MOX NOX ~ SEQUENTIAL ILLUSTRATED SURREALISM FOR GROWN-UPS

Monoglots, rejoice! You don't have to be able to read Spanish to enjoy Joan Cornella's beautifully painted, multi-panel, single page comic strips. That's because this Spanish artist has chosen to leave her work wordless, a decision that ends up making just as much artistic sense as it does from a marketing standpoint. 

Mute as they are, Cornella's little stories practically scream for attention. Paradoxical in every conceivable way, these delicately savage non-allegories often achieve a near transcendent level of surrealism, displaying a paradoxically violent beauty via Cornella's delicately simple representation.

The gags don't always land, but they certainly do often enough to warrant giving each and every one of them the benefit of the doubt. And even the pages that fall flat often still contain something that makes them worthwhile... a strikingly beautiful design element, for instance, or a never-before-seen juxtaposition that stays with you, like an odd passing glance from a stranger on the street.

The book itself is also a thing of beauty. Bibliophiles will marvel at the design work that Cornella's North American publishers, Fantagraphics, have put into this product. Producing adult-oriented content with the colorful sturdiness and rugged durability of the best in children's publishing is a brilliant idea, and it's one that I hope more publishers will consider copying.

Ultimately, what we have here is a traditional European style "funny book" that can also easily be considered a collection of postmodernist sequential paintings that builds on the surrealist traditions of Dali and Bunuel. Fantagraphics is to be commended for helping to spread this artist's work beyond her home continent of Europe, and for making MOX NOX such a ridiculously low-priced bargain.

If you're thinking about purchasing MOX NOX via Amazon.com, please consider doing so through the links provided here. Much obliged!

MEDIAVORE ~ GRAPHIC NOVEL EXPLORES WW II'S FORGOTTEN ASTRAL FRONT

Noted "ideas man" and branding expert Douglas Rushkoff, perhaps best known for writing multiple bestsellers in which he coined the terms "viral media" and "social capital", is a man of many interests and talents. Among his interests are the Western esoteric tradition, and among his talents, storytelling.

Rushkoff's latest graphic novel is Aleister & Adolf, and it is competently rendered in occasionally impressive chiaroscuro by Michael Avon Oeming. It synthesizes the author's interests in a brief and breezy time-and-globe-hopping neo-noir mystery that centers on the secret symbolism of a venerable corporate logo. This is territory Rushkoff knows well.

By the time all is revealed, our reluctant investigator (and his mid-century counterpart) will have stumbled across the existence of World War II's forgotten battlefield, where Astral war was waged by crazy old men in esoteric brotherhoods wielding their ceremonially amplified wills like magickal WMD.

All in all, this book makes for fun stuff, particularly if you're intrigued by the Third Reich's obsession with occult artifacts and other such Theosophical nonsense. The fact that much of this story is based on historical fact makes it all the more compelling.

Aleister & Adolf is published by Dark Horse, and is available both in a sweet-looking hardcover edition or as an e-book over at Amazon.com. If you're gonna buy the thing, use the link I just provided, please!

HEADS UP! TWIN PEAKS ANALYSIS PROJECT BEGINS AT MEDIAVORE!

Hey gang! Why not head on over to the DDD's sister-blog, The Mediavore, to take part in our ongoing exploration of the Twin Peaks phenomenon? We're starting where it all began, with the legendary film that served as the pilot for the ground-breaking series.

So, in order, here's the project's introductory post!

Next comes my breakdown of the Pilot Film!

Then comes my breakdown of Episode One!

Enjoy!

MEDIAVORE CROSS-POST ~ NEW MST3K EPISODES HAVE ARRIVED AT NETFLIX!

Much like the zoster virus--which covers you in unsightly chicken pox for a while before going dormant and laying in wait for years, only to reemerge when you least expect it, stronger and more vicious than ever, covering you in unsightly (and painful!) shingles--the greatest achievement in the history of humor-based televised audio/visual entertainment is back!

I am referring, of course, to Mystery Science Theater 3000, Eden Prairie Minnesota's own little cow-town puppet show made good.

MST3K, as we fans like to call it, premiered on a tiny UHF station in 1988 before becoming one of early cable TV's most critically acclaimed cult sensations. For ten years, it channel-hopped from The Comedy Channel/Comedy Central to the Sci-Fi Channel, producing nearly 200 full length episodes before apparently closing up shop for good in 1999.

Too much has already been written about the phenomenon that is MST3K for me to bother going over it all again for you now. The show's controversially huge Wikipedia entry goes into obsessive detail about everything from Joel Hodgson conceiving it as a way to help breathe comedic life into KTMA's hopelessly dated film catalog, to all the various cast switcheroos, to the show's ill-fated foray into making "cinema", to all the post-MST3K projects (like Cinematic Titanic and Rifftrax), to the record-breaking Kickstarter revival that helped bring a full 11th season of the show to Netflix nearly 20 years after the final Sci-Fi Channel episode... so if you're one of those sad, unsullied fools still in need of a refresher course to remind you why this reboot is such a big freaking deal, you can always refer to that.

As for the rest of you--those who share in your humble blogger's absolute and unquestioning adoration of Mystery Science Theater 3000 as entertainment, yes, but also as a potentially powerful paradigm for a positive and progressive postmodernism--you need only know this: the first 14 episodes of the 11th season of MST3K all premiered on Netflix today, April 14th, 2017, one day before your humble blogger's 47th birthday... and you'll have to forgive me for getting more than a little mistie about the whole deal.

And so, as I hunker down to watch the first fresh episode of my favorite TV show of all time since watching the "lost" episode, featuring the film Merlin's Mystical Shoppe of Wonders, which aired on September 12, 1999, I promise to bring you updates, commentary, and bullet reviews for each episode. Watch for them to start appearing here, at the Mediavore, and also at my home base blog, the Daily Dirt Diaspora, seeing as I've been neglecting my duties there of late, due to the unfortunate combination of a paying graphics gig and the fact that Trump's increasingly unhinged behavior has got me so spooked I don't even want to comment on his shenanigans anymore for fear he might read something I wrote and launch nukes at Grenada or some other crazy shit like that.

Keep watching this space! HUZZAH!

DDD EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ~ MARCH 7, 2017 ~ LATE MONDAY EDITION

MELTDOWN MAN

After the inexplicably ebullient praise heaped upon him following Tuesday night’s address to Congress, which saw even those fake news-spreading cucks over at CNN declaring it “the moment Donald Trump became President”, most of us knew it was only a matter of time before something happened that would knock him off kilter. For those of you keeping track, it took Trump all of three days to spectacularly lose his shit, taking to Twitter to accuse his predecessor, President Obama, of illegally having the phones at Trump Tower tapped during last year's hard-fought election campaign.

Then he mocked Schwarzenegger's Apprentice exit.

There are many reasons why Trump's accusations are preposterous, which is why all but the most devoted Redcap cultists are pretty much brushing it off. But what are the real motives behind Trump's unprecedented and so far groundless accusation that President Obama had Trump Towers' phones tapped?

For my money, Trump is running scared. And that's because his Attorney General, Jefferson Beauregard Bedford Forrest Sessions III, had to voluntarily recuse himself from any Justice Department investigations of Trump or face more serious censure after it was discovered he'd misled Congress about having met with Russian representatives during his Congressional approval process.

Which brings up another innocent question... How long will Sessions last before stepping down to "spend more time with his family"? I mean, it's not like he got the job thanks to his looks! And now that he's incapable of quashing or fucking up any investigation into the boss-man's lifelong parade of chicanery, he's literally of no use whatsoever to Trump anymore.

My prediction? Sessions will be gone by April Fool's Day. Let's just hope he's not taken care of the way the Rooskies are back to handling things. And yes, I am referring to the recent death of Alex Oronov, the Russian "entrepreneur" who, along with fellow "entrepreneurs" Jeff Cohen and Felix Sater, was instrumental in putting together that much-discussed "Ukraine Peace Plan"--more accurately described as a list of blackmail demands--that somehow mysteriously made its way into Trump's hot little hands.

