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9 Clues: The Ward HD (Full)
Games and Entertainment
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70 % OFF - LIMITED TIME OFFER! Donโt miss out! Plunge into the creepiest edition yet in the...
Enchanted Kingdom: A Dark Seed
Games and Entertainment
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The Tar Empire is in serious danger, as a deadly illness known as the Dark Seed has begun to take...
The Complete Book of 1970s Broadway Musicals
Book
The 1970s was an exciting decade for musical theatre. Besides shows from legends Stephen Sondheim...
Horror in Architecture
Joshua Comaroff and Ong Ker-Shing
Book
This book looks at the idea of horror and its analogues in architecture. In these, normal...
The Secret Financial Life of Food: From Commodities Markets to Supermarkets
Book
One morning while reading Barron's, Kara Newman took note of a casual bit of advice offered by famed...
Reading this would be a great cure to insomnia...
This book has been on my shelf for quite some time. Mainly because it's a beast of a read - a huge 650 page hardback book - and I've not had the inclination to read. As my pile of unread books is dwindling drastically, I finally decided to give it a go and overall I was pleasantly surprised.
My biggest surprise when reading the first few chapters was the realisation that this book isn't what the Christopher Nolan film Insomnia was based on. I cant even tell you why I thought this in the first place ๐ Once I got over this, I really got into the book or at least the first few hundred pages. As always with King, the book is very well written with a likeable protagonist and well developed secondary characters. The problem is that the story is maybe a little convoluted and isn't helped by the sheer length of it all. 200 pages in I was wondering how this could be dragged out for 650 pages and whilst it never gets as tedious as you'd imagine, this is definitely longer than it needed to be. Whilst the plot is typical King, it gets a little confusing and 'out there' even for him and I think he could've simplified this a little. Because of this I could only read up to 100 pages at a time as it made me feel rather sleepy - a perfect cure for insomnia I'm sure.
By the end of the book I did come to at least enjoy this story more than I thought I would, and even shed a tear or two. This definitely isn't a book for casual readers though and not one of King's best. But if you're looking for a door stop sized challenge, you could do much worse than this!
My biggest surprise when reading the first few chapters was the realisation that this book isn't what the Christopher Nolan film Insomnia was based on. I cant even tell you why I thought this in the first place ๐ Once I got over this, I really got into the book or at least the first few hundred pages. As always with King, the book is very well written with a likeable protagonist and well developed secondary characters. The problem is that the story is maybe a little convoluted and isn't helped by the sheer length of it all. 200 pages in I was wondering how this could be dragged out for 650 pages and whilst it never gets as tedious as you'd imagine, this is definitely longer than it needed to be. Whilst the plot is typical King, it gets a little confusing and 'out there' even for him and I think he could've simplified this a little. Because of this I could only read up to 100 pages at a time as it made me feel rather sleepy - a perfect cure for insomnia I'm sure.
By the end of the book I did come to at least enjoy this story more than I thought I would, and even shed a tear or two. This definitely isn't a book for casual readers though and not one of King's best. But if you're looking for a door stop sized challenge, you could do much worse than this!
Travis Knight recommended Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) in Movies (curated)
LoganCrews (2861 KP) rated Joji Presents: The Extravaganza (2020) in Movies
Nov 27, 2020 (Updated Nov 27, 2020)
Not as good as Hair Cake. In seriousness, as someone who firmly believes that FIlthy Frank was perhaps the single greatest online entertainer who ever lived - something this casual was always going to seem like a downgrade for me as opposed to his former persona's caustic, over-the-top antics. But I also really enjoy Joji and feel he's similarly unique in a different way - one of which I dig quite a lot. Ballads 1 and Nectar have some *banger* songs on them that I regularly put on repeat so I was fully ready to have fun with this. But what was marketed as a dark spin on a circus stage performance meets a lite version of The Eric Andre Show ended up being a rather low-energy, repetitive slog that stretches at barely over an hour. I'm still not even sure what the point of this was, the only half-inspired bit was Run (and maybe Sanctuary yet it seemed so telegraphed) but other than that it's a collection of confusingly samey (though never bad) live renditions of songs that you get no benefit of seeing performed here as opposed to hearing/seeing them on the albums or music videos. Joji's downtrodden, walking broken heart persona (which - by the way - I love) tries to mix with this high-energy would-be attention grabber and truthfully it doesn't work or come even close to justifying the ticket price. The costumes and songs are still rock-solid even though two or three of them just feel like the same track. It makes me happy to see George's newfound success in something he's so passionate about, but this was a misfire imo. Alas, not even Joji performing Tick Tock as a ๐๐ฆ๐ด๐ฑ๐ช๐ค๐ข๐ฃ๐ญ๐ฆ ๐๐ฆ minion can save it. God-tier ending, though - why wasn't the whole thing more like that?
LeftSideCut (3776 KP) rated It Follows (2015) in Movies
Oct 9, 2020
There are plenty of positive aspects to It Follows. The concept for one is decent and an original idea for a horror film. A sexually transmitted disease that causes an entity to relentlessly hunt you down at the pace of a Romero era zombie, never giving up until you're dead, unless you pass it on to someone new.
