#168: Halloween

Halloween (1978)
Directed by John Carpenter
Written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill
Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance and the best slasher killer in the history of slasher films!


When I was a kid I dressed up as a different ninja turtle for halloween three years in a row. Only Donatello never figured into the equation for whatever reason. After my run of portraying mutan turtles turned stale, I did what many a young child did. I became a vampire.

It was sweet. I had a cape, I greased my hair into a pseudo-widow's peak and put some uncomfortable plastic fangs in my mouth and fake blood ran down from the corners of my mouth.

As a kid, I had a love-hate relationship with horror movies and scary stories in general. I would get horror books from the library at school and scare myself senseless in the dark of night. Nightmares were plentiful. Anyone who says the boogeyman can't get you has either forgotten or has never had a bad dream.

Unsolved Mysteries is a pretty lame show in retrospect but when I was 10, it was eerie and creepy. Anything to do with alien abductions and I'd be there to squirm my way through it. It seems masochistic but there is a certain exhiliration and pleasure that comes from being scared or seeing something shocking and unbelievable. If you get to the point where you're vocally trying to convince yourself that it's not real...well you're hooked.

Halloween is the greatest of all childhood holidays. We looked forward to it every year because it's the only day where the scary monsters lose their shadowy mystique and become part of the norm. We as children -- and as adults, who am I kidding? -- entered the world of the darkness for but a night. As a vampire or a werewolf we embraced the horror.

There always is an air of safety surrounding Halloween. So for John Carpenter to make a movie about October 31 where the horror is real and not just make believe he created a new level in the genre. A lumbering, escaped mental patient in a William Shatner mask wielding a knife trying to exact revenge on those who did him wrong on halloween of all days. It packs a punch.

It paved the way for the Friday the 13th movies -- which paved the way for Sleepaway Camp and others -- but it wasn't as campy (sorry about that one). Halloween is still the most effective slasher film maybe because of the double reversal within the holiday from horror to safety and back again or maybe because John Carpenter knows horror better than any other filmmaker.

Halloween is still an annual treasure for my friends and I, although sometimes my creativity takes a backseat to procrastination. The last two years I've worn a suit and attached some accessory to that suit in order to call it a costume.

In 2007 it was a briefcase. Arlo was the devil and I was his attorney.

In 2008 I wrapped a noose around my neck. I was an investment banker. I stole that idea from Traer a few years earlier when he was an Enron executive.

One of these years I'll be more elaborate with my costume. We should all channel that fear and exhiliration at least once a year anyway.

AQ Redux: The inner workings of the movie geek

Being the self-described movie geek that I am, I am conscious of the image us somewhat volatile folk can be. In 2002 I discovered Joblo.com and along with it, the message board.

I thought "hey, a place where I can share my love of movies with others like me? Sign me up!"

Under the moniker of Rated R I posted regularly for six years with only occasional absences. Looking back on my early posts I am embarrassed at what I was willing to print even if it was anonymous. At least here, I am posting as myself and not an alias.

The internet has seriously hurt art critique by giving everyone the option of being their own personal critic. Lost are the days of looking for a well written piece on the depths of cinema or the flashing lights of a masterful action film. Now it's all about the statistics.

If a movie has a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, that's all you need to know it's supposed to be great. The problem is a lack of context. By just looking at a number you lose nuance expressed by the writer and instead focus on a an arbitrary number that can not sum up the film properly.

The worst part of the message board is how piss poor the spelling and grammar is. I can understand the occasional typo, but some of these posts are littered with the demolition of language. Like Isaac told me -- which I assume he got from somewhere else -- "the internet is like the world's largest public bathroom. Through the power of anonymity people will write anything they please. Would they ever say these things in their own home or in the face of the person they're insulting? Never." That is, of course, paraphrasing.


The inner workings of the movie geek
by Jason Wilson

The movie geek, like the music aficionado and literary nut, is obsessive and cares way too much about what the layman refers to as 'entertainment.' Films are more than time killers to these people.

I would consider myself a recovering movie geek, although that would indicate that I am no longer am or wish to be one. Neither of which is true.

Films can represent life and reflect values of what is dear and important. If you're watching Meet the Spartans this isn't the case but filmmaking is an art that is so often discarded as mere flashing lights. What's worse is that these bells-and-whistles pictures are the most successful at the box office.

There has to be balance in the media for both art and escapism. Sometimes the two cross over. If every film released was a harrowing look at the ills of humanity, we'd all be refilling Zoloft prescriptions daily.

If every movie was directed by Michael Bay, we would be completely desensitized to senseless violence and we'd lose all comprehension of basic human emotions. Without our physical self changing we would become like Roy Batty and the replicants in Blade Runner. We would look human, maybe even want to be human, but we wouldn't be able to grasp what it means to be human -- although we may not even know what it means anyway, which might be the point of Blade Runner.

