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Episode 009 - Remember Remember
8 Plays1 year ago
In this episode we discuss recent viewing including Guillermo Del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities and Martin McDonagh's The Banshees of Inisherin as well as looking back on our Halloween horror series.
Sifting through decades’ worth of mass media consumption, my friend and fellow cinemaphile Scrumpy joins me in discussions on film from the low to high brow
CREDITS:
Intro clip from James McTeigue's film adaptation of "V for Vendetta" (2005) from Silver Pictures, Virtual Studios, Studio Babelsberg, DC Vertigo Comics, Anarchos Productions Inc (distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures)
Sifting through decades’ worth of mass media consumption, my friend and fellow cinemaphile Scrumpy joins me in discussions on film from the low to high brow
Opening music: https://pixabay.com/music/id-116199/
Closing music: https://pixabay.com/music/id-11176/
Two Oceans is a creation of Siouxfire & Scrumpy in association with SiouxWIRE
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Two Oceans Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
The oceans.
00:00:24
Speaker
Remember, remember, the 5th of November, the Gunpowder Treason and Plot. I know of no reason why the Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot. First, the Overtiller.
00:00:49
Speaker
Welcome to the Two Oceans podcast.
Recent Viewing Experiences
00:00:52
Speaker
Myself, Sue Fire, along with my friend and rebellious colleague, Scrumpey, discuss film and other media through a decades-long lens of mass media consumption. In this episode, we'll be talking about our recent viewing, including Guillermo Dottoro's Cabinet of Curiosities and Martin McDonough's The Banshees of Inashiren, as well as looking back at our Halloween marathon and what we've learned.
00:01:13
Speaker
This is the Two Oceans podcast, so throw some chum into the water and get a bigger boat as we begin episode 9.
00:01:28
Speaker
So we begin. Very appropriate for the date. Well done. Should have planned it ahead of time. We should have been doing an episode on political movies. Well, it's also, someone pointed out, I believe it's the date on the newspaper that Marty checks in the first back of the future movie. When he goes back to 55, it's November 5th.
00:01:53
Speaker
Oh, good one. Good one. That's interesting. Yeah, the one pine and two pine small. Right. Exactly. The joke everyone seems to miss. Anyway, sorry. Do you manage to watch much this week? I watched a couple. I finished out three more and then a couple more things on it. So we
00:02:19
Speaker
went in with the the hocus pocus 2 because we
00:02:23
Speaker
I just basically held off until last year to finally watch the first one, which came out, what,
Hocus Pocus 2 Discussion
00:02:30
Speaker
93? I want to say something like that. I haven't seen either of them yet. And, you know, it's what you expect, but it's not bad. I mean, it's, it's harmless. It's, it is, I would say, you know, that whole horror adjacent kind of thing, because, you know, you are dealing with witches. They do act as witches. You know, it's kind of goofy and obviously I'm very Disneyfied, but at the same way,
00:02:53
Speaker
fun stuff in it. And the other thing I liked about it, so the sequel is just pretty much like the first one, just pointing out some new, you know, obviously a lot of things have changed in the interim. So they're learning along, you know, it's just kind of that comedic thing of anachronism. The other thing I liked is that Doug Jones, they let him speak because
00:03:13
Speaker
Back in the 90s, he never spoke. He was just always the physical skinny actor. And now, thanks to what we do in the Shadows TV show and other roles, they've learned like, oh, he can talk. And he can actually act. Well, we even got to see his face in this last series. Right. So that was kind of nice, his character. Because in the first movie, one of the witches had sewn his mouth shut.
00:03:41
Speaker
And so he just had to close. But by the end of it, it got open. So now in this iteration, he was able to speak. So that was just a nice touch. But it's almost as fun. Now it doesn't shut? Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of like the first iteration at Deadpool. Right. Oh, let's not talk about that. Yeah. Well, I've had a mixed bag of movies this week.
Film Review: Banshees of Inisherin
00:04:06
Speaker
So some of them were good.
00:04:08
Speaker
Some of them not so good. So last Sunday, I went to the cinema and I saw Ben Cheese of Inishiran with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleason, basically the same crew that did In Bruges. In Bruges.
00:04:26
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, so this is this is basically the follow up or the second and a proposed trilogy of movies with those two. But it was it was really good. It sounds really heavy. It's like a deep philosophical kind of existential kind of movie with with with really good humor in it.
00:04:47
Speaker
Um, and it's set in this isolated, uh, Island in Ireland during 1923, when the civil war is kind of ongoing in the mainland. Um, but it's terrific. It's really good. I, I, I, I think it's probably the best movie I've seen this year. Yeah. Let's
Thoughts on Eve's Bayou
00:05:08
Speaker
see. You also got, uh, finally watched Eve's Bayou.
00:05:13
Speaker
which had been on a lot of lists. It popped up really in the horror and war at the documentary. It was on shutter for black or basically. And so finally, finally got around to watching that. I've not seen it. How was it? It's good. You know, it's it's, you know, the term that keeps coming up, if you look at reviews on these, confident, it's very assured of itself.
00:05:41
Speaker
and just kind of comes out of nowhere. It's just a very small little movie and it's much more though in the vein of like Southern Gothic or much more than the outright or any other kind of more psychological or thriller almost, but not quite. And so it's Samuel Jackson is the father and a very young Jurnee Smollet
00:06:05
Speaker
I always say her name, the girl from Lovecraft Country. Yeah, yeah. She's the lead and she does excellent job. She was really good in Lovecraft Country. Yes. Yes. She's good in everything I've seen her in so far as well. But also directed by a woman, Casey Lemons, who's done a few other things and is an actress as well. I recognized her as an actress, more so than a director when I saw the name.
