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Master of Horror Ep 1

Just watched the first ep of Masters of Horror, the new anthology series of one hour "movies" airing on Showtime and carried on the digital channel Scream here in Canada. At first I thought they might have butchered this episode because they were showing commercials and Showtime is a premium channel without commercials, but they extended its playing time by 15 minutes so I'm pretty sure we got the whole thing. How was it? Great! I loved it, they didn't hold back with the gore, it was full on, unhibited horror, great stuff. At first it came off as a typical slasher movie, but it has enough twists and turns to keep you interested and it had great production values so it was a pleasure to watch. Good stuff. It was called "Incident on and off a Mountain Road" and was directed by Don Coscarelli of Phantasm fame.

The actress who plays Ellen [Bree Turner] in this episode, is she the same girl who was in a commercial, I think it was for Noxema [?], where she comes in her bedroom and her little dog has made a big mess, but she doesn't get mad cause her dog is so cute? Halfway through this show, I was like "It's the Noxema girl!!", but I can't find any listing for it in her bio on IMDB. It's driving me crazy!

From NY Newsday:

"How will the other "Masters of Horror" fare? Their results arrive on Showtime weekly, with "Dreams in the Witch-House" coming next Friday from Stuart Gordon ("Re-Animator"), to be followed in November by hour efforts from Tobe Hooper, Dario Argento and Garris himself. In subsequent months, the makers include Japanese masters (Takashi Miike of "Audition"), '70s auteurs (Larry Cohen of "It's Alive") and the latest new-schoolers (Lucky McKee of the forthcoming "The Woods")."

From CNN:

"Garris' goal with the Showtime series was to provide a venue for directors to make, essentially, one-hour horror movies for television -- with no studio interference. "We wanted these filmmakers to do their movies, their way," he says. "The idea was to pull these people together, who founded this genre, and let them do the shows they've always wanted to do, with no restrictions, no second-guessing," confirms executive producer John Hyde."

From UGO:

"DON: I saw Led Zeppelin in the mid '70s and the guy next to me got hit in the head by Robert Plant's harmonica. That was pretty exciting."

More Movies Man

Profondo Rosso
» Amazon.ca
» IMDB
This 1975 movie by Dario Argento [Deep Red] has a few problems with the plot [it's rather confusing and doesn't always make sense] but is considered one of his best, mostly because of the incredible visuals, cinematography and musical score. Marcus is an English pianist in Italy who witnesses a murder one night and after being questioned by the police, has a strange feeling he's seen something important, but can't quite put his finger on it. Sounds a lot like "Bird with the Crystal Plummage", an earlier Argento movie. But you can tell he's progressed a lot since that effort, at least stylistically. This movie has all the Argento trademarks; an awesome, catchy score by Goblin, the band who worked on most of his films; the cinematography, swooping crane shots, long shots, sudden zooms; intricate murder scenarios worthy of Rube Goldberg. The plot has quite a few red herrings that keep you guessing who the killer is. Although when you finally find out who the killer really is, it's not explained very well why, at least not after the first murder, other than "that's what crazy killers do". It also ends rather abruptly, I would have appreciated a bit more of a denouement, this ending reminded me a bit of Hitchcock's "Frenzy". I can't really complain though, this film rocks, I would definately recommend it.

Carlo: No Marc. You think you're telling the truth, but in fact... you're telling only your version of the truth. It happens to me all the time.

Addendum: hey, if you've seen this movie, do you know if Marcus' ex Carol is supposed to be his friend Carlo, or was Argento just playing with our minds with that obvious anagram? Looking at both pictures from the movie, they do look rather similar, but it's hard to say for sure.

Monster Movie Marathon

Mill of the Stone Women
» Amazon.ca
» IMDB
This flick is from 1960 and has the Hammer Studios type feel to it. Hans goes to this mill to do some research on a book he's writing and he meets up with the owner [Prof. Wahl], who's an art teacher, and his lovely but very strange daughter [Elfy]. The lecherous Doctor Bolem is on hand to keep an eye on Elfy because she has some chronic medical condition. Hans stays at the mill for a week as he's doing his research and some bizarre things start to happen. Not bad for its time, a little slow going at times tho. But hey, look, we get to see Liselotte's nipple, woohoo!



