It's almost time for Nevermore!

 Greetings, readers! It's been a little while, hasn't it? After a month straight of recapping 2013 and then a few reviews to follow that, the Cap'n took a little break to recharge the batteries and to focus on my other, regular job (it's nothing exciting and doesn't have anything to do with the Blogorium, which is why I don't mention it much). And then the Snowpocalypses happened and friends had kids and before you know it, I'm looking at two weeks of nothing new. But hopefully you had plenty to read in the meantime, and maybe now we've all had time to let news like Philip Seymour Hoffman's death to settle. It still sucks (it really sucks), but it is what it is.

 I'd like to have some more reviews up for you soon, and I'll try to, but  the past two weeks haven't been much more movie watching. The Cap'n did see The Bling Ring, and while I wrestled with whether I had anything to say about it, I'm landing on the side of "it didn't do much for me." I'm not convinced that Sofia Coppola really had any point to make about celebrity obsessed culture or that the movie accomplished much of anything at all. A gaggle of teenage miscreants break into the homes of people they idolize on superficial levels, steal their things, and attain a level of quasi-celebrity (the girl Emma Watson is based on had her own show on E!) and end up in jail. Well, some of them. And they betray each other because they're just as superficial... and that's the point. There's no insightful commentary or anything that really makes The Bling Ring stand out from the TV movie version that already existed, unless you count the fact that Coppola had access to Paris Hilton's house and also asked some of her friends to appear on camera, sometimes merely for seconds (seriously, how long is Kirsten Dunst on screen?). Maybe I'm missing something, but I sure didn't feel like I was while watching The Bling Ring.

 Grand Piano, on the other hand, is much better, but I don't want to review that yet because I'm going to watch it again this weekend and will be covering it for the annual Nevermore Film Festival roundup. This will be my third year attending the festival of things dark and macabre in Durham, and it looks to be a fun one. Their "retro" feature is William Castle's The Tingler with Vincent Price (actual title, don't bother fact checking me on that one) with Castle's original "Tingler" gimmick. If you don't know what that is, either look it up or show up to The Carolina Theatre in Durham on Saturday night to find out. It's going to be a fun time and will make it the first time I've seen The Tingler as it was meant to be experienced.

 I'll also be checking out Big Bad Wolves, Here Comes the Devil, The Shower, Open Grave (if I can fit in a showing), Last Days, Proxy, and the short film collections. In particular I enjoy the shorts because it takes me the rest of the year to find them online, and even then sometimes you just can't, meaning that Nevermore is the only time you'll see them. Some of my favorite bite-sized horror comes from the collections, and there's always a surprise or two that really works with an audience. On the features front, I'm looking forward to Here Comes the Devil and if I can squeeze it in, I'd really like to see The Returned, but right now it's not looking likely if I want to catch all four shorts compilations. Haunt is the same way, but with work as it is I can't make it there until Friday night, meaning that some of it's going to have to get left out. I'll see if I can get some of the other attendees to file reports on movies the Cap'n couldn't see.

 If you live within driving distance of Durham, you really should go to Nevermore this weekend - the atmosphere is great, they have three screens running all day with all sorts of different varieties of horror, science fiction, thrillers, and just bizarre stuff. Tickets are pretty reasonable, and there's always something to walk around and see in between - vintage posters, movies for sale, memorabilia. The audiences are always great, which is a major plus when seeing something new or being able to watch a classic like Dawn of the Dead in a completely different way. John Dies at the End also played very well with a large audience, something that most people didn't get to see as a result of its limited release. The Tingler is going to be a lot of fun with a crowd, and for five bucks you really should make the trip out to see it. And at this point I sound like I'm shilling for the fest so I'll stop. The point is that I got my passes yesterday and the Cap'n is rather excited. It's the one fest I don't run myself that I try to make it to every year.

