It’s my birthday; I’m sitting in the bedroom I grew up in at my parent’s house in Massachusetts … and I’m waiting for Ron Perlman to call me. Does life get any better than this?

Last week while I was home visiting my family, I had the pleasure of spending the evening of my 36^th birthday speaking with one of my all-time favorite actors. I first became aware of Ron Perlman’s immense talent as a performer from his work on the popular ‘80s fantasy series Beauty and the Beast, but it’s his impressive and vast resume of film accomplishments that has made me a fan. I loved his unique portrayal of characters in movies like The City of Lost Children, Alien Resurrection, and Star Trek Nemesis, but it is his collaborations with lifelong friend Guillermo del Toro (Cronos, Blade II, Hellboy, and Hellboy II: The Golden Army) that I think marks some of his finest work.

But recently it seems like Perlman’s career could not be hotter. For the past three seasons he’s starred as Clay Morrow on FX’s hit motorcycle gang series Sons of Anarchy, which just began airing its forth season. He is also currently getting rave reviews for his role as a crime boss in director Nicholas Winding Refn’s critically acclaimed movie Drive, starring Ryan Gosling. Not to mention that he was seen this past summer playing the father of Conan the Barbarian in Lionsgate’s big screen adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s beloved character. Now the actor once again plays a crime boss in the new film Bunraku, which opens in theaters on September 30^th.

Guillermo del Toro, our preeminent purveyor of phantasmagoric monstrosities, hasn't had a film in theaters since Hellboy II: The Golden Army back in the summer of 2008.  After two mega-projects that went nowhere under his direction, his next has plenty of momentum and seems destined to actually grace screens all over the world.  Pacific Rim, an epic monster movie that pits humans in huge anime-inspired mecha against alien invaders, will hit theaters on July 12, 2013.

If Guillermo del Toro is involved with a film in any capacity, you can rest assured that it will contain some spectacular monsters, vampires, ghouls, or other creatures that go bump in the night.  He is, after all, the director behind Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy, and The Devil's Backbone.  He's also the producer and co-writer of Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, a modern update of a 1973 made-for-TV movie that del Toro fervently believes is the scariest film ever made.  The first official poster for the haunted house horror tale has premiered, and it is appropriately spooky.

His dream project, the HP Lovecraft adaptation At The Mountains of Madness, may have gotten the axe from Universal this week, but Guillermo del Toro can rest easy knowing that, though his last two mega-projects have not come to fruition, he has principals and lets his passion dictate his choices.  The Pan's Labyrinth director, who previously declared that he would never direct a movie that didn't contain monsters, is our first Rogue of the Week to earn the title not simply based on the movies he has made, but also on those that he hasn't made.

Guillermo del Toro is about umpteen different kinds of cool.  The writer/director responsible for Cronos, Pan’s Labyrinth, and the Hellboy movies is the type of director who has publicly vowed that he’ll never make a movie that doesn’t include monsters.  He’s currently in preproduction on his dream project, an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness with producer James Cameron. 

Ron Perlman maybe one of the very best actors working today. Screw that, he IS one of the best actors working today.

All you need to do is look at his early career to get an idea how talented this man is. Even in a melodramatic television show like “Beauty and the Beast”, both he and Linda Hamilton made it better than a romantic drama about a dude that looks like a cat and his love for a woman ought to be.Yet he was terrific back in the day, and he just gets better and better.

What the world needs is more Men and Black/X-Files rip-offs... I'm not being snarky, I really can't get enough of that kind of thing. While another MiB is two years away, and The X-Files is dead, there's plenty of room for more monster-hunting-in-the-real-world fun to be had. (Unfortunately, I don't hold Hellboy in very high esteem.) Production companies Mad Chance (Jonah Hex) and Circle of Confusion (AMC's upcoming "The Walking Dead") are hoping to fill the void and get a franchise going with Lore, based on the IDW graphic novel that seems like it would nestle in quite nicely with the above mentioned titles.