Category Horror

Dec 30 2011

Best Of 2011

Short and sweet here’s our rankings of the best (and worst) in sci-fi, fantasy, comics, etc. in film, TV, etc.

Best Sci-Fi TV Show

Fringe, with all the mind-bending twists, parallel universe visits, inter-dimensional funkiness, and John Noble’s brilliant portrayal of half-mad scientist Walter Bishop, this show has outdone The X-Files It’s a shame its ratings are plummeting making a fifth season not guaranteed. Please Fox, if you intend on canceling it, give the creators time to wrap up the show.

Best Horror TV Show

The Walking Dead, just the premiere episode in its second season made it scarier and more terrifying than anything shown in theaters. With many contenders for the title like Supernatural, True Blood and American Horror Story, The Walking Dead ate out the competition.

Best Fantasy Show

Finding Bigfoot–just kidding! Actually it’s a tie between True Blood and Game of Thrones. Sure the latter has many horror elements like vampires and witches, but the entire Sookie and the Faerie angle took the show into the fantasy realm.

Best Documentary/Reality Show

Prophets of Science Fiction, airing on the Science Channel offers viewers involving examinations of the lives of sci-fi literary greats and how their works influenced culture.

Best Cancelled TV Show

Stargate Universe, it’s too bad Syfy got impatient with this program thatdecided to jettison all the cowboy antics of previous Stargate shows and concentrate on the wonder of space travel. One truly got the impression that the people onboard the ancient starship Destiny were out exploring the unknown. Too bad viewers never got a proper series conclusion, which is nothing new with genre shows even on networks supposedly dedicated to them. But that’s another rant.

 

Best TV Character

Walter Bishop (John Noble) in Fringe. His mad scientist antics are very funny while also full of pathos. As stated online everywhere it’s a crime Noble hasn’t been nominated for an Emmy.
 

Most Missed TV Character

Castiel from Supernatural, our favorite deadpan angel sadly bit the dust shortly after the seventh season premiere. His death has overshadowed the rest of the season, even the supposed death of the Winchester Boys’ surrogate father Bobby.

Most Improved TV Character

The Eleventh Doctor as portrayed by Matt Smith in Doctor Who. After a shaky first season, Smith has grown comfortable with the role and showrunner Stephen Moffat has let the wild complexity of time travel define this show.

Best Series Finale

V, technically it was only a season finale but the show was cancelled. Nevertheless, people who still tuned in watched in glee as hated characters,especially annoying teenage son Tyler Evans (who incidently gets the title for Worst TV Character), get killed and the aliens apparently conquered the Earth with some kind of cosmic enrapturing that left most of the populace in a trance-like state of alien worship. Cool, the bad guys won!

Worst Series Finale

Smallville gave fans who waited ten years for Tom Welling a.k.a. Clark Kent the moment to finally put on the Superman suit and the show did not deliver it right. Sure Welling ripped open his shirt at the very end to reveal his S Shield and there were a couple of bad far away CG shots of Superman but that figure could’ve been anyone!

Best Sc-Fi Film

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, a genunine surprise given how disappointing Tim Burton’s 2001 remake was. This emotional film reinvigorated the franchise and took it in a new direction in a way that was better done than most ofther reboot attempts, including J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek. Also the year’s best film line was heard in this movie: “NO!”

Best Horror Film

Insidious, made by the creators of Saw and Paranormal Activity used many ingredients for a memorable horror movie: creepy kids, demons, haunted houses, ooh time to sleep with the lights on.

Best Fantasy Movie

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II brings the film saga to a spectacular finish. Now the question remains will Potter mania stand the test of time? We think so.

Best Animated Film

TIE: Kung Fu Panda 2 and The Adventures of Tintin, Steven Spielberg gives us another rousing adventure film in the vein of Indiana Jones but using beautiful animation but Kung Fu Panda 2 had more heart in its story of Po the panda trying to discover his roots and inner self.

Best Super Hero Film

Captain America: The First Avenger, everything could’ve gone wrong but instead was a nearly perfect rendition and ode to one of Marvel’s earliest heroes.

Best Super Hero On Film

Captain America from Captain America: The First Avenger, see above and add in Chris Evans’ heartfelt portrayal of an average man who only wants to do good and became someone greater.

Biggest Disappointment

Green Lantern could’ve been so great but it wasn’t. In a summer with a patriotic hero, a larger than life thunder god and retro mutants this film presented a tepid origin story with forgettable villains and the 3D stunk. Unbelievably a sequel is still being planned.

