Consumption October

October 30th, 2009 Graig

UPDATED REGULARLY

COMICS - Batman: The Black Glove tpb - J.H. Williams III is, hands down, the greatest sequential artist working in comics today. He not only has an uncanny and innovative sense of page design but he still manages to tell the story not just good but great. His work on the Black Glove story is mindboggling, his adaptability just somewhere beyond most artists. Tony Daniel does a decent job with the follow-up story in this volume but it’s like comparing a well aged, carefully tenderized, seasoned steak with, well something from Applebee’s. Sure they’re both steak, but one is so tangibly superior to the other that one may never want to compromise again, but then you realize that if you’re always eating the finest steak then it’s not that special anymore.

DVD - Dexter Season 3 disc 3+4 - Okay, so things didn’t play out as I expected them to (the cat and mouse between Dex and Miguel was fun), but the sad thing is the main storyline resolved itself in a much sloppier way than I had envisioned (I mean, really how did Miguel get in touch with the Skinner when everyone was looking for him… really?). The sub-plots worked a lot better though, with happy endings for Deb, Angel and even Vince.

TV - Saturday Night Live - Ryan Reynolds hosted, a passable if unmemorable show… although Lady Gaga in a leather catfight with 50+ Madonna is something I can’t unsee (*shudder*). Happy birthday to the ground!

PODCAST - Comedy Death Ray Radio ep 2, 3, 4, 5 - Scott Aukerman was still finding his groove when Chris Hardwick (ep 4) and Jimmy Pardo (ep 5) stepped in to guest host. Listening to comedians talk about comedy and riff off one another is pleasurable to me, but I can see how many could find it tedious.

PODCAST - Radio Free GAK ep 83, 84, 85, 86 -
83 - oh, you can bet it gets funky. Damn funky. Best episode yet? Close to it. Lumme some funk.
84 - a twisted assembly of various sounds, even some comedy, and an absolutely inspired profile of the great, if lesser known composer Piero Piccioni
85 - so, so good - a french pop diversion, a profile on fabled radio DJ Mr. Magic, and a spotlight on Hedwig and the Angry Inch. So good I listened to it twice.
86 - an episode-length spotlight on the great John Barry (noted most for scoring half of the James Bond flicks). Rock solid.
87 - After a couple of incredible weeks, RFG settles in for some less adventurous but still full-bodied programming with a spotlight on Where The Wild Things Are soundtrack by Karen O and the Kids.

DVD - Ghost Town - A sweet, if generic, supernatural romantic comedy made rather special by the brilliant Ricky Gervais. Kristin Wiig delivers her funniest cameo role as a less than loquacious doctor.

MOVIE - Point Break - My first ever viewing of Johnny Utah vs Bodhi surfing the waves, skydiving and robbing banks (back in the day I chose to see Problem Child 2 instead… umm). Incredibly well directed by Katherin Bigelow, and Swayze seems effortless in his role, and Gary Busey, John C. McGinley and even Lori Petty all put in a great showing, but young Keanu, 26 years old, is absolutely atrocious. Meant to hold the film his wooden-boy acting of 1991 nearly destroys the whole endeavor. One thing I did realize is exactly how far his wooden-boy acting has come in the past 20 years.

PODCAST - Comedy Death Ray Radio #8, 14, 21, 19…etc - Episode 8 finds Weird Al co-hosting, and is really 50% an interview with Al, 20% character sketches by Paul Scheer, 25% Weird Al songs and 5% Doug Benson. Weird Al treats pop music as his job but his love is indie music and comedy. Al is awesome.
Episode 14 features Andy Samberg as co-host, special guest Zach Galifianakis and character sketches from Andy Daly …it meanders a bit.
Episode 21 - Chrarlene Yi, no thank you. Up until Charlene Yi, hilarity.
Episode 19 - SNL spectacular with Kevin Nealon, Laraine Newman and Casey Wilson… lots of fun.
Episode 12 - Mad Men’s John Hamm co-hosts with two absolutely killer character pieces by Nick Kroll. A keeper.
Episode 23 - Paul F. Thompkins guest hosts with Weird Al cohosting, and Tig Notaro in studio. Al has a great laugh.
Episode 25 - Neil Hamburger… I get it, but he’s just too annoying to tolerate.
Episode 20 - As much as I hate autotune Jerry Minor’s “VIP” song is damn catchy and atypically funny. Also, JP Inc.’s “Jazzbot Xtreme”… wow.

DVD - Away We Go - sweet, charming and often hilarious, this is the most unique (and one of the best) buddy road comedies I’ve seen, co-written by Dave Eggars, directed by Sam Mendes. A resonant movie for the late-20’s/30’s single or couple.

COMIC - Batman and Robin #5 - Morrison sure knows how to propel a story forward don’t he. Kapow! He makes it seem like Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne ARE Batman and Robin…. so good.

COMIC - Strange Tales #2 - Jonathan Hickman, Jhonen Vasquez, Max Cannon (the Red Meat guy), Tony Millionaire, Matt Kindt and more all in one place. Love!

TV - Modern Family - Possibly the sleeper hit of the year. It’s quiet but really quite hilarious.

TV - Cougar Town - what was with the ad for CougarLife… a Cougar dating site? Where was this 8 years ago when I was single and looking for an older, richer woman to service?

COMIC - Doom Patrol #3 - I quite enjoyed the story but Matt Clarke’s character designs are - how do I put this gently? - detestable. Do the Doom Patrol need to be so…emblemized? Metal Men back-up with a focus on Copper, yes! Douglas: Robot Hunter? Awesome. I’m biased though.

COMIC - Planetary #27 - I don’t get it.

DVD - Tell No One - 93% fresh on the Tomatometer… an interesting movie, cleverly shifting gears about halfway through but the final act just seems to fall apart in terms of presentation (”now let me tell you what really happened”…for serious?) and ultimately the final reveal just feels inordinately convoluted and even kind of silly… it’s 4/5 of a great mystery/suspense thriller.

MOVIE - Barnyard - For the record: Bob Odenkirk, co-creator of Mr. Show = funny. Bill Odenkirk, Bob’s brother, head writer of Futurama = funny. Steve Oedekirk, doesn’t even spell his name the same, not related, writer of Patch Adams, Ace Ventura sequel, Evan Almighty, Kung Pow = not funny. This animated feature was turned into a kids TV show, “Back To The Barnyard” which is actually pretty entertaining. The film, however, not so much.

MOVIE - Night at the Museum/The Adventures of Pluto Nash - I didn’t really watch either, but instead both, concurrently, whilst doing other things like playing with my daughter and making phone calls. “Museum” is a kids movie with little interest for adults, while “Pluto Nash” is a shit movie which even shit shouldn’t watch. “Nash” is about a bar owner on the moon fighting against a monomaniacal billionaire who wishes to turn the whole moon into a casino, so, really there’s absolutely no reason to care about this film. The effects would have been considered good in 1987, the story would have been considered good in 1480 (men living on the moon, how fantastical). The effects in “Museum” weren’t that bad, but the treacle runs thick…

DVD - State of Play - Cleansing my Thanksgiving Day palette of the crap that I fed myself earlier in the day… based on the BBC series of the same name, “SOP” is taut, highly charged intrepid reporter/political thriller. A really good film, despite its many, many cliches.

AUDIOBOOK - David Cross: I Drink For A Reason - 6 and a half hours of David Cross reading his first book. Normally I can’t do audiobooks because they’re boring, but this is more like a series of sketches, or radio bits, with Cross throughout breaking “character” and addressing the differences between reading and listening (admonishing the listener for being lazy and not buying the book), and also having guests like H. Jon Benjamin, Kristen Schall and Les Savvy Fav appear. There’s a lot of “audiobook-only” material here and it’s much more performance-based than you’d think. Highly enjoyable, even if it does seem like Mr. Cross thinks I’m both boring and lazy (and a blogger, ouch)… at least I’m not a hippie. Multimedia bonus material (including an animated short from the creators of Superjail) at the link above.

