Even though she doesn't like horror movies, The Doctor does like Halloween. This is us as tour guides for a haunted house in Vergennes, Vermont. This was probably our favorite Halloween Night.
If forgotten, the sins of the past are likely to be revisited on the future. As the only nation to have nuclear weapons used against them, Japan has a duty to remember the scale of devastation Fat Man and Little Boy had on the unsuspecting cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. They commemorated these attacks by re-imagining the bombs as giant, invulnerable radioactive monsters who would devastate entire cities. It was fitting that The Doctor and I chose to honor the memory of the frightening destruction of the war by spending Memorial Day watching Gareth Edwards' thoroughly American remake of Godzilla, a creature spawned 60 years ago by the Japanese to remind us all of the monstrous effects of the most violent weapons ever unleashed on humanity.
In the 1970s, martial arts films from Hong Kong began to flood grindhouse theaters and late night television slots in America, creating a “Kung Fu Craze” that captivated action film fans. Martial arts director/star Sammo Hung, actors Lam Ching-ying and Yuen Biao made several standout films together together that not only fed the craze but also elevated the quality of film-making of the genre. In the 1990s, my daughter and I used to watch bootleg VHS copies of these movies together. One of her favorites was 1979’s The Prodigal Son, which was both a kung fu comedy with breathtaking action scenes and fight choreography and a warm tribute to the Peking Opera origins of the stars.
I started this blog in 2010, when I became ill and couldn't sleep. The Insomniac Theater was a chance to dump some of the obsessive thoughts into the larger muck pond of the Internet. My daughter's cat, Olivia, would pad into my room as I set up my laptop and put on headphones. Tucked under my chin, she would watch the colors of on laptop screen while I explored all the movies I could get my hands on. We were a weird pair, me with my nearly useless limbs and this scrawny, angry black cat the only two creatures awake in the house. A perfect time for ghost stories.
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| Basra, the Bat |
