HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA: He-Man + Cher = LOL

I wasn't one of the 14 million people who had seen this already. Are you like me?

This is why I love the internet with all my heart:

Chinese Game Of Thrones Season 2 Cover! Featuring Thor. Wow.

For those who haven't seen the gorgeous cover from a now legendary Chinese bootleg of Game of Thrones Season 2, feast your valyrian steel blades on this:

ZOMG it's Ned! Alive and well. How about that, eh? And he's Thor'd the fuck out. Remember that part in book 2 where Mr. Stark shows up and saves the day after having found Mjollnir, Thor's magic hammer? No? Oh right, that was just a Bath Salts hallucination. I'll never go to Bath & Body Works again.

Fun fact: Mjollnir literally means 'The Crusher'

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #95: Tales of an Ancient Empire (2010)

 Hi there. I'm a drooling man. I was featured prominently on the DVD cover. I'm in the movie for 5 minutes.

 
Beyond confusing
Sword and Sorcery green screen
Irredeemable

Albert Pyun made a film in 1982 that was named after the genre it was exploiting. It was The Sword and the Sorcerer. It had swords, it had sorcery. It was a sword and sorcery film.

It was released the same year as Conan the Barbarian, the film that kickstarted an 80s SnS craze that would reach into the B-movie production pits of Argentina and Italy and beyond. It was one of the very first of the Conan copy-cats, if not the first. It was certainly one of the highest budgeted. Many have been made, but few have been chosen by fans as a worthwhile blip on the heart rate monitor of the genre. The Sword and the Sorcerer has been chosen, because one cannot say no to a three-bladed missile sword. It fires its blades.


20 years later we get Tales of an Ancient Empire, promised originally to be a sequel to Sword and Sorcerer, it quickly changed. The only link it has to the first film is a brief cameo by the Sorcerer's star, Lee Horsley, who is falsely credited on IMDB.com as Talon. He didn't cameo as Talon, his old character. He was some other adventurer. That doesn't bother me all that much.

I'm bothered by the fact that it is, without a doubt, one of the most unwatchable films I have ever seen. That's no small statement for me. It'd be a good bet that it's in the five worst films I've ever seen list, among the likes of Night Train to Mundo Fine and Zombie Nation, utterly baffling films that aren't even enjoyable for being terrible.

Tales of an Ancient Empire is expertly convoluted. Each scene seems so unrelated to the previous one, so poorly paced, so disjointed, that I could swear I was watching a bad TV series boiled down into an 85 minute movie. An entire season of awful acting, terrible green-screenery, and embarassing dialogue. So, the green-screening. Most of the film is shot, judging by the special features, in a garage studio in front of a green screen. Most of the film consists of shots of characters standing in one place with some silly backdrop filled in. Like in the opening prologue - a prologue that lasts a good 10-15 minutes. It's effectively a feature film unto itself, and is the only section of the entire movie that's coherent because an annoying narrator tells you what's happening. Well, what should be happening. What you actually see is some guys in painfully obvious wigs playing at being samurai and swinging swords over a scroll-like backdrop, attacking nothing. FOR TEN FUCKING MINUTES. That's the equivalent to a text prologue by Robert Jordan (heron-mark swords rest his soul).

This prologue drudgery will in fact be better than the rest of the movie.

Most of the action is implied, and not in a way that lets you use your imagination. In a way that looks stupid. Like a picture of Kevin Sorbo sliding against a picture of a vampire. Or having a sword strike out slowly at the camera, as though the actor was afraid to hit filming equipment. Oh right, I keep forgetting Kevin Sorbo is in this. Likely because he isn't the main character. There doesn't seem to be one really. I guess the Melissa Ordway character is supposed to be, but her story is obscure despite being cliché, and whatever revenge resolution she was aiming for gets lost when the movie derails into epilogue. The narrator (and if you read my Conan review, you know I hate narrators) turns out to be an evil vamp by the end, and we get filled in on what the ending of the movie was to be. Sorbo somehow killed the vampire sorcerer but she came back to life in a desert and the vamps have taken over everything.

