I sometimes forget that the characters in my “stories” have had previous acting jobs. Which means that this adorable Brit:
Went on to become this Georgian corpse-killer:
While we can all agree that Andrew Lincoln is totally dreamy (even if he’s grown a bit skeletal himself since he started his Walking Dead stint) I think after tonight’s episode I’m firmly on Shane’s side – if you’re not busting zombie heads, you clearly have no interest in survival anymore.
I’ve been curious about Amber Heard for a few months now. She’s gorgeous, and in a Nylon Guys interview she said something interesting: That horror movies are “sometimes the only real platform for a young woman to act. Horror films give you the opportunity to be tough and independent and to fight, to kick, to kill, to cry.”
I get that (I’m only taken seriously when I kick, kill and cry too) so I was excited to see The Ward on Netflix. It’s the first film John Carpenter’s directed in nine years, it stars this kicky blonde girl who thinks she’ll have a platform to act, and it’s set in an insane asylum, which I always find fascinating.
Amber’s character Kristen ends up here after she burns an empty farm house. She arrives at the asylum with no memory of her past, disoriented and surly. Eventually she meets the other girls in the ward. They’re nice enough, but they fit stereotypes so perfectly it starts feeling a little contrived. In this clip you can see Zoey (the nympho), Sarah (the infantile one) and Emily (the kooky tomboy) – and Kristen, who is just kind of pissed off.
The “Alice” everyone’s getting worked up about is a rotting girl-corpse who devises different ways to take out the girls, one by one.
Really, the movie would be better without Alice.
I know that having a ghoul lurking around makes everyone question their sanity in thought-provoking ways, and quick cuts to rotting flesh make for good shocks, but the ghost aspect actually detracts from this film. The best scenes here involve the (living) girls interacting with each other, or the various ways the nurse, attendant and doctor exert their authority and coerce them into submission – there are two great electroshock scenes, one a little deadlier than the other. And when Kirsten has her interviews with the doctor, she does act – and yell and fight – and she doesn’t need a monster to make that happen.
Despite an 11th hour twist (why do screenwriters always add those? to make us watch the movie again) there’s not all that much to recommend The Ward. I love a nice 60s aesthetic, and the actors are good when they get a chance to act, but the story is awfully sparse. Instead of learning more about the inmates, we see them showering with a corpse hiding in the steam. Instead of figuring out whether the attendant is molesting his charges, we see endless creepy pans across the long asylum halls.
You know what? Go watch Halloween, and then watch Girl, Interrupted. That way you’ll see two good movies instead of a mediocre one.
In the past several years, LGBT teens have made headlines for being bullied, beaten, and ultimately taking their lives after enduring daily harassment from their classmates. For gay men and women, this isn’t exactly news. That’s why Dan Savage started “It’s Gets Better,” a series of videologs filmed by celebrities, athletes,and people like us – promising the kids that they’ll be alright. To date, there have been 22,000 entries.
But bullying, unfortunately, is by no means a recent phenomenon. Last night, as part of their Vincente Minnelli retrospective, the Brooklyn Academy of Music Cinematek screened Tea and Sympathy, a 1956 melodrama that follows the trail of an “off horse” in a New England prep school populated by “regular fellows.” Protagonist Tom Lee is a sensitive guy. He spends his time listening to records and strumming his guitar – the other boys play football and go mountain climbing. Tom’s only allies are his roommate, Al, and the housemaster’s wife, Lauren, played by Deborah Kerr.
It’s easy to read Tea and Sympathy as a cult classic of the ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ variety. When Tom’s father complains, “I can’t tell my friends he wants to grow up to be a…folk singer,” he delivers it as though a folk singer were no different than a crack fiend. Later, the housemaster reassures Tom’s father: “Don’t worry, they’ll give him a real going over at the pajama party tonight,” which, to a gay audience, plays very differently than intended. Between the soaring orchestrations, bereft close-ups and the camera’s omnipresent focus on the tea set, one can imagine that Todd Haynes partly styled 2002’s Far From Heaven on this film.
Check the trailer (which really glosses over the gay parts)
While some scenes come off as shlocky, others can give gay audiences goose pricks ofrecognition. Tom’s father forces masculinity on him – encouraging him to flirt with the haggard woman at the coffee shop, nearly forcing him to get a crew cut so he’ll fit in the other boys. Tom’s interests, including gardening, sewing and cooking, immediately earn him the nickname “sister boy,” a moniker that sticks like superglue in an all-boysschool. The most poignant scene comes when Tom’s alpha-male roommate tries to coach Tom in the art of manliness. He has Tom walk around the room, and when he attempts to describe his stride, he can only produce a gesture, an unspoken, “You’re light in yourloafers.” Then when Al demonstrates his walk, a hulking stomp, it seems ludicrous –Tom won’t event attempt it.
