7 Days of Badalamenti: Day 6 - She Would Die For Love

 

"She Would Die For Love," from Julee Cruise's 1993 album The Voice of Love, produced by Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch. The instrumental version earned considerably more momentum as the opening credit sequence soundtrack the year before in Lynch's much-maligned prequel film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. The the latter is the version I am more familiar, and taken, with, but both have their merits.

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Cast:

This morning The Horror Vision launches a new spin-off podcast, The Horror Vision Presents: Elements of Horror. This is a project that brings in my good friend Missi, as well as the other THV folks when they're able. My 2022 Wrapped from our hosting platform Anchor shows The Horror Vision created more content this past year than 77% of our contemporaries, and that felt good. This new show is something I'd been wanting to do for a while: a place where we could talk non-genre flicks that contain Horror Elements. And oh, what a list we have so far! The first episode is on Jim Jarmusch's beautiful, beautiful film Only Lovers Left Alive, but from here we have some films I cannot wait to talk about. Here's a small tease:

Ryan Gosling's Lost River

Nicholas Verso's Boys in Trees

Adam Rifkin's The Dark Backward

David Lynch's Lost Highway

And a whole lot more beyond those. That's just scratching the surface! The first episode is now on all streaming platforms - you can even hit play up on the little Spotify widget in the upper right-hand corner of this page. 

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Watch:

Saturday night I caught Lorcan Finnegan's new film, Nocebo:

Another solid film from Finnegan, who popped onto my radar with his Without Name. 

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Read:

I finishe Irvine Welsh's The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs last night in one Heruclean jaunt of reading that lasted most of the evening and well into the small hours of the night. Just like the first time I read it, back in 2006 upon its release, I could not put those last two hundred pages down. Having only gotten back into reading Welsh after a self-imposed hiatus (his voice tends to affect my own writing, and I wanted to steer clear of that for most of the projects I've been on for the last decade), I'm temped to say this is Welsh's best behind Glue, which will most likely always remain my favorite. Secrets is fantastic though, and creates such unrelenting pathos for all the characters through rotating first-person accounts from nearly the entire cast, that when you reach the last act, well, it's fraught with tension. He sets up several really great "gotta-sees," and balances them in such an expert way that you often lose sight of one for whichever is currently "on screen," only to have Welsh juggle them in front of you again and immediately re-ignite your curiosity for what's been in the background for several chapters. 

Really great book. Now, I'm feeling that void of having just finished a great book and really wanting to jump into one of Welsh's newer books that I haven't read. Not sure that will happen before the end of the year, so I will most likely pick Will Carver's Psycopaths Anonymous back up. 

I began it directly after I finished Hinton Hollow Death Trip and quickly realized my genre interests had shifted a bit. From what I did read, there's a definite Fight Club influence here, although not in an egregious way. I loved HHDT, so I'm very much looking forward to more Carver!

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Playlist:

Zombi - Shape Shift

Type O Negative - Life Is Killing Me

Lustmord - Dark Matter

Beach House - Depression Cherry

Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures

Rodney Crowell - Christmas Everywhere

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

More on the money front, which has been an open loop for a while. I need to square this CC bill soon, before the no-interest period runs out, but hidden costs continue to keep the balance level. This is nothing dire, but it would definitely be nice to be at 0 by year's end. 

7 Days of Badalamenti - Day 3: Booth and the Bad Angel

 

From Booth and the Bad Angel, 1996's collaboration with James lead singer Tim Booth. The entire record is fantastic - this is one I ordered around the time it came out and didn't quite 'get' for a few years. But I was a Badalamenti completist, or at least as a pre-internet kid with limited funds could be at the time. I chose this particular track because, although I've never actually been able to confirm it, I believe it is the only song on the album that Badalamnenti contributes vocals to. 

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Watch:

Upcoming Horror flick Thorns looks like it's either going to be a fantastic Hellraiser-in-space riff on Event Horizon or a clumsy mess. 

