READING THIS ARTICLE WILL EARN YOU AN FBI FILE

http://chud.com/nextraimages/village_bush.jpgAre you going to the Toronto Film Festival this year? Want to make it through customs unmolested on your way home? Maybe you should consider skipping the screening of DOAP – no, it’s not Dugongs on a Plane. It’s Death of a President. And it’s a mockumentary about the assassination of George W Bush.

Now that I have the Secret Service’s attention, here’s the press release:

New York, NY (August 31, 2006) – The Toronto International Film Festival released new details today regarding a film in their line-up. Previously referred to as D.O.A.P., the film’s actual title is DEATH OF A PRESIDENT. This fictional drama, which mixes archival footage with narrative elements, focuses on the assassination of President George W. Bush in the style of a retrospective documentary. DEATH OF A PRESIDENT makes its world premiere in the festival’s Visions section on September 10th at 8:30 p.m. at the Paramount 3 Theatre in Toronto.

"We’re thrilled to be screening the film at Toronto," said writer/director Gabriel Range. “It’s a striking premise which may be seen as highly controversial. But it’s a serious film which I hope will open up the debate on where current US foreign and domestic policies are taking us.”

DEATH OF A PRESIDENT is a thought-provoking critique of the contemporary American political landscape. In the film, President Bush is confronted by a massive anti-war demonstration as he arrives in Chicago to make a speech for business leaders. Unperturbed, Bush goes ahead with the visit but as he leaves the venue, he is gunned down by a sniper. While the nation mourns, the hunt for his killer swings into action and the state apparatus tries to make sense of this horrific attack on the administration. The investigation soon focuses on a Syrian-born suspect.

DEATH OF A PRESIDENT is co-written and directed by Gabriel Range ("The Day Britain Stopped"), and is produced by Borough Films’ Range, Simon Finch and Ed Guiney. The executive producer is Robin Gutch. U.S. rights are represented by William Morris Independent, with distribution already secured in the UK by Film Four/Channel 4.

Range has made a couple of these fake docs – The Day Britain Stopped was about a fictional series of accidents that crippled the British transport system, while The Man Who Broke Britain was about a financial meltdown. The general style is that the docs are from the future, looking back at events we’re just about to experience.

Matt Drudge is already freaked out about DOAP, and that should give the film some notoriety on some level. I haven’t seen Range’s other films, so I can’t tell you what to expect, but I will say that my interest is piqued. And not just because I hate Bush! The basic format sounds interesting, and reminds me of the excellent CSA: Confederate States of America.






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DAILY GRABOID 8.31.06

What
is this? Every single day of the week (almost), a new "Graboid", a
single moment grabbed from a random movie, appears on this site for you
to guess the name of the film, share with your officemates, or discuss
on our message boards. Sometimes the Graboid will be very easy and
sometimes it’ll be as obscure as obscure gets. So read the news, read
the reviews, and enjoy a screencap each and every day for your guessing
pleasure.

As of 5/15/06, the Graboids are archived right here!
Guess and discuss today’s Graboid on the Message Boards.
Send an email about this feature.






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CREATURE CORNER DVD REVIEW: BONE SICKNESS

Bone SicknessDirected by: Brian Paulin
Starring: Darya Zabinski, Rich George Brian Paulin
Buy it from The Creature Co.!

"You turned me into a fucking necro junky!"

After the fun time I had with City of Rott,
I was eagerly looking forward to checking out Unearthed Film’s next
release- which from the trailer looked like much more of a true
Unearthed film- meaning gore, and lots of it. In that respect, it
doesn’t disappoint… but as for everything else….?

The Movie-

Alex
is dying. He’s got some weird sort of degenerative bone sickness, and
it’s left him sick to the point of not being able to act. Excuse me, I
meant take care of himself. His wife Kristen is very concerned for him
and so goes to his good friend Thomas for help.

Thomas (played
by director Brian Paulin) works in a morgue, and has a strange
suggestion for some alternative medicine. He makes some soup out of
human bone marrow and other bits and has Kristen feed them to Alex. But
is he getting better from it? It’s hard to tell, but the blood and
worms coming out of all of his orifices is probably not a good sign.


That’s the last time I eat Taco Bell.


Thomas
knows what it is- he needs fresher material! You don’t want to be
feeding the terminally ill just any human cadavers, you know. As he
spends more and more time with his buddy’s wife plotting to save him,
his own wife becomes jealous, because Kristen has a very, very nice
rack.


I
know what you’re saying- what are you telling me this ridiculous plot
for, where’s the meat of the flick? No fear! We all know why you want
to see this movie, and that’s for two things- zombies eating people and
zombies getting killed. And you will get plenty of both. Zombies soon
emerge from the graveyard and start killing everyone and everything, in
the worst ways imaginable. They even kill off an entire police force
that’s armed with machine guns for some reason. As this goes on Alex
starts to become insane and turn into a "necro junky" as he calls it,
he starts killing and eating people himself. The thing is, the demons
that control the zombies don’t approve, and start a fight with him.

Wait, what?

I didn’t get it either.


You don’t want to know where the lower half of this skeleton is…


The Judgement-

You know how, in every good zombie movie, there’s a scene where the zombies go nuts and chow down on everything living? In Bone Sickness this
happens in every scene with a zombie in it. Which leads me to the two
positive things about the film. First, the zombies are great,
beautifully made- these are on par with the best of the genre. The
makeup work is incredibly done here, and the designs are everything you
could hope for. And to go with that, the gore here is really well done-
even to the point of showing you some things you haven’t seen
before…. wait till you see what happens to a guy who gets stabbed
with his own gun. The main problem with all of the zombie scenes? They
get boring, fast. There’s only so much gore you can watch before you
yawn and wait for the next victim. The actors are nothing to write home
about either (like any of you write home anyway).

The victims
here all act like they’re in a 50s scifi flick, standing completely
still and screaming as monsters approach and tear them apart. They then
make funny faces and die slowly. For a moment I was considering using
screencaps of all their funny faces for this review, but I’m not that
mean. But yeah, there’s not a decent actor among the bunch, which
wouldn’t be such a deal with a gore flick- but this one tries to get
some emotional acting out of them- which just ain’t happening. It just
makes it that much funnier.

Another fault with this movie is
that it doesn’t know when to end. You’d think that the killing off of
most of the main characters (oops, spoiler!) would end the flick, but
no, it goes on for another 30 minutes afterwards with a subplot that
comes out of nowhere involving demons. Really geeky demons. Seriously,
they’re lame. Just look at them. It’s too bad you can’t hear them talk.


Hey, at least it looks better than the one Spidey fought…


It
then goes on from there to the most bizarre and out of place action set
piece ever created- with some admittedly cool car wrecks as zombies
take over a town.

But as a whole, the film is just too boring to
merit attention. The first time I watched this flick was with 2
horror-loving friends after we went to a bar and we tuned out about 20
minutes into it. Giving it a second try by myself to see if it was just
that night that turned us off I realized that no, this movie just
doesn’t do it for me. Which is a shame, because there’s some definite
talent involved here. Not the actors, obviously, but the effects are
topnotch for a production with such a low budget. The zombies really
are well made and the gore is just as sick as it should be. (They
actually did go back to reshoot some extra violence to make this more
of an Unearthed flick) But the rest of the movie can’t hold up.

The Sight and Sound-

The
picture’s nothing special. It’s shot on grainy fullscreen DV. The sound
and more specifically the effects are where they dropped the ball on
this. It could’ve been made a lot more brutal with some good sound
effects while the zombies are munching down (See City of Rott for a better example) and when people are getting hacked apart. As it is now everything pretty much falls flat.



Besides the gore- the best bits of the movie.


The Extras-

This
is where the dvd gets some points. The extras are all very well done,
and there’s a lot of humorous behind the scenes features.

Of those, Scenes That Hurt
is the funniest- as we see zombies and actors yipping in pain as things
go wrong. It’s pretty amazing they didn’t hurt themselves more with all
of the weaponry and stunts in this flick…

Having Fun on the Set
is exactly that- most of it involving the people dressed up as zombies
goofing around. There’s some really funny stuff here- these obviously
guys had fun making this movie. There’s also more evidence of that in
an Outtakes clip.

An Interview with the Director by
Uncle Creepy of Dread Central (who must be insanely pissed that he was
caught wearing a THC shirt in this… but…) which is good, but makes
the movie appear a lot sicker than it really is.

There’s a Commentary with
director Brian Paulin and actor Rich George, but I didn’t get a chance
to check much of it out. It sounds like they have a good back and forth
but I couldn’t get myself to watch the movie a third time.

Lastly there are Trailers, which are all varied, gory and good. Included are Bone Sickness, Frankenhooker, Ichi the Killer, and the next release- Nails.


Rule #1- once zombie starts biting you, lay still and play possum. Do not struggle in any way.


The Packaging-

Dig
the cover art…. Unearthed definitely takes care with these. The only
thing is that it’s a little dark compared to the image you see above,
but it’s definitely better than most of the art you see out there.

The Lowdown-

Has a lot of potential but never lives up to it. Not really worth your time, when there’s so many better gore flicks out there.

The Movie- 4/10 The Disc- 8.5/10

Bloody shit
Bloody maggots
Bloody worms
Bloody zombies
Bloody overacting humans
Jaws ripped off
4 boobs
Zombies shot
People stabbed by skeletons
2 people bisected by zombies
Green Goblins







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SCREENING: THE COVENANT (UPDATED)

http://chud.com/nextraimages/covepostnant.jpgNote from Nick: I’ve made this as easy as can be. I’m going to mail the passes. I’m not giving you any trivia or instructions to deal with. All I have asked for is your address and that you use the links below. Why? Because those links below create a subject line that makes it easy to filter these emails out so I can mail passes. But maybe and I mean MAYBE 15% of you have used those links, so what I get is blank emails or emails that say "Hey Nick" or Movie Passes" or "Craven", which really threw me off. Use the links or I am not sending a pass. Bottom line. Also, if one person sends like 5 emails with their friends’ names on each different one to gobble up a stack of passes, you aren’t getting them either. This is the last straw. I make it easy, I do the work, and it’s free (for you, not me). Show a little decency, eh?

Was anyone else surprised to see Renny Harlin’s name on this film? I mean anyone who wasn’t Dave Davis, as he went on set and all…

I was also surprised to see how many effects there were in the trailer for this movie, something that both excites the primal side of me but also raises the question in my tiny head "what about subtlety?". Then I remembered that this is a fun movie, a The Lost Boys by way of The Craft with a little of The Skulls tossed in for good measure. I expect every film to be Evilspeak and that is why I fail. This sounds like fun, so screw my typical pessimism. This looks fun! Go, The Covenant!

I’m a sucker for when cars dismantle.

Want to see this fella earlier than the people over at minotaursareslender.org? Use the appropriate link below and I just might be shoving a pass in the mail. You mailing address is imperative as I failed ESP for the 34th straight year.

By the way, I’d love to see the readers in some of the smaller cities represent. It’s rare I get to send you passes, so let’s do it right this time.

Atlanta
Birmingham
Nashville
Knoxville
Charlotte
Raleigh
Memphis
Greensboro





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BOLDLY GOING WHERE THESE OLD BASTARDS HAVE GONE BEFORE

http://chud.com/nextraimages/Anki-Cosmic-bath.jpgEverything this week feels like it’s related to the Transformers set visit (including these damn crabs!). While hanging out in downtown LA waiting for shots to be set up, many of us would get to talking, and the talk would often turn to nerdy subjects. I talked to producer Tom DeSanto (seriously – if the guy was any nicer the Hollywood system would have eaten him alive already. It’s incredible how down to earth and geeky he is) about JJ Abrams’ Star Trek XI, something that Paramount publicity has already begun working on.

I have to admit that I thought that Abrams’ take would disappear after Mission: Impossible III sucked, blew and then didn’t make enough money. But it turns out that Paramount loves JJ and hates Tom Cruise, so despite the fact that MI3 would have been no good despite its star, Abrams continues on the Star Trek revitalization.

Now there’s new, weird news that might help us understand where Abrams is taking the film. Leonard Nimoy talked to the Toronto Sun recently and revealed that Paramount has been in touch with him and Bill Shatner about being involved in Trek XI… somehow.

Thus spake Spock: "The head of production at Paramount called my agency to tell them about this project and they are aware of Bill’s and my contribution to the franchise, and they’d like us to know they might want some involvement. It was all very, very general.

"They might possibly want Bill and I to set up the story as a flashback. But that’s just conjecture on my part."

While I’ve been lately hearing “complete reboot” rumors, this does sound like Abrams might be looking to prequel after all – unless he just wants Nimoy and Shatner to do cameos (maybe playing the parents of their rebooted, younger selves? Just spitballing here). I think a reboot is the way to go, especially because there’s too much nonsense in the Star Trek canon, and a prequel runs into the Enterprise problem of figuring out how to make the surprisingly low-tech high-tech of the original series even more low-tech while believable as our future.

