Monday, February 21, 2011

Emerald City Comicon 2011

Set phasers to NEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRDDDDD - photo by Jim Berry

I just got my 3 day pass to this year's Emerald City Comicon on March 4th-6th and it got me all excited and nostalgic about the previous cons I've gone to.

I remember when my good bud and then roommate Keith roped me and our roommate John into going with him to ECC in 2007. He probably said something like, "Yeah, it's a total shitshow full of mouth-breathing dorks, but it's really fun and there are lots of deals to be found and some cool folks to meet." And that was that. The three of us rolled down from Bellingham to the Qwest Field Event Center, took photos with Star Wars dorks, met comedian Brian Posehn, I bought an old Transformer for probably way too much money and had a general good ol' nerdy time. I loved it. I was hooked.

Keith Tusken Raider-ing John
Keith was also key in getting me back into comics in the first place. I absolutely loved the X-Men in the early 90s like every sane boy my age and made many trips to The Spider's Web on River Road in Puyallup, WA, to buy as many X-Men related comics and trading cards as I could afford. But, then you know, I started noticing girls and playing hockey and other stuff teenagers from the suburbs do and kinda forgot about comics.

Years later, when I moved in with Keith, John and sometimes Alex at the legendary-in-our-own-minds "Bro Compound" on Humboldt Street in Bellingham, Keith showed me some newer, more violent and off-the-wall comics like "Punisher: MAX," "Preacher" and "Y: The Last Man." Slowly, but surely I started checking out more newer comics and trades (or "Graphic Novels" as high-brow arty folks who don't want to admit they read comic books call them) and have been reading weekly comics since 2008 or so.

Getting back to why I really enjoy going to ECC every year, it's really just the whole experience. Where else am going to get to hear Leonard Nimoy read excerpts from his poetry, see Thomas Jane drunkenly amble around the con or drool over Kaylee from "Firefly" from afar? And don't even get me started the folks who dress up as various comic book and movie characters. It's just a totally authentic freakshow of nerdy humanity and I love it.

Keith: Dude bro, you were awesome in "Deep Blue Sea!"
Tom Jane: "Yeah, whatever, check out this shitty comic I wrote." 

Since 2007, it has grown an incredible amount in size, popularity and in the notoriety of its celebrity guests. In 2008, it switched venues to the Washington State Convention Center in downtown Seattle, which is better for its size and close proximity other businesses downtown like restaurants and such. And it expanded to three days this year for the first time instead of two, which I think will make for a more relaxed atmosphere.

Another thing I love about ECC are the celebrity and writer/artists panels. This is where a bunch of con-goers cram into a conference room and listen to the guests talk about pretty much whatever they feel like. And if you're lucky, they'll allow part of the panel to be Q&A. This is where people really let their freak flags fly and ask the most absurd, obscure and/or utterly embarrassing questions. And the best part is how unflinchingly nice almost all the guests are, no matter fucking stupid the question. They know that these folks are the ones that make it possible for them to have careers and these are the true blue fans, so they better not make them angry if they want to keep making money playing make believe with fictional characters. But, like I said, it's witnessing these kinds of jaw-droppingly weird and embarrassing interactions alone that make the price of admission well worth it.

This year I'm mostly excited for a handful of writers and artists, but most of all for Jeff Lemire. He writes "Sweet Tooth" which is probably my favorite comic on the rack these days and also wrote the heart-breakingly sad and awesome "Essex County." He was there last year, too, but at that time I was unfamiliar with his brilliance, but luckily I had the foresight to buy "Essex County" from him and ask him to sign it. That's the other cool thing about these cons. The writers and artists will sign pretty much anything you want them to for free and are almost always really friendly and will shoot the shit with you about their work. Some artists will do sketches of their characters for you for a small fee, too, if you're into that.

I definitely want to catch Wil Wheaton's panel. He's most well known for playing Wesley Crusher on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" back when he was a teenager, but he now he's a writer and occasional actor and is one of the most genuine and hilarious public speakers I've seen. He usually reads a bit from his books and tells embarrassing stories from his Star Trek days. Always a good time. He's been a guest at ECC every year since I started going.

