Category Archives: Educational

Kageoween: Found Footage 3D in 2D Review.

INTRODUCTION: These movies, as of late, seem to be making a lier out of me. I know I said I hate these films, but Found Footage 3D is another exception to this rule. I don’t know why it has taken the better part of two decades to produce some quality found footage films, but they’re here now and it might be a good thing. At least this one was pretty epic, besides HellHouse LLC trilogy.

SYNOPSIS: Group of people, go off into the woods, like every damn movie, albeit this one with some meta aspects to it, making it “different”.

CHARACTERS: Well done! Granted, none are overly remarkable, but they draw you in and keep you glued into the edge of you seat. I found myself caring at the end, which is a rarity for me.

ACTING: Very, very good! None are well known that I am aware of and all of them put their best foot forward. That, or my standards are getting lower the older I get.

KILLS: Fuckin’ wicked! Oh good, they’re good stuff. Seriously, the ending is amazing!

DIALOGUE: Fantastic! I love the Evil Dead homage along with a great line, pointing out how these films tend to suck. Brilliant!

PACING: Fantastic! Moves at a great pace and keeps you enthralled until the end.

SUBTEXT: none of note. It’s not really a thinker, but it doesn’t need to be. You really just enjoy it and a popcorn flick is always alright.

CONCLUSION:
This one took a tired old cliché and didn’t turn it on its head, but made it tolerable and enjoyable. Found Footage 3D is how these films should have been produced years ago and it is nice to see that people are taking the genre as more than just a cash grab as it has been for years and they’re making haters of the genre like myself, eat crow for the fact that they can be fun, even with an overblown formula. This one is well worth the check out.

4 out of 5.

Kageoween: Hell House LLC 3, Lake of Fire

INTRODUCTION: I’m on record pointing out that I hate found footage films, but I loved the first one. I’ve seen the second and while a little more flawed, still very good. Now I am onto the third and I have to say, I very much love this whole series. I don’t think it is too early to dub them classics. Sure, much like their older predecessors, they have flaws, but they’re still amazing films in spite of those flaws, so I’m, at least, dubbing them modern classics.

SYNOPSIS: As if two times of going to back to HellHouse LLC wasn’t bad enough, a third group decided to take a chance and build something out of it. Like it ever works out? If it did, they’re be no more cash cows, uh, I mean sequels.

CHARACTERS: I think they’re the best developed of the three movies, sadly, you will remember the movie more than the characters and that is one of the flaws of these flicks. That said, everything else makes up for it.

KILLS: You’re not going to find over the top kills here, you’re going to get amazing old school build and some kills. This one does the same for the most part and when it goes go gory, it is worth it.

ACTING: Best of them all. Not a single bit of weird or awkward. Everyone is on their A-Game and it shows. Fantastic choice!

DIALOGUE: Excellent and well done!

PACING: Fantastic tension building and it works throughout the whole movie. These films really do it for me in a way few modern horror films have been in recently years and I really appreciate that.

CONCLUSION:
While the end is kind of weak and it was once again a pretty predictable ending, not mind blowing, everything else leading up to it was on point, so it was still a very strong sendoff overall. Although, as with all Horror franchises, if this does well, you can expect a fourth one or even more. Give it a year and I can pretty much guarantee that Shudder will come back with HellHouse LLC 4. Stephen Cognetti is a director and writer to keep an eye on as I see big things in his future and personally I would love to see him get a theatrical run. Not that being a Shudder Exclusive is bad, but he could be becoming a bigger name. Regardless, you need to spend Halloween watching all three of these movies back to back. You’ll thank me for it, because they’re really well done, albeit slightly flawed, horror flicks.


4 out of 5

Kageoween: I Chuckie, a review of the 2019 remake.

