Wide Awake

Film: Come True
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!.

I’m one of those people who doesn’t remember his dreams. I can recall glimpses of them now and then, but in general, I recall virtually nothing from wherever my mind goes at night. Dreams are fascinating, though, because it seems like anything can happen in your dreams. You can be back in high school, or chased by a chainsaw-wielding clown…or both. Come True is a movie that explores that place and posits the possibility of things from the real world moving into the dream world, and vice versa. As someone who has struggled with insomnia in the past, that world of dreams is both a desired destination and a little terrifying.

Sara Dunn (Julia Sarah Stone) is a high school student who is essentially homeless. She avoids her mother, but sneaks into the family home to steal food. At night, she sleeps rough in a sleeping back or in the homes of friends. Her situation causes her to frequently fall asleep in class, and when she does fall asleep, she is plagued by dreams of a maze and a shadowy figure with glowing eyes.

Hail! Hail!

Film: Don’t Turn Your Back on Friday Night
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on basement television.

I think I’ve mentioned before that a lot of my musical tastes come from my older brothers. You pick up what you hear, naturally, and I grew up around a lot of prog rock and yacht rock from the ‘70s. What this means, though, is that the artists I discovered on my own are going to in many ways be much more important to me. Ike Reilly, and now the Ike Reilly Assassination, is one of those artists. I first heard him on the big Chicago alt-rock station, WXRT a couple of years after the release of his first album, Salesmen and Racists. I missed the name of the artist and had to call the station to find out who he was, and I’ve loved him ever since.

Ike (Michael) Reilly is one of those artists that has somehow managed to elude fame and popularity outside of a crop of dedicated fans. I have a fondness for songwriters who are storytellers more than anything else. There’s a lot of Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Nick Cave, Woody Guthrie, and Warren Zevon in his work (as well as lesser known writers like Eef Barzelay, Freedy Johnston, and Dan Bern). He’s the type of artist who, if you ask 1000 people if they have heard of him, 999 will look at you with their head cocked like a dog hearing a sound it doesn’t know. But that one person who does know him is going to be someone who knows their stuff. His fans include people like Penn Gilette, David Lowrey from Cracker, and fellow Libertyville, IL alum, Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, who is also the film’s executive producer.

Stop Me if You've Heard this One

Film: Count Dracula (Nachts, wenn Dracula erwacht)
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on various players.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is one of the great books of the end of the 19th century. Seriously, if you haven’t read the book, seek it out, because it really is fantastic. It’s also a book that has been adapted as much or more than pretty much everything else out there aside from the Bible. The 1970 Count Dracula, also known by its German title of Nachts, wenn Dracula erwacht, which sounds badass in German (and means “Nights, when Dracula awakens”) is, I believe, the 8th adaptation of Dracula I have seen--Nosferatu and its remake from the ‘70s, the Bela Lugosi version and the Spanish language version of the same vintage, Christopher Lee’s first Hammer horror film, the Frank Langella version, and Coppola’s from the mid-‘90s. So yes, this is the eighth one. It’s like a Batman original story; it just keeps showing up.

Because of this, I’m not going to spend a great deal of time discussing the plot. If you really need my take on the narrative, well, there are literally seven other versions of this basic story that I have already written up. Go to one of those.

Bird Brain

Film: The Boy and the Heron(Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka)
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on basement television.

My original plan was to watch The Boy and the Heron (Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka if you want the original Japanese) on Sunday and post the review that night. Alas, I fell asleep about 45 minutes in. My follow-up plan, then, was to skip back a few minutes to the last thing I remembered and watch after my lectures on Monday night. And the same thing happened. I fell asleep again, managing to get to about the 1 hour 15 mark before I had no idea what was happening. I’d try desperately hard to focus, and five minutes later, my eyes would be rolling back into my head.

What does this mean? It means that evidently, despite how much I really wanted to like it, I found The Boy and the Heron to be the movie equivalent of Sominex. I like Miyazaki’s films as a rule, so this came not only as a surprise but as a supreme disappointment.

After this Commercial Break

Film: Late Night with the Devil
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

If you have any connection with the skeptic community, you know who James Randi, also known as The Amazing Randi, was and what his career was about. Randi started as a magician and escape artist, but eventually became a professional debunker. Randi, who was a good friend of Johnny Carson, used to appear on Carson’s show to debunk psychics and clowns like Uri Geller, showing how the tricks were done. His organization had a $1 million prize for anyone who could demonstrate any psychic or paranormal skill or ability, a prize that went unclaimed for Randi’s entire life. I say all of this because it’s going to be relevant in Late Night with the Devil, since there is a character clearly based on Randi.

However, that’s not where we are going to start. Late Night with the Devil is going to give us an alternative history of the late night television wars by introducing us to Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian), a Chicago radio host-turned-late night television host. Delroy hosts a show called Night Owls with Jack Delroy, and competes unsuccessfully with Johnny Carson. The movie takes place in 1977, during the sixth season of the show. Desperate for ratings, Delroy decides to up the ante during sweeps week on Halloween. We’re told that while the show was broadcast live, this is the first time it has been seen since that broadcast.

This is a Weird Olympic Event

Film: Deep Fear
Format: Streaming video from Hoopla on my phone.

I don’t generally watch a lot of movies on my phone, but needs must. I spent Sunday through Wednesday with my brother in North Carolina tending our father, and time alone to watch a movie or two was essentially not available to me. So, knowing that I had a 90-minute or so flight on Wednesday, I downloaded Deep Fear (also called Bunker 717) on my phone for the flight home. You don’t need to pay for wifi if the movie is already loaded on the device. A horror movie seems like a weird choice for an airplane, but I figured I could watch it without anyone looking over at me, and the film was about the length of the flight, so it all worked out.

Deep Fear has similarities to a lot of other films. As Above, So Below, which also takes place in the Paris catacombs, is an obvious connection, but it feels like there are elements of Creep and a few others, too. This is a film that takes place far under the streets and under the Paris Metro, deep in the ancient catacombs. If you are at all a claustrophobe (and I very much am), there are going to be some parts of this that will be difficult for you to sit through. You’ve been warned.

What I've Caught Up With, July 2024 Part 2

On the television front, desperately attempting to catch up on everything I’ve missed over the past two decades, I’ve watched the first two of Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor Who seasons, gotten to the final full season of Farscape, and made it past halfway on Arrested Development and White Collar. I also watched The Last of Us and Hazbin Hotel, both of which I enjoyed, and the latter of which is more difficult to recommend, at least to a lot of people.

What I've Caught Up With, July 2024 Part 1

I watched about three dozen movies in July, which catches me up a little. I’m still a dozen or more off the pace of the goal of 400 for the year. There were some solid watches this month, and some weird coincidences, as there always are. More coming tomorrow