mikeshearules

theactioneer:

Ghanian Mission Impossible poster featuring a husky Latino gentleman who bears no resemblance whatsoever to Tom Cruise (1996)

– EH

The What? How? Wonder Book of Animal Birthdays

freakyfauna:

From Kris Kool (page 49) by Philip Caza.

Found at 50 Watts.

Baseball Card of the Week: 

Rick Honeycutt: Two-time All-Star, Five-Time Major League DADHAT leader. 

Certain books have a gravity just by their presence, and things are just a bit more weighty around the office since we got our advance copies of Janet Hamlin's Sketching Guantanamo: Court Sketches of the Military Tribunals 2006-2013. Hamlin’s artwork is the only official visual record of the legal hearings of suspected terrorists, including those accused of being responsible for the attacks on 9/11, taking place at the offshore military installation that houses the world’s most controversial prison. These drawings are history, and this is the first time they have been published together, along with commentary and background from Hamlin and others.

Designed by Jacob Covey and covered in prison-jumpsuit orange, this important and essential book is due out in October and can be pre-ordered here.

Good grief, still more Animalistic Professor.

emmyc:

draw with your left hand and pretend you are some weird kid drawing fanfiction

malformalady:

Spotted atop the Jiutian International Plaza, a shopping mall in Zhuzhao, China, are four villas fully equipped with electricity and water. The images have been circulating online and people have been speculating whether they are legal dwellings and if the properties are for sale. According to China Daily the buildings will be offices for the shopping mall developer’s 160 real estate management employees. Officials have also confirmed that the developers obtained proper approval for construction.

Original page by John Bolton from “Business Hours: Monday Through Friday, 9 to 5” from Epic Illustrated #18, published by Marvel/Epic, June 1983.

I have absolutely no idea what’s going on here.

The Atlanta Braves called up outfielder prospect Todd Cunningham earlier this week, and Cunningham pinch-hit and recorded his first career hit—a single—on Tuesday. This isn't the interesting part, though; Cunningham's rap video from 2011 advocating abstinence is a much more important subject.

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Every now and then Ken Kagami’s sold-out  STILL AVAILABLE stone-cold classic SnooPee proudly makes the rounds of Tumblr. Destiny. And on sale now at 40% off. Thus: Yours for just $3.00!

Here, from yesterday, is your argument against the efficacy of PED use.

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petetoms:

MOVIE REVIEWS (*SPOILERS*)

VIDEO OF MY NEPHEW TAKING HIS FIRST STEPS (My sister in law, 2013).

I was sent VIDEO OF MY NEPHEW TAKING HIS FIRST STEPS without an explanation, or hint as to what it was. When it opened with a child that I’ve known for about 10 months suddenly standing up and walking around, I felt this weird mix of happiness and uncanny terror. It has that quality that some dreams have where reality is just slightly off, which often makes it more horrifying than a more extreme nightmare.  Amongst all the imitations, it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a David Lynch movie not directed by Lynch himself.

JACK REACHER (Christopher McQuarrie, 2012)

Most people that know me know I currently live inside of a Redbox. I used to live in an apartment. In between, I lived inside of a Coinstar, but left after having change dumped on my face knocked out a lot of my best and most expensive teeth. The Redbox currently has the cheapest rent that I can find in the New York area ($11,000 a month plus utilities). For the past month or so, I’ve been sleeping on a bunch of misused and food-covered JACK REACHER Blu-rays. It’s like sleeping in a Hi Def bed with Tom Cruise. I can’t complain.

THE WOLVERINE (James Mangold, 2013).

I’ve probably read somewhere between 50 to 70 million Wolverine comics in my life, but the one event that my mind immediately goes to almost every time I think about the character is when he had all the metal stolen from his bones, and then cried because his bones were now made of bone. After like 6 Wolverine movies, that scene kind of gets adapted in this film.

There’s actually an interesting thing going on with this movie, where it does the same stuff that all these big budget superhero movies feel like they have to do, have the plot function as political allegory, but it takes that allegory and makes it the main text of the movie. The actual plot gets sort of ignored and openly dismissed throughout, while it’s replaced with a discussion of the relationship between the US and Japan post-World War II.

The movie opens with the bombing of Nagasaki. Wolverine is there as a POW. He rescues a Japanese officer, Yashida, by putting him in the underground pit they were holding Wolverine in and covering him with his body. Wolverine gets all of his skin burnt off. The whole thing is played for tragedy and is somber and serious (like a lot of the rest of the movie). 

The next scene is Wolverine dreaming about Jean Grey, who is dead and imploring him to die himself and come be with her. He can’t because he is immortal. He feels guilty because he killed Jean in the third X-Men movie. I didn’t remember that this happened, and I don’t think the movie expects you to, because the events from the third X-Men are never described, and seem totally unimportant. So, as it’s juxtaposed, it seems that Wolverine feels extremely guilty about the bombing of Nagasaki (not X-MEN: THE LAST STAND), and is haunted by it for the rest of the film. Wolverine, a Canadian, becomes a stand-in for the US.

Yashida, meanwhile, while still physically scarred from the bombing has become a successful inventor, and entrepreneur, but he is now dying of cancer. He sends for Wolverine because he wants to suck out his power of immortality and use it himself. Plot-wise it makes no sense, but allegorically, it seems totally normal. It is eventually revealed he wants to use futuristic technology in order to return himself and, in turn, Japan to his nostalgic view of it before WWII. In his mind, the US should sacrifice its corrupted, haunted empire so that his could live.

The movie eventually ends with Wolverine telling Jean Grey that, though he feels bad, he had to kill her because she was ‘hurting people.’ Essentially justifying the bombing of Nagasaki. Wolverine has replaced Jean with Yashida’s granddaughter, Mariko, (who kills Yashida with Wolverine’s severed claws), who is taking over her grandfather’s company, and wants to love Wolverine, and live a life divorced from ‘outdated’ Japanese tradition (her evil father, and evil grandfather are killed by Wolverine, and her evil arranged husband is disposed of).

