It

Last night I went out and saw It, based on the Stephen King novel.  I saw the two part miniseries adaptation from 1990 when I was about 15, and it was really my introduction to Stephen King, and I saw it several times.  I also read the book when I was 15, and I was on this massive King kick and buying pretty much everything I could find from him.  It is still one of my favorite Stephen King works.  The movie is good, and sticks fairly close to the book, although the setting is updated to 1989.  It's set in a small town in Maine (where else?), which is being terrorised by a string of mysterious disappearances of children.  Seven outcast kids band together to find out what is going on.  They soon learn that the culprit is a weird clown called Pennywise, which is just one manifestation of a hugely powerful, evil, shape-shifting entity, that the kids just call "It".

I saw the show with my friends Alan and Jackie, and we went out afterwards to Five Guys for some food.  I had a bacon cheeseburger and fries.  Then we had some drinks before heading home.

I went along to my parent's house today for lunch, which was fun.  When I got home I got the book I Am Behind You by John Ajvide Lindqvist delivered.  I had pre-ordered it a few weeks ago.  Lindqvist is a Swedish horror writer, who is probably best known for Let the Right One In which was turned into a hugely successful Swedish movie, and was re-made in the US as Let Me In. 

I also got some writing done.

Schalcken the Painter

I saw Schalcken the Painter, which is a surreal made-for-TV Gothic horror story based on a short story by J. Sheridan LeFanu, inspired by 17th century Dutch artist Godfried Schalcken.  It was pretty good, and well made, about a student painter who falls in love with his patron's niece, however she is married off for money, to this ghoulish, strange old man.  The student doesn't protest or try to help her, because of his own ambition.  Eventually becomes famous and successful, but is always haunted by the woman who he basically abandoned.  A lot of the scenes and images were composed and lit like old Dutch paintings.

Blair Witch

After work I went to the comic book store and got Civil War II issue 5, Seven to Eternity issue 1, Batman issue 7, The Hellblazer issue 1, Cyborg issue 1, Trinity issue 1 and Aliens: Life and Death issue 1.

I went to the movies afterwards and saw Blair Witch, which involves the brother of Heather from the first film, heading back into the woods in search of his sister, after seeing an online video which hints that she may be alive. It's not very good. It's basically the original but bigger with less subtlety. I wrote a review here:http://www.permanentlyweird.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/blair-witch.html

Christine Rides Again

Last night I downloaded a new audiobook from Audible. This month I chose Christine by Stephen King, read by Holter Graham. Christine is about a teenager who buys a broken down old 1950s car but finds himself slowly possessed by an evil force in the car, which comes to life and starts running down his enemies. It was made into a film in the 1980s by John Carpenter. i read the book when I was about 16 and it was one of my favourite Stephen King books at the time.

On my way into work I listened to Chilling Tales: The Podcast, the stories this week were about an aspiring screenwriter who has a gruesome encounter in Hollywood, and a woman trapped in a down elevator, that takes her into a horrifying world. I listened to a new episode of one of my favourite podcasts You Must Remember This about the "secrets and/or forgotten history of Hollywood's first century". This was the first in a series of episodes about the life and career of Joan Crawford.

Back home I listened to a podcast episode called Punt PI where comedian Steve Punt investigates odd old mysteries, and mysterious crimes. This one was about the mysterious death of a reclusive elderly actress in the 1940s after she had apparently vanished for ten years. I also heard an episode of The Moth, which had a story about a family drama that blows up during a Bar Mitzvah, a man has a strange adventure in Morocco while searching for author Paul Bowles, and a struggling writer who tries to combat writers block by shutting the world out.

Calzone

On my way into work I was listening to Chilling Tales: The Podcast. This week's story was called "Ultrasound" about a teacher who decides to play a trick on an unruly class by playing a special sound that causes horrific hallucinations. Unfortunately, the hallucinations don't stop, even after the sound is switched off, and the teacher realises that the sound summoned up much more than just a trick of the eye. It was a pretty good one.

It was a pretty long day at work, but afterwards I went out to meet my Mom. We went to Ask Italian to eat. I had some garlic bread with mozarella to start, a calzone filled with beef tomato sauce, chili, pepperoni and ham, for dessert I had a chocolate ice cream and a raspberry sorbet. It was really nice.

