The Bleak House of Blahs 90210

Months ago, I asked Bing Image Generator to craft a portrait of Ron, Allan, Carrie, and me mowing the lawn in front of the Bleak House of Blahs. I tried to describe our younger selves as accurately as possible, but Bing insisted in turning all of us into fitness models. Of course the faces are completely wrong, because I haven't modeled any of us; I need a far better computer for that, and of course even then I wouldn't without consent. 

That genie is probably out of the box, though. I'm sure it won't be long before anyone who's ever posted even a single photo of themselves on the internet will eventually find themselves artificially generated one way or another. Carrie herself, though, should be safe, as she's never had any social media presence. Good foresight! 

Note, too, how primitive these images seem compared to what generative AI is capable of now. The singularity approaches...

The Last Conversation

Allan's Car

For some reason, I took this photo of Allan's car parked in front of his house on a summer day in 1999, the year before he moved to California. Maybe it was the rainbow. The car went to California with Allan. 

Reflections on an Ancient Ambulance

Photograph, 1993. 

2 Questions

When 15 members of the University of Alberta Star Trek Club and the University of Alberta Scuba Club crammed ourselves into a 15-person van for a road trip from Edmonton to Los Angeles, we had to find ways to amuse ourselves during the 27-hour drive. Some suggested 20 Questions, and when my turn came to ask the questions, sometime during deepest midnight, I started with the obvious:

"Is it bigger than a breadbox?" I asked Allan, who harboured the answer in his mind.

"Yes," he said.

A sudden flash of intuition hit me.

"Is if the pyramids?"

Allan's eyes bulged in shock, and he reared back in his seat.

"WHAT..how...but...yes. It's the pyramids."

Of course I'm not suggesting a paranormal explanation; it was just a moment of whimsy on my part that, against all odds, happened to be correct. But the look on Allan's face was spectacular. 

The Suffering of SimEarl

A few days ago, I pointed readers to a story on Jeff Shyluk's Visual Blog that showed how Jeff had made custom skins for The Sims back in the early 2000s. And now, thanks to Allan Sampson, I'm sharing a glimpse of how Jeff's very abstract-looking art looked when overlaid onto the Sims in-game models. Allan shared four screenshots of SimEarl in various stages of content (reading a newspaper, upper left) or distress (lacking nice furniture, playing chess in lonely solitude, and passing out in the street). I'm very grateful to Jeff for creating the Sims skins in the first place, and to Allan for capturing these screenshots. 

Meanwhile, on Jeff Shyluk's Visual Blog: Sim Bleak House

A couple of weeks ago I found an old CD-ROM with some of my friend Jeff's art, specifically, art he'd created to customize characters in popular sandbox computer simulation The Sims. Jeff and I had a brief e-mail exchange about the old files, and I wrote, in part:

"I'm sure you created these skins for either the first iteration of The Sims, or The Sims 2 at the latest - but I'm sure it was The Sims. I, too, recreated the Bleak House of Blahs to run SimEarl, SimCarrie, SimRon and SimAllan through their paces, and I can still feel the bruises from the belly laughs. Most disturbing was the misery the Sims endured, how perfectly it mirrored our early-20s ennui and angst. I loved it most when one or more of us peed our pants with a plaintive 'Poo poo pee dee!' I was happy to see your memories captured in your recent blog post."

To see 1990s me, Allan, Carrie and Ron brought to virtual life, check out Jeff's story on the subject. 

The Wrong Turn

Many years ago--sometime during the early-to-mid 1990s--I was out with my friends Jeff, Susan, Tony, Steven and Ron. Carrie and Allan may have been there too. We were out searching for films to play for our semi-regular bad movie night. Back in those halcyon days, we would visit video rental stores and pore over racks and racks of VHS cassettes. Sometimes the trip itself was as fun or more than the movies themselves.

In this particular instance, we spotted a video store in the Oliver district of Edmonton, in the strip mall that hosts a Brit's Fish & Chips now. We sauntered in and started browsing, and within a few minutes we all realized that the entire store consisted only of the porn section...it was, in fact, an adult video store, a fact that all of us somehow missed. We skittered out, tittering nervously, faces flushed with embarrassed laughter. We were all close, but not so close that we had any interest in perusing pornography together; we were not nearly so hip.

