Blogging: a lack of actual writing ability?

Tonight's post is Seinfeld-ian, in that it's about nothing. You were warned.

---

Huzzah! What's better than bringing Steve Martin back for the Oscars? How about Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin in a duel to the comedic death, Thunderdome-style? But not comedic death in that "not funny" way that the Oscars tend to be. I liked Mr. Fruit Juicy's* hosting this year, even if some people pissed and moaned about the song-and-dancing. Not the Cap'n, mind you, but some people. They know who they are.

---

The Men Who Stare at Goats is coming out in two days. I didn't mention this in yesterday's Coen-centric post, but I do thank the brothers Coen for shifting George Clooney from merely socially conscious back to goofball. Coen-esque films from Clooney and Grant Heslov (who directed Goats) are, I feel, a byproduct of O Brother Where Art Thou, Intolerable Cruelty, and Burn After Reading. Since I happened to be one of the five people who liked Leatherheads, I strongly suspect The Men Who Stare at Goats is right up my alley.

Maybe Goats and A Serious Man would make a confounding double feature...

---

I promised to share some of the classes that the University of Chicago is offering this year (and hence, an indicator of what I could take down the line if I got in), so here's a list of the course titles, followed by a link to their descriptions:

Women Mystery Writers: From Page to Screen.
Neorealism: Space, Culture, History.
From La Dolce Vita to the Murder of Pasolini.
Cinema in Wartime Japan and its Territories
Japanese New Wave Cinema, 1955-1973
The East Asian Film Musical.
Seeing/Writing the Everyday in 20th-Century France.
Before and After Beckett: Theater and Film.
Seminar: Catharsis and other Aesthetic Responses.
History of International Cinema, Part I, Silent Era.
History of International Cinema, Part II, Sound Cinema to 1960
CINEMA POST-CINEMA

So yeah... sign me up. Right now. Please. The descriptions only make this more enticing, including classes with titles that sound run of the mill.

Alas, kiddos, that's all the Cap'n has. I've been writing all day, and periodically reading Harlan Ellison's Watching, but now it's time for bed. Ta-ta for now.


* that is not in any way a knock on Hugh Jackman, by the way. It's just a nickname I have for him because he seems like such a genuinely nice dude that he'd ask you to get a fruit juicy with him, which I guess would be like something you'd get at the Juice Shop or Orange Julius. Yeesh, I just make this crap up, people!

The Dude Registers

The Cap'n has been spending the bulk of this semester mumbling "just get through this, next semester will be better", because fall 2009 has been underwhelming. Spring 2010, on the other hand, sounds like it could be a lot of fun, and today it finally declared "BEST FINAL SEMESTER EVER" when the one film theory professor I like came back from sabbatical to teach a 527 Class.

What's the title of MST 527-01*?

The Auteur(s): Joel and Ethan Coen

I haven't taken a film class in more than a year, but it's nice to be able to wind out my undergraduate career studying the collected body of work from the Coen Brothers. Details about the class are kind of hazy; Dr. Adams was taking the 2009-2010 year off to work on a book, but the Media Studies department cajoled him into teaching the Auteur class next semester. I know I have my own ideas about what I'd like to see.

For example, I'd like to watch Sturges' Sullivan's Travels before O Brother Where Art Thou, or to do some semi-serious study of the genres the brothers Coen dissect in their films prior to watching them. Instead, I sense we'll probably just cover film noir, particularly as it relates to Blood Simple, Miller's Crossing, and The Man Who Wasn't There (and I suppose Fargo). Surely The Big Lebowski will get its day in court (I have to keep reminding people that in 1998 nobody thought Lebowski held a candle to Fargo), and I assume Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, No Country for Old Men, and A Serious Man will get their due.

On the other hand, I have a sneaking suspicion that Burn After Reading, The Hudsucker Proxy, Intolerable Cruelty, and The Ladykillers will be brushed aside in order to focus on "serious" Coen fare, if not dismissed entirely. I'm not the biggest fan of Cruelty or The Ladykillers, but there is merit in studying the misfires that bridge The Man Who Wasn't There to No Country for Old Men. I've never understood why Hudsucker doesn't get the props it deserves, and I contend that one of these days, with enough time removed, Burn After Reading has the potential to attain a cult status not dissimilar to that of The Dude.

