Chadzilla ROARS!!! (The Official Blog of Chadwick H. Saxelid, Writer)

La Dolce Paura

My wife and I went to Italy last month, visiting both Rome and Venice, and had the most wonderful time.  Rome and Venice are cities drenched with fascinating history that can be seen and, in many cases, even touched.  There is one church (San Clemente) where you can walk down a flight of stairs and go back centuries in time.  Doing so was a breathtaking and fascinating experience for us both.

But the best thing for me?  The one thing that I was most looking forward to doing?  The place that we headed to the moment after we had dropped off our luggage at our hotel?

Dario Argento's Profondo Rosso store.

The very first place any life long fan of horror, science-fiction, and fantasy would want to go to while in Rome.

At the store I got the (possibly once in a lifetime) chance to not only geek out in an almost embarrassingly childish manner, but also to meet and speak with Luigi Cozzi, the writer/director of Star Crash, Alien Contamination, Lou Ferrigno's two Hercules movies, and several other entertaining pieces of joy filled cinematic geekiness.

Once I got over the shock of him being in the store (I had thought he would be retired by now and someone else would be working the counter) I gushed about how much I enjoyed all of his films and what a huge fan of Star Crash I was (am) and so on and so forth.  He chuckled and said thank you, then he chatted with my wife while I went down the spiral staircase, into the dark basement, and paid a visit to The Museum of Horrors.  Which is a small collection of props from some of Argento's films, as well as some of the genre memorabilia that Cozzi has collected over the years.  (Cozzi could, and should, be considered Italy's version of Forrest J. Ackerman.)

Here are two pictures of the entrance to the exhibits.

I took a lot of pictures, many of which did not come out all that well, and I do not want to post them all (although it is very tempting to do so).  So here are my three favorites:

The deformed killer from Phenomena.

And two items that will be very familiar to anyone that has seen Profondo Rosso (Deep Red).

A mirror...

and a painting...

I had hoped that Argento's Dracula 3D would have been released by the time we were in Rome, but the film is still in post production.  Cozzi told me that the final sound mix had just been finished and they were now focusing their work on converting the 3D effects.

He also told me that Dario Argento was planning on making an appearance, for a media interview, at the store in about two days.  He encouraged me to call and confirm the time so I could come to the store and meet Dario Argento.

That, I am sad to say, did not happen.  I did not get around to calling the store to verify times because, just to be blunt, there was so much else to do and see while we were in Rome.  I had made my pilgrimage to the store and met Luigi Cozzi, which is all that I had wanted to do.  Meeting Argento, and the possibility of getting a pic with him, could have been a nice feather in my fanboy cap, but it did not work out that way.  I just could not motivate myself to break away from the other sights and sounds and get back to the store.  

Now I know that could get my Team Argento card revoked in certain circles of fandom, so it goes.  I remain quite content with having met Luigi Cozzi, having bought a somewhat sizable bag of goodies, and having taken my pictures.  My visit to the store was as close to being a perfect fan experience as it ever could possibly be.  I have no regrets, only fond memories.

The only other thing about the Rome leg of our trip that falls within the spectrum of horror, science-fiction, and fantasy interest was our visit to the Capuchin Crypt.  Where, for a small donation, you can view several deliciously creepy (and goose bump inducing) mosaics made from human bones.  That place gave me the willies.

As far the Venice leg of our trip goes.  The only real science-fiction, fantasy, and horror highlight that I can share is whem my wife and I strolled around the Piazza San Marco, and tried to figure out the route Roger Moore had driven in his Gondola:

It was quite easy to figure out, actually.

If Your Adolescent Has Schizophrenia: An Essential Resource for Parents - by Raquel E. Gur M.D., Ph.D & Ann Braden Johnson, Ph.D

This blog was originally created as a place where I could post my thoughts, opinions, blatherings and pontifications about the varied movies, books, comics, and film music I enjoy (or have not enjoyed) passing the time with.

Last year, when I made the terrifying leap of faith to pursue a writing career, I also began using this blog to update my readers on my misadventures in writing.

I did not create this blog to share personal information, but there have been times when I have felt compelled to.  This is one of those times.

My wife and I, like so many other parents in similar circumstances, were completely blindsided by our son's psychotic break in January of 2012.  Because our son has been diagnosed with both autism and mental retardation (his IQ hovers just below 70, on a good day) we had been able to explain away the symptoms of the approaching break.  Even as I write this review (on a bright and sunny Wednesday morning) it is still difficult for me to wrap my mind around what has happened.  

