Friday, March 6, 2009

The Boys Consider "Totally Stylin' Tattoos Barbie" and Prepare to Geek Out with Watchmen!

Barbie recently celebrated 50 years of dollhood and she's still making waves. Many parents are in an uproar over the new "Totally Stylin' Tattoos Barbie," which comes with sticker-tattoos that girls can apply to their dolls.

Chip: "In Forttt Scottt many people oppose tattoos for religious reasons, but I find them hot, especially the ones which are known as 'tramp stamps' or, in some cases, 'bulls-eyes,' often found on the lower backs of many Quinton's waitresses."

Richard: "What's wrong with a tattooed Barbie? The bitch is 50 years old. Let her get a tattoo if she wants."

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Today is the day when Watchmen, widely considered the "Citizen Kane of graphic novels," finally arrives in a big-screen incarnation helmed by Zach Snyder, a man the studio has been trumpeting as a "visionary" in their marketing campaign (based on his 'Dawn of the Dead' remake and a homo-erotic CGI war film). Geeks across the land are hitting the multi-plex today (well, not all of them: according to today's LJ-World, one of the guys who runs Larryville's downtown Astro Kitty comics is involved in a massive anti-Watchmen Facebook campaign, citing the 'purity' of the graphic novel, which must not be tainted).

What does the New York Times think of the audience for this film?

"Indeed, the ideal viewer — or reviewer, as the case may be — of the “Watchmen” movie would probably be a mid-’80s college sophomore with a smattering of Nietzsche, an extensive record collection and a comic-book nerd for a roommate. The film’s carefully preserved themes of apocalypse and decay might have proved powerfully unsettling to that anxious undergraduate sitting in his dorm room, listening to “99 Luftballons” and waiting for the world to end or the Berlin Wall to come down." (NY-Times).

Richard: "I find this insulting. Just because I was a mid-90's college sophomore doesn't mean I'm not a huge fucking geek too!"

Chip: "What's a 'Watchman?' Also, I understand the film is mostly about a giant blue man who walks around naked with a blue penis. It seems like that would be hard to take seriously. I wonder what Roger Ebert thinks?

Ebert: "It might seem improbable to take seriously a naked blue man, complete with discreet genitalia, but Billy Crudup brings a solemn detachment to Dr. Manhattan that is curiously affecting." (www.rogerebert.com)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"naked blue man," "discreet genitalia," "solemn detachment," "Dr. Manhattan". Any movie that has those phrases in a review for it is right out in my book. Not art.

And why is it impossible for me to hear the term "graphic novel" without the voice from Comic Book Guy saying it? "You're ruining the purity of the graphic novel! Worst graphic novel adaptation ever."

Anonymous said...

Art. It is naked blue art, my friends.