The COMIC STRIP Returns?!!!! THE HOUSE OF DUELING MIDNIGHT #1

Yeah, yeah.. it’s pretty stupid, and horrible. But I have to admit… it made me chuckle. 🙂

As far as why… Well I’ve been meaning to put up a couple strips for a while. And have been trying to network, collaborate with a couple of artists, but I’ll let you in on a secret, artists aren’t really the most reliable bunch for collaborating or networking with… at least the ones I’ve been dealing with.

So rather than wait on people to grow up, I decided to just ‘what the heck’ it, and just go ahead and create and post something that would make me laugh.

Hence this very brief, very juvenile ‘cut and paste’ cartoon courtesy of one of the free cartoon generators out there, The art is crude, but the insane story and words and madness is all me. Hope you enjoyed it. If you do, leave a comment and some likes!

It’s a work in progress experiment, that will improve if you guys will stick in there with me. Thanks!! 🙂

MOVIE TRAILER OF THE DAY: GHOUL MASSACRE

Just saw the trailer for something called ZOMBIE MASSACRE.

I don’t like Ghoul movies (If they eat people, and they are rotting they are not EFFING ZOMBIES! THEY ARE GHOULS!!! Get it right!! Pet Peeve. Sorry.)

And I don’t care for any of the extreme films I’ve heard of from Uwe Boll (woman tied to a chair and hit in the face with a hammer on camera. Using real life Ugandan atrocities to sell as entertainment, etc. He’s too close to a snuff film director for my liking. I like my horror less gory, less irresponsible).

However the actual director-writer team on this film is not Uwe Boll, but an Italian writing/directing team of Luca Boni, Marco Ristori. A neophyte team they have only one film to their credit, something called EATERS, another ghoul pic, that has lukewarm to poor reviews.

So all that, does not endear me to see this latest flick. And it’s a Ghoul flick, so even good Ghoul flicks are not my thing.

That said I think the trailer is tremendous. Sight unseen I’m willing to go on the line, and say the best thing about the film will probably be this brief trailer. Especially for me, that has only about 2 minutes worth of patience for the premise of any ghoul flick, which generally has nothing creative to say outside of 2 minutes.

So no intention of seeing this flick, but the trailer… worth a look here!

Humanity is a goal: On Science fiction, so-called Zombies, the Space Race and dreaming futures to make them

I don’t think Humanity is a birthright, I think it is a goal. And I think most people in this world, most Americans especially, fall short of that goal.

We have this ludicrous idea, particularly in this country which produces only one thing in quantity, mass murderers and television, that adult hood is something we reach in years. That we hit 18 or 21 and suddenly we are adults.

No. To repeat a trite phrase, but hopefully not tritely used here, ‘age is just a number’. Maturity is something else. And I think with just a quick scan of what passes for dialog in this connected age, what passes for conversation, you can see very few people… grow. While they may grow physically, mentally they stop maturing, in ways deep and dangerous they are immature children, with adult responsibilities.

Mayors, Governors, Police Chiefs, Generals, a whole world full of children in the roles of men, but lacking the conscience of men, the humanity of men.

I don’t think Humanity is a birthright, I think it is a goal. And I think most people in this world, most Americans especially, fall short of that goal.

There was a time when people went to the movies to cheer for the hero, to be inspired by heroism. Today people watch movies, or tv, or play video games to watch the other suffer. To play out vicarious games of aggression and an end to responsibility. It’s part of the reason so-called zombie movies are so popular, because subconsciously you have empty, aimless, driftless, purposeless population, that wants and needs and is angry, but is unsure of what they want, and what they need, and what they are angry about.

It’s just an irrational need, irrational hunger you may say, byproduct of an irrational leadership, an irrational age. Caused by at every path, the higher callings of their nature being sabotaged, by a leadership that relies on ruling ignorant, stupid, misinformed, desperate people.

So a rudderless people see in the myth of the ghoul (the proper name for what western cinema incorrectly misnames zombie), this engine of only hunger and no responsibility, something to identify with. To lose the burden and responsibility of higher humanity, of callings of honor and friend and family and duty, and sublimate it all to the joys of abandon and bestiality.

A consumer nation, a capitalist/tyrannical world, taken to its rudderless extreme.

It’s the reason I have no use for Ghoul ‘Zombie’ films, or torture porn flicks, or slasher flicks. Everything in moderation, but I see in this deluge of barbarity, that in our fictions, do we shape our facts.

The 50s and 60s, decades of science fiction fanaticsm, of the dreaming of stars, this obsession passed like cholera to every man, woman, and child of the age, and the dreaming culminating in man walking on the moon.

Shared idea space, as progenitor to our physical space. Our facts but late fortifications of our fictions. Heady concepts, but well trod ones.

So what becomes of a culture whose obsessions are death, war, serial killers, cannibalism and the crazed dead? God, whatever God you believe in, being always kind, he gives you what you dream of.

