Patrick R
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Everything posted by Patrick R
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Both Goldfinger and a Golden Girl would be pretty easy costumes. If you wanna go obscure, there's the Frank Sinatra movie Man With the Golden Arm, where he plays a heroin addicted drummer, or Humphrey Bogart's gold obsessed character from Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Or, if you want to celebrate Christmas early like a certain butt on this forum, you can go as Yukon Cornelius from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.
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Idle Thumbs 231: Computer Processing Unit
Patrick R replied to Jake's topic in Idle Thumbs Episodes & Streams
A reader definitely wrote in about CPU Bach in the past, but I don't know what episode it was. -
We really really really have to stop bumping these threads I know I just did it this was the last one.
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10/7 The Invisible Man (1933) Universal's reign over the world of horror through the 30's and 40's lead to a slew of great and indelible films, and of that collection The Invisible Man is the bottle of wine that has aged the finest. While bats on strings and the limits of early sound films have rendered the once great shocks of Frankenstein and Dracula as slightly creaky and charming, The Invisible Man works on the same level it always has: madcap black comedy. It isn't just Claude Rain's absurdly haughty vocal performance, or the shrieking innkeeper's wife, or the plethora of unflappable British bobbies stomping around saying "Right, what's all this then?". It's that Whale balances all these silly playful touches with strong direction, convincing effects, and a real willingness to go dark places. The Invisible Man isn't just spooking little old ladies by running around wearing only boots and gloves, he's also pushing over baby carriages, derailing trains, and cackling as he pushes his best friend off a cliff. The zany humor is grounded in the Invisible Man as a real credible threat. The film is still wonderful and entertaining to this day because the only thing Whale takes seriously is the storytelling. How can I watch it? It's available to rent on Amazon and iTunes. The Sleepover (2012) By Friday the 13th Part 7, the town of Crystal Lake had been through 6 annual teenage massacres. One wonders what that must do to a town. How does a town react to a dead killer coming to life, cutting children's heads off, and then being killed again on a yearly basis? Chris Cullari's clever and funny short examines just that. How can I watch it? Youtub- no I'm just kidding. This one is on Vimeo.
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Ben has not and never will learn his lesson.
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10/6 Kwaidan (1964) Maybe ghosts aren't vicious. Maybe ghost don't want to haunt you. Maybe ghosts are forced to haunt you, because you've forgotten something you shouldn't have, because there's a misdeed in the past so terrible it should never be forgotten. Maybe ghosts are just the past's way of forcing itself onto the present. Maybe that's an equally painful process for all involved. Which is a whole lot of vague suppositions, but part of what makes Kwaidan such an overwhelmingly powerful collection of ghost stories is it's pervasive morose tone. Kwaidan's four supernatural fables are soaked in regret and shame, but kept afloat by what is surely the most beautiful color photography in horror history. With a running time of just over three hours, it's definitely not a film to be approached casually. But those who do sit down and watch it will quickly be absorbed in it's dreamlike rhythms. How can I watch it? Criterion just re-released it on DVD and put it on blu-ray for the first time. Luckily, this also means it's on Hulu+. Common Shiner's "Social Mediasochist" music video "Social Mediasochist" is a fine power pop song from Chicago rock band Common Shiner, but it takes a backseat to this insanely horror reference-dense music video directed by Zoran Gvojic of the Chicago sketch troupe LowCarbComedy. The video depicts a high school entirely populated by famous slashers, from the notable Freddy Krueger (as the wise-cracking best friend, natch) to the more obscure Leslie Vernon (seen wisely refusing a videotape from The Ring's Tamera). You couldn't ask for a better take on the cute premise of a nerdy Jason Voorhees pining after a girl who may or may not be a damsel in distress. Die-hard horror fans will want to watch it a couple times to pick up every reference (freeze-frame the facebook pages to see an ad for Tucker & Dale's cabin repair business!) and in-joke. How can I watch it?
