Is it me, am I just an old out-of-it fart, but the only thing that as they used to say fill the seats in cinemas is horror, kiddy movies and funny book movies? I mean, like, variety to speak of? For that matter, again, is it me or does there seem to be a preponderance of horror movies? What does it say about society?
I dunno, just asking questions... Just seems weird. Or again, just a clueless old fart being, you know, clueless.
I thought blockbusters were people of a certain hue who had the gumption to buy a house in an otherly-hued neighborhood…I am willing to be schooled otherwise.
Maybe weirder (again from an old fart perspective) is serious movies being done in the horror genre instead of being done straight.
I’d say it’s a sign of the times but the trend started before the times would have inspired it. Maybe it’s no more than horror being cheap stuff so with (apparently) shrinking audiences, go cheap.
If a shit ton of horror films first got green lit since November, it would make perfect sense. But this trend has been going on for a few years. So, you know, query.
And money on “The Substance” notwithstanding (I doubt we’re talking a nine-figure budget), it’s still a relatively inexpensive genre.
Were I to guess, it may have resulted from a hedge post-Covid: a cheaper genre that could produce the excitement bigger budget stuff did when movie going was a mass thing. Took awhile post-covid for theaters to recover to whatever extent they did.
Eh, someone someday will explain it all in their doctoral thesis…
BTW, this is where I'm getting my hope these days, Tubby and his superfans don't really give a shit if we deport 20 million immigrants of 20 thousand because "don't give a shit" is their default setting. Show 'em video of brown folks being thrown into a van, that's all they need. Hell, show 'em the SAME video of brown folks being thrown into a van, over and over, they'd never notice. All them brown folks look the same.
I didn't really see it as a horror movie. I think "Science Fiction" is the accurate description. Even if you consider "Alien" to be a horror movie, which I can see, I still don't see "The Substance" as part of that genre.
I always understood that the Michael Bay stuff was for simpler international distribution; comedy and drama depend on cultural cues, but shit blowin' up real good is the universal language.
Well, there is acupuncture, and use of bee stings to treat chronic pain, but horror is mental, not physical. A big part of horror qua horror is helplessness, loss of agency, and watching *someone else* dealing with that might be therapeutic. Like little kids hiding from Dracula or the Wolfman on TV. (For me it was Dark Shadows, and the paintings on Night Gallery.)
I read somewhere that movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers were driven by the Red Scare, the fear that people you know (Maybe even someone in your own family!) could be taken over by an alien force and become COMMUNISTS.
Funny, we're not seeing modern versions of this, with millions of us turned into pod-people by QAnon. Too early?
Yeah, there was a spate of articles and stories I vaguely remember like that, some about Commie anxiety, some about some vague free-floating anxiety during one of the most peaceful and comfortable (for most Americans) periods in history. The Day The Earth Stood Still as an expression of nuclear anxiety. The Age of Anxiety, I think they called it. Maybe in hindsight someone will call horror movies an expression of fear of the Other, or fear of each other, something like that.
I had an idea for a movie. You know how Silicon Valley is betting the farm and the seed corn on AGI, artificial general intelligence, aka the Singularity, aka SkyNet/Colossus/Deep Thought (the original, who came up with The Answer to the Ultimate Question). So AI right now is just LLMs, a system that can assemble words into coherent text given a prompt to create it. But it doesn't know about facts, reality, human nature, truth, etc. Fluffy stuff, but you need it to get to AGI. What if some billionaire became convinced the easiest, fastest, and only way to get there was to integrate an LLM with a network of human brains?
Thanks Roy! I really want to see this movie, but my own aversion to body horror is so strong it even puts me off some of Cronenberg, although I appreciate him and would prefer to be able to watch his work without peeking through my fingers.
You didn't have much to say about the performances and I know Demi Moore has been nominated (maybe Qualley too?). Do you think that was just nostalgia for her 90's heyday or has Moore got the goods?
If you prefer a doppelganger story with a little less icky, take a trip to Iceland.
2021's "Katla" stirs some Bergman into the volcanic slurry and strange goings on.
