Noise: Cloverfield

Noise: Dante's Peak

Noise For The Peanut: Monsters vs. Aliens

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Noise: The Watchmen

Have a brand new surround system installed in Goopy's house (that's my mother).  So we are spending this Countdown to Halloween day playing the loudest stuff we can find.

Had A Blast....

....Literally!  A sound blast with films all in the DTS surround-sound mix.  Here's what was playing for Day 10 of Fright Month:  The Countdown to Halloween:

And then enter this

First of all--it is extremely violent!  I can see how many find it nonsensical, even gratuitous.  Zombie himself has been a bit touchy on the subject in his past films--saying that if you want gratuitous violence go watch "Cannibal Holocaust" or a Italian zombie flick.  Ok--I don't quite agree with that, I do think that there is a kind of "viciousness" in the violence that he tends to film.  I do think, though, there is some genuine thought that has gone into this remake.  First John Carpenter told him "make it your own;" secondly, this is deliberately set in a time frame that is forward of the original.  Carpenter's Halloween has the elder sister being carved up on a Halloween night in 1963.  The presence of the KISS song places the remake murder as no earlier than 1977.  So Zombie has moved the time frame--that makes his Laurie Stroud a late 90's high schooler.  Having said all of that, I don't blame a horror lover for not warming up to this stuff.  It's hard and it obviously interferers, or some might say "complicates," a much intrenched, even beloved, horror icon:  Michael Myers.

There are a few moments that I find a bit amusing.  As a sort of inside joke kind of thing, Danny Trejo's character Ismael Cruz (why Ismael???) pleads to Michael "Hey I know, I spent a little time behind walls."  Trejo is an ex-con, and he spent more than just a little time "behind walls." [Future blog warning:  I might include, at some point, Trejo's first film appearance in the really strange and compromised Runaway Train]  His wife Sheri plays a striper, and she was a striper--what's amusing is that she is reputed to have been good in real life--not so much in the bit part of the film.  Finally who in the world decided that Alexander DeLarge could leave his government provided job to star in a Rob Zombie film??

Next up:  Rob Zombie's  Halloween II  

I have not watched this before (so really how big a fan can I be??).  My live blogging is ending and I will provide comments tomorrow.  I have heard that this film is really awful--so I am going to brace myself with strong drink!!  It's been a pleasure!!  See ya'll in the A.M.

Halloween Countdown "Bumping Back"

This is really more in the spirit of Halloween, although it does at least mention Halloween...  Myers (Rupert Evans) blurts out "Hey crazy costumes uh?  Trick or Treat!" when chasing down Hellboy in a vane attempt to keep him from being filmed.  

Director and Monster Lover Guillermo del Toro, who was working until recently with Peter Jackson on the filming of The Hobbit, has stated that he absolutely plans to make a Hellboy 3, and cites that as being one of the reasons that he quit the Weta project.  Of course, immediate to his demands as director are his remake of Frankenstein and his film adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's classic At the Mountains of Madness.  Likely those projects would have been greatly delayed or shelved all together if del Toro had remained in New Zealand.