It's a very modern take on horror, acting as an age old cautionary tale about casual sex, masquerading as a creepy stalker flick.
The image of a person slowly walking towards you, staring at you the whole time is unsettling enough, but the entity's appearance will frequently change. This allows even people in the background shots to carry a weight of danger in the times where the audience is unaware of its whereabouts. It's a simple yet clever trick that gives It Follows a steady undercurrent of dread.
There's some really nice cinematography on display as well. Lingering shots of empty spaces are intimidating (I found myself constantly scanning for the entity, and got caught out more than once) It also has a phenomenal synth soundtrack courtesy of Disasterpiece. It will switch from ethereal to jarring in a flash and contributes greatly to the dark tone this film carries.
I wasn't a huge fan of the constant frame dissolves and screen wipes. It's kept taking me out of the narrative a bit, and the film suffers greatly with it's characters constantly making silly decisions. Although Maika Monroe is a solid lead.
Overall, It Follows is a genuinely unsettling horror-thriller with some truly chilling moments. It's just a little frustrating that the great concept isn't explored as much as it could have been.
It's a very modern take on horror, acting as an age old cautionary tale about casual sex, masquerading as a creepy stalker flick.
The image of a person slowly walking towards you, staring at you the whole time is unsettling enough, but the entity's appearance will frequently change. This allows even people in the background shots to carry a weight of danger in the times where the audience is unaware of its whereabouts. It's a simple yet clever trick that gives It Follows a steady undercurrent of dread.
There's some really nice cinematography on display as well. Lingering shots of empty spaces are intimidating (I found myself constantly scanning for the entity, and got caught out more than once) It also has a phenomenal synth soundtrack courtesy of Disasterpiece. It will switch from ethereal to jarring in a flash and contributes greatly to the dark tone this film carries.
I wasn't a huge fan of the constant frame dissolves and screen wipes. It's kept taking me out of the narrative a bit, and the film suffers greatly with it's characters constantly making silly decisions. Although Maika Monroe is a solid lead.
Overall, It Follows is a genuinely unsettling horror-thriller with some truly chilling moments. It's just a little frustrating that the great concept isn't explored as much as it could have been.
LoganCrews (2861 KP) rated Enter the Dragon (1973) in Movies
Dec 16, 2020
"๐๐ข๐ฏ, ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐ค๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฆ ๐ณ๐ช๐จ๐ฉ๐ต ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ต ๐ฐ๐ง ๐ข ๐ค๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ช๐ค ๐ฃ๐ฐ๐ฐ๐ฌ."
Exquisite, worth every ounce of its reputation. Sensational use of music, dazzling acting, timeless fight sequences, savory aesthetic, very funny, and just an inherently juicy premise at the helm - I've always loved the idea of this gaudy remote island reserved exclusively for corrupt martial arts tournaments (plus drug/human trafficking and casual murder of course) that people can just casually go to lol. Not only a masterclass in personality but highly acute in its intelligence - crafts smart dialogue and extra fun characters to make this more than just the surface-level experience that it still could have been successful at. Bruce Lee really was the definition of raw star power, giving a performance which I can only describe as a live endorphin meets calculated hitman meets wrecking ball - leading both the ripper action bits as well as the cool, collected talking bits with seismic gravitas. The part where he stomps that guy to death as we watch his facial expression go from pure adrenaline takeover to euphoric satisfaction to regret then finally to painful acceptance all in a matter of like ten seconds is nothing short of astonishing. Plus it's all just so damn cool, I love this whole experience - the primal anticipation, the hearty sense of grooviness, the way the camera takes on the POV of the fighters as we can see how their conditions differ then zooms back in on the wildly emotive faces... pure cinema. The scene where Lee mows through an entire compound full of guards as he keeps switching progressively better weapons with the last one he retrieves from the previous wave of baddies? Oh hell yeah, say no more.
Exquisite, worth every ounce of its reputation. Sensational use of music, dazzling acting, timeless fight sequences, savory aesthetic, very funny, and just an inherently juicy premise at the helm - I've always loved the idea of this gaudy remote island reserved exclusively for corrupt martial arts tournaments (plus drug/human trafficking and casual murder of course) that people can just casually go to lol. Not only a masterclass in personality but highly acute in its intelligence - crafts smart dialogue and extra fun characters to make this more than just the surface-level experience that it still could have been successful at. Bruce Lee really was the definition of raw star power, giving a performance which I can only describe as a live endorphin meets calculated hitman meets wrecking ball - leading both the ripper action bits as well as the cool, collected talking bits with seismic gravitas. The part where he stomps that guy to death as we watch his facial expression go from pure adrenaline takeover to euphoric satisfaction to regret then finally to painful acceptance all in a matter of like ten seconds is nothing short of astonishing. Plus it's all just so damn cool, I love this whole experience - the primal anticipation, the hearty sense of grooviness, the way the camera takes on the POV of the fighters as we can see how their conditions differ then zooms back in on the wildly emotive faces... pure cinema. The scene where Lee mows through an entire compound full of guards as he keeps switching progressively better weapons with the last one he retrieves from the previous wave of baddies? Oh hell yeah, say no more.
Ross (3284 KP) Jun 17, 2020