The Rebel Fleet/End Title
Aug 15Weird morning today–found a live roach in our bedroom, some stupid accident on the interstate sent hordes of traffic onto the tiny backwoods road that is my main conduit to the magycale cityee known as Jamlando, the coffee didn’t really pick me up.
Made me melancholy. So as I often do, I turned to music to regulate my mood, and the goddamned shuffle ended up pulling in some pretty dour stuff, including the big end credits suite from The Empire Strikes Back.
And it hit me–that fucking movie has been fucking with my mood for years. Every time I think of it, it makes me sad–Han’s in carbonite, Leia’s missing her man, Luke’s got a robotic arm and a half-robotic daddy. Their only hope is a scoundrel who just betrayed them and is going off to find Han, in Han’s ship, with Han’s buddy, WEARING HAN’S OLD CLOTHES. Creepy.
Star Wars IS who I am, more or less. Geek tropes come and go but those damned movies keep dragging me back in. It’s an essential component of my DNA…and MAN, is Empire a melancholy movie.
It’s like Nick Hornby wrote in High Fidelity, only a little different: Which came first, the movie or the misery? Was there always a Han in carbonite lurking around my mood and the movie just reinforced it, or did this fucking flick shove this wistful bittersweetness into my brain?
This, my friends, is why I need therapy.
"My daddy's in a coma!"
Aug 14Had an amazing moviegoing experience Saturday night…in Orlando, FL.
If you’ve never been here, you may not realize the shocking revelation in the above statement. Orlando is a town built on tourism, and so its cultural offerings tend toward the uber-mainstream. They don’t really have movie theaters; they have only massive gigaplexes screening every mass-market slab of Hollywood pap that is available to them. Ten screens of Superman Returns, twelve of Talladega Nights, and so on.
Which means seeing an indie movie–a damn funny one–in an actually charming environment floored me. The theater in question is the Enzian, which is actually the ONLY theater screening arthouse-type flicks in Orlando, so it’s pretty easy to figure out where to get your Todd Solondz/Michael Gondry/Atom Egoyan/etc fix in Central Florida.
This is a true dinner theater; they serve meals and show movies. The only slight critique is the color palate for the decor, which is reminiscent of what someone thought would seem “artsy” in 1992. Lots of pastels.
Otherwise, this is really one of the finest places I’ve ever seen a flick. Sumptuous chairs, delicious food, exceptional (and unobtrusive!) service, just PRIMO.
The movie weren’t bad neither. Strangers With Candy should be on every geek’s viewing list, if only because it stars Stephen Colbert, who deserves status as some kind of Inhuman Geek God for being painfully funny AND an unrepentant fan of geeky stuff like Lord of the Rings.
Strangers With Candy is a prequel to the short-lived Comedy Central series of the same name, which starred Colbert, Paul Dinello, and the unbelievably hilarious Amy Sedaris in a weekly parody of after-school specials revolving around Jerri Blank, the fortysomething former “boozer, user, and loser” who decides to go back to high school after thirty-odd years in prison.
This comedy is not for everyone. It’s an occasionally absurdist mix of parody, satire, vulgarity, and flat-out offensiveness. Maybe Netflix the DVDs of the series if you have any question about your ability to enjoy.
If you think you can handle it, you will laugh till you hurt.
And that was my weekend.
Be A SpokesShatner! (A Spatner?)
Aug 13Is it just me, or does this have “Matt” written all over it?
The Shat wants YOU to be his DVD Club spokesperson! Submit a video clip, explain why you’re a big genre fan, boldly go, etc.
There are already a bunch of submissions for your perusing pleasure.
My Kingdom for a Copy of She-Hulk #10!
Aug 13I am so wishing Nerd Nation was a reality already. See, this weekend, Jeff and I were staying in a certain unfamiliar locale, and we wanted to find a decent comic shop so we could pick up our books. Thanks to some convoluted Googling, I located a place that seemed cool: newish shop, nifty name and mere steps away from where we were staying. We hustled on over there — and in approximately 30 seconds, we had come to a rather dismaying conclusion. The shop only stocked two things: graphic novels and RPGs. Which…nothing wrong with either, but there was nary a single issue in sight. No new comics. No tantalizing display of the week’s latest issues. What’s more, we were the only customers in sight, and the atmosphere was one of heavy silence coupled with sterile weirdness, so we didn’t quite feel comfortable asking what the deal was.
We decided to wander around the area a bit, and came upon a little olde thymey hobby shop with model trains, action figures annnnndddd…comic books! Huzzah! Only once we got inside, we found that said comic books were mysteriously ensconced behind the counter. No touchy! So…OK. I guess they don’t want you reading stuff you aren’t gonna buy, but…the books weren’t even displayed well. We craned our necks a bit, trying to suss out the full selection, but it was all for naught since old hobby shop proprietor dude was busy chatting up another customer and could not be bothered to take notice of us. Jeff was pretty put off by the whole behind-the-counter schtick anyway, so we ditched the place.
Both of those scenarios are…weird, right? And if NN existed, I might write up both of these places and name names, oh my! Instead, I shall just marvel at this particular town’s lack of a good shop in which to indulge in one of my weekly rituals of nerdery.
Bat-Brilliance
Aug 11If you’re not picking up Paul Dini’s current run of Detective Comics, where he’s basically cranking out tight-ass little done-in-ones every month, you may kick yourself now. This is shaping up to be a GREAT run.
Somehow Dini mixes a decidedly Animated Series-inspired take on the character and Gotham with a more tense, adult approach–and I’m not just saying that because a scene in the last issue featured an S&M club. These aren’t kids stories, or really for kids, but they get to the essence of Batman just as the Animated Series did.
There’s even awesome little touches, like Batman offering a guy he’s just interrogated a band-aid for the cut on his face. NICE, Dini. NICE.
Will it be one of the all-time great Bat-runs? Way too early to say. I will say, however, that it’s really fucking great, and the first decade of the aughts has yet to produce its great Bat-run, so it’s already a contender in my book.
