movies/tv

AMC’s Preacher

Very much digging it. Not at all an easy adaptation. Dug the comic, of course. And really digging his supercab Ford in the television version: I’ve watched so many shows just to get to look at the ride. This may be another, in a very long line.

October is for Werewolf Movies

Also, all the other months. But it’s in October that I’m getting to intro Wolfen, The Company of Wolves, and The Howling. Talking about Wolfen at The Alamo Drafthouse down in Denver: [ link ] TalkingThe Company of Wolves and The Howling here at CU Boulder’s International Film Series: [ link / link ] Need

The Drinky Bird Endures

Not going to try to claim When Harry Met Sally and Alien are the EXACT same movie, don’t get me wrong. But, I DID watch them back-to-back last night, and found what might be a secret code or symbol or key to the universe—both feature this mesmerizing drinky bird:  

Those Winchesters

Yeah, Deadwood and Hannibal and Breaking Bad, and STNG and X-Files and Twin Peaks, and Brisco Co., Jr and The Good Guys and Newsradio and Happy Valley and Monk and Northern Exposure and Psych and all the rest—all my favorite television stuff. Still, none of them have ever been quite this cool:

Today’s Westerns

What I think about after peeling back through all those years of the Western movie, it’s the western now. As in, why was all the cool stuff back when? Is the myth of the Old West not as vital anymore? Are we telling ourselves different stories today? And how has the Western movie changed? Did

Couple Weeks’ of Westerns

I think I fell into a tailspin of rewatching—and watching for the first time, in some cases—Westerns over August because of a couple of things, that happened right close to each other: I read Joe R. Lansdale’s Paradise Sky, which was and is amazing, and I rented Forsaken, which is also really, really good. Anyway,

How to Mount a Horse

if you’re just super cool, and have been hired on this movie (3:10 to Yuma, 1957) probably expressly for some trick-riding. But, man: this is something you don’t see anymore, right? I mean, both that running mount followed by just beating it across the road and the needless showmanship—the kind of celebration of an art

Blair Witch

I have to share my favorite #BlairWitch anecdote since the (really good) sequel is coming soon. pic.twitter.com/rsOBAsEf1O — BenDavid Grabinski (@realbdgrabinski) July 29, 2016

Stranger Things

Dug it, of course. How not to? Just done with it a couple nights ago, I guess (binge-watching: not for me), and am now peeling through all the links I’d saved back for when spoilers didn’t matter. Was going to write something about what worked, what didn’t—very little didn’t—but then Chuck Wendig did hisTerrible Minds

Flatliners

Thanks to Xach Fromson for the headsup on this: [ link ] Was just tweeting about it a few weeks ago, with even the same pic: Y’know, all these years and films later, Flatliners is still one of the scarier moviegoing nights I’ve had pic.twitter.com/2SdAHdGjXF — Stephen Graham Jones (@SGJ72) June 23, 2016 Thinking now

The Elvis Room Lives

So cool, watching The Elvis Room come alive these past few months, thanks to one Andrew Schwarz. I’ve seen rough cuts, and hope to see it on a big screen somewhere in its film-fest run (starting with Fantasia). Thanks to Andrew Schwarz for making it happen. Here’s some stills: Pictured, that’s: Keir Gilchrist, Corbin Bernson,

Cabin in the Werewolf Woods

In a movie where each scene is cooler and more iconic than the last, this one maybe rises to the top:   Hey there, Little Red Riding Hood. It’s #WerewolfWednesday, so give your Big Bad Wolf a kiss. pic.twitter.com/0CFGg3PhDp — Lykanos Wulfheart (@Lykanos_Wulf) June 23, 2016

Building Your Bad Guy

Was just on a panel about villains at Denver ComicCon—actually, my second villains-panel there—and then, just now, I went all the long way down to Alamo Drafthouse to see Footloose on the big screen for the first time in thirty-two years, then listened to the Sir Patrick Stewart episode of The Nerdist on the way

Four Movies

Oh, man, don’t have time really even to mini-review all of these (edit: that’s a lie. I couldn’t help it). But they’re far and away the best stuff I’ve seen lately: This one—wow. Halfway between Tombstone and Unforgiven, and kind of built on the dramatic backbone of Shane. Doc rides again. Unlike most westerns, though,

Torn: a Shock Youmentary

Wordplay aside, this looks to be pretty fun. So it only has one review? It’s a pretty good one, anyway. And I dig the setup: Coming across as a sort of Blair Witch Project version of hunting The Wolfman This is one I’m going to try hunt down myself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37BpGGZWxA8

Canceled Shows I Still Carry a Torch For

And, two that “finished,” but maybe didn’t get to quite go their intended distance: Uncoincidentally? Deadwood and Hannibal are my two favorite things to ever happen to television. So it probably stands to reason that I’m A) going to want more, and B) going to suspect they didn’t get a fair shake.

Slasher TV

And lo it came to pass, that the slasher did migrate to the small screen. Well, what we used to call the small screen. But the home viewing experience isn’t what it was in 1988. Nowadays, the image-quality and sound are practically theater, right? But that’s not the reason for the move, I don’t think.

Some Kind of Hate

This is the best horror I’ve seen since—since Deathgasm, I guess. But Deathgasm was playing it for laughs. This one, it’s out for blood. And there’s gallons of it. What I dig about it the most? It’s not the Holes setting, it’s not that the main guy could be the fire-kid from Sky High (really, he’s

End of the Road

This would have been cool for the short-film day we had in Werewolf Class this fall. It’s pretty cool just watching it alone at home on your laptop too, though. One of the more excellent Little Red looks I’ve yet seen: End Of The Road_TEASER from Unmanned Media on Vimeo.

The Final Girls

It’s a good time to be a slasher. Nearly twenty years ago, Scream revitalized the genre, kicked off a series of clones and also-rans—some of them quite excellent—that finally landed us at Leslie Vernon, at Tucker and Dale, at Cabin in the Woods, at You’re Next and It Follows, even accomplishing the unheard-of feat of

Endless Janes: Ex Machina

Have we come a long way, baby? I don’t know. I’m not going to pretend to have a line on the first AI done in film or novel or story—and, after Ex Machina, no way am I going to profile myself Feed-style by entering this into a search engine—but, working from my limited set, I can

The Shining in Emoji

From forever ago, yes. But I’m just now stumbling onto it. And, is ’emoji’ the right word? Like, what are those little character-based happy faces people put in their texts? It’s all confusing to me. But this isn’t: The Shining, without words. Pretty cool. Wondering if I should learn whatever this language is (he said

The Slasher in the Machine

The analogue to ‘found footage’ in fiction would be the shoebox novel: somebody drags a box out from under the bed, there’s all these clippings, let’s lay them out one after the other and thread a narrative through them. Which is to say, as Man Bites Dog and The Blair Witch Project and the rest

Scroll to Top