Pointless Man

I am a big fan of prolific Japanese director, Miike Takashi. His movies are not always good (which would be an accomplishment, considering he averages about three feature length films a year), but he doesn't mind experimenting or playing around. Not everything he tries works, but when it does, it can be pretty damn awesome. His subjects and genres vary wildly from a musical about a family running an inn, to a kid fighting goblins, to some of the best yakuza flicks I've seen. Meanwhile, he tends to get good performances from his actors, even when they are children or non-native Japanese speakers. The only time I've been completely disappointed with one of his pieces was a rejected instalment in Showtime's Masters of Horror , entitled 'Imprint'. The story was stupid, and the acting was bad. This was Miike's first all English production, and it showed. So, when I found out one of his 2007 films, Sukiyaki Western Django was in English, I was a bit put off. How ...

When I am at my mom and stepdad's place, I sometimes end up seeing movies I would never watch otherwise. Recent titles have included Codename: The Cleaner and A Night at the Museum , both of which were better than I would have thought, though the leads played to my expectations. Cedric the Entertainer is still hilarious, and Ben Stiller is still better suited to serious acting than comedy. While baking some banana bread, I also ended up seeing about half of Shut Up and Sing , the documentary about the Dixie Chicks pissing off all their patriotic country fans and dealing with the fallout. Getting past the terribly uninteresting music, the film was pretty interesting and well made. The Chicks and their manager can be genuinely entertaining as people, and watching the business side of things is fascinating. It's also disturbing to see just how dumb some of their former fans are. On my own, I've recently watched: Miike Takashi's 2007 flick, Crows Zero , is a stupid, but en...

After watching the unrated version of Doomsday I think it took an unnecessary beating at the hands of critics, but who knows how different the theatrical release was? I've enjoyed Neil Marshall's exploration of variations on horror tinted pulp, so far. I don't see how Doomsday was any worse than Dog Soldiers , but I guess people were hoping for his latest effort to top The Descent . Good luck there. Not only was he back to editing his own product (rather than Jon Harris, editor of Snatch , Ripley's Game , and Layer Cake ), but the synergy between writing and location in The Descent couldn't be improved upon. That movie was scary long before any traditional horror elements were introduced to it. As a film in the tradition of Mad Max and Escape from New York , Doomsday did just fine. It had a decently disturbing near future, a nasty supervirus, and some badass action sequences, including some really fucking cool fights. A few moments stretch the viewer's suspen...

I'm having some trouble working through the third page of 'Pointless Man: Death to Pretty Boy Groups'. It's not easy trying to colour separate hand coloured, digitally scanned drawings, but that's what I'm working with. Hopefully, I'll find the time and wherewithal to finish it and move on soon.

I don't understand people who say alternative energy sources aren't ready yet. If we're talking about cars, we've had electric ones for at least half a century, and we have all sorts of means of creating electricity, including existing alternative energy technologies, such as solar, wind, and thermo; all of which could be more efficient (kind of like our internal combustion engines), all of which could benefit from further investment in research and infrastructure, but which are already being used now. It's funny to hear the Republicans attack some Democrats for their tendency towards protectionist rhetoric, to hear Republicans deride Democrats for not accepting the forming global economy, and then to hear Republicans complain that we're giving too much money to foreign countries for their oil, and that we should be self sufficient when it comes to such matters.Then they briefly endorse alternative energies (which they never really want to talk about, unless it ...