NBC News recently featured a video of last year's "Krampus Run" from some part of Austria. For the video click here. It's a hoot!  Part of the 13 Days Of Creepmas.  

Nightcrawler (2014)

Unlike most of the films we've been viewing yesterday and today, I have seen this one before--actually twice.  The first time around I was impressed with the cinematography, but wasn't entirely sure of what to make of the story.  On second viewing, I really came to appreciate what a solid true to heart thriller it is through and through.  It's more than just a bit unnerving how well Jake Gyllenhaal plays are rather boring and pathetic psychopath.  Yes I know, great actor and all, but he just does "weird" very well (love his turn in Donnie Darko!).

From Musick Hund: Cronenberg Publishers Novel Description

About the Book 

Stylish and camera-obsessed, Naomi and Nathan are lovers and competitors – nomadic freelancers in pursuit of sensation and depravity in the social media age, encountering each other only in airport hotels and browser windows.

Naomi finds herself drawn to the headlines surrounding Célestine and Aristide Arosteguy, Marxist philosophers and sexual libertines. Célestine has been found dead and mutilated in her Paris apartment. Aristide, suspected of the killing, has disappeared. Naomi sets off in pursuit, but the secrets she discovers are as seductive as they are disturbing.

Nathan, meanwhile, is in Budapest photographing the controversial work of an unlicensed surgeon named Zoltán Molnár. After sleeping with one of Molnár’s patients, Nathan contracts a rare STD called Roiphe’s. Nathan then travels to Toronto, determined to meet the man who identified the syndrome. Dr. Barry Roiphe, Nathan learns, now studies his own adult daughter, whose bizarre behaviour masks a devastating secret.

These parallel narratives become entwined in a gripping, dreamlike plot that involves geopolitics, 3-D printing, North Korea, the Cannes Film Festival, cancer, and, in an incredible number of varieties, sex. ‘Consumed’ is an exhilarating, provocative debut novel from one of the world’s leading film directors.

News Flash: Two Navy Jets Crash In The Pacific

FROM AROUND THE WEB:

New York Times

CNN

FOX

ABC

NBC

THE Blaze

Daily Mail

Fourth Of July: Zodiac

Although several annual holidays show up in this David Fincher film, it starts out with the July 4th shooting that first started the hunt for the still unknown serial killer who styled himself "The Zodiac."

The Insider

Random Hitchcock: Marnie (1964)

Despite that Sean Connery is by far my favorite Bond, I just can't warm up to this psychological thriller.  Of course, we now know that actress Tippi Hedron had a very bad time of it with Hitchcock.  So now's a good time bring up that there is movie being made about the whole ugly affair, the nastiest details still no disclosed (or so it's said).  The film is entitled The Girl and Hedron is being played by Sienna Miller and Hitchcock by Toby Jones.  Here is the first still from the picture of the two:

So I think I lot of people who have trouble warming up to this film and picking up that Hedron's performance is not just that Marnie herself was an extremely disturbed character, what with the kleptomania, and phobias of thunderstorms and the color red, but that underneath the whole thing, Hedron herself was laboring in an intensely disturbing and negative environment--one that was fast coming to an end by the time the picture get into production.  Leaving that behind, the script is based on the novel of the same name by writer Winston Graham. It's basically a domestic drama turned into a really weird twisted psychological thriller.  One thing that I do think really works for this movie is the soundtrack, with the original score being composed by Bernard Hermann.  I works it's way nicely through the mystery story behind who or what Marnie really is; and where she came from.

News Worthy: Canada's First 3D!

It's hard to believe that Canada has never before had a 3D--in any genre!! How fitting is it that their very first be a horror film!  And one bringing on what they are calling "Zemons," that is a combo of Zombie and Demon.

Check out their press on on their website here AND read all about it in today's Vancouver Sun!

The Mysterious Geographic Explorations Of Jasper Morello (2005)

This is another short film nominated for Best Animated Short, which has a wholly different vibe altogether than the cute Monsters, Inc. short!  I admit that I personally admire this little 26 minute long film quite a lot!  I was reading an article in The Daily Beast by Evan Shapiro entitled The Oscars: 21 Fixes for the Show So It's Less Boring, in which he recommends doing away with the awards for the shorts in which he states "no one really cares about the shorts." [And by "doing away with," I mean give them out on another occasion, not get rid of them altogether.] Really!!??  Speaking for everyone here is he--because I am not related to anyone who has ever been nominated in either one of the shorts categories, I DO care about the shorts; and honestly, they do not take up that much time!  Give me a break.  But, though he does have some good suggestions, his other suggestion of "Let Woody Win" is strange, considering that the fantasy acceptance speech he has in his head regarding "Woody," has almost a zero chance of happening, as Allen is highly unlikely to attend.  If he does, the moon would likely turn some strange color!  In other Oscar news, and I'm sure we were all soooo worried about this (!), it turns out that Admiral General Shabazz Aladeen will be on the red carpet.  What a triumph for the people of the Republic of Wadiya!!! Check out his phone interview on the subject on the Today Show Here.

To watch the full short of Jasper Morello click here