Kinda difficult to tell from the trailer, right? I mean, there's plenty that looks cool from a distance, obscured by the quick cuts of the trailer's edit, but will those effects look cheesy in a more sustained experience? Only time will tell. I can say that I'm in need of an Event Horizon viewing. It's been over a decade, largely because the last time I watched the film, I found it to be a bit underwhelming when compared to the revelatory first viewing I had, many moons ago. Some films just live better in our memories.

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Read:

After finishing Night of the Demon last week, I dialed it back to a previous intention and began re-reading Irvine Welsh's The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs. I haven't read this since it first came out in 2006, within a few months of my moving to L.A. I remember finishing it the night before getting on a plane to fly back to Chicago for a visit. 

A strange novel that has Welsh's unique flourish that makes his take on anything supernatural not only realistic but unique beyond anything I've seen in any other authors' work. Now that I think about it, I suppose the same way Spanish Authors tend to have a certain recognizable tone for works of Magical Realism - informed by location, religion, cultural distinctions and peccadilloes, the same would hold true for Scottish Authors. The idea that Welsh's work tips at times into its own version of Magical Realism actually makes a lot of sense. Either way, this is a weird one, mixing Welsh 

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Playlist:

SQÜRL and Jozef Van Wissem - Only Lovers Left Alive OST (Detroit Side)

Zeal and Ardor - Eponymous

Public Memory - Veil of Counsel

VAAAL - A Wounded Fawn OST

Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks Season One OST

Angelo Badalamenti and Tim Booth - Booth and the Bad Angel

Deafheaven - Infinite Granite

Godflesh - Messiah

Ifernach - Capitulation of All Life

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

Mixing in some of the dark thoughts I shy away from may help to fully realize an intellectual conundrum that has been causing me great pain. ie the unfinished short story I've been writing and re-writing off and on for going on four years. 

The Subways - Black Wax

Ask and ye shall freakin' receive. New music from The Subways. "Black Wax" is taken from the forthcoming album Uncertain Joys, which drops January 13th, 2023. You can pre-order HERE. Very cool song; feels good to reconnect with a band like I have with The Subways.

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Read:

Over the weekend, I finished up a couple of books I'd had lingering over the last few months. First, I knocked out all the remaining stories in my re-read of Irvine Welsh's seminal short story collection The Acid House. Fantastic stuff. 

Second, I went back and read the last three (of a paltry four total) tales in Emily Carrol's Through the Woods. Somewhere between a book of short stories, a comic book, and a story book, Through The Woods is a joy to immerse yourself in, and proves to be too short an experience. 

Ms. Carroll's style pushes and pulls the heart between youth and adulthood, joy and terror, naughty and nice. There's a similar appreciation for the Fairytales and Nursery Rhymes of the old world that you see in the work of Neil Gaiman, and there's just as sharp a'teeth here and there. 

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Playlist:

Rowland S. Howard - Pop Crimes

Poni Hoax - Eponymous

Orville Peck - Pony

The Final Cut - Consumed

Primus - Pork Soda

Sausage - Riddles Are Abound Tonight

Nun Gun - Mondo Decay

Joy Division - Still

Belong - October Language

Sylvaine - Nova

Beach House - Once Twice Melody

Preoccupations - Arrangements

Jackie Wilson - Higher and Higher

Ozzy Osbourne - Diary of a Madman

Jerry Cantrell - Atone

Fleet Foxes - Shore

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

Allowing Change to occur for the purposes of growth even when that change necessitates difficulty in material life. 

Well, our Thermostat went down yesterday and we're waiting for a technician to come out, so that definitely fits. I'll take this as the cards reminding me to ask questions and pay attention when the tech is here, so I can learn something. I'm pretty bad about paying attention to homeowner things, and I suppose that needs to abate.

World Coming Down

 

Yesterday marked the 22nd anniversary of Type O Negative's World Coming Down. I can still remember driving to Threshold Music in Tinley Park to pick it up that first day, smoking up before driving home with it blasting in my minivan. It still haunts me today, as it did then, that my friend Jake did not live to hear the follow-up to October Rust.

