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Willy's Wonderland (2021)
Willy's Wonderland (2021)
2021 | Horror, Thriller
7
6.7 (13 Ratings)
Movie Rating
I can safely say that I got exactly what I expected from Willy's Wonderland, a schlocky as hell B-Movie horror that manifests Nicolas Cage going toe-to-toe with a host of murderous animatronic mascots, set to a music score of synth heavy electronica/children's party jingles. Is it silly and dumb? Yes. Does it have annoying and unlikable teenage human characters who are there just to die horribly? Also yes. Is it entertaining as fuck? Most definitely.

Cage's silent protagonist feels like the role that his career has been leading up to all these years. He has his very own corner of the zeitgeist at this point, and is just running with it, happily poking fun at himself whilst managing to be undeniably badass, whether it be the Mad Max-esque opening, tearing the robots to shreds with his bare hands, or him furiously dancing whilst playing pinball. Whenever he's on screen, he steals all the focus, without uttering a word. It's so ridiculous and enjoyable, that it renders the half-baked plot a moot point.
The animatronics themselves look pretty decent for the most part, and there's some solid gore here and there. It's the kind of gore that will make you burst out laughing, but in a good way.

Willy's Wonderland is far from a perfect experience, but it is what it is, and never tries to be anything more, and therefore succeeds in what it's trying to achieve.
  
Dirty Dancing  (1987)
Dirty Dancing (1987)
1987 | Drama, Music, Romance

"Finally, we’re going to go with a film that is so culturally relevant that as soon as I say it you’ll be able to quote at least one line from it. We’re going to go with Dirty Dancing. Because, come on, nobody puts Baby in a corner, right? Of course it’s been acted out, it’s been referenced in numerous films. It was in Crazy, Stupid, Love. This is the move that Ryan Gosling does to get the girls, right? And he and Emma Stone reenact this scene. So, you want to talk about a film that just had an amazing soundtrack, the performances were great, and it speaks to the confusion of teenagers growing up, but not in a, I feel like, a “loner” teenager way. There’s been a lot of teenage films where they feel like a loner. This is someone who liked her family, and she was a little irritated with her older sister as siblings tend to be, but she liked her dad and her mom, and when push came to shove at various points, she ran to her dad to help. There was something striking about how all of that worked together in a film that just made you feel good and want to dance and want to take someone to see, and then, how many years later, that film still holds up. And if you don’t believe me, go watch it. It still works."

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The Wrong Family
The Wrong Family
Tarryn Fisher | 2021 | Philosophy, Psychology & Social Sciences, Thriller
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
A wild and wacky thriller
Juno, a former therapist, moves in with Winnie and Nigel Crouch because she thinks the family is nearly perfect. They appear a loving couple who adore their teenage son, Sam. But once she's living in their picture perfect house, Juno realizes all isn't as it seems. And when she overhears a conversation between the couple that she cannot forget, she gets involved... setting in motion a string of events that she cannot undo.

"Humans had a way of uprooting happiness. They found flaws in it, picked at it until the whole system unraveled."

Well, this was an interesting read, to say the least. It had the odd distinction of being both predictable in many ways yet really weird and crazy. It's a fast read and while there's nothing really amazing here, it was certainly good for a crazy (!) twist or two. I didn't care for any of the characters--Winnie, Juno, or Nigel--and most of my sympathies stayed with poor Sam, who had to deal with all these wacky adults in his life. There's a lot of drama and truly, the plot is bizarre and wild. Which is definitely fun at times and a bit too much at others.

Overall, this is a dark read with an insane plot and characters that aren't exactly endearing. It's a quick read that stressed me out and probably won't stick with me long, but was enjoyable enough for a few days. 3 stars.
  
Sapphire Flames (Hidden Legacy, #4)
Sapphire Flames (Hidden Legacy, #4)
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
I read the original trilogy with Nevada and Connor "Mad Dog" Rogan a few years ago now but I loved it, so the chance to continue the series with the two younger sisters was a big YES!

It's been three years since Nevada and Connor got married in Diamond Fire and now Catalina is the head of House Baylor. She gets a visit from Augustine - who runs a large PI type firm - and is asked to help talk a fifteen year old down from a hospital ledge after the death of his mum and sister and she immediately agrees. What follows draws Catalina into helping her friend find out who killed their family and she finds her teenage crush, Alessandro, is somehow involved in it.

