Down to the Cellar

I'm a big Svankmajer fan and this is hands down one of the creepiest films I've ever seen, by him or anyone else. Truly nightmarish.

^^ is that a short film or is a little girl in the cellar a common trope in his work? ecause i remember seeing a short film like that.

i need to check more of svankmajer's work. i really love his animated shorts but didn't like little otik's camera at all. i'll try to find that one you just saw.

I saw about 5 or 6 of the first season and thought it was pretty poorly written, like a bad couple of twilight zone episodes.

Zoom and Piranha.

exactly.

its important we shit on this massively revered and hyped show, which is hailed as the pinnacle of intelligent sf

just like the english i meet

"pinnacle of intelligent SF?" Jeez, I don't think so... "Massively revered". I guess kind of like the Pope, who I don't think much of, either. Now a decent new SF show out now is Mr Robot. And another? Orphan Black.

mr robot season 1 was fucking awesome. almost. but yeah. fucking awesome.

orphan black i tried watching season 1 but found it like all canadian tv-- boring. (sorry canada, but having such nice people does not make for exciting tv.)

first time i hear of black mirror. now i'm actually curious about it. blagh.

Charlie Booker is a good (maybe great) comedy writer. He's not good at dystopian fiction. A lot of good actors in these episodes and the series really swings for the fence, but it's a strikeout. The ideas are thin, the dialog is wooden and the concepts are pretty lightweight and at the same time, pretty repulsive. Sort of a "Idiocracy" feel to the series, with the current state of affairs brought to some sort of futuristic territories, but no humor and very little to recommend it. I watched the first one, the one about the return of the dead thru software, the one about the special Disney punishment village and the one about the "American Idol"/Hunger Games kind of TV show, with the avatars and all that. None of them really any good, and a pity to see Mike Smiley and some of the characters from the Thick of It wasted in this. I spose they enjoyed the paycheck

I've barely heard of Black Mirror. Orphan Black interests me though. I've been meaning to watch that for some time.

Also, I've heard excellent things about this new West World reboot-type-thing. Haven't watched a minute of it yet, but I think Jonathan Nolan is involved? And maybe one of the dudes or dudettes from LOST (which is, in my opinion, the real "pinnacle of intelligent SF, even though it now feels like a relic from the pre-Sopranos-turning-everything-into-ultraviolent-cinematic-mini-film days.

I cannot WAIT for American Gods, even though I would have cast the entire thing differently. Whatever. That show's going to be a Game of Thrones-level beast, mark my words. Better source material too.

oh, i did like that. needed subtitles but yeah.

It's a short film. That's a still from it. A girl is sent down into a cellar to fetch some potatoes and encounters all kinds of horrible weirdness. It's quite an unusual film for Svankmajer in that it contains very little actual animation.

You can see the whole thing here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XBJCTD9p9A

I didn't think much of Little Otik either. I'm generally more a fan of his short films than his features.

oh yes yes, i've seen it!

i don't recall a whole lot of it but yes

my problem with little otik is TOO MANY FUCKING CLOSEUPS. it makes you dizzy after a while. it just doesn't work. it's like WRITING A BOOK IN ALL CAPS. doesn't matter what happens in it, you just can't read it.

have stopped movies for the workweek and been watching last year's WALKING DEAD. it's such a fucking chore, ugh, but i have to do it.

for this weekend i have lined up DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS, a new MACBETH, LET ME IN (the American version of the Swedish one with the better title) and... SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE

haven't had a chance to watch NEKROMANTIC yet, or the other one by the same guy that's supposed to be depressing, due to bad internet--but i should be able to catch it before my amazon subscription expires.

Black Mirror is awesome. It is like a twilight zone on steroids for the modern day.

Holy shit, I've seen this.

Just once, I think, and many many years ago, but I saw this shit and it stuck with me. It's one of those things (not sure if anyone can relate, butt...) ... where I saw it when I was young and the imagery just got branded onto my subconscious. I never learned the name or anything, so I've kind of "searched" for it for years, but have never been able to find it, and sometimes it almost feels like it was a dream.

Anyone have any experiences like that with films?

Wow, though. This is it! Awesome.

I'm done with the Walking Dead. It HAD a few interesting things in it at first, like the military response and the CDC site, but has just degenerated into the torture porn of the week. Writing is fucking stale!

I watched one episode and was like... meh... never been tempted to revisit it.

I liked the comics well enough too, but ugh.

Let the Right One In was fucking BRILLIANT. Brilliant, I say.

Let me in was bleh meh. Who needs it.

i know. i'm still plugging at it due to a need for closure or something. and i'm not even talking about this season!

almost gave it up on season... 3 i think it was... when it looked like a stupid video game for several episodes until some plot finally happened

but no, here i still am in the middle of 5. why, i'm not sure. annoying.

Been watching lots of horror movies:

1) best of the bunch is "Baskin", just a terribly disturbing descent into madness, reminiscent of Zombie's "House of 1,000 Corpses"

2) "The Theatre Bizarre"- The good thing about anthology films is their array of ideas and narrative swerve. The great thing about anthology films is they're short, which means if it sucks at least it won't last long. This one has the usual hits and misses, grotesque in parts and moving in others.

3) "Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell"- just a carousel of fantasy/horror film tropes. Massively enteratining in that late 60's Japanese craziness kinda-way. And it carries an anti-Vietnam message!

4) "Darling"- Nice little black and white psycho drama about a lonely girl in a large New York mansion.

5) "Nightmare Detective"- The dream logic narrative allows all kinds of surrealism and absurdity. It's just too bad the non-dream portions of this film are just as jumbled and confusing. And it's full of that early 2000's digital video herky-jerkiness that J-horror films made all the rage.

6) "Livid"- From the filmmakers of "Inside", which I regard as one of the best horror films of the last 25 years, "Livid" doesn't quite reach that violent masterpiece status, but its a spellbinding exercise whose scattershot ellipses to black and perfectly attuned atmosphere feel like someone breathlessly whispering a gothic fairy tale into your ear.

7) "Witching and Bitching"- Not a fan of Alex de Iglesia and his pop-confections, and this hybrid thriller-horror doesn't do much to convert me. Cool looking witches though.