Every week, we list our recommendations of new music, books, comics, movies and TV to check out. This is Recs in Effect:
New Book
Grant Morrison is the man of theory that people like to put up when defending comics. A man interested in investigating, deconstructing, destroying, reinventing and adhering to the fundemental aspects of storytelling and comic books, Morrison can be the Tarantino of comics when he works. He can also be the Spike Lee, an artist with so much to say that he tries to say it all at once, creating whiplash inducing tonal shifts that make it easy to lose focus. In either case, Morrison appears to approach comics as a medium in a very solemn way, respecting all that has come before him, while trying to just finding the constant vein of having fun and creating the impossible that he relishes so. A book by him on the medium, including meditations on Superman and X-Men, the two franchises that he completely rejuvenated, is a must grab for anyone that is interested in media studies, literary theory and where Batman gets those wonderful toys.
New Graphic Novel
The Griff by Christopher Moore, Ian Corson, Jennyson Rusero
Christopher Moore is what would happen if Tom Robbins and Joe R. Lansdale had a kid and then let that kid be raised in Humboldt County. He has the drive-in, B-movie tendencies and tastes perfected by Lansdale and Stephen King (in his short stories) while also indulging in the heady, mystical mumblings of Tom Robbins or Kurt Vonnegut. The combination creates books that are both much deeper than they appear, but also not at all interested in seeming profound. There have been some misfires, true, but when Moore is hitting, it's usually aces. This is his latest venture and his first foray into graphic novels.
New Disc
This movie is terrible. But it's also the type of terrible where you can't quite figure out to whom it looked good. Jackie Gleason playing the overweight, past-his-prime mob assassin to Groucho Marx's mob boss called "God" that takes on barious elements of 60s counter culture like hippies and acid. It's...just bizarre. There's weird social commentary and attacks on the rise of pop culture and mass media...but jesus, is it weird. Simply put: Otto Preminger did not get the 60s. Skidoo has been out of print, unavailable except for a few copies of the film print (it was shown on AMC a year or so ago, which is where I saw it) and some filmnuts made copies from that and passed it around. It's a movie where you'll spend a third of the time going "wait - what?", another third saying "Ohhh, I get it. That's...clever, I guess." and the final third going "these people are way too old to be doing any of this." So if you like awful movies that seem to defy god simply by existing - and want to see a 63 year old's interpretation of the merits of cultural revolution through aging comedians - then check it out.
Honorable Mentions: Cocteau's Beauty & the Beast and Small Town Murder Songs
New Reminder
Breaking Bad
Do I really have to remind you to watch the best show on television? I hope not. But just in case - catch up on DVD/blu-ray/iTunes/bittorrent, watch last night's episode on demand or through bt, and then wait on pins & needles with the rest of us for next Sunday's new episode of Breaking Bad.