In these alternative 1950s, after the “zombie wars”, life resumed in America within fenced in communities managed and policed by a corporation named Zomcon (zombie containment is their motto). Hordes of ‘untamed’ zombies roam the zones outside the communities’ perimeter, while within, domesticated zombies wearing electronic shock-collars serve the living delivering milk, papers, mowing lawns and acting as household help, etc.
Neighborhood watch
In order to keep up with the neighbors, Helen Robinson (Carrie Ann Moss) buys a domesticated zombie helper (Billy Connolly), much to her neurotic husband’s (Dylan Baker) dismay. Bill Robinson has a serious phobia of zombies since childhood, when his dad and uncle tried to eat his brain.
Certainly a very sore subject around the dinner table.
Bill is distant with his son Timmy (Kesun Loder) and pretty sadistic towards the zombie helper, zapping him for the slightest reason, and repeatedly. Timmy decides to call the zombie Fido and the two become friends, inasmuch as you can with a Z-dude.
Those familiar with this series know it has bugger-all to do with the movie franchise. Nada. No Jason Vorhees here, eh?
In this series from Canada, made when cars were in their cubist period and hair was BIG, an old dude by the name of Lewis Vendredi (meaning Friday in French, geddit?) has second thoughts on the deal he made with Satan and gets his soul repossessed as a result. [Insert current political jokes here]
Watch ole’ Lewis (R.G. Armstrong) buying the farm:
His antiques shop is then inherited by his nephews Micki Foster (Louise Robey) and Ryan Dallion (John D. LeMay). Soon after they take possession of the shop and try to decide what to do with it, they meet Jack Marshak (Chris Wiggins), a man who used to do business with the dear departed uncle. Or is that deported to hell?!?
Can they trust this old dude (he’s well above 30 and into the occult)?
Can Micki keep her fiancé panting whilst deciding which conditioner is best?
Hmmm… Since Monday’s a holiday (happy Columbus day everyone), no mail, no Netflix. No matter, I do have a film to review for Wednesday’s Midnight Movie Madness. Woof!
I’m really not a fan of revenge movies, I don’t particularly care for the “Dirty Harry” series, much less “Death Wish”. You can guess by extension, that the so-called “torture porn” movies are even less my thing as far as entertainment goes.
The Australian film “the horseman” seems on the surface to fit in neatly with at least the first two, but “horseman” is more of a Western for me.
Watch the trailer:
Strange? Maybe, but would you consider “the searchers” (John Ford, 1956) a revenge movie..?
The language of Westerns is spare, and plain. Surviving in the face of great odds and hardships, natural or otherwise, dictates humility and economy.
Some films have clever dialogue and good one liners. It is telling that the imdb page for “the horseman” has no ‘memorable quotes’, not one, and that is a really good thing. This isn’t Schwarzenegger or Tarantino territory.
I will not include spoilers in this review. The premise is that a man receives news of his daughter’s death under more than questionable circumstances. We understand from the first few minutes that she was a runaway, and had taken part in some cheap, semi-underground porno.
The man (Peter Marshall) wears a pest control uniform with his name, Christian, on it. Make what you will of the occupation or the name.
When Christian finds out about the porno film, he sets out to find the people who made it and kill them. The majority of reviews call this a revenge movie, and again, I don’t see this as Christian’s motivation. Rather, I see a man needing cleansing from the filth that reached him through his daughter.
He was done and ready to go home about mid-way through the film, there was no desire to keep on killing, especially after having bonded with a runaway (Caroline Marohasy) the age of his daughter, he’d done what needed doing.
The cinematography is stark, shadows are intense and light feels at times like a harsh glint. In fact, watching Christian’s face is like watching the planes and contours of a steel hammer. Reading his expressions is noting the imperfections in the metal, Marshall’s performance is minimalist and perfectly suited and nuanced.
His violence is purposeful, as opposed to the sadism demonstrated by another later in the film. And for realism, simply keep in mind a scene involving a handcuffs’ key, and later on, the way a man sounds after getting stabbed in the chest (no, not with the key).
