This Christmas Day, another hero born of comics comes to life on the big screen.

Adapted from Will Eisner’s comic book series, and directed by Frank Miller (creator of “300″ and “Sin City”), The Spirit tells the story of a man who mysteriously returns from the dead to fight crime from the shadows of Central City.

Unfortunately, the Octopus (Spirit’s arch-enemy) plans to wipe out the hero’s beloved city as he pursues his own version of immortality.

While tracking this cold hearted killer, The Spirit faces a slew of beautiful women who may want to seduce, love or kill the masked crusader.

The film will be a contemporary version of the ’40s and ’50s comic strip era, aiming for a “timeless feel.”

While director Frank Miller intends to be faithful to the integrity of the material, he won’t make it nostalgic and predicts that people will find it scarier than expected.

Miller plans to film The Spirit using the same digital background technology that was used for Sin City, copying specific shots from the comic.

Created in 1940, Eisner’s Spirit ran in newspapers and comic books across the United States for twelve years.

Eisner’s pioneering work on The Spirit created a comic book style that departed from the melodrama of most superhero serials, focusing instead on the tragedy, romance, and world-weary humor of his characters.

DC Comics are currently publishing Will Eisner’s The Spirit Archives, reprinting the entire original series in high quality hard cover editions. They have also launched an all new monthly The Spirit series.

You know, Star Wars only shows the Dark side of Darth Vader. But I was curious about Vader’s mundane everyday moments, so I hired a spy to find out what he’s really like when he’s not hanging out at the Death Star. Hold on to your helmet…this may surprise you.

Vader takes a swim

Vader rides to work

Vader runs a marathon

Vader does the Christmas shopping

Moms, teens and tweens (and me, of course) are biting their nails in anticipation of the Twilight film release on Friday, November 21st.

In a recent survey, Twilight was voted by Fandango moviegoers as the most anticipated film of the season.

As of 12:00 noon on October 31st, the film accounted for 51% of all daily ticket sales on Fandango, the nation’s leading moviegoer destination.

Twilight show times are expected to sell out quickly, based on a current Fandango survey of more than 5,000 moviegoers:

— 92% of respondents say they’ll see “Twilight” on opening weekend.
— 85% say they plan to see the film more than once.
— 56% are planning to see the movie with a group of friends.
— 97% have read the novel by Stephenie Meyer.
— 86% would be interested in visiting the locations where the movie
was filmed.
— 95% of the respondents to the survey are female.
— 42% of respondents are 25 or older; 58% are younger than 25.

Screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg indicated that she had to condense certain aspects of the popular story, while combining supporting characters and expanding upon story features not thoroughly described in the book. But hopefully, Rosenberg’s modifications will not detract from the integrity of Edward and Bella’s story.

Summit Entertainment has announced that they’ve acquired the rights to the sequels and has already hired Twilight screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg to script New Moon (Book 2) and Eclipse (Book 3). As of yet, no screenwriter has been secured for Breaking Dawn (Book 4).

For those of you who can’t get enough of the Twilight trailer, watch it here:

And if you can’t get enough of vampires, check out the
Fandango website for a list of other unconventional vampire tales.

The fascination with superheroes is crossing comic book boundaries and leaping into fashion, music and pop culture.

Even music and retail icons like Christina Aguilera and Target know the value of channeling superhero popularity in their advertising.

In this Target commercial (that promotes the release of Christina Aguilera’s new best-of album, sold exclusively at Target), Aguilera borrows from the action-hero theme of her music video Keeps Getting Better dressed in various superhero outfits, with an animated comic-book style background.

Even babies enjoy a good film parody once in a while. Here’s the wee ones’ version of two BIG Blockbusters:

Baby Harry Potter

Bat Baby

There’s a reason mum told you not to play with knives. But why didn’t she ever warn you not to play with plastic ones (especially if you’re planning on dressing as Rambo for a night out on the town)?

British student, Anthony Radley, 21, must have missed that lecture.

He was approaching a friend’s house in Lenton, Nottingham (England), when he was stopped by officers. While the police didn’t seem to mind his menacing Rambo attire, they did take exception to his six inch plastic toy knife.

Police demanded that Radley put his hands in the air before they cuffed and searched him.

Radley was arrested and spent three hours in a cell before being charged with causing public alarm.

He was then offered an £80 fine instead of having to go to court. Initially taking the fine, he later decided it was silly and appealed it.

The case has been dropped, but it seems to have cured Radley of any desire to go out and about with a plastic knife in tow.

[via Telegraph.co.uk]

Admittedly, I’ve never seen a costume quite like this one before…kind of gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “rabbit hunter,” doesn’t it? I think it’s both cool and a little, um, disturbing. The only information I could seem to find about this costume was that the picture was posted on the internet in November of 2007 (maybe my internet research skills are rusty) but I’d sure like to know the story behind it (Elmer Fudd, beware)!

What do Star Wars and Thanksgiving have in common? Nothing, you would think. But this hilarious Xbox commericial blends clever advertising, in promoting a their Star Wars game, with the ensuing quirkiness that sometimes prevails at Thanksgiving’s traditional family gatherings (after watching this video, I think I’ll pack my light saber before heading off to Grandma’s for Thanksgiving dinner).

Most Halloween stories are usually scary…and fictional. How about some amusing true Halloween stories for a change? These real accounts were sent in to Reader’s Digest. LOL!

Playing With Fire

Firefighters are required to wear their full bunker gear on all safety calls, even to advise homeowners of a county ordinance against burning leaves after dark. One Halloween, two fire workers waited on the porch of one such offending household, helmets in hand, until a woman finally opened the door. Promptly dropping a candy bar into each helmet, she remarked, “You boys are a little old for this sort of thing, aren’t you?” and closed the door.

Picture This

For Halloween, one child wanted to be the The Incredible Hulk. Using food coloring and a washcloth, his hands, face, neck and blond hair were dyed the same green shade of the TV monster. After his bath the next morning, a faint green tint still remained. As he was heading out the door for school, the child handed his mother a note he’d forgotten to give her the day before. The mother quickly opened the note to find, with dismay, that school pictures were going to be taken that day.

Right place, Wrong time

On Halloween night a driver called a road-service dispatch office complaining that he was locked out of his car. The dispatcher forwarded the information to a locksmith, along with one more detail: The car was parked at a nudist colony. Of course, the locksmith arrived in record time. But when he called the dispatch service later to report, he wasn’t amused. “Figures,” he said. “I finally get to go to a nudist colony, and they’re having a costume party!”

There’s no sense having a Halloween party if you’re not planning on creeping people out with horror films, monster mashes and eerie appetizers.

You can have your very own Fear Factor Food Fest with these yucky and yummy snacks:

Edible Arachnids

 

Eerie Eyeballs

 

Bleeding Heart

 

Decaying corpse flesh with entrails

Head on over to britta.com for the recipies to enjoy eerie eats this Halloween.

Get ready to play dead.

Ok, World Zombie day (coming up on October 26th) isn’t just about playing dead…it’s about feeding the hungry. Uh, perhaps I should clarify that. World Zombie Day is about having a deadly fun time, as pretend zombies, for a good cause.

Pennyslvania is proud of its Zombie heritage (think iconic films Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, both filmed in Pennsylvania). In fact, Pittsburg has become the hub and official World Zombie Day organizer and every year they host the Zombie Fest.

This year on Friday, October 24th, there will be a Zombie Masquerade Ball. On Saturday, October 25th there’s a sort of “Zombie Com” with horror writers, vendors and activities. And Sunday, of course, is the world famous Zombie Walk in which participants bring cans of non-perishable food items for the Greater Pittsburg Food Bank.

Here’s a promotional trailer just for fun:

1932: Premiere of White Zombie, starring Bela Lugosi. Capitalizing on previous voodoo zombie themes, it is regarded as the first legitimate zombie film ever made. Zombies are portrayed as mindless, shambling henchmen under the spell of an evil magician.

1930’s – 1960’s: Zombies, typically still voodoo-inspired, continue to appear in cinema periodically. Notable films include: I Walked with a Zombie (1943), the notorious Plan 9 from Outer space (1959) and EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.

1954: Publication of I am Legend, by author Richard Matheson, the story of a future Los Angeles overrun with undead bloodsucking beings, influences the zombie genre with the portrayal of a worldwide apocalypse due to an infestation. Although classified as a vampire story and referred to as “the first modern vampire novel,” it has an authoritative impact on the zombie genre through the work of George Romero. Romero, by his own admission, was greatly influenced by the novel and its 1964 adaptation when writing the film Night of the Living Dead.

1968: Night of the Living Dead crushes former horror film taboos to became a genre-defining classic, proving more influential on the zombie archetype than any other literary or cinematic work (see Zombie Evolution: Part 1 below)

1978: George Romero follows up Night with Dawn of the Dead. The film tells the story of four survivors of the expanding zombie apocalypse as they take refuge in an abandoned shopping mall, in Monroeville (Pennsylvania), where they intend to wait out the crisis. They clear the mall of the undead and barricade the entrances with tractor-trailers. But they have more than the undead to worry about. They also have to contend with a band of looting bikers and their own mounting tensions. Here’s a look at the trailer:

Make sure you check back for more zombie goodness, including tutorials on how to do zombie makeup on the cheap and information on the official World Zombie Day!