The Garfield Show: Holiday Extravaganza
Studio: Dargaud
ASIN: B0089BSLWG
Release Date: September 4, 2012
Running Time: 72 minutes 
Rated: NR


I grew up watching Garfield & Friends and of course the CBS Garfield prime time specials. It took me awhile to get use to The Garfield Show, in which I am starting to like. The Holiday Extravaganza came out of nowhere. I never heard about the DVD being released until I came across it in the store. Since I am a die-hard Garfield fan, I eagerly bought it.

The episodes on this disc are:

The Haunted House - John is out of idea for a new comic book, so he spends the weekend at Mr. Barker's new mansion, which is haunted by a ghost cat!

Which Witch - The annoying twins Druscilla and Minerva are visiting John and Garfield plans on getting rid of them by sending them to a witch's house.

I've been a vampire fan since I can remember, watching movies and reading books from the genre, so I eagerly read through The Vampire Hunter's Daughter in one night, courtesy of Bewitching Blog Tours.

The book opens up with a fourteen-year-old Chloe Kallistrate being awakened by her distraught mother in the early morning, telling her to hide in the closet as they are coming for her. Who is coming for her? Blood-sucking vampires of course!

Jeremy Lapoint is a victim of bulling at Anoka Middle School by a fellow student, Sid Lundah, and a couple of his friends. The bulling consist of naming, calling, dumping everything out of Jeremy's book bag, and even destroying his iPod that his grandmother gave to him. To make matter, worse, Jeremy's father is in prison for theft.

Things start to change for young Jeremy on the day he learned to fly. Yes, I said he could fly! 

An angel named Asiel appears to him explaining that Jeremy is a Nephilim, a half human/half angel, and that he is not the only one as there are two hundred-thirty kids spread across America, Europe, and Canada. Being what he is, Jeremy is one of the few that can see the demons that walk the Earth, therefore he must be trained to use his new powers, such as increased strength, invisibility, and how to mute himself so others can't hear him.

Author Kathryn Dahlstrom has written a creative plot for kids that doesn't involve vampires or werewolves, but instead focus on a world where there are half human/half angels while at the same time throwing in a superhero story. Kids will easily connect with the main character Jeremy as he is a bullied student who discovers the difference between angels and demons. I enjoyed reading the book and I recommend it to readers of all ages.

Disclaimer - I received this book free of charge from WinePressPublishing and the Litfuse Publicity Group.


About the Author:

When Kathryn Dahlstrom’s husband was transferred to Los Angeles, she traded Minnesota’s black-bear country for the inner-city and taught children at a Child Evangelism Fellowship Good News Club in Watts. She also began her writing career. In addition to writing six titles in the Good News Club children’s fiction series published by Child Evangelism Fellowship Press, the author is also a screenwriter and film producer. Currently, she and her husband, Tim, live on wooded acreage north of Minneapolis/St. Paul where they care for her mother. They also have an adult daughter, Kristina. Find out more about Kathryn at http://www.kathryndahlstrom.com

The writer’s muse sports a variety of footwear. Sometimes she leaps out of nowhere in spring-heeled running shoes. Sometimes she shuffles along in flip-flops that make a soft flapping noise heard long before she actually shows up.

And she comes from an endless variety of directions.

For A. A. Milne, she trotted out of his son’s collection of toy animals and gently prodded him to pen Winnie-the-Pooh. The muse who inspired Jerry Spinelli’s Wringer screamed up to him from a Pennsylvania pigeon shoot she couldn’t get away from fast enough. J. K. Rowling’s muse materialized after the legendary author took a train journey and the idea of a boy wizard named Harry Potter—to quote Rowling—“fell into my head.” Maurice Sendak’s muse for Where the Wild Things Are raced out of a gathering of Sendak’s unsavory relatives who had scared him when he was very young. Judy Blume’s muse marched in from a story Blume’s daughter told about a school bully and demanded that Blume write Blubber. Jeff Kinney’s muse is reluctant to show her face—a common occurrence even among the best of writers—but when she does, she’s positively quirky because of where she shows it. In Kinney’s words, she arrives as he’s “stepping into the shower or walking out the door or crossing in some sort of threshold”—and another Diary of a Wimpy Kid episode is spawned.

Kinney’s inspiration comes from everyday life, as it does for so many writers. “Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day,” Orson Scott Card once said. “The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.” Anton Chekhov put it another way: “If you look at anything long enough—say, just that wall in front of you—it will come out of that wall.”

And when the muse urges, how does a writer meet the command?

The story centers on Cordelia, who has finished her enrichment years at the school. She is now starting an optional school year as a student mentor and is the apprentice to Professor Bern, who is the head of the Department of Paranormal Powers and Control.

Also retuning is Faustine, who is staring her second year and she faces many challenges as she is a human/demon hybrid. Surprisingly, Mason is also back at the school after being kicked out the year before, but his father pulled some strings getting him back in.

8 Films Masters of Terror Volume 4
Starring: Jason Scott Lee, Jason London, Roy Scheider, Christopher Walken
Studio: Echo Bridge Entertainment
ASIN: B006ZL1PPC
Release Date: April 10, 2012
Running Time: 705 minutes
Rated: NR to R


I found this 8 Horror films 2 discs set in the five dollar bin at my local Walmart. I already own three of the movies, Puppet Master, The Prophecy II, and Halloween: Resurrection, but I bought the DVD for one other movie called Wes Craven Presents: Dracula III: Legacy.

Dracula III is better than Dracula II. The plot isn't great, but there is enough vampire bloody scenes and nudity to make any any horror fan happy.

The other four movies on the set are Roman, The Nurse, Live Animals, and Paranormal Entity.

Roman stars Lucky McKee (who normally directs) as a shy social outcast who accidentally kills a girl (played by Kristen Bell) that he has a crush on. He keeps her body on ice in his bathtub. His depressed life changes when a strange woman becomes interested in him. This is an odd little movie. When it first starts you can easily tell that it is an low-budget film with bad camera work and lighting. I almost pushed the stop button, but I gave it a chance and I'm glad that I did. It is a strange movie, more of a thriller than a horror film. I actually felt sorry for Roman!