He gives you horror, if that is what you are intent on having.

So many have died aspiring to nobler ends for those who follow them, do not sacrifice all the virtues and the hopes they have bequeathed to you… in pursuit of petty dreams of barbarism. Dream larger. Save yourself, and save us all and… dream Nobler.

Dream of a world where wars may be ended, governments held accountable, forests replenished, aboriginal people saved, and lives bettered. Dream of a better world, and who knows, you may become a better man (or woman)… to build it.

NOW & THEN:DEAD ISLAND TRAILER vs LIGHTS OUT’s “IT HAPPENED”

Okay, spurred by a recent trailer I got the idea for this post called NOW & THEN, a new reoccurring posting that will contrast, so called, hot new things and breaking news; with classic or overlooked older items.

There is always this generational thing where people of a certain age look at current items, be it films, music, books, sports, and call them crap and pine for the good old days, and on the other side of the coin you have people, also of a certain age, who have a tendency to look at anything that is not current or today and call it old fashioned or irrelevant.

Being someone who cherishes both the old, and can embrace the new when it’s great, I think both of those previous positions are very limiting.

Everybody can have an opinion, but your exposure to other things, your foundation in the medium you’re talking about, says a lot about the weight and worth of your opinion.

If all you watch is romantic comedies, or Kevin Smith slacker films, and yet you want to have an opinion about what a great film is, not knowing that the romantic comedy you glorify, is nothing but an iteration of a Cary Grant film made 70 years ago… your opinion while colorful, may not exactly be valid or valuable.

Same way it limits you, if all you listen to is HipHop or Heavy Metal or any single type of music consuming it… but not knowing there’s a rich range of influences from a variety of music informing every beat or sample you bob your head to, and a rich history of lyrics having meaning beyond the profane.

(And no, I’m not hating. I was listening to rap and heavy metal before most of you reading this I reckon. But I was also listening to folk, country, soul, jazz, calypso, classical, blues, etc. And I think that has made all the difference. While guanranteeing no expertise, such a diverse grounding, grants you at least the ability to speak from a wide perspective, rather than a narrow one)

[Twista is an example of an actually talented rapper, unlike many who are paid just to curse at women, act ignorant, and look stupid. Twista is perhaps no stranger to those vices, but when he wants to he can actually craft, relatively misogynist-free/genocide-free music… that is actually fun. His ‘Tattoo’ is one of his fast and fun songs. Listen to a nice mashup of it here!]

Restricting yourself to just one thing, being unwilling to grow beyond your comfort zone, is analogous to someone who sticks their fork into the cake, just enough to taste the icing, but not actually enough to taste the cake, and then wants to have an opinion on the cake.

That opinion isn’t worth much.

And that goes for all of life, the more you marginalize or segregate your experience, or allow your experience to be marginalized, be that marginalization with films, or music, or reading, the more incapable you become in competing… in anything.

And that is the problem with too much of America, too much of the world, increasingly people speak without taking the time to be informed about the things they speak on.

Seemingly that is what happens when consumers only consume one thing, and aren’t required to think about that thing, they become… un-moored when introduced to anything that challenges them slightly. To anything that is not… their stereotype.

Here in NOW & THEN, I’m going to do my bit to combat that tunnel vision, by giving you both something current and something classic to consume, to experience, to integrate into your storage banks. Be it movie trailers, films, music, books, comics, personalities, news… I’m not saying you’re going to love the things I post, though my attempt is that you will hopefully enjoy at least one of the things posted.

And I’m going to try and have those distinct things in each post, be united by some common thematic or structural thread, so it makes a nice comparison between old and new.

Well that’s the idea. Without further ado let’s get to this installment’s… NOW & THEN:

THE NOW: Feb 2011

I’ve caught the hoopla on this trailer for a new game called DEAD ISLAND. The hoopla goes thus:

“In the last twenty-four hours, zombie horror game Dead Island has climbed into the top trending topics on Twitter and has merited coverage by numerous blogs and entertainment sites thanks to a provocative three-minute “announcement trailer.” ‘
–The Collider

View the trailer here and see what passes for horror today.

THE THEN: 11 May 1938

LIGHTS OUT, a famous and quite ground-breaking radio program that ran (to unprecedented success) from 1934 to 1947, the brainchild of boy genius Wyllis Cooper (and later Arch Oboler), is recognized as one of the first shows to bring suspense and horror to the still young medium of radio.

Broadcast Wednesdays at midnight, when previously only languid music programs played, LIGHTS OUT reinvented that time-slot as a witching-hour. And the whole nation quickly got in the habit of starting Thursdays just a little bit sleep deprived, having spent the previous Wednesdays cuddled in front the radio, listening to the dire voices of the id. In May of 1938, 73 years ago, one of the most disturbing of those voices called “It Happened” was aired, to a world that was between wars, and between horrors.

