Monthly Archives: June 2021

Streaming Review: Psycho Goreman

 

Psycho Goreman is horror comedy with the emphasis on comedy.

After a mercifully brief voice over narration informing the audience of an ancient evil that threatened all of existence now entombed on a distant planet Psycho Goreman transitions to Earth the aforementioned ‘distant planet,’ and two children Luke and his younger sister Mimi playing a game of their own invention, Crazy Ball. (Think Calvin Ball but with a more stable rule set.) Luke is unsure of himself and easily bossed around while Mimi is assertive, commanding, and may very well be fully psychopathic. While digging a grave for Luke’s penalty for losing Crazy Ball, the winner can dictate any terms they please for the loser to fulfil, they discover the Gem of that will eventually give Mimi full command and control over the now unearthed evil which the children name Psycho Goreman or PG for short. In a far distant location, the entities that entombed PG become aware of his release and hurry to recapture him setting the stage for the final conflict between this pair of ancient foes that will be dictated by the capricious commands of child.

With a limited budget and merely adequate digital effects director Steven Kostanski who also wrote and produced Psycho Goreman manages to create an entertaining, bloody, and disturbingly funny film centered on a terribly dysfunctional family caught at the center of a crisis of universal proportions. This movie will not be for everyone if the comedic tone is too strange for your tastes, then it is very likely that you will be unable to suspend disbelief for anything that occurs on the screen. This is not a film that strives for any sense of reality rather it swings for the fences and if that results in a homerun or a strike out will vary entirely upon your tastes. Myself, I enjoyed the bonkers approach and felt the film exactly hit its intended mark.

Psycho Goreman is currently streaming on Shudder.

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Movie Review: Dragonwyck

 

Despite the title the film Dragonwyck is not a fantasy but rather a period drama set in the area around New York and Connecticut during the years of 1844 to 1846.

Gene Tierney plays Miranda Wells a devout Connecticut farmgirl who is asked by distant cousin Nicholas Van Ryn, (Vincent Price) to come live with he and his wife for a while as a companion to

Title: DRAGONWYCK ¥ Pers: TIERNEY, GENE / PRICE, VINCENT ¥ Year: 1946 ¥ Dir: MANKIEWICZ, JOSEPH L. ¥ Ref: DRA005AB ¥ Credit: [ 20TH CENTURY FOX / THE KOBAL COLLECTION ]

their eight-year-old daughter. Miranda convinces her religiously strict father to consent, and she leaves the family farm with dreams of see a larger and more exciting world.

Nicholas is estranged from his wife and daughter and rules over his vast estate, Dragonwyck, as a patroon, a Dutch title nearly invalidated by the Revolutionary War and Independence, but Nicholas retains ownership of the land and extracts rents from the farmers living there.

Miranda also meets the handsome young Doctor for the farming community Jeff Turner who is also involved in the Anti-Rent movement seeking to abolish the last vestiges of patroon system. Torn between these two men and their opposing political views Miranda is mired in ancient superstitious familial curses, the growing threat of political violence, and possible murder.

Dragonwyck is an enjoyable melodrama and few actors performed haughty patrician as well as Vincent Price. Though popularly known for his work in the horror genre Price’s gifts as a thespian granted him great range with his stature and demeanor perfectly suited for the doomed nobles.

While not the best example of his work, Dragonwyck is thoroughly serviceable for anyone wanting to experience Price beyond ghosts, ghouls, and ghastly revenge.

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I Am Back

 

Well, this has been an interesting week. Tuesday, I went for an out-patient procedure to have cataracts removed from both eyes.

I admit that I was quite apprehensive about the operation. Yes, these are routine, and surgeons perform them daily, all that is very good in the abstract but when it is your eyes getting sliced, well abstract becomes concrete quite quickly.

Overall, things went well. The most irritating aspect of the surgery itself was that it took three nurses 5 attempts to get the IV needle into my vein. One the table and thanks to the drugs pumped into my system I was awake for the entire procedure but relaxed and calm. The visuals were off, bright indistinct shapes as the doctor removed my lenses and replaced them with artificial ones.

That afternoon and evening I was unable to see anything clearly and light sources presented rainbows induced by chromatic aberrations and I passed the time listening to podcasts. Sleeping was far more difficult.

I had been given the two plastic shields to cover my eyes, they were transparent with holes to allow gas exchange and served as a barrier to prevent me from accidentally rubbing my healing eyes. Meaning I had to wear them to bed and these shields were too close to my lips with my lashes sweeping across them every time I blinked. Worse still was they tended to direct sweat into my eyes, frequently waking me with burning sensations. Luckily, I saw my Doctor the next morning and when I told her the issues, she gave me a new set of metal ones that were adjustable, and these work a hell of a lot better.

Wednesday I could see much better and by the evening I could watch TV, yay LOKI!, and playing video games. Thursday I was very nearly back to normal and today I have returned to my day-job.

Now I can get back to work on my novel, edit the first few chapter and write a new one for the tail end of the story based on the feedback my beta readers kindly gave me.

 

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Noir Review: Kiss of Death

Noir Review: Kiss of Death

It was difficult to find a copy of Kiss of Death to watch but I eventually managed the task. The film, starring Victor Mature, is particularly notable for as the first screen appearance of one
Richard Widmark as the vicious and psychopathic Tommy Udo a screen debut that scored
Widmark an Oscar nomination.

