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Friday, March 12, 2004 ( 3/12/2004 01:12:00 PM ) Bill S. SIXTY MINUTE MANGA – (Episode Twelve: in which our intrepid manga dabbler reads at his emotional age.) After reading how Wal-Mart chain was now selling cost-cut manga graphic novels in its superstores' children’s book section, I recently made an effort to check out the pickings during a weekend's shopping. Found a smattering of volume one Tokyopop and Shonen Jump titles on the racks right next to the Captain Underpants books. Not too surprisingly, considering both the books' placement and the conservative chain's preference for selling edited versions of current pop CDs, the age range for the selection was pretty restrictive: all the Tokyopop titles were either labelled "All Ages" or "7+," while the Viz/Shonen Jump graphic novels fit the same early teen category as their feeder magazine. All the books were selling for a third less than their bookstore counterparts, though, so it was inevitable I'd sample at least one. After carefully dipping into each of the Tokyopop titles on display (been reading the Shonen Jump series in their magazine format, so I decided to pass on 'em), I wound up selecting the premiere volume of Hiro Mashima's Rave Master, which is rated "7+." Perhaps it was the cover presence of a large wooden sun head giving the reader a thumb's up that swayed me. Or maybe it was the snowball-headed creature with a carrot for a nose. . . Reading the inside cover artist blurb, I learn that Mashima's series has spawned more than eighteen volumes and "a hit anime series." Which only goes to show how far out of the manga/anime loop I am. First time I caught the title, I thought it was gonna be about a party deejay, though why you need a big honkin' sword like our cover hero is strappingly carrying to work a turntable is beyond me.  Rave Master opens "50 Years Ago," with a bloodied teenaged boy telling us "the war" is over. "Maybe now there can finally be peace," he notes, but before he can take this wishful thought any further, there's a massive atomic-styled explosion, and the story jumps to presentday Garage Island, where a big-eyed teen with "Mischief" emblazoned across his tee-shirt is lazily fishin' for dinner. Instead of a fish, however, the boy (whose name, we're told in a simple identifying box, is "Haru") pulls in a strange four-legged creature with an oversized round head and a large pointed nose. "What the heck kinda fish is this?" he wonders.Haru takes his catch to his older sister Cattleya, who is sitting contemplatively before her mother's grave (efficiently establishing a lot of background info in four sparsely dialogued pages). They bring the mysterious creature back to their home, which has a large satellite dish attached to one side and a mysterious sun head with two forearms imbedded alongside the front door. This unexplained (at least in this first volume) figure is named Nakajima, and he seems to function as both alarm system and chatty companion to the brother & sister. Turns out this seemingly idyllic island setting is so removed from the world at large that neither Haru nor Cattleya know of the war that is on the horizon. But when our boy takes his catch into town to show his catch to Gemma, the snickery owner of Café Tsubomi, an elderly figure appears to bring us up to date. It's the young boy we saw in the opening pages, now aged into your standard issue geezer with a long beard and a single pointed thatch of hair in the middle of his head. His appearance is promptly followed by the entrance of a menacing type dressed in black ("There are a lot of out-of-towners around today," Haru observes), who attacks the old man. "You need to respect your elders," Haru states stoutly. "My sister taught me that!" And he knocks the thug out in righteous retaliation. "I've been training every day," he explains to Shiba once they've left the unconscious baddie. "I need to protect my sister." Which, of course, establishes (as if there was any doubt) that Haru is gonna be the fightin' hero of this series. Shiba quickly fills him in on the back story, telling him and us of the war that occurred between "mysterious stones of light and dark": a demon stone called Dark Bring and "the only thing which can oppose it," the sacred stone Rave. Fifty years earlier, Shiba used a sword infused with the power of Rave to destroy what he thought was the last Dark Bring. But his efforts resulted in that massive explosion (or "Overdrive") which destroyed a "tenth of the world" and allowed the last Dark Bring to escape. Now the followers of Dark Bring, an organization known as Demon Card, are planning on bringing further death 'n' destruction to the world. Okay. Standard