Free Guy

Any big fans of Free Guy here? I am right in the middle of watching it for the first time. I had vaguely heard about it when they were filming it in Boston, but this is the first time I've seen it.

So far, my verdict is.... not bad at all. They make a huge deal about sunglasses being the key to a realm of higher awareness, which is clearly borrowed at least a little from They Live. But the overall plot, at least so far reminds me mostly of the "Everything is Awesome" scene from The Lego Movie. Just that whole idea of a lowly but cheerful worker drone dude in a cutthroat world, who begins to get a clue.

It also reminds me, at times, of Tron, and of Ready Player One. Not hard to see why. Anyway, I'm right in the middle of it, but so far I like it.

The Exorcist: Believer

The trailer for the movie looked terribly underwhelming. They wanted to market this as a straight-up horror film, but if you think about it, the original Exorcist was more of a psychological drama for most of the movie. This movie goes for that approach too, meaning that its trailer isn't showing you the movie you end up getting.

What you get is actually a pretty simple story. Two young girls go missing, and their respective families experience some bizarre shenanigans. It takes the legacy sequel approach by bringing back a familiar face or two, but the main idea is pretty concise. I wouldn't say it's very scary, but it is well made. That's what I say about the original, too. It has a few decent creepy moments, and I think it was trying to channel Hereditary a bit, especially by casting Hereditary actress Ann Dowd in yet another spiritual horror character role. I also liked the ending. It's a bit of a twist, both bittersweet and still quite bleak.

For anyone wondering about continuity, nothing in the movie negates the events of Exorcist 2 and 3, and the director confirms that. So none of that garbage where it's a sequel only to the first film, though the first film of course will be the only film they reference, because even I don't remember part 2, and modern audiences shouldn't have to relieve that mess either.

Not a bad flick like I was expecting, but poor box office and reviews tell us we probably wont be getting this turned into a trilogy like they planned. I wasn't terribly attached to that idea anyway. As a stand alone legacy sequel, it works just fine.

#Review

Excellent potential for a meme

Pause this clip at 1:37 or 1:38, and just look at the expression on Rev. Sayers' face. What a great meme that could make. I don't know exactly what you could use it for... just the expression on his face is awesome. Like, maybe you could post it on some thread, right after the person posting before you said something that reveals he is out of his mind, or is a complete idiot.

The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis

This https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/3858519 is a short story by Clark Ashton Smith, published in 1932. C.A.S. is mostly known today through his connection with H.P. Lovecraft, but I have been beginning to appreciate him in his own right. I discovered him... early in the pandemic, 2020 or 2021. Well, I had vaguely known that he had existed, before then, but, whatever.

I just wanted to mention this story, because I came across some discussions online, speculating that it might have been a big inspiration for Alien. Yes, THAT Alien, the 1979 classic.

I am not sure if I agree with this or not. It is an intriguing possibility, though. It is possible to describe the story in such a way as to make people prone to say "Of COURSE it was the inspiration for Alien, you idiot! How could anyone possibly even question this?!? Why is this the first time I am hearing about this?!? Jesus Christ!"

OK, here is how I would describe it, if I were trying to see the idea that it inspired Alien.

A group of explorers in the future are on another planet. While exploring, they find a passage into some kind of large, underground complex, built by aliens who have long since died out, or have gone to some other unknown end. While exploring the complex, one of the explorers is abruptly surprised by a small alien creature that doesn't LOOK too threatening at first glance, but which pounces on him and attaches itself to his head and (upper) face. It seems to be comandeering his body for unknown, but clearly nefarious, purposes of its own. Very soon, all the other explorers are in great peril from... well, not from the exact same alien, or from a spawn of that alien, but from other, identical creatures which were also concealed in the depths of the underground complex. One by one, the explorers are subjected to extremely yucky attacks, until they are all severely yuckified except one solitary explorer, who through a combination of quick thinking and luck avoids the fate of... well, of HIS, not her, comrades. Does that lone explorer survive all the way until the end of the story? ead the story, and you'll see. (Or just ask me, I'll tell you if you want).

