Happy Halloween Little Ones

Halloween this year was warm and pleasant it’s a shame it’s not a national holiday.
I saw Hellraiser: Hellseeker it’s the 6th of 8 Hellraiser. It brings back the original female victim but there is little fear or action or Pinhead goodness.
Masters Of Horror: Incident On And Off Mountain Road
This is the first of the weekly series it was a bit gory not to scary. A young woman driving in the middle of nowhere gets in an accident. She seeks help only to get kidnapped by some nameless monster.
She flashes back to her life and training with her demented boyfriend. We see that she is stronger then most victims after experiencing a horrible incident with ex. She overcomes all her hurdles and continues with her life slightly madder.

Three Things to Know

First is the Halloween episodes.
Two and a Half Men had a nice and funny surreal episode with a witch and curses.
Batman the latest animated series on the Cartoon Network had Batman vs. Dracula, it was kinda cool.
Night Stalker was nothing special but they did have the Happy Tree Friends featured in the episode.
George Lopez tried to bring back the trick in trick or treat which nice but not funny.

As for channels AMC they are having a collection of scary & monster movies, here’s s short list…
Sunday, October 30, 2005
1:15 AM/EST Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
2:00 AM/EST Friday the 13th
4:00 AM/EST Arachnophobia
6:00 AM/EST The Beast Must Die
8:00 AM/EST Prophecy
10:15 AM/ES Village of the Damned
12:15 PM/EST Arachnophobia
2:15 PM/EST Pet Sematary II
4:15 PM/EST Stephen King's Graveyard Shift
6:00 PM/EST An American Werewolf in London
8:00 PM/EST Tremors
10:00 PM/EST Species II
11:45 PM/EST Tremors
The best of which is An American Werewolf in London I would recommend the uncut version because it deserve to be watched like the original theater version.

On Showtime they are having a mini-marathon of horror movies starting the 28th.
Incident On and Off a Mountain Road//Directed by Don Coscarelli ("Phantasm," "Bubba Ho-Tep")
Dreams in the Witch House //Directed by Stuart Gordon ("Re-Animator," "Dagon")
Dance of the Dead //Directed by Tobe Hooper ("The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "Poltergeist")
Jenifer //Directed by Dario Argento ("Suspiria," "Terror at The Opera")
Choclate //Directed by Mick Garris ("Riding the Bullet," "The Stand")
Homecoming //Directed by Joe Dante ("The Howling," "Gremlins")
Deer Woman //Directed by John Landis ("An American Werewolf in London")
Cigarette Burns //Directed by John Carpenter ("Halloween," "The Thing")
Fair Haired Child //Directed by William Malone ("House on Haunted Hill," "FearDotCom")
Haeckel's Tale //Directed by John McNaughton ("Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer," "Wild Things")
Imprint //Directed by Takashi Miike ("Audition," "Ichi," "The Killer")
Pick Me Up //Directed by Larry Cohen ("It's Alive," "The Invaders")
Sick Girl//Directed by Lucky McKee ("May," "The Woods")

On non-Halloween related stuff,
Surface: Episode 6 was great the showed the monsters poop and they also show a second species. Plus they killed off two main characters Doc Cirko and his assistant. They DNA key is, agkagk not sure what that means.
Prison Break: The Old Hand, Scofield is 3 weeks in and 17 days ‘til the escape. The Vice-President is the one ordering the killing and she’s a woman, alos the rest of the Scofields are dead or faking it just to survive.

Thirdly is news from TV first George Takei came out the closet who’ll be next Ricky or Clay, sorry Claymates.
In General Hospital an 11 year old girl “LuLu” was recast into a 22 year old whore. I understand soaps often advance ages but enough this is ridiculous.

TV Guide: Oct. 24-30

Late again so what, on the cover a heavily airbrushed Geena Davis with the Commander in Chief title. There is a 4 page story about her life and love.

Good Things To Read Inside:

• Charlie and Martin Sheen are appearing together in Two and a Half Men. Nicolas Cage, a confirmed Sci-Fi geek is producing a series of fantasy novels from Jim Butcher on the Sci-Fi channel.
• Dana Delany will be on Related, Joss Whedon will be on Veronica Mars.
• Beau Bridges will play the dad on My Name Is Earl, Jon Stewart, Woody Harrelson will have new babies and Mo’Nique just had twins.
• An interview with David Krumholtz of Numbers.
• Richard Burgi talks about his TV career.
• How Ethan Suplee lost 250 pounds.
• Matt Roush’s blindness is getting worse as he rates scary shows and calls Surface awful and Invasion great.
• A Grey’s Anatomy review, it’s a good show.
• Pinky Tuscadero of Happy Days fame later became a demolition derby driver then a criminal after shooting up a neighborhood after a car-alarm went off.

