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disappointingyet · 4 years ago

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The Last Seduction

Director John Dahl Stars Linda Fiorentino, Peter Berg, Bill Pullman, JT Walsh, Bill Nunn UK/USA 1994 Language English 1hr 50mins Colour

Gloriously nasty 1990s noir

[Spoilers about the events of the first 10 minutes or so of the movie]

Is the greatness of The Last Seduction a marvelous accident? (You may, of course, not agree that it’s a a great movie). Why an accident? Because although this was the writer’s first movie, he only has two further credits. Because although John Dahl was a promising director making his third movie, in the quarter century since he’s only made five more. And, most of all, I guess, because Linda Fiorentino gives such an indelible performance, yet by the end of the decade her career was effectively over and in 2009 she officially called it quits.

I think that summary is unfair to Dahl, at least: he’s one of several directors who made good low-budget movies in the 1990s who have gone on to have long, steady careers in the waves of great TV that followed – he’s done episodes of Billions, Justified, The Americans and Dexter, to give just a small sample. As for Fiorentino, I can’t presume to know whether her failure to become a big star was down to bad luck, Hollywood’s misogyny, her own character or some combination of the above.

After watching the film again, though, what I can say is I still think she’s extraordinary here.* She plays Bridget Gregory, who wants the kind of Manhattan apartment that her job as a manager at a telemarketing firm and her husband’s income as hospital resident won’t pay for. So Clay Gregory (Bill Pullman) does a drug deal – which, presumably, is Bridget’s idea – and then she double-crosses him, drives off with the cash and ends up laying low in Beston, a characterless town in upstate New York.

In Beston, she has what’s meant to be a one-off screw with none-too-bright local Mike (Peter Berg), which sort of becomes an ongoing thing.

In a way, the tension of the story comes from a situation where Bridget’s been advised by her lawyer Frank (JT Walsh) to sit patiently until her divorce comes through, but she’s not prepared to be passive. She’s spotting opportunities and using them to build a scheme to protect the fruits of her first crime.

The great JT

What occurs to me is that although the femme fatale drives the events in, say, Double Indemnity (which The Last Seduction references) and Basic Instinct (a huge recent hit when this came out), we don’t see the story from her point of view. The perspective in those movies, and in most others in the tradition I can think of, is of the manipulated man.** But The Last Seduction is emphatically Bridget’s story.

And, doubling-down on that, Bridget has little vulnerability and no warmth or empathy. Mike says to her: ‘I'm trying to figure out whether you're a total fucking bitch or not.’ and Bridget replies:

‘I am a total fucking bitch’.

The closest thing she has to a friend and confident is Frank, and while she clearly enjoys his amorality and the fact that he trades insults with her, she’s also relying on attorney-client privilege. Walsh – one of the great character actors – and Fiorentino seem to have a terrific energy together but since all their conversations happen over the phone, who knows if they were actually even acting together?

Bill Nunn!

So it’s up to Fiorentino to carry the movie and she does. She makes Bridget a compelling and convincing sociopath rather than a cartoonish character. She finds a way to make the spirit of Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity work in a post-innuendo age. And Dahl keeps the film lean and efficient around her. Along with Walsh, there’s able support from Pullman (who, like Fiorentino, was somewhat older than the character he was playing) and Bill Nunn as a private eye. Peter Berg went on to be better known as a director and exec producer than actor, but this is one of his better roles.

A passing thought on the question of genre, even though I know these are just arbitary categories we give movies. Like most critics I tend to think of The Last Seduction as a noir (or neo-noir, if you like) rather than considering it an erotic thriller, which is what the production company allegedly thought they were getting and which its none-of-the-cast-or-main-crew sequel The Last Seduction II presumably is. Part of that might just be snobbishness – I like this therefore I’d rather slot it alongside, say, Scarlet Street than the movies starring assorted Shannons that followed in the wake of Basic Instinct or indeed Jade, the William Friedkin/Joe Eszterhas movie Fiorentino starred in shortly afterwards. (Then again, I’ll make the case for the bonkers but in places briliantly made Basic Instinct – absolutely an erotic thriller – anytime). More to the point, though, is the fact that the sex scenes in The Last Seduction are all short and plot-relevant – it is (like the noirs of the 1940s) a film whose sexual charge comes through atmosphere and dialogue rather than flesh.

However, there’s a clear difference in style from Dahl’s debut, Kill Me Again, which although it was set in the present day had lots of scenes that were clearly trying to evoke the 1940s in their look. The Last Seduction in its lighting and sets and technology is unashamedly early 1990s. There are a couple of things that can be seen as retro nods – Bridget’s hair has a Veronica Lake shape to it, for instance – but its noirishness is much more about the characters and the narrative than the visuals.

Oh, and I like the way that in the outdoor shots in NYC the shots emphasise the height of the buildings and bridges*** to provide a contrast for when we reach low-rise Beston.

(Quick note: if you were born after the film was made and have 2020-flavour progressive sensibilities or are older but share those concerns, there are a couple of things in this film you may regard as problematic.)

Which I guess brings us to the final question: rewatching it in 2020, was I as blown away by The Last Seducation as I was in 1994? Absolutely.

*And I think she’s good in Men In Black and Dogma and – but I want to check this sometime soon – After Hours.

**I’m sure there will be some that pre-date this. But the Wachowskis’ Bound, for instance, is a couple of years after. ***I know, I know, but you can film at eye-level rather than frame your characters tiny against tall buildings.

#the last seduction #linda fiorentino #jt walsh #john dahl #bill nunn #film noir #neo-noir #1990s movies

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myhauntedsalem · 5 years ago

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Horror Movies Based on True Events

Open Water (2003)

When a couple goes scuba diving in Open Water, their boat accidentally leaves them behind in shark-infested water. It’s based on something that really happened to American tourists Tom and Eileen Lonergan, who were left behind by a diving company off the Great Barrier Reef. By the time the mistake was realized two days later, it was too late, and they were never seen again. A shark attack seems not to have been the cause of death, however, as the couple’s dive jackets were eventually found. The jackets weren’t damaged, which suggested that the Lonergans likely took them off, “delirious from dehydration,” and drowned.

Borderland (2007)

When three friends head to a Mexican border town to have some fun in this movie, they get mixed up with a cult specializing in human sacrifice. The concept loosely stems from the life of Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, a drug lord and cult leader who was responsible for the death of American student Mark Kilroy.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

The iconic baddie Freddy Krueger kills teenagers via their dreams in Wes Craven’s franchise-launching film. Craven told Vulture that the idea stemmed from an article he read in The Los Angeles Times about a family of Cambodian refugees with a young son who reported awful nightmares. “He told his parents he was afraid that if he slept, the thing chasing him would get him, so he tried to stay awake for days at a time,” said Craven. “When he finally fell asleep, his parents thought this crisis was over. Then they heard screams in the middle of the night. By the time they got to him, he was dead. He died in the middle of a nightmare. Here was a youngster having a vision of a horror that everyone older was denying. That became the central line of Nightmare on Elm Street.”

Black Water (2007)

Set in the swamps of Australia, this movie sees a group of fishers attacked by a humongous crocodile. It was inspired by an actual crocodile attack in the Australian outback in 2003 that killed a man named Brett Mann in an area that his friends said they’d “never, ever” seen a crocodile before.

Dead Ringers (1988)

In David Cronenberg’s movie, Jeremy Irons plays twin gynecologists who do messed up things with patients and ultimately die together in the end. Cronenberg adapted the movie from Bari Wood and Jack Geasland’s novel Twins, which was inspired by the lives of actual twin gynecologists Stewart and Cyril Marcus. TheNew York Times noted that the Marcuses enjoyed “trading places to fool their patients” and that they ultimately “retreat[ed] into heavy drug use and utter isolation.”

Deliver Us From Evil (2014)

The movie follows a cop and a priest who team up to take on the supernatural. It’s based on self-proclaimed “demonologist” Ralph Sarchie’s memoir Beware the Night, in which he tells supposedly true stories, such as the time he found himself “in the presence of one of hell’s most dangerous devils” possessing a woman.

Poltergeist (1982)

In Poltergeist, a family’s home is invaded by ghosts that abduct one of the daughters. The film was inspiredby unexplained events, such as loud popping noises and moved objects, that occurred in 1958 at the Hermanns’ home in Seaford, New York.

Psycho (1960)

Alfred Hitchcock’s essential film traces a woman who embezzles money from her employer and runs off to a mysterious hotel where she is (58-year-old spoiler alert) murdered by the man running it, Norman Bates. Bates is said to have been based on Ed Gein, a Wisconsin man who was convicted for one murder in the 1950s, but suspected for others. He also was a grave robber, and authorities found many disturbing results of that in his home, including bowls crafted from human skulls and a lampshade made from the skin of someone’s face.

Scream (1996)

The classic ‘90s slasher flick uses dark humor to tell the story of a group of teens and a mystery man named Ghostface who wants to murder them. But the real story ain’t funny. The movie was inspired by the Gainesville Ripper, real name Danny Rolling, who killed five Florida students by knife over a span of three days in August 1990.

The Conjuring (2013)

The movie stars Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as ghost hunters helping out a family in a haunted 18th-century farmhouse. The hunters, Ed and Lorraine Warren, are real people, as is the Perron family that they assist. Lorraine was a consultant on the movie and insists that many of the supernatural horrors really happened, and one of the daughters who is depicted in the film, Andrea Perron, says the same. She recalled an angry spirit named Bathsheba to USA Today:“Whoever the spirit was, she perceived herself to be mistress of the house and she resented the competition my mother posed for that position.”

Annabelle (2014)

The creepy porcelain doll from The Conjuring gets her terror on in this spin-off of The Conjuring. The ghost-hunting Warrens have claimed that there was a real Raggedy Ann doll that moved by itself and wrote creepy-ass notes saying things like, “Help us.” The woman who owned it contacted a medium, who claimed that it was possessed by a seven-year-old girl named Annabelle who had died there.

The Disappointments Room (2016)

Kate Beckinsale stars in the movie as an architect who moves to a new home with a mysterious room in the attic that she eventually learns was previously used as a room where rich people would cast off disabled children. It was reportedly inspired by a Rhode Island woman who discovered a similar room in her house that she says was built by a 19th century judge to lock away his disabled daughter.

The Exorcist (1973)

Two priests attempt to remove a demon from a young girl in this box office smash. The movie was based on a 1949 Washington Post article with the headline “Priest Frees Mt. Rainier Boy Reported Held in Devil’s Grip.” Director William Friedkin spoke about the article to Time Out London: “Maybe one day they’ll discover the cause of what happened to that young man, but back then, it was only curable by an exorcism. His family weren’t even Catholics, they were Lutheran. They started with doctors and then psychiatrists and then psychologists and then they went to their minister who couldn’t help them. And they wound up with the Catholic church. The Washington Post article says that the boy was possessed and exorcised. That’s pretty out on a limb for a national newspaper to put on its front page… You’re not going to see that on the front page of an intelligent newspaper unless there’s something there.

The Girl Next Door (2007)

The movie follows the abuse of a teenage girl at the hands of her aunt, and it was inspired by the murder of Sylvia Likens in 1965. The 16-year-old girl was abused by her caregiver, Gertrude Baniszewski, Baniszewski’s children, and other neighborhood children, as entertainment. They ultimately killed her, with the cause of death determined as “brain swelling, internal hemorrhaging of the brain, and shock induced by Sylvia’s extensive skin damage,”

The Possession (2012)

Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick star in the movie as a couple with a young daughter who becomes fascinated with an antique wooden box found at a yard sale. Of course, the box turns out to be home to a spirit. The flick’s “true story” basis came from an eBay listing for “a haunted Jewish wine cabinet box” containing oddities such as two locks of hair, one candlestick, and an evil spirit that caused supernatural activity. The box sold for $280 and gained attention when a Jewish newspaper ran an article about its so-called powers.

The Rite (2011)

In The Rite, a mortician enrolls in seminary and eventually takes an exorcism class in Rome, where demonic encounters ensue. The movie was based on the life of a real exorcist, Father Gary Thomas, whose work was the focus of journalist Matt Baglio’s book The Rite: The Making of an Exorcist. A Roman Catholic priest, Thomas was one of 14 Vatican-certified exorcists working in America in 2011. He served as an advisor on the film and told The Los Angeles Times that in the previous four years he had exorcised five people.

The Sacrament (2013)

In the movie, a man travels to find his sister who joined a remote religious commune, where, yep, bad things happen. It was inspired by the 1978 Jonestown massacre, in which cult leader Jim Jones led 909 of his followers to partake in a “murder-suicide ceremony” using cyanide poisoning.

The Shining (1980)

Stanley Kubrick’s horror masterpiece is about a man who is driven to insanity by supernatural forces while staying at a remote hotel in the Rockies. The movie Derives from Stephen King’s book of the same name, which was inspired by the Stanley Hotel in Colorado, where plenty of guests have reported seeing ghosts. The Stanley wasn’t actually used in the movie, however, because Kubrick didn’t think it looked scary enough.

The Silence of the Lambs(1991)

The Oscar-winning film tells the story of an FBI cadet who enlists the help of a cannibal/serial killer to pin down another serial killer, Buffalo Bill, who skins the bodies of his victims. FBI special agent John Douglas, who consulted on the film, has explained that Bill was inspired in part by the serial killer Ted Bundy, who like Bill, wore a fake cast. Ed Gein is also believed to be an inspiration, what with the whole skinning thing. And per Rolling Stone, 1980s killer Gary Heidnik was a reference for how Buffalo Bill kept victims in a basement pit.

The Strangers (2008)

Three killers in masks terrorize the suburban home of a couple (played by Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman) in this invasion thriller. Writer-director Bryan Bertino has said the film was inspired by something that happened to him in childhood. “As a kid, I lived in a house on a street in the middle of nowhere. One night, while our parents were out, somebody knocked on the front door and my little sister answered it,” he said. “At the door were some people asking for somebody that didn’t live there. We later found out that these people were knocking on doors in the area and, if no one was home, breaking into the houses.”

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974 & 2003)

Ed Gein also reportedly inspired elements of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and its remake. The movies are about groups of friends who come into contact with the murderous cannibal Leatherface. The original film memorably features a room filled with furniture created from human bones, a nod to Gein’s home.

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976 & 2014)

The original film follows a Texas Ranger as he tracks down a serial killer threatening a small town, and the 2014 sequel of the same name essentially revives the same plot. Both are based on the Texarkana Moonlight Murders of 1946, when a “Phantom Killer” took out five people over ten weeks. The case remains unsolved

Veronica (2018)

The recent Netflix release follows a 15-year-old girl who uses a Ouija board and accidentally connects with a demon that terrorizes her and her family. The movie’s based on a real police report from a Madrid neighborhood. As the story goes, a girl performed a séance at school and then “experienced months of seizures and hallucinations, particularly of shadows and presences surrounding her,” according to NewsWeek. The police report came a year after the girl’s death when three officers and the Chief Inspect of the National Police reported several unnatural occurrences at her family’s home that they called “a situation of mystery and rarity.”

#Horror Movies Based on True Events #horror #horror movies #paranormal #ghost and hauntings #ghost and spirits

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stockwellarchives · 5 years ago

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“There is one facial feature that saves the face from the Pretty Boy blandness afflicting actors like the other Dean (Jones) and John Davidson. "Dean Stockwell has EYEBROWS — bushy Hugh Griffith eyebrows that impart to the remainder of the delicate, finely-chiseled features a robust life. With multi-points ascending heavenward, the eyebrows are like two natural fiber toothbrushes on a visage that would otherwise appear Hollywood synthetic.

"Dean Stockwell, who will be starring at the Little Theatre in Relatively Speaking from March 8-21, is probably more often recognized than identified. That aforementioned face is familiar to the general public from countless television shows but the name may not be.

"Dean Stockwell has made at least one film that is a classic - the Sidney Lumet Long Day's Journey Into Night (with Sir Ralph Richardson, Katharine Hepburn and Jason Robards - 'That was a heavy cast,' Stockwell says), and another film that may be a classic - the Joseph Losey... It was The Boy with Green Hair. It was completed in 1949 before the McCarthy madness led Losey to take residence in England where he has directed a series of extraordinary films from scripts by Harold Punter.

"And he has made a good number of films that are not and never will be classics. The Dunwich Horror, Werewolf of Washington, and Compulsion. It was perhaps Compulsion that resulted in the typecasting of Stockwell as a tormented, intense neurotic, sometimes with leanings towards the poetic and lyrical. In Long Day's Journey he was the Eugene O'Neill character.

"It is a type from which he has yet to escape. 'I favor anything that is unique, that stands out on its own. As far as roles are concerned, I much prefer to exclude neurotics. I'd like to do a movie with Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder and that crew.

"'It's a bit of fluff,' he says of Relatively Speaking, and that is one reason he wants to do it. Too many years of smiling killers (Stockwell would assuredly work constantly were it not for Tony Perkins, who fits into the same schtick in the minds of producers) have left the actor with the desire to make people laugh. 'But even if I am funny and brilliant and all of that -- none of the people who give me jobs will see it.'

"Sigh. Producers may not give Dean Stockwell the jobs he wants beause producers know that he is superb at playing interesting neurotics and they want to take no chances.

"Producers want to make money. 'That's the studio psychology. The producers still think they are the only ones who know how it should be done.'

"And they still, Stockwell believes, control the film industry more than the post-Easy Rider optimists will admit.

"'The men who run the major studios are businessmen who at times consider themselves artists. And they are not necessarily successful as businessmen. But if you throw them out, the creative people would be incapable of taking their place. They'd go crazy. There's no way to change that.

"'BUT IT WOULD be better if, once the producer has chosen his creative people, he would let them alone.' Does that ever happen? 'Hardly ever.'

"Producers have a capacity for rationalization held by all humans, but heightened, Stockwell laments, 'They think when the movie is successful, it's their work, when it's a mess, they blame it on the shooting schedule or something else.'

"A case in point is William Friedkin's The Exorcist, which went on longer than scheduled and cost, in the end, about $11 million.

"Had that movie failed, Stockwell is convinced, the production company would have blamed Friedkin; since it is a howling success, the members of the production company bask in glory, even though the achievement may have had nothing to do with them other than the fact that they financed it.

"AND THAT, MAYBE, is what it means to be an actor in 1974 - you are typecast by producers who have cash register minds, you come to Albuquerque to get away from it and do something you enjoy even though it will make no difference, and you are slightly bitter.

"The eyebrows elevate with a little resignation, a lot of determination. Dean Stockwell is not quitting. 'It's my profession. I enjoy it. I can't imagine any other profession I would want to go into.'"

Beaven, Scott. "Stockwell Escapes Stereotype at ALT." Albuquerque Journal. February 25, 1974.

#Dean Stockwell #Relatively Speaking #play #1974 #quote

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tlbodine · 5 years ago

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Three 1970s Horrors Worth Watching (that are not part of this film series)

The Horror by the Decade series started innocuously enough, with someone requesting some recent film recommendations. That got me to thinking about trends, and recommendations from previous decades, and how many movies that were true classics I was familiar with but had never seen, and thus the idea “hey, let’s watch movies from every decade!” came into being.

But obviously you can’t watch every horror movie from every year, so there had to be a selection process in place. Here’s roughly how I’ve been choosing movies:

Search Google for “horror movies {year}” for each year of the decade

Research them a bit and pick out everything that is familiar, historically significant, or seems especially interesting, and put them on a list

Pare the list down to 1-2 of the most interesting titles per year

Look for themes and pair movies up according to theme (since we watch two movies a week)

In order to save time, any movie that both I and @comicreliefmorlock have seen recently/a lot gets knocked off the list. In the 1970s, that means removing three extremely good, extremely important movies, so I wanted to talk about them a bit here.

Follow below the cut for thoughts on Jaws, The Exorcist, and Alien

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Jaws, made in 1975 by Steven Spielberg, is based on a novel of the same name written by Peter Benchley. Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider team up to kill an unusually large and aggressive great white shark that is terrorizing the beach in a quiet New England town.

Fun fact: Until Star Wars was released two years later, Jaws was the highest-grossing movie of all time! This is probably due in part to how much money Universal decided to sink into its distribution and marketing, but the film’s quality has to play a big part too. It really is a magnificent movie and is probably a big part of why people are still scared of sharks.

Some things that are notable about Jaws:

It has one of the most iconic and effective film scores in cinema. Everyone knows the Jaws theme, and it’s been used to basically mean “impending danger!” in a jokey way for...I mean, at least 30 years, because I know that was a meme when I was a kid. I imagine it has been since 1975. That’s just a really impressive feat, and John Williams (yes, the Star Wars guy) deserves acclaim for it.

Music aside, Jaws is an excellent study in suspense and restraint. Technological limitations meant they couldn’t show the shark as much as they’d wanted, so scenes had to be filmed suggestively to ramp up the tension. (You do still get to see a lot of wonderful big scary shark, though, and honestly the effects still hold up pretty well to this day)

The performances are really good, too. The leads have a great chemistry and play off of each other really well. The script was a joint effort, getting passes from several people (including the book’s author), but a comedian Carl Gottlieb got a pass at it, and that humor really helps to elevate the film.

The most powerful thing about Jaws, though, is that it taps into a mythic seed that renders it utterly timeless. There is an echo of Moby Dick in Quint’s character and motives, with a similarly tragic arc. But it draws on something older and deeper, too. The premise of “man-eating wild animal terrorizes a community, a bounty is put on its head, only a hero can kill it” has been a staple of mythology for thousands of years.

Man-eaters are real, and they become the stuff of legend -- dating at least as far back to the monstrous Nemean Lion that could be slain only by Heracles. Historically, there are accounts of man-eating wolves, lions, tigers, etc. terrorizing locals, sometimes inspiring local werewolf legends - you can read about just a few of them here: https://listverse.com/2010/10/16/top-10-worst-man-eaters-in-history/

I think I watched Jaws for the first time when I was 8 (I saw all the sequels too, there was a cable marathon) and I was utterly captivated. I feel pretty confident if I showed it to an 8-year-old today, they would be too. It’s just that kind of movie.

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The Exorcist, released in 1973 and directed by William Friedkin, was based on a novel by William Peter Blatty, who also wrote the screenplay.

The story is about a 12-year-old girl, Regan, who begins acting strangely after playing with a ouija board. Once medical causes are ruled out, her mother turns to two priests for assistance; they come to perform the exorcism and have a harder time than expected with casting out the demon, to say the least.

The film is still considered one of the most frightening horror movies of all time by some, and at the time of its release it was a sensation. Movie-goers were said to have all sorts of reactions, from fainting and vomiting to having miscarriages and heart attacks. Contemporary psychologists even wrote about “cinematic neurosis” in people who had watched the film: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1151359

The story crossed a lot of boundaries (even for the 1970s) and you have to bear in mind that this was a major cinematic release, not a grindhouse exploitation film. Most film-goers in 1973 were absolutely not prepared to see an innocent child spouting off vulgarity, urinating on the floor, and masturbating with a crucifix. And some of the practical effects, like the famous head-twisting scene, are still really creepy.

This is one of those movies that’s hard to watch with fresh eyes because it was so influential on all of cinema to follow. If you like demonic possession movies, this is the film that started it all. I know religious people who are deeply afraid of this movie and won’t allow it in their home for fear of inviting real demons, so, that’s the kind of staying power the story has.

** As an atheist, I am not particularly frightened of demon movies, and I suspect I will never fully grasp the real terror of watching something like this for people who believe that these types of things happen in real life. The Exorcist is definitely not the scariest movie I’ve ever seen, but I can respect that it definitely is for many other people.

Fun trivia: The Exorcist is considered by some to be cursed because the cast and crew had an unusually tough time with filming: the set caught fire (but Regan’s room was undamaged), several actors were injured during practical stunts/effects, several people died during filming or in post-production (not on set), and the demon’s voice actor experienced an awful tragedy years later when her son killed wife, kids, and himself: http://www.the13thfloor.tv/2015/12/02/is-the-exorcist-movie-cursed/

The events are all most likely coincidental (and on a long enough timeline, everyone involved with a project will be dead!) but it lends power to the suspicion that this was A Very Cursed Movie That God Doesn’t Want You To Watch, which makes it all the more frightening.

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Alien, directed by Ridley Scott, came out in 1979 and is so powerful that it’s still a popular franchise today, spawning books, movies, video games, merchandise, and more.

The story is essentially a haunted house film set in space. A commercial space crew is woken from stasis by the ship's on-board computer to answer a distress signal, discovering a derelict alien ship and founding a chamber of eggs belonging to an aggressive, parasitic alien creature that infests a crew member with its egg, which later hatches violently from his body, grows up, and proceeds to terrorize the ship.

It's a tense cat-and-mouse game of searching for the alien as it picks off crew members one by one, and the music, atmosphere, and visuals are all compelling, with effects that still hold up pretty well for modern audiences. But what makes Alien especially significant is the performance of Sigourney Weaver as Ripley.

We’d had scream queens before -- female horror protagonists who survive as “final girls” against the mayhem and slaughter -- but Ripley is something different. She is badass, heroic in a way that girls rarely got to see themselves, and laying down a template for strong female characters in future cinema (for better or worse).

The script was reportedly written to be gender neutral, with no assumptions about casting, which allowed Ripley to defy gender norms and expectations. But despite this supposed gender neutrality, there is a definite flavor of female horror in Alien -- which is, after all, a movie about forced impregnation and death at the hands of a decidedly phallic monster.

And that is, I think, probably right at the heart of the film’s sticking power. Science fiction can swiftly become dated as our knowledge of the universe expands, but the horror of Alien isn’t really the aliens so much as what they represent -- and sad to say, sexual violence is something we humans may never understand. Here’s a fun essay on the topic: https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/film/2019/03/forty-years-what-can-ridley-scott-s-alien-teach-metoo-generation

So, there you have it. Three movies we will not be watching in our film series, but which you absolutely should check out if you somehow haven’t seen them.

#horror movies #horror by the decade #horror through the decades #jaws #the exorcist #alien #i love these movies #so much

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arecomicsevengood · 5 years ago

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Watching Movies In Self-Isolation, Part Two

L’Assassin Habite Au Rue 21 (1942), dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot. Clouzot is better known for directing The Wages Of Fear (the movie William Friedkin remade as Sorcerer) and Diabolique, but this is the first movie he directed. It’s a pretty effective comedy, as well as an Agatha Christie style murder-mystery thriller. It’s really cool to watch these things that feel like they are just “movies,” before a bunch of genre conventions got built up and put in place. This one’s also eighty minutes long, super-short. The premise of the movie is there’s a serial killer on the loose, leaving a business card on every dead body. A dude passes along to the police that he found a stash of the business cards in the attic of a boarding house, so the killer must live there. A police officer goes undercover as a priest moving into the boarding house to investigate the residents. His wife, an aspiring singer, has made a bet with him she can solve the crime first, and in doing so become a celebrity that will be hired to perform places, so she also moves into the boarding house, partly to annoy him. The stuff at the boarding house is basically the film’s second act, while the first and third act are more typical murder-mystery stuff, although the tone of comedy is maintained throughout, despite all the cold-blooded murders.

All These Women (1964), dir. Ingmar Bergman. Kind of dumb sex comedy directed by Ingmar Bergman, but with gorgeous Sven Nykvist cinematography, bright jewel-toned pastels, and sort of theatrical staging in spots seeming to foreshadow Parajanov’s The Color Of Pomegranates or eighties Greenaway stuff. About a critic who visits the palatial estate of a famous cellist to write a biography of him only to find a harem of women; the whole thing unfolding from the cellist’s funeral a few days later. The winking humor is both music-hall bawdy but in a way that feels self-aware or “meta” in the context of a sixties film.

The Touch (1971), dir. Ingmar Bergman. Bergman’s one of my favorites, many of his canonized classics resonate deeply with me, but he was also astonishingly prolific, with a bunch of movies of his blurring together in my mind, and even more that I didn’t know existed, like this English-language one, starring Elliott Gould. Gould’s another favorite of mine, being in a bunch of great movies in the sixties and seventies, but damn, he’s unlikable here. Unlikable characters “hit different” in older material because I’m not sure if you’re supposed to sympathize with them according to the sexist cultural attitudes of the day. Here he’s “the other man” Liv Ullman is cheating on Max Von Sydow (RIP) with, but he’s pretty emotionally abusive, just a shit to her, extremely demanding of her in a relationship he did nothing to earn, though it does feel like the movie is kind of treating him as a romantic lead.

The Anderson Tapes (1971), dir. Sidney Lumet. This is heist movie, starring Sean Connery as a dude fresh out of prison, planning to rob his girlfriend’s apartment building, costarring Christopher Walken in his first film role. It contains all the plot beats of a typical heist thing, all the satisfying “getting the gang together, planning things out in advance, chaotic elements interfere” stuff but also a totally superfluous bit of framing about like constant surveillance, video monitoring and audio tape. All this dystopian police-state stuff seems, implicitly, like it would make a crime impossible to execute, the criminals are monitored every step of the way, by assorted agencies. But then the punchline, after everyone’s arrested for reasons having nothing to do with that, is that all this recording is illegal and all the tapes should be erased as the high-profile nature of the case makes it likely the monitoring agencies will get caught. Sidney Lumet directs a good thriller, even though I don’t find Connery (or Dyan Cannon, who plays the girlfriend) particularly compelling.

The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse (1933), dir. Fritz Lang. I watched this years ago, after reading Matt Fraction praise it, particularly how skillful the transitions between scenes were, and I really enjoyed it, but didn’t remember much about it and was excited to rewatch it. It’s got a lot going for it: An exceedingly elaborate criminal plot whose only goal is to wreak chaos, low-level criminals caught up in something they’re morally unprepared to reckon with, a charismatic police detective interviewing a bunch of weirdos, Fritz Lang following up M by continuing to be a master of film and sound editing very early stitching it all together. The Mabuse character was previously the star of a silent film I haven’t watched, and here he’s mute, which is a clever choice I didn’t register until writing it out just now. He’s gone completely insane, but is nonetheless writing a journal filled with elaborate crime plots, and his psychologist is completely insane and following these directions, in a commentary on the rise of Nazism in Germany at the time.

House By The River (1950), dir. Fritz Lang. I watched this in the pre-Quarantine days, but it totally rules. Again, it feels sordid in part because of how old it is and my assumption you’re meant to identify on some level with the completely loathsome protagonist’s sexual desire and anger at getting turned down. It’s so creepy, he’s listening to the sound of his maid showering at one point. All the characters seem very fun to play, they’re all pretty cartoonish. This guy murder his maid, and then gets the idea that he should write a book about the murder when someone explains the idea of “writing what you know” to him, and he is then surprised when his wife reads the book and puts together that it’s a murder confession, saying something like “Really? I thought I disguised it pretty well.” The film functions as a dark comedy because every character is completely mortifying. Lang’s work becoming less ambitious and more reduced in budget during his time working in America is pretty sad but this movie feels legit deranged.

Midsommar (2019), Ari Aster. Heard good things about Hereditary, but haven’t watched it yet, having been put off by the plot summary of Aster’s preceding short film, about a kid who rapes his dad. This is like a longer version of The Wicker Man, basically, starring Florence Pugh, who I had heard was like the new actress everyone’s enamored with, but didn’t think was that compelling in this. A bunch of Americans go to a Swedish village, one of them (played by Chidi from The Good Place) has studied their anthropology extensively, but all are unprepared for the fact that their whole culture seems to revolve around human sacrifice and having sex with outsiders so they don’t become totally inbred. There’s a monstrously deformed, cognitively impaired child who’s been bred specifically so his abstract splashings of paint can be interpreted as culture-defining profound lore, which I took away as being comparable to the role Joe Biden plays within the death cult of the DNC.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2019), dir. Bi Gan. This got a lot of acclaim, but I am almost certain the main reason I watched it is because the director made a list of his favorite movies and included Masaaki Yuasa’s anime series Kemonozume on it. Does a sort of bisected narrative thing, where half of the movie is this sort of fragmented crime thing, a little hard to follow, and then you get the title card, and then the second half is this pretty dreamlike atmospheric piece done in a single shot, with a moving camera. I’m not the sort to jerk off over long shots, although I appreciate the large amount of technical pre-planning that goes into pulling them off. The second part is pretty compelling though, enveloping, I guess it was in 3-D at certain theatrical screenings? I’m a little unclear on how my fucked-up eyes can deal with 3-D these days and I was never that into it. The first half is easy to turn off and walk away from, the second half isn’t but I’m unsure on how much it amounts to beyond its atmosphere.

Black Sun (1964), dir. Koreyoshi Kurahara. This one’s about a Japanese Jazz fan and dirtbag squatter who meets a black American soldier who’s gone crazy and AWOL. He loves him because he loves Jazz and all Black people, but the soldier is pretty crazy and can’t understand him anyway. Jazz is, or was, huge in Japan and this is a cooler depiction of that fandom than you get in Murakami novels but it’s a fairly uncomfortable watch, I guess because the black dude seems so crazy it feels a little racist to an American audience? Maybe he wasn’t being directed that well because there would be a language barrier but it’s weird.

Honestly the thing to watch from sixties Japan on The Criterion Channel is Black Lizard (1962), dir. Umetsugu Inoue, which I watched shortly after Trump’s election in 2016, when all the Criterion stuff was still on Hulu, and it cheered me up considerably in those dark days. It feels a little like The Abominable Dr. Phibes, but with a couple musical numbers, and is about a master detective who thinks crime is super-cool and wishes there was a criminal who would challenge his intellect. Then the Black Lizard kidnaps someone. It’s a lot of fun, with a tone that feels close to camp but is so knowing and smart it feels more genuinely strange and precise. One of those things you get fairly often where the Japanese outsider’s take on American genre stuff gets what it’s about more deeply and so feels like it’s operating on a higher level. I really love this movie.

I had this larger point I wanted to make about just feeling repulsed by genre stuff that self-consciously attempts to mimic its canonical influences and that might not be all the way present in this post. Still, something that really should be implicit when talking about movies from the past is that they are not superhero movies, and how repulsed I am by that particular genre’s domination of cinema right now, and how much of cinema has a history of something far looser and more freewheeling in its ideas of how to make work that appealed to a broad audience, and how much weird formal playfulness can be understood intuitively by an audience without being offputting, and the sort of spirit of formal interrogation connects the films I like to the comics I like (as well as the books I like, and the visual art I like), this sense of doing something that can only be done within that medium even as certain other aspects translate.

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bmichael · 6 years ago

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Cold Takes

You need something extra after you drag yourself out of bed at 450am in a polar vortex to go to the gym long before sunrise. So I was honestly delighted this morning to see a new Chuck Klosterman - Bill Simmons podcast posted.

I’ve had an up-and-down relationship to reading and listening to these two. Growing up, I was a sponge for their ideas, then as a more mature person I outright rejected and ridiculed them, and now as we’re all more or less adults I can relate to their thoughts in a probably more considered way.

Simmons was in the news recently because of this WSJ profile of The Ringer and him that mentioned, among other things, that the Ringer makes around $15MM a year on ad and podcast revenue. Now, I saw some sports blogs and twitter users throw this number around as if it were large. And it’s not zero, but it’s not really a large revenue figure for a media network with you’ve got to figure at least 50 staffers (it launched with 43 and has grown) based in LA. He’s a businessman and a business, man (I will retire that phrase now) but it’s definitely still a pretty small business.

So the podcast. I started listening to it as I went through my usual deadlift-squat-rows day -- not super fun but not the worst (squats-focused is the worst) and found it pretty entertaining. I don’t really care about Tony Romo’s announcing one way or the other and I thought they both circled around some pretty un-nuanced ideas re: basketball offenses. (Is the best offense just having James Harden try to score every play or pass -- maybe?! Three pointers and dunks are really good -- whoa, great point!)

There’s one relevant point to this ramble where they’re talking about the different Fyre Festival docs and what being an influencer means. Neither seems to have a strong grasp on the term. Simmons focuses on it qua job or activity, where you get paid to endorse something while Klosterman sees it more as an Aristotelian category. Neither correctly assesses it as a figure in the culture with great-than-zero brand recognition and a role within the capitalist-media complex to generate added revenue for someone or something and not always yourself. Ie, they’re both influencers, but neither seems to consider this.

(This point sort of comes up later tangentially and unnoticed when Klosterman laments his latest book dealing with all these things currently being made into films and documentaries while he got none of the credit...)

At the 1:15 mark Simmons brings up the movie Green Book and its unfair treatment thus far. Now, in the last podcast with Wesley Morris, Simmons talks about how he likes Green Book and thinks the movie works just fine while simultaneously reading the wikipedia page for the concept of the magic negro (really, he does this). He’s coming from a place of really liking the movie and attributing to it (or to his enjoyment of the movie, maybe more precisely) a nobody-believes-in-us type of moral gumption and gravity.

My reading of Simmons in the last two podcasts is that the movie’s embattled status as controversial and under fire by parts of the media pisses him off slightly and makes him want to see it succeed. In this equation, Green Book is the 2019 Patriots and Simmons treats it accordingly.

So Simmons says to Klosterman (almost a direct quote, but I don’t have time to go back and re-listen. It’s at 1:15:30-ish)

unless you satisfy all these different demographics, a piece of art will be rejected

He doesn’t clarify what “different demographics” he means, but I’m taking him to mean black people, primarily. He perhaps also means young people and/or woke twitter warriors. Simmons continues, saying that he thinks art “should make you think”.

By itself, I found this point uproariously out of touch and wrong, but Simmons kind of continues to sort of tease this point out with Klosterman. I’m saying “continues to sort of tease” not because I write in a folksy, casual style but because he really doesn’t seem to have an argument or single point of view in mind, and this is what I found so fascinating by this part of the podcast.

(Klosterman, for his part, doesn’t really say much about Simmons’ comments except that he grew up in a different era and understands he has a POV or prejudices implicitly that he cannot control.)

So a little later, Simmons brings up the movie Cruising, which I have not seen, but he says is very good. Apparently, its a “ 1980 erotic crime thriller film written and directed by William Friedkin and starring Al Pacino” about a serial killer targeting gay men. Simmons brings this movie up to make the point that people are much more easily mobilized these days (so insightful...) and to say, further, that if the movie were released today it would have been boycotted heavily and possibly not released.

