Vampifan's Views 19 My Monthly Musings part 6

Vampirella by Joe Jusko. Note his name on the gravestone.

Seeing as I normally post my monthly musings at the end of the month I should have posted this yesterday but, hey, I'm a day late. So what? January was a very busy month for me. On the figure painting front, I have finished 12 Black Cat Bases 28mm scale African-American gangstas (5 males, 5 females and 2 mascot dogs), 4 Recreational Conflict 28mm scale survivors and 2 Battle Bunker 28mm scale zombies. On my desk at the moment are the following 20 figures - 4 West Wind bikers, 4 West Wind vampire rock stars, 4 West Wind zombie rockers, 4 Studio Minis Left 4 Dead zombies, 1 Studio Minis Hogan the Santa survivor, 2 more Battle Bunker zombies and 1 Eureka Victorian schoolboy.
Good news for those of you wanting to see my WWG Mayhem City Police Station - the end is in sight. All being well I hope to finish it this month. Yeehaa! I've been making a lot of office furniture for it and I have just five rooms to decorate - four detectives' offices and the large squad room. I only have a bunch of book shelves to make and then I'll be able to complete all four detectives' offices. The squad room will be the last to get made but fortunately, I already have a lot of the furniture for it already constructed. This has been a mammoth project, by far the largest card building I've ever made. I can't wait to finish it and then move on to something else. Don't ask what just yet. I have loads of options available.
I finished reading one vampire novel and two zombie novels in January. The vampire novel was Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer - the final part of her Twilight series. It was easily the best book in the series. The one character who has annoyed me the most in this series has been the petulant Bella Swann, the heroine of the novels. However, my opinion of her changed once her new husband, the vampire Edward Cullen, transformed her into a vampire. Vampire Bella is awesome!
The first of the zombie novels I read was As The World Dies: The Untold Stories by Rhiannon Frater. This was a short anthology featuring three of the peripheral characters from her As The World Dies series. If you're a fan of the series you'll probably like this one but it's not an essential purchase. Once again, we have a book that is badly let down by poor proofreading. Five times the word "soldier" is spelt "solider" including twice in one sentence. Unforgivable!
The second zombie novel was one that I bought after reading Zombie Ad's interview with the author, Iain McKinnon, on his Zombie Shop blog site. http://zombieshop.blogspot.com/2012/01/20-questions-with-iain-mckinnon.html The novel in question was Domain of the Dead. It's not a very long novel at 184 pages and I'm afraid I wasn't very impressed with it. Most of the action takes place on a research ship, which gets overrun with zombies, far too quickly and far too easily in my view. I really couldn't empathise with any of the characters, which is a major failing for any novel. Yet again, the book was let down by too many proofreading mistakes. My friend, Joe/Zabadak, states that this a curse of zombie books and I must agree with him.
I'm currently reading Remains of the Dead by Iain McKinnon, which ties in with Domain. At the start of Domain, a small group of survivors are found by a helicopter crew from the research ship. However, the helicopter only has a limited passenger capacity, so some of the group are whisked away and Domain tells their story. Remains concentrates on the group left behind.
As I mentioned in previous monthly musings, the last three months of 2011 saw me making no trips to the cinema. Here in January 2012, I've been three times. First up was to see Twilight: Breaking Dawn part 1. This follows the first part of the novel I mentioned earlier and ends with Bella's transformation to a vampire. Not very exciting but it serves its purpose in setting up part 2, due out later this year. The novel runs to 700 pages, so I wasn't at all surprised that the producers split the film into two parts.
Secondly, was the excellent Underworld Awakening in 3D, which I have already reviewed on my blog. The third film I saw was Haywire, which has nothing to do with the undead. It tells the tale of a female black ops agent who is double crossed on a mission in Dublin. She survives the assassination attempt and goes after those who set her up. Gina Carano plays the betrayed agent and she is very good in this film. As a champion mixed martial artist, she is excellent in her fight scenes. The film drags in places but overall I thoroughly enjoyed it. There's just something about hard-ass females kicking butt that I like.
That's almost all for now, but I would like to make a special mention to Johnny/Lord Siwoc for his wonderful survivor's house he made, dedicated to Vampifan. See it on his blogsite, Brains and Guts! here - http://lordsiwoc.blogspot.com/2012/01/house-of-desurvivor.html if you haven't done so already. Johnny, you really made my day with that. Thanks once again, mate!