#movietalk

[whatether]

the substance would make an INCREDIBLE play!!! the emotions r INTENSE, theres INSANE practical fx potential, + 2 actresses for e & s tagging in and out imagine buckets & buckets of dessicated shrimp shells & empty casings suffocating the audience i want this soooo bad

[charlie-grusin]

Alien (1979) : Movietalk # 10

The rare instance where this could’ve easily been a PG-rated joint – at least then Kenner wouldn’t’ve had a hard time making bank on this then-hot-n-ready new monster property. I’ve confided with some of my fellow buckaroos on Letterboxd before that the first and last time I saw Alien was years ago through a blown-to-fullscreen local cable edit but I never figured the real deal (a THX digitally-mastered widescreen dual-layer disc as Jonesy intended) would still be just as tame – what they do, trim out those split-second frames of blood and guts goulash to get a TV-14?

Maybe it’s time, maybe it’s age, maybe it’s the dwindling susceptibility of magic we always suspect from our older selves before it punches us square in the face and makes children of us all again, but one thing’s for sure it’s not because the Xenomorph is seemingly forevermore the Kenner action doll. Even if we find the form of the monster too recognizable to be stunned by the classic horror catatonic “fear of the unknown” ever again, we the youth can still find in these originating stories the model-works for said fear, the grooves of the First Time so orthophonic we can experience that discomfort firsthand because cinema is one of the finest examples of art, the dichotomic timeless record. Night of the Living Dead (1968) – though the Zombie is all too chummy and the ghouls seem so quaint to the advanced rot-decay décor of today with all their pale-to-the-bone complexions and torn or absent garbs – is still one of the most frightening and harrowing experiences ever caught on film, an eternal late ‘60s that’s perhaps one if not the definite way to inscribe the undead arrogance of its originating country for the ages; horror often comes from the fear of death (in this dark territory it’s practically a food group), but Night is not so much about the moment when death happens as it is the moment we know, in dreadful, absolute clarity, that the great and final Death walks towards us all – the moment when we discover in the futile comforts of our strange new homes that incident becomes epidemic, that this time there shall be no rescue or course-correction this time, not because no one’s there to save us but because Death is now Us the familiar – Death from panic, Death through distrust, Death in the face of kin that eviscerates each other from the threadbares of existence to mounds of nothing flesh. And we witness all this through Barbra’s own shock catatonics, the hopelessly wishful feeling of Judy and Tom, and the ultimate and futile death claw-clash between Ben and the Coops because when the creeping death comes there’s no time to be boss- only time enough to look to the sky.

And Alien, using Night as a template as far as setting itself within a single locale and having only seven characters to spare, makes some of those attributes its own – the fear of death is the fear of rape and vice versa (a weaponized form of reproduction and intercourse that turns the body against you with unfamiliar intruding lifeforms) – yet this is also about as far as the movie goes in successfully replicating its effects. The moments where the primal fear is realized are plenty evident, whether it be the facehugger impregnation cycle as surrogated through Kane, the moment when Ash tries to suffocate Ripley with a rolled-up porno mag, or that final battle of titillation between Ripley and the Alien on the escape shuttle craft (the erect mouth-rodded tongue retreats to its fleshy-industrial folds, the perceived-damsel final girl taking up the armor and spear gun) but they all feel so far in between of everything else, a fact made all the more pronounced by the surely-studio-suggested near-two-hour runtime and its unquestioning adhesion to the script’s infrastructure. By slasher standards the characters function as you’d expect from the trade – they have roles and standards that arrive and act on the dot as they do within the confines of that power plant submarine city – but function is also all they do; they work but nothing else; they are pawns to the plot so for the grace of the plot they must die. And maybe that’s ultimately the point, the subtext political to Night’s exhumations of the American condition: that the capital industrial complex erodes nearly everything of thought except for the instance of enacting harm and being hurt, a loss of life and company that for Company’s best interests are forever withered down to the cold equations (number of staff, number of product… let’s cue that ratio, please).

