Those lazy Virginia tech victims?!....could they not've even gotten a round off?

My house mate 'E', an avid Dr. Laura Schlessinger-watcher emailed me this today:

From the blog of the American Armed Forces Radio Network agony aunt, DrLaura Schlessinger:
"I am “the proud mother of a deployed American paratrooper,” and because of that fact I have, perhaps, a unique perspective on the massacre at Virginia Tech. As a mother I, of course, thought about how horrendous this whole nightmare is to the families of the victims as well as all the emotional damage to the survivors. From listening to the reports on this heinous occurrence,

I heard repeatedly that the shooter had to reload several times and went from classroom to classroom.

As a military mom, I immediately wished that our young people had the same obligation and experience that all young folks in Israel have: two years of military training and service.

Those reloading and trolling periods were windows of opportunity that only young folks trained militarily would have been able to use to subdue or terminate the perp and save many lives."
Questions:

"Terminate the Perp?" is this fecking Judge Dredd or Robocop?

What's a trolling period?

Does she know what unique means? surely there is more than one military mom in the world with this persective?

This is reminding me of the old Dr. Laura-watching days in Dublin. Oh yeah, you can also get a Dr. Laura doll if you so wish (and if you have special voodoo powers please do)

The Glomp Project

Glomp me till I Frunk

Loving Dr. David Thrope's account of attending an anime convention on something awful, with the great ethnographic article:

Perhaps Some Animes are in Order

"I'm Louis Theroux at the orgy, I'm Louis Theroux and his wry smile"

Is it my imagination, or is this girl kind of checking me out? And… wait a minute… she's not wearing any pants. Jackpot! Just be cool. Girl with no pants right next to me. What do I do? What does "Glomp" mean? Come on, Dave, don't mess this one up…
"You're not even going to glomp me?" she asks coyly.
"I'm not really sure what that means," I sheepishly reply.

Has SA found it's Louis Theroux?

Apparently this is Glomp means.

ZODIAC (2007) trailer

the trailer doesn't do it justice because is mostly talking but it's amazing

Is Robocop based on a real person?

When looking up some Zodiac stuff on the ethergut, I came across Chasing the Frog a pretty detailed movie site that specialises in comparing the fact and fiction of movies based on real-life cases, like Hollywoodland. Well they do stretch it a bit by including The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Their 300 section has some inadvertant laughs:


Was the Persian King Xerxes really bald and 9-feet-tall?

No. The real Persian King Xerxes had a beard and was much shorter. He never went to the front line at the Battle of Thermopylae as his character does in the movie 300. Actor Rodrigo Santoro portrays the 9-foot-tall Xerxes in the film. Rodrigo, who stars on ABC's Lost, is around 6'2". His height and voice were both altered for the role of the Persian King. Director Zack Snyder talked about Xerxes' exaggerated features in an interview, "...because we scaled him as we did, when his normal voice played, it was even stranger to me. He was out of scale of his voice, not that it wasn't commanding." The actor's actual voice is heard in the film, only with the pitch scaled down.down.

phew, at least that's settled.

P.S. looking up zodiac stuff is a foolhardy enterprise, see the real TV phone-in thing the Brian Cox bit is based on, now Robert Graysmith's scrupulously researched investigation is open to the ramblings of the random yahoos that comment on youtube videos.

An actual Jimmny conversation....at the Goober Patrol gig

Peter Andre and Jordan unveil the 'doner kebab' of wedding cakes

I went to see my mate Tim Tims in his great punk band Goober Patrol at The Cricketers' Rest, check out their youtubes where they lost their galleon and went bowling and dressed up like kirk and co. They were playing with the Mustard City Rockers, which in a small town Norwich stylee also played in the Rose when I was working last night.

Anyway it was a great night, but as usual being allowed out of room to talk to ladies is always a faux pas waiting to happened.

Nice Lady: so your doing a PhD on superheroes, you must really like superheroes.*

Jimmny: Well yeah, but I understand in terms of their historical and cultural context, I don't think Superman's a real person, even if he was I'd probably think he was a boring dick, I'm not a lunatic Christian that thinks there's special superpowered being that's gonna scoop me up to heaven and give me a big hug for being good.

Nice Lady: I'm a Christian

[the actual words of rant are hazy as blogger did that weird overwrite thing that sometimes happens when I tried first tried to type this up on Sunday night, but is was along those lines, and of course you can tell the punchline a mile off, and her friend was a christian too and they had to leave early and go to mass...]

*See here's the problem this is a perfectly reasonable sentence but I sometimes feel that when you say you like superheroes, some religious types think you are a hop, skip and a jump away from being a converted godbiter just because they think you believe in fictional characters that resurrect themselves and fly and shit.

Who's to say that in two thousand years time there won't be any difference in authrity between the old and new testament and the book of mormon and Jordan's autobiography? Can you imagine that travelling two thousand years in the future ,say, and there's factions of Jordanists and you are trying to explain that she was just a model and she married a guy made up of sausage. And they're like 'heresy!' Jordan's secret orbs contain the secret to eternal life and we will all get to live in her fluffy white mansion and get to sing 'Insansia' with St. Peter Andre for eternity....god and then the Jodie Marshists weigh in and it's World War VII...

One person hears a voice and he/she is psychotic, a few thousand or million hear voice and it's a 'religion' and you kill people because of it. It is like people fighting over whether the wolf or the three pigs were 'right', so you're a Little Red Riding Hoodist I can't talk to ya I'm a Big Bad Wolfist....

Where did that come from, see what happens when you watch a Bill Hicks dvd over and over.

Never forget.....

...This lunatic still has the capability to blow up the whole planet. Voices in his head from a fictional character talk to him and help him in his decision-making processes and he's in charge of the most powerful nation on earth, I keep trying to forget this, but I can't.

Caddy Powers versus the World versus the Jimmny

Most memes are a pain in the hole, but comic geek-PhD student brother-in-arms Caddy Powers has been hosting a good one. In this five questions meme anyone who comments on this post will get five questions from yours truly and you answer them on your blog, and hilarity will ensue...maybe. If you don't have a blog, I dunno, I could come round your house and ask you questions and I'll photocopy your answers and post it in random peoples' letterboxes. Anyway, here's Caddy's questions, which thankfully for me and you hasn't investigated the underbelly of Jimmny's dark desires too much, although I have managed to jam them in there

anyway.

1: Name one film / TV show you should enjoy but do not

Man, I have loads of these, it's always more galling when something you love is shit, it's like a relationship gone sour. Of course X-Men III: The Last Stand , Superman Returns and Spider-Man 3 are prime offenders in these areas, but it's harsh to say I don't enjoy them, I'm still drawn in and on the verge of tears so they must work on some level. (I think sci-fi/superhero stuff is the melodrama of teenage boys, to paraphrase Tim Bisley, I cried like a child during Robocop 2 the bit the dad and picture). I think the biggest recent disappointment was Van Helsing. It should've been great and Stephen Sommers was on tv all the time going blah blah I love old Universal horrors and this is really a homage to those movies. If he loves these movies so much why make a film so shit no one will have the inclination to ever watch a Universal horror ever again. I love Universal horrors, they are partly the reason I got in to film studies, watching Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein and stuff like The Beast with Five Fingers (we all can relate to continually tussling with the beast with five fingers, it's a daily struggle).

Buffy's another blind spot and Lord of the Rings . I know this is heresy in some quarters, I know they're amazing and good and all the rest of it, but I just don't enjoy anything with a dwarf (well obviously there are exceptions) or and elf in it. See I grew up with Dungeons and Dragons (feck I've never heard of Tunnels and Trolls, I don't want to play that, sounds like my private life) but remember seeing this madness no wonder people of my age and inclination are a bit touched in the head hey conspiracy nerds getta load of this!. I know D&D was Tolkein-inspired but whenever I see a whispy asexual elf and a grumpy dwarf with a axe I just go, fuck this! where's the sexy robot ladies and apocalypse. The pressure on you to like it is so immense that it's very hard to enjoy them, I mean I like Robocop (as I may have mentioned) but I don't give fuck if you like it or not, I don't force people to watch it (well, maybe sometimes) but say you don't like Lord of the Rings and people look at ya like you just shot their dog.

2: As a man who has had some pretty shitty jobs, is there any job you would find too humiliating even if it meant complete financially solvency for the forseeable future?

God, I don't know, it's a tough question for an impoverished PhD, as you would know yourself. This is like that Twilight Zone episode the box isn't it. I remember while job hunting going into a recruitment agency that specialized in manual work and there was a really nice old guy who just looked at my cv and just went, look, mostly what I've got is bin collecting and stuff and you're

just not cut out for it, it was like a scene from some 1930s flick (in my mind) and I was there I could give it a go? and he's just there, look you could do better. So I almost could've been a bin man, I may have glamorised it in my mind a bit, like it would be similar to the end of Office Space or something.

3:Somehow you are tricked onto going on Big Brother, how long would you last in the house and what would be the reason for your eviction (or your lack of eviction if you think you would win)?

I suppose like all of us in dark moments (and most moments watching Big Brother are dark) we imagine what it would be like to be in the house and brush shoulders with today's intellectual heroes such as 'warehouse operative' Bubble, Darren and the Jungle Cats, and of course Jade, who should have 'Is Cambridge in London?' engraved on her tombstone. What drives me mad is when they start talking about movies and don't know anything, they say things like, 'there was that movie, it's old from the seventies, it has a shark in it, I don't know what it's called, he had these massive jaws, what was that film again? and the other person is there, going 'I dunno'. And someone else who knows fuck all chimes in with 'authority' and says something like 'Shark? 1970s? definitely The Exorcist' and they are ready to fight to the death for their unfounded beliefs and I'm there nearly having a heart attack watching this shit.

When H from Steps was trying desperately to bond with Shilpa Shetty, he was there pretending to have knowledge of Bollywood because he saw that 'Bollywood actor' in that film with Arnold

Schwarzenegger when he's a secret agent. I'm there shouting at the screen, you mean Art Malick, don't you, like Pakistani-born British actor Art Malick?: So H has seen an indian-looking(to him) actor and just assumed he was a Bollywood actor. Shetty's there like 'dude, I've never heard of him, he's not a Bollywood actor'.

Fuck, haven't answered the question, I just went into a bizarre Big Brother reverie, the reasons I would be evicted are: 1. correcting people's grammar, 2. Appearing that I am a know-it-all just becuase I now what films people are talking about by even the scantest description, like a while back someone was going on about seeing a Ben Stiller comedy about a house and she couldn't remember the name and I went, what? Duplex and she was OMG! how did you know that! (it's not rocket science, how many Ben Stiller comedy's recently involve him and a house?)

Anyway, that and chronic masturbation would probably get me the boot, or maybe ensure my survival in the house, the public would miss my wee scrunched face and constant gibbering

4: Which Irish politican do you think is most likely to be a supervillan? You must indicate the type of villain they are, powers (if any) and who their evil minions are?