There is nothing pleasant about “the horseman”, thankfully. It is however very well acted and suspenseful, a proper and very distinct descendant of “get Carter” (Mike Hodges, 1971) and should make first time director Steven Kastrissios someone to keep an eye on. The same certainly applies to the cast, Marshall in particular.
This is a real life horror story which is dying along with those people who lived it. So many things about it are hard to fathom and I don’t just mean the sheer size of the disaster, nor its duration.
Life on the Plains during the Dust Bowl has never been depicted in films. Ask people and they’ll counter with “the grapes of wrath” which showed a family who had moved away from the disaster, to California. A tangential story.
On the Plains, some of those who stayed formed “the last man club” and vowed to wait it out. Die hards led by a bit of a blow hard named McCarty who turned out not to be last to leave.
A dust storm approaching Spearman. In: “Monthly Weather Review,” Volume 63, April 1935, p. 148. Image ID: wea01422, NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) Collection
Eight years of drought, of dust storms of epic proportions, record heat, of futile efforts to seal homes from dust so fine it got everywhere, in people’s food, skin, lungs, of days turned to such darkness you could not see further than a few feet and at worst, not even the hand if front of your face.
Birds flew away until they dropped from exhaustion and were covered up in billowing dust.
People who had survived through the Spanish flu had to wear masks again, this time to keep the dust out, which could not be stopped, slowly suffocating out there in the open.
The plains were becoming a tomb, impossible amounts of dirt lifted hundreds of feet up into the sky and swept across the land, burying everything, killing man and beast alike.
Plagues of locusts and swarms of jack rabbits left nothing behind.
Dust buried farms and equipment, killed livestock, and caused human death and misery during the height of the Dust Bowl years. In: “Monthly Weather Review,” June 1936, p.196. Image ID: wea01408, NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) Collection
Children dreamed of the rabbits’ screaming as they were culled on Sundays with sticks and rods.
Static electricity generated by the storms was powerful enough to knock men down if they shook hands. People got to wearing gloves, along with the masks. Cars drug chains tied to their rear bumper in order to ground the vehicles. In the spring of 1935, winds blew non-stop for 27 days. Near Amarillo, Texas, a crow’s nest was found, made entirely of pieces of barbed wire, the only material to be found by the bird. Some folks went mad. Some suffocated while others succumbed to dust pneumonia. There were murder-suicides.
Dallas, South Dakota Source: United States Department of Agriculture; Image Number: 00di0971
Towns put up signs warning those who’d left the Plains to keep moving on as they couldn’t take care of their own.
And yet, whatever lessons there were to learn were not, by and large. The three horsemen of the terrible thirties will ride again.
The above section was written by Lastech. The section below was written by Rudha-an.
Credit for the first two pictures goes to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce and the collection can be found here by using the search function. http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/index.html
Surviving the Dust Bowl is a part of the PBS series “American Experience”. While not a great documentary, it makes a good companion piece to the Timothy Egan’s book above. Several of the people interviewed were featured in the book. Warning, there is footage of the rabbit culling that can be rather disturbing.
This documentary gets 3 beans.
Last, but not least, we leave you with a song by Woody Guthrie. Guthrie grew up in OK, and was living in the Texas panhandle when the storm that gave the Dust Bowl its name occurred. It happened on April 14, 1935 and it was so huge that many people believed it was the end of the world. It was known as Black Sunday. Woody recorded this song for the Library of Congress. The real name of the song is “Dusty Ole Dust”.
A tad late today, we have been celebrating hubby’s newly found employment after almost 6 months of wandering through the wilderness.
Though we are celebrating, it is with some sober consideration for millions of other Americans who are either still out of work or losing their job.
Big brother watching over naked brotherTaking care of one another
The more I read on Sphynxes, the more I get to understand how typical Mazuzu Whang is… I’m beginning to think of him as our Sphynxy-pooh.
Now a brief word before I continue, to encourage you to play some “golf” and hit some links: check out our blogroll and links on the right for cat and media stuff. We all need the traffic and your comments are always welcome.
Where was I? Yes. I came across this: sphynxforum (requires membership)
And it was comforting to know Mazuzu’s butt-in-the-face wake up call is not of his own invention. It appears these cats need a back up alarm like trucks, so any inventors out there, take note..!