I don't recall if we regrouped to find another video store or if we wound up playing board games or something. It's funny how some memories stick, while others flutter off into invisibility. 

Abandoned Review of Transition, by Iain M. Banks

Back in October 2009, I started writing a review of Iain M. Banks' Transition, a novel about parallel universes and, tangentially, eclipses. For reasons unknown to me now, I abandoned the review; only four short paragraphs remain. I post them here because the review opens with a recounting of a conversation I had with my friend Allan back when we were roommates in the Bleak House of Blahs. That conversation has always lingered with me, now more than ever, for reasons that will soon become clear. What the conversation had to do with Transition, I don't recall.

Here's the text:

Sometime during the summer of 1992 or 1993 - one of the summers, at least, during the time of the Bleak House of Blahs - Allan and I talked about the times. He was sitting in front of his Commodore Amiga.

"For all we know," Allan said, "Even with all the terrible things that are happening in the world, a hundred years from now people might look back at the 90s and think of them as a golden age."

"Or they could think that way even ten or fifteen years from now," I said.

This conversation with Allan has stuck in my mind for some years now, and it was brought back to vivid life as I read the opening chapters of Iain M. Banks' newest novel, Transition. 

Starring Earl as Earl in Toilet Chase

As the video above explains, I'm playing the part of myself as I appeared in Toilet Chase, an unproduced screenplay from the early 1990s. I'm unsure, as of yet, how to critique my own performance, except to say that I need to keep Brendan Hunter's advice in mind: this is a more intimate performance format than some others, so I need to be cautious about overplaying some moments, as I feel I have here. I also noted some engineering issues - I clearly have to figure out how to properly set the microphone, my own position, and my own volume levels.

Even with the hiccups, this was a fun exercise. Wouldn't it be cool if Jeff, Ron, Susan and Allan recorded their parts? Then I could create a real radio play, and the dream of producing some version of Toilet Chase would be reality. Heck, Jeff could animate it! 

Civ Weekend

Although my copy of Civilization VI appeared midweek and I did play for a couple of furtive hours on Tuesday night, I'm devoting this weekend to exploring the highly anticipated game in full as soon as I finish posting here tonight. It astounds me that I played the first Civilization on my Atari 520 ST back in 1992, when Ron and Allan and I were living in the Bleak House of Blahs. I wonder if I'll be around to play Civilization XII in about 50 years...well, not if I sit on my butt all the time playing Civilization, I suppose! 

Allan and the Suction Cup Dart

One evening, sometime between 10 and 15 years ago, my friend Allan stuck a suction cup dart to his forehead. I found this extremely amusing, so much so that I had an uncontrollable laughing fit. Allan was somewhat nonplussed by my reaction, which grew even more extreme when he pulled the dart off his forehead, revealing a prominent red welt. I begged Allan to let me take a photograph or two (one with the dart, one with the welt), but he refused, for eminently sensible reasons.

Luckily my friend Jeff has used his painterly skills to recreate the moment. Please visit JSVB to see. 

2058 Films

Ever since Bruce and Leslie asked me how many books I thought I read in a year, I've felt an increasingly overwhelming urge to catalogue not just what I'm reading now, but everything I've ever read. This mild obsession has extended to cataloguing every film I've seen and television series I've completed.

I've been using Letterboxd to log the films I've seen, and tonight I crossed the 2,000 film mark; indeed, I've catalogued 2,058 films, and I know that doesn't cover every film I've ever seen because I keep remembering more. Only tonight did I realize I'd forgotten to log Zero Effect, Xanadu, Vamp, Stripes, The Mummy, Red Dawn and many others. Remembering which films I've seen recently is relatively easy compared to digging out memories of movie nights from decades ago.

Letterboxd has a wide range of cool features, but I discovered one tonight that I really like a lot: it will sort your list of films by decade or even year. It's easy to see how many films you've watched from each of the dozen or so decades of the art.

So here's my list - at least as it stands today:

1900s: 4
1910s: 15
1920s: 22
1930s: 96
1940s: 109
1950s: 179
1960s: 207
1970s: 245
1980s: 335
1990s: 347
2000s: 300
2010s: 196

It's an almost disappointingly linear increase through the decades, with the exception of a small dropoff from the 1990s to the 2000s and a bigger drop from the 2000s to the 2010s (although to be fair, this decade is only a little half over).

