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 […]
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 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
Is a serial- or spree-killer who wears a mask and kills ‘misbehaving’ teens a slasher? If not, then what of Ghostface and fifty other killers, right? But, the slashers we know and love, they usually have a signature weapon, don’t they? Michael’s got his knife, Jason’s got his machete, Leatherface rips that chainsaw to life
With slashers, I’ve always been in John Carpenter’s camp: these people aren’t getting punished for having sex, they’re getting killed while naked simply because that’s when they’re the most vulnerable, the least likely to be looking around the room. However, like Jim Rockford says, If fifty people tell you you’re drunk, then maybe it’s time
For a long time I’ve been in a Kirk/Picard situation with myself, regarding Ginger Snaps and The Howling: which do I like best? And, I know, what about An American Werewolf in London, Dog Soldiers, Bad Moon. They’re all good and vital, and contributed important stuff, but for me, it’s always come down to Ginger
Wasn’t a clutch of eggs important last time around as well, for Godzilla? It’s cool. I mean, it shows Jurassic Park influence—’nature always finds a way’—but more than that, it suggests that in order for us to keep these science-fiction monsters believable, we’re having to apply biology to them. We’re giving them life cycles outside
The trick in adapting a novel—or anything—for the screen, it’s not about being loyal to every line or faithful to each scene exactly as it happens on the page, it’s about identifying the beating heart of the novel, and then finding a way to get it on screen such that the final effect can feel
I can’t figure why exactly slashers and musicals are something that’s been tried now twice. Once here, and once in Don’t Go In the Woods. I mean, Nazis and zombies, that just makes sense. But I can’t figure out what slashers and musicals share, exactly. And, maybe it’s not slashers in particular, even. We’ve already
Okay, I need to be writing chapters of a novel, but, to keep my brain from melting, I slip out from time to time for a movie. And I got zero time or fingerstrength for rigging a proper review together, but, man, I did dig this one. Also, the world may be lucky that Jim
1.) There’s about fifty jokes to make with that title. None of which will be made in this list. 2.) Put The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity in a jar, let Carrie (also 1974 . . .) shake it while Samara watches, and you’ve pretty much got The Quiet Ones. 3.) There was me
Got pages of mostly illegible notes re: Under the Skin, but not much time to collate. Rather, like Snowman and the Bandit, I got a long way to go and a short time to get there. So, some quick bulletpoint responses, anyway: 1) We all want to be David Bowie, of course. Or, we all
We need a new designation: there’s movies about the apocalypse, and all our valiant efforts to stop it from happening, from Armageddon to The Hunt for Red October, and then there’s the post-apocalyptic stories, from Mad Max to The Book of Eli and way beyond. There’s stories that are kind of both, too, like Twelve
Ten Bulletpoints re: Oculus 1) This is probably from The Exorcist, but where I remember it from is Hysterical: one priest telling another not to listen, that the devil will lie to you. But then one of the Hudson brother’s pants are actually at his ankles. It wasn’t a lie, surprise. If you could turn that
If only anybody were ever smart enough to call a lawyer and an English major before they made their three wishes, right? You’ve got to the get the wording just, just right, with all these exclusionary clauses, with all this over-specific verbiage to indicate exactly what you’re asking for. And bring an artist in as
Thanks to Jesse Lawrence for the heads-up on The Final Girls. Excited. ABC gave us HARPER’S ISLAND, yes? One of the best miniseries ever. And, this premise of a final girl support group is something I’ve been playing with for a while myself. So, this’ll either make it obsolete—which is great, I should have been
Once upon a time, a little movie called Scream asked What if the victims in the slasher knew the formula of the movie they were in? It started a revolution, a renaissance, one that finally made room for a Leslie Vernon to look at things from the slasher’s point-of-view, one that left room for Tucker
I keep thinking about these two kids who left the theater early. Say, ten minutes shy of the end, right when things were at their goriest, most sacrilegious frenzy. I mean, first and of course, eight- and ten-year-old girls shouldn’t be seeing The Conjuring. Boys either. I’m not even sure I was old enough to
[ this is the script of the pre- and post-words I gave for a charity event Cabin-screening Friday night, down in Manitou Springs ] wolf kisses and bear traps The slasher. We can all make a list of our ten favorite, yes? Which of course we consider the ten best. So . . . that list starts
Just talking World War Z. Which, I mean, I was doing that anyway, so, you know, it all worked out: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/06/27/how-world-war-z-stands-up-to-the-zombie-film-genre
The first thing to get out of the way when talking the World War Z movie is the obvious thing: it’s not the novel. Whereas with Hunger Games, say, sure, there’s a lot in the novel that doesn’t end up on screen, and a lot of what does is different, but still, condense the Hunger
Back when, the Pa Kent-Superboy dynamic made a certain kind of wholesome sense, didn’t it? Behind the eventual Superman’s heroism there was always this one old Kansas farmer’s values, really saving the world. There was something kind of safe and comforting about that. And, it’s not so much in opposition to the idea of an
Awards Stitches completely owns: best death-by-umbrella ever, in the history of whatever best cat-murder in a long, long time (to specify, this is the death of a cat, not Gage 2.0) best ‘bet I can extract your intestines and make them into a balloon-dog’-scene best high-heel-to-throat And, Stitches, he deserves some nominations, too. He camps it up with the best of
These are the ten movie clips that are always playing in my head, the ones that I don’t feel I’d be the same me without, my cine-DNA, I suppose. But, no, these clips aren’t necessarily the most iconic from all of film. There’s no “You had me at hello” or “Make my day” or “Of
Found Footage. I love it when a term contains the conceit, just because, by accepting the term, you’ve already bought into the trick: this movie you’re watching, it’s an artifact. Which of course means that it’s real. And if a horror film can have you convinced of that before even watching—it’s a feat. Most horror
