Finding the Sang-Froid: We Interrupt Our Mythical Schedule (Three Brief Reviews)

I had something witty to say about something or another. Give me a moment.

    [Beat]

I'm pretty sure it was either snarky and slash or biting. Harumph.

    [Beat]

. . . . . . . . . . . Oh!

    [Beat]

No, I didn't remember it.

       Dark Water: From the makers of the adaption of the Japanese horror—or J-Horror, if you're a loser and use phrases like that, like me—film The Ring, and the makers of the original J-Horror film Ringu (I'm not entirely sure how one accredits such things, really, so I guess I'll be docked for proper APA style), comes a movie less hinged on scare-jump tricks and chase scenes, much more centred on mystery and suspense. All in all, it reminded me a lot of The Shining, in that it was paced to set a very specific mood of tension and paranoia. 16% FR.

       Kung Fu Hussle: Hands-down the funniest movie I've borne witness to in a good long while, this Stephen Chow film is, as my friend put it, "live-action, Hong Kong Looney Tunes with kung-fu." Seriously, it's just . . . Great. From the dance sequence at the beginning to the very last absurd fight scene, the only complaint that can be had was that the DVD we rented was scratched so ten minutes, give or take, were unplayable near the end, at the beginning of the last fight. It was, for a comedy, rather lengthy, but it progressed very naturally, and I was vaguely surprised that everything you expected to happen did happen, insofar that I kept wondering if the movie was going to end or keep going at certain junctures, and it always continued, yet when it ended, it felt like the ending. Wonderfully put together, well-written and unique comedy, aesthetically pleasing with well-choreographed kung-fu scenes, complete with a reference to The Shining; I'd put some of the fight scenes in that movie above the bland, multi-million dollar tripe they pushed as "content" in the second Matrix movie. I thought Shaolin Soccer was cute and funny, but Kung Fu Hussle was leaps and bounds one of the best comedies ever made in the last decade. 0% FR, Titanium Imaginary Trophy for Doing Everything But Sucking.

       Stanley Kubrick's The Shining: The only Shining that should've happened. 0% FR, Titanium Imaginary Trophy for Being A Kubrick Film, Period.

    [Beat]

All that build-up to that comment earlier, you'd think I'd at the very minimum put something in its place, even if I forgot the first remark I was going to make.

You'd think—

I'm Not Drunk, I'm Just Bored (What Does This Shit Even Mean, Motherfucker?)

     Dizzy seemed like as good a state as any to be writing in . . . Not sure why I’m dizzy, I think it’s because I’m not quite sleepy, not quite awake, and when I move around a lot like that, it—wait, nevermind, I had Jameson and Amaretto in my two cups of Coke, earlier, while watching Firefly at a friend’s.

     [Yawns]

     I’m starting classes back on Monday, going to focus only on Art Studio studies this semester . . . Will be interesting, the whole “Going Blind” ordeal really soured being artistic for me, so it’s been awhile since I’ve really felt any strong pangs of passion about the whole practice. I bought a couple sketchbooks and a new pencil to try and kickstart my artistic tendencies, but it didn’t really work.

     I’m not sure what I’m doing with my life, but I’m twenty-two and I don’t think I’m meant to know. I’m the kind of guy who takes careful note of the fact that I started this and the last paragraph with the same word (“I’m”), the kind of guy who has a Blog and a LiveJournal, runs a D&D game and goes to college . . . Not sure what that means. I think it means I’m eclectic, but I think that whole “Hey, look at me, I’m indie” fad is bullshit, and I’m sick of posers who think it’s alright to pose so long as it’s not the “mainstream” or trendy thing to do. Posing is posing, poser.

     [Yawns]

     I’m listening to some Clutch—that’s three paragraphs, now—and I’ve got a beard. I shaved today, instead of trimming, because having a mirror with higher magnification caused me to be bothered by just trimming my neck, since I could clearly see all the hair still there in the real-close-up side of the mirror. This is the kind of style of writing and things I should reserve for actual . . . Writing, not rambling to my Blog.

I’m tired and I can't focus my eyes too well.

Not-So-Renascent (Bitch)

Someday, they're going to release a medical report showing that black and red peppers are somehow unhealthy or bad for you, and I am going to be royally fucked.

