Bite Me, Tony

 Cult Movies (#2) Unless you--like me--have a predilection for overlooked and unsung movies, you have probably never heard of Ana Lily Amirpour's atmospheric 2014 Spaghetti Western/Vampire hybrid, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night . Set in an Iranian backwater called Bad City, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night has that same lonely, downtrodden feel that Peter Bogdanovich so successfully captured in his 1971 masterpiece,  The Last Picture Show . While Girl may not be in the same league as  Picture Show , it does possess some masterful moments of its own. Amirpour has stated in interviews that she'd intended to film her feature debut in Iran, but the country's formidable restrictions put the kibosh on that idea. So, instead, she shot her movie in the industrial town of Taft, in her home state of California. Utilizing gorgeous black-and-white cinematography to highlight the setting of a small desert town in decline, Amirpour creates a world bathed in menace and arid darkness, a

What eventually became the Alien Franchise  was unleashed in 1979 when 20th Century-Fox rolled out Alien , director Ridley Scott's seminal, cosmic space shocker that wound up making a ton of money and establishing Sigourney Weaver as a major star. For better and for worse, Alien  spawned a string of sequels, prequels and interquels  that have endured for 45 years--with no end in sight. That first movie was an edge-of-your-seat, all-out horror show lurking beneath the trappings of science fiction. James Cameron's 1986 follow-up, Aliens , striking a slightly different tone, became an even bigger box office smash than the first. A nail-biting, non-stop roller-coaster ride, Aliens  featured Sigourney Weaver in the lead role that made her famous. Her triumphant return as Ripley in Aliens subsequently netted the actress an Academy Award nomination. Realizing they were on a roll, 20th Century Fox brought back Weaver (this time, with a shaved head), and an entirely new cast, for novic

After my marathon excursion into  House of Leaves  (see post from July 28), I decided to dial it back on the density and laboriousness of my next reading effort. Instead of choosing one of the unread books from the pile next to the bed, I opted to revisit a work  from one of my favorite British authors, Ruth Rendell. For those of you who don't know, Rendell, who died in 2015, was a bestselling novelist who won multiple awards for her standalone psychological thrillers, and long-running detective series featuring Chief Inspector Wexford. During her down time, Rendell also managed to be appointed a Commander of the British Empire, sat in the House of Lords (Labour Party), and was a bona fide Baroness. During her long and prolific career, Ruth Rendell produced more than 60 novels, a number of which were published under her pseudonym, Barbara Vine. Whether writing as Rendell or Vine, the author offered up a diverse and inclusive cast to help populate all her works: in addition to her p

This is not for you. (1) (1) The only words on the dedication page of House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.  Believe you me, he means it. At 662 pages, House of Leaves is Danielewski's magnum opus , a work deified by a large and devoted cult following, and swallowed hook, line and sinker by numerous literary critics from such august  institutions as The New York Times (go figure), The San Francisco Chronicle , The Wall Street Journal , Newsweek and The Guardian . My question is this: what is wrong with these people ?   What? You think I'm being unfair? Okay, maybe just a bit. Not everyone who holds House of Leaves  in high esteem is a pretentious douche attempting to demonstrate their intellectual superiority by claiming that they  get it . I'm pretty sure I got it , and by it , in this case, I mean Danielewski's number. With regards to the book as a whole, it is all about the footnotes. I'm not fooling myself into believing my completion of it means anyth

Cult Movies (#1) Camp movies, so-bad-they're-good movies, box office bombs, sexploitation cinema, out-of-the-mainstream movies, movies that are outright indescribable. They all fall under the umbrella of a film that appeals to the sensibilities of a specific set of filmgoers. I'm talking about  cult movies . As a rule, cult movies are "gems" often rediscovered years after their original release, usually via word of mouth, midnight showings, revival houses, even YouTube and cable TV. Some eventually become hits, others bona-fide classics. If you believe wikipedia there are hundreds, if not thousands, of cult movies in existence. Don't believe wikipedia . I'm not certain exactly what their criteria is for defining a cult movie, but the large majority of films wikipedia has listed are most definitely NOT cult movies. Just so you know. Okay, so having given you some idea of what cult movies are, or may be, I've decided to briefly examine a few of these film

So we went to Paris last month and I'm just now writing about it because it has taken me this long to get over the jet lag and the cold I apparently caught while we were there (sorry if I sound like a certain president). It wasn't my first time in the City of Light but it was certainly the rainiest and most crowded. I guess everyone had the same idea we did and decided to travel to Paris before the Olympics start later this month. I don't even want to think about how jam-packed the city will be then.  As it was, our average time spent waiting in line to get in anywhere -- the Louvre , Versailles , Musee d'Orsay , for example--was 2 hours. And, during much of that time, it was raining. Not the brief, summer afternoon downpours we regularly get here in the tropics, but a light, relentless veil of fine spray chilled by harsh winds and unseasonable temperatures. We'd packed for springtime in Paris, not Reykjavik, so were ill-equipped to schlep around town in such intemp