How Do I Choose The Films That I Watch?

So awhile back a movie-loving friend of mine was making small talk and asked me "So have you seen those Bourne Movies, what did you think of them?"

I just shrugged and replied "Naw, I've never seen any of em', actually."

"Really?" he said with sincere surprise, "I figured you would have seen those by now, they're pretty good"

And so I explained the way watching films works in my world...

"Look man, it's like this, I can only see but so many movies in my lifetime. I have to make choices, and if I have to choose between Matt Damon jumping around rooftops and a 1970's Japanese nunspoiltation pinky-violence flick, the movie with the crazy nuns is going to win."

With only a limited amount of time in my life, it's become clear that I have no time to waste on movies that don't mean anything to me. I have to be picky and seek out films that will deliver what I want. So what movies do I want to see?


I want to see films that challenge me and the way the world looks to me. I want to see films that take me to places far away, from small towns in America, to small towns in China. I enjoy movies that take me back into a time before I was born and give me a peek into a context I've never understood, and I enjoy movies that are happening right now in the moment.

I look for movies that are overlooked and neglected, that barely saw the inside of a theater and wound up being passed around on badly dubbed videotapes.


I want to see movies that are funny, sometimes laughing at the subtleties of life, and sometimes finding humor in low-brow places. I want to see movies that were made by the seat of the pants, and movies that were works of self-indulgent love.

I want to see films that are heralded as classics. Some of these classics are wonderful examples of what the medium can do, but some are classics because they do everything wrong. I love films that are beautiful and uplifting, and yet feel drawn to pathos and sadness.


Seeing a film is somewhat like going on a trip, seeing things you've always wanted to see, and discovering things that never occurred to you. Often this takes you to far away places, and sometimes right next door. All that matters to is that I go somewhere.


As I said, I have to get a little picky about what movies I watch, I have so many to see and so little time to see them. This doesn't mean that somebody else's choices are below mine, if Transformers does that for you, that's okay. We all need to decide what's right for us.

So what you look for in a film, and what do you want it to do for you?

Rob Ullman Gets Lurid In An Atom-Bomb Bikini....

So I'm counting myself among the incredibly fortunate people to get their mitts on an early copy of illustrator Robert Ullman's first hardback collection of pin-up art, Atom-Bomb Bikini!


Rob does the sexy pin-up thing in a style all it's own, and cooks up some delicious cheesecake that's bound to get any red-blooded male's (or girl, it's all cool with us) temperature up. You're pretty much guaranteed a eye-popping, sweaty good time as you lust over the pages of good and bad-girl hotness!

Rob's got a cool style that's his own, but gives a nod of respect to other masters of the craft. My favorite images in here are a couple of terrific Jack Kirby tributes with a babealicious twist. Oh, and Rob's a big hockey fan, so if that's your bag, you're gonna love this book. My other personal faves in here are the rough sketches he shares with us, giving you a window into his creative process. The whole package is a groovy 64 page tome of babe-worshiping art in lurid full color!


So what do you have to do to get a copy of this book? Well, the most immediate thing you can do is hop on over to Rob's blog and you'll see the details there. Another option is to get your ass to San Diego's ComiCon and meet the artist in person! (Table P-10, in the small press section where the cool people hang out). And if you live in Richmond, Va., drop by his book signing on August 1st!


Atom-Bomb Bikini Blog

Robert Ullman's Twitter

I'm a Geek But That's Okay...

And so the debate between collector geeks rages on.

Are you a well-balanced, socially functional geek, or are you the geek that takes it too far, doomed to live a lonely life in your parents basement?

Meet Fanboy

The first time I ever watched this video, I laughed and thought to myself that if I had never gotten married this is how I would have ended up...




So the other day I showed this vid to my friend who laughed and exclaimed, "If you had never gotten married, that's what you would've turned into!"



By the way, that short was directed by Jeff Krulik, most famous for the awesome classic Heavy Metal Parking Lot.

101 Outer Space Jokes With Will Eisner!

This paper paperback collection of sci-fi themed short comic strips and single panel gags came out in 1979, riding the wave of post-Star Wars mania that was still going strong. This copy of mine is in horrible condition, but that's because I got it brand new when I was just eight years old!



What really makes this cheapy printed paperback so dog-gone cool is that it was spawned from the prolific pen of the master himself, Will Eisner! While this is obviously a quicky job for him, you can definitely see the unmistakeable touches of Eisner's peerless ability in the ink, and thus this book remains a treasure I consider to be one of the coolest things I own!

Here's a few scans...(click for a closer look)







Here's a fellow with slightly more info (and a much nicer condition copy) here....

Kaiju Bootleg Puzzle Goodness!

I bought this puzzle at some closeout store for about 20 cents a few years back. I kept it in the original bag with the card attached not because I'm a collector geek, (although I kinda am) but because the whole package was part of the whole crappy bootleg's charm. I love me some giant Japanese monsters enough as it is, but cheap looking knock-off Japanese monsters really seal the deal!



