Well I’ll start with the worst of the bunch I’ve recently watched.

The Haunted World of El Superbeasto.  Well what can I say folks, I’m losing faith in Rob Zombie.  Back in the mid 90′s living in Mason City with my two best pals Jay and Rob I fell in love with a band called White Zombie.  I sought out every thing I could by these guys including the EP Nightcrawlers with remixes by KMFDM.  I was a man hooked.  Then I heard that Rob was going to start making movies and I got hit upside the head with House of 1,000 Corpses.  I like that movie, I even like The Devil’s Rejects but then it’s all down hill after that.  I’m not even going to talk about his Halloween remake and I still haven’t seen his sequel yet.  I have a real fear in my heart and I’m not even that big of a fan of the original Halloween.  But I thought to myself, “Self, Rob does a great job with his comic books and can you imagine what he could do with a cartoon?”  Needless to say that self was really looking forward to this movie.  Alas that self was completely let down.  Don’t waste your time with this one folks, especially if you are easily offended.  There is tons of cartoon nudity, lots of blood and gore, homophobia abounds, the cartoon steals from both Fritz the Cat and Ren & Stimpy but it doesn’t steal the good parts.  It’s a potty mouthed homage to Rob’s favorite things and I was bored to tears with it.  Even the music fell flat for me.  So unless you want to punch holes through your fingernails, I’d skip this completely.  ** out of *****

Monsters vs. Aliens was next on my list here.  Again I think my hopes were too high for this one.  Dreamworks set the bar really high with their first Shrek film and they haven’t been able to really capture that magic since.  As I’ve mentioned before I have a total man crush on Seth Rogen so I guess I just wanted him to be used more effectively here.  I think it can be done, I laughed like crazy at Rogen’s voice work in Horton Hears a Who but this one, he just wasn’t used well.  I also felt the story fell flat and was too one dimensional.  We’ve all seen this movie already and there wasn’t a whole lot of other redeeming qualities about it.  Your children probably aren’t going to learn a moral lesson from this one, and while that’s OK, I also don’t want to feel guilty as a parent letting my child watch an hour and twenty-five minutes of mindless animation.  The one bright spot on this DVD though was the animation.  It’s really really good, so good that when the camera zooms into the face of our opening sky watchers, you can actually see each hair on his beard.  Well done animation team, well done.  Each year we get closer and closer to eliminating the need for actual actors on camera… now that’s a scary proposition for those that make $20 million a picture isn’t it?  *** out of *****

Another man that I have a total man crush on is Clive Barker, here his wrap around stories from his anthology book The Books of Blood is brought to the small screen with a large amount of success.  I met Clive once when I was but a wee twenty something and his films Hellraiser (and it’s sequels) and Nightbreed are perennial favorites of mine, so perhaps I’m more biased than not but I thought the director did a great job with this.  A common theme with Barker, especially his early fiction, was sexuality and tension.  Book of Blood does a great job with that theme again (those same kind of themes are echoed in both Hellraiser and Nightbreed but definitely more so in Hellraiser) and stays very true to Barker’s original work of fiction.  The direction is very good in this, it’s a crawler here and you’re not going to be getting a lot of quick cuts and fancy edits.  It’s deliberate and extremely well paced.  The director and editor give you time to build the tension, to build the horror hiding at the crossroads of the dead.  I was impressed with the acting as well, this isn’t Oscar worthy performances here, but I’m used to watching a lot of low budget stuff and the acting here was far beyond that.  The three main characters all did a good job with what they were given and all three turned in believable performances.  There was some heavy use of CGI in this as well, but it wasn’t over the top or too fake looking.  We’ve all seen that shot in movies that just looks ridiculous, see Will Smith’s I Am Legend for a perfect example of ridiculous use of CGI, but this far surpasses that crap and looks great.  It’s not over done and is quite believable itself.  All in all I thought that Book of Blood was a good film and a great addition to any one’s library who likes horror movies.  There is a good amount of gore and a couple of good scare moments as well as some nudity so keep that in mind.  But if you’re up for trying something that may have been underneath the radar you can’t go wrong with this one.  **** out of *****

I’m planning a special event for the month of October since it’s my favorite time of year and my favorite time for movies!  Also I’m working on a review for local Des Moines Indie act why make clocks.

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Howdy Folks,

So here’s what’s hot on DVD this week.

September 22
- 30 Rock: Season 3 (Comedy, TV)

So here are my winning picks for this week on DVD.  Clive Barker’s Books of Blood is number one on my pick this week.  I’m a huge Clive Barkerfan, he truly writes the best horror out there.  Just beautiful, sexy, dark and twisted stuff.  The Great and Secret Showwill forever be one of my all time favorite books.  And if I remember correctly, the Hellraiser story was actually born out of his Books of Blood series, so this look very interesting to me.  Second up is The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, this is a Rob Zombie animated film that I’ve had my eye on for some time.  I’m not a huge fan of Zombie as a film director.  I’ve enjoyed his cannon so far, but I haven’t been blown away.  This is a totally original concept based on a comic book he came up with.  So I’m down for this one.  Finally Observe and Report hits DVD tomorrow too, and it stars my Seth Rogenwhom I can’t seem to get enough of lately.  I dig the dude and his comedy so sue me!  Unfortunately my Netflix queue only has two spots so I went with Books of Blood and El Superbeasto this week, I’ll review those when I see em and Observe and Report will have to wait a little bit.

