Hiss Hiss Purrr: The Media Kitten's Meow

Insidious

2011-04-09T10:41:00.002-05:00

Matt & I saw Insidious last weekend because I was too excited to wait another week. I am a fan of the guys who started the Saw franchise (if not a fan of the movies past maybe the second one...you know when they stopped being about the horror and all about the gore) and their other venture, Dead Silence, so when I saw they had this one coming out I was pretty excited.

Insidious is about a family that is settling in to a new home, unpacking, getting used to the things that go bump in the night in a new home. Unfortunately something does really go bump, it's not just weird noises or critters in the walls.

The movies goes from traditional haunted house, to weird, off-beat horror, to almost carnival tricks at the end. It's a wonderful mix of the unexpected. There were many scares and jumps to be had (ask Matt how many times I jumped) and I was engrossed for the entire movie.

I don't want to say too much and give anything away, because you really need to go into this with a blank slate as much as possible. Just know that it is an awesome blend of Poltergeist (references abound), goofy 70's horror, and even more traditional haunted house stories like Hill House.

Rating: 5 purrs...loved all of it

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Devil

2011-02-27T01:08:00.001-06:00

For some reason I am a true sucker. Ages ago, everyone talked about The Sixth Sense. They talked about how original it was & the twist. I figured the damn thing out in about 5 minutes. Ever since then, I continue to try M. Night Shalamalan movies, in hopes that one day he will actually live up to some of the style and imagery you occasionally get glimpses of.

So once again I took a chance. (This is even after I watched The Happening. If you need to take a guess at how much I didn't like that one, well...take a look here.) We rented Devil- a "supernatural story set in the modern world." Five strangers walk into an elevator after another man jumps off the 32nd story of the same building. One by one they are attacked. Who or what is doing it? According to the security guard (whose grandmother just happened to tell him a conveniently related folk tale), it's...The DEVIL!

Is he right? Or is it an elaborate plan of one of the strangers to murder a particular target? It's up to the cop with a past to figure out.

Of course there is a twist. But really, I jumped several times, and the opening credits are quite disconcerting. Overall, I'd say it wasn't a bad Friday night rental, but I would never watch it again.

Rating: 3 1/2 Purrs for not restoring my faith as much as just being better than The Happening, Signs, and so many of his others.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

2010-11-12T21:08:00.001-06:00

Oh Jasper Fforde, how I love your books. You have had me since The Eyre Affair, and I continue to devour any of your new books as quickly as you can write them. (I mean, Richard III as a rocky horror type event? It's a lit geek's dream come true.) Your stories are always so fun and imaginative; they truly are like dream exploded in my head.

Shades of Grey does not disappoint. Eddie Russett lives in a world where what color you see designates your place in society. Eddie's a Red, and a middling Red at that. He's sent to the Outskirts to take a chair census as a sort of punishment, and while there becomes enamored with a Grey named Jane (Greys see no color.) Poor Eddie soon gets over his head when he starts questioning why things are the way they are. Why is it no one sees in the dark? What really happened Before?

It's a fun start to a new trilogy,and if you like the idea of a Wizard of Oz type world fused with our own, then you should check it out.

Rating: 4.5 Purrs. It's not quite The Eyre Affair, but it's a very fun read.

- Posted using BlogPress from Bruce

Killers & Date Night

2010-10-22T17:52:00.002-05:00

Ok, so I don't usually watch romantic comedies. I like them, they just never make it to the top of my list. This weekend though, somehow I ended up watching Killers and Date Night, both of which I would classify as rom coms. They were both pretty funny, but overall nothing to write home about.

Killers felt a lot like Mr. & Mrs. Smith crossed with Grosse Point Blank, with a little Sandra Bullock thrown in for color. Ashton Kutcher plays it with the right amount of seriousness and silliness, and well, Katherine Heigl is in her element playing the lovely wife who discovers her hubby is a contract killer. Date Night felt a lot like Adventures in Babysitting, only with married people. Of course, both movies had decent acting, and well, Steve Carrell & Tina Fey are the awkward comedy masters. They do know how to make you laugh (seriously watch the takes in the credits- hilarious!).

They were both fun, and worth a rental, but I would never watch them again. I don't think either would hold up to a second viewing.

Rating: 3 1/2 purrs for some laughs and general goofiness

- Posted using BlogPress from Bruce

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

2010-10-18T10:11:00.002-05:00

When I started The Omnivore's Dilemma, I was warned that it might turn me vegetarian. I figured that nothing could do that. If Fast Food Nation couldn't do it, nothing could. I seriously considered it though for a few chapters here and there after reading even more about factory farming, the copious amounts of corn and soybeans grown to support the food habits of Americans, and the slaughter of animals. Then Mr. Pollan sums up the book with The Perfect Meal, a meal harvested, hunted, and grown by him and shared with others. He sums it up with such a lovely thought. It's not just what you eat, but being conscientious about where it came from. Thinking about what it is you are eating, and celebrating it, enjoying it, be responsible for it.

The bulk of the book walks through three types of meals: the corn-fed beef meal, the organic and sustainable farm meal, and the hunter/gatherer meal. What I like about Mr. Pollan is that he thoroughly pokes about at all of the theories. Corn and corn syrup and corn-fed beef, the farming industry and how it has changed over the years. Organic farming and the fallacy of big organic. The spiritual aspect of being a responsible eater.

Michael Pollan has several more books that related to the topic of food and responsibility. I am adding them to my reading list because frankly, he has made me think about what I eat, and done so in such a way where I never felt preached to or talked down to. I too want to eat responsibly, and enjoy every bite.

Rating: 5 purrs...thanks Matt for recommending this one.

- Posted using BlogPress from Bruce

Piranha (2010)

2010-08-29T20:41:00.002-05:00

I finally got to the theater to see Aja's remake of one of my all time favorites- Piranha. (I watched the original on Bruce here on the way back to DFW Friday, so the it was fresh in my mind.) To sum it up- it was one of the funnest, goriest, boob-fests I have seen in a very long time. From the very opening scenes with a clap-worthy homage to one of my other favorites, Jaws, to the hilarious and somewhat gratuitous "wild wild girls" & the spring break partiers, to Jerry O'Connell eating up the screen as the soft-core porn producer, it seriously was just so much fun. Even the various comments from the Tweens in the row behind us could dispel the fun.

Elizabeth Shue plays the town sheriff with a teenager who shirks his babysitting responsibilities to give the wild wild girls a tour of the best spots to film. This filing includes a lovely amount of nakedness, including an underwater ballet scene that had me tears and wishing we had seen the movie in 3D after all. Dina Meyer has about 2 seconds in the film, along with Ving Rhames. I kept seeing people and saying- hey look at that, there's so and so (including Eli Roth, who seems to be cameoing in every movie rather than hurrying up and filming Thanksgiving. Dude, hurry up.) the plot is still pretty much the same as the original, you know, hungry fish attack people in an Arizona lake. Lots of chomp chomp. Lots of blood. Lots and lots of gore. Plucky heroine, wry humor from the main hero.

I have really liked Aja and what he has come up with, even Mirrors, so when I saw he was remaking Piranha, I knew it was in good hands. I was not wrong.

Rating: 5 Purrs: Really, seriously you should just go see it. It was awesome. I might even see it again in the theater.

- Posted using BlogPress from Bruce

Under the Dome by Stephen King

2010-07-20T00:16:00.002-05:00

Anyone who knows me well enough knows that I pretty much grab up the newest Stephen King books right as they hit the shelves. I am a bit of an addict that way. Under the Dome was no exception, except in one small way. It took me forever to finish it.

So what's it about? One day the small town of Chester's Mill, Maine is going about its business like any other day when all of a sudden something unusual appears (if you guessed a gigantic dome, you get a cookie). The town is completely cut off from the outside world. People die. What happens to a small town where everyone knows each other but now they are cut off? Do they trust each other? Do they help each other out? Not if you are in Stephen King's world.

It's not that I didn't enjoy it. I really did, once I got about half-way through. It was getting half-way that was the hard part. Well, that and the fact that the book is impossibly huge, and when you like to take the book you are reading everywhere, well, War and Peace sized books just don't get put in the computer bag. It took awhile to get the story rolling, and honestly i kept getting flashbacks to The Stand. (Cell did as well but it seemed to not bother me as much.) I actually put it aside for awhile and came back to it after a month or two. When I came back to it, I sped through it. Maybe it was just timing. It also felt a lot like this old movie I saw when I was younger, but to say any more would give away the twist, and I just can't do that.

I would recommend this if you are a King fan, but if you are looking for an end of the world type tale, I would say check out The Stand first. It's still my favorite.

Rating: 4 Purrs

- Posted using BlogPress from Bruce

Taroko Gorge by Daniel Ritari

2010-07-07T21:52:00.002-05:00

Taroko Gorge is another one of those books I was lucky enough to get via LibraryThing's Early Reviewers group. There are good things and bad things about this group, and Taroko Gorge is definitely one of those good things. When I read the write up, I thought this sounds like Picnic at Hanging Rock. I love that movie. While Taroko Gorge didn't end up being a retread of Picnic after all, it still ended up being a very worthwhile read. I was surprised that this was a first novel. In fact, when I saw that it was, I lowered my expectations a bit. I shouldn't have. It was quite good.

Taroko Gorge has many narrators, all telling their version of events leading up to and after the disappearance of three Japanese schoolgirls at the Taiwanese state park Taroko Gorge. Did they fall into the gorge, down a hole, were they murdered? You have the two Americans, one a reporter and his photographer who seem to be the last to have seen the girls, the Japanese class rep who had a crush on one of the girls, a girl who lived in their shadow, and the Taiwanese detective who leads the search for the missing girls all telling the story from their perspectives. Where did the girls go? Are they alive or is all hope lost?

I really liked the different voices, the multiple nationalities all dealing with various prejudices and traditions in hopes of doing what is right. It felt very true, well researched, and the mystery kept me interested until the very end. In the end, found or not, everyone will be changed just from being there,waiting to see. It was a nice mix of traditions, how they can lead to prejudice and misunderstanding, and a mystery. The setting was interesting but not quite enough of a character to be the mysterious Hanging Rock. The characters were developed but not overly so. I knew enough in minimal discussion enough to care about them and their actions.

Overall, I liked this book quite a bit. I read it quickly, not because it was overly simple, but because I wanted to find out what was happening next. I wanted to find out about those girls, because in those short few chapters, I cared.

Rating: 4 Purrs for drawing me in and keeping me guessing. For showing the turmoil of teenage life and the human existence. For giving a very good first novel when expected far less.

- Posted using BlogPress from Bruce

Avatar

2010-07-02T21:25:00.002-05:00

"I'm probably just talking to a tree right now..."

Really, that sums it up. Avatar is Ferngully with really nifty computer animation. Everyone is cardboard. The hero is heroic, the anthropologist is a tree hugger, and the big company and big army evil doers are well, evil.

Yeah, the plot, is all about your stereotypical big bad company finding an untouched, misunderstood wilderness and looking for ways to exploit it. If that means running out and massacring all of the locals by making them out to be savages, well even better. My favorite part was when the bad guy runs out into the unbreathable atmosphere without his oxygen mask to shoot the tree huggers and HOLDS HIS BREATH. Oh, and the slow motion action scenes. Let's not forget when the whole end of the movie was telegraphed, um, from the minute she talked about the legend of the Braveheart guy who brought all of the clans together.

Don't get me wrong. The CGI is amazing, if you can get past the fact that it glows like a velvet Elvis painting under a blacklight. But really, even bells and whistles do not a Oscar winner make. Thank god. Because let's face it, The Hurt Locker- that had action, character development, visuals that made your blood chill, and enough tension that I couldn't keep my hands unclenched. Oh yeah, AND it had a point to make too, Mr. Cameron, without beating me over the head with it.

Rating: Bah. It's no wonder there's a RiffTrax. It's the only way I will watch this again.
- Posted using BlogPress from Bruce

Location:On my couch in the she-cave

Splice

2010-06-25T15:33:00.000-05:00

I have been pretty excited about Splice for awhile, from way back when I first read about it in EW ages ago. When I saw it was coming to a theater near me, I was thrilled. I ended up pleased but not overwhelmingly so. It was good, and had potential, but it wasn't the movie I had in my head.

Sarah Polley and Adrien Brody are two rock star geneticists. They create some weird creatures that create proteins for a pharmaceutical company, and they want to go on to splice with the human genome. When told no, they do what normal movie scientists would do. They go there. As these things go, of course it was a bad decision. Regret and bloodshed ho!

All in all, I loved the ultra trendy scientists, the idea, etc., but it felt slow towards the middle. I expected more action and bloodshed a la James Cameron's Aliens and instead got slow burning drama a la Ridley Scott's Alien. It's not a bad thing, I just expected something different. Sarah Polley was a wonderful cross between Lady MacBeth and Dr. Frankenstein. I loved the mixed parallels. It telegraphed too much though, so when it went full throttle to the end I knew fairly well how this would play out.

Rating: 4 Purrs for a horror movie that didn't tread a whole lot of new ground but did make it fun while it lasted.

Horrorfest 4

2010-06-20T22:42:00.000-05:00

This year's entries into Horrorfest have been much better than past years.

Dread: This one based on a Clive Barker story and stars a Cullen, but man it sure was icky. These college kids decide to run an experiment investigating people's biggest fears. Problem is, the ringleader just happens to be nuts, and he decides to make people face their biggest fears in hopes of learning how to cure his own. The paintings in this one were beautiful.
The Final: The opening says this was based on a true story and it was filmed in McKinney and area up here in North Texas, so I can't help but like the story of a group of tormented high-schoolers who turn the tables on their bullies in most gruesome and psychological ways. One even wears an Audition costume, so of course I like it.
Kill Theory: A group of long-time college friends head out to the lake to celebrate graduation, only to find themselves trapped by a psycho who says they must kill each other one by one and have one left standing at 6 AM or he will kill them all. This one was quite good. I can see why maybe it didn't make it to the theater but it is definitely worth a watch.
The Graves: Sisters Megan and Abby Graves are taking a cross country trip before Megan starts a new job in New York. On the way, they decide to check out the road-side attraction called Skull City Mine. As these things go, they find something not so pleasant. Slicing and dicing and spooky stuff happens, and things get a bit disjointed towards the end, but I can't help but love a movie that has two goth girls who love comics and can kick ass.
The Reeds: A group of Londonites take a weekend trip through the reeds of Norfolk on a hired boat. From the start, things get creepy, with the crochety old boat guy and the pesky teens that keep popping up here and there. It ends up in disaster and blood, and a mystery to be solved. It was quite good.
Lake Mungo: A somewhat slow, creepy supernatural movie that deals with an Australian family's grief at losing their teenage daughter to drowning. It's shot documentary style. I was watching it by myself and I got a bit creeped out, so stick with it.
Hidden: The foreign film entry into this year's horrorfest. A guy goes back home after his mother's death and faces the fears from his childhood. Someone is murdering people- is it a ghost, is it the boy from his childhood? It was spooky in places but also very slow.
Zombies of Mass Destruction: Zombies! Need I say more? Yes, well then - zombies started by terrorists in a small town, gore and hilarity happens, boy comes out to mom, girl comes to term with her roots, brains get munched on.

Sumner Island by Michael Cormier

2010-05-27T23:34:00.001-05:00

I got a copy of Sumner Island by Michael Cormier as an early reviewer's copy. It's a first novel, and honestly, it wasn't too bad. I thought I was getting a spooky ghost story, but what I got was more like a cross between Somewhere in Time and The Sixth Sense. In fact, I spent the majority of the first part of the novel trying to convince myself it wasn't a retread. Luckily, it picked up towards the end and I got absorbed into the story along the way.

Mitch Lambert is a history professor who, while writing the biography of Maria Boudreau, falls in love with the long-dead heiress. His book increases interest in Maria, and soon people are seeing her ghost walking the island where she was murdered. Mitch believes the man who was accused of her murder was innocent, and is determined to discover the real killer when a psychic comes to the island to have a seance. Along the way, Mitch begins to see things he shouldn't, a sort of time-travel thing, and plays detective. Will he solve the mystery? What do you do when you love someone who has been dead for years?

It wasn't bad, it wasn't mind-blowing. I felt like the ending was a bit of a let down, too neatly tied up I guess. I can't say for sure, but I think I would have enjoyed it more if I had gotten what I was expecting - a haunted house story. Instead I got a supernatural romance thriller, which was a good read, just not what I was looking for. Go into with the right frame of mind and I think you would enjoy it.

Rating: 3 1/2 Purrs

The Night Country by Stewart O'Nan

2010-05-23T22:21:00.000-05:00

Stewart O'Nan is one of those authors that captures a moment in time so well and creates such a feeling of place and character. I read The Speed Queen first, because my other half bought it way back when we were in college and he said I really needed to read it. I read Last Night at the Lobster, and it too was perfection. The Night Country wasn't a disappointment at all, although I am not really sure why people classify it as horror.

A year ago, a group of teenagers died in a car wreck on Halloween. Their spirits live on, haunting those they left behind: the cop who has a secret, the survivor, the mother of the survivor marred forever by the wreck. As the anniversary of the wreck draws near, you learn how their lives have changed and know that each is trying to commemorate it in his or her own way. In some ways, they are trying to move on, in others, they can't.

O'Nan creates this world where it makes sense that ghosts are along side us, whispering in our ears. He's able to include those voices without seeming silly or hammy. His characters are sympathetic, and all of the story leads to this reveal at the end that I literally couldn't stop reading. It's touching, life-affirming, and terribly tragic all at once, all without ever being cheesy or resorting to the stereotypical. It's lovely.

Rating: 5 Purrs

Nightmare on Elm Street (remake)

2010-05-20T21:27:00.000-05:00

The original Nightmare on Elm Street scared the hell out of me the first time I saw it. Freddy Krueger was terrifying. The idea of being attacked in your dreams, unable to wake up, unable to fall asleep because you might die. Yikes. The remake doesn't change much of that formula, which was nice, but it changed enough that it wasn't a complete retread.

Things I liked:

I jumped several times in my seat. Sure it might have been because of the loud Boo! music, but I jumped.
Kellen Lutz! The opening scenes with him are tense.
They didn't puss out with Kreuger. I thought they were going to, but they didn't. If they had, I would have not liked this movie at all.
Jackie Earle Haley. Wow. While he was pretty much replaying Rorschach, he does it well. Creepy.
There were plenty of homages to the original, but not complete re-dos.

Things I didn't like:

Why oh why don't they use real special effects any more? Why do movie makers these days feel so compelled to CGI the shit out of everything? I want real fake blood people. Not CGI blood. It never looks real.
Why oh why does Nancy have to be emo chick? Why can't she be the sweet, scrubbed up teen like the first one?
I hated her little booties she wore. Ugh. I know, I know. A shoe complaint in a horror movie. I'm a girl. Sue me.
No Johnny Depp death scene. Not even close. Dang it.

Overall, it was a decent remake. You can't recreate the atmosphere of the original, no matter how hard you try, but these guys did a decent job of remaking Texas Chainsaw Massacre and they did a decent job this time. I would of paid full price for this one, but I am a bit of a horror junkie, as you know.

