Big Trouble in Little China: Volume 3 (2016)

Jack Burton in the Hell of No Return (2016)

Authors: John Carpenter / Eric Powell  |  Illustrator: Brian Churilla  |  Page Count: 112

"It's all trouble from here."

Volume 3 is functional and purposeful, but not what I'd class as memorable and a lot of the time it even felt like the BTiLC spark of fun was missing from it.

With regards what I mean by the functional side of things, it's constructed precisely so that it takes four issues, (i.e. the TPB page count) for Jack to advance to the next part of his adventure, like a successful step in an ongoing narrative ought to do. In that respect it's kind of like a self-contained short story, but it also feels like a stop gap for the series, slowing it down too much.

With regards the purposeful side, the most successful aspect is in how it subverts expectations for comedic effect. much like it does with the hero genre, having Jack be a hapless fool but remain unaware of it. The Chinese Hells are at times the direct opposite of what most readers will be accustomed to from other media.

The Way of the Dragon (1972)

The Way of the Dragon (1972)

Dir. Bruce Lee

Sometimes titled with the definite article and sometimes without, The Way of the Dragon is the film in which Bruce Lee fights Karate champion Chuck Norris in a Roman coliseum while a kitty cat spectator sits on high.

Beyond that it's basically the same old story: Bruce's character arrives from overseas and helps some family members that are being exploited (this time they're in the restaurant business); there's an attractive woman (the adorable Nora Miao) for him to engage with; a traitorous countryman weasels about; and it culminates in a death match that enables Lee to show how bad-ass he really was - his fists are lightning fast during the fight with Chuck.

Even though poor Chuck only gets three words of dialogue he makes an impression.

It was the only film that Bruce got to direct before he died; he did well, especially on the finale. He also wrote, co-produced and is credited as martial arts director. The commentary on styles and how a student can be proficient in more than one is something he taught in real life.

eXistenZ (1999)

eXistenZ (1999)

Dir. David Cronenberg

I hope it isn't but it's possible that the film is Cronenberg's final full-on venture into the 'body-horror' genre that he excelled in. It contains within it many elements that fans of his earlier works will be familiar with, including the weird character names and sharp angled Canadian architecture, as if to say this is where the past ends, I'm moving onto genres new afterwards.

It has a lot in common with Videodrome (1983), not just thematically, but in other ways, and as such I'd definitely recommend a thorough viewing of Videodrome before sitting down to eXistenZ.

It stars Jennifer Jason Leigh as a VR video game designer named Allegra Geller. A player of Allegra's games experiences a different reality, literally. They become a character in the game.
Players of eXistenZ aren't sat in front of a screen or fed imagery through a lens in a headset, through biotechnology they're inserted into a functioning three-dimensional world that's as real to them as the one we collectively call reality.

Pretty Deadly: Vol 1: The Shrike (2014)

Pretty Deadly: Vol 1: The Shrike (2014)

Author: Kelly Sue DeConnick  |  Illustrator: Emma Ríos  |  Page Count: 120

"This world ain't been kind to me. I say let it burn."

Taking place in a traditional American Western setting with an accompanying fable-esque slant, Volume 1 of Pretty Deadly is centred on a small handful of enigmatic but arguably well-written characters, each of whom has a murky past that they're either aware of, are attempting to hide from others, or are simply oblivious to.

It's difficult to tell at this early stage which of the cast is going to be most important to the ongoing narrative, or even who will be most profitable to sympathise with, but two of them seem to stand out from the rest.

The first is named Sissy, a young girl with two different coloured eyes and an unusual and frightening destiny.

The second candidate is Ginny, a woman on a mission. Ginny is a yellow-eyed violent force within an already violent world. She has a skull mark on her face but it's not just for show - it has a deeper meaning. That meaning is revealed when author Kelly Sue DeConnick's darkly poetic prose hits its triumphant stride.

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)

Dir. Jim Jarmusch

Ghost Dog is a loner but he's well-respected. He lives in a modern American city but follows dutifully an ancient Samurai code as outlined in Yamamoto Tsunetomo's Hagakure. The code guides him and shapes his morality in his role as a perfect assassin for the Mafia.

The lives of the gangsters are empty and wasteful. In contrast, Ghost Dog's life is filled with meaning and purpose. It's an unusual, romanticised one that he's created himself, but that doesn't make it any less noble.

Forest Whitaker is a superb actor. He can make an average film good. It follows, then, that he can make a great film like Jarmusch's Ghost Dog even more exceptional, which is exactly what he does. He brings a beautifully understated sense of sincerity to the role.

It's not essential, but familiarity with chanbara cinema will greatly increase your understanding of the film's themes and enrich your enjoyment of many other aspects of the story.

Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

Author: Ray Bradbury | Page Count: 227

"And when he died, I suddenly realised I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again..."

Ray Bradbury's masterpiece tells of an unspecified future time when the written word is considered anathema, books are burned for their heretic meanings and too much knowledge is strictly forbidden.

If one man is smarter than another, it makes the other man feel shame and inadequacy. The state doesn't want that. They want everyone to be happy, and to achieve that they must make everyone the same. They want no one to question the equilibrium or to protest against the unfairness of the world that they've help create.

Television is the dominant information medium, a permanent fixture in almost every home, delivering sound and fury but saying nothing and somehow meaning even less. Life for the populace slithers along under a coloured blanket; the colour is grey and occasionally the colour of flame, but only if you try to think for yourself, if you risk going against the established order.

Crash (1973)

Crash (1973)

Author:  J.G. Ballard | Page Count: 185

"The intimate time and space of a single human being had been fossilized for ever in this web of chromium knives and frosted glass."

Crash is a subversive novel about a film-maker named James Ballard (the same as the author) who meets a deviant named Robert Vaughan. The longer Ballard spends in Vaughan's company the more influenced by him he becomes. He's soon happily entwined in a secret world of car crashes and illicit sex, and as a result his own sexual ideals begin to change dramatically.

Robert Vaughan is a character seen previously in The Atrocity Exhibition (1970). He was a perverted weirdo there and he's much the same here. He surrounds himself with like-minded individuals, the reasons for which will become clear the more of the book you read.