MOVIE - The Surrogates - I hate to be “that guy” but… the comic book was much better. The movie tries too hard to “amp it up” and make everything more high stakes and intense and takes most of the subtle cultural and character nuances and beats you over the head with them. It felt more “I, Robot” than “Blade Runner”.

PODCAST - Rock On London #15 - Another great, concise podcast of new edge music from Mar Sellars.

COMIC - Batman #691 - Okay, the lame ending of last issue was explained away but still, the fact that Two-Face can so easily a) find and b) infiltrate the batcave and c) kick new-Batman’s ass is really weak tea. This is one of Aden’s pick-ups so I’ll see if she’s wanting to go forward when Tony Daniel takes over writing next issue.

COMIC - Batgirl #3 - wow, a dramatic drop-off in quality from the first two issues as cliches abound with new Batgirl having a throw-down with Scarecrow. This is like the ending of every superhero TV pilot ever. Bo-ring.

COMIC - Final Crisis Aftermath Escape #6 - So all of this was Nemesis’ initiation procedure into the Global Peace Agency? Disappointed. I hate mini-series that end with “a new beginning”…bleh. What a waste of an otherwise kooky series.

COMIC - JSA vs Kobra #5 - Love the cat and mouse between Kobra and Mr. Terrific. Even if next issue sees the JSA handily beat down the Kali Yugans, it’ll still be a fun ride.

COMIC - Red Robin #5 - Can the bat-titles falter any more this week. This issue was plodding and an unnecessarily drawn-out set-up for the new storyline

COMIC - Secret Six #14 - Man, Bane is truly coming into his own as a great character here. Yes, that Bane. The lame luchadore-garbe dude. Hats off to Ms. Simone.

COMIC - The Shiled #2 - I’m absolutely loving this series already. Heady military technobabble + some subtle foreign policy commentary + some kick-ass action + great writing and art and a surprise villain at the end… this one’s totally flying under the radar.

COMIC - Unwritten #6 - Harry Potter’s in jail… I mean Tom Taylor is in jail and he’s so not pleased about it. Carey is doing some great world-building here with full pages of media commentary and great use of narrative captions. How’s this going to play out? Who knows.

MOVIE - Push - a meager 23% on the Tomatometer, this is a severely underrated film about an underground community of super-powered individuals (descended from Nazi experiments that were continued by various governments) in a slightly alternate-world where the human faction doesn’t really come into play (for a change, thank you). This isn’t the X-Men and it isn’t Heroes. I can see how many straight (by that I mean non-comic-geek) reviewers would be a) confused or b) bored by this, but superhero connoisseurs should find a lot to like, even if the whole plot of the movie is driven by a total maguffin. I love all the different classifications: shadows, bleeders, stitches, pushers, watchers, sniffs, etc… and I like how our heroes were completely outmatched, power-wise by their opponents and how their success was based more off relying on intelligence and manipulation than their powers. I also enjoyed it’s Hong Kong setting, and how it was used by the film, despite its largely American-centric casting. Probably my favourite geek discovery this year, right next to the Lost Room.

DVD - Northfork - a small midwestern town in the 1950s is going to be flooded once the new damn is complete, and the straggling residents need to be removed. Meanwhile a quartet of strange folks are on the hunt for an angel. It’s a beautiful film with some gorgeously scenes, a methodically paced (yes, it’s kind of slow) light drama from the Polish Bros. who followed it up with “the Astronaut Farmer” in 2006 and this year “Manure” and “Stay Cool”. Huh.

