Category: nfp

What I’m Reading: Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West

Nature’s Metroplis: Chicago and the Great West, by William Cronon, is a thorough, detailed book about the history of Chicago. Yet it doesn’t give an account of the labor movement, the ward system, mayors or aldermen, or the elevated trains, and only the barest… Continue Reading “What I’m Reading: Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West”

Scary Movies: Five Nights at Freddy’s

This one looked terrible to me in the previews, but my son really wanted to see it, so off to the movie theater we went. A movie based on a video game franchise isn’t exactly a recipe for quality. Moreover, this is a horror… Continue Reading “Scary Movies: Five Nights at Freddy’s”

Scary Movies: The Thing From Another World

After reviewing both versions of the Fly in the past couple weeks, and finding both the 1950s and 1980s versions to have a lot of merit on their own terms, now we come to another later-remade movie I was hopeful about. After all, I’ve… Continue Reading “Scary Movies: The Thing From Another World”

Scary Movies: The Fly

This 1986 movie, directed by David Cronenberg, takes the premise of the 1950s version of The Fly, which I reviewed last week, but uses it as a springboard for a very different type of movie. In the 1950s version, the emphasis is much more… Continue Reading “Scary Movies: The Fly”

Scary Movies: The Fly

I wrote in my review of The Haunting about, how after seeing so many 1950s B-grade horror movies, what a pleasure it is to see a movie from this era by a major studio–here, 20th Century Fox. The Fly boasted a bigger budget and… Continue Reading “Scary Movies: The Fly”

Scary Movies: Get Out

I’ve been wanting to see this one for a while, and so it becomes the inaugural movie of the 2023 horror season! The movie is Get Out, the first film directed by Jordan Peele, whom I previously knew from his work in sketch comedy… Continue Reading “Scary Movies: Get Out”

What I’m Reading: The Night Country

The Night Country, by the late Penn anthropologist Loren Eiseley, is a collection of fourteen essays united by the themes of nightime, darkness, or dreams. Some of the essays are memoir-ish, recollecting Eiseley’s strange and lonely childhood with a deaf mother and mostly absent… Continue Reading “What I’m Reading: The Night Country”

Ranking the Twilight Zone

I’m engaged in a project with my twelve-year old daughter to watch every single Twilight Zone episode and rank them. We watch and run them through a rubric to give them a score from 0 to 7. The episodes are graded in three categories:… Continue Reading “Ranking the Twilight Zone”