Book Review: The Amazing Screw-On Head

Sometimes you buy a book and decide not to read it yet as you know it will be a special treat for you the day you finally crack it open and peek inside.

Originally published in 2002 and purchased by me as a hardcover book back in 2010, Mike Mignola's The Amazing Screw-On Head is a fun little story about an Abraham Lincoln-era robot who can screw his head (think of a lightbulb) on to a variety of robot bodies in order to best serve the U.S. Administration and save the world from a number of villains set on destroying the world.

The comic is strange, funny, and clearly related thematically to Mignola's much more famous Hellboy, but works to create a strange world in which the fate of existence is left up to a robot and fighting a villain called Emperor Zombie.

All I can say after reading this tasty little gem this morning is "Thanks 2010 Bookmonkey!"

What a delightful little book.

Movie Review: Paul

Last Thursday my friends Mike and Ron managed to get a double guest pass to an advanced screening of the movie Paul, so my wife and I joined them to check it out.

Here’s my impressions of the film.

1) It was pretty darn funny

2) It is the closest thing I’ll ever see to an Alf movie (and I liked it better than Alf)

3) It has the makings for an excellent movie-lovers drinking game

4) It continues to show me that you can’t go wrong if you’re teaming up Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.

5) Kristen Wiig wears the funniest shirt I’ve seen in months

If you haven’t seen the trailer yet, check it out, but basically the film follows two guys who pick up an alien hitch-hiker and spend the rest of the film on the run from shady government agents. The movie nods at tonnes of classic genre films (seriously I tried to keep count by after hitting reference #27 I just gave up and enjoyed the film) in very clever ways.

The alien (a CG creation voiced by Canadian actor Seth Rogen) is pretty incredible, making him both foul-mouthed and loveable. I think it’s fair to say that if you’re a regular reader at my blog, there will be a lot you’ll like about the film (no it doesn’t spend a month looking at Twilight, that was just me). In the end, a very fun flick.