Playlist: John Carpenter's: The Thing

I love that Carpenter's films have his name at the beginning..Like Stanley Kubrick or Terrance Malick...like it's some grand director's vision and we all should acknowledge it...but you know what?...I think John Carpenter has earned it...he earned it when you look at his film list. Chances are you have seen just about everything in his earlier directing days...I mean even James Cameron did artwork and matte paintings for Escape From New York. I really haven't seen much of his later work, with the exception of Escape from LA, everything after 1988 is lost on me.

Story: Based on the film "The Thing From Another World"

Men stationed in Antarctica and some type of alien is hunting and taking them over...so think Predator in snow...think The Shining as an alien film, think Escape from New York without the New York, think AIDS or CANCER as a villian, think this is better then most horror films. This is a great cast with Kurt Russel (by the way the commentary I have yet to listen too, but the Escape from NY one was one of the best ever...and has Russel and Carpenter, I got The Thing blu-ray for the commentary and I also will get Big Trouble in Little China with the same duo commenting)...also Keith David and Wilfred Brimley. The star though is Rob Bottin...the effects guy...Bottin Effects are better here then in most CGI films today...I wish we would go back to effects like this...sure you can tell its just horror and that stuff cant really happen...but there are more bad effects in CGI these days then ever and Rob Bottin is a genius. Bottin hasn't done film much the last few years but here is what he has worked on:
Fight Club
Se7en
Total Recall
Robocop
Legend
The Howling

He won the Oscar for Total Recall and was nominated for Legend

The blu-ray transfer is up for debate...I have never seen this film before, except in blu-ray...die hard fans of films have really given studios hell for either making blu-rays of older films either:
1.too grainy and therefore losing the "blu-ray quality"
2. too over saturated and "lu-rayish", and therefore making everything look too perfect and not as intended by the filmmakers
See Digital Bits for the specs and the debate

As for me, I could tell times where they cleaned this film up too much...the light and color grade flicker in scenes...but I prefer the blu-ray..its a new version of the film...you want to see it how it was intended?..go to a time machine and see it in the theater...because years ago films were made to be seen that way...no studio made a film back then thinking people were going to see it in there living rooms on tiny TV's...even the biggest TVs can't give you what a theater can.

So The Thing is great...a great classic horror film that I should have seen like 20 years ago...it left me guessing and stunned, John Carpenter is a master of this, I love most of his films and look forward to seeing some more, any suggestions pass them by me.