Massive Moore Interview

Excerpts from Part 3 of a six-part Alan Moore interview on Newsarama:

"In Watchmen, we were suggesting, I think, that reality is perhaps a web of tiny coincidences and resonant images and little motifs that we hardly notice – this web of meaning that may be all glued together with repetitions of dialogue and slight similarities of image."

And...

"And I think that it’s now time to move to new ways of thinking to help us understand this situation in which we find ourselves. I know that Watchmen is being talked about a lot at the moment because of this ridiculous film, but these are ideas that are 25 years old. I think that I started writing it in 1984. That’s why it was set in 1985, because I had the idea that it would be all out and finished in 1985. But it was 25 years ago.

I think that the world moves at an unforgiving pace, and that this has accelerated. I don’t think 25-year-old ideas, no matter how adequate they were at the time, apply to our current situation – either my 25-year-old ideas or anybody else’s."

And about tying in tv shows The Wire and Homicide: Life on the Streets into the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen:

"That is the beauty of the League! We can tie in all of this stuff. Hey, it’s Baltimore! There might have been some relative of Police Chief Rawls or perhaps Det. Munch who was involved in manning the Baltimore Lunar Base."

Vengeance is To's

Vengeance, Johnnie To's latest film, starring French actor Johnny Hallyday and To regulars Anthony Wong and Simon Yam. It's the one must-see this year that I doubt will even be shown in cinemas here in Manila. It's a longfuckingshot but here's a callout to any generous publisher out there: Send me to Hongkong to watch and review Vengeance for your publication and I'd be happy, ecstatic even, to watch and review a year's worth of crappy films for you.

And pulling my head out of the clouds and plunging back to earth... I guess I'll just have to wait and get a copy from the usual suspects.

Crime Does Not Pay and Two Dead Authors

Steven Grant pays tribute to the end of Azzarello & Risso's 100 Bullets while ruminating about the crime genre and why it'll never catch on with the American comics readers. Excerpts:

"Crime stories, on the other hand, are about losers.

Stories about losers may seem counterintuitive to a lot of readers – like I said, American culture doesn't holds losers in much of anything but contempt – but for a writer they can be fascinating. It's simple math, really: winners win. That's what they do. That's what they must do. Doesn't matter what the story arc is, the story still has to end up in the same place. The hero wins.

Shift the focus to a loser, and the possibilities jump substantially."

And:

"Likewise, losers are usually simply more fun to write. Not only does similar storytelling math apply – the hero can't act villainously (at least not in some way that's not ultimately explicable in heroic terms, like Jack Bauer torturing a suspect for information necessary to stop a ticking nuke that will slaughter millions) but the criminal can act heroically – but no set characteristics are required, except those the writer sets himself. The absence of rules – it wasn't always so, but has evolved that way – fits the genre, and this inherent acceptance, demand even, of ambiguity invites the writer to conceive stories, characters and ethical issues in more fluid and unpredictable terms than is possible with superhero comics. (Not that superhero comics are incapable of it – there's no reason any genre should be – but the baggage that talent, publishers and readers bring to them prohibits it on any serious level, and where it has been achieved to any degree it has usually triggered a defensive backlash to reinforce the "purity" of superhero comics.) From the writer's standpoint, the crime story is simply more open to possibility.

From a reader's perspective it may not look that way, since crime stories, though frequently superheated and preposterous, usually involve the mundane world, as opposed to the supernatural elements that underpin genres like superheroes and horror, supernatural in this instance meaning "beyond nature" rather than "occult." From that outlook, the crime story, absent of vampires, androids, extraterrestrials and radioactive spiders, may seem less open to possibility. But that's a marketing issue. The other problem regarding an audience is the preponderance of "crime" stories, in the broadest application of the term, across other media like novels, film and television. Anyone wanting crime fiction has plenty of options. (Unlike anyone who wants a steady diet of superheroes or even horror, where options across media are considerably narrower.) Which means crime comics are under considerable stress to provide material not found elsewhere."

Read the entire thing here.

He also mentions that author J.G. Ballard passed away the previous week.

And I only found out the other day (via Ed Brubaker's column in his and Sean Phillips pulpy Incognito) that author Donald Westlake passed away last December 31. I'm a fan of his work, especially the Parker novels which he wrote under the name Richard Stark (which is just one of his various pseudonyms).

Ellis and Abrams are Wired

From Warren Ellis' Wired UK column:

"This is the problem with writing fiction in the early 21st century: the real world outdoes you for madness every day. You’d be overdoing it, as a fiction writer, if you had Congolese bushfighters eating their enemies’ flesh during an ebola outbreak… except that it’s happening as I write."

Read the entire thing here.

And that Wired issue guest-edited by J.J. Abrams is very interesting and very fucking expensive.

Watched It

Saw Watchmen earlier. Visually, it was great; Dave Gibbons' artwork brought to cinematic life. And while it tried to stay true (maybe even inanely true) to the graphic novel, as with all film adaptations of Alan Moore comics, it pales in comparison to the source material. The best part of the film was the opening credits montage where director Zack Snyder shows the world's background and origins to the tune of Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin'. (Maybe Snyder should stick to making short films in the style of opening credits montage. Prior to this, I thought that his best work was the opening credits to the Dawn of the Dead remake.) What follows is a very uneven film that tries to get the feel and the mood of the world that Moore and Gibbons created but stumbles more often than not.

Another gripe I have with the film has something to do with Snyder's fight scenes which I think were bloodier and more gruesome than the ones in the comics. Plus, they were shot in Snyder's signature fast forward slow motion (fastfoslowmo?) style which annoyed the hell out of me when I first saw it in his300 (not that that's the only annoying thing in that movie. That whole movie was an annoyance in itself) which made the film feel all the more dragging.

I admit that it took a couple of readings before I truly appreciated Watchmen. The first time I read it, it was okay. It did not wow me or anything, I just thought that it was different than any of the comics I've read before. It was darker, more violent, the heroes were not really heroes (some of them, at least) and what the fuck was that pirate story all about? I only "got" it after the second time around and I appreciated it even more after subsequent readings. If my appreciation for the movie adaptation will increase through subsequent viewings, that remains to be seen.

Haruki Murakami

Recently finished Haruki Murakami's Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman and I declare that Haruki Murakami is the only writer that can reach the hopeless romantic in me that I keep locked up like Schrodinger's Cat.

His story On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning (which is included in The Elephant Vanishes) convinced me of his greatness that I muttered "shitfuckdammit" the first time I read it and then I immediately reread it three times in a row. He made the work seem effortless and easy. The story seems simple but it's not. Only the great ones can pull it off. Read it and I dare you to disagree with me. When I first read that story years ago I was courting someone so I reasoned out that I was in the mood for such a story (not that the story is overly romantic and mush-filled).

And years later, I buy and read his latest collection of short stories. I figured that On Meeting the 100% Perfect Girl... was a fluke and nothing would come close to it. I was partly right and partly wrong. No story in the collection came close to being a punch in the gut like that story but many of them came close. Amid his weird and strange and oblique stories like Nausea and The Poor Aunt Story, there are stories of lost loves and longing like A Folklore for My Generation: A Prehistory of Late-Stage Capitalism? (Which reads like a Wong Kar Wai film.)

And then there's Tony Takitani. (Which also reads like a Wong Kar Wai film that I hope Wong gets off his ass and adapts a Murakami story. Although there is a Tony Takitani film already, how about adapting Nausea, the one about vomiting? I'd love to see Wong's version of that, with of course Chris Doyle lighting.)

Reading these stories makes one want to fall in love only to wallow in and even cherish the the misery of the ensuing heartbreak.

Free Weird Tales and a Weird Question

A free issue of Weird Tales is available for a limited time. Something to read in time for Halloween.

And there's a question that's been bugging me throughout the day:

How many Oreos (or Cream O's if you prefer the local variety) should one cram in a person's mouth to choke that person to death?

If you have any practical knowledge in this matter, let me know. It won't change the fact that you're scum of the earth, but you'll have my gratitude. Of sorts.

Frenzied Boredom

Jesus, it's been a while.

Allen e-mailed me this link and boredom led me to click through it.

I AM
65%
FRENZYTake the Transformers Quiz

Frenzy

Frenzy is a chaotic spy turned boom box, sent by the Decepticons to infiltrate enemy strongholds.

Like Frenzy, you are not compassionate and harbor evil thoughts. Your leadership skills are weak at best. You will never be the commander of the Decepticons. In addition, you use technology when you need to, but you do not embrace the latest trends.

I harbor evil thoughts--sometimes, mostly when I'm fresh out of bed and haven't had my caffeine fix--but I'm sure I'm relatively compassionate. I'm compassionately evil!

Ah, crap. Carry on.

Watching the Watchmen

The Watchmen trailer's up.