The big name this year is William Shatner. I'm no trekkie or anything, but I think Shatner is pretty hilarious in general and I definitley want to catch his panel on Saturday. Leonard Nimoy was the big name last year, and Stan Lee of course, but Nimoy's panel was absolutely hilarious and had the aforementioned poetry reading and some of the best/worst Q&A questions I've ever seen. So I'm sure Shatner's panel will be totally ridiculous.

Con-life, baby. I'm ready for it.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

"Cool Hand Luke" (1967) Dir. Stuart Rosenberg

Whoooaaa the 60s, mannnnnn.


As I watched this movie for first time in a good 5 years or so, my girlfriend asked me why I liked it after the 3rd or 4th time something horribly demoralizing happens to ol' Luke in the southern prison camp he gets tossed in after a night of drunkenly chopping off the tops of parking meters. It was a fair question that made me pause, but I came up with a few reasons.
  • The most obvious reason is Paul Newman. This was one of his career defining roles they say and you can't help but like his rascally and uppity nature. Newman was 42 when he made this movie, his hair was already starting to grey, but he was really in his prime from what I can tell. The dude was a stud. And I swear to god, 75% of his dialogue begins with "Yeah, well....(enter nonsensical musing here)."
  • Maybe one of the reasons I like this movie is that my dad used to quote the famous line "What we have here....is a failure....to communicate" all the damn time when I was younger. That's definitely the reason I sought out the movie in the first place. It's a movie from his generation and it's from the turbulent late 60s which makes it interesting to me on it's own. And Newman's character has been highly influential on damn near 50 years worth of movie protagonists who love to stick it to the man, mannnn.
  • The score by Lalo Schifrin is awesome, with a great, simple main theme played on a guitar and some other kinda wild parts like this one song that sounds like several banjos looped with reverb on it. Pretty cool.
  • The whole movie is an exercise in subtlety. We hardly know a damn thing about Luke or what has gone on in his life or why he has such a hard time with authority. We get one glimpse into his back-story when his ailing mom, step-brother and nephew roll up in a pickup truck to visit him. Hardly a god damn thing is explicitly said, but we can deduce that Luke's father took off before he was born, his mom is dying from emphysema, he's had a complete falling out with most of his family, he almost got married but shit fell apart and he was always his mom's favorite son. He is stand-offish, but perhaps only because he's embarrassed of his situation. You can tell he cares deep down. They give him his old banjo, his mom is seen silently crying knowing this will be the last time she sees her son and that's it. When Luke receives word later that his mom died, his reaction is utterly heartbreaking.
  • The movie must have made a big impression on me when I first saw it because I named one of my old bands after the character Dragline, played by George Kennedy (who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor). Dragline's character arc is very interesting. He starts out as morally nebulous and as the top dog amongst the prisoners, he bristles at Luke's smirking and uppity attitude. He's set up as a villian; a huge, hulking illiterate southerner with questionable motives. On Saturdays, the guards allow boxing matches between the prisoners and Dragline naturally challenges Luke and pummels the shit out of him, but Luke refuses to go down. He just keeps getting back up after every knock down. Later that night, Luke bluffs his way to win a huge pot at poker with a nothing hand. After that, ol' Dragline decides he likes Luke's non-traditional ways and becomes his loyal friend and supporter of all of Luke's future antics. But, when Dragline comes along on Luke's final escape attempt, he has that classic and sad "Aw, shit, I've been in prison too long and the outside world scares me" realization and knows that he can't hang with Luke's brash nature.
Watching this movie in 2011 is a bit weird since the cultural context has changed so much, but as far as old and "classic" films go I find "Cool Hand Luke" to be highly watchable and equally funny and sad. I can't say the same for that many older films.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

How to bum out your girlfriend in 20 movies or less

Months ago, my girlfriend expressed interest in learning more about movies. She's not a movie nerd like me, but she knows good flicks when she sees them and definitely has specific tastes, not to mention an incredible memory for what she hears and reads. Like we'll watch a movie once and she'll quote back the whole thing at random times and I'll be like, "huh?" I still regularly botch quotes from "Super Troopers" and I've seen that movie an excessive amount of times.

