Top Geeky entertainment of 2011...

Here's a rundown of some of the best bits of geeky stuff I've been enjoying in 2011....

Films watched....

STAKE LAND...I like a good post-apocalyptic movie - this is set after a kind of vampire apocalypse. Humans have barricaded themselves into small towns. Religious nutters / cultists rule the wastelands... the film follows a young man called Martin who is taken under the wing of a vampire hunter called "Mister"... It is very atmospheric, and nicely filmed. Good story, good acting, nice dose of horror.

TROLL HUNTER... This is a Norwegian low budget horror film about Trolls. It is fantastic! - Filmed in a kind of Blair Witch wobbly camera style - but the troll effects are ace!! Obviously Trolls figure quite largely in traditional Scandinavian folklore - this film taps right into that. Some media students decide they are going to make a documentary about a bear poacher... turns out it isn't bears he is hunting....!!! This is great stuff - TROOOOLLLL!!!....

TINTIN... I like Tintin. I've got all the books....I was a little bit wary of the film, but I heard that it had got good reviews, so me and the Mrs went to see it for my birthday treat. I'm not that keen on the Shrek style of computer generated animation, but things have certainly moved on a bit from that, this was so good, at times I completely forgot that I was watching an animation. We didn't bother going to see the 3D version because last time we did that we both came out with headaches and eyestrain - but you could tell which bits were done with 3D in mind... So anyway, we both really enjoyed it! - The story isn't based on any one particular Tintin story - it takes plot bits from a few different ones and adds a load of new stuff.... The film characters really are the comic characters brought to life, they've done a great job on the whole thing - fast action and non-stop intrigue! If you like the Tintin books, go with an open mind and see this, I'm sure you'll like it!

ATTACK THE BLOCK...this totally slipped under my radar - I read a review of it on some blog or other, so I thought I'd track it down and see if it was any good... and I certainly wasn't disappointed! It's a British sci-fi horror / black comedy made by the same production company that did SHAUN OF THE DEAD (in fact Nick Frost is also in this film)... A gang of South London kids have to join forces with their neighbour, who they mugged earlier in the day, to defend their tower block from alien invasion on bonfire night!! - Excellent acting - great story... some good jumpy bits, and lots of crazy alien monster action!!

Books read....

Well It doesn't seem like I've been reading that much this year - I've developed a habit of falling asleep after reading two pages of anything, so that Carolyn has to prise the tome out of my fingers before I  drop it on my own head...but anyway, here are a few of the best books I've read this year...

THE COMPLETE RICHARD HANNAY STORIES by John Buchan - I read The 39 Steps a few times as a teen, It's a classic. I didn't know there were other Richard Hannay Stories until I came across this "Wordsworth Editions" bumper collection with all 5 stories in... It took me a while to wade through it all, there are quite a lot of in depth references to the politics of the day that went completely over my head - but it's all good adventure stuff.. spy's, subterfuge and undercover operations in the 1930's. In my opinion the first 3 stories are the best ("The 39 Steps" is the first one, followed by "Greenmantle" and "Mr.Standfast") - lots of action and the adventures move along at quite a fast pace.. the last 2 stories in the series started to drag on a bit...

THE YOUNG BOND BOOKS by Charlie Higson - Yes that is Charlie Higson from "The Fast Show" - turns out he can churn out a cracking yarn also!!  - Whilst my daughter was looking at the Jaqueline Wilson books  I came across the graphic novel version of his first book in this series "Silverfin" in the teenage fiction section of our local library and I was totally sucked in! No holds barred action - and some gruesome bits too! An easy read - but gripping stuff!! In this series of 5 books "Silverfin", "Blood Fever", "By Royal Command", "Hurricane Gold" & "Double or Die" you get all the stuff you'd expect from a James Bond adventure - (except the sex - which is kind of nice, there are girls as main characters, but young Bond doesn't seem to be interested in that kind of thing!)... I managed to get them all out of the library. The stand out book of the series is "Double or Die" - Bond and his friends from Eton receive a suspicious letter full of cryptic clues, this leads to a race against time to save a professor who holds the knowledge required to build a code breaking computer that the Nazis and Russians are both after....

