The western may be one of the few if not only genres where character development is actually at crosspurposes with audience expectations. We don’t want the passing-through cowpoke/gunhand/lawman/whatever to actually change, do we? Isn’t it all better if they stay the same? Granted, maybe a more intense version of themselves, of the self they’re trying […]
So, the LOST writers claim not to be lost at all. They’re not just reeling the episodes out from nothing. It’s all going somewhere, somehow, some perfect way. Moreover (first time I’m using that word. cool, yeah?), they also guarantee that this crazy upside-down inside-out unfantasy island, it’s not some form of limbo or purgatory,
FRINGE, yep. Best series opener I think I’ve seen. And that’s including the white bears in LOST, the aliens in X-FILES, the space jellyfish in STAR TREK NEXT GENERATION, the plummeting cheerleader in HEROES, the (if I’m remembering correctly) sewn-up mouths in MILLENIUM, the look on Tom Vail’s face when Alyson denies knowing him in
I’m usually all in support of an artist making money doing whatever. Sure, I respect Springsteen and the U2 guys for not hawking anybody else’s wares, but I hardly begrudge Dylan pushing lingerie or BB King selling Whoppers1. And it’s not the ‘wares,’ the inherent goodness of lingerie or Whoppers, that makes what they’re doing
Man, came home Friday after watching Prom Night, just all conflicted and twitchy from it, and then the next morning woke early, slammed down an essay-thing about it, and then of course hit the wrong button, lost it all, so, when I finally had time (that night), I re-did what of it I could, and
Man, I got the year right for The Ruins anyway, back when. And this is another non-review, yeah. Specifically, one with spoilers. Anyway, yeah, Scott Smith pretty much proves that it’s not always a bad idea to let the author be the one to make that book-to-screen jump. He nails it, I mean. I guess
1. Just got a story, “Lonegan’s Luck,” accepted by New Genre. Like most stories if you peel them back far enough, this one, too, is a zombie western. Nearly forty pages of it. 2. Doomsday opens tomorrow. Very excited. Looks like all the elements I look for in high-calibre, life-altering cinema, they’re here. Which is
The Golden Compass is one of the more amazing movies I’ve seen all year. Best fantasy since Pan’s Labyrinth, I’d say. Too, so, so sad I didn’t read the book first. No way to remedy that now, of course, but, can try to make up for it anyway. Also on-list: Inkheart. The Girl Next Door
Working on a new slasher right now, and leaning towards making it a screenplay, mainly so the form can keep it reined in for me, somewhat. Too, this time, I’m doing what I’ve never done: thinking it all through ahead of time. Which has involved a lot of re-watching, a lot of thinking. And, on
Movies like this just make me break out my lists, look for a place to wedge this movie, so it can be that much closer to my heart. Which, I know it’s got to be an almost-empty statement by now, but, using Feast as my touchstone, and acknowledging that Leslie Vernon was the best since,
Jeff Stolarcyk over at Conditional Axe has some bad news: Trick R’ Treat, much like All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, has been bumped to some indefinite time later. Very sad. Now Saw 4‘ll have to do. But I trust it will, too. A very tight series so far, I think. And, just back from
What I scribbled down in my trusty notebook*, moments after finishing all of INLAND EMPIRE when I really only meant to watch thirty minutes or so: A girl’s gotten pregnant and not by the guy she’s with. She’s haunted by ‘Krimp’ — a ‘crimp’ in the umbilical cord — and by a screwdriver to the
Just a couple of remakes that might have gone below the radar: Wizard of Oz and Hellraiser. And Hellraiser‘s especially interesting, as it likely tangles up everybody’s knee-jerk dislike of remakes: Barker’s (re)writing it himself. Don’t know what to think, myself. I mean, man, the original, I loved it. That and Lord of Illusions were
Joon Hwan Jang. Which is to say I just watched Save the Green Planet. I mean, yeah, I’m a fool for Korean movies these last couple of years — not my fault, they’re just exploding, or I’m riding the wake of some explosion when everybody cool was watching Korean stuff, I don’t know — but,
A few years late weighing in here, but sometimes it takes a while for things to click. Anyway, yeah, everybody hates Star Wars 1-3. Maybe not because of what or how they are, but as compared to 4-6. And of course a lot of that’s just how nostalgia’s about the worst beer goggles out there.
Man, except for re-hitting ReAnimator the other day — and maybe even including it — Behind the Mask: the Rise of Leslie Vernon is far and away the best horror I’ve seen all year. Best I’ve seen since Feast, really.* And Feast is that holy kind of good for me. The only time I plan
Third installments of a franchise the audience is in love with are very difficult to pull off. Nobody says Alien3 or Return of the Jedi or the third Scream are their favorites of the series, right? Even Godfather III, as good as it might be, is overshadowed by the first two. Granted, by the third
This has to be the oldest news around, but’s new to me anyway: watching “The Women of Candy Snatchers” featurette on the Candy Snatchers DVD, and Tiffany Bowling kind of asides that she was in that old series “The New People,” which she says is Lost, now. So, checked IMDb, and yep: A group of
Old MadTV & Saw fun French X-Files If I’d had the clicks to make a trailer for Demon Theory, it would have looked like the child of this and this and definitely this. But there’d have been a good deal of this as well, of course. And, talking DT, this, cribbed (it took about fifty
or, more particularly, from DEAD SILENCE: going to the Guignol ‘doll’ Theater on Lost Lake in a town called Raven’s Fain when there’s a killer on the loose who eats living tongues is pretty much just asking for trouble. This isn’t to say DEAD SILENCE isn’t pretty surprisingly good either, though. I’m not really one
if anybody’s carrying a bag of groceries, it won’t have French bread in it nobody will flick playing cards into and around a trashcan or hat if the characters need to hack into somebody’s computer, the password will be unguessable if there’s some big and final showdown on a boat, then it won’t be finally
Benson: only the good die young Cheers: have a good life “You oughtta know”: grammies bball–23 sick and scoring 55 or whatever challenger (jfk/towers) rockford: 50 people tell you you’re drink, maybe you oughtta lie down uncle jesse: only one way to go down a hill. STRAIGHT down. tasha yar: going back chrissy to jack:
Everytime I search Amazon, I always end up falling into this maze of lists, each opening to more and more. And I find some cool stuff in there, thought I’d take a stab at a couple myself. Slasher 101 Horror-Comedy And yeah, that Slasher 101 one really should be a ‘guide,’ but I clicked on
So a while back a friend i was borrowing DVDs from asked what horror he might need to have a somewhat complete collection. I told him I’d pen him a list sooner or later. Only just now remembering this. And, yeah, two disclaimers before I even start here: 1) I’m surely forgetting as many as
