Severance

“Shit, I've left Gordon's foot on the coach... sorry mate.”

Severance is one of the many horror comedies that have come out in recent years. It’s not as good as some, but it’s got some funny moments. It’s definitely heavy on the sarcasm and black humor.

In Severance, a group of sales people from an international weapons company head off to a team-building retreat in the deep woods of Hungary. Things start off bad, with the bus breaking down and the group finally finds a lodge out in the woods, but it is certainly not what they expected. Soon, people start disappearing and the group comes face to face with a group of cannibalistic, psychotic commandos carrying the same weapons the group sells. These commandos are bent on the group’s destruction, and the sales people must learn to get out of the office and work together to live to see another day.

I was hoping it would be an even funnier movie than it was. It’s certainly no Shaun of the Dead, but it was worth a rental. In fact, I will probably end up watching it again. Laura Harris is great as the girl everybody wants (she looks remarkably like Kirsten Dunst), Danny Dyer is the drug addled guy every body likes, and Toby Stephens is the suave guy.

If you think the premise sounds good, check it out. It’s not a movie for everyone, and it could have been better, but it’s not bad for a newish time director. Christopher Smith directed another movie I rented awhile back, Creep, which was also pretty good. Franka Potente was in that, and if woman trapped in a subway being chased by a bloodthirsty mutant, check Creep out.

Rating: 3 ½ purrs

Recent Aquisitions to the Library

My most recent haul from Half-Price Books 20% off sale, Christmas gifts, and my trip to Barnes & Nobel.

Books:

• 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die by Peter Ackroyd - This should be interesting to see what is listed in this book!
  
• Little Children: A Novel by Tom Perrotta
• The eye of the beholder ; The queen of the night ; The ice maiden (A Black box thriller) by Marc Behm
• Murder & Other Acts of Literature: Twenty-Four Unforgettable and Chilling Stories ed. by Michele B. Slung
• A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson
• Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell
• Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr
• The Afghan by Frederick Forsyth
• Thriller: Stories To Keep You Up All Night ed. by Lee Child
• Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
• Last Bus To Woodstock , Last Seen Wearing , The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn, Dead of Jericho , The Jewel That Was Ours , The Daughters of Cain, and The Way Through the Woods (Inspector Morse Mysteries) by Colin Dexter
• Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas E. Ricks
• Sock & Glove: Creating Charming Softy Friends from Cast-off Socks and Gloves by Miyako Kanamori
• The Murders of Richard III by Elizabeth Peters
  

Graphic Novels:

• Flight, Volume One by Kazu Kibuishi
• Sleeper Vol. 1: Out in the Cold by Ed Brubaker
• Ex Machina, Vol. 3: Fact v. Fiction by Brian K. Vaughan
• The Blot by Tom Neely
• Glister Vol 1 by Andi Watson
  

Black Sheep

When I first read a blurb in Entertainment Weekly about a movie where sheep go crazy and attack people, I knew this was a movie I had to see. Finally, Black Sheep came out on DVD, and I lapped it up in all of its ovine glory. Baa, baa, Black Sheep indeed.

A young Kiwi’s older brother plays a cruel joke on him, one he never recovers from. He vows never to return to the sheep ranch where he grew up, harboring a deep fear of sheep from then on. Then one day he returns to sign over his half of the family ranch, only to find out things aren’t what they used to be. Why is his brother genetically engineering sheep? What happens when a vegan-Peta-organic-farming couple raids the genetic laboratory? Why are the sheep licking their chops? Who will survive the “violence of the lambs”?

Weta Workshop did the special effects, and they were fabulous. The relatively unknown cast did a great job. The script had its moments, with some really great sheep jokes sprinkled throughout. I will never forget the scene of the sheep barreling over the hillside into the crowd of people, just like the Ork armies in Lord of the Rings. Brilliant.

If you like a horror movie with some good gore and some great jokes, check out Black Sheep. It’s not quite as good as Shaun of the Dead, but it is definitely a DVD purchase in my future.

Rating: 5 Purrs for the mint sauce and were-sheep! I mean, come on – were-sheep!!!

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

The Lovely Bones is one of those books I put off reading because I knew the story would probably be a tough read. I finally pulled it off my bookshelf recently, and wow, what a book. I love to read, and I read a lot, but it’s not often I get a book in my hands that rips me up and stays with me even now, weeks later. I was sucked into this book, and it ripped me up emotionally, but it was such a beautiful story I just can’t say I regret the experience. As I remember the story and how it was told, I can feel that sorrow work its way back into my heart, but it is bittersweet.

Susie Salmon, a 14 year old girl, is the narrator of The Lovely Bones. When we first meet her, Susie is in heaven watching over her family. She tells us how she died, and she watches her family deal with that loss. He parents struggle to keep their marriage together, her sister refuses to feel anything so avoid the sorrow of losing her sister, and her baby brother struggles to understand where Susie went and why she is never coming back. Susie watches the world and struggles with letting it all go. While she works through the grief of losing her life, Susie sees her family grow, mend, and eventually move on.

I really don’t want to say too much because I truly believe this is one of those novels that you simply must just discover on your own. I couldn’t do Alice Sebold’s prose justice. Her words are too lyrical and haunting to condense, and I hate to take that experience away from anyone. The Lovely Bones is a memorable and stunning story about love, loss, grief, marriage, memory, heaven, and moving on. I can’t recommend it enough.

Rating: 5 Purrs for one of the best books I have ever read, hands down.

Recent Aquisitions to the Library

I have been on a book spree lately. Recently added:

• Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand by Fred Vargas, Sian Reynolds (Translator)
• Sunshine by Alex Garland
• Lace by Shirley Conran
• The Maul and the Pear Tree by P.D. James,T. A. Critchley
• After Dark by Haruki Murakami
• Angelica: A Novel by Arthur Phillips
• I Am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert

Graphic Novel trades:

• Ex Machina, Vol. 2: Tag by Brian K. Vaughan
• Torso: A True Crime Graphic Novel by >Brian Michael Bendis
• Nightmares and Fairy Tales Vol. 2 Beautiful Beasts by Serena Valentino
• Gloom Cookie Vol 5: The Final Curtain by Serena Valentino
• The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
  

The Proposition

The Proposition is one of the best movies I have seen this year. It’s a western, true life, dirty, gritty Western with and excellent story, acting, and landscape. I haven’t seen a Western I have liked this much since Unforgiven or Silverado. It’s that caliber of a movie.

In The Proposition, Guy Pearce is Charlie Burns. He and his brother Mike are caught by Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone) and given a proposal – hunt down and kill his older brother Arthur in order to gain a pardon and save the life of his younger brother Mikey. Arthur is the leader and mastermind behind the Burns gang, responsible for attacking the Hopkins farm, raping Mrs. Hopkins, and murdering the entire family. Capt. Stanley’s wife, who was a close friend of Mrs. Hopkins, doesn’t accept the proposal. The tensions surmount as the community cries for justice, the relationship between husband and wife become strained, and Charlie hunts for his brother in the Australian outback. Will Charlie kill his brother; will the town have their own justice?

The screenplay was written by Nick Cave, and while I like his music I was very surprised that he could write a screenplay so amazing. The complicated relationships between a husband and wife, a brother and a brother, a town and its leaders are so well written. Everything about this movie feels real, from the flies buzzing people’s faces, the heat rising in the desert, the blood and violence of carving a life out in the rough Outback. There are some scenes that are so iconic that they stick in your brain, like the scene of Stanley and his wife having Christmas dinner, the china set out, the turkey ready for carving, or the roses outside of their home, fighting for life in the arid desert, or the Aborigine leaving the homestead and returning to the land, removing his shoes at the gate.

I can't recommend this movie enough. What a brilliant, bleak, beautiful film.

Rating: 5 Purrs for perfection – Guy Pearce excellent as always , and a gritty, dirty, down to earth Western

The House Where Evil Dwells

What a surprise! The House Where Evil Dwells was an unexpectedly good haunted house movie that I stumbled across on NetFlix. It’s pretty similar to another movie, Ju-On or The Grudge, but it was made in the early 80’s, so it was appealing to see a different version of the same idea.

