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Watched the first Tomie movie tonight. (First time I've seen it). Such an unexpected atmosphere! Warm diffuse visuals & an odd indie electronica type soundtrack. Slow & kind of hypnotic; dreamlike.

Some unconvincing gore & special FX, looks like there wasn't much of a budget for that. Which is fine by me, that didn't feel like the point of the movie.

Was genuinely surprised (and scared) to see Yoriko Douguchi play a doctor again (looking similar to how she did in Cure).

The ending lifted my spirits in a kind of weird way. I am once again not sure it's a good thing I enjoyed this as much as I did.

The Roxy is closing.

The Roxy was the only 24-hour spot in downtown Portland (that I'm aware of, anyway). I ate at The Roxy late-night about once a month for the better part of 10 years. Used to hang out there after shows, usually on Wednesday, to wait for Trimet (public transit) to start running again.

They reopened in 2021 without the graveyard shift and weren't bringing in enough money, I guess. They close on the 20th, in a couple of days. I'll miss it, I'm really sad to see it go.

Watched "Personal Shopper" tonight, the 2016 Olivier Assayas movie. Loved it. Love thinking about it now, too. Not really a horror, more a story about grief. Though some bad and scary and spooky things do happen in it.

Another one I heard about through the podcast Live At The Death Factory. One of the hosts of LatDF, Astrid if I remember correctly, compared it to William Gibson's Blue Ant trilogy, and I think that's apt.

Finally got around to watching "In The Dark" AKA "Richard Laymon's In The Dark" after hearing about it on the excellent Live At The Death Factory podcast.

Seriously great and creepy shot-on-video horror. Good script and an excellent central performance. Does a lot with what looks like very little money.

Trigger warning for sexual assault in the film. It's not shown on-screen that I remember but it's still pretty nasty.

The movie was never officially released; you can find it on youtube.

Watched the fourth Eko Eko Azarak and I'm not sure what to make of it.

It doesn't feel like the other movies until maybe the last 20 minutes. This isn't Misa Kuroi the witch faking a transfer to a new school to solve problems. It's more a drama and commentary on the media. On mass hysteria. On belief changing reality. It's also an origin story in the sense that it's about somebody becoming the Misa Kuroi character.

I wonder if I'm missing something here, some context.

I enjoy thinking about this movie more than I enjoyed watching it.

The version of Misa from the third movie wouldn't have put up with the foolishness in this one.

Woke up to an email from Google saying that they're removing "less secure sign-in" on May 30th. Which I think means I finally have to set up some kind of 2FA.

I don't have a phone. (Of any kind). Or any Android or iOS devices. That makes this all very difficult as Google really, really wants a phone number. I'm still not sure if it's even possible, if Google will allow you to continue now without a phone. I guess I'll find out.

I worry that this is the beginning of the end for Bandcamp. I'm worried because of who they're "joining" and also because this feels to me like a shift in priorities.

I've been buying music through Bandcamp for 10 years; we'll see how much longer it lasts, I guess. See what Epic Games does to it.

I suppose the fundamental question is: did Bandcamp sell out?

If you haven't seen it: https://blog.bandcamp.com/2022/03/02/bandcamp-is-joining-epic/