New content up soon, I promises, but until then enjoy some random musings on meaningless minutiae.

First up, the huge dearth of decent horror movies. Now, as any of you that know me will already be sick to death of hearing, I'm a big horror fan. Love the stuff. But these days we're lucky to get one good one a year (for me this year's was Zombieland, but that's more of a comedy action flick than horror anyway).

These days you've got overly glossy remakes of wellworn frightflicks (Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, the upcoming Nightmare on Elm Street) stripped of all their sleazy low-budget charm. Then you've got your Blair-witch internet-hyped snoozefests which mistake dragging paces for 'building up atmosphere' and then make the cardinal sin of not giving any payoff in the end; at least the original Ring smacked you in the teeth at the climax (although the slew of derivative J-horror movies that followed are their own crime). Worst of all, you've got your inexplicably popular torture porn, which use unpleasantness in lieu of fear. Yeah; bunch of people get mutilated, then die. Great story. Really.

Where are the breakthrough calling cards of talented new directors? Where are the masterpieces of mood and tension, or the grand guignol excesses of those guilty pleasures everyone remembers? Forget yet another Dracula, how about raiding the bookshelves for something a little off the beaten track, like House of Leaves or, heaven forbid, an actual attempt at a Lovecraft adaptation?

Yeeesh. Rant over, and on to the first installment of the Transformers ongoing mentioned in my last journal; gotta say, this left me pretty jazzed. The new situation set up is genuinely interesting, the dialogue was well written, and despite the new art style still looking ugly as sin in my particular eyes, smacks of a lot of love gone into its production. With a few new characters supplementing the same old faces, there's a refreshing aura of 'bright new start' about the whole thing. Roll on issue 2, and this month we'll get to see if the Bumblebee miniseries can measure up as well.

Seein' as I've been rantin' for way too long, I'll finish with a recommendation for any of y'all that haven't to check out the art of for more robo-themed treats, and anyone else that wants a shoutout, you just let me know, a'ight?

Until next time, good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow!