Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
STAC Goat
Mar 12, 2008

Watching you sleep.

Butt first, let's
check the feeds.

Hahaha. I just worked out the schedule and we'll finish the first round on May 13th.

We voted. You wanted it slow and methodical. Democracy works.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

married but discreet
May 7, 2005


Taco Defender
Lol Stephen Spielberg is going to knock out John Carpenter in round 1.

STAC Goat
Mar 12, 2008

Watching you sleep.

Butt first, let's
check the feeds.

And Lloyd Kaufman is gonna knock out Wes.

I have cursed this tournament.

Shrecknet
Jan 2, 2005


An entire week for just three movies seems absurdly glacial to kick things off, especially when it's three teams that couldnt be bothered to whip votes to get past "almost none"

The playin game is not on at 1200 pm Sunday in March Madness for a reason

STAC Goat
Mar 12, 2008

Watching you sleep.

Butt first, let's
check the feeds.

The problem is the alternative is 9 movies in a week. The votes were pretty clear that we wanted more time than 8 movies a week so starting with a tighter crunch feels like the wrong move. Sure, they're "play ins" but the whole reason we're doing them is so we can watch more movies.

If someone has a better idea I'm all ears.

Irony.or.Death
Apr 1, 2009


I am a big fan of glacial; there's just too much going on in life right now for me to keep up an October type pace in the off season.

STAC Goat
Mar 12, 2008

Watching you sleep.

Butt first, let's
check the feeds.

Yeah, I was surprised by the popularity of the 4 movie week when I was watching results but I had a couple of weeks to get used to it and realized I love it. Yeah, trying to squeeze 8 movies in can be a rush and fun but over the course of months its exhausting and consuming. It kind of feels great to knwo I can do this and also do other stuff.

The Berzerker
Feb 24, 2006

treat me like a dog


Yeah count me on the side of slow pace is fine. We're not going anywhere and it helps prevent the tournament from feeling like a chore. There were weeks in the last tournament where I just skipped weeks to catch up on watching other stuff I wanted to see. It's hard to watch 8+ horror movies in a week as my partner isn't into most horror movies and I have two jobs.

MacheteZombie
Feb 4, 2007
It lets me watch other movies while still participating in this.

Franchescanado
Feb 23, 2013

If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment

Grimey Drawer
Great work STAC. You should be proud. This looks awesome.

I'm a big fan of glacial, and I'm happy it took the majority. Watching and discussing four films a week is plenty. I hope to also be able to do more research and reading before every write-up.

This is going to be fun.

The Hausu Usher
Feb 9, 2010

:spooky:
Screaming is the only useful thing that we can do.

Just finding out about this, hoping it allows me a chance to check out some names I haven't heard of and hang out in the streams more. Wish the demo was a little less old white guy but you gotta work with what ya got I suppose.

STAC Goat
Mar 12, 2008

Watching you sleep.

Butt first, let's
check the feeds.

I tried real hard to get young white guy in there. Diversity.

STAC Goat
Mar 12, 2008

Watching you sleep.

Butt first, let's
check the feeds.

Happy New Year! Whether last year treated you as badly as it treated most of us, or if you had a good one I hope this is even better. And I hope the Spook-A-Doodle Bracketology Tournament & Movie Club helps get it off on the right track! I said it was coming in and 2021 and it should be 2021 by now for everyone so lets get going. All films were drawn by a random number generator, no redraws were deemed necessary. We’re starting off light with one matchup this week, the 15th seed play in in the Italian Conference.

And the matchup image kinda sucks. Sorry about that. I had artists block. Hopefully I’ll come up with something better as we go.

Italy #15 Seed: Ruggero Deodato’s Last Cannibal World vs. (STAC Goat’s Radio Silence) Joe Swanberg’s Silver Bullets vs. Mary Lambert’s Urban Legends: Bloody Mary


Its our very first matchup of the tournament and I figured I’d start us off a little easier with just 3 films to fill that last 15 seed. The winner goes against 2 seed Mario Bava in the Italian Gothic Division so its a heavy fight. But first they have to get past each other. Mary Lambert makes her second appearance in the tournaments but fell in the first round last year after drawing… Halloweentown II? At least she can say she fell to Cronenberg. Deodato makes his first appearance as does Swanberg and his entire Radio Silence team. Swanberg’s mumblecore, Deodato’s exploitation, or Lambert actually drawing a horror movie? Who wins?

