Kill Bubba
Ok, so it’s been a while….what’s up? Not too terribly much. Still looking for a band name, but slowly completing more songs. Finally got the harmony vocals worked out for “Blank Canvas.” Now we just need to polish up our performance for that one. We’ve got one and a half complete songs now…performance at open mic night soon? One can only hope….
I saw Kill Bill a while ago, which I loved, and Bubba Ho-Tep, which was completely different then I expected. I knew Bubba Ho-Tep was about an elderly Elvis and a black JFK fighting off a mummy, and starred Bruce Campbell, so I was expecting something much closer to Evil Dead/Army of Darkness, etc….lots of fake blood, over-the-top cartoon violence, and such. Instead the movie was more understated, melancholy, and somewhat character driven. The plot was mostly just a backbone to support Bruce Campbell’s take on the King, which was surprising. I didn’t even recognize him at first. The make-up was so well done, that I thought it was some older actor portraying the King at first, and that the movie was going to slip into flashback mode and switch over to Bruce. And Ossie Davis as JFK was brilliant. Kill Bill, on the other hand, was everything I expected, and a little bit more. Non-stop fast-paced action-packed bloodspray and mayhem. A ballet of murder and revenge. Where Bubba Ho-Tep uses the conflicts to outline the personality of the main character, Kill Bill skirts completely around the edges of Uma Thurman’s character’s psychology. All we know about her is that she’s disciplined, brutal, determined, and pissed. And we don’t need to know anything else, because the movie doesn’t work on any deeper level. It has no insights into the motivations and machinations of the characters, beyond what is actually seen on screen. Even the most moving scene in the movie, where the sword-maker Hattori Hanzo breaks a 28-year vow to God to never make an instrument of death in order to give the Bride her weapon to defeat his former student Bill, all the revelations of his emotions are direct and unambiguous. He is saddened and relieved of his obligation because he says he is. Everything we need to know is made clear on screen, and everyhting that is kept ambiguous is not. Simplistic, and yet complex techniques are at work here….
Picked myself up another Love & Rockets collection, “Wigwam Bam”. I’ve decided to slowly but surely build myself up a complete collection. I’m also waiting for some other comics to arrive, namely Bone #50 (I already have #51 and #52, but haven’t read them, since I missed #50), X-Statix Vol. 2 TPB, X-Force Vol. TPB 2 (the pre-cursor to X-Statix), and a Sin City collection. It’s been a while since I ordered them, but they should be here this week sometime. Can’t wait to read them. Iw as also thinking of picking up Azarello and Risso’s take on Batman, but it didn’t look all that great when i thumbed through it on the shelf, so I guess I’ll pass, for now at least.
Still working on a design for successless.org. There’s a new placeholder design up right now, but I’m still working on the final layout. Hopefully soon. I might do some of that today.
More later….
