Showing posts with label Alfred Hitchcock. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alfred Hitchcock. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 24, 2023

Skinny Birds

 

A few days ago, Heaven Is An Incubator posted some old-school Skinny Puppy. Hearing it put me in the mood to dig out 1984's Remission, and it's kinda been stuck in my headphones since, so let's start the day with "Sleeping Beast."


31 Days of Halloween:

K and I went to see Hitchcock's The Birds on the big screen last night. The film still holds up, although here are a couple of observations I don't know that I made previously about the film:

• I'm guessing Cary Grant must have been Hitch's first choice for Leading Man Mitch Brenner because Rod Taylor feels like a stand-in. Not to say Taylor is bad; on the contrary, I rather think he does a smash-up job. There's just something about his physicality that makes me think Hitch originally had Grant in mind for the role.
• There's almost a full hour of lead-in. This isn't bad, and in fact, I was mostly engrossed; however, the weird practical joke Tippo Hedren's Melanie Daniels plays on Mitch unfolds rather slowly and then gives way to the Brenner family's very odd dynamic, none of which is ever mentioned. Why is one of Lydia's children in his 30s and the other looks to be about 10? I kept thinking I was forgetting some odd revelation, like Cathy is really Mitch's daughter and the mother passed away, or something like that. When that didn't happen, I was left wondering. What I have arrived at after sleeping on the film is I think there are a lot of little things in this one that make the overall tone expectant and slightly off, which adds to the overall tension.
• Not every scene of the titular birds attacking 'works' as well as I remembered they did - and I just rewatched this a couple of years ago - but the final sequence with Melanie and the Brenners barricaded in the house is fabulous and more than a little frightening.
• Suzanne Pleschette worked as a small-town school teacher before recovering from her bird attack and moving to the big city, where she married a successful psychologist.

1) When Evil Lurks/VHS 85/Adam Chaplin
2) Tales From the Crypt Ssn 1, Ep 6 "Collection Complete"
3) VHS
4) All You Need is Death
5) Slashers (2001)
6) The Beyond/Phenomena
7) The Convent
8) Evil Dead 2
9) The Autopsy of Jane Doe
10) Totally Killer
11) Ritual (Joko Anwar)/The Final Terror/Grave Robbers
12) Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (w/Joe Bob)
13) Never Hike Alone/Never Hike in the Snow/Never Hike Alone 2
14) Puppetman
15) Creepshow Season 4 Episode 1
16) Return of the Living Dead
17) Don't Look Now
18) When Evil Lurks
19) Barbarian
20) Demons 2/All Hallows Eve
21) May
22) Let's Scare Jessica To Death
23) The Birds/30 Coins Ssn 1 Ep 1



Playlist:

Forhist - Eponymous
Sexores - Salamanca
††† - Good Night, God Bless, I Love U, Delete
Wytch Finger - The Dance EP
Cristobal Tapia De Veer - Smile OST
Skinny Puppy - Remission
New Order - Movement
The Final Cut - Consumed
Skinny Puppy - Bites



Friday, April 26, 2019

2019: April 26th - Under the Silver Lake is Fantastic!



My good friend and increasingly frequent collaborator Jonathan Grimm flies in for a long weekend, so I took today off. With an open morning, I did what I've wanted to do all week - I rented Robert David Mitchell's Under the Silver Lake, altered my perception a bit, and fell into a film I'd ascribed an alarming amount of expectation to in the eight days or so since I first heard about it. With a run time of two hours and nineteen minutes, I knew I'd need a day off to give Mitchell's follow-up to It Follows a proper shake - lately anything with an above-average run time that I watch at night runs the risk of my nodding off. This isn't usually the film's fault; my early schedule and aversion to conservative bedtimes simply runs me ragged. All this aside, I'm happy to report I had a perfect morning, a perfect viewing experience, and I absolutely loved Under the Silver Lake. I don't want to say too much - I didn't even watch the trailer until after I'd seen the movie - so I'll leave you with three words: Approaching. Modern. Hitchcock.

That's big and hyperbolic, I know. Don't care. Visually, we still get some of that soft, pastel style of Mitchell introduced in The Myth of the American Sleepover and perfected in It Follows, though that has been combined with a real love of the medium, and the history of the Hollywood Thriller as a genre. The early scenes of Andrew Garfield's Sam following three girls in a convertible feel like they are pulled right out of Vertigo, as does the deference the story pays to the institutions and living spaces of Los Angeles, the likes of which were directed toward the cities and forests of Northern California in Hitchcock's masterpiece of obsession. Oh, and Disasterpeace knocks the score out of the park; gone are the synths, replaced instead with string-and-brass instrumentation one would also associate with Hitchcock, De Palma and their lineage, both forwards and backwards in time.

Oh yeah, and David Yow from the Jesus Lizard is in it. When is that not a sign of good things?

$5 rental on Amazon. Absolutely worth it, but wait until you have the time to sink slowly into a winding mystery. This films tastes best when allowed to breath.

**

Playlist from 4/25:

Soundgarden - Louder than Love
Totalselfhatred - Eponymous
Queens of the Stone Age - Rated R
Queens of the Stone Age - ... Like Clockwork
Queens of the Stone Age - Villains
Windhand - Eternal Return

Rounded the tunes out last night, driving home from Hollywood with KXLU program The Witching Hours as a sonic companion. GREAT show, and its host, DJ Marina, keeps an excellent website with news, prompt archives of playlists, and a bunch of other great stuff. Check it out HERE.

**

Card of the day:


From the Grimoire: "By adding to an idea's original form, we dilute it. Not inherently bad, just different. Expect ups and downs while fleshing out and developing anything."

Wednesday, October 3, 2018

2018: October 3rd



Love this song! I love all tracks by Type O, especially from this album, but this is one of the standouts. Also a great example of why they were so great: interesting, non-traditional song structure,  those group vocal accents that give everything a lush sense of good-natured hostility, fantastic two-person vocal melodies, and a sense of bloody humor for Christ's sake, just to name a few elements on display here that I love. No October would be complete without Type O Negative.

I decided to do the 31 Days of Horror movie thing. Not really a challenge, but a commitment for sure. Last night we opened Shudder only to find they'd added a bunch of Hitchcock! Super cool. First up from these was Rope, the adaptation of the play, starring Farley Granger, John Dall, and of course, the inimitable James Stewart. It had been quite some time since I'd watched this one, and while I remembered the big picture, a lot of the nuance - which is where all the fun lies - played for me like a first viewing.

10/01) Summer of 84
10/02) Rope

What will tonight's movie be? Not sure yet. I set a few DVDs out though, fodder for the coming evenings:



And there's a hell of a lot more than that. October is just getting started!


Playlist from October 2nd:

Sisters of Mercy - Floodland
Fields of Nephilim - Dawnrazor
Zombi - Spirit Animal
Zombi - Shape Shift
Sleep - The Science
Type O Negative - Life is Killing Me
Ennio Morricone - Black Belly of the Tarantula OST

Card of the day:


Seeking completion and fulfillment: And I continue to work on finishing my book!