#kevin gillette

[wordacrosstime]

Bad Actors

[Bad Actors, by Mick Herron. 10 May 2022. Publisher - Soho Crime. 360 pages. ISBN-10: ‎1641293373. ISBN-13 - 978-1641293372. Weight - 1.18 pounds. Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.75 x 1.17 x 8.52 inches. (publishing details thanks to Soho Crime)]

In 2010, writer Mick Herron published the first of his 8-book series centered on Slough House, an MI5 property that houses the discarded refuse of the British intelligence apparatus.  The slow horses (a play on the name of the facility) are embittered, disillusioned, and disgraced, but evidently not quite to the level of termination.  Instead, they labor on pointless, soul-crushing assignments for the Mother Ship of MI5, located at Regent’s Park in London (and prosaically dubbed The Park).

Heading up the slow horses is Jackson Lamb, himself a disgraced and hyper-cynical spy who, for reasons that are never made entirely clear, relishes his command position in this Purgatory of the intelligence community.  Lamb is ugly, foul-mouthed, misogynistic, anti-social in the extreme, and has repulsive personal and professional hygiene.  He claims to have total disregard (or possibly no regard whatsoever) for the people in his charge, whom he refers to as his joes.  But underneath the crass and off-putting demeanor lies a profound and singular intellect and an exceptionally keen understanding of the ways of the world, especially that part of the world dominated by intrigue, deception, treachery and violence.  And though he would never, ever admit it, he actually cares about his joes.  If anything is to happen to them, it had better be by his hand, or woe be unto the person or persons who got in the way.

The volume under review here, Bad Actors, is the eighth and final (?) book in the Slow Horses series.  In addition to Jackson Lamb, many of the usual suspects remain from the preceding seven installments:  Diana Taverner, the ruthless and rapacious First Desk at MI5; Roddy Ho, Slough House’s tech genius, a legend in his own mind only; Claude Whelan, who used to head up MI5; Catherine Standish, Lamb’s gal Friday and the bulwark standing between him and the chaos beneath him; and many more.

In this episode, a Downing Street superforecaster – someone who can predict, with startling accuracy, how policies will influence the electorate and advises the Prime Minister on same – has disappeared.  Claude Whelan has been assigned the job of finding her.  The trail leads back to The Park and Diana Taverner.  Just what is she up to?  Are her labyrinthine schemes for control of the Intelligence Service coming to a boil?  Or is something else at work?  Simultaneous to this domestic intrigue is the sudden arrival of Taverner’s opposite number in the Russian intelligence machine, who enters Britain under a false name and promptly loses his MI5 handlers.

Amid the tumult, the Slow Horses become involved in these machinations, for two reasons:  One, because they are terminally bored and eager to do something to set their personal records straight and perhaps – just perhaps – inveigle their way back into The Park, even though the history of Slough House suggests that this cannot happen; and Two, because Jackson Lamb hates Diana Taverner and The Park and loves to poke the hornet’s nest whenever and however he can.

Throughout this and the other seven Slough House novels, Mick Herron seamlessly interweaves caustic rhetoric with surprisingly poignant moments.  He plays off the Slow Horses against one another to varying degrees while Jackson Lamb lurks like a spider in his darkened corner of proceedings.  But when Lamb strikes, they all know to get out of his way (well, all but Roddy Ho who can’t seem to get out of his own way, much less anyone else’s) and let him do what he does best – whatever that is.  Lamb, both figuratively and literally, knows where the bodies are buried, and knows this not only within his own agency but with other intelligence services around the globe – including the Moscow directorate.  And though Slough House will never get their contributions acknowledged, even Lamb knows that sometimes the only solution to a sticky situation is a few Slow Horses – his joes.

Unlike many of his peers, Herron brings a decidedly literary quality to his writing.  Fans of John le Carré will find these novels great fun; they certainly move ahead more swiftly than, say, his Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy or Len Deighton's Funeral In Berlin.  There is a modern sensibility to these novels that will catch the interest of most readers of spy fiction and thrillers.  And if one can ignore Jackson Lamb’s foulness, one will be rewarding with some of the most sardonic humor to be found in modern fiction.  Herron’s writing pairs nicely with a chewy red wine and some spicy crisps of an evening.

