Horror burn-out

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Ministry88	Horror burn-out	Lead	[-]
Posts: 353 (12/26/02 21:08:38) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Tags : None Finally! I've thought of an interesting topic! Here goes: Admit it, even though you consider yourselves die-hard horror experts (which we all are to varying degrees here I am certain), sometimes you just need a break. A break from all the horror for something different. This "break" may last a week, a month or maybe just a day. So, what do we watch when we're NOT watching horror films? As for me, I usually turn to comedies for some "relief." Woody Allen especially. The man is a genius. Some of my all-time faves of his would be MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY, MANHATTAN, ANNIE HALL, SLEEPER and BANNANAS ("Hey, what's the price on ORGASM? Yeah! This guy here wants to buy a copy of ORGASM! YEAH ORGASM! HE WANTS TO BUY ONE!"). And Diane Keaton is the screen's best actress imo (check out her non-comedic roles in THE GODFATHER, etc..). Along with Argento and Cronenberg, Allen is the only other living screen legend we have now. Mel Brooks can do it too. Although A LOT of his films are crap, I'll admit. It really boils down to THE PRODUCERS, BLAZING SADDLES, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN and SPACEBALLS. But what films those are. I'll never forget that great gag in SADDLES when a gang first storms into the town and scares the horses. One poor schmuck in a beautiful 3 piece suit is dragged through the mud by his scared horse. As he's being dragged, he shruggs and says flatly "Well, I guess that does it for this suit." BRILLIANT! Of course there are so many other masterful comedies. THE 'BURBS has always been a fave of mine (by the always reliable Joe Dante). Man, that scene where Tom Hanks, Bruce Dern and Rick Ducommun all try to infiltrate the neighboor's house while the missis is gone is HILARIOUS. It's great when Corey Feldman treats his friends to the fiasco and treats it like a party ("awesome!" he yells as one of them falls off the roof). It's just such great therapy to see someone else get mad or hurt onscreen And of course we can't forget the incomparable Dick Miller as that garbageman.
bobmonel	Re: Horror burn-out	#1	[-]
Posts: 2560 (12/26/02 22:12:25) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	I'm a big fan of art cinema: Godard and Bunuel, also Japanese sci fi, martial arts films and Euro spy. I also enjoy crime films, noir, and sword and sandal. Then there's westerns: Peckinpah, Leone, and John Ford. I like the old screwball comedies. I HATE all contemporary mainstream films.
Ministry88	I'm with ya Bob	#2	[-]
Posts: 353 (12/26/02 23:09:56) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Yeah, i hate mainstream crap nowadays too. It has no soul, no style, no NOTHING! It's all slickly produced, empty-headed, CG dross. No rough edges, ya know? Peckinpah is the man. I've had a resurgance of interest in him lately. Just saw STRAW DOGS-what a great flick! Dustin Hoffman in one of his better roles and of course the delictable Susan George! And that famous ending is still brutal (can anybody say BEAR TRAP?). Bob, what do you consider the "cut-off" period to be for quality mainstream films? I think the 70s made amazing mainstream films (JAWS, BLAZING SADDLES, not to mention THE EXORCIST, etc..). The early eighties were ok, than it was all downhill. The only mainstream films from the 90s I like are PULP FICTION and, uh.... Bob, are you a Fassbinder fan? I usually find the man more fascinating than his films, although I haven't seen much to judge. His IN THE YEAR OF 13 MOONS was interesting and VERY complex and daring considering the subject matter and the time and place it was made. I have yet to see his 16 hour BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ, but i'm sure i will. I also enjoy Wim Wenders. His WINGS OF DESIRE is a modern classic. I've been looking for his directorial debut GOALIE'S ANXIETY AT THE PENALTY KICK for years now. I also had the (dubious) pleasure of seeing the ORIGINAL version of his LIGHTNING OVER WATER (AKA NICK'S FILM) on the big screen. A very intense, hard-to-watch but fascinating film. As for Godard/Bunuel: I admire Bunuel highly. His 1930 film THE GOLDEN AGE was highly influential and really solidified the surrealist template (Freudian symbolism, the subconscious imagery, the political agendas, attack on religion) that his prior UN CHIEN ANDALOU started. Also interesting as that was very probably the FIRST French sound film. Although I've only seen ONE Godard film (MY LIFE TO LIVE)-I can't say I'm impressed by him so far. Although I guess that's unfair since I've just seen one flipping film (can you guess that I spend most of my time w/ horror?)! Yeah, I realize how important it was and what it did for cinema (I challenge you to pick out one Hollywood film now that doesn't borrow a technique from that film), it just seemed very dry to me. I also respect Carl Dreyer very highly. Man, his JOAN OF ARC is by far the finest silent imo. That film is incredibly dense and so astonishing. It's technical wizardry is still astounding (that 180 degree crane tilt in particular) and the flawless application of expressionistic aesthetics to a famous historical tale. It is by far one of the most EMOTIONAL films I've ever seen-especially with the Einhorn "Visions of Light" score on the excellent Criterion disc (the ONLY version to get-pictured below). Strangely, Richard Einhorn began writing soundtracks to early 80s/late 70s horror like the infamous DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE and SHOCK WAVES (hmm..two thread-worthy flicks!)!
