By Roy Mathur, on 2021-08-28, at 23:23:57--23:44:00 GMT, for Captain Roy's Rocket Radio Show, Listen
Let's get this out of the way first. The US withdrawal strategy (hahaha) was a shambles. Forefront in my mind is hoping that many people manage to escape Afghanistan even after the flights stop. Want me to tell you the Saturday front page headlines on a couple of UK newspapers? The i says, "Thousands abandoned to the Taliban", and the Daily Mirror says, "Brits Die in Kabul Horror: Slaughtered fleeing hell city".
I'm sorry if this is jarring, but as I said before, much as I enjoy these cosy little chats about stuff that makes us geeks happy, I can't ignore the outside world and neither should you. Again, let's all wish our best for those still trying to escape and welcome them when they reach safe haven.
But now, deep breath and let's think more happier thoughts.
Cosy? You want to hear about cosiness? I bought the family some incredibly soft fluffy blankets, because the way things have been going recently with my health and the news, we damn well deserve some incredibly soft fluffy blankets.
Silly and schlocky fun in this social game/video game adaptation in which participants guess which one of them is a werewolf.
Absolutely charming and guileless National Park Ranger starts a new job in small community in Denver Colarado and immediately strikes up a friendship with a quirky local postwoman, though frankly, all the townspeople are quirky. Attacks by something vicous drives the townsfolk to the shelter of the single hotel and one-by-one they are attacked.
This feels very Agatha Christie's Poirot, but I'm a Karl Edward Wagner fan, so the first thing that came to mind was his beautful, haunting, and very gory short story set in snowbound hunting lodge: Reflections on the Winter of My Soul.
2020 horror film about a vegan singer having dreams of devouring flesh, when she goes on retreat to a snowbound mansion out in the sticks; the redoubt of reclusive pop star, who will mentor/produce her for her next album, and may or may not have murdered his wife.
I think the filmmakers were going for a cold palatte and a faintly windy bmabience in the soundscape, but the film's colour science came off as drab and dry and the audio's atmos noisy.
This is a poor attempt at a lycanthropy movie that channels a hell of a lot of The Howling (1989), with less of the humour, less of the artful gore (it goes for disgusting instead), less of the pathos, but tries to take itself seriously by being boring.
The creature design was sub-par for what purports to be a serious and a non-schlocky werewolf horror.
Conversely, the film conveys it's seriousness by being utterly devoid of humour. It's partly the script, but it's also the interpretation of the script by the actors. I don't know why this was the case, as there were a few scenes that were obviously written for laughs and would have been funny, if not for the obvliousness of the cast and their mostly wooden acting.
On the other hand, I liked the twist in the story, and Greg Bryk was good as the good/bad/ambiguous Svengali.
I saw the trailer for The Amityville Moon, which appears to be about werewolves.
It looked fun, but what happened to Lionsgate? If they are now purveyors of schlock, I'm okay with that, in fact I love it, but tagging on the Amityville name to something that bears zero resemblance to the franchise seems like a cheap move.
I love films about werewolves, even this low budget crap, but if there is no connection to Amityville, then what is Lionsgate doing?
Nicole Kidman is a cop eaten away by a traumatic event that occured during her past undercover work. It's a grim, hardboiled neo-noir, but other than, it seems fairly conventional, until the timeline flip-flops in a nice twist. Nicole Kidman is badass as the rundown cop on her last legs.
Oh, and I thought that her old partner was a bad guy early on because he favouired Dire Straits over Pink Floyd. Diabolical, I know. To see if I was wrong or right, watch the movie.
Netflix 2021.
Up and comming filmmaker meets with a bigshot Hollywood producer who rips her off and abuses her, leading her to seek revenge with the assistance of a witch. Susan Keener steals the show as "Boro", which to my untrained ear I thought was "bruja" which is Spanish for "witch".
I imagine the book is very much less unconventional than the filming, which is an amazing hotchpotch of David Lynch, obviously Nicolas Winding Refn's The Neon Demon without the predatory leering camera lens, Nick Antosca's previous Channel Zero elements are also definitely present, as is American Horror Story too, and the body horror reminds me of anything by David Cronenburg; the development of new and exciting bodily orifices is particularly reminiscent of eXistenZ (1999).
I'm not saying AI and VR haven't made advances.
But take AI and machine learning. Tracking algorithms that are supposed to send you targetted advertising is moronic. I am currently logged into Google Chrome. Most of the tabs are to do with, tech, music, and outdoor gear. Even so, the ads I generally get are, unflatteringly, only age-related; funerals, senior dating, and bargain basement tooth implant surgery.
And VR? The second boom in VR never really took off, much to my disappointment, as I was getting into the last boom, before it went phut, and what do you know? Years later it again goes phut.
AI has advanced in the field of killer robots, self crashing cars, Russian bot farms, and software that appears to aid ethnic cleansing. As for VR, there's a dwindling interest consumer VR and a decreasing number of VR headsets.
Are you a venture capitalist? Invest in anything but AI and VR.
The final irony of tweeting all my moans about tech is that earlier I could not log in to Twitter on any desktop browser. The log in link just sent me to the sign up screen.
Is this entropy or is this cosmic irony?
Meta time again. No show notes, because they are worthless, except to me. No one reads them and it does bugger all for my SEO. Wait, isn't SEO worthless too?
Also, I've already lost an extra 100 KB from my podcast RSS feed. Expect a slimmed down website too, though the blog might get bigger, er... as in bigger and actually working and looking like a blog.
There may be some major rebranding on the way too, not just the minor temporary changes I mentioned had happenmed in the last last episode. I tell you each week of how sick I am of being the captain... for nine bloody years.