Doubles of people, living and dead. emerge from the volcano, and attempt to get on with the lives of their originals.The grody resurrections are more implied than explicit. But this isn't just body snatchers out to replace us. Once out in the world, the doubles become independent of any "programing." One even comes to the rescue of her bedridden original version. There are a lot of explorations of individuality, life choices and second chances. It hits on some of the same themes "Solaris" explored, but is mercifully faster paced, despite its eight episodes.
Jodorowsky's Dune is an excellent film! The director comes across as very human, interesting and smart. It's a shame his Dune was never made. I read the synopsis for the Holy Mountain and noped out. I saw El Topo at the midnight movies and Santa Sangre on Tubi last year. It was ....different.
Not a body horror fan. I Revisited some Argento films a few years ago when the remake of Suspiria came out. Films I loved in my thirties seemed mindlessly violent. Mostly the Giallo films (Deep Red, Bird with Crystal Plumage, Four Flies on Gray Velvet etc) Suspiria and Tenebrae are full of ultra violence, but also beautiful and mysterious.
I have a low tolerance for gore, body horror, sadism, and suffering. However good the vehicle, some people enjoy these for their own sakes. Try to impress upon them the reality of war, for example, and they'll grab the popcorn.
This is not to say that I avoid such media entirely. I am of this world.
Imagine a world where bodies, others' and ours, living and dead, are treated with respect. What would reverence demand of us? It's nigh inconceivable. An alien planet, still gross and red in tooth and fang, but only on the part of nature.
I'm given to tangents, so here's the Tao Te Ching on necessary violence:
"Peace and quiet are dear to his heart / And victory no cause for rejoicing [...] That is why a victory must be observed like a funeral."
I'm not sure what my problem is, but I've found that I can cope with violence pretty well, and that aspect of Cronenberg just goes in one eye and out the other (to coin a phrase), but what REALLY makes me cringe, uncomfortable, and turn away is pain. Maybe that's why Crimes Of The Future affected me the way it did - without pain, it's just engineering, as it were. But I don't think I could cope with pain, fear, desperation.
I didn't like "The Substance." I watched it for a few minutes at a time over several weeks because I could see it was good as art. The editing and camera work were, for example, very well done and portrayed a visual telling of the story rather than just being cutting edge or avant guarde or whatever for its own sake – but I didn't enjoy watching it. It was only the end that I really liked. Not the buckets of gore, but when she put on the mask and the audience couldn't tell the difference. That was both profound and hilarious.
Dennis Quaid, crass and stupid and filmed with a fish-eye lens — telling someone the “old bitch” is going to get canned in favor of someone “young” and “hot.”
1. Is this a thing now, "givin' someone the fish-eye"?
Is it me, am I just an old out-of-it fart, but the only thing that as they used to say fill the seats in cinemas is horror, kiddy movies and funny book movies? I mean, like, variety to speak of? For that matter, again, is it me or does there seem to be a preponderance of horror movies? What does it say about society?
I dunno, just asking questions... Just seems weird. Or again, just a clueless old fart being, you know, clueless.
Jan/Feb are traditional months for horror movies, same way that summer blockbusters come in, well, the summer.
With our new confederate nazi overlords, say goodbye to blockbusters, estival or otherwise...
"Blockbusters" in the original, dropped-from-30,000-feet-from-a-four-engine-Avro-Lancaster sense.
I thought blockbusters were people of a certain hue who had the gumption to buy a house in an otherly-hued neighborhood…I am willing to be schooled otherwise.
not until Musk brings back red lining
In a 6 trillion dollar federal budget, his close examination reveals that most of the waste is happening in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Red lining never went away. (Signed, a Black person who was looking to buy a house in the early 2000s.)
No, it seems like every other movie is horror.
Maybe weirder (again from an old fart perspective) is serious movies being done in the horror genre instead of being done straight.
I’d say it’s a sign of the times but the trend started before the times would have inspired it. Maybe it’s no more than horror being cheap stuff so with (apparently) shrinking audiences, go cheap.
There was obviously money spent on The Substance.
A film professor may explain Why Horror Now better than I, but I think I'm onto something here: https://bsky.app/profile/edroso.bsky.social/post/3lievwxevds2b
If a shit ton of horror films first got green lit since November, it would make perfect sense. But this trend has been going on for a few years. So, you know, query.