You know what? Come to think of it, with all these loose ends being tied up so definitively, if I were in Trump's shoes, I probably wouldn't waste time worrying about Obama right now.

***

SUGGESTED READINGS

1. Over at the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik asks "Did the Oscars Just Prove that we're Living in a Computer Simulation?" The short answer is, of course, NO, YOU FUCKING IDIOT. But that doesn't mean a decent writer can't have fun batting the idea around like a metaphorical ball of yarn between his metaphorical little kitten feet... which is exactly what Gopnik does, here, bringing up a few decent points in the process. It begins with a recap:

Last night’s Oscars bizarreness was not just bizarre but bizarre in a way that is typical of this entirely bizarre time. The rhythm of the yes-they-won-oh-my-God-no-they-didn’t event, with “La La Land” replaced by “Moonlight” as Best Picture, was weirdly like that of . . . Election Night. First, a more or less expected, if “safe,” result was on its way—although Hillary Clinton never got all the way to the stage, so to speak, the result did seem safely in hand at 7 p.m., according to the polling—and the expected and safe people were ready to deliver their touching but obviously polished pieces. Then the sudden confusion and visible near-panic of people running around in the background of the stage, with the same slightly horrified spirit that one felt on Election Night as shocking results began emerging from the exurban counties in Florida. Then, yes—can this be happening?—the revised and unexpected result.

But then things veer into High Weirdness territory:

The people or machines or aliens who are supposed to be running our lives are having some kind of breakdown. There’s a glitch, and we are in it.  

Once this insight is offered, it must be said, everything else begins to fall in order. The recent Super Bowl, for instance. The result, bizarre on the surface—with that unprecedented and impossible comeback complete with razzle-dazzle catches and completely blown coverages and defensive breakdowns—makes no sense at all in the “real” world. Doesn’t happen. But it is exactly what you expect to happen when a teen-ager and his middle-aged father exchange controllers in the EA Sports video-game version: the father stabs and pushes the buttons desperately while the kid makes one play after another, and twenty-five-point leads are erased in minutes, and in just that way—with ridiculous ease on the one side and chicken-with-its-head-cut-off panic infecting the other. What happened, then, one realizes with last-five-minutes-of-“The Twilight Zone” logic, is obvious: sometime in the third quarter, the omniscient alien or supercomputer that was “playing” the Patriots exchanged his controller with his teen-age offspring, or newer model, with the unbelievable result we saw. 

There may be not merely a glitch in the Matrix. There may be a Loki, a prankster, suddenly running it. After all, the same kind of thing seemed to happen on Election Day: the program was all set, and then some mischievous overlord—whether alien or artificial intelligence doesn’t matter—said, “Well, what if he did win? How would they react?” “You can’t do that to them,” the wiser, older Architect said. “Oh, c’mon,” the kid said. “It’ll be funny. Let’s see what they do!” And then it happened. We seem to be living within a kind of adolescent rebellion on the part of the controllers of the video game we’re trapped in, who are doing this for their strange idea of fun. 

The thesis that we are in a simulation is, as people who track such things know—my own college-age son has explained it to me—far from a joke, or a mere conceit. The argument, actually debated at length at the American Museum of Natural History just last year, is that the odds are overwhelming that ours is a simulated universe.

Or not. You can read the rest of the essay and judge for yourself. One thing is certain, however... it sure is fun to read about!

2. Amanda Guinzburg's horrifying account of what it was like living in a Manhattan apartment building owned by Jared Kushner--entitled Gaslight Nation: America's Next Landlord--will have you shaking your head in disbelief. I know that was my reaction, which is why I did a little digging of my own after reading it. Turns out it's factual. The first paragraph gives you a pretty good taste of that weird yet familiar metro-malevolent vibe that surrounds New York City real estate:

After the first fire a young man with very pale skin and black hair who did maintenance in the building whispered to me that he heard it had been set deliberately. We’d previously discussed the election, then still in the heat of the primaries, and he’d informed me Donald Trump was definitely going to win. I said that was ridiculous and he replied, not unapologetically, that America would never elect a woman to its Presidency. I dismissed his mutterings of arson and conspiracy with a similar roll of my liberal over-educated eyes. I lived in a stout white hundred-year-old former grocery warehouse abutting the East River in North Williamsburg. It occupied an entire city block. A few months after I moved in it was announced the building had been purchased by Jared Kushner along with several partners and would be undergoing complete condo renovations. They changed the name from 184 Kent to Austin Nichols and hung a huge flag-like banner off the side scribed with elegant font. In the New York Times they advertise the addition, among other things, of a “jam room.” 

Reading this entire article only takes six minutes, according to Medium, so why not do so? It's good to take a cautious glimpse into the soul of your superiors every once in a while. Helps you stay real.

3. James Wolcott's latest for Vanity Fair, entitled Why the Alt-Left is a Problem Too, explores a poorly understood phenomenon that has, until now, suffered a bit of a nomenclature problem. We can't just call them "Bernie Bros", because... well, Bernie isn't running for anything now, and he pretty much disowned them anyway. And calling them, as yer old pal Jerky's been doing, "Leftier-than-thou", or the "Looney Left", doesn't do a very good job of explaining just how utterly shitty people like Glenn Greenwald, or Chris Hedges, or other people who often claim to be "on our side" often turn out to be. Wolcott writes, in part:

Disillusionment with Obama’s presidency, loathing of Hillary Clinton, disgust with “identity politics,” and a craving for a climactic reckoning that will clear the stage for a bold tomorrow have created a kinship between the “alt-right” and an alt-left. They’re not kissin’ cousins, but they caterwaul some of the same tunes in different keys. 

The alt-right receives the meatiest share of attention in the media, as it should. It’s powerful, vicious, steeped in neo-Nazi ideology, nativist white supremacy, men’s-rights misogyny, and Ayn Rand capitalistübermensch mythos, and it heralds a conquering hero in the White House in President Donald J. Trump, while the former executive chairman of the venereally right-wing Breitbart News, Steve Bannon, functions as despot whisperer, trickling Iago-ish poison into Trump’s receptive skull. The alt-left can’t match that for strength, malignancy, or tentacled reach, but its dude-bros and “purity progressives” exert a powerful reality-distortion field online and foster factionalism on the lib-left. Its outlets include not only Jacobin but also the Intercept, one of whose co-founders is the inexhaustible Glenn Greenwald... Web sites such as Truthdig, Consortiumnews, and Naked Capitalism; and anomalous apostates such as Mickey Kaus... A Tumblr site devoted to “Trumpian Leftism” captures the intellectual flavor of their temperaments. 

So, what are a few quick shortcuts you can use to help identify a member of the "alt.left"? One helpful hint is if they regularly appear on any RT programs. Another is if they argue that we need to look the other way at Russian belligerence and capitulate absolutely to all of Vladimir Putin's demands, unless we all want to die in a fiery Armageddon of nuclear holocaust. So basically, Glenn Greenwald. He's their poster boy... although I suppose an equally good case could be made for Chris Hedges. Which is too bad, because at least he can write! Anyway, finish the story. It's worth the read.

***
QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Watching Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan whistle their way past the graveyard of American democracy on their way to constructing the deregulated, privatized oligarchical hellscape of their dreams is like watching two men building a mansion in the middle of Chernobyl.”

- the always awesome and now downright obligatory Charles P. Pierce straddles his perch atop Vanity Fair and explains "Why Republicans Can Never Fully Separate Themselves From Trump".

