Micro Plugs!
Noted for posterity, a handful of teensy tiny movie reactions.
Halloween Party: I can barely remember now what thedeadlyhook and I played for our annual Halloween video fest. I think we started with Phantasm, and then it turned out that nobody had seen Jason X so we had to fix that right away, and I was pleased and surprised that everyone seemed to enjoy Halloween III: Season of the Witch because it's one of my personal faves. The gaps in between were filled with random episodes of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, as well as lots of snacks and the Hook's trademark Ghoulish Goulash.
Cloverfield: Selected from our Netflix pile on election night because I thought it would make a perfect sendoff to the Dubya era, and did it ever. Truly an ideal time capsule of the past decade: Pandering, grandiose, fear-mongering, self-absorbed, incompetent, incoherent, badly executed, and just plain stupid. Given that the central conceit of the movie is that we're seeing all this via a guy who can keep his video camera consistently level and focused even while he's running for his life, literally not a single frame of the movie is believable, which has to be some kind of record.
The Happening: This, on the other hand, was surprisingly good. I don't think it had much of a lasting impact - one day later, I'm already having trouble remembering much about it - but I enjoyed watching it, and I'm starting to think that Shyamalan just can't catch a break these days.
Silk: A polyglot horror/sci-fi movie made in Taiwan with an international cast. Although it starts to lean a little more on stock J-Horror imagery towards the end, for the most part this is a really fresh and original take on the ghost story and paranormal investigation. Very highly recommended for fans of The Stone Tape and Nigel Kneale-style hybrid tales of science and supernature.
Halloween Party: I can barely remember now what thedeadlyhook and I played for our annual Halloween video fest. I think we started with Phantasm, and then it turned out that nobody had seen Jason X so we had to fix that right away, and I was pleased and surprised that everyone seemed to enjoy Halloween III: Season of the Witch because it's one of my personal faves. The gaps in between were filled with random episodes of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, as well as lots of snacks and the Hook's trademark Ghoulish Goulash.
Cloverfield: Selected from our Netflix pile on election night because I thought it would make a perfect sendoff to the Dubya era, and did it ever. Truly an ideal time capsule of the past decade: Pandering, grandiose, fear-mongering, self-absorbed, incompetent, incoherent, badly executed, and just plain stupid. Given that the central conceit of the movie is that we're seeing all this via a guy who can keep his video camera consistently level and focused even while he's running for his life, literally not a single frame of the movie is believable, which has to be some kind of record.
The Happening: This, on the other hand, was surprisingly good. I don't think it had much of a lasting impact - one day later, I'm already having trouble remembering much about it - but I enjoyed watching it, and I'm starting to think that Shyamalan just can't catch a break these days.
Silk: A polyglot horror/sci-fi movie made in Taiwan with an international cast. Although it starts to lean a little more on stock J-Horror imagery towards the end, for the most part this is a really fresh and original take on the ghost story and paranormal investigation. Very highly recommended for fans of The Stone Tape and Nigel Kneale-style hybrid tales of science and supernature.