Man Defeats Wishmaster with First Wish.

A New York-area man on Sunday beat away the advances of a centuries-old, malevolent demon, and Green People Soup was hot on the heals of the story as it broke. Antonio Rossi, a Brooklyn native, was walking home from work at around 7pm, when a shrouded figure with the "voice of Burgess Meredith" approached him, slinking out of an adjacent alleyway.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes: Trailer Impressions

The first full fledged trailer is out for the next iteration of the "Planet of the Apes" franchise and the fans are buzzing with anticipation. I've watched the trailer several times now and just wanted to post some thoughts on my own personal reasons to be excited about where the filmmakers are going with the material. Hang on tight....it looks like we're in for one hell of a roller coaster ride folks!

Culture Spotlight - Harry Potter Interview

June 3rd, 2036

4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey - Once a place of great importance, the house at this address now stands in almost total ruin. The front yard resembles a briar patch, and the mailbox flaps lazily in the wind from being broken in two. The front door is ajar, and stray cats roam in and out at will. In Green People Soup's 25 years of tracking down and talking with former cultural icons, this is one of the saddest sights I've ever had to describe. Standing next to me is Harry Potter, who some of you might remember from that time he pointed a stick at a bad man in, like, 1999.

X-MEN First Class: 3 Reasons To Be Excited

In a movie season guaranteed to be over crowded by heroes in tight fitting outfits, how is one supposed to choose which film in the genre to be enthused about? We've got men with hammers, men with lanterns, and men with shields. I'm putting my vote in for the men with class. When "X-MEN: First Class" hits the multiplexes, here are three reasons to apply to Xavier's School For the Gifted.

Solomon Kane: None for you America!

I patiently waited for this film to hit American shores, but it was sadly not meant to be. Based on the writings of Robert E. Howard who fathered Conan the Barbarian, Kane is a Puritan warrior who wanders the land and fights various forms of evil. He uses his wits, magic, and sometimes just brute force to send the Devil's minions back to hell. The 2009 film takes a little liberty with the source material and gives us sort of an origin tale chock full of action, horror, and all the things true genre lovers appreciate. This is dark material so I guess it's really no surprise that it never got picked up by a U.S. distributor. I can't imagine how they would market it, or what the MPAA would have rated it. Thank goodness for region free DVD players because this gem of a title can be easily imported and viewed by all worthy fans of a kick ass good time.

Green Lantern hopes to shine a whole new light on sarcasm

As audiences prepare for the super hero sci-fi extravaganza "Green Lantern" to hit the summer movie screens, anticipation is even higher for its lead Ryan Reynolds. The 34 year old actor is hoping the summer tentpole film will showcase his ability to portray sarcasm. Reynolds has been a star on the rise for several years now, but feels that this will finally be the film where he can prove to the public that he has the skill set to play a sarcastic prick.


A PR rep inside the Reynolds entourage has recently stated that they feel he just hasn't had enough opportunities to engage in playful mocking banter with other actors. "We feel the material has been there in some cases, but for whatever reason, the powers that be have failed to maximize his sarcastic potential." The Reynolds camp even believe that Hollywood is intentionally stifling what could be a signature trademark for the young thespian. "Conspiracy might be stretching it a little, but look for yourself and you'll see a pattern," says the PR rep.

When looking back at some of Reynold's earlier work, one can indeed detect the machinations of sarcastic censorship at work. One insider who wished to remain anonymous has recently been quoted as saying, "just look at his work as Deadpool in Wolverine.....I mean...he had all this witty dialogue prepared beforehand and they went and took away his fucking mouth!" Perhaps there's something to the paranoia after all.

As Deadpool...no mouth..no sarcasm..no problem

Stories from Ryan's previous film "Buried" are now starting to unearth. An associate close to Spanish film director Rodrigo Cortes states, "Rodrigo knew this guy wanted to try and find the humor in suffocating to death, but felt he had to literally bury those instincts." We can only wonder what kind of film we might have had if Reynold's was allowed to hit the sarcastic pedal to the metal.

Sarcasm stifled again...this time by coffin

Reynold's feels that the sarcasm and heroism should go together like peanut butter and jelly. "Look at what Christian Bale did in Batman," the actor remarked. "The guy sounded like he was trying to expel a corncob from his anus when he talked.......sheesh.....have a little fun will ya? I mean....Adam West did!" The actor firmly believes that his fans are going to see something fresh in his performance as Green Lantern. "Just wait and see........the serious guy of the past is gone with this one.....I'm gonna really let my hair down and have a good time with this material."

The release date for "Green Lantern" draws near, but only time will tell if audiences can accept a more unique performance from Reynolds. It may be a stretch, but if the box office light truly shines brightly, we can expect great things from the star's future work.

Poltergeist II : LET KANE IN to your movie collection!

If anybody's family has ever been impacted by cancer, then they know what true horror is all about. Watching a loved one waste away to a shell of their former self can be heart wrenching. My Grandmother passed away from it, my mother in law is currently fighting it, and we have a family friend whose prognosis is dire. For those who can relate, Poltergeist II might be too much to handle. The cinephiles brave enough to watch will glimpse a real beast captured on film. Now.....let me in.....and lets talk about it.

Medical Malpractice - Return to Oz (1985)

That's not a creepy, photoshopped version of Fairuza Balk. Also, that's bullshit throwing the Tin Man in there.

Oh, hey, I forgot about this place. So, yea, I just finished watching Return to Oz. It's one I saw years ago, and I've owned the DVD for some time now, but tonight was the first time I'd seen it in at least 15 years. It's interesting what a child's brain remembers, especially when that brain, aged a bit more, gets to see the same images through an adult filter. Guess what, though? Return to Oz is still pretty fucked up, so the cheering can commence.

First things first; I remember the movie covering a hell of a lot more ground than it actually does. I mean, there's really not much going on at all during the 110 minute run time. The movie didn't feel short, but I'm having trouble coming up with an answer as to where the last 2 hours went. Here's a pretty faithful plot synopsis: Dorothy is having mental issues stemming from the whole tornado episode that happened 6 months ago, so good ol' Aunt Em decides to take her to a doctor with one of those new-fangled electric machines. All doesn't go well, and Dorothy ends up back in Oz, only this time Oz sucks. Picture the Emerald City, but if it was run by the Warriors or the Baseball Furies (whichever is more your scene). In either case, Dorothy finds another group of rag-tag unintentional ass-kickers, and they head off to the Nome King's mountain, where they play a short guessing game. Dorothy wins, and everybody is happy. She goes back to Kansas, where everyone is looking for her, and she lives happily ever after. Except...

...oh, yea. See, it's almost easy to forget the whole reason for Dorothy's second visit to Oz. Oh, it's just her imagination. Oh, the weather was horrible and she had a nightmare. Oh, a scary man administered electric shock therapy to her. Wait, what? Yes, that's the impetus for her return journey: electric shock therapy. I guess the turn of the century brought with it some magical new scientific devices (get it?) that were able to explore the depths of the human mind. By "explore," I mean shocking the shit out of her until her mind drifted away and she ruptured a lobe or something. She got tazed, bro.

Check it out, it's like I said: The Warriors with children and mechanical wonders.

In fact, she got tazed so hard that instead of curing her "waking dreams," as the magical looney bin doctor put it, the experience immediately sent her into a fucking frenzy. She somehow managed not to drown long enough to wash up on an embankment, where she probably just lied there unconscious for a while. How do I know this? Well, the film uses a couple of tricks that the original had in its bag way back in 1939. The biggest and most telling technique is the transposing of certain images and sounds from Kansas into Oz. When Dorothy first arrives at the looney bin, she's escorted to her room. While walking down the hallway, a probably retarded man is seen pushing a gurney on loud, rusted wheels. A few minutes later, as she sits in her room, she can hear the horrible sound of the wheels slowly moving towards her from behind the door. That would be a pretty disturbing experience for a 10-year-old, and, what's this? Oh, the Wheelers in Oz get around with wheels on four appendages, and they make a loud squeaking noise as if they were rusted. Yea, that's called psychological trauma. Also, the head nurse in Kansas was pretty straight-laced and creepy, so it's fitting she was turned into a witch. Fuck her and her black outfit and way too tight corset. The looney bin doctor also had a fitting alter-ego in the Nome King. Props to that dude (sorry, too lazy to grab his name) for really selling the Nome King to me. I think that role could have easily faded into the background as the stop-motion effects took over, but the facial expressions exhibited by the King were spot-on. I don't know if the voice-over was done by the same actor, but whoever did that deserves equal amount of props.

After watching this film again for the first time in a long while, it really did feel more like a children's movie this time around. But a lot of the creepy stuff I remembered was still there, such as Princess Mombi's hall of heads that she would switch out with her body whenever she felt like it, I guess. In a rare scene with details, Jack (the pumpkin-headed dude played by Brian Henson) lets us in on the little secret that Mombi can only remember shit when she's wearing the same head she was when the thing she's trying to remember occurred. In other words, if I was wearing head number 2 when someone punched me in the face, then decided to put on head number 1, only head number 2 would know about the face-punching. Anyways, it's fucking disturbing when you have a long hallway full of heads screaming "Dorothyyyyy!!!!" as a headless body fumbles around with both arms out trying to strangle the life out of a child.

Not pictured: something not disturbing.

I'm not sure what other stuff makes an almost one-to-one translation from Kansas to Oz, but I'm sure there's some more fucked up shit in there for more astute (read: unlazy) viewers to pick apart. I think I got all the metaphors I needed from my viewing. Oh, sorry, there's one more. Right before Dorothy is given electric shock, the doctor shows her the machine he uses. He clearly points out a "face" on the panel, and it has a little wind-up part to it - just like Tik-tok. So, is Dorothy in Kansas anymore? Um, no, but she's not in Oz, either. She's in fucking La-La-Land along with everyone in Gitmo. What doesn't kill her only makes her more susceptible to further harm, right? Right.

You know what? Who cares. Greatest animatronic chicken. Evar.

I'm gearing up for a run at reading the first 14 books in the Oz series, so I figured I'd throw this on as an appetizer. It certainly did what I wanted it to, and I'm ready to delve into the source material and see how many times the Tin Man hacked off his own limbs. Maybe I'll make a drinking game out of it.

Han Solo vs. Greedo. Yea, Some of You Are Retarded.

Peter Cushing is awesome. Anyways...

...George Lucas is a fat douche who doesn't know his own films' lore. Why, you ask? Ah, let me tell you. You know that whole "Han shot first" bullshit? Yea, well, as it turns out, there's no other explanation. Observe the original theatrical release of Star Wars:

This is called murder.

Oh, what's this? Lucas decided to care about "the children" and re-edit the film? Hey, guess what? FUCK YOU George Lucas. Your bullshit will not go un-called:

This is the Lucas version of photoshopping.

That's just about the worst shit I've ever seen in my life. Not only are the lazer shots horribly, horribly forced, but we all have to endure the ugliest digital manipulation known to man. Lucas just moved Harrison Ford's head like 6 inches to the left, regardless of what he was dodging. Even if his head never moved, Greedo's AWFUL FUCKING AIM would have never got anywhere close to his head. Either Greedo is the worst bounty hunter with a rubber face mask to ever hit the galaxy, or George Lucas sucks at rewriting history. Hmmm, which one is more plausible? Fuck you, George Lucas.

Burning skeletons taste like chicken.

If Lucas was really concerned with the children, he might have considered taking out the part where Luke's aunt/uncle was burned to a crisp and lying face-first in the dirt. Dental records might help identify the body, but the 8-year-old watching the film might still have a problem. FUCK YOU, GEORGE LUCAS.

Hey, heads are awesome.

Like, decapitated ones. Or, at least that's what Luke Skywalker thinks. What better scene to show the kiddies than Luke cutting off the head of Darth Vader, only to then reveal his own face under the helmet that inexplicably explodes? Fun for the whole family.

Jabba, schmabba.

Why, this being a family film and all, it should have all kinds of wondrous sights, right? Ah, yes, here's one: the frozen body of Han Solo; stuck in place for all eternity so that Jabba the Hut can have a living room decoration. It's laugh-out-loud hilarious.

I also failed to show the whole rancor bit, plus the part where Luke, Han, Lando and Chewy throw a whole bunch of people to their disgusting and detestable deaths, being slowly digested alive by a giant worm. AWESOME.

Pictured: Lucas being a contrarian tool. Harrison is not digging the man-titties.

An Exercise in Layers - The Shining (1980)

I'm not going to be so bold as to "review" The Shining. That would be stupid and a waste of time. Instead, I just want to briefly explain why I think it's the greatest horror movie ever filmed. OK, that's obviously not just as bold as reviewing it. Whatever, it's my blog.

For one, The Shining succeeds doing so many things that most horror movies absolutely fail at. It puts believable characters in extraordinary circumstances and gives them room to breathe. It's also not afraid to set the mood by ratcheting up the tension only to have no short-term payoff. There's no exposition of any real meaning, and the story is told from a sort of detached perspective. By that, I mean the film isn't told through any one person's eyes; it's like the camera is simply in the right place at the right time. Pretty much everyone in the film is flawed in some way, but those flaws aren't ever used as a contrivance to advance the plot, or as a bullshit convenience to make some ridiculous event more plausible.

To put it the most succinct as possible, I'm saying The Shining is perfect. You don't think so? It must suck to be wrong all the time. There's nothing that can be improved upon in any meaningful fashion; no director's cut, no deleted scenes, and no commentary could elaborate on events in the film without taking away something integral to the experience. It's as good as any fictional piece of entertainment is going to get. I titled this entry An Exercise in Layers for good reason, and, as an obvious fan of hyperbole, I'll add that no horror film will ever surpass what The Shining has accomplished.

The obvious first layer is the film's visual style. In typical Kubrick fashion, a lot of scenes are very tight and angular, giving off a claustrophobic sense of dread and foreboding. Even before the shit hits the fan, Jack's interview is uncomfortable and slightly off-putting. Basically, the film establishes strictly by visual means that nothing good is going to come of the situation these people are in. This same style permeates every shot, and the tension that slowly builds throughout is due to the mostly odd framing and striking visual cues. Nothing has done it better since, and I highly doubt anything ever will.

The second layer has to do with the characters themselves. Right from the get-go, Jack Torrance is pretty obviously a scumbag. He never quite seems genuine in his interactions with other people, and he's outed as an alcoholic, abusive prick before the story even gets going. Wendy, on the other hand, is the sweetest person alive, but why does she stay with someone like that? She could be a saint, but her decision to continue to allow herself and her son to be around someone like Jack doesn't make me very sympathetic to her cause. She may be a victim, but at least in the film, she's never made out to be the kind of person that would defend herself. Her rationalization of Jack dislocating their son's arm is, "it's the kind of thing that a parent does a thousand times to their child...". That's the most bullshit excuse I've ever heard. The only person that deserves sympathy in that family is Danny, simply because he has no say over his situation. So, it's in these character flaws, which are never sugar-coated or dismissed as a small part of the whole, that The Shining is able to deliver genuine horror over a scary good time.

The third, and arguably the most important layer, is the fact that the unexplained stays relatively unexplained. In a lot of horror films, there's inevitably a scene where an all-knowing or extremely wise and experienced character gets to sit down and lay out the who, what, where, when and why of literally everything that's been going on. And while there are plenty of guilty films that I still love, I can't help but call bullshit on that narrative choice. It's a cheap cop-out that gives the writer/s and director a way to make sense of things that shouldn't necessarily be explainable. In most cases, once every facet of a horrific story is laid out on the table, plain as day, its impact is dramatically lessened. Oh, the murders were all done by the guy who got killed in that building fire 20 years ago. Ah, yes, it was the Devil himself who was possessing that serial killer all along, and he was recruiting a shit-load of minions to do his dirty work. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for those pesky kids and a dog named Scooby Doo. I think you get my drift, anyways.

The Shining, on the other hand, allows the dread to slowly ratchet up by giving clues as to the nature of what's happening, but never fully explaining it. There's a choice bit of dialogue by Jack before he goes completely bat-shit insane, followed by a photograph at the end that gives a bit of insight as to the nature of the hotel and what it does to people, but it's all speculation as far as I'm concerned. The film perfectly balances need-to-know plot points with a vagueness that allows the fear to hold firm, and it's all done in a single setting with only a handful of people in complete isolation.

So, yea, The Shining is pretty fucking good, in case you haven't figured it out yet. On a totally unrelated note, I saw the Nightmare on Elm Street remake. What a pile of shit; I want my five bucks back.