Shocktober Revisited: Rosemary's Baby

 editor's note: this review originally appeared in the Horror Fest VIII coverage.

Rosemary’s Baby may be based on the novel by Ira Levin (Son of Rosemary) and be produced by William Castle (The Tingler) directed by Roman Polanski (I can only imagine what’s going to happen now that I’ve mentioned his name again on this blog), but it’s really the story of a book. And not just any book, because while Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) has a lot of books, including the conspicuously placed copy of Yes, I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis Jr.*, the most important one appears about an hour into the film.
 

 Of course, I speak of All of Them Witches.

 Oh sure, the title is an anagram (although not the one Rosemary figures out – for the record, you can make “Hell a Cometh Swift from the title), but for whatever reason, it became the running joke of the rest of the movie. There was a lengthy discussion about follow-up books like Some More of Them Witches, The Rest of Them Witches, That Should Cover Every Last One of Them Witches This Time, and the legally obligated retraction book Not All of Them Was Witches After All, and many a chuckle was had.
  
I realize that it’s probably disrespectful to Rosemary’s Baby to talk about it this way when I’ve never properly written about the film here before, but sometimes when you’ve seen a movie enough times and you’re with a crowd of people who have as well, instead of focusing on the actual story you begin to fixate on silly details or make jokes. While I often try to give a film its proper perspective on the Blogorium, much of what constitutes a Horror Fest recap is trying to convey the atmosphere surrounding the screening as well.

  

 For the record, I was not the first person to make a tasteless John Lennon joke about the Dakota Building. I made the second, and it was in reference to an audience member being unhappy that nothing bad happens to Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes) at the end of the film. I responded that she needn’t worry, because “there’s a guy outside waiting for phonies.”

 There were many jokes and references to Cassavetes films (as actor and as director), to Planet of the Apes, Harold and Maude, Midnight Run, The Wolf Man, and to Frank Sinatra, Robert Evans, William Castle, and any number of other ridiculous observations, like what was playing at Radio City Music Hall with Fred MacMurray (our theory – Walt Disney’s The Shaggy Dog: The Musical, or Son of Flubber: The Musical).
 

 (This is a total side note, but since I mentioned John Carpenter’s references in Prince of Darkness, it’s worth pointing out that at the beginning of In the Mouth of Madness,  John Glover’s character’s name is Dr. Saperstein, a slight variation on the name of Ralph Bellamy’s character in Rosemary’s Baby.)
 

 All joking aside (and it’s really the big point at the fest where the audience participation took over, which the Cap’n fully endorses as long as you can still enjoy the movie), Rosemary’s Baby is a great horror movie. It’s so well constructed and so limited to one character’s perspective that even though you know what’s happening to Rosemary and you desperately want her to get away from the Castevets and the conspiracy in The Bramford, you understand why she’s confused and can’t leave. The world is set against poor Rosemary from the outset, in arguably more insidious ways than even Suzy Bannion faces in Suspiria (it turns out witches, Satan, and issues with pregnancy emerged as the consistent themes this Horror Fest).
 

 Her husband is distant and verbally abusive, especially after he gets close with Roman and Minnie Castevet (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer), her doctor recommends doing nothing when she feels pain during pregnancy, and then her old doctor (Charles Grodin), hands her over to the enemy when she comes to him for help. Her only real ally in the film, Hutch (Maurice Evans), is the victim of witchcraft – as is Guy’s original agent – and the first friend she makes in The Bramford plunges to her death not long after they meet. All the while, Polanski keeps us tightly locked in on Rosemary (although not quite as uncomfortably framed as Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion) as we slowly move towards June of 1966, when her baby is due. I shouldn’t need to spell that out for you, and it’s not as blatantly stated in the film, but if you do the math from when conception happened to when the baby should be due, it only makes sense.
 

 The use of dream sequences and somewhat ambiguous dream logic (another recurring motif this fest) helps disorient the audience early in the film, so that even forty five years later, it’s not abundantly clear what Rosemary is imagining and what we’re actually seeing when plans are set in motion. The ending still gets me, despite the presence of one of the worst Asian stereotypes since Mickey Rooney’s unfortunate appearance in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. “What have you done to his eyes, you maniacs!” and, eventually, “You’re rocking him too hard.” It’s unsettling, but inevitable.
 

