Daemon (Level 48)

 
Criterion DVDs hold a special place in the heart of most cinemaphiles as has so often been proven time and time again when Barnes & Nobles have their semi-regular event of a 50% off sale, word of which is shouted loud and hard from every electronic street corner as film fans make short lists of "must have" purchases. Although companies like Britain's Eureka! and their truly excellent Masters of Cinema series are making a serious impact and little American indies like Shout! Factory are setting new standards for extra DVD content, the Criterion company has developed an intensely strong following over the years and their name alone almost defines a certain level of film reverence. Initially Criterion's calling card was their hard work in tracking down the best negative and re-mastering it as best they could to bring the viewer the finest visual quality they could buy. But slowly the packaging itself has been an increasingly strong source of worship as when people get a hold of a new edition they quickly take it apart and photograph it from every possible angle and then post it for eager devotees to drool over. 
 
But as Criterion has settled into people's hearts over the years and their ranks of followers have greatly increased, it stands to reason that the desire for more and more treasured films of film fans to get the Criterion treatment has increased just as dramatically. As people wait and hope for their beloved film to become accepted into Criterion scripture, their Photoshop skills have helped to assuage their collective angst in making their dreams somewhat realized but with they themselves as a part of the process. Back in 2003 threads at Something Awful and JoBlo  where fans posted their fake Criterion covers helped to create something of a serious happening as the practice has infiltrated and overwhelmed so many sites that the Criterion site itself had to close down its fake cover thread as it seemed to be the only reason a bulk of new people were joining the site. 
 
While there are some mighty fine faked covers out there, recently I stumbled across a thread at tumblr.com with faked Criterion covers designed by a person known as Sleepover. Instead of picking much deserved out of print or classic titles, he has decided to take some rather questionable cinema and give it the full quality treatment. Although this has been done here and there, I though these in particular were pretty damn good. What do you think? Feel free to post your own as well! 
 

  
  

Yes it's always best to not bother a long standing champion of Kickboxing when she's merely trying to buy a few things. Keeping this in mind, I wisely avoided angering Miss Long as she still actively runs and teaches at her dojo, and walked my lazy butt down to the Target to pick up a somewhat cheapish bicycle to finally replace the one that got stolen a little while ago. That rather surprised me when it happened as...honestly, who steals bikes anymore? I would understand if I had a kickass $1000 deal, but cheap Target bikes? Kinda weird if you ask me -- and in broad daylight in front of a store! Anyways, I'm back on the street again and now I can finally get myself down to the slightly farther art house theatre in the hopes that some of the films I've been missing this year will show up. Thank goodness for the IFC PPV channel helping me track some of my favorites down this year.

 

So an old friend of mine called me up and...huh? Oh yeah, Happy Thanksgiving and all that for those of you that partake in turkey/ham day and all its trappings both joyful and, considering that it generally involves a lot of family, rather trying. For those that don't generally speaking it's a happy day off except for those in the "movie industry" which in this case means theatre workers who sadly have to work Thanksgiving and Christmas because so many people insist on going to the movies because both holidays typically involve large family get togethers and after a couple of hours of that going to the movies is a great activity to do "together" that actively involves ignoring the people you're with which makes it strongly compelling but it's still wrong because all you're doing is insuring that theatre managers will never close their doors allowing their employees to enjoy the holiday as well which means you're actively destroying another's holidays when you go and thus you should avoid it BECAUSE FOR GOD'S SAKE I KNOW YOU ALL HAVE TOYS, GAMES, AND MOVIES TO KEEP YOURSELVES OCCUPIED BECAUSE IT'S THE BLOODY AGE OF BLOODY CONSTANT ENTERTAINMENT SO STAY HOME YOU INSUFFERABLE PRATS!

*deep breath*

But I digress. Or to be more precise, digest - something I did quite a lot of in fact. Yes...quite. I apologize for that last sentence. But after that - DANCE! - as well as quite a bit of jumping, yelling, swinging and all manner of rather alarming and loud movement was employed as we had a rather full night of Kinect oriented activities ahead of us which went on for so long that I'm fairly certain we burned off every calorie that we took in during the preceding dinner. Oh right the dinner! Thanks for reminding me!

It was rather traditional with turkey, stuffing, whipped potatoes and all manner of pretty tasty things that I won't mention because damons only eats the aforementioned tasty items with great vigor and then has seconds of those same items further insulting the offending non tasty food items that he won't touch.The meal was prepared by my old friend's wife, who did an awesome job, as well as her sister No. 2... or was it No. 4 (she has a lot of sisters and they all have the same name so they refer to each other by numbers "No. 2 called", "No. 3 is running late", blah blah blah) as well as my friend's mother who took me in oh so many years ago when I was young and my family had abandoned me to the streets.  I honestly can't remember the last time I enjoyed a Thanksgiving so it was a rather nice surprise.

