Tag: film

Omenbarmaladook Follows

I recently watched The First Omen which kicked off a run of watching other horror films. While many were just the other films in The Omen series, the rest were horror movies from the last 10 years that had been on my list since they were released. I’d probably call out The First Omen, The Omen, and Barbarian as the highlights. I realized that Sam Neil was in The Omen III and Possession in the same year, 1981. While The Omen III is flawed, I was impressed to learn those intense performances were the same year. It Follows and The Babadook were close to being great, but both left too many questions. Malignant has some great WTF moments, but it’s incredibly poorly acted. I was glad to see others calling it the horror equivalent of The Room. The Omen IV would be skippable, but are you not going to watch the whole series?

Late Night with the Devil

Last night I watched Late Night with the Devil, a horror film set in the world of ’70s late-night television. Overall I thought it was a great concept, but I had minor squabbles with the execution. Low budget or not, some of the effects, makeup, and technical aspects took me out of the film. Performances, set design, and (again) the concept, were great. Interestingly, there are several other films in a similar vein that I need to check out.

Star Trek: The Cheers Generation

Star Trek: The Next Generation is pretty much my favorite TV show. I have it, and many of the movies with the original cast, on repeat at most times. I recently decided to take a little break from Trek and gave Cheers a whirl. Little did I know, many actors who appeared on/in Star Trek were also on Cheers and Frasier. Here are some examples of the crossovers!

Christopher Lloyd

Christopher McDonald

Carol Kane 

Georgia Brown

Jeff McCarthy

Bonus

Ted Danson on The Orville

Halloween VII

I’m severely behind in my Halloween movie and TV watching.

  • Midnight Meat Train
  • Candyman
  • Fall of the House of Usher (three episodes)
  • Coraline

What else should I watch? Check out my past posts about horror movies and Halloween.

Down The Rabbit Hole

If you haven’t noticed from my previous posts, I like going down rabbit holes with film and TV. There are some interesting overlapping stories between Hugh Hefner, Peter Bogdonovich, Dorothy Stratten, and Bob Fosse.

  • Star 80 (directed by Bob Fosse)
    • Cliff Robertson as Hugh Hefner
    • Eric Roberts as Paul Schneider
  • All That Jazz
    • Roy Scheider playing Bob Fosse
  • Fosse/Verdon
    • Sam Rockwell as Bob Fosse
    • Lin Manuel Miranda playing Roy Scheider playing a fictionalized Bob Fosse
  • Welcome to Chippendale’s
    • Nicola Peltz as Dorothy Stratten
    • Dan Stevens as Paul Snider
  • Other
    • John Ritter as a look-a-like Peter Bogdonovich in They All Laughed (directed by Peter Bogdonovich)
    • Peter Bogdonovich as a fictionalized Hugh Hefner in Law & Order: Criminal Intent

Oscar Nominated Shorts: Animated

This weekend I saw this year’s Oscar Nominated Animated Short Films. I’ve seen most of the animated and live-action nominees since 2009 (though Covid may have interrupted the last couple years).

Four of the five films from this year are available online for free on either YouTube or Vimeo. I’ve ranked the films below from what I think is best to worst. The first two are maybe some of my favorites from all of the years I’ve seen these shorts and I would love to see either win. My third and fourth picks are more typical of what one would see for nominations.

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse won the BAFTA over the weekend. If it wins the Oscar, I’ll lose my faith in humanity. Don’t get me wrong, it’s beautiful looking and well executed, it has Idris Elba and Gabriel Byrne providing voices, and Woody Harrelson and JJ Abrams produced it. It’s written like a first-year philosophy student in a bad creative writing class. Maybe it works better in the original book, but it doesn’t here.

  1. An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It
  2. My Year of Dicks (it’s not for the kiddos)
  3. Ice Merchants
  4. The Flying Sailor
  5. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (trailer only)
https://vimeo.com/796231519

The Haunting

Last night I was lucky enough to catch a screening of a 16mm print of the 1963 version of The Haunting. It had long been on my list of my films to see. It’s one of three adaptations based on Shirley Jackson’s original novel, The Haunting of Hill House.

Dr. Markway, doing research to prove the existence of ghosts, investigates Hill House, a large, eerie mansion with a lurid history of violent death and insanity.

Letterboxd description

The story was adapted again in 1999, albeit loosely.

Mike Flanagan also adapted the story, though changed the characters to a family with some aspects of the original characters.

Dario Argento II

In my last post, I talked about watching Dario Argento’s Suspiria, Opera, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, Inferno, and Deep Red. In addition to those films, I’ve since watched Tenebrae, Cat o’ Nine Tails, The Stendhal Syndrome, Phenomena, Dark Glasses, and even both Demons films! Because they aren’t streaming, I’ve also ordered Four Flies on Gray Velvet and a couple lesser-known of his films.

I’ll spare breaking down the films one by one, but I do have some observations. The most interesting part of this process has been watching someone direct films starting in the early ’70s all the way to this year. Other than Sam Raimi, Spielberg, and Scorsese, there are very few people who have directed across that many decades (Argento’s been writing films since the ’60s).

I want to be kind here – I will say the films have lessened over the years. I won’t even say in they’ve lessened in quality; Dark Glasses looks great and it’s interesting to have Italians speaking Italian. There’s something about a lot of his films in any decade that make me think “it’s so close, but not quite there.”

Demons and Demons 2 were co-written with others, including director Lamberto Brava. There’s something fun about these films; including the ’80s rock and pop music and cast members playing different roles across the two films.

While I’ve been at it, I’ve watched a few films by Lucio Fulci (Zombie, City of the Living Dead, and The Beyond). My free trials of Shudder and Mubi, where I’ve watched most of these films, have been worth every penny!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFEFLTpSA5A