Well, it was fun while it lasted, but we're gonna have to go ahead and retire from blogging. It's time we got serious about art school, which means A) working more and saving money (I'm about to start a new job, and the schedule is 7 days straight every other week, ten hours a day, in addition to my regular job), and B) focusing on our own stories and art. It feels great to just write something and have people read it every couple days, but every word I type for this blog is a word I'm not typing for the multitude of comics, films, short stories and novels that are swirling around unrealized in my head, y'know?
Thanks to the folks who followed the site, and the fellow bloggers who linked to us. Blogging is a lot more challenging and time consuming than it appears, and the folks who can keep it up on a regular basis deserve many respeck knuckles. Also, props to Spacebooger for hosting the Friday Night Fights, which were a lot of fun.
We're gonna leave the blog up for now, and as our labors start bearing fruit we may use it as a sort of showcase or something. Our various projects will need a web presence, after all.
No, CRY HAVOK!!! is not dead, it merely sleeps, and one day all the whores and politicians will shout "Save us!"...and we'll scratch ourselves and grumble "Show us your boobs." because that's just how we roll.
Hello, everyone. Sad news tonight over here at Cry Havok... This will be the last post on this blog. Nick's ability to write frequently has been destroyed by a doubled work schedule, and my willingness to write (which wasn't very high to start with) has decreased as I attempt to pursue other creative... pursuits.
That being said, it's not ALL bad, because we all have an absolutely awesome episode of Lost to comfort us this week. 'Dead is Dead' might very well be one of the best episodes of this season. It was Ben-centric, which tells you everything you need to know right off the bat. ALSO, Ben is getting judged by the Monster, which automatically sky-rockets this episode into Lost history.
Another thing this episode did very well was something that should be nearly impossible. Making Ben into a decent human being... kind of. He refuses to kill a baby, first off, which is something I thought Ben would relish, and he even decides not to kill Penny because she has a kid she has to take care of, even though that bitch is Widmore's daughter!!
Last but not least, he even feels regret for the death of his daughter, at the hands of the awesome mercenary Keamy. In other news, Locke is Jesus now. He IS the fucking island. And Caesar's dead. We barely knew ya'... In fact, we still have no fucking clue who you are. You're not really dead, are you? I mean, Ben DID shoot you in the chest at close range with a sawed-off shotgun.Well, if you're wondering what REALLY happened in this episode, the important part is this. Locke meets up with Sun and Lapidus on the main island, with Ben, and they go off into the woods to let Ben receive his judgement from Cerberus for allowing Alex to die (sans Lapidus, who returns to the secondary island to try to fix the plane.).
In the end, Ben is judged, and apparently found worthy. However, Alex (as an apparition of the smoke monster) tells him that Locke's the man now, and he needs to be a good boy or she/it will fuck him up, hard... Ben appears to listen, however as the master manipulater and liar, I don't necessarily suspect Ben will obey his commands. The other interesting point of the show popped up when Lapidus arrived back at Hydra Island, and is warned that Alanna has taken over the island, and has the guns to back it up. As he confronts her, she asks 'what's in the shadow of the statue?', and when he tells her he doesn't know, she knocks him out...
The MOST exciting thing however, is next week will be a MILES episode (finally.).
But hey, from here on out, you guys are going to have to remember what happened on Lost by yourselves, because I'm out. Namaste.
Tonight's panel 0' pugilism is from one of the more one-sided fights to ever grace the funnybook pages, as Superman completely PWNS Ven-
...wait...what?
We don't actually have this issue (we found these scans on 4thletter!, which is well worth checking out), but there's no indication that Superman has kryptonite-cancer or Venom is possessed by an Elder God or anything, which means according to this comic Spider-Man would have a pretty good shot at taking down the man of steel, which is so retarded it just gave me erectile dysfunction.
And it just gets worse from there, as this extra-special(needs) bonus page demonstrates :
We'd like to tell you that the next page is a big shot of the real (non-mulleted) Superman grabbing Venom and saying " You've ruined your last costume party, creature!" before throwing him through the sun. But it isn't. In fact, this is the end of the fight, as Venom gets teleported back to the marvel universe. So there you go.
All Access #1 is by Ron Marz and Jackson Guice, may god have mercy on their souls.
Now go over to Spacebooger's and vote on your favorite panel. We're really banking on the all-important 'Venom Lovers' demographic this week, so, y'know, feeling pretty good about that decision.
Alrighty folks, sorry for the wait, but after two long weeks it's time for part 9 of Lost... In Translation. As Nick mentioned in his last post, the Lost bits are, indeed, going to be sleeker and sexier in the future, due mostly to my new working schedule for the summer... Because teenagers on spring break fucking need ice cream daily. I'm going to be working later on Wednesday nights, and earlier on Thursday mornings, which means less time for writing my posts... And if you're wondering why last week never even got a post... Well, I had something very important to do. Namely, wiping that smug look off of this bastard's face. So from now on, the Lost posts are going to be brief summaries, mainly just highlighting the important things that happened, rather than everything that happened.
Also, if you're worried about last week's episode, stop it. I'm going to do TWO episodes in this post... yeah. So here we go.
He's Our You
Namaste, indeed, Sayid. As you probably know by now, having watched the episode, this was a Sayid-centric episode, and marked a return to form for Lost, re-adopting the single character flashback template from the older episodes.
This episode began strong, with a message, and a sweet scene of Sayid murdering a hen as a small child. The message obviously being that Sayid's a killer through and through, even when it's not necessarily clean or pretty... And when you see him looking through the bars of his cell at a child Ben, his intentions become pretty clear. Even witnessing the boys abuse at the hands of his father later in the episode does not seem to sway Sayid from his mission, nor do Ben's offers to actually help Sayid escape.
Through flashbacks, we learn several things about the period between Sayid's departure and his eventual return, most noteably that according to Ben, Sayid is done killing everyone who had anything to do with Nadia's death. However, once Sayid goes about his life (the relief work in Santo Domingo) Ben shows up once again, asking Sayid to kill someone. This time, he's asking Sayid to kill the man who's following them, and watching Hurley. However, Ben leaves peaceably once Sayid refuses.
The other important flashback shows us that Alanna, the girl who had Sayid 'arrested' was a bounty hunter hired by the family of someone he killed, and that she seduced him before capturing him at gunpoint, with the intention of taking him to Guam.
On the island, however, as we already know, Sayid has escaped from Alanna, but is now being held by the Dharma Initiative, and they intend to find out who he is. The bad part though is Sayid is dedicated, and will not budge, even when Sawyer offers him the chance to be part of Dharma by headbutting him really hard. Eventually, Horace makes the decision that Sayid has to be brought out into the woods, to a very creepy fellow named Oldham, who is the guy Dharma uses to make outsider's talk, hence the name of the episode. Oldham, however, is not a torturer in Sayid's sense. He has a truth serum, which he administers to Sayid after tying him to a tree... But as it turns out, Dharma can't handle the truth. Once he starts spouting off about the future, they decide that the dosage was too high, and that Sayid's delirious... The next step is obviously to kill him. Or, at least, that's what Dharma decides to do.
However, Sayid is not an easy man to kill. Before the execution order can be carried out, Sayid tells young Ben that he has been sent to bring Ben to Alpert, and luckily that precocious little Ben has already set a van on fire and crashed it into Dharmaville to cover their escape. Sayid and li'l Ben set out into the woods to find the Hostiles, but happen to run into Jin first. Sayid knocks him out pretty quickly, and steals Jin's gun.
Then he shoots a very surprised little Ben in the chest before fleeing into the woods...
Whatever Happened Happened ...A little disappointed in this episode to be honest, guys. Maybe it's just because I'm not a woman or a parent, so I don't feel that kind of crazy parental attachment to kids that a lot of people do, but Aaron briefly disappearing in a supermarket isn't really enough to get my blood running. This one here is a Kate-centric episode, and to be honest, not a whole lot really happened in it. The big reveal is that Kate gave Aaron to Ms. Littleton, and told her that she was coming back to the island for Claire. The rest of the flashbacks reveal the promise she made to Sawyer, which was apparently finding Cassidy and Clementine and taking care of them. We also find out that Kate drops the ball on the whole 'we're keeping the island a secret!' thing A LOT, as just in this episode she tells her new girlfriend Cassidy, and Ms. Littleton.