     Until that day, however, I will continue to enjoy mounds of ground, black and red pepper on everything. In fact, probably way past that day I will keep on keeping on, since I will be so thoroughly hosed—so exceptionally boned—by the sheer amount of pepper I would have already consumed up until that day, then I may as well go down with the ship, per se.

     Anyway, I've been meaning—meaning with extra italics—to complete my five-part "Of 2005" series of posts, but I am, A: lazy, B: consumed by video game violence a la San Andreas, and C: not paid for this shit. So . . . It'll happen, eventually.

Or not!

Binary Daterape (The Most Pointless Entry #04)

"Sweet fucking shit-hell gnome-balls, installing the newest AIM is the closest experience to being anally raped by goats without any actual physical intercourse that has ever been conceived." - Me (Earlier Today)

Yeah. Seriously. Fuck AIM Triton. Anyway . . .

Something worthwhile in the future.

The Eighth Wonder of the World: Rekindling The Recondite (A Brief Review)

If you were not moved, at all, by the end of King Kong, then you are incapable, as a human being and a movie watcher, of being engaged by a compelling and well-told story.

Failure Rating: 0%

The Webcomic of 2005

  I had every intention of actually posting an "Of 2005" review for each day of the week, but I've been fiddling around with my new computer hardware for the past two days (wrote Tuesday's on Monday), and that has consumed me wholly. And by "consumed me wholly," italicised, I mean that it's driven me to drink and cry, simultaneously. And by "drink and cry, simultaneously," normal typeface, I mean I'm not funny. Anywho . . .

Something Positive.

  For those who, perhaps, expect me to always flout everything popular and mainstream, and to only tout things independent and esoteric, you should . . . Who are you? What? Why are judging me? Stop judging me! I WILL NOT BE CONTROLLED! [Insert Unoriginal, Suburban Teenage Angst-ridden Linkin Park Lyrics Here]

  Yeah, S*P is huge. It's got the kind of fanbase where R.K. Milholland—the artist and writer—can go, on somewhat of a lark, "Hey, guys, give me money and I'll quit my job to do the strip full-time," and the response is, "SURE! Here's thousands of dollars!" So, by no means am I breaking the ground of some virgin territory by saying that Something Positive is good. Everybody knows that, but I felt it necessary to repeat it.

  S*P has a brand of unashamed, straightforward comedy that you don't find on cable networks or Hollywood films: it's too honest for the FCC. God forbid the FCC ever claim authority in the realm of the Internet. Some people may say I just mean vulgar and perverse when I say "honest," but I say unto them that if you have some sort of moral reluctance to admitting that the nature of mankind is anything but ugly, then I'd probably be right to pronounce you an ostrich-in-the-sand. S*P is funny in ways that you don't want to admit to finding funny because it makes you an "indecent" person, and it isn't that breed of stupid bullshit that Howard Stern shits out his mouth and labels "rebellious," in order to bury people in controversy so deep they don't notice that he's not clever.

  There is no controversy to hide no-talent, trite, juvenile humour behind on the Internet, because it's a land where you're half-a-minute from porn at any given moment, and lesbian teenagers with dripping clits or throbbing cocks—or both—are awaiting to regale you with their stories and pictures in your email inbox, on an hourly basis. So, there's this convenient filter of jaded apathy and overall boredom with disgusting perversion that exists and separates the Something Positives from the "ha, ha, show me your tits" comedy; I know that if enough people on the Internet are frequenting a site and staying around, it's got some merit. Usually, when it's just cock-and-balls, there are so many more sites of that popping up every instant that the crowd just continually meanders forth, never sticking to the same well of insubstantial worthelessness that long.

  This is what happens when you go to a realm where capitalistic marketting isn't the linchpin of success: popularity actually means something, represents something aside from the amount of funds one puts forth to draw people to your product. Anyway, I digress . . .

  Something Positive is funny. It's usually got an original joke to tell, which is refreshing in today's oversatured humour markets (See: Newgrounds). More so than mere jokes, though, it's a well-told story, or series of stories, about well-rounded characters. It's not quite a Faulknerian work of literature, but it's got depth to the characters that is more than what you find with the archetypical cardboard stand-ups webcomics tend to present as characters.