I’m not a big Star Trek fan (although I was as a kid, to my eternal shame, and I have a head full of Original Series trivia as a result), but I’m eagerly awaiting information on just how Abrams is going to revitalize this franchise. While many of us nerds on the Transformers set had differing opinions on where the series should go, we all agreed that it was pretty surprising that it was coming back so soon. The recent bad films and terrible TV series really took the luster off the name, and I would have expected Paramount to let the whole franchise cool its heels for a couple more years before bringing it back. They have a lot of faith in Abrams, it seems.






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DO MOGWAI CHIRP?

http://chud.com/nextraimages/zachgalligan.jpgThere’s this new indie movie opening this weekend that I wanted to hate, because it’s all about Williamsburg hipsters, but I ended up really liking. The film is called Mutual Appreciation, and one of the reasons I dug the movie was the star, an actor/musician named Justin Rice. He’s funny and loose onscreen, and felt very real, even when being kind of a dick.

Then today I get an email telling me about this new film Rice is in – where he stars with Zach Galligan! Yes, Gremlins star Zach Galligan, who could totally pass for Rice’s older brother, I think. The film is an indie that’ll be shooting on the streets of New York City called Let Them Chirp Awhile. It’s being shot in 35mm black and white using vintage lenses and filters – the filmmakers are shooting for that “Old Hollywood” look. They’re also comparing the look to Woody Allen’s Manhattan, which is an audacious comparison to make, since I think Manhattan is one of the best looking movies ever made.

The movie, which is being described as a tragi-comedy, also stars WB babes Laura Breckinridge and Pepper Binkley. Is Pepper Binkley a real name? That sounds like she should be friends with Betty and Veronica, and maybe get her own sassy spin-off comic. I am in love with her already, and I haven’t even seen a picture.

Let Them Chirp Awhile is the feature debut from a good local boy named Jonathan Blitstein.






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LOST AMID THE ZOMBIES

http://chud.com/nextraimages/Harold-Perrineau.jpgI just got an email from a friend asking me if Harold Perrineau’s character on Lost has been killed off. Not yet that I know of, but that’s not a terrible assumption considering that the guy has just signed on to star in 28 Weeks Later, the hacky sounding sequel to 28 Days Later, which is shooting right in the middle of Lost time.

Perrineua will play an “upbeat” American pilot in the sequel, which finds a new viral outbreak hitting London a half year after the last one burnt itself out. The movie also stars Jeremy Renner, not playing a scumbag for once. If he’s playing a guy named Walt and Perrineau gets to spend half the movie shouting his name, they have my money for this seriously unnecessary sequel.

So what does this mean for Lost? Spoilers for the end of Season 2 to follow… At the end of the second year, Michael (Perrineau’s character) and his son Walt were sent off in a boat by the Others with a compass heading that would allow them to escape the Island of Mystery. The show has been filming for a little while now, so it’s quite possible that Perrineau shows up in the first couple of episodes, and it isn’t like the guy didn’t disappear from the series for half of last year anyway.

Here’s the thing – the show takes place over a very limited amount of time. Just over two and a half months have passed on that island in the last two years, and the actor playing Walt has grown as you would expect a young adult to grow – ie, two years worth, not two months. The show runners have said they have a plan to deal with the actor’s growth – wouldn’t it be great if the plan was to have Michael and Walt’s boat hit a mine in the opening of the season three premiere?

If 28 Weeks Later does well, expect the series to continue with 28 Fortnights Later, 28 Months Later and Four Score and 28 Years Later.






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LET’S GET OPTIMUS PRIMED TO COMPLAIN

http://chud.com/nextraimages/prime1.jpgIt’s interesting that even after a couple of years of high profile movies getting spoiled all over the internet that the big studios still haven’t figured out how to stem the tide. The thing is that the production of a big movie has so many ancillary aspects – from FX to merchandising – that it’s impossible to keep everything a secret. And then once some stuff starts leaking, like it has with The Transformers, it becomes hip to leak your own stuff.

The leaks from Transformers are getting to the point where I’m reminded of Episode I, with the sheer level of interest and also the quality and quantity of leaked material. That’s not even counting the Prime Directive script which has been making the rounds and is closer to the real film than antyone at Paramount would like you to believe. I’ve thought a couple of times that these leaks were being orchestrated from within, but after the set visit I don’t think that’s entirely the case.

