SHADOWCASTING

Happy Groundhog Day everyone! Alas, reportedly Punxsatawney Phil did indeed see his shadow this morning.

 

So, as I do every year, I’ll simply remind everybody back in my beloved home state of Pennsylvania and other such sub-Arctic climes of what my Mom, a Mississippi native, always said: That ONLY having six more weeks of winter to contend with is something to celebrate in itself.

Of course, it’s quite possible that we’re all in for a Long Winter figuratively as well as literally.

Here’s something odd: The sculptor who created the bronze statue of Mary Tyler Moore flinging her hat skyward in the streets of Minneapolis...

...has herself passed on, just days after her famous subject.

With The Space Between Us—a romance between a Martian-born boy and an Earthly girl—opening tomorrow, how about… 

Monster-of-the-Week: …another Martian visitor, Guilala…

…from the wonderful 1967 Japanese sci-fi saga known in English as The X From Outer Space.

HOG DAY

Happy Groundhog Day!

At this writing Punxsutawney Phil’s prophecy remains unrecorded, so I’ll simply note, again, what my beloved departed mother always said about the day. Mom was from Mississippi, & she always observed that only having to put up with six more weeks of a Northwestern Pennsylvania winter was cause enough for celebration.

In Arizona, of course, we greet a short winter more glumly.

Anyway, I’m not aware of any monster groundhogs, so…

Monster-of-the-Week: ...in Phil’s honor I thought we could, at least, give the nod to a fellow rodent, such as…

…any of the giant rats in the 1982 Canadian horror picture Deadly Eyes.

It’s a terrible movie—even the presence of the great Scatman Crothers does little to help it—but there is a detail of the production that fills me with envy toward those who got to work on it: The monster rats infesting the Toronto subway were played by dachshunds. That’s right, when Crothers & the other actors were frantically fleeing the horrifying giant vermin, they were actually being pursued by wiener dogs!

What a great gig.