Cover of the Week 10

Biggest Pet Peave Ever, when amazing theatrical posters get turned to shit for the home video release. 

Example.

How does this even happen? Does anyone prefer the photoshopped heads poster?

To the Mattresses Week 9 - Oscar Predictions *updated with winners

I'm usually pretty good at this, but for some reason this year I'm a bit apprehensive, possibly due to Avatar.  It was a visually amazing movie, but the amount of people calling for this to win Best Picture suprises me.  And sadly, very few crime movies to root for this year, though I do hear very good things about the Foreign Language film Un Prophete.  Supposedly, it's brilliant.  I wouldn't know, it will never play up here.  I'll catch it on DVD when I can.

Okay.  Here we go.

Best Picture- The Hurt Locker.  WINNER
Should it win, why not?  I had some problems with it, but it was a better film than Avatar.  Sadly, my favorite picture of the year, Where the Wild Things Are didn't even garner a nomination in the bloated ten movie race.  Overall, it was a weak year.



Best Actor- Jeff Bridges WINNER
Have yet to see the film, but the man is due.  Frankly he was robbed for not even receiving a nomination for The Big Lebowski.  Any other year I'd be hoping for Clooney.



Supporting Actor- Christoph Waltz WINNER
It's easy to sound cool when reciting Quentin Tarantino's words, but this man did it in FOUR languages.  He was scary and charming and made it look effortless.



Actress- Meryl Streep Sandra Bullock
I've got a feeling they are going to give it to Sandra Bullock, but I hope not.  The movie looked like a pap piece of shit, and I have no desire to be swallowed by the the whole "feel goodness" about it.  And while I wasn't all that impressed with Julie & Julia, there is no denying that Streep kicked ass as Julia Child.



Supporting Actress- Mo'Nique WINNER
Haven't seen the movie yet, but every clip I've seen of her absolutely terrifies me.  It breaks my heart to go against Maggie Gyllenhaal, but it's been over 20 years since a single named actress won a trophy.  I'm all about the whole brevity thing dude.



Best Director- Kathryn Bigelow WINNER
Again, tough call.  Cameron certainly put his balls out there for Avatar, and Jason Reitman's movies just keep getting better, but I think it's Bigelow's year.  Maybe now people will pay more attention to Point Break.

Best Original Screenplay- Inglourious Basterds The Hurt Locker
Sorry to the Coen Brothers, but I gotta give it to Q this year.  His scripts are always facinating, but it took some guts to re-write history and have so much fun doing it.

Best Adapted Screenplay- Up in the Air  Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009) - Geoffrey FletcherOnly because it's getting shut out of everything else.  I'd love to see District 9 take this.




Best Animated Feature - Up WINNER
Who is going to vote against Pixar?  Great all around category though.

Best Foreign Language Film- Un Prophete  El secreto de sus ojos
Gotta rally behind at least one crime film.



All the rest, or, the films that make the difference in all the Oscar pools.
Cinematography - The Hurt Locker Avatar
Visual Effects - Avatar WINNER
Sound Mixing - Avatar The Hurt Locker
Sound Editing - Avatar The Hurt Locker
Film Editing - The Hurt Locker WINNER
Makeup- Star Trek WINNER
Costume Design - Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus The Young Victoria
Art Direction - Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus Avatar
Live Action Short - The New Tenants WINNER
Animated Short - Logorama (Thanks Shane) WINNER
Documentary Short - The Last Truck Music by Prudence
Documentary Feature Length - The Cove WINNER
Best Original Score - Up WINNER
Best Original Song - The Weary Kind, from Crazy Heart WINNER



Come Monday, we'll all see if I'm full of it.

Friday Night at the Oscars Week 9 - The Green Mile

I dig prison stories. 

Before your mind wanders away, I'm not talking about Chained Heat or The Big Doll House, although those movies do have certain...attributes one can enjoy.  Throw a bunch of characters in cells and I'm riveted.  Something about the confined quarters and hatred leads to good storytelling.  Rely on tight scripting and actors performing at a high level , and in the case of OZ, lots of murder and wang, to hold our attention and you've got something good on your hands.  There is not much room for Whiz-Bang Michael Bay explosions when the story is set in a series of cells and at most a prison yard.

Case in point, The Green Mile.  Directed by Frank Darabont, adapted from the Stephen King novel.  And I'm sorry Mr. King, as good as your book was, the movie trumps it.  (I do, however, pay respect to your giant brass balls for publishing it as a serial.)  I loved the book as I read it, but after watching the movie, no amount of character description can get me to see anyone other than Michael Clark Duncan as John Coffey, like the drink, only not spelled the same.  I wish I had the movie in front of me as I wrote this, so I could give proper credit to the casting director, who filled this movie with amazing actors. 

For starters, you've got Tom Hanks as the lead prison guard, Paul Edgecomb.  At this point in his career, Hanks was nominated for everything.  Surprisingly, he wasn't nominated here, which is a shame, as I feel this was some of the strongest acting of his career.  I've never had a UTI as badly as he had, and based on his performance in the water closet, I hope I never do. 

Supporting Hanks on the Mile was character actor David Morse.  It's hard to think of the movies he's been in, but you'd surely recognize him.  He's one of "those" guys whose name you might not remember, but his performance stays with you.  He's "Brutal" Howell, the muscle on the row.  Most of the film he's a rather quiet guy, but the few times he becomes upset, you can see whre he got the nickname.

Barry Pepper is the new guy, Dean Stanton.  Pepper wasn't given as much as Hanks or Morse, but those haunting eyes of his do a lot for him.  Watch as he tries to hold it together during an execution, and wonder whatever the hell happened to him since then.  After this and Saving Private Ryan, I expected big things from this guy.  Did Battlefield Earth destroy his career along with those braincells I lost while watching it?

Not all the guards are saints and stand up guys.  One such person, the aptly named Percy Wetmore, perhaps belonged on the other side of the bars.  Played with the oily slickness of an environment disaster, Doug Hutchinson made the most of every scene he was in.  You couldn't help but hate the guy, and routed for him to get exactly what he deserved.

But nobody watches prison dramas for the guards.  It's all about the prisoners, and this film delivers with an incredibly eclectic cast.

I already mentioned him, but Michael Clarke Duncan stole the show as John Coffey. He'd had some bit parts before this, but he announced himself in a big big way with this role as the gentle giant/murderer and rapist of two girls.  His innocence would never have been doubted by me, as he was nothing but tender with every other person in the movie, except a few notable exceptions. 

One of those exceptions was "Wild Bill" Wharton, played buy another unbelievably underrated character actor Sam Rockwell.  He was the jailhouse wildcard, and he went aptly crazy with the role, being strangely likable, but downright nasty at the same time.

Add to these fellows a cast that included Michael Jeter, Graham Greene, Bonnie Hunt, Patricia Clarkson, Jeffrey DeMunn, James Cromwell and the always amazing Harry Dean Stanton, and you can understand why this film was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award.  (Which it lost to the cast of American Beauty.  They were a solid cast, but I'm sorry, Thora Birch's breasts were not as good as Michael Clark Duncan's.)

The Green Mile was nominated for four Academy Awards.

Best Supporting Actor - Michael Clarke Duncan

Best Sound

Best Adapted Screenplay

Best Picture.

The Long Con Week 9 - Heartsick

She smiles, satisfied.  "That's why I prepared something special for you, darling."  She has an instrument tray beside her and she turns and withdraws something from it.  A hammer and a nail.  Interesting, he thinks, amazed at his ability to detach himself, to remain clinical.  So far the victims had been seemingly random, male, female, young, old, but the torso damage, though it had evolved, had been notably consistant.  She had never used nails before.

She seemed pleased.  "I thought you'd appreciate some variety."  She lets her fingertips dance up his rib cage intil she finds the rib she is looking for and then she places the point of the nail against his skin and comes down hard with the hammer.  He feels the explosion of his rib breaking and gags again.  His chest burns with pain.  He fights to breathe.  His eyes water.  She wipes a tear from his flushed cheek and caresses his hairm and then she finds another rib and repeats the process.  And another.  When she is done, she has broken six of his ribs.  The nail is wet with blood.  She lets it drop with an innocuous clink back on the instrument tray.  He can't shift his body even a millimeter without searing pain, like none he has ever felt.  His nasal passages have clogged with mucus, he can't breathe through his mouth, he has to brace himself for agony with every lung expansion, and he still can't make himself breathe shallowly, can't slow the panicked, heavy pants that sound like sobs.  Maybe two days was optimistic, he thinks.  Maybe he would just die now.

