Category: Robert’s Blog

2010 Best of the Year

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Well it’s the first day of the New Year. This day means different things to different people. For my wife it means washing off the post-New-Year’s-Eve-bash Sharpie moustache that she woke up with this morning. For me it means it’s time to assess what I thought was the best of the media I consumed this past year.

Movies

Like last year, there really wasn’t anything that truly amazed me this year. My best rated films were Moon and The Maltese Falcon. I watched more T.V. than I have in recent years, so I suppose I could add Lost, V or The Walking Dead as honorable mentions.

Books

Towards the second half of the year I started reading a bit more than usual and found several books truly grabbed me in ways that no movie or show did this year. If I had to pick a favorite from this year it would be George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, especially if considered along side the three other books in the series that I also read and loved. At a near-tie for the number one spot is Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind, which started my on my current fantasy lit kick. Finally, rounding out the top was Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem. Honorable mentions would go to Mistborn books 1 & 2, Devil Born Without Horns and Racing the Beam.

Video Games

House of the Dead: Overkill Box Art

I played a ton of games this year. My highest rated game was House of the Dead: Overkill for the Wii. It was stupid, crude, violent and hilarious… loved it. My runners-up would be Mass Effect and Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Mass Effect further proves that the best science fiction is in video games these days, and Zelda is Zelda… ’nuff said. I am still mid-game in GTA IV and Metroid Prime Trilogy but I suspect those two titles would have made this year’s list too had I completed them in time. I also played a few casual games I liked such as Puzzle Quest and Plants vs. Zombies.

Steam just finished their massive annual game sale and I stocked up so there should be no shortage of gaming for me in the next year and beyond.

Download Martian Law Music!

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With the demise of Drop.io I have had to find a new place to offer MP3s of my musical project, Martian Law. In the process, I have rearranged the site a bit and given all my releases their own pages: The Exciting Sounds of a Compaq P133 and Upgrade Downgrade. I have also added a new track for download from the 2002’s Lumpenwave 80s cover compilation.

Liberal Rage

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Oh my. Most of my buddies on Facebook lean leftwards and I am anticipating an explosion of liberal rage come Tuesday evening. They can’t seem to shut up talking about Christine O’Donnell, or whoever the right-wing boogeyman of the moment happens to be, while completely ignoring the main gripe of over-reaching government that is going to swing this election.  I will try to document the “gosh, Americans are stupid” and “Somehow this is still Bush’s fault” nonsense and publish it here. If the Democrats pull off a miracle and keep the house, I will be knee deep in standard liberal gloat. Either way, should be fun.

Movie Week Continues

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My Halloween movie fest continued last night with a re-watching of Mother of Tears, the third film in the Three Mothers trilogy. When I first watched the film I pondered if it would get better on rewatching. Nope. It was actually more painful on the second viewing. What a rambling mess of a film with awful acting and dialogue all around. No screengrabs for this film. It doesn’t deserve that level of respect.

Stills from Kill Baby, Kill

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My Halloween movie fun-run continues with Mario Bava’s Kill Baby, Kill. Not really his finest work, but it is memorable for the scenes of the ghostly child at the windows.

This is a very creepy still, but, in the context of the movie, it doesn’t come off as eerie as it could. I’m probably the 9000th person to post this screenshot on the Web, but any Kill Baby, Killpost must include it.

Kill Baby, Kill - Cursed

The film is filled with more great compositions such as this one in which a young girl is compelled to impale herself with a sconce.

Kill Baby, Kill - Spiral Staricase

Italians sure do love their spiral staircases. As a note to budding architects who work in cities with high counts of maniacs and vindictive ghosts: a simple straight flight of stairs is probably a bit better in emergency situations. Oh, and avoid the metaphysical endless room loops.

Stills from Inferno

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My plans to watch a bunch of horror movies in the run-up to Halloween have not been going to well. I did manage to re-watch Dario Argento’s Inferno the other day. I have always considered this to be one of Argento’s weaker films of this era, but the more I watch it, the more I like it. It has much of the wonderful colored lighting, expressionist sets and dynamic compositions that made Suspiria so great. Also, despite the flawed and incoherent plot, there are plenty of memorable scenes.

Dario Argento's Inferno - Musicology

For some reason I especially like this scene where our hero, Mark, gets bewitched during his musicology class by The Mother of Tears…

Dario Argento's Inferno - Mother of Tears

This is only a brief cameo from the third mother, but it’s very effective. Too bad the actual movie about her, Mother of Tears,  was so mediocre. They should have just looped this scene for 90 minutes and released it as a feature.

Dario Argento's Inferno - Mother of Shadows

Inferno takes it its time in getting to the main villain, Mater Tenebrarum, but the scene in which she reveals her true identity is one of my favorites in Argento’s entire body of work…

Dario Argento's Inferno - Mark

Mark, don’t be lured into her fiery trap!

Dario Argento's Inferno - Mother in the Mirror

Without giving away the surprise, the shot above is so, so well done. Apparently, this is some of Mario Bava’s special effects handiwork. Good stuff. I encourage anyone who appreciates films simply for their beauty to check this film out.

Scarecrow Contest Entry

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This weekend the family dragged me to a scarecrow building contest. This is a contest intended to allow kids to be creative and show off their stuff as budding young artists. Of course, my wife decided it would be a great opportunity to kick some underaged-art-noob butt. Pictured here is her winning entry in the category “most likely to scare a crow.”

Buy My Art!

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After more than a dozen years of maintaining a personal Web site, I have finally decided to monetize this thing (well, okay, that doesn’t count the Google ads in the sidebar, but those barely earn any money anyways). I have gone through my gallery and enabled a PayPal shopping cart system to take orders for my art. Currently, there are about twelve prints for sale. So, start shopping now!