Saturday, August 14, 2010
Friday, August 13, 2010
Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter-Seth Grahame-Smith
Synopsis
"My baby boy..." she whispers before dying.
Only later will the grieving Abe learn that his mother's fatal affliction was actually the work of a vampire.
When the truth becomes known to young
While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for saving a
Using the journal as his guide and writing in the grand biographical style of Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, Seth has reconstructed the true life story of our greatest president for the first time-all while revealing the hidden history behind the Civil War and uncovering the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of our nation.
Publishers Weekly
Following the success of his bestselling Pride and Prejudice and Zombies with another mélange of history and horror, Grahame-Smith inserts a grandiose and gratuitous struggle with vampires into Abraham Lincoln’s life. Lincoln learns at an early age that his mother was killed by a supernatural predator. This provokes his bloody but curiously undocumented lifelong vendetta against vampires and their slave-owning allies. The author’s decision to reduce slavery to a mere contrivance of the vampires is unfortunate bordering on repellent, but at least it does distract the reader from the central question of why the president never saw fit to inform the public of the supernatural menace. Grahame-Smith stitches hand-to-hand vampire combat into Lincoln’s documented life with competent prose that never quite manages to convince. (Mar.)Kirkus Reviews
The latest literary experiment from the author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009). After striking gold with his gimmicky mash-up between Jane Austen and grindhouse horror, Grahame-Smith takes a stab at creating an original plot with this new historical aberration. The author picks a larger-than-life hero: the legendary 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. In his fictional introduction, the author claims to have received a visit from "Henry," a creepy young roustabout whose curiosity leads him to deliver to the writer Lincoln's lost diaries, detailing his life as a gifted vampire hunter. The fictional Grahame-Smith is instructed to compose a historical biography, resulting in a mimicked, formal study of the late president in the vein of Doris Kearns-Goodwin, infused with a macabre dose of gore. According to the book, when he's only nine, Lincoln's mother dies from a supernatural assault, passed off as milk sickness. From that moment, the future president vows: "I hereby resolve to kill every vampire in America." Subsequently we find him earnestly decapitating America's vampires with his trusty ax. Not to be missed are Lincoln's trusty companions in his crusade against the undead, among them the president's real-life wrestling pal Jack Armstrong, and a New Orleans encounter with a gloomy, little-known writer, Edgar Poe, newly fascinated with stories of the undead. The book's grotesque joviality should be fun for those looking for it.
Down The Drain- Daniel Pyle
Book Release this month...
AN EXCERPT FROM DOWN THE DRAIN
The thing surged up, now partially visible over the edge of the tub. Its scales weren’t uniform but jagged, like broken tiles. Hair poked out in tufts from between the cracks—a patch here, a patch there—and although there was no way he could be certain, Bruce thought the stuff looked more than just a little bit pubic. The eyes stared at him from the sides of the thing’s head, snake like, but with those eerily human irises that reminded him so much of his own.
The creature opened a hole in its face that Bruce guessed you'd call a mouth. The opening had no lips, nor could he see gums or a tongue within the black maw, but the lines of broken tiles above and below the opening were most definitely teeth.
No. Fangs.
Whatever you wanted to call them, they were undoubtedly the gutting, filleting, bone-crunching, life-ending weapons of a carnivorous hunter. The creature snapped the teeth together, cocked its head; it opened its mouth again and let out a long, watery, whistling-kettle hiss.
Bruce scooted back, but there wasn’t much room to move. He'd always considered the bathroom roomy; now it felt like a broom closet. When his back hit the vanity, he’d created maybe three feet of space between himself and the emerging thing.
The creature lifted a hand to the edge of the tub. Its fingers were bent but stiff. They appeared to be composed of segments of PVC pipe and jointed with L-bends of the same material. The ends of the digits came to points, as jagged as most of the rest of the beast. When they clacked against the tub, you could hear they were hollow. They didn’t look like the most articulate body parts, but Bruce guessed they could do a lot of damage. Enough damage.
The monstrosity let out another of those steamy hisses and leaped at him.
Author Daniel Pyle...
New "The Last Exorcism" Posters Pics and Trailer
When he arrives on the rural Louisiana farm of Louis Sweetzer, the Reverend Cotton Marcus expects to perform just another routine “exorcism” on a disturbed religious fanatic. An earnest fundamentalist, Sweetzer has contacted the charismatic preacher as a last resort, certain his teenage daughter Nell is possessed by a demon who must be exorcized before their terrifying ordeal ends in unimaginable tragedy.
Buckling under the weight of his conscience after years of parting desperate believers with their money, Cotton and his crew plan to film a confessionary documentary of this, his last exorcism. But upon arriving at the already blood drenched family farm, it is soon clear that nothing could have prepared him for the true evil he encounters there. Now, too late to turn back, Reverend Marcus’ own beliefs are shaken to the core when he and his crew must find a way to save Nell – and themselves – before it is too late.
THE LAST EXORCISM is written by Huck Botko & Andrew Gurland and directed by Daniel Stamm. Strike Entertainment and STUDIOCANAL present an Arcade Pictures production.
FRIDAY THE 13TH "Be Afraid! Be Very Afraid!
