* Boody Rogers’ Boody., Ivan Brunetti’s Ho!, the Greg Sadowski-edited Supermen!–that’s an impressive, and oddly punctuation-heavy, assortment of books now out from Fantagraphics.
* Real-world water monster update: Meet Predator X, a 50-foot prehistoric sea monster with four times the biting power of Tyrannosaurus rex–the most powerful jaws of any animal in the history of the planet.
* Curt Purcell ponders cultists vs. critics, liking something vs. “getting” something, and other issues of fandom and buffdom and whatnot. I think this is the key paragraph:
The basis for this difference of experience comes down to different patterns of directing attention. Attention–both what it’s focused on and what is filtered out of it–makes all the difference. Where I, a fan, see a werewolf in a Paul Naschy movie, non-fans see a bad actor in bad makeup. Well, he is a bad actor in bad makeup, and I’m not surprised that’s where most people’s attention comes to focus. If I see him as a werewolf in these movies, it’s not because I think he’s a great actor in amazing makeup. And I haven’t adopted some weird critical standard whereby I pay the same attention as non-fans to his bad acting and cheap makeup, and declare it awesome anyway. What I do is focus my attention much more intensely than most on the werewolf he’s trying to depict, and filter out or disregard as much as I can of anything that would compromise or spoil that experience.
To what extent do you offer a work you like the benefit of the doubt? To what extent does offering it the benefit of the doubt determine whether or not you like it to begin with? That seems to be the chicken-and-egg question with which Curt and his interlocutor here, CRwM, appear to be grappling.
* This brief review of Watchmen by Not Coming to a Theater Near You’s Eva Holland, a total Watchmen virgin, is for some reason my favorite entry in that particular Watchmen review subgenre, for its brevity and its lack of concern with finding the “correct” opinion w/r/t the book or the movie.
* Troubling image of the day #1: A still from a film adaptation of Paul Hornschemeier’s Return of the Elephant, god help us.
* Troubling image of the day #2: Renee French, ladies and gentlemen.
* Delightful image of the day #1: Olga Kurylenko in Neil Marshall’s upcoming Picts. vs. Romans epic Centurion. (Via Jason Adams.)
* Delightful image of the day #2: Kate Winslet, ladies and gentlemen.
Is Purcell talking about the same thing we were talking about back when Dark Knight came out when some people were hissing that Maggie Gyllenhall was ugly and others were shouting that no, she was plenty beautiful? I found that whole argument perplexing and eventually I figured out that was maybe because I have enough of a theater background where if someone signifies something you don’t really care if the reality matches up — if the script and the other actors are saying she’s beautiful, you accept that she’s beautiful. If the person playing Hamlet is really 30 years too old, you don’t pay attention to that. And so on.
If I remember right we spilled that over into talk of people wanting to believe that Heath Ledger was really insane or whatever, that the Joker was real, instead of just enjoying the performance.
If nothing else, these kinds of things make me think that Alan Moore may be more right and wrong about how people are having their tastes shaped.
Who critic-ises the critics? – updated
Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat * Curt Purcell ponders cultists vs. critics, liking something vs. “getting” something, and other issues of fandom and buffdom and whatnot. I think this is the key paragraph: The basis for this difference of experien…