I've always rather enjoyed HBO's True Blood, but this season tried my patience. Sure, the show has always lapsed into melodrama and bullshit soap opera-ness, but in past seasons, everytime the cheese starts to get too thick, the writers have always given audiences a great and gory "what the fuck" moment - such as the vampire king of Louisiana ripping the spine from a news anchor live on TV in season 3.

Season four layed on the cheese thicker than a Guy Fieri dish, and had very few moments of WTF to... well... cut said cheese. This season was so meandering it became boring; full of too many subplots and way too many characters... the number of shapeshifting denizens alone was almost too much to keep up with. Werewolves, shapeshifters, werepanthers... I was half expecting one of Tim Sullivan's biker-gay werebears from Chillerama (repeat screening October 14th at Metro Cinema!) to pop up. Not to mention, fairies, mediums, ghosts, and the season's big bad, witches.

None of it gelled like it did in previous seasons. In an effort to get from plotline to plotline, the show sacrificed heart, humor, and its trademark blood and guts. And don't even get me started on the head witch's Ronnie James Dio-esque spellcasting.

Truth be told, I kinda stopped caring about the show. But the fact that 90 percent of the other channels were chock full of 9/11 anniversary coverage, I summoned up a "meh" and gave tonight's season finale a shot. And although, like the entire season, the finale was meandering and felt tacked on, I actually had a pretty good time with it. The humor, the heart, and the gore were all back in spades... especially the humor.

The best parts of the show:

Jesus' warning that "you can't trade magic like fucking Pokemon cards";

Witch Marnie's final exclamation -  "this fucking sucks!" given with great delivery;

Bill liking Eric much better when he was "brain damaged";

finally seeing Jessica's ta-tas (and that little red riding hood getup was dead-hot too);

Sheriff Andy's pathetic yet somehow suave pick-up attempt;

Vamp Pam's rant about Sookie's "fairy vagina";

and that fucking love triangle BS that thankfully (we can hope) came to an end tonight - both the vamp and the shapeshifter ones. This pretty much derailed the season for me.

As expected, lots of characters bit it in the finale. Some shockingly, some sadly, and some gleefully (although I'll miss Nan's bitchiness, it was getting irritating). And some characters from past seasons are coming back into the mix, including a surprising new vampire and the ghost of a previous big bad.

The finale hooked me in just enough that I MAY tune in next season. But it better be more focused, streamlined, and fun than this one.

As for other TV, well my fave Curb Your Enthusiasm ended it's season tonight as well with a gut buster of an episode. Within the first FIVE MINUTES, we have a gay seven year old swastika-loving child and a Michael J. Fox Parkinson's joke. Before you send them hate mail, Mr. Fox guest starred playing himself as Larry's upstairs neighbor. In fact, after the Curb season finale, I'm convinced that 99% of the Michael J. Fox Parkinson's jokes were started by Fox himself.  I kid you not, MJF goes to get Larry a drink and says "I'll be back in two shakes." He is simply hilarious, and it was great to see him back on TV. From exploding pop bottles to late night stomping, he keeps Larry guessing whether he's getting fucked with or whether its part of the disease ("Pissed or Parkinson's? I'm not sure..."). And the young actor playing the seven year old of dubious sexual orientation almost stole the show away from Fox and David. One of the best shticks of the series is how obvious things are to Larry that everyone else is oblivious to. It was a great way to end a pretty... pretty... pretty damn good season.

And Entourage, a show both loved and reviled, wrapped up for good (until the movie at least) tonight. Lots of people rag on the show because its essentially about a bunch of spoiled rich boys driving hot cars, going to hot clubs, and banging hot women. Their point?

The show has always been about escapism. I work in film and TV (even in a small city like Edmonton), and I gotta say, whether you're making a documentary, working on local TV, or doing some other creative endeavor, I bet deep down inside most of us are in the biz because we want a little bit of that Hollywood magic. And for me, if I can't get it here, watching Entourage is probably the next best thing.

