I just spent a lovely hour+ smiling and snickering at the art of Chris Appelhans —–> So should you.

I especially love Carnitas! and Bad Unicorn of which I really NEED to get prints of and jes, there are bunnies to be adored.

I feel it is my duty to warn ANYONE and EVERYONE against watching Lost Boys 2: The Tribe. IT IS REALLY THAT FUCKING BAD.

We watched this last weekend with the lovely Monsieur Arrow and had we not been happily ensconced in the glow of Arrowness and FantAsia Festness, I think we would have surely eaten ourselves to death beginning with the eyeballs. Seriously, this is such an abomination of a movie that it cannot even be held up to normal, old fashioned shitty movies.

If you’re looking for a Lost Boys fix, please, for the love of all that is holy just watch the original - especially since the sequel does nothing but rip off entire pieces of dialogue from the original while spending the rest of the running time hideously attempting to emulate the style, atmosphere, and characters of the first film.

And if you’re thinking you just want to be a glutton for punishment I mean it, just pick up something from Troma or any number of Full Moon flicks because once Lost Boys 2 is finished, it will have pissed all over your soul and then pushed it down a flight of stairs before peeing all over it again.

Speaking of peeing, the movie is so bad I actually pulled a “I have to go pee but you know, you guys don’t need to pause it, really…” and when I came out of the bathroom… DUN-DUN-DUN! The bastards had paused it and were cackling at my foiled attempt to escape more torture. Thwarted I was! But I had a brief revenge when Arrow took a call and I hastily paused again for his “benefit”.

Movies should never be used for the torment of others so please, avoid this one at all costs.

They were subjected to all manner of lovely films over the past few days. Many of them I have a lot to say about but I don’t have time to reminisce now that it’s back to daily grind. Today I was SO TIRED at work I felt completely burnt out. The recovery from fests and cons is never pretty but this time around has been particularly difficult.

Anywho, here’s the rundown of flicks in the order I saw them. I missed a few like Dark Floors, Babysitter Wanted, and All the Boys Love Mandy Lane but we have screeners of those so t’wasn’t a biggie. I want to note that there wasn’t a single movie this year that I hated or even mildly disliked (rucky!). As I have the time I’ll probably slowly separate the movies into their own posts so I can properly reflect on them.

- The Echo (USA remake of a Filipino movie): A really gorgeous film that not only takes its time but also manages to shake off typical Asian horror standards. It’s not perfect, I think there are some elements that could have been tightened up (I was also hoping for more exploration of the effects of bearing witness to domestic abuse and how that can be further unbearable when the witness is an isolated individual) but I really enjoyed it and I definitely think it will get director Yam Laranas quite a bit of attention once more people see it.

Here’s a fun camera-phone pic of us with Echo director Yam Laranas!

- Our Town (Korea): Interesting vengeance trip story that could have used a little polishing to the plot developtment. Nice gory kills and a pretty bizarre antagonist.

- A Tale of Legendary Libido (Korea): Fucking hilarious and gorgeous and totally off the wall. Absolutely loved this movie.

- Repo! The Genetic Opera (USA): So much better than I was expecting. The art direction and costumes alone make this worth seeing but the premise is incredibly cool if not totally realized to its full potential. Some of the songs were pretty cool but a lot of them were flat or downright terrible in the lyrics department.

- The Rebel (Vietnam): Holy shit someone not only choreographed an amazing fight flick but also shot most of the fisticuffs in SLOW MOTION. And I don’t mean the lead in to the action, I mean the actual action. You can actually see the contact. This would be a perfect piece of ass kickery if only they had trimmed down most of the second act and reigned in the super cheesy love story.

- Seven Days (Korea): A suspense thriller that manages to handle two very distinct storylines pretty well. It’s about a lawyer’s daughter who gets kidnapped in order to blackmail said lawyer into proving a recently apprehended murderer innocent of the charges against him. The murder mystery takes most of the center stage but the kidnapping is never left on the sidelines or sloppily addressed. Unfortunately, like just about every Korean film out there, the running time is nuts and there are 3 endings.

- 4BIA (Thailand): Super awesome anthology film. The second and third segments make this movie totally worth seeing. Between the two of them the gore is over the top and there is the comedy is fucking hilarious. Got to sit behind the filmmakers for this one and I hope they appreciated all the screaming knee slapping.

- Sasori (HK):

- Midnight Meat Train (USA):

- Island of Lost Souls (Denmark):

- Pig Hunt (USA):

Jiggity jig. Back from FantAsia Fest and not quite ready to be all bloggity but holy shit, 2008 was a kickin’ year.

Got to meet some great filmmakers and hang with the Montreal/Toronto peoples and, I managed to successfully take in 5 movies in a row in one day. Surprisingly, it wasn’t nearly as tiring as I expected. Actually, remaining tucked in the theatre film after film helped me stay awake more than wandering the city for an hour here, 2 hours there would have done.

