Friday, October 11, 2013
A Change of Plans
I really hate doing it, but I was going to spend the last hour or so typing up what I wanted to type up, but then I had to take an important phone call and I dealt with that for awhile; so, I figured it would be best not to rush to do it and post it in the wee hours of the morning and I'll just post it tomorrow night, barring something even more major or out of the ordinary.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
His Name Was Jason: 30 Years Of Friday The 13th
His Name Was Jason: 30 Years of Friday the 13th (2009)
Runtime: 90 minutes
Directed by: Daniel Farrands
Starring: People from the franchise being interviewed
From: Masimedia
So yeah, I DID watch something Jason Voorhees related, but this is a documentary about the franchise. I figured I should revisit this as when I return on Friday night (hey, tomorrow night is a UFC show on TV and Thursday night is the Chicago Bears playing so I'll be busy on those nights) I'll talk about watching Never Sleep Again, a 4 hour (not including special features) documentary from most of the same people involved with this which I have never watched before. Eventually (hopefully it's soon rather than later) I'll watch the latest effort from that core group, the 400 minute (!) without special features documentary known as Crystal Lake Memories. I'll explain...
The feature documentary is only 90 minutes, which when you consider covers like a dozen different movies, that's pretty short and it's far from comprehensive. I discovered this after the fact from listening to podcasts which featured the core people who ended up making Never Sleep Ahead and Crystal Lake Memories, but there was strong interference from an unnamed producer who caused a lot of problems with His Name Was Jason, and that's why you ended up with a 90 minute documentary feature that was fine as a cursory glance at the franchise but it was far from being awesome in covering such a colorful and storied franchise.
If you do decide to watch this, try to find it on DVD in a 2 disc collection, as while you may be disappointed with the documentary itself (why some people not involved with the franchise were interviewed, I am not quite sure; Seth Green is but one example), there ARE special features which I've seen before (but not yet this week; I'll do that tomorrow) which are interesting as they are additional interview time with the people involved in the films and in an ideal world, they would have been in the docu, but alas... at least I do hear that with the meddlesome producer out of the picture, Never Sleep Again and Crystal Lake Memories are definitely better and worth seeing if you enjoy both Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger.
Like I said, I'll be back Friday night.
Runtime: 90 minutes
Directed by: Daniel Farrands
Starring: People from the franchise being interviewed
From: Masimedia
So yeah, I DID watch something Jason Voorhees related, but this is a documentary about the franchise. I figured I should revisit this as when I return on Friday night (hey, tomorrow night is a UFC show on TV and Thursday night is the Chicago Bears playing so I'll be busy on those nights) I'll talk about watching Never Sleep Again, a 4 hour (not including special features) documentary from most of the same people involved with this which I have never watched before. Eventually (hopefully it's soon rather than later) I'll watch the latest effort from that core group, the 400 minute (!) without special features documentary known as Crystal Lake Memories. I'll explain...
The feature documentary is only 90 minutes, which when you consider covers like a dozen different movies, that's pretty short and it's far from comprehensive. I discovered this after the fact from listening to podcasts which featured the core people who ended up making Never Sleep Ahead and Crystal Lake Memories, but there was strong interference from an unnamed producer who caused a lot of problems with His Name Was Jason, and that's why you ended up with a 90 minute documentary feature that was fine as a cursory glance at the franchise but it was far from being awesome in covering such a colorful and storied franchise.
If you do decide to watch this, try to find it on DVD in a 2 disc collection, as while you may be disappointed with the documentary itself (why some people not involved with the franchise were interviewed, I am not quite sure; Seth Green is but one example), there ARE special features which I've seen before (but not yet this week; I'll do that tomorrow) which are interesting as they are additional interview time with the people involved in the films and in an ideal world, they would have been in the docu, but alas... at least I do hear that with the meddlesome producer out of the picture, Never Sleep Again and Crystal Lake Memories are definitely better and worth seeing if you enjoy both Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger.
Like I said, I'll be back Friday night.
Monday, October 7, 2013
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)
Runtime: 92 minutes
Directed by: Danny Steinmann
Starring: John Shepherd, Melanie Kinnaman, Richard Young Shavar Ross
From: Paramount
This is not what I was planning on watching tonight; that's just how things worked out. I got off to a later start than I was hoping... I don't even want to get into it. Anyhow, I rewatched this movie, among my least favorite of the franchise; I'll explain why I feel the way I do. I don't know about everyone else but me, I don't hate it because it's the Friday movie where there's no Jason and it isn't his mother but instead it's a random dude.
The plot, written by me: Tommy Jarvis (Shepherd) is now a few years away from killing Jason Voorhees; he's now mentally disturbed and somehow he goes from a mental hospital to a rehab center out in the woods; yep, great idea to bring him back to the woods after the events of the last film... and he is clearly more disturbed than most of the teenagers who are there. How did he get out of the mental hospital, anyhow? I do not know how much older he is, BTW, which does mess up with people's timelines in trying to figure out in what years all the movies happen.
Anyhow, the other teens there include someone with anger issues (enough to kill an annoying fat kid), but two teens whose biggest affliction appear to be “horniness”, then there's a punk girl, Not Pauly Shore who stutters but that's about it, and Bootleg Kerri Green. I really have no idea what the mental issues are of most of the people there, as they are never explained and Tommy is clearly more disturbed than anyone else. But it doesn't really matter as you don't spend much time with them except to see them killed, and not even as much time is spent with Tommy as you'd think.
Instead you're distracted with such things as Reggie, an annoying young black kid (Dudley from Diff'rent Strokes) who is there visiting his grandfather, and brief appearances with several random characters who don't really mean anything at all. Sure, some of them are amusing, such as Reggie's older brother DEMON (apparently living in a 70's van and sporting a jheri curl); a redneck mother and son (that appear to be the exact same age) are NOT amusing; in fact, they are way overbearing awful caricatures. Then there's a drifter and some greasers straight out of the 50's who are dressed like Marlon Brando in The Wild Ones and say, "Rat-a-tat-tooey"... point is, it's hard to care about anyone. Not even Billy the horny middle-aged balding mustached orderly who is funny and enjoys snorting coke.
While there are some pretty cool kills, it doesn't really matter overall. The story is crap and so are the characters. The climax is mostly a middle-aged woman (Pam) who helps run the halfway house and annoying Reggie in his red 80's sweatsuit. Tommy isn't as big a factor as you'd expect, or hope. Young Mr. Jarvis actually speaks about as much as Ryan Gosling does in Only God Forgives, meaning hardly at all. I heard that Gosling only had 22 lines in the movie, which sounds about right. I also heard that Tommy here speaks only about 26 words in the entire film, which also sounds right.
Let me spoil things here with this bad 28 year old movie. Of course the killer isn't Jason Voorhees as he is dead. Instead it's the secret father of the fat annoying kid who picked up the corpse (as he's an ambulance driver) and he snapped at this. Motivations are understandable from that point, but why he decided to be Jason was incredibly weak and nonsensical, and I am not sure why at times the father (who looks like Lou Ferrigno) has similar powers to the incredibly strong and powerful mongoloid that Jason was in 2 through 4 before he was resurrected as an unstoppable zombie in 6. Many of the kills also come off as incredibly random and coincidental once you know who the killer is.
There is intentional and unintentional humor, such as how most of the women in this movie quite clearly did not wear any bras (there are several naturally large pairs of hooters in this movie, to be honest) or how you hear a Pseudo Echo song that wasn't their cover of Funky Town, but this is still one of the weakest in the franchise for reasons other than who the killer really is and hopefully have been conveyed well by me... at least I would rather watch it than Only God Forgives!
I'll be back tomorrow night, and likely not with a Jason Voorhees film.
Runtime: 92 minutes
Directed by: Danny Steinmann
Starring: John Shepherd, Melanie Kinnaman, Richard Young Shavar Ross
From: Paramount
This is not what I was planning on watching tonight; that's just how things worked out. I got off to a later start than I was hoping... I don't even want to get into it. Anyhow, I rewatched this movie, among my least favorite of the franchise; I'll explain why I feel the way I do. I don't know about everyone else but me, I don't hate it because it's the Friday movie where there's no Jason and it isn't his mother but instead it's a random dude.
The plot, written by me: Tommy Jarvis (Shepherd) is now a few years away from killing Jason Voorhees; he's now mentally disturbed and somehow he goes from a mental hospital to a rehab center out in the woods; yep, great idea to bring him back to the woods after the events of the last film... and he is clearly more disturbed than most of the teenagers who are there. How did he get out of the mental hospital, anyhow? I do not know how much older he is, BTW, which does mess up with people's timelines in trying to figure out in what years all the movies happen.
Anyhow, the other teens there include someone with anger issues (enough to kill an annoying fat kid), but two teens whose biggest affliction appear to be “horniness”, then there's a punk girl, Not Pauly Shore who stutters but that's about it, and Bootleg Kerri Green. I really have no idea what the mental issues are of most of the people there, as they are never explained and Tommy is clearly more disturbed than anyone else. But it doesn't really matter as you don't spend much time with them except to see them killed, and not even as much time is spent with Tommy as you'd think.
Instead you're distracted with such things as Reggie, an annoying young black kid (Dudley from Diff'rent Strokes) who is there visiting his grandfather, and brief appearances with several random characters who don't really mean anything at all. Sure, some of them are amusing, such as Reggie's older brother DEMON (apparently living in a 70's van and sporting a jheri curl); a redneck mother and son (that appear to be the exact same age) are NOT amusing; in fact, they are way overbearing awful caricatures. Then there's a drifter and some greasers straight out of the 50's who are dressed like Marlon Brando in The Wild Ones and say, "Rat-a-tat-tooey"... point is, it's hard to care about anyone. Not even Billy the horny middle-aged balding mustached orderly who is funny and enjoys snorting coke.
While there are some pretty cool kills, it doesn't really matter overall. The story is crap and so are the characters. The climax is mostly a middle-aged woman (Pam) who helps run the halfway house and annoying Reggie in his red 80's sweatsuit. Tommy isn't as big a factor as you'd expect, or hope. Young Mr. Jarvis actually speaks about as much as Ryan Gosling does in Only God Forgives, meaning hardly at all. I heard that Gosling only had 22 lines in the movie, which sounds about right. I also heard that Tommy here speaks only about 26 words in the entire film, which also sounds right.
Let me spoil things here with this bad 28 year old movie. Of course the killer isn't Jason Voorhees as he is dead. Instead it's the secret father of the fat annoying kid who picked up the corpse (as he's an ambulance driver) and he snapped at this. Motivations are understandable from that point, but why he decided to be Jason was incredibly weak and nonsensical, and I am not sure why at times the father (who looks like Lou Ferrigno) has similar powers to the incredibly strong and powerful mongoloid that Jason was in 2 through 4 before he was resurrected as an unstoppable zombie in 6. Many of the kills also come off as incredibly random and coincidental once you know who the killer is.
There is intentional and unintentional humor, such as how most of the women in this movie quite clearly did not wear any bras (there are several naturally large pairs of hooters in this movie, to be honest) or how you hear a Pseudo Echo song that wasn't their cover of Funky Town, but this is still one of the weakest in the franchise for reasons other than who the killer really is and hopefully have been conveyed well by me... at least I would rather watch it than Only God Forgives!
I'll be back tomorrow night, and likely not with a Jason Voorhees film.
Sunday, October 6, 2013
Yep... Internet Problems!
No, it's not on my end. Instead, blame the crap service known as Crackle. The movie I talked about last night (Crazy Joe) is on their website and on their YouTube page in separate videos. However, the YouTube video doesn't even play; the video on Crackle's page does play and the print looks fine and all... problem is, the video has no sound! I kid you not.
So yeah, I am NOT happy about that development at all. I don't feel like watching anything tonight after having my hopes dashed in such a matter. Instead, I'll finish other things, watch this current football game and the real late night one, and tomorrow I will have some sort of review up, come hell or high water, or some sort of major emergency. I really need to get going on my horror watching.
So yeah, I am NOT happy about that development at all. I don't feel like watching anything tonight after having my hopes dashed in such a matter. Instead, I'll finish other things, watch this current football game and the real late night one, and tomorrow I will have some sort of review up, come hell or high water, or some sort of major emergency. I really need to get going on my horror watching.
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Sorry, But A Change Of Plans
Today's been fine for me, but I feel tired and I don't have enough time (I went out and about late in the afternoon and early in the evening) to watch what I want to, which isn't even what I was planning to watch. So, Sunday night before midnight, unless I have some sort of Internet problems-I am going to watch something online but it's ethical, as it's for free on Crackle-I'll be talking about a non-horror film but one that sounds interesting to me upon first hearing about it literally minutes ago.
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Friday The 13th: The "Final" Chapter
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
Runtime: 91 minutes
Directed by: Joseph Zito
Starring: Kimberly Beck, Peter Barton, Corey Feldman, Crispin Glover
From: Paramount
It's been awhile since I've talked about a Friday the 13th movie so I figured as I am mainly going to talk about horror movies this month (I am creating a list on Letterboxd where I'll list and talk about those films; as of now I am not sure as all what I'll be watching in October, aside from probably at least one more Jason Voorhees movie and another movie or two already in the slot), I might as well start with one of my favorites of the entire franchise.
I really don't need to go over the plot, do I? You should know by now that magically in a morgue while a dirty morgue doctor named AXEL goofs around, a killed at the end of Part 3D Jason Voorhees is revived and he leaves there to go back to the area of Camp Crystal Lake where he goes after some horny teenagers living in a house for the summer and some regular residents of the area, including young horror fan Tommy Jarvis (Feldman).
There are many memorable moments, from Axel watching those early 80's “exercise” videos on Showtime that was basically softcore porn, to all the attractive women in the cast/nudity, from someone telling Crispin via his “computer” that he is a “dead f***” to Crispin's bizarre dancing to the LOL-worthy song Love is a Lie (by Lion), from the old stag film that was shown to Jason Voorhees and his interesting/nice kills... that along with nice direction makes this one of the best in the series, at least in my eyes... and the eyes of many other horror fans. All the humor (intentional and unintentional) helps too.
I know, in hindsight LOL to claims of it being “the final chapter”, but those retirements are like retirements in other fields such as sports or entertainment; most of the time they go back on those retirements and they return until they can't go no more (such as death or just hanging on too long until they just aren't good enough); is the same true for the series? There hasn't been one in almost 5 years-good one, Platinum Dunes-and just this week rumors have started up about doing a new one, but found footage style. It'll be different, but it doesn't mean it'll be worthwhile.
Anyhow, I'll be back Saturday night.
Runtime: 91 minutes
Directed by: Joseph Zito
Starring: Kimberly Beck, Peter Barton, Corey Feldman, Crispin Glover
From: Paramount
It's been awhile since I've talked about a Friday the 13th movie so I figured as I am mainly going to talk about horror movies this month (I am creating a list on Letterboxd where I'll list and talk about those films; as of now I am not sure as all what I'll be watching in October, aside from probably at least one more Jason Voorhees movie and another movie or two already in the slot), I might as well start with one of my favorites of the entire franchise.
I really don't need to go over the plot, do I? You should know by now that magically in a morgue while a dirty morgue doctor named AXEL goofs around, a killed at the end of Part 3D Jason Voorhees is revived and he leaves there to go back to the area of Camp Crystal Lake where he goes after some horny teenagers living in a house for the summer and some regular residents of the area, including young horror fan Tommy Jarvis (Feldman).
There are many memorable moments, from Axel watching those early 80's “exercise” videos on Showtime that was basically softcore porn, to all the attractive women in the cast/nudity, from someone telling Crispin via his “computer” that he is a “dead f***” to Crispin's bizarre dancing to the LOL-worthy song Love is a Lie (by Lion), from the old stag film that was shown to Jason Voorhees and his interesting/nice kills... that along with nice direction makes this one of the best in the series, at least in my eyes... and the eyes of many other horror fans. All the humor (intentional and unintentional) helps too.
I know, in hindsight LOL to claims of it being “the final chapter”, but those retirements are like retirements in other fields such as sports or entertainment; most of the time they go back on those retirements and they return until they can't go no more (such as death or just hanging on too long until they just aren't good enough); is the same true for the series? There hasn't been one in almost 5 years-good one, Platinum Dunes-and just this week rumors have started up about doing a new one, but found footage style. It'll be different, but it doesn't mean it'll be worthwhile.
Anyhow, I'll be back Saturday night.
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
I Talk About Attack The Block For Letterboxd
Like I promised last night, I decided to write up something new for the movie Attack the Block, which I have loved since I first saw it in '11 and reviewed it here.
I won't copy and paste what I wrote on Letterboxd as it was long (as least for me on that site) and by telling you to click here to read it, you can click around and look at my entire profile and see how I rated various movies. I'll just say that I still think the movie is as awesome the glowing review I gave it two years ago.
I'll be back Thursday night.
I won't copy and paste what I wrote on Letterboxd as it was long (as least for me on that site) and by telling you to click here to read it, you can click around and look at my entire profile and see how I rated various movies. I'll just say that I still think the movie is as awesome the glowing review I gave it two years ago.
I'll be back Thursday night.
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