COMIC - The Question: The Five Books of Blood - Greg Rucka has been working on the “crime bible” storyline for a few years now. Started in “52″, it continued here, then moved onto “Final Crisis: Revelations” and is ebbing in both his Batwoman and Question stories featured in “Detective Comics”. I skipped this one initially (wasn’t interested in getting suckered into all the post-”52′ storylines that emerged) but it’s now a pretty key chapter that sheds light on the events of “Revelations”. Originally known as the less intriguing: “Crime Bible: The Five Lessons of Blood”, it didn’t get good reviews, but it’s actually fairly intriguing, primarily in structure (as story-wise it’s kind of left hanging, which always annoys me about mini-series).

COMIC - Stuffed - From Nick Bertuzzi and one of the writers of the Colbert Report, “Stuffed” is the story of a suburban husband and father that finds out his father just died and was left with his only real possessions, a curiosity shop featuring a real stuffed African tribesman. The book is the lighthearted drama about the trials he faces after engaging a museum to help him return the “savage” to his homeland and his estranged hippie brother returning to interfere in the process. The opening pages are a bit clunky, but soon the characters and their relationships with one another begin to breathe, taking on a natural flow, resulting in a truly charming tale.

DVD - Superman/Batman: Public Enemies - An animated, hour-long adaptation of the first story-arc from the Superman/Batman comic by Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness and it’s exactly as silly and inane as its source. Though Kevin Conroy, Tim Daly and Clancy Brown all return to voice, respectively Batman, Superman and Lex Luthor, hearkening back to their Dini/Timm animated days, their given weak material to work with and the bloopy, over-muscled figurework (on-model from McGuinness’ work) is unappealing to look at. Add to that Power Girl’s ineffectiveness, the cartoonish villainy of Luthor and the unresolved, though heavily implied, Brokeback Mountain love-in between Bats and Supes and it’s just a good production of an extremely bad story.

DVD - Anvil:The Story of Anvil - Toronto heavy metal band Anvil has been at it for 30 years. Their highest high reached in the early 1980’s in Japan, with a rousingly successful performance at a huge festival, a success which never materialized in North America. I couldn’t tell at first if this was a “Guy Teriffico”-style mocumentary or a true doc, given the early participation from some metal legends, but it turns out they’re the real deal… and it’s only from a lack of lucky breaks or a series of unfortunate incidents that has kept them out of the spotlight. But this doc poises to bring them into legendary status, not because of any insane antic but on the mere perseverance of Lips and Robb Reiner all these years. Hard work and talent should be rewarded and by the looks of things, they finally will be.

CD - Flight of the Conchords: I Told You I Was Freaky - not quite as good as the music from the first album, but that’s understandable. The first season’s music comprised mostly of songs which the Conchords refined after years of live performances, whereas these were written over a year-long hiatus with less time to refine. In that context, this stuff is still pretty incredible. There are a couple of duds (the titular “I Told You I Was Freaky” most of all) but the sheer versatility of moving from the modern R&B of “We’re Both In Love With A Sexy Lady” to the retro nu-wave of “Fashion is Danger” to “Carol Brown” (which I believe is their best song to date, not just an homage, parody or novelty track). It’s a really solid album.

COMIC — Justice League of America #27 - 29, 30 - 34 — After months of searching I’ve finally completed the storyline “Welcome to Sundown Town” in which the Milestone Universe collides with the DCU and Dwayne McDuffie gets canned as writer of the JLofA. When it focuses on story, it’s actually quite a fun yarn, but the “characterization” bits, esp. those involving Hawkgirl and Red Arrow were really not very good. By the end it’s obvious that McDuffie loves the Milestone characters far more than half the DC heroes he was saddled with writing (as well as all the unfortunate editorial edicts he was forced to deal with). In fact the best his JLofA got was when the team was pared back to Vixen, Zatanna, Dr. Light, Green Lantern and Firestorm. Multi-culture pals assemble, sure, but you can tell he has more affection for these characters than Red Arrow, Hawkgirl and Black Canary.

COMIC - Ex Machina #46 - Issue after issue after issue, it seems like there’s just not enough Ex Machina. I don’t think there’s been an issue that has not left me wanting more. This is no different.

COMIC - Catwoman: It’s Only A Movie/Catwoman Dies/Crime Pays - Incredibly difficult but worth every effort to find. Absolutely love this Catwoman run, it’s going to be hard to leave it alone with the final trade “The Long Road Home”. Must find Will Pfeifer’s prior uncollected issues 44 - 52.

MOVIE - Confessions of a Dangerous Mind - For a first-time director, George Clooney’s take on Charlie Kaufman’s adaptation of Chuck Barris’ “autobiography” is damn solid. I haven’t seen the film since watching it in theatre but it is a visual feast, not to mention an absolutely wild story with incredible acting… but the production values on this are just aces, meticulously orchestrated and executed.

COMIC - Catwoman: The Long Road Home - So long Selena. Glad I could say I knew you when…

MOVIE - Disturbia - I only caught the last half hour of this teenie-bopper remake/rip-off of Rear Window, but that’s about all I needed. The whole “is the neighbour a murderer” plot goes right off the rails when David Morse bashes Carrie Anne Moss’ skull into the wall just as it looks like he got away with murder, and then chases down a house-arrested Shia LeBouf with a baseball bat. The whole Deus Ex Machina of LeBouf discovering a corpse on a video recording was pathetic and the expansive murder chamber beneath Morse’s house was cartoonishly excessive. That LeBouf goes from killing Morse to making out with the girl next door without so much as a single reflective moment of the horrors he encountered nor the deed he did is probably the most disturbing aspect of all. And what happened to his buddy who Morse beat in the head with a baseball bat? Is he dead? Alive? Nobody knows and the film doesn’t seem to care.

COMIC - Batman: Streets of Gotham #5 - Paul Dini takes a couple issues off and apparently so does Batman as Huntress takes center stage squaring off against the Man-Bat and winding up in the clutches of a murderous priest. Fill-in writer Chris Yost has a solid handle on Huntress and it’s actually a well-written story.

COMIC - All-Star Superman vol 2 - Bless you Grant Morrison for your constant pushing and reinventing of storytelling tropes. You make my brain hurt sometimes, but it’s worth it.

MOVIE - The Hills Have Eyes - a half hour of a contentious family stranded in a desert where mutant hillbillies may or may not be stalking them was about all I could handle, I got a little tired of the whole situation and went to bed. Don’t think I missed much except, likely, a lot of hillbilly mutant torture pr0n. I’m sure if I watched it from the beginning, without commercial interruptions (and channel flipping) and, you know, not edited for Spike TV it might’ve proved more engaging. Or not… I dunno. I’ll just read the Wikipedia recap.

MOVIE - The Fog - Intermittently watched a total of 5 minutes of this remake atrocity, and was bored, Bored, BORED!

TV - Monty Python: Almost the Truth (the Lawyers Edit) - The bulk of it provided details I had already read or seen numerous times, but it’s fairly thorough talking heads recount of the life of Python and engaging enough. I found fifth and sixth chapters, dealing with Life of Brian, Live at the Hollywood Bowl, Meaning of Life, Graham’s death and the requisite “what’re they up to now” to be the most enlightening parts, as they are the least explored chapters of Python history.

MOVIE - D.C. Cab - Firefly’s Adam Baldwin stars as a young southern kid coming to the nation’s capital with big dreams of owning his own cab company. Mr. T, Bill Maher, Marsha Warfield, Gary Busey and a host of no-names co-star as the rag-tag group of cabbies Baldwin gets to work with. As every ensemble comedy from the early 80’s went, the third act takes a big turn to what-the-fuckedness as the crew become embroiled in a kidnapping and rescue plot. It’s full of un-politically correct talk and a quick dose of the boobs early on, so it’s not without it’s own crude charm, but it’s still Joel Schumacher through and through.

