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We watched Dora and the Lost City of Gold on Prime the other day. It's actually a fun film. It does suffer from a pet peeve of mine: whenever explorers in films are looking for "inca" stuff it always has this odd, obviously Mesoamerica-inspired, iconography.
The Indiana Jones film that shall not be mentioned pulled the same shit. I mean, that's just lazy. Andean iconography is less uniform and probably less recognizable and iconic to the general audience but it's not impossible to come up with a fictional Andes-inspired iconographic style without resorting to inappropriate Mesoamerican elements.

I do realize Dora is just a silly film involving next to zero realism, but I still think not coming up with a remotely Andean-looking iconography is lazy.

Also, there was no writing system in the Andean culture region. Even Tintin got this wrong, though the iconography was spot-on.
 
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Gringnr Gringnr was kind enough to set me straight the other day that the name of a film I remembered bits of was Beyond the Black Rainbow, and I finally got to see it in its entirety last night.

As a love letter to sci-fi and horror films of the 70s (and a bit of the 60s, at one point) the film is flawless. Despite being made in 2010 it feels and looks like it came straight out of the 70s in a flawless manner.

Commenting on the actual story of the film, I’m torn. I’m a big fan of David Lynch and storytelling where audiences have to draw their own conclusions. At the same time there are several parts of the movie that seem to have just been thrown in, or feel as though a scene is missing. I should really dislike the film for this, but at the same time that was such a common occurrence in 70s films I don’t know if it was intentionally done as a further homage.

i did have to laugh, as I discovered someone had written their thoughts on the movie, and several things they attribute to plot and direction I attribute to low budget. One scene they thought set up subtext for the viewer to infer had just left me laughing at the thought of an inhuman creature just chilling in the break room with thr human staff.
 
I haven't watched much lately, as I've been pretty busy with work. I did catch The Hitman's Wifes Bodyguard on Saturday morning. i thought it was kind of meh compared to the first one. This morning I watched F9. While these movies tend to feature extremely outrageous situations, this one went above and beyond. The backstory between Vin Diesel's character and his brother (played by John Cena) was probably the best part (as it was a more grounded storyline). Past that though, it's nothing but fast vehicles, constant chase scenes and high tech stuff that is pretty much leaning into sci-fi territory at this moment.

The end credits scene was interesting, as it could bring someone back to the fold. But yeah, mindless fodder to kill time is what these movies are made for.
 
I haven't watched much lately, as I've been pretty busy with work. I did catch The Hitman's Wifes Bodyguard on Saturday morning. i thought it was kind of meh compared to the first one. This morning I watched F9. While these movies tend to feature extremely outrageous situations, this one went above and beyond. The backstory between Vin Diesel's character and his brother (played by John Cena) was probably the best part (as it was a more grounded storyline). Past that though, it's nothing but fast vehicles, constant chase scenes and high tech stuff that is pretty much leaning into sci-fi territory at this moment.

The end credits scene was interesting, as it could bring someone back to the fold. But yeah, mindless fodder to kill time is what these movies are made for.

I know the director a little bit as we're from the same hometown and close to the same age so we have friends in common.

I quite like BtBR but think Mandy, with its remarkable doom soundtrack, is better. The electronic soundtrack for BtBR, by one of the members of the band Black Mountain, is also really good.

I glad to see he has had some real success with Mandy and look forward to his next film.

Apparently early on Panos Cosmatos hated when people brought up his Dad, who directed several beloved b-films like Cobra, Of Unknown Origin and the much more respectable Tombstone.
 
Watched Quick Change, a largely forgotten 1990 comedy crime caper film co-written and starring Bill Murray with Randy Quaid, Jason Robards, Stanley Tucci in a small but memorable role as a Mafia goon and the ever lovely and funny Geena Davis. Man I miss her.





It is charming and surprisingly a lighter take on Scorsese's After Hours with NYC as a kind of inescapable nightmare. At the same time it is a prescient elegy for the gentrification of Old New York.
 
Recently I watched most of Clint Eastwood's Hang 'Em High (1968) on broadcast. I gather it is his first lead role in a Hollywood film and the first movie made by his own production company. It was good and I think I would have liked it even more if I had not missed a few key scenes (my wife needed to see the weather on another channel). There was an interesting amount of moral greyness to it--Eastwood's character's thirst for revenge, though understandable, is presented as a bit too driven to be heroic, and his opponents--the posse that mistakenly hanged him--are not cartoony villains. And the movie makes you wonder if the justice handed out at the official court by Pat Hingle is any better. It was also interesting to see Dennis Hopper in a very small role.

