A Tale of Two Kickstarters

Two long dormant kickstarters that I pledged updated yesterday and it's amazing how differently things went. The first one was the Ascension Online kickstarter. It's been 16 months since the campaign ended for it and all they've released was a buggy beta for the pc. Since the goal of the drive was to get the game on the android os it's pretty much been a failure. Amazingly enough their update made it worse. You see they announced that they were going back to having the app be developed by Playdek, the people who did the original ios app.

Backers are angry. Very angry.

It seems that lots of people backed this kickstarter because of the spit with Playdek. They wanted to support Stoneblade's in house development. With the return to Playdek they're understandably upset. They're calling for people to report the campaign, for refunds or additional content free of charge. They're looking for digital blood.

The other kickstarter I pledged that updated yesterday was a completely different story. It was for Victor Gischler to write a sequel to his gloriously trashy novel Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse. It ended almost two years ago and there's been no book. His update apologized, promised refunds to everyone, and promised copies of the book when it's done to everyone as well.

Almost everyone in the comments for his update have said to keep the money. Most of the ones who haven't advocate spending the refund on more of his books. Most importantly they're all supporting him.

So why? Is just because they're getting their money back? I don't think so. I think it's because Gischler is taking responsibility and being proactive about what he can do. And most importantly he's engaging his backers directly. He's always been extremely accessible, often responding to tweets from random people he doesn't know (like me) about things he's working on. He's built a community of people who's response to "it's not done yet" was "keep writing and let us know".

Stoneblade has been much more corporate, and they likely have to be, but that has never bought anyone any goodwill. It just makes people think you should have your ducks in a row, and eliminates the slack you might otherwise get.

I suppose at this rate it's hard to say if I'll get my book or my game first. But I know which one I'm willing to wait longer for.

Don't Starve, journal one

This journal was found on a trampled corpse near a herd of Beefalo.

Journal entry, day one:

The experiment was a success! I have been transported to some kind of strange and barren wasteland! Upon my arrival I was greeted by a man in very nice suit who suggested that I find something to eat before melting into the ground. I immediately set about doing just that, harvesting some of the local fauna and fashioning a crude ax made from flint and a sturdy stick. As I was chopping wood for tonight's fire I found two things of note. The skeleton of another man and a stone road! I wasn't expecting such level of sophistication from the inhabitants of this world and tomorrow I will be following it.

Journal entry, day two:

I found the strangest thing today. As I was walking down the stone road a creature not unlike a pumpkin hopped up to me. It has the name Otto von Chesterfield, Esq carved into its lid and it seems to want to help me carry some of the things I've scavenged. I've put a few belongings into it, nothing but things easily replaced. I can't be sure that Otto won't abandon me.

I also found the end of the stone road today. Unfortunately it comes to a halt in a large grove full of bee hives. There's no evidence of any bee keepers either. The grove is surrounded by water as well so further exploration is this direction is impossible. Tomorrow I head north.

Jorunal entry, day three:

I'm happy to report that Otto was still with me in the morning. I'm less happy about the fact that it began raining early today. I need to craft something to protect me from the elements. I doubt many more days will be as pleasant as the first two were. Fortunately the rain only continued until about noon. I managed to capture two rabbits in a woven trap of my own devise earlier. I also came across some large yak like creatures that I have named Beefalo. I need to build some more effective weapons before I attempt to slaughter one of them. I do't expect that they'll die easy. The terrain has changed from a lightly forested region to a grassy plain.

Journal entry, day four

I have decided to set up camp temporarily among the Beefalo. I've built a fire pit and a machine to refine the various things I've found into more delicate devices. The Beefalo seem to love my fire pit and their dung is an excellent source of fuel. I also found the remains of two more people. I salvaged a hat made of Beefalo hide from one of them. I wonder if I'm the only person alive here? Tomorrow Otto and  I head north. I've got a shortage of raw materials here, aside from Beefalo dung.

Journal entry, day five

There is a hole in the ground with teeth. I believe its a worm hole. Science compels me to jump in. After all, it may be a way home!

It was not a way home. I've emerged in an even more barren landscape that I was in before. Thankfully the wormhole is still there. I am going to explore this area a bit more. After all, I do still need more raw materials.

I've found several signs that this area used to be used for agriculture. And the reason why it is not anymore. As I was exploring a large spiked tentacle burst from the ground! I ran back into the wormhole before it could get me. Unfortunately Otto did not make it back as well. Tomorrow I will return to find my friend. I also found something not unlike a potato, but made of metal, but investigation into it will have to wait.

