Arctic Cold Comic Strip Spectacular (1 of 3): Best Comics NOT in Our Local Newspapers

Even with the imported "Washington Post," there are lots of comic strips which are not in the Sunday editions of the two main newspapers which are commercially available here in Roanoke,Va., where "The Roanoke Times" is the local paper.

In fact, we looked at 42 additional comic strips ranging from the cutting edge "F-Minus," which is available in daily editions of the "News and Observer" in Raleigh, NC, (at last check), to the right wing comic strip "Mallard Fillmore," which ironically started at "The Daily Progress," which serves Charlottesville, Va., the most liberal city in our state.

Neither of those strips made the cut this week, but we will give both of them another look in February. 

Since we have artic weather, which makes one think it might be warmer in Bergen, Norway, today than it is here in southwest Virginia, we had the time to look at all these strips, and we placed a ranking system to put them in their right place in a remotely objective manner.

We have the odd numbered strips on this blog, and the even numbered ones on our sister blog (see link below).

The top  strips in this Top 10 list dealt with an evil computer in "The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee" (which is the reason why we have HAL from Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey"), an ice storm in "Edge City" (see top image) and a great satire of the beloved American board game Monopoly in "Brevity"  (see bottom image).

The comic strip "Beeker" dealt with an ill-fated backyard hockey game, which probably helped win over Ottawa Senators fans in Canada (we could use some fans in Canada ourselves).

Here is the list:


1. "The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee" 8.4

2. "Bleeker" 8.0

3. Edge City 7.7

4. Brevity 7.6

5. Deflocked 7.5

6. Close to Home 7.4

7. The Duplex 7.3

8. Heart of the City 7.2

9. Zippy the Pinhead 7.2

10. Fort Knox 7.1

http://edisonleecomic.com/

http://bleekercomics.com/

http://edgecitycomics.com/

http://deflocked.com/

http://www.zippythepinhead.com

Quote of the Day/Week- Roman Polanski

For the second week in a row, we are quoting famous film directors with controversial personal lives. Last week, we quoted Woody Allen. But, the reason for this is not because we live controversy (ok,so we did say we would run to Costa Rica if Mitt Romney was elected president a few entries back), but because Roman Polanski, the subject of this week's quote, like Allen, is an Oscar-winning filmmaker. We are quoting Academy Award-winning film directors this month even though our personal favorite movie director Stanley Kubrick never won one! (Yes, not even for "2001:A Space Odyssey").

Currently, in some small-market art houses, Polanski's latest film "Carnage" with three Oscar winners (Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster and Christoph Waltz) and John C. Reilly is now screening. The film has already been screened in large markets.

The film director was born in Poland, and now resides in France.

Polanski won an Oscar for his film "The Pianist" (2002).

Here is Polanski's quote (the above image is of him acting in his own film "Chinatown" (1974)):

"Cinema should make you forget you are sitting in a theater."

SIDEBAR: The Film Forum in New York will be screening a very interesting film (well, we haven't seen it for ourselves) from Iranian director Jafar Panahi entitled "This Is Not a Film" starting on Feb. 29.

The film, co-directed with Mojtaba Miratahmasb, was entirely shot on a cell phone and a DV camera. Sine Panafi is under house arrest for his politics and not allowed to make films in Iran, he had the film hidden in a cake and sent to France for festival screenings. It became a huge sensation at the Cannes Film Festival.

Panafi is one of the most acclaimed filmmakers in Iran; his credits include "The White Balloon" (1995), "The Circle" (2000) and "Offside" (2006). His current film is an autobiographical documentary about isolation.

My friend Bilge Ebiri, a New York-based film critic proclaimed "Offside" to be the best film that was released in the United States in 2007. That film was about two girls in their late teens/early twenties try to sneak inside to see a soccer game. In Iran, women are forbidden to go to soccer games. Though we believe Irish women were allowed to see their national team play a game in Iran several years ago.

Quote of the Day- Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The editorial board here at "The Daily Vampire" which consists of managing editor (mr) Tilly Gokbudak (that's me) and a Honduran intern named Javier Gonzales (actually, a fictional person) decided late this afternoon to feature quips from literary and creative radicals for the month of August.

So, we begin with the late, great American novelist Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., who penned "Slaughterhouse Five," which was available at the Shenandoah County Jail Library in Woodstock, Va. (I am not making this up!), at least it was when I profiled the correctional facility as a reporter some 11 years ago.

According to Stephen King in King's book "On Writing," Vonnegut would type the same page 75 times until he got it just right. This practice sounds a bit like the perfectionism of the late film director Stanley Kubrick, but I don't if I should mention that since King reportedly disdains the 1980 film version of King's novel "The Shinning." And we like Stephen King. In fact, we are wondering if the temperature in King's hometown of Bangor, Maine, is less than 97 degrees as it is here in Mount Airy, NC, at the moment (not really where I am at).

The liberal magazine "The Nation" has apparently been posting some famous quips made in its pages over the years, and Vonnegut made this provocative statement in the magazine's Nov. 28th, 1981 issue, which we imagine the Rev. Johnny Robertson of Martinsville, Va., (a real person) might not appreciate:

"God shouldn't be put in charge of everything until we get to know him a little bit better."

