Horror Show!

No!  This Is Not About "The Thing"
 - "Prince of Darkness", "Halloween" or "In The Mouth Of Madness" - although if I get any supportive comments it might easily become so - as what I refer to is the pronunciation of the Russian for "Very good".
     No!  This is not about "A Clockwork Orange", although you do get 100 brownie points if you noticed that Alex and his droogs (Russian for "friends") use the word.
     What I was wondering about was, what would "Planet of the Apes" have been like if it had been made by Sinister-era communist Russians, instead of hideous capitalist Americans?
     Don't laugh - the source material is by a French author, Pierre Boulle, so it could easily have gone the other way*.  You can imagine the scene with Vanya pitching the line to Sergei, whilst both wonder how to make the Sinisters look good.
     Now, one of the money shots in POTA is the ending - Art?

     Here I chuckle with maleficent glee, as I get to re-use an old screenshot.  Do you see my point here?  The Statue of Liberty is an icon, known and revered, or at least known, across the globe.  How would the Sinisters have managed?  Not easily.  I strongly suspect their only international icon is Saint Basil's Cathedral.  Art?

Very <ahem> trippy

     This structure, obviously designed by an architect who was suffering from ergot poisoning**,  single-handedly refutes the stereotype that Ruffians are dour, unsmiling folk whose deepest wish is simply to empty the vodka bottle bottles.  
     So, you can imagine when Gyorgi Teilora stumbles across this in the films closing seconds -

     - he's not happy.  Credits roll, lights come up, audiences shuffle out, Mosfilm's biggest international hit ever is assured.
     Well, it might easily have happened*.

Kitchen Sink Drama
No!  This is not about the "Angry Young Men" of the Fifties, who are now mostly dead, and their attempts to breach the stultifying conventions of literature***.  The kitchen sink was used as an allegory instead of the smoking room or milady's boudouir, or the mansion's dining room.  The kitchen sink in this post is very real indeed, and your humble scribe remains cross all the time for many reasons, so he can be said to inherit the AYM title, if not the "Young" bit so much^.
     Okay, we had water damage that had been occurring, un-noticed, for years.  This meant a whole wall of the kitchen needed removating, which meant taking it down to the bare bricks.  Art?

Denuded

     It doesn't look like much, from this perspective, yet take a look at how much rubble it generated:

     Then it got covered over:

Add joke about getting -

     - plastered.
     After that it needed a stern lick of paint.  Art?

Well, personally I wouldn't call it art, but hey, whatever floats your boat

     We now stand ready to experience more water-born woe, and here I'm not talking about the weather.

"13 Hours"
Back to films again, and if you don't like the cinema, then the exit door IS THAT WAY!
     Conrad, as you probably know by now, is a lover of all things that go BANG, which probably explains his worrying interest in thermonuclear weapons.  He also enjoys films which involve machine guns, a lot, and indeed is such a pedant he can point out continuity errors in films like "A Fistful Of Dynamite" where they use an anachronistic MG42 <Mister Hand intevenes to prevent death by boredom>
     - the Hotchkiss in "Once Upon A Time In Mexico".  Sorry, where was I?
     Oh yes, the film.  Art?

He's a lot less pensive in the film

     Conrad immediately wondered how closely it followed the source book, because that's the way his mind works.  So, en route to the Boat Float Of Note on Friday evening, I popped into Waterstones and bought the book.
     Having finished it, I have to say the film plot does mostly follow the book, but with more gunfights added, and a car chase that simply didn't happen.  Also, because it's Michael Bay, you get a scene with windswept plastic that mimics dry ice.

And For Tonight's Spooky Coincidence - 
I was going to post a photo of myself and Kristian being devilishly phobotombed - is that the right word, I'm really not up on this digital media stuff? - by the deceptively pretty Stacy, and what do I find the instant I go look for the photo?

No caption needed!

     That very instant Stacy is "liking" my sinister, if not downright evil, comment about getting revenge.  Oh, and that's Kristian's matey hand upon my shoulder, not the wicked Stacy's.



* Okay, not "easily".  The point is still moot.
**  Liable to lead to wild hallucinations.
*** I.e. they were cross and sweary
^  Fifty five on Wednesday, if you're counting