/PHRENOLOG/3/11/11

What Bill's thinking/watching/reading/writing/doing. This is the shape of my head.

//Dear Hollywood: Can we get a Frederic Wertham biopic? I don't ask for much. Can Christoph Waltz star as Wertham? Thank you.

//Gary Groth arguing with folks about the merits of Dilbert. My view? Dilbert, at its height, was hilarious and awesome, and occasionally, we still get a glimpse of same.

//Jog on Ditko's recent output and Alan Moore's Swamp Thing. "Novel-length criticism!" a '70s comic would say.

//Witzke and Seneca go to town on Elektra: Assassin.

//The Mindless Ones' Amy Poodle writes about The Invisibles for the new Comics Journal, which is the new happenin' place to be (which is why I'll never be invited to their parties).


//Naked Cities by Miru Kim. (Contains butts.) Absolutely tremendous photography, a haunting exploration of our dilapidated urban detritus, as if these images come to us from a post-apocalypse, when the first brave, naked human wanders back out to explore the destruction we brought upon ourselves.

//Qaddafis/Bluths. It's Arrested Development.

//Four unused songs from the Scott Pilgrim movie.

//Chris Sims talks about one of my all-time favorite comics (spoilers: it's ROM Spaceknight).

//Weird old comics TV show interview with Grant Morrison (with hair!) and Dave McKean about Arkham Asylum and stuff.

//Stained glass comics cover reproductions by Brandon Michael Barker. Holy crap, you guys.


//Enter the Void: I kinda wanna write more on this later. But, it's a fucked-up visual feast. See it.

//So I've now watched the first three Friday the 13th movies before they expire off my Instant Queue, and... they're not very good, are they? I mean, they're passable, sure, and improve as they go along, which is rare for a franchise, but they're not about anything, are they? Each movie is basically a remake of the last one. Is it an anti-teen-sex PSA? With machetes? Compare it to Halloween, which defined the slasher genre for America, or to Evil Dead, which was visually inspiring and self-consciously ridiculous, or to Nightmare on Elm Street, the first of which works great thematically and visually, a fine entry into the Craven/Raimi one-upmanship competition, and clearly a major influence on Joss Whedon's Buffy, and, and, etc. The Fridays have almost no interesting or likable characters, very little plot, weak atmosphere, the endings are deliberately nonsensical, etc. Line up the pins and cut 'em down, that's all they are. Hardly the stuff of horror cinema legend. I guess that's why Jason inevitably becomes the protagonist, instead of the villain.

(Now, Jason X, there's a movie.)