Blackmoor Vituperative

Just watched “Alien Trespass“. I almost didn’t, because the cover art and the title made me think it was probably yet another of those execrable Asylum ripoffs. (If that makes you think the Asylum films are terrible, you are mistaken: they are much, much worse than that. Seriously, do not ever watch one. They aren’t “bad” in an entertaining way. They are just plain bad.)

However, to my surprise, it wasn’t. It’s more in the vein of The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, although it’s played completely seriously, without even the deadpan humour of Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. I confess I enjoyed Skeleton more, but I recommend Alien Trespass to anyone who has an affection for 1950s science fiction movies.

I still haven’t taught myself to use Campaign Cartographer 3, but I really enjoy ProFantasy’s monthly special maps. Check out the December Annual issue for 1930s travel guide-style maps.

We celebrated the third day of our four-day weekend by watching a number of shows on Netflix. The best of these were from across the water: Grabbers (an Irish film in the tradition of Tremors and Shawn Of The Dead), and the first episode of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. These were both great fun. Grabbers, in particular, deserves to have wider recognition. As much as I enjoy the work of Simon Pegg, Grabbers was much more fun than The World’s End.

As for Miss Fisher, it reminds me a great deal of another mystery genre import, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. I wish they had made more episodes of that. It was a delightful show, and quite likely the first time I had ever seen Africa being portrayed as a place where people could actually live and be happy.

When it comes to accounting for the money raised through Kickstarter etc., most people seem aware of the 5% Kickstarter fee, the ~4% Amazon fee, the 1%-5% billing failure, and the potential for as much as 10% to be lost in chargebacks. What I don’t see many people mentioning is the amount of income tax the IRS is going to take of the amount raised (if you are a US citizen). In Europe, you may have VAT, which is even more complicated. Established businesses already know about this, of course, but since many people who start a Kickstarter campaign are hobbyists and startups, I thought this was a worthwhile thing to point out: keep taxes in mind when you are estimating how much you will need to raise to complete your project.

The theme for Cult Movie Night this month was 1995 Ice-T movies. It’s a very specific genre. The first movie was Keanu Reeves’ first foray into cyberpunk, Johnny Mnemonic, which starred Keanu Reeves, Dolph Lundgren, Dina Meyer, Ice-T, and Takeshi Kitano. Fun fact! This was Dolph Lundgren’s last theatrically released film role until The Expendables. Lundgren’s street preacher is actually one of the high points of the film.

The second movie was Tank Girl, starring Lori Petty, Naomi Watts, Ice-T, and Malcolm McDowell. Ice-T got second billing in this, but I do not know why: Naomi Watts and Malcolm McDowell both had more substantial roles. I am glad that we watched Tank Girl last. Lori Petty was perfectly cast as Rebecca, and the whole movie was really fun. And Naomi Watts has really nice teeth!

edit: Unfortunately, I made an error in the scheduling of this Cult Movie Night. The blu-ray special remastered “collector’s edition” of Tank Girl is released this coming Tuesday. So we watched the DVD version. Ah, well.

edit: The Blu-ray has arrived! I’ve watched all of the special features. I love the Lori Petty interview. She seems so fun! The Rachel Talalay interview is really interesting, too. Tank Girl was ahead of its time in so many ways. Shout! Factory has awesome extras on almost all of their DVD and Blue-ray releases. It really is worth buying.

Next month: a Patrick Swayze Christmas!

I liked the first Harry Potter book and the first Harry Potter movie. The whole setting is nonsensical, but it was fun to explore this wacky nonsense world, and Harry was a sympathetic underdog. I liked each successive book and movie less, as they became progressively less fun and more dreary, while remaining completely nonsensical, and while Harry became progressively less sympathetic.

Dreary, nonsensical, and unsympathetic is not a recipe for a good movie (or book).

My favorite character is Snape, of course.

