James Franco has achieved full-blown meme status at this point. I can’t seem to stop writing or reading about him, and it seems like the rest of the world can’t either.
Thought Catalog – another one of those hot new Internet culture zines – tried to get an interview with Franco. Well, they say they tried. That might just be a clever excuse for an even cleverer article: an exclusive, fake interview with the star.
TC pulls few punches in its spar with the fake Franco, prodding at not only some of his writing but his penchant for manufacturing postmodern art out of his pretty sweet life:
[Thought Catalog]: Oh. You’re really hot, James Franco.
[fake James Franco]: Thanks.
TC: Can we, like, have sex?
JF: Maybe. You’re a dude, right?
TC: Yeah.
JF: Only if we can videotape it and then submit it to The Whitney.
TC: Cool.
JF: (Silence)
Somehow, I think a small pop culture site running a fake interview with him fits perfectly into Franco’s artistic mission.
You may also want to check out Thought Catalog’s thoughts on Franco’s Oscar potential. Soap star and Oscar nominee in the same year? Crazy talk.
I urge you, if you haven’t been keeping up with it, to browse through our own Alex Boivin’s comprehensive coverage of the horror genre. His Nights on Bald Mountain feature is in its second year and will be wrapping up this afternoon.
Not only is it fun to journey with him through a host of bad/good/middling movies, it’s also a fun trip through Boivin’s bizarre childhood. How did he never see Scream growing up? His relationship with his father is also explored: in discussing the feature with his son, the elder Boivin said simply, “You need to watch The Vanishing.” Like a good son, Alex listened.
Where should you start? At the beginning, of course. Boivin kicked off this year’s hike with A Nightmare on Elm Street. His plot synopsis:
“The story is simple enough, Freddy Krueger is an undead serial killer who invades teenagers' dreams and kills them in surreal, gory ways. I mean, it's a slasher: the story is that someone is killing teenagers, all these things need is a gimmick, right?”
Each day in October, intrepid blogger Alex Boivin will watch a horror movie. These movies are all new to him and are part of his month-long effort to fill in his gaps in the horror canon. If he doesn't die from fright, you just might get to read about about his exploits in cinema during the Halloween season.
When I was in high school a friend, who shall remain nameless due to his current posting as an officer in the United States Army, entertained me with stories of Cannibal Holocaust, the "goriest, most disgusting and offensive movie ever made!" Intrigued at the notion of making such a claim to fame as having endured a cinematic ordeal of this type, we sought it out. Indeed, one day I found it a copy at a used record store. But when I brought my friend back to purchase the DVD, it was gone, vanished, forever mocking us. Now, six years later, I return to conquer the most extreme horror exploitation film ever made.
The plot of Cannibal Holocaust matters more than you think. It's premise was somewhat stolen/adapted by The Blair Witch Project many years later: a group of young filmmakers goes missing in the Amazon while making a documentary about the cannibal tribes that have lived undisturbed in the rainforest by civilized man since time immemorial. An anthropology professor (played with relative virtuosity by honest-to-god porn star Robert Kerman) is sent to find them, and after negotiating with one of the tribes is able to secure several canisters of film left behind by the missing expedition. What follows is a grisly orgy of murder, cannibalism, rape, and mutilation- all filmed with disquieting realism.
After years of buildup, Cannibal Holocaust didn't terrify me so much as it disturbed me. The killings and torture etc. featured in the film are brutal and shocking beyond most things the average filmgoer (and not-quite-average filmgoer such as myself) is used to, even in violent films. A lot of the stuff I can't even go into in a family-oriented blog like this one.
The goes is so excessive and realistic that director Ruggero Deodato was actually brought up on murder charges until he could prove that his actors were still alive. On top of that, there are a series of terrible actual animal killings in the movie that I genuinely found myself offended by. This all goes without saying that the depiction of the South American natives in this film is just out-and-out racist, but that's honestly the least of this film's crimes for some reason.
There's some attempts at social commentary through the frame narrative where a TV network is trying to show the footage for ratings, knowing that sensationalism equals cash. But the film seeks to condemn the very thing it indulges in, almost as if it's offended that you would even watch it. Cannibal Holocaust seemingly exists in a netherworld between grindhouse exploitation and serious art, or at least it thinks it does.
Having conquered the "Green Inferno" of Cannibal Holocaust, I honestly feel live a little worse of a person, but I suppose that's the price I pay for doing this feature.
But was it scary? Even for a seasoned gorehound such as myself, this was a bit much. I wasn't so much scared as depressed, even angered. This usually doesn't happen, people.
Final Verdict:0 Congos. Alright, I watched you, Cannibal Holocaust; I have no more need of you now.
Not everyone who reads this site plays games. And I’m willing to accept that not everyone who reads this site even likes them. But I’m fairly certain that most of our readers like free stuff. Legit, free stuff.
So we’re running a contest! We came into possession of some codes for the indie adventure game Puzzle Bots, from Wadjet Eye Games and plan on giving them away.
Puzzle Bots, recently featured at the Penny Arcade Expo as part of the PAX 10 Indie Showcase, has garnered much attention for its fun puzzles and old-school cartoon art style. Five different robots must escape through seventeen different levels. It plays like a point-and-click adventure meshed with Blizzard’s old Lost Vikings series. Each robot interacts with the environment in a unique way – be it pushing, pulling, or picking things up – and you’ll need to combine their abilities in order to break out of the lab. My favorite is Ultrabot because he just pushes stuff and, oh I don’t know, his name is Ultrabot.
You can enter to win a digital copy of Puzzle Bots by tweeting @ us via Twitter or by writing on our Facebook wall. (Sorry, MySpace users. You’ll need to get with the times if you want to win this sweet prize.) Make it something about the game or robots. Humor is appreciated though not required.
The window for submission ends at 11:59 PM EST on Friday November 5, 2010 Sunday November 7, 2010. After that we’ll put all of the submitted names in a hat (or some sort of digital equivalent) and pick five winners. That’s right, five.
What are you waiting for? Enter our first ever contest!
Each day in October, intrepid blogger Alex Boivin will watch a horror movie. These movies are all new to him and are part of his month-long effort to fill in his gaps in the horror canon. If he doesn't die from fright, you just might get to read about about his exploits in cinema during the Halloween season.
It's strange for us to think about it now, but there was a time not too long ago when all vampires were creepy European noblemen in spooky castles. Of course, many still are, but the vampire subgenre has gone though such transformations within the span of most of our lifetimes that they might be unrecognizable to old timers. At the forefront of this "revisionist vampire" movement was Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow's 1987 film Near Dark.
Transplanting vampirism from the dark forests of Transylvania to the Sooner State, Near Dark's bloodsuckers are a clan of outlaws on the run. Composed mostly of actors from Aliens (Bishop, Vasquez, Hudson) they roam across the American West bloodlettin' and gunfightin' to their cold dead hearts' content. However, things get complicated the groups's youngest member May turns small town teenager Caleb into a member of the undead and he has second thoughts on the whole "drinking the blood of the living" thing.
Along with films like Lost Boys, Near Dark serves as an example of filmmakers trying to make vampires into something vibrant and scary instead of corny again. Bigelow's vampires are more like rough-and-tumble cowboy hicks rather than goofy guys in capes and "Dracula medals". In fact, the vampires of Near Dark are never referred to as such, the "v-word" is never mentioned, and there are no fangs in sight. Couple this with the skills of a talented director and a great cast and you have a very satisfying cult hit. Bill Pullman in particular gives a great performance as Severen, the sadistic wild card of the bunch.
But was it scary? No, I don't remember being scared even once; just proving that vampires are more than fodder for matinee scares.
I was a big fan of the comics page as a kid. However, Garfield becomes less and less funny as I grow older, and the double blow of losing both The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes around the same time meant that newspaper comics have been sapped of much of their former strength. Many of the old stalwarts still remain - I find Hägar the Horrible pretty funny, no matter what anybody says - but Blondie, Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois have lost whatever wit they might have once had. Others, like Shoe, Peanuts and B.C., continue on despite the death of their creator, a perverse legacy that takes three strips that once made me laugh and now either publishes reruns or write new jokes to old pictures.
As of this week, the comic Doonesbury is forty years old. This is not so surpring in and of itself - the comics are a medium in which initial publication seems to guarantee that the strip will never die. But what is surprising is that the strip still manages to be fresh, funny, and relevant four decades into its run. It's still written and drawn by the original creator, and it still manages to paint characters who haven't devolved into stereotypical comic foils. It's one of the few bright spots on an otherwise dull and outdated comics page.
Let's get something straight before
I start: I am not a hipster. I buy my clothes at Target and Old Navy, I
hate the taste of PBR, when I'm not wearing my contact lenses I wear glasses
that are an appropriate size for my face, and I've never smoked an American
Spirit cigarette. I am not a hipster.
And so when I came across Sufjan
Steven's new album The Age of Adz (Asthmatic Kitty) on the new music
shelf at the college radio station with which I am affiliated, I groaned. Not because I've listened to any of
Stevens' previous albums and disliked them, not because the title needs a
pronunciation key (it's pronounced "odds," by the way), but because
every time someone like Sufjan Stevens releases a new album it’s a point
for the hipsters. And I am not a hipster.
As I’ve been browsing around the major news networks’ health sections for the last several days, digging around for inspiration for this week’s segment, I have quickly reminded myself why I stopped reading these sections. They’re a constant attack on the paranoia of innocent hypochondriacs and those of us simply interested in our personal health. Journalists are driven to report newsworthy information daily, and will grasp at every whisper of “data” regarding a health threat or benefit, often exaggerating the facts just to generate interest. But can we really blame them, when the phrase “scientific study” is tossed around as if it were a staple of our vocabulary, without proof or merit, without specification or definition? Beyond that, it has become nearly impossible to trust the legitimacy of modern science itself, as we are constantly lacking the means to obtain proof that the story we’re being fed is legitimate. Was the study conducted by an unbiased party? Is it conclusive? Was the data manipulated maliciously or even accidentally? Are the parameters of the study designed to maximize the applicability of the results? This week, rather than explaining a scientific phenomenon in everyday technology, I will pontificate about the scientific method in everyday news, often with some cynicism, as I never claimed this was a wholly unbiased column. This, my friends, is what happens when you don’t email me with your topic questions and ideas like you’re supposed to be doing (science@chargeshot.com).
Each day in October, intrepid blogger Alex Boivin will watch a horror movie. These movies are all new to him and are part of his month-long effort to fill in his gaps in the horror canon. If he doesn't die from fright, you just might get to read about about his exploits in cinema during the Halloween season.
In my long past youth, my local sci-fi/fantasy bookstore sold a book about Hammer Films, the British studio that made a bevy of horror movies in the 50's, 60's, and 70's. Full of posters and publicity stills of distinguished thespians in monster makeup and delicate English roses with heaving cleavage, Hammer has since held a near-legendary place in my culture psyche. When Sir Christopher Lee hurled himself into my life with the one-two punch of Saruman and Count Dooku during my freshman year of high school, Hammer became an even higher priority. But I never saw a Hammer film until last year when I rented the classic Hound of the Baskervilles (with Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes and Lee as Sir Henry Baskerville) in preparation for Guy Ritchie's own Holmes picture. Now, I rectify a mistake a decade in the making with (Horror of) Dracula.
Do we really need a synopsis? This is a Dracula movie. It's all a matter of how different from other Dracula movies it is. This one's pretty divergent from Bram Stoker's plot, moving the setting to Germany for some reason (but retaining British names and accents) and making Jonathan Harker a vampire hunting librarian. The point is Saruman is Dracula and Grand Moff Tarkin is Van Helsing. 'Nuff said.
This Hammer horror turned out pretty much how I thought it would: campy and wonderful. Is it a particularly well made film? Not really. Is it well-acted? If you like the taste of ham, sure. Is it necessary? Absolutely, and I say that with full knowledge of the number of Dracula movies out there. This must have been amazing as a matinee back in 1958, a great cheap way to blow an hour and a half. It's pretty obvious and not at all challenging, but oh the Technicolor!
But was it scary? Unless Christopher Lee with fluorescent red liquid dripping out of his mouth is the stuff of your nightmares, this shouldn't scare modern viewers in the least.
When Gene reviewed developer 5th Cell’s Scribblenauts last year, he was perhaps more charitable than I would have been.
The promise of the first game was immense, and it received lots of coverage after E3 2009 for just that reason – it was a game that allowed you to solve its puzzles by literally any means necessary. You input words into it, and it made those words into objects. Need to lure a bear away from a scared camper? Make some honey, or maybe some meat, or just hop in a helicopter and airlift the bear the hell out of there.
In practice, that last solution is where the enterprise sort of fell apart – glue, rope, and some manner of flying device could be used to solve or bypass a disproportionate number of the game’s challenges. The action stages, which required movement of your character as well as the creation of creative and useful objects, were hampered by an imprecise stylus-based control system that made movement difficult and platforming nearly impossible. My copy froze with unfortunate frequency during play. The game was fun, especially in the straight puzzle stages, but it was a little too rough around the edges to really fulfill the full extent of its promise.
Super Scribblenauts targets the first game’s problems with a sniper’s accuracy, adding a slightly less-clunky optional D-pad control scheme, some smarter puzzles, and adjectives. The result is a game that realizes the Scribblenauts potential, though the impact is lessened slightly by the passage of time and the previous game’s existence.
I don't really want to call a play before it happens, but something tells me that this weekend is going to be, in the simplest of terms, pretty crazy. The tandem rallies to restore sanity and keep fear alive (hosted by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert) promise to be one of the more massive gatherings of politically active young people in a long time. In some ways more significant than the grass roots upheaval by which Obama catapulted his way into the White House, the rallies on Saturday may be the beginning of a new youth movement: A movement that values action and pragmatics over idealism and political polarity (pardon the editorializing).
Plus, Sunday is Halloween….historically, that particular event is accompanied by by some fairly raucous partying. Apparently when everybody puts on costumes, eats candy all night and throws down a few too many, they seem to celebrate a bit excessively.
As we recover from the hangover of our patriotic and costumed excesses, as well as being marred once again by our apparent collective complacency, we are in danger of missing a vital opportunity to actually embrace our patriotism - to go out on Tuesday and vote.
Case in point, eating dinner a few nights ago with some friends, during a lull in the conversation, I asked one of my buddies where his voting location was. He dismissed the question, admitting that he hadn't really looked into it. As I urged him to dramatically change his attitude, I realized politically complacent and removed young voters might not consider this election a priority.
In fact, as young voters (sorry to be over inclusive), this election is particularly important. We indeed have the most at stake and must make our voices heard. In addition to the House and Senate races, there are dozens of important governorships in play, not to mention initiatives and propositions in several states (read more here).
So, go out and vote. Also, get your friends and family to vote too. Through all of the craziness of the political season (which feels like it never ends these days), we have to remember that the election day ballot box is the only poll that ever matters.
Continue...
Each day in October, intrepid blogger Alex Boivin will watch a horror movie. These movies are all new to him and are part of his month-long effort to fill in his gaps in the horror canon. If he doesn't die from fright, you just might get to read about about his exploits in cinema during the Halloween season.
I've seen four Guillermo del Toro movies in my time: Blade II, the Hellboy Duology, and Pan's Labyrinth. But I've never seen any of his early Spanish-language horror stuff, from the old days when he was an up-and-coming Mexican horrorsmith. I've only seen the stuff that's happened since he became a name and the studios gave him a budget. Last year I tackled The Orphanage, which he produced and so I figured now would be a very good time to see his early work, The Devil's Backbone.
Devil's Backbone is set during the Spanish Civil War and opens with Carlos, the son of a fallen Republican officer being brought to a remote orphanage that serves as a home for the children of dead freedom fighters. Upon arriving, Carlos notices the strange fear the other boys live in of "He Who Sighs", the local ghost. Soon, amidst the backdrop of an encroaching fascist victory in the outside conflict, the eerie hauntings and staff intrigue come to a head, and Carlos discovers that the ghost is almost as recent a resident as he is.
Devil's Backbone isn't as straightforward a horror movie as many of the others I've watched, a "gothic drama" might be a better description. There are very few "Boo!" moments considering this a ghost story. Santi, the restless spirit in question, pops up more as an eerie presence than as a scare tactic. The movie serves more as a tale of lost innocence amid historical drama with supernatural elements than as a study in terror. Though on the other hand, how narrow a definition do we ascribe to "horror" movies anyway?
But was it scary? As stated before, this is about as scary as any Spanish Civil War drama you've seen (it serves as a great companion piece to Pan's Labyrinth) and unless children in peril terrify you, you'll probably come out alright.
I haven’t played the new Call of Duty game, Black Ops, but I think I get the gist: the preview trailer features not one, but two instances of soldiers crashing through windows on rappelling lines. An unshaven man wearing a red bandana draws his finger across his throat. Bullets are pumped into ski-masked soldiers, who then topple backwards in glorious slow-motion.
Black Ops is the first game in ages to plant its boots in Vietnam. But the war-torn city of Hue, rendered in such spectacularly hellish detail, seems to be little more than a tableau for a by-the-numbers shooter. Perhaps I’m passing judgment prematurely, but how many windows must a commando crash through before I’m allowed to roll my eyes?
Maybe Black Ops will shove my foot so far down my throat I’ll only be able to gurgle “hallelujah.” Until then, I have a modest nomination for someone who can make Call of Duty relevant again: Graham Greene. The man who wrote The Quiet American, one of the smartest novels ever written about modern warfare.
The end of this post will be stamped with an indication that it was posted with the Blogger Droid app v3.6.4.5.3+6 or something. That's because I composed and posted it exclusively using my Droid Incredible from Verizon.
I say "posted"even though I am still in the process of composing it. I hope I will see this experiment thru to the end without caving and opting for the infinitely easier and more convenient option of just sitting down at my.computer and typing the post out like I do every week. But as long as I have this intense and powerful smartphone at my disposal, I might ad well see if I can use it to its full potential. Regardless of how much harder it may be to perform normal everyday tasks using it.