The House Where Evil Dwells starts out in mid-1800 Japan. A samurai comes home to find his wife in bed with another, and in a rage murders them all in a great bloody slaughter. Zip forward to modern day Japan (well, modern 1980’s Japan), where a young American couple have traveled to Japan so the husband can work. An old family friend, who lives in Japan already, has found them a house. Guess what house it is. The family finds out that sometimes old ghosts stick around. Will they survive, or will they be forced to reenact that horrible night?

Many people say the ghosts were quite silly, and well, yeah, they are a little. But I just chalk that up to it being an early 80’s film, and too many people expecting stringy-haired girls crawling around walls like you see in modern day Japanese horror films. It did at times feel a bit like a movie-of the week, outside of the nudity of course. But overall, I felt the idea and the plot felt fresh, even though I have seen Ju-On, The Grudge, and most of the sequels. It felt new to me anyway. The acting was better than most horror movies you find from that age, including Susan George who shines in the troubled, haunted wife role.

If you like the stream of Asian horror movies being churned out on DVDs, you might take a look at this one. It’s refreshing to see an early version of an idea we have seen over and over in movies today.

Rating: 4 Purrs for a gigantic crab attack and creepy ghosts in the soup

Recent Aquisitions to the Library

I just bought a few books from Amazon:

• World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
• Black Light, Point of Impact, and Time to Hunt by Stephen Hunter
• Break No Bones by Kathy Reichs

The Stephen Hunter books I ordered for Pandabob. We watched Shooter the other night and now he wants to read about Bob Lee Swagger, master sniper.

Crank

Crank is one of those movies I had to rent because I just love action movies, even if they are bad. Well, Crank was bad. I mean ridiculously silly, Don “The Dragon” Wilson bad. I think I even laughed out loud a few times at just how asinine it was.

Jason Statham if Chev Chelios, just your average, amazingly talented hit man. He kills someone, and in turn, his minions come after Chev and inject him with a potent poison. He and his doctor figure out that he has to keep his adrenalin pumping to stay alive, so he begins this crazed hunt for the guys who set him up. Enter the video game, where Chev runs from location to location fighting folks and trying to protect his girlfriend Eve, who doesn’t know he’s a hit man until just now. After all, he was going to retire to spend more time with her. But first, he needs to find a cure and kick some ass while he looks.

Jason Statham is a great action hero; I just wish someone would give him something more to do than these types of movies. At least give the man a starring role in a bigger action flick, like a Die Hard movie. Amy Smart plays Eve with a great California vibe, and she is nice window dressing, but she’s not more than that. Dwight Yoakam is Chev’s doctor, and at least this time around he didn’t creep me out.

I can’t say I would recommend this movie, unless you really like movies that have no substance whatsoever, ludicrous plot points, and not so great acting. I mean, I like bad movies, I like silly movies, and I like absurd movies. There was just something missing here.

Rating: 1 Hiss for just being plain awful. Not even Jason Statham having sex with Amy Smart in the middle of Chinatown with onlookers could save this movie.

Strange Piece of Paradise by Terri Jentz

True crime is one kind of nonfiction I can tear through. Terri Jentz’s Strange Piece of Paradise was engrossing on a level most true crime doesn’t reach. It’s probably because Terri Jentz lived through this crime, kept it as part of her, and finally, took the case up to find that man who trespassed upon her campsite and tried to kill her. The story is gripping, her search for truth engrossing, and her journey is told with a true voice. It’s the best nonfiction I have read in awhile.

When Terri Jentz was a college kid in 1977, she and a friend began a cross-country bike tour. Their goal was to follow the year-old Centennial bike path across the United States. They made it just over a week. Eight days in they stopped for the night in Cline Falls, Oregon. That night, a cowboy brutally attacked them, driving over their tent with his truck and attacking them with an ax. It was a cruel, unprovoked attack, and both girls barely survived.

Nearly 20 years after the attack, Terri decides to return to the scene of the crime, a community that has taken the attack into itself and its memories. The “two girls from Cline Falls” have been in their minds for 20 years, and the community wants answers as much as it wants to hide the truth. Jentz won’t let them hide anymore. With some new allies, she tries to uncover the truth after such a long time, facing the difficulties of the criminal justice system and the inner workings of the small towns surrounding Cline Falls. Eventually, she finds some sort of truth and healing in the process.

Terri Jentz’s Strange Piece of Paradise is similar to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood in that it closely resembles a report, a true life, cleanly written report of a truly horrible crime. It is one that makes no sense and truly haunts the people involved, even remotely. The difference is Terri Jentz is that girl from Cline Falls, and it is her story.

Rating: 5 Purrs, for telling a true story even when it uncovered her own warts.

Recent Aquisitions to the Library

Here are some books I just picked up at Half-Price Books:

• Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
• Anatomy of a Murder by Robert Traver
• Oriental Ghost Stories by Lafcadio Hearn
• The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue
• The Mammoth Book of New Historical Whodunits edited by Mike Ashley
• Heartsick by Chelsea Cain
  

The Hitcher (2007)

I really liked the original Hitcher. Rutger Hauer was a truly frightening man, someone who has successfully scared me off of picking up even the most docile looking hitchhiker. The remake wasn’t nearly as scary, but I liked it a lot anyway.

The plot is pretty close to the original, only this time you have a boyfriend and girlfriend who are traveling across New Mexico for spring break rather than a young guy driving a car across country where he meets a waitress who is dragged into the Hitcher’s cross fire. The two kids pick up Sean Bean, a crazed, sadistic killer who torments them as they flee his murderous intent. The New Mexico police, despite how much the two kids try to convince them otherwise, suspect them of actually being the killers.

It’s pretty scary in parts, with lots of blood. I liked the two kids, Sophia Bush and Zachary Knighton, and Sean Bean was good as John Ryder, the crazy hitchhiking serial killer. The blank desert landscape of New Mexico is perfect for the story and it only helps increase the isolation the two kids feel and it only heightens the tension.

This version is nowhere as good as the original, but if you can separate the two and not hold this one up to that classic, you can find this one to be a pretty fun horror flick.

Rating: 4 Purrs for my favorite Sophia Bush and the beautiful New Mexico landscape

The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld

I am a huge murder mystery buff. I love mysteries, highbrow mysteries by Grand Dames like Agatha Christie or Anne Perry, silly serial mysteries like The Jane Austen series by Stephanie Barron, or even, sometimes, begrudgingly the whole time, mystery thrillers like James Patterson or Dean Koontz. The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld belongs in the first category. While I am sure he would rather not be called a “Grand Dame,” Rubenfled’s book is not just a mystery; it is literature.

Rubenfeld bases his book on Sigmund Freud’s first and only visit to America in 1909 and his comment that Americans were “savages." Despite his success while in America, he always talked of his visit as being an unhappy or traumatic one. From this kernel of an idea, Rubenfeld builds the story of a murder and the attempted murder of two socialites. While on their tour of New York, Freud and his apprentice Jung are called in to help diagnose why the young girl who escaped (but heavily beaten while being tied up in a very S&M fashion) is suddenly unable to talk. Our main character, Stratham Younger, is a disciple of Freud and is called in to help diagnose Nora, the fortunate (or unfortunate as her parents believe) girl. The police want to know what happened, and when Nora recovers her voice, Younger must put it all together to help catch the man who attacked Nora. He becomes his own detective, digging deeply into the high society relationships of Nora and her family to discover a twisted tale of sexual perversion, family relationships, and of course, blue-blooded intrigue.

While there are several subplots that do distract a bit from the meat of the story, I found them to be interesting and unexpected commentary on the New York or New England area of the US in the early 1900’s. The young society doctor is earnest enough and troubled when he feels his affection for Nora could get in the way of his treatment of her. Nora is a deeply convoluted and troubled girl who is wrapped up so much in her own lies it gets difficult to understand her motives after awhile, but when you see what is really going on in the story, you can understand why she is so confused and confusing. It is heavily mired in the interpretation of sex and sexual relationships of Freud, all of which seem very masculine to me. Of course, I have never studied that much psychology to really get into Freud, so maybe that is just my interpretation.

