Whatever they’ve written about The Dark Knight. It’s all true.
Heath Ledger’s swan song was breathtaking. This is the insane, full force, no bullshit Joker that every Batman Comics reader has hoped would see reality. His magnificent performance pushes this highest-caliber crime drama completely beyond the superhero genre. Christopher Nolan has thrown us to the absolute bottom of the rabbit hole. The plot twists like a leviathan and fearlessly spares NO ONE. My biggest concern is that this movie killed the franchise. Enjoy this movie… there may be nowhere left to go from here.
The marketing was perhaps the best that has ever been in American Cinema. If you believe The Dark Knight is over hyped, then you haven’t seen it yet.
9.4/10 - I’m not telling you this is the perfect movie, It felt a bit stretched and sometimes hard to swallow… but its faults are few and far between. This Is Art.
Should you be in Hollywood and lucky enough to catch it at the Arclight, Costumes from the film and the Bat Pod will be on display this weekend. Who’s ready for The Watchmen?
I went to the Midnight showing of Hellboy II: The Golden Army tonight and fucking loved it. This is an epic that goes so far beyond being “just a comic book movie” that I consider it a moving piece of art. Guillermo Del Toro has proven once again that as a director he has total control over an AMAZING army of costumers, visual fx hordes and production designers. His unique fantasy aesthetic mixed with Mike Mingola’s brilliant characters bring Hellboy II to life with 10x the flesh of his indie-esque endeavors. It has proven that you can throw money at brilliance and return something positive.
Danny Elfman’s score is at once subtle and appropriate AND a bold storytelling symbiont, it took me half the film to figure out that it was even his! Perhaps the boldest musical choice was the mix of Rock Songs (namely the vintage Eels track) to push the narrative and successfully keep the slow points (the non-punchy shooty stuff) to a minimum.
But once again I can’t stress the amazing work of the artisans who crafted this film. The phrase of “too many cooks in the kitchen” does not apply to this film which must have had some amazing head chefs to produce this NON-STOP occular feast. Jim Henson and Stan Winston would weep if they could see the creativity in this SEAMLESS mix of CGI and good old fashioned creature effects.
As far as the acting goes it is a bit comic book-y but um, duh, it came from a fucking comic book. What do you want? That aside acting was fair, Seth McFarlane’s Germanic accent was a bit stressingly humorous, the fantasy characters melodromatic in an “I’m in 100 lbs. of foam rubber and you want me to be Peter-fucking-O’Tool for christsakes!” kind of way. The exception being Doug Jones’ triple costume duty which is probably as hard as it looks. And I think Selma Blair is hot.
But you’re now screaming, “What about the plot?” Because surely we have seen a bevy of movies lately trying to push a piece of shit plot through with an overload of Eye Candy to trick us right? Well, Not Really. Although Rotten Tomatoes is already rating 100% for The Dark Knight, calling it a crime drama on par with HEAT, I can’t say Hellboy II would get that kind of presumptive acclaim from this reviewer. HOWEVER! This movie is a fantasy, and a fucking good one at that. Deal with it.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army, directed by Guillermo Del Toro gets an 8.5/10 because I have an art degree and this movie makes Damien Hurst look like Jeff Koons made me cum in my pants and want to become a Production Artist.
This all being said. AliUptown and I already have our tickets for the Midnight showing of The Dark Knight next week. Sorry you only have a week to shine, Hellboy. Can’t wait for you to destroy the world in the 3rd!
If you have a time machine, you can always kick it old school.
In my top 5 movies of all time you will find Back To The Future, which I saw in theatres back in 1985. I didn’t want to go, the Dark Cauldron was out that weekend as well. But my Mom dragged my sister and I to see the movie… and I think I never opted to see a kids movie ever again. And I’m a dork. It should also be noted that I live 150 feet from the Hollywood United Methodist Church (the actual location of the ‘Enchantment Under the Sea’ Dance where Marty plays Johnny B. Goode). But we’ve already established that I am a dork…let’s move on.
I saw BTTF:2 on New Years of ‘89/’90 and after witnessing the future scenes it wasn’t just a new year once I left the theatre… it was a new world! Well up on ebay right now is a working prototype of one of Marty McFly’s Nike Air Mags. Bidding began at $1,000 and is now at $2,025 with 8 days left.
This comes shortly after Nike themselves introduced the Back To The Future II inspired shoe which may be a little more affordable, but not much more wearable in public unless you have an orange vest and suspenders. And although they don’t even light up or autolace, they will probably match your Delorean.
But the real question is when will they sell us the hoverboard?
[ADDENDUM: SUN: JULY: 13 2AM]
Today I recieved an email from the folks partially responsible for getting the Nike 2015 Hyperdunks into production. Namely the Maloof brothers @ www.mcfly2015.com {link is down: click here for cached version} gathered 41,000 signatures online and the Prez of Nike still wouldn’t hook them up with a pair! They’d asked him if Nike was planning to produce a faithful McFly “Slamball” shoe (with working autolace and glowing logo) to which CEO and President Mark Parker responded, “The voices have been heard. Stay Tuned!”. Read about their press here.
Thanks for the tips Mickey Maloof and good luck on your quest! I share your dream and hope it becomes a reality. You know if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.
Because so many summer movies suck, I’ve been watching them for free on watch-movies.net. I am so glad I didn’t fork over real monies to see turd sandwiches like Zohan, The Love Guru and the Happening… all of which I watched today.
Midway through Zohan I noticed an actor playing a redneck and said to myself, “Is that Dave Fucking Matthews?” I actually said this aloud because I haven’t talked to a real human being in a couple days and I’m a little crazy. But then I checked his IMDB and noticed that he has 2 more upcoming acting gigs. Are there no more actors? I see out of work douchebags all the time here, surely they could use a job.
One of those films is in pre-production right now called The Other Side and among the co-stars of what could be an amazing rock-opera is Maynard James Keenan (of Tool, listed with 6 roles), Alanis Morissette (mentioned on this site last week), Jason Lee, Eddie Izzard and Woody Harrelson. And a couple more douchey scientologists not worth mentioning. Everyone has weird character names that sound like they came out of Harmony Korine films so hopefully next year when it comes out I’ll have something that I can actually see in a theatre. Well I guess I don’t mind if they get rid of these “superstars”. Their movies are shit.
But please, don’t go making films based on YouTube clips just yet.
My gym is right next to one of the best movie theatres in the world. So before I went running yesterday I decided to see “The Wackness” starring Sir Ben Kingsley and Josh Peck. It’s the story of Luke Shapiro, a pot dealer who just graduated from high school and the parallels of his problems (girls) with that of his middle aged Psychiatrist and client. Its set in 1994 New York and the pop culture references were a bit heavy, like they were trying to induce early nostalgia of a time not so long ago, but overall the movie was pretty good. The one appropriate reference was to the emergence of The Notorious B.I.G. and the soundtrack supported the relationship between the old guard and the new. It had Indie-pacing (that medium slow character development thing) but I really felt the themes of it. Supporting characters played by Famke Janssen, Mary-Kate Olsen, Olivia Thirlby and Method Man (bad Jamaican accent though, Johnny Blaze) were pretty solid. The overall grainy look of this film worked to ad warzone like grit to Guiliani’s “Let’s Clean Up New York” era and the set and setting make it a pretty good Summer flick. Catch it at your local arthouse if you get the chance.
The Wackness directed by Jonathan Levine gets 7.5/10 - Points deducted for the nostalgia card and the uncomfortably stoned feeling I got from watching a High School Pot Dealer try to emote. And does every movie have to start with Lou Reed’s “Take A Walk On the Wild Side” end with Mott the Hoople’s “All the Young Dudes?”
I’m available if someone wants to hire me as a music supervisor.
Most people I ask these days are at least vaguely familiar with either David Sedaris or his younger sister, Amy. Those who are more fans of David’s work know Amy as his crazy and wildly entertaining sister who tortured their father by wearing half a fat suit home for the holidays, co-wrote plays with him (as The Talent Family), and was his overall accomplice in playing practical jokes on their friends and family.
I knew of Amy before David, from catching her as the amoral ex-con/junkie/prostitute Jerri Blank on Strangers With Candy. I was immediately captivated by the freakshow that is Flatpoint High School, home of the Concrete Donkey. I was also amazed by how pretty Amy Sedaris is without the fatsuit/makeup/schlumpy look. The show is in the format of the beloved after-school special, each episode ending with a lesson learned, often times the wrong one. For example, in an episode about eating disorders, Jerri learns that it’s OK to be anorexic because then people will pay attention to you. In the episode “Who Wants Cake?” (possibly my favorite), after much research and advice-seeking, Jerri discerns that it’s okay to snitch on the suspected retarded girl in class, because “if provoked, she could fly into a rage with the strength of an ape and no remorse, not even a bullet could bring her down”.
