Category: film

Not Your Average Souvenir

What I’ll be doing after tonight’s Ruby is complete:

Listen, I know Night Of The Lepus, the “Giant Bunnies Attack a Town” 1970s horror movie, isn’t exactly known for its realism or tight plotting – still, I caught part of it on cable last night, and recalled something that I actually do find creepy every time I see it.

(I apologize for the quality of the pictures, I took them with my iPhone, straight from the picture-box.)

I understand the value of the parent-child bonding that “Take Your Child To Work”-day can provide, but I’m not sure that it has the intended effect when you’re bringing your daughter to an animal testing lab full of angry rabbits in tiny metal cages.

This scene actually goes on to poke one of the rabbits with a large needle full of chemicals, while the two staff members tersely discuss their lack of any idea about what might happen as a result, all as the little girl watches on from the rear of the room.

Worse still, she needs to be there for the plot: she’s the MacGuffin that moves the infected rabbit out of observation and into another unmarked cage as “it’s her favourite”.

I realize she’s just a standard ’70s mop-headed child actor in a poorly plotted movie, but I choose to believe she was a pro-bunny sympathizer who fully understood her actions.

Whatever the case, ten minutes later it’s all giant rabbits and Deforest “Bones” Kelly shouting about how he’s a doctor, not a veterinarian.

Ape Laws Of Physics

Listen, I understand that questioning the logic of the original Planet Of The Apes is like weeping into the ocean, but there’s something that’s always bugged me. It’s a classic ending, but how exactly did half of the Statue Of Liberty get onto some random beach? Never mind that it’s obvious they crash landed in Utah, which is no little walk from New York – we’re talking about a 60,000 pound copper statue, even getting it from Liberty Island to the mainland would be a ridiculous task.

It didn’t just wash up on shore.

The thing is, I can’t watch that portion of the film without getting the mental image of either:

Nuclear explosions tossing the statue into the air and re-depositing it somewhere along the American east coast, like some sort of thermo-nuclear Krazy Kat cartoon, or,
The final battle that destroyed humanity being a lot like Ghostbusters 2, and mankind was wiped out after animating giant statues to fight each other.

Killer Klowns

We watched Killer Klowns From Outer Space last night.

Klowns has always been a bit of an oddity to me. It’s obviously a ridiculously goofy movie, but it’s never played as anything but earnest – and I love it because of that.

Post Scream/Scary Movie every bad movie actor is on on the joke, and that guts a lot of the magic of watching a terrible film. I’m convinced Killer Klowns is only remembered from an era with a glut of bad horror because of its earnestness. If they’d gone into it like, say, Hobgoblins, it would edge out of enjoyable and into “Shut Up”.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFHBtu6Nb40]

A Rush Limbaugh Movie?

Sciafani gives his perception on the film, “This is Citizen Kane meets Private Parts, where you have a man who always had trouble relating to people in the outside world, but does it effortlessly in the booth.” He also adds that Limbaugh was the “proverbial fat kid” always ignored in school, “There’s this anecdote about a game of spin the bottle in high school. The bottle pointed at him, and the pretty girl who was supposed to kiss him ran away, and that stayed with him. When he came up in radio, he was culturally opposed to everything happening in the 60s and 70s, and all this left him with something to prove. He is an underdog, and became an extremely determined person with something to prove.” – JoBlo

I think it’s pretty understood that Rush’s “Rosebud” would be an “Eva” or “Margarita”.

Despite the fact that I’m not a fan of the guy, I could definitely see this being an interesting film.

Buried

Have you heard about the new film Buried? Here’s the trailer:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3NClUkY700]

Frankly, that teaser doesn’t really get me going at all, but I must admit, somehow the poster art has sold me COMPLETELY.

Rip off a little Hitchcock, and while you’re there, tear off a li’l piece of my heart.

Yes, at the risk of being choked to death by the cartoonishly re-animated hand of Saul Bass, I have to admit that I quite like this Vertigo homage:

Somewhere in the still reasoning portion of my brain I fully understand that Ryan Reynolds is in this movie, and therefore the film will open with a lot of shots of Reynolds smiling before he has to start transitioning between his two other facial expressions, soft-eyed surprise and steely-jaw, but still, I want to believe.

I’d also be interested in re-watching Quentin Tarantino’s CSI episodes before viewing this – as in submarine movies, there are only so many things to be done in a buried box story.

A Confession

There are only two movie scenes that have ever left me shivering in the night.

One of them, The Furry Scene from The Shining, is often listed as one of the creepiest moments in film history – maybe, but does it stand up to this?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-Pdlxd_rro]

Pontypool (Sydney Briar is alive)

Had a chance to watch Pontypool last night, and I was pleasantly surprised by how good it was.

It’s a low budget horror movie, but the lead, Stephen McHattie, carries the movie like he’s been subbing in for Willem Defoe for years. Flipping over to imdb, his list of credits is huge, although usually as ‘Guy in the back’ – I can’t see that lasting much longer, he has some mean talent.

The film itself is something of a zombie movie, although that’s not quite right – it’s more of a thriller set in a radio station, with the occasional zombie-a-like.

Beyond that though, it’s tough to discuss without giving away some of the magic, so I’ll leave it at this: If you have the time, pick it up – but don’t be expecting a Michael Bay flick.

Kuato

By Federico Piatti of Gorilla Art Fare.

If only we’d timed the baby better, I could have built a fantastic Kuato costume for Halloween.

Night Of The Casio Dead

Re-watched Night Of The Living Dead (1990) a few evenings ago.

It’s still a fantastic movie, but it reminded that I need to give someone the idea of opening a production house to re-score all the casio symphonies of the early ’80s through mid-’90s.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA2oWwEBICQ]