Faux Voorhees - Canary faces Friday the 13th A New Beginning

Here's a little addendum to my October Horror Movie Challenge posts; this month I'm trying a little something coined #NewWatchNovember, trying to make all movies, TV etc. I see new to me.  Not going to make it formal or anything, it's purely for fun, and it's helping me be more decisive about what things from the unwatched Blu Ray pile I do next.  Part of this is taking care of a few leftover things from the October Challenge Pile, both clearing out the spreadsheet (yes, I have spreadsheets to organise my movie viewings) and making space on the DVD rack. Well during this sorting out, I realised that I had on the spreadsheet something that's been on there for ages which I still hadn't seen; Friday the 13th Part V.  The only reason I actually have a copy of it is that it's on the same Blu Ray disc as Part VI Jason Lives, easily my favourite of the entire run, but I've never even bothered to watch V normally, because of its terrible reputation.  When something is considered "the worst one" in a series like Friday the 13th, which isn't exactly a critical darling at the best of times, you know that's something pretty bad.  So given it was the date itself yesterday, I decided to have a mini-challenge; see if I could get a bunch more donations on the Fundraiser on the promise that I spend that evening (on a Friday the 13th that had started out very, very, very well) slogging through this.  Well, the people spoke with their wallets, so let's dig into the Friday that even a lot of die hard Jason fans have turned their backs upon.  Spoilers ahoy...

The Morlocks Will Be Right! - Leaving with Dignity? Yeah, right!

Wow, haven't done one of these in a little while.  This is the heading I use for a little political rant, and in case you didn't notice, quite a major political development happened this weekend.  The day I've been dreaming of for four years, The Furious Orange defeated.  But of course, from before the election, I knew that if Biden did win, Orange Julius would be a sore loser, and not go away without causing a whole heap of trouble.  Now thankfully, despite all of The Cheeto's boasting, and his lawyer displaying his legal prowess at in a car park between a crematorium and a dildo store on Saturday (that will never stop being hilarious!) his chances at actually changing the result are at a very low to negligible probability.  Here's a thread that can explain a lot of these reasons why better than I can.  The short version is that plain and simple, the sheer scale of electoral fraud he'd have to prove across many states, to get five digits' worth of votes disqualified in each one, when so far the only possible case of voter fraud to be seen is... a Republican voter trying to vote twice, it's impossible. (Mind, I am still touching wood after saying that; this is 2020!)  What I'm going to do here is just give my thoughts on why the administration is doing this, why some Republicans are going along with it... and a little prediction for something that might happen before this all ends.

What Would Ingmar Think? - The Canary Visits The Last House on the Left

Well, I decided to tackle the other big video nasty from the pile whilst I was at it.  Tackling Cannibal Holocaust actually did generate a bunch of donations (is that what it takes to make you give, MY SUFFERING?!?), so might as well see if I can go for a double.  It's the film that I think more than any other personified the sheer brutality of US exploitation cinema at the time, really got the ball rolling on quite a few other horror projects later in the decade, and had one of the best movie taglines of all time, which you can see in that trailer below... pity then it's such utter shite (oh, Spoiler for the review I guess).  It's 1972's The Last House on the Left.

Canary vs. The Ultimate Nasty - Cannibal Holocaust

Well, I was going to watch this one when the fundraising hit a certain level, but I decided to go ahead with this before then because I figured that I didn't want to have it lurking in the corner of the bedroom until next year.  So I decided to face it, a real challenge for me to sit through the whole thing.  As promised, I'm going to give my full thoughts on this one, mainly so I can properly purge the memory, and have something constructive from putting myself through it.  It's the poster child for the whole Video Nasties moral panic (somewhat literally, its poster was the main image used in a lot of news stories at the time), it's 1979's Cannibal Holocaust.

I'm not going to embed the real trailer, as even that is shockingly explicit, you can see it here if you like.  So I'll pepper this article with some trailers and clips for other cannibalism movies that I actually like.

Trailer of the Week - Theatre of Blood

Getting back into the blogging saddle again, so amongst other things, we're doing this again!  However, there is a sad reason for this week's choice.  Today we all received the terrible news that legend of stage and screen Dame Diana Rigg has passed away aged 82.  She has had a huge, notable career; in recent years she gained a whole new legion of fans for the part of Oleanna Tyrell in Game of Thrones, however she first became a household name thanks for her role of Mrs. Emma Peel in The Avengers.  Taking over as Honor Blackman had departed the role of Cathy Gale, she instantly became a true icon of a character, not least for her fashions.  (Fun fact comics fans; one particular episode of The Avengers, A Touch of Brimstone, was a big influence on The Dark Phoenix Saga in the X-Men, down to the outfit Rigg wore).  She then followed that up with her role as Tracey in On Her Majesty's Secret Service; not just a Bond girl though, this was the one that 007 actually fell in love with, and with Rigg in the role, you can believe why.  The ending of OHMSS still knocks me for six to this day, it's my favourite of the whole series.  She had a whole bundle of great roles over the years, including a few wonderfully OTT turns, like in The Great Muppet Caper and Evil Under the Sun.  To pay tribute to her, I'd like to reference a personal favourite of mine, one where it's clear she's having the time of her life in the part; 1973's Theatre of Blood...

The Film Canary - The New Mutants

It's very hard these days to approach a big studio film without preconceptions.  In this age of internet muckraking clickbaiting scu- erm, I mean 24/7 film journalism, you can often build up in your head quite a picture of a movie from all the sneak peaks, reveals at conventions, big news stories etc. way before you see it.  That isn't helped from entertainment press' urge to make every little thing that happens a big deal, portraying it as some sort of crisis, nearly always making mountains out of molehills.  For example, reshoots happen all of the time, they're not really that big a deal, and often they do work out for the best.  However, I think it's safe to say that The New Mutants is a case when the exaggeration wasn't that necessary, this thing seems to have been straight up cursed from the luck it's had, to the point that I'd only be half joking if I was to say that it feels like the outbreak of a pandemic was par for the course given it's luck.  That trailer below, the April 13th release date at the end?  That was originally April 13th 2018!  I am an amateur that takes this seriously though, so I'm writing this before going in to say that I am going to judge this purely on the state of the finished product.  There have been films made that were nightmares to shoot that you wouldn't have guessed from their completed state, so I'm going to set aside my foreknowledge of the troubled history of this one in watching it as best as I can.  If I do bring it up again, it will be purely to say whether or not the film transcends these problems, or if they really impact the finished article.  Right, into the cinema, with mask and hand sanitiser ready, let's see how it's turned out.

:One viewing later:

Well, I'm going to be bringing up the whole troubled production thing A LOT, and not because the film transcended it.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2020 - Fundraising Begins

It's that time again!  Start the jingle!

"Two more months till Halloween!
"Halloween!
"Halloween!
"Two more months till Halloween!
"Silver Shamrock!"

Canary Duty - Tenet, and a bit about cinema in the time of COVID

Woo, I'm back!  Now, before I talk about the film itself, I should address the experience of returning to cinema at all.  Since this whole lurgy business began, I've been wondering a bit about whether I've been tempting fate with my title of Canary, as I don't think it's ever been more appropriate than with this trip.  I was hmming and ha-ing about whether or not to go back to the cinemas, however I managed to book for a nearly empty screening at Odeon Swiss Cottage this morning (just me near the front, an elderly couple right at the back), and had a free promo code, so it seemed a relatively low risk in the grand scheme of things.  Besides, I work in a school, so in terms of risk, work will be the bigger one.  In the end, I think Odeon have mostly got the right idea, in terms of blocking off seats either side when you book, making sure everyone stays in their areas, use of masks, and cleaning a lot, I felt pretty safe.  My one concern though is that it's still possible in their bookings to go right in front or behind someone, which is when you think about it a bigger risk than sat next to them, so that's far from ideal, and also being a small screening with a teeny audience I can't talk for when it gets busy.  I say if you're not comfortable with the idea of going back to the big screen yet, I understand and don't blame you at all; I felt reasonably safe the way things were, but I will say that if the screening looked any more busy, chances are I might not have bothered.   So yeah, I felt OK on this occasion, but I'm almost certainly not going back as regularly as I might for a little while yet.  With all that out of the way then, here's the question; is Tenet the experience that demands to be seen on the big screen that will bring us all back to the multiplexes?

