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.

Lifetime Movies: 1982

This year kicks off a run of craziness as I've seen so many of these movies--and so many times on TV through the years--that it's hard to separate quality from comforting nostalgia. But the unpaid professional that I am, I will give it my all.

Nominees: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Poltergeist, The Thing

E.T. was a phenomenon, one of those cross-cultural events before the landscape fragmented in the 90s. Like the Thriller of movies. Everyone liked E.T. and there's  no reason to try to say anything different. Director Steven Spielberg had quite a year as he also produced Poltergeist, the E.T. of horror movies. It's generally believed that he actually did much more directing than credited director Tobe Hooper and based on track records and final product, it's hard not to believe it's true. This was a genuinely scary movie and remains so today. The Thing was director John Carpenter at his creative peak and is still one of the best science fiction/horror films ever made. Did you notice I skipped a nominee? I'm a big Cameron Crowe fan and while he didn't direct Fast Times, he did write the script which was both of the moment and timeless. This film is funny and poignant and a pitch perfect depiction of American teenagers. It also captures the transition between the dazed and confused 70s and the greed is good 80s better than just about anything else.

Winner: Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Notes: I've fallen into the bad habit of feeling like I have to mention every movie I liked during a given year instead of just hitting on a few of particular interest. Like Swamp Thing. I remember seeing it in the theater (despite the nudity and violence--awesome head crushing scene--this was rated PG. Gotta love the 80s) and some teenager was walking up and down the aisles completely wrapped in toilet paper pretending to be the title character. You wouldn't see that today...Rocky III may have been the most fun film in the series. Mr. T and Hulk Hogan? No doubt this led to the first Wrestlemania and all its historical magnitude...I'm not sure when I saw Creepshow, but it's a movie I still think about and reference. Especially the final story, "They're Creeping Up on You!" You know the one: germaphobe jerk sealed up in his apartment is overrun by cockroaches. Horrible, just horrible...The Beastmaster was another favorite at the time and the best example of one of the many phases I went through as a kid (sword-and-sorcery)...Then there's Blade Runner. I won't say much here because we touch on it in more depth in an upcoming podcast/Ridley Scott Distillery, but I will let you know I'm not a big fan. (I wouldn't be surprised if Vin picked it as his favorite. That or Diner, which I haven't seen in a long time, though I know I should.)

Playlist: Whiteout

This 2009 film adaptation of Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber's acclaimed comic series starring Kate Beckinsale as a U.S. Marshall hunting a killer in Antarctica had early geek buzz, then sat on the shelf for 2 years. But Kate Beckinsale in the snow doesn't get old, right?

Eh...what we got is really just a run-of-the-mill thriller in an exotic locale, complete with the requisite killer-reveal twist. Director Dominic Sena, whose greatest artistic achievement remains conning Halle Berry to go topless in Swordfish, fails to understand that his thriller's most captivating character is Antarctica itself, in all its haunting isolation. Maybe he should have rented The Thing.

Not to ride Sena too much (really, bravo on the Berry coup), but here's how he introduces his setting:

Antarctica The Coldest, Most Isolated Land Mass on the Planet

Yes, it's only 10 words on the screen for a few seconds, but I couldn't help but feel a little insulted. Oh, that Antarctica? Wait, what's all that white stuff on the ground?* It's in bits like this that slip through that we truly get to see how dumb The Machine thinks we are (Note: seeing this film shouldn't be used in our rebuttal.)

*Snow.