Cuparius.com

Good day, and welcome to the Cuparium, where the first paragraph is always the hardest to write. You may as well skip to the second paragraph right now, as this one isn't promising to be either well written or very informative. Still here? Very well, 'tis your loss. My last update just barely managed to appear before the end of the month... of June. Yes, June. I missed July entirely. And that June update wasn't more than an apology for not writing a real update... and a promise to write a real one very, very soon. So, here it is, in August. The problem is not a lack of ideas or opinions; the problem is exhaustion and poor time management. And July, which is my month (being the month in which I was born), was a very bad month this year. To put it vaguely, nothing has been going my way lately.

...Which brings us to Paragraph Two. How do you like the view? A damned sight better than the previous locale, I'd say. Believe it or not, I've had enough material to write several updates a week for the past two or three months. I shall not, however, attempt to combine them into an Update of Epic Proportions, nor shall I post them in the order in which they were originally conceived and intended to be posted. Why don't we, as they say, wing it? I'll write a bit now and post it, then, in a few days, I'll write a bit more and post that, and so on, and perhaps I can hit upon a rhythm again.

Splendid!

I have lost track of which DVDs I've purchased since the last report, so I hereby post a listing of my complete DVD collection. It isn't very large, but not too bad considering I still do not own a DVD player (because, in case you were about to ask, I AM CRAZY!). Other lists will follow in the near future.

This brings me to the subject of films I have seen recently. Since Hellboy, I've seen only two films at the cinema. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was notable for the renderings of Buckbeak the hippogriff and the Whomping Willow. The human performances were less convincing. Spider-Man 2 is another addition to the growing list of superb comic book adaptations. It was everything I could have hoped for in a sequel, except for that niggling question about the lack of containment in an experiment in nuclear fusion. Even a comic book would portray such an event more believably. Nonetheless, it was an entertaining and satisfying movie.

Has anyone else seen the finale of the first season of Joan of Arcadia? It left me with a feeling of cold distrust in the writers. The trite allusions to The Shining and Satan have strained my faith in the series (please forgive the unintended pun), and the apparent partial amnesia of some of the characters from one episode to the next have strained my faith in the writers' ability to maintain a basic level of continuity. Unless nothing in the last episode actually happened. I have no patience for that hackneyed plot trick of juvenile writers. The new season begins in September; I hope it starts better than the previous one ended.

I shall end this update on a more positive note with a strong recommendation that you run to your local video rental shop fast and rent The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. If you are a fan of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and/or hilariously bad, low budget sci fi horror movies in general, then you will thoroughly enjoy this masterpiece. Be sure to watch the extra features, too. It became the newest title on my DVD wish list after I rented and viewed it last week. See it! I SLEEP NOW!

We return you to your regularly scheduled browsing. Thank you and good night.