LITERAL REMAINS

Alice Kingsleigh, not quite at home in her Victorian society, attends a garden party where Hamish, the pale, redheaded, son of Lord Ascot, asks for her hand in marriage.  Hamish, prone to digestion problems, proposes in front of everyone.  The guests look on in anticipation.  Poor Alice excuses herself and runs off, only to follow [...]

Take a note, I love zombies.  I love zombie movies, I love zombie literature.  There is something about these apocalyptic tales that grab me.  I love it when the dead come back for no known reason.  I love it when there is a reason, be it a virus, magic, or some demon affiliation.  These zombie vehicles [...]

It was just a short time ago I was discussing hot sexy vampires and those of the fugly kind.  Count Orlock is not one for romancing.  But there is no denying the current trend of sexy vamps, thanks to Twilight, though Stephanie Myers should not shoulder all the blame.  Think back to Coppola’s Dracula adaptation, the good [...]

By now, everyone and their mum has heard about James Cameron’s film, Avatar.  It’s the highest grossing movie of all time, beating out Cameron’s last movie, Titanic.  Is Avatar good?  Yes.  Is it great?  That’s debatable.  Did I like it?  Yes.  Did I think I would?  Not really. Jake Sully is a paraplegic ex-Marine who [...]

In the year 2702, Earth has been divvied up by four ruling corporations, and they are at war over Mother Earth’s resources, which are all but depleted.  A deadly battle between Capitol (North and South Americas) and Bauhaus (Eastern Europe and North Africa) opens up a crater in the earth which lets out the mutants.  The mutants [...]

Okay, I finally got around to fetching this movie off my desk and watching it.  I have to say up front, I’ve never really been a Star Trek fan.  I thought the original series was rather boring; I watched some episodes of Next Generation, but didn’t really get into it; and I never watched any [...]

It’s the end of the world as you know it, so whatcha gonna do?  Brothers Brian and Danny decide to go to the Turtle Beach.  A virus of some sort has all but wiped out the population; those not dead, or sick, are waiting to die.  And if you decide to wait out the new [...]

I’m willing to give a movie a chance.  I suffered through Shudder and Blindness.  I watched the first Twilight movie, for crying out loud.  I even watched the Bette Midler/James Caan weepy weep For the Boys (and thought it good).  I do my best to go into a movie with little to no expectations, I [...]

I guess this is the age of updates.  It seems most everything is being remade, rebooted, re-imagined, reinterpreted.  Batman, Superman, the Alien, the Predator, Michael Myers, Jason Vorhees, Freddy Krueger, Leatherface, the Planet of them Damn Dirty Apes.  Even the Fantastic Four is scheduled for a reboot series (kind of puzzling, but also kind of [...]

In 1936 West Virginia, German immigrants, the Wollner family, are asked by the Third Reich to host a visiting professor, Richard Wirth.  Wirth is researching ancient rune stones left behind in the Americas by the Vikings when they first discovered the New World before that charlatan Columbus, and the other vile explorers who followed in [...]

Zombies have overrun America, if not the world, and the country is a wasteland crawling with the undead.  Four survivors travel the devastated landscape looking for refuge and a safe haven free of the walking dead.  Zombieland sounds like a lot of other movies out there, but what Z-land, with its mix of comedy, horror, action, romance, [...]

Okay, I’m trying to catch up on some stuff.  I have a stack of DVD’s sitting on my desk, movies from Christmas and my birthday and thoroughly enjoyable trips to the Wal-Mart and other places.  I’m trying, trying, to get some of these things viewed.  Bare with me. District 9 I got for my birthday, [...]

I like werewolves.  I love Universal’s original, The Wolf Man, ever since I saw it as a wee lad.  It left an indelible impression on me:  the foggy moors, the twisted forest of trees, the cursed creature stalking the night for victims.  I finally got out to see the remake, after Universal finally got around [...]

If you decide you want to watch the oh so fan divided Halloween II on DVD, the best bet is to check out this unrated director’s cut of Rob Zombie’s high reaching, well meaning, slasher pic.  The theatrical version left me disgruntled, and puzzled, and although the director’s cut doesn’t clear up all the baffling [...]

My problems with the movie versions of Dan Brown’s bestsellers are the same problems I have with the books themselves.  They tend to get bogged down in all the story, and the trivia is better than the plot.  I must admit, though, that I enjoy the movies more so than the novels.  It took me quite [...]