fantasy hero babble, right? We also learn that in the aftermath of the Hiroshima-type Overdrive that the Rave Stone separated into pieces and flew off in different directions. Only one who knows the whereabouts of the myriad stones is the little creature Haru fished from the ocean: Plue, who is "Rave's bearer." By now we're fifty pages into the first volume, and I should be losing patience with this second-hand nonsense. Yet Mashima's clear-cut pen and ink style has a cartoony dynamism and attractiveness that keeps me reading. His dialog is concise and pushes the story along speedily (abetted by James Lucas Jackson's unobtrusively colloquial English adaptation). Without shying away from the darker elements of his storyline (we learn, for instance, that bro & sis have apparently been abandoned by their father Gale, who disappeared fifteen years ago), the writer/artist also keeps things accessible for a young reader. Yet he doesn't bother to over-explain his story either (though I know my curiosity has been piqued re: the "mysterious lifeform" Nakajima). Later in the first volume, the agents of Dark Bring attack Garage Island, nearly killing Gemma in the process and breaking off two of Nakajima's "feathers." Our hero's given a tiny Rave Stone by Shiba which fits into a humongous sword, imbuing it with a set of ten powers that will doubtless be revealed as the story progresses. Haru utilizes the sword's first power (the ability to explode) to best the villains who've attacked the island. But before he can rest on his laurels, the sword shatters in his hands. Only who can fix it, Shiba explains, is the "legendary blacksmith Musica." The book ends, after several pages of soul-searching on the part of both Haru & Cattleya, with the boy and his snowcone-headed companion rafting off in search of the smithy. I suspect, if I first came across Rave Master as an anime series, I wouldn't give its story much time. (Recently came across an episode of Yu-Gi-Oh – a shonen manga series I've enjoyed since its English language debut in Shonen Jump – on the Cartoon Network, and I barely lasted five minutes!) But after finishing volume one, I'm caught enough to look for the second at my local Barnes & Noble. On the cover to volume two, I see Haru wearing a loud shirt and headphones, hunched over a turntable with Plue scratching on a record. Now that's just oddball, I can't help thinking as I take the book to the checkout counter. But it ensures that I'll be reading this series for at least two more volumes. . . # | Thursday, March 11, 2004 ( 3/11/2004 10:48:00 AM ) Bill S. "SOME BACTINE TO PREVENT INFECTION" – A lotta folks seem to've grown bored with Stephen King, and I really can't blame 'em. The guy's been a trademark name for years, and his prolix productivity has resulted in a bibliography that's definitely seen its highs and lows. I have three remaindered King hardbacks (Black House, Dreamcatcher and From A Buick 8) on the shelves myself that I haven't read yet – see what too much teevee time'll lead to, kids? – so I'm not the one to go to for a take on the man’s more recent prose. But I continue to believe that at his best (last A-grade King book for me: Bag of Bones), the man is a great pulpster. So I was intrigued by the new weekly ABC mini-series, Kingdom Hospital, which has been adapted and New Englandized by King from a teleseries by Danish filmster Lars von Trier. Could the Yankee horrormeister mesh with the Euro art sensitivities of the director who gave us Bjork as a tragic factory girl? Early word on the series has been that King has infused his style all over the work, but after viewing the first three hours, the primary elements that hit me are those places King departs from his well-established tics. To be sure, the writer's openly invited the charges of King-sizing by inserting his own familiar lifestory into the plotline. He even sets the series in his familiar Maineland (Castle Rock, we learn, is nearby – and one of the hospital nurses is named Bannerman). After a prologue describing a 19th century mine fire that led to the death of 200 men & women ("good Yankees all," the narrator tells us), we flash to the present where the title hospital has been erected over the ashes. Cut to Porter Rickman (Jack Coleman), a successful artist who gets struck by a van while jogging and listening to Fountains of Wayne's "Red Dragon Tattoo" on his Discman. (Wouldn't "Hat And Feet" have been a better choice?) Rickman, who sees a giant talking anteater/bearlike creature while he lies paralyzed along the road, gets carted off to Kingdom Hospital and spends the next three episodes drifting in and out of a coma-like state. But once we get inside the building, things grow quirkier. The staff turns out to be comically odd or incompetent (Ed Begley's feckless hospital admin, a bug-eyed security man, two retarded kitchen workers who appear to be attuned to the supernatural goings on), incompetent (Bruce Davison's inappropriately arrogant neurologist) or Andrew McCarthy (yikes!) The hospital's maintenance man, the improbably named Johnny B. Goode, appears to be on permanent vacation, replaced by a different weirdly knowing figure (Charles Martin Smith in the second episode) daily. And then, of course, there's all the supernatural happenings. In addition to that chatty anteater, which also appears bedside to chat with the demi-conscious Rickman and to mess with Dave Hooman (the low-life transdermal patch junkie who was driving the van and who winds up in ICU next to the painter by ep three), Kingdom Hospital is haunted by the wraithlike figure of a little girl. (One of the first times we see her, it's in the reflection of the ER door window, just above a posted copy of the Patient's Bill of Rights – a neat touch.) A good number of pre-Child Labor Law children perished in that mine fire, but why the ghostly apparition has started appearing in the hospital halls and weeping in the elevators now is one of the series' central mysteries. For hypochondriacal psychic Eleanor Druse (Diane Lane), the auditory visitations are the "sound of a child coming from Swedenborgian space." The line – which prompts a whaa? from Andrew McCarthy's goodguy Dr. Hook – is meant to both cement and deflate the supernatural proceedings. It deliberately prompts a chuckle even as it provides grounding for the events to come. Throughout the series, there's an intentional goofiness that's kind of refreshing in King's hands. In place of his long established use of brand names and pop culture refs to pull in more concrete minded readers, for instance, we get a series of comically fictitious trademarks (e.g., Nozz-A-La Soda, which prompts one of the paramedics to ask his friend to "Get me a Nozzie!") or a teevee gameshow that looks like it's being broadcast out of the sardonic world of Robocop. Our mysterious anteater isn't the only creature to let us know its thoughts either. When Hooman does a gainer off the roof of his house, we suddenly hear his rotweiller disgustedly thinking into the camera, "Way to go, Slick . . . who's gonna feed me now?" We're also privy to the thoughts of a German shepherd who is seemingly allowed the run of the hospital by security guard Ed. Clearly, King isn't excessively concerned with ratcheting up the verisimilitude too strongly. Of course, there are hints of darker doings down the road. When demi-comatose Rickman is shown walking through a cobwebby and decaying version of the hospital (that Fountains of Wayne song still blasting over the intercom), we get glimpses of a fanged vampirish figure. Among the background info that we've received to date, is news about the capture of another of the area’s psycho killers (why would anyone wanna live near Castle Rock?) that'll likely pay off in the weeks ahead. And on a more mundane level, King & director Craig Baxley never let us forget for long how distressing Rickman's coma is to his distraught wife. Even when he's being playful, King can't stray too far from the grimly horrific. Who, among his many (non-bored) fans, would want him to? # | Wednesday, March 10, 2004 ( 3/10/2004 02:00:00 PM ) Bill S. COMMENTS ALLEZ-VOUS? – Well, the feedback I’ve received this a.m. re: comments has been quick and basically unanimous: HaloScan appears to be the service to jump to. So, being the take charge kinda guy that I am, I’ve dropped Squawkbox and am henceforth utilizing this new system. So to all you readers out there: say something! # | ( 3/10/2004 07:02:00 AM ) Bill S. THEY OFTEN CALL ME SPEEDO – Faster than the "Fifteen-Minute Comic," it's the Comic Book Speed Round! Hey ho, let's go:
# | ( 3/10/2004 05:26:00 AM ) Bill S. NO COMMENTS – John Jakala (who wishes that DC would archive the early Lois Lanes as much as I do) emailed me to note that my comments section has apparently expired. For me to continue utilizing Squawkbox, I have to subscribe to the service at a rate of something like eighteen English pounds. Not sure that I receive enough comments to justify plunking down the dough, though, so I think I’ll start checkin’ out a different service. Perhaps HaloScan? # | ( 3/10/2004 04:58:00 AM ) Bill S. AT LEAST HE DOESN’T RESEMBLE VIC MACKEY – Watching The Daily Show after last night’s season premier of The Shield, I couldn't help thinking: doesn't RNC chairman Ed Gillespie come across like a gigglier version of Detective Dutch Wagenbach? # | Tuesday, March 09, 2004 ( 3/09/2004 03:52:00 PM ) Bill S. "WAITER! MORE FOOD!"– Let the other bloggers reconsider Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns: here we're pondering, with the aid of an unnamed Weirdsmobile blogger, the dynamics of the male/female relationship as reflected in the Lois Lane comic book tale, "Fattest Girl in Metropolis." (Thanx to correspondent Karl Neidershuh for the heads up on this piece.) # | ( 3/09/2004 01:30:00 PM ) Bill S. SLAW'S FAIR IN LOVE & WAR – Mark Evanier officially pronounces cole slaw one of the most disgusting things on the planet. Me, I say it depends on whether you're talking about creamy cole slaw or one of those yucky vinegary concoctions. But I'll also own that I've never understood the appeal of foodstuff wrestling matches. Women in pudding, women in cole slaw – brrrr, just the thought of it brings out the Adrian Monk in me. . . # | ( 3/09/2004 10:42:00 AM ) Bill S.  "I WAS SURFING THIS TIDAL WAVE OF FADED GLORIES" – Okay, first things first: I'm pretty sure that the idea of a group of Dubliners singing songs about living in Southern California is more than a bit removed from Writing What You Know – even if that So Cal is the much-traveled myth-land of Neil Young and the Brother era Beach Boys (circa Holland, especially).But although wispy singer/songwriter Conor Deasey comes across more Van Dyke Parks than Dennis (the beach bro who actually surfed) Wilson, he and his band the Thrills have still concocted a splendorous pop disc with their debut, So Much for the City (Virgin). Over an Americana-drenched pop-rock sound that finds room for plenty o' harmony, Dylan-y harmonica, banjos and the bass-line from "Build Me Up, Buttercup," Deasey sings his songs of lost hopes and regret with an appealing Nils Lofgren whine. If his minimalist lyrics hint at more than they deliver ("Hollywood Kids," for instance, doesn't tell us anything that Steely Dan didn't do better on Countdown to Ecstasy), the tone is so gossamer lovely that I'm not gonna grouse. Or perhaps I'm just impressed by a songwriter capable of quoting both "The Monkees Theme" and Harry Nilsson's "Moonbeam Song." Highlights of this 2003 release include the cautionary "Big Sur' (not the "California Saga" track from the Beach Boys), with its blend of banjo (courtesy of Daniel Ryan) & organ (Kevin Horan), plus a proto-theremin flourish; "Old Friends, New Loves," which has a swirling string section reminiscent of a John Barry 007 movie theme; the strumming Schmillsony "Deckchairs And Cigarettes;" plus "Your Love Is Like Las Vegas," which contains the neatly bitter line: "Your love is like a city that burnt me good." I've also grown attached to the throbbing bass opener to "Hollywood Kids" and the swelling harmonies of album opener of "Santa Cruz (You're Not That Far)." Swell stuff for those who prefer their melancholy with a beat and some barbershop harmony. Authentic Dublin beach party music? Ah, who cares? "If this sounds phony," Deasey teases at one point, "Don't say that I didn't warn." Fair enough. I'm ready to dance "'til the tide creeps in." # | Monday, March 08, 2004 ( 3/08/2004 04:06:00 PM ) Bill S. PAPA BEAR – After all this time, the penultimate season of HBO's Sopranos has finally begun, and one of the big joys of watching a season premiere for a grown-up soap like this lies in trying to anticipate the plot threads that'll pay off by season’s end (as when a returning-but-new-to-us thug like Robert Loggia’s Feech reassures the rest of the cast that he has no intention of infringing on anybody else’s territory. And does anybody wanna get a pool going on Bobby Bacala's life expectancy now that he's apparently moved in with black widow Janice?) Like most discerning viewers I'm also tickled to see Steve Buscemi being added to the cast, and I liked the way the writers used a reference to an earlier Buscemi-directed episode as both an in-joke and a way of fueling the ever-competitive relationship between Soprano underlings Christopher and Paulie. But the emotional center of the series remains the bickersome Tony & Carmela Soprano – and the season's started off on some promising notes, an especially fine touch being the season premiere's backyard bear invasion (sparked, one ranger theorizes, by the presence of moldering bird food in an outside bid – it always comes back to the ducks!) I'm also wondering, of course, just how far our anti-hero is gonna take his doomed declaration of romantic intentions toward his former therapist Melfi. Man, have I missed this show. # | Sunday, March 07, 2004 ( 3/07/2004 09:45:00 AM ) Bill S. "REGRETS, I HAVE A FEW!" – Down in Texas, at a shabby nursing home called Mud Creek Shady Rest, a fat wreck of a man is living out his final days. The staff knows him as Sebastian Haff (Bruce Campbell), but Haff lets us in on the