Sounds cool, but I hate to break it that I got as much out of that here as I did reading the quick and sparse synopsi-copy on the back of the Alien Quadrilogy disc set. I understood Parker’s anger over the death of Brett, yet when Brett was snatched up to proto-Cenobite Heaven (no thanks to Jonesy) I realized I barely knew the guy. Or anyone for that matter, except for Ash – and even then his suspicious nature is merely another function, not a character, as is the shock-reveal of him being an extinguisher-intolerant spum-bot. Shock for shock effect can work and has worked, but even if there weren’t any depth or realization there would still be the approach and the method to consider, the very stroke of the splatter and shade of the blind corner shadow that says enough to become its own depth. Maybe it’s subjectivity, maybe time really hasn’t been so kind after all, or maybe it’s just between this and Blade Runner that I don’t care all that much for Ridley Scott the director. This is Texas Chain Saw Massacre for space truckers, a Conquest of the Sex Pest to Star Trek: The Motion Picture’s Groovy Sex Odyssey… how is it still this milquetoast and stuck-up!? It has my sympathies, but I too am left feeling groggy for the cryo-bed. Wake me up for the next drop.

[themovieguys]

We watched PATRIOT GAMES last night forgetting what a full-on, check-all-the-boxes, greatest hits of Harrison Ford awesomeness it is! After PRESUMED INNOCENT & REGARDING HENRY, this was a movie full of everything you love about Ford and everything he can do. We'll talk about it on the show May 1st! TheMovieGuys.net #TheMovieGuys #comedy #movietalk #opinions #movies #movieguys #hollywood #entertainment #commentary #cinema #filmmaking #PaulPreston #podcasts #flicks #filmbuff #films #cinephile #moviepodcast #movienews #celebrityinterviews #moviereviews #PatriotGames #HarrisonFord #TheFordFiesta #PresumedInnocent #RegardingHenry https://www.instagram.com/p/CrW8DfbPLtO/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[moviefanforlife]

Film fans! Check out the podcast Shoulders of Giants!

It is a "What if..?" movie sequel pod, where the hosts (two immeasurably likeable movie lovers!) discuss films and pitch ideas for movie sequels they've always wanted to see...

Goonies 2! Back to the Future 4!! Howard the Duck!!!! and so very much more!

Find them on Apple, Spotify or at shoulderspod.com

Engage!

[infenity360]

[gerimi]

🎬 Movie reboots & Sequels Talk while DRAWING!

Hanging out, Digitally painting, and chatting about film franchises like Alien, Predator, & Jurassic Park.

[charlie-grusin]

I can’t help but wonder if there wasn’t some precedent to this settled as far back as Indiana Jones: the first two films pretty much followed up to the ambitions Spielberg had had in making his own James Bond, but once we got to The Last Crusade we started to see Indy procure some personal growth as a character, discovering there was more to life than artifacts and that there was more at stake than the preservation of history from those stinkin’ Nazis (that being, well, life; human documents; the living present). It was a complete far cry from what was typically the norm for most pulp/pulp-inspired heroes and that was the intention - this, after all, was meant to be a last great hurrah for Dr. Jones from Spielberg and Lucas, who at that point felt it was time to give rest to their brash little character of high adventure - yet it also became a problem whenever it was inevitably decided that Indy should return: there was this obligation that only S&L could be in charge of sailing the ship, that only Harrison Ford could play Indiana Jones because he has become so recognizable, so defined as a character from the last time, that any other face or voice to that name would be thought of as blasphemous.* They could give the Indy character as many adventures and scenarios as they wanted in tie-in books, comics, video games and what have yous (and they certainly have), but when it came to the films themselves they eventually couldn’t keep hold of that luxury - it also didn’t help how heated (ha) in controversy Temple of Doom became on its release with its over-the-top violence but still - as long as Spielberg, Lucas & Ford were deeply involved with the series they had no choice but to further age out the character, to mellow out its edges, to repeat those same notes of hurrah like a stuck vinyl record before it became too depressing to play. There was a bit of a tease near the end of Crystal Skull that perhaps Mutt could become a new star hero with his own set trajectory, but they not only since neglected to follow along that thread they also literally killed it off by having Mutt killed off-screen in Vietnam; unless they decide to really revitalize the series (like, I don’t know, maybe give Alden Ehrenreich a call back?) then it will either stay on the flatlines or worse, it will eventually find a few inches more to grind itself and everyone else away - what we are seeing now with the MCU, essentially, is that Indy stagnation being shifted over to maximum overdrive, powered not by the changing tides of its head creators but by a relentless churning corporate meat machine with a grind-em-till-you-drop mentality.

