ramblings – Page 17 – Late to the Theater

In Honor of a Departed Master: Wes Craven’s Immortal “The People Under The Stairs”

So here’s to you, Mr. Craven. You knew what scared us, but it was because you knew what scared YOU first. Good horror comes from the heart, and by all accounts you were a wonderfully sweet man with plenty of heart to go around.

[NOTE: I was waiting until October to review Mr. Craven’s classic The People Under the Stairs, one of my all-time favorite movies, for my annual horror movie round-up. However, his untimely passing required tribute, so here it is.]

Back in the day, renting a movie at the video store was a gamble. If you rented the wrong thing, you wouldn’t find out until you’d got home, possibly hours later, possibly after the store had closed. It was terrible to find that the money you mowed a lawn or babysat for had gone to a dud, full of boring characters, dumb cliches, and forgettable story. The stakes were high on Friday afternoons after school, so I often agonized in the horror aisle making up my mind, my mom rolling her eyes and yelling at me to come on.

Imagine a time with no online forums, no websites, nothing but the movie reviews in the newspaper, articles in magazines like Fangoria or Starlog, or your friends’ recommendations.

I must have walked past the box for The People Under the Stairs 50 times before I actually picked it up to rent it. Although I look back fondly on the box art now, the somewhat generic design just couldn’t compete with the likes of Pumpkinhead, Deadly Friend, or anything coming out of Full Moon Studios for my money. I finally watched it in about 1996, and thence started a relationship that has lasted to this very day.

Two victories here: Twelve favorites AND I successfully screencapped it! — This is from two weeks ago! Still keeping the faith!

I STAND BY MY TWEET.

I’ve talked before about urban horror in the form of Clive Barker’s Candyman and what an interesting and clever deconstruction it was – but doesn’t even come CLOSE to The People Under the Stairs.

The film starts out brilliantly – Ruby is doing a tarot reading for her little brother Poindexter, nicknamed Fool, and we hear hushed voices as Ruby lays out the cards in flickering candlelight, and with them Fool’s destiny. We’re in. The setup is established – Fool and his family live in the projects, at the mercy of slumlords and in need of money for Fool’s mother’s operation. Fool, now the man of the house at 13, is convinced by Ruby’s boyfriend Leroy (Ving Rhames! In one of his early roles! With hair!) to help him commit a burglary that will net them enough cash to take care of his family.

The plan is to dress Fool like a cub scout and send him to the front door, so he can get in and case the house. What he finds instead is a highly paranoid, racist woman who won’t even let him into the secured house to use the bathroom, and a serious security system.

Once Fool, Leroy, and their friend Spencer gain entry to the house, Shit Gets Weird. So wonderfully, GLORIOUSLY weird! I almost don’t want to go into it in case you are somehow reading this article having NOT seen the film! BUT I AM! So stop reading now. Go read the Candyman article, or… or come back when you’ve seen The People Under the Stairs! The post’ll still be here! Shoo!

OKAY.

As I was saying, TPUTS is brilliant as a horror movie for a lot of reasons. Mr. Craven was inspired by a news article about the police responding to a home invasion, who discovered children locked in a closet, and the story grew from there. A philosopher and teacher first, he didn’t begin making films until he was 30, and he started out making porn. How COOL is that?

Since the main baddies of TPUTS are some crazy-ass white people slumlords who toss around The N-Word with careless abandon and cackle at all the money they have drained from the ghetto, the movie has the feel of a modern fable. For some, THESE are the boogeymen, but they are no less terrifying than knife-wielding maniacs. They take children from the ghetto to raise as their own, but being utterly batshit crazy, no child can live up to their expectations. The children who fail are put into the basement, missing tongues, eyes, or ears, and are fed on human flesh.

And since the movie didn’t know the meaning of the words ‘Over the Top,’ the performances by Everett McGill and Wendy Robie as “Daddy” and “Mommy” are MAGNIFICENT.