Last Cannibal World appears to be up on Youtube but I can't attest for the quality. But Deb says there’s copies out there.
Silver Bullets is on Kanopy, Fandor, and Mubi.
Urban Legends: Bloody Mary is on Showtime, DirecTV, and Fubo.

In case you might be a crazy person Urban Legends (1) is on Pluto and Shudder and Urban Legends: Final Cut (2) is on Showtime, Shudder, Tubi, Fubo, and DirectTV. Not that anyone would need that info just because Bloody Mary is technically the 3rd in the franchise. That would be nuts.

Vote!

Poll will be open until January 8th. I’m gonna say that’s midnight EST but really its whenever I get around to it. Midday seemed to work for Shreck but I’m a night owl so we’ll play it by ear. But try and have you vote in before January 8th. As always you can go back and change it if you change your mind mid week.

STAC Goat fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Jan 1, 2021

Debbie Does Dagon
Jul 8, 2005



I did consider streaming tonight, but I am severely hungover, so tomorrow from 7pm EST! I'll finish with Last Cannibal World, so people can skip the minutes upon minutes of animal cruelty, racism, and children pissing, if they would rather not see that. And as always, if anyone needs a film reshown, I am yours to command.

MacheteZombie
Feb 4, 2007
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVeC_y_310U

The Hausu Usher
Feb 9, 2010

:spooky:
Screaming is the only useful thing that we can do.

I'm going to try and attend the streams for films I haven't seen before but probably only be able to do the film streamed first due to time zone difference.

STAC Goat
Mar 12, 2008

Watching you sleep.

Butt first, let's
check the feeds.

I'll definitely try and make the Last Cannibal World stream because I don't think I can make it through that film alone.

Also Urban Legends (the first one) is so pinpoint, on the nose "1998" that I half feel like it's a nostalgia spoof. Its bizarre.

Shrecknet
Jan 2, 2005



Still wild that the fat one is named Fatone

Spatulater bro!
Aug 19, 2003

Punch! Punch! Punch!

Shrecknet posted:

Still wild that the fat one is named Fatone

We used to say Lance's name is Lance Gayone.

STAC Goat
Mar 12, 2008

Watching you sleep.

Butt first, let's
check the feeds.

Ok, I gotta do some house cleaning I forgot to do last week. It was called to my attention that Ishiro Honda’s list is incomplete/inaccurate. I added him just by taking the movies of his Letterboxd listed as horror, minus the ones we saw last year. That’s 14 films minus Godzilla, Rodan, The Human Vapor, and Half Human. Now Letterboxd has 28 films listed under science fiction. A few of those are repeats. Two are Godzilla recuts. Burk suggested I remove King of Monsters since its just a recut using Honda’s footage. So I’m gonna cut King of mOnsters, Godzilla ’77, and Godzilla Fantasia. That leaves me with this list of 23 films. Look good?

Matango
The H Man
Varan
Varan The Unbelievable
Frankenstein Conquers the World
War of the Gargantuans
King Kong Escapes
Destroy All Monsters
Half Human: The Story of the Abominable Snowman
Mothra vs Godzilla
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster
Invasion of Astro-Monster
Terror of Mechagodzilla
All Monsters Attack
Mothra
Frankenstein vs. Baragon
Space Amoeba
The Mysterians
Atragon
Battle in Outer Space
Dagora, the Space Monster
Latitude Zero
Gorath

Next I need to make sense of Charles Band.

STAC Goat fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Jan 1, 2021

Burkion
May 10, 2012

by Fluffdaddy
Some of those are good!

Some of them are great even!

Debbie Does Dagon
Jul 8, 2005



:spooky: First Bracketology 2021 Stream! :spooky:
:rip: Only on the CineD Discord :rip:



Jan 2nd starting at 7pm EST I will be streaming the three films from the first play-in round.
All times are in EST and may not represent reality.