I was quite amused by the whole RDJ as Dr. Doom reveal as a moderate outsider looking in: it’s very much a cry of desperation but it’s also such an outlandish idea that I bet a lot of people are gonna latch onto it anyways in the same manner a train wreck involving nuclear materials can’t help but be seen (of which I may cry myself guilty on that charge). Then when I thought about it (about that feeling in particular) it was like, Well of course - Marvel Studios is pulling the same old schtick Lucasfilm had done with bringing Emperor Papaltine back for The Rise of Skywalker, complete with bringing along the same array of directors who have recently made Disney some strong bank! Abrams might as well start inviting the Russos over to some clubs at this point

It’s absolute damage control; they’re starting to see the smoke that’s been building up since 2019 and they’re willing to pull anything but the stops to stop it. That 2026 release date feels like it’s only delaying the inevitable.

* I don’t know exactly how inclined British pop culture is to maintaining a kind of spiritual status quo - I can only make vague hints and gestures, and because I’m an American who hasn’t traveled as far around the world as Florida I’m likely dead wrong on all of them - but considering how willing the British side has been with giving new faces and identities to the likes of The Doctor, James Bond, even Sherlock Holmes, and how we aren’t, I can’t help but get the feeling that (amongst other things) we have made our pop culture too religiously sanctified. No wonder we brew so many cults.

obviously there are a bunch of issues with the MCU and I'm not gonna sit here and try to convince everyone that MCU movies are cinema or whatever so don't get what I'm gonna say twisted. I do find their kinda mainstay in cultural media and the dominance they had to be interesting, especially now in an era where the MCU is undeniably falling off and struggling. just as like a cultural analysis I find that interesting and everyone has their opinions of why it happened.

my opinion/theory on why the MCU just crashed is because they sort of forgot what it means to be telling a comic book story, especially a marvel comic book story. Because I've read thousands of issues of various marvel series at this point, across tons of different eras and events, and the thing that makes them last (which is also a thing that drives me personally crazy and I hate so much) is that the status quo doesn't really change. Or when it does, it lasts for a few arcs or years at most and then gets reverted back to the norm eventually. Like the fact that everything is pointless and nothing is a risk is something I loathe, but it is admittedly what keeps them going. If someone just got into comics, they can pick up a modern issue and expect to find Spider-man or Captain America or whoever. They may be introduced to new characters, but the big ones will show up eventually.

And after the last Avengers movie, like half of the mainstay cast are just gone. Which as someone who likes good stories, I think is a good opportunity (which is arguably being wasted but idk I haven't watched any MCU thing in years) to actually shake things up and develop characters that mainstream people are less familiar with and give them a chance to shine and tell interesting stories. But that's not why people like marvel comics.

People like marvel comics because if they want to read about Iron Man, they can pick up any random issue about Iron Man and it will most likely be the Iron Man they know. People like the status quo, and Marvel has never been high literature and has always basically been pulp storytelling, and it gave people status quo and familiarity. And I think Marvel Studios figured this out waaayyy too late.

Because if Marvel actually understood what people like about the comics, they would have embraced recasting major roles from the start. They wouldn't have tied characters' identities so strongly to their actors and would have made it clear that characters can and will continue on with different faces. There is no reason why Tony Stark needs to be RDJ or Steve Rogers needs to be Chris Evans. They would have had plans to not write these characters out of existance the second actors wanted to exit or died or were fired or any of the various reason why actors are no longer involved with the MCU. Hell they had precedent. They didn't have a problem replacing Terrence Howard with Don Cheadle, who are very different looking people who give very different performances, but we know why they felt ok with that recasting but won't recast any of their boys named Chris...

Anyway it seems like they realized that general audiences don't actually like change if its permanent and are learning the wrong lessons with the Doom casting nonsense and the fact that they seem to keep changing what the new story is to fit what they think audiences want.

I'm fine with the MCU dying off and its probably better for media that it does, but again I'm just kinda interested in the fumble from like an objective standpoint because it seemed like they just locked themselves into eventual failure in such a stupid way. Like they could have told the same safe representative Avengers storylines for decades and wouldn't have a meltdown every time an actor in a major role needed to be removed from production if they just accepted that people would be recast as needed. It would be worse for actors and it would be worse for movies in general probably, but it would have kept the MCU churning out pulp like the comics do to this day. But now people are realizing its not just pulp but pulp they don't want and its gonna kill the MCU eventually.

