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Post by loverofbeers on Nov 24, 2012 2:54:52 GMT -5
Puppies took me off the net. Broke my modem thingamagig. My poor computer has hit the ground hard twice recently. Mama mia, those wee angels are lil hellions.
Watched the original I Spit on Your Grave. I never wanted to watch this as a kid or grown up based on the VHS cover. I just thought that it was going to be uber-violent crap with no plot, horribly grainy images, and a sad plot. Only in the last year I learned about the female empowerment theme of the film. Only recently I have learned that it is a good film. Well, it is much more than just a good film. It is a jewel of a horror film. It is art. It has no real soundtrack but the background noise or silence, and you don't notice the lack of music until you hear one opera song during a rather graphic moment (I kinda noticed the lack of music and watched some bonus material with the director who confirmed that it was treated somewhat as a silent film). The camera work is beautiful and the director had the luxury of a full year's time to edit together a masterpiece of cinema. Folks, this is the real thing. I couldn't recommend this movie enough.
I just finished watching With Great Power... The Stan Lee Story. Stan "The Man" Lee is like a beloved father figure and best friend I have never met rolled all up in one. If I was a mad scientist I would record his memories, his personality, the "magic" that is Stan Lee and clone him a new body so we as a species can be blessed for at least another sixty years. I love this documentary. It made me feel like the little kid with big eyes at the two minute thirty mark who speaking on a mike tells Mr. Lee that he is his biggest fan ever. You and me both kid. And millions, millions more. I learned morality from Stan ("With great power comes great responsibility") and my overall religious personal non-religion, believing in random chaos (Master Chaos) and order (Lord Order). In a nut shell that is what my atheist ass believes in, random order and chaos explains everything, period. For all that and the unbelievably volumnous amount of fantastic characters that Mr. Lee created and that I met by the tender and impressionable age of ten or so, Thank You Sir, may you and your family live a comic book life from here on out and not age a day but live on, timelessly and happily ever after. I recommend this great documentary to students of American cultural history, comic fans, and those interested in censorship in film, namely the legacy of The Hays Commission in cinema and the self-imposed, self-censorship of comic book publishers' "The Comics Code" and their "Seal of Approval".
Drinking a delicious Lagunitas Brown Shuggah. This Cheers! is for Stan Lee and his big-spending wife (thank you as a fan for that) and his loving daughter. You Sir, have made a difference, but you already know that. And a Cheers! to Jack "The King" Kirby and the entire Marvel Universe Silver Era legacy.
LOB-18
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Post by loverofbeers on Nov 24, 2012 3:27:30 GMT -5
Just last night I was thinking of modern age black and white horror being a great idea. It would make movies cheaper to make (look at Karloff's Frankenstein's Monster, Schreck's Nosferatu, Chaney Sr.'s villain from London After Midnight or The Phantom, his kid as The Wolfman, or the greatness that was The Creature From the Black Lagoon, oh yeah, the classic undead in George Romero's Night of the Living Dead.
And I agree with you and Neil, the pig mask is great and I love the pig mask on the juvenial delinquent who accidentally burned down Victor Crowley's cabin in the swamp (by the way, I bought Cabin in the Woods for about $6.00!!!!, thank you puppies for forcing me into a Best Buy on a freaking Black freaking Friday, but I bought $135 worth of DVDs for $60). A Cheers! (only this one time) to the nonsense of consumerism a day after my second favorite holiday, Thanksgiving.
Oh yeah, I've only watched the first Hellraiser. I want to watch Rawhead Rex which I think he did, maybe Night Breed, and maybe... maybe... Hellraiser's sequel. I just never got into him and the more I find out about the man himself, on a private and personal level, the more I think he is unhappy and troubled. But fuck it, A cheers! to Clive Barker too.
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Post by loverofbeers on Nov 24, 2012 3:43:55 GMT -5
Oh yeah, as I learned from the documentary, censorship is more than just un-American, it is bad economically on a capitalist free-market kinda way. So many lost their jobs over censoring comic books.
I look at my incredible nieces. My brother and sister-in-law have done such a great job, iot blows me away sometimes, and all with love and openness. America, don't blame comic books, or heavy metal music, or horror films, or I dunno, boy bands? Hold up a mirror. It is called shit-ass parenting skills and priorities. Know what your kid is doing, but be cool, remember what it was like to be that dreamy-eyed age, and do your job, stop blaming, the blaming got old after all these decades of trying to censor are inherent American freedoms and creativity. And I now step off the soapbox, thank you Stan for anyone that got that reference, and I STILL want to be a card-carrying member of the M.M.M.S., or the Merry Marvel Marching Society of the late sixties. Stan IS the Man. Always was and always will be and 'Nuff said, Excelsior!