bobmonel	Re: I'm with ya Bob	#3	[-]
Posts: 2560 (12/27/02 00:06:11) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Check out Dreyer's VAMPYR, the use of ambient sound, shadows and indirection is absolutely stunning. Maybe the greatest of all horror films. I also like his ORDET, concerning a madman who resurrects a dead woman. The only mainstream I've liked in recent years was THE OTHERS, which technically is a Spanish horror film! PULP FICTION may have killed off the US mainstream. Where can you go after THAT? I like Tarantino's approach to genre and I liked his blaxploitation update JACKIE BROWN also. EYES WIDE SHUT was flawed but essential. The problem is that CGI and movie stars rule. I HATE CGI! It's going to kill movies, turns them into cartoons, really. If you think about it, none of the actors in JAWS were stars at the time, just good actors and it was well directed without CGI, now Spielberg just depends on computers, stars and presold material and he ruins even a fairly good film like SAVING PRIVATE RYAN with sappy sentimentality. IN A YEAR OF 13 MOONS is my favorite Fassbinder, it's really audacious. I had the pleasure of personally meeting Fassbinder in New York in 1975, a really nice, unpretentious person. Too bad he had to kill himself.
Latarnia	Mellowing out	#4	[-]
Posts: 12316 (12/27/02 07:43:06) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Great topic. I find myself rarely straying outside of horror territory, if just for the fact that I have so much I need to see for review or research purposes. But I do need a break once in a while. A good spaghetti western will do me fine and channel me into a more basic and earthy view of life, adding a spiritual boost that is provided from the images and music (particularly if it's Morricone doing the scoring). Lately, I've found myself becoming seduced by the color dance musicals of the 1950s that turn up on TV, usually TCM. You can go in and out of these at will, and they have a charm and grace about them that I find soothing. I never cared for Fred Astaire before, but (damn) I'm beginning to like the man and his style. In general, I have to agree with the negative opinion regarding CGI. There have been instances (DIE ANOTHER DAY, for one) in which I'm become nauseous due to CGI and ill thereafter. This nausea is akin to motion sickness. Something is going on here, and if I'm right, anti-CGI medication will need to be created to help sufferers deal with this affliction, because the future is CGI and we'll be seeing more of it instead of less. Mirek
evilskippy	Re: Mellowing out	#5	[-]
Posts: 841 (12/27/02 12:27:27) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	I've had to basically take a break from watching movies of any kind.My health has been even worse than usual and I find myself reading more as a result.It looks like it will be a few more months before I do anything with my website as a result. The strange things is I don't really seem to miss it. Now when flicks like Black Dragons & The Manster hit the stores next month that may change....
