Clerks 2

If you look at the sidebar to the right under "movies I like", then you know that I like Clerks. So when we went to go see Clerks 2, did I have high hopes for this movie? Of course not, silly rabbit. Sequels rarely exceed the quality of the original.

(If you know of a sequel that is better than the original, then let me know. This is a topic in itself. For example, I wouldn't say that Lethal Weapon 2 is better than Lethal Weapon, but it's just as enjoyable. Once they resolved Mel Gibson's mental state and suicidal tendencies in the first movie, it was all fun and games and buddy movie yuks in the second movie.)

So how was Clerks 2? Pretty good. I kind of think that the story got in the way of the clever dialogue that made the first movie so good. There are some great moments in this movie though, such as Randall talking about Lord of the Rings or Jay's "Silence of the Lambs" dance. I thought the new Elias character was hilarious with his Transformers and "pillow pants". But overall I wasn't really swept away by the love triangle aspect of the story.


While I like the dick & fart jokes as much as the next guy, I haven't seen a movie this vulgar in a while. I don't remember the original movie being like this; maybe I need to go watch it again. If you see Clerks 2 with a girl, make sure they know what they are getting into, or you might not make it through the whole date.

As with most of Kevin Smith's movies, I think this movie will be a whole lot better on DVD when you get the audio commentary. His commentaries never fail to entertain and give lots of insights into his filmmaking process.

One last note to Kevin Smith: please stop casting your wife in your movies. Just stop. Please.

Still Back From San Diego!

You know, the Comic-Con isn't all about seeing famous people. It's also about crap. Crap as in, "boy, that movie sure looks like crap", or "what sort of crap are they giving away at that booth?", or even, "crap, my feet sure hurt".

However, here are some of the non-crap things that we saw at Comic-Con:

Flapjack Toys is a new company started by the founder of Funko. Although Funko is still going strong with it's Wacky Wobblers, the owner decided to move on and start a new brand. Their Symptoms and Spooky Kooky toys made their debut at Comic-Con. While bulging eyeballs and little monsters won't appeal to everyone, the design showed a lot of promise for the future.


We were there in 2003 when the Uglydolls first showed up in San Diego, and it's nice to see how they have grown since then. The Uglydolls have moved into vinyl figures, t-shirts, and have shrunk down into little keychains; can a cartoon show be far behind? This year we picked up the newest Uglydoll, Chuckanucka.


Steve Rude is one of the most talented artists in the business today, although he isn't as prolific as he was in the eighties. It's a shame that he and Mike Baron aren't producing the Nexus comic anymore, but I eagerly wait for the next Mothman series to come out. His latest sketchbook, Steve Rude Sketches & Commissions 2006, is available from his website.


As I have wrote earlier, I love Phil Hale's artwork. Mockingbirds/Relaxeder is a pair of small, hardcover books commemorating a 2005 Phil Hale exhibit in London. Mockingbirds features the artist's more recent oil paintings, while Relaxeder showcases his pencil drawings. I also picked this set of books up from Bud Plant.


Fantagraphics is currently putting out a series of internationally-produced comics called the Ignatz Series. These comics feature a rotating group of artists with stories done in a more European style. I really hadn't heard much about these comics, but once I picked some of them up and flipped through them, I was hooked. It's always good to have a balanced diet of comics, and the Ignatz imprint is a great way to offset too many superhero comics. Each comic comes in an 8-1/2 x 11 two-color format printed on nice quality paper.


I had to do a little research on them first, but I finally figured out that Dumbrella is a group of web comic artists. Each artist has his own website that features their own individual comics. It seems that one of their main sources of income is t-shirts. At the convention they had their own booth with mostly t-shirts with clever drawings and witty statements. The shirts were apparently selling very well, because they never seemed to have the sizes we were looking for. It's always nice to see that both the big companies and the little guys can both thrive at the Comic-Con. Ah, there's nothing like a level playing field.

Back From San Diego!

Another Comic-Con has come and gone. How was this one? Pretty good. As usual, we saw some famous people, scored some pretty neat free stuff, and walked until our feet begged us not to walk any more.

As usual, there were too many people. Way too many people. I've seen an estimate that about 125,000 people attended, and that doesn't seem too far off. Some of these people should have stayed home: the smelly ones, the annoying ones, and the ones who blocked our way for no good reason when we were trying to walk by. You know who you are, stinky.

