Bad Lieutenant “remake” trailer

Here it is. (Click on “trailer” to see the trailer – by default it loads a clip of the movie, rather than the full trailer.)

I am late on this because I’ve been trying to pretend it isn’t happening.  I mean – one of my favorite directors (Werner Herzog) does a remake of an unpleasant movie starring one of Hollywood’s most unreliable actors (Nic Cage) who is almost always in crap especially of late and also Xzibit is in there for some reason?  What the holy fuck is that?

But then I read two things: 1. The movie isn’t a remake or even a sequel, but rather an unrelated story with some barely-connected narrative concerns (yes, Cage does play a police lieutenant of questionable moral fiber); 2. Cage’s performance is being compared – favorably – with the insanity of Klaus Kinski in his prime.  So I had to go watch the trailer.  Twice.  And now I know that the number of times I will see this movie on opening day is one of these:

A. one time

B. half or less of a time

C. five or six times.

But there ain’t no zero on that list, Diane.  Y’all better know dat.

Art from beyond the 5th dimension

I don’t usually post my visual art here, but I like this piece and this animation, so yeah.  Yesterday I did a piece of cover art for a death metal band’s concept album about the Lovecraft story, “At the Mountains of Madness.”  (Yes I know, I am a huge nerd.)  This animation represents the four main stages the piece went through: 1. rough sketch to get the composition down (what is this place? where is the huge monster? where do I put the tentacles, and how many of them?); 2. pencil and pen drawing (look, shit is all shaded and realistic-y now!); 3. first layer of digitally-added color (the basic hues are there but it’s flat like a comic book); and 4. the finished thing (darker! wetter! more abhorrent to the bounds of sanity!).  Anyhoo, here it is – or click for a slightly larger version.

Cover art for Cosmic Atrophy

Is this offensive?

My good liberal sensors might just be poorly calibrated, but doesn’t this seem kind of offensive?  From emusic.com’s listing of an obscure reggae album by Bigga Haitian:

The correct title is right there, emusic.  Binghi MAN.  Mr. Haitian may spell his first (er, nick-) name “Bigga,” but he doesn’t always have to type with a extremely cliched Jah-may-kon accent.

(By the way, this album is good.  Recommended, mon!)

Halloween playlist

Some obscure music for you this Halloween season, Diane:

Rose Kemp, “The Unholy.” Good lord, Ms. Kemp can sing.  And this song is creepy, eerie, yet gorgeous as all get out.  (Sorry about the “butt art” – people who make YouTube videos are weird.)

Fred Myrow, “Phantasm Theme.” Wouldn’t be Halloween without a spooky horror theme from the 80s; this is one of my favorites that isn’t the overplayed (but still classic) John Carpenter stuff.

Roky Erickson, “Two Headed Dog.” Roky was a nut who spent time in a mental institution, and wrote songs about demons and zombies and two-headed dogs.  And a lot of his stuff sounded like this: completely perfect rock ‘n roll.  (Albums like this are why I have emusic; occasionally you unearth a real gem.)

The Devil’s Blood “The Heavens Cry Out for the Devil’s Blood.” In an alternate universe, Heart and Iron Maiden formed a supergroup that sounded like this.  Weird band – too weird (and diabolical) to get any mainstream love, but their songs are amazingly catchy.

Fantomas, “Rosemary’s Baby.” On the “Director’s Cut” album, Mike Patton’s crew of weirdos in Fantomas did a bunch of horror soundtrack covers.  This is one of my favorites.

Aghast, “Enter the Hall of Ice.” A pioneering “dark ambient” album from the wives of famous Norwegian black metallers.  If you like spooky ambient stuff, don’t let the description keep you away – this is truly good, honestly disturbing music.

And finally, no Halloween music post would be complete without this slice of terror:

Remake on Elm Street

Here’s the new “Nightmare on Elm Street” trailer.

