Facilitating networking & cooperation between the Central Texas non-profit Social Sector Organizations by supporting One Voice of Central Texas by donating our expertise.
Supporting the performing arts industry by donating our expertise to the Texas Motion Picture Alliance and sponsorship of One World Theatre.
Supporting the Austin Technology Industry by sponsorship and advisory services to the Austin Forum of Technology and Community.
Supporting the Central Texas non-profit Industry by providing sponsorship of key events, board leadership and consulting expertise to Mission Capital.
Supporting the mental health of children and families in Central Texas by providing Board services to Austin Child Guidance Center.


Direction (Q. 1 - 5): In the following sentences one part has been given in bold. This is a phrase or idiom. You have to identify a similar meaning in the choices given below it That will be your answer.
His birthday is a gala day for him.
Too much seriousness acts as a wet blanket to cheerfulness.
My friend received me with open arms.
He is ill at ease on account of his father's illness.
He is out and out a gentleman.
Direction (Q. 6 - 10): Pick out a word/phrase which is not a synonym of the word/phrase given in bold.
'slough' means a state of deadness or dead skin.
palisade' means a fence made of wooden posts.
'kayak' means a canoe under which you sit.
'parole' means temporary release of a prisoner.


Murud is a dive deep into the ocean of tranquility at Murud a peaceful fishing village with pretty seashore. Murud is lovely beach is edged with swaying betel palms, coconut fronds and groves of casuarinas. A holiday and honeymoon destination with a difference, the beach town of Murud will definitely sweep you off your feet.
Panvel- 109km, Roha-38m, Khandala- 120km, Khopoli-120km, Lonavala-124km, Mumbai-148km.
The palace grounds hold a marvelous mosque and the tombs of the previous rulers. A mixture of mugal and gothic style architecture makes the palace an elegant mansion.
The dam is situated on the backdrop of lush vegetation. The chirping of birds, sweet sound of the gushing water and all around greenery, the nature surrounds the dam is at its very best. Truly the dam site is a scenic valley to be visited.
Seven storied towers of octagonal shape support the corners of this fantastic monument. The sound system in the dome is so designed that it reverberate even a murmuring sound return back to the person exactly nine times.
Being lashed away by the salt water for a long, much of Janjira fort has been putrefied and rotten. But the fort still remains with the same glory and grandeur.
Padmadurg Fort commemorates the repeated failure attempts of the mighty Marathas regime against the tiny Siddis. Padmadurg fort which is now called as Kasa fort, spilt in to three by the ravage of time and now it is not accessible to the public. Ruins of this great fort can be seen from the seashore.
It is very fun to have soak and drench oneself in this amazing gift of the nature. Another interesting aspect of this waterfall is that, its water is supposed to be very pure and one can even drink water from it. Garambhi waterfalls are bounded by woody forest and the surroundings offer a panoramic view.
The vast expansion of white sandy beach and the crystal clear bluish water Murud is a delight for water enthusiasts. Fenced by the green palm trees, this pristine beach arose the imagination of any visitor.
The earthy and calm beach of Nandgaon has all the sizzles of a typical beach. The pollution free environment of this pristine beach is an emerging tourist attraction in Murud. A virgin beach surrounded by sloping hills is marvelous scenery. A typical beach and a pilgrim center, Nandgaon offers the unique opportunity of relaxation in the midst of holiness.
The best way of transportation is three wheeler Rickshaw.
Barfi and some coconut chikki are famous and also Masalas are special in Murud.
October to June is the best time to visit the destination.


New Providence, NJ, 31 July 2018 – Hachette Book Group (HBG), a U.S.-based division of publisher Hachette Livre, has teamed with Bowker to integrate tens of thousands of reader reviews of adult, youth and audio books featured on its website, making its visitors' experiences more productive and engaging. Bowker is a ProQuest affiliate and acts as the retail agent for content and technology from ProQuest and partners such as LibraryThing.
"Consumer reviews are a driving force behind a customer's purchasing decision, often more influential than even critical acclaim," said Alyson Forbes, Executive Director, Analytics at Hachette Book Group. "Teaming with Bowker enabled us to easily embed content in our websites and content verticals that deepen consumers' engagement with our books."
"Bowker's partners can count on continual enhancements to Syndetics Unbound's technology and data," said Rich Belanger, senior vice president and general manager, ProQuest Books. "Our goal is to make book discovery ever more productive and seamless."
Bowker collaborates with thousands of publishers, retailers, libraries and search engines worldwide to make their media collections – whether print or digital – easily discovered, evaluated and selected by users. Its seminal Books In Print database is used by customers to enhance their collections, embedding them with rich details and real-time updates that capture new title releases.


text:
Beyond The Frame
Photograper
Photographers: Photojournalists
Soundslides
To counter the gory headlines of the recent current events in the Middle East, the photo essay on Miss Muslimah may be a relief. It's an award competition that seeks to be the opposite of a beauty pageant, and which took place in Yogakarta, Indonesia in 2014. It's for young Muslim women who are judged to have shown dedication, reputation and concern for Islamic values and community development.
With Indonesia being the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation, the event is popular and is attracting an increasingly international lineup. Entrants from Trinidad, Nigeria, Iran, Tunisia, the United Kingdom and many Southeast Asian countries take part.
The hijab is a controversial topic amongst Muslims and non-Muslims alike. While the Qur'an requests Muslim women to dress modestly, it does not specifically institute a dress code. However, most Islamic legal systems define modest dressing as covering everything except the face and hands in public. Wives of the Prophet Muhammad are said to have been hidden behind curtains from the rest of the Muslim congregation because his home was constantly visited by people. Muslim women started then to emulate this tradition by wearing veils and face covers.
For more background information and other images, drop by Al Jazeerah America 's High Heels & Hijabs.
Monique Jaques is a photojournalist based in Istanbul, who spent the past four years focused on documenting issues in the Middle East as well as Afghanistan and India. She graduated from New York University's Photography and Imaging program, and was nominated for the Prix Bayeux- Calvados 'Young Reporter' award. Her project 'Growing Up on The Gaza Strip', was first published in the New York Times. She was selected as one of the recipients of the PROOF Award for the Emerging Photojournalist for her work in Post-War Libya and featured in the Bursa Photography Festival. She was also featured in the Ian Parry Scholarship show in 2009 and received an Honorable Mention for the 2008 New York Photo Awards. Her work has been published by The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor, The Economist, GEO, The Guardian, and CNN, among others.
Photo © Chris McGrath-All Rights Reserved
What's a "dokar" you ask?
Well, it's a two-wheeled horse-drawn cart found throughout Indonesia, usually decorated with colorful motifs and bells. Its small horses or ponies often have long tassels attached to their bridle. Typical dokars have bench seating on either side, which can comfortably fit three or four persons...and luggage (and huge bags of rice).
Regretfully, the dokars are on their way to extinction due to other more efficient and modern ways of transport. More than 200 dokars were working in Indonesia's Denpasar region, but only a handful remain these days. Denpasar -as in other large cities- experiences an uncontrolled population causing chronic traffic jams that make it difficult for the dokar to work effectively. Cheaper motorcycles have also made the dokar obsolete.
Chris McGrath has documented these last remaining vehicles in his The Vanishing Dokar in lovely monochrome tones, along with copious information about the photographs as captions.
Chris McGrath is an Australian photographer with Getty Images, specializing in editorial and commercial assignments. He has photographed, four Olympic games, the Paralympics, Commonwealth games, the FIFA World Cup, the Rugby World Cup, the MLB World Series, the Super Bowl, the Daytona 500, US Open Golf, numerous US Open and Australian Open Grand Slams, the 2004 Asian Tsunami, the election of Barack Obama and the earthquake and Tsunami in Japan and the London 2012 Olympics.
He has worked for clients such as Nike, NFL, Coca-Cola, the LPGA, NASCAR and the New York Times, and his images appeared in Stern, Newsweek, Time, Sports Illustrated, The Independent, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, ESPN the magazine, The Guardian, L'Equipe and on daily news and sport websites worldwide.
He currently works in Tokyo, Japan.
Photo © Miguel Ángel Sánchez-All Rights Reserved
Here's another series of wonderful photographs by the talented Miguel Ángel Sánchez.
Not only are they wonderful, but they depict one of the most oppressed people in the world, living under a dreadful occupation for over 60 years, as beautiful human beings by borrowing the techniques of the Old Masters....perhaps Caravaggio.
Miguel Ángel Sánchez is a Spanish photographer based in Cairo since 2009, where he opened his own photography studio. Cairo is the base where he works and prepares projects developed in Egypt during the past 5 years.
He is also an itinerant photographer who takes his workspace to many corners of the world: Asia, Middle East or black Africa. He covered the war against Gaddafi in Libya, documented the Ulu Pamir in Turkish Kurdistan, the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.
His work has been published in media such as El País, The New York Times, Le Monde, New Yorker, Photo Raw, La Lettre de la Photographie, and many others.
While this post features Miguel's portraits of Palestinians, don't miss his gorgeous portraits of the Ulu Pamir people in Turkey.
Photo © Sebastião Salgado/Amazonas/nbpictures
The new work by my very favorite photographer Sebastião Salgado was featured by The Guardian newspaper in the UK. It's been trending very heavily on Facebook and on Twitter, which is not surprising since so many people admire him and his work.
I not only admire his work, but his way of seeing....as he describes it by saying " If you take a picture of a human that does not make him noble, there is no reason to take this picture. That is my way of seeing things."
But back to his new work.
Mr Salgado's Genesis project is now complete after 30 trips made over 8 years. The project portrays the beauty and the majesty of regions still in a pristine condition, areas where landscapes and wildlife are still unspoiled, places where human communities continue to live according to their ancient culture and traditions.
From The Guardian's very interesting accompanying article, Mr Salgado's latest trip was to the nomadic Nenets of northern Siberia. The Nenets are also known as Samoyeds, and are an indigenous people in northern arctic Russia. There are 40,000 Nenets in the Russian Federation, most of them living in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug and Nenets Autonomous Okrug.
The Nenets' lives are defined by reindeer, which are the source of their food, clothing and transport. Every spring, the Nenets move large herds of reindeer from winter pastures on the Russian mainland, travelling more than 1,000 kilometers north to summer pastures in the Arctic Circle.
I ought to also mention that London's Natural History Museum is scheduling an exhibition of Genesis on 11 April - 8 September 2013. There is no way that I will miss it...no way.
Why would I mention Bonhams, an auction house, on The Travel Photographer's blog?
Well, it's because Bonhams is holding an auction of a rare photographic album of 180 Ethiopian images by Julia Margaret Cameron, Felice Beato and others. These images include a number of self portraits of Captain Tristram Charles Sawyer Speedy(1836-1910), a well-known English explorer and adventurer during the Victorian era, who was also known by his Amharic name 'Báshá Félíka'.
He was a fascinating character who was an Indiana Jones of his time, with a long association with India, Ethiopia and Sudan.
Born in Meerut (India), Captain Speedy was a red-haired bearded man 6'5" tall, who learned to speak Amharic, adopted Ethiopian native dress, and was photographed by Cameron in various guises such as a Bedouin chief, a Nubian chief, a Nubian warrior and much more. He was the inspiration for a number of popular books.
I am enormously interested in news like that because it merges history, Africa, Asia, adventurism, exploration and photography. Despite my abhorrence of colonialism, I consider men such as Richard Francis Burton and now, Tristram, as quintessential eccentric explorers, as orientalists and ethnologists, and as remarkable linguists with an extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures.
They just don't make men that way anymore.
For those who don't know Julia Margaret Cameron: she was a British photographer born in Calcutta, known for her portraits of celebrities of the time. Her photographic career was short, spanning eleven years of her life (1864–1875), and got her first camera when she was 48 as a gift from her daughter.
As for Felice Beato (1832-1909), he was an Italian–British photographer, and one of the first people to take photographs in East Asia and one of the first war photographers. His work provides images of such events as the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the Second Opium War.
Photo © Karl Doyle-All Rights Reserved
Karl Doyle's Nomadic Worlds Series is the type and the quality of work you don't want to miss, especially if -like me- you're interested in ethnography and ethno-photography.
Karl Doyle is originally from Ireland, and relocated to London working with many visual artists. He traveled to Mongolia on the Trans-Mongolian Express train from Beijing to Ulan Bator, and spent weeks on horseback to capture the true essence of the Mongolian nomads.
In this Nomadic Worlds gallery, he merges the Mongolian Nomads, and the Harajuku Girls of Tokyo and New York's stylized sub-cultures into one continuing series...to highlight the diversity of their environment.
For larger projects, Karl uses a Sinar 4x5 for studio/interior settings, and a Wista for outside work.
Photo © David Lazar-All Rights Reserved
It's not the first time that I post about David Lazar's excellent work on The Travel Photographer's blog. Far from it. But he has just revamped his website, and it has vastly improved the layout of his many collections.
He suggested that I feature his new Kenya gallery which he titled Wildlife & Warriors which has photographs of Masai tribal people, but since I have recently had a post about the Masai, I thought I'd choose his South Asia Collection gallery to headline this post instead.
David is a travel photographer and musician from Brisbane, who is drawn to locations with rich cultural backgrounds, and is especially interested in portrait and landscape photography. His work is frequently published in photography and travel magazines, and in 2012 he won the Travel category in the Smithsonian Photography Competition.
He has been travelling annually since 2004, the year in which he became interested in travel photography.
No two ways about it....this is travel photography in the very sense of the word!
Captain Tristram Speedy: Travel Photography At Bonhams
Why would I mention Bonhams, an auction house, on The Travel Photographer's blog? Well, it's because Bonhams is holding an auction ...
Sebastião Salgado: The Nenets of Siberia
Photo © Sebastião Salgado/Amazonas/nbpictures The new work by my very favorite photographer Sebastião Salgado was featured by The Guardian ...
Karl Doyle: Nomadic Souls
Photo © Karl Doyle-All Rights Reserved Karl Doyle's Nomadic Worlds Series is the type and the quality of work you don't want to mis...
Monique Jaques | Miss Muslimah
To counter the gory headlines of the recent current events in the Middle East, the photo essay on Miss Muslimah may be a relief. It&...
Miguel Ángel Sánchez | Palestine Portraits
Photo © Miguel Ángel Sánchez-All Rights Reserved Here's another series of wonderful photographs by the talented Miguel Ángel Sánchez . N...
Chris McGrath | The Vanishing Dokar
Photo © Chris McGrath-All Rights Reserved What's a " dokar " you ask? Well, it's a two-wheeled horse-drawn cart found thro...
David Lazar: South Asia Collection
Photo © David Lazar-All Rights Reserved It's not the first time that I post about David Lazar 's excellent work on The Travel Photog...
Dominic Nahr: Travels Through Islam
Photo © Dominic Nahr-Courtesy TIME With good reason, I've become skeptical of mainstream Western magazines abilities or interest to pres...
Mauriã Rodrigues Sabbado: Opera Of Sichuan
Photo © Mauriã Rodrigues Sabbado-All Rights Reserved I was glad to see that Mauriã Rodrigues Sabbado , a Brazilian photographer and a membe...
Monica Denevan: Burma
Photo © Monica Denevan-All Rights Reserved I'm glad to have found Monica Denevan 's website with its gorgeous photographs of Burma a...
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


A great practical machine with a good range of utility stitches for general sewing plus two decorative stitches. The inclusion of an automatic needle threader is a real bonus.
This is an excellent starter machine that is also perfect for those that sew occasionally. It is a really easy to use two dial model, one for stitch selection and the other for adjusting stitch length. It just couldn't be simpler. The automatic 4-step buttonhole creates great buttonholes whilst the automatic needle threader takes the strain out of threading the needle.
There's plenty of accessory storage and a soft cover for protection.


TEACH YOUR SECURITY FORCES THE PROPER TACTICS, TECHNIQUES & PROCEDURES WITHIN IMMERSIVE 3-D REPRESENTATIONS OF YOUR ACTUAL FACILITY.
AVERT Virtual Reality Training is an interactive solution that allows you to use virtual representations of actual or planned facilities to build security awareness and test response procedures. The software was designed specifically for security forces and their management to instruct on tactics, techniques, and procedures using a 3-D representation of their actual facility.
Virtual Reality Training has multiple modules that enhance your understanding of your facility. Through replaying an AVERT simulation, performing tactical training or touring in your own facility you can quickly learn the appropriate tactics without leaving your desk. Individual or multiple trainees can participate together in the interactive, networked simulations to improve their skills against customizable adversary teams. VR Training records all simulation results ensuring that the experience is not just realistic, but measurable. Virtual Reality training can supplement expensive on-site training, especially when security precautions make such training cost prohibitive. The training simulations are built on the proven simulation engine of the AVERT threat and vulnerability software, and the facility models are interchangeable to maximize compatibility and eliminate start up cost. Virtual Reality Training improves the effectiveness of guard training while reducing training costs.
Virtual Reality Training is used in sync with the AVERT platform, therefore it allows you to leverage your existing, customized site models and simulations built in AVERT to identify and train against the most effective adversary intrusion paths. By utilizing your specific models, your security force understands your specific site layouts and trains to improve response times against specific threat scenarios. The cross-compatibility also allows for seamless comparison of objective analysis in AVERT with quantitative and realistic training results in VR Training.
The software allows for trainees to be exposed to real-world scenarios without the expense, site disruption, danger, and potential security concerns of conventional training. Rather than spending money on expensive training excursions, Virtual Reality Training utilizes guard downtime for training and provides instructions at duty stations, so you can train more frequently at a much lower cost.
With easy scenario creation, Virtual Reality Training allows you to quickly set up and run targeted training scenarios to reinforce and improve security procedures allowing you to defend against changing threats, tactics and technologies. Each trainee uses a first person simulation client, which incorporates modern video game technology to provide an immersive user experience. This unique capability adds a realistic level of fidelity to personnel training.
Whether training a single guard or a whole task force, Virtual Reality Training was developed to take the site-model creation capabilities of AVERT and expand on them. VR Training can scale from training single guards on a single task to large multi-person collaborative exercises with minimal setup time, providing quantitative tracking of progress and proficiency of trainees and training managers alike.
Contact us to learn more about Virtual Reality Training or request a demo.


text:
Newsmichael bibeau ottawamichael joseph hallmichael zehaf
Michael Zehaf-Bibeau Named As Ottawa Shooter
Ottawa Shooting Suspect Named
The Huffington Post Canada
Oct 22, 2014, 04:26 AM EDT | Updated Oct 23, 2014
A gunman who was killed after the fatal shooting of a soldier in Ottawa on Wednesday has been identified.
CBS Evening News tweeted just before 1 p.m. that the dead shooter was Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a Canadian who was born in 1982.
JUST IN: U.S. officials tell CBS News the name of the dead Ottawa shooting suspect is Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a Canadian born in 1982.
— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) October 22, 2014
It was later confirmed by CBC News that Zehaf-Bibeau was the man in a photo that had circulated on social media throughout Wednesday.
BREAKING | This is a photo of Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, gunman in this morning's shootings in Ottawa. #cbcOTT#OTTnewspic.twitter.com/OLSxlYPelj
— CBC Ottawa (@CBCOttawa) October 22, 2014
The Twitter account "Military Studies" tweeted the photo early Wednesday and said it was initially posted on social media by terrorist group ISIS.
But police sources told La Presse said that Zehaf-Bibeau was a "lone wolf" and had no affiliation with Islamic terror groups.
Author Denis Lessard wrote in French that the suspect was mentally unstable, but that his name does not appear on a list of people that police are monitoring for terrorist ties.
A Quebec-raised Muslim convert, Zehaf-Bibeau was born as Michael Joseph Hall but later changed his name, U.S. government sources told Reuters.
CBS News said his full name was Michael Abdul Zehaf Bibeau, and that he dropped both his first and second names at times.
Canadian authorities had considered him a "high-risk traveller" and his passport was taken away, according to The Globe and Mail.
Montreal court records indicate that a man of the same name and birth year had a criminal history in the city, The Gazette reported.
A resident of the Villeray-Saint-Michel-Parc Extension area for a time, he had been convicted of possessing PCP in December 2004 and received a 60-day prison sentence. He received an additional one-day sentence for possessing marijuana, and was also convicted for not complying with release conditions.
The man didn't show up in court for a marijuana charge in 2006 but later pleaded guilty to it in 2009, receiving an absolute discharge under the name "Michael Bibeau-Zehaf."
And he appears to have had a record right across Canada.
A man with the same name had been charged with a robbery that happened in Vancouver in December 2011.
He later pleaded guilty to uttering threats and spent one day in jail, which came in addition to 66 days of credit for time served.
His mother, Susan Bibeau, is a federal government worker who lives in Montreal, CBC News reported.
Police confirmed at an afternoon press conference that a male suspect was dead after reservist Nathan Cirillo had been killed after a shooting at the National War Memorial.
In Photos: Ottawa Shooting
michael bibeau ottawamichael joseph hallmichael zehafMichael Zehaf-BibeauMichael Zehaf-Bibeau ottawa


The quiet and peaceful ancient theater of Epidavros is a unique venue that I've visited recently.
I couldn't think of a different arrangement than a piano on stage, and a silent crowd observing the scenery created.
I composed this music with different variations but I chose the simplest one, to express the empty theater, the light and the speed of the footage.
I would appreciate your feedback on this!!!
It seems that our documentary created some noise in the media!
This is myself talking in the News of Star Channel about UpDrones!
Our first attemt on a short film is finally complete. We have decided to create a short documentary about the Volcanoes of Greece.
We collaborated with Vasilis Saltagiannis, an enthusiastic geologist, composer and singer who created the scenario and narrated as well.
Footage came from local drone pilots and I have created the music inspired by the words that accompanied the footage.
I am really proud of our collaborative work and the result.
My mind goes into similar thoughts which were reinforced by the aerial footage of the place.
A piece of epic symphonic music was required in my opinion and I did my best to bring it to life.
My entire VST library came in play, and a lot of time was spent on creating the sounds and the different themes.
I hope that you enjoy the outcome.
I could write a book about this video. Recording original sounds in the forest, the river and the monastery was a unique experience.
I must admit that being physically present in the location of the filming, puts a different dimension in the musical ideas.
It is clear, that cellos have a leading part in my musical thinking which I try to express as accurately as possible.
In this video however, Omnisphere vocal samples play a key part in the arrangement.
Lousios river as you can see, is truly astonishing and you can't help but thinking about returning to this place!
The bridge of Karitena is shown on the 5000 drachmas note. It is a bridge that many battles have been fought during the 1821 revolution. While standing on this bridge, my mind was thinking of him.
Theodoros Kolokotronis, was an emblematic personality during the Hellenic revolution of 1821 who was originally from Karitena.
He appears to express progressive thinking as well as being very courageous during the political conflicts that followed the end of the revolution.
In a play, titled "Our Great Circus", written by Iakovos Kabanelis, Kolokotronis has a monologue where his progressive thinking is illustrated clearly. He asks of the modern Greeks to keep looking ahead and stop leaning in their past.
This play, the scenario and the music have been always a great inspiration for me.
My music is a revision of a piece called "T Anapli" originally composed by Stavros Xarhakos, for this play.
Very little can be said about this video. All ancient sites in Greece are great sources of inpsiration.
I imagined a peaceful environment as seen in the footage, with nothing disturbing the nature and the ruins of the Oracle of Delfi.
I also imagined a cello playing on the top of the hill, in total harmony with the picturesque scenery.
This is when my faith in simplicity was massively reinforced. The sounds of nature along with simple music will always create an emotional movement inside me.
I used BBC Sound FX libraries to accompany the original sound of the area. I used Kurzweil's PC3X Cello samples as well.


Simple Grid Layouts plugin for Genesis websites allows you to display posts content (including cpts) in variety of cool grid formats. In few simple clicks, you can setup: Grid, Mosaic and even Masonry layouts for specific set of posts or cpt content.
Making grid layouts more user friendly are host of additional in-built features like: infinite scroll, lightbox pop-up, overlay text display and much more. Also, you can easily filter and select which posts should display in the grid via: category, tags, cpt taxonomy.
Select the Grid Layout style from settings box.
Choose which posts to display in the grid.
Besides awesome features, plugin comes with dedicated support desk for registered users. Plugin support is available via Help Desk, remember to register using same email ID used during the product purchase.
Got a pre-purchase question? Contact Here.
REFUND POLICY: Offering a 15 day money back guarantee for Personal License if you are unhappy with my support service. It should be requested within 15 days of the purchase. That's a bold statement..
Now go to your Dashboard. Click on Plugins -> Add New button.
You will redirect to the activate a plugin page. Click on "Activate Plugin" link and the plugin will activate successfully.
Can I create a filterable portfolio page?
Does this plugin support Masonry Grid Layout?
Yes, you can create 3 or 4 columns Masonry grid layout using this plugin. Also, you can replace the default pre/next pagination with infinite scroll feature.
Can I create grid layout for gallery page?
Can I add lightbox popup effect for Gallery images?
Yes. Plugin is using the prettyPhoto Lightbox library for modal effect.
Can I alter the default layout of the specific category/tag/taxonomy archive page?


text:
Every John Carpenter Movie, Ranked
By Jim Vorel | October 19, 2022 | 10:00am
Movies Lists john carpenter
Of all the superlatives one can lay at the feet of director John Carpenter, the thing that always sticks in my mind is the fact that Carpenter managed to end up with a phrase as broad as "the master of horror" indelibly associated with him. That is a really general statement, and yet horror film geeks know exactly who you're talking about when the phrase "the master of horror" is mentioned. And it's not George Romero, or Mario Bava. It's not Tobe Hooper, or Wes Craven, or even the likes of James Wan. No, it's John Carpenter—it's even the guy's Twitter handle! Talk about effective marketing, right?
And it's funny, looking back at Carpenter's generous feature film career, because although there's obviously plenty of classic horror cinema represented, the director's talents have actually been spread through quite a few genres over the years. Carpenter started his career in satirical science fiction comedy, in fact, before branching out into everything from crime dramas, to love stories, to martial arts action spectaculars. The horror genre may be the "home base" of Carpenter's career, as we're reminded with each of the endless string of modern Halloween sequels, but even the "master of horror" had a career far more eclectic than many realize.
It's been 12 years since the master's most recent feature film, and the last decade has seen the 74-year-old Carpenter increasingly focused on everything from musical composition and production to videogame fandom. But you always have to wonder if Carpenter believes he has one more feature left in him, and if with the closure of the original Halloween timeline in Halloween Ends, he might feel compelled to bless audiences with his cynical vision one last time. He keeps mentioning that prospective Dead Space movie, after all …
In honor of the master of horror, we recently rewatched every single theatrically released John Carpenter feature film, to assemble the following ranking. Consider it a guided tour of one of the most unique careers in Hollywood history.
Here's every John Carpenter movie, ranked:
18. Ghosts of Mars (2001)
The absolute nadir of Carpenter's career, this dreary amalgam of science fiction, horror and action tropes is sold by its fans—what few exist—as some kind of genre satire, but unlike Escape from L.A., it's difficult to believe while watching that the director intended any kind of knowing parody. And even if he did, it wouldn't excuse the film's myriad failings, horrendous casting and depressingly shoddy production, which results in a visual style that suggests not an auteur making a subtle satire, but a tired director running out of both style and steam. It doesn't matter how you approach Ghosts of Mars—as camp, as comedy, whatever—it's still a slog to get through, even if it definitely will elicit the occasional guffaw of disbelief. How else could one react to a film told as one long flashback (for no narrative reason), while simultaneously containing multiple levels of flashbacks-within-flashbacks? Inception this ain't.
Seemingly inspired by both westerns and classic zombie films, the latter of which inform many of the director's films, Ghosts of Mars is extremely lazy and unambitious for what sounds like it would be a grand sci-fi spectacle. Almost all of the action takes place in a remote, squalid "mining outpost," which is simply an excuse to use the same exceedingly unimpressive, generic sci-fi sets over and over again. Everything is grating, from the absurd costumes, to the crunching and out-of-place rock soundtrack, to the jaw-droppingly bad CGI action, to the committedly skeevy characterization of Jason Statham's Sergeant Jericho. Opposing the ragtag band of Mars soldiers, meanwhile, we have a "villain" who speaks entirely in gibberish, and is never even given the courtesy of a name. In the end credits, he is dubbed "Big Daddy Mars." Sounds like a compelling antagonist!
All of the worst traits and fascinations of late-career Carpenter are at their most deleterious in Ghosts of Mars, from the constant barrage of sexist characters, to his utter fixation on fades and schizophrenic editing, which first became a major problem in Vampires before reaching its zenith here. At one point, a character needs to walk from one end of a room to the other, a distance of maybe 15 feet, and Carpenter uses a fade to have them travel the distance rather than just showing it or cutting to them on the opposite side of the room. It's sort of amazing that this was a film made at the end of Carpenter's career, because it feels like something he might have shot when he was 13. Truly terrible, it needs to be seen only by film fans committed to critiquing every feature in the man's career. Everyone else can safely ignore Ghosts of Mars.
17. Vampires (1998)
Vampires is considerably more technically proficient than Ghosts of Mars, but it suffers mightily in the department of characterization, while sadly also the most regressive and painfully misogynistic of all Carpenter's features. The film makes up a little ground through some attractive cinematography, especially in its western landscapes and establishing shots, but after finishing Vampires it's the atrocious action, embarrassing one-liners and reprehensible attitude toward women that will stick in the viewer's mind.
In its opening moments, though, Vampires does seem to promise an action-horror allure that splits the difference between gritty and flashy. The initial sequence of vampire hunter Jack Crow (James Woods) and his crew of mercs clearing out an old farmhouse full of vampires by hooking them like fish and pulling them screaming out into the sunlight to be vaporized has a thrilling callousness to it, an attitude of almost bureaucratic professionalism applied to the battle between good and evil. The film immediately chooses to dynamite that dynamic, though, eliminating Crow's entire crew in a motel massacre sequence that is frankly stunning in its almost total lack of coherent choreography and editing. This is the moment that Vampires sheds whatever bits might have been compelling, stranding us with both heroes and villains impossible to accept at face value. Make no mistake, this villain can speak, but in every other respect he's just about as generic and uninteresting as "Big Daddy Mars."
The far bigger problem, though, are characters such as Daniel Baldwin's relentlessly pathetic and chauvinistic Tony Montoya, and Woods' portrayal of grizzled vampire slayer Crow. In the 12 years that passed between Big Trouble in Little China and Vampires, it's as if Carpenter is now unironically writing the very epitomes of the male jock hero he was once lampooning. Where we're meant to understand that Big Trouble's Jack Burton is a fool, blundering goodnaturedly into an adventure he doesn't really understand, it feels like we're supposed to find the character of Jack Crow cool as hell, as if Woods' tight jeans (black tank top tucked into them) and abhorrent one-liners represent the peak of male bravura. Worse, it's not just the characters who are constantly objectifying the few women in the film—Twin Peaks icon Sheryl Lee is done a grave disservice by the camera itself, which invites the audience eyeballs to graze on her body as she lies naked, tied to a bed by our protagonists. As a fan of Carpenter, it's a tough film to watch, and I'm glad Vampires stands out as more of an outlier than a persistent theme in the man's career.
16. Dark Star (1974)
Carpenter's first feature film, Dark Star is an uneven, messy, but cinematically curious bit of ephemera, one that feels like a student art film primarily because that's exactly how it began its life. Carpenter co-wrote with Dan O'Bannon, the writer of Alien and eventual writer-director of the immortal Return of the Living Dead, and some of O'Bannon's wry humor can be felt in this tale of lazy, mentally addled long-haul space pilots as they suffer their way through an endless mission of destroying unnecessary or "unstable" planets. We can also palpably feel the crew's debilitating boredom as they drift through space on a pointless quest, growing old as they listen to elevator music. It's a slow, slow way to die.
Dark Star is at its best while exploring the philosophical confines of what feels like an experimental short film, as encapsulated by the redundancies and illogical nature of a system where the space pilots must debate with their own, A.I.-empowered and sentient bombs in order to convince the bombs to do their jobs. These strange discussions allow for rambling pontificating on the nature of free will and identity, contributing what are ultimately the signature sequences of Dark Star—men arguing with bombs about whether they should or shouldn't explode. It's as strange to see on screen as it sounds on the page.
Unfortunately, though, the film bogs down interminably in the second act, during a sequence involving a beachball-shaped alien creature on the loose in the ship, feeling for all intents and purposes like extra footage that was crammed into a short film to help it reach "feature length." The end result is a film that feels stretched well past its breaking point, occasionally blessed with moments of imagination and a kooky sense of humor, but nowhere near ready to fill even 83 minutes of screentime. It absolutely feels like a first feature, albeit an admirable one.
15. The Ward (2010)
The Ward is Carpenter's most recent feature film to date, and represented his Hollywood comeback after almost a decade, following the disaster that was Ghosts of Mars. And as a comeback, The Ward really isn't bad—it proved he could still quite competently put a movie together, but it ultimately aspires to very little else, unless you want to give it a huge amount of credit for what turns out to be a deeply illogical twist in the final moments. It feels like a very "safe" attempt to get back on his feet, and honestly that's fine. It'a also easy to appreciate that Carpenter thankfully dismisses the more problematic, misogynist elements of some of his later works, which is significant here given the film's cast of young, attractive Hollywood starlets. With the One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest psych ward setting, The Ward easily could have descended into full-on "women in prison"-style exploitation, but this time around the director displays some welcome restraint in objectifying his cast.
As for the script, The Ward is for the most part a classic ghost story, fused with abusive psychological escape drama. It's not particularly visually striking, but the worst excesses of Ghosts of Mars and its obsession with fades are toned down a bit here, and it does feature a character lineup of enjoyably kooky residents, each with their own tics, evocative of something like the mental hospital residents of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. Getting on board with the protagonist played by Amber Heard, on the other hand, is a bit more difficult—we're meant to empathize with her due to the mistreatment she perceives, but she's simultaneously resistant to all genuine attempts to help her situation. How can one really be in the camp of a character delivering the line "there is no emotional trauma!" while she's simultaneously weeping and flashing back to her memory loss from the day before? Even when she meets those genuinely attempting to help her, she shows little interest in self preservation.
And as for the big reveal … well, it's some classic cheese, with implications that immediately introduce half a dozen paradoxes in the events we've already seen. At the end of the day, The Ward feels like a competent, low-budget potboiler, rather than the passionate return of an industry legend to the spotlight.
14. Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992)
In the 1980s, John Carpenter had produced an extremely impressive string of genre classics, though not all (such as The Thing) had been received as successes at the time. The 1990s, on the other hand, saw Carpenter initially trying to expand and seemingly shed his image as exclusively a horror filmmaker, resulting in one of the strangest projects of his career: 1992's Memoirs of an Invisible Man.
This is a film uniquely adrift in terms of its tone, constantly at odds with itself over what exactly it's supposed to be. In the 2000 book Which Lie Did I Tell? by screenwriter William Goldman, he writes that Memoirs of an Invisible Man had originally been developed as a vehicle for Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman, before Reitman bailed due to disagreements with notoriously difficult star Chevy Chase. It's easy to imagine how this version of the film would have been a far more natural fit, combining some of the same smart aleck humor of Peter Venkman with a similar fusion of science fiction, comedy and even light horror. In the hands of John Carpenter, however, it feels like Memoirs of an Invisible Man is constantly being pulled in multiple ways at once. While Carpenter resists the imperative for the film to be scary or science fiction-driven, seemingly seeing it as more of a combination of drama, noir and romance, star Chevy Chase seems dead set against committing to any of the material in the script that was likely intended to be more overtly comedic.
This seeming clash between script, director and star leaves Memoirs of an Invisible Man in a strange, moribund place, stranded between distinct takes on the same material that probably could have been pulled off more effectively. The reliance on parodic, noir-style narration is an odd touch, and Chase's Nick Halloway never quite manages to materialize into a relatable figure. The one person who does come off surprisingly well is Sam Neill as effectively dangerous-looking CIA agent David Jenkins, a performance that must have impressed Carpenter, given that he went on to cast Neill as his lead in In the Mouth of Madness two years later. Memoirs, on the other hand, has the distinction of feeling like perhaps the "least Carpenter" of any movie in the director's filmography.
13. Escape from L.A. (1996)
It's rare to find a film sequel that is simultaneously so similar, and so opposite its predecessor, but Escape from L.A. is that movie. Where Carpenter's 1981 original is a brooding, moody piece of dystopian satire, one that gets by on tone and the undeniable star presence of Kurt Russell more than it does on actual action or setpieces, Escape from L.A. runs wild with every conceivable idea that passes through the head of its writer-director. Snake Plissken hasn't changed, but the world around him has gotten orders of magnitude more absurd. What this yields is a relentlessly zany adventure, featuring a protagonist embodying the utter zenith of the badass cinematic antihero—he's every Han Solo trope, except stretched well beyond the boundaries of any kind of reality. That character is turned loose in the least subtle social satire imaginable, and yet Escape from L.A. defies its crummy reputation by simultaneously being deliriously entertaining from start to finish. By this metric, at least, Escape from L.A. is a better film than it's often portrayed.
As for the story, it's literally Escape from New York all over again, as captured outlaw/legendary soldier Snake Plissken is given another suicide mission by the U.S. government, to infiltrate the penal colony of L.A. in a dystopian 2013, where all the undesirables are housed in a United States that has been overthrown by the religious far right. Kurt Russell is again the film's biggest asset, as he oozes true movie star charisma. The fact that he manages to do that while dressed in a leather catsuit, looking like he's holding out for the release of The Matrix in three years, is all the more impressive. There's something gloriously stupid about the challenges he's made to take on in this film, especially when he's forced to dribble and shoot basketballs to save his life in the film's crowning sequence.
Escape from L.A. is so aggressively absurd, in fact, that its proponents often claim the entire film is very much intended as parody of both American machismo and action cinema cliches. I can't say for certain whether this is true—it certainly feels like Carpenter truly believes Snake is the coolest dude around—but whether or not the director intends it, the audience is still able to enjoy the film as parody, and it functions much better this way. The atrocious CGI, childish costuming and characters with names like "Cuervo Jones" only add to this effect, as does the absolutely breathless pace, which often sees elaborately detailed sets used for a single three minute scene before being immediately discarded. Never has it felt like Carpenter had more money to burn, and it makes perfect sense when you see that Escape from L.A. possessed the biggest budget of his career. Of all the movies in his filmography, this one feels the most deserving of the title "guilty pleasure."
12. Village of the Damned (1995)
Although one typically thinks of John Carpenter in the context of original screenplays and story concepts, it's not as if the guy was opposed to making a story that had been told before—The Thing is effectively a remake, after all, of Christian Nyby's classic The Thing From Another World. But where The Thing is a clear Carpenter passion project, his 1995 remake of 1960 British horror flick Village of the Damned feels much more like cinematic mercenary work, with Carpenter basically shrugging his shoulders at subpar casting and a thoroughly conventional script, and electing to simply get the project done without investing his heart in it. Perhaps he was still disappointed at the time at the box office failure of In the Mouth of Madness a year earlier.
Regardless, this is a workmanlike effort all the way, and is arguably Carpenter's most competently forgettable film. It benefits from the strength of its basic premise, which is as powerful and inexplicable as ever—the entire population of a town collapses one day, only to find that a handful of town women have suddenly become pregnant. When born, the silver-haired children are emotionally cold but hyper-intelligent, seeming to act as a hive organism before they start using their innate psychic powers to torture anyone who would stand in the way of their mysterious plans. The child casting is actually one of the film's stronger aspects, and there's some effective cinematography and imagery of the group of kids marching in lockstep, highlighting the budding humanity and individualism of David, the only one of the children without a "partner."
Unfortunately, the film is let down by much of its starring cast, particularly Christopher Reeve as the primary protagonist. He's still operating in full-on Superman mode, and his moralizing feels stiff, wooden and unrealistic throughout. Mark Hamill is wasted as the wild-eyed town preacher, a character that could have been utilized more heavily to illustrate the human side of evil. Likewise, the "horror" sequences of the kids using their powers to force townsfolk to destroy themselves have a tendency to come off as silly rather than scary. All in all, Village of the Damned just feels short, tidy and perfunctory—it's perfectly watchable, but has no particular interest in exploring any ethically gray territory. Carpenter punched in, got the job done, and punched out.
11. Christine (1983)
Christine certainly doesn't feel like one of John Carpenter's bigger or more ambitious films, but it's a more than competent Stephen King adaptation all the same. Tidy and self-assured, it has all the King hallmarks one expects—the psychotic high school bullies, the classic rock 'n roll music—punched up with some fantastic (but sparingly used) practical effects and a few flourishes of classic Carpenter electronic musical scoring. It's not quite as likely to leave a lasting impression as some of the director's other works of the era, but it's a very easy watch.
Our characters in Christine are essentially a menagerie of greasy, surly high school weirdos, with the nebbish Arnie as our unlikely leading man. To the very last person, everyone on screen in Christine is terminally horny—even the old man who sells them the car—and their conversational patter abounds with what can only be described as raunchy "locker room talk." Perhaps it's this overall attitude that is to blame for everyone seemingly not noticing when Arnie acquires the junker of a car and begins to undergo radical personality changes.
What follows is a story about temptation and empowerment, and Arnie does become effectively creepy as Christine comes to dominate his psyche. There are some excellent conversational scenes featuring Arnie and his friends, cruising the interstate late at night, which illustrate the dangerous fatalism he's acquired from his prized possession Christine. In the end, it's a sick little love story, but not between man and woman.
10. Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
It's sort of strange in retrospect that John Carpenter never directed a proper "zombie movie," considering how often the films of his career are deeply informed by them. Numerous Carpenter projects could be described as "basically a zombie movie, except…", such as The Fog and Ghosts of Mars, in which the zombies are more or less just replaced by angry spirits, or Prince of Darkness, which has another layer of dreamy mysticism infused in it from start to finish. But none of his films are more of a zombie movie analog than Assault on Precinct 13, a Night of the Living Dead tribute in which the undead have been supplanted by bullet-spraying gang soldiers, but the racial tension remains just the same.
This is a gritty, take-no-prisoners action drama, standing apart from even Carpenter's more overt horror films in its unflinching and disturbingly direct depiction of wanton violence. The early scene in which a little girl is graphically shot dead while standing at an ice cream truck is genuinely shocking for how callously cruel and uncaring it is—her death means absolutely nothing to the criminal who blows her way on a whim, and it quickly establishes that our villains are little more than zombie-like beasts, bereft of humanity. When they lay siege to a decommissioned LAPD office operating with a tiny skeleton crew, the desperation in the air becomes palpable quickly.
It may not quite have the elemental fear of his follow-up Halloween, but Assault on Precinct 13 is in fact the more complex film, an early testament in Carpenter's career to his skill with composition (visual and musical) and biting criticism of "modern life."
9. Starman (1984)
John Carpenter's Starman is one of those movies that is inextricably linked to another, similar film of the era that would go on to much greater pop cultural impact—in this case, Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Initially developed alongside Spielberg's Night Skies (which would become E.T.) at Columbia, it was a film that was seen very differently by various writers, producers and would-be directors. Some envisioned Starman as a family drama, others as hard sci-fi spectacle. The eventual release of E.T. threw a spanner in the works for the Starman script, as it was also about a friendly alien who comes to Earth and is taken in by a supportive human presence. Enter, John Carpenter of all people, whose vision for Starman focused more on its dramatic and romantic aspects, and the bond that develops between a woman and an alien (who happens to look just like her dead husband) as they travel across the country on the run from the U.S. government. It's safe to say this is about as different a take on alien life from Carpenter's 1982 masterpiece The Thing as is possible.
Even with that in mind, though, you can't really fail to note the Amblin-esque feel—this film is Carpenter at his most Spielbergian, something particularly inescapable during a sweeping close-up of the face of Karen Allen, who had starred in Raiders of the Lost Ark only three years earlier. And yet, there's trademark Carpenter to spare here as well, particularly in the genuinely horrific transformation of the alien presence into an adult Jeff Bridges, which briefly calls to mind the body horror of The Thing. There's also a certain wryness to the film, a bit of Carpenter's own brand of cynicism, perfectly captured in the opening sequences of an alien being invited to visit Earth by the Voyager space probe, only to be immediately shot down upon his arrival.
All in all, Starman is a strange and individualistic beast. It can be slow and meandering, slightly stilted but quite sentimental all the same. The budget for explosions, inexplicably, is far bigger than you would likely expect. But thanks to the keen performance of Jeff Bridges in particular, who never truly grows "too human," and does an excellent job of portraying a detached alien consciousness, Starman is memorably eccentric.
8. Escape from New York (1981)
In Escape from New York, John Carpenter creates a whole lot of atmosphere with a minimum of actual resources and setpieces. It's a testament to how effectively he sets the scene, and chooses a perfect leading man for the job, that viewers often remember Escape from New York as being a bigger, bolder film than it truly is.
In reality, Escape from New York is really pretty modest—certainly nothing like the completely over-the-top ludicrousness that permeates every moment of sequel Escape from L.A., which was made with a much bigger budget and much less restraint. Here, the city is shrouded by night through the entire runtime, and we really only get a suggestion of what kind of urban deathmaze NYC has become since the dystopian government roped it off and turned it into the country's biggest free-range prison. The use of NYC landmarks is minimal, and there's not even that much action to speak of, save for some underground fighting pits in which the grizzled Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) does battle with professional wrestler Ox Baker. Even the film's big conclusion essentially consists of a couple of cars driving slowly across a bridge, which isn't exactly "white knuckle."
Where the film shines is in its setting and its characters, having assembled an all-timer cast of character actors to do the job, from Tom Atkins and the squirrelly Harry Dean Stanton to Donald Pleasence, Ernest Borgnine, Lee Van Cleef and Isaac Hayes as antagonist "The Duke." But none of it would work without Russell, who makes his Snake Plissken into perhaps the ultimate cinematic antihero. His sneer and utter disdain for the powers that be turn an underwritten character into a cultural icon, with characterization coming largely not from his own mouth but from the way the world so often reacts in awe or disgust of his legend. Few movie characters have ever been so perfectly suited to anchor the story they're in.
7. The Fog (1980)
If you're a horror fan, it's hard not to love the basic premise of The Fog, with its billowing clouds of white vapor that bring swift death along with them. John Carpenter's follow-up to Halloween had a somewhat larger budget to work with, and the practical effects look great as a result, although it wasn't as successful at the box office. Regardless, The Fog is a superior film from a production standpoint, reuniting Carpenter with Jamie Lee Curtis, albeit in a less important role. It concerns a Californian coastal town that is celebrating its 100th anniversary when dark secrets from the 1800s begin to emerge. Turns out that the "city fathers" committed some pretty serious crimes against humanity, and now a crew of restless revenants has returned to dish out some much-deserved revenge. Caught up in the madness is Adrienne Barbeau, Carpenter's wife of the time, debuting on screen in the role that would make her a scream queen figure for decades. There's simply a great sense of atmosphere in The Fog, especially in the dense, otherworldly way that the glowing banks of fog move throughout town, amplified by a signature John Carpenter synth soundtrack. Anyone who knows Carpenter would be able to pick out his unique style immediately in this one.
It's also another entry in the director's history of "basically a zombie movie, except for ____" films, with the caveat here being that the zombie-esque antagonists are technically ghosts. No matter, they're effectively chilling no matter what we're calling them. Of note: Carpenter completists will appreciate the presence here of actress Nancy Loomis in another Halloween follow-up, having played Laurie Strode's best friend Annie two years earlier.
6. In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
There's a strong case to be made for In the Mouth of Madness as potentially the last great film of Carpenter's career, to be mentioned in the same breath as his better-known gems. Certainly, most horror geeks would agree it's the best of his 1990s output. This is a strange, delirious odyssey—uneven without a doubt, but visually inspired and anchored by a strong central performance from an actor who seems to understand exactly what is needed of him.
That performance comes courtesy of Sam Neill, one year removed from the biggest starring role of his life in Spielberg's Jurassic Park, and thus likely at the peak of his fame in the eyes of American audiences. He's playing John Trent, a no-nonsense freelance insurance investigator who is hired by a book publisher to look into the apparent disappearance of bestselling horror author Sutter Cane, who the film dutifully informs us "outsells Stephen King," so you know he's clearly a big deal. Cane's novels have been a pop-cultural sensation, with rumors that they've even affected the mental state of "less stable readers." Trent is tasked with tracking down Cane for purely economic reasons—the manuscript for his newest work is late, and time is money. It jibes perfectly with the skeptical, rather dismissive energy that Neill gives to Trent—he distrusts everyone around him, assuming duplicity exists in every soul, and it's just a matter of ferreting it out. An early scene illustrates Trent's ability to force a confession from an oily businessman, but what use will his cynical, smarmy talents be when put up against supernatural evil for which there is no earthly explanation? What if Trent is not the master of his own destiny?
Stephen King may be the horror author overtly namechecked, but In the Mouth of Madness is much more directly Carpenter's tribute to the pioneering weird fiction of author H.P. Lovecraft, to the point that the film is almost a collage of Lovecraft's greatest hits—interdimensional elder gods, parallel dimensions and Things Too Horrible to Describe. There's no overt Cthulhu appearance, but there might as well be, as Sutter Cane presents like one of the romanticized pop culture representations of Lovecraft as tortured genius (in addition to counter-criticism of his racist writings) that have become more common in the last few decades as the writer's works have steadily been absorbed into the mainstream. Carpenter's tribute seems to presage the mainstreaming of weird fiction and cosmic horror itself, and you have to wonder what the director thinks today of the visibility of Lovecraft as a genre, and indeed a verb, almost 30 years later.
5. They Live (1988)
Like most of John Carpenter's movies, They Live can be read however one pleases—they are, after all, mostly about pleasing you. A sharp commentary on consumerism carved gleefully with a dull knife, or maybe something closer to a concerned embrace of the bourgeois joys inherent in dumb violence, or maybe just a weird-ass sci-fi action movie with a weird-ass leading man: They Live is, almost inherently, a joy to watch. It's as if Carpenter's tapped into some sort of primordially aligned pleasure axis along your spine, giving you the tingles as he balances insight and idiocy throughout his tale about a drifter ("Rowdy" Roddy Piper) who, with the help of magic sunglasses, discovers that the rich and powerful are just as grotesque as he'd always assumed. Every one of Carpenter's odd plot choices click into place as if preordained, so that when Piper's in a completely pointless, six-minute fight scene with Keith David, one can't help but love that Carpenter's in on the punchline with all of us, which just happens to be that there is no punchline. The fight scene exists for its own sake—as maybe much of They Live does. Carpenter's a goddamn genius. —Dom Sinacola
4. Prince of Darkness (1987)
I'm prepared to make a case for Prince of Darkness as John Carpenter's most underrated film, at least among a rank-and-file film viewership. There's no doubt that this movie does possess a certain cult among the director's fandom, and a distinct species of horror geek in particular, but it simultaneously deserves a wider critical reappraisal. As part two of what is sometimes referred to as the director's "apocalypse trilogy," along with The Thing and In the Mouth of Madness, it treads some similar ideological ground, but never in his career does Carpenter weave such a tapestry of sorrow and hopelessness as he does here. To immerse yourself in Prince of Darkness is to feel mankind's utter insignificance in an incomprehensibly vast, cold and bleak universe, and to simultaneously be certain that we probably don't have what it takes to survive it.
The plot of Prince of Darkness, what little there really is, concerns the long-hidden basement of a Catholic parish in L.A., where we're told a luminescent canister of swirling green ooze had been safeguarded by mystics for hundreds or thousands of years. What's inside? Nothing less than the distilled essence of Satan himself, but Prince of Darkness is by no means content to stop there. In this universe, even the ultimate evil of Satan is only the scion of an original source of all darkness and entropy, and that ur-evil is now hungrily crouched on the doorstep of our reality, ready to step through the veil. It's up to a handful of research students (and Donald Pleasence!) to stand in its way, as the presence of pure evil begins its inevitable corruption. What follows is one part The Thing and another part Lucio Fulci's The Beyond, gleefully untethered from even an iota of "hey, will people think this is too weird?" restraint.
The result is perhaps the perfect amalgam of random Carpenter trademarks and elements, from the synth-y score to the reappearing cast members from Halloween and Big Trouble in Little China. It's a wildly creative exploration of concepts of liquid reality and dreams vs. waking life, far ahead of its time in some of its recurring elements such as the "transmissions from the future." These dream sequences, shot with a grainy VHS camcorder aesthetic, feel like a foundational text for the concept of found footage horror, the kind of lo-fi realistic imagery that would totally reshape the genre two decades later. The audience, meanwhile, is likely to find itself in breathless, uncomfortable silence throughout—Prince of Darkness holds the viewer rapt, equal parts confused and unnerved. This movie casts a disturbing spell—if you haven't seen it for years, plan to revisit it soon.
3. Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
The finest of Carpenter's "adventure movies" without a doubt, Big Trouble in Little China is also one of the decade's more broadly entertaining genre mish-mashes. Fantastical, colorful and brimming with parody of American action machismo, the film might also be Carpenter's finest satire—entertaining enough to appreciate at face value, but sly enough in its commentary that some contemporary viewers no doubt missed what it was saying about it's so-called "hero," Jack Burton.
Burton is yet another iconic Carpenter protagonist portrayed by Kurt Russell, but he's pretty much the antithesis of Snake Plissken or R.J. MacReady in terms of his attitude. Brash, loudmouthed, hotheaded and not particularly bright, Burton doesn't so much uncover a mystery in Chinatown as he does fall ass-backward into it, smack dab into the business of immortal sorcerer David Lo Pan (a never-better James Hong) as he searches for a mystical "girl with green eyes" who can restore his humanity. Burton is a big, dumb brick of grade-A action beefcake, all oiled biceps and glorious mullet, and audiences are primed to accept this man as our hero … even though in reality, he's more accurately playing the part of the goofy sidekick. The true protagonist of Big Trouble in Little China is the fearless and competent Wang Chi (Dennis Dun), who engages in death-defying stunt work and aerial swordplay while Burton is … firing his gun into the air and subsequently being knocked unconscious by falling debris for most of an action scene. Burton's just along for the ride, largely unaware of what the hell is going on for most of the film, an ingenue suffering from delusions of grandeur.
That kind of satire is easier to miss, though, in a film as relentlessly paced and exciting as Big Trouble in Little China is through its brisk 99 minutes. It throws a stunning collection of sights at the screen—huge back alley kung fu battles, flying and exploding lightning assassins, hairy sewer monsters, and instantly iconic, neon-drenched sets that encapsulate the style of the late 1980s like no other film has ever quite managed to replicate. In terms of pure aesthetic appeal, Big Trouble in Little China really can't be beaten.
For students of John Carpenter's filmography, it is interesting to note that Halloween is actually a significantly less ambitious film than his previous Assault on Precinct 13 on almost every measurable level. It doesn't have the sizable cast of extras, or the extensive FX and stunt work. It's not filled with action sequences. But what it does give us is the first full distillation of the American slasher film, and a heaping helping of atmosphere. Carpenter built off earlier proto-slashers such as Bob Clark's Black Christmas in penning the legend of Michael Myers, an unstoppable phantom who returns to his hometown on Halloween night to stalk high school girls. (The original title was actually The Babysitter Murders, if you haven't heard that particular bit of trivia before.) In the process, he becomes a mythic figure of evil.
Carpenter heavily employs tools that would become synonymous with slashers, such as the killer's POV perspective, making Myers into something of a voyeur (he's just called "The Shape" in the credits) who lurks silently in the darkness with inhuman patience before finally making his move. It's impossible to suss out his thought process—is he titillated by the promiscuous young women he's stalking, or is he even capable of recognizing another human? It's a lean, mean movie with some absurd characterization in its first half (particularly from the ditzy P.J. Soles, who can't stop saying "totally") that then morphs into a claustrophobic crescendo of tension as Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode first comes into contact with Myers. Utterly indispensable to the whole thing is the great Donald Pleasance as Dr. Loomis, the killer's personal hype man/Ahab, whose sole purpose in the screenplay is to communicate to the audience with frothing hyperbole just what a monster this Michael Myers really is. It can't be overstated how important Pleasance is to making this film into the cultural touchstone that would inspire the early '80s slasher boom to follow. Without Loomis, Michael is just a man. With him, he becomes something more.
As a 30-something horror geek who first dove headfirst into the genre in college, there was never a time for me when cultural appraisal of John Carpenter's The Thing was anything other than as a universally lauded masterpiece of the horror and science fiction genres. That's the reality I've always existed in, which makes it all that much stranger to read about how much critics sincerely hated Carpenter's film upon its release in 1982. They hated its unflinchingly gross gore and morphing effects. They hated its cold indifference toward humanity, and its distrust of authority. They hated the way its characters failed to band together in a cohesive or satisfying way to repel an alien invader. They hated it with such verve, in fact, that the magazine Cinefantastique ran a cover story on The Thing with the following caption: "Is this the most hated movie of all time?"
It's incredible, then, to think of how utterly the film was reappraised over the course of the next three decades. How many classics in this genre really end up that way after being not just "overlooked" in their initial releases, but widely condemned as abominations? The consensus on The Thing reshaped itself with an alacrity not unlike its titular, shape-shifting monster.
One thing the critics certainly weren't wrong about was the film's emotional temperature—everything about The Thing is icy cold and remorseless. It is ponderous when it wants to be, but Carpenter's slowly panning shots tend to hide nuggets of information meant to give audiences the tools they need to pick apart its central mystery. The question of any given moment—who is The Thing, and what is its aim?—can often be deduced by following Carpenter's careful clues, although some meetings, such as the final one between MacReady and Childs, are purposefully left ambiguous to stir a never-ending debate. It's the stuff that armchair YouTube film essays are made of.
From a purely technical standpoint, The Thing is clearly a triumph. Every shot conveys vital information. Its score, from Ennio Morricone, fuses the talents of the Italian master with Carpenter's own ear for electronic-driven soundtracks, amplifying the film's sense of apocalyptic detachment. Its visual FX, largely from Rob Bottin and with an assist from Stan Winston, are perhaps the greatest collection of horror film practical effects sequences ever assembled. Each transformation or assimilation sequence outdoes the last in pure, nightmare-inducing shock value, making the film's antagonist into cinema's most insidious alien presence. Say what you will for the Xenomorph in Alien, but at least that thing is brutally straightforward in its intentions to kill you. The Thing, on the other hand, operates with an alien intelligence that is utterly emotionless and unknowable. It's never even completely clear if those who are The Thing know whether or not they've become The Thing—perhaps it simply sits in one's system at times, idle, letting you live out your life until it's time to emerge. You could be The Thing right now, in fact …
Jim Vorel is a Paste Magazine staff writer and resident horror buff. You can follow him on Twitter for more film writing.
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The Big Activity Book for Anxious People (Paperback)
By Jordan Reid, Erin Williams
Reid & Williams are "funny as hell."--Amy Morrison, founder of Pregnant Chicken
Feeling anxious? Who isn't! Your most irrational (and sometimes rational) fears are hilarious fodder for this sharp and relatable activity book.
These days, anxiety is simply part of the human experience. Part journal, part coloring book, part weird coping mechanisms, and part compendium of soothing facts, The Big Activity Book for Anxious People will be an outlet for anyone who wants to take a break from reality, laugh through her fears, and realize with every page that she is not alone--and to help her figure out what to do when it's 3AM and she's wide awake worrying about whether she cc'ed the right "Bob" on that email. (Probably.)
• Fun Facts about Aging!
• Public Speaking: A Diagram
• Your Hotel Room Carpet: A Petri Dish of Horrors
• Obscure Diseases You Probably Don't Have
• Zen Mantras For The Anxiously Inclined
• Soothing Facts about Hand Sanitizer
On a bad day, try coloring in the soothing grandma. On a really bad day, find step-by-step instructions on how to build an underground bunker. Reid and Williams want everyone to remember that they're in good company: anxious people are some of the funniest and most interesting and creative humans on the planet. (They know, because they are two of them.)
Jordan Reid is the founding editor of the lifestyle blog Ramshackle Glam and the coauthor of the bestselling Big Activity Book series. Her hobbies include creating unnecessary complications, insomnia, and maintaining an impressive collection of fake plants. She lives in California with her two children, various pets, and a Roomba named Thanos.
Erin Williams is the author and illustrator of five books, including Commute: An Illustrated Memoir of Female Shame and the Big Activity Book series. Her work has appeared in MoMA Magazine, The Believer, Salon, Buzzfeed, and Synapsis, among other publications. She has 10+ years experience in data analysis and scientific research, and has published multiple peer-reviewed papers on healthcare disparities and inequity in medicine. She lives in Westchester with her spouse, daughter, and a one-eyed cat named Peanut.
"This book helped me feel less alone in my anxieties, while also laughing at the sheer absurdity of them. Thank you, Jordan and Erin, for giving voice to my silent screams."—Beth Newell, editor/cofounder of Reductress
"I've tried apps, mediation, exercise, mindfulness, doctors, meds, and more to help my ever-growing beast of anxiety but nothing put it into perspective—or made me laugh more—than Reid and Williams' smart, sassy, and absolutely genius The Big Activity Book for Anxious People. From anxiety check-ins to coloring to concrete suggestions for soothers that actually really and truly work, just seeing this book on my desk every morning makes me breathe easier. It should be required reading for everyone I know."—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author (and anxious person) of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You
"I laughed out loud at every page. Now I feel better about flying in a plane, being trapped in an Uber without cell service, and all the diseases I probably don't have. I want to give this to everyone I know in my Jordan Catalano generation."—Liz Teich, The New York Stylist
"The Big Activity Book for Anxious People gets me out from under my weighted blanket. If I had friends, I would definitely give them this book!"—Ellie Knaus, host of Atomic Moms
"Frickin' hysterical! Who knew my anxiety could be so funny?"—Amy Morrison, founder of Pregnant Chicken
"Anxiety loves company. Or, at least, commiseration. This brilliant, hilarious book of fun will keep you giggling and scribbling your worries away. Since receiving it, I've been too busy to do an in depth internet search, but I hear it's scientifically proven to be just as effective at alleviating self-torment as a heavy blanket, dose of CBD oil, or therapy session. My cuticles, hairline, and digestive system salute Reid and Williams!"—Phoebe Lapine, author of The Wellness Project
"What I love about this guide is a) it gives you something to actually do, other than sit with your angsty thoughts, b) it's funny, not earnest—they poke fun at the cliché of being told 'just breathing' will fix everything—and c) it's subversive and offbeat. As someone with OCD, I personally related to the word scramble on the germiest spots in your hotel room. This book validates real fears while providing solutions that are both helpful and actually enjoyable."—Amy Keller Laird, former editor-in-chief of Women's Health; founder @club_mental
"A valuable tool for any sufferers who are looking for distraction, compassion, and real, viable solutions to our most common anxiety triggers. Therapeutic techniques are shared by way of thoughtful (and fun!) activities, and between the layers of comedy, the authors are gifting readers with a palatable way to digest the reality of mental health issues. And—with their skill, insight and creativity—they have even managed to make it delicious."—Rebecca Fox Starr, mental health advocate, author of Beyond the Baby Blues: Anxiety and Depression During and After Pregnancy
"Comedy might be one of the best instant remedies for anxiety, and The Big Activity Book for Anxious People brings plenty of it. Beyond making us laugh, Reid and Williams remind us anxious people of one powerful thing: we're definitely not alone in this."—Lauren Sweeney, content director, HEYMAMA
"What can I say? This is one of the best books about anxiety. I meticulously read it from front to back exactly one-hundred and thirteen times so that nothing bad would ever happen to my family!"—Wendy Molyneux, writer and producer, Bob's Burgers
"My insouciant inner child was delighted; my anxious outer adult was soothed. And my usually-mangled cuticles would like to personally thank page 89."—Katlyn Carlson
"This book is exactly what it says it is: a big activity book for anxious people! It's got some great activities inside that totally keep me busy, keep my anxiety in check, and truly is a great time suck to keep my mind focused on the activities and an escape from whatever is consuming me those days. Cannot recommend this book enough!!!"—BuzzFeed
"Legit amazing and very relevant right now. It's like they wrote this book knowing what was going to happen."—Jamie Stone, host of A Little Too Much
"Absolutely obsessed… I don't know how it's possible for a person to be so funny. [Jordan and Erin] are geniuses."—Modern Mom Probs
Series: Big Activity Book
Self-help / Self-Management / Stress Management
Humor / Form / Comic Strips & Cartoons
Art / Popular Culture


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