Just watched World War Z with Susan. It is not quite like any zombie movie I have ever seen. Sort of like Day Of The Dead meets DaVinci Code meets Outbreak. I enjoyed it, although from time to time we did shout at the screen when something was excessively stupid. For example, while sneaking through a medical facility and trying not to make noise, it seemed like the characters were going out of their way to step on broken glass, kick cans, bang their gear on metal cabinets, and just generally make as much noise as they possibly could. At any moment, I expected one of the characters to stumble into a huge stack of champagne glasses.

We tried following up with Doomsday, which I quite like but which Susan has not yet seen, but we aren’t even in Scotland yet and Susan is falling asleep. So I guess that will have to wait for another evening.

Just got back from seeing Ender’s Game (in IMAX!). I really liked it — enough to see again (when it comes to DVD or Netflix), which is quite rare for me. A couple of scenes felt a bit overwrought and artificial (conversation in car, conversation on raft), but other than that, I think the dialogue and the acting conveyed the characters very well. I sympathized with almost everyone.

My only complaint — and it’s a small one — is that this seemed too much movie to squeeze into the time allotted. The screenwriter did a splendid job of it, in my opinion, but I can’t help but think that, like Dune, this much story really needs to be a miniseries to be done justice (but not a series of movies, like The Hobbit, which is like too little butter spread over too much bread).

But that’s a minor criticism. Ender’s Game is really good movie, worth seeing in a theater (although maybe IMAX is overdoing it, what with the EXTREME CLOSE-UPS).

Most of the time, we know Russell Brand as the goofball douche-monster best known for his (former) drug use, promiscuity, and obnoxiousness (oh, and his brief marriage to Katy Perry). But when the guy gets up on his soap box, he can be lethal, as these MSNBC anchors found at in June when he humiliated them on live television. The guy can display moments of pure brilliance, and when he gets a head of steam behind him on social and political issues, he’s one of the most charming, eloquent, and thoughtful guys in the entertainment industry.

Take, for example, this interview with Russell Brand with Newsnight’s Jeremy Paxman on the BBC yesterday. Paxman basically tries to shame Brand for broadcasting his political opinions despite the fact that Brand doesn’t vote, and Brand does a brilliant job of upending his argument, demonstrating why voting in this system doesn’t amount of a hill of goddamn beans given all the injustice of the economic disparities we are facing.

(from Underestimate the Intelligence of Russell Brand at Your Own Peril, Pajiba)

I have been voting since I was old enough to do so, but I confess that I, too, have suffered from “weariness and exhaustion from the lies, treachery and deceit of the political class that has been going on for generations.” I think he’s entirely too optimistic about the possibility of change, though. Power exists to perpetuate itself, and I am not aware of any effort to restructure society in a more egalitarian fashion that has been successful.

To me, voting is like trying to affect the trajectory of a bowling ball by leaning to one side while it rolls down the lane. It accomplishes nothing, but it makes me feel better.

P.S. Here’s a follow-up video shared with me by Roger Carden.

The theme for Cult Movie Night this month was “haunted houses”. The first movie was one of the films that scared me the most as a kid, Burnt Offerings, starring Oliver Reed, Karen Black, and Bette Davis. One of the things I really liked about Burnt Offerings is that (spoilers!) the haunted house wins. That’s pretty unusual, even today.

The second movie was Legend Of Hell House, starring one of my favorite actors, Roddy McDowell. I love Roddy McDowell in just about everything, and he really excels in this. He’s the only person who keeps his head together from start to finish, and he turns out to be the hero of the movie (although he doesn’t start out that way).

One of the things that I found really entertaining was how effortlessly he shrugged off the ghost-possessed sexual advances of the female cast. Of course, we know now that McDowell was gay, so those scenes have a level of irony that the director might not have intended. We don’t know whether whether McDowell’s character was gay (unless we’ve read the novel, which I have not), but when the ghost-possessed temptresses fail and fail and fail again in their attempts to seduce him, you can just imagine the ghost’s frustration at McDowell’s apparently indomitable willpower. (“What is it with this guy? Is he made of stone?”)

Next month’s theme: 1995 Ice-T movies! What’s that? You didn’t know that was a genre? Sure it is!