Down to the Cellar

I'm a big Svankmajer fan and this is hands down one of the creepiest films I've ever seen, by him or anyone else. Truly nightmarish.

^^ is that a short film or is a little girl in the cellar a common trope in his work? ecause i remember seeing a short film like that.

i need to check more of svankmajer's work. i really love his animated shorts but didn't like little otik's camera at all. i'll try to find that one you just saw.

I saw about 5 or 6 of the first season and thought it was pretty poorly written, like a bad couple of twilight zone episodes.

Zoom and Piranha.

exactly.

its important we shit on this massively revered and hyped show, which is hailed as the pinnacle of intelligent sf

just like the english i meet

"pinnacle of intelligent SF?" Jeez, I don't think so... "Massively revered". I guess kind of like the Pope, who I don't think much of, either. Now a decent new SF show out now is Mr Robot. And another? Orphan Black.

mr robot season 1 was fucking awesome. almost. but yeah. fucking awesome.

orphan black i tried watching season 1 but found it like all canadian tv-- boring. (sorry canada, but having such nice people does not make for exciting tv.)

first time i hear of black mirror. now i'm actually curious about it. blagh.

Charlie Booker is a good (maybe great) comedy writer. He's not good at dystopian fiction. A lot of good actors in these episodes and the series really swings for the fence, but it's a strikeout. The ideas are thin, the dialog is wooden and the concepts are pretty lightweight and at the same time, pretty repulsive. Sort of a "Idiocracy" feel to the series, with the current state of affairs brought to some sort of futuristic territories, but no humor and very little to recommend it. I watched the first one, the one about the return of the dead thru software, the one about the special Disney punishment village and the one about the "American Idol"/Hunger Games kind of TV show, with the avatars and all that. None of them really any good, and a pity to see Mike Smiley and some of the characters from the Thick of It wasted in this. I spose they enjoyed the paycheck

I've barely heard of Black Mirror. Orphan Black interests me though. I've been meaning to watch that for some time.

Also, I've heard excellent things about this new West World reboot-type-thing. Haven't watched a minute of it yet, but I think Jonathan Nolan is involved? And maybe one of the dudes or dudettes from LOST (which is, in my opinion, the real "pinnacle of intelligent SF, even though it now feels like a relic from the pre-Sopranos-turning-everything-into-ultraviolent-cinematic-mini-film days.

I cannot WAIT for American Gods, even though I would have cast the entire thing differently. Whatever. That show's going to be a Game of Thrones-level beast, mark my words. Better source material too.

oh, i did like that. needed subtitles but yeah.

It's a short film. That's a still from it. A girl is sent down into a cellar to fetch some potatoes and encounters all kinds of horrible weirdness. It's quite an unusual film for Svankmajer in that it contains very little actual animation.

You can see the whole thing here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XBJCTD9p9A

I didn't think much of Little Otik either. I'm generally more a fan of his short films than his features.

oh yes yes, i've seen it!

i don't recall a whole lot of it but yes

my problem with little otik is TOO MANY FUCKING CLOSEUPS. it makes you dizzy after a while. it just doesn't work. it's like WRITING A BOOK IN ALL CAPS. doesn't matter what happens in it, you just can't read it.

have stopped movies for the workweek and been watching last year's WALKING DEAD. it's such a fucking chore, ugh, but i have to do it.

for this weekend i have lined up DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS, a new MACBETH, LET ME IN (the American version of the Swedish one with the better title) and... SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE

haven't had a chance to watch NEKROMANTIC yet, or the other one by the same guy that's supposed to be depressing, due to bad internet--but i should be able to catch it before my amazon subscription expires.

Black Mirror is awesome. It is like a twilight zone on steroids for the modern day.

Holy shit, I've seen this.

Just once, I think, and many many years ago, but I saw this shit and it stuck with me. It's one of those things (not sure if anyone can relate, butt...) ... where I saw it when I was young and the imagery just got branded onto my subconscious. I never learned the name or anything, so I've kind of "searched" for it for years, but have never been able to find it, and sometimes it almost feels like it was a dream.

Anyone have any experiences like that with films?

Wow, though. This is it! Awesome.

I'm done with the Walking Dead. It HAD a few interesting things in it at first, like the military response and the CDC site, but has just degenerated into the torture porn of the week. Writing is fucking stale!

I watched one episode and was like... meh... never been tempted to revisit it.

I liked the comics well enough too, but ugh.

Let the Right One In was fucking BRILLIANT. Brilliant, I say.

Let me in was bleh meh. Who needs it.

i know. i'm still plugging at it due to a need for closure or something. and i'm not even talking about this season!

almost gave it up on season... 3 i think it was... when it looked like a stupid video game for several episodes until some plot finally happened

but no, here i still am in the middle of 5. why, i'm not sure. annoying.

Been watching lots of horror movies:

1) best of the bunch is "Baskin", just a terribly disturbing descent into madness, reminiscent of Zombie's "House of 1,000 Corpses"

2) "The Theatre Bizarre"- The good thing about anthology films is their array of ideas and narrative swerve. The great thing about anthology films is they're short, which means if it sucks at least it won't last long. This one has the usual hits and misses, grotesque in parts and moving in others.

3) "Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell"- just a carousel of fantasy/horror film tropes. Massively enteratining in that late 60's Japanese craziness kinda-way. And it carries an anti-Vietnam message!

4) "Darling"- Nice little black and white psycho drama about a lonely girl in a large New York mansion.

5) "Nightmare Detective"- The dream logic narrative allows all kinds of surrealism and absurdity. It's just too bad the non-dream portions of this film are just as jumbled and confusing. And it's full of that early 2000's digital video herky-jerkiness that J-horror films made all the rage.

6) "Livid"- From the filmmakers of "Inside", which I regard as one of the best horror films of the last 25 years, "Livid" doesn't quite reach that violent masterpiece status, but its a spellbinding exercise whose scattershot ellipses to black and perfectly attuned atmosphere feel like someone breathlessly whispering a gothic fairy tale into your ear.

7) "Witching and Bitching"- Not a fan of Alex de Iglesia and his pop-confections, and this hybrid thriller-horror doesn't do much to convert me. Cool looking witches though.

Yea, that and a few other decent blood sucker shows recently, Only Lovers Left Alive, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, What We Do in the Shadows....haven't had a chance to see Yakuza Apocalypse, but it looks very promising

Oh yeah, What We do in the Shadows is great. I haven't seen the others you mentioned, but that one was a beaut. Looking forward to the sequel, We're Wolves!

yes but it's been a few years

LET ME IN was quite good actually, if you avoid the comparison

i enjoyed it a lot.

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another vampire thing just watched:

DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS


mildly erotic 70s euro production. it was bad-but-great. what i mean is-- it was a bit preposterous all around, and the screenplay + acting were a bit uneven, but good aesthetics and tasteful nudity-- and i thought delphine seyrig was great as a mysterious hungarian countess. good midnight movie.

:Disappointingly, in the film the students are taught to use magic to conjure weapons, which they then wield for combat training; that's much less interesting than using magic to cast, like, crazy-ass spells."

Dr. Strange. gonna see it as soon as the Chinese/Taiwanese mafia loads up a torrent.....

for halloween i watched the 2011 the thing prequel. i thought it was pretty good. i'm going to admit the primary reason i watched it was for mary elizabeth winstead. then i rewatched carpenter's. wow what a classic! kurt russel need to come back. we miss you.

finally saw TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE from beginning to end

holy fuck that was a fucked up movie. my wife was closing her eyes and covering her ears by the end. i did manage eyes open, but man, that was some sick shit.

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watched also AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON and it was good and funny and the hot nurse was hot and i didn't like the puppet too much but okay it was the 1980s.

in some featurette in the disc john landis (the director) made a great point about this movie-- he said this was a very funny movie (he hoped) but not a comedy-- it was a horror film. and i appreciate his sage understanding of genres-- lately people have been calling all sort of horrible shit "comedies" because "sarcasm" or something. like, what's the one with that corrupt drug addicted scottish cop-- that was no comedy it was just disturbing sickening shit.

Jason Bourne. They should probably stop making more sequels. Seemed so repetitive at this point.

Nurse Price. Right you are.

The job was to be a hot nurse, and she did the shit out of it.

I kinda think it might be happening. He was in The Hateful 8 after all, and I think he's lined up to be in some Marvel film in the near future.

Yeah though, Carpenter's original The Thing is a goddamn masterpiece. I love that it's actually, indisputably terrifying in parts. It also does a handy job of mixing the subtleties of classic '50s horror gems with the grotesque prosthetic flashiness of the best '80s gross-outs. The ultimate effect is chilling and fucking brilliant.

The Thing would be on my top 10 horror films of all time list if I ever made one. Guaranteed. Possibly even better than the original Alien.

The Thing was a fun movie, but Alien was a piece of art and very revolutionary for its time.

i haven't seen "the thing" (i think) but ALIEN was indeed epoch-making

proletarians in outer space! and riddley scott's breakout movie if i'm not mistaken. an h.r. giger monster after a female hero with more huevos than han solo. fuck!

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last night watched IT FOLLOWS

i thought it was great! i haven't seen a scary movie about sex since FATAL ATTRACTION. long overdue. this one is probably about HPV or something (it walks slowly...).

now when i say great it's because it looked awesome and was creepy and scary and it was made in detroit which was a great setting for it.

on the weak side it looked a bit like a genre movie-- the genre being "young adult". teenagers go around doing whatever, no parents or adults around, a bit like charlie brown, but you do see a couple of parent's faces briefly. so it felt a little artificial that way, the kids dealing with megaproblems without asking for help and being stupid.

but okay, who cares, let's chalk it to whatever, it was great, and it's pretty new and it's out on bluray.

I agree. It was really good. Saw it about a year ago and it made an impression.

Re: Alien, you're right of course. Epoch-making. Classic suspense and horror qualities that actually WORKED in a space/sci-fi setting (unlike, say, Event Horizon). Maybe it was wrong of me to even suggest that The Thing was better. Maybe I just should have said I think The Thing is on a similar level of greatness. Plus, it was muddied by a series of sequels of varying quality.

I actually really liked Prometheus. Looking forward to the sequel to that.

Why did Scott have to hand over ALIENS to Cameron? I know a lot of folks think it's better than the original, but it's not. Cameron < Scott.

EXACTLY. and i don't know why. but wasn't it dan o'bannon thing? oh, imdb says no-- it was his "characters". i don't know who owned what. cameron is a great plagiarist.

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yesterday i finally watched THE CABIN IN THE WOODS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SO FUCKING BRILLIANT.

Spooky and horrifying at times sure, but mainly I laughed so hard-- especially at the end ha ha ha ha.

LOVED seeing Buffy/Angel's mythology taken a step further, plus all the echoes of themes in those shows (The Initiative, for one, Wolfram & Hart on the other, even some Dollhouse). I mean--classic Whedon. But on steroids.

It's so good I want to see it again right away, but I'm going to wait because I want to get more of its references--Hellraiser appeared to be one of them but I haven't seen that. Luckily luckily luckily I had just seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre or I would have missed the whole gas station thing. The Evil Dead was clearly all over this #1. My wife picked up on Children of the Corn (the phone speeches). Shit is brilliant. Brilliant. Greatest movie enjoyment of the season. A blast.

