Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Superhero Flicks, Part 17: Other Comic Films


So, that (Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) wraps up, like I said, costumed heroes, and adventurers that dance that edge into super.

This batch, we delve into other comics based properties.


Heavy Metal



The film-

Ohhh, FINALLY, I get here!

This one is a whole other dimension than even Punisher, or Freddy vs Jason.

This is my soul, this is my essence.
Burn my movie collection a thousand times, and I'll always rebuild, and it'll always restart with this one.

Heavy Metal...Heavy Metal......my...precious....*touches the screen*

The history-

From the very beginning, this was my movie.
It called to me, like the green crystal in Superman.

It came to HBO when I was a kid, and try as they may, my folks couldn't keep me from it, I saw bits and pieces of it.
The bond happened there.

In my teens, I watched it again and again on scrambled Cinemax.

I had dreams about it where I was in a world where they'd figured out how to project movies into the atoms of the sky, and Heavy Metal was the whole sky.
And it was good.

I loaned my neighbor, who had Cinemax, my VCR, so he could tape it for me.

I braved dangerous winter road conditions to purchase the cassette tape of the soundtrack, at that stupid evil fucking mall, full of stupid evil fucking teenagers.

I played it to the point of audio degradation.

I have the CD now, and STILL it gets me high like drugs!

I bought the official VHS release, I have the DVD, I'll get the the fucking gamma-ray laser edition if/when it comes.

I have...the Elmer Bernstein orchestral score to this fucker.
I waded through lakes of blood to get it.

...so...yeah...I'm a  fan....

Anyway, somehow, Kevin Eastman (of Turtles fame) acquiring the Heavy Metal magazine company with his Turtle-dosh helped bust up the legal bullshit, and get this released on video so it can belong to the ages.

Sneering comic elitist scum can say what they want about the man, we owe him for that, if nothing else.


Heavy Metal 2000


The film-

Ayep, every part 2 that came out in 2000 has "2000", instead of 2 on there.

Ehhh, it's got its moments, but it's sort of an inferior knockoff of the first one.

You got a green crystal as the Macguffin, you got a quest, you got spaceships, you got monsters, you got alien bars, you got a psycho villain, you got titties...

All the same ingredients are there, but mixed around.

Kevin Eastman was essentially showing off his hot wife.

Like Paul Anderson does with the Resident Evils.

It's...not BAD...but...I haven't broken my back to upgrade it to DVD either...

I do dig the soundtrack though.
Some truly great tracks on that.
IMHO.
..except the Insane Clown Posse one...I hate their stupid stinking guts.
Easy enough to track skip that though.

The history-

Um...well...this spins off of Eastman's "Melting Pot", universe, and that world was germinating as far back as my Casablanca story in Turtles, check that out if you missed it.


Fritz The Cat


The film-

...mmm, not one of my faves, but, I'm glad I have it.

Now, dig this, Robert Crumb disavows this flick, and even went as far as killing Fritz off to avoid sequels, and he has a rant about it in "Crumb",....but, I've got the fucking graphic novel of all the Fritz strips now...and it's totally faithful to his shit.

A perfect page by page adaptation, before they were de rigueur in the 00's/10's.

You couldn't ask for better.
He's a big fucking baby, and a big fucking liar when it comes to this film.

The History-

As for the X rating?
Ppppttt, hard R nowadays if it had to be rated.
Tops.
But...the MPAA, and the random yahoos they get to screen this stuff have always been a joke.

Anyway, it's famous for that.
Frankly, you see worse on South Park nowadays.
"Woodland Critter Christmas", kicks Fritz's ass.

But, it's important for history.


American Splendor


The film-

From here...

The life and times of Harvey Pekar adapted from the pages of his comic.

I like it better than "Crumb", actually.
Shit, I like HIM better than Crumb the person.
Crumb's a documentary, so it's still my favorite documentary.

The love story is great IMO. It's both fascinating and uplifting how he essentially built his family with the power of the comic, so, it gives geeks like myself the hope that "hey, maybe that could happen to me!", y'know?

Course, we all know Harvey Pekar is dead now.
Dammit. The heroes always croak on ya.

Anyway, Paul Giamatti is great in this, but I have yet to see anything he wasn't great in.
"Sideways", "Man in The Moon", "Private Parts", he's one of the great character actors.

He's supposed to be Colonel Tom Parker in "Bubba Nosferatu", I really hope that gets made someday.
Giamatti is quoted as saying "I'm going to fucking break my spine in half if I have to get that thing done".
Godspeed, Paul and Don!