The only way that I can best get across my reaction to a cinema buff is that it is exactly like how Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) obsessed, feared, and ultimately reacted to the realization that the planet Melancholia was not moving away from Earth, but actually moving toward it on a collision course.  Yes, the emotions (the pain, the anger, the grief, etc.) are all that powerful.

Because of our son's autism and mental retardation, I was always quick to explain away his visual and auditory hallucinations with what I have come to call my Temple Grandin Defense.  "Because he thinks in pictures," I would say to the psychologists and psychiatrists testing him, "if my son is having a visual based thought or memory, he claims to see it.  If he has a verbal or language based thought, he claims to hear it."  A nice theory, or excuse, for dismissing or downplaying hallucinations and/or delusions, but it does not explain the severity of the symptoms and, truth be told, they have been getting much, much worse in the last six to twelve months.  Basically after he turned 17.  Which is an almost textbook time period for the onset of schizophrenia.

At this moment in time it is uncertain as to whether or not our son is truly becoming symptomatic of schizophrenia.  Not helping is that the comorbid symptoms of his diagnosed conditions (i.e. his autism and his low IQ) already mirror, echo, or are almost identical with that of schizophrenia.  And, as my wife as pointed out, the treatments are pretty much the same.  

Now matter what our son's chronic mental disability or illness is being called today, we are already doing all that we can for him, at the moment.

Because the life long symptoms of his autism and mental retardation also fall into an almost frightening alignment with the symptoms of disorganized schizophrenia, I purchased and read Raquel Gur's and Ann Braden Johnson's If Your Adolescent Has Schizophrenia: An Essential Resource for Parents, just so I could familiarize myself with the mental illness that my parental spider sense was tingling about.

Aimed at the newcomer to the battlefield (and it is a battlefield, believe me) of mental disability/illness, the book offers valuable information about the wide ranging symptoms of the disease (and yes, it is a disease, don't let anyone tell you, or try to convince you, that it isn't).  It also paints a rather grim picture of the lack of long term resources for treatment.  I had already become aware of this, thanks to my wife and I's constant battle (and it was a battle, believe me) for a diagnosis of autism to replace the misdiagnosed "learning disability" that he had been given in the second grade.

There is also a good deal of contact information for resources, which is very helpful.

What was not helpful, for me at least, was that the book is exclusively focused on intellectually standard adolescents.  If you are like me and have a child with a below average IQ, this book can really make you feel left out of the cold and helpless.  Even more depressing is learning about just how little help there is out there.

Despite that, though, I wholeheartedly recommend this book to any parent that has questions or concerns about the mental well being of their child or children. 

To Russia, With Joy

I'm almost back to normal now, but for a while there my body did not know what time it was supposed to be.

As I stated earlier, a week or so ago my wife and I took a trip to the wonderful and beautiful country of Russia.  We spent several days in Moscow and then in St. Petersburg and I cannot recommend a trip to the country enough.  It's both beautiful and laden with a rich and complex history.  If you are like me and grew up during the last decades of the Cold War and you are at all interested in that time, then I suggest you go sooner rather than later, for democratic Russia is gradually erasing all public memorials to the Soviet Regime from its cities.  All statues (save for one) of Lenin have been torn down in Moscow and there has been talk of plans to demolish Lenin's Tomb in Red Square and bury his preserved remains somewhere less public.  Although all of the statues honoring Lenin are still standing in St. Petersburg, there was some talk about having them torn down at some point in the future.

When we told our friends, family and co-workers that we were going to Russia, the reaction was mostly raised eyebrows and confused looks.  Russia has a reputation for being a rude and inhospitable country.  I did not find that to be the case.  Yes, some people were abrupt, but those instances were quite rare and impersonal.  For the most part the people I interacted with were friendly and welcoming.

Although we did not know it at the time, my wife and I were visiting Russia during their Victory Day celebration.  Whenever you see footage of one of those massive parades of Russian military might you are seeing a film of a Victory Day parade.  Victory Day is the Russian equivalent of the United States Fourth of July celebration and Memorial and Veterans Day observations combined together.  The holiday celebrates the winning of World War 2 and honors the veterans of that war.  It was really sweet to watch so many Russian ladies (most of them significantly younger than me) giving elderly veterans flowers and kisses on the cheek.  What a wonderful way to honor the men that repelled those that invaded their country.  An estimated 27 million Russians died during World War 2, so Victory Day means a lot to them.