Book Shambles

It was a pretty long day at work. I listened to Robin and Josie's Book Shambles podcast, a show about books hosted by comedians Robin Ince and Josie Long, this week doing a horror special from the Latitude festival. It featured Reece Shearsmith discussing a horror story he had written, comedian Rufus Hound reading "The Outsider" by H. P. Lovecraft, and a piece on the cursed occult library of horror writer Dennis Wheatley. Dennis Wheatley was a massively popular writer back in the 1960s and 70s with books such as The Devil Rides Out and To the Devil... A Daughter (both of which were filmed by Hammer) and many others. He also wrote a series of non-fiction books about occultism and Satanism, and the person who owns his extensive reference library is claiming that they are cursed.

On my way home I stopped off at the supermarket to get my groceries for the week.

Millennium

Last night I was watching the first episode of Millennium from 1996.  It was a TV show created by Chris Carter (who came up with The X-Files) and it starred Lance Henricksen as a retired FBI profiler who has a unique ability to get inside the heads of serial killers, and he moves back to the suburbs of Seattle and becomes a consultant for a strange organisation called The Millennium Group.  It's a strange show, very much of it's time, and it lasted for three seasons, and totally changed each season.  The first one is extremely bleak and quite intense horror, the second went into bizarre fantasy-horror, and in the third it became an X-Files clone, and there was actually an X-Files / Millennium cross-over episode.  I still think Millennium is an underrated show.  It's dated, but it is still surprisingly disturbing for a mainstream network TV show.

Also last night I downloaded The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson on to my Kindle Fire.

It was a pretty long day at work.  I listened to This American Life about getting your money's worth, which told a short story from the point of view of a condom.  I also heard Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men, which is basically an analysis of the whole history of the X-Men comics and their many, many spin-offs.  I heard Comedy of the Week (presenting a sketch comedy show called Daphne Sounds Expensive), Happy Sad Confused (which interviewed Tom Hiddleston and Nicholas Hoult) and one of my favourite podcasts You Must Remember This, about the "secrets and / or forgotten histories of Hollywood's first century".

It was really hot today, surprisingly so.  The problem is that it's been really cold recently, and it often gets very cold at work, and so I was wearing my thick woolen top and thick jacket.  When I got home I was absolutely exhausted with heat.

Misery

Last night I watched Misery, directed by Rob Reiner, and based on a novel by Stephen King. The movie tells the story of Paul Sheldon (played by James Caan) the best selling author of a series of historical romances, featuring the character Misery. Sheldon has decided to end the series and kill off Misery, so he can work on more literary fiction. After a car accident in the Colorado mountains, a badly injured Sheldon is rescued by nurse Annie Wilkes (played by Kathy Bates), who happens to be his "number one fan". However when she finds out that he has killed off her favourite character, and reads his unpublished manuscript, she is extremely angry, and demands that he brings Misery back, if he wants to live. It's a really good movie, with some great performances, especially from Kathy Bates. The novel was inspired by the highly negative fan reaction that King received for his non-horror fantasy novel The Eyes of the Dragon, and his feeling that he was trapped in the horror genre and unable to get away from it. For the director Rob Reiner, he was best known for comedies and wanted to make more dramatic films. 

Today I went over to my parent's house for lunch, as usual for a Sunday. It was nice, we had some roast chicken, potato croquettes, peas and stuffing, with profiteroles and strawberries for dessert. This evening I was listening to the Just a Story podcast, which was telling the story of the lie detector test, which apparently was initially developed by William Marston, the same guy who created DC comics character Wonder Woman.

Scream 4

Last night I was watching a TV show called Awfully Good Ads which was about TV commercials that are so bad that they are funny. Some of them were really terrible. I fell asleep on my couch again. On Fridays I get up much earlier than usual, and I tend to stay up quite late so I often end up pretty much crashing out. Today I went out to see Scream 4, directed by Wes Craven. The movie opens on the tenth anniversary of the murders from the first film, when two teenagers recieve taunting phone calls and are then brutally stabbed to death by a "Ghostface" killer. The following day, Sidney Prescott (played by Neve Campbell) returns to town to promote a book and becomes involved in the murders. It wasn't a bad movie at all. I was kind of doubtful about it because it was coming out eleven years after the last Scream movie, but it was fun. I loved the Scream movies and I used to watch them all the time. The movie is reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

