Clown vs Monkey completion schedule

CLOWN VERSUS MONKEY: King of the Apes

CLOWN VERSUS MONKEY: King of the Apes: This one is finally done, just added the graphics thanks to  Jonas Ferreira  , editor extraordinaire. -sd

King of the Apes

This one is finally done, just added the graphics thanks to  Jonas Ferreira , editor extraordinaire. -sd

OCD (i mean OCR) software test

Wow! That did not work at all! Ha!

SD

TEN: Ten Things I Noticed from seeing Halloween on the Big Screen for the first time, thanks to Atlanta's Splatter Cinema at the Plaza!

ramble alert!!!

that says halloween, i swear

no slides! hooray!

1. Halloween, being almost 35 years old, still can bring in the crowd. So nice to see how many horror fiends came out.

2. That being said, and you all know Carpenter is my boy, but I can not imaging the movie being able to rise in classic status if it had come out today with 2000 channels, Internet, instant streaming, and all the million of diversions. It's not just movie theaters and TV anymore. I think this one would get lost in the glut of "5 instant cult classics" that come out weekly. Not saying it wouldn't, and hard to say since Halloween is the face that launched a million ships, every horror movie steals from it. I'm just saying, this movie was not an immediate sensation, and was allowed to grow in reputation while still in the theater.

3. And! I never noticed how bear bones this movie is. It is really low budget, and seeing on the big screen really brings it home. Few locations and actors, and very talky and walky. People walking and talking, while some one is stalking. That's the whole movie. Not much going on. I know I'm seeing this through jaded horror saturated eyes, but really, this is not about telling a nuanced story.

4. I never noticed how much the camera is swarming around in the first half of the movie. The movie is designed to be more claustrophobic as it progresses, but man the camera is very dynamic, almost verite in the beginning. We are constantly moving.

5. Everytime Donald Pleasence opens his mouth, magic happens. He is batnuts insane, talking that cop's ear off. "More fancy talk", saith the cop.

6. Every man in this movie is a total moron, or a psychopath. I think Debra Hill is the magic ingredient to this mix. She adds this strong feminist undercurrent. Without her contribution to the script, this would be pretty nondescript horror film. The only real people in this movie are the women. The film focuses on the three teenage girls and as they slowly walk into the path of this truck.

7. Everyone has a date except for Laurie Strode. Even the kids are a pair. Laurie says that men think she's too smart. Everyone else paired up and are on their way to living happy little suburban lives. Debra Hill was producing Hollywood movies in her twenties. The idea of marrying some moron and getting him a beer while he watches the game would have made her puke. So here is Laurie, with this spectre date slowly getting closer. By Laurie striking at the Shape and defeating him, she is lashing out and rejecting the status quo. The Shape for me now represents the inevitability of life, of the excepted and the unexamined roles we take. Of birth, marriage, work, carriers, and just general conformity. The Shape is death by loss of identity.

I'm rambling film school bullshit, but that is what the Internet is for dammit!

8. I never noticed that the whole reason that The Shape even starts after Laurie is because she comes to his house to drop a key off for her dad who is in real estate. Some how I never made that connection, the plot entangled in my brain with the wacky stuff from the sequels about Laurie being his lost sister. It is scarier that this is just some psycho stalker, and him coming into her life is just a random bit of bad luck.

9. In the 70s I guess you could stalk around an elementary school and stare at the students while wearing a scary mask. Those were different times.

10. In conclusion, I love this movie, but now more because of Debra Hill then the Carpenter influence. Carpenter has always been better with a good collaborator at the script. They Live being a great example of having nothing to say once the first 20 minutes have played out, the first twenty being an awesome adaption of the the short story source material. Great movies are like this. They grow with you. I got a lot out of this screening but not for the reasons I was suspecting.

BONUS: The jack o'lantern during the opening credits is huge on the silver screen. I mean, BIG man!

sd

CLOWN VERSUS MONKEY: Clown Versus Monkey in the Grip of Power!

CLOWN VERSUS MONKEY: Clown Versus Monkey in the Grip of Power!: high level decisions are being made at this second -sd

Clown Versus Monkey in the Grip of Power!

high level decisions are being made at this second -sd

Best fries ever

Mmmmm, soup!

Happy 4th o' July!