  Milholland weaves stories about characters with realistic lives, but not photorealistic. They're still living in a webcomic-world where things happen that would never happen in reality, and allows for the telling of ludicrous jokes. Yet, when he feels like it, he can draw the comic in a direction that elicits real pathos for the characters, as well, and it doesn't seem fake. It's not just some comic where the artist wants to jerk the reader between laughing and being depressed like a jarring ride on a see-saw of bipolarism. The story of S*P has a very natural quality about it.

  The writing is what truly makes it for S*P, to be honet. The art is interesting, but it's not engaging. Milholland has created a style that is distinctly his, but the influences are not so well-hidden. It reeks of a ton of comic strip influences, Charlie Brown and Foxtrot and Beetle Bailey/Wizard of Id or Hagar the Horrible. It's a style which is very apt for comic strips, because it's not so different that it's alien to the reader, but, instead, conveys the familiarity most readers seek in comic strip art. No one will ever say, convincingly, that comic strips are a condusive medium for Visual Art—not art-art, at least. In the century-ish that comic strips have existed, they have not really evolved that far visually, artistically speaking. So, in a way, the writing is what makes it for every good comic.

  Milholland succeeded beautifully at being artistic enough in his drawing to not be drab or amateuresque, while, also, not being too off-putting or avant-garde. Some webcomics try too hard to be revolutionary in their visual style, and it inevitably leads to the comic falling flat as the artist runs out of ways to advance the visual style while keeping it up to par with its own standards, all without losing the continuity of the strip (see: Mac Hall). Comicking—be that a word or not—is a medium where templates, stencils, and tracing is acceptable for good reason. Try writing a coherent story in everchanging languages, and that's how hard it is to make a coherent comic with everchanging art.

  Back to the writing: it's great. S*P can be described, truthfully, as a "wordy" comic, but that's fine, for me. Milholland clearly has something to say, through his characters, and I find it interesting and entertaining. He has four panels to make a point, so who am I to fault him for using a lot of words to do it? He usually has a very interesting double-layer of comedy and reality going on, so you tend to get both jokes and social commentary. The jokes aren't just there for jokes sake, they're there to help support the view of the world as presented through the lens of S*P. Or, maybe not, and that's breathing too much meaning into a webcomic, but I prefer to see it that way.

  In the end, Something Positive is the Comic of 2005 because it's been going for four years, and it's yet to get redundant or old. It's still got its charm, and I hope it keeps it. Too many comics hit a plateau and stagnate, without ending. Of course, Milholland has stated that S*P has a very finite timeline, so I don't think he'd let it get to the point of being an on-going, repetitive comic. I remember it either beinga five-year or ten-year project . . . One way or the other, it'll probably be the best it could possibly be in the time it's around, because I trust Milholland to keep it that way. Rock on, Milholland. Rock on.

Too much of a good thing ruined the stew . . . I guess?

The Movie of 2005

  I was all ready to write a review where I said that Kill Bill may as well be the best movie of the year, because jack shit happened in the cinema for the entire year and I may as well give a nod towards the best movie of 2004, instead--especially since I just picked up the Volume Two DVD and sat and watched both volumes, back to back. I even had a lot of the review planned out, in my head, hailing the visionary talent of Tarantino and so forth, and so on. Then . . .

Then, I remembered Sin City.

  I forgot that Sin City was a 2005 film. In fact, it was only thinking about Kill Bill that reminded me, because I had this train of thought in my head: "It's only when directors like Quintin Tarantino have such strong visions of what they want to have in a movie that they can execute it so brilliantly, that they're such a vividly imaginative and mindful of cinematics, theatrics, dramatics, all the important 'ics. You get directors like Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorcese, Steven Spielberg, Darren Aranofsky: people who usually not just direct, but write." And, I thought, "Although, adaption isn't evil, so long as you're adapting good material. Look at Robert Rodriguez and how adamantly truthful and accurate to the material he was with Sin City . . . "

  "Shit, Sin City came out this year, didn't it?" I checked the DVD box, couldn't find a conveniently visible year of release, so I went to imDB. "Yes. There's no fucking way I can say there was nothing memorable in the theatres in 2005."

