Finally got to see Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant last night. We had meant to see it when it came out, but with a small child in the house it can sometimes be hard to get away. It didn’t help that the movie pretty much disappeared after just a couple of weeks. I had read the bad reviews, but I didn’t care. It looked like the perfect movie for me. I went into it with very low expectations and was very pleasantly surprised. I really enjoyed it and the more I think about it I like it even more. I think this movie definitely suffered from much to long of a title. Movies with really long titles don’t usually do as well at the movies. With some exceptions I’m sure. The movie was based on the first book of a series, which I have not read. I plan to now. I liked the feel of the movie right away. It had a sense of humor, but still delivered some scary scenes and even a rather brutal scene. The town that the movie was set in was obviously supposed to be very vanilla and I like the fact that everyone wore pastel colors all of the time. Very “I shop at JCrew” kind of look. I just think they should have played that up a little more because I’m not sure it came across enough. Lots of great stars, too. It was also refreshing to see vampires portrayed in a more ugly way instead of all brooding and sparkly. Not all vampires are handsome. You can tell that they meant this to be the first of many, but unfortunately it did not do well, so I’m thinking it’s not in the cards. Too bad. It’s a world that transferred really well to film. Scary Hubby and I always tend to like the movies/TV shows that no one else does.  I’m looking forward to exploring it more in the books, though.

As I have stated before I am not as crazy about the Twilight series as everyone else seems to be. I mean the books were decent and so far the movies have been fun. I am just not the biggest fan of some of the changes that Stephenie Meyer made to vampire lore. Anyway, I did come across this Vampire Instructions T-Shirt that made me giggle a little and thought I’d pass it on. I wish it wasn’t so Twilight-ish and more general, but it’s still funny. I would assume this t-shirt is meant for the non-vampire person in the relationship (Bella, Buffy, Sookie et al). Obviously some of them need a little more instruction for their newly acquired vampire than others. Maybe if the Cullens had given Bella this t-shirt for her birthday instead she wouldn’t have cut her finger and started that whole mess.

In my quest to catch up on some of the scary movies released the last few years I saw The Eye from 2008 today. Yet another remake of an Asian film. Aren’t they all lately? I’ve been selling books for years and it constantly amazes me that Hollywood insists on remaking perfectly good films instead of mining more of the wealth of books out there. I have not seen the original of this movie called Gin gwai, but from what I can understand it’s much better than the remake. Very predictable. It’s about a blind girl who gets a cornea transplant and starts to realize that she can see dead people. Very similar to a movie from 1994 called Blink, which was much better in my opinion. It was good for some jumpy scares in the beginning, but otherwise I would not highly recommend it. Maybe a way to pass an afternoon, I guess. I’ve seen better remakes for sure, but all in all I wish they’d stop doing it. Most of the time they are not very successful anyway, so why bother.

Yay! It’s T-Shirt Tuesday again. I know you’re probably not as excited as I am, but you could at least try to be. Anywho the t-shirt I found this time is hilarious. At least it made me laugh. This would be the Eternal Exercise T-Shirt. This brings to my mind all of those zombie movies and something that pisses me off. I think there needs to be some agreement in zombie movies. In some of them the zombies run after their victims and others they just slowly stumble along, but always seem to get there. The latter seems the more realistic to me. I’m all for a little creativity, but let’s agree on one thing: zombies are not smart. All they want is to feed, so they head towards the food (people). I don’t think they would be smart enough to run after their food. They would stumble towards it. Some movies have even gone as far as to make their zombies appear smart. Zombies are dead people. Period. Putting all of that aside this t-shirt just makes me laugh. I’m not sure why you would want to put a zombie on a treadmill, but it sure makes for a funny picture. What would be even funnier though is if you hung a brain in front of him. Give him the incentive to continue on the treadmill, unlike I do.

Once again it’s T-Shirt Tuesday and I was looking around for the perfect t-shirt. I happened on this one from Hot Topic, which usually comes through in a pinch. Do you love Shakespeare? Do you love zombies? Well, now you have a perfect way to marry your two loves with the Zombie Shakespeare T-Shirt. On the bottom of the shirt is an updated quote from Hamlet: “Alas poor Yorick. I ate his brains.” That just cracked me up, but it got me thinking. It’s about time they did this to Shakespeare. I mean I actually can’t believe it took them this long. I’m not particularly a fan, but I don’t hate him either. Some of his stuff has become so corny with time that it just begs to be made fun of. Now I just have to wait for the Zombie Shakespeare movie to come out.

