Official Off Topic Thread

[Kenneth R.]

Pan's Labyrinth was a glitch. It was a well-made movie by a messy director. Did you know he was originally to do The Hobbit but his ideas for it were so off-base that he was replaced? I don't think he would have made a good ATMoM. It would be lacking the best elements of the story - the mystery and awe. del Torro would instead bludgeon the viewer with scary alien monsters.

The Alien/Prometheus movie does look to be good. HR Geiger on board is a good choice.

Game of Thrones is excellent, despite changes from the books. Only HBO could make it happen.

 

[ABQShredHead]

I can't wait to see Prometheus.

 

[Sauna]

I didn't even know that At the Mountains of Madness was going to be made into a movie at some point, but I am very, very glad to hear the idea was scrapped.

 

[monoxide_child]

the flash wonderwoman and deadpool are in development as movies
i think these are going to suck as bad as the justice league movie

 

[Harris The Epic]

The DC movies aren't nearly as good as the Marvel movies.

 

[Kenneth R.]

*except Nolan's.

 

[donKyle]

Does anybody know of any good horror movies? Not the lame stereotypical boobs, blood, and guts with bad acting moveis, but just something that really gets to you. It seems hard to find good scary movies these days, and I don't think I can honestly say I've ever seen a scary movie that really got to me.

 

[Kenneth R.]

there really aren't any that I can think of. usually a good horror movie accepts itself as a subgenre of comedy. none of them are legitimately scary.

 

[Phanto]

I've heard good things about Cabin in the Woods, if you want to watch a recent one.
Insidious from last year was okay. No blondes and blood. A couple of cheap scares but also some really great one. It uses classic costume and make-up stuff, no CGI bullshit.

Not really a horror movie, except for a few scenes I suppose, but Diabolique is one of my all-time favorite movies ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046911/ ). It's very Hitchcockian.

 

[Harris The Epic]

You heard good things about that movie? I heard that it was lame. (referring to The Cabin in the Woods)

 

[Phanto]

You heard good things about that movie? I heard that it was lame. (referring to The Cabin in the Woods)

I have yet to see it, so I can't side with either sources.

 

[donKyle]

there really aren't any that I can think of. usually a good horror movie accepts itself as a subgenre of comedy. none of them are legitimately scary.

Yeah, whenever I watch them with friends, we usually just get a kick out of making fun of the movie.

 

[Kenneth R.]

horror films and novels have the power of terror only so much as the activity in the plot is plausible.

typically, writers will try to create something alien or monstrous to capitalize on our fear of the unknown, the uncontrollable. maybe because we are also desensitized to violence and the unusual through our vast knowledge gained by the internet and advances of science, each subsequent writer will try to trump the previous king with something even more fantastic and even more gratuitously graphic.

and typically, this has exactly opposite the intended effect - it loses plausibility, and thus it loses the terror-causing agency it could have possessed because we will tell ourselves "hah, nice CGI, that can't happen in real life". stuff like an alien invasion (war of the worlds) was incredibly horrific when it was first issued, as we had much more limited knowledge of the nature of our celestial neighbors. stuff like that now, though - they have to make the aliens invisible, murdering parasites. we've not yet conquered disease, and so viruses are still terror-causing.

most horror films fail when they reveal the monster, or when they jump the inevitable shark. the ones that accepted that they were for comedic value before this pivotal scene can still be redeeming afterward, while the ones who had been trying so hard to scare you for real, are now after that scene just boring.

it perplexes me how few hollywood directors understand the mechanisms of narrative.

 

[EyeballKid]

RE: Cabin In The Woods, see it. If you expect a horror movie, you will hate it. If you expect ridiculousness with some blood and guts thrown in, you'll enjoy it. See it.

 

[Sauna]

most horror films fail when they reveal the monster

Yeah, and the only exception to this rule I can think of is Alien. H. R. Giger is just in a class of his own. Also, even though it's not from a horror movie, this fucking thing always scares the living crap out of me:



Childhood traumas.

 

[donKyle]

horror films and novels have the power of terror only so much as the activity in the plot is plausible.

typically, writers will try to create something alien or monstrous to capitalize on our fear of the unknown, the uncontrollable. maybe because we are also desensitized to violence and the unusual through our vast knowledge gained by the internet and advances of science, each subsequent writer will try to trump the previous king with something even more fantastic and even more gratuitously graphic.

and typically, this has exactly opposite the intended effect - it loses plausibility, and thus it loses the terror-causing agency it could have possessed because we will tell ourselves "hah, nice CGI, that can't happen in real life". stuff like an alien invasion (war of the worlds) was incredibly horrific when it was first issued, as we had much more limited knowledge of the nature of our celestial neighbors. stuff like that now, though - they have to make the aliens invisible, murdering parasites. we've not yet conquered disease, and so viruses are still terror-causing.

most horror films fail when they reveal the monster, or when they jump the inevitable shark. the ones that accepted that they were for comedic value before this pivotal scene can still be redeeming afterward, while the ones who had been trying so hard to scare you for real, are now after that scene just boring.

it perplexes me how few hollywood directors understand the mechanisms of narrative.

I pretty much agree with all of this. When shit gets too over the top, it becomes nothing but laughable. Also, those b-rate movies are pure comedy gold.

RE: Cabin In The Woods, see it. If you expect a horror movie, you will hate it. If you expect ridiculousness with some blood and guts thrown in, you'll enjoy it. See it.

I'll watch it with an open mind.

Yeah, and the only exception to this rule I can think of is Alien. H. R. Giger is just in a class of his own. Also, even though it's not from a horror movie, this fucking thing always scares the living crap out of me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoRY8lKTv3o

Childhood traumas.

Lol, I watched the Terminator movies all out of order: 2, 1, 3.

I am really excited for Prometheus, and I'm not sure why.

 

[Kenneth R.]

Terminator works because we can almost build machines like that with current technology. That makes it creepy. Their motives are also plausible, which makes it creepy.

Alien works because it's treated as a natural predator, not a malicious evil being. Alien also works because it's categorically alien to what we are familiar with. For Prometheus, I had read that Scott said he didn't want to show the xenomorph again because now, it has become familiar to us, and is no longer such a shocking, alien image. Alien was scary because the thing popped out of and violently killed what was moments before a seemingly normal guy.

 

[EyeballKid]

Lol, I watched the Terminator movies all out of order: 2, 1, 3.

At least you watched them in order of quality. I'd be sorry for you if that order was reversed!

 

[Kenneth R.]

at least you didn't watch 4

 

[Sauna]

At least you watched them in order of quality. I'd be sorry for you if that order was reversed!

Nah, the first one is definitely better than the second. Evil Arnold with almost no lines >>> nice Arnold with plenty of lines. Also, the future is messed up in the second one with naked terminators prancing around the battlefield for no logical reason. Also, the first one doesn't have a stupid slime-being that shouldn't even be able to travel through time according to the rules of the movies.

Terminator works because we can almost build machines like that with current technology. That makes it creepy. Their motives are also plausible, which makes it creepy.

Alien works because it's treated as a natural predator, not a malicious evil being. Alien also works because it's categorically alien to what we are familiar with.

I agree with these, though I wouldn't rule out the possibility of someone creating a genuinely terrifying "monster" that's supernatural and simply evil.

I think the advancements in technology we've had in the past decades have actually made movies less scary. Terminator is the perfect example: no amount of polished CGI can compete with that glitchy, erraticly moving terror we see in the first one.