Clearly, our writers have been abducted by crazed zombie clowns and the site is on a bit of a hiatus. Be sure to follow on Twitter (@WeLoveCult) for updates. No hyperlink, you have to do it the old fashioned way, solely because it pleases me.

Signed,

The one who screwed the whole thing up by leaving.

If Androids dream of electric sheep, what do politicians dream of? 

Vermin Supreme: Fucking electric sheep.

Talk me through your plan to solve the debt crisis, also is there a debt crisis since servicing costs (as a percentage of GDP) are pretty close to the level established as “typical” over the last 25 years? 

VS: Total all out war with the Godless Red Chinese bastards. Wiping out our national debt. Seize back America’s manufacturing base .

Any President rises or falls on the strength of the people they choose to stand with them, have you given any thought to who your Secretary of Time will be and what about your Ambassador to Gallifrey?

VS: No, I have not.

Who does Jesus love more, Rick Perry or Rick Santorum?

VS: Jesus loves Santorum, this I know because the bible tells me so.

Poor people, cuddly nuisance or societal plague?

VS: Both!!

Who is your haberdasher? 

VS: Whenever I’m down in the dumps, I try and find a nice accessory.

What’s the value of a campaign promise?

VS: The pixels they are digitized on.

Could you beat the “Rent is too damn high” guy in an arm wrestling competition?

VS: To do so would risk our beards touching. This could result in cataclysm and must be avoided at all costs.

Do you favor the legalization of drugs?

VS: Only happy drugs.

Minor followup, are you high, crazy, or fucking brilliant?

VS: Thank you, you’re very kind for noticing.

———————–

My Farewell.

This is my very last contribution to this site as editor in chief (a position I relinquished a few days ago to pursue other opportunities). I am extremely proud of what we did in my time here. I have enjoyed writing for you immensely and I hope that we offered up a bunch of funny, weird, and insightful stories.

With that said, working with my team was the very best part and so to them I’ve embedded this lovely goodbye video from when our favorite show, Doctor Who, changed hands. Cheers and best wishes to you all, goodbye and allons-y!!!

Why Moriarty? Why do you guys and others find this man, who’s only mentioned in three Sherlock Holmes stories, so engaging?

Daniel Corey: I don’t know. He seemed to really get stuck in the zeitgeist since he was first introduced a hundred years ago. People have just been really fascinated by the one guy who was out there causing all the ills of the world. I’ve thought about him constantly since we’ve been putting the series out.

I thought that it had something to do with people’s sense of justice, that maybe they want to know that there is one bad guy out there causing everything, because maybe they could do something about it — put their finger on it. I don’t know, he’s really stuck in everybody’s consciousness. Everyone knows who he is and knows about him. I have that same fascination myself, and when it came around to trying to think of a good idea for a comic, I wanted to do something with Holmes lore, but I didn’t want to do a Holmes story because it’s been done so many times. There are not a lot of Moriarty stories out there. There’s been some novels written, but there’s not been a comic book, that I know of, with Professor Moriarty as the lead. I really wanted to take that on and have the dark side set in the Holmes world.

Your Moriarty is more a man of action than some of the others. Is that because this was a comic? If you were telling the story in another medium, might he be the more cerebral Moriarty that we’re used to?

DC: I did consider, for a little while, writing it as a novel but the story would have been the same. I just wanted to do something different. We’re used to seeing him as this Mr. Burns style, ancient guy twiddling his fingers. I wasn’t interested in that. I thought of him in his past, when he was twenty maybe, working his way up in the criminal world, he had to go out and get his hands dirty. As we see him at the start of our series, Sherlock is dead and Moriarty has fallen on the skids. [He's] middle aged man, pushing sixty and he wants to get back into the fray and be the world’s greatest criminal mastermind again. He’s going to have to go back and do the stuff he did as a young man — get his hands dirty. He has to get in some sword fights and do some exciting things!

In some places, the comic seems like an inversion of Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven Percent Solution. But where he went for Fred, you’re going for a Jungian analysis of the mythos. What does Holmes represent to Moriarty?

DC: Moriarty is fixated on him as his reason for existence. I actually talked to a friend who was a therapist/psychologist about the characters when I was developing them, “What is Moriarty?”, “Is he a sociopath?”… He couldn’t be a sociopath though, sociopaths have no empathy, no feeling, and he obviously has some feeling since he misses Sherlock so badly. We settled on the fact that he’s probably obsessive compulsive. His whole life is centered around Sherlock, but why is that? These are the kinds of questions I asked myself when developing the story. He’s a man that wants to have control of his life, control of everything. He wants to order himself and make it through the day alive, just like anybody else. But he has this obsessive compulsive tendency, a co-dependence where he has to feel that death is knocking at his door at any moment. And what better form is death going to take than at the hands of Sherlock Holmes, the smartest guy that ever lived. That’s how he feels, really alive at the presence of Holmes and when Holmes is gone, everything falls to pot.