Since it was cold and snowy here over the weekend Scary Hubby and I decided to see some of the movies that we hadn’t seen in the theater. We are huge movie fans in this house, but with a 7 year old you end up not seeing a lot of the scarier ones until they are released on DVD/satellite. This time we saw “The Uninvited“, “The Haunting of Molly somebody or other” and “Lady in White“. I realize the last one is from 1988, but I had never seen it for some reason. All of these were scary, but not particularly bloody, which I like. More mystery than horror, I would almost say. Anyway, I’ll start with “Lady in White“. It was okay, but quite cheesy. It honestly felt more like a made for TV movie. The acting was decent and the story was interesting, but the music and special effects, even for 1988, were not good. I’m still rather confused as to why they called it “Lady in White” when she was hardly in the movie. I guess it’s a scary title. Doesn’t every town have some legend about a lady or woman in white? On to “The Haunting of Molly…“. Not worth it to look it up to get the correct name. It’s about a girl that’s about to turn 18 and finds out about her devilish future. The movie had me interested in the beginning, but I soon realized where this was going and that there was no way out for her. It was okay, but predictable in my opinion. Glad I didn’t spend the money to see it. Finally, there’s “The Uninvited“. This was definitely the better of the three. We were prepared for it not to be good, though. I’d heard that it was a remake of a Korean movie called “A Tale of Two Sisters” and that it did not live up to that movie’s supposed brilliance. Since we had not seen that movie though, we had nothing to base the story on and just went with it. We both enjoyed it very much! It started out as pretty run of the mill and I have to confess I was playing on my laptop in the beginning with only one eye on the movie. It wasn’t long before the movie had my full attention. It ended up being one of those movies that you go back and re-watch a few scenes to put it all together. I also noticed that we have continued to discuss it even though we saw it back on Saturday night. That’s always a good sign for me. A lot of the reviews mentioned big holes in the story, but if you pay attention that really is not the case. It was, by no means, the best thriller I had ever seen, but it was definitely worth watching. Basically it’s about a girl that tried to commit suicide after her ill mother was killed in a fire and now comes back to live with her family and her Father’s new fiance, who was also her Mother’s nurse. Give it a chance, if you really pay attention you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

I know this Flaming Silver Skull is supposed to be scary and it is I guess. It’s very cool and all that, but it reminds me of something a lot less scary. Like the Heat Miser (without the skin) from A Year Without a Santa Claus. He might be scary to your average 3 year old, but not me. I absolutely love the Heat Miser and his brother Snow Miser. Great song. It also reminds me of Syndrome from The Incredibles. Let’s face it though, his look was totally ripped off from the Heat Miser. Anyway, this little skull is about 6″ tall and is made of cold cast resin with a silver finish. He looks to me to be quite pointy, so he might be a good weapon to have around if someone pisses you off.

So, there is a woman in France that designs lamp shades and calls them Spooky Shades. Elisa refers to herself as a rock n’ roll/metal fan who was frustrated with the lack of interesting and funky housewares available in stores. She particularly didn’t like all of the plain lamp shades out there, so decided to make her own edgy ones. What Elisa has come up with is just fantastic. I’m not neccessarily a metal fan, but there are a lot of common design elements between that and my preferred scary lifestyle. There are ones based on horror movies, skulls and even one with anatomy sketches over a Jack the Ripper letter which I might add is my personal favorite. Each one appears to be different and one of kind and she updates often with new styles. If you don’t see one you like now, keep checking back because her stock changes often.

Years ago I saw the movie Mystery Men and became obsessed. I absolutely loved the movie and still do. Janeane Garofalo plays the Bowler who uses her bowling ball as her weapon. The bowling ball that she uses supposedly has her father’s skull encased in it. After this movie came out many people became obsessed, like me, with owning a Skull Bowling Ball. Luckily a company started making them and I snatched one up. I love it to this day and constantly get compliments on it. I’m a sucky bowler and I don’t play very often, but when I show up with Henry, that’s what I named him, people get scared and think I must be amazing. Quickly they find out that is not the case. I’ve always wanted a backup one in case it gets stolen or something, but by the time I got around to that they were not making them anymore. You could only find them sporadically on eBay for big money. Well, after years of waiting my dreams have come true and they have rereleased it! Still can be hard to track down one because stores are often sold out, but you can usually special order it from any store that carries the Ebonite brand.

This week’s T-Shirt Tuesday is the I Live Under Your Bed t-shirt. I don’t know about you, but what’s living under my bed is a lot scarier than that guy! It reminds me of Cat’s Eye which was a movie that had three scary stories and they were all linked together by this cat. In “The General”, which I think was the third story, there is a little girl played by Drew Barrymore that is being terrorized by this tiny horrible troll that lives in her room. Technically it does not live under her bed if I remember correctly, but it does spend a good amount of time under there. Anyway, he’s quite scary and the cat saves Drew Barrymore from him. It was scary when I was young and when I think about a monster under my bed that troll is the one I think of.