I find this to be a laughable take, but he goes on to say something very revealing in response to something Klosterman says. Chuck says that if Cruising were made in 2019, maybe it would be made by a gay director and/or have a gay star. And Simmons is like, oh so they’d anticipate these issues and get out in front of the controversy.

This was so revealing to me because it snaps into focus a few different domains Simmons occupies and shows he almost ‘code switches’ his thought process, unconsciously, depending on whatever ghost of a coherent thought happens to be haunting his mind in a given moment.

This is clearly Simmons the producer and media mogul. He wants to get this movie, Crusing, made in 2019. Logistically, he knows certain demographics will boycott the film and maybe prevent it from being released.

(By the way, there have been some movies prevented from being released, generally on the basis of a moral panic, but the most recent one I can think of is the Woody Allen Louis CK one which, who the fuck would want to see that anyway? I’m sure it would ‘make you think’... that CK and Allen are pieces of shit.)

This is not really a great place to come from as a critic or even person who runs the Ringer media empire. Speaking to the latter, obviously the Ringer is a vehicle to make money for its owners, but it does seem to have a more coherent, somewhat woke new media 3.0 purpose that’s not 100% cynical in the vein of, ‘hey cast a gay actor for this homophobic film so that it won’t get boycotted’. For the former, sure it would be something you’d note and maybe write about, but would it really ‘make you think’? It would make me think that the movie was a cynical piece of shit floating in the homophobic toilet bowl of American culture.

Drawing back even further, it just goes to show me at least that the majority of influencers in this apparently lamentable influencer culture still don’t really consider themselves influencers. The sort of way saying someone’s a “white male” is kind of offensive because it creates this contre-pied cognitive step where a white man actually has to identify as a subgroup of humanity and not the default setting, as it were, and realize that he has discursive and political motivations that aren’t just ‘natural law’ or something and are generally around to further his demographic’s self-interests.

Simmons constantly spouts this backward, establishment-protecting bullshit when it comes to entertainment - and with regard to everything else. The one arguably moral stand he took, to badmouth Roger Goodell on his ESPN podcast, had the effect of making him more famous and gave his flagging outsider status a little more life, allowing him to pivot to the Ringer. He and his site still slavishly cover football, despite making jokes (I guess?) about CTE and concussions.

There is not a large conclusion to all this except to get my thoughts out there. Like, I don’t think Simmons is evil or anything, but he’s totally unaware of his biases -- the same as anyone, I know.

It just galls me that I think he thinks he’s this establishment-wrecking poster boy for new media when he’s just the same old self-congratulatory, now-middle-aged white guy holding back progress in the name of art or a sophisticated critical view when it’s really about the bottom line and protecting conservative values.

#bill simmons #chuck klosterman

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aion-rsa · 3 years ago

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The Exorcist Sequel Will Be ‘Like 2018’s Halloween Reboot’

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With the release of The Forever Purge—the fifth in the eerily prescient dystopian horror series—upon us, Den of Geek had a chance to speak with Jason Blum, the producer and Blumhouse Productions president. In addition to discussing the future of the Purge franchise (more on that later this week), we also had the chance to query the producer about the many other genre projects always percolating under his banner.

One of those is a The Exorcist sequel, which Blum is developing with director David Gordon Green. The pair’s last attempt to reenergize and sequelize a storied horror title, 2018’s Halloween, was both a box office and well-deserved critical success. It ignored decades of inferior sequels, retcons, and reboots and focused on picking up the story—40 years later—at the heart of the property: Laurie Strode’s (Jamie Lee Curtis) battle against Michael Myers.

Blum and Green face a similar situation with The Exorcist. Despite one sequel being considered a minor classic in its own right (The Exorcist III) and a short-lived but well-received TV series that found a way to tie itself to the original movie, William Friedkin’s 1973 horror milestone—the first horror film ever nominated for Best Picture, not to mention a cultural phenomeno—has been dogged by a handful of terrible follow-ups and add-ons. There was 1977’s unwatchable The Exorcist II, plus two underwhelming versions of the same prequel: 2004’s Exorcist: The Beginning and 2005’s Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist.

Although he doesn’t say directly that Green’s film will disregard the four sequels and the TV series that came in the original The Exorcist’s wake, Blum hints that it will be far removed from those entries since

“[It’s] going to be like David’s Halloween sequel.”, Blum says. “I think it’s going to pleasantly surprise all the skeptics out there. We had a lot of skeptics about Halloween and David turned them around, and I think he’s going to turn it around with The Exorcist.”

Blum also maintains that he doesn’t find the prospect of creating a new sequel to what is widely considered the greatest horror movie of all time to be daunting.

“I love to do [these] kinds of movies because people are very emotional about it,” he says. “I think it’s a high bar and it’s a challenge to do the movie. Remember, most of the audience coming to this—95 percent of the audience who will, if we do our job right, come to see this movie—will not have seen the first Exorcist or even heard of it.”

Blum doesn’t say where he got that statistic from—although we suspect he has market research folks who do exactly that kind of heavy-lifting—but he does insist that number is “shocking, but true.”

He continues, “I want to make a movie that works for both [audiences]. I want to make a movie for people that know and love the first Exorcist and are furious that we’re doing this, but somehow drag themselves to the theater. I want them to come out happy. And I want to make a movie that people who’ve never heard of The Exorcist really enjoy. I think David did that with Halloween. I think he’ll do that with The Exorcist also.”

For now, all other information on the sequel, including plot and casting details, remains up in the air while Green completes the trilogy he began with Halloween (the next one, Halloween Kills, is due out Oct. 15, while the finale, Halloween Ends, arrives exactly a year later).

Unlike Green’s Halloween reboot, for which original director and mastermind John Carpenter served as an executive producer and composer, The Exorcist director William Friedkin has adamantly said he will not be involved, even if asked, in any new films spun off from his original.

The Forever Purge is out in theaters this Friday, July 2.

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The post The Exorcist Sequel Will Be ‘Like 2018’s Halloween Reboot’ appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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filmstudiesandshenanigans · 8 years ago

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20th Century Women: Punk Rock in the Cosmos

It's fitting that during a scene in which Annette Bening's narrator breaks the fourth wall and ponders the next twenty years of American history, director and writer Mike Mills decided to insert a scene from Koyaanisqatsi. Indeed, this film feels closest to Godrey Reggio's ponderous meditation on the nature of time and how the earth just keeps on spinning, our daily lives a mere blip in the cosmic ballet. But while we're here, Mills thinks we ought to try and make the best of it.

As intensely personal and semi-autobiographical as his previous film, Beginners, 20th Century Women is not just a step forward artistically; it represents a quantum leap. The shift in narrative and thematic ambition to something less precious and more purely empathetic allows Mills to connect the intimacy of this makeshift family of sorts to a vast thematic landscape. What Mills seems to be occupied with isn't as much a conversation with God or the cosmos about the meaning of existence, but rather an interest in our relationship with the passage of time. If we're really only here for a moment, what do with do with that moment? What impact does it have, and how does the flow of time shape who we are?

The kaleidoscope of experience and perspective is embodied in the surrogate family on display in Mills' exploration of what can be surmised was his relationship with his mother and the people around him. Standing in for the author is Jaime, a 15 year old boy being raised by his single mother, a feminist who yet struggles with the changing world around her, trying to make heads or tales of a post-Nixon America. As William Friedkin once said, the 1970s represented the country having "a national nervous breakdown" following the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr, the Kennedy brothers, and the Vietnam war. That nervous breakdown could arguably be seen as culminating in the impeachment and resignation of President Nixon. The Watergate scandal shook the country's faith in democracy like nothing before, and afterwards, we're still picking up the pieces. In fact, the film's use of an omniscient narration by the various characters able to see their own past, present, and 20 year-on future allows this historical perspective to ponder where the fuck we as a people are supposed to go from here. Does it matter?

Surrounding Jaime and Dorothea are their two tenants, a 20-something photographer who "dyed her hair red after she saw The Man Who Fell to Earth" and a 40-something handyman who lived through the 60s but maybe left his heart back there, struggling to reconcile his deep, salt of the earth goodness with his younger free spirit. Add to the list a lifelong childhood friend of Jaime's, a girl he is deeply in love with but unrequitedly so, and you have a strange surrogate family indeed. But Mills is so invested in finding the empathy to treat them all a human beings that it never becomes the precocious, farce it could be in the hands of anyone less insightful and pointed in their observations. If this all sounds a bit weighty and ponderous, rest assured it balances lofty thematic ambitions with an absolutely acidic wit and joyous celebration of life's messiness. It strikes such a balance between these tones that I found myself often laughing hysterically while also literally choking back a good cry.

That deep sense of humanity is embodied beautifully in the performances across the board, but never more so than in the ways Annette Bening and Greta Gerwig's generational gap contrast and compliment one another. Instead of playing either as a stereotype, their ability to project some much emotional complexities in the simplest of gestures and body language is astonishing. That's par for the course with Bening, who has long been portraying that level of devastating nuance in her career, but something of a revelation for Gerwig, who up until now has been the heir apparent of Parker Posey as the indie queen, playing variations of herself throughout. Here, she finally allows herself a level of raw vulnerability that results in a complex, heartbreaking, and passionate portrayal of a young woman just trying to feel sane in an insane world. The scenes she shares with Bening show a level of compassion between two women who have a stronger bond than just friends. There's a real love and understanding that comes off as a mother-daughter dynamic at first, but reveals itself to be something more pure and with less baggage. Two women who just wan tot be there for one another, connecting through shared experience throughout time.

At one point in the film, Bening stumbles upon her son and Gerwig's character listening to punk rock, and says "They're not very good, are they?" Gerwig replies Yea, it’s like they’ve got this feeling, and they don’t have any skill, and they don’t want skill, because it’s really interesting what happens when your passion is bigger than the tools you have to deal with it. It creates this energy that’s raw. Isn’t it great?"

That assessment of the energy and passion pf punk permeates throughout the film, serving as a thesis of sorts on our place in the course of history. Mills seems to assert that without allowing yourself to express that raw feeling and energy, you find yourself stuck in frustration and a life measured only in what you think you have the tools to achieve, rather than finally just shouting "I'm here, and this is who I am!" at the top of your lungs. Such a love for humanity is rare these days, but a film like 20th Century Women is bursting at the seems with it. We're all complicated, messy, strange people, but damned if we aren't going to just try our best to make our mark on the flow of time in whatever way we can. No fate but what you make, after all.

#20th Century Women #Mike Mills #Greta Gerwig #Annette Bening #Billy Crudup #Elle Fanning

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tessatechaitea · 6 years ago

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New Titans #108

I can't believe we had to wait 108 issues for Marv Wolfman's take on the trauma of rape!

The advertisement on the inside front cover is for the movie Blue Chips and I've never hated past everybody more. Shaquille O'Neal starring in a movie directed by William Friedkin with the tagline, "In your face." Maybe I'm judging this movie too harshly simply because my first thought was, "What fucking world were we living in where we decided Shaq needed a movie career?" But then, he's playing a basketball player in this movie so he probably nailed the role. I'm sure there's no difference between the way he performed his role and the way he answered press questions after a game. And I guess he was kind of funny and charming, so what Hollywood bigwig wasn't getting on the horn and yelling at casting directors, "Get me Shaq! I've got a script here for a basketball movie and he'd be perfect! Also maybe throw this genie script at him!" Anyway, the Internet and Roger Ebert seem to think this movie wasn't too bad so maybe this isn't a hill I should die on. Not that I haven't died on a whole slew of hills that weren't worth dying on. Maybe not as many as Deathstork fans but I've still had my share. I don't remember any of those hills because I purge my memory of all the times I acted foolish so that I can continue to believe I'm the epitome of the perfect human being. Also, maybe I shouldn't trust Roger Ebert's judgment as much as I do seeing as he began his review with this word: "Alot". Unless that indicates he despised editors too in which case I'm back to being his #130,503,227th biggest fan! The issue begins with Starfire visiting Councilwoman Alderman in an insane asylum. Kory is dressed in torn rags because fuck you. You don't deserve a comic book that makes sense if you stuck with New Titans this long! My first thought was, "Is this a nightmare?" But I skipped ahead a few pages so that I wouldn't write a bunch of shit that didn't matter when it was revealed to be a dream and I don't think it is a nightmare. My second thought was that Kory broke in to confront Alderman but Kory mentions things the guard said to her, and references waiting for the guards to open the door leading to Alderman's cell. So she went through the proper channels for a visit and nobody seemed to care she was barefoot and wearing a torn sheet that was skimpier than her superhero costume. But then I remember this is a comic book from 1994 and even when a hot female character is dealing with the trauma of rape, the artist still must cater to the male gaze. You know how many comic book drawings of dead female heroes I've jerked off to?! I mean, obviously it's zero! That was meant to be hyperbolic and satirical!

So sexily satirical!