Wolverine as the US and a new, modern feminized Japan in the form of  Mariko get over their guilt, and pain, and fall in love. The US by admitting it has to do horrible shit sometimes, but that doesn’t make it only a murderer, and Japan by forgetting the past and moving on. 

I walked out of the movie thinking that this was totally insane. 

I rushed home on my razor scooter, while underneath my bandana dreams of the incensed critical reactions people on the Internet had to this movie danced.

I don’t have a degree in googling, but no one seems to have really brought it up. I read a lot of reviews that claimed there was ‘no substance,’ or bemoaned the fact that the big action sequence is stuck almost randomly in the opening 3rd of the movie, or talked about how the plot of the film was boring or didn’t work, but nothing really about the actual text of the movie. A lot of the reviews just read like the reviewer was going down a list of writing tips explaining which tips the movie didn’t listen to.

I rolled around in front of my computer about to cry as if I had just realized my bones were made of bone. ‘I hate fucking writing tips,’ I whispered. ‘Sometimes it feels like the Internet, corporate exploitation of “fan entitlement," and popular review sites work together to force a divide between the creators and an intellectual property. People run these movies against a list of writing tips they saw on a blog to decide whether it was good or not, then move on to the next Wolverine movie (which is advertised inside of this Wolverine movie), it doesn’t matter who’s making it. Any ideas put forth by the writers or director are actively ignored. All pop culture is the singing competition on AMERICAN IDOL. Everything is sports now, and no one gives a fuck about the players.’

Then I imagined a world where people actually had in depth discussions of superhero movies, and terrified myself into silence. 

samhumphries:

niggaimdeadass:

IM DYING

dying

via http://25.media.tumblr.com/25ef083afd7bf0bd7477070ee03179f3/tumblr_mi8berLwVy1qf4nxzo1_400.gif

Baseball Card of the Week: 

“I see all the things I love in this world. The work, the food, the time to sit and smoke. And I look at this bullpen and I ask myself, “What the hell am I catching this thing for? Why am I trying to become something I don’t wanna become when all I want is out there waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am? Which is Biff Pocoroba, baseball catcher. "  - Biff Pocoroba

"Commies from Mars" #5, 1986, cover by Kenneth Huey

FIFA dream - sketchbook 2013

Me as Gay Talese… Gay Talese as Me

This is by far the most determined bear I have ever seen. This is perhaps the best bear I have ever seen.

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brush practice - sketchbook 2013

based on this photo

This San Diego Comic Con, I stole an idea from Blind as a Batman and had a bunch of my mates attempt a little Batman drawing with their eyes closed. Here are the results.

Mo Shafeek
General Manager at Mondo

Jock
Artist

Arne Meyer
Community Manager at Naughty Dog

Jhonen Vasquez
Cartoonist

Brett Lewis
Writer

Duncan Jones
Director

Will Dennis
Editor at Vertigo

JW Buchanan
One half of Little Friends of Printmaking

Mark Chiarello
Artist and Art Director at DC Comics

Chris Yost
Writer

Eric Garza
Designer at Mondo

Kevin Mangan
Developer, Designer

Nan Lawson
Cartoonist

Delaney Mamer
IDW

Andi Baker

Ben Mekler
Ruin The Internet

Mary Nash

Jessica Olsen
Mondo

Melissa Buchanan
The Other Half of Little Friends of Printmaking

Tyler Hutchison
Cartoonist

Evan Dahm
Cartoonist

Clark Orr
Designer

Aaron Morgan

Scott C
Artist

Rodene Jones
Photographer

Frank Gibson
Tiny Kitten Teeth

Lisa Hanawalt
Artist

Jed Henry
Artist

Mark Buckingham
Artist

Olly Moss
Popular singer

James Spafford
Community Manager at Media Molecule

Becky Cloonan
Artist

Martin Ansin
Artist

Becky Dreistadt
Tiny Kitten Teeth

Angie Wang
Artist

Danny Askar
Printer

Kazu Kibuishi
Artist

Craig Kyle
Producer of Thor and Thor: The Dark World. Writer.

Mike Mitchell
Artist

Jason Edmiston
Artist

Tony Cliff
Artist

Kevin Tong
Artist

Dik Pose
Artist

Justin Ishmael
Mondo

Jason Caffoe
Artist

cinephilearchive:

By the way, it’s not in the goddamed cat and it’s not in Newt, either. I would never be that cruel. —James Cameron’s 1987 responses to angry fans who hated Aliens

A pretty rare James Cameron’s Aliens screenplay, FIRST DRAFT February 26, 1985 [pdf]. (NOTE: For educational purposes only)

3 hour ALIENS making of documentary, this is how you make movies. Real fire, real Aliens, real guns; not a bunch of actors pretending in front of a green-screen. I miss the era before the overuse of CGI ruined moviemaking. [thanks to Danny Lacey]

I don’t know how else to describe this: The movie made me feel bad. It filled me with feelings of unease and disquiet and anxiety. I walked outside and I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I was drained. I’m not sure Aliens is what we mean by entertainment. Yet I have to be accurate about this movie: It is a superb example of filmmaking craft. The director, James Cameron, has been assigned to make an intense and horrifying thriller, and he has delivered. Weaver, who is onscreen almost all the time, comes through with a very strong, sympathetic performance: She’s the thread that holds everything together. The supporting players are sharply drawn. The special effects are professional. I’m giving the movie a high rating for its skill and professionalism and because it does the job it says it will do. I am also advising you not to eat before you go to see it. —Roger Ebert

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