Film
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Here's a list of my top horror films of the last decade in no particular order. What are some of yours?

1. The Descent (Neil Marshall, 2005).Two-fold narrative with dual monsters: the cave and the crawlers. Probably my favorite horror film of the last decade (with the original ending, of course.) This film is one of my favorites to teach along with the original TCM and Suspiria when discussing startling usages of sound and silence. I'm intrigued by the sonic sleight-of-hand in films where the viewer is purposefully distracted by non-threatening sounds, and then boom, someone's dead. In The Descent, this device is cleverly constructed, delivering a purging shock to the audience when the main character awakes in the night, and as she stares out the window into the darkness, we only hear ambient sounds—snoring, the breeze, a bird; as we are mentally diverted by the bird's cry, a pole breaks the window, slamming straight through her eye. Inevitably someone always screams during this scene. Perhaps my affection for this film also has something to do with going spelunking as a kid in the Ozark mountains.

2. Ginger Snaps and Ginger Snaps: Unleashed (John Fawcett, 2000 and Brett Sullivan, 2004; written by Karen Walton). I can't decide which I like better. Both highlight the travails of adolescent girls with humor, poignancy and horror. Lycanthropy employed as a metaphor for the sexual transitions of female adolescence, as well as for PMS, scarification, and drug addiction. The prequel is interesting as well, but doesn't compare to these. Mimi Rogers is a delight in this film (many have fortunately forgotten that she was once married to Tom Cruise) and sparks up the screen with subtle humor.

3. À l'intérieur (aka Inside, Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, 2007). The first 20 minutes read like an Antonioni film capturing grief and depression in blue cinematic splendor, and then cut, and the fireworks begin. Watch it the first time for entertainment and then watch it again for its intricacies of patterns, camera movement, sound, color and utilization of light to create suspense. The more I watch it the more I appreciate it. Beatrice Dalle is one beautiful, but scary woman. Scissors, babies, and beautiful women, need I say more.

4. Martyrs (Pascal Laugier, 2008). It took me two years to decide what I thought about this film because I never want to watch it again and yet I'm continually haunted by it (same as Gaspar Noé's Irreversible). It is a brilliant horror film essay on interrogation, the banality and routinization of torture, and our "need to know" regardless of the cost. I love the way it transitions through various horror subgenres so that where you begin and where you end is a lengthy and unexpected journey, and demonstrates the director's love of horror films in his various homages. The ending, which I initially discounted as "too easy" has continued to resonate in its ambiguity. Probably the most viscerally pounding and depressing film on this list.

5. The House of the Devil (Ti West, 2009). This film transported me back to being a kid going to see movies like The Silent Scream (1980) with my dad. The House of the Devil raises many interesting topics surrounding issues of psychosis, the frightening power of belief systems, externalizations vs internalizations of violence, authority constructs, Barbara Creed's notion of the monstrous-feminine, etc. It is a great homage to 70'/80's horror films, and what more to say than "Tom Noonan!" Remember Michael Mann's Manhunter and the tiger scene?




Respire

Respire, a short film by Sarah Kretchmer




Weird Al and me

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Simone Muench micro-interviewed by Daniel Handler

Visit The Believer here




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As Rich Johnston writes, "Earlier this week, writer Clifford Meth revisited his rather-abandoned-of-late column at Comic Bulletin, Meth Addict.In which he told how a project he was associated with, Dave Cockrum's The Futurians almost made it to the screen a couple of times.And how he was also hired to write a screenplay treatment for his IDW series Snaked, before being moved aside for another writer - and then discovering he was suddenly not getting paid his kill fee...

"We have a contract," I said. "Of course he's going to pay me." "No he isn't. He's pretty sure you won't sue him. The fee is too small and you'd have to fly to Los Angeles to file for damages. Apparently this is how he does things." "Tell me this is a bad joke." "Sorry Cliff," said my agent. "Welcome to Hollywood."


So Cliff describes how he offered to "talk" with the producer's parents. Whose address Meth happened to have. Which suddenly has the desired effect.The column has been pulled, after someone got a bit scared it seems. But I understand the specific column in question has been bought out by a bigger site who will be running it tomorrow.

Not Bleeding Cool, we weren't even in the bidding. But if you'd like to read the whole column now, go to Daniel Best's Blog, where it is re-posted here.