Though I’m on record as hating the idea of, and avoiding spending one red cent on, basically every horror remake ever with just a couple of exceptions* – I think this looks kind of/maybe/hopefully/for the love of jeebus… decent?  I like that they’re not playing up Freddy’s wisecracking to the detriment of his scariness (a mistake made by the majority of the original series).  I like the iconic shots of the little girls and the claw in the bathtub.  I like the casting of “Watchmen” freak Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy – not only is he a good and scary actor, but his name actually sounds like it belongs to a serial killer.  And I like that there’s no Jessica Biel, Megan Fox, or the next one of those actressbots to roll off the assembly line.  This could be OK.  Time will tell.

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* Carpenter’s version of “The Thing”; the 70s “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

Polanski arrested

I don’t have a lot to say about this.  He’s a brilliant director, a complicated man, and a scumbag.  He probably deserves whatever he gets in this case (unless he gets nothing) – even his own account of the rape in his self-titled autobiography doesn’t make him seem all that sympathetic, or excuse the crime.  And yet I’m still planning on my fifth (I think?) viewing of “Rosemary’s Baby” this October.

David Cronenberg to remake his own remake of “The Fly”

Heeeeellllllllp meeeeee!  Heeeeeelllllllllllllllp meeeeeeeeeee!

I just figured out the formula

I think I have a bead on how to cruise through my NFL suicide pool.  For those that don’t know, a suicide pool is a competition where each participant picks one team every week to win straight up (no point spread stuff).  If your team wins, you advance to the next round, where you repeat the process; moreover, you can’t pick the same team twice in a season.  On paper it sounds like this would be pretty easy, but in the years I’ve been in this pool I don’t think it ever went to the end of the regular season without a winner being declared.  And that winner has never been me.

Well, maybe this time.  Here’s my new system:

1. Don’t pick good teams; pick against bad teams. Obviously if you can pick a good team playing against a bad team, that’s ideal.  But good NFL teams still lose a few games a year, usually, while bad NFL teams tend to win only one or two games, with the majority of those wins being at home.  Bringing me to point 2:

2. Pick against bad teams on the road, playing against good teams. Good teams win most of their home games, bad teams lose most of their road games.  This is a lock strategy.  And we’re setting the deadbolt and chain by adding this little refinement:

3. Pick against bad teams on the road, playing against good teams who aren’t in the same conference. Last year the league’s three worst teams were the Lions, Rams, and Chiefs.  They had a combined record of 4-44.  The four wins were by the Chiefs and Rams, and ALL FOUR WERE IN CONFERENCE GAMES.  This is because bad teams are still loaded with coaches and players who have played against their conference and division rivals a number of times previously; they tend to play more to the level of a division or conference opponent than when facing a similarly good team who they haven’t played against in five years.  I’ve always tried to stay away from division rivalry games, but I think leaning toward inter-conference games is taking things to the next level.

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The only stumbling blocks for my plan for suicide domination (…hmmm) are these: a. it’s hard to always pick against a bad team on the road in a non-conference game – these games are not that frequent and occasionally would entail me picking the same opponent to win, which I can’t do.  So I think I’ll be actually using option 2 (and even option 1) a lot of times throughout the season.  And b. you have to identify the truly bad teams.  The league’s three worst had four wins last year, but if you moved up to the tepid likes of Cleveland or Cincinnati, you could easily double the win total – and thereby halve your percentage chance of surviving any given pick.  Luckily, on this last point, I’m pretty sure the Lions, Rams, and Chiefs are all going to continue to blow this year.  So that’s my starting line-up, with substitutions to be made at a later date as needed.

Applied science: my all-stars this week are St. Louis on the road vs. Washington, Detroit hosting Minnesota at home, and Kansas City hosting Oakland at home.  All three are conference games unfortunately.  Oakland is a division rival and a poor team – immediate red flag.  Minnesota and Washington are both good and should easily win, but Detroit is at home (St. Louis is not) and Detroit/Minnesota is a division game, so my choice is clear – I’m taking the ‘Skins.  Wish me luck.

