Sorry this entry is about two weeks late. As usual, there's no excuse for it, really--just me being lazy.
Not much to report here from Casa de Bracken. It's summer in Oakland so that means one day it's 85 and the next it struggles to get to 60, but that's okay with me. It could stay 60 all summer long and I wouldn't complain. Maybe next month I'll have something more exciting to talk about here...
Inside: I don't know if you realize this or not, but the French have finally discovered something they're good at (other than waving the white flag): making horror movies. What started with High Tension has morphed into an entire gallic horror renaissance over the past few years (and just in time--I can't take anymore of these fucking Asian girl ghost movies). High Tension has always been the best of the bunch--until now.
Inside's premise is simple: Sarah (Alysson Paradis), a young photographer is very pregnant. Unfortunately, four months earlier, she was in a bad car accident—one that left her husband dead. Now, it's Christmas Eve and she's slated to deliver her baby the next day. Still depressed at the loss of her love, she spends the evening home, alone—at least for awhile anyway. Things become much more intriguing once La Femme (Beatrice Dalle) arrives on the scene. La Femme is a complete psychopath, desperate to claim Sarah's unborn child for herself—through any (and I do mean any) means necessary. What ensues reminded of a number of films, most notably Yukihiko Tsutsumi's 2LDK (wherein two women in one apartment engage in a heated battle to the death) only with much higher stakes and an off-the-charts gore quotient.
The film is amazing--it's one of the most brutal things I've seen in a long time, filled with great gore, two fantastic performances (especially the one from Beatrice Dalle), and a final sequence that's so haunting it will scar you forever. This is horror cinema at its finest.
Snuff: Snuff is the latest novel from Chuck Palahniuk (best known to most people as the author who gave us Fight Club). This isn't Chuck's finest work by any stretch (in fact, in some regards his writing style is starting to feel a little formulaic at this point and far less shocking than it used to--despite this, I'd still sell my soul to be able write like this guy) but it should please his legions of devoted fans--like me.
Porn legend Cassie Wright is set to end her career with a bang--or better yet, a gangbang. She plans to shatter the world gangbang record by fornicating with 600 men on camera. Snuff is the story of what happens in the green room while 600 dudes wait their turn to take their place in the annals of adult film history. Told from the perspectives of three men--number 72, a virgin, number 137--a TV star looking to revive his career, and number 600-- a porn film legend, Palahniuk creates a tale of tragedy, horror, and humor. In his typical fashion, Palahniuk has littered Snuff with lots of weird information about the inside workings of the porn industry (including various mentions of Annabelle Chong's gangbang from a few years back), facts about Hollywood stars and what they've done to make it, and his usual biting social commentary. Weighing in at 197 pages, this is more a novella than a full-fledged novel, and the ending isn't the greatest, but Palahniuk's B game is better than most guys' best work. If you're a fan, grab it now. If you've never read Palahniuk but are an adventurous book fan, this is still definitely worth checking out.
Finally, we close with something I really wanted to Geek Out over, but just couldn't.
Mother of Tears: I'm a card-carrying member of the cult of Dario Argento. Argento's films occupy numerous slots on my top 10 horror films of all time list and if you asked me to name my top 10 filmmakers in general, Dario's definitely included. That being said, it's always sad to watch your idols start to lose the magic that made you love them in the first place. For Dario, it's been a long process, full of peaks and valleys. Every time I see something like Do You Like Hitchcock and think he's totally done, he returns with something good like his two Masters of Horror episodes.
That being said, I was always wary of him making Mother of Tears. For those of you who aren't familiar with Italian horror, Mother of Tears is the third film in a trilogy started way back in 1977 with his masterpiece, Suspiria (and followed up by the equally impressive 1980 film Inferno). The films were about a trio of witches who secretly rule the world from their castles in Germany, New York, and Rome. Anyway, ever since Inferno, fans have clamored for the third film in the trilogy. Most of us assumed Dario would never make it--and we were right for thirty years.
However, now Mother of Tears, that long-awaited third installment of the Three Mothers trilogy, is playing in the US. I went in hoping for the best and expecting the worst. Optimism is for chumps.
I'll give Dario this--he apparently knew that there was no real way to recapture the magic of Suspiria and Inferno after three decades (and utilizing two writers who had nothing to do with the earlier films) so he just went all out on this film. The result is a deliriously stupid movie that features some pretty decent gore work but also runs at least thirty minutes too long and has what may be Asia Argento's worst acting performance to date (which is really no small feat when you think about it). Don't even get me started on the "poncho of doom" that kicks everything into motion. Is it nice to see Daria Nicolodi and Udo Kier? Sure. Is it cool to hear about Suspiria's Suzy Bannion in passing and see sketches of the Mother of Sighs and Mother of Darkness's houses? Yeah. It's just that the rest of the movie is pretty meh overall.
Maybe I'm too close to the source material--being a hardcore Argento nerd, that could certainly be the case. Even though I tried to temper my enthusiasm for the film, maybe I had higher expectations than could have ever been met. My wife (who likes Argento but hasn't written 80,000 words on his films and career like yours truly) and stepdaughter (who prepared for Mother of Tears by having her first viewing of Suspiria--which necessitated me giving a lecture on the aesthetics of Italian horror cinema and the work of Argento in particular before she was allowed to push play) both thought it was ok.
I guess I sort of know how the hardcore Indiana Jones fans feel now. They waited twenty years for Jones to come back and what they got was Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. We waited thirty years and got Mother of Tears. Both prove that sometimes things we love are probably better left in the past.
And that's it for this month's Geeking Out. Tune in next time when I'll rant and rave about...something.