I bought Adam a Yoda toy yesterday and in return he kicked me in the fucking shin!!:

Jerk.

Over here, Moriarty calls foul on that favourite fanboy watchphrase, "George Lucas raped my childhood." He's right: inarticulate losers reaching for an ugly overemphasis of their hurt feelings through violent sexual overtones are not doing the world, or the discussion, any favours. Moriarty, though, has become the film criticism community's biggest pansy. He has been so completely spun by the birth of his child and the "development" of his middling screenwriting career that his reviews have gained an imperious, "I'm seeing this from a higher level than you" level of smug that is simply useless to both his direct audience (AICN fanboys) and film criticism in general. And the fact that both of those changes in his personal life have softened any ability on his part to look at a piece of film objectively without either going gooey-eyed over how the flick speaks to his h opes and fears for his child, or rose-hearted about how it's just so hard (sniff!) to make it in tough-ass Hollyweird, means that his opinions have become useless to me as well. Sigh of frustration. When Roger Ebert kicks it (and they're taking him down in chunks, these days), film criticism will die.

For a few months I've been remarking that I really have no idea what's coming out, movie-wise, next summer. Well, others seem to have noticed the tentpole gap in summer 2009, too, because following Star Trek into a release delay is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, bumped from a November '08 show-date to July '09 to run riot over the relatively limited field of box office competitors next year. I'm not particularly disappointed, if only because my overall interest in the Potterflicks has dwindled precipitously since Order (even though, as blog-memory serves, I liked that one), and this gives me the opportunity to build a bit back up again. They'll never go down as the biggest cinematic contributions to my life, but there's something reflexively nice about going to a Potter movie with Rebecca and just magically freaking out a bit. And with five down and three (!) to go, I do also have an appreciable sense of the scale of the thing, once it's all finished.

So I'm ploughing through Y: The Last Man for the second time, sort of like when I read all the Potter books consecutively since this time, I don't have to wait for subsequent volumes to be released and can treat it as one big story. In addition to all the other stuff Brian K. Vaughan is doing, I am really enjoying the degree to which the story gets to be about the way men think about women. All the myths, misconceptions, psychological fracture points, broken chivalry, noble (and not) ambitions, outright needs, subconscious lacks, complete and utter raging misunderstandings... just so eerily, pleasingly accurate. What 13-year-old boy hasn't stared into that gaping chasm of proposed femininity and refused to take more than a tentative step into the dark cave, out of the sheer unknowable otherness of it all? We can be so patently bad at knowing ourselves when it comes to sex, love, and our position on the gender coin; one of the best things about Y is the way that fully selfish and immature male-ness (which is now too happily fostered in modern North American life) just tracks for Yorick through the story, into a genuine process of maturation and change until he does become, like Jung woulda said, a fully individuated person. It'd be nice if this could happen to everyone, or at least, me. I kinda wonder if Vaughan has actually Figured It All Out, or if he's just a smart enough writer to know that he can just parlay his own experiences of relating to women throughout his life into a reasonable psychological arc for The Last Man, and let the arithmetic work itself out. Either way, it worked great.

It's chilly. It's actually chilly. Fall is coming.

Posted by tederick at 9:07 AM in comix & galaxy far & movies & toys!
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Posted by tederick at 5:36 PM in movies & youtubery
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"I will take you outside and fuck you in the street!!" - Ed Begley Jr.

"That is spicy. I don't think that's for cats." - Adam

I love that photo a lot.

Sarafina and myself went to the Pineapple Express movie last night, and ate fish burritos, and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. I would say there are at least six things in that film that are outstanding, four things that are just really pretty, and the rest is overall very well done. Additionally, I read the second neo-Fray arc issue in Buffy, and was so goddamned thrilled that I almost didn't know what to do with myself. Actually, I probably embarrassed myself in public spaces with my near-constant glee. The densely-woven futurespeak is new (I suppose we can presume that in the previous self-contained storyline, we were seeing "translated" futurespeak, as we would see translated Chinese in an issue of Iron Fist) but very well done. And as for the spoiler... well yeah. I fell for the Dru fake-out rather nicely and was aptly rewarded at the end, but the bones of the thing now are just gorgeous to look at. Something happened in this issue that never happened before - the modern-day Buffyline just gained a fuck of a lot of context, a place in the world. It's not limited to Sunnydale any more, it's not even limited to the naughties any more; with the past and present accounted for and the future now added in, the Buffyverse feels dense. I like.

This crazy son'bitch built the Batman Beginsmobile. There was a phantom DeLorean that lived somewhere between my ex-girlfriend's house and my parents' place, back in the day... you'd be driving along at night and it would just appear behind you, and you (meaning I) would freak right out. Imagine how you (meaning I) would feel if the motherfucking Batmobile started tailing you instead. Holy cow.

Finally, for everyone who (like me) is still having trouble sliding the oily oyster that is "Quantum of Solace" down their gullet, there's a Joe Cornish fake theme song floating around YouTube that's quite enjoyable. They had me at "great big man-tits."

Posted by tederick at 3:48 PM in batman! & comix & joss & movies & youtubery
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One scathing email, two failed mover negotations, two large going-away meals within three hours of each other, one supervisory smackdown, three hotel getaway scheme needs assessments, one unplanned wander around the midtown area, and one half-accurate and hilarious description of my job later, I'm feeling quite a bit better thank you. I would like to go see Batman again, and then I think everything will be set to rights.

No more cell phone driving Ontario? OK. The telecommunications industry and its foibles has been much in my mind of late, but due to various conflicts of interest I will have to publish my findings at another time. Until then, please do not call me while I am driving.

In the more immediate future, I need a couch.

On another topic, I'm not entirely sure how we got a hundred and nineteen shows into this deal before stumbling upon the title "Mamo a Mamo," but we've finally arrived, and with that clever bit of pun titleage, my esteem for Matty Price has grown another hectolitre. Here's Mamo #119: Mamo a Mamo, in which further Batmania is discussed.

And in the "let's further prove that we just don't get it" sweepstakes, Sony is trying to widen the Spider-Man movie platform with a Venom spin-off. I for one couldn't be more thrilled: Spider-Man 3 being the only entry in the series that I can actually enjoy (I own it on Blu-Ray!) and Venom being the worst thing about that awful, awful movie, I must expect that a Topher Grace-headlined Venom flick would be fan-fucking-tastic, not just in a so-good-it's-bad way, but also in a so-bad-it's-hallucination-inducing sort of way. I can see molten rivers of obsidian CG goo in my mind's eye right now... hopefully they relocate the story to a smaller city in the American midwest where Venom arrives as a hapless outsider on the run... and have an orphaned kid involved, who forms a tender bond with the oil-slick-with-a-heart-of-gold Venom... It'll be the story of us, man, who we are right now, all us loners and losers and people made of glop out there. Yeah. That's moviemaking.

Posted by tederick at 9:32 AM in 1701 & j-o-b & movies & podcastery
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Today sucks, for reasons blah, and blah-ha, and boo-hoo, which I shall not utter here. I shall, however, say: Ha! (Not a "ha" of merriment. A "ha" of deep, diaphragm-clenching malaise.)

I will also say that if you're going to have a gigantic see-thru glowing toy bust of Fat Palp on your desk (I'm not), this is the one to have. Tell me this ain't some scary shit. Damn the Japanese are weird.

Unsurprisingly given the storm clouds over my head today and also the obvious cinematic parallels in The Dark Knight, I've been thinking about There Will Be Blood quite a bit lately. The TWBB blu-ray remains one of the highlights of my collection and the flick is just, well... "even better every time" don't cover it. It's goddamned stunning. In fact I think a blu-ray TWBB/TDK double feature (to be subtitled: The Night America Stole Your Soul) would be quite the crushing experience of cinematic awesomeness, examining the complete dissolution of moral certainty in the 21st century, and I may stage such a viewing at 1701 in the fall sometime.

That's right, 1701: behold the tag for my new domicile, in which I shall be living solo starting on September 1 of this year. I signed the lease on Friday. Now I'm all bound up with labour and logistics. More detail to follow.

Posted by tederick at 1:49 PM in 1701 & galaxy far & miscellaneous crap & movies & toys!
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...but it looks like the X-Files movie turned out pretty bad.