Gonna pop in a DVD of something new to me. Probably almighty horror. Buenas Noches, and have a good day.
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Post by loverofbeers on Nov 25, 2012 23:03:14 GMT -5
Just watched my second full Kevin Bacon movie, and for the record, I have never watched, nor will I ever watch Footloose. Same goes for Top Gun and all but two movies Tom Cruise has been in. Back to Kevin Bacon, the only other movie I have watched with him in it was his acting debut in Friday the Thirteenth. So that said, it seems fitting to watch a movie with another acting debut, Reba McEntire's.
My best friend/enemy in junior high loved Tremors and Pumpkinhead and both looked like poop to me. So I never watched them. I was wrong at least, so far, about Tremors. It was a very fun ride and good comedic Hollywood produced horror. I liked how the creatures looked, good special effects and puppetry or robots, I dunno which. Reba did a great job as a gun toting badass wife of a gun toting survivalist. Shit I liked all the characters but the annoying teen, but that was the point of his character.
Hell, I liked everything in this movie but Kevin Bacon's face (I'm an asshole, his face and hair have bothered me for years) and the actor's not the character's inability to use a freaking hammer. It was odd. That scene should have been re-shot. He couldn't hit a nail.
Drinking a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, an American classic. Cheers!
LOB-20
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Post by loverofbeers on Nov 26, 2012 21:08:18 GMT -5
Last night I watched King of the Zombies, a 1941 horror/comedy that debuted about six months before the Pearl Harbor job by the Japanese and our declaring war on the Axis Powers. That is why the villain, an Austro-German of unknown origin, is just named as a foreign agent, not an actual Nazi even though he is shown speaking German, and hating on the Children of Africa (boy that sounds corny, but fuck it) and being the only true racist in this movie.
The plot, The Austrian/Nazi doctor practices black magic from around the world. He has set up shop somewhere in the Carribean on an island where he turns the natives into Vodun-type zombies in a plot to steal American secrets. A good little bit of pre- World War II period propaganda themes from Hollywood. I liked it and laughed a couple of times. Kinda like an Abbot and Costello episode.
I loved the Virgil character (the African-American man-servant). He was the funniest, wittiest, and quickest talker in the movie. The white actors received top billing, but this African-American actor stole the film and was obviously respected by the director and cast. This movie WAS pro-civil rights and under the radar subversive for its time. For that a cold Mexican lager Salud! and Arriba!
More on the actor and plot from the mighty Wikipedia. Looking it up now. Here it is.
"During World War II, a small plane somewhere over the Caribbean runs low on fuel and is blown off course by a storm. Guided by a faint radio signal, they crash-land on an island. The passenger, his manservant and the pilot take refuge in a mansion owned by a doctor. The quick-witted yet easily-frightened manservant (Mantan Moreland) soon becomes convinced the mansion is haunted by zombies, and confirms this with some of the doctor's hired help. Exploring, the three stumble upon a voodoo ritual being conducted in the cellar, where the doctor, who is in reality a foreign spy, is trying to acquire war intelligence from a captured US Admiral whose plane had crashed in a similar fashion on the island. But the interruption causes the zombies to turn on their master."
LOB-22
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Post by luditesupreme on Nov 27, 2012 3:13:25 GMT -5
Just las Thanksgiving. Oh yeah, I've only watched the first Hellraiser. I want to watch Rawhead Rex which I think he did, maybe Night Breed, and maybe... maybe... Hellraiser's sequel. I just never got into him and the more I find out about the man himself, on a private and personal level, the more I think he is unhappy and troubled. But fuck it, A cheers! to Clive Barker too. see lord of illusions my favorite clive barker flick
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Post by luditesupreme on Nov 27, 2012 3:17:02 GMT -5
you were most likely right not to see ispiton your grave as a kid. i sawit grade six ; still burned in mybrain
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Post by jakeawesomesnake on Nov 30, 2012 22:22:24 GMT -5
First I watched Werner Herzog's 1982 masterpiece Fitzcarraldo starring Klaus Kinski as a businessman who wants to build an opera house in the jungles of South Peru. Great movie, the acting is great especially Kinski as the tenaicous Fitz who stops at nothing despite the odds to get his opera house. Great soundtrack with the tribal drumming and great cinematograhpy of the rain forest and rapids. What's cool about this movie is that when they take the steamboat over a mountain and steer it through the crazy rapids they actually did it for real. The ending was beautiful and heartwarming Fitz just looks so damn happy. Great movie and high reccomend. Especially for the ship in rapids scene, it doesn't look real ,but is.
