dimfuture.net

MODOR

At last we come to it – the raison d’etre for half of the reviews of the last two weeks – MODOK himself, the Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing. Your reviewer loves MODOK, loves him enough to buy figures he doesn’t want to build the ol’ Organism. Why? Well, MODOK is one of the more effective of Jack Kirby’s ugly-monster designs, but more to the point, MODOK’s focus is wholly admirable. Would you like MODOK to bake you a hot apple pie? Well, he won’t be baking you a hot apple pie – Only Killing. Would you like him to join your bowling league? Well, if by “bowling league” you mean “killing,” then yes; otherwise, no. He knows what he wants. He was Designed Only for it.

MODOBS

Articulation: 26 points of articulation, plus he can swivel on the rocket-blowback upon which his chair is mounted. 26 points of articulation, for a giant head in a chair. Do you know what that means? You guessed it - individual finger articulation. Ahhhhhhhhh.

Sculpt: Really, really nice-looking, or rather, gruesomely ugly, but that’s clearly the point. Really, they went all-out on this one, which is gratifying. He’s to scale with the other figures, by the way, which means he’s no taller than, say, Sasquatch, and hence nowhere near the size of build-a-figures such as Galactus or the Sentinel. He’s still too bulky to have made it into a regular single-figure carded package, though, and so his build-a-figure status is justified. Barely.

MODONS

Paint: Your reviewer is beginning to sound hysterical, here, but this is also exceptional. Shiny, no bleed, and a lot of unnecessary subtlety – different panels on his chair are slightly different colors, for example. Suffice it to say, MODOK has not been handled with such care since – well – er –

Durability: Remarkably solid, for a figure that you snap together yourself. Previous build-a-figures have had problems here, but this one’s totally fine. Seriously. We’ll give it a slightly reduced rating, just to keep your reviewer from having a seizure.

MODOWSP

Get Up, Stand Up: He’s mounted on this great big fiery-rocket-blowback effect, and so of course he stands up perfectly well. Actually, he’s remarkably front-heavy, but still, no care need be taken in keeping him upright. All part of Only Killing!

Accessories: MODOK is an accessory; he doesn’t come with them. And anyway, does he sound like a Mental Organism Designed Only to Have Accessories (MODOHA) to you? Yes? Shut up. (No stars – N/A)

Overall:

(Note: Please enjoy guessing what the acronyms of the various homemade MODOK variants, pictured above, may mean, right down there in the “Comments” section. Yeah, not too hard.)

The Internet is full of memorable mishaps. Ghyslain. The “developers” chant. The guy who whacked off to World of Warcraft. Pretty much the entirety of YouTube, actually. But then, there are the smaller mistakes, the sublime moments of routine idiocy so small, you might miss them if someone weren’t around to point them out and mock them without pity.

Such is the fate of Twelve Days of Dimfuture, where I promised to deliver twelve beloved genre films, and then proceeded not to publish them. Oh, I wrote them. They were there, in all their digital mediocrity, waiting to be devoured by an indifferent populace of dozens, but they were marked as “private” because, in the ancient words of my hoary Viking forefathers, I R a dumass.

But, never fear! The first two Days of Dimfuture can easily be found by clicking on the “Movies” link at the left. (Or by scrolling down. Way down. No, further… keep going… keep going… too far!) So, please enjoy them at your leisure… assuming the heady odor of rank incompetence hasn’t already driven you off.

Tomorrow: More of the same!

As the critically adored Pan’s Labyrinth creeps closer to worldwide release, the era of my heaping unselfconscious praise on Guillermo Del Toro’s Blade II may rapidly be coming to an end, mostly because I am likely to be heaping unselfconscious praise on Pan’s Labyrinth. All the same, I will always have a soft spot beneath my cartilaginous chest plate for Blade II, one of the most enjoyable second entries in any film franchise ever.

What Came Before: Ultimately, Blade II can hardly help but look good, next to the films that came before and after it. The original Blade is a fun idea with a mostly drab execution, featuring far too much Donal Logue and a third-act twist that sets a new bar for screenwriter laziness. The audience is tantalized with the promise of La Magra, the Blood God, in whose presence everyone will be “instantly turned” to vampires. When game time comes, and La Magra ostensibly manifests, all we get is a partially invincible Steven Dorff, who, now being the ruthless incarnation of an elder deity, takes up to four laborious minutes to defeat.

