Here's a one-off from our lord of pulpy scifi and fantasy. Damnation Alley is the nickname for the middle majority of the United States after all the nuclear bombs were dropped. The roughest toughest outlaw in the west must drive across country in a monster car, then a motorcycle to deliver an antidote to a plagued city in New England. There are monsters, storms, gangs, death, and guns. There was a B-movie made on the premise, but I'd skip it. Read the book if this sounds like your thing.
Outcast (feat. Nicolas Cage)
Meanwhile the action prince (Christenson) and the action King (Cage) get tired of killing women and children. When their great Crusades are over is where we get into the meat of this film. Our heroes had talked about going east, where they might do some use their swords for good. As fate would have it, our crusaders show up at the right place at the right time to restore justice to China and become the heroes they always wanted to be. Or do they? My son, you will have to watch the film to find out.
For some reason, this film got a score of 0 on rotten tomatoes, which I don't entirely understand. These raters obviously haven't seen the Crudes. I very much enjoyed watching beautiful, grown-up Hayden Christenson with a British accent and beautiful princess Lian (played by Liu Yifei). There could have been more Cage, but I know he's a busy man with better movies to focus on. To some extent, he is the true hero of our story. Sure, the Chinese might have saved themselves without Nicolas Cage but that is not the world we live in. If this film were made today, I don't think they'd name his character Gallain. It sounds too much like Ghislaine.
Is this film totally predictable? Yes, but only as whole. There are some fun, grunty action scenes. Does it put a new angle on historical events? No, but it does romanticize a foreign time and place we'd otherwise be left to imagine. Does it say anything new about our current world? He is the lesson of the film: If you neglect your values, you can have a profoundly negative effect on the spirits of your friends. And if you're lucky, you can make things right. Not horrible. Maybe it's just a rehashing of the trauma one experiences from life in battle. Maybe there is only one god, but he/she wears many faces. I could be wrong on all accounts. Maybe Hayden Christenson always had a british accent and I never noticed.
best quote: But the Guards... Cut. Out. Her. Tongue!
- Raising Arizona
- The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
- Leaving Las Vegas
- Red Rock West
- Adaptation
- Pig
- Birdy
- Wild at Heart
- Renfield
- Joe
- National Treasure
- Guarding Tess
- Snake Eyes
- Mandy
- Dog Eat Dog
- Color Out of Space
- Mom and Dad
- World Trade Center
- Peggy Sue Got Married
- The Rock
- Zandalee
- Prisoners of the Ghostland
- City of Angels
- Willy's Wonderland
- Jiu Jitsu
- Captain Corelli's Mandolin
- Bangkok Dangerous
- Drive Angry
- Army of One
- Lord of War
- Gone in 60 Seconds
- Matchstick Men
- Vampire's Kiss
- Con Air
- Face/Off
-
Outcast
- Trapped in Paradise
- The Boy in Blue
- Honeymoon in Vegas
- Deadfall
- Amos and Andrew
- Moonstruck
- Tokarev
- The Sorcerer's Apprentice
- Knowing
- Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
- Bringing Out the Dead
- The Family Man
- Stolen
- Season of the Witch
- It Could Happen to You
- The Wicker Man
- Inconceivable
- 8mm
- The Frozen Ground
- Left Behind
- A Score to Settle
- Pay the Ghost
- Primal
- Dying of the Light
- Grand Isle
- Looking Glass
- Arsenal
- Between Worlds
- Ghost Rider
- Trespass
- The Humanity Bureau
- Next
- The Weather Man
- 211
- Fire Birds
- The Croods
Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami
Here is yet another book about how one very talented person becomes a Novelist and maintains that status. If you haven't gathered, I have ambitions as a writer. Sure. I've written a few novels which I won't let anyone read? Why, because I don't have the confidence to do much with it. Why? Because I get distracted and want to do other creative stuff. But writing is fun, and I always want to do more of it while I'm more practiced at completing big projects in Music that very few people listen to. It wouldn't be much different to put out a long piece of fiction that even fewer people will Read.
Whatever. Writing is fun. Haruki Murakami had fun as a writer, and he did some really great work, with a very unique method of first writing his novels in English and then translating to Japanese (his native tongue), to keep his prose simple and clear. And he does have a wonderful narrative voice.
Inconceivable feat. Nicolas Cage
The cast is good though. Everyone is good except for the scenes in which everyone is bad, reading their lines like good workers. It's as if the directors were aiming for mediocrity at best. But I had to keep watching because there's always a chance that the villain will in, or the villain will win and the hero will die, or the hero will die and the villain will lose. I'm not going to tell you what happens, my friend. You're going to have to watch and find out for yourself, unless you can find me one of these family sized papasans. Then I'll give you any spoiler you want.
- Raising Arizona
- The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
- Leaving Las Vegas
- Red Rock West
- Adaptation
- Pig
- Birdy
- Wild at Heart
- Renfield
- Joe
- National Treasure
- Guarding Tess
- Snake Eyes
- Mandy
- Dog Eat Dog
- Color Out of Space
- Mom and Dad
- World Trade Center
- Peggy Sue Got Married
- The Rock
- Zandalee
- Prisoners of the Ghostland
- City of Angels
- Willy's Wonderland
- Jiu Jitsu
- Captain Corelli's Mandolin
- Bangkok Dangerous
- Drive Angry
- Army of One
- Lord of War
- Gone in 60 Seconds
- Matchstick Men
- Vampire's Kiss
- Con Air
- Face/Off
- Trapped in Paradise
- The Boy in Blue
- Honeymoon in Vegas
- Deadfall
- Amos and Andrew
- Moonstruck
- Tokarev
- The Sorcerer's Apprentice
- Knowing
- Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
- Bringing Out the Dead
- The Family Man
- Stolen
- Season of the Witch
- It Could Happen to You
- The Wicker Man
-
Inconceivable
- 8mm
- The Frozen Ground
- Left Behind
- A Score to Settle
- Pay the Ghost
- Primal
- Dying of the Light
- Grand Isle
- Looking Glass
- Arsenal
- Between Worlds
- Ghost Rider
- Trespass
- The Humanity Bureau
- Next
- The Weather Man
- 211
- Fire Birds
- The Croods
The Shining by Stephen King
I have a strong feeling you've seen the film, The Shining. You probably even know it's based off a book. You might even be like me and find yourself watching the Kubrick masterpiece every single halloween season. Let me tell you something. There's more to the story than is in the movie. You might be a fan, but you probably feel like a poseur in the face of one who has Read the Book. And it's a good one, a very early work by Stephen King but exhibits his style perfectly. Sometimes it's more fun and more scary to get into the heads of our demons.
Gino's Pizza & Spaghetti House of Cross Lanes, WV
For my current trip, I thought I had all of my pizza stops planned but I kept seeing signs for this Gino's. I feel like maybe I've heard of it or maybe I've had a frozen pizza from a brand of the same name. It's not a unique name for a pizza monger. Then I saw Gino's and Tudor's Biscuit World in the same building, which greatly amplified my curiosity. In a world of biscuits, can there be a pizza that is the most West Virginia of All pizzas?
My $9.99 Large Cheese Pizza had a Ratio of 3cr/2ce/2ch. I give the dough a 4 out of 5. Texturally it was perfect, with some goo in each bite and a little skin of crispy chewiness on the bottom. However, it was much thinner in the middle 1/3 than the rest, so there were some parts that edged on being too doughy. For that reason, I give Gino's a 4 out of 5 for Overall Quality.
Gino's sauce gets a 4 out of 5. It's really good, with a consistency I wish Pizza Hut still provided. However, there's nothing remarkable about it. Which leads me to style. I was able to order my pie at a counter, like a fast food joint. There was a counter on the other side of the place for Tudor's biscuit world. The decoration was definitely more like a world of biscuits, which is fine. It's unique. I detected a bit of Cheddar on my pie, which enhanced its savory. Every bite was delightful.
I see how Gino's is a local favorite and successful chain in the region, but it doesn't stand out. I give them a 4 out of 5 for style. With a final score of 80%, I will definitely go to Gino's again. You should go there too.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
I read this one because a couple of my friends said they had started it, or were going to read it. I love when this happens because I yearn for friends to talk about books with. As it turns out, my friends didn't read this book. Maybe they have by now. I should ask. Anyway, My Year of Rest and Relaxation is about a depressed young woman who lives alone in New York City. As she was already enabled to support herself as a part time receptionist at a gallery, she lost her parents who left her a house and enough money to live on for a while. So our heroine decides to get herself prescribed to as many downers as possible, so she can sleep almost all the time, until she feels better. Eventually she finds a drug to make this happen, and an artist who's willing to take care of things for her, so she only has to be awake or cognizant for one day out of every week or so. As it turns out, she takes for granted the ones she truly cares about those who truly care for her in turn.
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