* Another episode of Lost this season! I’m not even gonna pretend this doesn’t excite me greatly. (Via The Tail Section.)
* Bruce Baugh takes on Cloverfield in a pair of excellent posts. First, he focuses on how the good stuff was quite good but the bad stuff was not just bad but avoidable, which is dead on; he also has some insightful things to say about why 9/11-esque imagery is going to be showing up in disaster movies simply by default, and about a missed opportunity for the otherwise great creature design. (Meanwhile, check the very active comment thread for a Blair Witch bash-fest, and then click here to find out why they’re all wrong.) Second, he focuses on mainstream critics of monster movies and their “allegory or bust” approach to analyzing the films; Bruce wonders why the monsters aren’t first and foremost considered for what they are and what they do within the world of the film, and then considered for whether what they are and what they do is reminiscent of something going on in our world. (There’s a useful comment thread on this one too.)
* In a thoughtful review, Jason Adams echoes my take on The Ruins: Strong performances and memorable horror imagery undercut by rushed pacing and a loss of tension. He also points out something I forgot, which is that the time frame for the events of the story is shortened considerably not just before we get to the ruins, but after. He’s reserving final judgment until he gets a second viewing free from annoying audience members, though.
* Jason also runs down five of his favorite things from the season premiere of Battlestar Galactica. I’ve gotten the impression that people are classifying it as “good but not great,” and I would actually lean toward great. Granted, I was a little taken aback by the way (as Jim Henley astutely noted) the sci-fi/mythos aspects were foregrounded as opposed to the whole “human drama in a sci-fi setting”–I mean, they changed the intro from describing the basic premise to a more or less context-free description of a particular dangling plot thread, even. But from the cinematography and the performances on down–is there a better ongoing performance on television than James Callis’s?–I was constantly reminded what a great show this is by this episode. I mean, at varying times three or four of the main characters looked/look like they could be in the process of getting killed, and I believed in it every single time. That to me is a signal of great television.
* Art show, part one: Daybreak cartoonist Brian Ralph is cleaning out his morgue and putting some killer pulp covers on display. This, uh, unique water monster struck a chord with me, as you might have guessed:
Giant hippos!
* Art show, part two: The Blot cartoonist Tom Neely has another weekly comic strip up and it begins like this:
* Art show, part three: Aeron at Monster Brains digs up another awe-inspiring Hieronymus Bosch knockoff, Herri met de Bles’ “The Inferno”–here’s a glimpse:
