Ben Caldwell's Dracula

Ben Caldwell sent me this picture from his excellent book, All-Action Classics: Dracula, easily the best comics adaptation of Stoker's tale ever published. If you at all consider yourself a Dracula fan, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

And because Ben's awesome, he also sent some behind-the-scenes designs and other miscellanea for us to look at. It's from an art book he's putting out for all the All-Action Classics he's done. Cannot wait to see that.

10 movies I liked a lot in 2010

Now we're getting into the good stuff. These ten films were almost perfect, but for some minor detail that kept me from loving them forever.

Number 20



The dialogue, the setting, the acting, and the mood are all as great as everyone says they are. I loved it right up until the "25 Years Later" jump, which is where it lost me. I know people who appreciated that closure, but I would've preferred it another way.

Number 19



A powerful and moving love story, but I couldn't get behind the couple, as I've said before. And even though I suspect that was exactly the reaction I was supposed to have, it kept me from fully embracing this movie.


Number 18



I was shocked to like this as much as I did, but in some ways it's better than the original. Jackie Chan is no Pat Morita, but he acts his heart out in this thing and so does Jaden Smith. If it was an original story, it would've been a lot higher on this list.

Number 17



An enjoyable, light-hearted spy movie. Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz aren't my favorite actors, but they were perfect for this harmless bit of fun.

Number 16



A powerful character study combined with an intriguing mystery. Two things keep me from loving it though. One is the knowledge that the series will never be properly completed, but more than that: though I empathize with Lisbeth, I don't actually like her.

Number 15



If you have to adapt a cheesy action show from the '80s, this is exactly the way to do it. It had everything I liked about the show (the characters' ticks and relationships; the traps and plans; the explosions) and none of the stuff I didn't (guys stumbling away unscathed from airplane crashes). Like The Karate Kid, it loses points for being a remake, but not as many because unlike the other '80s remake, this one has an original plot.

Number 14



A solid action movie that proved you don't have to have a villain to keep the excitement level up. I'm not really sure why I didn't love it more. Maybe it was Chris Pine's relationship with his wife. I didn't really buy how that subplot played out.

Number 13



It was a pretty good year for action movies. This is another solid one that entertained me the whole way through. It was exciting and funny. There's one thing I didn't care for, but it's a spoiler, so I won't go into detail. Just something I thought wasn't resolved very well. Ask me in the comments if you're curious.

Number 12



A fun, funny movie about Vikings and dragons with some great 3D flying sequences.  My only beef (and I know this isn't fair to say) is that it kills me to know that Dreamwork's is going to drive this into the ground the way it did Shrek and Madagascar and plans to do with Kung Fu Panda. That takes a lot of the fun away for me. Not the movie's fault, but that's how it is.

Number 11



It's got a great, tightly woven story with awesome twists and revelations, some really nice acting, super special effects, and an unforgettable soundtrack. The only thing keeping it out of the Top Ten for me is the ambiguity of the ending. I don't have any doubt about what happened three seconds after the fade, but I really hate having to argue about it with other people.

12 movies I hated in 2010

They say that every cloud has a silver lining. If that's true, the silver linings in these storm clouds were bolts of lightning about to strike the tree I was standing under. From worst to...well, "best" doesn't seem like the appropriate word, but "least worst" maybe:

Number 52



I wrote a full review for the Kill All Monsters! blog, but the short version is that Skyline had no story. It was an idea for a story, but it went nowhere and ended at what should have been the movie's halfway point. Horrible.

Number 51



The movie that proved that M Night Shyamalan is so far gone that he doesn't even have to direct the movie for it to suck. Devil didn't make any sense and replaced Plot and Character Motivation with things like Fate and Whatever Shyamalan Decided to Pull Out of His Butt.


Number 50



Better than Devil only because Shyamalan started with something wonderful. But he managed to suck every bit of joy out of it, even going as far as taking one of the most positive, fun-loving characters ever created and turning him into a mopey downer, while also inexplicably mispronouncing his name.

Number 49



"The three of us have to go to Hades to rescue my mom, but first we have to find three magic items that will each let one of us escape once we get there. No, no, don't even think about the math. We can figure that out once we're in the underworld and have no other way of getting out. I'm sure it'll be fine."

Number 48



I love Peter Jackson, but how can anyone manage to make a movie about a child murderer that doesn't make you feel anything about what's going on?

Number 47



Takes everything awesome about the Jonah Hex concept and throws it out the stagecoach window in favor of making Wild Wild West II.

Number 46



As an amateur theologian, I try not to be too judgmental of movies that get it wrong, but seriously...Legion didn't even try. I need to watch The Prophecy again to cleanse my palate.

Number 45



Man, people love their blue posters, don't they?

My big problem with this one is that it's based entirely on my least-favorite element of vampire mythology: that getting bitten by a vampire automatically turns you into one. I disliked more than just that, but you can read the rest in my review.

Number 44



I love Liam Neeson and Julianne Moore, but Chloe didn't do either of them justice, mostly because Moore and Seyfried's characters don't act in any way resembling real people. Liam's character is fine, but he's really just a plot device.

