Our hottie for the day is the impossibly cute Sasaki Nozomi.
Ms. Sasaki is one of the most popular Japanese models who was born in the Akita Prefecture in Japan and now lives in Tokyo. While fans of her work in the West know her mostly from her work as a gravure model she is quite the multi-talented lass who is also one of Japan’s top Idols and also an up-and-coming actress both live-action and voice-acting. Her looks has been compared to those of porcelain dolls and her modeling photobooks attest to that fact.
Ms. Sasaski is another reason why it must be good to live in Japan.
In what may well be John Carpenter’s finest film—greater even than Halloween and Escape from New York—the director boldly remakes Howard Hawks’ 1950s sci‑fi classic The Thing from Another World and, incredibly, surpasses the original. Unlike Hawks’ version, steeped in Cold War anxiety, Carpenter draws more directly from John W. Campbell Jr.’s short story Who Goes There?, shifting the focus to paranoia festering within an isolated group of men. His setting, an American scientific station buried deep in the frozen desolation of Antarctica, becomes the perfect pressure cooker for suspicion, distrust, and barely contained madness.
Carpenter’s vision announces itself immediately. The film begins with an overhead shot of jagged, snow‑capped mountains—an endless expanse of icy barrenness. This stark imagery is paired with Ennio Morricone’s minimalist score, a low, pulsating bass throb that mimics a heartbeat. In just these opening moments, Carpenter and Morricone establish the film’s defining tone: desolation, unease, and a creeping inevitability. Carpenter never lets this sense of dread relent; the unease initiated in the opening frames lingers throughout, until the final note of the end credits.
Where the 1951 film wasted no time showing an alien in the flesh, Carpenter follows Campbell’s original concept more faithfully: the creature hides, assimilates, and imitates. It kills and replicates members of the Antarctic crew, transforming everyday interactions into moments of terror. This conceit allows Carpenter to stage his film not just as a monster movie, but as a psychological exercise in tension. Each man is a potential threat. Each argument, however trivial, is laced with suspicion. The audience feels trapped alongside the crew, caught in their spiral of mistrust. At its core, the film is less about the monster’s abilities than about what happens when trust is stripped away from a community forced to live in isolation. The most chilling moments often occur not during the creature’s violent reveals, but in quiet exchanges where fear and doubt spread faster than the Antarctic cold.
The special effects remain legendary, an enduring benchmark even decades later. In the early 1980s, CGI was not a viable option, so Carpenter entrusted Rob Bottin, then in his early 20s, with designing the creature effects. Puppetry, animatronics, latex, and rivers of stage blood combined to create some of the most grotesque and imaginative transformations ever put on film. The kennel scene—when the alien first erupts from the body of a sled dog—remains a horrifying pinnacle of practical effects, unsettling in its creativity and biological plausibility. Bottin’s work is still studied in film schools as a triumph of practical ingenuity. The tactile, slimy, unpredictable reality of these effects would be nearly impossible to replicate with CGI. If any film demonstrates why computer graphics can feel cold and weightless compared to visceral practical effects, The Thing is it.
Anchoring the film is Kurt Russell as helicopter pilot R.J. MacReady, equal parts rugged pragmatist and reluctant leader. Russell’s performance gives the film its center of gravity, portraying a man forced into command when order collapses. Keith David brings an equally commanding presence as Childs, his wary, confrontational energy making him a perfect foil to Russell. The ensemble cast is one of Carpenter’s great strengths here. Each character is distinct, each performance meaningful; there are no throwaway roles. Even smaller parts resonate, as every man crumbles at his own pace under the weight of fear. One of the film’s most unsettling turns comes from Wilford Brimley, whose genial, trustworthy persona makes his gradual descent into paranoia and violence all the more disturbing.
