Monster Hunters, Minimalism and More

My wife and I watched Van Helsingon Friday night. It stank. The dialogue was wooden, the plot goofy, the backstory hard to follow. I will give it this much: I haven't seen a better werewolf on screen (or anywhere). The CGI Mr. Hyde was pretty good too and more closely resembles the Mr. Hyde from Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen than the one in the movie of that same name.

Van Helsing did remind me of the classic Universal monster movies I loved as a kid. When I was growing up, a local Oklahoma City television station aired a "Mystery Theater" on Sunday afternoons and I paid rapt attention to the classics: Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula, and The House of Frankenstein. These films did not age well but they fired my imagination. A few years ago, I learned that Phillip Glass composed a new score for the original Dracula and I picked up a copy of the CD. The score is a series of short, evocative string quartets that inspire the same feelings I had when I was a kid watching the films. I highly recommend it.

In other news, I learned recently that the 3rd season of Alias will be out on DVD in September. Check out the link here [link via Various and Sundry]. My wife and I are big fans of the show but we have only experienced it on DVD. We prefer the show in that format because it allows us to indulge in immediate gratification (so we don't have to wait a week to learn what happens next). We made a consious decision to wait until the 3rd season comes out on DVD, so this is going to be a difficult wait for us.