Guilty Pleasures

We all have them. Yup, I know you do too so don't pretend you don't. It's just that sometimes guilty pleasures are very unexpected....Like some of mine. Here's my top 5 in no specific order...Don't judge me.

1. Glee

I love Glee. It makes me happy. I love the songs and I love how ridiculously sappy it gets sometimes. Sue Sylvester is the most evil person ever, yet I can't help but love her. Maybe this is the reason I love her so much:


Either way, Glee rocks.


2. Lady Gaga
For someone who listens to mostly punk rock and metal, liking Lady Gaga is almost a crime. But I can't help it. Her costumes are outrageous, her make-up is insane and her music videos make no sense. She has everyone confused by her existence. I love her. This is my favourite video from hr because of the Tarantino influences...Check it:



3. Jennifer's Body
Most horror fans HATED this movie. I like to think that they just missed the humour in it. Check this clip out and tell me you didn't laugh:


4. Perez Hilton
To be quite honest, I don't really care what most celebrities are doing with their lives and whether they've crashed their car or who they're dating. But everyone once in a while you find a gem of a story. Like this:
Something Wrong, Courtney?

5. Jersey Shore
Yeah. I hate to admit this one. But I've watched since the first episode came out and I'm stoked for Season 2 to start. I hope Snookie gets punched in the face again.




You know you love some things that other people hate. Just let it out my friends. Let your guilty pleasures out.

Watchmen

So I blogged about how I bought Watchmen about two weeks ago for $3 but I hadn't watched it yet. Setting aside three hours to watch a movie is kind of a big deal. But last week one day when I wasn't working I finally watched it.

The last time I watched it was when it came out in theaters and I had forgotten most of it. What an awesome flick though. I know there are certain things that had to be left out of the movie from the book due to time restraints and everything but even so, I think they did an incredible job of interpreting it into movie form.

The special effects were unreal. Especially the way they created John. The soundtrack is amazing. The way they played Bob Dylan through the opening credits while the news headlines ran sent chills through me. It was so fitting.

Although the story line itself is more attributed to the book than to the movie, the story in the movie didn't change much and you can still pick out all of the important parts and relate them to the way our world is now. The story itself contains so much social commentary it's difficult to take it in all at once.

I'm going to need to watch this movie again. And maybe again. And then maybe again. Setting aside three hours for a movie is just such a pain in the ass.

Breathers - A Zombie's Lament

A lot of people have told me about their hate of reading. I like to think that most people hate reading because they haven't found a book that they really love yet. So many people associate reading with the times they were forced to read stuff like Shakespeare in high school. And let's ace it, who likes being forced to do anything? Certainly not me.

Sometimes I also find it difficult to get into a book. But other times I fly through books within a week because I love it so much. That's what happened to me with Breathers.

Breathers is a story about a man named Andy who kills himself and his wife in a horrible car accident. Unlike his wife however, Andy re-animates. He has a broken ankle, a flattened arm and his vocal chords have been ruined from the accident. He can't get a job, can't stay out of the house past 11pm and people are constantly throwing rotten food at him screaming things like "Go back to your grave!" Since every 1 in 200 people re-animates, the undead have formed support groups for themselves called Undead Anonymous. Andy meets a girl at one of these groups and falls in love with her.

Andy goes through much turmoil and trouble in his second life and it's all entertaining. The book literally made me laugh out loud, which made people think I was listening to voices in my head on the train.

The rights to the book have recently been sold to Fox Searchlight Pictures and Diablo Cody has her hands on the project. Most book-to-movie adaptations lose something in the transition. But I really like Diablo Cody so I'm hoping she will do something fantastic with it.

Read Breathers! You won't regret it.

Blu-ray

Is Blu-Ray really that much better than DVD? What about if you watch a DVD on an HD tv? We have an HD tv that I watch all my movies on and I think they look great. Is there really any point in spending the money to get a Blu-Ray player AND re-stock your movie collection? hell i still watch movies on VHS sometimes and I still think they're great. What is this obssession that people have with buying more expensive things for a slight increase in quality? Can't we just be happy with what we have? Do you really need to see the pimple on the actor's left cheek that much more clearly?

It's silly, people. Just watch your movies. And enjoy them.

I love cheap movies!

I was at Rogers Video yesterday and got The Watchmen AND My Bloody Valentine in 3-D for $3.19 each! score!





I've already watched My Bloody Valentine last night. I don't know if I'm 3-D illiterate though or what because I don't think I got the 3-D effect. Everything was just green. Strange.

Every summer...

...there's something that happens in Toronto.

Something magical
and exciting

and very, very expensive.

What is it you ask? Well it's the Rue Morgue Festival of Fear!

I went two years ago and had a blast meeting Tobe Hooper and Sid Haig and Rugero Deodato! Such a fun-filled day. I didn't get to go to the one last year because I was in Newfoundland and I missed my love Bruce Campbell. We will be together some day!

This year there are more great guests including Bill Moseley and GLENN DANZIG! Check out the rest of the guests here!


Who's coming with me!?

Orphan

Someone had told me the ending to this movie a couple of weeks after it came out so I didn't even bother seeing it because the ending that the person had told me was lame. But my sister and I had nothing to do the other day so we watched Orphan.
The movie is about a couple who has two children but wants to adopt a third after they had a miscarriage years earlier. The go to an orphanage and meet a young girl named Esther who they quickly decide to adopt. As the little girl gets settled into the house weird things start to happen and Esther seems to be at the scene of the crime each and every time. The young girl torments the parents through putting the other two children through hell and back.
The ending is still pretty ridiculous. You think the little girl is just psychotic but then BAM! Absurdity.

watch a bit

Movies your mother would (not) approve of

Happy Mother's Day to moms and grandmas everywhere! My mom bought me my first Goosebumps book, My Hairy Adventure, and on the cover there was a picture of a boy staring at himself in the mirror in the midst of turning into a werewolf. I carried the book around my house for days before I even cracked it open because I wanted to read it so bad but at the same time I was terrified of what I would be reading. My mom finally said to me "it's just a book. it's not real. but if you never read it, you'll never know." Thanks mom for encouraging me through everything. You always had faith in me.

And now for movies your mother would never approve of... unless you're my mother. who would probably go see these with me.

Grace
Grace is pregnant with a baby who dies before it is born. Grace decides to carry the baby to term anyway and give birth like it was still alive. And somehow, her child miraculously comes back to life. But it is no normal baby. Maybe this is where zombies started...

Super bloody and graphic and this movie makes me believe that I will never breastfeed my children ever.

snippet!


Inside
A pregnant woman is in a horrible car accident in which her husband is tragically killed but her unborn child lives. She goes on living her life after the accident and maintains a healthy pregnancy. Just as she is rounding her due date, a strange woman shows up at her house in the middle of the night.

And she wants her baby.

gore!gore!gore!


The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
The fact that this movie came out in 1992 makes me quiver. I remember watching it a few years after it came out, probably 1996 or 1997, and although I haven't watched it since then I still have vivid memories of how much this movie disturbed me.

Anyway this movie is about a psycho nanny. She acts like the family's best friend while she is in front of them but begins wreaking havoc on their family behind their backs in the worst imaginable ways.

trailer!


Friday the 13
Oh Mrs. Voorhees, your little boy turned into such a monster. I think the first one is the best example of the mother/son bond.

the remake sucked

Still searching...

...for a copy of James and the Giant Peach on DVD. I have been in over ten different stores in different cities looking for a copy of this movie...And I leave each store empty-handed.


I know I could just order it online...But where's the fun of the search in that one?

You Don't Know Jack

You Don'n Know Jack is an HBO movie about Dr. Jack Kevorkian AKA Dr. Death. For those who don't know, Dr. Kevorkian was the man who brought the idea of Euthanasia to the United States. There was so much controversy over the doctor assisted suicide practice that Kevorkian introduced that the feud and protest went on for years. I guess the practice is similar in idea to abortion, where both raise so much public outcry.
Dr. Kevorkian was played by Al Pacino. I totally forgot that Al Pacino was the man behind Dr. Death. He did such a good job of convincing me that he WAS Kevorkian that I'm still stuck with the question in my head of whether assisted suicide should be legal or illegal.
Susan Sarandon also plays a small part in this movie as a close friend and supporter of Kevorkian.
If you're at all interested in the subject of Dr. Death and the legal and moral debates raised by the subject, it's definitely worth checking out.

Check out the trailer!

A Nightmare on Elm Street

I used to be totally against remakes. I hated everything about them. I thought that the originals were as good as they possibly could be so there was no point in updating them to make them "better". But over the years my opinion has slowly changed. I'm not saying that I agree with every single remake every done because there are definitely some useless and pointless remakes (Quarantine anyone?), but there are some movies that would just be so cool if they were updated slightly and given a face-lift.
Before I came around to the idea of remakes being not so bad, I would worry myself with the question "what if they remake Freddy?" And then my worry became a reality. Luckily after I had become okay with the idea of remakes.
And I'm glad they redid it. Freddy needed a little bit of an update. I am slightly disappointed at the fact that they found a new actor to play Freddy Kruger, but I was looking around a comic book store a few weeks ago in Toronto and found a magazine with an interview with Englund (I wish I could remember what magazine it was in. Rue Morgue maybe?). They had asked Englund of he was upset that someone else was playing Freddy in the new movie and he responded by saying that he was getting too old to play these high-energy parts in movies now. I can definitely see where he's coming from, and I don't really think of anyone who could have done a better job of Freddy than Jackie Earle Haley.
I didn't really care for the majority of the actors in the movie as they were all young and mildly-gifted actors. But that's just one of the charms that the original movie passed on to the remake.
Haley did a great job of bringing out Freddy's menacing side without losing any of his dry, sarcastic humour. It was definitely weird to be seeing close-ups of Freddy's face and instead of his looking like Englung wearing a mask, Freddy looked like a real burn victim. His face looked as if it had been smoothed out by it being melted in a fire. It was a really cool new face to give Freddy.
I also appreciated the way they had many of the memorable scenes from the original in the new one, yet they were minorly tweaked. Like instead of Nancy's boyfriend being eaten by a blood-gushing bed (original), they had Nancy fall from a blood-gushing ceiling onto her bed. Just these minor details were really cool.

Overall, I loved the new A Nightmare on Elm Street. It will definitely be added to my collection as soon as it's released on DVD!

Movies to look forward to...summer 2010

Just looking on IMDb to see what good movies are coming out this summer... Looks like this summer is full of monsters, science experiments gone wrong, drugs and giggles. Here's what I found:

NEXT WEEK!!!!!! The remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street finally comes out! I know most horror fans are not looking forward to this, and I don't blame most people. Remakes are mostly over-rated. But Freddy Kruger?! The first time Freddy graced us with his presence was in 1984...That's before I was even born. As much as I love this movie and think there's nothing wrong with it, seeing Freddy with updated make-up and watching Nancy and her friends die with better special effects will definitely be a treat. I'm not saying it will be better than the original, but I'm definitely looking forward to it.

I wonder who's going to get sucked into the bed...

The new A Nightmare on Elm Street trailer

The Human Centipede

I found this gem while searching through the new releases on IMDb. I had never heard or read about it before. The movie takes places in Germany where two tourist girls get lost and stumble upon the house of a mad scientist. The scientist wants to create a human centipede by fusing three bodies together.

This looks like it could potentially be the most disturbing movie of the summer. It looks like it will be bloody, immoral and something I will have to watch through half open eyes.

The only problem is that it will be a limited release...So finding a theater in my area that's playing it will probably be a little bit difficult. It's also being released the same day as A Nightmare on Elm Street. Maybe I'll just have to make a day at the movies!

Watch the trailer!

Holy Rollers

Alright...So this isn't a horror movie at all. But I do have a weakness for drug related movies. And Jesse Eisenberg.

This movie is about a young Jewish boy who's about to get married and he needs a little extra cash. He gets into the drug trafficking world and doesn't realize how deep he's in until it's too late to get out.

This movie looks like it could either be fantastic, or super slow. And there's only one way to find out. Holy Rollers comes out May 21.

Watch the trailer!

Survival of the Dead

He's at it again...George Romero has yet another movie to add to his growing list of "dead" movies...The movies that made him as famous as he is.

IMDb says that the movie is set for release May 28. Buuuuut...I found a copy on the internet and have already watched it. I won't ruin anything for anyone. All I'll say is that I think Romero has lost his zombie touch...Just a little. I feel like this movie had more of a sarcastic undertone to it then his previous movies which took surviving the zombie apocalypse very seriously.

Either way, if you like Romero, it's worth watching.

Check out the trailer!

Get Him to the Greek

Oh how I love to satisfy my funny bone! Russell Brand and Jonah Hill in a movie together again? That's all I need to know. I'll probably even pee my pants a little bit.

It comes out June 4.

Watch the trailer!

Splice

Mmmmmm I don't know about you but I love a little bit of science fiction with my horror.

I read about Splice in a copy of Rue Morgue magazine just over a year ago and have been itching to watch it ever since. Finally, the time has come. Well...not yet. I still have to wait until June 4. I've waited this long...A few more weeks won't hurt.

The movie is about two scientists who accidentally create a new life-form. It seems pretty predictable that the new creation will go on a murderous rampage...At least that's what I'm hoping for.

Check out the trailer!

TOY STORY 3

Is it alright that I'm THIS excited for this movie when I'm 22 years old? I can remember when the first Toy Story came out when I was so so so young...And the desk lamp that jumped on the bouncy ball and accidentally deflated it before the credits of the movie. Wow I can't wait for this.

I have a feeling it will be a tear jerker. For me at least. I can't help it. Andy's going to college! Who wouldn't cry?

I can't wait. I think th 3-D thing is a little bit overused at this point but I'll go to see it anyway. It comes out June 18.

Watch the trailer

Despicable Me

I lol-ed throughout this entire trailer. There's no way I'm NOT seeing this. Just watch the trailer...This one comes out July 9

Watch and lol!

Predators

You know... I didn't really think much of this. And then I watched the trailer and saw that Robert Rodriguez had his hands on this project. And now it has my full attention.

I didn't really like the first Predator movie. But maybe I'll give this one a shot. Maybe.

It comes out July 9 as well.

Watch the trailer

Sooooo overall, the summer of 2010 is not a good one for horror movies. But on the flip-side, there are lots of other fun movies coming out. This is not a list of ALL of the movies being released this summer...Just the ones I am personally looking forward to. If you want to find out about more movies coming out this summer just go to the IMDb website. You can find a complete list there.

Brutal Massacre - A Comedy

So this movie is about a B-horror movie director who's trying to direct his final "masterpiece" but everything goes wrong.

It's pretty good if you want a giggle. The movie has a bunch of B-movie actors in them too, like Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead), Brian O'Halloran (Clerks), Ellen Sandweiss (Evil Dead), Gunnar Hansen (who played the original Leatherface) and Gerry Bednob (the "go fuck a goat" guy from 40 Year Old Virgin)...just to name a few.

I probably wouldn't watch it again...But it was pretty good for a one-time thing.

Preview!

Broken

So when you're in a bad mood, what cheers you up? A disgusting, disturbing bloody movie? That's definitely what cheers me up.

My friend and I spent about an hour looking through a video rental place for that perfect "pick me up" movie. After discovering that they didn't have any of the movies we originally wanted (Inside, Martyrs, Frontiers) we found Broken. I'm the one that convinced her to rent it because it was a Dimension Extreme film, which means it has to be good, right? RIGHT?

Wrong.

I think this was one of the slowest horror movies I have ever seen. The movie is about this man who kidnaps women, puts them through a self-survival test, and if they pass he makes them his personal slave. The man lives in the middle of the woods in a tent and seems to be a naturalist. He kills his own meat, grows his own garden...etc. The women serve the purpose of doing these things for him.

I think this movie was put into the Dimension Extreme family because the few gory scenes in the movie were REALLY gory. To the point where I had to watch through my fingertips. But other than the maximum eight gory scenes, this movie was a bore. I had never even heard of it before I saw it in the video store even though it came out in 2006...But now I know why. This movie was much better left unwatched.

James and the Giant Peach

I remember watching this movie religiously as a child. The centipede was always my favourite which is weird because every time I see a centipede I shriek and go bananas.

Directed by Henry Selick, I consider this movie one of my great childhood classics. Watching it over again and remembering all the songs and just how horrible James' aunts were was hilarious. Isn't it amazing what we can think of when we just use our imaginations?

The biggest kick I got out of re-watching this movie was when the centipede goes under the frozen water to try and move the boat which has gotten stuck in the ice. When he's down there he finds an abandoned pirate ship. He walks into the ship, yells "Skellington!" and who do we see, but a character from one of Selick's other childhood classics.

