The Urban Pantheist

Not bad, if you don't mind constantly pointing at the screen screaming THAT makes no sense either! Enjoy a harrowing/luxurious ride where every car is a metaphor for the unfairness of class structure.

I'm going to type my random post as I read my friends list, since that's where a lot of the fun stuff comes from.

First, if you ever read superhero comics any time between 1990 and now, you must read this eye-wateringly funny dissection of The 40 Worst Rob Liefeld Drawings. For the rest of you, Rob Liefeld is an inexplicably popular comic artist who pioneered the "millions of tiny lines" style of superhero rendering. His drawings always looked to me like he'd taken the finest rapidograph he had and made sketchy scratchy lines with a ruler all over everything, especially the absurd musculature of the male characters and the gigantic guns they carried. He was so popular that he got his own comic book (X-Force) and when he felt he wasn't getting paid enough, he took his ball home, and along with his buddy Todd "Spawn" (hey, at least they made a movie of it) MacFarlane they started IMAGE comics, which were momentarily profitable until even 12 year old boys realized they sucked. Anyway, it's funny.

On the other hand, a good artist, and former classmate of mine Mr. Reusch painted some boobs for charity.

Evel Knievel died at 69, making me ponder, "He was only 69?" as well as "He didn't die in a motorcycle crash? How disappointing." When he was on his way out his family should have propped him up on a motorcycle and driven it by remote control into the Snake River Canyon.

My wife's dog is on dope. She (my wife) blanched at the price, but 120 bucks for happy pills seems reasonable to me. I wonder if they work on humans; I could use a little pick-me-up.

Another former classmate of mine, G. Weir, put a review of Lost in Space up at BBT that puts my Soylent Screen backwash to shame. The man can write--he definitely put more thought into the movie than the people who wrote it--just don't bug him about the spelling, ok?

Oh, and what's with this crap in the Sudan? As if I didn't already consider the place to be a savage hellhole, some poor teacher (a Brit doing her good deed by teaching in a savage hellhole) got arrested and nearly escaped being executed for the crime of allowing her students to name a teddybear "Mohammed". Okay, so it's blasphemous and culturally insensitive to name a non-human animal (even a stuffed one) after The Prophet. But the kids named the teddybear after one of the students--not The Prophet. It's like naming a teddybear Christopher. Anyway, my bigotry is now increased, or at least I feel justified in it. I just don't know if I should feel increased justification of bigotry against Sudanese, Africans, Muslims, or all religious people everywhere.

And now I read in another post that the Pope has blamed Atheism (as if it was an organized movement, and not a collection of disinterested New Englanders, smug sci-fi fans, and All of China) for great forms of injustice and cruelty or some such crap. I'm edging toward "all religious people everywhere" as the answer to my last quandry.

unusual word combination of the day: "Abortion Storms." one of the pathological signs of a certain bovine virus. i read it on a bioterrorism alert poster.

An awful lot of the movies I've been reviewing lately have been horror movies. Halloween is to blame for some of that: I see it coming and load my queue up with more horror movies than i could watch in a year. I'd like to review some sci-fi/adventure type movies, but I don't have many on the way. Here's a run-down of what i have coming that netflix considers 'Sci-fi/fantasy.' What do you think i should review?

( pick what i should review from a long list of movies )

linkdump is such an ugly word. Look at this cool thing, though!



it comes from this very cool page, which i found on buried_in_green.

Also, while researching the frogmouth, i discovered this:



Are you kidding me? how can that possibly exist? more here.

We saw the movie 'Daywatch" and this was my netflix note about it: "This second part of Russia's impressive but overrated fantasy trilogy is better than the first. When it's not confusing, it's very fun. It's confusing a lot of the time." i suspect, like 'Bladerunner' that it only makes sense if you've read the book.

i poured some coffee into the laptop yesterday morning (about an hour before i got to work and discovered i left a co2 tank open, wasting it all--i rule!) so the left hand shift key doesn't work. That's why all my right hand capitals are small. not because i have low self-esteem (but, you know, i do anyway).



Finally, if i participated in something called "BOWLING FOR RHINOS" would you support me?

i'll have more details soon, but the gist of it is, i bowl, other people give me money, i give the money to the charity that protects rhinos and rhino habitat. i haven't figured out if i should ask for pledges by the frame, with bonuses for spares or (ha!) strikes (it's candlepin, so strikes are rare to shockingly rare) or if i should just ask for regular old donations. hopefully the person coordinating it at work will give me more info about it today--the event is a week from Friday!

In this installment, I review the first ever Swedish vampire movie, Frostbiten. The cool idea about it is that it takes place way up where the sun doesn't come up for a month, so the vampires don't have to hide during the day. Apparently the same idea was in a comic that's been made into a movie called "30 Days of Night" which comes out this month. I don't know who thought of it first, but somebody's biting someone's idea.



Read my review here at Blood Blade and Thruster.

Four young men living the thug life plan one big heist to escape the street, or at least make life a little easier. They choose a small town bank to hit, but there’s one big problem. Wouldn’t you know it? The town is in the path of the zombie invasion.

Read the rest at Blood Blade and Thruster!

Go to Blood, Blade, and Thruster to read my review of The Sticky Fingers of Time.

This will seem somewhat random to many of my readers, but I'm now reviewing movies on a regular basis. What does this have to do with urban nature? Nada. But I figured some of you might dig my writing, regardless of subject, and I suspect many of you fall into the Sci-fi/Horror/Fantasy fan category (I understand this is now called "speculative fiction." So be it.)

My reviews are under the name "Soylent Screen," at the magazine "Blood, Blade, and Thruster." My first review is of "Hot Fuzz." Hope you like it!

Behind the cut is my review of Prophecy: the Monster Movie. Usually I make my movie reviews friends only, since they don't have anything to do with the themes of my journal. This is an environmental horror movie, so maybe my general readership might be interested. There are some spoilers, but as this is a b movie, they probably won't interfere with your enjoyment of the movie. I do say how you can tell when the monster is going to attack, though.

( Read more... )

I just finished watching the movie a couple hours ago, it's after midnight, and this review might be gibberish, but I'll put it out there for you to judge. I don't think there are any spoilers here, but I think it's a better review if you've seen it already.

( Read more... )