SIDEBAR: On a more somber note, we want to send our condolences to the family of Gizem Dogan, a 17-year-old Norwegian girl of Turkish heritage who was killed at the summer camp in Norway last week. All total, the attacks in Oslo and on the island where the summer camps took place, claimed 77 lives. Both the NPR news program "The World" and the English-language Turkish newspaper "Today's Zaman" reported that Turkey's Foreign Minsiter Ahmet Davutoglu attended Dogan's funeral in Trondheim, Norway.

Gizem Dogan is perhaps the most high-profile casualty of a violent action in the Turkish media since Furkan Dogan, (we assume they are not related) a 19-year-old Turkish-American from New York state was killed by Israeli commandos during the infamous armed raid fiasco aboard the Marmara Flotilla, which aimed at giving food and aid to Palestinians, in June of 2010.

We learned today that Furkan Dogan's father filed a lawsuit in an American court against the Israeli government in May.

The Last 10 Films I've Seen- It's a Strange List

We are using the image above as something that could go with "Rango" that the other 112, 316 bloggers who've mentioned the animated western with the voice of Johnny Depp haven't used. We had to insert the words "Big Green Lizard Costa Rica" in Google to come up with this!

I wasn't too keen on seeing "Rango" until a tweet from film director Sofia Coppola said that it was not only a good film, but it was like 'a kiddie version of Chinatown.'

The very last movie I've seen is the 2000 Iranian film "The Circle" by Jafar Panahi, whose later film "Offside" was championed by my good friend Bilge Ebiri. The late Susan Sontag was among those who praised "The Circle," an amazing, highly-political film about the plight of women in Iran.

The Iranian film brought to mind some of the controversial films made by the late Turkish actor/director Yilmaz Guney in the late '70s and early '80s. Although, I have the subjective opinion, which I think even people who aren't of Turkish heritage like myself would agree with, that Turkey is a far better place politically than Iran. Well, we certainly hope that is the case!

The most disappointing of the ten films listed was unquestionably "Bronson," a 2008 English film which is essentially a Stanley Kubrick rip-off orchestrated for the shock porn generation.....hmm....I am starting to sound too much like Jonathan Rosenbaum, forgive the film geek humor!

We must profess that we got this idea from the great magazine "Film Comment," which has an amazing article on the gradual death of film projection in the current issue.

Here is the the list, my rating (out of four stars) comes after each film:

1. "The Circle" (Iran, 2000) ****

2. "Rango" (2011) ***1/2

3. "The Lucky Ones" (2008) ***

4. "The Tall T" (1957) ***1/2

5. "The Devil-Doll" (1936) **1/2

6. "24 City" (China, 2008) ****

7. "Treeless Mountain" (So. Korea, 2008) ***1/2

8. "Bronson" (2008) **

9. "The Adjustment Bureau" (2011) **

10. "Youth in Revolt" (2009) **

Silly Photo to Fill Space- Jaaack-O-Lantern

For those of you who reside in a remote village in Azerbaijan, this image above is of Jack Nicholson who played Jack Torrence in the Stanley Kubrick film version of "The Shinning," based on the Stephen King novel of the same name.

King is to this day reportedly displeased with the Kubrick film. Interestingly enough, Kubrick would frequently call King when it was the middle of the night in Maine, where King still resides, and ask him absurd questions like: "Do you believe in God?"

"The Shinning" is currently showing (at least of tonight) at the famed Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin, Tex., which is about as close to us as a remote village in Azerbaijan (we are on the east coast).

According to the IMDB, King also professed a preference for actor Jon Voight, now known more for his radical transformation from post-Vietnam hippie to a right-wing Tea Party extremist than his still emmence on-screen talents, to play the title role instead of Jaaack Nicholson.

The title of the book apparently came about when King was listening to or thinking about the John Lennon song "Instant Karma" and the line: "We all shine on."

The Last Ten Films I've Seen

Here are the last ten films I've seen. No time for commentary, but we decided to feature an image of Roman Polanski not because of the current controversy he is embroiled in but because his latest film is on this list:


1. "The Art of the Steal" (doc. d-Don Argott. 2009)
2. "The Wages of Fear" (France. d-Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1959)
3. "Ghost Writer" (d-Roman Polanski, 2010)
4. "Roaring Twenties" (with James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart. d-Raoul Walsh. 1939)
5. "Four of the Apocalypse" (a spahetti western. Italy. d-Lucio Fulci, 1975).
6. "Heaven Can Wait" (d-Warren Beatty and Buck Henry, 1978)
7. "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars" (doc concert about David Bowie. d-D.A. Penebaker. Filmed in 1973, released in cinemas in 1982).
8."The Story of Floating Weeds" (Japan. d-Yasujiro Ozu, 1934)
9. "The Killers" (with Lee Marvin. Last cinematic role for Ronald Reagan. d-Don Siegel, 1964)
10. "Dr. Strangelove........" (d-Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

SIDEBAR: My friend Jason Garnett is showing the documentary "Cinemania" about film fanatics tonight at the Shadowbox Cinema in Roanoke, Va. That might be short notice, bue he is also screening a night of vintage '70s era trailers which he is calling "Trailer Trash Night" on May 17 at 8:00 p.m. Admission is five dollars.