00:06:36
Speaker
But it was good. It was just, you know, again, it was expecting more of this horror and it is kind of touching into that. But again, the way a Southern Gothic horror does, you know, touching and being in the black community, it touches more into voodoo.
00:06:52
Speaker
and being in the swamps of Louisiana. Louisiana. Yeah. Yeah. So, but it doesn't vary. It's not really exploitative. It doesn't feel out of place. It feels just very, everything feels very assured of itself. Very, very established. It's a very well structured little thing. So yeah, it's very much well worth it. It's very, it's very well done.
00:07:13
Speaker
On the flip side of that, I watched another movie from a woman director, just watched it this morning from Zann Cassavetes.
Critique: Kiss of the Damned
00:07:27
Speaker
And yes, she is the daughter of Cassavetes, John Cassavetes and Gina Rollins.
00:07:36
Speaker
um and it's called kiss of the damned and it was one of these that uh kept cropping up on lists of horror movies that you might have not seen kind of thing and so I check that out it's a vampire movie it's good it's kind of patchy but it it had a lot of potential there there's a leading man in it that
00:08:02
Speaker
is probably the only weak performance in the whole movie. And it's a real shame because as they kind of drag drags it down a little bit. But yeah, some interesting ideas in there. Nothing new. It's done pretty well, kind of closer. Again, it's it's it probably is like more Southern Gothic interview, the vampire type tone to it. But yeah, that was all right. That was all right.
00:08:26
Speaker
Nice. But yeah, not great. You have to go out of your way for it.
Remakes: Living and Suspiria
00:08:33
Speaker
The thing is this this week, I've seen some really, really good movies. So I saw a band she's in this year and I got to see Oliver Hermanus's Living with Bill Nighy.
00:08:45
Speaker
which is the Akira remake. Yeah. And if the script was from Kazuo Shiguro, but it was very good because it was something it follows the same structure as the original, obviously set in 1950s.
00:09:06
Speaker
London, but it has its own soul to it. It's it's it's it's really good. And I was I went in just expecting to tear it apart. You know, like, why, why do this point, you know? But I would think that they feel like two, two different movies.
00:09:28
Speaker
which is such a great thing because I did see another remake this week that didn't make me very happy, which was Suspiria's remake from 2018. So I watched that and I think it could have been a lot better.
00:09:50
Speaker
And there were certain things that, I wish it stopped trying to be so loyal to the original at times. Do you know what I mean? And I was like, just break away. Just go for it. Just go for it. And I think they tried to add these layers of the politics in Germany at this time with the terrorists and all this.
00:10:16
Speaker
which I thought was interesting, but the second I started getting interested in it, it sort of went back to what the old film was, but it didn't sort of weave it in very well. Yeah, it was kind of a funny one. It was kind of an odd one. Oh, actually, I will say the performances across the board are really, really good, except the lead. I could not stand her. You didn't like her, no.
00:10:42
Speaker
No, no, no, no, no, did not, did not enjoy that performance at all. And then, uh, I'm just curious what, cause I liked it and I thought her performance actually pretty good just because I was holding up as a mirror though, to the original and the original to me is grotesquely overrated. I just got to say that about Suspiria.
00:11:02
Speaker
Everybody's like, but it looks so cool in the soundtrack. I'm like, yeah, get past that. And the ending is weird. I thought they fixed the story in this one in a way. I will agree with you that it feels like it kind of gets distracted by the political intrigue or
00:11:22
Speaker
sort of trying to tie that in. I mean, I get why, but it's just like, you could have done without that. But by the same token, I really enjoyed the holding up versus the gal in the original who was fine, but she was just so...
00:11:38
Speaker
It just seemed very much more, she seemed much more like, it's a lot of my problems with Ariento's stuff, of how exploited his female character seemed to be, like, victimized. Not just in the movie, but by the movie, if that makes sense.
00:11:57
Speaker
Yeah, I know what you mean. And this one seemed the inverse of that. This seemed like a mirror, like it starts that way and then it becomes something else. I think one of my problems, because in some ways I sort of think it's not fair to compare the two, but sometimes when they get too close, you can't help but do it.
00:12:17
Speaker
And I remember seeing an analysis of the first Suspiria. And what they were talking about was visual storytelling. And there's a sequence at the beginning where she arrives at the airport and gets into a taxi. And that's all that happens. There's no dialogue, nothing. But through the sound and the images,
00:12:41
Speaker
it tells you there are witches, something bad is happening. She doesn't have a clue. And all this stuff that kind of reminded me of stuff like, you know, the visual storytelling that Tartakovsky, you know, the animator does in like Samurai Jack.
00:13:05
Speaker
and primal and all this and and i quite enjoyed that the new movie has a completely different look so so so that was fine but i think sometimes there was a bit a bit too much explanation of things like i um i think i think even just sort of saying witches all the time you know
00:13:22
Speaker
It's like, yeah, okay. Right. I think it would have been better if you weren't sure because there was something that the sort of old man character says, which Tilda Swinton Jesus. Unbelievable makeup there. And the old man kind of says, you know,
00:13:43
Speaker
they might believe that they're witches. They might be using the idea to kind of push things forward. And it sort of planted this doubt until until you got to the last act of the movie and then and everything seemed to kind of revert back.
00:13:59
Speaker
to the original in tone, which just kind of felt a little bit weird to me. But like I
Upcoming Horror: Evil Dead Rise
00:14:07
Speaker
said, there's so much I enjoyed about it at the same time. But then I didn't quite buy
00:14:15
Speaker
especially Dakota Johnson's in the finale. I think she was really good all the way up to when she was expected to do something else. And I was like, No, I don't I don't I don't buy it. It just didn't kind of sink in with me. But yeah, yeah, it's I mean, we can do a whole episode around and remakes because it's quite interesting. Yeah. Yeah.
00:14:37
Speaker
Oh, and speaking of in horror news, while I remember this, there's a new Evil Dead coming up, Evil Dead Rise. Yeah, a series of the remake of
00:14:49
Speaker
What was that 10 years ago now? It doesn't I mean, it doesn't it doesn't sound like it's a direct sequel to that. Right. OK. And I the director created a movie and the only other movies ever done is called The Hole in the Ground, which I'd seen. And it is a terrific horror movie. Really good. And if the tone of this new evil dead matches what was in The Hole in the Ground, we're in for a treat.
00:15:19
Speaker
Because the synopsis is that it's completely new characters. This character and her older sister who are like raising three kids in their own in a cramped apartment. The sisters are just reunited, but then they discover a mysterious book.
00:15:41
Speaker
And then all hell breaks loose. And you know what? This is a Necronomicon, isn't it? And yeah, it and that's all they've told about it. But but if you haven't seen the hole in the ground, it is it's set in Ireland. It's this this woman and her kid move out to this country house. And there is a great whopping hole in the ground in the middle of the forest.
00:16:11
Speaker
And that's all you need to know. That's it. That's it. But it's good. It's good. The atmosphere is terrific. Did you see anything else this week? The only other one I saw was Dream Demon.
00:16:27
Speaker
Finally got a chance to, it's a British film, late 80s, the Gemma Redgrave and a great Kathleen Willoweet and a nice little role from Timothy Spall in there as well. Oh, nice, nice. She's, Redgrave's a young woman.
00:16:48
Speaker
and she starts having these terrible dreams about that she's marrying a he's a war hero for them it's a falcon's war hero do and
00:16:59
Speaker
it seems fairy tale and Timothy Spall another guy or the journos that keep relentlessly creepily following her and becoming more invasive such too but the dreams are very uh uh shocking that she's having about uh things happening and things going sideways and then she meets Kathleen Willowood uh which uh i'm probably butchering her last name apologies but um if you're sorry you know where you you know what you see she had the
00:17:24
Speaker
Uh, she kind of looked like this little punk rock chick from the eighties, but she was in everything. Then you're like, you see her and she kind of has a rough voice.
00:17:33
Speaker
as well, you're like, oh yeah, that's her kind of thing. But she's just randomly there and she's somehow drawn to the house that this gal's living in and her fiance's always away. So the two of them strike up a friendship and it becomes much more than that as the story unfolds without spoiling it. The two become really linked, but then the gal's dreams start to take on a manifestation of physical.
00:18:00
Speaker
manifestation as well, which is, uh, uh, unexpected and it, you know, it's good. It's, it's not great. There's a little uneven, uh, but it is well done and it is in that vein of British or it wouldn't be outside of a, you know, hammer wasn't making movies at the time. I don't think so, but it wasn't out of line of what, uh, what they were doing or something they would make in that line.
00:18:24
Speaker
And it was directed by, looked up Harley Cokeless, who just did a bunch of sort of similar stuff, medium range kind of stuff. But he was also second unit on Empire Strikes Back. And he was the fake shimp in Army of Darkness. The fake shimp.
00:18:46
Speaker
I was like, that's awesome. They're hard to come across those. You know, they're really fake, not real. Second
Denis Villeneuve's Enemy
00:18:58
Speaker
-rate chimp. Exactly. Amazing. Amazing. Let's see, what else did I watch this week? I also watched Denis Villeneuve's Enemy, which I hadn't seen.
00:19:11
Speaker
I really enjoyed that. I thought that was really good with Jake Gyllenhaal and- Jiggy, Jiggy, Jiggy, Jiggle Hall. It looks like someone leaned over their keyboard while typing. No, that's Jamal, Jamal, Jamal, Jamal. Yeah. M Night. And then it has Sarah Gedan in it who is in Black Bear a couple of years back. But did you see enemy by any chance?
00:19:40
Speaker
I did not. I'm familiar with it, but I did not see it yet. It is a solid, solid movie because if he came out of the gates with that movie, then
00:19:53
Speaker
It's no surprise he's got to where he is now. It is a kind of surreal story. And it's basically kind of talking about commitment, love, identity, temptation. And I keep using this word over and over again about a lot of the movies I watch. It must have something to do with me, but it is quite Kafkaesque as well. And
00:20:18
Speaker
It is based on a novel called The Double, but not the Russian novel, but a Spanish relatively modern novel. But it has, and this isn't spoiling anything, one of the most best surprising endings I have had in a really long time.
00:20:44
Speaker
And where where where it it it it really hit me. And when the credits were scrolling up, I was just like, wow. Wow. Wow. That was fantastic. So it's pretty short as well. It's it's it's around 90 minutes. I think that's another problem that I had with Suspiria as well, because that was a long movie, like when it goes on for a while.
00:21:14
Speaker
And yeah, didn't really watch. Oh, OK. The only other thing I watched this week that was horror related is I went back to revisit Tetsuo, the Iron Man, which I hadn't seen in probably since it came out. Uh huh. And now that movie is really short. That's like an hour. Yeah. But you don't want an hour that we are. What an hour is just a complete.
