The news articles that came out last week when Googles gaming platform, Stadia, went live, made it sound like the sky was falling. They focused on the things Google did not deliver, or the problems a few people had, but glossed over the single most important fact. The damn thing works!
Continue reading “Google Stadia impressed the hell out of me”For the final night of out 31 nights of horror, on Halloween I watched Halloween! Not not that Halloween, I already saw that one. No, not that one either, this is the new, new Halloween, which is a sqeuel to Halloween and should really be called Halloween 2… are you confused yet?
It’s November 1st and that means National Novel Writing Month begins today. If you have already signed up, awesome! Now quit procrastinating and go write.
For everyone else, it’s not too late. Challenge yourself mentally. Let that story you have locked away in your imagination out into the wild. I started almost a week late last time, but still managed to get out 50,311 words. Some things I’ve learned from past years that may help.
Write more. Sounds trite and simple, but what I mean is, if your goal is to write 1,666 words a day to meet the goal, don’t stop simply because you’ve met your target on a given day. There will be occasions where things happen and you just don’t have the time to write. The pressure of feeling behind the eight ball can stifle the creative juices and having a buffer will alleviate that stress.
Write often. If you can schedule a block of time each day to devote to writing, that’s great! I can’t. I usually have a couple of hours at night, but weekends are totally unpredictable, so I write wherever I can, whenever I have a few free minutes. I use a PC at home, but keep my tablet on me at all other times and use a writing app that syncs between the two.
If you get stuck, skip to the next part. You don’t have to write a story in the order it will be read. You can write the sections you have already seen in your mind, and then stitch them together later. If you are point D and want to get to G, but don’t yet know the steps in between, that’s okay, just move ahead and you can come back to fill in the gaps when inspiration strikes later on.
The most important part is to try. I’ve attempted the challenge five times now and only succeeded twice. You know what? Nothing bad happened to me when I failed and I learned a lot. You have nothing to loose and everything to gain by making the attempt
On the 30th night of my 31 nights of horror marathon, I picked a film with an appropriate name. Bonus, it’s a vampire movie, so I think I’ve covered pretty much all of the horror sub-genres.
Continue reading “30 Days of Night (2007)”Nearing the last of our 31 nights of horror, number 29 is an urban fantasy movie all about the bad guys.
On night 28, of 31 nights of horror, I watched the movie that scared me more than any other so far, and it wasn’t the monsters or the thousand and one jump scares that did it.
Continue reading “The Descent (2005)”So far, during our 31 nights of horror, we’ve watched stories about ghosts, aliens, demons, psychos, killer fish, ancient gods and mutant monsters. On night 27 it’s werewolves!
Only a few nights left in our marathon. On night twenty six we have a fun movie, but only as scary as your average episode of Buffy or Angel.
I feel kind of mixed about this movie. It was fun, it was funny, but it didn’t blow me away, so I’m surprised by how well reviewed the film was. It was very well done, don’t get me wrong, and the acting was top notch, but with the story going back and forth between the five friends and the mystery group… it was hard to get invested, since my mind was constantly working at the puzzle of what was really going on.
That’s one of the key components for a good horror movie for me. Getting to really know and like the characters in jeopardy, so that you care about the bad things happening to them, and that just didn’t happen for me.
It really did feel like an episode of Angel, only without the main cast. I could totally see Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins organisation as some Wolfram and Hart subsidiary. The dialog will feel very familiar and comfortable to fans of Joss Whedons TV shows. I read that he and Drew Goddard wrote the script in only three days, and felt that way to me, like they had a list of things they wanted to highlight and pulled a loose screenplay together around them.
I didn’t hate it the way I did some others I’ve watched this month, but I wonder how much better it could have been with more time in the oven. There were more than a few things that just didn’t make sense when I would think about them afterwards.
But don’t take my word for it. You may love the movie. It has 91% from critics and 74% from audiences on rotten tomatoes.
Richard Dreyfus may have survived a great white shark, but he was no match for thousands of Piranha! For the 24th night of our 31 nights of horror marathon, I watch the 2010 re-make of the Roger Corman original.
Late to the party, as usual 