TEN Reasons you have to see ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER

1. Bowler Hat! I'm a sucker for a good bowler hat. A character wears one.

2. Jimmi Simpson is the actor who wears the bowler hat, and the only thing I know him from is a scene in David Fincher's Zodiac, where he plays a shifty loser. I like shifty losers in movies. This actor has a weird vibe that I like.

3. You gotta love all the black long coats and top hats going on. All the vampires wear leather and have awesome sunglasses on. Oh, the vampires can walk around in daylight, that confused me at first. Just warning you. In closing, great costumes.

4. Marton Csokas is a great vampire character and he walks around in the daylight (confusing at first). He has some nasty teeth in the first scene and plays a really slimy dude. He seems less slimy later, but still, that first scene is great.

5. Marton fights Abe Lincoln in the middle of a bunch of stampeding horses. It was CG as hell, but I must say I have never seen a fight scene that takes place in and over stampeding horses. 

6. All the fight scenes are pretty neat. Great choreography. AX-FU! There is a great ax in this. For me, the star of the movie is the ax.

7. Zack Snyder must be proud that action scenes love his speed up/slow down method these days. I only mention it because because the CG blood erupting in slow mo was actually quite beautiful and badass. And I usually hate CG blood.

8. There is a great old creepy plantation in this. I'm a sucker for a creepy moonlit plantation with the orange lamp light glowing in the windows. Total Sucker.

9. So we are telling revisionist history here, and the sweeping wide shots with recreations of famous battles and old cities are really impressive. The camera glides over these insanely detailed digital paintings and you go "Ohh-Ahh!"

10. Speaking of "Oh-Ah", the ending battle on a speeding train climaxes in a real orgy if chaos and boom boom bam! It is pure spectacle, and not really convincing, but like the horse scene, conceptually really neat. Mainly, the little red embers coming from the locomotive fill the air and are really cool and made me wish I had watched this in 3D. I would say watch this in 3D (i hate 3D) just because...

THIS MOMENT BROUGHT TO YOU BY WTF! - the day scenes are so over-lit everything looks flat and boring. If you are looking at it through tented 3D glasses, it is probably fine. The night scenes are great, but in the day this looks like bad History Channel Reenactment Theater. Bluh. PLUS! I like the digital projectors that have been coming along, giving movies this vibrant clean perfection, but! 

ONE MORE WTF! You shoot it on digital and show it through a digital projector, man I see every pore on your face. It freaks me out. It doesn't look cinematic. It's too freaking perfect. I know its progress, but it looks cheap man. I respect all the work and artistry that goes into these movies, but I sat in my favorite seat, forth row up the stadium, and I was totally taken out of the movie by the perfectly defined inner contours of the actor's nostrils. I see too much now. I need some glaucoma so I can start enjoying movies again. 

Showstopper - Share an ax with a buddy, kill twice the vampires!

Kill murderbot, kill!

DROG/BLOG: Clown Versus Monkey in the kitchen of FILTH!

DROG/BLOG: Clown Versus Monkey in the kitchen of FILTH!: party's over, clown -sd

Clown Versus Monkey in the kitchen of FILTH!

party's over, clown

-sd

TEN reasons you have to see... PROMETHEUS!

1. Alien pretty muched changed my life when I saw it as a kid. And this movie happens in the same universe. All the doors look, open and close, and make the same noises the doors in Alien did. So see if for nothing else then the ecstasy that comes from seeing those airlock doors swish open and closed, see this movie NOW!

2. Did I mention that Ridley Scott hasn’t made a science fiction movie since 1982. Can I say that most of the ills in society are pretty much caused because of this fact. Did you know that now Ridley Scott has made another science fiction movie that world peace should be coming up any second now.

3. Did you know that Darth Vader made C-3PO? Me neither. It kinda ruined everything didn’t it? Well, campers, you will be relieved to know that by then end of this movie, you will still have no idea who built C-3PO. In fact, you will have no idea what anything in life is.

4. Related to #3: If you call this a prequel, it is the best case scenario. It gives you more of that universe you wish you could live in, but it doesn’t rob the mystery of the original. I still have no idea what the Space Jockeys are or how their tech works. It answered questions from the first movie by asking more questions, thus making the first movie a small peek at the much bigger universe. Well played, movie.

5. If I could make any geek purchase, it would be one of those tank go-carts. I will cry everyday until I get a tank go-cart.

6. Noomi Rapace is so wonderful in this. Thank you world for making her the lead actress and not uber barbie Charlize Theron. Both are great, but Noomi looks like a scientist and is vulnerable and you feel for her man. Theron is great here too, but I have trouble relating to supermodels, so there you go.

