I watched a really disgusting horror flick called The Ruins recently that I thought would be interesting because of the Yucatan locale and the plot centered around Mayan ruins, but it was way too fucked up. I love a good old fashion bloodbath in the David Cronenberg or John Carpenter vein, but these new school horror movies are much too sadistic & cringeworthy for my blood with all the torture devices and bones breaking. What happened to squibs?

Anyway, it’s October. Time for getting lost in a corn maze, passing out candy to lil monkeys, carving pumpkins, eating more stuff with squash in it and… watching scary movies. Here are five spooky horror films i love that freak me out cerebrally instead of making me want to vomit:

1) Rosemary’s Baby starring Mia Farrow (dir. Roman Polanski 1968)

2) Don’t Look Now starring Donald Sutherland & Julie Christie (dir. Nick Roeg 1973)

3) Hour of The Wolf starring Max Von Sydow & Liv Ullmann (dir. Ingmar Bergman 1968)

4) The Tenant starring Roman Polanski (dir. Roman Polanski 1976)

5) Eyes Without a Face starring Alida Valli (dir. Georges Franju 1960)

Marrying my love of movies and animated gifs, Three Frames is a fantastic tumblr site that publishes one animated gif a day from a classic movie, using only three frames total for an awesome herky-jerky effect. It’s pure genius.

//from Close Encounters of the Third Kind

//from Play Time

One my favorite film noir flicks ever is this relatively obscure one made in 1950 in San Francisco called Woman on the Run. I discovered it by chance and watched a beautifully restored print many years ago during a noir festival at our historic rep movie house, the Castro Theater. It has never been released proper with a good print, which is a crying shame because the film is so suspenseful with an exciting cat & mouse plot, the dialogue razor sharp and the execution is crazy nontraditional in terms of the standard noir formula for the time. Most women in noirs were strong but morally ambiguous & semi-villainous femme fatales that couldn’t be trusted and you could never feel completely good rooting for them without feeling slightly dirty/criminal. Ann Sheridan’s character is not this at all – she is flawed but 100% good, completely coolheaded & guarded at all times, in control, street smart and never once uses her sexuality to influence others, which is seriously weird for this genre.

//Ann Sheridan outfoxing the fuzz in the name of love

Aside from Douglas Sirk films which had hopelessly romantic plots that were sometimes surprisingly sexy and complex addressing issues like racism & class during a very repressed era in US history, it can be harder for me to be engrossed in movies from the 40s and 50s because I cannot relate to them in modern terms. Woman on the Run has a great plot and is something special though, and I love seeing San Francisco streets and locales during this time.

Her alienated & lonely husband witnesses a murder and is on the run (and he is awesome, unrequitedly affectionate, & creative). Her character is, on the surface, cold and seemingly indifferent as a wife and when watching sometimes I think she’s insane for getting into that complacent lull during marriage you always hear married folks complaining about. But it is understandable because he is an escapist dreamer who goes nowhere and she a realist who keeps the house alive. A weird match-up for sure, but interesting and somehow, as a whole, makes for a strange & cosmic balance (the chemistry is really satisfying to watch when they are on screen together). Because of this murder he witnessed and him fleeing from the cops who want him to testify (and risk his life), she is forced awake out of her emotional slumber on this mission to find him because he has a bad heart and needs to get his medicine to him… the possibility of him dying scares her straight. It is really a great film and I highly recommend it if you are into film noir or films set in San Francisco (or both).

This is the same idea as the Cover Versions post, but instead of records in book format it is now movies. Killer

//opening scene in Sam Peckinpah’s violently symphonic western The Wild Bunch

For the record, I personally think Kathryn Bigelow‘s movies so far have been god awful (Point Break & Strange Days, anyone?). And it wasn’t until I looked up her filmography recently that I found out that she was involved with that lame & pretentious Twin Peaks-rip off back in the day on ABC called Wild Palms which starred Jim Belushi. Yeah… JIM BELUSHI! It was so bad that I remember it clearly. One episode appalled me because it wasted use of licensing the Supremes’ Love Child for some second rate David Lynch atmosphere.

Anyway, back to Bigelow. She is one of those women directors who frequently works in genres like horror, action and science-fiction where I think has a lot of meaningful & intellectual potential, but then she always blows it with some cornball heavy-handedness and/or bad casting choices. I would really, really love for a woman director to achieve commercial success in approaching these typically male dominated genres with a feminine hand. it would be inherently more interesting/engrossing, not to mention make the studios tons of money by appealing to the other demographic.

That said, her Top 10 Favorite Action Sequences list recently is so on point and inspiring. Her list reminded me that the sniper scene in Full Metal Jacket = instant anxiety attack for me. Holy crap, I get goosebumps just thinking about it, that’s how powerful it is. And The Wild Bunch scene is one of many big reasons why I felt compelled to buy that Sam Peckinpah shirt at Lost Weekend Video. She knows her stuff and the trailer for this new Iraq movie is fooling me into thinking this may be her first really good movie, even with that terrible terrible name.