Bio-Zombie
» IMDB
This Hong Kong flick is like a Chinese version of "Dude, where's my Car?", except with Zombies and shit. It's actually pretty funny, most of the time, and the zombie effects are pretty well done for such a low budget movie. The mugging did seem a little bit of an unsympathetic thing for our two leads to do. And it comes to a rather grim end for a comedy. But what the hell, it was damn funny for the most part.
"You oughtta smile... It'll break up your ugly face!" → Crazy Bee



City of the Living Dead
» Amazon.ca
» IMDB
The Beyond
»Amazon.ca
»IMDB
Two Lucio Fulci flicks. Who Lucio Fulci? He's an Italian director who made some low-budget Giallo/Zombie flicks, a poor man's Dario Argento I guess you could say. Both these movies aren't too bad, they have some good gory sequences and The Beyond has a pretty spooky musical score. The one thing both these movies suffer from is an incomprehensible plot. The highlight of CotLD is the "driller killer" sequence, yet the killer in that scene isn't even a zombie, it's a father pissed off with some kid messing with his daughter, go figure. The Beyond has a few decent gore effects, although the "attack of the tarantulas" was rather silly, you could easily tell the fake tarantulas from the real ones. I wonder if Joss Whedon has seen The Beyond; his Hellmouth in Buffy is very similar to the "seven gates to hell" in the basement of the hotel as depicted in this movie.

Movable Type Errors

I kept getting an error in Movable Type, something about renaming my index temp file. Pissed me off because it wasn't consistent, one time it would give me an error, the next time it wouldn't, even though I was doing the exact same fucking thing! It was also giving me this error with comments, apparently. Anyway, by changing the setting in mt.cfg to NoTempFiles 1 seems to have fixed the problem. Sorry about that, I'm sure anybody trying to post a comment on here encountered the same problem. Damn old movable type, I should upgrade someday...

The pain in my hand is insane man!

I played some Need For Speed Underground 2 last weekend and I had my joystick jammed into the palm of my hand while playing the game. The corner of the joystick is kinda hard and sharp, and this is what was poking into my palm as I played. I was stuck on this stupid race in Jackson Heights where you have to slide around all the time [I forgot what they're called] [Drift!] and I kept replaying over and over again. You need 175,000 points to win and I think the best I got was around 130,000 points. Anyway, my hand felt a little funny afterwards but I thought nothing of it. But later in the week [Wednesday?], I woke up in the middle of the night with a massive pain in my wrist. I thought I might have sprained my wrist at work somehow, although I didn't seem to have any swelling. The next day, I felt better and thought that was it, but then yesterday I took a nap after work and woke up to massive pain in my wrist again. After doing some research on the net, I came to the conclusion that I had some carpal tunnel syndrome thing happening. Holy shit, I heard people complain about how painful this condition can be, but never realized it was this bad! Damn, it really hurts! I put some ice on it last night and the pain eventually ebbed away, like around 3:00 am. I feel much better today, but I'm going to buy a bag of ice in case it comes back again tonight. I think riding my bike with my palms on the handlebars all day probably exacerbated the problem, so I'm going to stay off my bike this weekend as much as possible.

Can I see your papers, please.

The cops busted me for riding on the sidewalk today. Damage: $25. Not much money, but it was still depressing. I think the last time I got nailed was February, so I had a good run without paying the poor tax.

Perdido Street Station / Ubik

I finished Perdido Street Station a couple nights ago. Overall, I'd probably not recommend it but mostly because it just wasn't my cup of tea. Although there were a lot of things I liked about it. But the main characters [Isaac and Lin] seemed like a couple of self-absorbed jerks and I really couldn't care less what happened to them. The mass of obscure words at the very begining was a real turn off, although he tones it down later and the story becomes much more readable. The story is rather boring at first, with Isaac working on his 'project' and Lin on her art piece. But then the slake-moths appear and the story gets rolling along and is quite fun and interesting for awhile. The Construct, the Weaver and all the other creations in the story are pretty freaking cool. The ending kind of pissed me off though, rather stupid and bleak. It just kind of left a bad taste in my mouth and made me wonder why I had bothered reading the damn thing. A lot of things in the story irritated me, the combination of sci-fi and fantasy didn't always work, and it seemed like the story didn't quite fit together in some places. I guess you could say I have mixed feelings about this novel.

Anyway, for a totally different pace, I've started in on Ubik, which looks like a quick, easy read compared to PSS.

My Cobalt Blue - Out and About

I was feeding my T's last weekend when my Cobalt blue popped out of her hole. She looks healthy, although a little thin from her egg-laying incident.