Remember the collapse of the polar vortex a few years ago? Apparently, it’s happening again:
Just a gratuitous tweet of the latest #PolarVortex (PV) animation, but hey you need to make hay while the sun shines. Seems lots of model volatility on some important details but GFS seems to be embracing more strongly a PV split with the major daughter vortex across N Eurasia. pic.twitter.com/kjm9TOcnjN
Here’s a bit of inspiration for all you rationalists out there:
Los Angeles activists are holding car caravans on Wednesday evening and New Year’s Eve to block Christian recording artist Sean Feucht from holding outreach events in two LA homeless communities, including the 54-block area of Skid Row.
Stephen “Cue” Jn-Marie — who founded the faith community known as The Row, or “The Church Without Walls,” in Skid Row — and Pete White — founder of the Los Angeles Community Action Network — are among the organizers taking part in the blockade.
In a statement Tuesday (Dec. 29), Jn-Marie and White said that “Feucht is waging biological warfare against a community he deems as defenseless.”
“He will soon find this is not the case if he chooses to continue down this path,” the statement read. [Religion News Service]
I think all of the members of the caravan should carry handcuffs, and threaten to use them, arresting offenders for biological warfare crimes.
And, for fans of surrealism, the handcuffed offenders could be delivered to a local Catholic church. The local bishop could be requested that the prisoners be delivered to the local chapter of the Inquisition, now known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith., for purposes of convicting Feucht, et al, of, naturally, blasphemy[1].
The attempt would be rejected, I’m sure, but it’d make for a great movie featuring authentic footage. And more than a little outrage from the right.
I’m short on sleep, what did you expect from me?
1 Somehow, the words naturally and blasphemy seem deeply incongruous in conjunction with each other.
“… and leave only footprints.” Dammit, someone forgot their head!
The Monster of Piedras Blancas (1959) is a morality tale, detailing the disasters you court when you, well, feed the monsters. (Or show off the pretty lady’s attributes, as we sometimes say.) Who’s the feeder? Lighthouse keeper and widower Sturges, whose grief and guilt over the death of his wife in the midst of a storm which required his attendance at an earlier lighthouse has driven him into reclusion at his new posting. He leaves daily rations out for his pet monster.
Those rations have been growing.
And now his daughter, Lucy, long exiled at a boarding school, is home for a bit, romancing a local biologist, no-last-name Fred, and working at the bar. She’s the one at risk, along with the boyfriend, the family dog, and, yeah, the entire local village.
And, getting no rations one day, the marine monster starts to pick off the townspeople. It turns out he – or she, for after all the female of most species often has the more discriminating palate – has a taste for brains. “Slurp them down yum!” it yells after each one. Kidding!
Soon, the guy in the rubber suit has shown his peculiar sense of humor, hiding out in the walk-in freezer of the local butcher, which works until the sheriff walks in on it in mid-delectation. Then the limbs fly and we’re off on the hunt.
Does this end well? The top of the lighthouse is, of course – of course! – the end of the journey, but little thought is devoted to exactly how various parties, guilty or not, meet their end. The monster itself appears to be cartwheeling wildly, but then the actor willing to put on that costume deserves the cruelly silly end that it came to.
Perhaps I’m too harsh. The acting was actually not half bad, except for Mr. Monster, who evidently imbibed too much Scotch between takes, but, minus the Les Tremayne fans out there, the whole thing seemed pointless. Unless, of course, the audience (you!) has a habit of feeding monsters.
Do you?
Perhaps the first scene will look familiar to you.
NAGPRA, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, was originally passed by Congress to force the return of the remains of Native Americans to their tribes, when they can be identified, by federally funded entities such as educational institutions, as well as cultural artifacts.
But the Lummi Nation is taking it a step further, according to NewScientist (28 November 2020). The Lummi considered themselves kith and kin to the orca pod that hunts off the coast of northwest Washington State, including a collection of juveniles collected in 1970. The sole survivor of that group is currently an attraction at the Miami Seaquarium. Their strategy for releasing the survivor from what they consider inhumane conditions?
For the Lummi, who draw no distinction between what they call their “blackfish” and human kin, Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut’s captivity is nothing short of imprisonment. “We are one and the same,” says [Lummi Nation tribal elder Raynell] Morris. “We call ourselves a pod.” Nevertheless, she also recognises that these ancestral spiritual ties aren’t enough to secure Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut’s freedom. “You have to walk in the white world,” says Morris. Before returning to the Lummi Reservation in 2007, she worked for more than 22 years in corporate banking, and then as a White House staffer under Bill Clinton. It is this experience, she believes, that led her ancestors to task her with the “sacred obligation” of bringing Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut home.
To that end, Morris and [Lummi tribal elder Ellie] Kinley have enlisted help from the Earth Law Center, a Colorado-based non-profit organisation that aims to transform laws worldwide so that they protect, restore and stabilise ecosystems. In July, they informed the Miami Seaquarium and its parent companies in writing of their intent to sue under NAGPRA. The Miami Seaquarium, having received federal funds, meets the definition of a museum, so is subject to this legislation, they argue. Their aim is for Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut to be repatriated as “cultural patrimony”, defined by NAGPRA as “an object having ongoing historical, traditional or cultural importance central” to a Native American group or culture.
As an agnostic, I’m not particularly enamored of the claim that the Lummi are part of the orca pod.
However, as an observer of the world, I have no problem acknowledging the likelihood that this captive orca, known to the Lummi as Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut, has some form of intelligence. The fact that orca can learn human-concocted tricks more or less ends the debate on that question.
Therefore, I’m all in favor of releasing all captive whales. Some have been ruined, I don’t doubt, by their time as captives, especially those inhabiting low quality quarters, as is alleged in the Seaquarium instance, and may require support.
Hell, I’ve always found the concept of a zoos to be uncomfortable. I recall visiting the Minnesota Zoo once – reluctantly – and witnessing some sort of large herbivorous quadruped, slowly walking backwards in circles. I thought that was heart-breaking.
On the other hand, I’ll happily eat a steak. Call me inconsistent if you must, but our dentition tells the story of our needs.
Midnight Limited (1940) is a story that missed its genre. Presented as a thriller/romance, the fact that the audience knows what’s coming really rather ruins the anxiety.
Because we know the good guys will win and the bad guys will lose.
The Midnight Limited is an overnight passenger train running from New York City to Montreal. On one run, the emergency stop signal is pulled, and a man disappears into the night. Another man is found in his room, tied up and robbed of a large sum of money. And a female passenger, Joan Marshall, is robbed of some legal papers of paramount importance.
The story then turns into a police procedural, as the railroad police, represented by personable ace detective Val Lennon, begin the lengthy process of tracking down the thief. The detective is busy romancing Joan on the side as well. But when one of his men is killed during a second robbery, things turn deadly serious.
We soon discover the ‘finger man’, who points out and arranges the robberies; his cohorts; and moving on to the how the robber / murderer disappears into the night isn’t hard to guess.
Far more anxiety could have been generated by leaving those questions hanging, by even making Joan a possible suspect. But they didn’t. They dolloped a bit of racism into the story, and left it at that.
And it’s not an unclever story. It’s just not told properly.
The term postmodern is often used in a denigrative sense, which is not surprising given this particular (of several) definition of it:
Of or relating to an intellectual stance often marked by eclecticism and irony and tending to reject the universal validity of such principles as hierarchy, binary opposition, categorization, and stable identity. [Wordnik]
And replacing those principles with virtually nothing, at least so far as I can see. With respect to the GOP these days, I think this is the postmoral era, and far-right conservative Erick Erickson is appalled:
At this point, people are being led astray by shameless butt monkeys who are just flinging poo hoping something sticks. These people need to be put in a mental institution. I realize Rudy Giuliani is getting paid a ton of money to do this, but the shameless charlatans and grifters need to be denounced.
Ultimately and seriously, the problem is that these butt monkeys are pointing people in the direction of nonsense when there actually are serious issues about election integrity. But we can’t talk about those while the idiots are misidentifying rural parts of Georgia as parts of metro Atlanta and casting aspersions on the integrity of Georgia law enforcement for not giving them what they want.
Morality works best when it acknowledges the primacy of reality. The reality is that Joe Biden won more votes in Georgia than did Donald Trump. This has been verified multiple times, in multiple ways, as a matter of law and and at the demand of Donald Trump.
It’s good to see that Erickson at least acknowledges there’s a vast cliff where so many of his fellows have plunged.
