Black Book and Paul Verhoeven

Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Joe Humphrey on 25-07-2008

poster2

I watched a movie yesterday (the day before yesterday now I guess) called Black Book. Not that Brittany Murphy thing but a Paul Verhoeven movie about a Jewish woman in WWII who goes undercover for a communist resistance group and infiltrates a Gestapo headquarters by seducing a high ranking Nazi officer.

It’s a damned entertaining movie and incredibly well acted. It’s interesting to watch a big budget foreign film made by a director who has been making big budget American films for the last twenty years.

It’s also interesting because it brings a kind of twisted Night Porter element into the mix (though not nearly as extremely as The Night Porter did, and without the S&M aspect) in that a Nazi falls in love with a Jewish woman and visa versa.

I friggin dig Paul Verhoeven. I think of any director, his style is probably the closest to what I want to do with my movies. Of course, he gets a lot of shit because he directed Showgirls, which I’m completely comfortable saying was an abysmal pile of garbage. That being said, I also own the special edition collectors box set of Showgirls with the shot glasses and nipple tassels and lobby cards and other extra shit.

The elements he brings to his movies are almost all elements I want to bring to my movies. There’s the constant blurring of the lines between sex and violence. On a related note, there’s the extreme amount of sex and violence, which I’m fully into. There’s the religious metaphors and symbolism that I totally dig and the social commentary. The color pallets he uses are very appealing to me (typically very bold, primary colors. Very classic) and he deals a lot with characters who aren’t exactly good and aren’t exactly evil. You’re usually not quite sure where everyone stands in a Paul Verhoeven movie and I like that. I don’t like characters to be clearly defined as good or evil.

And the man directed Robocop, the greatest movie ever made.

Well, maybe not greatest ever, but it’s up there.

I just finished listening to the audio commentary on Black Book and it was pretty interesting. His commentaries usually are. I didn’t realize that he’s as old as he is. He talks a bit about remembering what it was like to live in Holland during WWII and how that informed the way he made the movie. He also talked about a scene where the main character has to dye her pubic hair because she’s going in to seduce this Nazi and she’s already dyed her hair blonde. He said people have come up to him and asked him if he really HAD to show her dying her pubic hair and he said "Well, yeah, I did. Haven’t you seen my other movies?" which I thought was kind of a funny response. It’s Paul Verhoeven. That’s what he does.

Either way, it’s worth checking out. The movie is in Dutch and German with English subtitles. So if you’re one of those goddamned people who bring your movies back to Blockbuster because you can’t read, then don’t rent it. But otherwise, it’s worth checking out.

laptop

Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Joe Humphrey on 24-07-2008

I got a laptop today.

I’ve wanted one forever… like, since they were invented. Now I have one. I had one years ago, but it was a 50$ job that barely ran windows 98 and was pretty much useless. This is a much sweeter thing. It’s still a cheapie, but the cheapness of it is far more tolerable than my previous laptop. The keyboard is nice and normal sized but this little touch pad thing is going to take a while to get used to. I am seriously missing a scroll wheel.

Apparently around Christmas or so I committed to spending a week at some place called Salt Spring Island in a cabin with Sandra’s family. Sandra reminded me of this and informed me that we’re going in a couple of weeks.

I started to panic because I have the shortest attention span in the world and the thought of being trapped in some god forsaken shack in the woods for days on end started to give me a panic attack. I’ve been bitching about it for the last few weeks. Sandra finally broke down and said that we could get a laptop to keep me occupied if I’d just shut up and stop bitching.

So that’s what happened. It was the cheapest one we could find. 498 bucks at Walmart. I’ll probably get another gig of ram for it. Now I’ve just got to get it set up how I like it with my programs and such, and move over a bunch of music and movies and other garbage.

Ultimately, I need to make it my "writing" computer. I think this will be more conducive to writing than my desktop. Since I’m less inclined to use the touchpad and won’t be using a mouse I won’t be doing any photoshop. I don’t think it’s powerful enough to do any video editing. This thing will be mostly internet/writing.

Anyway, that’s what I’m writing on.

In other news, Robert Rodriguez is continuing on his campaign to put his trashy girlfriend in every movie he makes.

072208_redsonja

Survey says…

Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Joe Humphrey on 24-07-2008

1) Full Name: Joseph Michael Humphrey
2) Name Backwards: Nah
3) Were you named after anyone? I think so, though I never met em.
4) Does your name mean anything? Let me look it up. From Wikipedia:

Joseph is a name originating from Hebrew, recorded in the Hebrew Bible, as ??????, Standard Hebrew Yosef, Tiberian Hebrew and Aramaic Yôs?p?. In Arabic, including in the Qur’an, the name is spelled ???? or Y?suf. The name can be translated from Hebrew as signifying “The Lord will increase/add”. This variant of the name is used mostly in English, French and German-speaking countries. Some diminutives of Joseph include: Joe, Joey and Jo. In nowadays-Hebrew this name is very common, especially in the version “Yosi”.

