#woodlands dark and days bewitched: a history of folk horror my beloved

[hairtusk]

i'm already such a boring old fuck in my twenties. realised i could spend the evening quilt-making, drinking red wine and rewatching a 3hr+ long documentary about folk horror and starting grinning to myself. my god.

[staringdownabarrel]

I've just seen Beloved. My thoughts are below the cut.

Honestly, I think I probably would have liked the novel better. A lot of the pacing of the film would have worked better in a novel than it did in a film. There were also certain scenes that I think would have worked better if you were able to read the characters' inner monologues rather than just seeing them acted out on the screen.

There's really nothing with the film itself that I take issue with. My only substantive issue is that it probably would have worked better as a novel. I guess I'll have to go read Beloved at some point to know for sure.

On the whole, I'm actually surprised at how good the movie is. When I heard that Oprah Winfrey was in it, I was expecting this to be dragged down by her performance. When I heard that people refer to this as a horror movie, I thought this might be some kind of joke about her performance that I wasn't in on.

That wasn't the case. She was good. Not amazing, but she was good. I'm surprised that she's never done more acting, actually--she probably would have been quite successful at it if she hadn't decided to focus on her talk show.

I also wouldn't have realised she had a major role if I had have gone into the movie blind. I haven't really watched a lot of The Oprah Winfrey Show, so I only really know her from photo shoots and memes where she's clearly identified.

This sorta touches on something I don't really get, too. Beloved gets labelled as horror a lot--the IMDb page labels it as horror; clips of it were shown in Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror.

I don't really agree with this classification, though. I think it's just a drama with supernatural elements.

I think it does well at being a drama. It has a lot of emotional weight, and I think the characters had a lot of nuance, both in terms of how they're written and how they were performed.

The nuance part is why I think this story probably works better as a novel, though. There is a lot of complex emotion and psychology informing the actions of the characters, and I don't know if you can really communicate that fully in a film format. You can definitely touch on a lot of it, and the film does, but probably not as well.

I dunno. I think it's definitely worth watching, but I think I'll probably like it more after having read the book and then seeing it again.

[tvrundownusa]

tvrundown USA 2022.01.10

Monday, January 10th:

(exclusive): Undercover (netflix, Belgium, season 3 available, all 8 eps), "Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched" (Shudder, history of Folk Horror), The Golden Palace (hulu, classic "Golden Girls" spinoff series)

(streaming weekly): Queens of Mystery (AcornTV, season 2 opener, first 2 eps), The Larkins (AcornTV, penultimate), Our Beloved Summer (netflix)

(hour 1): 9-1-1: Lone Star (FOX), Kenan (NBC, 60mins), The Bachelor (ABC, 2hrs), Kids Baking Championship (FOOD)

(hour 2): The Cleaning Lady (FOX), That's My Jam (NBC), The Bachelor (ABC, contd), The Big Bake (FOOD, season 2 resumes, new time)

(hour 3): Ordinary Joe (NBC), "Black Market" with Michael K. Williams (VICE, docuseries season 2 opener)

[repeats, resuming next week: The Neighborhood (CBS) /   / Bob Hearts Abishola (CBS), NCIS (CBS), NCIS: Hawai'i (CBS) ]