A bit apprehensive about this one because I didn't really like Zack Snyder's previous movies (I thought 300 was boring and the best part of his Dawn of the Dead remake was the opening credits with the Johnny Cash song and then it was all downhill from there), but damn, I have to admit Watchmen looks really, really nice. You have the birth of Dr. Manhattan, Nite Owl and Sally Jupiter's assault on the prison, Rorschach with an improvised flame thrower (could've done with a "Hurm", though) and The Comedian being thrown out the window. Damn.

I'm off to dig out my copy and read the whole thing all over again.

Ellis Interrogation

"I don't like anything I've written, a half hour after writing it."

"I like the games where you kill people and they scream. I liked SOLDIER OF FORTUNE, because you could shoot people in the throat and they'd thrash and choke and drown in their own blood. Also you could shove knives in their balls and they wouldn't die immediately, but lurch away from you shrieking."

"I come from the old school where a writer is a person who sits alone in a room and beats on a keyboard with their fists until the machine surrenders and spits out the story they wanted."

More here.

Exiled

Finally saw it. Wow. My mind's still reeling in awe of it that I don’t know how to start.

Four men came knocking at a house looking for one man. Two came to kill him, the other two to protect him. The wanted man finally shows up and the gunplay and the violence begins.

Exiled is basically a western but instead of a frontier town the action is transposed to 1998 pre-handover Macau. And while director Johnnie To riffs from the masters of the western genre--traces of Sergio Leone in the first fifteen minutes (and throughout the film, actually) and there are tones of Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch towards the end--the film is all To. And as with all Johnnie To crime flicks, the action set pieces are things to behold. The aforementioned opening fifteen minutes is fun, but it’s just a taste of what is to come. Personal fave though is the shootout at the underground clinic; close quarters gunfight in a claustrophobic setting and To stages the hell out of it. Jaw-dropper, really. Heck, I found myself slack-jawed even in some non-action scenes.

The cast consists of To mainstays: Anthony Wong, Francis Ng, Lam Suet, Roy Cheung, and Simon Yam. It’s the classic cast of The Mission plus a couple of new faces in Nick Cheung and Richie Jen. Unsurprisingly, the leads do very well. Even Nick Cheung was bearable for I thought he was a bit annoying in Breaking News.

Yeah, the themes and situations are nothing new to To (he even gives some nods to his classic The Mission, which Exiled may or may not be a sequel to, but who cares, right?) but with this one, there’s a certain… exuberance to it. It’s like Johnnie To’s having fun on this one and it is infectious.

Not that the film is light. I think that parts of it are grimmer than The Mission. It turns somber towards the end but in a self-reflexive moment, the characters laugh despite their fate. They had a good run and they had fun and surely the audience did too.

Bye Pooch

Poochy, one of our dogs, died early Tuesday morning. Whatever the cause was, either heartworm or distemper, I don’t know. The veterinarian never called back with the result of the blood test and besides, it’s rather moot now. It was difficult watching him suffer and I don't dare imagine what he felt during those last twelve hours.

Sleep well, Pooch. You are missed.

Kill Fidel

I remember reading about this last year, probably when the author's book first came out (and I also remember seeing something like this at the Discovery channel), but in light of Fidel Castro stepping down as Cuba's Comandante, this article lists some assassination plots that the CIA cooked up to get rid of the bearded one. Gotta love the ones where the intended effect (or so they say) is for Castro to lose his beard. And the ones where the Mafia is involved echoes bits of James Ellroy's American Tabloid.

And with Castro gone--well, he probably won't exit the stage entirely--will the CIA dream up more schemes if his successor does not play nice? But then, they don't assassinate people anymore, do they?

Akira Lives

Leonardo DiCaprio will produce a live-action version of Akira.

It'll probably be westernized so instead of Neo-Tokyo, the story will be set in, um, Neo-New York?

And instead of shouts of "Tetsuuooooo!" we'll have "Jaaaaaaacccccck!" or maybe, "Miiiiiike!" I dunno.

I liked the anime because it was visually gorgeous but wasn't really into the story. I thought it was nice to look at but the story was a bit off. It's hard to compress a thousand-page (at least) manga (which I've not read except for the last few issues of its Marvel/Epic reprint) into a 2-hour film and Katsuhiro Otomo tried admirably but fell short. But he more than made up for it in the visuals. He came up aces on that department.