But, there are a great many classic or well-known movies that she hasn't seen yet. I was excited that she wanted to learn more so I made a list of 20 movies that I thought she should see at some point for a variety of reasons. Some are personal favorites of mine, some are important benchmarks in their genres and some are just kinda standard classics. We were in the midst of a year long LDR when I made the list and she didn't want to watch them alone, so the list had to chill for a while. Recently, my girlfriend moved across the country to live with me here in Seattle because she's awesome like that and we have begun to attack the list.

Here's the list, which is no real particular order:

1. Blade Runner (1982) dir. Ridley Scott
2. The Godfather (1972) dir. Francis Ford Coppola
3. Rashomon (1950) dir. Akira Kurosawa
4. Rear Window (1954) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
5. Heat (1995) dir. Michael Mann
6. Alien (1979) dir. Ridley Scott
7. Aliens (1986) dir. James Cameron
8. Full Metal Jacket (1987) dir. Stanley Kubrick
9. RoboCop (1980) dir. Paul Verhoven
10. Akira (1988) dir. Katsuhiro Otomo
11. Princess Mononoke (1997) dir. Hayao Miyazaki
12. Jaws (1975) dir. Stephen Spielberg
13. Cool Hand Luke (1967) dir. Stuart Rosenberg
14. The Outsiders (1983) dir. Francis Ford Coppola
15. Stand By Me (1986) dir. Rob Reiner
16. The Terminator (1984) dir. James Cameron
17. Die Hard (1988) dir. John McTiernan
18. The Thing (1982) dir. John Carpenter
19. Rocky (1976) dir. Sylvester Stallone
20. Phantasm (1979) dir. Don Coscarelli

As you can see, that's a pretty dudely list that's heavy on the horror, sci-fi and action flicks. The girlfriend has a strong aversion to horror films because they genuinely freak her out and cause visceral reactions. I keep telling her this is awesome because I haven't had those sorts of reactions to many horror flicks since I was a young buck. So I'm excited to show her some shining examples of the genre and hopefully she won't break up with me after she watches "Alien" for the first time.

The other night, we started in on the list and she chose "Cool Hand Luke" to watch first. I hadn't seen it in a good 5 years I'd say, so it was fun watching it again and I'll post a "hilarious" review soon here, and will probably do the same for these flicks as we watch them. If we make it through half of them and she's still speaking to me, I'll consider our relationship solid as a rock!

Monday, February 7, 2011

A preview of "Drive Angry 3D" and why Nicolas Cage is one of my favorite actors


As previously mentioned, I really enjoy Nicolas Cage movies. There are 3 categories of Nicolas Cage movies. There are the objectively good ones, where he was actually trying to give a good quality dramatic performance like "Raising Arizona," "Adaptation" and "Leaving Las Vegas" (for which he won an Oscar for Best Actor).

Then there the arguably good Nic Cage movies, and these are some of my all-time favorite movies in general. Flicks such as "The Rock," "Face-Off" and "Con Air" all display Cage's now infamous wide-eyed craziness and tendency to go overboard on delivering his dialogue, which help make these movies endlessly entertaining and very quotable. So, you can make the argument that despite the flaws and over-the-top nature of these sorts of Nic Cage flicks, they are still fun to watch and generally well-made action movies.

