Archive for October, 2010

« Older Entries

Movies That I’ve Watched a Second Time

Posted in Braak with tags , , on October 30, 2010 by braak

1) Iron Man 2:  this remains a perfectly serviceable, fun little actioner.  But the fact that, in the old days, Howard Stark wasn’t the bad guy and Anton Vanko wasn’t the good guy now pisses me off to no end.  And the fact that when Tony Stark says, “I’ve tried every combination of every element,” Nick Fury DOESN’T say, “You haven’t tried this,” while handing him a hunk of vibranium also pisses me the fuck off.  It’s like, “You guys did just a regular, decent old job with 90% of this movie, and then just phoned in the last 10.  What the hell?”

2)  Jesus, Sin City is terrible.  I mean, it’s pretty, but OH MY GOD, everybody:  SHUT.  UP.  But they don’t shut up, they just keep talking, talking, fucking TALKING, illustrating the most testosteriffic exercise in misogyny I have ever seen.  Carla Gugino got her hand eaten, but then she cries, and now she’s fine.  Bitches, right?  WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS MOVIE?  Clive Owen, I can hear you trying hard to make this insane bullshit interior monologue not sound like insane bullshit, but even the fact that you are English doesn’t help.

Additionally hilarious:  MARV:  “What the–?  No one can sneak up on me.”  Because Frank Miller forgot he wasn’t writing Wolverine or Daredevil.

4 Comments »

Serious Question About the Multi-Colored Lanterns

Posted in Threat Quality on October 29, 2010 by braak

Hey…I’m just kind of noticing this but…but if the different colors are supposed to represent the “spectrum of emotions”, is it weird that there isn’t a “happiness”?  Or “sadness”?  Or any of the other things that are generally considered to be “emotions”?

11 Comments »

OH MY GOD!

Posted in Threat Quality on October 29, 2010 by braak

http://blog.melissadunphy.com/2010/10/i-made-my-husband-krang-costume-for.html

8 Comments »

Some Thoughts on Green Lantern

Posted in Braak, comic books with tags , , on October 29, 2010 by braak

Oh, man, I can’t believe it took me this long to figure the guy out.  But here I am, sitting on the couch, trying to figure out why Hal Jordan would use his power ring to conjure a giant green jetplane when he wants to fly around instead of just, you know, flying around with his Green Lantern power, and it hits me, and now obviously I have to talk about it.

You guys, no doubt, already have it figured, because you read the comics, or whatever.   Read more »

11 Comments »

Halloween Movie Playlist: 10+ Recommendations

Posted in Horror, Jeff Holland, October Horror, reviews, Threat Quality with tags , , , , on October 28, 2010 by braak

(OR: “Stomping Around in the Dark: A 5-Year Retrospective!”)

(OR: “The Scary Things don’t seem too concerned with hiding in big shadows. They just wait for you to look at them.”)

As Halloween weekend approaches, you’re probably lining up your movie selections with your own personal playlist of great horror/suspense/sci-fi/dark-fantasy/what-have-you films.

You’ve probably got some zombie flicks lined up (Romero, 28 Days/Weeks Later, even Shaun of the Dead), maybe a good vampire movie (Let the Right One In), a classic or two (Cat People on TCM Sunday, 2 AM), and probably a couple fun schlock-fests (Re-Animator, or hey – Evil Dead 2 is on AMC Sunday at 6 AM!). All solid choices, I’m sure.

Now, these last five years, I’ve devoted each October to catching up with all the horror films I’ve missed in my lifetime, while also sussing out which new ones are worth adding to the canon.

Representing the best of the last five years of having to put up with crap like Candyman so I can occasionally stumble onto something good, I humbly submit these TQP-approved entries for a quality movie-viewing weekend:  Read more »

11 Comments »

Amazon, BookSurge, and What Does it All Mean?

Posted in Braak with tags , , , on October 27, 2010 by braak

Good question.

