I have been a fan of F Paul Wilson’s for several years now and starting with the Tomb, read all of the Repairman Jack novels. While it seems kinda romantic to be someone selected by the great powers of the universe to be their “hand” in matters, and really an intense experience to live off the books like Jack does, is it really plausible for someone who isn't a criminal? I hope that doesn't sound too naive, but Jack lives in a whole other world.

How is he ever going to move back to legitimate society? I was thinking about this when Jack starts to consider it when he falls in love and wants to be Vicki’s dad, etc. It looked as if Wilson was going to chart a path back for Jack, but it must have been too conventional, implausible or something, maybe impossible, because with the last novel, being formally pronounced the ONE, he’ll forever be some sort of Emissary.

I got ahold of the new version today. I love Johnny Depp even back in the 21 Jumpstreet days I was a huge fan of his. If you havn't seen this yet, it's definitly worth a view, I think it's a little more violent than the original. If you have young kids you may want to preview it first, there's just a few scenes I was suprised to see.

* Minor Spoilers* Minor Spoilers* Minor Spoilers*

I think the disappointment came with the lack of creativity in the ending vs the older 1971 version. I'm not going ot give away either movies, but take a gander at both movies, and you don't feel that special majic from the second movie.

I really thought they blew off a lot of the craziness. I did not like the Umpa-Lumpas. The 1971 song was great, I can mumble through the chorus to this day. The new ones are totally revamped with no relavence to the old song. The 1971 boat they use to sail down the chocolate river is cheezy, but it looks the part. The new one is just rediculous looking, and there is a new theory in the new one on how the Umpa Lumpa's came to live.

While the new Depp version is not a complete disaster in my mind. It still did stay true to the older movie, which was a good thing. My disliking of the movie was not a result staying true, but a dull meaningless ending they created in the new version was just crap. They really could have saved the movie for me keeping the ending like the 1971 one. Luckily, they still keep a moral to the story for the kids, but it doesn't seem to really have been like 1971 did.

No, that is not a typo. That is what the remake of John Carpenter's The Fog should have been title.

Right from the beginning I knew this movie was going to be bad. It replaces Hohn Houseman's creepy campfire story with a nonsensical montage of fire and screaming on board a clipper ship accompanied by a bunch of loud noise.

From that point on it continues to go horribly wrong. Hal Hobrook's Father Malone is replaced by a bearded, brooding, drunken Alan Rickman impersonation (not Alan Rickman, just some idiot who wants to look like him). Jamie Lee Curtis's character is replaced by a Lost cast member who has dreams about the events of the past for some reason. Adrienne Barbeau's wise presence is replace by Selma Blair.

At MANY points during this movie I found myself laughing at the absurdity... but not in a good way. For those of you who don't know me and my movie tastes very well, I am what a friend of mine refers to as a "movie whore." I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to most movies. I don't LIKE all movies but I very rarely dslike them. And when it comes to horror movies, I tend to give even more leeway; I'm kind of a "horror whore." That being said, I came out of this movie feeling like I had just had 2 hours of my life sucked painfully from me through my eyeballs.

Perhaps the most disappointing things about this movie to me were these:

1. The lack of any real suspense or scares or, lacking that, quality kills. There was one quality kill, but it was of the otherwise completely worthless Father Malone character (Alan Rickman-lookalike). Any others were completely idiotic and needlessly violent for the sake of visceral impact.
   
   
2. The total lack (or maybe I just didn't notice) of a score. I've always liked John Carpenter's scores, especially his earlier ones. The only thing resembling a score in this movie was the annoying loud noise that screamed at me whenever something "scary" was happening.
   
   
3. I have always LOVED the ending to the original The Fog. The main reason I even stayed for the entirety of this movie was to see if the ending held even a flicker to the original. It didn't. There were some decent special effects in the graveyard, but I didn't care one bit.

Finally, I must say that I did make two incorrect predictions. First, I mistakenly guessed that the fishhook-like sharp objects that were hanging from the eaves of the house as wind-chimes would be used to kill someone. Second, I guessed that the hairbrush that Stevie's son found on the beach (instead of the wooden sign) would at some point begin to glow green; instead it glowed red and then started on fire. My bad!

Hey, just found this on ebay. I didn't even look at the seller's ratings, so I'm not endorsing a thing. I just thought it was interesting!
http://cgi.ebay.com/Poul-Anderson-F-Paul...dZViewItem

Finished watching the first season on DVD last week.

Damn, this show is good. Now I'm pissed that I have to wait for Season 2 (no word of it appearing in the UK yet).

When I first heard the name I had images of a teenage girl solving mysteries on a space station. I had part of it right, teenage girl solving mysteries, but it is a contemporary setting (Californian High School), and has so much more going for it.

As a rule, I'm not a big mystery fan, but this is just so well written, witty dialogue, strong characters, brilliant twists, that I loved every minute of it.

Picked the DVDs up whilst in the States (thanks Marc's dad), and am so glad I did.

Check it out if you get the chance (Netflix, re-runs, or just pay the moolah in sacrifice to the dvd gods, you won't be disappointed).

