Amentep

Houdini and Doyle ep 8: "Strigoi" Given the pile-up of historical inaccuracies (but to be fair, this has to be an alternate history, really), its sometimes amazing that I like the series as well as I do. This one deals with (Doyle's real life friend) Bram Stoker. Doyle had met Stoker at about 18 or so, IIRC, and they had become friends. Stoker would have already had his first book published and Doyle would have been starting (or about to start) medical school. Later in life Stoker and Doyle would collaborate on two chapters of a collaborative novel, "The Fate of Finnella". Stoker was a fan of Sherlock Holmes. Set about 3 years after Stoker's publication of DRACULA. In real life, while well reviewed, the book was only a modest seller. Dracula's popularity as an element of pop culture was three decades away. Here, though, the novel has made Stoker a veritable recluse - sort of. We find the real reason he has become a hermit is his tertiary syphilis (speculated by biographers, but I believe not actually proven). I believe the symptoms presented here don't really match up, but not being a disease expert I'll leave that alone. Stoker is presented as a little old man - and while he may have been 53 at the time the show is set in, the real Bram Stoker was a big burly man with red hair and beard. Also this presentation dispenses with Stoker's wife entirely - she outlived him by two decades (and while considered a great beauty of the time is mostly known today as the widow who fought the distribution of NOSFERATU for copyright violations and won). Henry Irving - the actor Stoker represented, and Stoker's role as Business Manager of Irving's Lyceum Theater is also missing (this being where he primarily made his money for many years, including the post Dracula ones) That said, the story was fairly fun; Stoker's servant is killed with a stake. Two groups circle Stoker's fame - a group of self-professed vampires and a group of self-professed vampire hunters. Its funny to see Houdini rail against the vampires for hanging around graveyards, given that we're only a year (or so) removed from the Victorian era that saw many seeing a cemetery as a park - a nice place to walk and have a picnic. While Houdini from the US may not have had any connection to that, Doyle and Constable Stratton would have, and so nothing being said seemed odd (or maybe it was because hanging around the graveyards at night was odd - just seemed a bit like a missed opportunity to talk about a weird real-world historical factoid). The mystery adds a lot of inconsistencies allowing the viewer to muse whether or not there really were vampires or not. And as always the main leads make their characters engaging, with Houdini having dialed back some of his more irritating mannerisms to be more in tune with the other characters.

Been looking forward to that starting almost as much as the Twin Peaks continuation.

Darkman was fun. Mind you I liked DC's The Unknown Soldier who has almost the exact same MO as Darkman, so I was already set for the film. Interesting trivia: Darkman came about because Raimi couldn't secure the rights to do a film for The Shadow (now doing a Shadow film is something Raimi has been attached to for 6-7 years now with no real movement that I can see). (As a Raimi side-note, I saw CrimeWave recently - not as bad as its reputation, but certainly a flawed/compromised film. Still worth checking out if you're a Raimi fan, IMO, though).

Given that all the orcs excepting half-orc Garona were mocap performances...it was effects work. IIRC DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES cost $170 million

I agree it is a very small pond, with NARNIA, and HARRY POTTER possibly being LOTR's only modern bretheren amid English language films

For me the best example was in Dragon's Dogma - I spent hours just wandering the wilderness and finding what was there in the day, then at night and even once I knew, sometimes I'd just go wander again because I enjoyed the combat and the locations.