Here's the windup... and the bitch! — Mama said there’d be days like this…

God how I could go on. A young A.J. Langer, of “My So-Called Life” fame plays Alice, the only girl and only child who has managed to toe Mommy and Daddy’s crazy line. Brandon Adams turned out a brilliant performance as the charismatic, intelligent, and compassionate Fool – I’m surprised to see so few credits under his name on IMDB.

The gimp suit, the attack dog, the dolls, “A man ain’t dead just cause he’s laying there,” and the wonderful, wonderful shouts of ‘GONNA FIND YOUUUUU!!’ interrupted by a brick to the face. GOD how I love this movie.

Here is a link to Edgar Wright’s touching tribute to Mr. Craven, who perfectly expressed what I have been stumbling and blathering to say.

Farewell, Mr. Craven! We’ll see you in our nightmares!

May You Rest Well Knowing That We Won't! — May You Rest Well Knowing That We Won’t!

A Hysterical Man’s Thoughts on Mad Max: Fury Road

I am hurting from not seeing it. HURTING.

So I plan on buying two tickets, both to support the movie, and because the theater owner is closing the theater for my friend’s bday.

Normally I skim Jezebel headlines and don’t read too many articles (as a laid-back social progressive, their inexhaustible supply of outrage tires me) but this one caught my eye. I haven’t seen Mad Max yet but I REALLY want to!

The New Mad Max Film Is So Feminist My Scrotum Killed Itself.

Excerpt:

“Anybody who has seen the original three Mad Max movies knows that women exist for one of four man-created reasons: to be raped so Mel Gibson can get mad, to be sexual partners with a guy trying to kill Mel Gibson, to be murdered so Mel Gibson can get mad, and to force Mel Gibson to fight in the Thunderdome. They have character names like “Nurse,” “Nightrider’s Girl,” “The Captain’s Girl,” and “Victim.” ALL OTHER REASONS ARE A PERSONAL AFFRONT TO ME AND THE SACRED LEGACY OF MAD MAX, WHOSE HAUNTED EMOTIONAL EMPTINESS I RELATE TO ON A VERY DEEP LEVEL DESPITE THE FACT THAT MAD MAX WATCHED HIS FAMILY DIE IN A HOPELESS FUTURE HELLSCAPE AND THE WORST THING TO EVER HAPPEN TO ME WAS THAT SOME GIRLS SAID THEY DIDN’T WANT TO BUMP UGLIES BACK WHEN I WAS A TEEN.”

It’s… *wipes away a tear*… it’s such glorious, glorious parody.

I haven’t seen it yet because a friend forbade me to until his birthday, so a bunch of us are getting together on Thursday night to see it.

I am hurting from not seeing it. HURTING.

So I plan on buying two tickets, both to support the movie, and because the theater owner is closing the theater for my friend’s bday.

My Dinner With Failure, Or, The Importance of Context in Foreign Films

Play a game of charades with some friends and see how far you get if you have to act out anything more complicated than simple nouns or verbs. Chicken? Easy. Chicken Little? Somewhat harder, but there will still be copious pantomiming to get the point across. Even if you know the person very well, you’ll still occasionally have to guess what they’re trying to depict.

Recently I wrote about my cinematic fail in watching Force Majeure. Basically I failed to understand the newest Netflix interface and didn’t push that most important of buttons when it comes to foreign film-viewing: SUBTITLES Now, you can totally fumble your way through a foreign film without subtitles given the right conditions. Such conditions include:

A passing familiarity with the language (I know enough French to follow some movies without reading the titles, but if anything gets more complicated than the present tense or basic concepts, I’m sunk)
A passing familiarity with the culture (You don’t have to master the pluperfect verb tense to know when people are yelling at each other)
A passing familiarity with the story (You might recognize themes or situations from famous plays, books, mythology, or graphic novels)
A story simple enough to surpass language (Dead Snow comes to mind; do we really need to know why the zombies of reanimated Nazis are harassing these attractive skiers and ruining their holiday? Do we?)

