24 Deathcount Part 7: Episodes 5-6

Another light installment for Jack 24 this week. Things were pretty dry on the casting front, as well.

After killing no one at all during hour 5, Jack finally managed to kill someone in hour six, and he in part made up for the lacking quantity by killing a mercenary using an abundance of quality: In this case, by shooting him with a sniper rifle from just fifty feet away.

Tony picked up the slack with great efficiency, though, killing three people in hour six, tying him with Jack for the day so far, and reminding all of us just why we've been missing him so intensely the past two years.

Don't ever leave us again, Tony.

It's Avod Time Again!

That's right fans and fan-ettes, there's Brand New Avod just waiting to be listened to here! Simply right click and save it to a location of your choice! Or you can always head over to the the home of TheAvod and stream it directly through your computer's sound system!

This week's topics include "The Thing" "The Strangers" "Fringe", and, of course, "Garth Marenghi's Darkplace"!

Now for some show notes!

The trailer for Bitch Killer!



And the Official Garth Marenghi Webiste can be found at http://www.garthmarenghi.com/

Whoo!

Happy New Year's Avod!

Happy New year everyone! Three weeks late! Yaay!

Anyhoo, the DiveMistress and I recently recorded our first Avod of the new year, in which we elected to discuss a couple of hot new horror films currently heating up the theatres!

Who will win the war of films?

Download the file here to find out! (Through the magic of right clicking and saving target as, naturally).

Or, of course, you can always head over to the home of the Avod at theavod.blogspot.com and stream it through your browser!

TheAvod: Now with two different ways of listening to it.

The Unborn

Happened to see The Unborn in theatres the other day, and I was outright startled by two things. Not in the good, scared-in-a-horror-movie way either, despite writer/director David Goyer’s love of musical stings accompanying sudden movement onscreen. I’m sure the myriad jump-scares would have been more effective if they hadn’t been telegraphed so obviously. There’s not a scene in the movie where something ‘jumpy’ happens that isn’t preceded by a five-second shot of the place where the scare is going to happen. That’s just laziness.

Also, isn’t it a time for a moritorium on medicine cabinet mirrors and the frightening things that can appear in them or leap out from behind them? At what exact point does a cliché become so overused that the only emotion it creates in an audience is a combination of boredom and disgust?

Oh, the Strangers...

I was absolutely right about you, wasn’t I? You’re just as terrible as your opening minutes suggested you were.

Tonight I finally finished watching The Strangers, and discovered that first impressions are often the best ones. I also discovered that, when deciding which films to watch in the future, the name Bryan Bertino should serve as a disincentive against renting or purchasing any given product.

24 Deathcount Part 7: Episodes 1-4

While I might not have mentioned it here previously, one of the things I'm most passionate about is the television show 24 - not because of its strange, schizophrenic politics or ludicrous plot twists, but rather because Jack 24 is the only character on television that I can count on to shoot a whole lot of people through the course of a season.

Every year, I judge the relative success or failure of 24's season by two criteria: the number of people Jack kills, and the number of geek-friendly guest stars the producers cast in minor and major parts.

This season is off to a middling start - in four episodes, Jack has only killed two people, mercenaries that he cooperatively shot with an FBI agent. For a while it looked like he had been responsible for another death - he used a third Merc as a human shield to defend against bullets, but then the guy turned up alive later on.

13 Hours in a Warehouse: It's nice when titles can substitute as synopses.

I’ll give 13 Hours in a Warehouse this: It’s rare that you’ll get a movie with the guts to ask the question: What if, after the robbery in Reservoir Dogs, they’d gone to a warehouse haunted by the ghosts of snuff film victims?

Well, all the unlikable thief characters will wind up dead, but in ways that aren’t especially interesting, making for a mostly dull viewing experience, enlivened by two pieces of hilariously bad writing. More on that in a second – first I just want to mention how tired I am of horror movies about criminals on the run who get caught up in a horrific situation. Here’s the problem – they’re criminals, so it’s always impossible to care whether they get killed or not. This film, like many others, attempts to give the audience someone to care/worry about by dropping a hostage in there, but the woman is never once in danger, because the ghosts haunting the warehouse appear to her at the beginning of her confinement and explain to her, in no uncertain terms, that they have no interest in killing her. So there’s never really a credible threat against her life, and no reason for the audience to be scared.

Why can't I get through The Strangers?

So, hoping to avoid losing what little cred I have as a person who watches terrible movies, I tried to finish watching The Strangers tonight, and once again I failed.

Last time I made it through a full half of the movie before turning it off in disgust. This time? Three minutes.

That's right, three minutes after a guy gets himself shot in the head because of stupidity beyond all measure, enough even stupider things happen that I was forced to turn off the movie by all the good judgment my conscience is still able to muster.

Saturday Night Live RapeWatch! Neil Patrick Harris Edition!

It's a light week here on the rapewatch, with only two jokes rising to the level of being countable.

The Rape joke happened right at the end in a sketch about Burger King's series of 'Whopper Virgin' ads which are premised around the idea of people who have never eaten fast-food being given a big mac and a whopper and being asked to choose between them. One of the interviewees, a woman, explains (through a translator) that she's not a virgin (and that it was her uncle that did it).

In Re: The Strangers

Tonight, something wondrous happened - for the first time in my life, I quit watching a movie for the second time. As someone who'll watch just about anything, giving up on a movie is odd enough, but twice is just unheard of.

So just how bad is 'The Strangers"? Well, about halfway through there's a scene where a friend of the main characters drops by the cabin to pick up his friend (if you'll recall, based on my prediction, there was a rejected proposal in the offing, and the man of the pair felt it might be too awkward for he and his would-be fiancee to drive back into town together, so he called for a ride), and as he's sitting in his car outside the cabin, making a phone call, one of the 'Strangers' throws a brick through the front window of his car in what can only be described as an 'attempted murder'.

What does this character, one 'David', do? Does he call the police on the cell phone he's holding in his hand? Does he duck down, put the car in reverse and then drive away as quickly as possible as before calling the police?

New Year's Terror - Golden Age Captain Marvel Style!

With the new year arriving at a time of great fear and uncertainty, I thought the perfect way to ring it in would be another trip back into the Golden Age of comics, for a fascinating strip that I call "Captain Marvel and the Shapeless Horror From Beyond Time".

For the record, though, it was actually titled "Captain Marvel and the Chameleon Stone" when it was published in Captain Marvel Adventures #92, in December, 1948

As usual, the story begins with a charming image that tries to encapsulate the entire story the reader is about to enjoy, without depicting a moment that actually specifically appears in the story:

I'm confused by this webternet ad.

So I'm clicking over the old Internet Movie DataBase, as is my wont, and this ad turns up on the side of the screen:



The basic idea is that the relative health of your credit score is indicated by the type and mood of dinosaur in the box.

Criminal Minds 105: Broken Mirror

Synopsis – Trish and her boyfriend leave a party and on the road home they come across a SUV blocking both lanes. Despite the fact that we’ll later learn Trish is the daughter of a prominent US Attorney, who for her entire childhood has had a protective detail, and should know that she’s always in danger of being kidnapped to leverage her father financially or politically, she doesn’t find this immediately suspicious and demand that they drive away. This leads to the boyfriend being murdered and Trish being kidnapped.

Due to the existence of the aforementioned important father, the team is called in immediately to work up a profile of the kidnapper, who’s given them less than a day to come up with the money for her ransom. It turns out that Trish has an mirror twin sister (that means they’re mirror images – one has the heart pointed right instead of left – oddly, she doesn’t wear a medic-alert bracelet with this information, even thought that would be unbelievably useful toe EMTs and doctors were she ever to get into an accident) named Cheryll who can sense her sister’s anxiety, no matter how far away she is. Using this gift, she insists that her sister is alive. Elle, helping absolutely nothing, points out that Cheryll is a physics major. Cheryll responds in the episode’s stupidest line of dialogue:

“If you’re asking why a science major would believe in something non-scientific, I don’t. I just know what I feel. My feeling is that my sister is still alive.”

It's a very WishMaster Christmas!

You can download the Avod's Christmas special right here! (Or listen to it off the webternet by clicking on the avod link to the right)

We're doing something a little different this time around: Including show notes - more specifically, show notes that reveal which of the hosts, DiveMistress or Count Vardulon, was right concerning the things they argued about.

It's a Golden Age Christmas Eve!

Now that the stockings are hung on the bookcase with care, I got to wondering about just what might be the most appropriate post for this time of year.

After a long period of consideration, I decided the only logical action was to review a Captain Marvel comic in which a Civilized Tiger (representing Negroes) is harassed by the inhabitants (representing white male oppression) of the nice suburban neighborhood he moves into.

The Story, titled "Captain Marvel and Mr. Tawny's New Home", appeared in Captain Marvel Adventures #90, with a publication date of November, 1948.

After that adorable opening panel that establishes the premise, the story proper begins with Billy Batson discovering that his good friend, Mister Tawny, the civilized Tiger, has been thrown out of his boarding house.