The textures have got to stop.

EXHIBIT A: Big Blue..um, Dark Blue?

There’s a new Superman movie coming: Man of Steel, directed by Zack (“you know you loved Watchmen, you hypocrite”) Snyder. My love for his take on the unfilmable graphic novel aside, what the hell has happened to Superman? More specifically, what has happened to the long underwear?

Dark and Gritty...yet shiny..wait, this is Superman, right? Bastion of Hope and Justice, and all that?

Did Supes encounter an enemy with a desaturation gun, and fight him in a tar pit?  And that cape is beginning to remind me of Spawn-it seems a little unwieldy. Maybe superstrength makes it easy to lug around. Or..oh, god, I dare not even think it: what if it’s CGI?

...maybe they're just rehearsing? That's it, (uneasy chuckle belying shaking hands) it's just rehearsal-they wouldn't give Superman a CG prehensile cape!

What happened here with all this butterfly wing filigree stuff? And bracers? Does an invulnerable superhero need armor? I always thought the term “shield” to describe the chest emblem referred to the shape, not the function. Maybe Kryptonian fashion was sort of like Asgardian, all warlike and stuff. But weren’t they, by most accounts, a race of scientists who had socially evolved past warfare? And how did Ma Kent get patterns from Krypton in the first place? Did they send a catalog along with their only son?

At least they ditched the red briefs, huh? Now we won’t be distracted by Superman’s crotch at all. (Did you just look at the picture again?) Especially since they got rid of the belt also, making him look like he’s ready to compete in some sort of S&M luge event. And, again..the textures have completely crept into the costume now, so the suit looks like it was made from the skins of wild alien blue basketballs.

Unlike our own domestic species, which are raised in farms.

I’m not entirely blaming Mr. Snyder (I really did love Watchmen, and I really am a hypocrite-both irrelevant here). Like lots of evil things, it started subtly, with the old “new” Superman, portrayed by Brandon Routh in Superman Returns, courtesy of  Bryan Singer. I loved his take on the Xmen’s outfits (including the requisite postmodern joke about yellow and blue spandex-”haha, you see what he did there?”, as I elbow an uninterested stranger in the dark cinema). However, with the Superman project, we started the dangerous drift towards wtf territory.

Tall, proud, and only slightly dark and shiny. The chest emblem looks like it could deflect bullets without kryptonian powers backing it up. But at least the suit still seems to be fabric of some kind.

Since Singer was obviously such a huge fan of the Richard Donner 70′s Superman movies, you have to wonder whether this subtle shift was due to other pressures besides taste..perhaps there is a small army of evil fashion ninjas who terrorize Hollywood directors into making things more…fabulous?

"Okay, I'll put little scales all over the shield and change the cape to leather-just please don't hurt my family!"

With or without Ninjonistas, I must implore (not for the first time, or last-even in this article) that film producers/directors/costume designers, and generally anyone with input: please back up off the griptape on the superheroes’ costumes. It’s impractical in the so-called real(istic) world: superheroes being easier to grapple can’t be good for fighting villains, not to mention that brightly colored costumes serve much better symbolically and to help those in need recognize which flying guy they should try to run towards rather than away from.  And in the traditional comic book universe point of view, can you imagine having to draw all that detail in every panel? Books are late enough as it is.

What exactly is wrong with this, anyway?:

Not-so-subtle patriotic propaganda notwithstanding, I mean.

Hey kids!  Try scrolling up from here to watch Superman’s outfit get dirty!

EXHIBIT B: The Amazing EXTREME Spider-Man

There’s a new Spider-man movie coming out, and while a lot of people are gabbing about Andrew Garfield-”Can a Brit be Peter Parker?”, “He’s too freakishly tall-it’s going to be DaddyLonglegs-Man!”, “Gwen Stacy is hot!”, and so on; I’ve only got eyes for the new costume. Sore, overworked, very sad eyes.

Here is what I’m talking about, and a very good example of my texture beefs:

Posture: check, hand positions: check, silver slippers: che....wait, what did you say?

