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Artemis Fowl is the next "Next Harry Potter" book to film series you haven't read yet

Artemis Fowl Goggles

I’m Harry Potter with goggles and fashion sense, suckers!


Though from the look of these books, I could read them all in a week. But I’m too busy playing a game. Of thrones. At the moment to read them, but I’ll have plenty of time before the first entry hits theaters. At this moment, all we know about Artemis Fowl the film is that it’s happening.

Plenty of YA books have come and gone from the theaters without making even the slightest of ripples. No star and no director means I can’t call it the new failure, but at the rate studios have been churning out YA fiction books into film to try to find the next Harry Potter (and the next Twilight), eventually something will end up making bank. Sure, Percy Jackson inched by to somehow score a sequel, but Eragon, The Golden Compass, and Alex Rider are among the dead.

Artemis Fowl is an antihero who does both bad and good things, this status can serve to give the series a different flavor from some of the other fantasy fair. Or they’ll just screw it up. Have any of you read the series? If so, do you think Hollywood can turn it into a good film, or will they be using Artemis Fowl as a tax writeoff?

Also because I’m a jerk, I hope that “foul language” is one of the MPAA warnings about Artemis Fowl.

Killer Joe

K-Fried-C: Killer Joe’s Reflection of Human Interaction in the Age of Social Media

K-Fried-C: Killer Joe’s Reflection of Human Interaction in the Age of Social Media

Killer Joe
2011
Written by Tracy Letts
Directed by William Friedkin

Killer Joe

Social media has literally changed the entire world. From creating uncountable communities great and small, to expanding our reach and allowing connections the world over, to creating billions of collars of customer data, social media is an ever-evolving juggernaut that reworks the fabric of society in a heartbeat.

As social media changes how we interact with each other online, the effects spread to our offline interactions. Character dynamics in stories reflect society, and as culture curves towards more online activity and more online influence, it is reflected in print and film. The expansion and fragmentation of social media is reflected in the Smith family in Killer Joe, as the genie is unleashed and cannot be contained, forever changing their lives in unexpected and tragic ways.

The Smith family relationships are already fractured as the film begins. Ansel is on his second wife, Sharla, and their favorite hobby is being disgusted at each other. Chris begins the film being thrown out of his mother’s place, having committed violence against his mother after she stole his drugs, causing him to owe far too much money to a local gangster. And Dottie is always in her own little world, rapidly switching from childlike innocence to implausible omnipresent knowledge at the drop of a hat.

Instead of “likes” and “retweets”, the Smith family deals in “anger” and “screaming” They are the living embodiment of getting into a political argument on Facebook, where suddenly your relatives that you’ve loved forever start spouting abhorrent viewpoints that make you question their humanity. The Smiths scream and some openly hate each other. Chris and Sharla do nothing but scream insults at one another, barely containing their contempt to just throttle the other. As internet discourse takes over, the veil that polite society limits such squabbles to sniping and occasional remarks is long abandoned. In order to get any point across, the easiest way is to yell and scream the loudest. As the family’s arguments increase in volume, the screaming gets louder and more violent. Like online, no one filters what they think, everyone just ramps things up.
Killer Joe

Dreams for Sale

Dreams for Sale

Dreams for Sale

aka 夢売るふたり aka Yume Uru Futari
Dreams for Sale
2012
Written and directed by Miwa Nishikawa
Dreams for Sale
In the blink of an eye, flames reduce a couple’s restaurant to ash, and with it their future. Struggling with depression, dejection and suffering at lower jobs at subpar restaurants, a drunken affair sparks a scheme that sees them become grifters to earn the money needed to buy a nice restaurant. Nothing is that simple, and their fall from grace exposes their dark sides. Dreams for Sale is a tale of struggling to survive and doing bad while excusing it as a greater good.

Director and writer Miwa Nishikawa doesn’t just tell a normal con artist tale, the story of Kanya and Satoko Ichizawa (Sadao Abe and Takako Matsu) is only one side of the coin. The focus in Dreams for Sale is not only on the couple, but on the female victims as well. The movie is their tales just as much as the two leads.
Dreams for Sale
Nishikawa wanted to write a film that dealt with issues of women, their life choices and their feelings of anxiety over whether they made the right decisions with their lives. With the various women who are targets, Nishikawa explores the social consequences of their lives, from discarded mistresses to empty beds to vengeful exes to single mothers struggling to hold things together to driven athletes on the cusp of giving up. This focus is defined in the opening and closing montages that are tiny scenes into the lives of women (some random, some central to the storyline).
Dreams for Sale

Housewives from Another World

Housewives from Another World

Housewives from Another World

Housewives from Another World
2010
Written and directed by Fred Olen Ray (as Nicholas Medina)

Housewives from Another World

Yes, it is all so clear now how Honey Boo-Boo is a good show.


It’s been far too long. We need an application of Fred Olen Ray, STAT! Thankfully, Housewives From Another World is here to deliver us from the torment, the torment of not seeing one of Ray’s bikiniverse films on TarsTarkas.NET recently. Don’t laugh, this is a recognized medical condition. In that I edited it into a Wikipedia article on medical conditions before I was banned for “trolling”. But how is spreading knowledge trolling? Wikipedia is the true monster.

Housewives From Another World features invading aliens who possess some local women in hopes of sabotaging a satellite launch to prevent a war that ends up destroying their species. These women never regain control of their bodies, and are essentially dead. The aliens would declare that it’s all in the name of saving countless lives. So a moral choice is presented: Is it worth killing a few innocent people in order to prevent a genocide? Obviously, the aliens have made their choice. But did they really have to kill the women as they gain control of their bodies? And why not just gain control of Max, the designer of the satellite, and use his knowledge to sabotage all chances of it being launched?

Housewives from Another World

Oh, great, someone wake up Bruce Willis…


It’s also interesting so see that the aliens travel back in time to Earth, instead of going to warn their own people to get them prepared. Or maybe they do, we just don’t see those characters. After all, some of the alien women leave at the end (with Max), and they must be going somewhere. The aliens may have advanced technology, but they have dubious planning skills (unless their technology only allows them to travel to Earth in the past!) and who knows what their time meddling may have done to history. Technology from the satellite may have saved the galaxy at some point, but the whole thing is tossed to save their skins. And let’s not even talk about how this would be a minor setback at best, human technology can easily catch up and eclipse the work of one man. Though that might mean the time sequence to discovery and war is very quick, perhaps enough that they will be able to develop defenses (heck, there might even be a Team B that is warning their own homeworld!) or even arming their own side, who may come to conquer Earth instead.

These ethical and mysterious quandaries add intrigue to Housewives From Another World. Also there are naked people who have sex.

Housewives from Another World

Cut loose like a deuce, another runner in the night


Max (Frankie Cullen) – Works on the Orion Deep Space Satellite when he’s not cheating on his wife, Karen. Is the best worker in the program, and the boss constantly talks about how cool his is.
Karen (Heather Vandeven) – Max’s loving wife, who is less than loving when she finds he’s been cheating around. Finds a meteor crater in a drunken stupor and is taken over by aliens from a distant world who are working to sabotage the Orion Deep Space Satellite to save countless lives.
Carla (Christine Nguyen) – Fellow worker on the Orion satellite, but she’s nowhere near as good at her job as Max. Dreamy Max… But at least she’s better than Tom! Gets meteored last of the three female characters.
Rita (Rebecca Love) – Unbright neighbor to Max and Rita, easily convinced to hop into bed with Max. Gets meteored and suddenly is much smarter. Because she’s an alien, and not Rita.
Tom (Billy Chappell as Tony Marino) – Oh. This guy.
Mr. Roberts (Ted Newsom) – Boss at the satellite company, he really rides his employees to do their all, but only Max is good enough to get anything done.
Undercover Agent (Ron Ford) – This totally cool looking guy who is trying to buy the satellite plans off of Tom for suitcases of cash is definitely not an undercover agent for the FBI.
Housewives from Another World

This is the only shower in all of LA!

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu J-Pop Concert San Francisco

J-POP Summit Festival concert with Kyary Pamyu Pamyu trip report!

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu  J-POP concert San Francisco

As part of the continuing adventures of TarsTarkas.NET, I attended a free concert in Union
Square in San Francisco that was part of the J-POP Summit Festival 2013. The Festival is also sponsoring the first ever Japan Film Festival of San Francisco, which I am also attending screenings to (and reviews for Dreams for Sale and Library Wars will be appearing on TarsTarkas.NET!) I have press access, which I say as a disclaimer now, though I don’t accept free screening passes in press form, so I’ve paid my way for those films. I did, however, take advantage of the press access to get front row seats at this concert, which I would be attending anyway. But enough about the moral implications of getting a front row seat, let’s get on with the concert!

