THIS IS THE NIGHT: BELIEVE THAT MAGIC WORKS

Don't forget, myself, Joëlle Jones, and Nicolas Hitori de will be signing at Bridge City Comics in Portland from 6 to 8pm tonight. Details here.

If you need more incentive to come, I just found out that Nico will have a limited number of these prints on hand:



Come on. You know you wanna.

Current Soundtrack: Longpigs, "Dozen Wicked Words" and Gene, "Olympian" in the Common People are People room on Turntable.fm

AND WE MOVE LIKE ACTORS

NEW IN THEATRES...

* 50/50, as unserious as cancer. Or as serious as cancer. Kind of both. Great work from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, and an all-around solid cast.

UPDATED TO CRITERION CONFESSIONS...

* Les cousins, the sophomore effort from Claude Chabrol is an interesting but hollow inverse of his debut. (Also at DVD Talk)

* The Phantom Carriage, a creepy silent ghost story from Sweden, ca. 1921. (Also at DVD Talk)

THIS WEEK IN DVD/BD REVIEWS...

* Boccaccio '70, four Italian film directors team for a 1962 anthology film telling individual stories of modern romance.

* The Inspector General, this whitebread Danny Kaye musical is only offensive in how unfunny it is.

Current Soundtrack: Brett Anderson, Black Rainbows



e-mail = golightly at confessions123.com * Midi-Confessions123 * Criterion Confessions * Live Journal Syndication * ComicSpace * Last FM * GoodReads * The Blog Roll [old version] * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

All text (c) 2011 Jamie S. Rich

TELL ME MORE ABOUT MY EYES

Thanks to everyone who came out to Comics Underground last night. We had a great time, and there was some truly awesome readings. Alison Hallett and Erik Henriksen did a fantastic job organizing it and I hope they keep doing it and make it a regular event.

Spell Checkers vol. 2 is on sale next Wednesday. In the meantime, you can hear my audio commentary for the first scenes and read the pages over at Stumptown Trade Review. Check it out here.

You'll want to open up one window with the pages and another with the audio and read along with my babbling. Hear the creative process at work, unvarnished and unfocused!

Or, if you're sick of listening to me talk, Joëlle Jones answers some questions over on the Cosmic Treadmill.

And if you live in Portland and weren't able to come out last night, you have another chance to meet myself, Joëlle, and Nico:

Click on the image for the full press release.

WHAT: Spell Checkers Vol. 2 Release Party with Jamie Rich, Joelle Jones and Nico Hitori De
WHEN: Friday, September 30 from 6pm - 8pm
WHERE: 3725 N. Mississippi Ave.

Bridge City Comics is proud to announce our Spell Checkers Vol. 2 Release Party on Friday, September 30, 2011 from 6pm - 8pm! This event is free to the public.

In attendance will be the creative team of Portland locals Jamie Rich, Joelle Jones and Nico Hitori De! They will be signing copies of Spell Checkers Vol. 2 but sketches will be left to the discretion of the artists. Come join us for a night of fun, comics, try to stump Jamie Rich at 80's music trivia!

Bridge City Comics will have copies of Spell Checkers Vol. 2 on hand for purchase during the event, as well as a copies of Spell Checkers Vol. 1 and assorted other titles from the creative team.

Bridge City Comics is located at 3725 N. Mississippi Ave in North Portland. Please call 503-282-5484 or e-mail info@bridgecitycomics.com for more information.

Current Soundtrack: Wild Flag, Wild Flag

ALL THE CURRENCY WE'VE SPENT

NEW IN THEATRES...

* Moneyball, a surprisingly deep drama about the inner workings of baseball. (Note: One of the screenwriters was Aaron Sorkin. Did you know that?)

* Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure, a fascinating, thought-provoking look at one of the most infamous pre-internet viral sensations.

UPDATED TO CRITERION CONFESSIONS...

* Le beau Serge, the debut film from French innovator Claude Chabrol.

* The Complete Jean Vigo Part 1, covering the influential, developmental films of the great director from the early days of sound cinema.

* My Life as a Dog updated for Blu-Ray.

THIS WEEK IN DVD/BD REVIEWS...

* Hung: The Complete Second Season, Thomas Jane returns as everyone's favorite lovelorn hustler.

* The Super Hero Squad Show: The Infinity Gauntlet, vol. 1. You know. For kids.

Current Soundtrack: Birdman w/ Nicki Minaj & Lil Wayne, "Y.U. Mad;" various form Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds; Anthony Jeselnik, Shakespeare



e-mail = golightly at confessions123.com * Midi-Confessions123 * Criterion Confessions * Live Journal Syndication * ComicSpace * Last FM * GoodReads * The Blog Roll [old version] * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

All text (c) 2011 Jamie S. Rich

READER MEET AUTHOR!
TONIGHT: COMICS UNDERGROUND!

Portlanders, come on out tonight! Myself, Nicolas Hitori de, and Joëlle Jones are joining our friends and colleagues to celebrate comics and read aloud from our books. I'll be lending my voice to Greg Rucka's performance, and I think Joëlle Jones will be reading with Kelly Sue DeConnick, as well. Plus, our friend Natalie Nourigat!

Here. Go to the site, check all the updates. It was totally fun last time, and it will be even better with this crew, I swear. We will be performing a selection from Spell Checkers vol. 2, and there should also even be early copies for sale!

Comics Underground is a staged reading—only the performers read dialogue from their own comics, with images projected above them. Performers provide their own soundtracks, sound effects, live music—whatever they want, really. It’s in a bar, it’s pretty informal, and the last one featured extemporaneous guitar accompaniment and broken-window sound effects courtesy of a bottle scrounged from behind the bar.

Here’s a bit more info on this edition’s guests:

• Writer Jamie S. Rich and artists Joëlle Jones and Nicolas Hitori De collaborate on the Oni Press-released mean-teen-witch comic Spell Checkers. They’ll be reading from the new volume, and Rich will also present some autobiographical work.

• Writer Kelly Sue DeConnick has worked on a number of Marvel Comics titles, including the well-received Osborn miniseries. She’ll be presenting a comic from a recent anthology about New York venue CBGB, published by Boom! Studios.

• Artist Natalie Nourigat is a member of Periscope Studio and creator of Between Gears and Over the Surface. She’ll be reading some original autobiographical comics.

• Greg Rucka has written Stumptown, Whiteout, Queen & Country, The Punisher, and much more—as of right this moment, he hasn’t decided yet what he’ll be reading, but we’re pretty sure he’ll pull together something great.

DOG ON WHEELS

NEW IN THEATRES...

Portland is lucky enough to have Cinema 21 showing the original 3D version of Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder this week. To go along with it, the Portland Mercury asked me to pick some other Hitch films for home viewing, and I did so by taking a tour of his trailers. Read the column online here.

* Drive, the best movie Paul Schrader never made. Ryan Gosling stars, all Alain Delon-like, in this violent tour-de-force by Nicolas Winding Refn.

* The Lion King 3D, an old favorite shown in a bad new light.

* Straw Dogs, a competent but pointless remake. Rod Lurie is no Sam Peckinpah. (Hey, I reviewed the original once, too.)

UPDATED TO CRITERION CONFESSIONS...

* Orpheus, Jean Cocteau's arthouse poem, still rock 'n' roll after more than 50 years. (Also at DVD Talk.)

* Resurrected capsule reviews of Young Mr. Lincoln and La bete humaine.

* If... updated for Blu-Ray.

THIS WEEK IN DVD/BD REVIEWS...

* Breakfast at Tiffany's, the quintessential Audrey Hepburn film is now on Blu-Ray.

* Road to Nowhere, Monte Hellman returns to the director's chair for a disjointed potboiler.

Current Soundtrack: James, Millionaires; Das Racist, Relax




e-mail = golightly at confessions123.com * Midi-Confessions123 * Criterion Confessions * Live Journal Syndication * ComicSpace * Last FM * GoodReads * The Blog Roll [old version] * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

All text (c) 2011 Jamie S. Rich

ON SALE SEPTEMBER 28!

Photographic evidence that the book exists!

Spell Checkers, vol. 2: Sons of a Preacher Man is out in two weeks.



Yes, it was supposed to be out on September 20, but there was a shipping snafu at the printer. Apparently they kind of forgot to send the books anywhere after they were printed. D'oh! But have no fear, just a temporary delay.

Nico is already drawing vol. 3, so hopefully the next installment will be here even sooner than expected!

Current Soundtrack: Damon & Naomi, False Beats and True Hearts

THE KIDS ARE SICK AGAIN

NEW IN THEATRES...

* Attack the Block, the ultimate summer movie shows up just in time for fall. (Unless you were lucky enough to get it in your town earlier, of course...)

* Contagion, in which Steven Soderbergh makes sure you'll never touch yourself again. On the face. ON THE FACE!!! But seriously, this movie is awesome.

* Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life, a biopic of Serge Gainsbourg from French cartoonist Joan Sfarr. It can't quite sustain its inventiveness, but I liked it all the same.

* Higher Ground, actress Vera Farmiga tackles feminism and faith in her directorial debut.

UPDATED TO CRITERION CONFESSIONS...

* The Warped World of Koreyoshi Kurahara, an Eclipse set collecting five of the Japanese films from the 1960s. (Also at DVD Talk.)

THIS WEEK IN DVD/BD REVIEWS...

* David Holzman's Diary: Special Edition, Jim McBride's seminal indie movie from the late 1960s.

* A Fistful of Dollars, the stylistically explosive beginning of the Leone/Eastwood "Man with No Name" films.

* If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, a thought-provoking documentary about controversial radicalism.

* Let's Do It Again, a musical remake of The Awful Truth starring Jane Wyman and Ray Milland.

* One Minute to Zero, Robert Mitchum makes love to Ann Blyth and hits the snooze button in this Korean War drama.

Current Soundtrack: John's Children, "Smashed Block;" Serge Gainsbourg, Serge Gainsbourg (Best Of)

e-mail = golightly at confessions123.com * Midi-Confessions123 * Criterion Confessions * Live Journal Syndication * ComicSpace * Last FM * GoodReads * The Blog Roll [old version] * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

All text (c) 2011 Jamie S. Rich

WHERE DEM GIRLS

Great roundtable interview over at CBR, conducted by Steve Sunu and featuring myself, Joëlle, and Nico talking about Spell Checkers volume 2.

Rich elaborated on how he's handling the characters this time around and noted that he's grown "more comfortable" with them. "Writing the gals is like putting on a favorite pair of shoes, and it comes much more naturally. My affection for them only grows, and the more I settle into their world, the more the characters surprise me. I know that sounds pretentious, but I am a fan of the happy accident and writing by instinct, and to keep the shoe metaphor going, I often compare writing to walking. Once you put a foot forward , the natural move to follow is putting the next foot in front of that. Sometimes, if you just see where the journey takes you, you stumble into some interesting things. There is a flashback in chapter 3 with Cynthia that was a total surprise for me when I wrote it, it had not been planned, but it works to flip around certain story elements and tropes and challenge how the reader has been perceiving events and characters up until then."

Seriously. Read the whole thing.

Current Soundtrack: Fabolous, The Soul Tape

TEMPTATION INSIDE YOUR HEART: 52 Alternatives - September comics for your consideration

The pioneering Sequential Tart website has picked 52 comics coming out in September that are not part of the DC Comics line-wide relaunch. Spell Checkers has made the list! We are #49, which is where we fall alphabetically. Otherwise, all recommendations are created equal!

#49. Spellcheckers: Sons of a Preacher Man (Oni Press)

Writer Jamie S. Rich and artist Joelle Jones always deliver an excellent and nuanced read. The first Spellcheckers was a delicious mash-up of Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Mean Girls. If you haven't read the first one, don't fret, at $11.99 a book you can pick up both easily! (Erin)

Current Soundtrack: The Velvet Underground, Peel Slowly and See disc 3