Movies from Heck

Doug: “Hey Lyn, it’s me!”

Lyn: “ … ?”

Doug: “Doug. The one in Cambridge. University friend? Misspent evenings in Canberra featuring red wine and pizza?”

Lyn: “Right. Yeah. Doug. What time is it?”

Doug: “Here or there? Look I figured in the time difference, daylight savings, your office job and how long it must take to get from Balmain to the city, shower, get breakfast …”

Lyn: “And this led you to believe I wake up about five, right?”

Doug: “Well, it seemed sensible.”

Lyn: “It’s really been too long since you had an office job. You sound a bit jittery, too. What’s your coffee count today? Because I’m guessing your waaaaaay over your limit. I know you're a student again, but there's food groups other than caffiene, y’know?”

Doug: “Look, sorry, forgot you’re not a morning person. But there’s something I had to tell you, given your brilliant movie site and all.”

Lyn: “Oooookay.”

Doug: “Well, the Hellboy movie opened it the states today. The New York Times is raving about it. The director, Guillermo del Toro, even turned down a Harry Potter contract to finish it.”

Lyn: “Hellboy?”

Doug: Yeah, the huge red demon-hunting … um … demon from the Mike Mignola comics.”

Lyn: “Yeah, I know. Great art. Incredible use of shadow, high-gothic atmosphere and steam-powered looking machinery at least a mile high. And lots of references to that horror-writer you and the other boys are so obsessed with.”

Doug: “H. P. Lovecraft. You forgot to mention Mignola’s really gratuitous use of both Nazis and Bavarian castles. Anyway, I’ve spent all morning looking at trailers on the movie site. It looks so cool. Think Raiders of the Lost Ark meets City of Lost Children. I was pretty unimpressed by the New York scenes, but once they get inside a decent Nazi Bavarian castle it actually begins to look like Mignola’s work – and the combination of action and Hellboy wry humour seems spot on.”

Lyn: “Didn’t you just have adventures of your own in Germany you should be blogging about, instead? I know Big George as Batman traumatised you a little ...”

Doug: “Well, we’ll have to see if Christian Bale makes up for it in “Batman Begins”, but the only official thing up on the movie site so far is pictures of some Bat-tank with monster-truck tires bogged in a field. Anyway, I just had to tell you who’s playing Hellboy. Ron Perlman. One in The City of Lost Children. A soft-centred strongman with a sort of tender, gritty charm and humour. That Perlman.”

Lyn: “Oh, wow.”

Doug: “Exactly. In a weird twist, the new Halle Berry Catwoman film is being directed by Pitof, the digital effects supervisor from Lost Children, but I don’t think that’s going to save it somehow. It looks like being a travesty beyond comprehension. Berry’s a mystically empowered revenger who brings down an evil cosmetics company that has a sinister secret behind its new anti-aging products.”

Lyn: “Let me guess. Tested on babies?”

Doug: “Much worse. Marketed by Sharon Stone.”

Lyn: “Ouch.”