#lovecraft kurt is more creative | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kurtty-drabbles · 6 years

Text

Love is all you need au(cults)

n/a: Lovecraft Kurt, evil wizard Kurt and actor Kurt have to suffer from fangirls. Maybe I make a crossover with them, for now, this one only Lovecraft Kurt and Evil Wizard Kurt will meet.

@djinmer4 @dannybagpipesarecalling

A court can be a place of envy of many people, but, also can be the despair of many. Jia Jing never once thought or even pay no mind to the gossip some courts gather, especially, the court of the necromancer and his weird harem. Jia is a new member of the Zaorva´s temple, the name may not be the strongest point of the temple(Zoarvians, see? that´s why people prefer to call just temple) but the blue girl is happier learning more healing and defensives spells and is even happier to be able to help the world.

Be realistic, little Jia, the world is a chaotic mess, there´s always good and bad as well grey, so, one good deed won´t radically change the entire world, however, one good deed can change one person and that´s enough.

Her superiors often leave this piece of advice for Jia. And the girl still doesn´t understand the term. At least, not as well the others wanted. Tonight is chores duty, and Jia is the one responsible to take the trash out, much to her chagrin.

"Uhm, this stick so bad, what they are eating?" Jia asked shaking her head and ready to throw the trash on the disposal, recycling has a deep meaning to the temple.

Sadly, this trash won´t ever be recycled. A hand muffled her mouth and prevent her screams to be head. A voice is heard with a sleeping spell and Jia´s eyes are closed now.

_________________________________

Kurt Wagner is not a man above to admit his own mistakes, it was a mistake made that deal with Genosha and the X-men, it gave more headache to him(and of course, he give more grieve in retribution), so Kurt can admit making mistakes and his newest mistakes were Amanda Szardos. The woman may be pretty but is too rotten inside to even admire her looks, rotten and stupid.

Kurt, for a moment, thought the woman take a hint of his displeasure and leave back to her cult, mixing two cults is bad enough, but one dedicated to HIM is a really bad idea.

But this is rendered short as Amanda is back(Kurt cringe at the sight of Amanda waving at him as she demands someone to open the door as this is her house as she the GREAT AMANDA SZARDOS shouldn't have to open the door, Kurt refuse to open as in the end, Amanda open herself muttering angrily at that)

"Who was the fool who dares to not open the door to the great Amanda?" she speaks in a boisterous tone. Kurt raises his hand and saw her mood change, good, it matches his own now. Kurt´s good mood is ruined thanks to her.

Kurt saw Amanda carrying a large sack. The man can only guess this is another gift to buy him into HIS cult. Which makes his mood get even worse.

"Szardos, you are here, again. Clearly, intelligence is not a requirement for HIS cult" Kurt mutters angrily and cuts the chase "very well, what gift you gave me in HIS name or whatever?"

Amanda smiles arrogantly this time.

"You are a necromancer and you like to experiment, so, how about this?" Amanda opens the sack revealing a still sleeping Jia, thanks to the spell, to a very angry and confused Kurt. "Not your daughter, I make sure of that, once you mentioned how you wanted to experiment in someone with wings, here it is, of course, the exchange is not free, you must workship HIM" the way she speaks is pretty obvious that HIM = her "in order to do that, you should grovel before me right now"

Kurt would laugh at this poor attempt of persuasion and murder Amanda in the most violent way possible(he is in one of those moods now)however, not even his bad mood can make Kurt miss the Zaorva´s badge on the girl´s uniform. Green uniform, it means the girl is a novice in the field.

(Kurt still remember when he goes against the temple and the man does not wish to repeat the experience in any way. Also, maybe siring so many children in his immortal life make the man has a bit of compassion for kids)

Amanda was flying, well, hovering above the ground talking about her powers, when shadows start to emerge from the place and Kurt only groans at that.

Kurt rose from his throne, no reason to not enjoy the taste of his conquest in many forms, and was ready to take the girl back home before killing Amanda, when, of course, HIM shows up in the most dramatic way possible.

The necromance exhales by his nose as the entity wearing a mask, far too obvious as the mask is almost breaking, take the girl in his arms and looks at Amanda really displeased. Amada lost her ability to fly and by the looks lost much more.

"Master" Amanda speaks in reverence and the entity wearing the blue mask similar of Kurt(the necromancer feels many negative things about this) is carrying the sleeping girl as his eyes are solely on Amanda.

(ALL.OF.HIS.EYES.)

"I did have bad Heralds before, incompetents one, of course, but you? Congratulations, you pick my disgust and anger, not an easy feat, Szardos, so, pat yourself in the back or on the shoulder, you really piss me off" the little girl still sleep but speaks or tries to in her sleep.

"I have to return this one to Zaorva, but, Amanda, don´t go missing me, I´ll be watching and soon, we´ll talk about it" the entity now look at Kurt smiling too big for his face(his own face?) "make her suffer will you?"

"You don´t need to ask twice" is all the necromancer speak as his eyes are crimson and Amanda is in a circle now trying to leave as the necromancer smiles.

"Maybe if you grovel before me, I may be forgiving...Oh, who Am I kidding?" Kurt snaps his fingers and Amanda scream in pain.

______________________________________

A blonde woman with freckles is at the temple´s door waiting until the man with blue fur and a white suit shows up with the sleeping Jia, who now, wakes up, completely confused and unsure of everything.

"Little one, is ok, you are saved now, go back to the temple, your superiors are sick of worry" the woman´s voice is far too similar of Kitty, one of her superiors, but...at the same time, it´s different. Too motherly. Too above humans. Jia´s eyes widen as conclusions are racing in her mind.

"Shush, just go back, no question asked, little one" the woman ordered gently and Jia make a salute and enter in the temple, the woman laugh at the exchange and look at the entity in front at her.

"Thank you, that´s was nice of you"

"Zaorva, she is one of your toys, of course, I would intervene" Zaorva chuckles and kiss his check.

"Still was sweet, either way, what will happen to that woman?"

"She is dead now, huh, necromancers don´t know real torture, Zaorva, do you want to torture Amanda with me?"

"She takes one of my people from me to be sacrificed, of course, but I admit, you are more creative in the torture part, me? I tend to just eat them" the Crawling god of chaos smiles at this and wrap his tail around her waist, they have an appointment now and is not good to let Amanda waiting. Is not nice to let the victim waiting.

#kurtty #the lovecraft one #the necromancer haven´t meet kitty yet #kurt wagner #kitty pryde #jia jing #zaorva is pratical in the time to punish someone #lovecraft kurt is more creative #the necromancer kill amanda in a painful way #not enough for him

2 notes · View notes

brokehorrorfan · 3 years

Text

Book Review: Underexposed! The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made

For every movie that makes it to the screen, there are countless others that never see the light of day. In Abrams Books' Underexposed! The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made, author Joshua Hull chronicles the ill-fated history of 50 movies that failed to come to fruition. The unique journeys - some were mere pitches, others were developed to varying extents, and a few even entered production - coupled with the reasons why they failed to come to fruition - from creative differences to budgetary concerns - provide a fascinating look at the challenging world of filmmaking.