He looks like some sort of 90′s Japanese fever-dream about combat skateboarding over lava flows. When I first saw this picture, I read some comments on the site where people were arguing that the “shoes” were just safety equipment for stuntmen, and the reflective surface was for cgi foot replacement. As crazy and dumb as that sounds, I still like that explanation better than these shoes being part of the new costume. I always pictured Spider-man as being lithe and agile, and wearing shoes seems kind of…well, clumsy and dumb.

Even in the Mangaverse-where he's a ninja, by the way.

And then, of course, there’s the crux of my angst-texture.  This new costume has texture EVERYWHERE. The emblem on the chest is broken up into grooved pieces, making it a texture within the texture of the fabric (Aren’t icons more effective as simpler solid shapes, Design School? That’s what you always told me, anyway)…even the eyes have a grill texture now. He looks like a cheap Spider-man speaker for iPod that you might find in a knockoff shop, fresh from the Chinese shipping container.

Turn up the music! Those eye-speakers are too small!

And if you ask a person on the street who is probably not a Spider-man fan (although maybe they’ve seen the first set of movies), “What is the defining pattern in Spidey’s costume?”, and then chase them until they stop screaming to be left alone and agree to answer, they will likely say “Webs! Now leave me alone, for God’s sake!”.  Makes some sort of twisted sense, right? A character based on a SPIDER theme might use WEBS in their costume, because logic is cooler than fashion.  Now look at the chest/abdomen that picture above. Watch as the clean, figure-defining lines laid down in the Sixties by artists degenerate into something that you would probably find on an art deco window, or maybe a bmx track.

The gloves in particular are a good example of “let’s change the pattern around, because arbitrary chaos is more interesting!”  And again, we’ve got major “basketballing” going on. While it could conceivably be argued that all the rubber grid on the suit makes it easier for him to stick to walls and such-I would counter that the first time he’s snagged from the air and bear-hugged by Rhino, or Venom..or hell, even the Vulture-he would regret all that friction.  The texturing is so overwhelming even the toys are suffering from it with this suit:

My toy lost a fight with a cat. And I spilled paint on it. And it has platforms.

Again, it’s not purely the fault of the new film that this is happening (although I blame them, personally-I’m a complex person like that). It started the first time Spider-man graced the silver screen, with the three (really good, pretty good, and not at all good) Sam Raimi-directed Spider-man films. They gave us the “silver raised webbing look” that previously I had only seen in some ridiculous thing called “Spider-armor”.

Hit the disco lights! It's party time! ( this is still better than the new suit)

At least the first movie costume was somewhat respectful of the original intent, even if it did make it look like Spidey had been wrapped in wire and could never feel anything with all that rubber (that’s the worst, isn’t it guys?-obligatory penis joke). The choice of coloring the raised webbing grey-sliver always struck me as strange, too. It just over-emphasizes the whole thing, in my estimation. But I’ll take over-emphasized webbing on Spider-man any day over the slight reference to webs in the new outfit.

They're so...raised!

This was also when the texture started, possibly for all recent superhero outfits in films (by virtue of this being the first major blockbuster in the genre in recent years, I suppose). As much as I love Sam Raimi and the two Spider-man films he made (we shall not speak of The Other here), this first pebble falling down the hill has turned into the avalanche of detritus we have to wade through now to see people in colorful clothes beating on each other on the big screen.

Harbinger of doom..portent of evil times..and a sad mess of a movie.

So, as with Superman, I am forced to ask: What exactly is so horrible about this?:

That's right, web-wings. Still not as dumb as silver slippers.

Or this?:

Stylish, iconic...obviously not suitable for movies. I mean, nobody watches movies with ninja in them, right?

Or even:

Uh..okay, not this one.

Hey Kids! Scroll up from here to see Spidey become an X-games athlete!

EXHIBIT C: A disembodied head can’t use a ring!