truth. He's really Elvis Aaron Presley. The King of Rock 'N' Roll had traded places with a professional Elvis impersonator back in the day to escape the trappings of Kinghood. Now he spends his time, watching staff speed through their daily routines, worrying about an undiagnosed growth on his penis ("Truth was," he notes in voiceover, "I hadn't had a hard-on in years,") and wondering, "Is there anything to life other than food, shit and sex?" Down the perpetually underlit halls a second patient (Ossie Davis) also claims to be a famous personage, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, victim of an unseen conspiracy that has taken out part of his brain and replaced it with sand, then dyed his body black "all over." When a stolen Egyptian mummy shows up at the nursing home, sucking the souls of residents out through whatever orifice is convenient, it's up to these two old, barely ambulatory geezers to stop the monster that Elvis/Sebastian calls Bubba Ho-Tep. It's to writer/director Don Coscarelli's credit (working from a tall tale by Joe R. Lansdale) that a.) he never once lets us know for certain if our heroes are totally delusional (though at one point, E/S spies an unexplained scar on the back of his friend’s head) andAs a result, he creates something pretty unique in the annals of low-budget moviedom: a blend of campiness and melancholy regret that does both these boomer icons proud. He also – rather amazingly for me at least since I'd written the guy off years ago – has created his first great film since Phantasm (sorry, Beastmaster fans!) The movie proceeds at its own geezerly pace and at times shows the restraints of its budget (the climactic showdown between our heroes and mummy is flatter than you’d expect it to – which only seems half intentional), while the occasional old-aged digressions into scatological obsessions will definitely try the patience of some audience members. But there are plenty of moments of B-pic poetry in this baby: a scene where our hero attempts to fend off a flying scarab (happily reminiscent of the deadly flying orb from Phantasm) using nothing but his walker and some dinner utensils, for instance, or the moment when a victim-to-be surprisingly shuffles up to a second nursing home resident in an iron lung to steal her eyeglasses. Plus, he captures the ravages of age and convalescent isolation with noir-like toughness. The mummy, happily, is pretty cool looking, too. Created by the FX crew at KNB EFX Group, he strides down the halls in an unexplained cowboy outfit: just the kind of creature you'd expect to see in one of Lansdale's outlandish horror westerns. When he opens up his maw to attack one of our heroes, it's a moment horror fans'll treasure. Coscarelli couldn't have pulled it all off without Campbell, of course, who inhabits his role with hard-bitten believability. It's too bad more folks won't be seeing this quirky little flick, if only to get a glimpse of what a damn fine actor Bruce Campbell can be when he's not attaching chainsaws to his arm and fending off the walking dead. At one point in Bubba Ho-Tep, our hero comes upon a 24 Hour Elvis Marathon on television and sadly considers the King's film legacy: "Shitty pictures – every one of 'em," he pronounces. You get the sense in that moment Coscarelli would've loved to write and direct a movie for the real Elvis Presley. If only he could've. When you're old, Elvis/Sebastian states early in the proceedings, "Everything you do is either worthless or sadly amusing." On the whole, Bubba Ho-Tep is the latter – and all the better for it. BLOGGISH POSTSCRIPT: I like it when a director remains loyal to the actors who were present when s/he started out (as with Joe Dante's ongoing use of Roger Corman regular Dick Miller), so I was pleased to note the presence of Reggie Bannister, the balding hippie-ish brother from the Phantasm movies, in this pic as an officious nursing home administrator. Way to go, Don! BIG GULP DEPT.: While prepping this review to go up on Blogcritics, I happened to notice that I'd gotten Lansdale's name wrong twice - and I've got a slew of his books on the shelves upstairs! This dumb-ass error has since been corrected. # | ( 3/07/2004 09:40:00 AM ) Bill S. GREAT MOMENTS IN MOVIE NUDITY – My previous posting spurred me into briefly wondering: if monsters plus nudity equals an unbeatable movie combo, what is the ultimate nudie monster movie? After a few minutes, I came up with my personal candidate: Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce, which features a shapely alien vampires waling about London in the altogether for the length of the movie. Scary? Not a whit. Entertaining? You betcha! # | |
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