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rik_tod
Member since 7/10/2007, last signed in awhile ago.
"Nothin' but the Truth..."
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Re:More Shoes
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rik_tod
in
Spout Mavens
"More Shoes, Less Filling... http://www.spout.com/blogs/rik _tod/archive/2008/11/11/37239. aspx "
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More Shoes
REVIEW... REVIEW... REVIEW... R ...
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rik_tod
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The Cinema 4 Pylon: SpOutpost
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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"More ShoesDirector: Lee KazimirCinema 4 Rating: 6I've been asked to recommend a film either at the top or bottom of this post, which isn't actually a review, though many people still insist on referring to these pieces I construct as reviews. All the same, I have also been asked to place the word "review" into the title. It was rough going, trying to find the exact spot to place that (used erroneously here) noun, but I hope I have at least been able to follow through properly by some small measure on that count.As for that recommendation... well... let me ask you one small question: Do I know you? Apart from one other person here on Spout, The Working Dead, I don’t personally know any of you. Yes, a handful of people on here have left some very nice comments regarding my writing, and I am sure some of them would make great friends, but I still can’t know someone from just a quick comment or two. It makes it hard to recommend anything if one does not personally know thos ... "
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Re:Shorts! Volume 3
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rik_tod
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Spout Mavens
"Well, Disney World sort of got in the way of my finishing the last entry in my series on Shorts! Volume 3. (For those interested, you can read the dozen or so of my Disney World travel notes, and all of my blogging entries including my Spout Mavens material, here at the Cinema 4 Pylon.)To sum things up directly, here is Part 12 from a couple of weeks ago regarding a couple of ninja shorts, and my final entry on Archipelago posted just today. "
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Shorts! Volume 3
Spout Mavens Disc #14, Part 13 ...
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The Cinema 4 Pylon: SpOutpost
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"Director: Leon SiminianiSpain/Puerto Rico, 18 minutes, colorCinema 4 Rating: 6And so, the short film Archipelago, with its triangle of players representing the past that more often than not rubberbands back to snap most of us smack in the face, drifts coolly up to me at a time when I seem to be on the verge of my own inevitable haunting by past. As far as I can make it out, the haunting is not of a malicious nature, but I am definitely getting the feeling of some serious ghosting going on about me. Recently, coincidentally or not, as I approached my 44th birthday, I began to see the signs. New Facebook friends, forged from old friends, lovers from spurious romances, those we wished to have as lovers in some momentary but glorious lapse of reason, part-time enemies and mild acquaintances of my cruel past – the same cruel past we all share, and a past which grows daily, no matter how we pretend to not care, with each additional tiny, cruel step we take forward every second of e ... "
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Shorts! Volume 3
Spout Mavens Disc #14, Part 12 ...
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"Climactic Death of Dark NinjaDirector: Peter CraigUS, 13 minutes, colorCinema 4 Rating: 6A Ninja Pays Half My RentDirector: Steven TsuchidaUS, 5 minutes, colorCinema 4 Rating: 6At the outset of reviewing two ninja films, please forgive me, if you will, for being a samurai guy.Yeah, they’re pushy and elitist and, in the manner of most of the rest of mankind, they are often simply drunken, woman-slapping, craven beasts. But every once in while, one of them steps out, does something unbelievably heroic or cool (more often than not against the general grouping of pushy, elitist, drunken, woman-slapping samurai that aren’t heroic or cool). And when they finally do their heroic, cool bit, it’s usually out in the great wide open, where everyone can see and learn from their awesomeness and die by their godlike skill with the blade.Not like ninja.Sneaky, creeping, shadowy bastards, the lot of them. I guess it hurts them as a species that ninja have never really had an aute ... "
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Re:Shorts! Volume 3
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"A couple of swell songs in an average and disappointingly misleading setting. That's Pretty Dead Girl, and here's the rest of my take on it in Part 11 of 13 of Shorts! Volume 3 pieces...http://www.spout.com/ blogs/rik_tod/archive/2008/9/1 0/34966.aspx "
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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Spout Mavens Disc #14, Part 11 ...
