Pacificapocalypse

We Watch Movies: Quarantine

Ok let’s get this out in the open first: I’m over the docu/horror flick. Enough with the handheld camera work. Yes I get it builds a sense of place and realism, but I’m done. I’m really really done. ( I’m looking at you Cloverfield ).

With that said this movie scared the crap out of us. I mean damn, that was a scary flick. Here we are four years on from Dawn of The Dead (2004) where we got fast zombies and also six years out from 28 Days Later (2002) where we had, not quite zombies, but pretty damn close. And they were fast AND infected AND turned friendly happy guy into flesh ripping Mister Cranky Pants in, what was it? 30 seconds? Damn. Those two twists to the classic zombie paradigm really shifted everything.
They used to be slow, shuffling things who relied upon sheer numbers to eventually whittle down the plucky band of survivors. Now. They’re fast. They can run and climb. Oh hell no.
Since then there’s been little innovation in the cinema zombie, but Quarantine does manage to put a few new spins on the zombie schtick, setting it in a single sealed building was a neat idea for one, making the .gov a partner villain was another. What causes the pleasant residents to turn into mouth foaming killers is actually pretty clever as well as believable, I actually thought that part was one of the more intelligent aspects of the film. I mean, it’s pretty plausible.  Which is freaky.
Ok I *did* get a little tired of Jennifer Carpenter’s giggly cub reporter in the first part of the film, as quickly as I got tired of her, later in the film, screaming and freaking out unintelligibly. ENUNCIATE DAMMIT!. Right, you’re terrified. I get it. Sure I’d probably be babbling and peeing my pants as well, if I were in that situation, but GET A GRIP!.
Some great gotcha terror scare of the leap out and freak out variety, and a bonus sense of the creeping dread as the characters realize, that the .gov has written them off and they are NOT getting out of that building even *if* they survive the nastyness within it.

So yeah, good old fashioned scary film. Pretty smartly written and relatively believable.

Oh! And yet another movie with the greatest actor who’s face you’ve never seen, if only for the last few minutes.

Man, Latino Review has been getting some good stuff lately.
Now they have the latest Max Payne posters. They look pretty good I think; captures the dark feel and oppressive constant snowfall of the first game, but they’ve turned the brooding Wahlbergness (Wahlbergian brooding?) up to 11,  and dude! Look up for once! But the Brooklyn Bridge angel wings are as subtle as napalm. And where’s Max’s Hawaiian shirt?

Click for full size.

What’s with Batman’s voice in Dark Knight?
I thought it was a bit much, seems I’m not alone.

Watched Léon the Professional again this weekend. Such a great film.

Busy! I need another full day around the house. Saturday started early and completely disassembled my old office desk and hauled the pieces down to the driveway. Need to call Claude the JunkMan to come pick them up. Put together my new desk and chair. So cool. Now I just need to find homes for everything; files, printer paper, knicks, knacks and paddywhacks. Still have to hook up the printer and finish up with the PC and external drives. *sigh* yeah one more day would do it.

Sunday Court and I went to go see my Mom. Stayed for a couple of hours just hanging out.
Sounds pleasant and innocuous, but this is a pretty significant milestone; Mom had never met Court before and we (Court and I) thought that it’s time Mom faced up to facts. It’s been two years, everyone else has moved on, now it’s time for Mom to start. It was a little awkward, but not overly so. I had to explain to Court that, sometimes, that’s just how Mom is. But it was good, and now that Mom has met Court and talked to her, perhaps, she’ll be able to finally understand that life goes on and that the past is a different country.

Anyway, Court’s side of the office/studio space is pretty much completed. As soon as we’re finally through I’ll post some pictures. It looks brilliant and she’s very happy with all the work we did.

Ok, Monday morning, let’s do this thing.

UPDATE: Videos have been pulled. *sigh* well I knew it couldn’t last.
It’ll probably be pulled by the end of the day before lunch; but here it is in two parts sneaked from Comic Con.

Wolverine! (No link. Seriously if you need a link for more info on Wolverine, then this post is of absolutely to interest to you. And you suck.)
Sabertooth!
Gambit!
Blob!

Please oh please oh please!

Check it!
Can Wahlberg atone for THE HAPPENING? I’m starting to get interested in this. This first poster mimics the box art of the original game perfectly
Trailer here.

Click to embiggen.

So the hype for the Watchmen movie is ramping up nicely, what with the release of the official trailer last week (and it looks amazing; please don’t fuck this up guys!) but what I really love right now is this Vargas style illo of Sally Jupiter done by James Jean.

At 1:32 into the Watchmen trailer, you can see a glimpse of an illustration I did for the movie. Alex McDowell asked me to create a Vargas-esque portrait of Sally Jupiter, played by Carla Gugino. It only appears for 1 second in the trailer, but the illustration is supposed to play a larger role in that particular scene.

click for full size goodness.

Urban Ore on Saturday; man that place is cool. How cool is it? It has it’s own set on Flickr. I wish I was craftier and or more skilled to take advantage of all the stuff they have. If you’ve never been, it’s basically a housewares recycler; doors, bathroom fixtures, furniture, old tools, just stacks and stacks of it. Found a downright awesome old industrial steel cabinet unit with drawers and shelving; cleaned it up and viola! Ammo cabinet and gunsmithing station. I’m so happy with this thing I may post a picture. GUN NERD!