  Also, I just remembered, right now, that Serenity was also most definitely a '05 picture. Saw II was great, and I loved it, about as much as I did the original Saw, but I didn't like how it ended: I wished it hadn't been left obviously open for a sequel, because I think a franchise will kill the novelty of it all and I highly doubt a third movie will live up to the first two (third time, in filmmaking, is not the charm). MirrorMask was also a visually stunning masterpiece and a great, surreal work of vintage Gaiman, but, honestly, the story and characters were a bit too lacking for me to ever award it Greatest Movie of the 2005. All lovely movies, yes, but . . . Sin fucking City.

  The hype behind Sin City was monumental; generally, I avoid hype and I don't follow entertainment news or anything like that, but I got all the hype there was from a friend at college who went on and on about the film; honestly, I've never read any of Frank Miller's Sin City comics, so I had no big reason to be all excited about anything being adapted to screen for them. But, I am, in the end, a sucker for going to the movies with friends, because I can't think of anything better to do than catching a flick with friends--not that my life is in a sad state of affairs, I genuinely think experiencing movies with friends at the theatre is damn fun--so I followed the crowd into a showing of Sin City when it came out and I may have shat my pants. (The same, exact thing happened with Serenity: never watched Firefly, but a buncha friends went and I tagged along, and I believe what I said to my ex-roommate afterward, verbatim, was: "About halfway through this movie I was about ready to cum my pants in glee. I really want to find Joss Whedon and just hug him and thank him for existing." This is why I trust my friends, most of the time, for movie taste, these days.)

  Few films have I watched where my jaw literally dropped, but, ooh, it happened quite a few times in Sin City.

  The movie was brutal, violent, sex-ridden, dark, brooding, angry, passionate, and beautiful. It was a Film Noir-esque endeavour, but hardly a Film Noir: maybe Film Noir if you put it on a speeding train heading towards Hell itself. I'm a sucker for inner monologue and gritty material, so I am biased--everyone's biased--and it delivered in spades. Best of all, the stories weren't predictable: I did not see the sheer amount of brutality coming that I got shovelled in my face. Mind you, I am not glorifying the idea of violence and brutality in a movie as being the mere ticket to cinematic genius in my book, no, not alone.

  Sin City made you want the people who died to die. It put you in the shoes of the individual stories' protagonists, and you saw the world through their eyes, through their smoke-stung, bloodied, bruised, shaking eyes. The movie swept you up in its emotionality and gripped you, making every punch satisfying, every gunshot gleeful, every visceral act of violence very much vindicating. It wasn't about violence, it was about survival, hard and cold lives full of death. It was sick, but the alternative was sicker. Basin City is a land of desperate hopelessness and despairing antiheroes, doing what has to be done to make right what can never be made pure.

If you can't handle this shit, get off the bus. Nobody wants you here, anyway.

  Rodriguez made me want to read Frank Miller's comics. I haven't, yet, but that's because I'm a lazy, procrastinating bastard. It's the kind of visionary work that makes directors like Rodriguez and Tarantino truly geniuses. Maybe it's not always the most deep, soul-searching material on the market, and it's not mind-bending or world-inverting, but I like it. Because it's unique, and stylistic, and new. Even intellectualism can get dull, if you see too many films with world-weary characters doling out philosophy after philosophy over slow scenes of coffeeshops or bus-stops. I can't deal with another Good Will Hunting or A Beautiful Mind: the originals were great, but I don't need you to produce eighty thousand more like 'em, Hollywood. Thanks but no, alright?

  Tarantino movies, and Rodriguez's one, at least, are about setting up the mythos of a world and, then, placing a set of characters within them to play around inside the movie-world. Their worlds are full of stylised beauty and interesting things. Sin City wasn't just a movie, it was the devotion of a director to extending a mythos from the pages of graphic novels to the movie screen. Kill Bill wasn't just a revenge movie, it was a revenge movie placed in a world as birthed by Tarantino's mind: unique, bloody, and beautiful. Maybe I don't always need to think hard and long about the existence I have, sometimes it's good to just invent a new existence, and I like the existences that are presented by Rodriguez and Tarantino. They're highly, highly engrossing, engaging and entertaining, and, ultimately, emotional and impactful.

  Yeah, Kill Bill was the film of 2004, but Sin City definitely took 2005, handsdown.

Tarantino: Modern Day Existentialist . . . Maybe?