31 Nights of Horror: The Retrospective

First things first, the full list for my 2013 31 Nights of Horror

1: Funny Games
2: The Possession
3: Don't Look Now
4: High Tension
5: I Spit on Your Grave (1978)
6: Dead Snow
7: Don't be Afraid of the Dark (2010)
8: Audition
9: I Saw the Devil
10: Suspiria
11: Frankenstein and the Beast From Hell
12: The Wolfman (1941)
13: Session 9
14: The Corridor
15: 6 Souls
16: Grave Encounters
17: The Woman in Black
18: The Bad Seed
19: The Prophecy
20: Maniac (2012)
21: Stake Land
22: Blood for Dracula
23: Repulsion
24: Grave Encounters 2
25: The Conjuring
26: Night Watch
27: Mama
28: Pet Semetary
29: In The Mouth of Madness
30: The Fog (1980)
31: V/H/S/2

The Best of the Bunch

I Saw the Devil

I Saw The Devil was without a doubt the best movie I watched in this experience. Its a South Korea Revenge Thriller about a government agent whose fiance is killed. So he takes a week off from work, hunts the killer down and begins torturing him. The two quickly escalate things into a cat and cat game where they're both just trying to do as much damage as possible to the other and its fantastic. Some of you will even recognize the actors as the Government Agent was played by Byung-hun Lee of Red 2 and the G.I. Joe movies and the Serial Killer was played by Min-sik Choi who you might recognize as Oh Dae-su from Oldboy. I can't recommend this one enough and if you've got any interest in Revenge Thrillers, South Korean movies or even just really well done insanity then check it out. Its even on Netflix.

Suspiria

This wasn't a movie it was a god damned experience. The sound and color in it were like almost nothing I've ever seen before. I'd love to see a good, high quality copy of it in a theater so that I can fully immerse myself in it instead of the sort of crappy You Tube rip I got to watch it on.

Repulsion

Roman Polanski is one of my favorite directors but for some reason I've never seen him as a Horror director, despite all the evidence that piles up. This movie was dark and disturbing, not because of the rapes or the arms stretching out of the walls but because of just how mundane it was. This girl didn't go insane from some horrible trauma or dark incident. She was just ignored and shoved aside. She was unstable and when left to get own devices she decided to hang out with a dead rabbit and kill the only person that showed any real level of concern. And as we see in the news it happens fairly regularly. Some people need help and we just ignore them, going about our lives. And then they do something terrible.

Maniac

Elijah Wood is creepy. Very, very creepy. And here he manages to improve on the original Maniac while spending almost no time on screen. See this version is shot almost entirely in first person. We're in the killers shoes at every turn, feeling his awkwardness with women, his inability to connect, his jealously and rage and his sickness. Its excellent.

The Worst of the Bunch

Grave Encounters 2

Now I normally look at Horror movies as films where you get to see characters making bad decisions. And that's fine as long as it makes some degree of sense why the character would do what they did. This movie should have been subtitled "What are you, a moron?" for how little sense its protagonist made. He's a film school student that comes to believe that the movie Grave Encounters actually happened. Which is pretty stupid, but then he hunts down the asylum it was supposedly filmed in, breaks in with his friends and camera equipment and decided to spend a night there himself filming it. You know, like the people that you think died doing just that. And I don't blame his friends for following. They were promised Film Credits and for film school students that's like offering crack rock to a junkie. But the lead? He's accepted murderous ghosts are real and then puts himself and his friends in their path. Its incredibly stupid.

High Tension

I know a few people who have a high opinion of this movie and I probably would too it it wasn't for one thing: the terrible twist ending at the end of the film. See at the end of the movie we find out that our Heroine has a split personality and that she's the one who killed everyone and kidnapped the other girl. And that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense given what we've seen. It also robs a lot of the previous scenes of their tension and kills rewatchability. The worst part is that without the twist we'd have had a highly effective slasher flick that incorporates a cement saw. Which is pretty cool!

Audition

This is another one that people seem to love and to that I ask: Why? The first three quarters of it is fairly dull and depressing and the final act is almost nonsensical peppered with horrifically disgusting imagery. Maybe I just don't get Takashi Miike. I'll freely admit that this isn't the first film of his that I've watched that I came out of thinking "What the hell was that?" I'd really like someone to tell me what is supposed to redeem this movie.

I really enjoyed doing this, even if I did have to scramble some to get to some movies that I haven't seen. Next year should be even more interesting.

Thirty One Days of Horror Days 6-9: Dead Snow, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, Audtition, I Saw The Devil

Day 6: Dead Snow

This is a movie that knows EXACTLY what it is and what it wants to do an delivers perfectly. We've got Nazi Zombies, attractive people in a cabin, makeshift weapons, self amputation, and some of the best brush off lines I've seen in a while. The creators on this have made a love letter to Zombie horror and if you're a fan of the sub-genre then check it out. Definitely Recommended.

Day 7: Don't be Afraid of the Dark

Guillermo Del Torro loves two things: Faeries and putting eyes where they don't belong. As he was only a writer and producer on this movie he couldn't force creepy eyes into it but if you're looking faeries then this is the place for you. We've also got all the stock characters for a child against evil movie, from the oblivious dad to the gruff older man who's really looking out for the child, to the mother figure, in this case a girlfriend, who eventually believes the child's story after some research and a trip to the most awesome library ever.

I couldn't find a picture of it so this will have to do.

Despite being a bit paint by numbers it was nicely moody and did everything well. It was a quality film with an unexpected part at the end. I'd recommend it.

Day 8: Audition

This is one fucked up movie. I mean really, really fucked up. It starts pretty innocently with a man whose son thinks he should get remarried. The only problem is that he's not sure how to go about finding his new bride to be. His buddy offers a suggestion: Hold and audition. He'll dig out an old script and they'll audition actresses for the lead, he can try and date the one he likes and hell, if they get financing they can even make the movie. So far it sounds like the set up for a Kate Hudson/Matthew McConaughey romantic comedy. He starts dating her and, spoiler alert, she's insanely fucked up. I mean this woman is the gold medal winner in the what the fuck Olympics.  She was tortured by her dance instructor as a child and now goes around mutilating and killing men. Except for the one she keeps in a bag in her apartment. I don't even want to think about how she feeds him but it does help her keep her figure. The end of the movie cuts between hallucinations and a torture scene in which the widower has his feet cut off. Why his feet? Hell if I know. I don't know if I can recommend this one. I expect you already know if its for you or not.

Day 9: I Saw The Devil

I was torn over wither or not I should include this movie because dispite having a serial rapist/killer, cannibals, torture, and a man hunting another man it never felt like a horror movie to me. But it seems to fit broadly so I decided it counted. Oh, and I god damned loved it. This movie is fantastic. Now I'm the first to admit that I'm a sucker for a good revenge flick and South Korea seems to put out the best of them for a while now. The plot is fairly simple. A man's wife is killed and he hunts down the killer who did it. The killer is played by the fantastic Min-Sik Choi, who you might remember from Oldboy. The man is just built to be abused. No one suffers quite as well as he does or has that perfect look of manic glee when he retaliates. The hunter is played by Byung-Hun Lee. He's nearly emotionless for most of the film, deadened inside by the death of his wife. He's the picture of intensity. I can't recommend this movie enough. 

Thirty Days of Horror Days 3-5: Don't Look Back, High Tension and I Spit On Your Grave

Day 3: Don't Look Back

I don't feel that I gave this movie the proper attention. From where I was sitting it was a series of random events that ended in a midget stabbing Donald Sutherland in the neck. Its well regarded enough that I'm fairly certain that its a problem with how I watched the film and not with the movie itself. I'm going to re-watch it in the next few days and give it a proper shake.

Day 4: High Tension

French lesbians in a slasher flick! How could it go wrong? With a shitty twist ending! In general I'm not a big fan of the twist ending that changes everything.

But this is one of my favorite movies ever.

Most of the time it comes off to me as "Oh, look how smart I am, you didn't know what was happening! Ha!" while not actually working. For example the killer girl wasn't ever depicted as particularly strong in the movie, except for when she was the killer, then she was kicking furniture so hard it could sever a head. Having said that without the twist I'd have been fine with the movie. Its a solid home invasion/slasher flick. Nothing revolutionary but well done.

Day 5: I Spit On Your Grave.

This movie has a twenty five minute rape scene. Twenty five minutes. Its only 101 minutes long. A quarter of this movie is dedicated to raping this woman. Its fucking terrible. I'm the first to admit that I'm a little more messed up than most people, and that I've got a pretty dark sense of humor, but even I couldn't stand watching the TWENTY FIVE MINUTES OF RAPE. You can't argue that we needed that long a scene for any good reason other than to make the audience sick. The movie also featured the lynching of a character that was at least regarded as being handicapped by the other characters, even if he didn't come off quite that way. It was more like watching a snuff film. There's no entertainment here. Go somewhere else.

Tomorrow I'm watching something fun.

Flavor Wins of Theros #3: Witches' Eye and Fleetfeather Sandals

We're doing another double dip on Flavor Wins of Theros this time because both the Witches' Eye and Fleetfeather Sandals are from the myth of Perseus!

Sweet kicks ya got there, lemme get a closer look.

So Perseus, one of Zeus' many, many, many, I can't stress this enough, many bastard children, is most famous for killing Medusa the Gorgon and staring in terrible movies along side Liam Neeson.

He looks like he's trying to remember if he left
the stove on.

But these mythical equipment didn't make the films.

But this guy did And Perseus still looks confused.

First we have the Witches's Eye. In Greek Mythology there were three witches called the Graeae. Among the three of them they shared one eye and one tooth. Just stop for a moment and thing about how you won't let someone else drink out of your water bottle. The three of them were instrumental in Perseus' quest to kill Medusa since like most Greek Heroes he had no god damned idea how to go about it. But unlike out friend Hercules he was more clever than most and when seeing that the Witches shared an eye between them he slipped his way into the rotation and held it hostage until they told him what he needed to know. Nothing like extorting information from the elderly to get your story going! But knowing is only half the battle, next he needed to actually get the gear. Thankfully this proved easier than you'd think. At one point Hermes and Athena got bored of watching him wander ancient Greece and just dropped by and armed up their half brother. Hermes gave him his winged sandals, made by Hephaestus (Purphoros?) himself and granting him the ability to fly and move extremely fast. As for what Athena gave him? I'm not going to go into it today because I expect we'll see something for it before the end of the block. Thanks for reading folks and I'll see you next time.

Thirty One Days of Horror: Day One and Two

Once again I've decided to take part in 31 Days/Nights of Horror, where I watch a horror movie that I've never seen before every day in October. Now I attempted this last year but due to work being horrible I had to drop out about a third of the way in. Thats not going to be a problem this time. So lets get into it!

Day One: Funny Games (1997)

Michael Henke wanted to make a statement with this one, I'm just not sure what it was. He made a home invasion film, normally one of the more indulgent sub-genres of horror, then didn't show any violence. He didn't show any exploitation. When one character is killed we focused on a man making a sandwich. He also peppered it with fourth wall breaking commentary as one of the invaders continuously spoke to the audience about what they were watching.

Seen here, literally winking at the camera.

And overall I don't think that it worked. The audience for a movie like this is looking for the visceral thrills found in the movie, from the violence that we don't see to the satisfaction of seeing evil punished at the end, which doesn't happen at all in this. I think that Cabin in the Woods did a better job of exploring peoples fascination with brutality and making statements about the emptiness of it, and it still functions extremely well as a horror movie. This sets up all sorts of audience expectations then leaves them laying on the floor and tells us we're bad people for it too. It doesn't function as a horror movie, it doesn't function as a drama. It seems to come up short in every direction.

I will say that the ten minute long single take scene in the movie is fantastic. As is the performance by Susanne Lothar. If there's any reason to watch this movie it's to see her perfect rendition of pain and loss.

Day Two: The Possesion

This one is a little more by the numbers. A little girl gets a wooden box at a yard sale and it turns out its got a demon in it. Hijinks ensue. There's a moment in this movie where you can tell the writers decided to say "Fuck it" to subtlety. We change gears immediately from the girl acting a bit off to blood pouring from one of her teachers eyeballs till she throws herself out of a window. Now I know exactly how hard the transition from acting odd to demonically possessed is thanks to my work on Lucifer's Unholy Desire. Part of me wishes that we had just said fuck it instead of trying to play it straight. Here once they jump that hurdle they do give us some great special effects. The fingers escaping the throat shot was awesome, as well as the moths entering the girl under the streetlight.

On a side note I mainly watched this one for Jeffery Dean Morgan

Also known as pudgy Robert Downey Jr.

I'm sure you've got them. Actors that you enjoy but never seem to break through, or even be in a movie that's best descriptor is fun? Jeffery Dean Morgan is one of those for me. If he shows up I've got a solid +10% interest in the movie but I know they're not going to knock anything out of the park.