One of my talented friends...

I've been meaning to share the work of my friend Kim Acrylic for a while now and since her latest musical collaboration is now available on amazon, I figured now would be a good time.

Kim is a talented, dark and sensitive soul. Angsty emotions and visuals abound in her work. Not only that, but she's a darn cool person as well!

Her first volume of poerty, published under her given name is a good, short read. If you can get it on sale or in digital format, it's worth it. However, you can see why she had cause to switch editors after its publication. Apparently in the self-publishing world, you can edit yourself or pay the publisher to edit it for you. And if you do so, it may not be good editing. While flawed, it is still a good read. But if you're a perfectionist, you'll want to skip it.

You can find Coffee Pot Poetry for sale here.

Kim's second volume of poetry, Poisoned Lullabies, picks up where her first work left off. Delving into the subject of addiction, anxiety, love and loss, she evokes dark emotion which is easily related to if one has ever been depressed for a period of their life. I was blessed to watch the evolution of her work as she was writing this one and I enjoyed being a friend and witness to her creative process. Being that we are friends, I can identify the real situations and experiences that shape her work and this one has some real tear-jerkers in it.

You can find Poisoned Lullabies for sale here.

After the release of Poisoned Lullabies, Kim had the opportunity to guest with The Northern Drones, of Ireland, on a music/spoken word CD. Kim's poetry mixes well with the music of The Northern Drones in a psychedelic Doors-inspired groove. This was a good friend to me when making long car trips on rainy days.

You can find this for download or listen to sound samples here.
Kim's third volume of poetry and lyrics brought a publisher change, electing to go through Lulu. Beauty and Noise can be downloaded as an e-book or purchased in paper form, in a magazine-style book. Unless you are a book snob like me who needs to have a real, tangible book in my hands, the e-book is probably the way to go. Beauty and Noise shows the continuing maturation of Kim as a writer and artist.

You can find both versions of Beauty and Noise here.

And finally, Kim's latest collaboration with Cdr, was released earlier this week and can be downloaded on iTunes and amazon. I'm not good with properly describing the techno genre, but I guess I would lean towards describing it as trance. "Record Player" is my current favorite track, but, like all music preferences, it's subject to change at the shifting of my moods.

You can listen to sound samples and download Techno Eyes by Cdr + Kim Acrylic here.
I'm not going to choose favorites amongst Kim's work. Each project has its own merits. Either way, I'm lucky to have such interesting and talented friends!

A... Book Review? Nah!

I'm not going to review it, really. But I figured I should comment that I re-read a favorite book recently and it still has the same effect on me it did the first time. Which explains why, while it's a favorite book, I have re-read it less than three times.

William Johnstone is a largely unrefined, formulaic writer, best known for writing in two genres: horror and action. This is, from what I can tell, his only love story. Which is a good thing. I don't think I could handle a second one since What The Heart Knows leaves me so damn emotionally worn out every time I read it.

I originally discovered this little treasure in a used bookstore. Used bookstores are few and far between anymore, but there's nothing better in my opinion. I was reading at adult level at age seven and therefore, was allowed to choose my own entertainment. My mother was all about letting me discover the world in my own way, so nobody seemed to flinch when I gravitated towards the popular horror fiction of Stephen King and Dean Koontz. But once I had worked my way through their back catalogs, I was left trying to discover treasures on my own. I wasn't a library kid. Even then I liked to own my books and revisit them like old friends. When my mom went to the grocery store, liquor store, DMV or hairdresser, I would head straight for that dingy little used bookstore, where it smelled like old books, tobacco and mothballs. The books were priced as a percentage of their original price, so if the book had been $4.99, it would be $1.29, etc. I usually had a big, fat $5 to spend, so I'd come out with two or three books if I was lucky. I started out reading The Devil's Kiss, Johnstone's first horror novel and continued following his work from there. I must confess, I learned to curse from two sources: Too $hort songs and William W. Johnstone's books.

Johnstone's horror books are masterfully dark and gratuitously violent. If one of the cable networks that pushes horror took a look at his catalog, they'd have a treasure trove.

All blathering aside, if you feel like having your heart repeatedly run over by a steamroller, you might want to check out What The Heart Knows on Amazon, because I doubt you'll find it in a bookstore.

If you're interested in checking out Johnstone's other works, you can check out his website here.

Sometimes They Come Back...

I watched Sometimes They Come Back earlier this week and have been meaning to give a short review... however, it seems that I got stuck posting about... *gasp* ... meaningful things like duck emergencies. So back to some happy fangirl fluff for a while.

Sometimes They Come Back is based on a Stephen King story, which makes it safe viewing because I know what to expect out of King. In viewing the film, it seemed to ring a bell with me which means either I've read the story (probably) or that King's stories tend to have common themes (also likely). For a while, I kept mixing up the storyline of this with the storyline of a few other of King's works, which made it interesting because I was expecting something totally different to happen.

I watched this while being the only one awake in the house. I don't normally get alone-time when watching movies, so that was a bonus. Was I scared? Not necessarily... but I was on the edge of my seat for this. Not much gets my attention that well, so I'm going to give this film a 4.5 out of 5 on the obscurefilm-o-meter.

Now for the screencaps and Tim Matheson fangirling...

A teacher and his family return to his old hometown...

In which a terrible tragedy happened...

Struggling with nightmares and bad memories, Matheson's character has to deal with obnoxious high school students...

While he probably wants to kill whoever chose his clothing for the film...