If you look at the grand scheme of filmmaking and analyze the whole as its own organism, it makes sense. Our bodies are littered with bacteria. The film world's version of the bowel region is made up of Uwe Boll, Dane Cook and Julia Roberts among many others -- in music, it's the entire Emo genre.

The human body is also resilient, which is way the bacteria are more of a nuisance than anything. Sadly it's a necessary nuisance.

Movie geeks don't always accept this. On movie message boards and the intenet at large people expunge cruelty toward artists(?) they don't like. Why would anyone take the time out of his day to say Tom Cruise should kill himself? What is the point? It's baffling and people who write crap like that should seriously re-examine their lives.

Dane Cook is one of my least favourite "actors." Any time he's on screen I cringe. And yea, I got a kick out of his violent fate in Mr. Brooks. But my solution is to not watch any of his movies on my own dime...simple.

The flip side -- the side most people don't seem to separate from their image of what makes a fanboy -- is that because of the film geek's obsession, a new world is opened. Without watching Goodfellas, The Godfather, Platoon and other classics at a young age, the path to Fellini, Godard and Kurosawa* might never have come.

The expression and communication of ideas is one of the most important parts of life. Film is one of the ways we communicate but film critics have been devolved into grading machines. Chances are if you read a review, it will be apparent how the critic felt about it. Instead, we want everything faster. Immediately.

Give me a rating out of 10 because I can't be bothered to read a few hundred words about it.

Rotten Tomatoes is a good resource in principle. It should be a collection of essays on film and what each individual film means as well as their quality. While links to the full reviews are there, there are only one or two-sentence blurbs summing them up. Next to it is an image indicating whether the film is considered "fresh" or "rotten."

The percentage rating is not representative of context. For the most part, horror movies are destroyed by critics. Horror movies are made with a specific audience in mind and there is art behind it.

Ask most horror fans, they'll watch pretty much any horror movie but they do not love the films blindly. Horror fans are probably the most honest and to the point about the movies they love, critics be damned.

There needs to be balance. As a movie geek I am willing to admit mindless entertainment has its place and I can enjoy it. All I'm asking is that the rest of you meet us half way so the art gets equal play.

I rate this column 5/10

*Just because it's foreign doesn't mean it's good. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

#169: Grindhouse

Grindhouse (2007)
Written and Directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino
Special trailers directed by Rodriguez, Eli Roth, Rob Zombie and Edgar Wright
Starring Kurt Russell, Rose McGowan, Josh Brolin, Freddy Rodriguez, Marley Shelton, Jeff Fahey, Michael Biehn, Rosario Dawson, Bruce Willis, Naveen Andrews.

Never before have I had so much fun in a movie theatre. Grindhouse was exactly what I was expecting and exactly what I wanted when I went to see it. Sure it didn't offer anything new but that's the point. By lampooning and honoring splatter flicks from yesteryear it reached a somewhat more respectable level.

This is why I like Quentin Tarantino as much as I do. He's almost the equivalent of that one-hit wonder that maintains a crazy fanbase because he's not willing to conform to what their one hit would dictate.

Tarantino could have made Pulp Fiction knock-off after Pulp Fiction knock-off for the rest of his career and coast all the way there. Instead -- and it hasn't exactly been taken so well by critics, not that it matters in any way -- he's chosen to pay further homage to the films he watched as a child. What's wrong with that?

What you can be sure of when you go to a Tarantino movie is that it will be so slick and watchable no matter what the subject matter. And while some will disagree about his segment in Grindhouse, I think it's a wonderful addition to his resumé.

Opening night, I heard a guy shout at the screen "boring!" or "nobody cares!" during a scene where the female protagonists are shooting the shit around a table in a diner. It meandered a bit, I'll give him that but it wasn't out of place. And the slight glimpse of Mr. Kurt Russell in the background made it all worthwhile.

Rodriguez on the other hand seems to alternate making some of the most bloody and violent action movies with kid flicks for his own children. Planet Terror delivers the goods up front and just keeps it coming. Zombies or well mutants I guess but zombies all the same.

I thank Mr. Rodriguez for giving Jeff Fahey and Michael Biehn work. Biehn was in some of the best damn action flicks in the 1980s (Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss) and has pretty much disappeared. After Grindhouse, Fahey has popped up on Lost several times, so there's that.

This movie is an experience to behold and it's best in theatres. The way the studios released it on DVD is a slap in the face to fans. Sure, they'll make more money by selling them individually but it really breaks up the flow of it eliminating any real chance of replicating what was seen theatrically.

