Blog, Blog, Bloq

 Recently, I've been watching and reading some stuff that has ranged from bad to great. While I am leaning toward doing an eventual write-up on Kazuki Hiraoka's manga, The Urban Legend Files. Today's piece is going to be about the Taiwanese Horror-Comedy film, Dead Talents Society, that was directed by John Hsu. A movie that has instantly become one of my favorites. It's charming, it's melancholic, it's hilarious. Just a complete package of a film that has earned its critical acclaim. DTS makes me question whether people watched it when it came out, as it should've garnered way more awards. This movie deserves the world and then some. But why does DTS deserve so much? Obviously, there's a lot of angles to attack this idea from. Yet, the best one for me would be the character writing and performances. These key factors make the whole concept and execution work. Without them, DTS might've just been another film. But before I get to the crew of the Luck...

 This week has gotten me inspired to talk about one of my favorite directors. The one and only George A. Romero. While I have only watched a handful of his films, the mark on my taste and expectations exist because of people like him. While I can't wholly relate to the man and his era, I understand what he's putting down to an extent. The times are different, but all the same. Things may look like they have changed, yet they really haven't. And that's just one of the things that I came away with when I watched movies with the Romero name on the front.  In the same vein as Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left, and David Cronenberg's Shivers, Romero was able to look at the nature of man and pull out the ugliness along with its beauty. People are complex and need to be showcased as such in order to make an impact in the messaging being brought forth. So, the goal today is to talk about some of  the Romero films I h...

 Given my indecisiveness leading up to this week's post, I decided to look at influencing in movies. A pretty general topic that let's me jump around to different things and describe what works and what doesn't work from these influences. Whether that be wholesale ripping something off, or using another piece of media or news story as a springboard. This is about the pieces that shape a work. To ease into this topic, I am going to use A Nightmare on Elm Street as an example. The film was made in response to Wes Craven seeing the deaths of Hmong Refugees in the news. Seemingly random deaths that were most likely caused by the usage of chemical weapons. But the jumping off point for Craven wasn't the horrors of war, it was the hallucinations, and unwillingness to sleep that caught his attention. So, the film was born out of this fear of a boogeyman that haunts your dreams. Even the look of Freddy was based upon a random guy Craven saw when he was a child.  The core idea b...

 The fast turn around of February means that I have less time to figure out what to talk about. But it just so happens that I do have something in mind. And that's Remakes in Media. This topic has become more and more prevalent in recent years as movies, games, and shows are recycled and redone. And to be clear, this is specifically about remaking, and not rebooting. But even the examples I have in mind skirt that line, so who really knows exactly. Regardless, while it's nice to get a shiny new coat paint on an old favorite. Sometimes I just feel tired looking at how the material gets treated. So, the goal for today is to talk about some media that I have engaged with and their remakes.  For some context, the reason I wanted to talk about remakes again revolved around the rejected Bloodborne Remake that the now defunct Bluepoint Games had pitched. Like, it fucking sucks that the studio got shutdown, but I can't understand wanting to remake a game like Bloodborne. If anythin...

 Lately, I've been on a real Horror kick. Watching The Initiation, The House on Sorority Row, Curtains, and A Bay of Blood. While I enjoyed all of these movies for what they were doing, the one that stuck with me the most was A Bay of Blood. The 1971 Mario Bava classic that served as the template for the early Slasher Boom in the 1970s and 1980s. And when you watch it for longer than a minute, you really see how influential it was. Like, Italian Films, and Giallos more specifically, have been noticeably influential, but A Bay of Blood seemed to be the "It Girl". A title that I think it rightfully deserved.  A Bay of Blood landed in that sweet spot for me as a Slasher with its element of surprise. This part was important because when thinking about Giallos, the surprise aspects function a bit differently. It's what separated them from their non-Italian contemporaries. With Friday the 13th, the surprise will almost always be on the timing of the kill. You would hear the...

 Recently, I decided to watch the first seven Howling movies. And the only reason I didn't watch the eighth was due to convenience. I didn't think it was very necessary when I started the series, and after going through seven of them. I was right. The Howling movies peak at the first film, and nosedive into a stream of bad or mediocre films. This surprised me because most film franchises don't even make it past two or three. So, to constantly ride on the coattails of the success of a single hit feels a bit odd. Until you realize that the series had a handful of people who still wanted to make Howling films. And that's how you get so many low budget sequels. Because someone with money wanted to make it happen.  But this isn't some grandiose takedown of a dormant franchise. This is about the positives and negatives that came out of the the Howlings. A series about Werewolves, sometimes. And that's the biggest issue that I have with the sequels. They mostly try to ...