Here’s an article about how Amazon just bought BookSurge, an actual honest-to-god press.  Now, I’ll admit that I thought that Amazon already HAD it’s own press, and that was what they were doing Createspace with, but it turns out no — they were doing all of their printing with a third party.

[EDIT:  Duh, this article is a reprint from 2008.  On the one hand, I am an idiot for not checking more closely; on the other hand, who fucking reprints the news?  It's not exactly "new" anymore then, is it?  Anyway, basically everything I say after this remains true, despite all that.]

So.  Hm.

Read more »

14 Comments »

Naked, crazy and invisible: Halloween Movies 2010!

Posted in Horror, Jeff Holland, October Horror, reviews, Threat Quality with tags , , , on October 26, 2010 by braak

I haven’t followed my usual pattern this month, wherein I watch a lot of horror (or horror-ish) movies of varying quality and try to figure out whether they’re worth the time spent watching them. A couple reasons for this:

  • The ones I didn’t like weren’t really that bad, just not all that interesting (there was no way for me to stretch “Picnic At Hanging Rock was pretty boring” out to the usual 1000 words)
  • Even I couldn’t get through more than a half-hour of Roger Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound (though any movie where John Hurt delivers the line “I suppose I should begin with the time slips” with all the energy he’d bring to telling you about this bagel he had one Sunday deserves a shout-out, at least), and
  • The ones I liked were fairly obvious (you don’t need me to tell you to go see Let the Right One In; although, you may need me to tell you the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake was a lot more involving than I thought it would be, so…there, done) and I wasn’t bringing anything new to the discussion.

But the more I sit here and think about it, the more I believe The Invisible Man was the most awesomely weird movie monster I’ve seen in quite some time. The reason: He isn’t just invisible. He’s jacked-up, naked, and crazy (and yes invisible).

He is, in fact, like a PCP addict with an extra edge.   Read more »

12 Comments »

Braak Is Losing His Mind

Posted in Braak with tags , , on October 25, 2010 by braak

It’s what happens when I don’t have regular work, or a regular schedule, or any kind of enforced regularity.  I react by just letting my crazy brain and perpetually-malfunctioning body do whatever they want.

Over the last couple weeks, I’ve repeatedly forgotten to eat, haven’t gotten more than four or five hours of sleep a night, and haven’t really been drinking anything but coffee and rum.

I am, incidentally, totally looking forward to a future in which this meaty shell can be replaced by a robot body.

Read more »

9 Comments »

Recommended Reading

Posted in comic books, Jeff Holland, Threat Quality with tags , , , on October 21, 2010 by braak

Everyone should hop on over to their local comics shop and pick up an anthology book called “Vertigo: Resurrected.” (DC/Vertigo, $7.99)

The primary feature is “Shoot,” a previously banned issue of “Hellblazer” by Warren Ellis and Phil Jiminez. It’s been available for years online as a black and white scan, but the story – a chilly meditation on school shootings (whose release date unfortunately coincided with Columbine, hence the drop) – remains a great one-off issue, and it’s nice to have the final piece of Ellis’s unfortunately brief stint on Hellblazer back in print.

But as an added treat, the book also features a bunch of shorts from never-collected late-90′s anthology series Vertigo had a habit of running, like “Flinch” and “Weird War Tales.” From the latter comes Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s “The New Toys,” and it remains one of the creepiest, most unnerving things I have ever read.

I scanned it a few Halloweens back and you can check it out at the dusty old MySpace blog, and if you can’t make it to the store, you can at least get the chance to read it here.

But yes – nice little collection, and if this reprint book gets nice sales, perhaps we’ll end up seeing that issue of Swamp Thing where he meets Jesus.

Leave A Comment »

Question For Writers

Posted in Jeff Holland, Threat Quality with tags , , on October 21, 2010 by braak

Particularly freelancers out there -

Who charges per hour, vs. per project? How does one come to this conclusion?

And – assuming this isn’t too personal – what do you generally charge?

(You have to understand, in my freelancing experience I’ve mostly been paid in beer.)

5 Comments »

« Older Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 1,014 other followers