You see, as magical wagical as these smartphones appear to be, my theory is that, by making these tasks that one would normally do on a full power computer readily available, phones decrease the quality of both the tasks and the time spent performing the tasks. But rather than simply expounding on this theory, I figured I'd try to prove it by putting it into practice.
I hate going to shows with women. Or men. Or pets, but I guess that's obvious. Basically, I hate going to shows with a group of people larger than two. I'd go to shows alone, but I'd look like a total lame-o.
Friday night's sold-out LCD Soundsystem show at the Eagle's Ballroom suffered from an excess of women in my party. Nice girls, but also girls who needed to pee, smoke, and buy seven dollar Miller Lites a lot. Needless to say, after losing "the girls" for the fourth or fifth time, myself and my sole male companion were a tad miffed. I'd also gone along with the concept of playing a couple more games of Music Catchphrase instead of seeing openers Hot Chip and was slightly pissed at myself for my acquiescence.
But, like a concert version of Baldur's Gate, we needed only to gather our party before venturing forth. The women returned, and the lights went down.
Each day in October, intrepid blogger Alex Boivin will watch a horror movie. These movies are all new to him and are part of his month-long effort to fill in his gaps in the horror canon. If he doesn't die from fright, you just might get to read about about his exploits in cinema during the Halloween season.
Around this time last year, a funny thing happened: ads started popping up for a remake of George A. Romero's little-discussed 1973 film The Crazies. I myself really didn't pay them any mind: "Oh great, another shitty remake of a horror movie. Oh, what's that? They have the Gary Jules version of "Mad World"? What, did David Fincher direct these ads? Who cares?" Well, apparently a lot of people ended up caring. 2010's own Crazies blazed a trail through the desolate winter box office and critics' reviews like a bat out of Hell. I had at one point planned on watching both the remake and the original in an effort to compare and contrast the two, but then I realized I didn't care and just wanted to see this sleeper.
Timothy Olyphant stars as a small town sheriff who witnesses the strange phenomenon of seemingly normal townsfolk turning from mild-mannered Middle Americans into dead-eyed psycho killers. It turns out that the government accidentally spilled an experimental biological weapon into the town's water supply and if the titular maniacs don't get Olyphant, the military quarantine crews will.
I'm reluctant to label Crazies one of the better horror films of the past decade but I might have to label Crazies one of the better horror films of the past decade. It isn't that original (duh): it's still the tried-and-tried Survivors Escape the Infected and The Government Is Also Evil movie but it hits all the right notes and delivers some good scares and setpieces. Seth Bullock vs. bonesaw is readily apparent as a standout, as is an attack in carwash. Sure it's leftovers, but sometimes reheated junk food tastes pretty good.
But was it scary? As scary as any of the recent zombie-esque genre films, but I'm a city boy from Minnesota so the sight of murderous Iowans is especially chilling for me.
There are two ways to go when you name a song you’ve written. (Well, three if you simply use a numeric classification system like classical composers.) You can take one of the most recognizable or otherwise emblematic lyrics and slap it on top (“You’ve Got a Friend In Me,” “Take On Me”) or you can pull a Sufjan and name it a goddamn sentence.
While this week’s artist, Somniaferum, doesn’t go so far as our dear Mr. Stevens, he does have a knack for odd song titles. Upon reading the names, I had no idea what to make of “Come on, Arduous Hummingbird!” or “Days of Fulfilled Hope.” How bizarre it was to find that they actually matched the moods of the songs in question. I suppose they’re not so esoteric after all.
Make the jump, read about this week’s selections, ride any that sound great, then head on over to Somniaferum’s website if you care to. The EP these came from is up and free for download.
Each day in October, intrepid blogger Alex Boivin will watch a horror movie. These movies are all new to him and are part of his month-long effort to fill in his gaps in the horror canon. If he doesn't die from fright, you just might get to read about about his exploits in cinema during the Halloween season.
On the recommendations of Martin Scorsese and funnyman Patton Oswalt I found my way to the 1957 British horror classic Night of the Demon. Why shouldn't two of my favorite representatives of their respective fields as well as two fellow cinephiliacs point me in such a direction?
Night of the Demon is the story of American psychologist John Holden (Dana Andrews, he who "said prunes gave him the runes" in Rocky Horror's "Science Fiction Double Feature") who upon arriving in London for a conference discovers that his colleague Professor Harrington has died under mysterious circumstances. Along with his colleague's niece, he begins an investigation that leads him to the Crowley-esque leader of a Satanic cult. The warlock Karswell claims he put a curse on Harrington as revenge for the professor attempting to discredit his power, resulting in his death at the hands of an ancient demon. Holden believes it all to be balderdash until Karswell curses him as well. Now eerie occurrences seems to follow Holden wherever he goes and soon enough even he the skeptic fears he may fall prey to Karswell's demon.
As Marty said, the scariest part of Night of the Demon is what you don't see. According to legend, there was a disagreeement between the writer and director and the producer about whether to show the demon at all. The titular malevolent spirit does show up at the beginning and end of the picture but the film would lose nothing with its absence. What would be left (and is very much still there anyway) is a great battle between rationality and faith. Karswell claims supernatural powers but may very well be a charlatan. And are the seemingly diabolical events surrounded Holden the machinations of infernal forces or merely cleverly plotted tricks and coincidence? The answers are left up to the viewer to decide but what isn't questionable is the features spookiness.
But was it scary? The eponymous demon actually scared me a bit in its brief appearances; odd for such an old bit of creature effects to do, but this movie is plenty scary with or without it.
Chris is trying to compensate for his lack of musical knowledge by immersing himself in one new artist each week. At the end of the week, he will write up a brief summary of his opinions. You can read about the origin and parameters of this project here.
I'm not sure why I have such an affection for early 1980s synthpop. A lot of it sounds really hokey, and in this day and age it seems more like a relic of the past than anything else. It's the sort of thing that's played in films to remind the viewer that the movie is taking place in 1981. It's a historical footnote, not a living musical tradition.
Synthesizers and digital music have become omnipresent in musical culture today, but in a lot more subtle ways than what the Cars and other bands of the time were doing. To listen to the Cars' music is to go back in time and hear an old-fashioned view of the future, complete with whirring electronics and pristine synthesized sounds and rampant vocoders (okay, maybe that last one still came true).
