True. The interesting thing (in my opinion) is how Freddy's Revenge is the darkest of the first six films. It gets so much hate for the "homoerotic" subtext, but it has a pretty cool atmosphere and a far more interesting concept than the films that revolved around Alice. The third one struck a nice balance between both extremes and is probably the first one to track down after viewing the original. The three that followed are equally abysmal, and for some reason Englund's makeup started to look like shit. It looked like his face was plastered with bubblegum.

I actually liked Freddy's Revenge. Never thought about it having a homoerotic subtext, apart from the obvious gay bar and towel whipping scenes, until I watched the Never Sleep Again documentary, where it was mentioned and discussed in great detail. Freddy's Revenge was a bizarre trip of a film, incredibly gross transformations and at times almost reinventing the rules of slashers, such as when Freddy emerges at the party and just randomly kills everyone. It's also hard to pin-point what's dream and what isn't, which is a style and atmosphere I would have liked to have seen more of.

If you dug Freddy's Revenge, you'll enjoy the below quite a bit.

http://staticmass.net/jesses-lost-journals-preface/

This is something called "Jesse's Lost Journal". It's a 68-part series of journal writings by Jesse's actor Mark Patton in-character as Jesse. He describes these as "subtext writings", exploring the themes and events of Freddy's Revenge from Jesse's perspective, as well as events leading up to and following the movie. I'm a total sucker for in-universe stuff like this, so it's a really interesting read.

--

In regards to the Nightmare series, Freddy's Revenge is certainly a ton better than the Alice movies and Freddy's Dead (although I'm certain an infected hemorrhoid is better than Freddy's Dead). I'd put it right under Dream Warriors in the grand scheme of the series, although not as close as I'd put Dream Warriors under the first movie; it's one of the only times in horror history I can think of where a sequel was as good and possibly even a little better than the original.

Also, the vein marionette death scene in Dream Warriors is probably the most uncomfortable death in the whole series for me. Just the thought of what's happening to the guy in that scene is incredibly disturbing.

Wow, thanks for the link, Subrick. I definitely enjoy in-universe stuff when it's from people who helped make it happen. Adds a certain legitimacy that's really worth the time.

Speaking of horror movies, I just caught up with the rest of the universe and watched The Blair Witch Project. I guess I can say it wasn't quite what I was expecting; I thought there'd be more focus on building the creepy atmosphere/supernatural elements, while a majority of the tension ended up coming from watching the group fight and grow increasingly desperate. So it was still tense, just didn't end up taking the route I had expected. The final sequence was pretty scary, though.

Granted, that may also have been because the creepiness in the film seemed pretty mundane to me; what was likely scary as hell in 1994 seems pretty bland in today's world of found-footage-horror-overdose. I suppose it's a film that really hasn't aged well, even though it codified the found footage trope and is still better than the majority of Paranormal Activities and their ilk.

The Hercules trailer is so awful! (this is the one with Dwayne Johnson)

Apart from the cliche fade-to-black repeatedly with epic sound effect, the CGI looks like it's from 2007 or before.

Wow yeah that CGI is very apparent.

Just finished watching Only Lovers Left Alive by Jim Jarmusch. Tilda S. and Tom Hiddlestone are a couple of ancient vampires living in the modern world: he is a depressed and overtly existentialist rock musician, she lives in the west in exotic places.
It has a really nice atmosphere and ambientation, there's a noticeable noire/hip vibe in the characters and scenarios (this movie reminded me of Nadja, another hipster-vampire movie from the 90s)
The characters are depressed and cultured vampires, of course the movie is full of literary references and pretentious dialogues about art and life, but I enjoy that kinda shit. O.L.L.A is some kind of vampiric, noire version of Before Sunrise (?). Nice movie for a rainy, boring night.

EDIT: I dunno if it was the whole eerie and noire vibe, the locations, the hairstyle or what, but they made Tilda Swinton look like the sexiest and most fuckable thing on earth. It felt weird (?)

I think I'm becoming that guy who posts links to movie-trailers, but anywho, thought I'd share the trailer to the new TMNT movie.



I find the turtles' faces a bit odd looking since I'm so used to the cartoons and the 90s movies.

They look pretty bad.

That mouth looks like a Grinch mouth.

I think they would have looked stupid no matter what design was chosen. Does anyone honestly believe even the old film's turtles looked good? The design of the turtles are so inherently cartoonish that unless you just completely changed what they looked like they are bound to come out really goofy looking.

Yeah man, the old movie their mouths stuck out further, like sorta beak-ish. Setting the whole mouthparts bit back toward the face makes them too awkwardly human. The 90's movie mouths definitely look better, even if they weren't as good at looking like they were saying what the voices were saying.

That looks fucking awful. Even worse than what they did to Transformers. Those faces look more like gorillas now than anything. Fuck Michael Bay.

I really wasn't as perturbed by the appearances of the turtles as I was by the inclusion of Megan Fox as April. Yeah, the turtles look really stupid and deformed and kinda roided up, but Megan Fox being the lead actress just completely sucked me out of the movie's world, which is the total opposite of what a movie should do. Considering her acting has not improved one iota in ten years of being in movies, this is going to be a painful, sad experience.

Oh well. At least there's still the kick ass new TMNT cartoon on Nickelodeon.

I will be pretending this doesn't exist.

Guardians of the Galaxy opens the weekend before Michael Bay's "Jizz on the Face of a Franchise" Part 38, so everybody should just go see the former again rather than waste money on the latter.

I feel like I'm alone.....but I'll give it a chance. Atleast until the next trailer which could chang everything. I was truly expecting worse, but honestly, it dosn't look that bad. Dosn't really look that good either. I don't know, the jury is still out for me so I'm reserving judgement for now.

I think it's the nostrils.

As for the movie, it looks like Transformers with creepy looking human turtles.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0453556/ Is it too late for a sequel to this?

More Youtube trailers!

So they're actually making Phantasm V now? Damn, good for The Tall Man for still being healthy enough to act even though he's getting close to 90.


I don't care much about the Ninja Turtles either way, but I honestly never got the "hot chick, but she's terrible with dialogue" reaction from anything I've seen Megan Fox in. Which would be the first two Transformers movies, Jennifer's Body, and This Is 40 (Minutes Too Long). I almost rented Jonah Hex once, but decided against it.

Jennifer's Body and Jonah Hex are both horrible, miserable experiences.

What he said, although Jonah Hex for me is so infinitely worse than Jennifer's Body that it's kind of insane, and Jennifer's Body sucked already. For comparison's sake, Jennifer's Body is probably a 1.5 out of 5. Jonah Hex is a -3 out of 5.

Jonah Hex was just a mess, but I forgot most of it afterwards. Jennifer's Body was actively, ear-piercingly annoying. Because of that movie I doubt I can ever find Megan Fox hot again.

But enough about these two turds.

Conviction - 4/5

Really good. Hilary Swank stars in an Oscar-bait role as a woman trying to pass law school to get her wrongfully convicted brother out of prison for a murder charge. She does a great job, and so does Sam Rockwell as her brother - both of them really knock it out of the park and you get to care about their characters a lot. The story is engrossing and well paced, starting off with flashbacks put in at the right time to give the film a sense of the artistic. Sometimes it gets a bit cheesy, as some real-life adaptations are wont to do simply to try and give it a sort of "feel good" atmosphere. But mostly it's a really enjoyable, compelling film. Recommended.

Something's not right about the film footage, maybe it's the HD but it looks way too youtube-indie-horror with random seemingly unnecessary CGI, like Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance, only less stylized and less locations. I haven't enjoyed a Phantasm movie since the second and select parts of the third.

Bought and watched "Wolf of Wall Street" last night. This is easily one of Scorcese's best flicks EVER. The movie is insane, there's just so much going for it. Hilarious dialogue, drug-induced hijinks, ludicrous amounts of T&A&V, and DiCaprio's awesome performence as the main character. Not to mention that for 3-hour movie, it passes by pretty nicely, though I would have snipped a few things here and there.

Regarding the weird turtles' faces: @rexxz, I loved the old films. Yeah, goofy customers et al, but it seemed to resemble the cartoons the best.

I think another problem I have with the way they're portraying the characters is that they're missing the whole "teenage" element. Maybe it's just me but from the little glimpses we've have, those turtles look like mid 20s or 30s gym-bros.