Rating: 4 Purrs

The Losers

2010-05-18T22:34:00.000-05:00

"Did you know that cats can make one thousand different sounds and dogs can only make ten? Cats, man. Not to be trusted. " - Jenson

I loved The Losers. I loved every second of the cheesy 80's action movie-ness of it. The one-liners, the explosions, the gun fire, the hot chick...Jeffery Dean Morgan (yum), Chris Evans (yum), Zoe Saldana (yum). Really, what's not to like?

It's a movie that never takes itself too seriously. I laughed out loud. I loved the explosions. I don't know why more people didn't see it, but you should have.

The Chinatown Deathcloud Peril by Paul Malmont

2010-05-13T21:49:00.000-05:00

A good friend handed this book over to me because he thought with my love of old 40's noir, old time radio programs, and James Ellroy that I would love a book that stars the authors of two of the most popular pulp stories - The Shadow and Doc Savage. He was right.

In The Chinatown Deathcloud Peril, William Gibson writes The Shadow. He's buddies with H.P. Lovecraft, whose strange death spurs the writer to meet the real-life Shadow and it scares him. Gibson and Lester Dent (author of Doc Savage) are in a race to uncover the answer to one of the greatest mysteries and best pulp stories ever told. All sorts of writers appear in the tale, including L. Ron Hubbard and Louis L'Amour. The two authors are rivals and partners as they dig deep into the secrets surrounding Lovecraft's death and the secrets hidden in Chinatown, all culminating in the biggest pulp of all.

It's fun, it's pulpy, it's a fast read with plenty of all that a good pulp fun with quips, crazy characters, and impossible adventures. It was funny without being too campy, when it could have gone over the edge.

Rating: 5 Purrs for something I probably never would have found myself but loved every page of it.

Clash of the Titans (remake)

2010-05-11T21:46:00.000-05:00

What can I say about Clash of the Titans? Hmm...What to say...What to say...

They took out pretty much every shred of mythology from the original. All that stuff about Kalabos, Thetis, Poseidon, Zeus ruling the gods and goddesses with an iron fist, the gifts from the goddesses, the origins of Perseus, all of that - out. You see Zeus and Hades, but that's it. All of the others there on Mt. Olympus are pretty much window dressing to Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes munching on the screen.
Perseus wants to be a *man* not a *god.* He whines like Luke Skywalker throughout the entire movie about how he wants to do the whole journey to Medusa as a *man* despite the many good men dying around him because he is stubborn.
Io - WTF? I guess Andromeda wasn't warrior-chick enough to be in this movie but for more than a second.
Man, I miss Ray Harryhausen's special effects. CGI just doesn't give the right feel to what this movie could have been.
Oh no, you did not just throw Bubo back into the trunk. He's a gift from Athena dude. You don't just cast off a gift from Athena.

I wasn't looking for a retread. I knew that Harryhausen wouldn't be there and that there would be mostly big-bada-booms, but I was very disappointed that they stripped so much of the mythology out. That's what the freaking Clash of the Titans is about, dang it. I admit, I clapped when Neeson said "Release the Kraken!" and when Bubo did show up for all of two seconds.

What this movie needed: more Bubo! More clashing and less "no we are men, not Gods! I will fight as one" and "but I was going into Tatchi for power converters" blah blah. Of course if you remove those feelings from the equation and just see it for what it is, a big CGI action fest, well, it's not so bad.

Rating: 3 1/2 Purrs because there was a Kraken, after all

Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff

2010-05-09T14:10:00.000-05:00

I have had this book on my shelf for a long while, kept looking at it, picking it up, and then putting it back. I wish I had read it earlier because it was a very fun, witty, surprising read. You really don't know who is telling the truth or who is lying right up until the end, when it throws you for a complete loop.

In Bad Monkeys, Jane Charlotte has been arrested for murder. During her interview, she tells the police she is a member of a secret organization that fights evil. Not crime, but evil. Her job is to get rid of "bad monkeys" AKA irredeemable persons.

The whole book is Jane Charlotte being interviewed by the psych ward doctor, and she walks through her childhood, her first contact with the group, and way the group works. The whole time you don't know if she is lying or telling the truth or if she is just down-right crazy.

The book is one that really didn't give anything away. It kept me guessing the entire time. It made me laugh at the wit (the Catering department sets up ops for Jane). If you like the style of Jasper Fforde but with a little darker twist, you would like this one.

Rating: 5 Purrs for a book I am going to recommend over & over

Sweetheart & Evil at Heart by Chelsea Cain

2010-05-07T19:00:00.000-05:00

Mmmm, mmm. I love me some serial killer fiction. I read Chelsea Cain's debut novel, Heartsick, pretty much right after it came out but then left Sweetheart on the shelf for forever until the 3rd in the series, Evil at Heart, showed up. Then I tore through the 2nd and 3rd books pretty quickly (but honestly, that's partly because of enjoying the story so much and partially because they were pretty easy reads).

In Sweetheart, Archie is back to investigate the murder or accidental death of a state senator and a newspaper man, all the while trying but not really trying to keep Gretchen Lowell out of his head and at bay. At the end, Gretchen escapes, and no one is safe.

In Evil at Heart, Gretchen is free and Archie is in a mental institution. Someone starts killing in Gretchen Lowell's style, and the police are on Archie to investigate. (He's sort of a hero, and Gretchen is a media darling at this point.) Is it Gretchen or is it a copycat? How does Archie's past play into it? Will they catch Gretchen Lowell and will it kill Archie to do so?

If you can't tell, I really liked the third book better than the second, although I liked them both quite a bit. The second felt like it went a little fast and felt a little thin on plot, while the third was better because Gretchen was there, but there was this interesting connection between Archie and the new murders that kept my interest. The speech the writer gives in the newspaper room is just perfect. I wanted to fist pump. The end was one I couldn't put down.

If you like serial killer fiction, then you should check out The Beauty Killer series. It's like the Clarice and Lecter relationship but with a female serial killer and male cop.

Rating: 4 Purrs - I can't wait for the next one.

Horrorfest 2009

2010-05-04T23:32:00.002-05:00

I was pleasantly surprised with the entries in this group of Horrorfest movies. (Well, outside of the exact same, endless trailers on each DVD.) I had little hope after last year's entries.

Autopsy: Some college kids go to New Orleans to party and end up in the strange Mercy Hospital. The hospital is creepy, and I am a sucker for weird, deserted building movies. Plus you gotta love Terminator 2 alums Jenette Goldstein and Robert Patrick. The reviews said this was supposed to be an homage to Italian horror, but it really ended up just being a gore-fest.
The Broken: Lena Headly rules in whatever she is in, and so of course I think this one might be my favorite on that alone. Thsi starts off like your classic doppelganger tale and turns into something, well, different.
The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations: Okay, so I skipped this one. I just couldn't stomach another Butterfly Effect movie. Sorry.
Dying Breed: This one had Leigh Wannell and the guy from Snakes on a Plane and Wolf Creek. It's set in Tasmania with a group of students searching for the elusive Tasmanian Devil. Unfortunately they find the descendants of the serial killer called The Pieman, rather than the animal they were looking for.
From Within: This one was good. It's about a small town that has a rash of suicides. Is it a curse? Will their faith in God protect them?
Perkins' 14: A cop is obsessed with his son's disappearance. Soon he realizes the guy in his jail just might be the guy who took him and 13 others. And they just might still be alive.
Slaughter: A young woman is running from an abusive boyfriend and stumbles upon a new friend in a bar who is much more than she seems. She agrees to stay with her new friend, only to find out she may have traded an apartment in a new city to a place much more dangerous than the one she ran from.
Voices: The Asian horror entry in the series, this one has a young girl whose friends and family turn on her, one after the other trying to kill her for no reason, following a history of "accidental" deaths that have plagued her family for generations. This one was based on a Korean comic book.

I liked these entries better but honestly I am ready for horror to return to being scary and not just being gory.

Audition by Ryu Murakami

2010-04-25T21:32:00.003-05:00

I have to say right off that I am a huge fan of the movie Audition by Miike, and when I saw that I won a free early reviewers copy of the novel I literally clapped my hands.

Audition is about a widower named Aoyama, who after many years has decided to take the advice of his son and try to find a new wife. To do so he teams up with a buddy to hold auditions for a movie in hopes that one of the girls who auditions for the lead role might be his new wife. He meets Yamasaki Asami, a shy girl who captures his attention and of course he falls head over heels in love. Despite his friend's concern he pursues her, only to find out there are worse things than being alone at 40.

The movie followed the book pretty closely, only the book really gives you much more why behind it all. Let me tell you some of the imagery is downright gruesome and beautifully written. Miike certainly made it his own when he made the movie, but the book was well worth the read, even knowing how it all turns out.

Rating: 5 Purrs because once it starts rolling it just doesn't give up.

The Beyond

2010-03-25T09:13:00.000-05:00

"Woe be unto him who opens one of the seven gateways to Hell, because through that gateway, evil will invade the world."

I love Italian horror. Dario Argento was my first foray into the genre and man, Suspiria knocked my socks off. Anytime anyone asks me my favorite horror movie, it inevitably comes up. Fulci is a master, truly, but nothing it seems will ever be Suspiria to me. Well, except maybe Argento's Opera, but I do have a thing for opera, MacBeth, and those awesome costumes.
The Beyond takes place in New Orleans, in an old hotel with a past. Bad stuff, the entrance to hell, all sorts of goodies pop up here. The question is will the young, pretty new owner of the possessed hotel survive, or will they all die and turn into ewie gooey monsters?

The movie is beautifully shot, has all the right spooky music scares, and plenty of oozie gore. I think this movie might have had more slime than You Can't Do That on Television. It even looks like they shot some of this in New Orleans.

I don't know if anyone outside of true Italian horror fanatics would care for this one, especially anyone icked out by ooze and gore. It's old-school gore though, not your new The Hostel type gore, if it matters.

Other thoughts:

Man, a lot of people fall off of things in this movie.
Eeeewwww, that was an eyeball.
Dog puppet FTW
Cue the jerky boyfriend who doesn't believe the heroine is imperiled.
Oh yes, the best place to go in a deserted hospital is the laboratory. Perfect.
Zombies! Zombie killing!
Uh oh, looks like the gates to hell opened up in her basement. That sucks. I hate it when that happens.

Rating: 4 Purrrs

It All Changed In an Instant & Not Quite What I was Planning by SMITH Magazine

2010-03-24T09:47:00.003-05:00

I was very intrigued by the idea of the six word memoir. How do you tell the story of your life in six words or less? It seems impossible, even though Hemingway seems to have done pretty well at it. ("For sale: baby shoes, never worn." ) Apparently, you can in fact tell a whole heck of a lot in 6 words.

SMITH Magazine gathered various 6 word memoirs written by famous and not-so-famous people in these two books (and I think there are a few more published) - Not Quite What I Was Planning and It All Changed in An Instant. I found them simple, devastating, hopeful, everything you expect in the story of a human being. I must admit my favorite is the title of the first book - "Not quite what I was planning." Sums up a life perfectly, and it's really left up to the reader to determine if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

"I still make coffee for two."

"So would you believe me anyway?" —James Frey

Joan Rivers, Joyce Carol Oates, Amy Sedaris, and more contribute. It's really a quite lovely read, but I found it such that I couldn't read more than a few at once before it felt too trite. I am intrigued on what my 6 word memoir would be. I should think on that.

Rating: 4 Purrrs

The Stepfather (1986) vs. The Stepfather (2009)

2010-03-21T22:18:00.000-05:00

"Wait a minute, who am I here?"

I had only seen the original The Stepfather in bits and pieces, so naturally I couldn't watch the remake without seeing Terry O'Quinn in all of his glory (and surprisingly enough, all of his glory actually is onscreen at one point - Hello John Locke).

Both movies are pretty much the same: lonely mother of troubled child finds the man of her dreams, or so she thinks. Little does she know that Mr. Too Good To Be True is in fact, way too good to be true. Actually, when he realizes you and your family are not Leave It to Beaver, he will decide to murder you and the kids and move on to some other chick. In a nutshell, that's it.

Why is the first movie better than the remake? Well besides the fact that the original usually is, the Final Girl is named Stephanie, so of course I liked it best. How can I not? She's the troubled daughter who has this idea that new daddy dearest just isn't right somehow. Second, the tension between Jill Schoelen and Terry O'Quinn is very well played. She's not some eye candy with no acting ability (eyes you Stepfather remake), she acts like a teenager with a new stepfather a year after he dad died. It's believable. The opening scene where Terry O'Quinn is stripping his former self and getting ready to move on is chilling, especially when you get to the part where you realize the entire family is dead as he walks out the door, refreshed and peppy.

The sequel - well it had the mom with 3 kids, two of which are non-existent and the other is fresh out of military school (and Gossip Girl). None of which are interesting enough to hold your attention. The most interesting characters are the "aunts," the lesbian couple that actually show some true affection for each other (kudos to the writers for making their relationship subtle and kind, rather than some way to add salaciousness to the movie). Otherwise, you might as well sleep throughout the movie because there is no tension, little blood, and really no character worth caring about.

So, rent and watch the original Stepfather and skip the remake. Even the bikini scenes can't save that one.

The House of the Devil

2010-03-20T16:39:00.002-05:00

So a college girl needs to make some rent so she can pay for a new place. Her roommate isn't a very nice one you see, so she needs a place of her own. Unfortunately her bank account is pretty low, so she might have a bit of trouble trying to pay the rent. Good thing she found a babysitting job way out in the boonies that's going to pay her some nice change.

What else about The House of the Devil?

This movies has a nice 80's feel without being parody or campy.
Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov & Dee Wallace - holy crap! It's like b-move horror roll call.
Oh wow - he just totally blew her head off and stuff went everywhere.
Man, I know just how she feels. Bored, waiting for pizza. Wandering around the house poking around. Every teenage babysitter knows these minutes.
Why don't they do what they say, say what they mean...One thing leads to another...
God, I just can't seem to get away from pool, can I?
And yep, that whole dancing around the house thing - did that as a babysitter too.
Uh oh, that locked room bodes no good for anybody.
Who is that creepy dude with the beard lurking around?
Ahh! Lights out!
Uh oh. You know it's bad news when you wake up strapped to a pentagram in only your underwear.
Yay for blood slippage!
This movie went from bored babysitter to blood fest in 30 seconds.
Well, wow. That was unexpected.

Wow. Wow. I must own this movie.

Rating: 5 Purrs

Thirst (Bakjwi)

2010-03-20T16:35:00.000-05:00

Thirst was in a word, Wow. I had heard very good things about it, but I wasn't really sure. I mean I have seen a lot of Asian horror, so they all sort of run together at this point. However, Thirst really stood out for its combination of sexy and eerie without resorting to the sexy vampire stereotype.

Sang-hyun is a priest who volunteers for a medical experiment in hopes of helping find a cure for a deadly disease. Instead, he gets more than he bargained for. In fact, he gets some tainted blood that turns him into a vampire, and then gets pulled into helping an old friend try to escape her unhappy marriage and family ties. He struggles with his new inhumanity and his infatuation with the woman from his childhood.

This movie was so much not what I expected. It's a lot less horror in the traditional gore, slash & dice sort of way and much more in the line of beautiful thriller. That white painted apartment is simply beautiful.

I would definitely recommend this to anyone who liked Let The Right One In. This is much more like that than say, Near Dark.
Rating: 4 1/2 Purrs

Perfume: The Story of a Murder by Patrick Suskind

2010-03-11T18:35:00.000-06:00

I bought this book because I heard about the movie and it sounded very interesting. I ended up reading it very quickly, as it was very, very engrossing. Of course, it is a story about a serial killer, which if you know me makes complete sense as to why I would really enjoy it .

Perfume is about Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a child born in the filth of 18th-century Paris. He has no scent of his own, but he has an amazing nose and files every scent away in his head. He decides to apprentice to a perfumer so he can learn to capture scent. Specifically, the scents of certain young girls. Funny how those young girls mostly have red hair, are beautiful, and are virgins.

It's a creepy subject, but the character is just as good as Hannibal Lecter, except instead of cannibalism, this guy just wants to keep your smell around, which you know actually seems a wee bit creepier.

The book was beautifully written, with some very vivid imagery. The movie totally did the book justice, and honestly I wasn't sure if it would be able to do so. I liked them both, quite a bit.

Rating: 4 1/2 Purrs

2012

2010-03-07T20:30:00.000-06:00

"When they tell you not to panic, that's when you run!"

I love disaster movies. I have the remake of The Poseidon Adventure on DVD. I've seen the TV version and Beyond The Poseidon Adventure. The Day After Tomorrow? Check. The Towering Inferno? Check. Earthquake? Check. The Airport movies? Yep. Now these movies are usually bad, but they are also so bad they are good. 2012, well, it cries for a RiffTrax.

My biggest problem with 2012 is the fact that it plays the standard Roland Emmerich does disaster movies playbook the whole way. (You know, secret science stuff, no one believes the truth, montages of random characters that no one cares about really because they are cardboard stereotypes, epic sweeps of far away countries also affected by the disaster accompanied by sweeping music, lots and lots of explosions and CGI.) It opens with some scientists finding out some really, really bad news. They rush to tell the politicians, and then secret stuff starts to happen. Fast forward a bit. The bad stuff starts to happen for real. John Cusack stumbles upon it, the everyman with the troubled family life, and then proceeds to run like crazy, everyone yelling a whole lot because everything is.so.very.important. Will they survive? The fact is it's very hard to care because they just don't create any sympathy with the viewer. They are so cardboard you just don't care. You even get the "Today is our Independence Day!" speech. Wait, twice!

Okay, well so what's good? The initial John Cusack grabs the family and races California crashing into the ocean in a limo was pretty damn hilarious and yet awesome at the same time. I imagine seeing it on the gigantic screen would have been fun, even if it was super heavy on the CGI. I actually laughed out loud. The number of times they escape disaster by the skin of their teeth is so many I lost count. It gets to be ridiculous way too fast. A character actually says, "Oh God, not again." I agree.

Maybe 2012 isn't so bad. Or maybe it's so bad it's good, if you can get past the awful, awful heavy-handed hammy acting. I don't really know yet. I might have to watch it again to tell for sure. But I will definitely skip the credits. One can only take that song once.

Rating: I'm not even sure. 3ish Purrs, maybe?

Carriers

2010-03-06T09:31:00.000-06:00

I don't remember precisely how I stumbled across this gem of a film, but boy am I glad I did. Of course, I do tend to like those end of the world, everybody is dead from a global pandemic sort of media. I'm not sure exactly why. I mean, I'm a people person, right? I am good with people.

Anyway, Carriers opens up with four friends driving to the beach. Brian, Bobby, Danny, and Kate aren't really going for a good time though. They are trying to avoid infection, at any cost, which means when a stranger asks for gas, you have to really wonder if it's worth it to stop and help. There are rules to survive, gas is scarce, and anyone infected is a liability. The question really is, what is it to survive? Is it worth losing your humanity? Can you have compassion and survive a world where the touch of a stranger could kill you?

The Pastor brothers do a very nice job directing. Chris Pine plays pretty much the same character he always does, but I can't complain. It fits here. Piper Perabo is yummy. They filmed this mostly in New Mexico I believe, and I'm always for seeing more of that on film.