Seriously! When The Big Lebowski came out, it was not the phenomenon it is today. I'm going to link Roger Ebert's review, which should give you some idea of the critical reaction. Essentially, the film was considered to be too weird, to rambling, but generally entertaining and forgettable. The consensus was "well, it's no Fargo", which is exactly how Burn After Reading was compared to No Country for Old Men. People always seem to forget that this is how the Coens operate; they seldom make the same kind of movie twice (if ever) and tonally you can expect pretty wild fluctuations from film to film.

For example, take their next project, which follows A Serious Man: a remake / re-adaptation of True Grit. Jeff Bridges is onboard playing Rooster Cogburn (for those keeping track, the John Wayne role) with Matt Damon and Josh Brolin rumored to be joining the cast soon. I have no idea what the tone of the film will be. Joel and Ethan Coen are also working on Hail Caesar, which may or may not still have George Clooney appearing again for the brothers.

In the mean time, I'm looking forward to taking this class in preparation for graduate studies. I'm really hoping to go to Chicago, and tomorrow I'll share some of the classes their graduate program is offering next year.


* Yeah, I know. It went from BCN to MST, and even though it stands for Media Studies, we all know what MST really means...

Horror Fest IV: The Final Chapter Wrap Up

Here are a handful of non film related Horror Fest images, to give you some idea of what you *ahem* missed.

Were-Phillippi was one of the two costumes to grace Horror Fest. Regrettably, I didn't snap a photo of Randy's zombie costume. It was pretty impressive.

It's not immediately clear, but Adam is enthralled by Terrorvision.

A side view of watching Terrorvision.

Now I'd like to present a selection of the fine spirits left at The Apartment that Dripped Blood:

$64 dollars will get you all of this. Lucky me.

Now why is it that the classiest alcohol in the apartment also happens to be empty?

Be still my beating heart.

Guess which I'd rather drink.

And because I forgot to put them up last night, some random images from Cemetery Man.

Zombie Nun.

Zombie Boy Scout

Gnaghi.

Thanks to everybody for making the last Horror Fest in Greensboro a lot of fun. If you haven't done so yet, please drop by the apartment and sign the Horror Fest poster before I frame it. For your trouble, I'll give you a copy of the Official Commemorative Horror Fest Soundtrack, which features the following songs:

1. Theme from Halloween - John Carpenter
2. Move Your Dead Bones (from Beyond Re-Animator) - Dr. Re-Animator
3. Monster Mash - Bobby "Boris" Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers
4. Beware of the Blob - The Five Blobs
5. Intro to Tales from the Darkside - Donald Rubinstein
6. Prologue (from A Nightmare on Elm Street)
7. A Nightmare on My Street - DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince
8. Dream Warriors (from A Nightmare on Elm Street 3) - Dokken
9. The Dead Hate the Living (from The Dead Hate the Living) - Penis Flytrap

Horror Fest IV Day Four: Cemetery Man, Drag Me to Hell, and An American Werewolf in London

As we come to the end of Horror Fest IV: The Final Chapter, I felt that as we began with a bang, so to would it be fair to end with a trifecta of fine films. Much like every other Horror Fest, I always program more films than we actually watch, but two of tonight's films have been longstanding "why haven't we watched this yet?" entries. The other, Drag Me to Hell, was a nearly-made-it Fan Favorite pick, so I gave it the Sunday spot in its "Unrated" form. Stay tuned for thoughts:

I've gone long stretches since seeing Cemetery Man the first time, although it nearly made it to Horror Fest 2. The film itself, directed by Michele Saovi, is an odd blend of black comedy, zombie gross-out, and existential angst. It probably would fly apart at the seams without Rupert Everett's Francesco Dellamorte anchoring the madness, although Anna Falchi's eternal siren beckoning Dellamorte to his doom doesn't hurt any.