Comic book fans think they have it rough now, what with Tom King portraying Batman as a man who might actually have to deal with the psychological trauma of his entire life in ways other than beating criminals nearly to death. Back in 1994, we had to deal with poor misunderstood and tormented Raven turning into a rape monster just like her father! It was a hard lesson! Thankfully, the only people who had to learn it were the assholes who still kept buying The New Titans after the Wildebeest story arc. Nightwing arrives to save Starfire from more trauma induced by Alderman's ranting. He appears in full costume because men are allowed to be dignified. Although, technically, with the way artists draw characters in spandex, Nightwing looks more naked than Starfire. Starfire yells "Kynasf'rr!" and blasts through the wall, leaving Nightwing free to think about how Alderman said he was always second to Batman. I mean, Kory's pain is terrible and Alderman taunting her about a possible Trigon pregnancy is terrifying but second to Batman?! Below the belt, crazy lady! Phantasm makes an appearance to say, "Trigon's seed has returned to Earth!" So now I'm thinking about Trigon's ejaculate, so thanks for that, Marv Wolfman! You dirty pervert!

Based on these two articles on the front page, I'm guessing nobody at the Globe knows what "landslide" means.

Beast Boy and Dr. Sarah Charles have a grieving session while packing up Victor's things in whatever space Victor kept his things. Garfield decides to remember things so that Marv Wolfman can show that Garfield has learned a lesson about inspiration and hope from Cyborg. Gar says, "Only [Cyborg] never complained. He just kept going on, even after what happened to Sarah Simms. Even after he realized he was going to die. He just took things as they were and changed what he could and accepted what he couldn't." Maybe I'm the one remembering things wrong but I felt like Cyborg was constantly complaining! He was constantly angry at his dad for turning him into a machine. He was constantly upset at his robot life because it didn't allow him to fuck his romantic partners. He was always saying "Booyah!" because what else is there to say when your body is a constant and painful reminder that you'll never again be human and you're bound to live a life of loneliness? I mean, I could be remembering wrong. And anyway, this plays much better. You want the dead guy to have left some kind of meaning filling the void his presence has left. Also, Garfield needed this moment to grow the fuck up. It reveals too much about my inner character so I won't discuss the scene where I identify too strongly with Pantha's grousing about the Beast Boy/Dr. Charles scene just before Red Star almost beats the shit out of her. Those two are definitely about to fuck, right? Roy Harper discovers that his bosses at Checkmate have found a non-Dayton Industries corporation to begin design Titan weapons systems and that corporation is run by Alexander Luthor. Not Lex Luthor! Alexander! The one with red hair and the beard. The one that was fucking Supergirl. But not the real Supergirl! The Supergirl made out of slime or computer data or something. I don't have a real clear memory of these post-Death-of-Superman Superman family histories! And finally, Starfire travels to South America — the Tamaran of Earth, I guess? — to undergo Kynasf'rr. I don't know what that is but I bet it's sexy. New Titans #108 Rating: B-. I almost gave this issue a C+ which is worse than a B- but feels more positive because our perceptions of things, as humans, can be fucking stupid. I was hoping for Marv to really plumb the deaths of Starfire's tragedy but instead he just scripted a few pages of Starfire nearly naked while Alderman tries to convince her to let Raven rape her again. Marv doesn't even spend much time on the Titan's grief over Cyborg since he had to deal with a bunch of Titans' bureaucracy over their current leadership and membership problems. This seemed like an issue where Marv could have really flexed some emotional writing muscle but he spent only a few pages superficially glossing over the Titans' grief and pain. The Letters Pages! Jeff DeMos of New York, NY, gave me a good laugh when he wrote, "Why is there a periodic need to overhaul a character that will 'change (them) forever?' Has Cyborg really become so boring and dated? Has he exhausted all possible storylines?" Why, yes and yes, Jeff! Thanks for asking the truly important rhetorical questions! The editor's response to those obviously rhetorical questions was another good laugh: "Cyborg never became 'boring or dated.'" Ha ha! I suppose that statement is true if you consider Cyborg has always been boring and dated which means he could never become those things!

#New Titans #Teen Titans #DC Comics #DC #Comic Book Review

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joneswilliam72 · 6 years ago

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The 405 curated streaming queue #1A, March 2019 – totally free streaming choices.

The world of streaming is getting more and more dense with more and more options for the average viewer among more and more outlets to choose from.

Indeed, the sheer volume of content is daunting. But this climate also offers a tremendous amount of quality choices. If one knows where to look.

Toward that end, at The 405 I will be sharing a snapshot every month of my entire streaming queue across Hulu, Amazon, Tubi TV, PlutoTV, Sony Crackle, Netflix, MUBI and Vudu – all of which have apps for one’s smart TV in addition to the usual mobile fare. We will be adding entries for other free services like IMDb Freedive, and other paid services like The Criterion Channel, as they expand their smart TV capability. I have taken into account truly great films in most every genre in making this list and will continue to do so.

Tubi TV, Sony Crackle, and PlutoTV are all free all time (with adds), Vudu has a tremendous amount of free content but also pay content (all entries on this list for Vudu are free with ads). Hulu, Amazon, and Netflix are of course pay options.

Towards that end, entries over the free services will be in this article and entries in the paid services will be coming a little later this month. This template will be repeated from month to month as the platforms rotate new titles in.

The options below are on their respective outlets as of March 11, 2019. As I am in the US, they may not be accessible to viewers who are not. I cannot guarantee that one way or the other.

This is also just a snapshot. To list my entire queue would make this article unbearably long. What I have included below are the choices in my queue that I consider to be the most essential, must-see, and the highest quality. Links to each film at the respective service are embedded in each bold title below, along with the film’s trailer after the description.

Stay tuned for “The 405 curated streaming queue #1B, March 2019 – paid edition” for the best of my queue on the paid services, Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon.

I. Vudu

Still from Darren Aronofsky’s first film PI (1998). Source:Nerdist.

Tootsie

The classic starring Dustin Hoffman as a down-on-his-luck actor who cross dresses to gain a part on a TV show is always a fun watch and really essential if you have not seen it. Tootsie was directed by the one and only Sydney Pollack (Out of Africa) too.

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The Last Witness

The Last Witness is a WWII murder mystery about a very real massacre of 22,000 Poles by Stalin and the Red Army. Catch my interview with director Piotr Szkopiak here.

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A Scanner Darkly

Based on the Philip K. Dick novel, A Scanner Darkly is a dark, dystopian wonder with a lot to say on the human condition.

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Pi is Darren Aronofsky’s first feature length film. It tells the story of a migraneur mathematician obsessed with the Bible Code and the people chasing him. In its monochrome, frenetic, and sublimely beautiful style, Pi is a cannot-miss.

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Bully

From Kids director Larry Clark, Bully is a gritty look at teenagers and a murder plot involving their bully in 1990s California. It is a visceral gut punch of a movie that anyone who appreciates great cinema will love.

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Irreversible

Gaspar Noé brings us a vicious, incredible, seemingly-random story of violence in Paris in a way only he can. Irreversible was the follow-up feature to his I Stand Alone, which was terrifyingly brutal in its own right. While both films are hard to watch, this is very intentional considering the subject matter and should not deter the viewer as Noé’s horrifying elegance is one-of-a-kind among directors.

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Last Man Standing (NOT the Tim Allen TV show)

Bruce Willis is a mob hit man getting in gun fights in a Texas ghost town – which is a setting not often seen in mob movies. Last Man Standing is an action flick with a story the one and only Akira Kurosawa contributed to the story of – Last Man Standing (like Sergio Leone’s Fistful of Dollars in 1964) is a retelling of Kurosawa’s 1961 classic Yojimbo which is itself based on “The Maltese Falcon” author Dashiell Hammett’s novel “Red Harvest”. The Coen Brothers”– and Frances McDormand’s – incredible 1984 film debut Blood Simple. also got its title from a quote in “Red Harvest”.

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Amityville II: The Possession

One of the best in the Amityville franchise and starring the incomparable ‘80s sex symbol, actress Diane Franklin who started the teen heartthrob curly-haired revolution. My interview with Diane can be read here.

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The Machinist

Christian Bale stars as an insomniac machinist with a very dark secret. Bale lost an incredible amount of weight to play the part – dropping around 60 pounds, he is damn near unrecognizable in it – and his acting does not disappoint. Come to think of it, neither does the writing or filmmaking of this black as night neo-noir. The Machinist is truly a must-see.

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Delicatessen

Delicatessen is a darkly funny, brilliantly-surrealist, post-apocalyptic fantasy. This is one you have to see to believe.

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II. PlutoTV – Note that PlutoTV does not have a search function that I could see. You have to scroll through the relevant section for a title. Therefore, I have noted which section I found each title in next to its listing. While the site’s features and navigation frankly suck something awful, PlutoTV does offer an exceedingly wide breadth of great films and overlooked gems.

Still from TEETH (2007). Source:Bloody Good Horror.

The Evil Dead (horror)

Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead tops more than a few “essential horror cinema” lists for good reason.

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Night of the Living Dead (classic movies)

More essential horror, this time from the master George Romero. Night of the Living Dead is still scaring many an audience after nearly 51 years.

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Hellraiser (horror)

A third entry for essential horror, this time from the great Clive Barker who both wrote the “Hellraiser” novels and directed the film.

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Bronson (thriller)

Bronson is a loosely-true, biographical film of “the most violent prisoner in England”(an electric Tom Hardy) from The Neon Demon and Drive (look for Drive under the Sony Crackle section lower down this page) director Nicolas Winding Refn. NWR also runs a streaming site that is pretty incredible in its own right: bynwr.com specializes in restoring, then streaming, old cult classics and great movies that fly below the radar. Restorations are personally supervised by NWR and the site is always free to watch and read the treasure trove of information it shares on each film. The paid MUBI service streams these films on the larger mobile and smart TV ecosystem.

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Children of the Corn (horror)

The feature length horror classic from Stephen King all about a couple whose car breaks down in a tiny Nebraska town with homicidal child religious zealots. Children of the Corn did a lot to define Stephen King’s horror on the big screen in the 1980s.

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Bug (indies)

Bug is an overlooked gem of psychological horror starring Ashley Judd and directed by cinematic legend William Friedkin of The Exorcist, Wages of Fear, and The French Connection.

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Donnie Darko (indies)

One of the most significant head-trips I’ve ever experienced at the movies – Jake Gyllenhaal is sublimely terrifying as the titular character who just so happens to have a homicidal rabbit named Frank as his hallucinatory friend. Donnie Darko messes with your sense of time and reality in incredible ways that no fan of serious, cerebral horror should miss.

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Freakonomics: The Movie (documentaries)

An exceptional movie after an exceptional book (which I also highly recommend). Freakonomics will teach you to think counter-intuitively and reason like the rogue economist who wrote it.

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Teeth (horror)

Teeth is a blood-chilling feminist horror film about a woman with literal vagina dentata (look it up) that became much more relevant in the #MeToo era. Read my interview with Teeth’s lead star Jess Weixler here.

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The Merchant of Venice (drama)

Al Pacino stars in 1984 director Michael Radford’s 2004 take on Shakespeare’s play. Watch for the incredible realism here: for instance, the prostitutes are topless in the beginning scene not because Radford wanted a racier movie, but because it was the law in Venice, where authorities thought it would stomp out homosexuality. My interview with Radford can be read here.

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Melancholia (indies)

Melancholia is Lars von Trier’s surreal story about two sisters (Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg) who find their already strained relationship at its breaking point as a mysterious planet is colliding with Earth. While far from von Trier’s best (that, in my opinion, goes to the profoundly nihilistic Antichrist), Melancholia is well worth a watch.

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A Star is Born (classic movies)

The 1937 original with Frederic March and Janet Gaynor.

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Suddenly (classic movies)

A thriller with Frank Sinatra as the baddie along with Sterling Hayden? Count me in.

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His Girl Friday (classic movies)

Cary Grant is always a great watch with his one-of-a-kind humor and goofiness. The great Howard Hawks (the original 1932 Scarface, The Big Sleep, Bringing Up Baby) directs.

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House on Haunted Hill (classic movies)

The original 1959 horror classic based on the book by Shirley Jackson and starring the immortal Vincent Price, this is essential modern gothic horror.

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D.O.A. (classic movies)

Edmond O’Brien is California businessman Frank Bigelow who is poisoned when he heads to San Francisco. Can Bigelow find his own murderer before the poison acts? D.O.A. is a fantastic, frenetic film noir directed by prolific cinematographer Rudolph Maté who worked on classics from The Passion of Joan of Arc to Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent.

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Algiers (classic movies)

Hedy Lamarr and Gaslight’s Charles Boyer star in this locational love story that did quite a lot to convince the studios of Casablanca’s merits four years after Algiers came out.

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He Walked By Night (classic movies)

Richard Basehart is a cold blooded killer in this noir that acted as a forerunner to TV’s Dragnet.

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Indiscreet (classic movies)

Indiscreet is one of screen legend Gloria Swanson’s first talkies. Wanna see what the experience behind her immortal portrayal of Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950) looks like? Indiscreet is a definitive entry in the canon of a powerful actress that helped build that indelible foundation as Norma Desmond in Wilder’s movie.

