Barry Keller, 7/3/2009

This is the end. My only friend, the end.

-Jim Morrison. "The End"

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning.

-Baker Priest

Robert J. Sodaro, 5/25/2009

Observe and Report: Rated “R” (106 Minutes)

Starring: Seth Rogen, Anna Faris, Michael Peña, Ray Liotta, Collette Wolfe

Directed by: Jody Hill

Does this man make you feel safe?

The Forest Ridge Mall isn’t like any mall that you’ve ever visited. To be sure, there are anchor stores, kiosks, and smaller retail outlets. There are teenage mallrats, hot chicks who spend all their time shopping, those over-make-uped chippies who work at the cosmetic counters, skateboarders, and of course, security. They also have a flasher. Head of security Ronnie Barnhardt (Rogen) patrols this particular mall like it was his very own Green Zone, and he aims to keep it safe for all of the folks who shop there every day.

He and his crack team of over-eager, jingoistic, rent-a-cops patrol this particular jurisdiction with an iron fist, combating those evil skateboarders, vile shoplifters and the occasional unruly customer while dreaming of the day when they can swap their Maglights for a actual cop’s badge and a real gun. Needless to say, Ronnie’s high-minded delusions of grandeur are put to the test when the mall is struck by a flasher, one of whose victims is Brandi (Faris), the hot make-up counter clerk who — up until this incident — wouldn’t give him the time of day.

Now, driven by an overwhelming desire to protect and serve “his” mall and its patrons (including the afore-mentioned hot Brandi), Ronnie seizes the opportunity to showcase his underappreciated (and largely imaginary) law enforcement talents on a grand scale. Hoping that by solving this horrendous crime he will not only earn a muchly-coveted spot at the police academy as well as the heart of his elusive dream girl. As can be expected, Ronnie’s single-minded pursuit of glory launches a turf war with the equally competitive Detective Harrison (Liotta) of the Conway Police. Now Ronnie is confronted with the dual challenge of not only catching the flasher, but getting him before the real cops can catch the villainous nogoodnick.

Marc N. Kleinhenz, 4/30/2009

Watchmen, it goes without saying, is the comic world’s most beloved work of all time. It is to sequential art what Hamlet is to English literature; its writer, Alan Moore, the equivalent of videogaming’s Miyamoto Shigeru.

It is not a little astonishing and, even, miraculous, then, to discover that the motion picture translation is not only a more-or-less well-crafted filmic experience in and of itself, it also does the original work justice. Such an assertion is not as frivolous or inconsequential as it may first sound; beyond Hollywood’s disregard for literature of any kind in general, the Watchmen comics, in specific, contain a dense interchange of plot and theme, winding visuals, dialogue, characterizations, and thematic motifs across a dizzying span of some fifty years. By the time the reader has put down the graphic novel, he feels as intimately connected to Moore’s alternate timeline as he does his own – a striking and supreme achievement for any work of art, but even more impressive for a medium that has, even nearly twenty-five years later, yet to fully maturate.

The viewer of the movie walks out of the theater with much the same sentiment. Indeed, much of the film is a literal translation of the book’s four- hundred- plus pages: from props to costumes, from dialogues to cinematography, from textures to the secondary color palette, all is dutifully carried over and steadfastly – oftentimes unflinchingly – presented to an audience that, weaned off of standard Hollywood fare, is not accustomed to being challenged (a fact which may account for the film’s dismal performance at the box office). It is a rare feat to see such loving and slavish adherence to a source material.

Such an outcome, of course, is by no means inevitable. Amongst the myriad forms the screenwriter employs in his craft – theme, character, plot, genre, dialogue – the most elusive and outright dangerous is, by far, adaptation, for each story is its own unique individual and each medium has its own demands and idiosyncrasies; in trying to pair one up with the other, the writer becomes the psychologist, battling out nature versus nurture, in no uncertain or abstract terms. The only thing that makes the alchemical process even possible in the first place is each medium’s status as a facet of the same overarching diamond that is called narrative. And, much like the Zen Buddhist mondo of the little wave who is picked on by bigger, older waves, all narratives, no matter their structure or format, are comprised of story – the very same lifeblood that has propelled man since he first wandered into a cave and started drawing on its walls.

Alex Ness, 3/20/2009

I thought in my absence here you might want to read what I had to say in the form of interviews...

Best wishes to everyone.

About Writing

Richard Caldwell, 12/25/2008

Last time, I tried to give light to what I see as a major issue that I am just not reading all that much about elsewhere. Comic book successes in Tinsel Town have been spiking on up over the past ten or twenty years, but how much further can this notoriety honestly be maintained before the big shot producers latch on to some other niche market?

