* Well, I wrapped up my guestblogging stint at Robot 6 on Friday. My last few posts included a round-up of reactions to Disney CEO Bob Iger’s visit to the Marvel offices, a photographic tribute to the Incredible Shrinking Wizard Entertainment, a look at the array of new Cold Heat comics coming out this fall (Cold Heat #7/8! Mome Vol. 16! and according to Frank Santoro, the long-awaited 6th and 7th Cold Heat Specials!!!), and a peak at what I’m reading now. Many many thanks to JK Parkin, Kevin Melrose, Chris Mautner, Jonah Weiland, and all at Robot 6 and CBR for this hella fun opportunity!
* Remember when I said that Rambo V was going to be about Rambo vs. Mexican druglords? It’s actually going to be about Rambo fighting a monster. Seriously, a genetically engineered monster, created by the government’s top secret science-fiction labs, running amok in the Arctic, the whole nine yards. I really, really don’t know how to feel about that. On the one hand, Rambo was my favorite movie of 2008, and I think it really established that killing his way through Third World hellholes is Rambo’s milieu. On the other hand, I’m not sure there’s any place for that particular concept to go after that movie–seriously, they shot kids and jammed rifle barrels into the bullet holes, where else could Stallone take it? And as the Rambo films have come closer and closer to replicating Sylvester Stallone’s platonic concept of war as some sort of necessary horror, maybe actual horror is the only way for that concept to become even purer. Click the link to listen to a voice mail Sly left on Harry Knowle’s phone about it. I am totally serious.
* Curt Purcell takes on his horror-movie nemesis, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and comes away pleased, if not transformed. Curt’s right to believe that seeing this film during one’s formative years as a horror fan is a seismic experience; I remember renting it with some buddies and watching it stoned as a lark and ending up feeling like I’d been in some sort of horrible accident. I think what’s most interesting in Curt’s post is how he hones in on how the film’s much-touted documentary-style ugliness is actually a studied series of deliberate choices–one thing that emerges from repeated viewings of the film is that this ostensible ugliness crosses the line into beauty on several occasions (the Pam shot, the final shot, the long shot of the van pulling over to pick up the hitchhiker, some of the nighttime work, etc etc etc).
* Joe “Jog” McCulloch reviews Jacques Tardi’s excellent comics adaptation of Jean-Patrick Manchette’s crime novel West Coast Blues, occasionally by way of comparison to Darwyn Cooke’s comics adaptation of Richard Stark’s crime novel Parker: The Hunter. It’s juicy.
* God help us all, Tom Spurgeon’s placeholder post for the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con International is up.
* Man, I must be out of touch: I had no idea The Weinstein Company is in serious financial trouble. Interestingly, this is largely due the varying fortunes of such of-interest-to-readers-of-this-blog genre films as Grindhouse, Inglourious Basterds, Halloween II, and The Road. (Via Bloody Disgusting.)
* Those of you who took an interest in Matt Wiegle’s illustrations for George Orwell’s 1984 will want to check out the July and August daily drawing archives at the Partyka site for much more where that came from.
* Elsewhere, Matt investigates the eternal struggle of good and evil represented by the Phantom and Randall Flagg.
* What a young Sean T. Collins wouldn’t have given for some sort of King Kong vs. Godzilla comic that looked like this drawing from Steve Bisette’s sketchbook. (Via Tom Spurgeon.)
* Watching a giant killer bear tear-ass through a church and Pearl Harbor a priest gave this particular ex-Catholic high school student more enjoyment than words can describe.
* It’s difficult to imagine a photo more tailor made to tickle me pink.
* Ben Morse Presents: “Well, stranger, we feed them strangers” and other artistic delights given as parting gifts to departing Wizard staffers.
* Finally, Damn Right Your Dad Played It. Chris Ward, ladies and gentlemen.
The Weinstein story ignores the $500 million dollar debt they’ve racked up attempting to build an overnight media empire (including, among other things, an ill-fated fashion line).
While more blockbusters would certainly improve matters, at this point it is hard to imagine any film that could reverse that trend. Instead, to save themselves, they’ve got to cut and sell everything that doesn’t impact their core competency.
Though folks in the horror blog-o-sphere have taken this as some sort of sign that God will punish those who screw with their pet franchises, the real problem is that they unwisely overleveraged themselves and not the fact that H2 simply made a couple million profit. (At this point, Zombie’s first Halloween remains the most profitable flick of that franchise and his sequel is poised to be the third or fourth highest earner.)
Carnival of souls part two
* Part one is here. * As you may have heard, this is a landmark week for popular culture: Crank: High Voltage comes out on DVD today. I…I just can’t describe…please see this movie. It makes everything else look like…