Monday, August 22, 2005
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Supah Brain Explody
Liberality for All
Muita gente critica os quadrinhos de super-herói por serem um gênero conservador - afinal, o tema básico do troço são super-homens defendendo o status quo. É até curioso que, atualmente, a maior parte dos roteiristas desse gênero conservador seja de esquerda (com direito a porrar o Bush, no Authority). Mas tem gente que volta às raízes, e tem gente que vai muito além delas e estaciona na extrema direita da extrema direita, como na pérola do fascismo Fox News linkada.
LIBERALITY FOR ALL #1 It is 2021, tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of 9/11 It is up to an underground group of bio-mechanically enhanced conservatives led by Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North to thwart Ambassador Usama Bin Laden's plans to nuke New York City...And wake the world from an Orwellian nightmare of United Nations dominated ultra-liberalism.
(Read complete synopsis) or (see 5-page preview)
Series concept: What if today's anti-war Liberals were in charge of the American government and had been since 9/11? What would that society look like in the year 2021? What would be the results of fighting “a more sensitive war on terror” and looking to the corrupt United Nations to solve all of America 's problems? In Liberality For All , the reader sees a vision of that future where there is only one justified type of war…the war against Conservatives and their ideals
LIBERALITY FOR ALL #1 Is getting major publicity in the talk radio world, with much more to come. To our knowledge, no book in over 10 years will be made known to so many people, outside the comic community.
WARNING: Expect this to sell out very fast.
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Monday, May 02, 2005
What is cyberpunk?
The Matrix has been hailed as a cyberpunk movie. Is it? I don't think so. Now, of course one can call whatever one likes cyberpunk, just as you can call April Lavigne punk. In fact, a lot of punk is about calling others unpunk, and it should be admitted that cyberpunk bears a tenuous connection to punk as a musical gender, and even its connection to punk aesthetics isn't so tight.
Why isn't it? Because it's Star Wars - or Dune - with "virtual reality" added in. (Note- this is not a dismissal of the technical and scientific inaccuracies of the Matrix movies. Cyberpunk isn't "hard" science fiction, itself). Let's make a list of cyberpunkisms, and see if the Matrix fits
1 - Broken Dreams - Heroes come from the sprawl. Think Depression, rather than Dystopia. The world is not decaying, but decayed - and humans have been displaced by the gleaming chrome corporations. "Red Star, Winter Orbit" is before Year Neuro. Heroes glean hope from cockroach droppings - but it's still hope, and they still dream. The decadence is not just social, it's physical. Count the references to shiny stuff and the references to obsolete junk. Junk wins 4-1. (The Matrix is all about the slick, although the first movie retains this aspect by referencing "the desert of the real." No huge raves and togas yet, just slop. The chicken-tasting gruel is probably the cyberpunkest bit of the Matrix.)
2- Badassatron - In fantasy and science fiction (even cerebral fantasy and science fiction, usually) heroes are badasses. Conan, Fafhrd, or Mazirian could face on whatever their world had to offer and win. Molly, if she ever tried to tack Hideo head-on, would just die. And she knows that. She may be a competent razorgirl, but he is a "stone-cold killer from the vat up." Case may be smart, but there's always the nagging feeling that the grey-haired people who live a strange half-life, organic hearts for the corporations, are just toying with him - as is, definitely, the AI Wintermute-Neuromancer. (There's a half-hearted go at this. However, Neo is "the one." Messiahs aren't very helpless.)
3- Riding the Tiger - The sense of urgency should always be a big part of it. And a large plot device is the "artifact." Chrome is far better than the heores, but she has no chance aboutthe Russian icebreaker they use to burn her. However, using it is dangerous. Everything the heroes use is dangerous, and the bigger the target, the bigger the chance the weapon may be turned against them. If they chose safer weapons, or try to face the corporations with their own resources, they will wound, not kill. Hosaka helicopters coming for the cheap coffin-hotel. (They can stop to have a talk with the oracle. What urgency is there in the movie is of the action-movie sort - the hero, busy with something else, has only a few seconds - yeah, right - to save the world/girl/etc. There is, of course, no big break, since the hero is already The One, and just has to go through the standard Hero's Journey steps.)
4 - Cyber - The loss of humanity is everywhere. There are characters who are jacked full of circuits, but more important are the ones whose soul has been taken over by the corporations, described as the dominant life form on Earth. That's important; Man's enemy are not machines, but corporations. Machines are wonderful, strange, alien. Wintermute doesn't take over the world and quash humans, it doesn't change anything at all. Its concerns are not our concerns, it is perfect in its isolation. Human beings altered to be tools are a truer symbol of the genre. Hideo, not Neuromancer. Even the latter - in the form of a "Brazilian urchin" (heh - pivetes do America, c. 1984) has been shaped by the corporations to be a tool. Though, unlike our finite human heroes, it does transcend that society.
5 - Heroism - from holding on to your principles or your friends to saving the world - is a big part of it. It's just that the heroes are closer to Bilbo than to Conan.
Of course, Bilbo isn't slick; you'd never catch him in mirrorshades and trenchcoats. But he was Tolkien's Everyman. And everymen in the future-that-was of this particular cyberpunk don't use magic rings to become invisible, they use sendais to see the invisible world, that is, jack into the matrix. Surreal landscapes, four-dimensional and in a trillion different colour channels are the mode of hacking, not grubby keyboard-punching. For all of the punk in the name, the reference is not musical, but visual. (I suppose this one counts. But it comes, in the literature, as something that balances the other stuff. Case, the low-life ex-hacker, manages to be a hero of sorts. Neo is a hero, pure and simple, not Everyman who manages not to betray himself.)
All four aspects can be glimpsed at (the gruel, again) in the first movie. In the latter two things become downright camp, complete with the blandest sex in human history and the Big Ewok Rave. And the challenge whereby the hero has to kiss Monica Bellucci - and pretend to like it! (The next challenge, I suppose, would be eating through a wall of chocolate.)
Why isn't it? Because it's Star Wars - or Dune - with "virtual reality" added in. (Note- this is not a dismissal of the technical and scientific inaccuracies of the Matrix movies. Cyberpunk isn't "hard" science fiction, itself). Let's make a list of cyberpunkisms, and see if the Matrix fits
1 - Broken Dreams - Heroes come from the sprawl. Think Depression, rather than Dystopia. The world is not decaying, but decayed - and humans have been displaced by the gleaming chrome corporations. "Red Star, Winter Orbit" is before Year Neuro. Heroes glean hope from cockroach droppings - but it's still hope, and they still dream. The decadence is not just social, it's physical. Count the references to shiny stuff and the references to obsolete junk. Junk wins 4-1. (The Matrix is all about the slick, although the first movie retains this aspect by referencing "the desert of the real." No huge raves and togas yet, just slop. The chicken-tasting gruel is probably the cyberpunkest bit of the Matrix.)
2- Badassatron - In fantasy and science fiction (even cerebral fantasy and science fiction, usually) heroes are badasses. Conan, Fafhrd, or Mazirian could face on whatever their world had to offer and win. Molly, if she ever tried to tack Hideo head-on, would just die. And she knows that. She may be a competent razorgirl, but he is a "stone-cold killer from the vat up." Case may be smart, but there's always the nagging feeling that the grey-haired people who live a strange half-life, organic hearts for the corporations, are just toying with him - as is, definitely, the AI Wintermute-Neuromancer. (There's a half-hearted go at this. However, Neo is "the one." Messiahs aren't very helpless.)
3- Riding the Tiger - The sense of urgency should always be a big part of it. And a large plot device is the "artifact." Chrome is far better than the heores, but she has no chance aboutthe Russian icebreaker they use to burn her. However, using it is dangerous. Everything the heroes use is dangerous, and the bigger the target, the bigger the chance the weapon may be turned against them. If they chose safer weapons, or try to face the corporations with their own resources, they will wound, not kill. Hosaka helicopters coming for the cheap coffin-hotel. (They can stop to have a talk with the oracle. What urgency is there in the movie is of the action-movie sort - the hero, busy with something else, has only a few seconds - yeah, right - to save the world/girl/etc. There is, of course, no big break, since the hero is already The One, and just has to go through the standard Hero's Journey steps.)
4 - Cyber - The loss of humanity is everywhere. There are characters who are jacked full of circuits, but more important are the ones whose soul has been taken over by the corporations, described as the dominant life form on Earth. That's important; Man's enemy are not machines, but corporations. Machines are wonderful, strange, alien. Wintermute doesn't take over the world and quash humans, it doesn't change anything at all. Its concerns are not our concerns, it is perfect in its isolation. Human beings altered to be tools are a truer symbol of the genre. Hideo, not Neuromancer. Even the latter - in the form of a "Brazilian urchin" (heh - pivetes do America, c. 1984) has been shaped by the corporations to be a tool. Though, unlike our finite human heroes, it does transcend that society.
5 - Heroism - from holding on to your principles or your friends to saving the world - is a big part of it. It's just that the heroes are closer to Bilbo than to Conan.
Of course, Bilbo isn't slick; you'd never catch him in mirrorshades and trenchcoats. But he was Tolkien's Everyman. And everymen in the future-that-was of this particular cyberpunk don't use magic rings to become invisible, they use sendais to see the invisible world, that is, jack into the matrix. Surreal landscapes, four-dimensional and in a trillion different colour channels are the mode of hacking, not grubby keyboard-punching. For all of the punk in the name, the reference is not musical, but visual. (I suppose this one counts. But it comes, in the literature, as something that balances the other stuff. Case, the low-life ex-hacker, manages to be a hero of sorts. Neo is a hero, pure and simple, not Everyman who manages not to betray himself.)
All four aspects can be glimpsed at (the gruel, again) in the first movie. In the latter two things become downright camp, complete with the blandest sex in human history and the Big Ewok Rave. And the challenge whereby the hero has to kiss Monica Bellucci - and pretend to like it! (The next challenge, I suppose, would be eating through a wall of chocolate.)
Sunday, December 26, 2004
Louraburra
Acabo de me dar conta de que o meu gosto por filmes é antes de tudo estético. E não é nenhuma coisa de refinamento, ou da estética do filme como obra no tempo, nada disso. É bem brega, pompa e circunstância mesmo. Exemplos:
Hero
Age of Innocence
Visconti em geral
Quinto Elemento
Tigre e o Dragão
PAciente Inglês
Until the End of the World
Hero
Age of Innocence
Visconti em geral
Quinto Elemento
Tigre e o Dragão
PAciente Inglês
Until the End of the World
Nerds de videoclube
Algum diretor de programação teve um enfarte, e os estagiários aproveitaram. Enquanto o sujeito ia pro hospital, tiraram a programação habitual de enlatados de ação, comédias românticas, e musicais antigos colorizados. Puseram no lugar Acossado, Quanto mais Quente Melhor, e Brancaleone.
E assistindo acossado, surgiu uma idéia um tanto estranha (e portanto, provavelmente já tida por outros, discutida, e assunto de tese de doutorado). Godard e Tarantino são extremamente parecidos, apesar das diferenças do meio, dos "different skies" de Frazer. Os dois são, basicamente e acima de tudo, cine-nerds. Fizeram filmes que poderiam ser o resultado de dois tarados por cinema discutindo de madrugada sobre "aquela cena em que aquela atriz gostosa larga o cara e aí..." Começaram pelo policial maravilhoso, depois foram ficando mais doidos até degringolar. A diferença é que a degringolagem do Tarantino, sob a influência da locadora americana, foi no caminho do esquecível, enquanto o Godard do cineminha europeu foi pro inassistível.
E têm toda a pinta de terem, ambos, feito na verdade o que o Tarantino sacaneou uma vez "did I do Uma? Fuck, I spent ten years as a pimply, ugly video clerk. Of course I did her! I fucked every woman on that set!"
E assistindo acossado, surgiu uma idéia um tanto estranha (e portanto, provavelmente já tida por outros, discutida, e assunto de tese de doutorado). Godard e Tarantino são extremamente parecidos, apesar das diferenças do meio, dos "different skies" de Frazer. Os dois são, basicamente e acima de tudo, cine-nerds. Fizeram filmes que poderiam ser o resultado de dois tarados por cinema discutindo de madrugada sobre "aquela cena em que aquela atriz gostosa larga o cara e aí..." Começaram pelo policial maravilhoso, depois foram ficando mais doidos até degringolar. A diferença é que a degringolagem do Tarantino, sob a influência da locadora americana, foi no caminho do esquecível, enquanto o Godard do cineminha europeu foi pro inassistível.
E têm toda a pinta de terem, ambos, feito na verdade o que o Tarantino sacaneou uma vez "did I do Uma? Fuck, I spent ten years as a pimply, ugly video clerk. Of course I did her! I fucked every woman on that set!"
Friday, December 17, 2004
Dream of the Merchant
The air is very still, and smells of hemp and sweat. In an atmosphere that's brighter than it should be, a lamp hangs from the ceiling, a brass affair from whose beak you would expect a genie, not a flame and smoke, to come out. It reminds one of a movie, of that illumination which Hollywood calls darkness.
The man in front of you is fat. Not just fat - immense. Rolls of fat cascade from his neck, and his face stands out as if framed by fat, a small face in a huge head, with yellowish eyes and a coarse, sparse beard which reminds one of pubic hairs. You cannot see him in his entirety, or even his face, but only in glimpses and flashes, perhaps the light isn't as bright as it seemed to be, and it is thus impossible to judge his countenance, if he is angry or serene, joyful or sad.
He is sitting on top of a pile of rolled carpets, and dressed in a rich gown of silk. It is almost impossible, in the dim light (is it dim or not?), to know where the carpets end and his body starts, as if he were a spirit of the carpets, perhaps the genie who's not inside the brass lamp. It is not that which makes him grotesque, however, but his hands, which are fine and almost feminine, slim, impossibly long fingers tapering into short, manicured nails. They wave out of the folds and drapes of his robed arms, as if bearing no connection to the obese head and formless body, tracing figures in the dusty, smoky air.
The hands of merchants resemble their wares. These are not the rough hands of a merchant in rugs and carpets. They are too fine even for a slaver's hands, for a financier, for a dealer in music and illusion. What does the merchant sell, what does he buy? The hands wave, and their waving and weaving looks as if the air itself is a gross thing, which they touch but reluctantly as the long fingers create gestures redolent with meaning.
You cannot help but think souls would be too coarse for those hands
The man in front of you is fat. Not just fat - immense. Rolls of fat cascade from his neck, and his face stands out as if framed by fat, a small face in a huge head, with yellowish eyes and a coarse, sparse beard which reminds one of pubic hairs. You cannot see him in his entirety, or even his face, but only in glimpses and flashes, perhaps the light isn't as bright as it seemed to be, and it is thus impossible to judge his countenance, if he is angry or serene, joyful or sad.
He is sitting on top of a pile of rolled carpets, and dressed in a rich gown of silk. It is almost impossible, in the dim light (is it dim or not?), to know where the carpets end and his body starts, as if he were a spirit of the carpets, perhaps the genie who's not inside the brass lamp. It is not that which makes him grotesque, however, but his hands, which are fine and almost feminine, slim, impossibly long fingers tapering into short, manicured nails. They wave out of the folds and drapes of his robed arms, as if bearing no connection to the obese head and formless body, tracing figures in the dusty, smoky air.
The hands of merchants resemble their wares. These are not the rough hands of a merchant in rugs and carpets. They are too fine even for a slaver's hands, for a financier, for a dealer in music and illusion. What does the merchant sell, what does he buy? The hands wave, and their waving and weaving looks as if the air itself is a gross thing, which they touch but reluctantly as the long fingers create gestures redolent with meaning.
You cannot help but think souls would be too coarse for those hands
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