Happy New Year!!!

"Trailers From Hell": Sheer Heaven!

Bored with YouTube's endless parade of other people's kids, pets, and painfully unfunny "ambush" videos? Wouldn't it be more fun to listen to "Shawn Of The Dead" director Edgar Wright defend the British cannibal flick "Raw Meat"? Well, for that, you've got to go to Trailers From Hell, the brainchild of Joe Dante's multi-media companyMetaluna Productions, in collaboration with The Nickels Group and Elizabeth Stanley Pictures.

Other notable "gurus" include directors like John Landis, Alison Anders, Allan Arkush, Larry Cohen, Mick Garris, and Jack Hill, and screenwriter Sam Hamm.

The best part of it all is that in most cases, the trailers are better than the films they're ballyhoo'ing. Case in point: this month's trailer is "I Was A Teenage Werewolf", hosted by none other than makeup maestro Rick Baker!

©2007 Robert J. Lewis

iTunes Makes Canadians Pay For Stuff They Won't Even Watch For Free...

Television shows can finally be downloaded in Canada via iTunes, but the most of what's available is CanCon-approved fare only. Hoo-ray.

"Corner Gas", "Little Mosque On The Prairie", "The Rick Mercer Report," "Dragons' Den" "Degrassi: The Next Generation" and "Robson Arms" are some of the initial titles. Although CTV fare like "The Hills", "South Park", and "The Sarah Silverman show" come from south-of-the-border.

If iTunes really wants to get me excited about downloading Canadian content, they'll add "SCTV", "The Forest Rangers", "The Starlost", "Strange Paradise", and of course, "Rocket Robin Hood" to the library.

I assume that the selection will eventually expand to films. Just think--Michael Snow's "Wavelength"! Available in your shirt pocket! Whenever you need some perspective during a long streetcar ride!

Check out the story here at Canoe.

Chimp Beats Humans At Test, Shares In Loincloths Skyrocket...

Japanese researchers (who else?) recently devised a short-term memory competition between young chimpanzees and college students and, overall, the apes won. Goodbye Statue Of Liberty...It's only a matter of time before our closest genetic relatives take over civilization with meat cleavers, as documented in J. Lee Thompson's Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes.

Yep, a five-year old year chimp has a better memory than a human--at least compared to these these co-ed clods--in a test that involved recalling the order of Arabic numbers. If General Urko organizes his gorilla army before next year's 2008 elections, perhaps Dubya can save face and send 'em to Iraq...

The beginning of the end can be read here at Canoe.

Batman And "Razumihin"?

Thanks to DC's "Elseworlds" one-shots, we've had Batman in Victorian England ("Gotham By Gaslight"), Batman in the Civil War ("The Blue, The Grey, And The Bat"), "Batman: Dark Knight Of The Round Table" (guess), Batman in the ghetto (Stan Lee's unfortunate "urban" reinterpretation, which was basically Boyz N' The Hood with "Manbat"), Batman in Cold War Russia ("Superman: Red Son"), plus Batman vs. the Phantom Of The Opera, Nosferatu, OSS agents, Edgar Allen Poe, the French Revolution, Al Capone, The Templar Knights--so what's left?

How about The Dark Knight starring in classics of literature? Back in 2000, Drawn And Quarterly proposed Dostoyevsky Comics, the first (and presumably, only) issue devoted to Fyodor D's Crime and Punishment--an appropriate subject for The Caped Crusader. It's definitely the most unique take since the Josef von Sternberg film version which starred Peter Lorre and compressed and updated the tale to The Great Depression.

Hilarious stuff by R. Sikoryak.--check it out here.