INTRODUCTION: I was excited to see that Child’s Play was getting the reboot treatment. I was never the biggest fan of the series, but up to three was good. There is an argument to be made for Bride of Chucky but I was pretty much out at that. The concept was kind of hoakie, but it worked in its time frame, remember, it came out in 1988 and every movie had characters with weird backstories. This one removes the weird voodoo in exchange for a more realistic take. Was it better off?

SYNOPSIS: A company like Apple produces an Amazon like Alexa, but in the form of a doll. The doll goes rouge due to a disgruntled employee having shut off the safety precautions. All hell breaks loose.

CHARACTERS: Pretty shallow to say the least. They could have developed them more, or at least the main characters. Overall, very weak, but so wasn’t the original Child’s Play.

ACTING: Fantastic! Not a weak actor among them all. They all did superb.

DIALOGUE: Not a single bit of cringe! It was excellent and at times very comical.

KILLS: Weak and not very inventive. We have seen most of these things before and it was tame.

PACING:It tried to be an old school story driven movie, but the pacing wasn’t right for it. It didn’t build tension correctly and that is a shame, because I would have loved more build and tension.

SUBTEXT: If we ignore the overt text that is the dangers of AI, Child’s Play at its core is really about being involved in your child’s life more and not allowing negative things to influence them, as Chuckie was. Everything he learns, he picks up from others and I think that is a worthwhile takeaway.

CONCLUSION:
The story could have been better and Andy’s hearing aid could have been a much bigger plot point. It was a missed opportunity to make him seem crazy, so by the end, he would have been redeemed in a most stellar fashion. The modernization was much needed and a fantastic break away from the old. While not an amazing film, a sequel could be beneficial and wouldn’t be minded. I loved the Isaac Asimov homage of the three rules that cannot be broken and there are a few other reference, like RoboCop that are within. Even with the comedy, this movie just could not get me to like it. Objectively speaking, not bad, just slightly flawed. Subjectively speaking, I really hope if they do make another they expound on this one with more developed characters, better kills, a better story and more tension.

Overall
3/5

Kageoween:Horror Collections, Scare Street Horror book four

INTRODUCTION: It’s that time of year, again, and my favorite time of year. That is right, it is Kageoween and I am kicking off one of my favorite months with this short horror collection. I’m not sure when I picked this Kindle e-book up but it was probably for Halloween and it was either cheap or free. I decided to read the first few stories in it, because it only has a few and wow! I managed to make my way through five of 10 of the stories in this collection and skipped the “bonus novel” which, if that is anything like the 5 stories I read is ironically named. (Turned out, you had to e-mail for the bonus novel, still a pass).

CHARACTERS:
The stories were filled with shallow characters. The first one alone was a clear Stephen King homage and boy did it miss the mark on both characters and homage. The woman draws a nine millimeter on a homeless person, without much hesitation. What a horrible character! How do we know the homeless character is what the author tells us “she” is without build? She was shallower than my character in Happy Acres, which isn’t my finest of hour when it comes to writing, so I’m an expert on this. All of them in the first five are highly forgettable.

PROSE: Telling, telling and more telling. The first one had one decent part of showing, which was the old woman’s hands which you can see for yourself and compare it to the excerpt down below.

The fingers, Wendy noticed, were exceptionally thin, the forefingers longer than the middles. And each finger was tipped with a long, dull gray nail, the edges of which looked wickedly sharp.-Going for a Walk by Ron Ripley.

Who the hell was the curator and editor on this thing, Stevie Wonder? Rubbish is an understatement!

DIALOGUE: Oh good god! It has more cringe than an autistic or a YouTube if you want to get technical, trying to be cool. This excerpt is from the second story within the book:

My hand appears to have some kind of bracelet around it, most likely a hospital admittance bracelet; the kind with name and DOB.- Story Two, The Doctor’s Questions, Eric Whittle.

Never mind the face a comma would have sufficed and there was no need for a semicolon, but no shit Sherlock? What other type of bracelet would it has been?
How about this little piece of cringe from the first story

From the chain’s sagging center, a faded sign reading “No Trespassing” hung limply. There was no breeze to move it.-Going for a Walk by Ron Ripley.

This simple sentence could have read “The sign hung still, dangling from a single rusted chain. The faded and chipped white sign had bold red lettering, reading “No trespassing.”

Instead we get his shitty take on the sentence. I’m not saying mine is the end all be all of writing, but it is a step in the right direction.

SUBTEXT: None, unless, how to shill shit counts as subtext.

CONCLUSION: For a book that was most likely free, it is still, somehow, too much of a cost for the “pleasure” of read this short story collection. If you’re looking for something to read this Halloween, I highly advise to steer clear.

1 out of 5 stars.

Is it Just Me or?: Curtis Knight “Voodoo Woman vs Carlos Santana “Black Magic Woman”

Voodoo Woman

Black Magic Woman

Ok, so Voodoo woman showed up in my Youtube recommendations as part of a Halloween compilation. I have never heard this song, but it is listed as early 60’s and Black Magic Woman is 1970 in terms of copyright. So is it just me or do The lyrics and sound seem very similar and did Santana just make a blatant rip off.

Communism for the USA: One for all and all for Comrade

A lot of people in entertainment seem to be obsessed with the concept that we’re slowly becoming a communist society and that that is ultimately a bad thing. I submit to you that we’re already living in Communist America and have been for nearly a century. You see it everywhere with Alt-Right vs Antifa, or Democrat vs Republican. We always seem to be at war with the communist. At one point in time, during WW2, communist were our allies in the fight against Hitler and the rest of the axis. Capitalism and Communism joining forces, though? Seems weird, since they’re like cats and dogs, right? Yet it happened and shortly after the fact America, clearly trying to wash the stink of pinko off their consciousness, profusely attacked anyone and everything it thought was a commie. McCarthy started it off in the 50’s and then the 60’s and 70’s saw Cuba and Vietnam as battlegrounds for anti-commie ideologues and least we forget the cold war, which lasted decades. So for something so inherently evil, we must surely need to teach our children about this horror, correct? Apparently not, as no one on either side, even neuvo communist, seem to understand what the fuck communist is and one side likes to keep purporting it hasn’t really been tried yet and the other sounding like the Ghost of Joseph McCarthy himself and all of it rings as hallow as the stereotype of your typical comrade. So what exactly is communism and what are its goals? Well, we’re going to define communism as Marxism and nothing past that. You see, anyone can highjack an ideology and use its name to push their negative agendas, history is full of this. Nazi’s originally started as a working class party before Hitler highjacked it. The Alt-Right has stolen conservatism for far right perversions as Antifa has perverted liberalism with far left insanity. As such, I have picked Marx for the fact it was a unique concept for the time, he did invent it technically and anything else riding his coats would not have been supported by the Herr Comrade himself, Marxist Clause.

So Marx defined communist as a proletariat run society, where the class struggle between them and the bourgeois would end and the workers would no longer be exploited. He had a list of 10 things that were the ultimate goals for communist to move to make for a better society and that is what we’re going to look at right now and see how bad Marxism really is as opposed to US Capitalism and give it a break down.

At first thought, a proletariat society doesn’t sounds too bad, I mean, it really wasn’t and original concept and goes back to ancient Rome with similar aspects, like the pata familiars. So it isn’t out of line to have been tried in the past that is until we get up to 1776, where our society also tried a government system by plebeian or as they put it “Government of the People, by the people for the people”. Marx would write the Communist Manifesto in the 1800’s. I know you’re thinking, that is irrelevant linking and surely there was a difference between rhetoric to arouse patriotic passion in early Americans and evil communism? Well, sure there is. America and Communism are vastly different systems with different goals, here I’ll show you by posting the list.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

The first desire to get rid of land rights and abolish the taxes on property that isn’t public land. How novel of him. Seems pretty conservative of him to want an end to property tax. He also didn’t want people to own land privately. Except no one really owns the land, the banks and governments do, so we’re already one step closer to apparently living in a Marxist world.

