Despite (or perhaps because of) my trips out of town in October, I still found time for 25 new-to-me movies. Like last month, I'll run through them in 3 posts over the coming weeks.

175. (482.) Sky Murder (1940)
The second Nick Carter, Master Detective movie. Even more predictable than its predecessor, but with an increased action quotient. They do make movies like this anymore.

176. (483.) The Manxman (1929)
Another silent Hitchcock film, this time a romantic drama. I didn't like it. There is really only one sympathetic character in the film, the other two leads were dumb assholes. I'm still not really sure which of the two men was supposed to be the Manxman, and I no longer care.

177. (484.) Number Seventeen (1932)
Another Hitchcock, this time more in the traditional suspense/thriller vein. Watching this, I became convinced that Hitchcock did it only so that he could investigate what he could get away with with stark lighting and shadows.

178. (485.) Adventures of Kitty O'Day (1945)
There are only two movies in the Kitty O'Day series, probably two too many. These would have worked well as 30-minute television episodes a decade later, but as feature-length films, there is just too much padding.

179. (486.) Family Plot (1976)
Hitchcock again, this time his last film. This one I really loved despite the weakness of its climax. Something about the look and feel of this film, its characters, its limited scope... it just all worked for me. I've read that contemporary critics were not big fans, so your mileage may vary.

180. (487.) Topaz (1969)
A Hitchcock spy thriller built around the Cuban Missile Crisis. Fascinating in its way, but too slow in all the wrong places. Enjoyable, especially as a fictional history lesson, but hardly one of Hitch's best.

181. (488.) Superman vs. The Elite (2012)
The comic that this animated movie is based on was fantastic. It showcases why Superman isn't an archaic moral concept (a story that seems to need telling at least once a decade). The movie is considerably less successful at delivering that same message. The "villains" aren't made villainous enough, and their heel turn doesn't even come until the last minute, too little time to allow the viewer to realize that they aren't who we should be cheering for. It seems that these DC animated movies are always a waste of time, vastly inferior to the material that they are based on.

182. (489.) All-Star Superman (2011)
I spoke to soon. I didn't like disjointed storytelling of All-Star Superman #1, so I didn't buy the rest, but this movie is the perfect bookend for fans of the Silver Age Superman. This is exactly the sort of thing that Grant Morrison, writer of the All-Star Superman comic, has made his bread and butter on in recent years. Finally a DC animated movie that captures the essence of its source material. Is this the exception that proves the rule?

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Only 2 more days until Halloween, so let me hurry up and post the rest of my Jack O'Lantern Spectacular jack o'lanterns! Keep in mind that these pictures represent the best of my pictures, but only a small sampling of all the pumpkin art there was to see.

Many pumpkins, like this Irish Setter, utilized black paint for added contrast.

Bright lights can turn pumpkins into organic Lite-Brites.

Some carvings were more elaborate than others.

White paint and deep carvings make for a shiny, shiny pumpkin.

The Greek section had a pumpkins designed to look like urns, gods, and mythological creatures.

Not every design was horrific.

My art school roots are showing: The Great Wave off Kanagawa was probably my personal favorite.

This amazing Chinese dragon had a tail made of scores of small pumpkins that wound between and around several large trees. It was a fantastic work that was the highlight of the exhibit. Definitely something you're unlikely to see in your neighborhood this or any year.

(If you missed it, there were more pumpkins in yesterday's post.)

[UPDATE: I should have mentioned that this year marks the 20th anniversary of my First Place finish in the 1993 Emory University Pumpkin Carving Contest. I only entered because my dormmates bragged that they could carve better pumpkins that I could. As I proved, they could not.

I thought that pumpkin was pretty good, but it didn't hold a candle to most of anything I saw in Louisville. The state of the art of pumpkin carving has come a long way in 2 decades!

(For the record, the prize was $100 to spend at the University Bookstore, and I still have the $60 sweatshirt I bought with it.)]

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I've told you that Mom and I went to Nashville, but I still haven't told you why. The real reason for our road trip wasn't to see the Vanderbilt game. No, Nashville was a mere detour from our real objective: the Jack O'Lantern Spectacular in Louisville, Kentucky.

The Spectacular is 5,000 pumpkins arranged along a nature trail. That's a lot of jack o'lanterns. There is no way I can really convey the experience of walking a nature trail at night lit only by jack o'lanterns all around you. "Spectacular" is an appropriate word. Most impressively, So far as I could tell, none of them were duplicated.

Some stood out, even among thousands of similar carvings.

One of the carvers must have a thing for star-shaped eyes.

This skull looked like something I might try.

There were several of these "splatter" designs, my favorite of the styles I saw repeated.

To me, this looks more like a pictogram than a face.

Lest I fool you into thinking that all the jack o'lanterns were the traditional kind you might find in your own neighborhood, you need to know that scattered among the more mundane carvings were a smattering of true pumpkin-carving works of art.

I'll showcase a few more of these later this week.

In any event, know that it was worth the trip to Louisville for the experience.

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As I said, Mom and I went to Nashville, Tennessee, last week where we caught the UGA vs. Vanderbilt game. Do you know what is literally across the street from Vanderbilt Stadium? The Parthenon.

I'd known that Nashville had their own Parthenon for awhile. (They always use it in establishing shots of Tennessee Titans games on television.) However, I was under the impression that it was kind of small. I didn't realize that it was a full-scale reproduction of the ancient Grecian monument until I saw it in person.

Atlanta has nothing like Nashville's Centennial Park. Founded as part of the same 1897 Tennessee Centennial Exposition that saw the construction of Tennessee's Parthenon, the park is huge, filled with playgrounds, fields, monuments, ponds, cafes, sidewalks, trails.... You name it, it's got it. I tried to take a bad picture, really I did. Impossible.

But the highlight of the park isn't outdoors. No, it is the breathtaking gilded gold statue of Athena Parthenos inside the Parthenon. This modern recreation is Alan LeQuire's best guess match to the long lost original. Look and be amazed!

No photos can do this amazing place justice. If you can swing the admission price — a whopping $6.00! — you owe it to yourself to drop in and pay your respects to a goddess.

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Third of three sets of 8 movies from September. (Almost done!)

167. (474.) Three Ages (1923)
Buster Keaton's first movie as writer/director/producer/actor. It's pretty darn funny. This Buster Keaton guy might have a career.

168. (475.) The Maiden Heist (2009)
Sometimes movies don't try to be anything more than a polite diversion from reality for a couple of hours. This is one of those. Let's call it a "gentle caper film." Charming in its own way.

169. (476.) The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Widely called the first horror film, this movie isn't so horror-able as it is just plain weird. If you've never seen it, give it a look. I think you'll be satisfied.

170. (477.) Vampyr (1932)
This is another early silent horror film. Story is sacrificed for atmosphere, but why weigh down visuals this creepy with complicated plot? Again, if you haven't seen it, you might want to take a look.

171. (478.) Lifeboat (1944)
I debated whether to put this movie on my list. I was convinced that I had never seen this Hitchcock film, but while watching it I began to wonder otherwise. It was familiar and predictable. Did I see it and forget about it? That seems unlikely. Maybe I half watched it while doing something else. Maybe I'd seen parts of it. In any event, I'm sure I've never given it my full attention all the way through, so I decided to add it to the list of "new" movies. As for whether I liked it, yes, I did.

172. (479.) Creature with the Atom Brain (1955)
Midway through this noirish crime story involving Frankenstein-ian physics, the protagonist police chemist comes home and gripes that his wife should be giving him a drink, not some lip about how his daughter misbehaved that day. I found this super amusing, in part because the protagonist had exactly the same job as DC Comics' Flash character who debuted in 1956. Is that how Flash (Barry Allen) would have treated his fiancee Iris after a hard day of detective work? Probably, yes.

173. (480.) Detective Kitty O'Day (1944)
Kitty O'Day is no Nancy Drew. After all other suspects are murdered, Kitty turns to the one surviving suspect for help. Guess which suspect is the murderer? If you can imaging a 30-minute I Love Lucy episode drawn out for over an hour, you've already seen this movie.

174. (481.) The Farmer's Wife (1928)
It must have been evident to everyone that the director of this silent comedy — some nobody named Alfred Hitchcock — would go on to great things. The shots are held too long (typical of the silent era), but the blocking, pacing, editing, and camera work are otherwise all impressive for a movie of the era.

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Mom and I traveled to Nashville to see UGA play Vanderbilt. Instead of a football game, we saw an epic tragedy. It was cold and rainy at kickoff, and the sun didn't come out in Nashville until it had set on the Bulldog's SEC Championship chances.

I could talk about the terrible targeting call that turned a failed Vandy fourth down conversion into a first down that finally broke the spirit of our staggering team. (Replay can overturn the ejection, but not the bad call itself? Who thought that was a good rule?) Or I could talk about the inability of our coaches to improve the failures that have defined them this season (Richt's special teams muffed a punt and a snap, Grantham's defense surrendered 31 points, Bobo's offense managed only a field goal in the second half, Tereshinki's conditioning resulted in a 6th player with a knee injury.) Or I could talk about Arron Murray failing to put it together with the pressure on again.

But what it all comes down to is the fact that Georgia lost 31-27, and is now all but mathematically eliminated from SEC contention. What was such a promising season is now wasted.

Heartbreaking. There is no other word.

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I finally have a replacement for Wendy's as my favorite burger chain. Considering that they serve Pepsi and not Coke, I think you'll recognize the significance of my declaration.

Say hello to Culver's. Recommended by the boss of a friend, the Culver's ButterBurger® is better than anything I can find around my house (now that Wendy's has decided that they only make burgers for yuppies). Welcome to delicious™ indeed!

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A few years ago (2008 or 2009), I played Assassin's Creed on the Xbox 360. The experience was so unsatisfying (repetitive play, no closure to the story) that I vowed to never again play anything in the Assassin's Creed family of games (of which there have now been 15!) or anything produced by the Ubisoft studio. (Ubisoft had already been on thin ice with me after butchering a handful of Batman games and the sequels to Prince of Persia.)

Fast forward to this past summer when Microsoft began their "Games with Gold" program, giving free games to Xbox Live Gold Members each month. I feel compelled to play those games in order to maximize the return on my Xbox Live subscription. You can probably see where this is going. One of the free games was Assassin's Creed II.

Despite my misgivings, I downloaded the game and played it for awhile. It's more of the same. A fun set of mechanics stretched a little too thin and covered with a varnish of moronic conspiracy theory hogwash. Enjoyable enough for the price I paid. (I also get a kick out of the fact that this French-produced video game slanders Italians as a sex-obsessed bunch of hypocrites. It's good to know that American game developers aren't the only ones with xenophobic and sexist tendencies.)

I'd played the game for maybe 20 hours and was looking forward to some potential story closure in the near future. Maybe the hours invested years ago on Assassin's Creed would be payed off. (Would Kristen Bell and the murderous protagonist ever get it on?) Then, for no apparent reason, the game deleted my save file. Poof. All gone. Like it never even existed. No closure for Walter.

Fool me twice, shame on me, I suppose, but that was the last straw, Ubisoft. I will never buy one of your games again. I'm sure you don't care about just one gamer like me, but I'm not writing this for you. I'm writing this for me, to remind me the next time I even consider buying one of your games that it won't be worth the cost. Your games are just one more hassle I don't need in my life.

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