There is no one who has ever written quite like Hal Bennett, His stories live somewhere that is beyond our suffering, and beyond our joy, beyond our hopes, and beyond our despairs. His are alien deep space tableaus, as strange as any fiction of Bradbury’s outer space, but rooted in the far more alien landscapes of a Jim Crow tinged America. There’s a bitter truth in his tales, married to a wicked, merciless humor. His is the landscape of an irony and lynch-filled America. Where sense is a strange and undiscovered country, and insanity the norm, for those who live and die by insane designations.

Insanity Runs in our Family. These stories are a wry and disarmingly written indictment of the Insanity of a post Jim Crow America, and things we lost in the fire, but more than that, they are about our missives and our misgivings, and living in a wronged world… that resists being righted.

I continue to dip my toe into these stories of the downtrodden and disenfranchised, and yet somehow remarkable, and more than a bit magical. And I continue to be… both horrified and charmed.

THE GHOST OF MARTIN LUTHER KING is one of those stories, wherein Hal Bennett takes us on a spiderwalk above still restless and unsettled ground. B+.

Insanity runs in our Family– Price your copy here!

Another art-book I wanted to give attention to is MIDDLE-EARTH:VISIONS OF A MODERN MYTH by Donato Giancola.

Now I have no interest in the subject matter, being not a fan of Tolkien’s mythology. I enjoyed the audio books well enough, and loved Peter Jackson’s first LORD OF THE RINGS film, while disliking the last two. And generally have no interest in the upcoming Hobbit movie. So yeah the subject matter of this art book leaves me cold, and had anyone else done it, I would have avoided the book.

However, Donato Giancola is an artist/painter of unrivaled, awe-inspiring talent, whose work yearly in the SPECTRUM Art Book, is always the most memorable and striking of a celebrated field. Unfortunately very few collections of his brilliant artwork is available, outside of his self published collections/chap books.

So any chance to see Donato’s Caravaggio/Classicist style in one place, in one book, in one quality hardcover book, is a collection to be sought after… and to attain.

Having done that with this book, while the subject matter still underwhelms, Donato’s artistry does not. It’s a wonderfully constructed tome, with a solid stitched binding, slipcover, and lavish glossy pages, deserving of showcasing Donato’s oils. It’s a scant 80 pages, with very little text, but the images speak for themselves.

Shifting between his penciled roughs, and his finished paints. Not all the drawings grab me (again my disinterest in the subject matter) but the ones that do… make the whole book worthwhile.

And did I mention the book smells great!? I’m a bibliophile, what can I say, things like smell and touch and presentation mean something to me. Yet another reason art-books have nothing to fear from digital.

So until there is a better collection of Giancola’s work available, for less than $25 this is not just an enjoyable purchase, but I think a must have one to any true fan of this artist. At these prices buy two. One to own, and one for resale value. .

Final Grade: The subject matter is not my cup of tea, and the selections chosen are hit and miss, sometimes coming off as filler, but that said the ones that do work… work well, work majestically.,,, Are the stuff of modern myth. Recommended! B+!

Middle-Earth: Visions of a Modern Myth – Support this blog. Buy this item here and this blog gets a few pennies on every sale made through this link! Thanks!

Over the next few installments I’ll be tackling them one by one.

Starting with…

THE ART OF FRANK CHO: APES AND BABES- Clean lines, and voluptuous forms, define in scant words the strength of Frank Cho’s art. A lot of people draw voluptuous women, so it’s hard to put into words why Frank Cho stands out, except to fall back on that tired catch all of… verisimilitude. Working in broad fantasy genres, Cho’s central human characters, primarily female, while without doubt well-endowed, are never overly endowed, if you follow me.

They never step into caricature, they are always if nearly perfect examples of the female form, never gravity defying examples of such. They are items of idolatry to be sure, but never impossible ones. And adding to his rock solid understanding of the human form, his anatomy, is his economy and control of line in crafting his uber women and men.

Seemingly with a cartoonist’s understanding of brevity, Cho does not need to over-render and cross-hatch his characters to death to make his drawings… real or gritty, with an understanding that form births function, he puts down the clean, confident line… and the realism comes. And that ‘realism’ is all the more appreciated as it has to sell the ludicrous and fantastic worlds that Cho’s characters cavort in.

APES AND BABES is a great example of Cho’s work, his penciled (and in some cases inked) work, accompanied with the final colored page, and what comes across is that it’s all there in the pencils. Sometimes the color serves to distract from Cho’s craft, not to take anything away from the wonderful color artists he works with, just to emphasize how much fun the unadorned line can be to look at.

What comes across is an artist who from inception to completion makes the whole process look… effortless. Which is always the sign of someone who has spent much effort mastering his craft… much effort in learning to make it look… effortless. There’s no accompanying text, and it’s more than a little light on backgrounds and substance, but that acknowledged, and APES AND BABES judged as just a big hardcover posterbook, a sampling of Cho’s beauties and his behemoths, for under $30 for a 144pg slipcovered HC, it’s a great buy.

Titillation does not come any more accomplished, and yet still somehow irreverent and innocent and fun. It’s an odd combination to make work, and yet somehow Frank Cho pulls it off. Strongly recommended. B+.

Apes and Babes: The Art Of Frank Cho Book 1:Click here to price your copy

It is such a great luxury of our 21st century digital age to be able to watch an Entire season of a television series over the course of a few nights. Particularly when the show is as compelling as BREAKING BAD. I can not imagine having to wait a week between episodes.

The DVD Box Set viewing experience, helps you avoid spending weeks, months, and sometimes years following a show and hoping the season ends well. With the DVD Box Set and reviews, you can be an educated consumer, and more quickly either dismiss a show (DEXTER, JUSTIFIED) or more quickly embrace it(BREAKING BAD, DAY BREAK, KIDNAPPED).

BREAKING BAD is definitely a show to be embraced. It’s addictive, compulsive TV, which giving its subject matter is more than a bit fitting. The show tells the tale of a high school professor with cancer who pursues a most interesting side business to make money.

Well performed, well directed, but it’s the smart and always captivating scripts and dialog, and surprising turns, which really makes this series sing.

I’m definitely ready to see SEASON 3. Grade on Season #2: B+/A-.

Now I love traditional books, it’s my preferred way of reading books. That said, for some books, specifically the vintage paperback with faded pages, a digital version, where you can adjust font size and brightness to your leisure… can be a boon.

On the PC I recommend Calibre. It’s a software ereader for your laptop that works great. For the tablet I recommend using Alkido Ebook reader. Both are pretty fantastic.

Use my links to see my recommended tablet, laptop, and software options.Your purchase through my links, give this blog additional pennies to keep me publishing. So I definitely appreciate those of you who help me out by ordering items through my links. It really does make all the difference.

Getting back on topic, here is today’s must read Ebook.

Whip Hand by W. Franklin Sanders/Charles Willeford (Gold Medal, 1961)- Well obviously no one is going to mistake a book with such a salacious cover for War and Peace, however that said this novel, credited to Franklin W. Saunders was actually ghost written by the acclaimed cult writer Charles Willeford, and the first chapter… surprisingly great. I just blew through it. If the other chapters are that solid, this is going to be a good read.

You can download the Epub versions of this from various places online, or read it online here!

I think the first chapter may hook you as well.

BEST TABLET EREADER! Better than Kindle, more useful than an Ipad! Archos 101 G9 16GB – Turbo- To save money you can go for the G8 version, and/or get one with 8GB as opposed to 16GB. At $250 it’s a great deal!

HP ProBook 4530s XU015UT 15.6″ LED Notebook (2.1 GHz Intel Core i3-2310M Dual-Core Processor, 4 GB RAM, 320 GB Hard Drive, DVD+/-RW SuperMulti DL LightScribe, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit)- Laptops are potentially going to start climbing in price. Get a great one now. This HP is a particular winner in that it supports Linux better than most laptops.

“Nimoy is a gnostic mystic—a radical spiritualist, indeed, a spiritual rebel…I am suggesting that Nimoy’s fascination with the female body involves an element of temptation as well as transcendence. I am suggestion that what is really unusual about his female figures is that they signify profane and sacred love simultaneously…The issue that Nimoy’s photographs subtly address is the transmutation of sexual desire into spiritual aspiration…It is Nimoy’s ability to convey woman’s many-sidedness—Shekhina and Succubus at once—that makes his photographs profound.”
— Donald Kuspit

First and best, most inspired of Leonard Nimoy’s Monograph’s, released in 2002 this large 10.3″ by 10.3″ Hardcover was met with both acclaim and a bit of shock, in its portrayal of Jewish Women, that strives for both the sexual and the sacred. A beautiful book, published by Umbrage Editions, mixing large, striking photographs with quotes and prayers. It’s a book deserving of any coffee table.

Price your copy of Shekhina here.

On the DVD front I recently watched the INTERNATIONAL, THE UNINVITED, RED, and the original Swedish language THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO.

UNINVITED- This 2009 film, was the worst of the four. About a teen whose mom burnt to death in a fire, and her coming to terms with that, after being released from a mental ward. The first feature film by the Guard Brothers while it did have a nice twist at the end, by the time that came I was too annoyed with the characters, and the film to really care. Grade: D.

“Along with me I’m gonna need a scientist, an engineer, and of course, a black person to sacrifice himself in case something goes wrong.”
- Eric Cartman, SOUTH PARK, season 9, Cartman’s Hippie Exit Strategy 2006

RED- RED would have been okay except for one thing, the idiotic lets sacrifice/kill the ethnic character (Morgan Freeman) for no reason whatsoever. It’s the most egregious example I’ve seen in a film.

It was such a moronic death, that I just couldn’t believe the stupidity, I went through the film expecting, to find out it was some trick, the character was wearing a bullet proof vest and distracting them, and playing possum, and would turn up later in the movie.

But Nope. Basically Morgan Freeman’s character just decides to commit suicide for the white characters, when it was completely unnecessary.

I mean completely unnecessary.

We’re not talking the cool Jim Brown in THE DIRTY DOZEN type death, this is utterly unnecessary. When it was probably fifteen ways they could have all gotten out alive. Nope, instead the script just shoehorns in a ‘let’s kill the ethnic character’ scene. This Director, Robert Schwentke and Writers Joe and Erich Hoeber go on my list of incompetent and pedestrian filmmakers to avoid.

They should really be ashamed of themselves, and the fact that the writers wrote the upcoming BATTLESHIP, hints heavily at that being a film worth avoiding. All in all, the unnecessary cliche/stereotype ruined an otherwise okay action flick. GRADE: D-.

THE INTERNATIONAL- nicely filmed thriller, about an Interpol agent trying to bring down an arms running bank. Well filmed and enjoyable. B+.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO- It was better than I thought it was going to be, this tale of an investigation into a 40year old disappearance/murder. Well filmed, well acted, and both disturbing and thrilling. Not something I would feel any need to watch again, but a compelling viewing experience at the time. B.

It’s not enough to defeat bills like HR 3261 (the Stop Online Piracy Act, which sounds like it might be a good thing, but is anything but. The full text can be found here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:h.r.3261:)aka SOPA; the bill would criminalize much of what you can do on the internet today, would allow big business to shut down sites and blogs with impunity. With no real burden of proof necessary.

Just an email or a call. And concepts such as free speech, or more to the point, anti-big business speech, can be shut down… as if they never existed.

So it is not enough to just defeat this Bill.

It’s not about this one bill. It’s about giving them reason to fear… drafting the next, and the next, and the next.

This is just one bullet you’re dodging in this bill. It is not enough to dodge this bullet, you have to take out the gunmen.

Remove them from positions, to be able to fire that gun at you again. Stop them from firing more bullets. Because what they know, what any good gunman knows, is… you can’t duck them all. They shoot enough bullets, and at least one is going to hit you. To take you down.

And what they are trying to take down is nothing more or less than your ability to resist… being owned, being controlled, being terrorized, being enslaved… to big business. They want to be able to do, whatever they want… unchecked.

And with enough bullets dressed as bills, they’re on the road to… turning back the clock.

To the killing of liberty, and the hard-fought dream… of America.

So you don’t try and just duck the bullets, you stop the shooter. You stop him hard.

You stop him so hard, that God himself will blink.

There are 29 gunmen, who signed the bullet called SOPA.

There are 29 assassins.

Assassins of liberty, at the onus of big business and big business dogs such as the RIAA and MPAA to be sure… but Assassins none the less.

You may want to look over the below names. See which ones come from your state or a surrounding state. Which ones are representing themselves rather than you. And do your part… in un-employing them.

Rep Smith, Lamar [TX-21]
Rep Amodei, Mark E. [NV-2] – 11/3/2011
Rep Baca, Joe [CA-43] – 12/7/2011
Rep Barrow, John [GA-12] – 11/14/2011
Rep Bass, Karen [CA-33] – 11/3/2011
Rep Berman, Howard L. [CA-28] – 10/26/2011
Rep Blackburn, Marsha [TN-7] – 10/26/2011
Rep Bono Mack, Mary [CA-45] – 10/26/2011
Rep Carter, John R. [TX-31] – 11/3/2011
Rep Chabot, Steve [OH-1] – 10/26/2011
Rep Chu, Judy [CA-32] – 11/30/2011
Rep Conyers, John, Jr. [MI-14] – 10/26/2011
Rep Cooper, Jim [TN-5] – 12/12/2011
Rep Deutch, Theodore E. [FL-19] – 10/26/2011
Rep Gallegly, Elton [CA-24] – 10/26/2011
Rep Goodlatte, Bob [VA-6] – 10/26/2011
Rep Griffin, Tim [AR-2] – 10/26/2011
Rep King, Peter T. [NY-3] – 11/3/2011
Rep Larson, John B. [CT-1] – 11/30/2011
Rep Lujan, Ben Ray [NM-3] – 11/14/2011
Rep Marino, Tom [PA-10] – 11/3/2011
Rep Nunnelee, Alan [MS-1] – 11/3/2011
Rep Owens, William L. [NY-23] – 11/14/2011
Rep Ross, Dennis [FL-12] – 10/26/2011
Rep Scalise, Steve [LA-1] – 11/14/2011
Rep Schiff, Adam B. [CA-29] – 10/26/2011
Rep Sherman, Brad [CA-27] – 12/7/2011
Rep Wasserman Schultz, Debbie [FL-20] – 11/3/2011
Rep Watt, Melvin L. [NC-12] – 11/3/2011
Rep Terry, Lee [NE-2] – 10/26/2011(withdrawn – 1/18/2012)
Rep Holden, Tim [PA-17] – 11/30/2011(withdrawn – 1/18/2012)
Rep Quayle, Benjamin [AZ-3] – 12/13/2011(withdrawn – 1/17/2012)

That is your mission, and your duty, and your calling if you choose to accept it. To say no, to all the people who would betray you.

To attack the Assassins of Liberty.

“Sometimes a man can meet his destiny, on the road he took to avoid it.”— The International

]]> http://heroictimes.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/a-sopa-bullet-and-29-gunmen-meeting-your-destiny-on-the-road-you-took-to-avoid-it/feed/ 0 heroictimes paine-rights-of-man-bookcover http://heroictimes.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/what-im-listening-to-eight-favorite-podcasts/ http://heroictimes.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/what-im-listening-to-eight-favorite-podcasts/#comments Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:47:21 +0000 heroictimes http://heroictimes.wordpress.com/?p=4018 ]]> Well 2011 was a big shaking up point for a lot of podcasts I listened to, with a lot giving up the ghost.

