Friday, October 16th, 2009

I was flipping around the telly today, and caught somebody mentioning the Darth Vader gargoyle on Washington National Cathedral. I attempted to find a news story that would have prompted the newscaster to bring up the piece of architecture, but to no avail. Still, last year I went on a vacation to Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and as much as I absolutely hated D.C., especially in comparison to Baltimore, one of my highlights was the drive-by on the tour bus of the beautiful National Cathedral. Of course, I had no clue that this was part of the huge church, which was the venue for John F. Kennedy's funeral. Kind of neat, and may even cause me to go back to D.C. once I take the inevitable return trip to John Waters' hometown.

Aside from this random find, the only real news for the day is the week's Friday releases. Of course, topping the must-see list is Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are, which looks brilliant and has been getting the critical acclaim to back up the amazing looking trailers and featurettes we've been seeing that past few weeks. Also out this week, the sequel to what I felt to be an underrated movie, the anthology Paris, Je T'Aime, came out today, called New York, I Love You. The movie definitely has the talent to match its predecessor, but I just don't see it recapturing the magic of the Coen Brothers' or Sylvain Chomet's entries, and as for critics, anthology films are usually dismissed anyhow, so I don't see this flick getting much exposure. There is also a nice blaxploitation throwback, Black Dynamite, out today. I've not heard much about the movie, but I'm a huge supporter of exploitation homage films, so I'll at least keep an eye on the reviews. To a lesser extent, Law Abiding Citizen looks watchable and The Stepfather being a horror film in October stands a decent chance of gaining a following, but I doubt anything special.

A few random thoughts on the rest of October in film for my local area. Next Saturday, here in Harlan at the Old Hall Gym, as if anybody that will come across this doesn't already know about it, there will be a free showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight. Since I can't find anywhere near that is doing a good Rocky Horror live show, this looks to be the next best thing. Also, the next day I will be attending The Grand AdventureCon in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, which will be taking place the whole weekend.

Finally, since it is a slow news day, and we are drawing closer to Halloween, LiquidGeneration has a good video up of their top 25 horror flick kills. Enjoy the link.