From Mtv.com :
Today is Friday the 13th, which means anything that can go wrong will go wrong — black is white, up is down, pigs can fly, and all of these oddities will culminate in your demise in an epic "Final Destination" inspired display of gory awfulness.
Alright, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. But for the superstitious readers out there, you may want to consider being a little bit extra careful on this supposedly unlucky day. For example, while we would rarely encourage you to take cues from your favorite action heroes and act in dangerous and brash fashion, today is one day where you really don't want to step out of line — again, if you believe in superstition, that is.
So, in the name of speaking to that crowd, we're offering a little bit of advice on what not to do on Friday the 13th based on our horror movie watching experience. Check out our thoughts past the jump!
- Remember when I called out "Final Destination" earlier? There are a lot of lessons to glean from those films: don't stand under massive glass window elevated twenty stories in the air, don't exercise too aggressively in the weight room and make sure to stay away from airplanes of all kinds. In other words, avoid everything. Even ice water.
- In "Scream," Jamie Kennedy eloquently summarized the most important rules of surviving scary movies. One such rule is to never have sex, or else risk grisly death at the hands of a serial killer. We're not here to preach to you on what you do in your personal life, but maybe this is one unlucky day of the year where you don't want to get lucky, if you catch our drift.
- Don't go to sleep until the clock strikes midnight, unless you want to risk a lethal invasion from a guy like Freddy Krueger, or even the cast of "Inception." At the very least, make sure your mind is trained for such possibilities.
- Although he's not exactly a horror movie icon, Anton Chigurh of "No Country for Old Men" is one of the single most terrifying characters of all time. Take my advice, friendo: if you see somebody limping around your town today with an awkward haircut and a captive bolt pistol at his side, run — don't walk — in the other direction.
- Speaking of avoiding people — this is Friday the 13th we're talking about, after all — it's best if you avoid large men with hockey masks and machetes. You should probably do that every day of the year, but today is one particular day to look out for such thugs.
LOCKDOWN: ESCAPE FROM FURNACE 1
Escape from Furnace 1
Escape from Furnace (Volume 1 of 5)
Awards: American Library Association Quick Picks for Young Adults
EXCERPT:
NO WAY OUT If I stopped running I was dead.
My lungs were on fire, my heart pumping acid, every muscle in my body threatening to cramp. I couldn’t even see where I was going anymore, my vision fading as my body prepared to give in. If the siren hadn’t been hammering at my eardrums, then I’d have been able to hear my breaths, ragged and desperate, unable to pull in enough air to keep me going.
Just one more flight of stairs, one more and I might make it.
I forced myself to run faster, the metal staircase rattling
beneath my clumsy steps. Everywhere around me other kids were panicking, all bolting the same way, to safety. I didn’t look back to see what was behind us. I didn’t need to. I could picture it in my head, its demonic muzzle, silver eyes, and those teeth—like razor wire.
Someone grabbed my arm, pulling me back. I lost my balance, spilling over the railing. For a second the yard appeared five stories beneath me and I almost let myself go. Better this way than to be devoured, right? Then the beast shrieked through its wet throat and I started running again before I even knew I was doing it. I heard the rattle of the cell doors, knew they were closing. If I was caught out here, then I was history. I leaped up the last few steps, hurtling down the narrow landing. The inmates jeered from their cells, shouting for me to die. They stuck out their arms and legs to trip me, and it almost worked. I staggered, lurched forward, falling.
Somehow I made it, swinging through the door an instant before it slammed shut, the mechanism locking tight. The creature howled, a banshee’s wail that made my skin crawl. I risked looking back through the bars, saw its huge bulk bounding past my cell, no skin to hide its grotesque muscles. There was a scream as it found another victim, but it didn’t matter. I was safe.
For now.
“That was close,” said a voice behind me. “You’re getting good at this.”
I didn’t answer, just stared out across the prison. Six stories of cells beneath me and God only knew how many more above my head, all buried deep underground. I felt like the weight of the world was pressing down on me, like I’d been buried alive, and the panic began to set in. I closed my eyes, sucking in as much of the hot, stale air as I could, trying to picture the outside world, the sun, the ocean, my family.
All things I would never see again.
“Yup,” came the voice, my cellmate. “Bet it’s starting to feel like home already.”
I opened my eyes and the prison was still there. Furnace Penitentiary. The place they send you to forget about you, to punish you for your crimes, even when you didn’t commit them. Only one way in and no way out. Yeah, this was my home now, it would be until I died.
That wouldn’t be long. Not with the gangs that eyeballed me from behind their bars. Not with the blacksuits, the guards who ran their shotguns along the railings as they checked the cells. Not with those creatures, raw fury in their eyes and blood on their breath.
And there were worse things in Furnace, much worse. Maybe tonight the blood watch would come, drag me from my cell. Maybe tonight they’d turn me into a monster.
I dropped to my knees, cradling my head in my hands. There had to be a way out of here, a way to escape. I tried to find one in the hurricane of my thoughts, tried to come up with a plan. But all I could think about was how I came to be here, how I went from being a normal kid to an inmate in the worst hellhole on Earth.
How I ended up in Furnace.
The Many Lives of Jason Voorhees: A DVD Extra
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