“It wouldn’t do me any good anyway,” he says. Once you’ve become the class pariah,there’s really no way to shake it. Tom does try to bed the coffee shop girl but the plan goes horribly awry, and in a heartbreaking capitulation Tom casts aside the girl and riflesthrough her kitchen for a sharp knife. Only the intervention of strangers stops him from killing himself.
Many hold that the main character in Tea and Sympathy is not gay at all. The playwright Robert Anderson flatly stated, “It has nothing to do with homosexuality… It’s about a false charge of homosexuality.” While many gay audiences ignore this, the film is no-less poignant if Tom is simply a sensitive, straight teenager. Whether bullying springs from differences in race, class, orientation or anything else, the common denominator is difference. If the trappings have become outdated, the central theme of Tea and Sympathy is as important today as ever: students can be helpless at the hands of their classmates, but it only takes one understanding person to turn their life around.
In celebration of Spirit Day 2011, go be that understanding person. Check out Out.com’s post on how to show your solidarity with LGBT youth, and remember that your help can make all the difference in the world.
The Vincente Minnelli Retrospective at the BAM Cinematek runs through November 2. For information on screenings, tickets and times, visit www.bam.org.
American Horror Story premieres tonight at 10pm on FX, and let’s all pray to the gods of the F train that I make it home in time…
You may have noticed I have a thing for horror (see: The Woman In Black, The Prowler, a billion other things on this blog) and this show will try to make a case for serialized horror, versus something feature length. There aren’t many predecessors in this genre – the only one that comes to mind is Dark Shadows, a Gothic soap opera that aired on NBC in the late 60s/early 70s (that series is now being recast as a film, directed by Tim Burton, starring (surprise) Johnny Depp).
AHS follows an unfaithful psychiatrist and his wife and daughter as they move cross-country, mostly to try to repair the family after Daddy (Dylan McDermott) is caught cheating. The daughter is a especially awesome, as she sort of resembles Lydia from Beetle Juice. She smokes at school, and spits in the face of the girl who tries to stop her, and when the realtor mentions there was a murder suicide in their prospective home, she immediately replies “We’ll take it.” She’s like the ginger from Suburgatory with more Gothic bite. Here’s the 30-second spot they’ve been airing on TV.
The family ends up in a beautiful, sprawling house (yes, psychiatry pays well) with a bloody past. FX recently released the first five minutes of tonight’s episode. It doesn’t tell you much about the current family, but you get a sense of the creepiness that will be going on here. Hank Steuver of the Washington Post had this to say: “American Horror Story is one scream after another. So much creepy stuff happens in the first episode that viewers will be left asking: Can I possibly watch an entire series of this? Followed, of course, by a more obvious question: Why do they stay in that house?”
People in the horror genre are dumb! That’s why they stay put. Otherwise we’d have nothing to watch.
OK, enjoy the first five minutes.
To be honest, the scariest part for me was watching those boys vandalize irreplaceable light fixtures and stained glass. They had it coming.
Just to make sure you’re not missing the gay quotient here: The show is created and produced by the makers of Glee, and Zachary Quinto (is he or isn’t he?) has a recurring role as one half of the gay couple who formerly occupied the house – you know, the ones involved in the murder-suicide…
The answer: he is.
I think they should replace the rest of the Jersey Shore cast with more of Vinny.
He’s even channeling a bit o’ Ryan Gosling a la Blue Valentine with that ukelele. And did I mention he has a blog? He does. Read it, to learn the many trails and travails of being a highly paid reality star.
First, Suburgatory wasn’t nearly as dismal as I thought. Second, it’s channeling a lot of that Mean Girls fish-out-of-water vibe with great success.
Is it downright derivative? Yes. When Tessa Altman’s dad (who is Elton from Clueless!) finds her condoms in her drawer, he moves them out of NYC and to a place that looks like Greenwich. She’s dropped off in suburbia and muses: ”Kind of ironic that a box full of rubbers would bring me here, where everything is… plastic.”
The suburban girls wear only pink, slather on lip gloss and live for the mall – all things you’ll recognize from the plastics in Mean Girls. When Tessa’s dad starts a new remodelling project, he meets Dallas (she’s not like a regular mom – she’s a ‘cool mom‘) who immediately tries to take the motherless Tessa under her wing. Tessa, who prefers ‘lesbian’ boots (according to her new classmates) doesn’t go for this plan.
(I mean, does this not look familiar? A ginger girl hiding in a bathroom stall at her new school. Who happens to also like animals? They could have been a tad more subtle.)
But listen, here’s what could redeem Suburgatory. First off, Mean Girls was awesome, and if this show can make that theme work over a season, I’ll be watching.
Second, both Mean Girls and Suburgatory are at their best when they break a bit from reality. In the former I’m thinking of all those fun jungle scenes. In the latter there are several moments of totally surreal, menacing homogeneity that actually make suburbia seem like hell. Tessa’s father walks into the country club, and six augmented housewives tanning in lounge chairs slowly put down their cell phones, sit up and pivot their heads to follow his stride in perfect synchronization. Later, Tessa’s walking down the street and thinking “New York was scary, but here. Here the people look like they could eat their young.” At that moment she passes a Real Housewife who’s just thrown a pair of baby booties on her grill.
I like a little weirdness like that. I also like Ana Gasteyer, and I can’t wait till she makes it across the street and becomes a real character.
See for yourself.
You know what? He’s really busy. Stop hounding him.
Well, he was in Friends With Benefits, which I didn’t get to see. I did however read a review of the movie in last week’s New Yorker, which is maybe the funniest place to read a review of an R-rated sex rom-com. Or a “shag-buddies comedy” starring Timberlake, who “swings his lithe body around the room,” and Kunis, “of the almond-shaped eyes and dusky skin.” You should read the review here – we all need more lyricism in our lives.
But that’s old news. Next up for Justin is In Time. He plays a man on the run in a future where everyone stops aging at 25, but usually doesn’t make it much longer. Time is currency, which means the haves live indefinitely and the have-nots are screwed. It’s really similar to Logan’s Run from 1976. Check out the trailer below – the clincher for me is where Pete Campbell introduces his mother-in-law, wife and daughter.
You’re at least guaranteed a film full of good-looking people.
Like The Rum Diary, this ALSO comes out on October 28 (the most auspicious day of the year (hint hint I’d like a black leather jacket)).
Again.
You might remember this post about Thompson’s The Rum Diaries from last year. Well, after a very long wait, they’ve released the trailer for the film version starring Johnny Depp. It looks really fun and surreal, and Amber Heard, the actor playing Connecticut expat Chenault, matches Depp blow for blow when it comes to good looks.
Of course the way my mind moves through this photo is (top to bottom): what a fantastic screen wall, how many bobby pins went into Chenault’s updo, does everyone wear white in Puerto Rico, where do I buy that turquoise and puce Op Art pillow? So. many. questions.
The trailer is really high-spirited – I don’t see any evidence of the darker parts of the novel (spousal abuse, some rape, some violent locals) but maybe they’re trying to trick us into thinking 1960s Puerto Rico was a blast all day, every day? It also doesn’t show Depp’s character writing all that much, except for the line “I’ve got a story for you… I’m going after him.”
One excellent omen: it’s released on my birthday, putting it in the pantheon of other films greats like Zombie Strippers and Saw 3D.
As a bonus, here’s a shot I found that was captioned: “Dr. Hunter S Thompson modeled as a youth in Puerto Rico.” I don’t really believe it, but it’s fun to imagine. Plus, his cheekbones are the spitting image of Depp’s.
This is just too cool not to mention immediately. I’m sometimes helpless in terms of downloads and bittorrents, because I’m always hearing about hapless school teachers in Iowa being arrested and charged millions of dollars for downloading illegal content. HOWEVER, dailydot.com just wrote about a ‘masterpost’ Tumblr (essentially, it gives you a list of links to download films/songs/episodes of your favorite actor/band/series).
Obviously I found the most backwards one around – a list of Pre-Code Hollywood films compiled by Julie Marsden, a very savvy 18-year-old. We’re talking Dracula, The Maltese Falcon, Mata Hari, Blonde Venus and more at your instant disposal. These are the movies released before Hollywood got boring and decided to impose morals on everything (separate beds for married couples, no homos, you get the picture).
Here’s her Tumblr, and here’s the masterpost. I know what I’ll be doing on Sunday afternoons from now on.
A good friend handed me this excellent book yesterday, and now you get to benefit with some artwork.
This one’s from DuBarry Was a Lady (1943), based off a Cole Porter musical. It’s by Symeon Shimin. Check out the trailer below.
Next up in 1936′s Follow the Fleet, starring Fred and Ginger.
And a clip from that movie with one of my favorite songs – “Let Yourself Go.”
And my favorite of the three, Anton Grot’s poster for The Thief of Bagdad, has all the fantastic appeal of a Maxfield Parrish (or the cover of a Burroughs book).
And even better, a clip from the Douglas Fairbanks silent movie. Eat your heart out, Aladdin.
