December 2019.
I toured Fair View Cemetery by my friend’s house in northwest Roanoke just around twilight, which made for a couple of interesting shots. The cemetery occupies a sweeping, broad hill. It was established in 1890 and actually includes the grave of Confederate States of America Congressman (Waller Redd Staples).
Oil on wood.
Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe than time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, and reminds us to cherish every moment because they’ll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we lived.
— from “Star Trek: Generations” (1994), screenplay by Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga
As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I will never stop loving Steven Spielberg’s 2005 take on H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds.” It was a damned decent science fiction epic, the special effects were fabulous, and it’s actually pretty scary upon its first viewing. The movie successfully channeled post-9/11 anxieties without exploiting them, and Spielberg characteristically humanized the story’s apocalypse by framing it through the eyes of a realistic, relatable modern family. (The terror of the genocidal monsters is a little ironic, too … when I was a kid, Spielberg was known for the wondrous aliens of 1977’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and 1982’s “E.T. — The Extra Terrestrial.”)
Say what you want about Tom Cruise … I think he’s a decent actor, and he’s led some really terrific science fiction films. Dakota Fanning was fantastic child actor here, and Tim Robbins was predictably brilliant (even if his story arc, in my opinion, was largely unnecessary and too depressing).
This was a great flick.
This is me laughing at Trump’s feelings being hurt by Trudeau and Macron at the NATO Summit.
Cry me a river, Snowflake-in-Chief.
I’d love to say “schadenfreude,” but I’m not sure I can spell it. (Did I get it right?)
“The Night.” Oil on canvas.
I know this is a weird thing with which to get preoccupied, but little mysteries drive me nuts.
What is the deal with this worn nickel? Why does it sparkle the way it does? Is it the work of an oblique prankster? A faulty counterfeiter? A chemical agent? A sparkly vampire?
Occam’s razor suggests that it’s just a thin, undetectable acrylic paint or something. But I swear doesn’t feel painted; it feels like an ordinary nickel. And what kind of prank is that, anyway? Who sits around painting nickels? And why?
“Fractured” (2019) is essentially a “Twilight Zone” episode presented as a feature-length film. Like many movies of this type, it would be better suited to a 40-minute television script; it takes too long here to reach its denouement. It suffers just a little because of that.
That isn’t to say it’s a bad film — it was pretty well executed, despite its unnecessary length, and the final minutes had me squirming. It certainly held my interest, and I’d rate it a 7 out of 10.
Brad Anderson’s directing was quite good — this is a well visualized psychological horror film that capably builds tension with its unsettling angles and strange lighting. Sam Worthington does very well in his lead role as a man who has his family admitted to a hospital emergency room, only to see them vanish altogether. He’s upstaged just a bit by two actors in small supporting roles — the priceless Stephen Tobolowsky and the superb Adjoa Andoh as doctors at the mysterious hospital.
DC Comics.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 