Second I watched Grave Encounters which is about a paranormal investigations team who decide to do an episode in an old insane asylum, where they meet the real deal. The acting in this movie is good and it starts out good building up a creepy atmoshpere and seeing if you notice little things happening in the background. The characters actually have distinct personalities and are likeable. The gore looks good ,but in the end there's too much Youtube quality CGI ghosts/monsters in your face and it ruins the good moments the film had established earlier. Ok movie that started out good ,but fades around the second half.
After that I watched What Doesn't Kill You a good movie about a pair of brothers that are low level gangsters in Boston, that was apparently based on a true story. The acting, violence, gore, and soundtrack are all good. I liked the realism in the movie and the Celtic Rock soundtrack. Has a similar feel, atmoshpere wise as The Town.
Finally I watched 2009 Norwegian psychological horror film Hidden. I thought this was a really good movie. Great gore, acting, violence, cinematograhpy, and a good soundtrack. I liked how it messed with your head about whether what was happening was real, supernatural, or imagined. The red-hooded figure looks quite ominous in the Norwegian woods. High reccomend as I don't want to give anything away. Wish this movie could've been a little longer.
JAS-24
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Post by loverofbeers on Dec 1, 2012 1:37:38 GMT -5
Just watched a very good and extremely original RomZomCom, Zombie Dearest. Very well mader for an extremely low budget independent film. Comedy from the start, and then 20 minutes before a zombie and then forty minutes for the romance. A twisted film with a twisted sense of humor. And no gore or horror until the last few minutes. I recommend.
Drinking a delicious and black like my soul He'Brew Jewbilation Sweet 16 made with 16 hop varieties and 16 types of malt. And 16% ABV. This Cheers! is to the Schmaltz Brewery and their flagship He'Brew and Coney Island Lagers, Happy sweet sixteenth!
LOB-24
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Post by jakeawesomesnake on Dec 1, 2012 2:15:13 GMT -5
I watched two great movies.
First I watched a Mexican movie Amores Perros Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu it has three different stories going on at the same time that converge later on. Acting, soundtrack, gore, violence, and the soundtrack was great. Extemely realistic and sad movie, especially the dogfighting scenes. Great movie, high reccomend. It's funny some directors have entire careers of crap ,but this guy's first movie is a masterpiece.
Second I watched William Friedkin's Bug. Great psychological horror movie. The acting, gore, violence, cineamtograhpy, and soundtrack are all great. Loved how crazy the main two were it just kept going and going and going. It's so crazy that it is kind of funny except you know they actually believe it and that there are people out there that do too. Great movie man especially Michael Shannon's performance, his eyes man his crazy eyes.
JAS-27
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Post by loverofbeers on Dec 1, 2012 2:59:04 GMT -5
Mutant Man. This is schlock. I recommend this odd nerdling director's movie. He is a fan of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre after all. Wow. LOB-26 This Jewbilation Cheers! is for the winner this month, JAS!
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Post by loverofbeers on Dec 1, 2012 3:02:01 GMT -5
What is the next month's competition, Jake and congrats! Well played.
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Post by jakeawesomesnake on Dec 1, 2012 13:34:20 GMT -5
Thanks LOB I was thinking Foreign and Christmas movies.
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Post by loverofbeers on Dec 1, 2012 18:40:52 GMT -5
Bug was a really good movie. It's a movie that you don't see the end coming, but when you finally do, the film ends.
I just read up on it on Wikipedia. Jake, the article says that after the fire, the only body is the doctor's. Does that mean the two lead characters imagined the end?
And the December competition, it ends on the 31st or the 21st?
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Post by jakeawesomesnake on Dec 1, 2012 18:51:04 GMT -5
I don't know it could be possible or the Friedkin messing with us.
I prefer to think they're just paranoid-delusional meth addicts. I've heard that Friedkin explained everything pretty well on the DVD commentary ,but I didn't see it through DVD.
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