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.
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.
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.
Being a book store owner I naturally love books as well as all things scary. When I come across something that brings two of my loves together I get very excited and my wallet begins to quiver with anticipation. Here is a book that I have already placed my order for called Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities written by Amy Stewart. How could I not want this book? The title alone is worth it! I love to add odd and interesting books to my shelves at home. Though I do not have the book in my hot little hands yet, you can take a peak inside on the Amazon website. With titles like Deadly Dinner, Lawn of Death and The Devil’s Bartender the chapter’s names themselves are worth a read. Check out this cute little video the author did about the book.
Have you heard of Vampira? I’m sure you have unless, of course, you never crawl out from under your rock. She was the original Mistress of the Dark. Elvira was inspired by Vampira. She was the first television horror movie hostess from 1954 to 1955 and then again briefly in 1956. Although the show didn’t last long Maila Nurmi (Vampira) was nominated for an Emmy for the character and has a huge cult following to this day. Maila Nurmi actually passed away just last year. I happened to pick up the latest Gothic Beauty magazine and there was a big article in it about her. I know I claim not to be a Goth, just a lover of all things scary, but lets face it a lot of the stuff I blog about would fall into the Goth catagory. It’s a cool magazine and it gives me great ideas sometimes, so I pick it up now and then. You should check out the magazine so you can read this article, but you can also find out all about Vampira at her website OfficialVampira.com.
Can you believe that I never noticed it was Friday the 13th yesterday? I usually look so forward to those days. They always talk about it on the news like it’s some huge event and people are convinced some horrible thing will happen. I enjoy that part of it, not really the day itself. I just think it’s a crack up that people put so much onto a number and a particular day. They made crap loads of those Friday the 13th movies just based on our irrational fear of that day! According to the Wikipedia entry there is no definitive answer as to where this came from. It seems to be mostly a 20th century superstition, but you can read more about it yourself here. If you do have a fear of that day maybe reading the entry will help you not be scared of it. I’m all for scary days, but in my life it’s just for fun. I don’t take it seriously as a couple of my readers seems to think. Lighten up people and enjoy life a little. Next time Friday the 13th comes around enjoy it for the silliness that it is. Now, I know if I don’t answer this I will be bombarded with emails, so yes I do like the movies and the second one is my favorite.
Well, after spending the last month searching for the best Halloween decorations, recipes, costumes, decorating my new house and watching movies here are my thoughts. LAME! Okay not totally lame, but not as good as in years past. My biggest gripe was Halloween decor or the lack there of. Every Halloween I have spent hundreds of dollars on new decorations for the store and for the house that I could not live without. This year I spent $19.00 and that was just for spiderwebs, candles and misc. crap. WTF?! My thoughts are that with the bad economy they just didn’t really come out with anything new and scaled back on some of the more pricey items. My favorite has always been animatronics. I love things that move and say things. The ones they had this year were cheap looking and weren’t all that scary frankly. Costumes were pretty lame as well. I wanted to post the scariest costume of the year, but I really didn’t see anything that was worth even a wimper. Some of the bad costumes that were popular, like Micheal Jackson and Octomom, were just in bad taste and stupid. Decorating our new house was great and everything worked better than we had hoped. We even got voted as the scariest house in the neighborhood, but there were a few that were really close. We’ll have to step it up a bit next year. Movie selection in the theaters was not even worth discussing, though rarely is it. All I can say is I really hope next year the economy is back on track and decorations are plentiful. This is my favorite time of the year and I found it depressing to go into stores that normally have huge Halloween displays and only had pitifully small racks of cheesy decor. Just my two cents.
I just got back from seeing Zombieland. I’m not a big fan of zombie movies in general, but I do love the funny ones like Shaun of the Dead and Fido. Zombieland did not let me down. This was gorier than what I normally like, but the humor and casting made up for it. It starts out with a guy played by Jesse Eisenberg just trying to stay alive in a world taken over by zombies. He meets up with Woody Harrelson’s character, who was a brilliant piece of casting, playing the anti-hero with nothing to lose. Together they embark on trying to find a place that isn’t overrun with zombies. They meet up with Abigail Breslin and Emma Stone’s characters and lots of zombie killing ensues. Along the way there is a fantastic cameo by someone I will not name. I don’t want to ruin it for anyone. Overall the movie is extremely gory, especially early on. Once you get to the meat of the story it’s not quite as bad. The best part of the movie was the narration by the main character. No real names are given in the movie, so they each go by the name of the place they are from. You get the feeling that Jessie Eisenberg’s character has been surviving for quite some time in zombieland and he has devised a list of survival rules. He’s very strict about not breaking them and throughout the movie these rules continually come into play. A great movie overall that I really enjoyed, as did most of the people in the audience. No where near the brilliance of Shaun of the Dead, but can any movie touch that?