The music deserves as much recognition as the visuals. Rather than scoring the film himself, as he had done in his earlier works, Carpenter handed the task to legendary composer Ennio Morricone. The gamble paid off. Morricone’s spare, throbbing motifs mesh seamlessly with Carpenter’s minimalist style, complementing the stark visuals rather than overwhelming them. The score is skeletal, almost primal—music that feels less composed than unearthed, vibrating with dread. It remains one of the finest examples of how sound can serve as a force multiplier for tension.
The Thing is not for the squeamish. The violence is graphic, the gore extreme, and the imagery deeply unsettling. Yet for those who admire masterful filmmaking, it stands as essential viewing: a perfect marriage of vision, execution, and atmosphere. For students of cinema, it offers a lesson in how genre filmmaking can transcend cliché and attain something close to pure, operatic terror. In the end, Carpenter’s The Thing is more than a remake—it is a redefinition. It strips away the veneer of mid‑century optimism and replaces it with a stark meditation on distrust, survival, and the alien within us all. Few horror films hold up this well or manage to stay this scary for fans old and new.
I must begin this entry by thanking Phil Edwards over at Live for Films for introducing me to this particular piece of awesome. Check out his very extensive blog on practically anything about films. It was there that I first saw this trailer for a zombie film that’s stuck between concept and development. The trailer is for A.D. and while it hasn’t been made into a feature-lenght film this trailer should convince studio heads everywhere to seriously make this into one. If 9 can go from a short cgi-animated film into a full blown feature-leght one then I definitely think A.D. should get the same chance. I mean it’s CGI zombie apocalypse and does it ever look great.
The only thing I hope doesn’t happen is for a place like Lionsgate to end up as the studio to get this film up and running. They may like horror and genre films, but they’ve been very sloppy in handling those same types of film (ex: Midnight Meat Train and Punisher: War Zone). I think A.D. is definitely the type of project Peter Jackson’s production company could get behind on.
So, all horror and genre fans need to spread the word concerning A.D. This is a film that needs to get made and he sooner the better.
Latest hottie of the day is one Krystle Lina. California-born and raised Ms. Lina has been in the modeling industry since 2006. She has worked for Playboy and Destroyed Brand Denim plus many other men’s magazines and publications. Her Spanish and Irish ancestry has provided Ms. Lina (born Krystle Suarez) with her exotic good looks which has helped make her fast rising and popular internet and print model.
In addition, she has become quite popular with the internet crowd due to her internet radio show, “The Krystle Lina Experience”. Her show comes on every Wednesday night on Nowlive.com. She talks about everything from news stories to events and dealings within the entertainment industry. Krystle’s show has allowed her to expand her audience beyond area of the Los Angeles basin to worldwide. She also has taken advantage of the internet nature of her show to give back to her fans by taking phone calls from the show’s audience and interacting with them through the show’s chatroom. Ms. Krystle Lina definitely is a hottie going places.
I think everyone who has been visiting and reading this blog might have figured out that I am a huge fan of the zombie genre. If some haven’t come to that conclusion let me just get it out of the way and say that I do indeed love the zombie genre and everything associated with it. Sometimes the heart wants what the heart wants.
For the past couple months I have had the pleasure of reading one the best web comics still running on the web. I am talking about Jenny Romanchuk’s very own on-line zombie comic book series, The Zombie Hunters. The series began in around mid-November of 2006 and has gained quite the loyal fanbase as word-of-mouth about this particular zombie webcomic spread like the undead infection that is its subject.
I came across the webcomic while I was bored and going through the usual surfing of my favorite zombie-related websites. One site had a poll asking people which zombie webcomic was their favorite and listed all that met criteria. Ms. Romanchuk’s webcomic was one of them and being bored I clicked the link and to say I was impressed and instantly hooked would be quite the understatement. The storytelling is quite good with some scenes quite emotional and others knee-slapping funny. The artwork is very good with clean lines, not much clutter to distract the eyes and very good coloring done. Since The Zombie Hunters is about a zombie apocalypse the comic is also quite violent and gory as it should be.
With Apple’s iPad now being seen as the start of a new era in digital distribution of comics both in print and those just on-line I truly hope that Ms. Romanchuk finds a way to sell her series through that medium if just to expand her fanbase and really make some money off of an excellent comic book series. Sometimes the little guys need to be rewarded for a job well done and one that is still being done well.
February 2, 2010 marks the date which begins the final season of one of TV’s biggest pop culture phenomena of the past decade. I will begin by saying that I was never into Lost not because I didn’t like the show or even thought it was bad. I never got into it because I missed the entire first season. While I heard people gradually get into the show by the time season 2 rolled around and it had become the water-cooler show I knew I was too late.
Shows like Lost is the kind of show which is never easy to get behind even from the get-go with it’s over-encompassing mythological story arc not to mention several running subplots which bisects and even joins the main story. I knew that I couldn’t give the show it’s proper due by rushing into watching the first season. It’s the same reason why I hesistate to recommend the best show on TV ever to people who never watched it from the beginning. I speak of HBO’s The Wire. These kinds of shows needs and requires an almost slavish like attention and loyalty from it’s early adopters.
While I may not have adopted and watched Lost I have bought all the DVD sets and will buy the 6th season as well. I do this so I can watch the show once it is done using my own timetable and also giving it the attention it deserve. Some would say that the show will have lost some of it’s mystery since people have been talking about it to me or I have read thing about it on the internet. To be honest I have a knack for tuning out such things if I have to. All I know about the show is that people on a plane crashed on an island with a polar bear and a smoke monster. So yeah, the show hasn’t been spoiled for me.
Now, with this 6th season about to begin I can see the anticipation building amongst people I know who literally love this show. It is all they can talk about. It is this kind of devotion I wish other shows whose run ended too soon would’ve gotten (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Dollhouse, Firefly, Jericho and many more). I haven’t seen this kind of devotion to a TV show by so many people since Chris Carter’s The X-Files. That was another show which gradually became a pop culture sensation after the first season and just kept building and building until it reached its final season.
I see many similarities between the two shows. Both have labyrinthine mythologies which comprise the bulk of its main story. Both shows have a small core of characters whose motivations are clear but everyone else around them steeped in mystery. Pop culturally both shows have ingrained themselves in the mass audience’s TV watching habits. Both shows have been well-written with some of the best characters on TV of the this generation.
With this final season of Lost I bring up one thing that may distinguish it from Carter’s long-running serialized show. J.J. Abram’s show has a chance to go out swimmingly. It has a chance to deliver on it’s legions of fan expectations. Many are already expecting this final season to be the best of the whole series and will want nothing less than a “big bang” of a series finale. While I think it would be great if Lost went out with a bang and not a whimper the way The X-Files did in its final season, I still caution people to temper their excitement and expectations. A show with this much hype throughout its time on TV almost seemed destined to underwhelm and disappoint a large portion of it’s fans. I use the series finale of Battlestar Galactica as a prime example.
That show from Ron D. Moore was another show which built a loyal and fanatical fanbase with its complex storyline which reached an almost religious myth level. When the finale finally aired there were equal amounts of satisfaction and major disappointment. The ending of that show, for some, just didn’t satisfy their expectations and certainly left questions unanswered.
Will Lost avoid this pitfall? Only the next couple months will answer that question and for Abrams’ and his team of writers they better hope that the ending they have for the show will not sink the series in the end, but let it swim into TV legend.
Our latest hottie of the day is truly the only reason why one should even be watching House on the Fox network. Olivia Wilde’s character “Thirteen” is just stunning in every episode she is in. Her character being a promiscuous bisexal is just icing on the cake. But the medical procedural drama on Fox wasn’t the first time she’s been seen on TV. She was also the only good thing about the little-seen drama on NBC called The Black Donnellys.
