Surviving Pirates

While I work on just how I'm supposed to write 600+ words on how uninteresting Friday the 13th (2009) is, check out John Kenneth Muir's own review which accurately sums up everything I'm thinking about the movie.

Anyway. For her birthday, I bought my girlfriend the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy on Blu-ray. As she sees it, this was a huge sacrifice on my part, because I've expressed a negative opinion on the movies consistently and, between the two of us, I own the only Blu-ray player. So she's decided that today, she will work through all three, all the while trying to convince me that these are the great escapist adventure films of the 21st Century.

Now, I don't hate the Pirates flicks, despite my frequent protests. I'm just surrounded by Jack Sparrow fangirls all the time. My girlfriend is one. My last roommate is one. Most of my female friends are. You begin to get defensive when they want to watch the movies for the billionth time, because there are so many other films, better films that could be watched.

But properly, I find the original to be amusing but overlong by a half-hour, all of which is in the middle act. As for the other two, well... there's probably one good movie between the two of them and I may take it upon myself as an intellectual exercise to stitch together such a film at some point.

My full review of all three remains "Johnny Depp in eyeliner."

Notes from the Abyss

Yeeeeah, I've been lousy about this blog concept. I do have bullet points, though!

• I finally have a solid book concept and a title to go with it. I don't want to get into more details until I have an outline and a few chapters hammered out, but I'm extremely excited about where this is going. Right now I'm looking at how I can reorganize the editorial structure at Classic-Horror.com so that I can take a six-month sorta-sabbatical to write the damned thing.
  
• I've seen Star Trek three times now and I'm going for a fourth tonight. In part, it's because my brain is just geeking out about all the little intricacies of J.J. Abrams' brave new Trek universe, but mostly it's because I have a couple of friends who geek out even harder -- physically flailing with joy -- while they watch. It's one of those things that makes being a film fan so rewarding.
• My girlfriend and I have been working through the entire run of Supernatural -- we're two-thirds of the way through Season 4 right now -- and it's amusing as hell. She absolutely adores the brotherly interactions of the Winchester boys and the overall story arc, but she's very easily grossed out by gore and horrible death -- two things that SPN has in surprising abundance for a network television series. Sometimes she'll make me rewatch an episode in the same night just so she can relive some of the banter between Sam and Dean. Other times I'll have to shield her from monsters opening a maw of disgusting fangs or a particularly expressive arterial spray.
• The new Friday the 13th is a rather listless exercise in brutality, one that actually makes me pine for the days when Jason Voorhees was more into the quick, creative, over-the-top kill. I never wanted to use the verb "pine" and the name "Jason Voorhees" in the same sentence, but here we are. I was actually describing Jason Lives in faintly glowing terms to my mother because the new version put me off so much. Look for a review over at Classic-Horror in the next week.
• I cannot stop watching the last four minutes of the Glee pilot. It's like crack on iTunes.
• I'm working on a new horror-themed fanvid, this time related to the Hammer era. I'll probably post it online sometime in late August.
• I still haven't seen Drag Me to Hell and it's killing me a little inside.

Finally, Classic-Horror.com's Tenth Birthday celebration begins on Monday, June 15th with a brand-new design, some new site features, and more!