Keep in mind that Crumb had little to do with the of Fritz the Cat motion picture--characters aside, it was almost entirely Ralph Bakshi's creation. And what a creation it was.

Anyone see that supposedly-terrible studio mandated sequel, "The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat?"

Oh there's been a fight over the years to get that re-released, especially since fans want a US release of the Orriginal Japanese version, Return of Godzilla. Some rumors, but nothing close to beingg reliable.

Watched Tucker and Dale VS Evil. Such a funny movie. I'm realizing that I really like films that play with horror tropes. It wasn't brilliant by any stretch, but there were moments that are so funny I couldn't stop laughing.

God I love that movie. You could tell that the film makers where wanting to Parody fish out of water stories like Deliverance and Texas Chainsaw, while at the same time showing love and respect for them. I think my favorite bit is the Chainsaw/Bees bit.

Grave Encounters - 4/5

On the one hand this is incredibly retarded, but on the other, I admire its devotion to balls-out, throat-ripping, pants-wetting horror, and it has a lot more going on than any Paranormal Activity movie, for whatever that's worth. This is a found footage horror movie that shoots itself in the foot in the first five minutes - literally, the guy at the beginning is like "there has been no editing to this; it is all real," and then five minutes later you get superimposed newspaper articles and video-clips telling the story of the haunted asylum the characters are going into, that obviously would have had to be edited in. Uh, hello? Were you even trying? The characters are all silly and kind of annoying at first, but once the ball gets rolling about 40 minutes in, you actually do want them to escape - they're shallow and money-hunting, but they become at least a little likable. And the scares are seriously good. This is basically the equivalent of a really grisly, mind-bending haunted house attraction. The mark of a good horror film is how far it takes its themes and how much it pushes its characters to the limits, and for that Grave Encounters is legit.

The Innkeepers - 2/5

This is a brilliant romantic comedy film, but a poor horror film. For character development and acting, I would give this a much higher score, but I think this was really trying its hand at being a horror film, which it fails at. Director Ti West gave us the brilliant House of the Devil a few years ago, but sadly this is just too haphazardly constructed and directionless to really work...I guess it's trying its hand at being an avant garde/satirical sort of thing that plays with your expectations, as at first it's legitimately a comedic light hearted film centering around two charming and quirky characters in a hotel. But the horror elements, involving a ghostly mistress haunting the halls, are not well done at all, feeling forced in, lazily written and overall pretty weakly done. At the end of the movie I was just scratching my head, because it didn't really make any sense. I'm all for ambiguity and for trying some new things, but you have to try harder than this.

It's hard to choose a stand out performance when everyone was so strong, but if there was a gun to my head, I would choose Jack Lemmon. He's almost TOO good and you genuinely feel bad for him.

I thought the conceit of having the protagonists be a film crew for a reality show was a smart way to deal with the question that always pops up in found-footage movies - "why are people still filming?". I was enjoying the movie up to the point where everything went to hell and the ghosts showed up. Then I just couldn't take it seriously at all and any tension or atmosphere that it had built up just went away. I thought the idea that the actual asylum was fucking with them and preventing their escape, screwing with their perception of time, was much more disturbing than ghosts with silly makeup running at the camera and random objects flying about. I started laughing when Houston, the fake psychic, got pulled up midair and then thrown down the hallway. Seriously? If this is considered better than Paranormal Activity, then I can't imagine what utter turds those movies must be.

I agree with you more on The Innkeepers though I think The House of the Devil is complete garbage. Both movies suffered from similar problems (long buildup with little atmosphere or tension-building and bad payoff). Innkeepers at least had the relationship between Sarah Paxton and Pat Healy's character to keep us interested while we waited until bad things were about to happen. The last 20 minutes of it was pretty scary though, which I can't say for House.

The Panic In Needle Park

*nods his head off*

Woke up at 2 this morning, decided to watch the entire band of brothers series on blu ray. Don't know why I couldn't sleep, but I do know that band of brothers is incredible.

Insidious is a frustrating movie. It has short moments where it's actually effective, but all out together they make up maybe 10 minutes of the movie. Plus the ending is complete bullshit. Fucking modern horror movies man.

Cloud Atlas - 1/5

New one for the Wachowski, uh, siblings now, I guess, and clearly they are off their rockers, as this is an awful film with very little substance or anything recommendable at all beyond some flashy special effects. Purportedly one of those 'multiple timeline story' movies where a bunch of seemingly unconnected storylines all end up fitting together by the end, this is big on budget but little on ideas, and while at first the sheer ambition and creativity put into the aesthetics and settings made me think there was something to sink my teeth into, by the end I was just fuming. It's one thing that they really only had one central idea - "it's a good idea to rebel against authority when something is wrong in society" - another that that idea is cliched, preachy crap, and a third that they repeat it SEVEN TIMES OVER IN VARIOUS DIFFERENT GUISES. I can't even begin to comprehend the level of vile, psuedo-intellectual trash that this all amounted to...really it was just insufferable. Add to that awful pacing that made it impossible to enjoy any of the storylines even if they were good, stock characters with no personality, a shitload of melodrama and to top it all off, completely stale unfunny 'humor' that mostly just clashed with the serious tone the rest of the film set. This has no idea what it wants to be and is completely terrible on top of that. Inconceivably worthless hack-work of a film.