Harry Potter 6 Trailer

Here's the new trailer for Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince. Half-Blood Prince is probably my favourite of J K Rowling's sorcery school books - Harry is finally taken into Dumbledore's confidence, experiencing journeys in time through Dumbledore's bottled and noted memory bar.

Half-Blood Prince is a twisting, snaking companion piece to the second Potter tale: Chamber of Secrets. As in Chamber, Half-Blood takes great delight in drawing an alarming number of parallels between Tom Riddle / Voldemort and our young hero Harry. Both orphans, both perpetually stranded in summer love limbos yearning for Hogwarts, both able to communicate with serpents. Harry and Riddle are contrast doppelgangers locked into mutual extermination. I'm a sucker for twin war! Half-Blood Prince is the calm head-think breather before all-out Wizardpocalypse.

Investigate his past! Learn his weakness!

James Kochalka Must Live!

So he can complete his fever dream Robin comic. Read on AND WONDER!



Read the shocking slumber insight behind such a startlingly surrealist savage side-kick story!

Holy alliteration!

Commence e-bomb DC beg bombardment now. Then head over to his website for his daily update artobiography. It's splendidy.

Death Wish

Charles Bronson is Paul Kersey, a New York architect. Cast as a bleeding heart liberal by virtue of the fact that he does not agree with his boorish friend's idea about stick all the poor in death camps. Already we know Bronson's in for a rude awakening with, hopefully, violently cathartic results! Hell arrives in the form of three hoodlums who stalk his nearest and dearest back to their apartment. Led by a goggle eyed Jeff Goldblum, the sex-crime gang have all the larking irritability of dance-school kids doing improv. Perhaps sensing this disconnect, director Michael Winner has them indulge in an especially nasty rape scene, doubly bad for both its brutality and its leering objectification of Bronson's daughter. Bronson's wife, meanwhile, gets her head caved in while Goldblum screams "rich cunt!" in her face.

His life up in smoke, and saddled with a irritatingly familiar son-in-law, Bronson ups sticks and heads to Arizona. It's here he learns to love pistols and simplistic cowboy justice. Bronson's limp left-wing resolve finally breaks half-way through a wild west stunt show. Of course! The Old West eh? There was a time of moral stability! The first half of the tourist show is an extended torture scenario in which a white-hat sheriff gets ambushed, thrashed and imprisoned. Seconds later, he's miraculously recovered and sat on top of a building blasting the malcontents that did him over. It's High Plains Drifter as a tea-time treat, with a millionth of the flair. Returning home, Bronson embarks on a one-man mutilation mission. Cheer him on!

Death Wish enjoys an reputation that far outstrips its means. Despite Winner's credit I was expecting a sleazy Euro-infused Dirty Harry derivative, instead I got a grubby, rambling cheapy shot through with long, room-sweeping TV takes and a hectoring Herbie Hancock score. At a guess, I'd say Winner hates New York almost as much as he hates women. He shoots the Big Apple as a bestial shit-hole, full of bleating psychopaths and bawling addicts. Best not to mention the obnoxiously loud performances and keystone cop ineptitude that further muddle any thematic interest either. It's not all dreadful though - the funeral of Bronson's wife has a vaguely lyrical quality about it: taking place during a snow storm, what remains of the Kersey family huddle together for comfort. Clad in stark, mournful blacks, each is covered in a coke white freeze frosting. Bronson's always fun to watch too, his face exactly the kind of thing Jack Kirby might chisel out of marble - all brutalised lines and squinting vendetta.

Death Wish's most interesting aspect is the rejuvenation of Bronson through what amounts to homicidal cottaging. Initially Bronson's encounters are either self-defence or rescue. All too quickly though he's wandering around parks late at night, gussied up in expensive coats and flashing money, daring criminals to jump him. Once they've built up the courage to approach him, they get one in the gut and another in their face when they're lying prone on the floor. Retreating into himself Bronson finds solace in bawdy muzak and grim execution. The public loves him.

This is Death Wish's major failing, The Vigilante crusade is never approached from any angle other than simplistic crim bashing. It never affects Bronson's mental state, and his actions are never questioned. There is only another gut bullet at the end of another midnight honey trap. This is pre-Guiliani New York, exterminate the underclass! This lazy simple-mindedness I could quite happily sit through if Winner demonstrated even the vaguest hint of stylistic flair. Everything in Death Wish is shot drab and lifeless though. Corpses stumbling around ugly apartment sets and dark, urban spaces.

I got very excited towards the end - with the Police hot on his trail Bronson can't resist plunging himself into another park, down another flight of bone-white stairs, desperate for any illicit thrill. Half way down Bronson pauses. At the bottom are two muggers, goading and threatening him, demanding his money. Bronson's hand inches into his coat fumbling for his pistol. Suddenly another figure appears behind Bronson. Is it a cop? Is it the cop we just saw puzzling along Kersey's trail? Is Bronson trapped between the law and the lawless? Is that cop really going to take the side of the criminals to put an end to Bronson's reign of terror? Is this film actually getting exciting? Of course not! The cop was stuck elsewhere bumbling around like a twat. It was just another mugger. Bronson exterminated them all. Never mind eh?

A special mention must go to Paramount's DVD mastering department who clearly made no effort what-so-ever in putting this package together. No extras. Shitty print. Shitty sound. Too bad I can't blame them for the shitty film too.

Star Wars: Episode 2 And Change

There's a new Star Wars film out at the end of summer. Ahem. Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Why the distinct lack of hype? It's a feature length spin-off from a forthcoming CG animated TV series.



Reading around the film it sounds like Lucas is operating on whimsy; deciding to release a feature upon seeing rough edits of the TV series projected on a big screen. Despite retaining the character models (or 3D approximations thereof), this series bears scant relation to Genndy Tartakovsky's magnificent Cartoon Network series Star Wars: Clone Wars.

See for yourself, here's the first 4 odd minutes.

All that sweeping camera movement! Reeks of tech-demo eh?

Compare that drab anti-punch to this little wonder.

What's Mr Tartakovsky up to now? He was last seen in the director's chair for fantasy muppet epic Dark Crystal follow-up: Power of the Dark Crystal. When's that out? Maybe never. Apparently the project is long canned, with Lisa Henson looking for an opportune time to break everyone's hearts. Rumour source? Some sneaky chap what smells. Hope he's fibbin'.

Goddamn Bat-Figure!

In dreadful news, looks like Holy Terror, Batman! is off.

Curse and confound it all.

Watch Tatsuyuki Tanaka!

Rooting around the interwebs, I found myself a couple of Tatsuyuki Tanaka shorts. Tanaka, you may know as the author of the rather splendid artbook Cannabis Works. Other than that his CV is very hard to get a grip on. He's done storyboard work for Studio 4 °C, was a key animator on Akira, and has a short in the compilation sequel Genius Party Beyond. Tanaka's work tends to feature exceptionally well observed slouch frames moored in a steam-machine clutterscapes AND BEYOND! Misleading pat generalisation wise, I'd go Katsuhiro Otomo meets Paul Pope. It's all the clean lines.

Anyway, the shorts:

First a Nike advert, featuring an animeheroic LeBron James.

Lastly, an Utada Hikaru music video excerpt.

Here, have the Genius Party Beyond trailer too!

Kiss Kiss Sight and Sound

Film freak pamphlet Sight & Sound offers a free pdf download of dream double bills. Ain't they nice? Get it here. 52 great write-ups, most of which contain multiple suggestions and ruminations. Including! Some re-appraisal for above Renny Harlin flick. No. Seriously.

Red-Haired Homewrecker Strikes Again!

Looks like neo Barbarella is off. That's Rose McGowan in the upcoming Robert Rodriguez produced Red Sonja. The film is to be directed by one Douglas Aarniokoski, previous responsible for Highlander: Endgame and reams of second-unit direction on Miramax genre pieces. Based on a Marvel Comics' character created by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith - itself modelled on a minor character from Robert E Howard's Conan books - Red Sonja is a lithe female barbarian clad in absurd swim-suit armour.

Sonja was the subject of a quite awful 1985 film starring Brigitte Nielsen and Arnold Schwarzenegger, although scanning message boards following the announcement of the above re-jig, you'd think it was fucking Proust. Pages of whining and complaining that someone has dared to meddle with such an established piece of cinema. Bleh. Nostalgia eh? Just because you saw it when you were a child, and remember bits, doesn't automatically mean it's good.

The Possibility Of Watchmen: The Movie Being Excellent Slips A Little Further Away.

Ouch.

Just highlight the link. It tells you everything you need to know.

The Dark Knight

I'm sitting in front of an 8 storey high screen. It's formatted for a 1.34:1 display - I'm watching a television the size of an office building. It swamps my vision. I can barely see anything but it. A blue glass building bursts into view, filling every inch of the canvas. We hurtle towards it. I'm crashing into it. Windows shatter and clowns take flight. I feel dizzy. IMAX. Unlike it's hero, The Dark Knight is a film that seems utterly without restraint. People die, buildings burn, and whole sequences are scored with nothing but a buzzing electronic reverb - a giant mechanical fly struggling to get out of a jar, twitching and clawing as a world implodes. Heath Ledger's one-man Al Qa'eda piloting Gotham towards extinction. Events steer down dark alleys into dangerous, upsetting territory. All this, despite the usual Summer baggage: July release date. 12A rated.

Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan and Christian Bale's Batman catches a glimpse of light at the end of his tunnel - rising lawyer Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) is cleaning up Gotham within the confines of the law, one swaggering disarmament at a time. Gangsters squabble and cower while Batman brutally ties up a loose-end from his previous outing. He's close to getting out. Grasping at a relationship with childhood sweet-heart Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal). It's nearly over. Bruce Wayne can step down as The Batman. He can make himself a life. Then all fucking hell breaks lose. The Dark Knight is almost a half-billion dollar remake of Dirty Harry, a maverick law-man shedding rules and process to track a terrifying criminal. Like Scorpio, Heath Ledger's Joker is in it for the kicks, not the cash. He kills then cackles, holding an entire city to ransom. At that films' conclusion Callahan tracks and murders Scorpio, blowing a fist sized hole clean through him. Batman allows himself no such luxury. He will allow himself to punish, break and maim his foes, but not go as far as killing them. 

This note of personal temperance is what carries The Dark Knight; the abstract that simmers away as three scarred men clash and battle in a boiling hell. Unlike Batman Begins, were this code is callously jettisoned for a finale in which Liam Neeson's ninja terrorist is, more or less punished, The Dark Knight obsesses over Wayne's promise, and all that it implies. This line, that cannot be crossed, becomes an Achilles' Heel to be exploited by knowing enemies; a procedural blemish that can be ruthlessly stripped apart and used to undermine the potency of a figure premised on fright. Nolan makes text of the most basic (rational?) objection to costumed superheroics: why don't they just kill their colourful, murderous quarry? Why would a Superman suffer the indignity of Lex Luthor? Why wouldn't Batman just erase Joker? After decades of muscled-up monsters exterminating anything that raises an objection on the big screen (and with proxy war oil grabs looming large outside, in the real world), how do you examine the make-up of a hero? You give him a pledge, something he'd rather die than betray, then you dangle every single reason imaginable for him to break it. You tell lies about him. You reimagine him as a slathering beast. And in the end you chase his battered, fleeing body screaming and shooting. Then, hopefully, you make another film just like it. 

Daigo VS. Street Fighter IV

Here's Daigo schooling ass on Capcom's upcoming fourquel: Street Fighter IV.

Excitement!

Who's Daigo? He's The Wizard behind meme sensation Evo Moment #37.

You've seen. You've gasped. You've forwarded.

Albino Gland Attacks!

Look at this pituitary monster! Lay off the cattle steroids you hulking freak. Yep, this is how pond stalking neo-con Jason Voorhees measures up in Michael Bay's latest Platinum Dunes de-imagining. Thanks Michael! You fuck.

I kid! I couldn't give two shits how Jason looks. Of all the 80s bogeymen, he always seemed the safest. Freddy's a dream stalking paedo, Leatherface ate people and liked a dance; Michael Myers had a seedy stonk-on for his sister. All loons. Jason was into hockey and dismembering horny / drunk teens. Nice work dickhole! Why not picket for the Phelps Church while you're at it? Jason's always struck me as a big anti-jock wish fulfillment equaliser for dick wringing non-invite nerds.

"Murder up 'dem awful popular kids! I dangs hates 'em!" none of them have ever said.

Still, what genre fan doesn't love a good muscle-mensch fascist? What card carrying geek doesn't love a bit of black and white simplicity? Give it twos! Why didn't The Bayster rope in Rob Zombie in full on SS Exploito-Scuz mood? Stick a swastika armband on the sloping, half-dead blonde dope and what do you gots? Inbred hick master race murder! Fucking get it sorted! He's a one-man final solution. Cast yourself a wheelchaired Roma as the hero, give him a sawn-off shotgun, and we'll see who gets to pass on their genes!

Let Them Die Well! 16 Bit Edition!

Remember the parent worrying furore surrounding Mortal Kombat, and its lack-of-depth masking death moves? Once upon a time they were The Devil! Looking back now they seem technologically ugly, and really quite quaint, in their unimaginative attempts to shock. Disappointing isn't it? Where will you get your 16-bit kill fix now? I've gone done ruined it!

"Thanks for ruining that happy memory Disaster Year!" you scream at your monitor. "Thanks for reminding us that everything is just childish shit masked with nostalgia!"

Well, as much as I like to tear down your grubby little memories, it's nothing compared to giving you a real does of outdated pixel grott! Behold Eternal Champions!



Sega's Eternal Champions appeared originally on the Mega Drive system at much the same time as Capcom's long awaited Street Fighter II' Special Champion Edition / Dash Plus. Struggling for a sense of identity to call its own, Eternal Champions dabbled in both combo depth and aggressive sensationalism. Whilst never close to toppling Capcom's mighty fighty, Eternal Champions trumped Mortal Kombat completely with a variety of little-seen graphic gulaging. Realising they were onto a winner, Sega upped the unlikely death stakes into absurdity for an even littler played Mega CD spin-off.

I'm not kidding! There's all manner of murky mega murder here; from point-blank full-stops to full blown vignettes, each with all the twitching gesture plausibility of mondo mondo flicks like Cannibal Holocaust. Ugh!

Yuck it up over here! It's a tea-time treat! Those monkeys are complete bastards!

Watch Alan Moore On The Telly.

Moore. Moore. Moore.

Here's a few Moore interview scraps from youtube. It's your Sunday evening gift.

First, Mr Moore being interviewed by Skins extras for what I can only assume is a college project. What a nice man.

Unlikely inspiration!

Moore-Man fails to impress! Simpsons also discussed!

Lastly, we have some interviews originally broadcast as part of BBC4's Comics Britannia series, albeit in truncated doses. Here they are in full: Moore offers his thoughts on four of his most famous series'. Can I just say, what a class act too - praise for his collaborators is never far from his lips.

V For Vendetta

Watchmen

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Lost Girls

Isn't Mr. Moore an erudite speaker and commentator? Lock him up in a room and ask him about everything.

Alan Moore Watches Telly.

And has rather excellent taste too.

Plus! Details on Century, the third volume of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; and thoughts on Zack Snyder's suitability for Watchmen.

Bateman Crashes Helicopters on Terminators For Fun!

He does. He does. He does.

Take that scruffy prop!

Watch Watchmen

Head ringing from Film Freak Central's exoneration of The Dark Knight, I wandered around looking for the Watchmen trailer. I saw it here. It may be down by the time you read this.

Watchmen, as a film property, has limped around Hollywood for decades. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' labyrinthine master-comic charts a self-contained continuity of masked crime-fighters, Richard Nixon, an atomic superman, a brutal murder, and a 1980s world teetering on the edge of an all-out nuclear exchange. 400 pages. 9 panels on most. Terry Gilliam called it unfilmable. Solid Snake voicer David Hayter couldn't help but 'update' it. Paul Greengrass' vision got lost in a corporate re-shuffle. The job fell to Zack Snyder.

Pop video director Snyder managed to quite successfully marry an Aliens siege / flee action narrative to his speeding Dawn of the Dead remake, before his director's cut embellished some rather tasteless homophobia. His follow-up, a seizure edit monument to fascism called 300, is reviewed here. Although I do quite like 300, Mr Snyder's film did utterly fail to underscore the inherent irony present in Miller and Varney's text - fascist Spartans championing democracy. A trait widely held as a wrong-headed imperialist oversight by reviewers not intimately acquainted with the comic. If a grey shade like that slipped under his radar, how could he possibly adapt a work as obsessively layered and textured as Watchmen?

Obviously, as with all trailers, this is nothing more than a tweaked-to-perfection image collage mood enhancer; but at least it points to a retention of teeth. Vietnam's in the film in all its mega-man march glory - 100% less penis though. Manhattan's doppelganger sexuality is alluded to. Comedian has the resigned gaze of an accomplished murderer. Rorschach towers and hates. And the Mars palace rises out of the ground as The Smashing Pumpkins' The Beginning is The End is The Beginning winds down into clockwork doomsday. I really hope the film proper is that good.

I'd start pining for a hypothetically perfect screen interpretation of The Dark Knight Returns, but it sounds like Christopher Nolan has already delivered.

Woah! I is Plastic!

Various sources are reporting that the Wachowskis are looking to resurrect their 1990s Plastic Man script for their next feature. Rolly polly mouthpiece for the brothers Joel Silver was recently heard talking the project up on German radio, he also revealed Keanu Reeves is sought for the lead.

Plastic Man concerns one Eel O'Brian, a petty hood that gets shot-up and doused with acid. Nursed back to health by a kindly monk, Eel discovers the acid has given him the capability to transform his body into any shape he can conceive. Imagine that! Slapstick crime-fighting ensues. Given the kaleidoscopic eye-treat nature of the Wachowski's latest: Speed Racer, I'd say a surrealist body-morph crime-fighter was right up their crime alley.

My fingers are now crossed!

T4! T-More? T-Bore?!

Saw the T4 trailer!

If you harbour similar desires yourself; look here.

No images have been released (that I could find), so you'll have to content yourself with one of Simon Bisley's covers for Dark Horse's Terminator: Enemy Within comic series as a header.

My findings? Looks like flashy well-lit post-apocalyptia. Feel fairly neutral on it. I'm assured that the overall screen sheen has much in common with TV series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Wow. Great. Thanks. It certainly looks nothing like Cameron's smoke choked neo Stalingrad.

I did enjoy the static bursts hammering out Brad Fiedel's Terminator theme, and sand blasted landscape always remind me of Mad Max 2: Road Warrior / Fist of the North Star - both nostalgia jerks born elsewhere, bubbling up to make something totally different palatable. Christian Bale assures a certain amount of quality though, I'm half-way convinced he's quite incapable of being anything less than great. In interviews he always seems to have a keen genre hat on too; not merely doling out what-you-want-to-hear plaudits, rather demonstrating passion and a research instinct. I would hope that insures a script-level integrity.

The apparently obligatory Terminator role is played by Australian actor Sam Worthington.



Personally recommended by James Cameron (fresh off a role in next years Avatar), he has that man-in-crowd quality that Cameron originally toyed with (but rejected) when plotting the 1984 original. Better Mr Worthington than a musclebound ex-wrestler or Vin Diesel eh?

My main fears (dreads, anxiety attacks) rest first on director McG, and secondly the script. McG, or Joseph McGinty Nichol to his Mum, has directed several bad films - chief among which is surely Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle - and been involved with listing filler TV drek like Pussycat Dolls Present: Search for the Next Doll. It's the resume of a middle-aged chronic masturbator. Rise to the occasion? He'll need a fucken jetpack. Script wise, all I can say is that I sincerely hope that mega spoiler that did the rounds a few months back is completely inaccurate. Otherwise, who gives a fuck? It's not brave, it's just an Alien vs Predator-esque retroactive continuity fucker. Quite apt given the modus operandi of the title characters like, but I'm not that fond of irony.

Water Terminators too eh? What a crock of shit.

Batman: Not Ever Released

Maybe one day Frank Miller will finish his Holy Terror, Batman! project. Maybe not. An interview conducted in May last year had the project about two-thirds complete. It's slated for release later this year. I'm not holding my breath. Holy Terror depicts Batman battling al-Qa'eda in Gotham City - an intentional nod to 1940s propaganda strips that saw Captain America et al duffing Nazis.

Miller's on record (in a doc on one of the Batman dvds) stating his admiration for the rough 'n' ready approach Columbia Pictures took with their 1940s Batman serials - the first of which had a portly lo-fi Batman battling Japanese spy Dr. Daka. Racial slurs and snides abound as Bats does his bit for the war effort, narrowly escapes lethal falls, and plays tricks on his butler. Not that I mean to suggest that Miller's a Johnny Foreigner demonising bigot, just that he seems to find a special kind of joy in seeing costumed supermen battling intangible despotism. Miller's spoken about his project as being a gut reaction to living in New York during the 9/11 attacks. A vocal supporter of the war in Iraq, Miller has compared the World Trade attack with Pearl Harbour, and cited sixth century barbarism and fascism as chief among our abstract enemies' traits. Although I don't find anything Miller's been saying particularly agreeable, I do admire his gumption. Holy Terror should be a cultural artifact du jour.

Until Holy Terror rears it's head, here's a natty little parody piece that popped up not long after the books announcement. Unfortunately I have no idea who produced this little winner. It helps if you're au fait with Miller's (then) recent output - particularly The Dark Knight Strikes Again (a piece that is awash with political caricatures and asides).