Benny in search of a bright future

Plastic is sexy!

Today I went to see Surrogates, and I kind of liked it, but not really. It's the kind of movie that makes you wish there were more movies like it, more sci-fi thrillers, so maybe some of them could actually be good. It's enjoyable enough, but there's very little originality to it. The basic concept of mechanical human surrogates is pretty interesting, if a little silly (everybody can afford life-size robots? Really?). It's been done much better in David Brin's Kiln People and many other books, with much more depth and much more interesting ideas. There are a few moments in this movie that make you think there could be more to it than pretty shiny robots, like the look Bruce Willis' wife (in her surrogate) gets when she bumps into the real him in the hallway, and takes a second to realize it's not his surrogate, but most of it doesn't stray too far from the old sci-fi-whodunit formula. They did a really good job with the surrogates, a really pretty mix of makeup and CGI that truly makes them look like perfectly designed constructs. They even got rid of Radha Mitchell's signature mole, the one on the bridge of her now, between her eyes. And then there was the "real" her, and for those brief scenes they managed to make her "ugly", which in Movie World means that her skin looks like a regular person's skin, her teeth look normal, not straightened, her hair doesn't look like she just stepped out of a hair salon, and her posture is just as crappy as everyone else's. Real people really are horribly disgusting. When they finally start making and selling robot-girlfriends that are lifelike enough to take out on dates and bring home to meet you parents and stuff I'm totally going to be first in line. And the weirdest thing about the movie? The gorgeous (and Jewish, sort of) Elizabeth Banks gets an executive producer credit in the opening titles! I wouldn't mind getting a robo-girlfriend who looks like her, if you know what I mean. And I do mean that I'd like to put my peepee in an animatronic puppet constructed of metal and latex that sort of resembles the lovely Miss Banks. Oh yeah. That's pretty damn hot.

Bruce Willis' new plastic face

In other news, I've finally started reading a new book, after a really long time I've been too lazy to pick one up. Since July I've only read three books! Lazy Ben. So today I started reading Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and so far it's pretty good. I hate getting reader's block. There's this short story I've read once in an old sci-fi magazine about a guy whose job is to give book recommendations. This woman comes to him and says she has serious reader's block, that nothing can hold her attention anymore. So he gives her this Stephen King book, and she really doesn't like the idea. A few days later she calls him up and tells him that it was one of the stupidest things she's ever read, but the point was that she actually read it. So maybe this tale of a Jewish comic book duo can help me get to some heavier stuff later on. And by heavier stuff I mean KW Jeter's Glass Hammer. Only 615 more pages to go!

Benny in search of lost time

Beats any friggin' boy-peepee in the world

Today I watched Trainspotting on DVD, the first time I've watched in a long time and also the first I've seen it in widescreen since I saw it at the movies when it came out back in '96. It's still pretty good, and not as depressing as I remembered it, though watching any movie on VHS can be a pretty depressing experience. I remember how before I went out to see it my dad asked me which movie I was about to see so he could check the synopsis in the paper, and that he really didn't like the idea of his 16 year old son going to a movie about junkies. Different times, I guess. I like it how everything about the movie looks so ugly and dirty, and living in Israel I know a thing or two about dirty ugly places. Scotland looks like the crappiest little shithole ever in this movie. Even those great big green hills look completely oppressive, the kind of view only shooting sweet junk up your veins can help you forget. The actors have that sort of quality too, looking more like real people than movie stars, but I guess that's sort of my problem for watching too much American stuff. Ewan McGregor being the exception, of course. For some reason he very much reminds me of a young Alec Guinness. Can't imagine why. Kelly Macdonald is an old teenage fantasy of mine, despite having a rather oddly shaped nose. Too bad her role is so tiny here, way smaller than I remembered. I really like the dead baby puppet, not the one crawling on the ceiling, the greenish one in the crib. Very realistic. The music in the movie is still pretty great, and it was really nice to hear all those cool songs again after so many years. Kind of reminded me of all that time I spent in high school sitting in class, listening to the Trainspotting soundtrack (and later the second one) on my portable CD player and trying to ignore everybody around me. Good times. I've been trying to find a copy of the book for years now at this used book store I like in Tel-Aviv, without much luck so far. Maybe some day.

Kelly Macdonald, not humping Obi-Wan

Maxx update: I've finally found the entire TV series available for download in near-DVD quality! It says it was sourced from a VHS cassette, but there's just now way, the quality is just too good. It's also divided into 13 full episodes, the way it was first broadcast (the version that came out on VHS was cut down and the episodes were bunched together) so the whole thing is a mystery to me, but an extremely happy one at that. If the buttholes who own the rights for the show don't want my money, this should do just fine. Yaaaaaayyyy!!!!!

Benny in search of facial hygiene

I'm afraid I couldn't quite figure out how to translate the following comic strip, but I think it's sort of entertaining even if you can't read it. So here it is anyway! Enjoy!

A-tone-of crap is more like it

Well, Yom-Kippur (aka The Day of Atonement) is finally over. This year is was mostly about taking naps and reading Sam Kieth's Zero Girl - Full Circle, the second Zero Girl book. The Zero Girl books are all about how circles are good, squares are bad, and 15 year old girls shouldn't fall in love with grownups, and this one was really really really good, just like the first one. Thank Jebus for teenage lesbos. Sam Kieth is my all time favorite comic book writer/artist, and has been so since I first watched The Maxx TV serial on MTV's Oddities (MTV used to be so cool in the '90s, wasn't it? There was Beavis and Butthead, Æon Flux, The Head, Daria, Liquid Television... not to mention some actual music. It sure has come a long way since then, into the wasteland of nothingness it is today), based of the first 13 issues of The Maxx, way before I had even read one page. The Maxx tells the story of a big purple homeless guy and the social worker who looks after him, but it's also about the other world, Pangea, where Maxx is a superhero who protects his jungle queen, while the evil Mr. Gone is being a total asshole. The TV show absolutely blew my mind. Absolutely nothing on TV or anywhere else was better than or as good as The Maxx. The Maxx was a god to me. The problem was, it was the mid-'90s, and the whole internet thing was just getting started over here, not to mention any actual comic book stores. So I did what I could and ordered issue #1 of Friends of Maxx (a spin-off of The Maxx) from this weird catalog-based operation in Jerusalem, I think, and then forgot about the whole thing for a couple of years, until the entire series came out in TPB format and the first comic book store was opened in Tel-Aviv. I couldn't be more excited to be the proud daddy of all five Maxx TPBs. The Maxx is truely the awesomest comic book series ever. Kieth's art is extremely original, mixing several styles and techniques flawlessly, never lacking that unique Kiethian magic I'm so in love with. And the stories are absolutely fantastic, almost like a very emotional version of Philip K. Dick on LSD (PKD was never that big a druggy, in contrast to popular belief). Then there were the Zero Girl books, and Four Women, and Ojo, and a couple of Batman serials, and more recently My Inner Bimbo, all truely great stuff. I can't wait to see what he comes up with next.

The sounds in my head have started again. Good.

And here's a fun fact: David Feiss (creator of Cow and Chicken) and Sam Kieth are cousins! Feiss even did a weird little story (in rhymes!) in one of the first Maxx issues. Now if someone could please just put the Maxx TV show of DVD (it was animated digitally, so no remastering is needed) then I could finally die happy.

Benny in search of emotional growth