The Middleman - Episode 1 - Sanction

June 19th, 2008 by Brack

Let it be said, I am not a man afraid of whimsy. Indeed, I am willing to embrace it. And so this adaptation of Lost scribe Javier Grillo-Marxuach and Les McClaine’s comic book series was right up my alley.

Temping artist Wendy Watson gets attacked by tentacle monster during a dull day at work at A.N.D. Laboratories. She manages to wound the creature before The Middleman intervenes and saves her. Impressed by her composure in the face of weirdness The Middleman ends up recruiting her as his partner. Their first mission as duo is a strange case involving mobsters and genetically engineered gorillas.

Whereas most modern sci-fi is coloured in drab grays, blues and browns, this is a primary colour world of square jawed pulp action. The closest current series to the look and viewpoint of the show is Pushing Daisies, though The Middleman’s budget doesn’t quite amount to same unified level of hyper-reality that Pushing Daisies manages. Rather, it has more in common with 60’s science fiction programming, many have pointed out similarity in tone to the Adam West Batman series and the show itself makes reference to The Avengers’ starting credits when Wendy joins The Middlemen. It has a low budget, make-do pep to it’s step. There’s also Preston Sturges, Howard Hawks, Due South, The Tick, and Venture Bros comparisons to be made.

But forget all that, here’s all you need to know:

It’s Torchwood without all the crying.

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Elvis Meets The Spider People From Hell

May 12th, 2008 by Brack

Thanks to the evil powers of the internet I’ve been saved the trouble of digging out my tapes of Liquid Television and ripping them to computer based video formats myself. Looking back at them, I rediscovered this 1989 short from Mario Lajoie, which still brings a warm smile to my face today.

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Thoughts that have crossed my mind while watching E4 during breakfast.

April 26th, 2008 by Brack

Alphabeat resemble an master race breeding programme at the exact point the inbreeding kicks in.

—

Television, stop trying to be the internet. TV shows that broadcast “funny web videos” - I’m talking to you. Anyone who wants to watch these can find them on the internet, they don’t need Lenny Henry, fucking Alex Zane or whoever is presenting Have I Got News For You this week to introduce them. In fact the people want to watch them have most likely already seen them, and so you, television, just look old and out of touch. It’s not 1998, we have hugely popular video websites, we don’t need a “So Graham Norton” to fill us in on internet goofery anymore.

—

THE POINT IN TIME WHERE I DECIDED PANIC AT THE DISCO MUST BE CRUSHED: 2:08 minutes into their Nine In The Afternoon Video.

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Final Fight

April 12th, 2008 by Brack

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Jim Blashfield Music Videos

April 12th, 2008 by Brack

I knew I loved all these music videos, but until recently I hadn’t actually connected them by their director Jim Blashfield. Here’s what I love about them: the found objects, the collage animation, the repeated loops of live action and the vocalists trapped in objects. All these things combined give his videos an unique look.

Blashfield Studio

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Blogs I’m reading that I should really add to the blogroll were it not already unwieldy

April 10th, 2008 by Brack

I need some fancy pants blogroll widget that allows you to just show the 10 most recently updated blogs on it. Or a new theme. In the meantime I’ve been reading.

似顔絵ロック 〜 Portrait in Rock - You don’t need to be able to read Japanese to appreicate yu-shio the Rock’n'Roll Illustrator’s portraits of classic rock stars

The Wolverine Daily - Gideon Boomer draws a new Wolverine everyday.

The Rossitano Report - A record of every hat worn by Judah Frielander’s 30 Rock character.

The Fury of Linus - Newbridge’s top blogger.

Rick Veitch’s sketch blog

Photo Basement - Photo’s scoured from the web, the best bits are things like this.

Paul Scheer.com - Human Giant’s Paul Scheer

Pappy’s Golden Age Comics Blogzine - Is there any scanblog better than this?

Paleo-Future - Yesterday’s Future, Today

Nerd Armada - Chowder creator CH Greenblatt’s blog

Hey Oscar Wilde! It’s clobberin’ time!!! - Artists draw literary figures.

David Wain’s Blog - Stella/The State/The Ten/Wet Hot American Summer/Wainy Days chap David Wain’s blog

Cartoons, Model Sheets, & Stuff - No prizes for guessing what this is about.

Bateszi Anime Blog - One of the few anime blogs I read.

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Never Ending, It’s The Persistant March of Popular Culture.

March 30th, 2008 by Brack

Lewis Black’s Root of All Evil Episodes 1 to 3

This show finally surfaced this month after being announced ages ago. Not sure how long Comedy Central have been sitting on these, as the comedy doesn’t feel super topical. But topicality isn’t everything, and this format where two comedians each present a topic to Lewis Black and he must decide which of the two is Evil-er of the two.

