Hello faithful reader, and hello to those unfaithful ones too (You know who you are) life has got in the way of this here little blog and…well I won’t bore you with the excuses and the reasons, but what’s more important is that we’re here now, ready for the best season of the year.
Reviews
Long live Torgo! In celebration of Manos: The Hands of Fate
Invariably, someone will watch a film and declare it “the worst film ever!” It’s usually hyperbole of course; we say that instead of just saying “I didn’t like it.” A recent contender of the ‘Worst film ever!’ title was The Room, a film made by the auteur Tommy Wiseau. It’s true that The Room is terrible, a completely misguided attempt at a drama from a person who clearly has never had a conversation with someone else before (Wiseau also doesn’t actually look like a person, instead resembling someone who’s half melted in a freak accident). So what happens when you see what is quite possibly the worst film ever unleashed onto an unsuspecting audience?
31 Nights of Frights #2: Paranormal Activity 2
USA: 2010
“Hey! Who left the front door open?”
Sequels are funny things. They’re almost uniformly made for the money, even the good ones. They’re also rigidly formulaic. The general rule of thumb is ‘Whatever worked in the first film, do it again.’. It’s the law of diminishing returns. Really about the only thing a film can do is improve the formula, not change it. So what does Paranormal Activity 2 do? Continue reading
31 Nights of Frights #1: Lake Mungo
Australia: 2008
“Alice kept secrets. She kept the fact that she kept secrets a secret.”
In the wake of The Blair Witch Project there were an immediate glut of releases (Some of which will be coming up I’m sure) that cashed in on the ‘found footage’ craze. While it wasn’t the first film to use that conceit, it’s not hard to argue the case that BWP, as the hip kids called it, effectively gave birth to the genre or at least the genre as it exists today.
These range from good ([Rec]) to mediocre (The St. Francisville Experiment) or just so bad they remain unreleased (The Poughkeepsie Tapes).
So which is Lake Mungo?
Announcing: 31 Nights of Frights
Ok friends lets put aside things like lack of updates and instead focus on what will be coming. Those of you with a calender have probably noticed that today is October 1st, and as has become tradition around these parts, October 1st generally means 31 Nights of Frights. What is it? Well it’s a horror film a day, sometimes more, and all sorts of scary content to get you in the mood for the best time of the year.
I’m going to try and avoid any repeats of previous years, though that’s getting a little harder these days. The first review will be up later today.
P.S. Given the heat in the UK right now, this does not feel like a time to be spooky at all.
Unseen Screen #1: 10 to Midnight
Unseen Screen is where we take a look at those films that no one really knows about. Films that, for good or bad, have flown under the radar.
Today we look at the Charles Bronson serial-killer flick, 10 to Midnight.
The game that came in from the cold: Thoughts about ‘Duke Nukem Forever’.
1997 . It was this year that Princess Diana was killed, James Cameron released Titanic and recent internet laughing stock Rebecca Black was born. It was April that year when 3D Realms announced a follow up to their hit Duke Nukem 3D, a game titled Duke Nukem Forever. It was predicted the game would come out in time for Christmas 1998 and in May of ’98 the game was shown off at Video Game convention E3. The game was built using the Quake II engine, which at the time was the most cutting edge game engine available….at least until a few months later when the Unreal engine was released. Despite showing off the game to journalists and proclaiming their delight with how the game was going, 3D Realms made the sudden announcement that they would be switching to the Unreal engine, effectively starting the game again from scratch.
Then, 14 years later, the game was released.
Some thoughts on X-Men: First Class
Not just one of the best films of the Summer, but the best films of the year; X-Men: First Class offers smart thrills for most of it’s running time, with just a few unfortunate caveats which we’ll get into soon enough. Rest assured though that Matthew Vaughn has created a film that not only distances itself from some unfortunate entries that came before it, but leaves you hungry for more.
I’ll try and keep my views as spoiler-free as possible, but those of you who like knowing nothing about a film might need to skip this entry.
Film Review: Overnight
A review coming up for this just as soon as I put on my overalls…
Night #24: The Funhouse
A review coming up for this just as soon as I take off this Frankenstein mask…
Is This Thing On? 