After three years of daily poems, then lyrics, and at last a mesh of varying creative crafts (of which most turned out poems), I decided to slow the roll this year, and go for a weekly piece instead of a daily.

Falling behind on daily writings as the old year came to a close might have something to do with that. Writing every day does keep you going, but it gets tiring too. After a year of daily poetry I decided to post leftover bits and pieces back in 2015, so after last year's dailies I'm taking that route again. A break... but not really.

I want to keep going, just not all the time. Though it's fun to delve into different things I also want to focus on the one thing I really want to progress with. It's not poetry. Nor leftover lyrics. Nor art...

Well maybe it is. All of those. It's poetry - in lyrical form. It's audial artistry, but it's no leftovers: it's all new. It'll hopefully be an evolution and showcase of my lyrical abilities: in the form of a past forecast, or a vision for the future, or... something different entirely. In it's entirety. With a larger time frame for each, and no definite day on which to craft each piece, I hope the process becomes all the more inspiring.

Be it spoken word, or rap. Be it freestyle or pre-written cagestyle. Be it with or without a beating. With reverb or high-pass. On a voice recorder or microphone. By me or my ghost writer. Whichever it be: the plan is to keep honing my craft, rhyming regularly, toning my voice, and by the end of the year hopefully having put out at least a few bits of mastery amidst the mundane and regular rhyme and ramble.

I did have other considerations for what I might like to do with this year's project, not least the ones I considered last year, but hopefully there's many more years left before I'm out of time to fuel my creative vein with yearly projects such as this.

What else is there to say? Not much! Let's get this thing on the road! And stroll, or race against a sunset that glows like gold, till we're gray and old, and cold and bold, and sold our souls to be tolled in the cold-hearted cauldron this world controls... knowing there's a rise just beyond that fold. Oh, you know...

Project 2017! Is on a Go.

Here's a movie based upon a work by Stephen King: The Body, a novella originally published in 1982.

It tells the story of four kids, as they embark on a quest to find a dead body in the woods, and traverse all kinds of obstacles to get there. They're all twelve years old, adventuring at the end of the summer, right before Junior High, and this is their memory. A tale of bonds and characters more than it is about the dead body.

It's not that complicated, but the character's are all their own, and the one who tells the story is the narrator grown up - looking back on that one last summer. I feel like I'm looking back with him.

It's nicely filmed. The settings are hazy and warm, like my own childhood. Like when you look at old photos and think back.

It's not a very spectacular or particular story, but familiar, relatable even if it really isn't. Maybe it's because the four main characters seem to collectively embody such a mass of common traits, backgrounds and habits, from life, or movies, or wherever they're fetched from. I don't relate to any one of them, or what they go through, yet it feels like they're telling my story.

It feels like Stephen King-based movies often have that tone. That familiarity. I don't recognize any of the actors except Kiefer Sutherland - most of them were kids, after all, but they were all great. Everything was great. And maybe the lack of well-known actors help you not perceive it as much as a movie, as... something else. Like a memory. A glimpse back into another time.

I wonder what happened to those other guys? Maybe they saw them... maybe they didn't.

 rated 4/5: fo shizzle

Sure the special effects are awesome, but did they really have to turn Good ol' Ghostbusters into an anti-chauvinist Chick Flick?! Isn't this a bit unnecessary? I do like seeing the franchise get a facelift, and reboot, and the reversed roles were an entertaining twist, but the shift of genre seems a bit unnecessary. The new characters feel out of character too - maybe as a result of the former. And also: it's mean. No need to go so hard on the Ghostbuster gals now that you've intently made them so!

Kate McKinnon as the somewhat jilted inventor Jillian Holtzmann is a clear favorite though. Out of the whole new Ghostbuster crew she's the only one that really gains my liking. Kristen Wiig plays the very not-so-special (and thus I assume supposed-to-be relatable/likable) main character Erin, Melissa McCarthy the not so likable but in the end not so bad Abby (the boss woman), and Leslie Jones the black girl (Patty).

Chris Hemsworth is the secretary - a very visually appealing (there's the intended audience made clear) but unfortunately also very stupid such. Of course the villain is a man, too, and pretty much everybody else who happens to have something against or make things hard for our Ghostbuster crew, except maybe Ozzy Osbourne - who stops by for a quick cameo. Apparently Sigourney Weaver is in somewhere in there too. It's all depressingly audience-angled though, and not as charming as the old. Many of the ghosts familiar at least, and the janitor villain's a suitably Ghostbusterish type. They do get some things right.

The story follows the girls before they are the Ghostbusters, until they are, and from before the world acknowledges them, until they do. The process isn't all that arduous though, and even in the meanest moments the threat never seems all that fierce. The threats look nice, ghastly and green, and with plenty of slime, but overall it feels like one big bucket of wasted potential. They're like ghosts of their former selves.

With a remake like this they could've done so much, but even though it embarks into uncharted territory it ends up following the same old path anyway, and making changes for the worse wherever possible. I'd like to see more, but if there is to be more I hope they at least swap out a few core members, and a whole bunch of others. The intrigue's like it should be, and the story's not wrong either, but everything else is way out of wack. Comedy, and chemistry, and character most of all.

 rated 2/5: decent

When there is no enemy within the enemies outside cannot hurt you.

The catchphrase is genius, as was the original title: Belly of The Bulldog (Bulldog as in the tank). The movie... it could have been.

A bunch of people - soldiers and prisoners, wake up in a forest fog, and run onto a field to find a tank. They enter, and get locked inside, and that's where the whole movie plays out. There's paranoia, claustrophobia, craze, and sudden death, and for a B-movie all of this plays out surprisingly well, and yet there's not really any substance. It leads nowhere. The actors are good enough, the settings hazy and desolate, and in the end... it starts again.

It's surprisingly well-choreographed, and acted, and with a great setting, but no meat on the plotbones. Or dialogbones. Or characters. The little there is gets blown up or runs under the tank. It's all just... bones. I feel like if they'd spent more time in their think tank and put together a better script, this could've been more than a B-movie, because everything else surpassed my expectations Even the no-name actors.

 rated 3/5: not bad

It's that time of the year again! That time when there's no more time. When the old year passes, and through the fireworks and ashes a new one rises.

Have you set any goals for yourself this year? Any resolutions? Hopes and dreams and visions you wish to chase? I'm echoing mine in my mind as I type this, Trying to make them a part of me. Hoping I'll remember. Knowing there's no way I'll forget, but that maybe, just maybe, my resolve will falter as the exhilaration of early days fades away, and routine lumbers in and blocks the way.

But not this year! No. I'll beat my routine, and I don't mean like an abusive stepfather. I'll train my routine, and I don't mean like that rail-bound vehicle that follows the same tracks no matter what. Instead of dragging my routine behind me, like a boulder glued to my back, I'll let it carry me through the arduous days, and let it grow stronger the further we go. My resolutions...? Well, for starters I'm going to make more music. And for the rest of it: I'll save that for some other post.

The New Year is here, and so far it feels pretty hopeful! It's not a fresh start entirely - not as well as I wish it was, but though dues do keep collecting, and collecting dust as they do, sometimes you just have to let some of them go. Especially if they're mostly in your mind. Put down those burdens that weigh you down, and start fresh, feathered as a fleeting dream.

Let's make 2017 amazing.