5) Nick Name(s): Sandra calls me Jofess. The reason for this is because when my sister Delena was very young, she figured out that my name wasn’t actually Joe or Joey and she called me on it. She said “I know that your name isn’t actually Joe. It’s Jofess”. She was trying to say Joseph and couldn’t quite get it out right. I told Sandra about it and she’s been calling me Jofess ever since.
6) Screen Name(s): thewalkingman
7) Date Of Birth: January 26, 1978
8) Place of Birth: Somewhere in Kentucky
9) Nationality: AMERICAN GOD BLESS AMERICA.
10) Current Location: Canada. Goddamn Canada.
11) Sign: Aquarius.
12) Religion: nothing specific
13) Height: 6′ 2″, though I think I’m actually closer to 6′ 1½”. I’ve shrunk a bit as I’ve gotten older
14) Weight: somewhere between  270 and 280
15) Shoe Size: 11
16) Hair color: browish
17) Eye color: Hazel
18) What do you look like? Jofess
19) Innie or Outie? Innie. Deep and cavernous, where men dare not to tread.
20) Righty, Lefty, or Ambidextrous? Right handed. Lefties make me nervous.
21) Gay, Straight, Bi, or Other? Straight up G

Who is your…

22) Best friend(s): Sandra
23) Best friend you trust more than anyone: Sandra
24) Best friends {your sex}: Sandra’s my sex. I don’t have other sexes, just Sandra sexes.
25) Best friends of the Opposite Sex: Sandra!
26) Best Bud(s): What?
27) Boyfriend / Girlfriend: None that anyone KNOWS about! Not. Just Sandra.
28) Crush: I’ll crush you.
29) Parent(s): Yes.
30) Worst Enemy: Myself (I’m fucking deep, yo)
31) Favorite on-line Guy(s): Probably Josh
32) Favorite on-line Girl(s): Probably Devin
33) Funniest friend: Probably Sandra
34) Craziest friend: Definitely Sandra
35) Advice Friend: Mom
36) Loudest Friend: Lindsey
37) Person you cry with: I never cry. I’m goddamned man.

Do You Have…
38) Any sisters: Yes
39) Any brothers: Tons
40) Any pets: Fishes
41) Disease: What? No.
42) A Pager: Um… no. I’m not a doctor or a drug dealer.
43) A Personal phone line: As apposed to what? A payphone in my house?
44) A Cell phone: A couple of em
45) A Lava lamp: Somewhere
46) A Pool or hot tub: I WISH
47) A Car: A couple of them.

Describe Your…
48) Personality: Creative, silly, lazy.
49) Driving: I’m a fucking awesome driver.
50) Car or one you want: Have: A 96(? I think ?) black Acura Integra that needs an oil change. A 94 (? i think?) Ford Tempo that needs an oil change and probably a transmission fluid flush and needs to have the idle adjusted. What I want is a 2008 Corvette Z06. Red or silver.
51) Room: Fucking gay. It’s just a bed and dresser and my drafting table which is currently my “place to put boxes we don’t have room to unpack” table.
52) Closet: Small, full of bullshit.
53) School: School? That’s a word I haven’t heard for a long, long time.
54) Bed: It’s alright. I like it.
55) Relationship with your parent(s): I get along well with my mom. It’s touch and go with dad.
56) Believe in yourself: I’m pretty sure I exist, yeah.
57) Do you believe in love at first sight? No. I believe in wanting to fuck someone at first sight.
58) Consider yourself a good listener: I think so.
59) Consider yourself a good friend: Not really. I tend to be pretty reclusive and unreliable. I’m friends with people and then I disappear for a year or so. Lindsay and Brennan are the only ones who put up with my bullshit, and I haven’t seen then for at least six or seven months.
60) Get Along with your parents: Already covered this
61) Save your e-mail conversations: I’ve got Gmail so I don’t delete anything except for spam and bullshit that I didn’t know I signed up for and no longer want.
62) Pray: Nah.
63) Believe in reincarnation: I dunno. Ask me again in eighty years
64) Like to make fun of people: When they deserve it.
65) Like to talk on the phone: No, not really.
67) Like to drive: I like to drive long distances. I hate driving from one part of the city to another part of the city and home again. Though sometimes I go out and just drive for the sake of it. I’ll come up with an excuse to need to go to a store or something and I’ll just go because I want to get out of the house.
68) Get motion sickness: Only in extreme cases. I can’t do rides at amusement parks that spin me. Spinning will make me hurl. Especially that one at Six Flags Magic Mountain where it’s a big barrel and you get strapped to the wall of it and it starts to spin and the G-Force makes you stick to the wall and you just spin and spin and spin and when you get out you puke all over your Guns n’ Roses shirt. That happened in a Jr. High school trip to Magic Mountain.
69) Eat the stems of broccoli: I don’t eat any of the broccoli. That shit is nasty.
70) Eat Chicken fingers with a fork: What? No. What are you, retarded?
71) Dream in color: Of course. Who doesn’t?
72) Type with your fingers on home row: Yes. I did learn SOMETHING useful in school.
73) Sleep with a stuffed animal: No.