Hang-em-high.jpg
 
Well my son and I have almost caught up on the current MCU offerings.
We've just watched all of WandaVision and Falcon & Winter Soldier, seen the Black Widow film, and now are halfway thru the Loki series.
All good fun, some shows are better than others. Quite enjoyed Black Widow, and Loki is definately fun :thumbsup:
 
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Her career did, unfortunately.

Unfortunately, most actresses stop getting roles over a certain age, although that has started to change a bit and a lot of them can now move into good roles in more respectable TV series.

This was driven home to me when I had the pleasure of watching how great Sissy Spacek was in the first season of Castle Rock (she also did a wonderful film with Robert Redford, Old Man and a Gun).

 
Saw two horror flicks last night.

The first was a polish film on Netflix Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight

The trailer was pretty good, and the premise seemed like it had promise - a tongue-in-cheek tribute to 80's horror featuring a bunch of kids sent to a camp because of "internet addiction" (good excuse to take away their cell phones).

The cinematography was great, the soundtrack fantastic - sorta John Carpenter-esque with some folk elements (flutes and the like). Unfortunately the story was so run-of-the -mill I had completely checked out by the third act. "Creepy mis-shapen man in the woods violently kills teens". It didn't go any further than that. There's one "twist" - if you can call it that - I wont ruin in case anyone plans to watch this, but honestly unless you really want a Friday the 13th/Wrong Turn/1000 clones-experience, you can probably skip this one. The Director has potential, as I said, technically the film is great, but the premise is something any horror fan has seen a thousand times and it's not a subgenre that ever particularly interested me.

The second was a (I found out later) comicbook adaption The Empty Man

This was absolutely fantastic. It starts out seeming like one kind of film, then transitions to another, then turns into something else entirely, and the tension is off the scale. I don't think I've had so nailbiting an experience watching a film in years. It's a bit like The Ruins, it's a bit like the Ring, and it's a bit like In The Mouth of Madness, and that's all I'll say because I really recommend if you like horror at all running out and watching this one as soon as possible.

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As soon as it ended, I looked up the comicbook, a mini series by Boom! studios (the only ones to do anything decent with Hellraiser since the Epic comics of the early 90s), and started reading the first volume.
 
I found I had a note I made to myself last year about the film Mermaid Isle, and finally got a chance to watch it, and tapped out around the 29-minute mark.



The info dump at the beginning has the one interesting bit of the film, that mermaidism is contractible via mermaid bite, with a later bit seemingly indicating mermaids are a form of undead.



The info dump also has the first “WTF?” of the film, as we learn someone was institutionalized in the 1983 for bringing up mermaids, even as we see a grainy photo that looks more from the 1920s than the 1980s that seems to show the corpse of a mermonster. A later scene might have addressed this, but the scene is too dark for the audience to read what a character is looking at.



We’re then introduced to the quartet of main characters, in which we hear no one speak for nearly nine minutes. I say it that way because at one point you can see lips moving but there’s no sound, and giving how low budget the film is I could see this being a sound gaff.



Couple A have been only dating a “short time,” and the dude is planning to propose. She says no.



Couple B is...really, you’re left wondering why either couple is dating, given none of them seem to like each other. The dude of couple B pushes his girl into about two inches of clear water in a lake, and somehow a mermaid sneaks up and inflicts a fierce bite on her without damaging her clothes.



Yes, it’s that low-budget.



They go looking for help, an old lady shows up with a gun and says the bite victim has to die, and I checked out. I will admit her matter-of-fact tone about needing to mill the bite victim was hilarious, but not enough to keep me watching.



The acting is terrible, and I’m not someone who usually notices such things. There’s major plot holes (such as characters apparently telepathically deciding to carry the bite victim, and all of them having travelled to a secluded place they know nothing about so the one guy can propose). In my youth I would have keep going just to see how bad it turned out, but at this point I have better uses for my time.
 
Saw two horror flicks last night.

The first was a polish film on Netflix Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight

The trailer was pretty good, and the premise seemed like it had promise - a tongue-in-cheek tribute to 80's horror featuring a bunch of kids sent to a camp because of "internet addiction" (good excuse to take away their cell phones).