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Maniac (classic movies)

A fascinating example of early grindhouse cinema (from 1934) in its violent, disturbing style, Maniac (originally titled “Sex Maniac”) tells the story of a former vaudevillian who is skilled as an impersonator as he aids a mad scientist in re-animating the dead.

They Made Me a Criminal (classic movies)

An essential early noir starring the great John Garfield (The original Postman Always Rings Twice).

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The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (classic movies)

More essential noir and Kirk Douglas’s film debut. Barbara Stanwyck also delivers knock-out performance.

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Goya’s Ghosts (drama)

Goya’s Ghosts is an incredible look at a scandal involving the mistress (Natalie Portman) of legendary Spanish painter Francisco de Goya (Javier Bardem). Milos Forman (Amadeus) directed and co-wrote this fantastic, based-on-a-true-story historical piece.

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III. Sony Crackle.

Ryan Gosling in DRIVE (2011). Source:Japan Times.

Sexy Beast

Sir Ben Kingsley earned an Oscar nomination for the role of brutal British gangster Don Logan in this Jonathan Glazer-directed crime thriller.

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The Haunting

Catherine Zeta-Jones and Liam Neeson star in this more modern take on Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House.”

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Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is Guy Ritchie’s breakout London crime comedy that is always a treat to watch. Check out my interview with Rocketman director and actor Dexter Fletcher who plays Soap in Lock, by heading here.

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Arlington Road

Jeff Bridges plays a college professor who suspects his new neighbor (Tim Robbins) may be an alt-right domestic terrorist. It is sad how timely a thriller Arlington Road still is (it is 20 this year) – but even if it wasn’t, Arlington Road is still a taut and very well-executed.

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Drive

Nicolas Winding Refn directs this neo-noir with Ryan Gosling as a stuntman who moonlights as a getaway driver with a conscience. The visual palette of Drive is absolutely incredible with its neon-drenched, realist, California scenes – made all the more incredible because Winding Refn is actually color blind in that he is physically unable to see midtones. If you like movies like Nightcrawler, you’ll really like Drive.

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Lords of Dogtown

Heath Ledger, John Robinson, and Emile Hirsch star in this look at the skateboarding trends that developed in the 1970s in Venice, CA. Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight, Miss Bala) directs Lords of Dogtown.

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IV. Tubi TV

Still from CARNIVAL OF SOULS (1962). Source:The Criterion Collection.

Memento

Christopher Nolan’s epic 2000 neo-noir murder mystery told in reverse chronology. Starring Guy Pearce and Carrie-Anne Moss, Memento is undoubtedly one of the best and most influential neo-noirs of the early 2000s.

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Mulholland Dr.

David Lynch’s surreal magnum opus is a movie I’ve written about extensively at The 405 – read my original analysis of it here. Mulholland Dr. is essential cinema for the modern world. Check out my interview with Oscar-nominee Robert Forster, who was in Mulholland Dr., here.

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True Grit

The Coen Brothers version of the classic western from 1969, with Jeff Bridges in John Wayne’s part of Rooster Cogburn. True Grit was nominated for 10 Academy Awards.

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Hugo

Martin Scorsese’s multi-Oscar winning love letter to classic cinema. Hugo (with its PG rating) also functions really well as a family film that has substance and can teach your kids a thing or two about the great Georges Méliès who directed one of the first great movies in the early 1900s: A Trip to the Moon.

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The Bird With the Crystal Plumage

The 1970 giallo classic from Dario Argento. The Bird With the Crystal Plumage is a defining film for giallo as a style in its reluctant detective story about an American who witnesses a murder at an art gallery in Rome and tries to piece his recollections together for the carbineri. .

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The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made

An entertaining, self-explanatory documentary. Every cineaste should know about The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made.

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Multiple Maniacs

Multiple Maniacs is the definitive John Waters classic. Read The 405 interview with him here.

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Reefer Madness (In Color and Restored)

While it isn’t the monochrome original from 1936, Reefer Madness is an essential watch to understand the racist and hype-driven roots of America’s Drug War. It is definitive in that area and even birthed terms like “voodoo pharmacology.”

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The Goode Family

Another brilliant satirical show from Beavis and Butt-Head creator Mike Judge. The Goode Family is a scathing sendup of modern leftism and was beloved by many regular leftists when it was on for one season in 2009 because it shows a regular family. Think King of the Hill with weird vegan hippies and not Texans and you’ll understand this half hour show. Alas, petulant, safe-space-hiding critics hated The Goode Family and crucified it till the plug was pulled. Still, the lower than average ratings also didn’t help the shows ultimate destiny. But don’t let that deceive you: this is quality – and very funny – satire. See the pilot below.

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The Little Shop of Horrors

A fantastic little piece of comedic horror from 1960, Roger Corman directs The Little Shop of Horrors.

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The Hitch-Hiker

The Hitch-Hiker was the first Hollywood film noir directed by a woman: the incomparable actress and filmmaker Ida Lupino. Edmond O’Brien stars.

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Carnival of Souls

A remarkable low budget but high-concept, psychologically-driven horror flick made by Herk Harvey, a Kansas filmmaker who specialized in industrial films in 1962. The film’s entire budget was sourced over the course of one weekend in Lawrence, Kansas. Carnival of Souls is a must-see that bombed when it first came out but is now viewed as a standard-bearer of superb psychological horror.

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Suspiria

The Dario Argento horror classic which was recently remade by Luca Guadagnino.

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1984

Director Michael Radford’s superb take (the 1956 version, done almost 25 years before this one, was essentially panned by Orwell’s widow for neutering the more brutal lessons Orwell intended in the novel) on George Orwell’s powerful and timely novel of an authoritarian future. Read my interview with actress Suzanna Hamilton who played Julia in 1984, by going here.

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Dial M For Murder

Dial M is the Alfred Hitchcock suspense classic starring Ray Milland and Grace Kelly. Warner Brothers insisted the film be shot in 3D, which Hitchcock did not want. The craze was fading but Hitchcock gave in to their wishes. Still, like all his movies, Dial M is nerve-shredding.

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The Naked Kiss

A 1964 crime drama about a prostitute working out her psychological demons. Prolific auteur Samuel Fuller (The Big Red One, Shock Corridor) is the mind behind The Naked Kiss.

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Five Minutes to Live

Johnny Cash stars as hood Johnny Cabot in this 1961 crime flick directed by Bill Karn. Five Minutes to Live was the only feature length film the Man in Black acted in in the ‘60s, he would go on to do more in the intervening decades before his death in 2003.

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Kansas City Confidential

Kansas City Confidential is a rather under-rated film noir with John Payne as an ex con trying to go straight who is framed for an armed car robbery and must go to Mexico to seek justice and the truth.

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Gothic

Gothic is the great Ken Russell's take on the infamous story of what happened the night Mary Shelley wrote “Frankenstein” with Gabriel Byrne as Lord Byron and Natasha Richardson as Mary Shelley. Russell’s work is always bold and boundary-pushing: if you like Gothic, you owe it to yourself to see his 1971 film The Devils too, although you’ve probably already seen The Who’s Tommy – probably Russell’s best known directorial effort.

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from The 405 https://ift.tt/2VUHE4T

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myhauntedsalem · 5 years ago

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Horror Movies Based on True Events

Lots still not mentioned

Open Water (2003) When a couple goes scuba diving in Open Water, their boat accidentally leaves them behind in shark-infested water. It’s based on something that really happened to American tourists Tom and Eileen Lonergan, who were left behind by a diving company off the Great Barrier Reef. By the time the mistake was realized two days later, it was too late, and they were never seen again. A shark attack seems not to have been the cause of death, however, as the couple’s dive jackets were eventually found. The jackets weren’t damaged, which suggested that the Lonergans likely took them off, “delirious from dehydration,” and drowned.

Borderland (2007) When three friends head to a Mexican border town to have some fun in this movie, they get mixed up with a cult specializing in human sacrifice. The concept loosely stems from the life of Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, a drug lord and cult leader who was responsible for the death of American student Mark Kilroy.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) The iconic baddie Freddy Krueger kills teenagers via their dreams in Wes Craven’s franchise-launching film. Craven told Vulture that the idea stemmed from an article he read in The Los Angeles Times about a family of Cambodian refugees with a young son who reported awful nightmares. “He told his parents he was afraid that if he slept, the thing chasing him would get him, so he tried to stay awake for days at a time,” said Craven. “When he finally fell asleep, his parents thought this crisis was over. Then they heard screams in the middle of the night. By the time they got to him, he was dead. He died in the middle of a nightmare. Here was a youngster having a vision of a horror that everyone older was denying. That became the central line of Nightmare on Elm Street.”

Black Water (2007) Set in the swamps of Australia, this movie sees a group of fishers attacked by a humongous crocodile. It was inspired by an actual crocodile attack in the Australian outback in 2003 that killed a man named Brett Mann in an area that his friends said they’d “never, ever” seen a crocodile before.

Dead Ringers (1988) In David Cronenberg’s movie, Jeremy Irons plays twin gynecologists who do messed up things with patients and ultimately die together in the end. Cronenberg adapted the movie from Bari Wood and Jack Geasland’s novel Twins, which was inspired by the lives of actual twin gynecologists Stewart and Cyril Marcus. TheNew York Times noted that the Marcuses enjoyed “trading places to fool their patients” and that they ultimately “retreat[ed] into heavy drug use and utter isolation.”

Deliver Us From Evil (2014) The movie follows a cop and a priest who team up to take on the supernatural. It’s based on self-proclaimed “demonologist” Ralph Sarchie’s memoir Beware the Night, in which he tells supposedly true stories, such as the time he found himself "in the presence of one of hell's most dangerous devils" possessing a woman.

Poltergeist (1982) In Poltergeist, a family’s home is invaded by ghosts that abduct one of the daughters. The film was inspiredby unexplained events, such as loud popping noises and moved objects, that occurred in 1958 at the Hermanns’ home in Seaford, New York.

Psycho (1960) Alfred Hitchcock’s essential film traces a woman who embezzles money from her employer and runs off to a mysterious hotel where she is (58-year-old spoiler alert) murdered by the man running it, Norman Bates. Bates is said to have been based on Ed Gein, a Wisconsin man who was convicted for one murder in the 1950s, but suspected for others. He also was a grave robber, and authorities found many disturbing results of that in his home, including bowls crafted from human skulls and a lampshade made from the skin of someone’s face.

Scream (1996) The classic ‘90s slasher flick uses dark humor to tell the story of a group of teens and a mystery man named Ghostface who wants to murder them. But the real story ain’t funny. The movie was inspired by the Gainesville Ripper, real name Danny Rolling, who killed five Florida students by knife over a span of three days in August 1990.

The Conjuring (2013) The movie stars Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as ghost hunters helping out a family in a haunted 18th-century farmhouse. The hunters, Ed and Lorraine Warren, are real people, as is the Perron family that they assist. Lorraine was a consultant on the movie and insists that many of the supernatural horrors really happened, and one of the daughters who is depicted in the film, Andrea Perron, says the same. She recalled an angry spirit named Bathsheba to USA Today:“Whoever the spirit was, she perceived herself to be mistress of the house and she resented the competition my mother posed for that position.”

Annabelle (2014) The creepy porcelain doll from The Conjuring gets her terror on in this spin-off of The Conjuring. The ghost-hunting Warrens have claimed that there was a real Raggedy Ann doll that moved by itself and wrote creepy-ass notes saying things like, “Help us.” The woman who owned it contacted a medium, who claimed that it was possessed by a seven-year-old girl named Annabelle who had died there.

The Disappointments Room (2016) Kate Beckinsale stars in the movie as an architect who moves to a new home with a mysterious room in the attic that she eventually learns was previously used as a room where rich people would cast off disabled children. It was reportedly inspired by a Rhode Island woman who discovered a similar room in her house that she says was built by a 19th century judge to lock away his disabled daughter.

The Exorcist (1973) Two priests attempt to remove a demon from a young girl in this box office smash. The movie was based on a 1949 Washington Post article with the headline “Priest Frees Mt. Rainier Boy Reported Held in Devil's Grip.” Director William Friedkin spoke about the article to Time Out London: “Maybe one day they’ll discover the cause of what happened to that young man, but back then, it was only curable by an exorcism. His family weren’t even Catholics, they were Lutheran. They started with doctors and then psychiatrists and then psychologists and then they went to their minister who couldn’t help them. And they wound up with the Catholic church. The Washington Post article says that the boy was possessed and exorcised. That’s pretty out on a limb for a national newspaper to put on its front page… You’re not going to see that on the front page of an intelligent newspaper unless there’s something there.

