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.