1900 Urban Legends: Bloody Mary
2045 Silver Bullets
2205 Last Cannibal World

Thank you so much to Tarnop for the assistance! I couldn't have done it without you.

TrixRabbi
Aug 20, 2010

Time for a little robot chauvinism!

STAC Goat posted:

...

Half Human: The Story of the Abominable Snowman

...

Next I need to make sense of Charles Band.

Isn't this also just the same movie cut differently as the Half Human we watched?

STAC Goat
Mar 12, 2008

Watching you sleep.

Butt first, let's
check the feeds.

Yeah, looks like its another King of the Monsters where a US company bought it, inserted John Carradine as a character, and retold it from his perspective. So one less for Honda. He'll have to do with 22 films.

Basebf555
Feb 29, 2008

The greatest sensual pleasure there is is to know the desires of another!

Fun Shoe
I'm gonna watch Bloody Mary tonight I think. Kinda looking forward to it actually, I've seen the first two and just never sought this one out for whatever reason. Never knew it was Mary Lambert either.

Franchescanado
Feb 23, 2013

If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment

Grimey Drawer
I've been meaning to watch Silver Bullets since I stumbled across it on Amazon Prime.

All three are new to me. Pretty excited to watch some schlock. I liked the first Urban Legends enough. This one seems to take a supernatural turn? Did Urban Legend 2 do a supernatural thing, too? The original is a standard human-killer slasher.

Basebf555
Feb 29, 2008

The greatest sensual pleasure there is is to know the desires of another!

Fun Shoe

Franchescanado posted:

I've been meaning to watch Silver Bullets since I stumbled across it on Amazon Prime.

All three are new to me. Pretty excited to watch some schlock. I liked the first Urban Legends enough. This one seems to take a supernatural turn? Did Urban Legend 2 do a supernatural thing, too? The original is a standard human-killer slasher.

I haven't seen it, so this isn't a spoiler, but I'm kinda assuming there will be a Scooby Doo aspect to the story where Bloody Mary ends up being some sort of ruse but who knows.

Franchescanado
Feb 23, 2013

If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment

Grimey Drawer

Basebf555 posted:

I haven't seen it, so this isn't a spoiler, but I'm kinda assuming there will be a Scooby Doo aspect to the story where Bloody Mary ends up being some sort of ruse but who knows.

That feels like a safe assumption, since the original plays with a similar idea. I guess we'll find out!

married but discreet
May 7, 2005


Taco Defender
Back from the holidays at the non horror house, I'm stoked to start watching!

STAC Goat
Mar 12, 2008

Watching you sleep.

Butt first, let's
check the feeds.

Franchescanado posted:

I've been meaning to watch Silver Bullets since I stumbled across it on Amazon Prime.

All three are new to me. Pretty excited to watch some schlock. I liked the first Urban Legends enough. This one seems to take a supernatural turn? Did Urban Legend 2 do a supernatural thing, too? The original is a standard human-killer slasher.

Final Cut/2 is a human slasher story like the first one, although it tries to be a more meta/"Hitchcockian" thing than the first one. Which basically means its set in a film school and everyone constantly says "Hitchcockian" and "mis en scene" while they try and domore than they can.

STAC Goat
Mar 12, 2008

Watching you sleep.

Butt first, let's
check the feeds.

Oh, yeah, I watched these.

Italy #15 Seed: Ruggero Deodato's Last Cannibal World vs. (STAC Goat's Radio Silence) Joe Swanberg's Silver Bullets vs. Mary Lambert's Urban Legends: Bloody Mary

Last Cannibal World is a repugnant piece of trash without a single redeeming value. Its racist, cruel, exploitative, misogynistic, abusive, reckless, and fundamentally trying to glorify a piece of poo poo protagonist. Its total garbage and the only reason I even sat through it was others were suffering with me. And even beyond all that poo poo, if for some reason none of that poo poo bothers you. The movie's just boring.

Bloody Mary is very clearly a first draft of a film that maybe could have been good with more filming and post production. There's talent there and it flashes through a few times. But those flashes are brief and disjointed. The whole film is disjointed. As Tarnop said the editing is so bad that it sometimes draws your attention to things that don't matter. There's weird exposition dumps, one dimensional characters, actors who appear to forget their lines and they just go with that take, unanswered questions. It looks cheap and bad. The whole thing just seems obviously rushed out on the cheap to make some quick cash on the "Urban Legends" title and I doubt any of the talent involved really could have changed that momentum.

Silver Bullets is weird and odd but easily my favorite of the bunch and the most interesting. A little loose to call it "horror" but besides the horror movie setting I think there was real tension and unease there in the "who you trust" nature and some of the uncomfortable gun or rough moments. Its a really interesting character/relationship piece that drops us not at the begging or end of a relationship but just the awkward middle where the couple are falling apart, failing to communicate, making passive aggressive slights against each other, doing outrageous things to try and keep each other's interests, and looking at other people. Its kind of fascinating and I'm not sure I understood anything it was trying to say. Like was there a reason that Ti West plays the director/other guy? Was there a reason he was making a movie called Silver Bullets? Is that just a setting or is there something about Swanberg's view of himself or directors or the business? I dunno. I'm definitely gonna go back and rewatch it sometime after I've had some time to process and where I can know what I'm looking for.

So yeah, I voted for Silver Bullets. And I dread Deodato advancing.

Debbie Does Dagon
Jul 8, 2005



Three films are a lot to discuss, so allow me to dispose of the least interesting immediately. Urban Legend: Bloody Mary is not a good film in any regard, the only praiseworthy things I could say are that there is a nugget of an entertaining film buried in there somewhere. Between the yawn-worthy predictable plot, the terrible performances, the baffling logic motivating these "urban legend" inspired kills, the unengaging characters, and most importantly how dull the whole proceeding is, there's something there. If this was a film about the Grace character attempting to solve the mystery of her friend's death, whilst the faces of those around her erupted with spiders, that might be an entertaining film. You would actually need a whole new set of writers though, because regardless of how charismatic Tina Lifford's performance is, she still needs lines which don't make her sound like a racist caricature.

Moving on to Last Cannibal World, this is a film which does a few interesting things and plays with the expectations and the stomachs of its audience, which I can respect. It, however, does so in a way which is deeply racist, deeply colonialist, deeply misogynistic, and treats animals and the natural world with a level of disrespect that approaches, broaches, and exceeds what I would call criminality. I was planning on being more fair and even-handed, but gently caress it, let's actually discuss the issues.

First, the animal cruelty, which is extreme. There are multiple, multiple animals killed on-screen during the runtime of this film, often in ways that deeply distress the animals, leave them mangled, and in pain, often taking an excruciatingly long amount of time to complete, and sometimes death isn't even the result, the result is simply a struggle or a beating. Now you could claim that most of the kills, I'm not going to go back and check, are performed by local people in presumably traditional ways. A crocodile or alligator, I don't pretend to be an expert, is stabbed in the brain, and a knife is run down its side in order to free the innards. The fact that these acts exist in the world, or even that they exist on camera, is not what distresses me. What distresses me is that the filmmakers orchestrated the circumstances in which this occurred, and presented the footage in the context of entertainment. What is entertaining about a distressed animal? Forget the nature of the acts, why should we wish to fund or reward filmmakers who think tying a bird in an enclosed space and having a man slap-it is entertainment? Additional to this, we must ask what the film is trying to say by positioning this animal cruelty at the forefront, which leads me to my second point.

Second, the film is atrociously racist. We begin with a scrawl claiming that these indigenous people are primitive cave-people, we are then presented with a picture of them which would cause the makers of Birth of a Nation to blush. The filmmakers would like us to believe that indigenous hunter-gatherer groups are childlike savages, who do not understand the fact that they have fingers, let alone the world around them, and that the whole culture exists only to brutally dispatch everything they come into contact with. This unwavering frame is carried forward through the film, culminating in our hero correctively raping an indigenous girl, after which she becomes servile to him, and is introduced to the "superior" white methods of wilderness survival, which hilariously seems to amount to bleeding to death in a cave anyway. We the receive some bizarre fantasy of our hero taking revenge on the indigenous people after they cannibalise the girl he was raping and had kidnapped.

I feel I've spoken enough on Last Cannibal World. I honestly meant to give a more balanced appraisal, but I guess it wasn't in me, unfortunately. Moving on to our winner, Silver Bullets. This is perhaps my first Mumblecore film, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. I was expecting a very low-grade student film, with terrible, directionless and boring improv, and a story that does nothing but aggrandize a few egos. Instead, I felt like the film used its understated aesthetic to deliver some surprisingly poignant emotional moments, some surrealist subtext, and a story arc that felt powerful, relatable, but also fantastic.

Silver Bullets presents a story of a group of loosely collaborating filmmakers who are attempting to piece together a low-budget werewolf movie called Silver Bullets. Layered on top of this is the emotional drama of the filmmaking couple, who struggle through issues of infidelity, emotional neglect, and emotional abuse. All of this is shown very simply through character interaction, naturalistic dialogue, and the juxtaposition of images. Creeping into the film however are these moments of surreal horror, the most obvious of which is a dance sequence, in which the lead female character morphs into a werewolf, and enacts a struggle with her partner for the emotional attention she craves. This lycanthropy is contracted after exposure to a person who is receptive, emotionally available, and treats her with respect. It’s such a wonderful metaphor, and one I’m not sure I’ve seen before. To say this film was a pleasant surprise, which resonated with me strongly, would be a severe understatement, and as a result, it’s easily my choice to win this week.

STAC Goat
Mar 12, 2008

Watching you sleep.

Butt first, let's
check the feeds.

I'm thinking more about Silver Bullets and I think the key to it is taking Swanberg and Ti West's characters as parallels.

Swanberg spends all his time rewatching interviews and rereading books of artists and ranting to Claire (or his standin girlfriend) about his disinterest in filmmaking. West spends all his scenes talking to Claire or reporters about the filmmaking process and his previous and future work.

Swanberg shows almost no interest in Claire and undermines and ignores her even when she's actively seeking his attention or interest. West is constantly engaging with her and building her up and making her part of the process.

Claire and West have an awkward hookup when West puts the wolf mask on her. Claire then puts the wolf mask on herself and makes it sexy to try and seduce Swanberg. Her being turned on by the last interaction? Trying to recreate someone actually being interested in her?

Now I think the kind of interesting thing is Swanberg seems to have a lot of contempt for the character he's playing. He's just a total creeper and at the end he basically admits he was just intimidated by Claire because he couldn't control her. But I think the movie kind of leaves it unresolved how you should feel about West. On its face he seems like an ok enough guy. His interested in Claire seems sincere and much more equal than Swanberg's. But also a lot of his actions mirror Swanberg's. Just as Swanberg insisted he needed the actress after meeting her once West said he ended auditions as soon as he saw Claire. West invites Claire to an intimate situation just as Swanberg does his lead, but just under better pretense. is West just the same sort of guy Swanberg is? Is he just more together and smooth about it? Is West Gallant to Swanberg's Goofus?

I'm not sure I think West is a bad dude or anything but I think its just a really interesting thing not just because Swanberg wrote and directed himself into this seemingly self critical role, but also because the rest of the cast is loaded with other directors like West.

MacheteZombie
Feb 4, 2007
Last Cannibal World - very trashy Italian cannibal movie. Problematic at every turn with not much to say on those elements of the piece. Shame, since I do think Cannibal Holocaust (another Deodato) is a very smart movie even though it utilizes similar problematic elements. This one has nothing to offer really.

Silver Bullets - Joe Swanberg's take on a werewolf story. The relationship drama is pretty compelling and handled well. There's some good shot selections, and a surreal feel to the piece. I liked it well enough, but I also felt a bit cold. STAC and Debbie did some good write-ups on it that gave me a bit to chew on for voting purposes. It's 70 minutes, but felt a bit padded at points to me as well.

Urban Legends: Bloody Mary - ya know, this is better than I expected, especially given it's a 2000s slasher. It starts off really strong but once the dude blows his crotch off peeing on an electric fence it's pretty downhill. Wastes the best two characters Grace and David and gets super generic in the backend which drags the whole thing down.


