Patrick R

Alien 3 is a beautiful but tonally (and even visually, towards the end) incoherent movie. "Director's Cut" is the way to go, but none of it is great. Still think it has the greatest opening of the series, though Aliens fanboys hate that

I have been fascinated by slasher movie fan films for a long time. I think slasher movie fan films feel distinct from Batman, Star Wars, etc. because slasher movies so often already look like their made by amateurs. And, in the case of most of the major slasher movie franchises (Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers) there is no one creative force (and often, not even one studio) behind them, so every entry already feels like fan-fiction, in a way. The line between Friday the 13th Part 3 and is a lot thinner than you'd think. What I've learned is that most slasher movie fans (or at least, the ones who make and watch slasher movie fan-films) are obsessed with two things: Who could kick whose ass? Creating complex mythology that explains why these mindless killers are doing what they do Which is too bad because those are my absolute least favorite parts of slasher movies. But there's still something pure about slasher movie fan-films. I feel like at one point every little kid who likes horror movies picks up a camera, puts a mask on their friend, and makes something like this. Even in the most elaborate and slick looking slasher movie fan-film, there's still that vibe of the 12 year old with a camcorder making a monster movie. My favorite slasher movie fan-film is , which is already down the rabbit hole of fan-fiction, since it's an adaptation of a Friday the 13th young adult novel, which in turn was written by an amateur writer and Friday the 13th fan who worked at K-Mart. The story behind that is apparently crazy (he misread his contract and thought he had a year to write each of the four books he was assigned and it wasn't until he finished Mother's Day on month ten that he realized he had two months to write three more books) but the book he wrote actually shows a really good understanding of what makes slasher movies work. If most Friday the 13th movies feel like sex comedies that got interrupted by a deranged killer, Mother's Day feels like a Sweet Valley High book that gets interrupted by a deranged killer. My love of the big three horror franchises has always been my dumb little guilty pleasure, but my fascination with their fan films is a different thing entirely. It's the only fan-fiction I've ever been able to get into.

Snowpiercer is the greatest.

What would be the phonetic spelling of "I'm the strongest women in the world." in a Boston accent?

I'd be cool with it, personally.

A link in that article brought me to http://www.cafepress.com/idlethumbs Was there a whole other realm of Idle Thumbs inside jokes before the podcast started? This does not seem like a shirt you guys would sell in earnest. EDIT: This is only the best of maybe 6 Manhunt related items.

It's too late, we're putting Danielle's face on an oven-mitt and there's nothing you can do.

Oh yeah, I guess that's true. I always forget it because I don't like it very much. But that's very accessible.

If you want to continue in the order of most accessible, Blue Velvet is the next. Traditional noirish thriller that slides into nightmare territory before you even realize it. Eraserhead has a reputation for being insane and experimental but it's actually incredibly straight-forward, thematically. That's a great one. A lot of people really like Wild at Heart but I find it incredibly dumb and irritating. Again, not hard to follow with a traditional narrative, but I find it impossible to care about any of the characters. Your mileage may vary. Lost Highway is a bit harder to follow. Great moments but again, I find it very hit or miss. Mulholland Drive is great but it is essentially a puzzle. If you aren't opposed to having something explained to you, Film Crit Hulk wrote a very good article about his interpretation. And I'll throw this in here because it's actually one of my favorite David Lynch movies, despite being a minute long and silent. It was shot on the same camera the Lumière brothers used. It is briefly not save for work. EDIT: And the brief moment it is NSFW is the thumbnail. Ok, I'll just make it a link.

I love the second story. Price at his swishiest, Lorre at his grubbiest.

Kanal is a 1957 war/thriller film by seminal Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda. It's hypothetically a stylish and tense exercise in fatalism as it follows the Warsaw uprising against the Nazis, with elements of the surreal as the last survivors of the resistance retreat through the sewer system. I say theoretically because I haven't seen this since film school, which was a long time ago and I was doing a lot of drugs back then. But I am fairly confident I saw this sober and that it totally blew 20-year-old me away. So let's find out together how apt my memory is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqcMtWnXkV4

This makes me giggle like a moron every time I think about it.

Oh, awesome. Ozu is one of those major blind-spots in my experience because every time I say to myself "You know, you've never seen an Ozu movie, you should really fix that." I get intimidated and watch Friday the 13th Part 3 or some other cinematic comfort food.

You're absolutely right about the expressionist aspect. Above ground every piece of rubble and broken building is reproduced (or, probably in some cases, just filmed as it remained in 1957) in loving detail (right down to specific brand of piano they find), but once they get down into the sewers the setting becomes about reflecting their state of mind much more than capturing the specificity of a mid-century sewer system. As surreal as it is, it didn't occur to me to tie it back to expressionism because I tend to associate expressionistic influence with films that are way less naturalistic.

"What if he's a bad dog?" Between that and Nick barking randomly, that was a quality segment.

Are you kidding? Marrying Vincent Price's corpse would be, like, the most Vincent Price thing I could do.