Overall, The Interpretation of Murder is a good first outing. It’s much better than some first novels I have read, and the mystery keeps you guessing quite a bit until the end. There are sufficient red herrings and twists and turns to keep you turning pages, and when you are finished with the book, you do feel like you picked up a bit of the flavor of what life might have been like in New York then. I have read better, but not often enough for me to lower this one to the second rung of the mystery ladder.

Rating: 4 Purrs for an engrossing and complex mystery with a bit of unexpected but a little disturbing kink.

Bandidas

Bandidas was a fun little movie about two women, one a spoiled rich girl, Salma Hayek, and a poor farm girl, Penelope Cruz, who end up running for their lives and robbing banks to get back at the men who crossed them and are terrorizing the people who live in their town. It’s not a lot of substance, but it is fun for a rainy afternoon.

Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz are obviously having a great time playing Sara and Maria. They pick off of each other, play up their lines, and complement each other really well. Both characters grow a bit in the film, but of course, there isn’t a whole lot of character development. It is a comedy/action movie, after all. Steve Zahn is quite fun as the agent sent to find the two bank robbers. Each lady tries to win him over, and he is obviously having a lot of fun seeing which one will win. Dwight Yoakam is Jackson, the murderous henchman who is after the bandidas. He was the only downside for me. His character was just way too much. Of course, I must say that I get the willies whenever I see him after seeing him in Sling Blade. He just makes my skin crawl.

If you are looking for a fun, light-hearted movie staring two beautiful women playing female Robin Hoods, corsets included, check out Bandidas. It is worth a rental.

Rating: 3 1/2 Purrs for fun, a surprise part for Sam Shepard, and two very lovely women shooting it up

Ronin by Frank Miller with Lynn Varley

I like Frank Miller, but I have mixed feelings about Ronin. I think maybe I thought I was getting into something else when I picked it up. I thought it was going to be parallel story lines, one with Ronin of 13^th century Japan, and a modern dystopic New York, but instead the two stories were meshed into one. Then, the story just felt too much like The Matrix (which I know was released afterwards, but it did affect how I saw the graphic novel).

Ronin is about Billy, a young paraplegic who works in a 21^st century utopia, a perfect bubble society. One day the demon Agat comes blasting out of the past, with the spirit of the Ronin on his tail. Ronin possesses and transforms Billy and goes after Agat, blazing a trail of destruction through the dystopic New York.

I wouldn’t count Ronin as my favorite Frank Miller. I loved Sin City but Ronin just didn’t wow me the way his other work has. I’m not sure why, but the story just didn’t seem up to par.

Rating: 3 Purrs because it’s Frank Miller.

Recent Aquisitions to the Library

Spoils from my recent trip to Half-Price Books:

• Through a Glass Darkly - Karleen Koen
• The Assault on Reason - Al Gore
• Son of a Witch - Gregory Maguire
• Ghostwalk - Rebecca Scott
• The Print - Ansel Adams
• Sharp Objects - Gillian Flynn
• The Bourne Ultimatum - Robert Ludlum
• Fingersmith - Sarah Waters
• Under the Banner of Heaven - Jon Krakauer
• Get Shorty - Elmore Leonard
• Devices and Desires - P. D. James
• The Body Artist - Don DeLillo
• Practical Demonkeeping - Christopher Moore

I have finally gotten almost all of our books and graphic novels into my LibraryThing. What a very , very cool site. A link is there on the left of the page.

Marie Antoinette

I love Sophia Coppola's previous work. The Virgin Suicides was just beautiful and a near perfect interpretation of the lyrical novel. Lost in Translation was a vision of a story , making the viewer a part of a newly formed friendship in a strange place. Her visuals made Japan a postcard that I wanted to visit, even though I felt the alienation of the main characters. Marie Antoinette was a visual feast much like Sophia Coppola's other movies, but while I loved the movie, I didn’t get the charm and the haunting, staying power of her other films.

Coppola used Antonia Fraser’s biography of the fated queen, which I hread after seeing the film, but from what I understand it is a much more generous interpretation of Marie’s life than some might give. The story is well told, but focuses mostly on the young queen’s life and her early years at court before her first children were born. You feel the alienation and the confusion the young Dauphine feels when she first enters Versailles, and you fear the intricate court politics that she must maneuver to survive. You feel sorry for this girl who is married off for the good of her people and is under pressure from all around her to fulfill her conjugal duties when the Dauphin is indifferent and every move she makes is gossiped about and scrutinized. When you get to the later years of her life, Coppola moves quickly to the end, but you also see the point Fraser and in turn, Coppola is trying to make: Marie Antoinette was maligned by the public at large, and while her excesses were problematic, she also was only a small piece of the puzzle. While most would lay the blame for the revolution at her feet, you see here the more human side of the woman with ships in her hair.

The movie is a like a big piece of intricately frosted cake, and of course you get the heavy 80’s influence you tasted in the trailer. The costuming is beautiful, with no detail left undone. The colors of the costumes are bright pinks, blues, greens, and yellows that could be more frou-frou versions of the neon teens would wear in the height of the big hair era. Even the food follows this color scheme. I thought this fit rather well with Coppola's comparison of the court at Versailles and the opulence that was the Reagan years. The only thing that didn’t fit was some of the music. Coppalla used a mix of traditional and retro tunes that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. The music fit really well during some of the shopping and ball scenes but the one point I really felt didn’t work was the song used when Marie and her entourage return from a masked ball in Paris. It kicked you right out of the moment. Not only was the song jarring, but it was a bad song.

There are many reasons you should see this film, but I can’t recommend it to everyone. Sophia Coppola has so much talent you can’t help but feel she is genetically encoded with good film-making genes. This would be a near perfect movie if it weren’t for the poor use of music in some places. It was beautiful, the actors were good in their roles, and the supporting cast was outstanding. However, if you are looking for a perfect interpretation of history with the soundtrack to match, you won’t find it here. Instead you will find a bright, independent, and inventive telling of a widely misunderstood person in history. This version of Marie Antoinette has guts and feelings, she’s no cardboard cutout or dry, unidentifiable woman who recklessly and uncaringly sends her country into revolution. I don’t know if it’s true, but I like it.

Rating: 4 ½ stars for such a beautiful feast for the eyes

Saw III

I saw the first Saw movie in the theater the same day I saw The Grudge. I liked The Grudge better, but I have still picked up the Saw sequels to watch because that puppet creeps me the hell out. The idea of Jigsaw keeps me coming back, even though the reality of Jigsaw never quite lives up to my ideal.

Saw III has Jigsaw being very ill, completely reliant on Amanda to carry out his evil plans. Problem is, it looks like Amanda is not quite right in the head, and she is completely devoted to Jigsaw. Their next victim is Lynn, a doctor who is required to keep Jigsaw alive, at least until their other victim, Jeff, has completed his game. Jeff has lost a son in a car accident, and Jigsaw has set up a special game for him. Will he make it through the game and learn the lesson Jigsaw has set up for him. Well, if you have seen any of the Saw movies, you should have a good idea of how this will go.

The Jigsaw traps are really, really icky this time around. I cringed several times during the presentation of the different levels of tests. There was plenty of gore, and really you can’t help but like a serial killer who makes people face their issues and come out the other end happier. But, just as usual, not everyone wants to learn a lesson, especially by a psycho that has you strung up on some sort of machine that will rip your ribs off.

As for characters, I like the more in depth character of Amanda. I have always like Shawnee Smith, ever since her role in The Blob. Jigsaw is a good character, as usual. I was disappointed to have Dina Meyer cut out so soon; I really think she should get more work. Angus McFadyen plays the grieving father well, with just the right amount of grief, anger, and need for vengeance.

I’d have to say Saw III was a pretty good movie, especially for a sequel. I even liked it a little more than the original, if just for the characters being a bit more sympathetic this time around. I’d say catch it if you like the franchise, and if you are a horror fan, you should at least see the original.

Rating: 3 ½ Purrs, especially for that last sequence when you find out how all the bits fit together, and the last test for Jeff with the screws. Ouch.

Giallos: More Fun, More Kool-Aid

I simply cannot get enough of Giallo cinema. You would think that after watching as many as I have I would get tired of them, but somehow the flashy Italian fashions, the ultra-mod furniture, and the bright candy apple red fake blood just get me very time. Here are three Giallo films I watched recently. They aren’t Deep Red by any means (and really, how much really can be?), but they are good examples of the genre.

The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave

In this Giallo, a wealthy lord is having trouble getting over his wife’s death. He is obsessed with her as much as he was when she was alive and he was worried she was cheating on him. He tours the local bars, finding red-haired women to come back to his castle and fool around, where he later tortures and kills them. Later, his doctor friend convinces him to marry again, this time to a blonde, hoping it will help heal his slowly rotting mind. Of course, due to the nature of the Giallo, it really doesn’t help at all. There’s the gloved killer murdering women in gruesome ways, the creepy castle, the crazed lord who may or may not be killing people, and of course the beautiful women getting sliced and diced. It’s one of the better Giallos out there, once you move past the masters of the genre, and it’s well worth checking out.

The Red Queen Kills Seven Times

Two sisters have a past, with a secret tragedy and a horrible fairy tale that haunted their child hood. Even to this day, they remember the tale of the “Sisters in Red,” two murderous sisters will return on April 6, 1972 and continue their lethal behavior. So when the day arrives, they aren’t terribly surprised to have people around them dying, and a young woman in a red cloak being present at the scene of the murders. This Giallo was almost as good as The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave, in fact it makes a good double feature, and this once stars the very lovely Barbara Bouchet.

The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail

This Giallo is heavy on the mystery – a very rich businessman dies in a plane explosion, and his unfaithful wife is the beneficiary of 1 million dollars. The insurance company wants to investigate before they actually pay out the weeping widow, so an investigator arrives on the scene to determine if the widow had anything to do with the murder. A mysterious black-gloved murderer steals the money and leaves a trail of bloody bodies in his wake.

If you are a Dario Argento or Mario Brava fan but are looking for something more, maybe you haven’t seen these. Check them out. If you want to know what Giallo is, I would start with some others, like Deep Red or The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, and then, if you like those, move on to some of these Giallos.

Rating: 4 1/2 Purrs for nice Giallo cinema. Gotta love those titles and those very lovely pantsuits.

AfterDark Horrorfest

I ended up renting every film in the AfterDark Horrorfest series, and surprisingly enough I wasn’t all that disappointed in what I ended up seeing. Sure, they were pretty much direct to video, but each had good qualities. That may sounds like trying to hook someone up on a blind date with someone with a “great personality” but really, these each had bits that I liked, even though there were some I liked way more than others. I’ll talk about them here in the order of least to most liked.

Penny Dreadful – A young woman suffers from an extreme phobia. She cannot ride in a car because when she was younger she was involved in a horrible accident. Now her therapist thinks it would be a good idea to drive her in her car into the mountains to help her get over her fear. Of course the therapist picks up a stranger, and naturally, blood and gore happen. There isn’t much redeeming here at all – the acting, the effects, the whole plot. Nothing.

Wicked Little Things – A widow and her two daughters return to her husband’s old family home place out in mining country only to find out it is haunted by some very pissed off zombie children. Not much scary here just a lot of gore. The acting was sub-par.

The Hamiltons – This ended up being better than I expected. A young kid is full of angst about his family, troubled with how they behave. They murder, move a lot, chain young girls up in the basement. The acting was pretty sub par but the story ended up being pretty decent.

Unrest – A young woman starts her first weeks in medical school and right off she has issues with her cadaver for anatomy class. Is it her imagination? Is it real? Why are her classmates going crazy or turning up dead? I liked this one quite a bit, at least until it got all weird “ghosty” at the end. Otherwise, the creep factor was high and the acting was decent.

Dark Ride – This one is pretty straight up slasher. Some college friends are out on a trip for spring break, and on the way they come across a flier for the “Dark Ride.” The Dark Ride was closed several years ago because of a lunatic killing some twins while they were on the ride. Now, they have reopened the ride, and will the kids survive when they sneak in to stay the night? Overall the actors were decent, the scares okay. This one really scored higher on my list because the acting, sets, everything seemed to be a higher quality than the rest.

The Gravedancers – A guy passes away, and three of his closest childhood friends come to the funeral. They decide the only way to truly mourn their friend is to go out and have a good old-fashioned wake at his grave. This of course leads to nothing but trouble when the three friends discover they have desecrated the graves of some very unhappy ghosts. This one has pretty good acting as well, and it really held up until the end when the CGI kicked. Then it looked like a really bad B-Movie.

The Abandoned – A woman discovers she has inherited property in Russia from her birth mother who she never knew. She travels out to the isolated farmhouse only to find another man there who has claims to the property himself. Why does the farmhouse seem to be haunted? Why is she having visions? Why can’t she get off the island? This one was chocked full of atmosphere, creepy characters, and good acting. The end got pretty confusing but I enjoyed it none the less.

Reincarnation – Of course the Asian entry to the AfterDark fest would be my favorite. A young Japanese girl wins a part in a new horror film that is based on a true life killing spree of a professor at Tokyo University. The girl keeps seeing ghosts and once the filming moves to the actual hotel where the killings took place, things start to get really, really creepy. This one is sufficiently creepy and atmospheric, although it did get confusing at times.

Overall I wasn’t overly impressed with the AfterDark Horrorfest movies, but there were a few worthwhile moments in the bunch. I’d never actually purchase any of them on DVD, but renting them wasn’t so bad.

Rating: 4 Purrs overall

Eccentric Circles by Rebecca Lickiss

I picked up the first novel, Eccentric Circles, by Rebecca Lickiss because I loved her second work, Never After. It’s clearly a first novel, but the urban fairy tale is still a very fun read.

Piper inherits her grandmother’s cottage that just happens to have a very large garden in the back, a garden which she eventually finds out that leads to fairyland. Piper knows her family is a bit weird, but when she wakes up one morning and has a weird guy dressed like he was going to a Ren Faire in her kitchen, she’s not quite sure what’s going on. Aerlvarim, the freaky elf, isn’t sure that Grandmother Dickerson’s death was a natural one. Piper takes up the investigation, and in the process learns a bit of magic, meets some very interesting dwarves, fairies, and wizards, and discovers the writer inside of herself.

The characters are comical, and not a whole lot of development is built in to the story, but the story is certainly not entrenched in D&D style characters (you know, shazam, big muscles, silly backgrounds, and adventures). Lickiss doesn’t try to put in a bunch of flowery text to fill out her plot, so I have to give her credit for that.

It’s a very light reading, with a plot that borders on a Mary-Sue, but it is still a fun read. I’d say it was a good beach book or a good afternoon’s bit of reading. I am jealous of such a nice, cozy cottage with a stuffed full library. I must have a library in my next house, but maybe, well definitely, without all of the chintz.

Rating: 4 Purrs, for a fun story, a bit of sarcasm in Piper, and a spunky Grandma that reminds me of how my grandmothers used to be

Lisey’s Story by Stephen King

If you have read anything by me previously, or at least heard me talk about how The Stand is my favorite book ever, you will know that Stephen King is one of my favorite authors. I love how he has many layers to his stories, horror and the unusual, people and how they relate, and places that are normal and yet, in the dark, scary. Lisey's Story is one of those stories, pure Stephen King at his best.

Lisey Landon is the widow of the famous Scott Landon, prize-winning author. Scott died two years before, and Lisey is just now going through his study and sorting through his papers. There are those who want the rumored lost stories that he wrote before he died, and Lisey finds out that some people are willing to do just about anything to get their hands on them. As Lisey sorts through his things, she is haunted by memories of their life together. She remembers a layer to their lives she had buried ”behind the purple.” She remembers this seemingly fantasy of Scott's, and in turn, she ends up traveling once again to Boo’ya Moon, a parallel universe of sorts where Scott would go when he was afraid or hurt, the place where he would go to find inspiration for his unusual stories. She must face Scott’s demons, sort through her past and her future, and come face to face with a crazed fan who won’t take no for an answer. She must have her own “blood bool” to cleanse herself and move forward into her own new future.

