A Casual Source for Film News & Lore

Happy Independence Day to everyone out there! If you get the chance, sit down and watch a Fourth of July classic, the original summer blockbuster, JAWS.

Strangers on a Train is one of the quintessential Hitchcock classics. It has a great premise, interesting and often chilling characters, and is basically a massive collection of tense scenes and fantastic shots. While I watched it I was marveling at how well thought out each and every shot was and how nearly everyone helped to build the dramatic tension. In a modern age of cinematic crap, most directors and editors seem to believe that it is rapid edits and incomprehensible sequences of action that build tension as opposed to real cinematography. I’ve come to the conclusion that film is not so much an art anymore, but just a means of making money with whatever product they can turn out, no matter how lazily shot and edited it is. Hitchcock predates this era, hell even his death predates this era. He is from a time of classic movie making in which films were edited carefully and manually, not sloppily and on a computer. Film is expensive and he knew he had to make every shot count. And that’s exactly what he did.

Of course as I said before the shots build tension, and this tension is essential for the plot. The film opens with a tennis pro on a train to go divorce his estranged wife who is pregnant with another man’s baby. On the train a man recognizes him and introduces himself. They have a somewhat awkward interaction before the man invites the tennis pro to his compartment for lunch. There they drink and discuss various matters. Then the man suddenly mentions how much he and his father hate each other and how sometimes he wishes his father were dead. It is then he presents his idea for the perfect murder. He proposes that the tennis pro kill his father and that he will kill the tennis pro’s wife. Of course the tennis pro marks this off as drunken banter and doesn’t give it a second thought when he gets off the train. In short, the wife refuses to get the divorce she had wanted and the man kills her. The rest of the movie is then him stalking the tennis pro, trying to convince him to carry out the other end of the bargain. It all culminates to a spectacular climax on an out of control carousel.

Besides the wonderful cinematography, I mentioned above that the characters are great. This is completely true. Each has a function and each carries it out. The strongest however is the man from the train played by Robert Walker. Walker manages to play murderous and deranged in such a subtle manner that it brings tension to the screen every time he walks into frame. He is also the subject of many of the great shots in the film. Perhaps the most famous shot is of a tennis match in which the pro is playing. The man is in the audience and Hitchcock gives us a shot of the audience following the ball with their eyes back and forth. However one person is not turning their head. It is the man. He is staring directly at the pro. This fantastic yet simple shot gives me goosebumps every time. And it all builds the tension required by the film’s plot. We watch as things escalate and eventually explode. It is an exciting experience that is rare in modern cinema.

Verdict? Definitely a must see for any fan of Hitchcock, murder, suspense, thrillers, tennis, old movies, new movies, basically anyone! So rent it or download it, just see it any way you can. You wont regret it.

Up Next: Whatever movie I feel like reviewing. I’ll probably watch some stuff this weekend, though don’t expect a review for Transformers 3 or anything like that.

Of the five Hitchcock movies I watched last night I found this one to be the most chilling. Not because it included murder or deception, but because it is a true story. The main character in The Wrong Man is Manny, a Jackson Heights family man who plays the base at a local club. He, his wife, and their two children barely scrape by on his $85 a week. But they do scrape by. The first ten minutes of the film very productively and sufficiently establish Manny’s character. He goes to work, comes home to his wife, socializes with his children and helps them sort out their conflicts, he even goes to visit his parents when his mother phones to say his father isn’t feeling well. Manny is a good guy, making a living the best he can and supporting his family. However, we learn very early that Manny’s wife needs to have her wisdom teeth removed and it will cost them $300. Manny decides to go to the insurance office to see how much they could borrow on his wife’s policy for the surgery. While there, the women working in the office identify Manny a man who had held them up a few months earlier. Later that evening as he is on his way home, Manny is arrested. He is not told what for until he is at the police station and is in fact told very little altogether. I wont even get into the horrible police work done by the 110th Precinct in this film, except to say that they didn’t even let Manny have a phone call. Schmucks.