Vampires kind of usurp the movie. So much of the movie really is, without exaggeration, the entrance of some vampire character we've never seen before picking someone else we've never seen before and draining their blood. Sometimes turning them into a vampire. Rinse, repeat. Green-screen it, onto the next shot. It's like there's a vampire movie fighting for control of the sword and sorcery movie fighting for control with a California garage studio. Can't wait for the fucking sequel.

So: It takes a lot for a movie to defeat me. I am vanquished.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #94: Conan The Barbarian (2011)

 That's right. We've got Morgan Freeman's voice. And we're not giving it back.

Chicks wearing little,

Swords, axes, and sorcery

Somehow made boring.

Here's a little tip: if you go to see a movie and it starts off with voice-over narration, even if it's Morgan Freeman, it's probably going to suck. Hard.

Guess what Conan does. Then guess the result.

Narration's bad because going that route typically breaks that always important 'show don't tell' rule. Fantasy films just love to feel like story books and open with a prologue that clearly establishes you're about to enter into a magic realm full of dancing wizards and burrowing unicorns. But it doesn't ever need to because when you go to see a fantasy film it's a pretty safe assumption that you're going to see some fucking fantasy. That's the point. And if informing you that you're in for a wizardy time isn't their mission, then the voice-over will be there to fill you in on some legend or similar crap that will be of importance to the characters and to the movie's overall aim to be cliché. This they don't have to do either, because all that backstory stuff can be revealed as you actually watch the movie. We can figure it out. All it would require is a bit of careful writing, which is, of course, unfair to the diseased monkeys the producers of Conan chained to a typewriter in a Swedish dungeon.

What was worthwhile in Conan? Not much. You'd think scantily clan woman and swords would be enough, but it really isn't. I'd say only the appearance of Ron Perlman is worth watching, but after he departs the film never manages to reach that dizzying height again. The 3d sucked. Not just because the pop-outs were cheap, but the effects mostly looked like paper cut-outs walking over paper cut-out backgrounds. It's way over-scored, meaning that the soundtrack plays way too much and is overly epic at points that don't call for it. There's a pointless sex scene with an even more pointless romance that just wastes time and patience. The female character involved is token at the best of times, which I guess I was expecting, but part of me hoped for more. I probably shouldn't have hoped for any kind of sophistication once I heard some of the dialogue. Some key lines were, and I quote, "Barbarian, I don't like you anymore" and "Barbarian! I'm going to kill you with your father's blade!" And Conan just shouting "Die!!" as he kicks someone. It was like a grade 7 writing exercise.

You know how movies that think they're being clever will often have a line uttered early on in the film by the bad guy and then later on the good guy will use the same line once the tables have turned? And you can twitch in your seat and pee in your pants and whimper something like 'omg thatz wut he said b4.' That line repetition is meant to be witty or ironic, but in Conan it felt like it was done just to strike that movie cliché off the list.

There was just a hell of a lot of shoddy thinking. More than could be excused. Like enemies that were clearly just Pict-esque human dudes in warpaints snarling like they were supposed to be orcs or werewolves or something. They actually used animal sound effects for them. And there's a scene where a ship is being boarded in the secret hours of the night, but within moments the intruders are discovered and a fight breaks out onto the deck – and it's broad daylight. The movie pays so little attention to itself that it fails even to get the most basic thing about Conan right – that he's a badass. Conan's not really supposed to be a good guy. He's actually a pretty huge dick. But this incarnation made him out to be a noble savage fighting the good fight, saving the girl, overthrowing the evil overlord etc. etc. The actions and motivations of the characters in general seemed arbitrary and stripped of import or gravity. Fairly early on in the film I came to the realisation that I didn't care about what was happening on the screen, and was far more interested in the backs of the heads of people I didn't know sitting in front of me. That one's balding. That person left her hat on. Isn't she overly warm? What does she do for a living? That was me hungry for character.

 

Just try and care about me. I dare you.

I was somewhat happy to see a two-bladed sword in the movie. Not a blade for each end of the stick mind you, a sword with two blades running parallel to each other. Hadn't seen anything that silly since Sword and the Sorceror's three-bladed canon-sword.

So: Has potentially destroyed an already shakey market for sword and sorcery films that aren't The Hobbit.