Myy relationship with review aggregators has become interesting over the past year or so. There was a time when I would have resisted the very notion of aggregators, and on a basic theoretical level I suppose I still think they're an even more flawed approach to film response than thumbs up / thumbs down (a reduction so gross that even Roger Ebert has said it is specifically responsible for destroying modern film criticism). And yet, there's little denying that any movie I'm even slightly "on the fence" about, I'll go to RT and see what the critical consensus is before deciding whether I should give it a try. Money and time being as finite as they are right now, I lean on the rapid data snapshot - which I suppose by default must also mean that I no longer think my critical taste distinct enough for the masses that there is a better-than-average chance I will like something that the majority does not, i.e. even if using the aggregators is a massive generalization on my likelihood to like a movie, the odds are still in my favour that I'll come out above par by just following the herd. And this from the guy who liked The Phantom Menace. Ah well. If only movies (Dark Knight notwithstanding) weren't so crappy right now.

Comics being in a similar state of blah, I went all Five Families on my pull list Wednesday night - chucked the Avengers, the X-Men, the Boys, the Hellboys, the Angels, and came damn close to chucking Iron Fist thanks to the unannounced (at least to me) switch to an entirely new writing/art team. WTF? Fraction and Brubaker abandon sweet IIF awesomeness for Uncanny frickin' X-Men? Grrrrrrr.

Speaking of Five Families, all the stolen bike raids are making Toronto feel like The Untouchables this week! You know, like when Sean Connery walks across the street and knocks that door down and there's all the jamokes in there? Exciting.

Posted by tederick at 9:40 AM in blogTO & comix & movies
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The Dark Knight - which arrives at a level of craft and dedication that will be a high-water mark for 2008 - is not just the film that Batman Begins inspired in all of our minds with its critical final words ("escalation," "taste of the theatrical," "calling card"). It is significantly more: the most dextrous, complicated, and absorbing "comic book movie" ever made.

Click here to read my review, with a heavy spoiler warning.

This review was murderously hard to write. Actually, I guess it isn't even a "review" at all, more of a film analysis than anything about pros/cons of a new Batman flick. Oddly enough I glimpsed at my review for Begins just now, and was struck by how oddly and unintentionally parallel the two reviews are in construction. Which I suppose bodes well for my theory on Nolan and the films, if they could spontaneously generate such similar responses without any purposeful re-examination of my previous writing. That guy is doing some fucking incredibly solid work, man, and with each successive entry I become more and more fascinated.

Posted by tederick at 3:49 PM in batman! & movies & reviews
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Spider-Man 1. It was Spider-Man 1. And now Danny Elfman will now be a selly-outy sucky wanghole for ever and ever amen.

Yesterday my soccer team won! Which is frickin' unheard of! And I (me personally) had an actual good play! Which is also fairly rare! So tonight's the night for betting on horse lotteries, folks. If it weren't for the TCSSC shipping us further and further into the hinterlands of Ontario on fields that can absolutely not be qualified as "Toronto" or "Central" (or even "Social" or "Club," so I guess really the league should just be called "Sport!" with an exclammation point), I'd say this soccer season is shaping up fine.

Meanwhile, the city of Toronto stole my blue boxes. All four of them. They were there, they were beautiful, they were mine, and now they're gone. We are reduced to pitching empties out the kitchen window at the upright bin in the driveway. Who do you call to charge the city of Toronto with theft? 3QF is going to make it to the end of our tenancy on fucking fumes. By August 31 the only things left in the house will be a broken kitchen faucet, the noise the fridge makes, and six floorboards.

Posted by tederick at 12:36 PM in 3QF & movies & sockey
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Last night the 3QF cinematheque hosted perhaps its final double feature of the season, Krull vs. The Machine Girl. In an odd bit of unintended synergy, both films featured the same five-bladed starfish weapon. The latter, though, also featured a schoolgirl with a machine gun arm. It's tremendous what they're doing with movies these days.

Food on hand for screening: Crullers and sushi.

Coincidentally, around the same time we were doing all that, Warner yanked Where the Wild Things Are from its release schedule altogether, after having previously shoved the release to late '09. The bulljive is in full swing in the press release, and lord knows I'm no great Spike Jonze fan anyway, but I wonder if we're now ever going to see what he conceived as the proper approach to this unmakeable film - an approach which, regardless of how it turns out, is inherently way more interesting to me than anything that "delivers for a broad-based audience." It's a feature-length adaptation of a 15-page children's story, and if the rumour mill it to be believed, it's gonna have giant walking puppets. Honestly, I don't care if it sucks; I just want to see it. There just aren't enough amazing things in the world any more.

Admonitions like that, however, lead to Hellboy II. And it is, unfortunately, time to report that I don't want any more things to lead to stuff like Hellboy II. I am declaring a moratorium on underwhelm: let's get back to kicking some ass, shall we? Review snippet follows thus:

For all his prodigous gifts with the look n' feel, Del Toro has always suffered from recurring skill gaps in his writing: an over-reliance on form; a lack of substance in his English-language dialogue; a tendency to see hererosocial relations from only the male point of view; and what's with all the clocks? Pan's seemed to herald the completion of a successful leap upward from the young director of able adventure stories like Blade II and even the first Hellboy. With Hellboy II, sadly, all of Del Toro's weaknesses as a writer have come roaring back, and have brought some friends. The thing looks fantastic, but goddamn, this is some piss-poor storytelling.

And full review is here. I can't help but notice that I'm writing a lot more bad reviews these days than good ones. I do hope this isn't because I've become an asshole, which I admit is becoming more and more possible with every film I see. I suppose it's unlikely that every single goddamn thing sucks. HB2 has many admirable qualities and means well, if "meaning well" means to plumb whatever street cred Del Toro has amassed in order to make a nice chunk of summer-movie coin. (I don't even begrudge that. Who wouldn't want to make coin? Coin buys condominiums.) I just want a flick to have appreciable achievement in all areas of filmcraft, not just one or two, y'know? Or at least, transport me so spectacularly into its own idea that I come out unable to help admitting that yeah, that thing was a movie, a thing of the world worth making and bestowing upon others. (Like Wall-E, and in a completely opposite series of ways, like The Machine Girl.) I'd like to stop rounding up.

Posted by tederick at 11:42 AM in 3QF & movies & reviews
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Happy Pride everybody! I hope you all did something suitably queer-positive. I no longer truck much with the parade(s), so after the spanktastickest buffet brunch ever at the Bloor Street Diner, I helped Demetre move a series of belongings from one St. George high-rise to the high-rise immediately next door. Which meant I spent my yesterday with four dudes hoisting shit sweatily; queer-positivity: check. Plus, I am metrosexually jealous of his new place. Spacious, well-situated, good sized living room for Blu-Ray film viewings. I've got one last 3QF Double Feature to unroll this summer, and then I have got to find a place with similar attributes in which I may live for the foreseeables.

Wall-E action figures! I wouldn't mind an EVE to sit on my desk and come to my meetings and blow shit up, although the lack of articulated fingers suggests that the toymakers underestimated the degree to which that movie is about hand-holding. Meanwhile, I wrote in my journal that Ben Burtt should get a Nobel Prize for sound design. (No mere Oscar will suffice.) Between Wall-E and Artoo he’s done a thing that no regular audience members will probably ever notice or think about, but is utter artistic transcendence. Yikes, I'm going to cry. I'm going to cry about sound design.

After seeing Wall-E on Friday night, Sarafina and I took a dreamy walk down College to Kensington, and ate Mexican food on a patio as the sun went down and the margaritas flowed. We could have been anywhere, anytime. The hum of the world sort of matched the hum in my heart. That kind of sound design. Yeah.

Giving away boardgames is bloody challenging; oddly enough, it was Episode I Monopoly that was the hardest to part with. I kept Globetrotters. I have a lot of papers to go through - do people keep files any more? I have to do a book-off; I have to do a DVD-off. I have to get rid of my old TV and my old monitor. I am leaving behind more furniture than I'm taking. Plus, yet another Operation: Annihilate!, all the food in the house must be eaten. Two months out and I'm already obsessed. I played F-Zero on the Wii. Things feel right.

Posted by tederick at 3:38 PM in jedi antics & movies & toys! & wii
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