Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant is a movie about Darren Shan (Chris Massoglia), a teenager who with a friend attends a mysterious freak show where it turns out the freaks are really supernatural in nature.  Through a course of events he winds up having to become the assistant to a vampire (John C. Reilly), becoming half-vampire himself in the process and joining the Cirque to save his best friend’s life.  But his best friend may not be such a great person after all.

The movie is directed by Paul Weitz (American Pie, American Dreamz) and written by Weitz and Brian Helgeland (Salt, Conspiracy Theory).  It is based on the first three booksof the Cirque du Freakseries of Young Adult books by Darren Shan.

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The Informant! is a comedy directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Matt Damon as Mark Whitacre, an executive for a food company who comes forward to the FBI about his company price fixing a food additive in virtually everything called lysene.  These are the same people who pretty much put high fructose corn syrup in everything.  It’s based on a book of the same name (also available through Audible: ) that is actually a true story written by Kurt Eichenwald.

I really did not know what to expect from this.  I went in knowing pretty much nothing.  The advertising was horrible.  I mean look at that poster above.  It gives you no clue of what this movie is about.  The commercials were similarly vague and only hinted that it was funny.  The idea that I formed for myself would be that it’d be like a sort of funny version of The Insider.  It really wasn’t though.  The narrative is mostly driven by a voice over delivered by Damon’s character.  This voice over is probably the best part of the movie.  It is extremely funny.  They mostly have nothing to do with what is going on and just give you an inside line into the character of Whitacre’s brain on some level.  Here’s an example:

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Doghouse is a british horror comedy directed by Jake West.  It’s about a group of friends who travel out to a small town in the middle of nowhere for a boys weekend to help one of them get over his divorce.  When they get there though they find an empty town.  Unfortunately for them it isn’t as empty as it first seems as all of the women have turned into zombies.

This is an alright movie.  There isn’t really a lot to write about it.  It’s pretty standard fare.  Nothing stands out as being great, but nothing stands out as being bad either.  It’s certainly enjoyable and would be a good party movie to watch with some friends.  The plot is not really anything you haven’t seen before and everything is pretty predictable. The action starts pretty early on and never lets up.  It certainly could have done with a little break for some breathing room.

My one real problem with the movie is that it doesn’t have an ending.  There is an ending but then it doesn’t end and instead continues to what is not at all an ending.  Anyway it’s fun and I’d recommend it for a rental. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be currently available in the US.

15 years after their iconic, seminal series The Kids in the Hallreturn to the air with this much awaited 8 part mini-series.  It just started this Tuesday and stars and is written by all 5 of the original Kids: Dave Foley, Bruce McColloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney, & Scott Thompson.  If you love weird, twisted comedy then you already worship at the altar of the Kids.  If you don’t already love them you owe it to yourself to check them out.

This new series is a murder mystery mixed with the Kids comedic characters, both new and old.  This is what fans have been waiting for.  The plot is that Death, the grim reaper comes to the small town of Shuckton where there isn’t much but they Mayor had given them hopes they’d get the 2028 olympics.  Of course this doesn’t happen.  Most of the first episode has us getting a feel for the town and a whole bunch of wacky characters.  This is classic Kids stuff.  It’s not a sitcom and not a sketch show, but something in between.  Each scene is sort of a sketch but not really.  You just have to see it.  And if you live in Canada there’s no reason not to.  It’s airing every Tuesday at 9 on the CBC.  If you are unlucky and live somewhere else in the world for now you’re out of luck (unless you know how to use google).

I really loved the first episode but I may be biased by my deep love of KITH, but still after all these years I’m laughing and that’s saying something.  Welcome back boys.  I’m just sad this is for only 8 half hour episodes.

Youth In Revolt is based on the book(also available on Audible) by C. D. Payne.  It is directed by Miguel Arteta (Homicide, Freaks & Geeks) with a screenplay by Gustin Nash (Charlie Bartlett).  It’s the story of Nick Twisp (Michael Cera), a geeky 16 year old who just wants to lose his virginity.  He’s stuck living with his mom (Jean Smart) and her boyfriend Jerry (Zach Galifianakis) in Oakland.  When Jerry runs into some problems they’re forced to go away for a little while.  This is where Nick meets the girl of his dreams, Sheeni (Portia Doubleday), whom he vows not to let get away.  This leads to the creation of an alter-ego named Francois Dillinger, who is a bad boy and does the things Nick could never do.

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The Invention Of Lying is the latest movie from the mind of Ricky Gervais (original creator of The Office).  The plot is extremely simple.  There’s an alternate universe where no one knows what a lie is and can only tell the absolute truth, then one day an out of luck loser after a horrible date, getting fired, and evicted, figures out how to not tell the absolute truth. You can view a trailer and a clip on

I have to admit that I was concerned about this movie.  I mean I love Ricky Gervais’ work and with something he both wrote and directed (along with Matthew Robinson) is bound to be good, but the plot seemed too simple.  It seemed like one of those SNL skits where they drag out something way too long.  I’m glad to say I was dead wrong. First oddly the movie seems a little more like something you’d encounter on Mr. Show rather than SNL.  There’s all kinds of social satire going on, later getting into religion, and an odd wackiness to the whole thing.

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The Weather Girl is an independent romantic comedy written and directed by Blayne Weaver and starring Tricia O’ Kelly and Patrick J. Adams.  The basic plot is a local Seattle weather girl (O’ Kelly) on a morning show discovers her lover and one of the hosts of the show (NCIS’ Mark Harmon) is sleeping with the other host of the show (It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’s Kaitlin Olsen) and has an on air breakdown.  With no job, being considered unhireable and having virtually nothing of her own she’s forced to move in with her brother (Ryan Devlin) where she meets his best friend and neighbor, Byron(Adams).

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Bandslam is a film about a high school kid named Will (Gaelan Connell) who’s entire life is about music but has no one to share that passion with.  This all changes when he moves to New Jersey and his new high school is crazy about this competition called “Band Slam”, a battle of the bands where the winner receives a record deal.  He winds up managing the new band of one of the coolest girls in the school (Aly Michalka) while falling for another girl (Vanessa Hudgens) with hidden musical talents of her own.

The big problem with this film is firmly in it’s marketing.  I barely payed any attention when this was released in August.  I couldn’t care less.  It looked like a High School Musical knock-off and even featured one of the stars of HSM.  As a 26 year old I could care less about that kind of stuff.  So I wrote this off, as did lots of other people because this made no money, despite Vanessa Hudgens and Aly Michalka who through the internet I’ve learned is in a somewhat popular band Aly & AJ.  However bored on a Friday night with nothing better to do I checked it out and was pleasantly surprised.

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Taking Woodstock is the latest from Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain, The Ice Storm).  It’s based on the true story of Elliot Tiber who helped bring Woodstock to Bethel, NY after both Woodstock and Wallkill had kicked the festival out of their towns.  But more than that it’s about the smaller story of Tiber and his parents and his trying to find who he was in the world.

It’s a long film, 2 hours theatrically with a much longer dvd version, but only once did I feel a scene didn’t really fit.  It’s an extremely thorough film that does try to show as much as possible, even though that’s an impossible task.  Lee did make the choice to not focus on the actual concert.  While this might upset anyone looking to see re-creations of some of those legendary sets, it’s actually really perfect for this film.  It’s ultimately about Elliot and not about the concert.  Another choice that was pretty interesting is the very stark use of music.  You’d think a movie like this would be filled with all sorts of classic rock goodness, but while there is some, a lot of the movie is very quiet in this respect, especially earlier on.  It’s clear that every single bit of this movie was deliberate and in the best way possible.

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Misfits is a new show on BBC’s E4 network.  The premise is that a group of young adults (it’s never really clear how old they are) who have been given community service get struck by lightning during a freak storm.  Slowly they discover that they have powers, like superheroes, only these kids are anything but.
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