7. What does a robot do all day with no one to talk to? Thank you movie for showing me that!

8. So in 1977 Dan O’Bannon wrote Alien (called Star Beast at the time), and he had these ancient hive mounds in them, and they did not make it into the final movie. O’Bannon cried himself to sleep then woke up the next day and kept on being awesome. Well, his ghost can now go into the light because after 30 plus years we have the mounds. You get to see them in this movie. What the hell are you waiting for! Go see it!

9. Idris Elba may be the best thing to happen to movies in the last couple of years. You just want to hang out with that dude!

10. Sean Harris, who may be my favorite actor these days, who always rocks and who played Ian Curtis in 24 Hour Party People and a mutant freak in Creep and a freaky freak in Harry Brown and who is just my kind of performer is here and get this, he plays a tattooed red headed mohawked douchebag! And he has the best death(?) in the movie. Ouch, really ouch.

Showstopper! Medical Pod Scene is a gift to humanity that will bring a glow to any rainy day from now on.


This moment brought to you by WTF! - You like the Giger ship in Alien, well here you go, I'm going to throw it at your head! HARDCORE GARRRR!!!!!

DROG/BLOG: CVM UPDATE

DROG/BLOG: CVM UPDATE

CVM UPDATE

I cant stop, i dont know how it works

DROG/BLOG: CLOWN VERSUS MONKEY: Easy Street

DROG/BLOG: CLOWN VERSUS MONKEY: Easy Street: boom bam, an easy scene, slip slap SD

CLOWN VERSUS MONKEY: Easy Street

boom bam, an easy scene, slip slap
SD

TEN REASONS you have to see... BURN WITCH, BURN! (1962)

1. You know who Boris Badenov is? Ya know, Rocky and Bullwinkle. Ya know. That guy in the Jay Ward cartoons. Yeah, that guy. Okay, so the guy who did the voice of Boris was this cat named Paul Frees, and most of the voices you love from your childhood came from Paul Frees. He says you're welcome. The voice of Santa Clause in your head is realy the voice of Paul Frees due to him performing Santa in all those Rankin Bass holiday specials. Can you dig it? So I popped this movie in the other day and loe and behold there is this incredible opening narration that is indescribably cool that perfectly sets up the movie. I swear, you will be throwing up all over yourself with excitement after you hear it. No exageration. And the voice you hear will seem so familiar, like that of Santa Clause, but this time a melodramaitc Pagen spell casting Santa. So that's the first 2 mimutes of the movie and already you have been better served then the last ten movies you saw at the theater. Paul Frees is long dead but he just keeps on giving, man, from beyond the grave!

Here's some Paul Free's awesomeness.

2. Aren't old creepy cemetaries with tilted tombstones in these old black and white movies great? They are. Something fun about all that. Now you add some manic British actor running around and franticly performing a pagen ritual in a crypt filled with fake spider webs. Movie party has begun.  

3. This movie has some great meat to sink your teeth into. Relationships, marrage, sexual politics, suburban conformity, living with a crazy person. It all becomes a big vortex of ideas, but isn't showy about it. I think movies used to think they had to have a theme, and now if a movie has a theme it has to be BEATEN INTO YOUR FOREHEAD. I think the theme of this movie is... men are stupid. 

4. There is this really great scene with a tape recording during a rain storm that you will immediatly think Evil Dead. It is the best scene in the movie. All creepy wind and a banging on the front door. And the wife pretending she doesn't think it's the devil, and the husband trying to be calm and rational, though he's freaking out because he thinks his wife has lost her mind. And I was right there with him. Maybe she has lost her mind. Or maybe it is the devil. This scene is the heart of the movie. It works as a supernatural thriller and a domestic drama, all wrapped up in a creepy British chalupa.

