Criminal

I can only assure you that I am, indeed, drawing. That does not, however, excuse my lack of posts. THAT I can only attribute to an accute case of lame.

New year/new president/economy bad... No need to address here what is swiftly becoming dead horse paste.

Most important is that the Chargers are out of the playoffs, thus my sundays are, once again, mine to control.

Movies: First and foremost, WTF is hollywood doing, seriously? Anyone? When is the last time an original property was commited to celluoid? Don't get me wrong, having movie versions of comics like Iron Man, Hulk, Batman, Hellboy, Wanted... dominating the cinematic landscape tickles me to no end, however... the sheer lack of original material is, well, let's break it down. Novels continue to be a staple of source material ( Spiderwick, Narnia, Choke) , and video game adaptions continue to pop up ( Max Payne, Dungeon Seige [shudder]), faring not so well critically/finacially, although I appreciate the effort. Leave us not forget the remakes ( Day the Earth Stood Still, Get Smart, Speed Racer) and sequels ( Indiana Jone, Harold and Kumar, Quantum of Solice). For real, if you look through a list of synopsies (sp?) of this year's movies, I'd guess at least 80% start out with "Based on the... Adapted from the... Ripped off from..." Has it always been like this? I may not even mind if it resulted in some cool movies but it seems to, more often than not, result in a bunch of "meh".

What this does, is it fills me with a fearful dread toward the upcoming crop of movies this year and it shouldn't 'cause movies are a true love of mine. Sure, I'm confident in the new Harry Potter and Watchmen movies (Watchmeny goodness), but there are a plethora of other properties that scare the bugeesums outta me. The Uninvited chief among them as that is a remake of my favorite ghost story of all time Tale of Two Sisters, an exquisite blend of psycological terror, familial discord, mental illness, and loss that this remake has zero chance of doing even a modicum of justice. Lets see, we also have the Chun Li movie (yikes), Avatar the Last Airbender (all white actors playng all asian roles), GI Joe (um, really), Friday the 13 (stop), another Fast and Furious (double stop), Dragonball (dear lord), Wolverine (ambiguously gay), Star Trek (maybe), Terminator (sorry, I really don't like Christian Bale), Land of The lost (god)... Well, you get the jist.

My point, (I did have one didn't I?) is that it really feels like Hollywood is clutching at any and every property with a whif of possible built in fanbase, or "next big thing" quality... grasping desperately, pathetically. And it's what they're doing with them! For God sakes they're thinking of casting Keanu Reeves as Spike Spiegel in the Cowboy Bebop movie, Keanu F'ing Reeves!!! It's just a big bunch of FAIL!

Rant finished. I saw some cool stuff, Forbidden Kingdom was waaaaaay better than I thought it was gonna be. Pretty, clever, exciting, not nearly as offensive as it could have been. The Life Before Her Eyes was one of the best movies I saw this year. Gorgeous, lyrical, poignant, skillfully acted/written/directed/crafted, an unmittigated crime that you've never heard of it. The Substitute, a danish scifi grim fairy tale illustating my point that averyone in the world has imagination except Hollywood.

In all honesty, I can't wait to see the next movie that reafirms my faith in the power movies, it really doesn't matter where it comes from, or who makes it, and they do keep coming, eventually, if not consistantly.

Oh yeah, picture is a sketch of Fiona Apple, absurdly talented girl.