Sean Lemass and Brian Lenihan looked a bit scary, they would have a sort of scary eye death ray thing, and obviously Dev's flirtation with Hitler (ideologically not romantically, ouff, what an image) put him up there as supervillain. Dev would have a magic Irish dancing ray, like if he even glimpsed at you, you would immediately have to rip your front door off its hinges and start Michael Flatleying * all over the place like a mad man. Thomas Bryne of course, but mostly in the way that the Juggernaut's a supervillain, blindly following orders. Haughey of course, he was a villain in our house because of the 48 percent tax teachers and nurses had to pay in the 1980s when he was off partying and riding Terry Prone,** it's almost a porn name ain't it, but for intellectual pornnoisseurs. Yeah Haughey did have a super power, didn't he, magically sucking money out of everyones bank accounts. He's in hell now, eating every single crappy meal we all had to eat the 1980s, that's it Charlie boy eat your boiled bacon and angel delight. Nearly forgot John "The Brute" Burton his super power is making Irish people weep incontrollably that our amazing nation ever had some sort of braindead seal in charge of it for any period of time, it's lucky he didn't sell us all to another country for slave labour or meat, by accident, or something....

5: Prisoner Question: If you were on the village, would you rather be Number 6 or Number 2?

Number 6, man, every time. My love of The Prisoner Runs Deep. way too deep. That and Batman: The Animated Series were my friends in secondary school (christ! didn't know my old

school had a wiki entry, apparently at my old school : "we seek to provide an environment where the Christian values of mutual respect, tolerance, care and justice are encouraged and nurtured", so where does me being called a poof every day for five years because I like comics fit into that?)

It was the ulitmate teenage show to get into, when you're 14/15 and seeing yourself as Number 6 stomping down a corridor to bang some tables and break some saucers Goddamnit! It's followed me my whole life. When I came to norwich first and lived in halls, I felt like I was in the village the uni security guards all drove round in wee vans and I used to get up and look out the window, and think to myself: this is it, isn't it! I'm in the fucking village I am the Prisoner. I have the Prisoner box set from an ex and it's the ultimate emotional conundrum, we had been going out for two years and it was my birthday and she was going, 'well I don't really know what you're into so I'll get you something in HMV tomorrow' and I'm there going, cool the Prisoner on DVD would be great, but then I thought wait a minute, you've been going out with me for two years and listening to my demented rants and gibbering and you still don't know what stuff I like? So in conclusion I have The Prisoner boxset but not a girlfriend, who wins? No.6 wins, every time baba baaaa baba *ching* baba baaaa.....Anyway, it was one of the moments where you realise this person knows nothing about you really and you're hanging around because you're gullible oaf.

*Jeez, sorry about the Michael Flatley link, if you don't follow it, this is what happens. There's a picture of Mickey Flats in mid air without his top on. The following credo appears: 'Follow your Dreams, because you wouldn't want it so bad it you couldn't have it' what the hell? is this a bizarre Irish dancing S&M porn site?

**UPDATE: jeez II, never get let the truth get in the way of a good wordplay gag as finger-on-the-Irish-politics pulse correspondant Karl has pointed out, Charlie Haughey of course was riding Terry Keane of hilariously named column 'The Keane Edge' not Irish pr Guru Terry Prone, you see the confusion, Irish female writers with double-meaning surnames. Haughey could have slept with both of course, who knows.

Bill Hicks on Marketing

In sane Man...

I have amost daily fever dreams about what Bill Hicks would say if he was alive today. With most of the routines it doesn't matter, becuase I just substitute Bush Junior for Bush Sernior and, horrifyingly, the comedy works out fine. But what would he say about Big Brother (the TV and CCTV kind) Guantánamo Bay, Iraq, 9/11, etc. etc.?

The strange thing is though, Bill Hicks dies and Dennis Leary suddenly stops being funny...what are the chances....

Zodiac...it doesn't put the lotion on its skin....

Wow! what the hell is going on? a summer film that is three hours long, looks beautiful, makes sense, has characters you believe in. Jesus, it's like I've fallen into a parallel dimension where there is movie justice, sure there was this and this pirate plop but for three hours I sat in a movie theatre and enjoyed a movie on every level how rare is that these days?

As HH had warned there was a high quotient of postfeminist fatherhood, hey I'm a lonely single obsessed guy, is it too much to ask to see a lonely single obsessed guy on screen without cutsy mopsy mook kids all about the place...can you imagine if Taxi Driver was remade today? it would involve Travis coming home to his hovel where he has (for some bizarre reason) a kid by Cybill and the wee kid would be there drawing a gun in crayons and he has a wee mohican and he's there 'dawdy can I drive wit you in de cab today' and De Niro's there like 'no little Bickie I got some business in town today and you have to stay here and take care of your mother and blah blah sensitive family hollywood shit boo hoo...' Christ just leave an obessed geek to his mountains of files, like it happens in the real world, would ya, there's no Chloe Sevigny that gonna want you even though you act maybe.like.the.zodiac.killer.yourself....

In fact, the only down side of Zodiac was having the amazing Sevigny on board and giving her nothing.to.say. apart from sporting various period hair cuts, glasses and expressions, you could put her whole script on either side of a little notecard. And yes, Gyllenhaal's inability to look older over a 25-odd year period is slightly disconcerting. Obviously after Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and being that he's gonna be Iron Man Robert Downey Jnr. rocks at the minute and is amazing in this.

Hey, as you may have guessed, I'm a media geek so any film that involves a cartoonist as the main character and is set in the world of 1970s journalism is gonna have me up the walls with enthusiasm, even if didn't have a serial killer in it. So the fact there's not a serial-killer-balls-between-the-legs-it-puts-the-lotion-on-its-skin shootout doesn't bother me none....

Some of my priorities for Meath East

one more time, smacks the cards, oh so she's only a 'pretty' accomplished GAA footballer? What does the youth of Ireland need? more GAA...

Irish Election News!: There's the votes... [pats votes]

Look at the size of me column!!

