It's Good Because It's Bad

We've all said it before: "It's so bad it's good." Some of the movies I look back on with the most fondness are ones which aren't generally considered to be very good. Films like Phantoms, Chill Factor, The Faculty, and Universal Soldier. Speaking of which, check this out:


That's right, Dolph and Jean-Claude will be back together in Universal Soldier 3: The Next Generation in 2010. That movie's still a ways off, but more and more these days I've been getting excited about films that honestly don't look very good. Now, you could chalk that up to me just having poor taste (which I wouldn't necessarily blame you for), but I think that it's been long enough since the types of action and sci-fi movies I loved growing up went out of style that they seem to be making a bit of a resurgence. Look at more recent movies like Slither, 12 Rounds, and even the new Rambo film for proof of this.

Essentially, I've just been getting a lot more excited about a lot of cheesy looking movies, and you know what? I'm fine with that. Some people probably hear that Jet Li, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Goldberg, and Sylvester Stallone are going to be in a new action movie called The Expendables and scoff at the idea, but I think it sounds great! In fact, that's probably one of my most anticipated movies of 2010 right now along with Iron Man 2 and the aforementioned Universal Soldiers sequel. So I figured that I'd try using my blog to turn a few people onto some movies that they might otherwise overlook. Below are trailers for some upcoming action movies which may seem laughable on the surface, but may actually prove to take you back to the days when you could just sit back and watch Arnold Schwarzenegger impale people all day and love it. I won't say that you had to grow up on movies like Commando to find an interest in these trailers, but I'm sure it wouldn't hurt.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
I figured I'd start with this trailer because I'm betting that most people have either already seen it or at least heard about it by now. Chances are if you've seen the preview already you think the movie looks abysmal. Maybe that's because you loved G.I.Joe when you were younger and think that the movie looks too cheesy. If that's the case, take a moment and think about the old Joe cartoons and comic books. Doesn't knocking the Eiffel Tower over with some crazy plant virus missile thing seem like the kind of ridiculously evil plot Cobra Commander would have concocted in those issues and episodes? Hell yes it does! We're talking about a franchise that had guy named "Golobulus" who could turn people into snake-men! So watch the trailer again with that in mind and try to imagine how awesome you'd have thought this movie looked if you'd seen this trailer 20 years ago.


Gamer
Now we're getting into the nitty-gritty. In this film death row inmates are given the chance to be pardoned and released from custody if they can survive 30 rounds of "Slayers", a futuristic video game in which people at home literally control the bodies and actions of prisoners like Kable (Gerard Butler) as they play the equivalent of a modern day FPS deathmatch game with real live people.It doesn't get much cheesier than that, but if you've ever watched The Running Man with Arnold Schwarzenegger and enjoyed it, you should have an open mind when it comes to this one. Look at those explosions! Also, Michael C. Hall from Dexter is the bad guy, which I can't wait to see.


Armored
In the case of this trailer, I admit that even I may not have paid it much mind if it weren't for the cast. Matt Dillon, Laurence Fishburne, Jean Reno, Skeet Ulrich, Milo Ventimiglia, and Fred "Tremors" Ward! Sure, it's not all Brad Pitts and Clive Owens', but that's still a pretty nice round-up regardless. Basically, the new guy on a team of armored car guards doesn't think too highly of his partners' plan to rob one of their own trucks, so he locks himself up in said armored vehicle with an injured cop and all of the money, then tries to stay alive long enough to turn his "friends" in. Get that many character actors in a room and give them this concept and I'm sold. How about you?


Command Performance
I don't think I need to say too much about this one. Dolph Lundgren stars in, co-wrote, and directed this beast about the drummer of a rock band who has to fight back against a group of terrorists who have attacked a concert for some reason. Stupid? Yes. Fun? Hell yes!! The blog-o-sphere is already referring to Command Performance as "Die Hard at a rock concert". Don't lie to yourself. You want to see this movie. And if this teaser isn't enough for you, you can check out a full length trailer for Command Performance here.

