Tag Archives: movies

In which I review Joe Dante’s Burying The Ex

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Yeah, more movie reviews than average just now. I really enjoy doing them when I have the time.

If you don’t know who Joe Dante is, he’s a director who cut his teeth working for cult-iconic ’50s & ’60s B-movie director and producer Roger Corman before becoming a horror hero himself by making flicks like Piranha and The Howling. Dante went on to do great, successful Big Hollywood flicks (Gremlins, Twilight Zone: The Movie, and many more). Now he’s returned to his roots with a cheaper horror-comedy that retains his penchant for fun and cute romance amid the chaos. It’s definitely a better-than-average flick, especially if you’re a horror-flick omnivore who likes Return of the Living Dead as much as you like old Hammer films and Shaun of the Dead.

The review is here.

On the Subject of Horror Movies

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Rebecca and I were watching Insidious, mostly as homework before seeing Sinister (we haven’t yet).

At a particularly slow point during the movie–the point where (SPOILER ALERT) the psychic friend tells Patrick Wilson that he’s always had the ability to astrally project inside him, like a conveniently plotted metaphysical version of some character cut from The Wizard of Oz–I was reminded of the hypnosis scene from Stir of Echoes, the marvelous 1999 flick based on the book of the same name by Richard Matheson.

I asked Rebecca if she’d ever seen Stir of Echoes.

“Kevin Bacon and the chick from Criminal Intent? Hell yeah,” she replied. “That’s an awesome ghost movie.”

Then she nodded at the TV screen in our living room, and said:

“This is the opposite of that.”

My wife is the greatest.

On The Subject of Fangoria‘s FrightFest

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I recently got to review the eight films comprising Fangoria Magazine‘s fan-participatory online FrightFest promotion, and most of ’em were a hell of a lot better than anybody who’s waded through hundreds of straight-to-DVD horror titles might expect.

Here’s the piece at Creative Loafing.

lawbi #9: 3-D TV, or This Should Be Awesome For A Month

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Training simulations. Architectural design. Medical tests. Mapping.

There are dozens if not hundreds of sensible, practical applications for efficient, realistic three-dimensional digital imaging technology. But slapping a pair of goofy glasses on your kid so he will shut up for a bit while becoming even more confused about reality isn’t one of them.

You understand that 3-D movies are a trend, right? At no point in the near — or even distant — future will all consumer entertainment be rendered in three dimensions. (If 1983’s immortal Jaws 3-D didn’t irrevocably turn the tide, nothing will.) No studio can afford to make all of its films in 3-D. No theater chain can afford to convert all of its screening rooms to 3-D. And no indie production company can start cranking out straight-to-Blu-Ray titles for a market of home viewers showing all the explosive growth of recreational space travel.

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