The Band of 2005

Nomeansno continues to exist as the singlemost exemplary modern band, in my mind.

  I've been trying to find a band that can simply match, or even excel past, the monumental entity that is Nomeansno. Bands, here and there, release albums that are in the same league, but it's not just the one album with Nomeansno: it's the over a dozen albums. The string of albums, each a unique and creative endeavour, are powerful masterpieces in their own right, and, collectively, are the masterful career of a humble, Canadian punk rock three-piece that will destroy your world.

  The Mars Volta and Muse stick out in my mind as bands, this year, that put out albums which impressed upon me the same moving, exstatic listening experience that I received with Nomeansno. Maybe they'll be the next Nomeansnos for me, maybe their track record will keep up and they can produce a body of work so strong and outrageously, ridiclously good as Nomeansno's, and I'll write something like this about them, in the future. I hope so. De-Loused in the Comatorium from The Mars Volta is a stupendous work, and Absolution is equally marvellous.

  Still, Nomeansno exists as the one band which has so many albums that rock my fucking world. For nearly five years, now, I've been listening to these albums--I think it took me just one year to get everything they'd released up until that point in 2002 or '3--and every album is individually amazing (alright, maybe Mama isn't redefining any musical standards, but for a first attempt at an album by two brothers doing it themselves with low-budget studio equipment as, essentially, a garage band in 1982, it was strong, comparatively). I struggle to find words to describe the experience of listening to Nomeansno.

  Nomeansno is composed of three people: Rob Wright, the bassist and lead vocalist; John Wright, the drummer; and either Andy Kerr or Tom Holliston serving as guitarist, depending on the era. In more recent albums, there's also been a second drummer utilized. Really, I don't want to go on too much about Nomeansno history: www.no-means-no.de is a good site for information. Also, check out Satan Stole My Teddybear for good reviews. Anyway . . .

  Nomeansno is like listening to a march towards an inevitable climax and then the completely natural resolution of the whole ordeal; every song is so brilliantly composed that you never question what they do. You never think to yourself that something seems wrong with the music, because the dominant and effective usage of the rhythm section causes everything to make sense--the heart and soul, arguably, of the band are the two Wright brothers, drum and bass, and it shows. Their songs tend to be foreboding or ominous-sounding, made up of deep vibrations that shake the human soul, from the very early era, Wrong material to the very recent era, One material. Nomeansno is like a train thundering toward you on the tracks, ready to roll you over and destroy you . . . Nomeansno is like being raped in the ear by pure talent.

  I struggle to find good words to describe the sound of Nomeansno, because the best music escapes transliteration. It simply is. Nomeansno is simply good.

  Speaking of words, the lyrics of Nomeansno are not your typical, two-bit poetic endeavours written by people more concerned with power chords and catchy riffs than the meaning of music. Punk rockers of today who so eagerly label themselves as thought-provoking or frontal lobe-style musicians can learn a thing or two from Nomeansno; in fact, they can learn the entire lexicon from Nomeansno. If a band can not produce lyrics that match up in quality with the instrumentation, they may as well drop the singing and just play (see: Dream Thetre versus Liquid Tension Experiment). The words of Nomeansno almost have as much power as the sound: no, they don't, actually, because they are part of the sound, they are the sound. The churning, driving bass line and the rolling, thundering drumming with the accompanying melodies of the guitar would not be complete without a voice coming out above it all, weaving delicate imagery or creating surprisingly complex characterisation or setting down the schematics of a dark, rich setting. Listen to "The World Wasn't Built In A Day" or "What Slayde Says" or "Our Town" or "0 + 2 = 1" and try and tell me modern poets write better, with a straight face: I fucking dare you.

  Nomeansno isn't composed of hip, young musicians, either. Look at the photos from recent tours: these guys are white-topped. And they outrock the young kids. They outshine the new breed. They continually redefine what it means to be punk, while suburban Californians struggle with the original definition with bad, Cockney imitations. They keep the spirit of punk alive. They help me retain the hope that punk isn't truly as dead as it seems at first glance. All from Canada, too. Rock the fuck on, Canada (no, I don't mean you, Celine).

  What the fuck are you waiting for? Go listen to some Nomeansno. Prove me Wrong.

You won't.