But under the glitz and glamour, the show's always been about loyalty and the "bro-code". And it's never lost that theme. So by the end of the episode (and the series), everyone winds up happy. Including Ari Gold, who manages to save his marriage in one of the best scenes of the entire run. Entourage wrapped with an ok episode with a few sentimental moments (and a great post-credits bit).


So that's it for TV's more interesting moments of the summer. For now, I'll wait with baited breath for new seasons of Bored to Death (a series that got MUCH better in its second season), Boardwalk Empire, and down the road, Californication.

For those of you breathlessly anticipating DEDfest (and we hope you are!), there are a few offerings at this year's Fringe Festival to tide you over!

For the blood, there's an adaptation of Bram Stoker's classic DRACULA that's sure to chill the blood. And for another kind of undead experience, check out NOTES FROM A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE.  If you're a sick person (like me) and love to see what kinds of punishments the body can withstand, check out our good friends' Ryan Stock and Amber Lynn's freakshow called - appropriately enough - SICK?.


From blood to boobies, check out the Hook'Em Revue Burlesque at Wunderbar.

For the comic geeks, there's the epic tale of HAROLD OF GALACTUS, and for those of you that caught the comedy of Mostly Water Theatre a few years ago at DEDfest, MWT's Trent Wilkie has a one man show at Filthy McNasty's called AACHEN about a crusty old bastard.

Happy Fringing... see you at NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD this Friday at Metro Cinema!

Hey all,

Last blog was January so I figured time to update! As some of you know, The Dedmontonian - me, has moved to the coast, making me the... Vancleaverian? I'll work on that. I moved out here for work and to also spread the good word of DEDfest, but don't worry kiddies. I will return for our yearly marathon of madness. And the added bonus? We (and our amazing friends at Metro Cinema) will be bringing you the bad-assed-ness from the historic Garneau Theatre this fall!  Once we make our dates final, we'll make an announcement. Stay peeled to www.dedfest.com for more details.

I figure with all the strangeness, wonderment, and sometimes the frustrations of a new city - especially a city with such roots in the entertainment and film industries - I'll have more fodder for this blog. I'll get into the pole dancing busker on Commercial Drive and the lingerie photoshoot in a store window in Gastown some other time (and those were just from yesterday afternoon!). I should start things off again... and appropriately... with a movie blog.



One of the niceties of living in a film-centric community is the chance to do things like, say, walk down the road and catch a midnight screening of J.J. Abrams' new film Super 8. The verdict? Well aside from my initial thought of "Spielberg with lens flare", Super 8 turned out to be a fun, yet flawed retro mashup of Mr. Spielberg's greatest hits (Spielberg was producer on Super 8 by the way).  If anything, the film is like a very entertaining cover band.

The plot? Essentially it's ET meets Cloverfield. Precocious kids making zombie flick, strange and nasty alien caught on film, even nastier government soldiers, themes of loss and heartfelt family drama - that pretty much sums it up. What worked about the film? Abrams, like Senor Spielbergo before him, nails the casting. These kids are naturals, especially the leads Elle Fanning and Joel Courtney. And the rest of the group are fun to watch. Abrams never paints these characters with broad strokes or falls prey to cliches. The fat kid isn't funny because he's portly, he's funny because he's a bossy director; the small kid is funny not because of his size but because of his pyromaniac tendencies; and so on. And these kids can hold their own alongside most of this year's adult action heroes. On that note, the grown ups in the film (Kyle Chandler and Ron Eldard as the respective dads) are great too.

I also dug the film's retro setting. Replace the CGI with some practical effects and drag the film print around the parking lot a few times and you could sell someone on this film actually being made in 1979. There are references to pot, disco, The Knack, etc., and for the geeks, we got nice mentions of Aurora Models, Dick Smith makeup, and Fangoria Magazine. Although quite a few critics have criticized Abrams for it, I never found those nostalgic touches too heavy handed.

What was heavy handed, and what nearly derailed the film for me, was the ending. Not plot-wise, but in the way Abrams trotted out the "core" of the film, so to speak, in a very hammy way. And strangely, I'm not quite sure why it felt cheeseball. Perhaps when Spielberg did it in the 70s and 80s, it felt kinda fresh in the context of an event movie. I think as well that in those iconic films, Spielberg had been drawing on his own experiences and influence to give audiences that extra depth - there just seemed to be that something personal in his films. Abrams seems to be drawing on his memories of Spielberg's influences and experiences rather than infusing the film with his own.

And that is what Super 8 feels like: a photocopy of a Spielberg film. A very entertaining and enjoyable copy, but a photocopy nonetheless. Despite that, and because we've had more than enough "event" films over the past few years that had no heart or character at all (looking at YOU Transformers), I'd gladly take a summer movie that dares to put story and character over spectacle any day.

Oh and once last thing, you nancies that like to leave as soon as the credits roll? Stick around to see the finished Super 8 zombie film!

I'm sitting here at 3AM watching one of my favorite christmas films -  and one of my guilty pleasure horror flicks - Black Christmas.  Not the Bob Clark original. The 2006 remake.  Yes all you hateful bitches, I love the remake.  I love it better than the original. In fact, I'll be so sacrilegious as to say I thought the original was... well... a bit dull. John Carpenter did a much better job of Black Christmas with his Halloween (which incidentally was supposed to be a sequel to Clark's film). The remake is much better paced, has some very creative gore gags, and doesn't take itself too seriously. It has a wicked sense of humor that was sorely lacking in the original.

The plot?  Pretty much the same. Billy Lenz escapes from the asylum and stalks a bunch of sorority girls living in the house where he once committed his ghastly deeds. Much deadness ensues. What did they improve on? Well, the first was all tension and mood, which when done right has a heavy impact. Mood and tension are definitely lost here.  But director Glen Morgan (an X-Files alum) replaces the tension with gore and humor.  Seriously, there's a lot of fun grue in this flick. There's stabbings aplenty, impalements, strangulations, fleshy gingerbread cookies, scalpings by ice skate, and enough eye trauma to make Lucio Fulci proud.



Also, as mentioned before, the flick has a great sense of humor. Sure, unlike the '74 BC, its hard to like any of these sorority bitches (except Andrea Martin, who starred in the original and cameos here) but that makes their deaths all the more enjoyable. Plus, they take a creative approach to the use of cell phones. In most modern horror flicks, the use - or uselessness - of cell phones is usually explained by "oh, no service" or some other lame excuse.  In this movie, not only do cell phones work, but they are used by the killer to stalk and torment his prey. In the original, Billy made a few crank calls to the house's old rotary.  In the remake, Billy steals each victim's cell and uses them to terrify and confuse each new target.  Sure, there are other plot holes, but the fact that the producers dealt with a common horror cliche in such a creative manner was refreshing.



The film is not without its flaws.  In typical remake fashion, they spend way too much time giving the killer a backstory to explain his motives.  Couldn't we just leave it at "Billy went nuts and killed his family"? Instead, the producers felt it necessary to tack on a whole abusive mom angle. Plus there's a whole incest scene i could have done without.  In a film with, for the most part, a great sense of black humor, the family drama felt out of place.



Also, once nice thing about the original was that they kept the killer hidden for the most part.  Just like his origin story, we see way too much of Billy for him to be as menacing as he was in the '74 version.

But these are minor flaws in a great no-brains, popcorn munching, dumb-ass yuletide horror flick. If you've always wanted to decorate your x-mas tree with guts and eyeballs, this is the perfect seasonal treat for you. Pop this on with Santa Slay and rot your brain.

As our Bad Santa Kyle would say, "HO HO MOTHERFUCKIN HO!" Happy Horrordays y'all!

Not really horror-related, but food for thought: is Jordan Staal a Klopek?




oh and also...