COMING THIS DECEMBER!

Christmas is coming and this festive season there's a tinsel bedecked ton of treats coming up from the Great Library of Dreams!

• On the 2nd of December, come with Mr Jim Moon to investigate on the most famous haunted houses of the 1970s, with a look back at the  creepy comedy series The Ghosts of Motley Hall! 
• As is traditional we have selection of ghostly tales for Christmas, and of course no Yuletide season is complete without some MR James! Join us on the 6th to discover the horrors that lurk in The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral
• Meanwhile on the 9th of December, we take a look at that story's televisual incarnation and the first episode of the BBC's A Ghost Story for Christmas series - The Stalls of Barchester  from 1971, starring Robert Hardy! 

• We've got blockbuster action too! It's festive fun for all the family with the Joe Dante classic Gremlins! Catch it at the Commentary Club on December 11th! 
• The 13th of December proves to be a very unlucky night! Discover what happens when you take Christmas bet to stay overnight in a haunted house in the Victorian chiller Number Ninety! 
• 16th December! Every one love party games at Christmas so prepare a new one in the the AM Burrage short shocker Smee !
• Meanwhile on 18th Teresa and Jim summon up the Yuletide spirits with a viewing of  the 1984 version of Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol starring the incomparable George C Scott as Scrooge! 

• Fancy getting away from it for Christmas! Well, on 20th December take a trip with us out a country house for an old fashioned Christmas complete with a family ghost in The Real and the Counterfeit by Louisa Baldwin! 
• And finally, just before Christmas Eve, Mr Jim Moon invites you all on a festive ghost hunt, travelling around the British Isles searching out the spectres that walk at Christmas time!

DOWNLOAD OUR CHRISTMAS TRAILER HERE!

For full listings and a fine selection of Yuletide treats from Christmases Past, don't forget to check in on the Hypnogoria Advent Calendar at Hypnogoria.com!

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SEVEN OF SPECTRES

From the Great Library of Dreams, Seven of Spectres: The First Hypnogoria Book of Uncanny Tales! Seven stories of unwelcome returns from the grave masters of the genre such as MR James, WF Harvey and Bram Stoker. Introduced, annotated and illustrated by Mr Jim Moon.

Available now at Amazon 

THE DAY HOLLYWOOD STOOD STILL...

Gort calling Orson... Gort calling Orson...

Visit THE DAY HOLLYWOOD STOOD STILL here!

THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE 3 - WORLD EXCLUSIVE!

Thanks to a dodgy fellow of my acquaintance and a USB stick, I've managed to get my hands on what appears to be a rough cut of a teaser for Tom Six's next magnum opus, The Human Centipede Part 3! And although there's no actual footage of the in-progress production, you can tell the shocking direction Six is taking his sick vision in next!

Unbelievable I know! Enjoy this quickly before the lawyers and the BBFC demand it's removed!

AVATAR - The Prologue

As a prelude to my Avatar review proper, I thought it would be a good idea to reprinted the short piece I wrote for The Rattle in reaction to the first released trailer for Cameron's opus.

And so after literally years of news snippets, rumour and outright hype, here's what I made of that first peek into the world of Pandora...


So at last it's here, our first look at Avatar, I was hoping to be wowed by the footage. and I hate to say it, but I really wasn’t that impressed. For quite a while I’ve had the suspicion that more time and money has been spent faffing about with the 3D technology than on the film itself and this debut trailer has only lent weight to that feeling. Now as a first look, it would seem they are going to be selling Avatar on the spectacle of the piece so there very little in the way of story presented here. But on the strength of the visuals, I have to say this movie is really going to need one helluva plot.

To begin with I’m not sold on the look of the avatars and the Na'vi themselves, which are basically just blue fellas with googly eyes and faun ears - sort of like the bastard offspring of Mr Tummnus and Blue Man Group. And the supposedly exotic and alien world they inhabit – a big bloody forest. Are these designs really best they could have come with? On the plus side the humans’ hardware looks fantastic, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before.

But the biggest concern I have is the way all of this is realised – a lot looks exactly like the usual blatant CGI. The trailer features several creatures attacking in exactly the same way all CGI monsters do these days – we have an alien predator that looks like He Man’s Battlecat pouncing with the same tired oddly weightless and somehow too quick fashion, and doing that annoying roaring in some guy’s face that seems to be compulsory for all movie creatures now. And we have even larger monstrosity lashing down to grab a guy in an equally clichéd CGI fashion. And the battle scenes have the same we’ve seen this all before patina too. Where the hell is the Cameron flair for action?

Don’t get me wrong it looks exciting enough, but also it looks like any run-of-the-mill effects heavy blockbuster. The design and effects work seem to have taken a back seat to developing the much trumpeted ‘illusion of depth’. And considering the low proportion of cinemas equipped to deliver it in any sort of 3D, this could well be a big problem for Avatar. So no matter how eye popping it all looks in 3D, ironically the alien world, its inhabitants and battles seem flat and uninspired.

Avatar may well be reinventing the wheel in terms of 3D technology but I’m worried that as a film itself it may well flounder into clichés. I hope I’ll be proved wrong but from this first look I still have the nagging feeling Avatar will be “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".


Right then, so that was what I thought of the trailer. Prophecy or puff piece? Find out in my full and frank review of Avatar in all its IMAX 3D glory...here