If you click the image and check out the full size scan, you can see there's a manufacturer's watermark for a Japanese company called YOT, and that's about all I can tell you about this odd little puzzle....

EXTRA fun time bonus! Why not print out the image, cut it out along the puzzle lines and have a blast with this intensely demanding puzzle! Minutes of fun for the whole family!!!

The End is Nigh...Again!

Sometimes I find myself wishing the apocalypse would hurry up and come already. I try to see the positive in most things, and when you think about it, if civilization ended today, you wouldn't have to go to work tommorow. Also consider that your bills and credit history would be gone, you could make your boss your post-end-of-the-world bitch, you could wear face paint and carry guns in the street, and you could convert your truck into an armored tank with the bodies of your enemies tied to the hood. Okay, so sure you'd have to fight off hordes of biker gangs, ancient dragons, flesh-eating zombies and avoid exposure to radiation put hey, you gotta take the bad with the good, right?

I think the innate human desire to have a radical change in one's life is why post-apocalyptic movies are so popular. We go to work, say hello to our neighbors, pay our bills and get annoyed with people who cut us off on the highway, and a major disaster represents the ultimate escape from all that. Plus it's the true test of our will to survive. Whenever I watch the Mad Max films or a good zombie flick, I can't help but think what I'd do if I were stuck in a house under seige by the walking dead or if insane bikers with mohawks wanted to steal my gasoline. I also wonder sometimes if maybe I need to start stockpiling shotgun shells , fuel, and face paint...y' know, just in case. And tell me this, does it keep you up at night worrying about whether or not you'll be able to get a fair hearing at the ape tribunal?

Here's a few of my favorite moments in post-apocalyptic pop-culture...

Night Of The living Dead : "They're coming to get you Barbara!" And so a teasing joke leads to terror as the dead come to life and George Romero set the bar for all zombie movies to come. With three sequels and a remake, (not to mention a remake of one of the sequels) we've learned that slow moving, dull witted creatures with a taste for flesh can indeed bring civilization to it's knees. What's more frightening, that people will become zombies and stalk us, or that we to have band together with people we don't like to survive?

Damnation Alley : You can't go wrong with a movie that opens with a guy fighting giant scorpions while riding a dirt bike. There's one bright side to this adventure in a nuclear wasteland, you still get to go on road trips! And this film featured a prime example of a really cool giant armored, futuristic tank-thing, which was later re-used in a gasoline commercial.... Also notable is that the Roger Zelany sci-fi novel that inspired this flick also inspired a song by cult prog-rock band Hawkwind.

Escape from New York : A film that brings you a the ultimate version of hard time and gives new meaning to the term "prison bitch". How about being dropped into a sealed up city with the worst scum of the Earth waiting to show you your place in their food chain? And get this, the Duke Of New York is Issac Hayes, and this time he's gonna tell you to shut your mouth. This John Carpenter movie rules, featuring Kurt Russell as the ultimate bad-ass anti-hero with cult-movie cast favorites Harry Dean Stanton, Donald Pleasance, and Adrienne Barbeau, one of the breast...um, I mean best B-actresses ever....

Thundarr The Barbarian : Somehow somebody managed to convince NBC to include a cartoon about a barbarian, a wookie-lookin' thing, and a sorceress fighting for good in a post-apocalyptic wasteland in it's Saturday morning line-up. Every weekend kids got to see famous monuments all over America fallen down and covered in vines while a guy wearing animal skins smashed up evil robot orbs and mutant beasts. Let's face it, the 80's were a good time to be a kid, and Saturday mornings were good to us. And one more reason why Thundarr The Barbarian was so cool? The series' visual look was based mostly on designs by the late, great, Jack Kirby.

Mad Max : I think the Mad Max flicks contain the most bleak scenario for post-war living I've ever seen, but at the same time one of the most fashionable. Basically in the future all anybody has to wear are shoulder pads, fetish outfits and left-overs from Hot Topic, with mohawks and face-paint to accessorize the new survivalist fashions. Gas and shotgun shells are worth more than gold and be can used as bargining chips, and road rage has gone far beyond flipping off the guy who's driving too slow in the passing lane. Even the kid sidekick in the movie is a rabid freak who's devolved down the animal chain, or is that Ted Nugent's son? You can learn pretty much every thing about the Mad Max movies at this website here, and you can check a badass reproduction of Max's Interceptor right here.

The War Of The Worlds : The original H.G. Wells novel kicked off one of the great staples of science fiction, the alien invasion. Orson Wells caused a genuine panic when he adapted his infamous radio broadcast, and after failed attempts by Cecil B. Demille and Hitchcock, George Pal finally pulled off one of the greatest science-fiction end of the world stories of all time with his 1953 film. The true kicker of this story is that the aliens were gonna win and there was nothing we could do about it. Whole cities were vanquished and any attempt to stop them was a failure. The human race survived because we got lucky. The unstoppable alien invasion is an often imitated device for lesser apocalyptic movies like Battlefield Earth (yes, it really is as bad as you've heard) and sometimes comes packaged as a blatant rip-off like Independence Day, but the original remain the best. Word has it that a new War Of The Worlds is being developed by Spielberg, could it be E.T. really planned on kicking our ass all along?