As for individual years, the winner is 1998; I've seen 44 films released from that year. They are: The Thin Red Line, Shakespeare in Love, A Simple Plan, Star Trek: Insurrection, Babe: Pig in the City, Enemy of the State, American History X, Apt Pupil, Soldier, What Dreams May Come, Antz, Pleasantville, Rushmore, Elizabeth, Ronin, Run Lola Run, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, The Avengers, Ever After (which I reviewed in The Peak), Saving Private Ryan, The Mark of Zorro, Pi, Armageddon, The X Files, Free Enterprise, The Truman Show, Godzilla, Bulworth, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Deep Impact, Tarzan and the Lost City, The Big Hit, From the Earth to the Moon (HBO miniseries), Lost in Space, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Dark City, Burn Hollywood Burn, The Big Lebowski, The Replacement Killers, Zero Effect, Gods and Monsters, and Great Expectations. Of these, of course, I caught most on DVD or Blu-Ray or movie channels after their initial release; but I did catch a few of these films in theatres, including Shakespeare in Love (with Leslie, maybe, or do I just associate her with Shakespeare?), A Simple Plan (with Allan, I think), Star Trek: Insurrection, Soldier, What Dreams May Come, Antz, Pleasantville (with Kim, I think), How Stella Got Her Groove Back (with Parvesh in California), The Mark of Zorro, The X Files, The Truman Show (with Allan and Leslie, I think), Godzilla (with Sean?), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Tarzan and the Lost City (in St. Albert's theatre for some reason), Lost in Space (again with Allan, I think), Dark City, The Big Lebowski, and The Replacement Killers (maybe with Pete, Mike and Jeff Pitts?). Quite a year.

Several years are only represented by one film: 1900 (Cyrano de Bergerac), 1903 (The Great Train Robbery), 1917 (Bucking Broadway), 1918 (Take a Chance), 1921 (The Kid), 1922 (Nosferatu), and 1926 (The General). And of course, there are several years from the 1900s and 1910s from which I've seen zero films. But not for long - thanks, YouTube!

So there's my pitifully small sampling of the world of film as it stands today. As I continue to pore over my records and memories, I'll improve the list's fidelity. Let's see how many I've racked up by the end of the year...

Super Foul Mouthed

Back when I lived in the Bleak House of Blahs, I had a stand-up cardboard Superman given to me by the folks at comic store Warp One. One day Ron or Allan added a dialogue balloon with an inspirational phrase lettered across it. On another occasion, though, one of them wrote something so indecent and out of character that I was stunned senseless, as captured in this photo. I don't believe you can make out the awful text at this resolution - at least, I hope not! 

Disneyline

In 1992, the University of Alberta Star Trek Club, accompanied by the University of Alberta Scuba Club, packed into a van and drove to Disneyland. Here we are waiting in line for a ride; I don't remember which one. Nor do I remember why I looked unimpressed, because it was an amazing trip. 

Movies I Watched in 2015

It turns out that I watched a lot of movies in 2015 - more than ever before, an almost embarrassing number: 209. However, this year I started counting short films, not because I wanted to inflate my numbers, but because I think they deserve their due. About 40 of the films I watched in 2015 were shorts, including five screened at the Edmonton International Film Festival, a bunch of Chaplin shorts viewed on YouTube, and a wonderful batch of really excellent and interesting 3D pictures on my favourite Blu-Ray of the year, 3D Rarities. 