I’d wondered how to tackle this subject but now I realize I’m not alone, I’ll try to ‘splain.
Mazuzu maneuvers in strange ways… When I reach out to pet him, instead of leaning into my hand, he will back up. Without looking of course.
His tail is always up like a whip antenna, which I gather is a sign of contentment, and yes okay, I’m grateful for that, butt…. (pun intended)
Does this towel make my butt look big?
That means he, ummm, “contacts” places and things I wish he wouldn’t. I’ve learned to reach from the side and give his flank some scritches to foil the dreaded maneuver.
In a previous post I mentioned it’d be good to stock up on baby wipes, because that butt is gonna need the occasional “once over”.
As in when we give Mazuzu a bath, he straightens out his legs, toes splayed up, knowing his nether regions are going to get cleaned, and I can read his expression:
“Ye gads! NO! GOD NO! Stay away from there!”
But we’re done before he knows it…
Now, before I got used to his “antics”, meaning I learned to sleep with one eye open, the infamous plug incident happened.
On this particular night, I felt him stir between us. Didn’t realize he was moving.
I opened an eye.
My brain tried to make sense of what was happening.
I tried to make out his face but that wasn’t what I was seeing. Before I could even begin to understand, he shoved his butt up my right nostril.
I-was-breathing-in…
I compensated for my stomach beginning to heave by accelerating towards the bathroom at warp 9 point 8, grabbed the hand-washing soap, upended it and squirted up my nose, resulting in pain beyond the worst brain-freeze I ever felt.
Once it all became clear, my wife couldn’t stop laughing and Mazuzu stopped licking his extended hind leg to look at me as though I was crazy.
I’d rather have locked lips with a jumping crocodile. So beware the butt-in-the-face wake up call…
Somewhere deep in Australia’s Northern Territory, a group of tourists embarks on a tour boat piloted by guide Kate Ryan (Rhada Mitchell). As they prepare to turn back in the late afternoon, the group notices flares going up somewhere deep in sacred aboriginal land.
Reluctantly, they push on in search of the distressed party.
As they consider returning to town, in a wider part of the river forming a lake with a tiny mud island at the center, they come upon a small boat partly submerged and nothing else. Before they have a chance to discuss their next move, their boat is almost lifted out of the water by a huge crocodile hitting them from below.
With the hull breached and rapidly taking water, Ryan steers towards the island and beaches the craft.
With the tide rising and ill-equipped tourists far away from civilization, the group’s survival comes in serious doubt, especially as the huge crocodile begins to pick them off in an inexplicable display of aggression.
Watch the trailer:
Director Greg McLean describes “Rogue” as an old style horror film and I suspect he refers to his suggestion of violence rather than graphic displays. In fact “Rogue” uses both and it’s a good blend. Some reviewers took issue with the pacing, others with a perceived lack of gore. There are several things which set “Rogue” apart from other entries in the so-called killer-croc sub-genre.
One of these are the locations. The setting of the film, the Northern Territory, is one of the main characters, absolutely stunning from the features of the landscape, waters, sky and shifting colors beautifully captured by Will Gibson, the director of photography. Sadly, he passed away in March 2007, and from what I’ve seen in the extras and the way he shot the film, I’m sure he must be dearly missed.
Anyone who loves the outdoors owes it to themselves to check out “Rogue”: footage of this quality and of this part of the world is all too rare.
The music score, written by Frank Tetaz, is excellent: while I was always aware of it, I never felt it intruded, as others have.
The extras have him describe how he integrated certain tonalities to not only ‘support’ the action and mood but define characters: tapping strings on violins and violas, using wooden and metal containers immersed in water as percussion instruments and a simple piece he composed as a foundation for improvised Aboriginal vocalizations.
Very well thought out, and best: it works great, not unlike the soundtrack designed for “winged migration”.
As mentioned above, McLean effectively ‘suggested’ some of the kills, using clever editing and scene set-up rather than showing people getting chomped. This gave those kills he did show more impact. And those were complex scenes to design, between stunt work, CGI, mechanical crocs and editing. What gore there is has more of an impact, not just because it looked very real, but because there wasn’t that much of it throughout the movie. He had a fairly solid group of actors as well, with some unspoken characterization notes, glances, looks and smiles which actually worked better than much of the dialogue, which was on the weak side.