Lessons Not Learned - The Fall of the Studio System

Hey, I know, long time, no see.  Well, that's what comes from starting a new job, and then a whole mess of terror about an apocalyptic global event getting in the way, sorry.  Still, I think I have some new things to say on here.

Now I'm not a very big player of video games, but I am interested in them, and seeing what the games industry has been going through recently has been fascinating, if a bit saddening.  Major issues of systematic harassment, exploitation of staff, corruption, and still making utterly obscene profits on top of predatory business practices.  With recent legal interventions on some of these points occurring, as well as a few other recent things which I'll mention in a moment, it suddenly hit me that where the Triple-AAA games publishers are these days is very similar to where The Big Five Studios used to be before a slow-motion trainwreck of their own creation mangled them across the 1940s and 50s.  So it's time to also dust off my "Lessons Not Learned" title, for not a look at a film going wrong, but close to the entire US film industry going wrong, and how we can see a few parallels with things happening in the games industry today.

Best way I could think of illustrating old cinema and modern video games at the same time.

The Morlocks Will Be Right - Cummings and Goings

Hey, I've been quiet on here for a while, I know.  Well, the general level of global stress and bru-ha-ha has not been great for the ol' mental health, not exactly ideal writing conditions (and entering the brain-broiling heat of summer isn't exactly helping).  However, I decided that working constructively on here is perhaps one of the best forms of therapy I can have, so to that end, here's the start of a new little column, The Morlocks Will Be Right, which is me going full political.  If you don't get why it's called that, have a little think about what message a certain Mr. Wells was going for in his work.  This isn't going to be that regular, it's just more here to help clear my head whenever the world get too... interesting.  So with that in mind, let's talk about the Dominic Cummings situation.

The energy I'm going for.  Especially with my quarantine haircut.

Happy Birthday to Me - 34 More Underrated Films from my Lifetime

Well, I enjoyed doing it last year, I thought I'd try it again this one too.  As a little birthday treat for myself, here are 34 films that deserve a bit of a better reputation than they currently do.  They're not necessarily the best of that year, or true classics, and some do have a better reputation than others, they just all deserve to be a bit better known.  Some are well known to film geeks, but they really should be household names.  Others are a lot more obscure, and just an audience to find them.  How many of these have you seen?

Canary Duty - Inside No. 9 Series Five

Another TV preview, however a pretty tricky one to review.  Inside No. 9, the wonderfully dark anthology show from half of the League of Gentlemen, Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, has developed a reputation for its twists in the story, though as I can say from the Q&A somewhat to at least one of the creators' annoyance.  So if I say anything about whether or not there are twists or big surprises in either of the episodes, it will colour your initial watching of them, you'll spend all the time trying to "guess the twist", when it's best just to follow along with the story and performances.  Thus rest assured, I will not be giving any spoilers, nothing that you couldn't gather from a Radio Times listing; this show has had plenty of surprises that you couldn't have paid me to give away.

The Oscars - My Countering

I was going to do a blog about the Oscars in a more calm manner, one where I have a proper look at the nominations and get into what they did right, what they didn't.  Well the thing is, some of the omissions were ones so massive, and some of the decisions were so wrong-headed (11 nominations for Joker?  Really?  11?  It's the frontrunner.  Are you kidding?), that I decided I had to do a proper retort to this.  Now there were some fine decisions made, most of the Best Picture nominations are very strong (and then there's Joker squatting in amongst them, like it slipped past the bouncer saying "I'm with them"), glad that Taika Waititi, Greta Gerwig, and Rian Johnson got some noms (although none for Best Director, when the guy behind The Hangover did), and that an international feature like Parasite (which you bet I'll be seeing as soon as it gets a proper release over here) has gotten a lot of love.  But still, there are some notable absences and bad calls, like an all male Best Director line up again, in a year when there were a load of female lead features to pick from.  So what I'm going to do is take a note from The Kermode Awards, and give my thoughts on what I think should have gotten in there.  Now these aren't necessarily my favourites of last year, they are ones though where I genuinely do think that they are of the calibre to deserve the nod.  Before I start, I can't comment on ones I haven't seen yet, so I can't say much about Rocketman, Little Women, The Farewell, or Dolemite is my Name, even though I plan to catch up with all of them this month.  Let's get started though with...