And then... the requisite weird shit starts to happen...

Are his students methodically being murdered and replaced... or has Matheson's character gone off the deep end? And who are these new students?

Can this mild-mannered schoolteacher save his family when nobody will believe him?

Sometimes They Come Back IMDB.

Phantoms

I figured now would be a good time to share one of my favorite films: Phantoms. I adore Liev Schreiber and Dean Koontz, so this film is right up my alley. Any fan of Koontz knows that no movie ever made from one of his novels has ever done the book justice. Phantoms comes pretty darn close.

This film also has Rose McGowan in it. She almost seems out of place in the film, but then again, her character is supposed to be a little out of place.

The basic premise is this...

Big sister takes little sister to live with her in a small mountain town...

They arrive and all hell breaks loose...

Is it a disease, or... ?

"It's just a bundt cake... it's just a bundt cake..."

Ben Affleck... before he was well-known:

Liev Schreiber is delightfully creepy...

With Peter O'Toole, they try to unravel the mystery of who or what has decimated the town...

Phantoms IMDB here.

Phantoms has some of the best lines in it. "Heyyyy, ya wanna see something?" And I'll never think of the song, "I Fall To Pieces" the same.

This is one of those films that I've seen so much that I curl up and go to sleep with it playing. That may seem like a negative to some, but I consider this to be a "comfort movie." Other movies that I use to lull myself to sleep if I have insomnia: Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, Army of Darkness (ok, I see a trend), Alien Apocalypse, Safe House, Star Trek: First Contact, and Star Trek: Insurrection. There are more, but those are the ones I watch most often late at night when I should be asleep.

On notoriously bad taste and Bruce Campbell:

I have always liked odd movies. Obscure and hard to find movies. Movies with bizarre dark humor.

Some childhood favorites, a few of which you’ve heard of:

- Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, Army of Darkness. They are so awesome, they are like one big, long movie that should be watched all together. Bruce Campbell, ironically, was not a childhood crush of mine. The Brucey fangirling came later. I accidentally came upon Bruce years later, in Alien Apocalypse. Somehow that lead to me keying in on his career, which has lead to where I am now.

- A Nightmare on Elm Street. The original and Dream Warriors are the best of the franchise. Would love to shake Robert Englund’s hand. Bonus points for good soundtracks.

- Return of the Living Dead. Not to be confused with the ground-breaking films of George Romero, this film is an immensely watchable b-movie from beginning to end. As an aside: I wonder if the appearance of Clu Gulager in a film is a good guarantee of camp-factor?

- Black Roses. The effects in this were surprisingly good for the time period and likely low budget that this film was constrained by. Evil rock band: yes, it’s been done a million times, but not too many people have seen this one. This also gets props from me because it actually had a really good soundtrack. Which I purchased. On cassette. Hello, shades of 1990.

- Hard Rock Zombies. A movie that I suspect nobody loves but me. This time, inexplicably, given the name of the film, the musicians are the good guys. I loaned this DVD to a friend, who commented daily for a couple weeks that he had started watching it and couldn’t continue because it was so bad. He kept trying, though, if for no other reason than to be able to review it to the chagrin of everyone in his Facebook horror group. Will leave you going, “Huh???” many times throughout. The super-jealous girlfriend character is worth watching closely. I think the people who made this film were practicing for a career making music videos. I wish they had released the soundtrack for this puppy, I would have been all over it. Heck, I’d buy it even today, though it is a little buttrock, a little candypop.

- The Amityville Horror (with an honorable mention for Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes). The original was one of the first horror films that scared the living daylights out of me. I’ve always been a little more frightened by the subtle horror than the gratuitous gore films. To this day, people still argue about whether or not this film was based on a true story. As an adult, I realize that “based” on a true story can still be a far cry from what really happened, but as a 7 or 8 year old kid who was allowed to watch almost anything, I took it as canon truth.

My choices in literature are equally mainstream to odd…

- Dean Koontz. I think I’ve read everything he did from the beginning of his career until about 2003. I don’t have the luxury of much reading time anymore, and it seems like when I do, it’s non-fiction. I started reading at adult level when I was about 7. For that reason, my mom stopped censoring my entertainment choices. Life was good. If someone didn’t know what to get for me for a holiday or occasion, it would be the default Dean Koontz novel. Phantoms was the only novel of his made into a film which wasn’t totally raped by the studio. I’d still like to see Dragon Tears made into a film. With Bruce Campbell. Perfection. Or Dark Rivers of the Heart. That would be Bruce-worthy as well.

- Stephen King. I don’t think Stephen King can be avoided. While I consider his writing to be slightly more crass and unrefined than Koontz, I still love some of his work. And he has spawned such a lovely number of B-movies for me to enjoy. Here’s where my taste goes a little strange. Favorite King stories: Needful Things, Dreamcatcher, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon and Insomnia. Looking at a list of his work, I could continue, but I’ll restrain myself.

- William W. Johnstone. This was one of my many author discoveries from the time in my youth where I would ride my bike to the used bookstore and choose reading material based on the cover art and brief description on the back of the cover. If it wasn’t for Johnstone and Too $hort, my mastery of curse words would be lacking. Severely. Johnstone’s works ranged from tales of satanic cults to a love story (What The Heart Knows) to stories of political dissent and societal collapse. Love them all. If I was looking for ideas for the next Sci-fi channel movie, I’d go with The Uninvited. Chemically-enhanced cockroaches who eat flesh. Awesome.