In the current timeline, things are a tad bit more exciting. Juliet struggles to save Ben's life, as the Dharma doctor is at The Looking Glass for the next few days. As it turns out, Ben's bullet wound will apparently be fatal, and guess who refuses to help? Jack the hero, who was until rather recently my favorite character before he apparently got castrated and his balls shriveled up and fell off... I mean, I know he has to have low-points, but I thought Jack would be back to his old self by now, and this was a poor showing... tsk tsk. He even admits that he has a 'fate', and for an atheist like me, that's just depressing. I really hope Jack gets his shit back together and starts resolutely defying destiny again, or I'm gonna need a new favorite character... And it's going to be Miles. I'm telling you, the dude's underused. Did I ever mention how much I like Miles? I mean, he's an antisocial, sarcastic asshole who can talk to ghosts, and he gets just enough play to be remembered as the guy who came to the island with Daniel and Charlotte, and proceeded to do nothing. I mean, why can't we have a Miles-centric episode instead of a boring old Kate-centric? There's no justice. At least he's still alive. More than we can say for Charlotte, I guess.
By the way, I also have a new theory that Charlotte was the little girl who supposedly drowned and came back to life in one of Mr. Eko's episodes in season two, where he was investigating this 'miracle' for the church. The girl's name was Charlotte, and she had red hair... Hrm. What do you guys think?
Anywho, after Jack refused to do surgery (like a junkie refusing heroin), Kate and Sawyer took Ben to the Hostiles, in hopes that they could save him. Turning him over to Alpert, Richard warns that he will forget the entire event, and will forever be one of them. Kate agrees, and Richard treks off into the woods, carrying the dying child...
Now back to Miles. He was, with the help of Hurley, the highlight of this episode. The writers did a really good job here, by deciding to have the two most entertaining characters have a long-lasting back and forth on time travel, and how it works. Unlike Daniel's nerdy explanations, Miles speaks english that makes sense, and Hurley counter-points with seemingly dumb, but usually correct assumptions of how time travel would work. As Miles explains it, time travel in Lost works basically like this: All time travel that will ever take place in history has already been accounted for in determining the future. i.e. because Miles and Hurley have ALREADY experienced the future, it is possible for them to die in 1977 and be fully dead, BUT Ben will survive, because since this is Ben's PAST, he will still grow up to be adult Ben, so there's no way he'll die... Hurley retorts that he's expecting to disappear like in Back To The Future, and also makes a solid point about Ben not knowing Sayid ever shot him as an adult, which does stump Miles. Luckily, Richard 'explained' this in his scene, by saying Ben would lose his memory.
The episode ends well, too, with Ben waking up in the makeshift hospital on the Hydra island, with Locke staring at him...
The next episode looks to be pretty epic too, and it's going to be Ben-Centric, so I'm obviously very excited.
Here's a quick list of things we haven't done this week because of A.) work and B.)
1. Justin's Lost post. He's gonna cover the last episode along with this week's on Thursday. It sucks because the Lost reviews are some of our most popular posts (like half of our Google Search traffic comes through them.,,the other half seems to be picture searches for 'rocknrolla buttshot'), but they take him a long time to do, I can't help with them since I'm just starting season 3, and now he's working most Wednesdays, so they're hard to keep up with. Expect them to be a bit smallerrrrruhhhhmore streamlined and compact from here on out. Also, I hope, more oiled up.
2. We didn't get around to watching two new movies that we've been looking forward to : the Spanish bloody-bandaged-Darkman-looking-time-traveling-rapist movie Timecrimes...
And Special, the superhero satire starring Michael Rapaport.
3. And we also missed our chance to participate in Final Girl's film club by writing about The Beyond, despite having like two months to get around to it, and the fact that we freaking love The Beyond. We wanted to re-watch it (since it's been a couple years), which we put off till the last minute, then our adventures in Africa began and the deadline blew right past us. Oh, well. Here's our too-little-too-late review of The Beyond : it's awesome, watch the hell out of it.
So, what did we think of Resident Evil 5? It was awesome, play the hell out of it.
Ok, well, it's a great and terribly addictive action game. The 'survival horror' aspect of the series has certainly suffered, though. There was a time when RE games were about running down dark hallways, desperately praying to a god who's abandoned you that you'll stumble across a box of handgun bullets before something you can't run by chews off one bite more than you can live without. Gamers, remember the feeling of almost sexual bliss when you'd open a new door and find a nice safe storeroom instead of a giant spider?