Mature plays Nick Bianco a thief nabbed in an armed robbery that goes wrong and rather than cooperate with the district attorney’s office takes his hard time sentence rather than squeal. However, when events intervene Nick has a change of heart and begin working for the state which brings him into conflict with Udo who has an intense hatred of those who turn on their criminal brothers. There is a romantic sub-plot between Mature and a younger woman, Coleen Gray, but the film’s real focus is Bianco and Udo.

This is one of Mature’s best performances and the conflict Nick suffers as his world crumbles if evident on his feature but without a doubt the standout performance is Widmark’s Udo. If you have watched any documentaries about the film noir movement, you have undoubtedly seen the clip of Udo sending a helpless woman tumbling down a long flight of stairs. While this capture the cruelty of his character the performance is much more than acts of wonton violence. Widmark manipulates every muscle in his face, creates a perverse curl to his upper lip, and give a joker-like grin as Udo that radiates that this person has no empathy for anyone.

Kiss of Death plot wise is fairly standard and the voiceover narration could have been dropped to improve the movie, but it should not be missed for the performances.

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It’s Hard Being Defenseless

 

Saturday, I held the Zoom meeting and discussion for the beta readers of my most recent novel.

Beta readers for those who may not be aware are people who are willing to read a work that is complete but may, nearly always, need additional editing or writing to correct flaws that were invisible to the author.

The discussion was fruitful and represented a diverse set of opinions, some things worked for some and not for others, but there was enough commonality to give me some direction in edits, alterations, and revisions.

The most difficult element of the process is also one I consider to be the most vital; never defend the work.

As an author you will not be present when an editor, agent, or person skimming books off a shelf is reading your work. The work stands alone, and you cannot expand or explain or clarify anything. When beta readers have comments that something was missed, that it might have worked better if you had established this or explained that you cannot stop the feedback and point out where you did exactly that. Whatever it was you did it clearly did not work and defending your choices, your text, or your edits will not change that. Also, once you start defending it is very easy for the conversation to turn into attack and defend as people construct fortresses of logic for their position. At that point all valuable feedback has been lost. An author who is out to be ‘right’ about an interpretation has stopped truly listening. Defending is the antithesis of hearing.

It is hard to be defenseless. Author often are opinionated people and as such used to vigorously supporting their position but when it comes back to a reader’s feedback it is more important to remember that no honest feedback can be wrong it is what they person honestly took away from the work and if that’s not what you intended then it’s your job to diagnosis why and to fix it.

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The Return of In-Person Gaming

 

This Saturday for the first time since the pandemic sent the nation and the world into shut down, I am getting together with my friends for in-person role play gaming.

The game that I had been running when COVID-19 came along and upended everything was FGU’s Space Opera, a complex sci-fi game setting with tons and tons of complex calculations and table as it attempts to model nearly every kind of sci-fi setting you might want for you enjoyment.

I used to run campaigns of this way back in the 80s and they were very popular with my friends. It was a challenge getting back into the swing of Space Opera particularly finding that groove where I am willing to let the wild and free nature of such a setting run free, but I think I was getting there when the pandemic suspended the game.

In the interim I have lost one player and a dear friend to the disease and I have plans to give his character a fitting exit from the campaign to honor his own unique quirky nature.

I have also taken quite a bit of time creating spreadsheets to help me run this campaign. Back in the primitive 80s when personal computers were little more than stone knives and bear skins, I used a lot of notes, notebooks, and guestimates to run the game but now with laptops, iPads, and smartphone I have more options and I am quite proud of the Excel sheets I have crafted to manage skill learning, transit time, system generation, and time keeping.

Here’s my hand drawn and letter and thus hideous sector map for the current game. I am so looking forward to this weekend.

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Movie Review: Cruella

 

Confession: I have no memory of every having watched in its 101 Dalmatians making a feature film about the origin story of its chief villain an unlikely movie to interest me. But then repeatedly people whose taste I trust reported the film fun and worthwhile and so after re-instating membership in AMC’s A-List subscription service for up to 3 movies per week I ventured for a late-night screening.

Cruella, starring Emma Stone as the titular character, is an origin story for the Disney villainess, a period London centric crime comedy, and plants a feminist flag for taking command of your life with verve and individuality. The film boasts a voice-over track as Cruella narrates her life for the audience and it is one of the examples of how to do a good voice over as it is always in the tone and viewpoint of the character and not simply a voice describing what is one the screen or hastily created world building.

Orphaned at a young age Cruella, whose actual name is Estella with the more recognizable name an identifier of her more aggressive traits, struggles at first as a petty criminal on the streets of London as she dreams of becoming a fashion icon and designer. When finally, life presents her with this opportunity she finds herself engaged in a battle of fame and fashion dominance with ‘The Baroness’ and no it’s not the villain from G.I. Joe but rather a domineering designer played perfectly by Emma Thompson. The remained of the film’s two hours plus running time is the war between the two women. Elaborate displays are engineered, and secrets revealed before the story resolution all done to period and anachronistic needles drops of a truly great songs featuring styles as diverse as The Clash to standards such as Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps.

Screenwriter and novelists C. Robert Cargill may have found the perfect description for Cruella, “CRUELLA is like Guy Richie re-imagined THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA … “

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