Nicholas Bruner's Blog, page 16

Ranking The Twilight Zone

Im watching all the Twilight Zone episodes (that I have on disk) with my daughter and ranking them. Ive previously ranked episodes here, here, here, here, and here. This time out, we watched two episodes and, as ever, Im running them through a rubric to give them a score from 0 to 7.

The episodes this time were from Volume 1 of the DVDs.

Night of the Meek (Season Two, 1960)
Henry Corwin is a department store Santa (played by Art Carney, i.e. Norton on the Honeymooners), whos fired on Christmas...

What I’m Reading: Gorgias

Every year for the past several years, Ive tried to read one of Platos dialogues or a similar work from or about ancient Greece. Well, its December, so my ancient Greek work for 2020 is slipping in just under the wire! In this case, its Gorgias, a Platonic dialogue where Socrates (always the hero in Platos dialogues) debates the nature of oratory with two leading orators in ancient Athens, Gorgias and Polus. This evolves into a discussion of what makes for a life of excellence with a young...

What I’m Reading: Newsletter Ninja

This will not be a long review, as Newsletter Ninja: How to Become an Author Mailing List Expert, by Tammi Labrecque, is pretty self-explanatory. I mean, it’s all right there in the title! I’ve reached the point in my writing endeavor where I have three books published and would like to attract more attention to my writing. How? Advertising on Facebook or other sites? Well, yes. But I’ve noticed in a lot of author blogs, many of the most successful self-published authors use their mailing lists ...

Ranking the Twilight Zone

I’m watching all the Twilight Zone episodes (that I have on disk) with my daughter and ranking them. I’ve previously ranked episodes here, here, here, and here. This time out, we watched two episodes and, as ever, I’m running them through a rubric to give them a score from 0 to 7.

These episodes this time were from Volumes 1 and 9 of the DVDs.

Nick of Time (Season Two, 1960)
This is one of two Twilight Zone episodes starring William Shatner, and perhaps I’ve let that color my thinking on it...

What I’m Reading: The Story That Cannot Be Told

The Story That Cannot Be Told is a YA novel by J. Kasper Kramer about Ileana, an eleven-year-old girl who lives in Bucharest, Romania, in the summer of 1989. And right here, I need to make a point, because to an adult the tone of this story will be different than for the age group it’s aimed at. An adult will remember that 1989 was the year of the Communist revolutions in eastern Europe, and may even remember that Romania’s took place rather late in the year, in December, and was quite bloody co...

Ranking the Twilight Zone

I’m watching all the Twilight Zone episodes (that I have on disk) with my daughter and ranking them. I’ve previously ranked episodes here, here, and here. This time out, we’ve seen three episodes over the last few days and, as ever, I’m running them through a rubric to give them a score from 0 to 7.

These episodes this time were from Volume 9 of the DVDs.

It’s a Good Life (Season Three, 1961)
One of the best known episodes, and for good reason. It’s a Good Life is about Anthony, a six-year ...

Scary Movies: Midsommar

Our final scary movie review and ranking for this year! And this time out we’ve got a freaky one, to say the least. My wife and her friend went to see this in the theater last summer, and when she came back she said I had to see it (or maybe she said I had to see it to believe it). Anyway, I immediately put it on my horror movie to-do list.

Dani is a psychology grad student whose sister commits suicide in the opening scenes of the movie. A few months later, her boyfriend, Christian, an anthro...

Ranking the Twilight Zone

I’m watching all the Twilight Zone episodes (that I have on disk) with my daughter and ranking them. A noble project, I think! The first batches of rankings are here and here. We watched two more episodes this week and, as before, I’m running them through a rubric to give them a score from 0 to 7.

These episodes were from Volume 11 of the DVDs.

The After Hours (Season One, 1960)
Here’s an overlooked episode that turned out to be fairly interesting. Sort of a dry run for the later “Five Char...

Ranking the Twilight Zone

Okay, here’s the second batch of Twilight Zone episodes I’ve watched with my daughter to rank! The first batch was here. As before, we’re going to run them through a rubric to give them a score. I think this time out, we will also add a notation to each episode to place it in a “theme” category. By this, I mean Twilight Zone episodes tend to fall into one of a number of themes (aliens, dolls, airplanes, etc.), and we’ll begin tracking those here.

These episodes were from Volumes 11 and 39 of ...

Scary Movies: Shadow of the Vampire

Okay, this film is a clever one. When the film Nosferatu, which I reviewed last week, came out in 1921, the make-up and scariness of the vampire Count Orlok in the movie was like nothing that had ever been seen in film before. Shadow of the Vampire is a fictional take on the filming of Nosferatu, and takes the conceit that the reason for Orlok’s realism is because actor Max Schreck, who played Count Orlok, actually was a vampire.

We join director Friedrich W. Murnau and his cast and crew as t...