Oh lawdy, this show is highly offensive and politically incorrect, which is why I watch it. No one is safe from insult, whether Jerri is writing in her “dirty Jew diary”, or constantly comparing to her Filpino friend, Orlando to a monkey (see below). The writers of SWC (Paul Dinello, Stephen Colbert, and Amy) relish in the act of Schadenfreude, pleasure felt at someone else’s misfortune-”Laughter through the tears,” in the words of Amy. Here are some of the show’s finer gems:
-”It’s unthinkable, the atrocities that the Native Americans committed against the buffalo. No one is certain what exactly the Native Americans did to the poor creatures, but whatever it was, it caused the buffalo to become so depressed, that when the white men came, the buffalo committed suicide by jumping in front of the white men’s muskets.”
-”Orlando, you can’t be a pilgrim. The pilgrims had snowy white skin to match their pure Christian souls. They didn’t sacrifice coconuts to their monkey gods.”
-”Greeks are just Jews without money!”
-”Let’s go watch some gay porn so we can get our hate back.”
-”You know, I cried when I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. And then I laughed…really hard.”
One of the primary inspirations for the show, and for the main character was a 1970 documentary called “The Trip Back”, which featured a 50-year-old former junkie whore named Florrie Fisher lecturing a group of high school students about the perils of drug use. And yes, any resemblance of Fisher to Jerri Blank is intentional.
The film version premiered at Sundance in 2005, as a sort of ‘prequel’ to the TV show. The plot was sloppy, production was delayed multiple times, and the budget appeared to be teeny-weeny, but most SWC devotees (myself included) still enjoyed it.
This show was grotesquely hilarious and deliciously offensive, and its run was cut way too short. Apparently Comedy Central was disappointed with its less than South Park stellar ratings, even though it quickly built a cult following, whose fans included the likes of Janeane Garofalo, Winona Ryder, and David Cross (who all made guest appearances on the show). It’s a bit like the car crash that you can’t take your eyes off of…if the car was full of handicapped albino dwarfs that also happened to be white supremacists with eating disorders. I now leave you with these wise words…
“Packing a Musket” by Jerri Blank.
When you work from your home and johns call on the phone, you’re a call girl.
When you walk ’til you limp and give a cut to a pimp, you’re a street whore.
When they’re beggin’ you please to get down on your knees near their groinage, excusa me, but you see, don’t you touch where they pee without coinage.
Shit. George Carlin has passed. Comedian, Philosopher, Enemy of Censorship - This is how George Carlin should be remembered.
Piss. This morning on Indie 103.1 comedian Patton Oswalt said not to be sad for the loss of George Carlin because he would have hated people crying over his death instead of celebrating his life. I think we profane loudmouths have a lot to thank Mr.Carlin for. Carlin, Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce were perhaps the 3 most important people to ever take on the conventions of “Decency” and what is considered “Profanity”. Because of them we have freedom in media and this here internets to say whatever the Fuck we want.
Cunt.
Cocksucker. In his 5 decades of comedy he produced 23 albums, won 4 grammys and wrote 3 bestsellers. If you haven’t checked out his 14 HBO specials, I recommend you do so.
Motherfucker. He and my Dad have the same birthday…the day after mine. And for fucks sake, he was Rufus.
Filter and MTV have set up 5 summer movies next week for advanced screenings in the L.A. Area.
So iffa yous interested in seeing: You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, The Foot Fist Way, The Rocker, Kung Fu Panda or The Pineapple Express then click on: http://www.mtvsneakpeekweek.com/ and RSVP.
The bonus of all of this is that stars from each of the movies will be there and doing Q & A’s: Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Jack Black, Seth Rogan, James Franco, Rainn Wilson, you get the picture.