I saw a bunch of great movies this year; I'm especially fond of the short The House is Innocent, about a couple who buy a house that was the site of an infamous multiple murder and make it their own with their own special brand of macabre humour; Ex Machina, the last film I watched in 2015, a tightly written examination of the possibilities of strong AI; Whiplash, my favourite of the 2014 Best Picture nominees; Witness for the Prosecution, which features a performance twist so incredible I nearly jumped out of my seat; the bleak and unforgettable The Spy Who Came in From the Cold; my favourite film of 2015, Mad Max: Fury Road; the creepy and revelatory Nightcrawler; the laugh-out-loud, lives-up-to-the-promise-of-its-trailer Kung Fury; the horrifying and yet beautiful The Wicker Man; Woody Allen's disturbing Crimes and Misdemeanors; the surprisingly excellent, badly-titled SF action film Edge of Tomorrow; Ant-Man, another fun hit from Marvel; Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation, the second great Mission: Impossible film in a row; The Breakfast Club, a film I really should have watched when it was released; the breathtaking and inspirational The Martian; the surprisingly good Keanu Reeves vehicle John Wick; Ingmar Bergman's magnificent Persona; the sad and haunting Midnight Cowboy; and 2015's likely Best Picture winner, Spotlight. 

Disappointments included the latest Bond film, Spectre; the undercooked The Talented Mr. Ripley; The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything, which to my mind glossed over the accomplishments of two great scientists; Akira, which I found underwhelming given its reputation; Roman Polanski's meandering Tess; and the good but not great Bridge of Spies. 

Just plain terrible films included Fantastic Four, Jupiter Ascending and Sinbad: The Fifth Voyage. I also suffered through the Fast & Furious catalogue, which includes seven bad but oddly compelling bromance action films. 

I knocked at least 20 Best Picture nominees of my list this year, and possibly more, depending on if any of the 2015 films I screened wind up being nominated for this year. 

Unlike my reading list, which is heavily weighted toward science fiction, my film tastes are more diverse; oddly enough, comedies topped my list this year, followed closely by SF, documentaries and straight dramas. While about a quarter of the films I screened were released in this decade, the rest are spread pretty evenly through the 20th century. 

This year Allan introduced me to Letterboxd, the social media hub for film nerds, and I've been busily filling in, to the best of my memory and fragmented records, every movie I've ever seen. I've collected all of my existing film reviews there, along with a couple of new lists and new short reviews as the mood strikes me. Those interested should feel free to peruse my Letterboxd profile. 

Without further ado, here's the list: 

January: 13

The Quatermass Experiment (Sam Miller, 2005)

Safety Last (Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor, 1923)

Take a Chance (Alfred J. Goulding, 1918)

Young Mr. Jazz (Hal Roach, 1919)

His Royal Slyness (Hal Roach, 1920)

The Talented Mr. Ripley (Anthony Minghella, 1999)

The Thief of Bagdad (Michael Powell and Ludwig Berger and Tim Whelan, 1940)

The Lion Has Wings (Michael Powell and Brian Desmond Hurst and Adrian Brunel, 1939)

Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius (David Gill and Kevin Brownlow, 1989)

A Sammy in Siberia (Hal Roach, 1919)

A Slight Case of Murder (Lloyd Bacon, 1938)

Prince of Darkness (John Carpenter, 1987)

Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014)

February: 7

American Sniper (Clint Eastwood, 2014)

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (Alejandro G. Inarritu, 2014)

Boyhood (Richard Linklater, 2014)

Whiplash (Damien Chazelle, 2014)

The Theory of Everything (James Marsh, 2014)

Selma (Ava DuVernay, 2014)

The Imitation Game (Morten Tyldum, 2014)

March: 10

When Worlds Collide (Rudolph Mate, 1951)

Westworld (Michael Crichton, 1973)

Futureworld (Richard T. Heffron, 1976)

Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo, 1988)

Father of the Bride (Vincente Minnelli, 1950)

Father’s Little Dividend (Vincente Minnelli, 1951)

Revenge of the Ninja (Sam Firstenberg, 1983)

Ninja III: The Domination (Sam Firstenberg, 1984)

Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979)

Sinbad: The Fifth Voyage (Shahin Sean Solimon, 2014)

April: 22

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (Alex Gibney, 2015)

Murder by Death (Robert Moore, 1976)

Jodorowsky’s Dune (Frank Pavich, 2013)

Dune (David Lynch, 1984)

Hollow Man (Paul Verhoeven, 2000)

The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980)

The Seven Year Itch (Billy Wilder, 1955)

1941 (Steven Spielberg, 1979)

The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012)

Witness for the Prosecution (Billy Wilder, 1957)

City for Conquest (Anatole Litvak, 1940)

San Quentin (Lloyd Bacon, 1937)

Each Dawn I Die (William Keighley, 1939)

Bullets or Ballots (William Keighley, 1936)

Smart Money (Alfred E. Green, 1931)

The Mayor of Hell (Archie Mayo, 1933)

Picture Snatcher (Lloyd Bacon, 1933)

Lady Killer (Roy Del Ruth, 1933)

Cyrano de Bergerac (Clement Maurice, 1900)

Jack and the Beanstalk (Edwin S. Porter, 1902)

Black Legion (Archie Mayo, 1937)

Brother Orchid (Lloyd Bacon, 1940)

May: 14

Avengers: Age of Ultron (Joss Whedon, 2015)

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (Martin Ritt, 1965)

The Little Giant (Roy Del Ruth, 1933)

Kid Galahad (Michael Curtiz, 1937)

Tombstone (George P. Cosmatos, 1993)

Superman Unbound (James Tucker, 2013)

The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (Anatole Litvak, 1938)

Invisible Stripes (Lloyd Bacon, 1939)

Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)

Larceny, Inc. (Lloyd Bacon, 1942)

Public Enemies: The Golden Age of the Gangster Film (Constantine Nasr, 2008)

Kung Fury (David Sandberg, 2015)

Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen, 1989)

Fury (David Ayer, 2014)

June: 5

The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973)

Time Lapse (Bradley King, 2014)

Three Kings (David O. Russell, 1999)

Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

Project Almanac (Dean Israelite, 2015)

July: 12

Jupiter Ascending (The Wachowskis, 2015)

Life Itself (Steve James, 2014)

The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened? (Jon Schnepp, 2015)

The Raid: Redemption (Gareth Huw Evans, 2011)

Edge of Tomorrow (Doug Liman, 2014)

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (Herbert Ross, 1976)

The Natural (Barry Levinson, 1984)

Cotton Comes to Harlem (Ossie Davis, 1970)

The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973)

Ant-Man (Peyton Reed, 2015)

The Fast and the Furious (Rob Cohen, 2001)

2 Fast 2 Furious (John Singleton, 2003)

August: 17

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (Christopher McQuarrie, 2015)

Fast & Furious (Justin Lin, 2009)

Fast Five (Justin Lin, 2011)

Fast & Furious 6 (Justin Lin, 2013)

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (Justin Lin, 2006)

Furious 7 (James Wan, 2015)

Prelude to Axanar (Christian Gossett, 2014)

Aelita: Queen of Mars (Yakov Protazanov, 1924)

Skippy (Norman Taurog, 1931)

Probe (Russ Mayberry, 1972)

Star Trek: Renegades (Tim Russ, 2015)

To Trap a Spy (Don Medford, 1964)

One of Our Spies is Missing (E. Darrell Hallenbeck, 1966)

The Breakfast Club (John Hughes, 1985)

The Spy with My Face (John Newland, 1965)

One Spy Too Many (Joseph Sargent, 1966)

The Spy in the Green Hat (Joseph Sargent, 1967)

                             

September: 15

The Karate Killers (Barry Shear, 1967)

How to Steal the World (Sutton Roley, 1968)

The Helicopter Spies (Boris Sagal, 1968)

The Bubble (Arch Oboler, 1966)

The 27^th Day (William Asher, 1957)

The Night the World Exploded (Fred F. Sears, 1957)

The H-Man (Ishiro Honda, 1958)

12 to the Moon (David Bradley, 1959)

Battle in Outer Space (Ishiro Honda, 1959)

Valley of the Dragons (Edward Bernds, 1961)

The Italian Connection (Fernando Di Leo, 1972)

Super Fuzz (Sergio Corbucci, 1980)

Wild, Wild Planet (Antonio Margheriti, 1965)

Murder, My Sweet (Edward Dmytryk, 1944)

The Broadway Melody (Harry Beaumont, 1929)

                                                                                                                                             

October: 39

Lego Batman The Movie: DC Super Heroes Unite (Jon Burton, 2013)

Terms of Endearment (James L. Brooks, 1983)

Movies of the Future (William van Doren Kelley, 1923)

Thru the Trees – Washington, D.C. (William van Doren Kelley, 1923)

Plastigrams (Jacob Leventhal and Frederick E. Ives, 1924)

