Patrick R
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Posts posted by Patrick R
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Black Sunday is the greatest gothic horror film of all time, what I always wished Universal's monster movies were like before I developed a taste for them. It's well-paced, gruesome, atmospheric, fevered, and insanely beautiful nightmare of a film, one that practically dares you not to cheer for the fabulously wicked witch played by Barbara Steele.
The opening (which I linked to the original post) is so astounding, so strong, so perfect that it's kind of a miracle that the film can keep it up past the credits. But it does. Oh oh it does.
If there's an argument to be made that Mario Bava is one of the best cinematographers of all time, this film is certainly Exhibit A.
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Baron Blood was Mario Bava's follow-up to Bay of Blood (AKA Twitch of the Death Nerve, the greatest horror title ever) though it has very little to do with that film other than being a proto-slasher film with some good moments of violence.
As the above still may imply, Baron Blood is more of the gothic tradition, a film about a wicked torture-baron (is there any other kind of baron?) from the 16th century who is brought to life by his dopey descendant, who is fresh out of college and looking to have some fun by fucking around with seances and black magic incantations.
The plot is honestly not important, and whenever a scene of exposition comes up you can tell that Mario Bava couldn't be less interested. And there's no shortage of scenes like that. But when the horror kicks off his absolutely beautiful photography elevates this into a memorable horror film. Mario Bava had a distinct style that combined chiaroscuro shadows with garish color gel lighting that can be absolutely stunning when it kicks in. Unfortunately it kicks in far less here than, say, Black Sabbath. But still, look at this!
Pretty great.
Tonight I'm seeing my absolute favorite Bava film, Black Sunday, on the big screen and I couldn't be more excited.
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Listening to an artist's entire discography in chronological order is a really fun thing to do if you have the time, and you have the time.
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Oh Hello is a recorded Broadway comedy special on Netflix and it's one of the funniest things I've seen in a long while. Comedians John Mulaney and Nick Kroll play Gil Faizon and George St. Geegland, two 70-something New York City weirdos who love Steely Dan and drugs. It's largely a satire of bad theater cliches and one-man shows, but it's also just fucking crazy and weird and funny. Really really amazingly funny. Steve Martin cameos.
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BLACK SABBATH IS SO GREAT. EVEN BETTER ON THE BIG SCREEN.
AH! SO COOL.
It's a three-story anthology horror film hosted by a very cheeky Boris Karloff, assuring us that some of our fellow audience members are vampires.
"Il Telefono" is still the weak link, but on the big screen it's still of interest because of Bava's amazing cinematography. Even if nothing really happens, nothing really happens in an absolutely GORGEOUS way. People slowly looming, their faces going in and out of shadow...so great.
"I Wurdalak" is still a banger, like a lost Hammer film with all the filler cut out, except much much more beautiful and colorful. One of the great Boris Karloff performances, with a tone and set that feel straight out of an opera. The initial moments of Karloff returning home and no one knowing how to handle it is absolutely chilling, the household of an abusive patriarch.
"La goccia d'acqua" remains actually truly terrifying, a total fucking nightmare and easily some of the scariest horror of the decade. THAT FACE FLOATING AROUND JESUS. Just watch the video above!
The most beautiful color photography of Bava's career, which makes it a shoe-in for most beautiful color photography of all time. And that goofy ending is one of the most endearing things I've ever seen.
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I think every Indiana Jones sequel is equally worse than the one before it, and Crystal Skull really doesn't stand out in that regard.
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REWATCH RANKING SO FAR (as of 8/19/17)
1. Black Sunday (1960)
2. Kill Baby, Kill! (1966)
3. Black Sabbath (1963)
4. Rabid Dogs (1974)
5. Baron Blood (1972)
6. Lisa and the Devil (1973)
7. Knives of the Avenger (1966)
The Godfather of all Italian Horror! Your average clued-in film person has seen a Dario Argento and perhaps even a Lucio Fulci movie but it feels like, outside of horror hounds, people have forgotten Mario Bava. Bava is a strong candidate for greatest horror filmmaker of all time, as well as best cinematographer (he shot most of his own work, often uncredited) of any genre.