The trip is already starting to become a bit of a blur, so my recap might be just a tad bit jumbled.  While in Moscow we visited most, if not all, of the important cultural and historical landmarks.  Or first stop was Novodevichiy Convent.  Since the location is back to being a practicing convent all we were allowed to do was stroll around an adjacent park and take pictures.  Back in the time of the Tsars the Convent was used as a dumping place for the unwanted wives or un-marriageable women of nobility.  During the atheist Soviet era all religious institutions were shut down and either turned into government buildings or demolished.  Now, as I said, it is back to being a practicing Convent.  Like all Russian Orthodox churches in Russia, Novodevichiy Convent is beautiful to behold.  We were also told that lake next to Novodevichiy inspired Tchaikovsky's famous ballet, Swan Lake.

After the Convent we dropped by Gorky Park, a Russian amusement park  made famous in the United States by Martin Cruz Smith's Cold War era mystery novel (which was banned in Russia for quite some time).  The highlight there was seeing a "Cave of Horrors" ride that was decorated with the face of Mount Rushmore.  Our tour guide went to great lengths to assure us that it was not meant to be disrespectful of the United States.  Personally I thought it was just funny as hell.

Then we stopped by the Kremlin.  Red Square was closed for the Victory Day holiday, but we did get into the Armory, which has to be one of the very best historical museums it has ever been my pleasure to visit, and the Cathedral of the Assumption.  I do not know what was being assumed, though.  We also saw the seat of government, of course.

Day two of the tour took us back Red Square for a St. Basil's Cathedral photo op.  Just as any film shot or set in San Francisco has to feature the Golden Gate, or any film shot or set in New York City has to feature the Stature of Liberty, any film shot in Moscow has to have at least one shot of St. Basil's Cathedral in it.

It's such a beautiful building, can you blame them?

After that came the most surreal moment of the Moscow leg of our trip, a tour of Cold War era nuclear bunker.  I just could not get over how this monument to the absolute insanity of nuclear war had become a tourist attraction and that we were allowed to play dress up with Soviet army uniforms and weapons.

As weird as that was, it did not hold a candle to the F.S.B. agent (a.k.a. KGB agent) telling us about how Lee Harvey Oswald was NOT a Soviet agent, but that they (the KGB) also knew what a lousy shot he was thus incapable of firing the shots that killed Kennedy.  That was a truly one the biggest WTF moments of my life, learning that even the KGB thinks that there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy!

On May 9th, Victory Day itself, the wife and I hoofed it out to Kolomenskoe Estate and then over to the grounds of the Tsaritsyno Palace before heading back to Red Square, which had been finally opened to the general public, although the amount security was incredible.  Another weird moment followed our stroll across Red Square, when we stood outside of the KGB building (which now the FSB building) and took a whole bunch of pictures.  Twenty plus years ago we would have gotten in trouble doing that.  Now its all smiles and waves.

We took an overnight train to St. Petersburg, so I got to scratch sleeping in a Sleeper Car off of my bucket list.  The city once known as Leningrad was Peter the Great's love letter to western europe.  Here we toured countless palaces and cathedrals.  The highlight of that tour had to be our visit to the Hermitage, where we saw countless works of art by Picasso, Van Gogh, Rembrandt (a personal favorite) and Michelangelo.  The other highlight was a tour of St. Petersburg's canals and a visit to the Church on Spilled Blood.

Although commissioned to be a church, the Church on Spilled Blood has never been used as a place of worship.  It was used a place to store food during the siege of Leningrad, which gave it another name: The Savior of Potatoes.

While those highlights were undoubtedly high, the highest of them all was going to the Mariinskiy Theatre to watch  a performance of the ballet Don Quixote.  It was a stunning performance and the perfect way to end out trip to Russia.

As I said before, the people were friendly and the country was beautiful.  If you ever get a chance to go, do so.

"Future events such as these..."

I "joined" the 21^st century yesterday. I bought an iPad.

My purchase was far from an impulsive one, for I had already decided to get an Amazon Kindle, either by buying one outright, or by dropping subtle hints that it would make a great Xmas gift (i.e. telling any and all that asked what it was that I wanted for Christmas to get me a Kindle). I also knew that, if I wanted to get serious about my writing again, it was time to replace my aged to the point of being ancient desktop computer with something a tad more portable. Like a laptop. The reason being that my wife and I are, far more often than not, on the road and I seldom make it to the guest room to work.

And yes, I know that is a lame excuse for not being disciplined enough to get off my ass and do the work. Writing a story is considerably different from reading one. Writing a book is like going to the mental equivalent of the gym for a bout of serious weight training. Reading is simply sitting in a chair, or sprawling across a couch, or laying on a bed, and enjoying the hard work someone else has done.

But I digress (apologies to PAD) and need to come back around to the subject of this meandering and melancholic post, my purchase of an iPad and why it makes be both happy and sad.

