Adam Selvidge's Website Blog
Ico: Directed by Fumito Ueda. With Kazuhiro Shindou, Rieko Takahashi, Misa Watanabe. On a distant island, there is a legend that anyone born with horns will bring about calamity. When such a boy is locked away in a fortress, he must work together with a girl named Yorda to flee before they can be claimed by the spirits. Played on the PS3 as part of the “The ICO and Shadow of the Colossus Collection”, I bought this back in September 2015, it sat on multiple shelves for about 7 years, never being opened or even paid much attention to, which...
The Lost Daughter: Directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal. With Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Dakota Johnson, Ed Harris. A woman’s beach vacation takes a dark turn when she begins to confront the troubles of her past. A slow meandering movie with horror creeping around every scene with no ultimate pay off. There’s something to be said about watching it twice, once to figure out to what kind of movie it is, then watching it knowing where they’re going with the story and which parts of it you can ignore. This is a good film, but it’s a confusing one, and features the...
Hellbound: Directed by Aaron Norris. With Chuck Norris, Calvin Levels, Christopher Neame, Sheree J. Wilson. Two Chicago cops (Chuck Norris, Calvin Levels) investigate a murder until they encounter an ancient demon. There’s a lot to unpack with this relatively unremarkable film. First up is that it’s directed by Aaron Norris, who is Chuck Norris’s younger brother. He’s better known for his stunt work, and while he made a good effort at directing ‘Hellbound’, I think it’s for the best that he seems to have gone back to working on just stunt choreography and setup. Second, it has Chuck Norris as...
The Old Man: Created by Robert Levine, Jonathan E. Steinberg. With Jeff Bridges, John Lithgow, E.J. Bonilla, Bill Heck. A former CIA officer who’s living off the grid finds himself on the run from people who want to kill him. FX continues to be a gold mine of amazing content, this time with Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow killing it in every scene that they’re in. Alia Shawkat, who I knew from Arrested Development, is way past the comedic stuff that I knew her best for and plays a serious character that I’m shocked to see playing right up to...
Welcome to Me: Directed by Shira Piven. With Kristen Wiig, Wes Bentley, Linda Cardellini, Joan Cusack. When Alice Klieg wins the Mega-Millions lottery, she immediately quits her psychiatric meds and buys her own talk show. For nearly the entire movie I was asking myself, is the studio shooting this show taking advantage of Klieg or is she taking advantage of them? There’s clear signs that both parties are getting something out of the arrangement but I can’t really say who’s more responsible for the bad behavior that ultimately ends up being broadcast on tv. The concept is pretty interesting, her...
Alone Together: A DS9 Companion: With Alexander Siddig, Andrew Robinson, Shana Collier, Cirroc Lofton. Set 25 years after the events of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Alone Together follows Dr. Julian Bashir as he goes to visit his old friend Elim Garak on Cardassia, and uncovers a dark secret in the process. Released all the way back in July of 2020 during the absolute pit of despair that we found ourselves in after staying in our homes for several months after the covid-19 lock down began, I watched the first episode, put the others on my “watch next” list on...
I baked some eggs, it went surprisingly well, just 350 degrees for 30ish minutes, then an ice bath for a couple minutes, and they were easily peeled. Made this to go with some chicken over the weekend, it turned out pretty ok. Cat 1/6: Charlotte I voted in the 2022 primaries for the 2022 election! Cat 2/6: Miles Cat 3&4 / 6: Nyx add Bellatrix Cat 5/6: Syrah Cat 6/6: Odo, aka my leg cat I took the Florida Civic Literacy Exam, which is now required for all students that enrolled after the 2021 Fall semester, which I was a...
Good Morning, Vietnam: Directed by Barry Levinson. With Robin Williams, Forest Whitaker, Tom. T. Tran, Chintara Sukapatana. In 1965, an unorthodox and irreverent DJ named Adrian Cronauer begins to shake up things when he is assigned to the U.S. Armed Services radio station in Vietnam. My journey back through Robin’s movies have landed me at one of his most memorable roles. There’s a lot to like here from Robin himself, but the setting of the movie makes all the humor punch much differently if it were just a funny film. Instead we get a sad look at a sad situation...
In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man, of course, is king. Anyone that’s seen Idiocracy knows this story pretty well: a man frozen in time is awoken in the far future and learned that the idiots have inherited the Earth because the smart people were too busy being smart while the dumb people were all out there breeding. The solution in this story from 1951 is vastly different than the one in Idiocracy, here they’re just straight up killing off the surplus people by making them want to take a trip to an off planet colony. The story...
Day Shift: Directed by J.J. Perry. With Jamie Foxx, Dave Franco, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Meagan Good. A hard-working, blue-collar dad who just wants to provide a good life for his quick-witted 8-year-old daughter. His mundane San Fernando Valley pool cleaning job is a front for his real source of income: hunting and killing vampires. This isn’t the greatest vampire movie, but it’s in the top 20%, and there’s a pretty good bullet count going on in nearly every scene that made me feel good about what they were doing here. The first scene before the title card is a bit...
