Attention world: In addition to my writing about movies for fol.lowfoc.us, I have launched with my friend Lewis Manalo a new film criticism site, Split Edit. As such, (A Superhero Named) Tony will begin to have a lot less movie-related writing on it.
And behold: Split Edit on Twitter.
This week’s Movie of the Week is Cat People.
This week’s Movie of the Week is Rififi.
Just posted in the last couple days at fol.lowfoc.us:
// Movie Notebook: RASEN, on the forgotten (and forgettable) sequel to Ring
// Breakfast of Champions, about Jim Jarmusch and Coffee and Cigarettes
Over at fo.lowfoc.us, a new weekly feature, Movie of the Week. This week’s movie: Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil.
See also: Last week’s inaugural, Killer of Sheep.
Jump over to followfocus to check out my farewell to one of the greatest video stores ever, Kim’s Video.
I love a scary movie as much as the next nerd who uses the word “superhero” in a URL — maybe more. Interest in the genre began in my junior high years, the midst of the 1980s slasher franchise trend when Freddy and Jason ruled all and straight-to-video cheapies were bountiful. With that kind of training, I quickly overcame childhood fears and dove in for all the blood and guts I could. Then came Freddy’s Nightmares.
“…the zombie-take-all scenario isn’t just a fear–it’s a fantasy too, exposing our secret desire to guiltlessly blow away row after row of hungry, stupid humanoids, with no repercussions. When is it gonna be most okay to shoot someone in the head? In the zombie apocalypse, that’s when.”
–Program notes for ZOMBIES! ZOMBIES! ZOMBIES!, Thursdays in October at the Silent Movie Theatre.
October is a big month for the Cinefamily. Other programs of interest include The Man of 1,000 Faces, Japanese Ghost Stories, George Romero, Val Lewton, Holyfuckingshit: Evil Children and more. Can’t think of a better way to escape the media mania of election season.
// graphic by Matthew Forsythe for Flak Magazine
I don’t have a solid memory of the first time I saw Falling Down, the 1993 Michael Douglas vehicle about American white male frustration. I remember that the movie was still fairly new, that I watched it on a television (either via cable or videotape) and that it didn’t affect me much. The time was the early 1990s. Douglas was Hollywood’s Male Victim #1. Bill Clinton was a new President, I was in high school, and not too soon before there was a riot in nearby Los Angeles. My interest in the film probably didn’t go beyond the shoot-and-yell-at-people trend that came into vogue after Reservoir Dogs.
Fast forward to the present: I spend about half of the intervening years living in New York City. A terrorist attack occurs. The country’s tenor changes. Back in a Los Angeles hell bent on urban development, and with renewed interest in the city’s elusive soul, I figure, Hey, why not watch Falling Down again? It’s Los Angeles around the time of the riots. That’s interesting. Why the hell not?
Well, now I know. Because it’s lame.
Over at fol.lowfoc.us, Amy Robinson has some thoughts about George Romero’s latest zombie movie.
What’s most striking to me about the film is how it trades the old idea of zombies as stumbling metaphors for an obsessive look at the human response to apocalypse. Involvement vs. Aloofness, Criticism vs. Action, etc. Examining these responses has always been part of Romero’s agenda, but in Diary to stay in communication and share stories of your immediate surroundings becomes a vital function of survival. As “mainstream” news of the zombies is woefully recut as propaganda, online user-generated content helps create a jigsaw puzzle of fact. This is social networking at its most useful!
Not since Night of the Living Dead has Romero’s social commentary involved the zombies so little. Here they’re rendered almost irrelevant. This time around the threat could be any threat — a tornado, a hurricane, a civil war, alien invasion. It just so happens that zombies are more entertaining.
Split Edit fol.lowfoc.us