Photo credit: “Mrs. Teodor Fedaj feeding turkeys at Picture Butte (22047610312)” by Provincial Archives of Alberta – Mrs. Teodor Fedaj feeding turkeys at Picture Butte. Licensed under No restrictions via Wikimedia Commons.
Bangksgiving!
I enjoyed some delicious turkey with all the trimmings tonight, thanks to some wonderful hosts here in the Commonwealth.
One of the things I love about Virginia is that fireworks are usually employed to celebrate just about ANY holiday — this is a patriotic state. Tonight was no exception, when some neighbors treated us all to an impromptu display.
I snapped about 20 pictures. And, when I say “I snapped about 20 pictures,” of course I mean that I snapped one picture and then accidentally hit the “menu” button on my camera 19 times.
Enjoy the pics! (Pic.)
“I am grateful for what I have. My Thanksgiving is perpetual.”
— Henry David Thoreau
Happy Thanksgiving to all who are reading this, both near and far!
Photo credit: “Men, women and children eating lunch at harvest time, Little Smoky, Alberta,” by Provincial Archives of Alberta – Men, women and children eating lunch at harvest time, Little Smoky, Alberta. Licensed under No restrictions via Wikimedia Commons.
Check out a terrific review of Clive Barker’s “The Scarlet Gospels.”
Dennis Villelmi has published a great review of “The Scarlet Gospels,” by Clive Barker.
Trust me – I’ve known Dennis for a while, and he’s an expert on Clive Barker.
Click the link to see the review over at Gruemonkey.com:
“All This Useless Beauty,” by Porter Girl
Check out the most recent blog post by Porter Girl. Her powers of description are just beautiful.
Source: All This Useless Beauty
I have never felt so old until this very moment.
Fellow science fiction fans, all of us recognize the distinguished lady at left — Sigourney Weaver, better known as Ellen Ripley. For most of us, our best loved outing with her was watching her rally against “Aliens” in 1986.
She’s aged over the years, just as we have. But we can accept that, as we ourselves have grown older along with her.
But the lady at right?
THAT’S NEWT.
Yes, tiny Newt. Actress Carrie Henn.
Excuse me while I go find my dentures.
[Update: Sorry about the typos in this post earlier! Yeesh!]
My review of “Blood Glacier” (2013), with general spoilers
[The following review contains general spoilers.]
I want to love “Blutgletscher” (“Blood Glacier”), an earnestly made independent German science fiction-horror film from 2013. I just can’t ignore its flaws, however, and I’ve got to settle on a giving it a 6 out of 10.
It has so much going for it. There’s a freezing, arctic-like location. (This time out, we’re in the mountains of Austria.) There’s a nifty, nasty sci-fi plot device. There’s a variety of gooey monsters. It’s creepy and atmospheric — a group of protagonists huddle in an isolated location while the wind howls outside on a cold night. There’s a cunning everyman antihero. All of these are rendered by a reasonably intelligent script that lets “Blood Glacier” rise above the level of a horror-comedy.
But its flaws make me hesitate to recommend it. It’s poorly paced, for example, and it’s sometimes confusingly plotted. One person assailed by the creepy-crawlies emerges as kind of villain, but the character’s motivations are never clear. Also, why is another character consistently a idiot? Is he just a really dumb scientist? And the ending shows otherwise intelligent people doing something incredibly ill advised.
And I was puzzled by the special effects. At times, they were actually damn good! But at many points in the movie (as so many other reviews will point out) they were downright poor. I kept thinking that they looked like papier mache props in a high school play.
Additionally, (and this can’t be the fault of the filmmakers) the version of “Blood Glacier” that I watched had incredibly poor English-language dubbing. The actors on screen (especially Gerhard Liebmann and Briggite Kren) did a fine job, but their corresponding voice actors had … no talent or enthusiasm at all.
Look, I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler if I tell you that this movie strongly parallels John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982). Any horror fan worth his or her salt should suspect as much if they read the preceding paragraphs. Our MacReady-like antihero drinks heavily and … he even looks like MacReady! And a dog and a helicopter are actually minor plot devices.
But I liked this movie’s thoughtful story device too much to call this film “a rip-off;” I rather think of it as a fairly skilled homage.
Honestly? If you’re fan of “The Thing,” you might enjoy this as an interesting companion film. As another online reviewer bluntly forgave it, “It isn’t TOTAL crap.”
If you hunt it down, its alternate title is “The Station.”
“Christ! That my love were in my arms …”
Western Wind
Western wind, when wilt thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?
Christ! That my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again!
— Anonymous, 16th Century
“Fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph.”
“Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph.”
— from George Orwell’s “1984”
Yeesh. Lotta nightmares last night.
Rescue a helpless little girl lying unconscious in the street during the vampire apocalypse? The tiny one with golden braids and porcelain skin? There’s a reason you couldn’t feel her heartbeat. Her skin is porcelain because she’s undead. Have fun watching her rise, slowly and ceremoniously, in the makeshift fortress of your living room. For added fun, the lock on your bedroom door won’t work! Ha! The moral of the story? No good deed goes unpunished.
Thrilled to see your childhood dog again? She’s NOT thrilled to see you. Because she’d been buried in “Pet Sematary” or something, and she’s biting your fingers because she remembers all those times you pulled her tail when you were three. (Mom TOLD you to stop, but you couldn’t resist.) The moral of the story? [In best Fred Gwynne voice:] “Sometimes dead is better.” Also: be kind to animals!
That wicked cool GIGANTIC snake you keep snapping pictures of when it drinks from the backyard birdbath? The one with a head the width of a shovel? It’s actually NOT harmless merely because you cannot see any fangs. It all fun and games until it wraps its coils around you, and you realize it’s a python. For added fun, your Mom can’t hear you in the kitchen and cannot respond to your pleas for her to throw you a butcher knife, and then shut the open back door to protect herself. For added confusion, your childhood home NEVER HAD A F***ING BIRDBATH. (We WERE the 99 percent.) The moral of the story? [IN best MST3K voice:] “Watch out for snakes!” Also: if clothes don’t make the man, then fangs don’t make the snake.
Christ! What did I EAT last night?
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 