So a girl named SuperHeidi who I think used to run a website called Pretty/Scary, and now writes for a site dedicated to women filmmakers called Planet Etheria, wrote an article criticizing my selections of the Splatcademy Awards as being too male oriented. Essentially, the implication is that I may have intentionally whitewashed women from the awards….or something? It’s kind of ridiculous as the gender of a director is meaningless. A good horror movie is a good horror movie. Who cares if you have a cock or have ovaries? Anyway, thought you guys might be interested in some negative press we got.

I posted a response to her article in the comments section but I’ll repost it after the jump for anyone interested. I would please ask that nobody get the wild hair up their ass to engage in any flame war on DeadLantern’s behalf. If you must comment, please be respectful.

Hi! I’m the one that compiled the nominee list for the Splatcademy Awards. I appreciate your concerns and maybe I can address a few of them here.

First, the only film you listed that I’ve seen is Don’t Look Back, which I think is good, but wasn’t released in the past year which is part of our requirement for nominees. I saw that about 2 years ago and so it wasn’t part of the nomination process for those reasons. So there’s that.

The other films you list I’ve honestly never even heard of. I’m always interested in female horror directors and we have done shows on the Splattercast in the past about the need for more female directors, including having female co-hosts on to discuss. Doing a quick cursory IMDB search of the films you’ve listed, I see that Stained is rated a 1.2/10 and Trippin’ is a 1.9/10. Not saying there isn’t anything worthwhile in these films, just that it seems plausible that they weren’t highly publicized, or critically acclaimed, for a reason. I hope you could understand that I might have missed them, all things considered. There was no nefarious intent to keep these films off a list. I just didn’t know about them. And honestly, I can’t see every single film that is released. In Their Sleep? Yeah, hadn’t even heard of it. I notice it’s on Netflix Instant and I’ll make sure I take a look at it soon and I will review it on a future Splattercast.

I agree with you that there should be more female directors in horror. In fact, some of my favorite horror films are Pet Sematary, which I’ve stated on the Splattercast is one of the most underrated horror films of the 80′s. American Psycho, which I’ve said is one of the ten best horror films of the past decade and I love Near Dark by Kathryn Bigelow, for example.

But, the truth of the matter is that genitalia does not matter. A good movie is a good movie. It is true that the horror genre is a male dominated genre. That’s not my fault. I don’t control who makes movies or who makes good movies. I simply comment on the movies that I think are deserving of the best of the year. Unfortunately, female directors represent a near nonexistent sample size in relation to horror in general. By definition, you are going to get less “good” films by women because, let’s face it, most horror movies directed by men suck ass. Hence my Top 10 worst list, that doesn’t have any women directors on it either. Dudes just make most of the movies. I’m not gonna apologize for that and I agree, I wish more women were making more horror films. I am pro that

Now, in regards to boobs. Fact: People like boobs. Even women. I will point out, that I set up and organized an entire episode of the Splattercast dedicated to raising awareness and money for Breast Cancer Awareness month. I encourage you to listen to Episode #153. Yes, it does have dudes who say we love boobs, but we also bring our friend Ali on and it’s done in the spirit of “Hey, we love women. We don’t want you to die.”

The fact of the matter is, a female horror director doesn’t by default “deserve” a place on a best of list any more than a male does. It just so happens that males make most of the movies. It sucks, but that’s the reality of the world we live in. It has to be a good movie. It’s not about the gender. If American Psycho, or Pet Semetary, Near Dark or even Ravenous were released this year, they’d be nominated! Unfortunately, they weren’t.

Good movies are good movies. I don’t care what someone’s genitalia is. Why are you not decrying the lack of African-American representation or Latino representation, also terribly under represented in the genre.

In the end, I appreciate your comments, I just think that you are way off base on our reasoning and the motive behind the awards. I understand your thesis that women need to be recognized for their contributions and I agree with you! At least this year I did not come across any that could be put on the list without giving them any sort of special treatment simply because they are women. I don’t believe in that. I believe every film should exist on its own merits and not be required to have extra gender baggage attached.

As an olive branch, I extend an offer to you to come on a future Splattercast and discuss this issue because I do think it is an important one. Perhaps then we can get a better understanding of each other instead of a troll war based on a lack of mutual understanding of our points of view.

And please, there are so many films that come out every year, if there are these overlooked female directed gems, send them our way! We’ll be more than happy to take a look at them and give them a fair shake.

I hope you accept our offer to come on the show and discuss female directors in horror and expose our audience to some of these films and with that, I think we can all agree, here’s hoping 2012 is a great year for women in horror!

Mat
DeadLantern.com
Co-host of the Splattercast

UPDATE: A RESPONSE TO HEIDI WHO RESPONDED TO JULIE

I don’t get the argument here? Like, If I see Stained and Chillerama, but think Chillerama is a better movie….you want a world in which I am forced to stick Stained on a “best of” ballot simply because a woman directed it?

Is this some sort of strange argument for female director affirmative action?

I mean, I honestly don’t get it. Wouldn’t a more productive use of your time simply have been to shoot us an e-mail saying “Hey, I think you overlooked some films here. Maybe we could get a special category this year and moving forward I’ll help direct you to some stuff that you guys might not be aware of for future award shows?” Doesn’t that help the progressive cause of getting female directors noticed more than attacking our dumb little awards show that now has more notice than if you hadn’t brought it up in this manner? Isn’t the job of a writer to get all the information they can before they write an attack editorial?