Cemetery Man (or Dellamorte Dellamore) is a bit like Dead Alive without the wild gore and outlandish characters. Oh sure, there are flying heads, zombie boy scouts, and idiot savant sidekicks, but the film treats their presence as nothing out of the ordinary of Dellamorte. It's only in the second half of the film, when the surreal plot machinations kick in, resembling nothing so much as American Psycho, that Cemetery Man becomes more than another zombie film. The ending is still a kick, even if it only partially makes sense.

---

Almost everything I said about Drag Me to Hell last July is still true, although my appreciation for what Sam Raimi did for modern horror has increased upon second viewing. The unrated cut isn't radically different, save for much more blood during the nosebleed scene and a slightly less suggestive version of the "cat" plot point. It's not that you really see anything other than blood, but it's certainly less ambiguous how Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) deals with the Lamia visit in her room.

The "food" theory, discussed here by Patton Oswalt, certainly holds up if you're watching the film from that lens. It's an interesting alternative to Raimi's deconstruction of modern horror techniques, although I'm still fond of the semi-auteur trickery Sam is cooking up in a less-seen-than-it-should-be original-ish horror film. Hopefully it finds new life on dvd and BD.

---

Finally, in the big "DUH!" moment, we've never actually put An American Werewolf in London into a Horror Fest rotation. My original argument was that everyone's already seen the film, so let's try more obscure stuff, but after four years and nearly eight Fests, it's about time to bring the big boys to the table.

I'm glad I did, because I find new things every time I watch this movie. Andy proposed an interesting theory that the film is about survivor's guilt: since David Kessler (David Naughton) and Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne) are openly identified as Jewish visitors to Europe from America, there's a hint of Nazi survivor guilt in both David's dreams and Jack's insistence that he kill himself in the "old world". It's a way to read the film I hadn't considered, but may well be worth looking into...

---

So that's it. Tomorrow I go back to being a student, working on normal papers and what not, and Horror Fest as we know it in Greensboro is over. There's still one more Summer Fest to come, for which I have a few ideas, and one more Bad Movie Night in April, but the Final Chapter has come to a close. I'll put up a few pictures not from movies tomorrow, and if I can scan it in, a copy of the poster signed by attendees I hope to frame to remember an excellent Horror Fest.

Horror Fest IV Day Three: Night of the Lepus

Finally, a photographic essay of Night of the Lepus, a long standing Horror Fest favorite:

How could this little fella be the problem? He's just a bunny rabbit! Shame on you, Stuart Whitman!

Possibly Vampires. Or Sabre-Toothed Tigers. Definitely not rabbits.

I took this photo for two reasons: 1) DeForest Kelly's bitchin' moustache, and 2) the swirly tuft on wheelchair scientist's noggin.

We're not sure what it used to say, but now it's dynamite.

Freud would say it's like dropping a microphone into a mineshaft. Oh, that's what he's doing? Huh.

We close out night three with a few more pictures of everyone's favorite Re-Animator, Dr. Re-Animator!


That guy is totally the Eastern European Mark McGrath!

Horror Fest IV Day Three: Terrorvision and Blood Car

Instead of recapping two movies I've already talked about, I thought I'd share an essay in photos:

Forgive the poor quality of Terrorvision photos. The pictures come from a VHS copy and there's not much available online. We pick up in the middle of the film, after the alien has consumed Grandpa and two swinging adults!

Swinger's Night Goes Awry.

Pincher to the chest. Works every time!

OD (John Gries) and Suzy (Diane Franklin) are back from... uh, whatever it is they do.

I don't really have a caption for this. I just thought I'd share the color palette of Terrorvision with you.

Medusa has a special message for Sherman.

And here's Medusa taking a hot phone call.

Don't ask what's in the hot tub. You don't want to know. Oh, and Sherman is holding a real machine gun.

Food, glorious food!

The next two are from Blood Car. Both should give you some idea of what kind of movie this is.

I kid you not; he's talking about Tarantulas.

Guess how this ends.

Up next, another photo essay on Night of the Lepus, plus some hot Dr. Re-Animator action!

Horror Fest IV Day Three: Hillbillys in a Haunted House and Shark Attack 3: Megalodon

The votes were in, the movies were set, and we started "Fan Favorite Night" with a whimper bang! Hillbillys in a Haunted House remains the jam, even if everyone tells you otherwise. (it's because they're afraid of how excellent the film is)

What the Cap'n loves about Hillbillys is the fact that they promise you a Haunted House and a Nashville Jamboree and deliver both in 85 minutes. In fact, you get four songs in the first fifteen minutes, and we haven't even made it to "Gowns" at that point:



Then, in rapid succession, we get two more hot performances, and for you gripey types, things calm down and focus on the Three Queens, a Drunk, and a Gorilla for a bit, before the super sweet Nashville Jamboree, which makes up the last fifteen minutes of the film. Win!

I really can't understand how none of you love this movie. Seriously.

---

What does Shark Attack 3: Megalodon have that Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus have? Gravitas. And maybe authenticity.

Okay, so the authenticity comes from a liberal dollop of footage from Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, but footage of actual sharks eating something is more palatable than the same digital shot of a shark and octopus fight.

The dubbing was classy. I'd genuinely forgotten that the movie was made in Bulgaria, and none of the Mexican cast members were actually Mexican. They fooled me, and everybody else, but the end credits had more "V"s than a college Freshman field trip to The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The pick up line, aside from one involving tacos in Blood Car, remains as good as it gets.

Up next: Terrorvision and Blood Car!

Horror Fest IV Day Two: Trick r Treat and Scream Blacula Scream

Finally, we come to the late-night portion of the show. I waited until just after midnight to put on Trick r Treat, so we were officially watching it on Halloween.

Trick r Treat works just as well on a second viewing as it does in the first. In fact, it's easier to pick up on all of the interconnected elements once you know how they tie together, and Michael Dougherty really succeeds in making the four stories feel like part of a larger canvas.

Part of the reason Trick r Treat works so well is that it addresses, in varying fashions, what Halloween means and what it used to represent. As a horror movie, Trick r Treat gives real stakes to characters disregarding the "rules" of Halloween, and also consistently subverts "horror movie" expectations. A number of times during the film, folks in the room thought they had the story pegged, only for Dougherty to zag when they thought he'd zig.

For an anthology film, the twists and turns are well constructed, and time is played with well enough that it is possible not to catch the ways Trick r Treat sets things up before they happen, which is actually pretty rare. If you haven't guessed, I'm a big fan of this film, and it's a shame it never got a fair shake theatrically. I really hope the dvd sales are good enough for another Trick r Treat film, because the way this anthology is designed could keep them coming for years and not retread old horror tropes.

---


Scream Blacula Scream is something of an oddity. For those of you who haven't seen Blacula, it's about an African Prince or something like that who Dracula turns into a Soul Brother Vampire, and then he gets ashed. Scream Blacula Scream is, I think, about the struggle to take over a Voodoo Family, and for some reason this dude named Willis brings Blacula back from the dead by burning his skeleton.

I think Willis wanted Blacula to kill Pam Grier, who is taking over the Voodoo family (it's like the mob but they very rarely practice voodoo in the film), but instead Blacula turns Willis and everyone else he meets into a vampire, including two pimps, a honky, and a sassy woman who keeps trying to undermine Blacula's rule.

Of course, Blacula gives her a "bitch, back off" stare, and that settles thing. I think. It's weird, because all of Blacula's vampires look like zombies. They move like zombies, and they don't really bite people. It's silly.

Some other things happen that don't really make sense. Mostly some cops try to stab Blacula's vampires with fence posts, and Pam Grier tries to use voodoo to turn Blacula human again. Instead, Blacula kills everybody and then starts screaming because she stabs a voodoo doll of him in the heart. Here's where things really don't make sense.

See, Scream Blacula Scream doesn't actually end. Blacula is screaming in pain from being stabbed by the voodoo doll and then the film freezes and goes to credits. Maybe they were hoping for a cliffhanger ending for a third Blacula film, but since that never happened we won't know what happened to poor Blacula. Damn jive turkeys at American International Pictures.

Horror Fest IV Day Two: The Stepfather and The Monster Squad

After an episode of Tales from the Darkside called "Halloween Candy" (which set up Trick r Treat nicely for later), we sat down to watch the recently arrived on dvd copy of The Stepfather. While Adam and Cranpire are considering seeing the remake because of its Nip/Tuck associations, the rest of us were excited to see a pre-X-Files, pre-Millennium, pre-Dinosaur Island Terry O'Quinn doing what he does best: being a seemingly nice but secretly menacing psychopath.

Jerry Blake is just that man. He spends most of the movie being disappointed by the worthless families he marries into, so he kills them and then moves on. It seems fair: all Jerry wants is the "perfect family", and they constantly fail him. On top of that, these obsessed losers keep trying to track him down and expose his serial killer ways, so Jerry's constantly being barraged by the inane and the unworthy. It's really no wonder he beats people to death with a 2X4.

The Stepfather starts out with some great suggested brutality, while simultaneously giving audiences and idea of how Jerry operates. The camera follows Jerry as he shaves off his beard, cuts his hair, and sets off on his new life. Only as he's walking out of his old house, whistling "Camptown Races", do we see the indication of what happens when a family fails to live up to his standards, specifically the shot of a very dead child.

He sets up shop near Seattle with Susan (Shelley Hack) and her daughter Stephanie (Jill Schoelen). Stephanie is suspicious of Jerry, not only because he's her new stepfather, but also because she witnesses Jerry having a freak-out during a party. Unfortunately, she's kind of a troublemaker; Stephanie is constantly getting in fights and being kicked out of school, so her word is a little suspect, especially considering how "perfect" Jerry is.

Admittedly, when Jerry isn't being a psycho, he really is a great dad. All he wants is a happy family, and he works to keep them happy even when things invariably fall apart. But Stephanie's psychiatrist is trying to blackmail Jerry and this other drifter is also trying to smoke Jerry out, so he has to kill them.

Terry O'Quinn is great a Jerry Blake for many of the same reasons he works so well elsewhere. He seems perfectly nice and normal, if a bit "off", but when that switch turns on and psycho-Jerry shows up, the shit hits the fan and you do not want him to be angry at you. No sir.

Adam identified with Jerry a lot, which is kind of scary. Just ask Phillippi.

---

I don't have much to add about The Monster Squad, other than the fact that Dracula really does come off as just some dude in a fancy suit who loves dynamite. You only see his fangs once, and most of the time he tools around in his car or periodically becomes a bat. Adam really didn't like The Monster Squad this year.

Horror Fest IV Day Two: Matango and See No Evil

We kicked off Friday with a double dose of not-goodness by watching a one-two punch of Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People and See No Evil. Both were, shall we say, underwhelming.

If there's anything to be gained from Matango, a movie where nothing happens until the 75 minute mark (and the mushroom monster doesn't appear until nearly the 45 minute mark), it's that the producers of Lost may have borrowed from its playbook. Allow me to explain: at first, Matango looks like a Japanese Gilligan's Island, but once their schooner crashes and they land on Dinosaur Island Mushroom Island, they spend the next hour debating how to survive, they find a crashed vessel from long before, and there are flashbacks.

Eventually you see the smoke monster Matango, and people go crazy eating the mushrooms and then (SPOILER ALERT) becoming mushrooms themselves! The one survivor makes it back to Japan and is in an insane asylum. At the very end it turns out he too is turning into a mushroom person. (WHAT A TWIST!)

The only thing See No Evil has that Matango doesn't is more violence in roughly the same running time, but that's not necessarily a good thing. Oh sure, there are some decent kills, and maybe the gimmick of a hulking brute with a hook and chain that steals peoples' eyeballs could work, but not in this movie.

For some odd reason, See No Evil thinks it would be funny to let the characters you like the least live until the end, and everyone else dies. The twist involving a character you can see coming a mile away had most of us saying "well, duh" when they finally got around to the reveal.

I guess WWE Superstar Kane isn't that bad, but since all he has to do is skulk around and drag people, there's not much room to gaffe it up. The direction is a mess: Gregory Dark, a former video and porn director steals liberally from the Saw camera tricks playbook. Alas, if you've seen one speed ramp, ill placed jump cut, and "attached to character" cam, you've seen pretty much all you're going to.

