A Dictionary Of Symbols By J. E. Cirlot.

Evil Dead II (or Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn) by Sam Raimi.

A masterpiece of a film.

Fun Fact:

God of War's Grýla was based on a real giantess from Norse mythology.

In myth, she's not actually related to Angerboda at all, but the game got a lot of other things right. Like how she's enormous, absolutely disgusting and she did still have a cauldron you didn't want to end up in. Sagas from 13th century Iceland describe Grýla as a parasitic beggar woman who wanders around town, asking peasant farmers to give her their disobedient children. The parents could easily turn her away, but if their kid had been a real tachrán lately, they might just give him/her up. When Grýla was given a child, she'd throw them in a sack attached to one of her 15 tails, then take them home, toss them in the cauldron and get a stew going. Legend says that the naughtier the kid, the better the stew tasted and that she never ever had a shortage of food.

In God of War, she's not exactly nice to Angerboda, but she's never so horrible as to try and eat her. Instead, she uses her cauldron to harvest the souls of animals she traps around Jotunheim.

Compared to her mythology, her God of War counterpart is actually kind of nice...

Pet Sematary by Stephen King.

An unrelentingly dark and emotional book. Very interesting and frightening read.

It says something when the best-selling horror author ever feels a book is too unnerving.

"The soil of a man's heart is stonier; a man grows what he can and tends it."

- Stephen King

The Eternals (Volume 1) #11.

"The Russians are Coming!"

Taxi Driver by Martin Scorsese.

Saw this on Netflix, and I say it's pure art.

A study of masculinity, existentialism, isolation, and delusion.

Brazil by Terry Gilliam.

A good film, one that I felt was made exclusively for me. I was transformed upon first watching this. Brazil is an amazing masterpiece of a movie. Is it better than Blade Runner? ...Close.

Uncanny vibes, everything about it is freaky, every character in the film feels like they have this sinister agenda underneath this goofy facade, and it has an ending that's horrifyingly hopeless and really upset me upon first viewing. I was like, "Please, that is not the way it ended. Please no..." But I'm SO glad it ended like that, because apparently there was an alternate version where it ended happily. Forget that. It would not be as nearly as impactful if it didn't have that.

I should note that Terry Gilliam does this thing with fisheye lenses where he makes certain things in frame feel all the more close and intrusive to your personal space. The way he distorts the screen...say someone has a screwdriver or a syringe in their hand. It can really just bend around to really feel like it's about to get you. There's just something really intrusive about some of the visuals in this film.

Connection/Fate

"The limits of your language are the limits of your world." ― Ludwig Wittgenstein

2001 test for film adaptation of Paul Chadwick's Concrete comics.

I loved the superhero boom from the 90s/2000s, seeing mega hits like the Spider-Man films (which are some of my top favorite superhero movies, I think the first Spider-Man movie was developed before even X-Men was on film). The superhero set I would've loved to visit the most is Mystery Men. To me, the first Blade movie was instrumental in showing how superhero movies could exist at the end of the 20th century. There was a collision of Dark City and Blade that somehow, in subtle ways paved the way, via anime/manga, for The Matrix to spawn into the world. 

But, still, back then it was a countermovement to try to do superhero films, especially with material that didn't have Marvel or DC numbers. For many years, the proto-comic book movies were Paul Verhoeven's RoboCop (one of the best Judge Dredd movies) and Sam Raimi's Darkman in so many ways.

In my opinion, Paul Chadwick's Concrete is ripe to be adapted (there was a script written by Larry Wilson and Paul Chadwick, but it didn't go through).

Corto Stop Motion "Jaulas."