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house-of-slayterr · 2 years

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I hope its ok to come in here with this.. but do you think Tommy would enjoy watching movies or reading books? What kind do you think he'd like best?

So sorry this took so long, I was out all day and didn’t have Internet in the woods 😂 but you can always ask me stuff like this! I love it so much 🥺

I think Thomas would absolutely adore books. He’d like movies in a different way though. When it comes to books, I can imagine little Tommy going to his version of the Scholastic book fair and coming home and begging miss Mae for a few dollars to get a book he saw. Now of course Hoyt might make fun of him, but this is just another of those things Thomas learns to ignore. I think he’s probably start with non fiction. Thomas is a smart boy, and if he has his mind set to something her could learn so quickly. I think he’d enjoy learning when it’s at his own pace, and there’s no expectations.

I can imagine him picking up a book on farm animals and telling Luda all about what he learned when he’s finished reading. He’d be so excited to get his second book, and spend anytime he’s not working on the farm, at the library. He probably has a deal with one of the librarians and he just slips in the back and hides in his own little corner. Thomas didn’t even know you could take the books out of the library at first and probably would rush after school to get there before they close and cramp as much reading as he can. Then he’d mentally take an image of which page he was on, and come back to finish it the next day.

Now I think he probably wouldn’t understand the joys of fixture until the reader comes along. He probably met them reading at the library and was interested in the book they were reading, looking so concentrated. When they explain that the whole stories made up, he wouldn’t quite understand the allure at first. But as he listens to how passionately they retell the story, Thomas would be hooked. He’d try reading a few Romance or Sci-Fi novels on his own, just so he could write little notes to share with the reader about what he thought. They’d teach him how to annotate his books.

Poor Thomas is probably so confused the first time he sees one of their personal books and it’s got scribbles and highlights all over it. He’d be even more confused if they gifted it to him. But his favourite thing when it comes to fiction, is hearing them read it to him. He would very much enjoy audio books, but he’s a little biased when it comes to the readers version 🥺

Now when it comes to movies, I feel that’s also I thing Thomas wouldn’t really come across on his own. I don’t think he’d like them nearly as much as books, at least not watching them on his own. But with his new friend… Thomas will watch any and everything. I don’t think he’d be that found if Slashers and horror, not really wanting to be reminded of his reality. I mean the whole point of fiction is the escapism right (lol, my maladaptive daydreaming thinks so) but he’d adore romance and documentaries, maybe even a good paced comedy. I feel like he’d love the whimsical stuff, with all the pretty special effects and makeup!

Despite what I said about horror, stuff like Jurassic park gets a pass because, Dinos! And if you explain to him the behind the scenes, I feel like he’d find it even more magical than the movie itself. You’re telling him there’s animatronics? Man is baffled by all the work that goes into the art form. I also think he’d really enjoy the Harry Potter series, although we all know he’s hate it’s creator. But if you make Thomas a little Hufflepuff scarf, he’d literally melt, like putty in your hands.

Movie musicals however, Thomas is all over that! Humming every tune while he’s doing chores. Memorising the choreo and running it through his head all the time. He loves Mama Mia and Into the Woods. So I think Tommy would enjoy the routine of movie night with the reader, but on his own he prefers a good old fashioned nonfiction book.

But let me know what you think!

#thomas hewitt/reader #thomas hewitt imagine #thomas hewitt fluff #tommy hewitt #the texas chainsaw massacre #slasher imagines #slasher boyfriend #slasher bestie #head canon #thomas hewitt headcanon #autism headcanon

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watching-pictures-move · 8 months

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Viddying the Nasties | Cannibal Ferox (Lenzi, 1981)

Having recently watched and not very much enjoyed Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid, I decided that I was in the mood for more jungle adventures. Such is my affection for movies set in the jungle that in some cases I can let it slide if it isn’t even a real jungle. I think of classic jungle comedies shot obviously on sets, such as Africa Screams, in which Lou Costello slowly descends into petrifying fear as realizes that the lion with whom he is trapped in a cage is not his friend Bud Abbott disguised as a lion but in fact the real thing, and Three Missing Links, in which the Three Stooges brutalize a gorilla and later threaten it with sexual assault. The jungle in these movies may not be real, but the adversarial relationship between man and nature very much is. So in this spirit, I decided to rewatch Umberto Lenzi’s 1981 grindhouse shocker Cannibal Ferox. And I still think it sucks.

Probably the easiest way to summarize the movie would be to describe it as Cannibal Holocaust but worse, or Cannibal Holocaust with the most interesting part removed, that being the found footage element. The found footage scenes obviously give that movie a degree of verisimilitude with respect to placing us in the jungle, but even the earlier scenes give the environment an aura of foreboding as we’re tied to the perspective of the hero as he journeys deeper into the rainforest to discover the fate of the missing documentary crew. Here, I found the early scenes at least had a curious effect this time around. The movie was in fact shot in the Amazon, but the brightness of the image and the staid framing of the shots make these scenes feel like they were shot on a set. Lenzi’s limp direction cannot entirely defeat the voodoo of location, but he certainly gives it the old college try.

The most noxious element of the movie and the whole cannibal genre is the inclusion of animal cruelty. There is theoretically an artistic defense of this element, in that it shows that the jungle is an unforgiving place, so that having beast kill beast, man hill beast, beast kill man and man kill man in equally graphic detail presents a certain equalizing effect. The cruelty of the jungle does not discriminate. But at the same time, these scenes feel so divorced from the thrust of the plot that one wonders, if the filmmakers were too cheap to fake these deaths through special effects, they didn’t at least use some stock footage. It’s not like the movie would come off as anymore poorly made. I dunno, whatever intellectual defenses one can conjure up, I have a hard time getting behind staging real animal deaths for your movie.

It also feels like the movie is throwing in those scenes to pad the runtime, a purpose that also explains the mob plot that eats up way too much of the runtime despite adding little in the way of narrative momentum. The whole thing feels slipshod, although this is a movie that exists at such an extreme, where the violence, both real and simulated, is so vicious, that the rest of the movie dissolves. When a movie trots out images of a dick getting cut off, a dick getting cut off and eaten (which I admit got a laugh out of me), breasts being pierced with meathooks, torsos being split open and dug into for innards, eyeballs being gouged out and other acts of extreme violence painted with a certain level of realism, at a certain point you just gotta hand it to it. (Along with the alternate title of Make Them Die Slowly, these scenes make the movie play like an early iteration of torture porn.) It may not be enjoyable, but it certainly has an impact. I do think from this perspective, the limpness of Lenzi’s direction is arguably an asset. The rest of the movie is just the thinnest of structures to support these pungent visuals. Whether or not it’s any good doesn’t matter.

I will say that one thing I appreciate over the other movie is the, how you say, lack of intellectual rigor. Cannibal Holocaust, perhaps because it is more polished in craft and more calculated in its effect, has the pretense of seriousness about its message, even if it proves entirely disingenuous. (It’s hard to buy the argument that we’re the real savages… sorry, “cannibals”, when it explicitly paints the documentary crew as sociopaths and fails to convincingly conflate them with us.) Here, the movie is much lazier in pushing its message, usually with some ironic narration from one of three lines spouted by the heroine early in the movie. The effect is like someone trying to do a book report using only quotes from the back cover.

In my review of Anacondas, I posited that the worldview of these movies is that jungle is unforgiving but fundamentally amoral, and that the characters are able to unleash their true natures in such an environment. And much of the unleashing here is done by Giovanni Lombardo Radice, who plays his role with a coked-out derangement as he proceeds to terrorize the locals at every opportunity and eventually get his ultraviolent comeuppance. He is certainly the best part of the movie and also offers the more reliable form of levity thank to the voice actor and dialogue he’s saddled with, offering us such choice line readings as "Huh, you get off on ecology, twat?" And apparently he objected strongly to the animal killings during production. When Lenzi suggested that Robert De Niro would partake in the killings in an attempt to persuade him, he supposedly responded “De Niro would kick your ass all the way to Rome.”

Other forms of levity include the fake gruff voice that Robert Kerman is stuck with for some reason even though he speaks English in real life (and has a distinctive voice to boot), Zora Kerova’s character being defined entirely as dumb and horny and nothing else, Lorraine De Selle suggesting they sing a song to keep their spirits up before the cannibals eat them. I suspect De Selle was cast for her sad eyes and natural frown (the movie hilariously ends with a closeup of her face in the laziest attempt at generating an emotional reaction), but her performance here represents a kind of anti-acting, letting every single look, gesture, emotional beat and line of dialogue limply flop onto the ground, like you've just seen the art of screen acting die in real time.

Okay, so the movie isn’t entirely devoid of enjoyable elements, but also, a big no thanks to the whole thing.

#film #movie review #cannibal ferox #umberto lenzi #viddying the nasties

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mcrmadness · 7 months

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I'm again on my random journey of: finding documentaries about the history of movie/video editing.

I grew up watching movies from VHS cassettes and later from DVD:s, and anyone who was a kid or teen during that era can remember all those double-DVD movies with a shitton of extras on the second disc. I often enjoyed watching the extras to my favourite films and found it so fascinating to see the behind the scenes of the films, especially anything to do with the props, and bonus points for animatronics.

But now, now I am a media student myself, and now I have grown very curious over the history of the cutting and editing process. But can you imagine how difficult it is to find good information about this??? I'm especially interested in knowing how the cutting and editing was made WHEN stuff was filmed on actual film and not digitally. We have had computers in use since the 80s and 90s at least, but they didn't stop using film until 20-30 years after that - and some directors still prefer using film over digital. I'm just curious whether they already just digitalized the films back in the 90s and 2000s and used a software for cutting and editing, or if there was some literal cutting going on that they'd cut and tape pieces of film to each other.

Whenever I go to youtube and try to find stuff, I can only find videos titled something like "video editing as quickly as possible" and the videos don't even last 10 minutes. And they are often made by people who edit videos for youtube as a hobby (or job), but who probably have never worked in actual movie or media industry. Some educational videos are just animations. I don't want animations and voiceover! I want to ACTUALLY see the cutting and editing in action! I know I could just go through my dvd collection, but that's the thing - I don't remember ever seeing these extras focusing on the cutting/editing process. They show acting, directing and props, but rarely the technical stuff where all the magic actually happens - unless it's about special effects and CGI. But I don't remember interviews with the cutters and editors. Of course there might be and I just don't remember, but I also have so many dvds it'd take ages to sit through every single one just in hopes I can find 1 minute clip of someone vaguely mentioning editing.

I probably should look elsewhere than from Youtube, as youtube rarely has properly made documentaries about things unless it's someone who is so interested in some topic they live and breath the topic, and also create amazing documentaries of their own. That's the level I need actually, not stuff I can read from Wikipedia or the images I can find on Google myself too. I'm also sick of stockphotos and videos, as they are just filler clips and don't show anything actual.

I see that on Youtube there is one short 70s educational video about movie making from probably a North American childrens' show - wrong, it was from the UK! - and I feel like that is probably the closest to what I am looking for for now...

#mcrmadness' random stuff

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brokehorrorfan · 3 years

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Phantasm and Phantasm II will be released together on Blu-ray on October 5 via Well Go USA. Devon Whitehead designed the cover art.

The 1979 horror classic and its 1988 sequel are written and directed by Don Coscarelli (Bubba Ho-Tep, The Beastmaster). Phantasm stars Michael Baldwin, Bill Thornbury, Reggie Bannister, and Angus Scrimm. Phantasm II stars James LeGros, Reggie Bannister, Angus Scrimm, Paula Irvine, and Samantha Phillips.

The discs appear to be identical to those featured in the recent Phantasm Sphere Collection, including 4K restorations of both films and the director's cut of Part II with an X-rated gore sequence. Details are below.

Phantasm special features:

Audio commentary with writer/director Don Coscarelli, co-producer Paul Pepperman and visual consultant Roberto Quezada

Audio commentary with writer/director Don Coscarelli and stars Michael Baldwin, Angus Scrimm and Bill Thornbury

Dunes Cantina Party audio commentary by writer/director Don Coscarelli and the cast and crew

Graveyard Carz

Interviews with Don Coscarelli and Angus Scrimm

Deleted Scenes

Cast interviews - Phantasm: Actors Having a Ball

Phantasm Behind-the-Scenes Home Movies with commentary by Don Coscarelli and Reggie Bannister

Additional home movie footage

A Horse Drawn Hearse – Remastered black and white flashback footage

TV Spots

Radio Spots

Angus Scrimm Introduction

Fangoria TV Spot

Theatrical Trailer

Still Gallery

At a funeral, Mike (Michael Baldwin), watches as a tall mortician clad in black (Angus Scrimm) tosses the unburied coffin into a waiting hearse as if it were nothing. Seeking the truth behind this unusual sight, Mike breaks into the mortuary, where he comes face-to-face with the sinister Tall Man. After barely managing to escape with his life, Mike enlists the help of his brother, Jody (Bill Thornbury), and their friend Reggie (Reggie Bannister). Together they set out to uncover the secrets of the Tall Man and those who dwell in his hellish world.