As I said at the close of my second paragraph, my wife and I do a lot of traveling. We also do a lot of reading and movie watching. When we travel we always have a stack of books with us, as well as a portable DVD player and a bunch of discs. If she had not introduced me to the glory that is the iPod, then I would have been lugging around a stack of soundtrack CDs and a Discman to listen to them on.

That last sentence concerning "the glory that is the iPod" is the reason why I used quotation marks around the word joined in the first paragraph. The iPod (on my iPhone) was my first step onto the slippery slope that has slid me down into the digital abyss. I didn’t want to go there. I refused to get one for the longest time. I didn’t think that I needed one. I liked having stacks of CDs around with which I could visually measure the size of my ever growing library of movie scores. Then my wife (who, at the time, was my girlfriend) convinced me to get an iPhone. Her argument for investing in one was as sound as it was subtle: she just put one in my hand. That was all it took. Now I carry around more music in the palm of my hand (53 complete albums, currently, with a smattering of individual songs and tracks from an additional six albums that I did not count as albums) than I was every capable of if I were using a Discman and I have not even used one quarter of the available memory in my iPhone’s iPod. It also did not take me all that long to start bypassing purchasing discs and simply opting to download the music into an iTunes account. Now the only compact discs that I buy are the limited edition collector’s sets from specialty retailers like Intrada. Everything else is digital. It’s just easier and takes up a lot less space.

Which brings me to my second step onto the slope, and the one that resulted in my feet falling out from under me and my rocketing towards a digitized life: movies.

I not only collect film scores, I also collect films. My library currently hovers around some three hundred movies and television programs. That is not only a lot of movies, it also a lot of DVDs and, just like CDs, DVDs take up a lot of space. The step from downloading music onto my iPod to downloading movies to my iPod was as easy as deciding that it was far easier and, armed with a gift certificate for iTunes, much cheaper to download a digital copy of Tobe Hooper’s remake of Invaders from Mars than to try and find a reasonably priced used DVD. Since the disc was out of print at the time, and might still be, reasonably priced used DVDs were a tad difficult to come by and downloading a copy onto our computer was not only easy, but cheap. That was all it took. When we went on our next lengthy vacation, I filled my iPod with lots of music, and movies and TV shows I bought and downloaded from iTunes.

But I still carried a stack of books with me. I could not part with those, could I?

Then my wife and I spent a quiet, romantic weekend at a bed and breakfest in this rambling Victorian in Pacific Grove, just outside of Monterey. While there I was struck with the sudden desire to either read a "cozy" murder mystery or a gothic ghost story, neither of which I had with me. I was stuck in the middle of a science-fiction novel. There were no used book stores (a dying breed, it seems) to browse. But later I looked at the Kindle app on my iPhone (which I had begun to flirt with, downloading samples to see what it was like to read an e-book) and thought, "I could have just bought an e-book, downloaded it, and read it on my iPhone Kindle."

That thought was all it took to convince me that having a Kindle wouldn’t be so bad.

Oh, I had fought getting a Kindle. I hated the very idea of e-books. Books were meant to be printed on paper, not a computer screen. (So writes the man who writes a blog that numerous people read on their computer screens.) But they also take up a lot more space than DVDs and CDs. I have always lived in apartments or rooms that were literally overflowing with books, DVDs, and CDs. Even without sharing my living space with a spouse, I had little to no room for the books that I bought and hoped to read. At the moment my wife and I have six filled to overflowing bookcases in the house and my wife half-jokingly refuses to allow me a seventh or eighth one. But I love not only reading books, but collecting them as well. With a Kindle, the "need" for more bookcases is negated. With a Kindle I could carry around the inventory of a small bookstore in the palm of my hand and still have space leftover for some magazines.

Which brings me to my purchase, the iPad. I opted for the iPad because 1) I was in the Mac Store and could walk out with it then and there, 2) there is a Kindle app on my iPhone, so I already have one, it was screen size that really bothered me, and 3) the iPad has a lot more memory and could be used to store the movies and TV shows on my iPhone iPod, which would give me more space for music and...

Now I have an iPad. I should be happy, so why am I so depressed?

Because I still remember a scene from Galaxy of Terror, wherein a confused Robert Englund asks a reading Ray Walston if what the man is holding is in fact a book. "Yes, it’s a book," Walston’s character replies. "Do you want to hold it?" He offers it to Englund’s character, who recoils as if from a dangerous animal and refuses to touch it.

Nothing I had ever seen before, nor anything I have ever seen after, has ever disturbed and depressed me like that moment. "Please," I remember thinking, "please do not let me ever live in a world without books, without book stores, or without libraries."

I am happy with my new toy, but I cannot keep from holding it in my hand and thinking of that scene.

A Moment of LOL (Special "I bought an iPad today" Edition)

see more Very Demotivational

June 19 - 27, 2010: On VACATION!!!

That's right...we're on vacation.  No reviews or blathering for at least a week.

Two Days, Four Shows: My First Weekend Visiting Broadway

Last weekend I made my first ever trip to Broadway, with my lovely fiancee acting as personal tour guide.  (She makes the trip regularly.)  We did not go to sight see, although we did stroll around Times Square, Rockefeller Plaza, and walked right past Radio City Music Hall.  We went for the express purpose of seeing theater, and what theater it was.

We arrived Saturday morning and the first show I caught was a matinee performance of The Toxic Avenger, a musical adaptation of Lloyd Kaufman's cult classic movie (described by one character as something "that most people have seen while stoned," which is probably the best way to enjoy it) is respectful of its 1984 source material and honors its politically incorrect and vulgar humor.  So much so that I sat there wondering about all the parents that had brought their kids to see it.  (What the hell?)  Sure, the musical is cartoonish and playful, but there are severed limbs, heads, and various internal organs tossed about with gleeful abandon.  There are also quite a few sexually graphic moments, and the language is on the salty side.

Needless to say, but I loved every second of it and would gladly watch it again in a heartbeat.  The songs were terrific (the Springsteen parody "The Legend of the Toxic Avenger" and the one person duet of "Bitch/Slut/Liar/Whore" being two of the most memorable standouts, but the show's heart glows through the almost tear inducing "You Tore My Heart Out") and all the performances top notch.  The Toxic Avenger should become this generation's Little Shop of Horrors (stage version, of course) and no genre fan will want to miss it. 

Next was an evening performance of God of Carnage, the play that I had been most looking forward to seeing.  My expectations were not only met, but surpassed.  The play is brilliant.  On its surface the plot sounds simple, the parents of two children that have been involved in a violent altercation at a local park meet to discuss what happened.  The talk, however, slowly spirals out of control, until utter chaos breaks out on the stage.  Christine Lahti, Annie Potts, Jimmy Smits, and Ken Stott were all wonderful.  Author Yasmina Reza, who also wrote the equally fascinating Art, is fast becoming a favorite playwright of mine.

Sunday started with a matinee performance of A Steady Rain, the play that actually got me motivated to make my very first trip to Broadway.  Being both a Bond fan and something of an on and off comic book geek, there was no way that I could pass on the chance to see Daniel Craig (the current James Bond) and Hugh Jackman (Wolverine) on stage together.  The play itself was only fair to decent (there is a plot development that pulled me out of the story and I never really managed to get back into it completely) but the actors, especially Craig, were fantastic.  They elevated the material to a level that, from reading it, you would not think it capable of reaching.

I closed my Broadway weekend with David Mamet's new play, Race.  Unbeknownst to me, it was the play's official opening night, so there was a red carpet and oodles of celebrities to ogle as they walked it.  Happy, happy, joy, joy.  The play itself is a challenging work about racism and racial politics.  In an article in Playbill, actor David Alan Grier (who performed, and performed quite well, alongside James Spader, Kerry Washington, and Richard Thomas) said of Race, "some will say it goes too far and some will say it doesn't go far enough."  I agree.  While nowhere near as good as God of Carnage, but far better than A Steady Rain, the play held my attention and the final line left me both breathless and eager to talk about the play, what it said, what it tried to say, and what it implied.  Unfortunately I was the only Mamet fan in the group, so I saw it alone and only had myself to talk with about it afterward.  Since I agreed with myself on all points, it was a boring conversation.

The weekend ended much too quickly, like so many very busy weekends do, and I returned home with reluctance.  Now that I have finally experienced the joy of Broadway theater, I am eager to return and experience it again.

Primal fear and Paranormal Activity

In the last few years I have managed to whittle down my description of the horror genre to a very simply and almost universal sounding general truth: "The horror genre dramatizes or explores the fear, or terror, that results when the irrational intrudes upon the rational."

Stephen King described that very same thing, albeit it in a better illustrated manner, thirty-one plus years ago, in his foreword to his book Night Shift:

"At night, when I go to bed, I am still at pains to be sure that my legs are under the blanket after the lights go out.  I'm not a child any more but... I don't like to sleep with one leg sticking out.  Because if a cool hand ever reached out from under the bed and grasped my ankle, I might scream.  Yes, I might scream to wake the dead.  That sort of thing doesn't happen, of course, and we all know that.  In the stories that follow you will encounter all manner of night creatures; vampires, demon lovers, a thing that lives in the closet, all sorts of other terrors.  None of them are real.  The thing under my bed waiting to grab my ankle isn't real.  I know that, and I also know that if I'm careful to keep my foot under the covers, it will never be able to grab my ankle."

