"HALLOWEEN" SHAPES UP

       
          Forty years later, and still cutting-edge.
          John Carpenter's smash indie hit spawned sequels, inspired imitators, and established an iconic character so laconic he makes Eastwood's Man With No Name seem chatty.
          Carpenter derived his idea for the William Shatner mask-wearing, butcher knife-wielding Michael Myers, aka The Shape, in some measure from the girl in the 1960 film Eyes Without a Face. Equally essential to the filmmaker's aesthetic, and also from 1960, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.
          When Halloween was released, Psycho was regarded as the high-water mark of suspense. Carpenter pays the film homage by casting, in her first film, Jamie Lee Curtis, daughter of Janet Leigh, the star of Psycho.
          What Hitchcock did for taking showers, Carpenter almost did for babysitting.
          In this new vision, which scraps all of the films except for the first one, we find Michael Myers preserved in an asylum, where for forty years he has been a silent object of study. Researchers wanting to meet him even attempt to goad him. His being quiet and unable to express himself except with weapons once every few decades drives them crazy.
          To the young people in Haddonfield, the local legend of Michael Myers, who stabbed a handful of people Halloween night forty years prior (having  murdered his sister when he was six because she was brushing her hair topless in her room), pales in comparison to the customary violence of the world normalized in intervening years.
          Only Laurie Strode, who survived the violence, understands the danger involved in the event that Michael Myers ever gets free.
          Which he does.
          Echoes of Sarah Connor from Terminator 2 aside, Curtis' Strode is a self-described "basket case" obsessed with the need to never be a victim again. That said, her resolve extends to the women in her family--her daughter and her granddaughter. Whereas the 1978 movie showcased the "senseless violence" of a killer without a cause, the 2018 film concerns three generations of women uniting against an abuser.
          Unfortunately, John Carpenter isn't the director. (Although he and Curtis produced it.) Yet for that matter, he didn't direct Halloween 2 (1981). Whether the latter or this new vision takes second-place to the original is up for debate, but neither exceeds the source material.
          Fans of the franchise know what to expect from the hallowed lore: from the mildly curious tilt of Michael's masked head, to the inevitable demise of Unlikable Teens, Halloween digs deep into the cinematic bowl and freely disperses treat after treat, even managing to throw in a few surprises.
          Well worth the watch.



HALLOWEEN
Starring Jamie Lee Curtis,
Judy Greer,
Andi Matichak,
James Jude Courtney,
Nick Castle,
Haluk Bilginer,
Will Patton,
Jefferson Hall
Directed by David Gordon Green
Written by David Gordon Green, Danny McBride, Jeff Fradley
Based on characters created by John Carpenter, Debra Hill
Runtime 106 minutes


Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE

WHAT THE ASTRONAUTS SAY

          According to Mercury 7 astronaut Gordon Cooper, in 1951, before he went into space, while flying an F-86 over Germany, he encountered a formation of "metallic-looking" craft:
          "There were a number of extraterrestrial vehicles out there kind of cruising around...they didn't have wings, they were saucer-shaped, and we never could get as high or as fast as they were," states Cooper. (To hear him, search "An Astronaut's UFO Experience - Gordon Cooper" on YouTube.) He further states that these craft were capable of maneuvers "that we couldn't do," such as "horizontally displace themselves rapidly."
          Several years later, in 1958, while working as a project manager at Edwards Air Force Base in California, Colonel Cooper had a film crew recording stages of an installation's construction when a small saucer "flew overhead and put down some landing gear and landed out on the dry lake bed only about fifty yards out." The cameramen started towards it, filming, "and with that it lifted up and put the gear back in and at a very high rate of speed disappeared."
          Cooper immediately had the film developed, following the protocol at the time required for such an event, in order to take it to Washington. Possession of it ran higher and higher up the chain of command. And that was the last he heard of the film evidence.
          In 1976, in an effort to disclose information on the UFO subject, Cooper wrote a letter to the United Nations wherein he stated, "There are extraterrestrial vehicles visiting from other planets."
          Nor is Gordon Cooper the only US astronaut to unequivocally affirm the answer to the UFO question.
          Apollo 14 astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, Sixth man on the moon, on the subject of whether outer-space alien UFOs have been kept secret, states: "The question of has it been kept secret, or how could it be kept secret--it hasn't been kept secret. It's been there all along. But it's been the subject of disinformation in order to deflect attention and to create confusion so the truth doesn't come out." (To hear Dr. Mitchell, search "Astronaut Edgar Mitchell Testimony" on YouTube.)
          "Yes," says Mitchell, "there has been ET visitation."
          Apollo 15 astronaut Al Worden says the same thing.
          "We're the ones who come from somewhere else," says the man who flew around the moon 75 times, adding that people from somewhere else showed up and "started civilization here." (Search "Al Worden Apollo astronaut. We are the aliens.")
          Worden goes on: "If you don't believe me, go get books on the ancient Sumerians and see what they had to say. They'll tell you right up front."
          The land of the ancient Sumerians, by the way, is what we call Iraq.
          A skeptic, also by the way, is "a person inclined to question or doubt all accepted opinions." Therefore, because the mainstream has been fed the disinformation Dr. Mitchell discusses, it is the skeptical mind which doubts the official story which denies the truth affirmed by the astronauts.
          We are not alone. Alien UFOs are real. This is the testimony from the sources with the greatest credibility on the planet. They don't say that maybe UFOs are real. They say absolutely definitely.
          "This universe is limitless," says Col. Cooper. "We're kind of vain to think we're the only ones who exist here."
       

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CHEMTRAIL DOCUMENTARY ILLUMINATING OVERALL
https://stewartkirby.blogspot.com/2015/11/chemtrail-documentary-illuminating.html










Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE

"THEY LIVE" OUT OF SIGHT

          John Carpenter's heroic documentary on the exploitation of the working class masquerading as a sci-fi flick.
          According to Carpenter speaking on the topic of his 1988 visionary film, They Live was "mainly inspired by Ronald Reagan's conservative revolution."
          The film is "partly a political statement, partly a tract on the world that we live in," the director says, "and as a matter of fact it's even more true right now than it was then."
          Disgusted by the unrestrained capitalism of Reaganomics, and a culture "consumed by consumerism", the director of Halloween (1979), Escape From New York (1981), and The Thing (1982) "decided to scream out in the middle of the night and make a statement" about human values being pushed aside in the service of elitist greed.
          The resulting film stars Roddy Piper as a rough-hewn working-class hero who drifts into town and from the fringe finds a box of what look like regular sunglasses. However, he soon learns that by wearing these special lenses he sees the world around him as it truly is: a place where inhuman creatures pretending to be people enslave the masses through constant subliminal control.
          They Live, We Sleep. That's the writing on the wall. Literally.
          What appear to be billboards and magazines advertising toothpaste or perhaps spray cheese are actually hidden directives to OBEY and CONSUME, with the threat that REBELLION WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.
          It's a hard-hitting movie with rolls of quarters in the filmmaker's fists because the subliminal messages which the hero discovers are the same words used in real-life 1960s subliminal programming.
          Look it up. The old TV sign-off (back when TV used to stop for a few hours) which played the National Anthem in fact did used to contain those exact words, and more, presented in a very sneaky way. Eventually discovered, this particular trick got scrapped.
          Eleven years later, The Matrix follows suit. And while The Matrix is one of the greatest movies ever, They Live is simply much more pure. In a sense, the least realistic aspect to it is the abundant proliferation of alien enslavers in humanity's midst. One percent just doesn't look like that.
          Among the film's many notable features, its protagonist was the first professional wrestler to star in a number one box-office release. Rowdy Roddy Piper (who died three years ago) proved that he can act. He also personally wrote the film's most memorable line: "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and I'm all outta bubblegum."
          The 6-minute fight scene with Keith David (Kurt Russell's co-star in The Thing) is the brawl of legend, and a brilliant decision on Carpenter's part because it focuses the conflict on making one's fellow unwitting accomplices see the true reality all around.
         


THEY LIVE
Starring Roddy Piper,
Keith David,
Meg Foster,
George "Buck" Flower,
Peter Jason,
Raymond St. Jacques
Directed by John Carpenter
Written by John Carpenter (as Frank Armitage)
Based on a story by Ray Nelson
Runtime 94 minutes
Rated R


Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE