Monday, July 2, 2012

Portos dos Morto arrived!



I just got my copy, now i need to find a place and time to watch it (away from my 4 year old grand daughter.)

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Portos dos Mortos II

Earlier today I posted this.

A few hours ago, I received this via Facebook:

Hi!
My name is Isidoro B. Guggiana, producer of "Beyond the Grave". I saw the post on your blog. Are you interested in an English subtitled screener?

Holy Shnikes!

Portos dos Mortos (Beyond the Grave)-please help me find this movie!

I read about this here and have not been able to find anything about getting a copy of this DVD for  myself.


Monday, May 7, 2012

Death and Dying


My wife asked me to help edit her video for the "Death and Dying" class she is going to teach this summer.  She filmed a ten minute introduction in a local cemetery, sitting among the markers while going over the course objectives.

Sunday, April 29, 2012

A Confession-You don't have to say you love me

I am going to share something that is really personal with my (subscribed) readers, I don't want this to appear on my facebook page because I have to associate with those people in real life and I don't want them to know.

All my life, at least since I discovered EA Poe (in second grade!), I have wanted to be a writer;  the kind of writer whose words on paper will make the reader's blood run cold in terror.  I started a new blog for that kind of content.  There will be no witty, carefully structured commentary on popular culture or delightful anecdotes about my personal growth as I strive towards acceptance of my new life as a professional invalid.

I am calling that blog Samples, although I don't know why.  I hope that some of you will take a peek at it, although there isn't much there right now.  Here and here are a couple of things I would love to share, they have plenty of warts and I am betting your thoughts would be very constructive.

Until then, this has been stuck in my head since last Thursday's 30 Rock.





Saturday, March 17, 2012

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Thought you might like to know...

I never blogged about the final Harry Potter movies because, well, I couldn't find anything new to say about them.

On the March 3 episode of the National Public Radio show Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me, host Peter Sagal and the panelists discuss the latest news from the wizarding world

Listen to the complete show here

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Tuesday Afternoon

 At Miami I had to read selections from Robert  Ardrey's African Genesis (1961, I think) which put out the ideas that mankind was born on the African Savannah and  aggression (and the invention of weapons) fueled the survival of the species.  This was leading up a discussions about how visionary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick and futurist Arthur C. Clarke then extrapolated those ideas to create the world's most expensive pornographic film, 2001, a Space Odyssey (money shot here)

I never know what my friend Todd will send me, but it is always worthwhile.  Today was a video clip that, even though it pre-dates Ardrey's book by a few years, takes that same evolutionary trip backwards, from space to the African plain and a pre-technological society (not killer apes!) to welcome the Star Child, all in under 8 minutes.





Saturday, February 25, 2012

The Woman in Black, (James Watkins, 2012)

I just finished watching Hammer Films' The Woman in Black with Harry Potter Daniel Radcliff, Ciaran Hinds and some of the most frightening CGI I have ever seen.

This film was pants-wettingly-scary, plenty of jump out of-your-skin moments.

True story:  In 1984, my girlfriend and I went to see  a Friday the 13th movie on a rainy, Easter Sunday before her  parents took us back to Miami University.  I remember thinking it was odd that there were so many small children in the same theater.

The movie was laughably bad, which is not always a bad thing with me.  As I was explaining to my girlfriend that Jason was surely about to grab his next victim from under the stairs I paused long enough to jump out of my seat and somehow leap completely over her, landing on her lap and screaming the rest of my snarky comments about how predictable a movie it was into her ear, all because Jason Voorhees grabbed his next victim from under the stairs.

Better than drugs.




Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Funny Stuff

To make something funny, add:

an obese person
bigots (although it seems the only PC stereotypes left are Canadians and left-handed people.  This is not a bad thing)

Monday, February 6, 2012

S. William Hinzman (1936 - 2012)

Bill Hinzman, No. 1 Zombie from the cemetery in the original Night of the Living Dead, the  ghoul that was "Coming to get you, Barbara." is dead.  John T. at his superlative blog, Shocks to the System has written a very loving tribute to the man, his character and career.


I have written about my life long nightmares of gaunt, hollow eyed men pursuing me, but I never realized until tonight that Bill Hinzman was the zombie that haunted me.