The latest leak is a full body shot of Optimus Prime with his Big Fucking Gun, which comes from some clothing trade show – the sort of thing that’s impossible to keep the lid on. Now the bitching can continue in earnest – I keep meaning to write an editorial about the need to let go of your favorite franchises when they get turned into movies, especially when said franchises were originally aimed at 11 year olds with developmental disabilities. What’s weird about the vocal Transformers fanbase is that these people are actual grownups much of the time, and by weird I mean pants-fillingly terrifying.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I’m not that comfortable with self-proclaimed and self-policed ‘fanbases.’ Whether they be Browncoats or Trekkies or ‘Transfans’ (which sounds like they troll the t4m sections of Craigslist). There’s something about an unthinking and blind devotion to any property that’s creepy, whether it be the Bible or Lost. But it’s especially creepy when it’s about a property that wasn’t meant to be taken half as seriously as the fans take it.

The other problem with these fanbases, these Transfans who will look at this picture of Prime and weep in frustration and who are threatening to protest outside Michael Bay’s office, is that they just don’t understand the filmmaking process. They don’t understand why the original, boxy designs won’t work in a photoreal environment, or why studios don’t make 150 million dollar movies about a whole bunch of robots and without people. I’m not sure how worthwhile it is to the studio to reach out to these people (although the studio really is doing so), just because they’ll all probably see the movie anyway, and the ones who won’t wouldn’t see it unless it was a live-action recreation of that shitty animated movie that was the depressing capstone on the final, dreary years of Orson Welles.

As for me, I don’t care how Prime looks until I’ve seen him in action in a clip or a trailer. I think that Transformers is probably a perfect fit for Bay, and if he keep some of the script’s schmaltzier and more boring qualities under control we are going to see a very exciting giant robots on the rampage movie that won’t win a single non-technical award but will be a very rewarding two hours spent in a theater on a hot summer day. That’s what makes me interested in seeing things from this film, not wondering if it has enough fealty to a poorly animated 1980s cartoon.






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DVD REVIEW: ASPHALT WARS

Buy me!BUY IT AT AMAZON: CLICK HERE!
STUDIO: Buena Vista
MSRP: $29.99
RATED: R (for no good reason)
RUNNING TIME: 83 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
None


The
Pitch

"It’s like taking Romeo and Juliet and then
photocopying it alongside The Fast and the Furious, and then
photocopying the photocopy, and then photocopying that, and then getting all ‘creative’ on the result."

The
Humans

Gilbert Chavarria, Calvi Pabon. (Both of whom
might want to change their names, now.)

The
Nutshell

Roger Corman, he who is set to watch over
independent cinema, presents the story of young
Reno, an
impoverished car enthusiast who finds himself embroiled in the seedy side of
street racing and disorganized crime. He makes himself some enemies, scores
himself some cash, and falls for the sister of the aforementioned enemies.

The
Lowdown

How bad, exactly, do you imagine this will be? Expectations
do not form a viable basis for criticism, but they can occasionally function as
a shorthand. For example, from the artwork, the obscurity, and the lame title,
I’d hazard a guess that you either:

a)
aren’t reading this because you don’t trust your cunning CHUD staff to make crap
reviews entertaining, or

b) you
think that Asphalt Wars shows off a level of talent that even its meager
budget overvalued. B is a good choice. What sucks for me is that now I have to
tell you why, in three easy steps.

Case study number one: in the first impromptu race
of the film, our protagonist grits his teeth in great concentration, the sound
of his motor humming all around him, his eyes on the finish line — while
through the rear window we can see that he seems to be parked, motionless, in front of a
brick wall. The acting really sells the scene.


Warp nine, Mr. Nastygram!


I think it’s gaining on you.

Case study Nummer zwei: The primary conflict that
our hero faces is convincing his uncle that he’s a big boy, now, and deserves
his car back. The range of emotion displayed in
these tantrums is staggering. As an added bonus, the car is invested with serious metaphorical weight.

Case study numero tres: These are the women the
filmmakers could afford.


No, not them.


I don’t get it.

This would be a great place to be pithy, I guess: Asphalt
Wars
contains zero-percent redeeming factor by volume. Don’t watch it
unless you’re related to the director, and even then I bet you’d have about as
much fun as you would have watching aunt Nanner’s slideshow of her trip to the
ice cream social. It’s trite, ugly, and effectively mute.

The
Package

There is a void.

