* Matthew Perpetua has posted his 2003 Survey Mix as part of his Fluxblog 10th Anniversary celebration, and this one’s an absolute beast. Hey Ya!, Maps, Heartbeats, Yeah, Seven Nation Army, Crazy in Love, Milkshake, Galang, I Believe in a Thing Called Love, Strict Machine, 99 Problems (Sean’s Imaginary Remix Wherein Jay-Z Doesn’t Structure the Chorus Around Referring to Beyoncé as a Bitch), Transatlanticism, We Will Become Silhouettes, Pass That Dutch, Never Leave You, Ignition (Remix), Toxic, In Da Club, Danger! High Voltage…What a goddamn year. Eight discs of fun.
* Here’s another big one, but for movie buffs rather than music buffs: David Bordwell’s masterfully enlightening and readable essay on the aesthetic, technical, and ineffable differences between film and digital projection. If you’ve ever really wanted to know what the difference is — resolution, artifacts, the process of projection, the impact on theaters, the reactions of audiences, the opinions of filmmakers, idiosyncratic observations on seeing a digital movie vs. a film one in any number of settings — this is quite simply the best piece on the topic I’ve ever seen. You’ll be smarter for having read it, but it’s a joy to read in the process.
* Zak Smith and Shawn Cheng’s collaborative webcomic/fighting game Road of Knives is back, and they’ve brought my Destructor collaborator Matt Wiegle along for the ride!
* Hooray, Cindy and Biscuit #2 from Dan White! That is a very good comic.
* Did I never mention that Gilbert Hernandez is doing a zombie comic called Fatima: The Blood Spinners for Dark Horse? Shame on me, then.
* A couple of frequent ADDXSTC commenters and friends of the blog have posted strong pieces on some of my favorite works of fiction. Here’s Bruce Baugh on Stephen King’s The Stand and Rev’D on David Chase’s The Sopranos, particularly the last few seasons.
* Andrew White’s taking Frank Santoro’s correspondence course! That oughta be interesting to see.
* Well, this photo of Jonny Negron and friend certainly looks promising.
* Brian Chippendale’s Puke Force is still great, if you were wondering.
* Lovely Evan Hayden piece from Electric Ant #2.
* The tumblr for the Happiness Comix anthology series has made the regrettable decision to shut down, but for now it’s still posting compelling work by Heather Benjamin and Tom Toye, drawn for still another anthology, Dimensions.
* This is quite a sketch of Jerry Robinson, Bill Finger, and Bob Kane’s Joker by Frank Quitely.
* I sure am glad Tom Neely’s now in the naked lady business. Lots more where that came from at his blog.
* Here’s a list of things that are sexier than the young Patti Smith:
* The write-up gets a little too “totes amazeballs” for my taste, but just the other day I was talking with friends about the haunting Sesame Street special in which Big Bird and the still-believed-imaginary Mr. Snuffleupagus spent the night in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and tried to help the ghost of a young Egyptian boy escape the underworld, and here’s an impassioned tribute to exactly that. (Hat tip: Simone Davalos.)
* Jeeeeeeeez, Ta-Nehisi Coates on the life and death of Andrew Breitbart.
* “The NYPD did not respond to our request for comment about allegations it has violated the law.”
* If President Obama loves Omar from The Wire so much, why doesn’t he marry him? Oh right, because he believes marriage is between a man and a woman. Also he’s the commander-in-chief of the drug war. Enjoy the show, Mr. President!
* Finally, can I point out that Christopher Young’s “Leviathan” theme music from Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 did the Inception Sound thing like two decades before the fact? And in Morse code for “God,” at that? In many ways my adult life is just a fruitless search for a way to replicate the high of that first hit of Hellbound.
Tags: books, Carnival of souls, comics, horror, links, movies, music, real life, TV
About Scott Lynch, who wrote that gloriously over-the-top Sesame Street piece…you really want to read his novel The Lies of Locke Lamora, which is basically swords-and-sorcery caper action, with the organized crime side of a typical big fantasy metropolis. It’s the Heat to the Song of Ice and Fire’s Das Boot, sort of. Great stuff. The series goes on to be excellent after that, too.
And holy cow, you weren’t kidding about that Hellbound track.
Having just seen HELLBOUND (well a few months back) at the urging of one Mr. Marra, I have to echo the sentiment. It is a wholly underrated dark fantasy trip.