I only watch TV one night of the week. I dont really have to watch it at all anymore thanks to Hulu. But if I’m at home, and its Sunday night then I’m watching The Simpsons, Family Guy, et all. So the worst ending to the week comes on after American Dad in the form of Los Angeles’ nightly news. In the meager 8 minutes i let FOX LA stay on in the background there were 4 violent stories, mostly involving the police and their incompetence. The best/worst one involving the Long Beach Police tasering and shooting a 125 lb. terminally ill lung cancer patient with mental illness. Of course the eyewitness testimony was completely different than the police spokesperson. It seems that the cop accidentally popped the guy tasered on the ground and the police made up a bullshit story that they guy had retard strength and withstood batons and tasers to grab a policeman’s nightstick and they had to take him down. In what fucking fantasy world are tasers ineffective? If you have muscles and nerves then they are going to fuck you up because thats what electricity does to you. Are they hiring out-of-work screenwriters as police spokesmen now?
Have you ever seen the 1988 John Carpenter classic They Live starring Rowdy Roddy Piper? It’s amazing! In the story Roddy finds these glasses that filter out what the media is telling you to its base element. For example, a Mcdonalds billboard would just say EAT or CONSUME and politicians are just telling you to OBEY. (Yes that’s where Sheperd Fairy’s mark came from…and they also see aliens in their true form). So what I see for that short period of time before I shut the tv off in disgust is that:
Your police are violent and will fucking shoot you and get paid leave and are never wrong so do what they say. Also, don’t leave the house, here are some car and food commercials. You’ll be safe if you have this car and won’t have to be a responsible driver. This fast food will make you a closer, more happy family; no home prepared meal can. Go into debt to afford things that are newer because that makes them better and that will make you a better person. Here are some tips to save a nickel or a dime off of a 3 dollar purchase as long as you don’t pay attention to how much of your income your many loan payments are. *click*
There are upwards of 17 million people in the Los Angeles-Riverside-Long Beach area. Of course crazy shit is going to happen but should I be watching a completely unbalanced “report” of it? There is no community catharsis or instructions on what you can do about having terrible public servants. There is no advice on how you can make your own community stronger. They are telling you that the viewing public doesn’t want to see that anyway. They’d show that stuff but they’d lose raitings and they’d lose sponsors. It’s bullshit and I’m not going to watch a second of it anymore, ever. I don’t see who it helps for that to be out in front of anybody if it doesn’t accomplish anything. The citizens of the Long Beach community should have beaten those officers critically with their own clubs and tasers and the anchors should have been the people to give them the order. “I don’t know about you Suzi but if some fucking redneck asshole cops killed my unarmed dying family member, I would beat the shit out of them and park their squad car on their throats.”
On top of that its been hot as fuck here. It’s summer, there are going to be a lot of crazy things happening and I know the news will only be painting a more desperate story. I know I sound like a hippie here but where is the Peace and Love, man? I though weed was legal in this motherfucker? And we can marry whomever the fuck we want! Lets fire the cops and fucking celebrate! Gah, its hot… I need a shower.
Because I live where I live, sometimes I randomly catch some awesome events. Tonight for example at the Chinese Theatre I saw a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark done over 7 years in the mid-80’s by a couple of kids in Mississippi (max age 17ish). Presented by Eli Roth (as in, he was there and talking at length about this film’s journey) Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation was kitsch gold. I wished that all of the Dead Lantern/Grand Horror crew was there to see this DIY masterpiece. It probably won’t ever make it to DVD because of the obvious copyright restrictions but it has been making the indie-theatre circuit for 5 years with the blessing of Mr. Roth who hooked the filmmakers up with a renewed career in film and even a meeting with Stephen Speilberg himself.
Spinning from this amazing backstory is a Daniel Clowes (Ghost World) screenplay and Paramount project in the works based on the kids who made it (now in their late 30s).
When I get to catch things like this, it’s pretty fucking rad to live here.
I was at Sundance last year a few people we all atwitter about the movie “Teeth“, so i’m watching it now and its kinda boring, a little slow, but only half way through. At the part I’m at now she’s doing a web search for Vagina Dentata so I figured I’d do the same (at the least there will be some crazy tentacle hentai or something as a consolation prize). The first and last thing I found was a page selling The RapeX which is A BARBED FEMALE CONDOM TO THWART AND IDENTIFY RAPISTS. I guess you just put the thing in your hoo-hah and let your short skirt and a bad neighborhood do the rest. (Just make sure you don’t have it on inside out)
The next time I have consensual sex even, I will be checking. Nothing personal ladies, safety first.