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rik_tod
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The Cinema 4 Pylon: SpOutpost
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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"Director: Shawn KuUS, 22 minutes, colorCinema 4 Rating: 5Despite a title sure to be at least partially tempting to any horror nut, Pretty Dead Girl: A Musical Necromance turns out to be rather tame. And if you could get the subject of necrophilia past the initial tsk-tsking of your grandma, there is a good chance that she would end up at film’s end thinking the movie was rather sad and sweet, and would hardly take offense at all to what is being suggested by its potentially creepy premise.I first saw Pretty Dead Girl on some cable network sometime about a year ago. I am not sure if it was Sundance or IFC, but honestly, I mix those channels up so much that I am never able to check out any of their shows regularly. Of course, most of the shows I have seen on there are of the variety about which I don’t give a rat’s ass, except for the ones done by Henry Rollins and Jon Favreau, but honestly, even thinking really hard, I can’t remember which one of the channels ... "
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Shorts! Volume 3
Spout Mavens Disc #14, Part 10 ...
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"Director: George SiougasGreece, 24 minutes, colorCinema 4 Rating: 7I have spent a shocking number of minutes the last few days recounting the trials of living with a handful of my roommates from past days. These roommates are, for the most part and as far as I can surmise, still friends, and thus, I shall not detail in such a public place the names and antics of said possible "still-friends." I will save those tales for a time when said stories directly tie in with whatever subject about which I am writing, or if I am just really good and pissed off at them.By "recounting," I mean that I was engaged in a series of conversations with random current friends of mine, wherein certain items were brought up by them, which then reminded me of an anecdote involving this old story or that past occurrence, and all of them, for some odd reason, involved things that happened when mired (ooh, perhaps too strong a word considering I have been so careful up to this point) in cohabitation with tho ... "
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Re:Shorts! Volume 3
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"For the last time, Mr. Bill is not claymation! He is merely, and literally, a poser...Clay Pride: Being Clay in America is though, and it's featured in Part 9 of 13 of my pieces on Shorts! Volume 3. Check it out, right here. "
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Shorts! Volume 3
Spout Mavens Disc #14, Part 9 o ...
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The Cinema 4 Pylon: SpOutpost
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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"Director: Jonathan Watts & David KarlsbergU.S., 5 minutes, color animatedCinema 4 Rating: 7At least the filmmakers admit that their project is built upon a one-joke premise.What producer/co-director David Karlsberg doesn’t really declare, perhaps out of a humility rarely found in filmmakers, is how well sustained that one joke turns out to be. Granted, Clay Pride: Being Clay in America, yet another film on the Shorts! Volume 3 DVD collection, only runs a mere 5 minutes. But even with one joke, once you acknowledge that delivering humor in stop-motion clay animation is a good deal harder than telling the same type of joke with live-action – timing, the mainstay of all successful humor, is even tougher to achieve when you can only film your “actors” a split second at a time, frame by laborious frame – then you will be astounded by the overall effect and feel of this film.On the commentary, Karlsberg also admits that the animation in Clay Pride is not ... "
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Re:Shorts! Volume 3
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Spout Mavens
"I beat up on two nice little girls and a couple learning a lesson post 9/11... I am a mean, terrible person -- but I am gripped by honesty.Part 8 of 13 of my Shorts! Volume 3 pieces right here. "
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Shorts! Volume 3
Spout Mavens Disc #14, Part 8 o ...
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"A New York Trio: Confection, Colorforms & DateDirector: Eva SaksU.S., 4, 8 & 5 minutes respectively, all colorCinema 4 Rating: 5s across the boardOnly fives for three straight Eva Saks' films? How can I be mean to someone whose chief desire seems to be to entertain or educate children?Smack-dab in the middle of the Shorts! Volume 3 DVD collection lies a mysterious region known as the New Yorker's Triangle... er, I mean A New York Trio, consisting of two films of absolute, nearly cloying innocence and a third, slightly more adult short featuring a character whose death I was almost screaming for until the snotty little gold-digger's ways are changed for about thirty seconds when surrounded by the emotional residue of September 11, 2001. (That she will rebound from this the next day, and in about six months time or so, convince her unfortunate boyfriend that she needs a gigantic, unnecessary, ridiculous "wedding of the century" is not mentioned within the film. But, if you kn ... "
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Films I want to buy
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Films I've seen
Films I Own On DVD (1001)
Very incomplete... I actually have over a thousand, but I need to take some time to catch this o ...
Cable Obsessions in the Early '80s (47)
Cable was still new to me, and so were R-rated films. Some films, owing to less or more limited ...
The Uncritical '80s: Tapes I Watched A Lot Then (92)
Forged in Childhood: The Deepest Influences (574)
Needs to be on DVD... RIGHT FRIGGIN' NOW!!! (59)
There's absolutely no excuse to be made... I need these films in my collection immediately! (Luc ...
Afternoons in Rapture: KTVA Matinees 1976-79 (82)
The Alaska CBS affiliate, KTVA Channel 11, ran an afternoon movie matinée show from 3:00 to ...
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