A certain dumb riffer and I are having no end of fun by keeping track of Fianna's Fail's own Eoin McLove: Thomas Byrne . Check this shite out above, see wee Tommy Bryne's column, I'll wager his nurse GAA footballer wife Ann will be pleased. On the one hand, you kinda have to hand it to the nurse/GAA/jumper/cake lover, he did utilise new media in his campaign quite well....but if these guys have flickr accounts and want to appear 'hip' etc. There is always the possibility that some wisearse who knows nothing about politics might just put them up on his blog and attach captions that he thinks are funny by acting like he's fecking on Have I Got News for You not sitting in his pants on a Friday night after watching Justin Lee Collins on Jonathon Ross and listening to Foxy Brown and drinking Carling. But...

Decision '07: Lads we need some fucking Buckfast in ...no, no! Buckfast isn't the way to go, it's three crates of Harp and some Whiskey...and thats' a dealbreaker... Johnny Leather Jacket Pinkshirt here's gonna get us some MDMA too...

Look Ma! I'm doing it! I'm doing it! I'm like fecking Nicole Kidman in BMX Bandits, eat my dust fuckers!!

Congratulations on your confirmationTommy, don't spend all your confirmation money on matchbox cars and bangers...ok Uncle Bertie... I won't.... just let me shake hands with Billy O'Shatner here will ya....

Now Tommy, did you fill out your FAS application form....yes Nan....can I have a go on your red puncher?..... No! you can't, you know what happened the last time...

See Tommy, you have to carry the three here, you have to get the hang of it or you'll never leave 4th class....I know, sorry Uncle Bertie, but I've been playing 'football' with Ann and she makes me do things...

Man, I love our Fianna Fail underwater headquarters, I just hope there's not a great white shark out there looking for revenge like in Jaws 3: 3-D or Jaws...The Revenge...

Ah man! the best thing about being in Fianna Fail was when Uncle Bertie took me to see the Old Irish Justice League: from l-r: The Brown Avenger, Plaid Promethea, Grumpy McFuck, Billy O'Shatner, the Red Hallion, they fucking rock man!

Look! Uncle Bertie! I've got a girlfriend, I'm straight! I'm straight! I like football! I like football!

Down with this sort of thing!...careful now...

Well hello young Tommy, you've just been confirmed I hear...yeah Mrs. Clinton and I didn't spend any of my confirmation money on bangers or anything...have you ever been on The Simpsons?

Old Spice Commercial ft Bruce Campbell

he's gotta long auld ship

Bruce Campbell

ruff

Black goo a go-go

My Spider-Man 3 review

Hey internet get outta me head

From the great Tina Kugler.

Whilst repopulating my blogroll* (drop me a line if I've overlooked your blog) I've come across **some gems that are dangerously close to the sort of stuff the trundles around my demented noggin of an evening already, such as Charlie Anders on the ambivalently sexualised She-Hulk. Not only is there Jen's Wonder Woman blog (also check out her great sarcastic sex toy blog too) but a BBW Wonder Woman Blog! Yet no one has yet to do a She-Hulk blog in the manner of her cousin's or its pale imitator. I do miss Dial B for Blog, but at least the sockamageemesiter has created the pulp inspired sister-site Dial B For Burbank.

God my brainpan is going demented, Pete recently gave me a big monitor that his techwizard company were going to throw out, i haven't organised a screen guard yet and I occasionally feel like James Woods in Videodrome, I fear I might fall into the auld ethergut. It's very sunny outside but I have to shun the sun to get the marking done...that should be my PhD motto for the summer: Shun the sun to get it done.

A current ipod shuffle mix of Hank Williams, Ween (The Pod, is especially hardgoing at times) , Millie Jackson, Momus, Peaches, Bill Hicks isn't helping the wooziness. Working at the Rose later, that'll reintergrate me into reality, well Norwich, a reality of sorts. Alrigh Boi?

*Sounds dodge.

**Uff, and another, the dodginess doesn't stop.

Bill Hicks on David Letterman censorship

a random gem of Bill Hicks talking to some teenager metaller that appears to be shiteing himself, just because I thought I ranted a bit too much on Grindhouse, but of course Hicks in the genius of the rant in any key.

Well like there was this script floating around: Joel Silver in nonsenical 'news' of Wonder Woman

The Hollywood Crown...watch it twirl in the breeze

"Well, we did have a script but it had no pictures and it was all spoilt by all these wee scribbly things in a row, I didn't know what the hell was going on but they tell me it's about a big tall powerful woman from another country who is invincible and can fly and that makes me pee my wee producer pants...at least with the Matrix you could pee yourself and the leather would catch it all....I'm scared..."

The current great white hope of Wonder Woman casting? maybe, I don't know, no one seems to actually know shit about how the Wonder Woman movie's gonna go down....I'll just keep up the whispering campaign here...ginatorresginatorresginatorres....

A while back on these very e-pages I accused Brett Ratner of being a scat loving imbecile in a propeller hat, that was terrible, I apolgise so much, not for the scat and propeller jibe ("The Scat and Propeller" now there's a Super Hans pub if ever there was one!) but the fact that I forgot to include Joel Silver in the whole shitting on geek dreams while wearing propeller hat scene.

Now that there's a Whedonless Wonder Woman, [*sniff*], the skinny from the Silver camp has been, well, gibberish. The last update on Superhero Hype explained little. First up, any information procured in the following circumstances:

At the Los Angeles junket for Silver's latest Dark Castle horror flick The Reaping *with Hillary Swank, Superhero Hype! had a chance to ask the producer about progress on the long-anticipated movie

Isn't going to be good, but Silver gives this slice of non news:


But what about that script they recently bought, which wound up sending Whedon packing? "That was a script that came about," he said. "It had some good ideas in it but I didn't want it floating around, so we took it off the market. It was a period movie and I really don't want to do that."


What was it set in the olden days Joel?, like World War II that's like hundreds of years of ago isn't it? it was 'period piece' so like Wonder Woman Versus Jane Erye! More Joel Gibberish here.

It's amazing that a producer in control of millions of dollars and masterminded the whole Matrix thing is reduced to sentence fragments and talking like a pissed-off teenager in mid-wank whenever anyone asks 'what the hell's going on with Wonder Woman?' He's like 'well...yeah...like there's like a script floating around and there was some ideas in it like and, well just fuck off...okay' yep cheers Joely! I leave ya with decisve nugget from Rotton Tommyatoes :


"I mean, we’re struggling with it, but we’ll fix it," Silver asserted. "We’ll solve it."He would not specify where Whedon got stuck. "I don’t know, we've got to find a way; we just couldn’t, we just struggled with it, we couldn’t find a way into it."


According to imdb it's down for 2009 so it all seems very unsure, I suppose no Wonder Woman movie is better than suffering an utter shite one with a microwoman such as Kate Bosworth or Rachel Bilson attempting to be Wonder Woman. It would take some sort of reverse hobbit cgi trickery to make most current starlets appear statuesque and powerful, or they could make all the non-Wonder Woman actors/actresses attach shoes to their knees and sort of waddle around for the whole movie. Days of Our Lives actress Nadia Bjorlin was the last rumoured casting that got a bit of coverage. Her official site's here.



Shit! news just in! Thomas Jane's just pulled out of Punisher 2: me and like three other people give a shit.

Before I leave the subject of Wonder Woman (yeah like I ever really leave it) isn't this probably the scariest thing you've ever seen?

*In a world of constant war, starvation and global environmental catastrophe how can you sell a horror movie on the basis of things like 'locusts' and 'supernatural rivers of blood', there's actual rivers of blood in the world! oh but it's a special Devil type of blood river and Hilary Swank's there so it's scarier than an actual river of blood. I thought Stigmata was one of the weirdest shittest movies I'd ever seen and yet we have to suffer The Reaping, and Sin Eater. It makes Repossessed look like the fucking Exorcist.

Grindhouse Final Trailer

Grindhouse! not coming to a picture house near you!

Grindhouse, don't get me fucking started...

On fucking Grindhouse!! This was merely the last straw for a Norwich based film geek like myself. Firstly, I find out Kulture Shock in Norwich is closing and moving to ...wait for it...Beccles, then I find of the two multiplexes in Norwich, neither is showing This Is England ! so they can keep shite like The Last Mimzy (if you see it, tell me whatever happened to the second-last Mimzy? is that going to be in the prequel?) on for another week but they can't risk a screen for what's been lauded as the best British film of the year in a town packed to the fucking gills with film students and a uni nearby that specializes in British cinema?

Young Pietari was telling me for ages that Grindhouse going to be split up into two movies and I just wouldn't believe it, I was so looking forward to a double bill. As you might guess, I love going to the cinema for as long a stint as is humanly possible (my current record is 17 horror films in two and a half days at the Horrorthon ) Ever since the trailers I was geekily going nuts, this was the ulitmate film injoke gone mad, our pal Tarantino was sticking it to the money gubbing 'man' by forcing him to come up with value for money and a long enjoyable night at the cinema in an era of inflated ticket prices and low quality.

But it seems, because of the stupidity of others (i.e. some U.S. audiences supposedly walking out half way through because they misunderstood the concept of the double bill) the discerning viewer who understands it's a fucking double bill because it says it's a fucking double bill in the trailer, will have to shell out twice to see two movies, with all the edited out flab reinstated,. Where will the Edgar Wright trailer go? surely a highlight for British audiences, to see Nick Frost as a baby-eating zombie! (It's on youtube, as are all the trailers if you fancy a bit of spoiling!)

I feel that the whole 'people walking out' angle has to be a bit of a fabrication. It's been so widely publicised as a double bill, I doubt many would walk out, even if it's true, so what! they've already paid their money so let the mooks walk out and let the film fans who, you know, read reviews and generally know what's going on stay for the next film! It implies that only American audiences understand U.S. movies, when so much of film lore comes, like Cahier du Cinema coining Film Noir, from an outside perspective on a cycle of U.S. movies consumed at once, sometimes in like...double bills. Double bills aren't the sole preserve of America and to suggest that Europeans don't understand the idiom is preposterious.

I just wish the Weinsteins would say look 'we didn't make as much money as we thought we would so we're gonna pump you yurpean fucks for more money, ok,' instead of:

We've revised our UK release plans to allow audiences the chance to see the films separately, like they will be shown in all international territories.

Oh thanks, I love the chance to get my pockets emptied twice and be robbed of a filmic experience just becuase you didn't make as many millions as you wanted becuase you failed to understand the fundametally cult niche audience the film appeals to. If you've got Tarantino and Rodriguez on board you're not going to get Die Hard 4.o!

As the Guardian arts blog puts it:

You can't help but be dismayed at the way that US box-office returns are increasingly treated as the only important guage of quality. Grindhouse may well bomb in British cinemas. Whatever happens, it is unlikely to match the grosses achieved by Hot Fuzz, let alone Spider Man, but that doesn't mean it's a bad movie. It would be nice if UK audiences were able to make up their own minds for once, without having to take it on trust that just because a film has only made $23 million in three weeks in the US, it must therefore be bad.

It's not only Grindhouse, but why isn't there a delux Kill Bill box set yet with more features? or a cut of both films together, I see there's a new Sin City one, but wasn't there a rumoured three hour cut? I had initial feelings of deliberately not seeing either parts of Grindhouse and boycotting it at the cinema and wait for the DVD, but in a scenario where I'm Peter Gibbons and the Weinsteins are Lumbergh I'm going to have to go anyway becuase I'm a fucking pussy....

Update: see, Kurt Russells is with me on this one!

Tim and Eric awesome show, hip hop dance instructional video

as Graham Linehan was saying over on his blog, it takes a while to get into Tim and Eric but once you do it's pretty addictive.

A Jimmny Photographic Interlude.

