There’s a transcendent, almost alchemical, moment towards the end of  Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic, when Bill Murray finally encounters the Jaguar Shark, with the most perfect Sigur Ros track playing over the soundtrack. There’s a similiarly perfect moment in The Darjeeling Limited, when the narrative pauses to offer a glimpse into the world of every minor character in the story, ending with a tiger that’s only been referenced up to that point. Saw Moonrise Kingdom last night, and there are not one but two such moments in it. It’s brilliant, i love it, and Bruce Willis and Ed Norton fit so perfectly into Anderson’s regular troupe, i hope they continue on. Highest possible recommendation,  urge you to seek this out.

How does it rank against Anderson’s other films? Don’t know yet, need to see it another 3 times to answer definitively (so probably by monday…), but it’s definitely up there, and it’s my favorite of the year (at least until TDKR arrives.)  Also, i’ve long hoped for a Wes Anderson-directed comic book movie, but given the depth of performance he’s able to evoke  here from teen leads Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward, and the increasing number of toy brand-based films, can’t help but think he’d do something  astoundingly dope with a live-action Monster High or Pokemon.

Teh 5 best of 2012 (so far…)

5. Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie – #5 was a toss-up between The Hunger Games and T&E…gave the edge to the movie with more James Quall.

4.  Haywire 

3.  The Avengers - i’ll admit Mark Ruffalo was great here, but Moonrise will definitely get you wondering how much better it could have been, had Norton returned…

2. Safe - promise i’m not being a bitter DC fan putting an action movie nobody saw over The Avengeres…loved Avengers, but Safe is really that good. Best final boss fight since Equilibrium. 

1. Moonrise Kingdom

I also kinda wanted to see Men in Black 3 over the weekend…that desire has been amplified by this superbly executed hybrid, Moonrise in Black:

Hmmm…big, pro-military movie starring 2 of the highest profile Republicans in Hollywood as elite soldiers on a mission to overthrow a sinister, subversive, psuedo-President suddenly gets its release pushed back to 4 months after the big election that’s beginning to look more difficult for the incumbent than initially expected?

Seems curious to me, but what do i know. Movies that buy superbowl ad time probably get delayed 9 months all the time.

potential upside: Hasbro has time to get its act together, and release some damn Joe/Cobra Kre-O construction sets…and maybe it really will generate bigger profits in March, so we could get a sequel with Serpentor.

If you bought anything on our wishlist, please do send me an email…turns out Amazon doesn’t send out any kind of alert when this happens, so i had no idea any purchases had been made.

New cosplay set shortly, and will have a new video out this week to Post-Human Pin-Up backers, and everyone else who’s helped support all this nonsense.

Snark rescinded. Earlier today, Warners released their “Rain” and “Snow” series, two new themed sets of character posters for The Dark Knight Rises, and i want all of them. Particularly the two Catwoman posters, and the Bane in the rain one. Amazing images.

Bane and Batman ones post-jump.

Read more on “Enamored all over again” »

Apparently this is the newest poster for The Dark Knight Rises, and apparently i’m not completely in the tank for everything Batman and/or Christopher Nolan, as i kinda hate it. Seen infinitely better fan-made one sheets, and is Bale supposed to be riding the Bat Street Luge from The Brave And The Bold finale? Looks like he’s trying to luge out of this lame poster…

I’ll just pretend it doesn’t exist, and go back to lighting candles to this, one of my all-time favorite movie posters, from the last Batman movie…it’s almost like a Frank Quitely drawing come to life, and has a perfectly appropriate Fight Club vibe.

There look to be three members of the 8+ club this year, movies i’ll happily pay to see more than 8 times in the theater, between The Dark Knight Rises, Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, and Skyfall, the Sam Mendes-directed new James Bond film, the first teaser trailer for which is embedded above, and Jesus does it look gorgeous.

Three 8+ movies in one year is a definite outlier, and hasn’t happened since 2002 (Solaris, Punch Drunk Love, The Rules of Attraction, Equilibrium)…closest i’ve come since was 2009, with Watchmen and Crank 2.

I know the consensus is that the last Bond film, Quantum of Solace, was a disappointment, and i thought so too, initially…Casino Royale was a very, very tough act to follow. But fuck if it’s impossible not to respect the massive balls it took to basically make Al Gore the villain of the piece, and call out anthropogenic global warming as the creepy control strategy it’s kind of been revealed to be (imho), subsequent to the film’s release. Also, the Bregenz Opera House stuff has become one of my all-time favorite (mostly) dialouge-free action sequences.

Skyfall is due out November 9, 2012.

New alt superheroine cosplay pics, the first part of a series, featuring Kat in a set inspired by Peter Chung’s beyond brilliant Aeon Flux. If you’ve never watched the original serials, or the longer-form episodes, they’re all available for free viewing on MTV.com. It’s my all-time favorite animated series, manages to encompass pretty much the entire spectrum of fetishes while waxing deeply philosophical, and i can’t recommend it highly enough.

Have had some requests from people wanting to donate to the site, with the Post-Human Pin-Up project now closed. Really appreciate that, and figured out a way to do it that will help keep this stuff going: set up an amazon wishlist here…just polaroid film, and amazon gift cards that will go towards a Macbook (never owned a Mac, but keep getting told how much better they are for editing video, so hope to try that at some point.) Buy anything on that wishlist, and you’ll get the same pdf ebooks, and access to bonus sets and videos, that Rockethub backers got/will get.

More pics post jump, and while i really do like these, they pale in comparison to this.

Read more on “New Veidt alt superheroine cosplay: Kat Flux vs ? (part 1)” »

Really late on updates here, sorry…was thinking long and hard about taking the Rockethub monies, renouncing my citizenship, and moving to Singapore. That, or my laptop’s hard drive died, there were a couple graduations i had to go to over the weekend, and Diablo 3. Either way, 2 new sets featuring Kat and Marnie are up now in the bonus section (if you already have the link/password, it’s still the same.)

Emails going out now to everyone who backed the Post-Human Pin-Up project on Rockethub…if you don’t have something from me by tonight, do feel free to yell at me.

During the brief sleep i got after getting home at 4am thursday from Avengers, had a dream where i’d coordinated with one of the local comic stores to have girls in costume for photo-ops on Free Comic Book Day, in exchange for signs/qr codes promoting the Post-Human Pin-Up project on Rockethub.com. There were balloons, media coverage, children getting pictures taken hugging inappropriately attired superheroines: it was glorious…and then woke back to stark. bitter reality where i’m nowhere near focused or motivated enough to actually do something like that. Fun while it lasted, though.

Big THANK YOU to everyone who’s backed this project, so far. As we’ve surpassed the original target, wanted to update a couple things:

So saddened to hear that Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys has passed: amazing musician, champion for Tibet, and Body Movin’ is on the very, very short list for best music video ever shot.

Godspeed, sir.