Jon Schnaars's blog

Regular podcast listeners may be aware of my man-crush on Edgar Wright. Here's a director that in two films has proven to have his head thoroughly screwed on in the right direction when it comes to genre films. Both "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz" went beyond parody to really embrace the genre's that they belong to. Where most of the schlocky spoofs that are being put out today are content to ape the conventions of a handful of films, Wright's work shows that he has a deep understanding of what makes horror and action films what they are.

9/11 Conspiracy T

Word is out, via AICN (warning: potential spoilers), that the script for Max Brooks's World War Z is pretty solid. I read the book back when it hit shelves, and absolutely loved it. The news of a film adaptation, while not surprising, was a little disconcerting for a couple of reasons.

• Zombie movies, by their very nature, have to be small. A worldwide tragedy is hard to capture in a film because films have to tell stories, which require characters who traverse arcs.

A couple of pieces popped up over at the AV Club today that are worthy of some attention. The most pertinent to horror fans is an excellent essay on They Live written by Scott Tobias as part of his ongoing "New Cult Canon" series. Tobias addresses a lot of the issues that swirl throughout that film. It's certainly Carpenter's most overtly subversive film, filleting Reagen-era America with almost comic levels of paranoia.

As part of my ongoing series: "Catching up with older movies that I should be embarrassed about not having seen," I sat down with John Carpenter's The Fog this past Sunday. There wasn't any real impetus to take up this film, other than my desire to check out all of Carpenter's lesser discussed works (Christine, Village of the Damned, Vampires, etc). Carpenter has one of the strongest voices of any horror director, and his style heavily permeates all the films that I've seen.

I started this post as a comment on Mark's recent post about Ric Flair. It started to get a little long-ish, so I figured I'd go full blog post with it.

My wrestling fan years lasted from about the middle of 4th grade to somewhere early in high school. I saw the "Return of the Warrior" tour live in Philly

Anyone who has dabbled in comics likely has at least a passing familiarity with the Comics Code. The Code, which went into effect in 1954, was established by the Comics Code Authority, which was handled under the auspices of the Comics Magazine Association of America. This organization was charged with overseeing the comics industry to ensure that the vileness that had pervaded comics wouldn't continue to destroy America's youth.

When I see "Sci-Fi Channel" next to the word's "Rock Monster," the word that I least expect to see next is "good." But flipping through today's Variety, that's exactly what one would encounter. In an almost shocking turn of events, reviewer Brian Lowry has many pleasant things to say about this week's Sci-Fi Channel Saturday evening offering. His lead paragraph spills most of the goodies:

Probably.

pic via Jezebel

News just came across my wire that sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke passed away today. And when I say that he died today, I actually mean tomorrow because as crazy as it sounds, one of the finest minds in science fiction was living in Sri Lanka. So it's morning there.