Archive for May, 2022

100 reasons to go to the movies…

Sunday, May 22nd, 2022

I came across a list I had made in 2003 of 100 reasons why I loved cinema. My love of the silver screen still stands, but I had to refresh a few entries with some recent refs before I could present it below 🙂

1 – “What have you been doing all these years?” – “I’ve been going to bed early.”
2 – You want to move to Montana to learn fly fishing
3 – “I am your father, Luke”
4 – Steward Granger and Edwige Feuillère in “Woman Hater”
5 – The pale face of Alec Guiness when he first appears in “The Lady Killers”
6 – Anita Ekberg wades into a fountain and you want to be Marcello Mastroianni.
7 – Tiffany’s will never look the same at dawn
8 – “We’re gonna need a bigger boat”
9 – Monsters do exist in movies
10 – Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration
11 – “We have all the time in the world.”
12 – You still hope Steve McQueen is going to make it in “The Great Escape” even though you’ve already seen the movie a zillion times
13 – The race in Ben-Hur
14 – James Stewart discovers that life is wonderful, and it’s wonderful
15 – The bridge scene in Sicario
16 – You know who is Kaiser Söse and wish you didn’t so that you can find out again
17 – “I am Wind In His Hair! Do you see that I am your friend? Can you see that you will always be my friend?”
18 – “So, I hear you, like, ran into these things before? – “Yeah.” – “What did you do?” – “I died.”
19 – You want to spend your next holiday in Rome
20 – “My name is Lymon Zerga”
21 – You can prove that Sherlock Holmes made a cameo in Star Wars
22 – Peugeot will still make cars in 2049
23 – You are not afraid of witches provided there’s some water nearby
24 – “My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die!”
25 – The mere reference to Groundhog day makes you laugh
26 – You never take showers in motels anymore
27 – Taming leopards is nothing more than knowing the right song
28 – “Oh, but you can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you!”
29 – You know who Wong Fei-Hong is, and you just don’t want to mess with him
30 – “Ooh, I’m really scared. Help! There’s a peck with an acorn pointed at me!”
31 – Tiny bits of burning paper flying in the night in the name of the father
32 – You know the names of the magnificent seven by heart
33 – Communication with aliens is nothing more than knowing the right tune
34 – “You jump, I jump, remember?”
35 – “You’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya punk?”
36 – You’d like to know if that smoke shop really exists in that special corner of Brooklyn
37 – What the heck is in Marcellus’ briefcase?
38 – “Movies don’t create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative!”
39 – Youth pills elaborated by monkeys work too well
40 – “Never fall in love with a woman who sells herself. It always ends bad!”
41 – “I’m the guy telling you the way it is.”
42 – You’ll still wonder if Totoros really exist
43 – You know the names of the seven samurais by heart
44 – Fantasy fight: Captain Vallo vs Captain Jack Sparrow
45 – “Me fifth element – Supreme being. Me protect you.”
46 – “Death is… whimsical… today.”
47 – Paula Alquist is right to be afraid of gaslights.
48 – “Truth is, I help horses with people problems.”
49 – There are some fish that cannot be caught. It’s not that they are faster or stronger than other fish, they’re just touched by something extra.
50 – The mere reference to Groundhog day makes you laugh
51 – Richard Gere proves that statement #40 is not always accurate
52 – Vincent Pryce’s escape in ‘Brazil’
53 – 12 monkeys are not always what they seem
54 – Al Pacino’s TV in “Heat”
55 – You know where snow comes from
56 – The milk and the cookies in “Man on the Moon”
57 – Painting a whole town in bright red and renaming it “Hell”
58 – Lessons from the past: in “Star Trek” there are no flies in teleport rooms
59 – You’re waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can’t know for sure. Yet it doesn’t matter…
60 – Skynet bugged on August 29th 1997
61 – When you’re on acid, Las Vegas looks… different
62 – Father Gabriel’s clarinet in “The Mission”
63 – Wayne’s guitar in “Wayne’s World”
64 – Christopher Walken’s haunting eyes
65 – “My house, My rules, My coffee”
66 – The cow boy in “The Big Lebowsky”
67 – The way of the samurai is honorable but deadly
68 – Note to self: a cross won’t work against a Jewish vampire
69 – “The bartender never gets killed.” well, sometimes, he does
70 – Lefty in “Donnie Brasco”
71 – Tim Roth’s hoax to be admitted in the gang in “Reservoir Dogs”
72 – “You ever dance with the devil by the pale moonlight?”
73 – “Grease” is the word
74 – “I am a man of constant sorrow” is in your top 10
75 – “There can be only one.” Sequels not accepted.
76 – William H. Macy in “Fargo”
77 – Everyone says “I love you”
78 – John MacLane’s bare feet
79 – Greta Garbo’s laugh
80 – Spock is allied with the body snatchers
81 – Nobody puts Baby in the corner
82 – “War’s first casualty is innocence”
83 – You can watch “Mulholland Drive” fifty times and still understand nothing
84 – You know that “the rain is Spain stays mainly in the plain” and you pronounce it perfectly
85 – William Munny is the best cow boy character ever
86 – Saturday nights will never be the same
87 – You learn all the prime numbers in case there’s a cube somewhere
88 – The plastic bag in “American Beauty”
89 – Perhaps “nobody’s perfect”, but some movies are
90 – You can tell the difference between “Rio Bravo” and “El Dorado”
91 – Tyler Durden has a funny way to tell stories
92 – Marty MacFly’s car really can fly
93 – Harrison Ford’s hat in “American Graffiti”
94 – A piano left on a beach for weeks can still make good music
95 – Rick nods in Casablanca, and everything changes
96 – “I have very fond memories of that dog.”
97 – Cross over: you just know that Captain Nemo’s real name is Lidenbrok.
98 – The Untouchables will always be four, even in the end
99 – Yul Brynner is a terrific terminator
100 – Life is like a box of chocolate, and sometimes it’s the kind you like

New toy came back from the shop good as new!

Friday, May 20th, 2022

Promotion time!

Sunday, May 15th, 2022

May 15th marks the first anniversary of THE KERGUELEN CAT. To celebrate, both ebooks in the Ascalon Circle series will be priced 0.99 until June 30th. 😁

Are you ready to fly in legendary planes, navigate webs of spies and dubious characters, and travel all over the world, from busy Cairo to rural Hampshire, from the jungles of French Indochina to islands at the end of the ocean? If the answer is YES, join the Ascalon Circle! Books I & II are now priced at only 0.99 in ebook format!


Get it now! Books also available in paperback. Offer applies to ebooks, only until June 30th!

Mini-review: Severance (2022)

Monday, May 9th, 2022

These past few weeks haven’t been smooth sailing, but I’m kind of back. I’m extremely behind on my writing, NaNo April was a bust, I just didn’t have any heart for it. I’m planning to slowly get back into it, but I just haven’t yet. After my dad’s passing, I flip-flopped about focusing on my French hist-fic saga project… But I don’t know.

Everything is pretty much on hold on all fronts, except for one thing that I can’t quite get into yet. I’ll probably have an announcement about it later this year, if things go as planned. The release dates for the WIPs are likely going to be pushed back.

In the meantime, I spent the weekend on Severance (on Apple TV+), a dystopian show where a new implant technology allows us to hermetically separate our work life and our personal life. It’s as captivating and horrifying as it sounds, and absolutely riveting.

The show manages to capture the tedium of office environments and make it both gorgeous and ominous, making you wonder what hides behind every turn of the labyrinthine corridors of the “severed” floor, and behind the smiles of its cultish managers… The photography and art style are ultra polished and framed to perfection (the Bell Works building and its atomic age vibes make for a perfect location for a show full of retro-futuristic mid-century-ish elements) and the cast brings everything together incredibly well. The finale also resolves enough of the mysteries to be satisfied, but leaves enough pending that you just can’t wait for Season 2 to drop.

One of the best written shows of the year. Greatly recommended.