So, Anthony, how early were you brought in to this?

Anthony Diecidue: Pretty much from the beginning. It wasn’t the first project we’ve done together. I was Daniel’s go-to guy, I like to think.

DC: (laughs) Absolutely! Absolutely!

AD: Right off the bat, before there was even a full script he was asking me about it. I was right in there doing the designs and everything before we had a finished storyline.

What were some of your influences when you were building the world of Moriarty?

AD: My biggest Moriarty influence was the Moriarty character from Star Trek: The Next  Generation. (laughs) I loved that characterization of him and when I first did it, that’s who I wanted to design it off of.

DC: Daniel Davis!

AD: He was just so cool. And he’s actually more like our Moriarty than any other version, because he was a well rounded character. He wasn’t a villain. He was someone looking to survive, looking to move on and live. And that’s how our Moriarty is. He’s not trying to rule the world necessarily, just his world.

Will we ever learn how Lestrade came to be in Moriarty’s pocket? Is that a flashback tale waiting to happen or are you going to keep that close to the vest?

DC: I hadn’t thought of doing a flashback tale on that, but you know what? That would make a nice one shot, wouldn’t it? I’ll think about that! (laughs)

In the second arc, The Lazarus Tree, I presume the Gregson is the same Scotland Yard Inspector as was in the canon?

DC: Actually, I wasn’t making that connection. I named him after a friend. (laughs) I didn’t make that connection. I’ll have to go back and read that.

Yeah, he’s in a couple of stories. I was going to ask if there might be any more cameos from characters in the [Holmes] canon?

DC: Certainly. Any time I can bring anybody from the canon in, I will. I enjoy doing that. Yeah.

You guys are one of the great Kickstarter success stories. How did that lead to being put out by Image?

DC: I don’t know if Image was in tune with our Kickstarter campaign or not, but the campaign helped me along in getting some of the artwork done. [Image] wanted two issues done, complete, before they released anything. Kickstarter was really essential in making that happen. We met the deadline to get those two issues done and the series came out as a result.

As was mentioned, this isn’t your first project together. How did you two meet?

AD: How long ago? Four years? Five? I used to work at Universal doing caricatures. That was my earliest art job. One of the guys I used to work with there, Mario, was a neighbor of Daniel’s. Daniel was looking for an artist for an early project that was an adaptation of a horror novel. He was looking for someone to do storyboards on it, like an animatic. Mario said it wasn’t up his alley, but he knows somebody. So he introduced him to me and we hit it off pretty quick. I did that first project with him and when he was looking for an artist to do his next book, Prophet, which is like a supernatural spaghetti western, we jumped right into doing that together. And from there to Moriarty and from Moriarty, who knows!

You started out as an artist, as a cartoonist. Is it something you still dabble with in your spare time?

Ed Brubaker: Not really. I wanted to be a penciller when I was a kid. And then I started writing stories for myself to draw, and then at some point in my late teens I started to have friends who wanted me to write stories for them to draw. Then, like around my late twenties, I was doing more of that then drawing my own stories. And you know, just sort of slowly evolved into a writer more than an artist. I haven’t really drawn for ten years or so, other than phone doodles, you know? And I’m pretty happy about that. (laughs)

Did your experience as an artist help the way you write scripts for other artists?

EB: Oh yeah. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think visually. When I was a kid, all the way through junior high/high school, I would make films and stuff. I always thought of words and pictures at the same time. I think the way that I write scripts… I’ve always had all the artists I work with tell me it’s very easy for them to visualize my scripts. And I don’t give them too much detail or too little detail and they can easily see the way the page is supposed to look in their head when they read the script. So I think that’s definitely helped, at least with my relationship with artists. They liked my scripts. I’ve even had letterers tell me they like my scripts.

The increase in digital market share and it’s ability to potentially be an easier entry point for the masses — has that altered your writing at all? Do you feel the need to be more accessible with an individual issue? Or are you just interested in the story as a whole?

EB: Well… no. It hasn’t really altered my thinking on anything. I mean, there is nothing I’m working on right now where I think about the digital side more than the print side. Because the print side — we’re still selling ten times what the digital side is, so obviously that’s our main audience. I love print so much that I don’t ever want print comics to go away. You know, everyone acts like it’s inevitable that it will. I’ve heard a couple people say that they can see a time where, five or ten years from now, all the monthly books, the single issues, are all digital and then a lot of the collections are nice big hardback art kind of things. Which, you know, I’d be semi-OK with that future as long as they sold well enough. The way I’ve always approached everything I do is to make sure each issue is worth whatever you’re charging for it, if it’s part of a longer story… I’m a fan of serialized fiction. You know, it worked for Dickens. It worked for the Bible. (laughs)

One tablet at a time.