Under The Influence: Masters of the Universe Tribute Art Show

In my online travels today I came across this wicked 2010 gallery show filled with artwork inspired by the inimitable He-Man. There's a long post filled with some great imagery to be found at this link. There's something I find really compelling about artwork made through the regurgitation of cartoon imagery, especially from a terrible cartoon. He-Man was sold to us, most of us bought it, and now we seem to be trying to give it some kind importance. Judging by the gallery show, that manifests sometimes as the attachment of dignity through some kind of poetic understanding, the stripping of dignity like the above piece, or simply the urge to see these oddly beloved characters actually drawn well for a change. The animators of the original show certainly didn't give a shit.

 

 

The show included an amazing piece from one of my fave artists: Skinner. You might recall my admiration from one of my first blogposts. Behold!

 Skinner's 'He Who Walks The Path Of Titans, Knows Not What Faith Will Bring'

Originally posted on my blog, qfaq.blogspot.com.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #73: Amazons (1986)

High adventure in progress.

This wildly entertaining sword and sorcery flick, like most of them, comes to us from the dark and time-fogged forests of the 1980s. Under the supreme command of dread mogul Roger Corman, a screenplay was commissioned to Charles Saunders, who based his script off a short story he wrote for an anthology called, coincidentally, Amazons!. So that Amazons! was apparently the first significant anthology of fantasy works using female protagonists and written by a mostly female cast of authors. You'd expect, then, that the Amazons under review is an interesting feministical text where warrior women fight for equality and independence in a harsh and largely masculine world, right? Well yeah you get that. Only with boobs. Lots of boobs. This is a film, after all, and it is common knowledge that only films with boobs do well. I remind you of Titanic.

If you've seen as many 80s sword and sorcery movies as I have, you might recognise these common links:

• There will be a scene where a woman takes off her top.
• There will be a scene where women are swimming naked in a river and are being watched by drooling pervs.
• There will be a scene with sex in it.
• It is made in Argentina.

We will not be given armour or be clothed against the elements.

Amazons is of course about a tribe of warrior women. They are under the command of a queen who rules over a kingdom currently under siege by an evil wizard named Kalungo. When I hear the name Kalungo I can't help but imagine a cute baby elephant, a born in captivity type that's maybe the result of a worrying but in the end rewarding pairing. Not so much a demon-enslaved lightning-throwing sorcerer. After doing some quick online digging, however, I find to my shame that a kalunga, or calunga, is a Brazilian descendant of runaway slaves. The word can mean many things, and is oddly enough used both as a derogatory racial label and as a byword for someone who is famous or important. Go figure. Charles Saunders is African-American, and I wonder if the link here is merely coincidence or some interesting subtext.

Oh, right, the movie. So anyway the amazons need to quite obviously find a magic sword since it's the only thing that can stand up to Kalungo's evil magic. Two amazon babes are sent on the quest, and it's hilariously wonderful. It's great fun to watch people use prop weapons they've never handled before. Especially when they haven't been given much supplementary training. You're basically given a bunch of calendar models who drill practice their spear maneuvers with 'What if I really hurt someone?' hesitance. A real winner's attitude on the mock-battlefield. Sword duels can sometimes look half-decent, but largely possess a 'What am I doing?' grace that lends the whole production metric ass-loads of charm.

So: A fantastic watch with friends. Can't get enough of this stuff.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #68: The Color of Magic (2008)

This mini-series, comprised of two films, is based off of the incredibly charming work of Terry Pratchett, a British writer of glib, comical fantasy novels. I had seen the Hogfather about a year ago without realizing that it was a Terry Pratchett piece, and was amazed to find that I was watching a fantasy film that wasn't shit. In fact, it was probably one of the best fantasy films I'd ever seen.

The Color of Magic doesn't achieve the same kind of gravitas that the Hogfather reaches, but offers enough to endear me to Terry Pratchett's world, and more importantly, his characters. Color follows a lovable, aged, and underachieving wizard by the name of Rincewind who's studied magic for 40 years only to find that he can't really do anything particularly magical. There's grand adventure and whatnot, as is typical of the genre. But Color will poke fun at that.