This movie, along with The Nightmare Before Christmas as well Coraline, is often confused as being a Tim Burton movie. It's true that Tim Burton had a hand in producing both Nightmare and James, but they are not, in fact, directed by him. I think this may put Selick ahead of Burton in my all-time favourite directors category. Especially after Sweeney Todd and Alice in Wonderland...

We'll never tell the kids...

...Cinderella died

Happy un-valentine's

For next year...

Alice in Wonderland (the original)

A few nights ago, my room mate and I watched the original Disney version of Alice in Wonderland. I haven't seen it since I was in first year university so I had forgotten some of the best parts of the movie.

After watching the original though, I think I have figured out why I didn't enjoy the Tim Burton version of the movie as much as I had originally enjoyed the cartoon classic. Tim Burton formed his movie to be a sequel to the Disney version. The Tim Burton version takes place when Alice is in her 20s and she is facing a difficult decision on whether or not to become engaged to a man she does not truly love. To escape tis reality she dives into a rabbit hole and rediscovers Wonderland.

But it's not the same as when she visited the first time. The first time she was there all of the characters seemed so light-hearted and content with their Wonderland world. The second time she goes, however, there is a dark undertone which follows Alice as she re-encounters character after character. This could be because when Alice visits the first time she is six years old and does not have much to be sad or worried about in her real life. What does a six year old have to worry about other than behaving herself and trying to do her best in school? When she visits as a twenty year old, her vision of the world has obviously become more clouded through her maturity; she is being pressured into being married without loving her fiancée, she has surely seen the darker parts of the world including poverty and war, and she has surely by the age of twenty made friends and lost them for whatever reason. Since Wonderland exists in Alice's head, it is no wonder that the happy-go-lucky place she once knew has know become dark and almost ominous.

Another thing that I didn't really realize until I watched the original was that this sequel was not a musical. I had not forgotten that Disney made a musical but I had just put it out of my mind. I guess this sort of adds to the happy and bubbly place that Alice originally encounters when she is six. Without the musical aspect, it definitely adds gloom to Alice's new idea of Wonderland.

United States of Tara

A few months ago my sister discovered this tv show on my mom's Rogers on Demand called United States of Tara. She tried to convince me to watch it telling me it was about a woman with multiple-personality disorder. But that's all she told me. So I didn't believe her that it was a great show.

But then I was at my mom's house with a bunch of free time on my hands so I decided to give it a shot. I'm super glad I did too! Not only does Tara have multiple personalities, but she has a husband, two kids and a sister who are all main characters in the show. And ALL of them are equally as hilarious as Tara.

The show was created by Diablo Cody who also wrote Juno and Jennifer's Body. I didn't know this until I started watching the show and saw it in the opening credits, but that just makes me love it even more. It's such a great show.

If you've never sen it, check it out. I'm sure it will completely suck you in like it has done to me.

Click here to see one of Tara's hilarious alter-egos.

Frontier(s)

I heard about Frontier(s) a long time ago but never really understood what it was about. From the preview I could tell that there were many riots and I assumed it was about something political.

I haven't been able to find this movie to rent anywhere. My friend and I tried to find it in the video store the other day so I looked it up online today. I now know why video stores don't carry it!

And I was right about the political background...kind of. The beginning of the movie starts with five "friends" who are up to no good. They have a bag of cash and are trying to escape the city, we assume for political reasons since there is a seemingly unwanted election happening at the time. One of them is shot and dies in a hospital. The rest try to get to a hostel. Two make it there before the other two and chaos ensues.

You never really find out what the five of them were up to when they were in the city but you know it's illegal since they are trying to escape with a huge bag of money. The rest of the movie doesn't really have much to do with politics at all.

This movie is kind of like Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets Hostel. TCM because they encounter a family of crazed lunatics, Hostel because they are kidnapped from a hostel in a different country and the family uses the hostel to lure people in. The movie has nothing to do with either of these other movies though. It's something totally fresh, which is great because it's really difficult to find a slasher movie that isn't like all other slasher flicks.

If you don't mind subtitles, you should for sure watch it.

Oh you Frenchies and your horror....

Watch the trailer!