I doubt I will sleep better tonight knowing he is dead.  In fact, I hope comes to chase me one more time.

Monday Morning Halftime Quarterbacking

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

The Sanducky Mall and my dreams of monsters


I returned to the center of the universe last week-The Sandusky Mall.  Large malls were a novel phenomena in the heartland of the 1970s. These local edifices were both brothels, where the sins of lust and conspicuous consumption were fanned to fever pitch, and cathedrals that provided expiation and atonement.  This was an irresistible, sensual experience a dissatisfied, alienated teenager.  I devoted countless hours to searching behind the mall's garish facades, prowling its promenades, perusing the emporiums and boutique,s and spending my quarters in  the meretricious arcade, hoping to find that one thing that would bring gratification.

Hardcore, Paul Schrader (1979)

Paul Schrader's Hardcore, 1979, is a dark, postlapsarian fable showing America's  rapid and irresistible decline into debauchery and decadence. As the family of staunchly religious busnessman Jake VanDorn unravels, the forces of darkness  move in to entice his teen-age daughter into their subterranean culture.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Happy New Year-ish

WIWLN is going on hiatus.  Writing this blog i one of m y favorite things to do, but I have a couple of time crunches that are interfering with my watching movies and writing times.  It is sad that this is happening now because there are lots of cool things that I want to see and write, especially  now that so many of my favorite blogs are putting up their end of the year lists.

We are stuck between housing right now; we have one house that we can't move into and one house that we have to vacate very soon. This little apartment is already crammed full of moving boxes, but no definite date when the bank will let us move into the new place.  The present delay has to do with Bank of America LOSING some of the paperwork.   I won't bore you with the details, most of which I don't understand myself.

And also, my grand daughter is visiting us now.  She is a riot, but exhausting too.  Here is a video of the little angel, asleep in the car on the way home from the beach we went to on New Years Day.


Anyway, I hope I can get back to the blog soon.  

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (Guy Ritchie, 2011)



When I was in college, back in the eighties, a friend of mine had a cartoon on his door that showed two men outside a movie theater.  One guy is telling the other that he didn't know if the movie he was good or not, but "it was worth the price of admission just to experience the illusion of motion created by a rapidly projected series of still images on a screen."

That pretty much describes my reaction to Guy Ritchie's latest film, the sequel to 2009's Sherlock Holmes.  Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law are re-united as Holmes and Watson, Aurther Conan Doyle's Victorian crime stopping odd-couple.

Friday, December 16, 2011

Neat Neat Neat


The Damned, Dave Vanian, Captain
Sensible, bass player, Rat Scabies
Growing up in Stultified, Ohio, I lived for the unusual.  Living in a town with a library that removed offense articles from magazines and record store that featured only family friendly music, stimulation was hard to come by.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Thirsty for Love-Sex and Murder Online!

I wrote about Thirsty for Love-Sex and Murder ( in its native tongue, Aska Susayanlar) before (read about it here). It is available at Google Video. Loads of fun and only an hour long, I highly recommend it. Subtitled.



Saturday, December 10, 2011

The Commune (Elisabeth Fies, 2009)

Despite a shocking opening that turns Sophocles on his head, 2009's The Commune quickly turns itself into a family melodrama that seems too familiar, but is also too alluring to dismiss.   Spotlighting pretty, blonde Jenny (Chauntal Lewis), an adolescent in full "You just don't understand" mode who doesn't want to spend her 16th birthday away from her best buds.  Mom (played by writer-director Elisabeth Fies) has had enough of her daughter's hormonally charged, emotional hemorrhaging and needs some time to herself.  So off Jenny goes, to visit her visit her estranged father at his commune in the mountains.  

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Sometimes my mind wanders

Since Gilligan's graphic is more interesting,
I used it as the banner for this post. 
 
 Retrospace, is one of my favorite places on the Internet.   If you have any curiosity about what life looked like in the good old days, an hour or two at Gilligan's site is time well spent.  I saw this worthy posting the other day and it got me thinking about Josie and the Pussycats, my first taste of sex and rock and roll.  Of course the drugs leg of the triangle would come from Scoobie Doo's Shaggy, but that wouldn't be until I was in college.