Phantasm II special features:

Director’s cut with X-rated gore sequence

Audio commentary with director Don Coscarelli, actors Angus Scrimm and Reggie Banister

The Ball is Back – documentary on the making of Phantasm II

The Gory Days – an interview with Special Make-up Effects Artist Greg Nicotero

Deleted Scenes

Workprint Scenes

TV Spots

Theatrical Trailers

Behind the Scenes

Still Galleries

Released after seven years in a mental hospital, Mike convinces his old pal Reggie to join forces with him to hunt down and destroy the Tall Man once and for all. Mike’s visions lead the two to a quiet little town where a horde of flying killer balls aim to slice and dice their gruesome way through everyone. Exploding with special effects, unparalleled thrills, horror and suspense, Phantasm II climaxes with a blood-curdling conclusion that you have to see to believe.

Pre-order Phantasm/Phantasm II from Amazon.

#phantasm #phantasm 2 #phantasm ii #don coscarelli #angus scrimm #reggie bannister #well go usa #dvd #gift #devon whitehead #horror #70s horror #1970s horror #80s horror #1980s horror

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everydisneymovie · 3 years

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Review #69(nice): The Incredible Journey

Post #74

5/31/2021

Bit of a delay since several upcoming movies have proven hard to track down. Thank you for your patience.

Next up is 1963′s The Incredible Journey

Enjoyment : [4]

I think this movie is alright, bordering on boring. For the most part, this movie is 90% the animals wandering about aimlessly while the narrators struggles to come up with a story. It reminds me of those ‘real life adventure’ documentaries where they filmed the animals first, and then made a narrative around whatever they could film. This movie wasn’t awful but I don’t see myself watching it again.

Quality : [3]

This is one of those ‘bare minimum’ movies from Disney. There is very little money put into it and there is almost nothing of note in terms of camera work. The music is very pleasant, and I really liked the opening number. Other than that, I really did not see where the budget went. In fact one of my favorite moments is when they pull the cat out of the river, and you can clearly see it is a wooden dummy, like the stiffest most T-posing fake cat you can imagine. They basically paid the crew, the actors, and hired a few animal tamers and called it good. Then they used whatever coins they found in the seat cushions to pay for the special effects.

Hold up : [3]

In terms of animal abuse, this is not nearly the worst from Disney. The animals seem mostly safe, and as mentioned above, they used wooden dummies for the more dangerous stunts. HOWEVER... there are two truly awful scenes with a bear and a lynx. No matter how tamed/trained those animals where, they could still seriously hurt the cat and dogs if they wanted to. I do not know where Disney keeps getting these baby bears from but it is not ok. The fact that I can say ‘the animal abuse isn’t all that bad this time!’ is not a glowing endorsement for Disney.

Risk : [4]

Once again Disney delivered a pretty safe movie that doesn’t take any major risks. There isn’t really any depth behind the narrative, since the animals are just animals. They want to get back to their humans, which is very sweet, but they don’t really do anything beyond that. We don’t get a lot of time with the human characters and since the narrator controls the motives of the animals, we barely get any character development. This could have been a lot better if they tied some more narrative hooks to make the movie have more meat. As it stands, the movie has very little to say, but then again it is just a movie about animals going on a fun little journey so I can’t dock it too many points.

Extra Credit : [1]

The fact that the movie said ‘and the humans in the story’ in the opening credits is something I think all movies should include in the future.

Final thoughts:

I am all for cute animals doing cute things, but this wasn’t a very good attempt. There were several moments where the narrator said stuff like ‘the animals were beside themselves with sadness.’ only for it to cut to the animals wagging their tails and jumping around. At the end of the day this is a pretty basic film without much novelty or flair. The animals were put in danger, but from the research I did I THINK they all turned out ok. I cannot wait for CGI and green screen to finally eliminate this sort of thing in movies.

Total Score: 15/50

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#Disney #every disney movie #I watched Every Disney Movie #reviewing every Disney movie #The Incredible Journey #Incredible Journey #tw: animal abuse #tw: animal cruelty #Movie Reviews #movie review #live action movie #Film Theory #Film Ranking #movie theory #late stage capitalism #late stage disney #Rey Rapids

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yourdailykitsch · 3 years

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Taylor Kitsch, an actor known for his roles in such Hollywood productions as "Battleship: Battle for Earth" and "X-Men Origins: Wolverine", is starring in the new Canal + series "Defeated". In an interview, the actor reveals what he remembers from history lessons, what connects the series' story with the modern world. He also explains why, according to him, every person should visit the former concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Taylor Kitsch started his adventure in Hollywood as a "hottie" - an actor associated with a great body and beautiful face. All because the first role that brought the popularity of the former model Abercrombie and Fitch was the character of naughty lover Tim Riggins in the cult series "Friday Night Lights".

Kitsch did not avoid tough moments in his career - for example, when the $ 250 million John Carter, his first such big role, suffered a disgusting box office failure. But the Canadian knew this taste already - after coming to the USA, he was homeless for some time before finding a job.

For years, he has been successfully playing in big titles and alongside big names. Oliver Stone ("Savages"), Ryan Murphy ("Heart Reflex"), roles alongside Chadwick Boseman ("21 Bridges"), Michael Shannon ("Waco"), Michael Keaton ("American Assassin") and Rihanna ("Battlefield ), the HBO series "Detective," starring Vince Vaughn and Rachel McAdams. Meanwhile, Kitsch finds his way to charity, especially for children.

From 1 January 2021, we will watch him in "Defeated" . There he plays the role of Brooklyn policeman Max McLoughlin, who in the summer of 1946 is sent to Berlin, which is divided into four spheres of influence. Its task is to support the emerging police structures in the rubble. But upholding order in a space of brutality and lawlessness and clashing political forces - French, American, British and Soviet - will not be easy. Especially since Max does not know that he is used as a pawn in the game to open the Cold War, and somewhere in the maze of Berlin rubble lurks his brother Moritz, a self-proclaimed Nazi hunter who will stop at nothing ...

In addition to Kitsch, the main roles will be: Nina Hoss (local policewoman Elsie Garten), Sebastian Koch (criminal known as Engelmacher, Al Capone of post-war Berlin), Logan Marshall-Green (Max's missing brother, Moritz) and Michael C. Hall (consul Tom Franklin ).

The "Defeated" takes place in Berlin, right after the war. When you decided to play Max McLoughlin, did you have any knowledge of what the situation in Germany was like then?

The seres begins six months after the end of the war. I have the impression that this is a moment that is missing in the educational process - we learn a lot about the war itself, but about what happened immediately after it, for example, I had no idea. The plot of "Defeated" is made up, but our director Måns Mårlind (co-creator of the hit series "Bridge over the Sund") constructed it on the basis of many true stories. I have the impression that fact and fiction are perfectly balanced here. In the process of preparation, he gave us many documentaries and articles that helped to build an idea about the climate of the city from 1946. Discovering the next details of the story was fascinating for me.

Your work gives him a chance to get to know the world, its history, extraordinary places and people. Do you appreciate it?

This is the best part of my job! With each new production, I have a chance to immerse myself in its world and get to know it thoroughly. It could be a war movie like "Survivor", a story about a cult leader ("Waco"), the world of a detective ("Detective") or the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, as in "Heart Reflex". When I was an aspiring actor learning to act in New York, I never imagined that I would be able to live and work like this. Train with Navy Seals or meet Larry Kramer [American playwright, writer and activist for LGBT rights - ed.]. I am very lucky!

Prague, where you shot "Defeated", is a cult city for many Polish filmmakers, due to the famous FAMU school, but also a popular, atmospheric excursion destination. How was your time there?

Lovely. He will refer again to the privilege of working like this: six months in such a wonderful place, it is almost immoral! The only downside was the tight schedule so I didn't discover all the nooks and crannies that I had on the agenda. Fortunately, my driver, a guy in his fifties, was a great-grandfather from Prague, very talkative, and from him I learned the most interesting things - stories about the adventures of my ancestors and friends! Besides, in Prague, if you want to take a history lesson, you go out twenty meters in front of the front door - and it's already getting started. We shot in the summer, before Covid. We had an international team - Czechs, Swedes, Russians, Germans, French ... In use - not only behind the scenes, but also on the set - several languages simultaneously. Really, the only problem for me was my diet. Flour, red meat, stews ... I don't really like to eat like that. At least the beer was delicious, really amazing! In general, I really liked the culture of drinking and eating outside, these gardens, the community ... wonderful thing.

Due to the fact that the film was made in Europe, you had the opportunity to see places related to the war with your own eyes. What made the greatest impression on you? I was lucky, although it is not quite an adequate term that during the shooting we managed to visit the site of the former Auschwitz camp. Of course I knew, I had read about concentration camps before, but this direct contact with the site was invaluable, it gave me a clear idea of what happened. It is difficult for a man to believe what he sees around him. He's standing right next to him, yet he doesn't quite believe it. The space made a huge impression on me. I did not realize how huge Birkenau was, how perfectly organized the entire extermination was. This architecture, the surrounding houses, barracks. Someone designed it, thought over the function down to the smallest detail, and during my visit, I had the chance to trace how and where the whole process took place, step by step. I was standing there and it felt like I was choking, my whole body ached. Such experiences helped me a lot to bring my character to life. Max did not survive the camp himself, but he appears in a place marked by this tragedy, the tragedy of World War II, it affects him. I wish everyone could visit this place because it is a life changing experience.

Movies set in the past can be a perfect mirror for what is here and now. What analogies do you see between that reality and today's world? - Division, the dictate of fear, fear of the unknown, of otherness. Different ways to work through your trauma. These are all threads that connect the "Defeated" space with our reality. For my character, especially the experience of trauma resulting from family history, from the relationship with my brother, becomes the key. They both underwent a similar shock, but their reactions were completely different. I found it very interesting. Max is still hoping for a change, Moritz, as the saying goes, "the platform is gone". They have a completely different perception of one and the same event. Again, it is also a very contemporary thread - one event, situation, and extreme different opinions about it.

Your hero comes from Brooklyn, after you came from Canada, you spent a lot of time in New York. What is so special about the atmosphere of this city that gives it such a "mythical" status? For me, it has always been, I fully agree! Scorsese's "Streets of Poverty" has always been such a cinematic quintessence of New York, with its excellent Keitel and DeNiro. This film is set in the 1940s, which is the present day of Max. He was my point of reference in terms of the accent. Those years were difficult, the inhabitants struggled to make ends meet, and that also had to affect my character's character. Besides, New York has a chic character, New Yorkers feel proud of their roots. It's also something that Max defines.

And you had to transfer this New York feeling to Berlin ... ... to the razed Berlin, which for Max becomes, in a way, another space of trauma, personal again, but this time much more intense.

For this role, you had to master not only a Brooklyn accent, but also the German language. It was difficult?

I had an amazing accent teacher from Berlin, Simone. My rock! Fortunately, Max is an American who speaks German poorly and not a German, because if I had to play a German, I would have had a nervous breakdown! German is a damn hard language, especially for someone who wasn't exposed to such sounds when growing up. I learned everything phonetically. Sometimes I was "suspended" during the scene and then I was saved by Nina [Hoss, a great German acting and screen partner of Kitsch - ed.]. In my career, I have had to play with a South African, Texas, New York accent ... I've learned that there is no such thing as an optimal effect, someone is always dissatisfied. I focus on the vision agreed with the creators and I stick to it. Language is an amazing link between the actor and the protagonist, gives a unique insight into his state of mind and view of the world. I definitely prefer to play the character with an accent than to speak as usual. It's a great transformation tool. The arrangement of the lips, the appearance of the face, and the term are changing. In "Waco" my character, the guru of the sect David Koresh, had an unnaturally high, soft voice, which immediately made the viewer feel differently.

We associate you with American hits, but you are, like Ryan Reynolds or Ryan Gosling, Canadian. Do you feel like an American, or is Canada a state of mind after all?

I started my adventure with the USA when I was 20, I came to school. Now I'm forty, so I've spent half my life here. Madness! Over time, I have grown into this space, I have settled down and I feel at home. I'm talking to you from my home in Austin, Texas. But at the same time, I'll always be Canadian. I go there often, visiting my family and familiar places. Maybe I'll go back one day, who knows?

You've had moments in your career that turned from a promise of triumph to failure, such as the high-budget John Carter, who failed at the box office. Do you have something that you already know: "I'm avoiding this"? I don't have things that, as a rule, I don't do or know that I will never do. But there are some that I don't like. These include radical weight changes. My dear friend must have gained twenty-five kilos for a small, independent film. The first week was great because you eat what you want, then depression started, joint problems, sugar jumping ... I never put my back, but I lost weight. I lost a dozen kilos for the role in "Waco", before that for the "Bang Bang Club". It's fucking hard and very exhausting, especially the older I get. My body and head hate it! Also, until Scorsese calls with some great proposal, I say: enough.