What Is/Are/Was…
74) Right next to you: My watch and a bottle of extra strength Tylenol
75) On the walls of your room: Nothing special. There’s a wooden J and an S over the bed that Sandra bought at Michaels and I nailed to the wall. Oh, and the wreath from Christmas is still hanging on the door.
76) On your mouse pad: Golden Lab puppies. It’s a mouse pad I bought Sandra. She’s right into puppies and shit.
77) Your dream car: Black 71 Cuda.

71cuda Fucking KILLER.
78) Your dream date: I dunno. I’m supposed to say my wife but like… seriously? Does this date include sex? Or is it just dinner and a movie and a peck on the cheek? If it includes sex, I might have to go with… I dunno… Monica Bellucci. No sex? Steven Spielberg. it would be a bromance and strictly for business purposes. If it HAS to be romantic, but no promise of sex (but the possibility) I think that Alanis seems like a pretty cool chick. I’d like to get to know her.
79) Your dream honeymoon spot: Disneyland?
80) Your dream husband/wife: Um… my wife I guess? She’s gonna read this so like, totally Sandra.
81) Your bedtime: Depends on what I have to do the following day. I typically am up till between 1 and 3am.
82) Under your bed: Downtown? Is where I drew some blood? Wait, no, actually, it’s storage for lots of small, skinny things.
83) The single most important question: What can YOU do for ME?
84) Your bad time of the day: usually around 2 in the afternoon, which is when I realize that I didn’t get enough sleep the night before.
85) Your worst fear(s): Abandonment. Failure.
86) The weather is like? Hot.
87) The time? 11:49am
88) The date? July 24, 2008.
89) The best trick you ever played on someone: I don’t really play tricks on people. I’m not the fucking Riddler.
90) The weirdest food or drink that you like: I like potted meat sandwiches.
can12
91) Been in love before?: Yep
92) Loved somebody so much it made you cry? I’ve loved someone so much that I cried when it went badly.
93) Been in a car crash? Yeah.
94) Dumper or Dumped: Yeah
95) Color of socks: None at the moment.
96) Place to be kissed: Hmmm… my peepee?
97) Quote from a movie: “That’s like, your opinion, man.” The Dude in The Big Lebowski
99) Favorite Concert: Probably the last Pearl Jam show. It was stellar.
100) What is your favorite kind of cheese? Mozzarella. It’s fucking choice.

question

Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Joe Humphrey on 22-07-2008

Can anyone identify the music playing in the trailer for the new Tomb Raider game?

http://www.tombraider.com/server.php?show=ConMediaFile.694

I know I’m associating it with a scene in a movie and I can’t figure out what that scene is. I know it was something really sarcastically over dramatic, like possibly the scene in Beetlejuice when Winona Ryder was writing her suicide note. But I don’t think it was that scene. It was something similar though.

Hmm

Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Joe Humphrey on 22-07-2008

Maybe wait till the kid’s down for his nap before making your naked booty shake dance video.

 

Hey kids, remember the sixties?!

Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Joe Humphrey on 21-07-2008

clothing5 reminded me of a blast from the past. Remember this shit?

mrtballs

When everyone was going around eating balls?

I sure hope everyone remembers that, because like… remembering things from the internet shouldn’t make me feel old.

I’m too tired to do stuff

Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Joe Humphrey on 21-07-2008

Stuff sucks.

Luckily the stuff I have to do is pretty minimal. Like… this.

