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Lets talk about the first round! Feel free to skip this post if and go to the next one if you want.    Of the 32 matchups in Rd1 there were only 7 upsets. 8 if you count the draw 14 seed Joel Schumacher had with 3 seed George Romero. All in all that’s probably a testament to our seeding process, or maybe just dumb luck. Maybe we seeded well to our tastes or maybe the RNG just favored the numbers. Notably though of those 7 upsets 4 of them were 1/2 seeds. On one hand that seems like massive upsets and crazy odds, but it might actually favor the seeding argument considering those are the nominees who didn’t go through that process but were granted byes by the council. Of course 1 seeds Dario Argento and Takashi Miike both have the deep pools that may have hurt them with the new format this year, as might have Romero and 8 seed Ishiro Honda. And 1 seed Agents Provocateur and 2 seed Daddy Issues may have been the longest shot choices and just over seeded as a result. 6 seed Rob Zombie and 8 seed William Friedkin make up the rest of the upsets but both have pretty small pools so its hard to say they really got taken down by much but themselves and their competition. Notably 3 of the 5 Play In teams advanced into the second round - Team Vulgaer, Predation, and Andrzej Żuławski & Jerzy Kawalerowicz. That’s given all three an edge in the stats department but its well earned since they all took down #1 seeds and won threeways. Hilariously enough the only Play In teams to be eliminated first round were both mine - Block Party and Radio Silence. Sure they lost to Carpenter and Bava, two of my favorites so I don’t even mind, but ha ha. I suck at building teams.  Matter of point I had 16 teams make the tournament had 10 of them fall in the first round. Deb and Fran both have 3 teams alive in the tournament. Deb lost 3 in the first round while Fran only lost 1. Tarnop has 2 teams in a 2 out, married but discreet has 1 in and 3 out, TrixRabbi has 1 in and 1 out, and Kangra lost their 1 team. Irony or Death advanced both their teams and Machette Zombie’s sole team is still alive, so both can effectively boast that they haven’t been beaten, something no one else can say.  Teams outnumbered Solo Directors 40 to 34 going into the tournament and outperformed them with 24 wins to 12. Some of those were Play In wins however and in the second round there are 19 teams to 14 directors. Which actually means the directors held their own since the teams made up 54% of the field in the first round and 57% of the second. It will be interesting to see if either side can make a dent into the Sweet 16.  Gasper Noe leads all directors with 22 votes but does so with 2 movies. Everyone else in the Top 5 has had only 1 film so far so are effectively outperforming Noe, but his Play In opportunity gave him an extra play they might not be able to make up. Noe does however share time on a team so isn’t guaranteed to get another movie in the tournament, giving solo directors like John Carpenter, Mario Bava, and Joe Dante an edge over team members like Noe, Jonathan Glazer, Nikos Nikolaidis, Claire Denis, and Michael Powell. Matter of fact all four of them have only had 1 film so seem all but guaranteed to fall out of the Top 5 as more directors get their second or third film in. Teams are led by Predation, Team Vulgaer, and the Poles, all of whom have an extra round in the Play In giving them a clear edge to hold onto their stat leads if they can stay alive in the tournament. They’re probably going to have to be knocked out of the tournament if any other team has a chance to overtake them, although if one team can rack up some massive landslides maybe they can sneak ahead in less rounds.  The top performing films of the first round were The Thing who came in 1st in total votes with 17 and 5th in percentage of ballots at 85% of ballots and Black Sunday who came in 1st in percent of ballots at 94% and 2nd in total votes at 16. The rest of both Top 5s consist of Under the Skin, Singapore Sling, Trouble Every Day, Peeping Tom, Ghostwatch, Reanimator, and Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Notable Black Sunday and Ghostwatch were the only two unanimous wins of the first round while Gremlins 2 and Reanimator fell one vote short. None achieved 100% of their ballots. There’s no real analysis to make here. Some films will likely supplant others going forward but there’s no saying or changing numbers since all movies are one and done.   Finally we have Decades and Countries. Honestly there’s a lot of numbers there and I don’t know how to sum them up. The thing that strikes me about the years is how few films we had pre 1960s, just 4 and only 1 advanced. 40 of the films have come from the 21st Century but their win percentages are all under .500. The 80s and the 60s have had the most success with the 90s and 70s surprisingly struggling. Over in countries its kind of a mess. The US has put up like half the entries with a pretty low win percentage. A whole bunch of other countries have just had one or two films. The big stories i think are that Japan and Italy are doing terribly while the UK and France are kicking rear end. I really don’t know how to analyze this stuff further but it should be interesting to see how some of these smaller field countries do going forward and how the traditional heavyweights continue. I could see way less US films going forward with all those loses but hard to tell with teams. Ok, I'm done. I hope that made sense and someone cares.