00:21:42
Speaker
freaking roller coaster that movie and it still holds up. Oh, actually, I didn't even put this in the notes. I think I tried to bury it, but I also rewatched Signal, which was another one of those sort of Japanese horrors that came out early 2000s.
00:21:59
Speaker
That did not hold up at all. No, no, no doesn't doesn't work anywhere doesn't does not work at all it was And again, it's one of these movies. That's two hours and some change and It it it it has like two sequences that I that I I remember really loving I still like them they're the really really good horror sequences
00:22:24
Speaker
But the rest of the movie, man, I mean, in characters just talking to each other and trying to theorize about what's going on. And it's like. So in your face, it's like I'm trying to think about this myself and you're trying to give me all the answers on here. I don't want them. Just just show me. But yeah, Tetsuo, the Iron Man. Yeah, that still stands up that that that is just such a trip. Indeed.
Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities
00:22:52
Speaker
Television as well. Yeah, let's say television was the other thing. We've almost finished the latest Flanagan entry, the Midnight Club.
00:23:03
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And it's all right so far. It's not the heights of Midnight Mass, unfortunately. But it ranks right in the middle, I would say, of a Netflix series. So it's still worth watching, right? I did see a video of a conversation between Guillermo Di Toro and him.
00:23:22
Speaker
talking about cabinet of curiosities and midnight mass, which was quite interesting because they were asking each other, you know, what scared them the most as kids. And it was quite interesting. It's good. But yeah, and that's a segue then to the other one, which is the cabinet of curiosities. Have you finished it? Yes. I thought it's one of the best anthology series I've seen in a long time.
00:23:49
Speaker
It was quite good. It was obviously some better than others. I think it got better as it went along, especially I would consider the final episode, the one Jennifer Kent directed, the Babadook director, as the best one. Just because the others all felt like they were trying to, the others, you know, there were a couple really good like the Pittman's model and
00:24:17
Speaker
autopsy. Both outstanding. Those are standouts for me as well. But they felt like they were trying to be del Toro. It all kind of felt up to that point, up until that final episode from Kent, they all felt like they were trying to be del Toro stories. Like, it makes sense, right? He's like, okay, you could see his hand on him. And last one looks like she was like, nope, I got my own. I got this.
00:24:41
Speaker
and created something and a much you know it's a different uh a much different um ghost story that yeah i think that the changes she makes and the the thing of the risk she dared on it all pay off all work really well you've got a great lead character who's
00:25:03
Speaker
simultaneously sympathetic and unsympathetic, but as she's processing her grief or not, and a husband who's trying to do it with her or for her, and how you get through grief, it's just so much more complex, emotionally layered and structured, and the way it ends, the way they tell the story, the way they interact with the ghosts kind of thing, rather than just being scared.
00:25:30
Speaker
without spoiling too much is just really, I mean, it was it was a nice bridge. I mean, it was very, very smart, very mature. I'll go back to that term, confident, assured of itself, like right from the get go, because you're like, how are you making a movie about a horror story about bird watchers? And she does quite well. And I mean, and I didn't even realize until after the episode that that was Andrew Lincoln
00:26:00
Speaker
in the answer. Just did not recognize him at all. And it's not as if they caked him in makeup or anything. It's such a weird performance to what we're used to. I'm glad you said that about the murmuring because I remember when I got to the end and I watched that and I really enjoyed it.
00:26:20
Speaker
I sort of started thinking about what some of the fanboys might think of that episode. Oh, I'm sure they would hate it. But like the Babadook, you know, they also. Right. Yeah. They're like, that kid's the most annoying kid ever. I'm like, let me show you House by the Cemetery.
00:26:36
Speaker
If you want to see an annoying child in a movie. Well, this is the other thing. And we mentioned this before. Del Toro don't give a shit about kids. Like he's the equal opportunities. Yeah, exactly. Actually, there are sort of other standouts in the series that aren't like entire because I think all the episodes were solid. Like I
00:27:03
Speaker
just good, solid episodes. But some of the episodes had some standout elements to them, either the way that they filmed it or some of the creature work that was done in it. Like Dreams in the Witch House, that is probably one of the best witches I've seen on the screen. That was fantastic. So good. And what was the...
00:27:31
Speaker
I'm trying to remember the episode before the murmuring. Wasn't it that one? Yeah. Wasn't it Dreams or what else or was it? Oh, that's the other thing. When they did the adaptation and Pikmin's model and Dreams and the Witch House, which are both HP Lovecraft, they changed the story quite a lot. Like they expanded on the story. And so.
00:28:01
Speaker
Oh, man, I tell you what, I talking about endings that surprised me. I haven't been surprised on a TV show ending, certainly not in an anthology series as much as one of those episodes that we've been talking about. And I think, you know, which one I'm referring to.
00:28:20
Speaker
where it got to the end of the credits roll and I was like, what? Wow. Wow. That is really good. That is dark, but that's really good. The viewing, the Cosmodos empty entry was the one before the murdering.
00:28:41
Speaker
Right. Right. Which was all like, you know, my wife said it best. Oh, yes. And I was, I shared the same thing with her. I kind of warned her going in. I'm like, he likes visuals. He likes style. You know, is stuff's worth watching? But then at the end, you're like, what the hell just happened?
00:29:00
Speaker
And this one was like, not much different because it's like, get into the goddamn room to get the monster. Like, come on, go. Why do you spend like, like, it's like, you know, it's almost an hour and a half long and 75 minutes of that is them talking. Like, move along.
00:29:19
Speaker
But yeah, I completely agree with that. But when it got to those last frames, again, another conclusion that I thought was really good. And just that image at
Appreciation for Saloum
00:29:32
Speaker
the end, it felt like reading the last panel of a really good Alan Moore story.
00:29:39
Speaker
It was just like, because it left it open. It didn't explain what happens next, but you know what ain't going to be good. Well, it's his late 70s, early 80s style and that ending matches late 70s, early 80s sci-fi horror films, right? That were just like, oh, that's bleak. Oh. Yeah. And you have Peter Weller in there as well, which was he's quite good to see him. It's been a little bit.
00:30:08
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And kind of going back to what I watched just before this episode, Saloom.
00:30:17
Speaker
which you'd already seen, we haven't really discussed in detail. I just thought that was, I mean, I thought it was really solid, but what really impressed me was how attached I became to the characters and how pulled in I was, because that's another thing where like in the Suspiria remake, I got maybe a half hour in and I was like, I was thinking,
00:30:42
Speaker
I don't like any of these people. I do not care. I don't care. I mean, it might be kind of like the beginning of Alien, all those working class people kind of moaning about being woken up and, you know, they better get their bonus kind of thing instantly attached to them. And it was kind of a similar thing with Saloom as well, where it was quite down to earth what their issues were.
00:31:08
Speaker
um whereas it's kind of hard to get connected to people who are in a privileged position you know like oh my gosh they might not they might not be able to do the dance routine that they they want to do gosh that must be tough you know it's it's not it's it's it's more difficult to kind of kind of hook you in uh kind of thing but yeah I
00:31:29
Speaker
saloon, man. You knew that these guys knew each other for a long time. And then even the people that they met in the village that they went to, the Valbab village, I found them all interesting as well, you know, almost from the get-go. And I'm not quite sure how he did it, but I'm really kind of looking forward to what he directs next because, yeah, that was really interesting.
00:31:57
Speaker
Yeah. And, uh, yeah. And a good, good monster on suspect, uh, you know, unsuspected. Yeah. Like, Oh, you're going to do, okay, sweet. And, uh, and yeah, same with the ending, uh, on that too. Like, Oh, this is, this is where we're going to go with this. Cool. Okay. Yeah. He's, uh, he's actually not directed anything else. There, there isn't another one. Uh, that, that was his, is it a premier, um,
00:32:28
Speaker
full length movie. So, gosh, interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of potential. Yeah. We're keeping an eye on.
00:32:42
Speaker
Agreed. And let's see. So did I drop anything else off? No, I think that pretty much does it. So Cabinet of Curiosities. Yeah, that was that was that was great. Also watched all of the short episodes for Tales of the Jedi from Dave Filoni.
00:33:03
Speaker
Oh, nice. Did you have you seen those? Oh, yes. Oh, I really enjoyed them all. It was either great or superb. Yeah, right. And and they did so much in those like 15 minute bites that it didn't feel like 15 minutes. I still wanted more when it got to the end, but yeah, really, really enjoyed that.
00:33:33
Speaker
And then obviously been keeping on top of Andor as well from Tony Gilroy. Oh, yes. Yeah, that's been just consistently awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Rogue One was pretty much a war movie and
00:33:53
Speaker
This is, this is kind of taking it, you know, uh, in a little bit more depth, uh, sort of more political intrigue war movie. Um, but yeah, really looking forward to seeing where they, they ended in the first series. It's, uh, you know, it's an interesting thing with those two kind of looking at, you know, since Filoni is the guy now, right? He's the creative overseeing all this and what, what gets out there, what gets put out there.
00:34:19
Speaker
And it's kind of like, it's an interesting thing of how he's kind of repositioning the universe to move on from the Skywalker saga, move away from it. It's like, it's been done. So not doing any disrespect, but we don't, it doesn't need to be done. We've done it. We've done a lot of it here. This is a rich, you know, varied place that can, that can have all these other stories. So let's, let's explore that.
00:34:47
Speaker
and you're daring to set that up. Yeah I mean it's it's so broad because as that that was when we originally went to go see the original trilogy it hinted at how big this universe is right without explaining it without explaining it George and
00:35:10
Speaker
you know, you didn't know where they're going to go next. It's like, Oh my gosh, they're in an asteroid field. Where are they going to go now? Oh, my city in the clouds. Wow. Inside, inside of me, you know, one of the asteroids instead of a creature, you know, you didn't know what was going to happen next. And I love that kind of road movie feel.
00:35:25
Speaker
to especially Empire Strikes Back where you thought, what kind of wonder are we going to see next? And it was that kind of wonder that you had as a kid watching The Wizard of Oz where you're like, what's the next thing they're going to come across on this crazy road? And it just started getting restrictive because as they kept going back to the original, which was a really cowardly thing to do,
Star Wars Universe Expansion
00:35:48
Speaker
And now it just feels so big and epic and there's so many, and actually just one thing I want to point out on the tales of the Jedi, those short features that they pulled together,
00:36:04
Speaker
The music on it is clearly inspired by traditional Japanese kabuki music, and it is fantastic. It doesn't sound anything like the original. If you would have asked me 15 years ago, it's like, oh, no, it's always got to have the Star Wars music, otherwise it's not Star Wars. But it's still Star Wars. I think Mandalorian managed to open up the music quite a bit more as well.
00:36:33
Speaker
Exactly, and it's not that and he wasn't so much then, I don't think, or maybe it was just because I was younger or something, but the, you know, the Williams score is, well, iconic, you know, like that, you know, it's, they typically do that thing that I hate of telling you how to feel.
00:36:52
Speaker
Right. With Spielberg would use, Spielberg used very exclusively much more than Lucas, I think, as part of my issue with it, but it's just like, it really irritates me.
00:37:06
Speaker
It's like, I don't need you to tell me how to feel, like let me feel whatever I want to feel. I mean, I mean, that's what I like about a lot of William's stuff is it, it, it, it, it sort of enhances what you already feel, you know, when it's, when it's at its best. Um, instead of like being a signal that, Hey, Q in the tears here, I'm for you to be sad, you know, um,
Horror's Mainstream Acceptance
00:37:32
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, a lot of it was fairly neutral because you had various themes for different characters and you'd get those little riffs when they appeared, you know, the most famous ones being around like Vader, you know. But yeah, no, really, really kind of enjoying where that's all going.
00:37:52
Speaker
Um, right. So, um, let's move on to, uh, what did we learn from our Halloween horror marathon? How are we better people because of this experiment?
00:38:06
Speaker
Taking a few notes down, I mean, one of the things I've realized, and this is not deep at all, it's how many horror movies I haven't seen, which surprises me because I have seen a lot of horror movies. I've seen a lot of garbage too.
00:38:28
Speaker
Well, that's the thing. And then you go to these lists saying, actually, and I will say this, I think both of us have probably seen a majority of the films, if not all, of anything that the mainstream press puts out saying, the 10 movies you need to see before you die. It's like, yeah. I've already seen those. But some of these other places, like with Shutter and things,
00:38:55
Speaker
where they probably have a, well, they definitely have a broader understanding of the genre, that they're throwing things up that I've not heard of before. So I've spent a lot of time watching older movies during this the past few weeks. Yep. Yeah, I did my count. I did 26 movies, but only three of them were ones I'd seen previously.
00:39:19
Speaker
That's good. And that was a mix of old and by old, I mean I'm talking 50.
00:39:27
Speaker
plus years potentially for 40 to 50 years old as well as, uh, then, uh, stuff, you know, very recent, you know, even up to like barbarian and such that's coming out during this month. That, that was a good one. That was, oh yeah, that was so good. So good. Um, but that's the thing too, kind of seeing like, you know, understanding like, uh, cause again, there's a lot of folks out there that are like, Oh, well the, uh,
00:39:55
Speaker
Uh, you know, the, the eighties were the best genre for horror. I'm like, well, no, because when I talked about that, a lot of crap, that was the eighties. There was a lot of garbage that you would get it because you'd go to the video store and you'd like, that box looks neat. That box art looks cool. Right. Right. And you'd grab it and you'd regret it after that. It was like, I don't, I'm not getting that time back. Um, yeah.
00:40:20
Speaker
And the fact that there's a joke about, one of the ones I watched was the Scream remake that came out earlier this year, which was excellent. And they're talking about sequels and remakes and elevated horror in it.
00:40:37
Speaker
And, you know, not everything has to be elevated, you know, it's going to be in the joke. And it's like, that's true. And, you know, that's also a quote from Jordan Steele saying he's like, you know, he's like, I don't intend to make elevated horror. I'm just telling the stories. Yeah. Yeah. Which, you know, OK, sure. Yeah. You know, he's pulling the Hitchcock thing, right? Hitchcock said his movies were just about what was on the screen, never about what
00:41:03
Speaker
the subtext everyone was reading into him. It's like, really? Dude, you can, okay, fine. Well, I don't like it when directors actually tell you what the subtext is. Right. David Lynch is really good about that. He asked him any question and he was like, I'm not answering that. Yeah. No, that's his answer. I think that's the right way to do it because everybody can put their own interpretation on it, which is better. Yeah.
00:41:32
Speaker
So yeah, there's a lot of good stuff going on now.
Horror Films as Societal Metaphors
00:41:36
Speaker
And yeah, some of it is elevated. Some of it is very meta in its reflections and playing with old genres and commenting on them and updating without. But I haven't seen it as like, oh, we're
00:41:50
Speaker
You know you could say it with your with the Suspiria remake it'd be like oh, we're totally breaking with it And here's how let's show you the elements from the original and then here's what we're doing with them You know you could take that could read that I think I film that way almost intentional in In doing that versus some they're just like no we're still just horror is just another genre that we can explore and there's a lot to horror That
00:42:20
Speaker
That is what allows for multiple voices.
00:42:28
Speaker
and multiple types of stories to be told, you know, like something like She Will can stand up against, you know, Terrifier 2 or Barbarian. And it's like, yeah, they're horror movies. They're still legit horror movies. I mean, you could still defend them as such. Well, that's what I also had down was that I think something that I hadn't I kind of had an idea, but I didn't quite know how deep the waters were. But the variety in the genre, you know, from like
00:42:55
Speaker
You just pointed out like from horror drama to splatter punk to mashups with other genres as well. Yeah, there's a lot. I mean, there's no limit, really, is there? You know,
00:43:12
Speaker
it is a varied flock at the Church of Horror. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, I guess, main thing is like, it's doing fine, it's alive and well.
00:43:30
Speaker
It's probably as successful as it's ever been. I think the only, probably the last hurdle that's left really is to be taken more seriously in the awards. So you mentioned sort of the Babadook. My gosh, thinking about the performances in that movie and how there were no nominations off the back of that movie is,
00:43:58
Speaker
you know, if it were any other genre, you know, there'd be nominations there, wouldn't there? And it's even worse than comedy because it doesn't even have its own category, right?
00:44:15
Speaker
it is completely out in the cold. So, you know, you might be able to get some special effects or costume and things like this, but, you know, nothing for the sort of horror actors unless you are, I mean, even Jack Nicholson and the Shining, you know, no nomination there. Despite the performance. It's more a monster movie than a horror movie, but Shape of Water does kind of,
00:44:44
Speaker
tick, you know, over to that, over to that side, right? It does a little bit, but a little bit. Right. Yeah, I'm not saying it's game changer or anything. Well, Guillermo de Toro, when he was talking earlier, was saying that he likes the horror aesthetic, but he doesn't particularly like watching horror movies. So he doesn't watch very many, which surprised me a little bit. Yeah, it's funny.
00:45:11
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, I think of that as a love movie, a romance, kind of mixed with Frankenstein as well. And that's another thing that he mentions about horror is
00:45:29
Speaker
it tends to appeal to people who are a little bit outside the status quo. The kids who are alone when they're children, that sort of isolation and being shunned means that a lot of these people identify with the monster. Like Frankenstein, he keeps talking about Frankenstein being his all-time favorite monster because of that.
00:45:55
Speaker
Yeah, I get that. But I'll also throw in, you know, the other sort of acceptance level around a horror being a little more mainstream or going a little more in-stream between his stuff, Jordan Peele's stuff, something in series like Stranger Things, which fear a bit. And I would argue in their most recent season, go almost full horror.
00:46:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah in it and but people seem okay with that and then you know, it gets good rates. They're like, okay, there's There's there's a room for that, you know, there's room for this
00:46:32
Speaker
Or a movie like The Terrifier actually making into the top 10, you know, now. Right. You know, I might have expected that like in the 70s or 80s, maybe possibly. But but, you know, it's it's been a long time since a movie like that, which which is a gore fest. Yeah. And that's a movie that doesn't pretend to be anything else from what I hear anyhow.
00:46:58
Speaker
is that it's a slasher movie, and it is a gore movie. And it likes to show off how much gore it can throw up on screen. And it's been successful. It's probably going to drop off now that Halloween's over.
00:47:16
Speaker
Yeah, but you know the fact that it did have that run is Is is a sign of you know horror kind of opening up because if people are going to go see that There's certainly gonna be open to see practically anything else. I'd imagine it's Yeah, yeah, it's much more box office friendly
00:47:36
Speaker
Right. Right. Well, anything else is going to be more box office friendly than that. Um, because as I mean, just look at, cause we get the BBFC sort of certification notices here and sometimes they're quite funny. And so for, for that, they start explaining like things that happen in the movie, like,
00:47:54
Speaker
I get people are killed. They their corpses are mutilated for several minutes afterwards. You know, so so so it it is pretty clear that that, yeah, this movie is going to just make you squirm in your seat and be like, just to end. You know, so I don't know how I feel about that. But a couple of people told me that they quite enjoyed it. So I'm going to have to I'm going to have to check it out. I'm just not right. Not in a hurry right now. Yeah.
00:48:23
Speaker
And again, the other thing that I started thinking about when we were going through all these is how
00:48:31
Speaker
Uh, really on some level, all horror movies are a metaphor for something, you know, like, um, marginalization of women and Rosemary's baby cold war paranoia and invasion of the body snatchers. Or like I said before, more generally that monsters are a representation of the excluded or disenfranchised, you know? Um, and, and I don't even think all movies mean to do that. Right.
00:48:59
Speaker
But they blatantly fit perfectly into that. And then on the flip side, they can be reflections of some pretty nasty things in culture as well. And I think one of the things that started coming up quite a lot were these trends that we had around
00:49:19
Speaker
home invasion movies, because everyone's like a paranoid that crime is going up, even though crime has been going down consistently since, you know, like 1990. And yeah, there's some things kind of feed into kind of the general perception that aren't that aren't true. I mean, really, you got to worry about the police more than anything because their violence has gone up.
00:49:43
Speaker
So and and I remember them playing into that in the 90s because there were a lot of movies about bad cops in the 90s in the early naughties Where where where the cop was the villain and I'm struggling to remember the names those movies there's one with Andy Garcia and Richard Gere and
00:50:06
Speaker
And I cannot remember, uh, internal affairs, I think it was, and, uh, then there was the one with Denzel Washington. Um, Oh, he takes the Ricky. Oh, training day. Training day. Yeah. Yeah. So there are movies like that, that, that I quite enjoyed.
00:50:29
Speaker
And what else did you put in your list of what you picked up from going through all these movies this year? You know, those are the those are the main things are just like just the ability of it to to have to be, you know, far richer genre than what people think or what, you know, what the sub genre isn't able to
00:50:56
Speaker
to play with and then watching the Queer Fear documentary on Shudder as well and seeing that how, you know, they talk about the identification with the monster and such too, or the things that are negative, that are taken as a positive and why, you know, why and how sort of thing in there.
00:51:16
Speaker
I'm going to have to catch up on that one because that sounds really good. Yeah, it's really worth the time because especially watching that and then watch some other straight ahead, like they also have the 101 scariest moments in horror is another series on gender there. They'll talk a lot about the same movies and then what they're talking about is like in the 101 thing, it's like, oh yeah, what I'm normally used to. But then after having watched and when they talk about some of these movies that were in the queer fear,
00:51:43
Speaker
Series as well you're like oh man it feels like they're missing so much like this is so much more going on here that we're talking about and so it's just a it's a far richer experience experience and.