DDD EXTRAS

• I've created a new blog! The Mediavore! From Cult to Canon, from Classic to Trash, this is the place to find out what yer old pal Jerky thinks about all the latest media! Cinema! Books! Music! Comics! Television! Bullet Reviews! In-depth Analysis! If you have any suggestions, don't hesitate to send them along!
• If you want to learn about some cool and/or weird things that happened on whatever day of history that it happens to be when you're reading this, why not check out our sister-site, Useless Eater Blog? You're sure to find something of interest, guaranteed!

THE TAKEAWAY

Sorry for the abbreviated DDD. I'll have more substantial stuff for y'all soon!

MEDIAVORE~FILM: BULLET REVIEWS

DE PALMA ~ A documentary about filmmaker Brian De Palma in which the man himself takes us through his career, film by film, from its intriguing beginnings, through his tenure as one of the 70's wunderkinds alongside Speilberg, Lucas, Scorcese and the rest, through his time as Hollywood's most productive controversialist, with the occasional bypass into blockbuster-land, up to the present day. If you're already a fan, this film will delight you. If you aren't, this film might convert you. At the very least, you'll walk away with a bunch of new movies you'll be wanting to see. Highly recommended!

MILES AHEAD ~ Don Cheadle stars as Miles Davis in a somewhat entertaining but ultimately poorly conceived heist film, which is a terrible, confusing waste, because Cheadle actually makes for a very convincing Miles Davis. The producers' excuse, apparently, was that they didn't have sufficient budget to make a biopic worthy of the jazz titan's life and legacy, so they decided to make the kind of streetwise crime flick that Miles was known to be a fan of. Which is all well and good, but as I watched, even while I was occasionally entertained, I couldn't help but shake my head at the squandered potential of the thing. Your mileage may vary.

THE IMITATION GAME ~ There may very well be a way to make the complex, intriguing, tragic life of landmark computing philosophy pioneer Alan Turing into a riveting cinematic experience. Unfortunately, the people behind this Benedict Cumberbatch vehicle were not made privy to it before making this ever so British "date night" confection, which is far more reminiscent of The King's Speech than any film other than The King's Speech has any right to be. In case you're wondering, Oscars be damned, that is NOT a good thing.

THE UNKNOWN KNOWN ~ Errol Morris is one of America's most acclaimed documentarians, and his 2003 Robert McNamara documentary The Fog of War could very well be his finest work to date. That film is almost like a university level political science course boiled down to a 107 minute documentary. While watching 2013's The Unknown Known, I couldn't help but think he was going for a repeat performance, but just as Donald Rumsfeld is no Robert McNamara, The Unknown Known is no Fog of War. Whereas McNamara was a thoughtful, philosophical, forthcoming interview subject who was genuinely interested in getting at some semblance of truth at the core of the mess that is the historical record, Rumsfeld seems all too comfortable taking cover in the smothering swirl of confusion choking America's recent past like a shroud - a confusion that he, himself, was instrumental in creating. I have read some reviews that call The Unknown Known a horror movie of sorts, with Rumsfeld playing the role of the monster. His weirdly disconcerting laugh, his reptilian smirk, his self-satisfied sophistry (none of which is as clever as he seems to think it is) all combine to make for an altogether unwholesome package, void of revelation or any sort of satisfaction. In short, Rumsfeld: 1, Morris: 0, which has to stand as a minor tragedy of sorts.

NEW BOOK EXPLORES A FASCINATING ASPECT OF CONTEMPORARY COMICS

Thanks to a recommendation from the ever-awesome comics legend Stephen Bissette, yours truly has been made aware of a new book exploring one of the more salutary developments in contemporary comicdom: the explosion, and ongoing influence, of ground-breaking, formula-exploding, taboo-shattering writers from the British Isles.

The book has a rather unwieldy title - The British Invasion: Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, and the Invention of the Modern Comic Book Writer - but don't let that deter you. As Bissette declared in a recent Facebook post: "it's a pretty brilliant book and spot-on. ... I can honestly say Greg's not only done his homework, he's synthesized it all into a concise, involving, flowing read that's so true to the experience of those years ... that I'm getting sensory flashbacks at times ... RECOMMENDED!"

I've gone ahead and ordered a copy for myself, and I'd love it if some of you did the same, so we could do some kind of book club type thing together and discuss it in a forum I'll create for us on Facebook.

If you're in the USA, kindly order your copy from this link, which will result in a few shekels being dropped into yer old pal Jerky's beggin' cup. Meanwhile, if you currently reside in the howling wilds of Canada, then kindly use this link, as I have recently fixed it so that my affiliate program works there now, too! I went through a bit of a hassle to arrange for this, so PLEASE, if you're gonna order this book, order it through my affiliate links!

MEDIAVORE // COMICS ~ DAN CLOWES' LATEST IS A MASTERPIECE

Alternative comics legend Daniel Clowes is nothing if not prolific, and his output generally falls into one of two categories: short form comedy and long form graphic novels that, while retaining some comedic elements, tend somewhat towards detached, ironic bathos. Patience, Clowes' latest long form narrative project, is by far the most impressive work he's produced in the latter category.

Without giving too many plot details away (I've seen many reviews of Patience that are chock full of ridiculously revealing spoilers), I can tell you that Clowes has crafted a deft blend of soft sci-fi time travel fantasy and idiosyncratic, multiple stream-of-consciousness character study. So if you've ever wondered what Back to the Future would be like if it had been directed by Todd Solondz, then this is the book for you.

For those of you without access to a quality neighborhood comics shop or alternative independent culture store, Patience may be purchased at a seriously discounted price from Amazon.com. Also, if you buy it via the provided link, yer old pal Jerky gets a few shekels tossed into his beggin' cup.

If you're looking for a book that highlights an entirely different aspect of Clowes' substantial talents, look no further than his formally innovative misanthropic gut-buster WILSON, which continues to be my favorite thing that Clowes has ever done, and one of my favorite graphic novels of all time. And yes, purchasing it from the above link helps to keep me blogging.

MEDIAVORE // FILM ~ AAAAAAAAH! WE ARE NOT MEN

You might remember Steve Oram from his decade and a half of continuous character and background work in such worthy Britcom projects as Green Wing, The Mighty Boosh, Tittybangbang and Steve Coogan Live. Or perhaps you remember him as the bearded half of the comically bumbling yet oddly endearing serial killer couple in Ben Wheatley's magnificent 2012 satire, Sightseers.

However, it doesn't much matter how--or even if--you knew of him beforehand. Because there is nothing in Oram's pre-2015 catalog that could possibly prepare you for the certifiably insane masterpiece of hyper-subversive comic audacity that is Aaaaaaaah!, his ferocious and fearless directorial debut, which he also self-financed for reasons that will become apparent as you read on.

Described by Cine-Vue's Martyn Conterio as being an "anthropological social satire/horror-comedy" that is "like a collaboration between Dogme '95 and Chris Morris", Aaaaaaaah! is, at its core, a relatively straightforward exploration of interpersonal dynamics among a small group of friends, neighbors and acquaintances in a quiet, leafy section of South London. The surreal twist on this relatively mundane premise is that all the characters behave as though they've had their brains switched out with those of great apes.

Here is the trailer for Aaaaaaaah!

There is no dialogue in this film. Or, more precisely, there is no complex language, as the characters communicate via crude, pantomime gesticulations, as well as vocalizations consisting of grunts and huffs of varying intensity. The written version of this ape language, which can occasionally be spotted on street signs and in adverts, looks like this: "// oooo / oo /// o". Discussions, or what passes for them, are often interrupted by flashes of violence and cruelty, crude sexual propositions, and the occasional fart. The score, made up almost entirely of improvisational sonic tone poems by King Crimson and Robert Fripp, compliments the action absurdly well.

The plot involves a pair of males--an alpha (played by Oram) and his submissive sidekick (played by Tom Meeten)--who wander out of a woodsy suburban copse and into a household already beset by seething familial, romantic, and inter-generational conflicts, throwing the fragile established order into chaos. The household consists of a mother and daughter, (Lucy Honigman and Toyah Wilcox) and mom's alpha boyfriend (Julian Rhind-Tutt), who has a submissive sidekick of his own (Sean Reynard). Complicating matters is the family's fifth wheel, the exiled paterfamilias, beautifully portrayed by Britcom MVP Julian Barratt.

You might think such a heady set-up would lend itself to the filmmakers indulging in a bit of heavy-handed social commentary. Fortunately, you'd be wrong about that. In an interview with HeyUGuys.com, Oram states: "There are no metaphors and no intended comments. It’s just details that I hope people will enjoy, find funny and laugh at."

And oh, those details! Aaaaaaaah!'s hilarious gross-out highlights include a store manager ejaculating on a photograph of Prince Harry, a disgusting cooking show watched by the females while the men play a primitive motorcycle simulator video game, and poor Noel Fielding getting his knob bitten clean off by an angry shoplifter.

And yet, the filmmakers' avoidance of allegory notwithstanding, there's something about Oram's walk-through of his conquest's flat during a party, wherein he continually marks his territory by pissing on every surface, that manages to transcend the grotesque and speak to certain unspoken truths about masculinity and our culture's relationship with our baser animal instincts. Perhaps it's for this reason that, in his enthusiastic review for the "men's issues" column from The Telegraph UK, Tom Fordy claims that "every man should watch Aaaaaaaah!". Meanwhile, over at The Guardian, their shorter, 3-star review chose to focus on "the film’s despair at the ways women respond to such shows of mastery".

Ultimately, Aaaaaaaah! is an incredibly bizarre and transgressive experimental film that also works as a comic entertainment, simultaneously relate-able and recognizable yet disturbingly alien, and therefore worthy to sit alongside the best of Bunuel.

If you think you've got what it takes to watch Aaaaaaaah!, you can currently download it at the iTunes website via this direct link.

***

MINI-INTERVIEW WITH AAAAAAAAH! CREATOR STEVE ORAM

After reaching out to his management via Twitter, I was recently fortunate enough to get a chance to ask Mr. Oram a few questions about his film, which he graciously agreed to answer for me via email. Here, now, is the sum total of our online exchange.

JERKY: Can I get a rough estimate of the budget? And was it entirely self-financed, or at least entirely independently financed, as I've seen intimated (but never confirmed) in various media stories about the movie?

STEVE ORAM: Yes it was an entirely self-financed movie. Paid for with proceeds from a TV voiceover I did. It was entirely independent and so without any 'creative' input from outside. The actual budget - well think of the lowest budget feature film you've seen, it's about that.

JERKY: Was the addition of the sub-titular appendix "We Are Not Men" an after-thought for the North American market, to make it easier to find in search engines? And does it have (as I suspect) a Nietzschean meaning?

STEVE ORAM: I wish! The search engine thing is an absolute nightmare. On social media anyone searching for it will just come across a thousand people going aaaaaggh! about someone's haircut or something. I wouldn't say I aligned myself with Nietzche or any philosophy. It's just the idea that we aren't as special as we kid ourselves to be. We're no better than any of the other animals at the end of the day.

JERKY: That ending... WHY?!?!?

STEVE ORAM: Well I hope the ending feels true to human nature. Julian Barratt's character is totally disenfrachised and emasculated throughout the film and this has to have its catharsis. Quite often an audience will actually laugh at the ending which astonishes me. Maybe this is an awkward thing, I dunno. Or else there are a lot of sick people in my audiences.

MEDIAVORE: FILM ~ BULLET REVIEWS

DEADPOOL ~ You know all the hype surrounding the release of Mad Max: Fury Road? How so many critics and reviewers claimed that it "revolutionized the form" and "redefined the action film"? Personally, although I enjoyed it, I didn't see what all the fuss was about. Deadpool, on the other hand, lived up to its hype and more.

Tonally perfect with its deft blend of slapstick comedy and ferocious, R-rated violence, the acting and characterizations, the overall look, the choreography, the set-pieces, the attention to the tiniest of details, and the sophisticated (for this genre) non-linear narrative, all combine to make Deadpool the most successful comics-to-movie adaptation in the history of the genre.

Furthermore, playing off Ryan Reynolds' comedic running commentary as an in-context symptom of his mental illness (note that he never breaks the fourth wall until he undergoes the horrific, torturous process that awakens his mutant powers) was probably the masterstroke in a movie jam-packed with strokes of subversive genius... and other kinds of subversive stroking, as well.

Just a brilliant, gonzo, fucked up and fucking awesome love letter to everything Fredric Wertham tried to warn us away from. I don't even care that this movie's planet-cracking popularity is making that poopy-head Rob Liefeld rich beyond the wildest dreams of mortal man. Deadpool is that freaking good.

...AND CURRENTLY, VIA VIDEO ON DEMAND...

FILTH ~ British director Jon Baird's adaptation of Irvine "Trainspotting" Welsh's novel about a dirty Scottish copper using every diabolical trick in his prodigious metaphorical book in order to secure a promotion certainly lives up to its title.

Filth pretty much wallows in the kind of hyper-stylized, surrealistic, boundary-pushing depravity that we've come to expect from the latest wave of post-whatever UK filmmakers.

All the increasingly familiar elements are here: the unreliable narrator, the constant breaking of the fourth wall, occasional bursts of 'zany' hijinx up to and including wacked-out animation, irony up the wazoo, etc.

Like the aforementioned Trainspotting, Filth's evolutionary predecessors definitely includes the likes of Nicholas Winding Refn's Bronson, Jon Glazer's Sexy Beast, and goes all the way back to Lindsay Anderson's ...if, Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange, and (believe it or not) A Hard Day's Night.

In fact, Baird wears his Kubrick fetish on his sleeve, complete with a couple of direct references (a 2001 poster makes a surprise appearance at one point), which I, of course, enjoyed. However, depending on your level of Kubrick fandom, your mileage may vary. In fact, I'll be posting a detailed rundown of all the Kubrick references in Filth in an upcoming essay for my Kubrick blog, KubrickU.blogspot.com.

While Filth may be a bit much for most viewers - it's most definitely not a date film - I found it to be a sufficiently entertaining diversion, and James McAvoy acquits himself well in a somewhat risky role.

For fans of violent, transgressive, gleefully nasty British crime movies, the decision to buy, rent, or download Filth most likely won't result in regret. Who knows? You might even learn a little something about yourself by the end of it!

THE INVITATION ~ Don't let the emerging and highly exaggerated narrative of director Karyn Kusama's allegedly poor treatment at the hands of film industry types sour you to The Invitation's myriad cinematic charms. This tightly wound, slow burn thriller is a virtual clinic on how to evoke and sustain paranoia, and build level upon level of suspense.

The film starts with a couple, Will and Kira, driving to a party in the Hollywood hills. Neither one seems overjoyed to be attending. It turns out to be a dinner party put together by Will's ex, Eden, who has since married Dave, a music producer. Many of the former couple's friends have been invited to the house, along with a few new friends that Eden and Dave (whom we learn had a serious drug habit) met during some kind of New Age style "healing" retreat in Mexico.

As the party begins and the narrative unfolds, we learn that Will and Eden's marriage ended in tragedy upon the accidental death of their young son, Ty, and Eden's subsequent attempted suicide.

At one point, Eden and Dave bust out a videotape featuring what they consider to be a beautiful, transcendent moment from their Mexican retreat. It goes over poorly, with one guest describing the behavior on display as being cult-like. Dave and Eden decide to lighten the mood with a grown-up variation on the game of Truth or Dare. Once again, this only serves to freak out one of the more sensitive guests. In fact, The Invitation works best when it dramatizes the potentially disastrous consequences of ignoring danger signals in favor of maintaining an even social keel.

I can't say much more about this film without spoiling it, so let me just conclude by telling you that it begins and ends with a bang, and takes you on one hell of a ride in between, coming damn close to greatness in the process.