And money on “The Substance” notwithstanding (I doubt we’re talking a nine-figure budget), it’s still a relatively inexpensive genre.
Were I to guess, it may have resulted from a hedge post-Covid: a cheaper genre that could produce the excitement bigger budget stuff did when movie going was a mass thing. Took awhile post-covid for theaters to recover to whatever extent they did.
Eh, someone someday will explain it all in their doctoral thesis…
Did not view bsky bit; does it say "cheap to make, popular sellers"? Because that is what the genre looks like from here...
Basically, America is overstuffed with jaded thrillseekers and it takes more and more stimulus to get their sap to rise.
"jaded thrillseekers"
Look, if thrills are to be sought, don't make me get off my couch.
BTW, this is where I'm getting my hope these days, Tubby and his superfans don't really give a shit if we deport 20 million immigrants of 20 thousand because "don't give a shit" is their default setting. Show 'em video of brown folks being thrown into a van, that's all they need. Hell, show 'em the SAME video of brown folks being thrown into a van, over and over, they'd never notice. All them brown folks look the same.
I didn't really see it as a horror movie. I think "Science Fiction" is the accurate description. Even if you consider "Alien" to be a horror movie, which I can see, I still don't see "The Substance" as part of that genre.
Ya gotta admit it's full of horrors!
Yea, no denying that, but I think a horror movie has to be about some kind of monster killing other people, not just itself,
I always understood that the Michael Bay stuff was for simpler international distribution; comedy and drama depend on cultural cues, but shit blowin' up real good is the universal language.
It harks back to other times and places of disruptive change. Think Kafka. But I agree with you: Jordan Peele appeal. What's that about?
There was a noticeable bump in the percentage of horror releases but that happened in 2017. It’s been pretty steady since. https://www.the-numbers.com/market/genre/Horror
The world is too full of real horrors, so we go to the fictional ones so we can feel we have control over our reactions? Maybe?
As I said to Roy, the timing sounds weird unless it was related to insecurity about filling seats post-Covid.
Like when you have a toothache, and so you distract yourself from the pain by stabbing yourself in the palm with a pen knife?
No?
Well, there is acupuncture, and use of bee stings to treat chronic pain, but horror is mental, not physical. A big part of horror qua horror is helplessness, loss of agency, and watching *someone else* dealing with that might be therapeutic. Like little kids hiding from Dracula or the Wolfman on TV. (For me it was Dark Shadows, and the paintings on Night Gallery.)
Well, whatever it is it probably looks a lot like whatever caused the big spike in science fiction alien invasion movies in the 50's.
I read somewhere that movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers were driven by the Red Scare, the fear that people you know (Maybe even someone in your own family!) could be taken over by an alien force and become COMMUNISTS.
Funny, we're not seeing modern versions of this, with millions of us turned into pod-people by QAnon. Too early?
Yeah, there was a spate of articles and stories I vaguely remember like that, some about Commie anxiety, some about some vague free-floating anxiety during one of the most peaceful and comfortable (for most Americans) periods in history. The Day The Earth Stood Still as an expression of nuclear anxiety. The Age of Anxiety, I think they called it. Maybe in hindsight someone will call horror movies an expression of fear of the Other, or fear of each other, something like that.
I had an idea for a movie. You know how Silicon Valley is betting the farm and the seed corn on AGI, artificial general intelligence, aka the Singularity, aka SkyNet/Colossus/Deep Thought (the original, who came up with The Answer to the Ultimate Question). So AI right now is just LLMs, a system that can assemble words into coherent text given a prompt to create it. But it doesn't know about facts, reality, human nature, truth, etc. Fluffy stuff, but you need it to get to AGI. What if some billionaire became convinced the easiest, fastest, and only way to get there was to integrate an LLM with a network of human brains?
"...with a network of human BRAAAAAINS"
There, I made it more box office for ya.
Or too late, comrade.
Thanks Roy! I really want to see this movie, but my own aversion to body horror is so strong it even puts me off some of Cronenberg, although I appreciate him and would prefer to be able to watch his work without peeking through my fingers.
You didn't have much to say about the performances and I know Demi Moore has been nominated (maybe Qualley too?). Do you think that was just nostalgia for her 90's heyday or has Moore got the goods?