So now here at the beginning of 2012, my current favorite podcasts are as follows:

COMIC GEEK SPEAK
B-MOVIE CAST
HORROR ETC
NO APOLOGIES
11 OCLOCK COMICS
AGONY COLUMN
GEEK BRUNCH
THE TREATMENT-One of the new podcasts on this list. So I’ll give a quick description: Elvis Mitchell is the host of THE TREATMENT, one of the better cinema interview shows I’ve come across. It’s typically great,and incise and smart, avoiding the inane questions that most reviewers ask.

That said, if there’s one demerit you can lay against Elvis Mitchell’s interviewing style is he comes into interviews with a thematic agenda, or thematic viewpoint that he tries to foist upon the people he interviews.

And when they politely say, ‘uhh not really’. He still over their objections insists ‘these are the things you try for in each of your films’, etc, no doubt because he’s worked the interview out in his head and doesn’t want to relinquish his hypothesis/preconceived notions; but it still comes off as more than a bit… suspect,

To pursue a line of inquiry that has been asked and answered seems like you’re not listening to your guest. We’re here to hear the personalities viewpoint on their work, not for them to signon on a reviewers viewpoints.

Thematic even stylistic agendas are typically more about the viewer than the filmmaker. Concepts like filmnoir are hindsight discoveries or designations by armchsir film critics, often trying to create parallels or themes or constants, when viewing a filmmakers work in quantity, when really that’s often not what the filmmaker was going for at all.

So rare is the filmaker or actor who thinks in terms of playing the same stylistic tune, but more readily thinks simply in terms of telling the story. And if there is a thruline between products/films its less something imposed than something ingrained, So yeah I typically find interviews trying to convince filmmakers about their style, sketchy at best.

But when not leaning on that particular crutch, Mitchell can make for intriguing and fun interviews. He interviews everyone from David Cronenberg to Lawrence Fishburne to Kevin Smith to John Landis to John Ridley to Mark Waid, etc. And manages to do it all in a scant short form format. Go listen now.

You can check them all out at the links below:

http://www.comicgeekspeak.com/

http://www.bmoviecast.com/

http://www.horroretc.com/

http://thetaylornetwork.wordpress.com/no-apologies/

http://11oclockcomics.tumblr.com/

http://www.bookotron.com/agony/Current/Current_Podcast_Audio.html

http://www.geekbrunchpodcast.com/

http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/tt

There are a few shows I’m going through to fill spots 9 and 10. One forerunner being THE RED PANDA. If you want to suggest some podcasts, please do.

Check back soon!

]]> http://heroictimes.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/what-im-listening-to-eight-favorite-podcasts/feed/ 0 heroictimes http://heroictimes.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/movie-review-red-tails-i-was-wrong-go-see-this-movie-now/ http://heroictimes.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/movie-review-red-tails-i-was-wrong-go-see-this-movie-now/#comments Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:05:20 +0000 heroictimes http://heroictimes.wordpress.com/?p=4004 ]]>

I just returned from seeing RED TAILS, a movie I had great qualms about, after just seeing the trailer, and specifically regarding the leads of Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr.

I didn’t think they could bring the gravitas necessary to these pivotal roles.

I was absolutely wrong.

There is no other way to say it. Both Cuba Gooding Jr and Terrence Howard nailed their respective roles, giving great performances. As does the whole cast.

I’ll go into details later, but suffice to say it’s the first great movie of 2012. From direction, to acting, to editing, to special effects, to script, the movie fired on all cylinders.

Just a phenomenal movie, that I’m already planning to see in theaters again in the next couple of days.

And evidently I’m not alone. When I went to buy my tickets, the girl at the counter told me ‘You might want to get a seat now, because it has been selling out all weekend’.

And after seeing it, I can see why.

And the audience was completely into it from first frame to last. Just accomplished film-making and a great flick.

Easy grade of A.

]]> http://heroictimes.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/movie-review-red-tails-i-was-wrong-go-see-this-movie-now/feed/ 0 heroictimes rtails