It's safe to say that the films of Quentin Dupieux are not for everyone. I fine his darkly comic abstract work to be mesmerizing bizarre indie masterpieces. His previous directorial effort featured a murderous rubber tire, various reality bending moments, and characters within the movie who knew they were in a movie. There's no secret origin revealed, there's not much in the way of a conclusion, and I completely loved the thing.

His latest directorial effort might seem a bit more mainstream at first, as it's a story about a man who wakes up and finds out that his dog has gone missing. It is of course much more complicated and weirder then that. Clocks flip over from 7:59 to 7:60, an office is drenched in water sprinklers and no one seems to make notice, a self help guru communicates through some form of magic powers via unknowing lackeys. None of these or any of the other weirdness is explained...this is just the normalcy of a world crated from the mind of Quentin Dupieux.

You have one last chance to revel in the enthralling insanity of this new generation David Lynch / John Waters at the Mayfair, tonight at 9:30pm.

Work and travel have caused a backlog on teevee watching. Falling behind on my media intake is a constant in my life, but I try my best to keep up to date with the most important of things. Watched the Doctor Who episode titled Hide. It was a great mix of Hammer Horror ghost story like surroundings, time travel, and a really great and creepy monster. Doctor Who is so consistently good that the only negative in the whole current incarnation of the 50 year old series is that I am kinda sad that there are not longer seasons and more episodes.

As predicted, it was an exhaustive weekend of roller derbying, and I am ecstatically happy that Ottawa's own Slaughter Daughters took home the championship Beast trophy for the second time in three years. My biggest worry came to reality as the opposition for the battle was Montreal's Racaille, which happens to be captained by Slavic Slayer - former a RVRG'er and a pal. Glass half full, it meant that I got to be happy for both the first and the second place teams.

This is the day of roller derby that lies ahead of me. I know from experience that just watching this much roller derby in a day is exhausting and leaves your brain in a blur of trying to remember match-up's and scores. Imagine how the athletes feel (and this is only day one of two) by the time days end rolls around.

Off to Montreal later on today to guard the merch table for my Rideau Valley Roller Girls family at the annual Beast of the East tournament. I will watch numerous bouts over the weekend, while I hope and pray that my friends on various teams meet up against each other in derby battle as few times as possible. Watching derby can be mentally harrowing enough and when you can't vilify one of the teams 'cause there's people who you like on both sides of the match-up, it's even worse. I'm sure that it will be an action packed weekend, and one in which I spend a major portion of the time holding my breath and being in a general stressed out state of being. I'm not a sports fan, but I am a roller derby fan, and this tournament is some of the best derby you can find.

Your latest chance to be inspired by and gain knowledge by the life of William Shatner is his autobiographical rule book Shatner Rules. There are few other human beings who you could learn more valuable life lessons from. William Shatner is of course one of the greatest Canadians of all time. So, if you are Canadian, I'm pretty sure that that means you must study and learn and better yourself from his work. It's a law I think.

I read the first volume of comics starring the New 52 version of Blue Beetle, which I picked off the shelf on my last visit to the library (a library I should be avoiding because I have so many books at home that are still unread). I give this collection a resounding meh. It was average super hero fare, and there's nothing wrong with that, but I demand more from my modern day comic book reading experience. I fully admit that I am a tough sell on this version of the character, as the previous incarnation is one of my favourite characters ever. I miss Ted Kord.

I know that the man has a rabid fan base who would disagree with me, but I'm just not a fan of most of the film-making works of Kevin Smith. I loved and was inspired by Clerks, and I thought that Red State was an impressively put together and well written piece that finally showed evolution on the part of the screenwriter and director. Everything in-between, from Chasing Amy to Cop Out, left me unimpressed to neutral in my opinion. I don't think I hated any of his movies, but I thought that they all seemed a little guilty of too much fun and not enough work.

On the other hand, I think that Kevin Smith makes a great interview subject, host,and makes the most of the social media and podcast world that he finds himself a corner-stone of currently. Plans always change, he said that Jay & Silent Bob Strikes Back was his farewell to the View Askew characters, and then a few years later Clerks II hit the silver screen. He said that his farewell to directing would be a hockey movie, now it seems like his next film-making effort will be a third Clerks. It does seem now though that the foreseeable future of the creative output of Kevin Smith will come mostly in the form of non-fiction writings, podcasts, and live performances of his not-quite stand-up storytelling kind of shows.