Show of hands, how many people expect “Speed Racer” to suck? Come on, be honest, I read message boards, I’ve heard your podcast, you aren’t thrilled at all, are you? The print campaign with the cars on the track is messy and the trailer was lukewarm. It’s not nearly the campaign of say, Iron Man, which is already a sure thing summer blockbuster to be. But maybe all of this bad publicity could have let you down again; because there may be a lot of very satisfied uber-nerds on May 9th when the Wachowski brothers’ “Speed Racer” live-action living comic book candy fireball sensory orgy hits theatres. I expected to be underwhelmed by this movie, writing it off as effects laden fluff but I might have found a bit more in it than the rest of the public.
The story is sparse and plays 2nd fiddle to the technically awe-inspiring visual effects, but I should hope you didn’t expect a repeat of the depth of the Matrix from this Manga-to-Anime-to-Live Action film. I appreciated that the storytelling was delivered at times in a liquid form with visuals co-mingling with the narrators as the timelines wrapped and coiled into themselves. The film centers around the Racer family: Pops, played by John Goodman - a racecar builder devoted to his family; His wife, referred to only as Mom, played with beautiful sentiment by Susan Sarandon; Rex, the eldest brother who dies in a shady racing accident; Emile Hirsch’s Speed, the prodigal son; Christina Ricci as Trixie, Speed’s love interest and best friend; and of course the comic relief, Speed’s Kid Brother Spritle and his monkey Chim-Chim. During the story Speed shuns the corporate sponsors who have corrupted racing to stay in business with his family and has to race to save their reputation and the very sport of racing.
Casting was spot on as the actors held this movie together wonderfully through the effects. The females that I saw this movie with admitted to misting up during a scene between Sarandon and Hirsch. Christina Ricci seemed to get hotter in the grimier moments of the film and although the dialogue like everything else becomes saccharine to the point of aspartame, the perfomances are true and warm. Adding emotion to a primarily green screen movie can’t be an easy task but each of the characters indeed has their opportunity to shine. And Oh how this movie shines. Us designers had conferred that the movie was more of an animated film than live action. Stylistically the exact polar opposite of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
I mentioned that this movie is eye candy right? Can I maybe repeat that a thousand more times? Maybe thats not decadent or bright enough to describe its seizure-inducing effects and Japanese inspired hyper surrealism. Think of having neon injected straight into your brain through your eyeballs. Maybe if you just lined your skill with an OLED TV above your Pineal gland. You know that feeling the morning after you’ve been tripping balls and know you are still kinda tripping because stuff is still kinda melty and the walls are still breathing a little bit? I kinda got a little of that going right now after seeing “Speed Racer” this afternoon. This is the exact movie that IMAX was made for. Not so coincidentally, it will be released in said format as well. I recommend that venue but only if you want your brain to turn to a happy pile of overstimulated nerd mush.
My proper introduction to Speed Racer happened sometime around 1996 when a pre-Adult Swim Cartoon Network had a sort of marathon one stormy Saturday night. I’d only seen a couple scattered episodes but when I sat down in front of the TV that night I expected to see 1 episode but what happened was them showing literally hours and hours of the show, in sequence and seemingly without commercial interruption. I was pretty immersed in the story. And what I saw today was a pretty faithful translation of that. Sure the characters are simple, sure the production designers have blown everything out of proportions; but you will learn within the first 10 minutes of this movie is that the filmmakers consciously decided that if they were going to make an over-the-top living cartoon, then the only way to do it is to go WAAAAAAAY over the top. There are some disgustingly kiddie moments in this film. I have an aversion to the use of chimps in films anyway but to summarize (like i never do), there was monkey poo. And unfortunately it was in the middle of a pretty good 60’s Batman style “Bank! Crash! Ka-Pow!” fight scene.
Assuredly there will be doomsayers next week saying the movie is “unfocused”, “simple” and “confused about it’s demographic” but it’s just because most film reviewers think they should squash a movie that doesn’t appeal to them, well, news flash, IT’S PROBABLY JUST NOT FOR THEM! This isn’t a movie that you have to bring any more of your brain to than the part that WANTS TO HAVE FUN …And maybe the part that controls bladder function, cause this movie is 2 hours long and there aren’t many places you can safely wizz without missing something.