00:51:57
Speaker
It's getting more mileage, I guess, out of that, I think. It sure seems like it, because again, talking about the disparate films that you can still call horror and still qualify, that you would still hold up. It's like, oh yeah, because everybody just assumes all horror. It's creepy.
00:52:18
Speaker
uh, you know, or it's, uh, yeah. Well, I think our generation generation X remembers being in the video shop and all those covers that we, we loved so much that they caricatured the, the, the, all these films by those covers. Because, you know, I didn't, I think we touched on this before. Some of those covers exaggerated how awful they were, you know, to try to get you to rent them or get people like us to rent them, uh, rather than the normals.
00:52:50
Speaker
Something else I got into this week and you probably saw me share this in Facebook was that AI conversation between an AI Werner Herzog and Lavois Zizek. And it's funny, but it is uncanny sometimes because a lot of what they talk about are movies and
00:53:13
Speaker
It sometimes it's accidentally pretty insightful. It's to the point that I looked up actual discussions that these guys have had and Zizek has a great video on YouTube where he is discussing John Carpenter's They Live.
00:53:36
Speaker
And he spends 10 minutes walking through it with his own unique perspective. But it's it's a lot of fun seeing someone of that kind of stature approach a movie like that, that again, going back to the normals, we kind of think, you know, that's kind of a that schlocky movie. It's got a wrestler in it and all this other stuff. But but he's he he he being, you know, a philosopher loved the movie.
00:54:05
Speaker
and took away so many different layers from it. It's a lot of fun. I've actually got a clip here. I'm gonna play of Werner Herzog. And he has, it's not a very long clip, but he has an interesting take on why we have horror movies. So I'll just quickly play this now.
00:55:09
Speaker
So there you have it. We've got her because we're not getting ripped apart by bears. Yeah, exactly. Back to bears. Yeah. Nature is terrible and wants to kill you. That's the way it should be. Yes, thank you. Cool. Yeah, that's fair. I think it's fair assessment too. It's an interesting
00:55:36
Speaker
Interesting take that I'll just continue, you know, it can still continue to entertain me. Well, it's a roller coaster ride. Right. I just never expected to be able to keep adding new, you know, great new content. Well, yeah, it has been a few years now where there has been
00:55:57
Speaker
just exquisite output. I mean, yeah. Well, and they're good movies, right? It's not just, yes, they're great horror movies and these are good movies, though. You know, there's like, yeah, there's just something you have to feel like you have to still have to qualify that right with some people. Right. Like, yes, it's a horror film, but it's really good movie, you know, kind of. Or even the TV shows, you know, it used to be that when you had an anthology series, the difference between the worst episode and the best episode
00:56:27
Speaker
was huge. You'd get something that's absolutely shit and then something absolutely classic or what you usually get is 90% mediocre episodes and one or two standout episodes that were acceptable. That became classics because you're comparing them to the rest of the series.
00:56:51
Speaker
But we've had Cabinet of Curiosities. I thought the Twilight Zone series was pretty good. I think the episodes were probably a little bit too long. I think they try to force them to be an hour. And I think that's something that I've appreciated with a lot of series now that have just said, we don't have a fixed length. They're as long as they need to be. And I think that works a lot better. Creepshow, I thought was really good. I really enjoyed that.
00:57:17
Speaker
Um, but yeah, just so much material out there and so many new directors as well, you know, they're going to be coming out with their sort of sophomore efforts in the next few years. And, uh, yeah, it's really exciting. And, uh, yeah. And again, I think it's also that celebration or recognition of, uh, other people that were on margins before having bringing that better for, you know,
00:57:43
Speaker
because of it. So, you know, people of color and LGBTQ plus and all that, you know, kind of tying in as well. I'm like, you know, it's like, good, bring it. It's obviously working. It's obviously helping, you know.
00:57:58
Speaker
But I think some of the things that are changing is also the caliber of actor that is willing to go into these movies as well. Just sort of thinking about Tony Collette, right?
00:58:17
Speaker
Sure. In Hereditary or Gabriel Byrne in that movie. I mean, and there's such solid, you know, Oscar winning actors and also a science fiction. All the genre movies seem to be attracting that. I mean, look at look an Andor at the different actors that we have in that. It's it's it's amazing that that, you know,
00:58:43
Speaker
that we've got them in there because actually this is another funny thing that Guillermo Di Toro said is that, you know, you get directors that kind of go like, oh, a great actor will read one of the lines they'd written. And the director will kind of be thinking, huh, that's amazing. I wrote that. But he said that's not true. It's like that was great acting.
00:59:08
Speaker
Right. It wasn't the writing. It was was was that actor made it made it come to life. Sure. So so that makes it, you know, so much better. Agreed. Yeah. Yeah, there's definitely a. A raising of all boats, right? Oh, totally, totally. And then, you know, like S.C. Davis as well was, you know,
00:59:36
Speaker
She was so good in the murmuring. And again, almost didn't recognize her from the Babadook, right? And again, really good performance that everything kind of hinged on for that. But yeah, no, really, really good. Great. Well, it looks like we're coming to the top of the hour. Is there?
00:59:59
Speaker
anything else before we move on to Pastures New next week? Yeah, you know, I think it's good. I think I just, you know, look forward to doing it again next year. Yeah, that's what I'm looking forward to as well. Once we've had a chance to, you know, by that point, the saddle should be well oiled.
01:00:20
Speaker
the machinery is in place. And yeah, this is a good foundation. We'll have a variety of special guests.
01:00:59
Speaker
Remember, remember the 5th of November. Two oceans!