Movie Catch-Up
Before I get into the books I've been reading, I thought I'd deal with the movies I've seen in the last month or so.

• Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Brain That Wouldn't Die
  
• The Matrix Revolutions with the RiffTrax commentary.
  
• Doctor Who: The Sontaran Experiment
  
• Hancock Okay, but not terribly memorable.
  
• Little Big Man I had forgotten how depressing this is. I don't know why, given that it's about Native Americans in the 19th century.
  
• Tokyo Godfathers Another great movie from Satoshi Kon.
  
• MST3K: The Horrors of Spider Island We watched this our first night in the new place. Teena picked it out because the host segments deal with moving.
  
• MST3K: The Giant Gila Monster
  
• Kung Fu Hustle I love this movie. So much fun.
  
• Pirates of the Caribbean : The Curse of the Black Pearl with the Rifftrax commentary. Teena and I like to pretend that Disney showed restraint and did not make any sequels.
  
  And now for the movies from the (last?) H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival:
  
• The Burrowers Nice, suspenseful western. I do think the filmmakers made a mistake in giving the audience a good look at the monsters in the last part of the movie.
  
• Pan's Labyrinth Such a great movie.
  
• Shorts Block 3. Pretty good selection of shorts, including a great parody of those ads promoting religion.
  
• The Whole Wide World Bio-pic of Robert E. Howard. Probably would not have seen it if there had been anything besides readings & panels on opposite it. I'm glad there wasn't, because this was great. Vincent D'Onofrio & Renee Zellweger give fantastic performances.
  
• Shorts Block 2. Not quite as good as Block 3. I really think it is a bad choice to present a dramatic reading as a movie. Either make it audio only or put in the effort to make it visually interesting.
  
• Shorts Block 1. Other than a humorous piece about a "paranormal drug dealer", I didn't much care for this block. Skipped out early so we could see
  
• Dreams of the Witch House. The most incompetently-made movie I have ever seen. Hilarious.
  
• The Unnamable Oh so 80s horror flick.
  
• The Unnamable Returns: The Statement of Randolph Carter Slightly less 80s than the first one, but just as cheesy.
  
• Dagon Pretty good adaptation of Shadow over Innsmouth. Not exactly faithful, but it doesn't abandon the story either.
  
• El Monstruo del Mar. Lovecraft mixed with Russ Meyer. Not good. Too long at 75 minutes, sound problems, hints at backstory that go unexplored, and main characters made irredeemably unsympathetic in the first 15 minutes.
  
  And one DVD that I picked up at the Festival:
  
• The Cosmic Horror Fun-Pak. A collection of short films from a local production company.