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I don't know nothing about nothing but I'll read it.
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To go back to this, the first thing that always pops into my head in terms of pacing is Portal. Not just the total game length, or how much time you spend on individual puzzles, but the way mechanics build on each other as your dread of GLaDOS builds, as the arc of your character goes from doing what you're told to finding hidden spaces GLaDOS didn't intend for you to find, to disobeying her to destroying her. I find all the aspects of that game dovetail into one another beautifully, which creates a perfectly paced story. I think the more you strip out story and player choice the better the pacing gets, which is probably why so many Valve games feel so well-paced. Technically speaking, I think one could argue that Tetris is "objectively" a perfectly paced game. Most arcade games are as well, due to their simplicity. How would you improve the pace of Ms. Pac-Man?
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#NoEuphemism
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let it end let it end let it end
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Yes Virginia, there is a Satan. His name is Ben X.
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I am going to fill your stocking with coal and by stocking I mean mouth.
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The last time I was this mad at Ben I got stuck on a puzzle in Time Gentlemen.
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10/5 Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments This could be pure nostalgia, but for me it isn't October without watching the Bravo 100 Scariest Movie Moments, If you've seen a basic cable clip show, you know what to expect here. Lot of actors and comedians, a few minor celebrity cameos that haven't aged well (let's find out what the Coors Lite twins think of The Shining!), but in this case there's also a good amount of film critics and filmmakers. It definitely skews mainstream and American, but the thing that sets this apart is it's genuinely deep selection of movies from every era. You have Silence of the Lambs and Jaws listed, sure, but you also have lesser heralded films being discussed like The Vanishing, Alice Sweet Alice and The Black Cat. You couple it with a creepy music and art design, and clips from almost every one of the films listed, this is perfect background viewing for October. I will sporadically just throw a random episode of this on the TV as I do other things. How can I watch it? This used to air on Bravo every October, but I now they probably show real housewives getting real drunk at a costume party. Or perhaps a special Halloween costume episode of Project Runway? DOES THAT EXIST? IS THERE AN EPISODE OF PROJECT RUNWAY WHERE THEY HAVE TO MAKE HALLOWEEN COSTUMES, THAT'D BE AMAZING. Anyway, YouTube exists so now this does too, in five parts. Vincent (1982) I wish Vincent played on Sesame Street. I think seeing this at an impressionable age would have changed my life, and the lives of so many weird little kids, for the better. This stop-motion animated short from Tim Burton is not only a perfect portrayal of growing up weird and morbid, but it's also a great encapsulation of why Burton would go on to be so successful. Not only are his gifts for art design and visual storytelling front and center, but it's a story about how children will make idols of any adult who offers a different way of life than what they get from their parents and teachers. The way Vincent worships at the altars of Poe and Price, so many other kids would grow up to do the same with Tim Burton, and this is where it started. How can I see it?
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I hate having glasses. I feel so limited in my costume possibilities. Not that I ever go anywhere for Halloween, but I like the idea of dressing up a lot.
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The only time I ever saw Nightbreed was when they were touring a very rough version of the Cabal cut around, trying to drum up interest for the eventual director's cut DVD. It was far from an ideal way to see it (most of the new footage was ripped from VHS dupes), but I remember being distinctly unimpressed. It felt like a horror Star Wars prequel.