#taylor kitsch #Shadowplay #interview

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anhed-nia · 4 years

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BLOGTOBER 10/17/2020: SPOOKIES

What do we watch, when we watch movies? This question was sparked by my SOV experience with the very different, and differently interesting BLOODY MUSCLE BODYBUILDER FROM HELL and HORROR HOUSE ON HIGHWAY 5. Within the Shot On Video category, one can find inventive homemade features that are driven entirely by blood, sweat, and the creators' feeling of personal satisfaction. The results are sometimes fascinating, in their total alienation from the conventions and techniques of mainstream filmmaking, and after all, one rarely sees anything whose primary motivation is passion, here in the late stages of capitalism. But, all this talk about what goes on behind the camera points to a discrepancy in how we consume different kinds of production. The typical mode of consumption is internal to the movie: What happens in it? Do you relate to the characters? Are you able to suspend your disbelief, to experience the story on a vicarious level? One hardly needs to come up with examples of films that invite this style of viewing. Alternatively, we can experience the movie as a record of a time and place in which real people defied conventions and sometimes broke laws in order to produce a work of art. SOV production is usually viewed through this lens, where the primary interest is not the illusory content, but the filmmakers' sheer determination to create. We find some overlap in movies like EVIL DEAD, which simultaneously presents a terrifying narrative, and evidence of what a truly driven team can create without the aid of a studio, or any real money to speak of. See also, Larry Cohen's New York City-based horror films, in which a compelling drama with great acting can exist side by side with phony but beautiful effects, and exciting stories of stolen footage that would be dangerous or impossible to attempt today. I'm thinking about these different modes of consumption now because I just watched SPOOKIES, a legitimately cursed-seeming film whose harrowing production history has superseded whatever people think about what it shows on the screen. The lovingly composed blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome includes a feature-length documentary that attempts to explain the making of the film--which is accompanied by its own feature length commentary track by documentarists Michael Gingold and Glen Baisley. The very existence of this artifact suggests a lot about the nature of this movie, in and of itself. The truth behind its existence is as funny as it is tragic.

I'm not going to do a whole breakdown of the tortured origins of SPOOKIES, which is much better told by the aforementioned documentary. To summarize: Once upon a time in the mid 1980s, filmmakers Brendan Faulkner, Thomas Doran and Frank Farel conspired to make a fun, flamboyant rubber monsterpiece called TWISTED SOULS. It was wild, ridiculous, and transparently fake-looking, but it was loved by its hard-working creators; as a viewer, that soulful sense of joy can rescue many a "bad" movie from its various foibles. Then, inevitably, sleazoid producer Michael Lee stepped in--a man who thought you could cut random frames out of the middle of scenes to improve a movie's pace--and ruined it with extreme prejudice. Carefully crafted special effects sequences were cut, relatively functional scenes were re-edited into oblivion, and the seeds of hatred were sown between the filmmakers and the producer. Ultimately, everyone who once cared for TWISTED SOULS was forced to abandon ship, and first time director Eugenie Joseph stepped in to help mutilate the picture beyond all recognition. Thus SPOOKIES was born, a mangled, unloved mutation that would curse many of its original parents to unemployability. For the audience, it is intriguingly insane, often insulting, and hard to tear your eyes off of--but in spite of whatever actually wound up on the screen, it's impossible to forget its horrifying origin story as it unspools.

As far as what's on the screen goes: A group of "friends", including a middle-aged businessman and his wife, a vinyl-clad punk rock bully and his moll, two new wave-y in-betweeners, and...a guy with a hand puppet are somehow all leaving the same party, and all ready to break into a vacant funeral home for their afterparty. Well, this happens after a 13 year old runaway inexplicably wanders in to a "birthday party" in there, that looks like it was thrown for him by Pennywise, and he has the nerve to act surprised when he is attacked by a severed head and a piratey-looking cat-man who straight up purrs and meows throughout the picture. Anyway, separately of that, which is unrelated to anything, the island of misfit friends finds a nearly unrecognizable "ouija board" in the old dark house. Actually this thing is kind of fun-looking, having been made by one of the fun-havers on the production before the day that fun died, and I wonder if anyone has considered trying to make a real board game out of it...but I digress. Naturally, the board unleashes evil forces, including a zombie uprising in the cemetery outside, a plague of Ghoulie-like ankle-biters, an evil asian spider-lady (accompanied by kyoto flutes), muck-men that fart prodigiously until they melt in a puddle of wine (?), and uh...I know I'm forgetting stuff. One of the reasons I'm forgetting is because of this whole side story about a tuxedo-wearing vampire in the basement (or somewhere?) who has entrapped a beautiful young bride by cursing her with immortality. That part is a little confusing, not only because it doesn't intersect with the rest of the movie, but because sometimes it seems contemporary--as the bride struggles to survive the zombie plague--and sometimes it seems like a flashback, as our heroes find what looks like the mummified corpse of the dracula guy, complete with his signet ring. So, I don't know what to tell you really. Those are just some of the things that happen in the movie.

Some people like this a lot, and have supported its ascendance to cult status, which is a huge relief when you know what everyone went through to make this movie, only to have it ripped away from them and used against them. I found SPOOKIES a little hard to take, for all the reasons that the cast and crew express in the documentary. It holds a certain amount of visual fascination, whatever you think of it; something of its original creativity remains evident in the movie's colorful, exaggerated look, and its steady parade of unconvincing but inventive creature effects. But then, you have to deal with the farting muck-men. What was once a scene of terror starring REGULAR muck-men, that sounded incredibly laborious to pull off, became a scene of confusing "comedy" when producer Michael Lee insisted that the creatures be accompanied by a barrage of scatalogical noises. Apparently this was Lee's dream come true, as a guy who insisted everyone pull his finger all the time, and who once tried to call the movie "BOWEL ERUPTOR". But, of all the deformations SPOOKIES endured, the fart sounds dealt a mortal injury to the filmmakers' feelings, and even without knowing that, it's hard to enjoy yourself while that's happening.

Actually, all the farts forced me to ask myself: Is this...a comedy? Like for real, as its main thing? As the movie slogged on, I had to decide that it wasn't, but I was distracted by the notion for around 40 minutes. I was only released from this nagging suspicion when the bride makes her long marathon run through throngs of slavering zombies who swarm her, grope her, and tear off her clothes, before she narrowly escapes to an even worse fate. The lengthy scene is strangely gripping, and sleazy for a movie that sometimes feels like low rent children's entertainment. Part of the sequence’s success lies in its simplicity; it is unburdened by the convoluted complications of the rest of the movie, whose esoteric parts never fall together, so it seems to take on a sustained, intensifying focus. The action itself is unnerving, as the delicate and frankly gorgeous Maria Pechuka is molested and stripped nearly-bare by her undead bachelors, running from one drooling mob to another as the horde nearly engulfs her time and again. Actually, it feels a lot like a certain genre of SOV production in which, for the right price, any old creepy nerd can pay a small crew-for-hire to tape a version of his private fantasy, whether it's women being consumed by slime, or women being consumed by quicksand, or...generally, women being consumed by something. I wish I could describe this form of production in more specific or official terms, because I genuinely think it's wonderful that people do this. Anyway, Pechuka's interminable zombie run feels a little like that, and a little like a grim italian gutmuncher, and a little like an actual nightmare. Perhaps it only stands out against its dubious surroundings, but I kind of love it--and I'm happy to love it, because apparently the late Ms. Pechuka truly loved making SPOOKIES, and wanted other people to love it, too.

Which brings me to the uncomfortable place where I land with this movie. On the one hand...I think it's bad. It's so incoherent, and so insists on its impoverished form of comedy, that it's hard to be as charmed by it as I am by plenty of FX-heavy, no-budget oddities. Perhaps the lingering odor of misery drowns out the sweet joy that the crew once felt in the early days of creation--which is still evident, somehow, in its zany special effects, created by the likes of Gabe Bartalos and other folks whose work you definitely already know and love. But I feel ambivalent, about all of this. On the one hand, I can be a snob, and shit on people for failing to make a movie that meets conventional standards of success. On the other hand, I can be a DIFFERENT kind of snob--a more voyeuristic or even sadistic one--and celebrate the painful failures that produced a movie that is most interesting for its tormented history and its amusing ineptitude. I'm not really sure where I would prefer to settle with SPOOKIES, and movies like it. (As if anything is really "like" SPOOKIES) With all that said, I was left with one soothing thought by castmember Anthony Valbiro in the documentary. At some point, he tells us how ROSEMARY'S BABY is his personal cinematic comfort food; he can put it on at night, after an exhausting day, and drift to sleep, enveloped in its warm, glowing aura. He then says that he hopes there are people out there for whom his movie serves that same purpose, that some of us can have our "milk and cookies moment" with SPOOKIES. Honestly, I choke up just thinking about that.

#blogtober #2020 #spookies #horror #supernatural #vampire #zombie #creature feature #old dark house #cursed film #thomas doran #frank farel #eugenie joseph #michael lee #vipco #twisted souls #brendan faulkner #maria pechuka

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achildofuniverse · 3 years

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“If life is a movie then you’re the best part.” But have you ever thought of what every movies’ best part? We always take films for granted and be subjective enough that we became obsessed with it and not just simply put it on our favorites. We always seek and long for the usual thing we always had but not crave for something new which we also need in our lives. For me, films’ best part is letting you discover and unravel what is behind the story and the whole contextual part of it which will give you the ability to have a personal judgment and perspective within the whole film itself.

Bleached Bones Avenue by Akio Fujimoto illustrated a documentary in which it depicts a longing feeling of a historical memory about the Battle of Imphal. The real life setting and portrayal using actual actors which are the diggers, lets you discover the story behind with them and made it more interesting to watch. The adventure like theme of discovering the main plot about the past battle that was mentioned served as the function of the film as well, it adds up to the factors of how unique it is. Featuring the actual scene in which the battle takes place in Burma (Myanmar), justified the parallelism of the film.

Talking about love by Asoka Handagama depicts the longing for the infinite love we all deserve as a person. The film covers different stories, situations and conflicts but will lead into one topic which is about love. The characters which you can also find in real life, mirrored different perspectives that will let you fight and empower the love that you have within you, which is also serves as the main function of the film. Along with it, Bee my friend by Cheng Thim Kian by mirrors the memory of yesterday which is still longed in the present. What made this film more appreciative is the clear portrayal of every character’s role. The setting also added to the factors in which made the film more felt because it is clearly illustrated and the film is actually happening in a school which the story took a big part. I do appreciate that all of the conflicts presented were all solved in the end which made the film more interesting to watch and discover. Both have the same motivation in which the stories have reached its respective agendas in the end.

Tenebrae by Nicole Midori Woodford exhibits the longing for the memories you are about to leave. The simple illustration towards the character’s situation, plus the actual setting in which the character of the girl is currently in, made it more special which will give you a pictographic vision of your own nostalgic memory. Similarities and patterns within the characters’ action were also noticed for it is clearly and directly illustrated right from the start. See you Next Century by James Lee portrays the memory of longing for someone even in different lifetimes. The simple narration of the story using the basic way adds up to the special and sincere factors in which of the characters presented in the story. The setting is also much appreciated for even though it takes place only in a limited space, it never failed to tell the whole story perfectly. These two films have both motifs, for it has the same element presented in the cinematography; both were illustrated in a black and white color of cinematography.

To be honest, I do appreciate all the Bakunawa films to analyze for it all gave a different perspectives and flavors to its audiences, including me. Upon watching and analyzing the short films, I have found a general theme for all of it which is longing that I also mentioned above.

Bleached Bones Avenue is an interesting documentary film for me because it tackles about a history unfold now in our modern days which we are all longing for. I like that the film used the native language of Burmese for you can really see the rawness yet good quality of the overall screenplay. I also like that the documentary did not used a common narrative way of telling the story because it lets the audience discover it themselves by watching it well.

Talking about love I believe has the characteristic of similarities and repetition because I noticed upon watching the film a few times that the dialogues were somehow interconnected. I liked that the film was not explicitly expressed immediately and just let the audience to interpret it in a way. The parallelism of the film’s screenplay made the film unique itself. Bee my friend is one of my favorites from all the Bakunawa films, for it made me tear up a little bit especially the ending scene. I liked the sequencing and the story flow, for the theme, setting, and the message both jive all together. I can compare both of the films because as I have already said above, I think it both end up having the same theme which is longing for love, but still expressed differently.

I can describe Tenebrae as simple yet captivating film. It made me feel different things like nostalgia and sincerity all throughout watching it. It is one of those films that will let you appreciate the things that you have while it lasts. See you next century I have to admit is my most favorite of all the Bakunawa films. I just love how the cinematography of the film used images to show the story. The narrative style including the dialogues made the film sincerer to watch because this style was effective as an audience who watched it. Both of the film has the characteristic of black and white color, and to be honest, it left a good feeling and very compelling to watch. Longing for a memory before and now are the elements that I have found in the films which both expressed creatively in their own ways.