Yep, the blog's been quiet of late, you've escaped from the madness, but the Jimmny's got yous in his demented sights for some weekend rants. Don't worry it's one of those there Airsoft rifles that shoots wee plastic balls, and if you ever get hit in the nuts with one, you'd have wee balls too. It was weird to have a go on one, I worked with a kitchen porter while at the monk who spent all his expendible income on night sight googles, sniper sights, camoflague etc.

Was great to see the auld Badbrute and Oldgrom, and the usual rants ensued along with much youtubing of the Walken and Tim and Eric variety. Also got in the my habitual 'bargain buckets' trip to Forbidden Planet and picked up some Girls, heh, obviously the comic rather actual variety and some Hero Squared.

In a crazy sort of action figure version of a suicide pact, yon BB agreed to open his Red Son action figure, if Oldgrom would open the Colonial Viper model I got him.

Meanwhile, mine now has monitor-top pride of place along with the spudtrooper and various Wolverines. Toyz and Games in Norwich are currently selling them two for one. They're from Joyride Studios, good review here, which basically recounts exactly what I did with mine. Plaid Stallions also had a good vintage Battlestar Galactica toy review recently.

But, God told me to take crystal meth ride rent boys...

Great bit in The Independent today on the top ten current 'God Squad' done a FAQ style this was priceless:

Ted Haggard
Who is he?
Founder of New Life Church in Colorado Springs and former leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, with unusually good access to the Bush White House. These days, though, he is Exhibit A for the hypocrisy of the evangelical movement.
What's his style?
In public, bog-standard gay-bashing, family values-spouting fundamentalism. In private, snorting crystal meth and fantasising about all-male gang-bangs.
How does he keep the faithful in line?
These days, with great difficulty. On the eve of the November 2006 elections, a gay prostitute went public detailing three years of sexual encounters with the married preacher. First Haggard denied it, then admitted it.
Juicy scandal?
It doesn't get juicier. The prostitute, Mike Jones, said he came forward when he found out the true identity of his client, as he was enraged by his hypocrisy. After several days of denials, Haggard issued a statement saying: "I am a deceiver and a liar. There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life."

Lit Trek: The Next Generation

Hooray for multicultural Britain! check out Waterstones' 'next generation of literary superstars'
as reported in the Independent and the Guardian , who call it a 'diverse list', so, apart from one Indian guy and a black girl all the next generation of British writers will be white? great job fellas. I'm sure all these middle-calss writers have some carefully repeated ethnic/working class background, but you have to admit visually at least it's pretty depressing. Oh, and do graphic novelists count?

Just reading the Guardian's a three line summary of Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair book made me want to puke. I have no problem with litarary types churning out sub-twilight zone style parallel dimension fare but when the litarary establishment continually steals the ideas of science fiction while simultanuously looking down on it, it drives me up the wall. I think it's also a product of being in close proximity to creative writers at college, and serving them every year in the bar listening to similar ideas each year: someone in year 1: it's a novel about Picasso, but from the perspective of his mistress; someone in year 2: it's a novel about Van Gogh, but from the prespective of his mistress; someone in year 3: it's a novel about Guaguin, but from the presepective of his mistress, etc. etc. Oh and what are you doing? some PhD on funny books, that's cute....

News from the Blogroll

Something Awful's PhotoShop Phriday: 'recreate famous movie posters in the classy tradition of grindhouse cinema' is a doozy!

Howdy, have upated the auld blog, so this could be called The Life and Times of Jimmny Homunculus Version 2.0 whenever I figure out how to make some demented banner, it will probably be a representation of me cranking onto an action figure. In deep dissertation marking mode so I have to curtail my rants until tomorrow these be three:
1. Why Grindhouse can go fuck itself
2. Why I have the total horn for Battlestar Galactica
3. Why Spider-Man 3 makes the same kind of sense as Superman Returns.

In the meantime here's some hot news from the blogroll:

Bob Byrne's just got an official date for his 2000 AD appearance: Prog 1536! Cover here.

Karl Whitney recently interviewed Evan Dando, until the singer hung up in a strop like, dare I say it, Evan Dildo. At least young Karly didn't start off the interview by going: 'We'd like to know a little bit about you for our files'...

Adam Buxton has a very funny and informative account of being on Have I Got News For You, hosted by Bill Bailey and with Armando Iannucci should be a great episode:

The night before the taping my Dad, without a trace of malice said to me, “Have I Got News For You is exactly the kind of programme on which you are thoroughly ill suited to appear. It’s full of people being witty and telling jokes and that’s not what you’re good at all.” My Ma, who was all excited about me appearing on proper telly, has remained conspicuously silent since the show went out so she perhaps agreed with that assessment.

hey ho, back to typing phrases like 'overreliance on online sources' and 'conversational tone unsuitable for an academic work' over and over again until my eyes fall out.

Continuity Man, Continuity Man, where's the Continuity Man?

Like a lump of alien black goo, this post has festered in my blog-box for weeks, it's time to release it and let it find its own Topher Grace. Like Spider-Man 3 itself, it's longer than most posts but not necessarily better...

Black suit? there's a lot more where that came from...

Spoilers Ahead if you haven't seen Spider-Man 3 yet

In a similar vein to the madness that was Superman Returns, (not to mention the crowded 'plot' to X-Men III) Spider-Man 3, although enjoyable in parts. is surprisingly po-faced and turgid, which makes its logical flaws all the more apparent. Overall, Raimi does a great job in very difficult circumstances, in the hands of a lesser director--I'm looking at you Ratner....you Hack!-- it could have been utterly unwatchable.