But! As I learned, context is key, and for context you must have translation, some kind of intermediary to help guide you to the salient points.

Picture this: two well-dressed people are meeting in a Parisian cafe. The director has done his job, and despite the beautiful, laid-back surroundings, the score is tense, as are the faces of our characters. You know it’s a crime film, you know someone young was murdered and dumped in a ditch and had some kind of relation to these two. Now: what more do you want to know? Who started it? Was it justified? How long’s it been going on?

I don’t need translation to watch Godzilla to know that giant monsters destroying buildings is a bad thing, but what about trying to guess what was happening in the Avengers (assuming you were unfamiliar with the characters)?

“There’s a big blue ball, and it’s just absorbed this little gold ball, and now it’s… there are a lot of windows, and now there are robots everywhere but there’s also one robot who … is standing there talking about something, and now there’s a bigger one and a man in a suit with lasers and now there’s a farm where the people are and again we’re back to the city and robots lots of robots and OMG FLYING TOWN and another flying man with lasers coming out of his head and now everything is okay but might not be. Whatever, it was worth the 10 bucks.”

Context is everything, especially in an age when so little culture is shared on an intimate level. With no subtitles or dubbing, I might recognize a Thai person by their mode of dress or the sound of their language or the shape of the letters on signs in the background or the presence of tuktuks, because those are the big contextual markers. I won’t recognize the little nuanced ones, like the nature of their relationships with other people. I might miss little gestures accompanying the person’s movements that indicate their relationship, like a deferment to an older relative or a rolled eye to indicate a tiresome friend. Even something that should define a relationship, like a sex scene, doesn’t help because you don’t know if these people are together, cheating, or engaging in a forbidden affair.

A movie without context is a series of Rorshach images that the viewer can pull all kinds of things from, depending on their perspective.

Preacher Casting!

Preacher is not a graphic novel for everyone, but I would have said the same about Walking Dead and that blew up like marshmallows in a microwave – I know kindergarten teachers who are rabid fans. Hopefully this show will have the same appeal while sticking to the storylines.

Cassidy has been found!

Joseph Gilgun Cast As Cassidy

Preacher's Hard-Drinking Irish Vampire Cassidy Has Been Found

The site tells me I might remember him as Rudy from Misfits. I don’t know who Rudy is or what the Misfits are but he has the right face for it!

Also, Ruth Negga has been cast as Tulip.

And Ian Colletti as Arseface.

I find myself distressingly out of the loop with these actors – I have no idea who any of them are!

I am so happy this show’s getting made, and on AMC no less, so they won’t shy from some of the…errmm… edgier content in the stories. There’s so much to look forward to – I can’t wait to see who they get for Starr!

And although it’s looking like my dreams of seeing Woody Harrelson as Jody won’t be realized, I am curious to see who they do get to play that role.

Preacher is not a graphic novel for everyone, but I would have said the same about Walking Dead and that blew up like marshmallows in a microwave – I know kindergarten teachers who are rabid fans. Hopefully this show will have the same appeal while sticking to the storylines.

Breakdown: Jesse Custer (the ubiquitous Preacher, not yet cast) has lost his faith and is drinking himself to oblivion while preaching in a small, shithole town in Texas when a strange entity takes up residence in his body. The entity is a creature of limitless power that gives Custer the Word of God, allowing him to command people to do his bidding. However, Custer is conflicted about this power and only uses it in moments of great need – such as defending the love of his life, Tulip, or his drunken reprobate best friend, Irish Vampire Cassidy. Jesse sets out on a quest, with his friends in tow, to understand this power, and ultimately to force God to answer for the faults in His creation. Along the way he encounters a vast, international organization that controls the nations of the world and is bent on bringing about the apocalypse; a couple serial killers and inbred hicks; the KKK; a voodoo priest; an old cowboy; his father’s past as a Vietnam veteran; and a rejected astronaut who has written his life’s message on the earth since he was denied his shot at the stars.