It takes quite a bit to disturb me.  I can eat a plate of spaghetti during Hostel, shrinkwrap hundreds of porn boxes without batting an eye at the flesh showcase, and the choice of written words has never made me put a book down, not even Bret Easton Ellis' descriptions of rats and ribcages from American Psycho.

I would like to think I'm unflapable.  At the very least, I'm one desensitized SOB.

Not so sure anymore, thanks to Chelsea Cain's Heartsick.  The above passage, from very early in the book, gives fair warning to the squeemish.  You are not ready for this.  She certainly seems like a pleasant woman from the author photograph on the back, but then again, she goes through great lengths to show her pretty little serial killer Gretchen Lowell is not just another pretty face.  However, inside her skull is one twisted, deviant woman.  That goes for both of them.

Of course, I find Gretchen facinating.  That's something I have in common with Archie, the facinated man from the opening,  and I hope that's about it.  He hasn't been the same since he was kidnapped, tortured, and yes, killed by Gretchen over the course of ten days.  He was suppossed to catch her, not be her victim.

But he lived.  He should be done with her now that she's in jail, but he hasn't been the same since she called 911, turned herself in, and saved his life.  It's taken him this long to get back to active duty, and that's only with a pharmacy worth of pills to help him make it through the day.  Besides the fruit coctail of meds, he also needs her help.  For every Sunday he visits her, she turns over information that leads to another body.  That's what he tells everyone else, but it's apparent he needs her to feel normal.  But what does she need from him?

It's amazing, in a book with a serial killer and a junkie cop, there is another character just as interesting.  Meet Susan, a tiny, rebellious hair dyed reporter, who for reasons unknown is handed the story of her life.  She's going to shadow Archie around as he attempts to solve another murder spree.   Like everyone else, she's got a few demons of her own.

Chelsea Cain does a remarkable job at handling multiple points of view, allowing us to enter the thoughts of Archie and Susan, but sadly not Gretchen.  It's appropriate, because no one gets in her head, while she is so apt at manipulating everyone else's thoughts.  She's a formidable villian, both smarter and more frightening than that other literary boogyman Hannibel Lector.

Both of her follow-ups, Sweetheart and Evil at Heart are on my bookshelf.  I'm kicking myself for having other books to read first.  But you can bet I'll get to them.

New Comic Wednesday Week 9 - Choker

CHOKER
Issue 1 of 6
by Ben Templesmith and Ben McCool
published by Image Comics

This book was a last minute addition to my DCBS order.  I had looked over the solicitation, thought it looked interesting, and figured I'd wait for the trade.  But those guys at discount comics, they know how to hook you with promised percentages off.  It was worth taking a chance on the issue.

My first worry was the book was going to be the GoBots to Fell's Transformers, a cheap imitation that had some merits but would never rise to the status of the original.  The chances were there, Templesmith did draw both books, and I had never heard of Ben McCool outside of a Choker press release.  I wasn't expecting him to be Warren Ellis, but the preview pages I had seen gave me the same feeling that Fell had.  Creepy seetings, angry, foul mouthed lead character, and a vibe that borders on a hatred for humanity.  I hoped he would distance his writing style and story enough to make me forget Fell ever existed.

But was it any good, and more importantly, did it make me want to buy the next five issues?

The main character, Johnny Jackson, is nothing special.  He's a private eye, and judging from the stack of papers on his desk, a pretty good one.  He performs a job he apparently hates, but before the issue is over, he's given a chance to get back on the police force.  The boss, another person he loathes, wants an escaped convict found, and Johnny was the man to get him in the first place.  It's an offer he jumps at, and its a good character reveal.  He actually wants to go back.

The one thing McCool does really well is sprinkle in bits of information about Shotgun city.  (I love that name!)  Instead of pointing bit giant arrows at FIVE headed men or supercops he just presents them matter of factly.  These people exist in this world, now move along.  And oh yeah, there are vampires to deal with.

Choker is an interesting book.  The art and story are engaging, and the back matter, where Templesmith shows how he creates a page, are facinating.  I'd love to pick it up on a monthly basis, but I'm not sure I'm going to.  Image did the book a disservice by placing a $3.99 price tag on it.  I usually trade wait on that price. 

I have a month to decide.

The Short Con Week 9 - News and Notes

Just some quick notes for today, as I have found myself buried under colorist submissions for my comic work. 

- If you happen to be a colorist and are looking for work, check out the site, and see if anything catches your fancy.

- Found 6 of those Dirty Harry novels on Ebay and they arrived yesterday.  Cannot wait to read them, but no way in hell are they all written by Dane Hartman.  Five of the Six were published in 1982.  Sure, only one of them barely tops 200 pages, but it would still be hard to swallow that one guy cranked them out that fast.

- Very pleased to see that Shutter Island continues to be #1 at the box office.  Perhaps this will be the week that I actually make it to the theater to see it myself.

- Some serious shit has been going down in Bangor lately.  Infant murders, drug kidnappings, unsolved hit and runs.  When did we stop being a small city and turn into Thunderdome?

- Just got introduced to this Thomas Kaufman fellow the other day.  He seems like an awfully nice and talented fellow.  He's got a book coming out today.  I'll be picking it up.

Willis Gidney is a born liar and rip-off artist, an expert at the scam. Growing up without parents or a home, by age twelve Gidney is a successful young man, running his own small empire, until he meets Shadrack Davies. That's Captain Shadrack Davies, of the DC Police. Davies wants to reform Gidney and becomes his foster father. Though he tries not to, Gidney learns a small amount of ethics from Shad - just enough to bother a kid from the streets for the rest of his life.



Now Gidney's a PI, walking those same streets. So it's no surprise that when Gidney's closest friend, jazz saxophonist Steps Jackson, asks him to find Jackson's missing daughter, Gidney is compelled to say yes -- even though she's been missing for 25 years. He finds a woman who may be the girl's mother -- and within hours she is killed by persons unknown. The police accuse Gidney of the murder and throw him in jail.


Maybe Gidney should quit while he's behind. But when his investigation puts him up against a ruthless multi-national corporation, a two-faced congressman, and a young woman desperate to conceal her past, Gidney has no time left for second thoughts. In fact, he may have no time left at all.

You can find out more here.

45 Minutes Week 9 - A Tale of Two Cities

It's no secret I'm a comic book fan, so the thought of characters crossing over from one story to the next is not a great leap for my simple mind to make.  In comics such a wonderful event is called a crossover.  In television land, it's called "please bring our ratings up!"  I can only assume that was the case with the great Law & Order/Homicide Crossover event.

At the time, Law & Order was an absolute ratings juggernaut.  Everyone loved it.  Personally, I thought the show was okay, borderline boring.  I adore Jerry Orbach, and despite what Patrick Swayze said, he can put anyone he damn well pleases in a corner, Baby included.  But other than him, the original cast of L&O left me cold.  It's not their fault.  The show wasn't about them.   The police procedures and the cases were the stars of the show.  How many times can Orbach ask a witness to describe a perp and not get bored?

We all know my feelings about Homicide.  It's my crack.  I'd watch a show where they crossed over with The View if I had to.

So did the experiment work?

It worked about half the time.

It was nice to see Bayliss and Frank in NYC, walking unfamiliar streets.  And watching Frank ruffle a few NYPD feathers was worth the 45 minutes I invested in the episode.  But even with their charisma injection, the episode left me as cold as expected.

When they got back to Charm city, it turned for the better.  Suddenly, Orbach's Detective Lennie Briscoe had slept with Munch's ex-wife, adding immesurable depth to his character.  It would also build a bond between them when Munch transferred to Law & Order at the end of Homicide's run.

The  other highlight was J K Simmons portrayl of Col. Alexander Rausch, a white supremicist and mastermind behind the episodes murder.  I'd be will to bet all the change in my pocket this performance got him cast as Vern Schillinger on OZ.  (It's no coincidence that Tom Fontana went on to create OZ.)  They must of liked him enough, because Simmons would return to Law & Order as Dr. Emil Skoda.

So was the experiment a success?  I'd say yes.  It was worth it to see L&A's actors cut loose with some interesting scenes, and I'm sure Homicide saw a ratings boost as a result of the crossover.  Had it not been a success, I'm sure they wouldn't have repeated the stunt two more times.

Homicide still kicks Law & Order's ass with ease, and it's a shame only one of them got twenty-seven spin offs.  At least Munch lives on.