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that-yandere-life · 6 years ago

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Who Hides In The Darkness-Chapter One: Dinner To Die For

[Thank you so much for all the lovely feedback you all gave on my preview! Here is chapter number one I hope that you all like it!!! If you have the chance could you please give me feedback once again! Thank you for reading! (If you want to be added to the tag list let me know!) <3 <3 <3]

[Trigger Warning: Character Death, Slight NSFW mentioned]

Flashback/Preview-

Holding the mysterious invitation in your hand as you approached the mansion in the attire that had been provided for you. It was clearly a vintage sort of costume party being held by none other than the notorious Tony Stark. Setting your suitcase on the front steps you wondered if anyone else had arrived before you. That question was answered almost instantly as a man you knew to be Happy, Tony’s head of security walked out to greet you.

Taking your suitcase he led the way not saying much beyond his initial introduction and pleasantries. Looking around once you entered the building you couldn’t believe your very eyes. It was quite possibly the most beautiful place you had ever seen let alone gotten to stay the weekend in. Everything around you was perfectly placed and designed, it was hard not to get lost in your surroundings.

“Everyone is already in the main lounge waiting to begin.”Happy said breaking out of your wowed trance like state.

Upon entering you could see all the people you had been working side by side with for the past two years. A group with varying personalities that somehow mesh together to be able to manage to save the world many times over. Giving everyone a quick hello and wave you turned your attention to the front of the room where Tony stood a glass of whiskey in hand.

“Welcome everyone! Thank you so much for joining me in my little venture here this weekend! Now I’m sure you are wondering why you are all here and dressed in these period outfits, I promise all will be revealed shortly! This actually is a competition and I know how competitive you all are so this should prove to be most entertaining.”Tony started off swirling the liquid in his glass wanting to build the anticipation.

“What I didn’t mention in my invitation was that this mansion you are in happens to be haunted. There have been experiences that cannot be explained, and disappearances that have never been solved. So what I propose to you all here before me is this, if you can stay in this mansion for the entirety of the weekend you will win a million dollars cash. Once you agree the doors will be locked and no one can leave unless they forfeit their potential winnings. The period outfits are to enhance the spirit energy since most of the activity seems linked to that specific time in history. Now make your choice, either stay and make your dreams come true… or walk out that door right and never return.”Tony said looking to the small congregation of people surrounding him now whispering to each other in hushed tones.

“I’m in.”You announced shrugging slightly not even really thinking about it, you weren’t worried about being haunted having always felt at ease around most spirits. What you didn’t know was that there was more than spirits hiding in the darkness…

Chapter One: Dinner To Die For-

Once you had been shown to your room you were told to freshen up for dinner, that would start at exactly seven o’clock. Looking around the luxurious suite that had been provided for you, it seemed much fancier than you deserved. A dark oak canopy bed with a deep red silk top comforter, red silk sheets beneath to match, giant fluffy pillows that could be mistaken for actual clouds. Not to mention the mattress probably felt like a dream, it was all of the highest quality available. Lost in thought you didn’t even notice someone standing in your doorway watching you with amusement.

“Like what you see?”A voice called out breaking you out of your concentration, loud enough that you could distinguish that it was your best friend Natasha.

“It’s truly the epitome of no expenses spared. I’m not sure it’s all necessary but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to enjoy it.”You laughed turning to face her now. “Tony does have a certain reputation to maintain I suppose.”You shrugged chuckling slightly.

“A flair for the dramatic is more like it, you ready to head downstairs to drink some wine and have a good ass time?”Natasha asked walking over locking her arm in yours to lead the way.

“But of course.”You reply in an over exaggerated posh accent. “We shan't keep them waiting after all.”

The two of you headed down the tall staircase with intricate designs carved into the railing almost seeming like it was depicting a story as you took your descent. Reaching the bottom you both were greeted by Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, and Sam Wilson. “Hey guys, we have been waiting for you.”Steve said with a small cheeky grin on his face. “I must say the period outfits suit you both.”He said with a small bow, just using the top half of his body.

“You clean up pretty well yourself Rogers.”Natasha retorted snickering a little. “Why don’t you ladies lead the way to dinner.”She suggested a smirk plastered across her face knowing that she was slightly antagonizing him but it was all a part of her charm.

“Excuse me, I’m actually a gentleman. May I accompany you to dinner this evening?”Sam asked holding his hand out to you, kissing the top of yours when you took it. “Let’s let them hash this out themselves shall we?”He grinned wiggling his eyebrows slightly making you giggle.

Starting to walk into the dining room you were amazed at how large the table in the center was, and how many people it was set up for. Plates, silverware, wine classes, centerpieces, lit candles, it had everything you could imagine straight out of some gothic horror movie. Sam pulled out the chair that had your place marker set in front of it, pushing it in as you sat down. “Thanks Sam.”You smiled feeling your cheeks heat up slightly at the wink he responded with before taking his own seat.

After a short while everyone had taken their seats and Tony stood at the head silencing everyone for a speech. “Thank you again for being here and deciding to stay for the festivities! We are going to kick this off with a nice feast like dinner, some adult beverages, and finish it off with some decadent dessert. I would like to propose a toast, to a weekend of fun, mayhem, and a good old fashioned haunting good time!”He said raising his glass, the rest having been filled during his rambling. Everyone took a sip before the conversation and laughter broke out once again amongst each other.

Several smartly dressed waiters brought the dinner out placing each dish in front of people with a silver dome cover. Curiously you looked to each side wondering who you were sat next to seeing it was Pietro Maximoff on the right, and Thor Odinson on the left. Thor was engaged in conversation with the person opposite of him so you turned to speak to Pietro. “It’s really over the top isn’t it?”You ask as the waiter removes the cover for you revealing a plate of steaming freshly cooked food.

“It might be, but I think we deserve it. Especially you, you work too hard you need more fun in your life.”Pietro replied smirking a little, clearly flirting with you.

“Oh and what kind of fun might that be?”You asked trying not to let your smile break through just yet but desperately failing.

“I can show you, just say the word.”He whispered into your ear causing your breath to hitch slightly, checking to make sure no one else heard him. “Don’t be shy now, we’re both adults here. It’s not like Stark doesn’t expect something to happen between any of his guests.”Pietro teased quietly still keeping the conversation between the two of you.

“After dinner.”You mustered out under your breath trying to focus on calming down, taking a huge swig of wine gulping it down harshly. At this point you needed some liquid courage in your veins if you were going to deal with the fastest man in the world. Possibly with the world’s largest amount of stamina paired with it. Picking at your dinner it was delicious but you were too distracted by your own thoughts to full enjoy it.

Once the dinner plates had been removed, the wine refilled, and dessert placed in front of you it felt like the time was right. Swiveling sideways in your chair to look at Pietro who was currently stuffing his face with what appeared to be lemon meringue pie. Of course you couldn’t help but chuckle as you used a napkin to wipe off some of the meringue left on his lip. Suddenly his face crumpled into a pained expression taking you off guard.

Foam started dripping from his mouth and he started to convulse in front of your very eyes. Screaming you caught the attention of everyone, shooting out of your chair. “Help him!”You called out looking for Bruce since he would be the only one who might be able to do anything. Eyes filled with tears as Wanda rushed over taking her brother into her arms, sliding out of the chair onto the floor. “What’s happening?!”

“Piet Piet look at me...LOOK AT ME! You can’t leave me, you can’t.”Wanda shouted shaking and begging her brother, the light softly leaving his eyes as the entire party watched on with terrified expressions.

“He’s gone Wanda, there was nothing we could do. It looks like he might have been poisoned, there are very few things that can cause a reaction like that, that fast.”Bruce said shaking his head as he knelt down checking for a pulse.

“NO NO NO NO!”Wanda screamed, heart wrenching sobbing shaking throughout her entire body as Natasha tried to get her to move away from her brothers body.

“Baby you shouldn’t see him like this, he wouldn’t want you to.”Natasha said softly pulling her off the floor and into her chest holding her tightly. “I’m going to take her to her room.”She said leading the poor girl away.

All you could do was stare on as tears fell down your face rapidly, you couldn’t think, you couldn’t speak. Arms wrapped around you gently guiding you to turn away from the sight before you and into them. Burying your face into Clint’s broad chest you couldn’t help but begin sobbing.

“It had to be one of us…No one else is here but us, it’s the middle of nowhere. We need to call the police, this needs to be investigated.”Steve stated firmly looking around at the crowd of people who have become like family to each other.

“Only one problem with that Capsicle… No one has landlines anymore, and there is no service for cells out here in the woods. All the cars are gone, plus no civilization for miles and miles. We are totally isolated, we are going to have to figure this out ourselves. When I said we would be stuck out here for the weekend, I meant we would be stuck out here.”Tony explained biting his knuckle in contemplation. No one knowing if it was him trying to figure out who did it, or what in the hell they were going to do now.

End of Chapter One

Tag List: @beeeb05 , @albinotigerpython

#yandere marvel #marvel yandere #avengers x reader #yandere avengers #who hides in the darkness

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roseisread · 6 years ago

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My Year in Movies: Favorite Non-2018 Feature Films (Part 1)

I watched a LOT of movies this year. At last count, I had logged 229 features and 126 shorts; and that doesn’t count rewatches--only movies that were new to me.

I set a few challenges for myself as well this year. The first one was to watch at least one non-English language/US release per week--this exposed me to so much world cinema and some really amazing filmmakers. Anyone who avoids foreign films because “I don’t like subtitles” is really missing out, and I found myself craving these narratives from voices I don’t ordinarily get exposed to in my everyday life.

Other personal challenges: Watching as many horror movies as possible in October (with horror defined pretty loosely so I could include entries from silent era and onward, as well as some comedy cult classics that have horror/thriller elements); participating in Noirvember (in addition to attending Noir City in Chicago); crossing off some major blindspots from my list (such as Bicycle Thieves, The Producers, Lethal Weapon, A Few Good Men, Grease, Home Alone 2, Brazil, and Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom); and trying to watch movies and short films from every decade that motion pictures have existed.

In 2019, I hope to do similar personal challenges with a focus on movies made by women, LGBTQ+, and people of color, in addition to filling in the gaps of my classical/canonical movie knowledge.

OK, so that’s enough preamble. Let’s get to the list! For this list, I’m excluding movies that were released in 2018--that’s coming but this is for movies released before that.

50. Linda Linda Linda (2005, directed by Nobuhiro Yamashita, country of origin: Japan)

High school girls recruit the Korean exchange student (Doona Bae, of Cloud Atlas and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance) to join their rock band a few days before the school talent show. This is just a feel good film, recommended if you enjoyed the likes of Sing Street, We Are The Best!, and The Runaways. Unfortunately, it’s out of print in physical form; but last I checked someone had uploaded it to YouTube so you might want to get on that before it’s removed. You can watch the trailer here.

49. The Blue Dahlia (1946, directed by George Marshall, country of origin: US)

This film noir stars Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd, and like any good noir, it deals with dark subjects including murder, blackmail, political corruption, and PTSD. It’s been on my watchlist for a long time, and thanks to Noir City Chicago, I got to see it on the big screen at the Music Box Theatre. For small screen viewing, you can catch up with it via rental on Vudu, Amazon, iTunes... the usual suspects.

48. Siren of the Tropics (1927, directed by Mario Nalpas and Henri Etievant, country of origin: France)

My dearly departed Filmstruck had a spotlight on the films of Josephine Baker, and this was among them. I fell in love instantly with the lively, beautiful Baker, here playing a woman named Papitou who deals with some super scummy dudes but manages to be herself in the face of all that nonsense. Silent films can sometimes be tougher to engage with for modern audiences, but this one flies by and contains some unexpectedly racy sequences for the time. Its racial politics don’t meet today’s cultural standards, but considering Baker’s parents were former slaves and their daughter went on to become the first woman of color to star in a major motion picture, this is still a landmark film worthy of our consideration. She broke down many barriers and contributed a great deal to both the entertainment world and the Civil Rights movement, and this serves as a nice entry point into her career. It’s available on DVD through Kino Lorber, and hopefully one day soon it’ll pop up on another streaming service that carries on the Filmstruck legacy.

47. I Don’t Feel At Home in This World Anymore (2017, directed by Macon Blair, country of origin: US)

Here’s a film that goes to some unexpected places. I had no idea what to expect from Macon Blair, who frequently appears in the movies of Jeremy Saulnier; but in his debut feature for Netflix, he pulled out all the stops. Hilarious, violent, and intense, with memorable performances from stars Melanie Lynskey and Elijah Wood, this is a movie about getting in over your head and just going for it anyway. I don’t want to tell you about the plot because it’s best discovered through watching--just go to your nearest device and add it to your Netflix queue.

46. Song of the Sea (2014, directed by Tomm Moore, country of origin: Ireland)

Absolutely gorgeous animation from the team that previously brought us The Secret of Kells, and a touching story that combines family and mythology. I adored this one. Watch it on Netflix or rent on the usual streaming sources--for a preview, click here.

45. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942, directed by Michael Curtiz, country of origin: US)

I always watch Independence Day on the Fourth of July; but in 2018, I decided to mix it up and cross this patriotic musical off the watchlist. I’d seen James Cagney’s gangster movies like White Heat and The Public Enemy, but seeing him sing and dance was a whole new joyous discovery. This movie is entertaining, funny, touching, and full of iconic sequences that other films would go on to borrow from. I absolutely loved it. Pretty sure I saw this on Filmstruck originally, but since that’s no longer possible you should be able to find it at your local public library or you can rent it for a couple bucks on Amazon, YouTube, iTunes, and the like.

44. The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950, directed by Felix Feist, country of origin: US)

This tightly wound noir thriller pits brother against brother against the backdrop of 1950s San Francisco. Lee Cobb plays an aging bachelor and an accomplished police detective who falls for the wrong dame. His younger brother, played by John Dall (Gun Crazy, Rope), has just joined the police force and idolizes his older brother. Trouble strikes when the dame murders her no good husband and needs help from Cobb to cover it up. Naturally, Dall gets assigned to the case and as he begins to piece together the clues, he doesn’t like where they’re leading him. The climactic sequence is one of my favorite endings to a noir film, and I’ve seen a lot of them. Watch it for free if you have Amazon Prime; otherwise, there are a few versions uploaded to YouTube of varying quality or you could wait for it to pop up on TCM.

43. Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003, directed by Thom Andersen, country of origin: US)

This documentary edits together clips from movies of every era that were filmed or set in Los Angeles, and explains through voiceover narration the significance of each location and the history of the motion pictures in LA. That’s it--very simple concept but also fascinating. I split this up over a couple nights because it’s pretty long, but if you’re a film fan or a Los Angeles native, this is well worth your time. The voiceover is kind of hilariously flat in its delivery--kind of a Steven Wright sound actually--but that sort of adds to the charm for me. Get a taste by watching the trailer, and then you can rent it on YouTube for $1.99.

42. A Simple Plan (1998, directed by Sam Raimi, country of origin: US)

It’s been almost two years since we lost Bill Paxton; I don’t know about you but I don’t think any other actor can really fill those shoes. This year I caught up with three films that showcased his talent: A Simple Plan, One False Move, and Frailty. He plays very different characters in each one but in many ways they all start off with a similar premise: Ordinary guy dreams of becoming more. What that “more” is for each character is what sets each film and performance apart, but Paxton provided a great canvas to paint these unique characters onto. He inhabited the ordinary man better than just about anyone.

In this film, which I watched during Noirvember, Paxton plays Hank, a college-educated guy working a blue collar job in a small town, trying to make a better life for himself and his family. He’d like to get away from those small town roots, but his socially awkward brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton) relies on him. Unfortunately, Jacob is often accompanied by the hard-drinking loose canon Lou (Brent Briscoe). When the unlikely trio discover a crashed plane in the woods containing a suitcase full of cash, they each have ideas for how to handle the situation. Of course things escalate from there, and the way the movie explores human nature and family ties set this story apart. Available for online rental on the usual platforms.

41. The Iron Giant (1999, directed by Brad Bird, country of origin: US)

Given my obsession with Vin Diesel in the early 2000s, it’s pretty shocking I never saw this movie til now--sure, he and his glorious muscles don’t appear on screen, but he does provide the voice of the title character after all. When the Iron Giant made a controversial cameo in this year’s film adaptation of Ready Player One, I decided it was time I saw the source material for myself.

This gorgeously animated fable unfolds during the Cold War era, and features an ET-inspired story arc of a young boy befriending an unlikely being that the government is looking for. If you’ve never seen it, this is definitely a must-watch. Currently available on Netflix, but rentable on other platforms too.

40. The Unsuspected (1947, directed by Michael Curtiz, country of origin: US)

I adore Claude Rains, star of this film and supporting actor in Curtiz’s more famous work, Casablanca. Here, he plays the host and narrator of a popular radio show that revolves around tales of murder--basically the Law and Order: SVU of its day. We learn early on that he sometimes draws inspiration for his broadcasts from real life criminals. When people in his own life start dropping dead, the plot thickens and he finds himself at the center of the action. A very suspenseful and well-plotted film noir, which is available from the Warner Archive collection on DVD. I got to see it at Noir City Chicago, and loved every second of it.

That’s all for this entry--stay tuned for part two of this list, posting soon!

