I’m not sure why filmmakers insist on remaking films that were already great. The original Suspiria is one of my favorite movies, but perhaps there is room for improvement. Like almost every Italian horror movie, the plot is a mess. Is that reason enough for a remake? This new version is pretty good, and I’d prefer this to Mother of Tears any day. Wisely, there really wasn’t much of an attempt to match the colorful visual mastery of the original. The artistry is mostly in the performances and choreography. Dance plays a vital part in the story, which makes the the idea of a coven using a dance company as a front seem almost sensible. Where the movie falls flat is that it tries to cram too much in the story and runs on too long. The movie is never scary, so when we reach the insane ending the viewer is jarred in a way that I don’t think was intended.
A roving band of vigilantes are killing criminals left and right while the police try to track down a kidnapper. Not much action in this poliziottesco, but it’s moderately entertaining.
Penn details his weight-loss journey and his wacky diet. It’s an interesting take on how we view food and there are elements of his diet that might make sense for me to try. He keeps it entertaining and informative, but I miss crazy junk-food Penn. Snackers need a hero now that the Go-Nuts are no more.
I primarily have this book because I am interested in the spectacular Gustave Doré wood engravings. The text is a deep and thoughtful meditation on the divine yadda, yadda. To be honest, most of it was over my head. I would be reading and finally think I had a grasp on what he was talking about, then he’d slip into the medieval Florentine pop-culture references and I would be lost again. By the third book I was just reading the overviews, skimming the poem and spending most of my time in awe of the illustrations.
The final book the The Tripods trilogy delivers a satisfying conclusion to the story. I picture the aliens looking like Sigmund the Sea Monster and it all just works. I don’t think I’ve torn through a series of books this fast in a long time. Just squeaking in to 2019.
Having read her other books, I felt obliged to read this novella. It’s a fairly literal take on individualism that would have benefited from a little world-building and character development. The sci-fi premise is that the world has regressed back into a primitive technological state. The collective is all-important. People are known only by numbers and their preferred pronoun is we. As expected, the hero is the character who begins to view himself as an individual only to be shunned by his peers. This idea would go on to be fleshed-out within the vastly superior novel, The Fountainhead. Anthem just reads like a episode of The Twilight Zone rather than the deep philosophical meditation Objectivists probably think it is.
I have had this wood block sitting around for years and years now. Every year I would make a resolution to finish it and, like all resolutions, never followed through. Until now! I was able to squeeze this in before the ball dropped in 2018 and now my twelve print Grand Voyage series is a thirteen print series.
Originally, I was visualizing that the series would be comprised of three books of twelve prints. That was back when I was young, stupid and enthralled by the Lord of the Rings movies. The main problem with my ambitions were that I don’t really have a full story fleshed out (and I’m lazy). I knew the two main characters would be separated and not much else after that.
This print shows the first moments of that separation when the fisherman is banished to the king’s dungeons. There really isn’t a satirical point to this image. It is just a way to introduce the inhabitants with a sense of tension and foreboding. I dunno. Just look at the pretty lines.
If you’ve seen my Planet Pimp Records site, then you know all about this movie. Planet Pimp regular Michael Lucas directed this homage to rock and roll era, juvenile delinquent B-movies with a radical feminist twist. Read my overview for some of the story behind the making of this film. I’ve finally had a chance to watch Blood Orgy after all these years and it is about what I expected. It’s amateurish and at times incoherent but there are a handful of moments that make a viewing worthwhile. Fans of the barely-related soundtrack will enjoy seeing their favorite lines of dialogue in context. This is punk rock film making and as such is definitely not for everyone.
A musical with no memorable musical numbers. There are a couple of nice dreamy dance moments. I think the key to a movie musical is the complete disregard for realism. This is why The Wiggles Movie is the greatest musical movie since Fiddler on the Roof. The problem with this movie is that the story and characters never go anywhere. There is no motivation behind why the male lead falls for the female lead other than she is the closest female. It was surprisingly nice to see Asian characters played by Asians in 1961.
Shadow Warrior 2 is a fast and wild shooter that continues in much the same vein as the first reboot game (which I never got around to reviewing here). The game is irreverent and revels in its 90s roots but does its best to avoid the politically incorrect Asian stereotypes of the original game. There is a really visceral quality to the combat, especially when focusing on swordplay and melee attacks. You are constantly surrounded and relying on spastic special attacks and super powers to thin the onslaught.
The story is nothing special, but the one-liners and goofy tone keep it interesting enough to not skip the cut scenes. There are tons of monster types and tons of weapons. In a lot of ways it feels like Borderlands as you constantly upgrade and modify weapons with random enhancements. Apparently there is also a good co-op mode which I have not tried. The levels are huge, but there aren’t too many of them and about halfway through the game you realize that you are constantly revisiting the same levels over and over again. In the end that doesn’t really matter since the game isn’t really about exploration. The levels only serve as temporary settings in which to obliterate foes in to clouds of gore.
