The Thing

yeah, Carpenter gives him shit for considering himself an "artiste"

first viewing of mouth of madness left me flat, but i recall i was all 'ooh a new carpenter film it will be great'. then of course second viewing was more of a neutral position and i actually enjoyed it.

can't say the same for mars and vampire, they are awful.

The whole spooky recorded sections in Prince of Darkness still crop up in my mind as one of the creepiest things i've seen in movies ever.

Ghosts Of Mars isn't *bad* per se - it's just a rewrite of Precinct 13 with a little bit of Outland thrown in. Vampires is still the bottom point.

but there was no ice cream van scene!

In Darwinian terms: How would a Thing even evolve? Would it evolve intelligence? Would it need to?

Interesting exploration of this by excellent biologist and sci-fi author Peter Watts in his story 'The THings', which won all sorts of awards/nominations last year. http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/

vampires has some cool gore effects and a fun james woods performance going for it, but the second half is awful. ghosts of mars doesnt have a single creative or interesting moment in it, and to me signals the moment where he was no longer capable of making energetic movies on low budgets. then again, i thought his masters of horror ep was pretty good. memoirs is pretty bad all the way through. christine isnt very good by the standards of his early stuff. havent seen The Ward yet but i havent heard anything good.

bah i am going to have start 'refining' my 'all horror movies w sam neil in them are grate' theory eg possession, in the mouth of madness, dead calm, the omen 3 (hang on...)

― Ward Fowler, Friday, August 26, 2011 11:54 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark

EVENT HORIZON explodes that theory :(

the omen 3 does rule though

Cronenberg always watchably entertaining and interesting, even when he's committing an "honorable failure" (filming unfilmable novels! the clue is in the word "unfilmable"!)*, but -- big caveat: existenZ was the last i saw -- he's NEVER made a film as flawless as The Thing.

*Even as failures, Crash and Naked Lunch aren't remotely down in a league with Vampires: I'm glad they were made, and both have excellent individual scenes, they just don't really gel, in themselves or as translations of the source material. With NL this is as much as anything an allergy on my part to the RoboCop guy, actually.

Cronenberg's films always too studiedly "illustrational" for my tastes: he's making a politico-philosophical DO-YOU-SEE point, albeit often quite an unusual one, at least the the time, before the point became a much-borrowed cliche. So yes, he's grossing people out, but with a (Perverse) Moral Nostrum embedded; he too often fails to goose-cum-creep those who are already onside with his idea, maybe. He's not as bad as Clive Barker in this regard.

Ugh/LOL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qhqQ6F0l1o

lol'ing right off the bat at use of Friday the 13th trademark sound effect

da thing

this movie does not look very good.

you can use that for the pull quote

http://www.revelinnewyork.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_main/recommendations/photos/thething.jpg

really couldn't care less about the cgi but this looks so tragically BRIGHT and high-key and bland

no one knows how to shoot movies anymore

tell it to Christian Nyby

fuck off, Carpenter version's better than the Hawks movie.

^^^realness

nothing i've seen so far here is a deal-breaker; i mean yes i complained upthread about the look - it is all gleaming and contrasty and teal and orange and people's hair looks great - but that's just what movies look like these days. i mean regardless i am going to see the fuck out of this.

The final scene in the Carpenter version totally makes the movie for me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8faq5amdK30

a+

amazing! i thought it was a real Sinatra song for a good 30 seconds.

The prequel opens tonight at midnight...

this really isn't all that good.

but on the other hand it is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWPx-fw0mI8

jed u talkin about the remake.... right???

which remake?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToCq_c3wOM8

oh boo

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/82164665/

omg lol

^ remake stakes were impossibly high

Best scene in v minor (tho v beguiling) Thing-remake* "The Faculty": when Alien Jon Stewart -- for it is he -- is stopped in his tracks with a pen-case full of crystal meth stabbed into his eye

(The kids who defeat the alien render themselves inviolable by DOING DRUGS THEY MAKE THEMSELVES:
there's some script flummery that the drug is "caffeine and other household shit", but the guy saying it is TOTALLY LYING obviously)

This is the film that Reality Bites should have been: with Selma Hayek in the Winona role. There's even actually a Gen X ref in the tidy-up montage, alongside Elijah's mugg on a mag cover you only spot for a moment...

*They very carefully cheerfully and geekily lampshade-hang all the OTHER films/stories it remakes: viz Bodysnatchers, Puppetmasters etc. There's a whole Whedon-esque scene where they gameplan their fightback by discussing science-fiction plot cliches. But (TELLINGLY) they don't mention The Thing.

only beguiling thing in The Faculty was the bit where attractive woman from 'Defying Gravity' chases the 'hero' for extended period of time while nude

The Faculty was probably the best movie Robert Rodriguez has ever been involved in imho

i'm not arguing with that

beguiling in the sense that if it's ever on TV, i always think "not that again" but if by chance i flick onto it i end up watching it to the end: ie descriptive not evaluative

also: better than reality bites

A crowbar to the back of the head is better than Reality Bites.

only a beguiling crowbar

Mm.

Just saw the remake/prequel/whatever and while it was complete horseshit, it wasnt for the reasons you might expect - betraying the originals steez or whatever, it was because vast amounts of screentime were devoted to IDEAS THAT MADE NO SENSE. most tellingly the central conceit of the movie that the thing cant reproduce non-organic material so thats how people can be ided except uhoh what about the zippers on peoples parkas you stupid fucking sons of bitches, also just flamethrowers and grenades conveniently hanging out on an arctic research station and goddamnit fuck this movie in the eye

The Thing was just a really, really good seamstress.

the parkas probably aren't organic either!

when i saw it, i just figured the thing takes the parka prior to killing the victim - but then i found the movie "beguiling" so ...

haven't seen the remake, but in the original, it only duplicates tissue, right? not clothing and dog collars and such.