Dan and Bands at Brat's Tinderbox,
Cinema 57 Part Three,
and Some Thoughts on
George Romero and Diary of the Dead...

My son Daniel called me from Boston earlier this week, in part to let me know about an upcoming Brattleboro, VT concert venue he'll be part of -- The MAJESTY FOREVER GLOWING MUSIC AND ART SHOW!

Here's the Tinder Box MySpace page, which will provide directions, info, and all you need to get there --

and here's my earlier Myrant writeup about the Tinder Box (scroll down a bit for text, pix and more).

So, if you're in the area this weekend, rush on over to The Tinder Box on Elliott Street in downtown Brattleboro on Saturday, February 16th at 8 PM. Playing are Colin Ahern aka Flash 'C'; Jeremiah Crompton aka Jeramigo, 'Kyle Thomzo' and finally the trio of Sam Phillips, Zach Phillips and my son Daniel Bissette.

Marge and I can't make it -- we'll be away -- but if you can, please, go! $5 donation at the door, more if you can afford it (support the musicians, folks), all big fun for a few bucks.

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Yesterday was the shits weatherwise -- a few inches of snow overnight Tuesday into Wednesday AM, light and crisp, which then turned into almost 20 hours of rain, freezing rain, sleet and slush. Marge and I had no school at either of our places of employment, so we were home. We stayed put, pretty much, too, except for shoveling/scraping/salting late afternoon so Marge could make it to her late afternoon appointment, by which time the roads weren't as hazardous.

Today, it's all glittering cement, rock-hard ice and our driveway is a steeply pitched ice rink, narrow and black-iced. I've spread salt (environmentally sound salt in 50 pound bags -- and get this, it's been dyed a light green) and the sun is already beaming, so the day's looking good.

We've already exchanged Valentine's Day gifts and had a pretty sweet evening together, once I wrapped up work on the Gaiman book. Life is good -- Happy Valentine's Day, one and all; if it's a day you'd rather not have to deal with, well, then, the hell with it. It's Thursday, is all.
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The first two images in the pages of Cinema 57 #20, the historic horror film issue, are telling: a shot from Frank Tashlin's Artists and Models (including the Bat Lady wall-size painting ostensibly credited to Bob Kane) and a Charles Addams cartoon. From the outset, the French cineaste's orientation to the horror film was more exploratory, more expansive, and far more mature than that available to the hungriest American devotee of fantasy, sf and horror. (Again, I'll humbly ask Classic Horror Film Board posters not to just cut-and-paste this info to that board; please link to this blog post, and bring some eyes here. Thanks, and hope this offers insights to the merits of this vintage magazine.)

Pierre Billard's introductory text immediately evokes Buchenwald and Hiroshima; the first article, Jean Loth's "Le Fantastique Erotique ou L'Orgasme: Qui Fait Peur" further codifies the decidedly adult orientation of this first digest dedicated solely to the genre -- for one issue, at least. Loth's essay is peppered with evocative stills, all now familiar images to devotees of the genre: the night shot of beauty and beast in a Florida lagoon from Revenge of the Creature (1955, the caption citing director Jack Arnold), 'la Belle' walking up a dark corridor lit only by hand-held wall-mounted candles in Cocteau's La Belle et la Bete (1945), RKO's mockup of Kong clutching a dangling Fay Wray, both impossibly gigantized over a NYC cityscape from King Kong (1933), and Leslie Nielson embracing Ann Francis in a posed MGM shot from Forbidden Planet (1956). Not a bad four-image summary of the theme, eh?

A cropped (the right half only) of this now-iconic, then-rarely-seen artfully composed but absurdly proportioned publicity shot of King Kong appears in Cinema 57, already a mythic image of horror, power and eroticism.

It's a grand lineup. As promised, I'm listing the zine's contents today to wrap up this snapshot of a historic bit of horror movie history.

Loth's article is followed by:

* "Mephisto, Ce Martien" by Robert Benayoun, an overview of the devil in fantasy films (and more).
* "King-Kong Magicien" by Jean Boullet, which concludes with a tantalizing three-panel sequence from what appears to be one of Boullet's silhouette animations in which a Tyrannosaurus rex-like dinosaur devours the Statue of Liberty!
* "La Mise a Mort Dans le Film de Terreur" by Andre S. Labarthe, with a focus on the then-recent 3-D feature House of Wax (1954).

The giant of the snows from Georges Melies's La Conquete du Pole/Conquest of the North Pole (1912) was first seen by most American monster movie fans in 1967's An Illustrated History of the Horror Film, but Cinema 57 readers were familiar with it a decade earlier.