[itsparanoiaa]

they should film like almost all live action anime’s in the style of scott pilgrim bc now i’m realizing a lot of them lack the chaotic silly ness

[cat-brrr]

They are on da date

[unitedcba]

Easily the most underrated movie of this year and one of the best from Netflix! 👌🍿

[whatether]

men across from me laughing at monstrous elisuebeth while im crying my eyes out

[charlie-grusin]

Project Monster ("The Gryphon", "Living with Monsters" and "Shelter 54") : Movietalk # 07

What follows is a post originally published on Letterboxd as a "review" for The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim. It has been slightly edited to read as a standalone.

I believe there is inherent magic in the holidays the same way Werner Herzog believes in the inherent exotic beauty of nature. Before me now the sky is a gray blanket with no tear or end, and though these trees have not faced a wildfire in these parts they nonetheless look dead to the world – even after a sudden months’ worth of rains after an equally punishing drought cycle a lot of them still have that ashen-white smother to them. We have had days of fog (the kind multi-appendaged leviathans could migrate through undetected by the naked eye) but the snow hasn’t caught up to us – year after year it seems to arrive later when you least expect it – yet I also doubt when it does it’s going to look pleasant enough over a mug of Folgers. It always comes close to a wasteland out there, everything so blaring white it hurts to even look, yet all the same I hope it stays and goes on time. I hope we still remember this burning planet by the seasons.

But do not take me as that kind of antidepressant, for I too know my limits. Whenever I stand in that winter wonderland when it comes (if it comes), I can always hear some part of the mechanized world driving down the highway not too far from here (this, of course, could merely be false echoes carried by the winds – an imitative ambiance of the bitter cold – yet I choose to believe in the former). To be more precise I instead believe that the magic which exists this time of the year is only a result of our own creative endeavors – we summon the spirits. You know “Little Saint Nick” by the Beach Boys? That’s a pretty good song, those guys could never let you down, but you also know Johnny Mathis’s “We Need A Little Christmas”? (probably – you may’ve heard it blasting out the speakers as many times as Andy Williams and Mariah Carey this cycle but that’s beside the point.) That’s a jingle I can get behind. Why? Because unlike the many other Christmas tunes out there that seem to imply the Most Wonderful Time of the Year appears as naturally as a growth of poppy fields, this one affirms to us that Yes there is indeed some magic, but we must first nurture it from within ourselves – we must haul out the hollies and slice up the fruit cake before we can ever take the sweets of laughter. Even though it is first and foremost a Christmas Song, it’s perhaps the one I’ve come across that, after chewing on it for a loop or two, might not only be timeless but universal: if we can not find joy in the joys offered to us then it is imperative we make our own. All those who disagree, all others pay cash.

So naturally (and especially the case this year) I seek my own through giant monsters and nuclear annihilation. I may not be a perfect blue downer but I sure drive fucking nuts – ever tried reading Off Season on Thanksgiving and/or Christmas? Try reading Paul Ham’s Hiroshima Nagasaki.

The last time we were on the subject of Godzilla fan projects we talked about TAIYAKI’s “Gojira ゴジラ - blender animation”, a masterwork which still stands as such a high standard in the current fandom scene (if no one has yet to transfer it to tapes by now they really oughta should- like, now), and as part of that discussion I mentioned along with how the short replicated many elements from that budding era of tokusatsu infancy down to a T that it also successfully infused it with a healthy pinch of the analog horror genre, notably because I’d felt compared to the numerous other projects (original or otherwise) which have enveloped themselves from the analog cloth that “Gojira ゴジラ” was one of the few rare instances where its inclusion not only worked but made sense (the splice-n-tightening together of chronological events, the props of machinery making up for the near-absence of life... all things prevalent in Godzilla (1954) to begin with). To me a lot of analog horror in general doesn’t really cut it, and there is often the occasion where I find myself thinking how I missed when this shit used to be called “ARGs” or “online web horror series”. I guess they still are, in a way, but the connotations that ought to be abundant in something as seemingly potent (and popular) as the very name “analog horror” suggests are as spread and laid thin as anyone believing “liminal” and “eldritch” are still usable adjectives of praise. Some of it’s in the execution, some of it’s in what they’re even executing, but while it is still in ways a vibrant, youthful field it is also one which garners more than many mixed results... the kind that more often than not are blasted to unbelievably astronomical popularity in the Netosphere thanks to the likes of reaction-streaming and “analytical” FULLY EXPLAINED channels (the former unequivocally being one of the most despicable, repugnant species thriving in the rancid entertainment bubble and a bane of our existence undeserving the heat-death we need a little snappy happy ever after). But that is also not to say the genre is entirely a lost cause – like pretty much any other field of art which might seem at odds with our tastes, it is merely a case of seeking out the diamonds in the rough. And there are diamonds, my friends: Piggy Soda’s Dog Nightmares is top notch horror that brilliantly plucks at the nerves of the heartfelt all the while striking the same nodes of primal tension I haven’t truly felt since Marble Hornets, and UrbanSPOOK’s The Painter is a masterpiece of aggression which has successfully traced (and pushed) the very boundaries of horror that have once been laid in full through the cinematic lineages of Roger Watkins, Tobe Hooper, Fred Vogel and the rest of that extreme variety. We just gotta spot it... mine it... sieve it from the rocks and the crud and hold it out for all to see.