EB: Yeah, one gospel at a time. But yeah, I like TV and my favorite TV shows are serialized shows. Nobody complains about, Game of Thrones. And then you complain that you can’t get it for free on the internet. (laughs) But you know you can.

You jump back and forth between more corporate comics and personal projects with great ease and success in both. Are they two different mindsets? Do you have to really swap gears or is writing writing for you?

EB: It’s a little bit of writing is writing for me. I mean, you’ve got to know what you’re doing when you’re doing a superhero comic. It’s pretty rare for me to write a superhero comic without an action scene. When I’ve written issues of stuff I own where nothing happens as far as comic fans are concerned, they’re like, “I don’t like this issue because nobody punched anybody.” My goal as a writer on the stuff that I do just for myself, I’m just trying to make a really good story.

I often look at everything from the “Did something exciting happen this issue? And if it didn’t, why not? And am I OK with that?” Whereas in an issue of Captain America that goes by without Captain America punching someone or throwing his shield — you’re failing to some degree. You have to know what you’re doing. I always look at the old Bruce Timm/Paul Dini Batman cartoons as the example of the best way to do that stuff. Each episode was a great Batman story where Batman did different stuff in all of them, but in each [show] you saw him be Batman at some point. That was what you needed. I think about that a lot. I don’t think I always succeed in it, but writing is writing. When I get to the point with any of the superhero stuff where it’s more of a struggle or I’m not doing a good enough job with it, I usually quit the book. Like X-Men or Secret Avengers or something that I feel is just not in my wheelhouse, really, and it’s taking longer than it needs to take and I’m not happy with how it’s turning out. If I can’t really just let the characters take the story through.

Going along with the two things you mentioned, do you prefer working on a single character book or an ensemble, a team book?

EB: I think everything I write is an ensemble book, but I think it’s the same thing. When you’re writing an issue of Captain America, you know Captain America, unless there’s a specific reason he’s not in that issue, you need some kind of cool action scene. I wrote an issue of Captain America that was  primarily focused on the Falcon once and I got to do all the cool Falcon moments that you want to see. He’s talking to birds! He’s flying! He’s kicking people’s asses! You got those moments in. But I think with a team book, what happens to me is that I feel like with each issue or each arc you need to show each team member doing something really cool. Whereas on a single character book, everybody gets their moments and there’s always a supporting cast, but you know which main character is really driving the train through the story. It’s somehow just a mental thing. It’s much easier for me to have one sole focus.

Fatale is completely ensemble, and we haven’t even met half the cast that’s going in the book because they haven’t been born yet! (laughs) We’re in the Fifties! We haven’t met any of the modern characters other than the guy we met in the beginning. I’m OK with an ensemble, it’s just like, not to go back to Game of Thrones but Game of Thrones is an ensemble cast, but each chapter is narrated by someone different so it feels like you’re reading about just those people while they’re the star. So that’s what you can do. With a single character book, I’m much better with that.

You’re working on the film adaptation of Coward. How’s that going?

EB: Good. I should have been done with the script in a couple weeks. I’ve given the first chunk of  the script to the director to look at and I’ve gotten really good feedback from him on it, so full steam ahead. Really enjoying that. Moved down to LA to work on it and to pursue some other options that are out there. But I’ve written a number of screenplays and I did a TV pilot for Fox last year and I’m familiar with that.

What was the pilot? Are you allowed to talk about it?

EB: Uh, I’m not sure if I’m allowed to talk about it actually.

OK, fair enough.

EB: They didn’t end up filming it. It came down to mine or The Breakout Kings. They made Breakout Kings instead. But a lot of people liked my pilot a lot. That’s the difference between comics and TV, everybody can love a product in TV and still not make it, where in comics if everyone loves something we’re definitely publishing it. There’s always room for another one. (laughs)

So you’re not planning on departing comics?

EB: Oh no, I’ll never quit comics. You wouldn’t believe the amount of screenwriters I know that wish that they could make a living in comics. Just so people would see what they do! Because there’s a lot of bitter millionaires who get paid a lot of money to write scripts that never get filmed. Which to me sounds like a great job! (laughs)

Yeah, I’m not going to turn down the money.

EB: Yeah, exactly. They’re not turning down the money, they’re just bitter. It’s a great outlet and I’ve been doing comics my whole life, so I’ll never stop doing comics.

One more. Anything on the horizon with Greg Rucka? You’ve worked together very well in the past.

EB: Greg is really busy. I tried to do a project with him just recently. I tried to get him on board for something and he just does not have the time to do it right now. No, I love working with Greg and he, Michael [Lark], and I have talked from time to time about getting the band back together for some sort of Wings-esque sort of a thing. (laughs) My Paul McCartney reference.

Dare I ask who Linda is in this?

