shutupholden

[shutupholden]

Holden’s Video Vault: A Potential New Series?

Hey gang. It’s been a minute.

Since I last wrote, I’ve been quite busy acquiring a bunch of crap that I neither need nor have the space for. I’ve been to every thrift store and flea market in my immediate vicinity, buying up DVDs I don’t have time to watch and records I don’t have time to listen to.

I think I’m really going through it right now.

In addition to the DVDs and the records, I’ve managed to get my hands on some other really cool stuff! I found a Philips LaserDisc player and then about a month later found a Pioneer one, so now I have two LaserDisc players, because… I don’t know.

Most recently, I picked up a cheap VCR (plus a VCR/DVD combo, also cheap) so that I could watch some old home movies and transfer those memories to digital using a cheap little video capture card I picked up on Amazon. I’ve also done a couple LaserDisc transfers!

Here’s one from a LaserDisc release of The Lost Boys (1987) that I picked up back in June:

I’ve been having a lot of fun playing around with the capture card and doing these transfers, but I don’t just want to record them for myself, so I thought that maybe I could make a new series out of it, similar to What’s On My Shelf? but for obsolete home video formats and even clips from my own home movies.

I dunno. We’ll see. Going back to sleep now. Later.

[shutupholden]

What’s On My Shelf? #4: Skinamarink (2022)

This post contains spoilers for Skinamarink.

How do you make analog horror boring? You make it a feature film.

At this point I probably have 250+ films on my shelf, but just because I own something doesn’t mean I like it. In fact, I’m the kind of person who will buy stuff I’ve never seen before, either because it’s something I want to see or because I feel like trying something new. Nine times out of ten, I end up enjoying the film. But I don’t always get lucky. Sometimes a film that I had high expectations for won’t meet those expectations. Other times I’ll go into a film completely blind, with little to no expectations, and end up hating it. I’m gonna be discussing a film that falls into that first category.

People on TikTok called it the most terrifying film they’ve ever seen. The trailer looked promising. I was bummed when I missed its theatrical run, and was so excited when it finally came out on Blu-ray. But something funny happened when I finally watched it.

I fell asleep.

I’m talking about director Kyle Edward Ball’s feature-length debut Skinamarink, an experimental supernatural horror film about two little kids who wake up in the middle of the night, unable to locate their father and unable to escape their house because the doors and windows start disappearing.

When you were young, did you ever wake up in the middle of the night after falling asleep somewhere other than your bed and discover that your house, a place that’s so familiar to you, suddenly feels so unfamiliar, at least for one brief, disorienting moment? This movie is that, but it goes on for two… fucking… hours. The effect does not take long to wear off.

A still from Heck.

Skinamarink started as a proof-of-concept short called Heck, and in my opinion, it would have been better off just staying a short. I find that analog horror is most effective in small doses, and after watching this film, I’m still waiting to be proven wrong.

I don’t mean to make it sound like my feelings toward this film are entirely negative, because they’re absolutely not. I liked Skinamarink, or at least the concept. And you know what? It did have moments that scared me to death, and I’m not just talking about jumpscares.

There are many shots in this film that linger on dark corners and dark hallways, and we all know that if you stare into the dark long enough, your brain begins to trick your eyes into thinking that you can see something there. Shots like that filled me with anxiety and dread, but it’s the final shot of the film that gave me full body chills.

We once again linger on pitch black nothingness. That feeling of dread comes back. I’m waiting for my eyes to start playing tricks on me, but then something happens that I don’t expect: THERE’S AN ACTUAL FACE. Every single hair on my body stood up. I had to look away from the screen because it actually made me uncomfortable. This movie that put me to sleep the first time I tried to watch it somehow managed to unsettle me in a way that I’ve never quite experienced, and it waited until the very last second to do it.

How I managed to sleep after that I don’t know.

It’s not bad. It’s not great. It’s definitely unique. Ball took an unconventional approach to the horror genre and made something original, and even though I didn’t love it as much as I wanted to, I’ll still recommend Skinamarink to anyone looking to try something different.