The title track will always be my favorite among WCD's 13 tracks (if you count Skip it, and we are); this one is an emotional jackhammer.

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Watch:

Current obsession:

This show just gets Chicago perfectly. 

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Read:

Currently splitting my time between two short story collections that couldn't be more different:

First, Irvine Welsh's The Acid House. I started this with my third-ever reading of "A Smart Cunt", the novella that rounds out this collection. This was the first story by Welsh I ever read, back in the 90s. It made an enormous impression on me then, and still does now. From there I cherry picked a few other stories: "Snuff," "Snowman Building Parts for Rico the Squirrel,""Sport For All," "The Granton Star Cause," and the Eponymous story, "The Acid House." I am very much enjoying this return to Welsh's writing, and can't wait to dip back into this for more.

Then this morning, inspired by the encroaching Halloween season, I went looking for my Ramsey Campbell Alone With the Horrors trade paperback I have, but couldn't find it. I haven't bought bookshelves for the new house yet, so a lot of my books are still in boxes. I gave a perfunctory search, but when I stumbled across Nathan Ballingrud's Wounds:

As I've related here previously, although I have the original, softcover novella The Visible Filth - the novella Babak Anvari's film Wounds is based on,  I picked this new volume up as soon as it hit the shelves in tandem with the release of the film. I've read The Visible Filth at least three times, but the other stories packaged with it in this particular volume have all only received one go-through. Until now, that is. So yesterday I started my day with The Atlas of Hell, a story that feels so much like Clive Barker to me, yet still stands tall on its own thanks to the clean and precise ton of Mr. Ballingrud's prose. I plan on picking through this one a story at a time over the coming month, and maybe going back and re-reading the stories in Ballingrud's first collection, North American Lake Monsters as well, if I can get around to finally watching the rest of the series based on that book HULU did a few years ago. Previously, I'd only watched two episodes of Monsterland (produced by Anvari), not because they weren't great, but maybe because the two I saw were ultra disturbing. In a good way, but also in a real way. Which is the goal, however, sometimes you have to work up to that sort of thing. 

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Playlist:

Ozzy Osbourne - Patient Number 9

The Cramps - Stay Sick

The Dead Milkmen - Beelzebubba

Misfits - Static Age

Type O Negative - World Coming Down

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

The center and left card go along with  the rejection notice I received this morning for a short story I submitted to a Horror Anthology last week. I'm having trouble figuring out the Queen though... or maybe I'm not.

Linger Fickin' Good, Baby!

 

Getting psyched to see "The Revolting Corpse" at the end of the month, courtesy of Mr. Brown. I'm not entirely sure who will be on stage, but either way, it's sure to be amazing.

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Watch:

K and I wrapped up Evil season 3 on Paramount Plus the other day. As always, this show leaves an ENORMOUS void when it's off. I have a feeling the next season may be the final; either way, with the low-grade anxiety Netflix is resonating with its coy attitude toward Sandman's renewal, it's good to know that the next season of Evil has already been announced. 

Next up, Feud!

 

We'd been meaning to watch this since it aired back in 2017, and our timing proves fortuitous, as a quick look-up on IMDB surprised us with the listing for an upcoming season two slated for next year.

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Read:

I finished Irvine Welsh's Marabou Stork Nightmares. Jesus. This was easily his darkest book, and that's bloody well saying something. Still, I loved most of it; it always feels like slipping into a favorite Marathon Shirt when I tackle one of Welsh's novels, and despite several absolutely soul-searing scenes, this was no exception. Next up, Welsh's long-time friend Sandy McNair's tell-all book Carspotting: The Real-Life Adventures of Irvine Welsh.

Like Marabou, I've had this one for over a decade. After this, I'm thinking I may re-read Welsh's 2006 novel Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chiefs, which I haven't read since it came out.