I am much the same way.  I also suffer from the same semi-irrational fear.  My adult mind knows that my and, more than likely, King's collective fear is rooted in the dread of having an actual intruder attack while we are asleep, when we are unaware of the danger that looms over us.  Oren Peli, Paranormal Activity's writer and director, understands this perfectly, for he enacts that familiar to us all nightmare scenario of something grabbing an exposed foot and yanking someone out of bed while she sleeps with gooseflesh inducing power in his film.  That scene, and the ones before it, as well as the final one that followed it, are nothing more than our most primal nightmares brought to life.

I understood that intellectually, when driving to the theater last night.  I knew that I would be seeing those primal fears of the dark and the unknown played out as entertainment.  Like King, I knew that what I would be seeing was not real (and, being an atheist, I do not believe that "paranormal activity" itself is real) but I was uneasy about seeing the film.  I was afraid, you see, that it would have a negative effect on me beyond simply getting me to the edge of my seat and nervously anticipating the moment when the next jump scare would explode out of the sound system.

Because, as I said, I suffer from Night Terrors.  A sleep disorder that causes me to snap awake in terror shortly after falling to sleep.  Sometimes I just snap awake.  Other times I grab my fiance and repeatedly ask her if she is all right.

And sometimes I wake up screaming my throat raw, leap out of bed, and try to escape whatever it is that mind think is attacking me.

My fear going into Paranormal Activity was that it would strike the Night Terror nerve, and it did.  Watching the movie, at times, was like watching some of my worst episodes happening to other people.  I lost a night's sleep worrying about whether or not I would have an episode, which brings my line of thought back to the film's title.  

It was once believed that nightmares were caused by assorted demons (their names are legion, you know) tormenting some poor unfortunate soul.  Many still believe that to be true.  I do not.  I just cannot buy Ultimate Evil doing the psychological equivalent of sneaking up behind me and going, "BOO!"  I mean, I expect more out of Ultimate Evil than some stomping footsteps in the night.  In the dark.  When I am asleep.  Is Ultimate Evil a six year old?

But as I lay in bed alone last night (the fiance is out of town this weekend, hence my night out at the horror show) I worried about having an episode to the point of getting angry.  I eventually fell asleep and woke up this morning without incident.  Unless I had one and just don't remember it.  That happens, a lot.

Although my critical assessment of Paranormal Activity remains unchanged (while it is certainly an unnerving viewing experience, it is also not very "good" as an actual film) I nonetheless have to tip my hat to Oren Peli for making me fearful of going to sleep last night.  Even if it was not quite the way he intended.

Until next time, pleasant dreams...?

 

I Have Been, I Am, I Will Be...

First off let me wish you a very Happy New Year.  I don't know about you, but I'm really looking forward to 2009.

It's hard for me to believe that this blog o' mine has been chugging (and, at times, limping) along now for well over three years.  I'm working on year four now.  Thank you all for visiting and taking the time to read my opinions, blatherings and pontifications.  It means a lot to me.  I know you're reading, because I check the visitor stats.

And to those that encouraged me to hang in with the blog back when I went through a really bad time in 2007, thanks.  2008 was a far better year for me.  My emotional keel has never felt so even and, as I said before, I am really looking forward to 2009.  Why is that?

First off, there are the books that are coming out in 2009: A Dark Matter by Peter Straub, Critical Mass by Whitley Strieber, Meg: Hell's Aquarium by Steve Alten, and Contagious by Scott Sigler are just four of the books that I am looking forward to reading in 2009.  I've already placed my orders for them.

2008 was the best year ever for scratching my soundtrack collector's itch.  A huge amount of titles were released on CD, either in expanded edition reissues or for the very first time, and several gaps in my music library were filled.  2009 is getting off to a splendid start with the release of Lalo Schifrin's complete score for The Dead Pool, the fifth and final Dirty Harry adventure.  Intrada, my go to place for the countless limited editions released, will be starting the new year off with a promised limited edition release of Jay Chattaway's score for the Chuck Norris action film Missing in Action. Great stuff.

I'm still reading comics, but have opted out of reviewing individual issues, unless they are one shots, and will instead be reviewing entire story arcs.  I'm also flirting with the idea of giving up on many serials and simply picking up the occasional trade collection.  But there are some serials that will have to ripped from my cold, dead hands.  Stuff like The Walking Dead and Hack/Slash.

Looking forward to this year's Wonder Con, Bay Con, and SiliCon, of course.  We might even attend a few more, although I seriously doubt that we will even come close to breaking the seven Cons attended record of 2007.  That was exhausting.