Truth is, I was on the verge of tears during some moments and the action is well done if a bit over done. Thomas Haden Church is great (after his standout performance as The Strobe in this, he can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned) as always but it was a bit of a disappointment that some of his great comic timing was not utilised. The best performance was of course...Bruce Campbell. Kristen Dunst is as always in the Spider-Man movies a painful-to-watch and even more painful-to-listen to simpering oaf. Her ginger screams will haunt my dreams forever. Like Topher Grace, Bryce Dallas-Howard and James Cromwell did well with the few lines they were given but were pretty underused. James Franco was a revelation and arguably the best thing in the film, if lumbered by a terrible 'ow my head...I've convienently lost my memory' subplot.
J.K. Simmons, Bill Nunn, Ted Raimi and the Parker-Posey-alike Elizabeth Banks are all great as well.

Similar to the X2 to X-Men III transition from eager aniticapation to crushing inevitability, the coming of Spider-Man 3 was a juggernaut from which there was no escape rather than a film I thought every day about seeing until I saw it in a fevered mess of enthusiasm. I almost missed the Marvel logo which gave me a bit of a shock, that's like missing a really important prayer at mass or something for me.

I'm not a nit-picker per say, I'm not bothered if car or gun is a anachronistic by a few years in a film, but when a logical flaw or continuity gaff actually takes you out of the emotional core of a movie it sucks and you're sitting there thinking, why does this make no sense? One of the amazing things about Spider-Man 3, a film that cost a reputed $250,000,000, is that they couldn't spare a few of those dollars to buy a notepad and pencil and pay somebody just to check what the fuck is going on and keep continuity and logic.

oh so that's how it works....

1. The metorite: it was always going to be difficult to tie in the intergalacitc element of the black suit, being that it has its origin in the Secret Wars crossover, itself an exercise in crass commercialism and the black suit little more that a marketing opportunity to create diversity in spidey action figures. Back in the innocent days of the first Spider-Man movie, one of the reasons given for creating the organic webshooters was that it strained credulity that someone who got bitten by a genetically altered superspider could also be a genius capable of creating the web shooters and fluid. How then can this sort of logic go out the window in Spider-Man 3: a kid who just happens to get bitten by a genetically altered superspider also just happens to be out whining with Mary Jane in the middle of nowhere when a intergalactic symbiote just happens to fall nearby. What's galling about this is that there were already setups in the second film that would have made more sense, forthwith:

2. Forgetting Set-ups from Spider-Man 2. Where did John Jameson go? I thought he was almost shoehorned into the second movie to have a logic connection between an intergalactic conciousness and kid from queens. A scene of a few minutes showing Parker covering Jameson's latest voyage where the symbiote has attached itself to a rocket, or a probe sent out specifically to find this lifeform would have made a bit more sense. Heck they could even have included some line about the symbiote specifically targeting Parker because of his enhanced biology, that he was sought out instead of anyone else by the alien lifeform.

3. What? no Spidey Sense? Following on from the comics, the symbiote suit has seemed to negate the auld spidey-sense, but there's very little evidence of the spider-sense at the beginning of the film before the metorite incident. Apart from shooting web balls (ahem) (which was already evident from Parker learning more about his powers in Spider-Man 2) there is very little exposition as to how the suit is enhancing Parker's abilities.

4. Venom See fans, maybe getting what you want isn't necessarily a good thing. Sure it was great to see Venom and all, but so briefly? The character was also very mismatched to the overall tone of the the Spider-Man movies, The Green Goblin, Hob Goblin, Doc Ock Sandman, the potenial introduction of of The Lizard, these are all old-school spidey-villians and work well together. Sticking the hyper-muscly 1980s villian Vemon in there is a bit odd. Whenever you get hackneyed 'evil twin' type supervillians its kind like the bottom of the super-barrel. Topher Grace does a good job, but it's amazing that the 1990s animation has more script and philosophy than the movie!No mention of a She-Venom in the movies so far though.

5. Sandman and needless retconning. Sandman steals money...Spider-Man hears about it on his police scanner (wasn't that a bit creepy?) and then goes after him, end of story, it's logical and uncluttered. But no, that won't do we have to have a bzyantine plot back track that makes Flint Marko responsible for auld Uncle Ben hairplug's , ahem, plugging, but he does it in a nice way? It's like Ben's almost saying it's alright you killing me and all, 'cause you're a good man, and your only helping your daughter or following some preordained plan so I get to say the famous line in the film that wee Petey figured out himself in the comic and get to be resurrected in each film', what's with this Jesus/Judas-like bobbins? can't he just be a fecking criminal that Spider-Man goes after?

other small annoyances:

Aunt May's hot water: Aunt May and Peter Parker are having another creaky heart to heart about ole Ben and all the while I'm thinking: why are they just drinking hot water out of the tea pot, there's no tea? If they were using tea bags why go to the bother of getting the hot water from the kettle to a tea pot.

Mary Jane's answer phone message changes mid film from "this is Mary Jane leave a message after the beep....beeep" i.e. she says 'beep!' giving her some much-needed sense of humour and personality, yeah like that's going to last: this is absent from the second occurence of her answering machine.

Isn't Parker in some way responsible for the Green Goblin's Death? and who the feck is that butler guy? and doesn't it make Osborne appear a bit too much like Batman?

There's no connection established between the Stacey's and Osbornes, why are they at his funeral? Yes Gwen Stacey is in Park's class at college but Osborne and Parker went to high schoo together, do we just assume all rich people in New York know each other?

Towards the end Venom takes off Spidey's mask and appears to drop it, a split second later Spidey's suit is intact.

Some of the smaller points don't really spoil the film as such, it's the just overall sense that no one knows what's going on and logic goes out the back door. One of the almost lampable questions I got asked my some mook when I was going on about how good Spider-Man 2 was 'was it good for a superhero movie or a normal movie', implying that superhero movies are a priori stupid and even average intelligence in one is impressive. The lack of writing and emotional depth in this gives superhero movies this sort of bad name, the grandstanding action and Stan Lee cameos, nice that they are, just aren't enough in the wake of Batman Begins and X2. Godammit superhero movies should be getting better not worse.

Jesus, just read that Lucas is even ripping the shit of Spider-Man 3 . Spidey 3 still has three times more sense, intellect and logic than all the prequels combined. More good reviews (good as in 'good reviews' not claiming the film is good, it's like a sub genre of reviewing that suits epic movie, where reading the reviews is sometimes more enjoyable than watching the movie) here and here .

Something Wonderful...the Internet still makes you stupid though.

The scarily prolific John Rogers , he's written Transformers don't you know, over at Kung Fu Monkey had a great link to one of the funniest Something Awful articles:

The Inbox Of Nardo Pace, The Empire's Worst Engineer

Yeah, once you've built one death star, building another is a piece of piss and takes like 10 times less time to do..don't think we've ironed out the 'one weakness' yet though

These are hilarious too:

Leave a Message in the Anonymous Christian Complaint Box

Although the Internet has news-based photo-manips and the like coming out of it's electro-arse, Something Awful genuinely spoofs not only images in Photo Shop Phriday but every aspect of the sites themselves, like their amazing Awful Movie Database or Wikipedia user bit and obscure gaming jokes like Gordon Freeman's most memorable lines. The fake web pages are also amazing, but they don't do them as much now because people got confused that there really was sites devoted to things like office chair porn or erotic MS Paint drawings or personal ads where you can go out with a child's drawing of a small robot! Interests: "I'm a child's drawing of a small robot".

Apologies, this post was simply an excuse to put lots of links I like together, so I don't have to go trawling around sites with my 'puter protesting and grinding its gears. It's probably the Web equivalent of putting a funny picture of a little cat falling off a stick on an office cubicle notice board.

Incidentially in my last office job I won a 'best dressed desk award', the prize for which a giant photocopy of a 10 euro note. My desk cubicle included the following items:

1. A large cinema poster for the remake of Rollerball. (yet another shitbox cinematic extravaganza I witnessed with my own orbs)
2. Three 1974 fisher price action figures: the astronaut, the diver and some mission control mook with flares. Can't find pics but found Plaid Stallions which makes up for it. Stumbling upon a decent blog is like finding a fiver in the street these days. Wait, there's the wee fellas, kinda like star wars, but educational. Check it out above I had one of these, still do somewhere in the Batcave mark 1 (aka the redroom)
3. A painting I think by Goya of some really gaunt skeleton figure fighting a Lion, I renamed it

"Zombie: The New King of the Jungle"

Heavy Metal 2000 (2000)

Heavy Metal Movie Trailer

The adventures of Mucky Metal and the Porn Ombudsman.

Buy this teenage wank....

and get this free!!

In the university newsagent there's only three comics stocked: 2000AD, Judge Dredd the Megazine and Heavy Metal. For some unknown reason I picked up Heavy Metal in the hope that it had more stand alone stories. I hadn't read it for years and immediately felt like a mucky 14-year-old idiot. Thanks Heavy Metal. I'm just removed from the whole idiom of female characters in comics turning into leather-booted devil things with wings and that for no reason. The ads were good though.

I'm weak and was swayed, like so many times previously, by the 'bumper pack' magazine mentality. Current issues of Heavy Metal are bagged with an old back issue of Heavy Metal so it was like extra value, which as soon as you buy it you realise is not extra value but less space in your 'library'. For once the magazine I couldn't see was the better one (this only makes sense If you are familar with mucky mag-selling practices of British newsagents, call your local 'porn obudsman' for advice on the mucky mag choice that is right for you, don't get duped into buying 'Razzle' when it is sandwiched between two copies of 'Nugget' ). I used to joke about the porn obudsman and wrote some notes for an 'adventures of the porn obudsman' short story in the style of that noir-spoof Garrison Keillor story about the arts adminstrator, but now I find there already is a Utah Porn Ombudsman. Her name is Paula J. Houston, and far from being a consumer avenger for the common or garden pornnoisseur she wants to stop porn, kinda like a bizarro version of Watchdog where they don't want you to have consumer 'satisfaction' :

Proclaiming the occasion "historic," Mark Shurtleff,[Attorney General for the State of Utah]promised that "I, for one, will not allow pornographers to hide behind the First Amendment," and advised porn purveyors that "I'm coming after you, Paula's coming after you."

I'm fooked, she's after me! Quite a funny opinion piece on this story here, which also mentions whether naked mannequins are obscene!

If that's not bad enough, I have also seen both of the Heavy Metal movies too. The first one Heavy Metal is ok mostly because of the cult comedy cast, but Heavy Metal 2000 is pretty terrible despite having Michael Ironside and Julie Strain onboard. I've also seen Lady Death, I have to occasionally innoculate myself with Bisley-lite wank fantasy art to stop a full outbreak of Nacrol-ness.

P.S.
Kevin Eastman and Julie Strain !

Paul W. Anderson and Mila Jovovich !
See chubby geeks can end up with statuesque adult movie/action movie stars, it's very common, along as the geek in question has a made a few million dollars and is a director, and not someone who buys Heavy Metal and wastes the time not only to read it but to write about in on a blog.

to quote Mark Corrigan from Peep Show: 'It's what men want and we shouldn't have it'
or
Jeremy Osborne: [masturbating while looking at Mark's "Fantasy Figure Modeller" magazine] [thinks]
Jeremy Osborne: I'm a dirty hobbit and she's a sexy elf so she might be... "Oh! You dirty hobbit. Take off my bodkin and my jerkin." "Oh, yeah... pixie ears. But that sword." What if she was a hobbit slayer? I'd just use my enchanted amulet. "Yeah. Yield to me, hobbit-slayer. You will touch my magic cock."

Previous porn ombudsman mumblings here