It's a solid performance. And she goes through... changes.
We enjoyed it, even all the gross parts, but it’s a little too long, imo. Moore was terrific, as was Qualley.
If you prefer a doppelganger story with a little less icky, take a trip to Iceland.
2021's "Katla" stirs some Bergman into the volcanic slurry and strange goings on.
Doubles of people, living and dead. emerge from the volcano, and attempt to get on with the lives of their originals.The grody resurrections are more implied than explicit. But this isn't just body snatchers out to replace us. Once out in the world, the doubles become independent of any "programing." One even comes to the rescue of her bedridden original version. There are a lot of explorations of individuality, life choices and second chances. It hits on some of the same themes "Solaris" explored, but is mercifully faster paced, despite its eight episodes.
!
Icelandic volcano movies! Let's call it a genre, we'll pair this one with Journey to the Center of the Earth..
Sometimes people go INTO volcano, sometimes people come OUT OF volcano...
Jodorowsky's Dune is an excellent film! The director comes across as very human, interesting and smart. It's a shame his Dune was never made. I read the synopsis for the Holy Mountain and noped out. I saw El Topo at the midnight movies and Santa Sangre on Tubi last year. It was ....different.
Not a body horror fan. I Revisited some Argento films a few years ago when the remake of Suspiria came out. Films I loved in my thirties seemed mindlessly violent. Mostly the Giallo films (Deep Red, Bird with Crystal Plumage, Four Flies on Gray Velvet etc) Suspiria and Tenebrae are full of ultra violence, but also beautiful and mysterious.
I wonder if that's an old guy thing.
I have a low tolerance for gore, body horror, sadism, and suffering. However good the vehicle, some people enjoy these for their own sakes. Try to impress upon them the reality of war, for example, and they'll grab the popcorn.
This is not to say that I avoid such media entirely. I am of this world.
Imagine a world where bodies, others' and ours, living and dead, are treated with respect. What would reverence demand of us? It's nigh inconceivable. An alien planet, still gross and red in tooth and fang, but only on the part of nature.
I'm given to tangents, so here's the Tao Te Ching on necessary violence:
"Peace and quiet are dear to his heart / And victory no cause for rejoicing [...] That is why a victory must be observed like a funeral."
"That is why a victory must be observed like a funeral."
is sorta how I would write it...feeling it either way...
If we ever have one, I'll try to remember that.
I'm not sure what my problem is, but I've found that I can cope with violence pretty well, and that aspect of Cronenberg just goes in one eye and out the other (to coin a phrase), but what REALLY makes me cringe, uncomfortable, and turn away is pain. Maybe that's why Crimes Of The Future affected me the way it did - without pain, it's just engineering, as it were. But I don't think I could cope with pain, fear, desperation.
"NOW A WARNING?" (Meryl Streep, Death Becomes Her)
I didn't like "The Substance." I watched it for a few minutes at a time over several weeks because I could see it was good as art. The editing and camera work were, for example, very well done and portrayed a visual telling of the story rather than just being cutting edge or avant guarde or whatever for its own sake – but I didn't enjoy watching it. It was only the end that I really liked. Not the buckets of gore, but when she put on the mask and the audience couldn't tell the difference. That was both profound and hilarious.
Yeah, I liked that bit too, and also the pathetic music as she put on her earrings.
Gotta make some signs, we're going to a protest in Carson City.
Good for you! Yell extra-loud for those of us who can't be there!
We've got one here @ the Capitol and I can't be there...
[cue snarl]
Dennis Quaid, crass and stupid and filmed with a fish-eye lens — telling someone the “old bitch” is going to get canned in favor of someone “young” and “hot.”
1. Is this a thing now, "givin' someone the fish-eye"?
2. Who watches TV Jazzercise shows, young men?
Don't overthink it Mr B (tho I would like to hear the young men's answers).
I will admit that, as a teen boy, I did take an interest in "Lilias, Yoga and You" on PBS, and this was not driven primarily by an interest in yoga.
Yo ga, Girl!
Took me years to master side-eye, and now they made up some other kind of eye I need to learn?
The trailer was more than I could stand.