Finally there are the movies.  2009 is looking very good on several fronts.  Let me start with January, which is looking like the new October.  January alone is seeing the theatrical release of at least eleven horror movies:  The Uninvited (the American version of A Tale of Two Sisters), David (Blade: Trinity) Goyer's The Unborn (which is not an adaptation of David Shobin's novel), My Blood Valentine 3-D (which may or may not be in 3-D, depending on what theater you see it at), and After Dark Horrorfest III.

I don't know about you, but I really missed attending Horrorfest last year.  There's just something about getting to see the kind of low budget crap that used to play in theaters before video became the new drive-in movie venue.  Considering just how badly Horrorfest 2007 tanked (and that failure was the primary reason After Dark Films skipped 2008) I'm surprised that they are coming back for another round.  Although this year's offerings look to be a distinct improvement over 2007's tepid offerings (the film's are The Broken, Slaughter, Perkins' 14, Butterfly Effect: Revelation, From Within, Dying Breed, Autopsy, and the Korean thriller Voices) I would not be at all surprised if this turned out to be the Event's swan song.  I hope it isn't, because I love the idea of Horrorfest.

February = Friday the 13th.  March = Watchmen (despite what Fox has done with their lawsuit).  Then there is the new Star Trek, Terminator: Salvation, 2012 (which will probably be crap, because it's a Roland Emmerich flick, but it has an AWESOME teaser),  Final Destination 3-D (that isn't the official title, but it might as well be from a marketing standpoint) and Saw VI.

I passed on seeing Saw V and will probably do likewise for Saw VI, but I will be watching the film's box office numbers rather closely.  The fifth entry barely made it past the first film's 55 million box office take, which is far below the large returns of the second and third films, so it is clear that the Law of Diminishing Returns is whittling away at the franchise.  Although Saw VI might be able to get the 30 million opening, the drop-off looks to be faster.  Then again, Saw V was a strike picture and thus had to rely on excessive clips to pad out its running time.  But the final numbers on Saw VI will show if the franchise can squeak to number VII, or shut down at VII.  Either way, I doubt that will be the end of Saw.  The logical leap would be for Lionsgate to turn it into a DTV franchise.  That's what I would do, if I ran Lionsgate.  But I don't.

And that is the stuff that I'm starting out the year looking forward to.  I'll get back to the reviewing the stuff in a day or two.  Until then, Happy New Year!

Lights...Camera...

Action?  Wait a minute, isn't the camera supposed to be pointing at me?  What are my lines?  What IS my motivation?

Well, truth be told, I had no lines.  There wasn't even any sound being recorded. I just had to react comically to a plate of slop that my "wife" placed in front of me.  Such are the beginnings of fame.

FAME!  I'm gonna live forever, I'm gonna...something something something.  Bah, it's an old song anyway.

For those of you that don't know (hi Mom, hi Dad) I was asked to do a small bit part in an ultra low budget, ultra independent "musical comedy" that I now know is called Devious Inc.  The movie evidently has something to do with shoes, beyond that I haven't a clue.  I never even saw the script.  Didn't need to, really, since I had no dialog and only had to hit my marks and give the performance the director told me to give.  According to the producer that asked me to play the part, I did the hitting the marks and performing thing rather well.

Working on a movie really is work.  It's also a lot of hurry up and wait.  Just look at me there, waiting patiently for my chance to shine in the spotlight.  I did a lot of waiting that morning, but I also did a lot of working.  The cast and crew were obviously focused on the task at hand, making what I take to be a feature length movie, and while they were all friendly, they were also clearly there to work, not to goof off.  This was not one of those goofy, relaxed sets you see on the making of docs on DVDs.  This was one of those "time is of the essence and we have to get shit done and real quick" sets.  But that didn't stop anyone from being friendly, no tempers flared, and my experience on the set was far from an unpleasant one.

Should the opportunity ever present itself again, I will be more than ready for my close up.

It's also mine!

Another day and another glorious addition to my collection.  This is a splash page from Widow #3 and, best of all, it's an ORIGINAL.  I have collected my very first piece of original comic book art.  Sweet rhapsody of life, at last I found you

It's mine!

Just bought me a healthy dose of Mike Wolfer style awesome for my wall.

Sweet.

Well...

It seems that the announcement of my closing up shop was met with "No!  Don't do it!" and a couple of "Why the hell would you want to do that?"

