Some bored yet utterly genius chap spent a considerable amount of time compiling pictures of both The Dark Knight himself, Christian Bale, and my man and yours, Kermit the Frog, that are mirror images of each other, and holy shit is it great.
The things nerds online with too much time on their hands are capable of, simply astonishing....click the link below, it's pretty amazing ish:
***By the way.....people brag about doing "30 posts in 30 days" and all, but I just noticed that this is my 51st post in 30 days....beat that, blogging world.
Sometimes I wonder why I'm being so open with this blog, saying things that normally I'd be ashamed to admit. But I guess that was the point all along, for me to have a place where it'd be easy for me to totally real, and a place for those who care to see how I am the 94% of my life in which they don't see or talk to me.
This next post is really a shameful one.....songs that I'm a bit ashamed to be loving the hell out of these days. Yes, most are chick records, but I can't help it. They all knock.
--Ne-Yo "Miss Independent" --Usher "Traffic" --Katy Perry "Hot & Cold" --New Kids on the Block w/ Ne-Yo "Single" --Mario "Stuttering" --Gym Class Heroes w/ The Dream "Cookie Jar" --Lloyd "Sex Education" --The Dream "Should've Been You" --The Dream "She Needs My Love"
Am I becoming a R&B/pop head now? It'd make sense, considering how shitty rap is. But god I hope not. The day a new Premier beat doesn't make me giddy will be a sad one indeed.
But c'mon Matt.....Katy Perry?! There's something afoul going down in the state of Barone....
Stop the presses.....I just read that Governor Palin was at one time a beauty pageant contestant!? Won second place in the 1984 Miss Alaska pageant, as Miss Wasilla. She was, also, voted Miss Congeniality.
This resonates with so much because, honestly, when I saw her pics earlier, my initial reaction was strangely, "Damn, she's kinda sexy for an older Republican dame." I swear....it weired me out, and I didn't know if I should even admit it in my last post, but now that its proven she has a neauty queen past, I feel more than validated. She's hot! I'd do Sarah Palin, it's the truth....
Past
Present
Be honest....you know you would, too.
Sucks for Hillary Clinton....something tells me that if Palin is really legit and performs well, Clinto could slowly fade away...at least, in public feminine favor.
One of my flaws I've always been open to admitting is my lack of political awareness. I know enough to get by, but in terms of engaging in intellectual debates over CNN and MSNBC fodder, I'd catch an L every time, unless I was debating against my niece. Or even nephew, for that matter. But my dad's side of the family is so passionately and outspokenly Democrat, that I've naturally been one myself, and proud of it. Liberal is me, and everything the party stands for and against coincides with my personal beliefs, so it fits like a glove.
And of course, that being said, I'm all about Obama this year. He has my vote locked, no question, and this Joe Biden fella impressed the hell out of me with that speech the other night at the Democratic National Convention.
But today, with McCain's announcement of his Vice President running mate, an Alaskan Governor named Sarah Palin, I feel like, for once, John McCain has impressed the shit out of yours truly. This is some slick, brilliant, art of war tactic shit right here, at least as far as I can register. Palin was a total surprise, nobody pegged her as his inevitable selection. I've heard Mitt Romney's name mentioned most, but not Palin. But after investigating her stats, it makes so much sense, it's damn near genius.
She's only three years older than Obama = the whole "McCain is a geezer, Obama is the young guy brining change" argument has just been countered by the Republicans. I wonder if the age issue will be such a lightning rod for us Dems anymore? It's no mystery that the VP is the one who actually makes the most calls, not the President. The Pres is largely the one in front of the scenes; behind, the VP makes moves. See Don Cheney and pupper Dubya.
Palin is, obviosuly, a she, meaning many of the voters who rallied behind Hillary Rodham Clinton because of her "strong female" angle could very well switch to the McCain side now that his running mate is another "strong female." Meaning, tons of those Hillary supporters who have been on the fence about Obama could very well turn their sights of backing on Palin. Girl power, as they say.
She's a history maker, and this election has been all about that. Palin has become the first woman to ever be named to a Republican ticket. Now if that's not shaking the system, as Obama and his peeps have said is a major must, I don't know what is.
It's almost like McCain's camp sat around anticipating Obama's VP choice. Once Biden was named, somebody exclaimed: "Damn, imagine if we had a younger woman on our ticket. Chess moves, motherfucker!" And then another white geezer was like, "Hey, how about that broad from Alaska?"....of course, I'm sure she was in the running secretly for much longer, but still. Makes sense, kinda, right?
Now, I'm not totally sold on the fact that Obama will win come November. I never was, frankly, but now I'm a bit less than before. I guess I'll just have to pay a closer eye to this whole race now, see if Palin shows some cracks that could turn swaying voters off to her. Time will tell.
What think everybody else? Is this a great strategic move by Repubs? A blow to Dems? Or nothing of either such?
Take my all-time favorite movie (the original Night of the Living Dead), give it some old animated-making-over, condense to like five and a half minutes, and what do you get?
Decided to toss Dog Soldiers into the old DVD machine last night before my slumber time. Wasn't fully tired, and figured that an "action-packed werewolf thrill ride" would surely keep me awake. I read that description in some review, can't recall which precise one.
First a bit of background into my affinity for werewolves. The first classic movie monster that earned a sweet spot close to my heart was Lon Chaney Jr.'s The Wolfman. Made back in 1941, his hungry-beast-trapped-within-a-man's-tortured-soul always registered with me more than Boris Karloff's Frankenstein or Bela Lugosi's Dracula, or even Karloff's Mummy. The Wolfman is a damn fine piece of film, one I can still watch with enjoyment to this day, and I first watched it when I was like nine or ten years of age. The beast resides within a kind-hearted fella, a guy who wants nothing more than to live a normal life, but has been cursed with wolf-ishness after being bitten by one. He didn't ask for it, and Chaney Jr. played the character with such vulnerability and compassion. Plus, the wolf attack scenes were pretty raw for '41's standards, with a blonde cutie running through the woods as Wolfy was on the prowl. And the creature makeup always impressed me.
So you can imagine my excitement with next year's modern-day telling of The Wolfman, if not only for the fucking-brilliant casting of Benicio Del Toro in the Chaney Jr. role. I mean, Del Toro looks like a wolf on any given day, and he's a great thespian, so odds are certainly in the movie's favor. And I managed to catch that camera phone version of the footage shown at Comic Con that four minutes it was available online, and it kicked uber ass.
So yeah, werewolves have always held a strong spot in my lifeline. Meaning, when I discovered that Neil Marshall, the writing/directing mind behind one of my fave horror joints in the last five or so years, The Descent, made his debut with a werewolf-filled action horror movie, I was ecstatic. It's been a long ass time since I've seen werewolves done some justice. I'm still wiping the shit-stain of 2004's fecal Van Helsing off of my eyes. Man, that's literally one of the worst movies ever made. Frankenstein as a crying, pussy bitch? Blasphemy! At least Kate Beckinsale looked piping-hot in it.
But, alas.....Dog Soldiers.
Made in 2002. It's about a ragtag British army outfit from sent into the woods of Scotland on a "routine training exercise," one that of course goes to complete wolf shit. A tenacious and starving pack of at-least-7-foot-tall werewolves lets loose on the troop, picking a few soldiers off before the fatigue-laden fellas are rescued by a mysterious chick who brings them back to af friend's empty farmhouse. Once there, the hairy-sons-of-bitches wage war on the soldiers, smashing through windows, breaking down doors, feeding on dumbass soldiers who step foot outside. All that good stuff.
