Chatterbox- Film

I think I may hazard sound simply due to the role it plays in the story (gurgling over the phone is a major plot point), and as to not totally ape the style of the HP Lovecraft Historical Society's film. I loved the feel of their movie, though, so it'll definitely be similar. And definitely black and white. I feel like Lovecraft should not be in color.

Beyond that, it's just in scripting, so nothing else is concrete, you know? I'd love to shoot on film, but... well... film is expensive. And so are costumes and effects. It may have to be HD...

But alas! Just scripting now. We'll see if it ever even gets off the ground.

It is a shame there aren't many other good Lovecraft adaptations. I heard that John Carpenter adapted some for In The Mouth Of Madness. Has anyone ever seen it? Is it any good?

Well good luck, man.

I've heard good things about In The Mouth Of Madness, but I've also heard it's the weakest of his Apocalypse Trilogy.

That sounds like a pretty cool project, Brendan. I only somewhat recently got into Lovecraft via a short story collection, but that was one of the stories I was getting the strongest mental pictures of, so I think it'd make a good black and white movie.

Already watched three other movies since my last post and they were:

Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. I very much get the idea that this is the result of a film student gathering all their punk/goth friends together to star in an intentionally campy would-be cult movie, but that's sort of what makes it fun. YMMV though.

White Zombie. I kind of found this more interesting historically than good (it's been called the first movie centered on zombies as such, but they're slaves as in the Haitian tradition). Still, there's a pretty awesome elaborate castle set to admire, Bela Lugosi is pretty entertaining, and there's some nice direction and zombie makeup.

Phantasm. A little cornily acted, but I still really liked it because The Tall Man is so terrifically creepy.

edited 28th Jul '10 12:00:57 AM by MikeK

About freaking time. Seriously, I've always wanted to see Del Toro's take on this more than the Hobbit.

edited 29th Jul '10 2:44:33 AM by ZeroPotential

Added the work page for Traitor, which I managed to dig out of the bargain bin this weekend. I found the film to be surprisingly good, with a fairly smart script and great acting (as usual) by Don Cheadle. After watching it I was honestly surprised that it did so poorly at the box office.

^ And ooh, that will be a must see for my little brother and I when it comes out...

edited 2nd Aug '10 4:53:50 PM by Meeble

Oh del Toro... Will you ever lead us wrong?

Watched The Most Dangerous Game yesterday. The one with Fay Wray from the 30s, and it was a ton of fun, though a little lighter than I was hoping. Still though, you can't go wrong with it. Wonderful action film. Eying Ivan's Childhood or Contempt somewhere in the next few days...

I watched The Importance Of Being Earnest the other day (I reviewed it too).

Oh dear... The Flunk Punk Rumble Live action is so good! I'm tottally hooked. Can't wait for the third episode >"< !

edited 9th Aug '10 8:13:13 AM by Dreamy_Hunter

Having rewatched Following, I've come to the conclusion that Cobb is actually the Joker, pre-facial scars.

Sounds like Charlie St. Cloud isn't very good. What a shock.

I saw Changeling for the first time last night, and found it to be quite good. Apparently the script stayed fairly accurate to the historical record of the actual events it was based on.

I added a work page for it, so Wiki Magic away.

Just opted out of seeing The Expendables this afternoon due to Hype Backlash. Everything I've heard suggests it isn't nearly as good as would be expected.

Saw The Expendables on Friday, and I think I can sum it up quite nicely: "WASTED POTENTIAL". It had some good ideas, personally I think the action was fairly well done most of the time. It had this good old school 80's no nonsense action film vibe that I really liked.

The problem was extremely bad and pointless romantic sideplot with one of the main characters (if you want to kill time in an action film, how about actually, you know, having the guys kill stuff). Another thing was underutilization of most of the characters, Stallone and Statham got plenty of screen time, but the others had far too few scenes to shine in in comparison (as a huge fan, the lack of Dolph Lundgren especially bugged me). Sure most characters get at least one obligatory "HELL YEAH!"-scene, but is that really enough?

Unnecessary sidetracking away from the action, not enough good scenes evenly distributed for all the main characters and the occasionally questionable lack of quality control regarding whatever. Still the action was good and there was lots of it (and I especially liked the frequent use of knives, nice touch). I really hate these kind of films. They actually do something good, but proceed to fuck the greater whole up by screwing up in other areas leaving me with far too mixed feelings.

I'd say it's on par with some mediocre Van Damme/Seagal flick from the 80's/90's, but it really could have been a lot better. Shame on you Stallone, you should have known better.

I went ahead and added the page for 28 Weeks Later. I honestly wasn't aware until I looked at the 28 Days Later page that there was a lot of fan backlash against Weeks... it seemed like a pretty solid movie to me.

My inability to find recent news on the prospect of 28 Months Later me.

I really enjoyed ''28WeeksLater''. Not as much as Days, but still found it highly entertaining.

JCVD had me almost crying at a performance by Van-Damme. Which is shocking, to say the least. He's a much better actor when he actually has a character.

edited 16th Aug '10 9:44:42 PM by BrendanSteere

Added the page for Suspect Zero. While I found the plot to be a bit too predictable to really get into it, the performances from Ben Kingsley and Aaron Eckhart were as great as you'd expect from actors of that caliber.

I'd say it's at least worth a rental.

Finally managed to watch Galaxy Quest, and enjoyed it immensely.

A comedy with a soul - my favourite.

I watched an indie documentary called Zombiemania, and while it inspired me to write some zombie fiction myself, it wasn't a definitive zombie doc.

Any movie about the undead that doesn't mention Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2 and only gives passing mention to pre-Romero flicks is incomplete in my book.

edited 20th Aug '10 12:45:24 PM by BrendanSteere

Saw Kick-Ass.

Still don't know how I feel about it.

edited 27th Aug '10 2:12:27 PM by Myrmidon

I feel the exact same way, and I saw it months ago.

I think I sort of feel like the movie might have been better without Kick-Ass himself, and more crazy competent people running around pretending to be superheroes.

As it was, it felt like the movie didn't know what it wanted to be, and I got my fix of "Well-meaning idiotic loser gets the shit beaten out of him by various people, but ends up being an inspiration" from Defendor.

edited 27th Aug '10 8:57:51 PM by Myrmidon

Man, Defendor was great. Watching it, I always felt like something terrible was about to happen, even when heartwarming stuff was happening.

Added a page for An American Haunting.

Hands up, whose minds immediately flashed back to this film when they first saw that subject line?

Just finished watching Wall-E. First time, seriously. The first half hour of this is quite simply a work of art, with barely any dialogue and most of the time if you're not paying attention, you forget you're watching an animated movie!

The last 50 minutes aren't as compelling as the first 40, but it was definitely cute and fun. And the "living is better than just surviving" Aesop was delivered without too heavy a hand.

edited 1st Sep '10 12:09:44 AM by Bananaquit

I added a page for Dead Air, which I was surprised to find out was directed by Corbin Bernson, the guy who plays Sean's dad in Psych.

I'm also surprised that this was a direct to DVD release, because I found it to actually be pretty good... it kept my attention a lot better than some recent horror films that did get theatrical releases, at least.

I caught it on Showtime this past week. It should continue to air for a while, if anyone else is interested.