Listen to the radio program here and see what passed for horror seven decades ago.

Well that’s this installments NOW & THEN, hope you enjoy what you see/hear and if so, feel free to email or post your comment on which selection was most effective… Now or Then. 🙂 . Also feel free to mention what common theme unites the two things. Be right, and who knows, I might even toss in a gift for correct responses. 🙂 .

Till Later!

George Romero’s DIARY OF THE DEAD DVD Review! Haitian Zombies or American Ghouls?

Well I’ve rented a pasell of movies in the past couple weeks, and thought I’d break my blogging silence, for a quick overview of what I thought of one of them.

George Romero’s DIARY OF THE DEAD- First let me say, I’m not a fan of the so-called Zombie Movies.

I’ll follow that line up with a slight tirade: They are not effing Zombies!!

Zombi is a Haitian word, Romero’s ‘creation’ is a ghoul. Not a Zombie. The Zombie of Haitian lore, is in real ways about the incorruptibilty of the flesh, it is about a state in which you do not eat or sleep or defecate or decompose. The Zombie of Haitian Lore, in many ways a state of grace most analagous to Christianity’s Lazarus, save bent to the will of another. So think the myth of Lazarus mated with the Jewish myth of the Golem, and you begin to get an inkling of what the word Zombie really implies.

But leave it to the west, America in particular, to take a concept of incorruptibility… and make it about corruption. Leave it to a cannibal nation like America to play out in fiction, the nature of its facts.

So that is my general issue with so-called Zombie flicks, hereto referred to by their proper nomenclature… Ghoul flicks. 🙂 . Don’t worry, it’ll grow on you.

So yeah it’s a genre I can take or leave, and typically leave. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD as the progenitor, holds up. It’s a very good movie, that is a very simple premise, but elegantly done with, for the time, a shattering ending. And its purity of vision, over five decades later, puts it head and shoulders over just about all the numerous Ghoul flicks it has spawned.

The first NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD had something to say, but said it in a very understated manner, to let you draw for yourself parables of science gone amuck, or judgement from god, or the cannibal nature of the American id. In contrast all Ghoul films since suffer either from being about nothing but gore (idiotic and juvenile), too full of its import, or just inept.

George Romero’s DAIRY OF THE DEAD suffers, to some degree, from all three issues. The plot/writing is the main issue. The films conceit is this student filmmaker is going to walk around during a walking dead apocalypse with a camera glued to his face, during scenes both intimate and horrific. Such as when his friend is being chased by the ghoul in a mummy costume (don’t ask), rather than put the fucking camera down and help, he just keeps filming. I don’t buy the conceit.

I’m not saying there aren’t such sick fucks out there who would do that, I’m saying I don’t know any such people, can’t relate to such people, and don’t want to spend hours of my life watching such a peice of garbage survive. So the protagonist was an unrelateable and unlikable character.

And that said other characters I thought their arcs and actions were likewise a bit fast and convenient, becoming quickdraw terminators, and taking their particular brand of murder/killing way too easily in their stride (“I just blew my lovers head off, but I’m from Texas yall, and am ready to make jokes in the next scene for you Mr. Romero”). There was just a lot of poor acting married to either heavyhanded/preachy dialog or inane plot contivances.

So the poor plot, bad dialog, unnatural performances makes it impossible for you to view the film seriously, but it fails also as satire or comedy because a/it’s not smart and b/it’s not funny (with the exception of the Amish line. The only memorable line in the whole movie).

DIARY OF THE DEAD attempts to jump on the discovered footage bandwagon of flicks such as CLOVERFIELD (which I found also to be an inept film, with unrealistic performances, married to a heaping dose of annoying actors and quite a bit of boredom) or REC(which I found to be brilliant. There the conceipt of a TV crew following a team of professional, is crafted believably), DIARY OF THE DEAD however is a poor jumper, and instead slips on the bandwagon, twists its ankle, and pretty much lays there like a dead fish till the credits roll.

I’m being a little facetious, the film does have some points of interest, high among them is the performance of the film/theater teacher, who just so happens to be John Rambo when emergeny requires. While something of a hodgepodge of stereotypes, the actor pulls it off and imbues his role with real charm. And the aforementioned Amish scene has a humorous beginning. And I liked them running into the Black survivalists. I thought that was a neat twist.

So the film isn’t without its strengths, unfortunately its flaws, the spliced in footage of real disasters (trying to give the film an importance and weight that its ultimately too inept and tactless to earn) the too often poor performances and situations, just smother everything else.

All in all a pretty disappointing and forgettable film from Romero, who seemingly has become obsessed with making these Ghoul flicks, in an attempt to recapture the acclaim and relavence of his first film. It comes off almost as a one trick director, remaking the same film to various degrees of diminishing returns.

DIARY OF THE DEAD may be worth a look if it is free and you’re bored, but otherwise avoid. D-.