The Deepest Cuts: NIGHTBREED (1990)

June 26, 2015 by Madelyn Sutton Posted in Retrospectives Tagged Clive Barker, Nightbreed, The Deepest Cuts 1 Comment

The Deepest Cuts is a weekly invitation into some of the sleaziest, goriest, most under-explored corners of horror and cult film online. Every title will be streamable and totally NSFW. Whether it’s a 1960s grindhouse masterpiece, something schlocky from the 90s, or hardcore horror from around the world, these films are guaranteed to shock, disturb, tickle, or generally blow your mind.

Though vampire and zombie movies have seen a major revival in popularity in recent years, “monster movies” of the sort exemplified in early genre titles like The Blob or The Creature of the Black Lagoon are a much rarer find. Nightbreed, writer/director Clive Barker’s second feature film, is like a monster movie on steroids. And where recent films like Drew Goddard’s Cabin in the Woods treat horror-movie monsters with humor and irony, the creatures of Nightbreed are not fucking around. This combination of unrestrained imagination and genuine horror make Nightbreed a completely unique and compulsively watchable film. Read More

Director Face/Off: Wes Anderson Vs. Richard Linklater (Part Three – Music)

June 23, 2015 by Lillian Angelle Posted in Retrospectives 3 Comments

Wes Anderson and Richard Linklater –prominent writer/directors, Texas natives (both have roots in Houston) and coincidentally my two favorite humans. Their latest films were nominated for Best Motion Picture this year and, delving further, their careers have evolved at very similar rates, humbly paving the quaint dirt road that was the indie film scene in the ‘90s with Slacker and Bottle Rocket. Onward, they transitioned to tastemakers, acquiring cult followings with Dazed and Confused and The Royal Tenenbaums. With each film Anderson and Linklater make, their toolbox gets a little bigger without compromising their eclectic and pridefully offbeat styles, one vastly different from the other, yet hauntingly similar. Which leads to the question, who does it better?

For Anderson and Linklater, a film’s soundtrack seems to be equally as important as cinematography or plot. Anderson uses music to form a specifically cultured aesthetic shaped from a balance of scores by Mark Mothersbaugh and rock ‘n’ roll. Linklater uses era-defining music as a sort of bookmark for time, shaping his stories around cultural happenings as defined by what was playing on the radio.

The Deepest Cuts: FRANKENHOOKER

June 12, 2015 by Madelyn Sutton Posted in Retrospectives Tagged Frank Henenlotter, Frankenhooker, James Lorinz, Patty Mullen, The Deepest Cuts Leave a comment

Sci-fi and horror nerds are championing the return of a certain much-beloved low-budget aesthetic heralded by the success of George Miller’s newest installment in the Mad Max franchise, Fury Road, and in the use of practical effects in evidence in trailers for the upcoming Star Wars episode. In the case of the latter film, this reliance on puppets and robots represents a return to the ethos of episodes IV-VI – but one needn’t go back as far as 1977 to see actors interacting with real objects in the same physical space for the sake of thrills. Read More

Director Face/Off: Anderson vs. Linklater (Round One – Reusing Actors)

June 11, 2015 by Lillian Angelle Posted in Retrospectives Tagged Bottle Rocket, Dazed and Confused, Richard Linklater, Slacker, The Darjeeling Limited, The Royal Tenenbaums, Wes Anderson 1 Comment

Wes Anderson and Richard Linklater –prominent writer/directors, Texas natives (both have roots in Houston) and coincidentally my two favorite humans. Their latest films were nominated for Best Motion Picture this year and, delving further, their careers have evolved at very similar rates, humbly paving the quaint dirt road that was the indie film scene in the ‘90s with Slacker and Bottle Rocket. Onward, they transitioned to tastemakers, acquiring cult followings with Dazed and Confused and The Royal Tenenbaums. With each film Anderson and Linklater make, their toolbox gets a little bigger without compromising their eclectic and pridefully offbeat styles, one vastly different from the other, yet hauntingly similar. Which leads to the question, who does it better?

Director Face/Off: Wes Anderson Vs. Richard Linklater (Part One – Reusing Actors)

June 10, 2015 by Lillian Angelle Posted in Retrospectives Leave a comment

Wes Anderson and Richard Linklater –prominent writer/directors, Texas natives (both have roots in Houston) and coincidentally my two favorite humans. Their latest films were nominated for Best Motion Picture this year and, delving further, their careers have evolved at very similar rates, humbly paving the quaint dirt road that was the indie film scene in the ‘90s with Slacker and Bottle Rocket. Onward, they transitioned to tastemakers, acquiring cult followings with Dazed and Confused and The Royal Tenenbaums. With each film Anderson and Linklater make, their toolbox gets a little bigger without compromising their eclectic and pridefully offbeat styles, one vastly different from the other, yet hauntingly similar. Which leads to the question, who does it better?

Girl Crush of the Week: Lisa Rowe

June 9, 2015 by Jill Landon Posted in Retrospectives 2 Comments

There are certain female characters in certain movies that makes us all sparkly-eyed with love–and not for their cleavage, their tans, or their LiteBrite smiles. These aren’t your blonde bombshells and your Standard Hollywood Love Interests. No, these are the women in film that women adore–for their spunk, their sass, their I-just-DGAF attitudes. Sometimes they’re “hot,” and sometimes they’re “not,” but what they’ll always be is memorable. These are our Girl Crushes of the Week.

I don’t remember the first time I saw Girl, Interrupted, the 1999 psychological drama based on Susanna Kaysen’s memoir of the same name, but I do remember that it came, for me, in a time of great Winona Ryder obsession. This was around seventh grade, and while part of me definitely hankered for bedazzled Abercrombie jeans and a T-Mobile Sidekick like all the popular girls, there existed a small yet ardent flame inside me that ignited whenever I watched Winona onscreen. Her dark, emotive eyes, the secondhand clothes, the insistence on shunning both what was trendy and what would give you a tan–this was an actress who spoke to the weird girls, the shy ones, the artists. Like a vegetarian dog offered raw meat for a change, my soul immediately perked up for Winona and proceeded to go crazy. I was a goner from my first Winona film, Beetlejuice, a grand slam for fans of Tim Burton, but which was a little too oddball-horror for my emo-teen aesthetic.