As I write, I’m sitting in a plastic chair that faces the leaf-painted lawn my parents spend all spring & summer trying to protect. “Sorry `rents,” I laugh inside my head, “but even Home Depot’s finest lawn-care products can’t ward off Mother Nature. That bitch is nasty!”

The wind just picked up, tossing over a few of the aforementioned leaves and inspiring my obese pooch to tilt his head upward. I see his snout quiver ever so slightly and he squints as the breeze fills his lungs. Maybe I really am starting to turn into a hippie, but I think Stryder’s got it right. He’s not worried about the recession, or the perpetuation of the military-industrial complex, or even whether or not his DVR is going to save tonight’s Californication. No, this motherfucker is just glad to be.

Since I’m particularly struck by the  dog today, I’ve decided to let him choose the OCTOBERFEAST entry. I mean, he’s just a dog so I let him make a choice from my tentative list. I was going to write about any topic of his choosing, but he wasn’t willing to budge:

Pepsibones: Hey, what should I post about today?

Stryder: Isn’t there some Halloween movie where every scene includes a cat being brutally murdered?

Pepsibones: Nah, I don’t think so man.

Stryder: Hrm…I’m pretty sure there is.

Pepsibones: Well, I’ve never heard of it.

Stryder: Really? C’mon, you know what I’m talking about. It’s that movie by the director, and in every scene a stupid cat gets just  what he fucking deserves.

Pepsibones: I don’t know.

Stryder: …Well, what if I give you a script that I wrote and you enter that into the OCTOBERFEAST?

It went on for about a half an hour. Seriously.

Anyways, Stryder finally made a decision and thus the OCTOBERFEAST will continue upon its magnificent voyage.

Stryder the Dog contemplates OCTOBERFEAST

Today, we hit the rest stop known as Scream.

I’m not sure why, but I’m under the impression that the 1996 film is the object of much hatred. I understand why one may dislike the series as a whole, as Scream is a satire of the horror/slasher genre and its penchant for producing subpar sequels. But Scream itself? A great movie.

Penned by the master of 1990’s horror, Kevin Williamson, Scream is a slasher flick with a brain. While trying to avoid being stabbed to death, Neve Campbell (remember her?) and her friends realize just how similar their situation is to a horror movie. As a result, they come up with all sorts of strangely self-aware theories about how they should behave. Jamie Kennedy, in an awesome performance as a hardcore video-store clerk/nerd, lays out the rules:

Perhaps I’m just a sucker for the 1990’s and its finer moments. More accurately, I am a sucker for metafiction, and Scream certainly dabbles in that area. So if you want to chalk up the appreciation for Scream to that, feel free.

But even stripping away the self-referential aspect, the plot is noteworthy: you have a killer who calls you on the phone (in the days before Caller-ID), quizzes you about movies, and then stabs you to death. It’s fucking fantastic. The death scenes are exciting and full of gore, executed lethally (cheesy pun intended).

What really makes me root for the movie is that it takes some chances. There’re some recognizable names in Scream and not all of them make it out alive. In fact, Barrymore doesn’t even make it out of the first scene. While I was only ten when I saw it for the first time, I remember that Scream kept me guessing throughout.

Oh, and I completely forgot to mention — Wes Craven directed this movie. Sure, he isn’t Spielberg, Coppola, Scorsese, Tarantino, PT Anderson or Ridley Scott — but as far as horror movies go, he’s a force.

Forget the fact that it spawned the reprehensible Scary Movie series and the terribly played-out “ghost-face” costume. Scream is a good movie and you should include it in your personal OCTOBERFEAST celebration.

Although I’ve been saying this a lot lately, I must now formally announce that we are in the final lap of OCTOBERFEAST. In one week’s time, the demons and ghouls who spend most of the year pretending to be children will be running on the streets and holding us up for candy. It’s going to be great.

I really believe that trick-or-treating is one of the most surreal, almost magical parts of childhood. For one evening, adults step back and allow the inmates to run the asylum. Children shed their skin and assume the roles of beings that are to be not only considered, but actually feared and revered. I will never forget the feeling of importance when some fat-assed housewife would open her front door, fork over a goodie, and ask “Oh my! And what are you dressed as?”

