?The Incubus? : Cassavetes And Hough Chart The Krueger Family ...

When it comes to the twisted and complex family tree grown out of Wes Craven?s classic?A Nightmare On Elm Street, it?s a safe bet to say that most here ?are no doubt well familiar with its branches ? there?s the progenitor of the clan itself, dating back to 1985, followed by five direct descendants ?(those being the ?official? sequels), two let?s- call -them -cousins ( in the form of the meta-fictional?Wes Craven?s New Nightmare and the franchise mash-up/cash-in?Freddy Vs. Jason), and a bastard offspring no one likes to talk much about ?(the 2010 Michael Bay-air-quote-produced remake). But what about its?roots?

To explore those, my friend, we have to go back to medieval folklore, specifically the legends surrounding a creature known as an incubus. Evidently, this homicidally-inclined, violently horny form of demon would first appear in some unlucky pubescent male?s head in the form of a recurring dream, then somehow find its way out into the real world and wreak a fairly astronomical amount of havoc, raping any and every human female it could gets its hairy, scaly hands on (and presumably equally scaly-and-hairy schlong into) in a desperate desire to procreate like crazy in the short time it was able to take physical form before the virile lad from whose nightmares it escaped woke up again. There was just one flaw in the logic of yer average incubus, though ? since it invariably went on to?kill whoever it forced itself upon, those offspring it was after would never come to be, and alas, the sound of tiny hoof-steps was ?never to be heard in any family home.

Alternately, though, if you don?t feel like rifling through a bunch of dusty old tomes in the cavernous sub-basement of some European castle-converted-into-a-library to learn about these things, you can just watch ?the decidedly gothically-tinged 1982 Canadian tax shelter production?The Incubus and be done with it.

Starring the obviously-awesome John Cassavetes ? who you most likely know as an actor thanks to Rosemary?s Baby or?The Dirty Dozen,??or as a director thanks to his groundbreaking, highly personal films like?Faces,?Husbands,?The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie and?A Woman Under The Influence ? and directed by the less-obvious-but-no-less-awesome John Hough, a household name only in the abodes of the most seasoned exploitation fans despite a stellar track record that includes?Dirty Mary Crazy Larry,?The Legend Of Hell House, and such fondly-remembered Disney fare as?The Watcher In The Woods,?Escape To Witch Mountain and?Return From Witch Mountain, our story here centers around the supposed New England (even though it was filmed in and around the Toronto area and the license plates on the cars read, for some reason, ?Wisconsin) town of Galen, where local pathologist/medical examiner Dr. Sam Cordell (Cassavetes) and police chief ?Hank Walden (the always-great John Ireland) are investigating a non-stop series of brutal rapes/murders that leave many of the victims so pumped full o? spunk that the initial investigative hunch both men play is that there absolutely?must?be more than one perpetrator ? in fact, they feel it?s quite likely that a whole?gang of wild n? reckless youths are behind this sordid spree.

There?s just one wrinkle ? all the semen still scurrying about in the dead victims matches, and it?s all?red. Complicating matters even further is the fact the a local newspaper reporter named Laura Kincaid (Kerrie Keane) who?s covering the developing story just so happens to be a dead ringer for Cordell?s deceased wife, and that his ethereally-beautiful teenage daughter, Jenny (Erin Noble, billed here as Erin Flannery) is dating a kid named Tim (Duncan McIntosh) who the good doctor is, shall we say, decidedly less than impressed with. Tim?s got a less obvious problem than his choosing to get overly-familiar with sam?s precious little angel, though ? ?he?s been plagued with horrible, vivid nightmares lately : ?nightmares invariably revolving around the brutal, ritualistic rape and murder of young women. Oh, and our young would-be-Romeo?s last name? It?s Galen.

Somehow, of course, it?s all connected ? the dreams, the rapes/murders, the intrepid doppleganger lady reporter, even the secret lineage of the family the town is named after ? but how?

Don?t let the admittedly salacious nature of the plot fool you, though ? for flick that drops the word ?sperm? more often than your average gang-bang porn loop and revolves around an unending string of what are, we?re told, the most violent killings the cops have ever seen, almost all the truly horrific stuff happens off-screen. A supernatural ?I Spit On Your Grave? this ain?t. Hough instead relies on a constant, oppressive atmosphere of gothic foreboding ? for a Canadian movie purportedly playing out in New England it sure does feel like we?re moving between one ancient, ?dank, stone hall of records here and another ? and serious-minded, thoroughly professional performances from his uniformly fine actors to bring the horror home in this one. The script has some serious flaws and gaping holes, but Hough knows that flawed source material will, when left in good hands, be elevated to a level it may not, technically speaking, even deserve. Just because it doesn?t read terribly well on paper or make a tremendous amount of sense in retrospect doesn?t mean that John Fucking Cassavetes can?t do something good with it, after all.

I guess if I were more inclined to brevity ? I?m trying! ? I?d sum this one up by saying ?don?t expect a horror classic here, but something of a largely-forgotten, hidden gem ?albeit one of more ornamental than actual value.? Sound about right?

Fortunately, the ?largely forgotten? part of the previous verbal equation is no longer necessarily the case, as Scorpion Releasing has recently seen fit to offer up?The Incubus as part of its ?Katarina?s Nightmare Theater? ?DVD series hosted by former/supposed WWE ?diva? Katarina Leigh Watters (apparently when you?re a female ex-pro wrestler your two career options are either to start dating George Clooney or become a horror movie presenter). The film is presented in a good-looking, remastered 1.85:1 widescreen transfer with pretty decent, also-remastered mono sound. ?Extras,? such as they are, consist of Watters? semi-informative intro and outro bits, the original theatrical trailer, and a smattering of trailers for other Scorpion titles of semi-recent vintage.

At the end of the day, I have to believe ?there?s just?no way Wes Craven didn?t see this movie, unless he took up the study of medieval folklore as a hobby there for awhile, because three short years after this was releases he latched onto the core concept of the incubus demon, took its thinly-disguised allegory for the onslaught of male puberty in general down a pedophilic road (oh yeah! remember when Freddy was a child molester who didn?t snap off clever one-liners and was actually kinda?scary?) and gave it metal claws a la the just-getting-popular-at-the-time X-Men character Wolverine. The rest, as they say, is history.

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This entry was posted on February 19, 2013 at 5:41 pm and is filed under movies with tags A Nightmare On Elm Street, cinema, dvd, film, Freddy Krueger, John Cassavetes, John Hough, John Ireland, Katarina Leigh Watters, Katarina's Nightmare Theater, movie, scorpion releasing, The Incubus, wes craven. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Source: http://trashfilmguru.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/the-incubus-cassavetes-and-hough-chart-the-krueger-family-tree/

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U.S. to tackle trade secret theft from China, others

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Wednesday it will step up diplomatic pressure and study whether tougher laws are needed to stop a wave of trade secret theft from China and other countries in a strategy that offered few new ideas for dealing with the threat.

"Trade secret theft threatens American businesses, undermines national security and places the security of the U.S. economy in jeopardy," the White House said in a report that laid out its strategy. "These acts also diminish U.S. export prospects around the globe and put American jobs at risk."

"Emerging trends indicate that the pace of economic espionage and trade secret theft against U.S. corporations is accelerating," the White House warned in the report, which listed threats to corporate intellectual property from cyber attacks and more conventional methods of economic espionage.

The report did not specifically name any country as the main culprit. But it listed more than a dozen cases of trade secret theft by Chinese companies or individuals, far more than any other country mentioned in the report.

U.S. corporate victims of the Chinese theft included General Motors, Ford, DuPont, Dow Chemical and Cargill.

"For an economy like ours, that's going to win based on our innovation of what we produce and create, this is a critically important issue," U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk told Reuters in an interview ahead of the report's release.

The Obama administration released the strategy one day after a U.S. computer security company said it believed a secretive Chinese military unit was behind a series of hacking attacks.

China flatly denied the accusations made by the company, Mandiant, calling them "unprofessional." Its Defense Ministry said hacking attacks are a global problem and that China is one of the biggest victims of cyber assaults.

Victoria Espinel, the White House intellectual property rights enforcement coordinator, said the new strategy coordinates and improves existing U.S. government efforts to protect the innovation that drive the American economy and supports jobs in the United States.

Kirk said the problem of trade secret theft in China was a factor in the decisions by some U.S. companies to move operations back to the United States.

The companies have "had very frank conversations with the Chinese, (saying) 'you know it's one thing to accept a certain level of copyright knock-offs, but if you're going to take our core technology, then we're better off being in our home country," Kirk told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Doina Chiacu, Bill Trott and Todd Eastham)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/white-house-targets-trade-secret-theft-strategy-144711867--sector.html

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Japan government approves $1.02 trillion budget for 2013/14 amid fiscal worries

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's government approved on Tuesday a $1.02 trillion draft budget for the next fiscal year that aims to nudge tax revenues above new bond sales for the first time in four years, but still relies on borrowing to cover 46.3 percent of its spending.

The first full-year draft budget compiled under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who led his Liberal Democratic Party back to power last month with promises of economic revival, marks symbolic improvement after years of deterioration.

With the 92.6 trillion yen ($1.02 trillion) in spending, the government effectively trimmed the size of its draft budget from the previous year for the first time in seven years, taking into account government funding for basic pension payouts.

Still, the budget size hovered around record levels, underlining the difficulty which Abe's government is facing in striking a balance between economic stimulus and fiscal reform.

Taken together with an 10.3 trillion yen extra stimulus plan signed off earlier this month and financed in more than half by new bond sales, it drives borrowing to new highs, pushing Japan's record high debt further into uncharted territory.

"We managed to make the annual budget slimmer than before," Finance Minister Taro Aso told reporters.

"Without the extra budget, the economy would fall into a severe situation in April-June," he added.

In fiscal year 2013/14 starting in April, the government plans to issue new bonds worth 42.8 trillion yen, below this year's 44.2 trillion yen initial target. But combined with the extra budget borrowing of 5.2 trillion, Abe's government will borrow 48 trillion yen, though technically the extra budget borrowing will be booked in the 2012/13 accounts.

Tax revenue is targeted to rise 750 billion yen to 43.1 trillion yen, mainly reflecting an expected pick-up in economic growth to 2.5 percent from 1.0 percent forecast for the current year.

FISCAL TARGETS

Within the 92.6 trillion yen general-account budget, spending excluding debt servicing costs is estimated at about 70.3 trillion yen, slightly less than the 71 trillion yen earmarked in the regular budget for the current fiscal year.

The government is expected to submit the extra budget to parliament this week and the 2013/14 budget in late February.

The previous government led by the Democratic Party of Japan had set a 44 trillion yen ceiling on annual bond issuance and a 71 trillion yen cap on spending excluding debt servicing costs.

Rating agencies, institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and many economists have said that those limits were seriously insufficient, allowing Japan to rack up budget deficits of close to 10 percent of GDP, above those seen in some of the most indebted euro zone countries.

"We need to see whether the government can carry out its growth strategy to boost the economy, thus increase tax revenue, and also whether it can continue to cut expenditure," said Yasuo Yamamoto, senior economist at Mizuho Research Institute.

"I cannot deny a chance that the government will compile an extra budget again if the economy won't recover ... It may raise public work spending, which would require more bond issuance."

So far, however, vast domestic savings have allowed Japan to comfortably cover nearly all of its financing needs at home and at record low interest rates.

Abe's government has reaffirmed its predecessors' goal of bringing the primary budget, which excludes borrowing and debt service, into balance by 2020/21. This can only be achieved with substantial spending cuts and tax hikes.

"We must come up with something new to fix the primary balance by the middle of this year," Finance Minister Aso said. "It would not be convincing if only the economy picks up while we leave (fiscal reform) undone."

(Additional reporting by Kaori Kaneko; Editing by Tomasz Janowski and Kim Coghill)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/japan-government-approves-1-02-trillion-budget-2013-084543663--business.html

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Iran Says it Launched Monkey Into Space

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Iranian state television said on Monday that the country?s scientists had succeeded in sending a monkey into space ?as a prelude to sending humans.?

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/world/middleeast/iran-says-it-sent-monkey-into-space.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Aspen reviews 14 mph speed limit to alert drivers

ASPEN, Colo. (AP) ? Aspen city council members are considering a 14 mph speed limit in a residential area of the Colorado mountain town in attempt to get the attention of drivers and have them slow down.

Residents say few drivers are obeying the current 25 mph speed limit and are ignoring other efforts to protect people.

The Aspen Times (http://tinyurl.com/9wlktaz ) reports Mayor Mick Ireland suggested an 18 mph limit because the number is out of the ordinary for a speed limit. After further discussion, council members decided to drop the proposed limit down to 14 mph.

___

Information from: The Aspen Times, http://www.aspentimes.com/

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/aa9398e6757a46fa93ed5dea7bd3729e/Article_2013-01-30-Odd%20Speed%20Limit/id-98610ad162de4cfa861519888f1708a9

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Nexus 4 shows up for sale on Best Buy's website, T-Mobile contract in tow

The Nexus 4 has just show up for sale on Best Buy's website, with familiar T-Mobile on-contract pricing of $199.99. In typical Best Buy fashion, the off-contract price of the phone has been inflated, showing $599.99 to buy the device outright. This is something Best Buy (and other retailers) does to both cover its overhead and most importantly compel people to sign 2-year contracts, and is nothing new for the Nexus 4.

This isn't likely to be any special deal between Google and Best Buy to offer the device though, as you can bet that Google would rather secure supply for its own store before branching out to yet another retailer. This is probably just T-Mobile's current deals to resell handsets and service with Best Buy extending to the new handset. New stock heading to a wider range of T-Mobile stores means it is ready to also let resellers sell the device on its behalf.

Although not many people are likely to head to Best Buy to pick it up, the Nexus 4 is certainly getting a little more exposure as these new listings arrive. Let's just hope that Google can get its own supply channels sorted out so it can offer the device through the Play Store once again.

Source: Best Buy

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/SNPXypQ7k1g/story01.htm

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Fed likely to stick to low-rate message this week

WASHINGTON (AP) ? When the Federal Reserve meets this week, it's likely to affirm a message it intends to help lift the economy: that consumers and businesses will be able to borrow cheaply well into the future ? even after unemployment has dropped sharply.

Last month, the Fed signaled for the first time that it will tie its policies to specific economic barometers. It said that as long as the inflation outlook is mild, it could keep short-term rates near zero until unemployment dips below 6.5 percent from the current 7.8 percent.

That could take until the end of 2015, the Fed predicted last month.

The Fed's guidance was designed to give consumers, companies and investors a clearer sense of when super-low borrowing costs might start to rise. Though some key sectors of the economy are improving, analysts think the Fed still feels more time is needed for low rates to spur borrowing, spending and economic growth.

One reason is that many Americans remain anxious about the budget impasse in Washington.

"The Fed is dealing with a lot of uncertainty right now, with all the decisions still to be made on federal budget policy," said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial, who expects the Fed to make no changes in its support programs when its two-day policy meeting ends Wednesday.

At its December meeting, the Fed said it would keep spending $85 billion a month on bond purchases to keep long-term borrowing costs down. It will continue its bond purchases until the job market improved "substantially."

When it buys bonds, the Fed increases its investment portfolio and pumps more money into the financial system ? something critics say could eventually ignite inflation or create dangerous bubbles in assets like real estate or stocks.

On Friday, when the government will release its jobs report for January, unemployment is expected to remain 7.8 percent. That still-high rate, 3? years after the Great Recession officially ended, helps explain why the Fed has kept its key short-term rate at a record low near zero since December 2008, just after the financial crisis erupted.

In a speech in Ann Arbor, Mich., this month, Chairman Ben Bernanke said he thought too little progress had been made in reducing unemployment and signaled that the Fed's aggressive support programs should continue.

"There is still quite a ways to go," Bernanke said of the unemployment crisis. "There are too many people whose skills and talents are being wasted."

Still, some private economists think the Fed will decide to suspend its bond purchases in the second half of this year. They note that the minutes of the Fed's December meeting revealed a split: Some of the 12 voting members thought the bond purchases would be needed through 2013. Others felt the purchases should be slowed or stopped altogether before year's end.

On one point, economists agree: Once the Fed does decide to scale back its stimulative policies, it will signal its intent well before it actually does so. Policymakers will want to blunt the shocks that could reverberate through financial markets, which have been heavily influenced by the loose-credit policies the Fed has engineered for more than four years.

Interest rates have sunk to record lows. And stock prices have risen as many investors have shifted money into the stock market in search of better returns.

"Nothing will change at this meeting, but as time goes on, I think the Fed will begin laying the groundwork for changes," said Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at the Martin Smith School of Business at California State University.

Once the Fed does tighten its interest-rate policy, it will inevitably jolt the markets, however much it tries to ease the impact, predicted David Jones, chief economist at DMJ Economic Advisors.

"The second the Fed gives a hint that they are in any way being less accommodative, we will see interest rates shoot higher and stock prices fall," Jones said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fed-likely-stick-low-rate-message-week-123924693--finance.html

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