Ok you're in for a really weirdo treat with Hellraiser. Watch the second one too. But for the love of god stop there. PROMISE ME YOU'LL STOP THERE!!!

watched Hunt for the Wilderpeople last night. Pretty OK, formulaic, though. Expected a little more from Taika Waititi. but I suppose it has the source story to blame for the shortcomings and it probably also will gather a lot of cash. Funny in a "family movie" sort of way

I am SO glad you liked Cabin in the Woods. Totally unsurprised, since you have excellent taste in these things and you like Whedon, and Cabin is pretty much the most Whedon thing ever Whedoned... but still super glad.

I didn't know what I was getting when I first watched it. Thought it was just going to be another Evil Dead rip a la Cabin Fever, and so on. I guess at the time I didn't fully understand Joss Whedon, what makes him Joss Whedon. I thought Firefly was just an accidentally excellent Star Wars rip, and I'd never seen any Buffy or Angel (still haven't).

It was Cabin that made me aware of Whedon's brilliance and champion of the comedy-cum-epic. Rewatching Firefly after seeing Cabin, I realized just how good it was, and the Serenity movie helped a lot with that too. He's done a good job at Marvel, but his true talents shine when he's working with original characters and riffing on American pop culture sensibilities.

I still haven't seen much Buffy or Angel. Seems like those would be guaranteed to suck, but maybe I'm wrong.

I have been sick for a couple weeks, first with a cold, then with a sinus and ear infection. Stacked up a few sick days during this time, but surprisingly I haven't watched any movies. Just drilled a bunch of the new Supergirl show into my skull. God it's fucking terrible. But I'm a true sucker for all things Kryptonian (remember when I championed Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice?) and I now realize that this suckerdome presents me with a fatal flaw regarding my tv and film sensibilities. I will watch ANYTHING where there's a promise of seeing an "S" inside a pentagon.

Man though... it has some ok moments (or, rather, moments where watching it doesn't actually HURT my artistic and intellectual sensibilities) but man oh man is it a stinkeroo. The main chick can't act for beans but she is cute (in a vaguely middle eastern say if you disregard the hair and focus on the nose and eyes). Looks a bit like an ex of mine at moments. But the whole thing is really quite awful and it's a problem I have that I need to take responsibility for ASAP.

fuck Angel.

Buffy was GREAT around seasons 2-6 or so. Then it got degraded......

what the... what the... are you....? what the...

LISTEN, MAN

you're missing out in a very big way.

back around, i think... 2000, or so, i was in one of those post-napster download apps and got into a little discussion with an internet stranger

"buffy the vampire slayer" i said. "sounds like a bunch of teeny bopper shit." or something like that, you get the idea. well, the prequel movie had been an utter mess, so... yeah.

since we were on a file swapping thing, she sent me buffy season 4 episode 10, "Hush"

THAT SHUT ME THE FUCK UP FOR GOOD.

it should have the same effect on you. or trust me, get season 1 episode 1, and get addicted.


yeah season 7 wasn't the greatest one ever, but it had one of the best villains in caleb. holy fucking shit, that was a spooky fucker. anyway i'll say no more lest we spoil severian's fun-to-be.

and i liked angel. it was hilarious. i'm not going to pepper this with hilarious quotes because again it would be a massive spoiler giveaway, but yeah, i liked that show a lot. now-- there were subplots and characters i hated for sure (*cough* connor *cough*), but overall i enjoyed it tons. actually i'm thinking about rewatching it from the start again, now that i'm talking about it. i miss those "people".

anyway, while buffy was about the travails of teenagehood, angel was about the perils of adulthood, about the challenges of running a business, about fighthing wars you can't win, and making compromises... it was a great show in that regard. plus... no no no i don't wanna spoil it for severian.

Ok you got me I'll watch that Hush episode. Promise.

I actually liked the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I mean, it was obviously terrible. But I think that was kind of the point. When it came out I was all over that shit. Thought it was fun as hell.

Then again, I also watched Clueless at least once a year for a good decade.