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internethorrorfan · 6 years ago

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Commentarypasta: Slenderman vs. Eyeless Jack (originally posted on deviantart in 2017)

You know what's almost as creatively bankrupt as Jeff the Killer wannabe stories and Slender Mansion fics? Versus stories. Today's gem, hailing from the Spinpasta wiki, is one such story. Because why write original suspenseful horror stories or possibly put a new creative spin on an older idea or character when you can just take two unrelated creepypasta icons and have them lay a WWE smack down on each other, right? Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this story... Slenderman vs. Eyeless Jack by OptimusPrime27 There are legends of the Slender Man. Some say he's a kind nurturing father figure that lives in a big beautiful mansion full of other monsters and killers as one big happy loving family who do all sorts of cute family activities with each other when they're not going on mass murder sprees. Nobody over the age of 12 believes such things.

He is a dark spirit. He is truly evil. Wait, what you mean to tell me is that the murderous, child snatching eldritch abomination who forces people to become his slaves in order to commit horrific acts on his behalf is evil? You don't say? He stalks people and murders them. But now he is gone. He's been gone. People don't know why, but he just... disappeared. Everything changed after the Fire Nation attacked. One day, he just left. Never to be seen again. Except in terrible fanfiction written by pre teen girls. Only a few people still remember him. This sentence is so easily contestable that I won't even bother. I wouldn't even know he existed if it wasn't for that dark, dark night... and that video-game that made. That sort of helped... This joke might have been funny is the grammar wasn't messed up.

You see, Slender Man disappeared because less people feared him. This sounds awfully similar to Freddy's plot in Freddy vs. Jason. Instead of that dark, mysterious force he became that cool, popular guy. "Yo Slenderbro, pass me that brewski when you're done droppin' those phat beats!" Just that guy. People didn't care how terrifying he really was, they just liked him. What if people liked him because he was terrifying? I like Slenderman because he's creepy. Creepy if done well at any rate. Video-games, toys, shirts, Hold the phone here, since when has there official Slenderman merch? he was everywhere. Less people feared him, and he became more of an internet icon than a despicable creature. So you can't be a despicable creature and internet icon at the same time? Someone better tell [insert well known internet personality who gets a lot of hate here)! More people knew him and they learned to stay away from him, how to avoid him, There's no official way to avoid Slenderman. and thus he didn't get their souls. Many people don't know this, but Slender Man needs souls. Many people don't know this because you completely made it up. They give him energy. He harvests them. He feeds of them. He lives. But now people don't fear him at all. He's just that guy.

That guy. He's just that guy who stalks people, kidnaps kids and drives people insane. Ya know, nothin' special.

But you see, Eyeless Jack is a different story. A story so bad its own writer personally asked for it to be deleted from the creepypasta wiki.

Eyeless Jack is a dark, undead spirit. Says who? A young boy brutally murdered, his eyes ripped out of their sockets. A vengeful spirit, Eyeless Jack's a ghost now? he spent the rest of his eternity getting his revenge. Which he accomplishes by eating random people's kidneys. Out to find the man who killed him. Until then, he could never truly be at peace. Less powerful and less famous, Jack was just a little kid compared to Slender Man. Which might have something to do with Slenderman being 6-10 feet tall. No match for this monster. Stories over! Goodnight everybody! Slender Man is basically the king of modern horror. I'm a huge Slender-verse fan and even I think that's bit of an overstatement. How can he be the king of modern horror anyway if supposedly no one takes him seriously or cares about him anymore? Creepy, mysterious. Slender Man has given existence to many wannabes and copy-cats like Jeff the Killer or Laughing Jack. Laughing Jack and Jeff the Killer have nothing at all to do with each other let alone Slenderman.

Slender Man saw potential in Eyeless Jack, and decided to use his superior power to manipulate the poor lost soul. This is literally just the plot of Freddy vs. Jason. One night, Jack was lurking through the forest, when Slender Man, now weak but still more powerful than Jack, appeared before him. Jack was shocked, but then the figure seemed to disappear into thin air. Jack turned around as Slender Man reappeared in front of him. Slender Man began to stalk the evil spirit as he ran through the forest.��What sounded like static assaulted Jack's ears. He fell down and began to faint, everything else in the world fading away... Slender Man was now in control of Jack, and ready for the harvest. Now this is where I get involved. Me and my friends were having a sleep-over. It was a dark, rainy night. Lemme guess: You really wanted to write "it was a dark and stormy night" but you realized that was too cliché even for something called "Slenderman vs. Eyeless Jack" so you thought wording it differently would mask the unoriginality. Newsflash: it didn't. We were watching a crappy, blood-filled generic horror film, yet we kept screeching. We didn't know what true horror was yet. It's certainly not this story, I'll tell you that much. Not yet. You could’ve removed those last two words entirely and just said you "didn’t know what true horror was. Yet". We heard the back door creek open, so me and my friend Anne went to go see. The suspense was killing us. Suspense from what? The door creaking open? Do you guys flip out every time there's a light breeze? The entire house was pitch black. Turn on the lights then. We stepped into the dark hallway and slowly stepped closer and closer to the door. We heard heavy breathing from behind the door. And...JUMPSCARE! We went to grab the door knob, and when we saw what was behind it, we shrieked in terror. It was just our friend Mark. You held the tension here for 1 sentence. He and his friends Brad and Chuck were here. The idiots tried to scare us. "They're gonna be dead soon is what I'm saying." Me and Mark are sort of more than friends, but not really dating. Just sort of... into each other or something. It's complicated. We watched the movie together, and the guys kept making fun of us when we got scared, but they themselves kept getting freaked out now and then. Suddenly, we heard glass breaking. Mark volunteered to go check it out because how we were such "chickens". His words, not mine. I'd say that last sentence was completely superfluous but this whole story is completely superfluous. He walked into the hallways, closing the door behind him. He saw broken glass on the floor. He knew somebody had broken in. He turned around to warn us, but saw a masked, hoody-wearing creature. I thought he was a spirit. Now he's a creature? The mask was blue, with deep, empty, black holes where the eyes were supposed to be. I asked myself this same question when reading the original Eyeless Jack but how can they tell he has no eyes when he's wearing a mask in the dark?

The creature grabbed Mark's throat, squeezing it tightly. Mark gasped for breath, but the grasp on Mark's throat increased in strength. Tighter, tighter, until Mark couldn't breathe. Mark closed his eyes and dropped down onto the ground as the creature finally let him go. The creature observed his corpse, as if marveling at his own work of demented art. Oh no, not Mark! He was such a well developed character that we knew so well!

It was half an hour later, and we were worrying. I went to go check on him and found his corpse. So all of you just stood there and waited for 30 minutes while a monster choked Mark to death instead of alerting the police? What truly wonderful people you guys are. I nearly puked. There was no brutal damage or harm to it, but that's what scared me. In the movies it's always bloody and chopped up, nearly unrecognizable. But this was... was so real. Just a lifeless body there on the ground, nothing more to it. The police said he was strangled to death by... something. Poor Eyeless Jack always getting described as a "something". The finger prints on his neck Fingerprints is one word. Like, nobody writes "head aches" or "bed rooms" do they? were something odd. They tasted great! They scanned them and all, but the person they belonged to was murdered long ago. Jack Robins was a young boy who was brutally killed back in the 1970's. I sure am glad these cops committed every important detail of this decades old case to memory. His parents were on a date, and he was being babysat by a local teen trying to get some quick cash. You say that as if all teen babysitters aren't just looking for quick cash.

A strange man broke in while he was asleep and the sitter was busy on the phone. Being on the phone doesn't automatically cancel out all other sounds. I think she'd be able to hear someone breaking in. The man went through the house stealing everything he found useful. The sitter saw him and shrieked, only to be shot down by the robber. The robber found Jack and pulled out his carving knife. Jack saw him and shrieked. The robber, not wanting to get caught, shot him, and then cut his eyes out with the knife. Why? How could cutting out Jack's eyes possibly benefit him in any way? If he's trying to be sneaky then carrying someone's eyeballs around would be super easy to trace. There is literally absolutely no reason for this guy to cut out Jack's eyes other than "well he's gotta become Eyeless Jack somehow!"

I was shocked when I heard this. That poor kid. But what was the killer doing with his fingerprints? Was it a coincidence? You don't know what coincidences are, do you? Was the killer the same one who did this terrible, terrible thing all those years back, and the sicko kept Jack's hands with him? If the killer took Jack's hands the cops would've said that. How is that your first thought? Why would a robber cut off the hand of someone they murdered, keep it on their person and use it decades later to strangle some random person to death? I was scared. Me and my parents were staying in a hotel room since the murder, but I couldn't help but wonder if he was still in the house... Meanwhile, in the woods, Jack woke up. He saw that he was in Slender Man's body. I'm sorry, what? This is a body swapping story now? Why does "Slenderman vs. Eyeless Jack" need to be about body swapping? But more importantly, he actually saw. He discovered that Slender Man didn't just take over his body, he switched both of their souls into each other's bodies. I have so many questions. This story keeps calling Jack a spirit so how can he have even have a body/soul to swap? Since when did Slenderman have a soul? Didn't this story also say Slenderman ate souls? How would swapping souls allow Eyeless Jack to see? How can EJ do all the things he does if he can't see? I have the sneaking suspicion that none of these questions will go answered. Jack, now able to see, used this to follow the Slender Man's foot prints to the house. The police were investigating the scene of the crime, and went into the basement. The entire house was totally dark. If the power went out it'd be nice of you to let us know that. The two police man walked slowly down the stairs, and entered the dark room. The basement was flooded up to the police men's ankles because of the rain. Our house was an old one and it was always in a really crappy condition. Get it remodeled it then.

They found the old light switch and flipped it, only to be attacked and killed by Slender Man in Jack's body. He took on the other cops as they ran down the stairs. Their bullets did nothing. The body may have been harmed, but it was just flesh and bones. Useless flesh and bones. If they're so useless why did Slenderman even do this whole body swapping thing in the first place? How does switching souls with Eyeless Jack benefit Slenderman in anyway?

As the battle in the basement was going on, Jack in Slender Man's body broke down the front door, searching for his impostor. He rushed down the stairs to confront Slender Man. Slender threw his knife into Jack's face, distracting him as he grabbed a metal pipe up from off the floor. He hit the already dazed Jack in the head, knocking him to the floor. Remember: Jack's in Slenderman's body. So according to this story Slenderman can be stabbed, dazed and knocked to the ground. Jack got up and pulled the knife out of his head, impaling Slender Man with it. Slender Man seemed to slow down for a bit, but no real harm was done. "Besides the gaping chest wound I mean." Slender Man tore the knife out and dropped it to the ground. It was useless. Slender Man hit Jack with an uppercut, grabbed him and threw him into the furnace, closing him in and turning it on. Jack struggled to break free, but Slender Man was holding him in with all his strength. Eyeless Jack's body is capable of picking up and throwing the body of Slenderman, who is a 6-10 foot monster with teleportation powers, tentacles, and psychic abilities. Ok then. Jack pushed against the furnace with all his might, and finally jumped out, tackling Slender Man over. He held Slender Man's face down under the water, trying to drown him, but Slender Man managed to push up and knock Eyeless Jak down. Wow, Slenderman knocked Eyeless Jack down so hard the c fell out of his name! Jack reached for a nearby tool bag and pulled out a drill, sticking it into Slender Man's face. He turned it on, and it began to cut into his face. Why is EJ trying to kill Slenderman when they've switched bodies? I assume the body swapping is the reason EJ is mad at Slenderman in the first place so why would he ruin his chances of ever getting his real body back? Guys, Eyeless Jack is drilling into his own face. Slender Man grabbed the drill and pulled it out, throwing it over onto the stair case. Getting shot, drowned and stabbed didn't kill him so cutting into his face with a drill probably wouldn't either. Shouldn't Eyeless Jack know the limitations of his own body? Slender picked up the carving knife, slashed Jack across the chest with it, and jumped up and cut a pipe above Jack's head. Tons of sewage poured down onto Jack, knocking him to the ground and covering him with the slop. Did the writer of this even know Slenderman's power set?

Slender Man left, leaving Jack to die. Slender Man grabbed a thing of matches on the kitchen counter, lit one, and threw it to the ground, burning down the building as he turned and ran out the back door. The entire house burnt up and collapsed in, crushing Jack completely and seemingly finishing him off. Slenderman is leaving his own body to burn to death. Slenderman of all beings should know fire doesn't hurt him! The police told me and my parents about what happened. The cops that were there were killed before any of this crap even happened. They didn't know anything about the two killers or what really went on, but they knew that the house burnt down. I was devastated, but I was hoping that... that THING... was killed in the fire. Can't be, the story's not over yet. Unfortunately. I thought it was all over. I wish it were all over so I could do something more productive with my time like watching paint dry. I told my parents I was ready to go back to school, but they hesitated to let me. We talked it through, and they decided I was okay. What teenager wants to go to school?

The next day at school, my friends from the sleepover, Anne and Lauren, asked me what happened. I told them everything. Jack, how Mark died, the house burning down, etc.,etc. They were shocked. Everyone who overheard was shocked too. One kid approached us. He said that Jack never really died, and that he is still alive. Everybody that he was crazy, but he said that Jack's spirit still wanders the Earth, searching for the man who killed him. Who is this kid and how does he know any of this? The janitor saw all the commotion, and told the kid to go down to the principal's office. He turned to the rest of us and said to get to class. The principal told the kid that the legend of Eyeless Jack was just crazy talk.

Rumor spread that all these stories of monsters and ghosts and stuff was all actually real and the adults were keeping it from us, like some crazy conspiracy. This kind of conspiracy I hope. Now it was like a rebellion was on the horizon. How could these things really exist without anybody letting us know? It's our right to know these kinds of things! If they're trying to protect us it clearly isn't working because now Mark has been murdered! OK we get it author, you really like Freddy vs. Jason. Can you please quit rehashing plot elements from it?

I was angry. We were all angry. I'm angry because it feels like this story should be over by now. But we still had to carry on. The prom was coming soon, and I planned on asking Mark to go with me and maybe we could officially start dating, but then this whole crazy thing happened. Multiple people, including your own boyfriend, have been brutally killed by supernatural forces and you're worrying about the damn prom? I went with Brad, Mark's friend, but I felt really guilty. Just because Mark was killed I went out with his best friend? It was messed up, I knew it. Yeah, taking your boyfriend's best friend to the prom the day after said boyfriend was murdered is pretty messed up.

Everything was fine at the prom, until... it happened. www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xe0Ba… Chuck and Anne sneaked away to make out or something dumb, and then he came. Obvious joke is obvious. They went over by the lockers and made sure nobody was looking, but then they heard footsteps. They thought they were caught, but it was much worse. That masked man that strangled Mark. It was here! It grabbed Chuck and held him up against the wall by his throat. Anne shrieked in terror as the creature stared into Chuck's eyes. Stared deep down into his soul. You'd think someone called "Eyeless Jack" would have a hard time staring at people. Then it took him and it threw him straight out the window. A car was driving by, and Chuck's body landed straight on the windshield, nearly shattering the glass. The principal and the gym teacher both came running to help us out, but they were no match. The masked man grabbed both of the two and hit their heads together, knocking them unconscious, and then he stuffed both of their bodies into a locker. He slammed the door, locking them inside, and then turned around to face Anne. He ripped a locker door off of the wall and hit her upside the head with it, knocking her down. Why is Slendy-in-Jack's body here in the first place? Doesn't he have better things to be doing than picking off stupid teenagers? She got up and ran, and the man... no, not a man... the DEMON rushed after her. Demon? Wasn't he a spirit earlier?

She ran into the gymnasium, where we all were, and told us to run. Too late. The creature bursted in and impaled her with a leg he tore off a desk. Ah yes desks: a common thing to find in gymnasiums. She dropped to the floor, and he tore the leg out of her corpse. We all ran out screaming, but some of us weren't as lucky. Me, Brad, Lauren, and the janitor all got out alive and took off in Brad's van. The janitor drove us away, and said that he knew about Eyeless Jack. What a totally non contrived coincidence that some random janitor at some non descript school knows all about Eyeless Jack, Slenderman and the conspiracy covering them up. He confessed to us, telling us that the kid from the hallway was right all along. He was privy to this information how exactly? They just didn't want kids knowing to try and keep them safe, but it clearly didn't work. As we were driving, a flaming man in a tuxedo ran out into the road, Tuxedos and business suits aren't the same thing. and we accidentally hit him. The janitor thought it was a victim of Jack from the prom, He didn't notice that Slenderman was 6 feet tall and you know, lacking a face? so he rushed out to save him, but the faceless man got up and grabbed him, throwing him into the sky with all his might. We screamed in horror, and Brad leaped into the driver's seat, ramming over the man. So did the janitor come down or did he fly into outer space or something?

We drived off as it tried chasing us on feet, but we managed to escape. We were all scared, and none of us knew what was going on. I remembered the faceless tuxedo man, though. I could never forget him. It was the Slender Man. But he was real? Of course he's real! You've seen him attack people and you just ran him over with your car. UGH. We didn't know what was happening, You and me both. we just knew to get away as quick as possible. Meanwhile, Slender Man and Jack had a score to settle themselves. Jack (in Slender Man's body)arrived at the school to face his foe. A high school: truly the best place to stage the climatic showdown of your story. The two saw each other, and nothing could stop them. Nothing else in the world mattered. It was just them, face to face again at last. Sure, Slender Man had won it the last two times, but now Jack knew better. Jack grabbed the knocked-over punch table, lifted it up over his head, and threw it right at Slender Man, knocking him over. It's damn confusing reading this and having to remember that EJ and Slenderman have switched bodies. Almost like it's pointless or something. Jack quickly ran over and started punching Slender Man repeatedly. Is EJ gonna use a single one of Slenderman's powers while inhabiting his body? Slender Man kicked Jack in the chest and knocked him over. Guess that answers my question. Slender Man started to kick Jack in the face over and over, even stomping on his head. Jack got up and overpowered Slender Man, picking him up and throwing him up on the stage. Jack ran over and jumped up, hitting Slender Man in the chest several times and damaging his decaying ribcage. Jack grabbed Slender Man by the throat and threw him down onto the ground. Jack grabbed one of the band's amps, lifted it up with all his strength, and dropped it down onto Slender Man. Jack picked up a bottle of water off the floor and poured onto his semi-crushed opponent, frying him completely. Eyeless Jack has apparently succeed in destroying his own body. Hooray?

Jack, victorious, left to find me and the others. We were at Brad's house, Can we please just stop with the constant POV and tense changes because this story is testing my patience as it is. and we went inside we saw his dad, dead, hanging from the ceiling by a rusty metal chain. NO! Not Brad's dad! He was almost as well developed a character as Mark! We were shocked, and Brad broke out crying. Me and Lauren let him have his moment, so we went in his room to discuss it. Lauren said that maybe somebody in the town was the one who killed him and that's why this is happening, but I knew it had to be something more. You think it might have something to do with those 2 monster guys running around? You know, the ones you killed your friend and that janitor right in front of you?

I mean, why was Slender Man there? Better question: why is this story still going? Brad walked in, still sad, and asked what was going on. Lauren told him her theory, but he didn't believe it either. Suddenly, a corpse was thrown straight through the window, crashing onto the foor. We all shrieked in terror as we saw the message. It was... written in blood on his chest! It said "If you yourself do not release than it will come to take a piece". "YOU ARE WRONG". He was spying on our conversation? How? Why? For what reason? Suddenly, Jack kicked the door down. Of course, he was in Slender Man's body so we couldn't tell it was Jack at first. How could you tell it was Jack after the fact? How do you know any of this crap involving Jack and Slenderman? He as holding the corpse of Brad's dad, and threw it right at Brad, knocking him to the ground. Brad screamed, and we all ran off, being chased by Jack. We got outside and into the van, but the tires were slashed. Suddenly, Jack ran out of the house and jumped up on the hood of the car, kicking the windshield. It shatter and broke open, and he reached in to get us. Brad kicked him in the face and we ran out, trying to escape on foot. Suddenly, a beaten up and bloodied Slender Man (in Jack's body) I think everybody knows they've switched bodies by now! ambushed us and stabbed Brad in the heart several times with his knife. We shrieked and ran off, when suddenly a car stopped right in front of us on the road. It was Brad's mom, home from shopping! How wonderfully contrived. She said she heard about what was happening and immediately left the store to get us! We drove off as the two monsters fought each other once again. Slender Man stabbed Jack in the face several times, but Jack was unharmed. Which Slenderman should know wouldn't work because it's his body. He grabbed Slender Man, lifting him up off the ground, and threw him into the streets. Jack charged at him, but Slendy kicked him in the stomach and then got up and punched his face several times. Jack overpowered Slendy and pushed him down to the ground, elbowing him in the face. The two struggled and pushed eachother around, until Slender Man managed to push Jack up and throw him off of him. Slender Man got up and ran off to find us, leaving behind Jack. Just finish him off already! There's no reason whatsoever to chase after these dumb kids!

We told Brad's mom what happened, from what happened to Mark, to Jack, to the house burning down, and what happened at the prom. She was depressed that her husband and her son were both murdered, and we were sad about all the murders too. "All these murders are a major bummer, man."

Suddenly, a truck rammed into the car and sent us off road into the forest. The truck chased us into the woods until we hit a tree and the car went tumbling down a path. We jumped out the first chance we got and watched in horror as the car rolled down the nearby docks and fell into the water. You're still alive...how, exactly?

The truck came crashing after us, and Slender Man stepped out. He began to chase us, and we managed to get to an abandoned factory. We picked up a wooden plank and put in through the door handles, locking him out. If Slenderman was in his own body he could just teleport in the building. Hell, he could've teleport them outside the building if he had his old body. See what I mean about how switching bodies with Eyeless Jack doesn't benefit him in anyway? We went into another room so we wouldn't be able to hear the freak pounding on the door. We were terrified. There was no hope left. What could save us now? Hopefully nobody because all of you are such bland characters that I couldn't care less whether you lived or died.

Suddenly, Jack arrived. Slender Man turned around to face the creature, and was immediately kicked in the gut. He stumbled backwards and slammed into the door. Oh goody, another fight scene. Because we haven't had enough of those now, have we? He grabbed Jack by the throat and began to strangle him. He eventually just lifted Jack up by the throat and threw him down into the ground. He kicked Jack in the face several times, but Jack got back up. How do you kick a faceless man in the face? Jack grabbed Slender Man and threw him over into the distance. Slender Man saw a little canoe and picked up the ore, charging at Jack and impaling him through the ribs with it. Slenderman's body can apparently be impaled with a rock. Sure. Why not?

Jack pulled the ore out and hit Slender Man upside the head, knocking him down. Slender Man got up again, only to be smacked by the ore and sent flying. Slender Man landed on the docks, and Jack ran over at him. Meanwhile, we thought the coast was clear so we opened the door and looked outside, stupidly enough. We saw the two fighting on the docks and couldn't help but watch. Standing there and watching the two fight is obviously a better option than running away.

Jack hit Slender Man with an uppercut, knocking him over. Slender Man got back up and punched Jack in the face repeatedly, knocking him back a bit. Jack picked the ore back up and hit Slender Man in the face with it, knocking him down. Jack was serious now. This time...it's personal. He lifted the ore up above his head and pushed it down into Slender Man's chest. He kept stabbing him and stabbing him with it until Slender Man managed to get up and take the ore from him, throwing it into the water.

Lauren yelled out to us, pointing at a stick of dynamite she found. Oh there just happened to be a stick of dynamite lying around on these boat docks? Oh how convenient. What's next, is Brad's mom going to pull out a lighter she just so happened to have and use it to light the dynamite so they can kill Slenderman and Eyeless Jack? Brad's mom pulled out her lighter and lit it. I was joking! We threw it onto the dock as the two were fighting. This was it. Our last hope. Slender Man and Jack were brutally beating each other, and didn't notice the TNT. Suddenly, it finally went off, and it blew the two into the air. They went off into the sky, and crashed down into their watery graves. It was finally over! Oh thank God! Finally I can move on with my life! We were saved! We ran out to get back to town, but little did we know it wasn't over. Why not? Everything's been resolved. There's no reason to keep going.

Slender Man and Eyeless Jack awoke in a fiery pit, surrounded by a whole crowd of demons. They seemed to be chanting some weird spell, when a strange, creepy statue of Link from the Legend of Zelda series Oh come on! appeared before the two, and smiled deviously.

"Men..." he said, "What seems to be the problem?" You couldn't even have BEN say either of his catchphrases? Either "You shouldn't have done that." or "You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?" would have worked here. I sort of appreciate the shout out to one of the unused endings from Freddy vs. Jason but missed opportunity here, come on. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And that, my friends was "Slenderman vs. Eyeless Jack". I have but 1 question to ask: What the hell was the point of any of that? Slenderman eating souls, Eyeless Jack being a spirit, the town trying to cover them both up, Slenderman needing people to fear him in order to gain power and Eyeless Jack's whole backstory were all introduced and then forgotten about. None of the human characters were interesting and they barley impacted the plot at all. The body swapping was completely unnecessary and just made everything extra confusing for no reason and there were just way too many fight scenes. The whole thing just dragged. On the plus side the sentence structure was good and there were relatively few grammar mistakes. It's just that on top of all the other problems the whole premise was silly and it took itself way too seriously from the get go, which is my problem with most vs. fics to be honest.

#old stuff from my deviantart

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best-horror-movies · 3 years ago

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Best Horror Movies

3. The Thing (1982)

The movie: Perhaps you’ve been buried in snow and have missed best John Carpenter’s ultimate creature feature. Entirely understandable. Why don’t you come closer to the fire and defrost? The title might sound hokey but The Thing remains one of the most gloriously splattery and tense horrors of all time as a group of Americans at an Antarctic research station - including Kurt Russell’s R.J MacReady - take on an alien, well, thing that infects blood. It might start off taking out the canine companions - there’s no need to check out DoesTheDogDie.com this time around - but it really doesn’t stop there.

Why it’s scary: The Thing is a movie of physicality. There’s intense paranoia and horror sprinkled in as the party begins to fall apart as the infection spreads but it’s the very real, oh-so-touchable nature of the nasties at work here that’s so disturbing. The practical effects - the responsibility of a young Rob Bottin and uncredited Stan Winston - are the true stars as arms are eaten by chests, decapitated heads sprout legs, and bodies are elongated and stretched. The macabre vision of these murderous monsters at work is never anything less than true nightmare fuel. It has an amazing experience.

2. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

The movie: Some movie titles are vague, letting you gradually work out their meaning as the narrative slowly unfurls in front of your eyes like a delicate flower in tea. Then there’s Tobe Hooper’s grim, sweaty horror movie. There is nothing delicate here. Its titular weapon needs to be sharp but The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a blunt instrument of horror. This is a tour de force of violence as five young people leave the safety of the world behind and journey into dusty Americana. What they find in one house when they innocently enter looking for gas is such death and depravity that the movie is still, decades on, a disturbing endurance test.

Why it’s scary: The funny - and there is humor here, it’s just not there on the first watch - thing about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is that there’s actually very little blood. There’s the iconic Leatherface, inspired by Ed Gein in his fleshy face covering, and a death scene involving a hook that will make you look down and check your body is still there, but very little viscera. Gore is something that your brain mentally splashes everywhere to try and deal with the horror on screen here, to cope with the screams of pure terror and iconic disturbing soundtrack. It’s suffered plenty of clones over the years, not to mention a Michael Bay-produced glossy cash cow remake, but nothing can replicate the sheer desperation and violent honesty of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It would almost be dangerous to try.

1. The Shining (1980)

The movie: Even if you haven’t watched Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece it is way scarier, you’ll know of The Shining. You’ll know Jack Nicholson’s (apparently ad-libbed) "Heeeeeeeere’s Johnny" and you might even be aware that if you’re handed the keys to room 237 in a hotel, you might want to switch it for another suite. But what if you haven’t? What if you have been snowed up in a mysterious hotel with only hedge animals for company? Well, The Shining follows a man and his family as he takes on the role of winter caretaker at a resort hotel known as The Overlook. Given that this is a Stephen King adaptation (albeit one that that horror author hates so much that he made his own movie), the winter months don’t go well. The Overlook Hotel, it turns out, doesn’t really like people.

Why it’s scary: There's a reason that this is the top of this veritable pile of screams. The Shining feels evil. From Jack Nicholson’s deranged performance as a man descending into murderous insanity to Kubrick’s relentless direction as we hypnotically follow Danny navigating the hotel corridors on his trike, this is a movie that never lets you feel safe. Like Hereditary earlier in this list, The Shining is like being driven by a drunk mad man. What’s coming next? Lifts of blood? Chopped up little girls? The terror that lurks in the bath of room 237? This is not a horror movie made of boo scares or cheap tricks, Kubrick’s film is a lurking, dangerous beast that stays with you long after your TV has gone dark

#horror movies #scary movies

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sweetsmellosuccess · 6 years ago

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TIFF 2018: Day 3

Films: 4 Best Film of the Day: The Old Man & the Gun (pictured)

Gwen: This is no white-knuckle affair; it’s a red one. As in knuckles chapped and scraped until nearly bleeding. Wind plays a large atmospheric role in William McGregor’s unsettling drama, both as a constant background noise, and as a bleak visual metaphor for the pitiless sparseness of the land. Wales is shown to be both staggeringly beautiful, with its craggy mountains and rolling green hills, but also unwaveringly uninviting: You will not see a more overcast film this year. The story concerns a young woman (Eleanor Worthington-Cox), her kid sister; and her struggling mother (Maxine Peake), as they try to survive on their hardscrabble farm while Gwen’s father is out fighting in an unnamed war. As their farm gets more and more stricken by what seems like a curse — their sheep are slaughtered, their potatoes are fallow, and their horse breaks his leg — it slowly becomes clear that these are not supernatural forces at work, but rather the acts of a supremely callous and hateful capitalist, who’s after their land for his mind operation. The obvious comparison would be to Robert Egger’s deeply unnerving The Witch, but McGregor isn’t playing with devils and demonic curses, here, just the horror perpetrated by callous greed and disregard for humanity. The film’s unrelenting grimness could certainly be a deterrent for some audiences, but it does capture something both about the land, and the attitude of those who can survive it.

Donnybrook: As a longtime admirer of Jamie Bell (and not only because he was the voice of Tintin), I’m happy to see he’s branching out his roles and expanding his reach, as it were, I just wish he’d picked a better project than this grungy, exploitive action drama from Tim Sutton. Bell plays a dude named “Jarhead Earl,” a former Marine, and a dutiful fellow on the economic downswing, looking to make a pile of cash at the big midwestern, bare-knuckle brawl known as the “Brook.” With a wife (Dara Tiller), teetering on the edge of meth addiction, and two young kids, Earl stakes all his hope on the prospect of winning the Brook, and claiming the $100K prize. Meanwhile, many other unsavory characters flit about, including another vet-turned meth dealer, Angus (Frank Grillo), and his seriously deranged sister (Margaret Qualley), whose had to put up with years of her brother’s intense abuse and has had enough; and the local sheriff (James Badge Dale), who’s knee-deep in his own business with Angus, and is dirty as they come. The film is filed with flags, guns, fists, and blood, as well as a jacked sensibility that suggests a faint homage to Lynch, without any of his wit, creativity, or artistic merit. It is not intended as irony, to be sure, or if it is, no one informed the serious-as-death actors, who play this to the last drop of blood. It’s the kind of film where a tied and tortured middleman gets to have sex with a seriously beautiful woman, while still bound to a chair, and immediately after he reaches the highs of ecstasy, she tips him over and shoots him in the head.

The Old Man & the Gun: How would you follow up a film as utterly stunning as A Ghost Story, a powerhouse of a philosophical treatise on love, time, and human artistic legacy? Perhaps by approaching a similar topic from a vastly different direction. Based on a true story, David Lowery’s film follows the exploits of a man named Forest Tucker (Robert Redford), an elderly bank thief who simply cannot stop plying his trade. His approach, gentlemanly and smooth, matches the tone of the film’s opening two acts, as Forest hooks up with his two compadres (Danny Glover and Tom Waits), meets and woos a feisty widow (Sissy Spacek), and matches wits with the detective (Casey Affleck), whom he inadvertently humiliated during an earlier heist. By the film’s third act, however, as he gets closer to being caught, the film begins to take on a more melancholy air, as if sensing his mortality. He made a career out of springing himself from prisons (a series that gets lovingly highlighted near the end), but there is the sense he can’t escape his mortal prison, nor can he change spots and just settle down on a nice horse farm. A shot near the end, as the cops are sweeping in posits him as a kind of Don Quixote figure, sitting forlornly on his horse, looking down and defeated. Reportedly, this is Redford’s acting swansong, and if so, like Forest, he’s certainly going out on his own terms.

Halloween: Unofficially, there have been 700 bazillion sequels and remakes of John Carpenter’s 1978 slasher film classic, most of which have been derivative drivel, but with director David Gordon Green, working with longtime collaborator Danny McBride, you finally have a new vision for the venerable horror series. It’s been four decades – to the day – since Michael Myers terrorized a teenaged girl and murdered her friends. Since then, he has been locked up in an asylum, never uttering a word (the film smartly disavows all previous sequels). To the still-disturbed Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), however, the nightmare has never ended. Since surviving his original attack, she has dedicated her life to preparing for his eventual return, learning fighting/survival skills, fortifying her house, and arming herself to the teeth. This devotion to self-protection she imbued to her daughter (Judy Greer), and attempts to do so with her granddaughter (Andi Matichak), now the same age as Laurie was when she first met the Bogeyman. Things move along in typical Halloween fashion, with Michael escaping, donning the mask, and returning to Haddonfield to kill indiscriminately once again, only this time, he finds Laurie well-prepared and waiting for him. What ensues follows a similar pattern but with a major twist. In the film’s most exhilarating moments, the film gleefully twists and turns the tropes we have come to know so well – one such moment, setting up the film’s fiery climax, left the midnight TIFF audience laughing and cheering wildly – and morphs into, of all things, a feminist slasher flick. Naturally, the ending leaves things just ambiguous enough for another sequel (or six), but as a re-imagining of one of the seminal horror movies of the last 40 years, it’s got a lot of moxie. It might not have the actual scares of the original, but the film’s forward-thinking politics twist the butcher knife in very satisfying ways.

Tomorrow: A mix-and-match sort of day: In-between interviews, I’ll be checking out the militia-group thriller Standoff at Sparrow Creek; the harrowing sounding The Most Beautiful Couple; another Witch-like film in the horror/western The Wind, and, if I can stay awake, the brutal retelling of the Mumbai terrorist attack from 2008 in Hotel Mumbai.