It is with this awe of and respect for Halloween’s most celebrated  activity that OCTOBERFEAST inducts its newest member — E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

But first, let’s step back for a moment. Completely independent of its connections to the American Harvest Festival, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a fantastic film.  The 1982 Spielberg-concoction  is about a cute little alien with a pot-belly who gets stuck on Earth. Shortly thereafter, he is discovered and protected by three children and their single mom. Elliot, the middle of the three children, becomes best friends with the alien and they share a mind-link. In the process, Elliot helps the otherworldly visitor make an interstellar phone with which he can call home for a ride. By the end of the movie everyone learns the true meaning of love, friendship, and just how funny it is to call someone “Penis-breath.”

Really though, the only way you can not enjoy E.T. is if you don’t have a heart. Between Drew Barrymore’s debut (as Gertie), a John Williams score, the hilarious scene in which E.T. drinks beers, and flying bicycles there is something for everyone. So even on its own, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is an amazing slice of cinema.

Now, you may  find yourself asking why this movie is part of the OCTOBERFEAST. Well, first of all, the titular character is an alien. While certainly different than Earth-based monsters, I think it’d be foolish to argue that aliens don’t deserve a spot in the category of horrifying. While E.T. turns out to be a good guy, there is still an element of fear and uneasiness about the concept of outer-space men. So at the very least, just remember that E.T. is about an alien and that is enough of a qualifier in and of itself.

But more poignantly, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial takes place in a suburb preparing for Halloween festivities. With Spielberg at the helm, the viewer is treated to scenes that perfectly embody the spirit of the holiday, featuring kids getting amped to hit the streets and the costumes of which they are so proud. While one may want to write off the inclusion of Halloween in E.T. as incidental setting, I believe that Spielberg wanted to capture a season that contained a magic such as that found in the relationships of the movie’s characters.

Halloween may be a backdrop for the movie, but it is a significant and memorable backdrop.

For your consideration — E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial’s (sometimes first-person) perspective on trick or treating:

Born in the in the middle of Reagan’s second term, I can’t honestly say I knew what the hell was going on until the early 1990’s. And even then, a lot of cool shit (like the Spice Channel and Through the Never) went right over my head. It’s an unfortunate fact but I might as well have not even lived my first six years.

However, there were two figures so ingrained within pop culture that I couldn’t help but recognize them. Although their respective franchises had already started to descend, their ability to affect my six-year-old sensibilities did not dwindle at all. In my childhood, there were two indisputable manifestations of terror:

Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees.

Take a giant, undead monster with an unquenchable bloodlust and put him behind a hockey mask. Then give him a machete and a penchant for hacking up doofuses. Occasionally, include a back-story that touches upon his being a semi-retarded child who drowned in Crystal Lake. The result? Jason Voorhees of the Friday the 13^th series.

Even more frightening is Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street. Krueger is a former child molester/murderer who was burned alive by a mob of pissed off parents. Of course, Freddy is then somehow able to infiltrate the dreams of the townsfolk and kill them in the process. If this weren’t horrifying enough, one must remember that Freddy rocks a glove with four knives on it, wears a creepy striped sweater and adorns a fedora. A fedora!

So, if my childhood was haunted by these icons of horror, why include Freddy vs. Jason in the OCTOBERFEAST? Well for starters, that fact that Krueger and Voorhees scared the piss right into my bedsheets is a testament to their effectiveness. If you walk out of a horror flick completely unafraid of its antagonist, chalk that movie  up as a failure. While there are certainly some duds in the  Friday the 13^th & A Nightmare on Elm Street collections, the best of those franchises are some of the best.

Secondly, 2003’s Freddy vs. Jason finally gave fans what they had been begging to see for years. The burn-victim-nightmare-killer and Lennie-from-Of Mice and Men-with-a-goalie-mask dominated the American horror scene throughout all of the 1980’s & 1990’s; it was natural for people to want to see them go toe-to-toe. Same idea as Superman vs. Batman or Godzilla vs. King Kong — you take the two greatest and have them duke it out! Even the producers of the series knew it was only a matter of time — just consider the teaser placed at the end of Jason Goes to Hell (posted below).

