A Far Out Fantastic Site

I never thought 1976's "Carrie" as being a good movie. I saw it when I was a freshman in college and thought it was one of the most pessimistic, most despairing films ever. But that's when I had a different view of horror movies and what they should consist of. After all, I was just out of high school and carrying with me my own family's beliefs of what decency is. So, I've been meaning to watch the movie again lately but haven't had a chance. But now I'm inclined even more to see it since it’s been selected for the Library of Congress's National Film Registry (NFR). “Carrie” is one of at least three films that are science fiction or fantasy that will be inducted into the NFR. What’s more is that all three are based on books! The other two are Disney’s "The Little Mermaid" and 2008’s "Iron Man". (Yes, I’m including comic books.) I haven't seen "Iron Man" (as much as he’s a favourite Marvel character of mine) and do...

  It's the first Wednesday of the month and so it’s time for another Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) post! In an IWSG post, we writers bring our writing challenges and problems out into the open to share with each other and try to offer solutions.  When the brink of the holiday season comes around which is, at least for me, just after Thanksgiving I never feel ready for it. Time flies by so fast that it seems like when one Christmas goes by another comes within only a week rather than a year. So, it’s from around Thanksgiving up to about the second (full) week of December that I always wonder how I’m going to handle both my regular year-round duties and the holidays. And those year-round duties include my writing. So, that brings me to the IWSG optional question of the month: Are the holidays a time to catch up or fall behind on writer goals?  For me the holidays are a time to inevitably fall behind in my writing. This means that I don’t intend to fall behind bu...

The promotion poster for the 1960 movie adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher" which starred Vincent Price. Photo Credit: Wikemedia Commons    Our Book-To-Movie for November is now crossing into December in which I apologise for. However, like myself, I’m sure many of you were too busy to read many blogs during the Thanksgiving weekend in which I hope you all had a great one. I didn’t post this during the week either because I was busy getting caught up on things that I got behind on mostly due to the holiday. Here’s November’s Book-To-Movie in December. In a Book-To-Movie , we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation. We’ve reviewed many Roger Corman film adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories here in the past. One we haven’t reviewed yet is his 1960 adaptation of Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”. One of the most distinguished features of Poe’s horror tales is his morbid style in both setting and character. Vincent Price...

Credit: Wikimedia Commons I’ve been watching an episode a week for the last three weeks of Guillermo Del Toro’s new Netflix horror anthology series, “Cabinet of Curiosities”. (Yes, you read that right; I only watch an episode a week and so I don’t do binge watching.) So far, the series has been really good. I first started watching the episodes in order (even though the series doesn’t have an over-arcing storyline), but only up to the second episode. That’s because I wanted to see how at least one of the two episodes based on H.P. Lovecraft stories played out. Episode five is based on the short story “Pickman’s Model”, and episode six is based on the short story “The Dreams in the Witch House”. I’ve only seen the first of these two so far and thought it mostly played out really good including the creature effects. However, an article at ScreenRant doesn’t seem to give it as much credit, nor does it give much more to episode six. The article’s author, Padraig Cotter, says the monsters ...

Credit: Pixabay If you read, a few years back, my Book-To-Movie review of “Logan’s Run” , please don’t mistaken this post as a duplicate of it. What this post is concerned with is not the movie and book as a whole but with two evil AI characters in the story. “Evil” may be too sentimental of a word here because computers aren’t moral beings, they don’t have a conscience to make moral decisions. At least not yet. I’ll just use the word synonymously with “corrupt”, as in corrupt software. Isaac Asimov once said, "I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them." Neither do I fear them. I don't even fear the lack of them. I fear the overdependence on them. In other words, I fear society’s addiction to computer technology. And society has become addicted to it. Look at the people on a busy city sidewalk and at least every other person is either looking down at a mobile phone, are holding it up to their ear or wearing headphones connected to it. “Logan’s Run” foretells this o...

It's the first Wednesday of the month and so it’s time for another Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) post! In an IWSG post, we writers bring our writing challenges and problems out into the open to share with each other and try to offer solutions.  November has come really fast and so October flew by like a speeding bat! I was nearly burning myself out to get things done for my Halloween themed blogs and newsletter and even activity outside of my writing such as decorating the house. October and December are the busiest times of the year for me, so November is kind of a breather period between the two. So, for me, November is a time to rest . . . and to write. Not that I don’t write during October or November, of course. When I say that November is a time for me to write, I mean it’s a time to get back on track with the writing routine and not worry about holiday duties, Halloween and Christmas being two of my favourite celebrations of the year.  What about Thanksgiving?...

Credit: Pixabay.com Warning: This review may contain spoilers for both the book and movie being discussed. Read at your own risk! As I said last post , we've moved our Book-To-Movie review from its usual fourth weekend time slot to this Halloween weekend (or as I like to call it, Halloweekend). In a Book-To-Movie, we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation. The usual fate of rip-off films, it seems, is that they’re often soon forgotten as if they never existed. That was almost the case with the original film adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel, "Dracula". And those of you who are thinking the original film was Universal's 1931 film starring Bela Lugosi, it wasn’t. That was only the original legal film adaptation of the novel. The original adaptation was the 1922 German-made "Nosferatu" and is one of the oldest vampire movies. Although it was at one time destined to be forgotten, it became far from that. As this year’s media coverage of “No...