z2k8gejh zvl87egt u4g1gbwx uln22fsd Picture005-1 maryp141280x1024 Joker_5 k5k0zm7v highrise gt2xsl76 chusm db46bjga 327697695_df5e49b77e_o 1012706516_9ad78c8a7a_o 1078613578_4d73d0b167 Arewehaving funyet 1844-300-300 28224 73790maxim2007cal031234su7 3735700 43g0k8ft 67ewcclq 322paf0s 359d27s 29z6b12 33icp4oh 33vcfpc 33vky2s 27g0khwb 5ksadr8s 7gsmvc94 7xsycaya 1a2hl2 001k7y97 carla-gugino-02 carla-gugino-03 Serious-Cat-Joker wm6_1280x1024 wm2_1280x1024 wm1_1280x1024 wm3_1280x1024 wm4_1280x1024 wm5_1280x1024 Sexy_lips_by_josemanchado 37 Vivid 3 036 Harley_Quinn__3__by_pinkeye Harley_Quinn__4__by_pinkeye Harley_Quinn__5__by_pinkeye b03 09d woman_with_gun_western-m 379645666_09c5c9a6ff_o Tribute_2_Saudek_by_josemanchado lisaedelstein003lagrangug3 0004w197 2593838418_90ac0d58bd 2593835674_afa81b42f0 10_penthouse_pets_21 evildead1-775121 2042 2046 2045 ari_gold 2776 ariel-by-mark-blumas-for-metart-001 ariel-by-mark-blumas-for-metart-002 ariel-by-mark-blumas-for-metart-003 ariel-by-mark-blumas-for-metart-005 ariel-by-mark-blumas-for-metart-006 ariel-by-mark-blumas-for-metart-007 ariel-by-mark-blumas-for-metart-009 ariel-by-mark-blumas-for-metart-010 ariel-by-mark-blumas-for-metart-012 ariel-by-mark-blumas-for-metart-013 ariel-by-mark-blumas-for-metart-015 ariel-by-mark-blumas-for-metart-016 071101-ARIEL-MarK-119-5999 06 08_2 05 04 03_2 00 01_2 02 07 11 10b 09_2 12 13 14 15 2791 2795 2909 The_play_for_four_hands_by_photoport yarrow  may 25, 2008

house1
house2

Hey dicks

Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Joe Humphrey on 21-07-2008

Stop it. Seriously.

tb

Michael Bay can eat a dick

Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Joe Humphrey on 21-07-2008

hr_Friday_the_13th_remake_jason_voorhees

jason-voorhees-new

awesome

Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Joe Humphrey on 20-07-2008

http://www.sdbarber.com/

2007335223138

Tattoos

Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Joe Humphrey on 20-07-2008

I might seriously travel to Philadelphia to get a tattoo by this dude.

http://www.prickmag.net/paulackerinterview.html

http://www.prickmag.net/paulackertattoos.html

http://www.fixedarmy.com/paul.php

 2-22

that’s badass

ArkhamAsylum-020

Re: Tim Burton’s Batman

Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Joe Humphrey on 20-07-2008

INT. JOE AND SANDRA’S LIVING ROOM - NIGHT

Joe and Sandra sit on the couch. Joe flips through the channels.

JOE
Hey, the original Tim Burton Batman is on. Have you seen it?

SANDRA
No. Do I want to?

JOE
Maybe you should watch a bit just to see the difference between
Jack and Heath’s Jokers.

SANDRA
Okay.

They watch for a few minutes.

SANDRA
Does this get less gay?

JOE
Not really.

Joe flips back and forth between Batman and a documentary about the Edmund Fitzgerald. About a half hour of this goes on.

SANDRA
I sure am glad movies aren’t stupid like this anymore.

JOE
ME TOO.

SANDRA
Can we just watch the show about the boat?

JOE
Yes.

Joe turns off Tim Burton’s Batman.

 

heathftw

So…

Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Joe Humphrey on 20-07-2008

Who here is happy that they didn’t cast Crispin Glover as the Joker? Remember how everyone thought that would have been the most awesome shit ever? Yeah. I had NO idea.

Alan Moore and Watchmen

Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Joe Humphrey on 20-07-2008

You know, if I was Zack Snyder, and I heard all of the shit that Alan Moore has talked lately, I’d tell him to eat a fucking dick. I’d tell that homeless looking fuck “I think I saw a pizza box with some cheese still stuck to the bottom in a dumpster outside. Bon appetite motherfucker!”

Fucking Alan Moore. Awesome writer. Self important fucking dickwad.

I haven’t written about The Dark Knight yet

Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Joe Humphrey on 19-07-2008

I can’t quite put the words together. Maybe I will later. Maybe I’ll be able to articulate what I’m feeling. Maybe.

this

Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Joe Humphrey on 18-07-2008

d3_1920 d2_1920 d1_1920 d0_1920 new-star-trek-poster_l

Much better

Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Joe Humphrey on 18-07-2008

The Darren Aronofsky remake of Robocop is actually a sequel, set 20 years after the Robocop program has been terminated. That sits much more comfortably with me. I still think that teaser poster is stupid looking though.

Here’s the news from Ain’t it Cool

How’s a Darren Aronofsky-Directed ROBOCOP Sequel Sound?

Beaks here…

If Bloody-Disgusting is correct, and Darren Aronofsky’s “rebuild” of ROBOCOP is actually a sequel set twenty years “after the termination of the Robocop program”, then forget all that whinging over the sacredness of Paul Verhoeven’s original. If ROBOCOP 3 couldn’t tarnish that fucker, nothin’ can.

Though it’s a little disappointing that they’ve (allegedly) opted to move the series from Detroit to Los Angeles (especially when it’d be incredibly affordable to shoot in the actual confines of the Motor City nowadays), I’m cool with anything that allows Aronofsky to put his own stamp on the established mythology of the character (and let’s pretend that this “established mythology” begins and ends with the first movie, okay?). According to Bloody Disgusting, talks between MGM and the director are fairly advanced. Perhaps Sony will have an announcement ready for their Saturday panel at Comic Con.