So, yeah, when I describe the story like that, it really sounds like it could be the inspiration for Alien.

But... well, I won't wreck the story anymore than I already have, but lots of the common ground the story has with Alien are actually pretty common sci-fi tropes. I'm not a hundred percent convinced.

One thing I'll say, and I don't think this wrecks too much of the suspense: the story takes place on Mars, not some heretofor undiscovered planet way the hell out there in the cosmos. For me, that radically changes the whole feel of the story from Alien. Part of the mystery of Alien was that not only was that planet unknown, but also we had no idea where the alien spaceship was from, at least until the recent sequels. For me, that added a lot to the mysteriousness of the setting. I guess it is possible that that was just an improvement that Ridley Scott thought up.

Another thing is that there is nothing in the short story about The Company, which for some people was one of the main scary things about Alien, maybe even THE scariest thing.

Anyway, I can see this one going either way.

By the way, I have mentioned this author here before, in some thread. He wrote another story that I DO think was probably a big inspiration for Land of the Lost, the 70s Saturday morning TV show. I'm pretty convinced about that.

Anyway. Yah. Had to share. Any thoughts?

Marvel's Echo

Hulu and Disney+ premiered all 5 episodes of this today. Marvel is such crap these days, but I was optimistic because of the TV-MA rating, honing in on the Netflix vibes of Marvel's greatest era. Either way, this is still a Disney production, so it must suck, right? Especially since this is a cultural/fem-centric show that nobody asked for, which I've been saying from the get-go would suck.

Overall, I didn't hate it. It has it's moments, but it's definitely pandering to the native American scene. They shoehorn that shit in hard, and when they do, the show suffers from it. Not because embracing the heritage is bad, but because they do it in that generic magic/superhero way that always leaves me rolling my eyes. Fortunately, that garbage is minimal, and it's a mostly grounded series with enough violence to keep me from calling it some lame tame BS.

The main character does an okay job, but I'm really only watching it for Vincent D'Onofrio. He's still fantastic as the Kingpin, stealing every scene he's in. Anyone expecting Daredevil, know that he's only in it for one scene, but I had to hold back tears of joy as it reminded me of the good old days. And for anyone wondering about continuity, the character of Echo first appeared in the Hawkeye show, which was pretty lousy, but all of her and Kingpin's main points are recapped in episode 1.

A lot of Marvel's best stuff comes when they're not trying to embrace the superhero angle, but rather when they keep things real and gritty. Keep the CGI usage minimal and this is a direction that Marvel should stick with if they want to get me excited again.

#Review

Happy 2024, Hope it doesn't SUCK!

New year, same old shit. I try to be optimistic and set goals. I totally failed on last year's resolution to make a new video, but time has a way of slipping past me so fluidly. My new resolution will be more vague, such as eating better. Less sugar. Maybe get some more sunlight and try to be more active in the daytime, instead of wasting my life on this here computer, working on nothing important and watching tv and jerking off.

Some Site Stuff

Speaking of working on lame garbage that nobody cares about, I have a few things I'm still brainstorming on for TE. As a programmer, I haven't gotten to explore the glories of a thing called WebSockets yet, but I'm hoping I can weasel my way into that this year. It's a real-time connection from browser to server, so it would improve the shoutbox, tracker, and casino stuff immensely, as well as provide stuff like facetiming, and dare I think so far ahead... maybe even multiplayer video games.

I was also considering perhaps automating user viewings. Maybe on the home page, there would be a text input field for what you want to log as a viewing, so you can type it in real quick (title, year, some brief comment) and then submit it to update some user list. If you were to log everything you watch (autofill titles would be pulled from site's DB and maybe even from imdb, if I don't get blocked), then it could auto add you to applicable challenges, if that type of data could be figured out. Hard to say since challenge rules vary.