Stephen King has written something similar before in Bag of Bones, but this time he tells the story of loss and haunting from the widow’s perspective. The alternate universe and the horrors involved are only half the story. The best part of Lisey’s Story is the people and how they relate. On one hand you have Scott and Lisey Landon and the layers of communication and stories that make the ups and downs of a long, satisfying marriage. Stephen King captures how two people speak without words, how a couple has a private language of their own. Lisey’s relationships with her sisters are also a key part. Each sister is her own personality, and each is bound to the other eventually coming to the big confrontation with the wacko at the end.

You can’t help but feel that this is a deeply personal story for Stephen King, even though he states in the letter to his readers that Scott and Lisey are not Tabitha and himself. The characters are so real and the feelings portrayed so true that you can’t help but feel that he is pulling from real life, if not his own marriage then his own experiences and close observation. Overall it’s an excellent story, and while the scary parts aren’t the whole thing, they are terribly good on their own. The scary bits make the touching parts that much more perfect.

Rating: 5 Purrs, for the piebald thing, the sisters, and the ability to capture how two people in love can speak

300 by Frank Miller & 300: The Movie

Two great tastes that taste great together.

I adore Frank Miller. I adore Lena Headly and Gerard Butler. So naturally, I loved both 300 the book and the movie. To be honest, I had a hard time not cheering throughout the entire movie.

Frank Miller’s 300 is a pleasure to look at with the sepia tones and the splashes of red for emphasis. The characters are not well developed, but the story is a short one, so that didn’t disappoint me. It is a rousing story, one that makes you shout “Huzzah!” or “St. Crispin’s Day!”, whichever you prefer.

300: The Movie brings all that testosterone and vibrancy to the screen. What I liked about 300: just about everything. The actors were great; all good actors without huge names so you could really like them just as they are. Gerard Butler plays King Leonidas, and while he looks a bit young, he is still terribly yummy in the role. You just can’t help but want to follow a guy like that into battle. Lena Headly is a wonderful Queen Gorgo, whose part is greatly enhanced from the graphic novel (Thank God!) She is beautiful and fierce, and terribly devoted to Sparta and her family. (I’ll admit to having a bit of a crush on her for a while, and I can’t wait to see her in The Sarah Connor Chronicles.) The other soldiers were good background, with some of them providing some nice side stories. There were plenty of rousing speeches, but the best parts of the movie were the battle scenes. While I know the slow-motion camera action can get a bit overdone, I can’t help but love every little bit of it in 300.

There wasn’t much I didn’t like in 300. Xerxes and the baddie in Sparta were somewhat caricatures to the point where I almost expected the Sparta baddie to pull up his cape Dudley Do-right/Dastardly style, but the overwhelming spectacle of the movie made me forgive that. Plus, there was no NIN song in the movie, and I just loved it in the trailer.

I really felt the movie translated the graphic novel well, keeping the color palette, the feel, and even pulling exact panels for some shots. And that’s all I really expected out of it. It’s not quite as page to screen as Sin City, but it is pretty close in spots. Some might be turned off of it because of all of the testosterone and the battle rousing, but to me it was just what the graphic novel presented.

Rating: 5 Purrs for sheer Spartan perfection!

Rooms for Tourists

I picked up this little indie-horror film from Argentina, Rooms for Tourists, and was really pleasantly surprised by it. You can tell it’s low budget, and the acting is not primo, but overall, it had some scares, decent effects, and a good plot.

Five girls, strangers to each other, are traveling to the city on a bus. (True, they are stereotypes, but what do you expect in a horror film?) They stop over in a small town and end up needing to spend the night while waiting for transportation. They find rooms in an out of the way house owned by two strange brothers. Little do they know, something is hunting them one by one. The girls band together to try and survive, and in doing so, discover why they are all traveling to the city. It seems like the locals have a thing or two they want to say about it, and it becomes a race to see who will survive the night.

The movie is shot in black and white and on some sort of video. It takes a little getting used to, but it’s all right. The acting is all a little over the top, but you don’t expect a whole lot from semi-professional actors. The locals have a whole set of creepy to them that adds to the atmosphere. (If you have ever been on a driving trip and driven through one of those really small towns, halfway abandoned with crusty locals sitting on porches, you know what I mean. Every time that happens, I think, yeah, I have seen this movie, and it’s not good for me.) The story is good, and there’s even some social commentary thrown in there for good measure. It’s not what I expected at all, so I was nicely surprised.

Overall, I would say this was a great indie-horror effort. If you aren’t scared off by a low (really low) budget horror film with subtitles, check it out. It’s worth a rental. If you like the idea, you could make it a double billing and rent Turistas as well, another surprisingly decent horror flick with a bit more of a budget.

Rating: 4 Purrs, for a good low budget scare with a sympathetic main character and a town I would not want to get lost in.

Cover Her Face by P. D. James

I hear of P.D. James a while ago because of a BBC TV adaptation of her Adam Dalgliesh story The Murder Room. I really enjoyed the adaptation, and Dalgliesh seemed like a pretty interesting character, so P.D. James was added to my list of used books to buy. What an excellent author, what an excellent story, and what an excellent character.

In Cover Her Face, Sally Jupp has come to Martingale to serve as a housemaid. She is an unwed mother, so many frown upon this appointment, but Sally works hard and seems to catch the eye of the young Dr. Epps. This wouldn’t be a problem if he weren’t the son of the lady of the house, so expects him to marry someone else. Soon after announcing their engagement, Sally is murdered in her bed, behind a locked door. Adam Dalgliesh must solve the crime by choosing which person in house thought their reason to kill Sally was important enough to go to prison.

Adam Dalgliesh is everything that I want in a British detective. He is thoughtful, observant, and quick-witted. The setting was just right, with the small country manor, the town fete, and the locked room whodunit. All in all, Cover Her Face was like a perfect, long lost but way more mature Agatha Christie mystery. (Don’t get me wrong; Dame Agatha is my favorite mystery writer ever. Dalgliesh is not a caricature, like Poirot or Marple can sometimes come off as being.) If you like British mysteries like Christie's, you should definitely check out P.D. James. Even if you just like mysteries that aren’t the funny, Carl Haissen kind, but more of the locked-room country estate kind, check P.D. James out.

Rating: 5 Purrs for a truly exciting, tightly written mystery

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, The Most Devestating Plague of All Time by John Kelley

I have always been fascinated by outbreaks. My favorite book is The Stand. I love plague movies like Outbreak and 28 Days Later. After reading books by Anne Benson called The Plague Tales and The Burning Road, both very good books on their own, I decided I wanted to know more about the real history of the Black Death and y pestis.

In The Great Mortality, John Kelley traces the full history of the Black Death, from its origins in Mongolia through the trade routes of Europe. He talks about the variations the plague took, from bubonic plague that had the trademark bubo, bruise like splotches on the body, and bad odor, pneumonic plague that spreads directly from person to person though coughs, and includes coughing up blood and constant vomiting, and septicemic plague, that causes extremities to become black and hard as coal. He talks about what made the medieval world so easy for plague to spread and what helped stop it after thousands died. (Estimates say numbers of a third to 60 percent of the population.) Not only does John Kelley trace these facts, he includes stories of people who lived during the plague times, straight from their own journals and letters. He talks about people who stayed by friends and family to help them, and those who ran and hid. He talks about the Flagellants, who whipped themselves sin the name of God to “save” others from plague and he talks about the rampant anti-Semitism that ran through the world before and along with the plague.

Overall, the most interesting thing I found was how John Kelley traces how the culling of the population due to the first round of plague (and the two others that followed) helped usher in a new age of development. Suddenly, the laborers were in demand, food was plentiful, and the hierarchy of the serfs and nobles was breaking down. While the plague was devastating and destroyed thousands of lives and wiped whole families out, it ushered in a new hope for all those left behind.

It's an interesting look at a world forced into change and the nasty little bug that spured it on.

Rating: 5 Purrs, for making something that could have been terribly dry into something intriguing and informative

The Gathering

From what I can tell, The Gathering sat on shelf for a while, despite having Christina Ricci as the lead. While it wasn’t a terribly suspenseful horror movie, or really a horror movie at all, it was an okay rental for a slow weekend afternoon.

Cassie (Christina Ricci) is drifting through life, passing from town to town. She finds herself drawn to Ashby Wake after being hit by Marion’s car and losing her memory. She stays with Marion (Kerry Fox – yeah for Shallow Grave!) and her family while she recovers. Cassie becomes a nanny of sorts and becomes very close to Marion’s son. Cassie is also drawn to Marion’s family and Ashby Wake for another crazy reason: Marion’s husband Simon is researching newly discovered First Century church buried in the countryside, with strange carvings of the crucifixion. Cassie starts having visions and the townspeople start showing up staring at her ominously. Dan (Ioan Gruffudd) is the handsome love interest, but what role is he really playing in Cassie’s life? Is there a murderer in the town? Why is she even drawn to Ashby Wake? What is her role there?

It’s an interesting premise overall, but you are lead to expect one thing and I was surprised at the resolution to the story. It’s not a true shocker or anything, but it’s a twist that I don’t think I have seen before. You can see why the movie went straight to video, while the actors were okay, you could tell there just wasn’t a whole lot for them to work with.

Rating: 3 Purrs for a decent straight to video mystery thriller that sad to say, was better than the Da Vinci code.

Night of the Demons

“Angela is having a party, Jason and Freddy are too scared to come. But you'll have a hell of a time.”

Hee! This is just another one of those 80’s slashers, chock full of teenagers drinking, having sex, and then getting chopped up by scary things. This time around, the group of teenagers decides to celebrate Halloween in an abandoned funeral parlor, naturally rumored to be haunted by the Hull family who were murdered there years before. So what do you do when you party in a haunted house, especially when you party with a Gothy chick? You have a séance of course, right smack in front of a mirror. This awakens the demon that lurks in the basement, and all hell breaks loose. Angela, aka Gothy chick, is possessed, and each teen fights to get away with his or her life.

Linnea Quigley, everyone’s favorite B-Movie scream queen, shows up as Angela’s friend Suzanne, with such awesome lines as, “Do you guys have sour balls?… Too bad. I bet you don't get many blow jobs.” She meets her untimely end, turns into a demon, and gets to eat people up herself. It looks like she is having a blast.

This flick was obviously entertaining enough to spawn 2 sequels, all with Angela returning, and even played by the original actress Amelia Kinkade. It was silly, not that scary, but the gore effects were decent enough. It’s funny on a bad 80’s horror flick sort of way, but if you aren't a horror freak like I am, you might just steer clear of this one.

Rating: 3 ½ Purrs, always for Linnea Quigley and the lipstick breasts scene

Arthur and George by Julian Barnes

The book Arthur and George tells the story of the real-life meeting between the very famous Arthur Conan Doyle and small town lawyer George Edalji. Julian Barnes paints a very vivid picture of what life was like for Doyle and Edalji in Late-Victorian Britain. It’s a real life mystery, where Doyle gets to use the skills he builds up in his Sherlock Holmes stories, which is why I bought the book in the first place. It was a good read, once I got several chapters in to the story.

The novel is written chronicling the two men’s lives from birth onward, slowly bringing them together, with Doyle eventually becoming George’s savior. George is a near-sighted, shy half-Indian living in Great Wyrley, a small country town whose residents aren’t very accepting of George and his family. He is victimized for years, from childhood where he is accused of theft and sent harassing letters, to later, where Doyle comes in, when he is accused of mutilating the animals of Great Wyrley. Arthur Conan Doyle began studying medicine where he meets Dr. Bell, the man who inspired his character Sherlock Holmes. He later becomes quite famous, marries and has children, and later falls in love with the love of his life, Jean (despite being married). The two men meet when George is finally set free after serving time for the animal mutilations (found guilty on shady circumstantial evidence), and Doyle decides to take up the case and investigate, mostly because he has sunk into a depression after his wife dies. He wants to bring justice to George, and you hope along with him that he can find it. In doing so, he hopes to find peace within himself.

I almost put this book down at the beginning. The first few chapters were very long-winded, but I kept plowing along and in the end, I was glad I did. The book is such an interesting tale of two men who would never have met, but when they did, they made such a difference in each other’s lives that it changed where they went from there. It is a good mystery, but even more it’s a character study and a story of love, loss, and family. It’s wonderful to think of it being a true story (fictionalized accounting of course), that Doyle became his famous detective for a short while and found new purpose to his life, and that George found happiness in the end.

Rating: 4 Purrs. I’d give it five but I can’t because of the very slow start to the book.

The Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman

The Dragonlance Chronicles: Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Dragons of Winter Night, and Dragons of Spring Dawning by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman

Let me just say up front that I am not a fan of fantasy novels, especially those you could call “dragon books.” You know, the ones with the elf-lords running around with swords, mages calling up spells with capes, all that stuff. It’s a bit too much D&D for me. Okay, a lot too D&D for me. You might wonder why in the world, if I dislike fantasy so much, I would have ever read these books. I never would have on my own, but my husband has insisted for years that I read them since they were his favorite books when he was younger. I broke down. I’m a little embarrassed. Never had I believed that Tolkien influenced fantasy writers more than I do now, because boy, he sure did with these two.

The trilogy starts out with a group of friends meeting at an inn. There is an evil spreading, and they by chance join up to help Goldmoon, a barbarian woman and her lover, escape from the bad guys. They want her magical staff, so of course, our life-long friends jump to her aid. They must travel the land of Krynn to find its owner and keep it from the forces of evil. (Sound familiar? Yeah, me too.) This group of friends includes Tanis, the half-elf with a past, torn between two loves, Laurana the beautiful elf maiden and Kitiara the swordswoman. There are the two brothers, Caramon, the big warrior with a head of mush and a heart of steel, and Raistlin, the mage who could be evil or could be good but of course has a growing power and lots of magic. Flint Fireforge, the crusty dwarf, and Tasselhoff Burrfoot, the kender, who pick peoples pockets and provides comic relief, supposedly. There’s Strum Brightblade, the knight who still believes in valor, and the flighty old magician that shows up and wrecks havoc, but naturally has a secret that we will only discover at the very end. Once they journey on, find out about the staff and the war has broken out, the group of friends is separated (Two Towers? What do you think?) You meet more elves, learn a bit about the dragon lances and dragon orbs, and find out there is more to Laurana than you thought and wonder if Tanis is really turning to the dark side. The third book finds the friends fighting a hard battle, brothers being separated, and some friends are lost. The friends meet the evil Queen of Darkness, Takhisis, and the big battle begins. Will Tanis choose Laurana or Kitiara? Will good beat out evil? Why do they want the Everman? Will the metallic dragons help the people of Krynn fight the evil dragons?

I found this trilogy to be difficult to read, especially at first. I really enjoyed The Lord of the Rings trilogy, so this just felt like a cheap rip off. I must admit, to be truthful, I did get caught up wondering if Raistlin would end up a bad guy. It was actually the only reason I kept reading the trilogy all the way through. Everything else just felt like I was watching the TAMS kids larp back in college.

Rating: Hiss, for making me read all three books and then taking the easy way out.

Pulse

I saw the original Kairo a year or so ago, so when I heard they were remaking it, I was very interested. I thought Kairo has an interesting premise, but I felt it was lacking something, so I thought maybe the remake would fill in whatever that was. Unfortunately, it didn’t fare any better as a remake, although I did enjoy it a bit more than the original.

In Pulse, a computer hacker finds a new signal and somehow releases a computer virus of sorts, only this time, it can come through and infect real people. People start acting weird and disappearing, committing suicide, or melting into ash. Ghostly figured start appearing, haunting people. Mattie’s (Kristen Bell) boyfriend is one of those affected, and while searching for the truth, she and her friends get drawn in to the dangerous signal. Soon, they search for an answer on how to stop it, but are they too late?

