of a film he so obviously loves…almost as much as I…though I suspect for completely different reasons. He’s better at it than the army of inarticulate hacks who took a pair of sheers and some gaffer’s tape to the Aliens vs. Predator films. Whatever else you can say about the man, Rodriquez has the Tarantino Eye for Unflappable Talent. Things could’ve (and have) been much worse…but that feels like the faint praise it used to be before I realized how fucked and shitty things really are. (The films of Michael Bay will certainly do that to you.) {More}

Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths (2010)

He's a saa-aad Batman...The day I discovered NOVA’s The Elegant Universe was a grand day at around this old Batcave o’ mine. I rejoiced that physicists had finally figured out what we comic book nerds have known for over fifty years: our world is but one of an infinity of universes, operating on parallel levels of what we so blithely call reality. Bully for you, Science. Welcome to the party.

As with so much else, superheroes had a large part in popularizing what was once the esoteric pipe dream of clever sci-fi authors. The Justice League first met their “evil” dopplegangers, the Crime Syndicate of America, back in 1964. And while those original Silver Age comics have…shall we say…mellowed…in their old age, I still respect the CSA’s original motivation for jumping dimensions: sheer boredom at the ease with which they’d conquered their own world. (with the exception of one Alexander “Lex” Luthor). The Justice League cartoon series updated and expanded up this plot to great effect in its second season two-parter “A Better World.” And while this Justice League cartoon was originally meant to be a transition into the series’ third season, life, and a tight production schedule, intervened. It still works as such, but feels oddly out of place coming so far down stream, after I (for one) thought Warner’s Animation department had run this idea into the ground. {More}

Saw (2004)

Swirlycheeks: the sign of madness everywhere.Torture porn will probably never go out of fashion. Somewhere, in the dank bowls of some abandoned warehouse, or the Glade-scented heights of California office buildings, freshly swept by underpaid immigrant workers, filmmakers will continue to feed expendable characters into increasingly-ridiculous grist mills. And people will pay to see it, always and forever more. Self-appointed moral guardians should take note of this and realize the futility of their mission. It’s the way of the Force, kid, get used to it. Move on, and take your goddamned squeamishness with you. The rest of us will be over here, wondering how in the hell people can be so stupid to mistake this for a horror movie? {More}

Memo From New Zealand: Twilight Kills!

What's a little murder between friends?

Wednesday night, police discovered a twenty-three year “transient” slumped in his car, dead, outside a Wellington, New Zealand theater screening of Eclipse, the latest film installment in the unfortunately-popular Twilight series.

To paraphrase my favorite Quaid, I’ve been saying it for years. (Ain’t I been sayin’ it, Miguel?) Twilight is undeniable blueprint for murder, more potent and viable than all the “violent” video games I’ve ever played in my life put together.

The official cause of death is yet to be determined at press time…but I think we could hazard a few guesses. I’m living proof that puzzling over Twilight series continued success can inspired more than one bout of suicidal depression. Frankly, its nice to know I’m not alone. So I’d like to salute you, anonymous transient man, and let the whole world know that your death was not in vain.

(h/t Jezebel and the NZ Herald, with preemptive apologies to all those actually involved in this tragic loss of life).

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)

Bromance! 2007It’s amazing how unmemorable a film like this can be. Twenty-four hours and it vanishes from your mind like a bad dream. Oh, to wake in a world where Marvel Studios did not chose to produce Fantastic Four films in conjunction with 20th Century Fox.

At once flagrantly pandering and incoherently pretentious, Rise of the Silver Surfer is undeniably worse than its prequel. All thanks to production logic that threw aesthetics under the bus in favor of expediency and marketing tie-ins. Got to crank them out quick before the marks get wise, see? And we are getting wise, though the general mass (who still, even after all this, refuse to read comic books) continues to throw cash at whatever crap’s offered us. And so it goes. {More}

Predator 2 (1990)

Targeting your children since 1997.
Targeting your children since 1997.

It’s easy enough to feel like the Predator during an opening shootout, when we as the audience have no real idea who the hell anyone is or what’s going on. Except we know at once that we’re trapped in an action film, and a fairly gratuitous one at that. No problemo there. Gratuity and I are old friends. But Predator 2 is unique in that it lets us know, almost from the first, that it knows we know how gratuitous all this is.

I think this extra level of aesthetic intelligence contributed to Predator 2‘s near-universal condemnation. Genre fans failed to appreciate the time, effort and thought that went into this production (at least at the time…most have woken up since, and the rest of you should keep reading – this one’s for you guys), while non-fans…well…we all know there’s no reasoning with them, don’t we? Yes. {More}

From My Cold Dead Hands

Today, in a 5-4 decision that should surprise absolutely no one, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that gun ownership is an individual right. I know. “Duh,” right? Apparently, this is only news to constitutional scholars and the court system that draws it’s members from them.

Apart from restating an obvious, on the ground fact, this ruling once again proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that John Roberts and Sam Alito are the bought, paid-for, and kept whores of the knee-jerk, Wrong Wing, conservative ideologues who handed them their jobs in the first place. {More…Within the Empire}

For a moment, there was hope