The acting is half-way decent and the comic deliveries tend to be pretty entertaining. And ladies, start your swooning, because Color stars none other than "Mr. Samwise Gamgee I was in Lord of the Rings!" Sean Astin himself! You've shit your pants with amazement, since I can smell the sickly sweet excitement from here. Technically, more starring than Sean Astin is David Jason as Rincewind. He's the voice of Count Duckula! Remember him? And Mr. Toad from the Wind in the Willows! David Jason is terribly charming despite having a first name for a last name. Oh, and you get to watch Tim Curry get his evil wizard on. Damn right.

You'll also get a fascinating world to learn about, one that's flat like a disc and sitting atop four huge celestial elephants that are in turn sitting atop a huge space turtle. The whole world is strung together by oddity and humour.

I was surprised to find some fitting and strange film homages as well. Like a scene spoofing the famous "What is best in life?" scene from Conan the Barbarian, and references to Monty Python's Holy Grail and Star Wars. The strange one comes as a visual homage to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as the heroes dash out from a hiding place in slow motion, slinging spells like pistols in a last-ditch effort while under heavy spell-fire themselves. Where the hell did that come from? I mean I like it, but WTF, as the French say.

So: The jokes are sometimes over explained, but since it's so wildly imaginative, it never ceases to be interesting.

New Conan Stills

Haven't seen any of the stills released for the new Conan flick? NOW YOU CAN IF YOU ARE STRONG AND FREE FROM THE YOKE OF MORALITY LIKE CONAN

Word is that the film will be released next year. And Rose Mcgowan is supposed to be in it. Not much detail beyond that. She was supposed to star in Robert Rodriguez' Red Sonja until their romance went badly. Could she be Red Sonja in Conan? Could it possibly be...a Robert E. Howard crossover!? Mcgowan is, of course, allowed to say very little about the topic, though the first picture you'll see after clicking the link supposedly features her, I wonder if it's just a dirty trick. The secrecy seems strange.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #66: Krull (1983)

Read it and weep, boys.

I’d first like to thank Krull for giving the Glaive to the world. Once I find it, locked away in some (no doubt) nearby mountain, life’s going to be a whole lot more interesting. I can’t think of one life-situation where a glaive couldn’t be applied to achieve great success.

If you don’t know what the Glaive is I’d imagine you’ve never seen Krull, and I would think, furthermore, that you’d better get on that before the Slayers arrive. They’re evil and blackly armoured juggernauts that take people’s planets from them. Then they give the enslaved worlds over to their boss, who is the Beast. I don’t think you want that. If you do, you are what’s called a bad person.

The Beast will likely kidnap a princess and try to wed her, and if you, dear reader, are a prince, I’m afraid you’re going to have to do something. You’re going to have to find some British actors, band together, and find The Beast’s wonderfully surrealist fortress. Getting in and saving the day is going to be dangerous.

But at least there’s the goddamned Glaive, which is shaped like a big starfish and has retractable blades and you can throw it around and control it with your mind. And guess what! The Beast fucking HATES it.

All in all Krull is a glittering and melodramatic science-fantasy done well, which makes it a lot of fun. It might feel a bit long, but the amazing James Horner score should make up for it. And the Beast looks like the creature from the black lagoon after his black lagoon became a toxic nightmare.

So: Give Krull a try so you’ll know what to do when the Slayers come.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #49: Tarkan Vs. The Vikings (1971)

I am going to talk about Turkey.

Turkey’s typically drab and melodramatic cinematic output was slim to nil until the late 1960s hit the country like Attila the Hun. Turkey’s film industry exploded in the blink of an eye, and what once was the meagre production of a handful of films a year became approximately three hundred, at its apex. This explosion resulted in the creation of a mad host of exploitation films, filled with all the violence, sadism, sex, and senseless nudity that defined the genre. Drawing much inspiration from 1930s and 1940s American serials (the likes of Zorro, Flash Gordon, and Tarzan), the Turkish pop cinema often showcased the ultra-cliché: testosterone-powered soldiers, masked superheroes, and indomitable barbarian sword-slingers. These films shamelessly ripped material from popular Hollywood films, stealing soundtracks and even going so far as to insert whole film sequences. Of the most famous is the notorious ‘The Man Who Saves the World’ (1982), or ‘Turkish Star Wars’ as its affectionately called. Check it out on youtube.com, it’s all there.

