Blackmoor Vituperative

Not too long ago, I spent a day watching animated films I’d never seen before on NetFlix, including The Great Mouse Detective, Hercules, The Emperor’s New Groove, and a movie I had never heard of before, A Monster in Paris. While I enjoyed the other three movies well enough, the best of these, to my surprise, was the movie I had never heard of.

In Paris in 1910, during a city-wide flood, four friends experience adventure and discover love when two of them accidentally create a giant monster in a brilliant scientist’s laboratory. I do not wish to tell you any more, because I would like you to discover this wonderful film for yourself.

A Monster In Paris is a beautiful, charming film, with humor and a heart that is too often lacking in American films (most Pixar films being the exceptions). One of the Amazon reviews refers to this an as “undiscovered pearl”, and I couldn’t agree more.

Watched “(Jack Ketchum’s) The Girl Next Door”. It’s based (very loosely) on the true story of a girl who was tortured to death by her guardian and some neighbor children. Netflix called this a “thriller”. It’s not a thriller. It’s not a mystery, or a whodunnit, or a suspense film, either: it’s horror. Unlike most horror, it does not depict evil as smart, strong, sexy, or suave. That kind of evil exists only in fiction. “The Girl Next Door” shows the kind of evil that actually exists in the real world, and it’s utterly banal.

In the real world, evil isn’t Hannibal Lecter. In the real world, evil is a pathetic wretch that abuses children.

Good morning, afternoon, or evening, Mr. or Ms. Hollywood producer. Thank you for coming. I present to you seven rules that you must follow from now on. No, sorry: there are no exceptions. Policy, you see.

1. Do not use the “fade to black” transition more than once per minute during any theatrical trailer.
2. Hold the camera still while filming. If the camera operator is not capable of holding the camera still, enroll them in a drug treatment program until their shakes go away.
3. Do not remake any movie that was good the last time it was made. One good version of any film is sufficient.
4. You may make a film version of a TV show, but the film must belong to the same genre as the television show: if the TV show was a drama, the film must be a drama; if the TV show was a comedy, the film must be a comedy.
5. You must wait at least two years before releasing another movie about a superhero in which the same actor plays that hero.
6. You must wait at least ten years before releasing another movie about a superhero if the actor playing the character has changed since the last time.
7. Some day we will all look like a cross between Terrence Howard and Kristin Kreuk, but until then, at least make an effort to match up the appearance of the actor with the appearance of the character. Don’t cast pasty white Englishmen as Indians. You might even try casting an Indian as an Indian.

We may add new rules here from time to time, so please check back periodically. Ignorance will not be an excuse for failing to follow these rules.

Thank you.

Cult Movie Night at Castle Blackmoor returns to the third Friday of the month. In September, we will celebrate D-list superheroes with Mystery Men and The Specials. In Mystery Men (1999), a group of inept amateur superheroes must try to save the day when a supervillian threatens to destroy the city. Features fun performances by Hank Azaria, William H. Macy, Janeane Garofalo, and Geoffrey Rush.

People who want to stay late will see The Specials (2000). The sixth or seventh best superhero team in the world pursue their rightful place in the harshly competitive world of toy tie-ins and fighting evil. Features Jordan Ladd, Rob Lowe, Thomas Haden Church, and Jamie Kennedy.

I think Mystery Men is a hoot, but the real gem here is The Specials. The character interplay is such great fun, and there are little touches that any fan of superhero comics will notice and appreciate.

The J. Paul Getty Trust just announced an Open Content Program making some 4,600 pieces of art from the museum’s collection free to use. Users can visit the Getty Search Gateway to browse through the entire collection of high-resolution images, and they can all be used for commercial and non-commercial purposes so long as they’re properly attributed to the museum.

This evening’s Cult Movie Night was Phantom of the Paradise and Suck.

Phantom of the Paradise is unusual among our Cult Movie Night offerings in that I had never seen it before this evening. It was… interesting. I’m glad we saw it, but it’s not the sort of movie I will go out of my way to see again. Or maybe I will. Who knows.

Suck, on the other hand, is simply brilliant. From the numerous cameos and supporting parts played by rock icons like Henry Rollins, Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, and Alex Lifeson, to the surprisingly good music, to the various homages to classic rock album covers, to the hilarious subversion of — and yet total respect for — the vampire movie genre, there is so much about this movie that we love. It’s just 96 minutes of pure awesome. If you haven’t seen this yet, you need to see it. You need to buy it. And you need to see it again.

This is an official National Security Agency (NSA) coffee mug. Nowadays, this isn’t anything special. Everyone knows who the NSA is and what they do.

Back in the 1980s, it was a different story. NSA agents were my favorite government “spooks” to use in modern-day role-playing games, because not many people knew they existed, and many people who did know weren’t quite sure what they did. So if I needed a couple of “top men” to show up under the flag of government authority without revealing exactly who they were or what they were authorized to do, the NSA was my go-to organization.

Those were the good old days.

One of the great things about my company is that they send me to conferences every so often. This mug came from php|tek 2012, which was a great convention held at a terrible hotel located an hour away from Chicago. It was a horrible location for a conference, honestly. However, the conference itself was really good.

This mug came from Mashery, which was one of the sponsors of the conferences. They provide API management for third parties. But what I think is neat is that the mug changes when you put something hot in it.

This mug was made for me by a colleague. The logo on the front is DriveThru, which is the parent brand of most of sites operated by the company I work for. The most well-known of these, and the one I like best, is DriveThruRPG. I loved DriveThruRPG before I worked here, and I’ll love it after I’ve moved on.

The back of the mug has my name in a “hobbit” style font.

The details are kind of hard to see in photographs, but it looks great in person. This is one of my favorite mugs.

We watched Double Indemnity this evening, which stars Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck. I am a huge fan of the genre, yet somehow I had never seen this classic. It was so much more hokey than I expected. From the self-consciously hard-boiled narration, to the snappy nonsensical patter, to the “twists” in the plot that are more spoof than suspense, I kept thinking that Larry Blamire would have made this movie if Billy Wilder hadn’t made it first.

I enjoyed it, but I chuckled a lot.