Resident Evil 5: My Review

Resident Evil 5 is a game that I wanted to play, but wasn't dying to get my hands on. Basically, I feel like I have a hard time getting into a lot of games these days, and since I never played RE4, which started the whole "not really zombies" storyline, I didn't really have the itch to dive into this game. I even played the demo when it was released on the Playstation Network and it didn't really change my mind. What it eventually took to get me excited was a taste of the two-player co-op mode. After I played the RE5 demo in co-op mode with Ricky, I immediately felt the urge to play the full game, so we acquired a copy from Blockbuster and went to town. All in all it took us three nights to beat the game, playing between 4 and 6 hours a night; Ricky as Chris Redfield and myself as the new character, Sheva. The following is my account of the experience playing through Resident Evil 5 in co-op mode:

First of all, the game looks great. It seems rare that I play a PS3 game which doesn't impress me visually, and RE5 is no exception. Second: the gameplay. We began (as we always do) on the normal/medium difficulty setting, which made the game challenging, but not so difficult that we had a problem with dying too frequently (until the end that is, which I'll get into in a little while). There's a decent variety of weapons with a pretty cool upgrading system to help give you more motivation to locate and obtain gold and treasures which you can use to purchase said upgrades. As with all of the RE titles, the game forces you to be strategic by limiting the number of items you can carry in your inventory at any given time. This adds a level of extra thought which makes the game both frustrating and fun, but if you're familiar with the RE games you probably knew that already. As far as the enemies are concerned, if you played through RE4 (or watched someone else play through it like I did) there isn't much new here aside from the bosses, but that's all well and good. There's a good enough variety of enemies that they never get old, and it was exciting to see the Lickers make an appearance for the first time in quite a while.

The game takes place in Africa, which is a pleasant change of scenery from the previous games. Speaking of the scenery, I already mentioned that the game looks great, but there are some really cool locales to play through. You begin in some dusty towns and eventually end up in a marshland, abandoned mining caves, an ancient temple, the standard underground Umbrella laboratory, and even a few boats/barges. One of the things the game had to offer which I was most delighted by were the scripted action scenes such as one which places you behind the trigger of a turret on a jeep that's speeding through the desert being chased by motorcycle-riding 'zombies' and huge trucks which you need to take out. I wasn't used to seeing that sort of action-packed gameplay in a Resident Evil game.

Now for the good stuff. The real draw of this game for me was, as I mentioned, the co-op. Resident Evil 5 offers so many great features and events for players to overcome as a team. I'm sure it works fine if you play through with the A.I. character, but nothing beats calling out to your friend for cover fire or a quick heal when you're in a tight spot. As with a number of two-player games these days you can be mortally wounded without dying immediately, giving your partner an opportunity to find you and give you a quick boost of health to bring you back from the verge of death. As far as I'm concerned, no video game moment beats the feeling of cooperation and teamwork that one gets from an instance like that. The ultimate example of this is the game Army of Two, which was designed specifically to be played by two people, but RE5 definitely still gets it right.

There are a lot of other cool moments to experience with a partner that are specific to certain parts of the game, as well. For example, there's a really tense segment which takes place in a pitch black mine shaft. As you enter said maze of tunnels you'll find a lantern with a big battery which one player must hold and use to light the way while the other takes out any 'zombies' you come across. It makes for some great teamwork. Even simple occurrences such as when one player is about to accidentally set off a tripwire and the other sees it and shouts out "STOP!" just in time to avoid a disaster make playing a game like this so much more rewarding. Not to mention, specific to the pairing of Ricky and I, we're very different when it comes to the way we like to play these types of games, which makes for some interesting interaction. For example, if a Shotgun or a Magnum is available, I'm gonna want it in my inventory, whereas Ricky tends to prefer machine guns and sniper rifles. This makes us the perfect team as one of us will always be perfectly suited for any situation. If there are enemies firing explosive arrows at us from across the level, I'll hang back and let Ricky take care of them with his rifle, and if larger, tougher enemies attack us straight on I'll take over the heavy lifting with my more powerful, close range weapons.

After beating the campaign mode, you're awarded Mercenaries Mode as was the case with the last few RE games as well. In this mode you're essentially dropped in the middle of one of eight (if I'm not mistaken) different stages and left to fend off a seemingly endless horde of increasingly dangerous enemies. You get points for every 'zombie' that you kill and bonuses for killing multiple enemies in short periods of time, earning you "combos" for rapid kills. You can either focus your attention on simply staying alive and racking up kills or also trying to locate and destroy glowing "time bonus" symbols which tack on extra minutes to the goal time you must meet to win in hopes that you can use that extra time to kill even more enemies and max out your score. Rank high enough in each level and you'll earn more characters and costumes to play with. Again, this mode takes teamwork to the extreme as Ricky and I often found ourselves healing one another, warning the other player of danger or new enemies, and swapping ammo when needed.