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The Horror! The Horror!: Torture porn and the state of scary movies
From: newcityfilm.com
By Tom Lynch

We all have nightmares. For some, it's a dusty leather glove with knives attached to the fingers, a torn green-and-red striped sweater. Others, a hockey mask and the woods, or an eerie white mask shaped in the likeness of William Shatner. The overwhelming buzz of a chainsaw in the dark. For me, it's a little girl spouting obscenities and oozing split-pea soup.

Read The Horror! The Horror!: Torture porn and the state of scary movies






Let's Rage

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Check Mate: Ingmar Bergman is Dead at Age 89

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"Ingmar Bergman, one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of cinema and an artist who changed the way the world perceived the movies, died Monday, local media reported. He was 89 years old."


For more of Michael Wilmington's piece on Bergman click here. (Registration at chicagotribune.com is required, but it's free.)



Shock The Monkey

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Michael Moore’s latest makes the point once again: we are living in the Golden Age of documentaries. This time, he affords us a disturbing look into the diseased guts of the American medical system.

Plenty of Americans – perhaps a majority – blindly believe that we have the best medical system in the world. In fact we are near the very bottom the list (#37) according to the World Health Organization. The fallacy of American medical primacy is one whose debunking takes up a good deal of Moore’s film. Toward that end Moore takes a truly circumspect approach: he (partially) circles the globe to look at the health care apparatus employed by other countries, namely Canada, Cuba, Britain and France. It is an evenhanded approach that perhaps slightly exaggerates the effectiveness of those systems, nevertheless, it is hard to dispute the superiority of all of them (with the possible exception of Cuba’s). If we’re going to import all our luxury goods and cars from countries that make a better product, why not import their health care systems as well?



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Where is Hef anyway? Oh never mind, clearly he's not being missed in this picture.....could it be that The Shark is poised for yet another return to the big screen with hmmm... Hefs Women as bait errrr.... I mean co-stars? .......what would it be, Blonde On Jaws? Or..... Sea Meat Mansion! or, how about, Centerfold Sharkbait!...




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In 1977, I Spit on Your Grave (Meir Zarchi), issued under the less flamboyant title Day of the Woman (and also known as I Hate Your Guts and The Rape and Revenge of Jennifer Hill), was condemned across continents for being a film that, according to Roger Ebert in “Why Movie Audiences Aren’t Safe Anymore,” fostered in the audience rape and violence towards women (Ebert 54). Initially, the film was banned in the United Kingdom, Finland, Australia, and Germany. Upon its release in theaters, it was picketed by various groups (including women’s organizations) and panned by critics; and still, thirty years later, it remains a subject of controversy. That a low budget B-film can generate an inordinate amount of storm and stress is illustrated by Ebert’s assessment of the film as "a vile bag of garbage” that is “so sick, reprehensible, and contemptible that I can hardly believe it’s playing in respectable theaters” (Ebert 61). Gene Siskel, in a concurrent review, labeled it as “easily the most offensive film I have seen in my 11 years on the movie beat” (Siskel 3). Ten years later, in the 1987 Video Movie Guide, film critics Mick Martin and Marsha Porter called I Spit on Your Grave




Looking away: one day in Toronto

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Sidelong glimpses of the city on my first day at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.



Ceci n'est pas un marché: Sundance 2007

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Ceci n'est pas un marché.




The Nine Arts and the Nine Muses

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There are traditionally Nine Muses and Nine Arts, frequently linked to one another. My Latin professor Dr Clemens Müller and I have concocted a fresh, contemporary version of this system for no darn reason other than pure, arcane fun.




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And now for Part 2 of How I was Exploited by the Indian Film Industry and Enjoyed Nearly Every Aspect of It -

Suddenly this little adventure seemed to come with a tight leash attached - Every time I even thought about going for water or juice or something one of the assistants would say - Please John Kruthi, your place, your costume - which meant my sunglasses - even when they were busy fiddling with cameras or some such thing - they only had two of course with no lights - shooting had to stop by 6 pm when the sun went down - Just one step above art school...



Guest Editor Ignatius Vishnevetsky: Notes on Recent Viewing

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THE SOUND IN MODERN TIMES
The moment we started thinking about sound, we started making sound films. The moment the soundtrack stopped being an assumed quality and started being a controlled aspect of the presentation of a film, we started thinking sound cinema. The Passion of Joan of Arc is a sound film because Dreyer insisted that it be shown without a soundtrack. And Charlie Chaplin, who waited so many years to finally reveal his voice, was the one of the greatest early sound directors. Recently, while watching Modern Times for the first time in many years, I realized that it’s an exemplary sound film. In it, Chaplin utilizes the faculties of sound to achieve the desired comic effects only sound effects and music could create.



