A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon

I read Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time several years ago and really enjoyed it, so I really have no grounds for why it took me so long to come back and read his next novel, A Spot of Bother. He has such a nice voice for for his characters - they are comedic and human and frail all at the same time. They are people you think you could know.

In A Spot of Bother, George Hall is nicely settled in to his retirement. He's working around the house, nice and quiet, when one day he finds a nasty looking spot on his hip, his daughter Katie decides to marry the wholly inappropriate Ray, and all hell breaks loose. George is convinced he has cancer and is dying, Katie starts to doubt her relationship with Ray, son Jamie, the responsible one, ends up ruining his relationship, and everyone slowly starts to fall apart all while the mother of the family tries to plan the perfect wedding in the garden. It's a comedy of errors, with George trying to hide from the inevitable in bushes and hotel rooms, Katie trying to mend or not mend her relationship with Ray, and Jamie try to decide who he is after all of these years.

I really don't know how to do the book justice. It's funny and sad, truthful and joyous in all of those ways that families can be but in an entirely British sort of way. It's Teas and Tescos. It's like you see your own crazy family in the Halls every step of the way as they fall apart and find themselves joined as a tight family unit somehow in the end in a way you hoped for but didn't really expect. Sort of like you do when the life you planned isn't how you ended up, but you are all the more complete because of it.

You should try one of Mark Haddon's books and see how you like it. He's refreshing, a voice of craziness and sanity all in one shiny package, and an author who is able to show you the not so nice sides of humanity without removing the humanity, if you follow. I need to add his next books to my wish list. I don't think I will wait as long to read them this time.

 Rating: 4 Purrs for a delightful, easy read that made me think a lot about how to cope with realities without trying to make the rest of my days by hiding in bushes. Here's to crazy families!

Killers & Date Night

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

Avatar

"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

Horrorfest 4

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.
  

The Losers

"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

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.

2012

"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?

Watch Instantly Day 2

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.

Jennifer's Body

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.

My Name Is Bruce

"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.

Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski

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

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...

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

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

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.
  

Murder Party

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. 

Recent Acquisitions to the Library

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

Run Fatboy Run

"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.

The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries by Charlaine Harris

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

"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. 

Jack Brooks Monster Slayer

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!