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
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
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,
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
