Previews and Reviews that are Z's Views
Our next Sketch Society get-together is this Saturday. If you like to draw and live within traveling distance to Daytona Beach, Florida, come and join us. Click HERE to learn more about the meeting!
Ah, finally success. A perfect score in the Scary Beginnings quiz.
It’s really hard to believe that The Walking Dead has been around for five years. But it has. And from the very first issue The Walking Dead been one of the best monthly comics published. Longtime ZONErs know that I’ve been singing it’s praises for years.In October, Image is coming out with the Volume 4 hard cover Walking Dead [which collects issues 37 – 48 of the series] as well as The Walking Dead: The Covers hard cover [which collects the first 50 covers, as well as the various collected edition covers plus sketch book material and commentary].
Since we have a lot of Hellboy fans here at the ZONE, I thought I should mention that Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy, will be back in October with the first Hellboy comic that he’s drawn in three years! Hellboy: In the Chapel of Moloch is a one shot that finds Hellboy investigatating an ancient chapel where he discovers “an artist compelled by something more sinister than any muse” locked away in order to complete his “life’s work.”You can see the entire cover and read more about the issue here.
My unperfect [yeah, I made it up] streak continues with this
If you’ve been around the ZONE in the last day or so, you know that I planned to check out “Babylon A.D.” this weekend when it premiered. I wasn’t going in with high expectations, just the hope that I’d have an enjoyable couple of hours. Now I’m not so sure.That’s Mathieu Kassovitz, “Babylon A.D.” director in the photo with Vin Diesel above. Kassovitz says he’s very unhappy with the film and that he “never had a chance to do one scene the way it was written or the way [he] wanted it to be.” He’s especially upset that the film has been cut down to 93 minutes instead of the 108 he was hoping for. Kassovitz doesn’t call the film a total waste — “I like the energy of it and I got some scenes I’m happy with,” he says. “But I know what I had — I had something much better in my hands but I just wasn’t allowed to work.”
Arrrgh! Just missed a perfect score again. 8 out of 9. Knocked out of the Gold Medal slot by Bela Lugosi. Here’s
Vin Diesel has a new movie, “Babylon, A.D.” opening Friday. The reaction to what we’ve seen of it so far, at least from most ZONErs has been mixed. I’m actually looking forward to “Babylon, A.D.” with midlevel expectations.
Even if you’re not interested in
“Babylon, A.D.”, you still might want to check out this Vin Diesel interview at Newsarama.com. Diesel talks about the “Fast and the Furious” pre-se/quel that brings back the orginal cast [Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez and Paul Walker], his dream project “Hannibal” and “Dark Athena” which is the third in the Riddick trilogy. According to Diesel, writer/director David Twohy is working on the script now. I love the Riddick character and would love to see him in a new adventure.
80% means that I got two wrong. The only way to get one wrong is to use the same answer twice. If you use every answer once and aren’t perfect, the best score possible is 80%. Beat my score [or at least give it a go] by clicking 
James Hibberd, a senior reporter for The Hollywood Reporter, posted a spoiler-free review of the first eight episodes of The Shield’s final season.Here are a few snippets that really stood out for me:
It’s no secret that I’m happy about Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillip’s “Sleeper” graphic novels being optioned for the big screen. The fact that Sam [‘Spider-Man”] Raimi may direct with Tom Cruise set to star sweetens the deal, at least in my humble opinion.
If you wonder what Ed Brubaker thinks about it, wonder no more. Simply click here.
One of my favorite authors, Charlie Huston is the subject of this interview at FantasyBookCritic.
Huston’s new Joe Pitt novel, Every Last Drop comes out next month, so that’s probably the reason for the interview… and I guess
Every Last Drop could be classified as “fantasy” since it features modern day vampires. Still, if anyone asks me, its genre when I’m reading Every Last Drop, I’m going with “horror.”
It’s good that I didn’t bet that things would be back to normal tomorrow. Compare the map from 11am in the post below and the one above from 5pm and you can see the problem. Tropical Storm Fay is hardly moving. Who would have thought that this blog would turn into a weather report? Yeesh.
Word at 2pm was that schools would open tomorrow. Teachers, administrators and support staff would arrive on time and prepare for the students who’d come in one hour later. At 6pm a new notice came through. School tomorrow was cancelled due to flooding, winds and above average rain everywhere.
I still think that tomorrow I’ll go in and get some work done. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t plan so far ahead. If we’ve learned only one thing with this weather it’s that projections, predictions and plans seldom work out.
On Monday we received word that the Daytona Beach area was in the direct path of Tropical Storm Fay. At that time, it was projected that Fay would come across the state at tropical storm strength, hit our area at about 2am Wednesday morning and then head out to sea.
Tuesday morning I went in to work to assist in running a special needs shelter. Schools and many businesses closed in anticipation of the high winds and rain. Tropical Storm Fay changed paths. Because of the storm shift our area didn’t get near the winds or rain predicted. Our shelter closed down at 2:30pm and we were sent home. Those who had come for shelter had the option to go to another shelter.
It was then projected that Fay would cut across the state, head out to sea and then double back slamming into our area at about 8am Wednesday. But that’s not what happened. Instead Fay slowed down and didn’t move for hours. She just kept dumping rain and wind. News reports came in from areas south of us that homes were being flooded, streets washed out and that people should not go out unless absolutely necessary. The local news warned to be careful of snakes and alligators that could be in newly flooded areas. Schools and many businesses opted to close down for Thursday. At 10pm Wednesday evening, I received a call that we might have to go back and open up the shelter at midnight. Fortunately, the call never came [which means the current shelters were able to handle the people in need].
So here it is 11:50 on Thursday morning. The prediction is that Tropical Storm Fay will be out of our area by Friday morning. If that’s the case then things will pretty much back to normal tomorrow. Since Fay has yet to follow her projected path and timeline, I’m not betting on it.