It's frustrating that many of these promising projects came so close to reaching viewers (case in point: Guillermo Del Toro's $150 million adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's cosmic horror opus At the Mountains of Madness starring Tom Cruise), although there are a few that are probably best left unseen. (Did we really need The Lord of the Rings starring The Beatles or A Clockwork Orange starring The Rolling Stones?) Many of the movies were highly publicized in the internet age (like Neill Blomkamp's Alien legacy sequel), while others are more obscure (such as William Friedkin's Jack the Ripper with Anthony Hopkins or a David Lynch comedy starring Martin Short and Steve Martin). But in all cases, the "What if?" of it all is fascinating.

Underexposed would be a worthy addition to any cinephile's bookshelf regardless, but the addition of original artwork makes it worthy of a coveted coffee table display. With the assistance of PosterSpy, a different artist was commissioned to create a full-page poster for each of the 50 essays. The impressive and diverse lineup of talent includes Scott Saslow, Matt Talbot, Liza Shumskaya, Sam Coyle, Tom Coupland, Ben Turner, Mark Levy, Bella Grace, Julien Rico Jr, Si Heard, Chris Garofalo, and more.

Filmmaker Fred Dekker (The Monster Squad, Night of the Creeps) provides a foreword in which he gives a glimpse into his first unmade movie: a Johnny Quest adaptation. He also discusses Shadow Company (detailed later in the book), an action-horror film he wrote with John Carpenter on board to direct and Kurt Russell in mind to star. His takeaways are that most movies don't get made, and if they do they bear little resemblance to the original vision. Hull also pens a brief introduction in which he explains that, as a no-budget filmmaker in Indiana, the book is the result of the old adage "write what you know."

It may not offer any new insight, as the content is gleaned from public information, but Underexposed is a convenient resource with concise overviews that span only a few pages. The essays are broken down into four screenplay-inspired sections: Fade In (setting up the background), Flashback (providing context on the project and filmmaker), Action (detailing on the development), and Cut (exploring why it failed and what became of it). Far from reading a Wikipedia entry, Hull's casual, snark-tinged tone makes the 252-page book an easy read.

Horror fans will be delighted - and heartbroken - to read about a sixth Nightmare on Elm Street installment written by Peter Jackson (which could still work as a revival of the franchise); Alfred Hitchcock’s boundary-pushing Kaleidoscope told from a serial killer's point of view; Quentin Tarantino's remake of the Lucio Fulci giallo The Psychic; a concept for Jason vs. Cheech and Chong from the director of Friday the 13th Part VI; Joe Dante's surreal tribute to Roger Corman with Colin Firth as the B-movie maven; an attempt at Batman vs. Godzilla in the wake of King Kong vs. Godzilla’s success; and more. They're not all horror, but a large percentage of the 50 films covered are genre titles.

Several of the essays are accompanied by sidebars that touch on related unmade films, either by the same filmmaker or based on the same property. Hull smartly relegates two unmade films that each have a documentary's worth of information readily available - Tim Burton's Superman Returns and Alejandro Jodorowsky's June - to the sidebar, but many others are worthy of their own essays and artwork. With no shortage of material to pull from, I would love to see Hull, PosterSpy, and Abrams re-team for a sequel.

Underexposed! The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made is available now in hardcover and e-book via Abrams Books.

#underexposed #posterspy #horror #fred dekker #book #gift #article #review #book review #joshua hull #john carpenter #alien #a nightmare on elm street #friday the 13th #godzilla

33 notes · View notes

aion-rsa · 4 years

Text

Best Horror Movies on Amazon Prime Right Now

https://ift.tt/2G6IjxE

Editor’s Note: This post is updated regularly. Bookmark this page and come back to stay up to date with the best horror movies on Amazon Prime. Den of Geek participates in Amazon’s affiliate program and may receive a commission from links on this page.

Updated for October 2020

Amazon Prime’s selection of horror movies is as extensive as it is terrifying. What’s more, they have a significant selection of both new and old/classic films for your scary pleasures. So we’ve compiled our picks of the best scary movies to watch on Halloween (or any other time) on Amazon Prime Video right now.

Now, pour yourself a glass of something good and dig your fangs in to our list of the best horror movies you can watch on Amazon Prime Video.

Afflicted

One of the better recent found-footage efforts takes a ghastly turn when one of the filmmakers wakes up foaming at the mouth with his eyeballs rolling back in their sockets. He can also suddenly run faster than a car speeding in a school zone. Diagnosis: vampirism.

There is no cure for the undead except feeding on human blood (especially child molesters). That epic travel blog they were planning is going to be supernaturally epic.

Watch Afflicted on Amazon (US Only)

Bone Tomahawk

Writer and musician Craig Zahler made his feature directorial debut with this grim, ultra-violent and unique hybrid of the Western and horror genres — two great tastes, etc.

Movies

Best Horror Movies on Netflix: Scariest Films to Stream

By David Crow and 2 others

Movies

The 20 Best Horror Movies on Netflix UK – Scary Films to Watch Right Now

By Rosie Fletcher

Kurt Russell is outstanding as Sheriff Franklin Hunt, who must lead a posse into the wilderness to rescue three people from a brutal tribe of Indians who may not even be human as we know it. The grisly confrontation that ensues is not for the squeamish. Zahler gets the period details and the horror right, while the rest of his excellent cast includes Richard Jenkins, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox and others.

Watch Bone Tomahawk on Amazon

Buried

Before he found failure as Green Lantern and then career rebirth as Deadpool, Ryan Reynolds made this tight, claustrophobic thriller in which he wakes up to find himself sealed in a coffin.

Turns out that Reynolds’ character is a contractor working in Iraq, abducted and buried by an insurgent kidnapper who has left him a cellphone. While the abductor calls to demand a ransom, Reynolds attempts to contact the outside world — with director Rodrigo Cortes never leaving the confined space of the coffin. What’s amazing is how well he and Reynolds pull this exercise in storytelling economy off.

Watch Buried on Amazon

The Cabin in the Woods

A remote cabin in the woods is one of the most frequently occurring settings in all of horror. What better location for teenagers to be tormented by monsters, demons, or murderous hillbillies? Writer/Director Joss Whedon takes that tried and true setting and uses it as a jumping off points for one of the most successful metatextual horror movies in recent memory.

Movies

Best Horror Movies to Watch on Shudder Right Now

By Rosie Fletcher and 1 other

Movies

31 Best Horror Movies to Stream

By Alec Bojalad and 1 other

Like you would expect, The Cabin in the Woods features five college friends (all representing certain youthful archetypes, of course) renting a….well, a cabin in the woods. Soon things begin to go awry in a very traditional horror movie way. But then The Cabin in the Woods begins doling out some of the many tricks it has up its sleeve. This is a fascinating, very funny, and yet still creepy breakdown of horror tropes that any horror fan can enjoy.

Watch The Cabin in the Woods on Amazon

City of the Living Dead

Italian horror director Lucio Fulci kicked off his famous “Gates of Hell” trilogy with this gruesome, crude but surreal 1980 gorefest, in which a reporter (Christopher George) and a psychic (Catriona MacColl) struggle to stop those gates from opening and letting a horde of hungry undead into the world.

Fulci loosely based the movie on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, vying for the latter’s brooding atmosphere while indulging in his own trademark splatter. The results are somewhat slapdash but a must-see for Italian horror fans. Followed by the much better The Beyond (1980) and House by the Cemetery (1981).

Watch City of the Living Dead on Amazon

Climax

An uncategorizable but still horrific entry from the endlessly provocative French director Gaspar Noe (Irreversible), Climax starts off with — of all things — a lively, lengthy dance number in which an isolated dance troupe nails the erotic, exotic, physically demanding routine they’ve practiced for months.

But then someone slips an extremely potent drug into the punch during the party afterwards, and the tight-knit troupe turns into a raging mob of psychotics who tear, beat, and fuck each other to death. Another not-for-the-faint-of-heart film, Climax is perverse, macabre, and visceral — yet somehow alive even in the midst of all its morbidity.

Watch Climax on Amazon

Crawl

Kaya Scodelario (The Maze Runner) has to battle both hungry alligators and relentlessly rising floodwaters in this punchy better-than-you-expected thriller from director Alexandre Aja (Piranha 3D). Scodelario plays Haley, a college student who goes to check on her reclusive dad during the onset of a Category 5 hurricane and finds him injured in his basement just as nature runs all kinds of amok.

Our own Patrick Sproull said in his review that the movie delivers an “exhilarating shock to the system” and simply wants to “entertain the bejesus out of you,” which is all we want in these waning days of the Republic. Killer alligators and a deadly cyclone? It’s like two scary movies for the price of one.

Watch Crawl on Amazon

The Crazies

The Crazies is a zombie movie without the undead. And that kind of makes sense given that it was written and directed by the zombie maestro, himself: George A. Romero.

Movies

Best Horror Movies on Hulu

By Alec Bojalad and 1 other

Movies

Best Modern Horror Movies

By Don Kaye

1973’s The Crazies (there’s also a 2010 remake) tells the story of an experimental bioweapon called “Trixie.” There are only two possible results from exposure to Trixie: death or irreversible raving insanity. That’s rough. But what’s even worse is that Trixie is accidentally unleashed in Evans City, Pennsylvania, turning the small town into war zone where any neighbor could become violently insane at any moment.

Like his zombie works, Romero uses this creative horror/sci-fi concept to great satirical and symbolic effect.

Watch The Crazies on Amazon (US Only)

The Dead Zone

The Dead Zone strangely remains both one of Stephen King’s more underrated movie adaptations as well as one of director David Cronenberg’s more unsung efforts. Yet it ends up being among the best from both author and auteur, while also providing star Christopher Walken with one of his most moving, complex performances to date.

Walken’s Johnny Smith awakens from a coma to find out he’s lost five years of his life but gained a frightening talent to touch people and see both their deepest secrets and their future. Whether to use that power to impact the world around him is the choice he must face in this bittersweet, eerie and heartfelt film, which found Cronenberg moving away from his trademark body horror for the first time.

Watch The Dead Zone on Amazon

The Devil Bat

Ah, The Devil Bat. One of those infamous vampire movies that isn’t actually about vampires. But who the hell cares when it has Bela Lugosi in it, right?

But this poverty row production from 1940 features plenty of atmospherics, as well as a giant honkin’ bat, and that’s enough to set the mood on a chilly night. Especially if you’re indulging in adult beverages or contraband. If nothing else, just bow down to Bela.

Watch The Devil Bat on Amazon

Die, Monster, Die!

This was just the second feature film ever adapted from a story by H.P. Lovecraft, with movie producers eager to find other horror writers’ work to plunder after Roger Corman hit it big with his Edgar Allan Poe movies in the early 1960s.

This one is based on Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space,” which you may recognize as the title of a recent nutty Nicolas Cage movie also based on the same tale. Boris Karloff stars in this one, about a scientist who discovers that a crashed meteor begins to mutate all the plant and animal life around his home, including him and his wife. It’s kind of a slow burner but it does have its weird-ass imagery.

Watch Die, Monster, Die! on Amazon (US only)

The Exorcist III

Out of the many attempts to sequelize William Friedkin’s classic 1972 movie The Exorcist, this is the only one worthy of the original. William Peter Blatty, author of the original book, wrote a sequel novel called Legion and adapted and directed it himself for this chilling movie starring George C. Scott.

Scott plays Detective Kinderman (the role filled by Lee J. Cobb in The Exorcist), who investigates a series of murders that have connections to both the first movie’s exorcism and a spate of killings done years earlier by the now-dead Gemini Killer. Even with extensive studio-forced reshoots, Blatty has fashioned an eerie theological thriller, with one sequence that is a stone-cold classic of tension and shock.

Watch The Exorcist III on Amazon (US only)

A Field in England

2013’s A Field in England presents compelling evidence that more horror movies should be shot in black and white.

Directed by British director Ben Wheatley, A Field in England is a kaleidoscope of trippy, cerebral horror. The film takes place in 1648, during the English Civil War. A group of soldiers is taken in by a kindly man, who is soon revealed to be an alchemist. The alchemist takes the soldiers to a vast field of mushrooms where they are subjected to a series of mind-altering, nightmarish visions.

A Field in England is aggressively weird, creative, and best of all clocks in at exactly 90 minutes.

Watch A Field in England on Amazon (US only)

Frankenstein: The True Story

Well, not exactly. Originally presented as a two-part mini-series on NBC back in 1974, Frankenstein: The True Story takes plenty of liberties with Mary Shelley’s milestone novel. But it keeps the essence and atmosphere of the story intact, while taking it down some interesting new narrative paths.

The cast is sensational, led by Leonard Whiting as Dr. Frankenstein, Michael Sarrazin as the creature — who starts out beautiful and ends up degenerating into a monster — and especially James Mason as the Dr. Pretorius-like Polidori, named after one of Mary Shelley’s colleagues who was there when she began writing the novel. Frankenstein: The True Story is both macabre and lush, and deserves rediscovery.

Watch Frankenstein: The True Story on Amazon

Fright Night

Screenwriter-turned-director Tom Holland lets a jaded, smarmy vampire named Jerry Dandridge loose in suburbia and watches the blood spurt in this beloved ‘80s horror staple.

Chris Sarandon brings a nice combination of amusement and menace to the role of the bloodsucker, while Planet of the Apes veteran Roddy McDowall is endearing as a washed-up horror host recruited into a real-life horror show. Much of Fright Night is teen-oriented and somewhat dated, but it still works as a sort of precursor to later post-modern horror gems like Scream.

Watch Fright Night on Amazon

Hereditary

Between Hereditary and The Haunting of Hill House 2018 was a great year for turning familial trauma into horror.

Movies

Hereditary: The Real Story of King Paimon

By Tony Sokol

Movies

Hereditary Ending Explained

By David Crow

Written and directed by Ari Aster, Hereditary follows the Graham family as they deal with the death of their secretive grandmother. As Annie Graham (Toni Collette) comes to terms with the loss, she begins to realize that she may have inherited a mental illness from her late mother…or something worse.

Hereditary is terrifying because it asks a deceptively simple but truly creepy question: what do we really inherit from our family?

Watch Hereditary on Amazon (US only)

The Hole in the Ground

Recent horror trends have stumbled across a universal truth: kids are very creepy. A24’s Irish horror film The Hole in the Ground makes great use of that truth.

