The Urban Pantheist

Another fantabulous Boston spring day out there, and I finally hoisted my beer-belly laden carcass onto my bike to commute like I used to: in pain. I have two matching bruises where my body contacts the saddle, that I would never notice except they make it impossible to sit on the bike properly. Bike shorts, a gel seat, and maybe a nice soft set of Depends for the next ride.

Nonetheless, bicycling remains the best way to move around the city. On a nice day like today I like to keep aware for urban nature in a way that's simply impossible in the cocoon/cage of a car. I took some shots of flowering trees and whatnot, but the best is just feeling the air all around me. Now that the air doesn't feel like a snowcone pressed against my neck.

Jim was neutered last night and seems none the worse for wear. He looks kind of sleepy but not injured or traumatized. I'm against a lot of dog-related legislation, but I wholeheartedly support mandatory spay/neuter for all pets. Well, it would have been be difficult to do for my Madagascar hissing cockroaches.

I'm looking forward to a planned Soylent Screen column. I'm going to compare and contrast Cronenberg's The Fly--NO I'VE NEVER SEEN IT--with a documentary called 'Housefly--An Everyday Monster.' Depending on when they both arrive (not from Netflix for reasons I'll explain in a minute) I'll write it this time or in the next fortnight.

Currently our Netflixes at home are 'Elling' a foreign movie about a friendship between two mentally challenged adults, and 'After the Thin Man' the second and supposedly best of the Thin Man series where Myrna Loy and William Powell play a witty and alcohol-obsessed married couple that solve mysteries between drinks. Both movies will require some mood-getting-into as well as the time, so I'm expecting we'll have these until June.

We just finished (well, I did, Alexis fell asleep during the last 5 minutes) a documentary called, and about HELVETICA. Yes, the typeface. It's actually a great documentary; if I taught a documentary filmmaking course, I'd definitely use it as an example. And yet I feel like I have to rate it three stars, not four, because if I rate it four Netflix will dig up a documentary about Times New Roman or something.

This time I complain about the endings to The Prestige! while admitting that I'd like Fight Club better if it was a TV show. If you would like to read the full thing go to BBT.


"Better than Swordfish."

While we wonder what we can say about the passing of Gary Gygax, I've gone and posted my review of The Call of Cthulhu, the 2005 silent movie adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's signature story.

I never knew much of Gygax, except that his name appeared on the games and in the pages of Dragon magazine (which, I must disclose, I subscribed to for a year). I was delighted to see him appear on "The Simpsons," Futurama in a good natured self-parody (as all guests on "The Simpsons" and "Futurama" must be) but that was all I'd ever seen of him. Suffice it to say, the gaming paradigm he engineered changed my life, and changed how everyone thought about gaming. The Sims, Second Life, Gaia, WoW, Halo, and all the other ways of playing through living alternate lives were made possible by Gygax's popularization of role playing. Dungeons and Dragons became a phenomenon and a fad, but also spurred on hundreds of spinoffs and copycats, many of which surpassed D&D in originality and playability. But you'll always remember your first dungeon adventure.

Read my review of The Call of Cthulhu (the movie, not the role-playing game, which I also played and enjoyed) at Blood, Blade, and Thruster.

Call me a sentimental old romantic, but in honor of Valentine's Day, I reviewed Slither (2006). It's the most self-conscious horror movie since Snakes on a Plane, deliberately designed to be an homage to the horror/sci-fi movies of the 80's. Brain slugs from outer space turn people into zombies, and Nathan Fillion is there too. Read my review at Blood Blade and Thruster.

Hey! It's another fairly big budget sci-fi movie that I didn't really care for! I must be some kind of curmudgeon, I tell ya. This time it's the 2007 space disaster movie Sunshine, starring ugly heartthrob Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh, and a bunch of other doomed bastards. It looked pretty cool, but I was tired of the crew's bickering by the 20 minute mark, and it doesn't stop until there's nothing but corpses to bicker with. I can't explain why Alien (which also featured a crew full of people who hated each other dying horribly one by one) was better, but it was. Maybe it was the top-quality acting and directing, not present in Sunshine.

But other people probably love the movie, its blandly hopeless tone, its hilarious spacesuits, and Murphy's wide wet eyes. To them I say, sorry. It sucked.

Read a longer and slightly less mean and funny version of this review (and understand why I asked you to post a picture of a tardigrade) at Blood Blade and Thruster!

For those of you who wished that Fahrenheit 451 looked A LOT like The Matrix, or perhaps you just wanted to watch Christian Bale suck on his cheeks for an hour and a half, I've got the movie for you. I actually enjoyed Equilibrium, even with it's ludicrous gun-fu and implausible plot. I am amazed that there is a major fan site devoted to it (maybe they just love Bale's shaved chest) complete with diagrams of the weaponry and discussions of the rebellious underground. I guarantee you that these fans thought more about these details than the filmmakers did.

Read my review at Blood Blade and Thruster!

On this day in 365 Urban Species: Golden-crowned kinglet.

This time around I review Fantastic Planet, the 1973 animated movie where humans are treated as disposable animals by huge long-living aliens! It made me think about how we treat our pets and pests, but it was supposed to make me think of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia! Oh, well, the art--designed by Roland Topor--is absolutely mind-blowing, and the story is pretty chilling. Read the full review here at Blood Blade and Thruster!



On this day in 365 Urban Species: Callery pear, which at that time was one of the few trees with leaves still clinging to it--this year it's one of many.

This time around I review Murder Party, a great new indie horror comedy that's been circulating at film festivals but is already available on DVD.

Also, I give my Hallowe'en recommendations, as a naturalist who loves b movies about monsters and killer animals.

In this installment I review Stephen King's Dreamcatcher, which borrows from many other stories, but innovates by having the main characters be telepathic, and by moving the scariest monster scene into the bathroom. I innovate by using the word "assweasel." (In the movie they use a slightly more offensive word.)

Read it at Blood Blade and Thruster!

Four young men living the thug life plan one big heist to escape the street, or at least make life a little easier. They choose a small town bank to hit, but there’s one big problem. Wouldn’t you know it? The town is in the path of the zombie invasion.

Read the rest at Blood Blade and Thruster!