New High-Rise Trailer

So back in 2014 I did a book review of a novel called High-Rise by J.G. Ballard - sort of a class struggle/lord of the flies mashup set in the UK and maybe a little more speculative than science fiction. Either way, I was a pretty big fan, and now look here - not only are they making a movie, but the first trailer has got me pretty interested...

Man, reading all that 70s-era SF has got me excited for all sorts of stuff!

My October is starting to shape up!

One of my favourite horror writers right now is Joe Hill, writer of Herat-Shaped Box, NOS4A2, and the comic book series Locke & Key, but my personal favourite of his novels is the 2009 title Horns.

Although I've known about the film adaptation for a while now, today I came across the trailer, and you've definitely got to check it out.

Bookmonkey vs Hack/Slash: Day Nine

Trailers and Crossovers

The next few Hack/Slash story arcs focus on a staple of comic books, the crossover event, and a staple of modern motion pictures, the movie trailer.

In Hack/Slash Vs Evil Ernie and Hack/Slash Vs Chucky, Cassie and Vlad begin to expand their world to include two other comic book characters published through Devils Due Publishing – Evil Ernie (a reanimated corpse that can control other corpses) and Chucky, the killer doll from the 1988 MGM film Child’s Play.  Generally comic book crossovers refer to an event where “…a hero with its own title series appears in an issue of another hero’s series” (Alberich, Miro-Julia, Roseello, 2002, 3).  With both of these crossovers, however it works a little differently.  Evil Ernie was a completed series at the time, and in his story the majority of the Earth had been destroyed, so a little exposition was needed to explain how he could possibly end up in Cassie and Vlad’s world.  For Chucky to appear inHack/Slash, on the other hand, it came down to a potential “…big screen adaption of ‘Hack/Slash’ in development at Rogue Pictures, which is also the home of the “Chucky” film franchise” (Richards, 2006) Unlike the extensive explanation of how Cassie and Evil Ernie could meet, Chucky and Cassie are simply written as already being aware of each other and begin moving through the story. 

In the first Hack/Slash trailers collection, the reader is treated to a number of short stories which are horror movie-style trailers for potential Hack/Slash stories.  In an interview about the issue, Seeley stated “…They’re written, really, just like a trailer, complete with bad one-liners, tag lines, and voice overs (you’ll have to pretend it’s the ‘Voice-Over Guy.’).  The ‘stories’ they ‘preview’ aren’t actually coming to comic stores (or theatres) anytime soon (as in ever).” (Richards, 2006)  As movie trailers are short advertisements for upcoming films, these stories work in much the same way, allowing readers to imagine Cassie and Vlad in Japan, fighting a killer shark, and even adventuring in space.  Also, as Hack/Slash trailers was my first experience with the series, I found the mix of violence, humour and self-awareness of the Slasher sub-genre definitely peaked my interest.

It’s also interesting to note that the crossover and trailers use characters from previous stories and even introduce villains and storylines that did eventually get used in the main series.

WORKS CITED

Alberich, R. Miro-Julia, J., & Rossello, R. (2002). Marvel Universe looks almost like a real social network. arXiv preprint cond-mat/0202174.  Retrieved online from http://arxiv.org/pdf/cond-mat/0202174.pdf

Richards, D. (January 3, 2006). “Playing in the Trailer Park: Seeley talks ‘Hack/Slash: Trailers’ in Comic Book Resources.  Retrieved online from: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=6153

Richards, D. (December 21, 2006). “One of the Good Guys: Seeley talks ‘Hack/Slash Vs Chucky’” inComic Book Resources.  Retrieved online from: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=8919

IMAGE USED

Cover of Hack/Slash vs Chucky.  Retrieved online from: http://www.amazon.com/Childs-Play-Chuckys-20th-Birthday/dp/B001B1UO6W/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1381367253&sr=1-1&keywords=child%27s+play

The Scott Pilgrim Trailer is online

This weekend as I was doing my weekly genre news update (There's actually a process I use to attempt to keep up to date - but that's the kind of neurosis that deserves a post of its own), I saw that the trailer for the upcoming film adaptation of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is online.

As long-time (and by that I mean since last August) readers of my blog are probably aware, I'm a huge fan of the comic series - it's awesome, it's Canadian, and it's references to my particular slice of pop culture are off the scale. At the same time, the movie could let me down, after all I was pretty excited when I heard that they were making a big screen version of The Spirit.

So lets take a brief glimpse at the pros and cons of this big screen adaption.

Pros: The fact that the film was made in Canada and has a Canadian star (Michael Cera). The fact that it's directed by Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz, Shawn of the Dead, Spaced). The fact that I really love the source material.

Cons: Actually only one - I really love the source material. I think that this actually makes it a little harder for me to warm up to the story, as I've got such a special fondness for the comics.

In the end, I have to say I'm pretty excited - but don't let me keep all the excitement to myself, check out the trailer here for yourself.