EB: No, no. (laughs) There isn’t one. Stefano. (laughs) Matt Hollingsworth is the Linda McCartney. No.

EB: Yeah, I would love to do something else with Greg. It’s just that both of us are incredibly busy, but you know Michael, I’m working on something with him right now on something that hasn’t been announced yet. A Marvel thing. But yeah, we always talk about trying to do something. I joked around with them recently about trying to do more Gotham Central at some point down the line, like a graphic novel or something. I was the only one that wanted to do that. Yeah, their separations from DC were much harsher than mine. (laughs) I left DC under very… I was working at Marvel and DC at the same time for about a year, so I didn’t really leave under any dark clouds. A lot of people that have left that place have been chased away and are not interested in going back.

Photo Courtesy of the Brilliant Bridget Silvestri

So, twenty years of Top Cow/Image! For a lapsed reader or someone who’s never read a Top Cow book, why now? Why is now the best time to jump on board?

Mark Silvestri: Well, if you’ve never read one it’s time to get out of the institution. But c’mon, now is actually the perfect time. Filip Sablik and Matt Hawkins and Ron Marz are like evil geniuses, [they] have gotten together and taken the Top Cow Universe, which over twenty years has become pretty substantial especially for not being one of the big two. We’ve got, I don’t know how many characters, a thousand? We had a fairly tight universe, in the sense that you’ve got Witchblade and the direct descendents with The Darkness and The Angelus and all that crowd. Our universe really started to develop in ’95 around Witchblade. And that universe was based in the supernatural. You had the Cyberforce universe, which was technology based, and then we had the supernatural. We could have fun over the years crossing those two worlds. I’m a sci-fi freak. I didn’t really grow up with superheroes as much as sci-fi and fantasy. The idea of having a superhero universe based in sci-fi and the supernatural was really appealing. And it was something that the mainstream guys weren’t really doing. So now, with all these years behind us, we kinda realized we have a big universe, but it’s not really all that scattered.  It wouldn’t be that difficult to pull together the universe so that it is more cohesive. It rewards the readers we’ve had for twenty years, it doesn’t in any way alienate them. And in fact, what we have coming up is gonna have them go, “Oh this is really cool!” A tip of the hat to them, thank you very much.

But also new readers are going to be able to come in here, because we don’t have forty years of back story. We don’t have a hundred titles a month coming out where you have to tie things in. We can reward the new readers. Since we just rebooted, literally restarted our universe in an organic fashion. And we’re not going to back off from that. It’s not, “Oh, that was a clone universe! (laughs) The whole world was cloned!” We’re not doing that. It’s not an alternate reality. We’re holding to that. But we’re making it in such a way that it’s organic extension for people who have been following us for years. That’s cool, that makes sense. We’re not just throwing everything out and restarting. We’re giving long time readers this perspective of the Top Cow universe has been destroyed with a purpose AND it’s been rebuilt by the last person you want to rebuild that universe: Jackie Estacado. You don’t want a tragic, tortured guy who happens also to be a sometimes sociopath (laughs) to restart your world. But he does and does so in a selfish manner because he wants what he lost back, including his humanity. But his vision of humanity is a little tweaked, to say the least.

So is it going to be, and pardon the really weak pun, darker from here on out?

MS: (raps on the table and laughs) One of the fine lines we like to tread is we like dark, but that dark leads to an affirmation. It leads to the human condition being celebrated, if that makes any sense. Jackie’s a hero in spite of himself because of his humanity. What he goes through is terrible and literally any body else would have broken before they started. So Jackie’s heroism is his constant struggle not to let the Darkness consume everything around him. He makes this one bad decision but it’s based on his humanity. And he didn’t really mean to do it. We always like to have these life-affirming messages. Our heroes are life-affirming, even though they’re antiheroes and they have this heavy burden. A lot of our heroes have the weight of the world on their shoulders. It’s not just, “Oh, I have the weight of a crime spree in Gotham.” Y’know? Which I love! Batman is one of my favorite comic book characters of all time, and I have this Batman story I’m going to tell one day. But the decisions that our guys make affect everyone if they make the wrong one. So yes, we’re going to have a dark tinge to this new universe but there’s always going to be that pinpoint of light. There’s always going to be the goal that at the end of the day, because we’re human and because we care, we’re gonna do the right thing. That’s what our universe is going to be. And I think that for new readers, that’s the story we’re going to tell. We’re going to be referencing what has happened in the past. And for the long time readers, the cool thing is that you’ll see the juxtaposition of the reality of the Top Cow universe as it has happened with the fantasy world of Jackie as one of us going, “If I could just make the world this way. If we could all just get along. The butterfly effect of that.” And a few people in the new universe know that something got fucked up. We’re going to have a lot of fun there. And it’s going to be great for everyone. Old and new readers.