2 out
of 10






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BOOK REVIEW: IN THE COMPANY OF OGRES

Buy me!BUY IT AT AMAZON: CLICK HERE!
PUBLISHER: Tor Books
PAGES: 352
AUTHOR WEBSITE: www.aleemartinez.com

A. Lee Martinez is going to be a great writer. He had a confident debut with Gil’s All Fright Diner which had great dialogue, a fun plot, and had new things to say in the horror and buddy action genre. It mixed zombie hunting with Joe R. Lansdale blue collar humor with small town charm, and it made me jumping up and down for his sophomore effort In the Company of Ogres, which I’m here to tell you is mostly a success.

The main character here is an average person named Never Dead Ned, a man who is unexceptional in every way except for the fact that he has died forty-nine times, and has been resurrected by a mysterious magical being every time. He’s a soldier with a perfectly average and boring job of balancing the books for Brute’s Legion. Just when he finds his niche in accounting, he is immediately transferred to Ogre Company. Ogre Company is a rowdy band of orcs, goblins, trolls, elves, treefolk(think Ents), humans, and obviously ogres. It also happens to be the most undisciplined, neurotic, and hardest drinking, unit in the whole Legion. He now has six short months to whip these sad sacks into fighting shape. Or else. This task is further complicated by the fact that Ned is pretty much terrible at every aspect of being a soldier.

The writing is fast and furious, the jokes coming left and right, with most of them scoring a bull’s-eye. Martinez knows the genre of fantasy well and loves to turn them over whenever possible. If anything, it reminded me of Shaun of the Dead because Martinez is interested in character first and making them relatable so you give a crap if they survive the many conflicts. He has such oddballs as the 19 inch tall demon king, the chain-smoking treefolk, a 25 pound goblin that is a daredevil pilot of beast 30 times his size, an insecure but overly assertive Amazon, and a blind oracle who smells the future, and that’s not even half the cast. There is some beautifully descriptive writing on display in Ogres, but Martinez’ talent lies in the small moments like two friends talking about what love is and how to tell someone you like your feelings or other funny moments where a bugler is given tips on how to add more pizzazz, oomph and, and shebang into his playing. It is a wonderfully funny and human novel, and the characters are like the people you might run into in your everyday life. This is rare in fantasy novels where the majority of writers are concerned more with building a huge world to stick their stock characters in to inevitably go on some kind of quest.

Which, ironically, is why I had a problem with the book, not enough to kill my enjoyment, but the problems did give me pause. Martinez sets the world up as one where races have mostly gotten over war and live in peace. So why is getting Ogre Company back in shape so important? The world isn’t developed enough to explain why that one particular company is so essential. Why not disband it and fill the fort with competent soldiers? Another problem I had was when a character kills Ned for absolutely no reason so Martinez can get most of his other characters much needed screen time. I enjoyed these scenes quite a bit and a less talented writer wouldn’t have been able to recover from sloppy writing like that, but it felt clumsy.

So why does Ned die so much and come back? Without warning, the Red Woman who has brought him back so many times launches into Ned’s Secret Origin which had some plot hole elements that made me scratch my head in confusion. It also surprised me that the admittedly easygoing Ned took the news of what he really is so calmly and well. It reminded me of the “Drugs are BAD, Mmm’Kay?” scene in South Park where the kids don’t ask any questions and just accept that answer.

With such convention breaking characters like the Evil Wizard Belok allergic to magic (It seems to gradually turn him into some kind of animal. The final transformation of his allergic reactions is a riot), a siren who can’t sing very well, an overly polite two-headed Ogre (Think The Goofy Gophers from Looney Tunes), and number crunching bureaucrats who are demons from Hell, it disappointed me when Martinez used such old and over-used fantasy elements like the self-sacrificing magical guardian and the seemingly normal protagonist’s great destiny.

In the Company of Ogres is a very good novel with some great humanity, natural humor, and writing. The final battle is absolutely Kirby in how cosmic it is and is written beautifully. I whole-heartedly recommend this novel, but I’m glad he wrote the brilliant Gil’s All Fright Diner first because it just misses the mark of brilliant, but I’m excited to see A. Lee Martinez grow as a writer; he’s a guy to watch closely.

READ IF YOU LIKE: The Princess Bride

BETTER THAN: Robert Asprin’s Phule’s Company

NOT AS GOOD AS: Shaun of The Dead (Different genres yes, but both strived and succeeded in enhancing their genres by humanizing their genres so well.)

7.25 out of 10





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