Image credits from top : Cover with thanks to © publisher. Portrait of Mick Herron with thanks to photographer © Mikael Buck and Hachette

Kevin Gillette

Words Across Time

19 January 2024

wordsacrosstime

[barnesmickey]

Behind the scenes of Abigail (2024)

[esqueletosgays]

ABIGAIL (2024)

Directors: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett Cinematography: Aaron Morton

[brokehorrorfan]

Abigail will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on July 9 via Universal. The 2024 vampire film will first be available on Digital on June 25.

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett (Scream 5, Scream VI) direct from a script by Guy Busick (Scream 5, Scream VI) and Stephen Shields (The Hole in the Ground). Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, William Catlett, Kevin Durand, Angus Cloud, Alisha Weir, and Giancarlo Esposito star.

Special features are listed below.

Special features:

Audio commentary by directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett and editor Michael P. Shawyer

Blood Bath featurette

Hunters to Hunted featurette

Becoming a Ballerina Vampire featurette

Directing Duo Matt & Tyler featurette

Deleted & extended scenes

Gag reel

A heist team is hired by a mysterious fixer to kidnap the daughter of a powerful underworld figure. They must guard the 12-year-old ballerina for one night to net a $50 million ransom. As the captors start to dwindle one by one, they discover to their mounting terror that they're locked inside an isolated mansion with no ordinary little girl.

Pre-order Abigail.

[i-didnt-hate-it]

I didn't hate Abigal, it was a lot of fun!

I was sick the week Abigail released, so I'm just watching it now because I'm not going to see the new Planet of the Apes, I haven't seen any of them yet.

Now THIS is how you do a Dracula's daughter story.

If you know anything about the movie going into it, you know what's coming, but they make you wait for it to actually happen. Making Hitchock's bomb a cute little girl? Bloody genius.

Abigail is a fun, exciting, bloody vampire movie. It's got to be hard to make an original and unique vampire movie these days, but I think Abigail did a good job of blending a Gothic tone with a modern gorefest vibe.

The soundtrack was pretty good, not quite outstanding, but not bad. The use of music (a la Tchaikovsky) was fun and really set the mood.

The casting was great. Giancarlo Esposito was very Giancarlo Esposito-y, Kathryn Newton was funny and made me want to watch Lisa Frankenstein even more (new horror queen?). Kevin Durand was great as "the muscle." Dan Stevens looked like he had a lot of fun. William Catlett and Angus Cloud were both solid. But of course the standouts are Melissa Barerra, definitely a horror queen, and Alisha Weir in the title role. It takes skill to make an audience believe a 12 year old girl is actually a centuries old vampire, but Alisha did it.

Spoilers below.

I feel like others might disagree, but I honestly loved the pacing of the movie. With how long it took for them to show Abigail as a vampire, it really gave time to get to know the characters.

The way they set the tone really somehow made it feel like a classic Universal horror, but it also felt fresh and modern too. Little things like the creepy basement, the rats(?), the big library, the statue garden thing. It really felt like they were in a house that someone had been living in for a looooong time.

I honestly love how two people died before Abigail ever bared her fangs. It really helped sell the idea that she was just playing with them. And the black guy didn't die first! It is kind of sickly ironic that Angus Cloud's character was the first to go (RIP), but I mean, bro was an absolute idiot.

I'm still not sure who my favorite character is, I really just loved the ensemble. I will say, I figured out the Rat Pack joke before Peter, not too long before, but still before.

I love when modern monster movies reference the lore, but make it their own. Like they reference all the stuff that kills vampires but only a couple of them actually work, the rest are just part of the legends.

I wasn't expecting to actually root for Abigail toward the end, but I loved the respect the was shared between her and Joey.

Those Ready or Not guys really love making people explode like bloody water balloons. I mean, what a way to go, I guess.

[jocia92]

abigailthemovie Children can be such monsters. #AbigailTheMovie is in theaters April 19.

thatdanstevens Let's Dance... ABIGAIL in theaters April 19. #abigailthemovie 🩰🧛‍♀️

x x

[screenshothaven]

Abigail (2024)

[moviemosaics]

Abigail

directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, 2024

[streamondemand]

'Abigail' – a little girl lost with bite on Peacock

If you’ve seen the trailer then you already know the premise of Abigail (2024): a team of criminals kidnap a 12-year-old girl from a high security compound and hold her in a secluded mansion for 24 hours until her unnamed father (ostensibly rich and powerful) pays a ransom. Then—surprise!—they discover that Abigail (Alisha Weir) is not only the daughter of a notorious criminal kingpin with a…

[geekcavepodcast]

Abigail Trailer 2 **Graphic**

A group of kidnappers are tasked with watching a kid overnight in order to collect a $50 million ransom. Too bad they're now locked inside with a girl who likes to play with her food.

Abigail stars Alisha Weir, Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, William Catlett, Kevin Durand, and Angus Cloud. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett direct from a screenplay by Stephen Shields and Guy Busick.

Abigail hits theaters on April 19, 2024.

[letterboxd-loggd]

Abigail (2024) Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett

May 9th 2024

[wordacrosstime]

Ingush Grammar

[Ingush Grammar. Johanna Nichols. First Edition: March 2011. University of California Press. Series: UC Publications in Linguistics. Pages: 830. Trim Size: 7 x 10 inches.  Illustrations: 1 map. Paperback. ISBN: 9780520098770]

Readers of my book reviews cannot help but notice my interest in – nay, my fascination with – linguistics and languages.  I am no stranger to Professor Nichols’s work: I read her award-winning treatise Linguistic Diversity in Time and Space a few years ago and was captivated by her command of language reconstruction principles.   Recently, it came to my attention that there might (in principle) be a call for persons to assist in national security-related activities who are fluent in, or at least familiar with, the Northeast Caucasian languages, especially Chechen and Dagestani.  The language discussed here, Ingush, is a closely-related language with a relatively high degree of mutual intelligibility with Chechen, Dagestani and Baltsi.  Since I couldn’t find a suitable book from which to learn Chechen, I thought I’d check this tidy little volume out.

“Tidy” is not the correct word for this work.  It tips the scales at almost 800 pages.  However, it is an undeniable tour-de-force of scholarship in the documenting of a comparatively obscure language. Prof. Nichols herself acknowledges that this tome is the culmination of about 30 years of work with Ingush, at least ten of which were spent in the homeland of the language itself, a region now known as Ingushetia in southern Russia adjacent to the Republic of Georgia and Chechnya.

The Northeast Caucasian languages are a small primary language family spoken almost exclusively in the region between the Republic of Georgia and the north end of the Caspian Sea.  Significant cities in this region are Ongusht (whence the name Ingush), Groznyy (the capital of Chechnya) and Makhachkala (the capital of Dagestan).   Though these languages share many features with Georgian (known as Kartuli to its speakers) and the similarly-named Northwest Caucasian languages (examples are Abkhazi and Cherkessian), they are not, in fact, related to them in any meaningful way.  This may seem surprising when one looks at a map of the region.  The area covered by these three language groups (Georgian is part of its own tiny language family called the Kartulian languages) is fairly small.  However, the area is peppered with mountain ranges that have carved it up geographically to a point where very ancient steppe peoples had settled in individual valleys and had no direct contact with even neighboring valleys for centuries. Little wonder, then, that language families developed independently from a still-more-ancient proto-language (as yet unidentified or classified).

Ingush, as alluded to in the previous paragraph, was named after a prominent community in its sprachbund, or speaking area.  Ingush people do not use this term, referring to their language as vai mott (our language) or, if speaking to non-Ingush speakers, vai neaxa mott (our people’s language).  Given that the homeland for this language has at least three well-defined geographic zones (alpine highlands, piedmont, and plains), it is not surprising that various dialects of Ingush have emerged.  All of these dialects are highly mutually intelligible, far from any objective criteria that would categorize them as distinct languages in their own right.

Nichols herself, in the introductory material, lists Ingush as one of the most morphologically complex languages in her experience, outstripping even daunting native American languages like Lakhota (a Siouan language of the northern Great Plains) and Halkomelem (a Salishan language from the Pacific Northwest in the USA).  Ingush has unusually large inventories of elements (phonemes, etc.), a high degree of inflectional synthesis in the verb (this is similar to some native American languages, especially the Athapaskan group) and a variety of categories of words, many of which do not have an analogue in English or any Indo-European language.  She comments that this might go some way toward explaining why this book took 30 years to produce!

Since the volume is so detailed, I will simply summarize my observations of its style and completeness.  I confess that I haven’t actually read the entire volume – I’ve probably read about 150 pages, or nearly 20% of it all told – but I have dipped into it in various places along its length to see what it was all about.  It is impossible for me to imagine that Prof Nichols missed anything; every conceivable component of Ingush seems to be covered here.  The book has 35 major sections, any one of which is worthy of at least a semester-long course of study (for the subject itself, not necessarily for Ingush per se).  Her writing tone and style strike an admirable balance between being very scholarly (it certainly is that) and yet being profoundly informative to a non-specialist like myself who is also not a trained linguist.

The best affirmation I can make of this book is that it is quite possibly the best template for any field linguist to follow when documenting and characterizing a language.  This is certainly true for someone working with an Endangered language, of which there are literally thousands still being spoken (some just barely) in the world today.  The level of commitment Prof Nichols has brought to bear on this work seems nothing short of miraculous.

This is definitely not a book for just anyone.  Like attempting to read all of Proust in the original French while not actually speaking French, a true appreciation of this book requires enormous patience and strong memory skills.  Prof Nichols refers to sections back and forth across the book, of necessity since linguistic elements do not exist in a vacuum.  That said, to truly appreciate the scope and even grandeur of this volume will command great mental agility and focus.  For anyone who is up to the challenge, I say, “Good luck – and enjoy!”  Even if you never speak Ingush or travel to that part of the world, this book will teach you something useful, edifying, and mind-expanding.

[Photo credits with thanks to : Book cover ©  2011 University of California Press / Portrait © 2012 Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin]

Kevin Gillette

Words Across Time

28 September 2022

wordsacrosstime

[moviehealthcommunity]

Abigail (2024)

This is a Movie Health Community evaluation. It is intended to inform people of potential health hazards in movies and does not reflect the quality of the film itself. The information presented here has not been reviewed by any medical professionals.

Abigail has one brief scene lit by a flickering cigarette lighter, and one where lights flicker off ominously. Neither of these scenes lasts very long.

All of the camera work in this film is either stationary or very smooth.

Flashing Lights: 3/10. Motion Sickness: 1/10.

TRIGGER WARNING: This film is very bloody and gory. The opening sequence depicts the kidnapping of a child. One woman vomits suddenly after discovering a gory scene. A man vomits blood with several seconds of body language warning beforehand.

Video ID: Admin Brandon's review and evaluation of Abigail

[hughmanrights]

Abigail film review Director(s): Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett Main cast: Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Alisha Weir, Kathryn Newton, William Catlett, Kevin Durand, Angus Cloud and Giancarlo Esposito. Runtime: 109 minutes. Basic Plot: A group of professional criminals kidnap the young daughter of a powerful underworld figure. These criminals discover that their seemingly innocent hostage is a sadistic vampire. This film is a remake of the 1936 film “Dracula’s Daughter”. Caution Warning: ⁃ Extreme blood and gore ⁃ Disturbing implications (spoilers) Overall Thoughts: Abigail is a fun but extremely bloody film. The acting, storyline and special effects are all great. There are some great plot twists. Overall rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars

[brokehorrorfan]

Children can be such monsters. Abigail opens in theaters on April 19 via Universal, and Broke Horror Fan is celebrating with a giveaway.

Four winners will receive an Abigail shirt. Fill out this form to enter. Winners will be picked at random next Friday. One entry permitted per person, US residents only.

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett (Scream 5, Scream VI) direct from a script by Guy Busick (Scream 5, Scream VI) and Stephen Shields (The Hole in the Ground). Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, William Catlett, Kevin Durand, Angus Cloud, Alisha Weir, and Giancarlo Esposito star.

After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, and they discover, to their mounting horror, that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl.

[blackcatfilmprod]

Hi Guys,

Tonight Boys 'n' Ghouls Film Review Podcast reviews Abigail here. https://youtu.be/0mMhi6qG0uw via YouTube