I expected a horror film, and what I got was more along the lines of a drama. I'm not complaining, mind you. I always like those stories that examine just how far people might go to survive. This could have gone deeper, could have gone darker, but for a 80-ish minute long movie, it did nicely.

Rating: 4.5 Purrs

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

2010-03-05T11:05:00.001-06:00

“Draw a picture of my soul, and it’d be a scribble with fangs.”

This review should probably start with if you haven’t read Gillian Flynn, then shame on you. Now after saying that, I must put in a caveat. If dark, moody, borderline icky plots disturb you, maybe you should avoid reading her. Because Dark Places is pretty much what this book is. It’s a dark place, alright.

Libby Day was 7 when her brother murdered her entire family with an axe and a shot gun. She ran from the killer and survived. Now, after 25 years, a group called The Kill Club wants to pay her for her memories, her family heirlooms, and her help in proving that the testimony she gave when she was 7 years old was wrong. They believe her brother did not kill her family, and they want her help proving it. Libby agrees, especially since they will pay her, and her trust fund is running out. She can’t get a job and she doesn’t want one, so why not? Did her brother kill her family? Was it her alcoholic father? Was it someone else?

Libby is a broken, hurting woman, even if she doesn’t want to truly admit it to herself. Gillian Flynn seems to specialize in these types of characters, and she does a good job creating them. Libby grows, and I enjoyed watching her grow without losing who she was in the beginning.
The story flows from present day, following Libby as she uncovers the truth about her family, piece by piece, and into various chapters narrated by Libby’s mother and brother in the days leading up to the murders. You learn the truth as Libby does, and see it from both sides: Libby as she uncovers it and from the involved actors as well. It’s a very effective way to narrate the story. It’s not new, but I liked it.

Like I said before, Gillian Flynn is one of my new favorite authors. Sharp Objects blew me away. Dark Places definitely did not disappoint. This woman cannot write fast enough for me.

Rating: 5 Purrs for writing the best novel I have read in a while. It kept me engrossed and turning the pages for hours.

Watch Instantly Day 3

2009-11-03T11:27:00.007-06:00

Once again it's laundry day! You know what that means - time for the Roku.

The Haunting of Molly Hartley showed up in NetFlix Watch Instantly recently so of course I had to watch it. I never would have bothered getting a DVD of it to watch, but since it was so easy...well how could I not? Molly's mom goes a bit nuts and tries to kill her to save her before her 18th birthday. Why? Well it seems someone made a deal with the devil, so to speak. This was a fun little movie - not much substance but nothing terrible here.

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans also showed up. I went into this one with very low expectations and was very surprised to find a decent, romantic, gothy, slaves vs masters, vampires vs lycans story. It too was short to have a whole lot of fluff and it was interesting to see the backstory of why the vampires and werewolves hate each other so much. I would too, man. I would too. Hello, Michael Sheen & his buff self. Also very nice to look at. Towards the end - totally riveted to the action sword play. Yay for gothy music. Now I feel compelled to watch the others. I know. I am sad.

Black Hole by Charles Burns

2009-11-03T10:51:00.002-06:00

I picked up Black Hole by Charles Burns awhile ago because the cover looked interesting and it showed up as an item in my QPB catalog. I thought Steve would enjoy reading it but never really expected to ick it up myself. Then I read an article on MTV's Splash Page that listed it as one of the contributor's favorite horror comics. Well, that put it in a different light altogether. Of course I had to pick it up then.

In Black Hole, the teens in town either have "the bug" or not. "The bug" is an STD that passes from one to the other, causing some mutation or another. Some mutations aren't so bad, maybe an extra small mouth or your skin sheds. Some are really bad - disfiguring the face so much you can't recognize what the person looked like before. Regardless, once you have it, you have it forever.

The stories are sad and lonely, the art is stark black & white with severe shading that only enhances the feeling of separateness felt by the teens. It's horrific- the mutations, the alienation, the rage these kids feel, but I wouldn't consider it horror, at least not in the sense as I define it. It was however terribly good. I highly recommend it.

Rating: 5 Purrs for a haunting, sad, eerie story told with beautiful art

Watch Instantly Day 2

2009-10-29T17:00:00.000-05:00

I am currently addicted to watching horror movies on NetFlix Watch Instantly. I have been catching up on chores so I figure why not?

Here's today's haul:

Laid to Rest: This one ended up being a pretty decent slasher flick, surprisingly enough. A girl wakes up in a coffin with no idea who she is or where she is. She soon figures out that the guy in the Destro mask is out to kill her, and she must fight her way through this very small town to safety before he kills her. Lena Headley and Johnathan Schaech have small parts. The acting is good in this one. The plot isn't terribly original but the gore is rampant. Not bad for a rainy day.

Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus: You know you want to watch. You know you can't turn away. Nothing beats a movie that stars Debbie Gibson as an oceanographer who discovers the polar ice caps melting have released a giant octopus that devours oils rigs and a giant shark who leaps out of the ocean to snags planes from the air. This movie is epic. Debbie Gibson does science and stuff with test tubes! It even stars Lorenzo Lamas. How can you *not* watch it? I may have to buy this on DVD. It's so bad it's awesome.

Cold Prey: This Norwegian thriller is so very good. A group of friends go snowboarding off the beaten path to avoid the lines and tourists. Of course one of the friends hurts themselves and they ahve to take shelter for the night in a deserted inn. It's very creepy - my favorite setting is the old deserted location (you know, ghost ship, haunted houses, abandoned hospitals, etc.). The hapless, unsuspecting kiddos are sliced and diced but what's best about is you hardly ever see the killer. You see snippets of the boots, the axe, the parka, but it's like Jaws. No shark until the end. Really, this one is worth watching. It's tense, it's bloody, it's scary, it's got eye candy. The worse thing is the over-dubbing on the Watch Instantly version. The voices are bad and a bit cheesy. Definitely worth a watch - must look for the sequel.

Love Is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield

2009-10-29T15:36:00.003-05:00

I think I found this book via my QPB membership. It's more than likely. I seem to find the best books there. Love Is a Mix Tape is probably one of the sweetest, saddest books I have read in a long while.

In LIaMT, Rob Sheffield tells the story of how his love of music blossomed and how that love of music brought him to Renee, the woman he loved, married, and watched die in his arms one night after about 5 years of marriage. He tells the story using each chapter to show why a certain mix tape was important, the songs that were on it, and why it was even made.

I wondered how gimmicky that would feel after a few chapters, but it didn't feel gimmicky at all. Instead I found a love letter to music, the act of loving a song enough to give it to someone else, to add it in between other songs in order to change it, make it your own, and a love letter to the person we meet that we know will change our lives for the better, forever. Not only could I tell that Rob Sheffield loves music, but I could tell that he loves Renee, even now. It was and is a beautiful story. Anyone who has ever made a mix tape knows the magic in it, and Rob brings that magic, the joy the two of them shared, making tapes together, to the reader.

I got through reading maybe the first 2 chapters before I went into Steve's office and said, "This book - you have to read it. It's like it was written for you by you." I can appreciate it, but Steve, as a true music lover, will be able to get it in a way I can't.

Rating: 5 Purrs for telling the story of two people, so different and yet so right for each other. For making a very sad story into one of love and living.

Watch Instantly Day

2009-10-28T11:23:00.009-05:00

I am trapped at the house today waiting on the FedEx guy so I decided to take advantage of my Roku. Horror movies on Watch Instantly all day. Whee!

Pin: Ahh, the tales of a boy and his best friend Pin, the anatomically correct medical teaching dummy. Leon and Ursula grow up with their doctor dad who uses Pin, his medical teaching dummy, to teach them the lessons of life. Trouble is, Ursula grows up and knows Pin isn't real. Leon doesn't. In fact, Pin becomes his only friend, and Pin is jealous. Pin likes the stabby and the smacky and the beaty with blunt objects. This one was creepy in a maybe I should bathe with Lysol and steel wool sort of way.

House: No, not that one. This one with Michael Madsen for about two seconds. Two couples end up with torn up tires on a back country road. They stumble upon an old country bed & breakfast that may or may not have been there before. Creepy Leslie Easterbrook is the lady of the house, and soon the young couples realize not all is right with this family. Somehow the house is using their deep, dark secrets against them. Will they survive the night? Not too bad for a straight to DVD flick but nothing really new here.

Hack!: Well, they name checked Argento in the first few minutes so I am hoping the rest goes so well. There are several actors that have a name - Juliet Landau, Danika Macellar, Justin CHou (from Twilight!?)...and the idea is okay. A group of college students go to an island to observe the wildlife as an extra credit assignment. Someone starts killing them. Horror movie in-jokes and references abound. None of the actors are terrible, it just ends up dissolving into a tongue in cheek horror movie that could have been a contender.

Factotum by Charles Bukowski

2009-10-09T18:45:00.000-05:00

Ah Bukowski, how I love thee. I once told a friend the reason I like Bukowski so much is that he’s an asshole and makes no apology for it. I was comparing him to Jack Kerouac, who I like as well, but not as much as I like Bukowski. Somehow he ends up being a sympathetic character (well Henry Chinaski does) despite the fact that he drinks too much, is lazy, a jerk to everyone, and a real asshole to the ladies who hook up with him. I can’t help but admire someone who will throw all of those warts out there, perhaps even make them worse, and yet still make me actually like the character.

Factotum follows Henry Chinaski again, this time as he drifts from job to job in WWII America trying to make enough money to live on and pretty much making just enough to buy booze and play the horses. The whole novel pretty much consists of his applying for, getting, and losing various jobs interspersed with scenes of drunken stupors, drunken hook ups, and drunken trips to the racetrack.

I don’t know why I find it so appealing, but I do. I mean, when I describe it, it doesn’t sound all of that interesting, but it is. The language, the characters and so gritty, so urban, so dark, and so poetic and somehow Bukowski takes those dark, lost, ugly people and helps you identify with them, in his ability to not care one way or the other, makes you sympathize with them. I really can’t put my finger on just what it is, but he had it. I just wish there were more Bukowski books to read. As it is I have to parse them out here and there to make sure I don’t run out any time soon. Otherwise I would just read them back to back and forgo any other book. I can’t help it. I rarely gush over an author, but this one I totally fan girl over. Bukowski is my genius. I don’t want to be him, but I sure love to read him.

Rating: 4 ½ Purrs for pure, classic Bukowski – ugly warts and all

Jennifer's Body

2009-10-08T17:30:00.000-05:00

When I first heard about Jennifer’s Body on my favorite horror blog ever, Final Girl, I knew I had to see it. It really had nothing to do with the fact that Diablo Cody wrote it, although I liked Juno. It was mostly because the idea of Megan Fox playing a cheerleader who goes bad, really bad, and hungry for boys, if you know what I mean, and I think you do, made my toes wiggle with excitement. Feminist-ish horror. Yay!

*Here be perhaps a few spoilery-type items*

Jennifer Check is the popular girl. She’s the one that every girl wants to be and every guy want to sleep with. Somehow her best friend is geektastic Needy (nickname for Anita), despite the fact that they share little in common. Needy’s boyfriend Chip doesn’t get it. Most people don’t. But it works for them. After convincing Needy to go with her to the local bar to see an indie-rock bad (Low Shoulder) play, Jennifer hooks up with the “salty” lead singer who really just wants her for her virgin body. (Joke’s on them haha) Unfortunately, when you sacrifice a non-virgin to Satan to help your indie-rock band become the next Maroon Five, she gets all hungry for boy flesh. Let the chomping and seducing begin!

While I was pretty disappointed there was a gross lack of nudity in this horror film (hello- horror movies always have some), I did like the snappy, snarky dialog despite thinking it seemed a bit too snarky to be natural. There was some nice gore, and the scene where Jennifer takes the football guy into the woods for some afternoon delight is hilarious and gross all at the same time. It reminded me of one of my favorite South Park episodes (I think it was called Woodland Critter Christmas?). The lesbian tension between Jennifer and Needy is a big underlying sub-plot and always nice. (The kiss between the two of them was hot.)

I enjoyed Jennifer’s Body quite a lot (hush you – you know who you are) but I wouldn’t put it with my favorites. It’s almost as if it couldn’t find a balance between being funny and being serious so it never felt like one or the other. However, Adam Brody playing the indie-rock bank lead singer was an inspired casting choice. He was hilarious in his bits. I’d recommend this to my fellow horror geeks, but you could wait for DVD. If you aren’t about Megan Fox being sexy for an entire movie, you won’t be as interested in this one.

Rating: 4 Purrs for Megan Fox in tiny outfits, chomping with the best of them, and actually looking sallow here and there in the film – plus who doesn’t love the line – No, evil evil, not high-school evil.

The Little Sleep by Paul Tremblay

2009-10-05T20:25:00.000-05:00

My friend Matt recommended I read this book because he knows I love a good mystery. What could make a better mystery than a main character that can’t even remember what he is supposed to be investigating or who asked him to investigate?

In The Little Sleep, main character Mark Genevich is a PI. A narcoleptic PI. One who falls asleep mid-conversation. One who can’t tell reality from the hallucinations he suffers. He’s a guy who is pretty certain he’s been hired to investigate these nudie pictures that ended up on his desk, but for the life of him can’t remember who asked him to investigate or really even why. He thinks at first that the pictures were brought to him by a prominent DA’s daughter, Jennifer Times, because the photos look a bit like her, but he soon finds out that investigating something “real,” something not a divorce case is going to be more difficult than he imagined, especially when you can’t tell for sure if what you are seeing is real or not. Who really asked him to investigate? Who is actually in the pictures? Is there even a case at all or is it just Mark’s imagination?

I really liked this book. It did feel uneven in parts, but it is a first novel so it didn’t bother me that much. I liked how the plot kept you guessing, mostly because like Mark you aren’t sure what you are reading is real or hallucination. Some of the solution I had figured out by the end, but some of the bigger points I hadn’t. This I like: a mystery that keeps you guessing, quirky characters (but not so quirky they feel ridiculous), and homage to hard-boiled detective noir. If this sounds interesting to you give The Little Sleep a read. I can’t wait to see what else Paul Tremblay comes up with in his next novel. I will definitely pick it up and give it a try.

Rating: 4 Purrs for a sympathetic character who despite the odds stacked against him, finds out the truth without losing his snarky edge

Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith

2009-10-02T19:38:00.008-05:00

I will admit to finding Patricia Highsmith only after The Talented Mr. Ripley became a movie, but I have been slowly but steadily buying her books used very since. Strangers on a Train is her first novel, and it is a remarkable one. Most first novels you read end up being iffy, with promise but that certain tinge of not quite polished prose. Strangers on a Train had so little of that feel that I struggle to even remember it. Mr. Hitchcock liked it so much he felt compelled to make a movie out of it and we know Hitch knows his suspense.

In SoaT, Guy is just a guy (heh) who would really like to get a divorce from his poorly chosen first marriage so he can marry the sweet, rich girl of his dreams. (He really loves her; it's not a money thing.) He is taking the train back to his hometown to finally file the papers, and on this trip he meets Buddy, a spoiled rich kid who has it all but thinks his father is in between him and happiness. Buddy invites Guy back to his train compartment to have dinner and a drink, and Guy reluctantly accepts. It's probably the worst decision he ever made. You see, Buddy is a sociopath who feels he has hatched the fool-proof plan for murder. He tells Guy you kill my dad, and I will kill your medlesome wife. No one will ever know. It'll be great. Guy is horrified, and what follows is one of the tautest thrillers I have read.

Highsmith really knows how to show a man completely dissolve all of himself. She shows him lose everything that is pure and hopeful, and makes it so real you know it could happen to you. That's why I love her work. The heroes in her stories aren't perfect; they are everyman. You could be there; you could be that person, clinging desperately to sanity and hope but all the while knowing it is over. She starts that path in Strangers on a Train. It is an excellent one.

Rating: 5 Purrs for a brilliant first novel

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick

2009-09-08T18:45:00.000-05:00

I never read a lot of PDK before this year. I read some of his short stories, which I liked well enough, but I didn't like them enough to really pick up a full book and give it a whirl. That was until my friend John recommended Ubik. Then I fell into serious lust. I believe I went right out and bought another 5 PKD books the very next day after finishing that one. I was told to pick up Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? next. I have to admit, I loved it, but not as much as Ubik. Not that Androids wasn't exceptional, trust me. It was. But Ubik was such a mind fuck, I don't know that anything will top it.

I loved the movie, Blade Runner, so I fully expected to find many similarities between the two, but as most book adaptations go, it was not meant to be. Actually, I didn't mind that at all, which is unusual for me. Androids focuses on Rick Deckard, an android bounty hunter, his pursuit of some escaped androids, and his desire to own a real animal, which is some sort of status symbol/religous thing in this story's universe. Really, though, the whole story focuses on the question of what it is to be human, as many of the androids Deckard hunts maintain that he himself is more android, more machine, than they are, and what happens to our humanity once we rely on technology so much that we have to own a real animal just to feel a bond with another living thing.

I love the ending, which I can't go into here because it is really worth reading for yourself. Other than that, I must say Androids is definitely work reading, although Ubik is still my favorite. Of course, I think I have about 4 other PDK books to read, so something else might knock Ubik out of its number 1 spot. Maybe.

Rating: 4 Purrs

My Name Is Bruce

2009-09-04T10:39:00.004-05:00

"Consider yourself officially exempt from my wrath sweetcakes, and if you're lucky a little later I'll let you play with my boomstick."

Okay, let's get one thing straight. I love Bruce Campbell. I'll watch him in anything. I'll watch Briscoe County, Jr. I watch Burn Notice because of him. I have even watched some of those really bad B-movies this movie makes fun of in droves. I.Love.Bruce.Campbell. After watching My Name Is Bruce, I can't help but love him even more. I mean the entore movie is pretty much him making fun of himself. His string of B-Movies. His string of C-Movies. His Hollywood "fame" or lack thereof. His ways with women. His chin. This movie felt like Drop Dead Gorgeous, where nothing was off limits, only instead of Lutherans, God, and beauty pageants, it's nothing is off limits in relation to Bruce Campbell & his career.

In My Name Is Bruce, Bruce Campbell is filming another one in a long line of C-Movies. He's a drunk and a womanizer. However, there is one true fan out there, and he needs Bruce's help. You see he awoke a Chinese demon in his small town, and that demon is slash happy. Who do you call? Well, Bruce Campbell of course. Unfortunately for Mr. Campbell, he discovers that the guy in the rubber suit is in fact a demon, and this whole thing is not a movie set like he thought. Will Bruce gather the courage to defeat the demon and win the lovely lady? You must watch to find out.

I fully acknowledge that this was a low budget, goofy, stupidly written movie. But come on - Bruce Campbell! Making fun of himself! It rarely gets better than that.

Rating: 5 Purrs - loved every stupid, god-awful, man-in-rubber suit minute of it.

The Mutant Chronicles

2009-08-30T22:34:00.003-05:00

I rented The Mutant Chronicles from NetFlix, mostly because I love Thomas Jane in just about anything. I'm not sure I can forgive him this one though. This one felt more like a straight to SyFy (why oh why change your name why?) flick, not even a straight to DVD flick. It was that bad.

