Well then. You’re cruising along, doing the best you can. You’re excercising, you’re eating right, you’ve cleaned up your act. Then one morning you wake up and you’re almost 40! The horror of it all! Right?

Well, to tell the truth it really wasn’t that bad. In fact, it’s been pretty spiffy. The Mrs. and the Young-one woke up me up this morning with breakfast in bed. I got some new tools that will help my writing considerably, and tonight the Young-One is cooking me sloppy joes for dinner. Happy Birthday indeed!

The well wishes have been down right staggering over at my Facebook page and all I can say to that is; you folks are pretty awesome! Thanks to all of you for the birthday wishes!

In the meantime, thanks to my mom and the Mrs. I now have a shiny new laptop/netbook for my writing pleasure. (And really, it is a pleasure!) I’ve spent the better part of today getting things setup just right and breaking in the beast and I can call it a success. It’s an HP Mini 210 and I love it! The battery life is insane! 8 hours? Oh hell yes!

In getting the new laptop ready, I decided it was time to get the writing folder cleaned up and I was a bit shocked at what I found! In total, I found that I have 13 writing projects in the works! These stories are in various stages of completion, some lined up for editing and others still in early gestation, but that’s a lot on my plate!

Just for shits and or giggles, I figured I’d share the list so you can see what’s in store for the year. Keep in mind, these notes are exactly that; notes! So they’re rough! See something that you think would be cool to read? Make sure to comment and let me know! Enough interest may get one project bumped up over another!

1. The Granny Story: Currently started as “Dead Before Dark”. Playing on Granny’s old superstitions that if you took flowers from a cemetery, there would be tears before dark. i.e. someone you knew would be dead before dark. The idea starts with a teenage (13-14? Older) boy at a funeral with his Grandmother where she utters the legend in with distaste at the relatives picking apart the funeral arrangements. To spite his grandmother, the boy takes a flower just so he could say ‘see, nothing happened’ and as a result, many around him start to die as Death starts to make it’s way to him.

2. Bloodhound: Well under way already. 30+ pages. Needs to be finished up so that it can enter the editing phase. Expecting a good 60-70 pages on this. Im aiming for a ‘mutant’ noir feel here as it’s kind of a crime boiler type feel with a guy with mutant powers.

3. Dinner With Denton: Ongoing. First Novel. Not your daddy’s cannibal story. More like…Rachel Ray’s cannibal story.

4. Love Song at Ground Zero: In editing phase. Down to rewriting the ending/last paragraph. Changing the scope to go with my original idea instead of compromising and taking the easy/predictable way out!

5. King of Squalor: Submitted to Fangoria.com. Waiting for response

6. Incident at Crater Lake: around 12k words. In line for heavy editing. Already slated for “Mondo Sasquatch”

7. Mother of Two: rejected a few times, latest by Pill Hill Press. They thought there was a decent story in there, but it needed a heavy edit. I agree. In line for editing then shopping around again.

8. Jackboots for Jesus: Expansion. Story was published in “The Jack”, a college lit mag in 2008. Want to possibly expand the story, down on the list of importance.

9. Good Bye Jim: Story of the ‘fill in reaper’. Currently at 3400 words, unfinished. Needs finished, edited, submitted.

10. Dirty Work: Monster hunter team up. Good old boys who work as a unit. Look messy and sloppy from the outside, work as an effective machine as a whole. Good old fashioned ass kicking. Once draft is at 20k words, never finished. May need to revisit. Got overwhelmed and shoved aside. There is a 2nd short story version in the works, only at about 3k words that would be once separate adventure for the team. Perhaps more of an origin story. Still unfinished. Short version may wind up in “Dark II” as that’s what I started it for.

11. Dead of Night: Crap title, more a place holder. Young Adult series, two boys who are deep into comic books, once full of chaos one strict and by the rules. Based around an old comic called ‘Dead of Night’ ala Scary Tales and the old EC comics. They face off against a character that comes to life from the pages of the comic. Was originally thinking of this as a wrapper for a small say…3 story anthology but I’m having second thoughts. I’m starting to lean towards a series of Young Adult adventure stories where the two kids I have written already hunt monsters and mysteries that they come across starting with this creepy comic shop that appeared out of nowhere. Currently 3k words written.

