Saturday, September 24, 2016

Weekend Open Thread

Find hungry cowboys!

We're just one week away from October 1st and the start of #ScaryMovieMonth. GET READY.

In the meantime, let's talk about movies and stuff we've been watching lately.

38 comments:

  1. Shockwaves podcast T shirts now for sale on Cavity Colours website, we just need F This Movie shirts for us all to wear and im happy

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  2. I just watched Exorcist 3 for the first time in years and that wheelchair bound Flashed scene made me cry with laughter, I kept rewatching it, funniest thing I have seen in ages

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  3. Greetings and salutations from the Helsinki International Film Festival. I watched 15 movies in four days and had a blast. A few highlights:

    Under the Shadow, the Iranian horror set in 80's Tehran, was definitely one of the highlights for me. I'm glad I went in knowing almost nothing, and the movie had me in its grip for the whole running time.

    John Michael McDonagh's first Brendan Gleeson-less movie, War on Everyone, is a hugely entertaining romp starring Alexander Skarsgård and Michael Peña as two charmingly unlikeable crooked cops kicking ass, taking names and being obnoxious. And Skarsgård acts the shit out of his character with his odd delivery and weird forward slant.

    The two Asian horror movies I saw, Creepy (from Japan) and Office (from Korea) both built tension really well and kept me interested, but Office was the one which also stuck the landing. That ambiguous ending works on a couple of levels, and they both work for me.

    Android in La La Land, a documentary about Gary Numan and especially his comeback album Splinter, is definitely worth watching if you're a fan, otherwise you probably won't get that much out of it.

    Girls Lost, a Swedish fantastical coming-of-age movie, really worked for me. It's about three 15 year old unpopular girls, who find a magical flower whose nectar turns them into boys for a while. It's all about gender roles and about searching for your sexual identity. The story is really touching, the direction beautiful and the electronic score magical.

    The Lure is a Polish fantasy-horror-comedy-musical about two vampire mermaids joining a night club band. If you're into weird shit and that sounded good, the movie is worth seeing.

    Also, Sing Street and Hunt for the Wilderpeople are both wonderful, but everyone knew that already.

    And here's a list of everything I saw. Because I like making lists.

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    1. I'm really looking forward to "Creepy" from the master Kiyoshi Kurosawa, I absolutely love "The Cure".

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  4. I watched Paul Verhoeven's Elle a few nights ago - I went in pretty blind, though I did see a quote of his defending the film as not a rape comedy but a movie with a rape and comedy, and I was a little worried that some of his sensibilities might not fly in today's social climate that rightfully doesn't tolerate making light of sexual assault. Thankfully the movie does not do this - the scenes involving rape are frightening, disturbing and deadly serious - those scenes and the scenes dealing with how it directly affects her life (getting an STD test, buying pepper spray, changing locks, being more cautious in her home, etc.) aren't ever played for any kind of laughs.

    But the movie is just as much about her family and relationships and career - it's actually remarkable how many people in, and elements of, her life are explored and just how seamlessly tones are shifted. You're in stunned silence one moment and laughing at her idiot son and his awful pregnant girlfriend (or her sad-sack ex-husband, or her mother and her boytoy, or her best friend and her skeevy husband, or her adoring subordinate at the video game company she owns and manages, or the one that kind of hates her, etc., etc., etc.) the next. I wasn't familiar with her, but Isabelle Huppert plays the subject of this character study and she is absolutely amazing and her performance, as well as the traumatic history that informs her character, make her reaction to the rape and everything else going on her life feel completely natural and believable.

    Paul Verhoeven is pretty hard to pin down - he's got a certain style but all of his movies are pretty different from each other - Elle most closely compares to Basic Instinct I suppose, but it's both more mature and a lot funnier (and just better quality overall to me). I really loved it - haven't stopped thinking about it - and though trigger warnings certainly apply, I really wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to everybody. Paul Verhoeven's still got it, folks!

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    1. That sounds super-interesting. I'm in (whenever it gets some kind of release in my neighborhood)!

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  6. The Magnificent Seven was more decent than I thought it was going to be. I didn't love it, but my lowered expectations and foggy memory of the original allowed me to enjoy it.

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    1. Was very unimpressed by the first 30 or so minutes, but things really picked up once the team was recruited and had gotten where they were going. I loved D'Onofrio more here than anywhere else I've seen him since Ed Wood. Spent the week before release day getting all caught up on the franchise, which I'd never seen any of the installments of: All four originals, Battle Beyond the Stars, The Seven Magnificent Gladiators with Lou Ferrigno (directed by Bruno Mattei!), and a Seven Samurai for freshness sake. Unrelated, decided to do a Godzilla mini-marathon with friends in anticipation of the Shin Godzilla release: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, Godzilla's Revenge, Godzilla '84, and Godzilla vs. Mothra. Weekends are fun!

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    2. I watched Godzilla '84 now that it finally came out on Blu Ray. Really satisfying entry in the series. Although I wish they had also released the laughable Americanized Godzilla 1985, as that is the version I grew up with on VHS.

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    3. Not a movie, but D'Onofrio was pretty cool on Law & Order: Criminal Intent. He was the original head-tilting mentalist.

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    4. Before that, he KILLED it on the episode "Subway" (?) of "Homicide: Life on the Streets." I think that EP won or was nominated for an Emmy. Take that for what it's worth. He's has a tough career cause how do you outdo "Full Metal Jacket".

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    5. Duh! Jurassic World. He once had a Wolf Pup he let chew on his wife. A Wolf Pup!

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  7. Watched Train to Busan. Good Zombie movie but pretty standard and nothing as special as all the hype around it. Wyrmwood is still the last interesting Zombie film I have seen. I'm really tired of them, honestly.

    Also watched Life, Animated. It made me feel a little icky. Part of me liked it but part of me felt like it was edited carelessly in creating it's narrative and also to provoke emotion in a sneaky kind of way. His first night alone, for example, they allude that he is watching "Bambi" cause of the whole Mom thing but was he really? They never showed what he was watching on the laptop. There were numerous times where I felt this way. I liked Owen though. Good dude.

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    1. To clarify - "icky" meaning because of the filmmakers, not the subject matter.

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  8. I been laid up with a nasty flew, so I have been sleeping through and watching a lot of halves of movies over the last few days. But I finally caught up with Final Girls, wich had its moments, re-watched Cabin in the Woods, which kept me awake through the power of its greatestness. I watched most of Mr. Holmes, it seemed to be more sentimental than I usually like, but Ian Mckellen and Laura Linny are great as usual. I need to try and watch again Bad Influence and Running Scared again, they both seemed better than they had any right to be, I just don't want to be ill when watching them. But they high light was Roger Corman's Pit and the Pendulum. Not only because that movie is great but also because I was sitting up and watching it (total win). The more I see of them the more I am beginning to adore the Corman/Poe movies.

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    1. And that's why you rock. Get feeling better.

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    2. Thanks Chaybee! I'm am feeling much better now thank you.Ready to give Running Scared another go.

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  9. I just watched Michel Gondry's Castaway, or Swiss Army Man. It really runs the emotional spectrum from absurd comedy to depressingly grim. That said, it is unique in that there is an ambiguity that engulfs virtually the whole thing. It starts a little slow, but it really picks up steam as it moves along. I'd like to have more ammo for the recommendation, but I don't want to spoil anything. It will definitely be in my top 3 fartiest movies released this year.

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    1. Interesting that you equate SAM with Gondry. I never would have thought that. Mood Indigo was such a revival for him that I can't wait to see what he does next. SAM on the otherhand was more Gerry to me, less Gondry. Not really a fan, but who cares.

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    2. Maybe he didn't go full-Gondry, but that second act was definitely heavily "Sweded". I haven't seen Mood Indigo yet, but I'll fix that soon enough. I think his Green Hornet experience was a huge setback. Although it's not as terrible as some would say, it reeks of studio interference. Apparently it could have been worse, according to the Imdb trivia section: Nic Cage was originally cast as the villain and he intended to play it with a Jamaican accent, much to Gondry's dismay (although Con-Air has proven that Cage is a master of accents).
      He's always had a Lo-fi, handmade aesthetic to his stuff dating back to his music videos. Both of his Director's Series music video dvds are brilliant, Eternal Sunshine is a hall of famer and I think Be Kind Rewind is very underrated. It's really too bad that he got chewed up a little bit by the studio system. There's more imagination in one of his dumps than in 90% of the major studio releases this year.

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    3. I actually thought Green Hornet was a lot of fun! Don't get all the hate for it.

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  10. Zombi 3 is like if Fulci, Fragasso and Mattei teamed up to make a movie and got the guy from Stagefright to do the music. Totally want this movie...oh, maybe I don't.

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  11. Since Patrick and JB were talking about Kurosawa on the podcast and Hulu has most of his movies on there, I decided to watch Stray Dog for the first time and liked it quite a bit. I'll probably watch another Kurosawa movie when I get off work tonight but haven't decided which one yet.

    Also watched Beware of Mr. Baker on Hulu as well. It's a fairly recent documentary about former Cream drummer Ginger Baker. The first half in particular is pretty fascinating. It bogs down a little bit later because due to being fairly crazy, the peak of his career was fairly short (Cream only lasted 2 years before breaking up) and while his life continues to be interesting for a while after that, by the time he gets to wife #3 I was waiting for things to wrap up.

    Getting ready for Scary Movie Month, but I'll be taking a trip to Australia for the last 3rd of the month so I'll have to watch as much as I can in the first half.

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    1. Hey, we'll be glad to have you!!! Though a lot of stuff is finally being released here in October if you wanted to re-watch things like Neon Demon or I'm not a Serial Killer. Though depending on you know what your trip is :).

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    2. I'll be in and around Sydney the pretty much the whole time. Have a few things planned out but not everything yet.

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  12. I decided to check Lawrence Kasdan's "Mumford" from 1999. A pretty amusing dramedy headlined by Loren Dean in the title role, with able support from Hope Davis, Jason Lee, Alfre Woodard, Mary McDonnell, Martin Short, David Paymer and Zooey Deschanel in her film debut. Probably Kasdan's last good directing effort.

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    1. Hope Davis is so good in that. I first saw her in Brad Anderson's Next Stop Wonderland (a very underrated romantic film) and have tried to follow her career since. I think she's an overlooked actress.

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  13. Been watching Best Picture winners and watched Chariots of Fire. Now I know it's not better then Raiders of the Lost Ark the movie it beat, but they are both four star movies in my opinion and I'm ok with Chariots winning. Plus that score, try not wanting to go out and run after listening to that theme. :-)

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  14. Mag 7 was p good. Exceeded expectations. Pretty much everything the podcast applauded Seven Samurai for doing m, that we (myself included) thought a new movie wouldn't do, it did. That is, taking its time, who it kills and who it leaves alive, the villain angle, etc. and of course some critics are knocking it for "underuse" of villain bs.

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    1. Just got around to watching it today, and while I found it enjoyable I do have a couple nitpicks. The first is that in Westerns I tend to be a fan of more grounded gunplay rather than the superhuman action movie kind of stuff. Also, it's hard to say that they rushed the last battle when it takes up the last half hour of the movie, but it doesn't have the protracted nature of the original or the Seven Samurai in that the bad guys never retreat and regroup. Seven Samurai in particular feels more like a siege than a skirmish which is something I enjoyed.

      Still, the basic concept is something that lends itself well to remakes and reimaginings, and they've got a fun cast here. It's nowhere near the level of its predecessors but we don't get a ton of Westerns in the theater these days so I'll take what I can get.

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  15. http://www.blumhouse.com/2016/09/26/31-horror-films-for-october-elric-kane-co-host-shockwaves-podcast/

    Perfect list for October SMM here

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    1. I'm pretty sure it could have been Xtro surrounded by 30 viewings of What Women Want and you would have supported it. But yeah, good list.

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    2. I was happy to see Xtro on there, your right, Xtro needs to be on everyone's list

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  16. Herscell gordon Lewis just died. Though I don't like his films, I appreciate him for being a trailblazer.

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