A thing

Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Joe Humphrey on 18-07-2008

Sometimes I get spasms in my arm. It feels like there’s a little frog inside my bicep and he’s jumping.

When this happens I get the horrible urge to grab a knife and carve my arm open to see what it looks like inside when it’s spasming.

Then I don’t do that.

This post contains two separate words that my spell checker insists are spelled wrong but I’m not sure. Apparently bicep is not the singular of biceps. And apparently there’s no such word as spasming, but spasm and spasms are words. Fucking spell checker.

Watchmen teaser trailer

Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Joe Humphrey on 18-07-2008

http://watchmenmovie.warnerbros.com/

Well, what a fucking treat. Seriously.

I was worried that with all of the build up and excitement and years (yes, years… the minute Batman flipped over that Joker card at the end of Batman begins I started getting excited for the movie I’m going to watch tomorrow)  of painfully waiting for The Dark Knight, that when it was all over and I’d seen it and it was done forever that I’d get depressed. A kind of postpartum depression. Because like… then there’s nothing. Just life. Just all of the shitty movies that I don’t care about. I kind of felt that once Dark Knight was done, what’s the fucking point of watching movies ever again?

There’s some kind of deep seeded need in me to have something to look forward to always. Some sort of event movie. It’s almost always an adaptation of something. Usually a book and (more often lately) sometimes a comic book. It’s just exciting for me. I love adaptations. When they’re good. Batman Begins was really good and The Dark Knight looks to be amazing.

And now that I’ve seen the teaser for Watchmen, I’ve got something new to look forward to. 230 days of delicious anticipation. I don’t know how they’re going to keep it up. I mean, I almost feel like I’ve already friggin SEEN The Dark Knight with all of the trailers and photos and clips and everything I’ve seen before actually seeing the movie. And that’s all ramped up in the last two months or so. We’ve got almost a friggin year until Watchmen comes out. Seven months anyway. Half a year. Math ftw.

I know that we’ve reached a new age of marketing. The internet is now officially the way to go when promoting these movies. Get people involved. The viral marketing. The production blogs. The leaked photos and posters and trailers and whatnot. Hell, the first thing anyone ever saw of Watchmen was that one frame of Rorschach holding The Comedian’s smiley face button in the 300 trailer. And that wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the internet. No one would have talked about it if some geek hadn’t noticed that there was a weird frame, slowed it down and screen capped it and posted it on a million blogs and Ain’t it Cool News.

And it worked. I know I lost my ever loving mind when I saw it.

And that was nothing compared to how I felt watching that teaser trailer today.

The good thing is that since we’ve got seven and a half months or so until the movie comes out, it gives people time to go back and reread the Watchmen graphic novel. If you haven’t, you should. Seriously. Not just because the movie is coming about, but because it really is probably the greatest run of comic books ever.

And this footage blows even my highest expectations out of the water. I didn’t even really HAVE expectations. I honestly couldn’t really see Watchmen as a movie in my head. I just couldn’t. It’s not that I didn’t think it could be done… I just didn’t know HOW they could do it. It’s like trying to imagine a song as a movie, you know? Watchmen is a comic book and that’s what it is. Maybe it’s because it’s only ever existed as a comic book. And one comic book at that. One writer, one artist. That’s it. It happened once and then stopped forever. There’s never been a TV series or a cartoon or other movies or anything. It’s not like Spider-Man and Batman and Superman where you’ve got all of these variations and different interpretations. There was Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and that was it.

So the idea of someone coming in and doing a movie of Watchmen is both exciting and kind of scary. I just couldn’t picture it. I was never against the idea, but I was completely baffled at how someone could possibly pull it off.

Sin City gave me a little bit of hope. Because I kind of felt the same way about Sin City. Frank Miller’s style was so distinctive and uniquely Sin City that it seemed impossible that someone could translate it to the screen and retain the same feel that the comic book had. But Robert Rodriguez did it and he did it almost perfectly. The only complaint I had with Sin City was that it was almost TOO faithful to the comic book. There were points in the movie where I felt that the people looked a little too distorted and weird looking. I would have preferred that he toned down the make up (especially on Marv and That Yellow Bastard) just slightly and gone for just a little more realism. But that was a very small complaint. And honestly, it was that ridged and completely ego-less devotion to the source material that made Sin City great. I’m generally against complete and utter devotion to the source when adapting something for the screen. Whether it’s a comic book or a video game or a novel, I almost always expect (and want) there to be some adapting in an adaptation. When something follow it’s source material without any real influence from the film maker, it tends to be dry and without soul. The movie Firestarter is a good example of this. When looked at as a movie version of a book, it’s almost beat for beat exactly like the book… and it was completely boring and dry. There needed to be some sort of consideration for the medium of film when adapting that story. I felt the same way about The Green Mile (though I seem to be the only one) when I watched the movie. I just felt like I was rereading the book. It was so close to the source that it felt like a waste of time.

