Downward Spiral

Funny how many of my news items seem to involve criticising films. I watched ’Jersey Girl’ by Kevin Smith last night and it was HORRIBLE. And the worst part was that it was that almost bad enough to turn the DVD off, but not quite.

Kevin Smith’s films tend to work well mostly because of the clever ideas. Guys chatting about innocent contracters dying on the Death Star 2? Clever. Angels sneaking back into heaven by turning human then getting their sins forgiven? Clever. Also, he uses rude words a lot.

So when he writes a film that involves a basic story with basic characters, he simply doesn’t have any tricks up his sleeve. He’s not playing to his strengths. It was like he had a bunch of notes about what had to happen in the film and he just contrived to jump from one to the next without the intervening ’stuff’ in between.

Plus, of course, there was the problem of Ben Affleck. The goal was to have Ben Affleck turn from an unpleasant selfish schmuck into a giving and warm human being. But all that managed to happen was that he stopped being selfish about his job and started be selfish about his kid. It’s hard to believe that a film can actually get worse once Jennifer Lopes dies, but here it is.

Zero out of five stars.

SO,,... What else,.. Well, I’m supposed to be starting my new comic in a couple of weeks. My goal is Sunday week, but I’m not sure that it’s going to happen. I’ve got an inspection next week so that kind of ruins that idea. Also, I watched ’The Incredibles’ too often and now I’m toying with the idea of doing a little more 3D animation again. Watch as I throw more buckets of life down that well.

Hmm, I haven’t linked to much stuff recently so here’s a couple of things that I’m super keen on at the moment.

A Softer World is a great and tragic comic. It kind of reminds me of Sans Sourire.

I’m also enjoying Alien loves Predator. A great comic done with photos of figurines. Brilliant writing.
Head Docter Productions is also intermittantly very good. Nice and dark. Kind of like Sleep Dep.
Funny how I like that stuff that reminds me of my own work. I guess I know who I’m writing for then.