A lot of it sounds corny to our modern ears, and a lot of it sounds too sterile and calculated, as if a machine were actually writing the music along with performing it. It's not hard to see why a lot of this synth music was relegating to the lost-and-found bin of musical history, along with the keytar.
But there's something undeniably fun about this sort of music. The hooks are catchy, the songs are full of energy, and the music manages to be a perfect cross-section of teenage pop and nerdy electronica. I liked the Cars in particular because they don't even try to pretend like their songs are meaningful statements, unlike, say, Tears For Fears. The Cars are pure fun, unencumbered by any sort of pretensions. Well...most of the time.
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Fans of Andrew, beware: he’s not on this podcast. He’s away at a conference, but we still needed to deliver a podcast. Thankfully, Jordan tagged in! Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Rob, the stand-in, and I talk about Kanye’s new grill, the bizarre intersection between the WWE and Republican voting practices, hackers, Randy Quaid (I know, I know…), and more!
I’m also testing out a new embedded player for those of you who simply can’t wait for an iTunes download. Let us know what you think in the comments, and we’ll see you next week!
Each day in October, intrepid blogger Alex Boivin will watch a horror movie. These movies are all new to him and are part of his month-long effort to fill in his gaps in the horror canon. If he doesn't die from fright, you just might get to read about about his exploits in cinema during the Halloween season.
Ray Bradbury's pretty swell, I like him a lot. So when I discovered that there's a film adaptation of his dark-ish novel Something Wicked This Way Comes, I figured I should check it out. I was also intrigued by the concept of a kids' horror movie. Longtime readers will remember when I watched Poltergeist and found it a bizarre combination of Spielbergian family film and gory Texas Chainsaw Massacre splatter. So is there a way to make a horror movie for kids without compromising the scary necessities of the genre?
Taking Bradbury's own small town Illinois upbringing as an inspiration, Something Wicked tells the story of two young friends, Will and Jim, who are more than excited when the carnival comes to town. However, the carnival's proprietor Mr. Dark (Jonathan Pryce!) who claims to make dreams come true actually has much more nefarious purposes for coming to town, such as binding the townsfolk to serve him forever.
This is probably a movie I would have been really into as a kid: I'm a sucker for stories about boys going on adventures and escaping peril. But supposed offscreen conflicts about the film's tone and direction seem to have sabotaged the movie. Even by little kid standards, besides a swarm of spiders there's nothing too threatening here. Bradbury apparently wanted a much darker film but Disney wanted something more family friendly and therefore more bankable, although they claimed to be trying to get away from their reputation as an animation house for children. In the end we have a enjoyable film on our hands, but not something all that special.
But was it scary? I'm not sure what scares children, but I feel as though one would have to be pretty sheltered for this to legitimately freak them out. Though there's plenty of whimsy and derring-do to make it a good time.
It’s the beginning of Oscar season, and that means another film by venerable actor/director Clint Eastwood is out in theaters. Hereafter is a film about death and its effect on life. Three parallel stories all explore this clichéd way-too-universal-to-ever-be-clichéd theme.
The reviews haven’t been terribly kind, with many attacking its pace and sentimentality. Roger Ebert, however, believes Hereafter to be “a deeper and more subtle film than many will realize.”
In a recent entry in his Sun-Times blog, Ebert uses Hereafter as a launching pad to discuss psychic mediums and fortune tellers and how our eternal fascination with the great beyond perpetuates the need for these roles in society.
Ebert refuses to deal directly with religion, explaining early that “I expect to experience no more after death than I experienced before birth.” He doesn’t wish to invest himself in afterlife theories he can’t prove – why risk that disappointment? Instead, he relishes the opportunity to focus on the time he knows he’ll be spending on Earth. This pleasant agnosticism allows Ebert to enjoy Hereafter for what it is, which is not a movie about the afterlife, but “the common human need for there to be an afterlife.”
If you were unenthused by the ponderous trailers and left cool by the negative reviews, give Ebert’s blog a read. It certainly piqued my interest in a film I expected to simply vanish into thin air. By the way, he gave it four stars.
Well, that's one more season of Jersey Shore for the books, ladies and gentlemen. You can tell because all through episode 213, everyone kept going on about how this was their "last [insert activity] of Miami." Their last (and first) airboat tour of the Everglades. Their last time going to the club and hooking up with mad bitches. Their last romantic dinners with significant others. Their last knock-down, drag-out fight over who called who fake or who ratted who out or who said what to whom.
But as one door closes, another one opens, and in January 2011, we'll see our favorite Guidos and Guidettes once again taking the stage back at Seaside Heights, NJ. I mentioned this last time, but it seems like some of the hype has definitely died down. There's no real anticipation for new episodes because there's no mystery anymore. Anyone who has a facebook or a twitter or a google knows that Season 2 ends without incident and the Season 3 will follow fast on its heels. The only reason to tune in episode to episode is to see how the minutiae plays out and maybe to catch some memorable quotes here and there.
And maybe it's just me (I've remained blissfully unaware of the ratings this season), but I'm getting just a little tired of the schtick we see on the show week to week. It's almost like they're going through the motions - I know GTL is in itself a routine, but they used to execute it with just a little more flair.
Each day in October, intrepid blogger Alex Boivin will watch a horror movie. These movies are all new to him and are part of his month-long effort to fill in his gaps in the horror canon. If he doesn't die from fright, you just might get to read about about his exploits in cinema during the Halloween season.
I return to the Great White North today for another horror movie: the Canadian teenage girl werewolf black comedy ("CaTeeGirWereWoBlaCom") Ginger Snaps.
Ginger and Brigitte are a weird pair of sisters: they're obsessed with death and all sorts of goth stuff. They're also, shall we say, "late bloomers" puberty-wise. When the elder Ginger finally gets her first period, she is also attacked by a lycanthrope (I hear their periods attract bears. They can smell the menstruation!) and soon her monthly cycle is taking a savage twist as she grows fur where there was no fur before and develops a taste for blood. Now it's up to Brigitte to find a cure or die trying.
I think the best way to describe Ginger Snaps is something along the lines of Heathers with werewolves and socialized medicine. The movie plays like a much-better-than-average teen comedy but with lots of murder and turning into a wolf at the full moon, which is definitely a strength. The fact that it works as well as a werewolf movie as it does as a keen glimpse into growing up and puberty and high school speaks volumes about the overall quality of the film. Ginger's coincidental blossomings into both beautiful young woman and feral monster works great. It's so effective that it makes me quite glad I was born a male, being a teenage girl looks like it sucks...or bites. Whatever.
But was it scary? Not especially, but this was probably one of the better ones I've seen this month because the minds behind it set out to actually, you know, tell a story instead of just making a vehicle to scare teenagers.
Here at ChargeShot!!!, we refer to ourselves, quasi-officially, as a "New Millennium Culture Blog." Looking past the fact that this awkwardly endearing moniker doesn't really make much sense to begin with, what to make of that final word - "blog"? Referring to ourselves as a "blog" puts us in a large pool of Internet writers, from well-known collective enterprises like Gawkerto professional individual analysts like the Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan to the slums of the Internet, the moody teenagers formerly confined to Livejournal and Xanga, who write about their feelings and how their parents don't understand them.
On Slate this week, Farhad Manjoo investigated whether or not the term "blog" means anything. His conclusion after corresponding with several prominent Internet writers is that there isn't really a hard and fast definition as to what makes a "blog." Yet the word is often thrown around as a pejorative (it doesn't help that the very enunciation - "blog" - sounds downright disgusting). Whenever I find myself admitting to people that I write for a blog, I always have to clarify this statement by explaining that no, it is not an online diary, I live neither in the basement nor with my parents, and I have friends who I have met outside of the Internet. Even for me, writing for this blog, the word "blogger" brings to mind an overweight, underdressed social pariah who talks like the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons.
Each day in October, intrepid blogger Alex Boivin will watch a horror movie. These movies are all new to him and are part of his month-long effort to fill in his gaps in the horror canon. If he doesn't die from fright, you just might get to read about about his exploits in cinema during the Halloween season.
When I was growing up, one of my favorite books (which of course only came out of its box during the Halloween Season) was Jan Pienkowski's Haunted Housepop-up book. Since those early days, I've always had a thing for old, haunted houses. Thusly, I approached The Amityville Horror with great enthusiasm.
Supposedly based on True Events, Amityville is the tale of George Lutz (James "P.W. Herman" Brolin) and his new wife Kathleen (Margot Kidder!). Along with Kathleen's three children, the new family moves into an old Dutch Colonial in Amityville on the south shore of Long Island (the film serves as good metaphor of the stress and anxiety of starting a new life). Of course, the house comes with a history: about a year earlier in the house, a young man had murdered his parents and four siblings in their sleep. Soon, strange voices are heard, doors are locking without locks, the dog is going crazy, flies are swarming, and curatesd are becoming violently ill upon setting foot on the property.
As far as haunted house movies go, Amityville has all the standard tropes: bleeding walls, built on a burial ground etc. And while it was fine experience, I couldn't help but think of better iterations of the haunted house subgenre. A scene involving the children locked in a closet with Brolin busted down the door with an axe conjured up fond memories of the far superior The Shining (though in Amityville's defense, Shining wouldn't come out for another year).
Also, I'm always bothered by films that claimed to be based on True Events. The problem is that this is all based on a family's story that their house was haunted (for which they were of course compensated when they sold the book/movie rights). At the end of the movie, what happens? Everyone is really scared and runs away. No one dies, nothing changes. The moral of the story? Some people got scared once- it might have actually happened, who knows?
The point is, whoever decided to shoot the side of the house so the windows look like the eyes on someone's face in every shot was a genius.
But was it scary? The house's "GET OUT" voice was really creepy. But the film relies on cheap scares sometimes. Example: Brolin kicks back and relaxes with a cigarette by a window. All of a sudden: "MEOW!", a random black cat jumps at the window, giving him a startle. Boy, you must be legitimately scared now, right? Now whose cat was that? What's that? It's never seen or mentioned ever again?
Sometimes reviewing a game is a piece of cake": “Space Marine Shooter X rehashes all the worst elements of better games,” or “Niche Downloadable TitleY turns a tried-and-true genre on its head and offers enough unique modes to bring you back for me.” It’s a success or a failure. End of story.
Occasionally, it’s a bit tougher. Hype plays a huge role in game coverage – I’ll go out on a limb and say that hardcore gamers are subjected to more opinion-clouding hype than dedicated fans of any medium (excerpt perhaps art collectors) – such a huge role, in fact, that it becomes difficult to separate your initial impressions of/hopes for a game from the actual game you’re playing. I struggled to check my fanboy at the door when we ran our Starcraft II review, and I tried desperately to find something good to say about Divinity II: Ego Draconis despite hearing much to the contrary before I popped it in.
Items (products, games, art, etc.) under review always deserve a fair shake. People pour their hearts (or at least hours of their lives) into things, only to have armchair designers critique each and every choice they made.
But what about unfinished products? How do you review games that aren’t even in beta yet, despite having sold hundreds of thousands of copies?
When I first received this week’s topic suggestion, I did what any inquiring mind might do: I typed RFID into Google. Near the top of the list were the usual websites that you might expect – Wikipedia, HowStuffWorks.com, news articles, technology journals, and a smattering of product descriptions by recognizable manufacturing companies. But nestled in between these sensible explanations were the occasional conspiracy theories, fear-o-blogs, and the relatively benign consumer advocate groups making a case against RFID technology because of its privacy-violating implications. While I sometimes believe that most members of my generation have conceded to the loss of certain kinds of privacy in our digitally efficient future, I was surprised to see that the discussion of morality and legality was comparatively quiet. We’ve been eased into it through the thrill of social networking and the convenience of high-speed communications, banking, and information technology. And for good or ill, it appears as if RFID is coming, and there’s little we can do to fight it.
RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification, and the concept has been well understood for quite some time. You may have first encountered it in one its primitive forms – animal tagging – when you watched the Discovery Channel during Shark Week. But modern RFID technology is something that everyone who has ever owned a touch-and-go pass for a public transportation system or a key-coded access badge has experienced first-hand. Hell, if you have ever shopped at Wal-Mart then chances are you’re already an unknowing participant. The idea of being able to track the movements of a uniquely identified object is not foreign; we track shipments, we are comfortable with GPS devices, and we’ve scanned items using a barcode at the grocery store. Rather, what has everyone alarmed about RFID technology is how small, how cheap, how ubiquitous, and how unregulated it is in its current manifestation.
Each day in October, intrepid blogger Alex Boivin will watch a horror movie. These movies are all new to him and are part of his month-long effort to fill in his gaps in the horror canon. If he doesn't die from fright, you just might get to read about about his exploits in cinema during the Halloween season.
Growing up, I had a big book about the history of comics. The first few chapters chronicled the general rise of comic books, even their pre-superhero days, as well as the implementation of the dreaded Comics Code. The Comics Code was created partially because of EC Comics whose Tales From the Crypt, Vault of Horror and other horror comics were being consumed by kids on a massive scale. The problem was these comics were grotesquely violent and grim by the standards of the Eisenhower era and yet were freely marketed and sold to teen and pre-teen boys. With the Code in place, horror comics suffered a massive setback; no longer was that black-hearted, cruelly ironic spirit allowed. Clearly, George A. Romero and Stephen King, two of the twentieth century's biggest names in horror, were nostalgic for those weird, wild days.
1982's Creepshow, a collaboration between the two aforementioned artists (director and screenwriter, respectively), explicitly presents itself as one of these old-timey horror comics. It is an anthology of five stories fully in the spirit of the EC comics of the creators' youths. A frame narrative gives us young Billy whose reactionary father throws his Creepshow in the garbage, because that's what mean ol' dads do. We are then given the stories contained therein.
In "Father's Day", a murdered patriarch seeks vengeance (and cake) from beyond the grave. "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" gives us Stephen King as a hick from Maine (natch) who encounters a meteorite that causes an outbreak of alien flora across his farm, resulting in a lonely death. "Something to Tide You Over" features a cuckolded Leslie Nielsen burying Ted Danson up to his neck on the beach, causing him to drown and return from the grave as a drowned zombie. "The Crate" tells the story of college professor Hal Holbrook encountering the titular cargo box and discovering a vicious monster within, which he then uses for his own purposes. And finally, "They Creeping Up On You" stars E.G. Marhsall as an cruel germophobe who gets his comeuppance via a massive swarm of cockroaches.
Creepshow bring the fun and dark humor of the fifties horror comic books to life. The tone of almost laughably mean-spirited gallows humor is a rarity among modern tastes (save Sam Raimi's excellent Drag Me To Hell, which was also directly influenced by EC). Another film this reminded me of was Trick 'r Treat, which I watched last year and really liked: same anthology idea, same comic book feel, same tone.
As someone who grew up reading old horror comics, Creepshow was a welcome addition to my movie knowledge.
But was it scary? Not in the least, it was too much damn fun- which may have been a shortcoming now that I think about it.
I've got to admit, I really do like covering these Apple keynotes. The company's reputation for theatrics makes their every Media Event a breeze for a blogger like myself - one can deliver news, commentary, and pithy jokes all in the same breath. Look at Steve Jobs! What's with that turtleneck?! Oh man!
Apple's event yesterday morning was called "Back to the Mac" for several reasons, foremost among them the fact that Apple forgot all about Mac OS X the very instant it invented the iPhone. Mac OS X 10.5 was delayed because the company pulled developers off of the project to work on what has become iOS, and 10.6 was a disappointing stopgap release that featured under-the-hood "improvements" and not much else. With today's keynote, Apple is trying to convince longtime Mac adherents that it hasn't forgotten about what is not only its oldest platform, but also the thing responsible for a full one-third of the company's revenue stream.
Unfortunately, the whole event came off as more of a booty call than a true rekindling of Apple's relationship with its operating system. Read on to find out more about how your Mac is about to become a whole hell of a lot more like an iPad.
I want to preface this post with saying that technology and the internet (as you can probably surmise by the fact that I choose to write about such subjects in my free time) cause me great intellectual joy and satisfaction:
I come from good tech-loving stock. As a very young child, some of my earliest memories are of talking computers with my father (one of those "early adopters" Apple is always priding themselves of having - he's been buying Apple products for as long as I can remember). I can clearly recall the first time he introduced me to email, probably on his Newton. Deeply ingrained in my childhood, my own curiosity and explorations have nurtured these interests in technology, the internet and later social media, into passions. Nonetheless, in at least a few very significant ways, I hate the internet!
Fueling the Cycle of 24 Hour News
One of the worst developments in television, not to mention American culture, is the 24 hour news phenomenon. When there is a lot of high pressure news (like during a major mid-term election, several national crises, two wars, a Chilean mine disaster...et cetera, ad nauseum) having constant coverage sure is riveting and entertaining (if not a little frightening). When the flow of news slows down just a little bit, some of those producers and news directors seem to try to will a story into the hearts and minds of the public. When unforeseeable tragedies occur, the very same news directors are ready to step in and compete for high ratings, market share and increased ad sales. Every issue, no matter the actual importance, is magnified and over-analyzed, keeping viewers glued to the commentary.
To be fair, during such high volume times, as described above, even the Huffington Post can't help but keep the latest "news" about Snooki on their main feed - you don't think the people who really needed to know the skinny on Snooki wouldn't just read the entertainment section? This isn't nearly as offensive as the above described hype of news stories (some of which are tragic), but it is off putting that a massive news feed, during a period of such instability, would place something so inconsequential and decidedly un-newsworthy on their front page
For this (very occasional) feature, Jordasch is going to be reviewing (bitching about) the top five artists according to immensely useful music blog aggregator the Hype Machine. If you're not familiar with the Hype Machine, render yourself as such. As its description implies, the site aggregates hundreds of music blogs and posts a new entry whenever one of those blogs posts an MP3 or a stream.
1. Generationals - You'll forgive me for thinking that, on the basis of the bass line, "Trust" was going to be another tinny-sounding garage rock revival track. But then that ebullient guitar line cuts in at :25, bringing with it some hip-shaking tambourine, and, what the hell, I'm on board. Indie Music Filter (ugh, worst name ever) calls the track a "perfect mix between Phoenix and Bishop Allen," and I'm thankful that it's heavier on the latter than the former (Bishop Allen makes me want to set fire to the nearest Urban Outfitters*). I'd call Generationals a less French Phoenix or one slightly less obsessed with sounding like they were recorded in an airtight, soundproofed room in space. Not spectacular, but certainly not offensive.
Each day in October, intrepid blogger Alex Boivin will watch a horror movie. These movies are all new to him and are part of his month-long effort to fill in his gaps in the horror canon. If he doesn't die from fright, you just might get to read about about his exploits in cinema during the Halloween season.
Back in my teenage years, I was a big anime fan (we prefer the term otaku, thank you very much...) and before that I had a lifelong love of Godzilla movies (um, the word is daikaiju...). In fact, when I made an eleven-year-old appearance on the children's game show Zap It!, my "fun fact" was that I owned every single Godzilla movie (at the time there were twenty-two). So basically we can all agree that I have an above average level of familiarity with Japanese pop culture. Pulse is just another example of that.
A group of Tokyo residents (Tokyers?) begins experiencing strange occurrences after one of their friends commits suicide, namely that a series of ghastly images begin appearing on their computers when they connect to the internet. Apparently, the hard drive of the afterlife is full and ghosts from the spirit world have begun seeping into our own.
Pulse continues the grand J-horror tradition that I am just now beginning to acquaint myself with. I've talked before about Japan and the rest of East Asia's idiosyncratic horror tradition: the visual cues that the Eastern horror canon is based around. We all are familiar at this point with the onryō, the Japanese ghost made famous in the West by the American remake The Ring. The ghosts in Pulse had for me the same sort of Orientalist strange otherness. Appearing as jerkily moving shadowy figures, they were spooky in their own unique way.
I think the best thing for a successful horror movie is to make the viewer scared of one everyday thing. Psycho made its audience afraid to take a shower, Nightmare on Elm Street made them scared to fall asleep, and hopefully Pulse will make you think twice about staying up all night browsing Wikipedia.
But was it scary? Sure. What really was strange about this (and I imagine a great deal of J-horror films) was the lack of breaks in the tension. No comic relief characters who get killed while trying to get laid, just loneliness and death.
Robin Wilson sits down with a reporter from the Arizona Republic to promote his new album. He’s tired of people asking you if the Gin Blossoms broke up, he says – sure, it’s been 17 years since “Hey, Jealousy” burned up the Billboard, and yeah, his last significant album dropped in 1996, but it’s not like the band is dead, gone, culturally irrelevant.
No Chocolate Cake will prove that, he says. It’s the band’s best stuff since ’93. It’s going to resurrect the Gin Blossoms like “Soul Sister” resurrected Train, he hopes out loud. It’s going to make Hootie & The Blowfish open for him.
“I’m willing to do whatever it takes,” he says, “to get back to that table.”
Be that as it may, it’s not happening with No Chocolate Cake. The best he can wish for is speedy banishment to the wastelands of Adult Contemporary radio.
I'm sure you've heard what they always say about politics and religion: that they're the two most taboo subjects to bring up at a dinner/cocktail party. For some reason, when these two subjects are involved, personal beliefs combine with tradition and social forces, and for some reason it's impossible to have a rational discussion.
Fortunately, this is no place for a rational discussion - this is the Internet. And seeing as the 2010 General Elections are fast approaching (November 2 - get out there and register, everyone!) and I've been agonizing over which candidates/ballot measures to support, this seems like a fine time to open up my thought process to our loyal readership.
Keep in mind that I only received a California ballot in the mail (they only let you vote once nowadays, more's the pity), so that's what most of my discussion is about. But many of the general principles apply to all elections - plus we've got some pretty interesting ballot measures coming up in the Golden State. Furthermore, I fully encourage you to sound off about YOUR state's elections in the comments section!
Each day in October, intrepid blogger Alex Boivin will watch a horror movie. These movies are all new to him and are part of his month-long effort to fill in his gaps in the horror canon. If he doesn't die from fright, you just might get to read about about his exploits in cinema during the Halloween season.
The always-theatrical Rob Zombie made the leap from musician to horror movie auteur with 2003's House of 1000 Corpses (say what you will, sweet title) with the intention of making horror movies "like they used to" full of schlock and gore without any redeeming social value. The aforementioned film's sequel, The Devil's Rejects, continues that grand tradition.
The eponymous band (whose name conjures up a track from Morrissey's most underrated album, probably not intentional on Zombie's part, I imagine) is a family of serial killers now on the lam after the blood-soaked events of House of 1000 Corpses (or so I've been told). The three surviving members- Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig), Otis (Bill Moseley), and Baby Firefly (Sheri Moon Zombie- the director's wife, go figure), flee their bloody compound after a brother of one of their victims swears revenge and brings down the full righteous force of the law on their heads. Fleeing their bloodthirsty nemesis, the bloodthirsty trio torture and murder their way across Texas in an attempt to continue torturing and murdering their way across Texas.
Despite some very well written and often-hilarious dialogue, Zombie's film succumbs to horror's oldest threat which is to place the substance of storytelling below the substances that flow out of the human body when it's hacked apart: gore over story, one could say. An attempt to make a more "extreme" horror film ends up putting style over substance and what we're left with is essentially an extended homage to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre complete with 1970's Texas setting and serial killer families. If not for some actual good dark humor throughout, this one might be have been a near-worthless torture-fest.
But was it scary? Gory to the extreme, and always in bad taste, but rarely frightening. However, children of the 90's will be forever scarred for two Nickelodeon-related reasons: 1) E.G. Daly, the voice of Tommy Pickles among others, plays a prostitute and 2) Kenan's Dad (who, holy crap, was Peter from Dawn of the Dead!) plays her pimp, and engages in a discussion with a redneck about the merits of buggering poultry.
James Franco has achieved full-blown meme status at this point. I can’t seem to stop writing or reading about him, and it seems like the rest of the world can’t either.
