p e n g u i n d e v i l

I know, it’s been a long time coming, but as a bonus, I’m putting in the best photo yet from the mainstream news sites.

Anyway, well, back at last. I have been having a harder and harder time finding movie time. But I have again snuck in a few. In more exciting news, today Mabel’s was on good-day Oregon! I had to tape it to catch it but it was a great segment! Speaking of recording things. I’ve been wasting many a bandwidth with youtube.com. Martin showed me some cool AC/DC video on it and now I have become fixated on downloading black metal videos from there. I still haven’t mastered the technique of converting them to play with sound in QT, but VLC works so I’m still downloading away! Anyway, I think it’s a pretty fun site, one that I’ll waste many an hour at… Accumulating more video material that I’ll probably never watch. But Immortal’s video for Blashyrkh must be seen to believe!

let’s talk about Rock… Blashyrkh

So Matt and I sat down for Three Extremes. I am surprised as to how long it took me to get around to watching this, I am also surprised as to how not-extreme they seemed. They were good though, and entertaining. Dumplings has some scenes that are a bit hard to watch, but it was probably my least favorite of the three…And though Box was the Miike portion, it wasn’t my favorite… Though it was quite squeamish at times, it was too quiet and a bit slow moving. I liked Cut the best it. It certainly held my attention. It looked very good and the storyline was quite fun with some interesting twists, and, once again, a visual treat.. Anyway, I would highly recommend the whole movie. Pleasing to look at, nicely shot with nice colors, fairly intriguing stories, though maybe not to deep, but then who needs that for something like this.

I also sat down for Branded to Kill! Surely Seijun Suzuki was a Japanese master of the French new wave for this one. At some point, that’s surely what crosses my mind when I watch some of these old Japanese movies. I really appreciate the blending of European style crime with Japanese sensibilities, they make a good blend. Though I must say that everyone is such a terrible shot it is distracting and how they lived through the biggest ambush since Lone Wolf McQuade, I can’t figure out. And also how one gas can turned a whole concrete bunker into a bbq, I don’t quite get. But still it’s a entertaining flick, fun to watch and arms, heads, leaps and bounds better then his more recent Pistol Opera, one of the worst films I have ever had the misfortune of viewing (in a theater, no less)!

No matter what anyone says, it hard to beat old President Chuck for classic social sci-fi movies. Probably the weakest of the three that come to mind, I watched Soylent Green for the first time in many many years. It didn’t seem as good as I remember it, I know, I say that too much. But I still found it quite enjoyable. His melodrama was high the sets were good and its classic story seems to gain credibility with time.

Suprisingly having nothing to do with Kevin Bacon we watched Six Degrees of Separation. It seems to have its hit and miss moments, but I thought that it was pretty entertaining. You definitely spend time wondering what’s going on and then, once you figure it out, being proved wrong. Not in a lame lynchian way where he just changes the story, but it a more “details makes it all clear” way. I thought that cast was very surprising and everyone did a good job, though with how chaotic some of the scenes were, it was a bit hard to tell at times. But I would recommend it, it ends up being worthwhile viewing.

Now, The House of Clocks. I’ve tried and I’ve tried (dating back 15 years to using the Gore Score as a rental guide), to get into these Italian horror movies… But, damn, they’re all soo bad. I can’t bear the giallo movies at all, and while the cannibal movies can have some good parts, they are for the most part boring with frequently unforgivable effects. I have tried again though. The House of Clocks, with it’s Lovecraftian title, nice packaging and crystal clear and bright screen shots on the case drew me into it’s web. Fortunately, it’s web wasn’t very sticky. There must be a good Fulci movie out there, but I haven’t found one yet. This one was better then most… Yes, it had the standard bad dubbing, terrible acting, irritating music (Goblin be damned!) and sure, some of the effects we alright, better than most and with a “not as boring as normal” story-line but still… It’s going straight to the “sell” stack…

the house of clocks 13:42

Take that!