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10/4 Pontypool (2008) A logorrheic zombie apocalypse, where people become infected by words. This is maybe the most semiotic-based horror film of all time, ripe with potential readings. Is it exploring the genre's communication breakdown tropes? Is it about Orwellian double-speak in the age of the War on Terror? Is it about the zombification of social media, with masses of hordes basically retweeting each other, endlessly recycling content? Or maybe it's just a paean to the power of suggestion. Pontypool is one of the most wildly original horror films of the century, but maybe the most impressive thing about it is that it juggles all those ideas while still being quite effective and scary. For a movie that entirely takes place inside a radio station, where the zombie apocalypse is only heard and not seen, it's astounding how many genuine thrills and scares it can achieve, just from listening to people calling in from the outside. A bonafide new classic, as entertaining as it is brilliant. How can I watch it? It's on Netflix Instant, and is available to rent digitally from iTunes. Lights Out (2013) Look, I'm going to be honest with you. This two and a half minute horror short is one of the scariest short films ever made. It's really really creepy and also there's a really good jump scare. If you are like me, and can get an overactive imagination when turning the lights out at night, imagining things hiding in the shadows, you maybe shouldn't watch this. This movie made my partner leave the hall light on for three months. And maybe all that warning will have built it up so much that it ends up not living up to the hype. How can I watch this? You maybe shouldn't, but
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10/3 A Bucket of Blood (1959) Roger Corman was not a great artist. He made his mark on film history by making movies faster and cheaper than anyone else, not better. But one of the reasons he's still so beloved today is his sense of humor. No film is a better example of that dark humor than A Bucket of Blood. A Bucket of Blood is about Walter Paisley (played by Corman stalwart Dick Miller, who you will at least recognize from Gremlins), who is also no great artist. But this simple-minded waiter quickly becomes a sensation among the beatnik art crowd when he covers a cat he accidentally killed with clay and calls it a sculpture. But as the demand for his art rises, so does his need to murder. Supremely fun and silly, with the best role of Miller's career. How can I watch it? This is actually in the public domain, so you can find a dozen uploads of it on YouTube. The Haunted House (1921) Buster Keaton was the greatest silent film comedian, and is maybe the greatest film comedian of all time. In this 20 minute short he plays a bank clerk who confronts a stick-up gang who are holed up in a haunted house. Great special effects and a spooky mood are the cherries on top of what is already one of Keaton's better shorts. How can I watch it?
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That sort of direct parody is pretty rare. But if you're looking for something that's right in that lane, Leslie Nielsen and Linda Blair made an Exorcist parody called Repossessed!. Beyond that, there's Scary Movie, which is a pretty direct spoof of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. And Student Bodies, a slasher parody made in 1981 (with an onscreen counter that keeps track of the body count), so it's mocking a limited number of slasher movies that existed, mostly Prom Night and Halloween. It's kind of impossible to track down a good copy of I Was A Teenage Werewolf but the Larry Cohen comedy Full Moon High is a very Mad Magazine take on that. Abbot & Costello Meet Frankenstein (which also contains Dracula and the Wolfman) would pair well with a later Universal monster mash movie like House of Dracula, but it only came a few years after those films. Shaun of the Dead isn't a direct parody of anything, though knowing about the genre will nudge you towards in-jokes ("We're coming to get you Barbara!" and the restaurant he forgets to make reservations for is called Fulci's). Actually, it's the fact that there's never really been a horror-comedy like it that makes it such a classic. Of the suggestions I made in the previous post, I'd say that Just Before Dawn and Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil probably comes closest to a 1 to 1 parody, but it definitely lacks that Mel Brooks level of specificity.
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10/2 Messiah of Evil (1973) Probably the quintessential California horror film. I described this to Argobot as "like a horror version of Joan Didion's 'Slouching Towards Bethlehem'", and that's probably overselling it a bit. Didion's prose is eloquent and precise, while this film (which was assembled by a French producer out of the bones of an unfinished horror film called The Second Coming) is decidedly not. But what it does have is an all-encompassing anxiety about California, and that Didion dread that something tragic and cataclysmic happened there in the 60's, something toxic that then worked it's way back east across the the rest of the country. Definitely one of those instances where the low production values add to the overall mood. The electronic score is incredibly rough and eerie, the scenery and sets are forboding, and the temple of the damned is a Ralphs supermarket. Honestly, that sums it up right there. The rivers of all evil flow in the aisles of a Ralphs. How can I watch it? It's on Amazon Prime, and the DVD is pretty cheap too. The Legend of Beaver Dam (2010) The less I spoil about this five minute horror-comedy short the better, but I've been in at least three horror film festivals that sprung this on unsuspecting audiences and the reaction every time is always huge. Totally wonderful. How can I watch it? It's available for purchase on iTunes, or you can watch this version that played on Bravo TV for free on Youtube. The only real difference is that they muted a few basic cable unfriendly swear words.
