I had a tremendous day today. I just got home at 11:00 pm and I've been out of my house since 7:30. But these are my favorite kind of days and I feel great. I had class at 8:00 today and I didn't fall asleep, and then I did student interviews and ran some errands until I taught at 11:00. This is the first lab day of the semester and I loved my first section. They were happy, enthusiastic, talkative and got really into the movie clips I showed. The best part was a lovely young man, tall, dark and totally beautiful, who got so excited about Pride and Prejudice and told me that his favorite version of it was the BBC one. I couldn't help but laugh to myself at this Jacob from Twilight lookalike who loved Pride and Prejudice. I wonder how many 19 year olds girls in my class are in love with him already. The second section was meh. They didn't talk, they didn't laugh at my jokes, which made me go a little too far in trying to get a reaction and probably caused me to freaked them out a little. Plus I was tired from already talking non stop for the previous two hours, and I didn't want to do it all over again. And in this class instead of a beautiful earnest young man who loves Pride and Prejudice I have a snarky smartass to contend with. Joy.
After class a friend came and got me and we went to a matinee of Daybreakers. I loved it. It was dark (like film noir dark) and scary and beautiful and bloody. The blood was gorgeous and there was just enough of it. I'm so excited that there is finally a movie that really explores the logical end of the vampire myth: what would happen if the Cullens turned everyone into a vampire? How could a world run by vampires sustain itself without a steady supply of blood? What happens when vampires stop becoming hunters and start mass producing blood? Buffy of course explored this a little in the episode when Cordelia wished Buffy had never come to Sunnydale and the whole town was run by vampires. The movie actually reminded me a lot of this episode. Anyway, it also fully explores the conventions of the genre and adds logical embellishments. When the vampires are stabbed in the heart they explode! And when they are in the sun, they don't effing sparkle, they die a horrible fiery death. I felt like this sunshine thing was really emphatic actually, and it's even there in the title. I also loved how Ethan Hawke's character's name was Edward. HA. He was way hotter than that other Edward, partly because he genuinely loved humans, but mostly because he wasnt an asshole. I adored this movie. It had everything I could want: proper character development, beautiful cinematography, the right amount of blood and gore, exploding vampires and pure, simple awesomeness.
That, ladies and gentlemen, was a really terrible review of the film, but I'm just so excited about it now. I definitely plan on writing a proper paper about it sometime in the near future.
After the movie I came back home, changed, my mom came and picked me up and we went to my cousin's wedding reception. It was lovely, and the family was wonderful, truly the opposite of what I expected. I got to see cousins, aunts and uncles and my grandparents, and they were all just lovely. (Honestly I'm glad there was no booze at the reception, otherwise it might have been a whole different story). It gave me hope for my own possible wedding someday. They rented this greenhouse park thing with plants everywhere, little stone paths and tables tucked away in corners. Very simple, little decorating required, and interesting enough to keep guests from leaving early. That was a good idea. I'm so happy my little cousin got married, and I loved seeing her family. They really all love each other and they are really wonderful people, and it makes me appreciate my own family as well as my extended family. I'm proud of them, who they are and what they've accomplished.
I took the bus back home from Sandy, which took an excrutiating hour to get to Provo, but it was a good time to think about stuff, about family and love and who I am, where I came came from and where I want to be. Now I'm exhausted and excited for bed and for the long weekend.
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Friday, January 15, 2010
Sunday, May 3, 2009
one of my summer goals.
I emailed a friend I met at the Popular Culture Association conference who is the chair of the horror section and asked him what horror films he would suggest I should watch, given the fact that I feel less versed on horror than I should be. He responded with a pretty huge list. I'm going to highlight in red which ones I have actually seen, and see how I'm coming along on my road to horror scholarship awesomeness.
1900s: Watch Thomas Edison's 1910 version of Frankenstein.
1920s: John S. Robertson's version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu; Carl Dreyer's Vampyr; Luis Bunuel's and Jean Epstein's The Fall of the House of Usher; Robert Weine's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
1930s: Jame's Whale's Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Old Dark House and The Invisible Man (you must see all of these!); Ernest B. Schoedsack's King Kong; Tod Browning's Dracula and Freaks; Rouben Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Carl Freund's Mad Love; Edgar G. Ulmer's The Black Cat.
1940s: All of the Val Lewton films, but especially Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, The Seventh Victim and Isle of the Dead (in that order, please!); Lewis Allen's The Uninvited; Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard; Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past.
1950s: Hitchcock's Vertigo; Christian Nyby/Howard Hawks's The Thing (from Another World); Hammer Studios' Horror of Dracula and Curse of Frankenstein; Gordon Douglas's Them!; Jack Arnold's Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Incredible Shrinking Man; Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers; Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter; Jacques Tourneur's Night of the Demon (also called Curse of the Demon); also check out The Blob and The Fly; Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone television series; Mario Bava's Black Sabath.
1960s: Michael Powell's Peeping Tom; Hitchcock's Psycho; William Castle's The Tingler and Mr. Sardonicus; Roger Corman's House of Usher, The Haunted Palace, and Masque of the Red Death; Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls; Roman Polanski's Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby; Romero's Night of the Living Dead; the televsion series, The Outer Limits
1970s: Hammer Studios' Taste the Blood of Dracula; Polanski's The Tenant; Brian DePalma's Carrie and Sisters; Romero's Dawn of the Dead; Nicholas Roeg's Don't Look Now; Peter Wier's Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave; Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre; John Carpenter's Halloween; Ridley Scott's Alien; Dario Argento's Suspiria and Inferno; William Friedkin's The Exorcist; David Cronenberg's Rabid and Shivers; Larry Cohen's It's Alive, God Told Me To (aka Demon), and Q: The Winged Serpent; William Crain's Blacula and/or Bob Kelljan's Scream, Blacula, Scream!; Mario Bava's Bay of Blood (aka Twitch of the Death Nerve)
1980s: Larry Clark's Deathdream; Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead (aka The Gates of Hell); Sam Raimi's Evil Dead and Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn; Joel Schumacher's The Lost Boys; Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist; David Cronenberg's Scanners, Videodrome and The Fly; Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street; Steve Miner's Friday the 13th, Part II; the televison series, Hammer House of Horror; Stuart Gordon's Dolls and Reanimator; Joe Dante's The Howling; John Carpenter's The Thing; Peter Jackson's Dead Alive (aka Brain Dead)
1990s: The Silence of the Lambs, The Ring, Se7en, Scream, Scary Movie I or III, The Blair Witch Project
2000s: The Others, Saw and Saw III, Eli Roth's Hostel and Cabin Fever, The Orphanage, Pan's Labyrinth, The Devil's Rejects, The Descent, Hansel and Gretel (Korea 2009), The Strangers, Tarantino's and Rodriguez's Grindhouse.
From the looks of it, I have a long ways to go. This weekend I watched Land of the Dead, John Carpenter's The Thing, The Exorcist, Candy Man, Hellraiser, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. So it looks like I'm well on my way. Next up I want to watch Silence of the Lambs, Suspiria and Reanimator. I need to see Reanimator because I'm writing about Lovecraft's contribution to the zombie genre. This summer is definitely going to be the summer of horror films.
1900s: Watch Thomas Edison's 1910 version of Frankenstein.
1920s: John S. Robertson's version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu; Carl Dreyer's Vampyr; Luis Bunuel's and Jean Epstein's The Fall of the House of Usher; Robert Weine's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
1930s: Jame's Whale's Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Old Dark House and The Invisible Man (you must see all of these!); Ernest B. Schoedsack's King Kong; Tod Browning's Dracula and Freaks; Rouben Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Carl Freund's Mad Love; Edgar G. Ulmer's The Black Cat.
1940s: All of the Val Lewton films, but especially Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, The Seventh Victim and Isle of the Dead (in that order, please!); Lewis Allen's The Uninvited; Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard; Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past.
1950s: Hitchcock's Vertigo; Christian Nyby/Howard Hawks's The Thing (from Another World); Hammer Studios' Horror of Dracula and Curse of Frankenstein; Gordon Douglas's Them!; Jack Arnold's Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Incredible Shrinking Man; Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers; Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter; Jacques Tourneur's Night of the Demon (also called Curse of the Demon); also check out The Blob and The Fly; Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone television series; Mario Bava's Black Sabath.
1960s: Michael Powell's Peeping Tom; Hitchcock's Psycho; William Castle's The Tingler and Mr. Sardonicus; Roger Corman's House of Usher, The Haunted Palace, and Masque of the Red Death; Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls; Roman Polanski's Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby; Romero's Night of the Living Dead; the televsion series, The Outer Limits
1970s: Hammer Studios' Taste the Blood of Dracula; Polanski's The Tenant; Brian DePalma's Carrie and Sisters; Romero's Dawn of the Dead; Nicholas Roeg's Don't Look Now; Peter Wier's Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave; Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre; John Carpenter's Halloween; Ridley Scott's Alien; Dario Argento's Suspiria and Inferno; William Friedkin's The Exorcist; David Cronenberg's Rabid and Shivers; Larry Cohen's It's Alive, God Told Me To (aka Demon), and Q: The Winged Serpent; William Crain's Blacula and/or Bob Kelljan's Scream, Blacula, Scream!; Mario Bava's Bay of Blood (aka Twitch of the Death Nerve)
1980s: Larry Clark's Deathdream; Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead (aka The Gates of Hell); Sam Raimi's Evil Dead and Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn; Joel Schumacher's The Lost Boys; Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist; David Cronenberg's Scanners, Videodrome and The Fly; Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street; Steve Miner's Friday the 13th, Part II; the televison series, Hammer House of Horror; Stuart Gordon's Dolls and Reanimator; Joe Dante's The Howling; John Carpenter's The Thing; Peter Jackson's Dead Alive (aka Brain Dead)
1990s: The Silence of the Lambs, The Ring, Se7en, Scream, Scary Movie I or III, The Blair Witch Project
2000s: The Others, Saw and Saw III, Eli Roth's Hostel and Cabin Fever, The Orphanage, Pan's Labyrinth, The Devil's Rejects, The Descent, Hansel and Gretel (Korea 2009), The Strangers, Tarantino's and Rodriguez's Grindhouse.
From the looks of it, I have a long ways to go. This weekend I watched Land of the Dead, John Carpenter's The Thing, The Exorcist, Candy Man, Hellraiser, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. So it looks like I'm well on my way. Next up I want to watch Silence of the Lambs, Suspiria and Reanimator. I need to see Reanimator because I'm writing about Lovecraft's contribution to the zombie genre. This summer is definitely going to be the summer of horror films.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Our life is not a movie or maybe
I had a weird dream the other night that I was in the tv show 24. Now, I've never actually seen that particular program, and since I don't watch television I can't even say that I've seen ads for it, nor do I know anyone who watches the show and have only heard passing references to it. But there I was, with Keifer doing whatever it is he does on that show. I don't remember, but I do recall being very excited.
I did buy The Lost Boys that day, so I guess Keifer Sutherland was on the brain, although I didn't watch the film until the following day...
I've been watching a lot of films lately, and I think I'd like to try to keep track of them all. Here are some I've seen in the last couple of weeks:
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Diary of the Dead
Wings of Desire (1987)
The Orphanage
Death Becomes Her
The Fountain
The Others
La Jetee
Stranger Than Fiction
The Lost Boys
The Lost Boys wasn't as good as I remembered it. It seemed to move too fast for me this time, but I still welcomed the familar images. I must have seen that movie a thousand times when I was little. Wings of Desire was wonderful: beautiful, poetic, deliberately paced, gorgeously shot. The Orphanage was scary, but also very sad and poignant. The Fountain was a little weird for me...especially Hugh Jackman as a floating Buddha. Death Becomes Her is a classic and I hadn't seen it in years, but I was quite impressed with the visual effects and I love Meryl Streep so much. Stranger Than Fiction is one of my most favorite films ever. I'm writing a little paper on it this week so I'll probably watch it again. It makes me happy that I've seen this many films so far this year. I'm sad I didn't go to Sundance this last week though. And I haven't actually been out to a movie in weeks, but I'll try to find some time this week to go see Benjamin Button
I did buy The Lost Boys that day, so I guess Keifer Sutherland was on the brain, although I didn't watch the film until the following day...
I've been watching a lot of films lately, and I think I'd like to try to keep track of them all. Here are some I've seen in the last couple of weeks:
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Diary of the Dead
Wings of Desire (1987)
The Orphanage
Death Becomes Her
The Fountain
The Others
La Jetee
Stranger Than Fiction
The Lost Boys
The Lost Boys wasn't as good as I remembered it. It seemed to move too fast for me this time, but I still welcomed the familar images. I must have seen that movie a thousand times when I was little. Wings of Desire was wonderful: beautiful, poetic, deliberately paced, gorgeously shot. The Orphanage was scary, but also very sad and poignant. The Fountain was a little weird for me...especially Hugh Jackman as a floating Buddha. Death Becomes Her is a classic and I hadn't seen it in years, but I was quite impressed with the visual effects and I love Meryl Streep so much. Stranger Than Fiction is one of my most favorite films ever. I'm writing a little paper on it this week so I'll probably watch it again. It makes me happy that I've seen this many films so far this year. I'm sad I didn't go to Sundance this last week though. And I haven't actually been out to a movie in weeks, but I'll try to find some time this week to go see Benjamin Button
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