Vargtimmen

“Vargtimmen” means “hour of the wolf” in Swedish; it’s the time just before dawn when all sorts of awful things happen.

It’s also the title of an incredible film by Ingmar Bergman, reviewed HERE at LERNER INTERNATIONAL as part of a blogothon organized by the ultra-groovy The Moon Is a Dead World .

Check ’em both out!

Meanwhile, this here pictorama is The National Art Gallery of Ivanlandia’s tribute to our lupine and lycanthropic brethren and their 60 minutes of the day…

All the Zexy Replikantz Agree: “LERNER INTERNATIONAL is the Ginchiest!”

The United Provinces of Ivanlandia is proud to announce the launch of its more studious and serious little brother,

LERNER 

INTERNATIONAL 

ENTERPRISES—

LERNER INTERNATIONAL is a seriously fun examination of the motion picture and/or media landscape, primarily the Cinema of Weirdness (along with a few other topics).

Check it NOW! That’s an order!

Politrix, or “Viva La Revolucion!”

“Hell, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against.”—W.C. Fields
“And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”—Barry Goldwater
“Reality is ultimately that which resists.”—Slavoj Žižek
Perhaps it was Contagion’s B-movie-like distrust of The Man that has caused this rebellious attitude in us, but The United Provinces of Ivanlandia is a revolutionary state!
And lately The National Film Board of Ivanlandia has been screening a variety of films of a strong political nature, usually very mistrusting of the status quo and “business as usual.”

And we can appreciate that—the entire population of Ivanlandia had rotten childhoods, and likes it when sacred cows are turned into hamburgers.

That said, there will be some changes coming soon to this section of the intertubian blogoverse—
For one thing, much of the film, literature, political and cultural content herein has been acquired by the recently incentivized-synergistic corporotron,
LERNER
INTERNATIONAL
ENTERPRISES
What will continue here after the separation of id and superego will be more… I dunno yet.
Freeform? More of an excuse to create Exquisite Corpses or Headline Hit Parades? Maybe bring back the Zexy Replikant of the Veek? That feature was a fan fave, boy howdy!

And as I transition myself from the internet methadone of Il Face`-book, I might be using Ivanlandia as more of a dumping/whining ground. A place to get snarkalicious? A photo of the day? Mayhaps!
Or maybe not.

But one thing’s for certain:
At LERNER INTERNATIONAL, as it’s known colloquially, there will not be as many of these damn megaposts I force myself—and you—through.
A more frequent publishing schedule, and a less scattershot and purposefully obscure art direction are some things that will be strived for.

(I really wished I’d learned more about creating a “fold” back before Blogger threatened to change your layout completely if you only wanted to alter one item. That’s why Ivanlandia’s format hasn’t changed in a long, long time!
It’s my own fault really…)
LERNER INTERNATIONAL will be a much more disciplined operation.


And now some righteous flicks!
Power to the People!
State of Siege (État de Siège; 1972; Costa-Gavras)
State of Siege is a new entry into One of the Best New Old Films Discovered This Year! It is really almost a perfect film for me, all the details and performances just right, with an intelligent script that neither preaches nor condescends.

The film attacks US involvement in Latin America, especially how American “advisors” routinely turn up working with the local secret police on interrogations, and side with the military juntas in all matters. It’s quite critical of US policies, and it’s no wonder State of Siege is not available domestically for home viewing—I caught it via YouTube HERE.

Set in an unnamed South American nation, the film follows
leftist guerillas/revolutionaries, whom the film’s government refers to only as “terrorists” (and the movie’s Senate has even banned the name of the rebel organization from being spoken!), as they kidnap several foreign diplomats as well as an American civilian.
It seems at first that kidnapping the Yankee was a mistake—by all accounts he’s no one important, but it turns out he was the prime target: he has been the head of secret police training programs using torture in several Latin American countries, and now he’s here, en esta tierra sin nombre.
Much of the film centers on the philosophical battle of wills between the professional interrogator and his interrogator, with the rest focusing on the police breaking every law in the book to find the missing American.

Great use of telephoto lenses abound, delivering an unsettling “You Are There” feeling, and the film is
shot in a clinical, almost cold manner, which may appear to be objective, but if anything reinforces the “logic” of the rebels’ arguments.
Not that that’s bad: I agree with this agitprop—the US has done/is doing nasty shit, colluding with horrible, horrible regimes.

That said, the flick is visually exciting and intellectually engaging, full of intrigue and suspense, with compassion for both sides (to an extent).
It’s a damn brilliant piece of filmmaking—worthy of being the successor to both director Costa-Gavras’ Z and screenwriter Franco Solinas’ The Battle of Algiers, directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. (Solinas also scripted other agitprop action flicks like Ivanlandia faves like A Bullet for the General, and Burn!)

BTW, State of Siege was filmed primarily in Chile—which roughly one year after the film was released, suffered its own US-backed military coup against its democratically elected government (September 11 means something very different to Chileans), including monstrous cases of torture. Now that’s eerie…

Socio-politically, the National Film Board of Ivanlandia also screened:
Battleground (1949; William A. Wellman) This war movie, set during the Battle of the Bulge and covering the 101st Airborne’s attempts to hold back the Nazis under wretched and freezing conditions, was probably a bold and shocking film when it was first released.
But after seeing so many movies that covers the same topic (essentially a variation on the “lost platoon” subgenre) but more intensely, Battleground feels a tad superfluous—heck, Sam Fuller’s Fixed Bayonets, made two years after Battleground (and while set in Korea, basically tells the same tale), still holds up today!

As one of the bridges between gung-ho war-time propaganda and noirish post-war cynicism in US action films, Wellman’s Battleground is best for buffs of history or war movies.
It’s enjoyable, but not essential, with its “cynical take” a bit lumpy and now heavy-handed.

Executive Action (1973; David Miller) A conspiracy theory “Who Shot JFK?/Behind-the-Scenes at the Grassy Knoll,” this film would be a great triple feature with Robert Altman’s “Nixon Agonistes” Secret Honor (1984) and Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View, the ultimate paranoia/conspiracy film ever—

I haven’t seen Oliver Stone’s lysergic JFK since it was in the theaters, so I don’t think I can compare—but honestly, I prefer Executive Action’s cold detachment, humorless documentarism, and industrial-film level of plotting to Stone’s fireworks and hysterics.

Not that Executive Action can’t be as intellectually histrionic as JFK,
this flick’s as subtle as a bag of bricks—but I like that sometimes, it gets to the point: this film doesn’t present a balanced argument; I’d certainly call Executive Action agitprop—but being straightforward jacks up the intensity, especially as Kennedy dances into the noose, and all other obstacles are removed from the assassins’ path.

This is a film for those who can appreciate sangfroid—
Like State of Siege, Executive Action takes a “nuts & bolts” approach: socio-economic and political motivations are given to the regicidal cabal of industrialists, oilmen and other sneaky types, and then the movie goes into a quasi-documentary mode, becoming a “how to coup d’état.” It’s a very matter-of-fact film, like “A Day in the Life of The Parallax Corporation.”

In one of the film’s few examples of wit, secret-shadow-government conspirators Burt Lancaster and Robert Ryan chuckle almost with amazement as their plans are routinely aided “unwittingly” by the CIA, FBI and Secret Service, all of whom are at best antagonistic towards POTUS.

Aside: Kennedy’s assassination assured his canonization, but also allowed everybody to pretend to have liked him, and get to jump on the mourning wagon.
In today’s outrageous and shameful political climate, where a maelstrom vomiting hate is considered discourse, it’s good to be reminded that right-wing loons are nothing new, and
how much President Kennedy was actually HATED back in the day.

Support Your Local Sheriff (1968; Burt Kennedy) Seeing this film’s unofficial sequel “first,” as it were, makes me realize that it wasn’t until the later Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971) that director Kennedy & star/producer James Garner got the “formula” right: Surrounded by lunatics, Garner’s the calm eye of the storm.
He’s got The Zen Cool and a breezy, yet intelligent unconcern combined with an obvious, but unforced masculinity and solid ethical core: Garner’s character doesn’t care if you spend your money on whores and gambling, but he will punch you out if you’re mean to a dog.

And rather than making a third “Support Your Local Whatever”—maybe “Bushwhacker”?
Anyway, instead of doing that, Garner wisely adapted the formula to a contemporary setting, and TV history was born with The Rockford Files.

As for Support Your Local Sheriff, it has its own merits in addition to Garner’s charm, especially:
—Bruce Dern as a goofball badman (like a stupider version of his biker characters)—his interactions with Garner are classic comedy routines, and Dern does great double-take.
—Harry Morgan as the quasi-Libertarian mayor who regrets that civilization is encroaching on his boomtown: he grumbles that churches will arrive, and that they’ll want to close the whorehouse (platitudes that are incredible coming out of the mouth of the man who was Dragnet’s straight-arrow sidekick, and MASH’s wise Colonel Potter).
—and in a delicious piece of casting, saddle-vet Walter Brennan is the cattle baron squaring off against Sheriff Garner—the grousing villain is more worried about his “eating teeth” getting broken in a shootout than whether his sons are safe.
Casting Brennan was as smart a cross-cultural meta-move as was Mel Brooks’ later casting of Slim Pickens in Blazing Saddles: you need the real deal so the joke has stronger impact.

Zero for Conduct (1933; Jean Vigo) Wonderful, anarchic 40-minute short that Lindsay Anderson completely rips off for If… (And Allan Arkush admits was an influence on Rock ‘n’ Roll High School.)
Somewhere in France, kids (and one sympathetic teacher) ultimately rebel over the arbitrary and callous treatment from the school’s administrators (a wretched collection of greasy pederasts, hypocritical thieves and morbid sadists—ruled over by a vain dwarf!).
—This feels very much like a Bunuel film, like the missing link between his L’age d’Or and Los Olvidados—a feeling enhanced when Zero for Conduct uses various experimental techniques, including animation and slow-motion, to give the situation an almost surrealist touch, and perhaps that’s because a successful rebellion at a children’s school is just a dream?
Wonderful, nonetheless, as
Zero for Conduct takes a very entertaining hot poop on all that is “holy”—Very much worth your time.

Missing (1982; Costa-Gavras) Watched again (since first seeing it on its initial release, and not since) after being so impressed with Costa-Gavras’ State of Siege (see above). But Missing is much different from that film, which while borderline-nihilistic, still celebrated the spirit of revolution—
On the other hand, Missing is heartbreaking and depressing—a sad tale of the innocence lost by a man nearing the end of his life, anchored by performances from a strong Sissy Spacek and an incredible Jack Lemmon.
While set in an unnamed country, State of Siege was filmed in Chile, but Missing is about Chile, yet that country is never named (it was filmed in Mexico, though). Set during the bloody and horrible coup, it’s essentially about a square, very devout Christian businessman trying to find his son—which is why the film succeeds, but also disappoints.

Produced by Universal, a very mainstream company, the movie is to be applauded for not pulling punches in its accusations against US military and diplomats in their ordering the murder of a naïve American schnook. (The Latinos wouldn’t care that he knows anything, they’ve won the civil war; but US is supposed to be neutral, and certainly wasn’t—and this kid knows too much.)
The sanctimonious brush-off Lemmon gets from US officials is emotionally much worse than the brutal blank stares and obvious lies of the junta.

(But I wished this subtext of bad American foreign policy eventually leading us to kill our own children had been explored to further detail, but director Costa-Gavras is primarily trying to touch the audience via the heart more than the intellect.)

The film is almost an anti-procedural, with an investigation that brings up horrible, useless information that clouds more than clears, and
where a violent, surreptitiously-backed, one-sided power-grab that left thousands dead is used as the backdrop and cover-up for the death of a Yankee.

And that’s a gripe I had with this movie, and with an entire subgenre, actually: those people over there, those dark and hungry ones? Yeah, their problems don’t mean jack shit till Whitey shows up.

Now, Missing is the least egregious offender of this sort of condescending Caucasian-centric filmmaking—John Boorman’s misbegotten Beyond Rangoon takes the cake for that one, where nearly all important events in the Burmese freedom movement are meaningless until blonde hottie Patricia Arquette wanders through in slow-motion looking great in a sarong.

Unfortunately, in Missing for the most part, it’s Americans… and then dark-skinned soldiers. We are only given cursory introductions to characters of Spanish and/or Indian ancestry, so we never really meet any Latinos who aren’t brutal thugs wielding bayonets and machine guns.

It’s not that Missing is trying to be part of a xenophobic film tradition—this is more a result of location (and budget): The Mexican government cooperated with Costa-Gavras, and allowed him to use actual Mexican Army soldiers as extras.

But the thing is, most of the regular grunts in the Mexican Army are from either Mestizo or Indian extraction—which generally means they have darker skin than most Yankees, and especially when compared to palefaces like Lemmon and Spacek. Scenes of these two actors being threatened by jabbering little brown men only reinforces the subconscious racism of “US vs. THEM.”

(An interesting factoid: As long as you don’t directly slam them, the Mexican government allows filmmakers to say whatever they want about other Latin American nations. This is why El Jefe’s hacienda is only identified as being in “Latin America” in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.)

The “Only Americans Are Important” syndrome was avoided in State of Siege as star Yves Montand is a Frenchman who hardly looks American (although he was playing one), and the balance between the actors who either looked like descendents of Spaniards or Indians was essentially equal for all characters in the film, whether on the Right and Left.

Because I was so moved by Lemmon’s interpretation of the script, I’m almost loathe to note this as well, but I was especially annoyed by the naivety shown by Lemmon and his son, which bordered on the suicidal!
Of course, that may be part of it—specifically, why the boy is dead—but then Costa-Gavras is being too heavy-handed: Americans, SO naïve! (Of course, since it was a Universal release, maybe CG was trying to make the flick’s message as obvious as possible…)

That all said, Missing is a flick that’s thought-provoking, heartbreaking and disturbing—don’t even think about a happy ending, it’s that fucking bleak. Yes, watch it.

A Plague on ALL Your Houses: Films, Two Finished, Three Un- (as well as a TV series—and some shorts, too!)

Contagion (2011; Steven Soderbergh)
What if someone remade one of those Irwin Allen all-star disaster movie epics, but played it very straight, very serious, very high-stakes? Contagion is one possible answer to that question.

Starting like the best kind of science-fictional techno-thriller, the film is dense and compact—running roughly 90 minutes, Soderbergh squeezes in an much info as it takes others three hours to do, covering complicated info-dumps across several continents, mixing a multitude of styles and stylistic choices, especially in color schemes: Asia is feverishly orange; Minnesota, an austere blue-white; San Francisco, gray. The frame is often filled with images from video monitors, surveillance cams, computer screens, cell phones and so on.

The initial pace is so relentless, however, that it works against the flick during some later, more somber moments: your body has been manipulated by Soderbergh & Co. into a sort of frenzy—and then you’re supposed to slow down and get all weepy boo-hoo, or “concerned citizen.”
Uncle Steve is enough of a showman to keep all the plates spinning—and there’s a lot!—so he deserves heaps of praise.
Maybe 90 minutes actually wasn’t enough? At 100 minutes, maybe the entire film could’ve had enough breathing room so that a pace could be set, and then maintained.

Personally, I felt the flick was not as Apocalyptical as it needed to be: Only 26 million dead? Not enough.
That’s only 0.4% out of 6 billion! Less than 1% of Earth’s population? Pshaw!
Around 1618, a smallpox plague (that the white man had brought unintentionally) started that would wipe out 90% (!!!) of the Native American population in North America.
Contagion’s bat-pig virus needs to try harder. Step up, young’un!

And I wanted greater societal breakdown (or more evidence of a totalitarian takeover post-plague) as well as the special effects that would accompany them—something a la the first 10 minutes of Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead—or certain sections of Children of Men—heck, even the simple matte-painting emptiness of 1958’s The World, The Flesh and The Devil would be perfect.

Because despite a deliciously gruesome shot of Gwyneth Paltrow getting scalped during her autopsy (oops! Spoiler! snicker…),
the flick doesn’t show enough pustule-popping, infectiously oozing staggering-around-looking-gross pre-corpses,
nor enough scenes of cops vs. rioters and/or infected civilians, and the gore that would result from such confrontations (for example, either version of The Crazies—or, contra-positively, go the total “hard” science route, like 1971’s The Andromeda Strain).
I mean, how the fuck does a low-budget flick like 28 Days Later create a grander scale of destruction than this megabuck production?

But maybe I’m asking too much, because I really enjoyed the film’s B-movie tenacity for attempting to bring current societal issues into the discussions, in this case, the collusion between Big Pharma and governmental agencies to line each others’ pockets, as well as further crush societal freedoms (if you’re not inoculated, you can’t enter any stores—or anywhere, really).
The film’s ambiguity regarding the government’s ultimate intentions was also a nice touch: the guys on the ground mean well, but their higher-ups may have a very different agenda.

I am annoyed by the flick’s standard bourgeois bias (necessary, I suppose, because it’s a US-produced film) that the plague will start in “dirty, sweaty, inscrutable” Asia—why wouldn’t it start in some Alabama trailer park, or a Belfast ghetto? (Perhaps Soderbergh proactively responded to this potential gripe by casting a cool, WASPy blonde right out of a Hitchcock flick as Patient Zero.)

There’s a happy ending that almost made me sick, but thankfully Contagion is saved—literally at the last minute!—by a John Carpenter-esque coda that not only tells us how the plague started, but by resetting the clock to “Day One,” lets us know that it’s going to happen again, like right now.

Soderbergh’s made a flick that’s a synthesis of both Kubrick’s fastidiousness and bleak view of “men in power,” and Roger Corman’s “shoot fast/political messages are okay as long as the exploitation elements are forefront” styles. Which is a schizoid combo for sure, but excellent pacing and a panicked mood generally hides that, or points out the black humor in the situation.

The film is structured very much like Soderbergh’s earlier Oscar-winner Traffic or 2005’s very good Syriana, directed by Traffic’s screenwriter Stephen Gaghan.
I’d really like to read Scott Z. Burns’ script to Contagion—a compare-and-contrast would be interesting. (And congratz to Mr. Burns—release the hounds—for scoring the gig to script the sequel to Rise of the Planet of the Apes. With his plague background, I’m sure he’ll do the End Times For Humans quite right—and I hope he sets it up for telepathic mutants to appear in the inevitable third Apes retcon.)

Usually, I kind of despise the type of “all-star” casting that disaster movies truck in, but in Contagion’s case, it is necessary as
so much shit is going down that you need recognizable, public-friendly faces so the audience can keep up with instant visual cues: Matt Damon! That means Minnesota! Larry Fishburne! Government stuff! Titanic babe! Front lines of the plague! Uhhh… Who’s this one? French chick, right? Oscar-winner? No shit. Well I don’t recognize her, and that plotline was forgotten—honestly, the story-thread about the WHO official being kidnapped was one of the weaker ones, like an attempt to apologize to Asia for being blamed for the plague in the first place.

That said, Contagion is a grand entry into that broad dystopic film subgenre I like to call “Apocalypse Right Fuckin’ This Very Minute!” (And, like, how many disaster movies make you compulsively wash your hands about 50 times after seeing them? Jeez, I’m glad I didn’t see this in a theater, I might’ve freaked!)


And now for some films only partially screened…

Shark Night (2011; David R. Ellis) Not enough gore, terrible shark effects—what the hell happened to the promise director Ellis showed with Final Destination 2?!? That flick still holds up!
Shark Night was so bad, that even despite the attractive babes of the fox brigade (above and left, for example), I couldn’t finish watching it.
Honestly, Sharktopus was so much, much better.
(Listed as Shark Night on the Nflicks streaming site, but on the film’s intro credits, it’s still listed as Shark Night 3-D—but it was broadcast in 2-D! They couldn’t even afford to change the credits, wow…)

Jackboots on Whitehall (2010; Edward McHenry & Rory McHenry) A brilliant idea executed so poorly, I had to turn it off after about 10 minutes. Maybe that’s not fair, but I had no other choice.
Because I really wanted to see an alternate universe story about Nazi Germany’s victory and occupation of Great Britain—as performed by semi-articulated puppets resembling either G.I. Joes or Barbies!
But the script was awful, just really, really dull stuff—puerile humor that thinks it’s sophisticated—or spoofing old-timey stuff only because it’s old.
This would’ve been so much better if they spent less time with the puppets and more on the script.

Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man (1976; Ruggero Deodato) Live like a cop, die like an asshole, is more like it.
Before he made the infamous classic Cannibal Holocaust (much loved in Ivanlandia), Ruggero Deodato helmed this Starsky & Hutch rip-off, pouring on more violence and cynicism—and subtracting brains.

The male chauvinist asshole cop protagonists are smug and vile—at first I liked this realistic depiction of the police, but bad dialog, repetitive “gags” and failed attempts at humor, and a pointlessly convoluted “plot” soured me by the halfway mark.

The scenes of violence and action are still pretty darn good; it’s just that I can’t even recommend fast-forwarding to them.

