Altered Ego

ATTACK OF THE REVIEW MONSTER!

So in the past two weeks, I’ve managed to see three movies: Evil Dead, Iron Man 3, and Upstream Color (in that order). I know there’s not a lot of rhyme or reason to the grouping here, but they’re all interesting in that they all let me leave the multiplex with either a gripe or plenty to think about.

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Evil Dead

Tonight, for the midnight showing! The horror re-vision that nobody asked for! EVIL DEAD!

All ribbing aside, I have nothing but fond memories of the Evil Dead series. Army of Darkness was one of those guilty pleasure movies that my dad and I saw together without mom in tow and it was my first exposure to the series. A few years into the great DVD revolution of home video, I finally managed to catch Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2. Nostalgia accounted for, the Evil Dead series always struck me as the documented metamorphosis of a filmmaker, Sam Raimi as an epic blockbuster butterfly emerging from a cocoon of earnestness, low budgets, and goofy special effects.

It’s interesting watching Fede Alvarez try to re-imagine the series with slick practical effects, excruciatingly effective cinematography, and a new cast of 20-somethings lacking feathered hairstyles; imagine a studio film adaptation of a preschool play and you’ll have the right idea.

That’s not to say there’s not a lot here to love. In an era of Saw and Hostel knockoffs, Evil Dead couples the ‘horror in the woods’ motif with drug addiction and rehab subtext. Jane Levy’s Mia is locked in an abandoned cabin with her estranged brother, his girlfriend, and her two friends to help her kick dope cold turkey. Unbeknownst to them, the same cabin was the sight of a horrific demonic possession. Cue the arrival of the Book of the Dead, the foolish saying of the phantasmagoric words aloud, and the possession of Mia by Infernal Forces That Shall Not Be Named.

When Mia inevitably goes deadite all over her friends, they at first treat it as an addict acting out, which is a great answer to “Why the heck aren’t these people driving out of here?” question. After all that, hell breaks loose  with self-mutilations, amputations, and inventive uses of power tools, climaxing with a scene straight from an Iron Maiden album cover. Along the blood-spattered way are nods to tropes from the original trilogy that satisfy the reference needs of the hardcore horror nerds.

The horror press is already rumbling with talk of sequels and I wouldn’t be averse to seeing more of Alvarez’s take on this universe. While you have to question the timing of this release (post-Cabin in the Woods, anyone?), it’s definitely a breath of fresh air compared to more Paranormal Activity and zombie fare. There’s not a lot of humor in this follow-up, but there wasn’t a lot of intentional humor in the first film either.

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Iron Man 3

Man, what a missed opportunity.This culmination of the Shell-Head trilogy sees Lethal Weapon writer Shane Black directing in Jon Favreau’s stead and bringing all the wrong epic sensibilities to the series. Robert Downey, Jr. is once again the immaculate embodiment of billionaire playboy/superhero Tony Stark and a joy to watch. Ben Kingsley and Guy Pearce as villains The Mandarin and Aldrich Killian respectively split a plate of delicious scenery and Rebecca Hall, Adam Pally, Jon Favreau, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Don Cheadle are somewhere in there too. This film suffers from Spider-Man 3 syndrome; it tries to accomplish way too much in scope without earning a lick of it. The effects are exquisite, the action set-pieces incredibly choreographed, and I think they hired a small island nation just to do the animation for all the armor sequences. 

I honestly wish I could go into more detail about this film, namely about its patronizing treatment of Pepper Potts as the damsel-in-distress once again (interrupted thankfully by two too-quick turns as a super-powered bad-ass), its lazy justification for the Big Action Scenes, and the whole 20 minutes of CSI spent in Rose Hill, Tennessee (played by the underrated Rose Hill, North Carolina), but I honestly just didn’t care too much about this movie. Even as a recovering comic fan, this was a handful of stale brain popcorn, consumed way too quickly to leave anything but a nasty taste in the synapses.

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Upstream Color

Now we’re cooking. With cinematography that reads as an homage to Terrence Malick and themes oddly reminiscent of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Shane Carruth’s science fiction romance (I wish I could type that more often) is a powerful meditation on the notion of a collective consciousness gone wrong and right. Amy Seimetz’s Kris and and Carruth’s Jeff are two lovers drawn together by an alien symbiote beyond their ken. Both victims of the mind-controlling parasite, they find each other in the wreckage of their lives one year after being robbed and defiled by Andrew Sensenig’s Sampler.

Even though shallow depth of field and a kind of navel-gazing attention on passive characters are now hallmarks of indulgent mumblecore films, it’s hard not to be drawn to Carruth’s first work since the mind-bending Primer.

Most of the action here is shown, rather than told, which makes me a happy writer. The entire third act, in fact, unfolds without dialogue and not once did I ever feel my attention leave the mise en scene.

As with Tree of Life, a review hardly does Upstream Color justice. Writing about it is like telling a friend about a meandering, beautiful dream, or maybe what you’re seeing through a kaleidoscope. You might love it or hate it, find it touching or pretentious, but either way it will be an experience.

Check it out. If you hurry, you might not miss it.

dresdencodak:

Inspired by Anita Sarkeesian’s Video Game Tropes vs Women, I wanted to pitch a Zelda game where Zelda herself was the hero, rescuing a Prince Link. 

Clockwork Empire is set 2,000 years after Twilight Princess, and is not a reboot, but simply another iteration in the Zelda franchise. It just so happens that in this case, Zelda is the protagonist. I’m a very big Zelda fan, and worked hard to draw from key elements in the continuity and mythos.

This concept work is meant to show that Zelda as a game protagonist can be both compelling and true to the franchise, while bringing new and dynamic game elements that go farther than being a simple gender swap.

Hope you like it!

Nintendo needs to hire this man!

Reblogged from Indistinguishable From Magic

abandonedography:

Years before the invention of photoshop, Jerry Uelsmann was producing composite photographs with multiple negatives and extensive darkroom work. He uses up to a dozen enlargers at a time to produce his final images, and has a large archive of negatives that he has shot over the years. The negatives that Uelsmann uses are known to reappear within his work, acting as a focal point in one work, and background as another. His photographs can be seen in the opening credits of the television series The Outer Limits, and the illustrated edition of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. In addition, his artwork is featured on Dream Theater’s seventh album Train of Thought.

His darkroom-developed images combining multiple negatives would ultimately lead to a revolution of mid-20th century photography and a career that spans five decades. (Source)

(via theflyingoliphant)

Source abandonedography.com

Reblogged from Abandonedography

Speaking of the Shield: So this is a very interesting device that looks to shake up the dedicated gaming handheld market a little bit more in the near future. In layman’s terms, this handheld integrates a Tegra 4 chip into the body of an Xbox 360 controller. The Tegra 4 represents a huge jump in graphical power and a quantum leap compared to other mobile devices on the market (namely tablets, smartphones, and Nintendo and Sony handhelds). Not only that, but this little bad boy can stream games from your computer in addition to running its own version of Android. Basically, it can either play plenty of games on its own or act as a mobile window to your more powerful PC games. So what’s the catch? The fly in the ointment is the marketing of the device. From what little news and information I’ve been able to read and gather, NVIDIA is marketing the Shield as a sort of disruptive, need-to-have gaming device when most other gadgets are migrating towards a convergence (with the notable exceptions of the Google Glass and the rumored-to-exist iWatch). Put simply, when every consumer is trying to carry fewer gadgets in their pockets, bags, and purses, the major onus is on NVIDIA to convince you to carry one more gizmo. In all honesty, I can only see dedicated, hardcore gamers carrying this platform—and that’s a pretty small market. I hope that I’m wrong, because I wouldn’t mind playing a game on the Q train that didn’t involve me breaking my thumbs against my phone’s gorilla glass. * Photo comes from The Verge’s liveblog of the NVIDIA press event this past winter.

Speaking of the Shield:

So this is a very interesting device that looks to shake up the dedicated gaming handheld market a little bit more in the near future. In layman’s terms, this handheld integrates a Tegra 4 chip into the body of an Xbox 360 controller. The Tegra 4 represents a huge jump in graphical power and a quantum leap compared to other mobile devices on the market (namely tablets, smartphones, and Nintendo and Sony handhelds). Not only that, but this little bad boy can stream games from your computer in addition to running its own version of Android. Basically, it can either play plenty of games on its own or act as a mobile window to your more powerful PC games.

So what’s the catch? The fly in the ointment is the marketing of the device. From what little news and information I’ve been able to read and gather, NVIDIA is marketing the Shield as a sort of disruptive, need-to-have gaming device when most other gadgets are migrating towards a convergence (with the notable exceptions of the Google Glass and the rumored-to-exist iWatch). Put simply, when every consumer is trying to carry fewer gadgets in their pockets, bags, and purses, the major onus is on NVIDIA to convince you to carry one more gizmo.

In all honesty, I can only see dedicated, hardcore gamers carrying this platform—and that’s a pretty small market. I hope that I’m wrong, because I wouldn’t mind playing a game on the Q train that didn’t involve me breaking my thumbs against my phone’s gorilla glass.

*

Photo comes from The Verge’s liveblog of the NVIDIA press event this past winter.

I was in a drawing sort of mood tonight, so I decided to do a cartoon self-portrait of myself playing the yet-to-be-released NVIDIA Shield next to a big guy on the subway. I know this stuff is pretty bad (Oh God! The hands! The inking! The lack of color and perspective!), but in another life I wanted to be a cartoonist like my hero Bill Watterson. It’s been a long time since I picked up a lead holder and an even longer time since I cracked open my old Calvin and Hobbes collection… But a guy can still pretend, right?

I was in a drawing sort of mood tonight, so I decided to do a cartoon self-portrait of myself playing the yet-to-be-released NVIDIA Shield next to a big guy on the subway. I know this stuff is pretty bad (Oh God! The hands! The inking! The lack of color and perspective!), but in another life I wanted to be a cartoonist like my hero Bill Watterson.

It’s been a long time since I picked up a lead holder and an even longer time since I cracked open my old Calvin and Hobbes collection…

But a guy can still pretend, right?