In some weird steampunk 1910 type universe, there are 4 corporations. They fight each other using trench warfare. A hole opens up and the mutants come out, slashing in lovely CGI gore. (by lovely I mean BAD. Really bad.) The world is lost (oh no!) and the Fellowship of the Ring must take the one ring to Mordor...wait wrong movie. A rag tag group of super fighters from the various corporations must band together to blow up the machine and save the planet. I know, it is as silly as it sounds.

What seemed somewhat interesting at first only heads pretty much straight into boring, oh-my-god seriously territory very quickly. The idea of a steampunk type world based on WWI rather than the Victorian Age could have been really interesting. In fact it held my attention here and there. Unfortunately the painful acting, awful plot, and ridiculous John Malkovich cameo just killed it. Oh and the, really that's the end ending. That too. I knew the minute the camera panned up to a red-clocked figure and I saw it was Ron Perlman that this movie was doomed. I like Ron Perlman, but with a fake accent and missing his HellBoy make-up, well, it just didn't seem right.

I really wouldn't recommend this one even to die-hard sci-fi fans. It's just too painful. And I like goofy sci-fi movies. Shut off the DVD player and read some Philip K Dick instead.

Rating: Hiss. Hiss I say!

The Last House on the Left (remake)

2009-08-25T09:01:00.000-05:00

I loved the original Last House on the Left. Wes Craven truly was a seriously horrific stroyteller back in the 70's and 80's. The Hills Have Eyes, Nightmare on Elm Street, and The Serpent and the Rainbow are some of my favorite horror movies. I loved the remake of The Hills Have Eyes. It didn't change much, and it felt very gritty and gross, just like the original. Luckily, the people responsible for the remake of The Last House on the Left took a page out of that book and kept the feeling, flavor, and horror of the original and made a great movie.

Mari and her parents have come up to their lake house to spend the summer, and Mari soon borrows the car to go meet her summer friend Paige to hang out and just be teenagery together. If you have ever watched a horror movie, you know this bodes not well for the two girls. They soon meet Justin, a hapless underage kid trying to buy cigarettes. The girls go back to hang out with Justin at his hotel, and unfortunately for them, Krug and the Gang show up and they are none too happy. Once the girls are tortured, raped, and sliced and diced, the gang takes refuge at Mari's lake house, where Mari's unsuspecting parents take them in during a horrible storm. Soon the parents discover just who their guests are and what they have done, and that's when the good stuff happens. Beware the parents who must fight for their child. They seek vengeance, y'all, and boy is it bloody. It's pure gore, sloppy violence. None of this insta-hero with super strength suddenly becoming Rambo. These people discover a revenge streak they never knew they had, and even thouogh they are clumsy, fall over, get beaten up, they still keep fighting. It's glorious.

I really thought the actors were excellent. Krug and the Gang (ha ha) really are creepy and Justin is such a sad character. The violence is truly horrific, although I remember the original being a bit more violent regarding the torture of the two hapless teenagers. The rape scene is awful; I couldn't watch it at all. My eyes were closed and I had my ears shut as tight as they could be. I watched the unrated version, so maybe the rated wasn't as bad. Let's just say it made my skin crawl right off. If you can get past all of that build up, all of that tension, the last half of the movie is well worth the wait. Tony Goldwyn and Monica Potter exact a revenge worth watching, and I cheered as the bad guys had the tables turned on them.

If you can make it through the torture scenes, you might enjoy this one. I am glad I watched it, but I won't be watching it again. It was just too much to get through that lead up.

Rating: 4 1/2 Purrs for making me really uncomfortable and then giving me a chance to cheer for the good guys as they kick ass.

The Happening

2009-08-23T22:23:00.003-05:00

I avoided The Happening like the plague until it finally came on HBO and I DVRd it. I really wish, after watching it all the way through, mouth agape in wonder at how bad a movie could possibly be, that I could hunt Mr. Sixth Sense down and ask him for my hour and a half back. I mean, I have seen bad movies. I enjoy bad movies. I watch them with relish. Usually, those movies are so bad they are good. Even Manos, Hands of Fate was worthy of watching, simply because the MST3K guys made watching it enjoyable. I am sad to say that I doubt even those guys could make The Happening worth watching again. I think my mistake wasn’t hunting down a RiffTrax or Cinematic Titanic track to watch with it. Then maybe, just maybe I wouldn’t be so bitter about the 1.5 hours this movie cost me. I don’t know though. Maybe not.

What I liked about this movie. Hm. That’s a tough one. Is there anything? Well, there were some scenes that could have been truly disturbing. Unfortunately, they were all in the trailer. The images of people throwing themselves off of buildings, hanging from trees, and all other forms of mass suicide could have been horrific, if they were in the hands of a more capable director. Unfortunately, they weren’t.

I could take that leap of faith and think that Marky Mark Walberg was intelligent enough to actually teach a junior high science class. If I squinted enough and just jumped right in there and suspended that disbelief, I could believe that two people, one of whom is a favorite actress (Zooey Deshanel) could be married, despite a complete lack of chemistry. I mean, a complete lack. None. In fact, I often wondered if they were in the same movie, shooting the same scenes together, seeing as so much of it is shot in single actor frames, sort of like how no one believes Pacino and DeNiro were in Heat together because they never seemed to be in the same frame. Seriously, so much of the movie was shot in these single actor frames I wonder if anyone was actually shooting the same scene at the same time.

So much of the plot was telegraphed early one that I can't help but think I would have known the big a-ha twist even if it hadn't been spoiled for me but dozens of others. I mean, at the beginning, one of the kids in Marky Mark's science class says, "An act of nature, and we'll never fully understand it." I think Mr. Sixth Sense thought he was being profound, but you know, not really. And when I heard it I knew it would come back around. And guess what. It did. And when it did, I seriously eye-rolled my whole body. I half-way expected some big drum roll in the background.

I don't think this movie was supposed to make me laugh, but it did. Out loud. I almost cried I laughed so hard. I seriously wonder if any of the actors read the script before signing on, and if they did, what on Earth possessed them to go ahead and sign up? If not, did they fire their agents after reading the script? And how on Earth did anyone greenlight this project? I want to find out who it was and punch them right in the baby-maker. Yes, yes I do.

If you want to watch a ludicrous killer plant movie, watch something better, like Day of the Triffids. Or better yet, read the book. It's a better use of your time than this painful. heavy-handed, oh-so-dramatic drivel. I swear this is the absolute last time I watch a M. Night Shyamalan movie. I have now been burned bad enough to take no more chances.

Rating: Can I give more than 5 hisses? Cause I would. Hell, it's my blog. Hisses to the infinite power for this one.

District 9

2009-08-16T15:08:00.003-05:00

I have been waiting forever to see District 9 pretty much since I first read about it way back in Rolling Stone's or Entertainment Weekly's Summer movie preview. They described it as a thinker's hard sci fi movie, and yes, that's pretty much what we got. Finally, truth in advertising. Ha.

I hate to give too much away, because I really think the less you know about District 9, the happier you will be with the movie. What you see in the trailer is this: a derelict alien spacecraft has is sitting in the sky over Johannesburg. The aliens inside are refugees of sorts, and have been relocated to an area called District 9. Folks are not too pleased, as you would expect.

I loved the real time, documentary feel of the film. It felt like Cloverfield, only I didn't get the nice wooziness I had seeing that one on the big screen. Ugh. This had just the right balance of sci fi, gore, tension, and social commentary to make me happy. I would have to say it's one of the best films I have seen this year, and definitely one of the best I have seen this summer. It was like a Night of the Living Dead in the midst of a collection of Speed Racers. I loved Speed Racer, it was a fun popcorn movie, but Night of the Living Dead had weight. It had substance and was fun all at once.

I can't recommend District 9 enough. It was so good, you have to go see it. Maybe we can get more movies like this if this one makes enough money.

Rating: 4 1/2 Purrrrrrssss - I would definitely see it again.

Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski

2009-08-11T12:36:00.004-05:00

Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski (besides having the hardest name ever in the world to type) is another one of those Quality Paperback Book club books that I bought on a whim, and after losing my job a couple of months ago, found even funnier and more full of black comedy than maybe if I were still working. It was truly an enjoyable book - dark, bloody, funny, and so, so satirical it almost burns like razor burn.

One hot Saturday in August, the boss has called in his key personnel into the office for a 9 AM meeting. No one knows why, least of all Jamie Debroux, who has been out the last month on paternity leave. After all, he's not really part of the inner circle; he's just a press writer. When he shows up, the conference room is stocked full of cookies, orange juice, and champagne, and the Knox, the boss, announces something very unexpected. It seems the business is a front for the intelligence community, and they are being shut down. In intelligence-speak, that means everybody has to die. They can choose to drink the mimosas and die quietly, or get a bullet in the head. Naturally, all hell breaks lose, because well, Jamie was in the dark, but not everyone else was. It's a fight to the death, with the clique making more alliances than a season of Prison Break, and no one knowing who to trust. Will Jamie survive to see his family again? You have to read to find out.

Like I said, it's very fun. Think film noir crossed with The Bourne Identity and Quentin Tarantino. It's bloody, characters are simply drawn but end up not being who you thought they were when you first meet them, and it's fairly tightly written. Overall, I would recommend it. It's not brilliant piece of literature, but it's higher on the scale than a worthwhile beach read.

Rating: 4 Purrs for a fast, page turning read. I read this puppy in maybe 8 hours.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

2009-08-02T13:18:00.003-05:00

I don't know how how many people told me Forgetting Sarah Marshall was hilarious. They were right. It's all in the mix - Kristen Bell plays just the right amount of bitch and cute, Mila Kunis is adorable, the Apatow regulars are a perfect background mix, Russell Brand was funnier than I expected, and Jason Segel was downright perfect. He is such a nice mix of goofball, sweet, funny that he really does seem to be the guy you would love to bring back to the parents.

Am I the only person in the world who would love to see the full production of Dracula puppets? Surely not...

Progress on my Book List for the 9/9/9 Project

2009-08-01T13:54:00.005-05:00

Here's an update on my 9/9/9 project. That's 9 books in 9 categories in 2009 (plus an extra few to make it up to 100 this year). Books in bold I have read. You would think I would have been caught up by now, but so far I believe the count is at 39 for the year. I should be at 50 or so by now if I am going to make 100. Hm.

Books I should have read but haven't (The Classics)

Sanditon and Other Stories by Jane Austen
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
I, Robot by Issac Asimov
Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
The Monk by Matthew Lewis
The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner
Middlemarch by George Eliot

Books picked by Steve (and recommended by others)

The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Post Office by Charles Bukowski
UBIK by Philip K Dick
Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

Collections and Anthologies (short stories and poetry)

QPB Anthology of Women's Writing edited by Susan Cahill
The Disobedience of Water: Stories and Novellas by Sena Jeter Naslund
Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut
The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
The Best of Roald Dahl by Roald Dahl
Morning in the Burned House by Margaret Atwood
The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot
Just After Sunset by Stephen King
Transformations by Anne Sexton

True Stories, Writing, Biographies, History...in Other Words Non-Fiction

Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul by Karen Abbott
Art & Fear by David Bayles
The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson
Secret Lives of Great Authors: What Your Teachers Never Told You About Famous Novelists, Poets, and Playwrights by Robert Schnakenberg
A Biography of Zelda by Nancy Milford
Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West by Ethan Rarick
The Journalist and The Murder by Janet Malcom
The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston
Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach

Good Intentions: Books I Own but Keep Avoiding

The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides
Snobs by Julian Fellowes
Fragile Things Neil Gaiman
Love by Toni Morrison
The Body Artist by Don DeLillo
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Where or When by Anita Shreve
Atonement by Ian McEwan

Books Turned into Movies

L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindquist
The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis
The Stand by Stephen King
The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry
Zodiac by Robert Graysmith
Blindness by Jose Saramago

Books from Childhood (or that I wish had been there for me to read)

The Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander (The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Lyr, Taran Wander, The High King)
The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K. LeGuin (The Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory & The Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures by Walter Moers
Peter Pan by J.M Barrie
The 13 Clocks by James Thurber

Books translated into English

After Dark by Haruki Murakami
The Helmet of Horror: The Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur by Victor Pelevin
Perfume by Patrick Suskind
Have Mercy on Us All: A Novel (Chief Inspector Adamsberg Mysteries) by Fred Vargas
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Seeing by Jose Saramago
Never Let Me Go by Nazuo Ishigino

Classic Mysteries

The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr
Inspector Morse: The Last Bus to Woodstock by Colin Dexter
Uncle Silas by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Dashiell Hammett novel collection
The Blunderer by Patricia Highsmith
Brown's Requiem by James Ellroy
The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly
Knots & Crosses by Ian Rankin

Whatever, Whatever, I'll read what I want...

Ghost: A Novel by Alan Lightman
The Lighthouse by P. D. James
The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll
Dead & Gone by Charlaine Harris
Love is a Dog from Hell by Charles Bukowski
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
Real World by Natsuo Kirino
Picture Me Dead by Heather Graham
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Deep Red

2009-05-31T17:26:00.003-05:00

Dario Argento is hands down the director that got me from watching regular Americanized horror movies and into watching foreign films. Argento was my gateway drug, so to speak. Suspria was the first one I saw. Deep Red was the second, and then I was hooked. Truly, seriously hooked.

Deep Red is a giallo, full of the traditional bright red blood, the over-the-top murders, and the beautiful art direction and use of color. The story this time around is a psychic is conducting a show and in the process ends up reading the mind of a murderer. David Hemmings witnesses her murder (the brutal, bloody kind of course), and ends up getting involved with Daria Nicoldi, playing the intrepid news hound, to help solve the murder. Whose mind did the psychic read? Who killed her? Will David and Daria figure out the true story and solve the crime without getting killed?

I love the brilliant color use here. You can tell Argento was looking towards Suspiria and it’s beautiful use of color. I also can’t help but love the Edward Hopper reference there at the beginning with the “blue bar” scene. The murders and the mystery are actually pretty good. The solution is hardly telegraphed throughout the movie at all. To top it off, you have a killer Goblin soundtrack. Man I love those guys.

Dario Argento really did some of his best work at this time. Deep Red is truly a classic.

Rating: 5 Purrs for one of my favorite films. Plus you gotta love a movie that was also named The Hatchet Murders.

Horrorfest 2009 - How many horror movies can I watch? Part 4

2009-05-27T23:58:00.000-05:00

So I skipped out last night on the movie viewing, and read a whole bunch instead. So tonight I am back on track, especially since I am off work for the next few days and I can stay up late. Never fear, I am trying really hard to meet my sister-in-law's expectations of 25 movies while the spouse is out of town I'm on 15 now, for those who are counting). So tonight is a night of classics rather than B-Movies. Tonight I watch the good stuff. (I don't think I have Suspiria in me tonight, but it's on the list.)

The Shining: God, I love this movie. I remember reading the book when I was in high school and being overwhelmed with how terrifying the story was and yet also how beautiful. Kubrick takes Stephen King's vision and makes it his own without ever really losing the essence of the story that King created. Jack Nicholson is damn frightening, the kid is so cute and creepy, and Shelly Duvall is terrified. You can tell she is totally stressed out by working with Nicholson and Kubrick.
Jaws: I watch this movie even if it's showing on regular TV with commercials and all the good stuff chopped out. Stephen Spielberg makes good movies, but I think this is one of his best. It seems sometimes crap happens for a reason, so I can't help but be happy that Bruce the Shark was such a pissy creature that they could only show him towards the end. It certainly makes that first appearance a shocker, even on the 100th viewing. Plus, that opening scene is downright scary, no matter how many times you watch it. Jaws did the ocean for me like Psycho did for some and showers. I still can't get in the water much more than hip deep without thinking about this film., and to me, that says perfection. That says true horror - forget all the slash, slice, dice and naked teenagers (not that I don't like watching those too of course).

Just After Sunset by Stephen King

2009-05-27T21:55:00.003-05:00

To be honest, I didn't think Just After Sunset was nearly as good as Everything's Eventual, Stephen King's previous short story collection, but I do love how King writes those short stories.

I think my favorite might be The Gingerbread Girl. The main character here takes up running after a tragedy strikes her family. When I say takes up running, I mean seriously running. Like all the time until she feels like dropping dead (which I have totally felt before but that's because running is like Heaven and dying to me. It's a weird combo, I know.). Of course, this obsessive/compulsive running comes into play later in the story when she has to run with purpose.

Otherwise, the stories all kind of ran together for me. I'm not saying they weren't good, but none of them really stood out to me like The Gingerbread Girl, except for maybe N., which channels Lovecraft (even if King says it doesn't). I love the play on obsessive/compulsive behavior in that story.

Overall, I will always love Stephen King's ability to write short stories. It seems like a lost art form these days. But despite that, I can't wax poetic about this collection.

Rating: 4 Purrs for The Gingerbread Girl, 3 1/2 for everything else

Horrorfest 2009 - How many horror movies can I watch? Part 3

2009-05-25T21:23:00.004-05:00

Monday Night's Viewing

Tonight is the night of goof-ball, B-Movies.

Horror Planet: This low-budget horror flick is pretty silly. A group of explorers are working some sort of mine on a far away planet and they discover some crystals that wake up some really big-eyed alien who decides he likes one of the chickies. Lots of people dies, the girl gets knocked up by the alien, and then everybody goes crazy. Some pretty interesting deaths, but really you could skip it. I watched it for nostalgia's sake after I found it on my Roku.
Killer Klowns from Outer Space: Basset Hound (my second choice for a dog after the Welsh Corgi)! No horrorfest is complete without a viewing of Killer Klowns. Really, what other movie has a gun that turns people into big balls of cotton candy?
Chopping Mall: I have a fondness for this movie because it's by the same guy who directed my favorite Christmas story - Night of the Comet, plus it stars Kelli Maroney, also star of Night of the Comet. It's cheeseball at it's cheesiest. Robots patrol the shopping mall, but unfortunately a lightning strike makes them go haywire crazy on a group of kids who sneak into the mall to have a sleepover. Blood, explosions, cheesy 80's hair. It's awesome. "It's not you, Ferdy. I'm just not used to be chased around a mall in the middle of the night by killer robots. " Where else would something like that make sense?

Horrorfest 2009 - How many horror movies can I watch? Part 2

2009-05-24T17:40:00.004-05:00

Sunday Night' s Viewing Extravaganza:

Blackout: Found this on on NetFlix Watch Instantly and watched it on my Roku. It's actually not that good. In fact, it got kind of icky squeamish at the end but then it was just blah. Three strangers are trapped in an elevator in a deserted apartment building with little hope of rescue. All of them have some place to be, but only one of them needs to dispose of a body. That's right, one of them is a serial killer. It's pretty obvious right off who the bad guy is going to be and it takes forever to come to a head.
House of Wax: God, I love this movie! Giant house built out of wax, roadside attractions, icky, icky deaths, creepy twins, the list goes on. This is an awesome remake, well re-imagining really, that no matter how many times I watch it I still get spooked and cringe.
Shaun of the Dead: Okay so this might be more of a horror comedy, but it still counts. I love these guys, plus Lucy Davis, Dylan Moran...well this is just about the best horror comedy ever.
Land of the Dead: Keeping with the Zed word, and the Edgar Wright Simon Pegg team (cameos!), I figured I would watch Asia Argento and Simon Baker kick zombie ass. This one isn't as good as Dawn of the Dead, but I thought it was better than Diary of the Dead and Day of the Dead, especially the Day of the Dead remake (which was downright painful).
Shark Attack 3: Megalodon: This movie is so bad is awesome. Seriously, it might be the absolute worst movie I have ever seen. Manos Hands of Fate was better. John Barrowman (Capt. Jack Harkness) is one of the harbor patrol at a Mexican resort. Big, prehistoric shark shows up and starts chomping away. When I say big shark, I mean like a great white they have forced perspective on or taken in Photoshop and stretched it so it can *swallow people on boats whole.* Like I said, this movie is so bad it is awesome.