* A three-page, three-image piece "Les Createurs de Monstres" showing Jack Pierce applying the Frankenstein monster makeup to Boris Karloff in Son of Frankenstein (1939), an unidentified ("l'anonyme createur") Bud Westmore posing with six different Metaluna mutant maquettes and the mask used in This Island Earth (1957), and a perversely amusing shot from the filming of the dinosaur episode of The Animal World (1956) showing producer/director Irwin Allen behind the animation camera, pointed at the table-top set sporting a stop-motion Brontosaurus [sic] (now Apatosaurus) while a rather zonked-looking Ray Harryhausen (unidentified in the caption, but the real 'createur de monstres' on Allen's film) looks on behind Allen, looking for all the world like he was just another studio carpenter, with two other unidentified technicians in the background.
* "L'Humour Chasse les Ombres" by Armand J. Cauliez, companion piece to:
* "La Comedie Fantastique dans le Cinema Americain D'Avant-guerre" by Etienne Chaumeton, a great overview of the 1940s and early '50s comedy-fantasies like the Topper films, A Guy Named Joe, Here Comes Mister Jordan, etc.
* Ado Kyrou's "Le Merveilleux de la Realite," which I'm eager to translate and read.
* "Le Fantastique de la Realite" by Jean Thevenot, a companion article to Kyrou's.
* "Le Cinema Interplanetaire" by Remo Forlani, an analysis of sf films featuring a cool comparative shot of Kirk Alyn as Superman (from the Columbia serial) next to a Wayne Boring panel of Superman from the comicbook series and a similar panel-to-still comparison of Alex Raymond comic strip art and the Universal Flash Gordon serial (1936).
* "La Science Fiction Trahit L'avenir" by Raymond Borde, opening with a vertical still of the 'faceless' alien from Harryhausen's gem (ahem, I mean, uh, Fred Sears's) Earth vs. The Flying Saucers (1956).
* The most 'monster magazine' like piece in the magazine is the 24-page "Galerie des Monstres" by Pierre Philippe. This was the model for Forry and Famous Monsters of Filmland, showcasing lots of the creatures soon to lurk on the pages of Famous Monsters stateside: the Universal monsters from Frankenstein's Monster to the first mutant from Tarantula (1955), King Kong and the pteranodon (1933), Charles Laughton's Dr. Moreau from Island of Lost Souls (1935), Caligari and his shadow (1919), Charles Gamora's martian from the George Pal/Byron Haskin War of the Worlds (1954), etc.

Director Tod Browning and the cast of Freaks (1933), still shunned, unloved and essentially unknown in 1957 -- except by the editors of Cinema 57 and writer Jacques Pinturault!

* The highlight of the issue for me: Jacques Pinturault's essay on Tod Browning's Freaks (1933), written and published at a time when Freaks was still a 'lost' aberration in American (probably still road-showed by Dwain Esper or his successor under the title Nature's Mistakes) and still banned in Britain. This is the major find here, and the piece I'm most eager to translate and clear the rights to reprint -- in English, at last.
* "Catalogue du Fantastique Americain" by F. Hoda and L. Seguin, a concise 11-page capsule history of the genre in the US cinema. A curious one-page cameo piece interrupting the article spotlights Curt Siodmak's weird cheapie Bride of the Gorilla (1951).
* "Paul Leni, l'Inventeur de la Terreur," with filmography (two pages total), the first horror auteur essay.
* "Y a-t-il un Cinema Fantastique Francais?" with a four-page filmography of French fantasy/horror/sf films, accompanied by a half-page piece "Quand les Martiens Sont Japonais" citing the then-in-it-infancy Japanese sf films (remember, this was 1957!), illustrated with a shot of Gojira and Angilus/Angurus facing off in Gojira no gyakushû/Godzilla Raids Again/Gigantis the Fire Monster (1955). With the Japanese genre a mere three or four years on at this point, one can see the editors were paying attention, no two ways about it!
* Another historic piece: Lotte H. Eisner's "Le Fantastique dans le Film Allemand," covering the silent German fantasy-horror classics.

There you have it, cover to cover coverage of Cinema 57! The Metaluna mutant adorns the back cover as well as the interior pages, the very year he appeared onscreen for the first time.

* "Helas! Le Cinema est Devenu Intelligent!" by Jean-Louis Caussou -- Melies, Ziegfeld Follies, The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Tales of Hoffmann; music, dance and fantasy film.
* "Comment Peut-on Faire l'Impossible Pour Vous Satisfaire?" by Andre Martin, an expansive 10-page essay embracing current animation and the genre, including everything from Walt Disney to Karel Zeman, Ted Parmalee's UPA cartoon The Tell-Tale Heart, Robert Cannon's Gerald McBoing-Boing on the Planet Moo, and Norman McClaren's Phantasy experiments at the National Film Board of Canada; this is a terrific piece, well-illustrated article.