Court’s been jonesing for a studio space for, well forever, so we also looked for some storage stuff for her - she picked up a massive solid oak dining table at Goodwill that will perform brilliantly as a workspace. The top is kind of beat, but what the hell, it’s going to get paint spilled on it anyway. Wrestled that into the office and it fits nicely. I’m going to get rid of my full size desk and pick up a smaller leaner unit. Think I’ve found the one I want (Ikea, of course), now just have to figure out how to get rid of my desk.
Anyway.

We Watch Movies: The Dark Knight

This is not a happy movie. In Iron Man, there was this undercurrent of, I don’t know, comic geek optimism. I can’t describe it better than that. Same thing with The Incredible Hulk. You just knew things were going to turn out ok. The little Marvel Universe tie ins and references made me squeal like a schoolgirl getting pinched. (”We’re putting a team together.” Oh fuck yes you are!)

You don’t get that with The Dark Knight. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it. It’s an outstanding film. But it’s bleak. People die. In fact a lot of people die. Heath Ledger’s Joker is bat shit (yes I just did that) insane. And you believe it. You really believe that this guy is a freaking psychopath. There’s no nifty gadgets or goofy clown cars, he’s just a crazy guy in a freaky makeup and a dirty purple suit. When the cops search him in one scene, they say “Nothing in his pockets except knives and lint”.
It’s minimalist Joker. But it works and it works very well.

Bale is still awesome as Bats, but I have to admit, this time around, his “Batman voice” was starting to hurt my throat. Just sounds painful. And the Batcycle is over the top cool.
A nice touch is that he actually does some real live detective work in this one. Something that Batman Begins pretty much ignored.

Harvey Dent. Wow, Aaron Eckhart plays evil good. Did that make sense? Well he’s not really evil, just really pissed off. You would be too if you went through what he did. They way they developed the Two Face character is brilliant. Harvey wants to save Gotham and he’s willing to, eventually, do anything, including taking the law into his own hands, to save it. And they actually only say the name “Two Face” once. Barely once.

Ok enough.

Oh, and don’t get the large soda, this is a long movie.

We Watch Movies: Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Amazing, Del Toro has created an astounding universe for Hellboy, which we sort of saw in the first film, but in The Golden Army you get thrown in the deep end like a medieval witch trial. A little back story, in a flashback to 1955, as told by Prof. Broom to an adolescent Hellboy (whom is convinced that Howdy Doody is a real boy)  and we’re set to go.
Favorite scene; the Troll Market. Damn, it’s like every extra creature from Labyrinth and Dark Crystal that didn’t make the final cut is in there.  We plan on seeing it again just to check out all the details and goings on in the background. Creature effects for days.
And Doug Jones is still the most amazing actor who’s face you’ve never seen.
Can you believe that Ron Perlman is 58? Selma Blair is a lot more fleshed out as a character this time around, not so much the shrinking violet from the first film; more confident. That’s hot. Go rent Feast of Love and Storytelling;  she’s *totally* naked in them.

The Wii Fit - I predict a headline from the future: Nintendo Saves an Obese America.
This thing is so cool that it sizzles. I was a little skeptical at first ( silly me, I should have know better - I’m a huge Wii fanboy and should keep the Mario Faith ) but we were able to score one at Game Crazy in San Bruno ( kudos to those guys, best customer service ever. Game Stop; you SUCK!) and Court set it up yesterday. If you have a pulse and/or an internet of your own, I’ll go ahead and skip the details. You know what it is and what it does. But I had no idea how well it does what it does.  Talk about unintended consequences; I broke a sweat with the original Wii Sports games, but the Fit just might make me even more sexy than I already am. Side note: the Fit may increase Court’s sex appeal but we have to be careful - she’s already hot - increasing her attractiveness factor could be dangerous - we don’t want the universe collapsing into a sexy singularity.
Wii Girl ain’t got nothing on my baby. But she’s indicated that if I post the video of her doing the hula hoop exercise that I took last night… I will regret it. We’ll see. I have powerful means of persuasion.
Oh and my Wii Fitness Age: 35! Suck it entropy!

Nerd girls are hot. They come in many flavors. Court is a comic nerd, science, art and lit geek.
And then there’s Becky.
Rebecca is a math and physics nerd of the first water. I’m pretty sure she’ll be famous someday for solving some unsolvable equation, discovering a new GUT or she’ll disappear in a lab experiment gone awry and then return with super powers. Something like that.
Anyway, she has a fascination with the number five and already has geek ink to prove it.
Her latest:

Dude, you had a Turing machine inked on you.
That’s so geek I can’t even begin to approach it.
Talk about MIT street cred.
You win one (1) internet.

REPO! The Genetic Opera
Saw this on Comcast previews a few months back and it’s stuck with me.
Now I see it’s starting to build a buzz. Looks wacky; a musical sci-fi splatter fest?
What’s not to like?
And from the above still pic: BOOBIES! YAY!
Opens November 7.
Maybe.