 If we jest during Rosemary’s Baby, it’s only because we like it so. Also, All of Them Witches would want it that way. Hail Satan!

 

* Now, it’s entirely up to you whether Yes, I Can is there because of the Rat Pack connection or just as another subtle hint about the Satanism to come.  In the interest of full disclosure, we leaned towards the former.

Horror Fest VIII (Day Two): Rosemary's Baby

Rosemary’s Baby may be based on the novel by Ira Levin (Son of Rosemary) and be produced by William Castle (The Tingler) directed by Roman Polanski (I can only imagine what’s going to happen now that I’ve mentioned his name again on this blog), but it’s really the story of a book. And not just any book, because while Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) has a lot of books, including the conspicuously placed copy of Yes, I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis Jr.*, the most important one appears about an hour into the film.

Of course, I speak of All of Them Witches.

 Oh sure, the title is an anagram (although not the one Rosemary figures out – for the record, you can make “Hell a Cometh Swift from the title), but for whatever reason, it became the running joke of the rest of the movie. There was a lengthy discussion about follow-up books like Some More of Them Witches, The Rest of Them Witches, That Should Cover Every Last One of Them Witches This Time, and the legally obligated retraction book Not All of Them Was Witches After All, and many a chuckle was had.
  
I realize that it’s probably disrespectful to Rosemary’s Baby to talk about it this way when I’ve never properly written about the film here before, but sometimes when you’ve seen a movie enough times and you’re with a crowd of people who have as well, instead of focusing on the actual story you begin to fixate on silly details or make jokes. While I often try to give a film its proper perspective on the Blogorium, much of what constitutes a Horror Fest recap is trying to convey the atmosphere surrounding the screening as well.

  

 For the record, I was not the first person to make a tasteless John Lennon joke about the Dakota Building. I made the second, and it was in reference to an audience member being unhappy that nothing bad happens to Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes) at the end of the film. I responded that she needn’t worry, because “there’s a guy outside waiting for phonies.”

 There were many jokes and references to Cassavetes films (as actor and as director), to Planet of the Apes, Harold and Maude, Midnight Run, The Wolf Man, and to Frank Sinatra, Robert Evans, William Castle, and any number of other ridiculous observations, like what was playing at Radio City Music Hall with Fred MacMurray (our theory – Walt Disney’s The Shaggy Dog: The Musical, or Son of Flubber: The Musical).

 (This is a total side note, but since I mentioned John Carpenter’s references in Prince of Darkness, it’s worth pointing out that at the beginning of In the Mouth of Madness,  John Glover’s character’s name is Dr. Saperstein, a slight variation on the name of Ralph Bellamy’s character in Rosemary’s Baby.)

 All joking aside (and it’s really the big point at the fest where the audience participation took over, which the Cap’n fully endorses as long as you can still enjoy the movie), Rosemary’s Baby is a great horror movie. It’s so well constructed and so limited to one character’s perspective that even though you know what’s happening to Rosemary and you desperately want her to get away from the Castevets and the conspiracy in The Bramford, you understand why she’s confused and can’t leave. The world is set against poor Rosemary from the outset, in arguably more insidious ways than even Suzy Bannion faces in Suspiria (it turns out witches, Satan, and issues with pregnancy emerged as the consistent themes this Horror Fest).

 Her husband is distant and verbally abusive, especially after he gets close with Roman and Minnie Castevet (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer), her doctor recommends doing nothing when she feels pain during pregnancy, and then her old doctor (Charles Grodin), hands her over to the enemy when she comes to him for help. Her only real ally in the film, Hutch (Maurice Evans), is the victim of witchcraft – as is Guy’s original agent – and the first friend she makes in The Bramford plunges to her death not long after they meet. All the while, Polanski keeps us tightly locked in on Rosemary (although not quite as uncomfortably framed as Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion) as we slowly move towards June of 1966, when her baby is due. I shouldn’t need to spell that out for you, and it’s not as blatantly stated in the film, but if you do the math from when conception happened to when the baby should be due, it only makes sense.

 The use of dream sequences and somewhat ambiguous dream logic (another recurring motif this fest) helps disorient the audience early in the film, so that even forty five years later, it’s not abundantly clear what Rosemary is imagining and what we’re actually seeing when plans are set in motion. The ending still gets me, despite the presence of one of the worst Asian stereotypes since Mickey Rooney’s unfortunate appearance in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. “What have you done to his eyes, you maniacs!” and, eventually, “You’re rocking him too hard.” It’s unsettling, but inevitable.

