This is not so much a parody as a straight-up recreation of a low budget 70s black exploitation film. The humor comes from the exaggeration of the style and it spares us (for the most part) from the Scary Movie-style moments of obvious jokes.
No-budget Japanese zombie movie with a dumb story a few good gore shots and lots of horrible iMovie-quality digital effects. I guess it’s played for humor, but there aren’t really any truly funny moments.
The French comic upon which the movie was based. Stunning 60’s stylized artwork, but the story is just a series of bland sci-fi episodes with a little titillation thrown in here and there.
This is a collection of the Aliens comics that were released by Dark Horse in the late eighties. These came out before the awful Alien 3 went and killed all the characters we loved from Aliens. The plot picks up shortly after Aliens with characters returning to LV-426 to explore the crashed alien ship. I think I would have preferred it if the later movies took this direction, but the comics are just poorly written fanboy garbage for the most part. They try to be deep and end up just being a confusing mess of clichés and movie re-quotes.
Giallo isn’t quite the return to form I wanted from Dario Argento, but it’s a much better movie than the majority of his post-Opera films (I still think The Stendhal Syndrome and the Masters of Horror episode Jenifer are much better). Gone is the visual style that really was what made Argento’s best movies so great. Instead, we have a good Italian-style thriller with the usual graphic violence, bad acting and plot holes. Generally, this is enough for me, but I always want more from Argento.
Ya know, I love me them video games. I would go so far as to argue that video games are, well… can be, art. However, I have to admit that even the best video games are a bit lacking in the originality department. Take, for example, this screen shot from Yahoo showing three upcoming games:
Stubble-faced muscle men abound in the video game world.
This was a cartoony and fun side-scrolling platformer with nice2.5-D graphics. A bit easy and lacking the exploration and precise control of a Mario game, but enjoyable and worth playing through especially for the unexpected ending.
A somewhat miscast French costume drama based on a 19th Century erotic novel. The male lead is played by a creepy man-boy / Macaulay Culkin look-a-like who is like a kid playing dress-up in his ill-fitting costumes. Asia Argento is good as usual, but I don’t think tattoos were that common among Parisian society women at that time.
A bit of speculative fiction showing how the world would deal with a zombie apocalypse. The book is written as a collection short vignettes, each told by a different character. Overall, it was an interesting read, but I would have preferred a bit more of a continuing narrative structure to keep me turning pages. Although, thankfully, it avoids the “the real monster is us humans” zombie fiction clichés.
I just got back from a short little weekend excursion to visit my cousins up in Windsor, Canada. Windsor can be described as Detroit’s Gary, Indiana… if Gary had weird money and lots of Tim Horton’s donut shops (or do they say shoppes in Canada? Or doughnuts for that matter?). One area where Windsor has Gary (and Chicago) whipped, is great Lebanese food (El Mayor). On the other hand, the whole “Beer Store” thing is really, dare I say, stupid and backwards. We got to witness a little bit of the Canadian healthcare system when we met our cousins at the E.R. while they had their son treated for his fevery sickness. The free thing is great and all, but they definitely had a much longer time waiting than you would see in most U.S. emergency rooms. They did manage to treat the fever and all was well by the end of the weekend. Other notable events: full monty vehicle search at the border coming home, vandalized key-drop at the Enterprise car-rental return and a guy with tourettes at the Swiss Chalet who would be an awesome back-up vocalist for Naked Raygun!