The series was printed in the 90s and is a CLASSIC of modern graphic novels. It deals with so much and is such a uniquely American story.

I CANNOT WAIT! 😀

Didja Miss Me?

Please forgive me my ramble! I have had a rough few months and I just had to make a mark on the internet for the exact moment when I saw the light at the end of the tunnel again!

I hope to get back into the habit of posting film reviews (I have a LOT of them in backlog!) regularly again, and reading other people’s blogs. I do miss catching up with folks!

Whew.

As it does, Life Got Hectic.

Here is a summary of things that happened in the second half of 2014:

May

Laid off from a job I loved. The company wasn’t doing well and still isn’t, and has literally gone from 250 employees in its heyday to about 30. I have made some really awesome friends at that job, and it was like being thrown out of a a family. I am afraid for other friends who are still there.
I find another job and, despite my disbelief, manage to land it. I start at a new company downtown, doing something pretty interesting with some intelligent, pleasant people. I mostly keep to myself.

June

My car begins to act up.
I rent a car and a friend and I head up to Atlanta for my best friend’s baby shower. When we are about to leave and make the drive home, I burst into near-hysterical sobs at the idea of leaving the first place I have been happy in months. My friend warns me that if I am not honest with myself about how I feel at my new job, I will only be more miserable.
I decide I want to go back to school, and get a Professional Writing Certificate, which is only 15 hours of Grad School classes. Since I don’t need a GRE score to apply, I go for it.

July

July 4th weekend doesn’t go well. I’m in a terrible depressive mood and I’m angry about everything. I take it out on my significant other on our way back from a barbeque. I apologize and he forgives me later, but it still bothers me.
My car continues to deteriorate, and my parents offer to loan me money for a down payment on another. Despite my pride, I take them up on it.
I get a used 2013 Fiat 500. I love it, but I didn’t negotiate the best finance price. Still, it’s not too much, and I have a reasonable monthly payment.
Our dryer acts up, and I try to save some money by fixing it myself. I wind up cutting myself horribly on the unfinished aluminum that houses the heating element, and nearly maim myself. I still don’t have insurance at my new job, so I fix myself up the best I can. My left is the worse of my thumbs, and bleeds for twelve hours before it stops. Changing the bandages is awkward and painful, and we wind up paying a guy to fix the dryer in addition to getting me a tetanus shot at the Minute Clinic. The NP at the clinic says I should have gone to the ER for stitches, but as it’s closed up now there’s nothing more she can do. I still have a pretty wicked scar, and it doesn’t quite bend the same.

August

I am accepted to UCF, and am incredibly proud.
I attend orientation and realize I should have already signed up for classes. I scramble to find one that’s both online and open, and wind up signing up for one that is WAY above my level.
A recruiter contacts me for a possible job opening at a company most of my friends work at. I send him my resume, and he says he’ll be in touch.
I make an impulse decision and buy tickets for Nine Inch Nails for myself and my significant other. It’s my first time seeing them live, but I’ve been a fan since 1995.
At the show, I find out Robin Williams has died. We still have a good time, but I am upset. I haven’t written my feelings out about that because it’s still taking a while for everything to settle down. I see a quote later about the whole thing: “Being lonely isn’t the worst thing in the world; the worst thing in the world is being around people who make you feel alone” and I realize I have been unhappy for some time now.
Terrible news: my Aunt has died, very unexpectedly, at the age of 53. Her 21-year-old son found her. She had been there a few days with no air conditioning on, and temperatures in South Georgia were in the high 90s.
The family gets together in Waycross to help my cousin make the arrangements and help him clean out his mother’s apartment. She had been hoarding and hadn’t cleaned for years. My other aunt and I do most of the cleaning so my mother and cousin don’t see the worst of it.

September

The first weekend in September, a week after she passed, we bury her. Because of her condition, it is a closed casket. Despite how upset I am, I am a pallbearer, and I am proud to say I was able to carry my share of the burden. We bury her on September 5th, which happens to be my mother’s birthday. The rest of the weekend is difficult, but the family does its best.
The rest of September is busy, yet a blur. I have things written down on my calendar and I know I was busy, but unless I look it up I have no idea what happened during that month.
As I am doing my coursework, I realize that I am really in over my head in the course, and that my heart isn’t in pursuing the professional writing certificate. I decide I will do my best to finish the semester and then bow out. Realizing this is liberating for me – I am glad I took the course and had the experiences I did, and want to pursue my MA in Creative Writing, but not now.
At work, my lead writes me a heartfelt email about how much he appreciates my efforts on our project. Other people express how much they like me and appreciate my work. I appreciate it, but I still feel hollow.

October

Life moves forward. I do things with friends, and try to get out more. I try to make an effort to work on my novel.
I see some movies with friends, including a special midnight showing of Aliens at our local art/revival theater, the Enzian. It’s a great time and I feel appreciated.
My job has an employee appreciation day at Wonderworks, an Orlando attraction that is part-fun center, part science museum. We do laser tag, and there is a ROPES course on the top floor that is 30 feet high. It dredges up memories of a ROPES course I took in high school over the summer.
I volunteer at Central Florida VegFest, a huge vegetarian/vegan festival. It’s fascinating, and educational, but I am not inspired to give up meat or dairy. Just to eat from more humane sources.
Halloween at work is fun – I go as the Winter Soldier from the recent Captain America movie. I wear it to my friend’s huge yearly Halloween party and it’s a big hit.
I try to get back into working out regularly, since Tough Mudder 2014 is coming up and I don’t want to embarrass myself.

November

My parents come for the TM, and it’s a lot of fun. Some of my former coworkers are there, and we run into each other at various obstacles. I carry someone’s brother during the Wounded Warrior carry, and I’m surprised I’m able to do it. I’m not as sore afterward as I thought I would be, although I get stuck in the mud on the last obstacle.
I take all of us to see Gone With the Wind at the Enzian for a belated birthday event for my Mom, as she is a “Southern Bell” and her actual birthday was a dreary affair because of the funeral. It is a big hit – although it was my first time seeing it and I had Opinions, I keep them to myself (mostly) so as not to spoil our time.
I get contacted by the recruiter again, and I finally interview at the company where all my friends work. I don’t expect anything to come of it deep down, and when I get the offer I am shocked… I’m so surprised I can’t even think how I feel. They want me to start the following week, but I insist on putting in a full two weeks’ notice where I am. I tell my coworkers and bosses first thing in the morning rather than agonize over it all day.
I stay home for Thanksgiving, and make a meal for my significant other and I since he has to work. I am hugely thankful for how well I am doing in life, and spend most of the holiday alone, mentally recharging.

December

Day two of my new job, and I’m happier than I’ve been in months. I’m getting a little pay raise, I work ten minutes from my house, and best of all, I’m working with almost two dozen people from my old job, several of which I count among my close friends.
Just now, I wrote my final paper for my class. I’m thrilled to be done with it, and haven’t felt this free or happy in a long time.
I have Big Plans for Xmas presents, my boyfriend is graduating with his BS, and I feel like I am getting back to a regular workout regimen again. I can finally appreciate how good life is again.

TL;DR:

Please forgive me my ramble! I have had a rough few months and I just had to make a mark on the internet for the exact moment when I saw the light at the end of the tunnel again!

I hope to get back into the habit of posting film reviews (I have a LOT of them in backlog!) regularly again, and reading other people’s blogs. I do miss catching up with folks!

Have a wonderful rest of your day! I hope we can catch up soon!