Making Time

Last night was pretty quiet. I was reading my new comic books and I watched some of the movie Scream. I really liked Scream. It's basically about a masked killer slaughtering teenagers, but it had a lot of jokes and comments about horror movies in general, which seemed to influence pretty much every horror movie for the next ten years. The fourth movie in the series is coming out this month. It was a another quiet day at work. I was in work for about nine hours today to make up some time, but I managed to get in early so I still managed to leave earlier than I would otherwise have done. Tomorrow I am planning on getting in to work really early so I can leave at lunchtime and get a birthday present for my brother.

The Walking Dead

Last night I watched the first episode of The Walking Dead, and I thought it was really good. I've only ever read one issue of the comic-book series. I'll probably check out more now and some of the collected editions. I love a good zombie story. One good zombie story that I've been reading is the iZombie comic, in which it is possible, with difficulty, for the zombies to retain their humanity. After that I saw a couple of epsiodes of Spaced and The IT Crowd. It was another pretty dull day at work today and it seemed to last forever. I got home at about half past six.

Inferno

Last night I was watching the 1980 movie Inferno, directed by Dario Argento. It's a sequel to his 1977 film Suspiria and was intended as the middle part of a trilogy. In this film a young poet (played by Irene Miracle) living in New York City becomes convinced that the old house that she is living in is the home of one of the Mater Tenebrarum (the Mother of Darkness) the youngest and cruelest of a trio of powerful supernatural creatures known as the "Three Mothers". She sends a letter to her brother (Leigh McCloskey), a music student studying in Rome, but by the time he arrives in New York she has vanished. Like it's predecessor, this is a very strange, dream-like film, full of weird camera angles, lurid coloured lighting, and very loud music. Along with elaborately choreographed and stylised violence. It's kind of designed almost as a fairy-tale for adults. The story doesn't really make a lot of sense, it's all about the mood that the images and sounds create. I liked it, I thought it was pretty scary. I really like the Dario Argento movies, mostly. It's reviewed over at Permanently Weird. I had the day off work today, but didn't go out anywhere. I was watching some of the documentaries on the Inferno DVD and thinking about my Script Frenzy screenplay, which I honestly believe will never make a movie because it would be way to elaborate and expensive to get made.

Mother's Day

I did write some more of my Script Frenzy script last night, which means I'm now on page eight of it. The general rule of thumb for screenplays is the one page of a script equals one minute of screentime. The rest of the evening was pretty quiet. I spent most of the time watching TV and reading. This morning my Dad came round and took me to the Omni Centre shopping centre. We had coffee and a muffin at Starbucks and then went out to look at our own stuff. I got a DVD of the Dario Argento movie Inferno and a book called Ricky Gervais Presents... The World According to Karl Pilkington. Of course it was Mother's Day today. Mom was really happy with her present (a book called Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde) and her card. I'd also brought along some olives for my parents. The latest issue of Sight and Sound had arrived in the mail during the week. Among the articles this month was a feature about director Wim Wenders, an article about New Russian Cinema and a feature about the Alfred Hitchcock movie Vertigo. My mum had ordered Dad to make the lunch today, which was salmon, roast potatoes and peas. I thought it was nice, but Mum didn't seem to happy with it for some reason. I got home at around five, also I have tomorrow off work, so that should be good!