THE BORDERLANDS ~ Found footage horror movies and mockumentaries are a weakness of mine. From the gloriously ridiculous This Is Spinal Tap to Peter Watkins' incredible and essential Punishment Park, there's just something about the conceit and the format of the mock documentary that grabs hold of my attention and refuses to let go. One of my favorite films of the last few years is What We Do in the Shadows, which is kind of a Spinal Tap for Kiwi vampires. So feel free to read the rest of this review keeping my prejudice in mind. If you hate found footage movies, then don't even bother continuing to read. 

Now that that's out of the way, am I saying that The Borderlands succeeds to the degree that any of the above-mentioned films do? No, I am not, and no, it doesn't. What it is, however, is a pretty solid, well-acted, beautifully shot indie horror flick that is well worth 90 minutes of your time.

The story is fairly straightforward. The Vatican sends a trio of priests to a remote Scottish village to investigate a miracle that has allegedly taken place in an ancient church there. The event was partially caught on video, so the team has been instructed to outfit the church (and their rental house, for some reason) with a battery of cameras. They're even forced to wear go-pros wherever they go. The whole thing plays out like an extended game of Call of Cthulhu, that classic table top, pen and paper, role-playing game that was at the heart of the 80's Lovecraft revival.

It also ends on a note that will either leave you stunned, paralyzed, and shocked in utter, mind-numbing terror... or rolling your eyes in derision. It all depends on your level of personal investment in the characters, and maybe also on your propensity for connecting the various narrative and sub-textual dots, as well as your susceptibility to the eldritch lure of Lovecraftian awe. Personally, for me, it worked like gangbusters. Highly recommended!

***

Where to Watch: iTunes, Amazon, Charter, Comcast, Google Play, DirecTV, Playstation, SuddenLink, Time Warner, Verizon FIOS, Vudu, XBOX.

JERKY PICKS THE WINNERS FOR TONIGHT'S OSCARS!

As some of you may already know, in my capacity as editor-in-chief and sole content provider for The Daily Dirt circa 1999-2006, yer old pal Jerky had what can only be described as an incredibly impressive track record when it came to predicting who would win at the Academy Awards, particularly in the Big Four categories (Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Picture).

This year, unfortunately, I have neither the time nor the fire in the belly passion required to write up my traditionally hilarious full accounting of the reasoning behind my ever prescient choices. But when I woke up this afternoon, rolled over, flicked my mouse to wake up the computer monitor and was reminded that tonight was Oscar night, I decided I had to write SOMETHING. After all, I owe it to you... the fans.

And so, without further ado, here are my sure-to-be accurate, no-miss Oscar night winning picks! You can bet the kids' college fund on these locks, folks... winners all, or double your money back!

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
WHO SHOULD WIN: Mark Ruffalo, for Spotlight.

WHO WILL WIN: Sylvester Stallone, for Creed.

WHY: Duh! Because #OscarSoWhite, of course.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
WHO SHOULD WIN: Who cares?

WHO WILL WIN: Son of Saul, straight outa Hungary

WHY: *cough* HOLOCAUST *cough*

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

WHO SHOULD WIN: Rachel McAdams, in Spotlight.

WHO WILL WIN: Jennifer Jason Leigh, in The Hateful Eight.
WHY: The wanton, misogynistic sadism of the Old White Men who make up the Academy, who really got off on seeing JJL getting the shit kicked out of her for three hours straight... or was it four? Kinda felt like five, to me.

VISUAL EFFECTS

WHO SHOULD WIN: Mad Max: Fury Road.

WHO WILL WIN: Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
WHY: The Hollywood Establishment needs to throw that stink burger at least a couple Oscar bones, and this seems like one of the best places for them to do so.

ANIMATED FEATURED FILM

WHO SHOULD WIN: Inside Out.

WHO WILL WIN: Anomalisa.
WHY: For proving once and for all that feature-length animated films can be just as ponderous, pointless, and dishwater dull as real movies can. Way to go, guys!

CINEMATOGRAPHY

WHO SHOULD WIN: The Revenant.

WHO WILL WIN: The Hateful Eight.
WHY: Because the Academy knows they'll never hear the end of Tarantino's whining about it if they don't at least give him this one. "70mm Roadshow Presentation" my fat white ass.

FILM EDITING

WHO SHOULD WIN: The Big Short.

WHO WILL WIN: The Big Short.

WHY: Because this film is incredibly well paced, which is a result of excellent editing, so it actually deserves to win.

DOCUMENTARY – FEATURE

WHO SHOULD WIN: The Look of Silence.

WHO WILL WIN: Amy.

WHY: Because, depressing as it may be to admit this, most people care more about an alcoholic celebrity crackhead doing herself in than they do about one of the most horrific episodes of recent history, wherein roving gangs of anti-communist street thugs swept the Suharto regime into power in Indonesia circa 1966, killing between 1 and 3 million of their fellow citizens in the process, without any of them ever having to face justice for their actions. The Look of Silence is a sequel of sorts to 2012's The Act of Killing, and both are more terrifying than any horror film ever made.

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

WHO SHOULD WIN: Inside Out.

WHO WILL WIN: Straight Outta Compton.
WHY: Because, incredible as it may seem, this is the one and only nomination - in the single, solitary category - that has any relationship whatsoever to "the Blacks", as Donald Trump calls them. So they pretty much don't have a choice. They have to give Straight Outta Compton the Oscar. Which is going to be doubly hilarious when this guy takes the stage to accept his statuette...

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

WHO SHOULD WIN: Room.

WHO WILL WIN: The Martian.
WHY: Because the journey from tech geek's self-published hobby-novel to world-beating, feel-good, box-office-domination is just the kind of Cinderella story the Academy likes to kid itself into thinking is emblematic of the Hollywood "brand".  

BEST DIRECTOR

WHO SHOULD WIN: George Miller, for Mad Max: Fury Road.

WHO WILL WIN: Tom McCarthy, for Spotlight.
WHY: Because they forgot to nominate Ridley Scott for some reason.

BEST ACTOR

WHO SHOULD WIN: Matt Damon, for The Martian.

WHO WILL WIN: Leonardo DiCaprio, for The Revenant.
WHY: Dude wants it so bad, he allowed himself to get raped by a bear. Let the baby have his bottle, already. 

BEST ACTRESS

WHO SHOULD WIN: Brie Larson, for Room.

WHO WILL WIN: Jennifer Lawrence, for Joy.

WHY: Because Cate Blanchett already has two Oscars, nobody knows how to pronounce "Saoirse", and everybody in the world wants to get with J-Law. I mean, have you seen those "Fappening" snaps?!

BEST PICTURE

WHO SHOULD WIN: Spotlight.

WHO WILL WIN: The Martian.
WHY: Because the collective IQ of the global "Anglosphere" seems to have experienced a significant and distressing drop over the past several months (see the recent Republican debates for evidence of such).

MEDIAVORE // COMICS ~ THE COSMIC HORROR OF "NAMELESS"

NAMELESS (Image Comics) ~ In this miniseries' six immensely satisfying issues, Grant Morrison serves up a heaping helping of Lovecraftian science-fiction, generously fortified with his trademark juxtaposition of heady, historically-accurate occultism with genre conventions and pop culture tropes. Handling the visual side of things, Chris Burnham makes an astonishingly successful go at aping frequent Morrison collaborator Frank Quitely's style, minus the latter's glacial, deadline-mocking turnaround rate.

Experiencing this gorgeously-rendered, mind-bending-yet-familiar narrative was a tremendous pleasure, so I'll do my best to make this a spoiler-free review. In fact, I won't be engaging in much analysis at all. This is really more of a preview for Nameless, or an enthusiastic recommendation, than anything else.

The basic elements of the story are as follows: A freelance occultist referred to only as "Nameless" is drawn into billionaire space mogul Paul Darius' clandestine efforts to deflect a massive asteroid that is hurtling towards the Earth, while simultaneously investigating some peculiar markings and structures that have been spotted on its surface.

If the above sounds a bit like Constantine does Armageddon, that isn't too far off the mark. But don't be fooled... Nameless is NOT some hastily thrown together pastiche. It features an intricate, non-linear assembly of nesting narratives that demands and rewards close attention.

From the first pages, in which Nameless sneaks, Inception-style, into someone's dreams in order to steal a powerful psychic artifact, we're never quite sure where we, or the characters, stand. Forever poised at the brink of revelation, the occasional glimpses of the hideous, alien reality behind the thin camouflage of sensory perception are sufficient to send even the strongest fleeing for the comfort of blind, blessed ignorance.

Nameless includes several genuinely disturbing moments, as well as a few vividly rendered scenes of graphic physical violence. It's also packed with goodies for lovers of esoterica, amateur occultists, and others interested in such paracultural oddities.

So how "paracultural" do things get, exactly? Well, as Nameless begins to realize that our Solar System has been the battlefield for an aeons-spanning interplanetary war between the deities, demigods and monstrous abominations who populate the mythological pantheons of the Sumerians, the Mayans, and various unknown "others", he decides to protect himself and his spaceship crew using the symbolic Enochian pseudo-language devised by Elizabethan court magician John Dee... an insight that comes to him while under the influence of one of Brion Gysin's hallucination-inducing Dream Machines. There are also some majorly twisted Tarot cards on display. But I've revealed too much already.

If the above sounds as good to you as it would to me, then you're in luck! A collected edition of Nameless is coming soon, which means you won't have to keep going back and forth to your local comic shop, waiting for up to eight freaking weeks before being able to gobble up the next incredible chapter, which usually takes no more than 20 minutes' reading time. Fortunately, thanks in no small part to Burnham, Nameless improves with each reading, so it will probably have a long, happy publishing life.

I'm not being paid to say this: Buy your copy of Nameless the minute it hits store shelves. Or heck, buy it now using this link, and Amazon will toss a couple pennies in my general direction! Go on... you know you want to!

MEDIAVORE // FILM ~ BULLET REVIEWS IN BRIEF

THE BIGGIES

STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS ~ Somewhat enjoyable, ultimately disposable opening salvo in Disney's continuity-redefining jump-start of George Lucas' inexplicably popular, intellectually moribund, decades-long series of glorified toy commercials. Of course it's the most "successful" film in the history of cinema.

SPOTLIGHT ~ One of the best journalistic films since All the President's Men, this extended look at the Boston Globe's Spotlight investigating team's groundbreaking 2001/2002 report on the Catholic Church's cover-up of massive pedophilia among the clergy is chock-a-block with interesting performances, great cinematic flourishes, understated and subtly powerful moments of revelation, without ever falling prey to the urge to be exploitative or overly sentimental. Mature, powerful, enjoyable.

THE HATEFUL 8 ~ as with every Quentin Tarantino since Kill Bill, there were things to love, and things to hate. Lots of cheap tricks disguised as shocking revelations, wonderful use of the ultra-wide
screen (some excellent staging and shot compositions), but ultimately too long by about an hour, and what little narrative heft it does have doesn't manage to ground it at all. For such a bloated thing, it sure was insubstantial. Also, there are way more than 8 characters in this thing. Cheat!

THE BIG SHORT ~ The Wolf of Wall Street, only more so. Probably the best movie about financial malfeasance that I have ever seen, and that includes most documentaries. This one was a great surprise to me, as I'd heard little about it before watching. A true story that is even more infuriating than Spotlight, and that's saying something.

THE SMALLIES

THE RIDICULOUS 6 ~ This is the Adam Sandler movie where all the native people employed as extras and in small roles decided to walk off the set because of the racist, caricaturist way in which the script dealt with them. And you know what? That's probably the funniest thing about this whole damn project.

HELL BABY ~ The creators of Reno 911 (a personal favorite) threw together this Satanic-themed pregnancy horror-comedy and invited a bunch of their comedy peers (including a game Rod Cordrey, half of Key and Peele, and a totally naked half of Garfunkle and Oates) to join them in New Orleans for some movie shooting and some Po Boys eating. Mildly entertaining, but ultimately disposable.

THE VISIT ~ M. Night Shamalamadingdong is back with this R-rated, found-footage, glorified "Goosebumps" episode. I actually liked this, which is kind of miraculous, considering who made it. I wouldn't be surprised to find out he didn't play a very large role in the writing of this project, because it actually works.

THE CONGRESS ~ Perhaps the most successful combination of animation and live action since Who Framed Roger Rabbit, this thoughtful, profoundly postmodern deconstruction of the ways in which the Hollywood machine chews up, digests, then shits out its employees (aka its victims) is also one of the most profound works of cinematic philosophy in recent decades, asking many big, important questions, and offering answers that enlighten, even if they don't comfort. Must see cinema, a feast for the eyes, the mind, and the soul.

MEDIAVORE // FILM ~ CRIMSON PEAK, EX MACHINA, WE ARE STILL HERE

The real world mystery of CRIMSON PEAK's myriad failures is far more perplexing and disturbing to me than the fictional mystery at the heart of the film. Perhaps doubly so because I have long admired Guillermo del Toro both as a director and as an ambassador for high quality genre film-making. The man is one of the best "movie" directors working today, with many near-perfect popcorn flicks under his belt, and he's given the world at least one bona fide cinematic masterpiece in Pan's Labyrinth. So what the hell happened with Crimson Peak? 

First and foremost, it isn't very scary. The ghosts are essentially just souped up versions of the overly-CGI titular specter from the 2013 horror hit Mama, which was also produced by del Toro, and which also featured Jessica Chastain in a leading role. Of course, in interviews, del Toro claims that he never set out to make a horror movie, but a "Gothic" romance, in the formal sense of the word. But invoking a word was never going to keep this film's audience from feeling misled, especially after Crimson Peak's marketing campaign tried to position it as "the ultimate haunted house movie", complete with a Halloween-friendly release date and a ringing endorsement from Stephen freakin' King.

Adding more sting to Crimson Peak's failure is the fact that, despite the above-mentioned expectational handicap, it actually starts out pretty strong. In bringing the people and places of late 19th century Buffalo to life on the big screen, one authentic detail at a time, del Toro succeeds in conjuring up some legit movie magic. He gives his actors a very real, believable universe to inhabit, and they repay the favor by delivering organic, easy-to-root-for performances. Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hidleston and the aforementioned Chastain are more than adequate as the central, incestuous love triangle (Gothic indeed!), while Burn Gorman and Jim Beaver provide stand-out performances in supporting roles. 

So when and where does the whole enterprise go pear-shaped? I've got it pinned down to a single scene, which features one of the worst shaving "accidents" ever captured on screen. After that, when the setting jumps overseas to England's bleak and blustery North Country, it's almost as if del Toro lets everything drop so he can spend all his time concentrating on his most obvious priority: Crimson Peak, itself. He spends so much time exploring every nook and cranny of that isolated, dilapidated and, admittedly, gorgeously-rendered manor house that he hardly has time for such petty annoyances as characters, plot, or anything else. The film descends into a series of silly, predictable, occasionally bloody but ultimately uninvolving set pieces, and the whole thing ends with a decidedly muted whimper, almost as though del Toro and crew knew that they had a lemon in the can. 

It's fucking depressing, is what it is. 

Because I'm still a fan of del Toro's work, I feel compelled to point out that even though it was a box office failure, Crimson Peak does have its defenders. Unfortunately, to this fan's way of seeing things, it is an occasionally interesting, somewhat noble, but ultimately failed, experiment.

Late last year I started watching EX MACHINA, starring current Star Wars Universe newbies Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson as a reclusive billionaire genius inventor and his amanuensis/guinea pig, whom he flies out to a ridiculously opulent Alaskan compound to serve as a human Turing Test for his latest invention: Eva, a beautiful synthetic humanoid AI portrayed by Swedish ballerina Alicia Vikander. After about 15 minutes, I got the sense that this was a low-budget take on the "Singularitysploitation" film genre that has given us the moribund likes of Transcendence and Lucy, so I gave up on it. 

