Easy, Evan – I’m excluding Speed Racer!

Perhaps I’m not the person to blab about how brilliant Del Toro is since I’ve only seen Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth, but I think the man has major storytelling skills. His commentaries for both of those films are full of life and he opens his own stories up like a seasoned literature prof. Lots of talk about the importance of mythology and a well-crafted story. I’m a fan.

Ok, I was already sold, but now I’m definitely hitting it this weekend.

I originally walked into it expecting nothing. Had no familiarity with the comic. Didn’t care. Sounded stupid. What I got was a subversion of the usual superhero BS and it was pretty funny. Good enough for me anyway.

I’m actually so bored of the whole superhero thing, I’m a bit skeptical of Dark Knight. I’ll be there opening night, but if it’s not great, I’m taking a break from the genre.

How do you guys feel about Nolan and del Toro? Where do they stand for you in terms of current directors? I’d probably put them very high – maybe top 5 for Nolan and top 10 for Guillermo. That’s in terms of current/anticipated future success, not past success (ie, Woody Allen is in my top 3 of all time, but not top 100 working currently)

It’s possible I would have liked Hellboy, were I in a different frame of mind when I watched it. There were just too many twelve-year-old boys who had told me it was “Totally badass,” or some variation thereon. That kind of buzz can turn me off to anything.

I enjoyed the first HB but wasn’t overwhelmed or anything (on record, I liked the comic, particularly Mike Mignola’s brilliant art work). I’m actually quite excited about this one. Del Toro had to fight really, really hard to get it made, so it’s something of a passion project for him. I’m catching an early screening later today and the review will be up sometime this weekend.

So Colleeny loves Brendan Frasier and Nick hates him. Would it be safe to say one of you wants to have his babies and the other wants to sell them into slavery? (I’m sorry, I just couldn’t help myself)

And G, I can vouch for The Amazing Screw-On Head. Actually, Luke, you might really enjoy that one. It’s like a steampunk Sherlock Holmes-ish animated comic that features (what else) a guy with a head that screws on in the title role.

Looking forward to hellboy II a lot more than any other comic book adaption this year. Del Toro ads to the films appeal, but I loved the first hell boy film despite a few big problems with it.

I keep adding Eddie Murphie’s name to my Dead Pool!

I also like Hellboy.

The comics are quite good too, although I read all the Hellboy comics when someone lent them to me when the first movie came out, so now there’s like 20 more volumes of Hellboy and its spinoffs that I haven’t read….but they’re probably good too.

If you haven’t, you all should netflix the short film The Amazing Screw-On Head. It’s pretty ok.

I’ll have to check out Devil’s Backbone, though.

A fine director, IMO.

And FWIW, I really enjoyed watching Beowulf in 3-D. I’ll definitely be checking out Hellboy II (liked the first one), but I’m not so sure about Journey.

I wish “Hellboy 2″ was opening in SA. Darn it.