question of the day: Is the Internet to blame for the glut of remakes, reboots, and sequels? (John Carpenter says so)
Could the Internet be better harnessed to spread the word of nonfranchise films (and TV)?
John Carpenter
John Carpenter’s The Thing (retro trailer)
“Found something in the ice. We need some help down here. Can anybody hear me?”
talk to John Carpenter on Twitter on Friday, July 8th!
Well, tweet at him, and be lost in the deluge of tweets from horror dorks groveling at his virtual feet…
question of the day: What filmmakers seem to have lost their minds?
Kevin Smith? John Carpenter? They’re two potentials on my list at the moment…
John Carpenter’s The Ward (review)
Crazy hot girl is hot, I guess. Is there something perceived to be sexy about mental illness? Cuz there would appear to be no purpose here unless it’s intended to get lonely horny guys off on the idea of the tediously banal Amber Heard locked in a depressing mental institution and subject to electroshock therapy rocking her bod.
retro trailer: ‘Halloween’
This trailer is as boring as the actual film, but at least it’s shorter.
September 11: DVD alternatives to this weekend’s multiplex offerings
We know how it is: You’d like to go to the movies this weekend, but it’s all this settling back down into pre-autumnal routine has got you exhausted. But you can have a multiplex-like experience at home with a collection of the right DVDs. And when someone asks you on Monday, “Hey, did you check … more…
August 28: DVD alternatives to this weekend’s multiplex offerings
We know how it is: You’d like to go to the movies this weekend, but you’re still hung over from celebrating the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. But you can have a multiplex-like experience at home with a collection of the right DVDs. And when someone asks you on Monday, “Hey, did you see Taking Woodstock … more…
Near Dark, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Once Bitten, Blacula, Love at First Bite, and Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter (review)
Of course, most respected anthropologists and biologists recognize that the New World Vampire, or *vampirus americanus*, differs greatly from the European species, or *vampirus continentalus*, but few films have recognized that the wide-open spaces of the U.S. produce a vastly altered creature than Europe’s dense urban spaces or intimate, if remote, medieval villages. But years before John Carpenter and the team of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez documented the vampires that dwell in the lonely stretches of the Americas, the criminally underappreciated ethnographer Kathryn Bigelow did it — spookily, grimly, hilariously, gloriously — with 1987’s *Near Dark,* in which a coven of nasty bloodsuckers roam the deserted American Southwest.
Halloween (1978) (review)
Please don’t write into tell me how sophisticated Halloween actually is, because that’s a symptom of my third point, which is that I suspect the Halloween movies are like the Star Wars movies, in that the most fun thing about them isn’t what’s actually onscreen but the fannish discussions that happen offscreen about the interrelations between characters and the interconnections between events that loop through the entire series of films.
