Once Upon a Time in Charliewood
I just bought two tickets to see Quentin Tarantino’s new film Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. It’s playing in 35mm at our local arthouse and I’m very excited for this one. I’ve grown to really like Django — especially Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance — but The Hateful 8 is probably my least favorite of Tarantino’s [...]
MIDSOMMAR BUMMER
The film Hereditary was scary successful last year. Writer/director Ari Aster’s feature debut delivered an incendiary performance by Toni Collette and a tightening noose of a story that gradually strangled viewers in supernatural sights, occult symbols, real life tragedies and heavy themes about the generational traumas that can ripple though family lines. Hereditary is a [...]
Kool-Aid Cult
Rev. Jim Jones at an anti-eviction rally Sunday, January 16, 1977 in front of the International Hotel, Kearny and Jackson Streets, San Francisco Photo by Nancy Wong This weekend we observed the 40th anniversary of the mass murder/suicide tragedy at Jonestown in Guyana. The utopian cult lead by the the charismatic Jim Jones had its [...]
Cinema de la Sandra
Over the October season of horror I was watching lots of classic monsters and murder flicks and my wife and I also binged on old YouTube videos from the various Joe Bob Briggs’ movie series which featured the eponymous Joe Bob presenting films like a 1990s version of classic horror hosts of the 1960s and [...]
Samhain 411
Devil’s Night seems like the right time to be posting one more spook-centric entry before Halloween is officially upon us. I caught up with this one over the weekend and immediately thought it would make for a great post. I love to watch and write about monsters, creatures and even real life killers and ghosts [...]
Halloween 40
John Carpenter’s original Halloween film splattered screens forty years ago, and I just got out of a preview screening for the new film with the same name. Carpenter’s original found the him co-writing the script, directing the picture, and writing and performing its iconic synthesizer score. In 1978, Halloween seemed wholly original with its fighting [...]
Demanding Poetry
I like to post about spooky stuff in October, and while this won’t count as a horror story I was more than a little anxious about my Poetry On Demand shift at the Southern Festival of Books on Saturday afternoon. The SFB is the premiere literary event of the year so it was THE place [...]
Indonesia’s Walking Dead
I’m still bummed-out over the passing of Anthony Bourdain. There are some Tony-was-murdered-conspiracy-theories floating around, and even though I love conspiracy theories, I haven’t been able to even look into those because I’m still wrapping my head around his suicide. CNN has been airing the last episodes of Parts Unknown Bourdain completed before his death, [...]
Beefheart Speaks
Nearly every Sunday evening I like to get my calendar and my to do list for the week together. These chores usually also include getting a blog post together for Monday morning. While I was getting my act together and making sure my ducks were in a row for another productive week I checked-in on [...]
Leary VS Nixon
If you follow me on Twitter you’ve probably come across some of my observations regarding the so-called “culturetain wars” everybody is sure we’re in the middle of here in America. Certainly there is stress and heat in relations between conservative and progressive — not necessarily politically speaking — folk, but does anybody really believe America [...]
