* Here is the trailer for the next Clive Barker-based movie, Book of Blood. The Radiohead remix adds hella production value, I think. Also, how nice is it to see a Barker adaptation retain the original English setting and accents?
* And here’s a promo reel for the next Barker flick, Dread–featuring interview snippets from Barker, director Anthony DiBlasi, and the cast, as well as boobies and some pretty horrifying things involving bleach.
* Meanwhile, I still haven’t seen Midnight Meat Train–I didn’t have it in me to try to OnDemand it the night before the election as originally planned. I know reviews from those I trust have been lukewarm, but Christ, if ever there was a movie I need to see for myself! Meanwhile, just so I can keep it straight in my head, I think the two Films of Blood on the way after Dread are The Madonna and Pig Blood Blues. Even if all of these films turn out kind of dull, I’d rather the horror section at Best Buy be filled with dull churned-out shingle-based horror movies based on great Clive Barker short stories that theoretically could find a new audience through them than dull churned-out shingle-based horror movies based on nothing in particular.
* Looks like George A. Romero’s next …of the Dead flick is, in fact, going to be called …of the Dead. I can get behind that. Please be good.
* I really admire the obvious amount of thought and heart that went into Shaun of the Dead star Simon Pegg’s Guardian-published essay about why zombies should be slow, but I also find it really silly (albeit admittedly so) when it tries to support that assertion on the grounds that fast zombies aren’t “realistic,” and really wrongheaded when it claims that speeding up zombies strips them of metaphorical power. Eve Tushnet, Bruce Baugh, and I beat up on that idea pretty good in a comment thread a while back. (Via Jason Adams.)
* Speaking of Bruce, here he runs down World of Warcraft’s creation myth. Actually, that’s an inaccurate word to describe it because in the game world, these things factually, demonstrably happened–there are Old God corpses lying around to prove it and everything. Anyway, it’s an intriguing, “art of enthusiasm”-style mix of Lovecraft, Greek mythology, and Tolkien.
* If I had to rattle off the names of, I dunno, the 10 people most directly responsible for my life being what it is right now in terms of the prominent role comics play in it, Joe Quesada and Bill Jemas would be on there thanks to their construction of so-called “Nu-Marvel” in the early ’00s. Therefore I’m really enjoying their reunion interview with Jonah Weiland at CBR. Jemas in particular is an interesting case: His ideas and approach really did shake up the company and make superhero comics much, much better on a qualitative level, but then as best as anyone can tell he kind of went a little ego crazy, and he was relatively quickly shuffled aside by his superiors. I think there are similar executive trajectories one can point to that were not brought to an end nearly as early, with the results you’d expect.
* This interview with Dan DiDio offers the first hints of an official confirmation that the art changes and scheduling delays for Final Crisis are due at least in part to tardy scripts from Grant Morrison. God knows I love the Mad Scotsman, but his work does tend to run into these kinds of problems, and the common denominator is, well, him. I’m not even complaining about the lateness (the calvacade of artists, now that I have some beef with from time to time)–it just has long seemed a shame to me that it all got laid at the feet of either the artists or the editors or the executives.
* I’m also excited to read that my friend and former boss Brian Cunningham will be involved via his new editorial capacity at DC in the upcoming Green Lantern (and i think overall DCU) event Blackest Night. If you look back at the past couple of years at DC, a lot of attention was given to Countdown and its countless spinoffs and tie-ins, none of which really merited it; but at the same time, you’ve seen pretty tremendous and momentous work on Green Lantern, Superman, and Batman from Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison. If, after 52, DC had done everything exactly the same–published Countdown, Countdown to Adventure, Countdown to Mystery, Countdown Presents the Search for Ray Palmer, Countdown: Arena, Salvation Run, Amazons Attack et al–but just made the mental and promotional adjustment of declaring Johns’ and Morrison’s main titles and events–Batman, Green Lantern, Action Comics, The Sinestro Corps War, The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul–the so-called “spine” of DC’s superhero line instead, I think you’d have a very different landscape to look at right now. Anyway, I think these missteps have badly undercut Final Crisis in terms of fan reception, but clearly the emphasis placed on it and Batman R.I.P. and Superman: New Krypton and Flash: Rebirth and Blackest Night indicate that DC is now aware of where its bread is buttered.
* They’re gonna make a movie out of Paul Pope’s yet-to-be-published cyclopean fight scene graphic novel Battling Boy.
* What can one say about being married to a woman whose first thought upon the election of the new president is “this reminds me of ‘The Battle of Evermore'”?
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