Left to my own devices

There has been some recent consternation regarding the term "elevated horror," as it pertains to certain movies in the horror genre. I've read an article expressing disdain for the terminology, making the rounds on social media, and felt compelled to share my own thoughts on the subject. Truth be told, this is something I've been wanting to write about for awhile.

UK Prime Minister Liz Truss took office September 6th of this year, and to say it's been a bumpy ride would be an understatement. With the death of Queen Elizabeth II just two days after Truss took the reins, the new PM had a bit of breathing space to put things together for her new premiership, with most of the country (and the world) paying attention to the pomp and circumstance of what happens upon the death of a monarch who'd reigned for seventy years. Alas, that extra time didn't seem to matter much.

For the uninitiated, I've been keeping a ranked, running tally of the concerts I've been to over the years. The most recent one was from May and, during the intervening months, I've gone to three more live music events (plus, Ashley reminded me after reading the last published list that'd completely forgotten the Culture Club/B-52s/Thompson Twins concert we went to in 2018, so that's thrown in here, too). With that, here is the newest edition of Matt Ranks the Concerts He's Been To .

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (or MCU, for short), which used to primarily consist of motion pictures, but now includes television shows (most of them on the Disney+ streaming platform), has announced that it is pushing back the release dates for several of its upcoming projects. Rescheduling for a film or TV show isn't anything new in the entertainment world. Marvel has done it before. But this recent move seems to stem from the decision to put their Blade reboot on hold . They announced the project (starring two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali) years ago and, by all reports, the script still isn't good enough, and the director has left the project. These bumps in the road for Marvel are becoming more common, and are perhaps a sign of the studio trying to do too much, too quickly. For example: Phase 1 of the MCU lasted four years(!), and consisted of six films. Now we're nearing the end of Phase 4, which will close out with the release next month of Black Panther: Wakan...

I don't remember the date (Wikipedia says it was September 30, 1984), but I certainly remember the occasion. It was a Sunday evening --  Murder, She Wrote always aired on Sunday evenings (except for its twelfth, and final, season). Mom, dad and I were gathered around the television, ready to watch a brand new mystery show. The first episode was two hours long, and titled The Murder of Sherlock Holmes . It had a bevy of guest stars, many of whom I recognized. And, of course, there was the star of the show, Angela Lansbury. Murder, She Wrote would become appointment television in my household over the next few years. We always watched it together. When my parents divorced in late-summer of 1988, it was just me who carried on watching the show. Mom was busy going back to school, working part-time, and starting a new relationship. I tried calling dad during the commercial breaks, partly as a way of discussing that week's episode, but also to try and bond over something we both e...

The rom-com Bros debuted in theaters over the weekend. It was projected to open with $8.8 million at the North American box office. Instead, it stumbled with $4.8 million. The movie's co-star and co-writer, Billy Eichner, has made headlines after tweeting about the film's lackluster opening. He seems to blame homophobia for the poor showing for the movie about two gay men who attempt to navigate their attraction toward one another. Maybe he's right? Maybe not? Full disclosure: I haven't seen Bros yet. Not sure if I will. I didn't find the trailer to be all that amusing. And, for the record, I've gone to see a lot of movies featuring gay characters over the years. This one just didn't grab me. Maybe it didn't entice others to go, either? Gay or straight. I'm not the only who thinks there may have been other reasons why folks didn't go see it.

I'm often intrigued by the FiveThirtyEight podcasts on their YouTube channel, but was really enthralled with one of their recent videos , where the topic was Why Misinformation Spreads So Quickly on Social Media . Host Galen Druke interviewed guest Max Fisher for nearly an hour. Fisher has written a book called The Chaos Machine , and listening to them talk about the subject of social media's psychological effects on people was, at least to me, quite fascinating.

35 years ago today saw the debut of Star Trek: The Next Generation , or TNG , as we fans often refer to it. For a few years preceding its launch, I'd watched reruns of "the original series" on our CBS affiliate, Sunday evenings after the local news. It was, of course, the standard bearer - Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, etc. But, TNG is my favorite. It was the Star Trek of my generation (no pun intended), and I was a devout viewer during its seven year run.

Recently I was part of a conversation about novels written by straight people that were about gay relationships. I kind of bristled at the idea. There's a well-reviewed book that I cited - Days Without End , by Sebastian Barry - about two men who fall in love during the American Civil War. Barry is straight. That's great - most people are. And, the writing of his novel came from a good place - he was moved by his son  coming out . Awesome. Based upon that, and the high praise the novel has received, I went to a local bookstore and purchased it. That was about five years ago. And it's sat on my shelf ever since.

Early last week, Kevin Drum wrote a blog post about debate. Specifically, Drum proffered the the view that most people aren't swayed by truths, or a logical laying-out of facts, but instead by feelings and sentiment. This resonated with me as 1) I agree with it, and 2) most folks agree with it, as well, but would deny that they do. Let's first look at a salient quote from Drum's piece: "Sadly, people are not persuaded by facts. They are persuaded by emotions. They are persuaded only when they're listening to someone who shares their worldview. They are persuaded by "arguments" that are beneficial to them - perhaps monetarily, perhaps in conferring status, perhaps in vilifying people they already didn't like. This is how you win in real life." I'm not sure it's always been this way. It feels like (there I go with feelings) people are more hardened in their beliefs now than they used to be, though that could just be a trick of memory. R...

In the early morning hours of August 31, 1997, Diana Spencer (aka Diana, Princess of Wales) succumbed to injuries received in an automobile accident a few hours earlier. This all occurred in Paris, France, so here in the United States -- specifically, Central Standard Time, where I reside -- it was during the evening of August 30. Regardless, it was twenty-five years ago that the world lost one of its most high-profile royals. The last such occasion was probably the death of Grace Kelly (Princess Grace of Monaco). That was in 1982 and, while I've watched a few of her movies, I've no memory of when she died.

Not long ago, I watched the 1993 film, The Remains of the Day . Based on a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, it's a Merchant Ivory Production about life at a British estate, pre-WWII. It stars Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, as the butler and housekeeper, respectively. There is the most subtle element of potentially romantic feelings between the two, but Hopkins's character is far too repressed to ever be able to acknowledge them. Today is the 25th anniversary of my father's passing. There's rarely a week that goes by where I don't think of him -- what his life would have been like had it not been cut short by cancer, how our father-son relationship would have evolved as I'd grown more into adulthood, what he would've thought of everything that's happened since August of 1997, etc. I've also come to realize that he's one of the reasons I tend to be drawn to emotionally unavailable men in fiction and, sometimes, in real life.

"And look at the view from your balcony  the sunset is searing the sky  and how proudly you are pointing out to me  London through your eyes"  - Pet Shop Boys, The view from your balcony Those who know me know I'm an Anglophile. From novels by Agatha Christie, Peter Lovesey, P.D. James and Ruth Rendell, to television shows such as Inspector Morse, Fawlty Towers, Doctor Who, Black Adder , and Midsomer Murders , to following Instagram accounts that are nothing more than photos of various British locales, from a young age I've been a fan of (nearly) all things English. Heck, I even used to regularly watch Prime Minister's Question Time on C-SPAN during my teenage years, and listened to the book-on-tape of Margaret Thatcher's The Downing Street Years memoir. You can imagine my exuberance when, in late spring, some friends asked if we'd like to join them on a trip to England this summer. I was able to get the time off of work for it, as was Ashley. The final r...

Years ago, my mom, maternal grandmother ("Gummy") and I were sitting around, talking, and the subject of what the favorite time of our lives was came up in conversation. I don't remember what mom's answer was, but Gummy (born in 1928) said, "Probably 1938/1939. that period right in there." She went on to say that she thought most people would, posed with the same question, give an answer that would fall somewhere in their childhood. That often seems to be the knee-jerk, default response most folks have about when they thought things were best. You know, the 'good old days.' What I liked then, and appreciate now, about Gummy's reasoning was its honesty. She acknowledged the personal nature of her response. Of course she thought the world was better when she was ten. Everyone's life is different, but for many, being a kid, unburdened by the responsibilities of adulthood, can come with a unique level of happiness, even if it may only be appare...

May 27th saw the debut of the Obi-Wan Kenobi series on Disney+. For the uninitiated, it is about the fallen Jedi master, and what he gets up to between the events of Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope . If that doesn't mean anything to you, then you probably won't get much from this blog post. If you're curious, however, keep reading. Just know that there are spoilers ahead. We're now five episodes into what has been presented to us as a six episodes limited series. The finale drops tomorrow, hence the timing this particular entry. I've very mixed feelings about the show, and  some strong opinions about it, as well as the overall direction of the Star Wars franchise in recent years. The end of Obi-Wan 's fifth episode left us on a fairly major cliffhanger, with several plot threads dangling. I have doubts as to how well they can wrap it all up, coupled with a theory as to whether or not Episode VI is truly the last one. Again, spoilers.