Oh well, things are headed to an upswing next, as we watch Terry O'Quinn in The Stepfather.

Horror Fest IV Day One: The Haunted World of El Superbeasto and Night of the Creeps

It's kind of tricky updating after the movies this year because one of the beds is next to the computer, and Cranpire is awfully lazy. At any rate, let's quickly discuss the two movies that followed last night's field trip to Zombieland:

1. The Haunted World of El Superbeasto is maybe not a solid on a second viewing, although something curious happened. The beginning of the film, which I found to be a bit tedious in the theatre, was slightly more amusing. The ending, however, felt like it took forever to get to (not such a good thing for an 80 minute movie) and wasn't quite as much fun this time around. Oh well, at least a few people saw it for the first time.

2. Night of the Creeps, on the other hand, was excellent. I hadn't seen the movie in years, so it was a nice pleasure to rediscover the film, even as I was struggling to stay awake. For a horror-comedy, it strikes the right balance of laughs and spooks, and Tom Atkins owns most of the film. One of the questions that came up, however, was whether the alien subtitles during the beginning of the film are representative of their language, or if they exist for another alien species watching Night of the Creeps. Curious...


On a side note, we put on a disc called Monsters Crash the Pajama Party, a collection by Something Weird video of truly random horror related ephemera. In addition to a seemingly endless reel of text ads, there were a number of short films about strange hippies being scared by monsters, a "Mad Doctor", and a Gorilla doing all sorts of stupid things.

We also saw the worst 3-D footage ever. Note to people including 3-D footage on your dvd: if you want to really use the gimmick, it's better not to use washed out images that make the three dimensions look awful. Additionally, the menu on Monsters is so cumbersome and confusing that I couldn't actually tell you how to get from one set of footage to the other. Seriously.

Oh well, the next round of Horror Fest IV: The Final Chapter begins in about an hour. We have a good night lined up, and already watched Child's Play with the Chucky commentary. Classy.

Horror Fest IV Day One: Zombieland Field Trip

I have to say that waiting the better part of four weeks to see Zombieland was totally worth it. While not a horror movie in the strictest (or really any) sense, it does manage to create a world populated by the 2004 Zack Snyder Dawn of the Dead "fast" zombies and keep things snappy and entertaining.

While I did enjoy Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin, Woody Harrelson really walks away with the movie as Tallahassee, the walking talking Id of zombie killing. I shan't be the one to blow the celebrity cameo that at this point 90% of you know about, but half of why it's so funny is Harrelson's reaction to meeting "the cream of the A-list crop".

That, and I don't think the Twinkies subplot doesn't really get the love it deserves. The rules are great, particularly the revisions, but Woody Harrelson really manages to stretch out a one-note joke through the entire film.

Not that Zombieland is very long film, and it moves at a pretty brisk pace. I personally wouldn't mind a sequel, especially if it means less of the following turd sandwiches stinking up the joint:



I mean, UGH!

Up next: The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, Night of the Creeps, and Basket Case.

Nice.

Technical Difficulties

Greetings, folks! The Cap'n is experiencing Internet related difficulties and is presently unable to update the blogorium from home. Hopefully this will be settled before Zombieland tonight, and he looks forward to seeing you folks tonight. In the meantime, we apologize for a lack of posting last night.

See you tonight

- the blogorium team

Horror Fest Forum #1: Your First

It's a simple question, but I'd like to open up the floor to you folks:

What was your first horror movie? Which film brought you into the genre, and why did that experience keep you coming back?

The Winnahs!

On Saturday Night, we'll be watching the following films:

Black Sheep

Blood Car

Hillbillys in a Haunted House

Night of the Lepus

Shark Attack 3: Megalodon

Terrorvision

There were... a lot more votes than I was expecting. It looks like a fair chunk of you REALLY don't want to watch Hillbillys in a Haunted House again, so I'll promise you that it has the Matinee slot. Accordingly, I will try to find places for Slither, Drag Me to Hell, and Teeth elsewhere in the fest.