Monday 24th August 2009

I'd do a review of the last restaurant meal I had if I thought it'd take up a paragraph or two, but I leave that level of self-affirmation to the Twitterverse - I totally need to know not just what you recently ate, dude, but your considered opinion on the merits of the Reggae Sub!
I know I find it hard to write anything on here and the cardinal sin of blogging is 'blogging about blogging', but I'm coming to suspect that the reason for that is so that no-one ever points out you need not so much confidence in your work or lifestyle that it be of interest to the web at large, but also a certain level of self-importance plays no small role in the posting of daily musings, and I really am the more reserved type even if I have managed to post something each day for the better part of three months now. Oh I'm blogging about me, now! Took a minute, but I got there.
Scribbling away at a more cartoony approach than usual, but much of my time was spent getting an eye for the differences in colour palettes between RGB and CMYK, and for the most part I'm flummoxed by the differences in the tablet display, the monitor at home, and the monitor at work. Learning curve.

My crappola movie of the day was the 'pish but nice gimmick all the same' Ready 2 Rumble starring David Arquette, some guy, Oliver Platt, and the cast of then-ECW before the merger with WWE. To call it utter crap is an insult to bowel movements, and I sure am glad I missed that one during my 'anything with a fight scene gets a viewin' period of filmic evaluation.

Sunday 23rd August 2009

I don't know what shames me more - that I willingly watched Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: the Movie, or that I enjoyed it, post-production sound and visual edits to the kung-fu and all. Well, maybe not that last bit, but the nostalgia factor for the movies - tosh or not - that I and my mates sat through for the odd decent bit of kickery punchery is good to experience once in a while. We put up with a LOT of crappy movies during our kung-fu phase (because everyone goes through a kung-fu phase), our tolerance even extending to a brain-amnesty for the films of Albert Pyun, the non-budget Segals, the Eastern Van Dammes, the careers of Cynthia Rothrock, Gary Daniels, Mark 'Iron Chef' Dacascos - all glorious to the growing mind of the pre-interweb kung-fu fan who's willing to overlook their craptitude for want of anything else to watch, but not something to revisit too often in adulthood, or what laughably passes for that in a household where a sizable portion of the living room floor is taken up by Playstation peripherals shaped like guns, guitars and drum kits.
Still doodling away, aimlessly as it's the weekend. Come the weekdays and we're back to the deadlined material. Gettin' closer, that deadline...

Sunday 5th July 2009 - more thumbnails and Watchmeh review

Just watched Watchmen, and my main complaint is... not bad. Misses the point on so many levels in slavishly recreating the tropes and idioms that the original comic book deconstructed, not least by introducing newer superheroic tropes created by modern cinematic interpretations of the genre, such as the body-armor costume and 'normal humans as superhumans by way of slo-mo and wirework' fight scenes, one of which - the prison dust-up - was clearly meant to be whitey one-upping Old Boy's memorable "1 man, 1 hammer, fifty thugs" hallway fight, but Snyder is just so addicted to multi-angle slo-mo and technology doing all the work for him that the scene merely serves to make the original look better in all it's lo-fi glory. You could argue it's a microcosm for the Watchmen movie's problems as regards being an adaptation of an original work, I suppose.
It's pretty soul-less and shallow, and that's the problem - it's neither good nor bad enough to be entertaining, and any fun to be had comes from having the recognition-buttons pushed rather than any new insight or a better interpretation of the material or themes - the ending especially is too much the makers trying to have their cake and eat it, because this is inherently silly stuff that's only ever as serious as it's treated by those making it - a giant blue man with no pants who's going to kill us all is just as silly as a space-squid from Dimension X.
A solid 'meh'.

Random doodle, poor film, hothothot

Doodle: an alternate version of the Fantastic Four comprised of Franklin and Valeria Richards, Molly Hayes and Katie Power. Can't imagine why they'd be the Fantastic Four off the top of my head - maybe the real deal are off in another dimension when trouble arrives on Earth or something - but the basic premise is that each issue would have the characters encountering different heroes from the Marvel universe and eventually punching them in the balls, learning a valuable lesson about trust or friendship along the way.

The doodle came about because I was watching Silent Venom, AKA the film that pointedly isn't called Snakes on a Sub and is all the worserer for it. Luke Perry stumbles around a leftover set while snakes sort of amble around in the background somewhere - it's just not very good: let's leave it at that.
I'm stuck why I thought it would be, or why I watched it in the first place, but it was sweltering today, and I felt suitably guilty being indoors at all.