The poster for the movie claims, “An Innocent Man Had Nothing to Fear!” But for poor Manny, it seems he does have something to fear. Everything he does to try and prove his innocence ends up only making him seem more guilty. Every witness to the hold ups identifies him as the man. All poor Manny can do is watch as his reputation crumbles. By sheer lack of luck his alibis fall through and with every explanation he sounds more guilty. All the strain of a trial and investigation eventually gets to his wife and she has a mental break down. He witnesses her become less and less functional until he must have her put in an institution. His life falls apart around him.

The question of the film is not whether or not Manny committed the crimes, but whether or not he will be accused of them. Hitchcock establishes this tension like a pro. Throughout the entire film I was scared for poor Manny. I didn’t want to see him locked away and I didn’t want to see him lose his family. I was watching until the very end to see what would happen. Again what makes this film work so well is that it is a true story. It could happen to anyone and it just by chance happened to Manny. And at the end, after everything he has been through, Manny does not receive so much as an apology from anyone. Not from the police, not from the courts, not even from the women who wrongly identified him as the criminal.

Verdict? This is a deviation from Hitchcock’s standard murder thrillers and for me feels just as potent. I recommend people check it out, it’s worth the watch.

Up Next: Strangers on a Train

One of the few Hitchcocks I’ve seen previously, Dial M for Murder is one of my favorites. The story, adapted from a play, takes place almost entirely in a single room and is told primarily through dialogue. On screen this can be tedious and boring but Hitchcock manages to keep the pace up by constantly toying with our perceptions of who the protagonist is and who is in the right. In the story a former tennis pro is married to a young Grace Kelly. He finds out that she has been seeing a young, American TV writer and decides that the best option is to kill her, that way he can inherit her wealth. So he hires a man, someone he knew back from college, to kill his wife. He has it planned to the last detail and calls it the “perfect murder.” But of course things don’t unfold the way he expects and he is forced to improvise. I wont reveal how it all turns out though just in case you wanna watch it yourself.

While the premise is good, and the plan complex and thought out, the greatest thing about this movie is how easily you are pulled from side to side. None of the three main characters are guiltless in the movie. The husband wants his wife to be killed, the wife is having an affair, and the young American writer is the man she is having the affair with. Every one of them is in some way morally corrupt. The result of this is that we are easily swayed by the characters into rooting against the others. For a good chunk of the film I found myself actually hoping that the husband would get away with it. I don’t mean to say I sympathized with him but it wasn’t like I had sympathy for the wife either. However late in the movie there is a shift and all of a sudden the other characters take the spotlight and I found myself rooting for them to catch the husband. Suddenly he was clearly in the wrong even though I had been cheering for him only minutes previous. And therein lies the strength of the film.

All in all Dial M for Murder is a relatively simple film technically with one or two sets and a few nice shots and effects. However the characters drive the plot and make us question who we want to come out on top. My verdict? While it’s no Rear Window or North by Northwest, it’s definitely a must see for any Hitchcock fan.

Up Next: The Wrong Man

Another one Hitchcock’s lesser films, I Confess is decent thriller. It has stakes, it has murder, and it has characters that you don’t want to see get put away. The concept is simple, what if a murderer confessed to a priest who was then bound by the church to not reveal the man’s identity. Simple, but Hitchcock adds a twist, without the real murderer’s confession, the priest becomes the primary suspect. Another standout quality about the plot is that the murderer is not a crazed madman who kills for the sake of killing, he is a frightened immigrant, desperate and when he confesses to the priest, he means it.

As the plot unfolds all the pieces begin fit together. Every piece of evidence in favor of the priest also acts against him. Even when a woman comes forward, divulging private personal details and an alibi for him, it results in his arrest. This is when the movie reaches its peak. The priest is arrested and put to trial as the real murderer sits and watches, and even testifies against him. All the while the father’s priestly morals are being questions while in reality he is upholding is duty to the very end. I will not reveal any further details except to say that the ultimate ending is disappointing. I was satisfied with how the film was progressing until it made a sudden shift and ended on a completely different note that did not work for me. It seemed like it was trying to tie TOO much up.

