Showing posts with label Babak Anvari. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Babak Anvari. Show all posts

Thursday, September 22, 2022

World Coming Down

 

Yesterday marked the 22nd anniversary of Type O Negative's World Coming Down. I can still remember driving to Threshold Music in Tinley Park to pick it up that first day, smoking up before driving home with it blasting in my minivan. It still haunts me today, as it did then, that my friend Jake did not live to hear the follow-up to October Rust.

The title track will always be my favorite among WCD's 13 tracks (if you count Skip it, and we are); this one is an emotional jackhammer.




Watch:

Current obsession:


This show just gets Chicago perfectly. 




Read:

Currently splitting my time between two short story collections that couldn't be more different:


First, Irvine Welsh's The Acid House. I started this with my third-ever reading of "A Smart Cunt", the novella that rounds out this collection. This was the first story by Welsh I ever read, back in the 90s. It made an enormous impression on me then, and still does now. From there I cherry picked a few other stories: "Snuff," "Snowman Building Parts for Rico the Squirrel,""Sport For All," "The Granton Star Cause," and the Eponymous story, "The Acid House." I am very much enjoying this return to Welsh's writing, and can't wait to dip back into this for more.

Then this morning, inspired by the encroaching Halloween season, I went looking for my Ramsey Campbell Alone With the Horrors trade paperback I have, but couldn't find it. I haven't bought bookshelves for the new house yet, so a lot of my books are still in boxes. I gave a perfunctory search, but when I stumbled across Nathan Ballingrud's Wounds:


As I've related here previously, although I have the original, softcover novella The Visible Filth - the novella Babak Anvari's film Wounds is based on,  I picked this new volume up as soon as it hit the shelves in tandem with the release of the film. I've read The Visible Filth at least three times, but the other stories packaged with it in this particular volume have all only received one go-through. Until now, that is. So yesterday I started my day with The Atlas of Hell, a story that feels so much like Clive Barker to me, yet still stands tall on its own thanks to the clean and precise ton of Mr. Ballingrud's prose. I plan on picking through this one a story at a time over the coming month, and maybe going back and re-reading the stories in Ballingrud's first collection, North American Lake Monsters as well, if I can get around to finally watching the rest of the series based on that book HULU did a few years ago. Previously, I'd only watched two episodes of Monsterland (produced by Anvari), not because they weren't great, but maybe because the two I saw were ultra disturbing. In a good way, but also in a real way. Which is the goal, however, sometimes you have to work up to that sort of thing. 




Playlist:

Ozzy Osbourne - Patient Number 9
The Cramps - Stay Sick
The Dead Milkmen - Beelzebubba
Misfits - Static Age
Type O Negative - World Coming Down




Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.


The center and left card go along with  the rejection notice I received this morning for a short story I submitted to a Horror Anthology last week. I'm having trouble figuring out the Queen though... or maybe I'm not.



Sunday, October 27, 2019

This is One Awesome F#&king Evil Dead Fan Film!



Praise be to the might Bloody Disgusting for plastering this one on their front page, right where it belongs! Not sure what to even say. Talk about inspiring. Courtlan Gourdan did this in 72 hours for $200? It might be time to finally think seriously about making the Short Film I've had planned for a few years now.

**

On Friday, October 18th, I had the members of The Horror Vision Podcast over to record an episode that started out with a planned viewing/reaction to Babak Anvari's Wounds. However, things slipped from my grasp - the battery meter on our Recording Device read a solid three out of four lines for not one but two pairs of batteries, only to die unexpectedly. The delay pushed back the viewing until we missed our spot to have everyone present participate, and realistically we were down my Left Hand Man Anthony, so the night just ran into random horror film conversations. Which was definitely cool in its own right, hence why I took the time to stitch together a mostly coherent episode and put it online. In listening back to it, there's one rough edit where two different conversations unexpectedly bleed into one another, and you can absolutely hear my up-at-four-AM ass lose steam somewhere near the middle of the episode, but overall, pretty solid discussion. Check it out, and we should have another new one up sometime real soon.

The Horror Vision on Apple

The Horror Vision on Spotify

The Horror Vision on Google Play


**

31 Days of Horror:

10/01: House of 1000 Corpses/31
10/02: Lords of Chaos
10/03: Creepshow Ep 2/Tales from the Crypt Ssn 1, Ep 1
10/04: IT Chapter 2, AHS 1984 Ep. 3
10/05: Bliss/VFW
10/06: Halloween III: Season of the Witch/Night of the Creeps/The Fog
10/07: Halloween 2018
10/08: Hell House, LLC
10/09: Dance of the Dead (Tobe Hooper; Masters of Horror Ssn 1 Ep 3)
10/10: Creepshow Episode 3
10/11: Jenifer (Dario Argento; Masters of Horror Ssn 1 Ep 4)
10/12: Poltergeist/Phenomena
10/13: AHS 1984 Ep 4/In the Tall Grass
10/14: Invasion of the Body Snatchers ('78)
10/15: Rabid (2019)
10/16: Wounds
10/17: Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
10/18: Creepshow Episode 4
10/19: Ed Wood/AHS 1984 Ep. 5
10/20: Sinister/Sinister 2
10/21: Uncanny Annie
10/22: Scream
10/23: Simpsons 666: Treehouse of Horror
10/24: Jennifer's Body
10/25: Belzebuth/The Lighthouse/Halloween
10/26: Murder Party

**

Playlist for 10/26:

Tones on Tail - Everything
Oh Baby - The Art of Sleeping Alone
Drab Majesty - Modern Mirror
Pastor T.L. Barrett and the Youth for Christ Choir - Like a Ship (Without a Sail)
Underworld - Beaucoup Fish
Zombi - Shape Shift
Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
Ghost - Infestissumam
The Doobie Brothers - What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits

**

Card of the day:


Interesting. I've been warring with myself for the last twelve hours or so, over an awkward social situation that blasted my night in splinters last night. Well, a series of them really, culminating with an almost telekinetic manifestation of the anxiety I've been carrying with me for a few days. Lots of stress right now, at work and in life. This Pull is a nice indication I should let it go.

Thursday, October 17, 2019

Babak Anvari's Adaptation of Nathan Ballingrud's Wounds @Screamfest!!!



Two films. Babak Anvari has made two feature-length films, and after seeing his second, Wounds, earlier this evening at the penultimate night of Screamfest 2019, I am floored by how exquisite a filmmaker he has become in so short a period of time.

I first read Nathan Ballingrud's The Visible Filth back in late 2015. I've read it at least three more times since. It is one of my favorite pieces of prose and was a very large inspiration in my completing my first book of short stories, A Collection of Desires. To say it is a very important work of fiction to me is an understatement. That means I went into viewing Wounds with extremely high expectations. The film met every one of those expectations. It lands on Hulu this Friday. Watch it. Then, go read The Visible Filth, which is now available in a collection of six stories, conveniently titled Wounds. (you can order signed copies from Malaprop's Bookstore in NC HERE or Amazon HERE)

Thanks to Screamfest for bringing this to the big screen, if only fleetingly; in a perfect world it would receive a much wider release. Also thanks to Screamfest, Tuesday night I saw the Soska Sisters' remake of David Cronenberg's 1977 film Rabid. This is another film I'd anticipated for a long time, and it did not disappoint. My quick-take review on Rabid is up as a short episode of The Horror Vision Horror Podcast, available in the usual places:

The Horror Vision on Apple

The Horror Vision on Spotify

The Horror Vision on Google Play

There will be a Wounds review up tomorrow as well.

**

31 Days of Horror:

10/01: House of 1000 Corpses/31
10/02: Lords of Chaos
10/03: Creepshow Ep 2/Tales from the Crypt Ssn 1, Ep 1
10/04: IT Chapter 2, AHS 1984 Ep. 3
10/05: Bliss/VFW
10/06: Halloween III: Season of the Witch/Night of the Creeps/The Fog
10/07: Halloween 2018
10/08: Hell House, LLC
10/09: Dance of the Dead (Tobe Hooper; Masters of Horror Ssn 1 Ep 3)
10/10: Creepshow Episode 3
10/11: Jenifer (Dario Argento; Masters of Horror Ssn 1 Ep 4)
10/12: Poltergeist/Phenomena
10/13: AHS 1984 Ep 4/In the Tall Grass
10/14: Invasion of the Body Snatchers ('78)
10/15: Rabid (2019)
10/16: Wounds

**

Playlist from the last few days:

Bauhaus - The Sky's Gone Out
Talking Heads - Sand in the Vaseline (Disc One)
Allegaeon - Apoptosis
Ritual Howls - My Friends Bury Their Souls for the Devil to Find
Ritual Howls - Their Bodies
Flipper - Album - Generic Flipper
Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love
Opeth - In Cauda Venenum

**

No card today, mainly because it's 2:29 AM and I am exhausted beyond reprieve.