The Girl Next Door (2007) The movie follows the abuse of a teenage girl at the hands of her aunt, and it was inspired by the murder of Sylvia Likens in 1965. The 16-year-old girl was abused by her caregiver, Gertrude Baniszewski, Baniszewski’s children, and other neighborhood children, as entertainment. They ultimately killed her, with the cause of death determined as “brain swelling, internal hemorrhaging of the brain, and shock induced by Sylvia's extensive skin damage,”

The Possession (2012) Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick star in the movie as a couple with a young daughter who becomes fascinated with an antique wooden box found at a yard sale. Of course, the box turns out to be home to a spirit. The flick’s “true story” basis came from an eBay listing for “a haunted Jewish wine cabinet box” containing oddities such as two locks of hair, one candlestick, and an evil spirit that caused supernatural activity. The box sold for $280 and gained attention when a Jewish newspaper ran an article about its so-called powers.

The Rite (2011) In The Rite, a mortician enrolls in seminary and eventually takes an exorcism class in Rome, where demonic encounters ensue. The movie was based on the life of a real exorcist, Father Gary Thomas, whose work was the focus of journalist Matt Baglio’s book The Rite: The Making of an Exorcist. A Roman Catholic priest, Thomas was one of 14 Vatican-certified exorcists working in America in 2011. He served as an advisor on the film and told The Los Angeles Times that in the previous four years he had exorcised five people.

The Sacrament (2013) In the movie, a man travels to find his sister who joined a remote religious commune, where, yep, bad things happen. It was inspired by the 1978 Jonestown massacre, in which cult leader Jim Jones led 909 of his followers to partake in a “murder-suicide ceremony” using cyanide poisoning.

The Shining (1980) Stanley Kubrick’s horror masterpiece is about a man who is driven to insanity by supernatural forces while staying at a remote hotel in the Rockies. The movie Derives from Stephen King’s book of the same name, which was inspired by the Stanley Hotel in Colorado, where plenty of guests have reported seeing ghosts. The Stanley wasn’t actually used in the movie, however, because Kubrick didn’t think it looked scary enough.

The Silence of the Lambs(1991) The Oscar-winning film tells the story of an FBI cadet who enlists the help of a cannibal/serial killer to pin down another serial killer, Buffalo Bill, who skins the bodies of his victims. FBI special agent John Douglas, who consulted on the film, has explained that Bill was inspired in part by the serial killer Ted Bundy, who like Bill, wore a fake cast. Ed Gein is also believed to be an inspiration, what with the whole skinning thing. And per Rolling Stone, 1980s killer Gary Heidnik was a reference for how Buffalo Bill kept victims in a basement pit.

The Strangers (2008) Three killers in masks terrorize the suburban home of a couple (played by Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman) in this invasion thriller. Writer-director Bryan Bertino has said the film was inspired by something that happened to him in childhood. "As a kid, I lived in a house on a street in the middle of nowhere. One night, while our parents were out, somebody knocked on the front door and my little sister answered it,” he said. "At the door were some people asking for somebody that didn't live there. We later found out that these people were knocking on doors in the area and, if no one was home, breaking into the houses."

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974 & 2003) Ed Gein also reportedly inspired elements of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and its remake. The movies are about groups of friends who come into contact with the murderous cannibal Leatherface. The original film memorably features a room filled with furniture created from human bones, a nod to Gein’s home.

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976 & 2014) The original film follows a Texas Ranger as he tracks down a serial killer threatening a small town, and the 2014 sequel of the same name essentially revives the same plot. Both are based on the Texarkana Moonlight Murders of 1946, when a “Phantom Killer” took out five people over ten weeks. The case remains unsolved

Veronica (2018) The recent Netflix release follows a 15-year-old girl who uses a Ouija board and accidentally connects with a demon that terrorizes her and her family. The movie’s based on a real police report from a Madrid neighborhood. As the story goes, a girl performed a séance at school and then “experienced months of seizures and hallucinations, particularly of shadows and presences surrounding her,” according to NewsWeek. The police report came a year after the girl’s death when three officers and the Chief Inspect of the National Police reported several unnatural occurrences at her family’s home that they called “a situation of mystery and rarity.”

#Horror Movies Based on True Events #paranormal #ghost and hauntings #ghost and spirits

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musiccosmosru · 6 years ago

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Jim O’Rourke is searching for a word he’s forgotten how to say in English. After more than a decade living in Japan, the experimental musician doesn’t speak his native language much anymore and warns me at the beginning of our interview that he may occasionally have trouble. He’s trying to describe his new album, Sleep Like It’s Winter, and he’s pretty sure the word he’s looking for is not “exhume.”

“Express!” he says after working his way backwards with an online Japanese-to-English translator. It’s a significant word. Pick nearly any genre and O’Rourke can express a deep knowledge, critical understanding, and sly humor. But generally, he likes to let his music do the talking. Curious about his thoughts on guitar rock? Listen to 2001’s Insignificance. Americana and folk? Bad Timing. Classic pop music? Grab Eureka — and if you enjoyed that Burt Bacharach cover on it, well, he made an entire album of them. His latest is being called an ambient album, but he sees it more as an album about ambient albums.

For many, O’Rourke is best known for his work with other artists. You’ll find him in the credits of records by foundational indie artists such as Bill Callahan, Stereolab, Superchunk, Brainiac, and Joanna Newsom, as well as experimental legends Faust, John Fahey, Nurse With Wound, Tony Conrad, and Keiji Haino. As a producer-turned-member of Sonic Youth, he was key to their 2000s renaissance on late classics like Murray Street. And of course, there’s Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, a record as much myth as music due in no small part to his presence.

None of those artists come up during our hour-long conversation. They’re other artists’ stories and O’Rourke prefers the sidelines even in his own career: Interviews are rare, live performances even rarer. Yet O’Rourke subverts the trope of the reclusive musical genius, and the last few years have actually been some of his most prolific. This spring, he released the 40th album in his Steamroom series. Though it started in 2013 as a place to put archival material, Steamroom has evolved into a sort of sonic diary. In 2015, he returned to Drag City with Simple Songs, a collection of hilarious, cynical, and immaculately recorded pop tunes, and he continues to make collaborative releases with longtime friends such as Fennesz and Oren Ambarchi.

During our talk, O’Rourke offers rare insight into works old and new — from Sleep Like It’s Winter to his legendary ’90s post-rock duo with David Grubbs, Gastr Del Sol, to his favorite lyric and the one record he wishes people liked more. Like his music, he’s sharply intelligent, hilariously self-deprecating, and leaves you feeling like you’ve only scratched the surface.

STEREOGUM: Are you at home?

JIM O’ROURKE: Yeah I’m at home in the studio, now that I have a studio.

STEREOGUM: I read you had to move your studio after the earthquake. How do you have things now?

O’ROURKE: When I lived in Tokyo, the second floor was where I worked, and the house got … it got kind of … you have to excuse me occasionally, I don’t speak English very much anymore. [Laughs] It became too unsafe to have the stuff up there. But I moved out of Tokyo just under two years ago. I live in the countryside where you can probably buy a block of buildings for the same price. I have something that is more like an actual studio now, although it doesn’t look like it yet. It’s still a mess. I’m about two hours outside of Tokyo in Yamanashi. It’s near Mount Fuji and all that stuff. It’s up in the mountains.

STEREOGUM: How did this new album Sleep Like It’s Winter end up on Newhere, which is a very new label?

O’ROURKE: I’ll make the long story short. The label Newhere, the mother label, or whatever you would call it, is this label called Felicity here and they’re the label that puts out Eiko Ishibashi’s records. I don’t know if you know her.

STEREOGUM: Yeah, I enjoy her records.

O’ROURKE: I’ve produced all of Eiko’s records on that label so I knew [Newhere founder Hiroyasu] Hirakawa from Felicity. So the other side of the thing is people don’t really use things like Bandcamp in Japan because Paypal is near impossible to use here and just the culture of download music isn’t really what it is overseas. People still buy CDs here. Everything’s about CD still. So he wanted to start this label and he was like, “People here aren’t hearing the things you’re putting up on Bandcamp and I want people to hear those things.” It would have ended up there otherwise, but I made it specifically for him. It wasn’t like, “Oh I got that thing I was about to put up on Bandcamp.” I did work on it for about two years.

STEREOGUM: Wow.

O’ROURKE: He said, “We’re starting an ambient label,” which got me going down the rabbit hole of conceptualizing the record for a much longer time than I usually would. Usually I give myself the problem to deal with, but the fact that somebody else was giving me a problem to deal with made it take quite a bit longer.

sleep like it’s winter by Jim O’Rourke

STEREOGUM: How would you say this album differs from some of the Steamroom releases?

O’ROURKE: I think the main difference was this certain stimulus, this problem that I had to pose myself was coming from an external source, which really made me feel on the hot seat more than usual. Also, that’s not anything I would have challenged myself with, like what the hell does it mean to make an “ambient record”? I wouldn’t. That would be something I would just talk about with someone or think about or make jokes about. But because I said I would do it, I actually had to finish it. I would say 80% to 90% of the things I do, I don’t finish, because I’m not necessarily interested in making something for other people to hear but that I’ve learned something from doing it.

STEREOGUM: You have an interesting way of approaching a genre too. When you look at Eureka or Insignificance, there’s a certain slyness to the way you’re making “a pop record” or “a rock album.” Did you have that impulse here?

O’ROURKE: Well in the end, this one really is the same thing as all those. I don’t know what the right word is because a lot of the words are very misleading — I guess it’s an album about ambient albums. Eureka was an album about pop albums. But for me the real challenge is how to do that and still for it to be that thing …

STEREOGUM: To still function in that genre?

O’ROURKE: How can it be able to be both? I really admire great genre filmmakers like William Friedkin, people who make these genre films that are simultaneously about [genre] but still completely succeed in being that thing. For me, that is the most interesting area. You can see when a genre filmmaker decides to make their experimental film, it’s almost always an absolute disaster because their strength is in informing the genre film conditions, the tropes or whatever you wanna say. If you try and do it directly it just completely fails. It has to be rooted in the language of what you’re working with.

STEREOGUM: Were you happy with the result?

O’ROURKE: I mean, I’m never happy, but it came out fairly close, more than usual. But I don’t mean that like I’m miserable — it’s just not why I do these things. If I wanted to be happy I would just sit and watch movies all day. [Laughs]

STEREOGUM: You also just hit number 40 in your Steamroom series. Did you have expectations when this series started five years ago? Did you think that you would be releasing up to Steamroom 40?

O’ROURKE: I didn’t think about it, because I would have been making the things either way. It’s what I do with most of my time. It’s just that I like the way Bandcamp works. There’s like 50 or 60 people out there who want to hear those things, and they listen to them and that’s great. I don’t have to get involved with the whole cycle, I just want the stuff to be there and then when I’m gone, it’ll get taken down and thrown away and that’ll be it. For me, that would be the optimal way to do things because by the time I’m done with something, it’s really way behind me. I’m honestly only interested in the work, in doing the work. And when it’s done, I’ve learned something from it and now I can move on from what I’ve learned from that and put myself in another screwy position.

The funny thing with 40 is, I was talking to a friend about one record in particular that I took a long, long time to make and is maybe the closest I’ve ever been to being happy with making something, and no one liked it at all, which is fine. And we were joking about it. My friend said he makes a track in ten minutes and people love it. So I decided I’m gonna see if I can make a track in exactly the amount of time that it takes to listen to it. And that’s what that was, and I put it up and of course, like my friend said, easily the most popular one that I ever put up. And I literally made it in the exact — I put a mic out the window, actually you can hear, they’re out, the cicadas here are year round. Can you hear?

STEREOGUM: Yeah, I can hear the birds too.

O’ROURKE: So that’s the window to the studio. I put the mic out there and then I played with a speaker outside so they could react, ’cause they do react to it. And then I just played for 40 minutes and I put it up. [Laughs] I didn’t even listen to it. Obviously I’ve been doing something wrong all these years.

STEREOGUM: How do you approach field recordings when you’re not just putting the mic out the window? Do you set out with your recorder to find something or is it more spontaneous and you just are trying to grab something that catches you?

O’ROURKE: I was really adamant when I was younger, in Chicago, because there were so many places to go to get sounds. I lived in an area where there were a lot of factories and stuff. And it was also the dawn of the first sort of really high quality portable recorders — before, you would need a Nagra or something really expensive. I don’t go doing it so much now because I don’t travel anymore really. If I went around where I live here all I’d get are these same goddamn cicadas everywhere, which is why they’ve been on the last six or seven things I’ve done, ’cause I can’t avoid ‘em. When I find something I wanna record I do try to make a point of doing it right. It’s now more like I’m looking for something that’s really special as opposed to when I was younger I was like gathering.

STEREOGUM: One of my favorite field recordings is the one you put on “The Seasons Reverse” from the last Gastr Del Sol record. You’re recording the kid lighting off firecrackers, and it’s a great sound, but then he notices and actually gets quite upset with you.

O’ROURKE: [Laughs] Yeah, I got yelled at once by somebody that called me a cultural imperialist for that. He yelled at David [Grubbs] and he said, “No that was Jim!” — which was true.

STEREOGUM: Gastr was so different from most of what got lumped in with post-rock at the time. That last album, Camoufleur, was released 20 years ago, so I’m curious what you think now about the project.

O’ROURKE: This is gonna sound weird, but we were fuckin’ great. [Laughs] We were! We were.

STEREOGUM: You were.

O’ROURKE: David and I were at a criss-cross point in our lives. I was like 24, 25 and all I was doing was making tape music and playing improvised music and he was a guy coming from his world of music, which was not my world, and we criss-crossed at a perfect point in our lives. I was someone who genuinely knew how to make tape music. That’s what my life was. So we met with his growing interest in that kind of music and his knowledge of things like Derek Bailey and I was getting more interested in finding ways to do what I did in other ways, besides making just straight up tape pieces. How could these things meet? And I think we — this is going to be a little roundabout …

STEREOGUM: That’s ok.

O’ROURKE: There’s a lot of so-called “avant-garde” pop and rock music and I absolutely fucking hate that stuff. It treats the other forms of music as sprinkles that you put on top of things. It’s not genuinely integrated into the songwriting, it’s not integrated into your choice of instruments. It’s just treated as like a stylish scarf draped around the neck of what is not interesting music. It really offends me, because my whole life has been about this other kind of music and it still is to this day. But I think what we did was absolutely genuine and was really an honest, true integration of those things, consciously. So I’m very — I don’t wanna use the P word, but I’m — I think it’s the real thing. So I’m very happy about that. I mean l don’t listen to this stuff, I don’t listen to stuff I’ve worked on, but I think what we did was better than people thought it was at the time. I know this is probably gonna be on print, but please somehow express that I’m not boasting while I’m saying this. I’m not boasting. [Laughs]

STEREOGUM: Eureka and Insignificance also have dedicated fans. Those are albums that were received one way and then, 20 years later, have grown to have a certain …

O’ROURKE: Well, I think because when they came out it was the height of that construct of that idea, this post-rock. And everything was seen through that prism. And thankfully that prism’s gone away and it’s like people, now they’re seeing things directly. I don’t know this directly, but I hear from friends, like my friend Glenn [Kotche of Wilco] who plays on all those. He’ll send me an email on occasion just like, “I’m in Morocco and someone just asked me to show them the beat from ‘Life Goes Off.’” So you hear stories, which is neat. I don’t know directly, but I hear from folks that people still listen to ‘em. Eureka, I’ve got too much on the record about my feelings about Eureka, I’m happy when someone says they like Insignificance ’cause that one came up pretty well considering how quickly I made it. And that one song, the lyrics still make me laugh to this day. The one where the guy dies in bed. There’s a line — “I sure picked a winner” — that I think is the best thing that I ever came up with in my life. If I came up with one thing in that life, it’s that line. It still makes me laugh. I know you’re not supposed to laugh at your own stuff, but that’s one that’s pretty funny. I’m waiting for people to like The Visitor. If there’s anything, that’s the one I’m hoping someday people will like because I worked really hard on that one. That’s the one I probably feel the most least uncomfortable about. That one got really close to what I wanted to do. And I learned to play trombone.

STEREOGUM: Really?

O’ROURKE: I had to. I went like a year and a half trying to avoid it because I knew it had to be a trombone part but I was like, “Oh, I can’t play trombone.”

STEREOGUM: You played every instrument on that record.

O’ROURKE: Yeah, I played everything. That was sort of the challenge.

STEREOGUM: What was the challenge for Simple Songs, which had a whole band?

O’ROURKE: There was no challenge. It was guilt, because I’d made these people go through this record I don’t know how many times over five years. So I felt obligated to put it out because they had put so much of their time into it. [Laughs] Yeah, I’m still not far enough away from that one to be objective.

STEREOGUM: What was the experience like performing it live for those few shows?

O’ROURKE: That was horrible. I never wanna play live again. Everyone who played was great of course, but I’ve seen video of it. You can see how fucking terrified I am in my left hand. I think it’s maybe the beginning of “Hotel Blue,” my hand is freaking out. I do not like playing in front of people. It’s fine if they’re not looking at me. I’m fine when I’m playing for someone else or in somebody’s thing I have no problem. But if they’re looking at me, I’m terrified. Glenn and Darren from the old band will vouch for this. I mean, I would throw up after shows. It just terrified me.

STEREOGUM: A lot of people don’t realize you taught the kids in Richard Linklater’s 2003 movie School Of Rock.

O’ROURKE: Yeah, I taught them how to play, I taught them the songs, because except for one scene, that’s actually them playing. So for those scenes I’d be on set to keep the music part off of Mr. Linklater’s mind, sort of on the side music-directing, you know? That was a fun experience. I was supposed to be in the movie, but there was a Sonic Youth tour during the shoots so I couldn’t go back to do it.

STEREOGUM: Who were you supposed to be?

O’ROURKE: I don’t think I would have had a line or anything, they said they were gonna have me be one of the judges, you know sort of like a little in-joke, but it ended up that when they were shooting those scenes I wasn’t even gonna be in New York.

STEREOGUM: You’ve collaborated with so many accomplished musicians — what was it like suddenly working with kids?

O’ROURKE: It wasn’t like a music job at all, it really was a film job. I mean, the fun part was getting to be on set, meeting Mr. Linklater. If you get me talking about film you can’t shut me up, so I probably was annoying, but talking to the crew, just asking them technical things and talking to them about their jobs was really fun. I generally don’t like being around kids, so that was interesting. The kid who played guitar and the kid who played keyboards, they were really nice and genuinely very talented. I liked working with those two a lot. It’s funny because the guitar player kid [Joey Gaydos, Jr.] kept asking me, “Man, I want one of your records.” And I was like, OK. So actually the last day I saw him, they were at that place where they, the last scene where they’re playing at the, what do you call it?

STEREOGUM: A battle of the bands?

O’ROURKE: Yeah, they were setting up and it was my last day before I had to go on tour, and I brought a copy of Insignificance on CD for him. And I handed it to him and then I looked at the cover and remembered the pictures inside. And I said “Hey, you know what, I’m gonna sign this or something for you and get it back to you later.” And I took it back and then I left and went on a plane and never saw the poor kid again. But oh my god, if he had opened that, the parents and the film. They would have gotten sued or something.

sleep like it’s winter is out now via Newhere.

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#beauty #healths #kids #royal espanol

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mytestdrive · 7 years ago

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Patrik, Age 1.5 Film Review by Kat DeBoer

Patrik, Age 1.5 is a 2008 Swedish film written and directed by Ella Lemhagen. The film has been seen at film festivals across the globe and praised for its representation of the hardships a gay couple would face trying to fit in suburbia lifestyle. The couple are hoping to adopt a child but because of a clerical error, end up with 15 year old juvenile delinquent and homophobic Patrik instead of a baby. The film is very loosely adapted from a stage performance piece by Michael Druker of the same name. Lemhagen uses some subtle and not so subtle examples throughout the film of internalized and institutionalized prejudice.

The film follows Göran and Sven Skoogh, a gay couple who have just moved into a new home and are hoping to make a life and family for themselves together. The neighborhood is what I would call an overly exaggerated for the sake of the film idealistic suburban lifestyle. The road is lined with cute little pastel painted houses filled with nuclear “normal” families. Sven and Göran and very much the outliers of this neighborhood. This point is made clear to the viewer in the opening scene of the film. Göran arrives to the neighborhood welcome party and is meeting his new neighbors for the first time. His neighbors introduce themselves and their wives to Göran than ask him “Where is your little lady?” Sven then arrives to the party and is introduced as Göran’s husband. There is visible tension and awkwardness amongst the neighbors at this point which is escalated when Göran announces that they will be adopting a child soon as well. Because a clerical error with the placement of a comma, the child instead of being Patrik age 1,5 ends up being Patrik age, 15.

Believing at first that there has been some sort of error and that there really is a one and a half year old baby named Patrik out there for them the couple agrees to take in Patrik until the adoption agency opens after the long weekend. The prescence of Patrik puts a serious strain on Göran and Sven’s relationship as they have different opinions on the idea of how to raise a child.Upon meeting with the adoption agency the couple soon learns that although they have been approved as fit for parenting and passed all the tests before you are allowed to adopt with flying colors no country will let them adopt a baby from them. The 15 year old Patrik in their possession is in fact the real Patrik as it was the only child they were allowed to adopt. Lemhagen based this part of the film off of an interview they did with the first swedish gay couple approved to adopt in 2010 and they had been waiting for a child for 7 years. This theme of the movie is a great way to show the viewer some of the institutionalized homophobia that goes on right under our noses.

Patrik is a homophobic 15 year old delinquent. He originally believes that Sven and Göran or possibly brothers living together but when he learns they are a gay couple he calls them pedophiles and fears they will try and rape him. Most of the films blatant homophobia comes from Patrik but there are other examples from the townspeople. The kids of their suburban neighborhood ride their bikes up and down in front of their house calling them homos and knock their mailbox over, Göran as a doctor is refused by patients, the couple aren’t invited by the men of their neighborhood to parties etc. I really appreciated as a viewer that there was no harsh violence on screen, some queer films I have watched previously have been quite violent. I understand is a cruel reality for some people in the LGBTQ community. But, seeing violence on screen can be triggering to some viewers who have experienced violence because of their sexuality before and can make the film inaccessible to them. The film tries to focus on the struggles of the characters from societal internalized homophobia.

As a piece of queer theatre I feel it is easy to give examples of out right homophobia such as these but the internalized feelings are much harder to portray successfully for an audience to understand. I think this is where Patrik, Age 1.5 really shines. One particular scene that stands out in my mind especially is when Göran , who is a medical doctor, is giving immunizations to a group of school children in his clinic. The little boy who he is giving a shot to asks him “Is it true that you’re a homo?” the little boy is about 6 years old I would say. Göran replies that yes it is true, and the boy continues and asks what being a homo means. Göran replies that it is when you love another boy very much. The little boy looks surprised. His father then walks in enraged, saying if Göran every touches his son again he is dead. This scene shows the viewer that homophobia is usually taught at a young age from the parents, the little boy didn’t even know what the word homo meant he just knew it was bad because his father said so. His father probably learned this attitude from his father before him, it’s a vicious cycle.

Although the movie touches on very serious topics and can be quite dark at times Lemhagen does so in a lighthearted story about finding love, whether it be in family or in a relationship that the viewer can’t help but want to follow to see if the characters get the happy ending they so desperately want. In doing so the viewer is forced to stare down the harsher realities of the film that happen. Overall I enjoyed the film and think it is a great introduction to queer film for a viewer who may not have seen anything like it before. I highly recommend Patrik Age, 1.5.

References

“Boys Beware Homosexuals Are On The Prowl ( For Adults Only).” Youtube, Inglewood Police Department , 1950, www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEBYc8oCGt8.

Wallace, Mike. The Homosexuals. Youtube, CBS, 1967, www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEWomEYWTlU.

“JUDY GARLAND: A GAY ICON DEFENDS HER GAY AUDIENCE, A RARE INTERVIEW.”Youtube, 13 Mar. 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=wauyHFqW0d8.

“AARP TV: Stonewall 40 Years Later.” AARP Media, 25 June 2009, www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTujTI8rGBg.

“50 Years of Theatre of the Ridiculous.” 50 Years of Theatre of the Ridiculous—Martin E Segal Theatre Center, New York City—May 15, 2017, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, 15 May 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=93zlrj3X49Y.

Friedkin, William, director. The Boys in the Band. The Boys In The Band - Harold Arrives, Cinema Center Films, 1970, www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOakue0MiZs.

Wyler, William, director. The Children's Hour. The Children's Hour 1961 Coming out Scene, United Artists, 1961, www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbvfSGZzR9w.

Lemhagen , Ella, director. Patrik, Age 1.5. Sonet Film, 2008.

Chapman, Kamarie. “Queer Theater.” Understanding Plays. Bellingham, Washington.

Kaye, Helen. “Theater Review: 'Milk Milk Lemonade'.” The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com, 31 Dec. 0ADAD, www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Culture/Theater-review-Milk-Milk-Lemonade-372422.

Solomon, Dan. “Review: Milk Milk Lemonade at The Vortex [Theater].” Austinist, 13 Sept. 2013, 11:15 am, austinist.com/2010/09/13/review_milk_milk_lemonade_at_the_vo.php.

Daunton, Nichola. “MilkMilkLemonade – Ovalhouse, London.” Edited by John Roberts, The Reviews Hub, 12 Oct. 2014, www.thepublicreviews.com/milkmilklemonade-ovalhouse-london/.

Conkel, Joshua. MilkMilkLemonade, www.playscripts.com/play/1966.

Bauer, Gabrielle, director. Venus Boyz. Clockwise Productions, 2002.

Hart, Bobbi Jo, director. Rebels on Pointe. Icarus Films, 2017.

“Patrik, Age 1.5.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 11 Dec. 2017, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrik,_Age_1.5.

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