In need of a tophat

Look at my horse, my horse is amazing!

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:16:47 GMT

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 23:14:31 GMT

I am not going to deceive you: This is a video of a Korean man with pigtails in a dress playing his bass guitar to some anime Jpop song thing. And doing other, more frightening things.

The thing is? He plays the FUCK out of that bass. I am astonished and horrified at the same time. Dude's got skills, but possibly needs his brain re-wired:

Ganked from Master Clone Eva

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:35:13 GMT

* Post ten of any pictures currently on your hard drive that you think are self-expressive.

* No captions. It must be like we're speaking with images and we have to interpret your visual language just like we have to interpret your words.

* They must ALREADY be on your hard drive - no googling or flickr! They have to have been saved to your folders sometime in the past. They must be something you've saved there because it resonated with you for some reason.

* You do NOT have to answer any questions about any of your pictures if you don't want to. You can make them as mysterious as you like. Or you can explain them away as much as you like.

Dune, as directed by some madman you probably have never heard of.

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 03:31:00 GMT

Just a warning, I'm about to go off on a weird tangent here.

So. Alejandro Jodorowsky. Ever heard of him? Possibly not, I have yet to meet anyone who has, but then, I try not to mention him in public so often. I mean sure, I've finally met a few people who've seen Tetsuo the Iron Man, and there are plenty of David Lynch lovers out there, but Jodorowsky is pretty obscure, despite his two most popular films, El Topo (surrealistic western madness) and the the Holy Mountain (psychadelic quest for enlightenment), were distributed by the Beatles manager Allen Klein, with the latter of the two being completely financed by John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

But then, he's only done a few other films along with those, none of which are nearly as notable,and finding any of it on DVD is damn near impossible. I got lucky in getting my copy of El Topo at Target. I guess it also lends to his obscurity that, despite having written quite a ton of comicbooks after deciding that film wasn't good enough, English translations are hard to come by. I myself am lucky to have the first volume of Technopriests (incredibly fucked up and mythical sci fi), the second volume of Son of the Gun (starring gunslinger-with-a-tail Juan Solo!), and an old 1980's issue of Heavy Metal with a strip written by him and illustrated by Moebius.

So don't feel bad if you haven't heard of him. Hell, I feel weird bringing up my knowledge of the man, for fear of getting looked at funny or for people thinking I'm some pretentious twat.

Because yeah, his films are weird, surreal, arthouse things that are equal parts pretentious, whimsical, bizarre, and horrifying. And his comics just kind of crank it all up, though I admit he gets to work with some INSANE illustrators.

Anyways, here we go, I'm getting to the meat and potatoes of this thing.

When I read about how David Lynch was picked to direct Dune (and also the Elephant Man before that) based on Eraserhead, I get confused. How could you watch Eraserhead and think, "man, this guy should TOTALLY direct a sci fi movie!" Hell, how can you watch Eraserhead and be capable of rational thought at all for at least 3 days afterwards? Wait, I may've just answered my own question.

Anyway, David Lynch directed Dune in the 80's, and it was an odd beast. But that's not the point.

The point is, Lynch was the final guy in a string of directors (including Ridley Scott) who stepped up to direct Dune, and he's the only one to succeed in what is truly a case of what-the-fuckery on a cosmic scale.

The first guy they wanted to direct the film, though? Jodorowsky. Why? I HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE.

Looking into it, Jodorowsky's vision of Dune was practically doomed from the start. He, much like Lynch, never read the book at first, so when he set forth in writing the 14-hour-long script, he took MASSIVE artistic liberties and went way off-track with the weirdness, wanting shit like making Duke Leto a eunuch and wanting the spice to be some sort of spongey substance. This would've been hardly anything like the novel, so it's for the best it never happened.

And yet, at the same time, look at the conceptual artists who were involved and the work they produced for Jodorowsky before the thing got aborted:

Chris Foss!

Jean "Moebius" Giraud!

H.R. motherfucking Giger!

Other interesting things to note are that the soundtrack would've been done entirely by Pink Floyd and Salvador "melting clocks" Dali as the Emperor!

Granted, this was the 70's, and special effects technology could not possibly live up to the concept art done by these fine artists, but still, can you imagine what kind of movie this would have been? Sure, it would not have been at all what any Dune fan would have wanted, but it would've been INCREDIBLE.

Incredible, and fucked up.

After watching El Topo again the other night and watching most of Jodorowsky's first film, Fando Y Lis, without English subtitles, and after seeing the crap he's pulled off in comics, I just find myself sitting, wondering, just what kind of movie he would've made if he had the abilities to make it. Maybe you're reading this thinking that I'm insane and retarded for it, but Jodorowsky is unrivaled when it comes to such a strange fucking imagination.

I mean hell, the guy's a philosopher who does therapeutic psychomagic. Say that out loud: THERAPEUTIC PSYCHOMAGIC.

He's one of the most interesting minds I've encountered.

Apparently, a lot of his ideas for the film, once production was scrapped, went into his sci fi comics, which can be seen, as my volume of Technopriests has ornithopters and two or three fat characters floating around with suspensors like our fair Baron, and I'd like to get my hands on more of his work, but still...

Admit it, it would've been one HELL of a movie.

[Brett]

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:51:11 GMT

So my girlfriend's been in Florida since Friday, coming back as we speak, but she won't get back here until 4am-ish, and I won't get to see her until Wednesday.

But what have I been doing in her absence?

Well, I uh, kind of found a crappy quality version of a 70's "erotic musical" adaptation of Alice in Wonderland.

I admit, I laughed at the line, "we had a towel once, but it was taken from us by a hotel," and I kind of also laughed at the shot of Humpty Dumpty, sitting proudly on the wall, big shit-eating grin on his face, holding his newly-erect penis, falling backwards and just hearing the crashing noise his landing made. But still, most of it was just...bad.

And then I saw the photos from Tim Burton's upcoming Alice in Wonderland remake/sequel/thing.

I'm starting to think the porn was better, even if Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum were incestuous and the costumes horrible. Hell, maybe I'll get it on DVD!

"She got his dingaling up! His dingaling up!"

...Okay, so I also watched El Topo again, documentaries on the making of the original King Kong and Merian C. Cooper himself, Matango, I've been playing a lot of Mother 3, and there's probably some other stuff in there too...

But yeah. Alice In Wonderland as a musical porn. The bar has been raised, and I don't think Tim Burton can live up to it.

I need to stop clicking on things that Warren Ellis links to.

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 01:24:11 GMT

This is so wrong.

I like giant things.

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 01:39:00 GMT

Except breasts. I do not like large breasts. They frighten me.

ANYWAYS

HAY GUYZ REMEMBER THAT LIFE-SIZED GUNDAM THEY'RE MAKING IN JAPAN?!

...THEY FINISHED IT. Oh dear. I so badly want to see this thing in person.

Also,

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD that is a HUGE FUCKING JELLYFISH

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 02:27:38 GMT

This is the damn funniest thing I've read in a long time.

I love Cracked, and I love Seanbaby.

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:19:41 GMT

Apparently I was so flabbergasted by those trailers that my basic comprehension of the English language was kind of broken there, and everything I said in that entry sounds like bad Engrish.

Sorry about that.

Hey look more videogame trailers!

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:44:25 GMT

This year and next year have been great for the Wii, with lots of good games coming out and people everywhere saying "oh now I can dust off my Wii and actually play the thing!"

...I kind of hate those people, seeing as how I love my Wii and play it all the damn time.

Anyways, E3 is going on and today was Nintendo's press conference, with announcements for some awesome stuff:

Top of the list that has me hot and bothered is this:

More Metroid: Other M Info

I just finished Metroid Zero Mission today, and when David called to tell me about this, I got giddy. Plus, it's being developed by Team Ninja, the Ninja Gaiden/Dead Or Alive team? I have never seen Samus being so brutal in a game before...

Super Mario Galaxy 2 at IGN.com

Super Mario Galaxy was the first Wii game I bought, and oh it was such a fun, worthy purchase. It was simply an amazing game, and look! It's Yoshi!

More Sin and Punishment 2 Info

The first Sin and Punishment is my favorite N64/Virtual Console game, made by Treasure, who are among my favorite developers for making other badass games like Ikaruga and Gunstar Heroes. Though the two characters looking like they're 10 years old is kind of lame, the action looks just as awesome.

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

I just came

[Brett]

There is no God, is there?

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 01:49:02 GMT

Ladies and gentlemen,

I have just been informed by my good friend Aaron Lord Jimifulss Deese that the MTV Movie Awards are currently going on.

Mr. AJ has also informed me that in the category of "Best Fight Scene," the movie Twilight won.

It beat out Hellboy 2.

MOTHERFUCKING DOGSHIT TWILIGHT BEAT HELLBOY 2 FOR BEST FIGHT SCENE.

This is horrible. Absolutely horrible.

I want to go destroy something now.

(on a side note, Up was amazing, and I now own Metroid Zero Mission, go me)

OH MY FUCKING GOD

Fri, 29 May 2009 21:43:21 GMT

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES DO WANT NOW PLEASE

Wed, 27 May 2009 02:05:46 GMT

Oh hey look I reviewed the amazing TOKYO GORE POLICE for Hindsight Alloys the other day!