Ministry88	Really Bob?	#6	[-]
Posts: 353 (12/27/02 13:52:22) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Wow that's interesting about Fassbinder Bob. That must've been great meeting him. I've certainly heard differently about the man! His cruelty was quite legendary I've heard. Did you know that he kept much of his actors on drugs so that they could better comply with his demands? Also, one time he made a vegetarian actress of his eat a full pound of raw meat so that she could sleep with him (he REALLY didn't want to sleep with her). She did...he didn't!
bobmonel	Re: Really Bob?	#7	[-]
Posts: 2560 (12/28/02 16:02:37) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	He seemed gentle, intelligent. I think he went crazy toward the end, on drugs.
James Cheney	Re: burn-out	#8	[-]
Posts: 5 (12/29/02 00:35:16) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	I too have a problem with modern movies, American especially (but what other kind is there these days?) though I don't know I can categorically reject them all as CGI-driven dreck. Last conventional one I checked out was SPIDERMAN and I enjoyed it greatly. Even the newfangled FX were used intelligently: the Spider Speed and the Peter Parker's p.o.v. thereof made film sense of virtuoso unreality, rationalising it as teenage hyperactive dreams of glory with hormones pumping and adolescent gawkiness: mastery always combatting total loss of control. It was typically Sam Raimi in the wit department. I liked him well enough when he was lo-tech in olden days, so why stop now? But the film was like 4th of July pyrotechnics. I don't want those more than once a year, and so much on display is fireworks nowadays...or awful movies about enervated American adults and their conformist fantasies and anxieties (they'll make grist for a PHD someday but I'd rather read about them than watch 'em)...and postmodern exercises like AUTO FOCUS...or intelligent but pointless remakes (SOLARIS) when the filmmakers should be doing something original if they're going to waste studio money though some persistent, obscure malaise paralyses them from trying...or...or. Horror is a respite from FILM burnout for me lately but I burned out on Horror near terminally after way overdoing it once before that I'm now VERY cautious about overindulging. Like Bob, old and art films are what draw me when my fetishes (Spaghetti Westerns currently chief among them) cease to excite. But I hasten to add it's not the genres that I tire of, it's the sorting through less good films to get at the fewer and fewer remaining uncollected masterpieces or rewatching the classics at longer and longer intervals that does me in. I love them all the same old way but there's less and less to add to what I already love. Thus I'm forced further afield and sixties World cinema is the best way for me to go, I'd say 1962-1967 or so was the international peak. I'll explain some day if desired. For now, suffice to say that technical accomplishment was at a universally high level; that the old indigenous narrative and artistic traditions weren't yet forgotten; and that actors were still stage-trained or educated by doing scores of films back to back. These factors add up to a real renaissance and maybe a final flourishing world wide. There are hundreds of good to amazing movies from this era still to be redicovered by audiences let alone seen...period. That thought keeps me unburnt out, regarding horror or anything otherwise
bobmonel	Re: burn-out	#9	[-]
Posts: 2560 (12/29/02 15:43:15) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	In a sense, we're like secret agents of GENRE, and we want to be part of a secret elite society. That's fun. The mainstream just doesn't interest me as much today. Mainstream used to be Peckinpah and a lot of films then wouldn't get made in today's conservative environment. You really gotta be on a special frequency to GET Naschy or Franco or Polselli, not everyone wants to go there. We do.