As I mentioned earlier, we all went Kinect crazy and were mighty sore and tired afterwards. We played Dance Central, Kinect Adventures, Kinect Sports, Kinect Joy Ride, and a demonstrated a little Kinectimals for his wife Ming. Dance Central was by far the best as it very accurately captured everything you did and involved the entire body so which made it rather challenging at times. I insisted on dancing to the now classic and highly respected street anthem Crank That (Soulja' Boy) by the esteemed modern poet and composer Soulja' Boy because it's the silliest thing I could think of doing. Yes folks...I did indeed Superman dat oooooooh so many, many times. Of course No. 2 got the highest rating as she is a professional dance so...duh, but my 2 star accomplishments proved you don't have to be good to be entertaining.

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving! :) 

 

There are times when you are confronted with things that just appear to make no sense. Oft times, these fits of confusion are just a temporary state as you quickly realize that it was just a trick of your brain misinterpreting shadows into a familiar but incorrect form or the hidden nighttime mountainscape that caused the distant lights of planes to appear as if they were suddenly disappearing and reappearing. But sometimes the confusion lingers despite repeated viewings as you try to desperately reason out the logic of it all. There has to be a reason for this conflicting conundrum...right?! WHAT MUST IT MEAN?! IT MUST MEAN SOMETHING?!

As we've learned time and time again from over the top conspiracy theorists and religious extremists, this can be quite dangerous territory as all too often odd things just happen and have little to no real meaning behind them. As the great humanist Homer Simpson once said in response to his wife attempting to encapsulate the morally ambiguous landscape of an odd set of recent events in their ever tumultuous lives, "It's just a bunch of stuff that happened".

Then of course there's just plain crap. The kind of crap that results of just too many variables and an author's desperate attempt to bring together a rather large amount of disparate elements and tie them all up in a neat box. But if the very elements themselves are rather odd concepts to begin with and require a rather weighty back knowledge as to how they all relate to each other, the quicker you bring them all together the more confusing they will get. Of course as an author you could easily make the meaning behind everything ambiguous in the extreme in order to brush away any obvious elements involving gaping plot holes or character logic -- hello Mr. Nolan. But sadly many are not that clever.

And so with that let us read a fine piece of traditional typical gobbledygook comic book nonsense courtesy of Adam Barnett over at Comics Make No Sense.

Ahhhhh yes...it all makes PERFECT sense now. Thanks for clearing that up for us Supergirl! Sad so say, if one has been reading comics for a few decades this actually doesn't seem as initially insane as most people probably would. In an odd way it is sort of comforting to old time comic book nerds I suppose as goofy stuff like this sort of puts a wall between us and...the others, those unclean ones that couldn't imagine how sexy Galactus initially looked in his cosmic short shorts that he originally graced us with. Although this bit of summation of dialogue is quite convoluted and crazy, it sadly doesn't doesn't eclipse the mad genius of writer Bob Kanigher. He does crazy better than anybody and he's very direct and to the point about it.

Say...like the time Wonder Woman and her military boy toy Steve Trevor were traveling through time once again and Steve ran into a bit of trouble with his his...equipment.

That's right folks, the gun full of bullets wouldn't work simply because it hadn't been invented as of yet. Perfect. 
 
Who would even have the guts to right that kind of crazy these days? Everyone's so wrapped up in their attempts to justify their crazy scenarios and failing so horribly to convince their audience that it's all somehow possible. Perhaps there are times when it really just doesn't matter and nobody really cares all that much. Just get on with the crazy and show me dinosaurs stomping around eating people and battling giant apes. I don't care where they came from.

And thus I center you back into reality with a more typical sexualization of Supergirl courtesy of Miss Bianca Beauchamp.

I love you latex Supergirl, because that's all just so incredibly impractical and yet you just don't care.  

 

The Production side of Panna Rittikrai's next movie has spoken and currently the director/fight choreographer is wrapping up his duties on the film "BKO: Bangkok Knockout" which should be out in Thailand very soon if some of the reports are to be believed. For the uninitiated, Panna Rittikrai is the master of many martial arts disciplines and has personally overseen the rise of such talents as Dan Chupong, Yanin "Jeeja" Wismitanant, and the international martial arts superstar Tony Jaa. He has also directed the action martial arts films The Bodyguard, Born to Fight, Ong Bak 2, and Ong Bak 3.

Sadly, Thai martial arts films as of late have seemed to lost their way a bit and have either tried to do too much in creating the most epic, be all and end all Thai answer to a period martial arts epic combining almost every known style (Ong Bak 2 & 3), or just have stumbled horribly by trying to put too many awful mismatches involving modern pop and fringe culture with a basic technique to create a boring mess (Raging Phoenix). Basically they seemed hell bent on trying to reinvent the wheel when the wheel was just awesome how it was.

Well that situation seems to be taking a change for the better as "BKO: Bangkok Knockout" looks to be a return to the old school Rittikrai techniques of complete and utter insanity in which you are sure you just saw somebody die in that last sequence much like the last portion of the end fight from "Chocolate". But...actions speak louder than words so watch the trailer and judge for yourself.

Now if only we could get Donnie Yen back making contemporary films again.