Where McLean avoided gratuitous gore, he gave in to gratuitous cussing, which was unnecessary and ‘jarred’ a little.
Given the shooting conditions, heat, humidity, flies, having real crocs and snakes around, not to mention spending a fair amount of time in murky waters, the actors pushed themselves. As Michael Vartan, who plays American travel writer Pete McKell, says in the extras, he did not have to act afraid, he was terrified. There is a real element of danger shooting a movie in an uncontrolled environment, especially doing take after take in the water as Sam Worthington had to do, knowing a three meter crocodile had been seen in the area. Sure, there are security guys with rifles around, but as they told the actors: “if we have to use the rifle it’s too late.”
And the mechanical croc head with chomping jaws? You can hear them clamp shut hard in the final confrontation in the crocodile’s lair, as Vartan humorously put it, he ‘peed a little’, you’ll know why once you hear that sound: special effects or not, that mechanical croc head could take a limb off.
This was a work intensive production for sure. The island on which the tour party seeks refuge was man made for the movie, in an artificial (and large) lake. The croc’s lair was a set on a sound stage, and the CGI and animatronics were complex blends of real and digital.
I don’t know how much of a return was made on this movie but it deserves to have done well: it is superior in most respects to others in the genre and I would rank it up there with “jaws”.
Paráklētos, “one who consoles, one who intercedes on our behalf, a comforter or an advocate”
Tito was born in the SPCA shelter, and somehow I think this really increased his survival chances. Big as he is now, he was a watchful little runt at 8 weeks old.
Normally, a cat turns his head to look at something and track it, but Tito’s eyes would look you up and down, as though he felt it wasn’t safe to move much and draw attention to himself.
They called him the Goober
On his early photos, he seems to “cower” a little, as he did when he was brought in for us to meet, a tiny ball of gray fur at the bottom of a big box.
He had a paranoid look in those kitten eyes losing the last of their cloudiness they have for the first weeks of their life.
Tito just turned 2 last month, and how did he change…
The eyes have it
We adopted him as a “transition” cat, once Soza had been diagnosed with Lymphoma. The last two years of Soza’s life were skirmishes with the disease, leaving him at times too exhausted to even eat. We became somewhat proficient at administering fluids subcutaneously between his shoulder blades. My wife would keep me posted on his status while I was at work, and even 150cc marked the difference between another day or the final trip to the vet clinic.
I didn’t want us coming home to empty rooms. That’s what brought us home from the shelter that day.
As much as we learned about the economy of a true fighter like this cat, these months took their toll. This month will be the first year anniversary of Soza’s passing.
Once we got he and Tito introduced, they became fast buddies and spent much time grooming each other, which usually deteriorated in wrestling matches.
Best friends
They even had the occasional high speed chase, making Soza as happy as we all could be. But his stamina was diminishing.
Tito didn’t have the chance to be the rambunctious young cat he should have been, especially as he soon outgrew Soza. His routine became regular checks on the older cat, maybe batting a toy around and always, always looking at us inquisitively with his green eyes. He began putting on weight, even though he never over ate, he simply wasn’t getting the exercise he needed.
After the day came, he would roam the apartment, sniffing at Soza’s preferred spots, and when he gave me that questioning look, it twisted something inside.
While Tito never was a lap kitty, Soza used to entice him to curl up on our bed and sleep there. But then that stopped, too. I never fully understood his thing about shoes: he will drop his toys inside our shoes, bat at the laces and generally play with them. But when we put said shoes on, his pupils dilate and he runs away, low to the ground, hiding until they come off.
A couple months passed before we felt it was time for another cat.
Brothers
We looked for a cat who was social, playful and highly interactive to hopefully make up part of Tito’s lost year. Even writing this, it feels to me as though this column’s again about another cat when it should be Tito’s time to shine. And maybe that’s his lot in life, he doesn’t like the spotlight.
Still, the complete abandon with which he plays with Mazuzu is a joy to behold, as was his expression of disbelief the first few times they chased each other around the house: Tito only wants to run and run forever.