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If your guests have a strong stomach for insane cartoonish gore, you can follow any number of zombie films with Peter Jackson's Dead Alive (AKA Braindead). Other thoughts: Just Before Dawn and Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil (redneck slasher in the woods and a deconstruction of the redneck slasher trope) Them! and Tremors (50's giant ant movie and 90's giant worm monster comedy) Night of the Living Dead and Return of the Living Dead (original classic and a funny punk-filled spin-off that spawned the brain-eating zombie trope) The Changeling and Housebound (haunted house with a dark secret and a comedic version of that same idea) Brides of Dracula and What We Do In Shadows (Hammer vampire coven and hilarious New Zealand mockumentary about a vampire coven)
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Soooooooo scarrrrrrry! Best Month of the year Has Returned. I think I want to try to do two horror/spooky/halloween-themed film recommendations every day this month. One feature, one short. We'll see if I can keep it up or if this is just late night manic episode Patrick talking. 10/1 Night of the Demon (1957) (AKA Curse of the Demon) Not just the source of that sample in , but the final "true" horror film of master Jacques Tourneur. Tourneur spent most of his career as a B-movie journeyman, hopping from noirs to westerns to war films and everything in between, but he made his bones in the 40's as the go-to director for RKO's short-lived horror division lead by famed producer Val Lewton, There he refined a talent for making classy horror films that played with light & shadow and the power of suggestion. Films like I Walked With A Zombie and Cat People elevated the language of the genre, and the stories it was capable of telling. With Night of the Demon Tourneur spun the M.R. James short story "Casting the Runes" into an entertaining but sophisticated tale of a skeptic confronted with a demon's curse. Tourneur's powers of light and shadow had diminished none in the twelve years between this and his previous horror effort, and there are quite a few effective scares in this, along with some very cheesy but endearing special effects. It doesn't take a leap to see this as the progenitor of films like The Ring and It Follows. Where can I find it? A DVD with both the original British and truncated American cuts is readily available on Amazon, and it's available digitally on Amazon and iTunes. The Tell-Tale Heart (1953) The most memorable Edgar Allan Poe adaptations have always been those that took his rock solid premises and ran with them, tuning everything up to a fever pitch. This animated adaptation of "The Tell-Tale Heart", with it's highly subjective point of view and fractured expressionist style, is a perfect example of that. In 7 minutes James Mason runs through an abridged retelling of Poe's tale that emphasizes the narrator's manic hatred and paranoia. Really wonderful and creepy. This is the canonical cinematic adaptation of Tell-Tale Heart. Where can I find it?
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Idle Thumbs 230: A Farewell to Junior Mints
Patrick R replied to Jake's topic in Idle Thumbs Episodes & Streams
Sure, you say you're splitting into two separate podcasts now, but just wait until the first crossover event and suddenly I have to listen to every episode of each just to follow the arc. I am glad that Junior Mints is sticking around, and none of us have to say farewell to her. Also, I was disappointed that Nick didn't specify who was sleeping in which bed. I imagined it as: Bed 1: Spaff, Jake, Sean Bed 2: Nick, Chris, Danielle Blader Runner sleeping bag on the floor: Steve Gaynor -
Quitter's Club: Don't be ashamed to quit the game.
Patrick R replied to Tanukitsune's topic in Video Gaming
SHINY ENTERTAINMENT! Creators of another late 90's EGM ad classic, MDK. Murder Death Kill!