I love Kristen Bell. Veronica Mars is one of my favorite TV shows. Some of the spark is missing here, but she still shines brightest in the cast. Ian Somerhalder is her new friend Dexter, a computer junkie who helps her track down the cause of the pulse and the ghostly figures. He’s also very good (and I will always miss him on Lost). Everyone else is pretty much unnecessary, except for ghost fodder. The atmosphere is sufficiently creepy, and some of the scenes kept over from the original movie (the plane crash, the tower jumper) still get me even though I have seen them before.

There are plenty of plot holes, but overall, it’s an apocalypse movie, so I can’t help but like it. The end made me cringe, if we had done without the cheesy end of the movie voice over, it would have been a much better ending. If you like the original and you want something just as good, I would avoid the remake. It’s really only good for Kristen Bell fans or people like me who love visions of the end of the world. If you do like Pulse, you should check out Cell by Stephen King. It’s a very similar take on the whole evil cell phone idea.

Rating: 3 ½ Purrs for Kristen Bell cuteness, Ian Somerhalder’s baby blues, and the very effective Tower scene

The Return

I rented this movie because it seemed like it would be one of those Asian horror movies wrapped up in American cinema packaging. It definitely wasn’t what I expected, but it was still a pretty good movie.

The Return is about Joanna Mills (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a young traveling saleswoman who has nightmares and waking dreams about a place she doesn’t remember ever being and a woman she's never met being murdered. Her life is falling apart, with her paranoia interfering with her job and her obsessive ex-boyfriend stalking her. While traveling for work, she finds herself near the town she is dreaming about, and decides to try and track down what it is she is dreaming and who murdered the woman she sees in her dreams. She befriends a man named Terry, who is somehow linked to the murder. Did he kill the woman in her dreams? Is the killer stalking her? Why is she having the dreams at all?

Sarah Michelle Gellar feels a little young for the role, but it’s not too bad. The atmosphere was dreary and stark, and perfect for a mystery. There were some real scares there, and the pacing was good once you get past the weird boyfriend showing up out of nowhere.

Overall, I was disappointed in some of the cuts to the film; I watched the deleted scenes and thought to myself – oh, now I get why that guy was even in the story at all. I know why they made the cuts they did, they wanted to speed the film up, but I really feel the movie suffered for it. I think that this movie would have performed much better in theaters if it had been marketed as the movie it actually is – a mystery/thriller, rather than an Asian horror rip-off. I was pleasantly surprised. As a thriller, it was good; as a horror movie, it lacked.

Rating: 4 Purrs for a surprising thriller in a pretend Asian horror package

Old Time Radio Podcasts

I have become addicted to old radio mysteries and horror stories, and pod casts have brought all of that joy back to me. I became fascinated with them when I first saw George Lucas and Steve Spielberg’s movie, Radioland Murders. Now when I hear these podcasts, I imagine all of the sound effects guys, the writers trying to finish up the scripts, and the actors performing in front of those tall retro microphones. I subscribe to several, but the following ones are my favorites.

Radio Detective Story Hour – The host for this podcast is just wonderful. Each episode introduces a detective series, and the host gives a wonderfully researched background of the show. He sometimes includes guest speakers and some previously taped interviews. I like this one because you get a deeper understanding of the history of the series he presents.

Tales of Horror – This series podcasts old radio shows like The Weird Circle, The Mysterious Traveler, and other shorts similar to the old Night Gallery and Twilight Zones of Rod Serling.

Suspense! – This podcast is replaying the old radio show, Suspense! It’s another one if those 30 minute horror anthologies, and the stories are pretty good.

Old Time Radio – This is a new group of podcasts that plays mysteries, detectives, thriller, and sci-fi. I have five of them in my podcast list, and each of them have a great mix of stories. I wish there was a little bit less intro to each episode, but that’s because eit is a bit commercial heavy at the front.

There are several podcasts out there full of old radio shows, but these casts post regularly and the quality of the shows is good. Usually you can count on the radio shows having decent sound, and of course, the commercials and political ads are a great way to look back into the past. It’s funny to hear how much women characters have changed over the years. Even when the women are main characters, such as Candy Matson, she still works to keep a few minks in her wardrobe, and of course, on the side, smash evildoers and help people.

Rating: 5 Purrs for a history lesson that’s entertaining, especially down on the waterfront of San Francisco, wearing a slick hat and hunting the evildoer

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning

I can hardly believe I rented Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. I liked the remake, and I liked the original, so I thought I would give this one a try. After all, it has Jordana Brewster in it, and I’ve liked her since The Faculty. Ugh. It wasn’t much to speak of, and brought nothing new to anything.

In TCM: TB, we see that the Hewitt family is in trouble. The meatpacking plant where they and Leatherface worked is closing down. The family faces starvation, and since they are obviously backwoods hicks with several screws loose, they follow right along when the head of the family kills off the sheriff of the town and serves him up as dinner. A trend is born, more or less, and old Leatherface gets to keep on doing what he is doing. This time, the first time, he gets to do it to a couple of brothers and their girlfriends on their last trip before shipping off to Vietnam. The four are appropriately pretty and very, very 70’s. Blood and guts follows, and madness ensues.

Diora Baird does a better job than I expected, since all I have seen her in before was some bit parts in movies and a Playboy photo spread. She does bring a bit more to the part than just a pretty face. She is terrified and stupefied in just the right moments. Jordana Brewster also does a good job being the plucky heroine who preservers and tries to kick butt. R. Lee Ermey is the nutso head of the family, but pretty much plays the same part he always plays: the loud, mean, crazy leader. Leatherface is just one big old lunk hauling around a chainsaw. He isn’t scary; he’s just sad and deformed.

I really hate the trend I have seen lately in horror films. There’s little plot and mostly just guts. There was no reason for this film except to show a bunch of people getting gutted and tortured. Now, I am not opposed to blood and guts. Giallo films are chocked full of it. Jason chops people in half all of the time. Honestly, I really don’t know why I disliked this movie so much. Maybe I am just tired of rampant blood and torture; maybe it’s just that there was no excuse for this movie anyway. Or maybe it was the fact that I am very, very tired of Texas always being the place where people are portrayed as backwards hicks who breed with their families, raise deformed serial killers, and scream crazy religious crap to terrorize sexy teenagers. Regardless, this movie was a waste of time, and for me to say that, you know it’s got to be bad.

Rating: 3 Hisses, for all the crazy backwards Texans and chainsaws up the gut and 1 Purr for Jordana Brewster and Diora Baird for playing sexy 70’s chickies and rising above the ickiness of this movie

Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein

I have had a copy of Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers ever since I saw the movie version by Paul Veerhoven. I liked the movie version; I found it just over the top enough to be entertaining, despite the little “commercial” snippets separating the chapters. I am not a huge fan of sci-fi or fantasy novels, but Heinlein is one of the masters, so I thought I would finally give Starship Troopers a chance.

Starship Troopers is a novel about a futuristic military state. I can see why it was labeled “controversial” on the cover, because it pokes holes in just about every tenet our society has grown to hold dear. Johnnie Rico is a soft, not so smart guy from Terran. His parents are rich and he has never really had to struggle for much of anything. In his world, to be a citizen, you have to be a veteran, and on a whim, our Johnnie signs up for a term in the military. He gets assigned to Mobile Infantry, and it’s the roughest thing he has ever done in his whole life. Boot Camp is brutal, but he ends up being more of an adult than he ever expected, and when Terran goes to war against the Bugs, he is shipped out to battle. Here is where he proves himself.

There is a whole lot description of the future gadgets, strategies, and the basic truths of the futuristic world, much like a softer version of For Us, the Living. I wish there had been more female characters; I felt like I was reading Lord of the Rings again. Carmen has a few paragraphs, but the military, for the most part, was male. Johnnie was just not an interesting enough character for me to really care about. He was too much of a “go team” sort of guy, and one who even though he supports his military, never really seems to question why he is there. Of course, that might have been part of the point.

What I found most interesting about Starship Troopers has less to do with the book and more in comparison to Ender’s Game, another futuristic military novel I read just last year. How these two authors look at the future of war and the security of our world both turn back and critique how we are functioning now, and both end up raking holes in so many of the basic “truths," especially now. Both books have children being turned into warriors; both question the validity of war. But, and maybe it’s just me, I got more of a “go military” vibe from Starship Troopers. It seems to present a value in controlled violence, a need for children to be disciplined, and a need for things like corporal punishment and the death penalty.

Starship Troopers was an all right book. I’m just not sure I would recommend it to anyone who wasn’t already a big fan of Heinlein’s work. I’m discovering that I am not.

Rating: 3 Purrs

The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier

Finding The Brief History of the Dead was a complete stroke of luck. The cover image intrigued me, so I ordered it from my book club. (If you like a variety of surprising and intriguing books, you should check out Quality Paperback Books.) What I found inside was intriguing, a tale of death and life, a fable of relationships and memories.

The whole book is based on a belief held in some African societies: once you die, you still live in the memories of those left behind on earth. These recently passed, if they can be called to mind or talked about in stories, are living-dead. Once the last person on earth who knew them dies, they pass on to the truly dead. Brockmeier takes this belief and creates a place where people come after death, a city of the dead. Many people live and work there like they did in life. They rejoin their families, they continue on as though they were living. One day, people start disappearing at a rapid rate, and the city itself looks to be shrinking. Luka Sims, newspaperman, is determined to find out what is going on with the city and where the people are disappearing to. What is going on in the world of the living that is causing so many to die, and of those, so many of the dead to disappear?

The whole story is like a richly woven fabric of characters and inter-connectivity. There is a complexity to the tale that you wouldn’t expect from something so simply written. After about half way through the book I figured out the “surprise” twist, but it didn’t diminish how much I liked the book at all. In fact, I loved the way every player down to the random teenager in the street were connected. It's a nice thought.

The ideas and lessons in this book found me at a time when I needed them most. I had recently lost my aunt to a very difficult fight with cancer and the story Kevin Brockmeier told in The Brief History of the Dead was a poignant one for me. While that was the case for me, I think it would have been just as amazing had I read it at any other time. The idea, the color, the underlying truth of the story is truly universal. Not only that, it is told without any kind of syrupy Oprah Book Club nonsense, so never did I feel like my heartstrings were being pulled in any artificial way. I can’t wait to see what else Kevin Brockmeier has to offer.

Rating: 5 Purrs for a quirky tale told with great care. It’s not often you find a book about death that makes you feel good too.

Recent Aquisitions to the Library

I am way behind on keeping track of the new additions to my library, but here are some of the more recent purchases:

• See No Evil - Mia Farrow thriller from way back.
• Demons, Demons 2 - Argento produced zombie demon movies.
• Night of the Comet - My very favorite movie of all time.
• Endless Night - An Agatha Christie mystery with a grown up Haley Mills.
• Stardust by Neil Gaiman
• The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder by Daniel Stashower
• The Monk by Matthew Lewis
• American Elf Volume 1 by James Kochalka
• The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl
• Destination Morgue! by James Ellroy
• The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld
• The Meaning of Night: A Confession by Michael Cox
• Fluke by Christopher Moore
• Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
• The Father of Forensics: The Groundbreaking Cases of Sir Bernard Spilsbury, and the Beginnings of Modern CSI by Colin Evans

Silent Hill

I have never played the game Silent Hill, so I can’t really compare the movie to the game outside of what I have read from other’s comments. I do know that I liked Silent Hill much better the second time around on DVD than I did the first viewing in the theater.

Rose and Christopher have a daughter, Sharon, who has terrible nightmares and sleepwalks. While she sleeps, she shouts "Silent Hill," and Rose, determined to figure out what is going on, takes Sharon on a trip to find the deserted town. On the way, a lady cop Cybil, (Laurie Holden – X-Files! Woot!) follows her into town, and Sharon disappears. Game on! Rose must track down Sharon, and in doing so, solve the mystery of why Silent Hill is haunted by really cool creepy crawlies.

On first viewing, I didn’t like the game feel to the movie, but I loved the creepy creatures and the story, so I thought I would give it another try on DVD. I loved it the second time around. Everything meshed for me then. The playing levels, the actors, the Silent Hill dimension versus the real world all came together just perfectly. Even the added on feel of Sean Bean’s scenes didn’t bother me all that much. My favorite creepies – Pyramid Head and his buggies, closely followed by the creepy janitor guy.

I thought Alice Kridge cast as the crazy religious nut was perfect, but not very inventive. She does have a way, though, of just freaking you the hell out. She has this way of enlarging her pupils to where her eyes seem black and she seems so certain. Overall, the religious nuts as the center of the story are a pretty regular turn of horror events, but as I understand it, it’s the heart of the Silent Hill games, so it doesn’t turn me off. The end was a whiz-bang. From Cybil meeting the flames (ick!) to Rose bringing in the dark, to little Sharon being turned (or is she…) it’s a great end to a very creepy horror/game movie.

If you like creepy, but not necessarily want to see a bunch of gore, and don’t mind a bit of crazy religious nuts sprinkled on top, check out Silent Hill. I can’t wait to see what Christophe Gans comes up with next; he definitely has a great eye for horror movies with substance.

Rating: 4 ½ Purrs, with extra nuts and buggies on top

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

The Haunting of Hill House is a classic horror story, no getting around it. Shirley Jackson is a true master of taking something that seems everyday and turn it into a vision that stays in your dreams. I read this book a while ago, and even though I knew the twists and turns, it still kept me reading and taut with tension.

If you don’t know the story, it’s a step above your run of the mill haunted house story. Hill House has a long history, and the villagers nearby won’t stay there at night, and most won’t approach it in the day. Dr. Montague wants to figure out why there are bumps in the night at Hill House, so he invites some people who have had some sort of psychic experiences to come and stay at the house for the summer, to help him record any unusual happenings. Eleanor, or Nell, has cared for her mother for years and now, for the first time, is out on her own. She’s your typical wallflower and is very unsure of her place in the world. Theo is vivacious, self-centered, artistic; she is used to being the center of attention. Luke is there because he will one day inherit Hill House. You could describe him as a liar and a rake. These strangers are brought together and different petty jealousies erupt. Is it the house playing tricks on them? Are the loud noises and cold spots they feel a true haunting or their imaginations?

The Haunting of Hill House is tightly written, full of suspense. The characters are well built. The haunting scenes are tense and while you read them you are on edge with the characters. It doesn’t surprise me that Stephen King, among many other writers, cite Shirley Jackson as an influence. I recently read We Have Always Lived in the Castle, another of her novels, and it was almost as good as this. I now have a mission to hunt her other work down.

Rating: 5 Purrs for haunted house perfection

The Changeling

I rented The Changeling ages ago, and when I saw it on Amazon for 5 bucks, I snatched up the DVD to add to my collection. This movie made me jump even though it was the second viewing and I already knew the story. The Changeling must be one of the best haunted house movies I have ever seen.

George C Scott is John Russell, a composer who has just lost his wife and child in a car wreck. He moves to Seattle and into an old house owned by the historical society. As he settles in to the house, he starts hearing strange noises. He spends time digging through the house and discovers an old room filled with children’s toys. Since he identifies with the lost ghost child as a substitute for his lost daughter, he then decides to solve the mystery of the house. Creepiness ensues, noises and furniture moves, and he digs deep into the mystery with a séance and a sidekick, Claire (Trish Van Devere, Scott’s real life wife).

I love the atmosphere in this movie. The house is huge and full of opportunities for scariness. The somber Seattle weather makes for a beautiful color palette. The story of the lost child and a lost birthright isn’t groundbreaking, but it is well written and well paced. George C. Scott is just excellent, as usual. He plays the grieving father and the curious intellectual with aplomb.

If you like haunted house movies, especially ones with a good mystery at the heart of it, you should definitely check out The Changeling. It’s definitely one of the better ones out there.

Rating: 5 Purrs for that first loud noise that made me jump out of my seat and the scene at the end with the wheelchair – wow!