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Playlist:

King Woman - Celestial Blues

Charles Bradley - Changes

Cocksure - Corporate_Sting

The High Confessions - Turning Lead Into Gold with the High Confessions

Corrosion of Conformity - Deliverance

Willie Nelson & Leon Russell - One For the Road

The Black Angels - Eponymous EP

The Black Angels - Death Song

The Afghan Whigs - How Do You Burn? (pre-release singles)

The Afghan Whigs - In Spades

Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower

The Bangles - Different Light

Joseph Bishara - Malignant OST

Melvins & Lustmord

 

It was not until just last week that I realized Melvins had collaborated with Lustmord on an album. THIS is mind-blowing stuff.

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NCBD:

We start this week's NCBD with the final issue of Moon Knight: Black, White & Blood. 

I Love this series. When they first announced they were doing one of these BW&B for Moon Knight, I was surprised. I'm hoping they do some other left-of-center characters, and that it wasn't just the Moon Knight Disney+ series that spurred this particular title. I'd love to see a Taskmaster or even, hell, a Wilson Fisk, Kingpin BW&B. Come on Marvel, let's see what you got!

One of my most anticipated series since the previous issue. This one is such a great heir to the Neil Gaiman/Vertigo legacy. 

Being that issue 3 just came out last week, I'm not entirely sure this will land today. We'll see. Either way, this series is worth the wait.

I feel like it's been quite some time since the previous installment of West of Sundown. That's not really true, I think I've just, you know, moved across country and completely restarted my life since issue 4. Can't wait to read this next chapter.

Probably my favorite cover with Scott Summers on it EVER. 

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Read:

There was a time when I bought every novel Irvine Welsh released the day they came out. That stopped after his 2012 Skag Boys. Not because I don't love Welsh's work. On the contrary, his prose is a HUGE influence on my own, and being that I had shifted to working on a genre series, I was afraid that influence would hinder my completion of the first Shadow Play novel. Shadow Play ultimately took another seven years to finish, starting and re-starting it. In between, I cranked out a lot more genre work, always keeping Welsh at bay.

Last Sunday, the damn burst.

I'm a saver - if I discover an author who already has a few novels on the shelf, I'll always save one. So was the case with Welsh's 1995 novel Marabou Stork Nightmares. Well, after learning Welsh had just released a follow-up Ray Lennox novel to Crime with The Long Knives. I realized I've now missed five Welsjh novels including this one. To quote Lebowski, "this will not stand!"

So I cracked open Marabou and cannot put it down.

It's crazy to think this was Welsh's second published novel. The narrative is written in the same kind of experimental fashion that Filth is - I don't want to try and explain it here, but needless to say, Welsh finds a pretty insane way to move between main character Roy Strang's coma-narrative and his real life and what he hears while he's inside the coma, bubbling up just below the surface of waking. Which Roy does not want to do. I love Welsh's work so very much, I can't believe I've been away from it this long.

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Playlist:

Pink Mountaintops - Peacock Pools

A Place to Bury Strangers - Exploding Head 

Megadeth - Rush in Peace

Melvins & Lustmord - Pigs of the Roman Empire

Anthrax - Attack of the Killer Bs

Patty Smythe - The Warrior (single)

The Ocean - Phanerozoic I: Paleozoic

Scott H. Biram - Nothing But Blood

Amigo The Devil - Born Against

The Mysterines - Reeling

Young Widows - Settle Down City

Breather Resist - Charmer

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

The way that I will choose to accomplish something will usher in notable change, part of which will be condemnation by someone I respect. 

I've got a BIG new project in the works, and I'm pretty sure a lot of people - not necessarily people I know - will give it a big eye roll just for what it is. Unfortunate. "The work that transforms the medium." 

I hope.

Arab Strap - I Still Miss You

 

As we come upon the end of the year and I prepare to commit my ten favorite albums to print, I realized that I completely forgot Arab Strap put out a record earlier in the year. This is, I think because when the album came out I was simply not in the headspace for the band. Yesterday, however, I fell headlong into an Arab Strap Vortex that lasted the entire day. 

The song above was originally published on the OST for the cinematic adaptation to Irvine Welsh's The Acid House, which, if memory serves, was the first Welsh book I ever read. I'm way overdue on a Welsh catch-up jag, but that's a post for a different time (I used to buy every book he published the day it came out, however, being that his writing influences my own, and the projects I've been working on for the last few years are not necessarily compatible with that particular voice, I've eschewed the last four novels the man has published). Anyway, "I Still Miss You" is available on all streaming platforms via the 2016 eponymous compilation put out by record label Chemikal Underground. I own the Acid House flick on DVD, and this prompts me to dig it out and put it at the top of the pile for rewatching after I mop up the rest of my year-end viewing for 2021. 

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Watch:

Thanks to my friend Jun and The Comic Bug, I attended a private screening of Spider-Man: No Way Home over the weekend and was BLOWN AWAY.

 

This is everything a Spider-man fan could want and more.

 

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Playlist:

Dance with the Dead - Into the Abyss

Arab Strap - As Days Get Dark

Arab Strap - The Red Thread

Arab Strap - Mondays at the Hug and Pint

Arab Strap - Arab Strap

Arab Strap - The Week Never Starts Round Here

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Card:

Directly referencing my experiments in the world of NFTs. 

November Walks at Dusk

Monday night was the first night I came home from work since the clocks went back. I'd gotten out late, and by the time I arrived home, the sky was already beginning to darken. K was still at work, so I threw on my headphones and took a nice long walk into the Dusk and listened to Yob for the first time. I mean, I'd given a song or two a whirl before, but the music hadn't really made an impact on me then, for whatever reason. This time though, I began with a song a friend recommended - Marrow, the final track on 2014's Clearing the Path to Ascend - and the timing couldn't have been better. Perfect.

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NCBD

A lot of good stuff this week!

And yes, even the final issue of Batman/The Maxx: Arkham Dreams! 

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Playlist:

The Velvet Underground and Nico - Eponymous

Meg Myers - Sorry

Naked Raygun - Basement Screams

Yob - Clearing the Path to Ascend

Kevin Ayers - The Confessions of Dr. Dream and Other Stories

Pink Floyd - Piper at the Gates of Dawn

New chapter in the Bret Easton Ellis serialized novel landed this week, and things are really beginning to get creepy. I'm really loving this as an addition to an already great podcast! Ellis' Podcast Patreon is HERE. In looking for an image to post, I found THIS insane little tidbit from a few months back. Ellis and Irvine Welsh writing a series together? YES PLEASE!

Also found out a friend of mine has been doing a BRILLIANT Quarantine Podcast called Cabin Fever. It began back in April, when all this was still fresh, and it's interesting to go back and hear other people's experiences as "essential" or "non-essential," and how either distinction affects their lives and the lives of the people around them. The cast covers everything: how they spend their days, how their roles have suddenly changed, what they're watching, insights into COVID, work, life, etc. It's all good stuff, and I've grown quite fond very quickly. Cabin Fever is up on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, here's widget:

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Card:

Full disclosure: This post is scheduled to auto-post at 12:01 AM on Wednesday, October 4th. I'm writing this section, and thus drawing the card below, at 6:21 PM Tuesday, October 3rd. I have not checked in on the election all day other than one small peek at about 9:00 AM. What was the card I was hoping for when I did my draw this morning, saw it was addressing the election and thus, prompted me to draw two clarifying cards? This one, which I just drew from the Raven deck after a rigorous shuffle:

By the time you read this, maybe the results will be in. Maybe this will be erroneous, a moot point. Or maybe, the old guard will have, as indicated by the guard, imploded. One can hope.

2019: March 12th

In Search of Darkness is the self-appointed, "Definitive 80s Horror Documentary." We've been knee-deep in horror docs at the moment, with both Horror Noire and Eli Roth's History of Horror landing on Shudder within a few weeks of one another, but who cares? I love watching these, hearing insider's interpretations, and building a scope for the tempest I grew up inside the eye of in the 80s. This is everything to pop culture at the moment, or at least the alleys of that culture that I traverse. Stranger Things is based on 80s Horror, Ash, Jack Burton, and Lucio Fulci all have current comic books on the shelves. John Carpenter makes records. Child Play's getting a TV show, and boutique Blu Ray imprints like Arrow, Vinegar Syndrome and Scream Factory and specialty streaming services like Shudder and Prime are making it possible for people to see movies they'd only ever heard of since those films disappeared off first-stage VHS rental shelves, never making the jump to disc. So why the hell would I not want someone to draw an outline around this behemoth?

The final Indiegogo is up now and ends on March 31st, link HERE.

Man, I walked into a book store the other day and hadn't realized Irvine Welsh released the 'Grand Finale of Transporting."

I felt so removed; I used to buy Welsh's books the day they dropped. But he's one of those authors I love SO much, his writing tends to steer my own, and I haven't had much space for that since starting to seriously work on Shadow Play, back in 2012 now. Of course, I've had a few long interstitial projects that have prolonged that, but really, this has been where I've learned to write genre, and there just wasn't room for a more literary pull in my voice. That's changing soon; I vowed to read at least one of the Welsh books I've missed this year, and now that there's a new chapter in the Trainspotters' lives, well, I guess I'll start there.

Wait, no. I believe I have to start with 2016's The Blade Arist, because I'm fairly certain this is what happens when Franco goes to America, which both amuses and terrifies me. Imagine Begby as your new neighbor. Nightmare fuel, that.

Playlist from 3/11:

John Cale - Black Acetate
Placebo - Meds
PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love
Don Shirley - Don Shirley Trio
Erase Errata - Other Animals
Waxwork Records - House of Waxwork Issue #1 OST
Wink Lombardi and the Constellations - 10 Songs
Earth - Phase 3 - Thrones and Dominions
Chelsea Wolfe - Pain Is Beauty
Exhalants - Eponymous

Card of the day:

More Cups. Emotion and sensitivity as directed or acted upon by Fire. This is good. This will get me through the lag I've experienced in finishing the book, where daily life seems to be conspiring against my productivity. I'm saying it now: My birthday is on the 24th of this month. The reading of it will be done by then, which means a few days to listen to it, a few more to make changes based on that listening, and then it's done.

2019: January 5th

Belong's October Language is one of the most beautiful albums I've heard in some time. Close your eyes and drift into a nothing space of faintly glowing radiance and soft, fuzzy waves...

I've been sick for a few days now, spending a lot of time watching movies and reading Nick Cave's And the Ass Saw the Angel, a book I started twelve years ago and never finished. I won't lie; I'm a huge Cave fan, but this is not easy reading. The book is written in a mostly first-person perspective, in the rather baroque hill-speak of protagonist Euchrid Eucrow, the son of an inbred father and a drunk-on-still-mash mother, so the language is biblical and flowery in a terse, over-reaching way. Which is exactly how it should be written, given the author's choice for narrators. I'm always up for a literary challenge, and I wonder if at some point my brain will just "click" to the style and have an easier time with it. That's what happened when I first began reading Irvine Welsh; the phonetic Scottish Brogue threw me at first, but after a while I acclimatized to it and began to read Welsh as easily as anything else. Incidentally, that also helped me when I met him and later, when I traveled to Scotland; I had no problem understanding most people I spoke with. So, I'm sticking with the Cave until it's finished.

This "read what's on the shelf" is a continuation of an initiative I began last year, to finally read a lot of the books I have on my shelf; working at Borders for five years in the 00s, I accumulated a lot I still haven't read. Now that I'm trying to start saving for a house, it makes sense to condition myself to actually read that stuff, to not just jump on Amazon at the mention of everything that sounds cool and order it. I'm not saying I have a moratorium on new books, because there's a ton I want to read, but a healthy, three-old-ones-to-every-new-one mix should help.