So the two primary challenges that the producers will have to deal with are to find a writer (or writers) who can make sense of the story and make it comprehensible (or at least near-comprehensible; I'm not asking for much. Hehe.) and find a director who can match (or even exceed?) Otomo's vision. Heck, maybe they could even get Otomo himself to direct the film. With Otomo at the helm, at the very least we'll be treated to an amazingly designed (he does awesome cityscapes) Neo-Tokyo (or Neo-New York), great action sequences, and a grotesquely mutated and bloated Tetsuo (or Jack or Mike) threatening to engulf Neo-Tokyo (or Neo-New York). I'll be first in line on opening day if that happens.

FreakAngels

The first installment of Warren Ellis' webcomic FreakAngels is up. It's free so go read.

Al Capone Sends His Love

Celebrating the day of hearts, prohibition-era Chicago style

"One February evening in North Chicago, seven well-dressed men were found riddled with bullets inside the S.M.C Cartage Co. garage. They had been lined up against a wall, with their backs to their executioners and shot to death. With the exception of Dr. Reinhardt H. Schwimmer these men were mobsters working under the leadership of gangster and bootlegger, "Bugs" Moran. Within a few seconds, while staring at a bare brick wall, these seven men had become a part of Valentine's Day history: the St. Valentine's Day Massacre."

And this article says that when the site of the massacre was demolished, an enterprising guy bought the bullet-riddled bricks and eventually sold them as macabre memorabilia. Most buyers returned the bricks, though, saying they are cursed.

Red Cliff

Directed by John Woo. Starring Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Takeshi Kaneshiro, and Zhao Wei.

What more do you need to know?

Sweeney Todd

Not really into musicals (can only count two I saw and really liked and they are Bob Fosse's All That Jazz and South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. And should Life of Brian count? I mean, there was this song-and-a- bit-of-dancing-while-crucified number towards the end. Um… where was I?) Yeah, but a musical directed by Tim Burton and is about a serial killing barber is enough to draw me out and end my months-old moviegoing abstinence.

It was moody, it was gory, it was disturbing, it had depraved characters in it, it had songs with wonderful lyrics in it (I’ve half a mind to buy the soundtrack, actually), and it was glorious. Excellent performance from the actors, especially Johnny Depp. His Sweeney Todd is all intensity that one can't help but avert one's eyes slightly when Burton closes in on his glowering visage. One thing that rankled a bit was Sacha Baron Cohen’s singing. While his cameo was fun, his singing sounded like he was possessed by Adam Sandler’s Opera Man character during his Saturday Night Live days.

But the thing that really stuck with me from the film is Burton’s vision of Victorian era (or was it pre-Victorian?) London. Burton’s London is dreary, dirty, and bleak that it could easily drive one to depression. Or slit other people’s throats. But despite all that, despite that coat of dirt and dreariness and bleakness--or because of it--Burton’s London is beautiful. Like that old saying goes, it'll be a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there. The city's duality was summed up during the opening minutes where Todd saw the city, as “a hole in the world like a great black pit, and it's filled with people who are filled of shit, and the vermin of the world inhabit it, and it goes by the name of 'London,'” which was a response to a young sailor’s fairly romantic and optimistic view of the city.

And the city perfectly mirrors the movie. For all its gore and gouts of blood and the pervading gloom that sticks with you even after you've left the theater, it is still something that one can't help but love. Just don't be surprised if it doesn't love you back.

A.I. Suicides

"So what exacty does a web suicide note look like?" McKinstry wrote on January 20, 2006, a week after he posted to Singh's blog. "Exctly like this."

He was sitting in a café near his home in Santiago, pounding the keys on his Mac laptop. He posted the message on his blog and a slightly different version on a forum at Joel on Software, a popular geek hangout.

McKinstry's rant was florid and melodramatic. "This Luis Vuitton, Parada, Mont Blanc commercial universe is not for me," he wrote. He talked about his history of suicidal feelings and botched attempts, and he insisted that this time things would be different. "I am certain I will not survive the afternoon," he wrote. "I have already taken enough drugs that my alreadt weakened liver will shut down very soon and I am off to find a place to hide and die."

Wired article about two A.I. pioneers who committed suicide using eerily similar methods, roughly one month apart.

Airing Out

It's been a while since I've been here. Some music to blast away the stale air.

Iggy Pop + Sonic Youth + I Wanna Be Your Dog = Rakenrol!



Sonic Youth's one of the few acts I'd kill to see perform live and yeah, I missed out when they were here back in '95--or '96?-- on a triple bill with the Foo Fighters and Beastie Boys. Here they are performing Sugar Kane, their ode to Marilyn Monroe.



Purveyors of beautiful noise, they are.