Really though, Freddy vs. Jason is a fun movie. There’s no bullshit philosophical musing, nor did the producers puss out and settle for a PG-13. Instead, the viewer is treated to ridiculous murders and plenty of excuses to pit the two villains against one another. It does exactly what it was expected to and does it well.

Lastly, Freddy vs. Jason makes it into OCTOBERFEAST because it is the collaborative swansong for both franchises. After this 2003 effort, both Friday the 13^th and A Nightmare on Elm Street would be subjected to bullshit Hollywood reboots. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no “purist” and I definitely think restarting a franchise can be an excellent decision (*ahem*Batman Begins*ahem*Casino Royale*). But in the case of both of these series, I’m calling shenanigans on reinvention.

Grab a bag of candy corn, pound some apple cider and watch Freddy vs. Jason. If for nothing else, you get to hear Kelly Rowland say, “What kind of faggot runs around in a Christmas sweater?”

I rest my case.

OCTOBERFEAST has shown a more merciful side today, granting access to an entry that had been already been cut twice. During the drawing of the initial list, this film came up but was then excised in favor of its predecessor. The second draft of the OCTOBERFEAST lineup saw the formation of the WEREWOLF TRILOGY (we’ll get there in a few days) and so the movie was scrapped in the hopes of avoiding redundancy.

But here we are — in the midst of an OCTOBERFEAST miracle! Maybe it’s because I’m a sucker for Jason Bateman or maybe it’s because it is the best film of 1987, but there’s no way I could not present Teen Wolf Too!

Written by Jeph Loeb (yes, the same guy from yesterday), Teen Wolf Too is about a teenager who is struggling academically, socially and athletically. His life is in the toilet and he just wishes there were a way to take a stand. Then, he finds out he’s a werewolf and everything gets better — just like it would in real life.

Teen Wolf Too is pretty much the exact same movie as Teen Wolf — except instead of Michael J. Fox doing his best to be the alpha-dog of the high school basketball team, we have Jason Bateman (playing his cousin) doing his best to succeed on the college boxing team. Purely speculating, I’m sure that Michael J. Fox was asked back for Too but preferred to spend two years preparing to finish the McFly role in Back to the Future II & III. It’s called method acting, duh.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about this at all — in my book, two 1980’s flicks about teenage wolfmen is definitely better than one. This movie has all sorts of great shit to keep you watching: boxing on par with any scene from Rocky, dance sequences, and the always wonderful Mark Holton. I imagine that if I were to pound a few brews, put on a Gary Numan record and try to shirtlessly write a movie, the result would be similar to Teen Wolf Too.

If you’re not too proud to embrace the cheese that got America through the Cold War, watch Teen Wolf Too.

I saw Paranormal Activity last night. I also slept with my television, and all the lights in my bedroom on. I had heard a lot of hype about PA going into my viewing last night, and I was fairly certain it was going to scare me. I’m an easy scare. No, really. I always joke that whatever friend accompanies me to a movie is my date for the night. I ain’t got any pride, or any testicular fortitude. Last night while being shaken to timbers by PA, I was practically dry-humping my friend Jesse’s leg. I was also letting forth a stream of marginally intelligible rantings that sounded something like:

Fuck this movie, seriously fuck this movie, you’re right, we should have seen Where the Wild Things Are, fuck, fuck, what’s happening, what’s happening, fuck this movie, this movie is horrible, I want to go home.

But I don’t regret seeing it. It’s an excellent movie. It just so happens to make my skin crawl when I even think about it.

Well Ian, what if I’m not a complete wimp?

That’s a good question. The two friends I went with are both pretty strong minded dudes. I think it takes a good amount to creep them out. But they both got the chills from this movie. Trust me, I wasn’t looking much at the screen. Besides grinding against Jesse’s body, I was preferring to stare at his face at the beginning of every time-lapse sequence. His expression to every eerie moment seemed to scream,

What the fuckkkkkkkkkk?