As TV took hold in the 70s, the Turkish cinema began to flounder. Distributors began to insist on racier sex scenes in an attempt to draw people back into the theatres. It worked, and for a time the theatres were packed tighter than ever before. According to Aytekin Akkaya (of Turkish Star Wars fame), the cultural climate was all but sexually free, and the soft-core sex scenes that the films contained (mostly little more than topless women, in truth) were a necessary release.

By the time the 80s rolled around, the Turkish cinema had just about exhausted itself, and American cinema had taken its place upon Turkish screens. Sadly, the bulk of the films produced during this period of boom are lost – many films were actually destroyed for the silver contained in the negatives.

BUT TARKAN VS. THE VIKINGS REMAINS. And you must see it. Based off a popular Turkish comic book, Tarkan features a patriotic Turkish barbarian, upholding Turkish ideals, fighting Vikings and giant octopi, and laying with Valkyries and exotic oriental assassins. For your trouble you’ll get to see another film on the dvd, one titled The Deathless Devil (1973). This one’s a superhero film, and while perhaps not as grand, it is well worth the watch if you’ve some friends handy. You’ll even get to see the featurette from which, in the spirit of Turkey, I have stolen the material for this article.

So: I can't express how much I love this movie.

Oglaf - Perverse Fantasy Comix

Check out this wonderfully perverse fantasy webcomic at Oglaf.com.

Heard from a friend that the cartoonist had originally intended to create a porn site, but ended up with a webcomic similar to the historic Sexy Losers series. Oglaf is graphic, taboo shattering, and really very clever. Playing with fantasy tropes is a good way to get on my good side. Example: the super-charged machismo of Conan. Oglaf gives us Kronar.

And if the raunchy stuff doesn't typically impress you, it isn't always the crux of the joke:

Miyazaki Has Made a PS3 Game!

Legendary master of animation Hayao Miyazaki, creator of Princess Mononoke and other fantastic films, has decided to make an RPG. That news fills my heart with joy.

Looks pretty wonderful, like all Miyazaki projects. So far it seems like it's just in Japanese, and there's no telling whether or not we'll see an English release in North America. But fingers crossed! And please buy me a gaming console.

Here's a vid!

Dragon Age Anime Announced

Game giant BioWare and anime giant FUNimation have teamed up to produce a direct to DVD anime film that will expand on the Dragon Age universe, and is slated for release sometime next year, likely to coincide with the release of the next Dragon Age title. BioWare has mentioned that they're aiming for a classic style of anime, which, I hope, means something akin to anime greats like Akira and Ninja Scroll.

The world waits....

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #37: The Wild Hunt (2009)

All you need is LARP.

I'm really glad that this didn't suck. I'd been waiting for this one to hit the Princess pretty eagerly, since hearing of it and its concept. I dared hope that I could look forward to a Canadian film I could actually endorse with honesty. It's not perfect, but it's good, and left me with the kind of reflective aftertaste that films like Apocalypse Now and Deliverance left me with - that is, a strong brooding on the lizard-brain, violent animal nature in humanity, lurking on the periphery of consciousness and waiting for a chance to assert itself. Powerful film titles to evoke, I know, but the first that came to mind. Wild Hunt doesn't approach their mastery, but is certainly effective in its conceits and is able to work within its own logic.

Wild Hunt follows Erik, a young guy who's girlfriend, Evelyn, has been seeming disaffected towards him and her life. She decides to leave him, and he finds out that she's been immersing herself more and more heavily in the secluded LARP camp that she frequents. Catching some looks from the LARP boys in the car she jumps into, Erik suddenly starts to think that Evelyn has been dishonest in her motivations for leaving and that she's left him for another man. He decides to track her down and speak to her, in a bid to win her back. Things get bad for him. Indeed, the film was much rougher than I had expected, and gave me some sequences I had to work not to flinch from. And not for any gratuitousness.