So Last Cannibal is out, even though I really wanted to vote for Deodato just to get some of the other pictures in his lineup. Bloody Mary is definitely more of a horror movie than Silver Bullets, but Silver Bullets shows more potential for interesting takes on horror. Silver Bullets gets my vote.

Debbie Does Dagon
Jul 8, 2005



MacheteZombie posted:

It starts off really strong but once the dude blows his crotch off peeing on an electric fence it's pretty downhill

This sentence is just :discourse:

STAC Goat
Mar 12, 2008

Watching you sleep.

Butt first, let's
check the feeds.

For the sake of openness its worth pointing out one of the quirks of the "Team" twist. This is Swanberg's only film on the team. The rest of his team is
V/H/S
Southbound
Ready or Not
Devil's Due
I Sell The Dead

Swanberg has a piece in VHS but otherwise that's all different directors with different styles. So if you're voting based on "I want to see more of this" that's a wrinkle. I like the weird variety of films in that team and I personally try and keep my vote to the movie drawn. But it feels worth noting that we won't see Swanberg again in this tournament except maybe for one segment.

TrixRabbi
Aug 20, 2010

Time for a little robot chauvinism!

I feel like Baghead should be on that team.

STAC Goat
Mar 12, 2008

Watching you sleep.

Butt first, let's
check the feeds.

I feel like I should have built a team around the Duplass brothers and Creep.

Tarnop
Nov 25, 2013

Pull me out

I'm glad I saw Silver Bullet
I wish I hadn't seen Last Cannibal World
I wish they'd had a competent editor for Urban Legends 3

Easy vote for me

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

married but discreet
May 7, 2005


Taco Defender
Silver Bullets - Very meta in a way I did not expect from a movie about a werewolf movie. My half assedly thought through, and in retrospect painfully reddit take on this, is as follows: The movie we are watching is obviously Silver Bullets, as directed by Swanberg, but we are also watching multiple layers of movies happening at the same time. Silver Bullets by director Swanberg (1st layer) is about an in-universe movie directed by director Ethan (actor Swanberg), 2nd layer. Director Ethan cast himself as actor Ethan (directing a movie) in his movie. In that movie, the actor Ben (West) is very obviously making a movie called Silver Bullets (3rd layer), which is either a straightforward werewolf movie or a meta take on the genre. Actor Ethans's parallel movie is either a 4th layer of actor Ben's movie (making Ben's Silver Bullets a meta mixutre of outtakes/behind the scenes stuff mixed with the straightforward Silver Bullet's movie) or a parallel movie (3rd layer) that actor Ethan (not director Ethan) is making. Director Ethan's movie leaves that open to discussion, but regardless of whether one or the other interpretation makes sense, the movies are clearly part of director Ethan's movie, and Ben is always just an actor -directed by Ethan. Ben explaining the pivotal werewolf attack scene to Claire - he slapping her, the blood and all, and this happening later with actor Ethan in the victim's role, that's one movie, not two. With actor Claire killing actor Charlie in a very straighforward horror way, all of Silver Bullets' layers but the first one end, and and we switch to Silver Bullets as directed by Swanberg, with himself and Kate Sheil playing director Ethan and his ex-girlfriend Claire. They discuss their past relationship, and how director Ethan's movie played a part in killing it.

The question whose answer I am too lazy to research is this, what was Swanberg's relationship status with the actresses at the time of shooting? Did cast himself in the movie so he could make out with some hot actress, despite clearly knowing that it's a bad idea? Was he dating one of them during the filmmaking process, and did it ruin their relationship?


Urban Legends 3: Bloody Mary. Boring and largely inept, with some flashes of interesting angles that are quickly swamped out by tedium. I liked the four deaths, in particular the spider pimple. After the dog dies and Sadako stabs his owner with a bottle all the steam is out. I wish this had been better or worse, but what we got is just forgettable.

Last Cannibal World Reading the wiki plot description of I really don't want to see it, so too bad Ruggero.

Swanberg + Team it is.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply