All-Star Survivor

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Survivor is “must-see tv” at the Zablo house. The whole family sits down to watch [and cheer or boo] the antics as players compete for a million bucks. You can imagine how excited we’ll be when an All-Star line-up goes head to head next season!

Ain’t It Cool News posted that CBS announced the all-star version of “Survivor,” featuring players from previous competitions, will launch right after the Super Bowl on Feb. 1. Although it wasn’t yet announced who will compete I’m hoping to see Rupert, Richard Hatch and Rudy trying to become the sole survivor!

Sale, Tim that is, Starts Here

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Tim Sale didn’t become a professional comic book artist until he was 29 years old. That’s pretty old to just be entering the profession.

The cool thing is that Tim didn’t give up on his dream and now he is one of most in-demand artists around, able to pick and choose the projects that HE wants to do.

Tim doesn’t have a website, but HERE’s a link to a recent interview. Tim talks about his influences, his art and what he plans to do next. Tim has worked on all of the classic characters. Batman. Daredevil. Wolverine. Spider-Man. Superman. The Hulk. He’s even drawn a really cool on-line Matrix story.

Pretty impressive for such a late bloomer, eh?

The Walking Dead!

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I love a good end of the world, small band of survivors fighting to survive against all odds story. You know, like Stephen King’s The Stand… “28 days later” and the clasic “Night of the Living Dead.”

Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore’s comic “The Walking Dead” can now join the list! I’m not kidding. It’s really that good. Don’t believe me? Then check out this review. And this one. Better yet, read it yourself. I did and I’ve added it to my monthly must buy list.

I really wasn’t familiar with Robert Kirkman before reading “The Walking Dead.” If you’re like me and want to know more about him, you can check out this interview. If you want to know a bit more about Tony Moore, here’s a link to his site.

I’d like to hang around and tell you more about “The Walking Dead” but I think I’ll go back and re-read it again.

It’s really THAT good!

Tampa Con & More

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I’m looking forward to this weekend. Big John Beatty and I will be motoring down to Tampa for Tim Gordon’s Tampa Comic Book and Toy Convention. Big Beatty is a guest but before I get to that…Saturday night Beatty and I are going to attend a little get together put on by Randy Martin. Randy is an avid art collector whose theme happens to be Edward Scissorshands. How cool is that? John Higashi will be there with his Star Wars theme [which includes are from just about anyone who is ANYONE. How many collections do you know that feature Drew Struzan originals [note the “s” as in many]? John Dell and other artists will be attending as well. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

The next day is Tampa Con. John is a guest [which makes me a guest of a guest, I suppose]. Other real guests include MARTY NODELL [creator of the original GREEN LANTERN], ETHAN VAN SCIVER [X-Men], ALEX SAVIUK [Spider-Man], JIM FERN [Scion, Wolverine], AUSTIN JANOWSKY [Superman], DICK KULPA [artist and publisher of CRACKED], MARK and STEPHANIE HEIKE and others.

If you happen to be in the area, stop in and say, “Hi.” I’ll be the guy in the StalloneZone shirt angeling for more Stallone sketches!

Cool & Fun

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I’ll bet that the new “Punisher” movie does pretty well at the box office. I say this for two reasons:

1] The Punisher is a pretty cool character and

2] the trailer makes it look like the movie will be fun.

So yeah, I think that it’ll do well even though the guy playing the Punisher doesn’t look like the “bad mofo” I’ve come to know and love. Mike Zeck’s Punisher… now that’s the real Punisher!

Interview & Transporter Too

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One of my favorite movies last year was the very under-rated The Transporter starring Jason Stratham. It had a cool soundtrack and just the right mix of action and comedy. It’s made a great addition to my dvd collection and everyone that I’ve shown it to has really liked it.

I’m happy to say that CHUD.com posted an interview with Jason Stratham and that he and director, Corey Yuen are returning for The Transporter 2!

ABC News Knows

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One of the biggest mysteries of our time is: Who Killed JFK? Ask ten different people and you could get ten different answers. ABC News thinks that they have the definitive answer.

“ABC News has conducted an exhaustive investigation of the Kennedy assassination, complete with a computer-generated reconstruction, which irrefutably confirms that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, the network said Monday. A two-hour special on the event is scheduled to air Nov. 20, two days before the 40th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s killing.”

Over the years, I’ve read just about every theory on the assassination of JFK and watched too many “documentaries” to even begin to count… I’m sure that I’ll tune in to see what ABC News has to say, but I doubt that it’ll have the DEFINITIVE answer.

Britney Bares No More

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Britney Spears appeared topless on the cover of Rolling Stone and British Elle magazines and even bottomless on the cover of Esquire. But now she says she going to keep her clothes on in future photo sessions.

Did I just hear the sound of males around the world sobbing?

Some Scary Facts

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I don’t know which surprised me more: that “Scary Movie 3” opened in first place [beating out “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” “Mystic River,” “Runaway Jury,” etc.], that it earned $48.1 million in it’s opening weekend [$48.1 MILLION!} or that it posted the best first weekend ever for a movie opening in October.

One thing that won’t surprise me is that with numbers like that, there WILL be a “Scary Movie 4!”

