tombking

The Wages Of Fear :8/10: layabouts stuck in a nowhere south american town risk their lives carrying nitro across country to a oil well fire. a lot of Yves Montand being manly and French. No real backstory on the main characters but very good tense if a bit long movie.

Sorcerer :9/10: A bunch of unrelated criminals of various sorts who have been hiding out in South America take the job of driving boxes of unstable dynamite across 200 miles of jungle to put out a oil well fire for the chance to get a ticket out of the hell hole they have been living in. Very moody and tense work from William Friedkin and supposedly his favorite film. A remake of The Wages Of Fear which I will hopefully be seeing as soon as get through the library hold queue . It bombed at the box office mostly cause this other film called Star Wars opened a week later.

UFO : Target Earth : -2/10 : this is not a movie for watching. this is movie to set down and run far far away from. no really. this is painfully bad. bizarre almost non sequitur dialog that sounds not only drug induced but tripping balls to wall drug induced, terribly wooden acting from everyone and reminders that the 70s were not cool at all. this is a movie to put on when you want guests to leave the party as i am not sure even a chemically altered stated of mind would help with this film.

Adam Savage at work on a model.

http://www.zbs.org/index_new.php/Ruby If you haven't heard anything from ZBS this is a good sci fi start.

Yeah I would have to watch it again to catch that. I kinda thought it was more about Cranston, his son and Dr. Serizawa.

See some of my previous comments about Godzilla films. Yes it could have had a bit more monster bash but I really enjoyed it. It was a movie about the people affected by the monster and not the monster itself which is what makes for a good Godzilla film.

Whoever Slew Auntie Roo : 7/10 : This week was of schlock was fun. Shelly Winters as Auntie Roo. We are not sure who is more evil. Auntie Roo going over the bend with loneliness and guilt from her daughter who died young, or the 2 orphans who she kidnapped and are being held against their will. This one is good fun and definitely worth watching and with supporting roles from Ralph Richardson, Lionel Jeffries, and Hugh Griffith.

So I missed out reporting on The Dead One/Blood of the Zombie : 4/10 : This had a better plot that ZAAT but the acting was pretty awful in a lot of places. Newlyweds go visit a the Plantation hubby now owns due to legal mumbo jumbo, his sister does not want to give it up so she summons dead cousin green skin back from the dead to have revenge. Anyway bonus points for going to the strip club right away on the honeymoon, heck the wife even drags them in. Starring Joe Jones. Last week wasn't a movie but 2 tv episodes, starring Richard Evans who was there as he lives just over on Bainbridge Island. It was an episode of Peyton Place and The Mod Squad, and fun stories about working on movies. Sunday my youtube recommendations gave me this Mexican gem from 1968 La Mujer Murcielago (The Batwoman) : 5/10 : Well yeah 1960s TV Batman ripoff, but this time a woman, and has a bikini batoufit and a luchador. The villain is a mad scientist making a fish man and really yeah thats it. See it on the interwebs if you dare.

Not safe for work, well not safe for much of anything... but it isn't fun unless you share the pain. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jaHEa5omWE

Zaat : 4/10 : very competent cinematography as this was a feature film attempt by a company that made industrial films underwater but that does not make up for the horrible writing and padding to make it a 90 minute film as they were marketing at the drive in market. Anyway german scientist who has been working in secret to make a man fish and giant mutant fish in order to take over the world or destroy surface dwelling humans or does it really matter? He turns himself into a fishman and then goes in search of material for making a fishwoman. Enter bumbling small town cops, some cringeworthy dialog of the Sheriff saying calling the young black biologist from the university boy all the time and then some gubbermint cryptid hunters and you have a movie of sorts. Filmed in Green Cove Springs Fl if that matters much, though I kept thinking why has this guy not become gator food a lot and the filmmakers seem to be very confused about fresh/salt water fish types for the underwater scenes.

Doooooooooooommm...errrnowait. Congrats!

So for christmas not really knowing what I wanted I asked the parents for some gift cards so I can start buying up stuff on my B&N wishlist for my nook. Besides a bunch of stuff that will be awhile for me to get through like all the Barsoom books, a collection of Zane Grey, etc. on a whim I got the first Sandman Slim book as they had a sale on first in series going. Man that was fun. I had been marginally aware of the books as Cory Doctorow recommends them on Boing Boing but I find it hit and miss for what he likes but for $1 what the heck. Our anti-hero is back from 11 years literally in Hell and he wants revenge on the jerk magician who sent him there, and gets tangled up with Angels and other supernatural things in the process. If you like Harry Dresden you will probably like Sandman Slim. I right away checked the 2nd book Kill The Dead out of the library pretty much right away and burned through that in no time, zombies, Lucifer, and Homeland Security. I am on a hold wait for Aloha From Hell. I also over the holiday read Bad Monkey from Carl Hiaasen as my wife is a fan of him. So yeah, he writes crime/cop stories about guys who are total f***ups and hijinks ensue. I will have to read some more of his stuff. Other than that I have been reading stories from the Solomon Kane and Conan collections I got with my holiday credit which are good pulpy fun. And I just started The Girl The Gold Watch and Everything as it showed up in the recommended list when browsing the library catalog and I barely remember the 1980 movie on TV but remember it being fun so what the heck and even though I am just at the beginning it is looking to be an enjoying read.

Yay. I will pencil it in on the calendar. Things have gotten crazyish for me so not totally sure I will come. I got a new job, same employer but directly billable and required to be at a Boeing site so I have to do the commute thing again but this also means I don't have to move to the new business center in Pittsburgh. So between getting up early and the traffic from hell at least on the homebound commute I have not even been up to TF2 much. But as I said before, What is good in life, To play 40k, to drink beer while doing it, and to have tasty meat for dinner.

With the right size LCD screen you could make a pretty nifty Raspberry PI case with it. Probably even be able to run an emulator for the Lisa on it.

Yeah, I know I had mentioned there were bit that could have easily been cut down quite a bit in the first film but I didn't feel like I had just watched a 3 hour film at the end. This one it felt like a slog to get to the end even though I am glad to have seen on the big screen.

Oven Cleaner is another good one. Coat liberally and just wait a few hours. Do use good ventilation and gloves but just about of the all of the paint should just come right off with rinsing after about a 4 hour soak then a toothbrush to get into the recesses.

Miami Connection : 4/10 : A cult favorite for some reason. Anyway Motorcycle Ninjas, Inept drug lords, and a Kung-Fu rock band as the heroes so I guess it has that going for it as well as the OMG 1987 fashions. As far as The Hobbit part 3 goes, yeah, glad I waited a bit. It was fun and good to see on the big screen but I think he may have been better at making 2 movies even though it was interesting to see what Gandalf was up to while missing.

Happy Birthday.

The Doctor And The Dinosaur by Mike Resnick : Probably the last of his steampunk/fantasy alternate west books featuring Doc Holliday and friends. This one is fun so far. Doc Holliday given a bit of a reprieve on his health by Geronimo is off to fight dinosaurs brought back to life by the Comanche as the two rival paleontologists are digging on burial grounds and Doc realizes that the live dinosaurs is not a threat to the two professors. The previous books are The Buntline Special, The Doctor And The Kid, and The Doctor And The Roughrider all are quite fun western pulp with indian medicine man magic and electrical wizardry.

I like Trailers From Hell personally

Lots of fun this week. Last Sunday an Italian horror triple feature and pizza party. Yay pizza and Lucio Fulci a great combination. The House By The Cemetery : 6/10: A history professor wants to pick up on the research of a colleague who recently disappeared under mysterious circumstances and moves out to the new england house the disappearance happened in. What could possibly go wrong with that. Italian movie logic reigns in this otherwise creepy gorefest from Lucio Fulci that is a decent story even with the logical inconsistencies and not quite what I expected for the ending. Burial Ground :4/10: yeah not much to say about this one, archeologist awakens ancient Etruscans who have a hunger for the living and yeah thats pretty much it and a really creepy incest/oedipal thing with some of the main characters/victims/reasons to have zombies do gross things with guts and blood that is entirely too pink in color. On the plus side a lot of if not good but unique zombie masks and good use of worms and maggots on the zombies. I was amazed at the number of different ones that were used rather than go cheap and just shoot the same ones over and over, they went cheap on the acting budget for this one but still a lot of fun if you like Italian zombie films. Demons :7/10: Directed by Lamberta Bava son of Mario Bava. This was the best produced of the 3. A young woman gets a pass to a preview screening from a creepy masked man in the subway she and her friend ditch music class to go see it and it turns out to be a possesed theater and everyone is turning into demons which go out kill and infect the living to turn into more demons, etc, etc. lots of good 80s synth and metal music for a soundtrack. Lots of green goo for demon blood, spit, whatevers. Schlock Cinema class on Thursday Snowbeast :6/10: A made for TV movie from 1977. Jaws on the ski slope basically with a bigfoot gone bad as the monster. Reasonably well paced.though there was a fair amount of extra time devoted to the skiing scenes. And on Halloween night The Little Shop of Horrors: :8/10: Amazing bit of cult cinema and a good movie considering it took them a week to get an idea/script/rehersals etc. Shot in 2 days. Roger Corman got a studio with sets for a week and made the best of it on the cheap. The supporting characters are really great, the story is actually coherent and holds up well and Audrey Jr is quite good looking for the rush job that it was. While not the first time I have seen this, it was the first time I wasn't distracted by other things while watching. I had totally missed out on the banter of the two cops being a dead on imitation of Joe and Frank from the early Dragnet shows.

Well considering that a Steam Sale (plus free weekend to get me hooked) is how I got to enjoying the game and I am still working on playing through the main game with each character I will probably end up getting BL1 and the Pre-Sequel next time they go on sale.

Creature Of Destruction: 2/10 : A direct and even cheaper remake of The She Creature made specifically for TV starring Les Tremayne. Part of a deal from AIP to redo some movies for the late night horror host shows that were popular at the time. Larry Buchanan delivered in color and under budget mostly due to shooting on 16mm film which shows on a big screen but probably worked just fine on the TV sets of the late 60's. The creature suit makes even the worst power rangers monster look like a masterpiece. There is obvious and painful padding with pauses between lines of dialog. This is not a film for watching, this is a film for laying down and avoiding.