This was hilarious.
Sorry, only for Fb peeps.
Foil Arms & Hog are great.
I’d not heard of them before.
We watched Presence last night, with Lucy Liu and the dude from This Is Us. It was kinda lame, especially considering this turned out to be a Steven Soderbergh flick. Meh.
Thankfully, it was a short movie, so we also watched the first two episodes of The Pitt, which we found engaging enough to keep watching, even though neither of us care for medical dramas or hospital soaps, i.e. never watched ER or The Practice.
Closest we’ve come was the very funny Childrens Hospital and Medical Police.
We found the realistic depiction of injuries and medical procedures harder to stomach than the splatter movies, where we don’t bat an eye. Go figger! 
Closed out the evening with the final two episodes of Atlanta, which was less of a brain cleanse than we hoped for given Al’s tractor mishap in the penultimate episode 
We’ll miss it, but I’m glad we finally watched it all.
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Wolfkin (2022) - dir. Jacques Molitor
Elaine is a single mom living in Brussels with her 10 year old son, Martin.Peter, Martin’s father, disappeared without explanation before Martin was born. Martin isn’t having an easy time of it. He’s disliked by kids at school and has begun lashing out violently. As his behavior grows more troubling, Elaine reaches out to Peter’s parents, whom she has never met. They are wealthy vineyard owners on an estate in Luxembourg. There, it’s revealed just what sort of family condition Martin has inherited.
Now, given the title, no points for guessing what that is.
Werewolf movies generally have to stretch in some way to avoid being tired rehashes of the same ‘duality of man’ themes and familiar sequences. Wolfkin manages this by putting some unexpected body horror transforms onto the character of a 10 year old (you feel genuinely bad for him), and for a third act that definitely did NOT go where I was expecting.
The acting and direction are solid, and there are only a couple of questionable effects shots. A fun, thoughtful monster movie.
Currently on Shudder and Tubi for streaming.
3.5/5 of grandma’s ’special’ meat pies.
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Sounds right up our alley! Thanks for the tip!
I got hooked on the PBS presentation of VELVET.
The series explores themes of love, family secrets, forbidden romances, money, fashion, drama, and entanglements, with a focus on the relationships between the characters. Where to Watch: You can stream “Velvet” on PBS.org and the free PBS App, as well as on platforms like Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and Vizio.
Maybe a chick flick, but engaging characters and fabulous 1950s bodies and fashion. (Lots of humping on office desks.)
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PBS’ Great Railway Journeys 30th Anniversary Show. Very scenic!
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So… Mad Men-ish?
Watched first episode of Running Point on Netflix and it’s pretty amusing. I was skeptical but started reading some good reviews and god knows we need laughs these days, Also watching the new season of Great British Menu on a site called hdclump. I’ve watched previous seasons on daily motion but this is working well. This week’s chefs were excellent and some great food being made.
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on Netflix, the billionth Manson documentary made. Chaos: the Manson Murders. have to admit the only reason i checked this out is b/c it was done by the great Errol Morris. i’m very familiar with this event, so nothing new to me. i welcomed the take down of the various inane conspiracy theories that have gained the most traction recently. the case is actually pretty simple.
(Velvet =) not like Mad Men. Mostly about several young women who were seamstresses for a couture company, Madrid, 1950s. Melodramatic romantic angst.
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third egg just hatched!
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… as evidenced by my confusing Grey’s Anatomy with The Practice.
I knew something didn’t seem right 
Yay!!! We used to watch the Sutton Center nests years ago. Haven’t viewed them in a long time.
They took up a lot of screen time at work.
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Phantom of the Opera (1925) - dir. Rupert Julian et al.
It’s the 100th anniversary of what film folks consider the first great American horror film. Previous efforts like The Golem, Nosferatu, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari were German efforts, and the expressionist photography would influence film forever going forward.
Phamtomwas the follow-up to Hunchback of Notre Dame, also starring Lon Chaney. The film went through tons of revisions, with Chaney himself even directing some scenes, including the most famous, where the Phantom’s mask is pulled off and his face is revealed.
Chaney’s makeup work still shocks and fascinates a century later, and along with his performance, it’s one of the best examples still existing of his work. The film clips along quite nicely, though it differs from its book origin in several important ways that were changed due to crowd reactions (yes, right from the start, studios were using focus groups).
The version currently on Shudder is the Kino Lorber restoration, which includes a new score and in tact color tinting and even early technicolor sequences.
It’s part of this season’s The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs, and I’d encourage you to watch his segments on the film. He goes in depth on the history of the film and the performers.
4/5 labyrinthine lairs beneath the opera house.
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The Girl with the Needle (2024) - dir. Magnus von Horn
It is 1919 in Copenhagen, and Karoline, a worker in a textile factory, is being evicted from her apartment. Her husband Peter has not contacted her since going off to WWI, but has not been officially reported as killed, so she cannot get window’s compensation. What follows are a series of decisions made out of desperation and a tense, DEEPLY disturbing psychological (’horror-adjacent’) drama, based, loosely, on the true story of Danish serial killer Dagmar Overbye.
The film opens with images of one character’s face being projected onto the face of another, and results are unsettling and even a little upsetting. Von Horn keeps this mood throughout, with masterful black and white photography and brilliant sound design that always seems to imply that something terrible is about to happen. And it often does. The shallow depth of focus and constrained 4:3 Academy aspect ratio not only echo the filmic styles of the era, they reinforce the claustrophobic, inescapable nature of the circumstances these characters find themselves in. The performances, particularly Vic Carmen Sonne as Karoline and Trine Dyrholm as Dagmar, are never less than riveting.
I cannot emphasize enough that this film is a serious emotional gut punch. Things like Lamthimos’ Killing of a Sacred Deer are dark, but it a calculated way. The extremity of it gives the viewer some distance. We can marvel at the darkness without being enveloped in it. The Girl with the Needle offers no such escape hatch. This is a movie about terrible systems that cause people to make terrible choices. The ending could offer one hope, or continuing despair, depending on one’s interpretation.
It is an astonishing film. It was (rightly) nominated for best foreign language film at both the Golden Globes and the Oscars. You really should make an effort to see it if you can. Just know that you’re signing up for a serious “feel bad” experience.
5/5. no cute joke here.
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First episode of new season of Righteous Gemstones was…righteous. Set during the Civil war, it’s the origin story of the family and how they became preachers. The first gemstone is played by Bradley Cooper and he does a great job. It’s definitely off beat and not that funny but beautifully done.
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I cannot wait to watch!!!
I was very impressed! With the cinematography, for starters. Some cool Matthew Brady references there, and a couple of nods to Gone With the Wind.