This week I finally got around to watching the whole thing, and I'm very glad that I gave it a second chance. Ex Machina is a strong film in pretty much all respects, and it works on many levels. It is, for instance, a great twist on the Frankenstein story. It also works as a high-tech corporate thriller of sorts, but that doesn't prevent first-time director Alex Garland from weighing in on some pretty heavy contemporary philosophical issues as well, even though his film isn't as subtle or explorative as, say, Spike Jonze's somewhat similarly-themed 2013 masterpiece, Her. 

Performance-wise, Oscar Isaac delivers the star turn here as Nathan Bateman, a preening, egotistical, hyper-dominant alpha whose behavior towards his employees (and creations) pivots from buddy-buddy to borderline psychopathic with disorienting speed. It is in these moments and others that Ex Machina veers into horror movie territory, a tonal shift accentuated by an impressive and very effective musical score. 

In this cinematic era of dumbed-down superhero sequels and endless retcon reboots, it is a rare thing indeed for a sci-fi movie to exhibit any kind of genuine intellectual curiosity, or demand a certain level of intellectual sophistication from its audience. That Ex Machina manages to do so while also being an unapologetic entertainment is, in and of itself, a great success. 

With projects like Ex Machina, Her, and the British TV series Black Mirror breaking bold new ground and expanding what is considered possible to portray in the realm of popular speculative fiction, perhaps the "Singularitysploitation Curse" has, at long last, been broken. One can only hope.

There seems to be a running theme in today's movies. Crimson Peak is about a massive, ancient, decaying English manor house that seems to have a life of its own. Ex Machina is set in a sprawling, isolated compound in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness; a cross between a penthouse apartment and the Overlook hotel. And in WE ARE STILL HERE, a grieving couple who have lost their adult son attempt to distract themselves by moving into a hundred-plus-year-old farmhouse that used to be the town funeral home, somewhere in rural New England. Smart move, folks!

The first full-length film to be directed by veteran indie horror writer/producer Ted Geoghegan, We Are Still Here is set in 1979, and was shot to seem as though it was made back then, too. This is a cinematic stunt that Geoghegan-associated director Ti West performed with great success for his 2009 retro-horror slow burn classic, House of the Devil. Genre MVP Barbara Crampton portrays grieving mom Anne Sacchetti, who believes her son Bobby's soul has followed them to their new home, and Andrew Sensenig plays her gently humoring but deeply skeptical husband, Paul (the man with the Biggest Forehead in the World). 

Things turn real creepy real fast, as photographs get knocked over, an electrician is brutalized by a half-seen evil presence, and a neighbor (Monte Markham!) stops by to divulge the awful history of the house and its 19th century tenants, the dreaded Dagmar clan. Seems old Lassander, the Dagmar paterfamilias, had taken to burying empty coffins in the graveyard, selling the townsfolk's deceased to nearby universities as practice cadavers, and also to certain unscrupulous restauranteurs in Boston's Chinatown, for use as Chop Suey eat. Needless to say, the whole family was ridden out of town on a rail.

After that, the weirdness escalates quickly, prompting Anne to call in her wacky, New Age friends, May and Jacob Lewis, played by Lisa Marie and Larry Fessenden (an indie horror institution and the man with the Second Biggest Forehead in the World), for moral and spiritual support. She also invites May and Jacob's son, Harry, who was Bobby's college roommate, to tag along with his girlfriend. Unfortunately, the mayhem escalates so quickly and with such brutal, bloody violence that many of the characters never even get a chance to lay eyes on each other. 

Nostalgic and yet somehow, paradoxically, fresh and original; polished and professional, yet with an endearingly hand-crafted aesthetic; occasionally chuckle-inducing, yet with moments of brutal savagery and blood-freezing horror. As I watched, enthralled, I noted echoes of classic John Carpenter, Lucio Fulci, early Cronenberg and the amazing, sui generis masterpiece Phantasm (1979). Fans of classic horror cinema, you owe it to yourselves to seek out and watch this film at your earliest possible convenience.

[This article was edited on the evening of Thursday, January 7, 2016, to correct certain mistakes as pointed out by my writing partner and best buddy, Marc Roussel. Thanks, Marc! - YOPJ]

MEDIAVORE: BINGE TV REPORT ~ SALEM, CHILDHOOD'S END

CHILDHOOD'S END is apparently part of an attempt by the specialty cable channel SyFy to move away from the silliness of "Sharktopus Versus Platybadger" towards more serious speculative fare, as otherwise exemplified by their superlative new original series The Expanse. On paper, adapting Arthur C. Clarke's evolutionary alien invasion mystery - one of the most important, groundbreaking, and influential novels of science fiction's late Golden Age, and a novel I, myself, have long wanted to see adapted for film - probably seemed like a no-brainer. I was therefore grateful to discover that, for the most part, veteran BBC show-runner Matthew Graham manages to avoid the pitfalls that come with adapting a work so seminal that most of its ideas have been pinched and "recycled" by countless copycats over the years. Perhaps part of its success can be chalked up to the decision to accurately convey the novel's cold and cerebral tone and its disturbing undercurrents of sublime cosmic dread. Combined with a faithful recreation of most of the novel's best set-pieces and surprises (including a fantastic character reveal that gave me chills, even though I knew it was coming) these are decisions that pay off handsomely, and result in a miniseries that will linger with you for days, leaving you pondering some of life's Big Questions, occasionally leading you down dark intellectual alleyways where you might not feel all that comfortable exploring. And this is a good thing. There are, of course, a few small caveats. For one, at three 90 minute episodes, SyFy's adaptation is too long by a third. One or two of the sub-plots could have been pared down or even excised altogether. And one of my very favorite scenes from the novel, involving all the spectators at a packed bullfighting arena screaming as one as they are simultaneously made to feel the bull's terror and pain as a picador's sword pierces his beating heart, is missing in action. But these are trifling quibbles. The bottom line is that SyFy's Childhood's End is a worthy adaptation of a legitimate science fiction masterpiece, and that is pretty much the strongest praise that I can give.

Which brings us to the first two seasons of SALEM, WGN's gory, gruesome, goofy period costume series about high-stakes, world-class, competitive witchery taking place in late 17th century small town New England. I won't defend this series as anything beyond what it so obviously is: a deliriously daft, demon-haunted soap opera with myriad sexy young characters, ruggedly handsome men and beautifully corseted women, all with bosoms heaving as they pant with repressed sexuality, wearing gorgeous clothes, performing outlandish magical spells on each other while trying to steer clear of the Witchfinder General, the diabolical villain Increase Mather. Here is a character who only pauses in mortifying his own flesh with a barbed wire girdle in order to torture and execute suspected witches - mostly innocent young girls - in his increasingly barbaric butcher block of a prison, which townsfolk have taken to calling the House of Pain. As for the witchcraft, itself, frogs are stuffed down paralytic old men's throats, young girls vomit blood and nine-inch nails, a face flayed from a dead man's skull is conscripted into revealing the secrets it held onto in life, masks teleport unsuspecting redheads deep into the woods, the blood of innocent children is used to heal third degree burns, etc, etc, ad awesomeness! There are too many subplots to list in this bullet review, and I'm not sufficiently invested to detail them all, anyway. Suffice it to say, in this case, that regardless of the vast number of characters and ever-shifting allegiances, Salem is easy to follow, and is an absolute hoot to boot. Also, there are a ton of references to classic works of horror literature that have nothing to do with witchcraft, much less Salem (the aforementioned House of Pain, for instance, is a reference to H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr Moreau), which has the makings of a potentially fun drinking game for your more well read friends, should you have any. If you're looking for beautifully produced series with ambitions that don't go beyond delivering a massive jolt of entertainment with each episode, by all means, seek Salem out. Both full seasons are now available for download at a torrent server site near you. Enjoy!