I become so uninterested with Live Like a Cop, Die Like Bacon, I went in the kitchen and listened to the rest of the movie in the background as I cooked dinner. I made clam pizza with pesto and fresh basil and it was delicious!
I’m not sure how the movie ends— and I don’t care—something blows up, and I hope our two so-called heroes were on top of it…

Trailer Park Boys: Season Seven (2007; Mike Clattenburg) Still funny if you’re a fan, but this season actually smelled a little of “contractual obligation”—a little tired, too—but it would be tough to top the near-perfect previous season, which ended in such an absolutely heartwarming—but utterly in character—conclusion that also indicated that this was it, the show’s over.
But if the TPBs were tempted back in front of the cameras by the lure of filthy $$$, I can’t blame them.
Laughing often, I watched all of Season Seven anyway!


SHORTS
The National Film Board of Ivanlandia only recommends short films that you should (MUST) watch—my doing this isn’t some sort of space-filling tactic that the daily sites need to do to keep their corporate sponsors happy, oh no. I do this out of love.
And in case you were not aware of this,

items highlighted in bold are usually links to something else;

in the case of the next batch of films,

the movies themselves.
Thank you! Enjoy!

The Eagleman Stag (2010; Mikey Please) Fascinating, stylized and angular animation, in an almost monochrome color scheme, that works as a counterpoint to enhance the film’s narration, which gets very convoluted and often bizarre, as a scientist discovers a new breed of beetle, with a secretion that can “enhance” human brain cells.

The Raid (2012; Lee Hardcastle) Lee Hardcastle rules, and his claymation cat version of The Raid—a film, you might recall, I had some problems with—is infinitely better than the original.
He doesn’t slavishly imitate the original flicks,

he re-envisions them—of course, the basic story tropes must be adhered to. I’m a big fan of Hardcastle’s version of The Thing, as well. Vastly enjoyable stuff! SPLAT!

Disassembled (2012; Junaid Chundriga) Fun short, spoofing the recently-released The Avengers (for some reason—

maybe loyalty to either Emma Peel or Penelope Houston,

I kinda prefer the UK title, “Avengers Assemble!”).
However, this animated short seems more aimed at spoofing the actual Marvel Comics universe, and not just the film.
Even Ivanlandia fave Galactus shows up—Excelsior!

And my fave music “video”these days is fIREHOSE live in Chicago in 1989, covering Public Enemy’s “Sophisticated Bitch.” Great stuff!

TELEGRAPHS (the Ivanlandia equivalent of notes scribbled on a cocktail napkin)
on a recently screened film that could be best described as “Cult”—

Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens (1979; Russ Meyer) Every once in a while, I like to revisit Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens.
I love Meyer’s disjointed but logical editing scheme, it’s quite trippy.
Love the narration/Greek chorus by Mr. Small Town (Meyer stock player Stuart Lancaster): “Small Town—cradle to the nation!”
Was this ever sexy? Hardly erotic—although I want to look up Ulli Supersoul on-line
Perhaps not surreal, but definitely off in its own world—not our universe
Crazy, nonsensical—dopey humor
Insanely multilayered soundtrack, beautiful cinematography
A world of bright colors
Live action cartoon

This is one of my favorite Russ Meyer films because it’s so good natured, yet also so overloaded with nudity and sex and stupidity. (Yes, he’s made films that are better, like Faster Pussycat Etc Etc and Beyond the Valley Etc., but Beneath the Etc of the Ultra-Etc. is a favorite—and personal favorites trump “taste” and “quality” every time—and that’s what RM’s about, right? Right!)

With Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens,
it’s like Meyer finally banished his internal hellfire-and-brimstone preacher, the guy that ruined Lorna and Supervixen and made those flicks bummers, and RM loosened up and began to enjoy the company of women.
Maybe hanging out with Roger Ebert (who co-wrote Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens under a pseudonym) finally chilled the old square out.

And Coming Soon to Ivanlandia:
--Horror!
--Repeat the Question
--Politix
--Hour of the Wolf
--and more, like:
June Rhymes With Moon! (I’ve got this crackpot idea that June will be Sci-Fi month here in Ivanlandia—I’m going to try to watch a sci-fi movie per day (or related genre, or combo-genre: horror sci-fi; comedic sci-fi, you get the idea), and I’m gonna try and post every day, or every other day, something like that… Big plans! Stay tuned!)