5. And ya know, it's no wonder the thing works so well. Look at who wrote the thing. Two heavy hitters. Richard "when in doubt rip me off" Matheson and Charles "I killed Telly Savalas" Beaumont. I'll ramble on about Matheson later. He's a freaking genius will have to due for now. But Charles Beaumont was also a Twilight Zone writer who created the great Living Doll episode, with the creepy little doll vs a terrifying Telly Savalas. But my main exposure to Charles was from a little Roger Corman produced film from 1990, long before the Crocasaurus Vs Dinoturtle fad gobbled up every b movie studio and there was still a shot at seeing something weird at an actual movie theater, well... Brain Dead is amazing, and just a total mindbinder of a movie. It came out almost 25 years after Charles death. The author died at the age of 3freak'n8. WHAT! Drugs and alcohol you ask? NO! He had some terrible desease that made you age prematurly. He looked like a man in his 70s when he died! WTF! You watch Brain Dead and you can feel all sorts of mad genius vibes imminating off it. Charles was a gun for hire for Roger Corman, also penning "The Masque of Red Death" and the only movie Corman ever made that lost money, "The Intruder", where Captian Kirk beams down to the 1950's south and ignites all sorts of racial shennanigans. Corman said it was his favorite of the 57,000 movies he made. Didn't make a dime. See, Charles must have been one of those crazy, tough to be around people that are necessary if society is to progress. An artist should be one of "the others" that are not beloved and actively participating in society. I have no idea if CB was that guy. I'm just typing stuff.

6. Every suit and shirt our rational husband wears is some terrible shiny synthetic material. Looks like he's going to a party. Distracting.

7. Speaking of shiney. The British actor who plays the lead, Peter Wyngarde, is great and is also shiney in another movie that I love. He's Shiney Goldhead in 1980s Flash Gordon. 

You know, the guy who says EEEUURTH, when saying Earth. He's incredible in that. And in Burn Witch Burn, it's the same cool voice. I kept wanting him to say Earth. EEUURTH. so good. Oh here, thanks internet.

8. So I run around wondering if this is all in my head, and what is really going on in the movie, but eventually the movie has to put the cards on the table and say here is the external antagonist, though really the villian is conformity to outdated gender roles (whatever, I'm illiterate), but when the witch is revealed, man it is a great performance. Creepy and unsettling and a gas to watch. Can I tell you how much this movie has grown on me since just starting to write on it.

9. I loved that this movie was this unseen witches duel set in the stuffy tweed jacket world of acedemia. Doesn't that sound cool. Is there anything more cool then a witches duel? What makes this one so cool is how it is unseen, again all being a possible result of the wife's troubled state of mind. But hey, though it's not two witches, don't you love this...

and while speaking of that, how about this...

has nothing to do with the movie, but my blog, I like to ramble.

10. I was not expecting the movie to go all Kaiju on me in the end and it is a total mind flip and really well done. Some great minature and forced perspective work going on. Cool to see how the Brits pull off giant monsters. The movie loosens up and isn't afraid to have a good time for the climax.

SHOWSTOPPER - Our Mr. Rational is attacked by a brooding student with a gun and performs a most excellent karate chop on him, putting the little punk in his place and reducing him to a quivering, weeping pool of jelly. You will laugh. You will cheer.

PAIRS WELL WITH - The Craft (1996) - if you can bear it

TEN REASONS you have to see... THIEF! (1981)

1. Heist movies and sports movies. Two things that Hollywood can do with their eyes closed and still make a somewhat entertaining movie. I am so sick of heist movies. The formula - One last robbery before he can retire, but he has to do the job with some unknown element that goes against his code so things end poorly. You know it when you go into them that there will be nothing different. But unlike formula horror films, this type of picture is hard to screw up. Even a train wreck can be watchable. Same with sports films. we are geared to cheer at the end when the underdog goes the distance. I hate sport movies too. Heist and sports films, just don't watch them. I don't watch any horror movies that start with teens running off to the woods for spring break either. Just been there too many times and like I said, a horror movie relies on timing and atmosphere and some finesse to make it effective. It's easy to screw it up. Heist movies just need to throw out the steps in the right order and you will get into it. I don't like the Pavlov bell response I get from these type of movies. I would rather just avoid them. MY POINT! "Thief" is awesome.

2. You like Michael Mann movies? They are kind of a grab bag you know. I can watch the robbery in Heat all day long. His entire career lives in that scene's shadow. I loved The Keep as a child, and still love that film's mood, while still not understanding what is going in. Who is Sam Shepard in that movie? Jesus? Huh? I love that he's gone digital and his amber streetlights in Collateral where so neat. But that Miami Vice movie was two hours of agony. His movies are pretty, and the set pieces are brilliant, but you have to get through some long stretches to get there, and I don't usually like the characters he puts up there. They are all arrogant assholes. All of them. If he shoots a baby, the baby comes off like an asshole. ANYWAY! Thief is the most completely satisfying movie Mann has made. It is a tight little cinematic time bomb. Crackerjack baby! Cracker.... JACK! He shows all his strengths here.

