Stop me if this sounds familiar: in a far-northern community, night lasts thirty days, which makes the area highly hospitable to vampires. Yes, Frostbitten shares a very similar premise to the excellent 30 Days of Night. And while the Swedish film predates its American counterpart, it is more recent than the graphic novel. At any rate, the similarities pretty much end there, as Frostbitten is more interested in comedy than its cousin, and is also nowhere near as good.

Hacking through Manhunt 2, Germans censor corpse desecration and Maniac Mansion censorship revisited - Welcome to the column that is unedited and contains plenty of swear words like *£ïΘ, &$%*, & *$&# known as Dare to Play the Game.

Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. Nope, still didn't get to Half Life Orange. *sigh* The girlfriend and I played a whole lot of Guitar Hero 3 which is why you got a handy dandy review so quick. That and I couldn't break my Guitar Hero streak on this site. No sireee bob. A lot of Puzzle Quest was also digested as my character has entered the mid 20's and the girlfriend is in her 30's. Just like our ages except in reverse. Damn, I'm old; but my girlfriend did turn 24 yesterday. Muhahahaa, perhaps it isn't nice to point and stare. But heck I do that anywhere on a daily basis. She also reads this column, I worry for her sanity.

Hmm. A vision of elaborate torture in washed-out tones on the cover. A three-letter title. Gee, could Gag be inspired by Saw? Perhaps, but fortunately not in any slavish way, limiting its connections to the idea of extended torture, and that’s hardly something Saw invented. As opposed to the Saw franchise’s increasingly risible plot convolutions, Gag keeps its setup simple: a pair a burglars break into a house where they first discover a man chained to a bed, and then are captured themselves by the resident nutjob. The ensuing drama is a claustrophobic one, with the main characters trapped in the torture room at the mercy of a lunatic who has a definite, if mysterious, goal.

Stephen King must be solely responsible for an acre of deforestation a year in legal pads and typewriter pages alone. I have heard it said that he writes at least ten pages a day, including holidays. A quick check of IMDB shows that he is credited for writing 106 television or movie stories, at least in part, since "Carrie" in 1976. While no writer - as I well know - can hit a home run every time they put pen to paper, King's "good to crap" ratio is far superior to that of the majority of the novelists working today.

I wanted to watch these movies back to back to try and get a feel for how they work together. The box art tells us: “Much has changed since we last saw Jake.” No truer words were ever spoken. Jack Nicholson is now a household name and a fixture at the Lakers games. Many a classic character has worn Jack’s sardonic smile since Chinatown. Perhaps it was the timing that was bad. Nicholson decided to resurrect Jake Gittes as his first role following his awesome turn as The Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman.

Jack Nicholson’s career has been decades of a man who is constantly redefining himself. Few actors have created as many memorable roles; among them has to be Jake Gittes. This Raymond Chandler styled character first appeared here in the Roman Polanski Film Noir Chinatown. The feel of Chinatown was far more effective in 1974 than it is today. Unfortunately the style has been done to death and often with disastrously horrid results. Still, in 1974, Polanski was able to create an effective atmosphere and use it not just for style but as a place to tell an engaging story. Chinatown takes you to a Los Angeles that simply no longer exists.

Pixar has become somewhat of a fixture around here, as I suspect it has in many homes across the world. For the most part the films have been nothing short of magic. I’m not only talking about the ever improving technological breakthroughs the company seems to have an endless supply of. The films often contain a warmth and friendliness that wear easily like a favorite shirt. They comfort and entertain all at the same time.

January 15th is the just announced release date for the Family Guy "Blue Farce" - apparently an extended version of the season six premier that is a protracted sendup of Star Wars.

I'd link to a trailer or some clips, but hey! Fox has taken everything related to this down off of YouTube. And of course, the Fox media site is lagging their press releases with no coverart, trailers, stills, or anything related to this release available. So enjoy some mildly descriptive text instead!

Featuring hysterical cameos from Rush Limbaugh, Chevy Chase, Beverly D’Angelo and Helen Reddy, Family Guy Presents: “Blue Harvest” is “a dead-on homage that hilariously picks apart Star Wars, along with much of real life” (Associated Press). The DVD features more than four minutes of never-before-seen material; an uncensored track; animatics; commentaries; interviews with Seth MacFarlane and George Lucas...

Man, these guys are bundling hard on the SE release. T-shirts, 3-D glasses, trading cards (meh), and, of course 3D footage to go with the glasses...

See the full specs after the jump...

A woman scorned is a dangerous thing. They will break you, hurt you and leave you for dead in the most unimaginable ways possible. In fact, it might be best for most men to sleep underneath their covers with a flashlight, a security system and no contact with the outside world. It probably wouldn't help. So it makes only sense that one would make films that deal with this subject. However, they had to make it believable even if a scorned woman sometimes does the unthinkable.

The name of this double-pack is slightly misleading, but that is not to suggest the film and television mini-series on offer are in any way bad. Quite the contrary, in fact. It’s just that they aren’t exactly “action” films per se. So don’t pick this up hoping for something in the vein of The Road Warrior. Instead, these are brutally intense dramas with strong action elements. Both titles are excellent.