I'm not sure on that last one, but I've wanted to update the shitty outdated 'lists' feature for a while now, and while I still might do that to some extent, I'm not sure I should bother if nobody cares to use it. Also, I'd understand if it's not wanted because it would kill some of the merit of a traditional sticky post with comments. Just pitching ideas here.

I'll still dabble in various random side projects, because when the ideas hit, they hit hard. So hopefully, 2024 will be an okay year. We'll probably get at least a few decent movies, but...

Election Year?!

Ah FUCK. This year is the presidential election. If it's anything like last time, it'll be a complete travesty with both sides slandering the other and it'll cause more social divides. I like to say I washed my hands of this stupid rigged two-party rigmarole, but I'm sure some extreme liberal stupidity will set me off eventually, but until then... stay tuned.

Anniversary

Did you know that 2024 will mark 10 years of TRASH EPICS? Yeah, that's right. We've been ruining lives since 2014. We used to ruin a lot more lives, but those pansies bailed out on some infinite potential here. Of course, without the userbase, I haven't been able to optimize things as quickly as I would have done had I more urgency to do so, but I still think this site is more competent and robust than those IMDb spin-off boards I quit looking at years ago. Now my webhost? That's a different story. When the site goes down for like a day or so, that's their fault. Never my fault. Maybe once or twice. Five times, tops.

I am upset that we lost basically 90% of our users over the years, but I'm also very incredibly lazy and gave up on trying to bring in new users, so I'll take some responsibility for why we're such a barren wasteland most of the time. Maybe TE hasn't found its niche yet. Maybe I'll figure it out in another 10 years.

Thoughts?

So what does everything think of 2024? Yay or nay?

Neal McDonough

Would you consider him to be an "A List" actor? I'm not even sure exactly what that means, or if anyone has ever really defined it... I was just thinking, he is probably one of the most famous people that I can think of who I can really relate to, in terms of his background.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_McDonough

He grew up in and around Boston, in places I know, and is of Irish descent, like me. We probably had a lot of the same reference points, growing up. We probably even know a few people in common, although I do not know who they are.

I probably noticed him for the first time in Minority Report, or right around that time. Wikipedia mentions that he has been fired from at least one acting job because he is so Catholic, and so deovted to his wife, that he wouldn't do love scenes. Yeesh. Imagine that, being offered to share intimate moments with hot actresses and just saying "nah, no thanks, not for me." Jesus. In a way, that reminds me of the scene in the 1978 Dawn of the Dead where Ken Foree's character Peter sees an expensive gun in a gun store in that mall, and says "Ain't it a crime." David Emge's character Flyboy asks him what he means, and he replies "The only person who could ever miss with this gun would be the sucker with the bread to buy it."

Anyway, I was just thinking about this. Nothing to do with anything. Had to share.

The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane (1976)

I watched this on Amazon Prime last night. Hadn't seen it in a while. Funny how we're less than 4 minutes into it and already, they're throwing a character at us who aims to stick it to a 13 year old by any means necessary. We don't even know him or the 13 year old yet, or even what this movie is about, and they've already established Martin Sheen as a raging child molester. As well as a rude dickhead. Just sayin'.

But what I REALLY don't get is the unnecessary nudity. Child actress, Jodie Foster, really was 13 during the filming of this movie, yet, it was decided that there must be ass and titties. It wasn't her's we saw, but apparently her 16 year old sister's body. Would love to know how the unavoidable conversaion with her parents went.


Director: Uh... hey, guys. Kinda wanted to pick your brain about something. The script calls for little Jodie's character to show some skin. And, well... I'm not exactly saying she needs to take her clothes off, but it would really help... •nervous laughter•

Mrs. Foster: Wait... what? Are you being serious??

Mr. Foster: Hear him out, dear. We're making a lot of money off this picture!

Director: Look, the script says what the script says, and the script says she's gotta show her breasts, and... well, her little bottom... her, uh, ass.

Mr. & Mrs. Foster: •stares blankly•

Director: Look, we got a long day ahead of us. Surely there must be something we can work out, here, because we need nudity in this movie. Any ideas?