Horrorfest 2009 - How many horror movies can I watch?

2009-05-23T22:34:00.003-05:00

When my spouse decided to hit the road for a solo road trip the week of Memorial Day, I decided it was prime time to indulge in my guilty pleasure - horror movies. The good, the bad, and the way below B-quality. I wondered how many I could watch the week he was gone. One friend bet 12, my sister-in-law is betting 25. I'm curious to see which one is closest. So far, I am on movie 5 since he left mid-day on Friday.

Here's what my viewing schedule has been so far:

The Fog: The original, of course. John Carpenter is the king as far as cheesy 80's horror goes. Tom Atkins, Jamie Lee Curtis, and the always lovely Adrienne Barbeau take on spooky sailors who come back to seek revenge on the folks in Antonio Bay, CA who done them wrong. Synth heavy JC music, creepy fog, and lots of spooky sailor ghost action makes this one an old favorite, which in turn makes me so sad the remake sucked so badly (which doesn't matter because I own it anyway). The scene where the possessed driftwood makes the tape recorder creepy ghost voice freaks me out every time. It's downright spooky, no matter how many times I watch it.
Halloween (Unrated): Rob Zombie takes on a John Carpenter classic. It's no where as good as the original, and Scout Taylor Compton is in no way as good as Jamie Lee Curtis was in embodying the terrified, goody-two shoes Laurie Strode. But honestly, I loved watching Malcolm McDowell chew up the screen playing Dr. Loomis, and while I think some remakes suffer from trying to put too much background to the spooky killer, I like the young Michael Myers scenes. It almost loses my attention once Myers grows up and the teenagers get to dying.
The Lost Boys: I haven't watched this one in ages. I remember loving this movie in high school, quoting it endlessly, and having such a huge crush on Alex Winter. Honestly, the music hasn't aged well at all, but it's still a fun, bloody watch. The end kills are just awesome, and Keifer Sutherland is still one of the coolest vampires ever. Even with the age, the dialogue is still snappy, the blood still bloody, and it makes me miss California even more. Any movie with a grandpa that gives you taxidermied animals and kills the head honcho vamp with a truck and a fence post is up for Grandfather of the Year.
28 Days Later: I haven't watched this one in forever too, so watching it was almost like watching it for the first time. I forget just how perfect this movie is, from the beautiful, haunting soundtrack, to the story, the scary infected, the actors, everything. Truly one of my favorites. Plus, Cillian Murphy is very high on my list. Argue if you must, but I am not sure I would count this as a zombie movie. I just can't make up my mind. Really, it doesn't matter. That rage virus is horrifying whether you attach the zed word to it or not.
28 Weeks Later: I couldn't watch one without the other. The thing about these movies is they combine three of my favorite ideas - plague, end of civilization as we know it, and well, zombies (there, I said it). The sequel is not as good as the original, but I like how they didn't just retread like a lot of sequels do. Imogen Poots is beautiful (the sister), and I love Jeremy Renner. I'm interested to see what they do with the next one.

Acquisitions to the Library

2009-05-02T19:52:00.003-05:00

Even more books. I am on a roll.

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller
Pulp by Charles Bukowski
The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories by Charles Bukowski
Love Is a Dog from Hell by Charles Bukowski
Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut

I think I am on a serious Philip K Dick, Kurt Vonnegut, and Charles Bukowski fetish this year.

Recent Acquisitions to the Library

2009-04-26T16:58:00.004-05:00

My most recent haul from Half-Price Books.

Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
Just After Sunset by Stephen King
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by JK Rowling
Underworld by Don DeLillo
Clandestine by James Ellroy
The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs: A Novel by Irvine Welsh
Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Other Stories by Charles Dickens
A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle
Transformations by Anne Sexton
Filmmakers Series - Fellini's Films by Burke
The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston
The Penultimate Truth by Philip K. Dick
Death Is a Lonely Business by Ray Bradbury
Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka
Sweetheart by Chelsea Cain
Next by Michael Crichton

Recent Acquisitions to the Library

2009-04-25T14:21:00.002-05:00

I just picked up some new books:

Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut (I needed a new copy - mine was falling apart.)
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick
A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick
The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis
An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke
Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski
The Women by Charles Bukowski
Factotum by Charles Bukowski

Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski

2009-04-21T21:05:00.004-05:00

I never would have picked up Charles Bukowski on my own if it weren't for 3 different people waxing poetic about him, so I threw in the towel and tried him out. Wow. I wasn't sure about him because although I understood the significance of On the Road, I just didn't fall in love with it, so more Beats, well, I wasn't interested. But damn if Mr. Bukowski didn't blow me away. Technically, he's not a Beat, but he has a similar style. So far I have read Post Office and Ham on Rye this year, and I have several more queued up in the library to read. I am parsing them out so I don't run through everything too quickly; that's how much I like Bukowski. He is reaching Vonnegut proportions for me.

Ham on Rye is set in Bukowski's younger years and man if the guy can't create a vibrant visual image using like, 3 words.

If you are interested in an author who can write using concise, simple language to create images that stick with you, beauty out of the ugly. gilding out of the sow's ear so to speak, then check him out. He runs up there with my e.e. cummings, Kurt Vonnegut, and (new) Philip K. Dick obsession.

Rating: 5 Purrs so far...there's still so much to read!

Ubik by Philip K. Dick

2009-04-20T17:00:00.000-05:00

I had a friend recommend Ubik to me, saying it's one of those books that leaves you saying, "what the hell just happened?" Well, he was right, because that's the exact reaction I had when I read the last paragraph. I can't get this book out of my head.

I read a collection of Philip K. Dick short stories awhile back, and I really wasn't sure I would like another go around. His short stories just felt like too much of a "ta-da" ending, a la Twilight Zone, but I think that's because it was a whole lot of them all at once. Ubik was almost a whole other animal. Glen Runciter runs a business full of anti-telepaths that people hire to protect their secrets. On a trip to the moon, a bomb goes off and the real adventure begins. Who lived and who died? Reality starts to change, shifting backwards in time and soon you don't know what is going on or what is real and neither do the characters.

I want to say more about the plot, but I am afraid that giving too much away would spoil the greatness that is Ubik. I'll never doubt Philip K. Dick again, and dang it, now I have to accept that every time that friend recommends a book I should pay attention. I can't get this damn book out of my head, and I keep twisting and turning it about like maybe then I could figure it out.

Rating: 5 Purrs for totally blowing me away

Let the Right One In

2009-04-18T14:50:00.000-05:00

Oskar: Are you really twelve?

Eli: Yes. It's just I've been twelve for a very long time.

I heard all sorts of good things about Let the Right One In about the same time Twilight came out in the theaters. I missed it in the theater, so when I stumbled upon the actual book, I snatched that puppy up like it was a tub of Chubby Hubby Ben & Jerry's ice cream (I can never find that most favorite flavor in the grocery store, people. If you can, you are most lucky.) It was one of the best books I have read this year, maybe even one of the best horror novels I have ever read. The movie, while beautiful and haunting in its own way, is not nearly as perfect as the original source.

The book: Totally immersive. Descriptive and foreign. Disturbing. A whole new ball game when it comes to vampires. Not that you've never seen a story that involves vamp children, because it has been done before, but this version is way more than just a vampire story. It's more about the relationship between Oskar and Eli, the joy they find in each other. It's tender, and that's not an adjective I would ever think I would want to hear in conjunction with the word "vampire," but hey, it works. It works amazingly well. Here you have this young boy, terribly lonely, bullied, on the outside. Then he meets this strange girl who is not who she first appears to be, a little odd, but somehow their souls know each other. I know that sounds romantic, which it really isn't...but it's like they were lost and when they met, well, they weren't.

The movie: The movie covered most of the major plot points in the book, but so much backstory and depth was left out, it was a pale imitation of what it could have been. Now, it was good, don't get me wrong. I think if I hadn't read the book beforehand, I probably would have been enamored with it all. The visuals were striking - all of that cold and snow added quite a bit to the atmosphere, and it was nice to put actual visuals to what the book described in the way of location. The scene at the beginning in the forest is truly tense and haunting. I really wish the Blu-Ray didn't have that pesky overdubbing. The voices seemed all wrong.

I loved the book and I liked the movie. I recommend both. If I were you, I would see the movie first, just to keep from constantly looking for the wonderful subplots and characters that you read in the book.

Rating: 5 Purrs for the book, 4 1/2 Purrs for the movie

The Convent

2009-04-16T21:38:00.003-05:00

"Prince of Evil? You work at fuckin' Dairy Creme for crissakes."

The Convent started off strong, pussed out in the middle, and got better towards the end for a bit. I picked it up because Final Girl reviewed it awhile back and it sounded worth a viewing. I'm not sure I can recommend it though, because despite the few bits here and there, it really was awful.

The Convent starts off with the best scene - a chick in a leather motorcycle jacket and Catholic schoolgirl outfit enters a chapel, disrupting what seems to be some sort of religious service. She whips out a shotgun, starts blasting away, and then burns the place down. All of this to the tune of "It's My Party" I think, or some such similar song. It's awesome in a cheesy horror movie sort of way. Then it all goes downhill when we zoom forward to the present - and a group of stereotypical college kids are geared up to hit the Convent where all the bad stuff went down. You know what happens when a group of kids gets together to smoke out and have the premarital sex. Especially when the local satan worshipers sacrifice a virgin. Yes, I know. It's too good to be true. It's like Santa came early, but then when you open your presents they really ended up being white tube socks. Enter evil nun and priest possession and goretastic attacks to the tune of really, really bad techno music. Techno music so disjointing it woke me up from my almost nap. But then, when all hope seemed lost, who shows up but Adrienne Barbeau. Ms. Escape from New York plays that Catholic schoolgirl all grown up. She commences to kick ass and take names, until the movie begins to suck again.

Really, I wouldn't rent this unless you really must see every movie Adrienne Barbeau is in. It's really not so good, even for folks who like really bad horror movies. I tried. Really, I tried. I had hopes there in that opening scene, but then the movie just stomped all over those hopes and dreams. Stomp, stomp, stomp.

9/9/9 Comics January - March Progress

2009-04-06T23:30:00.000-05:00

Graphic Novels recommended by Jeremy and his cohorts at Titan

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
Therefore, Repent! by Jim Munroe
The Blot by Tom Neeley
The Travels of Thelonious by Susan Schade
The Aviary by Jamie Tanner
Glister Volume 1
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Graphic Novels recommended by Steve

Graphic Novels recommended by others

The Complete Persepolis
Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth
Burnout by Rebecca Donner and Inaki Miranda
Local, Issues 1-3 by Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly
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Independent graphic novels

Re-Gifters by Mike Carey
The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci
Dead at 17: the 13th Brother by Josh Howard
Polly and the Pirates by Ted Naifeh
Lava Punch by Ben Seto
Last Exit Before Toll by Neal Schaffer
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Next in the Series (because I have a lot of series that I read and a lot of backlog here)

Walking Dead Volume 6
Walking Dead Volume 7
Walking Dead Volume 8
Hell and Back: Sin City
Fables Volume 11: War & Pieces
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It's the end of the world as I know it: Dystopias

DMZ Volume 1
DMZ Volume 2
DMZ Volume 3
DMZ Volume 4
Channel Zero
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Zombies, Vampires, Vampire Slayers, and other stuff of the supernatural

Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Vol. 1: Guilty Pleasures
Buffy Season 8 single issues, catch up
Zebediah the Hillbilly Zombie Redneck Bites the Dust
Pablo's Inferno: An innocent child's descent into the Underworld and Beyond
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Men (and women) in Tights: Superheroes

Superman Red Sun
Bulletproof Monk
Fallen Angel Volume 1
Elektra Lives Again
Wonder Woman: Love and Murder
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Adaptations of Books

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Black Dossier
Horror Classics: Graphic Classics
Graphic Classics: Robert Louis Stevenson
Graphic Classics: Mark Twain
Richard Mathesons' Hell House
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Whatever, Whatever, I'll read what I want...

Fell Volume 1: Feral City
Flight, Volume 1
The Killer, Volume 1
Ex Machina Volume 1
Ex Machina Volume 2
Ex Machina Volume 3
Ex Machina Volume 4
Ex Machina Volume 5
Ex Machina Valume 6
Jack of Fables Volume 1
We3 by Grant Morrison
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9/9/9 Books January-March Progress

2009-04-06T22:20:00.000-05:00

Here's an update. Books in bold I have read. Yeah, I am a little behind...I'm at 15, working on 16.

Books I should have read but haven't (The Classics)

Sanditon and Other Stories by Jane Austen
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
I, Robot by Issac Asimov
Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
The Monk by Matthew Lewis
The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner
Middlemarch by George Eliot

Books picked by Steve (and recommended by others)

The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Post Office by Charles Bukowski
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Collections and Anthologies (short stories and poetry)

QPB Anthology of Women's Writing edited by Susan Cahill
The Disobedience of Water: Stories and Novellas by Sena Jeter Naslund
Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut
The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
The Best of Roald Dahl by Roald Dahl
Morning in the Burned House by Margaret Atwood
The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot
e e cumming collection
Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, or Rainer Maria Rilke

True Stories, Writing, Biographies, History...in Other Words Non-Fiction

Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soulby Karen Abbott
Art & Fear by David Bayles
What If? Writing Exercises for Authors by Anne Bernays
The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson
Secret Lives of Great Authors: What Your Teachers Never Told You About Famous Novelists, Poets, and Playwrights by Robert Schnakenberg
A Biography of Zelda by Nancy Milford
Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West by Ethan Rarick
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
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Good Intentions: Books I Own but Keep Avoiding

Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
The Body Artist by Don DeLillo
Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides
Snobs by Julian Fellowes
Fragile Things Neil Gaiman
Love by Toni Morrison
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Books Turned into Movies

L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindquist
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Books from Childhood (or that I wish had been there for me to read)

The Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander (The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Lyr, Taran Wander, The High King)
The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K. LeGuin (The Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory & The Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl
Dianna Wynne Jones - something of hers?
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures by Walter Moers
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Books translated into English

After Dark by Haruki Murakami
The Helmet of Horror: The Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur by Victor Pelevin
Perfume by Patrick Suskind
Have Mercy on Us All: A Novel (Chief Inspector Adamsberg Mysteries) by Fred Vargas
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
Something by Arturo Perez-Reverte
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
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Classic Mysteries

The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr
Inspector Morse novel
Uncle Silas by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Dashiell Hammett novel collection
The Blunderer by Patricia Highsmith
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Whatever, Whatever, I'll read what I want...

Ghost: A Novel by Alan Lightman
The Lighthouse by P. D. James
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Murder Party

2009-04-06T21:23:00.004-05:00

I've been reading and watching as much as I could, but unfortunately work has been draining all of my free time and any desire to expend any extra effort on my part to do much of anything besides, work, eat, sleep. At least I have loved the guys I am working with, so it's been fun as well as all-inclusive. Ha ha. Anyway, since the Panda prodded me saying I hadn't posted in for-freaking-ever, I am going to sit down and write a post about the movie I just watched - Murder Party. Work be damned!

I read about Murder Party ages ago when it received some Slamdance Movie award and I thought it sounded like a fun, goofy, gory horror flick, which naturally is right up my alley. I was right. It was hilarious. Now I say that with the caveat that Murder Party is no Shaun of the Dead (I know, I know, I always say that.) , but it was a funny little indie movie for sure.

In Murder Party, Christopher, a lonely traffic cop, picks up an invite to a "murder party" on Halloween night. He builds himself the most awesome knight costume ever out of cardboard and duct tape (it's like the Knights Who Say Ni) and heads out, only to find an old warehouse in a scary part of town and a group of New York Art Scene artists who want to impress a local art king, Alexander. Chris hands them pumpkin bread; they try to murder him. You see, they want to get it all on tape as an "art piece" to impress Alex. It's like this black, black comedy poking all sorts of fun at the "art scene," indie films, so much.

Murder Party is like Drop Dead Gorgeous mixed with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It's low budget, but that works for it rather than against it, because unlike most low-budget horror, these folks can act somewhat well and the movie has a bit of a plot and good dialogue.

If you like the horror comedy genre, Murder Party is worth a rental. I won't buy it, but I am glad I moved it higher up in my NetFlix queue.

Horror Classics Remade: Friday the 13th, The Uninvited, and My Bloody Valentine

2009-02-22T10:56:00.000-06:00

I couldn't have been happier to hear they were remaking My Bloody Valentine, A Tale of Two Sisters, and Friday the 13th. Well, maybe I was less excited about Friday the 13th, since it's probably my top 1 or 2 in my list of favorites, but I was really interested to see what they would do the TofTS and My Bloody Valentine.

My Bloody Valentine: In 3-D! I really liked the original because it felt so real. The people cast in the film actually looked like people who would live and work in a mining town (think less WB Dawson's Creek and more like Norma Rae), the mine and other settings were spooky, and there was plenty of good old killings. The remake has the added bonus of being in 3-D, so it was extra fun to watch with the pick-axes swinging out at you and the like. The cast was prettier this time around (Gotta drool on Jensen Ackles. Delish.), but filming in Pennsylvania certainly gave it the mining town feel. The remake was bloody and gory, with some good shocks. The story was pretty close to the original, with enough deviations to make it worth remaking, but not enough to make it feel like a completely different film. I am not really sure I liked the ending, but well, it could be that I am partial...

Rating: 4 1/2 Purrs Loved it!

The Uninvited: This remake of A Tale of Two Sisters was a big old disappointment. The original blew me away, with high levels of creepiness, a twisted plot, and a holy shit did that just happen ending. The Uninvited brought nothing really new to the table, but the actors were good and the setting was beautiful. Elizabeth Banks brings a nice amount of creepiness to the wicked step-mother role. I probably would have liked it better if I had no idea what was going on, so the twists would have been less obvious to me.

Rating: 3 1/2 Purrs - I probably would have liked it better if I hadn't seen the original.

Friday the 13th: Let's just say that even Jared Padalecki couldn't save this movie. It's like they took the original 4 in the series and squished them all into one film, so basically any plot or minimal character development on any of the "extra" characters is lost. Plus, how do you have a Friday the 13th movie with minimal time at the freakin' Camp Crystal Lake? Jason was good, but really, why do all of the characters around the lake have to be rejects from the hillbillies-r-us casting agency? I am glad they didn't just reshoot the movie almost shot for shot from the original, but I really liked the "camp counselors at the camp" enties in the series. Why deviate from the tradition so soon? Wait for the sequels at least, and stick to the original formula for the first in the reboot. You can bring something new to the table without ignoring what made the original so great.