Ms. Wilde is of Irish-American heritage and those eyes and skin tone belie her Emerald Isle genes. In addition to becoming a regular on House, she has also appeared in films such as The Girl Next Door, Alpha Dog, Turistas and the Jack Black/Michael Cera 2009 comedy, Year One. While her role as “Thirteen” on House has been her stand-out and breakthrough acting role the fact that she was strongly considered for the part of Vesper Lynd in the 2005 James Bond reboot, Casino Royale shows that she’s just not beautiful but has the acting chops to go far.
I am definitely on Conan’s side of the recent NBC-Leno-Conan late-night debacle. I pretty much spent most of my post high school nights watching Conan’s late-night show. I never got into Leno, but I can understand why many people did. He’s a safe comedian whose reputation for treating guests with kid gloves made him a favorite for stars to drop by his show. Stars on the show make people watch Leno’s show.
Leno’s reputation has hit a major low during the last month as he’s become the punching bag for fans of Conan and Letterman. Even Jimmy Kimmel and his followers have jumped on the beat on the Chin bandwagon. Kimmel’s surprise appearance on Leno’s 10 @ 10 show a couple weeks ago was one of the best things to come on late-night in decades. To say that Kimmel emasculated Leno would be the understatement of this young decade.
It’s now been a week since Conan aired his final Tonight Show episode and during that week we saw Jay Leno try to repair his battered image and reputation by going on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah’s daytime show has become the place to go to for people who either have been brought low by other people and need a place to find comfort and support or people who need to apologize about something bad they did. Leno’s appearance could’ve been the latter, but instead he tried to be the former. In choosing this path he might have damaged his image even more than he already has.
Leno doesn’t even make a serious attempt to place some of the blame on himself for what had occurred. Instead he tries to come off as being the biggest victim in the whole shenanigans of a debacle. While not mentioning Conan’s name he even takes a shot at “the other show” which he says was failing (despite numbers showing that after a slow and low ratings early on Conan’s show was steadily rising in ratings). Leno comes off even more fake and disingenious through the whole interview. There were times as if he expected Oprah to be more supportive and throw him softball questions, but instead got something tougher and more probing. He even goes so far as to try and joke about the whole ordeal which just ends up looking awkward at best and pathetic at worst.
I hope Middle America who think Leno was the better host enjoy their bland, battered and bullshit of a Tonight Show host, because it definitely won’t be anything funny, engaging and surprising.
John McNaughton’s directorial debut has been hailed as one of the best by any first-time director. I won’t be one to disagree with those who agree. McNaughton took $125,000 dollars, an idea of fictionalizing a week in the life of one real-life serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, and a dedicated crew of filmmakers to create a raw, unflinching, visceral piece of filmmaking. Originally filmed and finished in 1986, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer languished in ratings limbo as the filmmakers struggled with the MPAA over its X-rating. In fact, it’s been reported and written in many publications that it is one of the few films screened by the MPAA where they saw no way an edit here or there can ever lower it to an R-rating. I think its fortunate for film fans and academics everywhere that McNaughton and company decided to release the film in 1990 unrated.
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer was loosely-based on the life of one Henry Lee Lucas. One of the most prolific (though Lucas has since discounted ever killing over 600 people) serial killers in American history. From the beginning, Henry plunges the audience into a world seen through the eyes of a sociopath and as, Ebert once wrote in his own review: “an unforgettable portrait of the pathology of a man for whom killing is not a crime but simply a way of passing time and relieving boredom.”
The first scene is haunting in its graphic and realistic portrayal of the randomness of a serial killer’s passing through the myriad roads and highways that criss-cross the American landscape. It was this stark and realistic portrayal of the aftermath of violence and death that has made some people label McNaughton’s directorial debut as a snuff-film masquerading as an arthouse production. It’s difficult to disagree with such people since the violence (though it doesn’t go as far as most horror films of the era and barely a blip on the MPAA’s radar in today’s mega-blockbuster-shoot’em-ups) has no look of articiality and not glossed-over with your typical horror/suspense sensibilities. It doesn’t have that exploitation look that the horror films of the 70’s and early 80’s. What it did have was the look and feel of a documentary. The titular character (chillingly portrayed by Michael Rooker) commits his murders as one who sees nothing wrong in what they’re doing. To Henry what he does he does to pass the time and to break-up the boredom of his existence. This behavior shows the banality of Henry’s view of the world around him. It goes to show that as horrific as Henry must seem to the audience there’s a sense of reality in what he does. We read about it on the news, in true-crime documentaries, and in the sensationalist shows dealing with serial and mass murderers.
Henry is not the only one who wades into the dark underbelly of American life and society. There’s Henry’s former cellmate, Otis (played with relish by Tom Towles) who at first seems like a buffoon, but later shows his own pathology for senseless killings as Henry finally brings him into his own world. In fact, Otis’ reaction to Henry’s revelations about what he does in secret looks similar to the reaction of the violence addicted mass audience who revel in the violence in action films and horror retreads. Otis is at first confused and knows that he should be disgusted with the killings he first witness Henry committing, but he later gives in to his own primal impulses. He soon revels in the act of murder and even sees it as his own form of entertainment. It’s during the home-invasion and subsequent murders of the home’s family captured on videotape by Henry and Otis that this change in Otis hits home.
This is the juncture in the film that posits the damning question the filmmakers want to ask the audience. Do we recoil in horror and disgust at this horrifying, voyeuristic sequence or does the audience continue to watch with the dispassionate eyes of one who has become desensitized to onscreen violence. There’s no clear answer to this question and the filmmakers don’t condescend to the audience and try to sugar-coat the violence. It is also this sequence where we see the difference between Henry and Otis. Henry almost feels remote and disconnected from the acts he’s committing. To him breaking the neck of a teenage boy might be the same as stepping on an ant. But to Otis the killings themselves becomes his addiction and only form of joy. He’s willing to go beyond what his mentor has done to sate his appetites. We see Henry’s reaction to this change in Otis and realize that as much as the audience want to hate Henry, he is the lesser of two evils. He doesn’t take joy from his work and we cling to that barely there shred of decency in the hope that salvation and redemption is at the end of the ride.
To the filmmakers’ credit Henry doesn’t trivialize the gruesome events from scene one right up to the end credits by tacking on a Hollywoodize happy ending. As the final reel comes to a conclusion and we see Henry and Otis’ sister, Becky driving off into the night (a sort of reverse-negative of the typical riding-off into the sunset of Hollywood past), the audience is ready to breath a sigh of relief from the relentless visual and emotional pounding the film has put on the audience. But the rug is pulled out from under the audience’s feet. McNaughton and his writers do not believe in the redemption of Henry. In fact, they know that such things are only seen in Hollywood and fairytales. What they give the audience instead is a scene that continue to show that the film is steeped in the real world. People like Henry do not find forgiveness and salvation from their evil deeds. People like Henry continue to ply the roads and highways of America. Their seeming normalcy hiding the calculating, sociopathic murderous instincts just below the surface.
I credit Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer as one of the truest work of American filmmaking. A great character study of a sociopathic individual whose banality can truly be called the face of evil. McNaughton’s film is admired and reviled and both sides have credible points in taking their sides. It is a great piece of work that shows that filmmaking can go beyond its basic need to entertain. It is also a brutal piece of film that didn’t have to be made the way it was made, but to do it in any other way would’ve diluted the message and impact of the story.
Taking the mantle of hottie of the day from fellow Japanese Idol model Haruna Yabuki is Anri Sugihara of Hiroshima Prefecture. Ms. Sugihara is one of Japan’s most popular J-Idol and gravure models. She has graced the covers of many Japanese gravure photoshoot books. While her video work still has been only through footage of her photoshoots she has still gained fans both in and out of Japan. Ms. Sugihara combines both girl-next-door beauty with flawless skin and the long legs and curvaceous figure thats made her legions of followers throughout the internet. Here’s to hoping we continue to see more of Hiroshima Prefecture’s favorite daughter, Ms. Anri Sugihara.
