GI Joe vs. Transformers vs. Planet of the Apes

I feel bad for not posting this week so I'll make a comeback that's pretty cheap. Hope everyone had a Thanksgiving and got to see the "rick-roll" at Macy's Day Parade.

Anyways, I've learned that comic publisher IDW, which generally puts out really crappy licensed books, is going to be doing deluxe reprints of Marvel's GI Joe: A Real American Hero comic. Lots of folks overlook the significance of this comic because it's assumed to be a lame licensed adaptation of a relatively speaking, lame cartoon. Marvel's GI Joe is way different though and almost reads like an Apartment 3-G story arc only if Apartment 3-G was about international crises, arms-dealing, and secret ninja religions. The writing is really great and you have story-arcs which lasted for years of issues. All 150-some issues of the series were written by the same guy, Larry Hama, who's pretty legendary. The art is worth mentioning too and I think a little bit more thought went into how the panels were visualized and directed than what one generally sees in mainstream American comics from back then and even today. Compared to other Marvel comics from the era, the art is maybe a little bit conservative, if that's the right word, and looks much more like something from the 1970s. I'm not sure if this was intended but it definitely brings out a lot more of the poppish drama which makes the book so fun. The issue below profiles one of Snake-Eyes' missions. The comic has no dialogue whatsoever and is generally considered to be one of the better mainstream comics from the era.




I also ran across a pretty cool podcast, here. It's from Destroy All Podcasts DX. These guys are pretty famous in the anime/manga/sentai/awesome toys corner of the internet and I see them referenced all the time whenever I'm looking up Robotech or Macross news. In this episode they discuss the 1980s Transformers animated movie in good detail. They pretty much tell the whole movie in about an hour (nearly the length of the animated film as they point out), some of the production history, differences between American and Japanese versions, and some of the post-movie continuity. Some of my friends know how much I'm into this movie. I'd say its probably my favorite 80s kids movie and maybe even one of my favorite animated movies of all time. There was once a time when I could recite the first 35 minutes of the film, probably up until Optimus Prime dies. I could probably do the first 10 minutes today. As a kid, I used to rent this movie every week until I convinced my Mom to buy it for me as it'd save us money. It definitely did. I still probably watch it once a year or so. I'm also a huge fan of the soundtrack. The soundtrack is all pop and high-powered heavy metal. Somehow, I have three copies of it. One of the guys in the podcast mentions a petition to add the songs as downloadable content for Rock Band.


Despite Ironhide's advice, Prime commands, "We don't have enough energon cubes to power a full scale assault. Ready the shuttle for launch!"

In supreme beard news, Fox Movie Channel is billing itself as "Channel of the Apes" this weekend and will be running specials and documentaries alongside the original five Apes films as well as TV Movie versions of select episodes from the 1970s series. I watched part of the original film and some of the documentaries last night over at a friend's house. If you have the time, tune in and soak in some Apes goodness for a while.




As for my own beard, it's been trimmed. I'll have a picture up sometime this weekend probably. I feel like the trimming sort of makes this blog a failure but I also feel like I'll get some awesome shape out of the beard by occasionally trimming it up. Truth be told, I felt like I had to trim it a bit because of work. Work has been keeping me from getting around to posts too as we're heading into a really busy, and critical, end-of-the-year. I'm not sure what this week will look like in terms of postage but I'll get around to something. But yeah, important, potentially world-changing work week coming up. We'll see what happens.

You know those CDs you buy that seem like a big mistake after you first bought them but then turn out to be awesome years later? Above is my latest and greatest rediscovery.

Dungeons and Dragons 4E

In a few hours some buddies and I will be playing in our D&D Campaign: Might of the Inquisition. Today marks our 10th Adventure. We'll continue learning the mysteries of the Labyrinth and hopefully track down Kujo, Ulthand Deepgem's pet Dire Boar, and probably get some sweet gems in return. So far our time in the labyrinth has been mostly about thwarting slave traders. The campaign has been a lot of fun. I still have some issues with 4th Edition but they're getting easier to overlook I think.



After D&D I'll finally start my "homework" which I've been putting off all weekend. I'm not looking forward to work this week or even the next four weeks of work for that matter.

No More Doctor Who On MPT

Last week me and the roomies picked up one of those Digital Satellite boxes which folks without cable or satellite will need by February 2009 in order to continue picking up broadcasts, etc. It's pretty great. Previously we had about 3 channels (NBC, CBS, and ABC), but with the digital thingy we get about 12 or so, great picture too. I was most excited for the MPT/PBS stations we'd pick up as I was looking forward to getting reacquainted with NOVA, Charlie Rose, and especially classic Doctor Who. It looks like MPT has kicked out the Doctor though. Here I'm suffering through freaking Weekend Update when I could be watching the Doctor outwit some Autons. Huge Bummer.




I went to Soundgarden tonight and picked up a Turkish Psych compilation and Liege & Lief by Fairport Convention. Good stuff. Soon I'll be picking up Religious Knives from Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label(photo above). I also picked up the November issue of Wire which is probably the first music magazine I've bought in a few years. I know I promised a few posts about some worthwhile movies coming out soon. I'll be posting about some upcoming shows in Baltimore too. Have a good rest-of-the-weekend everybody. I've got Dungeons & Dragons and homework tomorrow.

Cashiers Du Cinema 100

I saw a link earlier for Cashiers Du Cinema's list of Best 100 Films which was recently published and figured I'd share it with everyone. There are a few surprises here but nothing too odd. Here she be:

• Citizen Kane - Orson Welles
• The Night of the Hunter - Charles Laughton
• The Rules of the Game (La Règle du jeu) - Jean Renoir
• Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (L'Aurore) - Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
• L'Atalante - Jean Vigo
• M - Fritz Lang
• Singin' in the Rain - Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
• Vertigo - Alfred Hitchcock
• Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis) - Marcel Carné
• The Searchers - John Ford
• Greed - Erich von Stroheim
• Rio Bravo - Howard Hawkes
• To Be or Not to Be - Ernst Lubitsch
• Tokyo Story - Yasujiro Ozu
• Contempt (Le Mépris) - Jean-Luc Godard
• Tales of Ugetsu (Ugetsu monogatari) - Kenji Mizoguchi
• City Lights - Charlie Chaplin
• The General - Buster Keaton
• Nosferatu the Vampire - Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
• The Music Room - Satyajit Ray
• Freaks - Tod Browning
• Johnny Guitar - Nicholas Ray
• The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain) - Jean Eustache
• The Great Dictator - Charlie Chaplin
• The Leopard (Le Guépard) - Luchino Visconti
• Hiroshima, My Love - Alain Resnais
• The Box of Pandora (Loulou) - Georg Wilhelm Pabst
• North by Northwest - Alfred Hitchcock
• Pickpocket - Robert Bresson
• Golden Helmet (Casque d'or) - Jacques Becker
• The Barefoot Contessa - Joseph Mankiewitz
• Moonfleet - Fritz Lang
• Diamond Earrings (Madame de…) - Max Ophüls
• Pleasure - Max Ophüls
• The Deer Hunter - Michael Cimino
• The Adventure - Michelangelo Antonioni
• Battleship Potemkin - Sergei M. Eisenstein
• Notorious - Alfred Hitchcock
• Ivan the Terrible - Sergei M. Eisenstein
• The Godfather - Francis Ford Coppola
• Touch of Evil - Orson Welles
• The Wind - Victor Sjöström
• 2001: A Space Odyssey - Stanley Kubrick
• Fanny and Alexander - Ingmar Bergman
• The Crowd - King Vidor
• 8 1/2 - Federico Fellini
• La Jetée - Chris Marker
• Pierrot le Fou - Jean-Luc Godard
• Confessions of a Cheat (Le Roman d'un tricheur) - Sacha Guitry
• Amarcord - Federico Fellini
• Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bête) - Jean Cocteau
• Some Like It Hot - Billy Wilder
• Some Came Running - Vincente Minnelli
• Gertrud - Carl Theodor Dreyer
• King Kong - Ernst Shoedsack & Merian J. Cooper
• Laura - Otto Preminger
• The Seven Samurai - Akira Kurosawa
• The 400 Blows - François Truffaut
• La Dolce Vita - Federico Fellini
• The Dead - John Huston
• Trouble in Paradise - Ernst Lubitsch
• It's a Wonderful Life - Frank Capra
• Monsieur Verdoux - Charlie Chaplin
• The Passion of Joan of Arc - Carl Theodor Dreyer
• À bout de souffle - Jean-Luc Godard
• Apocalypse Now - Francis Ford Coppola
• Barry Lyndon - Stanley Kubrick
• La Grande Illusion - Jean Renoir
• Intolerance - David Wark Griffith
• A Day in the Country (Partie de campagne) - Jean Renoir
• Playtime - Jacques Tati
• Rome, Open City - Roberto Rossellini
• Livia (Senso) - Luchino Visconti
• Modern Times - Charlie Chaplin
• Van Gogh - Maurice Pialat
• An Affair to Remember - Leo McCarey
• Andrei Rublev - Andrei Tarkovsky
• The Scarlet Empress - Joseph von Sternberg
• Sansho the Bailiff - Kenji Mizoguchi
• Talk to Her - Pedro Almodóvar
• The Party - Blake Edwards
• Tabu - Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
• The Bandwagon - Vincente Minnelli
• A Star Is Born - George Cukor
• Mr. Hulot's Holiday - Jacques Tati
• America, America - Elia Kazan
• El - Luis Buñuel
• Kiss Me Deadly - Robert Aldrich
• Once Upon a Time in America - Sergio Leone
• Daybreak (Le Jour se lève) - Marcel Carné
• Letter from an Unknown Woman - Max Ophüls
• Lola - Jacques Demy
• Manhattan - Woody Allen
• Mulholland Dr. - David Lynch
• My Night at Maud's (Ma nuit chez Maud) - Eric Rohmer
• Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard) - Alain Resnais
• The Gold Rush - Charlie Chaplin
• Scarface - Howard Hawks
• Bicycle Thieves - Vittorio de Sica
• Napoléon - Abel Gance

Old But Good Horizons....

The past two days have been a bit hectic. Sorry for the blackout in postage. I suppose I slept for 12 hours yesterday. I got home around 6:30PM, made dinner, then watched the end of Nightly News. I got sucked into Inside Edition because of some story they had about a kid with one of those werewolf syndromes and eventually fell asleep on the couch until 9:20 when I got up and called it a night. It's the longest I've slept in a while and probably the earliest I've gotten to sleep since before I entered my 20's. I was able to wake up early which was great for work but ran into a ridiculous amount of traffic which put me at work around my newest average start time of 9:00AM. Sucked.

As for beardedness, if I've learned anything about beards besides that they're pretty cool to have it's that they can be tough to deal with in the morning for the following reasons:

1. You know how there's such a thing as "bedhead?" Same goes for beards. Often when I wake up my beard is all smooshed on one side, fluffed on the other, really unruly, and a little difficult to tame.
   
2. Bedbeard is never made easier by drooling in one's sleep. As a kid I thought drooling was just this goofy thing unique to cartoon animals and Homer Simpson. Today, it's me and the beard's worst enemy.
3. While I'm not so sure that looking at the beard in the morning is "tough," it definitely holds you up as it tends to hypnotize you when first seeing it, especially while brushing your teeth.

Trust me though, the upside of growing a beard greatly outweighs the disadvantages. Don't let any of the above intimidate you guys (or gals) from pursuing the beard of your dreams.

Lately I've been listening to the music of this fine bearded fellow, Ersen.



He plays this crazy Turkish (or Anadolu) psychedelic music that is really funky and danceable. The production is sort of reminiscent of dub but pretty unique I think. I absolutely love it. You can find some videos on YouTube or you can go to Finders Keepers' website and listen to some of the mp3s. The other one to check out is Selda Bagcan. My introduction to Anatolian Psych was based on comparisons between Selda and some Korean Psych which I enjoyed. I have two of her albums now and while I don't understand a word she's singing I'm pretty sure she's my favorite female singer.




I'll be reviewing one of the Finders Keepers' compilations here in a little bit. The compilation is called Bearded Ladies and features female psych from all over the world.

Please check out MLMB reader, Ethan's, latest blog at http://www.6thor7th.blogspot.com. He's got some thoughtful comments about the Star Trek trailer and Trek in general. I'm sure he'll be posting some interesting stuff pretty often.

Finally, I picked up one of those Digital TV converters today at Target. For anyone who needs one, be sure to apply for a coupon online. It'll save you like $40 I think. Anyways, I hooked it up and went from having like three channels to twelve. I'm going to go and watch some late night PBS. Later.

Week Seven - Beard File

Altogether I feel like it's coming along pretty nicely. This is officially the longest I've been able to hold down a beard.