Known for quoting the words “Hallelujah anyhow” from a gospel song, Harris served as the suffragan, or assisting, bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts from 1989 until her retirement in 2002. She later was an assisting bishop in the Diocese of Washington. [“Faith leaders and religion influencers who died in 2020“, Religion News Service]
Even more interestingly, RNS included James Randi in its list of ten noteworthy deaths.
The onetime magician and author was known for his investigation and disproving of faith healers. …
The New York Times reported that the skeptic, known as the “Amazing Randi,” moved from seeking to break the records of illusionist Houdini to exposing falsehoods. It noted he was inquisitive from an early age as a boy attending Sunday school.
“They started to read to me from the Bible,” the newspaper said he recalled in 2016. “And I interrupted and said: ‘Excuse me, how do you know that’s true? It sounds strange.’”
FromNewScientist (28 November 2020 – finally delivered today!):
Many visual-auditory neural pathways interact, both in people with and without hearing impairments, says Shoushtarian. Previous research has shown that people with tinnitus have reduced activity in the cuneus, a brain region involved in visual processing.
The people with tinnitus were asked to rate how loud and annoying their condition was. These results were correlated with the patterns of brain activity based on their [functional near-infrared spectroscopy] signals.
The researchers found that people with more severe tinnitus had higher levels of background connectivity between certain brain regions. In those with louder tinnitus, brain responses to both visual and auditory stimuli were significantly reduced. The team thinks this is because the increased background neural activity in people with tinnitus affects the brain’s ability to respond.
Which just sounds like the brain is losing efficiency in processing. I had never thought of it that way!
FromThe Gazette (Iowa, USA), which in turn credits the AP:
“It’s not surprising that a criminal like Trump pardons other criminals,” senior U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt of the Southern District of Iowa told the Associated Press during a brief phone interview Monday. In a bit of humor, he said: “But apparently to get a pardon, one has to be either a Republican, a convicted child murderer or a turkey.”
Pratt was referring to pardons Trump granted to his former campaign aides convicted during the special counsel’s Russia inquiry, former GOP congressmen who committed crimes, and security contractors convicted of killing innocent civilians in Iraq. Trump also pardons turkeys — this year two from Iowa — annually before Thanksgiving.
A blistering shot that may illuminate the corruption which is dooming the United States. The very end of the political spectrum that has pranced about, sporting its moral rectitude, is turning out to be far more immoral than the Democrats. The faux-issue of abortion is not, and cannot be, part of this equation, since a good 50% of Americans believe it should be an option available to pregnant women.
And screaming What About Marc Rich!? isn’t the same as the pardons being handed out to obviously undeserving criminals by Trump. And Clinton later expressed regret for the pardon.
Unless, of course, he’s just going to raise money and then not run.
But while I wouldn’t put that beyond him – frankly, no scheme of ill-repute is beyond him – I would draw my reader’s attention to the 41 second mark. No, President Trump did not win the Nobel Peace Prize, despite a nomination this year by a far-right member of the Norwegian legislature – another desperate attempt by third raters to look competent, I might add.
But President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. And, regardless of whether he deserved it, and I have my doubts on the matter, it sits on his mantlepiece, while Trump has nothing like it.
Trump’s apparent hatred for Obama, and this 6 second sequence, makes me think that Trump, due to his hurt feelings, will run again in 2024. And, if he wins, then beg for the Award. Are his accomplishments, yet to be evaluated by history, in the Middle East worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize? Show me normalization of relations between Israel and Iran, or Israel and Saudi Arabia, or China and India, or resolve the problematic province of Kashmir involving India and Pakistan – that would be impressive. Morocco, UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan – the last of which is no longer considered Muslim, even – are not major accomplishments. If we bought them off with the wrong bribe – and official bribery, such as an offer of better trade relations, is a normal tool in the toolkit of the diplomat – then his attempt to win a Nobel Peace Prize may actually backfire.
But this could be a salvo in the 2024 race. And, in a way, I hope the press simply ignores him on this subject.
That moment when you just realized you’ve slept with a rat! And you liked his hairless tail.
The House in Marsh Road (1960) introduces poltergeist to the viewing public. Cad David Linton and his wife, Jean, make a habit of taking lodgings and not paying for them while David writes his book, hoping to become a big-time author. Jean loathes this lifestyle, and when
her long-unseen aunt dies, leaving her a goodly sum of money and a mansion called the Four Winds.
And a poltergeist.
Jeans loves it; David would prefer to liquidate, take the money and run.
Jean is the owner. They stay.
David spends his time drinking, writing, and apparently being accident-prone, while Jean tidies up and enjoys her new home., along with her occasional housekeeper. But when David hires a shapely young lady to be his typist, household amity goes whoosh!
Literally.
It’s a bit fun, especially as my Arts Editor kept shouting at the TV, Get rid of him! David is thoroughly unlikable. But he makes it to the end, worse luck – for him. If you like old mansions, that’s a plus. But there’s nothing earth-shaking here. Well, not metaphorically, anyways.
The word “creed” comes from the Latin credo, which means, “I believe.” It is a concise statement of faith or beliefs held by a religious institution, outlining and clarifying that which sets the institution apart from others.
The Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Westminster Confession are just three examples of the many creeds developed to define the Christian Church or an individual tradition within it.
There are many Christian traditions, Baptists and Quakers being only two, that do not promote the use of creeds. But the majority of Christian denominations, being so influenced by Greek, systematic thought, use creedal formulas, which new members are expected to affirm when being baptized or confirmed. [The Free Dictionary, referencing The Religion Book – see the link]
I get it — and agree with it to some extent: Americans are deeply divided, inhabiting two parallel political universes, ingesting different media and adhering to contradictory visions of America. One increasingly defines the United States as a bastion of White Christianity; the other sees a creedal nation defined by its founding documents. But perhaps the “civil war” perspective is overwrought and distorted.
As Creed is often used in reference to Christian tenets, I find this a trifle ambiguous. I suppose Rubin means that we are a secular nation with a creed of believing that a democracy is a better form of government than other forms.
I take the more pragmatic view that, while it may be difficult to measure and prove ‘better,’ the riots, butchering of the populace by governmental forces, and general unhappiness often found in monarchies, theocracies, and other governmental systems is lesser – but not non-existent – in democracies.
Comments Off on And That’s Why He’s Known As The Clown Of The House
Ya gotta love this for sheer stupidity:
A group of Republicans led by Rep. Louie Gohmert on Monday sued Vice President Mike Pence in an unusual gambit aimed at overturning President-elect Joseph R. Biden’s election victory.
The lawsuit claims Mr. Pence has the “exclusive authority” to decide which electors should be counted when Congress meets on Jan. 6 to finalize the results of last month’s presidential election.
The certification is a largely procedural issue overseen by the sitting vice president under an arcane law from 1887 known as the Electoral Count Act. That will put Mr. Pence in the uncomfortable role of announcing a Biden victory.
Mr. Gohmert, Texas Republican, argued in the lawsuit that Mr. Pence’s role in overseeing the election certification also gives him the authority to decide which electors are chosen. He says Mr. Pence can select the Republican electors, who support President Trump in five states where the election results were contested. [The Washington Times]
Really? Please not to confuse an administrative duty with a decision making duty; the two are very different.
But perhaps this is really Rep Gohmert, et al, trying to tell Trump cultists that they are on Trump’s team, and please vote for them in two years. Personally, I think Gohmert’s lawyer, assuming he’s not doing this personally, should be asked about Section 11, under which lawyers are stripped of the right to argue in front of a judge because of filing frivolous lawsuits. It tends to cool off lawyerly epileptic fits.
All John Fetterman wants for Christmas is the $3 million he says Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick owes him.
The Democratic lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania has been trolling his Republican counterpart for weeks to collect on the $1 million Patrick offered in November for evidence of fraud in the Nov. 3 election. Three supporters of President Donald Trump have now been charged in separate voter fraud schemes in Pennsylvania. Fetterman says they should all count for bounty purposes.
Which is fine for justifying schadenfreude – savor – but Lt. Governor Fetterman’s expostulation is really the most important part of this exchange:
Fetterman says he is serious — about debunking the false allegations being thrown at his state. He has taken the lead in Pennsylvania pushing back on bogus claims of voter fraud circulated by Trump and his allies. Patrick — honorary chairman of Trump’s campaign in Texas — and his million-dollar reward are helping to disprove those claims, Fetterman says.
“While it’s undoubtedly and undeniably hilarious these cases involved Trump voters and their dead mothers, it’s irrelevant because it documents how truly rare voter fraud is and how impossible it is to truly pull it off,” Fetterman said.
If Trump and his allies are utterly incapable of bringing a credible case of systemic voter fraud or procedural irregularities to the attention of judge, whether appointed by Clinton, Bush, Obama, or Trump himself, then the only valid conclusion that any sane, mature, adult American can reach is that none occurred, and that Biden won the election.
These are the procedures we’ve refined & followed for more than 200 years, and to abandon them now is to abandon the very precepts by which the United States has been successful. Republicans love to toss around the word ‘radical’ in descriptions of Democrats, but it should be apparent that the only anti-American radicals are Republicans who persist in believing in systemic voter fraud.
And, by the way, Lt Governor Patrick’s offer, as I noted before, is the offer of a third-rater. What would he do if Trump’s victory of Florida was abruptly threatened by the revelation of systemic voter fraud on Trump’s behalf? Frantically withdraw or amend the offer?
Prominent Republicans: Don’t bother to look, there’s no good apples here.
It’s simply another symptom of the self-inflicted moral bankruptcy plaguing today’s Republican Party. For the honest independent, it’s difficult to list any prominent Republican name with pride, while those on the shameful side of the ledger overflow the bin.
It’s old news that President Trump vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act (2020) because it didn’t strip certain protections from social media companies, but Heather Cox Richardson’s summary of it sparked an odd thought. First, the summary:
Trump vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act, which specifies how the defense budget will be spent, on Wednesday, December 23. The NDAA has passed with bipartisan majorities since the 1960s when it first began, and presidents have always signed it. But Trump has chosen to veto it, on the grounds that it calls for the renaming of U.S. military bases named for Confederate generals and that it does not strip social media companies of protection from liability when third parties post offensive material on them. [bold mine]
Protection from liability? So, let’s stipulate Congress gives in on the issue.
How do the social media empires respond?
Do they shut down – permanently – offending accounts?
President Trump is a leader in the lies and conspiracy theories category of social media posting. Is President Trump looking to have his own accounts deleted? After all, stripping social media companies of protections means they’ll have to protect themselves by minimizing their exposure.
And this applies to all social media platforms. Like, say, Parler, the reportedly new social media platform used by right-wing fringe types. A few lawsuits tossed at Parler and they’ll either collapse or begin to frantically clean up spewing accounts.
No, I don’t think President Trump has thought this demand through. Neither has Donald J. Trump, private citizen. Losing his braying megaphone of lies would be a deadly strike against his ego.
The Death Kiss (1932) is a mostly ineffectual comedy that doubles as an average murder mystery. Leading man Miles Brent, on set and in action, is approached and kissed by a strange woman, the leading lady, who then wanders off. Brent, shaking off the kiss, begins to proceed about his business, only to be gunned down.
The production? “The Death Kiss.” But when it’s time for take two, Brent fails to jump to his feet: he’s really dead, a bullet through his heart. We’re off on a clumsy, gallumphing run, as the studio police, the city police, and scriptwriter Franklyn Drew, who writes detective novels on the side, fall in to the chase. But when the path leads to the leading lady and former wife of the murdered actor, Marcia Lane, Drew, who’s sweet on her, becomes disenchanted with the shortcomings of the police and begins a deeper investigation.
The humor, while perhaps accurate in its send-up of the inner workings of movie production, fails to translate to the screen in a useful way. But the murder mystery is mildly clever, including an intriguing method to the initial murder, a second murder which is set up to look like a suicide, and Drew, who tramples all over the evidence from here to Timbuktu.
In the end, it’s nothing compelling, but it is pleasant – if murder strikes you as a pleasant way to spend an evening. Or, if you’re a Bela Lugosi completist, you should also see this. He keeps his accent nearly imperceptible, and shows he had normal acting chops as well as his more traditional horror skills.
The mystery actually makes sense, as gradually more and more information is revealed, and in the end the bad guy gets his. Yay!
The Addams Family (2019) is another entry in the growing collection of films and TV series based on Charles Addams’ family of anti-society people. This version, an origins story, is animated and derives its artistic inspiration from Addams’ original cartoons of the family – an impossibly thin Morticia, the squat, debonair Gomez, and on and on.
So we quickly learn that Lurch is … well … that would be sayin’, as they say. But I do feel free to remark that, based on his entrance into the family, there may be something to be said for giving those who have been put away as mad a place in society. Give them a role, even as crazed as Lurch’s, and the frenzy’s energy may be absorbed by devotion to the role.
But the story has twin centers: Pugsley’s rite of passage, a desperate affair of uncertain judging and physical strenuousness, a veritable microcosm of the family’s search for a place on the landscape, and the evil machinations of a local TV star and interior designer who is bent on, well, being evil.
She’ll fit right in, won’t she? But only if Wednesday permits.
There’s room to hate the art – I didn’t care for Uncle Fester, for example, and my Arts Editor felt Kitty needed to be redone – but the story rarely drags and acknowledges the realities of normal society only when it absolutely must.
And who ever thought of a pink mansion for the Addams?
The Bird Way, by Jennifer Ackerman, is not a dry, academic work on our avian cousins, but rather an exploration, usually by way of anecdote and personal observation, of the varied habits of birds. From hunting to courtship to raising offspring – or not – Ackerman provides a well-written and frequently fascinating exploration of the vast range of behaviors followed by birds – and explores the question of just how much of that is instinct, and how much of it is learned.
From the brush turkeys who get no parental care at all, the brood-parasites such as the infamous cuckoo, to the clowns of the mountains, the kea parrots who frolic in the snow and show impressive intelligence, this is an easy and interesting read.
Plaintiffs paint a stark picture. They claim that Tier 1 “totally prohibit[s] religious worship services of any kind and any number.” (Motion 3.) This is not true. The First Amendment has not taken a sabbatical. Californians may still worship, attend services, pray, and otherwise exercise their religious freedoms. They just may not do so in ways that significantly increase the likelihood of transmission of a virus which has claimed more than three hundred thousand American lives in less than one year. The Constitution is not a suicide pact. The First Amendment may not be used to make it one.
Slapping the religiously entitled down, one church at a time.
But we can also guess that it’ll be rulings such as this that the far-right will use to prop-up their So sad are we, we’re such victims! propaganda. Sigh.
The post is better than any stills, really. Another mark of the 1970s,
Silent Night, Bloody Night (1972) is a bizarre slasher movie in which its biggest star, John Carradine, is reduced to just a couple of minutes of screen time, restricted to writing on notepads and ringing a little bell one might find at a desk. He manages to gasp out all of a single line of dialog – I think.
But the movie does have the oddest charm about it, as proven by the fact that we not only finished it, but we kept looking at each other, mystified concerning where it was going. After an opening in which we learn the previous owner, Wilford Butler, self-immolated twenty years earlier, leaving the property to his grandson, Jeffery, lawyer John Carter shows up at a magnificent ruined East Coast mansion, much younger mistress in tow, to inspect it. From there, he travels onward to the City Council and states that he’s authorized to sell it to them for $50,000 cash – perhaps 20% of its value, he states.
The Council is its own collection of characters with hidden pasts, from mayor to sheriff to the mute newspaperman. None appear to be happy people, but they tell the lawyer that they are interested and will attempt to raise the money. The lawyer returns to the mansion and the arms of his mistress, and, well, as this is a slasher flick, we can guess what happens to them.
But it’s just the start, and it’s not clear who’s providing the horror. The caretaker, who remains a figure in the dark? The daughter who birthed the grandson? Random mad slasher? The daughter of the sheriff, who, surprised by a random stranger who appears from nowhere, meets him with a gun? And, hey, how does that early scene showing someone escaping from the local insane asylum play into this mess?
But at the denouement, we learn the horror is much worse than a simple mad man with a big knife. Incorporating a scene which was filmed either with deep incompetence or admirable innovation – take your pick of adjective, but at the end of the sequence I was unsettled – this sickly moral horror piled on other moral horror on yet another moral horror, all filmed in a decayed manner which emphasizes the fragmentation of the moral depravities on which the film is based, makes the initial murders almost trivial in comparison to what has happened in the past.
I cannot possibly recommend this, but it was actually fascinating as we kept juggling elements and trying to make rational sense out of it. The era sensibilities vis-à-vis the art of movie-making, much like that of Britain’s, is that slightly brittle style of bad audio, unclear visuals, and apparently unsympathetic characters, but these technical facets gradually recede into the background as the bodies pile up and the mysteries of the characters become paramount.
Enjoy? Be horrified? Are those the same things? After this, you tell me. Merry Christmas!