I can even get behind the release of the two films individually for the reason that not everyone wants a three-hour movie experience with fake movie trailers in the middle. If that's wrong, however, I don't want to be right. So why not release an actual edition? A full blown special edition so that those of us who actually did pay to see it in its full form in theatres can enjoy it at home? Sin City got a big-time special edition treatment! Damn it!

Okay, I am coming off as a whiny fanboy and I apologize, it just doesn't make any sense to me why it hasn't happened. It would sell. And they could probably charge $60 a pop and still sell a bunch of copies to suckers like me who think the "full experience" is more important than eating his next meal.

The rationale, I guess is that the mainstream public couldn't wrap its mind around the fact that there were two movies. Never mind that the poster clearly says it's a double feature or that the trailer does the same. Nope, people still thought it was all over after Planet Terror ended*.

How does that happen? Even if you haven't seen a tv spot or an ad anywhere, or you just glossed over the poster, you would have noticed most everyone else in the theatre staying in their seats when the INTERMISSION screen started. Intermission is not the end...

So the movie was a box office failure and no special edition is in sight.

It was the best time I've ever had at a movie theatre. It was an experience, not just taking time out of your day to get to the next thing. It was exactly what I wanted from the beginning to the fake trailers to the end. Gore, sex and car chases. Really, who doesn't want to see a movie where a stripper loses a leg and replaces it with a machine gun? If you say that's stupid and unrealistic...you're missing the point.




*There were stories on it at the time. Since the internet search function pretty much only works when you need to find out about something that happened now or yesterday, I can't find them. I probably could, but it would take more effort than I'm willing to put forth.

#170: Dawn of the Dead

Dawn of the Dead (1978 & 2004)
Written and directed by George A. Romero (78)
2004 edition directed by Zack Snyder
Starring zombies


Purists will hate me. As you can plainly see, both Dawns are mentioned and this will piss off a lot of hardcore zombie movie fans. Thankfully for me, no one reads this except people that barely care and don't let trivial things like remakes of a movie ruin their day.

Remakes are a maligned creature and I can understand that to a degree. It's a proponent of the lack of creativity in Hollywood. Why think of a new and original idea when you can remake one from the past and cash in on its name?

Some people think this is a new phenomenon. A few years ago The Ring came out with Naomi Watts. It was a North American rendition of a popular Japanese horror flick called Ringu. Since then the USA has imported several from the terrible The Eye to improving over the original with Scorsese's The Departed (was Infernal Affairs).

This is not new.

Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai was released in 1954 and then remade in the States as The Magnificent Seven in 1960. The Magnificent Seven is one of the most recognizable titles in the western genre. Sergio Leone's Fistful of Dollars was also a remake of a Kurosawa film called Yojimbo. Cue the 1990's and Bruce Willis' Last Man Standing and you have a remake of a remake.

Kurosawa though adapted a couple of Shakespeare's plays into loose translations into a samurai motif. Throne of Blood (Macbeth) and Ran (King Lear) were essentially remakes but of plays instead of other movies. Is there any difference between an adaptation and a remake?

If no then the remake trend is certainly nothing new and you could argue Hollywood and cinema in general has never been very original and I wouldn't exactly dispute this.

Consider the following films: There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men, Zodiac, All the President's Men, L.A. Confidential, Goodfellas, The Godfather, and The Shawshank Redemption.

Each of those movies appeared in the printed medium first. And each of those movies are more or less celebrated. Even this year's best picture darling Slumdog Millionaire is based on a novel. Oh and captain fanboy, your beloved Star Wars? Yeah, Lucas was heavily influenced by none other than Akira Kurosawa. Lucas borrowed heavily from Hidden Fortress so there you have it.

The Dawn of the Dead's are so vastly different, and really the only similarity is they feature groups of people stuck in a mall fending off zombies. They both have the anti-consumerism message. Some have argued that it's more subdued and subtle in the original and I disagree. It's pretty obvious through the entire movie. The biggest difference is in the action.

The 70s version focuses more on character interaction while the remake is all about creating anxiety and tension with as many quick scares as possible. The zombies run and I have no problem with that.

Both films are fantastic in their own way. And even if you hate the remake as a whole I can't see how you can dislike the opening sequence and overall set up unless you just hate horror movies in general.

A lot of remakes are trash but so are the originals. Anyone who complains about the new Friday the 13th sullying the originals is on some crazy drugs. The originals hold no real integrity, for proof just watch part 8 again. Jason takes Manhattan is the worst horror movie I've ever watched and I saw Hellraiser: Bloodline.

It's infuriating to read message boards where movie fans bitch and complain about the lack of originality in the film industry. It's not a new thing and it will always be like this. Like any movie, watch it before you judge it and if it still doesn't cut the mustard well move on to the next movie. A remake isn't inherently a bad thing and remember a new idea committed to celluloid is not inherently a good one either.