Dustings #54
/Gizmodo has an excellent premise all set-up for you here:
(It’s helpful to have a folder set up in your bookmarks so you can just dump these types of articles in there as you come across them. Then you can sort through them at a later date to see if they’re something you want to utilize in the future. Well, that’s how I do it at any rate.)
I think you need to do this for more than one person. And the staging I would use is to have the audience split. So you’d have at least one person on the other side of a wall doing whatever it is that you’re going to end up knowing about. And then you’re going to have one or more people on the side of the wall with you, watching to make sure you’re not doing anything other than staring dead ahead at the wall. I think that will be a good, almost slightly unsettling, stage picture.
I’m not saying you should pretend to do exactly what’s in the article, with the cameras and all of that (you could, I guess). I would suggest using the article as a starting point and then saying that you’re learning a similar technique that just uses the human eye to perceive these slight changes through the wall.
Thanks to David S. for sending me the article.
I’m looking for feedback on a couple of things.
Wednesday’s post had an auto-playing video near the top (not a gif, but an actual video). This is something I’ve tried to do in the past with little success, but I think I’ve got it sorted out. If it didn’t work for you, send me an email and let me know what platform you were viewing it on. I’m not sure I’ll know how to fix it, but I’m curious if there were any widespread issues with it.
Also, a couple people have purchased this shower curtain from the Dumb Houdini Store. If you’re one of them, let me know how it came out. People have been pretty happy with the quality of the shirts from Threadless, but I don’t know much about the quality of the other stuff there. It’s an expensive product (and not much of that money is coming my way) so I only want to keep it available for sale if it seems decent.
Oh, and speaking of shirts. The GLOMM membership kits that were waiting on the shirts to ship should be going out on Monday because the new printing of shirts is supposed to be coming in this weekend.
Got this email from Ellusionist:
I thought it was going to be a new trick, but it was an email about the bartering economy of the U.S. prison system. Why, Ellusionist?
They followed it up with an email with the subject line: Turn Your Anal Virginity into Protection From the Aryan Brotherhood. Like… what the hell?!?! What’s going on over at Ellusionist? Why are they writing so much about prison life? Did something bad happen. Are they going away for selling counterfeit Zippos?
With Halloween just 10 days away, you may be in the mood to watch a horror film sometime soon. Regular readers may remember that I watch a horror movie every day in October. The way I choose which movie to watch is as follows. If there’s a release from this year that’s been on my mind to watch, I watch that (Halloween Kills, Malignant, The Fear Street series). When there isn’t something that new I have my heart set on, I find a list of the previous year’s best horror films and start working my way up that.
I’ve been a little bummed as I work my way up the best horror of 2020 list. For me, horror movies are intended to be escapist fare. Give me the horror first, and then if there’s some social commentary underneath, that’s fine. But a lot of these movies I’ve watched this year are only social commentary. It’s like, “Yes, this is a horror movie… it’s about the horror of the refugee experience!” Or, “These characters are haunted… by the dark specter of slavery!” Even Halloween Kills had way too much of this “Who’s the real monster” goofball shit. I think this ham-handed social commentary is a result of the success of Get Out and Parasite which did this stuff relatively well.
That being said, here are my recommendations for my favorite horror films I’ve watched in the past couple weeks.
I enjoyed both Swallow and Promising Young Woman as movies, although I wouldn’t call either a horror film. Certainly not a “movie to watch on halloween” type of horror film.
For that sort of thing I would go with:
or
Freaky which is from last year. A solid horror comedy.
Other films from the top of that Thrillist list linked above that I thought were alright are:
The Dark and The Wicked - For me this had that dreary Hereditary feel to it of impending doom. Pretty dark and unsettling.
Color Out of Space - This was well done but it’s a Lovecraft story, which is not really my scene. And it features Nicholas Cage doing his “crazy acting” schtick, which is also something I’m not a huge fan of. Despite those things, I thought it was pretty good.
Also, both those last two movies feature someone chopping off their fingers while chopping carrots. Both of them!
The Fear Street movies on Netflix aren’t exactly good, but they’re easily digestible horror flicks that would be good for this time of year.
That’s what I got for you so far. If anything else stands out these last ten days, I’ll try to let you know before Halloween.