Nude… Si Muore
A mediocre giallo that felt a lot like early 60s Bava without the style. Although the twist, which should have been plainly obvious, fooled me.
Tony Arzenta – Big Guns
Outside of Bava’s Rabid Dogs I have not seen many Italian Eurocrime movies. This one was pretty good. It had a groovy wah-wah laden soundtrack, lots of violence and a by-the-numbers revenge plot. I especially liked the 70s style car chases complete with fruit stands getting obliterated and scaffolding being driven through.
Excellent Italian Greyhound by Shellac - LP
I think this is my least favorite Shellac album. Sure there are some great tracks on it, as there are on any Shellac album, but are also a few that just seem lazy in their delivery. I am not too keen on the experimental/talky moments on the first side either.
The Magnificent Seven
I am a fan of Westerns, especially the spaghetti kind, but I not very familiar with many of the classics of the genre. The Magnificent Seven can now be crossed off my to-watch list. The story about a group of would-be heroes hired to defend a helpless village has been done a zillion times from the obvious Seven Samurai to A Bugs Life. Because the plot has become a cliché, you watch these various iterations for the characters, the action sequences or visuals. There are plenty of great actors in this version and a few hammy ones too. Overall, I was entertained throughout the film and especially enjoyed every scene with Eli Walach.
The Screwball King Murder
A pretty straightforward detective mystery which, despite the cover of the book, has very little to do with baseball. Even though the body count steadily increases, the story never really gets more exciting than the PI investigating clues and interviewing increasingly dull characters.
1000 Hurts by Shellac - LP
When this came out it felt like a return to form for Shellac. It opens with the fantastic “Prayer to God” which, upon first listening, any schlup (like me) would immediately run to their guitar to try to figure out. It’s a good excuse to use the F-word a whole bunch. The album loses a little steam on the second side but ends with “Watch Song.” It’s another barn burner complete with violent lyrics and the scuffling sounds of what I assume is supposed to be the fight alluded to in the lyrics.
Scream of Fear
Just when I was about to lose hope regarding my Hammer Films: Icons of Horror DVD set, I got around to watching the last film on the collection. Scream of Fear is not really a horror film and would have been much more at home on the Icons of Suspense collection. This is an excellent thriller about a wheelchair bound girl who is haunted by visions of the corpse of her missing father. It’s filmed in lovely black and white, has some good twists and contains the obligatory European-man-in-Speedo scene.
2019: After the Fall of New York
This is a zero-budget Italian take on post-nuclear sci-fi. It is utterly derivative and filled with bad acting, plot holes and cheap effects. What it does have is tons of action, a smattering of gore and George Eastman as a caveman.
Goodbye 2012, Hello 2013
Another year has passed here at the Pages of Fun so it’s time for my annual assessment of the year in media consumption. This was a pretty underwhelming year for movies. If it wasn’t for The Hobbit, which squeaked in at the last minute, there would have been no stand-out films for me this past year. To be honest, I haven’t really been keen on getting out to see movies for a while. I did love the Icons of Suspense DVD collection I bought even though I didn’t rate the individual movies that highly. I need to seek out more obscure foreign horror films this year.
For me this has been the year of the Kindle. I have been reading ebooks almost exclusively since 2000—first on a old black and white Palm Pilot, then a back-lit m505, and finally on a Nintendo DS with an M3 Flash Cart before switching to the ad-supported Kindle. The Kindle is just so much better than all my old hacked ebook solutions. I have managed to get through about two books a month, which is a relentless reading pace for my word-adverse brain. Of all the books I read, I can easily say that Baby Shark by Robert Fate was the best thing I read all year. I’m sure more books from that series will be on my 2013 list.
For the most part I have devoted most of my free time to gaming. I played a ton of great titles but my favorites of the year were Mass Effect 3, Batman: Arkham City and Tomb Raider: Underworld. Steam sales are great and I already have about half a dozen AAA titles lined up to play in the upcoming months (if I ever finish the awesome Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion) and I want to continue playing through adventure games as I await the release of Double Fine’s Adventure later this year. Consume! Consume! Consume!
Minecraft: The Story of Mojang
Although, as someone who has played a ton of Minecraft, I did enjoy watching this documentary about its creator(s). But the film really is lacking. When it was all done, I didn’t feel like I learned anything new about Minecraft, indy-game development or Notch himself. There’s a sequence where Minecraft is being used in a classroom, but there is no effort to show why the game is so unique in that environment. It’s just a bunch of kids and teachers telling us how much the kids like to play Minecraft in class. This lack of substance is pretty much how the entire documentary goes throughout the whole thing.