Paranormal Activity succeeds because it doesn’t show you much. It builds the tension continually throughout the movie. The happenings themselves begin as harmless. They begin to increase in severity as the movie plays out, and you have the uncomfortable feeling that something awful is amok. This is all interwoven through the time-lapsed camera technique they use. If that means nothing to you, when they show film of the couple sleeping, sometimes the film will be fast-forwarded.

And then it’ll stop, which indicates to the audience that something is going to occur.

The brilliance is that it’s a continual build. You begin to become tense right when the film cuts to the couple sleeping, because there are moments when the male protagonist Micah is just walking around the house with the camera. And then you become more tense when it begins fast-forwarding, because you know it’s catching you to…something. And then when it finally stops fast forwarding? Silence.

Almost every single time the fast-forwarding stops, still nothing happens immediately. So you sit there, watching the couple sleep. And you’re staring at the seconds ticking by on the bottom right hand corner of the “camera”. Waiting, waiting, waiting for something.

And then?

And then you dry-hump your friend’s leg.

A dude I went to high school with and a bunch of his friends have apparently filmed a movie. Fucking crazy. As a dude who spends his time desperately wanting even a minimal amount of recognition for toiling with the word, I can only do a solid by passing along word of his movie. The movie’s called Self Helpless, and apparently it’s showing at a bunch of film festivals and shit. Well done. You can check out the trailer after the jump.

Keep Reading »

Since the dawn of the cinema, an incalculable number of feature films have been produced. Some are good, others are atrocious, and most are some shade of cookie-cutter meh. The members of this homogenous body are usually enjoyed at the time and then forgotten for the rest of eternity. And I’m fine with that — more than fine with it, really.

I have a problem when it seems as though people forget about quality pictures.

There are a lot of movies that deal with ghouls, ghosts, and all the other staples of the supernatural world around which we base Halloween. But I have a terrible feeling (about this!) that today’s heaping of OCTOBERFEAST has been largely forgotten by pop culture. I can’t remember the last time I saw this movie on television or referenced in a bullshit Top 10 Best Something or Others list. And it’s a damn shame because the movie is a wonderful intersection of comedy, horror, zany special effects, and Michael Keaton.

I’m talking about Beetlejuice.

Let’s  hop in the Delorean and go back to a time  before  Tim Burton only made movies  so that studios would  cut fat checks to Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. Back in the day, Burton made some genuinely unique movies that weren’t afraid to take chances. I dare you to watch Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and suggest that it is anything other than an extraordinary journey, told with a self-awareness and darkness that only reinforces the humor. In fact, I probably don’t have to tell you to watch Pee-Wee because you most likely remember it.

And so I return to Beetlejuice, a strangely overlooked classic. This movie sees the young couple of Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis just trying to enjoy their time in a relaxing rural home. But since this is a movie and therefore requires a conflict, they die. Shortly after they bite the dust, Baldwin and Davis realize that they’re actually ghosts! Unfortunately, their house has been sold to a couple of new-age yuppie scumbags and their goth teenage daughter named Winona Ryder.

Befriending Winona, Alex and Geena try to figure out a way to scare the yuppies into leaving. With no luck on their own, they look to the assistance of Betelgeuse — a perverted ghost whose business lay in conducting reverse-exorcisms. Even with his relatively limited screen time, Michael Keaton shines as the self-proclaimed ghost with the most.

Betelgeuse is a crass, vulgar misogynist with whom you cannot help but laugh. He’s fucking hysterical. When questioned about his qualifications in convincing living beings to vacate the premises, Betelgeuse retorts:

Ah. Well… I attended Juilliard… I’m a graduate of the Harvard business school. I travel quite extensively. I lived through the Black Plague and had a pretty good time during that. I’ve seen the EXORCIST ABOUT A HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SEVEN TIMES, AND IT KEEPS GETTING FUNNIER EVERY SINGLE TIME I SEE IT… NOT TO MENTION THE FACT THAT YOU’RE TALKING TO A DEAD GUY… NOW WHAT DO YOU THINK? You think I’m qualified?

Also, it was because of Beetlejuice that I learned there is a time and place for swear-words. No more than four years old, I emulated the title character by kicking the air and proclaiming, “Nice fucking model!” My mom told me that I shouldn’t have used the sentence’s middle word…but she did so with a smile.