The free concert had four acts, so let’s go over them in order of appearance:

First up was Kylee (aka Kylee Saunders), an American singer with a Japanese mother who has become really big in Japan. As she’s currently going to school at Stanford, her focus now is more exposure and performances in the US. Kylee sung a mix of Japanese and English songs, including a cover of Pink’s Just Give Me A Reason. Kylee hung around a big to answer questions from concert host Mike Inouye of the local NBC station.

Up second was LoVendoЯ, the group formed around former Morning Musume singer Reina Tanaka. Over 4000 women auditioned to be part of the band, with Yuki Uozumi, Marina Okada, and Marin Miyazawa ending up with the coveted slots. LoVendoЯ was named earlier this year, and only has a few songs of their own, though I will say they were pretty entertaining. Among their songs played was Joukyou Monogatari. The act came out in outfits that were red and black colored leather, with billions and billions of metal studs in them. While talking with Mike Inouye, Reina Tanaka seemed almost apologetic the group didn’t have more songs to play.

Up third was human beatbox machine Daichi. Who performed by himself and made all of the noises for his songs. He was pretty crazy, creating inhuman musical sounds, mixing American and Japanese songs together into recognizable beats that were still unique. At one point he used a device to record samples of himself that he put on loop o he could perform as an entire band. Daichi has a song voice that sounds like a robot Popeye that he uses as his main song voice, but threw in several other completely different sounds. He also did a neat trick where he held the microphone up to his neck and still produced some awesome music. I believe he was the most impressive of the acts just for how cool it was that he did everything with just his mouth. And if they need a new Jones for a Police Academy reboot…

And, finally, what everyone came for – Kyary Pamyu Pamyu! The screaming was loud, but Kyary Pamyu Pamyu burst on stage with her four American flag attired masked alien cat girl dancers and rocked the house. Or rocked the open public area, I should say. Kyary opened with PonPonPon and went through her hits, Invader Invader, Fashion Monster, you know the drill. The audience was going nuts, and the energy from Kyary and her dancers was electric.

But all good things must come to an end, and thus the concert did as well. Kyary Pamyu Pamyu was kind enough to do a brief interview, and then that was all she wrote. Overall it was a fun experience, and some acts from Japan now have a larger audience thanks to the magic of exposure.

Here is a big bunch of photos I took

After the concert, the Press Pass lost it’s value, so I gave to to our good friend Mongo, who subsequently used the Press Pass to interview the brand new Royal Baby Prince George Alexander Louis of Cambridge. Also, Mongo has been arrested, something to do with trespassing and harassment of the Royal Family and annoying an infant. Who expected that to be a crime? Freaking infants, they are such babies…
Press Pass Mongo

J-Pop Summit Festival

Godzilla Marvel 15 cover

Godzilla #15 (October 1978)


Godzilla Marvel 15

Nighty-night!


Godzilla #15 – Roam on the Range (October 1978)
Writer – Doug Moench
Penciler – Herb Trimpe
Editor – Archie Goodwin

Holy Valley of Gwangi, Batman! This issue of Godzilla features Godzilla encountering cowboys and dude ranches! That’s not what anyone expected at all. Also there is missing cattle, stampeded, and crooked land deals going on. Will Godzilla be able to solve the mystery of whatever the heck is going on despite only being a semisentient giant mutant reptile? Of course! But next issue… First we got to set things up.

If you need a refresher on who’s-who, check out the Godzilla Marvel Splash Page, and feel free to check out the rest of March of Godzilla 2013!

Godzilla Marvel 15

Godzilla’s just got a hankering from some T-bone steaks!


Godzilla wanders into an area where lots of cattle ranches are (and then takes an adorable nap!) However, Godzilla gets blamed fro their recent rash of cattle disappearances and soon every ranch in the area is rustling riders to go rope themselves a dinosaur.

As you may have guessed, one of the lead instigators of the Godzilla Posse (henceforth called G-Posse) is involved in the actual stealing of the cattle. Oh, evil land barons, you don’t just exist in old western movies!

Godzilla then bumbles into a cattle herd, causing a stampede. STAMPEDE!!! The ranch hands stop the herd from diving off a cliff by blasting Godzilla’s tail with dynamite, then Godzilla follows some of the ranch hands and stomps a building as we are TO BE CONTINUED!!

Also Dum Dum and SHIELD clean up the aftermath of Salt Lake City and prepare Red Ronin to be taken for repairs. But that’s boring compared to Cowboys vs. Godzilla! Though it’s still more exciting than Cowboys vs. Aliens

Godzilla Marvel 15

Great plan, Tex!