Oh and on a recent stop by the Limited Edition Comicson the Hill in Cedar Falls I discovered that one of my favorite comic book heroes of all time has just resurfaced!  I’m really looking forward to reading the Darkness/Pitt crossover!

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Well folks I had high hopes for this movie.  Really high hopes.  In some cases it delivers, in other cases it fails miserably.  Your enjoyment of the film may be based on how much you enjoy 1. Marvel Comics, 2. X-Men, 3. Action Movies and 4. Summer Blockbusters.  Unfortunately I’m pretty much straight down the middle in my opinion of this movie.

So what did they get right?  Well they got the action right.  There was a ton of great action and the CGI was done really well.  The acting was passable in most instances and Huge Jackman is a PERFECT Wolverine.  I also think that Ryan Reynolds is going to be a PERFECT Deadpool.  I dig Ryan Reynolds an awful lot.  I’m not afraid to admit it either.  He’s got great range and brings a lot to his characters.  I’m also a fan of Huge Jackman.  You hear that Thomas Jane, you could be here too, instead you keep giving me awful movies like that last one with Ron Pearlman that I refuse to name in this blog so other people won’t waste their lives on it either.  That’s about as good as it got really.  Now I hate to do this to you, but here’s what they got wrong.

OK, I’ll try not to Comic Book Nerd you too much on this, but they didn’t get a whole lot of Wolverine’s actual origins correct.  They got the bone claws right, and the confusion about who his father maybe, but they got Victor Creed ALL WRONG.  They also got the Weapon X program wrong for the most part.  While they got parts of William Stryker correct, they got his ultimate soldier wrong.  They also did a terrible job with The Blob and Gambit, both of whom are major characters in the X-Men universe that are played completely wrong, Gambit even missing his Cajun accent which is as much apart of his character in the comics as his ability to energize the objects around him and use them as weapons.  This is the problem for me.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine as a summer blockbuster, mindless action movie it works.  It plays to the strengths of the genre, but as a film in the X-Men and Marvels comic book universe it fails miserably.  If I average my two scores together **** for action and ** for a Marvel film it equals *** Stars.

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Well I figured that I should probably catch back up on the DVD release lists!

September 15
- An American Werewolf in London (Full Moon Edition) (Comedy, Horror, Romance, Thriller)

- Barbie and the Three Musketeers (Animation, Family)

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Well sorry for the lack of posts in the last week or so.  Recently the family and I loaded up the wagon and headed to the Twin Cities for a little R & R before Fall hits and I thought this would be a good blog post, especially as you’ll see that I’ll bring it all around back to Iowa and our neck of the woods in the end!

The Big City

So last Wednesday we headed out of town and headed to Minneapolis for a little shopping and fun.  I won’t bore you with the shopping details, cause honestly we all know how entertaining that can and can’t be, but IKEA was hours of fun picking out big boy bedroom stuff for my son and wandering around looking at the wonderful lines and angles.  I was in heaven actually.  I like clean lines.

On Thursday we headed to the Mall of America for some serious shopping.  Serious shopping was not done though.  I kept my eye on a Spider-man ball cap, but it was just too expensive to spend the money on so we took silly pictures in the mall.

Lunch at Bubba Gump

 This is a shot of my son and I at Bubba Gump’swaiting for our meal to arrive.  All photos are courtesy of my lovely wife.

Shark Attack!

My son loves sharks so this picture was too awesome not to take!  Other than the pictures and a little Christmas shopping for family and friends we didn’t do a whole lot at the Mall of America.  The next day was the Como Zoo!

Zebras!

I’ve been going to the Como Zoo with my family since I was a little kid living in the Twin Cities with my parents.  Not a lot has changed at the zoo in all those years either.  They still have the machines that make the plastic animals that they had when I was a kid.  I was giddy with excitement as I remembered the smell from so many years ago.  The real beauty of the Como Zoo though folks is that it’s free.  Basically for a five dollar donation my family and I got to spend the whole day looking at animals, seeing shows and riding rides at Como Town Park.  Unlike the amusement park at the Mall of America, Como Town is full of rides for my son, and the rides are between seventy five cents and a dollar fifty to ride.  I think I spent a total of six bucks on all the rides.

Speed Racer

Not Quite Thomas but it

The family had a blast at the zoo and it’s definitely back on our plate to do again next summer.  My son will be a bigger and able to ride more of the rides by himself next year.

On the way home we decided to hit the Medford Outlet Center.  Here is where the real shopping happened!  HA!  So I went to a book store there and found a book called Great Movies You’ve Probably Missed: Videos You Got to Rent seeing’s how I write and entertainment blog I’m always on the search for movies that I need to see and the price was right on this book so I snatched it up and took it home.  At home I sat down to start taking a look at it and seeing how many of the films I’d seen already.  On the inside cover I noticed that the authors thanked the Cedar Rapids Public Library.  So I did a little looking some more and came to realize that this book is written by two Iowa City residents!  Ardis Sillick and Michael McCormick!  So that’s how I bring it all back around to Eastern Iowa!  I had to drive to Minneapolis to buy a book about movies from local Eastern Iowa authors!

Great Movies You

 So that’s about it for now.  I’ll be checking out the Kool-Aid and Cookie sale this weekend at Limited Edition Comics on the Hill in Cedar Falls, I hear Darth Vader is gonna make an appearance and my son and I already have our Imperial March ring-tone set for his entrance!

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