Stereoscopiks (Jacob Leventhal and Frederick E. Ives, 1924)

Ouch (Jacob Leventhal and Frederick E. Ives, 1925)

Runaway Taxi (Jacob Leventhal and Frederick E. Ives, 1925)

Audioscokpiks (Jacob Leventhal and John Norling, 1936)

Thrills for You (Pennsylvania Railroad, 1940)

New Dimensions (Chrysler, 1940)

Now is the Time (Norman McLaren, 1951)

Around and Around (Norman McLaren, 1951)

O Canada (Evelyn Lambart, 1952)

Twirligig (Gretta Eckman, 1952)

Bolex Stereo (Bolex, 1952)

M.L. Gunzburg Presents Natural Vision 3-Dimension (Milton Gunzburg, 1952)

Rocky Marciano vs. Jersey Joe Walcott (John Boyle, 1953)

Stardust in Your Eyes (Phil Tucker, 1953)

Doom Town (Gerald Schnitzer, 1953)

The Adventures of Sam Space (Paul Sprunck, 1960)

I’ll Sell My Shirt (Dan Sonney, 1953)

Boo Moon (Izzy Sparber and Seymour Kneitel, 1953)

The Champ (King Vidor, 1931)

Mo’s Bows (Jennifer Treuting and Kristen McGregor, 2015)

The House is Innocent (Nicholas Coles, 2015)

We Live This (James Burns, 2015)

Happy Town: The Surf Suit (Frederick Kroetsch, 2015)

All-American Family (Andrew Jenks, 2015)

The Martian (Ridley Scott, 2015)

Tess (Roman Polanski, 1979)

Parallels (Christopher Leone, 2015)

Night of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur, 1957)

Curse of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur, 1957)

White Zombie (Victor Halperin, 1932)

Night of the Ghouls (Edward D. Wood Jr., 1958)             

Tales from the Crypt (Freddie Francis, 1972)

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (Charles Barton, 1948)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Rouben Mamoulian, 1932)

November: 16

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Victor Fleming, 1941)

The Walking Dead (Michael Curtiz, 1936)

Frankenstein 1970 (Howard W. Kock, 1958)

You’ll Find Out (David Butler, 1940)

Zombies on Broadway (Gordon Douglas, 1945)

I Walked with a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur, 1943)

The Body Snatcher (Robert Wise, 1945)

Isle of the Dead (Mark Robson, 1945)

Bedlam (Mark Robson, 1946)

Spectre (Sam Mendes, 2015)

The Leopard Man (Jacques Tourneur, 1943)

The Ghost Ship (Mark Robson, 1943)

The Seventh Victim (Mark Robson, 1943)

Shadows in the Dark: The Val Lewton Legacy (Constantine Nasr, 2005)

Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows (Kent Jones, 2007)

Cinderella (Kenneth Branagh, 2015)

December: 48

Edward Scissorhands (Tim Burton, 1990)

Sleepy Hollow (Tim Burton, 1999)

Catch Me if You Can (Steven Spielberg, 2002)

Hard Eight (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1996)

Aliens of the Deep (James Cameron, 2005)

Sleuth (Kenneth Branagh, 2007)

The Magic Flute (Kenneth Branagh, 2006)

Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999)

The Space Children (Jack Arnold, 1958)

Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

Piranha II: The Spawning (James Cameron, 1981)

Xenogenesis (James Cameron, 1978)

The Toughest Gun in Tombstone (Earl Bellamy, 1958)

Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958)

The Last of the Mohicans (Michael Mann, 1992)

Inside Job (Charles Ferguson, 2010)

Mr. Nobody (Jaco Van Dormael, 2009)

Rachel, Rachel (Paul Newman, 1968)

Four Rooms (Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, 1995)

John Wick (Chad Stahelski, 2014)

The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965)

8 ½ (Federico Fellini, 1963)

Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)

Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams, 2015)

Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine (Alex Gibney, 2015)

The Ipcress File (Sidney J. Furie, 1965)

Twenty Minutes of Love (Charlie Chaplin, 1914)

Caught in the Rain (Charlie Chaplin, 1914)

A Busy Day (Charlie Chaplin, 1914)

Her Friend the Bandit (Charlie Chaplin, 1914)