The history-

Got this for "Christmas", during The Year of Hell.

We didn't have Christmas, I just opened my shit as it came in the mail.

Loved this though.
The tear-jerky bits got to me more cuz of..y'know..stuff.

This, n' Human Centipede are carved into my memory in a weird but special way now.

Yeah, and here's the other clip I watched in the hospital waiting room, besides the Freddy one that there was an incident over...





Oh, the hypocrisy. Now, look how political Dave has gotten in old age...tch...
10's Dave would let Harvey go for it.
Oh, too late, he's dead.


Oh...let's do the ka-ka...


30 Days Of Night



The film-

Oh, shit, that's German, or something.
Well, fuck it, it had the best picture.
Didn't like that stylized nondescript red shit they had on the others.

Double fuck it, cuz I ain't seen it, and ain't gonna.
Just doesn't look like my cuppa.

The history-

Lotta non-hero comics stuff coming out lately that I get the cynical feeling is nothing more than a hacky way to bypass the typical byzantine Hollywood script submission system.

There, said that.
Deal with it.


300


The film-

From here...


Um..yeah...I'm thinking lately that Frank Miller might be a closet Nazi.
He picks this of all possible stories in history,..Spartans, the originators of that eugenics shit, and it's referenced, and even plays out in the morality of the piece with the whole hunchback thing...
Then you got swastika throwing stars in "Sin City", and "The Dark Knight Strikes Again", you got swastikas on the tits of the evil chick in "Dark Knight Returns", and she comes back in "All-Star Batman", you got Sam Jackson in Nazi regalia in that shitty "Spirit", movie...
Again, and again, authoritarianism posing as macho, swastikas, why does this stuff keep repeating?
Geez...you can't even really call it closet...it's been out and proud since 9/11...
I dunno, maybe I'm reading something wrong...
But...no, watching this creeps me the hell out.
If it doesn't intend to be a fascist tract...it fucking is that.


The history-

I felt uneasy and sad writing that at the time.

Since then, "Holy Terror", has hit the shelves.
Yeah, he's totally out of the closet now, he's full on fascist batshit.

Full blown, "Turner Diaries", level crazy.

Fuck you, Frank.
I say that with no more guilt or reservation.

You were great in your youth, I'll always love Year One, Dark Knight Returns, and the first Sin Citys they did the movie from.

But now...go away.

I gotta say though, the silver lining is, man, I've knocked the shit out of the editors at Marvel/DC...but, someone is still awake over at DC if they rejected "Holy Terror", despite it being by the mighty Frank Miller.

I would give good money to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.
Yes, indeedy.



Alien vs. Predator (and Requiem)


The film/history-

See here.


Barb Wire


The film-

Ka-ka.

The history-

N/A


Bullet Proof Monk


The film-

The ads to this didn't give me anything to be excited about.

Looks like another aging karate man doing a CGI fuckfest for one last big payday to me

Like Jackie Chan in "The Tuxedo".
Aw, shit, am I on the hook to review that too now?
Fuck you, this is the review for both.
That's the end of that bullshit.

The history-

N/A


From Hell


The film-

S'okay.

The GN is a fucking phone book though, so, I'm guessing a lot of shit gets left out.

The history-

N/A


Ghost World


The film-

Well....Terry Zwigoff directed it....tch...I dunno....

*Skims Wiki summary* doesn't appeal as flat text...maybe it's the performances...

*Shrug*

Someone recommend this to me.
Otherwise..pppt.

The history-

N/A


Cowboys & Aliens


The film-

Well...at first glimpse, it looks like a white guy version of how I described "Bulletproof Monk".

But...people are going ga-ga over the fuckin' thing, so, maybe it's worth a look.

The history-

Eh...I'll catch it when it comes to Redbox.


Up next, more of these.


26 comments:

Hyla Tracy II said...

It's your one way ticket to midnight . . .

. . . And tits.

:D

Diacanu said...

*Dancing Kenny*

Hyla Tracy II said...

OOCH! Mah nurd-shames are kickin up.

The reference. O'er me head it sails.

:(

Diacanu said...

Oh, you didn't see?

They did a Heavy Metal homage south Park.

It ended with Kenny in a flying car with a Taarna ripoff driving, while he's boogying down to "heavy metal", the song.

Hyla Tracy II said...

Oh, that is right fucking excellent.

Naw, I don't keep up with the South Park much.

Shit, I hardly watch Adult Swim anymore, and I used to live off that shit.

