Near Dark

Near Dark is a 1987 modern-day vampire western film. I saw it on television and was singularly unimpressed. I appear to be alone in that. Reviews are generally positive, even glowing.

trailer:

1000 Misspent Hours has a positive review. Empire Online calls it "a fascinatingly modern take". Horror News concludes, "If you are looking to build a top vampire movie list, then “Near Dark” should definitely have a spot secured as an important entry." Horror News Freak recommends it. Time Out calls it "a subtle study in the seductiveness of evil and a terrifying ride to the edge of darkness." Rotten Tomatoes has an average critics rating of 88%.

The Idiot's Guide to Smarter Coffee Drinking in 7 Steps

Image via: AHealthBlog

and they completely lose me at step #1, because I drink a cup or two before 10:00 AM and like it better then than any time of the day. Ah, well, health advice seems more a matter of passing fad than of fact-based science.

I still haven't gotten back into creating ATCs. It's like that one week of vacation away put a screeching halt to the art fun. I have all my bits of papers and supplies out, and I'm committed to making a few this week. In the meantime I'll enjoy the artistic endeavors of the T Stands for Tuesday bloggers. Join us as we share a drink.

A Chinese Ghost Story: The Tsui Hark Animation

A Chinese Ghost Story: The Tsui Hark Animation is an award-winning 1997 Hong Kong animated film. Wikipedia begins its plot summary with this:

Tax collector Ning wanders the land with his pet dog Solid Gold grieving over his lost love Siu Lan, who dumps him over another man. He goes on, and along the way, he runs into two monks, White Cloud and Ten Miles. The two Buddhist monks, who appear to be trying to purify unholy spirits and send them to the underworld, are on rivalry with another ghostbuster, Red Beard. After a meeting and a hasty farewell to the monks who leave, Ning continues his journey.

Somehow, at night, Ning enters a ghost town, inhabited by many different monsters, ghouls and spirits.

T.H.E.M. Anime Reviews calls it "an incredibly strange, breathless, nonstop action fantasy, which leaves you gasping for air". Love HK Film calls it "irresistibly charming" and "visually exciting".

Variety says,

Result is infused with many of Tsui’s own filmic trademarks, some touches of typically Cantonese humor and a childlike, naive style that Japanese anime simply don’t possess. In dubbed versions, this could prove a strong seller as a children’s item for the small screen.

BBC has a review. The Rotten Tomatoes audience has a consensus score of 86%.

The World That Couldn't Be

illustration by Jack Gaughan

The World That Couldn't Be is a 1958 science fiction short story by Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master Clifford D. Simak. I discovered this author in junior high school, and he is always worth re-visiting. His stories are thought-provoking. You can read this one online here. It begins,

The tracks went up one row and down another, and in those rows the vua plants had been sheared off an inch or two above the ground. The raider had been methodical; it had not wandered about haphazardly, but had done an efficient job of harvesting the first ten rows on the west side of the field. Then, having eaten its fill, it had angled off into the bush—and that had not been long ago, for the soil still trickled down into the great pug marks, sunk deep into the finely cultivated loam.

Somewhere a sawmill bird was whirring through a log, and down in one of the thorn-choked ravines, a choir of chatterers was clicking through a ghastly morning song. It was going to be a scorcher of a day. Already the smell of desiccated dust was rising from the ground and the glare of the newly risen sun was dancing off the bright leaves of the hula-trees, making it appear as if the bush were filled with a million flashing mirrors.

Gavin Duncan hauled a red bandanna from his pocket and mopped his face.

"No, mister," pleaded Zikkara, the native foreman of the farm. "You cannot do it, mister. You do not hunt a Cytha."

"The hell I don't," said Duncan, but he spoke in English and not the native tongue.

He stared out across the bush, a flat expanse of sun-cured grass interspersed with thickets of hula-scrub and thorn and occasional groves of trees, criss-crossed by treacherous ravines and spotted with infrequent waterholes.

It would be murderous out there, he told himself, but it shouldn't take too long. The beast probably would lay up shortly after its pre-dawn feeding and he'd overhaul it in an hour or two. But if he failed to overhaul it, then he must keep on.

"Dangerous," Zikkara pointed out. "No one hunts the Cytha."

"I do," Duncan said, speaking now in the native language.

Suspense (1913)

Suspense is a 1913 short thriller film directed by and starring Lois Weber.

The Open Window

The Open Window is a delightful short story by Saki. It is often required reading in schools, and I know what a kick I got out of it when I first discovered it. You can read it online here. You can have it read to you here. It begins,

"My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel," said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen; "in the meantime you must try and put up with me."

Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something which should duly flatter the niece of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come. Privately he doubted more than ever whether these formal visits on a succession of total strangers would do much towards helping the nerve cure which he was supposed to be undergoing.

"I know how it will be," his sister had said when he was preparing to migrate to this rural retreat; "you will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living soul, and your nerves will be worse than ever from moping. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice."

Framton wondered whether Mrs. Sappleton, the lady to whom he was presenting one of the letters of introduction came into the nice division.

"Do you know many of the people round here?" asked the niece, when she judged that they had had sufficient silent communion.

"Hardly a soul," said Framton. "My sister was staying here, at the rectory, you know, some four years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here."

He made the last statement in a tone of distinct regret.

"Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?" pursued the self-possessed young lady.

"Only her name and address," admitted the caller. He was wondering whether Mrs. Sappleton was in the married or widowed state. An undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest masculine habitation.

"Her great tragedy happened just three years ago," said the child; "that would be since your sister's time."

"Her tragedy?" asked Framton; somehow in this restful country spot tragedies seemed out of place.

"You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon," said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened on to a lawn.

*******

The image at the top of the post is a screen shot from this short adaptation of the story:

It stars Michael Sheen.

Love's Labour's Lost

Love's Labour's Lost is a 1975 BBC adaptation of the Shakespeare play. It stars Martin Shaw, David Gwillim, and Jeremy Brett.

Crashing Suns

Crashing Suns is a short story by Edmond Hamilton, the first in the Interstellar Patrol space opera series. It was originally published in two parts in the August and September issues of Weird Tales in 1928. These are rousing adventure stories, and fun to read even if the science is dated. You can read this one online here. It begins,

As the control-levers flashed down under my hands our ship dived down through space with the swiftness of thought. The next instant there came a jarring shock, and our craft spun over like a whirling top. Everything in the conning-tower, windows and dials and controls, seemed to be revolving about me with lightning speed, while I clung dizzily to the levers in my hands. In a moment I managed to swing them back into position, and at once the ship righted herself and sped smoothly on through the ether. I drew a deep breath.

The trap-door in the little room's floor slid open, then, and the startled face of big Hal Kur appeared, his eyes wide.

"By the Power, Jan Tor!" he exclaimed; "that last meteor just grazed us! An inch nearer and it would have been the end of the ship!"

I turned to him for a moment, laughing. "A miss is as good as a mile," I quoted.

He grinned back at me. "Well, remember that we're not out on the Uranus patrol now," he reminded me. "What's our course?"

"Seventy-two degrees sunward, plane No. 8," I told him, glancing at the dials. "We're less than four hundred thousand miles from Earth, now," I added, nodding toward the broad window before me.

Climbing up into the little conning-tower, Hal Kur stepped over beside me, and together we gazed out ahead.

The sun was at the ship's left, for the moment, and the sky ahead was one of deep black, in which the stars, the flaming stars of interplanetary space, shone like brilliant jewels. Directly ahead of us there glowed a soft little orb of misty light, which was growing steadily larger as we raced on toward it. It was our destination, the cloud-veiled little world of Earth, mother-planet of all our race. To myself, who had passed much of my life on the four outer giants, on Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and Neptune, the little planet ahead seemed insignificant, almost, with its single tiny moon. And yet from it, I knew, had come that unceasing stream of human life, that dauntless flood of pioneers, which had spread over all the solar system in the last hundred thousand years. They had gone out to planet after planet, had conquered the strange atmospheres and bacteria and gravitations, until now the races of man held sway over all the sun's eight wheeling worlds. And it was from this Earth, a thousand centuries before, that there had ventured out the first discoverers' crude little spaceboats, whose faulty gravity-screens and uncertain controls contrasted strangely with the mighty leviathans that flashed between the planets now.

Abruptly I was aroused from my musings by the sharp ringing of a bell at my elbow. "The telestereo," I said to Hal Kur. "Take the controls."

Madam Crowl's Ghost

5 O'Clock Tea by David Comba Adamson

Madam Crowl's Ghost is a 1923 short story by Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu. You can read it here, and since it starts with the brewing and sharing of tea, let's keep each other company with a cuppa and gather around for the tale. It begins,

Twenty years have passed since you last saw Mrs. Jolliffe’s tall slim figure. She is now past seventy, and can’t have many mile-stones more to count on the journey that will bring her to her long home. The hair has grown white as snow, that is parted under her cap, over her shrewd, but kindly face. But her figure is still straight, and her step light and active.

