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Re-Animator (1985)
Re-Animator (1985)
1985 | Comedy, Horror, Sci-Fi
Jeffrey Combs (2 more)
Bruce Abbott
Stuart Gordan
Mad Man
Re-Animator- is frankenstien. But alot more gorer. So much gory, so much viloence, so much horror. Its different than frankenstein, but has a lot in common.

The plot: Loosely based on H P Lovecraft's classic horror tale, Herbert West is a young scientist who has a good head on his shoulders and another on the lab table in front of him.

Originally devised by Gordon as a theatrical stage production and later a half-hour television pilot, the television script was revised to become a feature film.

The film originally received an X rating, and was later edited to obtain an R rating for video rental stores.

The idea to make Re-Animator came from a discussion Stuart Gordon had with friends one night about vampire films. He felt that there were too many Dracula films and expressed a desire to see a Frankenstein film. Someone asked if he had read "Herbert West–Reanimator" by H. P. Lovecraft.

Originally, Gordon was going to adapt Lovecraft's story for the stage, but eventually decided along with writers Dennis Paoli and William Norris to make it as a half-hour television pilot. The story was set around the turn of the century, and they soon realized that it would be too expensive to recreate. They updated it to the present day in Chicago with the intention of using actors from the Organic Theater company. They were told that the half hour format was not salable and so they made it an hour, writing 13 episodes. Special effects technician Bob Greenberg, who had worked on John Carpenter's Dark Star, repeatedly told Gordon that the only market for horror was in feature films, and introduced him to producer Brian Yuzna. Gordon showed Yuzna the script for the pilot and the 12 additional episodes.

Yuzna described the film as having the "sort of shock sensibility of an Evil Dead with the production values of, hopefully, The Howling."

Naulin said that Re-Animator was the bloodiest film he had ever worked on. In the past, he had never used more than two gallons of blood on a film; on Re-Animator, he used 24 gallons.

The biggest makeup challenge in the film was the headless Dr. Hill zombie. Tony Doublin designed the mechanical effects and was faced with the problem of proportion once the 9–10 inches of the head were removed from the body. Each scene forced him to use a different technique. For example, one technique involved building an upper torso that actor David Gale could bend over and stick his head through so that it appeared to be the one that the walking corpse was carrying around.

Its excellent gory film
  
Wonder Woman (2017)
Wonder Woman (2017)
2017 | Action, Fantasy, War
The extent of my knowledge of Wonder Woman comes from vague memories of the TV show with Lynda Carter in the 70s and the Super Friends cartoon in the early 80s. So I knew she was an Amazon princess from Paradise Island who flew an invisible plane. I may have been Wonder Woman for Halloween back when you stuck your arms through a plastic sheet with Wonder Woman’s torso painted on it, that tied at the neck like a cheap, hospital gown, with a mask with eyes cutout and a mouth you really couldn’t breathe through. So really, I knew OF her, but I never really actually knew much about Wonder Woman.

Fast forward some 40 years later and I’m in a theater learning Diana is the fiercely spirited daughter of Queen Hippolyta who sculpted her from clay and was brought to life by Zeus. Wait. What? Tell me more! She’s raised on the secluded island of Themyscira where, thanks to her aunt Antiope’s training, Diana develops extraordinary skill in combat.

Those skills come in handy when Steve Trevor somehow crashes through the protective barrier surrounding Themyscira, while trying to escape from the Germans. Suddenly made aware of an outside world, Diana decides to leave Themyscira with Trevor for war-torn Europe believing she must help stop the great war.

Gal Gadot portrays Wonder Woman as a strong-willed, worldly but still naïve force to reckon with. Chris Pine plays a wiley American spy who isn’t immune to Diana’s beauty but remains respectful of the innocence he can see behind her conviction. Together they team up with a motley crew of unlikely heroes to bring down a horrific German, whom Diana believes is Ares, the God of War, reborn.

I wasn’t sure what kept me more riveted, the storyline, the chemistry between Gadot and Pine,or Wonder Woman’s physical beauty and prowess. I can tell you that I never heard a screener audience cheer for Batman or Superman like they did for Wonder Woman, just at the sight of the determined superhero slowly walking towards battle, prompted in part by the pounding opening wails of Wonder Woman’s theme music.

Wonder Woman is an origin story well-told, something I really can’t say for the previous Justice League movies. Where Man of Steel, Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad have left me “meh” for future DC movies, Wonder Woman left me hopeful for Justice League and future DC Extended Universe movies. I hope the directors of DCEU movies take some lessons from Wonder Woman’s director, Patty Jenkins. Simply put, we want to root for a multi-dimensional superhero with a story we can easily follow and get behind. In other words, be like Wonder Woman.
  
40x40

ClareR (5674 KP) rated The Farm in Books

Sep 1, 2019  
The Farm
The Farm
Joanne Ramos | 2019 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry
8
7.7 (3 Ratings)
Book Rating
In a world where everything can be bought and sold, even pregnancy has a value in The Farm by Joanne Ramos. Make no mistake: this isn’t dystopian fiction. In fact it’s probably closer to what is actually happening than we could imagine.

Jane (a Filipino immigrant to the USA) has been persuaded by her aunt, that the easiest way to provide for her infant daughter is to become a surrogate for someone else’s baby. Mae runs Golden Oaks (nicknamed The Farm by Lisa, another of the surrogates), a luxury resort set in woodland, far from prying residents of Golden Oaks are all young women. And they’re all pregnant with the babies of wealthy parents. It came as no surprise to me that the vast majority of these women were immigrants from The Philippines or Eastern Europe. Mae has just started to look at a more ‘luxury’ host: women who have very good educations. The future parents are willing to pay a premium rate for women like Reagan. Not that it could make any difference, because all of the surrogates are merely incubators (referred to by their numbers, not their names, when staff are talking about them out of earshot), and carry embryos made from their parents sperm and eggs. These are mainly people who don’t want to waste their time with pregnancy, childbirth and recovery. This part really didn’t sit well with me: pregnant women reduced to numbers, and parents who didn’t have time to be pregnant (how could they have time to be parents? Would their babies be like a new designer handbag?). The other thing, was that they largely speaking didn’t have time to even visit the women who were carrying their children. At one point in the book, an ultrasound technician doesn’t even acknowledge the pregnant woman that she’s seeing (or isn’t!), angles the screen away from her as she shows the picture of the baby to its parent who isn’t even in the room. The pregnant woman is a non-person - merely a walking incubator.

Make no mistake, this is a pretty damning insight in to class and race. I felt so sorry for Jane. She is cut off from her daughter. None of the women have regular contact with friends or family on the outside. And seeing foetuses and babies being used as commodities and benchmarks of profit really made me uncomfortable.

I did really enjoy this though. I liked the women who were the main characters - they all had valid reasons for their choices. And I liked that this wasn’t written as an alternative dystopian novel à la Handmaids Tale. It’s all so frighteningly plausible.