Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

Admittedly, I'm not a very manly fellow. Still, one of the few typical male things about me is that I don't have a clue about anything fashion, therefore, despite the ties to the cinema industry, you'll hardly ever see me blog about fashion, unless it is extremely gaudy (meaning that I enjoy Bjork) or if it has something to do with Halloween. In the latest issue of Harper's Bazaar, Tim Burton has lent his style to Halloween fashion. Check out the gallery at Cinematical. What does it say about me that I dig the mummy?

It doesn't take much to see by the opening there that it was a slow news day in the movie world, so instead of blogging about how stupid some casting news is, here are a few random movie related articles I've found throughout the day to keep me occupied.

First, Time Out London has counted down the top fifty directorial debuts in cinematic history. Sad to say that I've never seen the top spot, Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter, but I can say it has some mighty big shoes to fill. Also on the list is Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, the Coen Brothers' Blood Simple, George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, David Lynch's Eraserhead, Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, Luis Bunuel's L'Age D'Or and Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead among others.

Coed Magazine has a countdown of the worst movies to hit number one at the box office. Topping the list is Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, but come on, what about the original Red Sonja? Ishtar? Also, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace may have been an abysmal entry in comparison to George Lucas' original trilogy, and when reading movie articles all the time, you get accustomed to nerd rage directed at Lucas and Phantom Menace being the norm. But Jesus, saying it was a worse movie than Epic Movie, Norbit or Batman and Robin? Somebody needs to be stoned to death (Michael Dance).

I spent most of my downtime today watching a set of YouTube videos, set around a guy looking through the tapes of a fictional unfinished short film called Marble Hornets. The series of videos begin as what would appear to be a friend mocking a fellow student filmmaker, almost suggesting the feel of American Movie, and eventually evolves into an amateur horror web series. Most of the bizarre happenings come from the mythical creature of Slender Man, a character made up from a web contest by SomethingAwful.com. Still, I'm posting it because what the guy does works. With Paranormal Activity coming out this weekend, the documentary style horror subgenre seems to have some stories yet to tell, even in a post-Blair Witch Project world. The kid that edited this has gotten a lot of people's attention and should probably be applauded for making a series of homemade shorts that will surely be more entertaining than all the other entries in the faux documentary style, sans the great Cloverfield of course.