All in all I've got almost nothing bad to say about Resident Evil 5. Keep in mind that I did only play the game co-op, but so long as the second player A.I. isn't too incompetent, I can't imagine that the gameplay suffers too greatly from playing by yourself. I did say that I have almost nothing bad to say about the game though, and there was one part that pissed me (and Ricky) off to no end.

RESIDENT EVIL 5 SPOILERS BELOW
So at the end of the game you find yourself facing the final boss in the form of a heavily mutated Albert Wesker after your chopper goes down inside an active volcano. Crazy, right?! Well, the scenario is cool enough, but the trials and tribulations you need to face to actually defeat Wesker are infuriating. Rather than just blasting the hell out of him you need to wait for little orange orbs to appear on Wesker's body before you can injure him. This only happens on specific, scripted occasions, which is nothing new for the Resident Evil series (or video games in general), but in between these moments of target practice the "fight" can be very confusing. As we played we found ourselves dying or failing repeatedly and being forced to complete the same series' of events over and over as we tried desperately to figure out what we should be doing. I hate it when games go from being fun to becoming a test of endurance and patience via trial and error. Even that isn't the worst part though. There were other scripted events going on during the fight as well, such as a sequence where my character (Sheva) had to hang onto a cliff for dear life while Chris fought to keep Wesker off my back. During this entire segment I had to repeatedly tap the square button to keep from losing my grip on the rocks for about a minute at a time. Imagine having to do that close to 30 TIMES IN A ROW! By the time we'd finally figured out what the hell we were doing and defeated Wesker I was more happy to be done with the game than proud that we'd beat it.

END SPOILERS
Forunately, the part of the game described above was really the only down point. Aside from that one instance I never felt too confused or frustrated about what we were meant to be doing or where we were meant to be going, which is one of the most important parts of any good game. For a good co-op game, I'd honestly have to say that there are very few I'd recommend before Resident Evil 5. In fact, Army of Two may be the only one I can think of that tops it.

The Cartoonist

Someone is making a documentary about Jeff Smith, and it's about damn time if you ask me. I found this trailer a day or two ago via Twitter and I'm already sold. Where can I get a copy of this thing already?!

Cool Posters For Upcoming Sci-Fi Movies

Some (myself included) would say the art of movie posters isn't much of an art anymore, so it's incredibly refreshing when I come across a movie poster that really inspires me to see a movie on it's own these days. I was just researching some films for My Movie Radar and discovered a couple of cool posters for some sci-fi movies coming out in the near future. Check 'em out:


This poster for Moon is easily the most awesome retro movie poster I've seen since this one for last year's highly underrated Jason Statham heist film The Bank Job.


This one also gives me a retro vibe. It may be the color scheme, but I think the main thing that gives me that nostalgic feeling is the small inset pic of the guys walking through the desert. When I look at that image I can't help but think of the beginning of Planet of the Apes. Then, of course, there's the fact that the character in the larger image looks an awful lot like Boba Fett...


This one's got a more modern feel, but it's still pretty neat. I almost think it would work better without the text.


It's hard to say with any certainty how effective this poster is considering that this is the largest picture of it that I could track down via Google, but even a minute, blurry image such as this outshines the other two (one & two) typical, uninspired posters for this film. It almost looks like the cover to some old, tattered sci-fi paperback you'd find packed away in your grandfather's basement or something.

Advice To Future Students

or
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love
The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art
As my third and final year at the Kubert School drew to a close in 2006, our writing teacher Mike Kraiger asked each of his students to write two final papers for him. One of those papers is what I'm posting here: a list of advice for future students. To my knowledge Kraiger never actually showed these lists to any of his incoming students, which is probably a good thing. Mike had a good sense of humor though, so we were all encouraged to be completely honest with the assurance that none of the other teachers or staff at the school would ever see what we had written. As I was looking for some old Broken Legacy work on my ancient hand-me-down IBM Thinkpad, I came across this list and got a few good laughs out of some of the things which I had written and subsequently forgotten about over the course of the last three years. So here, edited only for grammar and punctuation, not content, is my list of advice for future students of the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art.

Oh, and the second of those two papers Kraiger asked us to write? It was a person by person critique of each of our instructors at the school. I may post that one at a later date as well, but I fear that my commentary may have been a bit too biting in that paper. Anyway, here we go.