Like the creepypasta and ARGs before it, there has been a rise of a sub-sector in the analog horror field which has made for a fascinating crossover of online realms and mediums; once when it seemed that something like the nearly four-hour Seal of Nehahra or Altered Vistas’ adaptation of the TV Century 21 Daleks comic strips would only come and go like comets, now it seems that more creators (some of them younger, many of them wielding tools more accessible than ever before) are taking the reins to make their fervent mash-ups come true and set them out in due random course to wherever the internet and their corresponding fandoms shall take them. How many franchises have been played with in this new liberating free-for-all is not exactly certain (or rather I haven’t been keeping track at all, I’ll admit) but as I’m starting to understand it is becoming an increasingly intriguing one. Thus far there have been a plethora of Five Nights at Freddy’s analog horror series independently produced – this may not surprise you as much as there is an equal if not greater amount of its weight in pseudo-Backrooms ecto-matter clogging up the pipes – yet there has also become a growing number of analog series and/or found footage shorts based on the Jurassic Park and (you guess it) Godzilla series. It’s quite a ways from the likes of the NES Godzilla Creepypasta blog, yet at the same time not a surprising one: both franchises are strictly based in the science fiction genre and (in the case of Godzilla)have many fantastical elements often leaning towards pure fantasy, both hold strains of the horror genre reaching as far back as their original manifestations and (if this be too sacrilegious to admit) both of them also share a similar trait as part of their mass appeal as FNAF’s: they consist of vast rosters of strange beastly creatures possessing their own unique and oftimes colorful characteristics and traits. It’s possible the genre may see the same amount of intellectual parodies as its preceding modes of online horror have touched upon before (I write this in blind ignorance of the seemingly inevitable My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic analog horror series which surely must be out there), but since many of these aspiring projects have ventured into genres that have been heavily practiced in the visual and the mainstream (the kaiju/giant monster flick, in this case) one can but wonder where we may go from here. Perhaps analog horror can grow to become godfather to an open array of analog genres, each as pronounced as the next…

It is not a swift possibility, but after watching the shorts that compose Tarrell Christie’s Project Monster series thus far, I cannot believe in any further suggestion that denotes this as an impossibility (if we’re lucky it just might become inevitable). It would be easy to label it as another analog horror series but if the parenthesized subtitle (Found Footage) means anything, it’s that the exact genre limitations which Tarrell Christie plays with thus far are potentially near-fluid (though this could also imply directly to the kaiju genre as a whole, which encompasses everything from science fiction to fantasy and all in-between). “Shelter 54”, the most recent of the lot, can definitely fall under analog horror and further into all of horror’s many subgenres, but when we look back to “Living with Monsters” and “The Gryphon” we realize it is only a sewed-in patch of a larger and ever-growing canvas consisting of shades and flavors that have been dreamt of by many a vivid giant monster fan but which had yet been this thoroughly materialized. If you’re familiar with Matt Frank’s collection of synthesized Toho redesigns then you’d already get a gist of where Project Monster’s going with this: it is a combination tribute, a hybrid remix of not just the entire Godzilla oeuvre but of all the monsters (all of em!) all in one big colossal clash of alternate and meta-history the likes of which even God has never seen.

