This was an image of Cyclone Pam before as it slammed into Vanuatu.. category 4 winds.. monster storm. Untold destruction.. those on the scene report pure devastation..
This is a developing story..
The movie is being released in a limited capacity today.. but that doesn’t matter to reviewers and fans of horror. The film has attracted untold amounts of attention through intelligent social media buzz and positive reviews–the film is boasting a near 100% rating on ROTTEN TOMATOES. Those types of things don’t happen too often..
Here’s a wrap of some of the reviews for the film that seem readable:
A VOX review is calling it the scariest movie in years.. “This is a movie you need to see right now.”
A THE WEEK review calls it a mesmerizing ‘coming of age’ movie” “The sense of unease is buoyed by Rich Vreeland’s terrific, pulsing score, which recalls John Carpenter’s unforgettable work for Halloween”
SALON: An instant horror classic about the dark side of teen sex: “There are distorted but obvious images of several real-world issues in “It Follows,” including acquaintance rape, teen suicide and mental illness, but you can’t boil the movie down to any of those things any more than to a metaphorical treatment of Detroit’s social and racial divide.”
i09: Proof that horror movies don’t have to be dumb to scare you: ” It offers an unpredictability that’s become increasingly rare in horror. For that alone (and for not being a sequel, a remake, a found-footage extravaganza, or gratuitously gory) It Follows deserves high praise. This movie is absolutely one of the year’s must-see horror films.”
Entertainment WEEKLY praises: “Even with its flaws, though, It Follows is a dizzyingly tense and creepy workout. Oh, and I almost forgot… Hey kids, don’t have sex!”
NEW YORK POST says the movie will stick with you.
A VULTURE reveiwer says ‘I’ve rarely been as scared as I was in IT FOLLOWS’
There aren’t currently too many theaters showing it. I have a feeling word of mouth will create demand.. and create a sensation. It will be the sleeper hit of 2015.
This is a full listing of the theaters you can see it
That’s why you will not be president.
–
Barack Obama, in a joking response to Jimmy Kimmel last night after Kimmel said the first thing he’d do as president is open the files on AREA 51, Roswell, and UFOs..
And another UFO related quip from the show:
On President Clinton’s claim that he went through the secret files on extraterrestrials and found nothing:
“That’s what we’re instructed to say.”
Obama went on to read ‘mean tweets’ . . his comments about UFOs are considered, of course, jokes.
But let’s not forget.. for a joke to truly work, there’s always a shed of truth behind it.. Perhaps it is why people like KIMMEL, who always seem to ask Presidents about UFOs, will not be President..
Kimmel had previously made some waves after asking former President Clinton about aliens.. at that time, Clinton was analyzed to have had ‘stressed’ behavior during his response.. I can’t find any analysis yet of Obama’s reaction..
Jokes.. Jokes.. laughable moments. Teachable moments?
Am I overreaching here?
There are rumors online that Vladimir Putin is either sick, or even dead!
The NYT says,
The last confirmed public sighting was at a meeting with Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy on March 5 — although the Kremlin would have citizens think otherwise.
Given that the Kremlin borrows all manner of items from the Soviet playbook these days, there appeared to be an attempt to doctor the president’s timetable to show that all was well.
The KREMLIN is busy doing damage control..
The mystery deepens: Where’s VLAD the IMPALER…
Astronomers have found the most conclusive evidence yet that a large watery ocean lies beneath the surface of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede.
Take a deep breath.. read the headline a few times until the true power of it sinks in. Jupiter’s moon.. a salty ocean..
Though it may seem like eons for my, it wasn’t too long ago that I learned in school how Earth was the only planet with life and water. And there were only 9. Boom. Done.
Now there’s trillions with untoldillions to be discovered. And maybe multiverses.. and Pluto is NOT a planet. But CERES has glowing balls of light emitting from it. And we are landing on asteroids.. and there’s a ROVER on MARS watching the sunset from the distant planet.. and TITAN may have water.. And MARS may have HAD water..
And we are stardust.
And there may be aliens..
And we are not alone.
This is an amazing time to be alive. It also makes me ponder if ‘disclosure’ is going to drip out slowly .. with each new story about water on some distant body in space, are we being primed for the ultimate: Not only water is abundant, but life is too?
From the LA TIMES STORY, a money quote:
“The solar system is now looking like a pretty soggy place,” said Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA. “The more we look at individual moons, the more we see that water is really in enormous abundance.”
A soggy place.
Much different than those 1980s and 90s grade school textbooks in science. And even much more different than those 2013 textbooks.
Throw them all away.
Next up?
LIFE.
Interesting article.. Worth the read. Anghus may be very familiar to those who have been long-time HORROR REPORT fans, he used to pen a little bit of a column way back when we were nothing and now he is a profoundly important writer and director, plus a genius columnist at FLICKERING MYTH (not being paid to write any of that, but I sincerely believe it) ..
And his point is taken ..
The money quote:
Up to this announcement, any of the characters could have been gay. Admiral Akbar. Boba Fett. Hell, even, Lando Calrissian. Would it matter if Lando Calrissian was gay? Not at all. His role in the story wasn’t impacted by his sexual orientation. If I had read the headline ‘Lando Calrissian revealed as gay’, all I would have thought was ‘that makes sense: those overtures to Leia were overcompensation.’ Lando ran Cloud City, betrayed Han and friends, and redeemed himself by blowing up Death Star 2.0. Gay… straight… it didn’t matter.
And:
We live in a time where everyone is desperate to label everything. To define what something is or isn’t because saying nothing somehow implies intolerance. To me, the Star WarsUniverse feels far more intolerant because they’ve flat out told me there’s been no gay characters in canon until now. I liked it better when there was ambiguity to it, because it had no impact on the story I was watching or comics I was reading.
He does make a good point near the end of his article: There really is no need for STAR WARS, a movie that will already have lots of attention, to get more attention.. And really, the sexualization of STAR WAR never really occurred.. though by THE RETURN OF THE JEDI I was coming of age, so I figured Princess Leia may have been Jabba’s sex slave. But, since it was gross, I never tried to determine how that would have even worked..
And Anghus is right: We are seemingly desperate to label everyone in our current time. Every single person deserves a label, an acronym, or a bandwagon to jump on. What happened to just being an individual? Daring to be different? Just having a light saber and destroying the Empire?
This is a trap..
And people will fall for it.
George Lucas gave us a number of political commentaries in STAR WARS when you study it.. Seems like DISNEY would rather give us pop culture than generationally important messages..
And anyway.. JAR JAR BINKS was gay, right?
This is how the ASSOCIATED PRESS dispatch reports it for the official record:
NASA launched four identical spacecraft Thursday on a billion-dollar mission to study the explosive give-and-take of the Earth and sun’s magnetic fields.
The unmanned Atlas rocket – and NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft – soared into a clear late-night sky, right on time. Within two hours, all four observatories were flying free.
A billion bucks to study, as the AP also reports, this:
Magnetic reconnection is what happens when magnetic fields like those around Earth and the sun come together, break apart, then come together again, releasing vast energy. This repeated process drives the aurora, as well as solar storms that can disrupt communications and power on Earth. Data from this two-year mission should help scientists better understand so-called space weather.
While I am not trying to induce mass hysteria or concoct some elaborate conspiracy, the timing is amazing—to some, most likely, even suspect. CERN is back with a vengeance this weekend, as the large Hadron Collider is going to fire with DOUBLE the power as previously done.. With the restart, scientists are hoping to unravel the secrets of dark matter and the universe.. Clyde Lewis had a couple of shows and guests this past week that may raise eyebrows and speculative questions, including Anthony Patch, someone who clearly, not in the mainstream has been sounding an online alarm over the CERN restart..
Since CERN was just being planned, people feared it would create a gaping black hole or alternate reality for everyone living on earth. Some even argue that it did just that, thinning the veil in a sense and giving us a whole new vibration..
And now with NASA satellites traveling to the sky to study magnetic reconnection, and some CERN magnetic happenings, all eyes are on the multiverse this weekend. Let’s see how things go..
A red alert has been issued for Vanuatu as a massive cyclone begins to lash the South Pacific island nation.
The WEATHER CHANNEL has this:
With Cyclone Pam expected to deal a major blow to the island nation of Vanuatu, officials were pleading with the population to get to safety, or risk their lives.
The country spent Thursday stocking up and fortifying buildings for the cyclone’s strong winds, torrential rain and devastating storm surge, but experts fear the worst will happen if Pam hits Vanuatu’s population centers directly, especially the coastal capital, Port Vila.
The country’s government issued a red alert for all six provinces as Pam closed in, BBC said. The alert orders all of the South Pacific nation’s 250,000 residents to get to shelter immediately, the report added.
And even more intense, a tweet posted by a user Humans of Vanuatu says a few things about the storm, right now, as it hits:
Folks, I’ll be honest. It’s really bad out there. The wind is howling with a deep roar that just doesn’t let up. Anyone not in shelter now is in mortal danger. Frankly, I don’t think our country will make it through this without some deep scars.
And
The shutters are groaning like ghouls, but the power is still on, and my internet is still running full bore. Not sure how I’d be feeling if not for that….
More:
Just got a text from some of the skeleton crew on the Tina 1, one of those ships opposite our house that you saw in the video. They’d love to get off the ship now, but they can’t. They’re stuck there for the duration.
This is PAM as she starts the terror on land:
A good list has been compiled by the AV Club about how to make good horror..
And it’s good horror that has been lacking for too long of a time, besides a few gems that have popped up through thebyears..
This article linked here could help any upcoming writers or directors create a new masterpiece of our time and genre..
I am perfectly fine that the Era of torture porn appears to be coming to a close..
Of course as I say that a popular Go fund Me still exists for 30, Rob Zombie’ upcoming film. .
The masterpieces of yesterday may never get repeated–even though we keep on trying to recreate them over and over again with remakes and redos.. Instead, directors and writers should update the standards, refocus on what is scaring this new generation.. And what isn’t.. Slashers lost their effect.. Our reality is comprised instead of trustworthy men in business suits ruining the world. That’s scary..
Equally scary: The future of robots and nanotechnology.. science fiction and horror can merge in a beautiful and well-made with under the direction of the right producer.
And maybe even more, horror movies should teach lessons again. Become societal commentaries again. Like DAWN OF THE DEAD. That movie held a revolutionary message. Even some say the same for FRIDAY the 13th, calling it a commentary on the Reagan era and the rise of the Religious Right. The SAW films capitalized on America’s newfound love of torture after 9/11..
And now today, as this is written, IT FOLLOW and BABADOOK are celebrated not only in alternative sources but also mainstream press as horror films worth seeing.
That’s a positive.
Horror can be as important as drama or any other genre.. As a matter of fact, even more so: It’s the primal fears, the instincts of humanity, the hopes and prayers of survival.. the scares of what we cannot control. All rolled into one hour and a half (or more) of visual and emotional scares.
Today, IT FOLLOWS is released in a number of theaters–but not nearly as many as I wish. With success, of course, that could change.
Earlier this week, I wrote about the high praise of IT FOLLOWS. And the positive press hasn’t stopped there, the shower of love of this movie has only continued. And that’s a good thing if you’re a fan of what this genre SHOULD be about.
For years I have been the anti-horror movie horror fan, usually celebrating movies opposite of what pop culture says they love.. as an emotional and loving father, I am disturbed by many of the films in the horror genre that some praise. I get a little queasy when other sites write stories talking about the ‘best death scenes’ and the ‘kills’ of films.. But please don’t get me wrong, there’s enough room in any genre for subsets of the best.
The real reason that horror, to me, is still important and worthwhile to follow: Because when done right it can put a spotlight on pop culture or societal troubles, drench it with attention, and change the world.. I really do believe that.
Some comments so far on the HORROR REPORT paranormal poll:
Freeranger writes, “Friday nights after I’ve rec’d my paycheck mostly……..then upon waking Saturday mornings, I’ve found that much of it has been spirited out of my wallet. Poof….”..
x x x
rootbeer29 says, “When i practise extended perception, intention, and wandering.”
x x x
Barbara wrote this, “I was working in my office when out of the blue a voice in my head said my brother was going to commit suicide. I immediately called my brother and he told me his was fine and working in his yard. The next afternoon he killed himself.”
x x x
Vote below on the poll and comment here on SODAHEAD..
[sh_poll poll_id=”4736476″]