For those unfamiliar with LARP (Live Action Role-Playing), it's basically Dungeons and Dragons ramped up to its logical conclusion - people in detailed costumes, pretending to be historical or fantastical characters of their own creation in an immersive role-play driven environment. Their conflicts and interactions are governed by Dungeons and Dragons-like game rules, and typically, these activities take the form of large camping events in specialised camp grounds lasting days at a time.

Oddly enough, I actually hadn't expected Wild Hunt to play up the nerdiness of the characters to the degree of comedic effect it went for, and whenever it did it felt pretty hokey and reminded me that I was watching a movie, likely in a theatre with a handful of actual LARPers. I wondered how they were reacting to their representations on the screen. At any rate, it was a bit of fan-service that could probably have been put aside for the much weightier and more interesting characters through which the film does its best work. There are tender and profound moments to be seen, and an ending I absolutely loved.

So: Check it out if you get another chance and support some Canadian filmmaking worthy of your loonies.

Ryan Watches a Motion Picture #33: Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire - Season 1 (2009)

For a fantasy junkie such as myself, the prospect of a heroic fantasy-inspired TV comedy is very, very enticing. So enticing that I've been working on my own web series for about two years. Here's a shameless plug. I thought I might have been the first to offer such a thing to people, but it turns out that at the exact same time, in some dank Comedy Central dungeon, a show entitled Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire was being produced, which, jealousy aside, only manages, sadly, to hit the 'OK' mark.

While there are some good and clever gags, the show's humour relies far too much on penis jokes and homophobia. Sometimes both hitting you at once for a dual-tech of stupid. There's also a lot of the show's sole female character showing skin and having frequent sex. The show is very clearly written by men, and, more importantly, men into the kind of male wish fulfillment you can find in the most boring fantasy writing. The characters on a whole aren't terribly likable, save for the bad guys. Indeed, the most entertaining stuff is found when you can watch the fickle and evil Chancellor Dongalor (chancellor's always seem to be evil) and his painfully more competent and wonderfully polite attendant Barnabus. They're a real treat, and in Dongalor the series eventually comes to present a character that calls for some genuine emotional investment. So kudos to the writing there.

So: I suspect that as the series goes on and the writers abandon their more basic strategies for the stuff that really works best it'll really become something worth watching.

Canadian Fantasy Writer Guy Gavriel Kay to Appear in Waterloo!

So you see, it was actually eating their souls all along. I like stories that turn out that way.

I do too, Kay. I do too. And I'll tell you that when I see you at Wordsworth Books in Uptown Waterloo this Wednesday, the 27th. It's located across from Waterloo Town Square.

Guy Gavriel Kay, famed canuck fantasy writer, will be at a book signing for the release of his latest - Under Heaven. It's either 10 bucks to get in or the purchase of his book. If you dig Kay, you may want to sashay that way.

Ok. So far I've read his beloved Fionavar Tapestry series and a book of his poetry. Decent shtuff.

Ryan Watches a Motion Picture #3: Sauna (2008)

I couldn't turn this one down: a ghost horror film set in the 1500s.

Looks like the Swedes and the Russians have ended a 25 year war and are now collaborating on the mapping of new borders. Things are tense between factions and its terribly important that nothing goes wrong. Naturally, something occulty goes down.

All in all, I'm fairly sold on the film for packing a cool dark age atmosphere of damp, mid-winter forestry and mud, great set design and costuming, and morally ambiguous war-weary characters. But sadly, about two thirds of the way through, Sauna starts to overdo it with the haunting stuff, and would have benefited by playing it much more low-key and infrequent. The creepiness it does well to evoke eventually loses much of its power, and it gets caught up in outdoing itself with its spookiness and minor plot twists to the point where some stuff happens that really doesn't make much sense, and you're left a bit lost as the stakes get higher.

So: A pretty unique European dark age spin on the kind of thing usually done on the Asian ghost horror scene.

Ryan Watches a Motion Picture #20: The Clash of the Clash of the Titans, Part 2

Clash of the Titans (2010)

Hello! I am Sam Worthington, a 'player' in this 'recorded play'

I mentioned before that the 1981 Clash of the Titans has more vitality than this remake. Here's why!