Rating: 3 1/2 Purrs...Man, I wish I could reboot this reboot.

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

2009-01-30T17:45:00.001-06:00

I picked up Lonesome Dove because a friend told me that it was his favorite book. I don't meet many people who love to read, so when someone tells me that a book is his favorite, and he is able to defend it when I respond, "Seriously? A Cowboy book?", I figure I really should give it a shot. I stand corrected. Lonesome Dove is much more than just a cowboy book.

Lonesome Dove is about a cattle drive and the people who participate in it or are affected in some way by it. You have my favorite character, Augustus McCrae, former Texas Ranger and current easy-going drunkard, who follows Woodrow Call, his former Captian and best friend, on the drive up to Montana. Jake Spoon shows up in Lonesome Dove, TX one day and tells his former Texas Ranger pals that the real paradise is Montana. The undiscovered, ungrazed country, so to speak. Call decides it's an opportunity not to be missed, and hires a bunch of local boys to drive a huge herd of cattle up to Montana to start one of the first cattle ranches before the wilderness is lost. He misses the urgency, the spectacle, the danger of his former days in the Texas Rangers. (Many times Gus & Call discuss the comfort of the area they have helped civilize, with Gus wondering why anyone would need to leave it.) Jake, however, has his own problems, and never really intends on joining the boys on the drive. Jake is a man of appetities, of luxuries, gambling, and using up women. When he meets Lorena, he thinks he's got it made, until she holds him to his promise to get her out of Lonesome Dove. (Lorena is another one of my favorite characters. I didn't like her much at first, but her character really grew on me. You start off thinking she will just be the hooker with the heart of gold type character, but instead she ends up being so much more complex.) Lorena joins them on the drive, along with lovesick Dish, the top hand, Newt, the youngest of the crew, and others. They face the difficult, long drive to Montana, driving the cattle across rivers, on the look out for Indians, protecting their horses and their own skin, and battling the weather.

What I liked most about this book was from the moment I started reading, I knew I was in Texas. You could almost feel the swagger, the hitching of belt buckles, the chewing of tobacco. Gus is a wonderful character, on the one hand so easy-going, and on the other, so cruel and exacting when rescuing Lorena. Lorena's whole storyline tore me up. Her grief was almost too close to home. I could see it in my head so vividly. But what I loved the most was despite the epic scale of the cattle drive, the growth of the characters, even the interplay of all of the characters, McMurtry never says this is epic. This is historic. This is significant. In fact, he leads you to question whether the whole thing is simply folly, an old man catering to his needs of danger, heroism, and valor, and whether the cost of it is too great. It's mythic and tragic all in one. You are left to question whether any of it really made any difference, even at the cost of so many and so much.

When you think of Lonesome Dove, don't think cowboy book. Yes, it is a Western. You can't deny that. But it can be so much more if you look beyond the cover.

Rating: 4 1/2 Purrs

The Beast Within

2009-01-21T22:38:00.003-06:00

"He Was On The Verge Of Becoming A Man... Eater!"

I really love The Beast Within. It's such an early 80's horror flick with balloon make-up, gratuitous rape scenes, over-the-top backwoods characters, and a big old beastie.

Bibi Besch and Ronny Cox are on their honeymoon when their car goes off the road. Ronny goes out to find some help and Bibi leaves the car to chase the dog. There she meets the beastie, who beats her up and rapes her. Flash forward 17 years and Ronny's and Bibi's son, Michael, is sick. The doctors don't know what's up, so Ronny & Bibi have to go back to the small Louisiana town where the elephant in the room happened to see if they can find out Mike's biological father's medical history. Mike follows them, and that's where the real fun begins, because he starts going a bit nuts, hearing cicadas, and having some serious cravings for meat - the bloodier the better. What's going on with Mike? What is he turning into?

Seriously, it's a bit silly, but what big beastie movie from the 80's isn't? I watched this once before a year or so ago and liked it then, but I think I liked it even better this time around. The make-up is appropriately cheesy, the teeth are bad, and Bibi Besch's wardrobe is almost as good as Faye Dunaway's in The Eyes of Laura Mars. You even have John Dennis Johnston as the dad of Mike's new love interest, playing the part with some serious creepiness. You can't tell if he is just over-protective or just inappropriately involved with his daughter. He does, however, favor a shot gun and wife beaters. Ah, the South. Now I know my dad was a bit overprotective when I started to date, and even joked about bringing a shotgun to the door when the guys would pick me up, but never did he do so drunk and wearing a wife-beater. You can make this out to be a tale of sexual awakening or going through puberty and all that, but why bother? It's fun on its own without looking for any deeper meaning.

Rating: 3 1/2 purrs for the awesomeness that is the big beastie. It's like Kaftka!

Darkwolf

2009-01-20T22:02:00.003-06:00

Holy cow, you don't get much worse than Darkwolf. Well, maybe you do. I have seen a lot of horror movies. But with Stephen Williams (X-Files' Mr. X) and Tippi Hedren, I thought maybe this would be a bit higher caliber than what it turned out to be. Instead, I got a movie version of that old Showtime series, The Hunger. (Remember that? No? Well, okay...think adult situations, poor acting, really bad dialog, and a bit of blood thrown in.)

Long story short, Josie (Samaire Armstrong, the oh so adorable geek hipster from The O.C. and a the X-Files episode The Lord of the Flies, oh yeah, and Stay Alive, one of my favorite guilty pleasures) is just a waitress with big dreams. What she soon finds out is she isn't just a med student to be. She's actual the last of some werewolf line that the big baddie wants to mate with. After Tippi Hedren bites it, Josie is left under the protection of Officer Steve, who happens to know a whole heck of a lot of werewolf history. Convenient.

The werewolf effects are so bad I almost laughed out loud. On one hand, it looks like a really bad computer game from maybe 10 years ago, in other shots, it looks like a guy wearing a bearskin rug crawling around towards the camera. The dialog for this is so bad that I don't know if better actors could have made it any better, but I doubt it. Just copy & paste from the cliche handbook and you have it taken care of. Girl and cop share a tender moment after she freaks. Check. I know my rights. Yep, that one too. What's happening to me? Got it. Oh yeah, don't forget to add an opening set in possibly the unsexiest strip club ever shown on film and mid-way a ri-god-damn-diculous girls dressed up in a naked werewolves photo shoot with two females with no chemistry what-so-ever, and you have yourself Darkwolf.

Do yourself a favor and spend your two hours watching something more worthwhile. Like, I don't know, Underworld (famous people LARPing!) which at least had Kate Beckinsale in it, The Monster Squad which I remember fondly from my younger years, Ginger Snaps, Waxwork (go Deborah Foreman!), heck, even that old TV show She-Wolf of London would be better than this

Rating: I can't even begin...I am at a loss

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

2009-01-16T16:54:00.002-06:00

Wuthering Heights is one of those books that has sat on my shelf for years. It's not that didn't want to read it; I always wanted to but just never seemed to get around to it. After reading it, I'm not sure what all of the fuss is about. Maybe I do, but overall, the book just left me kind of angry.

Cathy and Heathcliff grow up together and of course fall in love. But since Cathy has no redeemable qualities whatsoever, and neither does Heathcliff really, of course they don't end up happily ever after. Cathy marries rich, and since Heathcliff overhears her say it's because she can't marry him because it would be beneath her, he decides to seek revenge on Cathy and those who have slighted him. This revenge drive the rest of the book, and he seeks it even unto his and Cathy's own children.

I don't know why anyone would ever read about Cathy And Heathcliff and think man, those two are some of the most romantic characters in literature. Frankly, they are nightmares and deserve each other, if only they could not destroy everyone else in their path. They may talk how one completes the other, that Cathy *is* Heathcliff or whatever, but really, neither character understands one little whit about love. I can kind of see why Stephenie Meyer says Wuthering Heights influenced the Twilight series, because I see a whole lot of Heathcliff and Cathy in Edward and Bella. That's not really a good thing.

I do, however, find it very interesting that Emily Bronte would put two unlikable characters as main characters in her story, considering Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre has such an agreeable main character in Jane. It sort of makes Emily a bit balls-y in my thoughts. You know, like I *dare* you to like my story.

Rating: 3 1/2 Purrs for a couple of characters that pissed me the hell off, but yet also Go Emily!

Mirrors

2009-01-13T22:20:00.005-06:00

"Mirrors are just glass and silver, Ben. That's it. There's nothing behind them. "

Alexandre Aja has finally made me spooked to look in a mirror. He's finished what Poltergeist, Clive Barker, and Candyman started. This movie made me jump. Repeatedly. Pandabob found much amusement in it when from the other room, he heard me jump and squeak. In fact, the creepiness in Mirrors made me wish that maybe Aja had filmed Mother of Tears.

Mirrors is about an ex-cop, Ben Carson (Kiefer Sutherland), who is moonlighting as a security guard at an old burned out department store. The guy he replaced commits suicide, and when Ben finds out, he investigates, especially when he starts seeing things in the mirrors at the store that shouldn't, couldn't be there. Who or what is in the mirrors? Is he just going nuts or are he and his family really in danger?

It was gory. Amy Smart's bathtub scene, which you see part of in the trailer, is absolutely skin crawling. Ugh, and yet awesome. It was spooky. What wouldn't be with a huge, dilapidated, burned out department store as a main setting? I was torn with the desire to explore the place and yet, also to maybe just stay away because the place kind of freaked me the frak out. The whole idea of evil, haunted mirrors is just way cool in my book. The plot got a little wonky there in the end, but I still couldn't help but love it.

I didn't realize when I rented this that Mirrors is a remake of a South Korean horror film called Geoul sokeuro (Into the Mirror). Now I have another Asian horror film to add to my NetFlix queue.

Rating: 4 Purrs. I can see that Kiefer's got a bit on the heavy-handed with the acting here and the plot does deviate into a convenient solution, but not nearly as badly as Aja's first film High Tension (which was also awesome until the end got all well, you know.)

D Wars: Dragon Wars

2009-01-12T22:38:00.002-06:00

"I keep trying to understand, but none of this is making any sense." - Sarah

Trust me, Sarah, we don't understand it either. I watched D-War on my Roku box, so I can't really say it cost me anything but an hour and a half of my life. Trust me, this was an expensive 90 minutes. I think Pandabob compared this to something that a 12 year old might write, but then I reminded him of another dragon movie we watched ages ago called Eragon that was based off of a book a 12 year old (or was it 14? anyway) wrote. And it was better. (Not good by any means, but better than this movie. )

Legend has it that once upon a time there were some dragons. (Yea! Dragons! Everyone loves dragons right?) There are some good dragons and some bad dragons. And there was this girl and boy who fell in love, but the girl was supposed to be sacrificed to the good dragon to save the world. But the guy and girl died instead, thus, their souls were reborn in modern day Los Angeles, where the dragons come back, and they want the girl to be sacrificed because she has some shining light thing inside her and a dragon birthmark. I know, it makes no sense to me either, and I watched the movie.

I love Jason Behr. I've always thought he should get more work than he does, but this movie, well, seriously, what the frak? And where the hell did the evil fortress come from? And what is Skeletor doing in this movie? This was so bad I couldn't stop watching, like a car wreck on the highway. A big one. Think the car wreck in Final Destination 2, which you should watch instead of this movie. And holy shit, our hero just lit up like the power of Grayskull. I have changed my mind. This is an awesome movie. Plus, it's dragon smackdown time.

My real question out of all of this is...what are Tan Tans and machine guns doing in 15th century Korea?

Rating: Hiss Hiss Hiss. This was just bad. So very, very bad.

X-Files I Want to Believe

2009-01-09T15:16:00.003-06:00

I can't believe that I missed X-Files in the theaters this summer, but somehow I did. It even was released right near my birthday for crisssakes. Geez. Well, I soon remedied that by watching it as soon as I could get my grubby hands on the DVD release.

It. was. awesome.

Remember Star Trek: First Contact? It felt like a longer version of the TV show, but with uber-budget right? (It did to me anyway.) But then you saw Star Trek: Insurrection and you just cried a little inside? Well, X-Files I want to Believe was like the first - but without the overarching mythology banging you on the head. It reminded me so much of the Season 3 episode, Grotesque, hands-down one of my favorites, that I couldn't help but love it. Plus, I'm a shipper, so the little bits of relationship stuff mixed in there between Mulder and Scully just made me squee with happiness. (Literally, Pandabob could hear me in the other room. Squeeing. The beard thing, I couldn't help it. I clapped.)

My one complaint - it took forever to bring in Skinner. I love Skinner.

The plot in brief is this: Scully gets an unexpected visit from an FBI guy - they need Mulder's help. All is forgiven. They have this psychic, and for some reason the FBI wants Mulder to come in and verify what he is saying is true. And FBI agent's life is on the line; she's missing and it looks like there's a serial killer on the loose. So of course, Mulder and Scully some in to save the day. It gets dark; it gets creepy; it gets gross; Scully gets sassy. (Yes. I know. It was AWESOME.)

I don't want to say anymore than that because I don't want to spoil too much. Long story short (too late!), if you liked the show you'll love the movie. Unless you were one of those who never wanted Mulder & Scully to get together; in that case, stay away. Also stay for the credits. On the DVD they have candids of the cast & crew throughout.

Rating: 5 stars. Lets' see: the beard thing won me over. The grossness was spot on. What did this make me do? It made me want to pull out my DVDs and start watching from Season 1 on again, because I want the show back so much. I've loved a lot of TV in my time, but X-Files had me at Hello and I just never stopped loving it, even the last season.

Closing out the year...

2009-01-08T22:22:00.009-06:00

I never did finish up all of my reviews from the movies and books I watched last year, and instead of writing them all out I'm just going to go with the abbreviated version.

On Writing by Stephen King was one of my favorite books that I read last year. I loved the insight into his process, and you can tell that Mr. King really, truly enjoys what he does for a living. Not only that, but he is very honest about his history, his addiction, and the inspiration he finds for his stories. Inspiring, funny, and just another great example of why I love to read his books so much.

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey was a fun little mystery where a detective investigates the Richard III murders, believing that the face of Richard III isn't the face of a murder.

If I Am Missing or Dead by Janine Lutz is the true story of two sisters who end up in abusive relationships after a lifetime of difficult (to put it lightly) parenting by a disturbing father. One sister doesn't survive. It's depressing, it's scary as hell, but it's worth a read.

Pathology staring everyone's favorite Hero, Milo Ventimiglia, and the beautiful Laurel Holloman, (now on CSI and previously sexy L Word chef). A group of pathologists in training play "let's see who can commit the most disturbing and unsolvable murder" a la Flatliners. Lots of sex, lots of violence, kind of silly but I still liked it quite a bit.

Vault of Horror is one of those anthology horror movies. Five men end up in the basement vault of a building, brought together to tell tales. One is about vampires, another about dismemberment, magic rope, scams, and deadly paintings. This one stars Tom Baker of Doctor Who scarfdom.

The Shuttered Room stars Carol Lynley as a woman returning to the island she used to call home with her much older husband (woefully miscast Gig Young - talk about unbelievable). Come to find out, the island home of her youth is haunted by something naughty in the woodshed. This was better than I expected, much due to Oliver Reed playing the evil, inbred hooligan that is enamored with Carol Lynley's character.

And now I am free to fall behind in my 2009 books and movies.

Comics Read in 2008

2009-01-01T19:09:00.002-06:00

Here's a list of comics I read this year.

Friday the 13th: The Bad Lands
Mouse Guard: Belly of the Beast
Mouse Guard: Shadows Within
Mouse Guard: Rise of the Axe
Mouse Guard: The Dark Ghost
Mouse Guard: Midnight's Dawn
Mouse Guard: A Return to Honor
Buffy Season 8: No Future for You
Buffy Season 8: Anywhere But Here
Buffy Season 8: A Beautiful Sunset
Buffy Season 8: Wolves at the Gate
30 Days of Night
28 Days Later: the Aftermath
Gloom Cookie: The Final Curtain
Glacial Period
Capote in Kansas
The Museum Vaults: Excerpts from the Journal of an Expert
Nightmares & Fairy Tales: The Beautiful Beasts
Powers
Buckaroo Banzai: Return of the Screw
PARA
Dominion Vol 1-5
Fables: Wolves
Fables: Sons of Empire
Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall
Fables: The Good Prince
Serenity: Those Left Behind
Y: The Last Man: Unmanned
Y: The Last Man: Cycles
Y: The Last Man: One Small Step
Y: The Last Man: Safeword
Y: The Last Man: Ring of Truth
Y: The Last Man: Girl on Girl
Y: The Last Man: Paper Dolls
Y: The Last Man: Kimono Dragons
Y: The Last Man: Motherland
Y: The Last Man: Whys & Wherefores
Serenity: Better Days
Batman: The Killing Joke
X-Isle
The Lost Boys: The Reign of Frogs
The Dark Tower: The Long Road Home
Death Valley
Doctor Who Classics: Volumes 2-6
Doctor Who Vol 1-6
Helen Killer Vol 1-4

Books Read in 2008: All 89 of Them

2009-01-01T17:00:00.013-06:00

I was hoping to read 100 this year, but I got lazy again.

Fiction: General

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Fluke: or I know Why the Winged Whale Sings by Christopher Moore
Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore
You Suck! by Christopher Moore
The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis
The Keep by Jennifer Egan
Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
Saturday by Ian McEwan
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moer
Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

Fiction: Mystery & Suspense

Death in Holy Order by P.D. James
The Murder Room by P.D. James
Innocent Blood by P.D. James
Jane & The Man of the Cloth by Stephanie Barron
Jane & the Wandering Eye by Stephanie Barron
Thursday Next: First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino
Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris
Club Dead by Charlaine Harris
Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris
Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris
Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris
All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris
From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris
Grave Sight by Charlaine Harris
Bare Bones by Kathy Reichs
Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann
Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay
Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott
Thriller edited by James Patterson
The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
The Boomerang Clue by Agatha Christie
Death Comes as the End by Agatha Christie
The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie
An Incomplete Revenge by Jacqueline Winspear
Obedience by Will Lavender
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
Killer on the Road by James Ellroy
HeartSick by Chelsea Cain

Fiction: Horror, Sci Fi, Fantasy

The Terror by Dan Simmons
World War Z: an Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
The Cabinet of Curiosities by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
The Ruins by Scott Smith
Duma Key by Stephen King
The Children of Men by P.D. James
Dispatch by Bentley Little
The Mummy or Ramses the Damned by Anne Rice
Sunshine by Robin McKinley
Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison
The Good, The Bad, and the Undead by Kim Harrison
Every Which Way by Dead by Kim Harrison
Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits by Robin McKinley & Peter Dickinson

Fiction: Junk

The Murder List by Julie Garwood
All Night Long by Jayne Anne Krentz
The Dead Room by Heather Graham
Killer Dreams by Iris Johansen
Cover of Night by Linda Howard
Prior Bad Acts by Tami Hoag
The Third Wife by Jasmine Cresswell
Shadow Dance by Julie Garwood
Dead on the Dance Floor by Heather Graham
Pandora's Daughter by Iris Johansen
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
No Escape by Heather Lowell
The Night of the Blackbird by Heather Graham
Hurricane Bay by Heather Graham
The Seance by Heather Graham

Non-Fiction

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
The Executioner Always Chops Twice: Ghastly Blunders on the Scaffold by Geoffrey Abbot
Does this Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat? by Peter Walsh
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Cadavers by Mary Roach
Secret Lives of the First Ladies: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the Women of the White House by Cromac O'Brien
Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
The Dead Travel Fast: Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula by Eric Nuzum
The Maul and the Pear Tree by P.D. James and T. A. Critchley
On Writing by Stephen King
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt
Getting Things Done: Guide to Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen

Graphic Novels Assigned to the 9/9/9 Categories

2008-12-30T21:33:00.013-06:00

Graphic Novels recommended by Jeremy and his cohorts at Titan

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
Therefore, Repent! by Jim Munroe
The Blot by Tom Neeley
The Travels of Thelonious by Susan Schade
The Aviary by Jamie Tanner
Glister Volume 1
?
?
?