Halloween Fun!

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Man, I love Halloween!

As we get closer to the big night, I find myself drawn to scary books and movies. For some reason even more so than usual this year. Maybe it’s because there are so many good ones available.

I just finished reading Steve Niles’ Dial M for Monster. Dial M is a book of short stories featuring his monster hunter, Cal McDonald. You’ve heard me praise Niles’ work before and this book is no exception. I love everything about the world Niles has created for Cal [and I’m especially glad I can safely visit without fear of vampires, werewolves, fiends or other creatures coming after me!]. I’d suggest that you start with Guns, Drugs and Monsters [the first novel in the series] and then follow it up with Savage Membrane [the second].

If you’d like to get a taste of Niles’ work before commiting to a novel, then by all means check out 30 Days of Night. This award winning comic series [with art by the extremely talented Ben Templesmith] is being developed into a feature film produced by none other than Sam Raimi! Why wait for the film? The graphic novel is available now and well worth every penny!

Changing gears just a bit… on Tuesday, one of my two favorite movies so far this year, becomes available! That’s right 28 Days Later is available Tuesday! Man, I can’t wait!

If you’ve read this far, then you’re probably a real horror fan. You probably already know that a Dawn of the Dead remake starring Ving Rhames is coming out next March. But did you know that the trailer is available now? At first I didn’t think that a re-make of Dawn of the Dead was a good idea since the original trilogy [Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead] by George Romero are considered cult classics. But I did like the remake of Night of the Living Dead ]… plus Ving Rhames is starring… so why not? Plus, it’ll give me one more thing to love about Halloween!

As We Head into Halloween How About These Books, Graphic Novels and Movies

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Man, I love Halloween!

As we get closer to the big night, I find myself drawn to scary books and movies. For some reason even more so this year. Maybe it’s because there are so many good ones available.

I just finished reading Steve Niles‘ Dial M for Monster. Dial M is a book of short stories featuring his monster hunter, Cal McDonald. You’ve heard me praise Niles‘ work before and this book is no exception. I love everything about the world Niles has created for Cal [and I’m especially glad I can safely visit without fear of vampires, werewolves, fiends or other creatures coming after me!]. I’d suggest that you start with Guns, Drugs and Monsters [the first novel in the series] and then follow it up with Savage Membrane [the second].

If you’d like to get a taste of Niles‘ work before commiting to a novel, then by all means check out 30 Days of Night. This award winning comic series [with art by the extremely talented Ben Templesmith] is being developed into a feature film produced by none other than Sam Raimi! Why wait for the film? The graphic novel is available now and well worth every penny!

Changing gears just a bit… on Tuesday, one of my two favorite movies so far this year, becomes available! That’s right 28 Days Later is available Tuesday! Man, I can’t wait!

If you’ve read this far, then you’re probably a real horror fan. You probably already know that a Dawn of the Dead remake starring Ving Rhames is coming out next March. But did you know that the trailer is available now? At first I didn’t think that a re-make of Dawn of the Dead was a good idea since the original trilogy [Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead] by George Romero are considered cult classics. But I did like the remake of Night of the Living Dead ]… and Ving Rhames is starring… so why not?

Plus, it’ll give me one more thing to love about Halloween!

Kill Bill Disappoints

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I’m a huge fan of Quentin Tarintino’s work. Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction are two of my favorite movies. From Dusk till Dawn is as well. [And yes, I know that Robert Rodriguez directed it!] I loved everything about the original trailer for “Kill Bill.” The look. The music. The stars. How could it miss?
Let me tell you how. [Minor spoilers ahead.]
“Kill Bill” starts off well enough. It begins with a scratchy, cheesy “Now For Our Feature Presentation” intro straight out of the drive-ins that I loved as a kid. There’s also the retro “Presented in Shaw-Scope” title card, the “Revenge is a dish best served cold” Klingon quote, and the Sonny Bono song, “Bang, Bang” playing over the credits. Yeah baby, Quentin was tapping in to everything that we loved about this genre from our childhood.
Then the movie starts with a bang. Literally. Uma Thurman is shot in the head and left for dead. But she’s not really dead… just in a coma for four years. And when she wakes up she must have her revenge. Great set-up.

The action is over-the-top and brutal. The first payback that we see is really well done. It has the right mix of Tarantino heightened reality, humor and action. Then we have a flashback to the hospital and this is where the movie starts to loose me. There are a couple of scenes with a red neck and Buck the orderly that just really push the envelope. And for some reason everything after that seemed truly excessive and redundant.
How many arterial sprays do we need to see? How many limbs chopped off? But before we get to that gore we have to sit through an anime cartoon [which is pretty well done but again, very gory], a boring dialogue about tea, and discussion about why Uma needs a specific man to make her sword.
When I left the theater, I was disappointed. I had been hoping to see a really fun, really exciting revenge film. To make matters even worse, we don’t get to see how everything turns out, since “Kill Bill, Volume 2” doesn’t come out until February. The funny thing is, I didn’t hate the movie. I’m not sure I even disliked it. I was disappointed… but disappointed enough not to see the rest?

I guess we’ll know in February.

“Kill Bill”

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