Yesterday was Fathers Day. Dad had already been on my mind, as 2022 marks twenty-five years since his death. We tend to apply greater significance to various (sometimes random) measures of time. I suppose that a quarter-of-a-century counts as such a marker. Lewis passed away from cancer in August of 1997. I last saw him that June. It wasn't supposed to be the final occasion our paths crossed in life, but sometimes that's how things work out. Dad had received his pancreatic cancer diagnosis in October of 1996. I learned of it that November, and began visiting with him regularly soon after. He lived in Springfield, but would travel -- with his wife and two-year-old son in tow - to Champaign and stay with my grandmother about every two weeks. That is where we would meet, talking about a variety of topics before the time ran out.

Almost five years ago, I wrote about all of the music concerts I'd been to over the years (well, going back to the late-1990s, which is when I began going to live shows in general). Given my penchant for lists, of course I ranked the experiences. It was fun revisiting those times and, because I've been to nine more music events since that blog post, so figured it was time for an update. 2019 saw Ashley & I attend seven(!) concerts. We were really on a roll. The last one we went to was The Ocean Blue at Lincoln Hall in early November of that year. Then, of course, the pandemic happened in early 2020, and the world shut down. It was only at the very end of last month that Ashley & I ventured out to a concert venue again and enjoyed a live performance ( Suzanne Vega ). In total, I've gone to nine more shows since the last time I wrote about concert experiences, so there is an updated list, for anyone who cares. The 29 concerts I've been to, ranked.

In the wake of a leaked draft opinion showing the United States Supreme Court could be set to overturn Roe v. Wade, I've heard some renewed talk from folks on the left about how we need to increase the number of Supreme Court justices. This is something Democrats have looked into doing before and, perhaps naively, I find it perplexing. Not, at its core, the idea of changing how many justices sit on the SCOTUS bench, but the reasoning. Those on the left who have broached the notion have done so as a sort of remedy for the court becoming more conservative. I'm just not seeing what the numbers have to do with it. What matters is the who, not how many.

With the recent release of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness , we have yet another movie tackling the subject of alternate realities. The sublimely resonant Everything Everywhere All at Once also recently engaged with the theory of the multiverse, though it is not at all a new cinematic concept. One such example is the underrated 2011 feature, Another Earth . I have enjoyed the aforementioned films, to varying degrees, though I question their premise. Not that there are multiverses, but that they are all so similar. To be clear, several multiverse films have done a good job of providing creative variations of our own reality, with some of the ones we've seen presented consisting of worlds made out of paint, or cartoons, or floating objects. While that makes for eye-popping filmmaking, it is, on the whole, fairly surface-level. What gives me pause is that almost all of the parallel universe/multiverse presentations we've witnessed consist of the same characters as our...

I recently mentioned to an acquaintance (I am not using the word "friend" here, as the reason will soon be evident) that I was thinking of deleting my Facebook account (again). There wasn't one, specific reason for this, more so an accumulation of... dissatisfaction. Interactions (or lack thereof) on that particular social media platform have felt hollow for some time. And the Zuckerberg app, more than other outlets, tends to bring out the worst in my emotions for some reason. "But how will I know what's going on with you?" the person asked. And there's the rub. This person has my phone number. They can call or text at any time, yet never do. In truth, they rarely interact with me on Facebook, yet I know they see what I put up there because they report back to various people some of the stuff I post. So it goes. At any rate, I reminded them of how they have my phone number. We'll see if they ever reach out.

There may come a time when some of us realize we may not live as long as we'd wanted, or expected to. It may not come as a "Eureka!" moment, perhaps more as a slow, steady registering of potential reality. I use the word "potential" deliberately, as none of us knows precisely what the future holds. Still, we can have a fairly good idea after a certain point.

Last month, I announced the nominees for the 25th annual Matt Awards , where I highlight my favorites in film from the preceding year. And now, just a couple days ahead of the BAFTAs, and a few weeks ahead of the Oscars, here are the winners for the 2022 Matt Awards ! Here we go... 