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May 14, 2021 09:18
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City of the Living Dead is my 2nd or 3rd favorite Fulci, but Deb's built up a lot of reputation for The Wild Boys, so that's gonna be exciting. Fun round!
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May 14, 2021 13:49
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STAC Goat posted:That sets up our last second round matchup of TrixRabbi’s Andrzej Żuławski & Other Pole (although at this stage I think its JUST Zulawski) It is. It was really only to bump Zuwalski over the edge so it's really just him as a director. Also, I found one more Zuwalski that might qualify as it's listed as horror in several places, his film Szamanka. It's listed as horror on IMDb and Letterboxd, though the wiki plot didn't seem like it was necessarily a cut and dry horror film, more of a sexual thriller/mystery. Anyway, it really only matters if he gets to the finals (though did anyone expect Ken Russell to win the whole thing at this point last time?) but Zuwalski's short a film due to the play-in. You can add that in there so he has the proper amount. I haven't seen it so can't vouch for quality or actual horror-ness.
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May 14, 2021 13:54
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TrixRabbi posted:It is. It was really only to bump Zuwalski over the edge so it's really just him as a director. Also, I found one more Zuwalski that might qualify as it's listed as horror in several places, his film Szamanka. It's listed as horror on IMDb and Letterboxd, though the wiki plot didn't seem like it was necessarily a cut and dry horror film, more of a sexual thriller/mystery. Szamanka is actually the only Zulawski I've seen but I'd count it as a horror movie. Uncle Boogeyman fucked around with this message at 13:58 on May 14, 2021 |
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May 14, 2021 13:55
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Easy vote for Garcons, Fulci should have been out last round already. Not sure I want to watch the von Trier movie. I'll check out Sightseers even though I don't like Wheatley in general.
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May 14, 2021 14:08
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I've always felt like I was somewhat in the minority with my love of City of the Living Dead. It's my favorite Fulci film so I doubt my vote can be swayed on that one. Who the gently caress knows what I'll do with the other matchup. The films are actually similar in that they're black comedies, but obviously House That Jack Built is as pitch black as black comedies get and Sightseers has a bit more to latch onto as far as the characters and the story. I'll have to think about it for a few days and see comments by other posters convinces me one way or the other. Basebf555 fucked around with this message at 15:25 on May 14, 2021 |
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May 14, 2021 15:22
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And I was all ready with a joke about how the mummy was gonna invade the thread if Mark of the Vampire won. Because in that case, of course, TANA leaves.
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May 14, 2021 15:36
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STAC Goat posted:Lets talk about the first round! Feel free to skip this post if and go to the next one if you want. I just want to say that I enjoy the stats posts because I am a big nerd. Have you looked at how things shake out if you exclude the Play In numbers?
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May 14, 2021 17:47
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Darthemed posted:And I was all ready with a joke about how the mummy was gonna invade the thread if Mark of the Vampire won. Because in that case, of course, TANA leaves. This only would have worked if the two teams were reversed in the seeding, because then it would be #9 TANA leaves.
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May 14, 2021 18:15
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Honestly the wildest stats for me are that Japan and Italy have fared so horribly while the UK of all countries is 6 for 7.
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May 14, 2021 18:20
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:Szamanka is actually the only Zulawski I've seen but I'd count it as a horror movie. I agree but only because I'm curious how the thread would react to it. Movie has a couple real stand-out scenes, all of which become much less surprising in retrospect now that I know more about Zulawski's other work. And I will happily accept wreaths and congratulations on my undefeated status, but I have to toss out the disclaimer that my record would look much worse if we had ended up running all the southeast Asian teams I...tried to nominate? Thought about nominating but was too lazy for? I don't even remember. I'm sorry you're not watching the entire Black Magic series right now, however I botched it all those months ago. e: probably I looked at Meng-Hua Ho's IMDB page and gave up sorting through all the stuff I'll never be able to find that may or may not have been horror, then repeated the process with every other director I could think of in the region.
