With Halloween fast approaching, I'm actively on the lookout for both creepy and campy Halloween entertainment. The Phantom Creeps, starring Bela Lugosi as scientist Dr. Alex Zorka is definitely in the latter category, with the usual over-the-top creep show we expect from one of the godfathers of spookiness. As Adam Finley once said, the doctor's fiendish goal was to destroy the world using bad special effects. If MST3k was a favorite, you saw more than one of these episodes already; if not, you can create your own back channel. Public Domain Torrents seems to be the best place to find downloads of all the old episodes, although the image quality could be slightly better. Keep in mind you need a BitTorrent client, like uTorrent in order to download the actual movie files.
Here are links to a handful of episodes from The Phantom Creeps series:
Even Borg need to dance should be the tagline of this silly video from Seattle Mind Camp 2.0. 
If you prefer getting your tech news and information via video, Gear Live's 
A great deal of deserved attention focused on the devastation brought on by Hurricane Katrina around the Gulf Coast in 2005. It wasn't the only major storm of the year and New Orleans is one of many parts of the country destroyed by hurricane winds and flooding. The Florida Keys were hit by Hurricane Wilma during October 2005 completely submerging some of the islands in ocean water for several hours. Longtime reader of this site, Paul Hansen, was on hand during Hurricane Wilma, standing by as a paramedic on the islands and documenting what he expected to be a much less severe storm. Paul was in for a surprise as Hurricane Wilma ultimately hit Category 5 levels trapping his family in their home. Throughout the gathering storm and during the worst of the weather, Paul recorded video footage of winds, rain, ocean swells and the general wreckage of everything around his home. The resulting footage was later used for the local community college to receive disaster relief funding. More recently, Paul released a DVD of his footage combined with images shot by two other Florida Keys videographers. The DVD both documents the events as they transpire and provides something of a behind-the-scenes look at what it's like to survive a hurricane in a way Anderson Cooper simply can't begin to imagine.
I found out about the U.S. release of Breaking News by way of an advertisement that ran on the site. Apparently the distribution company, Palm Pictures, found the right demographic in me because I'm on record fairly regularly saying all my favorite movies are coming out of China and Korea at the moment. Breaking News is probably one of the better films from Hong Kong director, Johnny To, who has a long list of movie credits that range from exceptional to fairly lackluster. The movie is a traditional crime action flick with the cops in hot pursuit of some thieves. Nothing out of the ordinary at first, but there's a slick twist commenting on the nature of mainstream media and propaganda used to alter the perception of things with both the police and criminals using this to their fullest advantage. Rather than being concerned with resolving a number of criminal events efficiently and safely, the lead cop (played by Canto-pop music star 
I'm not a Joss Whedon fan. At least not the drooling fanboy type that waits with baited anticipation for the next script to erupt from Whedon's golden pen. I liked Firefly, Serenity was killer, Toy Story remains a favorite in the children's realm and I even dug Titan A.E., but I never latched on to Buffy or Angel with the passion that puts fan site 
Possibly one of the stranger movies I've seen, this film breaks down human behavior and examines what make hairless apes tick, in a rather unique fashion. Tim Robbins plays a behavioral psychologist, Nathan, bent on teaching mice table manners, in an effort to deal with repressed issues related to his upbringing. Patricia Arquette plays nature writer, Lila, a talented mind with a unique body hair disorder, who falls for Nathan after being setup by Lila's electrolysis specialist. Things are dandy until they discover Puff (played by Rhys Ifans), a man raised in the woods as an ape. Nathan wants to study Puff, and teach him to be civilized, which leads to all manner of absurdity. Written by Charlie Kaufman, who also penned the brilliant Being John Malkovich, Human Nature examines what it means to be civilized in a wry comedic light. The DVD offers little in the way of special features, but the movie is definitely worth renting and may take more than one viewing to really grab all the nuances.
OldBoy is a movie best explained as a Korean telling of a Greek tragedy. Director Chan-wook Park is a masterful storyteller, leading us on an adventure not easily forgotten. Oh Dae-su spends a night on the town with a friend and wakes up locked in a room with no windows. The next 15 years find the television as his only companion. Daily meals sent through a slot in the door sustain his health. He watches on television the news of his wife's murder and the presumption of his involvement in the crime since he cannot be located. To occupy his mind, he plots his escape through a hole dug in the wall and consumes all available television programming between fits of exercise. When he finally escapes, he wants to discover who did this to him and why. It's at the point of escape where Min-sik Choi, the actor playing Oh Dae-su, turns out a marvelously manic performance that carries the rest of the movie. The why part of the question gradually reveals itself to be one of the more disturbing movie plot lines I've ever seen. While the movie is most definitely violent and somewhat graphic in nature, most of the really unnerving stuff takes place off screen in your mind, employing the forgotten art of suggesting violence rather than graphically depicting it. There's no happy ending to the story, although everyone gets what they want as the story draws to a conclusion.