Stuff Sucks is an excellent webcomic written by Liz Greenfield, an Animation student from Amsterdam (where the story is based). While the first twenty-odd comics start out as black and white, rough sketch art, you can easily see it progress into a very richly drawn, full color tapestry of her own making. The characters personalities are believable even when the situations seem nearly too odd to be true. The record store clerks reminded me of the Kevin Smith “Clerks”, only older, and believe it or not, more snarky. However, while this COULD’VE stayed a comic with witty banter about stupid customers and indie rock music trivia, it went further than that.
Directed by Frank Henenlotter
Written by Frank Henenlotter & Robert Martin
"In a blaze of blood, bones, and body parts, the vivacious young girl was instantly reduced to a tossed human salad... a salad that police are still trying to gather up... a salad that was once named Elizabeth. " - Newscaster
I remember the first time I watched this movie, thinking that I really should be offended somehow. I mean, somewhere between the exploding prostitutes, rampant crack use, and borderline necrophilia, it seems like something should be pushing that button that turns my phasers to “deeply outraged”. However, this movie is so bad, SO beautifully over the top that one has to laugh at (and all the way through) it, taking it about as seriously as anyone performing in the film did. That’s the beauty (amid the mountains of utter wrongness) of Frank Henenlotters horror/comedy, “Frankenhooker”.
The story is fairly simple to start with…Jeffrey Franken (James Lorinz) is your average-looking electrician who dabbles ever-so-slightly in mad science (ok, so he has the Crawling Eye in a jar, but who are we to judge?) Early into the movie, you meet his girlfriend, Elizabeth Shelley (yeah, yeah…Franken and Shelley, cute references), who is a very sweet, albeit slightly dense young woman with little to no sense of self-esteem (this is brought to light by her mentioning that she let her boyfriend staple her stomach for her, so she could lose some weight). As soon as you see that Franken’s gift to her dad is a remote-controlled lawnmower, you just KNOW the scene isn’t going to end well…and true to form, she goes and stands right in front of the thing until it spatters her blood across the green (and now red-speckled) lawn. Oh, the horror; damn you Darwin, for making accidents like that seem so truly necessary! Survival of the fittest, indeed.
Most Geek fans knew Lucy from her role as Xena, but she didn't gain real Geek cred until her turn as D'Anna Biers on the updated Battlestar Galactica sporting her blonde locks and devious smile! More pictures after the jump!
Henry – “I have a condition…my therapist calls it Probataphobia.”
Experience – “What does that mean?”
Henry – “The unfounded and illogical fear that one day, THIS WOULD HAPPEN!!!”
Black Sheep - not to be confused with the Spade/Farley comedy of ’96 - is most definitely a sheep of a different color. Red, mostly. Filmed in New Zealand, by the same FX team that brought you the Lord of the Rings movies (yet in a style much closer to that of the early Trouma Films, a-la “Toxic Avenger”), this movie is about genetically engineered sheep that, thanks to a bungled animal rights protest, mutate and go on a wanton killing spree throughout a sprawling family farm.
Don’t bother making the bad sheep jokes before you go in, because the majority of those are written into the script already. Although I did get punched in the arm when asked for a ride to the theater and replying, “Sure - I see mutton wrong with that!” Sure, my left arm is sore (thanks to that and several other comic gems during the evening) but, like one’s favorite tattoo, it was SO worth the pain!
