Musing about home video again: The Alien Anthology BD set.

As a semi-early adopter of the Blu-ray Disc format, I have noticed two distinct patterns in terms of which releases I will line up to buy next. On the one hand, I will buy a lot of discs where I have heard good things about the film therein (or seen it as a rental) and am willing to take a punt. Examples of that include Crank: High Voltage or Machete. On the other hand, there are films I saw repeatedly as a boy and, since coming to fully grok the benefits of progressive video and lossless audio, have been dying of curiosity to learn how they scrubbed up on the new format. Aliens and the series it is part of (to one extent or another) is an example of that.

Fantômas (aka Mike Patton is a genius, part three of many)

So I am sitting around, thinking to myself about what I am going to write next, and I think to myself “you know, Dean, you have just written about a piece of art that you enjoy by counting and laughing at all of the mistakes, so why not try writing about something you consider good or even great?”. And since I have not written about the recently-realised genius that Michael Allan Patton has been displaying over the last ten to fifteen years, why not?

Crank: High Voltage (aka Mike Patton is a genius, part two)

So one of my unforgiveable hobbies, as it turns out, is to watch films that offer a perspective on the world that is not coincidental with the Everyone Is A Child nonsense coming out of mainstream media’s mouth. And one of the best examples of this is a fun little piece called Crank: High Voltage. Crank: High Voltage is a sequel to Crank, a film I did not really enjoy that much until after I saw Crank: High Voltage. More on that in a moment.

Revisiting the classics: Faith No More – Angel Dust

I make no secret of this fact. I am getting old. And I do not merely mean old in the sense that I am now not young enough to see any novelty in being granted the privilege of voting in subtly rigged elections or buying my own vodka. I mean old in the sense that I see Death standing across the road from me, waving a hand, and promising that he will see me soon. I mean old in the sense that when he does this, I ask him if he can make it quick and at least relatively painless. I do not want to live in a normalistic world run by the kind of morons my grandfather would happily have lined up against a wall and shot, thanks very much.