In the Future the Book Is still Better

by Angel

After completing a midnight séance and smoking three pounds of salvia, the deified soul of John Lennon (to whom time is no barrier and all truths are magnified) wrote me an epistle through my digital Ouija board. I have learned this: Milton’s classic poem "Paradise Lost" is finally leaping off the dusty page and onto the shimmering silver screen. The movie version of the best rendition of hell since Dante’s "The Inferno" hits theaters in 2009, only to compete with none other than Paradise Lost, which Shadie tells me is about, “’A brother [looking] for his lost sister who's been turned into a z,’ Z meaning zombie." At least Milton can be proud to win the award for best movie named Paradise Lost after it is overlooked at the Oscars.

Paradise Lost is channeled through the stunning vision of director Scott Derrickson. Don’t worry Milton purists—this isn’t Scotty’s first foray into Hell; he wrote and directed Hellraiser: Inferno. Now if I were the person in charge of Legendary Pictures, that would have been all I needed to green light this fiasco, but Derrickson does us one better by enlisting serious writing talent. Contributors Phil DiBlasi and Brian Willinger popped their movie cherries on this film with help from Stuart Hazeldine, whose last script was Battle Chasers (a not yet released film based on the eponymous over-the-top fantasy comic book featuring a strong, generic warrior with a big sword chasing giant red herrings and, of course, battles) and is no stranger to adapting fine literature to the big screen (he was an extra in DeNiro’s Frankenstein). When I felt my connection to Lennon’s ghost waning, I asked him to sum the movie in five words. He said, “Milton’s lucky—he was blind.”

Shadie: I also want to draw everyone's attention to the superb movie Turistas, which was known internationally as, you guessed it, Paradise Lost and featured tourists in Brazil getting kidnapped and harvested for spare organs. It starred Melissa George, of Home and Away fame ... the same Aussie soap that once featured thesps like Guy Pearce, Kylie Minogue and Isla Fisher.