I don’t seem to have any time for Hallowe’en these days. By which I mean that I think it’s far too commercial and that if any little brats come knocking on my door then I’m more likely to want to eat their livers, on toast with a nice pint of Hobgoblin and a bowl of chips. I’ve been accused of not getting into the spirit of the things and that it’s only a bit of fun - to which I point out that I think it’s fun to punch people on the nose but I don’t think they would appreciate it if I went around to their house, knocked on their door, biffed-boffed their conk and told them it was only a bit of fun.

Or perhaps they would. Maybe I should try it.

Anyway, my evening will be spent watching yet another dodgy horror film. Tonight’s flick will be the 2001 film, Dagon which is based on an H.P.Lovecraft story - although not actually the story of the same name but rather the more popular and renowned “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”. The same story has recently been adapted again in a film called Cthulhu (another Lovecraftian entity that, again, has nothing whatsoever to do with the Innsmouth story).

Dagon is directed by Stuart Gordon who also directed Re-animator and From Beyond which are also taken from the Lovecraft canon. He also directed the dire sci-fi film “Space Truckers” (starrign Dennis Hopper) so he’s probably more Corman than Cronenburg but meh! Who cares? I’m going to watch it for what it is.

The other day, driving home from work, I had an idea. An invention idea. The sort of idea you’d go on public television with and propose it to a bunch of rich business types who will then offer to lend you money in return for a share of the profits or something.

The idea was simple: a small, secure container that you could put your car key in; but it had a built-in breathalyzer and you could only unlock the container if the alcohol content of your breath was below the legal limit. I also reasoned that you might have to include some sort of fingerprint ID check too so that you couldn’t just find a random sober person to open the box for you. The point was to make sure that temptation was removed - even well intentioned people get to the point of drinking where they’re way over the limit but are convinced that they’ll be fine.

Anyway, there’s this article in the news: a proposal to introduce in-car breathalysers into the vehicles of convicted drink drivers that will prevent the engine from starting if they are over the limit (although no mention about how to prevent just getting a sober person to breathe into it for you yet. Is the technology to ID people by breath only - a la Alien Resurrection - available yet?)

Sometimes I amaze even myself with my own genius!

People are already starting to hear if they’ve made the interview shortlist for Metlab. I haven’t. I’m trying to be stoic about it but I know I’m going to feel disappointed for all of, I don’t know, a bit.

On the other hand

I had a call this morning about a new contract position and it’s for a company I can imagine enjoying working for as they are specialists in an area I’m particularly interested in. Not films, unfortunately, but the next best thing. So the only bit of writing I’m going to be doing tonight is updating my CV.

UPDATE: Sent off my edited CV AND managed to write 3 pages on Revelation (bringing the grand total up to 16 which is about a sixth of the way through in theory). Go me!

There are two versions of this film which both directed by the same person; George Sluizer. The first is subtitled and is a Dutch/French production that I watched last night. The second is a US remake starring Kiefer Sutherland, Jeff Bridges, Nancy Travis and Sandra Bullock. The first is raved about as a near perfect film, the remake is scorned as a disastrously americanised celluloid travesty.

Remember how I mentioned in my review of Session 9 that I don’t scare easily? Well, this film scared me.

“Scared” probably isn’t the right word; I was certainly stunned, definitely perturbed and more than a little un-nerved. For those reasons alone I must recommend this film. The ending, which I was vaguely aware as being one of those endings which people talk about (or would do if they’d seen this film), but I’d either managed to totally avoid any spoilers or totally forget the details. A bloody good thing too as I’m sure it would have lessened the impact.

It did make an impact too. My heart rate has just gone up just thinking about it.
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I’ve finally decided not to do the marathon that I’d planned to do.

I feel a bit defeatist about it but the decision is made on the fact that I’m not doing the miles I need to. Last week I should have run about 40 miles in total. I actually managed 5 and struggled through that because of (yet another) cold that developed over the subsequent couple of days. One downside to being the parent of a young, illness-susceptible toddler I suppose.

It’s all a bit of bad timing really. The wife has had even worse morning sickness this time around than she did with numero uno. It’s not just a matter of feeling sick but being totally incapacitated by it. This does mean that trying to find 2-3 hours on a weekend to go out running just doesn’t happen.

