Chadzilla

Picked up The Spy Who Loved Me the other day. Cheesy goodness.

Tales from the Darkside Season Two Licence to Kill (used) The Baxter (used) The Pink Panther Strikes Again (used)

My comic book reading has its high times and low times, kind of like the tide. I was a kid during the bronze age (of comics) and, being a big horror/monster movie fan, I read The Witching Hour and House of Secrets, with a dash of Batman and Spider-Man or sprinkle of Dr. Strange and Star Wars tossed in for flavor. I stopped reading around 1978 or 79, although I did pick up some comics and graphic novels from time to time during that period. The two that I remember most clearly are the comic book tie-ins/adaptations for Alien and Creepshow. While waiting for a matinee showing of The Blob (or was it Monkey Shines? The Monster Squad???) I drifted into a comic book shop and thumbed through a comedic "horror" fantasy anthology series titled Wasteland and was hooked. I drifted away for about a year, mostly due to no comic book stores that were easy to get to and my being both lazy and broke. But I came roaring back in 1990, thanks in large part to Sam Raimi's Darkman (a great comic book of a movie) and Dark Horse. From 1990 to 1994 I read comics regularly. Then I moved and, once again without easy access to a comic book store, drifted away. I found one in 1999 and was good to go until it packed up and moved in 2001. Came back yet again in 2004 or 2005 and was a steady reader until 2007. Now I am coming back again, but with a difference. Buying the serial editions are just too damn expensive, I was sinking $100 plus a month into Flying Colors Comics, so I am cutting down the serials to just three books: The Walking Dead, Hack/Slash, and Fallen Angel. Everything else I'm going to be picking up in a trade paperback edition, more or less. (Every rule has its exception.) Right now my purchasing goal is to limit myself to only two trades a month, one with each paycheck. ... ... Yeah, right.

My son and I went to see 2012 last week and we both loved it. I'm a disaster movie junky and Roland Emmerich made what has to be the most over the top end of the world epic I have yet to see. Yes, it is silly and stupid and the "drama" has all the depth of a dried pond, but it delivered on the spectacle and had me walk out with a big grin smeared over my face. I'm laughing as I type this, thinking back on it. Definitely watching that sucker again.

The first episode was really underwhelming, just a rehash of the first mini-series that speed through all the major set-up in the blink of an eye, so there was no suspense or haracter development worth a damn. Second episode was a tad better. I'll probably keep it in Tivo for a rainy day.

Okay, I will admit to loving to first three Saw movies, but I lost my taste for them during the third film. (Around this time I began losing my taste for graphically violent movies in general, so it really was not specific to the Saw franchise.) When I saw the first film and the identity of Jigsaw was revealed, I could only laugh and applaud. The reason for my doing so can be summed up in my knee jerk reaction to the first film, "My mythical-god, I just saw an American giallo movie." For me, Saw was not too far removed from the Italian genre films (lurid murder mysteries where style and graphic violence are more important than intelligent plotting or good acting) of Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, and Mario* or Lamberto Bava. Dario Argento's Deep Red and Tenebre are my two favorite giallo films and both (and especially Tenebre) contain plot twists that are every bit as ludicrous as anything in the Saw films that I have seen. *I was reluctant to put giallo master Mario Bava on the comparison list, because he is so much better than the other three, but his film Twitch of the Death Nerve was such an obvious influence on the Friday the 13th series, I have to include him for the historic perspective alone.

I checked out Paranormal Activity a few weeks back and enjoyed it, but had the most interesting reaction to it. While watching it I was never really frightened, although it did have me on the edge of my seat every time the lights went out. Then I went home... To a dark and empty house. I didn't get to sleep until well after two in the morning, because I was AFRAID TO GO TO SLEEP!!! I tip my hat to the film and look forward to snagging a DVD copy of it at some point in the future.

I am really looking forward to seeing this.

As far as the fingerprint thing goes, you can get prints off of a dead body. Just the other day I was watching an old episode of The New Detectives about how forensic scientists do that very thing. It's done using fumes from evaporated rubber cement in an enclosed space. The enclosed space is created by draping a plastic tent over the body, usually at the crime scene, and the fumes are then created by burning a small portion of rubber cement on a small metal dish that has been set beside the body.

If it were the late 80s (when syndicated spin-off shows seemed to be popping up left and right) I would be saying "This show could rock!" But the concept is 15 to 20 years behind the times.