Archive for October, 2011

  • 31 Oct

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    Toronto After Dark 2011: Father’s Day Review

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    Father’s Day is pretty much the perfect exploitation film. It will offend many with its graphic images and content (both bloody and sexual) while it embraces the anything-goes aesthetics of many of the films from the 1970s that range from impressively realistic gore to ridiculous use of stock footage. Its plot begins with a search for a serial killer and from there mutates with a speed and force rarely seen outside the viruses found in bad sci-fi movies. Strippers, priests, male prostitutes, bears, chainsaws, hallucinogens, demons, a visit to Hell and probably even a kitchen sink or two are smashed together, blended until each has been reduced to gooey chunks and then splattered back up on screen with a joyful exuberance. It’s sick, gory, disgustingly gross and very, very funny.

    However, let me be very clear up front: The opening 10 minutes of the film is extremely nasty stuff and enough to thoroughly repulse just about anyone but the purest of gorehounds. A rapist of fathers (it’s explained that he doesn’t like woman, but never stated why he only goes after the Dads) is on the loose and we join him in the middle of a particularly, um, gruesome violation of another human. Having seen the faux-trailer for the film last year (which led the Canadian filmmaking team Astron-6 to make a full version of the film for the folks at Troma), it wasn’t really a surprise – that trailer is full-on Grindhouse at its ickiest – but that first section began to validate my fears that the movie was going to be completely in that same vein. A strange thing happens after a few minutes of this type of gore though – it’s pitched so way over the top that you can’t actually take any of it seriously and it becomes more of a parody than anything else (though a disgustingly Lurid one).

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  • 31 Oct

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    DVD Review: Tabloid

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    What a joy it is to see certain absurdities in life and perspective and truth as filtered through the vision of Errol Morris. The documentarian is well known for his particular style of filmmaking, the kind that mixes interviews and information with a distinct cinematic style. If he can keep his subjects talking, they are bound to say just about anything, as was the case in The Thin Blue Line when a murderer who got away with his crime eventually confesses to the director in an interview. I also have a particular fondness for the types of things he obsesses on, such as a 15000 word essay on two photos of cannon balls on a roadway from the Crimean war. Then there is his documentary on a Pet Cemetery and its customers. The man has range, which brings us to… Bondage, Beauty Queens, Kidnapping, Mormons and Dog Cloning – how do they all connect? Through the British Tabloid rags of course and the longevity of one particular story back in the late 1970s about a North Carolina girl named Joyce McKinney who allegedly raped her boyfriend.

    At one point during the peak of the “Manacled Mormon Sex Slave” paparazzi-explosion, two competing papers ran opposite stories: The first painted Joyce as an innocent woman desperate to get her cult brain-washed boyfriend back to her, while the other proudly pasted nude pictures on the front cover and elaborated on the sex and bondage operation she ran under the alias “Joey,” several years before the kidnapping. The truth, of course, is somewhere in the middle, yet impossible to fully get considering the time passed, egos involved, and just a little bit of craziness on Joyce’s part. Nevertheless, it is the journey, not the destination that is such a wonderful dollop of entertainment in Tabloid.

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  • 31 Oct

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    Top 5 Scary Moments In Non-Horror Movies

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    Stop me if you’ve heard this one before… This is a list that’s probably been done a lot by others in the past but since it’s Halloween time and all I thought I’d throw up my own list.

    These are the moments that prove that a movie doesn’t have to be part of the horror genre to a give you a good scare, whether that be completely intentional or not. Of course this isn’t in any way definitive but just what moments I personally found scary/creepy/unsettling in movies that aren’t classified as horror. Enjoy:

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  • 31 Oct

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    Film on TV: Oct 31 – Nov 6

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    Repulsion, playing on TCM on Tuesday.

    I‘ve thrown in a bunch of Newly Featured ones this week, trying to get in some more content from Sundance and IFC – it’s too easy for me to just focus on TCM, even though honestly, they have easily the best and most consistent film programming on cable. Anyway, look for that “Newly Featured!” tag to find them all. Most worth mentioning: great British horrors Village of the Damned and Repulsion tonight on TCM, late John Huston film The Dead on Friday on IFC, Row Three favorite The Limey on Saturday on IFC, and Kubrick’s Vietnam-focused Full Metal Jacket on Sunday, also on IFC. Meanwhile, TCM is bringing the noir in November, with a whole raft of great films I’ve featured before, and some that I haven’t, like Detour and Scarlet Street on Tuesday.

    Monday, October 31

    8:45am – TCM – Hammer Horror
    TCM is playing Hammer Horror all day today; sorry this is going up late enough that some of them are already over. I unfortunately haven’t seen any of these except Horror of Dracula, but so far I’ve enjoyed all the Hammer films I have seen, so figure these are worth a look. Still to come today: Curse of Frankenstein, Frankenstein Created Woman, The Mummy, The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb.

    4:15pm – Fox Movie – The Legend of Hell House
    A disparate group of people go to the notorious Hell House to try to prove whether or not it’s haunted – previous attempts ended in madness or death. One of the quintessential haunted house films.
    1973 UK. Director: John Hough. Starring: Pamela Franklin, Roddy McDowall, Clive Revill, Gayle Hunnicutt, Roland Culver.

    8:00pm – TCM – Village of the Damned
    A highlight of 1960s British horror, with a group of children all born mysteriously nine months after a village experienced “lost time.” They all have the same blonde hair, creepy vacantness, and the apparent ability to communicate telepathically. It’s a very quiet, chilling film, with a fine central performance from child actor Martin Stephens, who would bring his preternatural creepiness to The Innocents the following year. George Sanders is his inimitable self as the schoolteacher/parent trying to solve the mystery.
    1960 UK. Director: Wolf Rilla. Starring: George Sanders, Barbara Shelley, Martin Stephens.
    Newly Featured!

    9:15am – Sundance – A Girl Cut in Two
    One of the last films from great French director Claude Chabrol before his death, with Ludivine Sagnier as an up-and-coming TV personality faced with choosing between two men – with Chabrol at the helm, you know there’s more than that to it, and his touch for black comedy thrillers should make this one an enjoyable watch.
    2007 France. Director: Claude Chabrol. Starring: Ludivine Sagnier, Benoît magimel, François Berléand.
    Newly Featured!
    (repeats at 12:00M on the 2nd)

    9:30pm – TCM – Night of the Living Dead
    Zombie movies can be conveniently subcategorized into pre-Romero and post-Romero, so influential has this film been. Eschewing voodoo and zombie masters, Romero posited a zombie created by our own nuclear follies and motivated by nothing more than insatiable hunger. More than that, the layer of social commentary makes Night of the Living Dead far more than the B-movie schlocker it seems like on the surface. It changed zombie films, and probably horror films in general to an extent, forever.
    1968 USA. Director: George A. Romero. Starring: Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea, Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman.

    11:15pm – TCM – A Night at the Movies: The Horrors of Stephen King
    A TCM original, with Stephen King leading a history of horror cinema through film clips and his own personal reflections. Should be an interesting time if you’re a fan of horror and/or King, and probably a good chance to hear him talk about some of the films that have influenced him personally.
    2011 USA. Starring: Stephen King.
    Newly Featured!

    12:00M – Fox Movie – Naked Lunch
    This is a whacked out movie, more of an exploration of beat author William S. Burrough’s life and writing process than an adaptation of his novel of the same name, with addictive bug powder, murders, hallucinogenic trips, typewriters that turn into cockroaches, and espionage plots. I saw it ages ago when I probably wasn’t ready for it; ought to try it again sometime.
    1991 Canada. Director: David Cronenberg. Starring: Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm.
    (repeats at 4:00am on the 1st)

    12:15am (1st) – TCM – The Innocents
    A genuinely creepy and disturbing little horror film, with Deborah Kerr as a new governess hired to raise a young boy and girl on a lonely Victorian estate. She becomes convinced the two are possessed by the spirits of two former employees – but the truth may be even weirder than that. Extremely effective; this is honestly my favorite type of horror, and few are better at it than this.
    1961 UK. Director: Jack Clayton. Starring: Deborah Kerr, Peter Wyngarde, Michael Redgrave, Martin Stephens, Pamela Franklin, Megs Jenkins.
    (repeats at 10:00am on the 6th)

    2:00am (1st) – TCM – Repulsion
    Psychological horror of the best kind, with Roman Polanski directing Catherine Deneuve in the role of a repressed young woman whose fantasies come out to play in very destructive ways when she’s left alone in her sister’s apartment for a few days. Her terror of men and sexuality leads to hallucinations of grasping hands reaching through the walls in one of the movie’s more famous scenes. Deneuve is basically batshit crazy here, and beautifully so.
    1965 UK. Director: Roman Polanski. Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Ian Hendry, John Fraser.
    Newly Featured!

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  • 31 Oct

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    Music in Film: Suspiria (1977)

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    Dario Argento’s Suspiria is justly celebrated for its bright, bloody set-pieces and flamboyant use of color, but it’s hard to imagine the movie being nearly as assaultive without the nearly omnipresent overwhelming score from the progressive band Goblin, who also provided the score for several of Argento’s other films. They recorded the music first, then Argento layered it into the film, a technique which works perfectly in this case, blending music into sound design to create sensory overload that matches, and sometimes even surpasses, Argento’s in-your-face visuals.

    This is the opening of the film, through the first set-piece, and you can already tell how important the music is going to be, from the initially delicate but creepy as hell main theme up to the frenzy of the horrific first kill. My favorite part of the movie, though, is actually the visually-subdued scene with the blind man and his dog walking into the square – a scene which is terrifying almost solely through the score and sound design. Suspiria beats you senseless with its stylistics (in the best way possible), and the Goblin score is a huge part of that.

  • 31 Oct

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    Mondays Suck Less in the Third Row (Halloween)

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    Revisiting Bob’s AWESOME Horror Movie Montage:

     

     

    One of the Better Halloween Costumes I Saw This Year:

     

     

    Dune Travel Posters (see more):

     
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  • 31 Oct

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    Review: The Skin I Live In

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    Director: Pedro Almodóvar (Tie Me Up Tie Me Down, All About My Mother, Talk to Her, Volver, Broken Emraces)
    Producers: Agustín Almodóvar, Esther García
    Starring: Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Marisa Paredes, Jan Cornet
    MPAA Rating: R
    Running time: 117 min.

    (5/5)

    Pedro Almodóvar clearly has issues. These issues have been evident for many many years and have shown their fantastic colors in film after film in a career spanning almost 40 years. But as far as I know, from the films of his I’ve seen, these issues have never been as dark and twisted as the ones depicted in La piel que habito (The Skin I Live In). And quite honestly, never has one of his films captivated me so intensely.

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  • 30 Oct

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    A Month Of Horror – Chapter 7

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    PrivateParts7

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    Here’s a sneak peek at the most recent batch of horror films from my month long bender (which will fall far short of last year’s number due to Toronto After Dark switching back to October):

     

    The Deaths Of Ian Stone (2007 – Dario Piana)
    Though I haven’t seen many of the “8 Films To Die For” series (otherwise known as the “After Dark Horrorfest” which shows its independent films over an eight day span in nationwide theatres), I haven’t heard a whole lot of positive response to any of the films even though last year’s fest was the fifth one. However, the concept for The Deaths Of Ian Stone sounded too good to pass up: the titular character dies every night only to wake up in a completely different life. Promising stuff that could go one of any number of directions. Unfortunately it chose one that abandons its premise early on for life sucking ghostly monsters that can take human form. Worse than that though, its main character is just simply unlikeable. Even worse, he’s just boring. As is the set of CGI-heavy effects of people turning into these black death spirit thingies. When he suddenly wakes up in a new life, Ian Stone has no recollection of his previous one so it just changes the situations within which this bland unsympathetic character exists. How exciting is that? Whatever rules the story had are shuffled to the side and it becomes generic in its rush to redeem Stone. If this is representative of the “8 Films to Die For” series, I can see why I haven’t seen overwhelming response to it (though you’ll see shortly, it isn’t completely representative).

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    The Mask Of Fu Manchu (1932 – Charles Brabin)
    Now here’s an interesting artifact of the early 30s…Filled with great set design, interesting shot selections and a whole lot more torture than you might expect, the film also engages in some of the worst casual racism that side of Breakfast At Tiffany’s. It’s not just the indiscriminate references to “the yellow man” (after all, Fu Manchu throws it right back at them with his hopes to eradicate “the white man”), but the thought that Asians think of nothing else but to rule the world. While the British wish only to find Genghis Khan’s old artifacts to preserve them in a museum (even though they break into his old chambers with nary a thought to its preservation), Fu Manchu and his “hordes” want them so that they can convince the rest of Asia to follow them into world domination. When the Brits discover that this is the plan, they double their efforts to get there first. They do, but Fu Manchu has several devious plans up his sleeve to get them back. Possibly the worst moment of all was the patronizing comment from the wealthy English archaeologist to a Chinese waiter congratulating him for not aspiring to anything more than what he was and avoiding the fields of medicine, science and exploration. Perhaps I was reading the film wrong, but aside from some of the great visuals the story didn’t have much else to hold it together, so I had to focus on something…

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  • 30 Oct

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    High and Low (Brow) – DISASTER!

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    During the Flyway Film Festival, I was lucky enough to finally get to be a part of Matt and James’ High and Low Brow podcast. Besides myself, along for the ride this time was Jay Cheel (Film Junk & The Documentary Blog), and Angela Fabbrini (The Film Confessional Podcast).

    Before getting to the meat and potatoes, it’s a roundtable discussion on our Halloween viewing habits and horror favorites. Then…

    In this episode we talked about two film that both have the disaster theme. As it turns out, both films also are sort of in the documentary “genre” in some ways so it worked out even nicer than planned. First up was Roy Ward Baker’s A Night Remember with a more “clinical” look at the sinking of The Titanic. Following that, a bit more on the obscure side is Peter Watkins’ 1965 pseudo-documentary, The War Game, which is a depiction of what might be (and what was a reality) should a nuclear attack hit mainland Britain. It’s quite disturbing actually.

    That said, it was a fun show to record. You can check out the show in its entirety over at WhereTheLongTailEnds.com. Be sure to subscribe to the RSS and iTunes feed over there so you never miss an episode.

    Enjoy!

  • 29 Oct

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    Saturday Morning Cartoons: Hair-Raising Hare (1946)

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    What better way to celebrate Halloween weekend than with a little classic Chuck Jones animation? This is one of my absolutely favorite Bugs Bunny cartoons, with some of Jones’ best fourth-wall-breaking gags. Plus a Peter Lorre caricature, a robot paramour, a creepy Expressionist castle, and Gossamer’s best appearance. You don’t get better than that. The cartoon is really well-known, but it’s always worth watching again.

  • 28 Oct

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    Talk Amongst Yourselves

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    Vincent Price would have been 100 this year. It’s the Vincentennial!

     

  • 28 Oct

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    Flyway Pubcast #5 – Xan Aranda Talks About Andrew Bird Documentary

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    Today’s Pubcast is brought to you by Andrew, Matt, Flyway regular Xan Aranda (of the Chicago Short Film Brigade) and Summit Beer Brewing Company. Though Xan has typically been involved with programming the shorts for Flyway Film Fetival in the past, this year she’s here pretty much just for the fun of it. Of course this isn’t to say she doesn’t have stuff to talk about.

    Her documentary, Fever Year, featuring musican/songwriter Andrew Bird is on the way. Andrew James meanwhile is busy with his 12 year-old scotch (thanks Peri!) so I defer to my girlfriend Emma to ask the tough questions before Gamble goes back to his gushing. Welcome to the drunken shenanigans that is Flyway 2011!

    Interview with Xan Aranda [ 20:13 | 18.51 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup

     

    Meanwhile, check out the trailer for FEVER YEAR under the seats…
     

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