Regarding the value of keeping things separate. "Compartmentalization stops us from numbering among our own enemies. We are less likely to cost ourselves from experiencing that which is useful and edifying, as well as people who can help us. But we need mental discipline, and we have to work at keeping our boxes separate. Don’t dump the contents of one into another."

On a heist-centered horror-thriller reimagining of A Christmas Carol. "Cushing evinces fear, and it wasn’t often that we saw him scared in the Hammer world, even if he was prying open a coffin to stake Dracula  through the heart. Turns out a frightened Cushing makes for a frightening Cushing."

January 1 and the important kind of time. "Don’t romanticize the first of the year. She’s going to break your heart, and likely with your help. If you are depending on her to help make you whole or to get to the gym or finally write your family-friendly book on how reading Tolstoy is fun, you’re going to contribute to the downfall of a relationship that never had a shot because you weren’t in it for the right reasons."

From Bloodvine. "There are stretches where you have no idea what you’re looking at, and as much as Silent Night, Bloody Night helped usher in the body-count festive carnage of Black Christmas, it bears a more apparent stylistic stamp on the likes of Skinamarink (2022). How low can the lo-fi go? The answer is pretty low. There’s hiss and hair all over this thing. You put the movie on in the background and it’s there with you, accompanying whatever you’re doing,  and every now and again, it provides a jolt."

On the finest episode of The Twilight Zone and how nostalgia will kill you. "I am only interested in anything insofar as it helps me move forward. With nostalgia comes a defeatist attitude. And vice versa. If nostalgia had a slogan, it would be 'The best has come and gone.' That’s not going to be good for you."

Let there be mirth. "Silent Night, Deadly Night features what has to be the most depressing holiday party in movie history: a five-person employee affair after the toy store closes that commences with the owner saying, “Time to get shit-faced!”—we’re not talking Fezziwig here—and gets worse (much worse) from there. But whether you’re the Grinch or Father Christmas himself, you are bound to adopt Billy’s one-word  catchphrase—'Naughty!'—as your own for the remainder of the holiday season anytime someone annoys you."

On a wondrous bauble. "For with the bauble, there is wonder. The bauble is different from that which we put atop the Christmas list, be it literal or figurative, all in caps, because that’s what we think we want the most. But the things we like best are often the things that find us, or that we discover because we are open, which is itself a great gift."

Festive slicing and dicing in Bloodvine. "Any time the phone rings in Black Christmas—and with each  subsequent ringing (and we’re not talking the bells on Christmas day)—we feel dread. This is a coarse film of paradoxical solemnity. The Christmas spirit is in consistent evidence (everything is suitably decked out, lights twinkle, trees are trimmed), but it’s as if we’re witnessing it from some remove rather than drinking directly from its wassail bowl."

In Bloodvine. "The film represents Browning at his most sensitive. Horror films of this vintage can have a certain arthritic creak to them, but The Devil-Doll is a spry offering. You want everyone to come out okay in the end. That they will is the longest of long shots in a horror movie, but the batting average is pretty high here, considering."

Exploring what the beloved Christmas special was also about. "If you’re going to create a Christmas-centric work that lasts, it has to be about more than Christmas, which is really what makes Christmas Christmas. Linus Van Pelt understood as much. So too did Ebenezer Scrooge, after he’d been visited by enough ghosts. And the same may be said about Rudolph and Hermey, the would-be outsiders who instead fostered community while still being true to their highly individualistic selves."

In Best Classic Bands. "Wild Honey is the band’s record—a kind of life’s soundtrack—for late autumn, when there’s still sunshine to be encountered amidst the fading color of the glade and the season’s final bees take a last turn or two outside the hive. It’s an album of dappled hues and the taking of various forms of stock—personal, professional, familial, fraternal. Musical, too."

Looking at a new documentary about the band's first US visit. "The Beatles had staying power, but there was never anything like this first visit. Remember: Their arc was protracted temporally. Seven years as recording artists. There are two highs of highs; co-summits, if you like, to the phenomenon that was the Beatles. February 1964, and the release of Sgt. Pepper in June 1967. The former rocked the culture; the latter cracked the zeitgeist."

Confessions of a former Nick Drake fraud and a consideration of an oft-misunderstood album. "And what I heard was the most uplifting music of my life. Music that was filled with life. A deathless spirit. Deathless beauty. Deathless vision. An unwavering life-force, despite—or perhaps because of—what its creator knew about life. I thought, 'This is a celebration, not a dirge. Like a miracle of humanness.'”

On 1960's The House in Marsh Road in Bloodvine. "This is a get-down-to-business ghost, but this is a get-down-to-business film, a rare example of kitchen-sink realism crossing with the supernatural. The ghost is very real, as is the depiction of alcoholism, infidelity, and what it means to be trapped in a marriage in different manners for different people."

From Bloodvine. “We’re not here for the plot, though, so much as we are for a horror hangout. You like to spend time with Revenge of the Creature as though it were some friend who was passionate about the same things you were. There are no delusions of artistic eminence, but nor is there that style of franchise-milking we’re so accustomed to with sequels.”

On 1964's The Gorgon. "This is one of those movies that makes you think you should put on a jacket or vest—though not your winter coat—while watching. The sun hangs low in the sky, like it barely clears the treetops. Time is compacting, slowing down—the same as the life within the gorgon’s victims. It’s a cinematic nocturne for autumn and one of the few films in which you can actually hear the scrape from the edges of wind-scuttled leaves on the ground."

On the 1948 Warner Bros. adaptation of Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White. "Collins and his pal Charles Dickens were adroit at conveying 'real life' via a ghost story and ghost stories via real life. The ghosts didn’t even need to be spectrally legitimate, and a ghost might be a lot of things—the haunting specter of one’s past, for instance. The novel also offered opportunities to filmmakers as a sort of choose-your-own-adventure property: if you wanted to dial in on the mystery, you could make a killer adaptation. If you preferred to push the ghost story to the fore, a terror classic was potentially in the offing."

Regarding 1953's Invaders from Mars. "Watching people drop through the sandpits into the unknown below is like viewing the film of a ballet in reverse. These Orphic disappearances are all the more disturbing for how fluid they are. This is a brilliant coupling: the idea of the descent into the underworld and the grave, but also outer space at the same time. No wonder viewers were shaken up."

Ideal movies for spooky home viewing. "Halloween is perfect for watching movies where we live. Alone. Or nearly alone. Movie theaters bring us together for that communal feeling of sharing a viewing experience, but there’s something about being off on your own, curled up in the dark, ghosts and monsters on the TV, that fairly screams Halloween. Have you ever noticed in modern Halloween films how many people are watching movies in this very manner? A character will have on The Thing from Another World and we think, 'There’s a film that hits the spot this time of year! I need to watch it again!'”

The commanding actress on her centennial. "You were watching a cinematic absolute of self-actualization. Not only watching—hearing. You could close your eyes and listen to Bacall’s voice as if you’d put on your favorite album. The voice contained levels. You had the top conversational meaning. The middle ground where things got livelier. Then the depths, where life was at its most consequential."

On an important teacher and how we should always be returning to the classroom. "So while the days of a crisp apple in your lunch bag and the smell of freshly sharpened pencils may be behind you, they’re also in front of you in a different manner. We’re always free to have the right attitude that allows us to learn. It’s funny that we think that’s a kid thing. Just as it’s ironic that we must grow up and continue to grow by being, at least in part, our own teachers."

Loving and moving on from Kind of Blue. "Jazz has a different problem, in that the people who listen to jazz are typically other musicians, the highly educated—in the went-to-school-for-a-long-time sense—the intellectual, the wannabe intellectual. So when we land on that jazz album—like Kind of Blue—we pat ourselves on the back, because most people do not. We are very smart, eclectic. We’ve done a form of cultural extra credit." 

Keeping yourself moving with Miles Davis's Kind of Blue. "As a searcher, Miles Davis was also a sublime tryer. And if anything didn’t work or stick, that was part of the process. Getting to where you’re going involves all of the places you were only at briefly. Passing through can be vital."

A short story called "Read the Ice" appears in the spring/summer issue of the journal. 

A Hard Day's Night and joy. "I’ve listened to A Hard Day’s Night and found this joy in it in happy times, times of hope, times when I could barely continue on, times when the concept of hope felt like some awful joke because I had none."