12. A Fine Line: Another short that has been published at the “Sonar 4 Ezine” which is now defunct. It was an early story, it’s problematic at best. Started a rewrite, didn’t get too far. Has a nice accidental villain flare that would fit in with Des’s super hero anthology idea.

13. A Fat Man and his Dog: This was published as a serial at The Great and Secret Thing. It’s always been special to me because it sprang from me and my dog and our walks on my first bought of weight lost a good five years ago. I’d like to expand some day making the Fat Man kind of a Tall Tale kind of fantasy story, using this original serialization as a prologue. I don’t have a good grasp if it’s worth it though, I’ve barely ever gotten any feedback on it.

A nifty Word Cloud made from the front page of Cinema Fromage, courtesty of Wordle.

Ten years ago, a tragedy changed the town of Harmony forever. Tom Hanniger, an inexperienced coal miner, caused an accident in the tunnels that trapped and killed five men and sent the only survivor, Harry Warden, into a permanent coma. But Harry Warden wanted revenge. Exactly one year later, on Valentine’s Day, he woke up…and brutally murdered twenty-two people with a pickaxe before being killed.

Ten years later, Tom Hanniger returns to Harmony on Valentine’s Day, still haunted by the deaths he caused. Struggling to make amends with his past, he grapples with unresolved feelings for his ex-girlfriend, Sarah, who is now married to his best friend, Axel, the town sheriff. But tonight, after years of peace, something from Harmony’s dark past has returned. Wearing a miner’s mask and armed with a pickaxe, an unstoppable killer is on the loose. And as his footsteps come ever closer, Tom, Sarah and Axel realize in terror that it just might be Harry Warden who’s come back to claim them…

The new teaser poster and trailer has hit the streets today for “My Bloody Valentine 3D”! Now, the poster unfortunately focuses on the 3D gimmick a bit too much for my own tastes instead of on the movie itself. Remember the old poster for the original “MBV”?

Now isn’t that far more iconic and attention grabbing? Unfortunately this new poster just smacks of ‘Look folks, 3D!’. Aside from the name on the top, the only real hint that this is ‘My Bloody Valentine’ is a pick-axe.

Where they did score however is in the new Teaser Trailer that is out today! Fairly standard as far as trailers go, but it shows us the meat and potatoes of what the movie is about and makes it look interesting to boot! So, check it out, let us know what you think!

You’ll notice on the sidebar that there is a brand spanking new image & link to the ‘The League of Tana Tea Drinkers’!

The LOTTD’s Mission Statement:

Our mission is to acknowledge, foster, and support thoughtful, articulate,and creative blogs built on an appreciation of the horror and sci-horror genre. Horror bloggers are a unique group of devoted fans and professionals, from all walks of life, who keep the horror genre, in all its permutations and media outlets, alive and kicking. Often spending long hours to keep their blogs informative and fun, horror bloggers share their unique mix of personality, culture and knowledge freely to fans of a genre difficult to describe, but easy to love.

It’s time to honor exemplary horror blogs with our own special insignia: one that signifies the heights to which we aspire, and the code of excellence we follow to promote horror in all it’s wonderfully frightening forms, from classic to contemporary, from philosophical to schlockical.

The League of Tana Tea Drinkers are bloggers who toil away the extra midnight hour to present the best in horror blogging to reach the heights of horrifying excellence, and know what rapture it is to sip tana tea in the full moon light, and feel the thrill of walking the dark passageways in cinema and literature in search of the unusual, the terrifying, and the monstrous. For the fun of it.

Keep watching the skies, and reading the horror. LOTT D is coming for you!

–ILoz Zoc

What’s this mean for Cinema Fromage? This means we’ve been deemed worthy to join the illustrious ranks of fellow horror bloggers around the internet! For me, this is quite exciting as I’ve deemed all the members of this group top notch talent that I’ve always done my best to keep keep up with! So now you’ll find the occasional post keeping up with the discussions taking place with the LOTTD helping to inspire me to more articles!

You can follow along with the League of Tana Tea Drinkers on blogspot at http://lottd.blogspot.com/. Be sure to check out the sites of the other members as well as there’s some great scares to be found!

-Casey

Those of you looking for some Halloween fun pay attention!

Over at FearNet they’ve recently launched their Scarabration festivities:

““Scare-A-Bration,” an array of programming (i.e the broadcast premiere of The Midnight Meat Train and 66.6 Second Film Festival) to tide over horror fans until our favorite pumpkin carving holiday arrives! One of the highlights of the event is the 66.6 Second Film Festival, which will showcase 10 modern day, iconic horror flicks, spliced and presented in a hilariously haunting 66.6 seconds each. The line-up for the film festival includes: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, Friday the 13th: Jason Lives, Night of the Living Dead (1990), The Howling, Evil Dead 2, Hostel, Candyman, Exorcism of Emily Rose, Boogeyman (2005), and Leprechaun.”

The 66.6 Second Film Festival is hosted by Powerman5000′s Spider and can be seen Here. (Check it out, it’s actually pretty funny!)

The days grow shorter and so does my attention span. As we reach the far side of the October Challenge, my mind becomes clouded and my constitution runs thin! I like movies, I really like horror movies… It still starts to get hard after 21 days straight, non stop!

As we stand right now, we’re exactly 10 days from Halloween and the end of the October Challenge. To help get me threw the twilight of my attention span, it will soon be time to break out the real meat and potatoes, such as a glut of “Friday the 13th”, “Nightmares” and “Halloween” of course!

So read on folks I start to skim the bottom of the barrel!

My computer is all fixed up and we’re back this week chatting about the recent release of “Quarantine”. Also, since Jon and I have seen the original foreign film [REC], there is a lot of comparing and contrasting going on. Plus we talk about pumpkin beers, this week’s box office and we have a brand new inductee into the BGH Itty Bitty Titty Comittee.

Give it a listen at Bloody Good Horror!

Hell Ride

The Movie

“Bad-ass biker Pistolero (Larry Bishop) hits the road to avenge the killing of his lover Cherokee Kisum (Julia Jones) by a rival motorcycle gang the 666ers, along with his brother The Gent (Michael Madsen) and the mysterious Comanche (Eric Balfour).”

Okay folks, pay close attention here. What you’re about to watch is what a mid life crisis is going to feel like when the time comes for you.

Larry Bishop is a tried and true veteran of the biker exploitation flick genre, and he comes back here to direct, write, and star in this throw back to the dusty and greasy genre. He promises ass kicking, babes, bikes, and more. What he delivers is a sad attempt at reliving his glory days in a disjointed conglomeration of scenes with bikes in them. There’s a thin underlying plot here but by god, if you can follow it you’re a better man than me.

At the basest form of the work, the plot revolves around two biker gangs, The Victors and the Six-Six-Six’ers. Both of these gangs are proverbial ‘bad asses’ and tend to ride around looking old and over stylized on their bikes. Larry Bishop strays off from the pack over and over again to show himself having sex repeatedly, Michael Madsen cruises around in a tuxedo with his colors on the back and talks a lot about nothing in particular, David Carridine shows up tied to a chair, and Dennis Hopper is about the only actor to show up and do anything of interest on screen. When I say that the movie is nothing more than a disjointed conglomeration of biker scenes, I mean just that; this movie jumps back and forth with no rhyme or reason. One moment you’ll be watching a pack of bikes rolling down the road with Larry Bishop trying to look menacing at the front, then we’ll cut to Larry Bishop and some lady cavorting on a pool table dropping F bombs every other word, to Michael Madsen and somebody having a fist fight. There is no flow whatsoever to this movie and it suffers greatly for it. Really, it feels nothing more than a vanity project to make Larry Bishop feel good about himself again.

