A Quarropas episode has been transferred to movie screens. This docudrama is making its way along the film festival circuit. Hopefully a distributor will acquire the movie and give it general release. Though factually based, and likely with poetic license taken, the effort will not portray my former hometown kindly.
Tag Archives: film
The Willies
Schlockmeisters believing themselves quality horror purveyors need to set up campfires that burn holes into patches of the darkest nighttime woods extant. Amid this pitch black setting, using remedial storytelling lessons, they should huddle around the flames and rediscover what truly jolts audiences.
They can start by reciting “The Monkey’s Paw” then diagram why the story still tingles. Continue reading The Willies
Dalliances
Matthias believed himself quite fortunate to have been a widower whose children had all entered adulthood. Or else explaining the circumstances which had befallen him to adolescents or teens could’ve been quite mortifying.
He asked himself, ‘Was it an incident? Or a series of misfortunes? Or an exercise in youthful malice?’
At least the English professor could engage the question philosophically. Nora, the other participant exposed, lacked Matthias’ considerable fig leaf. Apart from the pun, fig leaves were exactly what Nora needed. Those and mind wipes, as well as interdicting the bastard who’d swiped the incriminating memory card.
Not solely to cover the naked state she’d shared with Matthias, but to establish distance between the realized gossipy recrimination their private conduct stirred and the preferred mature indifference it should’ve left in its wake. Well, not so private now, though owing to her marital state, certainly illicit.
A university colleague, Nora, had entered a brief passionate romance (romance because affair sounded tawdry) with him occasioned by her husband Fausto. Living up to his name, Fausto was a true macho. Their marriage made Matthias wonder about ardor’s caprice. Continue reading Dalliances
Spittelberg
Fifteen years ago, British Airways delivered me to Vienna for the first time. Recently promotions by the UK flag carrier reminded me of that particular visit, my last flights before insane Koran perverting Islamists provoked the security theater air passengers now must endure.
Dovetailing nicely, it’s simply coincidence that Vienna is also the site where the West thwarted the Ottoman conquest of Europe. Any and all fretting about Western Civilization being swamped by Muslim hordes needs to brush up on his or her history.
If it was done then, it can surely be repeated if need be. Continue reading Spittelberg
Ooh! Scary! Ooh!
Congregants whose services demand sacrificial rites just might look for pointers at how cinema has steeped modern Halloween in blood and gore.
Until fairly recently wasn’t Halloween a simple holiday? One, which for the vast majority of us had lost its pagan purposes. Hadn’t it become candy mania for children and tomfoolery for adults? At best, an occasion for bingeing on movies that scared using moody atmosphere, lucid dialogue and vivid supporting characters?
When did trick or treat entertainments become so ominous? How did The Uninvited become the rebooted version of, what else, Nightmare on Elm Street?
For that matter, how has any producer neglected inserting Ministry’s Everyday Is Halloween into his or her movie?
What happened to the witches and ghosts? The improbable monsters? How did single-minded mass murders and asocial autonomes crowd out our familiar bump-in-the-night terrors? Haven’t these new manifestations of our subconscious, now news cycle regulars, coarsened more than the society they’re intended to reflect? Continue reading Ooh! Scary! Ooh!
New Start at New Address
Those Metropolitan Museum of Art bulletins are having an insidious effect. They remind of what’s been left behind. That’s why I’m already looking ahead to August 2015 for a return to New York.
Of course one upside regarding this move to Nevada is finally being able to enter contests whose grand prizes are all-expense paid trips to New York City. Before, sponsors never failed stuffing my inbox or mailbox with entries. For trips to New York City. Maybe if I lived in Buffalo or Plattsburgh the excursion offered might’ve been worthwhile.
Instead, had I entered and somehow won, travel would’ve consisted of catching a commuter train to Grand Central Terminal, then, depending on the hotel, taking a subway or cab there.
That sojourn wouldn’t have provoked any bug-eyed, screaming gratitude. That just would’ve been another weekend downtown.
Strangely enough now that I live in Las Vegas, I’m receiving pitches whose big prizes are Vegas vacations. Like I said, strange. Continue reading New Start at New Address
Unwritten
After rather involved February and March posts, the intent was to have been concise through April. Content will still be shorter but the subjects have changed.
April 2014 is the centenary of French author Marguerite Duras’ birth. Best known here for her book The Lover (most guys watched the movie version to ogle a gloriously naked Jane March), Duras also collaborated on the Hiroshima, Mon Amour script, a cinematic feat that set intellectuals, and those who adore their brilliance, swooning. Continue reading Unwritten
His Azure Adventure Ends
This concludes Intrigue the Boy and Three Kimonos
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Gone that March 1978 Thursday night were Trevor’s shitkickers. His entire casual appearance, the being it conferred, had been exiled. Though technically still a greenhorn, he learned quickly. He bought another pair of Western boots specifically for decent social occasions as well as two-steppin’ and instructor-hosted events. Not only did he endeavor to keep the black leather glossy but the white stitching pristine.
Absent also on this night were chinos and tees, replaced by tailored navy blue serge over a button-down shirt. One real-life tie whose Windsor knot was genuine completed the transformation that startled Delores. After he crossed her threshold, she smilingly stepped back, then circled to better assess “the wonder.”
Homecoming
Before relocating to Las Vegas I considered resettling in Southern Arizona instead. An Arizona graduate, the university I proudly attended had been considered a gem in America’s higher learning crown. Now lorded over by a blithely unaware administration, alma mater is just overpriced and being overbuilt.
Hmm. Maybe this post should’ve been titled Leave-taking.
Only intuition kept me from reestablishing myself in Tucson. With rue let me state Homecoming 2013 proved my hunch and subsequent detour correct.
The Shame of Others
Marvelous recent story from Germany demonstrates American thinking isn’t alone in being palsied by corrosive political correctness.