Author: Moe_Lane

Pride & Prejudice & Zombies… Is Just The Beginning!

(I originally wrote this when I heard about the P&P&Z book, and tried shopping it out to Big Hollywood.  Alas, no luck: but since I just pre-ordered the book with some birthday gift certificate money, I might as well put this article up here.  I was pleased with the way it came out, after all.)

The buzz today is over the greatest development in movie synergy since Hollywood decided to puree 134 films to make Independence Day.  I refer, of course, to news that studios are fighting to option out Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which is coming out April of this year.  What makes this exciting is that if successful, this movie could begin a trend:

Other talent agencies are pitching their own slate of monster-lit titles. They include a version of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, where Catherine, the deceased heroine, returns as a Japanese-style ghost not only to haunt but also to terrorise Heathcliff.

In a reworking of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Mr Rochester has something more terrible than an insane spouse in his attic, and a version of George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss is powered by human sacrifice.

The worry here is that the above might reflect the limits of said talent agencies’ creativity.  In light of that, I offer five concepts for those looking to interweave the genres of mainstream literature and horror.  I assure you that people would watch these films… and that literature critics would climb over each other’s dead bodies in order to attack them. Continue reading Pride & Prejudice & Zombies… Is Just The Beginning!

If your school has to issue a press release denying your vampire problem…

[UPDATE] Welcome, Instapundit readers.  Yes, this is a real story.

…then it’s pretty clear: you have a vampire problem.

Headmaster: No Vampires At Our School
Boston Latin H.S. Tries To Quash Rumors

BOSTON — The headmaster of one of the city’s most prestigious exam schools is dealing with an unusual rumor sweeping student classrooms.

There are no vampires at Boston Latin School, says headmaster Lynne Moone Teta.

Seriously.

Yeah. Damn right you saw this movie. We all did. And we all know what happens next: there’s going to be a few more people gone, and then there’s going to be a couple more, and there’s going to be some conveniently-upcoming big shindig and the bloodsucking fiends are going to be converging en masse on the conveniently-stake-free walking smorgasbord. Just like clockwork.

Well, I’m here to properly help. Not to try to tell you why there are no vampires, really: if there aren’t any, why bother telling you? No, I’m here to tell you what to do when one of the gore-lusting leeches comes smashing through the walls looking for your precious bodily fluids.
Continue reading If your school has to issue a press release denying your vampire problem…

I picked a heck of a day to take the (political) day off.

Apparently I’m Conservative Grapevine‘s Blog of the Day.  Which is probably confusing the heck of all the people seeing posts about lobster naughty bits and poisoned pigeons and alternate timelines and so forth.  To say nothing about the next couple of posts.

I have to admit, I’m not really all that upset about it.  But I will be blogrolling CG and Right Wing News anyway.  I’ve been meaning to.

The phrase “biologically accurate depiction” is problematical.

Although the picture is a bit more reassuring in that regard.

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The giant lobster of Plantation Key found its new home Friday morning in the Florida Keys. Betsey, who stands three stories tall, is now out in front of the Rain Barrel Artisan Village shopping complex at mile marker 86.7 of U.S. 1.

Betsey is made of metal and fiberglass. She is a detailed, biologically accurate depiction of a female spiny lobster.

Mostly because it drives home the lesson that just because a lobster may have female naughty bits doesn’t mean that you’re going to recognize them on sight. Which is a very strange sort of lesson, but then: it’s Key West. Those guys have turned secession into a The Mouse that Roared-style tourist attraction, so none of this is precisely out of character.

The cherry trees were indeed blossoming…

…and, look! The Internet survived my being away from it for most of the day!  Good start to the birthday weekend.

I’m going to go geek here for the rest of the day, so I’d appreciate it if nobody political does anything stupid enough for me to be forced to take official notice of it. Much obliged.

And now, some appropriate music:

Songs & More Songs by Tom Lehrer

It being spring, after all.

Wasn’t Burn After Reading supposed to be good?

I pretty much gave up after a half an hour, looked up the plot, and ejected the DVD. Which is weird: I like most of the actors in that film: but it just didn’t work for me at all. Maybe because I didn’t really like any of the characters?

No, I don’t know why I think that anyone else would particularly care if I liked a movie or not.

Quote of the Day.

This was never said by Andrew Jackson – although if he had ever had cause to, it would certainly fit his personality:

“Besides, it doesn’t matter. The thing that separates our party from – whatever you want to call that pack of scoundrels who don’t agree on much of anything except they want power – is this, before it’s anything else. You figure out what you think the republic needs. First. Then you figure out how to get enough people to vote for you. What you don’t do – ever – is go at it the other way. Leave that to the Henry Clays of the world.”

– Eric Flint, 1824: The Arkansas War

A paragraph that needs to be burned in various and sundry people’s retinas, methinks.

Crossposted to RedState.