After a huge marketing blitz and much anticipation The Vampire Diaries has arrived. I was busy that night and had to Tivo it, but finally got around to watching it. I knew it had premiered to big ratings. Well, big for the CW anyway, so I was excited to see it. I was looking forward to it just as much as all the other vampire lovers out there. I’m still looking for a vampire show to really get excited about and thought this might be it. Unfortunately for me this was not it. It was okay. It wasn’t horrible. I just felt like I was watching the 90210 version of Twilight. I know, I know, Vampire Diaries came out first, but you can’t tell me their casting wasn’t influenced by Twilight. Practically every character looked like one from Twilight. I really felt there was nothing original about this. It was nice to see Ian Somerhalder from Lost again. He fit nicely into the cast and gave it some edge that it was missing up until the last 10 minutes. The fog rolling in sort of bugged me as well and seemed cheesy. I was bored by the writing in the diaries and voiceovers, but I do realize that it is called Vampire Diaries after all. I just hope it doesn’t rely on this for filler. Will I continue watching in hopes of it improving? Yes, but I don’t have high hopes. I was just hoping for a vampire show that I could really sink my teeth into. Just my 2 cents.
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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.
In my quest to catch up on some of the scary movies released the last few years I saw 
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 “
Being a book store owner I naturally love books as well as all things scary. When I come across something that brings two of my loves together I get very excited and my wallet begins to quiver with anticipation. Here is a book that I have already placed my order for called 
Have you heard of Vampira? I’m sure you have unless, of course, you never crawl out from under your rock. She was the original Mistress of the Dark. Elvira was inspired by Vampira. She was the first television horror movie hostess from 1954 to 1955 and then again briefly in 1956. Although the show didn’t last long Maila Nurmi (Vampira) was nominated for an Emmy for the character and has a huge cult following to this day. Maila Nurmi actually passed away just last year. I happened to pick up the latest 
Can you believe that I never noticed it was Friday the 13th yesterday? I usually look so forward to those days. They always talk about it on the news like it’s some huge event and people are convinced some horrible thing will happen. I enjoy that part of it, not really the day itself. I just think it’s a crack up that people put so much onto a number and a particular day. They made crap loads of those 
Well, after spending the last month searching for the best Halloween decorations, recipes, costumes, decorating my new house and watching movies here are my thoughts. LAME! Okay not totally lame, but not as good as in years past. My biggest gripe was Halloween decor or the lack there of. Every Halloween I have spent hundreds of dollars on new decorations for the store and for the house that I could not live without. This year I spent $19.00 and that was just for spiderwebs, candles and misc. crap. WTF?! My thoughts are that with the bad economy they just didn’t really come out with anything new and scaled back on some of the more pricey items. My favorite has always been animatronics. I love things that move and say things. The ones they had this year were cheap looking and weren’t all that scary frankly. Costumes were pretty lame as well. I wanted to post the scariest costume of the year, but I really didn’t see anything that was worth even a wimper. Some of the bad costumes that were popular, like Micheal Jackson and Octomom, were just in bad taste and stupid. Decorating our new house was great and everything worked better than we had hoped. We even got voted as the scariest house in the neighborhood, but there were a few that were really close. We’ll have to step it up a bit next year. Movie selection in the theaters was not even worth discussing, though rarely is it. All I can say is I really hope next year the economy is back on track and decorations are plentiful. This is my favorite time of the year and I found it depressing to go into stores that normally have huge Halloween displays and only had pitifully small racks of cheesy decor. Just my two cents.
I just got back from seeing Zombieland. I’m not a big fan of zombie movies in general, but I do love the funny ones like 
After a huge marketing blitz and much anticipation