#anamorph

My workmate brought me these diseased Passiflora caerulea -leaf samples. The fungus causing the powdery mildew symptoms was identified as Pseudoidium passiflorae fungus. That is the anamorph (asexual stage) of the Erysiphe sp. fungus, producing single conidia on the conidiophores that rises from the mycelium. The multilobed appressoria are also seen in the pictures.

Day 20

Reflections on: Halloween Kills(2021)

• This takes place immediately after Halloween(2018). You should watch that before watching this or you’ll definitely be pretty confused!
• John Carpenter’s music was perfect, as always. I got goosebumps after only the first couple of piano and synth notes :)
  
• I appreciated the flashbacks to Halloween night 1978 which showed new scenes that were concurrent with the events of Halloween (1978). This was a rare well-done retcon that successfully deepened the modern character’s motivations and provided richer context for the present story. 
• Like the previous film this was written by Danny McBride and David Gordon Green, yet it was missing their signature humour. I wished there was a little more levity in this. It’s pretty brutal, even for a slasher!
• Anthony Michael Hall plays Tommy - the little boy Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) babysat in the original film. He is UNRECOGNIZABLE as the Tony Hall you know and love. A shot of his face lit up by red light cuts immediately to a shot of a jack-o-lantern (see both above). After this comparison I couldn’t imagine him as anything other than a pumpkin. 
• I will never look at a fluorescent light bulb the same way again.
• Kyle Richards (who you may know as one of The Real Housewives of Beverley Hills or possibly from Watcher in the Woods (1980)) reprises her role from the 1978 Halloween as Lindsey, one of a few survivors of Michael Myers. I liked the addition of side characters who were personally affected by the events of the first film. Of course their lives were irrevocably altered 40 years ago, and as a result some of them feel like they must now be the heroes of the story. If I survived Mikey M. as a kid I think I would have moved far far away from Haddonfield, Illinois - probably to an uncharted island surrounded by sharks and mines.
• One of my horror movie pet peeves is the ridiculously inaccurate depiction of hospitals. Morgues are not designed in a way that a murder victim’s mother can accidentally discover the body of her disfigured child through a window in a busy hallway! COME ON! Hospital chaos was the most stressful part of this film for me. A mob of angry townspeople including doctors and nurses trample people and knock each other down stairwells. Medical students take the Hippocratic Oath to, “first, do no harm”. COME ON!
• An over-the-top (even for Halloween) rich couple (see above) now lives in Michael Myers’ childhood home. They are Big John, a honey-pondering, stoned jazz daddy, and Little John, a pirate daddy played by MADtv’s Michael McDonald. I’m sorry I know he’s been in many other things since then, but I will always associate him with that problematic show and Zima (a drink I’ve actually encountered only once - weirdly in Kochi, Japan). How do I know they’re rich? Sure, the house was probably cheap to buy as it was the site of multiple murders, but they’ve obviously put a lot of money into renovations. They also leave FOUR lamps on in their upstairs bedroom while they watch a movie downstairs. I did love that they were watching Minnie and Moskowitz (1971) by John Cassavetes - a perfect choice for Halloween night. 
• Laurie, albeit “geeked out on pain meds” tells Tommy to go find and kill Michael Myers. I know she’s not his babysitter anymore and Tommy is a fully grown adult, but this is still terrible, irresponsible advice. Laurie!!
• I know I said I liked the addition of all the side characters but there might actually be too many characters in this!
• The soundtrack includes an Anne Murray song?! Scary! The fact that I was able to identify an Anne Murray song - horrifying!!!
• One adult survivor character gives an order to two teens (in an attempt to protect them!) that follows the same logic from Children of the Corn(1983): “[If] you see anything suspicious - you honk the horn.” Have these people learned nothing?! Honking?!
• As just noted in Anamorph(2007), we are again presented with several gruesome tableaus. Why are serial killers such creative installation artists?! Are they taking some sort of online course?? Good for them!

Day 19

Reflections on Anamorph(2007)

• This is the movie’s synopsis is “A psychological thriller based on the concept of anamorphosis, a painting technique that manipulates the laws of perspective to create two competing images on a single canvas.” With this plus the all-star cast of Willem Dafoe, Scott Speedman, Clea DuVall, Peter Stormare and many other loveable character actors - how could you go wrong?! Allow me to list the ways:
• The concept of anamorphic painting is not introduced until the 1 hour and 19 minute mark.
• The opening credits list Mick Foley (AKA Mankind) and Debbie Harry (AKA Blondie) in the cast, yet they are both have less than 10 seconds of screen time - combined! YOU DON’T LIST CAMEOS IN THE OPENING CREDITS!!
• Maybe the director was trying to distract the viewer from how much the opening credits looked like a bad teen art project?
• Sadly this has no relation to the Animorphsseries. 
• Willem Dafoe plays a straight forward alcoholic detective with OCD who is also an expert murder / art professor too? He looks especially dorky in this - they’ve maybe dyed his hair? He looks like an anamorphic painting of a toad ape.
• Lots of gross shots of body parts arranged in elaborate tableaus as art. Why are so many movie serial killers just frustrated installation artists??
• All the detectives in this dress terribly in ill-fitting suits. Scott Speedman looks BAD and this is only 5 years after Felicityended. 
• The line “uncle Eddie” is used WAY too many times.
• Bizarre visual effects are used to denote scenes taking place 4 years in the past (see first photo above).
• The hardened-detective-working-a-serial-killer-case-with-an-annoying-younger-partner story is so clichéd that I kept expecting a twist - something, anything - even a stereotypical twist! Maybe Scott Speedman was a figment of Willem’s imagination, or maybe they were in love? Maybe Willem was investigating… himself?! Alas, it’s just unimaginatively written and feels like it was intercut with a first year university art history lecture. 
• If this review is too negative I’ll end on a positive note: There are a lot of scenes where characters notice smells. So I guess there was good smell acting.