Screenplay by: Robert Kamen
Directed by: John Avildsen

Cast:
Ralph Macchio, Morita Noriyuki, Elisabeth Shue, others

Running time: 126 mins

Rated: PG (Australia and USA)

Rating: ★★★★.5 / 5

Wow. I thought High School Musical's reign as my favourite movie would be longer. I'm not sure that this has surpassed it, but it has certainly equalled it.

Daniel LaRusso and his mum, Lucille, have moved from New Jersey to California for Lucille's new job. They're rather poor, and aside from the usual feelings of isolation and having to make new friends after a movie, Daniel feels different and uncool. With no friends - except for Ali, a rich girl he is quite fond of - Daniel is picked on by a group of boys who study karate.

In time, Daniel develops a friendship with Mr. Miyagi, the 'maintenance' guy at the set of flats where they live. It turns out that Mr. Miyagi knows karate, and he agrees to teach Daniel is his own unique way. The relationship between the two grows, and Daniel learns a lot of important things about life from the older man.

There are so many things to like about this film... but I must admit, I felt a little wrong for one of the things I liked: Daniel. The boy is cute... very much so. I felt justified when I learned that the actor who played him was 23. Phew!

The music is also fantastic, but I'm a sucker for 1980s music - and the storyline is sweet and adorable, which I always love. That all of the actors performed the majority of their own stunts is amazing.

But the film does have a weakness. It starts out very complex and deep, positioning the karate as a way that Daniel approaches life. However, as the film goes on, the karate takes over. It looked like Daniel was going to learn all sorts of cool lessons, but... he doesn't. His dream is saved by something bordering on the supernatural, and he gets exactly what he wants; the writer forgot the deep, dramatic storyline he'd set up and moved on to humour and "coolness", which is disappointing. There was an opportunity in this film to impart some great life lessons on the audience, but they were missed.

The film really is adorable and inspirational and lovely, and I've definitely taken a lot away from it - but it could have been better. It could have surpassed High School Musical! I think everyone sees this film at some point, but if you haven't seen it and don't have plans to, make some plans to. At the very least, it is fun - at most, it is awesome wrapped in win.

Writer: Charlie Huston
Pencillers: David Finch (#7-8) & Mico Suayan (#9-12)
Editor: Axel Alonso
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Format: 6 issues of ongoing series
Price: $2.99 USD / issue

Rating: 0.5 / 5

Moon Knight (2006) #s 7-12 are utter, utter nonsense.

Let's begin with the plot: the child of one of Moon Knight's former nemeses has come back to kill Marc and the people he cares about, after first giving Marc a warning and taunting him. Meanwhile, Marc works on restoring his friendships while an inner voice torments and abuses him... and he is profiled but the same guy who profiled him in the first six issues.

Does that sound familiar? It should, because it is almost exactly the same as the plot to #s 1-6.

Some of these issues are branded as Casualties of War and The Initiative tie-ins to the Civil War event, with prominent figures such as Iron Man, Spider-Man and Captain America appearing alongside Moon Knight on various covers. Civil War has nothing to do with any of these issues, apart from two scenes in which characters appear completely out of character to tell Marc how much he sucks, which is a real shame considering how much could have been done with Moon Knight as part of the event.

The title of the arc - Midnight Sun - is nonsensical. The villain Marc faces is 'Midnight', the son of 'The Midnight Man'. Okay, that explains the 'Midnight' part... but 'Sun'? The midnight sun, I guess, is the moon, but surely simply 'Midnight' would have sufficed? Or 'Midnight Son'?

At least Huston correctly used 'vestments', as opposed to 'investments' from #s 1-6. But he changed creative swearing, like $#!%, to ####. Always hashes. Only hashes. No inspiration.

The artwork remains horrendous. The first two issues are pencilled by David Finch, so we get reasonably pretty snapshots but no sense of movement (and the same poses again and again and again). The four remaining issues are pencilled by Mico Suayan, whose style is very similar to Finch's, but does convey some movement.

However, sometimes Suayan's panels make no sense. In a handful, Midnight is doing painful things to Moon Knight, apparently, but all we actually see is Moon Knight standing a few inches or a foot away with some lightly-reddened skin. Something got lost there.

And this I just don't get: Midnight presses Moon Knight against a giant clock and says "Guess what time it is?" in a big, splashy panel. I'm guessing it was meant to be midnight, but Moon Knight was pointing at 1:55. Why go to the trouble of all that imagery, and only do it half-arsed?

Also, the colouring is crummy. In many issues it is next to impossible to tell whether a character is black or white, and the source of light keeps changing for no apparent reason.

No thanks, Marvel. Just... no.

( Stuff, but also some things. )

sonofgodzilla, be afraid! It's getting closer!

Scores were: 166, 151 and 116.

Better than the last couple of weeks, but still room for improvement!

Writer: Charlie Huston
Penciller: David Finch
Editor: Axel Alonso
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Format: 6 issues of ongoing series
Price: $2.99 USD / issue

Rating: ★ / 5

Nope. I'm afraid not.

Moon Knight (2006) #s 1-6 leave a lot to be desired. The premise/plot is remarkably simple: "two years ago", Marc Spector - Moon Knight - got in a fight with his nemesis, Bushman, who may or may not have hurt Spector's knees (it is hard to tell with the art). In return, Spector ripped his face off, which may or may not have killed him.

Since then, maybe, Spector's been living in a wheelchair and popping pills for some reason. However, a new "Committee" (which may be the children of the folks who introduced Moon Knight to the world) profile Spector and send Taskmaster to kill him, but Moon Knight saves himself and then Moon Knight crashes a helicopter into the side of a building and a few minor things happen and then the story ends.

What the heck?

Why did I have so many maybes in there? Because the writing tells us bugger all (and what it does tell us is pretty much nonsense) and the artwork is horrendous for a comic book. Sure, the individual panels are sometimes very pretty, but there is nothing sequential about them and sure as heck no sense of movement. What we get are like before and after snapshots; for a series like Moon Knight, that really doesn't work. There needs to be a sense of movement and purpose, which simply isn't here.

Then there's the dialogue. Where there is an emphasis on words, it is usually on the wrong word. Try saying the dialogue from these issues out loud - it is completely unnatural, and not in the good ridiculous comic-book way. Huston has also changed Spector's friend Crawley's addiction (to be "edgier", I'd imagine, although he fails majorly) and tries to suggest there is something wrong with Spector and that what we have seen up until now is not to be taken at face value, but that's just Marvel these days - nothing is how it seemed, there always has to be some dark motive or secret behind it.

Oh, and Spector might be crazy or Khonshu may be a gross vengeful spirit thing in his mind which takes on horrid forms to torment him. There's little evidence for the former and the latter is entirely inconsistent with Khonshu's comprehensive past representations, but why should that matter at today's Marvel?

It's all quite bizarre - I read reviews of these issues in which people claim Marc has multiple personality disorder and that all sorts of other things happened which are simply not the case. A villain briefly comments on the multiple identities Marc has used over the years, which have always had clear divisions between them - how on Earth does that lead to a claim that Marc suffers from multiple personality disorder?

Seriously, people. Read the minimal nonsense that's there - don't make stuff up to cover for its many, many shortcomings.

This has really been one of those weeks.

I just can't be bothered with it anymore. Wake me up on Monday. :-)

I have removed hair using wax before. Sure, it stings, but it actually feels really nice afterwards - yanking things out from the roots leaves such a nice, clean feeling. It certainly doesn't hurt.

I've never heard a woman complain about waxing. Men complain all the time.

But neither sex has a right to do so. Instead, people should complain about the Gillette Fusion razor.

For the last few years I have used a Gillette Mach3 Power razor to shave. It didn't give me a terribly close shave and I cut myself every single time, but it was the best option - it certainly provided a much closer, smoother, more even shave than any electric shaver.

There's been an ad campaign lately featuring sports stars physically assaulting men who use Mach3 to get them to switch to Fusion, so fearing Ricky Ponting coming around to bash me with a cricket bat, I figured I'd give it a go.

It gave me a much closer shave, and no cuts or irritation.

But it felt like it was grabbing each hair one-by-one and yanking them, roots and all, after freezing my pores tight with ice.

It didn't hurt, as such, but it was uncomfortable - much more uncomfortable than wax.

I'm sticking with it for the closeness, but if I ever hear anyone complain about wax again I'm going to shave them from head to toe with a Fusion. :P

Created by: Stan Lee, Wallace Wood, John Romita Sr., Gene Colan, et.al.
Format: Marvel Essentials
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Price: $16.99 USD

ISBN: 0-7851-1861-6

Rating: ★★★★★ / 5

Essential Daredevil Vol.1, collecting Daredevil Vol.1 #1-25 (published from 1964-1967) is a heck of a lot better than I expected! I first encountered the character only a few months before Brian BENDIS! took over the title, and as a result I wasn't terribly impressed. We had awful writing and less-than-stellar artwork from the likes of Alex Maleev. I didn't really think I'd ever be a huge fan of the character...

... until I went back to his roots.

Daredevil is Matthew Murdock - a lawyer who, while pushing a man out of the way of a careening liquid tanker, was blinded. However, the radioactive solution aboard the truck caused his body to compensate by making his other senses hyper-sensitive and giving him a powerful radar sense. Matt continued to study hard and began to use his father's (a boxer) exercise equipment to hone his body as well as he was honing his mind.

When his father is eventually murdered for refusing to take a dive, Matt swears vengeance and after finishing university and opening a law practice with his schoolmate Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Matt takes on the costumed identity of Daredevil and gets revenge for his father's murder, then dedicates himself to fighting villainy whenever it rears its ugly head.

For a book that seems so grounded in semi-realism (the characters are all remarkably realistic, save for the superhuman powers of those who possess them) and which focuses so much on a love triangle (the twenty-five issues are largely occupied by the torn and confused feelings of Matt, Foggy and secretary Karen Page, who each love one of their friends but doubts that friend's love in return), Daredevil participates in a very broad variety of stories which, remarkably, take him as far away from New York as Antarctica.

Stan Lee (and Denny O'Neil, in the one issue he scripted) make all of DD's uncanny adventures seem perfectly reasonable. Of course a blind man will end up kidnapped by pirates and taken to a prehistoric jungle in the middle of Antarctica! Duh! The writing is handled in such a way that suspension of disbelief just isn't an issue - you get so drawn in that it all just clicks (except towards the very end, where it seems ludicrous to think that Foggy and Karen would not fully realise that Matt and DD are one and the same).

The artwork is also exceptional. Even in the very early issues, DD's adventures are depicted with great clarity and a powerful awareness of human musculature - when DD moves, all of his muscles move and strain and stretch accordingly. It's remarkable. As time passes and the likes of John Romita (Sr.) and Gene Colan take over pencilling duties, that sense of real movement is enhanced - but that isn't all.

Daredevil possesses a semi-noir tone, where the background, surroundings and general atmosphere take on a lot of importance. Unlike other comics of the time, Daredevil has highly detailed backgrounds, and even generic characters in crowd scenes aren't actually generic, each with a unique face and dress, depicted consistently if shown between panels. The creators really manage to draw you in to DD and his world - and even when you start doubting the likelihood that New York just happens to have flagpoles in all the right places for DD to swing off, there is still enough of a pull to keep you hooked.

These issues also benefit hugely from the black-and-white format, which makes everything much more clear than the muddy colouring of the 1960s would have allowed.

This is truly remarkable stuff - some of Stan Lee's best writing ever and quite possibly the greatest Marvel artwork of the 1960s. Everyone - everyone! - should read this; I'm just disappointed I let my exposure to BENDIS! delay my reading of these issues for so long.

My father collected lizards, turtles and snakes and turned out backyard into this native bushland thingy.

Problem is, in one clump of native grass he transplanted were cockroach eggs. Big, bush ones.

Now, our backyard and garden is infested. They go in the colder seasons but reappear in spring, taking over our mailbox.

Now, they've made it inside the house.

There was in my mum's room the other day, and one in our DVD shelf this afternoon.

I am petrified of all things bug-like and allergic to cockroaches.

I'm... not comfortable.

Somebody save me!

(Just to be clear, these are not dirty urban cockroaches like people find in rubbish bins in the suburbs. These are clean, big cockroaches from the bush.)

I just copied the text from the Roboman HTML documents into a more standard word processing document for the publisher and printers.

While it still needs to be edited and to have some changes made to the layout, it ended up considerably longer than expected: 314 pages and 86,612 words.

Yep.

Golly jeez, says I.

Writing projects currently in the works:

• Guardian Force Roboman Vol.1, final round of preparation, expected for release on the first week of January
• Two short stories for an anthology featuring an established character every person reading this knows (a character I can't name at the publisher's request)
• A novella featuring an established American character (expected mid-2009)
• An introduction for a collection of short stories, and a handful of tales to bridge those stories
• Two short stories featuring lesser-known American characters

Plenty to occupy my time this month, no?

Yay.

( Spoiler-ish stuff explaining this series' utter nonsense. )

Snurched from megthelegend, mariko_azrael and musa_winxfairy.

Interesting, as my favourite colour is purple!

Your rainbow is strongly shaded violet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is says about you: You are a creative person. You appreciate beauty and craftsmanship. You are patient and will keep trying to understand something until you've mastered it.

Find the colors of your rainbow at spacefem.com.

For Christmas, my sister (by which I mean my mum, with my sister paying her back) got me Transformers Movie (live-action) Inferno.

( Pics behind the cut. )

The ending of the final episode of Timeranger still confuses me.

( Spoilers behind the cut. )

Snurched from kradical, who always has good stuff worth nabbing!

( Stuff and things about yours truly. )

Scores: 107, 112, and 115.

Hopeless.

In the lane next to us were six dipsticks who didn't know what sleeves were and had names like 'Night Hawk' (I feel Kyle Richmond's pain!), 'Wolfgang' (von Strucker!) and 'Dragon'. They made lots of noise, they showed no courtesy to anyone (ie, me) already approaching to bowl, they were an irritant and, frankly, spoiled it for me.

I'm not that bad a bowler!