Alternate Reading 2: The dark tower series and Mr. King.

Gotta Love Phil Hale.

Ok, HUUUGE king fan here. The dark tower series is one I've been putting off of for a while and I haven't finished the entire series yet, but so far pretty damn good. The awesome thing about this series, I have to say is not only the content of the books, but the continuation in comic form, and the heavy input of illustrator art (including Phil hale) for the covers.

Roland Deschain, the main character, and the gunslinger as we know is traveling towards the 'dark tower' which I've read as a physical place and a metaphorical concept in the story. One of the awesome aspects of this story is that it's genre is wide, from Horror (obviously for king) to scifi, and fantasy which I think covers most of the topics in this class.

The first book in this series came out in 1982 and the 8th book which recently came out in '09. I've only cracked the cover of the first novel, "The gunslinger" which introduces the main character without giving to much information about his past or his motives for his movement towards the dark tower. After reading the hobbit, and some articles about this novel online, the connections between this and tolken's work. specifically with the 'High language' that some of the characters speak in the book. It's a lot like the lord of the rings series in a sense that there is this epic journey, but with the span of harry potter, with twice the amount of time spent on each novel.

I can't wait to finish the series (in like 4 years with the pace I'm at) but it will be an interesting 4 years at least.

the future....

in 10 years, I will be 30 and then I will probably FINALLY be doing what I want to do in terms of my career. I have probably spent the past 10 years doing shitty work that I don't want to do and kept saying to myself "it'll all pay off one day" and thats the day it hopefully pay off.

in 50 years, I'd be 70. I would hopefully at this point be teaching art, or have been teaching art for some time and am on the verge of retirement. If I ever have kids I would also want to be a huge part in their lives.

in 100 years, I'd be 120, and if I'm not dead, I hopefully would be plugged into some kind of cyborg because my body would be just complete mush at this point. I don't know what I'd be doing. I don't want to be bored with making art at that point, I still want to be drawing and painting.

Let the right one in/Let me in

Cover of the Graphic Novel for the movie.

This was a pretty dark movie, but pretty amazing none the less. I had heard of the american adaptation before knowing that it was a Swedish film but I hadn't seen it yet (which is good because I got to see it's original adaptation). In general, the movie was incredibly ominous with everything that happened to the point where I was only wondering about who wasn't going to die. That made it interesting to follow because me as the viewer didn't know what was going to happen exactly, but the foreshadowing was pretty insightful.

Ok now back to a previous post about vampires, I can clearly say that this movie is

EXACTLY WHAT TO EXPECT FROM A GOOD VAMPIRE FILM

Seriously, this movie (and book actually) held up very well to what vampires are in legend which is basically everything that twilight isn't.

we had:

• Bursting into flames in sunlight
• Feeding on human blood/victims
• not being able to just walk into a person's house without being invited in (which I think is often overlooked) without bleeding or even dying.
• running water
• coffins

This movie had a touch of the 30 days of night feel to it because of the wintery scene, which was pretty interesting to see how vampires act in the cold climate. I think that the Swedish aspect was interesting to me in a foreign sense, because it took the vampire legend to someplace outside hollywood and the US.

Ender's game

Awesome imaged by Sam Weber

Ok, Awesome character name, Awesome concept, Awesome book. Ender is one of those names that really just rolls off the tongue and in all honesty, make this book easier to read because of it.

Ender, the boy who is at top raking at battle school, yet still being ostracized from everyone else is relatable and interesting to read about. His character development is slow at first but then explodes after he goes to the academy. In all honesty, This book was cheesy, but still enjoyable which was kind of like snowcrash. the titles to things are pretty generic and to the point, which was kind of dumbing the concept behind everything down to like 5th grade level (like the "dragon army, Battle school,wargame etc..."

But the other characters in ender's game make up for this. Peters philosophy about making the world a better place, and using it as a guise to rule the world or mass destruction is something I think is seen often in history, and was well played into this futuristic novel. Valentine's nature as well, being the control to Ender by Peter was well played. Also, the Concept of the "Final Exam" which I thought related a lot to world war 2 was pretty good plot twist for the book. sort of like the pilots who dropped the bombs on hiroshima that were unaware of it's destructive power, or the "final solution" in nazi germany.

again, not a big sci-fi fan, but this book took that genre out of the ordinary. I don't like the mostly esoteric machinery in sci-fi but this was still pretty easy to understand.

Snoooooow Crash and cyber punk

Really bad fanart was the best I could do for images...

Snow crash. Talk about a weird setup, and generic Character names. But cheesiness aside, this was a pretty good book. Hiro's character was rather indulging and fun to pay attention to. His job as a pizza delivery man for the mafia (which still doesn't make sense to me but I though was a pretty good play off of the greasy italian men who own pizza joints.) which was short lived was exciting in the beginning of the novel to take the reader into. His encounter with YT and their inevitable partnership was also a good set up with the car crash and life or death scenario. I had never heard of cyber punk before I had heard of this movie, but I have heard of Steam punk (which to me is most enjoyable through the visual media.)

The Metaverse reminded me of the concept in .hack//sign and the concept of being stuck in or living in a virtual world. But in this case, in the cyberpunk realm, it's more of a living environment than a video game.

And then Snowcrash, the weird virus/drug that affects people in the cyber realm as well as in the real world. Pretty fantastic stuff.

The whole book was pretty fantastic, and it's vulgar use of language made it more enjoyable to read as it make the characters more relatable. I would definitely consider reading/watching more cyberpunk after reading snowcrash because I feel as though I want more separation from sci-fi than what has been presented (mostly because I'm not the biggest sci-fi fan).

J Horror Cont. Audition.

"deeper deeper deeper deeper"

To be completely honest, I had seen the ending of this movie before I had even known what the name of it was, and that we had to watch it for class. I found a random link on a website once and it just played the gruesome scene at the end. In that sense, Yeah, Mega spoiler.

"deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper."

The movie however was pretty good. It was rather dead up until Asami's appearance. Her character, and the creepy things that followed her was the turning point for me to be more interested. It was weird knowing the ending scene beforehand because it allowed me to make weird connections. especially to the footless man in the wheel chair.

The backtracking from place to place that Aoyama does in search for Asami is pretty suspenseful and even if I hadn't seen the ending I probably would of seen it as ominous. Gore is a theme I have seen reoccur in J Horror. However, I've noticed that it's only in one part of the movie and not played out throughout the film like in most american slasher films (saw, hostel etc...) I've also seen the japanese version of The Grudge or JU-ON which got all of it's gore out in the beginning. The Audition took care of it at the very end. The rest of most of the J Horror movies I've seen also follow this pattern, Ringu being the other one. What isn't gore in J horror seems to be suspenseful build up and foreshadowing.

and those needles in the eyes were pretty messed up.

The classic adventure. The hobbit and such adventures.

A classical adventure tale, and one that sets up the trilogy that soon followed, one of the best ever written.

The hobbit to me is the story of an unlikely hero. Tolken writes about this little dwarf like creature (though is not actually a dwarf) that despite his small stature, goes on his way to an unlikely adventure where one might not think he would survive.

He was pulled away from his home, 'The Shire' by Gandalf, which to me was an interesting way to start the story off. The unlikely hero who by nature is sort of lazy and prefers to spend his time at home and not do anything particularly dangerous is torn away from comfort to go on an adventure in the mountains.

It seemed that though all of the dangers that Bilbo, Gandalf and and the dwarves go on, Gandalf saves them from potential doom. Up until the point where Bilbo finds the ring.

To me, this whole concept of finding this ring is somewhat overshadowed by the heavy plot of the story. it's probably because I know of the coming sequels (and have seen the movies) that it felt to me that the part of the book with the ring is sort of undermined by the rest of the plot. The ring that gives invisibility isn't a big part of this story but it still feels as though there is more to it.

The thing about stories like this, the "epic Adventure" is that you (or at least I do) want the main character, the "adventurer" to return home, and return home a better or at least more experienced person. I feel like this happened to bilbo which is what makes the story satisfying for me at least.

That or the entire story is one little hobbits crazy salvia hallucination.