Thriller

I confess I was never a big fan of Michael Jackson. Yeah, I liked a few of his songs, but I don't have any of his albums and those songs, although excellent in beat, melody and danceability never left a mark on me.

However, one of his videos did. Few things scared me more in my life than the Thriller video. I remember watching it at a friends house and just being petrified. You know when you're a kid and things terrify you but fascinate you at the same time? Well, I'll always think back to when I first watched zombie Michael dancing with a zombie horde with a smile. In that sense, Michael really did make a mark on me - especially since now I love zombie and horror movies, and that was most likely my first exposure to it.

Maybe in the end, it was the dancing I was scared of.

(the sketch is a little old, yes)
We should all dance the thriller now.

*Cause this is thriiiilleeeeer... Thriiiilleeeer night*

Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated

As you may or may not know, I've been working, along with many artists worldwide, on an animated re-envisioning of Romero's zombie classic Night of the Living Dead. Curated by Mike Schneider of Neoflux Productions, this project features a wide range of styles and techniques, which makes it very interesting and appealing to horror and art fans alike. It's been a few months since I started working on this, producing illustrations, and now I'm working in post-production, actually created an animated sequence (my very first!), and it's being challenging but very exciting, and Mike has been of great help.

The project has been recently mentioned on Fangoria's website, here, and the first teaser poster has been released. It's a great poster and a few more will be released, so just wait and see because there will be more eye candy. Here is the poster:

There is one of my drawings in there, Ben, which you may recognize after I post a couple of other illustrations I did for the movie.

You can find these and some others on my redbubble store, here. They're for sale as prints as official merchandise for the movie, so go over there and snoop around all you want!

As always, go to the movie's official website to know more about the project.

BRAINS!

Nightmare City (1980) Review

Well, well, well. This weekend I saw a movie that made me want to write a good old fashioned long review. What movie was it, you might think? Was it "Choke"? Was it "The Ruins"? Was it "Let the Right One In"? No, it wasn't any of these, although I saw them all - and actually felt like reviewing The Ruins just to really dwell on how impossibly dumb it was. The movie I saw that made me want to spend a few minutes writing in the internet about it like anyone actually cares was... Nightmare City.

Nightmare City is an Italian horror movie, also known as Incubo sulla città contaminata, City of the Walking Dead or, my personal favorite, Invasion by the Atomic Zombies. Being a lesser known Italian zombie movie, you know you have to expect horrible acting, atrocious dubbing, muted colors, and lots of gore and boobs, and this movie delivers on all of this. If you're not yet convinced that this movie is an awesome pile of cheese, check out the tagline:

"An airplane exposed to radiation lands, and blood drinking zombies emerge armed with knives, guns and teeth! They go on a rampage slicing, dicing, and biting their way across the Italian countryside."

If by now you still don't want to see this movie, go away. We can't be friends anymore.

Directed by Umberto Lenzi, Nightmare City begins when a reporter and his cameraman head to the airport to interview a very famous nuclear scientist, who is about to arrive there. The plane he's traveling in does not respond to the airports requests for identification, so the crew prepares a landing strip for an emergency landing. The plane lands, and immediately the airport's security heads there, shouting to the pilot to open the doors to the plane and to come down and explain why he didn't respond to the control tower. They eventually notice there is no one in the cockpit, and in a matter of seconds a whole military squadron is in situ (as well as the reporter - who happens to be our hero - and the cameraman). There is still no answer from inside, even though now there is some high patent military guy shouting to the plane. After a few minutes of shouting, the door of the plane starts descending, and... out bursts a gang of, I guess, zombies, armed with machine guns, knifes, revolvers and whatever else, and they just start butchering the military (which is ridiculous, because these military dudes, supposedly expert shooters and what not, can't kill a zombie for shit. Really, they just don't hit them! Shoot them, you fuckers, geesh!!). You have realized by know that these are not ordinary zombies, because they are really fast, they punch you, shoot you, strangle you, and stab you instead of just gutting you with their teeth or whatever zombies usually do. They run, plot and scheme. They also drink blood, which makes them a weird mix of zombie and vampire. But they don't eat the victims, they just leave their dead bodies on a trail through the airport. I guess these zombies aren't very hungry, they crave blood instead of brains.

