The Bank Job

I think The Bank Job is the first movie starring Jason Statham I have ever seen. The movie is based on a true story about a bunch of thieves robbing a bank and getting into a previously unsuspected world of trouble.

While the movie wasn't great, I found it quite entertaining, but then again, I usually like heist movies. As for Statham, his performance was a nice surprise. I guess I hadn't given him much credit because he tends to star in action movies that I don't bother seeing, but I thought he did a very good job as the leader of the bank robbers, so I won't scoff at him again.

So, if you're in the mood for a heist movie, I suggest you check out The Bank Job. If, on the other hand, this kind of movie doesn't do anything for you, you won't be missing much if you skip it.

Dhraya abocetada

Aquí tenéis otro dibujillo de mi famosa serie de dibujos que hago en reuniones. El boceto de hoy está protagonizado por nuestra querida Dhraya, la protagonista de Worlds Collide, está hecho con bolígrafo directamente, y no me llevó más que unos pocos minutos. Se me ocurrió que quería dibujarla con coletas, pero dado que no tiene pelo, la cosa estaba algo difícil. Al final, solucioné el problema con gomas para el pelo que pasaron a ser gomas para los tentáculos. Será que soy raro...

La tumba

Y ya llegamos a la tercera entrega de Los archivos de Dresden. Como nos tienen acostum-
brados, acción sin límite, peleas contra vampiros, fantasmas, hadas, perros demoníacos.... Y un sin fin de enemigos que no dejan al pobre Harry ni dormir tranquilo.

Me gusta el nuevo fichaje de Michel, el guerrero "templario" que con su maravillosa y gran espada se dedica a ayudar al pobre Harry para acabar con tanto malo. También me gusta la idea de que alguien tenga una familia y su mujer se mosquee porque esté salvando al mundo mientras ella está en casa con los chiquillos.

Lo que no me gusta, como ya comenté antes, es el tema del más allá. Cuando se tocan estos temas no sé cómo lo hacen que nunca terminan de convencerme. Lo mismo me ocurrió con la saga de Las guerras de la reina araña, de los Reinos olvidados.

Otra cosa que tampoco me gusta mucho es que meten a demasiados malos de los cuales apenas dan información, como en Spiderman 3. Mejor céntrate sólo en uno o dos malos, y el resto para otro libro. Yo hubiera eliminado toda la parte de la Madrina, que no me gusta nada en absoluto. Pero, como siempre, es un libro muy entretenido y muy bien escrito, y lo pongo por delante de Tormenta, pero por detrás de Luna llena. Y ahora a esperar al cuarto libro que no sabemos cuándo llegara.

Pixar Does It Again

I wasn't sure what to expect from Pixar's tenth movie, except for one thing: it was going to be good, since it was a Pixar movie (redundant but true). You've probably seen the previews: an old guy ties a bunch of balloons to his old house and flies away from his neighborhood. That was pretty much all I knew about Up, but, like I said, it was a Pixar movie, so I would gladly pay the admission price at The Rave and watch it in 3D.

So I went and saw it and I was blown away by this movie directed by Pete Docter. Up is a fun ride, and even though it packs a lot of jokes, gags, and laughs, it is also a heart-wrenching story about love, loneliness, and chasing your dreams. And while this is not the first time the geniuses at Pixar have tackled some of those themes, Up made it clear that the most deeply moving films nowadays seem to be coming from animation studios. Am I the only one who sees this pattern? Think of last year's Wall-e, for example, and how moving it was. Just like Wall-e, Up combines sunny with cloudy, funny with sad, and it does it seamlessly and in a vastly entertaining way that is by no means a kids-only movie. You want an example? Just a few minutes into the film we witness the whole lives of Carl and Ellie, as this serves as the prelude for everything else that will come later in the story. Those few minutes are incredibly emotive and compelling, and there is not a line of dialogue throughout the whole sequence. (Brings Wall-e to mind again.) From there, the tone goes back to fun and sunny, but the sadness and tenderness this sequence generates keep permeating the movie from beginning to end.

As you well know, dear readers, a story wins me over if I find it (and the characters) compelling. But when you add spectacularly amazing visuals, flawless animation, spot-on character design, and a technical prowess that puts pretty much every other film to shame, the result is a must-see movie that, strange as it might seem to people who know me, I liked much better than Wall-e, which was great as well. Could this be a contender for Best Movie of the Year when I write my list in December? Well, I don't want to hype Up too much or create impossible-to-meet expectations, but I really think you guys should go see this movie. Now.