- To avoid unnecessary headaches (and poverty), use the school's copy machine only when absolutely necessary.
- Concerning copies to be made off the premises of the school: bite the bullet and drive the extra few minutes to Kinkos. Their employees are, as a whole, far less incompetent than those of any of their competitors.
- Time Saving Tip: Ink "spilled" on the back of an assignment (obscuring a given grade) will allow it to be turned in for more than one class.
- Time Saving Tip: Weed out the assignments that are less important and/or less interesting than others and employ the use of tech pens, RoseArt non-toxic watercolors ($0.94 at Wal-Mart), and a simpler, 'cartoony' style on them.
- Painful as it may be, make each teacher feel like you're holding their current assignment in the highest regard.
- For the sake of concentration, if you insist on having a television in your possession, DO NOT get cable.
- Likewise, the internet is not recommended.
- Also, it is unwise to keep a bookshelf of your favorite books and comics within arm's reach of your art desk, or even in your peripheral view.
- If you have no interest in pursuing a job as a computer colorist, don't feel the need to color every single assignment in Photoshop. There are much faster ways to color (i.e. the aforementioned RoseArt watercolors).

If you are living in the school-provided housing (or if you have roommates regardless):

- Keep a list of all of the DVDs, CDs, Comic Books, and other assorted valuables that you have in your possession to make it easier to keep track of what's gone missing.
- Shower at night as those few extra minutes of sleep will seem precious the next morning while everyone else is fighting for the bathroom.
- Do not leave your toothbrush and toothpaste in the bathroom, but instead keep it in your room. This way you can brush your teeth at the kitchen sink in the event that someone is holed up in the bathroom all morning.
- Make a habit of reusing the same cup, plate, etc. so that when someone starts bitching about somebody not washing their dishes you have an alibi.

- Become friends with the office ladies. It will pay off eventually.
- Pretend to laugh at Mike Chen's jokes. There's no way to really get on Debbie's good side (presuming that she has one), so Mike is the next best option.
- While in the classroom, employ the use of headphones and a discman or MP3 player to block out distracting conversations which will draw you in and go nowhere for extended periods of time (i.e. "Who would win..." and "Well, I think Spiderman 2 is better because...").
- For privacy while attending to 'business' at school, use the upstairs bathrooms.
- Don't get yourself too worked up over the DC and Marvel portfolio reviews. While everyone involved means well and it can be a worthwhile experience, the companies in question take these events much less seriously than the school does.
- Difficult as it may be, try to choose a desk in the classroom that is surrounded by classmates who bathe regularly. This will prove increasingly important as the summer months approach.
- What seems like a friendly argument of opinion can draw the line between enemies and give sarcastic classmates weeks, months, or even years worth of material to use against you. Avoid them as much as possible.
- Tempting as it may be, a trip to Taco Bell at lunch will almost always result in being late to your second class.
- To separate the men from the Dorians, if you must talk on your cell phone during class, leave the room first.
- Car pool.
- Get a digital camera and take reference photos. It's time to stop pretending.
- While the school is preparing you to be a professional, unless you're getting paid for your work, a missed deadline is worth a better final product and a more impressive portfolio.
- When showing your work to Irwin, make sure a sheet of tracing paper is strongly secured over your pages.
- Don't rush every single assignment. At any give time you should have at least one assignment that you are trying your absolute best on.
- Considering that the school is located in Dover, New Jersey, learning a little Spanish couldn't hurt.

A Feast For The Eyes

I have to imagine that if you're reading my blog you probably know me in some regard, because I kind of doubt that I'm drawing any new fans/readers with posts about Beyond Re-Animator and what I've bought recently. So since you already know me you must know that Jesse Munoz and I have been collaborating for some time now on a potential comic book series called Broken Legacy. You did know that, right? Of course you did.

Well, as of late we have been refining the project and preparing (what we believe to be) a pretty solid pitch package to begin sending off to prospective publishers (damn, that's a lot of "P" words...). As of tonight we're about 99% done with the pitch. We've just settled on the final cover image that will serve as the visual backbone to the pitch, and so excited are we that Jesse and I are giving you, the people, a sneak peek at said cover image. So sit back, moisten your eyeballs, and prepare to gawk, because here it is in all it's color-ific, be-logo-ed glory:



And while I'm at it, just for kicks, here's a quick excerpt from the pitch itself:

"When an evil wizard by the name of Malacan begins dredging up the troubled and mysterious history of the land of Aeronen, the elderly King Talior enlists a pair of traveling brothers/soldiers named Tobias and Gabriel to help defend the kingdom from his enemy’s forthcoming onslaught. As they battle for the good of their homeland, the brothers will be forced to face the unfortunate truths behind their broken family legacy, as well as their future, through hardships which they never perceived possible."

