A Horror Movie-A-Day-A-Thon Keeps The Doctor Away-A-Thon

Well, as you can see from the lengthy title I've decided to start what will become an annual October tradition for me, the Horror Movie-A-Day-A-Thon Keeps The Doctor Away-A-Thon in which I watch one horror movie a day for the entire month of October. I'm a few days behind, but am slowly catching up. Thus far, my viewing schedule has been as follows-

Monday, October 1st-A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) Written & Directed by Wes Craven
Stars Heather Langenkamp, Johnny Depp, Robert Englund

Nightmare follows a group of teenagers who are being stalked in their sleep by the vengeful spirit of long-dead child murderer Freddy Krueger. Krueger kills the teenagers in their dreams and they die in real life, so to where can they escape? Dun dun dun.

Robert Englund is always memorable as the darkly comedic Freddy Krueger, and while I like later installments in the Nightmare series better, the original is no slacker. FINAL GRADE: B

Tuesday, October 2nd-Gremlins (1984) Written by Chris Columbus, Directed by Joe Dante
Stars Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates

In Gremlins, Billy is given a Mogwai for Christmas with three rules-Keep them out of the light, never let them near water and never ever feed them after the midnight. When these rules are broken, Gremlins are born from Billy's new pet and wreak havoc across town on Christmas Eve.

This movie has been a favorite of mine since childhood and one of only three movies that ever frightened me as a child (the other two being Jaws and Alien). It's as funny as it is scary, and really well rounded for a comedy/horror film. Big ups. FINAL GRADE: A

Wednesday, October 3rd-Phantoms (1998) Written by Dean Koontz, Directed by Joe Chappelle
Stars Ben Affleck, Rose McGowan, Peter O' Toole, Liev Schreiber and Joanna Going

Small mountain town besieged by an ancient evil from below...or something. It can turn into water, or octopi or...whatever it wants to, I guess.

Yes, the same Phantoms in which Ben Affleck is the bomb in. However, that's about where the good parts of this movie end. It reminded me very much of John Carpenter's The Thing (which I'll talk about later this month) but only in terms of creature design and none of the story elements that made that movie amazing. I really just stopped caring because the plot was so vague and convoluted and at the end I had more questions than answers. FINAL GRADE: C-

Thursday, October 4th-The Frighteners (1996) Written by Fran Walsh & Peter Jackson, Directed by Peter Jackson
Stars Michael J. Fox, Trini Alvarado, Jeffrey Combs, Jake Busey, Chi McBride

Psychic investigator Frank Bannister has the ability to commune with the dead, and with the aid of a few undead associates he scams the small town of Fairwater. But when Death comes to town, Frank's the only one who can put an end to a series of brutal murders.

If you loved the Lord of the Rings trilogy, you have this movie to thank. If you hated it, you have this movie to blame. After ordering 30+ computers for the CG effects in Frighteners, Jackson needed a huge project to justify the money spent on the computers. Frighteners is as scary as it is funny, and nothing about it feels stagnant or cliche. Michael J. Fox is great as the lead and Jeffrey Combs is overly creepy as FBI Agent Milton Dammers. FINAL GRADE: A+

Friday, October 5th-John Carpenter's The Fog (1980) Written by Debra Hill & John Carpenter, Directed by John Carpenter
Stars Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Janet Leigh, Tom Atkins, Hal Holbrook

On the 100th anniversary of Antonio Bay, a mysterious fog infiltrates the town, bringing with it the ghosts of wronged sailors seeking revenge.

I'm a huge John Carpenter fan, but this is probably one of my least favorite of his pictures solely for the fact that it really only feels like a John Carpenter film for about the first fifteen minutes and the last half hour of the film. Everything in between feels out of place save for one or two moments of horror-filled revelations that advance the story. All in all, a good John Carpenter film but definitely not his best. FINAL GRADE: B-

Saturday, October 6th-House On Haunted Hill (1999) Written by Dick Beebe, Directed by William Malone
Stars Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Peter Gallagher, Ali Larter, Chris Kattan, Jeffrey Combs

Eccentric millionaire and theme park tycoon (played wonderfully by Rush) offers five strangers $1,000,000 to stay overnight in an asylum with a disturbing history.