Other than the third film (Jesus what happened THERE?) the costumes in the original films were alright. It can't be easy transposing cartoons to real live with any degree of accuracy. If you ever want to complain about the turtles' costumes in the first two movies I refer you delightfully to this:

Honestly even more than the weird mouths and noses and Megan Fox, what bothers me is the tone of the trailer. FFS, it's called TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES, but the trailer is all serious violence and terrorists and buildings exploding and ominous BWUMS? The franchise is about ridiculous animal people beating up robots and evil ninjas with cheesy kung-fu and corny jokes, not Michael Bay-style "blow everything up" action. I mean fuck, at least Transformers lends itself to that kind of action, but TMNT is completely different.

Basically, fuck Michael Bay.

On a lark, I looked up the budget of the movie. The new TMNT movie's budget is $125 million. By comparison, the original TMNT movie's budget was $13.5 million in 1990, which nowadays is $25 million when rounded up because of inflation. The only reason this movie has a nine figure budget is because Michael Bay's involved. Can someone explain to him that nine figure budgets =/= better movies? The Transformers movies are testament to that. Also, in what universe would a TMNT movie need a nine figure budget? What the hell would nine figures accomplish in a TMNT movie aside from disgusting amounts of CGI and explosions?

To reiterate, go see Guardians of the Galaxy again the week this thing opens. At least that movie looks like good old stupid fun, and it might have the Episode VII teaser on it if my predictions are correct.

Don't forget, we also had the "pitch-increasing voooooooowweeeeeeeeeeeeee."

Though maybe I just have lingering resentment toward live-action TMNT because my mom wouldn't let me watch the live action show in 2nd grade; she said, after a villain summoned an evil spirit, that it was "too cultish."

To be fair I've never really liked TMNT. It has pretty much always lacked an aspect of seriousness which enthralls sticks in the mud such as myself . Maybe the NES games scarred me and that's why I dislike the franchise.

I guess you missed the boat seeing as they already made three of those films in the early nineties. Last time I checked, those were pretty great and goofy, as well as serious in spots. Also, Michael Bay isn't directing, so you'd probably do best to put your super-aggro GRRR somewhere else.

Anyway, I'm curious if anyody's seen Sabotage yet. I'm all about gun-centric ultra-violence and that movie looks like it has it in spades. Also, had to do some digging but unless you're in Los Angeles or New York, The Raid 2: Berandal isn't getting a wide release in the states for another two weeks. I'm still stoked as shit.

Eh, the first live action TMNT movie was pretty good for what it was. It was a well enough mix of the cartoon's kid friendly elements with some grittier stuff (there's quite a bit of swearing from the turtles in it, actually). The second one got a bit too kid friendly for its own good, and the third just sucked.

Every single clause of this whole paragraph deserves its very own facepalm.

Just because Bay isn't directing doesn't mean it won't blow. The director is Jonathan Liebsman, director of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning", "Battle: Los Angeles" and "Wrath of the Titans", which as we know were ALL cinematic masterpieces!

Damn, I truly hate that cliche. It's in every episode of Lost and countless other tv-shows to 'build' up tension.
That's all that needed to be said. Who'd have thought you could actually make an origin story of Leatherface boring. Liebsman obviously never learnt that visuals aren't the heart of a movie.

The Conjuring - 8.5 out of 10.

Wow......this is one of the best horror films made in YEARS. The subtlety of the scares is so nice, it has some standard jump scares which are good in their own right, but it goes back to basics of door slowly creeping, lights flickering, a noise down the hall. And honestly, it feels like they took everything great about The Exorcist and everything great about Poltergiest and managed to combine them into a damn great film.

I fully agree. I've never seen a movie twice in theatre, but for The Conjuring I went back three times. It reaches right down to the root of genuine fear, so it's very relatable and the feeling, rather than single visual scenes, sticks with you.

Recently saw it a second time (for the blog) - I really don't see anything scary about it. One of the more poorly written and boring horror movies to get a mainstream audience. But then again I guess that's kinda the norm. Just bad characters and limp, flaccid scares. People like it, I dunno - good for you. I guess I don't get it.