Monthly Archives: June 2024

Devil Take You

5 June 2024 By in Movies Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Devil aka The Night Chronicles: Devil.

Theaters: 17 September 2010

Streaming: ~2011

Runtime:  90 minutes

Genre:  Drama – Horror – Mystery – Suspense — Thriller

Els:  6.5/10

IMDB:  6.3/10

Rotten Tomatoes Critics:  50/100

Rotten Tomatoes Audience:  43/100

Metacritic Metascore:  44/100

Metacritic User Score:  8.3/10

Awards: — Two minor nominations for screenplay and supporting actor

Directed by: John Erick Dowdle

Screenplay by: Brian Nelson

Story by: M Night Shyamalan

Music by:  Fernando Velazquez

Cast: Chris Messina, Logan Marshall-Green, Jenny O’Hara

Film Locations:  Toronto, Philadelphia, Los Angles

Budget:  $10 Million

Worldwide Box Office:  $62.6 Million

Five strangers, one of them the devil on a soul collecting task, are stuck together on a broken-down Philadelphia elevator waiting to be rescued.

Devil is a low budget movie done right. The director and acting are competent, but the real star of the show is the screenplay. The run-time has been criticized as too short, but a longer movie would have led to over-telling of the story, unnecessarily dragging out the plot.

Sources. IMDb. Rotten Tomatoes. Metacritic. Horror Film Wiki. Graphic: Movie Poster, Universal Pictures.

Bodegas Juan Gil Silver Label 2020

5 June 2024 By in Red Wine Tags: , , Leave a comment

Mourvedre (Monastrell) from Jumilla, Spain

Purchase price $15.99

Rankings: Robert Parker 92. James Suckling 90. ElsBob 90-91.

ABV: 15.0%

A deep red in color with notes of black fruits. A full-bodied wine, medium-high in tannins with a medium and balanced finish. Pairs well with rich foods high in fat such as marbled steaks or cured meats.

This is an excellent wine at a good price.

The White Album

3 June 2024 By in Music, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

The Beatle’s most innovative album originally titled The Beatles was released 55 years ago, plus a few months, in November of 1968. It was the group’s only double album containing 30 new tracks, mostly written between February and April of 1968. The album cover was released in pure white with the simple and only words The Beatles stamped on the front, causing it to be known forever more as the White Album.

The album followed Sgt Pepper, and Ringo remarks that recording the White Album calmed the seas, “Sgt Pepper did its thing, it was the album of the decade – of the century maybe. It was very innovative. Great songs, glad I was on it. But the White Album…We ended up being more of a band again and that’s what I always love, I love being in a band.”

The album went number 1 on the UK charts for eight weeks and stayed in the charts for 22 weeks. In the US it ran at number 1 for 9 weeks and stayed in the charts for an astounding 65 weeks. The 2018 50th anniversary album reissue entered the Billboard 200 at number 6. None of the 30 tracks from the original album were issued in single format. The songs covered a broad range of genres including rock, pop, folk, country rock, blues, Ska, proto-metal, and avant-garde.

Source: Apple Corp, thebeatles.com. Genius.com. Graphic: Cover of the White Album, by Beat 768, 2010, Public Domain.

Journalism – Patricia Smith

2 June 2024 By in Journalism Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Patricia Smith is very good at performance poetry, like freestyle rap battles without a beat, but as a journalist she could never quite grasp that poetry was fiction and journalism wasn’t. She could write, she was good with words and phrases, talents that journalism seeks out and rewards, but she would rather write a good story, usually fiction, than hit the pavement to flesh out the truth.

Patricia Smith began her career in journalism in the late 1970s as an entry level clerk at the Chicago Daily News, first as a typist and later as a music and entertainment reviewer. When the Daily News folded in 1978, she then worked as an entertainment writer for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1978 to 1990. She left the Sun-Times after it was discovered that she had written a review of a concert that she did not attend. In 1990 she moved to the Boston Globe, beginning as an entertainment critic, and eventually was made a reporter and the paper’s metro columnist. She was fired from the Globe in 1998 for fabricating characters and events in one of her metro columns. The Globe editors, after further investigation, believed that an additional 52 columns or hers contained fictional elements.

Source: New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Media Nation. Graphic: Patricia Smith

The Roman Jewish Wars

1 June 2024 By in History, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

During the first and second centuries AD there were 3 major Jewish revolts against Roman rule in Judea: The first war from 66-73 AD, the Kitos War from 115-117 AD, and the Bar Kokhba Revolt from 132-135 AD. Roman taxation, financial exploitation, religious persecution, oppression, extrajudicial executions, and the plundering of the Second Jewish Temple all contributed to the conflicts.

Roman punishment increased with each successive war eventually leading to wholesale depopulation of Jewish communities by enslavement, death, and exile. It is believed that upwards of 1.3-1.4 million Jews were killed during these revolts, which would have been about one-third of the total worldwide Jewish population. After the Bar Kokhba Revolt the Romans renamed the area Palestina after the Philistines who populated the general area before the 6th century BC.

Source: Josephus. Wikipedia, Heritage-History, WorldHistory, Alchetron, Britannica. Graphic: Roman Triumphal panel from Beth Hatefutsoth showing spoils from the Jewish Temple. Max Morris 2016.