I wouldn’t call this priority Hitchcock but should be checked out by any diehard fan.

Up Next: Dial M for Murder

This little piece of 1950s Hitchcock is one of his lesser known films and seldom makes it on anyone’s top five list. I guess I understand why. While it was a sufficient “thriller” of sorts, it did have some flaws. The primary flaw is one I still see in films and TV today. It showed a flashback of something that in the end turned out to be false. Flashbacks imply a memory of an earlier event and therefore imply truth. It can be overly misleading to show a flashback of something that is in the end not what really happened. For the entire movie the audience is under the belief that a character is innocent while in the end, in an abrupt reveal, we realize he isn’t. The film therefore has very little potency in its effect.

But despite its lackings, it has its positives. The leading lady, Jane Wyman, gives a strong performance playing an actress who does a good bit of acting. My personal favorite however was her father in the film. He provided humor, intelligence, and a bit of quirkiness. Overall the story worked, despite the misplaced flashback, and had a decent pacing. I’d recommend this for any Hitchcock fan who’s seen his more popular fare and is ready for his more obscure, lesser known films.

Up Next: I Confess

Anonymous asked: Do you think Peter Jackson will eventually CGI Martin Freeman's face into "The Hobbit" flashback scenes in "Lord of the Rings"?

I highly doubt it for a few different reasons. Primarily it would just look tacky. Everyone loves Ian Holm as Bilbo and there were a lot of people who wanted him to reprise the role. However as the production delays continued that option was seeming more and more unlikely as Holm is now pushing 80. And really, why anger the fans? Holm was a great Bilbo and deserves every second of screen time he received in the first movies. It’s not like Star Wars when they used CGI to replace the random British guy with Hayden Christensen at the end of Return of the Jedi. That guy had had like five minutes on screen and we couldn’t tell who he was anyways. Though it was still tacky…

Secondly I just feel like they wouldn’t really need to. Martin Freeman is a great choice for Bilbo because he and Holm look, not necessarily the same, but as if Freeman could eventually evolve into Holm. It’s believable is what I guess I’m trying to say. I mean look at the guy, he screams Hobbit material.

So yeah, no CGI face transplant for Bilbo. I think Peter Jackson respects Holm, the fans, and even the movies too much to do that.

I feel like I need to take a few minutes to discuss what I assume will be a short lived TV show coming to FOX this fall. It is called Terra Nova and appears to abandon all science fiction laws of travel through time as well as rips off characters and ideas from popular sci-fi movies of the last decade or two. I would normally summarize the premise but I find that everything I need is in the description on FOX’s page for the show. Allow me to dissect their words.

From executive producers Steven Spielberg [Oh boy! It may have potential!], Peter Chernin, Brannon Braga, René Echevarria and Aaron Kaplan comes an epic family adventure 85 million years in the making [Oh wait, I guess Steven’s contribution was this tagline ripped off from Jurassic Park. Notice the similarities in the JP poster below?].

TERRA NOVA follows an ordinary family [By ordinary they mean cardboard cutout] on an incredible journey back in time to prehistoric Earth as a small part of a daring experiment to save the human race. In the year 2149 [Only 5 years before AVATAR takes place!], the world is dying [Oh crap this is an environment metaphor isn’t it?]. The planet is overdeveloped and overcrowded, with the majority of plant and animal life extinct [Yep, definitely an environment metaphor]. The future of mankind is in doubt, and its only hope for survival is in the distant past [First rule of time travel, you NEVER fuck with the distant past!].

When scientists at the FERMI Particle Accelerator unexpectedly discovered a fracture in time that made it possible to construct a portal into primeval history, the bold notion was born to resettle humanity in the past – a second chance to rebuild civilization and get it right this time [Ok so this paragraph alone raises about a dozen problems in this show’s plot. First of all the trailer makes it clear that the portal is one way, if so, how do the people in the present know it leads to the past if they don’t hear from anyone there? Second, I wouldn’t call the notion bold so much as idiocy. Humanity has ruined the Earth once already, so they wanna go back and ruin it again before they ruined it the first time? The Doctor would probably break his “no guns” rule for that person.].

The series centers on the Shannon family as they join the Tenth Pilgrimage of settlers to Terra Nova, the first colony established in this beautiful yet forbidding land. JIM SHANNON (Jason O’Mara), a devoted father with a checkered past [Cardboard cutout numero uno!], guides his family through this new world of limitless beauty, mystery and terror. Jim’s wife, ELISABETH SHANNON (Shelley Conn), is a trauma surgeon and the newest addition to TERRA NOVA’s medical team. JOSH SHANNON (Landon Liboiron) is their 17-year-old son who is angry to leave life as he knows it behind [The angsty teen cutout!]; upon arriving at the settlement, he finds himself instantly drawn to the beautiful and rule-breaking SKYE (Allison Miller) [And not to be forgotten, his bad girl love interest!]. MADDY SHANNON (Naomi Scott), Josh’s endearingly awkward 15-year-old sister [What’s that? One of the kids is awkward? Wow! I wasn’t expecting two angsty teen cutouts!], hopes TERRA NOVA will give her a new chance to reinvent herself. Although Elisabeth’s medical training secured the family a spot on the pilgrimage, a secret involving their five-year-old daughter, ZOE (Alana Mansour), soon endangers their place in this utopia [You know, one of those Ordinary families who’s five-year-old is harboring some strange secret that could jeopardize their future…].

Upon the Shannon’s arrival, they are introduced to COMMANDER NATHANIEL TAYLOR (Stephen Lang) [Hey it’s the actor that played the mean military guy in AVATAR!], the charismatic and heroic first pioneer and leader of the settlement [Ok so it’s the mean military guy in a near exact replica of his last role…]. Taylor, along with his right-hand man, GUZMAN (Mido Hamada), warn the travelers that while Terra Nova is a place of new opportunities and fresh beginnings, all is not as idyllic as it initially appears. Along with blue skies, towering waterfalls and lush vegetation, the surrounding terrain is teeming with danger – and not just of the man-eating dinosaur variety [I bet they couldn’t wait to drop the dino duzie]. There is also a splinter colony of renegades led by the battle-hardened MIRA (Christine Adams), who is vehemently opposed to Taylor and his leadership [I could be wrong, but perhaps this is another AVATAR parallel? Could this renegade band of misfits perhaps be filling in for the lack of tall, blue natives?].

Even more threatening than what lies outside the protective walls of the colony is the chilling possibility that something sinister is happening inside Terra Nova. The Shannons will come to suspect that not everyone on this mission has the same idea of how to best save mankind; in fact, there may be forces intent on destroying this new world before it even begins [Oh great, they send a bunch of people to prehistoric times to start a new human civilization and it’s already corrupt!].

And that’s FOX’s summary. Yeah. I CAN’T WAIT to see how it turns out. Though honestly if at the end of the first episode the universe hasn’t ripped itself apart due to the massive time paradox formed by this show’s guiding idea, I can’t say it will have won me over. But laws of time travel aside, this whole thing seems like a weak attempt on FOX’s part to get dinosaurs and people into the same shot on a weekly basis. I feel like they would have been better off with an updated version of Gilligan’s Island in which the island is more like Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lost World. But even cashing in on the dino appeal likely wont last seeing as the dinosaurs in the trailer look like their out of a Discovery documentary from 2001.

At best, I smell a mid season cancellation and a very poor investment on the part of FOX. Though don’t hold me to that, the TV viewing public seems to be more and more susceptible to crap.

If the show does indeed get cancelled and FOX needs to fill a time slot, they should email me, I have some ideas. (Sorta joking but really not.)

