Universal Dork

Bob Mould Gets Super Sneaky in his Awesome New Video!

June 5, 2014

l don’t do a ton of music posts here so when I do you know it’s something special that’s worth checking out! I had to take a minute to mention that a little over a month ago I worked on the latest music video from Bob Mould. I was lucky enough to work on the styling and wardrobe for one of my musical idols, being a fan since his days in Husker Du this obviously meant a great deal to me not to mention this new song “I Don’t Know You Anymore” I consider to be one of the best songs he’s ever written. It calls back to some of his best work from Sugar, his band from the early 90’s.

If you don’t know who Bob is and you love loud punky guitar rock, you may have at least heard him on the last Foo Fighters album where he and Dave Grohl dueted on guitar, vox and songwriting for the albums best track “Dear Rosemary”. Otherwise I highly suggest checking out his his work starting with Husker Du. This latest video was filmed right here in Portland Oregon and directed by Alicia Rose, who we worked with on several other projects together including Corin Tucker’s video for “Neskowin”.

I can tell you the latest Mould video is pretty damn funny too as Bob and his band tries to “get with the times” after releasing a vinyl single for the bands latest track and being schooled by Colin Meloy from The Decemberists. I also got his new album “Beauty and Ruin” which was released on Merge Records yesterday and it’s rock solid with jam packed with amazing guitar driven power pop. This guy just gets better with age- if you have any doubt check out the video already!!!
Vintage Monster Toys: Gre-Gory The Vampire Bat – He’s FUN!

May 29, 2014

Toys back in the 1970’s were pretty fantastic, they had a particular look & feel to them that the toys of today just can’t match! I’m sure there are some pretty bad ass toys out these days, but back in the 70’s it was pretty random. A toy was created pretty much for the hell of it often times, as just something cool a kid might dig. Thus bringing us to today’s showcased toy- ‘Gre-Gory the Big Bad Vampire Bat”. He wasn’t part of a popular movie franchise, he wasn’t in a cartoon or a comic book-nope he was just a cool ass vampire bat made for the kids!

The cool thing about this bat that made it a must have for all the cool kids was that you could see it’s inner organs through a see through plastic chest piece, but that ain’t all-it had a button you pressed on it’s back that pumped blood through them!

1979-80 was a cool time to be a toy vampire bat-you could use gregory to terrorize your GI Joe’s or attack Ken & barbie on their honeymoon! Gre-Gory is a classic toy monster that should never be forgotten!!

Check out this rad video! Get the scoop on Gre-Gory!
X-men: Days of Future Past – The Best Comic Book Flick Ever?!

May 27, 2014

I was beginning to lose hope this year for the summer blockbusters, after two big duds being The Amazing Spider-man 2 & Godzilla I was quite certain things weren’t going to shape up to much of anything memorable for the rest of the season. However, I was proven quite wrong as I’ve come to believe that X-men Days of Future Past is not only the best X-Flick but quite possibly the best superhero movie of all time. Yeah, it was that good! It finally brings things back full circle with the X-men franchise and is a superior sequel to the fine X-men: First Class. It rights many of the wrongs of “The Last Stand” & “X-men Origins: Wolverine” and brings us back to the fresh start that we all wished for. We’ve got an incredible X-movie headed by but not over powered by Wolverine, played excellently once again by Hugh Jackman.

The movie loosely follows the classic 1981 comic book story line of the same name but adds it’s own flare as it keeps up with the continuity of the movie universe that has been set up. What we ultimately get is a incredibly engaging time travel adventure back to the early 1970’s (which alone in itself is a great deal of fun) filled with wonderful set pieces, groovy clothes and ultra impressive cast. It really shows here how important a cast full of great actors, who clearly care about the characters they’re playing can really make a movie. Plus having director Bryan Singer back, despite all of the controversy surrounding him at the moment, turned out to be a great thing. It makes me even more upset though that he flaked on “The Last Stand”, however if this was his way of redeeming himself to all the X-fans then so be it!

Now I feel I have to say something here about one of my favorite moments in the movie that involve….Quicksilver. Yes, I ripped on his movie look and ridiculous clothing here many times. Somehow though, his all too short role in the movie was one of the best sequences I’ve ever seen in a superhero flick! It’s the same feeling I got during the opening Nightcrawler sequence in X2. Yeah, crazy as it is Quicksilver kinda stole the show! Don’t get me wrong, he still desperately needs a full on makeover! He looked incredibly out of place in his lame ass late 1990’s hot topic attire!

