100 Silver Bullets

Let’s hear it for comic book vets taking a bite outta originality. New York gangsters with Tommy guns and spats go up against Appalachian hillbillies and their missing teeth for remarkably distilled hooch during Prohibition. And oh yeah, there’s a werewolf or three out there on the prowl going all Gary Brandner because, man, this is comics!

Brian Azzarello excels – in short bursts – when working within the crime genre. His plots are quick, at times convenient, and his dialogue rat-a-tat fun as his work on Jonny Double and the first two-ish years of 100 Bullets can attest to. With Moonshine, his double entendre is as fun as his characters are cliché, completely fitting the bill for an Edward Robinson meets Lon Chaney, Jr mash-up. Eduardo Risso is never finer then when drawing a femme fatale or a Ford Model A, and he gets the chance to showcase both, along with a bunch of shadows, negative space, and man, that full moon, throughout this first volume.

Moonshine tells the tale of Lou Pirlo and how he gets caught in the world of, well, moonshine and, in a way, silver bullets. Written in a noir style, Lou quickly realizes he is in trouble and completely out of his New York state of mind. He’s drowning while gulping down every last drop of that nectar. Azzarello builds on the mystery while Risso paints trees of orange and rivers of red – along with the requisite shoot-em-ups.

Yeah. Good stuff. Tons of fun that will hopefully never become a show on HBO.


As Always,
theJOE

Video-Game Action; Direct-Release Scripting

Let’s play nice and call Spectral an homage to a heap of sci-fi films and not a mash-up of clichés from all that has come before. A mash-up, yes, but certainly a nice-looking one at that.

 

James Badge Dale, proving he had leading-man chops, as evident from HBO’s The Pacific, stars in first-time director Nic Mathieu’s sci-fi muscle film that provides more hardcore military meat than a Michael Bay Transformers film. Dale plays a scientist invested in designing protective tech for the US Army of the very-near future when he is assigned to accompany a Delta Force unit on the field in Moldova who have encountered, well, ghosts. Ghosts that can fly through walls and humans, the latter of which immediately perishes upon contact.

Mathieu’s constantly-moving camerawork and in-your-face visuals are slick and surprisingly high-quality, thanks to the use of Weta for the F/X work. The story, however, is nothing more than an outline for the big-bang shoot ‘em-ups and creepy apparitions. The Delta Force team members are mostly faceless fodder smacking of, but lacking the charisma of, the marines from Aliens; they even rescue a blonde girl who has been scavenging and hiding out safe from the ghosts in the inner workings of an old factory. Later, when Delta has the chance to regroup and restock, they are luckily holed up with enough provisions and workable gear that would make B.A. Baracus smile with glee, welding torch in hand.

The overall premise of Spectral makes for fun viewing. The film’s a fast-paced video game where the viewer doesn’t mind playing the third person role. And while the story briefly describes the HOW of the ghosts, the WHY is untouched resulting in an unfulfilled feeling as the convenient failsafe stopping the threat is thrown allowing the credits roll. The quick wrap-up makes you think that if there were a couple more available quarters to feed into the slot, the story could continue with a more satisfying ending.

As Always,

theJOE