Ever since Godzilla was called from the ice bucket to settle a score with that other king of the monsters, his journey since has been of many detours and little exits – he’s held beef with relatives, made a few enemies, adopted a kid to call his own and has made some sort of inner peace with being part-time humanitarian and all-around bastard terror – his every flux on film dictated in tune to the times more than anything resembling a chronology or (god forbid) a cinematic universe.* This hasn’t stopped anyone from attempting a plea towards an overall narrative cohesion, however: the Millennium series is amusing to examine on its own based on how nearly every installment was made as a direct sequel to the original, but before this was the Heisei series, which managed to draw an escalating chronicle of “VS films” from the once-seemingly conclusive end of Return of Godzilla, and more recently there was Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Legendary-Toho’s televised method of crafting a throughline between the scattershot tones and ideas of the Monsterverse. These latter two have been the closest the series has ever flirted with the idea of upholding a material timeline, much of it opting instead to adhere to Godzilla’s past encounters from the Showa era as a kind of spiritual myth – if there is undeniable proof Godzilla exists, then that in turn proves a Mothra and/or King Ghidorah must also exist – and although Monarch has thus far shown the makings of a defined Godzilla mythosby weaving much of its drama from a post-WWII atomic-age world to the echoing ramifications of the present day, it still stands to see whether it will truly blast the Monsterverse’s stratospheres towards something wild and extraordinary beyond its growing interconnectivity to the films. Even if its future seasons should never go far it will not be a total lose – for one, it may still stand as a solid work of SF television as long as it manages to keep its own footing, and as long as blazed and daring minds such as Tarrell Christie’s dare to make the impossible, we won’t need to worry. We summon the spirits, after all.

* And this is one of the major reasons why Godzilla has stood as a One and True successful franchise for seventy years, really – the character is simple, flexible, malleable and all around invincible.

It all starts as simple enough as the conceit of “The Gryphon”: what if the two American live-action Godzillas (the Emmerich and the Edwards, the lizard and the elephant) teamed up to fight that unfought enemy from Jan De Bont’s earlier fell-through attempt at an All-American Goji? It’s not as far off a concept as, say, Vrahno’s “Zilla vs. Gorosaurus” which posits how two of the most saurian-looking kaijus on the planet may square off in a brawl (spoilers: in the gnarly Vrahno tradition), yet what wraps this short off in the nicest, most efficient of bows is quite literally in the delivery. Though it stands first and foremost as a respectful tribute to Godzilla’s American incarnations (instead of introducing G’98 early into the fight so he can be immediately dispensed with by the 2014 Goji for some overused joke/easing of the typical fan-hatred salivations the film opts to treat them as agreeable cousins open to go tag team on this Gryphon fucker), the added angle of the battle being documented through a variety of on-ground and in-the-sky video sources (some meeting unfortunate ends due to the collateral carnage) elevates it a notch higher as a tribute to the modern day American kaiju by using Cloverfield’s own found footage approach as its narrative frame, using every camera’s panicked operator to capture every turn of this Big Apple tide. True that this probably would’ve been a more complete tribute had it included the Jaegers from Pacific Rim or even the Cloverfield monster on top of everything else, but not only does their absence here not deter from the short’s overall effective charm, it is also an admittedly thankful thing they were (it doesn’t take much to reach an overabundance, especially when it comes to fan projects). No, all you really need is pure human panic and death while Godzilla, Godzilla and the Gryphon duke it out in New York by slamming, tackling, and tearing each other all the way up the Empire State to Mount Kilimanjaro in a quick-n-easy four minutes; the world comes later.