 On the other side of that, there are a bunch of things I'd like to try doing beyond just reviewing movies, but I hate to set something up and then not get to it, so for now I'll leave it mysterious. I will say I've given some thought to revisiting movies that I reviewed a long time ago, both that I did and didn't like, if only because their original reviews are a) terrible, b) too short, c) both, or d) don't give a reader any real impression of the movie. I've gone back and read a few from years ago (particularly ones written in the middle of a Fest) that are too cursory and don't really seem fair to ask you to take at face value. So I might try to rectify that. The way I review films has changed a lot in the last ten years, and the Blogorium is more or less an archive of how that style evolved, but it means that old reviews really don't stand up, and there are a lot of movies in there I think deserve better consideration. Stay tuned on that one.

 I'll see you cats and kittens this weekend for Nevermore!

So, where were we?

 As you may have noticed, the Cap'n has been a bit more MIA in the Blogorium than I've been, well, ever. My routine of posting something every day whittled down to five days a week and then three days a week and then around the new year, to almost not at all. Part of that was that I was cramming in movies for the year end recap, part of it was that I just didn't prioritize correctly.

 Sure, some of it was work and when I had two jobs and was working every day it was hard to keep up the self-imposed schedule I had operated under since the Blogoium was on MySpace (I feel comfortable mentioning this since they relaunched and erased all the old profiles and that Cap'n Howdy's Blogorium no longer exists). But I found a way to write between movies at The Galaxy (also being demolished, which I hate, but there's nothing any of us could do about that so I'll honor it by name) and could even continue the Adventures in Projectioneering series while that lasted.

 Anyway, the Cap'n hasn't stopped watching movies, but as I feared, the longer I went without writing regularly, the harder it was to make myself sit down and do it again, even when I wanted to. Covering Nevermore was a good chance to dip my toes in, but then I let two weeks go by without reviewing any of the six or seven movies I saw after the festival was over (one of them, Heather Langenkamp's I Am Nancy, is a great companion piece to Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy and you should see it out).

 But this isn't about navel-gazing and making excuses. Nope, I found a gimmick to get the Cap'n back in the swing of things, and it's either going to re-invigorate the Blogorium for the next two months or kill me in the process.

 I call it The ABCs of Movie Masochism. It's borrowed, in concept, from the anthology film The ABCs of Death and in practice from a friend of mine who is doing something very similar to cleanse his palette from two months of cramming 2012 movies into his brain. I've selected 26 movies, each corresponding with a letter of the alphabet, and I'm going to watch all of them and review them on the Blogorium, by the end of April if that's possible.

 For the record, because friends of mine have already been confused about this, I don't mean to imply that I'm watching 26 terrible movies to punish myself and others. Yes, there are some schlock picks in the list, but the "masochism" comes from undertaking this task in a short a period as I can humanly accomplish it.

 It's absurdly ambitious for the Cap'n, considering that I work an 8-5 job during the week, but what the hell? I want to do it, and I want you to join in on the experience of it. Either in person or vicariously - if I know you, you're welcome to join me for double features every Saturday night until I'm done.

 One thing I can promise is that if you come to the Saturday screenings, you'll see two movies that you never in a million years would think of putting together. I'm not going to reveal the titles of all twenty six films yet, because it'll be more fun for you to find out the day that the review goes up, but each one is either a movie I've never seen or one I've never reviewed here before. Many of them are connected in unusual ways, even if you really have to bend over backwards mentally to figure out how.

 So stay tuned, readers, because I'm just going to put them up as I go along. I may tell you what the next one is at the end of each review, I may not, but know that every film is a hint towards something coming in the next two months. And to prove that I'm sticking to this one, the first review will be up tomorrow, and the next one the day after.

A Quick Note from Blogorium Headquarters

 Greetings to all readers in... internet land? (It doesn't have the same ring to it as TV Land, now does it?) Well, the Cap'n is hopping in between non-Blogorium related jazz, including my non-Blogorium job. Yes, it's true, the Cap'n cannot live off of the Blogorium alone - or at all. I don't make any money writing this, which is either a point of pride or something I'm too foolish to have capitalized on at this point. Take your pick.

 At any rate, I have to run off here shortly and will need to be up bright and early tomorrow morning to keep things running here at Blogorium central, so today's entry gets the short straw today. But don't worry, I'll make it up to you later this week.