Some people have said that they are put off by the video game-like graphics of the trailers, well then maybe you won’t like the movie. But there is a much better chance that you will get totally sucked in by the ultra-saturated seizure inducting shininess of this movie that simply never lets up. Half of this film is on par in action with the Pod Race scene in Episode 1 with the inevitable final race that will surely rival its excitement. Remember how you gasped the first time you saw the 18 Wheeler-collision scene in the Matrix Reloaded? There are a couple of those moments in this movie for sure. And isn’t that what an overblown summer blockbuster is all about?
On the DeadLantern.com 10 point rating scale I give “Speed Racer” a 7.5 overall with a 9.75 for the effects.
Tomorrow afternoon I get to head over to Warner Bros. in Burbank and check out the new Speed Racer pic. They usually make us sign a shhhhhh form or ask that we not give away too much of the plot but I figure it’s my duty to let you know whether its good or not. I know the hopes on it being good are pretty low compared to Iron Man. A lot of people have already said it’s going to be a flop and it isn’t even out yet. So check back tomorrow night or probably friday and see.
Also, there will be some contests coming up soon where you can win CDs, Lightey Discoball things and T-Shirts soon. So pay attention! I mean look at us lately, posting all regular and shit. C’mon!
How is it that I’ve been in Los Angeles for more than a year and have never been to the Vista Theater, I must have passed it a thousand times? The Vista in Los Feliz is a lovely place that normally shows some pretty good movies bordering on indie and/or typically the most watchable thing that you’d find in the Arclight down the street. The exterior resembles a Spanish mission with the interior more along the lines of Cleopatra’s bedroom. (inside joke: Joan in the north and Cleo in the south.)
So to fill this movie theater with concert-going patrons, a few of the rows of seats were removed and replaced with folding chairs. I guess that spaceland promotions figured that 2 rows of folding chairs could fit into 1 row of theater seats. This would have been all well and good if it didn’t mean that a certain percentage of said concert-going patrons wouldn’t be stuck in the seats right behind renegade rows of the aforementioned folding chairs. Needless to say, some of us instantly became very close friends with the strangers sitting next to us. (My neighbor was Anthony) The folding chairs were also at least an inch and a half taller, drag for me.
Obstructions and obstacles aside, The show was quite pleasant, very cute, but musically a bit under par. The venue’s sound seemed poorly mixed and hard to control. Neither those in charge of lighting nor live sound had much to work with as all of the sound came from a pair of speaker stacks on each side of the stage at the front of the house. The makeshift stage didn’t so much elevate the band as turn them into pinball machine bumpers for the PA and stage sound.
The openers Lavender Diamond bantered nicely with the crowd and were a complementary warm-up for She & Him; but the songs were far too simple to warrant the 6+ minutes that they seemed to drag on. Zooey joined the band for a song, but like I said lasted waaay too long.
To get it out of the way Zooey Deschanel is adorable. Quite literally one of the most beautiful people to walk the earth. M. Ward is nearly equally fantastic. But the show was very ok to pretty good in the grand scheme of things. It had some nicer moments, like the vocal breakdown in “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?” and of course their beautiful cover of Smokey’s “You Really Gotta Hold On Me” but really, how could you fuck that up? Still the show fell very short in comparison to either the previous time i’d seen M.Ward perform or the maybe 2 dozen female fronted bands/singer-songwriters I saw last year working in the same style. The band seemed very loose. But to their defense the problem was probably that they couldn’t hear each other because of the room’s acoustics; which seemed to pit the bass and drums against each other in Mortal Kombat. Rough spots showed through especially in an uncomfortably hurried version of “I Was Made For You” which left Zooey stumbling on what should have been a very strong melody.
To toot my Nebraska horn I recognized the bassist as Stefanie Drootin from Tim Kasher’s Cursive side-project The Good Life. To my own credit, i knew who the bassist would be before she even took the stage when I saw Ward sound-checking her instrument. I’m that good.
Ultimately I feel a show like She & Him would have translated much better at a smaller venue such as Spaceland. That also would have spared me the pain of dishing out 8 bucks for a tiny whiskey drink. I know it’s L.A. but give me a break! I honestly didn’t think that the act as a whole had the confidence to pull of a show of that size, perhaps after a run of smaller shows they will be a much better live act. Not many bands in L.A. have paid their dues and on occasions like this, it shows. I don’t recommend paying $25 to see anything at the Vista, either.