My First Talking Role in a Bollywood Film #9 #9 #9

Okay you guys, You're not gonna believe this but I just acted in my first Bollywood film! I was trying to get off the insanely overcrowded Lake Park Road - dodging autorickshaws, trucks, cabs, cows, motorbikes etc - feeling kind of crabby as I'm covered in mosquito bites and it's the hottest day yet and I itch - when I took the side road around the temple and saw a crane with a camera - walked over to take a few pix - a scene of a man about to jump from the ledge of a building, the crowd gathered in the street - people yelling various things when the assistant director comes up to me and asks if I would stand in the crowd - token American - so I say "yeah, sure."




8 Films to Die For: After Dark Horrorfest

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Horrorfest is where I'll be on November 17-19. What about you?




Art Film Con Game?

What happened to the idea of art films? Great question, and since it's got me thinking, let me dare a full post instead of a comment. I'll argue that, first, film became accepted as art, including mainstream film. Second, an outsider venue for art films became less crucial, thanks to video. But could those assumptions be changing as money centralizes yet again? NOTE ADDED: You'll see that I embellished this, because I wasn't satisfied with how it ended.




Art Film Confidential

On the dvd commentary track to Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger, recently released on Sony Picture Classics, both Jack Nicholson and writer Mark Peploe refer to the movie as an “art film”. I’m wondering when that term disappeared. I first saw The Passenger at the Kentucky Theater in downtown Lexington sometime around 1976. The Kentucky Theater was the prototypical “art house”. It was too big, too cold (or hot), with thick mildewed curtains. But it was cheap, and it had the films that any deep-thinking college kid who lacked the drive to change the world, but wanted to understand it better wanted to see. I pretty much went every weekend. Herzog, Fassbinder, and Wertmuller; Waters, Cassavettes, and Altman. Most of the films lived fondly in my memory for years. Many have turned up on dvd and have stayed in my top ten verified by repeated viewings. Stroczeck, Woman Under the Influence, The Last Detail, Days of Heaven. Some weren’t as good as I remembered. The Passenger was one of those films I would tell people about, but it remained elusive. When Nicholson finally took it off the shelf, allowing a transfer to dvd, I couldn’t wait to buy it, but I was nervous that it wouldn’t live up to my expectations and memories. All I remembered was that it had Maria Schneider and what I vaguely remembered as my favorite ending ever.




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Waterloo 144" X 120" alkyd resin/canvas 2004

In a new twist The Shark returns to the big screen, hence the scene of his earlier cinematic triumphs, however this time not as the scenery chewing rock star that first propelled him to fame in The Jaws Series, but now, in a new, more sensitive role as Carcharodon Carcharias Peinture Extraordinaire; revealing himself to be even more of a complex, misunderstood creature than previously thought. Thus, stupefying pelagic scientists who up until now had not stopped to consider The Shark's abilities in the arena of oil painting, effortlessly employing -not without a certain amount of formal rigor, the (to paraphrase Jed Perl) "hell-bent fury of oil painting" -in terms of sheer plastic invention as it plays out in an array, a conflation, of guises and conceits.....



Paul K Interviews Steve Gaghan

Replay: from time to time we bring back a piece which we feel warrants further attention. This is one such piece. -ed.

Stephen Gaghan, Oscar winner and Louisville, Kentucky native, is a man with more talent and more life experiences than most of the rest of us could ever hope to understand. Louisville has sent forth some fine artists (My Morning Jacket are burning up the pop charts as I write) but only one of them has won an Oscar. The single fact of his success as a storyteller (which is essentially what he is) is that his ability to write and to move people emotionally was forged in the crisis of his drug addiction. And his ability was not destroyed by that addiction. The specter of DOPE and dependency in general hangs heavily over his best works ("Traffic," "Syriana") and his best works are as good as anything American cinema has seen since the glory days of the Ashby-Hopper-Coppola-Altman-Scorsese 1970's. An ex-dope addict, he has suffered for his art in the righteous and classic sense. The Easy Riders and the Raging Bulls have a clear heir in Gaghan. And yet Gaghan himself is less ambitious than he is eager. Eager to write better screenplays, eager to make better films, but with seemingly no ambition to add his name to any sort of pantheon, especially when there is more work to do and more stories to tell.




