I am honored to be able to report that a poem of mine, “The Cyclops,” has appeared in the February issue of Aphelion, The Webzine of Science Fiction and Fantasy. I am honored to see my work featured alongside the many talented contributors there.
Aphelion is just full of cool voices and fun stuff (I myself find my interest piqued by the shared-universe “Aphelion Project”). Head on over there and find out what the creators there have in store for you.
I don’t care what anyone says – I love the “Paranormal Activity” movies. If nothing else, they manage to scare me with nothing but a simple formula and a very low budget.
Like its predecessor, people criticized this second installment for its acting. I totally didn’t see that. The young Molly Ephraim is a great standout, and I really like Sprague Grayden – though, to me, she’ll always be the First Daughter from “24.”
I’d give this a 9 out of 10.
Basically I need a little woman to sit on my shoulder all day and explain things to me.
“White House Die Hard …” um, I mean “Olympus Has Fallen” (2013) was actually a really good movie – I’d give it a 9 out of 10. The action scenes were goddam fantastic – especially the early set piece illustrating in detail how the terrorists gain control of the White House and even its underground bunker. And it was pretty damned scary, showing scores of grisly civilian deaths. This is the kind of hard-hitting thriller from which that the increasingly family-friendly “Die Hard” franchise eventually devolved.
I had no idea that conventional armed forces were 15 minutes away from the White House (if what the movie says is correct). Why can’t the government just rent/lease some of those office buildings and house some tanks and APC’s in there along with troops?
The parallels with Die Hard are many. There’s even a doomed rooftop helicopter assault, in which the hero tries to warn the authorities of an unseen threat – then nearly falls to his death after combatting the threat.
This was still a damned good movie, though. I really liked it.
Question – I’m sure they couldn’t have filmed the frontal assault at the entrance to the White House … did they build an identical set and CGI it into a DC background? I sure as hell couldn’t tell the difference.
First published in Dead Snakes, November 16, 2013:
http://deadsnakes.blogspot.com/2013/11/eric-robert-nolan-three-poems.html
“Man and Cigarette,” by George Hodan, public domain
“The Moth Diaries” (2011) is actually a decent vampire movie. Yes, the protagonists are teenage girls at a boarding school, but this is much more “The X-Files” than it is “Twilight.” It actually reminded me a lot of the fantastic “Let Me In” (2010), the Americanized version of “Let the Right One In” (2008).
Rebecca (capably played by the talented Sarah Bolger) grows concerned when her best friend is seemingly enthralled by the creepy new girl (Lily Cole). Vampire mystery ensues.
This is a really good movie for the first hour and 15 minutes or so, even if the sparing flashback sequences are a little awkward. Regrettably, its chances of being a truly great horror film are foiled by a quick and underwhelming anticlimax, complete with special effects that are about at the same level we would expect from network television. It’s like the screenwriter and director ran out of energy and decided to wrap up the whole shebang so they could grab lunch.
It’s still a fairly good movie, though – I’d give it a 7 out of 10.
Postscript: you know you’ve seen a lot of horror movies when their titles all begin to sound alike: The Moth Diaries, The Mothman Prophecies, The Vampire Diaries, The Zombie Diaries, Diary of the Dead, etc.
It’s a poem about January, among other things, so I wanted to link to it before the month is out:
http://dagdapublishing.co.uk/2014/03/03/amanda/
I am still blogging my past movie reviews on Faceback; this was my somewhat enthusiastic review of “Looper.” @@@@@
FINALLY. After a string of misfires, I finally succeeded in bringing home a decent movie from Redbox – “Looper” (2012), a smartly written, high-concept sci-fi thriller in which Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a mob hitman charged with executing a time-traveling older version of himself (Bruce Willis). This was a decent, thoughtful flick that definitely held my attention – I’d give it an 8 out of 10.
The script and dialogue were great, there were decent special effects, and this was a highly original story — with at least one nightmare-inducing wrinkle that was damn horrifying (such as when one character is cleverly extorted to be at a warehouse within 15 minutes). Ugh. The acting all around was decent, charmingly accentuated with makeup effects that really did make Levitt look like a younger Willis. While Levitt, Willis, Jeff Daniels and Emily Blunt were all really good, the terrific new child actor Pierce Gagnon stole the show – this kid’s voice and facial expressions blew me away.
It isn’t perfect. This wasn’t the escapist thriller that I was expecting. It’s downright chatty for a film about mob assassins, and it certainly didn’t feel like a “chase movie.” Although my attention never wavered, at times I did feel as though it was unexpectedly slow. It’s also a hard film for which to find anyone to root for — is any character besides Emily Blunt and the prostitute someone who can be considered a “good guy?” The story fails to render a likeable main character, whether it’s a younger or older version of “Joe.” I think many filmgoers will start out rooting for Willis – but this ought to change considering the choices he makes in the story. I found myself rooting for the kid … but this was a character that my friends intensely disliked. This isn’t a feel-good movie or a fun, futuristic fantasy, like a more cerebral “Total Recall.” It’s really more of a violent drama than a thriller.
For hard-core sci-fi fans, this movie might also suffer in comparison to that OTHER Bruce Will time-travel tragedy – “12 Monkeys” (1995). There are similar plot elements and setups, but writer-director Rian Johnson just can’t compete here with the magic of Terry Gilliam. No one can. Comparing this movie with “12 Monkeys” is like comparing “Batman” (1989) with the seminal modern Christopher Nolan films.
Then there were the seemingly inevitable plot holes that come with every time travel movie. I personally thought that the premise was a little shaky – “loopers” are hitmen who actually agree to assassinate future versions of themselves, with the understanding that they can live out a wealthy, 30-year vacation in the intervening years. So, by definition, this job requires employees who are suicidal, albeit in a delayed fashion. I kinda think this job would attract only unstable individuals – who probably couldn’t be best trusted with a high-pressure task like assassination.
I also saw this film with a friend who is far brighter than I am, and he easily pointed out other plot holes immediately. For example, the mob sends assassination victims back in time, because future tracking technology makes it impossible to hide a dead body. But if the technology exists for TIME TRAVEL, surely sufficient technology should exist to vaporize a body, right? Moreover, the time machine also seems to work as a transporter – travelers are displaced geographically. Why not teleport dead bodies out into space, or deep within the earth’s bedrock? There are additional questions that are even more obvious … why don’t future mobsters travel back in time themselves? They can easily live like kings with foreknowledge of the stock market or sports gambling. Even that knucklehead Biff from “Back to the Future Part II” (1989) was able to figure that out.
All in all, though, this was a good movie that is well worth the price of a rental. I’d really recommend it.
Postscript: if anyone sees this movie and enjoys it, may I also recommend “The X-Files’” own incredibly well done time-travel episode, “Synchrony,” (Season 4, Ep. 19)? If you enjoy this, you’ll enjoy Mulder and Scully in a similar story.
I thought that was pretty funny.
You have to give the makers of “As Above, So Below” a lot of credit for creativity and initiative. They were the first production team ever to get permission from the French government to film in the legendary catacombs beneath Paris. The film then makes great use of the location, and succeeds in establishing a great creepy atmosphere (and even though one of the principal actors had claustrophobia).
Still, this movie plods along during its first two thirds, trying in vain to derive scares from the same plot device as the classic (but now forgotten?) “Flatliners” (1990).
Then, in the final third, things pick up, and the movie succeeds in being scary. Not all the jump moments work, but many do.
It’s at least worth a look for horror fans.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 