Speaking of Welsh, he's an author that, for years, I bought everything he published the day it came out. That changed when I began shifting my reading to a more genre-specific diet, worried that the more literary stuff my tastes were entrenched in was influencing the way I was writing. Not that that's bad; the first two novels I wrote, one of which I'm hoping to finish editing this year and publish, have a more literary bent than Shadow Play, which is straight genre. But to finish Shadow Play, I had to curate my reading more carefully. With Welsh, he influences me so much that I had to swear him off altogether, knowing one day I'd dive right back in. That was 2012, because the last book I read by him was Skagboys. Since then, I've watched as he's published no less than four novels, and I've had to force myself to abstain from each one. But, with Shadow Play finally winding down - I started it in earnest in 2012 - another one of my ideas for 2019 is to flip back out of genre a bit - hence the Cave - and pick up with Welsh where I left off. Can't wait; I really miss the man's writing.

Speaking of Welsh again, I mentioned I've been watching a lot of movies while I've been sick, and the one I just watched this morning definitely makes me yearn for Irvine Welsh's novels; Outcast - not to be confused with the Nick Cage movie of the same name or the Robert Kirkman series on Cinemax - is a 2010 film by Colm McCarthy, a director that has come up in the world since by directing 2016's much lauded The Girl with All the Gifts and Black Mirror season four episode six: Black Museum. In elevator pitch shorthand, imagine Welsh and Warren Ellis writing a story about ancient magick adrift in the shadows of modern Edinburgh. That's this Outcast, and I LOVED this film; it's take on Magick was both enigmatic and practical, a lot like Ellis's Gravel series from some years back.



Also, yesterday I watched:



This I hadn't seen since its initial VHS release in 1992 or '93. I've been fairly afraid to revisit it; Hellraiser: Hell on Earth was actually my introduction to the Hellraiser movies, and you can probably understand then when I tell you I didn't actually rent the first two until three or four years later. Re-watching it now, as a massive fan of those original movies and of the concepts and characters in general, I can say that there are quite a few things about Hell on Earth that I like, most specifically the body horror effects. That said, this is the perfect example of the how Hollywood used to just throw money and special effects at ideas and think that made them better. The culminating sequence in this film, of Pinhead chasing our protagonist through New York, is rife with explosions, car crashes, water mains bursting, glass shattering, and none of it has any point at all in what's happening or even fits the story. It's both sloppy and lazy.



You know, I don't normally go in for home invasion movies. People doing terrible things to people is not really the kind of horror I like. Still, the original Strangers was well made and creepy as all hell, at a time when most studio horror had forgotten how to be subtle with their scares. That trailer, with the knock on the door at two A.M., this is a concept that has occurred to and haunted me since I was a kid. I liked that first film and so knew I'd eventually see the sequel. After watching Prey at Night yesterday, I can say it was good, but really left me with a violence hangover. I don't know that I'd say I enjoyed it, but it wasn't overly disturbing and bookended the first film in a satisfying way, so nice to check it off my list.

Playlist from 01/04:

Tears for Fears - Songs from the Big Chair
Henry Mancini - Charade OST
Paramore - All We Know is Falling

Card of the day:

From the Grimoire, "The Will (Fire) to Materialism (Disks)." This is what I was just talking about above, so nice to come to the end of this post and have this pop up. Literally, the Will to save Money.

Trainspotting Two Trailer

I am a HUGE fan of Irvine Welsh's fiction, so it was a little disappointing to hear that T2 would not move the characters down the paths outlined in all the subsequent novels that follow Mark, Simon, Spud and Franco. That said, this looks AWESOME! (plus of course in order to do the sequel to Transporting, Porno, they'd have to introduce the characters from Glue - my favorite Welsh novel - and that would really just move everything further down the timeline. I'm content letting film continuity be its own thing. As long as they work in some of my favorite Begbie moments and maybe throw in a cameo by Juice Terry somewhere along the way.

Thanks again to Mr. Brown for hitting me with this:

New Trailer for Irvine Welsh's The Filth

I cannot wait for this film. I'm on the fence about re-reading the book - which is, like everything Welsh has ever written, phenomenal - before seeing this. Maybe after? The tone is of the adaptation looks perfect, kind of a cross between Trainspotting and Bronson. And McAvoy is fast becoming a "he's in it? Then I'll see it" kind of actor for me.