[shutupholden]

What’s On My Shelf #3: Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

This week, we’re stepping into the Criterion Closet!

Actually, it’s just a little shelf in the corner of my room dedicated to my relatively modest collection of Criterion films. I say “relatively modest” because I might have close to 100 films in my Criterion collection (counting individual films included in box sets), but there are people like this guy who own every film Criterion has released on Blu-ray, DVD, and Laserdisc. I can’t commit to anything that hard. Nor can I afford to.

It was 2021 when I discovered the Criterion Collection, and in just the first few months of collecting I spent more money than I’d like to admit here. I am happy to report, though, that these purchases are far less frequent than they used to be and usually only occur during sales. That being said, yes: one of those purchases did occur a few days ago.

Now then! Enough about my poor spending habits. Let’s just get to the film in the title.

Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love.

One of the films I purchased during those first few months of collecting was Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love, a quirky romantic comedy-drama starring Adam Sandler. In a huge departure from the typical low-brow comedy films that made him a movie star, Sandler plays Barry Egan, a lonely and socially anxious entrepreneur who’s having one hell of a week.

He’s got seven sisters who torment him all the time, so he’s prone to fits of rage. He calls a phone sex line to chat about his feelings and ends up being extorted for cash by the operator and her boss (Philip Seymour Hoffman). He discovers a loophole in a promotion for Healthy Choice that could earn him a million frequent-flyer miles, and all he’s gotta do is buy ton of pudding. Oh yeah, and he meets and falls in love with his sister’s co-worker, but what’s really important is the PUDDING!

Emily Watson and Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love.

I remember watching this for the first time on Netflix late one night when I didn’t really feel like going to sleep, and I was so entranced by it. I don’t watch a ton of romance films, but for whatever reason this one really affected me. The story is as funny and sweet as it is intense and stressful. Robert Elswit’s cinematography is gorgeous, Jon Brion’s score has some of my favorite musical moments of any film I’ve ever seen, and Philip Seymour Hoffman continues to prove that even in a small supporting role, he was one of the greatest to ever do it.

Philip Seymour Hoffman and Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love.

I think what resonated with me most of all the first time I watched this film was Adam Sandler’s performance. As someone who’s socially anxious and kind of a loner, I think I saw a bit of myself in Barry Egan. I know what it’s like to not like myself sometimes, to lash out, to avoid situations that might actually bring me some significant personal growth because it’s easier to just close yourself off than to face potential embarrassment, rejection, etc. It’s my favorite Adam Sandler performance, and it’s undoubtedly one of the finest of his career.

Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems.

The last time I watched Punch-Drunk Love, I made it a double feature with Uncut Gems. There’s an episode of the A24 Podcast that I love to go back and listen to because it features a fascinating conversation between Paul Thomas Anderson and the Safdie brothers about what it was like working with Adam Sandler on their respective films, and I was like, “Damn, that’d actually be an insane double feature.” And it was.

Remember those things I said earlier about Punch-Drunk Love being funny and sweet but also intense and stressful? Uncut Gems is kind of the same, only the Safdies remove the funny, remove the sweet, and pile on several more heaping shitloads of stress. Watching these films back to back gave me whiplash, not only because of those differences, but because the transition from underdog Barry Egan to sleazy Howard Ratner was incredibly jarring. Usually if you watch two Adam Sandler movies back to back, Sandler’s just playing Sandler in both of them, but that is not the case here. Not the case at all.

So yeah, I’m just gonna say it: the guy who made Jack and Jill has range.

Emily Watson and Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love.

If I haven’t made it obvious, Punch-Drunk Love is one of my favorites. I cannot recommend it enough. If you’re a fan of the Sandman, check it out ASAP.

[shutupholden]

What’s On My Shelf #2: Waking Life (2001)

I’m terrible at picking favorites of anything simply because there’s so much art out there that I love, but Richard Linklater might just be my favorite director. He’s the director of several of my favorite films; Boyhood and Dazed and Confused take the top two spots on my Letterboxd top four. A lot of his films are character-driven and dialogue-heavy, so much so that they don’t actually have a plot, and yet they have the power to completely pull you in and take you on a journey.

A scene from Slacker.

Linklater broke into the indie film scene in 1990 with Slacker, a film that depicts a day in the lives of the weirdos and misfits of Austin, Texas. The film opens with an unnamed man (played by Linklater himself) hopping off a bus and into a taxi cab, where he delivers a monologue about a bizarre dream he had on the bus. When the driver drops him off, another character enters the scene and we follow them. After a few minutes another character enters the scene and we follow them.

And so on, and so on, and so on…

11 years later, Linklater gave us Slacker on acid with the release of Waking Life, an animated film that jumps from character to character as they engage in conversation about various philosophical topics, like the meaning of life and lucid dreaming. The film takes place inside the seemingly never-ending dream of an unnamed main character (Wiley Wiggins) who, after a series of false awakenings, becomes aware that he’s dreaming and fears he may never wake up.

Initially shot on handheld digital cameras with real actors, the film was then rotoscoped using a program called “Rotoshop”, which a team of artists used to digitally paint over each individual frame of the film. Each artist was given their own scenes to rotoscope in their own style, resulting in some incredibly trippy and dreamlike animation.

I first heard about this film while I was scrolling through my feed on a little app that absolutely no one remembers or makes compilations in memory of called Vine. A user by the name of PurpleCrumbs took a break from making videos featuring a dinosaur puppet with a hankering for cocaine to post a looping clip from Waking Life with Tame Impala’s “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” playing underneath it.

A still from the scene in question.

I was flabbergasted. “What the hell am I looking at?” I thought. “How’d they draw that so well? Why is everything moving so unnaturally? Where can I watch this?!”

I found out the film was on Netflix and I watched it immediately. I had never seen anything like it. Even though I didn’t really know what the hell anyone was talking about or what was going on, I found it so fascinating. The animation was so surreal and so cool, and I kept returning to it because of that. Then, in a massive dick move, Netflix pulled the film from its catalog and I didn’t watch it again for a couple years.

A couple years later I was sitting around bored, and I randomly decided to go online and order some Richard Linklater Blu-rays. I don’t remember why exactly; I might have been watching Dazed and Confused on the TV or something. I grabbed Dazed, its spiritual sequel Everybody Wants Some!!, and Waking Life, which for some reason has only been released on DVD in North America so I had to settle for that.

I finally watched the film again soon thereafter and it was every bit as mesmerizing and trippy as I remembered. I was also really excited about the special features. Animation tests and the live-action footage?! This DVD is great!

Admittedly, I haven’t watched Waking Life in a while, and I need to get around to it. I think I just need to be in the mood to have an existential crisis while Alex Jones (yes, that one) screams into a bullhorn until his face turns red. Then purple. Then red again. Like, a deep, deep, dark red.

Alex Jones in Waking Life.

This is a film in my collection that I’m dying to upgrade from DVD to Blu-ray or 4K, but the only Blu-ray release it’s received so far is a now out-of-print edition from Arrow Video that was never distributed in North America. I’m still keeping my fingers crossed that someone will scoop up the rights and eventually give Waking Life the Blu-ray release it deserves.

Looking at you, Criterion. Linklater has made three films with the same animation style, and I’ll literally give you everything in my bank account for a set that includes all of them.

Glen Powell in the upcoming film Hit Man.

Anyway, Richard Linklater, you are the man and I’m looking forward to seeing your new movie Hit Man when it drops on Netflix in a couple weeks. For now, I think I might actually go give Waking Life a rewatch because it’s absolutely overdue for one, so I’m gonna wrap this up. Thanks for reading!

NOTE: I wrote this a week before it was scheduled to drop, so by the time you’re reading this I will have already rewatched Waking Life and had the time of my life. I’m just assuming because as of me writing this it hasn’t happened yet. That’s all. Goodbye.

[shutupholden]

What’s On My Shelf? #1: Stop Making Sense (1984)

David Byrne in Stop Making Sense.

The year is 2024, and streaming services are dominating the film and TV industry. They’re also collecting other streaming services like Infinity Stones and calling it “bundling”. What a time to be alive!

A lot of people out there think that physical media is dying. If your name is Best Buy, you apparently think it’s already dead. But it’s still very much alive and there’s still a market for it. I currently have over 200 titles sitting on my shelf and that number will absolutely continue to grow because I love physical media.

That brings me to the point of this post—and the potential series of posts to come.

A few weeks ago I had a random idea for a podcast called What’s On My Shelf?, which would involve me choosing a film in my collection at random and talking about it. Because I hate the sound of my own voice and do a better job writing my thoughts down than actually verbalizing them, I scratched the podcast idea and opted for the same thing but in blog form.

Today the randomizer, which pulls films from my Letterboxd lists that I use to digitally catalog my collection, chose 1984’s Stop Making Sense.

Conceived for the stage by Talking Heads frontman David Byrne and directed by Jonathan Demme, Stop Making Sense captures the iconic band as they take the stage at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. Shot over four nights and featuring hits like “Burning Down the House” and “Once in a Lifetime”, as well as the now infamous “Big Suit”, it is considered one of the greatest concert films of all time.

David Byrne in True Stories (1986).

I first got into David Byrne and the Talking Heads sometime in 2021. I became particularly obsessed with “Once in a Lifetime” and had it on repeat. That same year I watched David Byrne’s first and only directorial effort, True Stories (1986), which had a killer soundtrack. Sometime after that, I watched David Byrne’s American Utopia on HBO, which is a Spike Lee-directed recording of Byrne’s Broadway show of the same name. I loved the music so much and listened to it everyday for months.

Flash forward to 2023 when A24 announces that they’ll be re-releasing Stop Making Sense in IMAX. I was so excited that I went and bought a copy of the film, which in hindsight was a painfully unnecessary purchase but I had never seen it before and I wanted to as soon as I possibly could.

David Byrne and Chris Frantz in Stop Making Sense.

The film blew my mind when I watched it alone in my room, so when the time finally came for it to hit IMAX screens, I was ready. I picked up a buddy of mine (who lived an hour and a half away) and drove to the closest AMC that was screening the film (which was another hour away), and had my mind blown all over again. A24’s remaster looked and sounded INCREDIBLE in IMAX and was worth the drive. The underwhelmingly brief live-streamed Q&A afterwards… not so much.

The collector's edition of Stop Making Sense, released by A24.

Earlier this year, A24 finally announced a physical release of the film on 4K UHD, which I pre-ordered immediately despite already owning a copy of the film on Blu-ray… and not having the kind of income to just drop $60 on a movie like that. After months of waiting it finally arrived in the mail this week. I have yet to open it at this point, but I’m excited to watch it again!

There’s a reason Stop Making Sense is considered one of the greatest concert films of all time. The music, the staging, the choreography, the decision to have the band members and set pieces come in one by one—it’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen. To quote my own Letterboxd review: “Just good vibes all around. Big Suit.”

[shutupholden]

Hi: An Introductory Post

Hello to the people still using Tumblr in the year 2024.

My name is Holden. I used to use this site a lot, back when I was an emo little high school kid. Yes, it was a phase, mom.

I realized as I matured that I was embarrassing myself, and in the years since, I've used Tumblr off and on as a means of creating little websites quickly and easily, but never really used it for what it was made for: blogging.

Back in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was in its early days, I joined the BroadwayWorld team as a college student blogger. Over the next year, I wrote blog posts (linked below) pretty regularly. I never submitted them by the deadline, but I was still writing them regularly. And once I called it quits there, I never really did anymore blogging. Guess I just didn't have anything interesting to say.

I say that like I have something interesting to say now, and that's totally not the case. I still have nothing interesting to say. But hey, I enjoy writing as a means of expressing myself, and that's what this site is all about.

I have no idea what I'm gonna write about here. Hobbies? Current events? Things to do as a woman on a budget in New York City? Maybe I'll write this post and never return. Guess we'll see.

Welcome. Apologies in advance for whatever this turns out to be.