Review – Selling God

Funny how a documentary about stupid fundamentalist evangelicals has such little trouble preaching to its own choir. I started watching this hoping that it would provide some kind of researched insight into how ethically-challenged churches use their special combination of bribery and blackmail to make money. Instead it's an hour and a half of superficial observations about the logic errors inherent in the old "Come to Jesus or burn in Hell" line. Plus the delivery is that comedically-challenged brand of bitter snark that passes for acceptable rhetoric far too often in 21st century America. See if desperate

Progress update

Work's getting pretty serious now. I'm moving from spot to spot a little more than I'd like. Progress would be easier to monitor if I was doing all of one section rather than shifting from section to section. However, at least for now I'm satisfied that the effort is proceeding apace.

For the last day or two I've been focused on "The Herd," the splash page for the whole Survival Guide. I've finished all the "road signs" and four of the chapter buttons. Fans of last month's Custer Expedition take note: the background of the "Socialization" button in the lower righthand side of the Herd is the sky above the Little Bighorn Battlefield.

Review – Eyes of the Mothman

Though normally I'm a sucker for urban legends, cryptozoology and the like, even way back when I first read about the Mothman my reaction was, "A dude with giant moth wings? That's just stupid." This documentary did little to change my opinion. The first 40 minutes don't even talk about the monster at all, instead exhausting the history of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and the surrounding countryside. And even when they finally do get down to the title menace, it's, well, a dude with giant moth wings. This would have been a merely a mediocre production with some genuinely awful grammar (not just the interviewees but the narration as well) if not for the Silver Bridge collapse. That these yahoos are willing to tie their silly little monster game to the tragic deaths of dozens of people is just pathetic. See if desperate

Review – The Robe

The concept – whatever happened to Christ's robe after the crucifying Romans carted it off? – has potential. Indeed, I've long thought that a fun indie movie could be made out of a similar question regarding the cape Elvis flung into the audience during his Aloha From Hawaii concert. Sadly, the production that grew from such a potential-packed seed is more Cinemascope (the first movie ever released in the new format) than plot or character. Richard Burton chews scenery as the Roman official in charge of the crucifixion detail. He believes he's been cursed by contact with the title garment until ... well, given that this is a big budget Hollywood production from 1953, you can imagine the rest of the come-to-Jesus story for yourself. Mildly amusing

Abandoned – House of Fallen

Netflix Instant is so helpful. Thanks to its "recent activity" list, I can see that I gave up on this precisely 21 minutes and 31 seconds in. Sadly, the descriptions are less precise. The paragraph about this stinker made it sound like a horror anthology rather than the cheap-ass Prophecy rip in turned out to be.

Progress update

The first chapter of the Media Survival Guide is done. To be sure, it's still a little rough at this point. I'm not happy with the link colors, which should be different than they are. Some of the underlining is a bit weird as well. I'll have to fix that.

Further, if you're visiting it now you'll notice that most of the pages have spots for links at the bottom and that there aren't currently any links on them. My workflow scheme at the moment is to finish the text itself and then backtrack to add the links I've been piling up. I may change my mind later and add variety to the project by intermixing writing and linking. But for the moment it's just my pearls of wisdom and no hyper-ties to the rest of the universe.

Abandoned – Monster

Because a ripoff of Cloverfield was necessary for some reason. I struggled through it for 20 minutes or so hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever was destroying Tokyo, but the pointless, meandering script sucked so bad that even if the monster had turned out to be Godzilla in a hockey mask and Dracula cape flinging Phantasm balls at everyone, it still wouldn't have been worth it.

Abandoned – Chain Letter

The description said this was about some computer geeks who suffer the ill effects of failing to forward the title nuisance. So I figured maybe it wouldn't be part of the film industry's recent fascination with torture porn. It took roughly three minutes to figure out that I figured wrong.

Review – Hell Night

I hate to pick on Linda Blair, because she's done a lot of great work for charities that help abused animals. Nonetheless ... Frat initiation. Haunted mansion. Killers in the basement. You can write your own script at this point. Wish I'd skipped it

Review – Fire and Ice

Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen ice. I've seen crappy films that I thought would never end. Seriously, Frank Frazetta's art belongs on the sides of vans, Ralph Bakshi's animation belongs nowhere, and beyond that there isn't much to this picture. Bakshi's Rotoscoping style is in particularly bad form here, making the characters look like they have corn cobs up their asses whenever they move. The most entertaining part of the viewing experience was keeping an eye on the backgrounds, some of which were painted by pre-fame Thomas “The Goddamn Christmas Cottage” Kinkade. Wish I'd skipped it

Review – Mark of the Devil (1970)

This should have been called "Soundtrack of the Devil," because the background music was the only clear presence of the Beast in this picture. A witch finder (Herbert Lom) shows up in small-town Germany and proceeds to abuse the local population. The IMDb notes say that Michael Reeves was originally supposed to direct but managed to escape the indignity by dying. He was replaced by Michael Armstrong, whose primary résumé item for a movie like this was AD'ing for Reeves on Witchfinder General. If they'd been just a little meaner to the rabbit, this would have bought itself an "avoid at all costs." Wish I'd skipped it

Review – Tangled

What can I tell you? Every once in awhile I get into a mopey mood that for some reason calls out for a dumb Disney animated musical. This vaguely Shrek-ish adaptation of the Rapunzel fairytale satisfied the need. Objectively it was a reasonably good picture, neither the studio's finest hour nor its worst moment. Mildly amusing

Review – Basket Case

I've said it before and I'll probably have to say it again, but if a movie is going to be this terrible it ought at least to make an effort to keep quiet so I can sleep through it. This is one of the screamingest pictures I've ever seen. A disturbed youth with his formerly-conjoined, largely-unformed twin in a basket (so it isn't just a catchy title) shows up in the Big Apple to seek revenge on the doctors who separated him from his brother. I you're doing a term paper on the early history of gore flicks, you'll probably need this for your section on the early 1980s. Otherwise you shouldn't need it for much of anything except maybe as an alarm clock. See if desperate

Progress update

This entry's strictly a matter of record keeping. Unless you're a big fan of 8sails behind-the-scenes stuff, you don't need to read it.

Today I finally figured out how to make a small icon for the bookmarks bar (and other similar browser locations). So now we're represented to the outside world by a tiny octopus. Fun stuff.

Work on the Media Survival Guide is genuinely underway at this point. I've finalized the page design, and I'm roughly halfway through creating master blank pages for all the subsections. Just about ready to start adding content!

Review - Father of the Bride

If having kids makes you into this bad of a sappy idiot, then I'm glad I never had any. The title character (Steve Martin) struggles with the expense and complications of putting together a storybook wedding for his daughter. All the humor involves the efforts of people around him to tolerate him while he spazzes, and especially toward the end even that limited modicum of entertainment gives way to pure sap. So if you need some treacle to adjust your blood sugar level, enjoy. Otherwise avoid. See if desperate

Review – Nite Tales

Flavor Flav takes a break from his wretched post-Public-Enemy reality show career to provide the intro for two wretchedly dreadful horror shorts. In the first a quartet of bank robbers run afoul of rural cannibals, and in the second a houseful of witless teens run afoul of either a killer cop, a killer clown (Tony Todd as "James Clown," no kidding) or Bloody Mary summoned from a mirror. Amazingly enough, the picture was even worse than this description makes it sound. Wish I'd skipped it

Abandoned – The Last Airbender

Usually a kids' movie with a budget this big will throw in an element here and there to keep the grown-ups in the audience entertained as well. At least my oath to stop watching M. Night Shyamalan movies remains intact.

Review – Arctic Blast

A hole opens up in the ozone layer above Australia, letting in a blast of cold air that creates a wall of ice fog that destroys everything in its path. In other words, here's another SyFy-ish take on the laws of physics. Uninteresting characters struggle to find a way to plug the hole before the audience loses patience. See if desperate

Review – Macbeth (2010)

Patrick Stewart stars in this adaptation of Shakespeare's classic. This production more than a little reminiscent of the Ian McKellen version of Richard III, particularly the alternate-universe-1930s look and feel of the art direction. Unfortunately, the casting folks decided to hire stage actors rather than movie stars, with predictably over-wrought results. Though overall I wasn't too impressed, I'll give the filmmakers this: I've never seen the Weird Sisters done in a way that made them quite so genuinely scary. Their scenes are worth the viewing time, even if none of the rest of it stands out. Mildly amusing

Review – 13 Assassins

This was not at all what I expected from director Takashi Miike. Just when I was sorta getting used to his penchant for extra-icky gore flicks, he turns around and makes a straightforward samurai picture. To be sure, it's packed with plenty of bloody violence. However, this story of 13 samurai tasked with assassinating a psychotic despot is a lot more Kurosawa and a lot less Argento. Worth seeing

Review – Dead and Buried

Writers Donald Shusett and Dan O'Bannon must have really shot their load on Alien, because all they had left for this pedestrian picture was enough for a run-of-the-mill creepy town tale. The local sheriff tries to figure out why strangers keep disappearing in friendly little Potters Bluff, why they later reappear as townspeople and why nobody else seems to notice anything amiss. Stan Winston contributes some reasonably good gore effects, but they're largely wasted on a boring story. See if desperate

Pay attention

Sorry to be gone so long. Truth is, with my first going-somewhere vacation in eight years and the heat making it hard to work after we got back, there hasn't been a lot to report.

However, yesterday during an 8sails staff lunch we floated the idea of Getting Rich and Quitting Our Day Jobs by starting a reality show called "Pay Attention to Me." Contestants will face an American-Idol-esque panel of judges, and all they'll need to do to win is get the trio to pay attention to them for five minutes. Anything short of physical contact with the judges is allowed, but if anyone's attention drifts the buzzer sounds.

I want to be the Simon Cowell judge.

SeacrestBotMark7: Bryan, what did you think of that performance?

Me: What? Oh, sorry. I wasn't paying attention.

Buzzzzzz!

Anyone who survives the first round goes on to Level Two. This time the judges have their cell phones with them, so the acts must compete with incoming calls, texts, chat notices, pushes and various and sundry other 21st century interruptions.

If this show turns out to be the success we're hoping for, the spin-off will follow the same format only with a panel of teenagers for judges. This one will be called "So You Want to Be a Teacher."

Review – Uncle Sam

Yet again they've spent a chunk of change (not Hollywood blockbuster money but still not exactly cheap) to make a movie guaranteed to alienate just about every potential audience member. The body of a soldier killed in Kuwait is helpfully deposited in the living room of his widow's sister, where his nephew develops an unhealthy (could there be another kind?) obsession with opening the coffin. Once released from its box, the crispy zombie dons an Uncle Sam outfit and goes on a killing rampage. His targets: liberals of any kind. Draft dodgers. Sleazy politicians. Crooked lawyers. Flag burners. Dope smoking teens. He'll teach them not to hate America! Oh, but then it turns out that the zombie was a wife-beating asshole before he died (as opposed to the serial-killing zombie sweetheart he became after death). So this should appeal exclusively to the ultra-conservative, pro-spouse-abuse, pro-serial-killing zombie fans. If that's you, enjoy. Wish I'd skipped it

Review – The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu

Lovecraftiana gets an Office Space comedy makeover. I should have hated this. And to be honest, the second half does lose focus and start to drag a bit. But wow, what a start. As much as I hate horror comedy in general and "disrespectful" overhauls of Lovecraft in particular, I should never have started watching this. So I was completely shocked to find myself laughing at many of the jokes and at least not hating the monsters. The picture tells the story of the last living (obviously non-lineal) descendant of H.P. Lovecraft who must give up his life as a cube warrior and prevent Cthulhu from rising to destroy the earth. The script – aided by clever animation and passable creature effects – smoothly combines snarky humor with apocalyptic doom and occasional gore to truly good effect. Worth seeing

Review – The Crow: Wicked Prayer

So let me make sure I've got this straight. This is a movie based on a novel based on characters from a series based on a comic book? I liked the original picture near the bottom of that heap, but somewhere between there and here I should have gotten off the bus. Edward Furlong is particularly ridiculous in the lead role, looking less like an avenging spirit and more like a surly counter girl at an indie record store. When Tara Reid turns in the best performance of the picture, you know the overall experience was wicked bad. Verdict: see if desperate

Review – Subspecies

I dunno. Some crap about a vampire fighting with his can-pass-for-human brother over some kind of a rock full of blood (disproving the old adage, I suppose). Script that kills time. Actresses willing to take their shirts off for the camera. What else could a 12-year-old boy want? Wish I'd skipped it

Review – Waxwork

My favorite part of this movie was the scene in which a maid struggles to write a college term paper foisted upon her by the jerkweed kid of the family she works for. What she comes up with ("I think dictators are the bad men") is far more entertaining than anything else in the picture. The rest of it is some mish-mash about a wax museum full of exhibits that need to imprison victims in order for a terrible evil to be unleashed upon humanity. See if desperate