Saint Know-All

Title: Wind Chill
Director: Gregory Jacobs
Year: 2007
Rating: R

Wind Chill is a horror movie that does little to expound upon the typical stranded-and-totally-fucked plot so often seen in this genre. But with only two main characters instead of the usual collection of meatbags, we do get a little more character development than usual.

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Title: The Birth House
Author: Ami McKay
Genre: Fiction

The Birth House is an interesting yet ultimately lopsided book about a young midwife in early 20th century Nova Scotia.

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A foil is a character who emphasizes and contrasts the personality of a main character. Providing double duty for characterization (the foil character and the MC are both at the receiving end; what you learn about one is what you learn about the other), a foil is a neat way to build upon your main character. Note that while foils benefit the main character, they can very much remain fully-developed characters in their own right. Some notable examples of foils include Gollum for Frodo from The Lord of The Rings, and Han Solo for Luke Skywalker from Star Wars.

Title: The Visitation
Director: Robby Henson
Year: 2006
Rating: PG-13

The Visitation in a nutshell: A small town is enraptured by the presence of a young man with healing powers, played by greasy-faced, rat’s-nest haired Edward Furlong. Edward fuckin’ Furlong, folks.

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Title: The Fifth Element
Director: Luc Besson
Year: 1997
Rated: PG-13

The Fifth Element is one of those movies that is so knowingly goofy that mocking it only makes you feel retarded. And then you realize that even though it’s cheese, it’s fun cheese.

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Title: Deerskin
Author: Robin McKinley
Genre: Fantasy

Deerskin is Robin McKinley’s retelling of the old fairy tale Donkeyskin, and proves to be a powerful, often harrowing tale about personal demons, rebirth, and hope. This is character-driven fantasy at its finest.

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A neat trick for achieving a snowy or star-filled sky in a watercolor painting is to use salt.

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Title: 30 Days of Night
Director: David Slade
Year Released: 2007
Rating: R

This movie sucked, plain and simple. And no, that wasn’t an intentional pun.

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Title: MirrorMask
Director: Dave McKean
Year: 2005
Rating: PG

MirrorMask is a frustrating movie. On one hand it has an original, vivid world to pull us into, with a palette and concept art to die for (unsurprising, considering it’s McKean and Gaiman’s baby). On the other hand, the plot is thinner than Kate Moss after her latest coke binge. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First things first.

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Title: Blood and Chocolate
Director: Katja von Garnier
Year: 2007
Rating: PG-13

Holy crap, was this a stinkbomb of a movie. The wide-ranging mythos and symbolisms associated with lycanthropy were completely ignored, a trend common among modern werewolf movies (looking at you, Underworld). Shallow, muddled, and unsatisfying even as camp.

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