Tuesday, September 24, 2024
Good Morning, Sir
Monday, September 23, 2024
Kit of the Day
Real Quick, By Billy
Aaron has got to be kidding me with that second pose 🥵 pic.twitter.com/274bphOEHP
— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) September 22, 2024
Friday, September 20, 2024
Gone Fishin'
I've Made My Bed, I'll Die In It
I'd often wondered how the Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? horror sub-genre of Grand Dame Guignol could be updated to our current age where a lot of people at a certain point simply don't age anymore -- they just freeze in place. Wonder no more -- Fargeat found the way, the sweet spot through where Dorian Gray meets The Swan by way of Society. The latter influence seems especially on point to me -- when Brian Yuzna's 1989 body-horror class comedy came out it never even got a proper release here in the U.S.. But now our culture has evolved -- or perhaps devolved, but this movie counts as a perk of our devolution -- to the point where one of the biggest movie stars of all time will star in a body-horror freak-out comedy that goes every ounce as hard as Society did. And it will premiere at Cannes for fuck's sake!
That said, while I won't say I'll eat my shoe if Demi Moore is nominated for an Oscar for a movie where... well everything that happens in the last act of The Substance happens... I don't anticipate that happening. She'll have to make due I think with the praise of being the cool pick -- the one too cool and too too out there for the Academy, even if the Academy has proven itself a little riskier than in the past recently. But what am I even talking about awards for? The Substance is one fuck-ton of a movie, man!
The Substance is a movie I can see myself putting on in the background of my life for the entire rest of it. It's grotesque, obscene, hilarious, meanspirited, gorgeous, heartbreaking, exquisite. It's an M&M with a cockroach inside; a long trail of innards curled up like a golden crown. To hold its excesses aginast it is to deny the excesses of its targets. Sometimes a punch to the face is needed. And I want to marry The Substance, punches and all, if it will have me. I promise I will be good to you, movie! Punch me unto nirvana!
Quote of the Day
"I don’t know what it is about Americans, but they are brought up for a heroic tale, where the good must win over the bad, and this version of the film cultivates that,” Tafdrup complained. He went on to say that the changes that were made to the film made it feel “less dangerous,” and more sanitized for American consumption. "When I saw the film yesterday, I could see that they would never succeed with a film where the characters are stoned to death, as they do in our film. These people [in the U.S. version] must fight for their family and defeat the bad guys […] It is a kind of happy ending, and it is so deep in their culture that America must be able to handle it all." Comparing audience reactions, Tafdrup said he witnessed audiences leaving the remake “who were completely over-enthusiastic and clapped, laughed and whooped. It was like being at a rock concert” while he recalled how “people…left my film traumatized.”