Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Chiller Theater: Feed your head

Chiller Theater this season was great! The theme of the shopping trip: Feed your head - with outrageous cinema. Mostly we bought Asian flicks, with a few exceptions. All had over the top paranormal, or action adventure, or both as themes, with one notable madcap exception. I think we wound up with something like 15 or more DVDs by the time the frenzy was over. Midnight Syndicate was set up and I picked up two of their CDs to play while working on Nobody's Hero: Vampyre, and, Out of Darkness. Total mood music. Check them out, they are a rare, and wonderful find: they do soundtrack style stuff, gothic, spooky, intense. As they say, "Music for the imagination". I told one of the composers I played the Thirteenth Hour CD while I wrote Immortal Protector, my first soon to be published novel, and he was totally psyched.

As to the flicks, here are some of the highlights:

Eko Eko Azarak, all three. Misa, new girl in school, teenage witch with incredible supernatural powers faces down ancient evil forces with even more mysterious mentor.

Versus The cover is the back of a man, Katana slung over the shoulder, automatic hand gun pointing down. He’s in black against a white background. This is a tough one to capture, but basically, unnamed prisoner escapes freaky prison into woods where he fights a mysterious, unstopable enemy and learns he is either facing big, bad evil, or is the evil, and I think there may be zombies. I know, I know, I usually hate zombies, but lately, they’ve seemed kind of interesting.

Silver Silver wants revenge against the gangsters that killed her family, so naturally, she infiltrates a Pro Wrestling promotion to achieve this goal. Involves not only karate but coin flipping.

Azumi, both of them. Live versions of an anime series, Asian costume drama with ass kicking heroine saving the realm, and stuff.

Yaji & Kita “Two flamboyant, down and out samurai embark on a journey on their chopper to battle Kita’s drug addiction and contemplate the meaning of their truly bizarre existence. Past and present intersect. Marked with a unique brand of cinematic mayhem, this hallucinogenic gay love story is sure to delight and bewilder all who dare journey with them.” This is from the cover copy. So it’s kind of Pricilla Queen of the Desert goes to Japan, on Acid. Sign me up!

There are a host of others, all along similar veins, except for Yaji and Kita, that one stands in a class by itself, but boy, it looks like a fun movie.

We used to watch a ton of Asain cinema and such, and then it kind of main streamed, and Hong Kong went through a 'management transition'. We kind of fell out of it at that point. Well, the Chinese have finally finished taking over, and now the Koreans are also involved in the movie biz, and there’s Japan still keeping it real, so it was a veritable smorgasbord for theater bizarre, and Tim and I jumped right back in and indulged to the max.

I didn’t do much in the way of getting autographs. Anthony Michael Hall was there. He’s a really big, big dude. Really big. I didn’t meet him, just ‘gazed’ from afar. But he appeared very pleasant. Bill Daley, a.k.a. Major Healy from I Dream of Jeanie, is a riot! A very funny, very pleasant man. Peter Chris, from Kiss, is an ass. He made fans wait for his signing until one pm when the show opens at 11. Then he only wanted to sign until three. I am not a Kiss fan, but one of our travel mates was, and due to all of the nonsense was unable to get an autograph, so I’m hating this guy in proxy for my buddy who was screwed. Solidarity, right?

I’m really liking this promo since they switched hotels.

I’m going to write in and ask them to get Temeura Morrison and Rob Halford as guests. Sure, one comes from New Zealand, and the other is in England recording, but hey, a girl can dream, right?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I met AMH at Chiller Theatre - he's one of my all time favorite celebrities (the list is short, only 2 people!) and he was really nice. Too bad I froze up and didn't ask him the two questions I was meaning to ask him! But I was not disappointed - he looked just like he does on TV :)

Ursula said...

He seemed very nice, and yes, he DID look just like he does on T.V. I'm a huge Boba Fett fan, and when I met Jeremy Bulloch, the actor beneath the mask, I couldn't get a coherent word out of my mouth. It was pretty funny, cause usually you can't get me to shut up. I hope they bring AMH back, next time I'll do the autograph.