Part of me still thinks that I should just enter it and do it and see what happens but I really want to be prepared for it both physically and mentally. As I don’t think I will be, I might as well defer and find a time to do it next year. Hey ho!

This was a fucking waste of time.

I’m all for superhero films and I don’t necessarily need them to be believable or take themselves too seriously. I like popcorn movies and I don’t always need substance. All I want, most of the time, is to be entertained. This was just tedious and, pardon the pun, lacked any soul whatsoever. So much so that I can’t even be bothered to go on about it.

It wasn’t all bad though. If you watch the first 30 seconds of the video after the jump then you’ll see my favourite bit of the whole film when the two (yes, two and I don’t care if I’ve spoiled it for you because watching this film will spoil 2 hours of your life) Ghost Riders race on down through the desert to Spiderbait’s version of the classic “Ghost Riders In The Sky”.
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My dilemma about what to watch last night was resolved about half way through this rather dull and tedious affair that showed on ITV last night. In fact, I’m not sure I can be arsed to write about it. I wasn’t impressed by this modern retelling of the Mary Shelley’s classic. It didn’t seem to update the story so much as simply transpose it entirely, merely changing the sex of the main character, giving her a slightly different motivation and updating the science behind the creature to make it more modern and relevant. Still kept the lightning in though. I’m suprised that there weren’t big glass containers full of bubbling and steaming liquid in the laboratory. I found I couldn’t bring myself to care about the characters at all, much less what happened.

Also, throwing in some random “Hammer-esque” moments (hugging the big vat of primordial soup, dramatic intonation of “It’s alive!” and so on) jarred with the otherwise serious tone of the film. Homage shots only work if they blend seamlessly with the style and feel of the rest of the piece.

And what the fuck was going on with that bit about the volcano? Eh? I mean, context people. Maybe it became more involved in the second half of the story (did the monster jump in it? I don’t know. Also, I don’t much care.) So there’s a supervolcano erupting but we don’t know where. In the UK? Because that would be a story. And how come at the beginning, Victoria not-Frankenstein’s car was covered with several inches of ash from this volcano but that was it?

Anyway, I decided, after about 20 minutes, that if they showed that the creature was afraid of fire in some contrived and hokey scene then I’d turn it off. At 45 minutes I did just that.

Session 9 is a low budget supernatural thriller about a group of asbestos removal engineers who get a contract to clear out an old insane asylum. The story was written with an actual place in mind, the Danvers State Insane Asylum and it was shot entirely on location here. As such, the building plays as much a part as any of the characters do.

Overall, this isn’t a bad little film. It’s certainly creepy and well played but the story does feel like it’s meandering a bit and doesn’t necessarily deliver the pay-off that it was building up towards. In fact, as much as I hate to admit to wanting what could be a clichéd ending, I do feel that they could have drawn the last act out a bit more and built even more suspense. As it is, it does feel like it ends a bit suddenly.
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that you’re going to get asked this week is this:

Who would win in a fight: a minotaur armed with a trident or a centaur with a crossbow?

Hint: if you answered centaur, you are quite clearly so very, very wrong.

After months and months (about, let’s see, 7 to be precise) of not having any type of television reception whatsoever, we finally decided that we’d get a new aerial installed. Yesterday morning the helpful chappie turned up and a short while later there was television. And it was good.

Well, actually, no it wasn’t. I’ve been surprised at how much I haven’t missed having the goggle-box available. Sure I watch a lot of films on DVD and yes there have been somethings I would like to have seen but even after one evening I realised that there’s been a lot more that I’m bloody glad we’ve been unable to contaminate our domestic habitat with (namely; most soaps, all reality TV and the general detritus that pollutes the air waves.)

That being said, I’m now torn tonight between watching the new one-off version of Frankenstein on ITV or Session 9 on DVD. It’s a total dilemma! Yes, I can always watch the DVD tomorrow but if I watch it tonight, I can return it tomorrow and get a new film by Saturday. Alternatively, I could record Frankenstein and watch that later.

Or I could if I actually had a working video recorder - that’s been out of action for nearly two years!