New year! more updates!

This year I promise more updates to this blog!
stay tuned!

Com.x double feature

Recently i was introduced to an independent comic publisher called Com.x. I was very impressed with their material and felt it was worthy of a write up here.



45

The idea of examining the archetype of the superhero in the context of real world society has been done since Allan Moore's Watchmen with varying degrees of success. 45 is a book that can definitely be considered a success. The premise is that a journalist who is about to have his first child and is concerned that his newborn will have the super-s gene decides to interview 45 superheroes of all ages, genders, races. What emerges from these interviews is a human tapestry as varied and complex as most novels, with the interviewee's struggles and triumphs transcending the limits of the genre. It's nothing new for comics to be considered complex reading for adults and to be taken seriously as literature. It's books like 45 that make this possible. This is a perfect graphic novel for people in their 30s who grew up reading comics and know that there is no limits to the medium.




Path

Path is an all-ages parable about friendship, life, courage, death and the sacrifices we are willing to make to feel accepted. And it involves rabbits and elephants. As heartwarming, and at times, heartbreaking as the bond between Doppler (the rabbit) and Dodge (the elephant) can be, it is really the art here that gives the story weight and grace. The artwork is so textured and dense it almost feels tangible and screams with personality. It begs to be an animated feature. if i was a Hollywood producer I'd snag up this property post haste. Buy this, read it with your kids and fall in love with it.

Nobody's Daughter.

Music speaks for me, and not just my own that I write. That's why it is just so damn good and crucial. It says what you want when you can't quite express it in words or maybe didn't even think about it that way. It's incendiary - haha...mixing rock music and movies here-(Almost Famous if you somehow don't already know & Brad this is for you). That's why I HAVE to live my life with music- listening to it, creating it, bonding with it, going into the depths of/with it = I. Couldn't. Live. Without. It. Music's nostalgic to me always because my emotions get drenched in what I am listening to at the time of what I'm saturated with and vice versa. I wake up listening to it, I fall asleep doing the same. I play it (literally) over coffee and I play it over drink. And I would never change a thing. I know I'm not the only one.

Right now I am listening to a bunch of stuff but I just downloaded Hole's (not the orig obviously -which I kinda think should be named something different without Eric Erlandson and Melissa Auf Der Maur) album Nobody's Daughter. Nevertheless, I Love Courtney. I just do. She is freaking honest, has huge balls and she is an underrated songwriter. We all know she can perform and has her very own persona- after watching a doc on her last night and seeing her closet I really want to raid it- she also has an impeccable, majestic style that is underrated. I dig Nobody's Daughter, not unlike Marianne Faithfull's (another of my favorite rockdolls) weathered voice you can hear the hardness C Love had to endure in hers. Listen to it. Listen to it loud as it says at the bottom of the preface and for fuck's sake get the Explicit version.

Some lyrics that stick out to me and what's really cool of course is that what she wrote and what I take from it are from two completely different beings with two completely different experiences, but who can take something from the words and have it completely mean something just the same :

"People like you fuck people like me fuck people like you fuck people like me.." in Samantha

"Sunday morning when the rain begins to fall I believe I've seen the end of it all ... I've got the cure for it all"
Someone Else's Bed

"Oh I've been cheated covered in diamonds covered in filth"
For Once in Your Life

"You are beautiful, you are glorious
Now you're covered in loser dust"
"Your youth is gone, it's turned to rust" Loser Dust

"And the rain it came down
And the wind it moaned
And she wrapped her legs around him" How Dirty Girls Get Clean

"It's a long ride home,
and my head is bowed" Never Go Hungry

"Hey I burn better in the dark" Happy Ending Story

Plus....included is the visual Digital Booklet which I adore because it's the closest thing to a tangible album or CD cover of yesteryear that I so miss. Fittingly this one is prefaced with a poetic heavy but beautiful paragraph about light, love, birth, death, stars etc. titled with Per Incendia ut Astrum /Through the Fire to the Stars and it starts with .."Nobody's Daughter is dedicated to all the motherless children...." I unfortunately relate to that too in a way ..or should I say fortunately. Fortunate that I have something to relate to and someone who relates. For that, for the artists (or people) that aren't afraid to be real and for their music that bares it I will do the same and am forever grateful. **

Red Rover, Red Rover, Red Riding Came Over : The Lost Blog Post

[Author's Note: The following is an unfinished blog post. I just couldn't figure out how to wrap words around these films. I took notes; I have plenty more to say. If you watch them/it, let me know.]

They are no longer running separately at the IFC Center in NYC, and I don't know if all three films ("1974," "1980," and "1983") making up the Channel Four trilogy Red Riding are still available "On Demand" from Time Warner Cable. Eventually you should be able to rent them through Netflix.com and other venues. And, of course, one is always welcome to purchase such things on DVD (or in their original 4-book form).

However you are able to do it, I highly recommend you experience Red Riding, but be warned -- it's hard stuff.

On Super Bowl Sunday 2010, I braved the first weekend of The IFC Road Show tour and watched all three parts in one 5 1/2 hour sitting. Since then, I have felt a bit paralyzed by the experience -- unable to say much or write on the subject, studiously avoiding all the reviews piling up around me. I just couldn't process the totality of what I'd seen.

