* I’ve been a busy little bee lately: On Friday I reviewed C.F.’s Powr Mastrs Vol. 1 and yesterday I reviewed Josh Simmons’s Batman and in between I talked about Scott Smith’s The Ruins with Jim Treacher. I also spoke with Tom Spurgeon about the year in superhero comics. Finally, at this week’s Horror Roundtable, I reveal the horror projects I’m most excited about in 2008. (That list got longer with every single other response!)
* Dirk Deppey has created a colossal (seriously, it’s big, like the size of one of those Pitchfork Top 100 things) tribute to the 52 best comics of 2007. It’s heavy on manga, particularly scanlations.
* It’s official: The New York Times reports that violent movies reduce violent crime rates by keeping potentially violent people off the street and in the movie theater. (Via Jackie Danicki.)
* The article also contains a great plug for Kids in Mind, the excellent, non-judgmental website that catalogs violence, profanity, sexuality, and bathroom humor in films (ostensibly for parents to know what not to show their kids, though the Missus and I use it for its reliable indications of whether or not a given movie has vomiting in it).
* My kind of civil disobedience: South African teenagers make out in public in defiance of their country’s new “no PDA” law.
* I’ve really been digging the bite-size “Screening Log” movie write-ups at Not Coming to a Theater Near You lately. Here’s David Carter on the analog world-building of Flash Gordon, Rumsey Taylor on a payoff in The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, Carter on the lack of Coen-isms in No Country for Old Men, Taylor on humorlessness in For Your Consideration, and two one-sentence reactions from Taylor to Eraserhead and RoboCop 3.
* And Now the Screaming Starts’ CRWM reviews Dan Simmons’s arctic horror novel The Terror, about which I know roughly as much as I did about The Ruins prior to reading that because I didn’t read the review. (Okay, I know a little more–the setting and time period.) I’m getting a similar vibe, though, so it seems like this will be the next book I take out of the library.
* Jason Adams at My New Plaid Pants wishes Jeremy Renner, a fine, fine actor and star of two of my favorite horror films ever, Dahmer and 28 Weeks Later, a happy 37th birthday.
* Jason’s also got his own massive, wide-ranging Best Of 2007 movie post, including invididual awards, his top 5 horror films, and his top 20 movies overall. He sees a lot of movies.
* Spinning off a New York Times piece, Clive Thompson examines the government’s crusade to be able to confiscate and examine your laptop at border crossings (I’ve also heard about this going down at airports) and potential technological workarounds for the intrusion.
* My friend and sometimes collaborator Matt Wiegle is holding in his hands his comic-book rendition of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for Barnes & Noble’s No Fear Shakespeare graphic novel line.
* Artist Robert Burden has posted pictures of a new pair of epic paintings of action figures, including my beloved Krang from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles line. (For scale, note the four framed Krang figures attached to the painting.)
* It took Southern classmates in college to turn me on to the genius of “y’all” as the English language’s second-person plural. Could “yo” be an equivalent innovation for the gender-neutral third-person singluar? (Via Andrew Sullivan.)
* The Blot artist Tom Neely has released the soundtrack to his gallery show Self-Indulgent Werewolf. It looks pretty badass:
* Speaking of looking badass, dig this lovely series of mostly horror-based Che-style paintings by Final Girl’s Stacie Ponder.
* David Lynch has no love for watching movies on cellphones. There will always be something funny about watching Agent Gordon Cole curse. (Via Rue Morgue.)
The fact that it’s hilarious aside, this video actually raises similar issues to the recent snobby reactions against Amazon’s Kindle and other electronic book readers. But whereas those reactions are transparently dopey–print is print, and having a fancy-looking book is nice but it’s also its own separate experience from enjoying the writing, as anyone who’s read a beat-up dog-eared coverless copy of a much-loved book can tell you–Lynch’s makes sense because most films are meant to be seen on a much bigger screen.
* Ladies and gentlemen, “doppelganger by cake.” (Via Bryan Alexander.)
* Finally, I know that putting the characters of a great drama’s final season in a Last Supper pose has been done before, and I don’t care. This shot of the Battlestar Galactica cast from Entertainment Weekly is awesome. (Via Whitney Matheson.)
