I only got 5/10 of my November goals accomplished so this time around I’m only setting 5 goals even though I’m only working 4 days so far this month.
1. Edit novel
2. Try a new recipe every week
3. Work out at least twice a week
4. Make Brian a sxe scarf
5. Read 3 books
My apologies for all of the negativity lately. I’ve veered a bit off course. Here’s a little something to remedy that:
My friends Josh and David are participating in the annual Mustaches for Kids fundraiser. They only have 10 days left to grow out their whiskers in order to make money for kids at various low income schools. The awesome thing about Mustaches for Kids is that you get to pick a project/classroom you’d like to donate to. So if literacy is your thing donate to one of the classes looking for money to buy books, if world affairs are your thing donate to one of the many classrooms that needs a set of new maps for students to learn geography, etc.
A little bit of money goes a long way for most of these projects so give as little as $2 or as much as $100 or more if you can afford it.
December is off to a rough start. Not sure how many people will notice this or this thanks to America’s obsession with this.
I feel cheated. Life moves too fast and nothing really changes. There are days when I want to do something drastic, something epic, but would anyone notice? Would anyone care? Most likely people would chalk it up to the shenanigans of the disenfranchised youth or the work of a crazy person with too much time on their hands – worth a glance perhaps, but not much more. So I continue to sit on my hands and do nothing, sickened by humanity’s incredible ability to ignore the suffering of others.
People are so ridiculously selfish – if something doesn’t directly affect them they don’t care. It makes me wonder where the world is headed, but then I remember that life has been fucked for centuries, which makes me wonder why we keep going. Why procreate when your spawn will suffer the same fate as you? – heartache, disappointment, anger. Or worse – when they could experience things like war and starvation. The only explanations I could come up with for spawning are religion and hope – for some reason we convince ourselves that though things suck now there’s a chance they could get better in the future, but that all depends on your definition of “better” and if you’re the religious type chances are spawning is something that’s encouraged by your religious texts in the hopes that it will lead to world domination.
Anyway, I often delude myself into hoping for a better tomorrow. I also delude myself into thinking that all the conscious choices I make are for the betterment of the world when in reality I’ve made them for selfish reasons. I’ve made the choices I have because I can, because they make me feel better about myself, because they make me feel like I’m doing something good without doing much at all. But have they actually made the world a better place? Not really.
These days I find myself feeling frustrated, useless, angry and confused. Yet for some reason I’m not ready to give up on people, on the possibility of positive change quite yet, which just goes to show how crazy people can be.
Today is Black Friday – the most bizarre day of the year. A day in which people fight tooth and nail to get that $50 DVD player or some ridiculous toy. A day when people line up outside stores at 4am to spend their money on things they most likely don’t need. A day when people shop ’til they drop without thinking about those who are starving or homeless. Without thinking about the workers in China who get paid cents on the dollar to make the majority of the goods they’ve purchased. Without thinking about the poor people who have to work ridiculous hours and deal with their crap because they have no other option. It’s shallow, it’s disgusting – it’s American tradition.
I realize that Thanksgiving has come and gone, so these reviews are a bit late. November, like October, was pretty nutty this year, though, which means I didn’t have a lot of time for writing, but here they are as promised.
October 16, 2009
Return of the Living Dead (1985) Directed by Dan O’Bannon 2/5
I thought I’d enjoy this film because I am all about B horror/sci-fi movies, but this film was pretty terrible. It feels like a bad Scooby Doo episode gone awry. The motley crew of characters are all over-the-top and include a punk girl who likes to disrobe, a prissy girl who’s dating a loser who works at a medical supply warehouse and a random black guy. The idiot who works at the warehouse inadvertently open a canister which releases a zombie gas of some kind and before you know it every dead person in the cemetery across the street is crawling out of their grave and his friends get picked off one by one. If you’re really, really, really bored I say watch it, otherwise don’t bother.
October 18, 2009
Vampires (1998) Directed by John Carpenter, based on the novel by John Steakley 2.5/5
This was not my first viewing of Vampires. I was exposed to this film by Brian a few years back when he was trying to indoctrinate me into the cult of John Carpenter. Vampires is a vampire western of sorts in the vein of the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino film From Dusk ‘Til Dawn (1996) which I would give a similar rating. Both films are entertaining, but they’re a bit predictable, hokey and dated and both feature incredibly mediocre casts.
October 20, 2009
La Cite des Enfants Perdus/City of Lost Children (1995) Directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet 4/5
I really enjoyed this film. It’s not so much a horror film as it is a surreal thriller for children. The filming style and story telling reminded me a lot of Guillermo del Toro’s El Laberinto del Fauno/Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and movies like Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985). Ron Perlman stars as One, a street preformer who loses his adopted younger sibling to a mad scientist who is kidnapping children in order to steal their dreams to keep himself from aging. With the help of a young girl named Miette, One must rescue his brother and stop the mad scientist before he causes any more harm.
October 21, 2009
Blood: The Last Vampire (2000) Directed by Hiroyuki Kitakubo 3/5
This short anime (48 min) is about a young girl who gets hired by a secret society to kill demons plaguing a military base in Japan during the 1960’s. It was good, but too short. A lot of questions were left unanswered. It’s been made into a full-lenght live action film which I’m looking forward to watching sometime in the near future.
October 23, 2009
Les Yeux sans Visage/Eyes Without a Face (1959) Directed by Georges Franju based on the novel by Jean Redon 4.5/5
This black and white French film is considered a classic and I can see why. Though the film was made in 1959 it is still incredibly creepy. Pierre Bresseur plays Dr. Genessier, a plastic surgeon on the cutting edge (no pun intended) of his field with a daughter whose face is incredibly disfigured thanks to a car accident. Feeling guilty over his daughter’s disfigurement, Dr. Genessier begins kidnapping young women with the help of his assistant in order to remove their faces and attempt to graft them to his daughter’s. The acting in the film is superb and it has quite a satisfying/appropriate ending. If you’re into classic horror, I highly recommend this one.