Spike Lee's "Inside Man" and the resurrection of Sidney Lumet

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An incipient Sidney Lumet revival continues to bubble up from the underbelly of the American film community. The resurgence of films about police corruption, along with the recent rereleases of "Network" and "Dog Day Afternoon" herald a renewed appreciation for the 1970's master's works. Like "16 Blocks," Spike Lee's "Inside Man" draws heavily from a Lumet piece; in this case it's "Dog Day Afternoon" with a significant twist.




After conversation...

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Over the past ten years or so, I've interviewed dozens of people about the movies they've made.



Altman essay part I

A Meditation On The Enduring Importance of "Nashville"upon the Occasion of Robert Altman's Lifetime Achievment Oscar (part I)

My friend Tim Welch (one of the best American drummers of the last 20 years) makes the claim that Robert Altman's "Nashville" is the finest American movie ever made. I believe he is correct. When he first expressed this opinion I admit I considered it another blustery partial truth typical of a percussionist. "Better than "Citizen Kane?" I asked, better than "The Godfather" or "Bonnie and Clyde" or "North by Northwest" or "The Bride of Frankenstein"?




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Like a good horse race the 2006 Oscars (honoring films, remember, released in 2005) is shaping up to be quite an interesting contest. The pre-emptive favorite for best puicture and best director, "Brokeback Mountain" (which I did not like and for which my negative opinion earned a number of accusations of homophobia) seems to have a certain momentum working against it.



Sundance Dispatch




Memories of Sundance 2005

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Next week, photographs from Park City, Utah, home of the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. Here are images from the 2005 edition.




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1) Needle Anus
2) The Witches of Breastwick
3) Not Dead Enough
4) Motor Home Massacre
5) Weenie Roast Massacre
6) Sugar and Shit
7) Slaughterhouse of the Rising Sun
8) Skankobite
9) Boy Eats Girl
10) Satan's House of Yoga
11) The Gingerdead Man
12) G-String Vampire
13) The Cactus that Looked Just Like a Man




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Until The Monkey Dies

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At once maddening and gloriously free and honorous of a mythical Hollywood past which may or may not have roots in reality, Peter Jackson's virtuoso remake of the 1933 classic "King Kong" offers everything for a movie lover to love (and everything for a curmudgeon to hate). Call me amiss, but I must cop to having never seen any of Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" films. Cast-of-Thousands spectaculars have always been distasteful to me. With "King Kong," it seems, Jackson has found a way to keep his megalithic special effects machine working full time whilst paying close attention to a simple plot line (albeit one written for him almost 80 years ago). The resultant film is everything one would expect from a $207 million budget.



Until The Monkey Lives

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Although I am a big Jack Black fan, I refuse to see the new remake of King Kong. I made this decision a few weeks ago after I first saw a poster for the movie with a close-up of Kong’s face. The ape looked an awful lot like my pug Louie. They both share the same loveable but domineering nature and pushed in nose.



A Far Cry From Dead

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Any self-respecting fan of American music should know who Townes Van Zandt was, and if you don't, chances are you will soon.



The Plot Thinnens

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Junebug
Directed by Phil Morrison

Sony Pictures Classics
A sensitive tale of family and art fails to live up to it's promise.



Platform 1

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Daily Variety reports that the merger of theater chains AMC and Loews will be approved by the Justice Department, with the condition that 6 theaters are sold, two each in San Francisco, DC and Chicago. Quotes Variety, "The divestures required by the department will ensure that competition at movie theaters in the affected parts of Chicago, New York, Boston, Seattle and Dallas is preserved," said Thomas Barnett, the acting assistant attorney general in the DOJ's antitrust division." The Feds also said "that without the divestitures, AMC and Loews would control 100% of the Chicago North, downtown Seattle and downtown Boston markets."



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A snappy little snapshot of local history, Genevieve Coleman's charming first feature, Monday Night at the Rock 'N Bowl chronicles about the punk rock bowlathon-drinkathon at the Diversey River Bowl in Chicago. It's out on DVD now, and we check in with first-time feature filmmaker Genevieve Coleman about its process and progress of a story told over the course of several months of Mondays around the turn-of-the-century with borrowed video cameras.




Christmas Movie Recommendation: Wolf Creek

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Opens December 25th.

"Swaggeringly nasty film which deserves an audience outside the horror fanbase."
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian



Reality School by John Sparano

From the Moviefone Short Film Festival. This is hillarious.



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