Mr. Foster: Well... Jodie's sister loves getting naked in front of people, and she actually looks a lot like Jodie.

Director: Ohhhhh... I see. A body double. How old is she?

Mr. Foster: 16.

Director: Oh... Well, does she happen to look young for her age?

Mr. Foster: Oh, sure. She has the body of a 14 year old.

Director: Well... I suppose nobody will tell the difference. Ok, sounds good! I'll call her tonight.

Mr. Foster: Uh, I'll ask her tonight and if she says yes, we'll bring her down in the morning.

Director: oh, ok... •nervous laughter•

Mrs. Foster: •Stares blankly•

Five Nights at Freddy's 2023

I never played the games, but I did watch Willy's Wonderland recently. That might have been a more kid appropriate plotline, had they toned down that R-rating just a tad. But since that simple plotted movie already exists, Five Nights needed to be different.

Blumhouse tackled this video game adaption and pushed it pretty hard for its PG-13 rating. We're given a troubled protagonist struggling with an unresolved child kidnapping, custody battles, unemployment, pill addiction... that's a bit much for a kid movie, right? Let alone the implied violence of getting one's head sawed apart, or being gruesomely assimilated into an animatronic... or the actual violence of rotting corpses, cuts, stabbings, and people getting ripped in half. Not bad, Blumhouse. You made me just a little bit unsettled there for a while. Not because I deem it graphic, but because kids are decensitized enough to deem it as casual. If kids can handle this without issue, our old go-to slasher franchises ought to be a piece of cake for them to sit through.

#Review

Teeth (2007) (or 2008? I'm confused)

I finally saw this. I don't know why I hadn't gotten to it earlier. Yes I do, of course I do, it's a movie about guys getting their penis bitten off. YEESH.

Anyway. The story is set in... well, it seems to be a public high school, in a very religious part of the US. The general feeling of the community there makes me think of Saved (2004), and also the community in the book My Best Friend's Exorcism. I still haven't seen the film version of that one...

Anyway, in Teeth, the main character is a female junior or senior in high school, named Dawn. She comes across as sort of a mixture of Dakota Johnson and Melissa Joan Hart. Probably mostly Dakota Johnson, but definitely with some MJH mixed in there, both in appearance and personality. Dawn is very religious, and still a virgin. Because she is a virgin, she has never really had to think about, or really even notice, the fact that her private parts have, yes, TEETH.

She had one incident when she was a little girl, when her jerk of a stepbrother got a little too intrusive in her personal space (not exactly in a sexual way, he was just generally being aggressive, and trying to touch her private area after he showed her his). In the incident I'm describing, she bit his finger with her lower teeth. She gave him a damned good bite, he almost lost the tip of his finger. I guess they stitched it back on, after the scene.

Teeth reminds me of Carrie, a bit. Not completely, but there are a couple of scenes that made me think "ohhh yeah, I know where they got this idea from, from Carrie."

The movie... isn't really comedy, and it isn't really horror either. To me, it mostly felt like just a straight up, straightforward depiction of how a girl with this mutation might behave, and might feel, as she was coming to terms with it. Think about that for a minute. It really portrays what a religious, very nice, well-meaning girl might go through, as she realizes that there is something unusual about her anatomy. There is a little comedy toward the end, but not much, and it is usually pretty subtle. Mostly, the actress (Jess Weixler is her name) just takes the role very seriously, and portrays the character very sympathetically.

Over the course of the movie, Dawn has three main, um, "incidents," and one that is not quite as serious, and then another that we don't quite see, but is heavily implied. Dawn become less innocent as the movie goes along, but she is always sympathetic. Many (not all) of the guys in her life are complete assholes, and you want something bad to happen to them. What does happen to a couple of them still seems a bit harsh, though, of course.

So. Yah. I would say that I recommend this, but more just as an interesting indie film than as a comedy or horror. If you expect too much comedy or horror, you will be disappointed. It is interesting to watch though. If anybody has any thoughts on this movie, I'd like to hear them. Kirk out.