The cinematography was great, the soundtrack fantastic - sorta John Carpenter-esque with some folk elements (flutes and the like). Unfortunately the story was so run-of-the -mill I had completely checked out by the third act. "Creepy mis-shapen man in the woods violently kills teens". It didn't go any further than that. There's one "twist" - if you can call it that - I wont ruin in case anyone plans to watch this, but honestly unless you really want a Friday the 13th/Wrong Turn/1000 clones-experience, you can probably skip this one. The Director has potential, as I said, technically the film is great, but the premise is something any horror fan has seen a thousand times and it's not a subgenre that ever particularly interested me.

The second was a (I found out later) comicbook adaption The Empty Man

This was absolutely fantastic. It starts out seeming like one kind of film, then transitions to another, then turns into something else entirely, and the tension is off the scale. I don't think I've had so nailbiting an experience watching a film in years. It's a bit like The Ruins, it's a bit like the Ring, and it's a bit like In The Mouth of Madness, and that's all I'll say because I really recommend if you like horror at all running out and watching this one as soon as possible.

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As soon as it ended, I looked up the comicbook, a mini series by Boom! studios (the only ones to do anything decent with Hellraiser since the Epic comics of the early 90s), and started reading the first volume.

I enjoyed The Empty Man as well. Hell of a opening. Interested in the comic book even if it seems to take a different approach.
 
The Portland Horror Film Festival this year was a two week event that ends on Sunday. With all the mandatory OT going on, I passed on going. They had a streaming option, but I didn't really look into it until I got an email reminding that the festival ends this weekend. I decided to check out some short blocks, which are always a mixed bag, but not big in time investment. So far, I've liked most of what I've seen. There's a feature film I'm interested in seeing so I might order that as well (and maybe another pair of short blocks).

Last year they used the Hollywood Theater website to host films (which used vimeo), but this year they used Eventive, which has a Roku channel. Which for me is great, since that's what I use. I'm already on the second block of shorts I rented, and only 1 or 2 were a bit of a letdown. One of the most effective ones was only a minute long called "Daybreak" that started the second block I rented. It was the third short in these blocks that involved nightmares/dreams, and they really did a great job. There's only two actresses involved (only playing the nightmare monster), but the "lead" actress does a great job of expressing terror on her face to get the short across (especially given there is no dialogue at all).

It's also great that the shorts are from all over, with films from South Korea, Turkey, Poland, etc.

The HP Lovecraft Film Festival is in October, and I hope I can attend that in person at least part of it. But I'm definitely going to stream part of it (as I have other stuff going on that weekend as well). The same people run both, and they do such a fantastic job. They've really adapted to having a streaming options for these festivals, and I think it's not only good for people who are hesitant to attend in person, but allows people who might not be able to attend a chance to see some (if not all) of the films).
 
Watched Suicide Squad on HBO Max.

I wasn't clear on if it were reboot or sequel or what. I guess it was a sequel? It didn't bother actually introducing the characters or developing them, so I guess it was a sequel.

The movie starts. Things happen. The end.

It was OK. It was entertaining. It's just that there was absolutely no emotional build. The movie acts like there is emotional build, but there isn't. Characters die and the movie acts like I'm supposed to care, but the characters were never really established. I guess I'm supposed to be already familiar with them. But, that's ok, I can go with the flow in this case. It's a decent ride.

The plot was basically all the same beats as Guardians of the Galaxy, only by the end of Guardians I actually cared about the team of nobodies and felt they had organically formed a bond. At the end of Suicide Squad, it was still a band of nobodies who I just had to accept had formed a bond because the movie told me they had.

After watching the Harley Quinn animated series, I have to say that I vastly preferred animated Harley to the live action Harley in this film. It was just a matter of taste. I don't think the portrayal as bad or anything. In fact, I'd guess it was probably closer to the original version in Batman the Animated series, but then again I didn't like the character back then. She also doesn't feel like she should be in this movie. It's like she's visiting. Even her entrance kind of feels like she's just stopping by on her way to some other film.

Idris Elba was... present... I guess?

Not something I think I'd watch again, but I didn't feel like I completely wasted my time or anything.
 
I set up a 3rd monitor to watch Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp while working. The book Pimp: The Story of My Life is one of my favorite books, an excellent, no-holds-barred look at the pimping life in 40's-50's America and I had no idea a film existed on the topic until this weekend. The writing hits like a right hook to the jaw. Pimp is right up there with Junkie by William S Burroughs for me and highly recommended


 
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Watched Suicide Squad on HBO Max.
Me too.
It's the first superhero movie I've watched since... Black Panther... maybe? But when I spotted who the 'final boss' monster is I had to watch (as a fan of old Japanese scifi movies).
I liked it.
I'm not usually the audience for supers, not at all... but I liked the first GotG movie a lot and Suicide Squad was a lot more to my tastes than I'd expect the BIG EPIC HUGE Marvel movies would be.
Violent and gorey and almost felt like anyone (except Harley Quinn of course...) could die. Lots of black humor but never full on grimdark.
I think they're more my level of supers... superhuman powers/skills but can still die to a bullet (except for the sharkman, who is a demigod).