As soon as Jesse whips up the actual pitch packets and sends them my way to give the once over (hopefully sometime within the next week), we'll be ready to start putting our money where our mouth is and hopefully getting the attention of some publishers. Cross your fingers for us.

Recent Acquisitions 001

I guess there's really no point to this post other than for me to be able to brag about all the neat things I've bought lately. You'll notice that there's a number in the title of this post. I'm not planning on starting any kind of weekly/regular/scheduled features on this blog because I'd just be setting myself up for failure when a week rolls by with no posts, which is bound to happen eventually, let's be honest. I do imagine that I may write another post similar to this one in the future though, so that's what the "001" is all about. Anyway, here's some shit I've bought over the past few weeks:

Click The Pics To Enlarge
Tank Girl Volumes 1 & 2


A week or three ago I was looking at a book we have at Beyond Comics called The Cream of Tank Girl, which is like a history of her publication with lots of pictures of the comic and it's creators, and it really got me interested in Jamie Hewlett. I know that most people are familiar with him from his work on The Gorillaz, but I immediately became interested in the primarily black and white Tank Girl stuff. I've got no real knowledge of the character, but his art was enough to make me pick up these two books for about $15 a piece. I've only just skimmed the surface of Volume 1, but so far so good.

Invincible Ultimate Edition Hardcover Volume 4


Invincible is one of the very few series that I will pick up both in single issues and a collected format. I'd been buying the trades for a while, but when these hardcover collections started coming out with all of the sketches and other backmatter included, I started collecting these instead and gave my trades to my good friend and fellow Invincible fan Brian.

Dirty Pair II






A few weeks ago I got into one of my major artist obsession modes, this time focused on Adam Warren. The only comics I really had that he'd drawn were the first four volumes of Empowered and some random Gen 13 stuff, so I turned to eBay and Wikipedia to see what else I could find. I am now the proud owner of almost every Dirty Pair comic Adam has ever drawn. I still haven't had the chance to read most of them, but here they are.

Dirty Pair III: A Plague of Angels






Dirty Pair: Sim Hell Remastered




As of the writing of this post, this is the only Dirty Pair series I've had a chance to read. I wanted to go through them in order, but this one arrived at my house first and I felt the need to jump in a start reading. I'll never say that Dirty Pair is one of the most intellectual reads out there, but it's awesome because Adam Warren fully embraces that fact. I've become a massive fan of Warren as a writer as well as an artist over the past few years (primarily through Empowered) because of how fun his stories are. I always seem to find this odd connection with the stuff Adam writes. It's as though he and I have the same sense of humor. Also of note: his artwork is amazing.

Dirty Pair: Fatal But Not Serious






Dirty Pair: Run From The Future




Bubblegum Crisis: Grand Mal TPB


While researching Adam Warren's past works I came across this Bubblegum Crisis mini-series he had drawn, so I snagged the trade off of eBay as well. It's similar to Dirty Pair in that it's about some hot ladies who fight crime, though they're a quartet rather than a pair.

Jet




Back in the day I recall seeing this mini-series on the rack, but didn't know exactly what it was. As it turns out, Jet is the daughter of Backlash, a character who I've never been a huge fan of, but he's a member of Team 7 so he immediately gets a pass from me. Cut to a few years later when I read The Authority for the first time and become an instant fan of Dustin Nguyen (who drew this series) and it became of great interest to me. For whatever reason it's just taken me this long to track it down and pick it up for pennies on eBay.

DVDs




A large portion of my DVD collection comes from Blockbuster Video and their frequent 3 for $20 used DVD sales. I acquired these three titles from one such sale. Zack & Miri is the only one I've rewatched thus far, and I enjoyed it pretty much just as much as when I saw it in the theater. Pride & Glory was one of the sleeper hits of 2008 in my book. I wanted to see it because I'm a big Edward Norton fan, but the trailers didn't do much for me and I was expecting to be bored by a stereotypical cop mystery. Surprisingly, Pride & Glory exceeded all of my expectations and earned a spot in my Top 10 movies of 2008 list. Definitely a pleasant surprise.