In addition to fish and chips and the choral tradition, England consistently churns out top-notch ghost stories. Harry Potter stars in a film version of one: The Woman In Black.
This movie looks like a trifecta of great British things:
You may know Chris Evans as the Human Torch: the superhero with gayest catchphrase of all, ‘Flame on!’. His Aryan looks and healthy teeth have also gotten him roles like the ‘Harvard Hottie’ in The Nanny Diaries and the jock in Not Another Teen Movie. Most recently he starred in Captain America: The First Avenger. I’ve heard the movie is pretty good until the special effects consume all the actors and plotlines like a CGI black hole. Still, I’ll see it for the pecs and the 1940s drag everyone will be wearing.
Right, but why is Chris posing with a Care Bear?
Because he’s looooves them. According to The Hollywood Reporter:
“’To be completely honest, I was watching like Care Bears and like My Little Pony,’ Evans said… But, he had his reasons for playing with the typically girl-centric toys. ‘I had older sisters, I had to, I had no choice.’”
Excuses, excuses, Chris. Those were my favorite toys, but at least I had a plastic dinosaur or two around to butch things up.
You can watch Chris’ video interview here.
And just to be gratuitous, here’s my favorite scene from Not Another Teen Movie. It happens to be a musical, which I know will be a shock to you all. I swear there’s an uncensored version of this out there somewhere which includes not just breasts but a scatalogical joke delivered on a high note, but maybe it’s just too much fun for YouTube to handle.
Somedays it seems like you come across a previously unknown something (a word, a concept, a ghostly being) and the next thing you know this unknown something is everywhere you look. I spent too much time last night on a blog called Pork Rhine. It’s a paranormal blog, run by a guy who generally debunks the kind of hoaxes believers go wild for.
I started reading about the shadow man. He usually shows up at night, standing by your bed or at the door, simply watching you. A lot of people who claim to see him also feel they’re unable to move for the duration of his appearance – this is probably just sleep paralysis, which is pretty common. It happens when you first wake up out of a deep sleep, and it feels as though something heavy is lying on your chest, a sensation best embodied in this fantastic Fuseli painting:
Note the gargoyle perched on the lady’s chest, stopping her from moving, while a white mare (you got it, a night-mare) peeks from behind.
Anyway, the shadow man seems to be everywhere, including the Dior ads in this month’s issue of Details. And in The Twilight Zone, surprise surprise. Click ahead to about 5:42 for the good stuff, though it never hurts to get a little backstory.
I don’t believe in this guy at all, but was intrigued Dior’s use of the same hallmarks in their ad. Sure, a flat-brimmed hat and a trench aren’t exactly rare in the fashion world, but there does seem to be a lot of shadow…
to have an attitude.
When I come home and have the house to myself, there’s only one thing to do. Well, there’s lots to do, but after a brief Risky Business dance break and a dalliance with my roommates’ ice cream, the only thing to do is put on a horror movie.
Tonight’s selection came from FearNet, the horror movie cable channel, so I wasn’t expecting much. Most of their OnDemand offerings are sequels or straight-to-DVD releases starring P!nk or Paris Hilton. I picked The Haunting of Julia because a.) Mia Farrow and b.) it was released in 1977, so if nothing else, I could count on some good clothes. Man did I underestimate this one.
The movie opens with Mia Farrow, her husband and her daughter at breakfast. They look happy and rich (or ‘poncey,’ as they say in the London, where the film is set). Next thing you know, Mia’s daughter is on the floor choking on a piece of apple. No one knows what to do – the mother stuffs her fingers in her throat to get the offending apple piece, the father turns her upside down and shakes her (has no one heard of the Heimlich?) and then calls an ambulance.
Mia gets so hysterical she ends up grabbing a steak knife and attempting a shaky tracheotomy, so… Yeah, the ambulance doesn’t make it in time. But what a way to set up the rest of the film. Here’s the first fifteen minutes, if you want to be sucked in.
Since I already spoiled the opening, I won’t give away too much of the rest of the film, but when traumatized Mia moves into a big mansion by her lonesome, things don’t go well. She’s being (very subtly) haunted by the ghost of a little girl, but it’s not her own. There are time-tested horror tropes here – a creepy old medium holds a seance in the house, Mia has to go to the British Library to get to the bottom of things, a creepy clown doll makes frequent appearances, etc.
Better, though, is the way the movie handles psychological issues like anxiety about motherhood, mental illness, isolation, infantilization and infanticide. It’s definitely a movie that builds well (I know, how can you top a steak knife to jugular in the first scene, right?) and by the end I was chilled to the bone.
The next step, of course, is to get the book, written by Peter Staub.
