Things I Love 4: Trailers from Hell

I don't know how long this site has been up, or if everyone has heard about this before me, but, holy crap, I love Trailers from Hell. If you're not familiar with this site, it was started by director Joe Dante and features contemporary horror movie creators commenting on old genre movie trailers. Current contributors include Dante, Mary Lambert, John Landis, Sam Hamm, Allan Arkush, Mick Garris, Larry Cohen, and Edgar Wright. Here's Edgar Wright's commentary on the great trailer for Mario Bava's Danger: Diabolik:

(I love the Tor Johnson/Looney Tunes mash-up for their logo.)

The trailer selection is pretty diverse, including B-movies, Hitchcock films, and many non-horror movies. My favorite so far is Joe Dante's commentary on the trailer for The Innocents, which is my single favorite horror movie of all time (though Robert Wise's The Haunting is a close second). Dante makes the point that this sophisticated, psychological ghost story is given a crappy trailer that makes it look like a sensationalized B-horror movie. Here's the link.

You may also, if you so choose, watch the trailers sans commentary.

The site promises to update three times a week, and I couldn't be happier about that.

Things I Love 4: The Dynamite Warrior Trailer

I saw this preview in the trailers on The Host DVD, and though I do not have any idea what the plot of this movie is, I know I want to see it. I have relatively simple needs: the movie has a guy kicking people through things that are on fire.

While some debate exists amongst martial arts aficionados about the relative merits of Dan Chupong compared to Tony Jaa, I find such arguments akin to those about cake vs. ice cream: why can't we be happy with both?

Things I Love 3: Monkeys and Robots (but mostly monkeys)

Like many comic bloggers, I have an inexplicable love of monkeys in comics. Part of it may be from growing up in the 1970s--a time when DC Comics still had an editorial policy carried over from the 60s to feature monkeys on their comics' covers frequently, because comics with monkeys on the cover experienced a sales spike. Blogger Chad Bowers has named his blog after his appreciation of monkeys, and Chris Sims had one of his greatest hits with a post about a gorilla fighting Nazis (from a comic that I loaned him).

Here is my favorite gorilla-related cover, which also explains the value of taking my English classes and adorns my office door:

It's hard to argue with a gun-wielding gorilla. Although I do have to say that I've read these three books, and I am no closer to conquering the world.

Also, Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang hit the trifecta with the Nazi vampire gorillas in the fantastic Dr. Thirteen story from the recent Tales of the Unexpected series, now collected in Dr. Thirteen: Architecture and Morality (a book that I cannot recommend enough, beyond the mere awesomeness of a Nazi vampire gorilla).

This picture also adorns my office wall, as a nice framed, signed print.

However, I never knew how pleasurable the combination of monkeys and robots would be until I saw this image, from Agents of Atlas 1 by Jeff Parker and Leonard Kirk:

In this picture, M-11: the Human Robot is carrying Gorilla Man so that Gorilla Man can fire four guns simultaneously (and for the kids out there, Gorilla Man is firing rubber bullets, so no one is getting killed).

When I talked to Jeff Parker and inker Kris Justice at HeroesCon in Charlotte this year, I told them that very little in the world has made me as happy as that picture. It is as if someone took the contents of my brain, downloaded them into a computer, and then asked the computer, "What does he want most in the world?" The answer: a robot, carrying a gorilla while the gorilla fires four guns.

The reason for my love of monkeys and robots may be best described by James Kochalka, from his fantastic multimedia work in Monkey vs. Robot: "Why can't we all love each other, monkey and the robot brother?" Though I'm okay with it if monkeys fight robots, too.

Things I Love 2: The SHOOT 'EM UP Trailer

This trailer has everything I want in a movie: namely, Paul Giamatti, Clive Owen, Monica Bellucci, and lots of guns. Then, just when you think this trailer can't get any more awesome, at the 1:35 mark it becomes brain-damagingly awesome.



When I was 19, the year the song that closes out the trailer first came out, I remember mentally choreographing chase scenes to it. And they looked just like the ones in the trailer.

Edit: Since I'm getting a lot of Google hits from people looking for information on the song in the trailer, I thought I should provide that information. It's "Kickstart My Heart" by Motley Crue (sorry, can't do the umlauts for some reason).

Things I Love 1: Flight of the Conchords

This is going to be a regular feature here at the 100-Page Super Spectacular (or "The Spec," as one reader suggested I abbreviate the title): brief posts about things that make me happy to live in this world.

First up, I've been digging HBO's Flight of the Conchords, and here's why:

1) Hip-Hopopotamus vs. Rhymenocerous



There ain't no party like my nana's tea party!

2)Business Time
This song was used in Sunday's episode, but here's the live version:



Two minutes in heaven is better than one minute in heaven.