Don't be afrid...

Quite excited about this film...

Guillermo del Toro up to his usual tricks.

Hombre Lobo...

Guillermo Del Toro Alka Seltza ad from 1991, not only did he direct it - he's in it...
Epic.

SCI-FI LDN 9...

I'm sure you're all aware but The 9th Annual International Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Film opens next Wednesday - 28th April...
The opening film, sadly sold out, is the Guillermo del Toro produced gene tinkering thriller Splice, plus loads of other brilliant other worldly cinema, like the japan-alive-all-nighter showing the likes of the Tokyo Gore School. Brilliant.

I'm mostly looking forward to the feature debut from the makers of the kick-ass short Batman Dead End. Sandy Collora's Hunter Prey. Check the trailer and if you haven't seen Dead End, shame on you...

MORE NEWS! (and rumors)...

Guy Ritchie has expressed interest in directing the adap of DC comics baby; LOBO. Considering the characters somewhat violent exploits in comic land this could be very entertaining...

Post Hobbit Guillermo del Toro has a number of equally fantastical projects that he wants to work on including Frankenstein and a "dark and creepy" version of Pinnochio. Crumbs.
Robert Rodriguez's Machete has an incredible cast including Steven Seagal and...wait for it...Don Johnson!!!!


Ryan Reynolds has signed up for every movie being made including the The Green Lantern and Christian Slater vehicle Paper Man.

Disney have bought Marvel Studios!

No one has an effing clue what Inception is about but all agree it looks interesting and fun.

Megan Fox has signed up for Fathom

And finally Uwe Boll has hung up his directing hat and is turning his hand to pig farming!
See if you can guess which of these is a rumor.

Criminal scum like you made me...

Batman fans out there will remember back in 2003, before Nolan rebooted the tired old franchise, an interesting little short turned up on the internet, doing the rounds.

Batman: Dead End. A back to basics, dark fight between The Bat and The Joker, with a surprising genre twist evolving some Aliens and a few Predators. It was no ordinary fan film, this had production values and some cool looking direction. Everyone described it as a bad ass calling card.

Looking into who made it reviled it was by Sandy Collora an ex-assitant at Stan Winston Studio's with some cool SFX credits alongside Rob Bottin and Rick Baker. Including concept design for The Crow and Men In Black. Would he direct the new Batman film, would he heal our wounds?
No.
But five years later he's back. And this time he's got a budget and a new vision. Hunter Prey.
An Enemy Mine type special opps chace in space. Even Guillermo del Toro is intrested, mentouring him through the post prossess. Due out now, but IMDb say's it's still in post. Can't find a trailer but it looks intresting, with a design tone from Star Wars' Ralph Mcquarrie this should be bad ass.

Magic: six. Strength: seven. Interest after 45 minutes: three…

I can’t for the life of me understand why Hellboy II: The Golden Army has got such glowing reviews. Nothing too unusual about the likes of Empire and Ain’t It Cool offering unstinting praise to a comic-based film (4 stars from Empire for Sin City? I mean, come on…Sin City?), no matter how average, but I was a bit surprised to read glowing reviews from The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw and from Time Out, normally bang to rights with every review.

Seemed to me Guillermo del Toro fell straight into the Tim Burton trap of caring far more about the production design than the camerawork, pacing, editing etc. If you care too much about what’s on screen and too little about the tools you use to put it up there then you’ve basically got the cinematic equivalent of prog rock.

The saving grace was some of the interaction between characters – Hellboy and Abe, pissed and singing along to Barry Manilow was a nice touch – but too often this just seemed like the usual semi-ironic approach you get to superhero films. It seemed like any other director could have directed that film and not much would have been different – as though del Toro spent so much time designing the things in the scene that he forgot to design the scene itself, if you see what I mean. One of the things that’s so beguiling about the comic is the sense of design in every frame – sparse, gloomy and impeccably laid out. In this, every scene was chock full of bloody goblins, making it a bit like how the inside of Games Workshop must appear to twelve year-old boys. And there was too much CGI.

And too many goblins.

And Harry Knowles loves it, and he’s a fat tit.