Tag: Reviews

Crossed 3: All that baking for nothing

Published by NiteMayr on February 21, 2009

Crossed 3 came out a while ago; it is kind of like a breather after the last two issues sort of dropped us into Wiry Meth-Head Rapist Armageddon. Mr. Ennis gives us a (somewhat cliche) “Man’s Inhumanity to Man” story with issue 3; which is hardly the issue to lose the momentum that was set up in Issues 1 and 2. One would have imagined that the story would reach a lull by issue 10, but this early break in the headlong run from the Crossed is kind of a letdown.

I’m not committed to the Characters yet, seeing them instead as a vehicle for us to ride on rather than actual “people in the story” if you understand. They don’t really exist as people yet, you see. They are brethless story ponys that we are riding with for now.

This is kind of where Crossed really drifts from what made “The Walking Dead” so good initially and so unsettling now; I cared about Rick and his family right away. I don’t care about any of the people in Crossed yet. That lack of empathy for the characters puts Crossed at Risk of being just a one-off Violent comic instead of a promising story about survival (or death) in the face of Skinny Redneck Violence Rapists.

Just Saying.

Review: The Book that Stinks

Published by NiteMayr on December 2, 2008

The Show that Smells

The Show That Smells is the most SHOCKING story ever shown on the silver screen! It’s also the tale of Jimmie, a country music singer dying of tuberculosis, and Carrie, his wife, who tries to save him by selling her soul to a devil who designs HAUTE COUTURE CLOTHING! Elsa is a powerful Parisian dress designer, and a vampire. She wants to make Carrie look beautiful, smell beautiful – AND THEN SHE WANTS TO EAT HER! Will Carrie survive as her slave? Will Jimmie be cured? Starring a host of Hollywood’s brightest stars, including Coco Chanel, Lon Chaney and the Carter Family, The Show That Smells is a thrilling tale of HILLBILLIES, HIGH FASHION, AND HORROR!

My rating: 1.0 stars

Bad Book. Bad Book. Bad Book. Horrible Tropes. Bad Book. Bad Book. Stunt Typography. Bad Book. Bad Book. Bad Book. Vampires are all Homosexual Baby Killers. Bad Book. Bad Book. Bad Book. Graphic and Morbid Rape Scenes.

There isn’t much of a plot to this screed, so I won’t waste any time with discussing characters or plot. There are 6 actual characters and about 15 speaking roles in this made-for-Limbaugh Vampire novella. It all devolves into a kind of stunt-book, with words strewn among typography tricks and over-used AMICLEVER section mastheads meant to evoke a maze of mirrors. The Vampires are monsters and as they themselves state, they are gay, because everyone who is evil is gay, right?

My satire detector is broken again I guess, but the heavy “We kill babies and have forced butt secks” section was more than enough for me, as was the pointlessly brief climax. Avoid this book and any derivative Jack Chick tracts it may spawn or else be forced to envision a melty-faced Lon Chaney standing behind a crying (pantsless) man saying “HAW HAW HAW” as he violates him with a perfume bottle.

To Draw it down to Numbers

Published by NiteMayr on October 23, 2008

An American Carol Week Number One (1,639 Screens):

$3,656,000

1,639

$2,231

$3,656,000

Sicko Week Number One (441 Screens):

$4,501,712

441

$10,208

$4,616,786

There has been alot of noise about “Real Americans” and “Real America” these past couple of days. The McCain campaign makes much of the fact that their supports represent the silent majority or the moral majority of the Country. The Down-home Salt of the earth that make up the real body of the electorate. The Authoritarian Right would have you believe that Liberals make up a tiny black-hearted exceptional bump in the world, and that the Rock-Ribbed Conservatives are in the Majority (while simlutaneously telling us about how they are persecuted).

These discussions are sometimes referred to as culture wars, expressed in purchasing patterns and behaviors. I can think of no better illustration of how North American people are really split than their viewing habits. They have to pay to see these films, they sometimes have to drive over some distance to go there, more than television, movie habits reflect the will and tastes of the affluent west and these numbers don’t lie.

People in the Western World ARE Liberals. They are Liberals by choice and in vast numbers, and if anyone tells you otherwise, they are deluded and foolish. Now if only they could vote that way too.

Oh, and in case you don’t know, An American Carol lasted two weeks in Theatres and Sicko, 13.

Review: Meet Dave

Published by NiteMayr on October 6, 2008

Meet Dave

Eddie Murphy plays the dual role of “this generations greatest captain” and “the ship itself” in this Sci-Fi comedy about a crew of 3 inch tall aliens in persuit of a secret weapon designed to steal all of the Salt Water on earth.

Much has been made of how bad “Meet Dave” is, and like “Norbit” before it, most of the problems people have with it can be traced to the easy familiarity of the movie and not to any other quantitive problem. It’s trite and lazy; the plot is obvious and cookie-cutter easy. Aliens come to Earth and take on the attributes of humans, some get into rap, some go crazy and the ostensibly toughest guy on board is a flaming stereotype. Sigh, yawn, seen it before. There are no surprises here. The guy with a stick up his butt goes crazy, takes over the ship an alienates the “kid”. Yawn.

My rating: 2.5 stars

The fish out of water story has been done to death, even by Eddie Murphy himself. This movie might even be best described as a family-friendly “Coming to America” with Arsenio Hall replaced with Gabrielle Union. It’s pretty much the same movie. Eddie Murphy’s character tries to blend in with the Humans, fails, falls for a local girl and finds love. It’s the same basic movie, without James Earl Jones and Sexual Chocolate.

Once again, we have a long-time movie comedian going back to the well for more of the same, hoping to win over his core audience, only to find out that his core audience has grown tired of his work and moved on to dirtier pastures. When Eddie Murphy tried to go back to dirtier roots (Norbit) they weren’t interested in that either. Which is a shame, because like Mike Myers’ “The Love Guru”, “Meet Dave” isn’t a bad comedy. I laughed at the predictable jokes and liked the ending. Yes, I saw it all coming when I saw the poster, but it didn’t make the ride any worse.

Audiences will go on the same Roller Coaster over and over again, hit the same drops and loops over and over and keep going back, why don’t they do the same for movies by established celebreties? They see the same stories over and over, the same themes. It’s not to say that “Meet Dave” is great, but it wasn’t as bad as one would have imagined. Eddie Murphy was funny, the relationship with the kid was “hearwarming” and the plot was straightforward. What more can one say about a family-friendly movie?

Why I Disliked Wall-E, Redux

Published by NiteMayr on September 24, 2008

To say that the movie lived up to my expectations is an extreme understatement. It completely blew my expectations out of the water. Everything about the movie was excellent. The animation was so flawless that I often found myself wondering whether we were watching real life landscapes. The only cartoon-ish aspect were the humans, but I think that was intentional. There were even lots of shaky, quick-zoom shots that gave certain scenes the look of being filmed with a handheld camera…and yet they were all animated. Mad props!

I don’t shy away from critics. I engage the Tomoatoes when I am about to go check out a movie that I haven’t already declared “too wicked to avoid for any rational reason” so the reviews, like the one above, mislead me about the quality of Wall-E and lead me to believe that the overgrown manandwomen-children who wrote these bits of fawning praise have taken leave of the hormones that allowed them to leave bald armpits behind.

Pixar is rapidly becoming the Apple of movies (if I remember correctly, it already is) where droves of fawning fans will crawl over each other to obtain the next bit of stuff that is farted loose from the bowells of the beast and they will love it because it is in a cute, non-threatening container, which Wall-E embodies almost as much as his erstwhile gal-pal Eve the I-Pod.

Then there is the heavy handed story, which I complained about previously, so I will only tarry on long enough to say that any halfwit who goes through that much for a “kiss” is not a romantic, they are an insanely focused stalker with serious emotional problems. Movies like this set me up for 5 years of emotional retardation and a firm belief that grand romanticism is what girls “wanted” (in truth they want to be treated like humans and occasionally like a princess or naughty slave girls or naught school librarians or naughty shop keepers … I’m getting off the topic here)

As I was saying, the critical response to Wall-E was overtly praise-laden and should have been reserved for the ressurection of Messers Einstein and Tesla in their all robot dancing girl review and kids fun-e-teria.

Review: Wall-E

Published by NiteMayr on September 16, 2008

Wall-E

A Walmart Brand robot develops a personality and deep emotional problems after 700 years of cleaning up world-covering garbage that appears to have miraculously avoided all advertising and signage

My rating: 2.5 stars

Wall-E is one of those movies that people love to gush over; where a cute something with no voice of it’s own falls in love with the notion of love and then overcomes everything just to get his limited groove on. Sometimes there is dancing, sometimes there is singing, sometimes there is some chaste kissing; however it is always stulifying and boring. Great for the kids, right?

Let me summarize Wall-E for those of you who have not seen it or refuse to do so, as you are principled people who don’t need Cartoon Robots to feel good about

Hello Dolly Song !

Fly-in through Garbage

There’s alot of Garbage

More Garbage, set to Hello Dolly Tune

Big Wall-E! Big Wall-E

Fat People all over the place

Fat Babies!

More Garbage

Hello Dolly Tune

End.

I don’t know if that is what some people took from it, but that’s about it for me. There was no there, there. Even for a kids movie, this was pretty pointless. Pixar has been pretty good about avoiding the “Song And Dance” methodology of Disney flicks, but only through having soundtrack montages and so on. It’s still a baseless little story about a crazy robot who wants nothing more than to “hold hands” with someone. It’s like American Pie, without the Stiffler or the Shannon Elizabeth.

The empty story is dressed in some nice clothes, but it’s fairly empty. I know the guys at Pixar worked very hard to build pathos for Wall-E; but in the end he is just a malfunctioning robot who has become obsessed with fulfilling his own dreams. Wall-E isn’t saving humanity, that’s not even in his scope, he’s obsessed with achieving the one thing that he has built up over years of watching Hello Dolly over and over, holding hands. At least Eve focuses on her actual function over self-gratification.

The Animation is passable, but it’s not ground-breaking for 3D animation and does little to further 3D movies as an artform or medium. I didn’t find any portion of the film to be breathtaking (save breathtakingly stupid or vapid) and I couldn’t get over the details that ruined the whole premise. Why would the robot repair all of the advertising but not dig up all the garbage from around it? Why does the robot “go back” to his house rather than move to closer to his work site? Why didn’t the robot build a wind-proof baffle around his little home so that he could leave the door open? Why didn’t he build a shelter for Eve? These little things detracted from the experience, it’s just poor storytelling when you can actually visually build anything and don’t simply solve these little logical problems right there on film.

Wall-E is a film about garbage that barely rises above it’s oeuvre. I’d say it’s okay for the kids, but only the youngest seem to want to watch it over and over. Go watch Monsters Inc. or Iron Giant instead, there’s a movie with real heart and emotion.

Review: World Made by Hand

Published by NiteMayr on August 23, 2008

World Made by Hand

Robert Earle lives in Union Grove, a little piece of America touched by history, good fortune and the malaise of the collapse of modern society. After the Oil disappears and the age of Globalism is over the people make a living by digging out bits of the Modern world to rebuild a semblance of Post-Civil war America.

Robert Earle was a corporate executive with two kids and a family. He lived the high life, flying across the country 3 or four times a month, first class of course. After the Oil dried up and the Modern world collapsed in Nuclear Fire, Plague and ennui Robert was left alone in union Grove, his wife and daughter dead, his son long gone into the wilderness. When a group of strangers come to town led by a man as equally worldly as he is religiously ardent; Robert is caught up in the rapid changes that only new blood can bring.

My rating: 5.0 stars

Before I being my review; I’d very much like to ask James Howard Kunstler to please sell the rights to this novel as a movie as soon as possible. A novel about a post-apocalyptic world that doesn’t simply descend into cheap nihilism is as refreshing as a cool breeze in summer and it has been a long hot summer this year.

I will have to admit that at points I had to restrain myself from siomply giving up and throwing in with some of the characters from the novel, they are a likeable and entrancing group. Brother Jobe and his New Faithers are a composite group that I have described to others as “Industrious Mormons who Drink and Fight Like Sailors” which I think is the most apt description. They arrive in Union Grove like shadows but bombastically “take over” helping revitalize a town caught in the doldrums of a slow death, mourning the lost world.

Robert Earle is one of the many single men in town, acting as the local carpenter and somtime lover to his best friend’s wife. He lives his life fishing, woodworking and playing in the local musical group. He tolerates the Former Bikers who have taken up as scrap merchants and archeologists, has an amicalable relationship with the local Laird, a plantation owner and is respected in the town. When a young man is murdered and it falls to the loca Laird to adjudicate, Robert finds himself thrust into more than one situation that requires him to be more than just upright and moral. A sometimes hero and sometimes confidant, Robert is a strong lead character. If I was to make any complaint, Robert (like many a post-apocalyptic hero before him) is an amzing man who cannot step through the day without being set upon by love crazed women; such is his sheer physical prowess. By the time he had bed his second woman, I was already tired of the concept. This stands as my only complaint about the novel and should be set aside as a personal complaint and no real black mark on the book itself.

