Spacewocket
It means nothing but it sounds good.

Winchester

By Sardoken on

Ensconced in her sprawling San Jose, California mansion, eccentric firearm heiress Sarah Winchester (Dame Helen Mirren) believes she is haunted by the souls of people killed by the Winchester repeating rifle. (source: IMDB)

I have absolutely nothing to say about this movies, except that it was too slow and the dialogues, especially the ones of Sarah Winchester, were way too long. I fought not to fall asleep and I eventually lost the battle. Two weeks have passed since we’ve watched the movie and I already forgot half of it. I’m writing this post to make sure that we don’t watch it a second time in a few years.

The Curse of La Llorona

By Sardoken on

A theater in Montreal, Quebec was supposed to play Pokémon: Detective Pikachu (2019), but this film played instead, causing the children in the audience to run out crying.

I don’t think that an horror movie ever had me cry, unless it was really bad and I cried out of boredom, which isn’t the case of this movie. Ok, it isn’t as frightening as the other movies in The Conjuring universe, but we had a good Saturday evening. It follows a simple pattern: kids are cursed – evil comes for them – the mother finds a priest who can help – big fight – evil is vanquished. Even if it isn’t really original, it worked and we didn’t fall asleep before the end.

Cabin Fever

By Sardoken on

Five college graduates rent a cabin in the woods and begin to fall victim to a horrifying flesh-eating virus, which attracts the unwanted attention of the homicidal locals. (source: IMDB)

I understand the success of Cabin Fever, this is quality old school horror. Eli Roth combined all that we love: the blood, the sex, the naked hot chick, the dumb jock, the cool guy and our beloved rednecks with shotguns. But that’s not all, the movie still manages to put a new spin on things by introducing a flesh-eating virus into the story. Apparently, Eli Roth originally got the idea for this movie while working in Iceland on a horse farm. He got such a bad skin infection from the rotting hay in the barn that his face broke out in sores, bled and peeled off when he shaved.

Not only is the movie great for a Saturday evening but it also defines the quality standard for a good slasher movie. Too bad that the rest of the franchise doesn’t follow the same path. Only the original is directed by Eli Roth, the others only share the title and are total garbage.

For the featured image, I was shared between a picture of Eli Roth and Jordan Ladd together (both also play in Death Proof), or a picture of bikini Jordan Ladd. Why not both?

Also, sentences like “This rifle is for the niggers” or “I shoot squirrels because they’re gay” would probably attract a lot of fire by the nowadays crowd. That makes me love this movie even more because I’m getting sick of the politically correct.

Asleep in the Deep

By Sardoken on

Mastodon is probably the best prog-metal band in the world and, among Mastodon’s albums, Once More ‘Round the Sun is our favourite. Not only has the band a load of amazing songs, they also have fantastic videos and our favourite is Asleep in the Deep. It’s the epic journey of an ordinary house cat who meanders into a demonic catacomb filled with dark lord bullfrogs, terrifying rat kings and a brave warrior squirrel.

The clip’s co-director/conceptualist Skinner (who’s also the cover artist for the 2014 LP) said:
“This concept was birthed out of my curiosity about what a cat really does at night while we are asleep,” Skinner says in a statement. “Where do they go? Cats have a very mysterious myth to them and I thought it would be cool to explore that, as little nocturnal heroes. I decided to put a sort of Joseph Campbell hero myth spin on it and add some Jodorowsky psychedelia as well. I’m more than excited about the way it came out! I love it!”. (source: RollingStone)

Well, we love it too. As a matter of fact, it is our favourite video-clip ever!

Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort (2014)

By Sardoken on

“An inheritance leads a young man and his friends to an abandoned resort inhabited by two sketchy caretakers and a clan of mutant cannibals.” (source: IMDB)

The final chapter is the worst of the entire franchise. It isn’t as bad as to stop the movie before the end, but it’s far from the quality of the other instalments. The Wrong Turn vibe is missing, it has been replaced by a slow plot that isn’t even rewarded by fun kills. The other chapters were about watching tourists getting slaughtered in a good slasher tradition, Last resort is about the weird reproduction of hillbilly cannibals.

The film does increase the nudity with the four different actresses taking off their clothes and there’s also some pretty weird and kinky sexual stuff going on. As for our three main killers, it’s without a doubt the most boring use of them in the series.

If you’re a fan of the show, watch it, for the sake of completion, but it isn’t representative of the franchise, at all.

Where to Draw the (CSS) Line?

By Sardoken on

During the last two decades, I’ve been coding all our blog themes. I’ve had them in all shapes and sizes: minimalist, supercharged with scripts, responsive, non-responsive, sidebar, no sidebar, mobile first,… In the end, I got tired of blog themes that confuse simple blogs with “pro” websites.

