I think that subwoofers, and all powerful bass speakers, should be banned for private consumer use. Any speaker that produces vibration as well as sound, that penetrates wood, plaster and concrete, does not need to be in the hands of individual morons. Only professional music venues (with proper acoustic insulation…

Double vagina, no vagina: If I weren't an atheist I'd have to conclude that God is a sick bastard.

It appears that Green Lantern will have geek appeal, despite the continuing controversy over the 'flayed look' costume. (That's nothing compared to the outrage over organic webshooters though.) However, it looks like a hard sell for the general public.

I can think of three recent ultra-low budget horror or fantasy movies that while they definitely look low budget, don't look like crap and in fact are pretty kick ass. Lo (2009), The Other Side (2006), and Ink (2009). They're all on Neflix instant.

Cronos was one of a number of nineties indies movies featuring vampirism as a metaphor for addiction: Nadja, Blood and Donuts, The Addiction (haven't seen that one), and my personal favorite, Habit. These arty but gritty 'vamp addict' movies provided a contrast to the era's dominant vampire trope: the lush, gothic,…

That's a good point about the Nolan Batman. I mean, he can practically fly, for crying out loud. Nolan Batman's techno-magical powers aide, for all of the so-called realism of the atmosphere of these movies, the plots are fanciful as hell too. It's just gruff quasi-noir verbalizing (not just Batman, most of the…

Warning flags:

I liked it a lot. What were critics (and some of the commenters here) expecting? It's not arthouse, nor is it straight full-on horror. Clearly it's not going to be the new Dog Soldiers or The Company of Wolves (but sometimes it does look a bit like the latter). It's a YA fairy tale with some skillful character…

The dwarf version of blackface.

I despise the costumes in Coppola's Dracula, especially Lucy's funeral dress. ('Bram Stoker's Dracula' my ass - Dracula in love with Mina, his reincarnated beloved? Please.) It's my least liked movie version of Dracula. 1977's Count Dracula starring Louis Jourdan is still the definitive adaptation.

I watched Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast this weekend on Netflix streaming. That version is pretty Stockholmy, stalkerish, and codependent too. Is there such a thing as a psychologically and socially healthy myth concerning romance? Probably not.

I highly recommend this article by John J. Shea which argues against the idea of cognitively modern as opposed to cognitively archaic Homo sapiens (who may be either anatomically modern or archaic).

Maybe not exactly Dickean, but certainly related as a 'mindfrack movie' is The Nines starring Ryan Reynolds, Melissa McCarthy, and Hope Davis. I saw it yesterday on Netflix streaming. It definitely deserves more viewers.

I pray that I never come across the tentacle fetish fanfic based on that Latifah-Ursula.

Related to the earlier slime monster post, hagfish also produce magnificent slime.

By the way, there already is something close to a Blade Runner 'sequel' (at least in concept and tone): the 2003 South Korean movie Natural City.

First of all, Blade Runner isn't sacred nor sacrosanct. No movie is; they're just movies.

I blame Alan Moore for a lot of this. Moore showed what could be done with digging up deep backstory, forgotten obscure characters, bits of arcana and lore, and tying them together with the mythos of other series. See the brilliant, classic Swamp Thing Annual 2 for recontextualizing Deadman, Phantom Stranger, and…

No matter how much Lady Gaga rips off / homages performance artists (Everyone should Google the name "Orlan") and New Wave divas, when the music starts it's the old, familiar generic pop that has changed little in three decades. It's the same formulaic club-filler, whether the singer's name is Madonna, Christina,…

I totally get where you're coming from. I'm not prescribing treatments to individuals, so for me the cost-benefit landscape of engaging these models is much different.