Ryan Reynolds portrays the classic Green Lantern, Hal Jordan in the new movie. Although this movie had been much anticipated by yours truly due to my fondness for the character, especially when Hal was wearing the superscience jewelry, I found myself unable to enjoy or balk effectively due to the overwhelming problem I had with the costumes. Mainly, the fact that what I was watching was the ghostly floating heads of actors rather than characters, even poorly written or portrayed ones. See, in this film the Lanterns are either entirely CG (almost all of them) or human actors whose bodies have been replaced with CG suits (Hal Jordan, Sinestro, and Abin Sur-don’t worry if you don’t know these people, you can still play the home game).  This was done, I assume, to make it easier to show the pulses of green energy flowing through what looks like the exposed musculature of the characters in these designs. And as much as some fans have expressed desire to eviscerate Reynolds for his portrayal, I do understand that CG is easier and less messy.

Look ma! No body!

So in this movie we have skinless muscle bodies, powered from within by a glowing green energy, with human heads precariously balancing on top. Seriously, in some parts of the movie Jordan swoops in for a landing and I swear his head lags behind a second, like the afterthought it is.

Like a handsome flesh balloon.

And as sexy and fit as Reynolds is, I’m not sure even his most fervent teenage girl fan contingent wants to see that kind of thing. Maybe in erotic horror fanfiction?

Hey ladies, this skin comes right off!

The mask also adds to this feeling, as it seems to be designed to sink the eyes deep into skull-like cheekbones. I thought Blackest Night was over already? (yeah, I know-only comic fans got that…but who else is really reading this anyway?)

This mask is inhibiting my peripheral vision.

Since there’s only one version of a film costume for Green Lantern, I can’t show a gradual progression into this madness. So we move directly into the comic book original comparison, and my small pitiful voice in the wilderness crying out.

What’s so wrong with this?:

Even watercolor and magic jewelry can't stop the awesomeness.

Hey, Kids! Stop scrolling back up now and listen to me talk to the Beast!

DEVIL’S ADVOCATE TIME:

D.A.: “So what if the movies are different from the books? The books aren’t even consistent themselves,  are they?”

ME: “The point is that non-comics readers are seeing this stuff and associating it with the characters. And being unfamiliar with the comics, they will not be used to accepting variants of characters, which further entrenches their (misguided) view that, say-The Green Lantern has no skin or that Superman needs wrist protectors. It’s important to the spirit of the character that as clear a picture as possible is presented to new people so fandom can develop honestly. I’m assuming that these new images of the characters are being developed to appeal to a broader (aka. teenage) audience, rather than at the imagination or story development of the creators or contributing artists.”

D.A.: “Who are you to say what shape the character development should take?”

ME: “I’m a fan, one of the people who support these little endeavours. Despite the example of George Lucas, I believe that generally creators should have their vision honored. I will concede that comics are a collaborative process by default, and movies even more so, but films like Captain America and Thor should show that modern film versions of comic book characters can retain some or all of the costuming of the comic and still appeal to fans and new people. Which in Hollywood speak means more money.”

D.A.: “Aren’t you a little old to be yammering about comic book stuff on the internet? And aren’t there enough commentaries by sad lifelong fans polluting the data streams, inbetween eating Doritos and drinking Mountain Dew?”

ME: “Vade retro satana!”

D.A.: “Okay, okay….douche.”

So-agree/disagree, if you’ve read this far I have at least met my goal of getting this off my chest and possibly planting my cranky fanboy seed into your minds. As far as the comic book costume changes go, I feel somewhat at peace now.

oh, crap.

The interesting part of all this came a few minutes later, as I slumped into a seat grumbling to myself about being so clumsy. There was no clamour, no notice, no indication of any kind that anyone at all had seen or noticed anything untoward happening at all. Being late at night, the platform was fairly deserted, except for maybe two other sad travellers like myself, but none down near my end of the train. And I have to assume that the whistle-blowing attendant wasn’t just being obnoxious and telling me to get on the damn train already, he or she probably didn’t see me at all.  So, what I came to realize pretty quickly was that if it had been a little worse-say for instance I had slipped completely through the gap to fall down where the train tracks are, and if I had somehow hit my head and been rendered unconscious or had the wind knocked out of me, I could very well have been under the train when it pulled away and no one would have noticed.  This would have, at the least put a damper on my evening, and more likely been a one-way trip to a dirt nap.  And no one would know, probably for hours. Probably not until the next security sweep of the tracks before the 4am trains, or maybe even not until the train arrived and crushed up what was left of me for the second time.