And it works pretty well as both a vehicle for Black’s ranting delivery and as a showcase for stand-up comics. And neither have to burn through stage material on TV.

So far the comedians featured have been Paul F. Tompkins (twice), Greg Giraldo (twice), Andy Daly and Andy Kindler. PFT and Daly were particularly good I thought, and Kindler’s use of the taped segment was great.

South Park Season 12 Episodes 1-3

Still good.

Mnemosyne Episode 1

This XEBEC OAV is trying to do be a gorey erotic thriller, but it fails. It has some nice animation, but the plain looking character designs, cheap feeling digital sheen of a lot of the scenes and appalling pacing gives the project the feel of porn creators trying to be taken seriously. You know, like See No Evil.

Utter rubbish, and not even fun rubbish as it takes itself too seriously.

Strait Jacket Episode 1

Talking of plain looking OAVs, this has been licensed for future release by Manga, and it’s a pretty good fit. Guys in magic suits of armour blow up demons. Blow ‘em up real good.

I enjoyed this more than Mnemosyne as it lacks pretension, and when things started blowing up it was fun. However it took a while for that to happen, and the character designs look like they’ve come out of a rubbish Japanese strategy game.

Spectacular Spider-Man Episodes 1-4

This new Spider-Man show has one thing wrong with it - the character designs. Particularly the huge dead pupils in the eyes of most characters. They also suffer a bit from being overly angular, but it’s not as pronounced other recent shows.

If you can overlook the eyes, then there’s a lot to enjoy, both in the writing, that captures the feel of Spider-Man much more than the 90’s series did, and in the animation, which really excels in the action scenes. Fancy Dan spinning his cane during the fight with the Enforcers was the sort of choreography detail that made me sit up and take notice. Yes, the show has the Enforcers. In fact all the villains in these first four episodes are from the first 50 issues of Amazing Spider-Man. The show’s world feels like it’s cherry picked the best aspects of all the different interpretations of Spider-Man. At it’s core is the Ditko/Lee stories, but there’s bits which feel like they’ve come from the 70s comics, as well as setting up things so they can introduce a certain popular villain from the late 80s.

Those eyes though…

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Youtube thoughts

March 25th, 2008 by Brack

GONZO’s plan to immediately stream their next two terrible series around the world for free is a GOOD THING. And it’s really something that a bigger fuss should be being made over. As much as I hate on GONZO’s content, in terms of how the international home entertainment business works nowadays, they are quantum leaps ahead of the pack of the Japanese anime industry.

Strangely it coincides with my realisation that Human Giant are doing the exact same thing with their second season. The last two episodes had all the sketches online after the episode had aired on MTV. And in fact they now have every aired sketch online. When you consider it’s a MTV (part of the Youtube suing Paramount) show, a pretty big hurdle has been crossed. The MTV site doesn’t even seem to have country blocking on it. Yay!

Vaguely related: Marcus Estes at WFMU’s Beware of the Blog has a sensible piece (with a great title) on the issues Billy Bragg raised about social network sites and musicians.

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HIP HOP IS THE BEST

March 7th, 2008 by Brack

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Detective Time!

February 20th, 2008 by Brack

Monk - Mr Monk Is On The Run Pt. 1

And now your annual dose of plot advancement. A burglary takes place where they things stolen are the same components as used in the bomb that killed Monk’s wife Trudy. A clue at the scene leads Monk to the mysterious six fingered bomber, who Monk seemingly murders.

Another Tom Scharpling script, and even on a serious episode, he again avoids the treacly pathos that pervades the worst Monk episodes. And delivers a great scene of Randy buffoonery involving a smoothie. Also we get something of a real mystery that needs solving, before we, the viewers, know what happened. Looking to be a great end to a season that has been strong most the way through.

Psych - Shawn (and Gus) of the Dead

Another horror themed finale for Psych, as Shawn and Gus investigate the disappearance of a mummy that seemingly walked out of a museum. The relationship between the two leads seemed a little strained, almost to the point of hurting the charm of the show. Not sure if this is poor writing or foreshadowing… something. Seeing as the thing I said they had been subtly foreshadowing actually happens in the last seconds of this episode, it may be deliberate, in which case, great. I’d hate to see the show fall into the cycle of hating their own characters so early in it’s life. It tends to happen when the natural behaviour of characters in a show seem to have all been exhausted, and so they start to deliberate mock that behaviour and have them become caricatures. Later seasons of The Simpsons or Friends are good examples of this.

Apart from Gus’ anger bordering on grating in the hiding from the camera sequence, this was a fine TV mystery, with the high standards of fairness maintained nicely. Plus the callback to the paleontologist episode gave the series more of a feel of a coherent universe.

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