 It's probably for the best, because after watching Alien twice this weekend (the 1979 theatrical cut and the 2003 "alternate" version Ridley Scott put together for the Quadrilogy) with both commentaries available, I have some thoughts about Prometheus, including the TV spots that continue to give away more information than I think I want to know. There's a lot of speculation out there, and the Cap'n will be adding his, with the benefit of some specific images from Alien and Ridley Scott's own words about the Space Jockey, the Derelict, Ash, and his desire to explore certain aspects of the Alien universe. All of them seem to feed into Prometheus, what we know about the film (which isn't much) and what we think we know isn't the case. Anyway, it's not going to hurt things for me to have to wait until Thursday to get to that.

 In the meantime you'll find a Retro Review tomorrow, a Video Daily Double on Wednesday, and then thoughts on Alien and Prometheus Thursday as we head into the film's release next week.

 Additionally, I'm mulling over when to bring back What the Hell Week, as I've decided to check out four or five films that under normal circumstances I'd avoid like the plague (one of them is This Means War) and maybe that's where a full examination of the Saw series will land. Or I might hold that off until closer to Summer Fest, which is still up in the air with respect to date and location. I was going to hold it after the 4th of July, and Friday the 13th makes sense, but nearly everyone I know is going to see Neko Case on the 14th, which takes away a prime day of Fest activity. Also, I'm torn between schlock-heavy or focusing on some really creepy horror films that have gone largely unseen since the Nevermore Film Festival.

 Well, I'm being summoned, so all this and more will be addressed soon. Until then, send in your suggestions of what you'd like to see for Summer Fest. I'm still not ruling out this year being the "Remake" Fest...

In Progress (a euphemism for Slacking)

 Hey gang! How about I tell you about things I'm currently in progress as a way to divert attention from the fact that I don't have anything done yet*? Sound good**?

 The Cap'n has begun reading Nerd Do Well by Simon Pegg, which is to this point very entertaining. When I finish the sort-of memoirs interspersed with passages from a fictionalized (?) version of Pegg's life away from the silver screen, I'll give you cats and kittens a review. Since I only have time to read it at night (before bed), this might take a little while, but it worked for Shock Value, so I think it'll be sooner rather than later.

 Last night I was doing some laundry and was finally able to put on More Brains: A Return to the Living Dead, which is a "warts and all" documentary about the making of Dan O'Bannon's Return of the Living Dead. I only watched forty or so minutes, but the film doesn't sugarcoat anything so far. It's both informative and funny, which doesn't always work but in this instance is exactly the tone to strike when covering Return of the Living Dead. I'm hoping to finish that up sometime this weekend for a proper review, but so far it's pretty engrossing. Stupid needing to sleep.

 Let's see, what other plates am I trying to keep spinning? Well, spine numbers are 50% off again at Barnes and Noble, so I'm really going to have to mull over those copies of The Battle of Algiers, The Complete Jean Vigo, 3 Women, Orpheus, Cul-De-Sac, High and Low, If..., Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and, um, Salo. Because I'm in such a hurry to watch Salo on Blu Ray. And you're so ready for that review, I know.

 Professor Murder will also be in town this weekend. That's almost always a call for some strange movie in theatres, so against the prevailing wisdom of reviews, I might end up seeing The Thing. Or something much worse. He did miss out on Horror Fest, and we have to rectify this, you see.

 As a small addendum to that, would people please stop referring to John Carpenter's The Thing as "the original"? You do know that John Carpenter's The Thing is a remake of The Thing from Another World, right? Oh no? You do now.



* In my defense, my work schedule makes it very difficult to do much of anything when it comes to watching movies, and it's only been getting busier because of two words: Annual Enrollment. Last weekend was by far the most movie watching I've done since the beginning of September.
** There are actually no other options, so I hope so.

Teaser for a Review I Hope Never to Write...

Forgive the Cap'n for a lack of posting today, but I just couldn't find it in me to subject you folks to a review of Monsturd. I know; I'm not proud of myself, but in order to talk Professor Murder into watching Thankskilling, Monsturd was part of the package.

If there's actually a demand for it, I might reverse this decision and write one up on Thursday. Surely someone is interested in a movie featuring the cheapest / most disgusting shit monster in horror history and really weak crap related puns, right?