Graphic Novels recommended by Steve

Graphic Novels recommended by others

The Complete Persepolis
Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth
?
?
?
?
?
?
?

Independent graphic novels

Re-Gifters by Mike Carey
The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci
Dead at 17: the 13th Brother by Josh Howard
Polly and the Pirates by Ted Naifeh
Lava Punch by Ben Seto
Last Exit Before Toll by Neal Schaffer
?
?
?

Next in the Series (because I have a lot of series that I read and a lot of backlog here)

Walking Dead Volume 6
Walking Dead Volume 7
Walking Dead Volume 8
Hell and Back: Sin City
Fables Volume 11: War & Pieces
?
?
?
?

It's the end of the world as I know it: Dystopias

DMZ Volume 1
DMZ Volume 2
DMZ Volume 3
DMZ Volume 4
Channel Zero
?
?
?
?

Zombies, Vampires, Vampire Slayers, and other stuff of the supernatural

Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Vol. 1: Guilty Pleasures
Buffy Season 8 single issues, catch up
Zebediah the Hillbilly Zombie Redneck Bites the Dust
Pablo's Inferno: An innocent child's descent into the Underworld and Beyond
?
?
?
?
?

Men (and women) in Tights: Superheroes

Superman Red Sun
Bulletproof Monk
Fallen Angel Volume 1
Elektra Lives Again
Wonder Woman: Love and Murder
?
?
?
?

Adaptations of Books

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Black Dossier
Horror Classics: Graphic Classics
Graphic Classics: Robert Louis Stevenson
Graphic Classics: Mark Twain
Richard Mathesons' Hell House
?
?
?
?

Whatever, Whatever, I'll read what I want...

Fell Volume 1: Feral City
Flight, Volume 1
The Killer, Volume 1
Ex Machina Volume 1
Ex Machina Volume 2
Ex Machina Volume 3
Ex Machina Volume 4
Ex Machina Volume 5
Ex Machina Valume 6
Jack of Fables Volume 1
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?

Books assigned to the 9 categories for 9/9/in 2009

2008-12-30T14:39:00.024-06:00

These might change as the year progresses, but this is the plan.

Books I should have read but haven't (The Classics)

Sanditon and Other Stories by Jane Austen
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
I, Robot by Issac Asimov
Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
The Monk by Matthew Lewis
The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner
Middlemarch by George Eliot

Books picked by Steve (and recommended by others)

Steve's pick
Steve's pick
Steve's pick
Steve's pick
The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
?

Collections and Anthologies (short stories and poetry)

QPB Anthology of Women's Writing edited by Susan Cahill
The Disobedience of Water: Stories and Novellas by Sena Jeter Naslund
Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut
The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
The Best of Roald Dahl by Roald Dahl
Morning in the Burned House by Margaret Atwood
The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot
e e cumming collection
Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, or Rainer Maria Rilke

True Stories, Writing, Biographies, History...in Other Words Non-Fiction

Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul by Karen Abbott
Art & Fear by David Bayles
What If? Writing Exercises for Authors by Anne Bernays
The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson
Secret Lives of Great Authors: What Your Teachers Never Told You About Famous Novelists, Poets, and Playwrights by Robert Schnakenberg
A Biography of Zelda by Nancy Milford
Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West by Ethan Rarick
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
?

Good Intentions: Books I Own but Keep Avoiding

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
The Body Artist by Don DeLillo
Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides
Snobs by Julian Fellowes
Fragile Things Neil Gaiman
Love by Toni Morrison
?

Books Turned into Movies

L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?

Books from Childhood (or that I wish had been there for me to read)

The Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander (The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Lyr, Taran Wander, The High King)
The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K. LeGuin (The Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory & The Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl
Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures by Walter Moers
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
Dianna Wynne Jones - something of hers?
?

Books translated into English

After Dark by Haruki Murakami
The Helmet of Horror: The Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur by Victor Pelevin
Perfume by Patrick Suskind
Have Mercy on Us All: A Novel (Chief Inspector Adamsberg Mysteries) by Fred Vargas
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
Something by Arturo Perez-Reverte
?
?

Classic Mysteries

The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr
Inspector Morse novel
Uncle Silas by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Dashiell Hammett novel collection
The Blunderer by Patricia Highsmith
?
?
?

Whatever, Whatever, I'll read what I want...

9/9 in 2009: Books I am going to read this year

2008-12-30T14:09:00.006-06:00

For the past several years, I stopped setting reading goals for the upcoming year. This year I became intrigued by the 9/9/9 concept that's floating around LibraryThing, so I'm doing one myself. (That would be 9 categories, 9 books in each, in 2009). That makes it 81 books in 2009. Which is okay, but I really want to read 100 books this upcoming year. So I guess I will have 9/9/in 2009, plus 19 freebies to be whatever I want. That might work. Eventually I will fill in the books I am assigning to each category, or at least assign them a topic of sorts.

And of course I have a separate category list for graphic novels, cause those always get left behind.

BOOKS, Meet your 9/9/9 Categories:

Books I should have read but haven't (The Classics)
Books picked by Steve (and recommended by others)
Collections and Anthologies (short stories and poetry)
True Stories, Writing, Biographies, History...in Other Words Non-Fiction
Good Intentions: Books I Own but Keep Avoiding
Books Turned into Movies
Books from Childhood (or that I wish had been there for me to read)
Books translated into English
Classic Mysteries

Whatever, whatever, I'll read what I want (random picks, 19 of them)

Graphic Novels, Meet your 9/9/9 Categories:

Graphic Novels recommended by Jeremy and his cohorts at Titan
Graphic Novels recommended by Steve
Graphic Novels recommended by others
Independent graphic novels
Next in the Series (because I have a lot of series that I read and a lot of backlog here)
It's the end of the world as I know it: Dystopias
Zombies, Vampires, Vampire Slayers, and other stuff of the supernatural
Men (and women) in Tights: Superheroes
Adaptations of Books

Whatever, whatever, I'll read what I want (random picks, 19 of them)

Even more acquisitions to the library

2008-12-28T22:39:00.005-06:00

My nephew challenged me this weekend. He said that he had more Hot Wheels than I had books. I hated to contradict him, so instead I took advantage of Half-Price Books 20% off sale and added a few more to the shelves.

A Wizard of Earthsea and The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin - The final books in one of my favorite series when I was a kid. I had the second, but not the first or the third.
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry - Not the type of book I would normally read but it comes highly recommended by a friend. We'll see if I agree with him.
Babylon Revisited and Other Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald - I pretty much adore Mr. Fitzgerald
In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O'Brien - Given to me to read by a friend years ago. (Not a friend anymore but at least she introduced me to this book.) I finally got my own copy.
Coyote Blue: A Novel by Christopher Moore - I'll read anything he writes.
Spaceman Blues: A Love Song by Brian Francis Slattery - This has been on my wishlist so long I don't really remember why - I think I read about ti in Entertainment Weekly.
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac Mccarthy - I'll also read anything he writes, or at least, I am working on it.
Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe - One of those that I should have read a long time ago.
The Daughters of Juarez: A True Story of Serial Murder South of the Border by Teresa Rodriguez - The murders happening down there are so scary.
Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates
City of Glass, Ghosts, The Locked Room (New York Trilogy) by Paul Auster
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Good Guy by Dean Koontz - I don't read a lot of Koontz but I saw this on Stephen King's best of list so I thought I'd check it out.
Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin
Presumed Innocent: A Novel by Scott Turow
The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons - The first science fiction/fantasy book I ever read was Hyperion. Many, many years later I discovered there were sequels. I will say that these are some of the very few science fiction/fantasy books I really, really enjoyed, so I picked them up fro Steve to read. He owes me big time for the Dragonlance books.

Recent Acquisitions to the Library

2008-12-25T18:55:00.005-06:00

As you might expect, books and DVDs were plentiful under the Christmas tree this year. People know me oh so well.

DVDs:

Wall-E (BluRay)
HellBoy II: The Golden Army (BluRay)
The Dark Knight (BluRay)
Cowboy Bebop Remix DVD set (Whee! Finally, Bebop of my very own!)

Books:

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams (Thanks LibraryThing Secret Santa!)
The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror by Christopher Moore (Thanks LibraryThing Secret Santa!)
The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson
I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away by Bill Bryson
Loser Goes First: My Thirty-Something Years of Dumb Luck and Minor Humiliation by Dan Kennedy
Rock On: An Office Power Ballad by Dan Kennedy
Who the Hell Is Pansy O'Hara?: The Fascinating Stories Behind 50 of the World's Best Loved Books by Jenny Bond
Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach
Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West by Ethan Rarick

Comics:

Dead at 17: The 13th Brother by Josh Howard
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Guilty Pleasures, Vol. 1 (v. 1) by Laurell K. Hamilton
DMZ Vol. 4: Friendly Fire by Brian Wood

Live action Cowboy Bebop? Wha?

2008-12-18T11:19:00.001-06:00

So Keanu Reeves spilled the beans supposedly.

http://www.aceshowbiz.com/news/view/00020675.html

I can't decide if I am overly excited or scared. I srsly love Cowboy Bebop. Keanu Reeves might not be too bad. After all Spike is kind of laid back, but can still kick ass. Keanu kicked ass in The Matrix. It could work.

No, the real question is, who will play Faye...

And will there be a Corgi...'cause go Data Dogs!

Run Fatboy Run

2008-12-17T17:07:00.000-06:00

"The only serious relationship I've been in ended in a broken collarbone and a dead meerkat. " - Gordon

I love Simon Pegg and Dylan Moran, even better if they are working with Edgar Wright. Well, Mr. Wright wasn’t in on this one, but Run, Fatboy, Run was funny and sweet. It was a good little movie, and anyone who has ever thought about participating in a long-distance run would get a kick out of it I am sure. I think it could have been leaps and bounds better with Edgar Wright back in there with the team, but Simon Pegg and Dylan Moran do a great job of carrying off the movie. These guys are comedy gold. In fact, I feel compelled to wax poetic on the awesomeness that is Black Books rather than say anything about Run, Fatboy, Run, but I won’t. I’ll just leave it at that.

This time around, Simon Pegg is playing Dennis Doyle, a hapless security guard who made a huge mistake about 5 years ago. He left his pregnant girlfriend at the altar after having a bout of cold feet. Now he wishes he could get her back, but instead Libby (Thandie Newton) is dating a new guy, Whit (Hank Azaria). Whit’s not such a nice guy really, although he treats Libby well. To Whit, everything is a competition, and eventually Whit & Dennis end up competing with each other over Libby, which ultimately leads to Dennis saying he will run the London Marathon. Dennis isn’t exactly physically fit, but he is determined to prove to Libby that he can finish something. Will he make it and will Libby see what kind of man he can become?

This was a sweet movie, and the supporting characters are hilarious, but honestly, it’s not as good as some of Simon Pegg's other work. I'm happy to have rented this but I wouldn't own it and watch it over and over like Hot Fuzz or Shaun of the Dead. David Schwimmer’s directing seemed uneven. Sometimes it seemed like the movie couldn’t decide if it was a comedy or a sticky-sweet romance. The birthday party speech Dennis gives Libby is truly touching. Dylan Moran steals the show as the goofball best friend to Dennis, but that’s no surprise. Dylan Moran is my not-so-secret, over the other side of the ocean crush. He had me at “Popsicle” and I’ll never let go. I'd watch him just sit and eat crackers.

Rating: 4 Purrs for Simon Pegg and Dylan Moran. They carry off the story despite the unevenness of the directing.

Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott

2008-12-15T16:53:00.000-06:00

I picked up Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott expecting one type of book and finding, on the whole, another. I thought I would be reading a mystery, but instead I found a complex weaving of mystery, history, romance, and thriller all in one package. Ghostwalk was excellent.

Ghostwalk starts off with the death of Elizabeth Vogelsang. Elizabeth died under slightly mysterious circumstances while writing a biography of Isaac Newton. Enter Lydia Brooke, hired by Elizabeth's son Cameron to come in and finish the biography. Lydia and Cameron have a history together, and when Lydia returns to Cambridge, their romance is rekindled, despite the fact that Cameron is married with children. Lydia begins picking through the mostly written biography and in turn ends up getting drawn in to the mystery surrounding two separate series of murders - a group of Cambridge scholars that Elizabeth discovered when researching Isaac Newton's biography and a group of Cambridge-affiliated researchers that have drawn the wrath of a radical animal rights group. Are these two groups of murders actually connected in some way? Lydia begins to think so, and begins to feel haunted by the ghost of (possibly) Newton. While she follows Elizabeth's research, Lydia realizes that Elizabeth might have uncovered a conspiracy that someone might be willing to kill for. Will Lydia be able to finish the book? Who is the ghostly figure that haunts her? How are the two sets of murders tied to Newton, if they are at all, and will Lydia be next?

This book is a great mystery; it successfully intertwines the current and historical time lines so that you feel much like Lydia does. On one side, you have this wandering, flowing narrative, and on the other, you are inundated with historical facts about Newton, Cambridge, alchemy, glass making, and more. It’s difficult to do, and I never felt overwhelmed with either side. You are captured in a dreamlike state, so much so that I longed to travel and walk where she walked, to see what Elizabeth saw, and know Newton to the extent that these main characters did. It literally felt like I was reading a walking dream and those types of books end up way high on my list of best. Mostly because I think reading should take you away, bring you into a place where your imagination can fly, and help you discover new things about the world and yourself, leaving you in a better place than when you started (even if that place is a sad one). Ghostwalk is one of those. I’m sure some will find things that could be improved, but really, it was perfect to me.

Rating: 5 Purrs. I’ll put this one up there with The Virgin Suicides and The Lovely Bones for the way the words worked in my head.

The Tattooist

2008-12-11T22:37:00.000-06:00

I'll watch almost anything with Jason Behr in it. I've been hooked on him since watching Roswell reruns on SciFi channel, so of course I picked up The Tattooist when I found it on NetFlix. (I think he needs to get more work. He's a pretty decent actor and nice to look at.)

In this horror film from New Zealand, an American tattoo artist specializes in tattoos that "heal." Jake is a wanderer, learning about different cultures and exploiting the design and symbols in his tattoo designs. While at an expo in Singapore, Jake sees his first traditional Samoan tattoo ritual, called tatau, and of course falls for the exotic woman involved in the ritual. He swipes something belonging to the group, and by doing so, awakens an angry spirit who stalks and kills everyone Jake has tattooed since he stole from the group. The bad news: Jake has tattooed the new girl he's dating. Can he save her in time and figure out who or what is killing his clients?

The Tattooist isn't bad. In fact, it's pretty good. Nice scenery, nice acting, interesting culture. I hate that Jake is a callous American who cares very little about using and abusing the rituals and history of the cultures he visits, but I guess that kind of helps push the plot. Like I said before, I really wish Jason Behr would get more work. If you have seen a few Asian horrors with the long-haired ghosts, then you probably won't be surprised by the plot or some of the scares.

Rating: 4 Purrs for Jason Behr's lovely chest, the interesting take on cultures and respecting what you don't know

Saturday by Ian McEwan

2008-12-09T13:29:00.000-06:00

Saturday by Ian McEwan has been sitting on my bookshelf for years, and often when I was searching for the next book to read, I picked it up, flipped through the pages, and put it back down. Not because it didn’t seem interesting, but because lately I can’t seem to make myself read a lot of “worthy” fiction. Instead I end up over in the horror section of my bookshelves, or the mysteries. This time, though, I picked it up and followed through. Boy, am I glad I did, because Saturday was engrossing in a way I don’t find much in books (probably because I keep reading the crap fiction over in my mysteries and horror shelves).

In Saturday, we follow an entire day in the life of Henry Perowne. It’s a Saturday, of course, and it’s been a long week for Henry. He’s a neurosurgeon, and this week has been abnormally busy. When he wakes up in the pre-dawn hours of Saturday morning, he sees something that surprises him – a plane on fire headed for Heathrow. His reaction is much what you would expect in the post-911 world. Is it terrorism? This question drives him all day, never leaving his mind until he hears more and more on the news as to what exactly happened. That Saturday is the day of a public demonstration against the imminent Iraq War, and the demonstration ends up shaping his and his family’s life in an unexpected way. As a reader we follow Perowne throughout his day, fully immersed in this character, his feelings, and his surroundings. On the way to his weekly squash game, he has a car accident (caused in a small way by the demonstration) and is set upon by three hoodlums, and the attack contributes to the tone of the rest of Perowne’s day, culminating with the evening family dinner where his estranged father-in-law, daughter, son, and wife are pawns in a very scary reunion. What was supposed to be a day of gathering, ease, and rest ends up being an uneasy and stressful day, and you the reader feel that throughout the story. The dual nature of the story (Perowne’s scientific brain, his inability to truly give himself to the arts while his children are professional artists, a poet and a musician), pull together in this climax, tying nicely into the final scenes of the story. Where there was fear, anxiety, doubt, even Perowne finds some peace and truth in the classical music he favors while performing surgery on a patient in the novel’s closing scenes. (In a particularly serendipitous moment, Perowne is listening to Barber’s Adagio for Strings at the end of a patient’s surgery.)

I really liked this book and am glad that I also have Atonement up there on the bookshelf to read. The places that Henry visits are richly drawn, the pace of the story builds consistently and rapidly to the end as you would expect. The characters are drawn rather well though Henry’s inner musings, although it becomes obvious that Henry’s thoughts and assumptions are not all truth. When I think of another “day in the life story,” that ever incomprehensible and yet highly revered Ulysses by James Joyce, I can’t help but say this one, Saturday, does it oh so much better. But that could be because I could read Saturday without 3 study guides. It could also be because I could relate ever so much to Henry and the world he lives in. Either way, Saturday is a very good book and worth the time, if only to remind ourselves that there is hope, that fear does not always win, and there is beauty in the world still.

Rating: 4 ½ Purrs

World War Z!!!!!!!!! Why did I not know about this???

2008-12-04T11:29:00.002-06:00

The guy who headed up Quantum of Solace (while I thought it was good...not great), is also in charge of the movie adaptation of World War Z, one of my favorite books of the past year. If you haven't read the book, shame on you. It's more than just a zombie novel. It's a biting commentary on the world we live in and amazingly written. It actually brought me to tears in some parts.