A nation has invaded a neighboring country. The leader of the invading nation says they want to restore land rightfully belonging to them. No, this isn't Russia attacking Ukraine. It's Germany invading Poland in 1939. There are enough similarities, I'm not sure why I didn't see them before. In truth, in the weeks of Vladimir Putin's saber-rattling leading up to where we're at now , there was an internal pipe dream that, no, the former KGB officer was somehow bluffing. Alas, it was a hollow hope. Russian military forces have moved into Ukraine and, while news reports are all over the place currently, word is that Kyiv and Chernobyl have fallen. This article tries to lay some sort of reasonable foundation for why Russia is doing what it's doing. I'm not buying it. There is truth that "the West" probably cannot truly have an understanding of all the dynamics at play in that region. Conversely, it's pretty apparent -- on a surface level -- wh...

People who know me have often heard me say that 1993 was the best year for music . That's only a half-joking statement. Subjective? Yes. Truth? Probably. Regardless, a lot of my music choices at that time came from listening to the radio, or watching MTV, VH1, or Friday Night Videos . That began to change once I graduated high school in 1994. A new world opened-up. I started attending the local community college, and began going to the local LGBT nightclub, where there was all sorts of music played across the booming speaker system. So many sub-genres of dance music. Being exposed to that every week was eye-opening. I ended up meeting a lot of different people at the club, many of whom were varied and interesting, and had eclectic tastes in music. Not all of it interested me. There was one guy I met while out one night whose apartment I visited a week or two later -- purely on a friendship level -- and whose CD collection was so humongous that it rendered me numb. It was too much t...

Having been a big Leonardo DiCaprio fan since the mid-1990s, I was disappointed when he wasn't nominated for an Oscar for his role in  Titanic  (as in, I-was-about-to-riot disappointed). Thus, in early 1998, I began what was to become an annual tradition --   The Matt Awards . Perhaps one of the most egotistical things on God's green earth, every year I proceed to select the best in movie making, as a sort of consolation for the fact that very rarely do the Academy Awards align with my own yearly favorites. I used to do both nominations and then, a few weeks later, pick the winners. After awhile I just went straight to the winners circle. This year, however, with the Oscars being pushed back a bit, and having been able to see a lot of really good films, I wanted to at least acknowledge several films and filmmakers with nominations. In a few weeks (before the Oscars ceremony), I will make announce the winners of The Matt Awards . No doubt you will all be on tenterhooks wai...

Before the pandemic, before the dark times, I'd get a cold about once or twice a year. It was pretty normal, hence the term "the common cold." Heck, maybe it was sometimes a case of the flu? Maybe...  though I get the flu shot on annual basis which, granted, isn't foolproof, but does seem to help either stave-off getting it, or at least make the symptoms less severe. Sound familiar? Anyway, I haven't really had a cold (or the flu) in at least two years, probably longer. No doubt a big reason for this is because I've been fortunate enough to work at a job where 1) most of my work can be done remotely, and 2) my employer has been very cautious, and had us working from home for all but three months since the pandemic got underway in earnest, back in March of 2020. Reduced contact with people has very likely lessened my exposure to viruses, whether it be COVID-19 or the ones that cause the cold or flu.

I felt somewhat numb a year ago today, watching live video from Washington DC, a horde of angry protesters storming the Capitol. As I saw the swarm breaking through barricades and ascending walls, I remember thinking, "They're going to get into the building. This is really happening." And then I got distracted. It was the middle of a work day. It was busy. A call was coming in, or some or other issue had arisen, I don't remember. The window was minimized, and I'd check back on it later. Later would prove to come along in a few minutes. The horde was breaking windows. They were getting into the Capitol. Reports were saying that certification of the Electoral College vote had been suspended amidst the chaos. Of course it had. That was the point of the exercise. It was what an aggrieved president, in the twilight of his first term, had been bleating on about to the crowds who had gathered to hear him speak that day. Our nation's lawmakers -- Democrats and Republ...

We like to compartmentalize things. It's easier for us to group together a series of events under convenient umbrellas of designation, often times related to time. You see it done a lot when it comes to decades. People of a certain age will often get dreamy-eyed when referring to "the '80s" -- something I admit to doing -- though, if we're being honest, we've simply taken a disparate clump of years and made a connection to them because of a happenstance of calendar . Does it make sense? Sure, maybe, I don't know, why not? I'm talking about years and time and how we view them because 365 days have gone by, and we've ticked over into another year. 2022. I suppose that holds significance because of the aforementioned calendar that we're on, though one could argue that 365 days pass every day (except, maybe, on a leap year, though that's debatable), and so January 1st is really no different than August 1st, weather patterns notwithstanding. Bu...