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nightmareonfilmstreet · 6 years ago

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The Monster Behind The Mask: Remembering FRIDAY THE 13TH PART III

Friday the 13th Part III was released theatrically in the United States on Friday, August 13, 1982. 36 years ago tonight. Does that make you feel as old as Pamela Vorhees’ grey sweater? If the answer is a resounding ‘No, you fool – I was born in the 80’s, I had to wait at least a decade until I watched Jason mutilating camp counselors’, then welcome to this special look back on one of the more divisive Friday the 13th films. Grab your machetes, pull down your ice-hockey masks and don your wacky green/red 3-D spectacles, because we’re heading to Higgins Haven for some stabby-stabby fun with Jason Voorhees.

By the time Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) came around in theaters, audiences had become swamped with low-quality slasher titles. Slasher film fatigue had set in hard, and although Jason’s second outing grossed over $21.7 million in the United States on a budget of $1.25 million, fans were disappointed with a rehashing of the original story, and it failed to pull in the original’s box office success. The fact that they gave no explanation to the ridiculous ending of Part II showed that the people in charge didn’t really put much value in the continuity or story progression. One thing everyone could agree on though: Jason needed to be scarier. He needed to be a real boogeyman. And to get there, there were going to need a gimmick to get that cold hard cash-vein open again. They needed…3D.

A New Dimension In Terror

The titles jumped out at you like Superman’s cosmic intro, only….cheaper looking. Not to mention a bombastic funky 70’s inspired theme that I totally dug, man. What you have to remember is that in 1982 although 3D film-making was still in its infancy (Jaws 3D anyone?) by 2010, it had become almost commonplace for any film released to be retrofitted for a new dimension of sight and sound. Friday the 13th Part III, however, paved the way for future 3D films. You may have a strong fondness for everything three dimensional, but for all the people that love donning plastic visors on their head the other bemoan the comically irritating ploy to cough up more money at the box office. I wear glasses and absolutely hate 3D films becuase it feels like I’m wearing glasses on top of glasses…which I am!

Unless you have your own pair of flimsy pre-revolutionary 3D glasses, (which I doubt you have) you’re going to see a lot of shots of people waggling sticks at the camera, having yo-yo’s thrown at them. You’ll also be treated to an overly long lingering shot of a crazy old man sticking an eyeball uncomfortably close to the screen. Steve Miner (who also directed Part II) returned to the director’s post to helm Friday the 13th: Part III and this new dimension of terror that continues straight after the events of Part 2.

The Higgins Haven Massacre

Just like its predecessor, the film opens with an extraordinarily long recap of the previous film. We see final girl Ginny (Amy Steel) running away from ‘Baghead Jason,’ trapped in the makeshift cabin Jason has been holed up in with his mother’s severed head lovingly affixed to a small alter. Ginny tricks Jason into thinking she’s his mother, by donning her sweater and generally berating the child-like minded serial killer. Before she can use her machete on him however, Jason sees his mummified mumma’s head and avoids her killing blow. Paul (John Furey) appears and begins wrestling with Jason. While Jason is distracted, Ginny hacks him in slow-motion with his own machete. They assume he’s dead, but we see Jason slowly moving off the screen. Cue: Opening Credits.

Originally, Friday the 13th Part III was supposed to focus on lone survivor Ginny Field, (Sorry, Paul) who checks herself into a mental institution after her traumatic escapade with the pillow-wearing, dungaree killer. The film would have been similar in that vein to the popular Halloween II (1981), with Jason tracking down Ginny in the hospital, but that idea was abandoned when actress Amy Steel declined to reprise her role. Perhaps she didn’t want to be typecast as the scream queen for this particular franchise, but by 1986 she was again up on screen evading a knife-wielding killer in the slasher parody April’s Fool Day (1986). There was also speculation that producers were worried fans would reject a Friday the 13th which didn’t follow the established formula.

I would love to find a script with this narrative, because the franchise may have steered in a different direction (or it could have died a horrible death right there and then). Every good franchise needs a protagonist the audience can root for. Alien (1979) had Ripley, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) had Nancy and Halloween (1978) had Laurie. You could argue that Friday the 13th had Tommy Jarvis, but he didn’t appear until the fourth installment. Looks like Steel missed the boat on this one if the powers that be really wanted her as the series’ Final Girl. With 12 films, a whole bunch of novels, video games, and the short-lived television series under their belt though. it looks like they went the right way.

Our new group of young victims are as follows: New Final Girl Chris (Dana Kimmell), ‘Spanish Phoebe Cates’ Vera (Catherine Parks), hot and steamy couple Debbie (Tracie Savage) and Andy (Jeffrey Rogers), hippie potheads Chili (Rachel Howard) and Chuck (David Katims), and franchise favourite, the lovable self-deprecating prankster Shelly Finkelstein (Larry Zerner).

The group arrives at Higgins Haven, a cottage (with a barn!) a mere stones-throw away from Packanack cabin, where the previous slaughter took place. The Scooby Doo/Cheech and Chong gang meet up with country farm boy Rick (Paul Kratka). It’s quickly established that he and Chris had a romantic tryst during their last summer at the lakeside cottage, and Rick instantly tries to get back to where things left off by feeling her up. Not cool, man. Not. Cool.

Chris explains that she wants to get to know him again but he responds that there are only so many ‘cold showers’ he could take. Wowzer. He essentially behaves like this for the entirety of the movie (bar one scene when Chris recounts a traumatic experience) but the weird thing is the filmmakers seem to want you to empathize with this guy – like he’s the hero of the movie. Film of the time, I guess?

After some tomfoolery from Shelley (and without the slightest irony of axe-wielding maniac foreshadowing), we’re introduced to a group of bikers that marks the first time in the franchise we’re introduced to black actors. It’s just a shame that they turn out to be scumbags. All the while, Jason’s been hiding in the barn, looking menacing from an over the shoulder perspective. He dispatches of the bikers when they arrive at the cottage to take their revenge on Shelley and the gang, following an altercation at a shop in town. Don’t assume that Jason is here to protect anyone though. He quickly sets his sights on the college co-eds and, of course, things really ramp up when he dons the now iconic ice hockey mask for the first time.

People will argue what their favourite Friday the 13th movie is until the end of days. Did you like the characterization of the teenagers in Part 2 or 4? Did you simply enjoy the hack n’ slash nature of the original? Were you excited when Jason went to Hell? Some people just want to watch cheesy 80’s effects and have some popcorn while devouring grisly death sequences with their eyes. But something doesn’t sit right with the third outing. They could have gone a much deeper, darker route with Chris‘ that might have lead Mr. Vorohees‘ down a very sketchy road. I’m obviously talking about…

The Final Girl

Late in the film, we see Chris and Rick sharing some quality catch-up time together. Up until this point Chris has been hinting that something terrible happened to her but now she’s finally ready to share her story. Even after Amy Steel declined to return, it’s safe to assume that some fragments from earlier drafts were kept to highlight Ginny’s (now Chris’s) trauma from the previous movie.

Chris explains that, while on vacation, she came home late one night which caused her to have an argument with her folks. She fled her house and ran into the woods where she fell asleep under a tree. Some time later, she was awoken by the sound of footsteps. The footsteps belong to none other than Jason and he grabs at her legs as she struggles to get away. She goes on to explain that she woke up in her own bed the following morning, without any recollection of what transpired after she was captured.

So what happened here? It’s unlikely that she would have survived an attack by Jason, so how did she escape? The series has been known for its nonsensical dream sequences and poorly crafted plot devices, but this is a pretty big moment for Jason. There are theories that she was raped by Jason and there are novels that further explain the story, but some people on the film claim this ambiguous resolution was always planned since actually outright calling it a rape would be too much for audiences to take at the time. Others say Dana Kimmell who played Chris, was a devout Mormon and forced the producer’s hand since she was uncomfortable with going so far as to call it a rape scene. However, at the start of the film, a reporter states that “Reports of cannibalism and sexual mutilations are still unconfirmed, at this hour.” It would seem that someone in the production wanted Jason to have a much darker streak than his previous appearances.

There are many articles and essays about The Final Girl in horror films, but this one scene could have changed the balance of how viewers perceived Jason Voorhees as a child-like killing machine with mommy issues, into something far more dangerous and disturbing.

Friday the 13th Part III is a divisive film. The franchise needed a shot to the arm and ultimately it would be 3D effects supervisor Martin Jay Sadoff that inadvertently created a movie monster boogeyman. As it happens, Sadoff kept a bag full of hockey gear with him and the crew wanted a mask to avoid applying prosthetic make up on actor Richard Brooker all the time. This is the first film where we see Jason for an extended period of time, as opposed to keeping him in the shadows constantly. The plot is nonsensical, sure – the characters are paper thin and forgettable, the 3D effects are mostly a gimmick – but in the cannon of the series, it catapulted Jason to an iconic status. And for that, Part 3 will forever remain ingrained in fan’s minds.

How do you rank Friday The 13th Part III. Is it one of your favourites, or do you consider it one of the weaker additions to the franchise? Let us know in the comments below, over on Twitter, or in our Horror Group on Facebook!

You can also take a look behind the scenes of Friday the 13th Part 3D with host, Paul Kratka, in this insightful fan driven documentary featuring untold stories and interviews with several franchise favorites, never-before-seen location footage and set photography, as well as a touching look back on the life of Richard Brooker.

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cackle-and-hex · 3 years ago

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Day 6 Prompt: Donation

Apologies for the late post. It slipped my mind, even though I was working out the story in my head. Silly how it all works.

I will try to have the Day 7 Prompt published today as well, but we'll see.

Enjoy!

"Adam, can you be a dear and empty out the attic?" Adam's mother asked as she was about to walk out the door. "The stuff we don't keep, we'll give to the Church as a donation."

"Sure thing, Ma," twenty-four-year-old Adam said as he walked her out the door, closing it behind her.

Honestly, Adam didn't want anything to do with the attic. In fact, he didn't want to be in the house anymore.

After his Gran passed, Adam's mother and her three sisters made plans to clean out Gran's home, the one she shared with Adam's Peepaw until he passed a decade ago, and sell it for the cash. Somehow, she wrangled Adam into helping.

'Of course my cousins don't help,' Adam thought as he trudged his way up to the second floor where the entrance to the attic was located. 'Probably too busy being single mothers and deadbeat dads.'

Adam opened the door to the attic and his eyes climbed the stairs up into the vast darkness. He gulped before turning the light on, scared of what may show itself in the light. Once on, Adam looked up again and saw nothing there.

With each step up the stairs, Adam's feet felt heavier and heavier. The closer he got to the landing, the more he wanted to turn back like a dog with its tail between its legs.

'C'mon Adam,' he thought to himself. 'Man up. It's just an attic.'

Adam remembered being deathly afraid of the attic since he was a kid.

When he was seven, Adam stayed the weekend with his grandparents and uncle, George. George was what they called 'slow,' though Adam didn't understand at the time. He just thought his Uncle George never grew up. He still had the mind of a child, and they were inseparable when Adam was younger.

One night, while watching scary movies before bed with his Uncle George, Adam swore he could hear someone hollering upstairs.

"It's just thunder, buddy," George said with a smile. He sat on the couch while Adam lied on a pallet of blankets in front of the television.

"There it is again," Adam said jumping up. "Let's go find out what it is!"

Before George could argue, Adam ran up the stairs where all the bedrooms were and waited to hear for the noise again. He saw George at the bottom of the stairs.

"Adam, come back down," George said in a loud whisper. "You'll get in trouble. Gran and Peepaw don't want you up there at night."

'It's a stupid rule,' the seven-year-old thought to himself.

A thump came from the attic door. The padlock had been unlocked and the door was partially open.

Adam made his way to the entrance, only for the door to burst open and a man with half a face jumped atop the tiny boy. Adam screamed as the man snarled and clawed at him.

Then, Adam woke up.

He looked around, confused.

George remained on the couch sleeping, a tradition of Adam's weekends.

His grandparents sat in the dining room drinking their coffee. Peepaw was reading the morning paper while his Gran finished a crossword.

Checking his body, Adam found no claw marks.

"Have a bad dream, dear?" his Gran asked.

He nodded.

Although it had been a nightmare, Adam could never shake the eerie feeling that what he saw was real, and maybe it was all a conspiracy that his grandparents and uncle were in on. He remembered watching that old Simpson's Treehouse of Horror, the one where Bart secretly had a twin brother who was deemed the evil of the two. What if what he saw was his Uncle George's deformed twin brother?

He never brought it up with his family, not even after Uncle George died when he was 12.

Thinking about it now, after Adam finished emptying the attic, he laughed at himself, thinking of how much of a baby he'd been about the entire thing.

His text notification went off on his phone. It was his mother.

Can you please start on the basement? These heifers are fighting over the China set again. It's gonna be a minute.

Adam scoffed at his mom's text. He loved when she called his aunts heifers. After texting her back 'sure thing,' he made his way down to the bottom of the basement.

The light was a single luminescent bulb in the middle of the room with a silver pull chain. As soon as he felt the chain, Adam pulled on it and screamed when he saw the half-faced man staring back at him.

#31daysofhalloween #31doh2021 #31daysofhorror #horror #writing #short story #fiction #my writing #flash fiction #Donation

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theadamantium · 6 years ago

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Harri’s Travel Blog - India 2018

Over the past decade, I’ve been quite fortunate to travel a decent chunk of this globe. But like anything so special, no matter how satisfying an experience, I am always hungry for more. I developed a fixation for culture. For every item I’ve crossed off the bucket list, I seem to add six others. But I will admit, India wasn’t on that list before.

India was my Mom’s dream. It was the top of her list and she wanted to experience it before she was “too old.” Meet my Mom for five minutes and you’ll see it’ll be a long time before she’s too old for anything. I knew she wanted to have this experience with me, her spoiled only child, before he was tied down with too many commitments. So I said, “let’s do it!” My Mom and I travel very well together. We have similar get-up-and-go styles and a do-it-all-while-you’re-here mentality. My Mom won’t shy away from long drives, elephant rides, local participation, live music, and exotic foods. As our guide would put it, “The heart of the mother becomes the soul of the child.” As I started doing research prior to our trip I began to see why India was such a priority for my Mom.

The Itinerary

As a quick outline of our plan, we set out to tackle The Golden Triangle – New Delhi, Agra & Jaipur – with a stop in Ranthambore National Park in the middle and a few extra days heading west to Jodhpur and Udaipur. Fun India fact, cities ending in ‘Pur’ were ruled by Hindu kings, while cities ending in ‘Bahd’ were ruled by Muslim kings.

On out first day in India we met with our guide, Raj, and our driver, Mr. Singh. We’d all be paired together for the next two weeks. Lucky for us, we made an excellent team. Mr. Singh was a quiet man and a traditional Sikh. He is a professional. He was never late and always available for us when we needed. He was shy so didn’t say much, but as he came to realize the easy going people my Mom and I are, he loosened up and became very honest with us.

Raj on the other hand, had the gift of the gab. He loved to share his wisdom and stories from his life and experiences. He enjoys his life’s work and looks at being a tour guide as his responsibility to show off his country and provide his guests with the best experience possible. We told Raj from the start we were excited for the sites, but we also wanted a real India experience and this thrilled him. He treated us as travelers and not as tourists and made special added arrangements to give us the India trip we wanted. More on this later.

Culture

Sightseeing is always special and an important part of travel. However, as I’ve become a more experienced traveler my trips have become less defined by these sights as it has about meeting the people and experiencing the life and culture. Not only is this the best way to expand your worldly knowledge, but I truly believe it is one of the best ways to get to know yourself and expel your own ignorance. Most of what I learned on this trip didn’t come from palaces or safaris but rather walking through local bazaars, attending religious rituals or just witnessing the local life that surrounded us as we passed through town to town.

Making our way through India was very humbling. I don’t need to explain how little many of the people own and the cleanliness of their conditions. But this is the life they know and they seem just as happy with it as I am with my own. Who are we to say this is a worse quality of life? The people of these small villages have a strong work ethic, sense of community, family pride and undying faith. Are these not life’s core values? One may not have this same outlook in the large cities as your experiences can certainly be clouded by the tip chasers and pushy salesmen. Often when we’d stop in one of these small towns or villages, the locals would crowd around us out of curiosity. We’d be the talk of the town and the young people would request a photo with us.

Of course, a trip to India would not be complete without its culture shocks. Sharing the roads with cows, donkeys, camels and elephants, straight men holding hands, curry for breakfast, recreational mathematics (including upwards of 15 channels on television dedicated to it), and the importance of cricket (I still don’t understand how this overcomplicated, slower and longer version of baseball works) are some of the traditions that would take me some time to adapt to. One of the most shocking sights to a Westerner or European is the number of swastikas painted or carved into important religious structures. This one requires explaining as this symbol does not mean the same thing as we are accustomed to. The swastika is a religious mark the Nazis adopted from Indian culture, alternating the direction in which it points.

Taj Mahal

Unlike the rest of the trip, I had an expectation for the Taj Mahal. It’s impossible not to. It was at the centre of our itinerary requirements and has been declared one of the manmade wonders of the world. So, in fact, expectations were pretty high. But I’m happy to report it did not disappoint.

Mahal which means palace, was built by the king, Shah Jahar, to monument his love for his wife, Mumzel Mahal. This work of perfect symmetry took 26 years to build and was originally supposed to have an identical twin in black marble. Meanwhile, I complain about spending $100 on an overpriced meal for two in Toronto. But if I had the means of a king, maybe I’d build a monument for Margot Robbie in hopes that she’d be my queen. But I digress.