*SPOILER ALERT: ANYONE WHO HAS NOT WATCHED THE FIRST SEVEN EPISODES OF SERIES 6 OF DOCTOR WHO SHOULD STOP READING*

Anyone who keeps up with the British TV show, Doctor Who, knows that this season started out with a bang, somewhat literally. The first episode begins with the Doctor returning to his Series 5 companions, Amy and Rory, at the ripe old age of 1109, a good 200 years older than he was when they last saw him only two months prior. Joining them is River Song, the Doctor’s future companion, a character who who is shrouded in as much mystery as the Doctor himself.

So he invites his friends to America where they meet up in the middle of the desert and have a picnic next to a lake. During the picnic an astronaut emerges from the lake. The Doctor approaches the strange and impossible figure, telling the others to not follow him, not matter what. For some reason, they for once abide by what he said. The Doctor knows who the astronaut is and is then promptly shot to death with some sort of laser gun. He begins to regenerate but is shot again, making him dead dead. The season’s first WTF moment.

(All that is missing is a prolonged “NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!”)

All seems lost and it’s only ten minutes into the season premier. But no worries, a few minutes later the Doctor shows up, an invitation identical to the ones they received in hand. A few moments of confusion ensue before Amy, River, and Rory realize that this Doctor is only 909, much closer to the age he was when they last parted ways. However the young Doctor is unaware that his friends have seen him die only a few hours before and they cannot tell him. This raises the question, what are they supposed to do? And how can they do it if the Doctor can’t know what has happened?

It is revealed through the course of this and the following episode that the astronaut’s suit is a life support system of some kind and within it resides a small girl. River remarks that the girl has broken out of the suit and therefore must be quite strong. In another scene Amy chances upon a room in an old orphanage that must have been the small girl’s room at some time. Amy looks around the room and notices several framed pictures, one of which depicts her holding a baby. Another WTF moment.

I almost forgot, the reason Amy entered this room to begin with is because she saw a one eyed woman looking through a view slot, which once it closed, disappeared. REMEMBER THIS FOR LATER!

Amy then gets kidnapped by the Silence who have apparently been the ones taking care of the astronaut/super girl. The Doctor comes to rescue her, stops the evil aliens, saves the world and all is well. EXCEPT, early in the episode Amy had told the Doctor that she was pregnant, however by the end she says she is not. However when the Doctor runs a scan her with the TARDIS, it can’t decide between pregnant and not pregnant. Interesting.

However the final scene is the kicker. We see the small girl from the astronaut suit wondering through New York City six months later. She is coughing and clearly sick. A homeless man notices her and approaches asking if she is alright. She responds that she is dying. Then suddenly her hands and head begin to glow a golden yellow and energy bursts from her. Any fan recognizes the telltale signs of a Time Lord’s regeneration. Oh look, another WTF moment.

(I dunno why she looks so scared, if this were me I’d be like “Fuck Yes!”)

Throughout the season the Doctor and his companions continue their exciting and varied adventures But everywhere they go Amy sees the eye patch woman through a view slot. She can’t figure out who the woman is or why she is seeing her. Eventually she tells the Doctor and he combines this information with the ambiguous status of her pregnancy and forms a theory which he keeps to himself.

(Seriously, who is this Bitch?!)

Now fast forward to the mid season finale. We now know that Amy is indeed pregnant and has been a captive of the one eyed woman for apparently almost her entire pregnancy. She is being held on some sort of asteroid base which is defended by an army of church affiliated marines and headless monks. So the Doctor calls in his debts and assembles an “army” to go and rescue Amy.

On the asteroid he surprises the enemy and pulls off an elaborate scheme that gives him and his friends control of the base without firing off a shot. Rory rescues his newborn daughter and Amy and they have a happy reunion. Just when all seems fine and dandy, the Doctor looks a bit more closely at the baby’s DNA. The DNA is not just human, but also part Time Lord. The Doctor theorizes that this could be the result of the baby being conceived while in the Time Vortex.

But alas, the one eyed woman has fooled the Doctor again. The baby he thought they had rescued is really a fake, while the real baby is still in the woman’s possession. All seems lost when River shows up. She tells them all everything will be all right and that she knows that for a fact. How does she know this? Because she is the baby. River is Amy and Rory’s daughter all grown up. Cue the final WTF moment of the first half of the season.

(Amy’s “Da Fuck?!” face)

So where does this leave us? We know River is the Baby and we know that the Baby is part Time Lord. Just how Time Lord is River? We know that the one eyed bitch wants to use the baby was a weapon against the Doctor, so does that mean that she succeeded when we saw the astronaut kill him in the first episode? Remember in Flesh and Stone when River reveals that she has been in prison for killing the best man she’s ever known? Of course we all assume that she is referring to the Doctor. Was River the astronaut? If so, I guess she’s a good actress because she manages to look pretty shocked when he dies. Additionally, she puts on an equally believable facade when she and the Doctor are examining the empty suit. I guess she would have to seeing as stopping herself from killing the Doctor and/or revealing anything she might know would create one of those time paradoxes we have all come to fear.

But wait! The little girl escaped the space suit in the sixties. We don’t even know for sure if it’s the same person in the suit when the Doctor gets killed in 2011. And just how old does this make River? Keep in mind she has no real time line since she doesn’t exist in a single time period. Plus we saw her regenerate. Or rather we assume that it was her after learning who she is. If she can regenerate, how many times has she? Can a child regenerate into an adult?

I know it’s easy to just go with the assumption that River is the little girl as well as the astronaut that kills the Doctor. Though I just feel that’s too simple. If that were true why would they have revealed what we know at only the season midpoint?

I dunno. I guess we’ll just have to wait till fall to see what happens. The wait will surely be agonizing.

P.S. If anyone has any connections to BBC or Steven Moffat, please let me know because I’d love to write for them. (This is sorta half serious but mostly fully serious)

Anonymous asked: What's better, fast zombies or slow zombies?

It really depends on what you are looking for in your zombies and what kind of zombies they are. When creating a zombie film, it’s important to consider the following:

• Are the zombies supposed to be scary?
• Are there a great number of them?
• What causes them to become zombies?

Think of the George A. Romero zombie films. Romero’s zombies are consistently slow and lumbering. They are the result of some unknown disease or virus that slowly kills the victim before they are reanimated into a moaning, groaning zombie. In an interview with NPR, Romero was asked the same question to which he responded that his zombies must move slow because they are technically dead. The only functioning part of their body is their brain which causes their slow shuffle. Anything faster would be destructive to their dead and rotting limbs.

However, because slow zombies are easy to outrun and are therefore not very scary (see Shaun of the Dead), Romero relies on other techniques to create suspense in his films. In his films there are often small groups of people often with conflicting beliefs and morals. This leads to a healthy amount of human drama which results in the scariest thing being the way the humans eventually begin picking each other off while the zombies slowly close in. He also generally includes large hordes of stumbling zombies that are just as terrifying as a small group of fast zombies.

Now for fast zombies. The most common occurrences of fast zombies are in Zack Snyder’s remake of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, and in Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (let’s not talk about 28 Weeks Later…). If you ask me, I consider fast zombies to be an entirely different kind of zombie. Take 28 Days Later for example, in this movie people are bitten and become infected with a rabies like virus that quickly transforms them into the raging, angry, killing machines that chase Cillian Murphy across England. These “zombies” are not really dead and therefore are able to run at a standard speed, although it appears that they do not recognize fatigue. They are more dangerous and ultimately more scary.

Dawn of the Dead, on the other hand, seems to blend both of these types. It takes the death and reanimation from Romero while adopting the almost instant transformation and speed from Boyle. This results in scary zombies that are ultimately illogical. But then again they’re zombies, and the idea of zombies in itself is not that logical.

Ultimately the decision is rooted in the story a filmmaker wants to tell. Is it a human story with zombies as a backdrop? In that case go for slow and meandering, keeping the peril constant but not so much that it distracts from the characters. Or if you want a straight out horror film, go with fast zombies, they are simply more terrifying. The rules of zombie reanimation are not set in stone but it is generally smarter to remain consistent in whatever type you choose and present it in a way that doesn’t seem dumb.