Captivity

< The story is, these movie poster up there, featured on billboards and cabs, reportedly freaks enough folks out that...offended witnesses soon filed complaints to After Dark, who claimed error and explained that the concept was only one of several working ideas that were being considered for marketing to the general public. According to Courtney Solomon, who spoke on behalf of After Dark, it wasn't even supposed to have been approved, he followed by saying "To be honest with you, I don't know where the confusion happened and who's responsible." The squeamish factor of modern day American folks is indeed a mystery, of a mythological proportions. Guessed it must be the bloody tubes running down to the nostrills thingy.

Peter Kuper's The System

Was alerted to Peter Kuper's new work, "Stop Forgetting to Remember: The Autobiography of Walter Kurtz" and while browsing his stuffs at Amazon, go all kinda nostalgic with his masterpiece, The System. Boldly envisioned and masterfully presented, the highly stylised art provides one with a heightened sense of point of view at New York, as the reader follows the trail of several New Yorkers through all the gritty dark corners of the cold hard city, and concludes when all protagonists's path clashes to a moving end. Can't pass it up.

"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die." - Howard Phillips Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) . To the great macabre mind who departed on this day seventy years ago.

Tonight We Dine In Hell!

...Be watching the much anticipated, highly hyped up, largely raved, 300 tonight. Regardless, it certainly holds its own when it come to publicity items, as evidenced from the poster shown here, notwithstanding the fact that all images are directly taken from Frank Miller's original.

"...The Only Self-described Satanic Vampire Candidate Who Has So Far Entered The 2008 Race"

This crack me up. The American Secret Service have launched an investigation into one of the candidates for the presidency in 2008 – after he pledged that as President, one of his first acts would be to impale President George W. Bush. The candidate in question is Jonathon 'The Impaler' Sharkey, and he is running as the only self-described satanic vampire candidate who has so far entered the 2008 race. Sharkey's pledge to impale President Bush, he makes clear, will only come into effect if he is actually elected to office. But that has still triggered action by the Secret Service, who say they have a duty to investigate any threats against the president. Sharkey, 42, says that agents from the service visited him at home with his 19-year-old wife, Spree, to investigate his impaling pledge. Sharkey told The Columbia Chronicle about the visit: 'They were telling me, when they were interrogating me, that their job was to protect Bush even after he's out of office. I'm looking at them like, “Oh, you're going to defy me when I become president?”' Sharkey previously ran for President in 2004, and has run for Congress several time, occasionally as a Republican. Darrin Blackford, a spokesman for the Secret Service, disagreed that the investigation was an over-reaction: 'Unfortunately, in our line of work, we can't take that chance. As ever, we can count on the good ol' law professor for diverse complication as such. 'Under the First Amendment, what it boils down to here is whether or not he's a vampire who wants to impale the president,' law professor Neil Richards of Washington University in St. Louis told the Chronicle. 'I guess the question is, if he's a vampire, why is he the one staking people? Shouldn't he want to bite the president and feed on him?' added Richards, describing these questions as 'perhaps further evidence that this is not a true threat.'

Rorscharch Sighted

On A side note, kinda... Johnson is no stranger to comic-book adaptations, having written and directed Daredevil and Ghost Rider, both based on Marvel comics characters. In the case of Preacher, however, he felt that a feature film would not do the story justice. "Well, Preacher is 70-something issues," he said. "There was going to be a movie made of Preacher a while ago, and I read the script, and it broke my heart. Because I'm like, 'Oh, it's not a two-hour movie. Preacher's six years—six dedicated years of the most incredible stuff you've ever seen in your whole life. So I always thought HBO was the only way to do that." Absolutely agreed, and had to add that the traumatic almost-two-hours I spend in the cinema enduring Mark Steven Johnson's adaptation of "Ghost Rider", certainly has been courtesy of some spawn from hell intending to throw thirty-five years-thirty five dedicted years of Ol' Flaming Skull's comic coolness straight to hell. For crying out loud, my buddy and I spent the entire movie chanting "Flaming Skulls! Flaming Skulls!" Daredevil was hardly bearable, but Ghost Rider was obscenely bad. And now, one of my all time favourite, "Preacher", one of the best series to ever come out from the Vertigo imprint. Judging from the source material, it's gonna take a genius of a certain proportion and particular talent to screw this up. The problem: Genius specifically of such calibre makes up most of Hollywood. And, I'm more than convinced Mark Steven Johnson's one. Truth be told, in terms of comic adaptation films goes, this is practically the era of "Post Sin City" after the great showing of how it should be done. Thus, the next obvious choice, 300. And after another positive demonstration by Zach Snyder after the decent remade of "Dawn Of The Dead", he's moving on to the holy grail of them comic adaptation. Watchmen. Was so interested that I covered the failed Paul Greengrass/ David Hayter's project in these two entries earlier. And now that Rorscharch himself has shown up in a test shot of himself, complete with Comedian's Smiley button in hand, in a single frame at 1:52 in the R-rated 300 trailer below. As Alan Moore himself put it, "David Hayter's screenplay was as close as I could imagine anyone getting to Watchmen. That said, I shan't be going to see it. My book is a comic book. Not a movie, not a novel. A comic book. It's been made in a certain way, and designed to be read a certain way: in an armchair, nice and cozy next to a fire, with a steaming cup of coffee." Fingers crossed. Updated 15th March 2007: Damn. Warner Bros has taken down the trailer from the ever loving Youtube.

It's Bizarro's World. We Just Live In It.

Albeit some kinda particularly kinky porn-crazed Bizarro. A drill sergeant at Fort Eustis is accused of forcing a male trainee to dress as Superman and submit to sexual acts, according to court documents. According to a search warrant affidavit filed in Hampton Circuit Court, officials began investigating Estrada in August after a soldier reported Estrada mistreated and sexually assaulted him. The soldier told Estrada that he felt depressed after being relieved of his training status, and said Estrada suggested "a technique that he had used previously to help soldiers with their self-confidence and alleviate depression," the affidavit said. The technique involved role-playing scenes from a pornographic movie, which depicted a Superman character weakened by Kryptonite as the subject of sexual torture. "Estrada would verbally describe a sexual act of torture, relating to the pornographic movie, and (the victim) was to respond in a sexual manner by moaning," the affidavit said. The soldier also said he eventually was forced to "dress in a 'Superman' or similar outfit" while Estrada performed sexual acts on him. The soldier reported he felt if he didn't obey the requests, "Estrada would negatively affect his reclassification efforts." Soldiers from Estrada's previous unit reported Estrada told them to shed their shirts "so he could photograph their bodies in order to document physical development," the affidavit said. Others described being ordered to "dress up and pose in spandex and then told not to mention it to anyone." Should we call this new sexual psyche phenomenon "The Lex Luthor Syndrome"? Surely, no one else harbours such grave obsession for the good ol' Last Son of Krypt...

Jim Steranko's Chandler

Stumbled upon this cool image from The Art of James Steranko site . This rendition of Chandler, Steranko's private eye character in "The Silk Stocking Killer" from 1978, probably was a major inspiration behind the film noir art style of Frank Miller's Sin City, comprising stark perspective of light and shadows.