2 Joker 2 Folly

It's out on VOD, so it would be rude not to.

Arthur Fleck is in jail because... did he get captured at the end of the last movie? I can't remember and I'm not watching it again. Anyway, his lawyer is going for the "insanity defense" because Joker is a different personality. Certainly this film has two personalities, where one is in a musical, and it is unrelated to the other movie. Unreliable narrators are always fun. Heck, for a while I wondered if Lee would turn out to be imaginary too. Arther Fleck goes to trial, not a lot happens, then Joker goes to trial. And then the movie finally ends, over two and a quarter hours later. You may have heard about the ending already, certainly there was a lot online about it at the time, but that might just be me.

The joke of this movie is definitely on the audience for sitting through this. Whatever he says, Todd Phillips clearly did want to make this movie, and say something. Other people have dissected that, but I put it to you that this doesn't say anything at all other than Todd Phillips made another movie. It just goes on and on and...

And yes, it's a musical. People complain about Joaquin Phoenix's signing, but... eh, it was fine to me. Seemed a bit rough in parts, but I'm no singer either. Nice to see Steve Coogan still in things, and even Ken Leung gets a cameo. Of course, there is Lady Gaga, and I have no idea if she did this because Todd asked nicely, it was a paycheck, or she actually thought there was something worthy of her attention in the script. I couldn't see it.

I'm not recommending this movie. Unless you like watching people smoke cigarettes, 'cos there's a damn lot of that.

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Murder by Bells

Sometimes you see a trailer and go "I have to see this!" Fortunately, youtube...

We start immediately with a women in a train station answering a phone, and death! Her previous lecturer is asked to be nosy. and looks into it, and there are a few deaths by phone and he is the One True Hero and works out that phones are to blame. He hooks up with an artist who works at the phone company while investigating, and harasses a cop to help, but...

Yes, we do get the point where just a ringing phone installs a sense of dread. Is this someone calling to pass on information, or is this a call to cause someone to pass on? Since this is 1982 phones are everywhere, and there's lots of wires, so this is very plausible. (Although, even back then, people's phone numbers are 555-something.)

Richard Chamberlain is our hero, and he does have a rather heroic beard. We also get fine performances from others, and some fine cameos too (hello Barry Morse!). The phone death effect is quite the thing, and I'm sure there's one or more stunt performer that got a good gig out of this considering how far some of the people got thrown.

An oldie.. but a goodie!

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Demos

In the recent Steam NextFest there were some demos for games I might like, so I tried them.

Hail to the Rainbow: Post apocalyptic game where you are Ignat and... I'm not really sure what is going on. This game is very Russian and as such is rather obtuse. Especially the controls. So much stuff I missed because I wasn't expecting the controls to be what they are. We get at least two bits, the first part I got past, the second part I didn't because I had no idea what I was supposed to do.

Wishlist? No.

The House of Tesla: From the makers of House of Da Vinci, a puzzle house. We get one room, and the demo had a bug or two, so that's not a promising start. But I played those other games, so sure as anything I'm gonna play this.

Wishlist? Yes.

no signal: There's a signal from a black hole, and something happened to the station. I think. There is a lot of Lore, but it is rather disjointed. We get a bit of stuff to do but... I hate the gameplay. It is free moving in all three dimensions and the controls are just uncomfortable to move around with.

Wishlist? No.

Take Notes: Something happened in the bunker, and we are investigating. Fairly direct puzzle game but... I had to brute force quite a few of the puzzles. It's possible that I missed the clues, but there were many I looked over for, but couldn't find anything. Rather on the basic side, but... okay?

Wishlist? Currently yes.

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M T Mon

Creepy-pasta does not a good film make.

An ex-cop looks into the missing young woman and... wait, let me stop you there. Whenever that happens in horror movies either the young woman is the Special One and ends up ending the person looking for them, or the person looking ends up the Special One. As this is called the empty MAN guess which one this is. Because I guessed before the end of the movie and remained unsurprised.

This was a comic book by BOOM! Studios, and was made back in 2017, but counts 2020 as the release year. Delaying a movie really indicates they have a hit on their hands and want to build hype or... no, wait, yeah, it was the other thing. No-one was interested and they finally let it out.

Pity, as this started well, with a group of young hikers and supernatural happens... but then they cut to J. Random White Guy and a cult and it all just falls apart, even though they sprinkle in "hit internet thing kids are doing that could be trouble". This had a few good ideas, but mired it down in a lot of tedium. I will check out the comic, and hope that was a lot better (although knowing comic adaptations as I do, it probably just has the same name and the concept of an "empty" man, and that's about it).

Featuring people that reminded me of other people. They were fine, but there are no actors that can make parts of that script believable, and it certainly wasn't.

I watched this on D+, and the best thing I can say about it is that it was better than the movie it recommended straight after (which I also watched), The Night House.

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ReBoot ReWind

As I mentioned when talking about the remastered episode, there is an associated ReBoot documentary, ReBoot Rewind.

The full series is now available, although the playlist is in a weird order.

Anyway, episode one for your viewing:

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The Superstance

This is as subtle as a car crash... which it has!

Elizabath Sparkle is an over aged, cursed husk of a woman (age 50) and the industry has no use for women over than this century, so she takes a "substance" that kicks out a sort of clone of her, but younger. Who is really popular. And doesn't want to put up with her older self. That can only go well.

As much as this isn't about women getting old, and we briefly see an old man, this is about women getting old and not being in Hollywood any more. As much as you want to say it isn't just woman, we get Dennis Quaid and Old Shareholders having a fine ole time. And we have plenty of evidence of older men still acting whereas always need the new female hotness.

Demi Moore is still a fine actress and so is Margaret Qualley as they both are the same person (more or less, they don't talk about how they don't really look that alike - indeed if they did it might cause more problems for the story than they want to address). The prothestics and other effects are blended in well, and help sell everything.

This is one of those good "black comedy"s, in that you can actually tell it is a black comedy. Worth a watch!

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Prints of Darkess

More John Carpenter? Don't mind if I do!

Science or Religion? When an old priest dies, he bequets the key to Donald Pleasence (who is just called Priest), and said Priest then gets in a scientist to study a large vat of green liquid. The scientist decides to get a whole slew of students in, and they practice good science like not actually observing the item of interest, and talking about things instead of looking. However, that does allow various people to get possessed, and soon Father shall be here.

This reminded me of The Stone Tapes, of science trying to tackle the supernatural and not being able to cope (I need to rewatch that). It is extremely watchable, slowly drawing you in, but then the idiocy of the students does make it not at all surprising that the Prince is winning.

Aside from Donald Pleasence, we have Victor Wong, and other actors who have not done anything to make me recognise them, and a cameo by Alice Cooper! The vat, and other, effects are hard core, done by playing film in reverse, and the main prosthetic is the skin one of the students ends up wearing. Simple, but good.

I'm gonna say a hot take here: John Carpenter made good movies!

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