He mastered black and white gothic horror with the stone classic Black Sunday, he made a slasher movie that Friday the 13th was still ripping off from ten years later back in 1971 before the word "slasher" meant anything. He did sci-fi that inspired Alien, he did pop-art comic book spy thrillers, wacky sex comedies with Vincent Price that were ripped off by Austin Powers, hardnosed crime thrillers, the giallo film that inspired the rest of them, and even nightmarish Alice in Wonderland dreamscapes.
I recently listened to a great interview with someone who wrote a 1,100 page biography/critical examination of his work and it timed up with the Gene Siskel Film Center doing a retrospective and now I am in full Bava mania. I hope to see as many of his films as possible over the course of August.
Here's the killer opening to Black Sunday, which is the first thing I ever saw that he directed (I saw it as part of a Bravo horror clip show) and inspired me to see much more. So beautiful, haunting and incredibly grisly by the standards of 1960!
"It is I who repudiate you! And in the name of Satan I place a curse upon you! Go ahead! Tie me down to the stake! But you will never escape my hunger, nor that of SATAN!" So awesome. As an a director working with black and white, he really is up there with Bergman.
Here's what I've seen so far this month:
Rabid Dogs (1974) -A grimy, nasty piece of work. Sweat-soaked extreme close-ups for days from this kidnapping thriller that takes place almost entirely in a crowded car. Bava keeps the screws tightening (dig that 12 note escalating organ theme that never quite leaves) and the threat of the worst possible actions you can imagine always present, while maintaining a certain degree of color and dark humor.
There's a few 90 degree wide-angle pans in this that absolutely destroyed me, standing out all the more because so much of this is constricted to inside a vehicle, right up in everybody's face. There's a certain emotional shift towards the end that took me completely by surprise and the final twist is a killer, not only because it's incredibly nihilistic but because it clears up some niggling plot problems I had.
I spent a lot of this thinking "This is so simple and effective, I can't believe no one's tried to remake it" but of course someone has and it was totally needless. This is quintessential 70's exploitation. Time and place are so important.
Lisa and the Devil (1973) -
A notable step down. It's an unhinged dream film that sadly has a complete blank slate for a dreamer. Ideally all this strange imagery and mood would be reflecting some kind of psychological mindset on the part of Lisa, but Lisa has no psychology to speak of, passive and hollow to the point of lunacy at times. She's a very dull Alice and Wonderland deserves better.
It leaves any scene without a murder or Telly Savalas's satanic smirk lacking a little something. Still very striking looking and admirably unparsable.
I'm seeing Black Sabbath on the big screen tonight and am very excited. It's easily one of my all-time favorite anthology horror films, and has some of the best looking color in any horror film I've ever seen, including Suspiria.
Also, psst, it seems like a lot of his movies have been uploaded in full to YouTube if that is your game.
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Yeah, I don't think this thread needs to necessarily turn into me picking apart this article (which is honestly more of a short piece of creative writing than an actual article) as I don't really have a problem with it on it's own, just in the context of a discussion about Nick Robinson sexually harassing people. But I disagree that it actually describes emotional abuse in any way specific enough to be meaningful.
Your anecdote about your female friends is all I need to hear to know the term has meaning, even if my attempts to discern that meaning by Googling "softboy" and "softboy culture" left me way more confused than anything.
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Those articles just did a bad job of conveying that, then, because the one linked doesn't describe emotional abuse at all.
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I think "softboy" is like "fuckboy" where it's fine as a humorous term to express a specific frustration with male tendencies but is ultimately so vague and subjective that it means nothing to talk about "softboy culture".
Then again I'm a dude who doesn't date straight dudes, so maybe I just haven't dealt with it. But both articles about "softboys" I read seem like a list of specific grievances of bad romantic partners that
a) aren't the same as each other
don't have anything to do with sexual harassment?
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I think I have also heard Austin Walker use it in jest, so it has reach.
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Life
in Idle Banter
I don't think you owe it to him or yourself to have a verbal conversation. It seems like it would quickly turn into a debate and you don't need to put that pressure on yourself to out-rhetoric a childhood hero in order to defend your feelings. In some ways I think direct communication is a worse way of exchanging ideas because it can quickly turn into "who is better at talking?" and make someone person conflate their ability to speak their points with the validity of those points. "It would take a novel" seems like a cop-out to me and if he cares enough he can write a response.