THE ENEMY by Charlie Higson - Ok so Charlie Higson has moved on from James Bond to ZOMBIES!! - "The Enemy" is the first in his teenage zombie series... set in present times, everyone (it seems?) over the age of 14 has turned into flesh eating zombies. Gangs of kids are struggling to survive. In this first book, the story revolves around two gangs who live in supermarkets, they come together to travel across London to Buckingham Palace, which they've been led to believe is a safe place. After running battles with zombies - and zombie monkeys (nice touch!!) they finally make it to the palace... but everything is not as it seems.... Don't think that just because this book is written for teenagers that the punches are going to be pulled - because they certainly are not. This book has some very descriptive gruesome parts. Nasty!! - The second book "The Dead" is already out... I'm just waiting for the library to get a copy....

THE LAUNDRY NOVELS  by Charles Stross - "THE ATROCITY ARCHIVES" - I bought a copy of this after hearing about it on the News from Pnakotus podcast. This is the first of 5 novels (only the first three have been published as I write this) featuring Bob Howard as the Protagonist. Bob works for "The Laundry", a British secret government agency that deals with supernatural goings on. This is like a modern day Lovecraftian spy thriller with a nice touch of black humour. It is very cleverly written, there are loads of great ideas here. In the world of "The Laundry" mathematics is dangerous. If you think too hard about maths you can open up a portal to another dimension and let unspeakable horrors in to yours. In this first novel there are two stories - "The Atrocity Archives" in which Bob is part of a team that have to foil a plot by occult nazis, and "The Concrete Jungle" in which someone has uploaded the deadly "Scorpion Stare" program onto the CCTV system in Milton Keynes -capable of turning living things to stone.

"THE JENNIFER MORGUE" - more of a Bond feel to the second Laundry novel. Bob is now in a relationship with Mo (who he rescued in the first story). He is sent to foil the plans of sinister Ellis Billington, a software billionaire who plans to raise an eldritch horror codenamed "The Jennifer Morgue" from the ocean depths. Bob becomes entangled with Ramona an enemy agent (actually a beautiful Deep One lady)... they are mentally linked through a ritual and things take a turn for the weird for Bob! Lots of Lovecraftian horror and James Bond style action. The characters are very well written and the plot is great!

"THE FULLER MEMORANDUM" - so Bob and Mo are now living together. Bob's boss Angleton has gone missing. Bob and Mo are attacked by zombie assassins...there are Russian spys...evil cultists... the Laundry has been infiltrated. Where is Angleton??... who is Angleton really?? why are cultists after Bob?? Loads of action, zombies and lovecraftian apocalyptic terror!! According to Charles Stross's website, the next novel will be out in 2012....and then the last one will be out in 2015!!! - Aaaargh - too long to wait!!

SHERLOCK HOLMES - THE GAME'S AFOOT edited by David Stuart Davies - A collection of Sherlock Holmes short stories written by various modern writers. Some are good. Some not great -but no stinkers! - Very enjoyable all round if you like a bit of Holmes, which I do!

THE BLACK VEIL & OTHER TALES OF SUPERNATURAL SLEUTHS edited by Mark Valentine. Another great creepy collection of short stories that is part of the "Tales of mystery and supernatural" series published by Wordsworth  Editions... the highlights for me were the Carnacki tale "The Gateway of the Monster" by William Hope Hodgson and "The Red Hand" by Arthur Machen,  but really every one of the stories in here is a corker!

Podcasts listened to....

H.P.LOVECRAFT LITERARY PODCAST - I cannot recommend this highly enough.  The presenters Chad & Chris are systematically reading their way through all of H.P.Lovecraft's stories in chronological order, then along with various guests they discuss the stories at length. I can't get enough of this. The production values are very high. Chad and Chris are very eloquent, funny and knowledgeable. They are quite a way into the books now - they've just done episode 98!! Also available for free from their website are some very good quality readings of H.P.Lovecraft stories.

WE'RE ALIVE - The second season of this zombie apocalypse audio serial ended climatically at the end of the summer... season 3 is starting on January 2nd 2012...not long now!!!

WE'RE NOT DEAD - A sporadic podcast about a podcast (We're Alive!) hosted by Brittney Brombacher... fans of the We're Alive podcast discuss what they think is going to happen next - and a load of other funny stuff - I guess you've got to be a total geek to listen to this. I've been enjoying it.

NEWS FROM PNAKOTUS - A monthly podcast with updates on everything you can think of related to H.P.Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos... Books, Films, Music, Games.... presented by Paul (from Yog-sothoth.com)  & Chris (from the H.P.L literary podcast) - very informative, and good fun for Cthulhu enthusiasts like myself.

Telly watched...

MISFITS - last years Series 2 of this British dark comedy/drama about A.S.B.O. teens who get super powers after being in a weird storm was great, but it was seeming like they had got as much mileage as they could out of the characters. So for series 3 they had a fresh start - the super powers have changed, Nathan has left, and two new main characters have joined the team - Rudy (Joseph Gilgun) is a fantastic edition to the cast - absolutely hilarious!! Excellent telly!!

SUPERNATURAL - The wife and myself have worked our way through the first 4 seasons of "Supernatural" so far (I know we're a bit behind the times - so no spoilers please!!). A good mix of drama, horror, scares and humour. I wasn't sure about how things were going when the angels were introduced - but I'm liking how things are developing now it turns out they're not as nice as you might think....

THE WALKING DEAD - I've only watched the first series so far - which was of course super. I'm saving up the second one for a zombie marathon in the xmas holidays!

THE FADES - Another British tv series worth a mention...I've got a feeling it was just a one off series of 6 parts - I don't know how they'd be able to follow on from the end of the last episode. Some good creepy stuff here - a teenager can see ghosts... the ghosts can become fleshy by eating people... things become very dark and quite surreal at times. Good plot, good acting, dark humour, and generally a bit grim. Nice.

BEING HUMAN - More cult British horror drama.. this time featuring a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost who are friends. The third series was on this year. It's almost a kind of "sitcom" with gore. Very funny. Very good.

Enjoyable kids telly worth a mention....Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated....the latest Scooby Doo series is very good indeed - on a par with the Simpsons for geeky cultural referencing and loads of bits that will have parents chuckling whilst kids watch with mild confusion...there are some genuinely creepy bits that get my daughter running out the room - kids programs that actually give kids the creeps like this and Dr.Who are excellent in my book. Also worth noting is that Jeffrey Coombes (Herbert West in the Reanimator films) is a guest voice artist on a couple of the episodes as the voice of "H.P.Hatecraft" - the monster that is haunting his mansion (as pictured above!) is "Char Gar Gothakon" ...not sure where they got the idea for that....??. .Batman the Brave and the Bold...is also very enjoyable - very tongue in cheek - unlike the other excellent, but more serious previous Batman Cartoons ..It's nice when I can sit down with the kids and enjoy some of the tv programs they are watching without my brain imploding...

Comics read....

HELLBOY..... lots of good stuff has been going on in Mike Mignola's comic book universe this year... If you didn't know (spoiler alert!) he killed off Hellboy!! - That's to say that Hellboy is dead. It is not the end of Hellboy - as 2011 will see the start of the new Hellboy arc: "Hellboy in hell". And there is endless scope for many more retrospective stories of course. The last 3 Hellboy stories were all drawn by Duncan Fegredo, and a fantastic job he did too - absolutely stunning artwork!! But I've got say I was very pleased to hear that Mike Mignola is stepping back out of the shadows to do all the artwork (not just the covers) himself for the next bunch of Hellboy comics...

B.P.R.D.....more Mignola goodness....whilst Hellboy has been off in England fighting witches and pulling swords out of stones, the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defence have been dealing with all kinds of mad apocalyptic goings on...not the least of which was the departure of long time artist Guy Davis. He has decided to go off and concentrate on his own stuff...which leaves the B.P.R.D. with Tyler Crook as new artist... only time will tell if he can fill the shoes of Guy Davis in this role....but anyway - I'm digressing slightly from the point that I'm loving how the main B.P.R.D. story is progressing at the moment - very Lovecraftian and very epic!!

BALTIMORE.....following on from the novel written by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden, this year has seen the second comic book story in the Baltimore series - "The Curse Bells", illustrated by Ben Stenbeck and coloured by the super-fantastic Dave Stewart... brilliant story, and an absolute work of art. Baltimore (the 1st World War vampire hunter) is on the track of the vampire Haigus...can he stop the spread across Europe of the vampiric curse...?

SUPER DINOSAUR.... Yes I have been reading other comics that have not been written by Mr.Mignola!! - I picked up the origin story of SUPER DINOSAUR at this years "Free Comic Book Day" - great artwork - great crazy idea for a comic, and a very funny story. It's aimed at kids of all ages - written by Robert Kirkman (of Walking Dead fame).....there have been 6 issues out so far, and the story is progressing nicely... how can you not like a comic about a dinosaur who is a superhero!!

So there you go... that was some of my geeky enjoyment of 2011.... lets see what 2012 has to offer....