Set to premiere Halloween night, based on the acclaimed comic series by Robert Kirkman, involving Frank Darabont creatively, and airing on AMC who are already knocking it out of the park with Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Rubicon, and featuring hordes of zombies…I can’t imagine how this will be anything but awesome.
Author Archive for Matthew
Pretty catchy tune.
Netflix announced a deal Tuesday that will allow the online subscription service to stream movies from Paramount Pictures, Lionsgate, and MGM, according to The New York Times. In a deal that Wall Street analysts estimate will cost Netflix $900 million over the course of five years, the company purchased the streaming rights to the three studios’ output from the premium TV network Epix. The deal, which begins Sept. 1, will allow Netflix to add such movies as Iron Man and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to its “Watch Instantly” library of online titles.
I was listening to some of the Feynman lectures recently on my (mostly) trusty iPod, which is the sort of thing I do to keep my brain from atrophying while working my mundane job, when a quote of his, totally unrelated to the lecture, popped into my (hopefully) mostly un-atrophied brain:
“It doesn’t seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil — which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.”
And I got to wondering if the producers of LOST had that quote in mind when they were crafting their little show and thought “yeah, you’re right, Feynman…so we’ll set it on an island instead and throw in a polar bear for good measure.”
Just food for thought.
My copy of David Mitchell’s latest novel came in the mail today via the UK. It’s not out for another week or so in the US, but my impatience and preference for the European edition’s cover (no dust jacket, and a tasteful cream and blue woodcut illustration) drove me to go ahead and order it.
I’m finishing up Dan Simmons’ dark, intriguing, and well-written sci-fi novel Hyperion at the moment, but Thousand Autumns will be quickly devoured after that. Blog posts for both shall be forthcoming.
You should probably read the works of Joe R. Lansdale. His books are dark, funny, compelling, prolific, imaginative… but most importantly, intelligent and fucking fun.
I’m not sure if he’s more well known for his series of dark mysteries featuring a couple of East Texas pals named Hap and Leonard, or for his short story “Bubba Ho-Tep”, which was the basis of the now classic film. Either way, he’s got the storytelling skills to keep any fan of horror or mystery fiction entertained, along with the stylistic chops required to keep most lit snobs sticking around.
If you can find it, I recommend staring with his collection of short stories (which includes the aforementioned “Bubba Ho-Tep”), Writer of the Purple Rage. You won’t be disappointed.
As I told the friend who turned me onto him, his books make me want to buy a house in East Texas, sit on the front porch with a cooler full of cold beer and wait for the weird shit to happen.
The premise of this film is so fucking outrageous and demented that I don’t know whether to respond with utter horror or hilarity. All I know is I have to see it. Wow.
A certain genius from Wisconsin, of all places, posted a hilarious and spot on review of Star Wars Episode I : The Phantom Menace some months back to much acclaim. Now he’s back with an even more epic evisceration of Attack of the Clones. Both of these videos are much more worthwhile than either of the films they meticulously and hilariously deconstruct.
Enjoy part one of the latest below.
I pretty much checked out of the comic book scene in the early 90’s. This owes as much to Rob Leifeld’s inexplicable success during that decade and the absurd glut of mutant “X” titles as it does to my adolescent discovery of “real” literature.
This is too bad for me, because I missed out on some great stuff back then. I’ve started to play catch up thanks to collected trade paperbacks, most recently Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s brilliant Preacher series.
To briefly summarize the plot, a celestial accident occurs in Heaven, which wipes out small town Texas preacher Jesse Custer’s entire parish and grants him some serious powers thanks to an immature, yet supremely powerful, being called Genesis which inhabits him and grants him the Word, i.e. a power that allows him to make anyone do anything he says whenever he feels like it.
With his newfound power, his gal Tulip, and an Irish vampire named Cassidy, Jesse decides to track down God, who has checked out of the day-to-day oversight of His creation, get face to face with him, and hold him accountable for all the evils of the world.
What ensues is terrific drama, action, violence, gore, hilarity, and a cast of characters that includes God, the Devil, inbred hillbillies, the ultimate badass Saint of Killers, a pathetic Kurt Cobain wannabe who goes by the name “Arseface”, and John fucking Wayne.
I can’t recommend this book enough.
Incidentally, while reading it I thought to myself “what an amazing cable series this would make”. Sure enough, it was in development for HBO a few years ago, but was ultimately scrapped. Too bad, because the Arseface makeup tests are tremendous:
Rumor has it Pynchon lent his voice to this little promotional piece from Penguin books.
According to Publishers Weekly , the film rights to Thomas Pynchon’s forthcoming 60’s noir novel, Inherent Vice, are currently being shopped around.
Paging Joel and Ethan Coen…
Dexter’s Mark Pellegrino has been cast for the season finale of a so far fantastic season of Lost.
Rumor has it he will be portraying the mysterious “Jacob”.
This is going to be one of the more bizarre things I’ve ever written, but is it just me or does this image from the Hungarian Xbox 360 manual look exactly like a young Thomas Pynchon? And what, exactly, are they trying to convey here?
And for comparison purposes:
Christian Bale went completely nuts after hapless DP Shane Hurlbut walked into his sightline while Bale was shooting a scene on the set of the new Terminator movie. Audio of Hurlbut’s emasculation below.
It’s been 15 years since Randy Pan the Goat Boy shuffled off forever. This Friday, the mother of the late, great, criminally unrecognized Bill Hicks will appear on Letterman, apparently to discuss her son’s career and legacy. More importantly, the show will finally be airing Hicks’ 1993 Late Show performance, which the powers that be deemed unsuitable for broadcast and completely cut. This remains the only time a comedian’s entire routine has ever been nixed from the show. Unfortunately, Bill died of pancreatic cancer a few months later.
The letter Hicks wrote to the New Yorker’s John Lahr, including a partial transcript of his cut set can be found here.