Do you have plans to go back and collect some of the older stuff like Weapon Zero?

MS: Ah, Weapon Zero! Joe Benitez! I dunno? Filip? He keeps the trains running.

Filip Sablik: We’ve talked about collecting some of the older stuff. The biggest challenge is a lot of those files are on storage devices that are no longer made or supported!

MS: Stone tablets!

FS: DAT tapes actually.

Wow? DAT tape?

MS: You even know what that is? That was before you were born! (laughs)

FS: We’d love to collect a lot of that stuff. I think the priority with the archival stuff is taking a look at collecting a lot of classic Cyberforce stuff. But Weapon Zero is definitely on the list of stuff we’d like to pull together. And we definitely get requests from time to time.

MS: I personally love that book!

What’s the status of The Darkness movie and how heavily are you involved with that?

MS: The status of The Darkness film is Top Secret Double Probation secret. We’ll have announcements, significant announcements soon. The movie is in active development with out partners at Mandeville Films. They’re also doing Crosshair with us, with is another Top Cow book. These are great guys. They get The Darkness, they get us. We have complete sign off rights on everything. We’re in complete creative control of the property. No one can get hired without our approval. Quite frankly, we have this maxim at Top Cow: Don’t do it if it’s going to suck. Anyone who’s played The Darkness game [knows], we’ve got a pretty good record of putting stuff out there beyond comics that doesn’t suck. You will not see a Darkness movie if, at any point, we think it’s going to suck. But at this moment, everything points to being bad ass and cool.

Is there a script yet?

MS: We’ve been getting pitches from writers. We’re getting some good guys. But we’ll know it when we hear it and we’ll move from there.

The long awaited Cabin In The Woods film will finally hit screens on April 13th, 2012 and this latest trailer gives us another look at what this horror movie has to offer. Starring Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, and Anna Hutchison the film follows the classic horror setup of a group of friends who visit a cabin in the woods and have a much more horrifying experience than they bargained for. Joss Whedon’s script is said to bring some interesting twists to the genre and from the footage in the trailers Drew Goddard is providing solid direction to back the script up.

The Avengers comes out on May 4th.

Hey sidebar, before you go look — don’t you miss when poster wasn’t a dirty word? Now everything is a print or a one sheet. Just another sign of these damning times, or not… it probably isn’t a sign of that, just a change in the parlance of our times, nothing to get freaked out about. Okay, now I am done fucking with you, go look at the poster.

Wasn’t that worth the wait? By the way, The Avengers premiers on May 4th and, as you can see, they have a Hulk. Will that be worth the wait? Don’t you dare comment below to let us know (Reverse psychology)!

For more on The Daly Show, follow Ben Shelton on Twitter.

A good movie trailer is hard to find. With only two minutes to create a world, populate it with characters, set a mood, introduce a conflict, sell the audience, and tease them – all while avoiding cliche – the precise construction of a trailer becomes an art in itself. And because we hate to see art go to waste, Trailer Park collects the best trailers for this week’s releases and the poor trailers that get lost between the cracks of the Internet in order to excite you about things you didn’t know you should be excited about.

Trailers of the Week:

Sound of Noise

It’s hard to tell, at first, what these six anarchist musicians are after with their rhythmic bank-robbing crime spree, but only when its too late do you realize that what they’ve stolen is our hearts.

With its snappy editing and catchy Stomp-like music that makes inventive use of the environment, the trailer for Sound of Noise is probably my favorite so far this year. This Swedish-French film has been playing at festivals since 2010, but since the perilous journey from Sweden to America takes approximately two years, the reels have only just arrived for a domestic release that is scheduled for this March. The reviews so far look solid, and given the combination of Sweden’s underrated reputation for music and France’s uncanny ability to be quirky without being insufferable, this film looks very promising.

The Raid

This Indonesian action film from Merantau director Garth Evans received overwhelming praise from both critics and audiences at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, earning comparisons to John Woo’s Hard Boiled and the recent wave of kick-ass Thai martial arts films. The rights have been snatched up for an American remake, but until then, we’re stuck with this lame original that seems to feature brutal yet well-shot action, a dedicated and talented martial arts stunt team, and the efficiently badass premise of an elite police team trapped in an apartment building with Jakarta’s most dangerous criminals. I guess I’ll just wait for the new one.

The Suicide Shop

The adorable and the macabre are together once again and Tim Burton is nowhere to be seen, though I imagine he’s lurking in the shadows shedding a single tear at the missed opportunity. This animated feature, directed by Patrice Leconte, tells the story of a family that runs a prosperous business selling suicide equipment in a city where everyone is depressed, until their routine is shaken up by the latest addition to the family: the happiest, most hopeful child in the world.

Based on the darkly comedic 2006 French novel by Jean Teulé, this adaptation seems to be preserving the original’s approach and tone with a unique animation style so perfectly suited for the material that I’m surprised that this even was a prose novel and not a comic or picture book.