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I think the worst category of actor is "Bland White Dude Lead In A Stephen King Adaptation".
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Yesterday I discovered that Martin McDonagh, the Irish playwright who wrote and directed the films In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths, directed a short film with Brendan Gleason (one of the best actors around) in 2004 that won an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short. It's called Six Shooter and it very much operates in the pitch black tone of In Bruges, mixing a witty script with absolutely horrible things happening to already emotionally devastated people. The humor gets pretty dark but it's also really really funny, and if you liked In Bruges I'd recommend it.
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I wrote a big long thing but ultimately I'm not invested enough to actually engage it all so I'll just say I found that "softboy" article way more confusing than clarifying, especially in how it connects to anything regarding Nick Robinson.
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And I personally have found most of the conversation around this respectful, measured, and helpful. Most people are not breaking any boundaries, and using this as an opportunity to examine larger issues of harrassment and silence without infringing on anyone's privacy. Sure, if you just search "Nick Robinson" on Twitter you're gonna find some real assholes, (including a contingent of gator people who are just trying to stir shit all both sides), but I've been impressed at how well everyone is handling a really shitty and painful situation.
Including Nick Robinson, whose silence seems to anger some people but is probably better than any sort of immediate reaction he could have made.
As a side note, I have no idea what the fuck a "soft boy" is, so this has been confusing to me on another level.
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On 7/20/2017 at 9:25 AM, Patrick R said:If Stop Making Sense ever comes to a rep theater near you (and with the recent death of it's director Jonathon Demme that's more likely now than ever) you should run, not walk, to go see it.
Ended up seeing another Demme memorial screening and can now say the same about Melvin & Howard, a truly unique and beguiling comedy that's ostensibly about the "real life" story of Melvin Dummar, the gas station attendent who was allegedly bequeathed 1/16th of Howard Hughes' estate, but actually is an incredibly shaggy character drama/comedy about a hapless blue collar guy constantly struggling with money, no matter how much he has. The Howard Hughes will doesn't even factor into the story until the last 15 minutes.
It's a beautiful human film packed with memorable scenes and interesting characters, and slowly discovering the wild winding structure of the film is a real treat. I highly recommend it, but don't go in expecting the high concept comedy the premise seems to imply.
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I feel like with all sitcoms you have to pretend everyone has some sort of head trauma. Unless the show has no interest in warmth or character growth or "lessons" (your examples of Seinfeld and Arrested Development) the emotional age of your average sitcom character is (18-x) where x= # of seasons the show's been on. By the end of Parks and Rec it mostly felt like a show about 12 year olds singing about friendship and hugging. I think that's probably just a necessity, both for the sake of plot contrivance and mass audience appeal.
But I can't think of a single comedy show interested in nurturing it's characters humanity where they don't come across as immature all the time. And I honestly think Crazy Ex-Girlfriend handles this better than most.
EDIT: I should say, I think this applies to American sitcoms. I haven't seen all that many British sitcoms but it wouldn't surprise me if there was less of this there, as I can immediately think of one show (The Office) where this isn't the case.
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https://www.giantbomb.com/podcasts/department-of-new-business-episode-0/1600-2046/
Ben and Abby's enthusiastic yet very awkward friendship is one of my favorite recent Giant Bomb developments and I think the podcasts they do are a bizarre combination of completely awful and completely compelling.
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Don't know if this was mentioned, but ancillary to the slowed-down Chipmunks:
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7 hours ago, Kolzig said:Why is Harrison Ford still acting? All of his major roles have been really bad in the past almost 10 years.
Does he even get good salary at this point in his career?
Maybe he found a way to take it with him.
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Yeah Gorm, what bad energy?
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If we're now in the business of merging threads and creating new ones maybe we should just slot in the veganism thread here and be done with it.
Movie/TV recommendations
in Movies & Television
Posted
I agree with you on Escape From LA (though I can't give it a pass in any way, I really think it is completely unredeemably awful), but I think Big Trouble in Little China is pure charm, bolstered on the running joke that big strapping all-American John Wayne-type hero is actually a total ineffectual goon and that Dennis Dun does all the work and gets the girl. There is a thoughtful subversion of the white savior trope that you don't expect out of a movie so unrelentingly silly. But I've come to understand it's more of an acquired taste, so you aren't alone in not getting the love.