Good Reader, I put to you this question: What’s worse? Hipsters, or an “actor’s actor” [fn.1] in his 50′s attempting to embrace the post-ironic, post-cultural and nihilistic world of affluent post-adolescent youth and the death of sincerity?

…

OK, so I don’t really want an answer; the question is purely rhetorical. In fact, as both possibilities are exercises in futility, there’s little to truly distinguish them. (Also, too much use of “post” for my liking too, admittedly.)

But that’s what Don’t Go In The Woods precisely is: futile. Not absurd; futile.

I won’t bore you with the particulars for long. Quasi-hipster [fn.2] band go into the woods to write new tunes. A slasher is killing them off one-by-one. Lots of forgettable songs are sung. It’s a slasher-musical.

The film could have easily had a dark and genuine subtext about said demographics, as American Psycho arguably did about Manhattan yuppies. Rather, it’s a gimmick masquerading as irony or a ‘thought bubble’.

Am I being too harsh?

From BHF:

BHM
Sounds great. Are you a big horror fan generally?

Vincent
It’s one of my favorite genres. I’ve been watching them since I was a kid, I think like most of us. I think the thing I like about horror films most is that they are… not meant to be critiqued? You watch a horror film expecting that you have to take a certain leap of faith with it, and that you know you’re going to see unexplained violence on top of this kind of intense, thriller aspect. It’s the only genre where… I think all of the other genres like Sci-fi, Comedy and dramatic films, you go in with this feeling of “I hope it’s a great film” whereas a horror film you really don’t go in thinking that. You just go in thinking “I’m gonna go see a horror movie”.

Genre is not a Get-Out clause, Vince.

Above: Performed by This Guy

Below: Trailer

fn.1 The very fact VD’O is on that website that gets defensive about the use of the H-word is perhaps a ’nuff said moment for the theme of this post.

fn.2 Read: early-to-mid-2000′s indie, which is becoming passée enough now to be ironic enough to appropriate, so long as said appropriation is ahead of the curve of ironic early-2000′s appropriation.

]]> http://tool8.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/exercises-in-futility-dont-go-in-the-woods/feed/ 1 teddyhernandez FEBRUARY 10TH, LAEMMIE MUSIC HALL, LOS ANGELES http://tool8.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/strangeness-abounds/ http://tool8.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/strangeness-abounds/#comments Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:34:58 +0000 gabriel http://tool8.wordpress.com/?p=1810 ]]>

I confess, around once a week I look at the visitor figures for this site, and at the search engine terms that brought them here. If nothing else, it gives me some idea of the zeitgeist, an insight into what people might want to read more about. The number of visitors can be a bit depressing if it’s down to 200 daily or so, or uplifting if it goes above a thousand, but I don’t pay too much heed to that. The search terms themselves are what I’m interested in. And, in the spirit of reporting strangeness, I thought I’d share some of the more… puzzling phrases that people search for which bring them here:

*girls farting in toilet
*boys lavatory
*toilet fart blog [I'm thinking of making this the blog's new tagline hehe]
*fart fantasy black girls
*barbed penis
*girls taking a sh*t on the toilet
*british girls toilet
*guy female toilet
*female toilet prank
*strange americans [don't ask me]
*hospital army porn
*fart girl
*gas mask [may come in handy]
*horror nurse
*teen boys wank
*girl reading on toilet
*girl fart
*girls peeing in toilet
*miliary hospital porn
*sara tancredi porn [is that the most twisted of them all?]
*porn in a mental institute

How bizarre… There’s a lesson here. I’m obviously not writing about those things that you apparently so desperately want to read about!

Thankfully.

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From last Sunday’s Independent, an article by Kate Youde drawing attention to some of the novels, films and shows “that are tackling all things spooky in 2012″:

The supposed visit by Princess Diana’s spirit to Chinese tourists in Scotland, revealed last week, was a timely apparition: ghosts are gearing up to make their presence felt this year, thanks to a succession of high-profile new books, films and cultural shows.

On Tuesday, Daniel Radcliffe will attend the premiere of The Woman in Black, an adaptation of Susan Hill‘s chilling novel. It is the first feature ghost story from the legendary British Hammer film studio. The West End adaptation of the book is enjoying its strongest advance sales since it opened 23 years ago.

Well-known literary figures are now turning to the genre for the first time: Helen Dunmore‘s ghost story The Greatcoat is being released next month through Hammer’s publishing imprint. Eloise, the debut novel by Judy Finnigan – of the Richard & Judy Book Club – is being released by Sphere in October. Catherine Burke, the editorial director of Sphere, said there was a “surge of interest from readers” in ghost stories, and agents were receiving more submissions in the genre. With high-profile releases expected to be popular this year, she predicts we will see even more ghost stories in 2013.

The current interest coincides with the 150th anniversary of the birth of one of the genre’s most famous proponents, M R James, whose ghost stories were recently re-released; and the British Library’s exhibition “A Hankering after Ghosts: Charles Dickens and the Supernatural”, which marks the bicentenary of Charles Dickens and remains open until March. Michael Joseph is re-releasing Roald Dahl‘s Book of Ghost Stories next month, while Radio 4 is airing a dramatisation of Wilkie Collins‘s The Haunted Hotel in May.

The Turn of the Screw

NI Opera is taking its new production of Benjamin Britten’s work, based on Henry James‘s classic ghost story, to four locations across Northern Ireland in March and to the Buxton Festival, Derbyshire, in July. The opera is being directed by Oliver Mears and conducted by Nicholas Chalmers, who were behind the company’s debut production, a site-specific Tosca, last year.

The Apparition

Not to be outdone by Daniel Radcliffe, Tom Felton, who played Harry Potter’s school rival Draco Malfoy, will appear in Todd Lincoln’s flick, due to be released later this year. The Brit, who plays an expert on the supernatural, stars alongside Ashley Greene, best- known for playing Alice Cullen in the film adaptations of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight novels.

You Came Back

Named by Granta as one of America’s 20 best young writers in 2007, following the release of his book of short stories in 2005, Christopher Coake has chosen a ghostly theme for his debut novel. Dubbed “a modern day The Lovely Bones” by its publisher, the book – which is published in June – explores bereavement and the difficulty of letting go.

The Greatcoat

The first ghost story from the Orange Prize-winner Helen Dunmore, released next month, is the first original title under the Hammer literary imprint. The memory of sleeping under her father’s RAF coat on a cold night with her sister as a child helped to inspire the novella. In the story, Dunmore says, “it is the object that becomes a subject almost”.

Ghost: The Musical

Despite receiving a mixed reception from the critics, Ghost: The Musical is a hit with audiences. The show, which has been adapted from the 1990 Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore film, has been seen by almost a third of a million people in the West End since June last year. It opens on Broadway on 23 April and then in Melbourne, Australia, in August next year.

Eloise

The television presenter and Richard & Judy Book Club champion Judy Finnigan has chosen a ghost story for her debut novel, which is released in October. Set in Cornwall, the book tells the tale of Cathy, who starts to have unsettling dreams which suggest that the death of her best friend Eloise from breast cancer was not all it seemed.

The Woman in Black

Susan Hill’s chilling story is already a successful stage show, and now we have the film. Daniel Radcliffe plays lawyer Arthur Kipps next month in his first big-screen outing since last year’s final instalment of Harry Potter. The film, which charts Kipps’s visit to a remote village, is the legendary British studio Hammer’s first feature ghost story.

Being Human

BBC3′s award-winning comedy drama returns for a fourth series this year, following the exploits of twentysomething housemates living in a former B&B in Barry Island, South Wales. So far, so normal, except Annie (played by Lenora Crichlow) is a ghost and her housemate George and their new friend are werewolves. And they have to deal with vampires.

The Secret of Crickley Hall

The BBC’s controller of drama, Ben Stephenson, announced earlier this month that BBC1 will spook viewers this Halloween with its adaptation of James Herbert’s bestselling ghost story. The haunted house tale, which will be told across three hour-long episodes, is being written and directed by Joe Ahearne, best known for working on Doctor Who and This Life.

Ghost tours

English Heritage has upped the number of ghost tours at its historic sites for 2012 and is running twilight visits between January and March for the first time, rather than just at Halloween, to satisfy public demand. The spooky experiences, which take place at properties including Pendennis Castle, Cornwall, and Kenilworth Castle, Warwickshire, range from the family-friendly to the scarier adult-only.

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John Carpenter has referred to three of his films as his “Apocalypse Trilogy” that begins with 1983′s The Thing (which is great) and concludes with 1995′s In the Mouth of Madness (which I need to revisit in order to offer any thought on).

1987‘s Prince of Darkness is wedged in the middle…

…I didn’t like Prince of Darkness.

From the POD fanpage:

Prince of Darkness is clearly influenced by a number of earlier science-fiction works, most notably by British author Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass and the Pit. Dramatised by the BBC in 1958 Quatermass and the Pit contains several elements which would re-appear in some form in Prince of Darkness. Carpenter also seems to have been influenced by another Kneale story,The Stone Tapes (again dramatised by the BBC, in 1972), which features some plot similarities…

A reclusive elderly Catholic priest dies in a Los Angeles mission the night before an appointment with the Cardinal. Another priest at the mission, Fr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance), finds a diary which Fr. Carlton has left behind. On reading the diary, Loomis learns that Fr. Carlton was a member of a secret sect within the Catholic Church called the ‘Brotherhood of Sleep’. The sect has guarded an ancient and deadly secret from mankind for centuries – a secret now contained in an underground chapel beneath a downtown Los Angeles church. 

On visiting the church, Fr. Loomis finds a cannister which contains a ominous swirling liquid, and an ancient book which provides a clue to this liquid’s origin. According to the book, a powerful anti-god had once walked the earth before mankind but was banished to another dimension. Before it was sent to the other side this malevolent being managed to store a part of its essence in liquid form in a large cylindrical container. The cannister was buried in the Middle East in the hope that one day the essence would break free and bring its master back from the void to our world. Centuries later the container was unearthed and has been closely watched by the Brotherhood ever since. 

Loomis’ worst fears are confirmed on observing the cannister – the essence seems to be breaking free from its prison. Inexplicable phenomena are occuring in the sky and light from a distant supernova has been detected. 

An alarmed Fr. Loomis enlists the help of the physics department at the local University to try to prevent the entity escaping and to prove scientifically to the outside world what its release will mean for mankind.

It seems to have had a bit of a reappraisal since being released on DVD, but I don’t get it. The obvious talking points are the (lack of) characterisation, the awkward slasher-zombie-possession-esque thing going on, and the unsuccessful attempt for suspense.

But, for mine, it’s mostly it’s the internal logic of the thing. It’s just clunky and lame; often the case with supernatural films attempting to create their own mythology. I have an aversion to supernatural internal logic – something I’ll elaborate on in another post I’m working on – but, yeah, it irks me.  I’m cool with suspending my disbelief and all, but when the writer keeps tripping over themselves on said logic, or keeps reminding us of how dumb the premise is, then it’s hard to go along for the ride (and I wasn’t quite as forgiving to American Horror Story on this point as many other people seem to be, but it certainly did a better job of convincing the audience to go along for the ride).

For illustration-sake, why is it that only homeless people became entraced by the Satanic presence (without getting Satan goo spurted into their mouths, that is)?… maybe I missed something…

Incidentally, POD features “everybody’s” 2nd favourite Rockin’ Republican Alice Cooper. Perhaps “everyone’s favourite“ RR Ted Nugent had scheduling difficulties while filming State Park (aka Heavy Metal Summer) in Canada.

Please forgive the laziness of my conclusion, but here are the mostly unsubstatiated points I got from Price of Darkness:

• The decline in the quality of John Carpenter’s films happened well before Memoirs of an Invisible Man.
• If you have to employ homage (in output and pseudonym), don’t do it with a piece of crap.
• Arguably, State Park is a more successful film.
• Don’t use dopey internal logic and mythology.

The latter point about internal logic and the supernatural is the point of departure for my next post.

I finally got around to watching a DVD of Hobo With a Shotgun (2011) last night (with a 2009 vintage of this). Hobo is a proudly bloody homage to exploitations films of decades past. Despite some high props from friends and colleagues, I’m always hesitant with films that are purely or overtly committed to homage, something I’ve written about before in a thought bubble on nostalgia. That it was spun out of fake trailer contest for Grindhouse did not bode well either.

Rutger Hauer is well-cast as the loner Hobo, in perhaps his finest role since this cinematic gem:

The rest of the cast do fine playing it appropriately hammy with the deliberately limited characterisation of the material and the soundtrack was spot-on. It felt and looked much like a Troma sponge with Jason Eisener’s greater degree of technical proficiency as the persipan.

Perhaps, as most of the Western World slumbers towards economic Depression, the presentation of a dystopic criminal wasteland so prevalent in many films of the 1970′s and 80′s reflecting the economic turbulence of the times  (see Robocop as this done to perfection) may take a renewed relevance.  *Maybe. This topic is worthy of another post*.

The Fades, which originally aired in the UK on BBC3 last year, has now arrived on BBC America. Worth watching?

In a word, no.

Imagine the bastard offspring of Being Human and The Inbetweeners: that’s The Fades. The ‘baby’ metaphor is also apt because in almost every scene somebody is crying. Usually in that snivelling, wretched way that makes you want to slap them. Repeatedly.

This could have gone either way, to be honest – a show that combined the best aspects of BH and TI would be quite something. But for the most part, The Fades actually manages to take the worst aspects: huge plot holes, inability to sustain suspension of disbelief, poorly conceived internal mythology, crudely drawn caricatures instead of characters, undisguised misogyny, and lots of teenage-boy “humour” (think Star Wars and wanking.) There is nothing original about The Fades, it really is just a straight mashup of the two source shows. Stuart Jeffries at The Guardian summed it up as: “Sexually deprived teenagers contemplating necrophilia to consummate their desires…” Did I mention the misogyny and the poor characters? Cue The Guardian’s Krystina Nellis: “with a tendency towards killing off the more intriguing women almost as soon as we’d met them, its central (living) female characters were either the lead’s bitchy sister or the lead’s girlfriend, rather than people in their own right.”

The Fades S01E01 - yep, schoolboy toilet humour. With obligatory fart gag.

Reading one of the draft scripts for S01E01 is enlightening. How is our hero introduced?

INT. DR TREMLETT’S OFFICE. NIGHT 1 (19.05)

Close on the face of PAUL, 17, and with eyes to die for.

That’s so important in a character, I find.

How about his sidekick, Mac?

EXT. STREET. NIGHT 1 (19.10) 4

PAUL enters the street and heads toward MAC, 17, geeky,

but with eyebrows you want to love.

How the fuck do you “want to love” eyebrows??

Each episode annoyingly begins with one of the characters breaking the fourth wall to deliver a recap of the previous week’s events. For some reason, brand new information – previously unseen – is included in this, leaving you wondering if you somehow missed an episode. And a good deal of the information thus injected is actually pretty crucial. There was effectively a whole episode missing from the series.

"Hi, zany recap coming up, just to ensure that any attempt to suspend disbelief is futile. Look, it's just a silly TV show for kids! And check out my eyebrows, laydees..."

Jack Thorne: “It’s about fairly ordinary people, none of these people act or behave like they’re superheroes. The Fades is about the world itself being an extraordinary thing and how you battle it. This old school fantasy element combined with some pretty original characters.” Hm. About as original as the Teen Wolf and his hairy palms; except angelic Paul has a magic, glowing, right hand with which to – metaphorically AND actually – masturbate his adolescent awkwardness momentarily away…

For those that want to try the series out, I’ll refrain from further criticism because of spoilerism. But when you’re wondering where all the Uzi submachineguns and revolvers and pistols later come from, or why Watford can fall into anarchy without the rest of the country noticing and sending even a token police car or Army helicopter, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Conclusion: The premise of the show isn’t too bad. The execution is dire. Watch only if there’s nothing else on. Or you are a 14 year old boy.

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Official synopsis: “When two young evangelical Christians (Brittania Nicol, Henry Garrett) head from Texas to Scotland, they are initially charmed by the locals in the town of Tressock, and agree to become the local Queen of the May and Laddie for the annual town festival. But the couple is not prepared for the frightening consequences of their decision, and the very disturbing secrets they are about to discover about Tressock’s seemingly friendly townspeople.”

Twitch’s Kurt Halfyard: “Bluntly speaking, The Wicker Tree is going to be seen as horrific and blasphemous to those who saw the original film as an act of iconic horror and blasphemy.  Yet underneath its broad tone and stagey execution is something worthy of conversation that might be best to walk into with your eyes open.  The film may not be as elegant (or cinematic) as the original, but perhaps is a more pertinent commentary on our times, and in the end it appears that Robin Hardy is telling the world to simply, “Lighten up” instead of “Light them up!”  Amen.”

In theatres 27 January.

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The Woman in Black opens in theaters 3 February.

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Synfidie at Apocalyptic Thoughts mentioned Outbreak (1995) on Twitter today, which reminded me of Carriers (2009; link to full movie online further down page) – described succintly by producer Ray Angelic as “a character-driven post-pandemic road-trip thriller…” Written and directed by Spanish brothers Àlex Pastor and David Pastor, this downbeat but intelligently crafted movie was filmed in New Mexico in 2006 but then shelved and shunted around until its eventual cinematic release in September 2009, rapidly followed by DVD release in December the same year.

Although overall the critics gave it positive reviews it didn’t go down as well with the public – possibly because the word “zombie” kept cropping up around it so often: the audience went to see a film about a zombie apocalypse and instead found themselves watching a movie about moral and ethical dilemmas. As Empire magazine‘s Simon Crook put it: “If you’ve come for visceral zombie thrills, you’re in the wrong film. While there are dashes of body horror (man-eating dogs, blood-gurgling plague kids), Carriers offers the kind of scares the [film censor] would class as “mild apocalyptic peril”. In its place is a stealthier suspense, bedded in the stark dilemmas of survival and an altogether weightier issue: the death of trust.”

Mayer Nissim at Digital Spy:

A gritty low-budget mix of some of the best bits from Mad Max, Outbreak and Night Of The Living Dead, it ticks all the boxes in a refreshingly snappy 84 minute runtime. We start off with Brian (Chris Pine), his brother Danny (Lou Taylor Pucci) and their respective girlfriends Bobby (Piper Perabo) and Kate (Emily VanCamp) in a stolen Mercedes daubed with “Road Warrior” (that Max connection). They’re traversing the freeways with the goal of reaching the boys’ old holiday home, but outside their vehicle the rest of the world has effectively fallen apart. Pretty much everyone has succumbed to an unnamed virus whose victims die painfully slowly – and not pleasantly either. Given their experiences, they’ve elected to stick to three key rules: avoid the infected; disinfect everything; and if you’re showing signs of infection, you’re already dead.

Dangers on the route (from the infected and uninfected, the well and malintentioned) mean that there’s little time for thought as our protagonists edge ever closer to their intended destination. Afterwards though, you ponder on the futility of their journey – even if they are to stay alive – and just how you might cope in similar circumstances. The resonance of deadly epidemic in a post-AIDS/SARS/H5N1 and H1N1-scare landscape is obvious, but like the best of its influences, the real subject matter here is people and their relationships. The movie succeeds in that age-old trick of pushing things to the very edge to find out just how thick blood and water really are.

None of this will be new to anyone who has seen any other post-apocalyptic disaster flick, zombie thriller or road movie, but Carriers succeeds by keeping things simple and never going over-the-top with either the acting or exposition. Best of all, it boasts a needfully nasty streak throughout. Hazy moral lines are successively crossed, but the truth of the dialogue and straightforward performances mean that every incident retains a hefty emotional punch.

Probably for all the reasons that most other horror fans don’t like this movie, I actually think it is one of the better depictions of the post-apocalypse. As David Pastor said: “It’s not really about the pandemic, but more about civilization collapsing, and how a small group of people reflect that crumbling of society.” Like any good thriller, the film puts people under extreme emotional duress and asks how they will subsequently treat one another. Pine said in an interview with Fangoria: “The question becomes whether it is better to just survive, or to be with – and die with – your loved ones…”

This is perhaps the most fundamental question at the heart of the post-apocalyptic narrative.

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In a sign of pessimism about humanity’s future, scientists today set the hands of the infamous “Doomsday Clock” forward one minute from two years ago.

“It is now five minutes to midnight,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) director Kennette Benedict announced today (Jan. 10) at a press conference in Washington, D.C.

That represents a symbolic step closer to doomsday, a change from the clock’s previous mark of six minutes to midnight, set in January 2010.

I should point out, the clock actually looks nowhere near as cool as the image above. But dammit, it oughtta!

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