October 31, 2009
Halloween (1978) Directed by John Carpenter – Always a Halloween tradition 
From Beyond (1986) Directed by Stuart Gordon Based on the Short story by H.P. Lovecraft 4/5
Jeffrey Combs who played Dr. Herbert West in Gordon’s The Re-Animator (1985) plays Crawford Tillinghast, a scientist who has built a machine to stimulate the pineal gland and open the door to another dimension. When his partner, Dr. Pretorius is killed by a creature from beyond, Tillinghast is locked up at the local psychiatric hospital where no one believes him. However, a young psychologist decides to get to the bottom of things and takes Tillinghast back to the scene of the crime where all sorts of bizarre things start to happen thanks to the machine and it’s effect on their pineal glands. Like Gordon’s Re-Animator, this film is a bit campy and dated, but these things are what makes his films great.
November 1, 2009
Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971) Written and Directed by John D. Hancock 4/5
A creepy vampire story/psychological thriller. Jessica has been recently released from an institution in NY where she was being kept because she was hallucinating/hearing voices. In order to get a new start she and her husband move to an old farmhouse with their friend Woody. However, before they even arrive at their new home Jessica begins having strange encounters/hearing voices again. When they arrive at their new house they find a young hippie woman living there and Jessica asks her to stay, though it soon becomes apparent that this was a mistake as the voices/hallucinations only get worse leading her husband to lose patience with her and fall into the arms of the young hippie girl. I really liked the ambivalent ending of this film and I was thoroughly creeped out by the hippie chick and the weirdos who lived in the local town.
I got nothing accomplished in October so I’m going to try to remedy that in November. The ever increasing hours of darkness and cold should help keep me indoors to do so…
1. edit YA novel and send it out to publishers or find a place to self-publish
2. finish Burning Fight photo book
3. finish knitted skirt
4. run at least twice a week
5. work on NaNoWriMo project with Brian
6. cut out dairy at home
7. make Brian a sxe scarf
8. read at least 3 books
9. Complete at least 1 project on the sewing machine
10. survive the holidays
So I broke tradition this year and watched two movies, which are not horror movies during October, d’oh! “What are these movies?” you ask. Well believe it or not, I broke tradition for 17 Again (ugh!) and Whip It (which I enjoyed). Anyway, I’m back to all horror, all the time now until Halloween rolls around. Here are the films I’ve watched since my last post.
September 27, 2009
Torn Curtain (1966) Written by Brian Moore, directed by Alfred Hitchcock 2.5/5
Torn Curtain isn’t Hitchcock’s most thrilling film, though it does have an interesting plot, and it offers good performances by both Paul Newman and Julie Andrews. Like a lot of spy thrillers of it’s time it deals with Cold War politics/problems making the plot fairly predictable. It’s definitely not a must see film, but it’s not terrible either. Read the rest of this entry »
Ok, so I was looking at last years reviews trying to remember what we watched and it appears that we started our little fest a lot earlier last year, like September 3rd early. Wow! So we’ve made up for our late start by watching a movie almost every night. So here goes…
September 21, 2009
Vargtimmen/The Hour of the Wolf (1968) Written and directed by Ingmar Bergman 3/5
I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about this film. It’s not so much a horror film as it is a psychological thriller and even then it’s more bizarre than it is thrilling. Max von Sydow plays Johan Borg, a mentally disturbed artist living in the countryside with his wife, Alma (Liv Ullman). It’s a dark film filled with strange and sometimes disturbing imagery which only grows more bizarre as Johan’s mind unravels. I suppose Bergman intended to viewer to feel like his protagonist, Alma. We don’t know whether what we’re seeing is real or imagined, however we know it’s very real to Johan, but what we see is difficult to understand. In the end Bergman leaves both Alma and the viewer to come to their own conclusions.
Brian and I have had a horror movie fest every year around Halloween since we were first married. Some years it’s only a handful of films due to time constraints while others we have watched movies on almost a nightly basis. This year is one of the latter seeing as how I’m free almost every night. This year was also odd in that summer didn’t really feel like summer. Usually September’s in Illinois can be steamy, but this year the seasons have jumped the gun a bit with leaves falling from the trees at my local park as early as mid-September, so Brian and I decided to jump the gun on our fest which will culminate on Halloween. Once again I’ll be rating/reviewing the films we watch. Feel free to comment or leave film suggestions.
September 20, 2009
Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979) Written and directed by Werner Herzog, based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker 5/5
I have yet to be disappointed by one of Werner Herzog’s films. Klaus Kinski stars as the evil Count Dracula in this remake of F.W. Murnau’s silent film Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922). Kinski is intense and creepy. He has such a great presence on screen that Herzog filmed most of the movie in one take using Kinski’s volatile nature to his advantage. The film also stars the strikingly beautiful French actress Isabelle Adjani as Lucy Harker. While Lucy is usually portrayed as the victim in the Dracula mythology, Herzog has turned her into his heroine. This film is as much a love story as it is a horror film. It’s also a film about loneliness and despair featuring Herzog’s typical landscapes and attention to detail. Herzog hasn’t so much created a remake with this film as a tribute to Murnau and his pioneering spirit by creating a film that’s more original than borrowed. This is by far my favorite adaptation of Dracula.
Boiling Over - best pic of the night
Boiling Over
Soul Control
Soul Control - 2nd best pic of the night
Soul Control