I admit it, I enjoy porn. I don’t buy it, I don’t rent it, I don’t keep a stash of it, but I watch it. I’ve seen a lot of crazy stuff. Mostly because one of my former roommates (you know who you are) used to ask us, “Hey wanna see something fucked up…” And whether we wanted to or not, our curiosity would get the better of us and we would watch. And what would usually follow would indeed be very fucked up depending on how JAPANESE or GERMAN it was. The kind of thing that you wish you could CNTL + Z and UNDO out of your brain. What is it about the axis powers anyway that makes their porn so crazy now? Is it maybe that after seeing the Holocaust and Atomic Bombs that everything else is completely tame and harmless in comparison? Well it seems that it has taken the British to trump them both with THIS EXCERPT from “A Girl’s Guide to 21st Century Sex” where apparently when thinking outside of the box they did the opposite. I warn you now, THIS VIDEO is Very Educational and VERY NSFW.
Its sad that using these words is going to spike my daily visitors. I’ll throw in another one for good measure, Bukakke. Good luck erasing this from your brain, suckers.
The dude who runs pixeloo says untooned but I guess being around music forever makes me think that someone saying untuned is just trying to say detuned. So the 3rd in his series after Mario and Homer is Jessica Rabbit. I already know 2 girls in L.A. who, minus the disproportionately large tits, look exactly like Jessica Rabbit. I think he should have done a full body shot in this case. The people commenting on his site seem to think that Stewie from Family Guy is his next victim. I think he should do something a bit more expressive, like someone evil.
And perhaps a bit more interesting is watching him do it. Can you imagine having to work on photoshop like that everyday for like 10 hours? Man that would be hell…oh wait.
I haven’t been posting all that much lately because I’ve been really busy at work. Lame I know. We worked through last weekend and I nearly went crazy on Monday but we finished the 2nd round of Comps (Different proposed versions of the artwork used for COMParison) for the complete boxed set of HBO’s Amazing Series The Wire.
At the beginning of this week it felt as if I was going stir-crazy from work; time had slowed to a crawl and each moment was complete agony. I just wanted a big womb to crawl into and sleep for a week. But I trudged through and we finished it and sent it off to New York last night so we’ll hear back next week sometime on who’s comp they are going with. But mine fucking rules. We also sent in comps for a movie produced by Tyrannasaurus Banks called The Clique. Its about vapid, conniving, spoiled rich tweenage lobotomies on the east coast who get anything they want. Its almost exactly like Heathers and Mean Girls… but its 15-17 year old melodrama for 13 year olds. Kinda weird how we can go from designing for THE ABSOLUTE BEST POLICE DRAMA EVER to total fluff.
Speaking of fluff, we have been doing a lot of work for a gay network. At first we were only designing their ads but another company we do work for bought a bunch of their movies to distribute (its a gaynopoly I tell ya) now we are designing their key art (the original artwork for posters and dvd covers) for something like 10 films. All of the movies are like PG-13 gay. Whats the point? It might as well be straight if you aren’t swinging wieners around. All thats left of these movies are ridiculous plots, bad acting and obviously very tiny budgets. I think they should just start making porn. The movie I had to screen today “starred” Tracey Gold from Growing Pains and a hot straight girl who played a lesbian on The L Word (and she was in Jason Goes to Hell I think). The plot was ludicrous and involved a boy genius who predicts sunspots that will wipe out technology and break down life as we know it… and his hot lesbian strip club bouncer mom. And Tracey Gold kisses a girl at the end, a slight peck, no tongue, less than a second. It was so not gay that it was gay. The biggest plot hole was how a single parent who worked at a strip club could afford a brand new Ford Explorer and own her own home in Los Angeles. And a full sized train passing Hollywood and Highland and crashing into Union Station. Sunspots. The last one we worked on was actually worse. It was based on an Edgar Allan Poe story (none that I’d ever heard of though), it was about a house that was alive and claimed buff manservants in order to stay in one piece. And of course it only had man-kissing, sensuous rubbing nowhere erogenous and the dudes would undo their pants and leave their wangs in… but they’d pull down the back of their underwear! Are there really dudes out there getting hot to this stuff? Being queer must give you an amazing imagination! It must be like drinking a bottle of cough syrup or something. No wonder all of those trannies on Santa Monica Blvd look like they are having such a good time.
I knew of Amy before David, from catching her as the amoral ex-con/junkie/prostitute Jerri Blank on 
