one zombie in a billion

So after a great movie night of Casino Royale and Pulse, tonight I’m gonna hit the books.

Of the movies in question Royale was the strongest, Craig makes a fine Bond with a far more fleshed out character (who owes more than his blond hair to Jack Bauer) the story was fantastic and a welcome departure from the doomsday mcguffin that weighed down the later James Bond movies.
It was a little strange to hear Eva Green with an English accent, but I thought she did a wonderful job as Vesper Lynd and between her and Craig, they really sold the horror of Bond’s work. I really look forward to seeing where this series goes.

Pulse was alright, Kristen Bell is always lovely to look at, but story wise it fell flat. Like a lot of the Japanese to American horror films — this one was Kairo in Japan — they eschew the social subtext and bring shock after shock, which are telegraphed to the point that I wonder when blank space and foreboding music ever led to a viewer being shocked. There’s some excellent cg work though that really pops, so that helps.

Now onto the stock pile of books, in my current pile:

• Layout — Gavin Ambrose, Paul Harris
• Nemesis The warlock
• Strontium Dog
• Lunar Park — Bret Easton Ellis
• Geometry of Design — Kimberley Elam

Somewhere between all that I need to design this place…

Spent the last week staying with my Nana, helping her around the house since she had her hip operation, was a pretty good week kinda quiet, but on the upside I managed to get through Kavalier and Clay, Hitchhiker’s Guide and V for Vendetta.

Kavalier and Clay is just brilliant, the story is an amalgamation of the experiences of many Golden Age comic book creators, such as Will Eisner (The Spirit), Sigel and Shuster (Superman) and CC Beck (Captain Marvel). The comic creation parts of book really drew me in and really got me excited about the medium again, in fact after reading about Joe Kavalier’s amazing pencil work, the first thing I did was break out the George B. Bridgeman and Burne Hogarth anatomy books and started drawing.
The self destructive natures of Josef and Sammy throughout the tale are harrowing and well embellished to the point that when the book took a downturn it pretty much ruined my mood for the whole day.
I’d recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in the history of comics and of the experience of growing up in New York in the 1940s, excellent read.

Right, I’m going back to the drawing board.

Title and Registration – Death Cab for Cutie (“Transatlanticism”)

Technorati Tags: Kavalier and Clay, michael chabon

Wee update of stuff I’ve picked up this week:

• Citizen Kane Special Edition dvd – Somehow I’ve never gotten round to seeing this until I bought the dvd. Simple put, it was amazing, lives up to it’s reputation. Welles was brilliant, really don’t need to go into this any further cause you all know how genius this film is anyway.
• Lodown 44 – New issue of the always brilliant dutch culture mag. There’s an awesome interview with James Lavelle and Ian Brown, pictures of the car that Haze designed the exteriors of and some photo journalism of the Mars Volta on tour. Great stuff.
• Writing Urban Calligraphy and Beyond – Great book on the study of graphitti fantastic stuff.

Kane is available at amazon.

Lodown and Writing – Urban Calligraphy and Beyond are available at the always awesome Analogue books