I just finished listening to Kevin Smith's audiobook version of Tough Shit: Life Advice from a Fat Lazy Slob Who Did Good (as read by the author). Kevin's life story (so far) is a good story indeed. A young geek with dreams of making movies, throws caution to the wind, and sets out to make a no-budget semi-autobiographical movie with his friends. It worked, and a little under two decades later he finds himself with a loyal army of worshipers of his movies and winner of a batch of indie awards and street cred. If that wasn't enough, he also happened to be a comic book geek, and since his film-making career took off he's also gotten to write characters the like of Spider-man and Batman. And he just happens to be a corner-stone Comic Con guest of honour every year. He is living the dream.

The book is a very entertaining listen, I would hazard a guess that even better than reading (not that I'm opposed to words on paper). The author reads it himself in a laid back conversational manner, going off script on a number of occasions. I think I'm very ok with the thought of Kevin Smith giving up on making movies for these other endeavors. I almost feel bad that I don't like his movies more, because I have a feeling that I could sit around and chat with Kevin Smith about Star Wars and comic books for hours.

I have to work like a chump tonight. If I were not working in exchange for monies that I can use to purchase comic books and blu rays, I would be going to Pressed to eat a tasty sammich and participate in this months Geek Trivia event as organized by the fine gentlemen of Unreasonable Action. It is an Easter themed night of questions, and judging by this picture advertising the event, I think one of the answers might be Jaxxon.

A few days ago, the Mayfair was packed full with kids on a field trip to watch some work that they had produced up on the big screen under the banner of the Churchill Alternative School Stop Motion Film Festival. It was the second year of hopefully an ongoing tradition of the kids producing their own works of animation. It was a very fun afternoon and the kids had a great time, and expressed themselves in a very loud and jubilant manner front beginning to end. A few short years ago an undertaking like this for a school would have been a much more expensive and time consuming endeavor. Now-a-days a classroom of kids can make a stop-motion animation piece with a smart-phone and nothing more then an average laptop at best. The great Bruce Campbell once commented that the good news is that in this day and age that anyone can make a movie...and the bad news is that anyone can make a movie. Seeing these imaginative little no budget bits of animation makes me think that in this sense anyhow, it is very much a good thing indeed.

While dropping by Lost Marbles to pick up a birthday present for my brother (he got Adventure Time Monopoly), I could not resist the blind-box vinyl toy section. I try to limit my addiction to Dunny's, but a new line of DC Comic themed Domo monsters were calling out to me in an unnecessary purchase like hypnotic siren song. All I knew was that I did not want the Superman in his red underwear-less New 52 incarnation. I know that there are much more important things to be concerned about, but I can't get over how weird he looks in head to toe blue one piece jumpsuit and a there for no reason belt. Usually I have kinda bad luck with the mystery blind-boxes, luckily I got the very awesome Green Lantern Domo, and geeky customer rage was left in check.

DC Comics may be in the midst of a bit of a bumpy road in getting some of their characters up onto the big screen, but they have no such issues with their animated teevee movie offerings. Superman Returns had all the best intentions, but was a bit of a mess. Green Lantern was one of those dream projects that I never thought would become a reality as a geeky young comic book reader...it was a train-wreck. Christopher Nolan's Batfilms made a lot of money...I could never get over that Batman sounded like cookie monster and had a lame Batmobile. Joss Whedon wrote a script for a Wonder Woman movie, but the Warner Bros powers that be figured that they could find someone better to do a super-hero movie.

Ever since the the Paul Dini / Bruce Timm Batman series of the early 90's, DC cartoons have been on an incredible role of quality output. That show's story continuity and character design style went on to encompass Superman, Justice League, Batman Beyond, a number of small screen films, and the big screen Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (which I think is the best representation of the character that ever appeared in cinemas). After they concluded that universe of stories, they produced a very fun anime style Teen Titans and a bunch of stand alone non-theatrical movies featuring various incarnations of their characters.

I finally got around to watching the adaptation of Frank Miller's 1980's comic book masterpiece, Batman: Th Dark Knight Returns. Despite the looming shadow of having the task of putting one of the greatest and most important comic books ever produced into animation form, they greatly succeeded and did not disappoint. The Kill Bill style cut in two chapters mini-epic features Peter Weller as Batman and Michael Emerson as Joker, both of whom would do equally fine jobs in a live action version of the script I'm sure.

You would think that sooner or later that the film executives would come to their senses and let this team do the big screen movie franchises instead. If that happened we just might have Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern...wouldn't that be a better movie watching world to be in?