What's WRONG with me!?

Diacanu said...

Well, you're Rumba's daddy now, she needs lots of TLC until she's big enough to fill a bookshelf.

;)

Hyla Tracy II said...

Rumba, shmumba, I got a whole passel of fuggin kids. A galaxy's worth, to be precise.

And do they ever call!?

. . .

Well, no, I should hope not. Because if I ever though that was happening, that would make it booby-hatch time. I gots too many pages to draw for . . . Hmm. Actually WOULD have a lot of time in there to get pages done . . .

Hmmm . . .

Diacanu said...

Ah, the "cuckoo's nest", gambit.

Well...didn't work out so well for Jack, did it?

Although...if you think about it...the entire Star Trek universe is in Benny Russel's head...but no one in that world ever got to see it.

Hyla Tracy II said...

A-ACK!!

The . . . the nurd-shame twinges! They're kickin up agin!!

I . . . assume that's referencing a Trek ep that I clearly have never seen/heard of.

(don't phase' me, bro!)

Diacanu said...

Deep Space Nine.
"far beyond the stars".

Sisko hallucinates he's a pulp SF writer in the 40's, and the stories he comes up with are DS9 stories.

The cast all show up out of makeup as alternate characters.

Sisko as Benny has a nervous breakdown over his stories getting pulped due to institutionalized racism in the business, and gets carted off to the funny farm.

Sisko snaps out of the trance, and concludes the visions were from Pagh Wraiths.

...but...there's a hint that maybe...just maybe..Sisko is the hallucination.

In which case, the whole star Trek universe is in Benny's head in his padded room.

Diacanu said...

Point being, best case, you get "work", done, but on your cell walls, and it doesn't get seen, worst case... lobotomy.

Diacanu said...

..picture that last bit deadpanned in the cadences of either Norm Macdonald, or Cliff Claven.

Hyla Tracy II said...

Shit. Yeah, I missed more DS9 than I caught, alas.

I was watching Babylon 5 (shrug).

Always liked DS9, though. WAY more so than any of the other TNG spinoff dreck.

. . . Which I still watched.

Hyla Tracy II said...

Sorry about the comment reply lapse. I was multitasking--popping some page samples up on the deviantART.

Weak traffic on TGND today.

I gotta whip them suckers up!!

Diacanu said...

Recommended DS9s...

"duet"

"In the pale moonlight".

"far beyond the stars".

"the visitor"

"what you leave behind".

Diacanu said...

Oh, and..

"past tense"

and..

"little green men"

Diacanu said...

Yeah, I hung in there for all of Voyager out of habit.

Enterpise too, although, I thought the last season got good...

Hyla Tracy II said...

Yeah, I watched a fair slab of Voyager, too. What choice did we have!?

Enterprise . . . I liked at first. I loved how it was regular humans in space for awhile--they screwed up, did stupid things, yelled at each other, wore ball caps and t-shirts and had a dog. I dug it.

But, BOOM, right off the bat: time travel shit. 'Temporal Cold War'.

They says.

*siiiigghhhhh*

And then the whole garbage with the Zindi (or Xindi, I dunno) and the 'Expanse' and crap . . . Meh.

But, yeah, they pulled the ol' balls out at the end. Good for them. That Gorn was a fucking disaster, though. >P

Diacanu said...

You ever check out, or get into Firefly?

Hyla Tracy II said...

GET INTO!?

Shit, son, it got up into ME!

. . .

Wait, that came out all sorts of wrong (yet felt so right . . .)

YES. Owns the box set Firefly? Lurvs it. Even Serenity, despite its hoity-toity H-wood discrepancies (futuristic suspenders? REALLY, guys?).

Diacanu said...

Ahh, all RIGHT then.

Yeah, that one was character based like an anime, so, I figured it would be your kinda show.

I was gonna flip out if you hadn't.

Diacanu said...

...ope, there's a novel coming...

Hyla Tracy II said...

A novel?

No.

But how about . . . a song . . .?

*bucka-bow-bow*

'Take my love,
Take my land,
Take me where I cannot stand . . '

Diacanu said...

I don't care, I'm still free.
You can't take the sky from mee-ee.

Hyla Tracy II said...

'Take me out,
To the Black,
Tell 'em I-

Okay, I'm done.

Ahhh. Joss, you big dork, you. God bless ya.

Diacanu said...

Well, I'm fadin' out anyway.

Nother batch tomorrow, and a homework movie to watch.

Blog Archive

Labels