 If we jest during Rosemary’s Baby, it’s only because we like it so. Also, All of Them Witches would want it that way. Hail Satan!

Up Next: Curse of Chucky and Trick ‘r Treat!

* Now, it’s entirely up to you whether Yes, I Can is there because of the Rat Pack connection or just as another subtle hint about the Satanism to come.  In the interest of full disclosure, we leaned towards the former.

News and Notes: Technical Edition (with Books)

 - Let's start with why it doesn't matter that Starz decided not to continue its contract with Netflix. This news is being treated the same way that Netflix's split with Showtime (and the never-to-be HBO deal), but I for one am happy to hear this.

 Consistently, I've found that Starz content on Netflix tends to be the most egregious examples of "pulling a fast one" on streaming viewers. In an era where "full screen" means something very different than it did five years ago, Starz streaming movies and TV shows on Netflix were constantly shown as "letterboxed" 4x3 images. If you aren't quite sure what I mean, try watching a show like MTV's Jersey Shore on a widescreen TV. See how the black bars are still on the top and bottom of the screen, even though it doesn't fill out the left and right of your TV? This is a fake "widescreen" that only really worked on old television sets.

 MTV released their Jersey Shore DVDs in the same fashion, and Starz did it with everything I watched from them on Netflix. It's a lazy alternative to providing 16x9 enhanced content and it actually diminishes the size of the picture on your screen. While it might have been nice to watch newer Disney films on Netflix, it certainly wasn't worth the drop in picture size. Not in this day and age. Netflix is hurting, and more companies jumping ship isn't necessarily good news for them, but I avoided the "Starz" section of Instant Viewing like the plague after being burned repeatedly. Good riddance to bad rubbish, if you ask me.

 - Speaking of "Full Screen," it makes me chuckle when I see stores (like one I will soon no longer be with) that still sell new DVDs with that moniker. Widescreen has slowly become the norm, and the pan-and-scan 4x3 discs are less and less desirable for customers. Many studios don't release new movies in "Full Screen" anymore, because it doesn't mean the same thing it used to. Not so long ago I would have to pay careful attention to the DVD cover of a movie I wanted to pick up in order not to buy one with a butchered "full" transfer.

 Every now and then, I put this video up, just to give folks a primer of what I mean by "pan-and-scan," because it doesn't just mean removing the black bars from the top and bottom of widescreen films:



  I often wonder what families who made the transition from standard TVs to widescreen TVs do with their collections of "Full Screen" DVDs when watching them. What probably happens is that they set their TV to automatically zoom in on the image so it fills the whole frame, creating an image twice as messy as the one shown above. Imagine taking a "Full Screen" image and then stretching it out even further to the left and right, because that's what probably happens. Yikes. I've seen it done before with VHS (hell, I did it once with the Star Wars Holiday Special) and if you really don't mind things looking messy, I guess it's watchable. But again, we were watching the Star Wars Holiday Special here, and mostly in fast-forward.

- Some time in the near future the Cap'n might have a book review up again. It's been a while, I know, but I've started reading Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror by Jason Zinoman. From the introduction, it certainly seems to be interested in Wes Craven, Sean Cunningham, George Romero, John Carpenter, Dan O'Bannon, and Brian de Palma and uses the William Castle produced, Roman Polanski directed Rosemary's Baby as the point at which Old Horror passed the torch to Modern Horror.

 I was a little nervous starting out because I have followed much of the history of Night of the Living Dead, The Last House on the Left, Halloween, and Alien, but the chapter on Rosemary's Baby already included an anecdote about Vincent Price I don't think I've seen anywhere to this point as well as a more balanced approach to Castle's involvement into bringing the picture to Paramount than is evident from Robert Evans' The Kid Stays in the Picture. The next chapter is about Hitchcock, particularly Psycho's oft cited influence on Modern Horror, and seems to be adding some nuance to the claims that it spawned the slasher films of the next two decades. Anyway, I'm clearly only starting the book, so I'll give it a proper review when I finish. I will say that it really makes me want to start working on a book idea I've had for years...

Context.

 So, uh, what's going on with you folks? Anything interesting happen to you today?

