Monthly Media Recap - November 2020

As usual, November's recap is going up on the last day of the month because December 1-13 is Creepmas when we inject a little spooky into the winter holiday season.

I think I got a little movied-out after last month and ended up going a bit lighter for November. I'm sure December will have its fill of holiday horror flicks!

 

Streaming

 

The Haunting of Bly Manor (Netflix) - I enjoyed it but not as much as Hill House. I like that they sort of American Horror Story'd it and have some of the actors from the previous series coming back in new roles. Towards the end where they get into the story of the haunting, I was a little bored.

 

Marvel 6161 (Disney+) - Blew through this in a couple of days. Some really enjoyable, and sometimes moving, looks at different areas of Marvel including cosplayers, Spanish creators, women creators (Ann Nocenti & Louise Simonson!), and my favorite: Japanese Spider-Man!

LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special (Disney+) - If you've never watched a Lego SW show before, you're really missing out. They're always fun, have some good jokes, and the occasional Easter egg wink at the audience.

Movies

One Cut of the Dead (2017, Shudder)
This was a good time and a great example of why I urge people to check out foreign horror films. It's definitely not something you've seen in a zombie flick before. It's a little slow in the middle but that's really a minor gripe considering how much fun the rest of it is.

Rating: 7/10

Prospect (2018, Netflix)
If someone hadn't mentioned this in r/movies I probably would never have glanced at it. Despite the fact that it's sci-fi and stars The Mandalorian's Pedro Pascal it was the person's appreciation of the movie that convinced me to check it out and I'm so glad I did. It's sci-fi but more the grounded/ "real world"  kind that with a few small changes could easily take place in the Old West. There's just something about this it that hits the right spot for me. Kudos to the people that designed the space suits.

Rating: 8/10

Murder Bury Win (2020)

This was a cool little indie comedy/horror, especially if you're a board game player. It's one of those dark comedies where one thing goes wrong and things just keep getting worse, fun right? There are a few spots where it feels like the characters are talking just for the sake of passing time but really, I was on board with them so I didn't mind "hanging out" with them a little more.

Rating: 6/10

Porno (2020, Shudder)

Your standard "movie theater working teens screen a forgotten film and unleash a succubus" movie. It's a good time and I think it'd be a great one to do a watch party with friends. It's a little weird (which I like!) and has some good gore. There is one scene that will have men squirming in their seats, and that's all I'm going to say about that!

Rating: 7/10

Did you catch anything interesting this month? 

Let me know in the comments.

Month

New: 4   Rewatch: 0

Year to Date

New: 71  Rewatch:3

Didn't Finish: 1 

9th Annual Creepmas Celebration

 I can't believe we've been doing this for 9 whole years!

In case you're new here, Creepmas is an online thing created by myself and artist Chad Savage. Mostly Chad, he does the heavy lifting. I just kinda put the spark out there. We decided enough was enough with Christmas pushing Halloween off the shelves before October 31st so we reclaimed December 1-13 as the 13 Days of Creepmas, the time to get some of your horror chocolate into the winter holiday peanut butter.

If you're familiar with the Countdown to Halloween and Drawlloween, that's kind of how things go with Creepmas. If you're a blogger, head over to this year's Creepmas sign up post and grab a badge for your blog. You can still play along on social media using #creepmas.

 

If you're an artsy type, there's the drawing challenge. I absolutely love the theme this year as I think it's going to expose a lot of people to some of the darker aspects from around the world!

Enjoy your fall festival celebration for now...in 8 days, it's CREEPMAS!

The Mandalorian & The Child Playing Cards

 Are you on the hunt for some new playing cards? Here's a two for one bounty of decks based on The Mandalorian.

 We'll start with Din Djarin himself, The Mandalorian.

I'm guessing this deck was designed before the show even aired. The back of the box states the images are inspired by the new live action show and, brace yourself...there is no Child in sight! 

 

I like what they did with the card templates where black looks like a beskar ingot and red is sand. There are Aurebesh letters on the bottom of red cards which spells rowe. Not sure if that's someone that worked on the cards or what.

The art is great and while a lot of it is "inspired by the show" it all captures the feel of The Mandalorian. My one big disappointment with this deck is that they used the same art for every suit, meaning there are only 14 different images. 15 if you count card backs. Given the show's popularity, I imagine there will be at least one more deck with a variety of images from the show.

Hey, do you love The Child? Are you as obsessed with him as everyone else in the world? Then have I got a deck of playing cards for you!

This one specifically says it uses images from the show, and boy, do they! Since they're drawing from the show, every card has a unique image. Each card has Aurebesh text which says Wanted The Child.

Nearly every card in the deck features an image of the little green guy. I mean, I think we've all been assuming it's male. Who knows?

Oddly, only the 8s (and Jokers) feature The Child with another character. Were they anticipating a lot of people playing Crazy 8s?

Halloween 2020 Post Game

 Initially, I wasn't going to do a final Halloween follow up post. This was the first time in 22 years that I was not in Salem on Halloween night and if I'm being honest, it had me pretty down the whole day knowing I wouldn't be there. Now that I've had a few days to think it over, I spent a whole month blogging about the countdown to Halloween so why not post about what I did on Halloween night?

Normally, we great Trick or Treaters every year until about 6:30 when we head into Salem. This year was a little...different. I setup a small table in the driveway and stocked it with the usual treat bags that I make. There was double candy in them this year. I could see the table from my living room and when the kids would go up to it, they could see me in the house and we'd wave at each other. I'd then go out to restock the table and wish the parents Happy Halloween.

We usually get around 30-40 kids by 6:30. I kept the table stocked until no one came between 7:30-8:00 and we ended up getting around 15 kids. I was glad I could do my part to help make a kid's night a little more special this year.

If you follow any of my social feeds, you may have seen that I entered a Salem virtual costume contest. I was not expecting to win the fan favorite costume, there were a lot of great costumes in the running. So as I'm scrolling through my Facebook feed I saw the winners announced by Salem Horror Fest.

They picked me as the scariest costume entry!!

Needless to say, this really made my night. Even though the Salem Creep couldn't be there in...person(?) it still managed to haunt Salem on Halloween. Honestly, I will take scariest costume any day over a popularity vote!

The different categories were: fan favorite, scariest, best Hubie Halloween, and best witch. If you're on Facebook, you can see the winners here. Each category had its own prize pack. Here's what I won:

2 passes to 2021 Salem Horror Fest (super excited!) & swag bag, contents below.

Magnets, stickers, and coasters with a cute contest poster.

Three shirts from previous Salem Horror Fests.

And a mini-prize pack from Horror Pack which I hadn't heard of prior to this. It's a horror movie blind box service that will send you 4 movies a month. As someone struggling with space for physical media, the service itself doesn't appeal to me but it's a fun idea.

So that was my Halloween! I hope everyone else enjoyed it in their own way and hopefully we can get things under control to make up for it next year!