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Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970)
Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970)
1970 | Horror
7
7.3 (4 Ratings)
Movie Rating
The Vampire's Blood
Taste The Blood of Dracula- is the fifth Dracula movie made by Hammer. The Fourth with Christopher Lee.

The plot: Three elderly and distinguished gentlemen, searching for some excitement in their boring lives, get in contact with one of Count Dracula's servants.

Taste the Blood of Dracula was originally written without Dracula appearing at all. With Christopher Lee's increasing reluctance to reprise the role, Hammer intended to replace Lee and Dracula in the franchise with the Lord Courtley character played by Ralph Bates, who would rise as a vampire after his death and seek revenge on Hargood, Paxton, and Secker.

Hammer intended to replace Lee and Dracula in the franchise with the Lord Courtley character played by Ralph Bates, who would rise as a vampire after his death and seek revenge on Hargood, Paxton, and Secker. Hammer's American distributor refused to release the film if it lacked an appearance by Dracula; this prompted Hammer to convince Lee to return, with Dracula replacing the resurrected Courtley.

In its original United States release, it was rated GP (General audience, Parental guidance suggested—the forerunner to today's PG), but when it was re-released to DVD it was rated R for sexual content/nudity and brief violence.

Its a hammer film, what else do you expect.
  
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LoganCrews (2861 KP) rated Conor McGregor: Notorious (2017) in Movies

Apr 22, 2021 (Updated Jul 4, 2021)  
Conor McGregor: Notorious (2017)
Conor McGregor: Notorious (2017)
2017 | Documentary
Your standard sports doc - and if there's anyone in the sporting world right now who *isn't* standard, it's Conor McGregor. The general rule of thumb I use for these is whether or not it's more insightful than what I can find from ~10 minutes of research, this is not. For following this guy around for 4+ years you'd think there would be something under the hood but there isn't a single for-the-doc interview in this - just a broken collage of quick 5/10 second conversations that rush right past anything half interesting. I swear this is like 90% B-roll footage. Seems like it's in such a hurry to be another generic, surface-level rags-to-riches documentary for people going into this already knowing they're going to love it. I'm not saying you have to deflate the guy's ego, I like the guy - but if you're going to make a puff piece like this at least make it a good one. It would be so easy to sit back and just let this unique, caustic, energetic performer breathe rather than cutting his screen time to shreds - let it be 3 hours who gives a shit? Would have much preferred a 90+ YouTube compilation of his famed trash talk + fight footage over this "the world isn't going to stop me!" snooze. Should have been a miniseries.
  
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ClareR (5726 KP) rated The Confession in Books

Jun 13, 2021  
The Confession
The Confession
Jessie Burton | 2019 | Fiction & Poetry
8
8.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
The Confession centres around three women in different times: it’s the 1980’s, and Elise meets writer Constance. So begins an intense relationship between the two women. When Constance’s new book is bought by a studio and they start to film, Constance takes Elise and goes over to watch her novel become a film. It’s a very different life to Hampstead, and Elise struggles.

We meet our third protagonist, Rosie Simmons, in 2017. She lives in London with her boyfriend, and she’s starting to question their relationship. She seems very discontented with her life in general, and this is perhaps partly because she never knew her mother. Her father, Matt, never talks about her. However, during a visit to France where her father lives, he tells her about the woman that her mother had once lived with: Constance Holden.

When Rosie returns to London, she decides to find out more about Constance. And through a set of strange circumstances, Rosie becomes Constance’s assistant - under another name.

I did wonder how Rosie was eventually going to explain her way out of the situation she had got herself in to, and the resolution didn’t disappoint me. I was completely enthralled by this book: the complicated relationships, the love of both parents and lovers, and the strong women, all made this a really satisfying read for me. A recommended read!
  
Academia de Dancas by Egberto Gismonti
Academia de Dancas by Egberto Gismonti
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"This one I discovered more recently. I'm a big Hermeto Pascoal fan; I was turned onto Hermeto by Kamasi Washington when we were teenagers. But, again, it's Brazilian and stuff like that you have to seek out, you have to want to find it yourself because it doesn't always get translated. I didn't know about Egberto Gismonti at first, but I spent a lot of time listening to Hermeto, and I remember I went on tour with Miguel Atwood Ferguson in the band with me at one point. And Miguel is also an astute follower of music, to say the least. We were listening to Hermeto Pascoal backstage and Miguel turns and he goes 'Is this Hermeto? Do you know about his friend Egberto Gismonti?' and I was like, 'no'. Miguel proceeds to tell me this is the person that plays bass with Hermeto Pasqual, and he's a beast of a composer. He played me the album, and I was floored. I was completely overtaken by this album and the composition. It tells such a story – Egberto Gismonti's albums in general tell a story – but this specific album, there's some moments on it that are so intense that it's hard to listen to them. It's hard to play one song for somebody, but if I've ever played the record for somebody, it has to be listened to very loud."

Source
  
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Sarah (7798 KP) rated Machines Like Me in Books

Sep 12, 2020  
Machines Like Me
Machines Like Me
Ian McEwan | 2019 | Fiction & Poetry, Science Fiction/Fantasy
6
6.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
Great idea, just not well executed
The idea behind this book and the base plot is a really great idea. An alternate 80s Britain thats more technologically advanced than we are currently in 2020 is a fascinating idea and I really enjoyed the parts of the book that detailed all the differences - some of which (like Apan Turing still being alive) were actually rather emotive and almost made you wish real life had been like this.

Adam too is a fascinating character and any part of the book that featured him was a winner. The problem with this book is the two main characters Charlie and Miranda. They are completely unlikeable and self absorbed, and the way they treat Adam (and Mark in some respects) is absolutely awful. There's something Alan Turing says towards the end of the book that really sums up how much of a horrible person Charlie is. Whilst having unlikeable characters isn't necessarily a bad thing for some books, in this I just found them rather irritating and annoying. And Charlie's constant internal rambling monologuing got rather boring and really dragged on.

I really wanted to love this because the general idea is fantastic, and there are parts of this where I did love it. It's just a same it was let down by the characters.
  
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LoganCrews (2861 KP) rated The House (2017) in Movies

Sep 19, 2020 (Updated Sep 19, 2020)  
The House (2017)
The House (2017)
2017 | Comedy
Not a better movie than 𝘊𝘢𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘰, but by far a better analogy between crime-soaked gambling and the bloody baseball bat of capitalism - as unintentional as I'm sure the allusion is here. Given how much of a dead horse the target of whitebread suburbia is even well through twenty-five years ago now, I'll give this some freshness points in the way it portrays the quest for fair financial stability in lieu of absurdly-gouged education prices, big banks, etc. by the warping of the upper-middle-class into an entire demographic forced to confront their own morals when they're encouraged into private crime upon the abject failure of their own government by way of goofy dark comedy. Starts off like your routine bland improvy entry into the 'haha raunchy families' trend and progressively becomes more and more doused in blood, blunt trauma, property damage, and general chaos that throws moron policemen, corrupt officeholders, and the inherent violence of America's economic system into the fire in its wake. Plus it's brisk (for fucking once with this genre good Lord) and has a ton of laughs even though I believe it still seems generally uninterested in its own plot in addition to criminally underutilizing both Ferrell and Poehler's talents together as well. The bit with Nick Kroll at the end was fucking gut-bustingly hilarious.
  
Jeepers Creepers (2001)
Jeepers Creepers (2001)
2001 | Horror, Mystery
Subhuman dumpsterscum Victor Salva adds absolutely nothing to this as an auteur let alone as a basic director: he shoots it mostly in the most unengaging, dated way possible and the writing - which can at best be described as semi-coherent - feels like a Quibi's worth of material thinly stretched into feature length. Overall a very haphazard, spotty experience that doesn't deliver nearly as much of the goods as it should... but definitely still weird, gross, and funny enough to suffice. That Sistine Chapel-esque lair of mutilated bodies, cobwebs, dirt, and vials of various mysterious liquids is almost worth the price of admission alone (in fact just in general the production is A-class when Salva can actually shoot it right), and Justin Long's one continuous panic attack of a performance is so tremendous. And come on, JC is one *hell* of a killer - running on moving cars, foully scarfing down innards, pulling 180s with his swiss army knife collection of bodily contortions, and whistling jazz tunes like some sort of crowd-pleasing merger of Predator and Freddy Krueger. Shame there isn't enough of him, but I just have to admire how that ending takes zero prisoners. It's fun, nowhere near the classic it should have been though even if there are hints of what it could have been sprinkled throughout.
  
Mansions of Madness: Second Edition
Mansions of Madness: Second Edition
2016 | Adventure, Exploration, Fantasy, Fighting, Horror
Really in-depth adventures and well made (0 more)
The app doesn’t always work properly (0 more)
Want to play more!
Despite the price tag, I took the plunge on this one. I own the first one and thoroughly enjoyed it, but the lengthy rules put quite a few people off that I was playing with. If you have the patience, then once you’ve learnt the rules then he game goes a lot quicker. This particular edition attracted me as the app makes learning the rules a lot easier. Ive played the shorter adventure twice already and i am keen to do the longer ones if i can get the people to play, although I’m pretty sure you can actually play 1 player. The figures in the game look amazing and all the house/scene tiles are nicely illustrated.
The downside for me is that the longer adventures seem to take a LOT longer than it states on the app which usually leads to it overrunning and a non-completion of the game. When we went to return to the game, the app had deleted where we were, which was frustrating. The app sometimes crashed and reset, but in general it worked smoothly. But saying that, the app really encourages players who aren’t as into board games as I am, meaning I could enlist more players at Christmas time XD.