happy tunesday! ("wrong again" by squeeze)

I know this song a Rockpile number, being that I was first exposed to it on Rockpile's album, Seconds of Pleasure. But fans (or, truthfully, anyone who reads things like songwriting credits on record sleeves) know that it was written by Squeeze's Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook.

So just for gits and shiggles I'm sharing this version performed by Squeeze. It was on a plexidisc included in an issue of Smash Hits which was (or is...I have no idea if it's still around*) a British music tabloid. I like Rockpile's version better. It's paced better, as compared to this one which seems rushed. Still, I'm going with the rarer Squeeze version.

*I bet I could look that up, but I don;t really care enough

that's two issues i have under my belt

It's not perfect, but I have created and released the Fall, 2019, issue of the LIDS Newsletter. You can read it here.

Features?

Aside from the front page headline visible in the illustration, there's:

• Pat Sayers talks about how she became interested in daylilies.
• Bob Stanton talks about his entries in the Saxton Seedling contest (including his winning entry which he has since registered as "Margaret Stanton Memorial."
• A rundown of new cultivars introduced by LIDS members in 2019.

This is the second issue of the newsletter since I became editor.

On the nitpicky side of things, a colleague at work* thinks that LIDS Newsletter is a bad name. But I don't have anything better. He suggested LIDS News, but I'm not feeling it.

*I won't divulge who it is, but suffice to say he his name has syllables in it.

cinema history class: burial ground

Session: Welcome to My Nightmare, Week 2
Movie: Burial Ground (1981)
Directed by Andrea Bianchi

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
Zombies lay siege to a mansion where a bunch of hedonists have inexplicably decided to have a party.  Hilarity ensues.*

Reaction:

In his introduction, Keith said, " Check your brain at the door. This is not gonna be an intellectual think piece."

He wasn't kidding. This thing spends very little time jumping into the zombie action, and there's very little exposition. So, while it's easy to follow what's happening, it leaves one wondering why it happened. Why did the zombies attack the mansion? Why were these jet-setting hedonists hanging out there? The fact that so much was left unexplained was the major reason that I didn't rate this any higher.

That said, there is a lot to recommend Burial Ground. Most notable was the creepily miscast Pietro Barzocchini (AKA Peter Bark) as the teenager, Michael. Bark was in his mid-twenties, and his face looked older than that, but he presumably got the role because he was short and of slight build -- from a distance he could pass for a kid. But between his weird expressions (Star Trek's Charlie X comes to mind) and the downright bizzare incesty nature of the character, he was the most memorable thing in the film.

The special effects were -- well, I don;t want to say well done, but they did do a good job of serving their purpose. And we can see the slasher genre developing here. While we're on the subject, it's worth noting that this movie featured strong cooperation among the zombies. They work together to cut a woman's head off with a scythe. They work together to use a battering ram. And in lots of other instances they go beyond the simple limited thought processes that we usually see in zombies. I do have to wonder, however, why, when they have a man in their clutches and can easily bite him, they feel the need to drag him to a huge miter saw.

As I noted, more stage-setting and explanation would have gone a long way toward getting me to appreciate this more. But the action was really well done, and I couldn't help liking it a bit.


Ratings:

Me: 6
Dave: 9.5
Ethan: 6
Joe: 9.9
Sean: 3 out of 4

happy tunesday! ("my wife left town with a banana" by carlos borzenie, sr.)

Do I really need any justification for this one?

cinema history class: nightmare

Session: Welcome to My Nightmare, Week 1
Movie: NIghtmare (1981)
Directed by Romano Scavolini

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
A psychotic made more psychotic by an experimental drug travels to Florida to murder his ex-wife and son.  Hilarity ensues.*

Reaction:

My main thought was "why?" This was disjointed to the point of being difficult to understand. I asked if this was a particularly influential film, and Keith said that it wasn't.

That said, Nightmare was notorious for the graphic nature of its gore. In the UK, its distributor was sentenced to prison for the violence. And it was often cited in the debate over violence in movies. The fact is this was far over the top in terms of the gore. This is true of multiple scenes of violence, but it peaks with the final decapitation (which had been hinted at all film long).

The concept of experimental drugs backfiring is an interesting topic, and the premise does remind me a bit of The Terminal Man, though I haven't seen that movie (I have read the book, though). The whole thing creates a villain who can be sympathetic, having been created through medical intervention.

While this could have been fascinating, the flaws tended to ruin it. Perhaps I would have liked it better if I actually were into slasher films, which I'm not. It was cool, however, that the villain looks sort of like Conan O'Brien.

Ratings:

Me: 2.5
Christina: 8
Dave: 8
Ethan: 4
Joe: 9.8**
Sean: 2 out of 4
T.K.: 3 out of 5

*This plot synopsis was written by Keith. I woudn't want to claim it as my own. I mean, I really would -- it is pretty spot on perfect. But I wouldn't want to be accused of plagiarism.

**Joe missed this week, so he didn't see the movie or get to rate it. I'm just assuming he would have given it a 9.8.