So, for two years, I’ve been stripping my themes. While it took me months to create the perfect collapsing menu in javascript, it took me less than 5 minutes to remove it. Did the blog became harder to navigate? Then the sidebar disappeared, who cares about “subscribe” buttons anyway or, even worse, a tag cloud. Also gone are the popup search fields, the gravatars and the fixed headers.

But where to draw the line? Why keeping the “load more” and the “back to top” buttons? Well, it’s pretty simple: because we use them ourselves and it doesn’t take our eyes away from what we write. It’s not minimalism, it’s content-oriented design. A blog has to look like a blog to be a blog, happy as a hippo.

And what does a blog look like? Like a man who talks to himself and not like a sales man. We’re not trying to increase our traffic, we’re just keeping a log of the things we do. Believe me or not, there was a time when we had 10 times more comments than posts, but that time almost got us burned out of blogging. So we really don’t need all the bells and whistles required to increase traffic and comment numbers.

No one enjoys post previews, contents hidden behind clicks, self promotions, ads that make you lose the line you were reading because they changed the height of the page,… The only people who benefit from these designs are the web designers and the click baiters. Let’s not encourage them.

Building the Falcon – Step 7

By Sardoken on

The build continues… We’ve now completed the 8th step on 17. The model is getting big and heavy, I’m very glad that we’ve purchased a 3D printed stand that can hold it vertically because we don’t own a table that could hold it horizontally, except our dining table, unfortunately we still have to eat. We also continue to record timelapses of the build and I can’t wait to see the final video.

The Final Girls (2015)

By Soforah on

A young woman grieving the loss of her mother, a famous scream queen from the 1980s, finds herself pulled into the world of her mom’s most famous movie. Reunited, the women must fight off the film’s maniacal killer. – Imdb

The trailer looked like this movie was going to be a badass slasher, so what could go wrong, right?! While it was entertaining, it looked like a horror for little kids. The woods looked too fairy, the few drops of blood (is this supposed to be a slasher?) looked like bright red sugar water, and there was too much emphasis on the “I’ve lost my mother” drama.

If it wasn’t for the casting, I think that we wouldn’t have been able to make it to the end. Taissa Farming, Alexander Ludwig, Nina Dobrev,… made it work.

Unlike the 80’s slashers, this movie is free of the iconic gore and nudity. For the film to be absolutely true to the genre, there should have been at least one skinny dipping or sex scene, not to mention a decent amount of splatter. All it can offer, however, is a few bloodless death scenes and a couple of the actresses showing off their bra. Shame on you guys!

One funny trivia though: During rehearsal, Thomas Middleditch tripped over the velvet rope in the movie theater. Director Todd Strauss-Schulson decided to add that as a gag in the film in order to momentarily linger on the cardboard standee for “Camp Bloodbath 2: Cruel Summer.”

All in all, we’ve watched the movie until the end, but wouldn’t recommend this to any slasher fan. Maybe it would be good for introducing your kids to the horror genre…

Blair Witch – The Video Game

By Sardoken on

The Blair Witch Project is one of my favourite horror movies ever, it was only normal that I would play the video game based on the franchise.

Searching the haunted woods in company of your dog to find a disappeared child was a great idea and I directly got caught in the story. I also enjoyed the mechanic that had me watch video tapes to unlock portions of the story.

Warning: Spoilers!

I really don’t understand why they needed to add a second plot to the story. The whole PTSD thing was useless and brought a psychological side to the game that only made it heavier and broke my immersion at times.

The final scene, inside of the witch house was the creepiest, especially the scenes where I couldn’t look at the monsters, otherwise I’d die. They even had me stay in a corner, while the witch was in my back, asking me to look at her… Unfortunately, the memories of the the dead soldiers from the time the hero was still in the army broke the rhythm of the main story, making the scene too long and not as creepy as it could have been.

Even if I would have preferred a more horror, less psychological approach, it was still a great game and I advise it to any fan of the franchise.

Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines (2012)

By Sardoken on

A typical meeting at the Wrong Turn production board:

Producer: How can we make Wrong Turn 5 better than Wrong Turn 4?

Writer: More sex and more gore

Producer: Didn’t we already do that with the fourth?

Writer: Yes, but we can always add more sex and gore

Producer: Go for it!

If you enjoy watching kids being slaughtered after having sex and smoking weed, you won’t be disappointed. So what makes this chapter different from the previous ones? Well, this time, it happens at the police station of a little town hosting a festival. As the father of our 3 favourite hillbillies is held inside of a jail cell, his boys attempt to rescue him by slaughtering every single person that stayed in town during the concert. As usual, blood and guts (and boobs) are the main ingredients to this perfect movie, for a Saturday horror evening.