Theatrical Pick of the Week:

The Forgiveness of Blood

It’s Oscar weekend. Why are you going to a movie theater? Stay at home, watch TV. This is a relatively weak week, with releases that include Tyler Perry’s Good Deeds, the Amanda Seyfried thriller Gone, that Navy SEALS movie Act of Valor, and the Paul Rudd-Jennifer Aniston comedy Wanderlust. While Wanderlust could be a solid comedy, with Rudd rejoining his Role Models and Wet Hot American Summer director David Wain (who also has tons of comedy cred for creating The State and founding the trio Stella), the trailers and promo materials all feature incredibly bland and broad moments that barely qualify as comedy. Surprisingly, Jennifer Aniston doesn’t really seem like the go-to person to blame here.

So instead, my pick for the week is the latest feature from Maria Full of Grace director Joshua Marston. The trailer isn’t entirely clear about the premise, but this dark coming-of-age drama set in Albania revolves around a family’s eldest son and daughter who get caught in the middle of an escalating blood feud when a neighbor is killed in a dispute. The neighbor’s family invoke a centuries-old law that demands the life of the son, Nik, as repayment, so while he’s forced to remain in hiding to protect his life, the daughter, Rudina, is left to take over the family business.

I last saw this trailer before A Separation and realized they shared the same sort of appeal – both movies rely on simple premises to escalate into complex situations and conflicts between family and law. Though this trailer seems to give half the film away, the last 40 seconds, with the teases of big dramatic moments, show there’s still a lot of tension and milage to get out of the story. But that was pretty clear the moment that law came into play. There’s never been a time where the invocation of a centuries-old law hasn’t made matters worse.

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Here at WeLoveCult, we love cult, just not those other kinds of cults, but we might love a good movie about those other kinds of cults, which is why Sundance favorite Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene is this week’s DVD pick.

In the psychological thriller, Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) is a girl dealing with something much more confusing than the above paragraph. After fleeing from a cult, she tries to start a normal life with her family again, but finds it increasingly difficult to deal with her paranoia as she continues to believe she is still in danger. From what I’ve heard the trailer apparently makes the film look far more thrilling than it really might be, but in either case, it’s a well constructed tease  from that intriguing opening phone call to the underlying creepiness and the subjective way those cult flashbacks keep uncomfortably seeping into the present.

Also out this week on DVD are Tower Heist, J. Edgar, The Son of No One and London Boulevard, but does anyone really care?

Because this interview is so very epic it will run in two parts, with one part here and the other part running over at VeryAware.com.

Have there been any instances on the Walking Dead show when you’ve had to jump in and stop the writers from getting too far away from the comics?

Robert Kirkman: I think that one of my main jobs on the Walking Dead show is to protect the show for the fans. I think that the fans of the comic book series have made the show possible. I think that the comic wouldn’t have become as popular as it’s become and would never have been made into a show if it wasn’t for them, and I think that I have to honor their devotion to the Walking Dead, which is a great thing that, you know, benefits me well and keeps my children fed.

So yeah, if they were suggesting anything that I thought was going to hurt the integrity of the Walking Dead, or something that would definitely piss off fans, I would step in. Luckily, I haven’t had to do that yet.

I think that everyone in the writers’ room, all of the producers – they’re doing the Walking Dead because they love it. You’ve got Scott Gimple and Angela Kang, who were reading the comic before the show ever started, and now they’re working on the show. You’ve got guys like Evan Reilly, who doesn’t give a shit about the comic (laughs). Still a cool guy, he loves it, I’m kidding. These guys read the comics more than I do, I’ll be honest with you, I write the comic and I go back and I read it and make sure I’ve got it straight, but these guys are reading it day in and day out, they go through and they read every month. Everyone loves and is devoted to the comic.

So they’re the continuity cops?

Kirkman: Exactly, to a certain extent I try to remember everything that happens but every now and then I forget something and we get into a big argument and I’m like, “That never happened!” and Scott Gimple is like, “What are you talking about?!” But yeah, if they ever were like, “What if there was a zombie that has super strength?” or, “What if Dale became a murdering psycho and started hacking people’s heads off?” Those are the kinds of things that would bump against what the comic has done, and I would definitely step in. Luckily I think that I have a relationship with all of those people. If I did ever have to do that, I think they would understand and they would listen to me. The show is in good hands.

Can the dark tone of the comic be matched on the TV series? Some of the stuff with the Governor was pretty intense; how far can you take that on TV?

Kirkman: There are certain boundaries for different mediums. I think that having the month long break between issue to issue or the 6 month break between volume to volume — you can push boundaries to a certain extent on a regular basis, more so than you can on a television show. So there might be instances where we go as dark as the comic in the show, but then we cut short and try to do something else and try to shift gears. People on a couch want to be entertained, they don’t want to be completely depressed. That said, we’re definitely going to go to those places.

There are some things coming up in the 3rd season that I can happily and proudly say exceed some of the darkest things that we’ve done in the comic. I think people are really going to be pretty shocked with a lot of stuff that’s coming. The show is gonna have teeth, the show is not going to be a watered down version of the Walking Dead [comic]. Seeing it thus far, you’ve got zombie autopsies, Sophia, and there is definitely a lot of dark stuff going on in the show, and it’ll continue.

Is there a character you regret killing off in the Walking Dead comic, Invincible, or any of your other titles? 

Kirkman: To a certain extent, I regret killing every character that I’ve killed. I wish I could still write Rex Splode, I wish I could still write stories with Axel and Tyrese. There’s all kinds of characters that I regret not being able to write. In the other sense, I don’t regret it because every time I’ve killed a character it’s been for the good of the story. I feel it’s led to interesting stories after that. It gives the book more impact.

Is there any hope for another Atom Eve mini-series?

Kirkman: Absolutely, yeah, you know she’s a very interesting character. I think those miniseries were cool. But yeah, there’s not any plan right now. But while I don’t like doing… I’m never goona do a spin-off of the Walking Dead, because the way that concept works, I don’t think it would benefit from having separate stories. I think that Invincible being a super hero comic, I love the idea of there being spin-offs every now and then and stories that kind of focus on individual characters. Atom Eve is definitely at the top of that list.

———-

Be sure to check out the other part of this two part interview over at VeryAware.com here.

Less Miguel Ferrer, more nudeyness, tweets, and kittens with lightsabers

Hey kids, wanna be just a little bit like RoboCop? Sure you do, and Google wants to make that happen. The search engine behemoth and Skynet wannabe is developing Android-powered glasses that will let you browse the net as you wear them. That’s right, news, porn, porn, and facebook all in your eye-line as you walk into traffic.

What else can these things do? Well according to the New York Times, which puts news on the interweb and on paper:

Several people who have seen the glasses, but who are not allowed to speak publicly about them, said that the location information was a major feature of the glasses. Through the built-in camera on the glasses, Google will be able to stream images to its rack computers and return augmented reality information to the person wearing them. For instance, a person looking at a landmark could see detailed historical information and comments about it left by friends. If facial recognition software becomes accurate enough, the glasses could remind a wearer of when and how he met the vaguely familiar person standing in front of him at a party. They might also be used for virtual reality games that use the real world as the playground.

The glasses are being constructed at Google’s super special secret Office X, where they ride around on Segways and make fun of everyone else who doesn’t work in a super special secret office.

So, there you have it — the future is here, and it is all about unlimited ways to access masturbatory aids.

Director Edgar Wright has joined Johnny Depp for the Night Stalker remake. Wright will direct and co-develop the film with Depp and an eventual writer. The brit director is probably best known for his work on Scott Pilgrim and Shaun of the Dead. He’s also tied to Marvel’s Ant-Man project and the end of the “Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy” with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, so Mr. Wright is a busy fellow.

So, why Night Stalker? Apparently Johnny Depp and his producing partner, Christi Dembrowski, both grew up with the original and apparently that is all it takes. To be fair films with a supernatural bend aren’t exactly box office wallflowers, so it is sort of understandable.

The original premiered in 1972 and starred Darren McGavin as Carl Kolchak. Kolchak was a Las Vegas newspaper reporter who investigates the murder of a possible vampire.

In 1974 Kolchak moved to Chicago (and a regular series) to continue investigating the supernatural. The series only lasted one season, but was revamped in 2005. This time with Stuart Townsend (Queen of the Damned) as the star.

Not sure how well a twice failed television series will turn out as a movie, but with Depp’s record the chances look pretty good. Also, what’s with Johnny Depp and TV remakes lately? Dark Shadows, a cameo in 21 Jump Street, and now this.

Source: Fear.Net

Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, a documentary on horror’s most graphically disturbed era, finds its pulse quickly in an effort to get to the bleeding heart of the story. The viewer is led through a cursory historical exploration of mankind’s history of and obsession with violence, makes the obligatory cinematic shout-out to the 1960‘s with Psycho and Peeping Tom, then lands squarely on horror’s favorite holiday, Halloween.

Though there were slasher films prior (among them, 1972‘s Last House on the Left) John Carpenter’s 1978 film is credited with really launching the sub-genre and establishing the outline for slasher conventions: the unstoppable faceless bogeyman-esque killer (Michael Meyers), the familiar supposedly safe and tranquil environment (suburban neighborhoods) and an innocent, morally sound but terrorized heroine (sweet, virginal babysitter).