But when you’re dealing with translating a medium that is already so visual into film, the groundwork is already done, visually. The only adaptation that needs to be done (if you choose to go that route) is in the writing. Consolidating and adapting the story for time and pacing and such. When I heard that Zack Snyder was using Dave Gibbons comic panels as his storyboards, that made me excited. Robert Rodriguez did the same thing in Sin City and Snyder had done the same in his adaptation of Frank Miller’s 300.

So yeah, my hopes were high but my expectations were pretty much non-existent. Not bad, just not there. Watching that teaser trailer though… it was so far beyond what my brain could even process. It was like watching my own imagination on the screen. The visuals that my brain produced when I read that book were so distinct and defined that I couldn’t imagine them as a movie. I didn’t think it could be done. But looking at the footage in that trailer… there it is. Right there fucking there, on the screen.

There were things in the Watchmen book that I couldn’t even begin to imagine how they were going to pull off on screen. Things that are fine in a comic book but would, by all expectations, look completely ridiculous in a movie.

Dr. Manhattan is a big glowing naked blue dude. That’s fine for the comics, but I just can’t see it working in a movie. Beast in The X-Men was a big blue dude. They tried to put him in a movie (X-Men 3: The last embarrassment) and he looked completely fucking retarded. It was awful.

But like… there he is. And it’s not like they took a bunch of liberties with his look. That’s exactly what he looks like in the comic books, and there the fuck he is. Standing right there, blue and glowing in all his glory, ball bag and all.

 DrManhattan blueandglowing

They got around the problem by doing it EXACTLY like it is in the comics.

And this makes me giddy like a fucking school girl.

watchmen 000bsz1h

The ordering is changed around slightly and Captain Metropolis is gone, but I think the arrangement was chosen more for aesthetics on a magazine cover. The intent is there regardless. And it’s fucking perfect. One of my main concerns was how they were going to deal with Night-Owl’s costume, because, as you can see, in the comics it was a littlle… fucking… goofy looking. But man, did they ever pull it off. Not only does Night-Own not look goofy, he looks fucking BASASS.

One of my concerns about this project was whether or not they could retain the spirit of the original Watchmen book. For those who don’t know, Watchmen wasn’t a normal superhero story. It was like… an analysis of superhero stories. Not exactly parody, but it asked questions of the genre. It took the concept of superheros and said “what if this REALLY happened” and set them in a world that was much closer to our world than anything in a superhero comic book thus far. The characters were people and they acted like people. They were flawed, and not just in a Batman/Tony Stark/Wolverine “I’ve got emotional problems” kind of way, but they were realistic issues. Like, The Comedian was a real fucking asshole. He was a guy who did horrible, horrible things to people. Not because he was a bad guy (technically, he was a superhero) but because he was an asshole. At one point he gets pissed off and tries to rape the Silk Spector. At another point, he kills a pregnant Vietnamese chick. He’s a really shitty guy with a lot of power and it gives him the freedom to be an even shittier guy.

Ya know, like, Rorschach. He’s not just a guy with emotional problems. He’s clinically fucking insane. He had to be broken out of an asylum. He is seriously, seriously fucked up. Batman has emotional problem. Rorschach is fucking crazy. In a scary way. A good guy, kind of, but completely dangerously psychotic.

There’s another part of the story where the Watchmen go off to Vietnam to fight in the war. But it’s not like Captain America going to do in Hitler and the Nazis for the good old US of A. They’re there as mercenaries working outside of the confines of the military. Their intentions are basically good, but it turns into a huge fucking bloody mess. Mostly because of The Comedian, but really, like America, they never should have been there in the first place and it doesn’t end well.

There is another scene where Night-Owl (the second Night-Owl. There were two) and Silk Spector have sex on his couch. All you see in the comic are their feet hanging off of the edge of the couch and their dialog. It’s not a sexy encounter but awkward and kind of funny, as sex often is. There’s a kind of “Ow, watch out,  you’re on my hair!” “Ow, your knee is in my stomach!” kind of vibe to it. It’s awkward and sweet and exactly what Watchmen is like. Kind of uncomfortable.

I was afraid that they wouldn’t be able to pull that off. A commentary about comic books within a comic book is a great idea. Within a movie is something else though. Watching this teaser though, and seeing the devotion and energy and time and love that so obviously fills every frame in that teaser, my fears are starting to wane. One shot in particular makes me believe that they’ve got a handle on it.

It’s the scene that this shot is from:

9

Dr. Manhaten walking through a field in Vietnam, casually exploding a dude, smiling the whole time, not a care in the world. It’s perfect. Fucking PERFECT.