Keep it moving, people! Nothing to see here!

So who did we see this year? We saw Jason Statham, the guy who was Pedro in Napoleon Dynamite, some of the cast of The 4400, Stephan Bonnar and Kenny Florian from the UFC, Henry Rollins, and the cast of the Blade TV show. We also saw Robert Smigel do Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. The highlight had to be Jorge Garcia, who plays Hurley on Lost. Not only did he walk by us two times in the dealer room, but we also rode with him in our hotel elevator. Try to top that.

Hurley: our new best friend.

There were a lot of celebrities that we didn't see who appeared at the convention, including Rosario Dawson, David Arquette, Hilary Swank, Snoop Dogg, Samuel Jackson, the Wayans brothers, Kevin Smith, Tobey Maguire, Topher Grace, and Kirsten Dunst. I'm sure there were more that we didn't know about. We tried to get in to a couple of these panels, but there were just too many freakin' people and not enough seats. See what I mean? Way too many people.

Next time: Some cool companies, some stuff I bought, and some stuff I wanted to buy...

The cast of Blade: The Series (picture taken right before the security guy hit me with his stun gun)

Off To San Diego!

Hoo hah! We're off to wade through impossibly large crowds, see some bona fide (& many borderline) celebrities, get some cool stuff, and soak up some San Diego sun! It will be tough to top last year, but I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised by what's in store for this week.

Unless I get hopelessly lost in the dealer room, I'll tell you all about it when we get back. Yippee-ki-yay!

Comic-Con Fans

As the San Diego Comic-Con (or SDCC for short) rapidly approaches, let's take a minute to reacquaint ourselves with the numerous species of Comic-Con Fans, courtesy of Skribbl at the Story Boredom Blog. This will be my 12th year of attending the convention, and believe you me, all the species described exist. For example:

"The Ravenous Reader: Look out for this one near any bathroom entrance or waste receptacle. Instead of waiting to get home to read their latest purchase, they plop themselves down at the highest traffic walkway intersection and begin reading.

By the way, I am not any of these, thank you very much.

The Heat Is Getting To Me

Holy cow, it's hot. This heat is keeping me awake, so let's think about something else instead.

There's a genuine Wolverine mask prop replica available for pre-order that you can buy and display proudly in your home. It's made of stretchable leather, and comes with its own "museum-quality" display case and certificate of authenticity. There are only going to be 1000 of these beauties made, so you better pony up your $89.99 right away.


Now, I like the X-Men as much as any comic book geek, but you have to be a little off your rocker to want this. Even though it has its own case and a little name plaque, the "stretchable" leather almost begs someone to try it on. You know whoever buys this thing will want to put on the mask and run around pretending they're Wolverine.

The problem is that you're never going to look like the comic book Wolverine. You're just going to look like a guy in a silly $90 mask. Why do you think the movie Wolverine doesn't wear a mask? At best, you're going to look like this guy:

He's available for parties and public appearances. No kidding. Just look here. Actually, there's quite a selection of Marvel Super-Heroes you can book for your next Christmas party. Here are a few of my favorites:

Daredevil, looking a little tipsy (you can get Ben Affleck for an extra fifty bucks)

Spider-Girl?

The Thing, with a stylin' pair of board shorts

Someone's parents must be very proud. See? Comic books are good for you.

Loituma

I've seen a few different versions of this video - it features a song called "Leva's Polka" by a Finnish group called Loituma. It's just a animated girl twirling a green onion around and singing the song. Endlessly. Forever. Personally, I don't get it, but it's apparently been sweeping across the internet, as these sort of things do.



The song is kind of catchy the first couple of times through, but if you watch it too many times it will slowly drive you nuts. Go ahead, give it a try!

Tintin and I

There's not enough Tintin in the US. He's popular all over the world, but unfortunately, not nearly enough in this country. If you don't know who I'm talking about, then you should bow your head in shame. Blistering barnacles!

Tintin is the boy reporter who has adventures all over the world with his dog, Snowy. His adventures have been chronicled in twenty-three graphic novels (see Amazon link here). This is some of the most well-crafted comics you'll ever read - plus it's kid-friendly to boot.

So get your act together and first go check out the official Tintin website. Next, watch the PBS documentary on P.O.V. called "Tintin and I", which is all about Tintin's creator Herge, and the impact of his work. It's showing on Tuesday, 7/11 at 11 pm. Just Tivo it, you won't regret it.

Road House, Yeah!

In less than two weeks, the special edition of Road House will be released on DVD. I would argue that this is one of the modern classics of "guy" movies. Every red-blood American male who was around for its heyday in the early nineties must have some measure of respect for this film.

If you don't know the magic of Road House, then here's a quick overview: Patrick Swayze plays Dalton, a professional bouncer hired to clean up an unruly southern bar. Along the way he defends the locals from the evil crime lord who wants to take over the town. I don't remember exactly why he wanted to take over the town, but he was just plain bad, and only Patrick Swayze could stand up to him.

In my humble opinion, this 1989 movie captures Swayze in the absolute height of his Swayze-ness. Dirty Dancing put him on the map, but Road House took him straight to the top of the heap. Sure, he would star in Ghost in 1990 with Demi Moore, but he didn't kick ass in that movie like he did in Road House. Not only does he beat up drunks and bad guys in this movie, but he also was a kind, spiritual soul with a "no one ever wins a fight" philosophy. So true.

So what does this new special edition DVD have? Deleted scenes? An alternate ending? You got me. All I know is that there is a Kevin Smith audio commentary included, which is well worth the price of the disc.

If that wasn't enough for you, then check this out: Road House 2 will be released on the same day. That's right, they finally made a sequel to the classic. You have to wonder why that waited so long. I guess the public demanded it, so they had to deliver.

When I first saw the preview ad for this DVD, this was the cover art:


First of all, who is this shmuck? Jonathan Schaech? Why does he look like such a dork? Most importantly, what's up with those jeans that he's wearing? My fiance has been getting me to wear more appropriately-colored jeans for going out, and brother, what this guy is wearing ain't it. Road House or not, those are not jeans that you should wear out in the evening.

I saw another preview of the cover art today, and I think the producers saw the same things I was seeing and made some changes. Here's the second version:


Oh yeah, that's much better. Those acid-washed jeans are a huge improvement.

World Cup Fevah

For my 100th post, I will not wax nostalgically on my previous 99 posts. No, there's plenty of time for waxing later. Instead, let's talk about the World Cup. For the first time I've actually kept up with the tournament this year, and while I haven't fallen in love with the sport, it's actually proved to be pretty interesting:

• As everyone knows by now, the US had a pretty dismal showing in the World Cup group matches. I watched them get crushed by the Czech Republic, and I watched them squeak out a tie with Italy (in which the only US goal was scored by a player on the Italian team). I didn't watch their last match against Ghana, but they lost that too. Oh well, there's always 2010.


• The flop knows no language barrier. It seems like a once every few minutes a player gets tripped or bumped, and then he proceeds to roll around on the ground for a while, clutching his ankle in agony. A minute later, he's up and running again. It's nice to see that the phantom injury is part of our universal language. Sure, it really hurts if someone steps on the back of your leg with a cleat, but I think a lot of these guys just want to lie on the ground so they can catch their breath from running around all over the place.
  
  
  
• This is Goleo VI, the official mascot of the 2006 World Cup. Pille, the talking football, is Goleo's constant companion who is always by his side. Goleo kicks Pille in the face and in the head all the time, but that lovable football just doesn't seem to mind. I've got nothing against mascots, and I actually love seeing people in animals suits. However, when I look at Pille, his mouth looks like someone took a soccer ball and slashed it with a knife. It kind of makes me queasy. Take a look at this, you can see his soccer ball guts inside his mouth:
  
  


• I could be wrong about this, but it seemed like both the teams from Japan and Korea had one guy with bleached blonde hair. Only one - all the other members of the team had regular dark hair. It was if they had a contest, and only one guy got to change his hair color.
  
  

• Whenever I see the World Cup Trophy, it always reminds me of the poster from the War of the Worlds remake. Creepy.

• As of today, Germany and Portugal have been eliminated and France and Italy will meet in the final. Who will win? I have no idea. I've been to both France and Italy, but overall I've spent more time in France, so there you have it. Go France!