She has taken of late years to the care of adult invalids, having surrendered to younger hands the little people who inhabit cradles, and crawl on all-fours. Those who remember that good-natured face among the earliest that emerge from the darkness of non-entity, and who owe to their first lessons in the accomplishment of walking, and a delighted appreciation of their first babblings and earliest teeth, have “spired up” into tall lads and lasses, now. Some of them shew streaks of white by this time, in brown locks, “the bonny gouden” hair, that she was so proud to brush and shew to admiring mothers, who are seen no more on the green of Golden Friars, and whose names are traced now on the flat grey stones in the church-yard.

So the time is ripening some, and searing others; and the saddening and tender sunset hour has come; and it is evening with the kind old north-country dame, who nursed pretty Laura Mildmay, who now stepping into the room, smiles so gladly, and throws her arms round the old woman’s neck, and kisses her twice.

“Now, this is so lucky!” said Mrs. Jenner, “you have just come in time to hear a story.”

“Really! That’s delightful.”

“Na, na, od wite it! no story, ouer true for that, I sid it a wi my aan eyen. But the barn here, would not like, at these hours, just goin’ to her bed, to hear tell of freets and boggarts.”

“Ghosts? The very thing of all others I should most likely to hear of.”

“Well, dear,” said Mrs. Jenner, “if you are not afraid, sit ye down here, with us.”

“She was just going to tell me all about her first engagement to attend a dying old woman,” says Mrs. Jenner, “and of the ghost she saw there. Now, Mrs. Jolliffe, make your tea first, and then begin.”

The good woman obeyed, and having prepared a cup of that companionable nectar, she sipped a little, drew her brows slightly together to collect her thoughts, and then looked up with a wondrous solemn face to begin.

*******

I'm out of town today and won't be able to participate (if I get back in time I'll link to the T Stands for Tuesday blogger gathering, but it'll be later), but I am pleased about the new-to-me thrift store purchase of a one-cup French press coffee maker and thought I'd take this opportunity to share it here:

A couple of you may have already seen it on Facebook, but everything gets shared on Facebook first and in real time since I share way more than one thing a day there. Each social media outlet has its strengths and weaknesses, and each one is suited to a different type of sharing.

1.) Blog: I post once a day on blogger, scheduling posts well in advance so that movies are not on consecutive days. That means I'm already scheduling horror movies for October of 2020, but that's the way I have chosen to deal with the number of movies I watch.

2) Facebook: I post on Facebook as I do things so there might be posts on 3 or 4 movies on some days but without the video embeds or descriptions/reviews. I share articles and images as I see them, and I'm much more politically vocal on Facebook.

3) Twitter: I am on Twitter but just as a follower and reader, and I haven't tweeted since those first few just to show I am a real person and not a bot.

4) Instagram: I'm not on Instagram at all, mainly because I find it a bit intimidating with all the folks sharing such good photos there.

5) Youtube: I use YouTube and post videos there that I've taken myself and want to embed on my blog, and I subscribe to many of the fitness and garden channels.

6) Reddit: I follow the local Reddit but have never posted and rarely comment there.

7) Pinterest: I used to use Pinterest but never found it particularly engaging. Except for pinning the occasional image to my "Hats" board, I don't use it.

8) I set up accounts at Tumblr, LiveJournal, Google+, MySpace, GoodReads, Letterboxd, and maybe more -who remembers. I have used email "lists" and online message boards and the chat rooms that used to be set up for real-time discussions among members of email listserve communities. I either didn't find these useful and/or they're not around any more. I've been curious about Second Life but have never tried it.

Social media should not be feared but used in the way that is most appropriate for each of us. I'd just like to say: You, be you. Don't condemn online activity you either fear, don't understand, or don't find enjoyable. Different strokes, and all that. I find judgmentalism to be the worst part of any social media experience just as I do when involved in face-to-face interaction.

Odds Against Tomorrow

Odds Against Tomorrow is a 1959 crime film (and maybe a film noir, depending on which article you read) directed by Robert Wise and starring Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, Ed Begley, Gloria Grahame, and Shelley Winters. Racism among thieves. No subtlety on that front, either. It's painful to hear people talk like that.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Variety says,

On one level, Odds against Tomorrow is a taut crime melodrama. On another, it is an allegory about racism, greed and man’s propensity for self-destruction. Not altogether successful in the second category, it still succeeds on its first.

The New York Times review from the time of the film's release calls it "a sharp, hard, suspenseful melodrama". 86% of Rotten Tomatoes critics like it.