Best Guilty Pleasure/Action Film

Battle: Los Angeles, the basic message of this alien invasion story told from the point of view of grunt marines is KILL, KILL, KILL! But there were many tense moments with great and gritty action sequences. Many claimed it was a mashup of Black Hawk Down and Transformers and they were right.

Best Use Of 3D In A Film

Transformers: Dark of the Moon may be dumb, noisy and be stricly for watching stuff blow up, but the 3D was nearly perfect and added depth to the film.

Best Trailer For An Upcoming Film

Prometheus, seriously we just don’t get tired of seeing this preview about Ridley Scott’s return to the Alien universe.

Best Comic Book Event

DC’s The New 52, was the game changer for the comic book world. It updated all the DC characters with a comprehensive reboot and the company’s aggressive push into digital online comics could pave the way to comics’ salvation.

Best Comic Book

Justice League, Jim Lee’s vivid art and the restructuring of the team’s personalities and relationships made this a can’t-miss comic.

Best Super Hero In Comic Books

TIE: Superman and Spider-Man, both flagship characters had their ups (Superman updated again but this time the changes largely work and readers are given two distinct versions of the character in his two books) and downs (Spider-Man is still suffering the damage of Marvel boss Joe Quesada’s boneheaded decision to have Spidey make a deal with the devil and erasing his marriage, still the Spider-Island story arc was whacky fun) yet continue to shine no matter their trappings. Honorable mentions go to Batman, The Flash and Captain America.

Nov 13 2011

The Walking Dead March On, Part II

Episode Three: The pre-credits scene of episode three of the second season of The Walking Dead, “Save the Last One”, shows Shane (Jon Bernthal) running water for the shower and shaving his head with electric clippers. Looking at his reflection in the mirror, he seems disturbed and somewhat uneasy…

episode-3-shane-otis-hallway-gp[1]Post-credits, in a nightmarish sequence, Shane Walsh and Otis (Pruitt Taylor Vince) run for their lives from walkers in the school hallway. The walkers –looking Hammer-film ghoulish in the dark, slow-motion scene – chase them into the gymnasium. Rick Grimes’ (Andrew Lincoln) conversation with his wife Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) – at their son Carl’s (Chandler Riggs) bedside – provides the narration. Telling of Shane’s icy prowess in getting any job done, he recounts the time Shane stole the high school principal’s car out of the teacher’s lot in the middle of a lesson…

Back in the RV, Carol (Melissa McBride) cries in her sleep, almost certainly over her missing daughter. Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus), sleepless, goes on a night search for the girl. Andrea (Laurie Holden) agrees to join, and grabbing flashlights, they set off into the dark, silent woods. Daryl casually reveals his survival skills, telling Andrea of the time he was lost in the woods as a child, alone, for nine days before finding his way home. Their vain search yields only a bite victim who unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide by hanging himself from a tree, turning into a walker in the process. After reading his rhyming, darkly humorous suicide note, Daryl – although initially reluctant to waste arrows –kills the gurgling walker. Andrea reveals a morbid outlook, unsure of whether she wants to live or die…

Please click on the link to Deadloggers to continue reading about Episode Three

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Episode Four: The pre-credits scene of episode four of season two of The Walking Dead, “Cherokee Rose”, shows the survivors re-grouping at the farm, as Hershel (Scott Wilson) tends to a recovering Carl Grimes (Chandler Riggs). Later, Otis (Pruitt Taylor Vince) is buried and eulogized in a solemn ceremony. Shane Walsh (Jon Bernthal) grows visibly uncomfortable as the unknowing Hershel waxes heroic, and has flashbacks to Otis’ final moments. Patricia (Jane McNeill), Otis’ surviving girlfriend, wants Shane to say a few words. Shane initially protests but stammers his way through a falsified version of the fatal event, designed to heroize the dead man’s actions…

Post-credits, the survivors study a map of the area to analyze where to search for the missing Sophia (Madison Lintz). Hershel advises Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Shane that they are medically unfit to participate in the search, so Daryl (Norman Reedus) goes alone. Hershel states his directive that no one carries guns on his property, objecting to an “armed camp.” Despite reservations, Rick and Shane comply, although Hershel permits an armed lookout. Additionally, Hershel breaks the news to Rick that as soon as Carl has recovered fully, and Sophia is found, the survivors are to leave his property, stating that “we don’t normally take in strangers.”

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Dale (Jeffrey DeMunn) and a lucid, recovered T-Dog (IronE Singleton) find a grotesque, swollen, misshapen walker trapped at the bottom of one of five wells on Hershel’s property, sarcastically calling it a swimmer (as opposed to a walker). The survivors want to shoot it, but don’t want to contaminate the well water. Finally, in order to remove it, they resort to lowering in a nervous Glenn (Steven Yeun) as live bait to harness it to a rope and the pull it out. Unfortunately, the bearings holding the tied rope loosen, dropping Glen sharply downward almost within the monster’s grasp. The group succeeds in pulling the screaming, panicky Glenn out of the well. After another try, they pull the swimmer out, this time using a horse for an anchor. As the gurgling swimmer is halfway out, his soft, bloated, squishy body snaps in two. His top half quivers on the ground, spraying blood and intestines while his lower half falls back into the well. A disgusted T-Dog bludgeons the swimmer’s head…

Please click on the link to Deadloggers to continue reading about Episode Four

Evan Rothfeld

Nov 7 2011

The Walking Dead March On, Part I

cast photo

The first season of AMC’s The Walking Dead, based on Robert Kirkman’s hit comic book gore fest of the same name, cleaned up in the ratings and kept fans biting their nails on the edge of their sofas.

Developed by veteran director Frank Darabont, together with Kirkman, the highly anticipated first season premiered on AMC to universal acclaim in October 2010, setting a record audience for a cable show premiere. Albeit way too short (a paltry six episodes, eliciting a collective groan from fans and critics alike) the not-for-the-squeamish show jumped right into the action. Initially sticking close to the comic, it developed characters, themes, and storylines made only for the TV version. episode-1-rick-3[1]The show follows Rick Grimes, a lion-hearted sheriff’s deputy from Georgia, as he got shot in the line of duty, then awakened from a coma in an abandoned hospital. He found his family and then led them and a small band of survivors to safety through the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. The Walking Dead delivered the goods: coming in the wake of Lost, the show helped satisfy fans’ craving for a diverse group (old, young, pre-teen, black, Asian, blonde, redneck, etc.), each with his or her own backdrop story to tell, struggling their way out of a helpless situation. The survivors dealt with infighting, romance, the daily grind of scrounging for food and weapons, and most of all, well…zombies.

male-walker-760[1]Where Lost had the villainous “Others,” The Walking Dead upped the ante and put forth the most horrifyingly evil and dangerous cast of villains ever shown on TV: shuffling masses of brainless, gut-chomping, intestine-ripping “walkers” (called so for their habit of endlessly wandering and being incapable of physically tiring). With outstretched arms seeking live flesh, they are slow, nameless, and deadly. As it seems, a bite from a walker turns a victim into a walker himself.  Over the six episodes, aired back-to-back, the show raised the bar for gore-splattering special effects and makeup as we watched the walkers, in varying stages of decay, feast, or get killed from head-bursting gunshots and blood-spraying decapitations.

By the last episode in season one (“TS-19”), the survivors’ ranks were thinning out due to walkers and suicide. Trapped in Atlanta’s Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) – where they arrived in a futile attempt to find a cure for the zombie plague – the group used a grenade to blast their way out of the fortress-like government center before it self-destructed. They fled Atlanta to begin a nervous, uncertain pilgrimage to Fort Benning in the hopes of finding a safe zone.

Thankfully, for season two, the top-notch main cast signed on to continue. Among them are native Englishman Andrew Lincoln (who should win an award just doing such a marvelously convincing American accent) as the take-charge Rick; Sarah Wayne Callies as his pretty wife Lori; Jon Bernthal as his best friend and co-deputy Shane Walsh (who had an affair with Lori before Rick turned up alive); Steven Yeun as Glenn, the delivery boy turned resourceful street rat; Laurie Holden as despairing Andrea; Jeffrey DeMunn as the elderly and life-experienced Dale; IronE Singleton as T-Dog, an amiable, stocky black guy;  Melissa McBride and Madison Lintz as gentle widow Carol and her pre-teen daughter Sophia, Norman Reedus as Daryl Dixon, a redneck alpha male archer and already a fan favorite; plus Chandler Riggs as Rick and Lori’s pre-teen son Carl.

Please click on the following links to Deadloggers to read more on Episodes One and Two of the second season of The Walking Dead

Evan Rothfeld

Oct 27 2011

Top Ten Sci-Fi Movie Monsters

 

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When it comes to monsters, the science fiction genre has many worthy contributions. Whether they’re from outer space, developed in a lab or a byproduct of our amok science, sci-fi monsters have thrilled audiences for decades and will continue to do so. Here’s the ten best sci-fi monsters on film.

10. Giant Ants (Them!): Sure they look hokey by anyone’s standards, but that spooky noise the behemoth ants created is memorable and the film (about efforts to destroy deadly gigantic ants created by nuclear radiation) is one of the best examples of giant animal monster movies from the ’50s.

9. The Judas Breed (Mimic): Guillermo del Toro directed this underrated monster movie about a genetically engineered insect (a cross of a praying mantis and termite) that evolves to feed on humans in subways and alleys. The creepy insects do this by appearing somewhat humanoid in the dark to lure their prey. Vicious, deadly and hard to kill, the Breed are a classic.

8. Ymir (20 Million Miles To Earth): An alien egg is brought back by a space expedition to Venus and hatches in Italy. The hatchling soon grows to humongous proportions and goes on a rampage in Rome in this Ray Harryhausen masterpiece.

7. The Creatures from The Mist (The Mist): Yeah the ending was too bleak but the film’s extra-dimensional creatures that plague the trapped shoppers in the supermarket are truly terrifying. An army experiment breaks the seal between dimensions unleashing a mist filled with assorted deadly carnivorous life forms that spit out corrosive webbing, lay eggs on human hosts and are just outright nightmare inducing.

6. Godzilla (Godzilla, King of the Monsters): The ultimate statement of nuclear radiation being bad for the environment as atomic bombs awaken and mutate a gargantuan dinosaur that destroys Tokyo with its atomic breath and destructive might. The original is still the best and most dire film of this genre. Let’s not talk about that abomination put out in 1998 which starred that Ferris Bueller guy.

5. Brundlefly (The Fly): David Cronenberg’s AIDS allegory cleverly updates and amps up the horror in this remake of the ’50s film. Jeff Goldblum’s scientist Seth Brundle has his genes accidently spliced with a fly when he teleports himself, and the result is a hideous amalgamation of the two.

4. T-Rex and Raptors (Jurassic Park trilogy): Let the extinct stay extinct! That message comes across in this Steven Spielberg classic about cloned dinosaurs that break loose and eat people in a soon-to-be-opened island theme park. The effects were groundbreaking then and are still impressive as the T-Rex is shown to be the badass that it was and the velociraptors nearly upstage the tyrant king with their cunning and agility.

3. Frankenstein’s Monster (Frankenstein): Boris Karloff’s quiet and eerie portrayal of the creature created out of dead human body parts by Dr. Frankenstein is still unsettling. Some thanks should go to Jack Pierce’s makeup and the atmospheric directing by James Whale in this classic statement of humanity’s folly in trying to control nature through science.

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2. The Thing (The Thing): John Carpenter’s 1982 remake of Howard Harwks’ film from the ’50s set a standard in moody paranoia and gross creature makeup effects. Not having a defined shape, the chameleon-like alien found by a doomed Antarctic research teams mimicked any life form it encountered. Including humans. But when the movie shows the Thing in-between transformations as its body disgustingly twists and contorts, it strained any viewer’s fortitude.

1. Alien Xenomorph (Alien films): The uber-space monster. Designed by H.R. Giger, this creature truly looked alien with its elongated skull, double mouth, exoskeletal structure and acidic blood. It’s a unique iconic look that few monsters have been able to match. Add to the mix, the fact that it can blend into its surroundings and it’s just plaine frightening.  Of course, what brought the movie houses down was the bloody debut of the serpentine infant alien that literally burst out of poor John Hurt’s chest.

Honorable Mentions: The Cloverfield Monster (Cloverfield),  the alien Predator (the Predator films), Hulk (the Hulk films), the Mutant Bear (Prophecy), the Bugs (Starship Troopers), the Mutant Baby (It’s Alive), Rhedosaurus (The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms), and the Gill Man (Creature From The Black Lagoon).

José Soto

Oct 26 2011

A Ghostbuster Summoned to Hogwarts

Earlier this month I was at the New York Comic Con and came across two persons giving out business cards with a website printed on them. I didn’t think much about it, everyone and their mother were giving out cards, mini-posters and other doodads to promote their film, comic, fill in the blank.

Anyway, I went home went, through my stash and found that card and decided to go to the printed website and was surprised to find a terrific fan film set in the Ghostbusters world mashed up with Harry Potter. The gist of it is that this rookie Ghostbuster down on her luck is recruited to go to Hogwarts on a mission. The only thing I didn’t like is that it sets up a big adventure and already I can’t wait. Give it a look-see, it’s worth the click!

Annette DeForester