Planet Of The Apes : Hands down, the greatest fall of man movie ever made, featuring the best Twilight Zone style ending ever seen on film, and starring one of the greatest actors of all time, the man himself, Charlton Heston. There is no finer moment than seeing that camera pan away from Taylor and revealing the films horrible secret....."YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP. DAMN YOU! GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!"

If you want more end-of-the-world goodness, go check out Post-Apocalyptic Media, a massive site dedicated all things apocalyptic, be it Nuclear War, Disease, Aliens, or a good old fashioned Zombie infestaton, here’s the ultimate website for anything to do with the apocalypse! Movies, books, videogames, you name it, they got ya covered!

Superman vs. the Robot Army

I Wanna Be Gary Busey When I Grow Up...

Any movie with a corrupt sheriff that terrorizes a small town, para-millitary biker gangs , a good guy with a four-wheel drive pick-up outfitted with metal plates, machine guns and grenade launchers, and set to a hard-driving 80's rock soundtrack automatically rules in my book.

By any normal criteria of cinema, the movie Eye Of The Tiger is technically a lousy movie. But in the genre of "Vietnam-Vets-who-come-back-to-their-hometown-to-fight-the-corrupt-Sheriff-and-Biker-Gang" flicks this one's as good as most that I've seen. The king of the genre of course, is the classic small-town epic, Billy Jack. But then again, Billy Jack didn't have Gary Busey in it.

I think I've decided (with the exception of the coke habit and spousal abuse) that I'd like to be Gary Busey when I grow up. I'll have to set some serious goals if I wanna be a slightly scary, belligerent crazy dude that refuses to wear a motorcycle helmet and talks about Jesus a lot. A guy who can score an Oscar nomination and still have time for movies like Point Break, Predator 2, and adding his voice to Grand Theft Auto, Vice City. And let us not forget the highest honor in entertainment today......a reality television show. And while we're at it, can we all agree that there's no way in hell Mel Gibson could take Busey in a fight?

So here's to you, Gary, stay crazy!

Here's some other films in the "hero-takes-on-the-bad-guys-who-bully-a-small-town" genre...

Billy Jack: The blueprint of the genre, without question. Billy Jack is a classic late-night movie with a half-white, half-Native-American Green Beret who preaches pacifism.............by beating the tar out of the bad guys. It's a bizarre, left-wing sermon of a movie among a right-wing genre. Written, directed, and starring Tom Laughlin, who in real life continues to be all over the map as he speaks at self-help seminars, tries to make a new Billy jack movie, and oh yeah, runs for President.

Walking Tall: Very loosely based on the true story of Buford Pusser, a wrestler turned hero turned Sheriff when he decides to take on crime in his small town. Walking Tall went from a ruthlessly violent film trilogy to a short lived television series. Pusser and his baseball bat become the embodiment of bad-ass justice as he smashes crime the old fashioned way. And naturally, the inveitable slick but inferior Hollywood remake has come to pass, featuring..............The Rock.

First Blood: Even as a kid, the first Rambo movie struck me as being one of the most bizarrely irresponsible flicks I had ever seen. Basically it goes like this. If you're a Vietnam veteran turned drifter who feels shunned by society, and you finally hit the last straw when the small town Sheriff with an iron hand and a pack of mean-spirited deputies tell you to get your ass out of town, then it's time to declare war. In an attempt to add meaning to Rambo's rampage, Stallone delivers a classic mumbling speech at the end that makes no sense whatsoever. Just to make sure you got the point, Rambo returned in a sequel where he singlehandedly wins the Vietnam war. Naturally after that, there was nothing else to do but become a kid-friendly cartoon character.

Roadhouse: This movie is a made for late-nite cable classic. I have always wanted to dislike Patrick Swayze, writing him off as a nancy-boy for crap-fest date-movie dreck like Dirty Dancing and Ghost. But dammit, I can't as long as he also does guilty-pleasure movies that kick ass like Point Break and Red Dawn. (and good movies like Donnie Darko) I'll add Roadhouse to his guilty pleasure catalog. It's easy the best zen-philosopher-with-a-degree-who-becomes-a-"cooler"-beating-the-bejeezus-out-of-small-town-thugs movie I've ever seen. Never has a movie created such an idealized image of a bouncer, certainly not like the fat guy with the Slayer t-shirt that most bars hire to roll you out on the curb in a trash can. I can at least take comfort in the fact that I'm not the only member of the Roadhouse cult, as evidenced by the Off-Broadway musical production currently running....

And of course, with the wonder that is syndicated cable television you can bet at least one of these fine classics of cinema is on right now!