Source Code

Last night I started writing the script for Script Frenzy. I got about three and a half pages written. It's a kind of horror, cyberpunk science-fiction script, based on a story idea I've had for years. Later on I watched the 1998 movie Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, directed by Steve Miner. It's the sixth sequel to the original Halloween film, and takes up the story of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) twenty years after the original, where she has a 17 year old son (Josh Hartnett) and is now working as a headteacher at a prestigious boarding school. While the rest of the school are off on a camping trip over Halloween, her son and three of his friends decide to take advantage of having the deserted school to themselves. Obviously before long, Laurie's murderous, invulnerable brother, Michael Myers (Chris Durand) to indulge his favourite hobby of slicing up teenagers, and anyone else he comes across, with large kitchen knives. It's actually a lot better than most of the others in the series. It owes a lot to the Scream series (Scream writer Kevin Williamson performed an uncredited rewrite on this film and acts as executive producer), with the same blend of shocks, jokes and movie references. Today I went out to the movies and saw Source Code, directed by Duncan Jones. The movie stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a US soldier who wakes up on a train with no memory of how he got there. He also doesn't know the woman sitting opposite him (Michelle Monaghan), but she knows him even though she seems to think he is someone else entirely. When he looks in the mirror he sees someone else's reflection staring back at him. Eight minutes after he wakes up, the train is destroyed in a bomb explosion. The soldier wakes up again to discover he is part of an experiment called "Source Code", which allows the participant to relive the last eight minutes of someone else's life. The train was destroyed that morning, and he has to keep going back through those last eight minutes in order to find the bomb and discover the bomber on the crowded train, before the same bomber detonates a nuclear device in downtown Chicago. It was a good movie with a really complex, intriguing plot and some great action and twists. Both of the movies are reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

Les Diaboliques

Last night I was watching the movie Kick Ass, directed by Matthew Vaughn, on TV. It's based on a comic-book by Mark Miller and John Romita, Jr. and tells the story of a New York City teenaged comic-book fan (played by Aaron Johnson) who, despite having no powers and no training, decides to become a superhero named "Kick-Ass". Despite the abysmal failure of his initial attempt he soon becomes an internet celebrity and attracts the attention of vengeful ex-cop turned superhero "Big Daddy" (Nicolas Cage) and his murderous 11 year old daughter "Hit Girl" (Chloe Grace Moretz). It is a really entertaining movie with plenty of humour and action.

Today I got some more of the Akira graphic novels by Katshiro Otomo delivered in the mail. Mostly I had a really quiet morning watching TV. In the afternoon I went out to the Filmhouse cinema to see the 1955 movie Les Diaboliques, directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, with the Horror Group. The movie is based on a novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, who also wrote the novel that inspired Alfred Hitchcock's film Vertigo. The film deals with the brutal and cruel headmaster of a second-rate boy's boarding school (Paul Meurisse) who is married to a fragile young teacher, Christina (Vera Clouzot), who has a weak heart, while openly carrying on an affair with another teacher, Nicole Horner (Simone Signoret). Tiring of his ill treatment of them both, Christina and Nicole decide to murder the headteacher. However, after the murder, the body goes missing and a succession of strange and disturbing events begin to occur. It is a really good suspense film, and features a memorable twist. Apparently it was one of the influences for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, and Robert Bloch (who wrote the original novel Psycho) named it as his favourite horror film. After the movie we went out and had a couple of drinks. The movie is reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

Bad Cheese

Last night I didn't really do much! I got a piece of cheese yesterday for a snack and as I was munching away at it, I noticed that it was starting to go bad at the far end, so I threw it out. Ugh. Gross cheese!

I was listening to an episode of The Man in Black on the radio. It was about a guy waiting for a bus late at night in a city where a lot of people have recently gone missing, and who meets a strange girl. It was quite predictible towards the end, but it was effective. Also cities are pretty creepy late at night.

Today I went along to my parents house for lunch. We had tacos which were really nice. I've decided I am going to try drawing in my sketch books. What I am really worried about is if I discover that I can't draw at all.

The Adjustment Bureau

Last night I was watching a movie on television called Book of Blood, directed by John Hamilton. It's based on two short stories by Clive Barker ("The Book of Blood" and "On Jerusalem Street") which were the frame story for Clive Barker's six volume Books of Blood short story collection. The film is set in Edinburgh and concerns a professor of parapsychology (Sophie Ward) who is investigating a house that is supposed to be haunted and has been the scene of several violent deaths. With the aid of a supposedly psychic student (Jonas Armstrong), she sets out to investigate. It turns out that the house is an intersection on the highways of the dead, and that they don't take kindly to what they percieve as mockery and before long the experiment spirals violently out of control. The movie is actually pretty dull. It follows the plot of the Clive Barker stories fairly closely, but there isn't enough there for a feature length movie, so it's fairly obvious that they were trying to pad out the run time. Also the stories are fine in print, wehre they are like the frame for a collection of short stories, but on their own they don't work as well. The movie was obviously made on a very low-budget, and is shot so murkily it's difficult to see what is going on at times, and there are some really bad computer special effects. Also the opening scenes give away a lot of what happens in the end.

Today I headed out to the Cineworld cinema to see The Adjustment Bureau, directed by George Nolfi, and very loosely based on the short story "Adjustment Team" by Philip K. Dick. It's about a New York political candidate (Matt Damon) who falls for a ballerina (Emily Blunt). However, it turns out they were never intended to fall in love, and a sinister organisation known as the Adjustment Bureau, who control and manipulate the course of individual lives and human destiny according to a pre-determined plan, are determined to keep them apart. It was as much a romance movie as it was a science-fiction fantasy thriller, but it never really managed to blend the different genres together. It's still quite enjoyable in places though, and Matt Damon and Emily Blunt are very good in it. Both of the movies are reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

I stopped off for some groceries on my way home. I have to say that I am really not a fan of romantic movies. Some I like, though (some of my favourite movies are Before Sunrise, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Juno and Garden State). I have never really experienced romance myself, and it never really seems to make a lot of sense to me, and I have ruled out dating and romance and whatever until I've emigrated and become successful.

I've ordered the first couple of volumes of the graphic novel series Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo. I've wanted to read them for years, since I first saw the movie in 1994, but the books were very expensive but I found out they were available on Amazon and so decided to get a couple of them.

All sympathies and best wishes, of course, to the people in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami.

Psycho

Last night I was watching the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock movie Psycho. The movie tells the story of a real estate secretary, Marion Crane (played by Janet Leigh), who steals $40,000 from her employer and sets off to drive from Phoenix, Arizona to California to meet her boyfriend. On the way she stops off at the remote Bates Motel and meets the shy, slightly odd owner and manager Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) who tells her that he lives with his elderly mother in the creepy old house overlooking the motel. Marion decides to relax by having a shower before bed, however that proves to be a big mistake when Mother pays a visit... It's a really good movie, and is probably one of the most famous and influential ever made. It's been imitated, parodied, spoofed, remade, discussed and commented upon endlessly since it's release, but it is still powerful and striking and also at times very funny. It's reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

I had a pretty quiet day today. I went out and got some milk and a couple of magazines (a TV listings magazine and a copy of Total Film). I also saw a bit of a 1994 comedy called Airheads, directed by Michael Lehman, about a bunch of metalheads who hold a radio station hostage in order to get their band's single on the air. It really does not seem like such a long time since 1994 when that kind of music was so popular. It was pretty funny, even if it seems pretty dated now.

Pancakes

Last night was pretty quiet. I was watchng some TV and reading. I fell asleep on my couch while watchng the movie All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, which for what I saw was an okay horror movie, but for some reason I wasjust feeling really tired.

Today my Dad came to collect me and take me over to my parent's house. The new issue of Sight and Sound magazine had arrived, which this month had a big feature article about the latest Woody Allen movie. I'm often surprised about how prolific Woody Allen is, considering that he releases at least one film a year. For lunch we had some sausage cassarole and some pancakes (diue to it being Pancake Day on Tuesday). I really like pancakes but I very rarely have them, so it was really nice.

After lunch I had a walk to a supermarket with my Mum and I got a DVD set of the complete Monty Python's Flying Circus TV series, which was in the sales. That should be really interesting to watch. Monty Python seems to be one of those shows where you don't often get to see the full episodes, more isolated clips and edited compilations.

The Human Centipede

Last night I was watching an episode of Spaced on TV, which I really enjoyed. Later on I watched a frankly bizarre 2010 Dutch horror movie on TV called The Human Centipede (First Sequence), directed by Tom Six. It's basically about two American tourists in Germany who find themselves at the house of a demented surgeon who plans to surgically attach three people together to form a "human centipede". Despite the horrific premise, it really isn't a particularly gruesome movie. Pretty much all of the horror is in the concept and the resulting creation, and it all loses it's impact long before the movie is over. Although there are some pretty good suspenseful and scary scenes. It's reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

I got to bed at about half past five last night and was awake at eleven this morning. The gas bill came today, and it was a lot, so that was pretty annoying. I went along to get my groceries for the coming week, which were four microwave ready meals, some bread, some potato chips, some flavoured milk, some chocolate and a bottle of wine, along with a TV listings magazine.

Back home I had some lunch and watched a couple of episode of The Big Bang Theory.