The Hole in the Ground follows a woman named Sarah O’Neill who opts to leave her (likely abusive) husband and move out to the lonely Irish countryside with her son, Chris. Things are going well until Chris starts to exhibit some strange behaviors. Not only that, but an old woman in the village tells Sarah that her son “is not your son.” When that woman is found dead with her head in the dirt, Sarah is forced to confront that maybe little Chris isn’t her Chris after all.

Watch The Hole in the Ground on Amazon (US only)

The House of the Devil

Indie horror auteur Ti West’s low-budget creepfest is a homage to 1980s horror yet plays it straight; he sets out to make a movie with the feel of genre films from that era without making self-aware in-jokes and references — and he mostly succeeds.

But The House of the Devil is also the definition of a “slow burn”: very little happens for much of the first hour (save a jolt here and there) and then the third act explodes into a paroxysm of murder, gore and Satanic horror. That makes the film feel a little off-balance, although in the end it all becomes quite unnerving.

Watch The House of the Devil on Amazon

House on Haunted Hill

What would you do for $10,000? How about surviving a night in a mansion haunted by murder victims and owned by a psychotic millionaire? Seems like a party trick until people actually start dying.

Vincent Price is the master and mastermind of a house that suddenly makes everyone homicidal—but the real pièce de résistance is what dances out of a vat of flesh-eating acid.

Some vintage horror never dies, and this 1959 classic is immortal.

Watch House on Haunted Hill on Amazon

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

One of a holy trifecta of remakes that actually improved on their predecessors (the other two are John Carpenter’s The Thing and David Cronenberg’s The Fly), 1978’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers hits that horror/sci-fi sweet spot with a cosmic premise, terrifying imagery and a nerve-rattling naturalism.

Movies

The Legacy of Invasion of The Body Snatchers

By Jim Knipfel

Movies

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers: How Philip Kaufman’s Remake Improved on the Original

By Ryan Lambie

Director Philip Kaufman shifts the story from small-town California to San Francisco, while updating the metaphor from a warning against Communism to a cautionary tale of urban alienation. But in the end, watching those duplicates of Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams and Jeff Goldblum ooze out of their alien pods is as terrifying as ever, making this a genuine classic of its time.

Watch Invasion of the Body Snatchers on Amazon (US only)

The Last House on the Left

Released in 1972, the directorial debut of the mighty (and sadly late) Wes Craven remains one of the most important horror films ever made. It helped kick off an era of horror cinema that tapped directly into the unrest of the late 1960s and 1970s, the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots, the alienation between parents and children and the escalation of violence throughout the nation.

It also showed, in nauseatingly graphic fashion, what happens when you strip away the veneer of civilization from both the characters you are expected to despise and those you are supposed to like. The result is still a crude, disturbing and grueling experience that is genuinely not for everyone.

Watch The Last House on the Left on Amazon (US only)

The Lighthouse

The second feature from The Witch writer/director Robert Eggers is just as accomplished as his debut, if almost entirely different in tone and imagery.

Movies

The Lighthouse: the myths and archetypes behind the movie explained

By Rosie Fletcher

Movies

The Lighthouse Ending Explained

By David Crow

Whereas The Witch was an exercise in Puritan supernatural terror, The Lighthouse is more of a descent into watery psychological madness, seasoned with a heavy dollop of Lovecraftian horror. Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe are brilliant as the mentally crumbling guardians of the title structure, with the latter in particular giving a crazed performance for the ages.

Watch The Lighthouse on Amazon (US only)

The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue

This 1974 film is almost as famous for its many alternate titles (including Breakfast at the Manchester Morgue and Let Sleeping Corpses Lie) as it is for being one of the first worthy zombie films to come out in the wake of Night of the Living Dead six years earlier.

With its counter-culture protagonists and environmental message (the dead are brought back to life by a form of radiation used as a pesticide), Manchester Morgue tries to be as socially conscious as the Romero classic it emulates. But it’s all about the zombie mayhem as well — and in full color, no less. This cult classic deserves a place of honor in the pantheon of the walking dead.

Watch The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue on Amazon (US only)

Midsommar

It’s hard to categorize Midsommar, Ari Aster’s followup to his absolutely terrifying horror debut, Hereditary. Part straight up horror, part The Wicker Man, and part anthropological study, Midsommar seems to occupy many genres all at once. Aster himself called it a “break up” movie. But whatever genre Midsommar is, it is a brilliant, and at times deeply disturbing film.

Movies

Midsommar: Florence Pugh Considers Ending Theories, May Queen Fandom

By David Crow

Movies

Midsommar: Getting Immersed in the Movie’s Terrifying World

By Don Kaye

Florence Pugh stars Dani, a young woman trying to heal in the wake of an enormous tragedy. Dani follows her boyfriend, Christian, and his annoying friends to an important midsummer festival deep in the heart of Sweden. Christian and company are there partly to get high and have fun and also partly to study the unique, isolated culture for their respective theses. To say that they get more than they bargained for is an understatement. But Dani may just end up getting exactly what she needs.

Watch Midsommar on Amazon

Neverlake

Horrors always lurk at the bottom of murky lakes, but the dead-eyed doll heads and evil statues staring from beneath the greenish surface of this one will have you begging Swamp Thing for mercy. That’s before some brutally disfigured orphans shamble out of the woods.

When Jenny visits her archaeologist father in Italy, long-drowned secrets start bubbling to the surface. To think, all this was supposed to be a vacation. Riccardo Paoletti’s directorial debut is worth checking out.

Watch Neverlake on Amazon

Night of the Living Dead

George A. Romero’s 1968 zombie classic The Night of the Living Dead messed up the minds of late ’60s moviegoers as much as it messed with every horror movie that followed. Shot on gritty black and white stock, the film captures the desperate urgency of a documentary shot at the end of the world. It is a tale of survival, an allegory for the Vietnam War and racism and suspenseful as hell freezing over.

Night of the Living Dead set a new standard for gore, even though you could tell some of the bones the zombies were munching came from a local butcher shop. But what grabs at you are the unexpected shocks. Long before The Walking Dead, Romero caught the terror that could erupt from any character, at any time.

They’re coming to get you. There’s one of them now!

Watch Night of The Living Dead on Amazon

Nosferatu

Nothing beats a classic, and that’s exactly what Nosferatu is. As the unofficial 1922 adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this German Expressionist masterpiece was almost lost to the ages when the filmmakers lost a copyright lawsuit with Stoker’s widow (who had a point). As a result, most copies were destroyed…but a precious few survived.

This definitive horror movie from F.W. Murnau might be a silent picture, but it is a haunting one where vampirism is used as a metaphor for plague and the Black Death sweeping across Europe. When Count Orlock comes to Berlin, he brings rivers of rats with him and the most repellent visage ever presented by a cinematic bloodsucker. The sexy vampires would come later, starting with 1931’s more polished vision of Count Dracula as legendarily played by Bela Lugosi, but Max Schreck is buried under globs of makeup in Nosferatu making him resemble an emaciated cadaver. Murnau plays with shadow and light to create an intoxicating environment of fever dream repressions. But he also creates the most haunting cinematic image of a vampire yet put on screen.

Check it out.

Watch Nosferatu on Amazon (US only)

Open Grave

Post-apocalyptic zombie fans won’t want to miss the love child of The Walking Dead meets 28 Days Later, now with amnesia. When a man who’s forgotten every fragment of his identity (Sharlto Copley) wakes up in a body pit crawling with pathogens, he scrambles out to fight a swarm of brain-craving undead along with five other amnesiacs.

The Best Horror TV Shows to Watch Right Now

By Ron Hogan

Best Horror TV Shows on Netflix

By Alec Bojalad

It gets even more terrifying when the pieces of memory hiding in his flashbacks are unearthed.

Watch Open Grave on Amazon

Overlord

War is terrifying enough as is. It doesn’t need the addition of Nazi super soldier zombies. Thankfully the J.J. Abrams-produced Overlord decided to include them anyway.

Overlord picks up on the eve of D-Day when a paratrooper quad is sent in behind enemy lines to destroy a German radio tower located in an old church. Their plane is shot down and only a handful survivors land. Those who do will soon discover that the horror has just begun.

Watch Overlord on Amazon (US only)

Vestron

Paperhouse

Hard to see in the U.S. since its 1989 release (it’s still not out here on DVD or Blu-ray for reasons unclear), Paperhouse was directed by Bernard Rose, who went on to make the equally acclaimed Candyman three years later.

But Paperhouse may be his masterwork. A young girl named Anna (Charlotte Burke) finds the line between reality and her dreams blurring, with her alcoholic father transforming into a frightening monster in the dream world. A slightly confusing ending doesn’t lessen the impact of this highly effective dark fantasy fable.

Watch Paperhouse on Amazon

Pet Sematary (2019)

After the classic Stephen King novel of the same name and Mary Lambert’s 1989 movie, what could there possibly be left to say about Pet Sematary? Quite a lot actually! Directors Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer breathe new life into this old tale…not unlike a certain “sematary” itself.

Movies

Pet Sematary Ending Explained

By John Saavedra

Movies

Why Pet Sematary 2 Is an Underrated Stephen King Movie

By Stephen Harber

Jason Clarke stars as Louis Creed, an ER doctor from Boston who moves his family to rural Ludlow, Maine to live a quieter life. Shortly into their stay, Louis and his wife Rachel (Amy Semeitz) experience an unthinkable tragedy. That’s ok though as neighbor Jud Crandall (John Lithgow) knows a very peculiar place that can help.

Watch Pet Sematary on Amazon (US only)

Phantasm

Director and writer Don Coscarelli has said that this 1979 cult classic was inspired by a recurring dream — and we believe him, since Phantasm has the surreal, not-quite-there feel of an inescapable nightmare from start to finish.

With its bizarre plot about a funeral parlor acting as a front to send undead slave labor to another dimension, the iconic image of the Tall Man, killer dwarves and those deadly silver spheres, Phantasm was and is like no other movie of its era.

Watch Phantasm on Amazon (US only)

The Pit and the Pendulum

Following the success of his first Edgar Allan Poe movie starring Vincent Price, 1960’s The Fall of the House of Usher, director Roger Corman returned to Poe for a second serving, once again starring Price and also featuring horror queen Barbara Steele, with a script by Richard Matheson.

The movie gets off to a slow start and very little of the plot is derived from Poe’s moody short story, but the picture drips with Gothic atmosphere and saturated colors. Vincent Price gives another mesmerizingly over the top performance, and the final 20 minutes — where we finally see the title torture device swing into action — is worth the price of admission alone.

Watch The Pit and the Pendulum on Amazon (US only)

Pumpkinhead

Another cult favorite from the late ‘80s, Pumpkinhead stars Lance Henriksen as a country store owner whose young son is killed by a bunch of teens on motorbikes. The grief-stricken dad consults with a local witch to get his revenge — and she assists him by summoning the monstrous title demon.

Best Horror TV Shows on Netflix

By Alec Bojalad

Best Horror TV Shows on Amazon Prime

By Alec Bojalad and 1 other

The directorial debut of makeup FX wizard Stan Winston, Pumpkinhead boasts one of the most memorable screen monsters of its time and a haunted performance by the great Henriksen (also notable is Florence Schauffler as the terrifying witch). But Winston’s direction itself is routine, causing Pumpkinhead to just miss being a true classic. It’s still a terrific Halloween watch.

Watch Pumpkinhead on Amazon (US only)

A Quiet Place

Thanks to a killer premise and excellent execution, A Quiet Place was one of 2018’s best horror movies and now it’s ready for a second life on streaming.

The film, directed by erstwhile Office star John Krasinski (who also stars in the project) follows the Abbott family as they try to survive a dangerous post-apocalyptic world. To make things even more difficult, however, the world is populated by blind creatures that also possess a devastatingly strong sense of hearing.

Movies

A Quiet Place: Who Are the Monsters?

By David Crow

Movies

A Quiet Place, and Using Low Budgets to Electrifying Effect

By Ryan Lambie

Father Lee and mother Evelyn (Emily Blunt) try to protect their children from these monsters – all the while not making a sound. The formula of A Quiet Place is destined to be oft-repeated for a reason. Horror really works when you’re unable to scream.

Watch A Quiet Place on Amazon (US Only)

Season of the Witch

Bored Stepford-esque housewife Joan (Jan White) is stuck in a suburban bubble with an abusive husband when she meets a mysterious new neighbor (Virginia Greenwald) who practices witchcraft. Pretty soon, Joan is casting spells to have affairs with college boys half her age, suffering from Satanic nightmares that wake her up to grim reality, and initiated into her neighbor’s backyard coven.

Movies

How Jason Blum Changed Horror Movies

By Rosie Fletcher

Movies

The 17 Best Christmas Horror Movies

By Elizabeth Rayne and 3 others

Proof that you never know what really goes on behind white picket fences. Another fine bit of weirdness from George A. Romero.

Watch Season of the Witch on Amazon (US only)

Suspiria

Suspiria is not necessarily a remake of the 1977 Italian film of the same name so much as its inspired by it. And that makes sense, as the simultaneously vibrant and creepy tone of the original film is nigh impossible to replicate it. So this Suspiria goes in a bit of a different direction tonally.

Dakota Johnson stars as Susanna “Susie” Bannion, a woman who enrolls in a prestigious Berlin dance academy that also happens to be run by a coven of witches. As Susie climbs up the ladder of the Markos Tanz Akademie she comes to learn more about its secrets.

Watch Suspiria on Amazon

The Tenant

Roman Polanski, in addition to being a creep and outright sex criminal, has a grand fascination with apartments, directing an unofficial “Apartment Trilogy” with Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Tenant. And it’s not hard to see why. There is something a little strange about dozens if not hundreds of relative strangers all calling the same place “home.”

1976’s The Tenant is the culmination of Polanski’s obsession with communal living and in some ways is the creepiest. Polanski stars as Trelkovsky, a paranoid young file clerk who is on the verge of succumbing to the constant dread he feels. Things are exacerbated when Trelkovsky moves into a Parisian apartment and discovers the previous occupant killed herself. What follows is a tense and trippy exploration of fear itself.

Watch The Tenant on Amazon (US only)

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The Wailing

Get ready for this epic-length (156 minutes!) story of possession and exorcism in a small village from director Na Hong-jin. Kwak Dowon stars as a cop who investigates a series of mysterious and violent deaths, only to discover that they have a supernatural cause that soon infects his family.

Despite odd moments of humor here and there, The Wailing is almost unremittingly bleak and its imagery is thoroughly unsettling. Deliberately paced and building an atmosphere of unspeakable dread, The Wailing is a standout of Asian horror.

Watch The Wailing on Amazon (US only)

Oscilloscope

We Need to Talk About Kevin

Mexican director Jorge Michel Grau garnered a ton of attention back in 2010 for this moody, low-key, character-driven study of a family of cannibals impacted by the death of its patriarch.

There’s no back story about how the clan became eaters of human flesh; they simply are, and the movie accepts that and focuses on the dilemma in front of them. That is more effective than spelling everything out. An English-language remake from director Jim Mickle (Stake Land) popped up in 2013.

Watch We Need to Talk About Kevin on Amazon (US only)

The post Best Horror Movies on Amazon Prime Right Now appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2UdUEDt

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

2 notes · View notes

comiccrusaders · 6 years

Text

Bassist-turned-junkie Jonny Wells is addicted to his past, but the only way to get there is through his music.This April, Insight Comics is publishing Skip to the End, a riveting graphic novel created as an allegory to the history of the legendary band Nirvana.

Skip to the End tells Jonny’s story as he tries to cope with his bandmate and best friend Kirk’s suicide. Twenty years later, Jonny struggles with heroin addiction, lost in the songs they created and desperate to relive the past—until one day he discovers he can. With the aid of a mysterious guitar, Jonny begins to make trips back in time, searching for the roots of Kirk’s unraveling. At Nar-Anon meetings and in conversations with his sponsor Emily, he starts to cope with the events that led to Kirk’s death. But by the time Jonny realizes that his visits can’t change the present, he might be too addicted to stop.

Skip to the End explores music’s transportive property, while sharing a story of friendship, combating addiction, and suicide awareness.

About the Author:

Jeremy Holt is a Vermont-based comic book writer whose most notable works include Skinned (Insight Comics), Southern Dog (Action Lab Entertainment), and Pulp (comiXology), which IGN has called “one of the best one-shot comics of the year [2013].” Follow him on Twitter: @Jeremy_Holt.

Alex Diotto is an Italian artist whose published works include Mayday (Black Mask Studios), Southern Dog and Brigands (Action Lab Entertainment), and a slew of short stories for various anthologies. Follow him on Twitter @alexdiottodraws.

Tim Daniel is a creator, writer, and designer of comics. His first original story, Enormous, was published by Image Comics in 2012. Enormous later returned to print in 2014 as an ongoing series from 215 Ink. Since then, Daniel has written and cocreated Curse and Burning Fields and more recently in 2017, Atoll, Fissure, and Spiritus, all for Vault Comics, where he currently holds the position of design director. He resides in Montana with his wife Erin and two daughters, Olivia and Elle.

Renzo Podesta was born in Rosario, Argentina, and has worked as a freelance penciller and colorist in France, Canada, England, Norway, the Netherlands, Spain, Brazil, and the United States. His notable work includes the miniseries 27 (Image Comics), Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom (Arcana Comics), and Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter (Viper Comics). Find his work at renzopodesta.blogspot.com or follow him on Twitter @renzopodesta.

Adam Wollet is a writer and letterer who has worked with both aspiring and seasoned comic book creators. You can see his work in the miniseries Kingdom Bum (Action Lab Entertainment) and Widowed (available on comiXology), and at adamwollet.com. Follow him on Twitter @adamwollet.

About Insight Editions: Celebrated for its unwavering dedication to quality, Insight Editions is a publisher of innovative books and collectibles that push the boundaries of creativity, design, and production. Through its acclaimed film, television, and gaming program, Insight strives to produce unique books and products that provide new ways to engage with fan-favorite characters and stories. Under this program, Insight has published books covering the worlds of Star Wars, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Destiny, Assassin’s Creed, Halo, Diablo, World of Warcraft, and the Harry Potter films, among many others. Insight’s award-winning art, photography, and sports titles celebrate the artistry and history of a wide range of subjects that include the Rolling Stones, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, Johnny Cash, the San Francisco Giants, and the Dallas Cowboys. Other divisions include a line of deluxe stationery products, as well as a children’s imprint, Insight Kids.

For more information, visit http://www.insighteditions.com.

New Graphic Novel Skip to the End Parallels the History of Nirvana Bassist-turned-junkie Jonny Wells is addicted to his past, but the only way to get there is through his music.This April, Insight Comics is publishing Skip to the End, a riveting graphic novel created as an allegory to the history of the legendary band Nirvana.

#comics #graphic novel #insight editions #Jeremy Holt #kurt cobain #nirvana #suicide awareness

1 note · View note

hermanwatts · 4 years

Text

Sensor Sweep: Wanderer’s Necklace, A. Bertram Chandler, Hyperborea RPG

Anime (Kairos): Contrary to many anime fans’ hopes, the fanatical, totalitarian Cult that’s usurped pop culture isn’t letting a little thing like an ocean get in the way of their conquest. Funimation, the American dubbing and distribution house that made news last year thanks to a defamation lawsuit brought against them by voice actor Vic Mignogna, now has a seat on the production committee of three anime series slated for 2020.

Fiction (DMR Books): Haggard wrote many different types of stories, which Deuce groups into the category of “exotic adventure stories,” a label that works as well as any. Among his stories were the Icelandic Saga-inspired Eric Brighteyes, and the Viking historical adventure The Wanderer’s Necklace (1914). While we don’t have much evidence that writers like Fritz Leiber or Michael Moorcock themselves read Icelandic Saga (though both have cited the influence of Norse mythology on their works, and we do know that Robert E. Howard read at least one of the Sagas as early as 1926).

SFWA (This Way to Texas): Tempest Bradford jump started the hate campaign against me, then Jim Hines jumped in. Bradford is Joe Goebbels to Nora Jemisin, who’s basically turned the SFWA into her own self-promotion racket, just like Tor Books turned the Hugo awards into its own little scheme. Hines is the same to John Scalzi, who is the single person the most responsible for the politicization of the SFWA. Most recently, Teresa Neilsen-Hayden jumped into the fray.

Fiction (Strange at Ecbatan): Today would http://rrhorton.blogspot.com/2020/03/birthday-review-stories-of-bertram.htmlhave been Arthur Bertram Chandler’s 108th birthday. He was born in England, became a seaman and eventually settled in Australia. He started writing SF in the 1940s. By the ’60s he was producing novels at a high rate, many of them about a spaceship captain named John Grimes. Here’s a look at a few of his early stories, and one 1967 Ace Double.

Review (Don Herron): When I was young I read everything I could find on ancient civilizations. Edith Hamilton, with her books on the great mythological hero-warriors, only furthered my desire to read of fabled, half-forgotten kingdoms that never were, but should have been. So, around 1966, when I discovered Robert E. Howard and Conan through the Lancer paperbacks, it was apparent to my youthful mind that truly I had been born at the right time.

Robert E. Howard (John C. Wright): Jewels of Gwahlur is neither the best nor the worst of the Conan Canon, but is somewhere in the middle. There is little to make it stand out from the other Conan stories, aside, perhaps, from the number of unexpected turns of the plot. There is a web of deception, with the deceivers being deceived in turn. Conan prevails due to his catlike stealth and lionlike courage more than his cunning wit — which he also uses. The side of the mighty Cimmerian on display in this yarn is the pilfering scoundrel rather than the barbarian mercenary or world-weary king.

Robert E. Howard (Adventures Fantastic): In a letter to Lovecraft from October 1931, Howard relates the story of Mrs. Crawford, a woman who survived a Comanche raid, and whom he knew that shows up in both of these women’s characters, and even in details in BBR involving other plot points. Again, the telling starts off with a restatement of the savage fighting history in the area of Texas between the two rivers.

Comic Books (Tentaculii): Back Issue! #121 (due in two months, 10th June 2020) is in Previews, and will be a special issue on Conan and similar in the comics. Includes among other items…the 50th anniversary of Roy Thomas’s Conan #1, the Bronze Age barbarian boom, top 50 Marvel Conan stories, Marvel’s not-quite Conans (from Kull to Skull), Joining Roy Thomas are Kurt Busiek, Ernie Colon, Chuck Dixon, Mike Grell, Ron Randall, Dann Thomas, Timothy Truman, Marv Wolfman, and many more.

Review (DMR Books): Although DC certainly followed suit once this successful formula became codified. Will Murray’s Tarzan, Conqueror of Mars is such a crossover event, which has been a hundred plus years in the making. Murray’s novel is a classic fish out of water tale, which slowly builds up steam, culminating in two Edgar Rice Burroughs protagonists, Lord Greystoke and John Carter, locked in a collision course. Conqueror is basically an Edgar Rice Burroughs universe crossover story in the tradition of Marvel Team Up or DC Comics Presents.

Fiction (Pulp Archivist): The Kickstarter for Jim Breyfogle’s Mongoose and Meerkat as now live. He’s a bit of a bravo, ready to knock a few heads for some coin. She’s a mysterious wanderer with more than her share of street-smarts and a head for ancient history. Together, the Mongoose and the Meerkat are a pair of rogues looking for coin to keep their bellies and wine skins filled and are sure to appeal to fans of classic Sword & Sorcery. This volume collects Kat and Mangos’ first five adventures with illustrations by the incredibly talented DarkFilly and is available in four formats.

RPG (Jeffro’s Space Gaming Blog): Well I don’t think I have ever run AD&D before unless you count that one disastrous attempt to run “Roarwater Caves” from Dungeon Magazine issue #15 a long, long time ago. Times have changed! With many years spent studying the ancient texts and an all star crew of players on hand, now was a great time to seize hold of gaming dreams from another time.

Pulp (Karavansara): What happened was this: Pro Se Productions, a publisher so reckless they even publish my stories (I mentioned Explorer Pulp a few days back, but there’s more), apparently went and licensed forty-two characters that were intended to form the stable of a little-known pulp magazine publisher based in St Louis, Missouri, a fly-by-night publishing company that was born and fizzed out in a matter of a few months, back in ’38. And I say “were intended” because the whole thing was over before it began, transitioning in the blink of an eye from the newsstands to the hazy memory of footnotes in pulp-collectors’ fanzines.

Cosplay (Tellers of Weird Tales): I noted in July last year that 2019 was the 80th anniversary year of what is now called cosplay. The first cosplayers were Forrest J Ackerman and his friend Morojo, who went to the first World Science Fiction Convention dressed in character. The dates were July 2-4, 1939. The place was New York City, including at the World’s Fair. What I neglected to mention is that the characters they were portraying were from Things to Come, a movie that had been in theaters just three years before. What a powerful influence it must have been on young science fiction fans of the time.

Gaming (Elf maids and Octopi): Will do a few more d100s for this space archaeology. Alternative for Traveller, star frontiers or other exploration SF. So this is some simple notes for a space archaeology campaign. Characters are mission specialists or ship crew (ex scouts). Funding bodies often nominate chosen experts for key jobs. Juggling funds and sponsors is mostly administered before an expedition. Factions continue to get involved in onboard conflicts. Expedition leader can usually veto votes from rest of the expedition. Ship crew in matters of safety and flight of ship are senior. Crew or team might have the past experience you wouldn’t expect.

Gaming (Swords and Stitchery): Today is one of those days where thoughts have been turning to introspection & especially about Jeffrey P. Talanian ‘s ‘The Sea Wolf’s Daughter’. The reason why is the implications that this module has for the future course of Hyperborea as a setting. A player of mine & I got into a discussion of this module last night via the phone. The question became what the Hell happened to Nodens & why are the nightgaunts attacking people in ‘The Sea Wolf’s Daughter’? The short answer is that Nodens is dead & the nightgaunts are running amok in Hyperborea.

Publishing (13th Dimension): But now the company is in a bit of a jam. Earlier this week, Diamond announced that next week it would temporarily suspend shipping new books because of the coronavirus crisis. Companies like Marvel and DC will be hurt by this, but they’re likely to survive. Smaller companies, however, face an even greater challenge. Right now, to help things along, TwoMorrows boss John Morrow has instituted a 40 percent off sale on all print mags, except new and upcoming releases and subscriptions.

Creativity (DVS Press): The Corona-Chan quarantine might bless us with a baby boom, but it will also bless us with a creative boom, and in the “right” direction. Hollywood has had to halt its productions. They might lose 20 billion dollars. They’ve put their feature movies onto streaming platforms, just so that they get seen and the brands can maintain some value. Hollywood and its giant apparatus represents the last remaining tower, however dark and menacing, of the corporate period in art.

Sensor Sweep: Wanderer’s Necklace, A. Bertram Chandler, Hyperborea RPG published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

0 notes

tunaforbernadette · 7 years

Text

No Humans Required: Exploring the Possibility of Computer Generated Fiction

Guest post by Wil Forbis

“It’s not hard to generate a story. It’s not hard to tell a story. It’s hard to tell good stories. How do you get a computer to understand what good means?”

Mark Riedl, associate professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology

Lately, I’ve been playing around with self-editing apps such as AutoCrit, ProWritingAid and SlickWrite. These tools, all of which offer some functionality for free, scan a user’s text and flag common literary transgressions like poor word choice, word repetition, improper sentence length and passive verbs. The apps aren’t perfect and tend to be biased towards a modern, no-frills writing style (the work of Lovecraft would caused their circuits to overload) but they can be helpful. They have caught errors that I would have otherwise missed.

The robust feature set of these apps makes the point that writing is not a single process but many. Proper word choice, balanced sentences and good grammar are key to successful writing as are larger concerns about structure, style and narrative. A good writer ties these skills together though no one masters them all. Some writers are known for excellent pacing but banal vocabulary. Others earn acclaim for great plotting while being damned for wooden dialogue.

These editing apps do not, of course, make editing decisions for you; they simply offer suggestions. Still, I find myself wondering whether they could be used to automate the editing process. Then the question arises: will software eventually write? Will computers create works of fiction out of nothing, no humans required?

This question might seem premature. The apps I’m playing with are helping with the more mundane, technical aspects of writing but they aren’t anywhere near the creative side. They aren’t developing plots or characters, or exploring the emotional symbolism of colors or religious icons. And it’s hard to imagine they could.

Still, we recognize that creativity is not magic; it is a process that can be studied and deconstructed. Bookstores are filled with volumes about using the right side of the brain, or developing creative “flow”, or finding a step-by-step process to awaken the muse. And employing process-oriented steps is exactly what software is good at.

Additionally, creative computers are not science fiction. In the world of music, computers have been composing for some time. Programmer/musician David Cope has used software to generate thousands of hours of classical pieces. Several tech start-ups such as Amper and Jukedeck have been automating the creation of background music used in online videos and films. The quality of the music varies---nothing has yet appeared to make hit songwriters nervous---but it’s credible enough.

Computers are also getting into the writing game, specifically journalism. The “natural language generation” technology of a company called Automated Insights has been used by the Associated Press to write finance articles. A competing tech company, Chicago based Narrative Science, has been generating sports and other statistics heavy news stories for years. Jeff Bezo’s Washington Post is using an AI bot called Heliograf to massage raw data about politics into human readable text.

Of course, journalism is not fiction (well, not all of it) and fiction is the kind of writing that requires the most creativity. Even there progress is being made. A European academic project, the What-If-Machine (WHIM), constructs basic plot premises by analyzing data on the web. (The WHIM software teamed up with another program, PropperWryter, to write the plot structures for a musical that recently ran in London. ) Another software tool, Scheherazade, developed at the Georgia Institute of Technology, writes original short fiction after analyzing human penned stories. These tools haven’t produced anything that’s going to put authors out of work but we are at a point where speculation on how computers could create stories and novels is valid.

As mentioned previously, writing is really many different skills, and exploring every function software will need to obtain to pen fiction is beyond the scope of this article. I’m going to consider the possibility of software tackling three tasks inherent in narrative writing: plotting, pacing and word choice.

Plotting Let’s define a plot as the “who, what, when, where, how and why” of a story. The form of it can vary between a one-paragraph synopsis or a ten-page story breakdown.

Automated plot development is not new; classic pulp fiction authors often used primitive plot generators. Erle Stanley Gardner employed a “plot wheel” to randomly combine story elements for his Perry Mason stories. Lester Dent swapped out elements in his “master fiction” plot to create stories for his Doc Savage novels.

Those early efforts were crude compared to what today’s technology offers. We now have computers with incredible processing power and the ability to parse written material and learn to correlate meaning to words. Computers are starting to “understand*” that Sweden is a place and bound to the various restrictions that places are bound to, or that dogs are living creatures and subject to various canine behaviors. As this capability expands in the future, software should have no problem filling in the “who, what, when, etc.” required for plot development.

* I realize I’m on tenuous philosophical ground when I imply computers can “understand” meaning, a feat that would presume they have some kind of consciousness. This is merely a writing shortcut: I make no claims about computers being able to think.

Early attempts will doubtless be underwhelming. (The WHIM software mentioned above already does this kind of plot development but only rarely creates gems.) Computers will need to not only understand what plots are, but what good plots are. How can this happen?

Two possibilities come to mind. One is that computers submit their plots to human reviewers. Via a crowdsourcing platform, plots could be ranked by engagement. As good plots are highlighted and bad plots down-voted, the data could then be fed back into machines that could analyze the differences. For example, computers might learn that lots of action or exotic locales are important to a good plot. (At least as defined by some readers.)

Another possibility hinges on a technique gaining ground in the world of artificial intelligence: deep learning. In this process, computers digest large amounts of data and observe trends and correlations in that data that might be missed by humans. Via deep learning, computers could analyze the text in every fiction book ever digitized*, as well those books’ sales figures and critical reception. This could lead to numerous observations about what makes plots good or bad. That data could then be used to aid a WHIM type tool in plot development.

* This kind of analysis is already occurring. Recently, scientists at the University of Vermont ran computer analysis on hundreds of stories and confirmed Kurt Vonnegut’s theory that most stories follow one of six plot outlines.

Pacing Pacing can be thought of as the flow of a story, the speed with which it progresses. Action scenes (battles/break-ins/romantic encounters, etc.) speed up the pace while expository scenes (dialogue/ruminations/descriptions etc.) slow things down. Good stories balance these two elements, though there’s no single, perfect formula.

Can computers automate the task of setting a story’s pace? To do so, they would need to be able to identify action scenes and expository scenes within text.

One way to define a scene’s nature is by identifying word types. Action scenes have a lot of action or emotion words like “scream,” “break,” “shoot,” “stab” and so on. Expository scenes have a lot of cerebral and calm words like “considered,” “wrote,” “says,” “mused” and so on.

Sentence length also indicates a scene’s character. Action scenes tend to have short, curt sentences that capture the frantic pace of what is being described. Expository scenes move more languidly and flesh things out over longer sentences.

These are two of many attributes that can be used to identify the pacing of text. With these tools in hand, computers could analyze stories and move scenes around to achieve a good balance between action and exposition.

There’s much more to pacing than described here, but this provides a high level view of how computers might tackle this writing challenge.

Word Choice The need for variety drives good word choice. Readers don’t want to see the same word echoed over and over. All of the self-editing apps mentioned above already flag repeated words.

Of course, choosing word substitutes is not about blindly swapping out synonyms. Several factors affect our choices. They include…

• Alliteration We sometimes take advantage of the sound of language when finding a word. Say you’ve already used the word “snake” and now want to refer to it again prefaced it with the adjective “repulsive.” Instead of saying "the repulsive snake" you may choose "the repulsive reptile" to play off the alliterative properties.

• Syllable Count Sometimes a you want a word that has some beef to it. You may be referring to a “reprise” but instead choose “recapitulation” as a meatier substitute. In other situations you may seek shorter words to balance a sentence correctly.

• Genre/Style The nature of the work will always have an effect on the words used. In a period detective story, a female character might be a “dame” or “moll,” while in a high society novel she may be a “lady” or “ingénue.”

• Intended Audience Every author must writer for his or her readers. Complex words should be avoided in kids’ novels but embraced in the fiction section of The New Yorker magazine.

There are many additional factors. Each of these could be thought of as a rule that could then be applied by software in the writing process. Via deep learning, computers could analyze existing stories and suss out the delicate ways these rules interoperate and influence each other. Computers may even develop new “styles” of word choice that humans find unique and engaging.

Summing it up I don’t want to make any of this sound easy. Efforts to automate writing will likely evolve in fits and starts, and the road to progress will be littered with failures. I suspect much of the development will not be in the interest of replacing human authors but aiding them. Who wouldn’t want a “pacing recommendation engine” or an “automatic thesaurus”?

There’s also the possibility that there is some unique property, some tic of the human brain, that grants a magic spark to the best human created fiction. Computer authors may never replicate this. But it’s a mistake to think they have to. Computers don’t need to write like Shakespeare to be competitive in the marketplace since most published human authors don’t meet that standard. Sometimes “good enough” is fine.

When all this could happen is hard to say. According to the science fiction of yesteryear, we should all be flying around in jet packs right now. Predicting the future is a fool’s errand but I’m enough of a fool to claim that within 20 years we will have an automated writing tool capable of generating readable fiction. And in 50, 100, 500 years? Who knows?

#featured #computer creativity #software #David Cope #Narrative Science #Automated Insights #What-if-Machine #wil forbis

0 notes