come anticipate guillermo del toro's "at the mountains of madness" with me

Supposedly Dagon is a good Chthulu-mythos adaptation, based on The Shadow Over Innsmouth, but I haven't seen it.

lovecraft is 'unfilmable' in the sense that a lot of the elder gods mythos revolves around physically impossible things--angles that dont exist in 3d space, colors that shouldnt be seen by the human eye

but i dont think that means no one should try. and i think del toro has the best shot of almost anyone working to actually make it work

yeah, dagon is awesome! one of my favorite movies. operates w/in the mythos and tells a great story. lead actor is atrocious though, as is the woman who plays his wife (a smaller role). doesn't bother me, but they're awful enough to warrant an advance notice.

a lot of folks rep for dagon but I couldn't get into it. starts off well, early stuff with the townspeople is creepy but goes downhill from there imo. final scenes get wild but it's too little too late.

Yeah, I loved Dagon.

angles that dont exist in 3d space, colors that shouldnt be seen by the human eye

yeah, but i think that these kinds of things can be suggested, even half-depicted. you know, like mc escher drew pictures of things that couldn't physically exist.

Angles that don't exist in 3D space - isn't this what CGI was invented for?

was watching hellboy the other day, the strange massive beast floating around in the beginning when rasputin opens the portal was def a nod to an elder god

true. lots of nods to the old ones in mignola's comics to begin with though. much more so than in the movies.

isn't this what CGI was invented for?

this is what multi-million dollar 3D CGI was invented for

i.e., hell yes

Yeah, that was kinda what I was getting at.

(I have yet to see a nu-3D movie but I imagine the possibilities for non-Euclidean architecture could be mind-boggling)

if del toro can't do this no one can

i guess? i mean, when i say "cant exist in 3d space" what i mean is "cant physically exist such that the human mind can process them" which is what i always understood to be going on in hpl stories. like--what i imagine those descriptions to be is of stuff that literally cant be imagined, in some sense. its what i love about lovecraft!

thats an xxxxp or something

with 3d you probably can't drive people mad, but you could make a few of them barf.

here's hoping for some barf.

come anticipate assayas' "at the mountains of madness" with me

I took it more to be like, perceptual illusions that fucked with the human mind's concepts of space and time.

x-post to max

would be funny if they advertised this film with a disclaimer that seeing it might DRIVE YOU INSANE

too bad brakhage is dead

contenderizer and i are talking about the same cthulhu film i think.

there are some other ones floating around that are utter shit tho

they should have a nurse outside the theater in case anyone DIES OF FRIGHT

this one?

xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHuY2wXTd0o

i have that one on dvd, it's bitchin'

pretty faithful, too!

3d really needs to embrace it's chintzy william castle heritage

as soon as i make this argt i realize i don't know what i'm talking about

no way you're totally right!

think about it! dudes dressed up as shoggoths popping out of the aisles at the right moment of the movie. it would be awesome.

miike should be making 3d movies instead of cameron

I took it more to be like, perceptual illusions that fucked with the human mind's concepts of space and time.

x-post to max

― procedurally generated pidyn (Masonic Boom), Thursday, July 29, 2010 5:23 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

aw no man i always conceived of those descriptions as like... stuff completely incomprehensible by the human mind. not 'illusions' but i dunno. crazy n-dimensional stuff of which humans can only grasp a portion of. i like reading him next to irritating hard sci-fi authors who are super concerned w/ making their stuff scientifically accurate to a certain extent, b/c hpl goes in the completely opposite direction--if its not literally impossible w/in the realm of scientific thought than he doesnt care

my reading/interpretation follows max's - always thought this was key to the Elder Gods/Cthulhu mythos stuff, that these are things that are beyond the grasp of our pitifully limited consciousnesses, and thus when we come into contact with them, our minds are broken, are souls crushed, etc.

our souls

OK, I see what you mean. Kind of like the bit in Cosmos where Carl Sagan talks about the Tesseract and shows that weird hypercube with the 45% angles and says "now imagine if all the angles were 90%" - that it's hard to perceptually grasp, but you can imagine it. I do think there are ways of getting around that, if it's cleverly done.

I suppose what I mean by "perceptual illusion" is that the brain can't quite render it properly, so it's the kind of thing that shifts every time you look at it, in ways that it shouldn't shift if it were a natural angle.

(But then again, I always think of the towers of the Barbican of being vaguely Lovecraftian because their angles aren't 90% at the corners, so they seem to be further away and closer than they appear as you walk up towards them, because the brain keeps trying to straighten them.)

(But then again, I always think of the towers of the Barbican of being vaguely Lovecraftian because their angles aren't 90% at the corners, so they seem to be further away and closer than they appear as you walk up towards them, because the brain keeps trying to straighten them.)

Had this after a Christmas drink round there once.

No, it's not the drink, the Barbican tower really is like that. I went to a party in a flat in it, and it's just not quite square.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/85/258902697_c315f904e9.jpg

^^^^^^^puny human brane cannot comprehend

Christ, thank God for that. I was busy worrying about the nameless horror that was going to confront me at every corner, but it was just an architectural quirk. (Actually wasn't the house in The Haunting built like that? That film allus gave me the willies as well).

xpost No!!!!! (Leaves final insane thoughts on stylogram and sends to cousin)

ya i agree with max/shakey

i think you could think of some fun ways to suggest that shit though, i mean what HP lovecraft is also talking about is stuff that shouldn't literally be even write-aboutable so

can't remember the plot to this story, but i know the typical lovecraft arc - is this is going to be 90 minutes of atmosphere and then 5 minutes of face-ripping CGI?

A huge part of the story in this one is basically just the protagonists exploring and figuring out the history of the Elder Things by deciphering murals

good

xpost -- Thus my reference to that above y'see. :-D

they're probably gonna have to sex it up a bit to make the movie more palatable for most people. hopefully del toro will at least keep the mutant penguins!

by "sex it up" i of course mean "give the monsters boobs"

Or they could just adapt this

Meantime, this actually looks of possible interest.

http://www.ibtimes.com/data/articleimgs/42030-people-guillermo-del-toro.jpg

"the tits on the mutant penguins will be truly extraordinary"

xpost -- have fun with the sneak preview.

"This scenario is a complex one. Mood and confusion play large parts in the evolving story—confusion over loyalties, allegiances, identities, and even the morality of duty. In the end the investigators find great responsibilities in their hands, and discover that the burden is not one they can ever put down."

find out what happens when explorers stop being polite...and start getting real

shub niggurath's clit

Can someone debunk the Tom Cruise lead rumors so I can relax and know this movie will be excellent?

Even though he would guarantee the movie actually being made which would be nice. But I just don't want him on screen.

tekeli-li tekeli-li

Well, no need to fret over Tom Cruise,I guess . . .

After three months of deliberation, Universal Pictures, the studio that gave del Toro money for pre-production creature designs, has remained unwilling to give the director a greenlight, citing concerns over the film’s budget and likely R rating. On Monday, del Toro withdrew from the negotiations, and that night at ten-thirty he sent me a short, mournful e-mail:

Madness has gone dark. The ‘R’ did us in.

Del Toro had told me that he would not compromise on the film’s rating, even though a film rated PG-13 would have a much easier time attracting a mass audience. “Madness,” as he imagined it, would not be particularly gory, but he insisted that he needed the artistic freedom “to make it really, really uncomfortable and nasty.” Del Toro had hoped that a greenlight for “Madness” would mark a new golden age for horror films:

Del Toro envisaged “Madness” as a “hard R” epic, shot in 3-D, with a blockbuster budget. Creating dozens of morphing creatures would be expensive, and much of the film needed to be shot somewhere that approximated Antarctica; one of the most disquieting aspects of Lovecraft’s novella is that the explorers are being pursued by monsters in a vast frozen void, and del Toro wanted to make the first horror movie on the scale of a David Lean production. But a “tent-pole horror film,” as del Toro put it, hadn’t been made in years. High-budget productions such as “Alien” and “The Shining” had been followed by decades of cheaper thrills. “The natural flaw of horror as a genre is that, ninety-nine per cent of the time, it’s a clandestine genre,” he said. “It lives and breathes—‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre,’ the first ‘Saw,’ ‘The Blair Witch Project’—in dark little corners that come out and haunt you. Rarely is there a beautiful orchid that blooms.” He mentioned Hitchcock’s “The Birds”: “It was a major filmmaker using cutting-edge optical technology and special effects. It was a big-budget movie. It had Edith Head designing costumes, it had all the luxuries. And it was appealing because it had all the polished aspects of a studio film.”

According to Deadline.com, Universal executives felt that “Madness” would need to make at least five hundred million dollars in worldwide grosses in order to turn a profit, considering global marketing costs. It is possible that del Toro will now present the project to another studio.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/03/guillermo-del-toro-madness-has-gone-dark.html#ixzz1G3d845aI

Aw, fuck.

Sometimes it's just better than way.

nice article by Drew McWeeny about the state of the biz as it relates to 'mountains...' being scrapped

http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/motion-captured/posts/is-it-fair-to-blame-universal-for-the-state-of-the-industry-today

Universal badly wanted to be in the Guillermo Del Toro business. It was a priority to them, and when they made "Hellboy 2: The Golden Army," that was in large part a show of faith on the part of the studio. They wanted to make "Frankenstein" with Guillermo. They wanted to give him a home for his particular voice and vision. And when it came down to it, after a few years marked by expensive filmmmaker-driven flops and sure-thing properties that failed and cult fanboy favorites that no one turned out for, they looked at that R-rated $150 million horror film and said, "We can't." Not that they didn't want to, or that they don't believe in Guillermo, or that they want to make crap instead. They looked at the money they've made, the money they've lost, the choices that have led them to this place, and they said, "We can't."

:(

It was a no brainer that this would never be made the second they announced that del Toro wanted to make it. Besides, Carpenter already did the mutating gory monster in Antarctica thing as well as anyone ever will. For a visionary, del Toro is having some trouble getting the vision-thing working for him. "Madness" was never feasible, "Frankenstein" would be a disaster, "The Hobbit" was a poor fit. And yet, "Devil's Backbone" and "Pan's Labyrinth," his best movies, were both original scripts. Stick to your strengths, big guy! You've got great, original ideas. Make a movie out of your great, original ideas!

it's silly, you could totally make Mountains PG-13. The book isn't that violent, aside from mutilation-discoveries that could totally be managed at Star Wars-level gore.

50-ft penguins are the elephant in the room

50-ft penguins are the 50-ft penguins in the room

the cancellation of this project is so tragic and i hope he gets to make this movie one day. there are very few directors i'm as interested in seeing what they come up with as del toro.

it's silly, you could totally make Mountains PG-13. The book isn't that violent, aside from mutilation-discoveries that could totally be managed at Star Wars-level gore.

OTM

dude had a hard R vision

Not dead yet, getting better, etc.

Somewhat of an uh.

GDT entering competition for unluckiest filmmaker in the game

though i'm looking at the imdb for pacific rim and the cast is p awesome

so basically space jockeys = old ones, aliens = shoggoths

(seriously fuck off to anyone who thinks that's a "spoiler")

You heartless cynic etc

Nah it's just kinda obvious that's the route they're gonna take with Prometheus. Lovecraft invented so many sci-fi/horror tropes that are still being used that it's pretty easy to spot the influence.

Xenoarcheology

lame

Enjoyed the first episode of The Strain! (Don't know if it's being discussed elsewhere) Very well put-together nonsense.

That seems to be the general takeaway. Basically, as long as you begin by understanding it is nonsense, the rest comes very easily.

Wow, "The Book of Life" (which he produced) has got to be one of the most gorgeous films I've seen in years. I sort of want to see it again to see it in 3D. Loved it.

Did I say "Book of Life" was gorgeous? Well "Crimson Peak," while both overheated and undercooked, boasts some of the most sumptuous production design I've seen in years. I'd see it again in a heartbeat despite it having nothing much else compelling really going for it beyond some impressively bloody make-up. Because I mean, who really makes a ghost movie where the demonic scary ghosts are supporting players at best? Surprised they didn't just go all the way and reveal it's all been a book she was writing ... or was it?

Man, del Toro, what is up with you? You spend years juggling dream projects, then when you finally do make a movie - this, "Pacific Rim" - it's something that no one really wanted.

What might have been:

https://money.yahoo.com/tom-cruise-versus-cthulhu-inside-104759713.html

I would have watched that! V intriguing

I would have watched that on an airplane

Wouldn't mind seeing more of the concept art, that one image was pretty good.