Much like Margot, it’s impossible to take a bad photo of the Taj. We arrived at sunrise as the golden rays reflected off the dome and towers - A photographer’s fantasy. Additionally, Raj had called upon a friend, a young boy named Raja who knew all the best spots to get photos around the premises. I could have stayed there all day snapping Nat Geo worthy (please see contact page to all Nat Geo editors reading this) and potential profile pics with this mega babe, but I guess an extra hour would have to do. Within hours the photo I posted with the Taj became one of my most liked photos on my personal Instagram.

Inside the Taj is basically a large marble room with the tomb of Mumzel Mahal. Although beautiful, it was maybe the only underwhelming part of the Taj. What did I expect? An exotic bazaar, curry buffet, and a Bollywood production of Rocky Horror starring India’s best and most beautiful maybe?

The Taj is located in the city of Agra. A fascinating but poor place with rundown buildings, street vendors and roaming cows. How can a city which brings in so much tourism be so poor you ask? Most of the money earned by the Taj goes back into restoration of the masterpiece. As well as the landmarks, I enjoy experiencing and photographing local culture. I found Agra fascinating but after consulting with Raj, it wasn’t a safe place for me to explore on my own. So instead I found myself taking video clips with my iPhone from the vehicle window.

Driving

If you think driving downtown is stressful. Try driving anywherein India. Stop signs, traffic lights and speed limits only exist in major cities like New Delhi. “Rules are suggestions in India,” Raj explained to us and then joked, “This is a sign that we live in a democracy.” Seatbelts are optional. Signaling is optional. Braking is optional. Driving on the correct side of the road... optional. However, using your horn continuously is mandatory.

It’s not uncommon in India to see vehicles getting bumped, families of five with infants riding a single motorbike without helmets, a bus so crowded some passengers are riding on the roof, and cows casually strolling across the highway. On our second day, we saw a van making a right-hand turn, crash into two women on a motorbike, knocking them over. Something I have never seen in my life before. Luckily no one was hurt. The van did stop to check if they were alive. The two women stood up, dusted themselves off and were on their way again. No exchange of insurance necessary.

Horns aren’t so much used as a way to let someone know how pissed off you are but rather as a tool to let the person in front of you know they’re approaching or passing quickly. For you see it is quite possible the road is being held up by a camel tow, tractor with an overweight load of chaff, or a herd of goats.

Tipping

Ugh.

Call me a cheap bastard. But I dislike the custom of tipping. I’m used to tipping service people - waiters, drivers, barbers, etc. But in India you tip everyonefor everything, and they expect it. On our daily adventures and discoveries, we found the people of India to be very friendly and considerate. But when it comes to service it can become difficult to distinguish genuine kindness from wallet plunging. Some days I felt like a sultan in a strip club, leaving a trail of dollar bills behind me.

After an exchange of pleasantries with someone, I’d often find them awkwardly lingering until I realized they were waiting for a payout. As we’d come out of our hotel room, a cleaner would be standing in front of you already or appear out of nowhere like something out of a horror movie and repeatedly ask if everything is satisfactory with the room. To the point where I felt like I was paying to get rid of them.

Activities that we’d consider common courtesy (like holding the door open for someone) we’d be expected to tip for. I used the gym at one of the hotels and asked the receptionist if someone could turn on the music. A man came ten minutes later while I was on the treadmill and did so. He then stood behind the treadmill and asked more than once if the music was to my liking. Unfortunately for him, this effort would not be a profitable one. For one, I very much don’t like being interrupted in the middle of a workout. And secondly, who carries cash in their sweaty workout gear?

See, my issue isn’t to do with the money (mostly). The tented camp we stayed at in Ranthambore adjusted this tradition in the right way, in my opinion. Instead of tipping the service people individually, you left something in a tip box upon checkout which was equally distributed upon the service people. This removed the sense of false friendliness.

Maybe I should just move to Australia or Japan.

Safari

Going on safari in Kenya and Tanzania was one of the best experiences of my Mom and I’s lives. So, we decided we wanted to slightly detour to include a few game drives in Ranthambore in an attempt to spot some wild tigers. The state of Rajasthan is one of few territories remaining that is home to the tiger. We were well warned by booking agents, guides, and naturalists that due to the dwindling number of wild tigers (only 64 remaining in Ranthambore) there is no guarantee you will see one. Tigers are also solitary animals that don’t travel in packs, making them even more difficult to track and spot. But I won’t lie, our hopes were quite high to see one. Twenty minutes into our first game drive, “Hey, there’s three tigers!” A mama and two young.

Our second and third game drive weren’t quite as lucky. Ranthambore National Park is split into ten zones, but because we booked late we only had access to zones 6-10. Our afternoon drive was in zone 10 and was pretty much baron and completely dried up. I kept picturing a collection of wildlife having a disco in a lush jungle paradise in zone 1. Our naturalist received a call saying one of the male tigers was hanging out back at the entrance to the zone, with our permission the 4x4 driver hit the gas and drove like an Indian version of Schumacher, who drifted corners and cliffs like human Mario Kart. We rattled around the vehicle, jumping close to a foot off our seat at times. Imagine riding the ricketiest coaster at Canada’s Wonderland (definitely The Wild Beast) without a seatbelt... for 30 minutes! Of course, by the time we reached the entrance, buddy had peaced. But it was one helluva ride to remember and we had some enjoyable back pain as a souvenir. Poor Mom!

Highlights

Other than Adam’s quam with tipping, it sounds like our trip was all sunshine and rainbows (well it was a lotof sunshine, complete with 41-degree heat). But no trip is complete without a few bumps. A group of young over-privileged women who felt entitled to party in the hotel hallway at the expense of everyone else on the same floor cost us a night’s sleep in Jaipur. I also had a 24-hour battle with food poisoning, complete with six accounts of projectile vomiting. But no amount of curry spewing from my nose (spicy!) was going to hinder my experience!

As mentioned above, Raj went that extra mile to create great memories for us to take home. Two of these trip extras became highlights of our travels. On our second day in Delhi he took us to the biggest Sikh temple in the city at the time of ceremony. Not only was the white & gold temple breathtaking but it allowed us to spend some time with a group of people we knew very little about. To honor tradition, we entered without shoes and our heads covered with a bandana. We spent a few moments meditating in the temple over song before Raj took us to the “kitchen.” The Sikh people of this particular temple prepare food and feed 60,000 locals every day voluntarily. I used the word kitchen in quotes, because someone from Canadian Health and Safety would have an aneurism after one look at this room. Everything was prepared in giant vats and no one wore gloves or even socks. Mom and I helped make Chapatti, and weren’t even asked to wash out hands. But alas, the Indian iron stomach can withstand just about anything. We were so grateful for this experience as it broke so many barriers of ignorance and replaced them with a foundation of respect and appreciation. Fun India fact, all Sikhs change their name to Singh. So what happens at a Sikh gathering when there is a phone call asking for Mr. Singh?

After being so intrigued by many of the villages we drove through on our commutes, I said to Raj that I would like to stop in a local village. He was pleased I asked as he had a friend who ran a village between our drive from Jodhpur to Udaipur. Upon arrival, we were greeted with great pleasure by Raj’s friend and shown around. We got to meet the elders of the village, who offered us tea (and opium). But the most rewarding part, maybe of the entire trip, was visiting the local school. We went into two tiny classrooms to meet the children, about age 6-10. They were so ecstatic to see us. Their little faces glowing with excitement as they bounced around on their chair or floor and each one of them wanted to shake our hands. More than any heart could handle without melting on the spot. Even as we had to leave, the boys were poking their heads out the window and door to wave at us.

I can’t thank Raj & Mr. Singh enough for their enthusiasm, patience and hospitality. To say I enjoyed my time in India would be a vast understatement. Most important to me was that Mom got the experience she was hoping for. I was happy to come along for the ride (and family time). That mission was a success and I think Mom came back more satisfied than she even expected. I hadn’t set expectation for myself and was therefore overwhelmingly surprised with the experience and the richness of the culture. So much so that some of the (many) other parts of India that we weren’t able to reach on this trip have now made “the list.”

Note: More photos from my professional camera to be shared on the blog as I get around to editing them. All photos above are from my iPhone 8 Plus.

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tiffanyunscripted · 5 years ago

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5 Billion DVD Rentals: 9 Films Available for Rent from DVD Netflix Shows Why Horror is a Multi-Billion Dollar Industry

Hollywood can't help cashing in on this most lucrative of genres - horror. Whether your preference is novels, films, television, there is a need for the scream. People lust after thrillers, dramas, and supernatural and can never have enough of the mind-bending stories.

Skip the cliches. Horror is not just a bunch of slasher movies, where people are chasing you through the woods with a machete. A lot of thought goes into the creation of the most successful films. The intent is to scare you beyond belief. Stephen King, the master of psychological thrillers, is famous for doing just that! He doesn't rely on using traditional weapons. He prefers to use the mind because dark fantasy fiction can encompass films, like "Lord of the Rings," the "Matrix" trilogy, and "Blade Runner." They're not obvious, like American Horror Story, "Killing Eve," and "Evil." One can easily fall into a snare of binge-watching something that could haunt them for the rest of their life.

Let's not forget the classic chillers by Edgar Allen Poe, H.G. Wells, and Alfred Hitchcock. Nothing says horror like the films produced by these writers. They still cause man people to have sleepless nights. Successful horror writers know it takes more than props to cause fright and keep the sequels alive! They know that effective horror stories happen in the mind of the audience. By creating a deep and believable character and convincing monsters, you can write a compelling script. It's the secret to writing a bestseller or blockbuster hit. You must have the best psychological enemy that must be defeated at all costs.

It used to Horror films were only released during October. Now, they're year-round. Audiences are eager to see them and the next horror scream queen. To become a good scream queen you must know how to scream. The Wilhelm scream is the most famous scream in Hollywood cinema. It's a stock sound effect used in over 416 films and television series. The scream was first heard in the 1951 film "Distant Drums." The scream is often used when a person has been shot, falls from a great height, or is thrown by an explosion.

I could list a slew of films dedicated to this franchise but DVD Netflix has too many to list! If you're into these films or prefer thrillers over chillers, then I'm certain you will find films, like "Malice" and "The Hand the Rocks the Cradle" more your taste.

I prefer the classics because the writers focused on the dialogue. In my opinion, current horror films rely on CGI and props to make a film. Here are my top nine classic horror films that caused many sleepless nights.

House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Would you stay in a haunted mansion for $10,000? Well, that amount is a lot in 1959. By today's standard, it is $78,164.26. Still, would you stay in the mansion? My answer would be a resounding no! I wouldn't care if you offered me one million. Don't mistake human greed over fear. Eccentric rich man Frederick Loren (Vincent Price) has proposed he will pay his five guests $10,000 each to show up and survive a chilling night in a haunted mansion. You already know there are plots within plots and opportunities to be had. No one anticipated how haunted the mansion is!

Psycho (1960)

Mother knows best in this Alfred Hitchcock horror film! You get what you pay for at the Bates Motel and no crime goes unpunished! There are so many hidden meanings in this film that you must understand how Hitchcock's mind works. He relied on the psychology of a murderer and a thief. He demonstrated how both lead to destruction.

The Exorcist (1973)

I still can't unsee this film! So, be careful what you watch! I had nightmares for years. Mainly because the theme of this film is real and is based on actual events. For those who have a different belief, you may be able to watch it as a typical horror film. Whatever you believe in this movie will scare the socks off you.

Jaws (1975)

After watching this film, I didn't swim in the ocean for decades. I wasn't alone. This film had many people afraid of the beach. Even in today's news, you hear of vicious shark attacks, so people can easily relate to the film.

The Omen (1976)

Damien (Harvey Stephens) is adopted by American diplomat Robert (Gregory Peck) and his wife Katherine (Lee Remick). Strange occurrences take place that will make the hair raise on the back of your neck. It's still one of the top horror films to date! The bodies pile up and no one can believe that this innocent child is a "bad seed."

Carrie (1976)

Stephen King doesn't disappoint. His novel was adapted for film and didn't dismiss the horror aspect! Teenager Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) is bullied at school. Also, her fanatically pious mother (Piper Laurie) adds to the abuse. Many things begin at home! This creates an environment for Carrie to develop supernatural abilities. Unfortunately, those who taunted her will face a wrath beyond their wildest imagination.

Halloween (1978)

Six-year-old Michael Myers violently murdered his 17-year-old sister, Judith on a Halloween night in 1963. He was committed to a mental institution for 15-years. This did nothing to help curb his homicidal instincts. During transportation to court, Myers escapes to Smith's Grove in murderous form as he seeks new victims.

The Shining (1980)

The antagonist played by Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) is also a writer who stays at a Colorado hotel to overcome his writer's block. As he settles in with his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and son Danny (Danny Lloyd), strange things begin to occur. Danny is plagued by psychic premonitions which become more disturbing the longer they stay at the hotel. Jack decides to investigate but is overcome by the hotel's supernatural powers. He soon turns into a homicidal maniac. Who will survive is rampage?

Poltergiest (1982)

This film will have you investigating housing developments before you move in! I highly recommend going to your local county clerks office to check out the land the development was built on.

You can watch these films over a huge bowl of popcorn. Rent them from DVD Netflix via dvd.netflix.com. Add them to your queue today. If you don’t have an account, you can sign-up for a free month. If you decide to keep the membership, pay as little as $7.99 per month to enjoy DVD Netflix’s massive database of blockbusters, documentaries, independent films, and more.

Disclaimer: As a DVD Nation Director, for introducing the DVD Netflix service to you, as well as writing about some awesome movies to rent that can be challenging to find anywhere else, I’m rewarded and always happy to share awesome movies with you. #dvd20 #dvdnation #ad

#dvdnation ad dvdnetflix

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argocitycosplay · 5 years ago

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A man in a billowing black cloak approached me.

“Where were you yesterday? You would’ve been a shoe in at the masquerade!”

By my robotic side, my diminutive companion, resplendent in her Pokémon gear giggled. It was Sunday morning at Hazard Con.

In all fairness, I’m really not much more than a tourist when it comes to anime. However, my daughter just turned 13 and is slowly finding herself more and more ensconced n the genre – and she anticipates Anime conventions now with equal or greater interest than comic book conventions. While I had previously been content to include one every year, I get the impression we’re going to be hitting more of these as time goes on.

I had recently become aware of Hazard Con, though I never attended it before. It’s been about a decade since I need to drive into Erie Pennsylvania (is Erie Horror Fest even still a thing anymore?). It’s about two hours from Cleveland, but it’s not a hard drive – you basically drive in a straight line on a single freeway for the entire trip, the convention center being attached to a hotel that sits right by the exit.

We had chosen to come on Sunday for a couple of reasons. Hazard con does not offer single day passes for Friday or Saturday, you either by the weekend pass for $40 or simply go on Sunday when the admission is reduced to $15. Because it’s Sunday, hours are little shorter as well, with things closing up around 5 o’clock. That’s fine, I wasn’t even certain that Maddie would make it all the way to 5 o’clock. Besides, this seemed like a nice low key opprutunity to try out the newly repaired Voltron costume and see how the changes held up. Maddie for her part, was looking forward to bringing out her Serena outfit again.

In addition to a vendor‘s room, Hazard Con also sports a flea market – held for half a day in one of the panel rooms. If you think the dealers room is eclectic, you ain’t seen nothing yet! Movies and toys in bits and bobs littered the tables, and we resolved to come back and check it out a little bit later – that ended up being a mistake since we misjudged how long the market would last and by the time we returned, they were all packing up.

As we pressed further into the convention center, we passed the movie room, then rounded the corner and found ourselves face-to-face with a giant robot. I don’t just mean someone in a costume like a Voltron outfit I was wearing. No, there was an actual eight or 9 foot replica of one of the giant robots from Pacific Rim. Next to it was a small one person land speeder and they were both gorgeous! We took photos by the props before hassling into Kyle Herbert’s panel. Kyle is a voice actor – and an incredibly prolific one. He was a regular at the late and lamented Shinbokou Con. It was good to hear his casual and self-deprecating humor as he hosted a very informal panel – more of a talk with those of us in the crowd and the sort of easy back-and-forth that Herbert excels at.

Once his panel concluded, we proceeded to explore further – the vendor‘s room was in an adjacent wing. It seemed bigger than the ones I’ve seen at Woo-Con or Zipcon, but perhaps it was just the floor plan. Being set up in the atrium, the bright mid-day sun poured down on the room creating a warm and positive atmosphere – it was a remarkable effect. Inside, Maddie spotted a No-Face – one of the characters from Spirited Away. I prodded her and encouraged her to go and ask for a photo. The cosplayer happily greeted her. The No-Face’s arms slowly emerged from the inky blackness of it’s costume, and you could see a gold coin offered up in the black hand. No-Face had come bearing gold, just as it had in it’s movie. They were chocolate coins, and Maddie happily accepted them.

“Come pet our table!” One vendor shouted out. We wandered over to her table and noted half of it was covered in color changing spangles, and the other half was covered in soft fur. Among the curious wares were little stuffed dumpings. Each came with an adoption certificate and back story. Maddie had already dumped her con allowance into a pokeball with a small Pokemon and candy inside. I decided to grab a dumpling to take home to Lydia. It was by far the cutest thing I found in that dealer’s room. I grabbed a “Bag of Cheap” for myself and was excited to discover the blind bag contained Tenchi and Cyber City Odeo DVDs! I was hoping for Japanese candy – some of the more interesting Kit Kats or something, but didn’t find anything that really interested me. Nevertheless, I grabbed some more deals on a Cap figure and some Cash movies, topped off with a couple of buttons for my con bag.