3. All the characters are assholes, but it just works here. James Caan is THE antihero, but man you really understand and like him here, and he is really convincing as a guy who has spent 11 years in a violent prison. I mean his voice is. His voices and his delivery of his lines is dead on. He has this nervous twitch in his voice, sometimes nasal. It's such a wonderful vocal performance. Cann is a little too pretty for the role, but ya know that's Hollywood. The guy who they based a lot of the film on is in the film playing a corrupt cop, and he looks like a beaten shoe. Most movie goers want to see pretty people doing cool things. Joe Spinell was in the original Maniac, Eliza Wood is in the remake. That's how it goes. So Caan carries the movie, but just superimpose a beaten shoe over his face and it will seem more realistic.

4. I hate it in movies when the main character comes out and says what he wants in life, unless it is the end of Rambo 2...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-gYV6-YHjw&feature=related

... but in Thief he just has a little picture he looks at, like a little dream collage he made, and that was okay. You get a pass. Just keep it locked up in your unicorn diary.
 
5. This movie has great tough guy talk. Mann is great at writing tough guys being belligerent. I cheered at a lot of the lines, poetic. Especially the bad guy, well, the main bad guy, well, the antihero's nemeses. The actor is Robert Prosky, and he's in every movie, but the speech he gives to demoralise Caan is vicious! I could listen to it all day. Also there is this great monologue about prison life at a late night diner and it is terrifying. IMDB says that it was a true story! Remind me never to go to prison.

6. Speaking of the badguy, he dies screaming in this. A bad movie becomes a good movie if the lead heavy dies screaming. It's a scientific certainty. I rewatched Lethal Weapon recently, and was surprised how crappy it was, but it does redeem itself buy having the villain die screaming. I could have used more screaming in Thief, but let's move on

7. Tuesday Weld is here, I mainly know her as the nails on the chalkboard wife in Falling Down, but I guess she was a bit of a sexpot back in the day. She plays a convincing gal who always falls for the wrong guy. Not much to do, but this isn't a Lifetime movie of the week, we got tough guys to blow away. The interesting thing about her relationship with Caan is that she's just one thing on his list that he wants, a part of his perfect picture, he sees her as something to check off the list. SO ROMANTIC!

8.  You like Dennis Farina? No opinion, huh. Well, me neither until this movie. He plays a silent enforcer with a shotgun and a black trench coat. One mean scary mamajamma. You walk away thinking, "Hey, I like that Dennis Farina!"

9. There is a great factory in this, all smelting steel and sparks and hellfire. You would think they had wandered into a Highlander movie. But it's pretty. All Mann's movies are pretty, and his factory is great. This is Mann's first theatrical movie, and he really went into overdrive to leave a visual impression. The night scenes are so perfect, all the streets are are sprayed down and reflecting all the streetlights and so great. Really for me, the star of the movie was the night photography. It was 1980 Chicago with those cars and the dirt and it's just a time and place and Mann showing off, marking his territory. Just a site to behold. The day stuff is flat and boring, but when the sun does down, this movie explodes.

10. Hey look! Willie Nelson! He is a pretty good actor. Everybody is good in this. I think Willie Nelson in the early 80's was something of an icon. He was in alot of movies. My dad loved Willie Nelson. He has one scene here, blows it away.

SHOW STOPPER! - Not really a scene, but Tangerine Dream has such an incredible score in this. It is perfection. Electrosynth loops, like expensive John Carpenter music, like 50 tracks all going and making this wall of awesome that washes over you and pushes the movie along. It gives the movie such a distinctive personality. High tech. I don't care for Tangerine Dream in all cases, but it is a perfect fusion here. I can not imagine this movie being worth writing about if it had not been wrapped in the Tangerine Dream music.

PAIRS WELL WITH - Drive (2011)

FIGHTEVIL

SD

DROG/BLOG: CLOWN VERSUS MONKEY: Middle School AV Monkeys

DROG/BLOG: CLOWN VERSUS MONKEY: Middle School AV Monkeys: Max loves Shelly, yet it is a terrible love that can not be spoken. - SD

CLOWN VERSUS MONKEY: Middle School AV Monkeys

Max loves Shelly, yet it is a terrible love that can not be spoken. - SD