Pretty cool, right? Just your average garden and fountain thing.

Hmmm, kind of strange to have a monk chilling with a deer. Whatever!

Cool fountain! What is that, a dragon? Not weird at all!

Wait, why the fuck are all the ceilings so low? Why is there carpet on everything?

AND WHY ARE THERE INSTRUMENTS PLAYING ON THEIR OWN ACCORD EVERY TIME YOU ROUND A CORNER? There were probably 30 of these instrument arrangements scattered throughout the whole compound. I didn’t take too many pictures of them, because you couldn’t tell that they were acting independently, so just picture a lot.

This was the “Infinity Room”. No, there’s nothing underneath this room to support the weight.

This was the view when you got to the end of the Infinity Room. The whole room creaked and swayed with every breeze. Fucking terrifying.

Don’t worry, this is just the beginning of the dolls.

This diorama isn’t that scary, is it?

HOW ABOUT NOW?

This guy also collected lots of maritime memorabilia. Some pretty neat, relatively normal things.

Cool chair! But what’s it made out of?

Oh. Thanks!

Oh you know, just a giant whale vs. squid battle. It was hard to get a picture of just how big this thing was, but hopefully this helps.

Different whale angle. Help at all?

Nightmares foreverrrrrrrrrr.

Might not seem too creepy, but you had to put a token into this machine to make this little bird demon pop out from behind that gravestone. So kvlt.

To the right is the human sized carousel that had absolutely no horses on it. Instead, it was crazy shit like this:

Towards the end, there was no escape from the circus music. It…was…EVERYWHERE.

Who needs radios when you can just buy a full-sized robot orchestra?

And here’s the doll carousel…for dolls.

But what do you put on top of the doll carousel? Hmmm, maybe I’ll put:

And what carousel is complete without the four horsemen of the apocalypse looking over you?

Too scary?  Then let’s just put some fucking angels up there! It’ll be fine!

On the way home, and since it was Wisconsin, we saw this deer farm and Rampaige decided to feed a goat.

And then Rampaige fed a deer!

Then she tried to feed the bison! This bison? NOT INTO IT.

I can’t wait for this baby pig to grow up and turn into bacon so I can eat it.

And finally, the reindeer that gives ZERO FUCKS ABOUT EVERYTHING.

Where’ve I been?! Nowhere good, just fucking around. Rather than type out the things that happened at C2E2, I figured it’d be easier to tell everyone. Hopefully this sparks my podcasting bug and I can go back to recording more frequently. In the meantime, download this episode through iTunes or through the direct page. Enjoy!

Episode 7

After a long, LONG hiatus (which some would argue should have been longer), the Wolfman is back. What’s happened in the last few months? Nothing that exciting. In this episode, however, the Wolfman recounts his experiences from the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo, casually known as “C2E2″. He may or may not have commented on other movies, but that’s the most important subject at hand!

Can I call this film “Shark Night 3D” if I saw it in 2D during the daytime? Fuck it. As some of you guys who might know me even a little bit could tell you, I’m typically not a fan of movies that vilify animals, especially awesome animals. Okay okay, Jaws is one of the best movies ever, but that’s based more on the paranoia and fear of the town with an unknown invader and the conversations between Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfuss. Point being, despite not typically liking creature features based on real, unwilling animals, there can be exceptions to that rule. As much shit as I talked about this movie, considering it was a B-movie plot with a PG-13 rating, the fact that it was directed by David R. Ellis, the man who brought us Snakes on a Plane and Cellular, and riding my fondness for Sara Paxton‘s character in The Innkeepers, I decided to give it a shot. Oh yeah, and I was bored as shit.

With all this shark terror going on, it was a wise decision to “cover up”.

Similar to the opening of Jaws, the opening scene of this movie involves a lady allowing her boyfriend to take her top off (don’t get excited, it’s only PG-13), and when he thinks she’s fooling around, she gets eaten by a shark. We’re then introduced to a hodgepodge of college-aged characters who are about to celebrate spring break or finals or they won a frisbee tournament or something, it doesn’t really matter. The way they choose to celebrate being attractive college kids is by going to Sara’s (Sara Paxton) family lake house in Louisiana. While wakeboarding, one guy gets him arm bitten off by a shark. Oh no! The rest of the gang need to contact the authorities to try to save the arm, but while using their boat, it fucks up on them and explodes. Two local rednecks offer their services, but that’s when we learn that these rednecks are the ones who put the sharks in the lake, as well as having rigged the sharks with cameras, so that way people are getting eaten and it’s all being filmed. Assholes. Even the sheriff is in on the whole thing! All the college kids get killed, except for Sara and athletic yet intelligent male counterpart, who are able to kill the rednecks and the sheriff. Our heroes make it out alive, as well as a dog, until at the very last moment, we see a great white shark jump out of the water at the camera! I bet THAT was cool to see in 3D!

Anyone feel like explaining to me how great white sharks were able to osmoregulate in order to survive in fresh water? ANYONE?

Let’s start off with the things I like, of which there were three. First, Sara Paxton was in it. Second, there was a point where one of the redneck characters said there were nearly 350 species of sharks, which would be correct. Third, the first time we see a shark attack, one character comments on it looking like a bull shark, which would make sense, considering they are the only species of shark known to travel into freshwater and can adapt to living in it. The things I didn’t like were everything else going on. There were hammerhead sharks and great whites, WHICH COULDN’T HAVE FUCKING SURVIVED. Had they chose to ONLY use bull sharks, I wouldn’t have been as angry, but why would you go through the effort of doing a tiny amount of research, like with how many sharks there are, and realize there is a reason why sharks live in the ocean? Did I mention this was PG-13? It was like if you had taken Piranha 3D and cut out all of the gore and boobs to be able to show it on TV. Donal Logue played the sheriff and Joel David Moore played one of the coeds, and that was kind of entertaining, but those guys weren’t used nearly enough to make it a funnier movie. Also, the excuse for why this was happening was because of Donal Logue’s statistics on how many people watch “Shark Week” every year. THAT’S THE REASON THEY’RE DOING THIS…IT’S BECAUSE OF FUCKING SHARK WEEK. Even had this movie been rated R and had they stuck to only bull sharks, it still would have been a poor knock off of Piranha 3D, and still would have been too little, too late. I recommend checking out Cellular though because THAT movie is hilariously terrible. Oh yeah, and that skinny guy from The Blair Witch Project isn’t skinny anymore, in case you were wondering.

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The first I learned of this movie was when a poster appeared at work, alongside posters for Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance and The Hunger Games. It just made me long for a time when posters had paintings of the main characters on it, as opposed to just tossing a bunch of black and orange on there. There’s also the very popular orange and blue color scheme, which is equally as annoying. I also remember that this film came out right around Christmas, and despite having no interest in seeing it at that time, I didn’t see it playing at a nearby 18 screen theatre. THERE WERE 18 SCREENS AND THEY COULDN’T WASTE A SINGLE ONE OF THEM ON THIS GARBAGE. It also wasn’t screened for North American critics, which is always a good sign.

This was the other image I constantly saw while this movie was being promoted. Sorry, Emile, but you can’t hide from this piece of shit movie.

You’ve got these two dudes who are flying to Moscow (that’s in Russia) to try to make money from some internet computer thing. Don’t worry, none of that shit is important, because aliens show up. None of the characters are really that important or interesting or entertaining, because all that matters is that aliens show up and start turning people into ash. The main characters manage to hide for close to a week, thanks to something referred to as a “door”, behind which is a “room”, and that provides enough security for the aliens to not find them. Through some huge jumps in science and logic, our characters learn that the aliens have armor that makes them invisible, but a drawback to that armor is it electrifies nearby objects. This means that all the characters have to do is wear lightbulbs around their necks and if they light up, bad guys are nearby! Convenient! They get word that there’s a nuclear submarine that’s leaving Moscow so the characters make their way there and some of them die but some of them live and these aliens are living everywhere but their weakness is microwaves so the humans fight back and it’s all a bunch of dumb, pointless bullshit that nobody cares about.

“Well of COURSE this microwave gun, built by a guy who covered the walls of his apartment with cages, is going to work when it comes to short-circuiting the extra terrestrial armor! Was I the only one who found that to be obvious?!”

Where do I start with what were the worst parts of the movie? I guess I had assumed there would be a reason why this movie would take place in Russia, other than maybe they got a discount for filming there. I didn’t see any aspect of why this movie was made better or more intense for having taken place in Russia, especially considering we learned that these aliens invaded the whole world, so this movie could have taken place ANYWHERE and been just as shitty. The aliens themselves switched from looking like shit that fell off of a tree in Avatar when they wore their “armor”, to looking like an enemy from a Sega CD videogame. Just a terrible, design for something that you’ve already established as essentially being invisible. Not to mention that one of their weaknesses was that they couldn’t see through windows? Really? When I talk about their weaknesses and jumps in logic, all of the rules were established by these American dum-dums who were trying to become billionaires through the internet, not any type of scientist. You have invisible aliens who can’t see through the store windows in a mall, so you immediately know that it’s because these windows have small amounts of electricity in them that disrupt the sensory perception of aliens, and when a character asks, “How’d you know that?”, the character’s response is “Shark Week”. AN ALIEN COMES IN TO DESTROY EVERYTHING AND YOU HAPPEN TO STAY ALIVE BECAUSE YOU HIDE BEHIND A GODDAMNED WINDOW AND YOU IMMEDIATELY JUMP TO THE CONCLUSION THAT ELECTRICITY CAN DISRUPT THEIR SENSORY ORGANS BECAUSE OF HOW CLEARLY SIMILAR THESE INVISIBLE ALIENS ARE TO SHARKS. What the fuck? Just skip this movie entirely and know that it should have gone straight to video and I’m sure that’s why the producers pulled it from theaters as a gift to humanity around Christmas, just like Jesus did. That’s what Jesus did, right?

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Even though I saw this movie three days after it opened, I felt like it might as well have been three weeks after its release. Last summer, there were four superhero movies and I saw every one of them on their opening day, first show of the day. Unfortunately, this just wasn’t possible with The Avengers, but considering that it made over $200 million in three days, I don’t think Marvel really noticed my missing $10. Also, with all the money it made, I don’t really feel like I need to go over the WHOLE plot for you guys because it feels like everyone has already seen it. Instead, just like I did with Iron Man 2, it’s going to be much easier to just go over how well I think each character/actor did in this movie, and that’ll also be a lot more fun for me. Before I do, I suppose I can just briefly say that Loki, as made famous in Thor, also made famous by just being Thor’s brother, uses the “Tesseract”, which all comic book fans should recognize as the Cosmic Cube, to teleport an intergalactic army to destroy the world. In retaliation, Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, the Hulk, Hawkeye, and Black Widow are called together to fight the impending galactic war. Brief enough? Now I get to talk about everybody!

Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man

Maybe it’s RDJ’s public personality that gets me kind of annoyed with him and the fact that he is kind of full of himself, but considering his financial and critical success has warranted him being a tad “bragadocious”. I was also nervous that the whole movie would focus on him, considering he’s already got two Iron Man movies under his belt and I always associate Captain America as the leading Avenger. Even though I had these reservations, I was glad to see that Tony Stark didn’t have much more screen time than anyone else, and considering he didn’t have to burden the weight of the whole film on his shoulders, he was able to be a more comical Tony Stark than we’d already seen. Lots of one-liners, jabs at other characters, and an overall tendency to downplay the seriousness of a situation. Steve Rogers even called him out on the fact that he was self-centered and narcissistic, which made me nervous that there’d be a scene where Steve Rogers would have to say some “You really are a hero!” bullshit, but we were spared. Even though Iron Man was a key part of defeating the aliens, nobody made a big deal out of it, which really fits in with the Tony Stark I know. That despite no matter how many successes he might have, he’s still kind of an egotistical prick and nobody wants to pay him ANY compliments.

Chris Evans as Steve Rogers/Captain America

I love Captain America. Call me old-fashioned for loving America, and I’ll call you a goddamned Communist. What I love about his character is that he ALWAYS knows what is right, and does everything in his power to stand up for it. Whether it was in the Civil War storyline where he had to allow himself to be arrested or sacrificing himself at the end of Captain America: The First Avenger, he knows what to do and doesn’t hesitate. One scene in particular near the end of the film, despite not being the most powerful member of the team, he told everyone exactly what to do and exactly when to do it, and everyone fell into rank. They knew that this guy had fought evil incarnate in World War II and trust him with everything. Whether he was breaking up a fight between Thor and Iron Man or jumping across the helicarrier to literally SMACK a grenade out of the air to protect Stark, Cap really proved that he’s more than just a science experiment. I also stand by my opinion that Chris Evans is handsome enough and funny enough to put him into any superhero outfit and do a great job.

Chris Hemsworth as Thor

Remember how I mentioned that the Thor movie really only served as a stepping stone to build up to The Avengers? Boy howdy, was I right. Even though Thor wasn’t the best superhero movie last summer, it introduced you to a regal character who lives in a world completely removed from and much more vast than anything us humans on Earth could even wrap our heads around. He proves himself not only wise in the way he tries to handle Loki and his desire to merely take him back to Asgard, but also showed how powerful and essentially God-like when he knocks Hulk on his ass with one punch or summons lightning to vaporize and shit ton of aliens. I’d say that in films, just like in the comics, Thor works much better as a supporting cast member than as a the major player. He could basically solve everything problem with a giant hammer and some lightning.

Tom Hiddleston as Loki

You might have found Loki to be a quivering, whining prick in Thor, so imagine how big of a douchebag he got after floating around the universe with nothing but the thought of vengeance in mind? They were able to play up the “God of Mischief” aspect much more in this movie as we saw how easy it was for him to manipulate humans, rather than in Thor and he was just playing tricks on his brother. We were able to see how cowardly he was and knew he wasn’t nearly as powerful as any one of the Avengers and had to call on someone else’s army to fight for him. He strategically manipulated every character to feed off of one another’s insecurities, and even though he wasn’t physically some sort of powerhouse, you could see how annoying he could be to deal with. Hiddleston was also showing some vulnerability as an adopted son who never received the love of his father, and even though you knew he was the villain, had a tiny bit of sympathy for his situation.

Mark Ruffalo as Dr. Bruce Banner/the Hulk

This was the part of the movie I was most worried about, considering that after two movies based on Hulk, there’s yet to be a successful incarnation of him on film. The thing about this character that people want to see most is actually what’s easiest to put on the big screen, which is a big green monster destroying everything. The more interesting parts of the character are figuring out how he deals with this timebomb that’s inside of him and the effect it had on his psychological state. Luckily, through the nature of this being an ensemble film, Dr. Banner was only used in small doses, mostly to show off his level of intelligence. There were a few scenes between Dr. Banner and Tony Stark that were really fun to watch, because they both felt like they had found an intellectual peer and playmate. When Dr. Banner left and Hulk showed up, obviously it was fucking awesome. HE SMASHED EVERYTHING. I went get into everything he smashed, but the smashing scenes were fun. I also kept doing double-takes when a character said “Banner” because I thought our dog might be in the theater.

Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow

I made a pretty bold claim with Iron Man 2 which was that Scarlett Johansson was a good choice to play Black Widow AND that she was one of the best parts of that movie, but most people thought I was just distracted by her tits. I suppose there might be a little truth to that, but just because she was good in this role doesn’t mean I think she’s a good actress. In fact, I think she’s not a good actress and every other movie I’ve seen her in she just seems distant and emotionally apathetic to everything going on around her. Luckily, while portraying a Russian assassin and spy, having an outward appearance of not giving a shit about anything or being emotionally involved in anything going on, things work out pretty well. Granted, in this movie, she had a few moments that seemed a little too superhuman and far-fetched in regards to her abilities, but it was really only one sequence so I can forgive her. Mostly because of, well, you know, boobs.

Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton/Hawkeye

Having only really appeared as a silhouette in Thor and having no other film appearances, Hawkeye was obviously going to be a tough sell as an Avenger. Rather than try to give him a long backstory, we instead spend most of the film seeing Barton as a villain who is having his mind controlled by Loki. One reason I really liked them doing this was that it removed the need for a backstory because all you saw was Hawkeye being a badass with a bow and arrow and showing of a multitude of different trick arrows. Another reason I liked this was because in the Marvel Universe, Hawkeye was introduced as a villain. He might have only been a villain for three issues before joining the Avengers, but still, it’s something that’s constantly referenced in the books and I think that using him as a villain for the first half of the movie not only showed you his abilities, but also made you enjoy the heroic things he was doing that much more. Two things I didn’t like, however, was the fact that the mind control he was under was undone by Black Widow just punching him a whole bunch, and I figured Loki’s spells would be a little more powerful. I also think that Hawkeye should have been played by Alan Alda, but I guess Jeremy Renner was an acceptable substitute.

Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury

Although I thought his cameo in Iron Man was pretty cool, the other times this incarnation of Nick Fury haven’t been as faithful to the character as I had liked. Granted, that basically means I didn’t really care for his scenes in Iron Man 2, but Samuel L. Jackson is a character on his own. He has a reputation of coming across like a badass, but also being really funny, talented, and can deliver these badass lines or insults while adding a smirk to the end of them to let you know he’s just fucking with you. The Nick Fury I wanted to see wasn’t a jokester or anything other than a grizzled war veteran who has gone to Hell and back to ensure the safety of the country he so loves to defend. It’s almost like he has the heart of Captain America but with the skills of Black Widow. Well, maybe not the bazongas of Black Widow, but the covert spy stuff. Lucky for me, they toned down Fury’s interactions with the team so you knew he was the one in charge and wasn’t taking shit from anybody. There was also a scene that involved him motivating the team by showing them something taken out of a dead agent’s coat, but once the team leaves, another character pointed out that they weren’t actually in his coat, but in the agent’s locker. This showed that Fury was willing to do anything and everything to get the reaction from people that he knew had to be sparked in them, even if that meant lying to them. His role in this film definitely made up for the doubts I had going into it.

Clark Gregg as Agent Phil Coulson

Someone who was introduced a few years ago to plant the seed of what S.H.I.E.L.D was and where all these Marvel movies were going, Agent Coulson has become a loved character to many fans. Even though he is typically only in Marvel movies delivering half a dozen lines, those lines are well-timed with great delivery by Gregg, even giving Robert Downey Jr. a run for his money in a few scenes. We got that sense from Coulson again in Avengers, and adding in the obsession that a S.H.I.E.L.D agent would clearly have for Captain America, the fanboy moments between Coulson and Steve Rogers were really charming and endearing. And congratulations to Mr. Gregg for having the character take a permanent seat in the Marvel Universe in not just films, but being introduced into the comics as well!

Cobie Smulders as Agent Maria Hill

If there’s one show I hate hearing people tell me is funny, it’s The Big Bang Theory. If there’s two shows that I hate hearing people tell me is funny, it’s The Big Bang Theory and How I Met You Mother. Knowing that Smulders was on that show, I figured the only reason she landed the role was to get audiences of that show interested. Lucky for me, I was wrong. DEAD WRONG! Well, not dead wrong, but I wanted to say that. Maria Hill is a tough character because she is essentially Nick Fury’s right-hand man, but considering she is younger and a female, the relationship could easily fall into a stereotype. This is typically avoided, and I always viewed the Nick Fury/Maria Hill relationship to be a lot like the Yoda/Luke Skywalker relationship in The Empire Strikes Back. We know that the apprentice can clearly handle their shit, but they still also have a lot to learn. We saw Maria Hill questioning Fury on his actions, even doubting his choices, but knew her rank and never opposed his views, clearly knowing that he was the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. for a reason. She handled what she needed to handle and stepped up when necessary, letting the audience know that she’s be okay in the event that Fury was ever compromised and she would have to take the reins.

In  short, EVERYONE DID A GOOD JOB IN VARYING DEGREES. Wow, I could have just said that instead of typing up all those other things. I knew this movie was going to be good. Everyone knew this movie was going to be good. In fact, I’d even say this movie was a GREAT superhero movie. As far as things I didn’t like, I’d say there were only two issues, maybe only one and a half…AND THEY’RE ONLY ISSUES! Let me clarify: I had ZERO problems with this movie. One issue was that I was disappointed that nobody ever shouted “AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!”, but considering this was their very first gathering, I could understand that not showing up naturally. I guess I hoped that in the epilogue, after all of the action, Fury would have mentioned assembling in some way. I know that any lines of dialogue I could come up with right now would be cheesy, but Joss Whedon is a much better writer than I am and I guess I hoped he had found a natural way to slip that in. The other issue was that even though this was a great superhero movie, it was just that…a great SUPERHERO movie. This movie won’t win any Oscars, any acting or directing awards, or be recognized with any other outstanding achievements. This movie is by no means a bad movie, not by a long shot. It was a witty, smart, action-packed, fist-pumping, stand up in your seat and high-five your friends FUN movie. After seeing the trailer for Prometheus and The Dark Knight Rises, it was hard to thing of The Avengers as being any sort of game-changer in the superhero genre. I’m also not saying that this movie needed to change the way we view superhero movies, it just felt very safe. Safe isn’t bad, safe is good! That’s why people where helmets and seatbelts! For some reason, which I can’t quite put my finger on, I kept having flashbacks to when I first saw Independence Day. Maybe it was because it was just a big, fun summer movie, or the fact that there were alien invaders, or the fact that you knew the good guys would win, I had the same excited feelings for The Avengers as I had almost twenty years ago with Will Smith. Whether you’re a comic book fan or not, you will have fun with this movie, and even though we spent close to two and a half hours watching this movie, this only felt like the beginning. I was totally willing to watch these characters interacting with another for two and a half more hours, just to see what kind of trouble they’d get into. Oh yeah, and I think I predicted a few years ago how closely this movie would mirror the events of The Ultimates comic book series, and I am glad to know I was right. What the fuck are these Chitauri aliens? JUST CALL THEM GODDAMNED SKRULLS AND BE DONE WITH IT!

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Okay guys, I know the season ended weeks ago, but hopefully by now you all know what happened and I don’t have to worry about spoiling everything. Even though there were complaints that there wasn’t enough going on in this season, there were plenty of behind the scenes drama to make up for it. In July of last year, it was announced that Frank Darabont, who had helped write, direct, and produce the first season. That scared the shit out of most people, knowing he had filmed some of the second season and not knowing the impact it would have on the show. The show had its premiere in October, and it went on a scheduled hiatus, with the other half to debut in February. While it was on hiatus, news outlets started saying that a main cast member asked to be written out of the show when Darabont left, and this cast member had their wish granted. Supposedly that actor changed their mind, but it was too late and they were already written out. Considering that Laurie Holden, who plays Andrea, and Jeffrey DeMunn, who plays Dale, had worked with Darabont on a few movies, my money was on one of them leaving the show prematurely. With a main character leaving and a new director, what hope was there for season two?

Without going over every single detail, I’ll try to summarize the major events of season two. When we last saw the gang, they had just left the Center for Disease Control because it was blown up by an employee. When the group made a pit stop, the little girl known as “Sophia”, got lost in the woods. While trying to find her, poor little Carl was accidentally shot. The shooter brought Carl and the gang to a farm where people were staying, and where everyone ended up staying. Over their time at the farm, we learned that Lori was pregnant, despite not knowing whether the baby was Rick’s or Shane’s, from one of their forbidden love sessions when they thought Rick was dead. We also learned that Shane was an even bigger asshole who had killed an innocent man so he wouldn’t be slowed down while retrieving medical supplies from a nearby high school. The first half of the season focused on finding little Sophia, but that search ended when she was revealed to have become a zombie and the owner of the farm, Hershel, had been keeping zombie in a barn. The gang also met other survivors and after a violent altercation, saw Rick and Shane take one hostage. We saw the depths that both Rick and Shane were willing to go to in order to protect the group, while Dale understood how much deeper Shane’s depths were than Rick’s. The season ended with Dale getting surprise attacked and killed by a zombie, Shane killing the hostage in cold blood, and Shane trying to take Rick’s life. Rick got the upper hand (ha ha, that’s a good pun if you read the comics) and killed Shane, and unfortunately the zombies overran the farm. The last few moments of the season showed the group realizing that they were living in a Rick-tatorship, if you will, while also introducing us to a woman with a katana and two zombies on leashes and zoomed out to show a prison looming near the group.

I have to agree that I thought the events of the first half of the season were pretty dull, since it was a lot of just hanging out at the farm and meeting a lot of new characters. Some people completely lost interest with the show at that point, but when Sophia was discovered to be a zombie and no one was willing to shoot her but Rick, I was totally on board. Once the show started up again, I thought things were getting more and more exciting and that the slow pace in the first half was worth it for the events of the second half. Considering Shane was killed very early on in the comics, nobody was really surprised to see him go. In fact, I think some people were even disappointed to see a character who challenged Rick to such a degree get killed off. On the other hand, Dale’s death seemed to come out of nowhere and really solidified my theory about predicting he would be the one who wanted to leave with Darabont. When I thought about Dale getting killed off, I was pretty bummed, because he really brought in a human element to the show. I felt a little bit of comfort when I realized the whole second half of this season was him whining about Shane being a jerk, and that TV Dale wasn’t necessarily the same person as comic book Dale. I think all the comic book fans also predicted the cloaked figure or the introduction of the prison, considering that person and location all play pretty heavy roles in the comics, but I know I didn’t expect BOTH things to happen. I figured it’d be either one or the other, but those last five minutes got me even more excited for the places they’ll go with season three. Considering that the role of the “Governor” has already been cast, all the readers are both excited and terrified to watch the show unfold, and I think all the viewers will be surprised at just how fucked up Robert Kirkman is and what he’ll put his characters through. Even though there are going to be plenty of new characters to meet next season and that we might have a slow start, I’m sure that Kirkman and new showrunner Glenn Mazzara will give us plenty of reasons to make any sort of waiting worth it.