Number 43



I know a lot of people like this one, but I'm guessing that they tend to like crime movies more than I do. I need a really likable - or at least relatable - character to hook me into a crime drama and He Loves His Girlfriend isn't enough to do that for me. I had a hard time rooting for or caring about anyone in The Town.

Number 42



It set itself up to be so much, but - though it had a moment or two - it was so little. Some of its biggest stars were nothing more than cameos and it unnecessarily used CGI when practical effects were needed. I mean, seriously, how hard is it to light a stuntman on fire that you have to create flames on your computer?

Number 41



Two of my favorite comedians. My least favorite comedy of the year. It made me laugh a couple of times, but that only reminded me of the reaction I should have been having through the rest of the film about unlikable people doing stupid, ridiculous things.

Pass the Comics: Kill! Kill! Kill!

Dracula



Kate Beaton drew a whole coffinload of Dracula comics.

Your Grave is Ready



Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine shares two werewolf comics in the same post. The other one explains that Wanda Was a Werewolf.

The Legion of Monsters



If you know Man-Thing, you can see where this is going. Read more about the world's spookiest super non-team at Diversions of the Groovy Kind.

31 Things I Love About Halloween: Vampire Fangs

Halloween is like Talk Like a Pirate Day for the vampire-curious. Sure, you could wear fake vampire fangs everyday, but only the most hardcore do. For the rest of us, October is the only time of year we can get away with putting plastic teeth in our mouths and trying out our best Lugosi accents.

Graphic Classics' Halloween Sale

Graphic Classics is a great line of comics anthologies that uses top-notch artists to adapt stories by classic authors. Each volume contains one or two familiar stories as well as obscure ones that you may have never read. None of the volumes I've read - and I've got most of them - have failed to entertain and educate me at the same time.

Several of the volumes are horror-related, so from now through Halloween Graphic Classics are on sale for 20% off when you buy them through the publisher's website. I'm not getting paid to advertise for them; I just really like these books and know some of you will too. Now's a perfect time to try them out.

Let Me In (2010)

As the title suggests, Let Me In accepts the legend that a vampire can't enter a house unless she's first invited. It's one of my least-favorite vampire traditions (tied with Can't Cross Running Water), but Let Me In makes it work by - if not explaining it - at least showing what happens when a vampire breaks the rule.

That's not the only thing to like about the movie. Even though I'm very poorly read in Hammer's horror output from the late '50s through early '70s, it was a thrill to see their name in front of a horror film again. More than that though, it's the story about loneliness that makes the film so interesting.

Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Road) plays a twelve-year-old boy named Owen who doesn't have any friends. He's a really cute kid, but his parents' divorce is screwing him up and his mom dresses him weird and he doesn't have a lot in the way of social skills. He's being picked on by a bully at school named Kenny (Dylan Minnette, who played Jack's son in the last season of Lost) and as the movie begins, Owen's trying to build up courage to use a knife to make Kenny stop. Enter Abby (Chloë Grace Moretz from Kick Ass), a girl Owen's age who moves into Owen's apartment complex with her dad.

I won't tease out what you already know. Abby's a vampire. And in her way, she's just as lonely as Owen. The two strike up a friendship, then a romance.

It's no coincidence that Owen's studying Romeo and Juliet in school. Owen and Abby are star-crossed lovers. What's nice is that the movie doesn't carry the analogy too far. It could have made Owen part of a family of vampire hunters or something, but there's no need for that. Vampires and humans are enemies and we all know it without having to be told. Owen and Abby should not be together. And yet they are.

The consequences are disturbing. My brother-in-law and I spent a lot of time talking about the movie afterward. Let Me In doesn't pull any punches or make it easy for the audience to root for the couple. Abby isn't some "good" vampire who only steals from blood banks or drinks from animals. She and her father kill people. Innocent people. She's so sweet and lovable when she's with Owen, but the movie never lets you forget who and what she really is. There's no justifying it.

I wanted Owen to connect to someone. He's got his mother, but she's going through her own crap with Owen's absent dad and has chosen to do it mostly alone.  She's loving to a point and superficially supportive, but she never once has a real, meaningful conversation with her son and ends every night on the couch by herself with a big glass of wine. Owen's not a perfect kid either, but he doesn't deserve what he's getting. His loneliness is heartbreaking.

So is Abby's, though she could very well deserve it. The movie doesn't tell us whether or not she has other options than killing innocent people in horribly violent ways. She seems to lose control when she's hungry, but there's at least one occasion when she's vamped out that she's able to keep herself from attacking Owen. Still, she has to run away to do it and it's not a tactic she can employ indefinitely in every occasion. But see, that's me trying to let myself off the hook for liking her. The film makes a point not to justify her actions. It wants you on that hook. She's cute and sweet, but she's a serial killer. It's impossible not to want her to find comfort in her loneliness, but you're sort of a bad person if you sympathize with her too much.

You cannot want her and Owen to be together. That they are is - like Romeo and Juliet again - a tragedy. But the movie does an excellent job - better than any production of Shakespeare's play I've ever seen - of putting you right there in the relationship and making you understand why they both need it so badly.