Having the chance to watched and even share my analyzations about the films were a great privileged for me. As a communicator in practice, film is one of the important means of communicating because it let us tell the story of our own in many different and creative ways. I enjoyed most of the films because it made me more observant and focus on little details inside the film. I now highly recommend these short films for I was amazed on how it can tell a story in a span of short time. “Film is a battleground." As Sam Fuller said, and I truly believed that it is because it is a fight of thoughts and elements inside and outside the film itself.

References:

https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-II/The-Italian-front-1944

https://www.battleofimphal.com/the-battle

@achildofuniverse

-Diaz, Patricia Claire

BAC-2

MIDTERM EXAMINATION OUTPUT

#BAKUNAWAFILMFEST

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chiseler · 4 years

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Edison and the Rise of the Snuff Film

“Fog and smog should not be confused and are easily separated by color. Fog is about the color of the insides of an old split wet summer cottage mattress; smog is the color and consistency of a wet potato chip soaked in a motorman’s glove.” – Chuck Jones

The Execution of Mary Stuart was made in August of 1895, produced by Thomas Edison and directed by Alfred Clark. It has a running time of 18 seconds and depicts the last moments of Mary, Queen of Scots. It is notable for several reasons: as the first costume drama period piece—still a wildly popular genre in the Republic, as proven by The Tudors or Game of Thrones; and as the world’s first horror film (Méliès’ Le Manoir du Diable, which usually takes this accolade, was made the next year). It is also thematically linked to the most famous American flick, our Revelation of St. John or Epic of Gilgamesh: Zapruder’s footage of the Kennedy assassination. This 60-second saga, shot by a Ukrainian-born clothing manufacturer, is so famous that it is probably impossible by now to watch it like one watches other films. The massive literary exegesis/sequel, The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, some 26 volumes in length, shows clearly the aura of holiness around a reel that can hardly be called just a ‘movie’.

Despite its relative obscurity, Edison’s Mary is a more influential production than is usually given credit. Its lingering effects include the modish cult of ‘snuff’ films, short clips showing actual murder with a violent sexual patina, as well as the execution propaganda of insurgent studio systems—most notably those of the Levantine organization, ISIS.

The similarities are instructive, formally and practically. The ISIS films also use editing at the denouement, but unlike Edison’s, they do not actually show the moment itself. The focus is instead on the horrible aftermath (at least visually), in order to work on the schooled imagination of the viewer. In the most crucial difference, the ‘star’ is actually murdered. Perhaps their most ambitious production, Though the Unbelievers Despise It, took four hours to make and features at least four cuts, not to mention the lives of some 20 Syrian soldiers. But we will here concentrate on the films that show a single slaying, such as Another Message to America and Its Allies, as the true exemplars of their cinema. Its larger-scale spectacles can never hope to compete with even the most pedestrian shots of the aerial bombardment of a city. But when they work pared down to the essentials, ISIS’ productions are a match for anyone’s.

Here, the sophistication of cinema ISIS relies on color and several well-placed edits, while the static position of the camera remains a self-conscious homage to early documentary. ‘Realism’ is a deliberate pose, as the framing of the films make clear—the executioner may be the real executioner, or just one of ISIS’ soldiers, as the killing is not shown on camera; the empty desert behind the statue-like figures is a stark abstract strip. The films were made in studios with high production values and sophisticated technology, a fact that has led some people to see them as off-Hollywood psyops projects produced with Saudi or American assistance (or at least with the sponsorship of Adidas, as footage of their columns’ early marches into Syria plainly shows). Whatever the case, simple elements are used to maximal effect. The use of free distribution platforms, a sadistic insight into audience fetishism, and the need to produce images for a legitimacy far beyond mere international recognition make ISIS anything but ‘medieval’ fundamentalists. As the movement declared its state, it also declared a foundational myth and for this myth, it knew it must create a cinema.

In Edison’s film, Mary is played by Robert L Thomae, which seems to have been his only role (he is mentioned in several sources as an employee of the Edison Company and may have been a choice of the moment, as with ISIS’ executioner-actor). The action is as follows: Mary steps up to the headsman block. The executioner lifts his axe, dispatches the last Stuart and then holds her severed head up for the audience—that is, for the courtiers and for the film viewer, a dual audience. A crude edit allows for the substitution of a mannequin, making the film also an early example of Grand Guignol special effects.

Historical killings on film were first done as mock-ups. There is film of Archduke Ferdinand reviewing his troops, but no one shot the assassination. Zapruder’s film can be seen an American remake: it shows the doomed President reviewing not his soldiers but the people outside Camelot; his motorcade passes and the good king dies with assassin off-camera (depending on who you ask). There is also footage of Czar Nicholas and other heads of state, but by the time of the First World War newsreels were utterly ubiquitous: anyone could appear on film. The early immortality of the nobles had quickly vanished forever. They were condemned to look like actors or be subsumed into family vacation footage. Zapruder’s accidental film returned some of the glow of eternity to history caught on celluloid, yet constant repetition since then has taken it apart frame by frame and it has disappeared into memorabilia.

Conversely, ISIS’ productions are avant garde agit prop: glowing images brilliantly worked in an uncanny mise-en-scène, a martial, immediate nostalgia for Year One. The use of green screen shows that the production team is more interested in color than with naturalism and is willing to spend money and time for scenes that could have easily been shot verité (Influence of Hollywood on ‘Caliph’ al Baghdadi’s cinema, rather than the 9th Century Baghdad school of optics—which shows again that he is no traditionalist). Offscreen fans blow the hair and flags of the participants; the executioner appears on a miraculous nuclear plane, half future earth and half divine ordination. Obscenely, the Day of Judgment in one man’s death is reduced to a symbol, then reduced again to a threat for tourists. As the brutal killings occur off-screen, the rather clumsily-simulated aftermath is obviously an aesthetic decision. Deciding what is shown and what is not marks every single filmmaker, from a kid with his cellphone to the Bollywood mogul.

ISIS may be most remembered for its cinema—if you discount its innumerable victims in Syria and Iraq, as the Western media always does. Its shrinking land holdings should properly be considered a last pitch to a captive audience or a vast studio lot now under hostile competitor control. Their films are exercises in total Technicolor modernism, with aspects both archaic and experimental, as befits their robust and seductive ideology. There is a Pirandellism even in their military operations—though they are hardly the first. The attack on Palmyra was Epic Vs. Epic, staged in front of the ruins as if these ruins were Caberia or Intolerance. Caberia was partly written and promoted by D’Annunzio; Intolerance was De Mille’s agonized revision of Birth of a Nation, the latter an opportunist attempt at making money from the perverse visions of lynch mobs.

But the greatest invention of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed (studio) head of ISIS, comparable to Howard Hughes but somewhat distinct from ISIS as a collective auteur project, was himself. More lost than the fabled reels of Ambersons and Greed, the final cut may rest deep in impregnable Langley or in the sub-basement of an Ankara post-production house, never to see the light of day. All we have are these eerie franchises played out with grave seriousness in places where empires compete, scored with real screams. Fake desert, fake Caliph, fake enemies.

The contradiction of supposed ‘snuff’ films is that they have always existed, but as war footage or disaster reels, easily available for free on prime-time television or called up via a million online videos. The selling point is the illegality and home-made aesthetics of ‘outlaw’ works, made for an exclusive conspiratorial club—of which the films of ISIS are really no different than a Netflix True Crime series. They combine the savviness of Silicon Valley with Old World American shell game, brute force and reaction, the poetry of murder and the thrill of feeling like you are the only one watching. For that reason, we can trace a line from Edison straight to the throat-cutters, passing through the gardens of those quiet suburbs our haunted secret agents swear to protect. The real art of the ISIS Corp lies in its Fordian project for a total community, a reworking of the past that is cinematic and available to everyone. It was the United States that understood the epos of the past needed to be self-reflecting if they were to be at all. Pharaoh must be an actor playing Pharaoh (Jack Hawkins, say), just as ISIS’ Caliph—far more film Pharaoh than historical Caliph, neither righteous nor even louche—must be an actor who employs another actor, just as al Baghdadi apparently did for his voice-overs and his doubles (one of them wearing a Rolex). To accuse ISIL, ISIS, Dae’sh of fanaticism obscures the professional, provocative point of their filmmaking. Like CIA, they adhere to a solid critique of realism, similar to Langley’s promotion of Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s against the USSR’s Stalinist line on socialist realism.

The representation of death obsessed Edison as much as it did ISIS. His company competed with Westinghouse in what was called ‘the war of the currents’, with Edison promoting a direct and Westinghouse an alternative current to power the electric chair. His West Orange laboratory was used to test his design on animals, most famously on Topsy the Elephant in 1903—which Edison naturally filmed. The two firms finally reached a temporary compromise, and William Kimmler was successfully electrocuted on August 6, 1890. But the killing was botched and agonizing to behold—also the case for ISIS over a century later, who could not allow itself to be seen as incompetent on film. Swiftness says efficiency, and the way around the problem was death offscreen, a sword stroke made all the more poignant by being put into relief. As for Edison and electrocution, Judge Dwight’s ruling had stated that “although the mode of death described is conceded to be unusual, there is no common knowledge or consent that it is cruel; it is a question of fact whether an electric current of sufficient intensity and skillfully applied will produce death without unnecessary suffering.”

Edison made The Execution of Czolgosz with Panorama of Auburn Prison in 1901, six years after his Mary Queen of Scots film. Leon Czolgosz had assassinated President McKinley that same year and was indeed executed, but Edison’s film was a fake, made to sell his new improved electric chair after the Kimmler debacle a decade earler. A far more ambitious work than any of his previous, perhaps because product placement was involved and contracts were to be won, it begins with a long panoramic shot of dead trees and marshland, ending on the walls of the prison and a cut to the interior. There are four cuts in the film and the execution of the anarchist Czolgosz is more convincingly rendered than the earlier death of the Scots Queen. The establishing shot of the lonely area prefigures those of ISIS in their fastness, and the film is so roughly pixelated in contemporary digital reproduction that this landscape looks like a model in an atom age monster movie.

That the eyes see for a few seconds after decapitation is a perpetual folktale. Also that beheading, like drowning and the chair, is quick and comparatively painless.

by Martin Billheimer

[1] I admit here to not actually having seen any of the ISIS oeuvre. There is no point—they have been seen by millions and watching them would be like falling into the Zapruder spiral. Looking for clues and secrets is an arrogant pastime which reduces everyone to the misery of an 'expert'. It has been noted that ISIS' films do include audio of the off-camera killings, which are real if not in time, just as the ‘confessions’ of the doomed men, recited over the earlier part of the films, are also ‘real’. This adds to the dislocation of watching a ‘mock’ execution which ends in a real one, with 'real' sound over posed images. The whole cruel and disorienting puzzle makes, I imagine, a viewing experience that is both indelible and banal.

[1] Though none of these torture and sex films were actually discovered at the time of the craze (1970s), they did surface later, made by killers who were inspired by the very public investigations launched to uncover them. The original legal targets were standard fare—a series of Japanese shockers with the moniker Guinea Pig (the filmmakers had to show the old rushes in court to prove that their actresses were very much alive, giggling and covered in red syrup); or utter trash, like 1975’s Snuff, which was picketed after the film’s producers spread a rumor that its totally unconvincing killings were real ‘South American’ murder footage.

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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How Babylon 5 Made Star Trek Better

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There are a few patient zeroes for proving serialized storytelling on TV viable. Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Battlestar Galactica, and the so-called “golden era” of TV aren’t possible without a few under-the-radar precedents. Different critics will point to different examples, but when it comes to science fiction and fantasy shows, that list gets a lot smaller. Some might say Buffy’s interconnected season-long arcs are the most influential, while Trekkies tend to lean heavily on the innovation and risk-taking of Deep Space Nine’s serialization in later seasons. In fact, one prominent DS9 podcast — The Rules of Acquisition — has effectively argued that DS9 created the foundation for all contemporary TV that followed. And then there’s The X-Files.

All of these examples are valid because, clearly, in the late 1990s, there was a vortex swirling that led to a revitalization of TV conventions that was most noticeable in genre shows. Buffy and DS9 probably deserve equal credit, but in terms of its influence on science fiction, and Star Trek in particular, the series that is (sometimes) overlooked is Babylon 5. By July 1994, Babylon was wrapping up its first season, and the future of science fiction on TV would never be the same…

In retrospect, Babylon 5 made Star Trek better in the 1990s. Like Paul McCartney being inspired by the Beach Boys in the ‘60s, Babylon 5 was the scrappy ‘90s sci-fi underdog that, in a roundabout way, inspired the best of Trek to be better. Here’s why…

Did Deep Space Nine rip-off Babylon 5? (Or vice versa?)

If you were watching sci-fi TV in the ‘90s, you probably had at least an argument about whether or not the two TV shows about people living on a space station were ripping off each other. I had an ill-informed one with my dad in 1995. My dad claimed he thought it was clear that Deep Space Nine (which premiered on January 3rd, 1993) had ripped-off Babylon 5 (which premiered on January 26th, 1994), and I claimed the reverse. Neither of us was right, but it’s easy to see why fans we’re so perplexed at the time. Here’s the list:

Both shows featured a cast of humans living with aliens on a space station, trying to work out various peace deals.

Both had no-nonsense female first officers, Kira on DS9, Ivanova on B5 (though in the B5 pilot episode, “The Gathering,” the first officer was Laurel Takashima, played by Tamlyn Tomita, who very recently turned up on Star Trek: Picard.)

In the first season, both had lead characters who were “Commanders” not “Captains.”

Both of these Commanders (Sisko and Sinclair) were veterans of major battles/wars, and their characters were (initially) defined by this experience.

Both space stations were positioned next to a strategic portal through space; the Wormhole in DS9 and a major JumpGate in B5.

And finally, both shows expected the viewer to have watched some, if not all, of the previous episodes in order to know what was going on. Again, in the ‘90s, this was not common for any TV.

So, what’s the deal? Well, as Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski has gone-on record saying many, many times: “Were Pillar and Berman [DS9 creators] aware of B5 at any time? No. Of that, I am also confident. The only question in my mind is to what degree did the development people steer them?”

Babylon 5 had been in development since 1987, but there’s not really any reason to believe that camp Star Trek was super-interested in ripping off a space station show and using it for its own purposes. So, the theory floated by JMS and others is basically this: Because B5 had been pitched to Paramount before landing with Warner Bros, it’s feasible that Paramount Studio executives encouraged the DS9 team to use various elements from the B5 pitch without telling them about the existence of B5. There’s also one rumor that states that Warner and Paramount were planning on launching a joint network in the early ‘90s, and that from a studio-level point-of-view, at some point in time, Babylon 5 and DS9 WERE THE SAME SHOW, even if the people making the shows were unaware of that. That last one is pretty out-there, and also hasn’t been publicly verified, so, there’s a good bet it might not be accurate.

Bottom line: Today, most consider the similarities between B5 and DS9 to be superficial and mostly coincidental. It’s water under the space bridge, Wormhole or Jumpgate. And yet, there are more concrete connections.

The Babylon 5 + Star Trek connections

In front of the camera, Babylon 5 had a few obvious Star Trek connections. The recurring villain Alfred Bester (named after the famous SF novelist) was played by Walter Koenig, best known to Trekkies as Pavel Chekov. Patricia Tallman, who played telepath Lyta Alexander on B5, was a familiar stunt performer on The Next Generation and DS9 (often doubling for Gates McFadden, Nana Visitor, and Terry Farrell ) and also appeared in notable episodes like “Starship Mine.” On top of that, at the height of the rivalry between B5 and Star Trek, Majel Barret — the first lady of Star Trek and Gene Roddenberry’s widow — guest-starred in the 1996 Babylon 5 episode “Point of No Return.” She played a character named Lady Morella, the widow of the Emperor of the planet Centauri Prime. This cameo was a calculated move on the part of B5 creator JMS and Barret. Basically, the goal here was to send a message to all fandoms: Be cool.

Behind-the-scenes, there were a few more big Star Trek connections. Harlan Ellison was a “Creative Consultant” for Babylon 5 and Trekkies obviously know his mega-famous Trek episode, “City on the Edge of Forever.” And, JMS himself was also a big Trekkie. But we’ll get to that.

How Babylon 5 (maybe) made Trek writing better in the ‘90s

Okay. So, there’s no reason to believe that Deep Space Nine ripped-off Babylon 5 in the ‘90s, but that doesn’t mean Deep Space Nine and Voyager weren’t made better by the existence of some friendly competition. Documentaries like What We Left Behind make it clear that DS9 had its own agenda, separate and apart, from, well, pretty much anything. That said, DS9 didn’t start out as a serialized show. Those big story arcs came later. Babylon 5 on the other hand, did start out serialized, which when you consider that most seasons were 22 episodes long, that’s really saying something. DS9 always had ongoing storylines, but the heavy serialization — the types of back-to-back story arcs that happened during the Dominion War — happened years after the show got off the ground. Did Babylon 5 give the writers’ room of DS9 the confidence to go this route? Most would probably say no. And yet, B5’s serialization was its signature. With DS9, the serialization became its signature eventually.

Adam Nimoy, son of Leonard Nimoy, directed the most pivotal episode of Babylon 5, the 1996 season 3 finale, “Z’ ha’dum.” These days, this kind of thing happens all the time — Jonathan Frakes directs episodes of Star Trek: Discovery and The Orville in the same year. But back in 1996, this kind of thing was more shocking. It’s not provable, but with so many Star Trek people working on Babylon 5, it feels unlikely that the writers and producers never watched the show. Because if they had, it seems like they would have been fired-up.

How Babylon 5 saved Star Trek’s special effects in the ‘90s

In the early 1990s, real sci-fi on TV didn’t use CGI. If you wanted to do spaceships, you used models. Even the sci-fi epic seaQuest DSV got away with heavy CGI use because, in essence, the ships were half-hidden underwater. But not Babylon 5. From 1994 onward, everything about the series was CGI. Initially, the VFX company that provided these effects was a company called Foundation Imaging. Because B5 had a budget of roughly a third of a Trek series of that era, CGI effects were the only way to survive. You might not think the CGI on B5 looks that realistic now, but you have to put it in context. Outside of maybe The Last Starfighter, nobody had really dared to do outer space ship VFX with anything other than models. B5 proved it could be done. The series also pioneered virtual sets, a practice that every single sci-fi show benefits from to this day.

But this isn’t an instance of Star Trek noticing someone doing CGI and thinking that it was a good idea. Foundation Imaging literally became a part of the Star Trek franchise in 1996. After 1995, Warner Bros decided to create the CGI for Babylon 5 in-house, which left Foundation Imaging in trouble. Luckily in 1996, the company started doing CGI for Star Trek: Voyager, which led to a longtime association with the Trek franchise. Up until 1996, for spaceship exteriors, Trek almost always used models. But that started to change after Foundation Imaging began working on Voyager. Though another VFX company — Digital Muse — did a bunch of DS9’s effects, Foundation Imaging was eventually needed on DS9 as well. Remember the greatest spaceship battle in all of DS9? Yep, that’s (mostly) Foundation Imaging.

In “Sacrifice of Angels,” the scope of the starship battle was too big for models to be used, and the workload too large for Digital Muse to handle alone. And so, Foundation was responsible for the epic moment in which the USS Defiant breaks through the Dominion lines. For most DS9 fans, this exact scene defines why the series is legit awesome. And, the truth is, if Babylon 5 hadn’t employed Foundation Imaging, if Babylon 5 hadn’t relied on CGI effects, the Defiant might not have flown like that. Everyone knows great VFX can’t save a bad sci-fi movie or TV series. But, in the late 90s, it was also true that bad VFX could prevent great sci-fi from being accepted. If Trek hadn’t slowly made the switch to CGI, it’s hard to believe Voyager would have continued to be exciting. Without Babylon 5 and Foundation, you can forget “Year of Hell.”

How Babylon 5’s creator predicted a Star Trek reboot

In 2005, after the cancelation of Enterprise was announced, JMS and Bryce Zabel co-authored a treatment for a possible reboot of Star Trek. This outline wasn’t done because anyone asked them to. It was done out of love for Star Trek. The basic concept was, at the time, fairly radical — do an entire reboot of Star Trek, in fact, the pitch was called Star Trek: Re-Boot the Universe. The idea was to give a new origin story for Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the rest of the TOS crew. JMS used examples from his work in comic books: Fans can accept that this happens in a different universe. Sound familiar?

By 2009, the entire trajectory of Star Trek was redefined by the first J.J. Abrams reboot movie, which, superficially, is what JMS and Zabel pitched. True, the current Star Trek renaissance has gone away from the reboot universe. But, the viability for big-budget, cinematic Star Trek probably couldn’t have happened without the reboots. Again, we can’t prove that the JMS/Zabel pitch inspired Paramount to do their own reboot, but just like there may have been some synergy between DS9 and B5, the basic pitch is just too similar to ignore.

Conclusion

Babylon 5 was a not a Star Trek rip-off, but it did take place in the 23rd Century, and like the classic Trek, featured heroic human starship captains and their alien allies teaming-up to save the galaxy. In a sense, there was a retro-feeling to all of Babylon 5 that probably reminded ‘90s Trekkies more of TOS than of TNG or DS9. Throw Walter Koenig and Harlan Ellison into the mix, and B5 was like a tribute band for Star Trek: The Original Series. These days, fans of The Orville make similar comparisons between that series and the TNG heyday of the ‘90s. The difference, of course, is that B5 was created by J. Michael Straczynski, a guy who cut his teeth literally creating the scripts for your favorite ‘80s cartoons; from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe to The Real Ghostbusters. In short, Straczynski was someone who understood what sci-fi TV was in the ‘90s, and he knew its limitations. When he set out to make B5 he clearly did it with a lot of love for Star Trek. JMS hired Star Trek actors for Babylon 5. He attempted to bridge the divide between Trek fandoms and the B5 fandoms. He even dreamed up a way to bring Trek back from the dead after it was seemingly canceled in 2005. J. Michael Straczynski maybe never formally wrote for Star Trek, but without him, and without Babylon 5, the world of Trek would have been much, much darker.

The post How Babylon 5 Made Star Trek Better appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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elisaphoenix13 · 5 years

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Conflict Ch.6 (End)

Getting Peter to stay behind was a bit of a chore, but it was understandable. There was a chance that Stephen would not come back from the quantum realm and then where would that leave the teen? He was a year shy of being an adult and already he lost five parents. No one should have to go through that. Now his sixth parent was risking time travel to bring back the fifth.

The conflicted look Peter gave Stephen before he left hurt him.

The initial plan had worked though. He and Scott arrived at the battle right before Tony snapped, and the sorcerer had Victor send a message to the billionaire. The man had paused (not like before) before snapping, and Stephen rushed over to him with Scott on his heals and immediately turned back time on his wounds before Rhodey got to them. They were trying to been seen as little as possible just in case it could cause issues.

He sincerely doubted it though.

Once the Time Stone fixed what it could and just enough color returned to Tony's face, he placed his hand over the arc reactor.

"FRIDAY."

"Boss needs medical attention."

That was enough. He'd have to leave the rest to his past self. God, seeing Tony like this again was too much but if this worked, it would be well worth it.

"Stephen. We gotta go now. Rhodes is heading over." Scott gently tugs on the sorcerer's shoulder until Tony weakly reaches out and grabs the sorcerer's wrist.

"Stephen."

The doctor smiles softly and gently cups his uninjured cheek. "I'll see you soon."

He carefully pulls his arm out of his husband's grip, and backs away, leaving the man confused as Scott grabs Stephen's arm and takes them back through the quantum realm and to their time. If he was correct, and this worked, they would take the place of their alternate selves and gain their memories. He wasn't really looking forward to memories being crammed into his head, even if it was just a few months. He had warned Scott about it ahead of time so he wouldn't panic.

Tony's lab was silent when they got back. No Peter, or Rhodey (who had seen them off), and not Tony. Before he could worry though, the memories assaulted his mind and it took both and Scott a few minutes to recover. It was like watching a really long movie but in fast-forward so one couldn't really grasp what was going on.

Tony was in those memories though.

"Holy crap. That was definitely in my top ten of weird things I've experienced." Scott finally says.

"Welcome to my world." Stephen replies dully and then with a pounding heart looks up at the ceiling. "FRIDAY...where's Tony?"

"In the living room with Peter. You just came from there. Are you alright Doctor? Shall I call for Dr. Banner?" The AI asks with worry.

Stephen and Scott look at each other and rush out of the lab and up to the family floor. Please be real. Please be real, the sorcerer repeats in his head as they stumble into the living room after the elevator doors open.

He was there. His right side scarred but he was there. He was alive and talking enthusiastically about suit upgrades with Peter, neither noticing the presence of the new pair. Peter very obviously didn't retain any memories of after Tony's death since he didn't make the trip with Stephen and Scott.

"Tony." He finally whispers.

The engineer looks up and grins. "Hey babe. Did you--" The smile disappears at the look of disbelief on Stephen's face. "What's wrong? Are you okay?" The sorcerer strides into Tony's arms when the mechanic stands up and throws his arms around his husband while nuzzling his neck.

He smelt like motor oil and coffee. He now understood why smells were important to Peter. They were soothing. They smelled like home. Stephen would never take advantage of it again. He didn't realize how much he really missed this.

"Okay...you're okay. I'm okay." Tony must have realized today was when Stephen came back to save him and that he was now dealing with an overwhelmed sorcerer.

Stephen held back tears. He didn't want to worry Peter anymore than he was already looking. "I've missed you." He whispers.

"We'll talk later tonight." Tony whispers in return. "You look like you need to sit down."

"Uh...so why are you in your suit Scott?" Peter asks curiously.

Shit. Stephen almost forgot about him. Poor guy was probably feeling awkward.

"Got bored again. Eventually saw your mom and followed him up here." He deflects easily.

"Okay." Peter shrugs. Thank whatever powerful deity that was watching that it was actual typical behaviour for the ex-con.

Stephen carefully moves away from his husband and meets his eyes. "Don't freak out. I'll explain later." He mutters.

"Freak out about what?"

Stephen ignores Tony's question and turns on his heel to face Scott. In two short steps, when he's nearly chest to chest with the man, he grabs Scott's face and kisses him. Not a simple peck either. A proper one, because this man helped him get his family back together and it was the very least he could do.

Tony and Peter squawk at the scene, and the sorcerer pulls away after a few long seconds to find Scott's pupils blown wide and his body frozen to the spot. Stephen thanks him with a smug smile, and leaves the frozen man behind as he joins Tony and Peter on the couch when the billionaire sits back down. Thankfully, the engineer didn't look offended. Peter on the other hand...

"What the hell?! Are you and Scott having an affair?"

"No cub. I owed him a favor and that was how he collected."

"Important enough to kiss him in front of us?" Peter asks skeptically.

"Very important." Stephen confirms as he looks at Tony.

His lover only smirks in understanding and points at Lang.

"I don't know if you can hear me Stuart Little, but that is never happening again!" Scott didn't respond. "Babe, I think you broke him. Maybe that should happen again."

"It would lose its effectiveness."

"Huh...thats true."

Tony waves his hand in Scott's direction as if brushing off the subject and leans against the arm of the couch. When he motions for Stephen, he didn't waste any time curling against his husband, making sure not to jostle the man's weaker arm too much. He knew his right side was sensitive sometimes but Tony could actually use it, and proved it by wrapping it around the sorcerer. Once Stephen comfortable settles against him, with his face in the man's unscathed collarbone, it was Peter's turn to wiggle into their cuddle. When he was comfortable, Levi flew over and covered the small family.

"So are we just going to ignore the fact that Scott is over there in his own world?" The teen asks and Tony laughs.

Stephen missed his laugh.

"Let him enjoy the moment. Mom made his day...probably his whole life."

"You know..." Stephen starts with a smirk. "Considering all the juice he drinks, there wasn't a single hint of it."

Tony raises an eyebrow. "Normally I would tell you I don't want to hear about it, but now you have me curious."

"I don't kiss and tell, love."

"Asshole."

They laid like that for a long time. The tv playing some sort of documentary that only Tony and Peter were half paying attention to, but Stephen was too busy enjoying the closeness of his family. Their smells, their beating hearts...their warmth. He wouldn't mind staying like this forever.

That is, until an important reminder came to him and he lifted his head just enough to look up at Tony.

"Natasha and Loki--"

"In their rooms. Along with Vision."

Stephen sighs. "Good."

The elevator hisses open and Natasha soon appears in the living room pointing her thumb over her shoulder. "What's wrong with Scott?"

"Mama Bear broke him."

"How did you manage that?"

"Kissed him."

Natasha's eyebrows fly up to her hairline. "FRIDAY, did you record that?"

"Yes, Miss Romanov."

"Oh. This I gotta see."

Stephen sighs when the assassin grabs Tony's tablet off the coffee table, and plays back the kiss that happened an hour ago (he was honestly surprised Scott hasn't moved yet), and catches Tony watching it as well.

"Now that I'm over the initial shock...that's actually kind of hot Mama Bear."

Both Peter and Stephen groan and Scott finally comes out of his happy stupor just in time to catch the last bit of the recording.

"That actually happened? I thought I dreamt that up. Damn that was amazing."

"You were standing there for over an hour in happy shock so I would hope so." Stephen teases.

"Well that's embarrassing. I didn't start drooling did I?" Scott asks as he wipes his mouth.

Tony sniggers. "Not yet."

"Can you send that recording to me?"

"Not a chance Thumbelina. I don't want you getting--"

"Man, your wife just kissed me. I can use my imagination." Scott argues.

"He has a point." Stephen mutters and Tony rolls his eyes.

"Fine. FRIDAY go ahead and send that to Scott."

Natasha grins wickedly. "Send it to the whole team."

Tony scowls. "If everyone starts trying to kissy with Stephen, I blame you."

"No one but you and Scott want that, and Baby Spider already gets the cuddles." Natasha points out with a roll of her eyes.

"Damn right." Peter mumbles. "My mom."

It didn't take long for Tony's and Stephen's phones to blow up from messages from the team. They all mostly consisted of confused questions or something of the like, and the sorcerer simply texted them all saying that Scott did him a very special kindness and it was just a thank you for it. He also heavily implied that it would nothappen again. Their phones didn't go off again but Scott's did. They both decided they didn't want to know.

Peter chose to just ignore it all and wait for everyone to calm down. Brilliant move on his part. He just pressed closer to his parents and enjoyed their presence. Both adults smile and both wrap an arm around the teen, making Levi adjust itself over them.

"Never let me choose a stone over the two of you again." Stephen whispers. "Biggest mistake of my life."

Natasha, overhearing the sorcerer, actually smiles and leans down to kiss his temple. "Thank you by the way."

Thank you for bringing us home.

#tony stark #ironstrange #peter parker #mama bear stephen strange #supremefamily

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mcrmadness · 1 year

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I got curious over how film reel videos were edited back in the day and I just don't know which keywords to use (on youtube) for that, and when I do, I get results like these:

And noooooo, don't give me short videos where everything is explained asap :( I want long videos! Even whole youtube channels dedicated to different topics, I want to know everything about it! Not just some shallow look on something that feels like wasting 8 minutes of life on something I already knew without the video too.

In general so many of these videos on youtube seem to be titled "as fast as possible" or "shortly" or "as shortly as possible" and so on. I don't like it how the trend of making everything be quick and fast is also in these videos. Like, I have nothing but time! I can very well sit down to watch videos for hours. I found one channel that does really good videos about film making, but it's focusing on today's methods only, and rn I'm feeling like looking back at the history of film making but from the behind the scenes point of view. Most videos are so shallow and only focus on old movie stars or most famous films and explain the same things as every other video too, and tell nothing new and exciting.

I am studying in the media industry rn, so I naturally have now the curiosity for knowing what the industry and film making WAS before. I wanna know everything about old-school special effects - not just those from the 90s, but even older. From the early days of cinema! I have seen some short videos that focused on that era and showed stuff from e.g. old wax stop-motion dinosaurs to how Charlie Chaplin did some of the trickshots in his films. THAT kind of stuff is what I want to know, just like how different cuts in films were done before you could do that digitally. I wanna know when did film cameras stop being the main camera type, and when did movie companies move to digital. Or did they? I know there are still directors who use expensive film cameras, but I also wanna know if film cameras are still common or not. Like, all this is so fascinating but I can't find real documentaries about the topic from anywhere. Sometimes youtube drops super fascinating video recommendations in front of me, but somehow I just never find such videos when I'm purposedly looking for them...

#mcrmadness' random stuff

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brokehorrorfan · 3 years

Photo

The Phantasm Sphere Collection will be reissued on July 13 via Well Go USA. The Blu-ray box set was originally released for Phantasm's 40th anniversary in 2019 but quickly went out of print.

The six-disc box set contains all five films in the Phantasm franchise on Blu-ray and a bonus disc loaded with special features, along with a full-scale replica of a killer sphere. Aaron Lea designed the cover art.

Phantasm launched in 1979 from writer-director Don Coscarelli. It was followed by Phantasm II (1988), Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994), Phantasm IV: Oblivion (1998), and Phantasm: Ravager (2016). Reggie Bannister, A. Michael Baldwin, Bill Thornbury, and Angus Scrimm star.

The extensive list of special features can be found below.

Phantasm: Remastered special features:

Audio commentary with writer/director Don Coscarelli, co-producer Paul Pepperman and visual consultant Roberto Quezada

Audio commentary with writer/director Don Coscarelli and stars Michael Baldwin, Angus Scrimm and Bill Thornbury

Dunes Cantina Party audio commentary by writer/director Don Coscarelli and the cast and crew

Graveyard Carz

Interviews with Don Coscarelli and Angus Scrimm

Deleted Scenes

Cast interviews - Phantasm: Actors Having a Ball

Phantasm Behind-the-Scenes Home Movies with commentary by Don Coscarelli and Reggie Bannister

Additional home movie footage

A Horse Drawn Hearse – Remastered black and white flashback footage

TV Spots

Radio Spots

Angus Scrimm Introduction

Fangoria TV Spot

Theatrical Trailer

Still Gallery

Phantasm II special features:

Director’s cut with X-rated gore sequence

Audio commentary with director Don Coscarelli, actors Angus Scrimm and Reggie Banister

The Ball is Back – documentary on the making of Phantasm II

The Gory Days – an interview with Special Make-up Effects Artist Greg Nicotero

Deleted Scenes

Workprint Scenes

TV Spots

Theatrical Trailers

Behind the Scenes

Still Galleries

Released after seven years in a mental hospital, Mike convinces his old pal Reggie to join forces with him to hunt down and destroy the Tall Man once and for all. Mike’s visions lead the two to a quiet little town where a horde of flying killer balls aim to slice and dice their gruesome way through everyone. Exploding with special effects, unparalleled thrills, horror and suspense, PHANTASM II climaxes with a blood-curdling conclusion that you have to see to believe.

Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead special features:

Audio commentary with director Don Coscarelli and editor Norman Buckley

Balls of Steel: Bob Ivy’s Stunt for the Ages - The Phantasm III Car Stunt – Behind-the-scenes footage of the film’s dangerous car stunt, including recently rediscovered material

It’s Never Over: The Making of Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead – Interviews with Don Coscarelli, A. Michael Baldwin, Reggie Bannister, Bill Thornbury, Gloria Lynn Henry, stuntman Bob Ivy, director of photography Christopher Chomyn, composer Christopher L. Stone, sphere designer Kerry Prior, special makeup effects designer Dean Gates and production assistant Kristen Deem

Behind the Scenes Compilation

Audio commentary with actors A. Michael Baldwin and Angus Scrimm

Phantasm III: Behind-the-Scenes

Deleted Scene

Radio Spot

Still Gallery

Trailer

The mutant dwarf creatures are attacking, the silver spheres are flying, and the Tall Man is back with a vengeance! Fifteen years after the original horror classic, writer/producer/director Don Coscarelli reunites brothers Mike (A. Michael Baldwin) and Jody (Bill Thornbury) to help their friend Reggie (Reggie Bannister) destroy the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) once and for all.

Phantasm IV: Oblivion special features:

Death is No Escape: The Making of Phantasm IV: Oblivion – Interviews with Don Coscarelli, A. Michael Baldwin, Reggie Bannister, Bill Thornbury, special makeup effects artist Gigi Bannister, stunt co-ordinator Bob Ivy, director of photography Christopher Chomyn, composer Christopher L. Stone, sphere designer Kerry Prior, cameraman Justin Zaharczuk and special makeup effects artist Robert Kurtzman

Behind the Scenes Compilation

Phantasm Sequels Conceptual Art Gallery by Justin Zaharczuk

Audio commentary with director Don Coscarelli and actors Reggie Bannister and Angus Scrimm

Phantasm IV: Behind-The-Scenes

Trailer

13 years after the original nightmare began, Mike must cross dark dimensions of time and space to discover his origins and those of his nemesis, the evil Tall Man. With only his loyal friend Reggie at hisside, and the spirit of his dead brother to guide him, Mike must finally confront this malevolent embodiment of death. Prepare to be scared witless as the fine line between the living and the dead snaps with a vengeance!

Phantasm: Ravager special features:

The Making of Phantasm V: Ravager featurette

Interview with actor A. Michael Baldwin

Interview with actress Kat Lester

Interview with actor Stephan Jutras

Behind the Scenes Promo with Angus Scrimm Tribute

Phantasm V Red Credit Sequence

Audio commentary with co-writer/director David Hartman and co-writer/producer Don Coscarelli

Behind the Scenes

Deleted Scenes

Phuntasm: Bloopers and Outtakes

Theatrical Trailer

After battling with the Tall Man in Phantasm: Oblivion, a battered Reggie wanders through the desert in search of his missing friend, Mike. After recovering his 1971 Hemi ‘Cuda, Reggie is targeted by two of the Tall Man’s Sentinel Spheres and destroys them. He awakens suddenly to find himself sitting in a wheelchair pushed by none other than the elusive Mike! Although overjoyed by their reunion, Reggie is in this alternate dimension an aged and weary old patient in a psychiatric ward. And only he remembers their battled and bloodied past with the Tall Man. Reggie must travel between dimensions and discern what is reality in order to confront the mysteries at the heart of a decades-long struggle against evil. He is met with new and familiar faces along the way, and an epic showdown on the Tall Man’s home world awaits!

Bonus Disc:

Phantasm: Ravager: How It Was Made – Feature-length documentary

Phantasm and You – Comic recap of the first 4 films by Phantasm: Ravager director David Hartman

Flashback Weekend Chicago Convention Panel Discussion (2008)

Flashback Weekend Chicago Convention Cast Panel (2014)

Flashback Weekend Concert Performance by Kat Lester

2016 Fantastic Fest Premiere and Q&A

Phantasmagoria: a documentary containing new and archival interviews with cast and crew

Phantasmagorical Mystery Tour with your host, Reggie Bannister

Phantasm Genesis

Phandom

Fangoria TV Commercial with Angus Scrimm

Angus Scrimm 1989 Convention Appearance

Pre-order The Phantasm Sphere Collection from Amazon.

#phantasm #don coscarelli #phantasm 2 #phantasm ii #phantasm 3 #phantasm 4 #phantasm 5 #well go usa #dvd #gift #reggie bannister #angus scrimm #horror #70s horror #1970s horror

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buzzdixonwriter · 4 years

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Cowboys And Cavemen

This one’s gonna meander, but it’s about cavemen and cowboys and dinosaurs, so some of you may wanna stick around…

. . .

Recently watched the colorized version of One Million B.C. with Victor mature, Carole Landis, and Lon Chaney Jr.

I remember frequently watching the original black & white version of this as a kid; it popped up on local Early Shows a lot primarily because it could be chopped down to fit an hour’s running time without losing too much of the story (Early Shows were afternoon movies with a local host that typically ran only 90 minutes from 4:30-6pm; with commercials and host segments there wasn’t much room for uncut films and as a result they featured a lot of B-movies with 65 minute running times, or else cut out sequences from longer films not germane to the plot).

The colorized version surprised me in a couple of ways.

First, I’d forgotten just how well done One Million B.C. is in basic film making terms: Once past the opening scene, in which an archeologist explains some cave drawings to a group of mountaineers who then imagine themselves in prehistoric times, there’s no recognizable dialog; the film is told in purely visual terms.

Second, the colorization was incredibly sloppy: There’s a lot of weird blue artifacting going on that lays a strange mist-like quality over several scenes, and in several places the colorists inexplicably either colored the actors’ bare legs blue or else overlooked the mistake in the final color correction.

Third, the sloppy colorization doesn’t matter: If anything, it adds to the weird dream-like quality of the film. As an attempt to realistically recreate the prehistoric past, it’s gawdawful; taken as the imaginings of an average contemporary 1940s person with no real knowledge of prehistoric times (viz the prolog), and it’s pretty entertaining.

Technically the movie is a mixed bag. The special effects are pretty seamless (yeah, you can tell when something is a rear screen shot, but then again rear screen shots in every film of that era were obvious)). A travelling matte shot of a hapless cavewoman buried under a flood of lava is particularly well done and as amazing today as it was then (though the colorists dropped the ball and didn’t tint it a vivid red or orange in the colorized version).

There’s a lot of monsters, but they range from well done to just plaine…well…

The best are a woolly mammoth (i.e., an elephant in shaggy fur costume) and a baby triceratops (a large pig in costume) that really seem to capture the essence pf those creatures.

The worst is a guy in an allosaurus suit who kinda just shuffles along like a grandparent going to the bathroom, and in the middle are various lizards dressed up with fins and horns.

The lizards bother me more and more over the years. At first it was because they were disappointing -- they don’t look like dinosaurs, dammit, but like lizards with fins and horns glued on -- but now it’s because I realize they were goaded by their handlers into fights and reactions shots.

That’s plain ol’ animal cruelty, even if they are reptiles and not mammals.

There’s an armadillo and a koala-like animal that appear thousands of times their normal size. The koala-like critter (sorry, but I don’t know what it actually is) is passable as a giant cave bear or sloth, but the armadillo is just an armadillo (there was something about armadillos that 1930s audience found creepy; they’re waddling all over the Count’s hiding place in the original Dracula).

One Million B.C. was produced by Hal Roach and Hal Roach Jr. The senior Roach goes all the way back to the silent era, so this was not a huge stretch for him.

Originally D.W. Griffith was to direct the film, but while he did a lot of pre-production work including screen and wardrobe tests, he either dropped out or was replaced on the eve of production. (Reportedly he wanted the cave tribes to speak recognizable English and left when Roach refused.)

The special effects wound up in a ton of movies and TV shows over the ensuing decades; modern audiences are more familiar with the film through 1950s sci-fi than its original version.

All else aside, the picture is carried by stars Victor Mature and Carole Landis. Ms Landis in particular is a spunky, charming cave gal with a blonde-fro and while Mature would never be an Oscar contender, he at least has the physicality and screen presence to get his character across.

The scene where he thinks Landis has died in a volcanic eruption may be corny, but you can feel his character’s grief.

. . .

A quarter of a century later it was remade as One Million Years B.C. with John Richardson in the Victor mature role and Raquel Welch in the Landis role.

No disrespect to Welch, who by all accounts is a nice person, but she never showed one iota the acting chops of Carole Landis. Welch is beautiful, and as a generic pin-up model cast as a film’s “sexy lamp” (look it up), she presented appealing eye-candy. She appeared in one good sci-fi film (Fantastic Voyage), one campy monster movie (i.e., One Million Years B.C.), two incredibly campy WTF-were-they-thinking movies (The Magic Christian and Myra Breckenridge), and a host of instantly forgettable spy films and Westerns. The best movies she appeared in were Fuzz, based on the 87th Precinct novels by Ed McBain (a.k.a. Evan Hunter nee Salvatore Lombino), where she did an acceptable supporting turn as a police detective, and Kansas City Bomber, a roller derby movie that many consider her best role.

Landis never enjoyed the same level of fame (or notoriety, depending on your POV) that Welch did, but holy cow, could the gal act. It’s a pity Hollywood is crowded with talented, beautiful people because she certainly deserved a bigger career capstone than One Million B.C..

Welch’s personal life certainly proved less traumatic than Landis’, however. When actor Rex Harrison broken off his affair with her rather than divorce his wife, Landis committed suicide.

The scandal exiled Harrison temporarily back to England. A few years later One Million B.C. and Landis’ other films started playing on television.

Who knows what opportunities may have opened for her in that medium?

. . .

The original One Million B.C. is vastly superior in all areas but one (well, two -- mustn’t leave out the catfight between Welch and Martine Beswick): Ray Harryhausen’s stop motion dinosaurs

Mind you, most of the dino scenes in One Million Years B.C. are underwhelming. To stretch the budget the producers used close ups of spiders and an iguana to simulate giant monsters, a brontosaurus does a walk through in one scene and never appears again, and the first big dino moment has cave gals poking sharp sticks at a big sea turtle.

On the other hand, the remaining trio of dino scenes are the aces and vastly superior to their corresponding scenes in One Million B.C.. The latter film’s allosaur attack is one of the best dino scenes ever animated, and the ceratosaurus vs triceratops battle followed by the pteranodon grabbing Welch are almost as good.

Both versions of the film had an interesting influence on films that followed. One Million Years B.C. was followed by a host of prehistoric films, most of which existed only to cast voluptuous actresses in fur bikinis although When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth, a direct follow-up, offered more monsters and a better story.

While One Million B.C. wasn’t the first film to sub real life lizards for dinos, it certainly told budget conscious producers that such substitutions were okay.

The 1959 version of Journey To The Center Of The Earth cast iguanas with glued on fins as dimetrodons, and for once the impersonation proved successful as the two species do bear certain similarities.

Producer Irwin Allen (he of Lost In Space and Towering Inferno fame) hired Willis O;Brien (the animator behind the original King Kong) and his then assistant Ray Harryhausen to do accurate-for-the-era stop motion dinosaurs for The Animal World documentary but apparently frustrated by the time it took to get results opted for lizards in his version of The Lost World (which, ironically, O’Brien worked on in a non-animation capacity despite having done the original silent version of the film with stop motion dinosaurs).

I saw Allen’s Lost World as a little boy and felt grossly disappointed by the obvious lizards, especially since the script identified them as belong to specific dinosaur species when they quite clearly didn’t (had the script said they evolved from such creatures, the way the most recent version of King Kong did, it would have been less egregious).

Allen’s lizards popped up in several TV shows he did, most notably the TV version of Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea. That show’s co-star David Hedison played a supporting role in The Lost World so once a season they found some excuse to get him out of his Navy uniform and into a safari jacket in order to match footage with stock shots from the movie.

The Animal World wasn’t the first time O’Brien and Harryhausen worked together, and Harryhausen followed up One Million Years B.C. with The Valley Of Gwangi, an O’Brien project that the older effects artist never got off the ground.

. . .

Let’s back up a bit to discuss “O’Bie” (as his fans refer to him).

O’Brien was a former cowboy-turned-cartoonist around the early 20th century who became interested in animation.

Movies were in their infancy then, and O’Bie shot a short test reel of two clay boxers duking it out.

This got him financing to do a series of short films ala The Flintstones with titles like Rural Delivery, One Million B.C. (the titles were often longer than the films).

These shorts featured cartoony puppets, no actual actors. O’Bie followed it up with The Ghost Of Slumber Mountain which was the first time dinosaurs were animated in an attempt to make them look real, and that was followed by The Lost World in which O’Bie combined live action with special effects, climaxing the film with a brontosaurus running amok in London.

O’Bie wanted to follow it up with a film called Creation but that got deep sixed. However, producer Merian C. Cooper saw O’Bie’s test footage for Creation and hired him to do the effects for the legendary King Kong.

While O’Bie followed that success with the quickie Son Of Kong he never got to work on a dinosaur film of such scope again.

War Eagles (a lost-civilization-with-dinos story) was supposed to have been a big follow up epic, but the Depression and the growing threat of WWII caused it to be cancelled in pre-production.

During the 1940s O’Bie pitched a number of stories to studios involving dinosaurs or other monsters encountering cowboys, one of which was Gwangi (he also pitched King Kong vs Frankenstein which eventually got made as King Kong vs Godzilla using two guys in rubber suits, not his beloved stop motion effects).

Gwangi had cowboys discovering a lost canyon inhabited by dinosaurs, chief of which being Gwangi, an allosaurus. O’Bie never got Gwangi off the ground but decades later Harryhausen did with Valley Of Gwangi.

. . .

I never cared for Valley Of Gwangi and much preferred One Million Years B.C. over it (and, no, not because of Ms Welch).

Growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s, I enjoyed cowboys as much as dinosaurs.

I’ve posted elsewhere how my interest in dinosaurs led me to dinosaur movies which led to monster movies which led to science fiction movies which led to literary science fiction which led to science fiction fandom which led to my writing career, but my genre of choice before age 10 was Westerns.

As others point out, most Westerns are actually crime stories, what with bandits robbing stagecoaches and banks, rustlers making off with cattle, etc. The climax usually involves a lawman (or a vigilante who carries the weight of the law) confronting the evil doers and bringing them to justice.

Sometimes these vigilantes wore masks (Zorro and the Lone Ranger). Sometimes those they pursued wore masks, and sometimes those masked villains pretended to be ghosts or phantoms.

They weren’t, and were invariably exposed as frauds.

Westerns based themselves in a rational world.

Other times a criminal in a Western would be after some invention that could bring either a great boon (say an energy source) or great harm (a death ray) to the world, and wanted it for their own selfish ends.

The story would invariably use the invention as a mcguffin device, maybe letting it figure into the villain’s eventual comeuppance, but never really influencing the outcome of the plot.

Westerns and fantasy genres (including science fiction) don’t mix well, The Wild Wild West not withstanding (and The Wild Wild West was not a Western per se but rather what we would now call a steampunk commentary on James Bond filtered through the lens of traditional American Westerns).

(And don’t bring up Gene Autry And The Phantom Empire, just…don’t…)

Dinosaurs and cowboys don’t really go together.

That didn’t stop O’Bie from trying.

In addition to Gwangi, O’Bie had two other projects that he did get off the ground: The Brave One and The Beast From Hollow Mountain.

The Beast From Hollow Mountain is a standard Western about mysterious cattle disappearances and quarrels over who might be responsible, only to discover in the end it’s really -- surprise! surprise! -- a solitary tyrannosaurus that somehow survived since prehistoric times.

The movie is constructed in such a way that had the dinosaur element not panned out, they could have removed it and substituted a more conventional ending.

While O’Bie didn’t work directly on the film after he sold the story, it did feature a variant of stop motion animation known as replacement animation. Instead of building a realistic looking puppet with rubber skin and posable limbs, the dino in Beast was more solid and featured interchangeable limbs that could stretch and squash in a more realistic manner (rather, the movement looked more realistic, the dino sculpture no so much…).

The Brave One started life as a story about a young Mexican boy who raises a prize bull for the ring, only to have the bull face an allosaurus in the ring instead of a matador.

The producers who bought that idea hired blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo to turn it into something filmable, and Trumbo sensibly jettisoned the dino to focus the story on the boy and his bull, much to the film’s advantage (it won an Oscar for best story when released, but Trumbo’s heirs had to wait decades before the award could be recognized as due their father).

The Valley Of Gwangi was yet another variant on the same basic idea, more expansive than the other two in terms of dinosaurs, and with at least a nod in the direction of trying to explain them (a “lost canyon” giving them shelter instead of a mountain plateau or remote island).

It never connected with me, despite having more extensive dino sequences than One Million Years B.C..

O’Bie animated stop motion cowboys fighting a giant ape in the original version of Mighty Joe Young but the context proved different. The cowboys’ presence in Africa is acknowledge in the film itself as a publicity gimmick, and therefore not a true blend of the American West with a fantastic element.

Mr. Joseph Young of Africa himself, a 12-foot tall gorilla, was also presented as an exceptionally large but otherwise natural gorilla, not a throwback to a prehistoric era.

. . .

Before there were action figures, but long after there were tin soldiers, we had plastic play sets.

They came in all eras and varieties, but among the most popular were Wild West sets, Civil War, World War Two, and dinosaurs.

My father took a business trip to Chicago when I was four, and when he came back I remember eagerly crowding around the suitcase with my mother, grandmother, and aunt as he opened it and brought out souvenirs for us.

I forget what they got, but I remember feeling disappointed and forgotten since their stuff was on top.

But, underneath everything else, sat a large cardboard box, and in that box was a Marx Prehistoric Times playset.

It’s hard to adequately describe the joy that filled my heart when I opened it; it was one of the best presents I’ve ever received.

And while I later acquired a Civil War set and a World War Two set and a bag of what we then called cowboy and Indian figures, the dinosaurs remained my most favorite.

I bring this up because I think the Marx playsets explain the origins of two comics books, Turok, Son Of Stone (an on-again / off-again series from 1954 to 1982 from Dell / Gold Key) and The War That Time Forgot (1960-68 from DC).

In both cases, I’m sure somebody from each company saw some kid combing their Wild West or their World War Two playsets with their dinos and realized there was story gold to be found there.

The War That Time Forgot felt much more my speed, a lost island inhabited by dinosaurs and visited by American and Japanese forces during World War Two.

World War Two effectively ended any hope of their being a lost island with prehistoric monsters; pretty much the entire planet was scouted either on foot or by air.

Turok, Son Of Stone didn’t connect with me. For one thing, it was too much like a Western in concept; for another, Turok and his brother Andar, being pre-Columbian Native Americans, were already from a neolithic culture, and the various cavemen and Neanderthals they encountered in their lost valley seemed more drab and colorless than their tribal background.

The dinosaurs they encountered always came across as large, dangerous, but wholly natural animals, different only from bears and wolves and bison by size and appearance.

Despite my indifference to Turok, I can absolutely understand why others love it and disdain The War That Time Forgot.

Different strokes for different folks.

. . .

We can’t close this without taking a look at The Flintstones, and we can’t consider The Flintstones without first examining Tex Avery’s The First Bad Man in order to bring this post full circle.

There’s a long history (har!) of contemporary satire using a prehistoric lens. The Flintstones started life as a knockoff of Jackie Gleason’s The Honeymooners told in a prehistoric setting; the series made no attempt to present itself as realistic in any shape, fashion, or form.

Among the many cartoons and short subjects that preceded it (including Chuck Jones’ Daffy Duck And The Dinosaur) is The First Bad Man by Tex Avery, an MGM theatrical cartoon.

Tex told the story of Dinosaur Dan, the world’s first outlaw, using Western tropes told through a prehistoric lens.

It works, because it’s a parody of the Western form, not a sincere effort to blend it with the caveman genre. It works because it’s a jarring clash of genres, not despite it.

The caveman genre itself has fallen on fallow times. Despite films like The Quest For Fire and Clan Of The Cave Bear attempting to do realistic takes on the topic, most people seem to prefer more fanciful approaches, best exemplified by the movie Caveman which sent up the entire genre while not skimping on the stop motion dinos.

With sword & sorcery / Tolkienesque fantasies finally acceptable to mass audiences and thus providing a venue for humans to directly fight giant monsters, there doesn’t seem to be a huge demand for a return to the glories of One Million B.C.

#Compare And Contrast #One Million BC #One Million Years BC #Ray Harryhausen #Willis OBrien #Victor Mature #Carole Landis #Raquel Welch #Hal Roach #DW Griffith #cavemen #cowboys #dinosaurs #sci-fi

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soundsof71 · 5 years

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Hal Blaine: “May he rest forever on 2 and 4.”

That quote is from his family’s Facebook posting, announcing Hal Blaine’s passing at age 90.

He played on 40 #1 singles, 150 top 10s, some 6000+ tracks in all. (You’ll see stats that say north of 30,000 but don’t believe the hype. All these guys were union and kept their timecards. When Hal says more than 6000, he knew what he was talking about.)

Hal was the drummer on six straight Grammy Record of the Year winners, 1966 through 1971:

“A Taste of Honey”, Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass

“Strangers In The Night”, Frank Sinatra

“Up, Up, and Away”, The Fifth Dimension

“Mrs. Robinson”, Simon & Garfunkel

“Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In”, The Fifth Dimension

“Bridge Over Troubled Water”, Simon & Garfunkel

Plus if it was a studio recording by The Byrds, The Beach Boys, Simon & Garfunkel, Sonny & Cher, Carpenters, The Association, The Fifth Dimension, or The Partridge Family, the odds are that it was probably Hal.

You don’t need me to cue up Hal’s biggest hits like the ones listed above, or “Be My Baby”, “Good Vibrations” (Hal seen below working on it with Brian Wilson)...

...so I’m going to take you to the first song that made me say, “WHO’S PLAYING THOSE DRUMS?!?!” The song was a deceptively complicated pop trifle called “Dizzy” by Tommy Roe, and it spent four weeks at #1, starting on March 15, 1969 (50 years ago almost to the day as I write this).

I say deceptively complicated because even though it’s basically two verses and the chorus three times (it actually starts with the chorus, which I’m a sucker for.) There’s not even a bridge, but it manages to go through 11 key changes in less than three minutes! And while there are other instruments, I always heard it as a duet between the drums and the strings.

You already know it was Hal Blaine on strings, and the string arranger was another member of the extended family known at the time as The Usuals, Jimmie Haskell. I was delighted to find this, as both Hal and Jimmie were well known to me from so many other albums in the family collection by then. (I was reading album credits before I was reading books.)

This really is an astonishing track. Bubblegum pop on one level, exceptionally baroque on another, and a drums-strings pas de deux the likes of which we’ve yet to hear again. I used to listen to this on repeat for hours, singing at the top of my lungs -- including the drum breaks and strings stings (c’mon, you know you sing instrumental parts too!) spinning around and around the room until I was DIZZY.

Check Hal’s snare kicking it off like a gunshot.

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I have a couple of other gems of Hal’s that are a little off the beaten path.

I hope that y’all are enough in the know by now to not be pissing on The Partridge Family, who was making absolutely first-rate pop composed by some of the best writers of the day, with pros like Hal Blaine laying down the tracks.

(Plus, c’mon, David Cassidy would have been a singing star without the show, and Shirley Jones WAS a star, an Oscar-winner no less, with one of the great voices that humankind has ever been blessed with.)

“I Can Hear Your Heartbeat” uses Hal’s right foot on the bass pedal as the titular heartbeat, until the whole kit comes swinging in after the first verse. One of the keys to appreciating Hal (or any drummer, really) is to listen to when he starts and stops, and the gaps in between what his hands are doing. This one is a real gem.

(And yes, there’s performance footage of the Partridges of course, but none of the clips SOUND good enough to hear all that Hal is up to.)

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Now having sung Hal’s praises, I’ll note again that it’s possible to overstate the case (which Hal encouraged, and participated in more than once). There were plenty of other drummers on the Hollywood studio scene, including Earl Palmer (very likely on more records than Hal in fact), plus a number of times that Hal was one of a couple of drummers on a single track.

This was a Phil Spector trick. Multiple drums, multiple bassists (often one electric and one acoustic), and an army of guitars all playing at once were the key to the Wall of Sound, NOT multitracking. Sure, Phil used that too now and again, but rarely to add depth. More often for polishing, because there’s no substitute for the vibrations in the air when all those players are playing simultaneously. THAT’s the Wall of Sound, and Hal and his friends are the exact musicians Phil used.

Mike Nesmith used this "Wall of Sound” trick to fine effect when he produced one of the best tracks he wrote for The Monkees, “Mary Mary”, so sharp that it appeared in FIVE episodes, yet still manages to be too little known.

“Mary Mary” features FIVE guitarists (Glen Cambell and James Burton both on lead, with Peter Tork among the rhythm players), two bassists (Larry Knechtel and Bob West), and two drummers (Hal Blaine and Jim Gordon, whose name may also be familiar to you from Derek & The Dominoes, George Harrison, Delaney & Bonnnie, et al.), with notable percussive support from Cary Coleman.

This is definitely Hal kicking it off, though, with a snare lick so sweet that Mike looped it three times and added it to the front of the track, making it that much easier to sample, and sampled it was, including on a nifty COVER of this track by Run-D.M.C. (even though they changed Mike’s lyric on the verses, Mike is the only writer credited) that also used Mickey’s vocal singing the words “Mary Mary”.

I should mention that The Monkees’ version of “Mary Mary” was never released as a single in the US, but WAS included as a cardboard cutout single on the back of Honey Combs cereal!!!! Yes, I had it, though, like a fool, I failed to keep up with it.

Anyway, this is GROOVE, kids.

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Last but not least, Elvis Presley’s “A Little Less Conversation” (1968) was so far ahead of its time that it STILL sounds like it’s from the future. Originally recorded early in the year, it was re-recorded for the famed Elvis ‘68 TV special, but scrapped at the last minute. (Hal did in fact appear in the special!) The second version of "A Little Less Conversation” was used to outstanding effect in the 2001 version of Ocean’s Eleven, and a subsequent remix by Junkie XL charted even higher than Elvis’s original, going to #1 in 14 countries including the UK.

And all of ‘em featured Hal’s drums, absolutely swinging.

You’ve surely seen Hal’s name by now in the context of “The Wrecking Crew”, a name that he invented well after the era had finished to describe this loose group of LA studio aces. It was not only NOT used at the time, but explicitly and angrily rejected by many of the folks tagged with that label later (Leon Russell was so furious at the name that he insisted that the chapter of the movie devoted to him be removed, and he’s far from alone in his outrage)...but hey, as long as you keep that in mind, you can still enjoy the documentary of the same name for what it is: a long conversation between some of the folks who made some remarkable music.

You probably know the song “A Little Less Conversation” well enough (although you should check it out if you don’t), but in this little clip from the aforementioned Wrecking Crew movie, you can see 2008 Hal playing along with 1968 Hal for 30 seconds or so.

Watch his right hand in particular. It’s practically floating on air. He’s holding the drumstick so lightly that I bet you could have snuck up behind him and snatched it right out of his hand. Not that 70s rock drummers like Bonzo couldn’t swing plenty, but the death grip on drumsticks as heavy as telephone poles characteristic of later drumming is barely even the same thing as what Hal was doing.

I’m not saying one is better than the other -- I hope you know by now that I love light 60s pop every bit as much as heavy 70s rock -- but this clip tells you everything you need to know about why drummers in particular revere Hal as one of the greats...even if he pissed them off sometimes, too.

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Additional notes: the photo, the quote and some of the stats at the top are courtesy redef, the picture of Hal with Brian Wilson is via forums.stevehoffman.tv, and the single of “Mary Mary” is via 45cat. The rest is from yewchewb, and me obsessively reading the back of albums since 1963.

Here’s a great list of highlights from Hal’s credits. You’re going to be flabbergasted by them. If you have any kind of record collection that dips into the 60s at all, you may have dozens of them.

And while most of Hal’s key work was in the 60s, he did in fact have a terrific 1971, with appearances on two albums each by The Partridge Family (including one of my favorite singles of theirs, “Echo Valley 2-6809″) and Barbra Streisand (Stoney End is one of my favorites by anyone that year), Carpenters (featuring “Rainy Days and Mondays”), and a good-sized handful more.

#hal blaine #the wrecking crew #rip #hal blaine rip #the monkees #the partridge family #mike nesmith #phil spector #tommy roe #dizzy #a little less conversation #elvis presley #my edit #essay #long post

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