So yes, I am excited. Yes, the next seven months will be spent gleefully pissing myself in anticipation. I desperately needed this. In four hours I will be sitting in the theater watching The Dark Knight, experiencing that final metaphorical orgasm after these long years of constant teasing and foreplay. And while I’ll miss all of that, I’m really glad to have my new movie obsession, Watchmen, to keep my geek needs stimulated.

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Weird dream

Filed Under (dreams) by Joe Humphrey on 18-07-2008

I was in some weird town that I didn’t recognize. I knew that I had just moved there with my mom and my brothers David and Josh. I was the age that I am now (or, at least, an adult) but my brothers were younger. Still teenagers. Usually when I dream about my siblings, they’re the age that I last spent any real time with them. They’re both now well into their twenties. My brother David is almost thirty. But in the dream they were about maybe sixteen and fourteen. For some reason we were meeting up with my dad (who haven’t seen in about eight or nine years) were trying to establish some sort of amicable relationship. One of the deal breakers of the relationship was that my dad wasn’t allowed to hit any of us. I wasn’t worried about myself (since I was an adult and could totally take my dad now) but the main concern was with his treatment of my brothers.

We were meeting up in a grocery store for some reason.

Before going to the grocery store we went to a comic book store. In the dream, the Watchmen movie was just about to come out and I remember buying a Rorschach action figure. I was waiting in line to pay for it and the owner of the store was talking to the guy in front of me. He (the guy in front of me) was a writer and for some reason the owner of the comic book store was considering hiring him to be a “writer for the store” whatever that means. The issue was that the guy wanted a 25% addition to all comic books trade ins. IE, his own comics that he would sell back to the store. The owner didn’t want to give it to him. Apparently the guy trades in a lot of comic books. I kind of piped in and said “Hey… I’m a writer and I don’t give a shit about trading in comics. I’ll write for a regular old pay check” and the owner said “SWEET. You’re hired” and gave me the job. The other guy got all pissy (understandably I think) and left.

After that we (my brothers and I) went to the grocery store to meet up with my dad. I don’t remember what happened at the store, but the next thing I remember is leaving the store with my brothers and my dad. For some reason my dad got pissed at my brother Josh (who, like I said, was much younger in my dream than he actually is) and grabbed him by his collar and started smacking him in the face. I fucking lost my mind and shoved my dad up against the wall and started screaming in his face. I ended up shoving him towards the door, where he started throwing up. The whole time I’m freaking out and yelling at him to get the fuck out and never come back and he left. Josh was understandably shaken up. My brother David was pissed at me for reacting the way I did. The store manager took us into the store office. I called my mom on her cell phone and she came to pick us up.

The next part is a bit of a blur.

There was one part where I was hanging out with these two dudes and talking about this one kind of classic car that the guy had two of and he was telling me all about how everyone in cars that weren’t this classic car were mindless robots trudging blindly through life and people needed to wake up and realize that they are slaves… all because they don’t recognize how awesome his car is. And I remember being like “Whatever loser”.

After that my mom shows up and she’s taking me and Dave and Josh somewhere and we’re trying to decide what movie we want to see. We decided on Hellboy 2, and I felt like some kind of hero since I was willing to go see it again just so Dave and Josh could see it, since they hadn’t already. I don’t know what was up my ass that made me think that was such a noble gesture, but whatever.

Either way I didn’t end up going because I ended up meeting these two chicks and talking with them. I know that pizza was involved, and I know that I wasn’t the one that brought it to them, but I do know that I wasn’t there (initially) socially. The two chicks were both women that I’d seen on the show Entourage. And they were playing themselves. IE, actresses who had been on Entourage and other things. The actresses were Carla Gugino and Malin Akerman. Carla had played Vinnie’s new agent after they fired Ari for losing the Joey Ramone project and Malin played the girl who was friends with Eric’s girlfriend Sloan and wanted to have a threesome with Eric and Sloan and Eric woke up spooning her and got all weird about it. Carla was also in Sin City and got her boobies out. Malin was in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle and… got he boobies out.

Here are both girls boobies from their respective boobies getting out roles, thanks to the wonders that is Google Image Search.

zn-Gugino-Carla02 bM3493-MalinAkerman@Harold&KumarGoToWhiteCastle

I decided (in my dream, and possibly in reality as well) that I wanted Carla to be in my vampire movie, and I was very desperately trying to convince her that this was a good idea. This was difficult though because they were constantly making out with each other.

As you may have guessed, my dream was very abruptly switching gears.

I didn’t really MIND that they were making out. I mean, I wanted to talk to Carla about my movie, but at the same time, I was also being very flirty and witty and cute and awesome and it seemed to be working. And of all the things that they could be doing that were distracting them from my very important conversation, that was pretty much best case scenario. Making out with each other beats like, doing math home work or playing Sims 2.

I ended up following them to their house, which was I completely comfortable with.

What happened next was a bit of a blurry period. Nothing sexual happened (outside of their continued make out session) but I’m pretty sure the movie was discussed. But ultimately what ended up happening was that I was 86′d out of the dream entirely. I became an omniscient observer. What also happened is that they turned out to actually be vampires and the movie aspect of it went away.

What I ended up watching was these two girls who were these super hot chick vampires (and were still making out with each other) and they were at their like, vampire house that they own and hide out in and bring people back to to eat.

Then, who shows up, but fucking Richard Gere of all fucking people.

I know WHY it was Richard Gere. It was Richard Gere because earlier that night (last night) at work someone brought up the movie The Flock and asked me if I’d seen it or heard anything about it. The Flock stars Richard Gere and Claire Danes and apparently has at least one or two pretty brutal rape scenes. I’d had a couple people come back and tell me that they found it really disturbing, and one guy couldn’t even watch it and had to turn it off. I told the customer that asked me about it that I’d had a few people tell me that it was pretty good and a few people tell me that it was really disturbing and apparently had a lot of rapin’s in it. I then said that I hadn’t watched it because it looked disturbing, but not because I find rapin’s in movies upsetting, but because I find Richard Gere in movies upsetting. We LOL’d and that was the end of it.

So now, in the middle of the night while I’m sound asleep, who comes strolling up into my dream but Richard fucking Gere.

He rings the doorbell. The chicks start to fucking freak out. One of them goes up and answers the door. Gere pushes the door open and just walks in. He’s wearing this like, London Fog overcoat thing and is mister smiles mister charming.

Apparently, Richard Gere is some kind of big shot fucking vampire dude.

BTW, he was a character, Richard Gere. It wasn’t like “Oh shit, Richard Gere the actor is here and he’s pissed!” it was just that my brain thought it would be funny to cast Richard Gere as this badass vampire character. It actually surprisingly kind of worked.

Anyway, so Gere muscles his way into the house and starts going off about breaking the rules and disrespect and a bunch of vampire bullshit. The girls are all groveling and apologizing and freaking out.

They’re in their underwear btw. Fancy bras and panties. Just so you know.

So they’re on their knees, pulling at his coat begging for forgiveness and it’s all very fucking weird. Gere grabs them both by the hair, drags them to the stairs, and then fucking throws them UP the stairs, one after the other.

Now, if you can picture this… it’s easy to think about someone being tossed down a flight a stairs. We’ve seen that before in a hundred different movies. But no, he threw them UP the stairs. Asses over elbows. It was very strange looking.

They’re at the top of the stairs, up against the facing wall all crumpled and bloody like rag dolls. He then follows them up the stairs, grabs them by the hair again and drags them to this room.

Inside the room, which he called The Experimentation room, is nothing but a bed in the middle of the room. Apparently (and I didn’t understand this at all) there was some issue with the carpet in the room. Something about that they weren’t supposed to touch the carpet and they had.

Anyway, so he goes into the closet and he pulls out this like, concrete anchor thing. Like a big concrete block with a metal handle on it that you might tie cable to or something on a construction site. He’s carrying this thing around like it’s nothing. So he takes this chain and he ties it around the ankle of Carla (the chick from Sin City) and attaches the other end to this concrete anchor. He then picks the anchor up over his head and throws it at the floor. The anchor breaks through the floor and very quickly drags Carla through the hole and out of sight. The anchor then breaks through the first floor and again, Carla is pulled through the floor and into the basement. Gere grabs the blonde (Malin… I don’t actually know her by name, like I do Carla, so in my dream she was just “the blond threesome chick from Entourage”. I had to look her up on imdb) by the hair, again, and drags her down the stairs and down into the basement, where Carla is on the floor and fucked up and twisted and broken bones and fucking blood and blah. Gere then grabs that weight, and throws it UP through the ceiling of the basement, pulling Carla BACK up through the fucking hole (or, through the new hole that he just made) and she’s now up on the first floor again. It was fucking crazy. And brutal.

That’s when I woke up.

And that was pretty much everything I remember about that dream.

What I didn’t realize until I woke up and looked them both up on IMDB was that both Carla Gugino and Malin Akerman are in The Watchmen. I knew Carla was in The Watchmen, but I had no idea that Malin was. I guess I subconciously knew it, and my brain filled in the rest. I mean, I’ve seen the cast list and I’ve seen the castlist of Entourage and Harold and Kumar, but my brain didn’t consciously associate her with Watchmen. It was weird.

Anyway, yeah, that was the dream. I’m sure there’s some sort of psychological connection between having a dream about my father abusing my family and then moving right into a dream where Richard Gere is beating the shit out of two hot chicks. I don’t really care to try and psychoanalyze that.

The end.