Kurt Wilcken, 12/21/2008

MECHA MANGA BIBLE HEROES #1
JMG Comics
Script by Tom Hall & Joey Endres
Pencils & Inks by Thom “Kneon Transitt” Pratt

There are many deep and abiding theological questions that man has grappled with over the ages: What is the Nature of God; Why does a Loving God permit Evil to exist in the world; Can God create a rock so big that even He can’t lift it? One question, however, the theologians have avoided:

Can God beat a giant robot?

This question is at last addressed in MECHA MANGA BIBLE HEROES #1 from JMG Comics. The story, by writers Tom Hall and Joey Endres and artist Thom Pratt, takes the story of David and Goliath from the Bible and translates it into a manga setting. King Saul and his army are facing the Philistines, but the enemy has a secret weapon: a giant mech-warrior named Goliath, who challenges the Israelites to face him.

Alex Ness: Reviews, 12/16/2008

Despite the current respect for comic books and characters (due to making successful movies and making money for Hollywood) I would suggest that comic books are still not a mature medium, and still have room to grow. Despite the huge downturn in the economy, I believe people can still make money in comic books, can still be creative there, and readers still have new things to read.

But, they need to overcome some problems, which are:

Eric San Juan, 12/16/2008

We are still reading, folks. Call these reviews. Call them my semi-random musings. Call them whatever you like. This is I Am Reading... This week I am reading DMZ. Garth Ennis’ Hellblazer run. And Ultimate X-men.

Rich Chapell, 10/23/2008

The best, and worst thing about going to a comic con is walking through Artists’ Alley. It’s how you find the Next Big Thing when it’s still just Some Guy’s Book. On the other hand, you have to avoid the eyes of all the guys selling hand-stapled Witchblade knock-offs or copyright-infringing pin-up girls. Once I actually start talking to an artist, I start to feel obligated to buy a book from him, so I only have a few seconds to eliminate the blatantly derivative and the pathetically untalented. It can be tricky, too. Lewis Helfand’s Wasted Minute is the worst-drawn book I’ve ever seen, at least in the initial issues, but I love the writing.

Joe Hilliard, 7/24/2008

Since Comicon 2008 is taking place in San Diego even as I type this, I figured what better time to do a column about … hockey. It's been awhile since I've wrote about my one real sports obsession; a few years ago I opined on Cam Neely's election to the Hockey Hall of Fame. Oddly enough, we are going to talk about the Boston Bruins again. I'm not a particular Bruins fan, but there is no denying their place as one of the preeminent franchises in the sport. And one of the enduring legacies of the team is the play of defenseman Bobby Orr.

Barry Keller, 6/20/2009

My wife thinks this is a little out of our range, but I sure would love to own it

You may remember this startling home from Blade Runner.

Barry Keller, 5/19/2009

This site has has sporadic technical issues for more than two months now. This has all been due to our long-time Internet hosting company going out of business and selling our hosting contract to a company that cannot support the code which runs this site. For a while there we thought we were completely dead.

"But we got better!" We are not dead, just have one foot in the grave. Most things appear to be working again, but it is sort of touch-and-go. I don't trust EasyCGI, the new hosting company, at all and we will be moving off of their computers as soon as I have the time to move us.

We are oh so sorry for the inconvenience.

Barry Keller, 3/26/2009

I can almost see Benicio Del Toro as Moe and Sean Penn as Larry in the new Stooges movie. But Jim Carrey as Curly? Are you kidding me?

It scares me that they would even consider a new Three Stooges movie, but casting a really thin guy as Curly has got to be a joke. And not a funny, slap-stick kind of joke either.

Are we ready for this? I don't think so.

Barry Keller, 2/24/2009

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Barry Keller, 2/8/2009

These things that have comforted me, I drive away

This place that is my home I cannot stay

My only faith's in the broken bones and bruises I display

So says Bruce Springsteen in the title-track from Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler and those words pretty much sum up Mickey Rourke's Randy 'The Ram' Robinson. They also pretty much sum up Mickey Rourke and his career and that is only one of two reasons Rourke will not be gathering up an Oscar later this month.

The second, and more important reason, is that Sean Penn is absolutely mind-numbing brilliant as Harvey Milk in Milk. It's a great year for moviegoers when there are so many amazing performances to watch and surly Rourke's tour-de-force deserves acknowledgment. Unfortunately for 'the Ram,' this is one match he is going to lose.