Axe-Cop
by Jake Teresi
I’m always surprised at what hits the web zeitgeist, and what doesn’t. Who thought a 13 year old’s curiously bad youtube video would amass 160 million views? And who could’ve predicted she would transcend youtube to outsell most everyone else on iTunes? And is the home video “Charlie bit my finger” that funny?
Then, on the other hand, there’s this under-appreciated gem. The concept is great: a 5 year old dictates comics to his 29 year old graphic illustrator brother, who makes them come to life on the page. It is funnier than you’d think.
The kid’s logic is hilarious: anyone who has blood spilled on them becomes part-that creature, which adds up to a lot of hyphens as the adventures continue; most of Axe Cop’s enemies are classmates who asked to be on his team earlier in life and had their feelings hurt; and, it’s not uncommon for a character to refer to his “tummy.”
The Strangest Damned Gang (Wild Things Review, Take III)
by Adam Hirsch
(Notice: Any film that creates a real dialogue about it has really done its job. Matt’s review of Where the Wild Things Are is here. Giampaolo’s review of it is here. Also, I discuss some plot points of the film but try not to spoil anything; however, if you want to see the film fresh, you might want to read this after watching it.)
When Bonnie & Clyde opened in 1967, it was heralded as the quintessential baby-boomer film. Even though the subject matter was over thirty years old, and the script was written by a hollywood outsider, and the direction was old school (almost archaic) formalism, everything about it seemed to bear some reflection on the current social and political atmosphere.
Where the Wild Things Are, forty years later, is the new generation’s Bonnie & Clyde.
(more…)
Were There Wild Things? (Wild Things Review, Take II)
by Giampaolo Bianconi
(Note: Matt’s previous post on Where the Wild Things Are can be found here. Also, this review contains some spoilers on the film. Just to know.)
Simply put, childhood does not exist. Its existence is contingent on its status as memory, not as experience or reality. Childhood has value only once it has actually disappeared, only has reality in the mind of the adult who conceives of his past, its purity and its frustrations–which are so “moving” because they remain our frustrations as we grow older. This means that childhood–no matter how liberating its primal scream, is really a call for conservatism, for a construction of the past as we imagine it. It has no forward motion and denies memory: it seeks to be without place or time, yet remains only in the place of our mind and the time that has past. Childhood is not real.
Peter Handke [Excerpted]
by Matt Paley