But I have to be honest....I didn't really like this one. I totally wanted to love it, and I've read pretty much nothing but praise from my trusty horror sites (really, in terms of horror movies, don't read mainstream reviews. Trust the critics on horror sites, because they're the real "fans.") But it mostly bored me. Sure, the wolves, or "lycanthropes" as science refers to them, are very kick-ass, and many of the attack setpieces are good bloody fun. It's just that, I couldn't give two shits about any of the soldiers. They're all annoying, disposable, poorly-constructed. Horror characters can be little more than soon-dead cattle, of course, but what I loved so much about Marshall's insanely-superior The Descent is how he fully developed the female protagonists so well. So when they started dying, you actually felt a bit of sympathy and remorse. In Dog Soldiers, you're rooting for the wolves. Maybe that's the intention? I don't know.
It opens up with one of those pointless, not effective scenes where anonymous characters are killed by an unseen threat, which of course turns out to be our wolves. So right off the bat, I wasn't impressed. And then it goes into about 20 or so minutes of idle banter between the soldiers, and it's pretty lame stuff. I'm sitting there thinking, "If the fucking wolves don't show up, fangs out, in about five minutes, I'm going to sleep." But fortunately, a mangled cow flies into their campsite, disrupting the chit-chat, and then it's on. But as the movie progressed, I found myself more and more disinterested. If the creatures had been on screen the entire time, just fucking shit up, I'd have been a happy camper. But that's not the case. You have mostly our soldiers discussing survival tactics, which sucks when you want them to die, not endure. And backing these scenes is a sweeping score, one that'd be better suited for a medieval times adventure, or a swashbuckling pirate show....not blood-soaked horror.
On a positive note: there's a cute white-and-black Lab dog in the film, and you know how much I love pooches. Always bring a smile to my grill. Our lead soldier, "Cooper," who looks like Dolph Lundgren minus steroid usage, finds the mutt inside the farmhouse, a scene that I welcomed. And much to my pleasure, the dog survives! Within the first ten minutes, a dog is shot in the head at point blank range, which I was quite pissed about. So imagine my satisfaction when the farmhouse canine makes it out alive, even saving the day during the last attack sequence. Very much like The Hills Have Eyes dog. Well done, canine community.
In all, I'm glad I finally got to see Dog Soldiers, but wish it grabbed me more. I can't say I'd suggest anybody else watch it, unless you're in the mood for some werewolf-caused carnage and tongue-in-cheek humor. The Descent was deliciously dark and bleak; Dog Soldiers is violent yet light-hearted. I prefer the former, because I'm twisted like that.
**As an added bonus, here's a great Wu-Tang song off their last unfairly-hated-on album, 8 Diagrams.....track is called "Wolves" (connection explained):
Talk about being late to the party....I finally joined Netflix a few days ago. Yes, me, the dude for whom Netflix was designed to please in the first place. The reasons for my tardiness: laziness, uncertainty, foolish impulse to buy DVDs rather than rent them. But I've arrived, bitches, so let the games begin. It's only been like two days, but my queue has like 50 flicks on hold already. I don't fuck around.
The first flick I've seen courtesy of the 'Flix is a Belgian chill-show from 2006 called Calvaire, which translates to "The Ordeal." I'd read about this flick a bunch o' times on various horror sites, and its filmmaker, Fabrice Du Welz, is the man behind a new jawn I'm dying to see, which I wrote about a couple days ago, called Vinyan. But I could never find Calvaire in Blockbuster, and I only happened across it once in a store, Virgin Mega I believe, but shit was like 28 beans and I couldn't justify such an unsure purchase. But thankfully, Netflix has every damn film ever made, so naturally I made Calvaire my first choice.
Just finished watching it....what the fuck was that? Like, seriously. I'm equal parts mesmerized, angered, confused, intrigued. Compelled to re-watch it right away. I'm no slouch in terms of loving darkly esoteric cinema, but this ish was off the charts bizarre. In good way, though, I'm pretty sure I feel.
Plot wise: a struggling, sort-of-shitty traveling performer/singer is en route to a gig deep in Belgium, when his piece-o-shee van breaks down in the boonies. First, some crazy fella scares the shit out of our main guy, Marc Stevens (I read somewhere that this name is a homage to some old school porn star. Weird), while looking for "Bella," his lost dog. Crazy Guy leads him to a rundown inn, where Marc sleeps the night off in hopes of getting his van fixed in the AM. He wakes up to the inn owner, Bartel (another name reference, this time to some cult filmmaker I need to research a bit), towing his van to the inn. As things progress, Bartel reveals how his one true love, Gloria, left him years ago, and he starts to show signs of lunacy. After Marc sings to Bartel at the old man's request, the shit basically hits the fan. Bartel believes that Marc is really Gloria, beats him down, tortures him, dresses him in Gloria's clothes, shaves his head half-assed-like. Marc sees some dirty villagers fucking a pig. The dirty villagers crash Bartel and Crazy Guy's party and rape Marc. Marc escapes. Villagers chase after him.
WTF!
Tons of other "huh?" moments ensue, such as Bella being revealed as a baby cow. Marc is partly crucifed in a barn. Some old chick makes a gross pass at Marc. Calvaire is strangely perverse, totally demented, and somehow beautiful to watch. The way Du Welz shoots the thing is something to really see. Tons of repeated imagery throughout and interesting camera movements and angles. Especially this one wild scene that mirrors the 'dinner scene' in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with Du Welz spinning the camera around the table as it gradually zooms in on the eyeballs of the deliriously-laughing guys-in-seats.
Also worth noting is the sparse use of music. There may be no music at all, actually, until the montage closing sequence, and even then it's just faintly-heard strings. The soundtrack here is provided by natural sounds: the crackling of a fireplace, the rustling of wind. Really adds to the uneasy tension that is felt even when nothing is happening.
Would I recommend Calvaire? I'm not entirely sure just yet. I'm really glad I watched it; it's been a long ass time since I've seen a movie that truly bewildered me in a way where I couldn't take my eyes off the screen even though internally I knew nothing was making any sense.
It's not a good movie, necessarily. Just one that's so unique and inventive in its borrowing of older genre offerings that it feels like a breath of fresh air, even though it's really a startling cough of hit-or-miss tribute. Think the aforementioned Chainsaw Massacre getting it on in a three-way with Deliverance and Dustin Hoffman's great villagers-gone-wild gem Straw Dogs, as overseen by David Lynch while staring at a Salvador Dali painting. It doesn't work fully, but it's a missed opportunity that you're oddly glad didn't connect on all cylinders. Its strangeness is its biggest charm. Sometimes, broken objects are better than operational ones.
The arthouse feel throughout Calvaire is striking, but you soon realize you're within an arthouse located firmly on the campus of a sexually-fueled insane asylum. And it's not necessarily a hetero asylum.
Netflix, you don't even know the monster you've created here.....up next, Neil Marshall's debut, the werewolf actioner Dog Soldiers. Should be a hoot.
Now this is how I like to hear my hip-hop....why can't DJ Premier just produce every single rap song ever recorded from here on out. A lad can dream, can't he?
Ill Bill "Society Is Brainwashed" (produced by Ill Bill)
From the '80s "classic" (I keed, I keed) TEEN WITCH, starring one of my earliest crushes, redhead Robyn Lively (80s pop culture heads, you feel me, I'm sure)....a girl I was dating a couple years back put me on to this, and I was in dumbfounded awe at first sight, which quickly turned into pure hatred and contempt.
But now, I just laugh my ass off at it. How the culture of hip hop survived this, I'll never truly know. Just goes to show how resilient rap music really is. And yes, this was actually in the movie; it's not doctored up at all. Enjoy, or cringe.......
[Yes, that third person in is indeed a woman. Hard to believe, right? For about the first 20 pages or so, I kept making sure mentally that she was in fact a 'she' and not a 'he.' My guess is that she bats for the other team, if you know what I mean, but it's never outright stated. Just hinted at in subtle fashion toward the end. But anyway, I digress... ]
Just finished a new comic book. Not sure if this one's even considered a graphic novel, since it came out as one continuous narrative, to the best of my knowledge. Four Women, by a highly-respected fella named Sam Kieth. It's one I'd been put on to, shit, about a year ago now maybe, but finding it in stores and/or online has been tougher than locating Cam'ron in Harlem nowadays. I was recommended it by a friend who swore that its plot and storytelling style were both perfectly up my alley, so naturally I was quite intrigued. Finally tracking it down on the wonderful haven of discount shopping half.com a couple weeks ago, the time had ultimately come for me to experience it for myself.
Quite happy that I did so, now. A swift, entertaining, intense, harrowing and very quick read, filled with twists and character-arch shifts and all that good stuff. It centers on a fateful night where four female friends, three mid-aged and one in her late-teen years, en route to a wedding reception. Their car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, and rather than things remaining dormant 'til sunrise, things naturally go haywire. And why wouldn't they? This is dramatic fiction, dammit. So these two sleazy, greezy, trucker dudes pull up behind them, and proceed to terrorize the shit out of these four helpless dames. Well, helpless is how they first seem, until a couple of them take action with mixed results. I won't divulge what exactly happens, in case others feel compelled to read it, but let's just say its an unhealthy mix of monster truck rallying, stabbing-via-rusty-pole, rape, and shattered friendships. Fun for the whole family.
What makes it so effective is how Kieth structures the narrative here. Who you think is one person eventually flips and proves to be somebody else entirely, and the whole thing is told as our main protagonist sits in a therapist's chair, torn between what her guilt wants her to think happened, and the truth that her heart can't fully accept.
The first thing I thought while reading it was, "Damn, Quentin Tarantino could make the shit out of a movie adaptation." Strong and eccentric female leads, engaging in extended dialogue before enacting some sweet revenge on trashy scum. Cast some of the typically-fine actresses whom QT is fond of, and you'd have my ass in a seat on opening night, for cot-damn sure. If Tarantino ever reads this, I expect producer credits. (Riiiight, like he'd ever in a million years even know this blog existed, let alone read it. But in the fantasy land I live in internally, it's his laptop's homepage. Nerdy, eh?)
Kieth, who also illustrated this comic, should be commended for his paintbrush chops on display, too. I'm no art major, so I won't get all super-pretentious-technical here, but he attacks his canvas with a bit of playful, non-imposing skethces here. Gives it almost a kids-comic-book feel, but it surprisingly works. This isn't a horror story, so trying to cause nightmares with the imagery would prove counteractive. By using such non-threatening art, he's allowed the reader cling to the underlying story going on within the four gal pals, rather than the frequently-horrific goings-on around them. At least that's the impression the art gave me. I could be way off from what others have interpreted the pics as, but who gives a shit. Opinions are, as they say, like assholes.
So, in all, Four Women was a rather worthy reading experience for yours truly. It didn't necessarily rock my world or cause me to engage in deep meditative thought in its aftermath, but I really appreciate the storytelling and true dedication and focus on character over spectacle. It's the kind of story I one day hope to scribe myself, not to mention a tale I'd love to write a screenplay-on-equal-level down the line.
I'd totally push for casting chicks like Kristen Bell, Rosario Dawson, Mila Kunis, and Olivia Thirlby, though. Maybe one or two of them would even make sense for Four Women's characters in reality, but fuck it. My kind of chick flick has tasty eye candy.....Yeah, I should probably work on such pervy tendencies if I'm ever going to make it credibly in Tinseltown. Note to self, made and banked.
Copied and pasted from Arrow In The Head, a horror component of the great moviehouse site, joblo.com:
"A couple months ago I mentioned that Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo (the team behind the brilliant Inside) may have been in talks with Bob Weinstein and Dimension about continuing what Mr. Zombie had started [with his Halloween]. Now, thanks to an article in Rue Morgue Magazine, we have further confirmation that this is indeed the case! Here’s a brief snippet of what was said:
'It's a proposition we couldn't refuse,” Maury explained and added that he and Bustillo are well aware of Zombie's re-imagining of Michael Myers and they're out to put their stamp on the character, not copy what came before them. "Therefore, our vision will be done with utmost respect, with a continuity of [Zombie's] work but also a real evolution of the world he set in place.'"
.....
I've been anxiously waiting on the news of what the brilliant duo behind Inside would be doing next. Inside was their first flick, and showed more potential than any film debut I've seen in God-knows-how-long, so seeing whether they can avoid the sophomore jinx or not has been quite intriguing for me. At first, they were attached to a remake of Hellraiser, the sadistic S&M horror jawn that brought good ol' Pinhead to the world. But alas, Hollywood is a bunch of pussies and these two dudes had to leave the project because their vision for it was apparently too raw, too evil, and too much. Meaning, exactly what it needed to be.
So the fact that these two guys are now attached to a second Halloween project is a mixed bag for me. On the negative side, I really wish these talented foreign genre filmmakers would be allowed to make their own original stuff here stateside, rather than being forced to handle tired remake and remake-sequels to get their feet in America's doors, sort of speak. But positively, this does mean that Bustillo and Maury are, in fact, coming to our shores, and I'm really optimistic that this will be good times for US horror hounds such as myself.
As for Rob Zombie's original Halloween spin, it tore my opinion in half like Mike Myers machete slash. The first section of the movie was pretty great, showing the demented and disturbed childhood of Myers, and I thought it all worked like gangbusters up until Myers left the insane asylum and headed back to Haddenfield. From that point on, however, Zombie abandoned all originality and basically did a shot-for-shot H-ween redux, and not terribly well. If he had just stuck to his own beginning vision, it could've been great. Introduce a whole new set of characters around Laurie Strode, and cast a different actress in the Strode role, one who could elicit some sense of compassion from audiences just as Jamie Lee Curtis once did. And try to avoid creating such white-trashy characters that the film reeks of Devils Rejects, which is a film I love but should remain its own entity. Zombie relies on this white-trash asthetic way too much.
So when Maury says he wants to stay true to the world Zombie created, I'm a bit concerned. They should just create their own universe and let the bodies drop in it. But still, though, these dudes have sick eyes and used some amazing camera techniques and frame tactics in Inside. Plus, John Carpenter's almighty OG Halloween has arguably the most iconic soundtrack in all of horror; the score of Inside, while far from iconic, is still bloody phenomenal. Nice meshing here, too.
Their "Halloween 2" could be something special. Time shall tell, my sick friends. Time shall tell.
I fucking hate The Hills. Worst show on TV right now, possibly ever. Hell, in my eyes, it is the worst show in the history of television. Totally staged. Boring as can be. Polluted with the biggest jerkoff characters this side of Big Brother.
My roommate is watching it, and being that our Internet connection is in our living room, I have no choice but to feel its wrath of putridity (think I just made up a word there....that doesn't sound like an actual word, right?) as I type away on my trusty laptop.
Spencer Pratt, or whatever his last name is, could quite possibly be the biggest douchebag to ever grace an idiot box monitor. I'd seriously pay a cool $100 just to kick the shit out of him. He could even try fighting back, it'd make no diff. He'd stand no chance against my pent-up rage against his show that has played a mammoth part in destroying pop culture.
I have so many friends who make it a weekly routine to watch this stupid show. Most times, catching every subsequent repeat. And I thought my obsessive viewing of Family Guy reruns was a bit much. Family Guy is like Rasputin compared to The Hills.
....
Oh dear God....some asinine new 'reality' show called Exiled has just come on after The Hills Have Douchebags. Not as ass-awful, but pretty darn close. Why does MTV suck so royally? I remember the days when MTV had quality programming such as Yo! MTV Raps, Dead at 21, The Head, Beavis & Butthead, Liquid TV, The Grind, and shit hosted by one of my first full-on celebrity crushes, MTV veejay Idalis. What a smokin' hot dame she was. My lord.
Remember her? Oh, how I loved thee....
How about this? MTV used to be the home of such genius moments as what you're about to watch. "Back in the days, when I was young, I'm not a kid anymore, but some days I sit and wish I was a kid again....."
I've seen this movie twice now, both advances screenings. The only reason I say that is because I can't say I'm telling people to run out and see it, for the simple fact that its not out 'til October. But trust: it kicks ass. Guy Ritchie is back in his long-gone pure Snatch zone. It may even be better than Snatch, in all honesty.
It's called Rock N Rolla, and I fucking love(d) it. And it has one of the cooler opening sequences that I've seen in a long time. And thankfully, that sequence has been put online by the dude who created it. Check it, it rocks. And rolls. Forgive the corniness. But this credit sequence really sets the tone for the rest of the movie. Of course, you can't agree 'til you actually see the full damn thing, but take my word for it:
Remember the opening credit sequence for Seven? Damn, that was amazing. Any others come to mind? I'll be racking my brain for some quality ones, that's for sure. But for now, nicely done, Rock N Rolla crew.
Son of a bitch! I really need to kickstart this Hollywood/movie journalist grind into super-duper high gear, because these film festivals are really where it's at.
In the hopefully-not-too-distant future, your boy will be at every one of these, as some sort of job requirement.....Cannes Film Festival....Sundance Film Festival...Toronto International Film Festival....hell, even Comic-Con.
I just realized that not one, but two of my most-anticipated flicks are screening during early-September's Toronto fest, and this means that I'll be forced to read every excited post-screening review online for months until these two French sick-times get U.S. release.
The first is Martyrs, literally a film I'd kill a kitten at this very moment just to watch in the dark confines of a movie theater. I've written about it before here, and having just skimmed through two new reviews surfacing after other film fests, I'm fucking losing my mind in anticipation. Both reviews are raving, ecstatic, all-praising, etc. This movie is going to rock my shit whenever I do finally see it, and boy can I not wait.
I remember when I first started reading about Inside last year on all of my trusty horror movie websites, and how it was consistently flooring every audience it was shown to....same goes for Spain's [Rec]. It's crazy to me just how geeked I'm getting these days for foreign genre cinema. Something tells me I really need to get my fucking passport. It's not a game anymore.
And next.....
[Vinyan]
The second is Vinyan, a flick by a French filmmaker named Fabrice Du Welz who I'm slowly learning more and more about, and I'm intrigued. It seems to be some weird tribal Lord of the Flies merged with Children of the Corn, and seems to be quite badass. But besides the simple truth that its from almighty horror heaven France, my main reason of excitement is that the score is provided by Francois Eudes, the same wizard behind the fucking brilliant music heard in Inside and High Tension. Just absolutely sick, jarring, pulsating, and invigorating tunes that really elevate the tension in these already-gripping movies.
To everybody who will be attending the Toronto International Film Fest, I have three simple words for you and yours:
Round two of my official Quarantine Watch 2008....this one is a bit of an overkill on the part of the chap who made it, but keeping in the spirit of my collecting all things [Rec]/Quarantine, it'll due.
Thing is, this one in particular will really only make sense for those who've seen [Rec], which is a very-very select few. Oh well, still being posted for my records.
Back on the scene, after one hell of a weekend down in Atlantic City. Wow.
Remember last weekend when I wrote about getting so drunk that my Friday night was a total blur? Well, multiply that by about 25 and then pour about four shots of Coffee Petron on the top and you have this past Friday night. Like, literally, I've only been able to loosely piece together upwards of 30% of the night through forced memory-digging and random revelation. "I had my hands all over some good-looking girl's ass all night? Sweet!" "It took me almost two hours to find my hotel room within the Borgata? Terrible!" "None of my friends knew where the fuck I was all night? Crazy!" "These mysterious scratches on my right arm happened last night? Possibly from that girl I was kicking it to the whole night? Jesus!"
At least the second night was good times and I was actually present the entire time, fully conscious and aware.
I must admit, however, how much I'm hating the fact that two Fridays in a row I got so polluted (a new term for "drunk" that I learned this weekend, btw) that I'm devoid of any recollection of events. Fortunately nothing that bad happened either time, such as arrests (although I was close that one time) or worse (waking up next to some hog....I just can't get down like that).
Fuckin' Coffee Petron. We've become mortal enemies now. And thus far, the bottle is kicking my ass all the way to kingdom come.
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