#nobody does comedy like horror writers

[warningsine]

#yellowjackets #yellowjacketsedit #usedit #jeff sadecki #shauna x jeff #jordan peele #filmedit #tvedit #sine's gifs #elizabeth moss #us #q #nobody does comedy like horror writers #when i watched us with a friend the whole theater couldn't stop wheezing during that moment #// yeah that should be 'fuck da police' and also there's an extra comma there that's haunting me

[lily-orchard]

Jumoing off that post about Andy and Leyley, what do you think about the merit of taboo in storytelling?

Hmm...

I should start off by saying that nobody is more annoying than people who are obsessed with taboos. The only reason we're currently having to deal with an army of proshippers screaming their heads off all day is because some people genuinely think "breaking taboos" is going to "stick it to the puritans."

This is ironic actually because a lot of these people find the fact that taboos are taboo alluring in and of itself... and that itself is a Catholic notion. Only Catholics believe that "forbidden fruit" is tempting.

Most people don't want to taste human flesh or fuck their own kin, and we all know (even if some people only intuitively) that for someone to get to the point where they want to do those things, something has gone seriously wrong somewhere.

That's the part that make taboos good vessels for horror. The point where that line is crossed is also the point where normal human behaviour has completely broken down.

There's a video of a guy confessing to murder, and he does it with all the casual air of a guy talking about the weather, and it's often described as bone-chilling because he's just so blaze about the whole thing.

This is creepy, because his calmness creates this sense of profound wrongness the same way a liminal space does. Killing someone is supposed to affect you in some way, and there's nothing more unnerving than when it simply doesn't.

Cannibalism and incest are the same way. We're social creatures, and so everything about evolutionary biology has hardwired us to avoid these two things because they're bad for us.

Genetic Diversity is crucial for human life to survive, and so our brains are hardwired to make you as unlikely to mate with your close relatives as possible. The only way that changes is if something fundamentally goes wrong, and 9 times out of 10 the culprit is social isolation.

Think about the kind of mind it takes to look at something your own brain is screaming at you "this is bad, don't do this, it'll doom us all" and say "I don't care" with a completely straight face.

Cannibalism is the same way. We are social creatures and work together to survive, so the idea of turning the "hunter gatherer" mindset on each other is fundamentally incompatible with the very concept of survival.

So on a fundamental level, there's a sense of eerie wrongness when these lines are crossed. Especially when they're done so casually. It's one thing to play these taboos for drama or comedy, but like the murder confession above nothing is more unnerving than taking a relaxed attitude toward it.

This is a very good vector for horror, but the question you have to ask yourself as a writer is "is it worth it?" Because unless you have something to say, the answer is probably no.

[ewzzy]

I haven't made a real list, but since I spend all my time reading comics here's a top ten for 2022. (no particular order) First up is Kyle Starks' I Hate This Place. Kyle is always the best and a couple inheriting a farm only to find out it's haunted by ghosts/aliens/demons/cyptids/everything is a great hook.

Next up is the new Amazing Spider-Man series that brings back writer Zeb Wells and artist John Romita Jr. They're two of the best to ever do Spider-Man and as they tend to do they drag him through the mud along the way.

Adjacent to Spider-Man is Jed Mackay doing more Black Cat stories. He's writing the Moon Knight, Black Cat, and Dr Strange series and has proven to be one of the best and most prolific writers in the Marvel bullpen. Here's a bit from Mary Jane & Black Cat: Beyond.

Too bad for Jed but this was the year Chip Zdarsky hit homer after home with so many great series. Daredevil, Stillwater, Public Domain, and two Batman series that are all comic of the year level. It's been crazy watching the comedy guy known for Sex Criminals become the most prized writer at the big two. Nobody but Chip gets to write Batman and work for Marvel at the same time.

I've been going on and on about writers but the recent Poison Ivy series is all about artist Marcio Takara. I normally wouldn't give a series like this a chance but it's a beautiful horror comic where a lot of folks get torn apart by fungal spores.

I also wouldn't have touched a Harley Quinn series but Riley Rossmo's art will get me to read anything. He just started a new Robin series where Tim Drake is living in a boat house and working as a private eye. So far so good!

I don't care about the Eternals or Avengers and keeping up with the X-Men is exhausting but the A.X.E. Judgement Day event was great. Basically the superheroes create a new god and it decides to judge everyone on earth individually. If it does the math and we're mostly bad the earth goes bye bye. Captain America is the first to get a thumbs down and everyone collectively goes "oh so we're fucked right?" Then when the Eternals wake up some old war machines one reads the whole internet and becomes the secret admirer of a single human writer.

As I said X-Men is exhausting, but it was worth it to get all the jokes in X-Men '92 House of XCII which retells the last few years of X-Men comics as if they were adapted to the 90s cartoon.

A much clearer X-Men comic was Giant-Size X-Men: Thunderbird. He was the first X-Man to die for the cause and now that mutants can be resurrected he's back and not sure he wants to be a part of it anymore. It's co-written by trans native-american pro wrestler Nyla Rose and I was expecting very little but it's great.

Guess this is my last one. I have been shocked by how good the Punisher: King of Killers series is. Writer Jason Aaron and artists Jeus Saiz & Paul Azaceta bounce between two art styles & times. The present where Frank Castle is worshipped as history's greatest killer by ninja assassin cult, The Hand, and the past where we discover he first killed at age 10 and how his family dying was never what made him the Punisher. It's also an allegory about how The Punisher isn't cool and you shouldn't like him and anyone who would use his skull logo unironically is dumb.

Sorry TMNT Armageddon Game, One-Star Squadron, Superman The Warworld Saga, X-Terminators, My Bad, Billionaire Island: Cult of Dogs, World's Finest, and everyone else from this year but I've run out of time and space. Look forward to Spider-Man/X-Men Dark Web on next year's list alongside both of Ryan North's new comics Secret Invasion and Fantastic Four.

#comics #comic books #spider-man #x-men #punisher #batman #poison ivy #harley quinn #black cat #I hate this place

[good-realtor-bad-realtor-dynamic]

This was sitting in my drafts and I'm cleaning up, so here goes:

Since Glenn is on this new show, I reckoned he would have to do interviews, so I did some digging because I'm so normal about him.

He was on a panel at New York Comic Con back in October. Here's the rundown of the Glenn content (not in chronological order):

GLENNTENT

Glenn signed on to the Velma show because "the people on stage were involved". The people on stage are EPs and cast, viz. Mindy Kaling, Charlie Grandy, Sam Richardson, Constance Wu.

Charlie Grandy had suggested Glenn for Fred because they were looking for a comedy actor with great humanity.

All the writers on The Mindy Project were obsessed with Sunny, especially Glenn as Dennis, which is why they had him on TMP to play Cliff Gilbert the lawyer and wrote him as a "normal" guy.

I couldn't quite pinpoint the timeline in the development process when the cast got involved because the character designs are clearly based on them, but it was unclear if they had the opportunity to read the whole pilot script when they came on.

Sounds like the cast went onboard based on MK and CG being successful writers and producers (can't fully confirm this)

Glenn did not know Fred is pre-pubescent (revealed in episode 1) until he read the pilot which seems to have happened some time after he was pitched the role and possibly after casting.

He used to do a "whiny spoilt teenage boy complaining to his mother" voice with his friends as a funny bit. He tried that voice here half-thinking he'd be stopped because it sounds nothing like the original Fred and perhaps a bit strange, but when nobody stopped him, he just ran with it.

When asked about playing these types of entitled white guys more than once and also if he was into Fred driving a "weird sex van": NO! He's actually uncomfortable with how almost every character he plays seems to be a variation on this.

Says he keeps doing it probably because it appeals to his sense of humour, but he also doesn't know why he does it. Admits maybe a small dark part of him can relate to these characters.

Glenn said the cast didn't get to see the final show until much later because they were all off in their own separate covid bubbles working on other shows (Sunny, AP Bio, etc.) when they did Velma

Glenn used to watch the original series as a kid.

He was more of a Shaggy than a Fred as a teenager. He had long curly hair and wore birkenstocks and Grateful Dead tshirts. Smoked a lot of week. Ate a lot of hoagies (is that the right word?). And Sam (Shaggy) was more of a Fred.

Moderator asked if there would be Velma/Daphne and Shaggy/Fred. They didn't say no!

Since I'm already going, here's some more stuff on the development and writing of the Velma show for context:

Development

The creator and showrunner is not actually Mindy Kaling but Charlie Grandy, the dude on the right, who wrote on SNL, The Daily Show, The Office, The Mindy Project and many of her other shows, and has been her collaborator since 2008

Charlie and Mindy started working on the show and pitching to Warner Brothers before the pandemic around 3+ years ago

Part of their pitch was "a love quadrangle", possibly influenced by various teen dramas currently on air

WB didn't give them the rights to the Scooby Doo character!

They didn't get into serious development until quarantine and mostly worked over Zoom

After lockdown, only animated shows were possible, so Mindy wasn't busy with Sex Lives of College Girls anymore

Unusually for animation, the characters designs weren't already done yet by the time the writers got involved, so they got to be involved in the process to choose art styles

With the art, they were going for something between classic Hanna-Barbera and modern cartoons with designs ranging from comedy to horror

None of the characters felt tied to whiteness except Fred

Writing

The show is a prequel that will track the characters as they grow into the classic versions of themselves, so like Norville -> Shaggy

The show will have an underlying mystery over the course of the season balanced with a series of shorter arcs

The EPs were influenced by Harley Quinn, Rick and Morty, Spiderverse and Riverdale

The writers talked about Riverdale in the room quite a lot... errr…

Parents, their impact on their kids and family life were fleshed out because those are big themes in modern teen dramas

Charlie hired a diverse young writing staff to help make Indian Velma and her family feel more authentically written

The writers had some trouble because they wrote some of the scripts a while ago not realizing that animation would take so long that some of the jokes would be out of date

They sort of avoided that problem by having Velma and Daphne be obsessed with pop culture like previous Mindy characters.

Velma does make references but has more blindspots than previous Mindy characters

Velma was moulded to be a typical Mindy underdog character

Daphne is more pop culture savvy than her.

Cast

Table read of the pilot was done on Zoom during lockdown.

In fact, it sounds like the whole thing was done quite some time ago in the pandemic.

Scooby was deemed safe enough for Mindy to watch when she was growing up and she latched on to Velma's intelligence as a kid

The cast all said the scripts were funny and that they were happy with how the episodes turned out, especially from a comedy pov.

Constance and Mindy said it was nice to see the characters have chemistry even though the actors did their table-reads and voice acting remotely and/or separately.**

Mindy and Constance didn't do voices for the characters because they already sound young.

NYCC 2022 was the first time any of the cast met in-person post-pandemic.

** Didn't Glenn say on one of the earlier zoom episodes of the Sunny Podcast that he got sent over all sorts of audio equipment during the pandemic for work reasons? I'm wondering if it was for this show.

I couldn't quite put together a timeline or ordering of casting, scripting, character designing and voice acting in reference to each other :(

#it's not like i'm doing this to avoid my irl problems #fred #velma hbo max #glenn howerton #panel interview #sur #sur rambles

[normal-looking-male]

Not people making art of Barten Of Ganban!! Hypocrisy out the wazoo, yeah, yeah, but just. Really? The most soulless and effortless """game""" on the market? The one without an ounce of personality or originality?? The one with THOSE designs that wouldn't pass for some YouTube Kids knockoff shit???

Rant incoming.

It's so unfair how these incredibly skilled artists and writers seem to have way more passion and care for these miserable """characters""" than the developers of the game. It's nothing new that 70% of the actual story and characters is carried by fandom in an indie project. We've seen it with Nive Fights Fat Reddy's, Nello Heighbour, Pendy, and now Bobby Blaytime especially. Fainbow Rriends from way back when already felt like one of the lazier examples of that kind of bait. But this... This is irrationally upsetting.

It's genuinely touching how fandoms can form around the things you least expect. Just talking about something, analysing it, sharing it with others is a precious experience, it is a form of art. But all of it feels so thoroughly wasted on things like this, where maybe two or three people behind the original project had any love for it, and the community survives on just those crumbs of love for it, doing most of the legwork. Fans end up making so much good, amazing stuff even, with so much heart and character in it, they may as well just take full ownership of the media, because they clearly care more about it than the actual people behind it.

But the reason they could make it was because they were offered this barebones foundation. One with just enough shits given for the gears to turn in people's brains, and get them to pump out storytelling and content for the developers. I struggle to find an example outside of gaming, but Uneven Stiverse reads to me like a similar situation as well, where the community literally made up several "AU's" with far better stories and themes than the showrunner halfway in, while the breadcrumbs of "lore" they were tossed to theorise about were quickly and hastily finished after skimming some quirkier fan-theories.

Projects like this just have no worth without the people that care. Obviously, if nobody is there for any story, nobody will know about that story, but a good... Thing. Just thing. Movie, book, podcast, show, game, legend, that thing can stand on its own, if it has something to say, if it has a heart, if it's used as a vessel to speak by the person who made it, and who genuinely cares about it as something more than just a quick cashgrab, using an impressionable and exciteable fanbase, ravenous for more content.

Barten Of Ganban is worthless. It does not deserve any positive or negative attention. There is no care or love put into it. It has nothing to bring to this world. I sincerely hope it's forgotten by the people that were unfortunate enough to give a damn about it, and that they can find better ways to pour their creative hearts out.

Side Note: I feel like people attribute all the "bad" parts of a fandom to just the younger fans getting too excited and therefore "cringe", but sometimes we need to stop and take a hard look at the media we so furiously want to "protect" from children. See if it's actually geared towards general audiences, or just kids. I don't think it's a bad thing that kids like horror or cute'ify it. Horror is just a genre, some people like it, some don't. Coraline is very much a horror movie made for kids, and I'm happy for everyone that fell in love with it, and everyone that figured out the genre wasn't for them, and everyone that tried to adjust it to cater more to their preferences in media. Even if those preferneces are far away from horror, and lean more towards. I dunno, romance and comedy.

Hell, teens and adults can engage with spooks in a similar way, too. People should be able to have fun, and engage with the things they like without being mocked and bullied for it. But I do wish they got to engage more with projects that actually have some heart behind them. Otherwise it's just another forgettable piece of content, that attracts the attention of the least "weathered" demographic online. A demographic that's easy to exploit, making merch for parents to waste their money on, spinning mysteries upon mysteries and vague shit upon vague shit to keep people talking about it. And just because some adults also fell for it doesn't mean it was ever geared towards them.

#incoherent ramblings #just in case the names are all jumbled up so that the people that actually care about those pieces of media Don't have to read me shitting- #-on them. i can't fathom Why they like it but i'm not going to shove my bitching in their faces.

[letterboxd]

Chaotic Bisexual.

Shiva Baby writer-director Emma Seligman tells Ella Kemp about expanding her wildly cringey short film into an even more anxiety-inducing feature, why Virgo and Taurus make the perfect producing pair, and the eternal conflict of being a good Jewish girl.

“If I can skip a bris to see E.T., I like movies!” —Emma Seligman

It sounds like a strange riff on a guy-walks-into-a-bar joke: a girl walks into a shiva and bumps into her secret ex-girlfriend, then her sugar daddy, then his shiksa wife, oh, and their baby—yet the payoff is so much more rewarding.

Filmmaker Emma Seligman’s debut feature is a new kind of teen classic: 78 non-stop minutes teeming with well-drawn traits and tropes that define the best coming-of-agers, the best Jewish comedies and the best day-in-a-life psychological roller-coasters.

Shiva Baby began as a grad project—a short film of the same name—and Seligman’s feature-length embellishment impressed at last year’s virtual editions of SXSW and TIFF, where it was quickly snapped up for international distribution. In a way, Shiva Baby was perfectly tailored to the times we were living in: Danielle, our reluctant heroine, is trapped in a claustrophobic family event she can’t escape, as people from her past and lies about her future make their way deep under her skin.

Fred Melamed, Rachel Sennott and Polly Draper in ‘Shiva Baby’.

Shiva Baby is very much the product of a wry school of emerging filmmakers who understand excruciatingly mundane horror and pin-sharp comedy as intimate bedfellows. Seligman’s writing finds a way to flesh out gloriously caricatural Jewish relatives, probing and overbearing and irrational. She does this both through dialogue and a visceral, haptic aesthetic that lurches in and out of focus visually, and has a nails-on-chalkboard unease sonically.

Coming in hot with a 4.01 average rating, Shiva Baby is striking all sorts of discordant notes with film lovers. “Combines some of my biggest anxieties: being asked if I have a boyfriend as well as what my plans for the future are and people talking with their mouths full,” writes Muriel.

The film’s “bisexual chaos”, which hinges on a haywire performance from Rachel Sennott as Danielle, opposite Molly Gordon’s overachieving ex-girlfriend, Maya, is also one of its great strengths. Glee star Dianna Agron is the shiksa threat, Kim, while Danny Deferrari is Danielle’s hapless benefactor, Max. If that’s not enough? Polly Draper, Fred Melamed and Jackie Hoffman are also just there.

What do you think defines a Jewish sense of humor? Emma Seligman: It’s morbid usually, and darker—generally uncomfortable and cringeworthy. I think about Curb Your Enthusiasm or Seinfeld, and A Serious Man. It borders on, “Is this funny at all?” I think Jewish humor leans into the darkly funny British sense of humor. I’m Canadian, so I feel like I’m halfway between the UK and the US in terms of their sense of humor.

Was it always your intention to make a comedy that feels like a bit of a nightmare? You’ve mentioned Black Swan and Opening Night as touchstones… Because I came from a short film, the question when expanding into a feature was, “How are we going to keep everyone interested in this day?” It’s got to be a significant day, it’s got to be that this young woman’s life has completely changed from this day. So what is it that changes? Why are we watching it? I watched a lot of movies that took place in one day, one of them was Trey Edward Shults’ first film Krisha. And then from there I realized that anxiety and this scary psychological feeling is a great way to have the audience stay there.

I watched Opening Night because there’s a shiva in it, but it was more the lobby scenes that were so claustrophobic and tense. And then each step of the way with each department, we were like, okay, it’s gonna be tense, but then we got to music, I was like, okay, this has become a full nightmare. Initially, I was just like, it’s got to be tense, but by the end, I was like, well, it does feel like a nightmare to a young woman sometimes.

Because you mention that, I have to ask whether you’ve seen Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade? I have, it’s incredible. It’s so funny, they’re both coming-of-age [films], and one of them is about a fourteen year old and then the same sort of feeling exists when you’re 22. When you’re fourteen is when it begins, and when you’re 22 you’re sort of at the end of it and you’re like, “Oh, I thought I figured out what I was supposed to do when I started feeling insecure this way at fourteen about sex and boys.”

Diana Agron and Danny Deferrari in ‘Shiva Baby’.

Let’s talk about Rachel Sennott, who you have describe as your “Virgo rock”. What do you bring one another in your creative partnership? She’s a hustler, and she sets goals like nobody else. I think she moves very fast, and I’m more detail-oriented. I don’t know if the movie would have happened without her because she was like, “What are the goals to achieve this film?” After we made the short film, she just kept checking in with me. She goes well beyond what an actor does, which is why she’s an executive producer, because she was very, very invested in seeing the movie get made.

I think she pushes. We joke that she brings me out of my depression and I help calm her down. I feel like Taurus is a little more chill. Virgos are also earth signs, but they run on a faster frequency. So I think I calm her down, especially when we’re writing and bringing it back to structure. But she’s way funnier, she’s able to give jokes so quickly. We balance each other perfectly, for sure.

Do you think your partnership with Rachel is the kind of partnership you could see yourself maintaining throughout your career? Definitely. I think it’s important to have a good friend and also a young woman. She’s got different career goals from me, but they’re aligned. And we’re not in competition with each other. I feel so grateful because so much of the time I feel like the world does make you feel like you’re in competition with your friends that are trying to do the same thing as you when you’re a young woman—or just maybe in general.

Rachel Sennott and Danny Deferrari in ‘Shiva Baby’.

Her character in Shiva Baby completely subverts the idea of a “nice Jewish boy/girl” which can be a trope in movies, but also very much a real thing in life. Is that something you consciously wanted to subvert, or did it come organically from the story you wanted to tell? I wanted to contrast that idea of a “nice Jewish girl” because every nice Jewish girl or boy has a sex life. I felt the sort of nice Jewish girl stressors on me were completely opposite from the NYU art school sugaring worlds, and hookup culture broadly. My family is such a huge part of my life and I think that those two sets of pressures are completely contradictory; to be a good girl or boy and have a stable career ahead of you, and to be finding, even if it’s at the very beginning, your eventual partner, or to just be in a relationship. And I felt like in school, no one wanted to date, everyone was hooking up. So many of my friends are sugar babies. I tried it super, super briefly.

I felt like the world was telling me to be like “an empowered, independent, sexy woman who doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her, and doesn’t abide by any rules”, and I was like, “This is the opposite of being a nice Jewish girl!” And I just felt like those two things were screaming at me. So I did want to play on that. But I don’t even think it’s playing, just because that felt like what I was trying to battle within myself. And I think a lot of young people do, whether they’re Jewish or not. That’s their family’s expectations. And then the world is like, “But don’t care and don’t commit…”

Writer-director Emma Seligman. / Photo by Emma McIntyre

But then you still have to go home to your parents at the end of the day and they’re going to tell you what to do… Exactly.

What would you want viewers to take away from Shiva Baby about the sugaring community that you feel has been maligned in the past? I’m not a sex worker, so I don’t want to speak on behalf of this community, but I definitely feel like there hasn’t been many positive portrayals of sex workers. So I just wanted to show someone—because I knew so many friends of mine who did it—who enjoyed it, or purposefully did it and didn’t feel bad or shameful about it. I think maybe a lot of people think that it’s always something that comes out of dire circumstances. But whether that is the case or not, I think there’s a lot of people who enjoy it and enjoy what they do like any other job. So I just hope that they’re able to sort of widen their scope of what a sex worker looks like and acts like. Every sex worker has got a family, friends, a full robust life, as we all do.

It’s time for your Life in Film questionnaire. Can you give me a few must-watch Jewish films for people who don’t know where to start? Fiddler on the Roof, Yentl, Keeping the Faith, Kissing Jessica Stein, A Serious Man. Definitely Uncut Gems, and Crossing Delancey.

Shiva Baby has been described on Letterboxd, variously, as “Uncut Gems but make it chaotic bisexual”, “the most stressful Jewish movie since Uncut Gems”, “the chaotic successor of Uncut Gems”, “if Krisha and Uncut Gems had a baby”, and, of course, “Uncut Gems for hot Jewish sluts”… Amazing, I love that. Extremely nice comparison.

Who is your favorite promising young woman? Not Emerald Fennell’s film, but a young creative or performer who you think is making waves. I love Hari Nef—I think she’s amazing and am really excited to see what she does next. I loved her so much in Transparent and Assassination Nation, and I don’t understand why she hasn’t been the lead in a million movies.

Molly Gordon with Rachel Sennott in ‘Shiva Baby’.

What should people watch next after Shiva Baby? Those Jewish movies would be a great start. And then Krisha, although I think a lot of people have seen it especially if they’re on Letterboxd! But then those Jewish romantic comedies, and then Obvious Child, all those movies are very sweet and endearing and helped me make it.

Separate from film, if it’s shiva-related then Transparent. If I didn’t have Transparent I don’t think I would have seen world of grounded, nuanced Jews that I could do comedy with. It would have been more in the Curb vein, which is also amazing, but a little more schtick.

What was the first film that made you want to be a filmmaker? My parents are huge movie buffs so I’m not sure there was one moment, but I will say that when I was six there was a re-release of the 20-year anniversary of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and I was at a horribly packed bris and my uncle was like, “Fuck this, there are so many people here, I can’t even breathe. Let’s go see E.T.” That was the first moment where I was like, if I can skip a bris to see E.T., I like movies.

Related content

From Short to Feature: Rob’s list of 2020 films that made the jump

Jewish Cinema (non-Holocaust): Amelia’s list of films “for when u want to celebrate your heritage but don’t want to have to think all too deeply about the Shoah”

Best Directorial Debuts of 2020: suggested by Letterboxd members, featuring Shiva Baby

Follow Ella on Letterboxd

Shiva Baby is now in select theaters and on VOD in the US. Film stills by Maria Rusche.

#shiva baby #emma seligman #jewish filmmaker #jewish director #directed by women #rachel sennott #jewish film #jewish movie #transparent #uncut gems #hari nef #e.t. the extra terrestrial #obvious child #krisha #trey edward shults

[reddie-4-more]

I’m recovering from another meltdown today and, with the heat wave in my country, it makes it near impossible to focus on my story, so I have to delay my update one day more... Really sorry about that.

With that said, I think I finally got THE idea for my next Reddie story. At first, I was thinking I could write a story inspired by the movie “The Village” by M. Night Shyalaman. That story is definitely a project, but I’d like to think about it a bit more before giving it a try.

However, I recently thought about the movie “1408″, adapted from the short story “1408″ by Stephen King. 

For those who don’t know it, it’s a story about a jaded writer, Mike Enslin, who is visiting haunted places and writes about them, usually disproving that they’re haunted. But one day, he gets a postcard telling him “not to go to room 1408″ in a certain hotel. And, well, you can guess that the place is haunted.

Anyway, I think it would make for a really good Reddie story, taking place after the second movie. Years after the event, Richie can’t move on, and he is trying to find a proof of the afterlife, as a way to cope with Eddie and Stan’s death. He published a few books and did a comedy show about his experiences. 

At first, Bill helped him with the writing, and the other Losers tagged along whenever they could, if only to keep him from sulking all alone. But they had their own lives and families to take care of, and couldn’t be there for him after a while. Not like he listened to them anyway.

Richie gets this postcard I mentioned, telling him not to go to Room 1408. Of course, he goes there (I’m thinking he manages to convince Mike to come with him, because I really like writing about their dynamic), and shit starts to hit the fan pretty hard. After all, as Pennywise disguised as Mrs. Kersh said, “ Nobody who dies in Derry ever really dies”.

I see it as a fix-it, with romance, friendship, and big elements of horror as well. While I love writing Reddie AU, I think setting my story slightly more in canon would be pretty fun, and making it horror based as well.

What do you think? Does it feel like a story you’d like to read?

Also, would you be interested in my “The Village” Reddie fanfic? Also with elements of horror, that one, of course.

#Reddie #Richie Tozier #Eddie Kaspbrak #Mike Hanlon #Bill Denbrough #Pennywise #It movies #stephen king #The village #fanfic #fanfiction #1408

[actualbird]

nobody (okay, well, 2 people DID ask, but it’s too late to change the title of this essay series now) asked but here are three main humor techniques i apply a lot in my fanfiction | a 2k word long post where i talk humor theory at you for entirely too long

I love humor. A good 75% of my personality is based primarily on whether or not it would be funny and thus, the study and application of comedy is something of a very big huge large interest of mine. I love watching standup comedy, I love telling jokes, but most of all, I love literature that makes me laugh. 

I write humor, and I put a lot of thought into it, and here, I will do the least funny thing ever: I will over-explain my jokes.

Before we do that, we must set some ground rules first. What is humor? Well, in Humor: Its Origin and Development, Paul McGhee contends that no single theory could encapsulate the entirety of humor. Additionally, according to McGhee, humor does not physically exist. It is, instead, a perception brought about by certain scenarios with certain characteristics. What we can take away from here is that first, humor is vast, and there are many ways to both explain it and achieve it, and second, that humor is something caused by certain other things. 

I do not claim to be an expert in humor, just an enthusiast, so what I will not be giving a cheat code to humorous writing. I will, instead, share three techniques that I frequently use and explain how they work.

The three techniques are the following:

INCONGRUENCY: Things that don’t fit.

SLAPSTICK: I hope that doesn’t happen to me.

CHEKOV’S GAG: If the gun is there, it better be funny.

My examples for each of these techniques will come from various sources of media. My examples of my own writing will all be coming from the most recent fanfic I have written, my Polygon Cyberpunk Red high school au “teenagers scare the living shit out of me.” Examples will sometimes have overlap in the technique they utilize, but I’ll try my best to keep everything clear on what exactly I’m trying to explain.

Without further ado, let’s jump right into it!

INCONGRUENCY: Things that don’t fit.

Göran Nerhardt, in McGhee’s book, states that “Humor is seen as a consequence of the discrepancy between two mental representations, one of which is an expectation and the other is some idea or percept.” Nerhardt’s definition of humor is one that relies on incongruity: wherein there is an element that is not in accordance with the other elements. An incongruous element is one that is not the expectation, and in this subversion of expectation, humor is achieved. 

In simpler terms, a congruent situation would be “A man walks into a bar and orders a beer.” An incongruent situation would “A man walks into a bar. ‘Ow!’ He says.” 

In the first example, everything is as expected, and in the second, the word “bar” has the characteristic of being a homophone, a word with different definitions. The second example takes advantage of the other definition of the word “bar”, that is to say a metal tube object, and thus the reaction of the man. 

Incongruency plays on the unexpected, the out of place, and the odd. This technique in particular I learned from writers like Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. They use incongruence, they use it A LOT but what I want to talk about is, first, its use as a descriptor. 

“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.” -Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“In a distant forest a wolf howled, felt embarrassed when no one joined in, and stopped.” -Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

Description is a fertile ground for humor. You have a thing, there are expectations to how that thing will appear or act, and then you describe it in a way that’s unexpected. I pull this trick off in so many fics, but here is an example from chapter 4 of the high school au.

Mr. Hypo sits at the desk in front of the classroom, staring all three of them down. Vang0, Dasha, and Burger are seated in the stupid circle again, looking at Robbie as it powers up like a man with gout.

Incongruency here is Robbie, the animatronic. Expectation is that it will be described in a robot like manner. Reality is that I describe it having the same condition that occasionally ails my nearly 50 year old father. 

Aside from description, incongruence is also something I play around with in the events of situations themselves. The most clear example I can give is this scene, from chapter 6, is this:

Burger picks up the closest thing.

That thing happens to be Peter.

“Peter!” Burger looks at Peter in the eye as Edmundton picks up a chair and starts menacingly walking towards Burger. He says, very quickly “Do you consent to be used as a self defense projectile!?”

Peter, pigeonly, nods.

“Thank youuuuuuuu!” Burger yells as he throws Peter at Edmundton’s face.

The context of this scene is that Burger has just entered active combat. Combat is serious. Combat is deadly. Combat is hitting and getting hurt. So what’s something unexpected you can do in this situation to make it funny? Have Burger ask a pigeon if it’s alright with being thrown at an enemy, and then make Burger actually throw the pigeon at the enemy. 

Incongruence is something that is present in a lot of humor situations and it’s very, very fun to play around with. Messing around with incongruence makes you think about what is expected in writing and forces you to think outside of the box in a manner that will elicit laughter.

Let’s move on to our next topic now!

SLAPSTICK: I hope that doesn’t happen to me.

Kevin Casper in his article I’m so glad you’re fake! describes slapstick comedy as a physical type of humor wherein actions are done in an excessive, ridiculous, and sometimes violent manner. Slapstick is Mr. Bean exploding a can of paint to paint his apartment. Slapstick is Courage the Cowardly Dog’s eyes popping out of his sockets when he sees something scary. Slapstick is the ending of Polygon’s video on Slapstick and Doom Eternal (a very good video about slapstick and horror violence) where Pat Gill gets hit in the face with a tube of paper. 

The excessiveness of slapstick creates a non-reality for viewers to enjoy in safety. It is a type of humor that revels in the suspension of reality, but more than that, it is a type of humor that you particularly gain enjoyment from because of the fact that it’s not happening to YOU.

Now, I use slapstick comedy sometimes, but I deviate from excessiveness and instead lean more into that last thing I said. I write situations that are funny and that you also don’t want to ever happen to you as a person. One example of “fuck, that’s hilarious, but I hope it never happens to me” is the following scene from Spiderman: Into The Spider Verse, where Miles Morales, invisible, has to find information on Doctor Octavia’s computer. When he accesses the computer, he is met with this.

You don’t want this to happen to you. But damn is it hilarious that it’s happening to somebody else.

When I am creating scenes that I want to be funny, I think about whether or not it would be funnier if I made it excruciating for the characters involved. So excruciating that you really, really, wouldn’t want to be in that situation. An example of this technique in play is from chapter 4 of the high school au, where the gang are in a room they shouldn’t be in, somebody is about to come in and stop them, and they are all at the mercy of a program slowly, slowly uploading.

 “Hey!” The somebody outside says, jangling the doorknob more violently. “Club time is over, nobody should be in this room!”

“Vang0, how long until the program is done?” Dasha hisses.

“43% Uploaded,” Vang0 says, panicked.

“Hurry.”

“I can’t make technology be faster.”

“Who’s in there!” The person outside yells.

“Should I answer?” Burger asks.

“Do not answer.” Dasha says.

Burger nods. “I’m gonna answer.”

“BURGER—”

“WE’RE JUST A COUPLE OF NOT FRIENDS. JUST LOOKING AROUND.”

“Who are you!” The person outside yells.

“Do not answer, Burger,” Dasha says, sounding like this conversation is actively shaving years off of her lifespan.

“But he’s asking,” Burger looks at Dasha then at the door then at Dasha again, looking very nervous.

“Just lie then,” Dasha tells Burger.

“Gotcha,” Burger nods, determined, and turns to the door to yell. “I’M NOT BURGER CHAINZ.”

“Oh my god,” Dasha thunks her head onto Vang0’s shoulder. “Is it done loading, yet?”

“98% Uploaded,” Vang0 says, feeling his blood pressure in a way he’s never felt before.

I make this situation worse for the characters by making Burger completely fail at being stealthy. As one reader told me about this chapter “I love Burger, but if I were in that room, I would strangle him.” Exactly! It’s not a situation you’d ever want to be in! 

But the characters are in it and you get to enjoy their suffering from a safe vantage point as a reader. 

Slapstick comedy is all about making situations outrageous and ridiculous and something readers wouldn’t want to legitimately experience. It’s about tapping into your audience’s mind and wondering what they want to see but not want to go through.

And last but not least!

CHEKOV’S GAG: If the gun is there, it better be funny

The principle of Chekov’s Gun is a principle that emphasizes that objects in a story should have a use. According to Bill in Chekhov: The Silent Voice of Freedom, Chekov says “If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.” 

Chekov’s Gag is that same rule, but instead of the gun going off, the gun better be fucking hilarious at some point. 

The first example I can think of is from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In the beginning of the movie, King Arthur stops by a castle and asks the guards to tell their master that he is here. This exchange happens:

Now, this, on its own, is already hilarious. It plays on incongruence (guards being very enthusiastic about bird’s holding coconuts and the logistics of that), slapstick (if you were Arthur and you wanted to have a simple conversation, people suddenly talking about birds and ignoring you is not a situation you want to be in), but what about Chekov’s Gag?

To become Chekov’s Gag, this situation must be brought up again in a funny manner later in the movie.

And so it does.

An hour later in the movie, The Knights of Camelot are at the Bridge of Death. There, they have to answer 3 questions correctly. If they do not have an answer, they are shot into a deadly cavern of doom.

King Arthur steps up to answer his 3 questions. Here is what happens:

The African swallow or the European swallow has achieved Chekov’s Gag-age.

Chekov’s Gag is something I’ve only started doing recently, in fanfiction. An example of this in the high school au is that, in the first chapter, I introduce two things. 1) Peter, an overfed pigeon, and 2) Robbie the RoboDog, an animatronic of the school.

Throughout the fic, I don’t forget about Peter or Robbie. I bring them up again and again and I make sure to make their presence not just integral to the winning of the final boss battle in chapter 6, but I make their presence funny.

Chekov’s Gag is a new trick I’ve started doing, and it definitely requires foresight and planning. It makes you think long term but at the same time forces you to think about the things you already have present in your story and make you re-evaluate just how else they could be used. If done correctly, the effect is hilarity, but also deep, deep satisfaction.

So there we have it! Three humor techniques that I use in my fanfiction. Shit that doesn’t make sense, shit you don’t want happening to you, and shit that you saw a while ago which you’ll see again later and when you do, it’ll be awesome.

Thanks for reading! 

#nobody asked but #long post

[spicy-raddish]

So, in my last post I said that I literally hated Japan Sinks 2020, but that I was scared to voice my problems with it, from a writing standpoint, due to so many people genuinely liking the show. It seems I'm not alone at all. A lot of people encouraged me to make this post, so, here we go...

(This is going to be a long one)

Everything Wrong With: Japan Sinks 2020 (and it's a lot):

this post contains spoilers, obviously.

The music doesn't fit the mood of the show, like, at all. Don't get me wrong, the music is actually good, a lot of it is in my study playlist now, but it absolutely doesn't fit the scenes that accompany it. e.g. the dad gets literally blown up by a ww2 bomb leaving only his severed hand behind *happy music intensifies* this just cheapens the entire scene and removes any tiny fragment of emotional response to what you're being shown. And this happens all the time.

The animation... The backgrounds and general scenery look absolutely stunning, but the characters look genuinely awful. At times, I would be legitimately crying whilst watching a scene, not out of sadness, but out of laughter at just how bad the characters look. Extremely lazy drawing, and if the character isn't the one talking, they just freeze their animation for minutes at a time, not even making them blink or move slightly, just... frozen there.

Go and his constant use of cringy Engrish. I get it, he's half filipino and he looks up to an English-speaking YouTuber. But he goes into this broken English way too frequently, and again, it doesn't match the tone of what's happening.

How did Mari survive the first tsunami? Also, why didn't we get to see the first tsunami? Or the plane crash-landing in the bay and hitting the bridge? Why do we never actually get to see these large-scale events that are supposedly impacting our characters? Also, if Mari supposedly was in a plane crash, then ended up in the river where a tsunami hit, and she somehow managed to swim out of the river during a tsunami, how does she then have the energy and strength to walk all the way through the city to the shrine, and doesn't even seem out of breath? Also, if Ayumu was in that changing room which resulted in people being literally severed in half, how is her phone not even smashed? Cracked a lil? No?

THE POLAROIDS. I actually turned the show off the second time Mari pulled her camera out for a group photo, and I had to force myself to go back and finish it. Why on earth do the characters keep insisting on taking these chipper polaroids like the literal apocalypse isn't happening around them? Is Mari emotionally stunted? I don't understand. Is it supposed to be making some kind of point? I don't understand...

The characters seem to have zero reaction to awful events happening around them, or they comment on it and move on immediately.

Random magical cult city growing serious amounts of weed... Literally everything that happens there is just awful writing. So far, everything that has happened has been a natural disaster, and they explain them as being due to the tectonic plate movements. So we're supposed to be believing all of this as possible. Explainable natural events. You can't build a world around this and then suddenly introduce magic out of the blue. Not to mention, what even happened in the end? Did 'Mother' reincarnate herself? How? Why?

The weird nightclub scene and the pensioner sex scene are both two scenes I could do without.

The weird trickster guy who keeps pulling fake eyes/ears/noses out of nowhere. Again, he ruins the tone of the show. Not only that, continuity just doesn't exist with him. He says he's from England, but speaks English with an American accent. And then he says he grew up in Yugoslavia. Like, which one is it sweetie?

Why is this old man just randomly addicted to morphine?

You can't expect the audience to have a legitimate emotional response to character deaths if you introduce and kill off new characters so frequently, whilst simultaneously not really telling us anything about them that would cause us to care that they're gone.

Huh, what do you know, episode 8 was actually kind of good-ish, and the only reason it was good was because we were left with only two characters, the characters we've known right from the start, meaning we have at least some reason to care about them. And there's none of the random happy music. And Go keeps his Engrish to a minimum. And neither of them dies in a freak accident that gives the animators reason to show more body horror out of nowhere for shock value.

THE RAP BATTLE. At this point, I genuinely thought that this show had to be satirical. Like, there is just no way this is supposed to be a serious show. Again, the tone is non-existant now. For some reason this show likes to be really self-deprecating towards Japan at every available opportunity and they just went full speed with this rap battle. Like, I get that maybe the writers thought, oh, we've been showing a lot of bleak scenes, let's give some comedic relief. But that only works if you haven't had happy music blaring this entire time, combined with hilariously out-of-place English phrases and the weird Yugo-Brit-American guy with fake eyes, etc. That only works if this was a serious show to begin with.

I'm making a separate point just for the godawful animation during Kite's weather balloon scene. Jesus Christ.

The fact that they built a new mini-Japan/Tokyo for the surviving Japanese people, knowing full-well that Japan is going to re-emerge at some point, thus destroying this new island and killing its inhabitants in the process.

We're supposed to believe that nobody, not one nation, tried to claim the area that Japan was once in for themselves, supposedly as a good will to the Japanese people, even though it would be a prime location for fishing, etc. And there's definitely not enough Japanese people left to try and contest it.

I forgot to mention the fact that the intro doesn't match the show either.

There is a consistent issue with the show not understanding the tone it's supposed to be having. Combining the happy intro, happy music throughout, characters' lack of response to what's happening around them, laughable animation and random "comedy relief" aspects like the foreigner and the rap battle, you're left with a show that is unable to make you feel the way it wants you to feel. It seems like a joke, you want to see it as satirical, but the show continues to act like these events should be taken seriously. Now, I've seen anime that does this kind of thing before, having the tone of one genre whilst actually being another, but in a good way. An example would be Gakkou Gurashi (School Live). But Japan Sinks 2020 seems to do this unintentionally. It's just... Funny. I don't think I cared that a single character died. And that, in itself, is sadder than the entire show.

If you've made it through this post, congratulations. As someone who is both a writer and a fan of apocalyptic/natural disaster fiction, this show hit a nerve and I needed to speak out about it. Especially since I'm seeing it be praised so much online!

#japan sinks 2020 #japan sinks anime #netflix #anime #japan #natural disaster #apocalypse

[tbhwhocaresanymore]

Nancy Drew 2x6

As promised I am done with my most stressful finals and am now posting my review albeit two weeks late, and let me say to start off that this episode would have made a fantastic season premiere.

Ghost kiddies: 1 Lamia: 0

Speaking of things I need to get off my chest wow I can’t believe the arraignment for the morgue break in finally happened. I assumed it had happened and she got off, or that everyone just forgot about it but more the fool am I. Because it is back and kicking off our second season.

And for the record as someone who despises insects and all forms of creepy crawlies with a passion this episode was a teensy bit horrific and not in the fun way.

Like I said at the top though, this episode would’ve made an amazing season premiere. It set up a whole bunch of fun new season plot lines in addition to being a killer episode in its own right. For example I’m assuming with Nancy’s 443 hours of community service to go we’ll be seeing more of Connor the Surly Coroner, and what if his flower shop wife works at the place the gang scammed a few weeks ago to get AJ Crane’s address? I mean be real how many flower shops can one small town have.

In other news I continue to yearn for Chief McGinnis to return. Like WHY in the name of all that is holy would you throw away a perfectly good, lovable book character, not to mention Native American rep, in favor of this new asshole that nobody likes? (This is only 10% me being bitter about my Tamura being AJ’s son theory not panning out.) The only (ONLY) upside to Tamura being here is that Nancy and McGinnis were becoming friends, and now we have a very rude cop for Nancy to be sassy to. “Not a real holiday.” “Not a real necktie.”

Speaking of lovable book characters, it causes me pain how Hannah and Nancy’s relationship was like shot in the head and dumped in a ditch. Like must she eternally be at odds with one of her book parental figures? For those of you who don’t know, in the books Hannah Gruen is the Drew’s housekeeper/cook, and a surrogate mother to Nancy. Like I’m thrilled that Nancy and her dad are back on good terms and working their way towards being the iconic father/daughter duo we all know and love, and I understand that Hannah has every right to be furious with Nancy, but the pain is still there.

Moving onto more lighthearted aspects of the episode, I love the balance this show has found between comedy and horror. Riverdale could never. The scene with the five of them in Nancy’s kitchen and the autopsy was comedic gold. Ace and Bess and George, fairly quickly getting on board with it, Nick convinced they all want to send him back to prison in possession of the group’s one brain cell. But then he immediately loses the brain cell because when somebody shows up AT THE FRONT DOOR, NONE OF THEM THINK to hide the body in plain view in the kitchen??? Guys! Oh and that absolutely iconic bit of dialogue: “No, we are not performing an autopsy in your kitchen!” “No you’re absolutely right Nick, we should do it in the living room there’s more space.” *wheeeeze*

So that’s the comedy now for the horror. So many little delightfully creepy moments sprinkled throughout the episode. George drifting off and singing in French, when the body in the back of the van opens its eye, when the dad stops the car and gets out and it SITS UP, when Charlie and Ted see something outside and all you can see is its silhouette, when the lamia is like sucking their souls out looking like a skeletal cretin straight from the depths of hell. Delightful.

Getting back to season long arcs, my writing sixth sense is tingling and it’s telling me the Women in White are going to be important. How? I don’t know. But there is sooo much potential. What if they’re all comatose a la Sleeping Beauty waiting for someone to call them back once some sort of evil reawakens? What if they’re immortal and walking the earth solving problems in secret? What if they were corrupted and had to be killed by their loved ones? The possibilities are endless and I’m here for it.

Time for my Drewson shipper talk so if you’re not into that skip this paragraph. Ooooh Lordy the scene with Nick and Nancy in the seamstress house made my heart do a happy little tap dance. Really any time they share the screen at the same time, but they had lines directed at each other and it was beautiful. And that gorgeous line of dialogue, “Hey, you can still fix this. No one’s gotten hurt yet.” aeexoijxoij

Now I will close out with some thoughts I had while watching.

Nancy can be so smart but also so dumb, like she hears a mysterious thumping sound and Hangs Up The Phone??? Girl it could be a human killer!

And is it just me or does it seem like if twelve children in a small town were all murdered on the same day and the killer was never caught that would be the sort of thing that lives on in town legend

Nick has the absolute WORST British accent oh my GOD. Understandable, because the actor is Scottish, so at that moment he was a guy with a Scottish accent pretending to have an American accent faking a British accent but still.

Cannot believe on their way to the Claw to stop a soul sucking spirit they had to stop at the grocery store for caramel apples and candy canes like them all running around must have been a hell of a sight for whatever sleep deprived Safeway cashier was on duty

Finally, what in god’s name is George going to tell Jesse? Not the truth I imagine, but I have no idea what possible lie she could sell. Personally I think I’d just tell her I drugged the water as a joke and gaslight her until she forgot about it.

Normally this would be the part where I theorize about what could happen in the next episode but at this point you already know what happens in the next episode so I’ll sign off with my typical schtick instead. Ahem

Writers give me Lucy Sable

#Nancy Drew cw #Nancy Drew #George Fan #Bess Marvin #Ned Nick Nickerson #Ned Nickerson #Ace #Carson Drew #Hannah Gruen #Nick x Nancy #Drewson #writers where is dead lucy #the writers give me a satisfying ending to Lucy Sable's character challenge #I want her BACK #BACK #AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

[willel]

I was surprised recently to see some Mike fans being very negative towards Will, but now I think it’s bc they’re jealous that Will can develop outside the party: the Byers are interesting (maybe even more now that El joined them) while the Wheelers have basically become a joke. Same reason they resent Dustin for his friendship with Steve. They want everything to stay within the party, and I’m sorry for them, but isn’t gonna happen, family dynamics have always been a big part of the show.

I dunno if it’s jealousy. It’s more like... well, Mike was a main focus of season 1 (other than the Byers) and the show hasn’t given Mike or his family much personal attention since.

In that way, it COULD be jealousy towards other characters, but I think it’s just misdirected frustration. It’s not Will/the Byers fans who are taking the spotlight away from Mike. It’s the writers. They’re choosing not to write the Wheelers or give Mike a reason to develop outside his love interest.

What many Mike fans don’t understand is, I totally sympathize. I feel the same way about Will/the Byers, especially after season 3. The Byers got NO screen time together. Will and Jonathan who are supposed to be best bros had NO one-on-one conversation the ENTIRE season. Joyce and Jonathan seem to have a set a rule to never share a screen again. That sucks, you know?

With the Wheelers, why the hell haven’t the writers developed Nancy and Mike’s siblingness? It’s just as bad as Jonathan and Will, if not worse. The only shining moment in season 3 is Karen giving Nancy a confident boost, a much needed one.

As for Dustin and Steve... in a way, I do think their friendship has zapped way too much screentime away from the rest of the cast. The writers found a cash cow and they jumped right on it.

I’m not saying Dustin should’ve stayed with the Party. I just think the excuse they used sucked (”My friends who stayed with me for 5 hours or something to help build my machine and wait with me totally ditched me yo”). Time spent forming the Scoops Troop could’ve been used for those much needed Byers/Wheelers sibling interactions. Ya know?

Season 3 was too focused on being a Scooby Doo adventure with the Scoop Troop instead of building existing platonic relationships.

I admit, some of the most annoying people in this fandom are Mike fans who shit on every possible character in some weird desperate attempt to make Mike more relevant. Shitting on other characters won’t make Mike more relevant because the other characters aren’t the problem. It’s the writers.

I love Will SO MUCH. As well as El, Joyce, Jonathan, Lucas, etc etc. You know what has never crossed my mind? Shitting on Mike to make them look better. What sense does it make? None.

My advice to the Mike fans is to chill out. Take a step back. Reevaluate the situation. Take stupid fandom wars out of it.

WHO are the people giving Mike lackluster story time and development? Is it a Will fan on reddit speculating about his future plot, or is it the writers who are becoming more and more hellbent on being a comedy than a horror/sci fi show?

Does your animosity towards Will help fix Mike’s character, or should you be redirecting and reforming that animosity towards something more productive?

At the end of the day, there is nothing we can do about the writing. We’re all nobodies. The writers, with their ears half open, are listening for what is “popular” and “hip” with regular fans.

Regular fans like Scooby Doo adventures with Dustin and Steve. Regular fans are #JusticeforBarb. Regular fans are Mileven. Unless you are in the majority opinion, enough for the Stranger Things twitter to make jokes about stuff you like, then you’re out of luck.

That is what fanon, fanfiction, fanart is for my friends! If I could send this to every Mike fan on reddit, I could, cause they are just.... ooof.

#Anonymous #ask

[ellie-reacts]

Vampire Diaries s1 e9

- ok i watched episodes 6-8 but didn’t make posts on them. however I do think that Lexi deserved to live longer. Also she’s been added to the ever-growing pile of ‘girls who deserve better but are instead used as plot devices to advance men’

- why are the hallways still so dark. is this school extremely concerned about the environment? I can SEE that your lights aren’t on even though you’ve got like 12 of them

- ah yes, witch sleepwalking dreams

-  yessss alaric. i thought he came in in like season 2 or 3 so now i’m questioning my hold on the plot line of this story

- look at those snazzy bagged lunches. that is the crispest brown paper bag i have EVER seen

- zip up fingerless gloves/sleeves, elena? iconic 

- “don’t worry about it” throws away documents on students, leaving it in a trash can that anyone can access. lmao sir. whatcha. whatcha doin there? 

- i was about to say “do people actually wear rings that thick” and then remembered that college rings are like,,, chunky as hell so i guess it’s relatively normal?

- caroline, sweetheart. you are,,, so lonely 

- how many days has it been in show reality? has it been, like 1 week? 2? because DEAR GOD Stefan and Elena have been through so many peaks and pitfalls in their relationship rollercoaster 

- someone in my last posts said Damon is 25 and I just. why did the writers think this was ok. why is this show written about high schoolers when it is CLEARLY supposed to be about college kids / straight up adults 

- road safety 101 w/ bonnie bennett

- eyyyy corinthian columns outside the gilbert household. lets gooooo

- FUCK one of the things i forgot during the episodes I didn’t comment on?? the fact that Damon fought in the civil war as a CONFEDERATE? like why the fuck is every single vampire on the side of the racists? 

- you’ve known this teacher 5 minutes and already have a handshake with him. 

- “You’re really hard to imitate, and then I have to go to that... lesser place.” for being an asshole he does have a lot of the better comedic lines. this show desperately requires more comedy in it

- we already knew the necklace was gonna come back the second it was thrown

- “oh, the ghost has a name now?” caroline is also stepping in to help w/ the comedy. sucks that its cuz her character is an airhead 

- how the fuck are all the characters in this show so ageless. like. if i don’t think about it, pretty much all the characters are on the same level but I know that that ISN’T the case and it freaks me out. like??? how old are jenna and alaric? I HAVE NO CLUE

- “cuz I consider you to be my best friend. And I say this knowing that Elena is in the kitchen listening to my every word” SEE WHAT I MEAN! Caroline delivers on the much-needed comedic relief 

- “let’s have a seance” caroline no

-  caroline, breathily: “bonnie, call to her”

   bonnie, in frat boy voice: “emily, you there?”

- i would love to see these characters play among us. i think it would be chaotic 

- what is going on with the salvatore brothers in this episode. stefan literally stabbed damon in the gut last episode after damon perma-killed his best friend

- “it wasn’t real, our love for Katherine. she compelled us” yo so do we ever break down the compulsion in this show? like. like. it’s so fucked up 

- “I was the last one to see her” the boys be fighting again 

- horror episode: play 

- has bonnie been possessed? let’s find out!

- the answer: y e s  lmao 

- jeremy, icon that he is, opening the door to his sister and friend screaming and just continuing past, no questions. 

- “I’m not dating him... yet” WE LOVE A WOMAN WITH CONFIDENCE

- burning pentagram let’s go

- i say “let’s go” too much in these... i probably won’t stop

- why don’t. *pauses to evaluate thoughts for once* Ok, I was going to say why don’t more vampires work in hospitals and I know it’s because they’re “secret” but what about like. just slipping blood into thing of oatmeal, or a cup of pomegranate juice or something. like. nobody would need to know, you could just assist. tho i guess if they died it would suck ass cuz vampire transformation

- MATT BUD. AN “OPEN WINDOW” DOESNT MEAN YOU CAN COME IN WITHOUT WARNING. you dense golden retriever man you

- “I don’t like you. I never have. but it was nice” you are,,, so stupid. “I stayed the night because you were all sad and alone, and I felt bad for you” MATT

- please please please don’t just use each other as rebounds. please be friends. why does everyone rush from one relationship to the next 

- why is this set in virginia. like?? if you were going to have the civil war be part of it why not just set it in a state that wasn’t part of the confederacy? 

- THIS IS LIKE THE FIFTH MINI BREAKUP ELENA AND STEFAN HAVE HAD AND I KNOW ITS NOT THE LAST BUT GOD I WISH IT WAS

- fuck yeah jenna destroy that shit 

- FUCK no get LOGAN FELL out of my house 

#vampire diaries #lexi branson #bonnie bennett #alaric saltzman #elena gilbert #jeremy gilbert #caroline forbes #stefan salvatore #damon salvatore #jenna gilbert #matt donovan #logan fell

[adamwatchesmovies]

The Best of 2019

What a year. By the time 2019 ended, I had seen over 130 new movies. It's actually probably closer to 150 but I lost count. There are a few titles I missed, such as The Dead Don’t Die, The Fanatic and Honeyland so obviously, this is not an all-encompassing, definitive list of 2019’s best, but it should give you a good idea of which films you need to check out if you haven’t already.

I usually like to save the #10 spot on my list for a movie that’s just for me. Normally, this would mean a giant monster movie, an off-beat creation nobody else saw, a comic book movie that spoke to my particular tastes or maybe a Canadian movie I know didn’t get the opportunity to shine like it should’ve. This year, that’s not happening. Trimming my list down to 10 was hard enough. I certainly wasn’t going to sacrifice one more to make it just 9. Let's dig in.

10. The Farewell

It’s been weeks since The Farewell and I’m still thinking about it. If I was put in the same position as Billi, I'm not sure what I'd do? Is it better to tell someone that's dying that their days are numbered, or should you spare them from that burden? Is it really them you’d be sparing, or is keeping the secret for your own selfish needs? Writer/director Lulu Wang asks serious questions about culture I had never contemplated before. There’s a lot for you here and even more if your family comes from mixed backgrounds.

9. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

I heard some complaints about Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks) not being the main character of this film by Marielle Heller, from writers Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster. It was the right choice. The plot has a cyical reporter meet Rogers and through their relatively brief interaction, learn what we knew going in. It delivers a moving character arc without having to stain its subject with flaws we didn't want to see. The quasi-meta presentation is what elevates it into top-10 status. That extra touch means it does a lot more than simply re-iterate what we saw in the 2018 documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor?.

8. Knives Out

Knives Out is one of the most entertaining films all year. There are no profound moments of meditation, no earth-shattering realizations about yourself, just a mystery to be solved. All the suspects are so intriguing they could be the stars of their own movies. Put together in the same house as a dead body and you’ve got no idea who did it. Its screenplay is excellent. The twists are juicy. Everything ads up in a satisfying manner. Rian Johnson is already working on a sequel. I can’t wait.

7. Apollo 11

There are few holdovers from the list I made halfway through the year, which either says something about the strength of the second half of 2019, or the weakness of the first. Either way, you’ve got to see Apollo 11. It’s the closest thing to going back in time and being there when man landed on the moon. The tension and anticipation are overwhelming. Knowing what happened doesn't matter. The way the footage is assembled is nothing short of incredible. Why this documentary wasn't present at the Academy Awards is beyond me.

6. Uncut Gems

Adam Sandler should’ve been nominated for an Oscar. He wasn’t. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts it's because of his association with all of those brain-dead Happy Madison Production comedies. His history with cinema shouldn't matter. The movie is what matters. The fact is, this was the perfect role for him. It isn’t even that Sandler’s doing something different, it’s that he’s being used to his full potential. If you weren’t glued to the screen, eager to see what’s coming next, this movie would have you jumping out of the window screaming - anything to escape the anxiety the Safdie Brothers serve up with devilish grins.

5. The Lighthouse

Next on my list is The Lighthouse. Right away, the aspect ratio and black-and-white cinematography lets you know you’re in for something different. You have no idea. What I love so much about this film is the way it handles madness. At the end of the day, I’m not sure if I could tell you if Robert Pattinson’s character was crazy, if Willem Dafoe’s character was the nutty one, or if they both were. It shows you just enough to make you doubt your own sanity. It’s also unexpectedly funny, which makes it feel oddly genuine. In one scene, Robert Pattinson's Ephraim Winslow gets a hold of the lighthouse's logs. In it, his boss, Thomas (Willem Dafoe) recommends Ephraim be disciplined for masturbating excessively. Considering Thomas has been cavorting with some kind of tentacle creature up in the lighthouse (at least that's what I think I saw, I'm not so sure anymore), all you can do is laugh. What kind of loony bin is this turning into? One I'm looking forward to revisiting.

4. 1917

Shot in a way that makes it all look like one take, 1917 is a technical marvel. It hooks itself up to your circular system and steadily replaces your blood with pure, undistilled stress. As you're about to flatline, it stops and gives you a breather. A shot of a meadow untouched by the ravages of war; a reminder of what the soldiers are fighting for and of how utterly devastating armed combat is on humanity as a whole. Gorgeous cinematography, powerful emotions, magnificent production values.

3. Joker

Along with Godzilla: King of the Monsters (a movie they basically made for me), this was my most anticipated movie of the year. To get ready, I watched Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, two Scorsese films Joker director Todd Phillips drew a lot of inspiration from. For some reason, it seems as though many critics took offense to the similarities. Sometimes I understand differing opinions from mine. This time, I don’t. It’s a great film that warns of the dangers of letting people like Arthur Fleck (brilliantly performed by Joaquin Phoenix) fall through the cracks. Left unchecked, he discovers that by doing terrible things, he becomes a “better” version of himself. It’s not a drama. It’s a horror movie that spins the familiar Batman archenemy in a new direction but also stays true to the character. There are several scenes in this movie that are going to be permanently imprinted in my brain. Those stairs. Need I say more?

Runner-ups

Avengers: Endgame

Even if every single Marvel movie going forward is awful, this caps off the whopping 22-chapter saga epically. A couple of aspects bugged me enough that it could only manage to make the runner-up list but it's a terrific film.

Booksmart

The funniest comedy of the year. I think back to Amy and Molly using their hairs as masks and still can't manage to hold back a few chuckles months later.

Toy Story 4

This one was hard to cut. The only flaw I could find was that it isn’t on the same level as 3… even though they’re both 5-star movies.

Midsommar

I’ve heard the extended cut is even better than the original. I wish I’d had the chance to see it in theatres.

Jojo Rabbit

Audacious and heartfelt. I loved those scenes of Scarlett Johanson being a mom. Her agent might've dropped the ball getting her cast in Ghost in the Shell but she sure knew how to pick great work in 2019.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Quentin Tarantino brings us back to a time when Roman Polanski was simply a good director instead of a convicted rapist, movie stars were untouchable, and the death of someone’s wife under mysterious circumstances was nothing to raise eyebrows about. It’s not a movie that screams “here and now”. If anything, it’s regressive. That said, I cannot deny the experience I had watching it. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime kinda thing and I doubt even Tarantino could pull it off again. I wonder how many people went in knowing what happened to Sharon Tate like I did.

Marriage story

It’s nothing but raw emotion and powerhouse performances in this drama about two people you love going through a divorce. I always make it my goal to watch movies all the way through without any interruptions. Several times throughout, I was tempted to hit "Pause" so I could catch my breath.

Internet lists are everywhere. You know why, don’t you? They suck you in and when you get down to it, most don’t require all that much effort to put together. Except when I make them, apparently. These bi-annual lists always turn out to be difficult to put together. 2019's proved particularly arduous. I’m fairly sure that my #3 movie belongs there. Out of all the movies on this list, it’s probably the one I’m going to go back to most often. The other two? I’d say that technically, one may be better than the other but I think the other one is “more important” so that gives it the edge. What I’m trying to say is, they’re all winners and on a different day, I might even swap them around.

2. Little Women

I have only seen three of the seven silver screen adaptations of Louisa May Alcott’s novel and I don’t expect any of the others to top this one. The secret ingredient to this one's success is Greta Gerwig. Writing and directing, she does so much more than merely translate the classic to movie form. She re-arranges the story to give the events a greater punch than they would if they were shown chronologically and puts a little more emphasis on a couple of key moments (that tear-jerking Christmas, for example) to crank up the emotion. She also makes it more modern without having to change anything about the setting or characters. Admittedly, the back-and-forth between the past and present is a little jarring at first - makes you wonder what Greta Gerwig could’ve done had she been given the de-aging budget Martin Scorsese was given - but that’s where the performances and costumes come in. It takes mere moments before you get what the movie is doing. I’ve said it already but it made me cry.

1. Parasite

To make this list, I didn’t go through all of my past reviews and check which ones were rated what. I thought back to which movies gave me the most vivid memories, which ones gave me the biggest reactions. I’m still not sure how I feel about the final final moment but there’s so much about Parasite that I admire. This would be a great one to watch with others just to see their reactions to the reveal about the bookcase.

#movies #films #reviews #movie reviews #film reviews #film criticism #best of 2019 #avengers: endgame #toy story 4 #booksmart #midsommar #jojo rabbit #once upon a time in hollywood #marriage story #the farewell #a beautiful day in the neighborhood #knives out #apollo 11 #uncut gems #the lighthouse #1917 #joker #little women #parasite

[marvelousmatt]

The Accidental Comedy of Matt Berry

The star of IFC’s detective-series spoof ‘Year of the Rabbit,’ famed for his booming voice and over-the-top faces, never set out to be funny

Matt Berry as Detective Inspector Rabbit in 'Year of the Rabbit.'  Ben Meadows/IFC

If you know Matt Berry from his most famous roles — such as The IT Crowd’s idiot boss Douglas Reynholm, Toast of London’s pompous struggling actor Steven Toast, or the preening and lascivious vampire Laszlo on What We Do in the Shadows — talking to him over the phone is sort of like meeting his un-evil twin. Where his characters are outrageous and inappropriate, Berry is circumspect and gentlemanly. While they pronounce every word as if they’re doing Shakespeare in the Park, with a ponderous theatricality, his signature rich baritone comes over the line from London sounding muted by comparison. It’s as though he’s playing the straight man in a sketch of his own life.

Whatever absurd and profane notions he has rattling around in his head, Berry saves them for his work. His latest offering, IFC’s Year of the Rabbit (a collaboration among Berry, producer Ben Farrell, and writers Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil), is a send-up of the period detective shows that are a staple of British television. Set in Victorian times, it centers on his titular character, Rabbit, a cranky copper who bumbles through every episode but slyly solves the whodunit in the end — a kind of gruff, English Columbo in a waistcoat. In the “why not” fashion typical of Berry’s comedy, the character is missing an eyebrow (a trait the show repeatedly explains away with the intentionally unconvincing line that it was chewed off by a dog last Christmas). He’s named Rabbit — his actual first name, with no surname — not because of any correlation with, say, the Chinese calendar, but because… well, just because.

“His father couldn’t be bothered giving any of the kids any normal names, so he just named them after animals and then left them outside a church,” Berry says matter-of-factly, as if Rabbit and his father are real. Pressed on the matter, he adds, “We have a huge history over here of these shows, Agatha Christie and stuff, and they all have these names, Inspector This and That. I just wanted to do something stupid with that — give him an animal name and not anything else. So he really is as earthy as you can get in that way. There’s nothing fancy about him at all.”

Rabbit is an inveterate boozehound with a colorful vocabulary. He beats up a schoolteacher on career day to demonstrate interrogation techniques to the children. He tells his rookie partner that the way to keep warm during a wintertime stakeout is to piss himself. He describes the London of his day as “a rat eating its own babies. Babies made of shit. And once it’s eaten its own shit babies, it shits them out again.” He is paired, reluctantly, with two bright-eyed and bushy-tailed colleagues to form a crack investigative team, a juxtaposition which only underscores his baser qualities.

“He’s basically trying to hide the fact that he’s incredibly hungover and not firing on all cylinders,” Berry says. “Whereas his younger sidekicks won’t be, because when you’re that young, you know, you get over a hangover by like 10 o’clock in the morning. I wanted him to be dull, in terms of reactions to things, but effective.”

Robert Bathurst, Matt Berry, and Harry Peacock in Toast of London. Photo Credit: Kuba Wieczorek/IFC/CH4

Ineptitude and buffoonery are much more the calling cards of Steven Toast, whose massive ego blinds him to his own failings. He is an oblivious object of mockery at the hands of his voiceover producers, a pair of douchey hipsters named Clem Fandango and Danny Bear, and his mistress, Mrs. Purchase (wife of Toast’s acting nemesis Ray “Bloody” Purchase), looks eternally bored during their trysts. His long-suffering agent has to force him to become a laxative pitchman, yet he complains that she’s not scoring him Oscar-caliber roles.

If Toast is the character closest to Berry’s heart, it’s for good reason. Despite a brand of humor that seems firmly rooted in the British tradition — the surreality and silliness of Python, the cartoonish prurience of Benny Hill — Berry, 45, maintains that he wasn’t especially interested in comedy growing up. He cites as his primary influence not comedic greats such as Peter Sellers or contemporaries like Steve Coogan, but “straight actors, people that normally weren’t trying to be funny.” The more “mannered” and “self-important” the star, Berry says, the funnier he found them. The line to Toast is clear — especially in his puffed-up diction and bizarrely exaggerated pronunciation of ordinary words (such as his praise of guest-star Jon Hamm’s “charismaaaaaaaeeeeeee”). Imagine the famous outtakes of a drunk Orson Welles filming a Paul Masson wine commercial, and you’re on the right track.

Berry’s career in comedy came as a complete surprise to him. He grew up in the hamlet of Bromham in Bedfordshire, about two hours north of London, in a wholly unartistic family who had “normal, decent jobs,” he says. “My mom was a nurse, my sister went into law — nothing like what I ended up doing.” Still, his parents were totally supportive — worried, but supportive — as he stumbled through temp gigs and patches of unemployment as a young man.

He was far more interested in painting and music — and, in fact, today is an accomplished musician who’s recorded eight studio albums (prog rock-ish, inflected with funk) as well as the scores and themes to numerous TV series, including Toast. That show’s frequent musical interludes, gonzo song parodies a la Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, speak to Berry’s true comedic beginnings. In between stints at the London Dungeon — a haunted-house experience where actors play figures from gruesome corners of the city’s past, like Jack the Ripper — he managed to book solo gigs as a singer-songwriter. But he found that spiking his performances with humor won over a crowd.

Natasia Demetriou and Berry in What We Do In the Shadows.  Byron Cohen/FX

“I was playing before comedians, and the gigs just seemed to go quicker and better if I put some comedy into the songs or the bits in between the songs,” Berry says. “I only did it so I’d fit in with what was going on after. Then I really got to like it.”

Fellow performers Richard Ayoade and Matthew Holness noticed his act, and cast Berry in a horror/sci-fi spoof they created called Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace. From there, his television career exploded, with recurring roles in several series before his breakout in 2007 with The IT Crowd. Despite a nomination for “best newcomer” at that year’s British Comedy Awards and a 2015 BAFTA for Best Male Performance in a Comedy for Toast, Berry insists he doesn’t have any particular aptitude for the form, and draws a blank when it comes to defining his style. Mostly, he chalks it up to timing (“Whether it’s music or comedy, that’s the most important thing for me”) — as well as a lack of training.

“I’m not held back by any sort of rules and regulations in terms of performance,” he says. “I’ll just do what feels natural, and because nobody’s said in the past, ‘Well you can’t really do that, because of this,’ you just do it. If it works, it works, and if it doesn’t, you just try something else.”

He does acknowledge one foolproof stylistic flourish that may be deeply ingrained: a true relish for the scatological and sophomorically sexual. See: Laszlo’s vulva topiaries, or the preposterously elastic faces Toast makes while he’s shagging Mrs. P (“Hang on — my balls are about to fizzzz!”) or pleasuring himself to old-timey images of women in military uniforms. A key moment in Rabbit involves the inspector having a pocketful of dog poop.

“I suppose that’s the British toilet humorist in me,” Berry admits. “It doesn’t matter where you go in Europe, toilet humor is enjoyed by all. Being from the U.K., it’s in you, like, from birth. You know, if you’re little and people are laughing at something all around you, it kind of sticks. If it’s something that my granddad laughs at and my dad laughs at, there’s a good chance that I’ll laugh at it, too.”

#matt berry #year of the rabbit #what we do in the shadows

[letterboxd]

How I Letterboxd #7: Cinemonster.

Hooptober’s head honcho opens up to Jack Moulton about his love for Texas-born horror director Tobe Hooper, the joys of running Letterboxd’s most beloved Hallowe’en community challenge, and the “terrifying, magical” experience of seeing Frankenstein at the age of four.

“You can’t spell October without Tobe.” —Cinemonster

Cinemonster, known to his family and friends as David Hood, is a restaurateur in Pittsburgh by day, and the head honcho of Hooptober by night. Now in its seventh year, the horror film challenge sees participants set their own 31-day viewing agenda of 31 films, curated according to a list of criteria set by its creator.

‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ (1974), directed by Tobe Hooper.

With over 5,000 films logged on Letterboxd and a growing collection of posters, DVDs, Blu-rays, laser discs and film memorabilia, Cinemonster is a literal monster of cinema. He has created more than 500 lists, including a ton of year, director, actor, actress, franchise and memoriam lists.

What brought you to Letterboxd? I found Letterboxd while I was doing a Google search for a horror film that I had forgotten the name of. I ran into a list that Hollie Horror had made and wound up starting a profile and it went from there. That would have been a little over seven years ago.

How freakin’ cool is last year’s Hallowe’en Easter egg with the dripping blood from our logo? [Pro members get this added to their pages by mentioning #horror in their bio.] I’m a fan.

Unfortunately I haven’t heard of a single one of your four profile favorites! What’s urging you to highlight these films? They are just lesser-seen and have something good or great about them. Eyeball is a great little underseen Umberto Lenzi film. Death Machines is an awkward, weird and wonderful film with kung fu and blood. Massacre at Central High is one of my favorite films and sadly lacking a disc release of any kind—anyone who has seen Heathers will recognize a couple of things if they watch it. Rituals is a criminally underseen stalked in the woods film from the ’70s.

In this this list description, you explain how the original Frankenstein (1931) hooked you into horror at four years old. Can you describe what you most remember about that life-changing experience? It was both magical and terrifying. The space, the creature, the little girl. I had trouble sleeping for weeks afterwards. No matter where I am in the world, if there is a screening of Frank, I’ll go. I watched most of the major universals by the time I was six or seven. I saw Alien and Jaws 2 with my folks and those stuck with me. Cable and a local UHF station showing Hammer films on Saturdays are what really allowed me to get sucked in.

‘Frankenstein’ (1931), directed by James Whale.

The horror films of 1980 and 1981 were the most impactful and are the ones that mean the most to me to this day; Fade to Black, Night School, Motel Hell, The Fog, Alligator, Altered States, Terror Train, Death Ship, Scanners, An American Werewolf in London, The Howling, The Funhouse, Dead & Buried, Hell Night, Wolfen, Ghost Story, The Pit and Evilspeak. I saw all of them five to ten-plus times on cable as a kid. They’re still all high on my list. I am glad that Fade to Black is on Shudder. People need to watch it. More relevant now than then.

What exactly provoked you to start Hooptober seven years ago? I moved into an old spooky house and had a backlog of Blu-rays to watch and the 4K of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was about to come out. I’d done some interactive stuff on Letterboxd previously and had a decent amount of people involved. I was also at a point in my life where 31 films in 31 days is tough, as it is for a lot of us now. So I thought ‘Why don’t I do something that starts a little early, clears some of my list out, and has some parameters that don’t feel like I am handing out an assignment?’ I grew up in Texas, Tobe [Hooper] is close to my heart, and with all the Hooper I owned and the 4K coming out, I decided to christen it with his name. You can’t spell October without Tobe.

What’s the most members that have participated in a Hooptober? The number of people who participated was a little more than I expected, but that wasn’t what I was surprised by. I never thought of it as a recurring event until I started to hear from people the following summer about ‘the next one’. I just kinda chuckled after about a dozen people had asked and I said out loud to no one, “I guess I’m doing another one of these”. We are well over 700 this year, and still climbing.

‘Fade to Black’ (1980), directed by Vernon Zimmerman.

Where do you get the ideas for the rules for films to consider watching? At this point, I look back at past years so that I don’t repeat myself. I look to the current year for inspiration. Is there a film from a sub-genre that was prominent? Was it a strong year for output from women, Mexico, Asia, Black filmmakers, something cultural, and so on? I may focus on effects creators, an actor or writer on a whim. I try to keep an eye out for blind spots I haven’t covered. Shudder, archive.org, the big streamers are all resources. Sadly, rarefilmm no longer exists.

In last year’s interview with Merry-Go-Round magazine, you mentioned plans to turn Hooptober into a film festival. How’s that going? In a post-pandemic world, how can we keep independent niche film festivals thriving? The world has not been agreeable, obviously. I’m not even sure how viable something like that will be next year. I’ve been taking a look at streaming options. Post-pandemic will require more creativity and outside-the-box thinking, and will probably continue to feed some drive-ins. Been a while since more than a handful of people wanted to put money into a drive-in, which is nice to see.

I’m going to do a tweet along to The Witch Who Came From the Sea in October, and I’ll give you an exclusive here: The George Romero Foundation and I are doing online Horror Trivia on October 11. I had been doing it live with them here in Pittsburgh until the pandemic.

Based on this year’s rules and conditions, if there was one essential you-can’t-miss film you could force all your participants to add to their challenge, which film would it be? Demons, Eve’s Bayou or The Witch Who Came From the Sea.

‘The Witch Who Came from the Sea’ (1976), directed by Matt Cimber.

What have been your own greatest film discoveries through your Hooptober adventures? A Tale of Two Sisters, I Drink Your Blood, Blood Diner, and though it is a bit of a cheat to list this one, The Amusement Park. It’s cheating because it didn’t exist as something that I or anyone else could have watched, prior to when I saw it.

Do you have any acclaimed horror movies still lingering in your list of shame? Eyes Without a Face, Upgrade, Cure and Scream 4.

Have you ever completed one of your own Hooptober challenges yet? Errrrrrrrrr, one. I’m on track this year.

What about the participants over the years—any Letterboxd friends you’ve made who would you like to give a shout-out to? Aaron, Sarah Jane and Chris Duck are people that I talk to outside of Letterboxd. There have been a few others over the years. Slappy McGee has helped me with Hooptober the last two years. They are great. Javo and David Lawrence are pretty great, too.

Before Hooptober, many of your lists invited discussion with your followers. In what ways is Letterboxd the ideal forum to foster a community of film fans? Fans exercise their fandom in so many ways. The platform is so flexible that it allows you to utilize it in a small and personal way, in a promotional way, or to dive into the community pool and see who’s out there that shares something with you or can show you something. The more people that we are exposed to and listen to, we are all the better for.

Which of your review—from any genre—are you proudest of? The Invisible Man or The Hustler, probably. I have a capsule of Hud that I like.

So, you’re the horror guy. Nobody is denying that. You are Cinemonster, after all. But when I look at your top movies list and see that Singin’ in the Rain is your all-time number one, I’ll need you to explain yourself. I go back and forth between that and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. They are 1A and 1B in some order. Singin’ in the Rain is a perfect film and the studio system at its best. I will ignore your implied insult. ;)

‘Fear of a Black Hat’ (1993), directed by Rusty Cundieff.

It’s true, even a horror aficionado needs some levity in their life. What other comedies pick you up from a dark place? Fear of a Black Hat always does the trick. Same with The Awful Truth, Murder by Death, Hollywood Shuffle, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Blazing Saddles, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Black Dynamite.

Who has been keeping you company during this tough year? I have watched thirteen Spike Lee films so far this year. I’ve taken a break the last few months, but I’ll probably knock out five or six more. With the exception of 25th Hour, everything is a revisit. It’s been a joy to go back through everything. Crooklyn is much stronger than I remembered, and Bamboozled just gets better and more impactful as time passes. I have loved Spike since the day I saw School Daze. His films have always connected with things that are important to me and to those that have been around me. Lee is still grossly under-appreciated as a narrative film director and a documentarian.

We’re bowing down to your epic Blu-ray and DVD collection. Which ones are your most prized possessions? Make us jealous. I have an Anchor Bay DVD of Dawn of the Dead signed by the cast and George A. Romero, a steelbook of Battle Royale, the first Slumber Party Massacre set before they had to reprint the box, the original Star Wars trilogy on Blu. I’m sure there are things I’m not thinking of. I have a lot of out-of-print and laser-only stuff. I’ll never get rid of my Holy Grail, Ghostbusters and Akira Criterion laser discs.

A selection of Cinemonster’s signed memorabilia.

I have a copy of Painting with Light signed by John Alton, John Waters and Steven Soderbergh I’ll send you a picture of. I used to collect movie posters, and I have the original Revenge of the Jedi one-sheet and the Drew Struzan Squirm poster. I do love those.

From your top directors list, let’s put one horror director on a pedestal. Who does the genre better than anyone else and why? George. They’re always topical, intelligent, thoughtful, personal and sometimes prescient. At their best they hold up both a mirror and a crystal ball. He was writing found-footage scripts in the early 70s, for god’s sake. Tobe is grossly under-appreciated. James Whale and Mario Bava could scare you in so many ways.

So, thinking beyond Ari Aster, Robert Eggers and Jordan Peele, which up-and-coming horror directors are you most excited about? Issa López, Gigi Saúl Guerrero, Benson and Moorhead, Shinichiro Ueda, Na Hong-jin, Julia Ducournau, Nia DaCosta, Jeremy Gardner and Leigh Whannell.

The 2010s were a great decade for horror. We have more money on-screen, moving away from the low-budget films of the 2000s. Which favorite horror film of the last decade inspired you the most? Get Out. What Jordan did for generations to come is unmatched in this century.

Chucky from ‘Child’s Play’ (1988).

Which probably-too-long horror franchise gets too much flak and is top-to-bottom a great time? Child’s Play. Chucky has always been treated generally as second tier. [That franchise] has tried a lot of interesting and out-there things during its lifespan that had no business working, but did.

I know it’s been a slow year but you haven’t logged many 2020 movies yet! Which is your most anticipated horror movie of 2020 or 2021? Peninsula, for sure; I love Train to Busan. Then Candyman, The Dark and the Wicked, Grizzly II: Revenge, Bad Hair, #Alive, After Midnight, The Platform, Bulbbul, Underwater, Shirley and Swallow.

Interview by Jack Moulton. Follow Jack on Letterboxd.

#letterboxd #how i letterboxd #cinemonster #el cinemonster #elcinemonster #horror #horror films #horror genre #tobe hoooper #tobe hooper #hooptober #hoop-tober #halloween #halloween films #halloween challenge #letterboxd challenge

[fireleaptfromhousetohouse]

Howcumzit?: Dracula

How come the show never followed up on the idea that Jonathan Harker had fucked Dracula?

They pretty much opened the show by bringing up the idea, after all, which lent an unpleasantly '80s frisson to Jonathan's emaciated appearance - one thinks of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, and that immortal line "the cosmic spores, of course, represented AIDS". But then Jonathan's interactions with the Count end up playing out, if not exactly like the novel, then more or less played straight - you'll pardon the pun, I'm sure.

Dracula does of course go on to gin up sexual tension with pretty much everyone else he meets, no matter their gender or religious leaning, but what makes it particularly surprising here is that in the first episode he's actively becoming sexier in every scene. Yet even when Jonathan is completely in his power, it all seems quite innocent and chaste. Perhaps those aren't quite the right words for being held captive, but nonetheless it doesn't seem to have any particular undercurrent of sauciness. Stephen Moffatt has been quoted as saying that rather than bisexual, this incarnation of Dracula is "bi-homicidal...he's killing people, not dating them". Which would seem to put a pin in the thrust of my complaint here, until you recall - as Moffatt really should have - that the show ended with Dracula banging Van Helsing.

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How come Gatiss and Moffat couldn't resist slipping in that painfully clunky reference to Sherlock Holmes? And by Sherlock Holmes, what they really mean is their BAFTA-award winning series Sherlock®. 

What makes it so obviously shoehorned in is the much better reference to 'Inside No. 9' in the following episode. Inside No. 9 is of course the comedy-horror anthology series made by the non-Mark Gatiss parts of the League of Gentlemen, which has, so far, not needed nearly as many frantic, flailing fan interpretations to make its plots make sense.

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How come Dracula's meant to pick up traits from the people he feeds on, but doesn't start speaking in Sister Agatha's silly Dutch accent?

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How come in episode two, the little mute girl didn't immediately tell her dad that Dracula was the killer?

This is more a straightforward plot hole than a wider point of pondering, but it's one that will probably occur to even the most casual viewer. The show's clearly hoping there's enough other stuff going on that nobody will notice, which is obviously a misstep when what's going on all revolves around there being a killer at large.

Now, there's an obvious fan interpretation to be made here that the little girl - angry with the world - simply wanted to see them all die horribly. I'd watch that, and so, I suspect, would most right-thinking people. It would certainly have made for a better episode three than the one we got.

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How come the snobby twink's boyfriend spends most of the time resenting the guy's sham marriage, then doesn't seem to care when Dracula feels him up in front of everyone? Come to think of it, why doesn't anybody else care about that?

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How come Gatiss and Moffat couldn't resist leaping into a contemporary setting?

And why, if they wanted to do it so much, did they have to do it so poorly? Thanks to some confusing editing and omissions, it came off looking like Dracula had been struggling along the sea bed for 123 years.

This is a recurring feature of their work - Sherlock, too, was taking a classic bit of Victoriana and transplanting it into the modern day. The Sherlock Christmas special, though, did put it in its natural setting, which if nothing else worked as a fun, campy thing - and that, despite what Gatfat might think their work is, is the tone that runs right through it like a stick of Brighton rock.

Episode two took a part of Stoker's book, stitched it onto a familiar Murder On The Orient Express-style setup, and then turned Claes Bang's Dracula loose to bounce around in that framework - and it worked beautifully. This could have been a winning formula for any number more episodes, but instead they pissed it all away in favour of a tired Hollyoaks-style relationship drama and a secret institute which definitely isn't Torchwood.

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How come modern-day Van Helsing didn't have the same silly Dutch accent?

Just to harp on a point, this makes the problem with the time jump quite clear. Van Helsing is pretty much the same character even before they literally inject the original Van Helsing into her - which makes it seem oddly like the sexual tension between her and the Count was somehow heritable. And having already demanded that willing suspension of disbelief, why not go the whole hog, and have Jonathan and Mina's identical great-great-great-descendants turn up too?

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How come they thought putting a bit of off-coloured prosthetic on the incredibly attractive Lydia West would put anyone off?

The TV and film industry in general has an issue with this, fumbling to present unattractive people while staunchly refusing to even think about casting anyone less than conventionally beautiful. Dracula, however, had already presented some suitably ghastly ghouls, and here went through an overlong sequence of coyly refusing to show us what the post-cremation Lucy Westenra looked like - then the shocking reveal was that, uh-oh, she's got a bit of latex on her face. I'm a man of the world and let me tell you, it would take more than that to change my mind.

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How come Mark Gatiss didn't stay behind the camera where he belongs?

This isn't to say he's a bad actor, but if he wanted to do Renfield, he should have done it properly. A show that's already had Dracula dressing up in another guy's face before tearing it off (for my money, one of the funniest things on TV in some time) doesn't need wacky comic relief.

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How come everything about the conclusion?

Okay, that may be a little vague. Let me rephrase it to at least be making a point, rather than inarticulately shaking my fist in the general direction of the TV screen - why'd they even need to have a conclusion?

Gatiss and Moffat are not good at overarching storylines, yet they will keep using them, and I simply don't understand why. The appeal of Sherlock Holmes is to see the guy solving mysteries - so Sherlock had the mysteries take a back seat in favour of examining the ever-more-complicated relationships of the Holmes family.

The last five minutes or so of Dracula's third episode crumble when exposed to the light, which is ironic, because this Dracula doesn't. Given any thought at all, it's clear that the inspiration here was that Gatiss/Moffat thought 'oh shit, we need to wrap this up'. It tries gamely to tie everything together, which is somewhat undermined by at least one dangling plot thread - which the writers have openly admitted was left there in the hopes of getting a second season.

Bram Stoker's novel, spoiler alert, ends with the Count getting staked - but this adaptation went off those rails long ago. The central charm of it is the battle of wits between Dracula and Van Helsing, seeing them try and one-up each other while trading sexually charged barbs in much the same way as Sherlock and Moriarty (or at least the Sherlock and Moriarty that Gatfat gave us). This is a dynamic which could carry on indefinitely, and would have done better if it had, rather than been sidetracked into an unnatural-seeming ending.

#dracula #claes bang #stephen moffat #mark gatiss