E. A. Solinas

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Backrooms - The Most Accessible Horror?

So, I saw the Backrooms movie on the second day of its release, at about eleven in the morning (which is a weird time to be watching a horror movie). I’m usually a few years behind Internet things that people are into, so it’s pleasant to be there before the Backrooms becomes a mainstream thing. And it probably will, because… this movie is a hit. A huge hit. As I write this, it has been out five…

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Recommendation: The Grandmaster Of Demonic Cultivation (Mo Dao Zu Shi)

Despite the general government disapproval of same-sex relationships, China does have some media focusing on such characters. Boys’ love content in China is known as “danmei,” and don’t ask me what that literally means because I know about ten words in Mandarin, and half of them are numbers. And the most famous example of the breed is probably Mo Dao Zu Shi or The Grandmaster of Demonic…

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Zach Creggar's Resident Evil: A Rant

Out of every franchise in the world, the Resident Evil franchise might have the worst track record when it comes to films. There have been seven films made about this bestselling series, six Milla Jovovich fanfics by Paul W. S. Anderson, and one crappy “adaptation” of the first two games that got every character wrong. Capcom needs to really start having a Nintendo-like grip on their IPs so they…

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The Crow 2024: Where Are The Good People?

So, I just watched The Crow. Not the original Brandon Lee movie, a searingly raw, beautiful tragedy of love, revenge and sorrow that sadly led to the death of its lead actor. I watched the 2024 remake… if you can call it a remake when it has very little connective tissue to the previous movie or its graphic novel origin. And it is bad. Now, there are many, many reasons that it’s bad. I could go…

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The problem with Medusa

One of the biggest problems in today’s world is that people will believe whatever they are told, even if the truth is easily findable through things like search engines and repositories of ancient texts. And one of those things is the legend of Medusa, which… most people really misrepresent online. Frequently, people misrepresent it (sometimes deliberately, but mostly due to ignorance). If you…

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The intimidation of rationality: Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot

Extensive spoilers for Death on the Nile, “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” and BBC’s Sherlock. So, I’m back again. And earlier today, I was listening to a video someone made about the many flaws of the BBC show Sherlock, which was a massive success as a show but also a terrible Sherlock Holmes adaptation. For many reasons, but I think the biggest one is that they fundamentally got Sherlock…

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Recommendation: Unpublished Brandon Sanderson

Every author has a trail of half-finished outlines, ideas or books that just didn’t work out. Books in embryo, which may or may not eventually be finished and released to the public. And apparently Brandon Sanderson is no different… he’s got whole novels that just aren’t published. I’ve been reading them lately, and honestly, it’s a shame that these books weren’t published and canon to the…

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It's bad to be an advanced reader?

So, watch the above video before reading more. Be sure to see other videos by KrimsonRogue – he’s one of the few Booktubers I follow religiously, and watch every video he makes. I am not entirely sure what this man he’s talking about is on. I have personal experience in this, because – not to boast – I was a pretty advanced reader as a young child. In first grade, I read The Hobbit. The next…

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Youtube Recs - Village Cooking Channel

I don’t understand a word of any language spoken in India. But somehow, that isn’t really a barrier when watching the Village Cooking Channel, a pretty major channel with 26 MILLION followers. Sure, the only part of the video I can really understand is “always welcome you,” but the content is so much fun and so wholesome that it doesn’t really matter. The contents of the channel are pretty…

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Uncle Roger, Jamie Oliver and Changing Recipes

I’ve been watching a lot of Nigel Ng’s Uncle Roger videos lately. If you aren’t familiar with these, Uncle Roger is Ng’s comedy character, a divorced middle-aged Asian man who critiques videos (mostly about cooking various Asian dishes, but sometimes other stuff like dating reality shows), complains about his cheating ex-wife, makes odd sex jokes, rhapsodizes about MSG and complains about British…

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Review: Exhuma

Imagine if your ancestors had the power to curse you for… well, general discomfort after death. That premise forms the bedrock for the South Korean horror movie “Exhuma,” in which a quartet of shamans, geomancers and morticians join forces to deal with vengeful ghosts. This is a movie that could never be remade in another country – not just because it relies on tension and dread rather than jump…

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Recommendation: Godzilla Singular Point

I didn’t really expect a series about Godzilla to go into detail about the nature of time. In fact, the series has a distinct lack of Godzilla about 90% of the time, which my brother found to be its biggest flaw – if you’re going into it to watch kaiju punching each other in the face, you will be sorely disappointed. There are kaiju, sure – there are a bunch of pterodactyl-like Rodans, there’s…

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Review: Godzilla Minus One (2023)

Sometimes, a classic franchise needs to get back to its roots. And after a highly unconventional outing in “Shin Godzilla,” Toho and director/writer Takashi Yamazaki, decided to do just that in “Godzilla Minus One.” This may be the best Godzilla movie ever made – an emotionally deep, historically-rich tale of disaster, loss, grief and guilt, which just happens to center around a giant nuclear…

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Review: "Dragon Rider" by Taran Matharu

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. If I could succinctly describe Taran Matharu’s new book, it would simply be: “Eragon” if it were written for adults, by an adult. Which is to say, “Dragon Rider” is a high fantasy with a lot of cultural richness and depth rather than Star Wars/Lord of the Rings tropes. It’s set in a world…

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Review: The Boy And The Heron

Hayao Miyazaki is one of those artists that needs no introduction, a brilliant storyteller whose characters and richly-developed stories include tales of flying pigs and walking castles, forest gods and floating cities, preschooler mermaids and fantastical bathhouses. So even when nobody really knew what the plot was, “The Boy And The Heron” was already an alluring prospect. And while perhaps…

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Review: A Quantum Love Story by Mike Chen

Disclaimer: I received this book in exchange for a review from Netgalley. All opinions are my own. Ah, time loops. An old sci-fi trope, but a good one – you relive the same short period of time, over and over, until you can find some way out of it. Such a loop forms the backdrop of “A Quantum Love Story” by Mike Chen, a clever and warmhearted little sci-fi tale with an oddball romance blooming…

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An Idiot's Critique of the Godzilla Franchise

For someone as pedantic and desperate to be seen as intellectual as Doktor Skipper is, he certainly has a very childish view of movies. “Movie has American military? Movie must be propaganda! American people clap for Godzilla? That means Godzilla is hero who cares about America! Original movie doesn’t delve into Japanese war crimes? That means movie bad! American Godzilla doesn’t symbolize…

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