Lastly I wanted to state that the movie looked great, the special effects were wonderful. CG was used tastefully here and the outcome made for an incredibly believable adventure visually. It’s final after credits sequence gives us a good glimpse of what’s next to come in Age of Apocalypse which is planned to be set in the 1980’s. I hope the whole crew will somehow be back for it, and Hugh Jackman better be back for at least one more X-men movie! Go check this out if you want to know what a true summer blockbuster should look like!!

Now seems like the perfect time to read this classic story again!

I however still do NOT condone this Carl’s JR Quicksilver bullshit!
New Norwegian Movie “Ragnarok” Gives Indiana Jones a Run for His Money?!

May 22, 2014

Check out this awesome looking trailer for the upcoming Norwegian adventure flick Ragnarok! This one looks like a ton of fun and has that old Amblin style Goonies type adventure thing going on. I wish there were more movies these days that could pull off this style of film. So far this one seems like it hits on all cylinders and has been described as an adventure that “Indiana Jones in his prime could never quite achieve” by Twitch Film.

There’s no release date yet here in the USA but Magnolia pictures recently acquired the right so we shouldn’t have to wait to long. The plot sound like a great time too: ‘When the archaeologist Sigurd can’t settle on the myth about Ragnarok, the end of the world in Northern mythology, he decides to go on an expedition together with two colleges and his two kids. This adventure leads them to Finnmark in the Northern most part of Norway, and into “No mans land” between Russia and Norway, where no one has been in modern times. Old runes gets new meanings, when they unveil the truth. A truth bigger and more spectacular than you would have dreamed.” Be on the lookout for this one!
Godzilla 2014: Less Boring Humans, More Monster Mayhem Please!

May 20, 2014

I saw Godzilla last night and my expectations were set quite low, because it’s a Hollywood Blockbuster reboot of yet another classic movie franchise and we all know how well this idea was executed back in 1998! So here we are, Hollywood is ready to take another stab on cashing in our nostalgia and this time I’m ready to bite the hook. So how well did the big lizard fare with Universal Dork?

I had a decent enough time with this one when it first kicked in, but around mid point my mind started wandering, thinking about other stuff like D&D the night before and that I was going to run out of licorice candy at any moment. Yeah the human plot line of this movie was pretty flat and boring. Which in a sense keeps in tradition with most classic Godzilla flicks. You have the boring human plot that somehow drives the movie and then you get a bunch of ass kicking monster battles. This time though I think Hollywood could have really improved on the boring human plot, a soldier trying to get back home to his perfect family while giant monsters awaken and threaten the planet. Yeah, it’s a touching hallmark-esque story that’s boring as fuck. So you really gotta appreciate it when some giant CGI monsters finally get on screen and break up this shitty monotony.

The only real problem was there wasn’t enough monster mayhem. In fact until maybe the last maybe 5-10 minutes, they tease you constantly and show you a beginning of a monster fight, like Godzilla getting ready to throw a punch and then switch to some shitty boring human drama. Seriously this gets old real quick and its actually quite irritating. The movie had some fairly decent special effects especially if you’re into giant CGI creatures smashing CG buildings into oblivion.

This is clearly much different than classic man in suit Godzilla and I’m not sure honestly that it’s that big of an improvement on the old movies effects wise. Don’t get me wrong the old Godzilla flicks have some crappy ass special effects, they however improved immensely over the years. It to me always felt a bit like monster WWF wrestling when I was a kid and I loved it. This however was real slick and much of the fun that the old movies had is almost entirely lost here in 2014. By this time I’m already feeling my attention span waning for glittery, bloated, CG infested, often heartless Hollywood Blockbusters and it’s really not even summer yet! Ughh!

I’d say if you really want the best CG monster battle movie skip Godzilla and just watch Pacific Rim. It’s a heck of a better time and about ten times more interesting. It’s looking like we’ll most definitely be getting a sequel here so perhaps next movie we’ll get some better monster battles? Maybe they can insert some human characters that aren’t quite so stale? Until then this has inspired me to check out some of newer Godzilla films I may have missed through the years. And for the record Gareth Edwards first flick “Monsters” was a far more superior movie…..let’s hope Godzilla 2014 doesn’t get the treatment that Zilla did in Final Wars!!
Will M. Night Shyamalan Right His Wrongs With His Top Secret Flick “Sundowning”?

May 17, 2014

I really love the the first few M. Night Shyamalan movies, heck I even liked The Village and yes Lady in the Water!! Get over it people, Lady in the Water was corny but a ton of fun! I think the order in which his movies were made go from best to worst, which is kinda interesting. Once one of the most well respected directors in Hollywood, Night now rarely even gets his name mentioned in ads for his most recent movies. The Happening, The Last Airbender and After Earth were three big time stinkers that most people just want to forget they wasted their time watching. I’ll even admit I’ve serious doubts that the guy can craft another hit or something as intriguing as his first couple films! Yet recently it has been reported that Night wrapped up a top secret micro budget film called “Sundowning”. It has a super small cast and sounds like a possible return to form for him. All we really know about it is that it involves a single mother with two kids visiting their grandparents out in the country during winter when things go terribly wrong. Sounds interesting to me and I’ve always thought Night was a master of mood & atmosphere.

I’ve always hoped he’d give us a full on horror movie, you know without all the preachy-ness he he somehow always seems to insert into the endings be it relgious or philosophical. Now a micro budget is where a lot of these big time directors should be spending their time. What I wouldn’t give to have someone like Peter Jackson or Sam Raimi return to a small budget flick and be forced to make something truly incredible again So this could be Night’s chance to amaze people once again, far away from the flashy effects and overblown plots.

I don’t want to get my hopes up, but I think there’s a good chance he could blow some minds with this one. If it’s rating is revealed to be an R, there’s a good chance otherwise we could be getting his tame family friendly recent styles. However the term “Sundowning” reveals some truly spooky possibilities, this is it’s definition: “a psychological phenomenon associated with increased confusion and restlessness in patients with some form of dementia. Most commonly associated with Alzheimer’s disease, but also found in those with mixed dementia, the term “sundowning” was coined due to the timing of the patient’s confusion.” This sounds to me like it could be a truly creepy endeavor. How about you? Are you willing to give Shyamalan one more try?
Fan-Made AKIRA Trailer Should Not Be Missed!!

May 10, 2014

Akira was an amazing comic book and one of the best animated feature films of all time hands down. If you have never seen the movie or read the book you’re missing out big time and maybe have been living in a cave for your entire life! So we’ve been hearing for years that a live action Akira movie is on the plate for Hollywood and we all know there’s a fifty fifty chance that the movie could be totally butchered in this day and age, paying little attention to fans or the source material.

What we have got today is a completed fan made trailer made by The Akira Project. Here’s a little more info on how this came to be and what this really is:

“The Akira Project is a crowd-sourced, non-profit project meant to create a live action fan trailer of AKIRA, the renowned manga-turned-anime film from the late 1980′s; a stunning example of both mediums as art forms. While Hollywood has been working on a live-action Akira movie for a few years now, we, as fans, wanted to take a shot at making our own adaptation. A chance to stick as close to the source material as possible. A chance to do Akira Justice.

We launched an Indiegogo campaign in July 2012 as part of a crowd sourcing effort to make this project come to life. Many people contributed not just financially but offered their time and talent to help the production that was shot in Montreal, Quebec from November 2-5th 2012. What started out as a simple idea between two guys having a beer (Hey! It’d be cool to see Kaneda ride his bike around Neo-Tokyo!), became a global endeavour, filled with adventures and hurdles, involving more than 40 artists in 12 different countries.

After a year and a half in post-production, we are proud to present the project to Akira fans the world over. We hope to have done justice to the timeless work of Katsuhiro Otomo and look forward to, someday, seeing the full scope of the Akira story translated to the big screen as a live-action.”

I say these guys should do the real movie! Check out the trailer!
The Woods #1: One of the Best Debut Comic Books of Recent Times!

May 9, 2014

As far as debut issues of comic books go these days I’d say the Boom! Studios debut issue of ‘The Woods” is one of the best! It’s a great little sci-fi/horror story that involves an entire High School (yes the building and all of the students and faculty) being transported to a strange forest seemingly on another planet. That’s the least of their worries though as they soon find out they are not alone there. With no idea how or why this happened students and faculty go head to head with each other trying to figure out the best plan of survival. This is a great start to hopefully a great series, the first issue has a little bit of a “LOST” which I adore, being a giant fan of that tv series. It also reminds me a bit of the tv show because of the mysterious situation, which for the time being there is no explanation for that they have found themselves having to deal with. It leaves me wondering what’s next and longing to read the next issue. It’s a lot of fun, with fair parts of horror, gore and comedy mixed in at just the right amounts.

The artwork done by Michael Dialynas is also alot of fun here and adds to the strength of this debut. It’s a really great to find a good solid first issue and a new series to look forward too. I’m finding it harder and harder to find books I want to stick with by Marvel or DC. I actually realized that at the moment I am not reading ANY tltles by the big two. Now that could easily change at any moment, but it’s a bit shocking that I’m not absorbed into any title right now that they are offering and at four or even five bucks a pop now a comic book better be good!I am open to suggestions also because at that price it’s not exactly easy to sample the platter, as comic books can easily add up every week at these prices. So here’s a little comic I think is a safe bet, The Woods was a damn fine fun ride-check it out!
Universal Dork Weighs in on “The Amazing Spider-Man 2”!