As some of you probably know, I recently attended the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Exposition. One cool thing the C2E2 website did was highlight who were Chicago residents or who had a career in Chicago, and it was highlighted that Steven Yeun, who plays Glenn on The Walking Dead, was attending. I would say one big difference between the TV Glenn and the comic book Glenn is that we’re able to see a much more emotional side of him. In the comics, the driving force of everything is Rick, and it’s not often we see extended sequences of what’s going on outside of Rick’s world. It happens, but only when it directly pertains to him. Although Rick is the driving force of the show, the nature of the medium forces us to explore more of the characters and Glenn’s is a lot more developed, I feel, than his character in the books. It was this season where we met Hershel’s daughter Maggie, played by Lauren Cohan, who we all knew would strike up a romantic relationship with Glenn. The reaction from Glenn on the show had him scared to get involved with her because he was afraid he would lose her, causing what could best be described an emotional ambivalence. He didn’t seem to care whether she liked him or hated him, and didn’t want to further any of those feelings because it might just make saying goodbye hurt more. Glenn eventually left that emotional state as everyone was leaving Hershel’s farm, but I think we all connected with Glenn in a way that was different from how we connect with him in the books, and Steven did a great job portraying that emotional state. I also couldn’t help but wonder if he took that emotional ambivalence towards his cast members as to save himself the heartache.

WolfMan: I think season two of The Walking Dead proved that anybody could die, anyone could go away at any moment. Who was the hardest, either actor or character, to say goodbye to this season? Do you know find yourself putting distance between you and other cast members, knowing they could leave at any moment?

Steven Yeun: Every death was hard. I took Jeff (DeMunn) and Jon’s (Bernthal, who played Shane) the hardest. Jon, I knew was coming, but he was someone I spent a lot of time with. And Jeff I spent a lot of time with, too. They were both pretty difficult. As far as keeping distance, no, we know the nature of the beast and I think it’s better to spend quality time and enjoy each other’s company.

WM: Clearly the show is going in a slightly different direction from the comics. Some things are similar but they are different versions of the same universe. How difficult do you find it to be to portray the television version of a character that’s already ingrained in comic books?

SY: I think our show has found a life of its own and we’re on that trajectory to become its own thing, not to insult the original material. We don’t think about the comic, we think about how things work in this life and all the writers and producers and actors are so great that we all convene and come to a consensus about how things play out.

WM: To me, the most surreal moment of the show’s success was the fact that it was referenced in The Amazing Spider-Man a few weeks ago. Not the comic book Walking Dead, but when Johnny Storm had come back from the dead and was catching up on all his TV, Spider-Man had mentioned that “they were still on the farm”. It was kind of crazy to see the success of the show bleeding into other publishers. Was there one surreal moment for you where the success of the show?

SY: Marvel does that, don’t they? That this world is part of their world, right? Every day when you walk around and someone might recognize you from the show, it’s really great. I think we were on an episode of Entourage. Ari said “Tell that guy he won’t be able to get a job as a zombie…”, and he said a lot worse than that. It’s just so cool to be apart of something that people really dig and are really interested in.

WM: One last quick question, do you happen to know what Robert Kirkman’s beard feels like?

SY: It feels like a lotioned porcupine. Ya know, like a really solidly lotioned porcupine with a little bit of ambrosia.

WolfMan: Clearly Poe is ingrained in pop culture; movies, music, TV, he’s everywhere. Everyone knows at least some of his stories, even if they don’t know it’s specifically Poe. Since Vincent Price in the 60′s, this is the first time we’ve seen Poe in theaters. This is Poe, this is his work. Did you feel pressure, that you were the one to bring him to life theatrically?

John Cusack: It wasn’t as much of a pressure as much as it was an opportunity. If you read about him, you know that he started so many different genres, the seeds he planted just grew in so many different directions. From science fiction and Jules Verne to hoaxes and being punked and pranked, to gothic horror and to this mystical stuff to great poetry. There’s so much to take from. Once he gets caught up in his own genre, you can always go back to his letters and pull language and it was such a great thing to do. It’s not like you’re ever going to have a definitive version of a person. This is one dream of Poe. Someone else will do another. If you can feel the underworld in the movie, or if you can feel it coming out of my performance, then that’s great.

He then went on to compare the process of interpreting someone like Poe to the different interpretations on stage and screen of the composers Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:

Salieri and Mozart…there was nothing (to work from). You get an insight into Mozart, you get a version of him, but then you get to understand classical music in a way that you probably wouldn’t if it was just a strict biopic, where he did this here and then he was really depressed and stumbling around drunk. It’s a weird blend of fantasy and fiction and legend. Some of the legends around Poe are played with a little bit, and that’s sort of what he did in some of his writings, so I thought it was a cool conceit. I thought it just seemed like a really good version, a good pop-pulp version of him. I just kind of went all in. I didn’t feel pressure, I just gave everything I had into it, and that’s the best I can do.

WM: You mentioned that this isn’t a straight biography about Poe, it blends legends and myth and his stories, but there are still some direct biographical nods to Poe, such as a rival writer being the victim in the pit and the pendulum sequence and the pet raccoon, which alludes to the rumors of Poe dying of rabies. Were there specific poems or stories that you took to heart to incorporate into your personification of Poe, that you used as the most direct references?

JC: I just read him all day and all night when I was making the movie. You could sort of take proxy characters and use then things that he’d said. For example, you could say things that he had said to Emily, the new girl, who’s a fictional girl. After his wife died, he had some romances with some other girls, and she was a proxy for that. His relationship to male authority figures, you could take things he had said to other writers or editors , which is on record, and put it into the stuff I said to Brendan Gleeson (who plays Captain Hamilton) or (Detective) Fields. He didn’t have a relationship with a guy Fields, but he still had a relationship to other people that he thought were inferior to him and he would say certain things to challenge them or push them, so I could take those things. When he says “I have often thought I could distinctly hear the sound of the darkness as it stole over the horizon”, he sort of says that in the movie to Fields, but he actually said it in another context. You have a lot of historically accurate Poe stuff in there, like he did go to West Point and he was athletic, he was a swimmer, that people didn’t know about, but it’s still in a fictional setting. There’s always stuff we could pull, it was amazing. Nobody talked on the phone, people wrote letters, so it’s all there. Amazingly there’s a lot preserved.

WM: I feel like other actors would have had trepidation approaching such a dark character and not knowing how to get out of that headspace, but you said this role is one you’d have fought for, but you had it offered to you. Are there any other historical icons or literary icons that you would fight for the opportunity to put up on screen?

JC: Anything good or anything that can really challenge you and get you frightened and make you think “how do you do this?” but I don’t have anything specific in mind. I’d love to do The Master & Margarita, which is a great Russian book that I think is very cool. I’d love to play Professor Woland but I think someone else has the rights. That’s a great book, I always thought it’d be a great movie.

In regards to the “darkness” surround Poe, he said:

It was helpful that it was winter and it was Serbia and Hungary and we were shooting nights, so I just kind of felt like a vampire anyway. I didn’t sleep much, I felt like I was on a bender for 8 weeks. I just sort of stayed in that headspace of it and then when I got back, I came back for Christmas, and I scared my family. They asked, “What happened!? You need to eat! You look sick.”

I think one reason people are fans of Mr. Cusack are his ability to appear as the every man, or rather, a man who everyone sees parts of themselves in. It’s this endearing quality that makes us always want to root for him and want him to succeed, whether it be as a person or the characters he plays. One big difference with his role in The Raven is that I’m not sure anyone wants to be in his position, and when you see some of yourself in Poe, it might be time to either write some poetry or schedule an appointment with a psychiatrist. Make sure to check out The Raven when it comes to theaters April 27th.
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This movie has been staring at me right in the fucking face for months. It was at the top of my Netflix Instant queue ever since it was available, but I kept finding reasons not to watch it. The biggest being the subtitles and my inability to focus on anything because I’m kind of dumb. The reason I finally bit the bullet was because I had recently gone to theaters to see The Raid: Redemption (which was pretty crazy, if you’re into those action-y martial arts type movies) which featured subtitles. It helped me realize that reading subtitles wasn’t as big of a pain as I always think it’s going to be, which built up my reading confidence! Hoo-ray! And even though I posted this review in the “horror movie” category, I only did that because it’s got a lot of gore in it. It’s more of a revenge thriller, which are typically more tense than they are scary or creepy.

Must have been one intense sled ride.

There’s this nice, sweet couple who are planning on having a baby, when the pregnant lady gets raped and murdered as fuck by a psychopath named Kyung-chul (Min-sik Choi). The dad of that baby, named Kim Soo-hyeon (Byung-hun Lee) happens to be a secret agent who is able to track down Kyung-chul, and rather than just killing him, tries to bring him the kind of torture that was felt when his wife and unborn baby were murdered. Soo-hyeon forces a tracking device down Kyung-chul’s throat to keep track of his whereabouts, and then Soo-hyeon goes on a catch/injure/release program with Kyung-chul, including breaking arms and slicing Achilles tendons. Kyung-chul realizes who is doing this to him and why, and goes on a hunt of his own for the remaining family members of the happy couple. After every sick and twisted thing that these two have done to each other, it’s ultimately Soo-hyeon who gains an “upper hand” and creates a makeshift guillotine for Kyung-chul that doesn’t go off until Kyung-chul’s mom, dad, and son show up. Their arrival is the final piece whose attempts to save Kyung-chul triggers the guillotine, so when they open the door, they are greeted by Kyung-chul’s head rolling across it.

This man hates plants!

Did you see how a few sentences I used the term “upper hand” and put it in quotes? That’s because it’s really not any sort of upper hand, because Soo-hyeon’s wife and child are still dead. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the titular devil in the film is Kyung-chul’s character, and we are mostly concerned with how far Soo-hyeon will go before he turns into someone as evil. The idea of finding the person who has caused you an incredible amount of emotional trauma isn’t really anything new, in fact, it’s old as shit. All those movies where we empathize with a main character who has been wronged and the viewer must decide what they’d do in that situation. The enjoyable part of this film is the fact that in most other movies, the moment where you question what to do with the person you’ve apprehended is typically a short-lived moment, and the resolution comes quickly, but instead we are shown those few scenes stretched out over almost the entirety of the movie. We see a sick and sadistic cat and mouse game being played, where you almost, almost have sympathy for Kyung-chul because of all the things he is forced to survive. Then we realize how good of an actor Min-sik Choi is and really convinces you how depraved the character really is and we go back to wanting him to be tortured even further. The movie did run a little long for a revenge thriller, and those typically aren’t the kinds of movies I’m drawn to, but I think this one might set the standard for ways you can innovate and surprise people within the  limitations of the genre.

Wolfman Moon Scale

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Because so many people have been complaining about spoilers for this movie, I am going to warn you now that yes, my review will include the details of what happens in the movie. You can finish reading this paragraph, as there will be no spoilers, but if you read further, it’s your own fault. Maybe because I heard so much about spoilers, I had assumed there was some crazy insane twist ending that changes your opinion of the movie, but that never happened. I think people are just trying to keep all details of the movie secretive so that way you can watch the movie fresh, but with so many people talking about how amazing this movie was, I had my standards set pretty high. I’d like to watch this movie again once the internet chatter dies down to see if my opinion is any different. My spoiler free review is that I liked it, but didn’t love it, even though I really, really wanted to. Remember, I’m going to spoil everything, and it’s not to be a dick, it’s because I know people who want to know what happens in this movie but don’t want to see it. REMEMBER, SPOILERS, STOP READING IF YOU’RE GOING TO GET CRANKY.

WOLFMAN LIKE!

Five college coeds are heading into the woods for a long weekend to get away from the pressures of college, similar to how plenty of other horror movies start. We learn that things aren’t quite as they seem, as we are also seeing some underground bunker where characters seem to be aware of the plans of this group of college kids. The audience starts to understand that this isn’t necessarily a movie just about these kids, but the story revolves just as much around the office workers. It turns out that these office workers are manipulating the events that these kids are going through, including the different supernatural elements that the college kids are encountering. Did that make sense? Think of it this way: the kids go exploring the creepy basement of the cabin, each person exploring some strange relic, while we see office workers placing bets on which relic will be chosen to summon a supernatural creature. In this case, one of the college kids reads a diary that summons zombies to attack the kids. These kids don’t know they’re part of some big illusion until it’s too late and some have been killed, but things do turn around when one of the college kids finds an elevator under the cabin. This elevator takes them down to the bunker where they see a whole bunch of other monsters, and when they realize they were part of some big hoax, decide to unleash all the monsters on everyone who works down there. The whole purpose of everything was that there are demon monster things that require ritual sacrifices so they won’t destroy the whole world, and each sacrifice had to fit the archetypes that are most commonly seen in horror films. Once this is discovered, the two remaining college kid sacrifices decide they don’t want to take part and would rather have the entire world get destroyed, so we see a giant demon hand come up from the underworld to smash the cabin, the camera, and the credits roll.

Could you have cast two better people to play cranky office employees than Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford?

It’s not often that I can accurately describe a movie by comparing it to other films, but I think I’ve nailed it this time. If Evil Dead and The Truman were to fuck each other, and then that baby grew up to have sex with The Monster Squad while H.P. Lovecraft watched, then you’d get The Cabin in the Woods. Yup, nailed it. These comparisons aren’t meant to take away from Cabin in the Woods, but rather, if you took all the horror/comedy elements from Evil Dead, and added in the idea of all the events in someone’s life being planned, then added in the feelings of fun and adventure of seeing your favorite horror movie icons in one movie, as well as the strange mythology about Cthulhu-like elder gods, there’s nothing to NOT like. I’m thinking that the reasons why I didn’t love the movie is because it did borrow so heavily from so many things I liked, but there weren’t too many things that felt new or original to me. DON’T GET ME WRONG, I’m not trying to say that the whole concept of this movie wasn’t refreshing to see for a horror movie with a wide theatrical release, because it was. It’s shocking to see something like this in theaters, considering how shitty most horror movies are. And considering this movie made less money opening weekend than the goddamned Three Stooges movie, this was clearly a movie that was made out of love for the genre rather than for financial gain.

This movie’s actually about a haunted mirror that makes you look like Ellie Kemper from The Office. For the record, the red-headed lady is Kristen Connolly. For the record.

I guess my concern with Cabin in the Woods is that this movie wasn’t scary to me, and I don’t feel comfortable giving my absolute best rating to something in the horror genre if it didn’t actually scare me. You might say that for a tribute to horror that is clever, violent, unique, and also pays tribute to the genre in countless ways, it’s impossible to be scary. You’d be wrong. As an example, when I saw Drag Me to Hell, I was fucking terrified. They chose their moments of when to emphasize the horror and when to emphasize the comedy to create some truly creepy moments. Instead, Cabin in the Woods relied more on surprise scares, of which there are probably three, and you were probably chuckling too hard to have those moments make an impact. Another example of a movie that blends “horror” with comedy was Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, but the reason that movie succeeds is because nothing about it is scary, it’s all comedy. It knows the genre that it’s mocking, and isn’t as dumb as parody like the Scary Movie franchise, which I think why it can say that it blends horror elements with comedy. Maybe it’s just my own personal taste in what’s scary, not really being creeped out by jump scares or wanting a movie to rely on them, so maybe that’s why I can’t say I loved this movie. One thing that sucked was I really loved the ideas they brought about with the elder gods that lived underground and would have loved to see a movie explore that concept more. The Lovecraft-ian idea of everyone going about their normal lives and thinking everything is normal, only to realize there are giant monsters living underground that were allowing us to go about their business as long as there was an occasional sacrifice. And how did these people get their job? How did they get these kids to go to this cabin? How long have they been monitored? I guess these are just my own tiny, personal issues with the movie, but this is my own goddamned website where I give MY opinion, so no need to jump down my throat if you loved this movie. That’s awesome! I wanted to love it too! And oh yeah, the filmmakers did decide to end the world to completely eliminate the idea of a sequel, so I guess that was pretty awesome, too.

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