- This was a short about a very calm, mellow cannibal serial killer. The whole movie was narrated by his seemingly menace-less internal dialog. It was hilarious! "I'm not too hungry, but I could eat. Oh well. Break time's over."
Katie Bird: Certifiable Crazy Person:
- This was a really interesting and intensely disturbing movie that showed you the inside of the head of a serial killer by showing her with her first and latest victim: she's telling the fellow currently under torture about her first time, and how daddy showed her the philosophy behind it. It makes heavy use of split-screens, showing you multiple views on the same incident at the same time. It's really well done. It's also full of the most graphically intense dental nightmares that I've ever seen. And I know me some dental nightmares. This was very hard to watch, but great. It's probably going into the category of "really good movies that I never want to see again", along with "Dead Ringers". It's interesting to contrast this with Kichiku Dai Enkai: Katie Bird was more graphic, but was still the better movie, because all that Kichiku had going for it was the gross-out factor.
- This was goofy fun. A pro wrestler that everyone thinks is dead comes out of hiding after having himself transformed into a giant squid. Then his nemesis makes a comback as a giant octopus. They are of course after the same girl. It's full of dorky costumes and seafood jokes.
- Without question the best play I've ever seen! Ok, I don't see very many plays, but that's because so few of them spray the audience with blood! Oh, so great. They covered the major elements of all three of the Evil Dead movies, and the guy who plays Ash did an admirable job of having his ass kicked by his own possessed hand. A good portion of the show took place off stage, with the cast running up and down the aisles and even down the rows of the audience. Best play ever. The Primitive Screwheads say that this was their last performance of Evil Dead, but that they're going to be doing Herbert West: Reanimator next. I can't wait!
(Confidential to Mr. Sweeney: I did not see you there, hopefully because you had seen it last time. But if you and your Spectaculeros have not seen this, for shame. FOR SHAME, SIR!)
The Man with the Screaming Brain:
- This was just kind of "eh." I expected more from Bruce Campbell. This just seemed like a not-very-good take on the Steve Martin movies The Man With Two Brains and All Of Me, except that the slapstick wasn't anything to write home about. Ted Raimi's range continues to consist of telling an un-funny joke then making a dorky face at the camera afterward. Go see Bubba Hotep again instead.
- A widower with a teenage son decides to take advantage of his role as a movie producer to audition potential wives while pretending to audition actresses. So, of course, he picks a loony. It's a bit long: it bogs down some in the middle, after the set-up and before the hallucinations and torture, but it's still fantastic and creepy.
You have one last chance to see Evil Aliens: this Friday at 10:30. I believe Dead Meat and Immortel have also been held over and are playing multi-day runs later this month, but they are not on The Roxie's web site yet.
Hmm, Audition. Seeing as I'm needlephobic, the last 30min or so is perhaps the most unsettling piece of cinema I have ever seen.
Grest film though.
I've had acupuncture, so that didn't freak me out at all (I know it doesn't feel like it looks). The teeth stuff in Katie Bird really squicked me, though.
Everyone has their hangups. Mine is schizophrenia. Schizophrenia runs in my family. My uncle is seriously affected. I think that I skirted very close to the edge, as I remember having occasional auditory hallucinations when I was very young, but I somehow learned how to suppress them or avoid their triggers. Hard to explain.
Seeing it live and close up (in the form of street crazies for instance) really gets under my skin in a creepy-crawly kind of way. Particularly in those sad cases where they get agitated at trying to express something simple, like ordering food at a restaurant. It gives me a tremendous feeling of vertigo. That way lies madness, indeed.
Movies portraying it accurately (such as Brad Pitt's suprisingly realistic performance in 12 Monkeys) bother me too.
I recently read "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" by Susanna Clarke, and one of the characters creates a potion which he uses to make himself insane (the better to see fairies with). The description of the results really bothered me. It's a bold motherfucker who drives himself insane to rescue his wife.
Is that book any good? It sounded somewhat interesting, but I generally don't like fantasy. And it's a brick.
I thought it was enjoyable, but I have no idea how you would evaluate it. It made excellent reading for the trip out to SF last weekend. The trip back was spent working through the first half of the complete Sherlock Holmes.
The ending is a little bit weak. The loose ends get tied up, but not in the most satisfying of ways. If you've read the "Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn" books by Tad Williams, the ending will look very familiar.
Where the book shines is in its descriptions. When Clarke gets going, she conjures lovely imagery. For that reason alone, it made a wonderful escape novel for a 4-hour flight. Total reading time was about 6 hours, but I read pretty fast.
Incidentally, what was the deal with private party that was upstairs for the night of Affliction a week ago Thursday? I heard it was for "some friend of the owner's", i.e. you, which led me to believe that's probably where most of the regulars were that night. The crowd was dreadfully thin downstairs, so Thursday night wound up being kind of a bust for me. The party at the Cracktory on Saturday definitely made the weekend worthwhile though.
Yeah, it was <lj user="exoskeleton">'s birthday. But, his friends have a very small intersection with the Affliction regulars, don't blame the downstairs turnout on that... There were maybe 4 people upstairs who normally would have been downstairs fixtures. (On the other hand, that might have been 20% of the downstairs turnout...)
Personally, I'm loving it. It looks like a brick, but it certainly doesn't read like one...
Immortel sucks ancient Egyptian God balls.
Bilal should stick to comics.
I have heard this, but it has flying cars and weird blue ladies, so I will see it anyway and try my damnedest to like it.
Yeah, well good luck with all that.
It has a terrific trailer, I'll give it that.
But only that.
You should go see Layer Cake, I'd be interested to see what you think about it.
those first two sound AWESOME. was katie bird in the "will never watch again" category mostly because of the dental stuff or....?
The dental stuff was very hard for me to take, yeah...
so jamie: how does that make you feel?
~runs away~
Hey, you aren't officially allowed to do that for another few hours yet, right?
yeah, but i unofficially do it to jamie all the time, because it makes him squeeby.
who am i kidding; he does it to MEEEE all the time to make ME squeeby *sob*
This isn't going to turn into some weird twisted sadomasochistic doctor-patient love affair, is it?
That would be hot.
ok, now YOU are trying to squeeb me. GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!