May 8, 2014

Alright so there are a bout a billion reviews up online everywhere about the Amazing Spider-man 2, so I’m not going to spend a whole lot of energy here on this one. The movie really doesn’t need another review or any more hype at this point, but what the hell it’s my blog and I shelled out a Fandango gift card on it! Ok, so first let me state that my expectations weren’t very high for this one as I wasn’t a real big fan of the first flick. As I always do though, I try my best to go into a movie with an open mind. Besides this is Spidey we’re talking here, a guy I’ve loved dearly since being a lil’ whipper snapper!

I’m thinking now, that maybe if I’d seen this one as a little kid maybe my mind would have been blown. The Amazing Spider-man 2 is a huge ass movie. Two hundred million dollar budget. It’s close to two and a half hours long. It’s loud, flashy and jam packed with intertwining story lines. That’s my first problem with it, there’s too much going on. There’s too many subplots. The movie goes on a few too many tangents and then decides to go on a few more after that. Sony is clearly trying set up more movies (ala The Avengers syndrome) from this one and honestly it didn’t have a smooth flow to what should have been a nice tight knit compelling story.

Which leads me to my second problem, the writing. Spider-man 2 suffers from some seriously terd-tastic writing. Everything from Peter Parker’s stale on again off again relationship, to Paul Giamatti’s corny ass Rhino, to the awful Jamie Foxx Electro to Harry Osborn’s overnight meltdown. They’ve really managed to create some paper thin excuses for people to turn into supervillains these days. Foxx did his best with what he was given, but his dialogue was painful to watch and his reasoning for going evil was just plain uninspired. There was nothing believable about his character, I felt absolutely nothing for him nor cared of his motivations. His entire existence in the movie was rather idiotic to say the least.

Then we have The new Green Goblin, played by Dane Dehaan. He did quite a fine job in the role and clearly he’s got the acting chops. However his character’s motivations were also pretty flimsy. His all too quick transformation from good guy into an evil raving lunatic was a bit ridiculous. The prison scene where he recruits Electro to help him break into Oscorp was one of the worst team up moments I’ve ever seen on screen or in the comics. “You need ME? You need ME?!” Also I might note that once again I wasn’t a fan of the Goblin’s look onscreen. Sorry I just can’t get behind that robotic body armor schtick. It just well…sucks!

Lastly the action scenes, which there actually really weren’t that many of, were decently executed, but really took me out of the movie. It’s like watching a live action movie suddenly turn into Toy Story 2. The CGI in this flick was great, if the whole movie had been done that way (which they maybe should consider doing) and the last final Electro battle looked straight out of an Xbox game with not a real human actor in sight for at least over five minutes. No thank you. If I wanna watch a video game I’ll go play one at home.

On a good note I have grown to kinda like Garfield as Spidey. He’s a good actor and really did put his heart and soul into what he was given to work with. He’s a more convincing Spider-man, who’s really grown into the part. If someone could get a good script for a Spider-man film it’d be golden with him as Peter Parker. However what we get once again is an even more bloated, glittery, mindless mess of a summer blockbuster. That’s not to say I hated it, but I wouldn’t want to see it again. I like seeing images of Spider-man on a screen in front of me, but at best that’s about as far as this movie appeals to me. Oh yeah and what the fuck was that lame ass mid credit X-men advertisement?! The movie was called “The Amazing Spider-man 2” not “X-men: Days of Future Past” last time I checked….that was a low blow. Don’t do that again. Can we just hurry up on that Avengers sequel already?!!
Let’s Appreciate Bill Sienkiewicz on his Birthday!

May 3, 2014

Today is Bill Sienkiewicz’s Birthday and it’s as good a reason as any to celebrate the man’s existence as one of the best comic book artists of all time! To say his artwork is unique would probably be the biggest understatement you could come up with in the comic book universe. His jagged, frantic and often abstract work is unmistakable. Whenever you’d get a comic book cover or let alone an entire issue filled with his artwork you always knew you were in for a treat.

His work became a staple in the early 80’s where he drew black and white back up stories of Moon Knight in The Incredible Hulk magazine size comic books. He continued on with some of his most famous work for titles like The New Mutants and the legendary Elektra: Assassin miniseries amongst many others. So happy birthday Bill! Thanks for the incredibly original art all these years-Here’s hoping for much more of it in 2014! Here are a few of my personal favorite pieces of his comic book art!