I am quite used to being alone. Thanks to my current situation with my wife (separated, estranged, waiting for a divorce, whatever you call it) and for my upbringing and isolated lifestyle; I am not at all unfamiliar with having no one know or care in particular where I am at any given time. And I have been depressed, sometimes bad enough sometimes that falling unconsciously underneath a train doesn’t seem so terribly bad. But I must say, last night didn’t seem like a solution that almost happened, or a failure of the self-reliance I pride myself on (I don’t have much else to pride myself on); it was just sad. It makes me angry that that could be my life.  It makes me angry that this is my life.

So, I am going to take some steps to change things. Updates to follow.

I am in a hazy dreamlike state, drifting from near-suicidal depression to a dull ache like bad music in my head that I can’t stop. I don’t see any way out that doesn’t involve more of the same for the foreseeable future. I am filled with impotent rage and fury, and there is nothing that will make it better except time, or (dim hope prevails, even when all other lights go out, it seems) maybe the choice of someone else. At any rate, I am as helpless as a piece of wreckage from a ship, tossed in a storm.

Ugh, even my metaphors suck now. I think that’s all I will say. Sorry for just spraying bile and running away, if anyone is listening. Maybe if I survive this I can make it up to you.

The rules for today:
* survival is victory (don’t hope for more)
*fight your way through it (thanks for the lyric, Slipknot/Richard Cheese)
*try to remember the social contract (your friends have to be protected from this)
*comfort with yourself can be enough (but don’t drink alone)

-N

It seems that I am still alive, after all.  What’s been happening in the world?  In my own little rounded corner of BizarroLand, I have made a major career decision and left my professional job with Paramount Home Entertainment Australia to pursue my dream-design. Hence the lack of time for updates, information, and other assorted luxuries like adequate sleep and peace of mind.

Now, I know what many of you are probably thinking (is 3 “many”?).  How could I leave a good paying (the best I’ve probably ever had it) job with a large and powerful corporation that produces some of my favorite film and TV shows?  How could I walk away from an office full of cool people (and they were cool, and nice too) and the perks of a corporate office-free internet, air conditioning and a stunning top floor view of lovely downtown Sydney?

And most especially, how could I do this without having any Design work lined up, a reputation, and/or talent?

To this, I say: “Hey, that last part wasn’t very nice. I have lots of training to make up for the lack of talent, I’ll have you know!”

Honestly, it wasn’t easy leaving that job. It was my first big-time corporate office experience here, and I really enjoyed most of it. I loved seeing Watchmen on BluRay in the store and thinking “I helped produce that.”  And I won’t lie, I enjoyed being able to tell people that I was in the industry and where I worked, I liked the respect.  Even for an office peon such as myself, there was a certain cache with working for Paramount.

But truth to be told, I wasn’t entirely happy with the job itself.  In my position, I was responsible for making sure that the artwork for DVD labels and sleeves and occasionally special boxes and stuff was formatted to given specifics and that there were no mistakes in spelling and color, etc.  It was interesting usually, but the whole time I found myself thinking how I would design the packaging, what I would have done differently.  And in addition, there were some personal issues that I was (am?) going through that made it exceptionally difficult to concentrate on petty things like multimillion dollar print campaigns.  (Admittedly, this was my own unprofessional fault also.)

So here I am now, a couple of months into the grand adventure of searching for a new job that I am (finally!) trained and qualified for. The latest news on this front is that I have set myself up a website portfolio (for maybe the 7th time, but this time I really mean it!), applied for a few dozen jobs, and even managed to do some freelance art for the theater chain I work for. Could be worse, of course-but it’s still not good enough for me. Hopefully something good is on the horizon, if I can just get the smoke from my burned bridge out of my eyes.

So long, giant aircraft-endagering logo...

Hopefully guarded,

Nathan

What the hell are you pointing at, anyway?

But even back home, it seems that celebrities are always using their looks and fame to tell us how to enrich and enhance our pitiful, non-famous lives. Even if they themselves have no life at all (literally).

