Ionic: Some 2011 Things

This place left blank to mess with your mind.

CHEW

I started reading this in 2011 but it started off in 2009 or so. Don't blame me for being late to the party that is John Layman's mind. He creates a crazy world full of frog-chicken hybrids, hidden pop culture references, cannibalistic government agents and a cybernetic rooster that is simply badass.
And all this is wonderfully illustrated by Rob Guillory.

Cylon. Independence Day. Fringe. Black Smoke Monster. Frozen Han Solo. What else you want?

The story is refreshingly new and the whole take on food related superpowers is unique. Plus, great dialogue, intelligent humor and ample pop culture brilliance. I have a winner.
Tony Chu is a cop with a weird secret. Tony Chu is Cibopathic, which means he gets psychic impressions from whatever he eats. It also means he's a hell of a cop, as long as he doesn't mind eating evidence. Unfortunately for him evidence could be as simple as leftovers or as cringe-worthy as a finger from a dead man. Add to that his boss-from-hell Applebee, his partner Colby who has all the charms that half a cyborg face allows and Mason Savoy.
Mason Savoy has to be one of the meanest, most vicious and yet amply cool character created in recent times. There have been talks of Chew being adapted to film or T.V. and I hope that they cast Mason Savoy right. [I, for one, would love to see Stephen Fry play the fat but nimble Savoy who can take out a room full of ninjas on his own.]

And have I mentioned the cybernetic rooster called Poyo who kicks military junta ass in N. Korea and rips out some dictator's heart right after being shot thrice? POYO!

Also they kind of explained Charlie Sheen -

ATOMIC ROBO

There is no word or combination of words in the English language to describe the awesomeness that is Atomic Robo.
Trust me on that.

It has Nikola Tesla and Evil Thomas Edison slugging it out for the future of humanity.
It has giant ants, a trip to Mars, a walking pyramid, and blasted Nazis.
It has Lovecraftian horror, regular science and sciencefictiony science.
It also had Carl Sagan hefting a big fat gun.
It has a talking dinosaur who is plain mad and yet somehow another one of those brilliant characters that is etched in history.

This guy rocks.

Since Atomic Robo's premiere in 2007, this scientist-adventure robot 'fathered' by Nikola Tesla has been a constant beacon in the stagnant mire that is mainstream comics right now. It's funny and can be surprisingly touching. It has robot fights, gun fights, robot dinosaur fights but it never uses them as an excuse to deliver a bad story. I recommend this both to those who have never read a comic before and those who have been reading comics their entire life

As Team Robo says on their official blog,

You can blame cable television, and DVDs, home entertainment systems, and PC and console games for the decline of comics readership. I don’t doubt for one second that those contribute to the problem. But, maybe, just maybe, people sought other forms of entertainment because it is a rare comic that treats itself or its readers with respect.

Here's to great comics.

PERDIDO STREET STATION

Sprawling epic. Those are the first words that usually pop up into your mind if/when you get through this book.

Perdido Street Station concerns the renegade scientist Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin. His research into various matters—such as the nature of flight or alternative sources of energy—leads to a series of unintentional consequences for himself and his fellow city dwellers. The science in this novel is in true steampunk fashion. But Isaac manages unwittingly to unleash a cataclysm of devastation when his experiments go awry.

Miéville’s stories are filled with scenery and sometimes it may seem like the plot takes a backseat. But not since the time I read Rendezvous with Rama, have I been gripped by this feeling of unlimited potential and oneiric possibilities.

Just when you think Isaac and his band are out of the fire and into the frying pan, Miéville hurls them into a blender. There is no single antagonist. First and foremost, he and his friends are battling a swarm of horrid monsters. This single thread alone could feed a film and a theme park thrown in for good measure. In addition, they must confront a totalitarian government, the university, the mob and technology itself. Each of these storylines is fully fleshed out and meshed into the narrative. There is even a World Wide Web that is spun by a huge spider.

Perdido Street Station is a long book, which doesn't get straight to the point [at one point I gave up reading]. Stick around and it will pay off. The ideas and concepts Miéville throws around in this one book could go onto make seven more.

A very solid and memorable fantasy.

DRIVE

"If I drive for you, you get your money. That's a guarantee. Tell me where we start, where we're going and where we're going afterwards, I give you five minutes when you get there. Anything happens in that five minutes and I'm yours, no matter what. Anything a minute either side of that and you're on your own. I don't sit in while you're running it down. I don't carry a gun. I drive."

[Also the movie soundtrack is so cool it makes me gush like a schoolgirl]

That sums up the Driver for you. He has no known name, and no other life. We see him first, he's piloting a getaway car. He eludes the cops with the help of his car, intelligence and sheer coolness. By day, he is a stunt driver for action movies.

I <3 Ryan Gosling. No one brings more charisma to the screen than this guy. As played by Ryan Gosling, he has no past and a limited emotional array. Any hints of personality are tucked away deep beneath the surface. His behavior defines him. He just drives.

As Roger Ebert puts it,

"Drive" is more of an elegant exercise in style, and its emotions may be hidden but they run deep. Sometimes a movie will make a greater impact by not trying too hard.

The Driver lives somewhere in an apartment building that also houses Irene and her kid. They connect but only till Irene's husband, Standard, shows up. They have dinner together [where's the deluxe version?]. The husband pitches a heist idea to The Driver and that alone drives the rest of the story. As expected things go wrong and ultimately, Irene and her kid, Benicio, are endangered, the Driver reveals deep feelings and loyalties indeed, and undergoes enormous risk at little necessary benefit to himself.

This year, I have seen a bunch of heavy 'critically acclaimed' movies but who knew that seeing a driver, wearing a gold jacket with a scorpion on its back, stomping on a man's head inside a lift would be the best?

This fan-made poster captures the whole essence perfectly.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

I hope I haven't bored you enough because I left the best for the last.

The first lines in this movie, via Gil Pender, hollywood hack, are

This is unbelievable! Look at this! There's no city like this in the world. There never was.

And that is true. Gil has come to Paris with his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her parents, all of whom are devout Francophobes. There is also the typical gassbag pseudo-intellectual(brilliant Martin Sheen) and his wife-to-be. Gil, on the other hand, a romantic, adores Paris and especially when it rains. He often dreams of having lived in its 1920′s incarnation when all the literary and artistic heavyweights held court there, downing cocktails and tossing about revolutionary ideas.
I do not wish to give away anything about this movie because it is like a thing of beauty.

Watching Midnight In Paris, for me, was like a lucid, beautiful dream. A lovely waking dream that is happening while I am in it as that allowed me to appreciate it to the utmost. I went to watch this movie without even the slightest hint of the magic it withheld. This might be the first movie that has so successfully hidden its secrets.

Woody Allen’s 41st film. He considers this movie to be a love letter to the City of Light and he opens with an idyllic 3-minute montage, set to jazz, of Paris’ most scenic and famed landmarks [see video above]. Cinematographer Darius Khondji works his magic that made me want to fly to Paris right after the movie ended.

Above all, I think it was a way for Woody Allen to rediscover Woody Allen. Consider Gil Pender as a Woody Allen substitute and then look at some of the quotes "You have a clear and lovely voice. Don't be such a defeatist." and "The artist's job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence." All of these somehow seem to indicate Allen breaking free of his usual rut of hopeless romances and finding a positively romantic muse in Paris.

It is charming. It is fun. Midnight in Paris is whimsical, romantic and it left me with a smile on my face.

I ♥ it.