jetpack_monkey_ljarchive

I really loved it. I loved it because it thrilled me and it made me think enough to put together a post on it at Cinema-Geek - Inception: The Movies in Your Mind.  It's one of those things that took me very little time to write because it all flowed out so naturally. However, after I finished, my head came up with even more stuff. Rather than try to fit it in to the already written post, there will be a second part later this week.

In which I get a little navel-gazey about Classic-Horror's upcoming tenth anniversary and contemplate exactly what running the site for 10 freaking years means for me. I'm of two very different minds on the subject.

Wherein I talk about colorization, Return of the Living Dead, Krull, Meet the Feebles, and idiotic things theaters do to save money.

I'm wondering how wise it was to start a second blog. I'm not really getting any major traffic (mind, I've only been operating for a month) and I don't always remember to post. At the same time, I feel more comfortable getting into ridiculous amounts of detail about movies over there than I do here. Don't ask me why. *ponders*

I often marvel at the number of "Unpopular Fandom Opinion" posts I read where the comments are, by and large, nothing but nodding agreement. I guess they couldn't've been that unpopular.

This, however, I think is an unpopular opinion:

Despite going to pot in the last half-hour, Exorcist II: The Heretic is by and large a better film than The Exorcist. midnightfae and I watched it over the weekend and we both agreed on this point. Mind you, neither of us is terribly fond of William Friedkin's The Exorcist (read my review). Exorcist II starts out quite strong, creating a logical follow-up and actually explaining away some of the irritating plot holes and inconsistencies that plagued its predecessor.( Spoilers follow. )

Uh... what now? Mix together the nihilism of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the misplaced devotion of Misery, and the French countryside, and you won't get Fabrice du Welz's Calvaire (or as the title's subtitle would have it The Ordeal), but you'll get a close enough approximation to start a journal entry about the film.

There's this singer, Marc, who does really low-rent gigs at places like retirement homes. He's on his way to a gala Christmas performance when his van breaks down in the middle of nowhere. He accepts the offer of a clean room from a strange innkeeper until his van can get fixed. Marc's detour starts heading downhill from there. The mechanic's always unavailable to come up. Marc is warned to stay away from the villagers, who are apparently too strange for words. And the innkeeper keeps stealing personal effects out of his van, while leaving things like money.

Then, one fateful morning, events stop heading downhill -- mostly because they go off a cliff and just go straight down. To explain would be telling, but I will say there's an undertaste of dark, dark, dark comedy in everything that follows, which is more than a little masked by the overtaste of "Oh shit oh shit oh shit."

Recommended. Sort of. It was a very strange film.

No full cinema blog on The Candy Snatchers or Blood Freak. Unfortunately, a day of having my ass kicked getting the new futon set-up was enough for me. The Candy Snatchers was... bizarre, often quite unexpected, and tasteless in all the right places. Mostly. I think that I've just had a bad streak lately of watching films with unexpected rape scenes. The Candy Snatchers, being exploitation cinema, had two.

Everything I have to say about Blood Freak is at my Classic-Horror review.

Caught the new Doctor Who. Without spoilers, I can safely say that I like the new companion.

( With spoilers... ever-so-minor. Really more speculation based on a teensy-weensy detail I caught that I don't even explicitly describe )

Bought some DVDs today, including a few slasher films since my collection is woefully without. Yes, I said woefully. Upon finishing "Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of Slasher Cinema" by Adam Rockoff (and watching the companion documentary -- thank you Starz for sending me five bajillion copies in various stages of not-quite-finished), I realized that I'd given this particular subgenre an unfair shake. Steps have been taken to rectify this.

I would like to keep this cinema blog somewhat accessible, without compromising the fact that I like my movies like I like my women -- esoteric. As such, I will probably alternate, something well-known and something not very well known at all. Something older, something newer.

In keeping with this, I'm starting out with a double feature: Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann, 2001) and Bone (Larry Cohen, 1972).

( Under the cut )

For those keeping track, I will definitely be watching and commenting on the following films soon: The Candy Snatchers and Blood Freak (both on 3/30), and Grindhouse (on or around 4/6).