Since we're on the topic, I'll take this chance to say that this has to be the worst zombie make-up I've ever seen. In most of the cases they just look like some mud (best case cenario) was thrown on their faces, and in most of the cases their hands don't even have make-up, so you're looking at a bunch of dudes with brown faces and clean hands. It's just stupid.

Back to the plot, the reporter and his cameraman manage to escape the maiming, and head to the TV station, where some sort of dancing program is being broadcast. I think the director was really gung ho on making sure we knew there was a dancing program going on, because there must be about 5 whole minutes of just these guys and girls dancing in blue spandex, to the sound of some of the cheesiest music I've ever heard. The show has no host whatsoever, just these guys and girls dancing on a stage. Fascinating. At one point, they stop dancing and actually talk to each other, which I found hilarious because the movie is dubbed in english, but the dubbers somehow found it was necessary to try and make voices with Italian accents!

Well, when the reporter gets there, he orders some guy to interrupt the Dancing broadcast because he needs to make an emergency news broadcast. The guy obbeys and the reporter starts saying that some shit went down on the airport, but his job description apparently didn't include "interrupt the awesome Dancing show", because 10 seconds in, his annoucement was cut again and the TV was back to broacasting the Dancing show (to the delight of thousands of viewers, I'm sure). He goes around shouting for a while, until his boss, along with another dude from the military, tell him that he shouldn't cause panic in the population until they were sure of what was going on. DAMN THE GOVERNMENT!
Our brave reporter (who, by the way, is one of the worst actors I've ever seen in my life - his emotional range is zero, I've seen cardboard boxes with more emotional versatility than this guy) thinks the public had the right to know, he resigns his job because he is all badass and the government can't tell him to do, and then decides to go look for his wife so they can flee to the countryside. And so, the movie goes on.


I won't describe the whole movie here because that would probably ruin any pleasure you might derive from watching this, but what happens is probably what you're guessing - the zombies just go around killing while the survivors try to escape the overun city. Yeah, pretty much that. I won't even describe the ending, but I can tell you you'll probably want to stab the director in the eyes with a fork, because it's so outstandingly lazy and lame.

This movie is filled with vapid, one-dimensional characters trying to act natural but appearing fake as hell. There is a lot of moralizing dialogue about how we cause all this crap by living in out concrete jungles or something, but it all falls in deaf ears because by this point the movie is so utterly devoid of plot and coherent dialogue that you just have to laugh at the drivel the characters spill out from time to time. It also stars the most incompetent military I've ever, ever seen. It's hilarious.
The soundtrack is another remarkable source of cheesyness, it's so bad that some of the times I didn't even know if we were listening to the "music" or just to shit falling around on set.

All in all, this movie really has to be seen to be believed. I don't think you can tell how cheesy and bad this flick really is just by a blog post - you need to go out and get it. Bad as it was, it's awfullness was hilarious and actually entertaining - which is more than you can say for some big budget horror movies of these days like, oh I don't know, The goddamned Ruins. And if you are at all a fan of zombie or cheesy flicks, gather around a bunch of friends, pop this on and I guarantee 100% that you will have a laugh riot. Me and my boyfriend sure laughed a lot :D

White Winter Hymnal

A very quick and sloppy sketch done after listening to Fleet Foxes' White Winter Hymnal. It's late and I don't even know why I'm posting this crap, to be honest. Brain Fart! :D

"I was following the pack
all swallowed in their coats
with scarves of red tied 'round their throats
to keep their little heads
from fallin' in the snow
And I turned 'round and there you go
And, Michael, you would fall
and turn the white snow red as strawberries
in the summertime... "

Dead Snow sketch

That movie was asking for it. Just a puny little doodle on my sketchbook.

Latest Movies I've Seen part 1003

Ah, I miss those times when I had time to get over here and write lengthy reviews about all the movies I've been watching. I've been swamped lately, and with little patience to write, but at the same time I feel the urge to post about what I've been seeing, if only for my own future reference. So here is the list of the past few weeks, along with bite-sized reviews.

1. X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Blatant continuity issues, too many characters for its own sake (some of them very poorly handed, others just plain ruined), Wolverine was too "softy"... What can I say? I really like Hugh Jackman, but he played a better Wolverine on the X-Men movies. This one was just a disappointment. 2 adamantium claws out of 5.

2. Star Trek

This, on the other hand, was awesome. Very well handled reboot, with great visuals (even with all those lens flares), compelling acting by most of the cast (I especially liked the new Spock, and the old Spock played by Leonard Nimoy), and a solid story. It was very entertaining and I had a great time. 4 out of 5 Spocks for this one.

3. Fright Night

Classic vampire movie from the 80s, so you know what you're getting into. It's super cheesy, unintentionally funny at parts, with a ridiculous storyline, but it entertains you and there are actually a couple of scenes with cool special effects for the time. If you're into 80s cheesy horror, definitely give this one a look, you'll have fun. 3 out of 5 shapeshifting vampires.

4. Once

This may seem like the outsider on this list, but it was probably the one I enjoyed most. It's easy to be entertained by spaceships, outlandish aliens, mutants and whatnot, but when the simple story of two people connecting through music really gets you, then you know you're watching something special. Once is wonderful: very touching, very human, and with a beautiful soundtrack. Definitely recommend it, and give it 4.5 out of 5 Irish singers.

5. Dead Snow

Ah, my home turf. A zombie movie. But not just any kind of zombie movie: the kind with Nazi Zombies. Yeah. Let that concept sink in. This norwegian movie managed to be one of the best zombie movies I've seen lately (I think the last I had seen was Virus Undead, which was crap), with the right balance of humor and gore (reminding us of Evil Dead and Braindead, although much inferior to either one). I really enjoyed it, and I'm giving it 3.5 out of 5 zombies.

What have you been watching?

Scott Pilgrimage

If you've been reading my blog lately, you probably already realized that I think Scott Pilgrim is awesome.

You also may know that there is a movie in the works, directed by none other than Edgar Wright (awesome director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz). Well, Mr. Wright has a flickr account that he has been updating everyday with new shots of the cast and sets of the movie "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World", so I thought I'd share it with you guys. Worry not: the photos are pretty un-spoilerish, and they're a lot of fun to browse through. Head over to Edgar Wright's flickr by clicking here.

Bryan Lee O'Malley, Scott's creator, also has a flickr account, that he regularly updates with convention sketches, comic thumbnails, con photos and lots of other cool stuff. I've had a blast going through the gallery, and I hope you do too, by clicking here.

And, since we're on the Scott subject, I'm taking the chance to pimp myself out and show you the Scott Pilgrim piece I finished a few days ago (in case you still didn't see it on my deviantart).

If you want to see more of my drawings, be awesome and click here, hopefully you'll enjoy it!

Comics

Almost a month without updating this time... have I really been that busy? I guess so.

Either that, or I haven't been watching a lot of interesting movies to write about. This month I mostly re-watched some bad movies with my boyfriend Cosmic (I made him do it... I think it's important to see some crap once in a while, so you value good movies even more), but the ones I watched I already talked about in older posts so it's not worth doing it again. I could talk about Wolverine, but that was a disappointment, and, funnily enough, I don't feel like ranting today, for some weird reason. So, what can I possible update on? Let's see... comics. I'm going to let you know what I've been reading these days. Hopefully you find one or two good recommendations.

1. Wolverine: Logan

So, since I mentioned the Wolverine movie, I'm starting out with this one, penned by Y: The Last Man's Brian K. Vaughn (also writes some stuff for Lost, but I've totally fallen out with that show... but Y: The Last Man is awesome, though) and with art by Eduardo Risso, this isn't exactly a groundbreaking Wolvie story (it's hard to make one these days, because it seems like every angle of his misterious past as already been explored...), but it's very interesting anyway. It's set on World War II, and Logan was captured by the Japanese army while serving on the Canadian parachute batallion (or something along those lines). There he meets and american soldier and a japanese woman what will change his life. The writing is solid, but what especially caught my attention was Risso's art, that I though was absolutely kick ass. I never read 100 Bullets (the comics he's most famous for) but I just might have to look it up after this, because the guy kicks ass. 3.5 out of 5

2. Scott Pilgrim Gets it Together


Ah, Scott! These books are always a little bundle of joy to me. Scott and his gang had me on the first volume, and it's just been getting better. I love both Bryan Lee O'Malley's writing and his art, that while apparantly simple, is very dynamic and endearing. Scott's journey is filled with bumps on the road that we all can relate too, and his relationship with his friends, his girlfriend, his band, is a pleasure to follow and it almost makes you feel like you know those people (stupid thing to say, I know). His combination of slacker/hero is one of the things that makes this comic so great, and little things like a pannel showing him melting in the heat of his house playing Nintendo and still being too lazy to get up and get some water really make me smile. Plain and simple, these books make me smile and I'd recommend them anytime, anywhere. Can't wait to read number 5... I'm just delaying the pleasure a little, and trying to make the wait for number 6 less excruciating. 4.5 out of 5

It had been a while since I read a manga of any kind, but since this book was recommended to me and my boyfriend by someone who knows his comics (working in a comic shop kinda comes with that, I guess), he bought it and I read it first, because I'm a little leech like that :B Anyway, this was a pretty good surprise. And I really mean surprise, because I had no idea what this book was about. Turns out it was a cleverly written sci-fi/mistery story, that deals with a group of childhood friends, now adults, that must dig deep into their memories to try and stop the impending end of the world. It was a very enjoyable read, and it was pretty cool to see the storyline jumping back and forth from the 60's to the 90's. The childhood bits almost reminded me a little of Stand By Me... which is good. The characters were well-developed and endearing, the story was suspenseful and... well, I have to know what happens next. This definitely has my attention, and I'll try to get my hands on volume 2 soon. 4 out of 5

Mark's already a familiar face around my comic book shelves, and it's great to see he's still able to keep my interest fueled after all this time. It never ceases to amaze me how good the story is (and considering it's Robert Kirkman who also writes The Walking Dead, well, it's amazing how the guy keeps such consistent quality writing on such different styles...), how incredible the art is and how with each volume I just wish I had the next one to pick up and read right after. Invincible is one of my favorite comics ever, it has rightfully earned that spot, and if you're not reading it, you're missing out terribly. 4.5 out of 5

Last but not least, the best zombie comic to ever see the light of day is up to it's 9th TPB and keeps all the intensity that we're used to. After volume 8, this felt a little bit slow and uneventful, but it was pretty unrealistic to imagine that every book after 8 would keep that pace - I think people would die from art attacks just reading it. Don't get me wrong - this book still is rich in emotional intensity and action. The story is progressing on a very interesting direction, and I can't wait to see what comes next, because I feel like this was almost the calm before the storm. But sadly, the next volume will probably take a while to hit the shelves.

Besides this, I've been reading a lot of Sin City issues and other miscelaneous comics that my boyfriend awesomely lent me, so I can't complain about my comic life at all.

And I won't complain about movie life either... after all there are some decent movies coming out these next weeks.

What have you guys been reading? Any recommendations?

Where the Wild Things Are

IN MY HEAD! THEY'RE IN MY HEAD!

...No, they're not in my head. At least not today, I've taken my meds already. What I'm talking about here is the upcoming Spike Jonze project based on a classic kid's book, Where the Wild Things Are. I admit I never read this book, not even as a kid (I don't assume it's very popular in Portugal), but the trailer for this movie looked great and won me over. I'm actually pretty excited to see this movie now.



Power to the imagination :)

Latest Movies I've Seen part 1002

As you may or may not know, I had a little break for a couple of weeks, that I dedicated to spending time with my boyfriend Cosmic, having fun and watching a lot of movies. There were a lot of them, and I'm not including the ones I re-watched, except one, that I hardly remembered. I'll only include very short reviews, but check out the list and share your thoughts too!

Here we go:

1. Transporter

After having tons of fun watching Crank, me and Cosmic decided we should check out Jason Statham's most famous franchise: Transporter. It was a pretty decent action movie, and we were entertained, and that gets it 2.5 out 0f 5 shirtless Jason Stathams from me.

2. Tokyo Gore Police

I wanted to see this movie ever since I saw the trailer, that was basically a montage of crazy shit going on. The movie was a tad disappointing because, let's face it, the story was stupid and the actors were crappy and the fx could be tons better, but it was still fun to see what comes out of the japanese minds. Really, once you see a dude with a penis shooting shurikens or something, snail women, and an amputee with swords instead of arms and legs, you can't complain about plot. It's just random insane-ness. 3 out of 5 engineers, just because of the sheer crazyness.

3. The Big Lebowski

Once I saw this, my only regret was that I had not seen it earlier. The story's ups and downs are amazingly fun to follow, and the characters are brilliant, just made me want to draw them all. 4.5 out 0f 5 bowling balls.

4. Transporter 2

Like almost every sequel, this one sucks. Not that the first movie was some work of sheer genius, but here they just threw everything to hell and had Jason Statham do the craziest, most impossible shit, and sometimes that works (example: Crank), and sometimes it just doesn't. Still had a few good moments though, and Statham is pretty good in his action roles (even if apparently he always plays the same guy, but I don't mind), so that makes me give it 1.5 out of 5 car chases.

5. Eden Lake

I was pretty curious to see this thriller, I had heard good things about it and let's face it, a decent horror thriller is not easy to come by. I thought it was pretty solid, it actually made you care for the main characters instead of just throwing a bunch of horny teenagers in a house in the woods, and the killers were far more scary than any Jason or Michael, because they felt real. Also, pretty unexpected ending. 4 out of 5 pocket knives.

6. Moulin Rouge

Yeah, believe it or not I had never seen Moulin Rouge before. Musicals are not my thing, and Romeo and Juliet kinda put me off Baz Luhrman stuff, but I have to say Moulin Rouge was very enjoyable. I really liked the eccentric visuals, the songs, and Ewan McGregor's dorky smile. I even teared up once or twice. 4 out of 5 penniless writers.

7. 9 Songs

Well, what to say about this one... No plot, firstly. Hardly any dialogue. Just a lot of (good) music and sex. Kinda felt like a fancy porn. I wish they had put in a litttle more character development, instead of leaving you guessing what the hell was going on after all. 2 rock songs out of 5.

8. Species

This is the one I had seen before, but the only things I remembered about it were that it starred Forest Whittaker, and that scene were Sil was kissing that dude and impaled his skull with her tongue. It was cool to watch it again, and I thought it was a pretty decent creature/sci-fi movie - at least up until the end. The end totally lost me. 3 out of 5 combined DNAs.

9. In Bruges

Me and Cosmic had been meaning to watch this movie for a while, and finally got around to it. I'm glad we did! The movie was great, I loved the dialogue, the characters, the story really sucked you in and managed to have great comic moments intertwined with dramatic ones too. A real treat, and a work of fine cinema. And, despite what Colin Farrel's character keeps saying, I thought Bruges looked like a lovely place. 4.5 out of 5 midgets.

10. Step Brothers

Say what you will, but I love a good Will Ferrel movie. Unfaithful ones should give stuff like Anchorman or Talladega Nights a chance. True, some of his latest stuff has been far from brilliant, but Step Brothers was actually pretty funny for the most part, and him and John C. Reilly have great comedic chemistry. The ending, once again, was weak, but the first 3/4 of the movie were great fun and did made me laugh out loud. 3.5 out of 5 drumsets.

11. Gran Torino

I confess I wasn't too excited to see this one, but I'm glad Cosmic took me anyway. The story can be looked on as a simple one, but the character development and relationships are great to follow all throughout, and you'll walk away feeling like you watched something great, and you did. 4.5 out of 5 chow meins.