In this sense, I think its an apt comparison simply because LOTR is the only real fantasy franchise created as a multi-part story (excluding science fantasy like Star Wars). Are there better fantasy films - sure. But CONAN THE BARBARIAN wasn't created with CONAN THE DESTROYER already planned; Harryhausen never planned out a continuity between his SINBAD films. And as I mentioned, I think WARCRAFT owes more to EXCALIBUR than to LOTR; I mentioned LOTR because the story in the books were broken up from a larger story and so the books often feel incomplete to me ('Fellowship' is the only one that kind of works on its own, sorta) and this feels like a 'Fellowship' story with no guarantee of a 'Two Towers'. I liked the Rankin/Bass Hobbit better than Jackson's Hobbit Trilogy. I also liked their Return of the King better than Jackson's LOTR entry (but I was the right age for that at the time it came on TV). Jackson's films were much more engaging than Bakshi's LOTR which was dull rotoscoping (IMO his FIRE AND ICE is a better fantasy film than his LOTR). Not that I didn't like Jackson's films (I even like the Hobbit even though they're even less successful than the LOTR), but they suffer (IMO) from the same kind of problems the book has, compounded with some new problems introduced by the film narrative. Yes, it is to be about the resurrection of Christ. CONAN THE DESTROYER was created because CONAN THE BARBARIAN (which bombed in the US) had done well in Europe. I believe the PERCY JACKSON sequel and the NARNIA film sequels existed because of overseas performance. The greenlight on PACIFIC RIM 2 was due to overseas money, as it didn't perform great in the US. So I think the sales in China are likely to give a greenlight to a WARCRAFT 2. I'm not 100% sure they'd ditch the direction totally and lose the markets they were a success in; they could actually try to get more China investment in a sequel though. I don't really know the Lore of Warcraft (although its not totally alien to me; I never played the games so any knowledge I have isn't first hand) but I think the narrative is fairly straightforward. decimated orc world -> Portal -> abundant land of piece -> fighting -> in-fighting -> new portal -> more fighting ->end

Pretty much my post is what happens when you don't proof read what you wrote. There was a missing "not" in one of the sentences. I'll leave it as an exercise for the viewers at home to work out where it should have gone.

Its déjà vu all over again. Then again, and the be fair, time has improved the argument.

Volo thats an unfair and unreasonable characterization of my motives Why would you think I dislike my own gender? I just dont believe men are victims in society So when you're robbed at gun point, the law shouldn't prosecute because as a man you can't be a victim?

Hopefully it will have better development and final execution than the previous Call of Cthulhu, botched by Bethesda. Bethesda wasn't the developer, they did publish it but seemingly without giving it any resources. Still, IMO, it was a fantastic game and first got me interested in Lovecraft. The game was, IIRC, mostly complete before the developer got into financial trouble. I think Bethesda basically put in enough money to make it publishable.

It seems like just yesterday you were talking about her being in elementary school...hope she has a happy birthday!

The Black Sleep (1956) - Basil Rathbone, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, Jr., Tor Johnson, John Carradine. Rathbone plays a surgeon who does brain operations on the unwilling to save his life. Lugosi (a small role and his last full one) plays his mute servant. Chaney Jr. plays a former colleague or Rathbone's who is now mentally unstable due to Rathbone operating on him. Tor Johnson and John Carradine play other victims. Into this is brought a former student of Rathbone's forced to accept Rathbone's patronage and Chaney Jr.'s daughter also forced to help Rathbone in his mad experiment. Well done attempt to bring back classic horror a year or two before the 30s-40s horror films hit television and really kicked off a horror boom. Mild chuckles because the hero forced to help Rathbone is named "Gordon Ramsay". The Witch (2016) - A great testament to trying to capture a feel of a time long past. In this case the time is 1600s America as a Puritan family is kicked out of their settlement due to a disagreement. They try to make it alone, but end up prey for darker forces. The film presents its story in a way like a cautionary folktale from the time, but the setting and dialogue are all of the time (the dialogue, in fact, using phrasings of English from the time sometimes is hard to discern the meaning immediately and yet also is rooted so in the time setting that it is appropriate). Visually arresting with creepy images, this is more about ideas than jump scares. The Last Starfighter (1984) - A fun film; in a way its just a sci-fi chosen one tale, but its well cast and has a great sense of humor. That and early computer graphics make for quite the novelty, but the main thing is the cast and the sense of fun (even if the main villain is hammy and disappears part-way through).