Mr. Knustler has taken great pains to give some obvious archtypes voice without heavioy playing the statements; the denizens of the trailer park are rough red-staters who would claim that just punishment for their crimes was oppression (even as they are oppressing themselves and their clan), the government is staffed by people who look to others to solve their problems (but are quick to use force to prove a point), Religious fervor has replaced community in places and it is up to the common folk to solve their own problems regardless of how insurmountable they seem.

“World Made By Hand” was rewarding to read and I STRONGLY recommend it to fans of political fiction, dramatic fiction and post-apocalyptic faire. In a world where the sudden report of a radio tuned to static is an alien and foreign thing, Mr. Kunstler has crafted a believable and utterly fascinating novel that bears repeated reading.

Review: Crossed #0: Crossed Prologue

Published by NiteMayr on August 16, 2008

Crossed Preview, originally uploaded by NiteMayr.

So, where have you been hiding, comic fan? Over in Marvel and DC? In that nice shiny house on the hill, I bet you think that Vertigo comics are edgy too?

While DC and Marvel had quietly cast off the Comics Code, Avatar Press has some of the most violent, edy and REAL comics out there. Did you get a chance to read “Black Gas” , how about “Black Summer”, maybe you have read “Gravel”?

Avatar Press continues to be THE source for creator owned, outside the norm comics. Crossed is yet another great example of that work. Like any good Apocalyptic fiction, the author throws the unsuspecting protagonists into a scenario that initially seems ridiculous or unlikely, abruptly tossing them into the fire with no obvious hope for safety. There is a reference to people becoming inured to the ridiculous by instantaneous media like Youtube or Break.com and I think there is something in that, if you saw a Zombie on the street eating an arm, wouldn’t you look for the camera too?

Garth Ennis continues to deliver Edgy comics and now that his Run on Punisher is over (boo) what can we look forward too? Crossed.

Story by Garth Ennis, Art by Jacen Burrows

Check out my Reviews of Issues 1 and 2

Review: Adopted Son

Published by NiteMayr on August 14, 2008

Adopted Son

A subtle invasion of earth has left a legacy of the alien among us.

Were it not for the lack of flow, this might have been a great novel, instead it is a chore and a boring one at that (with it’s serious over-reliance on technical details). I cannot recommend this book to anyone but the most dedicated Bureaucrat or Genetics Fanatic who needs good bedtime fodder. This is a great concept marred by poor execution, perhaps an editor will come along and re-arrange this work into a cogent novel.

My rating: 2.0 stars

Dominic Peloso may have a history of writing detailed reports and scholarly papers. At least One would hope he does. TinyGhosts is indicative of the style of writing that faces the reader; clever and clipped, I warn you of this now.

I also warn you that this is a fairly negative review of what is truly good material.

I could not read Adopted Son for more than 20-30 minutes at a time. The “Chapters” are short and choppy, but far from “to the point.” Scenes are told in sections, jumping in time over and over. It was jarring at first and then simply annoying. I skipped ahead, hoping that the “chopped military report” style would taper into traditional narrative, only to put the book down and gently weep for my future.

I can’t tell you anything about this book to make it more interesting that the concept, which is GREAT! The concept is that Aliens have germinated their seed in the genetic structure of people across the globe and scientists are rushing to understand the implications of it, while alien children grow up among us. It’s fairly awesome as a concept, but the execution was horrifyingly bad. Add to this that the author claims to have written this before 2001, he had 5 years to edit it and make it palatable to the general public. Alas, he has not.

Review: Two-Fer Wednesday Mass Assassin Effect Creed palooza

Published by NiteMayr on August 13, 2008

I’m not even going to bust out the hReview format one this one.

I didn’t finish Mass Effect or Assassin’s Creed. I coulnd’t get into them. More correctly, I DID get into Mass Effect, but couldn’t mustre the interest to see it through. Assassin’s Creed had that sci-fi wrapper that just turned me off and made me scream at it to just get to the Killin’.

Mass Effect was a good game, I just didn’t care how it came out. The vehicle parts really ruined it for me though, please release a patch to skip those please.

In the end here are my thoughts:

Avoid Assassin’s Creed, it’s not enough fun to justify the cost.

Mass Effect is good, but the main plot isn’t all that compelling.