No-Personality (from Letterboxd)

YouTube video by A Gift From Todd "Build A Ballroom"

Savage, Razor-Sharp Brilliance On Every Level:

www.youtube.com/shorts/MDAvb...

YouTube video by A Gift From Todd "Build A Ballroom"

Savage, Razor-Sharp Brilliance On Every Level:

www.youtube.com/shorts/MDAvb...

YouTube video by Tony Dortie KAROLINE LEAVITT LOSES MIND WHAT LIE 4 HALLOWEEN

I know, I know: but it's almost Halloween.

www.youtube.com/shorts/LmZeE...

YouTube video by Josie Lewis Controversial opinion: Norman Rockwell's art was more than kitsch. Your thoughts?⁠⁠ #arthistory

I *did not know* this about Norman Rockwell. I should have known, however. My respect is officially given!!

www.youtube.com/shorts/EfLTR...

YouTube video by The Speech Prof It’s the same reason why my favorite gifts are when people make me things.

It's not really about "you can't tell the difference." (In that case, it would be a matter of our differing standards for how much we need to believe something is real.) It's how there is actually a difference in the first place and what that difference is worth.

www.youtube.com/shorts/b79cZ...

YouTube video by Kesha - Topic Blow

On an uncannily-related note...

GOD I miss 2011-2014 Kesha(!!!)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyAF...

YouTube video by Anita Ward - Topic Ring My Bell

Makes equal sense as: Taylor Swift brings me back to Ace of Base's The Bridge

but whenever I think of *what*ever people see in the Pop Princess-ness of Britney Spears' first 2-3 years of music, Anita Ward's "Ring My Bell" spiritually embodies like nothing else could

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpR9...

I’ve said it before, any judge who so comfortably and clearly shows their prejudice should immediately be barred from their jobs, but we don’t live in a world that makes sense.

We live in a world where white people get to deem racism as a simple inconvenience and be the sole arbiter of its weight.

AI is gross enough on artistic bases. But what a perfect example of Late Stage Capitalism: Hollywood invests in it to cut THEIR costs. Just like tax breaks for the rich, who pays the money they save? The lower classes. AND the environment.

Fuck AI. And fuck Hollywood- for this and their Zionism!

"some legal experts have called it a crime to summarily execute civilians" says today's New York Times, continuing their long tradition of whitewashing fascism

Absolute all-timer sentence in today's @nytimes.com

From Adrianne Curry, the one with a crush on Peter Brady on VH1's The Surreal Life [suggesting] Bernie Sanders was her pathway to criticizing Bad Bunny for speaking Spanish on Saturday Night Live.

Actually, asshole, you 100% own this racism yourself.

The entire right wing do their mental math on Hopscotch squares.

From the start, this was an impossible task. The story was too big and too serious, it was destined to fail. And everything about this miserable miniseries is an example of failure. I said on Letterboxd, and I stand by it, checking out Gary Sinise's amazing butt is the only satisfaction to get here.

And when I call it dour, that's a potentially flattering way to describe the aesthetic of this agonizingly plain flop of a movie about armageddon. The subject matter begs for tension, you'll get none. That this was based on a Stephen King story, infamous for conjuring immense dread, is dumbfounding.

If you tried to sell me this concept as a 6-hour film in line at the ticket counter, I would pass. In record time. Unsurprisingly, watching it proved exactly the disaster I expected. A celebrity-stacked cast, mixed with a depressingly low budget (for 6 hours), does nothing to liven its dourness.

Age-Horror needs its day in the sun. Which it could accomplish with better horror films about it. Meanwhile? Don't ask me why a horror film about people stranded anywhere usually leaves me intrigued. A horror film about a storm somehow spilling the tea of an entire town's dark secrets? Sign me up.

6. The Stand (1994)

If the last 4 films on this list (beginning with Langoliers) were - somehow (unfathomably) - released theatrically and I decided to pick one to see based on word of mouth... it might make me look boring if I chose Golden Years because there aren't many horror films about aging.

Not to mention if I found remote stimulation in The Langoliers, it could be argued my minimum standards are quite low. But Age-Horror typically underwhelms me as though every filmmaker thinks the concept alone does all the work. The rest of this relies on tired Government Conspiracy anxiety. Bland.

In fact, I don't remember nearly any of the specifics. I would argue that's telling. But I sure remember the feeling. And I remember it involved the exact thing that pushed me over the edge about Cronenberg's Scanners. (I'll avoid spoiling it here. But if you remember Scanners...)

5. Golden Years (1991)

I've forgotten most everything about it except the serious subject matter baiting of its plot strapped me in insofar as I wanted to know how it would end. And the ending pissed me off minutes before the credit roll began. It wasn't resolution / lack thereof that furied me...

I make few claims with the following observations but it's true I've sat through some television productions which leached my lifeforce. The Langoliers, however, "thrilled" me with its elaborate exploration of the airport (I'm serious, cool airport) and Bronson Pinchot's paranoia was engrossing.

4. The Langoliers (1995)

This is the point of no return with overlong Stephen King adaptations. From here you can only hunker down, grab a bottle, and pray for daylight. That being said, compared to the next few films? I could not describe my hours with The Langoliers as particularly unpleasant.

that, much like with 1990's IT (and, frankly: Psycho IV), Garris's Shining had me curiosity-locked within minute 1 by his dedication to treat the made for TV format (at least on this occasion) with a grace and smoothness. Not sophistication but close. It's heavily sedate but more effective than not.

but if anyone ever tries to tell you Doctor Sleep is superior? You have more than my permission to unfollow that person- I'm going to insist upon it. On mere basis of Mike Flanagan's output somehow being elevated above schlock while Garris leans into it without shame, I am qualmless in admitting...

He's a lot like - a broke/n person's - Wes Craven: super soft-spoken, mostly down to Earth, and learned fast how to stretch a budget for all its worth. Once he shifted into television, he never made it out again. And, given that, his take on The Shining can't be the best book fans could hope for...

And there may be no words to explain Riding the Bullet. It's exactly as frustrating as Peter Jackson's The Frighteners, quickly justifies any argument by detractors. But it wouldn't take very much to essentially fix. And countless moments in it are jawdropping, it could have been Mick's masterpiece.

His Critters is easily the best of the series. The fact Psycho IV could've been visually flat with its script's setting (a roundtable call-in radio interview) but he gave it energy and mood. The spectacularly grisly Sleepwalkers; a scene with corn superior to any of the Children of the Corn films.

3. The Shining (1997)

Mick Garris has had his 3rd Strike with me; more than a total failure to show queerness in his films / scripts with any degree of positivity- Sleepwalkers, Riding the Bullet, and The V Word *all* portray gay men as predatory. Yet... I really have a thing for some of his films.

Regardless of which horror film best captures the Messed Up Town's social order as a means to corrupt youth and end lives (I'm inching toward Christine), the enduring iconography of 1990's IT (and its terrifying music score) draws me back to re-watches much more often than the Trump-era films.

Though- given my issues with Halloween Ends, I say it easily did a better job (than the 2010's IT Chapter films) accusing systemic influence for the spread of violence, soft-complicity in prevailing attitudes. In the form of a "haunting haze," casting Haddonfield just like Derry as a Ghost Town.