You just touched my telltale heart. VINCENT PRICE MOVIES RANKED 1.The Abominable Dr. Phibes 2. Masque of the Red Death 3. The Raven (if you like campy fun) 4. The Fly 5. Theatre of Blood 6. Witchfinder General 7. Madhouse 8. House on Haunted Hill 9. Tales of Terror 10. The Tingler 11. The Haunted Palace 12. Fall of the House of Usher Vincent Price is my favorite human. The saddest day of my life was when I found out he wasn't gay.

So Roderick, what's next?

The Best Show On WFMU is one of my favorite things ever.

I was trying to think of specifically what it was about the way the sewer is shot that struck me as surreal, and the Criterion essay pointed it out to me: The lighting! There wouldn't be any light down there at all in real life, but the whole movie is beautifully lit in high contrast whites and blacks.

It's the most heightened moment for sure. It just felt right for the character. As for vomit, I was going to say that they couldn't really show people puking their brains out in 1957, but holy cow is this movie graphic. When the Germans drop the grenade down the hole and the one guy's blood BATHES Halinka and her lover, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe I had forgotten it, for that matter. I think the fact that no one really mentions the smell is interesting, because they're essentially wading in shit. In a more naturalistic movie (like the hypothetical modern version Roderick mentions) the smell would definitely be one of the first things mentioned, but it really doesn't need saying. I think most of the characters are in denial about how bad their situation is before they enter.

My main takeaway from my first time watching this was it was the first really old movie that unnerved and shook me in such an immediate way. Sure, I knew Citizen Kane was brilliant because of reasons A - Z, and sure Casablanca has an amazing script and outstanding performances, but the effect of time always kept me at a distance from old films (Marx Brothers comedies excluded) until I saw this. Something about this movie was so modern and classical at the same time, it jostled something loose from my brain. It still floored me this time, but now it was much clearer how much more was going on than just a brutal and visceral (games) experience. Speaking of visceral (games) experiences, GO TO HELL. The only way I can really read this movie is that the retreat signals the death of the resistance, with the sewers as their hell. When the narrator says "these are their final hours" I think he means the hours before their last stand. There is no glimmer of hope in the sewer. They pretty much immediately get split up and the rest is spinning wheels as they literally asphyxiate on shit. Who they become in the sewer reveals who they were out of it. The census taker reveals himself to view his party only as numbers, the composer reveals himself to be self-centered and defeated, Halinka reveals herself to be a silly girl too in love to think straight, Daisy reveals herself to be the strongest of them all if not for the fact that her love and dedication undoes her. This movie is so potent and toxic and angry it makes me want to read about the Polish Resistance to get a better context for what made Wadja make a movie this fucking dark and cynical. He clearly has respect for them, but this movie is not a tribute to their heroism in the slightest. TL;DR It's like The Pianist meets The Warriors meets Dante's Inferno meets Dead Space. A+, would watch again. I think the ultimate cynicism in this movie is that the composer, the most pessimistic and solipsistic character, is ultimately the most correct. In the world of Kanal, the only rational response to the horrors of such overwhelming defeat is to give up. He's already retreated into himself so far by the time we first meet him ("this is the REAL tragedy", he declares when he finds himself wanting for musical inspiration), the rest of the movie is just a matter of the others catching up. So, in that respect, I definitely buy his descent into madness. I just think it's not as far a fall down as it was for the others. And I do agree that the multiple zooms became a bit much. I appreciate what they add to the surreality of the sewers, but so many zooms in such short time does get a little silly. Loved reading this. Good point on the elemental force of the Nazis. After that stock footage opening and that insane display of rubble that used to be Poland in the opening tracking shot (what a fun contrast to Ophul's opening tracking shot in Madame De...!), it's not even like they're fighting men, it's like the entire world is ending and they're fighting the apocalypse.

If I didn't love Matinee so much, this would definitely be my favorite Joe Dante movie.

I feel like I must be #blessed because I almost never encounter these problems in theaters. Then again, I have a couple of rules to help: Don't go to multiplexes if you can help it. Never go opening night. Try not to go opening weekend. If you go opening weekend, do a matinee. Don't see animated movies (Ghibli excluded) in the theater. If there are only seats up front, just return your ticket and see it another time. In Chicago it's easy to avoid most these problems because there are so many art and revival theaters, whose patrons are usually extremely polite (the odd drunken yelling asshole at a midnight showing of Purple Rain not withstanding). I guess that's not necessarily the case everywhere.

To go back to the idea of diplomatic wording, I think the podcast got way better once everyone on it were developers. It definitely made you have to reach to not say "this game fucking sucked", which in turn (I think) made you focus more only on games you really liked or felt you had a lot of interesting things to say. Of course, given the time gap between the second and third Age of Thumbs, it could be more that you just got burnt out on playing AAA games, or no longer felt obligated to. But still, even with something like Bioshock: Infinite, your inability to just say "this aspect was fucking garbage" forced you to be more specific and constructive. Definitely influenced the way I talk about film on my film podcast.