I really enjoyed this, as I have the previous books in this series. The action barely stops throughout, there's always something happening keeping you hooked.

It was a complicated web for the team to unravel with trying to find out the murderer of Runa and Ragnar's mum and sister and I was drawn into that mystery.

And then the romance. God, I don't know who to slap first. Catalina for not telling Alessandro how she felt, or Alessandro for leaving in the end, though we very clearly see in that epilogue that he doesn't particularly want to leave.

I cannot wait for Emerald Blaze to released in August so I can see these two meet again and hopefully work it out!
  
Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich
Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich
1998 | Classical
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I picked Steve Reich because I think it changed the parameters of how I thought about music. At the time I was 17, playing in The Edmund Fitzgerald and I hadn't really ever been aware of modern classical or minimalism and it inspired me and also reinforced stuff that I intuitively liked in music, such as points of sounds and structural emphasis. The band Youthmovies introduced me to Reich - they had a quite formative effect on me in a sense that, up until then, I still listened to music in a tribal way, as in I had to identify with whatever subculture was going on, so I listened to Skinny Puppy and really plunged my identity into that, for example. I was in that teenage phase of tying up your fashion and your self identity with music. They also played me Gwen Stefani, Missy Elliott and Stars Of The Lid and they showed me that you didn't have to only identify with one tribe - they broke that way of thinking down. So that record was really important. And on a more simplistic level, it's just stunning. It's the kind of record you can listen to in any environment, unbound by context - it induces a trance-like state. It's a particularly good record to listen to when you're on the Underground, it's soothing - the perfect soundtrack to seeing thousands of people walking past you. He's one of my top five favourite musicians of all time."

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Judgment Night by Faith No More
Judgment Night by Faith No More
1993 | Hip-hop, Rock
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"This was something of an anomaly in Faith No More’s catalogue, from a film made in the early ‘90s called Judgement Night. The soundtrack was a sort of experiment where they would get bands - white people, essentially - and they would couple them with hip-hop groups and see what happened. This was one of my first introductions to hip-hop to be honest and it wasn’t even ‘proper’ hip-hop, it was bands playing with rapping over the top. “I just thought it was absolutely amazing and I couldn’t get enough of it, this worn-out tape. ‘Another Body Murdered’ was one of the best tracks on it and it ended up introducing me to loads of bands and loads of rappers and this wasn’t like nu-metal, it was mostly edgy rappers. But then there was also a track ‘Fallin’ with Teenage Fanclub featuring De La Soul, things like that. It gave me a really broad introduction via a medium I already understood, which was bands. “But because it was a faceless tape, I didn’t really know who everyone was or who was doing what on each track. I didn’t realise then what cultural lines might have been crossed, because it was all just blurred into one: here’s the guitar, here’s somebody rapping. It didn’t matter to me at all and I think that was a healthy way to discover that sort of music."

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Moses Boyd recommended 2 Far by Dizzee Rascal in Music (curated)

 
2 Far by Dizzee Rascal
2 Far by Dizzee Rascal
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"On Xbox you could burn CD’s and some in games you could play the music in it, so Boy in Da Corner, Songs in A Minor and Speakerboxx/The Love Below were on my hard drive on my Xbox and would get played in any game that could do it in. So as much as this record is culturally significant, I just always had it on and I can just remember vividly it being a part of my teenage years. I think this track in particular because it’s got Wiley as well has that perfect energy, even if I wasn't from here I could tell that Dizzee is from East. It just feels like London, it just feels grey, someone’s pissed off, I don’t even know why or who’s pushed him too far but that could be anything, you know TfL, someone’s stepped on your trainers, someone’s chose not to sit next to you on the bus, you know, it could be anything. It's so angsty. I love music that can make you feel like that. Not that I’m trying to get people to go and moshpit or anything but music’s powerful. I like being able to tap into those things - you were fine before you came to my show and now you're hyped to do whatever, even to this day if I hear ‘2 Far’ I’m in the mode like ‘What! What! Who wants it!’"

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