It's kind of personal and painful, but let me explain:

I started and used this blog primarily as a tool to hide from (rather than to cope with) my grief over my wife's death.  Everyday I would just crawl into a book, a comic, a movie or a TV episode and then I would sit here and write a review.  It would take hours and I would be focused on something other than my pain and my anger.  But now that I have both released and confronted those negative emotions, I'm on the road to recovery.  I'm not all the way there yet, but I'm well on my way.

The biggest change has been a marked decrease in my comfort food of old: books, movies, comics and TV.  I used to be obsessed with them.  Long before I was ever married I found that I could immerse myself so deeply within a story that it would be like becoming an actual part of the story.  I used to take this stuff so personally.  Because it was my coping mechanism.  But all that has changed.  I think C.S. Lewis put it best in his stunningly accurate treatise on living through grief, A Grief Observed:

Here, for instance, is a new phase, a new loss.  I do all the walking I can, for I'd be a fool to go to bed not tired.  Today I have been revisiting old haunts, taking one of the long rambles that made me so happy in my bachelor days.  And this time the face of nature was not emptied of its beauty and the world didn't look (as I complained some days ago) like a mean street.  On the contrary, every horizon, every stile or clump of trees, summoned me into a past kind of happiness, my pre-H happiness.  But the invitation seemed to me horrible.  The happiness into which it invited me was insipid.  I find that I don't want to go back again and be happy in that way.  It frightens me to think that going back should even be possible.  For this fate would seem to me the worse of all; to reach a state in which my years of love and marriage should appear in retrospect a charming episode - like a holiday - that had briefly interrupted my interminable life and returned me to normal, unchanged.  And then it would come to seem unreal - something so foreign to the usual texture of my history that I could almost believe it had happened to someone else.  Thus H. would die to me a second time; a worse bereavement than the first.  Anything but that.

Did you know, dear, how much you took away we you left?  You have stripped me even of my past, even of the things we never shared.  I was wrong to say the stump was recovering from the pain of the amputation.  I was deceived because it has so many ways to hurt me that I only discover them one by one.

So the days of immersing myself in the escapist entertainments of old has passed.  (Am I alone in thinking of Stephen King's Insomnia when Lewis talks of those long rambling walks?)  I have found that, like Michael Noonan in Stephen King's novel Bag of Bones, when it comes to climbing into and reviewing escapist fantasy, I just "Prefer not to."

But it seems that a modest number of people have enjoyed my (increasingly) periodic blatherings and pontifications and don't want to see them go.  I am both honored and flattered to read those comments.  It warms my heart that, for a man who once dreamed of being a professional writer, people have read this blog and, for the most part*, enjoyed what I have had to say.

So, my announcement has proved to be a bit premature.  I won't shut this blog down on August 31.  My blatherings and pontifications regarding books, comics, movies and TV episodes, as well as my sharing classic moments of cinema and assorted movie trailers, will continue.  But I am no longer a Clueless Observer, from now on CHADZILLA ROARS!!!

For those that contacted and commented about my closing down, thank you.  Your readership and support is most appreciated.

Take care and be well,

C.

* Well, there have been a few allegations that I'm just another fat loser living in my Mom's basement. ;)

Good-bye, farewell and amen...

This blog will be shutting down and closing up shop on Aug. 31, 2007.

My Sky Dive video.

Here it is in all it's glory! If it downloaded properly, that is.

SEE me paraphrase They Live!

SEE my growing unease as the plane goes higher and higher!

SEE my utter terror before "jumping" from the plane!

GODDAMN is 13,000 feet a lot of feet!

My friend's making this movie, see...

David Hohl, a friend of mine for almost twenty years, is finally getting to fulfill his life long dream of making a movie.  (I even wrote a script for him at one point, but the less said about that project the better.)  What's ironic is that he is the second friend of mine to live the dream.

He's currently filming the movie in various locales in and around San Francisco and I may or may not have a cameo in it.  It all depends on scheduling.  (I have a schedule?)  The title is In Search of Lovecraft and, judging from Dave's comment to a local paper, it seems to be an In the Mouth of Madness style story, where the characters are driven insane by the not so fictional creatures of the Lovecraft Mythos. 

I am so looking forward to shamelessly plugging this project in the coming months.

I'm going to die!

Diagnosis Murder tie-in writer and TV producer Lee Goldberg, who is also an admirer of my reviews, has asked my permission to use my name for a victim in book #7 of the Diagnosis Murder series.  Of course I gave it, what fan wouldn't want their murder solved by Doc Sloan?

Seeing BOO.

Fangoria Magazine's official webpage had this contest to get tickets to a VIP only screening of Fango writer Anthony C. Ferrante's horror movie BOO.  I won!  Good thing that the screening is at a movie theatre that is literally within walking distance of my home.  I'll post a review as soon as I recover from the horrors of BOO.