 Me? No, nothing. I mean, there was the whole "comment" thing, but that's really no big deal, you know?

 Okay, it is, but not for the reasons some might expect. If you didn't find my X-Men: First Class review from last week via social media today, I received a pointed comment from Jan Niechwiadowicz which read as follows:

 "The film may take place in the Marvel universe not ours BUT it still wasn’t a Polish concentration camp. Please don’t shift the blame for murder of millions onto the Poles. Please correct your review to say it was a German concentration camp."

 At first, I was a little irritated because the commenter had not only misread the intent of the sentence (which has been changed, if you're curious) - it used to say "Things get off to a bit of a shaky start during the opening scene, which retells the prologue to the first X-Men involving a young Erik Lehnsherr manifesting his powers for the first time in a Polish concentration camp..." What I was inferring was not that the concentration camp belonged to Poles, but merely that the camp was in Poland, as the title cards of both X-Men and X-Men: First Class say at the opening of their respective films.

 I learned a lot today before heading to work, especially about Jan Niechwiadowicz; for one, I appreciate any commenter who stakes a strong position and leaves their name. Nothing personal, anonymous commenters, but after the "Roman Polanski" incident, I don't have much patience for people who hide behind anonymity while pursuing their agendas. Anyway, Jan Niechwiadowicz (I'm not trying to be rude, but it's very difficult based on Google to say with any certainty whether Jan is a "he" or a "she," so I'm just going to stick with the name and avoid pronouns) is a member of Support Poland Against the Lies, and you can read why at the link embedded in the organization's name. I'm not going to misspeak because I had no idea how sensitive of an issue it is.

 What I am going to do, even if I agree in principle with the concept of defending one's home against erroneous information (as detailed on another blog here where Jan also left a comment), is take exception to the imprecision and hyperbole found within the comment in my X-Men: First Class review, on two counts. The second one is more important to me, but as another commenter (anonymous, but I have an inkling of who it was) raised a very important point that Jan Niechwiadowicz doesn't get a free pass for.

 1) Yes, I changed the language of the review. I had no idea that Poles felt so strongly that they were being incorrectly tied to the Holocaust, so I opt to remove the imprecision of wording. As I said, it was a reference to location and not ownership. If you have an issue with the title cards of the movie, I suggest you take that up with Bryan Singer and Matthew Vaughn, but I'll get to that in a minute.

 I'm willing to overlook the fact that you imply I "shift the blame for murder of millions onto the Poles" when that's CLEARLY not the case. That's imprecision on your part, but not by any means the most egregious count. What I am not going to overlook (and neither did the commenter who responded to you) is the fact that you, Jan Niechwiadowicz, are asking me to "correct" my review to say "German" concentration camp. Not Nazi concentration camp, but German. Do you understand the difference there? Just as you make a leap to assume that I'm somehow blaming the Holocaust on the Poles, you are not lumping all of Germany together as Nazis with the same specious logic. How is what you imply I'm doing (and I'm not, and there's nothing anywhere on this blog that would support your leap in judgment) any less mistaken than what you did. All Germans were not Nazis. Period.

 Accordingly, I amended my post to say "Nazi concentration camp in Poland." If you take exception to that, not my problem. That's how the film presents it, and this is a site which reviews films. To take it one step further, the Nazis in Dead Snow are gold coveting zombies. Is that accurate? Well, the zombie part is highly unlikely, but Nazis are used as stock villains to distinguish them from any other zombie movie. They don't even really behave like zombies, since they prefer to punch and stab people, but whatever. I'm not looking for historical accuracy in a movie like Dead Snow or X-Men First Class; I'm looking at how the story is told, which brings us to the more important point...

 2) Based on your comment and the first half of the first sentence (from which I really can't decide if you're being glib or not), you clearly weren't interested in the review itself. Of course, I know this because I've slowly but surely been keeping an eye on people who came to this post with the search words "polish concentration camp." I had no idea what the significance was until you decided to leave a comment, but I was aware that the review was being observed. That's what sitemeter does (the little link at the bottom) - it helps me see who is coming to the page, what for, and how long they stick around. Now this usually is disheartening, because other than students looking to cut and paste my Coen brothers auteur analysis, most of the time it's people looking for "naked chick in Drive Angry" or "Monsturd."

 However, it does help me understand what people find interesting on the blog - I write nearly every day, so there's a lot to sift through. Almost everything I write about is movie related. I would rather not make assumptions about you, Jan Niechwiadowicz, but I somehow doubt you read any part of the X-Men: First Class review based on your comment. I have my doubts you even read the entirety of the paragraph from which your complaint originated, and that's the problem.

 It's fine if you want to correct the language about Nazi concentration camps in Poland, even if you do it badly by leaping to conclusions about the intentions of other people AND you insult Germans who weren't Nazis. I support you in principle, if not execution.

 However, since you made that assumption without reading the review or caring about the SUBSTANCE of the paragraph you want me to correct, then we have a problem. You picked an incidental detail from a debate about whether one director lifted shots wholesale from another in the interest of expediency (which he did, although Vaughn might argue it was for consistency). My analysis was strictly about what shots were reused, what shots were new, and its impact on the quality of the film. I can only surmise that because you didn't mention ANY of this in your comment that you had no interest in the substance of the review of X-Men: First Class but rather three words from a 1704 word review. As long as I made the change you wanted, it didn't matter what I thought of the movie.

 That I have an issue with; it's not often that someone takes something I wrote totally out of context and makes it part of their personal crusade (in fact, the Roman Polanski commenter is the last one I can recall), but I'm going to be very blunt here: it's not welcome. If you don't have something to add about the substance of what I write here, then don't bother dragging me or any of my readers into your causes. Your comment adds nothing to the review of X-Men: First Class, and since you're only interested in having your correction, you have it. No go away. If you aren't interested in reading about movies, and only in pushing your agenda, then we don't need you here. If you'd like to say something about X-Men: First Class or any of the other reviews here, be my guest, but keep it to the merits of the films themselves. As I said to the anonymous commenter who distorted my analysis of the timing of Roman Polanski's arrest last year, this is not a high volume readership blog. What I do here is talk about film and things related to film, and a small group of devoted film fans follow and comment. I didn't intend to demean your or Poland, and for that I apologize. I won't be using your name again on this blog, so if you're planning on coming back, this is it. If not, so be it - I'll continue doing what it is I do tomorrow. If that's not enough for you, then I'm afraid I can't help.

 - Cap'n Howdy

A Funny Meme Happened on the Way to the Blogorium...

 Okay, so when I mentioned a handful of directors that didn't make the cut in Thursday's post about the director meme? Where I also mentioned that someone would be providing me with more directors? Yeah, funny how that worked out...

 I believe that I mentioned Jean-Luc Godard and Ingmar Bergman didn't make the initial run, along with a host of others I gave to other people. For reasons known only to me, I decided to pass on John Huston, David Lynch, Ridley Scott, and Terrence Malick. Silly Cap'n... The results came in for my next challenge, and here's the text verbatim:

Alright here we go. Ingmar Bergman, Terrence Malick, Ridley Scott, John Huston, Jean-Luc Godard, David Lynch, Charlie Kaufman, Bernardo Bertolucci, Roman Polanski, Jacques Tati. Some are personal favorites, some...not so much. All pique my interest, however.

Well, looks like I'm doing them anyway, so here comes the part where I admit that some of them I left out because there aren't really any movies I "hate" by several of these directors, which makes this tricky. But oh well, let's give it a shot anyway...

 Ingmar Bergman
 A Movie I Like: Hour of the Wolf.
 A Movie I Love: The Virgin Spring.
 A Movie I Hate: I guess The Magic Flute? I don't really love or like it... The Serpent's Egg isn't one of my favorites, either.

 Terrence Malick
 A Movie I Like: The New World.
 A Movie I Love: Days of Heaven.
 A Movie I Hate: See, here's the problem. I guess maybe it was assumed I'd put The Thin Red Line or The New World here, but I don't hate either of them. In fact, I really like both of them. And I love Badlands almost as much as Days of Heaven. I haven't seen The Tree of Life yet so I can't really say anything in that regard, and that's it. That's all there is.


  Ridley Scott
 I'm giving myself the caveat that I'm not allowed to use Alien, Blade Runner, or Thelma & Louise.
 A Movie I Like: The Duellists, or Matchstick Men.
 A Movie I Love: Believe it or not, I love the director's cut of Kingdom of Heaven.
 A Movie I Hate: Hannibal. Yeah, Legend would be an easy choice, but it's at least an interesting failure. Hannibal is just terrible, and I didn't see Robin Hood or A Good Year.

  John Huston
 A Movie I Like: The African Queen, or Wise Blood. You know what? Wise Blood.
 A Movie I Love: The Man Who Would Be King.
 A Movie I Hate: This is a cop out, especially since I don't really love The Asphalt Jungle, but since Huston directed parts of Casino Royale, and since I HATE Casino Royale, there's your winner.

 Jean-Luc Godard
 A Movie I Like: Pierrot le Fou.
 A Movie I Love: Vivre Sa Vie.
 A Movie I Hate: I don't really enjoy Made in U.S.A., if only because I am a fan of the Richard Stark "Parker" novels and their adaptations (Point Blank, The Outfit, Payback), and since this one is kinda based on The Jugger but is also making fun of it, I'm not such a huge fan.

 David Lynch
 A Movie I Like: The Elephant Man. Or Lost Highway.
 A Movie I Love: Wild at Heart.
 A Movie I Hate: The easy answer would be Dune, I guess, which is kind of a mess, but in all honesty I have a hard time sitting through all of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me when I put it on. It's not a bad movie, but thoroughly unpleasant, unseemly in a way that makes Blue Velvet seem family friendly.


 Charlie Kaufman
 He only directed one movie, so this is kinda tricky. If we're expanding it to films he wrote, then that's a different story, but not by much.
 A Movie I Like: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.
 A Movie I Love: Synechdoce, New York.
 A Movie I Hate: I don't hate any of them, by either measure (writer or director). If we're just going "weakest link," then it's Human Nature by process of elimination. Nothing personal, Human Nature; I like you all right.


 Bernardo Bertolucci
 A Movie I Like: 1900. Or The Dreamers.
 A Movie I Love: The Last Emperor.
 A Movie I Hate: Is Little Buddha too obvious? Because if it is, I'm not really a Last Tango in Paris fan either.

 Roman Polanski 
 Like Ridley Scott, I am purposefully removing the best known, i.e. Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, Repulsion, and The Tenant.
 A Movie I Like: I am alone on this island, but The Fearless Vampire Killers.
 A Movie I Love: Knife in the Water, since I left out all of my other favorites.
 A Movie I Hate: I have more "meh's" than "hate's" here - I'm not a huge fan of Frantic, Pirates, or Bitter Moon. I have a love / hate relationship with The Ninth Gate, because it's such a great movie as it builds and builds and then just kind of peters out. There's not so much an ending as an "okay, we're done here; movie's over," which ruins the film every time I watch it.

 Jacques Tati
 A Movie I Like: Trafic.
 A Movie I Love: Play Time.
 A Movie I Hate: Again, I don't really hate any of the Monsieur Hulot films, which is the bulk of Tati's filmography. I guess of them, Mon Oncle is my least favorite, but that shouldn't reflect poorly on the film. It's like asking me which Buster Keaton film I like the least.

 Okay, so Monday we'll get back to reviews. I did see a movie about some super powered kids that wasn't "second class," per se, but could have been better than everybody seems to think it is. Not that I didn't like it, but I mean it wasn't all that, even with a cameo from the star of Baz Luhrmann's Australia (aw, who am I kidding, nobody saw that movie. I mean Australian Broadway's Oklahoma!). But I don't know if I'm going to review that yet. Nah, I don't feel like piling on the "January Jones is a terrible actress" critiques just yet. That can wait for some other time. Hrm... that means I have to find something else to review.... damn.

Remakes I Wouldn't Mind Seeing Trailer Sunday

Phantasm


Krull


Pirates


Six Pack


Silent Night, Deadly Night 2


Rawhead Rex


Outland

Heads or Tails...

I'm not normally one to turn away attention from the Blogorium, but if anonymous commenters are going to take me to task for things I didn't say about Roman Polanski yesterday, then by all means find somewhere else to make your point. Just because I find the timing of the arrest very odd doesn't mean I don't think he is guilty of something he plead guilty to or that he should be given a free pass or whatever else it is you're conflating with what I actually wrote. Sorry, this is a limited readership blog for the moment and you're not going to make a splash here.

If the extradition happens and Polanski returns to the U.S., of course I expect him to go to trial for skipping out on his sentencing. It was a shitty, stupid, cowardly thing to do. I stand by my point that this could have happened any time in the last 32 years by any number of means, so it's not like this is a "sudden break" that allowed the Los Angeles DA's office to arrest him. So yeah, I find that odd that so much ado is being made of "finally" catching Roman Polanski.

But I'm not in the mood to keep dragging this out, so I'm going to let the quarter decide what the Cap'n is talking about tonight.

Heads, I talk about The Wizard of Oz on Blu Ray.

Tails, I talk about the new A Nightmare on Elm Street trailer.

Toss that coin!

---

Dammit. Tails. Okay, we'll talk about The Wizard of Oz tomorrow. Despite all intentions just to check the BD out, I ended up watching the entire movie. Again. It happens to me just about every time I start watching The Wizard of Oz, but with added incentive this time.

BUT we're not talking about that. I left it up to chance, stuck to my word, so we're talking about a different child molester tonight: Freddy Krueger.

That's right, the "Bastard Son of a Hundred Maniacs" is back, this time with a great big "FROM PRODUCER MICHAEL BAY" slapped in front of the title. You know how I feel about Platinum Dunes, but in the interest of covering what's current and because of A Nightmare on Elm Street's place among my horror favorites, let's take a look at the trailer, shall we?

(please forgive the embedding that pushes into the poll, links, and other info. I don't know how to keep it from doing that)




Okay, so let's start with positives, since I'm not on record as being a Platinum Dunes "Fan":

- I really like some of the dream imagery here. The snow (or is it ash?) and boiler room footage looks really good, and I like that the dreams seem to be more practical effects than cgi. Despite the wild possibilities afforded by digital effects, what makes the dreams so disturbing in the first film is that they seem real (at first) and the reality becomes perverted and frightening. So good on that, assuming that's the trend of the movie (and not simply because no FX work was done in time for the SDCC trailer).

- There's not a ton of Freddy in the trailer, but Jackie Earle Haley seems sufficiently creepy in that final moment. I'll take creepy Freddy over jokester Freddy, at least if this is a remake / reboot. The burn makeup is... interesting. I don't know how I feel about that yet.

- I'm very intrigued by this suggestion that maybe Freddy was innocent when the families burned him alive. It's certainly a different take than the sociopath version of Freddy that was always guilty and continued punishing in the afterlife. This sort of take gives a different kind of credence to Krueger taking revenge, even if it is a little obvious in the "generic plot type" department.

- The production design and cinematography in the opening shots looked great. I'd forgotten, partly because of how it changed in the sequels (particularly Freddy's Dead and Freddy vs Jason), about the abandoned factory that plays such a huge role in Nightmare 2 and, I guess 3. It's still a little slick and Texas Chainsaw Massacre-y, but I'm at least interested in seeing what director Samuel Bayer brings to the visual palette.

- Clancy Brown! Always a plus. Am I hoping too much that he plays the John Saxon role of Nancy's father in this iteration?

Alas, there are negatives, and kinda substantial ones.

- None of the kids made any impression at all. In fact, were it not for something I'm going to mention next, I couldn't tell you who was supposed to be Nancy and who was supposed to be Tina. Or which one was the Johnny Depp character or Tina's boyfriend. That's not a good thing when setting up this trailer.

- Instead, the trailer focuses on iconography, and unfortunately that includes some direct lifts of shots from the original Nightmare. While I dug most of the new dream imagery, all of a sudden you'd get "oh! it's the bathtub shot!" or "hey! it's the scene where Tina dies!", and it took me out of the trailer.

Suddenly I wasn't watching a new take on the story; I was watching shots that immediately drew comparisons to A Nightmare on Elm Street. There's the suggestion of the jail "hanging" scene, but with the jump rope girls inserted into the dream, and a really worrisome shot that reminded me of the worst part of Nightmare 2: the pool scene.

The "references" didn't really work in Shit Coffin, er, Friday the 13th, or Texas Chainsaw Massacre for that matter. In some ways, I wish they'd just drop trying to remind audiences "hey! you've seen this and remember it! we invite you to compare our version to the one you love before you've even seen it!" and work on successfully adapting the iconography of Freddy and the dreams into a newer context.

In all honesty, I'd say that I would be willing to watch a new Nightmare on Elm Street film, as long as it wasn't trying to BE A Nightmare on Elm Street. There's plenty of territory you can still explore with Freddy, the dreams, the parents, and the children without making implicit claims that this version is superior - and simultaneously beholden - to a film we're already familiar with.

But then again, that's been my fundamental problem with most of these remakes. If they aren't trying to be slavishly loyal to the source material, they're being slapdash and lazy with the references (see Friday the 13th). Even when the remake is different enough that it can almost exist on its own (Texas Chainsaw, for example), they have to throw in the "saw dance" to remind us that we're not watching a different take on the same story.

It's going to strike you as strange to hear me say I kinda liked the trailer. Given the track record of Platinum Dunes, I doubt I'll like the movie, but this was a promising first impression.

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Tomorrow: The Wizard of Oz, proving once again that the guy who told me "they shouldn't bother making 'old movies' on Blu Ray" was out of his mind.

Wanted and Desired indeed.

I have to say that this sudden arrest of Roman Polanski in Switzerland strikes me as odd. I'm not trying to diminish the fact that Polanski committed a crime in 1977 and then bailed to France, but why now? It's not as though he's been hiding out somewhere; Roman Polanski has been living in plain sight for the last 32 years, and everyone knew exactly where he was. It's highly doubtful to me that this is the first time the director left France in three decades, so what prompted this?

Are they looking to drag Polanski into court and create another Phil Spector-like criminal flogging? After thirty years, the article indicates that even Polanski's thirteen-year-old victim wants this to be over and done with, and not necessarily by means of extraditing him and dragging him back to America. It makes a person wonder if Hollywood was really welcoming Polanski back with the Oscar for The Pianist, or if that was a botched "sting" operation.

The timing of this confuses me, as does the desire to perpetuate "celebrity justice". Polanski pled guilty, skipped town, and I don't see a huge trial coming out of this. This is not Robert Blake, Phil Spector, OJ Simpson, or Michael Jackson caliber. There's an entire generation of cinephiles who don't know the details of why the director of Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby, A Knife in the Water, Death and the Maiden, and Frantic lives in self-imposed exile. I'd be surprised if they even remember the Sharon Tate murders.

I was already planning on showing Repulsion at Horror Fest this year, but maybe I'll throw in The Fearless Vampire Killers and Rosemary's Baby while I'm at it. Let justice be served, but maybe we can hope for a good explanation why now and not any time prior to this.

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Well, that had me in a bit of a tizzy, so that's most of what I've got for today. Your thoughts would be welcome.

Final Films and Devil Worship!

You know, the Cap'n was worried there for a second. I was beginning to think that this movie didn't actually exist, and that Terry Gilliam had been showing us production art and setting up an elaborate ruse about the actual "final" Heath Ledger film. To be fair, I was basing this on the fact that - like Solomon Kane - in the year or so I'd been hearing about Parnassus online, there wasn't so much as a frame of actual footage featuring Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, or Jude Law to be seen.

Actually, I quite like the look of Tom Waits as the Devil, even if my earlier concerns that only die-hard Gilliam fans will see this aren't rattled after the trailer. Yes, I'll see the movie, and most of you reading this will (or very likely will), but I contend that much of the moviegoing public is "over" Heath Ledger after the Oscars, and accordingly won't see this since they're "said goodbye."

Of course, most of the moviegoing public helped give GI Joe fifty four million of their recession-dollars this past weekend, so the Cap'n clearly speaks for an irrelevant market.

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While it may not be one of his best movies, I certainly didn't hesitate to pick up a copy of Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate on Blu-Ray for BD Cheap*. I've actually revisited the movie a few times on dvd and find that the problem is entirely in the ending, which essentially unravels the narrative and feels like it skipped over something important.

On the other hand, if you watch the movie knowing that the last "twist" about false pages is going to fall down, you can at least enjoy the detective story that Polanski sends Johnny Depp's Dean Corso down before things get silly. The ending tends to overshadow how good the rest of the movie is, and while of the two I'm more likely to revisit Repulsion in the near future, The Ninth Gate is welcome in the collection.

Cutthroat Island, on the other hand, can stay at Target forever as far as I'm concerned.

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One box away from being dvd/BD unpacked. It's the horror box, of course, so that the demons can kill me during an appropriate shelving. These things just happen, you know...



* BD Cheap = DVD cheap last year, which is to say $15 or less for a new release.