Season 2 is airing on UPN, I understand, but you should grab Season 1 first, IMO.

Anyone else a fan?

Dave

I'm just about finished. I have one story left. (By Clive Barker, so I do have high hopes).

I didn't think it was very good. The stories were either NOT scary, or totally self-absorbed, or totally predictable and amateurish.

EXCEPT FOR ONE!

And I am truly being objective here. FPW's story was chilling, a little disturbing and had a great ending.

I really liked "Part of the Game" a lot. It was DEFINITELY the high point of the book.

I still would have bought the book so as to own a good copy of "Part of the Game". And maybe I was expecting something more than what it was trying to be, but I wanted something a little more horror, and less macabre.

There was one other story, about a psychic, that held my attention and interested me a lot. But then the ending was kind of weak, so.......

Any thoughts?

Today I went to theater see "The Brothers Grimm". Directed by Terry Gilliam. It was very fun movie. I enjoyed it. Ah....is this a commonplace comment? But this is IMHO. True. I really enjoyed it. I am Terry Gilliam fan. I saw all his movies, except "Jabberwocky". Ah......I want to see Jabberwocky.

So....about this "The Brothers Grimm", main roles are Grimm brothers, but this is not their biography movie. In this movie, they are swindlers! They use cheap trick, and they cheat village people out of their money. That's Terry Gilliam's Grimm brothers! He's BIG liar. But it's a harmless lies. I enjoyed funny lies. This is fantasy, but if you intend to go to see the movie with children, you should stop it. This is scary to little child. It's not like Harry Potter series.

By the way, what is your favorite Terry Gilliam movie? I like "The Fisher King", of course.


My favorite Terry Gilliam's movies/top 5.

#1. The Fisher King(I like park's scene. Was that Central Park? I'm not sure...)
#2. 12 Monkeys(Time travel and virus research....terrific idea!)
#3. Monty Python and the Holy Grail(I like Monty Python and flying circus)
#4. Brazil(In that ending, I was stunned.)
#5. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen(SFX was outstanding! And...Eric Idle! He was hilarious.)

The Brothers Grimm is #6.

...went out last night. If anyone thinks they're on the list but didn't receive it (check your spam filter first), PM me with your email address and I'll check it out.

Hello.

Is it okay to talk about Sims in this Forum? I wasn't sure whether I should put this in "Off-Topic Discussion".

I've had this book for a while but I've only recently started reading it. After getting hooked on the RJ books, with their touch of the supernatural, I didn't think it would be my kind of thing. Boy, was I wrong!!! Can't put the damn book down now! I'm about halfway through the book at the moment and I've just got a couple of questions.

1. What's a "401(K)"? I assume it to be a bank account of some kind.

2. One of the characters utters the words, "Damn them. Damn them all to hell." Is this a tip of the hat to Charlton Heston who spoke these very same words in a well known film also containing intelligent chimpanzees? Or is that just coincidental?

Thanks.

Kevin.

This will have some slight spoilers, but nothing to give away the ending, I promise!!!







Did anyone see the first episode of Showtime's Masters of Horror? It was Don Coscarelli's adaptation of Joe R. Lansdale's "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road". I've been looking forward to this for a while (and hope to see FPW's "Pelts" someday too).

I'll have to say, by the end of the 1 hour show, that I decided it was very good. The acting was bad in spots and great in others. The crazy old man was awesome, and reminded me a little of "Grandpaw" from House of 1000 Corpses.

There were some spots, early, in the show that really bothered me. The fact that this girl, who has been trained in combat and survival overlooked so many obvious advantages, neglected some glaring opportunities, and showed her training by doing some IMPOSSIBLE MacGyver-style attacks (That wouldn't work based on physics, and the odds) really bothered me, at first. An example is, Moonface threw a knife at her (she's well trained in knife fighting), misses, and it sticks into a fallen log inches from her head. My first thought is man, she can kill him with that knife. Instead she screams and crawls under the log to escape leaving the knife for Moon Face to recover and use later. There is another spot where she takes off her panties, and seems to find 6 or 8 feet worth of elastic in them. That elastic was strong enough to be stretched across a 3 foot opening and launch an arrow into a shoulder, several feet away. In fact, at one point, I said, "This show sucks", and stopped recording, but continued watching.

The show made a great turnaround though (maybe 10 to 15 minutes in) and ended with a cool twist and a majorly dark turn that I really liked. I never read the short story, so the twist was completely unexpected. With about 10 minutes left, I was waiting for the obvious Jason, Michael Myers, Jeepers Creepers type Monster comes back from death to continue wreaking havoc. I was brilliantly surprised by the direction the story went at that point. I didn't see it coming.

Luckilly for me, Showtime replayed it again right after. This time the tape machine was running!!!

This film isn't as amazing as Joe and Don's previous collaboration, Bubba Ho-Tep. That one was an all-time great, immortal. What it was, was a very good first episode of what I hope to be a good, and long running series for Showtime (with an FPW episode or two to boot).