Raimi's Return

After directing nothing but Spider-Man movies for pretty much the last decade, Sam Raimi returns to the genre that gained him millions (okay, maybe thousands) of fans: horror. Would Drag Me to Hell be any good? Would it be scary? Would it be as fun as the Evil Dead movies? And most importantly, would it feature Bruce Campbell? Fortunately, the answer to all these questions (except for one) turned out to be yes.

DMTH offers plenty of elements and tricks we've seen before in dozens of other scary movies, but somehow Raimi makes them work, and the movie feels like a fun, fresh ride instead of the trite, sad affair it could have turned out to be. I mean, there are curses and gypsies and demons and creaking planks and mysterious fortune tellers. Does it sound unoriginal already? It really does, and that is why it's so strange that the whole thing works so well. The weight of the movie rests in Alison Lohman's shoulders, as she plays main character Christine Brown, and she does a very good job of being scared, confused, and at the end of her endurance. I've never been a big fan of the actress, but I must say I was pleasantly surprised.

Something else that came as a surprise was how few special effects were in the film. Raimi likes to give you the chills by means of music, creepy noises, and unsettling camera angles. Still, there's plenty of effects, don't get me wrong, but they're not the flashy kind. Instead, they try to go as unnoticed as possible; except, that is, whenever poor Christine is getting some unlikely item forced into her mouth or down her throat. I don't know if Raimi has some kind of oral fixation, but the variety of outrageous things that happen to find their way into Christine's mouth is nothing short of spectacular and lends itself to all sorts of weird Freudian interpretations.

All in all, DMTH turned out to be lots of fun, and I definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys thrillers or scary movies. The film wasn't really scary, but it certainly had me in its grip from beginning to end, as I was rooting for Christine to fight her way out of her predicament. The only thing missing from this crazy cool movie was a Bruce Campbell cameo. Other than that, it couldn't have been better.

The Swine Rider

El otro día una de las estudiantes de mi escuela me mandó un email pregun-
tándome si podía dibujar una viñeta político- humorística para el periódico de la escuela, petición a la que por supuesto accedí sin pensármelo dos veces. Fue tras aceptar el encargo, por supuesto, cuando me di cuenta de que no tenía ni idea de qué dibujar, dado que ni leo el periódico, ni veo el telediario, ni visito páginas web de noticias (que no sean sobre comics o películas, claro), ni, en resumen, sé lo que pasa en el mundo. ¿Qué demonios podía dibujar que fuera actual, relevante, y moderadamente gracioso? Ni idea.
Me pasé el camino a casa dándole vueltas al tema, y caí en la cuenta que lo único que sabía de la actualidad era que Obama es el presidente y que la swine flu ha tenido a este país tan dado al tremendismo y la exageración un pelín asustado. La solución a mi problema pasaba, obviamente, por combinar ambos temas. Fue entonces cuando se me ocurrió que ver a Obama entrevistando al malévolo virus en el despacho oval tenía cierta coña: sería la entrevista de trabajo más extraña que jamás se había visto. Inmediatamente, la frase del virus me vino a la cabeza, y la idea de la entrevista de trabajo se transformó en esta especie de visita de cortesía.
El siguiente paso era asegurarse de que los personajes eran inmediatamente reconocibles para el público. Obama era "fácil", porque lo "único" que tenía que hacer era que el dibujo se pareciese al presidente. Era el malvado virus el que no sabía cómo representar. Al principio quería dibujar una especie de monstruo o algo, pero la única manera que se me ocurría para hacerlo fácilmente reconocible era ponerle un cartel o algo en la camisa. Tratar de justificar un cartel o algo que explicara quién era el personaje y que pareciera que viniese a cuento fue lo que me hizo pensar en una chaqueta de motorista con el "logo de la banda" en la espalda. Esto, sin embargo, hacía imposible que pudiéramos ver al virus de frente o de perfil, con lo que me iba a quedar sin poder dibujar mi monstruo. De todas formas, tampoco sabía qué aspecto darle, así que tenerlo de espaldas tenía sentido, favorecía la composición, y dejaba bien visible y claro que el personaje en cuestión era el H1N1. Y para asegurarme que todos sabían que era el tipo A, decidí ponerle una gorra que obviamente tenía que estar del revés para que pudiéramos verle la parte de delante. Todo esto convertía en irrelevante el aspecto del virus, pero aun así decidí ponerle orejas y morro de cerdo para reforzar la idea un poquito más.
Una vez tuve la situación y los personajes claros, lo único que tuve que hacer fue buscar varias fotos de referencia para dibujar tanto a Obama como a su escritorio en el despacho oval, y el dibujo a lápiz estaba terminado algo más de una hora más tarde. A continuación, entinté el conjunto en algo menos de una hora, y se lo mandé al periódico para que lo publicaran. Por desgracia (para mi ego), no tuvieron espacio suficiente en este número, y al final no publicaron mi estupendo dibujo, pero al menos podéis verlo aquí en semiprimicia exclusiva. Espero que os guste!