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May 14, 2021 18:20
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TrixRabbi posted:It is. It was really only to bump Zuwalski over the edge so it's really just him as a director. Also, I found one more Zuwalski that might qualify as it's listed as horror in several places, his film Szamanka. It's listed as horror on IMDb and Letterboxd, though the wiki plot didn't seem like it was necessarily a cut and dry horror film, more of a sexual thriller/mystery. I approached the idea of adding movies I missed pre-tournament early on and it was mostly shot down. I'm personally ok with it. I didn't want to press the issue then because it was my teams so I felt like i would have been doing it in the name of helping them. But they've all been eliminated now so I'm fine adding the film to Zuwalski's "team" if no one objects. In theory I have a plan for the championship round that should make the teams running out of films not terribly important. But I wanna see how the tournament plays out before finalizing that format.
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May 14, 2021 21:55
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It feels like I'm one of the few people here who have seen The House That Jack Built, so I'll give my thoughts for those on the fence about watching it. It's a film about a serial killer, who is a fairly dull human being. In that sense it shares some DNA with Henry and I think if you can cope with the violence in that film you'll be OK with this. It is also, however, an hour longer than Henry. So there's an endurance factor. I'm absolutely glad I watched it, and although I was planning to leave it longer than this I did intend to watch it again so I will be doing so this week. It's an audacious, sometimes pretentious, over the top film containing sequences unlike anything I've ever seen. Matt Dillon is great in it. The direction and cinematography are fantastic. In a lot of ways it feels like Von Trier having an artist's midlife crisis on celluloid but when it's an artist so capable I think it's worth your time.
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May 14, 2021 22:08
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 Week 20 Bracketology Streams!  Only on the CineD Discord All times are in EST and may not reflect reality. Saturday, May 15th  1900 The Wild Boys AKA Les Garcons Sauvages vs. 2100 City of the Living Dead Monday, May 17th  1900 Sightseers vs. 2040 The House That Jack Built Content Warnings The Wild Boys (2017) Unrated - Severe scenes of sex and frequent nudity, including a brief scene of gang rape. City of the Living Dead (1980) Severe scenes of violence, gore, and intense frightening scenes. Sightseers (2012) Contains strong language, bloody violence, sex and sex references The House That Jack Built (2018) Rated R for strong disturbing violence/sadistic behavior, grisly images, language, and nudity.
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May 14, 2021 23:07
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P.s. I love the stats breakdown, Goat! Keep up the great work.
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May 14, 2021 23:22
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Yes! I am unbeatable. All or almost all of everyone's teams will lose at some point, but by my having only one team that went out the first round, nobody else can possibly match my perfect loss percentage of 0 (aside from the entire country of Russia maybe). I do like seeing the stats, thanks for doing them. And it seems perfectly sensible to add a film as needed to even things out.
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May 15, 2021 00:49
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Those stats make me want to come up with new teams to showcase the countries that did badly or were underrepresented this time.
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May 16, 2021 01:48
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married but discreet posted:Those stats make me want to come up with new teams to showcase the countries that did badly or were underrepresented this time. I tried this but it resulted in my Spanish team not making the cut and my Russia team drawing The Bride. But clearly the numbers support that I'm just bad at team building.
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May 16, 2021 02:20
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4. Lucio Fulci’s City of the Living Dead vs. 5. (Debbie Does Dagon’s Queer as in gently caress You) Bertrand Mandico’s Les garçons sauvages aka The Wild BoysSTAC Goat posted:
So who do I vote for? Two films that have elements I appreciate and I recognize why people love them, but that are real loose and not what I like. Despite Fulci's reputation and how much some of his other films have given me a terrible taste in my mouth I wasn't really bothered by City of the Dead or anything. Mostly just kind of bored. I was kind of bored during sauvages too but I also had that bad taste from all the sexual violence and rape throughout the film. I really don't know what if anything it was trying to say. I get like half ideas and then they just don't pan out for me. Fulci isn't trying to say anything, which I don't really mind. I'm totally fine with him just trying to scare me. But he didn't. I mean some of the stuff is good, but it wasn't what it was built up as for me and left me pretty disappointed and thinking he's done better. On paper I have more problems with Wild Boys but I also appreciate more elements of it. I'm honest really not sure where to go here. I think I'm leaning to Deb's team but I'm gonna be reading anything anyone posts about these films this week carefully.
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May 16, 2021 05:32
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The Berzerker posted:
Likely voting for The House that Jack Built, surprisingly. Also, both films have weirdly jaunty songs over the end credits.
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May 16, 2021 15:42
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3.5/5
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STAC Goat posted:I tried this but it resulted in my Spanish team not making the cut and my Russia team drawing The Bride. Russian team has to include Come and See
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May 16, 2021 17:43
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So much uncharted territory.  New nerdery!  I should probably change it to Wins and Losses. edit: Better nerdery! 
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May 16, 2021 20:55
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I watched Sightseers. Really didn't do anything for me one way or another. I laughed a couple of time but mostly didn't get much, but also didn't like get turned away or distracted or something. Just kinda rolled right off me. Probably not gonna watch The House That Jack Built. Probably gonna abstain on that one.
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May 17, 2021 06:00
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STAC Goat posted:I watched Sightseers. Really didn't do anything for me one way or another. I laughed a couple of time but mostly didn't get much, but also didn't like get turned away or distracted or something. Just kinda rolled right off me. Same. Still gonna watch Sightseers, but with no enthusiasm whatsoever.
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May 17, 2021 15:33
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Well it's probably no surprise to anyone that I'm voting Fulci this round. The Wild Boys certainly presents us with more to debate, more to examine, more to think about. And I appreciate that, but City of the Living Dead was one of the first Italian horror films I ever saw and it's just an important movie for me and has good memories attached to it. In defense of Fulci, I think there's something to be said for his ability to gross us out even 40 years later. It's easy to dismiss it as a cheap trick, but look at how much gore has been thrown around in 40 years of horror since and how little of it has stayed in people's memories as strongly as Fulci has. Even if sometimes those gore moments overwhelm the films themselves, these are images that leave a mark on you and they're very hard to forget. The reason I love City of the Living Dead is because of how Fulci combines those moments with a more classic spooky atmosphere with foggy graveyards and crypts and creepy undead priests. For me this is the perfect Fulci formula.
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May 17, 2021 15:49
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9. (Tarnop’s The Brutal Brits) Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers vs. 16. (Francschendo’s Team Vulgær) Lars von Trier’s The House That Jack Built I'm quoting myself from the Horror Challenge thread here. quote:
I'm planning to vote for Sightseers here. The House That Jack Built is objectively really good, but I just didn't like it. On the other hand, I loved Sightseers a little bit and now I want to see other things that Alice Lowe has worked on. twernt fucked around with this message at 20:38 on May 17, 2021 |
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May 17, 2021 20:31
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twernt posted:I'm planning to vote for Sightseers here. The House That Jack Built is objectively really good, but I just didn't like it. On the other hand, I loved Sightseers a little bit and now I want to see other things that Alice Lowe has worked on. Her debut feature as director (and she stars) is in my other remaining team. It's called Prevenge and its really good.
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May 17, 2021 21:36
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Tarnop posted:Her debut feature as director (and she stars) is in my other remaining team. It's called Prevenge and its really good. Oh nice! I'll put that on my list so I'll remember to watch it if it doesn't come up in the tournament for some reason.
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May 17, 2021 21:48
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I love Prevenge. It's perhaps not for everyone, but it's such a unique vision, and it's currently on Shudder!
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May 17, 2021 21:50
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yeah I enjoyed both Prevenge and Sightseers quite a bit, Alice Lowe is cool
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May 17, 2021 21:59
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Prevenge is really good. While "Pregnant Horror" is now more common, Prevenge is the one I've enjoyed the most, from the ones I've seen. Really good score, really good cinematography with eye-popping colors, and I love the dry macabre humour that is so British, you have to add the "u".
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May 17, 2021 22:11
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I enjoyed Sightseers when I saw it back when it came out and was thinking I'd vote for it over what I imagined would be a Lars Von Trier slogfest given the run time, but The House that Jack Built was so much better than I expected. I can totally get complaints about it being too long and pretentious, however it's Lars meditating on his own films and the themes he's explored so it almost mandates being long and pretentious. The movie's sense of humor helps it immensely as well. That said it's also beautifully shot and Matt Dillon gives a great performance. So I'm on the fence about which to pick now.
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May 17, 2021 22:12
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MacheteZombie posted:I enjoyed Sightseers when I saw it back when it came out and was thinking I'd vote for it over what I imagined would be a Lars Von Trier slogfest given the run time, but The House that Jack Built was so much better than I expected. The Fence That Jack Built
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May 17, 2021 22:20
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Franchescanado posted:The Fence That Jack Built Hes got the barbed wire for it.
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May 17, 2021 22:41
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The House That Jack Built is the first Lars Von Trier movie I've ever seen so I don't have a lot of context for what his deal is.
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May 17, 2021 23:31
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twernt posted:The House That Jack Built is the first Lars Von Trier movie I've ever seen so I don't have a lot of context for what his deal is. He suffers extreme depression and expresses it through brutality and has very little interest in self-restraint or censorship. I would recommend Melancholia. I personally find it very darkly funny, but a lot of people appreciate it straight-faced; either way it's his most sincere take on depression, and nihilism, and the idea that the world is ending. Great performances throughout, too.
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May 17, 2021 23:51
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I will definitely need to check out Melancholia. Thank you!
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May 18, 2021 00:21
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I'd only seen Melancholia and Anti-Christ before Jack, I don't remember Melancholia well enough to give an opinion, but Anti-Christ is really good.
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May 18, 2021 00:41
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Von Trier’s one of those provocateurs who makes it work cause he’s also incredibly introspective, talented, funny and insightful into human cruelty. Like, his films only work because he is a very empathetic filmmaker even if that empathy is doused in cynicism and misery. It’s like, the world sucks and people will suffer but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a powerful, tragic thing. It’s really only in his later years that I’ve found his work veering towards trolling and sneering.
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May 18, 2021 04:07
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 Les Garcons Sauvages Les Garcons Sauvages begins with two gang-rape scenes. The first we see perpetrated against a young man with a single breast, then we witness the same young man at a previous time and place, taking part in the gang rape of his teacher. From this horrendous opening, the text of the film is made clear, that it is concerned with cyclical violence and the mutable quality of sex, gender, and sexuality. Soon after this dramatic opening, we find our leading players in a courtroom, where each has their character stated quite plainly. There is a sweet boy, a violent boy, a bad liar, and so forth. From this place, they are put within the care of a ship captain, who abuses, torments, and manipulates them whilst journeying to a strange island reminiscent of The Island of Dr Moreau. Once upon the island, the boys discover all manner of strange pleasures designed to inflame and awaken their latent sexual and gender identities, whilst also transforming them physically into women. Some, as Dr Severine stands as a prime example, resent the transformation, and experience dysphoria. Others consider it an awakening, while others still protest and refuse to change, leaving these subjects unsure about their place in the world. When I streamed Les Garcons Sauvages, some felt worried discussing the material. They feared, as cishet males, they would be wandering into a dangerous ground if they were to discuss these topics, and I reassured them that yes, even cis boys experience and play with gender. I would even go so far as to say that this film was directed very plainly to be inclusive of a cis audience. The boys begin as the very definition of toxic masculinity, and then slowly have their worlds pulled apart as they’re forced to consider the realities of being gay, of being trans, non-binary and intersex. They experience an isolated island where these identities are free to emerge in pleasure and comfort, in the spirit of exploration, only to be then spat back into the toxic world of men, of cisheteronormativity, as exemplified by the faceless sailors of the finale. I can understand some people being put off by the comparison to Dr Moreau, as what does it say about the director, Bertrand Mandico, ideas concerning gender-affirming treatments? I think a few things are quite clear. Firstly, the comparison between the two sources is mainly concerned with mutability and transformation, not a moral judgment on the product of mutability. Just as in the original Jules Vern text, the real monsters weren’t the transformed, but the “horror” of realising that we exist within a state of flux. In Dr Moreau, the spectator is unable to discern animal from human, and that triggers a series of realisations and fears about our nature, whereas here it is the fear and ecstasy of confronting our gender and sexual identities. Bertrand Mandico posted:What interested me about this project from the beginning, and which was part of the narrative’s initial concept, was to ask actresses to play boys. And also, to offer actresses parts they don’t generally get the opportunity to play. With that in place, I push viewers to lose their bearings. We have this very androgynous situation of actresses evoking boys and I think that after a while the viewer accepts this state of affairs, knowing, or more or less guessing, that these are actresses. Then these male characters turn into girls, revealing the actresses’ original femininity, while at the same time showing how, on a deeper level, these boys remain boys despite having the appearance of women. This creates an unsettling, possibly arousing sensation, a blurring of the perception and intellectualization of what we see [...] I have a hard time with a binary approach to sexuality, where you have to position yourself on a particular side. This limits the field of action, it divides. Personally, I prefer the idea of a different dynamic, of perpetual metamorphosis or the prospect of metamorphosis, of a more blurred identity. There’s something modern about that, something nearly futuristic. It opens new prospects of both narrative and sexual possibilities.” It is the spirit of this play, this exploration of possibilities, this emergent androgyny that the film asks us to engage with, it offers few answers because more critical in these circumstances are the questions themselves. There is a sense then that, while this is a work that challenges and confronts us with a sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes erotic, sometimes disturbing vision, the artist’s real goal is to encourage disagreement, encourage debate, and encourage this state of metamorphosis and flux. As a bisexual polyamorous trans woman, Mandico’s decision to focus this lens and encourage these uncertain visions, resonates with me deeply. It is easy to answer a question and present it coldly, but it is instead within the calculation of that answer that we find truly ourselves. These are answers that do not come easily, they elude us constantly and take many decades to decipher and emerge, and encouraging that deep exploration is the highest goal of the artist, imho. When I watch Les Garcons Sauvages, I could lay out the plot coldly and pluck an explanation out of the air that might fit. What makes the film special to me though, is that this simplicity is openly discouraged, and personal interpretation reigns as Queen. This point might be a good time to mention that Mandico co-authored the Incoherence Manifesto, a philosophical treatise on filmmaking that went on to inspire Knife+Heart, and may help people to decipher some of the filmmaking choices, both there and also here. I should also mention that Knife+Heart is included in this team. Bertrand Mandico posted:The International Incoherence is a concept that we have established with Katrin Olafsdottir. We have listed everything that makes our biases of staging against the current. Biases that may seem incoherent in the dominant industry of arthouse cinema. To be incoherent means to have faith in cinema, it means to have a romantic approach , unformatted, free, disturbed and dreamlike, cinegenic, an epic narration. Incoherence that's an absence of cynicism but not irony. It's embracing the genre without penetrating it. Incoherences are a whole group of young talented filmmakers like Marie Losier, Yann Gonzales, Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel. It's a flamboyant surge not a dogma. I suppose the first question might be, why limit yourselves in this way? What is to be gained from only using film, eschewing post-production, focusing on filters, double-exposures, projection, et cetera. And while I think all of those questions are admirable, and the world is a place that contains many different answers to those questions, it’s quite clear for me that these restrictions create a new form of artistic expression, and new possibilities, which take the techniques of a Georges Méliès and the many who followed in their footsteps, and allows them to be appreciated and seen anew, with fresh eyes, and the benefit of a modern filmmakers privileged vantage. For instance, one of my favourite shots of the film, the court case, in which the prosecutor hovers behind the boys like a spectre, and through the power of projection, grows exponentially to tower over the accused in judgment. That shot, for me, is more potent than many of the digital green-box effects we see today, but more importantly, it’s accessible! With a small amount of knowledge and equipment, any one of us could recreate this shot, and in recreating it, build a language of our own. This, for me, is the genius behind the Incoherence Manifesto; it democratises film technique; it grants permission to dive deeply into the history of cinema. It provides an egalitarian playing field in which all is permitted, and the only limit is our own creativity. It is, imho, the very spirit of cinema. I’ve waffled on pretentiously for long enough now, but I will also mention the obvious, and that is that all of the performances here are, without exception, iconic. From the combined coy innocence and swaggering menace of the boys themselves, to the duality of the henpecked though imperious ship Captain, all the way to the incredible Dr Severine played by one of my favourite actors, Elina Löwensohn. It's just such a wonderful film, and I hope people give it a chance. City of the Living Dead A lady puked up her intestines, and that was awesome. My vote goes to Les Garcons Sauvages.
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May 18, 2021 19:43
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