Now you’re saying, hey, that is just one thing that is similar and that doesn’t mean we’re living in a communist world. Look at all the non-commie world stuff. Ok, there are plenty of non-governmental examples of capitalism, but allow me to continue.
The second aspect he wants is a progressive tax or graduated tax. To those who do not know what that is, that would be where poor people pay no income tax and rich people pay more. Which obviously, isn’t an American concept at all! (Please note authors sarcasm)

Ok, you say, that is two similar things and there is a finite number of things in the world, so the odd thing or two is bound to be similar. Let us look at the next part which is the abolition of inheritance. In America, you have no right to inheritance. It is all based on legal documents that need to be drawn up that name you a benefactor of the individual’s possession in question. Why? A person could have innumerable wives, children and other family all whom could, technically speaking, lay a claim to any and all of it. Who would be more deserving or the family heirlooms, the son or a sibling? Who are we to decide which is more important than the other? Objectively speaking, this doesn’t exist. We even have a death tax, which to their credit, conservatives are against, so the only party that feels entitled to your stuff is government.

Ok, so that is three things out of 10, how many more could possibly be similar, well, glad you asked. 4 wants to take property from immigrants and rebels. I would presume there were different connotations to rebels in his time, but it seems to have pretty much the same as we already do this and both the left and right think it is kosher. FDR threw Japanese Americans into the gulags in the 40s and seized their property. Sure, Regan would rectify this in the 1980s, but it still happened. Our country is founded on taking other people’s stuff, like the Native Americans. If we extend rebels to include criminals, then in the 1970s, Biden introduced legislation to take property from criminals before they had even been indicted. This is very much in line with communism and their list of 10 things. 5 is the government having total control over credit by means of a national bank with state having a monopoly over money. Which sound a lot like the Federal Reserve bank, that pesky little thing libertarians hate but is loved by the GOP and Dems.

You’re probably banging your head on the table now being like, well there cannot be much more, ah but there is. Marx calls for Amtrak and other similar things being run by the state. 7 is excessive regulation, which pretty much means the government owns you by the balls and calls for forced working or as the GOP likes to cry about excessive “I have to work and so does everyone else”. 9 is government subsidies to farms and 10 calls for free education, of which, while not free, is state run and paid for by your tax dollars. He also wanted to end child labor and teach practical skill with other education, or what school has always universally had for a curriculum.

This is undoubtedly, beyond a shadow of a doubt, absolute smoking gun proof we live in a Marxist society. How have we fared? Well, the class struggle still exist, doesn’t it? The middle class is eroding and the divide is furthering, but yet we’re still calling for more of the same. Oh sure, I’ll admit that communist works in part, I mean, it has since 1776, but that more we add on to that, the worst society seems to get. I cannot seem to understand why people seem that Communism hasn’t been tried yet and yet also purport it to be evil and a failure.

Furthermore, it seems like both teams have their heads up their asses more than usual when it comes to the anti-commie rhetoric. Ironically, the left is the right and the right is the left. If conservatives want to keep America traditional, then they’re truly Marxist at heart as we would be keeping it that way. The left who want to further try communism, because we don’t live in that type of society, must have no concept of what Marx was truly all about and maybe they should read the book, it is a very short read, because I would hate to see what their version of Marxism is. In fact, for years our country considered changing itself as unpatriotic and commie, which is clearly the complete opposite of what it was. Wanting to change it is truly the least Marxist thing one could do. Regardless of current viewpoint, you have to admit the evidence is damming. I personally think we should look to cultivate a new system and have my own ideas of what that would look like, but at the end of the day, we’re all comrades in our Marxist world and I think we can finally put an end to the rift or one of the rifts that is driving a divide in our country. No longer should we be fighting each other over our ignorance. Let us, to paraphrase Marx at the end of the Communist Manifesto, UNITE!