From my brainpan to yours

FROM THE KEYBOARD:
I'm chugging away, slowly, at the PETER ROTTENTAIL rewrite for the Polonia Brothers. I'm going to try to get a batch of this done over the weekend. Fingers crossed. The Bros want to get shooting on this one in a week or two, now that hail is falling in Pennsylvania and movies about girls in bikinis getting eaten by pirahna get harder and harder to shoot.

READING:
UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN by Jon Krakauer, a harrowing nonfiction story of Mormon fundamentalism, penned by one of my favorite writers. Hard to put down.

LISTENING TO:
DROP CITY by T.C. Boyle. I hate to admit that I actually gave up on Ha Jin's THE CRAZED halfway through, but I did. It reminded me of what it was like to be in China in the mid 80s, but the storytelling was leaden. I might try it again in another frame of mind, though. Boyle's latest is another crunchy, complex opus, this time centered around a commune in the dying days of the Free Love era.

ON THE BEDSIDE TABLE:
NAUSICAA AND THE VALLEY OF THE WIND, a manga by Hayao Mizaki, the guy who did SPIRITED AWAY and other. Intricate drawing, interesting post-apocalyptic, pro-nature story.

TELEVISION:
There's not one single new show that has set me on fire; but the season premiere of LAW AND ORDER was really good.

MOVIES:
ASTROESQUE:I’ve been a fan of Mike Allred’s writing and art since his Madman Comics days, on forward to his offbeat “mutant beatnik� comic series THE ATOMICS and his current work on the oft-controversial X-STATIX (recently in the news for a storyline featuring Princess Di coming back from the dead as a superhero). His freshman directorial effort is ASTROESQUE, part of a multimedia triple-play tied into his RED ROCKET 7 comic for Dark Horse Comics. Allred wrote and drew a comic book, directed and started in a movie, and produced and played on a concept album, all stand-alone projects but with united themes.
ASTROESQUE tells the story of a time-traveling, space-faring “guardian angel� (Allred) who intervenes to help prevent the untimely death of an average joe (Matt Brundage), infuriating a fringe militia group in the process (though there is a convincing argument that if the “guardian angel� didn’t show up, nobody would be shooting at the guy anyway!). Plenty of slow-motion gun battles and some quasi-religious philosophical debates ensue.
The feature is stylistically offbeat, with directorial homages from Sergio Leone to Alejandro Jodorowsky, all set to a mosh-pit Morricone score. An admirable cinematography effort is offset slightly by some ill-timed edits, an occasionally spotty sound mix, and a few lukewarm performances, reportedly by Allred’s family and friends (though it’s hard to believe that it was shot in a “free weekend� as the opening credits seem to suggest). Allred himself, with his Banderas hairstyle, his Eastwood thousand-yard stare, and his coat borrowed from Laurence Fishburne, is very magnetic, and probably the baddest-looking dude every to draw comic books for a living (though John Romita Jr. is a close second).
This one's hard to find; Trent at the local comics shop loaned it to me.


Give me a yell at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.