Messages

Last night, while answering the door to trick or treaters, I had a chav girl with her family ask me, quite stright faced, if she could "have some of my pumpkins". When I said no, she actually seemed quite put out!

SBT

Noisy- that is brilliant, and I meant to ask you on the other place- are they custom appliances, or a shop bought set, of what? It's really, really, good.

SBT

Happy Halloween!

SBT

2,1,4,3

2 is freakily deakily- and the black squiggles only add to its berserker wrongness.

1 is traditionally scary, and I like that.

4 suffers from lighting that doesn't show it off to its best.

and 3 gains extra points for the guyliner... which I will callously steal as a finishing touch to a couple of mine, which I will add later.

SBT

8 and a half years here- which means I'd better pull my finger out to get as famous as Mr Carroll in the next eighteen months. Well done Mike- that's some staying power. And somehow you managed to do productive things at the same time! Our heads are wired up differently, obviously.

SBT

Night of the Living Dead (the original, not Savini's remake, or the 3D remake, or the animated version, or the Welsh one)

Not a review as such- other than to say, the boys and I watched this last night as their introduction to the world of zombies. It's very talky, obviously, but they sat attentive throughout and squirmed in all the right places. I'd wanted to watch this over halloween, but sometimes find it's a film that beats me if I start it too late and I'm too tired. Watching it at 6pm, when I was fully awake, and with the added bonus of two small boys whose reactions I wanted to enjoy, it was an absolute pleasure. Extra bonus points for starting a conversation about civil rights- which Bram has either been learning about at school, or has read about somewhere, and the treatment of Ben at the end. Bram seemed aware that "black people had once been slaves, and fought back in the 1960s". That they had this conversation while pretending to be zombies on their way to brushing their teeth, made me very happy.

Anyway, I enjoyed Night like I haven't in years. And for those with small children and similar concerns: the "inappropriate content" rating for NotLD stands at:

No sex, no swearing (barring a "bastard"), all gore implied. Scariest bits: the dead woman's face at the top of the stairs, the zombies finally breaking into the house, and Ben getting shot.

SBT

Hey chaingun, im not here to offer you anything im sorry to say- just to mention that my rather cutting comments about the original film over on the 'last film watched' thread were in no way intended to bait you, or anything! not that i thought they would, but youre obviously a fan, and i didnt want you to maybe take it that i was slagging the film because of this thread. As it happens, while i didnt like the movie at all this time round, i am quite looking forward to hellbound tonight and am itching to get my comics down from the attic and give them a read. Although hit and miss, i remember the Epic comics series as being intermittently a lot of fun!

SBT

Of course, the spine-madness can go too far the other way. Take DVDs for example- i hate having those 'collection' versions on my shelf- 'the clint eastwood collection', etc. I like the spines of series to be in the same style as each other, but not homogenised.

Yesterday i bought Hellraiser 1-3 from poundland for a quid each. Nicely packaged (other than 3's poster art being a copy/paste of 1 with some buildings behind pinhead)- however, this has the knock-on effect of meaning that 1&3 have basically the same spine, as the top part is the picture of pinhead from the poster. This gave me an extra crease on my forehead as i grumpily pondrred it for ten seconds...

SBT

Vol 15 is due early december, according to amazon. Which no doubt means january.

SBT

Hellraiser

Havent seen this in twenty years, and was interested to see if it holds up two decades on. Short version: no, not really. Shockingly paced, with awful dialogue, only ashely lawrence and doug bradley come out unscathed and with reputations intact. Much of it was bad at the time, of course. Bob keen's effects were always ropey- his frank bodysuit doesnt convince, the resurrection sequence was laughable on original release and is even more so now, and his rubber monster on a unicycle, that attacks kirsty cotton twice probably looked good on paper...

The opticals are cartoony, none of it makes much sense, its micro budget is writ large, and by christ clare higgins annoys just as much now as in 1987.

Its all quite dull, with a ridiculous ending. And it was never, ever, in any sense 'frightening', just proud of nudging some taboos, and a bit unpleasant. It's neither of those things now, and watching it i was strongly reminded of lesser hammer films.

A big, fat, meh.

Oh, and also An American Werewolf In London, earlier today- which is still a masterpiece that never puts a paw wrong.

SBT

Not being overly keen on phantom menace (still better than jedi though), i had no great impetus to see this. However, both my boys practically begged me to promise to take them, i guess i will.

Clones and Sith though- love them, and will be there for the 3D no matter what.

SBT

Dont know what youve read, or whether youre talking about online purchase (therefore anything), comic shop (lots) or local bookshop (next to nothing), but i'd recommend:

The Walking Dead (obviously- and with charlie adlard, so a tooth connection)
Scalped (vertigo, and my other favourite u.s comic)
Charley's War (new one, hitler's youth, out this week)
Requiem: Vampire Knight (pat mills magnificence)
XIII (cinebooks)
The Chimpanzee Complex (cinebooks, 3  volumes)
And i hear good things about cinebooks' blackbeard, too.

SBT

Colin, that's interesting. I bought my eldest a bunch of Asterix and TinTin for his birthday this year. Now, ive always loathed both- but i figure lots love them, so id give him the opportunity to make up his own mind. Plus, all comics is good comics, if you know what i mean.

I thought he'd not even bothered to read them, but on browsing in the bookshop yesterday, i caught him rifling through the Asterix books, and he proceded to run through all the characters, what they do and the plots of the ones he'd read. So they obviously do work.

SBT

Thank fuck for that- i thought i was the only one. My memory of Crusade is that while it wasnt by any means the Dredd i remembered from my childhood, it was at least 100% more fun than the strip had been of late.

I have no excuse for not reading it since, other than getting the progs out means moving lots of boxes, opening bags and then repeating the process in reverse when im done. Im quite looking forward to the new trade, actually. If only for the mick austin art.

SBT

Needless to say steve, i completely disagree. But your experience is different than mine, so im not going to argue with you.

SBT