A remake of a classic horror film. While the remake certainly doesn't reinvent the wheel, Geoffrey Rush (who bears a striking resemblance to Vincent Price in the film) alone is worth the price of admission and the sequence in the creepy chamber thing with Jeffrey Combs is pretty goddamn intense. Nothing new, but definitely some freaky moments that make it worth checking out. FINAL GRADE: B-

Sunday, October 7th-The Wicker Man (2006) Written & Directed by Neil LaBute
Stars Nicolas Cage, Ellen Burstyn, Kate Beahan, Leelee Sobieski

A remake of the 1973 cult classic of the same name, Neil LaBute's remake completely misses the fucking point. The basic plot points are the same (man goes to pagan isle in search of a missing girl, is too conservative/close-minded/stuck up his own ass to give the villagers anything but a shitty attitude and ultimately is sacrificed to the Wicker Man to improve their crops when it is revealed that he was baited into coming to Summer Isle in the first place), but that's where it ends. It's basically 100 minutes of Nicky Copes yelling at and hitting women and freaking out and well, just being Nicolas Cage. The most insulting point, however is when the missing girl runs back into the arms of the villagers and each villager decides to, in roundtable discussion, explain the big conspiracy of how and why Cage was lured to the island. So on top of assuming that his viewers don't want to see a good film, LaBute also assumes that everybody watching is completely fucking stupid and can't put two and two together. This anti-climactic exposition is far worse than any I've ever read in Golden/Silver Age comics where the writers never ever leave anything to the reader's imagination.

This is not a movie. This is a crime against humanity. Save yourself two hours and watch the YouTube highlight reel. Seriously. FINAL GRADE: F+

I'm gonna try to break the weeks in half so it's not as much reading and not as much writing, but that's gonna be the format for the rest of the month. Any real updates will be posted as separate blog entries.

These are the films I'm looking at for the rest of the month-
28 Days Later
30 Days of Night
Alien
Aliens
Army of Darkness
Bubba Ho-Tep
The Crow
Darkman
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Event Horizon
Evil Dead
Evil Dead II
The Faculty
From Dusk 'Til Dawn
Ghostbusters
Halloween (1978)
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Ravenous
Shaun of the Dead
Slither

If anybody would care to join me for these, let me know and I'll adjust my viewing schedule as needed. I'm also open to suggestions, because I've still got three or four days I need to cover.

There Are No Saints, There Are No Patriots

Last night was the Strike Anywhere show in Columbus, and as always it was an amazing show. It was my first time seeing them with new guitarist Mark Miller and he's an excellent replacement for former guitarist Matt Sherwood.

The opening act was a local C-Bus band called Overated. They were okay and put on a decent show, but I'm worried that once President Bush is out of the White House, they, like many other current politically charged bands, they may not have anything to write about (especially if Hil Rod makes it into the White House and does everything they want). I hope this is not the case, because they were pretty cool dudes (and a dame). Also, for some reason their guitarist/singer decided to announce to the audience that he liked me because I was up front rocking out to their set and that I reminded him of a big, angry looking teddy bear. Side note on their set-Some random dude who apparently knew the band decided to run up onstage during the band's set to their bass player (a girl who is obviously a very forward thinking, feminist type who was wearing a Planned Parenthood shirt) and slapped her on the ass. Way to set gender relations back by about a hundred years, dude.

The next band was Cloak/Dagger. I got really excited because 3/4 of the band looked like the biggest nerds in the world, and for those who don't know, nerds typically play the best punk rock and hardcore music. However, this was not the case. The singer started off doing some Steven Tyler-esque rock god preening during the first few songs, and at one point was holding the mic stand behind his head and shoulders like a weight bar which resulted in a Jesus Christ pose. How utterly droll. Also, the dude doesn't seem to know how to hold a microphone because every time he sang into it the speakers buzzed and my eardrums bled.

Finally, Strike Anywhere took the stage and their set was as follows.

YOU'RE FIRED
SEDITION
INFRARED
LAUGHTER IN A POLICE STATE
LIGHTS GO OUT
HOLLYWOOD CEMETERY
TIMEBOMB GENERATION
WE AMPLIFY/BLAZE
CHALKLINE
EARTHBOUND
ALLIES
TO THE WORLD
PRISONER ECHOES
SUNSET ON 32nd
REFUSAL (encore)

Basically, the only songs they need to play live now are IN THE FINGERNAILS, 'TIL DAYS SHALL BE NO MORE and YOU ARE NOT COLLATERAL DAMAGE and they will have played everything live that I really want to see, barring they decide to do a complete discography show (if only!). As always, an amazing show and still my favorite band.

"There are no saints, there are no patriots, designer gods fulfill their prophecies, but they're not talking to me, how many false enemies will it take 'til we see? Where we fall, where we fight, blackout in the daylight!"

Yeah, Let Me See The Way You Work It

Man, I suck at keeping this thing updated. Well, there's a lot to catch you nerds up on so here's what's what.

*I'm mobile, bitch. I've had a car now for about a month and it's been pretty amazing having the freedom to go where I want and when I want. I've been growing relatively familiar with the surrounding area in BG and making semi-regular trips to Saver's (an amazing thrift store in the Maumee area), Best Buy/Target/Circuit City out on Airport Road and my new favorite place in the world, JC's Comic Stop in Toledo. It is literally wall to wall comics and memorabilia with just enough space to walk around and explore.
*I've been practicing the drums at least two hours a day and am slowly improving, soon I might even be able to play along to stuff and actually make it through.
*I made Bad Genetics, Bowling Green State University's long-form improv team.
*This past weekend was the 48 Hour Film Project, and my team made a little film entitled [i]Werewolf Doctor:The Quest For Blood[/i]. Go here to see it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60PvGcmMVb4
It's split into two parts, so make sure to check out the second half afterwards. Y'know, for closure.

Next time there'll be a few rants, but for now this is Dustin's World Tour for the following month.

Sunday, September 30th-Strike Anywhere w/ Cloak/Dagger and Overated @ The Basement, Columbus, OH Tix are $10
Thursday, October 11th-Bad Religion w/ The Briggs and The Gallows @ The Agora Ballroom, Cleveland, OH Tix are $22
Sunday, October 21st-Every Time I Die w/ Underoath, Poison The Well and Maylene and the Sons of Disaster @ House of Blues, Cleveland, OH Tix are $18.50
Thursday, October 25th-Say Anything w/ Hellogoodbye @ The Fillmore, Detroit, MI Tix are $20

If anyone's interested in going to any of these shows, let me know. Until next time, nerdlingers.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

So, it's been just over two months since I updated. That's what happens when I resign myself to work even more than usual at summer camp I reckon. If this is any indicator of how busy I was, I bought the new Bad Religion album the Saturday after it came out and didn't get a chance to listen to it in its entirety until about two weeks later...Yeah. I had virtually no online presence once summer camp was in full swing, but time to recap as quick as I can.

*Went in with a girlfriend, came out single the last week (which was weak sauce, but what can you do? Some very good times were had while it lasted, so at least there's that)
*Bought an iPod Nano after two failed attempts with MP3 players. Apparently God favors the side of Apple and it was his way of telling me to buy an iPod.
*Met some cool new cats
*Lots of time logged driving with good buddy/fake brother Ryan as well as smoking only the cheapest expensive cigars
*My good buddy/fake brother Ryan's last year at camp as he departs for three years in the Bahamas, taking only his Fu Manchu and guitar with him and my friend the "other Cory's" last year as well
*Drinking with some friends from work at the Winking Lizard Tavern and terrorizing small children with the shotgun peripheral for the Cabela's Big Game Hunter II arcade game
*Our camp DJ Captain Kirk's last year at camp, and he rewarded me for being a cool dude with a trademark Captain Kirk tye-dye shirt. I hate tye-dye clothing, but the shirt had some sentimental value so if you see me wearing a tye-dye shirt with a heart emblazoned on it, I've not become a dirty, patchouli stank, tree-huggin' hippie, the shirt just means a lot to me.
*Finally got my license

The soundtrack to my summer is as follows-

Honest Goodbye and Requiem For Dissent by Bad Religion
Last Kiss by Pearl Jam
Yer So Bad, Here Comes My Girl and I Need To Know by Tom Petty
You Are Not Collateral Damage by Strike Anywhere
Sellout by Reel Big Fish
Believe It Or Not (Theme from The Greatest American Hero) by Joey Scarbury
Alive With The Glory Of Love and Little Girls by Say Anything
The Way I Are by Timbaland
Thnks Fr Th Mmrs by Fall Out Boy
Cupid's Chokehold by Gym Class Heroes
Ring of Fire and Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash
Soldiers by Ghosts In The Fight
Two Sides and Start Today by Gorilla Biscuits
Misirlou by Dick Dale
Institutionalized by Suicidal Tendencies

Anyhoo, I'm back in BG again and back at the FratCave again for the year. Classes are decent so far, and the practicum I'm in is awesome because I'll have access to video equipment so now I have no excuse not to shoot as much stuff as possible this semester. Tomorrow I go back home to work for the weekend but before will be making a brief stop in Delaware to pick up my BRAND NEW PIMPED THE FUCK OUT 1994 Toyota Camry Coupe.

'Til then, later days Bromfield Faces.

"(Did you laugh?) You know I did
(Did you cry?) Couldn't get it right
(Did you live?) Always on the edge
(Did you lie?) Causing such a fright
(Did you love?) Oh, to be forgiven
(Did you try?) But it wouldn't be right
God, it feels like an honest goodbye"

There's A Million Song Lyrics Running Through My Head And I Can't Pick One

So it's been about another month between updates, I know, I know. Deal with it, faithful readers. But a lot has happened, so I'll bore you with the unimportant first, then the semi-important and then some good news for me.

Firstly, if you see one movie this summer about an unplanned pregnancy see Knocked Up. No, wait. see Waitress. Damn it, they're both good. Okay, if you see one movie this summer about an unplanned pregnancy starring that guy from Freaks and Geeks, see Knocked Up. If you see one movie this summer about an unplanned pregnancy starring that guy from Firefly, see Waitress. But personally I think you should see them both. 28 Weeks Later you can give a miss, it's disappointing beyond words almost. If you like movies where any character you can really get behind gets killed off five minutes after the fact then you'll love it, otherwise just don't even bother. Oh, also if you like cop-out endings then 28 Weeks Later is for you. I've also logged in many hours with Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy over the last week and that's been a lot of fun.

In semi-important news, my boss of the past two years is resigning next month. This sucks because as much as he breaks my balls from time to time, we get along and well, we have a rapport because we've been working together for the last two years. So that's kind of the end of an era there. I know I've always talked about how cool it would be to get a full time position here, and there's one open now but I really need to finish school before I even think about something like that and truth be told I don't feel at this point in my life that I'm qualified for the position. I've also been working like a son of a bitch and it seems like a lot of those great plans I had for this summer won't be happening as a result of it, particularly since instead of moving out of my apartment I'll instead be renewing my lease due to some shady business practices of the Greenbriar Rentals company, so the FratCave will ride again, at least for another year.

Over the last few weeks, I've been spending time with a really awesome girl and some good times have been had. I'm not sure exactly what it's shaping into, but I know that at the moment it's really nice and it's a lot of fun, so I'm not as cranky as I usually am lately. There's the boring update, catch you later.

These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things

Wait, I keep a blog? Fuck. I should probably update it.

It's been a couple of weeks (actually dangerously close to a month) since I last updated and that's mainly because until about the last week or two nothing of note has really happened, just the usual slacking and trying to get by. Here's a breakdown of some of the recent things that have transpired in my life over the past couple weeks.

BAND NEWS-My drummer, Steve, got accepted to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Mass recently and will be leaving for school at the end of the summer. While I'm really happy for Steve, this naturally puts me back to almost Square One band-wise since now I have to find a drummer all over again. We may potentially have one or two more house party shows, but that will be our last hurrah with the current line-up. I've been writing like crazy lately and since none of the other ideas for side bands really came to fruition, I think I'm just gonna use everything I write (be it pop punk, hardcore or metal-esque) for Ghosts In The Fight.

UNRELATED NEWS-Spider-Man was fucking amazing. If you didn't like it, it's highly likely that we probably just shouldn't be friends anymore.

HOUSING NEWS-Brendan's not movin' into the FratCave, so I don't think I"m gonna be able to come up with a roommate for the next term of my FratCave lease. But due to some unfortunate circumstances, there's a possibility that my residence in the FratCave will end at the term of this lease and I will be residing elsewhere in Bowling Green, but I'm still waiting to hear back from a coupla folks on that front so hopefully they'll get on it so I can figure that shit out (as far as how much I need to work and how much I need to be saving). I'm more than willing to take advantage of the opportunity but at the moment it's not in my hands and will more than likely boil down to whether I can get the lease co-signed.

WORK NEWS-I worked like a son of a bitch for the last two weeks and it looks as though my dream of dividing my summer 50/50 between home and BG might be more like 60/40 due to crummy training scheduling. Some days work is easy, but lately I'm finding it harder to mask my contempt for some of my coworkers as well as the politics of the whole thing. It nearly makes me physically ill any time I hear talk of the camp and what we do reduced to profit margins and aesthetics. It's a summer camp, not a boardroom. However, Jim Tressel and a few of the Buckeyes' football players visited the camp this Friday and I was blown away by how well they conducted themselves around the campers and interacted with them, particularly since I was really expecting them to shy away and kind of disregard them. As much as I hate OSU, JT and those two players were stand-up guys and that made me feel a lot better about the whole thing.

MOVIE NEWS-I'm currently doing some pre-writing for a romantic comedy that Steve proposed an idea for, and hopefully I'll start writing it soon. I still need to finish up a few more rewrites on the Experimental Film now that I've figured out a way to shave off a good 7-10 minutes off the runtime and Nick has recently rekindled my interest in Shotgun Samurai and I may potentially shoot one or two shorts back home as well as in BG.

GENERAL NERDERY-I've recently acquired the Mega Man X Collection for my GameCube and just started playing that today. My love for video games is blossoming into an actual past time again and I've spent the last few days playing Mortal Kombat Armageddon, Resident Evil 0, Mega Man X, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Guitar Hero II, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door and a gem that I wish I'd discovered long ago in the Mario Party series with the bro hams (and a pretty cool new girl). It was almost like freshman year at BG all over again and tonight there was a very near nerd overload when the six of us (myself, Ryan Mags, Erick Cars, Matt, Dave and Niki) simply couldn't get enough of Mario Party 7 (I felt that one of the mini-games in the game was very derivative of Crash Bandicoot and Contra), making nerdy references (primarily Star Wars and various other video games) and they thought it was particularly funny when I cursed the stupid ass board when I didn't have enough coins to purchase the star whenever I got to it. But the following weeks in BG promise to hold more of the same and I wouldn't want it any other way.

Next post I might actually have one of the comic strip ideas I've been working on completed, but only time will tell on that one.

P.S.-I've also decided that nature is not to be trusted, and therefore have declared war against nature and allied myself with science. Deal with it, in science name I pray.

Let Me Take This Awkward Saw

Last night was damn good times (mostly). I've learned the following, however.

*People should not come to my parties looking for drugs. Srsly, wtf?
*Randos are teh suxxorz.
*The only good hippie is a dead hippie.
*Dudes need to not hit on my dude friends unless my dude friends are into dudes.
*Less talk, more rock. Less drinking, more dancing.
*I've recanted my fealty to the King.
*My friends are the shit.

2k7=2 Fast, 2 Furious.

"Heart is on the floor! Why don't you step on it?"

EDIT: No more parties at the FratCave.