Yeah, two reviews (er, well, three I suppose) in one week, but none of the other guys are updating, so why the hell not?

251-HIT COMBO!!!! BONUS CRITICAL +200HP

Sat, 23 May 2009 21:17:25 GMT

The first thing I've ever ordered off of Amazon came in today, much to my surprise, a copy of SHARKNIFE, volume 1, by Corey Lewis, who also designed the badass ZOMBI t-shirt that I also own.

Sharknife, though. I've gotten maybe a 4th of the way through it, even though it's a pretty slim little book that could probably be read in an hour with no problem. But I've been wanting to really sink my teeth into one of Corey's books for a while now. His art is insane! Bright colors, thick linework, crazy poses with exaggerated proportions and foreshortening. He wears his influences with pride, way too much anime and old-school videogames. He pulls the best of those influences out and puts them on the page, not trying to be another idiot deviantART kid doing Naruto fanart or something, but really making something energetic, explosive, something that CRACKLES. His artwork is not boring at all.

...Er. Anyways.

That was supposed to be a lead-in to where at this point I would ramble about the comic I'm working on. The thumbnailing is all done, shitty as they are, and I've been working on character designs for the past week. Well, not working too hard, admittedly, because my tendency currently is to sit down, draw a few sketches of their faces and such, then get pissed and walk off to play Henry Hatsworth, but I just beat that earlier today, so yeah.

The thing is, I'm torn. I find myself wanting to NOT be another generic anime-style kid whose work plagues deviantART. At the same time, though, trying to draw the characters in proper proportions, trying to make them pretty realistic, is just awful at the same time. They come across as just...boring, bland, uninteresting. So I'm struggling to find a style, a way to draw these characters and the settings they interact in, without getting bored or pissed off, and in a way where people will look at it and not see some generic crap, y'know?

It's frustrating. So I'm looking at Corey's stuff, along with the Brazilian twins Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá, both of whom illustrated the excellent CASANOVA (Bá also illustrates UMBRELLA ACADEMY). Paul Pope too.

(you should be clicking these links, these guys are great artists who encapsulate everything I love about comics)

I'm getting other ideas for these characters, too. This comic would be like part 1 of 6 in a trade, yes? But I've gotta draw this crap first. Arg.

So there we go. Rant out of the way. I'm going to find food and possibly watch Tokyo Gore Police. It might be my next HINDSIGHT ALLOYS review.

[Brett]

Violence and depravity!

Fri, 22 May 2009 01:44:17 GMT

I have finally posted another review to Hindsight Alloys.

This go around it's a double-review for Sega's one-two M-rated Wii punch, MadWorld and House of the Dead Overkill.

Give it a read.

I have also discovered that Josh Hommes, of Queens of the Stone Age, is one of the two guys in Eagles of Death Metal, and have downloaded a bunch of their songs. Why did none of you tell me he was in this band before?

[Brett]

Thu, 21 May 2009 02:15:15 GMT

The first model is way too skinny and the third model is just meh, but otherwise this is an awesome video and the best use of black censor bars EVER.

Sun, 17 May 2009 02:33:04 GMT

So my relationship with David Lynch's films is a kind of odd one. I've owned maybe 7 or 8 of his films, got rid of 2 of them. Sold Blue Velvet, gave Inland Empire to my girlfriend.

The thing about his films is, with the exception of Elephant Man, every single thing I've watched of his has rattled my brain and shattered my psyche so hard that each time I watch a film of his, I swear it shaves a few years off of my life expectancy. His shorter stuff that you can find on Youtube merely cuts my life expectancy by a couple months.

And yet I keep buying his films, because I'm a masochist and because this is a man with a bizarre outlook on the world that I just can't grasp. I dunno.

Aside from that though, David Lynch is also the nicest guy on Twitter that I'm following right now. Granted, most of the people I follow are comicbook guys and whackjobs, but still.

He's got a new thing coming along, the Interview Project, and you can get a nice little look at what it is here.

I've watched that interview twice now, because there's just something...heartwarming or touching about it. Between this and his Twitter updates, you can tell that David Lynch has a big heart.

I guess that's why I keep watching his stuff, because as fucked up as it all his, he's a genuinely good guy, and you don't see that often enough.

(also, my script is done. 22 pages. Next step: thumbnail layouts, character and location designs. BOW DOWN TO ME)

In which I destroy an abstract clay sculpture.

Sat, 16 May 2009 22:09:09 GMT

I just wet myself.

Fri, 15 May 2009 12:38:41 GMT

HOLY SHIT JAPAN IS MAKING A GIANT GUNDAM.