The movie is packaged well enough for what you would expect from DVD’s in this day and age. Widescreen formating, Dolby Digital and clean transfers are all as expected.

The Extras

· Feature Commentary By Writer/Director/Producer Larry Bishop & Director Of Photography Scott Kevan – We got enough of Larry Bishop in the movie. Do you REALLY want to listen to him talk about the movie too?

Frankly, I was so disgruntled by this flick that I couldn’t stomach going through the rest of the extras. Here they are for your perusal however!

· The Making Of Hell Ride
· The Babes Of Hell Ride
· The Guys Of Hell Ride
· The Choppers of Hell Ride
· Michael Madsen’s Video Diary

The Rating

I had such high hopes for “Hell Ride”; with Quentin Tarrantino’s name slapped on a violent action fest, what could go wrong. Obviously plenty as you will see. Sadly, disappointment colors my review colors; “Hell Ride” score 3 out of 10 for the movie itself. The DVD on the other hand is well put together and comes with a good bunch of extras. If it turns out you did in fact enjoy this movie, there’s plenty extra on the disk to keep you entertained.

“Hell Ride” hits streets on October 28th.

The Strangers

The Movie

The horrifying events that took place in the Hoyt family’s vacation home 1801 Clark Road on February 11, 2005 are still not entirely known. Champagne. Rose Petals. Candlelight. It was supposed to be a night of celebration for Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler) and James Hoyt (Scott Speedman). But after leaving a friend’s wedding and returning to the house, everything had collapsed for the happy couple. Then came a 4 a.m. knock on the door and a haunting voice. “Is Tamara here?” Writer/director Bryan Bertino explores our most universal fears in The Strangers, a terrifying suspense thriller about a couple whose remote getaway becomes a place of terror when masked strangers invade. The confrontation forces Kristen and James to go far beyond what they thought themselves capable of if they hope to survive

“The Strangers” on its own is a highly taut thriller packed with tension that will cause you to grind your teeth and inch ever closer to the front of your seat. While perhaps a bit slow paced at times the movie does a good job and making the hairs at the nape of your neck stand on end in anticipation of attacks and scares. There are many jump scares contained within, as well as some violence blood to spice things up.

The video is presented on the disk quite will in the dying days of the DVD format. Crisp and clean showing subdued colors and the like in well lit and expected fashion. A highlight for this disk is the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. In quite honest fashion, the sound effects packed into the rear speakers go a long ways towards making “The Strangers” as scary as it is. The movie relies heavily on sound queues of creaking doors and pondering footsteps sounding off throughout the shadows of the house and are brought to life in great fashion. You’ll catch your self checking your six repeatedly as you could have sworn you heard someone in your hallway.

The Extras

The biggest bonus feature on “The Strangers” DVD is that it offers both the theatrical cut and the unrated cut of the movie packaged together on one disk. Both offer DD5.1 sound and are both well packaged. There is only a two minute playback difference between the two cuts, so there isn’t that significant of a difference between the two. But, there are some lingering camera shots on the violence and gore; here at Cinema Fromage, that’s always a bonus!

Also packaged in with the two cuts of the movie are a deleted scenes feature as well as “The Elements of Terror”, a short behind the scenes look at the making of “The Strangers”. Deleted scenes are standard fare these days; a handful of disjointed and out of context scenes that aren’t nearly as interesting as they would be in context. Behind the scenes features are always fun however and “The Elements of Terror” is no exception.

The Rating

“The Strangers” gets 7 out of 10 for the movie itself, 8 out of 10 for the DVD. Deleted scenes fail to draw any interest whatsoever but packaging both cuts of the movie as well as a nice featurette are both nice touches.

The Info

“The Strangers” streets on Tuesday October 21st. For some extra awesomeness, Cinema Fromage and Bloody Good Horror have teamed together to bring you a kick ass Strangers giveaway! You have until Wednesday the 22nd to enter to win a copy of the DVD, 3 halloween masks from the movie, as well as a Tshirt! Sign up and tell them Cinema Fromage sent ya!