Sixteen Further Screams For Halloween: Day 4 (Trap)

Oh, and this shot was cinema.

Well, this was unexpected. I'll be upfront and say that it isn't really a horror movie and more of a thriller, but like... Fuck it, it's got a serial killer protagonist and it's my blog so I get the final say on what belongs. There's at least one other film on my list this year that doesn't fall under the traditional horror umbrella, so I am breaking all the rules. Ooh, I'm a rebel. The other unexpected thing for me was that I really enjoyed Trap. M Night Shymalan and I, we have a rocky history. A couple of years ago I watched Old for one of these. I really didn't like it, for reasons I forget but wrote down in that blog post. In contrast to that, earlier this year since my pal Joe did a whole marathon of all of Shymalan's films, I rewatched The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, and those movies kind of rule. Trap is not quite as good as those, but nor is it shit. It was actually pretty fucking good and had me engaged at all times. Yes, even the back half. It seems like this is sort of a Marmite movie, with lots of mixed opinions. All I can do is share mine, and I enjoyed it, and here's a little of why.

Sixteen Further Screams For Halloween: Day 3 (The Craft)

As above, so below.

In contrast to what we've covered so far, this is something I've seen already. I've lost count of how many times I've mentioned, but I was not a horror fan in the 1990s. I was scared shitless of the genre after encounters with Stephen King and the like. That being said, at some point I do remember The Craft. I couldn't tell you if I'd watched it within the last 25 years, and yet portions of it were seared into my memory. That was long ago, and now here I am a little older and wiser, and a little more attuned to the magical side of things. Also I have witchy friends, so there's that. I'm more an alchemist, in some respects, but I also respect the actual craft. As it turns out, I respect the motion picture The Craft a lot too. Let's see what sort of magic is in store with it.

Sixteen Further Screams For Halloween: Day 2 (Weapons)

Mood, Josh Brolin (but affectionately)

This one has been a long time coming. Ever since I saw the first trailers for Weapons, I knew it was a must-watch for this particular scary season. It was brilliant marketing, revealing just enough to intrigue and entice but not so much that it gave any of the game away. A movie you just go into and try to understand as it unravels before you. For a bit near the beginning I worried that this would be a more run of the mill thriller, and that I would have to cook a bit with some metaphor for horror. I could do that, but I don't have to. Weapons firmly belongs in the horror camp, and it is a staggering masterpiece of recent cinema in that camp. That's a fucking accomplishment considering some of the other horror films that have come out recently, but by fuck does Weapons accomplish it.

Sixteen Further Screams For Halloween: Day 1 (Gnome Cave)

 ooooOOOOoooo!!! Here we are, once again, on the dawn of another October! Spooky season is upon us! The last embers of summer have burned away, there's a chill in the air, I need a sweater and a blanket, and so it is time to once again begin with our spooky marathon. When building the lineup this year, it was quite interesting. There were a few shoo-ins, a few recommendations, and then just a few choices which kind of fell into my lap. Like this getting announced a short while ago; the debut horror novel of one James Rolfe. I trust that the man needs no introduction, but let's just say his reputation precedes him. That's complimentary, by the way. I know that reviews of this book came out from the usual Youtubers orbiting Rolfe, but I did not pay them any heed. It's difficult to trust the Internet on him when he has, for lack of a better term, a cult of haters. Not every critic of his is acting in bad faith, but holy fuck are the ones who are fucking organized. In a mad way, that becomes sort of relevant for what this book is doing.

Coming Soon: Sixteen Further Screams For Halloween

(Stream screenshot from dot_lvl )

Hello! It's been a little bit, and my summer didn't end up as productive as I hoped for on the blog. C'est la vie, but perhaps someday I will get the spoons to talk about the things I experienced this summer. In the meantime I've been keeping busy with other things, like twice-weekly streams and joining an amateur fighting game league playing Super Street Fighter II Turbo. It's been very fun and there's likely an image on the side of me beating something with a super move. That was the match of my fucking life, but I've rambled about that elsewhere. Nah, we should probably get down to the usual business. It's the middle of September, and the summer is all but faded. We are in fall's full grasp, things are getting colder, the leaves are just starting to turn, and the Spooky Season once again approaches. Which means, of course, the end of year super busy season for me. December brings my stream marathon. November my foray into Non-Specific November Writing Month. But October? You know what that brings... and if you don't, I'm about to say it.

Sixteen Further Screams For Halloween are coming to your Blogspot dot com soon. My annual Halloween marathon wherein I will discuss something spooky every other day. It used to be every day, but goddamn doing 31 of these would kill me now. I'm middle-aged, what do you want from me? 16 is enough. I have some plans, as there are definitely a few pieces of spooky media on my radar that I've been saving especially for this... but I do not have 16 planned yet. That's where YOU come in! That's right, you get to sound off in the comments and suggest some spooky media that you think I'd like, or that you like and want me to take a crack at, and I'll likely do one or more. I only ask a few things of you, and they are as follows:

-I think at this point I know my way around the Internet and can get my hands on most cinematic material, but for obscure edge cases keep that in mind. If we know each other I may ask for your help in tracking such things down.

-My only real trigger/phobia, beyond a very specific case, is wrist or throat slashing. If such scenes are signposted in the movie such that it's obvious they're going to happen, I can avert my eyes in time. If there's only one or two such scenes in the movie, it's fine with a warning. If it's something where such things are the main method of murder, that's a hard pass.

-I am open to other media, like brief forays into TV shows or comics or what have you, but it's not my main area of expertise and I'll need a relatively affordable or even cost-free way of access to cover it. This part I may be able to handle on my own, but it's a case-by-case basis and depends on context.

-Keep your suggestion to something that I can experience within a few hours: the runtime of a motion picture, or a short read that's about double that. This isn't a precise science, but don't drop a heavy tome on me that will take ages for me to experience and digest. I've got 15 more of these little shits to do on top of your choice, after all.

I think that does it. I look forward to your suggestions, and HAPPY SPOOKY SEASON WELCOME TO FALL MOTHERFUCKERS. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to bully gently persuade Rain into letting me practice my Chun-Li on him.

Doctor Who Capsule Reviews: Season 18

(UPDATE: In terribly sad news, some hours after I published this post the news came out that Christopher Bidmead, script editor for Season 18 of Doctor Who, has passed away. Consider the following a tribute to him. Rest easy, sir: you had one hell of a vision.)

It certainly is shaping up to be a summer of interesting views for me, with plenty of things for me to talk to you about, because they moved me. Naturally, instead of doing that I'm here talking about Doctor Who again. But in like, a fun way that's got a lot of me just being totally extra. Let me introduce you to a fun summer ritual I came up with last year. Even though I'm up here in Canada, it still gets what I would call hot in the summer. Temps past 20 degrees Celsius with lots of humidity. It's not fun, and so I like to think of ways to cool off. A good way of doing that tends to be retreating down into my basement where things are a lot cooler since it's all underground and stuff. That's nice and all, but I need something to do down there. 

Enter, then, a mainstay of my absolutely going extra nonsense. A Playstation 3 using the AV cables of a Playstation 2 to plug into my VCR and display content on a boxy old CRT from about the turn of the millennium. I use this to record either Blu-Rays or digital media files onto VHS in an increasing chase of aesthetic, but as it turns out you can just watch the Blu-Rays on that thing. So that's what I did last summer, and what I chose to go through was my classic Doctor Who Blu-Rays. I'd pick a set, and watch a story a night from that season, splitting six-parters up over two nights. This led to some interesting results and whatnot, particularly my viewing of Season 15 with Tom Baker; I fell asleep during Underworld and nearly went fucking mad with how off the rails the last two parts of The Invasion Of Time went. Amidst that, though, I also rewatched what is not just my favorite season of Tom's, but perhaps my favorite of Classic Who as a whole: Season 18.

It being warm again, I have restarted this tradition. Having just finished Season 8 with Jon Pertwee (it was fine), I get to pick another... and I'm feeling my old favorite again. Then an idea struck me. Why don't I talk about it for the blog? So, here it is then. Over the next week or so, I will be watching a serial a night from Season 18 and writing about it in this little document the next day. When it's all done, you get my retrospective on why I think this season rules. As a special challenge to myself and an attempt at brevity, I'm imposing a limit on myself: 500 words per serial. That may not sound like a lot, but there's seven of the things. Pair that with the intro I just done, and the overall summation, and that's easily 4 to 5k in words. Not bad. Well, let's get on with it. I'll set the scene for you. It's half past eight on a weekday, the sun is just about to set over the hills to the westward, directly facing me, and I am down here cooling off. I have my drink, my snacks, and on this old console hooked up to a slightly older TV, we're going to watch the finale to the most popular of the Doctor Whos before that David Tennant chap came along. 

Welcome, dear friends, to a chill summer evening. Welcome... to Season 18.

A Patriotic Celebration Of Obscure 90s Canadian Nostalgia (Street Cents)

Hey, kids! Happy Canada Day! Assuming I got this right and banged out all these words on time, it should be the start of July and thus the celebration of my funny little maple leaf country. 158 years of Canadian sovereignty, yay! Have some maple syrup, a donair, a poutine, a Nanaimo bar, whatever! We are going to celebrate here, in my own way. It's a party at this coffee shop we call a blog, and you are invited. So, let me set the scene. As of last weekend, I finished a work of media that has absolutely shifted my internal landscape in new and exciting ways, a work with such pure power and symbolism as to rival Twin Peaks and the work of David Lynch. It's gonna be a whopper to untangle in my mind, but I will do it and write about it.

This is not that post. We're not ready for that yet. Instead, I want to talk about something I watched in tandem with this work. I watched that thing in the mornings, but in the evenings? I was playing about with pure Canadiana nostalgia... and it being so close to Canada Day, I decided, what the hell? Let's talk about it. That's what we're gonna do here today, then. We're going to talk about a show I watched up here in Canada in the 1990s. It is a show that has slipped through the cracks, so to speak, but I remember it and am here to discuss it on this auspicious day. Start blasting your Rush or Shania Twain or whatever, and let's get Canadian.