I’m at a loss for words; so I’ll let the pictures do the talking. I hope you like them. I hope that he (Leonard Nimoy) would have liked them.
Tyler Stout
Tomer Hanuka
stormy94
nealienman
scourge07
Simon Page
Mondo
Matt Ferguson
Matt Ferguson
killashandra-ree
Martin Ansin
Matt Ferguson
Artist Unknown
Juan Ortiz
Juan Ortiz
Juan Ortiz
Juan Ortiz
Bensmind
BigStarJessePhilips
Cross Cult
Bensmind
Artist Unknown
Artist Unknown
I realize that I try to give credit where I can to the über-talented artists who have created these and many other amazing works of art. This is the moment where I say thank you to those artists.
I featured the films of Terrence Malick on the last installment of What’s Their Best Film? and you, dear readers, responded by choosing The Thin Red Line as what you believe to be his all-time best.
This time I feature a filmmaker with a (somewhat) more extensive filmography and that is none other than David Fincher. What’s his best film? Vote in the poll after the posters and let me know.
If you’re looking for a movie that features exciting and bloody lycanthropic evisceration and all-around bloody werewolf movie fun then I strongly suggest that you look elsewhere other than Jack and Diane.
If you’re looking for a movie that is a satisfying mixture of lesbian courtship, romance and just a little bit of girl-on-girl action then, again, I suggest you look elsewhere other than Jack and Diane.
If you’re looking for a movie that not only manages simultaneously to make werewolf movies and lesbian romance movies look bad but also manages to bore you to the point of digging out your eyeballs with a spoon then I have just the movie for you and it is called Jack and Diane.
Jack and Diane represent 110 minutes of my life that I will never get back no matter what. It is a monotonous, tedious, ridiculous excuse of a movie that should be buried deep within the Mariana Trench and forgotten for as long as this world spins around and around.
Diane is stranded in New York City and is rescued from her dilemma by Jack, a young lesbian with boyish looks and charm who quickly falls head over heels in love with her. Every now and again when they are intimate the film cuts to an animated sequence that I assume is a representation of the bestial yearnings within one or perhaps both of the two girls. Jack and Diane writer-director Bradley Rust Gray never makes it clear which of them is the werewolf or if either of them is a werewolf at all. Most of what we see is the two of the walking around town, drinking and mumbling every word they say with a soundtrack that chews up and spits out their garbled utterances. I am of the opinion that I could have turned on the subtitles and even they would have flashed “I have no idea what was just said” or “I give up; I don’t know what the hell they are talking about”.
I am reminded of a short story by Harlan Ellison entitled “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream“. It is the story of AM, a supercomputer that brings about the destruction of humanity and its revenge on humanity for its own existence. In one scene AM explains his deep hatred for the remaining, altered humans:
Hate. Let me tell you how much I’ve come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of wafer thin printed circuits that fill my complex. If the word hate was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for you at this micro-instant. For you. Hate. Hate!
If you apply that sentence to my disdain of Jack and Diane you might be getting close. Who would have thought that Harlan Ellison would write a short story in 1967 that sums up how I feel in 2015 about a movie released in 2012? Go figure.
TRIVIA
The first choices for lead roles were Juno (2007) co-stars Ellen Page and Olivia Thirlby.
Most of the food and beverages that Jack and Diane share with one another have the color red in them.
Juno Temple also appears in Horns and Maleficent.
Riley Keough also appears in The Runaways and Kiss of the Damned.
Just kidding. Breaking Bad is easily in my top 5 of all-time favorite TV shows and therein lies the reason I feature it in this installment of ALT-POSTR-SPOTLIGHT. Besides, who says I was going to feature movies exclusively? Enjoy.
Written and Directed by Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler
I’m not even sure where to begin with this movie. Can you even call it a movie? It says on the back of the DVD case that The Blair Witch Project debuted a year after The Last Broadcast. I asked “BWP” co-writer/director Eduardo Sanchez if the film had any influence on his and Daniel Myrick’s film and this is what he had to say:
That’s a question I’ve answered many times!
We heard of it (The Last Broadcast) for the first time right as we started editing Blair Witch Project. There we an article in WIRED, I believe.
But we didn’t see the actual film until September of 1998 – we had just finished the edit and were days away from submitting to Sundance.
The Last Broadcast wasn’t an influence on ‘Blair Witch; is that correct?
Right. If anything it was an example of what not to do. At least with our film.
I see some similarities; but in my opinion they are coincidental.
It was unbelievable to us how similar they were – it freaked us out when we saw the trailer early in 1998. We thought they would beat us to the punch and take all the glory!
The Last Broadcast is a ‘documentary’ (‘mockumentary?’ ‘mocku-drama?’) of the murders of Steven “Johnny” Avkast and Locus Wheeler, the hosts of a public access TV Show called “Fact or Fiction” that investigates paranormal incidents. When their ratings drop and the show is in danger of cancellation they take the advice of a caller-via IRC (Internet Relay Chat) to physically investigate the Pine Barrens and the legendary creature known as the Jersey-or Leeds-Devil. The duo hires Rein Clackin, who supposedly can record the sounds of the supernatural; and Jim Suerd, a self-proclaimed magician and psychic who claims that he can lead the group to the perfect campsite in order for them to capture the elusive ‘Devil’ on film. Wheeler and Clackin are killed and Avkast disappears and is presumed dead. Suerd, being the only one of the group to come out of the Pine Barrens alive, is quickly arrested, tried and convicted of the murders of Wheeler and Clackin. Framing this documentary’ is a narration by documentary filmmaker David Leigh, who has begun his own investigation into whether Suerd was guilty of the crimes he is so quickly accused of. After Suerd dies in prison of unknown causes Leigh receives the mangled remains of video footage from the group’s outing. He enlists the aid of data retrieval expert Shelly Monarch who, after countless hours of restoration, is able to determine that there is no way that Suerd is the killer. Working painstakingly (I always wanted to use that word in a sentence) she is able to extrapolate an image of the killer from the footage and this is where I will conclude my synopsis of The Last Broadcast. You may never see this movie but I’m not going to spoil it for you, either.
While it is obvious that The Last Broadcast is a descendant/precursor of Cannibal Holocaust and The Blair Witch Project it is also evident that it is a poke at how the use of video as proof of (mainly) guilt has gotten out of hand with the advent of the internet. I believe that whether it is a bad movie or not is a moot point. I will say that I was disappointed to find out that the people featured onscreen were actors (Wheeler and Avkast are portrayed by writer-directors Lance Weiler and Stefan Avalos) and are very much alive. Again, the influence on ‘Blair Witch‘ is strong seeing as how Myrick and Sanchez did basically the same thing with Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams and Joshua Leonard; the only difference being that the latter trio were portrayed as themselves in “BWP“.
The Last Broadcast does not play out the way I expected it to and I am not sure how I should feel about this. I’m only half satisfied. I suppose I could look on the bright side; half satisfied is better than not satisfied at all.
TRIVIA
Dubbed the first “desktop feature film”, it was the first film to be filmed, edited, and screened entirely digitally. No film was involved.
The premiere screening was released digitally to cinemas across the U.S. via satellite and shown using Texas Instruments’ DLP digital cinema projectors.
DARIO ARGENTO’S IL FANTASMA DELL’OPERA (THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA)-Italy-99 Mins. 1998
Julian Sands as The Phantom in Dario Argento’s Il fantasma dell’opera (The Phantom of the Opera)
Asia Argento as Christine Daaé in Dario Argento’s Il fantasma dell’opera (The Phantom of the Opera)
Written by Gérard Brach and Dario Argento
Based on the novel by Gaston Leroux
English adaptation by Giorgina Caspari
Having watched Dario Argento’s laughably pathetic re-telling of Bram Stoker’s classic novel Dracula I must say I was a tad bit gun-shy about watching his adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera. I almost didn’t watch because I didn’t want to be burdened with the knowledge that was two authors turning over in their graves. Alas, I bit the bullet and while it is safe to say that Stoker is still turning over like a rotisserie chicken Leroux has flipped over once, possibly twice, and gone back to sleep.
Argento’s The Phantom of the Opera is a faithful adaptation of the original story-for the most part. It is still the story of the Phantom (usually named Eric but who is given no name in this film) who lives beneath the Paris Opera house and of the series of unfortunate ‘accidents’ that he causes in the name of hearing his love, Christine (Asia Argento), sing the lead on the stage of the opera house. Several gruesome deaths later, including a falling chandelier onto a packed audience, and the Phantom (Julian Sands) gets his wish.
It is when Argento strays away from the source material that the film suffers. The Phantom is a normal-looking guy in this one; or as normal as you can get with Julian Sands. The Phantom is a sort of ‘rat whisperer’ and sends the vermin out to do his nefarious biddings. Having read The Phantom of the Opera I don’t recall there being a scene where we would possibly hear a reprisal of “Ben” by Michael Jackson. I also don’t recall the Phantom and Christine engaging in coitus in the book but nonetheless there it is on the screen. This leads me to comment on the fact that Argento has no qualms with either accentuating his daughter’s breasts and nipples or showing them off altogether. As lovely a pair of ta-tas as Miss Argento has I can’t help being more than a little disturbed by the whole thing.
Julian Sands is good as the Phantom considering that with lines like, “Your perfume, your female smell; it flows through my veins like the melody of the rolling ocean”, he doesn’t have much to work with. Asia Argento does the best she can with the role of Christine but with the limits of the character and of her range she doesn’t have very much luck.
In closing I would have to say that the best way to approach The Phantom of the Opera is to remember that A. Dario Argento has made much better films that this-Suspiria being one of them; and B. The absolute worst (Dracula 3D) is yet to come.
TRIVIA
Rumour has it that Dario Argento’s original cut of the film ran almost an hour longer and that the version which was finally released, has been heavily re-cut and changed by the producers to assure the film’s appeal to wider audiences.
The role of the Phantom was first intended for John Malkovich.
Despite the art work on the theatrical poster showing the Phantom’s mask, this is the only version which the Phantom does not actually wear a mask.
Julian Sands also appears in Warlock and Arachnophobia.
Asia Argento also appears in Land of the Dead and The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things.