I assumed you would say I was contradicting myself but I am not as I always look at the context and the nuances with this type of event And yes there is a difference between Hogan and his lifestyle choices and someone like Jennifer Lawrence Yes there is a difference. Both had images illegally obtained and distributed. The two differences I can think of was that Lawrence made her own pictures (Hogan didn't) and that Lawrence got many sites to take her pictures down, whereas Gawker did nothing of the kind with Hogan - even after told to do so legally. All of this mental backfliping is just smoke and mirrors to hide the fact that you think Lawrence was "good" and therefore it is horrible something bad happened whereas Hogan was "bad" and got what he deserved. Just accept that you believe its okay to commit crimes against people you don't like and be done with it.

Never played Warcraft (or World of Warcraft) so I'm not that up on the lore (I knew some people who did, though). I thought the movie was fine. In a way it reminds me a lot of Boorman's Excalibur. But overall I think the film is fine; some of the characters are very well drawn many others are not, but you get what you need to know about them to understand why they do the things they do. A lot of the film falls on Garona as the bridge character between the humans and the orcs and therefore ends up being the character the audience is going to gravitate towards simply because she's the character that will fuel their understanding of the world and I think Paula Patton did the job very well. The biggest problem ultimately to my mind is...

I'm not a morning person or a night owl either. I like to think I'm good for about 10 am to 3 pm.

Talk about "when dinosaurs roamed the earth"...

Lego Dimensions teaser for new content:

Well, yeah you're right. I was mostly addressing the esurance crowd (although I guess there could have been people who were there because cartoon) but yeah pretty much everything.

The mid-1980s was an explosion time for teen comedies. A lot of people - including myself - have some fond memories of the John Hughes films of the period. Or you had the R rated films like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Porky's or Comedy/Dramas like Puberty Blues or The Last American Virgin. And then there are the two surrealist comedies of Savage Steve Holland. Better Off Dead... (1985) and One Crazy Summer (1986). Each star John Cusack as a hapless teen. Both contain animated sequences (like the director, Holland, both film lead characters are artists/animators). Better of Dead... is the stranger of the two, with its Howard Cosell racing team, the dogged pursuit of a paperboy owed 2 dollars, the lead character's futile attempt to kill himself (often ending with him deciding to live before something happens anyhow). The supporting cast is stronger and Cusack and Diane Franklin have a good connection. One Crazy Summer isn't quite as deep in the dark comedy vein as Better Off Dead... but still experiences some of the same surreal humour of that prior film with some crazy re-occuring gags (in particular the two little girls who are told if they keep making faces they'll freeze that way). The biggest issue is that Demi Moore seems to be playing her character straight which makes her role somewhat more conventional in the film. Its not bad, but unfortunately the relationship with Cusack's character comes off as perfunctory. Still I'd argue that both are well worth seeing at least once as even if you hate them, there's not much out there from the era that quite attempts what they try to do. Personally I'm fond of both, and like to rewatch them every now and then and be transported to their weird cartoonish world. I have yet to track down the third Holland 80s film (How I got Into College) so can't vouch for it yet.

Or you fought a valiant battle against productivity, that you won.

I'm curious to know more about how the game is actually going to be, but...interested.

I think, as long as it's confined to it's own corner of the internet, they (and others) ignore it. If it gets to rampant they come down on it. I mean, Esurance had to change their mascot because there was just so many metric tons of porn created from Erin Esurance (with really really really bad puns) Which btw, I'd love to know who these people are that watched Esurance commercials and were like "yknow what? I really wanna jack off to this." If the internet has taught me anything, its that there are some people who find anything in a vaguely feminine form to be potential stroke material.

X-Men: Apocalypse. Could have been better; it's not bad, but I think it tries to juggle too many story lines and so I think it could have focused the story better. Not the best X-men film, but not the worst either.

Still you can't deny the goodness of a proper day-night cycle.