Halloween, however, managed to terrorize audiences with very little of the gruesomeness that became the slasher calling card in films like everyone’s favorite mountain retreat gore-fest, Friday the 13th (1980). The success of the two films with audiences paved the way for a bloody rash of films to flood the market.

The documentary quickly moves through a catalog and montage of some of the early 80’s most recognizable cut-up hits, Prom Night, The Prowler, Happy Birthday, My Bloody Valentine, Slumber Party Massacre, Graduation Day and the adolescent transgender nightmare that haunts many of us to this day, Sleepaway Camp.

Inevitably, audiences begin to tire of the genre conventions, feeling as if they’ve seen all possible kill sequence combination of random weaponry + vital organ or appendage. They begin to long for a side dish of  “sophistication” with their beheadings. Enter Wes Craven and a new kind of nightmare in 1984, with Nightmare on Elmstreet. Skewing the current trend of simply racking up a bodycount, Craven goes for more of a psychological thriller where its less about being in the wrong place at the wrong time, getting naked with the wrong person — but more about having the nerve to fall asleep. No one is safe and it has nothing to do with making stupid decisions that advance the plot, it has to do with being a person. The end, or, I guess, goodnight.

Craven talks about what interests him in the genre beyond cheap scare and gross-out tactics, ”to me its much more about the social, economical, psychological zeitgeist of whats going in the culture at the time…” Which begins a far too short segment of what was happening outside the camera while people were being slaughtered inside the frame: Carter, Reagan, Reaganomics, post-Vietnam, a mass exodus to the seeming sanctity of suburban America, greed, obsession on physicality and physical appearance, and of course, AIDS (an unseeable silent but deadly killer).

We go through the decline of the genre, then its second coming in the 90s where big studios got involved, actual stars jumped on board and the whole thing became a parody of itself with 897 new combinations of Freddy and Jason, etc. Craven’s Scream franchise carved out its own niche solely due to its self-awareness and ability to poke fun at the genre while empowering the audience by letting them know, that Hollywood knows, that they’re in on the joke.

Overall the film about these films was an entertaining survey of the slasher phenomenon with a number of adequately disturbing clips, interviews with some of our favorite directors, a few less recognizable names responsible for movies you’ve surely heard of, the editor of Fangoria Magazine, and Felissa Rose, the infamous confused pre-teen with one dirty little secret in Sleepaway Camp.

By far the most interesting interviews came from Tom Savini, a special effects make-up artist responsible for some of the most memorial gore in the field. He’s also a recognizable actor having appeared in a various Romero films (which he did the make-up for) to things like From Dusk Till Dawn and Machete. His enthusiasm for the creativity involved in staging cringe inducing gruesome death sequences, framed by his experience as a photographer in Vietnam seem worthy of their own documentary.

The weakest point of this whole assemblage seemed to be the lack of exploration of political and critical forces that spawned this movement and the criticism against it, all of which made up approximately 10 min of this hour and half long doc. It serves better as a suggested viewing list for additions to your queue than any sort of a serious examination of what the meaning behind all these horrific deaths. The whole thing ends on a weak note with clips from modern Horror Cons and some narration about fans being a fun loving community. I guess the most important tid-bit one could take away would be, if you havent seen Sleepaway Camp, think about it. Seriously.

News Crumbs: Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Jesus, The Terminator, and Rambo walk into a prison…

AICN is reporting that Jim Caviezel will team up with Sly Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger (totally red-squiggled on that one initially) for the prison-based action film The Tomb, according to producer Mark Canton. No word on who the on-staff Geriatrician will be.

Best News of the Day: Brit punk rocker Billy Bragg is teaming up with Wilco for Mermaid Avenue Volume III, 12 years after Volume II was released. Previous team-ups have resulted in some pretty fantastic tracks, including “California Stars” and one of my personal favorites, “Blood of the Lamb”.

Separately Bragg is known for “A New England” and “Must I Paint You a Picture” as well as countless pro-worker anthems. Wilco is known for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and being fucking awesome.

Source: EW

Hat Tip of the Day: A tie, between Badass Digest’s Dark Darkwing Duck find and THR’s TV pilot tracker, which is the ultimate resource for all those who want to track the numerous shows that will fall to the earth like a flame-covered butterfly. Remember, Work It survived the pilot process last year, which means ABC favored it above many other shows. (Gasp!)

Fun with pictures:  

Forgetting that they look like cosplayers for a moment, here’s a pic of Captain America, Hawkeye, and Black Widow taken from an upcoming Empire Magazine spread.

The Art of Movement: I was addicted to Goldeneye 64 once upon a time, and I mean I was surgical with that shit, so this video tickles me more than most, unless you were, of course, similarly afflicted. Hat tip to Bleeding Cool for posting it first.

In closing: Be sure to check out our “Completely Obligatory Oscar Live Blog with your overly thrilled host Jason Tabrys” on Sunday February 26th.