Titans Terrors and Toys

A few weeks ago, I posted a review of three books that were published under the Terminator Salvation title, books that I read as a way satiating my need for new Terminator stuff. In the time since then, I was itching for more stories about bloodthirsty, belligerent 'bots from the future, so I decided to pick up copies of two books that were released under the Terminator 3 title: Terminator Dreams and Terminator Hunt , both by Aaron Allston. Since both the Terminator 3 and Terminator Salvation books are set in similar narrative timelines--both feature Kate Brewster as a primary character, and both place Judgment Day in 2003--it was interesting to compare the differences and similarities between how both sets of books view the future war with Skynet. Read on for my review of Allston's books and how they relate to the Terminator Salvation books.

Of the many things that I don't understand about Japanese pop culture, the appeal of super deformed (or "chibi") merchandise baffles me more than most. The way I see it, if I'm going to spend some money on a miniature replica of a character design that I admire, I want it to be as scale accurate as possible. Thus, to distort well-designed monsters, robots and superheroes by giving them tiny, squat bodies, stubby limbs and oversized heads makes absolutely no sense. I can't just blame the Japanese for this, though. Given the popularity of bobblehead dolls here in the U.S., dolls that would qualify as being super deformed, we're just as much to blame for the popularity of ill-scaled merchandise. However, I will make exceptions in cases where no other merchandise for a particular character is available. Case in point: Godzilla during the mid-80s. During that time, I was itching to get my hands on a replica of Japan's King of the Monsters but no versions...

When I started writing this blog, I made it a point to keep this blog fresh by providing new content at least more than once per week. Unfortunately, I've been falling behind lately due to a new love in my life. For the last few days, my wife and I have been in a state of near-religious bliss as we devote hours of worship to our new secular, electronic idol: the Vizio 47-inch TruLED LCD 3D HDTV . I'll be the first to admit that as horror/sci-fi geeks go, I'm pretty late to hop on the high-def bandwagon. Yet this was the first time in a while that we've had the money to get something like this, and it was worth the wait. Everything we've watched on this Vizio TV is absolutely gorgeous, from TV shows to movies to even high-def Wii video game footage we now get through the component cable we bought for the game system. We recently watched the Criterion release of the classic mystery film Green for Danger (1946) and it felt like we were in a movie theater. It...

If you live in the Washington DC area and have a love for the various artistic styles from the 20th century, you might want to stop by the Mexican Cultural Institute sometime between now and June 18th. The Institute is holding an exhibit entitled "Beyond the Labyrinth: Latin American Art and the FEMSA Collection" . While the exhibition will include the works of many great Latin American artists, artists such as Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Fernando Botero, I particularly wanted to draw your attention to one of the featured artists: surrealist painter Remedios Varo (1908-1963). I first saw Varo's paintings when the National Museum of Women in the Arts held an exhibit devoted to her back in 2000 entitled "The Magic of Remedios Varo". As Varo's work is described in the exhibit's press release : "In her meticulous paintings rendered in jewel-like tones, worlds overlap to create a reality apart: a chair back mysteriously opens to reveal human fa...

After writing my previous retrospective of the original Scream trilogy , I had to see Scream 4 on opening weekend so I could determine if it fit with the other three films. Thankfully, it does and it does so very well. Scream is one of the smartest movie franchises out there and Scream 4 maintains that level of quality. Continue reading for my complete, largely spoiler-free review, although I'll warn you that it's hard to discuss the subtexts and themes of Scream 4 without making at least some references (albeit oblique ones) to the ending. The short version of the review is that even though Scream 4 is not without its problems, it's a great addition to the Scream franchise and is a must-see if you enjoyed--and understood--the original trilogy in its entirety. Furthermore, the killer in Scream 4 is a worthy successor to both the previous Ghostface killers and the late Maureen Prescott herself. Read on ...

Check this out: The Man-Cave blog's look back at Cinemaware's classic video game, It Came From the Desert . I always get a kick out of horror games that take a retro approach to their visual style and plot, because they feel like "what if" examples of how video games would have looked if they had existed back in the 50s and 60s. Zombies Ate My Neighbors , Destroy All Humans , Stubbs The Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse , and I Was An Atomic Mutant! are good examples of this style of gaming. Yet even by the standards that these other games set, It Came From the Desert stands by itself as a very unique video gaming experience. At first glance, It Came From the Desert looks like what a licensed video game for the classic movie Them! would have been, but it's much more than that. Unlike many horror games, It Came From the Desert plays very much like a feature-length horror movie, combining a diverse selection of mini-games with a cast of characters and dia...

A few weeks back, I found The Old Robots site while surfing around the 'net and boy, did I hit the mother load when it comes to robot trivia. The Old Robots site is an easy-to-navigate archive of all sorts of robots that were produced during the mid-to-late twentieth century (as well as a few from the early twenty-first century, such as the Robosapien robots by WooWee ). While a large portion of the site is devoted to toy robots, it also lists a few robots built for industrial, agricultural, medical and military uses. Furthermore, the site features a variety of downloadable manuals, articles, posters and box art for the robots, and it even has its own YouTube channel that displays video footage of some of the robots in action. If there's a more thorough, comprehensive reference site out there devoted to robots across a wide range of areas, from practical robots to toy robots to movie and TV robots, I have yet to find it. To clarify, when I mention "toy robots...

When it comes to nightly prime time viewing on the major broadcast networks, the Mrs. and I frequently tune in to the forensics-focused mystery/crime drama shows. We always enjoy a good whodunit and given my preference for giallo and slasher films that place an emphasis on the unknown, it's nice to see how much more elaborate murder mysteries have gotten on these shows since the popularity of CSI . (Even NCIS , which usually focuses on matters of political intrigue, has its fair share of knife-wielding maniacs, such as in last week's episode "Two-Faced".) Come to think of it, I can't imagine why slasher fans in general wouldn't be happy with prime time TV the way it is now, because I don't remember this many psycho killers and mangled bodies appearing during the nightly 8 to 11 programming block since X-Files , Millennium and Profiler were on the air. That said, last week's episodes of Criminal Minds and its spin-off Suspect Behavior delivered ...

This week, the folks over at the Fierce and Nerdy site invited me to share some of my thoughts on Ridley Scott's next movie Prometheus , the appeal of Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars , and how annoying public relations campaigns for the fossil fuel industry can be. Click here to read my whole post. Enjoy!

I can't think of enough good things to say about Batman: Brave and the Bold . While it isn't on the scale of achievement as Bruce Timm and Paul Dini’s animated version of the DC universe, it's a deeply sincere love letter to DC's Silver Age comics that simultaneously parodies and celebrates the colorful, campy and openly absurd story lines that defined this particular era of superhero comics. In fact, Brave and the Bold 's ability to seamlessly reference other eras of DC comics while staying true to Silver Age logic is proof of just how well-written and drawn this show is, perhaps making it the smartest and wittiest superhero show on TV right now--smart enough to weave engrossing tales of superhero adventure by using narrative threads from all over DC's multi-decade history (no matter obscure), yet witty enough not to take itself too seriously and maintain a sense of both visual and narrative playfulness. With that in mind, I've decided to do this post...

As far as I know, action figure customization is a hobby that ranks high in both practice and prestige among die-hard fantasy, horror and sci-fi geeks. The more customizable types of action figure were those made by the now-defunct Mego Corporation . Mego's action figures had such a basic design that with the addition of customized costumes, accessories and head sculpts, they could be adapted for just about any fantasy, horror or sci-fi license. So, leave it up to EMCE Toys, the company that's determined to continue Mego's legacy, to release its own action figure customization kit ... with zombies! During last February's Toy Fair 2011, EMCE displayed its "Make Your Own Zombie" Action Figure Customizing Kit as part of their Zombie Survival Headquarters booth. Scheduled to be released in the fall at the price of $49.99, this kit includes five heads and multiple torso and limb parts--each in varying states of decay, from freshly deceased to almost skinless--t...