#saloum (film)

[proustianrevelry]

Jean Luc Herbulot, writer & direcor of Saloum (2021): I was heavily inspired by Metal Gear Solid

Character in Saloum (2021): ghosts can't enter the building due to artificial light and magnetic waves

[tatiregis]

Saloum, 2021. Dir: Jean Luc Herbulot.

País: Senegal.

[qedmirage]

Saloum

Saloum is a fun little movie, excellent crime thriller tension. I really like the intro setting cards:

After that the film follows our mercenaries on the run as they're forced to land off-course, their plane sabotaged somehow. And the film goes from 0 to 60 real fast. As an example, not exhaustive, of what "the most suspicious dinner party on earth" looks like, here's their weird host Omar introducing a friend:

But this is a film from Shudder, and without spoiling anything, halfway through you get a shift to the kind of movie where people say things like this:

Honestly the first half is so good I want to see an entire movie of just that, the second half is good too! It just doesn't have the all gas no breaks tension fun of being a 90 minute thriller in 45.

[waywordsstudio]

13 Days of Halloween: "Saloum" (2021) Review

#moviereview #halloween #horror #horrormovie #13DaysOfHalloween #senegal #saloum #thrillerhorror

[bobduh]

Summer 2023 - Week 6 in Review

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I write to you from the midst of a furious thunderstorm, which I’m hoping will at some point calm down enough for me to get on with some apartment hunting. But whether I am swept away by the torrential rains of August or not, I will at least have left you all with another collection of ramshackle film reviews. This week our cinematic…

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week 2024-09-16

It's Autumn

This is late because turns out there's not really a polite way to finish tapping out your Mondaypost when someone else is already in your bed.

Listening: a recommendation from the Topic Lords podcast, Ancient Sword Cult by Writhen Hilt. It's about swords!

Epic fantasy metal is a tremendously funny genre.

Watching: Watched Saloum with @thosearentcrimes because we heard it on Kill James Bond and both went "that sounds cool as hell" and it was!

Another great addition to the group of films where guys turn to the camera and go "Hey does anyone else feel doomed."

This is a really tense and well put together crime drama, some top-tier monologues and characters who are going all out. Very much worth watching without looking up too much about it I think.

Reading: Started A Desolation Called Peace a few days ago. Three Seagrass! She's so clueless! Man my girlfriend is so cool it's a shame she's not a complete person.

Having read Memory, then all of The Masquerade, and now Desolation, I think this gives me an interesting look at what I like and don't like about each series. Teixcalaan doesn't spend so much time obsessing over little world details, instead building a culture and atmosphere of empire that I really enjoy. The Masquerade is more on the ground which has benefits, but it's somewhat artificial feeling. It's at its best in the very personal moments around Baru and the other cryptarchs.

Still getting through Desolation though.

Playing: Mine Craft. I've been fiddling with some mods like Distant Horizons which does low-res renders of the world out way further than the stock game. I always get back into Minecraft for like three weeks and then put it down for another year. I have a whole lot of thinking done on how the game design of Minecraft is very cleverly pushing on different kinds of players

Making: Printing again for the first time in a while, more home objects. Finally have an excuse to get dozens of tiny neodymium magnets!

Tools and Equipment: I got a new-ish oscilloscope! Proper digital one too, Hantek DSO2D10. It has one feature I consider a nice-to-have and one feature I consider essential for cramped home lab use.

The essential feature is a built-in signal generator. Sure, it can only do a couple dozen MHz cleanly and "cleanly" is being generous there, but for like a $50 premium over a similar non-generator scope you get a single channel generator with arbitrary waveform capabilities, very handy. Saves a lot of space and makes you more likely to actually use the damn thing.

The nice-to-have is built-in logic analyzer features. Yes, a digital logic analyzer will do this better and cheaper, and yes, you could even just dump the waveform and analyze it on a computer, but being able to poke around on a board and just hit "tell me what I'm looking at here" on a random bitstream is tremendously valuable for speed and comfort.

The DSO series is pretty cheap, they're no Tektronix or Keysight, but they're a damn side better than pure analogue, having used pure analogue for a long time. Just skip it, storage and maths functions are so worth it.

[haveyouseenthishorrormovie]

Stats from Movies 701-800

Top 10 Movies - Highest Number of Votes

Ringu (1998) had the most votes with 1,327 votes. Chillerama (2011) had the least votes with 360 votes.

The 10 Most Watched Films by Percentage

Beetlejuice (1988) was the most watched film with 80.9% of voters out of 780 saying they had seen it. Demonic Christmas Tree (2022) had the least "Yes" votes with 0.4% of voters out of 491.

The 10 Least Watched Films by Percentage

The Nun 2 (2023) was the least watched film with 70.6% of voters out of 633 saying they hadn’t seen it. Demonic Christmas Tree (2022) had the least "No" votes with 9.2% of voters out of 491.

The 10 Most Known Films by Percentage

Beetlejuice (1988) was the best known film, only 0.4% of voters out of 780 saying they’d never heard of it.

The 10 Least Known Films by Percentage

Demonic Christmas Tree (2022) was the least known film, 90,4% of voters out of 491 saying they’d never heard of it.

The movies part of the statistic count and their polls below the cut.

The Uninvited (1944) The Crazies (1973) Witchfinder General (1968) The Conspiracy (2012) When a Stranger Calls (1979) The Evictors (1979) The Birds (1963) Ice Spiders (2007) Rubber (2010) Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)

Daughters of Darkness (1971) Akira (1988) The End of Evangelion (1997) The Woman in Black (2012) Milfs vs. Zombies (2015) Knife + Heart (2018) It's a Wonderful Knife (2023) Attachment (2022) Gothic (1986) Jakob's Wife (2021)

Stranger by the Lake (2013) The Fog (2005) The Greasy Strangler (2016) Angel Heart (1987) Tumbbad (2018) The Snow Woman (1968) Sugar Hill (1974) Saloum (2021) WNUF Halloween Special (2013)

Sound of Violence (2021) Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) The Haunting of Molly Hartley (2008) Death Laid an Egg (1968) Baskin (2015) The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh (2012) The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) The Haunting of Julia (1977) The House That Dripped Blood (1971) Megan Is Missing (2011)

Ringu (1998) Three... Extremes (2004) Trench 11 (2017) Out There Halloween Mega Tape (2022) Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) The Driller Killer (1979) Berberian Sound Studio (2012) One Cut of the Dead (2017) Demonic Christmas Tree (2022) Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (1981)

Urban Legends: Bloody Mary (2005) Motel Hell (1980) Shallow Ground (2004) Annabelle: Creation (2017) Annabelle Comes Home (2019) The Conjuring 2 (2016) The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021) Morgan (2016) Sputnik (2020) Devil's Pass (2013)

Dracula's Daughter (1936) Dagon (2001) We Are Still Here (2015) We Are What We Are (2013) Somos lo que hay (2010) The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) Midori (1992) The Believers (1987) Troll 2 (1990) Chillerama (2011)

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976) The Mortuary Collection (2019) The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976) The Pit and the Pendulum (1991) House (1985) Flatliners (1990) The Town That Dreaded Sundown (2014) Crimson Peak (2015) Frailty (2001) Hell Night (1981)

Eyes of Fire (1983) Sister Death (2023) Tonight She Comes (2016) Bad Dreams (1988) Dead Snow (2009) Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead (2014) Veronica (2017) The Nun II (2023) Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) Maniac (1980)

Man's Best Friend (1993) M.O.M. Mothers of Monsters (2020) The Reptile (1966) She Creature (2001) Beetlejuice (1988) The Incredible Melting Man (1977) Kandisha (2020) So Vam (2021) Bit (2019) Death Proof (2007)

[thewarmestplacetohide]

Rotten Roulette Announcement 😱

hi all! we’ll be continuing our random Friday film stream with the Senegalese supernatural horror film Saloum (2021) on 10/13 at 8:00pm EST/12am GMT.

a group of mercenaries encounter something unnatural near Saloum Delta.

it's in English, Wolof, and sign language with a 1 hour 24 minute runtime.

it's unrated but i would suggest an R. features:

moderate violence

child sexual abuse

child abuse

torture

insects

[mycatwantstoeatpins]

I saw a post recently where someone was commenting on the batshittery of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels - I can't find it now but someone in the reblog chain recommended the Kill James Bond! podcast.

I listened to every episode over Christmas/New Year because it is an amazing podcast.

This is Alice's opening line in the first episode, though I can't do justice to how she delivers it:

'Hello and welcome to the first episode of Kill James Bond, a podcast in which us three pursue noted tuxedo spy dickhead James Bond Sr through 24 films, innumerable other properties and - I wanted to mention why we're doing this, right - James Bond is a fucking arsehole, man.'

There's a free episode every fortnight and a bonus episode on alternate weeks. The hosts have covered all the James Bond movies so they've moved on other spy movies for the free feed; they're currently working through the U.N.C.L.E. movies.

The hosts are very funny but they also talk intelligently about the movies and their subject matter (sometimes both, like where Alice, Devon and the guest host Komodo Dad are yelling about the misrepresentation of the Nuremberg defence in A Few Good Men).

They've done really dumb movies like Penguins of Madagascar and Cars 2, and those episodes are great, but some of the more serious episodes are the ones that stand out - Saloum, with guest host ML Kejera; The Lives of Others; and The Name of the Rose with guest host Dr Eleanor Janega.

Anyway, I'll end this post with a couple of jokes I liked in the episode on The Living Daylights:

[Devon] This is the Bond film where they're like, 'hey, the mujahideen, these guys fucking own, we should give them money and guns if possible.'

[...]

[clip from the film] My name is Kamran Shah. Please forgive the theatricals; they're a hangover from my Oxford days.

[Alice] And Bond goes 'Ah, this reminds me a lot of the time when I spoke to a Bedouin arms dealer in a tent in Egypt when I was the same man and that guy also went to Oxbridge, because I'm the same guy.'

[fatherramiro]

top 5 new-to-you movies you've seen this year?

SALOUM. Everyone shut up and go watch it now. I'm serious

Al Berto. Literally if you're noticing a theme here, no you're not :)

M3gan. A flawless film

Talk To Me. I don't think I can ever watch it again but it fucks

Nimona!!! A perfect film that healed my inner child.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 11/1/22

watched a good movie made a good soup

listening

Witch for a Night by Sugar Pie DeSanto. i think any song that starts with the lines

I'm gonna be a party-poppin, show-stoppin, wig-floppin witch for a night!

will never disappoint you.

_

reading

The Markup did a huge crunchy report about how they figured out poorer, less white neighborhoods got slower, more expensive internet than their wealthy white neighbors, and a more accessible writeup.

they do absolutely exquisite data visualization.

good data viz really makes a fuckin difference. this is damning!!! look at this shit!!!

and none of the ISPs had anything productive to say about their methodology!!! not literally bulletproof but pretty damn fuckin close, since it's pulling price and address info directly from ISP sites.

_

watching

Saloum (2021, dir. Herbulot). this is a West African terror film with a good dollop of acid western stylization to create the world's tensest dinner parties as a curse does what curses do. i really really loved this bc if we take a "western" as any movie with a group of mercenaries in an arid colonized land, it is a fun take on what a modern spaghetti western can be with all the visual flair and pathos i love about this subgenre when it's good.

this is the kind of film tarantino loves to rip off. Herbulot cites two video games as direct influence and they are rdr2 and metal gear solid v.

i do want to underscore that the director is very clear about his "terror" categorization:

But the cursed king that they're talking about, it's a real story. It's real mythology. That is from the Saloum. And so this story is real. This myth is real. This curse is real. Now beyond that, what's the curse and how does it work? I don't know yet. I don't want to know (laughs). But that was our starting point. It was essential for me that, if we were going to shoot the Saloum region, we wanted to be as respectful as we could be, especially for [collaborator] Pamela, because that's her birth region.

this is a really fucking tight eighty minutes. apparently this was originally closer to three hours long, with a lot of backstory about the Hyenas (a gang of mercenaries extracting a drug lord and a briefcase full of gold) and Awa (the girl they meet in a tourist camp when their plane comes down in the desert after sabotage).

this is a film, like all my favorite spaghetti westerns, that is very concerned with revenge and what makes a hero. it frames most of this during the world's tensest series of dinner parties at this camp as they try to get fuel and resin to fix their plane. and then, of course, things go sideways.

this is a very beautiful and well-made movie (and not just Good For A Budget Movie, just straight up a good lookin movie) with a lot of care put into framing and setting up shots. the director used to be a comic book artist and used to shoot music videos, so the framing and shot setup is really thoughtful. this movie is simply fun to watch. it is very good at holding and building tension, everything unravels in slow motion until it doesn't and then it's a level of your favorite first-person shooter. it does suffer from the "the monster isn't actually as scary as the anticipation of seeing the monster" but this group of mercs looks so fuckin sick all the time it more than makes up for it imo. yes he is wearing white dishwashing gloves paired with a machete. also versace pants and shoes.

this podcast episode was very helpful bc their guest is from the Gambia and had a ton of important and useful context to give. this is fundamentally a "recap the movie and do some bits about it" podcast so your tolerance may vary.

i would strongly recommend signing up for a free week of Shudder with a burner email and watching this movie legally, bc it will almost certainly never see wide release :(

how'd i find this: like many other things, this is indirectly @morrak 's fault. last year he said "hey have you listened to this podcast episode dunking on the hyperloop" to which i said "no i have not" and then fell into the alice caldwell-kelly podcast cinematic universe. her podcast Kill James Bond is not my favorite, bc it is mostly a podcast recapping spy films and doing bits about them, which i have a limited tolerance for, but it is very good at going WOW THERE'S A LOT OF RAPE IN THIS BOND FILM and reminding me i should not rewatch literally any of the older movies, as much as i love daniel craig's outings.

_

playing

i did nick valentine's final companion quest in fo4 and cried my fucking eyes out, again. why won't they let me romance the robot and why is he trapped in this incredibly mediocre game :(((

_

making

red lentil soup with lemon bc i realized if i buy a bunch of soup-serving-size-i-like plastic off brand tupperware, i can have microwaveable soup lunch for much cheaper than just buying a lot of canned soup. and it does not require any more prep than setting an alarm to take a unit of soup out of the freezer and into the fridge the night before, which is good bc my brain is fuckin fried by 1 PM.

the leek and potato soup i made last month did Not freeze well. it's like edible but the texture is...not ideal. the internet said lentil soups freeze well, and even though this recipe is from the nyt it looked reasonable enough with some modifications.

recipe here. shit i changed:

not quite tripled, bc i wanted to use up an entire bag of lentils at once.

did not add red pepper flakes to the soup itself as it cooked bc i'm bad at estimating how spicy i like things.

added cumin until my heart said to stop, deffo far more than a teaspoon. probably two tablespoons? the fun thing i previously knew about lentils is that they absorb a lot like A Lot of flavor so just like. keep fuckin going with ur lil shakers.

the lemon is really crucial here, it's perfectly fine on its own with just salt/pepper/cumin, but the lemon does a lot of work

added in the entire 6oz can of tomato paste, bc i never remember to use half-cans up and then they mold in the back of my fridge and i get cranky about it. also like. one tablespoon??? really??? get the fuck out of here.

added in many carrots bc i like a stew-like consistency and also had a lot of really sad carrots in my crisper

threw in like five stalks of celery bc i bought a clump or whatever a unit of celery is called for something else and wanted to use it up

most of a bag of small-medium onions and like 4oz of minced garlic bc that was what my heart said on sunday night when i made this

still nursing along some green onions on my countertop, bought nice bread specifically for dinner. i buy the spreadable carton of brie bc i hate peeling cheese and i like brie, and i think brie goes well with this soup.

[sloshed-cinema]

Saloum (2021)

There’s something exhilarating about when a movie grabs the viewer by the scruff of the neck and shouts, “Come along fucker, I know exactly what I’m doing.” The opening minute or so of Saloum, shifting from hallucinatory imagery of a boy wading out into the river with sun and moon arrayed overhead to a kinetic and immaculately choreographed handheld tracking shot of the Hyenas of Bangui retrieving a drug lord from Bissau shows in miniature the genre swath the film will explore. Much of the first half of the film adopts the energy of a sharp, stylish crime thriller with precise and breathless camera work accompanied by splashy graphics in an experience akin to what you might get in a Quentin Tarantino or Guy Ritchie actioner. Nodding to but never leaning heavily on the tropes of the genre, Saloum traps its protagonists, already caught back on their heels and in the middle of nowhere, in a web of tension: the camp they find themselves at harbors many threats to their survival. A sequence of conversations builds a house of cards on a knife’s edge, any false move threatening to expose the Hyenas.

While it flits at the periphery in the form of nightmare sequences early on, the Hyenas’ arrival at a strange commune in remote Saloum isn’t actually wholly a coincidence. Ringleader Chaka reveals he has a dark past as a child soldier held captive by the man now running the camp. It’s here when the film transitions rather abruptly to a horror film: spirits are present everywhere here due to the cycle of violence and anguish in the space, of which Chaka’s child slavery/soldierdom is simply the latest iteration. The entities that plague the survivors are a little silly, resembling a swarm of bees or dense cluster of ash with horns, killed all too easily except for when necessary, and the exposition dump explaining it all is a touch rapid. But it’s almost impossible for these missteps to overshadow the raw charisma of the opening half. Let the spiritualism that has been hinted at in the flashbacks and in fellow Hyena Minuit’s shamanic advisory come roaring to the fore. A mere Western isn’t enough to contain this cycle of suffering, it has to be rendered even more operatic and exorcised.

THE RULES

SIP

A flashback begins.

Someone is knocked out by white powder.

Spooky specter!

BIG DRINK

Voiceover narration begins.

Location establishing text.

[watchingalotofmovies]

Saloum

Saloum    [trailer]

In 2003, a trio of mercenaries escaping a coup in Guinea-Bissau take refuge in a hidden region on the Saloum river of Senegal. But something from beyond the grave awaits them there.

Has lots of elements of a classic western. But what makes it special is the African setting and its landscapes.

I could've done with less of the supernatural horror elements, especially since they take over the film towards the end. But I have to admit that they were visually well done and fitting for the production.

As usual, I feel obliged to point out, you can't carry with one hand a suitcase full of gold bars like that.

[annelidist]

like saloum is easily the coolest film i've seen in my life. it's not even a contest

[sszeemedia]

Blue Finch Films acquires worldwide rights to Jean Luc Herbulot's "Zero"; set for Sitges Film Festival

UK-based sales and distribution company Blue Finch Films has acquired worldwide rights to “Zero,” an action thriller directed by Jean Luc Herbulot, according to Variety exclusive report. Herbulot is known for his 2021 TIFF Midnight Madness selection “Saloum.” “Zero” has been selected for the first wave of the Sitges Film Festival, with further festival announcements anticipated. The film’s plot…