I'd put money on there being a short up-trend in folks picking up rats as pets.
 
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I set up a 3rd monitor to watch Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp while working. The book Pimp: The Story of My Life is one of my favorite books, an excellent, no-holds-barred look at the pimping life in 40's-50's America and I had no idea a film existed on the topic until this weekend. The writing hits like a right hook to the jaw. Pimp is right up there with Junkie by William S Burroughs for me and highly recommended




Love Iceberg Slim. I've read Mama Black Widow which was really good and ahead of its time in many ways. His second novel Trick Baby was adapted into a film in 72' and just got a blu release. Need to check it out, apparently it is quite good.

 
Love Iceberg Slim. I've read Mama Black Widow which was really good and ahead of its time in many ways. His second novel Trick Baby was adapted into a film in 72' and just got a blu release. Need to check it out, apparently it is quite good.


I was unaware Trick Baby was a film until today (but I have read the book). I also learned today that Iceberg Slim did spoken word!

Glasses should arrive in a week or so meaning my long break from reading physical books will finally be over. I got Wiseguy waiting for me but I think Mama Black Widow will be after that
 
I was really disappointed in the Suicide Squad. Part of it was the way some characters were handled, but part of it was things that I’m tired of seeing in fiction in general.



I feel like I owe a guy an apology, as he mocked the first trailer for the film, and I thought he was dumb for what he said. Turns out he guessed a major plot twist (that I hate) after just seeing the trailer. It’s the first time I’m not the one who made such a guess and turned out correct in my circle



I’m also left confused, as one line of dialogue seemed a shout-out to a 90s Batman story, and the finale seemed like a funhouse mirror version of a 2000s-era Squad story, but I don’t think either was intentional.
 
I was really disappointed in the Suicide Squad. Part of it was the way some characters were handled, but part of it was things that I’m tired of seeing in fiction in general.
Such as what?
I don't watch a lot of action movies or superhero movies so I might be happy about something that's actually old hat to you... but I'm curious what you're tired of.
 
Such as what?
I don't watch a lot of action movies or superhero movies so I might be happy about something that's actually old hat to you... but I'm curious what you're tired of.
  1. Jokes involving them no-good youngsters and how out of touch they are with things. It feels like that’s been a thing since the Beatnik-era, and I’m tired of it.
  2. Hand-in-hand with #1, the day being saved because of the out-of-touch-young person. Granted, they don’t lean into this hard as with many other stories, but it’s still there.
  3. Character who have had abusive or traumatic backgrounds picturing or hallucinating their victims as their abuser. When we saw what the fellow saw in the final battle I...may have perfectly quoted Kurt Russel in The Thing when he saw the ambulatory head.
  4. Going with #3, characters feeding into another character’s delusions or mental illness to get them motivated.
  5. People becoming friends with those who tried to kill them a short time ago.


There’s two other things, but I don’t wish to spoil the film for you, as one is integral to the plot and another involves a plot twist.
 
I dunno...
I've always been sensitive to ageism of whatever sort, but IIRC your #1 only really comes up once, near the beginning, and is otherwise subverted by having the younger person be very kind and capable. But she doesn't so much save the day as contribute to to saving it... the other characters also playing an important part. A big deal is made of her epic use of power because it's also symbolic of the movie's message about the power of cooperation and the importance of the underdog/misfit/forgotten.
It's not a Wesley Crusher moment, and we see her put her skills to good use in other situations as well.

I took the one fellow's visions to be a bit more than pure hallucination... given his bizarre disease.
The other points have been common story elements for ages... but no where near omnipresent.
 
Re-watched Session 9 again last night. Haven’t seen it since I was a teenager and I forgot how downright unpleasant it is. Looked it up and the hospital was indeed a real place and I was fascinated to find out they didn’t really add any props, allegedly what you see in the film was already in the institution prior to filming. Having worked in an institution, completely dissimilar in size and cruelty mind you, this film hit home.
 