We did miss a total of 3 movies due to timing and what not but I think I managed to catch a total of 11 movies over 4 days. Woo! Will post thoughts and stuff laters but for now: Emilie, Tony, Carl: I got you all FantAsia programs so expect to receive them soonish!

One thing about birthdays and technology is if you miss any special phone calls, listening to all the voicemails the next morning is a wooooondeful way to start the day. Yay and many thankees for happee bday messages from pals and fambly!

Is almost out of room! I have 14.72 gigs left holycrap! And even if I got a new iPod, an 80gb, that’s only 20 extra gigs. Fuck!

With FantAsia 2008 officially in gear, DreadCentral.com is continuing the FantAsia coverage madness that began 7 years ago with the Creature Corner and expanded it to a full fledged festival specific newsfeed (now in its 3rd year!).

I hope you can take a moment to check out the lovely McCannibal’s recaps and reviews here and that you continue to keep your eyes peeled on the DC FantAsia feed for almost daily coverage once Evil Andy joins the McCannibal (after he’s finished honeymooning).

When we arrive in Montreal for the last week of the fest, Mr. Butane will be joining in to pick up the slack so you can be confident that the coverage will be as across the board as possible. Yay!

Wanted is really fun and I had a great time watching it, but it’s not “the most amazing fucking movie” or “the best movie ever” or any other version of insanely exaggerated hypey hype. It is, like The Matrix, a wonderful example of how films have developed a very video game oriented mentality, in terms of actions (IMHO) and is likewise a perfect example of style completely shanking the fark out of substance.

If Wanted were personified, it would leave any party with every hot chick/guy in tow, it’s that cool. The action is amazingly amazing and they do things with cars like I’ve never seen before (outside of perhaps a VG); it’s eye popping and applause inducing.

All this in spite of the incredibly predictable “plot” and characters who are so formulaic, most of them don’t even get to change their clothes over the course of the movie. It literally took me about 25 minutes to map out the course of events and any “twists”, paper thinny it is. Now, you definitely should go see it if you like a good time, just be nice and don’t hold anything against it.

The Incredible Hulk was a helluva lot better than I expected too. Even though I adore Edward Norton, I just didn’t think I’d get much out of it. Liv Tyler was so much better than I was anticipating and I really, really liked her performance quite a bit. William Hurt makes a perfect stereotypical comic/anime/manga general guy too (his overall talent notwithstanding of course)! It’s like he was just waiting to grow into that look and does so very effectively.

The Hulk himself remained a tough CGI act to swallow for the most part, but a lot of this was made up for thanks to the really cool, very expressive face they gave him. His eyes were sufficiently tragic. I also liked that although the abomination managed to rip through all his clothes during transformation, he was able to abominate himself a bony codpiece to hide whatever remnants there might have been of his man-bits.

Other Hulky highlights include “don’t make me hungry… you would like me when I’m… hungry” and Lou Ferrigno taking pizza bribes (and damn he’s still huuuge!). Stan Lee ellicited guffaws as well and the purple stretchy pants. Ha!

The FantAsia Festival 2008 site is live, the schedule is a go, and all I have to say, as usual, is yay!

We’ll be making the annual trek on 7/16 and are staying through to the very end this year. We chose this particular week very carefully based on the schedule we received last week and I cannot be happier with the movies we’ll get to see. As sad as I am about missing Comic Con, I can’t be all that bummed with alternatives such as:

Seeing Ryuhei Kitamura’s long awaited adaptation of Clive Barker’s Midnight Meat Train and I’m just giddy about it because Kitamura will be there to present the film! Whee! I love his movies so. Much.

Also on the schedule is The Echo, which I talked about a little ways back because I’ve been super impatient to see this film. Good news upon good news too because director Yam Laranas will be in attendance to host the screening!

I’m also particularly psyched to see Akanbo shôjo - the tagline alone makes this Yûdai Yamaguchi (of Meatball Machine cred) a must see: “15 year old girl vs. 15 year old baby” - laaa! I just really, really, really, hope we can get to Montreal in time for this 5:25pm screening >__<

Repo! The Genetic Opera is another movie I’ve been anticipating for a while now too so we’ve plans to catch that and hopefully the new Pang Bros. film. The inimitable Uwe Boll’s war picture Tunnel Rats is also hitting the screens this week (I just can’t even imagine how this one will turn out…)but I don’t know if we can swing it since it’s up against Kitamura’s film.

I do know without a doubt that excitement abounds this July!

DreadCentral has a super early review of Hellboy II so go check it out!

I cannot wait to see this film.

While I’m admittedly buying into the hype like a proper fangirl, after all I’ve heard and read about it I just can’t imagine I’ll be displeased much. The trailers blaze across the screen (big and wittle) all dazzling and dark and as far as I’m concerned, the world really needs more dark fanatasy in its life, especially when it’s courtesy of Del Toro and Mignola.