COMIC - X-Factor #50 - concluding the current storyline in a excessively rapid pace, too fast in fact that it’s actually quite anticlimactic, which is too bad because the set-up was pretty cool. The ending works, but it’s just got no room to breathe with the (issue #200) relaunch happening in December.

COMIC - Detective Comics #858 - Rucka and Willams both offer a change of pace, but it’s a dynamite read. One of the best superhero titles on the stands. I’m a firm Batwoman fan (no innuendo implied).

COMIC - Ambush Bug: Year None #7 - Are Giffen and Fleming intentionally self-sabotaging the oblique humour of their creation so that they don’t have to work on him anymore ever? Or have I just outgrown the bug? Uh oh.

CD - The Nightclub Comedy Stylings of Eugene Mirman - I thought I was buying Mirman’s new cd, but instead wound up purchasing his first album from 2004 which was a surprise and disappointment at the same time. What it shows is Eugene was funny before I discovered him but he’s gotten better since then. His jokes by and large seem incomplete here, not fully mined for their riches.

DVD - Monty Python’s Flying Circus ep 34: The Bicycle Tour - The only episode-length sketch in the entire series, it’s top three of my favourite episodes and was early proof that Python could do features if they really wanted to. The wife had never seen it, and I was happy to hear her laughing. Housey Housey indeed (aka Bingo).

COMIC - Sleeper Vol 1 - 4 (Seasons 1 & 2) - Volumes 1 - 3 languished mostly unread on my shelves for years until recently when I finally acquired volume 4 (oddly, until recently I didn’t even know I was missing a volume 4). What’s inside is an incredible superhero espionage tale that makes Mark Millar’s “Wanted” look like the immature drivel it actually is. The fabulous team of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips weaves an incredible tale about sex and violence, good and evil and the shades of grey in-between, and of course the double-crosses… and the double-double crosses. It’s absolutely wicked, distasteful and utterly engrossing.

COMIC - Fear Agent Vol 1 - Man I absolutely love Tony Moore’s artwork. I’m going to have to rethink my position on The Exterminators and start snapping up trades of that, because, man, that guy can flipping draw. And while much of Rick Remender’s work left me cold, I think this is is just fantastic… truly original and creative.

COMIC - Jack Kirby’s OMAC: One Man Army Corps - Ever since I saw OMAC in Who’s Who two decades ago, I’ve quite liked the guy, even without ever having read a story involving him. The Batman: Brave and the Bold cartoon last month, in fact, was the first real story featuring the “classic” iteration of the character I was exposed to. After that I hunted down the hardcover collection and have marveled at the quite fantastic future-scape Kirby created, including some absolutely dynamite SF concepts. After 8 issues, it abruptly ends, story incomplete, which is a shame as it was starting to read less clunky than the early issues. Now to hunt the continuation stories…

DVD - Evil Dead & Evil Dead 2 - I acquired Evil Dead 2 back in 2001 for no other reason than it was in a “Collector’s Tin” casing from Anchor Bay (I bought the Collector’s Tin of Repo Man that same day for the same reason). I had never seen nor had any interest in Evil Dead 2 (or perhaps the High Fidelity conversation between Rob and Barry inspired me a little) but I watched it, was kind of amused but didn’t really understand the fervent fanaticism surrounding it. I watched Army of Darkness prior (didn’t care much for it), and had never seen Evil Dead. This Halloween, that was rectified. ED is, in theory, the “straight” horror, but it’s as silly and slapstick as any of them. ED2 is a pseudo sequel/remake of the first which I realize I just didn’t understand the first time around (watching ED is pretty essential to understanding the pacing of the opening 10 minutes of ED2). Good fun individually but like chocolate and peanut butter in Reese’s Peanut Butter cups, much better together.

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