Matt From Shai Hulud Critiques Movies, Loves Children’s Books

Shai Hulud founder Matt Fox admires the 'Dune' series. But what you may not know is that Fox reads much simpler literature, too -- like stuff written for children. "I like children's books," Fox admitted simply in an interview with Noisecreep. "I read the Narnia series. I read the Hobbit which is a children's book, however it's not treated like a children's book."

Fox spoke of one book that he had with him when Metal Blade's resident melodic hardcore band hit the road; a book coincidentally titled 'Fantastic Mr. Fox,' by Roald Dahl. It concerns a fox who stole food from three mean-spirited farmers. After several unsuccessful attempts at killing him, one particular night they were lying in wait for the fox.

"They were waiting for him, and they were starving," Fox explained. "So he ended up digging tunnels underground, going to their farms underneath rather than above. And the farmers were waiting for him to come out, all the while he was stealing from them at the other end. And the farmers did not know ... well, they found out about him stealing before, but they didn't know about this."

Fox describes his further adventures in juvenile tomes. "I just actually bought, what's it called ... 'Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs,' which I know is now being made into a motion picture -- which I didn't know at the time. What's his face ... Neil Gaiman's children's books."

Very closely related to children's books are children's movies, where popular books are often transcribed onto the big screen. One recently-released crossover didn't sit well with Fox, though: 'Coraline', originally written by Gaiman. "The movie was terrible. Yeah, I thought it was really bad. Our merch guy and I went and saw it. I thought it was pretty weak. The movie looked pretty good. It was in 3-D, and I've never seen 3-D that was so vivid and accurate."

As it is with most people that take the film seriously, special effects don't equate to a good theater-going experience per-se. "[The 3-D] was pretty cool, but overall, content-wise the movie was pretty rough to get through. Yeah, it was hard to sit through. We were both having a hard time with it."