From the Desk of…
Preparations are in full swing for October. Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead. Let’s see here… news… news… Ohio won’t have new congressional maps for 2024, despite their unconstitutionality. The plaintiffs dropped their suits to keep the air clear for the next election, but I can’t help but wonder if they aren’t wanting to give Republicans an avenue to be like “look! we made it better! stop trying to get a redistricting project going.” On the flipside, Republicans want to change how voter registration and our party primaries work. In short, voters would pick a party at the point of registration, and voters would have to be a member of a party thirty (30) days prior to a primary to vote in the primary. At present, Ohio’s primaries are semi-open, in that we don’t declare a party when registering, but we do pick a party when pulling a primary ballot, and that registers us with the party (there are… far more nuances than this, especially in regards to signature collection, but no one wants to read that). On the one side, it’s an effort to tamp down party raiding. On the other? You guessed it, voter suppression. They have one trick, but they love using it. In other Republican news, Bob Young has resigned following his multiple arrests. Truly, we have the best folks representing us, don’t we? Seems odd that so many of them get arrested. Probably all the crimes. And they’re so in touch with what the people want, like their unanimous opposition to recreational marijuana. Don’t worry though! The state Dems have countered by, uh… doing nothing? Some county parties are locally voting to endorse. I guess, when I think about it, maybe doing nothing is the best thing for the state Dems to do, given their track record.
At least Nancy’s running again.
The Brain Dump
bring back larry culpepper
Labyrinth and A Nightmare on Elm Street kinda have the same ending
one thing that would improve any movie is finding out about an hour in that one of the characters is a space alien
one thing that would be scary is if you were trying to fall asleep but then you heard someone outside do a witch laugh right by your window which definitely did not just happen to me
I would like to extend my best wishes to all, even the haters and losers, on this special date, September 11th.
Huh… most of my bangers were dunking on other stuff… doesn’t bode well.
At the Movies
I watched… every Halloween movie this past week. It hurt. Here’s the most recent three for you.
Halloween (2018), dir. David Gordon Green ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The requel that greenlit a thousand others. It gets carried heavily by Academy Award winner Jamie Lee Curtis who manages to engender audience sympathy in a movie about how sad it is that her liberal kids won't let her see her grandbaby because they don't understand that cops are good, doctors are bad, and Tucker says that Michael is in the immigrant caravan approaching the border. Postulating about the inherent conservatism of horror aside, this film, like Halloween II (2009), does explore the trauma of post-Michael life in interesting ways, and there's a catharsis inherent to seeing Jamie kick his ass, as demonstrated in Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (1998).
But my God, it is bizarre to watch someone in a Halloween movie open their mouth and say a Danny McBride line. "I got really horny at the party, and, like, all these girls were, like, dancing on me. Their beautiful bodies got me all chubbed out, Allyson."
I dunno, there's probably a five star version of this that exists or could exist. I know they shot a lot. If this had been the series send-off, maybe they'd have given it the concrete resolution it deserved.
Halloween Kills (2021), dir. David Gordon Green ⭐⭐⭐
Some of this I liked... some of this made me furrow my brow... Tommy Doyle and his fear whipping the town into an ineffective but violent mob with fascist undertones... flashbacks to 1978 with film grain filters... Michael McDonald as a gay pirate... but ultimately a film I found rather devoid of interest beyond "oh, look, he's stabbing again"
can't win them all
Halloween Ends (2022), dir. David Gordon Green ⭐⭐
Alright. So I gotta grade the movie in front of me and not the movie in my head. I think that doing a stealth remake of Christine as a Halloween sequel kinda bangs. Like, that totally could've worked, Michael in the abstract, Michael as memory, the lingering traces of trauma, cycles of violence, do the sewers like the cave in Empire... and as a direct-ish sequel to the first two films in its trilogy, it blows chunks. Like, I can understand why people would be mad about it. If this were a Part 4 with an action-packed 3 where Laurie downs him for good, I think audiences would've been a lot warmer to this. Instead it's kinda like "eh, she got over it, meet this new guy and also he's just chilling in the sewers... and has psychic powers now?" If Michael were totally out of the picture, a happy-ish Laurie trying to keep the past in the past works. He ain't though. I dunno. Feels like they decided in pre-production to throw half of everything out and do a different thing, maybe keep some of the third act. Wouldn't have gone down like this if I'd directed it. I hope they never make another one of these.
Go to the Letterboxd for thoughts on the other ten. And more!
One Picture
no but seriously what is he doing
In closing,
Psychiatrist and author Dr. Samuel Loomis once said that we're all afraid of the dark inside ourselves. The nights are growing longer, and sometimes it feels as though not even the daylight can protect us from acts of horror and violence. People have within them the capacity for great evil, but they too have within them the capacity for great good. Which we fear and which we foster is a choice - a responsibility - that ultimately rests on ourselves. That choice then dictates the societal structures we try to build and maintain, whether we allow our fear to rule and cast those on whom we blame our anxieties and neuroses into pits of darkness or if we, under the guidance of the better angels of our nature, work to support and understand them such that they embrace us in the light. Until next time, enjoy the sunshine while you can. It might not be here for much longer.