Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki

Dear James,

thanks for tragically ruining the lives of at least a dozen families, while giving movies and somewhat shy, almost anti-social nerds a bad name again. 

Congratulations on your shockingly original gimmicks, declaring yourself to be the Joker is certainly the most creative thing one could have done post-2008, and that subtle "Gingers have no soul!" reference with your dyed hair, whoah, hands down bro, it's a real shame you didn't try your luck in Hollywood.

I'm looking forward to reading your books though, written while spending your lifelong sentence, feeding on your one month legacy, brought to everyone by Warner Brothers, with special thanks to Bob Kane and Christopher Nolan.

Have fun! 

Your pal,

The Bloggler

(or something clever like that)

- -

And without wasting any serious words on this, I'll just put The Joker Blogs' tribute here. It expresses everything that I'd like to say, way better and memorable than I'd ever be capable of.

Capital G

Say hello to the latest incarnation of the one and only Godzilla, brought to you by Legendary Pictures and director Gareth Edwards. He's expected to stomp his way into the theaters in 2014, precisely ten years after Final Wars, his latest Japanese flick, in the year that marks the franchise's 60th birthday.

This reboot is going to be the second G-flick produced, shot (and probably set) in the United States, but it won't have much to do with Roland Emmerich's universally and somewhat unfairly penned incarnation from 1998. Director Gareth Edwards promises an ultra-realistic, pretty dark (knight) approach.

The pic above is a photo of the concept teaser Legendary showed to the audience at Comic-Con this year. The reactions have been overwhelmingly positive, but if any further footage has been shot, it has yet to surface. Here's a report, while we're waiting:

The teaser (which was shown twice) is fairly brief, with the camera slowly moving through an utterly devastated urban landscape. There’s even a building that looks like a monster walked right through it, and we see the suggestion of a six-armed beast lying dead in rubble. Then the money shot: Godzilla, seen from behind, turning his head to the camera in profile before emitting the monster’s signature screech. 

The vision of Godzilla was more a suggestion than a detailed reveal, but the guy is HUGE, with a tail and spines up his back that are very clearly meant to evoke the classic creature design. The head is a bit more elongated than the first couple iterations of the beast, but not to the degree of the version seen in the Emmerich remake.
While director Gareth Edwards (Monsters) did come out on stage, where he proclaimed that he’s making a realistic film rather than a sci-fi picture, we don’t know how this teaser represents the film he plans to make. If any footage has been shot for the film (I don’t know that we’ve even had confirmation before this that it is greenlit) it has done so in total secrecy, so what we saw today might be more proof of concept than anything else. ~ slashfilm.com

I'm incredibly hyped about this project. While Godzilla is an icon of camp, cheesy special effects, and nonsense sci-fi stories, he could and has been much more than that. Way before the rubber suit wrestling and kid friendly crapfests from the 1960's and -70's, Ishiro Honda's original Gojira, harbinger of the whole kaiju eiga genre, offered something entirely different. In a surprisingly sad, brooding tale about the horror of the H-bomb and mankind's responsibility over destructive weapons, the monster itself was nothing more then an easy gimmick, politically correct sci-fi exploitation of a troubled nation's memories just a decade after Hiroshima. Sixty years old suit-motion effects or not, that flick got one hell of a mood, and If Gareth can summon something from that feel in today's setting, we're in for a treat.

So far what I really like is that although we're going to get a CGI Godzilla - judging from the pic, at least - they will stick to the classic idea of the creature's design, a bulky, fatass sarurian badass, walking erect and angry, but always taking his time. It may seem dated (especially compared to the Dean Devlin designed, Jurassic Park-influenced 1998 Zilla), but trust me, among today's collective modern idea of those pathetic anorexic dinosaurs, often depicted with feathers, an old-school lizard like the Japanese big guy will be a refreshing sight.

It's time to make the word prehistoric equal cool again. Wishing the best of luck to Mr. Edwards.

Underneath Will Tear You Down

Kind of hard. 
Hard to see. 
When you crawl. 
On your hands and your... hell with it, here's the song itself.

Your humble narrator did it again, folks. Only five days have passed since I've got back to a country where summer is an existing season, not just some kind of myth or cinema lie - even better, I've got back to the city where no less than three of my best friends live within walking distance, wait a moment to see how ironic that is -, and I've already managed to fuck up practically everything. It happened in one short booze-filled moment, a slip on a Tim Burton-ish gate, sudden flash of pain as drunken joy turns into confusion, and here I am, with a pierced sole, the nastiest wound I've ever had, a handful of ruined summer plans and a ton of shame.

I'm gripping crutches in my sweaty palms, craving for the cold touch of a beer can instead. I feel bandages on the bottom of my useless right foot, which is supposed to lie either on a skateboard or buried deep into hot beach sand right now. Bounded to my bed, lying there since forever, I dream about darker days.

It's not the end of the world, really. Encouraging words from experts promise me a quick recovery, maybe three weeks. And underneath all the cynicism and pain I've realized that when the chips are down, there's a lot more helpful people in the world I can count on than I've ever dared to dream before. A comforting thought, in a godforsaken situation like this. I can't remember the last time I felt so much honest gratitude.

Moral of the story? There's three, and they are painfully obvious.

Alcohol makes you do stupid things. But I knew that already. I've had some of my best times, and made some of my worst mistakes thanks to drinking.This accident comes off somewhat special, but only because of its textbook nature. It's the kind of stupid, clichéd thing your parents warn you about all the time, hurting yourself physically. Never a word about hurting others with words and gestures you don't mean.

Alcohol is a strong painkiller. Not directly on your wounds, oh, hell no. And it could easily backfire - Not going into details here, in fear that writing it out would get me so mad that I facepalm myself into a coma.

I don't really have any right to bitch about my life as long as I have 100% usage of my legs. Not being able to walk is probably the worst thing that ever happened to me in the last ten years. Crutches are a pain in the ass, after five minutes of hopping around my left leg gets its share of the misery (heh, Stephen King, anyone?), and oh, Good Ol' Life, Fate, God Or Whatever, isn't it wonderful to live on the fourth floor now, during the heatwave of the decade? I could use an elevator.

Things are happening to me right now, forming, changing me. It doesn't feel like a healing, more like - to be a bit Thomas Harris slash Trent Reznor here - becoming. Getting ready to die with a scar.

pixenomorphy #2

Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk

Longing for / What Used to Be

Same location, same sweet July air, but it feels like everything else has changed.

It was a magnificent hour. I remember it way better than what could be considered polite from either of us, according to the rules of romance literature and alcohol anyway, but like every hour, on the long run it became only a fraction, a miniature sparkle of time.

Time isn't a stale mess, something that you could really describe with terms of physics. It's a never-ending loop, a paradox of continuous birth and death, something ancient that kills and eats itself along with eventually everything else in the world over and over again, leaving nothing worthy behind.

With the branch we first held hands on demolished, our stairs transformed into something else, the church and its square became a concrete graveyard of every faint memory I had about her tender touch.

But that night, for one exceptional hour, long overdue, the future was so bright indeed.

I dreamt of scarred wrists again last night.

Alien Retconnection - Agyadba áll a Halál

"The light is wrong," grumbles Sir Ridley Scott. “What's wrong with the light?” [empire]

Did that script look f*cking right to you, Sir?

Thoughts on Prometheus. Spoilers ahead.