Dont get me wrong. The original Blade has a lot going for it, such as a boiling fat guy, a lovely female lead in the form of the unfortunately named N’Bushe Wright, and an evil henchwoman who’s fresh from her tour with Ace of Base; not to mention the complete incineration of Udo Kier, which I’ve been wanting to see for decades. The best moments in Blade, however, come in the film’s first ten minutes, when Wesley Snipes lays waste to a vampire rave, killing everyone in sight to the tune of Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up.” Oh. Sorry, it was New Order’s “Confusion.” I always get those two mixed up when it comes to recalling scenes of wanton violence set to techno.

I remember thinking, very clearly, that Blade would have been much improved had it been ninety minutes of Blade beating the living shit out of everybody — no chilling, mother-murdering Freudian subtext, no repeatedly groin-kicking hapless rent-a-cops, no Temples of Eternal Evil buried somewhere under Burbank, and certainly no fucking Donal Logue stinking up the joint with his repellent brand of sub-Jerry Lewis “annoying moron who can’t seem to shut up” schtick. Just ninety minutes of pure vampire-killing. Is that too much to ask?

Thankfully, it appears, Guillermo del Toro was thinking much the same thing. Blade II starts off with glorious, ludicrous, over-the-top action, and rarely bothers slowing down. Oh, sure, they make time for lawyer jokes, a vampire autopsy, and a sufficiently bad-ass slow-motion stroll across a parking lot to the pumping sounds of Massive Attack, but other than that, it’s all carnage, all the time. Blade fights vampires Fred Astaire-style in his own hideout. He fights them in a dance club. He fights them in the church inexplicably attached to the dance club. He fights them in the sewers. He basically fights them everywhere but in the can. (I was hoping Blade: The Series would feature an epic kung-fu smackdown set entirely in a men’s bathroom, but it was cancelled before I could see my dreams come to fruition. I really wanted to see Goyer’s inventive, lethal variation on the swirlie.)

Why It Goes to Eleven: The laundry list of sheer nerdy goodness in this movie seems to go on without end. Donnie Yen not only choreographs one of the fight scenes (the best of them, in fact), but is actually in the movie himself, whaling on vampires with his sword and pointing menacingly at things. Ron Perlman has an explosive device stuck to the back of his head, and Wesley Snipes grimly intones the immortal line, “now you’ve got an explosive device stuck to the back of your head.” There’s a league of vampire-hunting vampires called the Blood Pack, where everybody has tattoos, two-tone hair, and an adolescent’s idea of what constitutes a “cool” name, like Lighthammer or Priest. There’s even an evil lawyer, for Christ’s sake. And, late in the movie, Wesley Snipes defeats a room full of bad guys in motorcycle helmets to the pumping sound of Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up.” No, wait, it was something else. I don’t remember.

Blade II is such a terrific ensemble piece that Snipes, playing a somewhat stalwart and boring character, nearly vanishes in the midst of his peers. Kris Kristofferson is entertaining as the foul-mouthed Whistler, wisely resurrected for the sequel, uttering profane, homespun euphemisms and calling everyone “Buttercup.” (I personally am still holding out for a movie where Kris Kristofferson, Tom Waits and Willem Defoe team up to defeat supernatural threats. Working title: Grizzled Force.) Luke Goss is utterly badass as the antihero Nomak, and pulls off the mother of all on-screen swaggers. Luke Voss should play a bad guy in every flim ever made. I say that utterly without hyperbole. If God (or del Toro) is merciful, someone will put Voss in another role where he can swagger and glare and beat the living daylights out of people.

Favorite Thing Ever: Ron Perlman, whose epic majesty I barely need to go into. I’d watch Ron Perlman eat breakfast while he reads the newspaper. That’s how into Ron Perlman I am. I read the plot synopsis for Outlander, which stars Perlman, and came nigh unto soiling my pantaloons. I love him so much, I can even forgive his utterly terrible death scene in Blade II.

Anyway. Not only does del Toro know how to direct good cheese, he knows that he is directing good cheese. His DVD commentary is insightful and frequently hilarious, as he pokes fun at the movie’s “Shakesperean dialogue” and talks fondly of “sperm removal.” (Incidentally, if you ever have a chance to look at Blade II’s bonus features, the “Michael Bolton Hair” deleted scene, with commentary, just might be the funniest two minutes ever filmed.) Del Toro genuinely loves what he does, and it not only shows in every frame, but it comes through in his commentary, which is as joyful, goofy, bawdy, and energetic as the film itself.

So many sequels are pale shadows of the first film, but Blade II firmly overshadows the original. It is what the original should have been: gloriously bloody, nonstop fun.

Finally, in case you were wondering whether or not I would take time out to lambast Blade Trinity in this entry: no, I won’t.

OH GOD, MY LEG! JESUS CHRIST, MY GODDAMN LEG!

So this is actually the second version of Iron Man to be put out by Marvel Legends with a “-buster” appellation; there was a “Hulkbuster Iron Man” awhile back. So apparently, Iron Man has an armor designed to “bust” pretty much everyone in the Marvel Universe. “Foolkiller-buster Iron Man”; “Howard the Duck-buster Iron Man”; “J. Jonah Jameson-buster Iron Man.” The mind reels. Hey – since Hulk and Thor would normally be too much for Iron Man to handle, but then he can anyway, by just suddenly coming up with new armor, why not go all the way? “Mephistobuster Iron Man!” “Galactusbuster Iron Man!” Why the hell not? Stories in which problems are solved by altering the properties of made-up technology – satisfyin’!

OH LORD, ALL THE TECHNOLOGICAL ACUMEN IN THE WORLD WON’T FIX THIS!

Articulation: Standard – which is to say, excellent – for a Marvel Legend. It’s a bit restricted by his beefiness; it is further restricted by the nightmare of his right leg – see below.

Sculpt: Mostly: Fine, just fine. But then we come to the right leg. The knee-joint is twisted heavily, painfully to the right, in a way that can only be excruciating for Mr. Stark. No amount of reposing will get rid of the effect. And it makes your reviewer wince. Perhaps he got a defective figure; perhaps he did not. But you’ve got to assume that everyone who comes into your restaurant might be a food critic, yes?

WILL NOBODY HELP ME? OH GOD, WILL NOBODY HELP?!?

Paint: Perfectly fine, simple and all, except for the human face beneath the mask, where the skin-tone bleeds out onto the armor. Stupid! The paint-job on the variant figure – which is the Destroyer, a slate-grey Asgardian robot, who looks a good deal like this armor – should be simpler still; your reviewer will tell you when he gets it. (Hopefully, it’ll be in a healthier condition than Iron Man here.)

Durability: Aheheh – well, it is too late for poor Thorbuster Iron Man… But at least it appears that he is unlikely to suffer any further disfigurement.

Hoo boy…this is awkward…

Standeroo: Actually, remarkably fine, considering. The awesome articulation saves him – the feet themselves swivel on a forward-pointing axis, allowing a foothold even with the shin almost parallel to the ground. He probably shouldn’t be putting pressure on that thing, though.

Accessories: None for him, unless you count his armor’s faceplate, which comes off – always a nice touch. He has a MODOK piece, and a backdrop depicting a blasted waste, presumably where all this Thorbusting is going on. And the comic, the comic is “Iron Man” #409, or “Iron Man” #64, depending on how you look at it. Both numbers are on the cover; the second refers to the ‘reboot’ number, when “Iron Man” was restarted at #1, whereas the 409 counts from the original #1. Confused? You’re not alone – the publishers of the reprint claim it originally appeared in 1973, though it is plainly, on every level of design and content, much, much more recent. The publication information appears to refer to the original #64. Anyway, the comic has Dr. Doom in it, handled well, and your reviewer loves Dr. Doom.

Overall:

Although I am not the creator of the following image, it so neatly encapsulates my feelings on the new Eragon movie that I just had to include it here. So, please enjoy.