“Paranormal Activity” trailer

Diane,

The trailer for this buzz-accumulating ultra-indie horror flick has just come out, and here it is. It’s not getting a wide release any time soon, so we may as well talk out of our asses for a while, eh?

My thoughts:

- Interesting idea for a trailer, showing the audience at the screening almost as much as the movie.  They are focusing on the immersive theater experience and building on the “scariest movie in years” hype they were already getting.  Good marketing for horror buffs.

- The faux-documentary, faux-real gimmick has been done to death.  It may work here and it may not (little hard to tell from this amount of footage), but I have to say, I’m getting bored with it in general.  If we’re striving for gritty and a more realistic feeling to absorb the viewer, what’s wrong with the 70s approach – flat lighting, low-key performances, long shots – that have worked so well for many a classic movie (horror and otherwise)?  Or how about emulating the “Children of Men” approach, which somehow merged the documentary idea with the old school, pure-cinema rollercoaster ride?  Of course it’s harder to do either of those things on the cheap.  Still, I don’t feel like I need to see many more movies where every camera shot is coming out of a camcorder held or set up by one of the characters in the movie.  Maybe I’m being too curmudgeonly though.

- Hard to get a bead on the acting, but that is often a weak spot in these kinds of movies.  Cast unknowns in this specific type of movie and you REALLY need realistic, believable performances for it to work.  Unfortunately they are often stilted and over-emotive instead.  “Blair Witch” suffered from it, as did “Cloverfield” at times.  The gold standard for me is “Alien” – the cast weren’t unknowns but weren’t A-listers either, and the movie wasn’t documentary-style, but nonetheless it really felt like a gang of real people, working away at a tedious, dirty job in the middle of (literally) nowhere.  Until the screaming started, and that also felt very real.  It’s a high bar for indie filmmakers to have to clear, but they bring it on themselves with their choice of aesthetic; I think viewers (myself included) are much more forgiving of bad acting in a campy slasher movie than in a “Blair Witch” type of movie.

- The two concerns out of the way, there’s some very good stuff here.  Parts of it do look very scary.  My favorite bit (and clearly the trailer editor’s favorite, as well) is the sheet billowing up as the couple sleeps, like some invisible thing is crawling underneath it.  I hope for a lot more of that.

My home! Where I sleep, where I come to play with my toys!

Diane,

So the police called me at work this morning, and get this: some little dipshit broke into my house.  He used a kitchen knife to cut a screen on a window facing the back yard, and climbed in through the opening.  Then he bundled up my XBox 360 and a stack of 13 games and two controllers and some cables (neatly disconnected from the media cabinet, might I add, which is no small feat to accomplish without breaking things).  He stuffed them all into a backpack, wrapped that in a curtain (why?), and went into the back yard, where he was met by cops who had been called by a suspicious and watchful neighbor a few houses down.  They tried to tase him – didn’t connect.  He ran around with officers in pursuit (in what I assume was a comical manner, soundtracked by “Yakety Sax”; I suppose there were quality bosoms and chippies in their knickers involved).  Then he was clonked over the head or something and taken into custody.  My XBox and accoutrements were abandoned mid-chase in the back yard, so I recovered everything taken and it still works and all.

To merge this with the usual subject matter of this blog – why just the XBox?  Does he have no taste?  I have racks of DVDs that are light, smallish, and representative of someone with excellent taste in genre fare.  I have hordes of CDs and LPs from a broad cross-section of styles, some of which are rare and valuable.  I have an iPod.  Has this dude no aspirations of self-enrichment?  Does he just want to game his life away when he could instead be listening to the out-of-print Sonny Stitt twofer “Tune-Up/Constellation” (excellent altoman!) and watching the obscure-but-great spaghetti Western “A Bullet for the General”?

Kids.  Feh.