Oranges and Sunshine tagline: Thousands of lost children. A secret buried by time. One woman will bring the truth to light. Rainy days take over this part of the Pacific Northwest, fires warm the home; a good book takes precedence even by battery light attached to my kindle when the wind knocks power out. In…
My favorite season is here. Fall into fall. Did anyone celebrate the solstice? Planning the trip to the pumpkin patch? Here is a photo of one visit to a most excellent pumpkin patch outside Portland, Oregon, complete with two terrifying corn mazes. One for daylight, and the other for night time horror screams. Yes, I…
In The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel British retirees travel to India to take up residence in what they believe is a newly restored hotel. Less luxurious than its advertisements, the Marigold Hotel nevertheless slowly begins to charm in unexpected ways. This summer’s sleeper hit film. Don’t miss it. Jean: As long as such a fall…
Elizabeth Shaw: My God, we were so wrong . . . I grew up in a family of horror film lovers, and scary book readers. I was a kid, age ten, when Jaws hit the big screen, 13 when Alien came out in May of 1979, and the junior high cafeteria filled with chatter of…
Zippy is sittin’ on the dock of the bay . . . patrolling for Canadian Geese who fly into the pond every spring. And Spring has come early as the first squadron of geese have landed. They go about their business as couples, egging each other on, trying to find the right place in the…
Classic modern horror films and novels fill a need for people who want to experience fearful places, confront scary people (monsters), watch horrific things happen from the safety of their armchairs, theater seats or cars (this last a very real thing for me as a child taken to the Drive-In movies–piling on top of the…
Here’s my critical expression: Truly great films are a rarity. This past year had several wonderful movies to choose from, and despite the fact that movie attendance is way down over last year, where it was down even more from the previous year, 2011 was a banner year: The Artist is a love poem of depth…
Hortense Daigle: Children can be nasty, don’t you think? I caught a showing of the classic suspense film The Bad Seed this past Halloween week on TCM the other night. There were no commercial ads to break up Rhoda Penmark’s murder spree; no light in the background to filter the slow dawning of devastating knowledge for Rhoda’s…
Okay, I resisted going to the new Woody Allen movie. A lot of you did the same. Every weekend I need to be convinced to go to the movies. This wooing has to be so much better at grabbing people away from busy lives, exquisite home theaters with state of the art sound and vision, or…
Another great summer movie, Rise of the Planet of the Apes comes out of nowhere and starts people talking about meddling with nature, Tom Felton, that meanie Draco Malfoy from the Harry Potter films, and his turn as a brutish animal handler and how well he masters an American accent, and the astounding sight of…