During the first ten minutes, I dared hope that I'd enjoy this remake. After an exposition-conquering, star-strewn opening sequence, we're given a few characters willing to call the gods out on their mistreatment of humanity. That'll always tickle my fancy. Defying the gods. Alright! Well and good. Until any weight that the defiance might have had evaporates once the movie actually starts to roll out. The plot is, unfortunately, loosely slung together with a poor man's mythology indicative of lazy writing - the mythological elements in the film seem throwaway where they should be an integral, organic part of the story.

Sam Worthington's performance is predictably weak. Whenever he tries to show any kind of inner turmoil, his face kind of stops half-way and then backs up, like he's not sure he's pulling it off because he isn't. That made me laugh at least. His interactions with the party of heroes assembled for the quest is unremarkable, and is filled with heaps of really lame male bonding sequences between token characters I don't care about. And there's a completely inexplicable race of Djinn people that join the party and bust out inexplicable powers now and again. These powers are called deus ex machina.

It all comes to feel like a failed attempt at Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films, complete with bombastic CGI events and a dude that looks and sounds like Orlando Bloom - which is to say, a dude that makes me want to throw a fiery anvil covered in bees into his face.

Even Liam Neeson's role comes off the screen a little thin (and he's effing ZEUS), but Ralph Fiennes is, at least, fun to watch as Hades. I was kind of rooting for his cause, but he had this fatal flaw - instead of being a fucking god and tearing shit up with his immense power, whenever he wants someone taken down he decides to split himself up into five or six winged demon things that really aren't that powerful. Not sure why Hades would bother with that when he seems to do pretty well by not doing that.

So: When Medusa is referred to as 'the bitch' at the end of a not-so-stirring speech, you know your movie is cinema slurry.

Ryan Watches a Motion Picture #19: The Clash of the Clash of the Titans, Part 1

Clash of the Titans (1981)

Expecting the 2010 remake to be pretty mediocre, I re-watched the original Clash of the Titans earlier in the day so I could sit in the theatre and hoom and hah to myself and try my hand at something called 'just a position'.

Well, usually referred to as legendary stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen's best film, Clash is a simple but fairly satisfying Hollywood romp of the pedestrianly operatic, effectively campy variety. Director Desmond Davis, who's repertoire consists mostly of British television, hasn't made a great film here, but it has to be said that Clash is certainly endearing. That's likely due to the producing and special effects charm of Ray Harryhausen and his menacing (or plucky) creatures. Laurence Olivier as Zeus doesn't hurt either.

The jewel of the film, I think, is Harryhausen's Medusa sequence. Here we get a fantastically animated, darkly lit Medusa, stalking slowly through a cluttered hall of pillars, picking Perseus' comrades off one by one with haunting stone stares and well-placed arrows. When Perseus is the last alive, his fearful wait before his last-ditch effort plays out slowly, and is earnestly tense. This is indicative of Harryhausen's thoughtful and deliberate style, and that scene is replaced in the remake with a barefaced CGI chase sequence. Ugh.

So: This one has more vitality and character than the remake.

The Most Metal Painter on the Planet - The Art of Skinner

A Shadow Out Of Time

When I came across Skinner's work it was as though Col. Kurtz's crystal bullet entered my brain. I'm enthralled by the clarity it hits me with.

He started out by painting hats and purses. Then he met a guy who was starting up a skateboard detailing company called Blood Wizard. Blood Wizard is also, incidently, what I should legally make my middle name. He uses Cel Vinyl paints, which is the sort of paint that animators use to colour animation cels. This gives his work a kind of He-Man caste; a sense of the bizarre, psychedelic cartoon worlds that kids internalized in the 80s. I love the alien but familiar physicality of Skinner's characters: they have this visceral, sinewy detail that pushes into the psycho-sexual. Gives me the heebeejeebs.

Forgotten Ones, Bogsmen Of Great Skill And Weapon Making

Between Man & Beast

It really captures the primal, haunting, atavistic whisperings that lie at the heart of two subcultures I tend to give a lot of importance: Fantasy and Metal. Both, when earnest, an attempt at reconnecting with some ancient aspect of ourselves. Pointing a finger at the lizard part of our brain and attempting to reconcile with it. Skinner's stuff seems to be emerging from that particular human fascination, which is a fascination that sure takes up a steaming helping of my time.