dimfuture.net

When I tell people that I’m a legally ordained minister, who has performed a good number of weddings, they tend to smile amusedly or even chuckle. Which is understandable. While I’m telling them this, I am, after all, usually wearing a Motorhead shirt, or one with R2-D2 on it. And I do think about Godzilla a lot. Still and all, I actually take a certain pride in the weddings I perform; take out the God, and all a wedding minister has to be is a public speaker. And I like to think I’m pretty good at that. I do serve a purpose, in the end; there are plenty of people in the world who want to get married but who don’t want Baby Jesus involved. I perform weddings for weirdoes, and I do a damn fine job of it.

Which is not to say that all the weddings I do involve costumes or juggling or being up to my waist in tapioca. Most are very serious, respectful affairs, even decent. And the second wedding I ever did – that was one of the stranger things I’ve ever done, insofar as it was fantastically, perfectly normal. Mostly.

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I don’t review a lot of comic books, mostly because I don’t read them that often. Not out of any contempt for the medium, mind you; some of my favorite works of literature have come in graphic novel form, mostly from the mind of Alan Moore. Comic collecting just happens to be the red-headed stepchild of my hobbies: rarely receiving much money or attention, rarely noticed, and quietly suffering through years of neglect and waiting for that one glorious moment when I’ll walk into my local comic shop and drop a hundred bucks on new material. Because that’s what I do. I’ll go without purchasing comics for a year or so, and then, when I go to buy comics, I buy them by the armful. The system works.

The other reason I don’t review comics is because I actually loathe and fear most comic book fans. Wait… come back. Sit down. Now, I don’t mean you. I mean that other guy — you know, the one who writes in several pages of “corrections” to the letters column of every issue of Dark Horse’s Conan and signs his name “Lord Darkthorne.” Or, perhaps, the guy who flies into a beer-fueled rant at one in the morning on your blog, telling you to “go to a bar to get laid” because you cast aspersions on the Hulk movie. Just kidding. (Although I did tell my girlfriend of three years that I’d been commanded to go to a bar and get laid by someone on the Internet. Despite my best efforts, she didn’t go for it)

Of course, I don’t think these people are necessarily all that common, or even representative of comic readers on the whole — but all the same, I know they exist, and I am reluctant to incur their wrath. Especially if I plan to mercilessly slur the good name of Sir Warren Ellis, which, of course, I don’t. (You hear that, Lord Darkthorne? It’s going to be okay.)

Most of the comic readers I know speak of Warren Ellis the way someone might talk about Alexander the Great , or maybe Z-Man Barzell. Ellis appears to be some sort of comic-nerd Rome, in that all conversations about the medium eventually lead to him. “Do you read Warren Ellis?” my friends will ask me, bright-eyed with anticipation, and I’ll shake my head politely, smiling and wondering if I can change the subject to Lord Dunsany or Krull or something I actually know about.

Well, no more. On my last visit to my friendly local comics shop, I asked for some recommendations — anything, really. Without so much as batting an eye, the clerk asked “Have you read any Warren Ellis?” and made a frantic beeline for the shelf to pick out a host of Ellis titles for me. I came away with the first trade paperback of Planetary and the first arc of Desolation Jones, a brief description of which was enough to sell me.

To sum up the plot briefly: Michael Jones is an ex-intelligence agent and the only living survivor of The Desolation Project, a destructive medical procedure that kept him alive and conscious for an entire year while being barraged with horrific images. Now a reclusive albino junkie, Jones lives in Los Angeles, which has become a kind of “open prison” for ex-intelligence types without anywhere else to go. As the story opens, Jones is hired by Colonel Nigh to recover a valuable stolen item — a reel of vintage porn made by Adolph Hitler. This, by iteself, is more than enough; but as with any good detective story, Jones soon finds out there is far more to his assignment than he thought.

What follows is a gritty, delightfully squalid adventure in the Raymond Chandler vein, except with a lot more pornography and lurid violence. Jones is a bitter, shambling wreck of an antihero, barely functional most of the time, but with enough raw tenacity to brutally and permanently finish most of the fights he gets into. If I could level one criticism at Desolation Jones, it might be that the titular character isn’t always quite as interesting as the throng of memorable characters that surround him. The most poignant of these is probably Emily Crowe, a beautiful ex-intelligence agent who, because of an experimental procedure gone wrong, exudes fear and revulsion, damning her to crippling loneliness and isolation. Desolation Jones is full of characters like this; tough, tragic, and vividly realized.

Most compelling of all, however, is Ellis’ sense of place. The Los Angeles of Desolation Jones is at once familiar and foreign, ringing with verisimilitude, but outlandish enough to keep the reader surprised and entertained. One trait I think Ellis definitely shares with Alan Moore is how deftly and prodigiously he throws out (and throws away) brilliant ideas; tossing off material that might constitute an entire series in the hands of another author, but is only filler in Ellis’ world.

In keeping with what I’ve often heard about Ellis, Desolation Jones is not a lighthearted romp. It’s seedy, violent, brutal, and frequently ugly. The art by J.H. Williams III is wonderfully varied and rich; sometimes deeply textured, sometimes stark and overbright, like overexposed film. Once the exposition is out of the way, the body count mounts pretty quickly in Jones, with a gruesome, heartbreaking ending that’s well-crafted and merciless, like Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest with all the dials cranked into the red.

While Desolation Jones is a little more nihilistic than I usually like my comics, I now have an inkling why everyone raves about Ellis so much. Recommended. 8/10

Remember when Reverend Matt used to write Men of Action? Oh, sure, we all do. Those were the halcyon days of dimfuture, filled with light and laughter and MODOK. Since that bygone age, the good Reverend has moved on to greener and more lucrative pastures, at least insofar as talking about toys is concerned. He emails me, every once in a while, to regale me with hellish tales of life in the action-figure gulag, each tyrannical regime more brutal and terrifying than the last, but each still preferable to posting reviews here. Actually, I just made that all up. I thought it sounded funny.

Anyway, in a vain attempt to fill the Reverend’s daunting size fourteens, I present to you a brief review of Kenner’s Moff Jerjerrod, a figure that truly represents the bottom of the Lucasfilm barrel. (See, you thought it was Power Droid. Nope.)

Now, you might think it’s stupid to put a cheap Kenner figure on the same level as the more robust and detailed action figures the Reverend reviewed, and you’d be right! But I have a special reason for doing this; namely, the Moff Jerjerrod figure is fucking hilarious.

First, a little background. In case you’re a little fuzzy on your inconsequential Return of the Jedi characters, Moff Jerjerrod was the panicky, gulping nincompoop whose shit Darth Vader imperiously commanded he get together in the opening minutes of the film. After promising to “redouble his efforts,” Jerjerrod turned crisply on his heel and strode off, presumably with a full load in his pants, and was never seen again.

According to legend, and a few rare movie stills, Vader later took the time to lay the unholy smack down on Jerjerrod, presumably for failing to redouble his efforts as previously promised. As with all things Star Wars, Jerjerrod has an exhaustive, yet entirely irrelevant background, and, thanks to Kenner, his own action figure. Let’s have a look, won’t we?

Word to your mother, Tarkin.

Sculpt: I’m not quite as skilled or discriminating as the good Reverend when it comes to things like this, but I’ll do my best. Jerjerrod’s figure sculpt is capable enough, in that he’s easily identifiable as a human being, if not necessarily, you know, Moff Jerjerrod. He looks more like a pinch-faced Paul Rubens in an Imperial outfit, glaring up from under hooded brows in a Stanley Kubrick-esque fashion. This, combined with his ramrod-stiff stance, is what made the Jerjerrod figure really leap out at me from the toy shelf: he looks so god damned mad with his arms sticking straight down, as if in impotent fury. I imagine this is what he must have looked like when squeaking orders to the Death Star contractors, whinily demanding they “redouble their efforts like Vader said” and dodging styrofoam cups of hot coffee.

Paint: Oh, boy, do I have a lot to say about the paint on this figure! Wait, no I don’t. A gray suit and some flesh. Everything pretty much appears to be in order. If you look closely enough, Jerjerrod’s neck is several shades lighter than his head, making him look weathered beyond his years, or perhaps as if he slathered Fake Bake tanning lotion on his face — and nowhere else. Look, I told you I was no good at this.

Oh God! Medic! Too-Onebee! Medic!

How Articulate! Although Jerjerrod’s straight-armed “ooh, I’ll get you” stance is by far the most humorously rewarding of any position you might put him in, it’s worth noting that this figure’s articulation is, for a Kenner figure, uncommon. He’s articulated at the legs, but they’re held in place by the bottom of his Imperial tunic, making it impossible for him to ever sit or bend, and thus making that particular point of articulation useless. He also has points at the hips, wrists, elbows, shoulders, and neck, although the elbows are where things really go wrong.