"I gotta show up at shopping centers for openings and sign autographs and shit like that and it makes my life a hell. Okay? A living hell."

I’m not doing this movie justice. Just trust me on this one — Beetlejuice rules. If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and buy/rent/download a copy and enjoy. If you have seen it, give it the respect it deserves. The fact that Beetlejuice is forgotten while Rob Zombie’s Halloween remakes are the objects of salivation brings tears to my eyes.

Kristen Bell has a movie coming out this week, “Couples Retreat.” It looks awful. But yet, my friend Dave and I are seriously contemplating seeing the movie. Why? It’s simple. Veronica Mar…er, Kristen Bell is in the flick. In a bikini. The nerdpull dragging us towards the screen is almost indefatigable.

So news that she’s going to be in another movie coming up? I’m stoked. I’m going to throw on my Pulse t-shirt and wait for this beautiful monster to arrive:

Via Slashfilm

Kristen Bell will appear opposite Christina Aguilera in the musical drama Burlesque

Kristen Bell? Musical? Perhaps dance numbers? Spin spin spinnnn!

Via Slashfilm:

Three weeks prior to its October 28th release, Michael Jackson’s This Is It is now one of the MovieTickets.com Top-25 Advance Ticket Sellers of All-Time, bumping The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring from the Number 25 slot. At the same point in the sales cycle, Michael Jackson’s This Is It is on the heels of Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds, the highest grossing concert film of all-time.

I’ll stop complaining about people worshiping a child-molesting monster when people stop worshiping a child-molesting monster. That goes for you too, Polanski!

Seriously, what the fuck is going on? Is Child Molesting the New Black? Someone grab their binoculars and let’s go hunt some playgrounds. If you’re not nose deep in Smurf underwear, you’re a lamer!

I consider myself a fan of movies. Granted, I’m no expert and I never went to film school, but I consider myself to be a step above the slack-jawed assholes who eat up any mindless drivel the studios produce. I think that I’m somewhere in between — not quite a cinematic snob, but certainly not a mere casual viewer.

With that being said, it is with a hint of embarrassment that I make my confession. Up until last fall, when it was required for a class, I had never seen Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. I suppose part of my disinterest was rooted in the fact that I had (through top-ten lists and pop-cultural ubiquity) already viewed the shower scene and knew of the twist-ending. My justification for not watching Psycho was the assumption that although it was probably a decent movie, its reputation had probably been inflated over time.

I was wrong — way wrong. As I learned last autumn, Psycho is a truly terrifying film. Watching it in the darkened basement viewing room of my college, I frequently found myself looking over my shoulder, making sure no one was coming for me.

Unlike most modern horror flicks, Psycho is deftly built on suspense and an embracing of the unknown. The creepiness of the movie is not in masturbatory gore, but in waiting for an act of violence you just know is coming. And when it  comes it is fast, brutal, unrelenting, and unfocused — just as I imagine being stabbed to death would be.

Additionally, I also find Bernard Hermann’s score to be an integral part of Psycho. Lifting a paragraph from a presentation I gave, I like to make the argument that Psycho’s music represents the dueling components of Norman Bateman’s unstable conscious:

Another choice of the director that facilitates Psycho’s examination of conflicting mental subdivisions is the use of Bernard Herrman’s score. As evidenced in opening credits, Herrman’s score simultaneously makes use of beautiful, sweeping melodies and hauntingly harsh, accented, staccato notes. The two distinct musical accompaniments form Psycho’s theme as a whole, just as the conscious and unconscious are two parts of the same mind. With this in mind, it seems reasonable to suggest that a lack of melody from the film’s score signifies the absence of the conscious, and therefore an ascendancy of the unconscious. In essence, it is no coincidence that short, dissonant quarter notes with no melody complement the instances in which the conscious is most obviously overwhelmed by the unconscious.

Psycho is a rad movie. And even if you know the truth about Mrs. Bates or have seen the shower scene, you should check it out.

Now for your viewing pleasure — a decent fan-made trailer: