From: "Ernest Lilley" <elilley at mindspring.com> To: "'WSFA members'" <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net> Subject: [WSFA] Hellboy - Don't racially profile demons from Hell Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 09:33:57 -0400 Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net> Drew Bittner (pre-WSFAn), David Hecht (likely candidate) and I saw Hellboy at the Potomac Yards Saturday, and we all liked it more than we expected. Pretty good, since we expected to like it pretty well to begin with. If you've seen the trailer, you've got the idea, it combines the best parts of Men in Black, X-Men, and a certain amount of Raiders of the Lost Arc in a way that remains true to the comic format while making the content more accessible to regular folks. I was pleased to see that it was playing next door to the Passion, just for cognitive dissonance. Often I cringe when I see a trailer that looks too good. Usually, they give everything away before you even get to see the film. Hellboy doesn't suffer from that. The trailer gives away the setup, but the story still gets to unfold. The casting is just plain terrific. My only complaint is that the title character doesn't seem to have a shred of evil in him. Adolescent angst, plenty, but demonic evil? Zip. Well, nuture beats nature, I guess. Perhaps I shouldn't be racially profiling demons from hell. If Drew is on the list, he should review it for the WSFA journal, as he had some excellent comments about the director and the comic. Ernest Also, we saw a trailer for a Thunderbirds movie...which we were unable to pretend we were too grown up to want to watch. Oh, and the I Robot trailer was up, showing what looks distressingly like an uprising of the Robots to overthrow their human masters. Three Laws Safe indeed.