Looks like the ranks of those unhappy with J. Michael Straczynski’s “One More Day” Spider-Man storyline include…J. Michael Straczynski, who’s basically throwing “OMD” artist and Marvel Editor in Chief Joe Quesada under the bus for the arc and saying he came this close to asking for his name to be removed from its final two issues. He also cites wanting to have Peter Parker sire illegitimate children by Gwen Stacy as an example of his sound judgment, which is hilarious. (Via every comics blog everywhere.)
Long live the new flesh: Feast your eyes on this Flickr set of “Horrorshow,” Johnny Ryan’s horror and exploitation film-inspired series of paintings. Best part: The originals are on sale! (Via Eric Reynolds.)
It feels like it’s been a long time since I blogged about a good old-fashioned sea monster, which is why it was such a pleasure to come across this article about a newly discovered species of prehistoric, sea-dwelling, carnivorous reptile the size of a bus. Fuck, the dinosaur era was AWESOME.
Aeron at Monster Brains brings us links to several photo galleries’ worth of photos from Austria’s Krampus festivals, celebrations of the mythical devil who hangs with Santa Claus and punishes the naughty children. Some of these costumes are weapons-grade scary.
Glenn Kenny and his commenteers are close-reading the bloody bejesus out of No Country for Old Men. I’m always torn when I see discussions like this going on. On the one hand it takes me back to my film school days, when similar bull sessions frequently lasted until dawn or sobriety intervened. And it’s always fun to watch people geek out so unabashedly about something I love as much as I love film, particularly a great one (and No Country is a great film). On the other hand it edges a little too close to the parlor-game mentality whereby great art is seen to be not just appreciated or understood but decoded, like the Jumble in the funnypages. I don’t think it works that way. I certainly hope it doesn’t. At any rate I’m pretty sure that determining whether or not Chigurh is in a certain room or holding a certain weapon in a certain scene is not some magic key to understanding what it all means. Like, when you watch that movie, don’t you just naturally come away understanding what it all means? Without having to resort to the equivalent of “the walrus was Paul”?
Finally, oh Marty, how I love you. (Bonus points for casting Simon Baker in the Hitchcock hero role. And for Thelma Schoonmaker on-screen. And for the ending.) (Via every movie blog everywhere.)
I assumed Chigurh was on the other side of the door to the hotel room because they showed him ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR TO THE HOTEL ROOM. What a philistine I am.
What fun you must be to go to the movies with. “But how can John Travolta be in this scene? Bruce Willis just shot him!” “Wait, how can Clarice be knocking at Buffalo Bill’s front door? The FBI just barged it down!”
Yeah, that’s me. “Duhhhh, fractured timeline? Misdirection? What’s that? Durrrrrr!”
Re: decoding. I’m generally with you: I think by approaching a film this way (like a text) you’re apt to ignore how the thing actually plays (more like a performance). Still – the Coens like putting “Jumble”-style games into their movies: that’s part of their performance. In terms of how this actually works out – well: picking up on the hidden David Mamet references in Lebowski may help to get a better focus on how the movie goes about bagging and tagging various specimens of macho aggression, but I’m not sure that it helps all that much to really enjoy the movie. But I’d guess that a lot of stuff in O Brother feels mannered and pointless if you’re not also actively decoding all the pop culture/folk/political references.
No Country does feel a bit more straightforward than those movies (though that might just be because I’ve only seen it once).
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