DAILY CALL SHEET: AUGUST 26, 2023

The Demolitionist (1995) What if the powers that be decided to make a female version of Robocop, but all they had to work with was some pocket change, a few scraps of latex, and one of the ladies from Baywatch? Well, not to worry as that seemingly imponderable question has already been answered.  To be sure, you may not like said answer,  but at least there is one. Cameo aficionados will have fun spotting the likes of Tom Savini, Greg Nicotero, Bruce Campbell, and Reggie Bannister, but that may just make you wistful wondering what a movie starring Ash and Reg would have been like. If only somebody would have answered that question instead.

TIL: In the original Robocop 2, it's suggested that Murphy's sense of duty springing from his devout Catholicism is the only reason he's able to survive the horrors of the Cyborg transformation while all the other Godless heathens used as test subjects end up committing suicide. This is likely because Christianity teaches it's possible for unavoidable suffering to be offered up for the good of others rather than wasted in despair.

Freeze Frames #013: "True villains are extremely photogenic." - Wallace Stevens

DAILY CALL SHEET: AUGUST 21, 2023

The Long Dark Night Gallery of the Soul #002: For your consideration... a colored pencil study I did of a mosaic, the name and location of which I'm ashamed to say I didn't write down. "None of us is alone in this world; each of us is a vital piece of the great mosaic of humanity as a whole." - Pope John Paul II

Dad Rock Diary: Dead Kennedy's - Frankenchrist (1985) Fans seem to consider this the kinder, gentler Dead Kennedy's, but for the uninitiated, that's probably like receiving a kindler, gentler boot to the face from an angry rioter. Just saying, if you're having one of those days when you're ready to burn the whole military-industrial complex to the ground, this is still an acceptable soundtrack. Laudable Lyrics: People, we know who should know better howl, "America rules, let's go to war!" Business scams are what's worth dying for!

DAILY CALL SHEET: AUGUST 16, 2023

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) A British nobleman (Christopher Lee!) is troubled by a family curse and the spectral beast which accompanies it. All seems hopeless, but not to worry, Sherlock Holmes is on the case. One of the best adaptations of one of Arthur Conan Doyle's best stories with Peter Cushing providing one of the best onscreen Sherlock Holmes. It's a shame this didn't do well enough to convince Hammer to turn it into a series but, alas, you take what you can get.

TIL: Modern interpreters of the character predictably try to claim Holmes as an atheist, however, the books strongly hinted Sherlock was a believer of some sort. The detective once mused, "Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers."

Freeze Frames #012:  "Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity — distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless" - Douglas Adams

DAILY CALL SHEET: AUGUST 11, 2023

Amityville Vampire (2021) A cleaning crew in something vaguely resembling the Amityville house run across a nosferatu, but are quickly forgotten as the movie becomes an anthology about vampires running around somewhere else entirely. Since the word Amityville can't be copyrighted there are, as of August 2023, at least 56 movies or shorts with Amityville in the title and this... is certainly one of them. I mean, it's marginally watchable in an "at least it's not porn" kind of way, but overall it's (hopefully) just another nail in the coffin of the trend of slapping the name Amityville on a movie just to garner a few more streams.

TIL: For obvious reasons, Scripture can't be copyrighted so, as of August 2023, there are nearly 2,900 different versions of the Bible floating around out there. To help the Church weed out those with too many errors in adaptation, or just full of outright agenda-related gobbledygook, the Vatican reserves the right to approve all translations of Lectionaries or biblical texts that are read during the Liturgy, though it does grant local ordinaries the authority to issue imprimaturs (In Latin: (let it be printed!) and Nihil obstats (In Latin: nothing hinders) to various other translations for personal study.

Short Feature: The Amityville Cute Farting Cat - It's a cute cat that farts while walking around the Amityville House for 46 seconds. That's it. And it's still better than most movies that have come out in the past decade with Amityville in the title. Enjoy.

In flatulence-related news, there's a story in the first book of Judges in which Caleb offers to marry off his daughter Achsah to whomever successfully conquers the city of Kiriath-sepher. When Achsah hears the news, there is some argument amongst translators over of her exact response. At least one Biblical scholar, Sir Godfrey Rolles Driver, insists the proper translation of the original Hebrew is that Achsah let one rip, thereby voicing (so to speak) her disapproval. For some reason, most versions of the Bible have decided not to include this translation.

DAILY CALL SHEET: AUGUST 9, 2023

Guess What Happened to Count Dracula? (1971) Keep guessing. This snoozer isn't even about ol' Vlad, but rather his ne'er-do-well son Adrian, who runs a nightclub of sorts for 70's proto-goths in a low rent section of L.A. There's some sort of plot about Adrian's fixation on one of his patrons, but you'll be hard pressed to stay awake long enough to figure it out. Rumor has it this was either shot as hardcore porn and then had the sex parts removed to make it presentable in drive-ins, or else filmed as is and then had hardcore scenes added later to trick the 42nd Street crowd into watching it. No matter, it wouldn't have worked either way.

TIL: Every so often, as if no one had ever thought of it before, detractors of the Bible will try to accuse Scripture of being pornographic due to its depictions of such things as incest, rape, gruesome murders, bestiality, gross bodily functions, etc. etc. What these atheistic puritans seem to ignore is intent and context. As with some (certainly not all) R-rated films, the occasional depiction in the Bible of the lousy things people do is not meant to titillate or arouse, but to communicate real truths about the human condition, one which God didn't sneer at from on high, but entered into personally to help us navigate.

Still Voices: Ready Player One (2018) "The danger is quite real that souls habituated to constant technological stimuli will never be silent with themselves, never alone in a receptive manner, and so never able to discover God in a personal encounter of prayer." - Fr. Donald Haggerty

DAILY CALL SHEET: AUGUST 6, 2023

The Stay Awake (1987) Catholic girls (well, girls in a movie reality sense of the word) having a sleepover at their high school use crucifixes, rosaries, and random crap they find in classrooms to combat a serial killer's demonic ghost. Sure, it ain't great, but how many South African attempts at a Freddy Krueger style slasher flick full of 80's rubber monsters are you gonna get the chance to watch? Um, likely just this one come to think of it. And honestly, that's probably enough.

TIL: Between the Dutch East India Company and the British government, Catholicism was actually outlawed in South Africa until the mid-1800's. However, once the Oblates of Mary Immaculate arrived, the Church began to take a foothold the way it always does, by making people less miserable through the establishment of agricultural initiatives, hospitals, and yes, schools. Not sure the school in this movie is what they had in mind though.

Back in high school, I had a very nice teacher tell me that while I obviously had some artistic skill, my true talent lay in writing and I should pursue that. Later, in college, during a weekly painting class critique session (a soul crushing experience for those in the know), my instructor offered his opinion that although I was a competent artist with interesting ideas, he sensed that at heart I was a storyteller and shouldn't abandon that path. And they weren't the only ones. Apparently, the gist of it all was that I should keep picking up a pen, but not necessarily to draw.

The thing is, when it comes to such matters, sometimes it feels like you don't have a choice. In his book Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, Henry Miller explained how "every now and then, especially if there are no visitors for a spell, the watercolor mania comes over me." What he was getting at is that he knew he could write books people wanted to buy, but he HAD to paint. See, even if you're known for something else (even if it's only by a few dozen people who follow you on the internet like myself), the "artsy fartsy" compulsion is a thing you just have to let loose sometimes.

So, I've decided to let it loose for a little bit, and from time to time will be sharing some art, if you want to call it that, that I've created over the years. All that being said, let's just go ahead and start with something weird.

The Long Dark Night Gallery of the Soul #001: For your consideration... an ink sketch from the journal (I have a few) I occasionally use to bleed off negative emotions at the end of some long, late nights. "A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness." - Bernard de Fontenelle

DAILY CALL SHEET: AUGUST 3, 2023

Monster Brawl (2011) The world's toughest monsters are assembled for a MMA-style pay-per-view tournament. Wrasslin' fans may chuckle at the cast of recognizable WWE faces and gore hounds might appreciate the Mortal Kombat-style finishing moves, buuuut...  overall, this plays out like something that would've worked much better as a short SNL sketch. Also, WTH is Dave Foley doing here? Are actors from the Great White North under some blood oath to appear in anything Canadian? On the plus side, it's got Lance Henriksen as the voice of God, which is acceptable.

TIL: As with many things, the Church has made no formal declaration on the morality of sports like boxing or MMA. Instead, it tasks the participants with weighing their training and personal motivations against the demands of the particular sport and their spiritual responsibility for bodily integrity. Even more complicated, it asks spectators to examine their reasons for watching. Are they tuning in based on an appreciation of skill or for the excitement of competition, or is it just to see real people bash each others brains in?

Freeze Frames #011: "I count it as a certainty that in paradise, everyone naps." - Tom Hodgkinson