Update to The Gateway

Okay kids. I apologize, I had intended to announce the hiatus I was on. I blew it. I have a project that is taking me longer than I expected or hoped. But October begins tomorrow and that means I gotta watch a lot of horror movies and write about them. Tomorrow will kick things off with a cult film that I had never actually seen until a couple weeks ago.

The Main Theme this month will be the films of Wes Craven. The Nightmare movies and the People Under the Stairs were reviewed a few years ago…so this will focus on the remaining horror films.

You would have thought I would have come up with a clever nickname for October after several years of this. Maybe next year?

September 30, 2020 0

Did Not Plan That

I was not intentionally meaning to fo the entire month of April without a single post. I apologized for that. I am still playing catch up on films that I missed before the theaters all closed.

As someone whose job already allowed me to work from home, I still have the schedule I have always had, so the lock down has not resulted in actual additional free time to devote to my creative endeavors.

But I am going to be getting more stuff up this month, starting Monday.

May 3, 2020 0

Colorist Open to Playing Reed Richards in the MCU

Comic Book Colorist Chris Sotomayer is open to Playing Reed Richards in the MCU if asked.

March 8, 2020 0

Welcome to October!

Well… the last couple of Months got away from me. It seems every August tends to slip away and my Septembers go silent. This year I have started trying my hand at selling art and August and September saw me run into some crunch. I was at the Crypticon Minneapolis Convention. I had some prints to sell and some original art.

crypticon_doug_bradley — Doug Bradley and Me

crypticon_ashley_laurence — Ashley Laurence and I

crypticon_Caroline_Munro — Caroline Munro, Joshua Kennedy and myself

crypticon_pennywise — Insert “Floating” joke here.

crypticon_mihm — Christopher Mihm’s table…

Here is some samples of artwork I had. There were prints…

some original art…

I am going to GalaxyCon here in Minnesota next month and I am trying to get a few more prints ready to go.

Add to this, Christopher Mihm (a local film maker and friend) cast me in a supporting role in his film that is in Post Production, the Phantom Lake Kids in the Beast Walks Among Us. I am also going to be appearing his film that follows, That Which Lurks in the Dark. If you want a refresher, I went through Chris’ films back in 2017. I have held back on reviews since I have gotten more interconnected to Mihm’s film making. I may do some write ups to talk about experiences and feelings on the films, but as Chris is a friend, I want my bias to be clear.

So, what is the plan for October? I probably will not be having quite the same past output as previous Octobers. But there will be more than one review this month. One of my themes will be “Less Talked About Gems”. Good little horror films I rarely see talked about. I also am going to get some reviews of recent films (Ready or Not and Haunt, for example) and a few…non-gems.

October 1, 2019 0

Tripping Further

Welcome to March! I have been contemplating this feature for awhile. Since I see a lot of films on Blu-Ray, streaming and 4k Ultra HD Blu-Ray, I plan to review some releases covering not just the film itself, but the full release. I plan to focus this a bit on older films hitting 4k for the first time.

I will explore the special features, the picture and audio quality. Is it worth it? What is included? Does the film benefit from the higher resolution? I hope anyone reading will enjoy and appreciate these reviews and will find them helpful if they are unsure about buying a certain film. Especially in a case where they might be double (or quadruple) dipping.

The first review will be dropping in the next few days.

March 1, 2019 0

Is it the End of an Era?

December 8, 2018 0

We Care A Lot (About Stan Lee)

So, Stan Lee has passed away. For a lot of us that was a bummer, and we all were tweeting and posting about Stan. Then Bill Maher had two step into it and blamed us for Trump.

November 22, 2018 0

Special Announcement…

I have been working on this for the past couple of weeks, which is why there has been no new reviews. Tomorrow is the first Essay…a new video each week for the next two and a half months or so…

Music is Cool Hard Facts by Kevin MacLeod

People referenced in this video:
Lindsay Ellis (https://www.patreon.com/loosecanon/)
Shaun_Jen (https://www.patreon.com/shaun_jen/)
Hbomberguy (https://www.patreon.com/Hbomb/)
“Movie Bob” Chipman (https://www.patreon.com/moviebob1/)

April 1, 2018 0

Western Expansion

I apologize for going silent the past week. Everyone has genres that they kind of get “burnt out” on. While I enjoy westerns, it is the one genre where I can hit a wall, and need a break. So I took a bit of a breather from watching westerns.

Due to this, I am going to continue my reviews of westerns into March. I have several that I still want to get to, including the films that inspired me to want to do a review of westerns in the first place.

Still to come are reviews of films such as Shane, Tombstone and Pale Rider.

February 27, 2018 0

October: The Dead, Martians and Atomic Brains

Welcome to the month of October. As with every year, it will be scary movies all month. Themes for this month include the films of George A. Romero and Tobe Hooper.

I had started doing a zombie theme for the month, but the death of Romero in July prompted an exploration of his films, as I really had only seen a few. And I had not seen some key parts of his older work, so it was interesting to take a look at films like Martin and Season of the Witch (one I find myself generally thrilled with and the other…well…).

Only a month later, Hooper passed. Now, I have covered a few Tobe Hooper films in the past so I will not be creating new entries for those. For Lifeforce, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and the Funhouse…click the links). I confess Hooper’s films start to take a sharp turn after the Mangler (which is more a crazy mess than a classic). I am going to also include his Masters of Horror episodes Dance of the Dead (which seems like it would be a Romero title for a zombie movie set at a rave, oh wait, that was one of the Return of the Living Dead films) and the Damned Thing.

Also, later this month, I will be going through the entire filmography of Christopher R. Mihm, a local Minnesota filmmaker. He has a new movie coming out this month, the Demon with the Atomic Brain. His films are loving odes to the horror and sci-fi films of the fifties and sixties. His Mihmicerse is populated with ghosts, mutant animals, and Nazi Killing Weresquitos. I will expound more as we get to the films later this month.

Hope you have as much fun reading these as I have had writing them.

October 1, 2017 0