I would KILL to see the finished product in person.

Thu, 14 May 2009 02:38:18 GMT

I have written the outline and started on the script for a depraved sci fi comic that I'm tentatively calling either WARREN LUSK: BEST JOB EVER, or WARREN LUSK: PAYS BETTER THAN PORN.

It involves sex with a cyborg and the encoding of information into a man's sperm.

God help us all.

Sun, 10 May 2009 01:20:12 GMT

The semester is over. I am back in Bristol, I am exhausted, I am broke, I am a little mixed up, lightheaded, disoriented.

There's work to be done.

Things of note:

I will eventually start writing stuff for Hindsight Alloys again. We've all been slacking. What will I write about first? Who knows. MadWorld, the KMFDM album that Kat owns, that I ripped to my iPod and can't stop listening to, the Terry Gilliam film Brazil, something else? I dunno.

Saw Star Trek last night. It was fucking amazing. When I actually have money again, I have to take Kat to see it. She made me buy a Spock glass for her at the drive-thru of Burger King. Never thought I'd find myself declaring out loud "I WANT SPOCK" at any point in my life, y'know?

I am playing and enjoying the hell out of Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure on my DS. It's great. Also quite hard.

My final printmaking grade is the only one I know of. It was a B-. I'll scan the prints you haven't seen yet...at some point.

I am unpacked, but I need to clean up now because my room is full of excessive junk. Of course, I'll have to pack all over again in the next month if the apartment thing with CJ works out. Let's hope it does.

One issue left to go with Ultimate Wolverine Vs Hulk, and it's the only recent Marvel comic I've been reading for a reason: It's batshit insane and absolutely hilarious.

Speaking of comics, I won't be taking the summer comicbook illustration class I wanted to, though Kat is. Instead though, I'm going to try to create something over this summer. Inspired by a few Radiohead songs, honestly, primarily the National Anthem. I'm doing a different approach in making it, that is to say I'm going to do it the PROPER way that, you know, the paid professionals do. Script, thumbnails, et cetera. Not scripting it just yet, just writing what I know I want the narration to be. I want to be all narration, no dialogue...

My strange relationship with David Lynch's films continues. Loading up his short film Grandmother right now, and because it was cheap, I bought his adaptation of Dune. I know it's supposed to be terrible, but I could not resist!

Hurm. That's it.

[Brett]

I am now 21.

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:55:44 GMT

It is my birthday. I have classes all day, and my girlfriend is sick, but you know what? AJ JUMPED OFF HIS ROOF FOR ME:

Stay on your motherfucking toes.

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 12:31:45 GMT

One week of school left, then finals week, then the semester will be OVER and summer will BEGIN.

Which is, of course, why we're always so damn busy.

I'm just doing this in bits and pieces, here.

The weather has suddenly gotten mind-blazingly hot. Which means I can wear shorts, much to Kat's dismay. My hairy legs seem to frighten her.

We saw Hamlet last night, which CJ and Mithra were in, and aside from some annoying folks sitting right behind us, it was fucking excellent.

The first 10 episodes of GI Joe Resolute are online, and it's amazingly badass so far.

I am also in the process right now of messing with a charcoal self-portrait done in class last semester. Especially because the internet here at Bristol tends to keep crapping out on me and I've nothing else to really do.

Things to do: Write 500-word paper on the design for something I buy. Write 1000+ word essay comparing a movie we watched in the Global Contemporary Cinema class to something watched outside of class. Thinking Spirited Away Vs either Paprika or Mirrormask OR The Diving Bell and the Butterfly VS The Elephant Man. Do 2 more prints of Leech King, finish re-etching and do 5 prints of Damnation, do 3 more prints of Oracle of Insects, finish carving and get started on edition for this final print that has no name. Finish plaster project for 3D Design. Start studying for next History of Graphic Design class. Did I leave anything out?

Hey my birthday is on Wednesday. My family will be celebrating it on Sunday though. And then the party CJ is throwing will be the next Thursday, once finals are over. Oh dear.

(I asked for House of the Dead Overkill and Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure)

I will also apparently be designing a tattoo for our own beloved Lord Aaron Jimifulss Deese.

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:52:53 GMT

From the makers of the amazing film the Machine Girl and also Tokyo Gore Police (which I've owned for months and STILL haven't watched, dammit), I present to you, VAMPIRE GIRL VS FRANKENSTEIN GIRL:

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 01:53:43 GMT

Find me an mp3 of this song and I will love you forever:

While you're at it, find me mp3s of Chu Ishikawa or his band Der Eisenrost while you're at it, please?