"My Dear Lucy, I Wrote This Story For You, But When I Began It I Had Not Realized That Girls Grow Quicker

"This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel." - Horace Walpole, The Letters of Horace Walpole

Parasite (Korean: 기생충) by Bong Joon-ho.

I have loved and respected Bong Joon-ho and his body of work since "Okja" and "Snowpiercer" and he never fails to surprise, delight, and move me every time. So it means a lot to me to be able to say this is his best film. It is.

A movie full of sadness, wit, and depth. Irreverent but benevolent. Amazing.

A Dictionary of Symbols by J. E. Cirlot.

An essential piece of literature.

This is a book that can help you interpret paintings, cipher and decipher art, and view the world in a different light.

Anyone who hasn’t seen Scott Pilgrim is missing out.

Fun Fact:

God of War's Grýla was based on a real giantess from Norse mythology.

In myth, she's not actually related to Angerboda at all, but the game got a lot of other things right. Like how she's enormous, absolutely disgusting and she did still have a cauldron you didn't want to end up in. Sagas from 13th century Iceland describe Grýla as a parasitic beggar woman who wanders around town, asking peasant farmers to give her their disobedient children. The parents could easily turn her away, but if their kid had been a real tachrán lately, they might just give him/her up. When Grýla was given a child, she'd throw them in a sack attached to one of her 15 tails, then take them home, toss them in the cauldron and get a stew going. Legend says that the naughtier the kid, the better the stew tasted and that she never ever had a shortage of food.

In God of War, she's not exactly nice to Angerboda, but she's never so horrible as to try and eat her. Instead, she uses her cauldron to harvest the souls of animals she traps around Jotunheim.

Compared to her mythology, her God of War counterpart is actually kind of nice...

2001 test for film adaptation of Paul Chadwick's Concrete comics.

I loved the superhero boom from the 90s/2000s, seeing mega hits like the Spider-Man films (which are some of my top favorite superhero movies, I think the first Spider-Man movie was developed before even X-Men was on film). The superhero set I would've loved to visit the most is Mystery Men. To me, the first Blade movie was instrumental in showing how superhero movies could exist at the end of the 20th century. There was a collision of Dark City and Blade that somehow, in subtle ways paved the way, via anime/manga, for The Matrix to spawn into the world. 

But, still, back then it was a countermovement to try to do superhero films, especially with material that didn't have Marvel or DC numbers. For many years, the proto-comic book movies were Paul Verhoeven's RoboCop (one of the best Judge Dredd movies) and Sam Raimi's Darkman in so many ways.

In my opinion, Paul Chadwick's Concrete is ripe to be adapted (there was a script written by Larry Wilson and Paul Chadwick, but it didn't go through).

Darkman by Sam Raimi.

Along with Batman (1989) and Spider-Man (2002), this signals the birth of quirky, inventive, modern comic-book movies. This film was very close to the genre, and it wasn't even based on a comic!

Note: I think the explosion that originates Darkman is meant to be an Alec Holland wink to the masterpiece: Swamp Thing.

Flesh and Blood (stylized as Flesh+Blood) by Paul Verhoeven.

Verhoeven's first English-language film.

15th century brutality, superstition and politics, Verhoeven style.

This film wasn't a smash hit, probably owing to it being outrageously dirty (and its immensely depressing depiction of 15th century life), but it was critically acclaimed.

Inspired Berserk creator Kentaro Miura.