We briefly checked out the tabletop room but they were between Pokémon tournament, and gaming is never really been a big thing for either of us. Around the corner and down in a separate hall we discovered the arcade. This game room flat-out puts to shame every convention video game room I’ve ever seen.Sure there were the tables with old systems set up for retrogaming just as you would expect, but what really drew your eyes as you entered was the room packed full of Japanese arcade machines – over a dozen games the US has never seen. There are familiar games like Dance Dance Revolution and some 2D fighters, but they were outnumbered by rhythm games and flashing light and spectacle. Maddie’s favorite was a rhythm game that involves two gigantic drums. Two players standing side-by-side would try and keep the rhythm with the graphics on the screen. I enjoyed seeing the Genesis set up again and the other retro games, in fact I probably could’ve spent all day in this room alone, but anime was calling our names!

We broke for lunch briefly and then hit the Anime room for three episodes of Seven Seeds. The second episode is really scary with some monsters on board and I wondered how Maddie was going to react – this stuff is more serious then a lot of the light-hearted magical girl things she watches, but she was entranced – and when they finally ended this run to break for the next panel, she was already insisting that we need to find more of this. It’s on Netflix by the way, it’s some good post apocalyptic stuff which probably appeals to Maddie‘s Hunger Games and Walking Dead sensibilities. Next up was the Studio Ghibli panel. Even I’m familiar with Miyazaki, indeed Spirited Away was the first film out of his studio that I ever saw (coincidently that was at Lake Effect Comic Con). It was interesting to hear a little more about the history of the studio and the idiosyncrasies of its creators. We headed back to the Anime room, but somebody had turned the air-conditioning way up to uncomfortable levels. Perhaps they were just trying to save us from having to watch the terrible Godzilla animation. We made one last pass at the game room and decided to call it a day. I was correct, Maddie didn’t last all the way until five, though she may have if that Anime room had frozen us out. We made our way out to the car around 4:15 to start the long trip home. This is one of those cons that is the exact right size for me, not too big not too small – I just wish it was closer to home. Nevertheless it looks like this might be one we come back to next year,and I’ll be interested in seeing what the guest list looks like then.

Hazard Con 2019 A man in a billowing black cloak approached me. “Where were you yesterday? You would’ve been a shoe in at the masquerade!"

#Anime #Anime Convention #cosplay #Hazard Con #Kyle Herbert #No-Face #Pokemon #Voltron

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recentnews18-blog · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/30-movies-worth-watching-in-seattle-this-weekend-nov-15-18-2018/

30 Movies Worth Watching in Seattle This Weekend: Nov 15-18, 2018

Widows is a damn fun thriller from an artsy director.

You’ve got many options for movie thrills this weekend, from Steve McQueen’s spectacularly cast Widows to the creepy/comedic classic Beetlejuice. For artsier fare, don’t miss Frederick Wiseman’s new documentary on small-town America, Monrovia, Indiana. Follow the links below to see complete showtimes, tickets, and trailers for all of our critics’ picks, and, if you’re looking for even more options, check out our film events calendar and complete movie times listings.

Stay in the know! Get all this and more on the free Stranger Things To Do mobile app (available for iOS and Android), or delivered to your inbox.

Beautiful Boy I’ve never been a parent or a junkie (yet!), but I found a lot that resonated in Beautiful Boy, a low-key film based on a pair of interconnected memoirs from father and son David and Nicolas Sheff. David (Steve Carell) chews himself up over son Nic’s (Timothée Chalamet) spiral into meth and heroin addiction, asking what he could have done to prevent it and wondering how he can fix it. Nic, meanwhile, copes with not only his body’s betrayal but with the disappointment he feels, both self-directed and from his patient, confused father. From Beautiful Boy’s perspective, Nic is really only guilty of having a curious mind, while David, a good father in every recognizable way, might have simply waited too long to show his beloved son some tough love. The performances make the whole thing sing. Carell and Chalamet both do expectedly good work, and they’re matched by Amy Ryan as Nic’s mother and Maura Tierney as his stepmother. Beautiful Boy is driven by the real-life horror of watching a loved one succumb to drugs, but it’s a family drama devoid of most of the genre’s manipulative qualities, substituting them with honesty, empathy, and fully drawn human beings. NED LANNAMANN Meridian 16 (Regal) & Oak Tree

Beetlejuice Newly dead Adam and Barbara Maitland aren’t down with the Deets family, who moved into the couple’s home after their unfortunate passing and don’t seem at all phased by the Maitlands’ attempts at scaring them out of it. Enter rotten, pervy Betelgeuse (“Beetlejuice”), who sells himself as a bio-exorcist capable of getting rid of their living pests, though he turns out to be a dangerous nuisance who’s more trouble than he’s worth. Tim Burton’s first film (and my first Tim Burton film, too) is on-point with vibrantly weird visuals, quick-witted comedy, and strong before-they-were-big-stars performances from (goddamn he looks young) Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis (extra dimply, woman-next-door funny), a teenage gothed-out Winona Ryder, and Michael Keaton at his comedic one-liner-throwing best—like, has he ever been this good? It’s bizarre yet delightful and still tons of fun three decades later. Even the dated special effects retain their charm. LEILANI POLK Central Cinema Friday–Sunday

Bohemian Rhapsody I heart Queen. The song this film is named for was on the soundtrack of my youth. But early reactions to the film biopic (that’s more about Freddie Mercury than the British rock band he led) have been mixed to bad. The New York Times’ Kyle Buchanan tweeted that Bohemian Rhapsody “is a glorified Wikipedia entry but Rami Malek plays Freddie Mercury (and wears his wonderful costumes) with incredible gusto.” Our own Chase Burns was not a fan at all. (“The 15-minute long shit I took during the middle of the movie was more nuanced than the straight-washed hagiography peddled in that movie theater.”) In sum, enter at your own risk. LEILANI POLK Various locations

Boy Erased This film features the most prolific twinks of our time: Troye Sivan, Lucas Hedges, and Nicole Kidman. These three gays will dazzle the screen in this year’s most star-studded gay flick—oh wait, Troye Sivan is the only gay among them. Lucas Hedges has said he’s “not totally straight, but also not gay and not necessarily bisexual,” and Nicole Kidman, despite being the world’s most famous twink, is surprisingly a 51-year-old Australian woman. While think pieces on Hedges’s sexuality will probably dominate the conversation around Boy Erased, it looks like a cute holiday movie about gay conversion therapy. Go see it! CHASE BURNS SIFF Cinema Uptown & Meridian 16

Can You Ever Forgive Me? In Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Melissa McCarthy stars as real-life best-selling biographer Lee Israel. But this isn’t a life of literary glitz and glamour that you’re imagining after such a juicy introductory sentence! After falling on hard biographer times, Israel turned to a life of writerly crimes, forging letters from long-dead authors to make just enough cash to pay her rent, take her cat to the vet, and aggressively drink. This all sounds sad, I know, but there’s warmth underneath, thanks to Israel’s friendship with the charming, equally self-destructive Jack Hock (Richard E. Grant). McCarthy, who’s made a career of portraying loud women, is a different kind of jerk here—a real person who lashes out not for laughs, but because life is hard and she knows she’s making bad choices. ELINOR JONES SIFF Cinema Egyptian & AMC Seattle 10

Cinema Italian Style The Cinema Italian Style is a weeklong SIFF mini-festival featuring the best in contemporary Italian cinema. This final day, watch Euphoria, about two very different brothers who come together in difficult circumstances. SIFF Cinema Uptown Thursday only

Dr. Seuss’s The Grinch If you’ve ever wondered how the jammy vocals of Benedict Cumberbatch would sound coming from a neon-green Seussian monstrosity, you have your chance in this visit to Whoville. This time, the Grinch has a doggy sidekick named Max. Angela Lansbury voices the Mayor and Rashida Jones does Donna Lou Who. Various locations

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald Twee hunter Newt Scamander returns for more J.K. Rowling-inspired exploits. Of the previous Fantastic Beasts film, critic Bobby Roberts wrote: “It is eager to please and amaze, but undersells its spectacle until that spectacle becomes perfunctory. It milks sentiment drier than the Arizona desert Newt’s trying to get to. It’s a goofy blast of kid-lit in love with Looney Tunes-inspired adventure—except when it’s a sour metaphor for child abuse and intolerance that owes one hell of a debt to Stephen King’s famous prom queen.” The new one has Johnny Depp as the titular dark wizard. Various locations

First Man The space stuff is great. When La La Land director Damien Chazelle’s biopic about Neil Armstrong focuses on NASA’s insanely ambitious and dangerous plan to put a man on the moon, it thrums with thrill and threat—from the astonishing scope of space to the claustrophobic confines of the command module, the best parts of First Man are worth experiencing on the biggest screen possible. Ryan Gosling offers an excellent turn as Armstrong, but even Gosling can’t liven up the story’s more pedestrian elements, which largely involve Armstrong’s relationship with his wife (Claire Foy) and his stoic mourning of his daughter. First Man bears the familiar curse of the biopic—it somehow feels both overlong and unsatisfying—and never quite escapes the shadow of The Right Stuff, Philip Kaufman’s remarkable 1983 film that told a similar story with more grace and smarts. Still: the space stuff is great. ERIK HENRIKSEN Meridian 16 & AMC Pacific Place

Free Solo This highly praised, dizzying documentary reveals the heart-stopping journey of Alex Honnold as he conquered Yosemite’s El Capitan wall without ropes or safety gear. You don’t need to be a climber to be thrilled at this glimpse into human accomplishment. Various locations

Hep Cats Cats in movies have symbolized everything from elegance to curiosity to evil, but sometimes they are simply their wonderful selves. Hep Cats delivers a handful of these ailurophilic flicks, like Harry and Tonto, a charming road movie about a man and his cat forced to leave their Upper West Side apartment. It stars Art Carney, who won an Oscar for the role. JOULE ZELMAN Northwest Film Forum Saturday only

HUMP! Film Festival The 14th Annual HUMP! Film Festival, the world’s biggest and best porn short film festival, premiers in Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco this November! After the opening festival concludes its run, HUMP! will hit the road in 2019 and screen in more than 50 cities across the U.S. and Canada. HUMP! invites filmmakers, animators, songwriters, porn-star wannabes, kinksters, vanilla folks, YOU, and other creative types to make short porn films—five minutes max—for HUMP! The HUMP! Film Festival screens in theaters and nothing is ever released online. HUMP! films can be hardcore, softcore, live action, animated, kinky, vanilla, straight, gay, lez, bi, trans, genderqueer—anything goes at HUMP! (Well, almost anything: No poop, no animals, no minors, no MAGA hats.) DAN SAVAGE On the Boards

Meow Wolf The adorably named Santa Fe artist collective Meow Wolf caught the fancy of George R.R. Martin, who helped them take over a disused bowling alley for an epic art exhibition. But success comes with its own struggles. Enter their world and find delirious, DIY inspiration. Northwest Film Forum Thursday only

Mid90s Mid90s tells the story of 13-year-old Stevie (Sunny Suljic) who, after he’s rejected and bullied by his older brother Ian (Lucas Hedges), finds new role models in a crew of skaters led by the wise and magnanimous Ray (Na-kel Smith). Stevie’s willingness to repeatedly fall on hard concrete as he tries to maneuver a skateboard that looks half his height endears him to his newfound friends. The resultant feelings—and the film’s title—places Mid90s squarely in Hill’s nostalgic memory, where he both dramatizes and idealizes the kids’ adventures. SUZETTE SMITH Various locations

Monrovia, Illinois The amazingly prolific documentarian Frederick Wiseman (Ex Libris, In Jackson Heights, National Gallery, and 40 more films!) explores a tiny American hamlet steeped in old farming traditions and periodic ceremonies, like church services, Town Council meetings, Freemason rituals, weddings, and funerals. Northwest Film Forum Friday–Sunday

Mystery Train Exactly one year ago, I was walking down a street in Memphis, Tennessee, when I had what is known as a Proustian experience (or what literary critics call an “involuntary memory”). But in Proust’s novel Remembrance of Things Past, the involuntary memory sends the narrator, Marcel, to a town he visited as a boy (Combray). My memory, which was triggered by crossing a street, sent me to a film, Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train, which is set in Memphis and concerns young Japanese lovers who are obsessed with American popular culture. The couple walks around Memphis a lot. And while I walked around Memphis, I found myself walking, not through my Memphis, but theirs. This movie does not have much of a plot. CHARLES MUDEDE Grand Illusion Thursday only

Narcissister Organ Player The feminist body-shocker Narcissister, who carries out her performance art mostly naked and masked, muses on her Moroccan, Jewish, and African American roots and her intense relationship with her mother in this absurdist, experimental documentary. Northwest Film Forum

Night Heat They proliferated in anxious postwar America and still occasionally return to brood and smolder onscreen: films noirs, born of the chiaroscuro influence of immigrant German directors and the pressure of unique American fears. Once again, the museum will screen nine hard-boiled, moody crime classics like this week’s Night of the Hunter, one of the most unusual and thrilling films ever to come out of Hollywood. The veteran actor Charles Laughton took inspiration from the stylistic extremity of German Expressionism to film this hallucinatory tale of a psychotic preacher pursuing two young children who know he’s murdered their mother. Clear your Thursday night schedule for this one. Seattle Art Museum Thursday only

Night on Earth Five cabbies and five passengers around the globe share funny, weird, and intimate moments in Jim Jarmusch’s quirky classic—a little inconsequential, but charming and beautifully acted. Thanks to Roberto Benigni’s performance, you’ll never look at a pumpkin quite the same way again. Grand Illusion Thursday only

The Old Man and the Gun Based on a true story, the latest from David Lowery (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints) reteams the filmmaker with Robert Redford, who plays Forrest Tucker, the charming, handsome leader of a trio of geriatric bank robbers. Forrest’s partners in crime are Teddy (Danny Glover) and Waller (a fantastic Tom Waits). Like one of Forrest’s disarmingly polite robberies, The Old Man and the Gun starts out pleasant and sweet before revealing hints of darkness—each of these characters is deeper than they first appear, and one’s never quite sure what any of them are going to do next. Lowery is happy to tag along, capturing lives that are polished by time and dented by experience but remain bright and sharp with wit and passion. Watching Redford have this much fun is, as always, a goddamn delight. ERIK HENRIKSEN Admiral Theater

Overlord While carrying out a vital pre-D-Day mission, a ragtag bunch of American Dogfaces stumble across a small French village that’s just packed to the rafters with secret Gestapo experiments. (Note: In what may be a controversial move in this day and age, the Nazis are unequivocally depicted as the Bad Guys.) Genre mashups are often content to rest on their high-concept laurels, but this J.J. Abrams production is very willing to do the grunt work, solidly establishing its war movie bonafides—an early paratrooper sequence is genuinely alarming—before transitioning into full-tilt body horror. (This is an extremely moist movie.) If this sounds even remotely like your sort of thing, Overlord’s combination of heavy artillery and horrid creatures should prove to be pretty irresistible. When it comes to B-Movies, nasty, brutish, and short all count as positive traits. ANDREW WRIGHT Various locations

Ponyo You can pretty much guarantee that anything with Hayao Miyazaki’s name attached to it will be superbly wrought, fantastically animated, and delivered with a fine dose of poignant storytelling. He has left a fine legacy of films in his (no longer retired, for now) wake, including Ponyo, which has its 10-year anniversary this year and is being celebrated in a series of screening events across the country. This anime fantasy is loosely based on The Little Mermaid (Hans Christian Andersen’s version, not Disney’s), about an austere, potentially malevolent warlock/sea king whose young amphibious daughter runs (swims) away from her home. Sosuke, the little boy who scoops her from the waves, believes she’s a goldfish, names her Ponyo, and introduces her to a small slice of his world before her father finds her and brings her back to their underwater kingdom. But Ponyo’s taste of food and friendship fuels her next escape, setting off a chain of events that will change her (and Sosuke) forever. This film gets me choked up every time. LEILANI POLK SIFF Cinema Egyptian Saturday only

Prospect Is this the first major work of Northwest science fiction? Indeed, it imagines a moon that is like the evergreen forests that surround Seattle. The whole planet is green—gothic green. And the light on this strange moon is sharply slanted like Northwest light. The superb film is about prospectors (a father and daughter) looking for a root-made gem that will make them rich. The daughter, however, is keen to get off the planet because the line to it is about to be shut down. But her father is money-mad. If he does not make it here, he will never make it anywhere in the galaxy. Translucent insects float through the air. There are other money-mad prospectors in the endless forest. You do not leave this planet without paying a big price. Money is the root of all evil. CHARLES MUDEDE Meridian 16

Sadie The latest from local filmmaker Megan Griffiths (Lucky Them, Eden) has a perfect Northwest feel. Sadie is 13 and lives with her mother in a dilapidated trailer park. Sadie worships her absent father while being impossible with her harried mother. She is smart and precocious, trying to come to an understanding of how the world works, but the adults around her have their own problems. The film shows the way adults communicate with kids, never talking to them directly, trying to fool the kid and themselves. This leaves young people with half-ass ideas, and they run with them without really understanding the situation, with mixed results. The film has a great cast: The wonderful Melanie Lynskey plays the mom, with Sophia Mitri Schloss as Sadie. GILLIAN ANDERSON SIFF Cinema Uptown Sunday only

Seattle Turkish Film Festival The Turkish American Cultural Association of Washington will present the sixth annual edition of their community-driven, volunteer-led festival featuring a rich panorama of new Turkish films. For the final weekend, check out Something Useful, an intense drama about two women, one of whom has a grim mission, who meet on the train; The Legend of the Ugly King, about the Kurdish actor/director Yilmaz Güney; and Taksim Hold’em, about a man determined to play his weekly poker game despite the massive anti-government protests taking place outside. SIFF Film Center Friday–Saturday

SHRIEK!: Thirst The class focusing on women and minorities in horror is back with a screening and discussion of Park Chan-wook’s Thirst, about a saintly Catholic priest transformed into an insatiable blood-drinker and sex fiend by a risky medical experiment. Here’s an excerpt from the review Lindy West wrote at its release: “Thirst is a horror movie, albeit a silly one. Actual scares are few to none—instead, Sang-hyun’s painfully earnest consternation at trying to live as an ethical monster (losing his priestly virginity, daintily sipping a comatose man’s blood straight from the IV) make it a funny, cartoonish, and strangely sweet fable about ethics versus instincts: ‘Is it a sin for a fox to eat a chicken?’ Unfortunately, Thirst drags on for a punishing gazillion hours—ethical monster shacks up with manipulative harpy and the complications pile up like bodies (because, you know, they literally are bodies)—and you feel like you’ll never see your home or your mom or the precious golden sun again.” It might not be the most positive of reviews, but you’re guaranteed to get a good discussion out of it with organizers Evan J. Peterson and Heather Marie Bartels. Naked City Brewery Sunday only

Suspiria Call Me by Your Name director Luca Guadagnino’s reinterpretation of Argento’s film Suspiria is a precisely choreographed mindfuck, and progressing through the film’s six acts feels like peeling off layers of an onion until you reach the reeking core. It’s swift, brutal, and breathtaking, but it’s also frequently bogged down by overcomplicated subplots and distracting details. The original premise remains the same—ancient ballerina witches trying to live forever by sacrificing students—but this time around, the Markos Dance Academy is located right next to the Berlin Wall in post-World War II Germany, and Susie Bannion (a very meh Dakota Johnson) is a runaway Mennonite from Ohio. Whatever parallels Guadagnino hoped to draw between the traumatic aftermath of the Holocaust and the bloody chaos going on inside the coven ends up feeling more confusing than profound. CIARA DOLAN AMC Pacific Place & SIFF Cinema Uptown

A Star Is Born If you’re entering the theatre simply desiring a couple solid musical numbers, then your $15 will not have been spent in vain. Unfortunately, the movie falls flat as only a two-dimensional vignette of common misogyny can. Ally, the lead character played by Lady Gaga, is a woman who knows she has talent but needs to hear that she is sufficiently pretty to be an appropriate vehicle for said talent. Like any woman vying for a piece of the proverbial pie, she is just one man away from success. One man to lead her, to mold her, to push her through to the finish line. This man-shaped void is filled by her father, her husband, her manager, her producer, her choreographer, and her photographer, all of whom take credit or receive credit from other men for her creative output and appearance. A Star Is Born is a classic tale, meant to be mutable, fluid, to adapt within each age it is reimagined. But the flaws of the inherent narrative are too real, too every-day damaging to continue being told in the form of a cinematic fantasy. KIM SELLING Various locations

Voyeur Presents ‘The Prowler’ The November edition of VOYEUR brings “one of the bleakest noirs ever made,” Joseph Losey’s The Prowler, about a man who’s determined to get what he feels society owes him—an unhappily married woman played by Evelyn Keyes. Scarecrow Sunday only

Widows Arriving a week before Thanksgiving, Widows is an overflowing plateful of entertainment, piled high with juicy plot, buttery performances, and plenty of sweet genre pie. It’s a mash-up of pulp and prestige that shouldn’t work well on paper but plays out tremendously well on-screen. Director Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave, Shame) cowrote the twisty script with novelist Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl, Sharp Objects), and while the interconnected webs of Chicago’s crime underworld and its racially charged local politics contain more than enough intrigue, the performances are what’ll grab you. I mean, just look at this cast: Harry (Liam Neeson) leads a crew of career criminals (including Jon Bernthal and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) in a heist that goes disastrously wrong, leaving their widows Veronica (Viola Davis), Linda (Michelle Rodriguez), and Alice (Elizabeth Debicki) with a serious problem when crime boss Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry) and his enforcer brother Jatemme (Daniel Kaluuya) demand they return the stolen money. The real fun is watching McQueen, Flynn, and this ridiculously large talent pool of actors lay the groundwork for a slick, rich, tantalizing thriller, and then connecting all the dots. NED LANNAMANN Various locations

Also Playing: Our critics don’t recommend these movies, but you might like to know about them anyway.

The Girl in the Spider’s Web

Instant Family

Nobody’s Fool

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms

Venom

Stay in the know! Get all this and more on the free Stranger Things To Do mobile app (available for iOS and Android), or delivered to your inbox.

Source: https://www.thestranger.com/things-to-do/2018/11/15/35633515/30-movies-worth-watching-in-seattle-this-weekend-nov-15-18-2018

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nivenus · 7 years ago

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2017 in Film: A Retrospective and Ranking

So tomorrow’s the big day, right? The day when Hollywood’s elite gather and decide what films are the best?

In genre fandom there’s a reflexive instinct to reject the Oscars, which has long dismissed (sometimes truly impressive) efforts by science fiction, fantasy, horror, and other genre filmmakers. I totally get that, even if it’s not always true (just look at this year’s nominees). But rather than grouse and complain about how we disagree with the Academy, I thought it would be more rewarding to talk about how we felt about the cinema of 2017.

It’s been a really good year, I think it’s hard to deny, even if Hollywood itself (and the world in general) has had a pretty awful one. Even some of the worst films I’ve seen were pretty darn good and the best were truly terrific. It’s also been a pretty stand-out year for genre films in particular, with some great additions to the horror and superhero canon in particular. With that in mind I’ve ranked every 2017 film I’ve seen and invite others to do the same.

19. Ayla by Elias

Ayla is one of two feature-length films I saw at Portland’s annual H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival at the Hollywood Theatre, an experience I can heartily recommend to anyone in the Pacific Northwest who loves horror or weird fiction. The basic premise of Ayla is that a young man who lost his sister as a child and is unable to let go of her memory finds what appears to be an adult and strangely mute version of his sister, who comes to occupy a central place in his life as he neglects every other part of his life, including his living family and friends. Essentially, Ayla is a story about loss and how it can consume us.

Out of all the debut films I saw this year, Ayla is unmistakably the weakest but that doesn’t mean its bad by any means. The central hook driving the story is a compelling one and the performances given by the film’s mostly unknown cast (Nicholas Wilder, Tristan Risk, Dee Wallace, and Sarah Schoofs in the lead) are actually quite good and do a great job of drawing you into the narrative. Unfortunately, the movie just kind of ends abruptly and there’s never really a satisfying explanation for why the protagonist is so obsessed with his dead sister (his other family members have all moved on… why hasn’t he?). Still, it’s a nice showcase for the cast and the director’s skills which are not insubstantial.

18. The Lego Batman Movie by Chris McKay

When it was announced that Warner Bros. had decided to make a spin-off of The Lego Movie centered on Will Arnett’s comically self-obsessed version of Bruce Wayne there was a fair amount of skepticism. Arnett’s Batman was funny but would the joke perpetuate itself for a full movie without becoming dull? The good news is no and The Lego Batman Movie not only is funny but actually tells a pretty decent story. The bad news is that it’s still mostly forgettable.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with The Lego Batman Movie but I have to confess that nearly a year later I barely remember it. I remember all the plot beats and who all the characters were but I don’t remember how I felt watching it. I remember the narrative theme and thrust of the story (“it’s braver to let yourself feel things for other people than to go it alone”) and I appreciated the thought behind it but it didn’t stick with me. Maybe that’s because I already feel that message has been told in more interesting ways. Maybe it’s because the movie never quite escapes the impression of being a merchandising cash-in, unlike The Lego Movie. I liked The Lego Batman, but ultimately I can’t give it more than a solid C in retrospect.

17. They Remain by Philip Gelatt

The other feature film I saw at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, They Remain is an adaptation of Laird Barron’s “-30-,” directed by Philip Gelatt, perhaps best-known to science fiction fans as the screenwriter of Europa Report (an excellent film I also saw this year, but which came out many years earlier and so doesn’t qualify for this list). They Remain focuses on a pair of scientists (William Harper Jackson and Rebecca Henderson) who are sent by a nebulous corporate employer to study strange animal behavior at the former site of a murderous cult that made headlines years earlier. A dark and moody film, They Remain examines the nature of cults, the effects of isolation, and the relationship between humans and their environment.

I was pretty excited to watch They Remain, especially since it was the actual premiere of the film, shown to audiences for the first time. Europa Report really surprised me when I checked it out earlier this year and I was eager to see what Gelatt’s newest film looked like. For the most part, I was very pleased with what I got. Gelatt does a great job at getting into the head of his lead character and the sense of dawning paranoia and psychosis that begins to overtake him at the film’s story progresses. You feel, like him, that reality is unravelling around you. Unfortunately, the film also has a last-minute twist (which I assume is in the original story as well) that didn’t quite work for me and I never was quite sure whether the cult’s past activities were a red herring or an important plot point. Then again, part of the appeal is likely considering such questions for yourself.

16. Blade Runner 2049 by Denis Villeneuve

Man was there any movie this year sci-fi nerds were more hyped for and the general public just didn’t care about? Blade Runner 2049 has at this point become somewhat infamous for being hyped everywhere by every nerd site imaginable and then just sort of dropping to the sound of crickets chirping. Which isn’t to say it wasn’t very well-received in some quarters. Hyperbolically (in my opinion) some have proclaimed it to exceed the original Blade Runner (itself a notable flop at the box office but darling among sci-fi fandom) in every way. Personally? I found Blade Runner 2049 a beautiful and ambitious but ultimately failed endeavor towards profundity.

The frustrating thing about Blade Runner 2049 is that it starts a lot better than it ends (far from the only 2017 film to suffer from that problem). The opening sequence where K visits the old replicant to “retire” him (which remains a chilling euphemism) is terrific, as are many that follow as K tries to uncover the nature of the mystery he’s stumbled on to. It’s only towards the end of the film, about the time that Harrison Ford’s Deckard finally makes his appearance, that things really begin to fall apart and you realize the movie was full of good ideas it didn’t know what to do with (as well as many half-baked ideas that should have been shelved). It doesn’t help that virtually every female character in the film is either defined by her relationship to men, a sexist stereotype, or both. There were parts of Blade Runner 2049 that I really liked, but in the end I couldn’t love it.

15. Alien: Covenant by Ridley Scott

More than anything else on this list I think switching the places of Blade Runner 2049 and Alien: Covenant will be a controversial choice. The funny thing though is that they share a lot in common for both good and bad, which may not be entirely coincidental considering they’re both follow-ups to Ridley Scott’s most widely praised films (even though Scott declined to direct Blade Runner 2049 in favor of Covenant). And like many I was pretty disappointed by Covenant when it finally debuted, though perhaps for different reasons than many (I’m very much on record as having been a big fan of Prometheus).

But despite Covenant’s confused narrative—which clearly wanted to be a sequel to Prometheus but got sidelined into being a more direct Alien prequel instead—I have to say that it stuck with me more. After I walked away from Blade Runner 2049 I rarely gave it another thought, at least after working out my disappointment. But Covenant is full of interesting ideas it actually commits to: the interplay of creation and destruction, the wrath of the created against the creator, and the nature of what it means to love. And if nothing else, Michael Fassbender provided was immensely enjoyable both as the Oedipal David and the gentler, kinder Walter.

14. Logan by James Mangold

Rounding out the three Michael Green scripts of 2017 (the guy certainly got around last year) is Logan, which is an interesting case in how far you can stretch the conventional boundaries of the superhero genre. It’s often been said that superhero films aren’t really a genre, with Marvel’s own Kevin Feige arguing that Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man actually represent different kinds of movies and whether or not you buy that argument it’s hard to argue that Logan isn’t a very different style of film than not only the aforementioned three but also Wolverine’s two previous solo outings. It has been described as a Western (though that itself is a very broad genre) and even noir but a typical superhero film it clearly is not.

I really liked Logan quite a lot when I saw it and had relatively few qualms with it other than some minor complaints about the ending. Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, and Dafne Keen all give phenomenal performances and James Mangold was quite effective at weaving a story about aging, depression, and regaining hope. It didn’t really stick with me though and that’s one reason it doesn’t rate higher. Once I’d seen Logan I didn’t much think of it. Which is too bad because it’s very experimental style is something I’d like to see a lot more of in superhero films (more on that later).

13. Dunkirk by Christopher Nolan

There was a time when I was as big of a fan of Christopher Nolan as anyone. I was immensely impressed by Batman Begins when I saw it abroad in Britain back in 2005 and The Dark Knight only confirmed my intense affection for the way he reinvented Batman. It’s easy to forget now, given how slavishly DC and Warner Bros. have been (poorly) aping his style for over a decade now but Nolan’s take on the caped crusader was genuinely fresh when audiences first experienced it, wiping away not only the painful memories of Joel Schumacher’s take but also the still campy but more fun style of Tim Burton’s. And since then I’ve enjoyed pretty much every film Nolan has directed though with some reservations in a few cases.

I’m happy to say that Dunkirk is no exception: it’s a very solid piece of work that manages to be a war film where the war is actually horrifying and not simply a stage for rousing heroics. It’s fairly notable for not featuring any German characters at all: the enemy is entirely unseen which, although unconventional, is probably a far more accurate rendition of war than is usually portrayed in Hollywood films. The film does, however, fall victim to some of Christopher Nolan’s weaknesses as a director, lacking in compelling human characters to ground the action (though Cillian Murphy’s shell-shocked soldier, who goes unnamed, is a possible exception). Nonetheless, it’s worth seeing if you’re a fan of either Nolan or his frequent collaborator Hans Zimmer, who makes an already tense film even more riveting.

12. War for the Planet of the Apes by Matt Reeves

It’s often forgotten but the original Planet of the Apes film was not thought of as a particularly cheesy or silly film at the time. Released the same year as 2001: A Space Odyssey, the 1968 picture was considered thought-provoking and though the makeup has aged somewhat (the characters look more like humans than actual chimpanzees or orangutans) it remains pretty visually striking. So the fact that the new Planet of the Apes series (which is ambiguously framed as either prequels or a reboot) has garnered critical acclaim is less a course change than a course correction, getting back to the core of the first film and the novel it was based on before the more campy sequels came along.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes were startlingly good. Both dealt with the concept of consciousness, bioethics, the politics of revolution, and non-human animal rights with a deftness that one would rarely expect from a major studio blockbuster. War of the Planet of the Apes, unfortunately, is a bit more of what one might expect. It’s still good, but compared with the pitch perfect execution of Rise and Dawn, it falters slightly. The villain is a little too simplistic, the arc of Caesar a little too predictable, and the plot basically just moves in a circle so that it’s not really clear if anything was learned or gained from the experience. It’s still worth seeing to finish out the new trilogy, but I’ll admit I was disappointed.

11. Spider-Man: Homecoming by Jon Watts

Given his recent faltering (as much a consequence of Sony Pictures’ financial troubles as anything else), one might be forgiven for thinking Peter Parker was a spent force in the superhero business. If you’re not familiar with comics or the merchandising that drives the genre, it’d be easy to assume the web crawling had long since been eclipsed by Iron Man or Captain America. And indeed, there’s hints of that in Homecoming, which features some heavy guest starring by Tony Stark and lots of references to the other Avengers. But Homecoming also proves that in the right hands, Peter’s still got a lot of storytelling potential.

Spider-Man: Homecoming is relatively unambitious by Spider-Man movie standards but where it aims it mostly hits on target. Compared with the cheeky melodrama of the Sam Raimi / Tobey Maguire films or the Batman Begins-style reboot of the Marc Webb / Andrew Garfield films director Jon Watts aims for a fairly simple coming-of-age story with actor Tom Holland at its center. And he more or less nails that. Holland’s Peter is a little self-centered, but in that very typically adolescent way we all are at a certain age and you can tell he means well. It helps that Homecoming grounds its whimsy with Michael Keaton’s take on the Vulture, which although hardly accurate to the comics makes for one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s better villains.

10. Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 by James Gunn

When Guardians of the Galaxy originally debuted in 2014, no one would have guessed it would quickly become one of Marvel’s most celebrated films. Indeed, many industry analysts wondered what the hell Marvel was thinking, making a colorful space adventure powered by 1970s one-hit wonders and starring a talking tree and raccoon. But the skeptics were proved wrong and it’s probably no exaggeration to say that the Guardians now stand second only to Captain America and Iron Man in their impact on the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And so when a sequel was inevitably announced everyone got excited.

Perhaps it should prove no surprise than that Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 is perhaps the most hotly contested Marvel film since Avengers: Age of Ultron. I’ve seen people who’ve been moved to tears by it while I’ve also seen people who loved the first film bored and disappointed by it. It is probably no coincidence that Guardians also centers itself much more tightly on the first film’s nominal lead, Peter Quinn, and the mystery of his parentage. For many this resulted in a male-focused film that lost some of the diverse charm of the original. But others (most compellingly Charlie Jane Anders) argued it allowed the film to tell a compelling story about the dangers of toxic masculinity and patriarchal mythmaking. Personally, I fall somewhere in-between. I saw and appreciated what Volume 2 was doing but I can also acknowledge why some people felt it fell flat.

9. Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi by Rian Johnson

Is there any bigger franchise in the world than Star Wars? Marvel, also owned by Disney, is certainly gunning for the title but the cultural impact of Star Wars, I would argue, goes far beyond what Marvel has achieved (so far). Indeed, Star Wars is so big and so popular that it’s really hard to remember just how weird the first movie was. But it’s worth going back through old interviews with the cast and crew and noting how no one (with the possible exception of Steven Spielberg) thought the movie would be a success, let alone a runaway hit that would spawn a massive media empire.

I’m noted among my friends and followers as being something of a grumpkin when it comes to Episode VII: The Force Awakens. Part of that is just how safe J.J. Abrams played it, opting for a story that more or less replicated the beats of Episode IV: A New Hope and a setting that saw a scrappy rebellion once more engaged against a massive authoritarian empire (at the cost of essentially making the original films seem pointless). Perhaps because of that, Episode VIII was a breath of fresh air. After the fun but largely empty adventure of The Force Awakens, Rian Johnson throws us into a more complicated and at times admittedly dorky version of Star Wars… which is really what the franchise has always been at its best. Obnoxiously cute porgs, goofy humor, and odd pacing, I’ll take them all in a heartbeat when coupled with a story that actually has something to say about the Force and which takes its characters seriously enough to show them fail.

9. Okja by Bong Joon-hoo

Netflix has has a bad run in recent months, with a number of high-profile releases that were widely ridiculed or outright slammed by audiences and critics alike. But not all of Netflix’s “original” pictures (actually usually produced by outside parties and then distributed by Netflix) have gone over poorly and last year one picture in particular garnered critical acclaim: Okja, South Korean director Bong Joon-hoo’s newest feature. And it is certainly worth a watch.

Okja is, at its core, about a young girl and her friendship with a strange, fantastical beast dubbed a “super pig,” and raised as part of a massive corporate publicity stunt to raise support for their genetically engineered food. Of course, that’s simplifying quite a bit. In truth, Okja is an incredibly complicated film, one that can simultaneously criticize the packaged meat industry and animal rights activists, which can make you bond with the suffering of a digitally generated meat animal while also not feeling immediately grossed out when her friends and family sit down minutes later to eat some chicken stew. It’s crazy, it’s twisted, it’s unnerving, and it’s very, very good.

7. Coco by Lee Unkrich

Pixar is one of those studios that I always feel a little bit ambivalent about. They’re indisputably full of great talent and they’ve made some great classics, but often when a new film of theirs is released I’ll confess to usually feeling no great urge to see it. I think part of it is that they’ve been so successful that they crowd out most other animation studios and styles, to the point that even non-Pixar films often imitate their look and style. As a fan of traditional animation as well as animated films that aim at a more adult crowd, I’ll admit that bothers me a little. But every time I actually go and watch a Pixar film I’m almost always pleasantly surprised.

Coco is a really great example. I wasn’t exactly sure whether or not I’d enjoy Pixar’s take on Mexican spirituality, though I did make note of the fact that the studio made a special effort to do its research and hire Latin American performers. When I actually saw it though I was won over completely. Coco is an incredibly beautiful film, with rich music and a genuinely moving story about family, loss, and creativity. It is very easily the best Pixar movie I’ve seen in many years and quite competitive against the likes of Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles. So much for my biases.

6. It (Chapter One) by Andy Muschietti

I wasn’t always a horror fan. For a long time I actively avoided horror and was easily spooked by even the most timid forays into the genre. I’d convinced myself that as a person who was naturally anxious, who avoided the appearance of danger reflexively, horror films would ruin me. I eventually learned, however, that the opposite was true. Given the opportunity to experience fear within a confined, prepared context, I actually found I felt liberated. And I also gradually realized, looking back on my childhood, I’d actually always enjoyed getting a little bit scared from time to time.

It, based on one of horror giant Stephen King’s most famous novels, touches on some of that experience. It positions a group of children as the main characters, unusually for a horror film aimed at adults (as opposed to a children’s fantasy film with horror elements) but it largely works, in part because it reminds us how easy it is to feel as children that something lurks in the shadows that adults won’t tell us about. The film is not perfect—it telegraphs some of its scares too early and is uncomfortably comfortable with sexualizing its female lead, Beverly Marsh—but it is a very good example of a horror film that touches on the psychology of fear and the importance of confronting that which frightens us. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing how the second part turns out.

5. The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro

Technically, I didn’t see The Shape of Water until this year. But since it came out in 2017 and everyone’s going to be talking about it over the next few days I felt it was important to include. I often feel Guillermo del Toro is one of those directors who simultaneously gets too much and too little credit. He’s by far one of his generation’s best visual storytellers, with an expert eye for set design and special effects that is scarcely rivaled. He also sometimes tends to write simplistic stories with very easy to follow themes and easily identifiable heroes and villains. So I wasn’t sure what I’d think of The Shape of Water. The answer is that it may be del Toro’s most complex film yet.

That’s a heavy claim of course, given how excellent Pan’s Labyrinth is. But del Toro something does here he never does in any of his previous films (to my recollection) which is write actually complex, nuanced characters. The Asset, del Toro’s male romantic lead, is beautiful in that strangely monstrous way del Toro loves and full of love—but he’s also not above eating domestic animals, which reminds us he’s not human and a little dangerous. Colonel Strickland is a horrible human being in the same mold as Captain Vidal from Pan’s Labyrinth—but he’s also not completely dehumanized here and we get a sense of the pain and desperation that drives him as well. Of course, the real star is Elisa Esposito, the film’s mute heroine who nonetheless never feels voiceless and whose earnest desire to be accepted and loved is moving and universally relatable.

4. Get Out by Jordan Peele

Was it a good a year for horror or what? Not every film was a hit but there were certainly a lot of really high profile releases explicitly labeled as horror in 2017 as well as a number that arguably touch on the genre’s edges (such as Dunkirk, Blade Runner 2049, Okja, and The Shape of Water). And the year’s horror extravaganzas arguably started with Get Out, one of the most talked about movies of the year and the long-form directorial debut of renowned actor and comedian Jordan Peele.

What is there to say about Get Out without entirely spoiling its premise or the major surprises? That it’s a horror film viewed through the lens of a black man’s experience in a white-dominated culture? That’s true but seems reductive. That it manages to be both deeply disturbing and laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes within the span of a single scene? Also true. That it will probably make your skin crawl and cause you to question some of your very basic assumptions about the black experience if you’re not black? Definitely. Altogether, Get Out deeply deserves every accolade its earned and makes a very compelling claim for required viewing in the horror genre as well as the examination of race in American cinema.

3. Wonder Woman by Patty Jenkins

If there’s one movie that’s felt neglected at this year’s Academy Awards after generating a huge amount of conversation it is without a doubt Wonder Woman. After debuting to nearly universal praise and an immense box office return (making it the highest grossing DC Comics movie ever without Batman as the lead character) it has been curiously overshadowed in this year’s accolades, especially considering the arguably favorable timing in the age of Trump and #metoo. Perhaps it’s because there are so many other good films to choose from. But for my money Wonder Woman beats many of them.

Wonder Woman is not a perfect film but is definitely excellent. Featuring a compelling and passionate lead in Gal Gadot and built around a story about war, fear, and why helping people matters even if they’re flawed, Wonder Woman impressed and thrilled me… and I’m not even a fan of the character (nothing against her, I just haven’t read the source material). I also have to give the film a big thumb’s up for telling possibly the best love story in a superhero film since Captain America: The First Avenger and for doing so in a way that centered the female gaze. Also, as someone who’s been continually frustrated with how small Marvel’s gods seem, it was gratifying to see some truly mythic mythology in Wonder Woman.

2. Thor: Ragnarok by Taika Waititi

Of course, Marvel had to come along the same year and prove that they can do gods right. I’ve never been as much of a critic of the Thor films as many others have—I thought the first Thor, while silly also had a great message and genuinely great chemistry between its too leads (I for one will miss Natalie Portman, who’s sorely underrated). But there’s no denying they’ve often felt trapped between embracing the melodramatic and mythopoeic origins and staying true to the style and trappings of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But finally, with New Zealand’s talented son Taika Waititi, someone got it just right.

My greatest fear, going into Thor: Ragnarok was that, like previous Thor films it would be silly but forgettable. That the trailers seemed to be aping the style of the the Guardians of the Galaxy films did not do much to alleviate this feeling. But that was very much not the case. Far from being just a silly romp (which some critics still described it as), Ragnarok is actually a great story that examines the core of who Thor is, both as a Marvel superhero and as an actual, literal god. It also happens to be very funny. But ultimately it’s not the laughs that won me over. It’s Odin’s speech to his son about what it means to be a god, the responsibility that entails, and why it’s the ideas that matter, not the things or places we associate with them.

1. Atomic Blonde by David Leitch

As aforementioned it was a great year for horror. It was also very clearly a pretty good year for superheroes, with both Marvel and DC breaking out of their usual patterns. My number one favorite film was not, however, a superhero or horror film. It was a spy film, a genre for which I have great affection but which has become neglected in recent years. I am, of course, talking about Atomic Blonde.

I’ve never seen the John Wick films—a personal failing many of my friends are happy to remind me of—but if they’re anything like Atomic Blonde, directed by one of the men behind the camera of those films, I understand the love. Atomic Blonde is a pitch perfect spy film, combining intrigue, frenetic action, and the sexy thrills we’ve come to expect from the genre in a seamless fashion. It also happens to have come out right at the peak of 80s nostalgia but while the film makes extensive use of an 80s soundtrack for excellent effect, it doesn’t feel trapped by that style the way many other projects do. Atomic Blonde is without a doubt a modern film, doing things with cinematography and choreography I didn’t even know were possible. I can’t recommend it enough.

And that’s it me for me. I don’t even remotely expect my ranking to line up perfectly with any of yours (heck, my ranking changed several times writing this) but I’m curious. What did you love? What did you hate? Share your thoughts in the comments.

#film #2017 #ranking #my writing

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hermanwatts · 5 years ago

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Sensor Sweep: Bruce Pennington, Science Wonder Stories, H. Bedford Jones, Post Oaks and Sand Roughs

Reading (Rawle Nyanzi): By now it is well-known that reading in the US has declined across all demographic indicators. Whether it’s caused by television, the internet, video games, or boring literature classes, the drop-off in reading time is plain and obvious to see. Some even claim that we are entering a “post-literate” period where the written word is actively rejected in favor of images and sounds conveyed by electronic media.

Art (DMR Books): In the process of finding art for my new Gene Wolfe post, I noticed that the artist, Bruce Pennington, turns seventy-five years young today. Bruce has been a fixture on the UK fantasy/scifi scene since the late ‘60s. Check the link here to see what Bruce has been up to for the last five decades.

Science Fiction Pulp (Pulpfest): The first issue of SCIENCE WONDER STORIES hit the newsstands ninety years ago, on May 3, 1929. Behind the dramatic Frank R. Paul cover were included five short stories, the beginning of a serialized novel — “The Reign of the Ray” by Fletcher Pratt and Irvin Lester — a science quiz (with the answers in the issue’s stories), an essay contest, and “Science News of the Month.” SCIENCE WONDER STORIES ran for twelve issues dated June 1929 through May 1930. David Lasser was managing editor and Hugo Gernsback was publisher and editor-in-chief. Each issue had a fantastic Frank R. Paul cover.

History (Running Iron Report): On July 28, 2014, an American expat living in Sweden named Indiana Neidell (for real) launched a Youtube project titled The Great War. Its premise was to cover the events of the First World War, matching up the centennial of that seminal conflict week by week through November 11, 2018. Other segments included technology developed during the war, concurrent events like the Mexican Revolution and vignettes on remarkable personalities.

Pulp (DMR Books): The King of the Pulps died on this date seventy years ago today. Henry James O’Brien Bedford-Jones, better-known to his millions of fans during the pulp era as “H. Bedford-Jones,” passed away in his comfortable Beverly Hills home after forty years of living well off his pulp fiction.

Bedford-Jones was born in 1887 in Canada, though he spent most of his life in the U.S. Before his twenty-second birthday, he had sold his first story to one of the greatest pulps ever, Argosy. He went on to write over a million words of pulp adventure per year for decades.

Radio (Tangent Online): The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939-47) aired “The Adventure of the Dying Schoolboys” on November 9, 1946. During this incarnation of Sherlock Holmes on radio (the first coming in the early 1930s and the last running to 1959), Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce reprised their Universal studio film roles of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson for close to 220 episodes. Afraid of being typecast–and following the cancellation of further Holmes films–Rathbone wanted out of his radio role. Though the show’s sponsor at the time, Petri Wines, offered him a generous bump in compensation if he would continue, Rathbone declined.

Robert E. Howard (REH Foundation): The REH Foundation Press is proud to present Post Oaks and Sand Roughs & Other Autobiographical Writings. Outside of the boxing stories, whenever Robert E. Howard used the name “Costigan” the autobiographical implications weren’t far behind. This volume collects those “other” Costigan tales, including the title novel as well as the previously unpublished early draft. It also contains other items that reveal details about the people and places in Howard’s life, including the “Lost Plains” stories, items from The Junto, personal essays, and more, all restored to the original text, where available.

Popular Culture (Rawle Nyanzi): I believe that all professionally produced franchises are either SJW -converged or soon will be, given enough time.

Let’s run down some prominent examples:

– Star Wars, the biggest name in sci-fi, attacked its own legacy and its most loyal fans to the point where its most recent movie flopped — the first flop in the franchise’s history.

Fiction (John C. Wright): From Book 1: My name is Officer Thomas Nolan, and I am a saint.Tommy Nolan lives a quiet life. He walks his beat – showing mercy to the desperate. Locking away the dangerous. Going to church, sharing dinner with his wife and son. Everyone likes Tommy, even the men he puts behind bars.

Then one day a demon shows up and he can smell it. Tommy can smell evil –real evil. Now he’s New York City’s only hope against a horrifying serial killer that preys on the young and defenseless.

Fiction (Elgin Bleeker): John Buchan’s 1915 novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps, is one of the grand old spy adventures of yesteryear and is still a pretty great read.

Most people will know the plot thanks to Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 movie version, “The 39 Steps.”

A spy with information vital to the British government is killed in Richard Hannay’s apartment. The police think Hannay did it and hunt him down. The real culprits – enemy spies – think Hannay knows their secret plans, and set out to kill him.

Cartoons (Broadswords and Blasters): As a kid growing up in the 1980s I was naturally attached to cartoons. That’s one of the defining characteristics of late Gen-Xers/early millenials (I’ve seen us referred to as a crossover generation, but isn’t everyone really?). For me, those cartoons were GI Joe, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and Voltron.

Pulp Awards (Pulpfest): The PulpFest Organizing Committee is pleased to announce that fifteen individuals have been nominated by their peers for the 2019 Munsey Award. The honor is named after Frank A. Munsey — the man who published the first pulp magazine. This annual award recognizes an individual or institution that has bettered the pulp community, be it through disseminating knowledge about the pulps or through publishing or other efforts to preserve and foster interest in the pulp magazines we all love and enjoy. Congratulations to all of the nominees for this prestigious award, presented annually at PulpFest.

Comic Books (Rough Edges): Several years ago, I read the graphic novel GRAVEDIGGER: HOT WOMEN, COLD CASH, written by Christopher Mills, and enjoyed it a lot. These days, Mills is putting together an entire line of comics called Atomic Action, which takes public domain superheroes and puts them in new stories written and drawn in the classic style of the Sixties and Seventies (which means they’re right in my wheelhouse). The first issue of these new comics, SPACE CRUSADERS #1, came out recently, and it’s great fun.

Paperback Horror (Kirkus Reviews): If you’ve spent any amount of time in a used bookstore, you’ve undoubtedly seen the horror paperbacks section. Adorned with decades-old book spines that are predominantly black, they boast covers that are simultaneously creepy, kitschy and remarkably appealing. Those books never fail to evoke a sense of nostalgia and—I’ll admit it—appreciation.

Grady Hendrix shared that same appreciation with readers in 2017 with the publication of the Bram Stoker Award-winning love-letter to 70s and 80s horror fiction, Paperbacks From Hell.

Anime (Karavansara): I have often written in the past about the impact that the first series of Mobile Suit Gundam had on my generation and on me in particular. I think the best evidence of how much it impacted me is the fact that I am still watching the cartoons – no longer as a start-struck teenager, not as an otaku (I never was that), but with an eye to narrative structure, themes, character arcs, patterns.

Gaming (Niche Gamer): One of the hardest aspects of game development is standing out from other games of the same genre. This is further compounded when you are heavily inspired by a particular style of game. Enter Hellmut: The Badass from Hell. A twin-stick shooter like Enter the Gungeon with a style roughly based on a more light-hearted classic Doom. Comparisons to both those games quickly end once you start to play. Does Hellmut evolve from other games in the genre, or is it a mutation better off being sterile?

Sensor Sweep: Bruce Pennington, Science Wonder Stories, H. Bedford Jones, Post Oaks and Sand Roughs published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

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