How can I describe what happened, to me or onscreen, in an intelligible way for those who haven't experienced it? I still feel in danger of failure. My marathon viewing is partly the culprit. Wannabe cinemaniac that I am, I'd never before sat for so long in one theater (two 15-minute breaks notwithstanding). The closest I'd come was watching the overlong Inland Empire in that same theater (during which, frankly, I wished to take a nap so that it would be over a little sooner). But it's the films themselves that really cripple me. I would both watch all three again immediately in a quest for a deeper understanding, at the same time that I never want to go back to their world.

Watching Red Riding the night I did was my chosen alternative to several Super Bowl parties, and it felt freeing to choose a wide parcel of film over that nearly compulsory (in this country, anyway) day of sport. That Sunday evening, at the movies, I felt like myself -- asserting my own identity, thrilled to be sinking deeper into the soft chair of the theater as I became immersed in the brutal, velvet world of the R.R. trilogy. I felt like myself, as I just wrote, yet accosted, and perilously close to despair. So it progressed.

I've seen many films (and television shows) with story lines revolving around serial killers. But Red Riding is different. It's a horse of a bloodier color, with a relentless gait. At moments I could stand apart as a viewer "watching a film." And then, if I may be so bold, there were moments I would feel a sensation that something desperately important was happening.

Occasionally I was central and centered, a bit like Roger Ebert is described in Esquire's now infamous article. Though, dear me, I'm not really comparing myself to Ebert, I did find myself feeling crucial and powerful, scribbling notes into a ringed pad in the dark, surrounded by the films, but held apart. And then I felt, at other times, like a lost child or faceless stranger in their world. My persona slipped away and I lost myself in the spectacle. It was "just a movie" (three movies), but it felt like more.

So, it was/they were (each and together) a singular experience and singular experiences. I was surrounded and enveloped at once by beauty, intelligence, talent, and horror. I was no one and the world was impossibly angry and raw. How could there be any good left in it?

As I mentioned above, the presentation I attended included two fifteen-minute breaks. These breaks came between films one and two. During each intermission, I found myself in the IFC's lovely, lonesome women's bathroom, dug deep along one edge of the theater's mouse-maze of a basement (yes, perhaps this description is a bit dramatic, but that's how it felt).

Anyway, watching films often makes me feel vulnerable, but this was a special night. Each time I took my stretch-my-legs-buy-a-snack-breathe-again break, I found myself in that bathroom, looking introspectively into the mirror, my eyes slightly red from strain -- and, each time, I felt compelled to apply a coat of the lipstick that just happened to be rolling around the bottom of my bag. I twice found I needed to put lipstick on before I could return to my seat and begin the next film in the trilogy. Why? It didn't feel like vanity. It felt like necessity. I think it was armor. I applied the color so I might feel more human, more tied to something outside the off-kilter, too familiar, wrong and punishing world of Red Riding.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

I am very excited to see the big screen adaptation of Scott Pilgrim vs the World. Judging from this trailer Edgar Wright has managed to not only faithfully adapt the comic, but also kept the series fun loving, innocent spirit intact. I don't know how well this film will go over with those not familiar with the source material, and quite frankly I don't care. Being a nerd/geek means you are part of small community. We care how our favorite stories are adapted for screens, but we could care less if the mass of movie goers like it or not.. Or at least that is how I am. In the end I have faith that edgar was enough of a true fan to really GET the stories. Judging by this trailer I don't think we have anything to be worried about...

42nd St. Forever

Before I begin i have to apologize for the size of the picture. I know it's small, but it was what I could find so deal with it kiddies. As I was browsing Netflix's selections I stumbled across a 5 volume collection called 42nd st forever. 5 DVDs of nothing but trailers Grindhouse movies played in the theaters of old Times Square. if you're old enough to remember when these films were shown, it will probably make you miss the sleazy days of old New York. If you aren't then these trailers are a curious and often hilarious relic to a pre-Disney NYC. These movies were shot in the 70s and it is interesting to see how sexism and racism were alive and well (check out the trailer for Corruption that states "we are so convinced that no woman will want walk home alone after seeing Corruption that no woman by herself will be allowed in" or the trailer for a blaxploitation movie simply called Nigger Charley.. sure he gets his revenge on whitey in the film but a title like that?) These trailers also hearken back to a time when porn was still shown in theaters, one of the standouts being the preview for Sly Stallone's infamous porn flick. Judging from the campiness of these films it is impossible fro me to believe that they are worse than the horror schlock Hollywood feeds us these days. if i could I'd see every one of these if they were available on DVD.

Little Steven

A few weeks ago I had the privilege to see Little Steven Van Zandt give an interview at the 92nd St YMCA. Although he focused on his new projects (his Underground Garage radio show and a website he is planning to launch at the end of the year), he had a good time reminiscing about his time on the Sopranos and the E Street Band and his role in taking down apartheid (he wrote and recorded the "We Won't Play Sun City" single). The main gist of his talk though had to do with love of 50's rock n roll. An era he described as a "renaissance". This is a man who has seen a lot, and contributed in a significant way to the history of rock music and television, but still remains down to earth. If only more celebrities were like this.