And come it does: if there is a star favorite among the current three it would certainly go to “Living with Monsters”, a seventeen-minute crash-course grind-fest through early modern monster history that not only unfurls more of the world of “The Gryphon” on that greater canvas but also indeed blows that stratosphere up to high heaven with what its world entails for any and every giddy and unsuspecting giant monster fan alive (if you were really concerned why there were Godzilla-like creatures existing on the same plane of existence in the first place don’t worry – now there’s freakin’ Gorgo). Whereas “The Gryphon” presented its found footage as matter-of-fact visual documentation brought to you by the series’ rendition of the Heisei films’ U.N.G.C.C. (United Nations Godzilla Countermeasures Center), we now have another piece in the presentation mix, a frame within a frame – subjectivity, a point of reference, an interpretive state of mind – for what we get here is an archived glimpse (the good old sequence meshing of monsters roaming across stock wartime-disaster footage) of an alternate ‘50s being besieged by giant monsters by way of a newsreel borderlining on the exploitative brought to you by- what’s this... Denham Pictures!? Indeed as the in-world copyrighted title card and historical key points make it clear right away, we are being granted all this through the veils of one Carl Denham – yes, that Carl Denham (a Denham who just so happened to find immeasurable success releasing a Raw, Uncut, Not One Scene Omitted jungle picture starring that most unusual eight wonder) – granting us an alternate history where all of cinema’s greatest monsters have appeared in this world (in a very meta twist of fate) through the very tidings which has inspired their mythical upbringings onto ours (as Kong was found by way of forced inhabitation and Ingagi, so too was Godzilla awakened through the testing of hydrogen bombs), a history in ways more in tune to our own than the likes of the one seemingly lips-sealed for the longest time by the Monsterverse’s own highly-secretive Monarch org: it is a cruel and sudden and most violent of existences to ever dare uphold any semblance of normalcy from which only a few may profit and of which many shall suffer (one moment you’re having a time of your life at a live dinosaur exhibit, the next being swept and torn in the debris of a tidal-wave as behemoths churn themselves away to crab-meat). And what a better way to illustrate this bitter truth than to have a few Max Steiner-types mickey mouse every moment of the action, the perfect cherry on the mondo top along with those lingering shots of the dead and dying left after a monster brawl’s wake! It’s shocking, revealing, befitting to the sensitivities of the era from which it sources its black-and-white griminess, and it is also one of the two greatest examples of that yet-to-be-discovered subgenre of analog alternate history alongside Alex Casanas (M4NTICOR3)’s “DEANDEMOCRACY”.

Yet this is not all to say that Christie’s latest, “Shelter 54”, is found lacking.** Rather it’s quite an advancement from the previous shorts, using the exact frame-within-frame as “Living with Monsters” with the simple premising of “The Gryphon” to finally bring us at last to some damn good analog kaiju horror. There’s definitely a whiff of Gemini Home Entertainment’s “MONTHLY PROGRESS REPORT” if you really lean in there, but do not let it be mistaken that on top of being a slight opportunity for the short to suddenly pull some deep cuts out of Godzilla: The Series (Skeetera? El Gusano Gigante?? apologies for my lack of knowledge I only have the Monster Wars DVD) that this is also a retelling of the doomed plant-human-hybrid Biollante myth which manages to tie along references to Hedorah the Smog Monster and (perhaps crazily, insanely enough) the Godzilla from Shin Godzilla (who appropriately shares much of the same attributes as Hedorah’s to begin with) to reel itself back on one of the most major underlying themes of the Godzilla franchise (something which compared to more familiar fan works of the fandom is an absolute rarity, an unsurprising few too far); much like how “Living with Monsters” was basically Mondo Kaiju, “Shelter 54” is told through the lens of what appears to be a U.N.G.C.C.-certified public safety film (one seemingly close to that icky true crime tone as that one major classic of the genre, “Will You Be Here Tomorrow?”) that, though showing all the major circumstances leading up to the creation of this universe’s Biollante and her tragic prolonging existence, ultimately wraps itself up with something as seemingly tidy as a public relations band-aid: we fixed up the shelters and passed a few regulations but we have yet to figure that as bad as it is to assault Mother Nature with our weapons and waste it is perhaps no different or even worse of an offense to take advantage of her with the intention of culling her to our very whims. We after all are an imperfect species – if the best of our highest minds can only lead to senselessness, then what says the world when they really try to save it? It’s a quieter, much somber short, and that’s because it had to be: it could’ve easily crept on you just to rattle you by the shoulders with some loud all-out assault, but this time it chose best to leave you hanging by the threads of unease, letting those spirits linger long towards the sunset and into the night.

** Though I can’t help but find it somewhat pale though this could be strictly preferential – I mean come on, analog alternate history’s right there!

[themovieguys]

Paul booked a tour today so there will be no streaming episode of The Ford Fiesta, but feel free to jump back into the archives and check out old episodes! In the meantime, here's a first-look at Harrison Ford as Thunderbolt Ross. Gotta be, right? The mustache gives it away. TheMovieGuys.net #TheMovieGuys #comedy #movietalk #opinions #movies #movieguys #hollywood #entertainment #commentary #cinema #filmmaking #PaulPreston #podcasts #flicks #filmbuff #films #cinephile #moviepodcast #movienews #celebrityinterviews #moviereviews #TheFordFiesta #HarrisonFord #ThunderboltRoss https://www.instagram.com/p/CrJFFvLLJYn/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[takanuru]

Coconut Daddy Show Con Drama And Endgame Discussion Spoiler Free Featuri...