Boils and Ghouls

It took me forever, but I finally finished watching the second season of Tales From the Crypt. Season 2 is a lot longer that the first one (18 episodes, as opposed to 6), but I think that, overall, the episodes are weaker than they were in the first season. Still, I enjoyed most of them, especially Korman's Kalamity, Four-Sided Triangle, 'Til Death, My Brother's Keeper, Three's a Crowd, and The Switch, but there were a couple of really bad ones, Cutting Cards probably being the worst offender. As usual, the Crypt Keeper was funny and alliterative, and his intros and afterwords to the different tales were always a hoot. All in all, it was a season worth watching, especially if you don't mind making fun of the acting, the clothes, and the hairstyles. Totally dated, but a fun show!

The Green Knight

I hadn't done a sketch during a meeting in a while, so I thought it was about time to put pen to paper and doodle a little. The result, this merry-looking warrior, is kind of cool, and I am happy with how it turned out. His costume is more than a little bit influenced by Altair and Ezio from the Assassin's Creed series, but it doesn't really look like either one of them. As for the color, it's green because that's the only pen I had brought to the meeting, so there's no need to look for any strange symbolism or hidden messages. At any rate, I hope you like it!

Uncanny X-Men #521

Another Land-drawn issue, UXM #521 was a fun read even though the bad guy's exposition was really clunky and stained an otherwise well-crafted tale. The artwork was better in this issue than it was in last month's, yet I'd rather have Terry Dodson draw the book every single month. Well, I can always hope it'll be his turn again soon.

Never Adopt Kids

That's pretty much the moral of The Orphan: never adopt kids, especially if they are older and from another country. Things would have turned out pretty different for the protagonist couple if they had left Esther well alone in the orphanage. Also, said couple could have used some therapy when it came to trusting each other and believing what the other one says. Things would have also been very different had the husband supported his wife. It wouldn't have made for such an entertaining movie, though, because, as it happens, The Orphan was a lot of fun to watch. It was intriguing and suspenseful, but there were also several examples of "why would she do that?" that could have probably been avoided. At any rate, I had a great time watching it at home with my girlfriend, who bought the DVD for the occasion. A fun, scary time!

Of Princes and Daggers

We have talked about expectations several times, but allow me to bring that up one more time. After seeing the Prince of Persia trailer several times, my girlfriend and I thought it was going to be an awesome movie. Then we read the reviews before going to see it, and she said she was going to bring a book so that she could read when the movie bored her out of her mind. I remained optimistic, hoping the film would be fantastic. Well, as I'm sure you have already gathered, our impressions fall somewhere in the middle of those extremes: she thought it was better than she was expecting, and I wished it had been better.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was entertaining and little else. There were good things, such as Jake Gyllenhaal's performance, the occasional somewhat witty banter between the Prince and Tamina (Gemma Arterton), and Alfred Molina's comic turn as Sheik Amar, but there were also plenty of bad things, such as clunky exposition and pandering to the audience. Also, director Mike Newell overuses slow-mo and fast-forward montages to, I guess, infuse the movie with some kind of style, or to make it more epic or dramatic. In any case, it doesn't work, and the end result is, in my opinion, pointless and pathetic.

A criticism about the movie I read several times was that PoP had no plot, but I disagree. It's true that it wasn't the cleverest, most convoluted or complex story ever told, but it did have a plot that worked for the most part. Was it predictable and full of not-so-surprising turns of events? Definitely, but the story was there.

To sum it up, Prince of Persia was entertaining, but I doubt I'll ever want to watch it again, let alone buy it on DVD. As for any potential sequels, we'll see how much money this one makes. Apparently, it placed third on its opening weekend, grossing only $30 million, which I'm sure the studios must have found disappointing after a reported $200 million budget. Unless the international box office compensates for its dismal opening numbers, I think the Sands of Time will be the first and last adventure of Prince Dastan on the big screen. Come to think of it, I don't think that would make me sad at all.

Curvy Lady

This is a super quick sketch I drew using as few lines as possible. Also, I wanted to communicate as much with each line as possible, so I tried to make them count. I don't know about you, but I think the results are sort of interesting. (At least, my girlfriend liked it.) Enjoy!

Communicating 08

Here you have the eighth page of Cultura de comunicaciones, the story my sister and I submitted to a comic book contest last January. As a throwback to what I did on page six, I decided to have a Facebook page as the first panel, and I think it turned out kind of cute. However, my favorite panel is the third one, with the old guy sending a telepathic message to the redhead. At this point, and after having covered as many inventions as I could think of, my sister and I thought it would be funny to come up with some predictions for the future, and I remembered this survey I read about how people would feel regarding having their credit card chips installed in their hips so that they wouldn't need to carry any plastic cards at all. I thought it would be crazy to do the same with cell phone chips, and that telepathy was pretty much just that. Next thing you know, the picture for this panel had popped in my mind. I hope you like it!