Hey all! Hope you had a great weekend. I'll say a few words about mine in a bit, but first, let's kick things off off with a new Scary-Crayon Spectare article -- a short review of Lavender! Assuming you've never heard of it, it's about a grieving aromatherapist who learns to love again when an angel moves in with her. It's pretty cute, even with all of the weirdness in the film -- weirdness like the angel's shoe fetish and the woman's flamboyantly gay, afro wig-wearing neighbor. Anyway, read the review here! Also, in the categories section of the blog, I've added one for film! All future film-related commentary, including SC articles and blogged thoughts, then, will be grouped accordingly. Yay! (more...)

I think I've seen a total of two movies in the theater this year, both of which I watched during the past few weeks. So here are brief reviews of them!

Sin City: I really wanted to like this one. Before I saw the movie, I checked out and read four of the original Frank Miller graphic novels (only one of which was used in the film, but that was all we had at the bookstore). I read up on the genre of film noir and rewatched D.O.A. and watched The World Gone Mad and The Amazing Mr. X (which has been described as film noir by some, though it lacks the familiar pre-1960s criminal underground connection). I can't remember whether I watched Mulholland Falls (another noish film) before or after I saw Sin City -- I'm thinking after -- but the point is that I was preparing myself for this film. I'd heard so many good things about it, read so many rave reviews from film critics whose opinions I respect, seen the trailers and comic comparisons -- it looked bloody amazing -- I was expecting to flat out love this movie. (more...)

It's been a few months, but we've finally got a new piece in the Spectare section -- a standard review of Stephen King's Sleepwalkers. It's fucking awful.

Also, I received reports that the link to the Miscellaneous section on the main and content pages (and now at the bottom of articles) wasn't working properly for users of IE 6, so I've attempted to fix that (apparently the problem stems from the fact that IE can't count, though oddly enough the display was fine on my IE 5.5). It should be deactivated on the Misc. page, but everywhere else it should behave like the others. Anyway, I think I've resolved that issue, but let me know if you encounter any problems with that (or anything else), mmkay?

And that's all for now. Ja!

Nothing new tonight, but since Tina commented on the "Angel" finale entry and wanted to know the extent of my grievances with the "Buffy" series finale, I popped over to a Buffy board on which I've been posting for some time and looked up my old comments on it. In case it doesn't come out as well in these older reviews (though I think it does), I'll preface these remarks by noting that my dislike of the series finale was the logical end of my immense disappointment with the final season as a whole. And, of course, I'd been upset with the series since the beginning of Season 6, since I felt then and still feel to this day that Buffy should've ended with Season 5. In addition to Buffy's ultimate sacrifice and the rather triumphant ending despite her death, it was pretty much driven home that while there might have been fun from time to time, the life of the Slayer must ultimately be an unpleasant one, fraught with conflict... and that the Slayer's fight never really ends until she's dead. (more...)

It's been a while since we had a quiz, so let's go!

Take the quiz: "Which American City Are You?"

San Francisco -- Liberal and proud, you'll live your lifestyle however you choose in the face of all that would supress you.

Interesting. And there's more: (more...)