While listening to an episode of the FEaB podcast, the topic of Muppet Babies came up between hosts Matt Mira and Scott Mosier.

The Muppet Babies cartoon featured lil kid versions of Kermit and Gonzo and all the other mainstay Muppets in imaginative day-care adventures. There were never any scenes of the Muppet kids being dropped off or picked up by parents, so it might've actually been an orphanage, I'm not positive.

As we all know, The Muppet Movie establishes that the Muppets all meet up as adults as Kermit instigates a road-trip to Hollywood to attain fame and fortune. Contradictory to that, in the teevee special A Muppet Family Christmas, there is a scene in which the gathered Muppets watch a home movie from when they were babies. Meaning we have conflicting histories in the Muppet-verse, one time-line in which they've been friends since they were kids and one in which they meet as adults. The only possible reasoning is that the bulk of The Muppet Movie is of course a based-on-a-true-story account bio-film that the Muppets have produced and are watching.

So, Muppet Babies, book-ends of Muppet Movie with the Muppets in the theatre, and Muppet Family Christmas are in continuity...core of Muppet Movie is the Muppets acting in a movie in which they play themselves and re-tell a fictionalized account of their origins. I'm glad that we could get all that mess figured out. Now, the real issue of concern is that the Fraggles in Muppet Family Christmas are the same size as Kermit, when we all know that they are much tinier then that. What the hell is the deal with those enormous Fraggles?

I love Mike Mignola's Hellboy universe of comic book characters. Especially great is how he hasn't rested on the singular popularity of Hellboy, in fact, for the past few years Hellboy has appeared in many fewer issues than his other Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense characters have been more in the front line. Former Hellboy sidekick, the fish-man Abe Sapien recently graduated up to reular ongoing series status star, and other bizarre characters like Lobster Johnson show up in their own mini-series every so often.

The latest strange character from the mind of Mike Mignola to spin off into his own mini-series is Sledge-hammer 44, which at first glance seems to be a World War II Iron Man. Because the character is in the Mignola-verse, that rather simple concept ends up being much more imaginative and interesting. Best of all, is that Dark Horse seems to have learned lessons from the mistakes of bigger goliath companies like DC and Marvel. Sledge-hammer 44 is a two issue series that you can enjoy is you are a Hellboy super-fan, or if you have never heard of Hellboy and just think that a guy in a robot suit fighting Nazi's sounds like a cool thing to read about. You don't have to buy three dozen other books to know what the hell is going on.

Do you like hilarious things? Then you should buy the House of Fun one-shot from writer /artist Evan Dorkin and Dark Horse Comics. I'm pretty sure that here is more funny in this single comic book than in entire seasons of teevee series, multiple stand-up comedy events, or giant stacks of other books. New adventures of Milk and Cheese alone would be worth the price of admission, but there is so much more (mostly wonderfully offensively more). Put newspaper comic strips to shame with their unwarranted claims at providing humour, read House of Fun instead.

The latest super-hero story-line twist that DC Comics has released onto their New 52 Universe is the introduction of Carrie Kelley. Carrie is a creation of Frank Miller, a female Robin side-kick to a crazy senior citizen Batman in the 1980's comic book masterpiece, The Dark Knight Returns.

Of course, not so surprisingly, this development has caused an unleashing of anger from many nerds on the interwebs. I avoid most of these comments by trying to stay away from comment boards on various geek websites. My eye has unfortunately caught a few bouts of typed out negativity though. What always drives me crazy about this kind of stuff is it's a level of critiquing anger leveled towards a thing which they have not even read yet. If you read it and don't like it, that's fine. How about we refrain from death threats to comic book writers at least until the topic of the subject is read? Actually...y'know what...just don't send death threats to someone because they wrote something you don't like in a comic book. Take a step back and realize that that is lunacy. Would you like receiving death threats? I don't think so.

I have read Batman & Red Robin # 19 (Batman will have rotating side-kick guest stars for the time being after the heartbreaking loss of Damien), and I liked it a lot. Carrie is indeed in it, though the Robin connection is a bit of a misdirection. The actual story explores how Batman is acting even more off-kilter than a guy dressed like a bat normally does, and how he is acting in a state of vigilante genius mourning. As the title states, previous side-kick Tim Drake guest stars in the book, as does the less likely guest-star of DC's take on the Frankenstein Monster.

Peter J Tomasi and Pat Gleason have written and drawn an impressive run on their Batman title. I think it's hands down the best Batman comic now that writer Grant Morrison is finishing up his run in Gotham. The curse of a shared universe is that you have to fall into pace with what happens elsewhere. I have a feeling that they would have liked to continue to tell stories with Damien Wayne as Robin, but that was not meant to be. I don't care how it's done, I don't care if it's some horrible magic or alien twist, I want Damien back. Until that happens though, or even if it doesn't, I look forward to seeing what these guys do with this book now. A lot of geeks have said that there's nothing good from DC's New 52 line. I have a feeling they haven't read Batman & Robin.

When I first heard of Warm Bodies, I didn't really get expectations too high, despite my usual enjoyment of films with zombies in them. I figured that it would be another in the weird and unwanted Twilight sub-genre of movies that have come out on the heels of those sparkly vampire movies, like Red Riding Hood and Beastly. It most decidedly is not, and is actually a quite intelligent and original zom-rom-com (although based on a book, so not wholly original).

There are both fast moving zombies and plot developments new to the zombie mythos within the movie. Which means that there are zombie fans complaining about the legitimacy of the motion picture, many I'm sure who are whining about it even though they haven't sen it yet. What these horror fan-boys must remember is that zombies aren't real, and therefor there can't really be rules as to how they are supposed to act. There are rules as to how lions or airplanes act, because those things are actually in existence. Zombies have made quite a come-back to movies and books and video games in the past decade or so, so when they can an interesting plot point twist thrown at them, I am all for it. I love the traditional George Romero zombie movie. One of the highlights of my life in fact was when I visited the graveyard where the opening scenes of Night of the Living Dead was shot. That doesn't mean that I fear change though.

You can check out this new take on the brain eating horror movie mainstay when Warm Bodies screens at the Mayfair on Monday April 15th and Tuesday the 16th at 9:30pm.

One of the best things about being a roller derby side-kick is getting to tag along and help out on their road games. In the past few years I've traveled into the States with them to Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New York, and Pennsylvania as a non-skating official (meaning I help keep track of the score and other stuff like that). What better way would I get to visit our friends to the south, and such cultural meccas as Sudbury and Scarborough in out homeland?

Up bright and early today to jump in to the Rideau Valley Roller Girls party bus and head across the border to Manchester, New Hampshire. Our Vixens will take battle against the Skate Free or Die All Stars at 7:00pm. As long as I don't get stopped at the border because they think I'm a law-breaker named Jamar (almost happened), good times should be had by all.

Watching The General, the Buster Keaton in the Civil War cinematic classic, at the Mayfair is quite the happening in it's own right. Now, make it a Silents is Golden screening, with musical accompaniment to the silent masterpiece and it's even more special. If the music is coming from the ensemble Viola Dana, who are visiting all the way from the far off land of Australia, that makes this one night only event rather spectacular. It's always difficult to truly claim that an experience is once in a life-time, but this just might be one of those situations.

The General screens tonight at 6:30pm at the Mayfair.

The negative in regards to the latest incarnation of the long and diverse Hulk mythos is that he wears a ridiculously ugly suit of techno-armour that looks like it could've been torn right from a Michael Bay Transformers character design. The positive is that it is written by Mark Waid (2012 Eisner award winning writer of Daredevil) and that this story arc is drawn by living legend (and creator of Beta Ray Bill, one of my favourite characters) Walt Simonson.

Hulk has had many incarnations, ranging from a suit wearing Las Vegas enforcer to a gladiatorial space Conan to the rampaging Jekyll & Hyde monster that most know and love. This latest twist on the comic book icon explores the notion that Bruce Banner is tired of hiding from the law, walking around the dessert and washing dishes for a living in order to try to stay out of people's way and avoid turning into a big green monster and smashing things. He is one of the most brilliant people on the planet, and he's tired of Tony Stark and Reed Richards getting all the praise and reward and getting to live in awesome New York City buildings. Luckily, Bruce Banner has reached a level of being able to reign in the Hulk and only transform when he wants to transform. So, he goes to SHIELD (Marvel's super spy organization if you are somehow not in the know of that) and suggests a proposal. He gets all the financing and resources that being a scientist for the SHIELD organization brings, and in trade they get to use the Hulk as a weapon against evil.

In honour of artist Walt Simonson being on board for a few issues, this is a Thor guest starring story. And something super awesome happens on the last page. I will not tell you what that thing is though, or even hint towards what it might be, because spoilers are evil. Just, y'know...avoid the internet until you read the issue if you want to remain surprised. If you type in Hulk to Google I'm sure spoilers will be quick and unavoidable and bring on smashing like levels of anger.