2 things: 1) He's Castor Troy and 2) WOOOOOOOOOO

Then there's the genuinely bad Nicolas Cage movies. The ones he clearly made just to get paid and he probably didn't really give it 100%. This makes up a good chunk of his recent output. As I understand it, he blames his financial adviser, whom Cage is suing, for stealing his money and mishandling his taxes among other grievances. So the dude is basically broke and will more or less do any movie he's offered. This has led to such gems as "Next," "Knowing," "Season Of The Witch," "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," and "Bangkok Dangerous." And that's only the last 2 years or so. All objectively "bad" movies, but all fairly entertaining. Some more than others. Like the remake of "The Wicker Man," one of my personal favorites of this sort.

Bottom line, I respect the man's work ethic and I can usually find some sort of redeemable quality amidst all mind-boggling crappiness.

So let me tell you why I am excited for "Drive Angry 3D."
  1. Nic Cage.
  2. I love 3D movies. That is one gimmick I can get behind.
  3. I love revenge flicks, and this one looks chock full of it.
  4. Hot chicks are a big plus.
Plus, it seems like there's satanic cult/exploitation movie angle to this flick that I wasn't expecting from the initial teaser trailer.

Some other things we can deduce from the full trailer:
  • Hell is indeed already walking the earth.
  • David Morse must also really need work.
  • Lots of badass muscle cars, naturally.
  • Some devil cult killed Cage's daughter and stole her baby, so there you have it: THE PLOT!
  • Satan's administrative assistant, played by William "HE'S GOT SPACE DEMENTIA" Fichtner, is out to bring Cage back to hell or something.
  • Yep, that's a hatchet cutting off a bit of Cage's hair (well, probably a wig) in slow motion, deal with it.
  • Brief shot of April from "Eastbound and Down," glad to see she's getting work.
  • Hot chick with a southern accent, short shorts and very unclear motives: check, check and check.
  • Lots of explosions, flying cars, Nic Cage's badass gun and some very questionable CG.
  • And for the record, Nic Cage is not concerned in the least about his chances of being let back into hell. Just so we're clear. Good.
Welp, sign me up.

Friday, February 4, 2011

"The Mechanic" (2011) Dir. Simon West

Ben: So, uh, Jason...you wanna...uh, get some beers later? Maybe pick up some chicks?
Ben:........Jason?
Jason: I'm sorry, mate. What's your name again?
Ben: (sigh)

Two of my favorite actors together in an action movie about professional hitmen directed by the guy who made "Con Air," what could go wrong?

Well, a shitload could go wrong actually. And it did.

First of all, Jason Statham is awesome. The dude has made himself into one of the very best action stars of the 2000s. From getting his start in British crime movies like "Snatch" to blasting his way through punk-ass eurotrash henchmen in the "Transporter" movies. Not to mention the insanity of both "Crank" movies and even stealing the show in the woefully underachieving "The Expendables." And he's done it all with full-on male pattern baldness! He just doesn't give a fuck.

Ben Foster, on the other hand, is an actual "Actor" with a capital A. No one plays a troubled or slightly crazy young man with issues better than this guy. He's got that shit down pat. He gained notoriety in small, but scene-stealing roles in "3:10 To Yuma" and "30 Days of Night" and then gave an incredible performance opposite crazy-ass Woody Harrelson in "The Messenger" as an Iraq War veteran given the duty of going around to the families of soldiers who died in combat and giving them the awful news. It was one of the very best films of 2009 and it was a bit overlooked by most folks. He was also awesome in the sci-fi flick "Pandorum."

So, with a real critically acclaimed role under his belt, I guess Foster decided it was time to do a fun action flick. I know I would if I were him. Sounds like a good time. But, maybe he should choose his scripts a bit more carefully in the future because this is clearly a one-star kind of movie. Statham and Foster never really show any kind of chemistry, not even in an adversarial kind of way. This is definitely not a buddy-buddy kind of action flick, their characters form an uneasy sort of bond. But even then it still felt very forced.

No real motives are given for why any of the characters do what they do. We have no idea why Statham is a hitman, we just know he's really damn good at it and his "fixer" is played briefly by Donald Sutherland of all people. Then he dies and his son, played by Foster, is total fuck-up but wants to somehow avenge his dad's death, Statham reluctantly tries to mentor him and it all just kinda falls apart and doesn't really go anywhere until the completely absurd ending.

Clearly I'm devoting far too much thought to a shitty action flick that got dumped off in January, which is where Hollywood buries the flicks they already know are intrinsically bad and won't make much money. That's what happens to completely unnecessary remakes of Charles Bronson movies that no one saw the first time around. But, you know, shit got blown up, bad dudes got their bones broken and Jason Statham was a badass.  There was just no need for 2 major stars here. I think Foster could definitely rock his own action flick and hopefully he will some day.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

The Appleseed Cast - "Steps and Numbers"

Perhaps my favorite song by this band. I've been feeling this band really hard the last few months. Just the wimpiest of wimpy jams. I highly recommend both "Low Level Owl" records.


When the outro kicks in at the 4 minute mark, it is just chill-out city, population: you.

"Do you feel alone in the secret? Are you standing there just weeping? Do you feel the light is gone?
Is it hard to remain strong in the face of all you know in a world that's brought you low?

Stand there, dance with. Stand there dance with a memory. The caption reads, 'It's all over now.'"

"Deliverance" (1972) Dir. John Boorman

I don't know much about guns, but I'm pretty sure a shotgun won't work after getting submerged in water. Maybe that's why this poster shot never happens in the movie. Damn you, Boorman!


Sanford note: One thing I'll be doing with this blog is reviewing whatever movies I happen to see and feel like writing about. The lengths will vary from some more one-sentence duders to many paragraphs, I'm sure. 'Nuff said!

Surprisingly, I had never seen this seminal American thriller about a camping trip gone terribly wrong. I bought the DVD what seems like years ago and just hadn't gotten around to watching it.


Of course, I already knew what goes down in this movie because, well, I guess "Spoiler Alerts" weren't really in style back in the 70s so "Deliverance" is just universally known as the flick where some city boys get raped by some backwoods hicks and some poor fetal alcohol syndrome lookin' kid riffs it out really hard on a banjo. With THAT kind of reputation, how can you say no? Sounds like a fun Wednesday night, right?

Maybe that's why I put off watching it for so long because I felt like I'd already seen it. So, I won't bore you with a long-winded review and just break down some bullet point thoughts on the ol' backwoods rape adventure movie.

  • The casting of the 4 friends who go canoeing down the river was pretty spot-on and they all do a great job of conveying a real sense of dread, fear and paranoia as the movie goes on. Jon Voight's performance seems a bit off at first, which is kind of his style I've noticed. He just seems a bit too detached here, but it sort of works as all the trauma builds up. 
  • Burt effin' Reynolds was absolutely ripped for this movie. His arms look like pythons! Plus, he got the most fun role of being the weirdo survivalist and his character throws in the movie's social commentary bit about man raping the environment. Then guess what happens?
  • The infamous male-on-male rape scene complete with the "Squeal like a pig, boy!" line that has been parodied and referenced endlessly was still very off-putting and hard to watch. This being an American-made movie, you don't see any real graphic shit, but you know what's happening and you know you don't like it. Still, when this came out in 1972 it seriously bummed a lot of people out. People would get up and leave during this scene and that sort of thing. A serious bummer.
  • Honestly, the dueling banjos scene was almost weirder than the rape scene. The banjo kid is unbelievably creepy looking and when he and Ronny Cox (who went on to play basically the same the evil old guy in a suit in "Robocop" and "Total Recall") play their lil' jam together it's seriously fucking weird. And then there's the awesome near-360 degree shot of the banjo kid lurkin' the dudes on a bridge as they glide underneath him and he never looks away. Pretty damn cool.
Fun fact: 2 years later, British director John Boorman followed up this critically-acclaimed and popular film with none other than the infamous-for-other-reasons "Zardoz" with Sean Connery running around a sci-fi dystopia in tiny red underwear. A genuinely awful and awesome flick, peep this trailer if you dare: ZARDOZ!

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

One Sentence Reviews of the 2011 Oscar Nominated Best Pictures

Jennifer Lawrence and John Hawkes aka Dusty fuggin' Powers in "Winter's Bone." More like Winter's Boner, amirite? Okay, got that shitty joke out of the way. Good.

This is going to be difficult because I tend to be pretty verbose about movies, but I'm gonna give this a go. There will most definitely be some awful run-on sentences ahead.

As a disclaimer, I have terribly specific and stupid opinions on movies. For the most part I tend to prefer a crowd-pleaser over an art film. My favorite genres are horror, sci-fi and action flicks. On any given day I would rather go see the new future-budget-bin Nic Cage flick than the new pretentious and "edgy" Coen Brothers flick. That's where I'm at. I like a lot of shitty, shitty movies.

But, for some reason, I LOVE watching the Oscars every year even though I tend to dislike most of the obvious "Oscar bait" flicks that Miramax or the Weinstein Bros tend to shit out and obnoxiously promote just in time for Oscar season. It's a silly and superficial game, but I love movies and I love to hear people talk about them so here I am.  And for the record, upping the Best Picture nominees from 5 to 10 is an absolute joke and I hope they ditch that crap soon.

Yet another disclaimer: Surprise, surprise....I haven't seen all the nominated Best Pictures probably because I was too busy watching "Season of the Witch" and "Tron Legacy"......twice. It was sick! But I'm going to make pithy comments about them anyways, so HA. Annnnyways:

SANFORD'S ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS OF THE 2011 OSCAR NOMINATED BEST PICTURES

"Black Swan": I get it "Pi" guy, women are crazy, but I was fucking bored until Portman started fingerblasting herself and then I was bored again.

"The Fighter": Three words: Christian fucking Bale.

"Inception": All "THERE IS NO SPOON" jokes aside, I think Christopher Nolan is the best director of the last decade and this flick was beautifully shot and edited and was just an all-around fun and sort of brainy for a summer blockbuster.

"The Kids Are All Right": I did not see this but man, how shitty and annoying was Annette Bening's character in "American Beauty?" (God that movie sucks).

"The King's Speech": A great example of the aforementioned "Oscar Bait" type movies and yes of course, Colin Firth and Geoffery Rush have great and stirring performances in this, but they always do in nearly every film they're in and everything else about this movie is just a unremarkable bio-pic snoozer.

"127 Hours": James Franco is wonderful in this movie and strikes a great balance between a realistic and slightly crazy inner monologue, but all the hype about the dreaded arm chop scene didn't quite deliver like I expected, but then again I watch garbage like "Hostel Part II" without blinking an eye so what do I know?

"The Social Network": This is the one movie of the nominees that I will probably never see because I just don't fucking care about a smarmy, quick-talking, jargon-filled, shitty-white-people-doing-shitty-things-to-other-white-people (aka SWPDSTTOWP, my least favorite kind of movie) fest about fucking Facebook.

"Toy Story 3": I haven't seen this or the second Toy Story movie, but the first one was great and I like just about every film Pixar has made so I'm sure I'll see this eventually and probably cry because that's what Pixar does: make Eric Sanford cry like a lil' bitch.

"True Grit": In its own right, this movie is kind of funny and entertaining, yes, but it's insulting that it is nominated for 10 Oscars because it's one of the laziest scripts the Coen Brothers have ever crapped out and fucking Lebowski already won his "We Owed You One (trademark)" Oscar last year, so what's the big god damn deal here about a mediocre remake of silly John Wayne western?

"Winter's Bone": This is a harrowing, suspenseful and noir-influenced (I guess?) story of some scary-ass, poverty-stricken, backwoods Missouri meth selling families and a young girl just trying to get some god damn answers about her missing father and it had me utterly captivated from beginning to end.

AWRIGHT, there ya have it. "Winter's Bone" is by far my favorite of the nominated films and I hope it wins everything and pulls a "Hurt Locker" on everyone, except for Best Supporting Actor because I want my dawg Bale to win that shit.