Wonderfalls: Series Finale

Wonderfalls: Caged Bird
This is the series final and a perfect end to a wonderful show.
A little kid is shoplifting at Jaye’s shop and is about to get busted but a blue caged bird tells her to “let him go”. She convinces the security guy to leave the slinky thief to get away. Eric comes in with his wife to buy some souvenirs but before can confess her true feelings the caged bird says again “let him go” then tells her “tell him you’re happy”.
The security guy arrests the little kid.
Barrel Bear tells Jaye to “give him heart” meanwhile the loser security guy is having trouble making friends with the cops, who have a robbery to deal with.
Jaye’s sister helps her after Jaye has mini-breakdown convincing her to call Eric and meet one more time and tell the truth.
The robber takes hostages in the gift shop and barrel bear tells her to “give him heart” so Jaye’s rendezvous is interrupted.
Mahandra has to keep bitch-Heidi occupied while Eric goes after Jaye.
Aaron and Mahandra are keeping their relationship a secret against Aaron’s wishes.
After some time the caged bird tells Jaye to “let him go” as the loser-security guy wants to take action. Meanwhile Heidi and Mahandra bond over their love lives.
While trying to escape the loser-security guy has a heart attack and dies, the police arrive because Eric sensed something wrong when he talked to Jaye. Sharon and Jaye do CPR on the dead guard, then the stuffed chameleon tells Jay ether is a “hidden door in the back and to let him go”, Sharon shocks the life back into the dead guard.
Jaye flees with the robber and crashes into Heidi, the robber is the squished by the arriving ambulance.
Jaye reunites with her family bit not Eric, Mahandra and Aaron go public.

Later security guy is showing off his scar of his new heart that he got from the robber and is not all that grateful.
Eric returns his souvenirs because he’s back and finally gets back with Jaye except now he’s divorced and without any baggage.

Wax lion starts to say “a word of advice” and Jaye tells it to shut-up and it does.

It was a perfect ending for the show, any type of resurrection of this show would ruin the happiness that happened. While they never quite explain why the inanimate-animals talked, they did say they talked to Jaye because she listened.

I would also add the music in this episode was beautiful.

Halloween And TV

Roseanne and Two Guys and a Girl always had the best Halloween episodes this year Two and a Half Men seems to be attempting a Halloween episode this Monday.

But what if you want to have a party with festive pumpkin carvings, well first you have too much time but here are three stencil places I've found on the web. Two are free the other is a paysite all are PDF downloads.

These carvings are a small sample of all the TV and movie characters that http://www.zombiepumpkins.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=db5e43972999116b094ade355bebc7c1 has it is a cool Halloween site that requires at least a $2.00 payment to download the stencils, but if your artistic or looking for inspiration you can figure out how to get these for free. Granted if you can afford to buy and carve a dozen pumpkins you can spend $2.00 for access, I've never used this site but the pictures are awesome. They have an open forum where you can get other free stencils and general help.

The next stencil site is from Hershey's http://www.hersheys.com/trickortreats/activities/stencils.asp thse PDFs are free and a bit more simple.

Finally another free site but it seems to working a bit slow the have dozens of PDFs several times I got error messages or broken images but I kept refreshing and they came through eventually. Under the Scary/Spooky Designs they have Mr. Worf(Star Trek) and many classic silver screen stencils. http://www.jack-o-lantern.com/patterns/ .

Halloween: Coming Soon

Halloween is my favorite holiday. I love scary movies especially on TV at 3:00 AM and during a storm. Everytime there is an unexplained noise in my apartment I turn off the lights and go to investigate, but nothing no monsters, no adventures through a mysterious portal only a damn mouse trying to crawl under the door.

But first regular TV.

South Park: Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow
Cartman and Stan break a damn and the Katrina jokes come flooding in. Nothing over the top and offensive except the constant Jew gold references. This tenth season opener was better then recent years but lost some of its punch.

Drawn Together: The One Wherein There's A Big Twist Part 2
After last seasons very offensive and sexual season these animated roommates took off in a helicopter that was about to crash. When we rejoin them they do crash in the style of Lost and lose two roommates.
Their new roommate is a Strawberry Shortcake Nazi and she is the least offensive thing in the episode. While all the dead characters come back Strawberry gets eaten.
This show is funnier then south Park and more offensive I love it. Everyone is back on this cartoon reality show and getting ready to disgust the masses.

Gilmore Girls: Welcome To the Doll House
Rory is still wondering and getting dumber by the second. While this episode is just a bridge for next week big birthday celebration it was still funny and smart, especially compared to the two previous shows I just reviewed.
The main plot in this episode was the Birkin, a Hermes bag that sells from $10,000 to $64,000( at a recent New York City auction of a black crocodile version). Everyone around Rory gets the meaning of the bag except for the twit herself. It's like an engagement ring.

