The Urban Pantheist

Head on over to Blood Blade and Thruster to read my review of the latest Indiana Jones movie.  I think it's one of my funnier reviews, mostly because it's so offensive.  Also, it's full of spoilers.

For those of you who wished that Fahrenheit 451 looked A LOT like The Matrix, or perhaps you just wanted to watch Christian Bale suck on his cheeks for an hour and a half, I've got the movie for you. I actually enjoyed Equilibrium, even with it's ludicrous gun-fu and implausible plot. I am amazed that there is a major fan site devoted to it (maybe they just love Bale's shaved chest) complete with diagrams of the weaponry and discussions of the rebellious underground. I guarantee you that these fans thought more about these details than the filmmakers did.

Read my review at Blood Blade and Thruster!

On this day in 365 Urban Species: Golden-crowned kinglet.

Hey, this time around I reviewed an absurdist Czech movie, based on a fairy tale, about a hideous chunk of root brought to life as a voracious infant that eats everything, including the frightening Eastern European cuisine that the camera lingers on, horribly. It's called "Little Otik," or "Otesanek" ("Greedy Guts") and was directed by stop-motion animation whiz Jan Svankmajer, and you can read my review on Blood, Blade, and Thruster.

On this day in 365 Urban Species: Tomato. Yes, tomato.

In this installment, I review the first ever Swedish vampire movie, Frostbiten. The cool idea about it is that it takes place way up where the sun doesn't come up for a month, so the vampires don't have to hide during the day. Apparently the same idea was in a comic that's been made into a movie called "30 Days of Night" which comes out this month. I don't know who thought of it first, but somebody's biting someone's idea.



Read my review here at Blood Blade and Thruster.

This time I review Cast a Deadly Spell, a movie about the only non-magic using person in 1948 Los Angeles, a private eye named H.Philip Lovecraft.

Also, my brother brush_rat has reignited his comic Waiting for the End of the World into a web comic!

It's all thank to Blood Blade and Thruster magazine.

On this day in 365 Urban Species: No species posted, as I was in transit on my way for my first look at the Republic of Texas (or at least the island of Austin, surrounded by it).

In which I review The Host, a Korean monster movie. Read it here!

Also, my brother posted a gag panel that appeals to those who love npr and ectoparasites--in other words, me.

The story behind my review:
The Host is a monster movie, about a giant animal mutated by toxic waste, that lives in the Han River in the heart of Seoul Korea. It's got the giant animal angle, the urban nature angle... how could I not love it? I was sure I was going to love this movie. But it strayed from its true cause, and spent way too much time on a red herring subplot about disease and government mismanagement. It didn't even get the government mismanagement part right (it was essentially the same as the UFO cover-up in Close Encounters, but more poorly thought out), and instead of building the tension (will the government's incompetence cause more lives to be lost??) it just dragged out the least interesting part of the movie.



On this day in 365 Urban Species: California poppy.

In this installment of Solylent Screen, I endured The Fountain, a piece of New Age claptrap about mortality and spirituality, starring Hugh Jackman as a successful conquistador, cancer researcher, and soap-bubble dwelling space Buddhist. If you liked and/or understood this attractive yet incomprehensible heiroglyph of a movie, please tell me wtf and/or why.