Mabel’s Married Life (Charlie Chaplin, 1914)

Laughing Gas (Charlie Chaplin, 1914)

The Property Man (Charlie Chaplin, 1914)

Going My Way (Leo McCarey, 1944)

The Bells of St. Mary's (Leo McCarey, 1945)

The Face on the Bar Room Floor (Charlie Chaplin, 1914)

Recreation (Charlie Chaplin, 1914)

2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)

The Monster That Challenged the World (Arnold Laven, 1957)

Fantastic Four (Josh Trank, 2015)

Romeo and Juliet (Franco Zeffirelli, 1968)

Funeral in Berlin (Guy Hamilton, 1966)

Bridge of Spies (Steven Spielberg, 2015)

Billion Dollar Brain (Ken Russell, 1967)

Spotlight (Tom McCarthy, 2015)

Room (Lenny Abrahamson, 2015)

All This, and Heaven Too (Anatole Litvak, 1940)

Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969)

Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2015)

                                                                        

Genres

Best Picture Nominees: 21

Comedy: 32

Science Fiction: 31

Documentary: 25

Drama: 21

Crime: 19

Horror: 18

Espionage: 14

Action: 9

Animation: 8

Fantasy: 5

Musical: 5

Superhero: 4

Western: 4

Film Noir: 3

Martial Arts: 3

War: 3

Propaganda: 3

Sports: 3

Thriller: 3

Star Trek: 2

James Bond: 1

Top Directors

Charlie Chaplin: 9

Lloyd Bacon: 6

Justin Lin: 4

Mark Robson: 4

Paul Thomas Anderson: 3

Kenneth Branagh: 3

James Cameron: 3

Hal Roach: 3

Steven Spielberg: 3

Jacques Tourneur: 3

Woody Allen: 2

Tim Burton: 2

Sam Firstenberg: 2

Ishiro Honda: 2

William Keighley: 2

Archie Mayo: 2

Leo McCarey: 2

Norman McLaren: 2

Vincente Minnelli: 2

Michael Powell: 2

Joseph Sargent: 2

Billy Wilder: 2

Robert Wise: 2

Films by Decade

1900s: 2

1910s: 12

1920s: 10

1930s: 20

1940s: 21

1950s: 29

1960s: 23

1970s: 14

1980s: 12

1990s: 9

2000s: 14

2010s: 49

Men of the Wheel

First Draft Event Cards for Jeff Shyluk's Toilet Chase: The Poop Deck Building Game

Jeff is working on a Toilet Chase deck building game based on our shared experiences at the Bleak House of Blahs back in the early 90s and the Toilet Chase screenplay, which concerns a toilet that comes to life and wreaks havoc in the house. In a lengthy exchange of e-mails between Jeff, me, and Bleak House survivors Ron and Allan, we inventoried every last possession we kept at the house so that Jeff could incorporate the items into the game. Jeff wrote in passing that these lists might amuse readers of this blog, but I don't want to invade the privacy or Ron or Allan. Instead, I'll share some of my early Event Card ideas, formed before Jeff had finished explaining his vision for the game. Since it's unlikely these Event Cards will appear in the finished game (at least in this initial form), I thought I'd share them here. Each card is (very loosely) based on real events that happened at the Bleak House of Blahs. 

By way of explanation, "Dummies" are the game's non-player characters, the guests who dropped by the Bleak House from time to time.  

Duck!

While racing down (or up) the stairs from/to the Loft, you crack your skull on the low-clearance overhang. 5 points damage. (Or whatever system you're using to track health.)

Shower Slime Mold

The downstairs shower hasn't been cleaned in so long that a Dummy gets exasperated and has to clean it. Maybe this card could result in an injury?

Crass Shinglers

Shinglers rain nails and scrap metal down onto the lawn. Anyone caught outside sustains an injury or has to dodge indoors, maybe?

Garage Thieves

Hoodlums break in and steal stuff, represented by cards from the inventory pile?

Fence Vandals

Vandals kick in the fence, reducing defences against the toilet and requiring repairs?

Cook It and Eat It

Jeff and Susan invite the Blahs-ians over for a Cook It and Eat It dinner. Invites free Toilet attack but replenishes Health if the attack evaded, perhaps? I guess this doesn't work if the Dummies are always inside the house. But it could still be done in-house - maybe the Dummies came over for a Cook It and Eat It in the first place.