Reading List: May

May has turned out to be a lackluster month in terms of the books I’ve read. I didn’t dislike any of them, but except for the Kinsey Millhone adventures, these month’s novels left me quite indifferent. Let’s see what I read…

Laura Rider’s Masterpiece

In this book by Jane Hamilton, the Laura Rider of the title engineers an affair between her husband and another woman so she can study it and write about it in the novel she is planning on writing. I thought it sounded perilously like chick-lit, but I also thought it was an interesting premise. As it turned out, it was more the former than the latter, but at least it was mercifully short.

Girls, vol. 1: Conception

Girls, vol. 2: Emergence

Girls, vol. 3: Survival

Girls, vol. 4: Extinction

I read the first volume of this bizarre story by the Luna brothers back in 2006, and when I bought volume two the following year, I reread the first trade to remember what the whole thing was about. Well, two years after reading the second chapter in the series, I finally bought volumes three and four, and proceeded to read the whole thing from beginning to end. And what I said before still holds true: Girls is a strange sci-fi and horror story about small-town people, their pettiness, and how they deal with each other when an unexpected catastrophe shakes their world. I don’t want to give too much away, because a lot of the joy of the book lies in figuring out what is going on, but I will say that the dialogue and the personalities of the different characters are pretty awesome, and the characters feel real and are a great example of the way people react to crises. You could certainly do worse than reading this weird but fun saga.

Gears of War: Aspho Fields

I’m not sure I can blame author Karen Traviss for what this story turned out to be. There are two stories being told in this book. One, in the past, deals with events that took place long before the first Gears of War game. The second one, in the present, happens in between the two games. And still, not much is told or revealed in either one. My guess is that Traviss had her hands tied because the people at Epic didn’t want her to reveal some information that will ostensibly be revealed in the third game of the series, and that made it very difficult to do pretty much anything. Still, the story is entertaining, and the characters feel like the ones I know and love from the game, but the fact that this book was so irrelevant made me a little angry.

N is for Noose

Leave it to Sue Grafton to provide some solid entertainment with her awesome alphabet mysteries starring private eye Kinsey Millhone. Good old Kinsey experiences the joys of a close-knit community that doesn’t want to give up their secrets in this chapter of the series, and, as it’s usually the case, the book is a fun ride from beginning to end.

O is for Outlaw

I actually started reading The Company (see below) before I got to O is for Outlaw, but halfway through the book I had to put it down and read something that was actually entertaining before I felt I could continue reading Parker's story. Enter Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone, and all my fictional woes were suddenly gone. A shame I keep reading faster than Grafton writes, since I'll run out of books to read soon!

The Company

If I said that Aspho Fields was irrelevant, then K.J. Parker’s The Company is as pointless (if not more so) as Traviss’s book. I enjoyed Parker’s Engineer trilogy, but I know s/he (“K.J. Parker" is a pseudonym, and it’s not clear whether the author is a man or a woman) likes to keep a slow pace throughout her novels and sometimes offer excruciating details that are not all that relevant. Still, since this was a standalone novel, I thought the author wouldn’t have too much time to digress and regale the reader with pointless information. And while that is mostly true, the whole book is pretty pointless in and on itself. I won’t reveal what the story is about, but once I finished it I realized it hadn’t really done anything for me. The characters weren’t very compelling and, silly as this may sound coming from a fantasy buff like me, their names were so freaking strange that it was hard for me to feel close to them or even know who they were without having to stop and think about it for a couple of seconds. In the end, I just kept reading, and while the story is somewhat interesting and the moral ambiguity of the main character, General Kunessin, is, as it tends to be the case with Parker’s “heroes”, fascinating, it is not enough to overcome the dullness of the whole thing. At least it’s only four hundred pages.

And that's it for this month. Come back in thirty days to see what I read in June. I can only hope it will be more rewarding than what I chose this time!