But anyway, he says it's going to be huge - a huge scale. Which makes me so f*ckin' happy I want to puke. Like Bourne Identity meets zombies. Which could be really awesome or like House of the Dead. Which could be not so awesome but still watchable because I love/hated House of the Dead.

MTV movies has the comments.

The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries by Charlaine Harris

2008-12-03T17:35:00.000-06:00

I first read Dead Until Dark and Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris several years ago, at the same time I was reading the Anita Blake series. I gave them up after two books because I thought they were way to close to the other series, which had really grabbed me and pulled me in at that time. Later the Anita Blake series got to be too much sex and no plot, so I put those away, and really didn't read the vampire type books at all for a long while. Then I picked up Twilight, and when I was finished with that series, my future sis-in-law said, here read these. So back to Sookie I came, and this time I read every single one as quickly as I could. I couldn't put them down. On the tail end of that came the HBO series True Blood, and the sis-in-law and another fiend started coming over for Sookie Sundays. Now my friend is reading the Sookie books, and we are sufficiently hooked and waiting for the next installment.

The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries, starting with Dead Until Dark, are all about Sookie Stackhouse. She's a telepath, and most of the folks in her small town of Louisiana, Bon Temps, aren't quite sure if they should pity her or fear her, so they do a little bit of both. In Sookie's universe, vampires are real and they have come out of the coffin, so to speak. There's this synthetic blood developed by the Japanese that allows the vamps to "main stream," so a few try it. Enter Bill the Vampire. One night he walks into Sookie's bar (where she waitresses) and her life will never be the same. Bill's mind is the one she can't read, and so she becomes fascinated. The relationship between those two is at the heart of most of the books, and as the series goes on, more and more supernatural things become a part of Sookie's world. In the process, Sookie realizes her telepathy may not be such a curse, as she can use it to help, sometimes most reluctantly, to aid those in the supernatural community.

I love these books. They are sweet and frothy, not too bad on the violence (except Sookie does seem to get herself into some pickles that can turn bloody), and pretty light even on the mystery. However, Sookie's voice is so refreshing. She's no nonsense, hopeful, sarcastic, and romantic. She's got that Southern thing going on, which on one hand bothers me because we are not all chicken-fried down here, thank you very much, but then again, some of us are. I really detest the clothes. I know that seems weird, but Sookie's fashion sense is appalling, and I wouldn't care except that Charlaine Harris spends a lot of time talking about banana clips, short denim skirts, and big blue bows. The secondary characters are eccentric and varied, but none are well developed, but you aren't really reading for those guys, you are reading for Sookie and her various cohorts and new loves.

One thing that I think kept me from reading the books for so long is the fact that my grandmother had a cow named Sookie, and every time (even now) that I read that name I picture my grandmother standing in the back pasture calling, "Soooo-kie! Come 'ere girl!" I would recommend them to anyone who might like a bit of southern-fried mystery, and who doesn't mind the batter a bit thick. You should also watch True Blood, but don't expect the series to follow to closely to the books. Major characters have been changed, but it didn't bother me too much. The series can be a little heavy-handed when trying to use the vampire as a metaphor for racism and gay rights, where the book does it in a way that you could almost miss it. It seems like it would be better to have a happy medium in there somewhere.

Rating: 4 Purrs for Sookie and Bill. No matter what, I'll be Team Bill over Team anyone else Charlaine Harris throws in the mix.

The Lost Boys: The Tribe

2008-11-30T00:51:00.000-06:00

"Your sister's a suck monkey. " - Edgar Frog

Boy, rarely do I see a horror movie that makes me sad. It's happened occasionally, but I can't think of one on the top of my head. The Lost Boys: The Tribe made me cry. It was so bad, I can't even explain how bad it was. I like bad horror movies, generally, but damn, this was bad in a way you can't even MST3K.

In TLB:TT, we meet Chris, a former surfer, and his sister Nicole. They've just moved to Luna Bay, CA hoping to start a new life with their Aunt Jillian, but unfortunately, she's not being as generous as they had hoped. They are having to pay rent for their broken down house she is leasing to them, so now the siblings must find work. In the process, Chris meets another former surfer, Shane, and tries to get a job with Edgar Frog working in his board shop. One night at a party at Shane's house, Shane takes an extra interest in Nicole, and she ends up drinking something special. You know the drill. Once Nicole and Chris realize something's up, Chris seeks out Edgar again to help save his sister. Can he save her?

Everything about this movie was bad, from the extra cheesy special effects to the piss-poor acting. I know The Lost Boys wasn't all that Oscar-caliber, but it has a special place in my heart. We used to run around quoting the damn thing. "You can never grow old, you can never die, but you *must feed.*" Ha. Such fond memories. Why, oh why did they make a sequel? It was a very pale imitation of what could have been. The Reign of Frogs comics were better than this (they walk through the events leading up to the film). If only they had made the sequel in comic form, but even then, unless they improved the story and added to the whole vampire as hippies type myth that The Lost Boys started, it wouldn't have mattered. I look for more than just a redux in a sequel (which this pretty much was, albeit a very poor, colorless redux). I want to get more of the story, more of the myth. Think Friday the 13th Part 2. There you get a similar story overall, but then you learn more about Jason (plus, hello, Amy Steel).

Anyway, just avoid this if you liked the original at all. Trust me, you'll just be disappointed.

Rating: Hiss. Hiss. Phooey on you for coloring the memory of one of my favorite vampire films.

Speed Racer

2008-11-28T18:48:00.000-06:00

I went into watching Speed Racer not expecting much, and I got what I expected. Now that may sound like I didn't like it, which is completely not true. I *loved* Speed Racer. I loved everything about it. From the loud, candy colored art design, to the outrageously silly story, to Emile Hirsh and Christina Ricci, I loved this movie. It helps that I also loved the original cartoon series; Speed Racer was my first real crush, and seeing him again in action just made me smile a whole heck of a lot.

So the story is all about Speed and his family. From a young age, Speed has been obsessed with cars and racing. Part of this is probably a because of hero worship, since his brother and his whole family is also obsessed with racing. In the opening, Speed is racing the same car race where his brother died, and later is offered a job racing with a big conglomerate. Speed turns the job down, and of course must then fight the big machine. Will he win the big final race? Who is Racer X? Will Speed and Trixie *ever* kiss?

Everything about this movie is popcorn. The art design in this is all bright colors and video games. It's pure carnival. Everyone plays their parts well - John Goodman as Papa Racer, Susan Sarandon as Momma Racer, Emile Hirsch as Speed, Christina Ricci as Trixie, and Matthew Fox as (who has the perfect profile for) Racer X. Everything about this film was over the top, and while it is mostly just a light, frothy confection, there is a nice moral to the silly, comic story. Speed sees the value in being true to one's self, the value of family, and the fact that no matter how great you are, there are others who are there to catch you and help you.

Trust me, this movie isn't deep by any means, but I didn't go into a movie called Speed Racer expecting Oscar material. I expected silly fun and I got it.

Jack Brooks Monster Slayer

2008-11-26T10:40:00.000-06:00

I'll admit to you right up front that I had pretty low expectations for Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer. I saw the poster somewhere and thought, "Hm, that looks funny." And lo and behold, it was funny. It was darn funny.

Jack Brooks is just your average guy. Well, except that tricky monster attack when he was 10-ish that killed his whole family. It's haunts him into his 20's. Now he's a plumber with a harpy for a girlfriend, he's taking night school classes that he could care less about, he has a temper that gets him into a ton of trouble, and he's harboring a crush on the girl in the front row. His therapist is afraid of him, and now, it looks like his professor is becoming something nasty. Something possibly monster-like. What's an average guy to do?

Robert Englund plays the professor, and man he is a treat. He's just funny. Trevor Matthews is funny as Jack Brooks. I mean, there aren't any Oscar worthy performances here, but the acting in this is better than many of the "Movies to die for" series and Sci Fi channel Originals. The whole thing plays like a B-Movie, and it does it well. I love that they used "men in suits" and puppetry to make the monsters. CGI can be so bad, especially in a low budget situation. The Professor monster was awesome, so gross and almost Jabba the Hut like.

Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer is worth a rental if you are looking for a funny, low budget B Movie. It won't kill you to miss it, but I think we might see good things from these guys in the future.

Rating: 4 Purrs for surpassing my expectations and the tentacle monster - yikes!

Obedience by Will Lavender

2008-11-25T18:45:00.000-06:00

As the case usually goes, I found this book via my paperback book club. Good old Quality Paperback Books. You are the reason I have over 1000 books in my library. QPB, you and I are soul mates. Truly, deeply, madly, forever. Obedience by Will Lavender is one of those books that seal the deal. It’s one of those that bind us together forever, QPB. Yes, it does.

When you start Obedience, you are introduced to a cast of very intriguing characters (and the characterization is just one of the reasons why I love this book. It's subtle, but Mary is a great character.). You have Mary, the insecure girl who feels compelled to be the one who answers everyone’s questions, who is only made more nervous by seeing that her ex-boyfriend, Dennis is in her new philosophy class. Dennis is the self-confident one, the star, the one who usually gets what he wants. There’s Brian, the boy who has a troubled past and is hiding some secrets, including a possible affection for Mary. Then there's good old Professor Williams. His classes are rumored to be much more entertaining than your normal philosophy courses. He opens the Logic and Reasoning class with this: there's this girl; her name is Polly. She's been kidnapped and you have until the end of the course to save her (six weeks). Otherwise she's dead, murdered by her kidnapper. As the professor introduces more and more clues (including real photographs of real people and places that the trio know), they get more and more involved, and all begin to wonder if the story is true. Is Polly really alive? Who took her? What is Dr. Williams' real purpose? Is it really just a game or is Polly dying day by day?

Like I said before, the characters were interesting, and the plot moves pretty rapidly once the game is afoot. The title of this book is pretty much what the whole story is all about. It’s the heart of the matter, so to speak, but you might not get that until the very end. Read until the end, find out the solution. It’s worth it, even if it does feel a bit like a let down. I know some have felt that way. I, however, laughed. It was perfect.

Rating: 4 1/2 Purrs. Loved it. Loved it right down to the fact that Mary thinks Poirot is just a little bit sexy. I even loved the end. Well, the end, but not the *end.* I wasn't happy with what happened to a couple of characters, but I can't say more or I'll give it away.

Terry Gilliam! Windmills! Don Quixote!

2008-11-24T11:51:00.004-06:00

I just read that Terry Gilliam is going to restart his production of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Whee!

I watched the documentary Lost in La Mancha a few years ago and was so overwhelmed with Gilliam's vision and so sad to see the just *awful* luck involved with the film. Flash floods, back problems, destroyed sets. Just like someone broke 100 mirrors and channeled all of that bad luck into one film. But the pieces of the film that you did get to see, the storyboards and costumes and drawings, gave me just enough of a taste to really wish he would have been able to push on. Wow. I just love his movies, mostly because I have always felt that Gilliam has such vision, such a signature style that creates a fairytale on screen. Sometimes it's dark , like 12 Monkeys, sometimes it's an adventure full of life and bittersweet relationships, like The Adventures of Baron von Munchausen. But what you always get is a dream. A beautiful, eerie, haunting dream.

Barber's Adagio for Strings

2008-11-24T09:46:00.003-06:00

I was listening to my iPod, The DoctorPod, this morning while getting ready for work and heard the most amazing song. I had to take a moment and just listen while Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings played. It is possibly one of the most hauntingly beautiful pieces of music I have ever heard. I swear my heart broke listening to this piece, the way the strings slowly build and descend, build and descend, until you feel like your heart will burst, and the things get quiet, and then build again. Wow.

I like a lot of classical music; a lot of pieces make me really, truly, emotionally respond, but this one, well, it's a cut above. It's up there with Bach's Toccata and Fugue, Air on the G String, Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring. It's up there with Mozart's Moonlight Sonata, Haydn's Emperor's Hymn, Debussy's Clair de Lune, and pretty much any version of Ave Maria. It's just amazing. I can't tell you how much, you need to go listen yourself.

I am committed to Sparkle Motion.

2008-11-20T10:45:00.002-06:00

Yes, that's right. It's D-Day. My future sister-in-law bought the "Sookie Sunday" group tickets to see Twilight tonight at midnight. Lord help us, for we may be lost in the screaming hordes of fangirls as they rush the theater to get good seats to see RPattz on the big screen.

We'll be much more dignified of course. We won't scream. At least not until the movie actually starts.

April Fool’s Day (remake)

2008-11-19T12:55:00.001-06:00

April Fools Day is hands-down one of my favorite 80's slasher films. It stars Deborah Foreman and Amy Steel, two of my favorite horror actresses (plus who can forget Deborah Foreman's memorable scene in Real Genius? Not I.) I rented the "remake" of AFD knowing it would in no way meet my expectations, but I guess I am just a glutton for punishment because this was way beyond bad.

This new version of April Fool's Day has none of the spirit of the original. The whole film is shot on video and has that shiny, crisp feel. The characters aren't interesting or sympathetic, and none of the actors are half as good as the originals. Scout Taylor Compton isn't nearly as good as Amy Steel. There really isn't anything about this movie that makes it worth watching, from its silly prank to death beginning to the twist ending that's not even close to a twist. This time around it's not a murder mystery weekend set up, it's a killer back to avenge the accidental death of a friend a year before set up. Even the deaths are so choreographed you can see them coming a mile away.

I don't know how this even got made, but I can tell why it went straight to video. I have seen Sci-Fi Channel Originals starring Casper van Dien that were more entertaining than this.

Rating: Hiss Hiss Hiss. This just makes me sad that they even tarnished the original by pretending this was a remake.

The rumors are true!

2008-11-17T15:58:00.003-06:00

I just saw on Amazon that P.D. James has written a new Adam Dalgliesh mystery and it comes out tomorrow.

Maybe iSanta will be good enough to get it for me. I just love her books. She's like Agatha Christie on steroids - more plot, more characterization, more thinking. I've been waiting to read The Lighthouse because I knew it would be awhile until I got the next AD mystery and now the waiting is over. Yipee!

OMG Star Trek num num num

2008-11-17T11:29:00.003-06:00

When I saw Quantum of Solace this weekend I was hoping for the new Watchmen trailer. Instead I got the latest Star Trek trailer.

Wow.

Wow.

I *love* Star Trek. I've seen all of the movies (outside of the the first one, when I was 4) in the theater. Some on opening day. I even love the The Voyage Home (Save the Whales).

I really had to keep myself from jumping up out of my seat and wiggling around like a crazy fool. It took a lot of willpower. I'm still giddy thinking about it today.

And on that note...a little Star Trek The Voyage Home quote to brighten your day.

"I mean, I may have carried your soul but I sure couldn't fill your shoes. " - McCoy to Spock

We are going to need a bigger boat.

2008-11-14T16:15:00.004-06:00

Steve has been watching this series from the BBC (I think) called Planet Earth. He also knows that while Jaws is one of my all time favorite films, it is one of my favorites because I have a terrifying fear of sharks. Big ones, small ones, I don't care. My hands get clammy just thinking about sharks, which sucks, because I do happen to have a serious love of the ocean. So just think of me, on the beach in Mexico or wherever, fully fortified with alcoholic beverages, saying to myself, there are no sharks, there are no sharks, and then remembering this video.

You Tube video of a Great White

Bastard.

The Eye (Remake)

2008-11-14T10:32:00.000-06:00

I really liked the original Hong King film, Jian Gui, so I thought I would give this American remake a chance. Unfortunately The Eye was almost the exact same as the original, and I just hate it when a remake doesn't bring something new to the table. On the other hand, the remake stars Alessandro Nivola, and I'll pretty much salivate over that guy in anything he ever does (including singing and dancing in Kenneth Brannagh's Love's Labors Lost), so I can't be too down on the film regardless of how much I would like to be.

In The Eye, Jessica Alba plays Sydney, a blind violinist who receives a corneal transplant. Finally, for the first time since she was very young, she can see. While she is getting used to seeing the world again, she realizes that some things that she sees aren't real. Some of those things are ghosts, and they want something from her. Alessandro Nivola plays her doctor, who sort of ends up falling for her and helping her uncover the mystery. Why is this happening? Who was her donor, and why, now after all of this time, is she seeing these ghosts? Are the visions real, or is she losing her mind?

Long story short, I liked the original better. This one had some nice atmosphere, but overall I think the original did it all better. It was spookier, the ghosts were more forboding, and well, even with avingt o read subtitles, the acting was far better. I would probably feel differently if there was something new and fresh brought to the story in the American remake, but there really wasn't. I liked Ringu and The Ring because I thought each really stood on their own. The Ring was similar enough to the original and yet still had a feeling of its own. The Eye didn't really have that.

Rating: 3 Purrs for some creepy ghost scenes and Mr. Nivola, but that's pretty much it.

The Mist

2008-11-03T13:07:00.000-06:00

“Lady, your tongue must be hung in the middle so that it can waggle at both ends.”

The Mist is one of my favorite Stephen King short stories. When I heard they were making a movie version I was torn. On the one hand, I loved the idea of seeing the story brought to life, but on the other, I know that sometimes his stories just don't translate well. What I loved about the written story was the lack of a reason why behind the mist. And well, we know that movies don't exactly let the reason behind why things occur just hide in the background anymore. They like to spoon-feed it to you.

So yes, the bulk of the story remains the same. Dave Drayton travels into town one day to pick up supplies after a terrible storm has knocked a whole heck of a lot around his lovely lake-front home. He takes his son with him, leaving the wife to guard the homestead. Once in town, strange things start to happen. A mist is moving across the town, and something's in the mist. Something that likes to eat people. Dave and his son are trapped in the grocery store with some other townsfolk, including the crazy religious freak, Mrs. Carmody, who declares it the "end times" and starts ranting about sacrifices and the second coming. Tension build between those who begin to follow Mrs. Carmody and those who hold to reason and fact. The question becomes will Dave and his band of "common sense" folks survive, or will they be sacrificed at the hands of the new religious fever infecting the survivors? Will they stay in the store or will they take their chances in the mist? Has the mist overtaken just the town, or has it reached everywhere?

What I liked? I thought the actors did a very fine job here - Thomas Jane was Dave and Marcia Gay Harden is sufficiently creepy as Mrs. Carmody. Although, she does tend to turn into a stereotype after awhile, but then I don't know how you could not make that character over the top, seeing as her purpose to the story. The creatures were scary, the atmosphere spooky, and there were some moments where I definitely jumped in my seat.

What I didn't like? Andre Braugher was woefully underutilized. He was a really nice foil for Thomas Jane's character. And the ending. Yes, I didn't like it. I understand it was approved by Stephen King (he's credited as saying he wished he'd thought of it), but I just didn't get that he and the others had reached that point of despair. It seemed too much like an ending Hollywood decided on for shock value, rather than it being true to the characters. Also, the reason behind the mist was of course inferred rather heavily, rather than left up to the imagination.

I wasn't disappointed in the movie version at all, but I don't think it could ever be as fascinating and as much of a draw on my imagination as the story itself.

Rating: 4 Purrs for some awesome dialog, spooky atmosphere, and of course, The Punisher, Mr. Thomas Jane