Over the weekend I found myself in an increasingly rare place: looking for something to watch on a Saturday night. Of course, I flipped through Netflix, Amazon Video and Hulu trying to figure out what to watch, but it was a trip to my trusty DVD rack that finally helped me figure out what to put in my brain: Vincent Price flicks!
Continue reading Halloween Scene: The Raven (1963) & The Tower Of London (1962)
It feels like I always had something interesting to read in 2018, but it took me a long time to get through some of them. Thankfully, I’m glad I stuck with the books as they all proved worth the effort at the end of the day.
Continue reading My Favorite Book Reading Experiences Of 2018 Part 1In addition to making my way through a lot of films in the Great Chronological Slasher Franchise Project (which I will post an update on shortly), I also dug into a nice mix of purchased Blu-rays, gifted DVDs and streaming offerings in 2018! To my surprise and delight, I actually came across some movies that have become favorites easily making their way into my collection. You gotta hit that jump to find out what they are, though!
Continue reading My Favorite Older Horror Film Discoveries Of 2018I haven’t done a lot of blogging this year, but, don’t worry, I’ve still been watching a ton of movies! I’ve even been keeping track of everything I’ve watched or read in a pair of Composition Note Books that I’ve (not so) cleverly dubbed Pop Notes. Thanks to them, I’m pretty confident looking back at the year and piecing together thoughts on some of my fave film-watching experiences (minus horror, which will get a list or two of their own). This one’s pretty long, so hit that jump and get into it!
Continue reading My Favorite Film Experiences Of 2018Here’s the funny thing about trying to tackle a big movie-watching project like this starting in September: the movies appearing on streaming change wildly when October finally hits. So, when it came to watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, I wound up running into a few problems. It wasn’t streaming anywhere for free, so I figured I’d buy a copy. The Blu-ray I grabbed on Amazon wound up not playing on my player, so I rolled over to FYE and got a DVD copy. This doesn’t sound like an epic journey, per se, but it took about a week! And now that movie’s streaming on both Hulu and Amazon Video.
This particular five pack of films all came out in 1986 and 1987 and features only one franchise kick-off accompanied by four part 2s. Only one of those sequels features the original director returning and only one could avoid the label of “bonkers” in my opinion. Let’s jump in.
Continue reading The 2018 Slasher Franchise Project Part 2
Last year I found myself in a strange place heading into the Halloween season, which for me usually starts sometime in September. In years past, I’d written posts about various movies and franchises for the dearly departed Topless Robot/Robot’s Voice site. I loved poring over these films, taking notes and then figuring out the best way to present them to an audience.
Oh do go on
While mainlining Search Party a month or so back, I saw a LOT of ads for The Chris Gethard Show on Tru TV. I knew a bit of the history behind Gethard’s NYC public access show and this latest attempt to bring it to the masses, but hadn’t seen it. First I checked out the Paul Scheer and Jason Mantzoukas episode which was hilarious and now I’m going back and watching everything I can on Hulu. His self-deprecating humor, audience inclusion and clear history with many of his guests mixes together to make a perfect cocktail for my tastes. The show also has its own mythology and characters, which I’m excited to dig into a little bit.
While watching a recent episode of The Chris Gethard Show I saw just a few moments of The Go! Team performing. I dug the grooves and put them on my mental “to check out” list. A few weeks back, my wife and I took a trip to Baltimore where I found the biggest record story I’ve ever seen, Sound Garden and got a copy of The Go! Team’s Thunder, Lightning, Strike. Since then I’ve also listened to Rolling Backouts and The Scene Between on Amazon Music and have become a big fan of this band. They’ve got this great sound that reminds me of The Budos Band or El Michels Affair, but with less of a retro tinge. These records are my new go-tos for writing or working.
Last week I finally got around to finishing something related to Stephen King’s It! I’ve never watched the 90s adaptation and only got about a hundred pages into the novel about 10 years ago. So, without comparing the Andy Muschietti film from last year to anything else, I really enjoyed the movie! The kids felt real and familiar, Pennywise was terrifying and there were some incredible horror set pieces like the bathroom and garage scenes, not to mention the whole ending. I was fully on board and am down to see what happens to the older versions in the second film. Oh, also, while I would have loved the kids-against-craziness vibe as a child myself, I did find it tough to watch some of the bad things happen to children as an old person with kids myself.
A few weeks back, I started going through all of Akira Toriyama’s Dragonball volumes. My library has these great 3-in-1 volumes that I’ve been able to plow through. I’m most of the way the way through the third one and have absolutely fallen in love with the character of Goku. He’s just so pure and innocent, but also always ready to defend his friends and do the right thing. Having only seen episodes of DBZ before, I’ve been surprised by the more humorous tone, but very much enjoy it. There are definitely problematic elements like the super-pervy Turtle Master and just about every female character being one-note, but for me the good outweighs the bad (at least so far).
I’ve been working on a secret freelance project for a bit now that’s lead to a near total re-watch of the Marvel films. I’ve realized that I like most of them even more than I remembered, but have to say that Chris Evans’ Captain America really shines through. They made some interesting changes to the character’s origin like making him a PR spectacle before a soldier and making the Red Skull the impetus for the Super Soldier program, but overall they really capture the goodness of the character in the script which Evans brings to life on the screen. The first film is so fun and great and I’m glad they made it a period piece. Then you’ve got Winter Soldier and Civil War which both go down pretty dark paths, but I appreciate why and how they got there. Plus those are just darn compelling films that take great advantage of the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe. A few more quick thoughts: he’s excellent in the fight scenes, his relationship with Peggy Carter a tragic one! I love his friendship with Bucky.
