Friday Ephemera (837)
Triumphant scenes. || Following quarrel, audience polled. || Unorthodox pest control. || Organic, low-allergen pet food made from feral camels. || Crooning occurred. || Dachas of note. || CD shopping, HMV, London, 1990s. || Seaside activities of a low-key kind, Margate, 1989. || Mile-high club, budget version. || Bill, as in buffalo. || Beer of sulphuric acid and other inadvisable recipes. || Better than one, they say. || His is bigger. || Blithe Spirit, 1945. || On personal space. || Wheelchair attachment of note. || Lighthouses of the world. || Lippy and legs. || Ladies at large. || A large one, you said. || The Hardiman exoskeleton, 1967. || Nommy-nommy-nom. || College, but enriched. || Fitness scenes. || Oh, and a familiar racial grift is turned on its head. A cost-benefit analysis ensues.
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Seconded.
They don’t even seem to comprehend that they lack certain kinds of information.
Cargo cult. Driven significantly by thinking you understand reality because you “read a lot of books”.
Incurious barely covers it. I doubt there’s much there beyond a desire for the approval of their peers. I doubt the ladies conceive of what is best, or least bad, or imperative, as something that exists independently of fashionable status or peer approval.
Have you tried Widow’s Bay?
It reminds me of an exchange I had with someone who was enthusiastic about Net Zero, a subject she raised, but had no idea – at all – about its practicalities and implications. It was just the noise she thought that a person like her – a nice person – should mouth. The enthusiasm was entirely disconnected from any reality or discernible thought process.
Which is a bit weird.
No. Any good?
Oh yeah, it’s a re-watcher.
I’ll add it to the list of things to consider on an Autumn evening.
I don’t watch a lot of modern TV and find the insertion of modern messaging clumsy and disagreeable, so I’m a bit out of touch. I stumbled across Carrie by accident.
It’s early days – I’ve only seen episode one – but so far, nothing has been jarring or inapt, and there’s been plenty to hold my attention. I like the fact that the mother is not entirely unsympathetic and her hostility to the world isn’t inexplicable.
Also, there are hints of something quite Biblical and uncanny. Bizarre miracles of a sort. In one scene, Carrie is being punished for chatting briefly with a neighbour and suddenly fist-sized rocks begin falling from the clear sky, but only on one house. That was darkly funny.
It’s also hinted that the real horror in play isn’t the implied telekinesis or the God-fearing mother, but the routine vindictiveness of the girls. Malice as recreation.
Agreed.
None detected; I found some scenes actually making fun of it.
The absence of progressive thought correction is always welcome.
Flanagan’s previous mini-series, The Fall of the House of Usher, met with lots of gushing coverage, but it’s by far his weakest work. Poor pacing, “diverse” casting that seemed to bypass competence – T’Nia Miller was particularly bad – and little of the atmosphere and subtlety of his earlier offerings.
The inexplicable gayness or bisexuality of no fewer than eight characters seemed to make reviewers happy, as if it were some kind of achievement, despite it being contrived, pointless and rather at odds with the themes of the story.
The media were applauding the ham-fisted messaging that made immersion in the story all but impossible.
The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass are worth watching. Both have plenty of uncanny atmosphere and some memorable scenes. Though again, the finales don’t quite deliver on the strong build-up.
Good deal, more from the likes of Kipling, Steinbeck, Solzhenitsyn, and Churchill. Let us take a quick peek:
Great success.
I know, right? Clearly the problem is with AmeriKKKa, who ever heard of a Muslim with a gun?
Meanwhile, over in Yurp, the No-No Square is out. Ladies, before you go out eat a huge meal so while you are being attacked use this one simple hack.
Cough.
Feigned disbelief.
The robot apocalypse may have bright spots.
[ Laughs, chokes. ]
I think I inhaled my own spit.
Canada as a clown country:
Via.
I really enjoyed that series. Give me atmospheric/psychological over buckets of gore in horror films every day. Even the 1963 movie had its moments.
Yup.
That count as a goal?
IT WAS A NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE.
Maybe you should have titivated your spit beforehand.
Pas de deux between European invader species: https://x.com/dicentra33/status/2109137356007846202
No knives?
(Girl) Band Name
Business etiquette
More here.
This is far from the first story I’ve read about blacks talking about how God loves gangbangers, thugs, and hood rat scumbags.
Michael Dudikoff was a deep cut.
This is the second adaptation to cast the whole thing as an anti-teen-bullying fable, which as usual profoundly misses the point. A story beat that nearly everyone misses is that Carrie’s mother got knocked up by a man who then left her, which is why she became so hyper-moralistic/religious. The point of the story is that absolutely everyone in Carrie’s life is horrifically abusive to her because of their own moral failings, and when she finally snaps she becomes an inhuman force of destruction. It’s literally Old Testament God’s Vengeance as 70’s sci-fi horror. Which is why the ending of the 2002 backdoor pilot film was so clangingly off.
Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House is some other show that used the title, character names and nothing else. I personally think it was two different shows, or like Hancock two completely different scripts that were mashed together, because the ending doesn’t match the beginning at all. The whole [SPOILER] “heart of the house” explanation in the final episode simply comes out of nowhere, wasn’t foreshadowed, and can’t decide on a tone.
I’m off to try rewatching Killjoys again. I do enjoy low-budget Canadian SF trying to pass off the parking lot behind the studio as a post-apocalyptic planet riven by warring tribes.
He’s an undocumented love maker not a rapist.
Darwin Award, Koranic edition.
“Evolved…souls…strong…brave…” Language that inspires utter contempt.
Have you ever heard “Clapping Music,” by Steve Reich? Two performers play rhythm. At the end of the sequence, one drops a single note out and everything shifts by one, getting farther away until eventually it returns to the beginning.
https://youtu.be/YPU5XrmORCQ?is=bUWUjdAronXG-7ga
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