The elbow points are sheared at an angle, which makes bending his arms something of a dodgy proposition. These points are also very loose, making it rather easy to just tear Jerjerrod’s arms off at the elbow, leaving him with only a stump (I’m not saying this isn’t awesome, of course; it’s just not what I expected). Fortunately, the arms are easily reattached, which is a good thing, because they come off pretty much at any time.

The plus side is that Jerjerrod can assume many arm positions unavailable to more standard Kenner figures: covering his face up in abject terror, shrugging in helpless bewilderment, clutching his stomach in agony after being gut-punched by an irate Trandoshan teamster, and my personal favorite, the “oh Jesus Christ I broke my fucking arm help help.”

Standery-Uppery: Because of Jerjerrod’s stiff, mostly immovable legs, he stands up just fine, with or without the use of his base. In other words, you’ll have no problem keeping him in the one position available to him.

A rare photo of Jerjerrod at the climax of ROTJ.

Accessories: There are so many accessories that could have made Jerjerrod cool. A bucket for him to puke in after his meeting with Vader. A tiny bottle of antacids, or perhaps speed. An escape pod for him to scramble into immediately after looking at the Death Star’s latest P/L statements. But no. He comes with a little rubbery Imperial pistol, which is great if you can imagine Moff Jerjerrod actually threatening anyone with it. Despite my struggles, I could not get him to point the blaster at his own head, which, again, smacks of opportunity lost. The only thing that would have been better than that would be an action button on his back to make him drop the pistol and raise both hands in abject surrender.

Overall:

Certainly, a large part of the allure of villainy – a large part of the reason that, on some quiet level, we want to be villains – is that villains have power. They have to; it is a definitive trait. An enemy who is easily thwarted by Our Heroes, whomever they may be, creates no real narrative tension, and can thus hardly really be called a ‘villain.’ Now, this power can take any of a hundred forms; devilish cleverness will do, as will simple possession of henchmen. Let us define ‘power,’ then, for our purposes, as ‘ability to affect one’s environment.’ Or, as Doctor Doom might put it, “The ability to impose one’s iron will upon lesser men, and upon the very nature of time and space itself!” Thanks, Doctor! And we all have that; villains just have more of it.

By this definition, then, there are few great cinematic villains as powerful as the HAL 9000 computer, from 2001: A Space Odyssey. HAL does not merely affect his environment; he is his environment. They come right out and say it: There is, we are told, “not a single aspect of ship operations that’s not under his control.” And there are subtler means of communicating the fact. Dave Bowman asks him how he’s doing; “Everything’s running smoothly,” he replies, which is appropriate – he is everything. HAL appears as a circle, and the circle is a recurring theme throughout the Discovery (the ship that HAL runs). This circle motif also creates a suggestion of completeness; the circle is a symbol of the totality of existence, of the world, that recurs from culture to culture. And beyond the Discovery, beyond HAL, there is nothing, emptiness. The astronauts have the ship, and they have HAL, and they have nothing else – at least, not until HAL is overcome.

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I couldn’t find it in my heart to post this the same day as Vincent Macropod, as I feared it would break Reverend Matt’s will. Hollywood North reports that there may be a remake of the 1951 Robert Wise masterpiece on the way.

According to our sources, Scott Derrickson – last here in 2005 to direct The Exorcism of Emily Rose – will helm Fox’s remake of their classic 1951 science fiction film, The Day the Earth Stood Still, currently prepping for production here in Vancouver.

The original was directed by legendary filmmaker Robert Wise, who passed away in 2005, and tells the story of an alien (Klaatu) and his mighty robot (Gort) who land their spacecraft on Cold War-era Earth just after the end of World War II. The travelers bring an important message for humanity that Klaatu wishes all the representatives of Earth to hear, but that proves more difficult to disseminate fairly than he had anticipated, prompting him to take a more bold approach.

The time frame of the remake will likely be updated, though no specifics are available yet.

Derrickson’s outgoing project is Paradise Lost, a live-action film version of John Milton’s epic 1667 poem, produced by Legendary Pictures, which tells the story of Lucifer’s failed rebellion in heaven and subsequent role in Adam and Eve’s fall from grace.

The Day the Earth Stood Still is scheduled to shoot until next November, making it one of the longest theatrical shoots ever to film in this region.

Now, although all my instincts scream to the contrary, I want to believe that there is a possibility for this to be good. The original film’s message — that we, as a race, must overcome our own stupidity and selfishness or be exterminated — is a powerful and immortal one. I might even say it deserves to be said again, even if it means a remake. But if this remake reduces Wise’s lessons on mass stupidity to irony, I’m going to start building a Gort of my own.