“This iron ball was found in the boar’s body. This is what hurt him so. It shattered his bones and burned its way deep inside him. This is what turned him into a demon.”

-from Princess Mononoke

(Found here–thanks, Matt Wiegle)

Well, I think that people loved Grindhouse. Everyone who saw it loved it. The critics loved it, the fans loved it. I just think that the length scared people away, and a lot of their audience now has kids. I talked to my friends who love those movies but didn’t go see it, and I said, ‘Why wouldn’t you go and see it?’ And they’re like, ‘Well, it’s three and a half hours and then you’ve got to get dinner and plus we get a baby sitter for five hours. There’s that extra money’ and you think ‘Oh wow. There’s a whole – you can’t take your kids to it. You have to get a baby-sitter. It’s like a whole extra expenses.’ It actually pushed people into the territory of ‘Well, I want to see it, but I’ll see it on DVD.’

—Eli Roth, in an interview at Dark Horizons (via JA)

The animal below lived for three hours after being shot eight times with a .50-caliber revolver before it was finally chased down and killed at point-blank range. I’m sure those were a wonderful three hours for it.

“This is the state of the beast,” it said, “to eat and be eaten.”

—Clive Barker

(photo source)

I talk about the latest issues of Criminal, Captain America, Countdown, Final Girl, Gutsville, Snake Woman, and X-Men at this week’s Thursday Morning Quarterback over at Wizard.

…click here.

Because the comments work now.

“There are no homosexuals in Korea. We don’t like them.”

–North Korean press escort to reporter Christian Caryl, “Curiouser and Curiouser: There’s pomp, propaganda–and even a fake Chanel purse or two. NEWSWEEK’s Tokyo Bureau Chief discovers that touring North Korea has some unexpected moments,” Newsweek

In honor of Monday season-ender for Heroes (which I don’t watch) and tonight’s for Lost (religiously!), here’s a new, working link to Wizard’s big “Heroes vs. Lost” joint interview with Heroes creator Tim Kring and Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof. It’s pretty sweet.

It’s funny–I didn’t HATE Pirates 3, and I usually either like movies or HATE them, or at the very least I leave feeling angry that I wasted my time. I simply didn’t like this. It wasn’t pretentious and it wasn’t insulting, which are the things that really piss me off about movies. It was really good-natured and easy to go along with, even root for. It’s just that GOD, ENOUGH with the deals and double-deals and double-crosses and triple-crosses already! It’s 2 1/2 hours of negotiating and 15 minutes of fighting. There are other things that I could pick apart too (including some major, major problems with structure and motivation and failing to meet consciously constructed audience expectations) but I won’t do that until more people get the chance to see the movie–the main thing is just, HOLY MOSES, SHUT UP WITH THE NEGOTIATING ALREADY!

That’s where the movie’s massive length hurts it the most. To At World’s End‘s credit it’s not BORING per se–it’s always lovely to look at, and every single actor seems to be having the time of their lives. But scene after scene after scene, I sat there thinking, “Why do we need to see this? And for that matter, why do we need to see it for so LONG?” There are so many shots of characters doing takes as they watch something else happen, it’s like they’re modeling what the audience is supposed to be doing or something. To be fair, it’s not in the standard slack-jawed whispered-“wowwwww!” Chris Columbus with Danny Elfman tinklings beneath it Harry Potter standing there and gaping mode that filmmakers employ like the wide-eyed-awe equivalent of a sitcom laugh track–it’s more like every character is reenacting a message board post consisting solely of the phrase “WTF?” all the time–but still. Imagine a whole movie of the part in The Thing where they stand there watching the spider-head and going “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me” and you’re almost there.

Washington Redskins players Clinton Portis and Chris Samuels defended Michael Vick on Monday by ridiculing the notion that dog fighting is considered a crime.

[…]

“I don’t know if he was fighting dogs or not,” Portis said. “But it’s his property; it’s his dogs. If that’s what he wants to do, do it.”

[…]

Hours after making light of the possible crime in the television interview, Portis issued a statement late Monday through the Redskins.

“In the recent interview I gave concerning dog fighting, I want to make it clear I do not take part in dog fighting or condone dog fighting in any manner,” the statement said.

—“Supporting Vick: Skins Portis, Samuels ridicule dog fighting as crime,” AP, SportsIllustrated.com

Aside from the utterly loathsome and contemptible animal abuse, for which these miserable bastards deserve to truly suffer, allow me to paraphrase the aspect of this story that bothers me the most:

“Except for that part where I explicitly condoned dog fighting, I do not condone dog fighting.”

He DID condone dog fighting. That’s EXACTLY what he did! He’s NOT ALLOWED to say he doesn’t. He does! He did! We all saw it happen!

The degree to which celebrities feel entitled to rewrite history to suit whatever their current preferred narrative happens to be is very, very disturbing. (To say nothing of politicians; at this point, though, I think celebrities-in-trouble are more boldfaced about it while the politicians are still at least slightly subtle.) You don’t need to look any further than the behavior of, say, the idiots on The Real World every season to see the extent to which people believe they can do any number of horrible, amoral, immoral things, then convince themselves it’s okay simply by saying so. It’s not. And this stupid punk is not entitled to say he didn’t do something he absolutely, unequivocally did.

(Via Bloody Disgusting.)

Missed this somehow, but Lloyd Alexander, author of the Prydain Chronicles, died Friday at the age of 83. This lovely Washington Post obituary for Alexander emphasizes the seriousness of spirit beneath the humor and fancifulness of his work:

“I used the imaginary kingdom not as a sentimentalized fairyland, but as an opening wedge to express what I hoped would be some very hard truths,” he once told an interviewer. “I never saw fairy tales as an escape or a cop-out. . . . On the contrary, speaking for myself, it is the way to understand reality.”

I very fondly remember reading his Prydain and Westmark books as a kid, and what I take away most from them is an increasing sense of world-weary, almost angry melancholy as the volumes progressed. The heroes of those books were changed by their adventures, and not always for the better. Receiving that message made me feel like I’d grown up a little bit. (You know what else had that vibe? Stanley Keisel’s The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids. Am I the only person who read that?)

Anyway, I wonder how long it will be before Alexander’s work gets the live-action film treatment.

I really liked the part where they negotiated, but not as much as the part where they negotiated. The part where they negotiated was okay, I guess, but the part where they negotiated was really where things took off. A lot of people will leave the theatre talking about the part where they negotiated, and I don’t really blame them, but for me, the part where they negotiated easily topped the part where they negotiated. And yes, the part where they negotiated is every bit as stunning as you’ve heard, offsetting the part where they negotiated. In fact, the part where they negotiated and the part where they negotiated rival the part where they negotiated. And the part where they negotiated will be remembered for a long time, even as the part where they negotiated will be quickly forgotten.

Authorities evacuated the area Saturday after the swarm of about 3,000 bees emerged from the woods around the West Noble High School football field, where 700 people were participating in a fundraising walk for the American Cancer Society.

—“Three-thousand bees force evacuation of fundraiser,” AP, CNN.com

Behold, a gallery of awesome deep-sea creatures.

(Via Monster Brains.)

Cinematical has more pictures from the upcoming Dark Is Rising film.

I fully realize that I could post an example that isn’t Christopher Eccleston as the Rider, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

And now for something completely different: Here’s a lovely excerpt from Don Breithaupt’s book on Steely Dan’s album Aja for the 33 1/3 series. I loves me the Dan–that air of sophisticated cynicism and studio proficiency is so soothing to me, like a dysthymic American answer to Roxy Music.

And these four posts contain pretty much every David Bowie music video ever made. I am in HEAVEN. To celebrate, here are a pair of horror-themed clips:

The Dorian Grey-esque “Look Back in Anger,” directed by David Mallet:

And the Taxi Driver-esque “I’m Afraid of Americans,” directed by Dom & Nic:

A message-board acquaintance of mine saw “two kids who had to be under five” at 28 Weeks Later the other day.

WHAT THE FUCK?

I don’t understand what the hurry is to expose your kids to this stuff–they’ve got literally their whole lives to watch zombies eat people!

I am the biggest horror fan you’ll ever meet, and yet I wasn’t one of these third graders who was watching Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th movies. (That was a popular-kid thing to do, oddly enough.) I was the kid who pretended to be asleep at sleepovers when the kids would watch Poltergeist II. I think I saw my first rated-R movie, The Lost Boys, when I was in eighth grade or so. I saw The Shining early on in high school at some point, and didn’t see my first real, gory, unabashed horror film, Nightbreed, until I was a sophomore. And that was fine!

I don’t know if these “parents” legitimately think their toddlers will enjoy watching horror movies, or if they think it’d be fun to freak them out, or if they haven’t given the kids any consideration and want to see the movies themselves and it’s cheaper to traumatize them than get a sitter. I just know it’s not the right thing to do to your kids.

This week’s Thursday Morning Quarterback at Wizard is the place to be if you want to know what I think of the latest issues of Ultimates 2, All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder, Justice League of America, Batman, Battlestar Galactica, B.P.R.D.: Garden of Souls, and Ex Machina.

And this week’s Horror Roundtable at The Horror blog is a virtual sacred-cow abattoir, as each participant names a horror movie (or several) that everyone else seemed to like but they didn’t. A lot of the choices had me all but yelling at my computer screen–“How could anyone not think THAT movie was scary?” It’s a pretty kick-ass read.