Gimme a Break…

Updated on October 1, 2020 By Ken Begg 25 Comments

OK, in a bit I’ll be leaving for the airport to head down to Dallas. I hope everyone not attending has a great week. If I can jump on one of Sandy’s computers I’ll pop in once in a while and let people know how things are going. We have a pretty solid line-up I think. A two-day line up, to make up for the cancelled fest earlier this year.

In in the meantime, feel free to use this post to start a general interest thread.  Have you seen anything new (or old?) lately? Read a good book. Whatever. And hey, it’s (daaaamn) October already. What are you guys going to watch for Halloween this year. I’d like to say I’ll really miss all the great stuff they’re likely to have on TCM this year. Let’s be real, though. I really only watch anime now, and the quarterly season–jam packed due to delayed shows from earlier this year–starts this weekend, so I’m going to be doing a lot of catch-up once I get back.

In any case, I’m pretty excited about the get together since the spring fest got cancelled, and I’m sure I’m not the only one to feel that way. So you all have a great week, and I’ll ‘see’ you soon.

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  • Gamera977

    Safe travels everyone!

  • Ken_Begg

    Dude, you have to come join us next year.

  • Gamera977

    Yeah, I need to. Hopefully next year Corona-chan will hopefully be a little less of an issue and I’ll be able to get a plane ticket.

  • Eric Hinkle

    Happy trails! (Until we meet again.)

    Well, for reading, I’ve been going back through the Dresden Files to get ready for Battle Ground and — man. Butcher didn’t hold much back with that book.

    I will only say this: if you get tired of characters who seem invulnerable when they shouldn’t be… You may enjoy Battle Ground.

  • Have fun!

  • Gamera977

    Cool, I found the first half-dozen or so of the series at our old used book store and really enjoyed them. I think the last one I read was the one where the Carpenter’s oldest daughter was mixed up with the Farie Court. I need to get around to reading the newer novels.

  • zombiewhacker

    The TCM lineup is fairly routine this year, with the only surprise being the relative scarcity of Hammer Film offerings compared to previous seasons. However, Amazon Prime is chock full of free and included Lee/Cushing offerings right now (and Price films as well), a number of which I’ve never seen before.

    That and my private DVD collection should get me through till Halloween quite nicely.

  • Eric Hinkle

    They are very good with only a few rough spots here and there. I like them, especially for how the Carpenters get treated in them.

  • Gamera977

    I finally got a chance to watch ‘Gamera the Brave’. Not as good as the ’90s Heisei movies but I still loved it. It’s a kid’s film but still it’s great to get to see something innocent and sweet totally lacking the angry, angsty, and bitter attitude everything seems to have these days. Just pure fun!

  • Good news! A new Godzilla anime is coming. It’s called “Godzilla: Singular Point” and it has absolutely nothing to do with the horrible trio of anime films, beyond the the lot of them being on Netflix.

  • Ken_Begg

    Hey, everyone! I am back. While I was in Texas my Internet/Phone/Streaming TV went down, so that was pretty obnoxious. I’m off to work now (wow, a lot of catch-up). Back on Monday with MotD, and we’ll work our way through the stuff we saw at T-Fest. Have a great weekend, everyone!

  • Ken_Begg

    Yes, those films were really disappointing. I didn’t even watch the latter two. Hopefully this will be better.

  • Gamera977

    Ya know maybe it’s neither here nor there but I’ve been digging out a bunch of horror DVDs and Blu-Rays for Halloween. And they’re all from the ’30s up to the ’90s. Most of my favorite horror films are from the ’80s.

    Have there been any great horror films from the last twenty years? Yes, there’s been a lot of good films but nothing I’d list as a real classic. I’ve read some websites with people claiming Hollywood with their obsession of sequels and remakes just hasn’t been turning out great films at the same pace they used to in the ’80s and earlier. Or is it just my old greying Gen X attitude that everything these days sucks and pining for the ‘good old days’?

    ‘Kids these days with their fancy-dancy streaming services! They don’t know how it used to be when we trudged to the video store uphill both ways…’

  • zombiewhacker

    Defines what you mean by classic. If a movie is great but most people have never heard of it, does it still rank as a classic?

    Two of the best horror movies I’ve seen in recent decades were [REC] and The Orphanage. How many people outside of a few small but passionate film circles have even heard of these flicks? But everyone’s heard of Freddie vs. Jason, so does that mean it gets bumped ahead in the list?

  • Eric Hinkle

    I’m looking forward to reading about events at T-Fest. Glad you got home okay, and enjoy the weekend.

  • Eric Hinkle

    Talking films I just recently finally saw the remake of The Crazies, and yeesh. The earlier film was a lot scarier to me. Weird as this sounds, it’s because it looked kinda cheap. It had the feel and look of a report on the 6 o’clock local news. It felt like something I could see happening in a local small town, though my living in Pennsylvania might have something to do with that.

    If anyone else saw both the 2010 Crazies and the 1973 version, how did they compare to you?

  • Gamera977

    I dunno, it’s just I haven’t really seen anyone talking about any as really great films. Hmmm, I’ll have to check out REC and The Orphanage. Anyone else have recommendations?

  • Lets see.

    Babadook is worth watching.

    The Halloween sequel did right by the franchise.

    It’s not a film I cared for, but Drag Me to Hell has a lot to recommend it.

    Session 9from the early part of the 2000’s.

    The Void is also worth watching.

    Shaun of the Dead, if you count comedies.

    The recent Ready or Not and Underwater (God, that was this year?) are damn fine flicks.

    I could have missed some. I’m catching up, as it were, with the classics. But no matter the decade there’s always one or two Horror flicks worth seeking out.

  • It’s hard to imagine worse. You have access to some of the neatest monsters in history, the ability to create whatever scene you want visual without concern of special effects, and you produce a Godzilla as stiff as the action figure on my desk, a Ghidorah that could have been three snakes for the way they presented him, and a cameo for Mothra. So disappointing. The Hanna Barbera series was more faithful, and they didn’t even bother to get the roar right.

  • zombiewhacker

    I thought the remake was more one-dimensional. Townies good, scientists bad. Military really, really bad. In the original, some authorities were villains, but others were good guys who genuinely tried to save the town even though the odds were stocked way, way against them.

  • zombiewhacker

    Bear in mind, both films are in Spanish with English subtitles. If IIRC, The Orphanage was produced (but not directed) by Guillermo del Toro.

  • Eric Hinkle

    I noticed that too. The 1973 film may have been cruder in some ways but the characterization was much deeper.

    I also noticed that the mistakes everyone made in the earlier film felt like the kind of mistakes anyone could be making in those circumstances. Real-world stupidity and not Hollywood stupidity, if you know what I mean.

  • Gamera977

    No worries, I’ve watched enough Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Thai movies etc that subtitles don’t bother me.

    And thanks Cullen! I’ve seen ‘The Babadook’ and ‘Drag Me to Hell’ which I found pretty good and have ‘Shaun of the Dead’ on DVD. I’ll put the others down on my list.

  • zombiewhacker

    Just thinking, the same could probably have been said of Night of the Living Dead.

  • Eric Hinkle

    I suppose. I’ve never really been a big fan of NotLD, or modern zombie films in general. Which is weird because as I said earlier I am a fan of the original Crazies, which might as well be a zombie film.