Ministry88	See MONSTERS INC.!	#10	[-]
Posts: 353 (01/11/03 01:02:35) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Damn! Just finished watching the newest Pixar flick MONSTERS INC and I was BLOWN AWAY. I haven't been this excited from an animated flick since FANTASIA. I've always thought that Pixar was the only reliable force of quality entertainment in the "mainstream" these days. Ever since TOY STORY they've made great, innovative films. And I think each one tops the former, both in terms of technology and content. MONSTERS INC benefits hugely from a GREAT premise: The world of monsters subsists on traveling to earth (via bedroom doors) to leap out of children's closets and scare them silly. Their screams are concentrated in a cannister and used as fuel to power the monsters' world. Then a child mistakenly wanders into the monsters' world and all hell breaks loose. The film constantly delights with ingenious ideas and monster gags. Mike Wazowski (played with verve by Billy Crystal) is a one-eyed mutant, and in one early scene he applies his single huge contact lens. Monsters from folklore such as the Abominable Snowman, the Yeti and Loch Ness are explained as exiles from the Monster world (brilliant concept!). And the film really DOES appeal to all ages. There are some surprisingly deep moments, such as when the boss gives a pep talk to his monsters, telling them how hard it is to scare kids these days. his speech is accompanied by video footage of a zombie-like child watching a horrifically violent cop show totally numb. Plus there is an angle of corporate corruption as well, which provides one of the film's twists YOU WILL NOT SEE COMING. PLUS there is the concept of energy conservation as well. What's so remarkable is that these buzz topics are seemlessly woven into the film's fabric. It never seems preachy. Add to that some great humor that thankfully keeps the gross-out toilet humor to a pleasing minimum (something that ruins so much family entertainment these days), and a great pace and you have one of the finest films in recent memory. PLUS it has one BREATHTAKING climax where Mike and Sully whiz around a labyrinth of doors clinging onto a door and riding around a track like a roller coaster while avoiding their arch enemy (played by Steve Buscemi! What more do you want?). The complexity of this sequence is amazing and you will definitely get vertigo! I've watched this sequence five times already Really, SEE THIS FILM. I could go on and on (certainly about the amazingly expressive and fluid graphics) but I'll let viewers enjoy it themselves. If you need a break from horror (if you're reading this thread I assume you may) SEE THIS ONE.
Unregistered(d)	Balance	#11	[-]
Posts: 0 (01/11/03 08:33:10) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	As the drunken brother says in HOLIDAY, the key is balance. I love horror movies, but I think the love has endured because I've made a place in my life for other things. I love to be outside, to be walking, to be with my friends, to meet new people, to go to galleries or to hear music, to read history and science. Absence makes the horror fonder, I guess you could say. I refuse to blanketly demonize mainstream cinema, although I dislike most of what I see that's new (most recently, M. Night Shamaylan's SIGNS and Jonathan Demme's THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE) because the movies spend a lot of time and money on, to me, things that don't matter-- at the expense of things that do. Still, I've enjoyed renting DVDs of CHANGING LANES, BIRTHDAY GIRL and BOOGIE NIGHTS and later today I'll be seeing CATCH ME IF YOU CAN. Conversely, I hated-hated-hated the indie flick SCOTLAND, PA. On a plane recently, I enjoyed the comedy ABOUT A BOY. As for non-horror, a lot of what I've seen lately has been foreign: Agnes Varda's THE GLEANERS AND I, Fassbinder's THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN (also bought FOX AND HIS FRIENDS and THE AMERICAN SOLDIER, realizing how much I'd missed RWF in my life), MY WIFE IS AN ACTRESS; last weekend, my wife and I caught the Scottish film MORVERN CALLAR. I thought MONSTERS, INC. was okay, with some brilliant moments, but like SHREK, I liked the beginning and the end best and I was sort of fidgety for the middle stretch. With my wife out honkeytonkin' last night, I treated myself to a grindhouse double feature of THE ZEBRA KILLER and THE ZODIAC KILLER. It was great. But I might just as easily have rented Rossellini's PAISAN! Everything in balance ... RHS
bobmonel	Re: Balance	#12	[-]
Posts: 2560 (01/11/03 09:31:50) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	With my thousands of fantastic cinema titles I guess I'm WAY out of balance. What I have tried to do is rediscover such favorites as Antonioni's IL GIRDO, FELLINI SATYRICON, THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT and 2001, all of which I got on DVD last year. Right now I'm watching the SWV STARMAN SE 1, a nostaglic treat from my youth. Maybe later I'll watch CONTEMPT of ALPHAVILLE. The best film I saw last year was Raul Ruiz's TIME REGAINED, a glorious DVD of his 1999 adaptation of Proust's masterwork. Contemporary Hollywood mainstream is something I only experience as a social event, to do something with friends. Scorsese and Spielberg are talented but I'd rather see one of the 70s films by them, when you could something interesting and subversive within the mainstream. You can't now, so it doesn't interest me in the least.

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