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Die, Monster, Die! (1965)
Die, Monster, Die! (1965)
1965 | Horror, Sci-Fi
Rather annoyingly not-quite-there horror movie based on an H.P. Lovecraft short story ('based on' in the sense of 'almost entirely different from'). Guy goes to see his girl in the remote English countryside, discovers surly locals, finds her father has been up to experiments into Things Which Man Was Not Meant To Know. Includes the obligatory badly-done Lovecraftian squid-monsters.

Interesting cast, and you can tell Karloff in particular is doing his best with the material, but there's an awful lot of wandering about with not much happening, especially for a film only about an hour and a quarter long. Obviously done on the cheap, and too invested in its standard Gothic tropes - creepy old mansion, spooky domestics, cursed family heritage, etc - to make the most of the potential in the short story it's supposed to be based on. All in all, less interesting than it has any right to be in the circumstances.
  
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Beth Orton recommended The Specials by Specials in Music (curated)

 
The Specials by Specials
The Specials by Specials
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I chose this because it incorporated a period of my life where it was all about ska music and reggae and going out dancing and Studio One. I got this record from my brother, it would have been just played in our house and it was the sort of music that would come on and I'd be like "oh, I like that!" There was this club that we used to go to called The Black Angel in Norwich and it was far too old for me, and I snuck in there when I was 12. They used to play all this dance, reggae, Motown, but The Specials would sneak in there. I think my favourite song out of it is 'A Message To You, Rudy', 'Nightclub' and 'Does It Make It Alright?' It hasn't really influenced my music - as you can probably tell! - but it definitely encapsulated a time of my life."

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The Beatles (White Album) by The Beatles
The Beatles (White Album) by The Beatles
1968 | Pop, Rock
9.0 (14 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"It's an overlooked record I think. They were in the midst of breaking up. They were writing separately, and here you can really tell the differences between the Lennon–McCartney and George Harrison songs. What I find really interesting about the record is how it's not really polished. 'Glass Onion' is as unique a song as I've ever heard, and with self-reference: 'I told you about Strawberry Fields', 'the walrus was Paul'; I mean all that stuff! It refers to things the fans were talking about. It's a spectacular album. It doesn't connect like Abbey Road or Let It Be anywhere near as fast because the songs are all over the place. In the days when album covers and packaging meant so much, it was just a brave statement to say it doesn't have a title and leave it white. There is no title anywhere on the record, that's fantastic! Just the solo photos of the band inside. It's a strange record."

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X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019)
X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019)
2019 | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
I know my body was present during this impossibly dull super hero outing in a dying franchise, but I couldn’t honestly tell you much about what happened… I was so out of my mind bored by every detail. The character of Jean Grey / Dark Phoenix has the potential to soar, as it almost did in the original X-Men trilogy, when the character was played by Famke Janssen, but in the hands of Sophie Turner and director Simon Kinberg you have to wonder if it was possible to fuck it up any more given the budget? Turner is fine as a TV supporting actress, but I am afraid her cinematic future is as limited as her talent – she has almost no presence, which is a problem for a superhero. I mean, it’s colourful enough and there are some decent flash pop action bits… but the pace, structure, momentum and… point of it all is all over the place. For very, very staunch X-Men fans only. Shame.
  
The Road (La Strada) (1954)
The Road (La Strada) (1954)
1954 | International, Classics, Drama
(0 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"Fellini is a deep, deep master of film. As time goes by I adore him more and more. La strada is quite perfect. It is like “The Ancient Mariner.” A haunting film for all time; one cannot insult innocence without a lifetime of cost. I don’t know why it is, but it is so, a spiritual truth, that both Coleridge and Fellini knew and tell in their respective stories. Fellini is the most fluent filmmaker of them all. His shots and storytelling are so at ease and elegant, it’s as if he’s thinking his shots through a camera in his mind and straight onto a screen. I went to his funeral in Rome in 1993, where people in the crammed huge Piazza Republica gathered to salute farewell. It was also a time when no one wanted to see a Fellini film. Every year since then his legacy appears more remarkable and more incomparable."

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