Stupid Movie Night

Desperate for entertainment, the Blahs-ians (Bleak Housers?) make an emergency trip to the video store. Invites a free Toilet attack?

Food Poisoning

All Characters and Dummies have diarrhea, but there are only two toilets available (the third having been transformed into a monster). The two Characters and Dummies closest to the main floor and basement toilet suffer minus one to all CHASE stats. All other Characters and Dummies suffer minus three to all CHASE stats and have to change their clothes and shower!

Your Turn to Mow

Play against a Character. That Character has to go the garage and mow the lawn, risking Toilet attack and suffering a stat reduction of some kind? Or another penalty?

Your Turn to Wash the Dishes

Play against a Character. That Character is forced to wash the dishes, risking Mold and Disgust.

Unpaid Bills (This would be five separate cards: Gas or Water or Power or Cable or Phone)

Power or Water Cable are turned off, rendering certain Event or Inventory cards useless - cards that have one of the corresponding Tags. I have no idea if your cards have tags, but maybe they could! E.G. Microwave Oven card has a Power Tag, Toilets have Water tags, Stupid Movie Night would have Power and Cable tags, etc.)

How Can a Toilet Cut the Phone Lines? and How Can a Toilet Cut the Power Lines?

The Toilet cuts the phone or power lines, affecting Event or Inventory cards with the relevant tags in the same way as the Unpaid Bills cards do.

Big Wheel

In 2000, I helped Allan move down to California. This giant U-Haul was the biggest vehicle I've ever driven. It sure takes a long time to accelerate to highway speed in one of these things. 

June 2015 Review Roundup

I screened a mere five movies in June: two low-budget time travel movies, two long-standing recommendations from Allan Sampson, and a well-regarded thriller of recent vintage.

My friend Allan recommended horror classic The Wicker Man (1973) many years ago, but only last month did I finally sit down to watch it. It was worth the wait. Though nothing supernatural happens in the film, its performances and premise make for a truly chilling experience. My favourite scene is one of the musical numbers, in which the hapless protagonist, an uptight, religious and virgin police sergeant, fights off the seduction of Willow, who sings and dances in the nude, beckoning like a succubus. He very nearly succumbs to temptation - and ironically, his faith and resolve ultimately doom him. Sometimes it's better to give in to the vampires...

Some years later Allan sang the praises of Three Kings (1999), a movie set in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. The movie still works as a war dramedy, but loses some of its lustre in the face of the unfortunate xenophobia and economic devastation wrought by the never-ending, so-called "War on Terror."

Nightcrawler (2014), is a showcase for Jake Gyllenhaal, who plays a petty criminal drifter who builds a new career for himself in the cutthroat world of electronic news gathering. While the news business has been an easy target for criticism going back all the way to Network (1976), Nightcrawler approaches the subject in a new and interesting way, from street level, as it were. It's well worth your time.

Project Almanac (2015) is a mostly forgettable by-the-numbers time travel film, but it's a decent way to spend a couple of hours on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Time Lapse (2014) tackles the same subject in a more interesting way; three roommates discover a camera that takes pictures from a day or so in the future, which leads to interesting questions about free will and predestination.

I read a few more books in June than disastrous May, though still not enough to meet my target. Three Mira Grant biomedical thrillers (Deadline, Blackout, and Parasite) provided reasonable thrills and interesting twists on old horror tropes, but nothing more than that. Stephen King's Finders Keepers is the second mainstream novel in a row for one of the world's most famous genre authors; it's refreshing to see King pursue more grounded work. Canadian SF great Robert Charles Wilson has a new book out this year, The Affinities, which takes the phenomenon of social media and spins it into a thought-provoking socioeconomic thriller.

Jo Walton has been around a while, but she's a relatively new favourite for me; I quite enjoyed Among Others earlier this year, and followed it up last month with the sad and delightful My Real Children and a collection of essays, What Makes This Book So Great. I've picked up a few books from Walton's back catalogue, and I'm looking forward to exploring more of her many worlds.

A couple of middling Star Trek tie-ins rounded out June's reading.