The older games really were about surviving a totally out of control situation, whereas RE5 (and to a lesser extent 4) are about killing waves of enemies until you get enough loot that you can upgrade your machine guns another notch. Being able to replay missions, earn money, and buy/upgrade your gear really pushes this game well over the line into shoot-em-up action, with only a couple scenes (the crocodile pond, the buildup to the lickers) actually going for the scary effect. Sure, fighting a horde of shovel-wielding psychos should be more intense than a couple of shuffling zombies in a hallway, but eachand every one of those zombies were deadly. You can take out like three RE5 guys at once with only your knife and melee attacks. Remember how much fun it was taking down Re1 zombies with just your knife?
But that's just my pet peeve, the game is great for what it is. We despaired a little to learn that you'd be paired with an AI teammate throughout the story, but Sheva is actually more of a help than a hindrance, which is pretty much a first in any game we've ever played. Not only do I not have to heal her every two minutes, she heals me!? This is new. Now, Justin and I are gonna see if we can't find an extra PS3 at a decent price so we can play together online, which should be epic.
Story wise, if you're a fan of the series, you'll be glad to hear that this is the installment where that smarmy bastard Wesker finally gets what's coming to him. After two games (this one and Code : Veronica) of getting beaten like a redheaded stepchild and laughed at by that Duke Nukem looking douche, we finally get our licks in. Also, Wesker's superhuman matrix-y fighting moves in this may be impressive in real life, but they look pretty weak if you've played Metal Gear Solid 3 and 4 or the Devil May Cry games. It's nice, while watching your character get slapped around by his old boss for ten minutes, to think "Whatever, dude, Dante could flip, like, way higher and a bunch more times than you can flip". In MGS4, Ninja Cyborg Raiden had to stop this huge freighter that was crashing into shore, but his feet were sliding, so he stabbed his sword through his own foot to brace himself. Then his arms fell off and he killed like fifty dudes with the sword between his teeth. So, yeah, whatever, Wesker. Whatever.
Saturday night's alright for fighting, Saturday night's alright...but Friday night, that's when the real action happens! Like so...
This is the scene from Marvel Zombies #3 where zombie Wolverine tries to cut the (still alive) Silver Surfer and instead the claws rip right out of his flesh, bringing the bones with them, and his whole forearm just kind of falls to pieces. Zombies don't feel, but this panel makes our souls hurt, so it's our Panel o' Pain! Go check out the everybody else's at Spacebooger's and vote for your fave.
Written by Robert Kirkman, art by Sean Phillips.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Man, we haven't had much to say lately, largely because we're broke (so we haven't been buying many books) and this has been a really slow month for movies, both in theater and on DVD. I did watch I Love You, Man last night, which was pretty good but not as funny as I expected from a Paul Rudd and Jason Segal teamup. It was very likeable and easy to watch, but rarely laugh-out-loud funny.
I wanted to see Rec. before I saw the American remake Quarantine, but we never got it at the Flick-Pit and yeah, no money, so I finally gave in and watched the remake. And it was better than I expected! Nothing to really set it apart from all the other 'fast-zombie' movies of the last few years, but it was well done and even a little scary in parts. Worth watching.
Oh, and a while ago we watched Let The Right One In, the Swedish film about a bullied boy who befriends a little girl who happens to be a vampire. The critics all went into spasms of ecstacy when this movie came out, so our expectations were admittedly pretty high...but man, it really wasn't all that great. The few and far-between scary vampire bits were really well done, but most of the movie is a fairly by the numbers coming of age story. Don't get us wrong, there's definitely some weird bits, but nothing that's gonna shock you too much. A lot of people apparently found the movie really touching and emotional (the boy is picked on by bullies and ignored by his parents, like every other boy in every other movie of this type), but it just didn't do much for us. Reading up on the film, however, we discovered that the book it's based on goes a lot deeper into the freaky parts and sounds much more interesting, so we'll be keeping an eye out for that when we get some spending cash.
Thanks to the folks at Daily Scans, I've discovered a great horror manga by Masaaki Nakamura called Fuan no Tane, which you can read all three volumes of for free here (just scroll down and you'll see them listed). It's just a bunch of short (sometimes only two pages) stories based on Japanese ghost stories and urban legends. Some of them are funny or sad, but most are just creepy. Here's a sample...as always, click the image to see it full-size:
We're just a pair of brothers with an intense love for storytelling, art, and just creative stuff in general. So that's what we're going to talk about.