Smallville: Aqua
Aquaman, AC, or Alan Ritchson whatever he calls himself makes an appearance trying to stop the further evilness of Lex.
One cool part was having Lois coming out the water like Pheobe Cates in her now famous Fastimes scene.
The other cool part was the little in joke at the end...
AC:"Maybe we should start a Junior Lifeguard Association or something."
Clark:"I don't think I'm ready for the JLA yet."

More Quick Updates

Surface: Episode 5
Laura last week tagged a monster and now she is tracking it but if she track it so can the government. The beast is moving fast inland and up river into a populated area.
Miles and Phil lost their pet and must track it before animal control and everyone else find out what is going on. They track it to a supermarket and hijinks ensue. They never catch it but little Nimrod finds his way back to Miles bed.
Rich less crazy but still obsessed calls Laura and goes to meet her. His craziness makes her nervous. They go to take pictures of the monster with a crowd of people who think they are seeing a whale but all evidence is deleted by the monsters electric pulse.
Rich is arrested while Cirko takes Laura into the fold.

Great show, getting better.

Lost:...And Found
This was a nice episode, taking place 4 days after opening the hatch. Sun lost her wedding ring and we see the flashback of how she met her husband. We also see the back-of-the-plane-survivors working together to cross the island safely to meet our favorite survivors.
We also see 12 barefoot people, one dragging a teddy bear, all white...maybe The Others.

ER: Wake Up
John Leguizamo takes over Sherry Stringfields abandoned position as the new doctor that will shake up the ER. He's quick and efficient very into modern toys.
There was a public service announcement with Laura Innes, Linda Cardellini and Maura Tierney talking about breast cancer and some tacky scarf on today's episode.

TV Guide: Oct. 17-23

On the cover of this new large format TV Guide is Ty Pennington with a sledge hammer under the title, TV Guide’s Extreme Makeover. On page one we have Ian Birch, Editor-in-Chief, delivering a message to the readers. He basically says since we have mostly one-hour shows and thousands of channels they must focus on what’s hip instead of what’s on your TV. The cover story is about how TV Guide teamed up with Extreme Makeover: Home Edition’s two-hour special on 10/16. They offered up 10,000 TV Guide for a secret project on the show. In case you don’t watch the show the project was a wallpaper of TV Guides for a kids’ camp.

Good and new things inside this issue:

• A HOTList, 21 shows in 7 days, 3 per day, recommendation such as Lost and Charmed.
• BREAKING News, Bruce Willis on That ‘70s Show, Vaughn is back on Alias, the FCC on Family Guy, we meet basement guy on Desperate Housewives, Ron Livingston on House, and The 4400 is back next summer.
• There not recasting Walt on Lost because he didn’t grow much. CSI is the most watched show.
• Kevin James and his Filipina-supermodel wife had a child Sept.30.
• Lost questions & answers: The Dharma film was spliced by a previous resident and the missing scenes lead to something. Walt said “Push the button. Don’t push the button, bad.”. Although that encounter was a dream it means something for the 108 countdown. Desmond will be back. Time is never mentioned on the show, THEY NEVER SAID THE PLANE CRASHED IN 2004, NO ELECTIONS OR HISTORY IS EVER MENTIONED. In November we find out how all the Rutherfords are related. The two Helens of Locke are explained.
• Matt Roush likes My Name Is Earl.
• Veronica Cartwright’s history as a scream queen.
• Alfre Woodard interview.
• An A-Z guide to Desperate Housewives.
• Photo Booth: cool pics and cool trivia for each person.
• Radar a shopping guide for the crap on TV shows.
• Tyler James Williams interview.
• Kari Wuhrer was fired from General Hospital and Passions is going anime.
• The grid and listings section is replaced with This Week featuring recaps of top shows, a movie guide with only four or three star movies. A daytime guide, a prime time guide and highlights for each day and then a late night guide all in 39 glossy pages.
• They added the game SUDUKO to the crossword puzzle in the back.

Finally Judgment: The format is okay, I never used the grid since I got TiVo so no big loss, the per day highlights may become useful. The focus on only popular shows is somewhat disconcerting. The articles are better and long enough to be interesting. Also I didn’t lose this issue as I usually do with the small versions. I give it 4 out of 5 stars.

Quick Updates/Mid-Term Madness

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
The last couple of episodes, one was titled 911, had the two main officers in Emmy getting roles. One had Mariska Hargitay leaving her date behind to help a kidnapped girl get rescued somewhere in the Tri-State area only to lose her phone connection and finding her buried alive.
The other has Christopher Meloni once again losing control and breaking the rules to help a friend, we also learn why he is so on edge when he visits a therapist.
This show gets better and better without all that undeserved hype ER is getting, frankly ER is getting worse.

Freddie: Rich Man, Poor Girl
Wow, this show is annoying, Freddie Prinze Jr. star as a chef whose female-family lives with him in an upscale apartment. He is single and dating with his best friend played by Brian Austin Green.
The worst part is the grandmother who refuses to speak English, while I've met people like her I still hate it.
This is not the pilot episode they changed things up and the pilot will be the second episode, thats never a good sign.

Lost: Everbody Hates Hugo
Finally the day after opening the hatch. It was a great episode dealing with Hurley's insecurities. We also see the other survivors of Flight 815 and we meet Rose's husband. There was a cute little dream sequence having Jin speaking English and a milk container that has a picture of Walt on the side under the missing sign.

Ghost Whisperer: Mended Hearts
The show is getting slightly better, today we saw a ghost creepily laughing at her, as if a storyline is building.
The shows main problem is that they don't have continuity, the Asian family from episode 2 is not even mentioned since that one.

Wonderfalls: Totem Mole
They try to explain why Jaye talks to the animals but she never finds out truly. She also gets to talk to a Native-American-Canadian Indian-Ghost/Spirit and we they show us more supernatural stuff.
They will have a marathon on LOGO starting Saturday at 9AM before the series finale next week. Wonderfalls Windfall

Surface & Other Good Shows

Surface: Episode 4
Miles little pet is now dog-gone hungry and all his friends know.
Rich has gone mad but takes a dip where he lost his brother and finally calms down, even after losing his job and his family for know. Although he everyone thinks he's crazy one of his weird drawings turns out to be something that really exists. So the question is how is he getting hints from his dead brother?
Laura is still struggling with money but she gets and old friend to try to tag on of the monsters. The find a pod of dead Humpback whales and she gets to GPS-tag one monster. They had a mini-marathon today on Sci-Fi, got to rewatch the first episode it is even better the second time around.

Grey's Anatomy: Make Me Lose Control
No abortion but a miscarriage, how convenient. This show is as close to a soap opera that a show can get. Grey's mother is admitted with a benign liver tumor and the whole hospital finds out how far she has fallen from her top doc position.

Gilmore Girls: We've Got Magic To Do
Those evil Huntzbergers are at Rory's party and once again Rory is wussing out, again. Grandma Gilmore is suspicious of Rory's activities. Grandma ripped into Mrs. Huntzberger after finding out the truth, it's a shame they didn't get into a smackdown.

TV Guide: Oct. 9-16 Goodbye?

The final small-size edition a true collectors edition and they milk it for all it's worth with 9 different covers. The cover I got has Reba McEntire and Lucille Ball in a two-page cover in identical poses. The other covers are..

1. Greg Gumbel & Dan Marino as Philip Michael Thomas & Don Johnson
2. The guys from Scrubs as the guys from M*A*S*H
3. John Cryer & Charlie Sheen as Tony Randall & Jack Klugman
4. Regis & Kelly as I dream of Jeannie stars
5. Reba McEntire as Lucille Ball
6. Conan O'Brian as Bob Smith
7. Jennifer Love Hewitt as Sally Fields
8. Homer Simpson as Fred Flintstone
9. The cast of The Bernie Mac Show as the cast of Good Times.

A 53-page article accompanies the front cover that is titled Then & Now, they've been publishing in small size for 53 years.

Some Then & Now highlights:

• Matt Roush learn to read and criticize with TV Guide.
• TV Guide as a collectable, the first national issue was April 3, 1953 with Lucille Ball & her baby is $2,000, the most valuable is the January 23, 1953 pre-national only for New York issue with Marilyn Monroe at $3,000. Rouger Hornberger a collector has 4,439 issues missing only 28.
• Interviews with all the cover stars of this issue.
• Fred and Barney were smokers.
• Quotes and pictures from every decade starting in the 50's.
• Cheers was to be set in a hotel.

Other Things inside:

• TV Guide Emmy after party picks.
• Wilmer Valderrama bumped into half a dozen exes at the party.
• Jorge Garcia lost some weight.Josh Hollway showed off his wife.
• Is Vaughn really dead?
• Kirsten Johnson, John Stamos and John Leguizamo will all be on ER, hmmmm, I see a "John" theme. Also about 50 charcters have left ER the most recent were Sara Gilbert and Sherry "I-need-a-break" Stringfield.
• Matt Roush likes Just Legal which was just caneclled.
• It's an 8-day issue
• To keep your TV Guides safe they are pushing a protective TV Guide Jacket for $2.95 each.

Well goodbye small TV Guide with your outdated listings that were never right it's been fun can't wait to see when your big issue fails.