I’m talking about advertisements using dead celebrities here. Those even more soulless, cold and downright creepy signs and commercials which feature a celebrity we were sure had shuffled off this mortal coil, yet they really want us to look at the features of this new toaster. These are like regular commercials, with an extra steaming helping of repugnant.

As you can probably tell, I’m not a huge fan of either celebrity or advertising, and I’ve never professed to be anything approaching normal, but I think that even normal, well-adjusted consumers would admit to feeling a little uneasy about being pitched wine by Orson Welles when he himself was likely mostly liquid.

Let's get stiff!

The creepiness only increases when we’re dealing with television commercials.  It’s bad enough when a celebrity did the commercial while they were still converting O2 into CO2, but it’s damn near an abomination to feature cgi-inserted products into film clips with deceased stars.  It’s sort of like if George Lucas redid Casablanca, with product tie-ins for Mountain Dew. Which is to say: Horrifyingly refreshing.  I don’t think Rick would have worked out his depression by “doing the Dew”, and I’m really not sure that Fred Astaire was thinking of household appliances when he did his dance numbers. Yet:

Hot-cha! It's great on dust! (which I am now)

I also would like to point out here that Fred Astaire has never even been the subject of a biopic, since his will has a clause that specifically disallows it.  He was quoted as saying:  “It is there because I have no particular desire to have my life misinterpreted, which it would be.”  I think I can hear a loud spinning sound coming from underfoot somewhere.

So, I’ve rambled on about the evils of advertising, and the abuse of the dead (even if they are just celebrities).  So do I have a solution to this dillema, or am I just ranting under the stars?  I mean, advertising is never going to stop, and people will always respond to famous people, (who will die eventually, I’m fairly sure), so what can we do?

Zombies, that’s what.

That’s right-the living, shuffling, product-shilling dead.  I’ve locked my anger and hatred at this practice in a hotel room with my fondness for the animated dead and the misshapen brainchild from that unspeakable night is this:  a law that forces advertisers who want to use the likeness of a dead celebrity for their purposes to use imagery that represents that celebrity as a rotting corpse.  Totally, completely,  zombified. (or “Romero’d” for the purists out there)

Think of the excitement of seeing that Orson Welles ad for wine with Orson expounding the virtues of its heady flavor while his skin is falling off.  And green.  Doesn’t that make you want to drink?  And now, the uneasy ache you feel in your soul when you see the advertisement can be explained away by disgust at the visuals, rather than the faint wriggling of your vestigial conscience.

And I know, some of you will argue, and you’ll bring up the celebrity “scare” ads, which use the images of those who died from excess as a cautionary tale against drugs, or drinking, or smoking, etc.  To that, I say-the only thing more likely to convince people to ease up on the drinking and smoking than an advertisement where Yul Brenner says it killed him… is one where he says it killed him and he really does look dead.

One of these is a little more convincing to me.

I agree, my proposal’s in terrible taste, and it’s reprehensible, and I will likely burn for it(among other things, of course).  But I think you must agree that it is at least honest. And perhaps it might make some advertisers think twice before buying the rights to someone’s image who is unable to speak for themselves.  Or at the very least, make sitting through ads a whole hell of a lot more interesting.

The ideas are escaping me and going off on their own already, and it seems like just yesterday I was saying how lame they were…(sniff).  My boys are growed up.

-Mnkyking

So…in essence, this will be a chaotic, meandering, directionless stew-with a purpose!

I apologize in advance for any discomfort at the quality, and remind you-if you must throw something, please throw money.

-Mnkyking

Do animals feel emotions like we do?  I understand that they are in general not equipped the same as us, brainwise-but just how complicated is the process of what we refer to as emotion? I have personally witnessed animals exhibiting signs of anxiety, fear, and affection-along with what I can only classify as “happiness”.  Given that I’m interpreting this through the lens of my own sapiens experience (which is okay, because the question is whether they feel like we do), I can say that I’m fairly sure that animals feel at least the basic emotions that we do.

Thing to remember here is that, they’re animals.  Their primary motivations seem to be :

• food
• shelter as needed (ie. if it’s raining, or a den of some sort for sleeping)
• avoiding or escaping danger (I like to think of “wildness” as a form of paranoia)
• mating (at certain times, dictated by hormones or instinct–kinda like us, except it makes more sense)
• food (so important I’ll say it twice)

For instance, today on my wait for a train, I had a chance to have a brief converstation with a small bird who landed (fearlessly, I might add) on the ground not 2 feet away from the bench I was sitting on.  He (she? no idea) knew I was there, and could obviously tell I was much bigger and possibly a threat, but perhaps due to some previous experience, or maybe just out of raw hunger, the bird approached me, looking to see if I had anything that looked tasty.  I spoke to the bird, and although it didn’t seem to understand, it certainly heard me and reacted (quizzical looks, then a quick return to the search for food) but didn’t flee or back away at all.  This behavior might seem simple and basic on the surface, but I would think that the more basic instinct would be to avoid really big animals that you weren’t sure were a threat that were making noises at you, just in case, and only search for food in areas where you knew there was some.  This guy was experimenting, looking to manipulate his environment to get something where there wasn’t anything obvious to get.  (And I know it’s my paranoia acting up, but I could have sworn this bird would have stolen my wallet and gone to MacDonald’s with it if he could)

I find myself glad to be larger than most commonly found animals, happy that I have thumbs, and concerned that Hate, which I don’t think that animals experience, at least not the ones further away from us in the evolutionary web, is considered a “higher” emotion.

More on this later, I think.

And I’m takin’ those shoes too, Bitch!

-Mnkyking

At any rate, there’s nothing special about my dreams, just the wanderings of an overactive imagination with all the roadblocks taken away.  I’m beginning to annoy myself, I think.  Imagine how you must feel!

I think what I’ll do is focus on the capital “D” Dreams, and let the regular lower-case kind run rampant without concerning myself too much with what they mean or don’t mean.  (since it’s most likely they don’t mean anything at all)  I want to focus on my plans and hopes, and I’ll feel special because I appreciate what I have in my life (and you know who you are, Sweetheart:), rather than thinking I’ve got some sort of precognition.  I’ll just have to be satisfied with my super intellect, and my rapier wit.  And my shiny shoes, can’t forget the shiny shoes.

yep, shiny

-mnkyking

Being a transplanted “Yank” (oh, the irony of a Southerner being called a Yank), I often find myself presented with situations, customs, and products that confuse (and sometimes frighten) me here in “the Deep South”, as I call it.  I plan to post one of these every so often, in an attempt to share with you wonderful people the joy, the heartache, the overwhelming confusion that is living Down Under.

Today’s Post:

Traffic

In Australia, driving is very different from in the US, not least of which is the fact that traffic moves on the left-hand side of the street.  While you may think this is a small change to adjust to, you may fail to realize that this also means that every control (turn signal, wipers, even the radio knobs) in your car is reversed from what you are used to.  I’ve been here, actively driving for years now, and I still occasionally come to a turn and proudly activate my wipers instead of my signal.  Other drivers seem to enjoy this, judging by the honking and waves I get.  Unfortunately, I figured out that it is probably harder for them to tell which direction I’m going based on my wipers being moving or not (it’s a guessing game, really), so I try to avoid this wherever possible in the interests of staying alive.

Another interesting quirk of Australian driving is the pervasive use of what we in the US call “traffic circles” and here they refer to as “roundabouts”.  Whatever you call them, these doughnuts of asphalt (often with raised islands in the middle to scrape against and for the pedestrians to take their lives in their own hands watching from) are tricky to navigate at first.  The main concern someone like me has is that these circles are used in place of stoplights or stop signs at intersections that the city planners feel are low traffic.  The way I was told to use them is like this:  you yield to your right, watching the driver’s signal to tell if they’re passing in front of you or if you can pull out in front of them.  You’re also not supposed to stop and look beforehand if you can help it, Australians preferring to use these circles as minor speed bumps in most cases.  The cumulative effect is that you feel you’re pulling out in front of someone every time you cross the road in some neighborhoods.

To come later: More about driving, meat in cans (trust me), and funny signs