Two short Cinema 57 non-genre pieces follow, with a few pages of ads, but as you can see, this gem of a digest is far more ambitious and wide-ranging in its exploration of the genre than anything we'd see in the US until Castle of Frankenstein after its 10th issue, Carlos Clarens's An Illustrated History of the Horror Film (1967) and the blossoming of Photon and Cinefantastique -- and Cinema 57 is still more expansive and all-encompassing with the net it casts than anything in English until the 1970s. All in all, a historic and impressive tome!

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A number of the Center for Cartoon Studies students are eager to see George Romero's new feature, Diary of the Dead, and the Spanish film [REC] is eagerly anticipated, too. I just posted this reply to a CCS discussion board thread, since these youngsters (well, OK, they're in their twenties) are seeing it all in the context of now, as youngsters will, and this geezer felt the need to add a bit of context. I'll post my blather here intact (I don't use the format I use on Myrant typically, so bear with the capitalized film titles, please):

Since Romero is one of our great living filmmakers, and he himself calls DIARY OF THE DEAD his "running away from LAND OF THE DEAD" and his experience with Universal Studios (which he admits went much better than he feared, but still, the studio system just doesn't work for Romero), I'm eager to see it. Even Romero's least (BRUISER) are interesting films, and worth seeing.

I see where you're all coming from, but don't assume Romero's in lockstep with current fashions or fads. This whole genre -- as I note in my yammering about CLOVERFIELD at Nine Panel Nerd's podcast (link's on my blog yesterday) -- goes back to Peter Watkins and his work for BBC in the mid-60s. There's a clear lineage here, and horror movies have been part of it from Orson Welles's fake WAR OF THE WORLDS radio broadcast in October 1938 that sent listeners screaming out of their houses believing the martians WERE coming.

There were also key underground filmmakers (Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Andy Warhol, Ed Pincus, etc.), feature films like DAVID HOLZMAN'S DIARY (1967) and passages in Brian DePalma's early films (GREETINGS, HI MOM) that anticipate this whole current movement. DePalma's use of faked video footage was often quite funny; there's sequences in HI, MOM and GREETINGS that are still hilarious and scathing, forty years later, that absolutely anticipate this whole "new" 21st Century movement.

Though the new vein is definitely fueled by the democratization of technology via digital video media (including cell phones), the conceptual turf is at least half-a-century old; if you count home movies and amateur movies, it goes back to the 1920s and the first available 16mm cameras, boosted immeasurably by 8mm film in the 1940s-60s. But Brakhage was the first cinema diary keeper, beginning in the 1950s, and Ed Pincus formalized the genre by the 1970s -- by which point satirists like DePalma were already goofing on it.

"Shoot 'em in the head": A martial law execution of civilians in The War Game. Like Gillo Pontecorvo's La Battaglia di Algeri/The Battle of Algiers, also made in 1966, Peter Watkins's The War Game emulated newsreel techniques to make its harrowing portrait of nuclear war-ravaged Britain utterly believable.

Horror entered the fray early on: to my mind, some of Brakhage's films are genre-relevant (SIRIUS REMEMBERED, his meditation on the corpse of his dog, found in the woods near his home; THE ACT OF SEEING WITH ONE'S OWN EYES, a grueling but beautiful and staggering feature-length work filmed in a city morgue). Watkins was using faux-documentary techniques to recreate historical medieval warfare for CULLODEN (1965) and to make THE WAR GAME in 1966, "documenting" the nuclear bombing of the UK and the aftermath with such vivid power that BBC (which produced the film) refused to broadcast it.

"Bring Out Your Irradiated Dead!": Another stark newsreel-like image from Peter Watkins's classic The War Game (1966), a definite precursor to Night of the Living Dead and the current vein of 'you are there' digital-era horror films.

Point being, Romero is tapping a much, much richer and deeper vein than the most immediately apparent (CLOVERFIELD, [REC], MY LITTLE EYE, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, THE LAST BROADCAST, etc.) contemporary context.

Don't forget much of the first flesh-eating zombie movie of 'em all, Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, depended on faux-TV news broadcasts, which meshed with Romero's use of handheld cinematography and 'you are there' staging in its narrative passages to create something completely fresh in 1968. He was, at that point, building on John Frankenheimer's films (THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, SEVEN DAYS IN MAY) incorporating news film techniques with mainstream studio filmmaking traditions -- Frankenheimer emerged from live TV drama, and in the early '60s his approach was startling and new to most viewers. Romero was taking that further, and by doing so reinventing horror cinema -- a step Frankenheimer himself had taken two years earlier with the underrated SECONDS (1966) -- so he was tapping this tree looooooooong before the current wave of filmmakers were even born.