Re-watched Session 9 again last night. Haven’t seen it since I was a teenager and I forgot how downright unpleasant it is. Looked it up and the hospital was indeed a real place and I was fascinated to find out they didn’t really add any props, allegedly what you see in the film was already in the institution prior to filming. Having worked in an institution, completely dissimilar in size and cruelty mind you, this film hit home.
One of my favorite horror movies. Probably top 10. The atmosphere is great, the sense of dread, the haunting misery. "I live in the weak and the wounded" always gets me.
The Danvers State Hospital is an amazing building, and Session 9 does a good job of showing it off. I believe the only props they added were a couple character specific ones and some chains in one of the rooms, everything else is as they found it. And the tunnels are real. They had tunnels running between buildings and to the power plant on site. Wonderfully creepy location that's pretty much the archetypical haunted asylum. It possibly was Lovecraft's inspiration for the Arkham Sanitorium, which influenced Batman's Arkham, but I believe the Batman video games went back to the original source for modeling their Arkham. It's the setting of the Call of Cthulhu adventure, Genius Loci, although honestly that adventure underuses the actual hospital. Lotta history in that there building.
Unfortunately it was mostly torn down not long after Session 9 filmed. It's a real shame.
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.
The other points have been common story elements for ages... but no where near omnipresent.

i suspect we’ve gone down different rabbit holes when it comes to the fiction we peruse.
 
Me too.
It's the first superhero movie I've watched since... Black Panther... maybe? But when I spotted who the 'final boss' monster is I had to watch (as a fan of old Japanese scifi movies).
I liked it.
I'm not usually the audience for supers, not at all... but I liked the first GotG movie a lot and Suicide Squad was a lot more to my tastes than I'd expect the BIG EPIC HUGE Marvel movies would be.
Violent and gorey and almost felt like anyone (except Harley Quinn of course...) could die. Lots of black humor but never full on grimdark.
I think they're more my level of supers... superhuman powers/skills but can still die to a bullet (except for the sharkman, who is a demigod).

I'd put money on there being a short up-trend in folks picking up rats as pets.
Suicide Squad was fucking awesome. I laughed, I cried, I may have shit my pants. Well maybe not, but I enjoyed it immensely.
 
That's cool! Is the adventure any good?
Yeah, it is. It's part of their Doors to Darkness collection for 7e, which are all pretty short, simple to run scenarios meant for novice Keepers. Genius Loci involves a friend at the asylum writing to the investigators of mistreatment and weird things going on. The investigators have to figure out what's going on and how to help their friend. There's a decent mix of researching the history of the asylum and its staff, some red herring stuff that can definitely get the investigators trying to come up with weird magical solutions to their problems, a ticking clock that effectively neuters attempts at going through more official channels to resolve the issue, and an excitingly chaotic finale. We had a good time with it.
 
Yeah, it is. It's part of their Doors to Darkness collection for 7e, which are all pretty short, simple to run scenarios meant for novice Keepers. Genius Loci involves a friend at the asylum writing to the investigators of mistreatment and weird things going on. The investigators have to figure out what's going on and how to help their friend. There's a decent mix of researching the history of the asylum and its staff, some red herring stuff that can definitely get the investigators trying to come up with weird magical solutions to their problems, a ticking clock that effectively neuters attempts at going through more official channels to resolve the issue, and an excitingly chaotic finale. We had a good time with it.

Currently playing in a 7e CoC campaign using one of the modules from Mansions of Madness and loving it. If I ever end up running it, I'll use Genius Loci. Thanks for the heads up.
 
Currently playing in a 7e CoC campaign using one of the modules from Mansions of Madness and loving it. If I ever end up running it, I'll use Genius Loci. Thanks for the heads up.
The Mansions of Madness collections are great. I've run Mr. Corbitt and Crack'd and Crook'd Manse a couple times each. The titular Mansion of Madness is high on my need-to-run list.
Haven't read over the new edition yet. It keeps Corbitt and Crack'd but has three new mansions to explore.
 
i suspect we’ve gone down different rabbit holes when it comes to the fiction we peruse.
Sounds likely... I'm more horror movies and gritty crime stories. Not that those are free of those tropes, but maybe lighter on them.
 
Finished up a lot this week-

The Boys S2 - Loved it
The Expanse S5 - Loved it
The Bad Batch - Loved it

Also in the middle of some things:
Titans - Meh. I might be finished after that last episode for a while. It's been very disappointing.
Superman and Lois - Really pumped for the finale
Stargirl S2 - Still going great into the new season
What if? - That was great! I loved the changes
 
I enjoyed The Empty Man as well. Hell of a opening. Interested in the comic book even if it seems to take a different approach.
They’re different enough that one won’t spoil the other. The movie was awesome.
 
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