Anyway, i may need to come up with random lists of my own as I have a compulsion where I like taking random shots of things that appear on my tv screen. Here’s a sampling. Don’t even try to make sense of it, it’s more poetic out of context:

I had no idea they were making a movie out of this.

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis from Dirty Three on music score too.

Just picked up two film nerd limited run shirts Maria Forde drew for my local video store for $12 each. She rules and I’ve talked about how much she rules here before.

Herzog/Kinski

Sam Peckinpah

Christ, I’m almost 30 and I bought a Barbie. My first barbie, mind you because we could never afford it growing up. Anyway, this one is special because it’s from one of my favorite movies

and it’s 100% real. Hitchcock and The Birds is a pretty odd and amazing choice for a Barbie but so perfect. Melanie Daniels, the San Francisco socialite character in The Birds is kind of an unlikeable beauty who always gets her way. She’s smug, bored and rich and eventually gets comeuppance for a life of complacency in the form of massive bird peckage when she leaves the comforts of her stomping grounds.

i am on a losing streak when it comes to rentals this week. first this boring and predictable thriller called Fracture and then this sci-fi dystopian action flick called Equilibrium.

(8:25:56 AM) audrey: i watched equilibrium last night, that movie was mega corny
(8:26:09 AM) audrey: last time i listen to you
(10:40:45 AM) woo: i didnt say it was classic
(10:46:12 AM) audrey: That part where Christian Bale risks his life to save a puppy because it licked his face is so corny
(10:46:33 AM) audrey: You just like movies where puppies are protected by futuristic machine gun toting martial arts freaks
(11:03:20 AM) woo: maybe true
(11:06:05 AM) woo: watch big rig
(11:06:10 AM) audrey: NO
(11:06:13 AM) woo: yes
(11:06:14 AM) audrey: i’m not listening to you anymore
(11:06:19 AM) woo: shut your face
(11:07:02 AM) woo: you would have watched equilibrium eventually anyway
(11:07:15 AM) audrey: no i wouldn’t, it got lousy reviews
(11:07:15 AM) woo: you wish christian bale would come to your house and yell at you

sorry for the language, but it’s the only way i can describe this scene from nick cage’s latest movie, Bangkok Dangerous (shouldn’t it be called Bangkok IS Dangerous?)

first cage beats up women and terrorizes kids in the wicker man remake and now he’s in a movie where he beats up and severs asians. i wonder what he is going to beat up in his next movie. it’s probably going to be sea otters or something random. he’s running out of things to beat up.

i watched this Sabbath dvd last nite and this part had me in stitches

Geezer for President

guess i’m really disconnected from my catholic heritage because it’s been at least a decade & 1/2 since my moms last badgered me about mass attendance and/or important catholic-related holidays that i must celebrate to avoid eternal damnation. so, i forgot how fun easter can be! i didn’t know until today, but the washington post has a peeps diorama contest. pretty fun me thinks. the birds one is killer – i loved that they used the boat scene. hitchcock & bodega bay forever. seriously, this scene looks like a scene i would enjoy eating.

i saw an american werewolf in london when i was really young and just watched it again. it was a lot more funny, entertaining & gorey than i remembered, almost in an evil dead way.

i think i have a crush on griffin dunne circa early-80s now.
yeah, that griffin dunne. the guy who chased madonna around in a 1 1/2 star movie and starred in a movie where he talks to his manhood for advice about career decisions. yeah, the guy that was named after a virile mythical greek beast. i’m grossed out by it too.

finally got around to making that Slap Shot fan-art T i said i would a month or 2 back. it’s a little messed up since i used iron-on transfer but i’m gonna make a better one in the near future and hopefully find a tomboy nerd who can appreciate a hilarious & subversive dudestravagent violent hockey flick from the 70s, give it to her and make her day. excuse the mediocre pic, young took it.

i thought i was strange for taking pictures of things that appear on my tv, but this person’s set takes it to the next level. some of these screen shots are familiar to me, but taken out of context with the kodak duaflex makes them seem far more mysterious and classic than they are.

stupid young. i watched all of those jason bourne movies for the first time this past week and got really into it and what did he do? this:

just because in theory i think it’s cool to be able to get a eurothug in a chokehold while cussing him out in french/russian/german/italian or spanish, it does NOT mean i want to marry MOR matt damon.

I caught Katie’s cold that made her sound like Demi Moore, except when i woke up this morning i sounded like Lucille Ball in her 60s. i kinda like it. Having this somewhat androgynous raspy voice makes me want to record myself talking shit and/or making threats like some kind of She-Serg and use it on a mix.

it’s rainy and windy as f*** outside. tonight i’m going to be inside spending some quality time with two of my favorite comforting things

if you want to see a This is Spinal Tap kinda film but with real idiots, I highly recommend that Metallica documentary Some Kind of Monster. Those guys come off so dense it’s unreal. here is a stupid but true summary I put together when it came out if you want to know what it’s about.

jesus christ, i want this on a shirt or my wall so bad.

if you know what movie this is from then we should be friends.

i don’t know why but i was searching for a screenshot from the final blues brothers car chase scene and came across this madness

i can’t believe somebody broke down that scene in terms of physics.