All horror fans have heard of, and many have seen, Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust (1981), but how about the BBC broadcast that scared a nation, Ghostwatch (shown only once -- October 31, 1992)? It's the real successor to Orson Welles's historic Halloween 1938 radio play of The War of the Worlds, and another precursor to the current wave of digital horrors.

That, for me, is the context for DIARY OF THE DEAD. I can't help it, I grew up watching these films AS THEY CAME OUT -- so I've experienced this genre as it took shape, usually seeing the films when, or close to when, they were first shown publicly. Even Watkins's horrific THE WAR GAME, which was shown by anti-nuke activist groups in the 1960s on 16mm, including a showing at my high school up in Duxbury, VT in 1970!

Off the top of my head, for anyone interested in tracing this lineage with their own home-movie festival of precursors, I'd cite Watkins's THE WAR GAME, BBC's crafty, fun GHOSTWATCH (which so terrified a gullible UK viewing audience that BBC never showed it again, so vehement was the public outcry against their 'true ghost' mockumentary broadcast), Ruggero Deodato's CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1981, and still a shocker, template for many that followed including BLAIR WITCH and CLOVERFIELD), and a few others.

Shameless Plug Dept.: Speaking of this whole school of 'you are there' digital horror, I did this cover art two years ago for the definitive DVD re-release of Lance Weiler and Stefan Avalos's digital feature classic The Last Broadcast (1998), the film that predated (and provided the obvious template for) The Blair Witch Project (1999). My cover art was ultimately used as an inside-cover sleeve 'pinup'; a few CCS pioneer class students and I also worked up a sweet little two-color minicomic on the Jersey Devil for this DVD package, too, which is mighty cool and only available in this DVD.

You can buy your copy online from a variety of venues; check it out!

For those of you interested, here's the online trailer for Diary of the Dead,

and a Spanish trailer for [REC] -- enjoy.

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OK, tomorrow is the last post of the next full week or so, more than likely, so I made this a fat one and hope to do the same tomorrow. Workload and travel require my attention be occupied elsewhere next week, so I'll likely weigh in here rarely if at all -- as promised, I'll be back to daily posts come March.

Have a great Thursday; we've got my amigo Howard Cruse coming in to speak at CCS later today, and Marge and I are looking forward with dinner with Howard tonight, so we'll be having a fine day ourselves.

You do the same...

-- Interlude --

Check out yesterday's post -- which stands as today's substantial post (part 2 of the essay tomorrow, folks), since it was posted so late in the day yesterday.

However, just a note: my son Daniel called at 7 AM this morning from the car he'd been sleeping in. Dan and his Mooneye compatriots Sam Phillips and founder Jeremy Latch were catching zzzzzzs outside of Louisville, KY. They're doing fine and have had a great trip thus far. Among the highlights was their Asheville, North Carolina venue playing for 200 people (biggest crowd yet outside of their local Brattleboro, VT gigs) and three glorious days spent with

Laura Carter (who plays on the Neutral Milk Hotel CDs Dan turned me on to recently, but I see she's also part of Elf Power)

in Athens, GA. They savored the 150 acres at the Orange Twin Conservation community and their time there (it used to be a Girl Scout camp, now converted to musician's paradise); they'd met Laura in Brattleboro earlier this year, and had been invited to visit.

OK, enough on that -- Mooneye is on to Bloomington, Indiana later today, and I hope to see Dan in time for Thanksgiving with Marge and me and family here in Windsor later this month.

Mooneye factoids: The mooneye is a medium-sized fresh-water fish (11 to 15 inches in length, 1-2 pounds ) with a silvery, almost flat slab-sided body. This fish's name is attributed to its big ol' reflective eyes, which enable 'em to see at low light levels; note that its teeth bristle from the tongue and roof of the mouth. They used to frequent large streams, rivers and lakes, including lakes Erie and Ontario, but the only population of mooneye in NY and VT resides in Lake Champlain and is dwindling.

Hey, they're predicting snow in the north country hereabouts tomorrow.

Have a mad Monday, Bunkie!

To
Night
Moon
Eye
De
Light

Tonight's the night I get to see/hear Mooneye -- Jeremy Latch, Sam Phillips and my son Dan Bissette -- at last. Marge and I will be there!

I'll be getting the scoop on their upcoming schedule later today. Marge is feeding the lads jambalaya tonight before the performance, making sure they've packed on some pounds before packing the museum with sound. Thereafter, they're off to Burlington, VT for more adventures and music-making.

Yesterday's Myrant post (see below) has the most info, linx and pix I can offer just now, and here's David Fairbanks Ford's announcement circulating the White River Junction community:

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Mooneye will be splattered all over the museum stage tonight from 8 to 11pm

it'll be a night of great music and more

free to all, but a hat will be passed for the band!

join us!

main street museum 58 bridge street white river junction, downtown
rio blanco, vermont

"may it please you" --the management

The Tinder Box Rox: Sam Phillips (member of Mooneye) is among the folks that co-founded and keeps the Brattleboro-based Tinder Box space rocking!

Sam Phillips, Tinder Box, Elliott Street, Brattleboro -- one of the spaces in which Sam and his Mooneye compadres make music, magic and madness
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We're starting to hear a bit about SPX here in Rio Blanco from the CCSers home from the show, but

the first public post from our cartooning community has just been posted by Trees & Hills co-founder Daniel Barlow, which you can read here.

Heck, I still don't know how Dead Man's Hand did, sales-wise or other-wise...

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Have a great Tuesday, you know I will...

Mooneye
Tuesday
Night;
&
A
Sunday
Anniversary...

Before I get to the big news:

Yesterday was a momentous day, though I'd forgotten:
Marge reminded me that it was precisely one year to the day yesterday that we first laid eyes on what is now our new home in Windsor, VT! Yep, one year ago yesterday, we first tapped a pair of local realtors to check out this place -- and now we live here.

Just FYI.

Now, on to the big news --

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MOONEYE is COMING to TOWN!

The band my son Daniel is part of is comin' to White River Junction!

Yep, Jeremy Latch, Sam Phillips and Daniel Bissette -- the threesome now known as "Mooneye" -- will be in White River Junction, VT's famed Main Street Museum (compliments of the amazing David Fairbanks Ford) tomorrow night, Tuesday, October 16 at 8 PM to open their ambitious October/November US tour.

Here's the scoop on the Main Street Museum, including contact info, schedule, link for directions, etc. -- see you there!

(For more on the Museum, click this link, too.)

Getting info on the Mooneye tour has been like pulling teeth, but I've got blood and molars on the carpet, so hopefully I'll know more in a day or two. Stay tuned, hopefully they'll be playing near you sometime soon.

Can't wait to hear/see them play with my own ears/eyes -- I won't be missing a nanosecond!

Mooneye has yet to record commercially in any venue, so I can't steer you to anything tangible/importable into your homes yet -- much as I ache for some for myself!

However, Jeremy Latch has some music available on audiocassette now, though it's not listed on the Yeay! Cassettes website as yet --

nevertheless, go ahead and pay Yeay!'s site an immediate visit, tell the deadbeats to update ASAP, and place your order.

Here's how -- and I know Jeremy's tape exists, I've held the cassette in my own hand! You want to request Yeay 019, entitled Love Letters for Everybody, and you can order it for $7 postpaid (I think) from
Yeay! Cassettes, PO Box 7, Turners Falls, MA. 01376.

To order, you just have to read this link's info first,

and then email kayleen@suchfun.net to make sure my $7 price quote is correct -- PayPal is accepted, so don't let these necessary steps delay your ordering today!

Here's an archival post of a spring/summer 2007 performance of the band (in its earlier incarnation) --

Check out "Vipers in the Tires" by the Jeremy Latch Love Always Love Band, recorded June 13th, 2007 at the Brickhouse Community Resource Center, Turners Falls, MA -- the very performance CCS grad and Pizza Wizard creator Sam Gaskin saw/heard and wrote me about back in June.

That's Dan on the left of the sidewise Brickhouse sign, playing bass. Circa June 2007, The Jeremy Latch Love Always Love Band featured Jeremy Latch (voice/guitar), Cory Bratton aka "Corey Mule" (drums), Sam Phillips (guitar), & Daniel Bissette aka "Pretty Danny" (bass). The YouTube video is described as a "lousy one take shot!," so keep your expectations in check, but it's a taste -- just a taste...

And finally, a short bio of the Mooneye members, cobbled together by yours truly from scant info coaxed, at forkpoint over breakfast, by this wayward father:
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Jeremy Latch is from Turners Falls, MA, and Mooneye is the latest incarnation of Jeremy's The Love Always Love Band. He spreads music and joy everywhere he goes, including the bathroom. Jeremy (guitar, Casio keyboard, vocals) has written numerous songs and toured the US playing 'em, including "Spider Jones," "Mr. Whisperwalk," "Vipers in the Tires," "Alive and Dead," and more. As noted above,

Yeay! Cassettes has just issued Jeremy's solo audiocassette Love Letters for Everybody -- order Yeay 019, via this link and an email, per instructions.

Also note that Jeremy likes to skateboard and to draw graduated circles for hours, among other things.
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Sam Phillips (guitar, clarinet, vocals) is an artist/photographer and a native of Brattleboro, VT. He co-manages The Tinder Box on Elliott Street in Brattleboro, loves to skateboard and create music and forms, and struggles with what might be tendonitis.

Visit The Tinder Box venue on MySpace for more info, pix (including 'Zombie Tag') and insights -- here's the short form overview, folks:

"The Tinder Box is an art 'collective' with no collective organization, a music venue, and a lot of weirdos smoking cigarettes on some front steps.... Located on the third floor of 17 Elliot Street, it might be best described as a space for things to breathe--things that are too often suffocated and pushed out of a world geared towards money and the people who have it. We are motivated by a desire to create a place where rock shows, dance parties, and creation can exist for their own sakes. A large ballroom functions as an outlet for all kinds of public events, from bands to film screenings..." Kudos to Sam and his amigos for making this a happening place! Also note Sam's uncle, Bill Phillips, is the fellow who scripted feature films like John Carpenter's adaptation of Stephen King's Christine, There Goes the Neighborhood (which he also directed), The Beans of Egypt Maine aka Forbidden Choices, Fire With Fire, El Diablo, Rising Son, and many others.

______

Daniel Bissette (drums, trombone, vocals) says his music is "fueled by the frustrations of growing up in America." He is a native Vermonter (born 1985) and has been drawing and making music of one kind or another (drums, guitar, etc.) most of his life. His art appears in an Italian book on director Lucio Fulci, onscreen in Lance Weiler's feature film Head Trauma (2006) on its companion alternative soundtrack CD Cursed, and his first self-published zine was Hot Chicks Take Huge Shits (2006). He currently lives in Brattleboro, VT and has a select but exquisite vinyl collection, and has steeped in Moondog, Harry Partch, Alejandro Jodorowsky, vintage jazz and various European traditional and folk musics. Dan and his dad Stephen R. Bissette jammed on a humor piece for the mini-comic Trees & Hills and Friends (2006) and “The Alphabet of Zombies” for the Accent UK anthology Zombies (May 2007). His mother Marlene O'Connor and his sister Maia Rose Bissette-O'Connor are also artists, whose paintings, drawings and photographs have been showcased in various Vermont and New England galleries.

________________

Please note: Many of the graphics on this post are, of course, compliments of the great George Melies.

________

Have a Marvelous Monday, one and all,
if that's in any way possible for ya...

Dan/Sam/Jeremy's Band in WRJ
and
a Taste of Tenderfoot, Too

"Tenderfoot" page 3, copyright 2007 SR Bissette, from the anthology Dead Man's Hand

Here's another peek at my six-pager "Tenderfoot," and for the rest you'll have to wait for SPX and the anthology Dead Man's Hand in a couple of weeks. I'm writing the anthology intro, too, so thar ya go.

Just got the news this week that the band my son Daniel is part of is comin' to town! Yep, Dan, Sam and Jeremy -- the threesome now known as "Mooneye" -- will be in White River Junction, VT's famed Main Street Museum (compliments of the amazing David Fairbanks Ford) on Tuesday, October 16 at 8 PM to open their ambitious October/November US tour, and I kid you not. They're also playing the prior weekend at a Brattleboro, VT venue -- more on that, and this, and everything about it as I know more. Can't wait to hear/see them play with my own ears/eyes!

Have a grand and glorious Friday in this torture-lovin' nation of ours that says it doesn't torture...

Dan, Dan, Popeless Condi and D-Wars D-light:
The Friday Revue

Keep this PreCode horror comic cover in mind -- Tales of Horror #8, Toby/Minoan, 1953

Dan the Man, My Son!

Sam Gas Can (CCS alumni and beloved Pizza Wizard creator Sam Gaskin -- hey, Sam!) posted this comment yesterday:

"Steve! Your son, Danny, had some cool drawings in our gallery of Brattleboro folks at HBML junk store today! It seems like wherever I turn, there's something he's doing!"

Great to know, check it out if you're in Brattleboro, folks.

Dan and his bandmates Sam Phillips and Jeremy Latch scored at a Friday night gig at the Tinderbox last Friday, I'm told, though I missed it (Dan didn't tell me it was happening); his mom did go, and she was blown away. Here's some of what she had to say: "It was amazing -- they are so good... At the end, Danny did one of his original songs -- it was just totally beautiful... he's awesome, he's really, really good!"

Kudos to Dan and Sam and Jeremy, and I can't wait to hear you guys! More info on their upcoming tour and gigs, once I know...

Dan Clowes Detonates Classroom

CCS senior Morgan Pielli shared this news today -- check it out, Eightball and Clowes fans.

As Morgan points out, "And it seems to have made EVERYONE into a dick!"

Pope Nope to Rice

Here's the most neutral US news source I found on this apparent Papal dis of Condi Rice,

but note the comment from fisticuffs at

Digg.com: "This is story is so misleading, the pope is on vacation. Shit, I'm a nobody and I wouldn't pause my vacation to meet with Condi Rice either..."

My Kind of Grindhouse Redux

Completely on a whim, after savoring a Mexican dinner with Marge last night, I tucked into the nearby West Lebanon NH cinema and paid my $8 to see something I'd never heard of, Dragon Wars (onscreen title: D-Wars).

I did so based solely on the poster (here it is), which looked like a cheesy CGI giant monster pic, a theatrical Boa vs. Python pastiche (rip-off of a rip-off). It's been ages since a poster alone grabbed my eye or a movie popped up sans any prepublicity had kissed my eye or ear beforehand. For that matter, it's been a long time since a completely unknown-quantity monster pic popped up at a local cinema, sans ballyhoo, and it turned out to be... bliss, joy, nirvana.

Released by a distributor I've never heard of (Showbox) from a production company I didn't recognize (Younguu Art) -- in and of themselves, alluring mysteries to this creature cinephile-- the writer-director credit on the one-sheet cinched it for me. Hyung-rae Shim is the fellow who remade the 1967 Korean monster pic Taekoesu Yonggary/Yongary, Monster of the Deep a few years ago (don't ask me how I remembered that immediately while glancing at the poster, but I did).

Doing a little homework after returning home with visions of D-War dancing in my dome, I was also delighted to find Shim was the director and star of the South Korean caveman/dinosaur curio Tirannoui baltob/Tyranno's Claw (1994), for which I have a soft spot in my skull. Shim is apparently a very popular TV comedian in his home country, and I'd love to see his other sf/fantasies, particularly the Ultraman-like Power King/Armicron: Outlaw Power (1995). Shim's 1999 Yonggary remake was buried as direct-to-video product in the US as Reptilian (2001, from Columbia Tri-Star Home Entertainment) -- it's not any good, but I had a fine time with it, due in large part to the rather dire CGI, which was strangely 21st-Century appropo, given the original In-Zip Byon flick's lame sub-Eiji-Tsuburaya man-in-suit monster. The two Yonggarys perfectly reflect low-budget monster filmmaking of their respective eras.

Taekoesu Yonggary (1967)

The original Yongary most memorably danced to '60s rock music in one sequence and died with his rubber tail twitching spastically. Nothing in the remake was as memorable, but Shim is clearly a filmmaker intent on making daikaiju eiga (giant monster movies), and that's enough for me to pay for a ticket and see what he's up to now.

I'm glad I seized the opportunity. D-Wars turned out to be a brand-new (2007) Korean fantasy film shot with American actors, and -- as lunkheaded an opus as it undeniably is -- a major step up for Hyung-rae Shim's gleefully adolescent brand of monster movie. Joon-ho Bong's The Host this isn't, but according to a number of online sources, this was a big hit in South Korea just last month. Yep, it's that new -- amazing!

The D-Wars CGI monsters are great, the American cast relatively high profile (Yonggary was populated by relative unknowns), and it's all consistently delirious enough to be intoxicating. What more do I need?

That cast, lead by vets like Robert Forster (Medium Cool, Jackie Brown, Alligator, etc.), Chris Mulkey (Twin Peaks) and Elizabeth Pena (Jacob's Ladder, Lone Star, etc.), seem utterly adrift throughout, as do telegenic leads Jason Behr (Roswell, The Grudge, Skinwalkers, The Shipping News, Rites of Passage) and Amanda Brooks (Flightplan). Nothing new in this, really -- remember Nick Adams ( with Frankenstein Conquers the World, Invasion of the Astro-Monsters), Russ Tamblyn (War of the Gargantuas) and others were down this road long, long ago. This is delicious in its own way, and Brooks and Behr (both utterly chaste throughout) are easy on the eyes, but the South Korean filmmaking team give it their all.

The casual viewer would likely assess this as Lord of the Rings meets Transformers meets those Sci-Fi Channel giant snake movies. The fact of the matter is Japanese filmmakers were making films like this decades ago (Kaitei gunkan/Atragon, 1963; Kairyu daikessen/The Magic Serpent, 1966, etc.), and Asian filmmakers were copping their licks as quickly as they could. Shim is just the newest and richest and most popular kid on the South Korean block doing it, and more power to him. The mishmash of obscure monster mythology and Godzilla and Transformers-style trashing of Los Angeles merges fun critter and mega-destruction FX with a loopy fusion of Asian mythology (I'm not versed in Korean myth or folklore enough to judge its fidelity to its cultural wellsprings), supernatural 'destiny' reincarnation hokum, vast armored armies marching with saurian mounts and an entourage of raptor-like critters and flying dragons, and much, much more. At one point, the metropolitan monsters-on-the-loose action pauses and the whole demented confection is sweetened by -- sigh -- a cameo from Bronson Cave (the classic standby from countless 1940s-70s western, action, serials, horror and sf movies) . My heart soared.

So, see, when CGNN reporter Ethan Kendrick (Jason Behr) spots an outsized reptilian scale protruding from the scorched dirt at an L.A. crime scene, he flashbacks to his childhood encounter with an enigmatic antique store owner named Jack (Robert Forster). Actually, he enjoys a flashback inside his flashback, and that's where the fun really begins. Betwixt flashback, flashback-within-flashback (in medieval Korea) and mucho maladroit dialogue exposition, Jack explains that Ethan is the reincarnation of a warrior who loved and protected (to the point of a martyr-like suicide for the duo) a young woman mystically tied (via birthmark) to the Buraki, an ancient race of dragons -- or, uh, the Yuh Yi Joo -- hmmm, wait, uh -- look, I can't recall which is which, and wasn't sure which was which as it was happening. Anyhoot, another dragon, Omoogi, I think, was out to devour the young couple, but they took the big plunge and the woman's latent Yuh Yi Joo or whatever was thus safe for centuries. Failing that, Imoogi comes roaring and hissing back 500 years later, seeking the reincarnation of the Buraki-or-Yuh Yi Joo-princess, now a working-out-in-the-gym 19 year-old babe named Sarah (Amanda Brooks), who likewise bears the birthmark of the dragon on her shoulder. She hasn't any idea any of this is happening yet -- her destiny is unknown to her -- but with her 20th birthday right around the corner, the Imoogi is about to hit the fan.

Now, I usually haven't much patience for this kind of fantasy exposition, but something between Robert Forster's wrapping his tongue around "Imoogi," "Yuh Yi Joo" and "Buraki" and the very cool medieval flashback (evocative of The Magic Serpent, in a good way) amused me greatly. Once big bad Buraki (an outsized cobra-like dragon) started gulping down elephants and trashing greater Los Angeles while chasing down Sarah, Terminator-style, while Ethan and the U.S. government close in on her as well (the Secretary of Defense orders her assassination!), Shim's opus picks up momentum as the absurdities and coincidences grow increasingly giddy. It shouldn't work, but it does.

This isn't quite the D-Wars shot I wanted to run, but it's close: recreating the Tales of Horror #8 cover on the big screen!

The dialogue is risible, the dramaturgy flaccid and ridiculous, the setup in the first fifteen minutes almost as overloaded and lame-ass as Uwe Boll's abysmal Alone in the Dark, but I had a shit-eating grin plastered on my fuzzy mug by the time Imoogi was wrapped around the downtown landmark Bank Building (like the 1953 Pre-Code Tales of Horror #8 comic cover I've put at the top of this post, "The Snake That Held A City Captive!") lashing out at black-op helicoptors. Man, I live for these kinds of cinematic setpieces.

Things -- and I do mean things -- only escalate from there. Did I mention the He-Man-like villain (Michael Shamus Wiles) that keeps popping up? No? Oh, sorry. OK, there's that, too. It's sprawling, insipid, stupid fun (per usual, hero and heroine consistently outrun and outdrive Imoogi, though we see the super-serpent cover three L.A. blocks in mere seconds time and time again), and I had a grand time with it. The finale boasted the coolest Asian dragon I've ever seen in a non-animated film, an unexpected climactic payoff for this vet monster fan.

Kim Jong-il's monster movie: Pulgasari!

Now, bear in mind I'm a sucker for this stuff, particularly Korea's faux-daikaiju eiga. High on my list of faves is the bizarre North Korean Pulgasari (1985), the only giant monster film made under pain of death -- by incarcerated South Korean director Shin Sang-ok, kidnapped along with his wife in 1978 by none other than that Axis of Evil despot Kim Jong-il while his poppa Kim Il-sung still ruled. It's sort of comforting to know that, even if you're threatened with public execution, you still couldn't make a better monster movie than Gojira or Majin (which is the closest daikaiju-eiga kindred to Pulgasari), but that's neither here nor there

(here's a marvelous archival The People's Korea link on the film, if you're interested).

If you're seeking a classy adult evening entertainment, D-Wars ain't it.

But if you're like me, this is a cinematic pig trough brimming with loopy delight. All in all, D-Wars is weird, akimbo and punch-drunk, but the blast I had was due most of all to seeing a new Korean sf-action film in a local theater on a big screen.

It's been ages since anything like this gimped through a New England theater.

Here's the certain-to-slow-your-computer official D-Wars website, should you wish to know more,

the one-stop Rotten Tomatoes.com link-feast to national critics trashing the movie (what do they know? Is there a single Pulgasari fan among them? I think not!),

and had I known all this, I'd have rushed to the theater long before last night.

In fact, I'm going again this weekend. To a matinee. Now, that's entertainment!

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Have a great Friday and a wild weekend!