ALL ABOUT JASON KARNS' TABOO-BUSTING FUKITOR

While scanning Facebook just over two years ago, I came across an update by comics industry legend Stephen Bissette that stopped me in my tracks. It was an eye-popping image of a hulking, helmeted barbarian wielding multiple bladed weapons with which he was expertly vivisecting a gnarly horde of subhuman riff-raff. A scantily clad vixen, wide-eyed and terrified, surveyed the carnage.

It was love at first sight. I needed to know more.

It only took a few clicks to get the basics. The artist was Jason Karns, who’s been self-publishing his unique brand of balls-to-the-wall, blood-dripping-from-the-ceiling comic books for over a decade. After putting out a number of one-off stories in a wide range of genres, he recently decided to publish his work under a single brand name; a title that he felt best expressed his artwork and storytelling: FUKITOR.

Nazi scientists unleashing genetically modified gorilla shock troops on unsuspecting G.I. Joes; cannibal Satanists and zombie royalty sharing a feast of wriggling female flesh; a psychotic, trigger-happy detective leaving bloody piles of collateral damage in his wake; butt-raping Bat-Apes from Pluto… It’s all FUKITOR. And it’s fucking glorious.

Karns is a one-man show. He is FUKITOR’s sole creator, hand-crafting every issue, from the initial plotting all the way down to the trimming and stapling. And he does it all from his small hometown in Illinois, where he daylights as a barkeep. He has toiled anonymously for years, designing the occasional t-shirt, or gig posters for local rock bands, honing his skills and producing beautiful work of rare quality and power, quite content to remain an unknown quantity, obscure even by the dim lights of independent comics publishing… until recently.

Continue Reading...

MEDIAVORE ~ THE BEST MUSIC VIDEO EVER MADE

MEDIAVORE REVIEW: VIDEO ~ BONE TOMAHAWK, AMERICAN MARY

BONE TOMOHAWK is a gift of a film; a master-class in stylistic blending that deftly combines the best of what frontier westerns and the cannibal horror genre have to offer. Despite a deliberate, careful pacing, momentum never lags as each passing moment is chock-a-block with wonderful, infinitely quotable dialogue and some truly fine performances by the uniformly superlative cast of veteran character actors.

Kurt Russell is at his best here as the dogged, stalwart Sheriff Franklin Hunt, of the tiny, isolated town of Bright Hope, which itself is populated by a collection of the usual suspects, including an ageing but resourceful deputy, a prideful, upper-class veteran of the Indian Wars, a timid barkeep, some hard-working, hard-drinking frontiersmen, their dutiful, inordinately attractive wives, and a colorful bad man or two. Sid Haig and David Arquette are particularly excellent in the opening scenes.

Fair warning: BONE TOMAHAWK starts off in a relatively conventional manner that gives precious little warning before erupting into a grim, horrific, gore-drenched struggle for survival. Featuring one of the most gruesome on-screen killings in recent memory, BONE TOMAHAWK is not for every taste. It is, however, destined to become a cherished and beloved cult classic for as long as people watch, and love, bold and innovative genre motion pictures.

As is often the case with films that cater to a particular element of contemporary fandom*, there are many cliches that apply to the Soska Sisters' aesthetically ambitious and ethically ambiguous sophomore effort, AMERICAN MARY.  Its reach exceeds its grasp, for one. However, if you have no problem suspending your disbelief for 90 minutes - and if you're either a member or curious observer of the "body modification" subculture - then perhaps this cinematic exercise in feminist revenge fantasy is just the thing to spice up your Sunday evening at home with the better half.

AMERICAN MARY tells the story of Mary Mason (portrayed by Katherine Isabelle), a promising and attractive young medical student from Seattle whose money woes force her to consider moonlighting as a stripper. After giving Billy (the bar's sleazy owner) the world's most unenthusiastic massage, a situation arises that leads to Mary being offered $5,000 cash if she can save the life of a double-crossing gangster, whom Billy's associates have been torturing in the basement. Mary's reluctant agreement to do this, and her success in the deed, are what lead to her subsequent decision to enter into the wonderful, whimsical, oh-so-90's-retro world of body modification.

For a movie that is a self-described reaction to the recent wave of cinematic "extremism" in both Europe (think MARTYRS) and Japan (think Takeshi Miike), I found AMERICAN MARY to be more silly than disturbing. A list of every character, line of dialogue, location, motivation, or decision made in this film that could fairly be described as "ridiculous" would stretch quite a long way, indeed. A few key examples should be enough to give you a general idea of what I'm referring to...

First and foremost, there's the film's oddly childish Riot-Grrrl-meets-torture-porn weltanschaung. You get the feeling that the Soska Sisters really believe that shit can go down the way they portray it going down in this movie, particularly at the 100% male-run "surgery school" that Mary attends... up until the moment when the professors all gather to assist the vilest among them - a character who's been twirling his mustache since we first laid eyes on him - to drug and rape Mary (and film it!) in order to ensure that the world of surgical practice remains an elitist, patriarchal cis-pit of unchecked male privilege... or something.

There are other, more basic believability issues here, too. Like, for instance, if her money troubles are so bad, why doesn't Mary just move out of that massive, cathedral-sized apartment of hers, and into a place more befitting her status as a student? And don't get me started on the idea of complex operations being performed successfully, solo, without any preparation whatsoever. Apparently, all it takes to make it big in the lucrative world of plastic surgery is a surgical mask, some gloves, a bag full of sharp blades, and raw surgical talent! No wonder the Old Boy's Club is trying to fortify that Glass Ceiling of theirs; if the truth ever got out about how easy their job is, it would totally derail their Gravy Train!

From the arguably objectionable to the merely annoying, we have Billy's weird, unrequited crush on Mary, which goes nowhere, story-wise. The character of Lance, one of Billy's hired thugs, is another annoyance; what is it with tough guys in Canadian movies all having long, greasy hair, wearing sunglasses, leather jackets and gloves, and secretly being soulful, supportive gentlemen? And then there's the Soskas' infamous Hitchcock moment, wherein they appear as the Demon Twins of Berlin, stereotypically "shocking", pseudo-incestuous Goth sisters who prattle away in ersatz German accents and wish to feel "more connected" by exchanging left arms with one another. Just like the detective who occasionally pops by to briefly question Mary about her instructor's mysterious disappearance, they come and go with neither consequence nor raison d'etre.

So... is AMERICAN MARY completely worthless? Not at all. At times it's enjoyable in an early Rob Zombie kind of way; like flipping through back issues of Fangoria Magazine while listening to Alice in Chains on an old CD Walkman. The practical effects are convincing, and the film looks pretty good, with a dark, rich color palate and some interesting shot compositions. There are also a couple of particularly enjoyable performances.

Katherine Isabelle has been Canada's best Scream Queen since her star-making turn in the excellent feminist werewolf movie GINGER SNAPS, and she does her best to make Mary into a believable, complex, and sympathetic character... no mean feat, considering some of the nasty business she gets up to. That Isabelle brings so much to the character that isn't, strictly speaking, "on the page" shouldn't come as a surprise, seeing as the Soskas wrote the screenplay with her in mind. The other notable performance in this film is Tristan Risk as the strange but compelling character of Beatress. Performing through an impressive latex approximation of Betty Boop, Risk conveys a paradoxically jaded innocence that stayed with me for days.

Of course, while good performances and decent cinematography can go a long way, they don't, in and of themselves, make for a successful film; especially one with the issues I've described. So, ultimately, I'd describe AMERICAN MARY as a failure... but an ambitious and intriguing one. And seeing as it's still early in the Soskas' film-making career, I will definitely continue to check out their work.

* AMERICAN MARY is literally dedicated to Eli Roth!