Our answer, if you had bothered to contact us, would have been “Absolutely, sounds great.” Instead, we see this rant implying that somehow we consciously avoid nominating female directors. That’s absurd. A couple years back we nominated Jennifer Lynch for Surveillance, as an example. Last year we honored Tiffany Shepis with a Lifetime Achievement Award, as we’ve done with Debbie Rochon. As you correctly pointed out, there IS a female director nominated this year, but you seem to disregard it completely because you personally didn’t like the movie. I’m sorry, but you don’t get to impose your will on what other people like and the decisions they make about their own things. That’s kind of totalitarian. I mean, as a counter example, if you made an awards show that nominated nothing but female directors, I’m not gonna get on a soapbox and impugn your character because of it. I mean, you don’t even know us, yet you make these absurd generalizations about our motives.

I get it. You want female directors spotlighted more. In fact, I’m sure there are plenty of cool films that the majority of horror fans just miss or don’t get to see for various systemic reasons within the industry that we should all work together to fix as best we can. I completely agree with you there. I would point out, though, that I don’t view horror cinema through this identity politics prism that you appear to view it through. I mean, I have a degree in Film Theory as well, I know exactly what you’re talking about and trying to get at. I happen to have a different opinion about it which I’d be more than happy to talk with you about some time.

The cold hard truth is that if Chillerama had been directed by four women, guess what, I’d still have nominated it. That’s just a fact. I will also point out, for the record, that we did not whole-heartedly endorse Chillerama. In fact, I wrote a scathing indictment of Tim Sullivan’s Werebear segment which I thought was an abomination for our website and on the Splattercast. But I felt the overall package, which struck a Troma-esque cord that I’m sure you can understand, was well deserving of its place. Again, you might disagree, but just because you think Trippin’ is awesome and deserves to be there, doesn’t mean I will.

In closing, I absolutely think you are off base with all of your comments and we absolutely extend the invitation to have you on the Splattercast. We’ll even allow you to program the films we watch and you can discuss any aspect of them that you’d like with us. That would be a good show and informative to our listeners because we are not opposed to having someone else have a different opinion on things.

As for the “Achievement in Boobs” category. What can I say? It’s crass. Got me there. But I mean, even here, is this simply a feminist “women as objects” thing you’re hung up with? If we had a category called “Achievement in Shirtless Muscled Abbed out Men”, do you have a problem with that as well? Or is your point simply that somebody should not be allowed to even entertain such a ridiculous option? I mean, I’d love to debate with you the nuances of nudity and the female form as its represented in horror imagery throughout history some time if that’s where you want to go with this. You can hit me with all the Laura Mulvey you can muster.

In closing, I guess I don’t know what you are trying to accomplish? What’s your endgame? If you felt bitter and slighted by our dumb awards that we admit on our show are simply fun and irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, well, we’ve offered you the chance to showcase these female directors and films on our show. It’s not like you won’t have a large audience and we’re not going to be disrespectful to your views. It’s true, we’ve got different worldviews on some of this stuff, but as our listeners can attest, even though we like blue humor, we are perfectly capable of having a civil, intellectual discussion about this topic with you.

But hey, that ball is in your court. You can take the offer or leave it, doesn’t matter to me. But what we won’t do is make apologies for selections that we enjoyed simply because some angry chick on the internet doesn’t like it. We didn’t see those films. Life goes on.

But as you said to me a couple years back when we offered you the chance to present on the Splatcademy Awards, “I’m excited and honored” that you think highly enough of our little site to bring this up as an issue. We’ll be sure to do an upcoming Splattercast about it with or without you. Hopefully with you.

Mat
DeadLantern.com
Co-host of the Splattercast

After finishing up my Worst of 2011 list, I figured I might as well give my Best Of list.

Best of lists are always more difficult than worst of lists. It’s easy to pick ten shitty movies, but not so easy when it comes to deciding which film sneaks into entry 8, 9, or 10. This year had a whole lot of movies that I dug. Stuff like Dream Home, Wake Wood, Cold Fish, and Evil Things all struck my fancy. I dug Stake Land and Troll Hunter. I liked the ideas in Yellowbrickroad, and was alright with The Thing prequel. Fright Night was surprisingly decent, as was the theatrical experience of Final Destination 5. And Rubber was fun in a “WTF am I watching?” sort of way. I’ve been saying for months that there is a lot of really solid horror stuff this year. It might not have been a year where stuff like Paranormal Activity and A Serbian Film sort of blow you away and dominate the discussion, but overall I would put this year up against any of the others in recent memory for overall quality. That doesn’t even count all the really top notch genre television that hit its stride this year. Even goofy stuff like Teen Wolf was better than expected (Granted, the expectations weren’t high). And marginal genre fare like The Killing was really interesting and got the watercooler abuzz each week.

Sometimes I think we look at Top 10 lists as “definitive”. They really aren’t. If I wrote this list yesterday, or even tomorrow, some of the films I mentioned above would certainly replace some of the films on my current Top 10. I think they are all worth checking out in their own ways. And in full disclosure, there are just some things that I didn’t quite get around to yet (Attack the Block, for example). But, that being said, my list reflects the stuff that really struck me this year. Stuff that, even months afterward, still seem fresh in my mind. I imagine there will be quite a bit of disagreement with some of my selections, but that’s a good thing! Who wants boredom?

I wrote a review of this a couple months back.  I liked it, but I wasn’t super hot on it.  I still don’t think I am and I wouldn’t argue if someone were to tell me Stake Land or one of the other films that just missed the cut above should be here. But though this film has flaws, the experience of viewing it really stuck with me. One of my complaints with Yellowbrickroad is that it had a lot of really good ideas but just didn’t execute them very well. I think Grave Encounters largely succeeds in what it tries to do and some of the scare sequences in it are top notch (love that bathtub full of blood). It’s found footage done really well and though I am not enamored with it, the film seems to be getting better in my mind the further I get from it. It will certainly merit a second look from me in the future, but my initial feelings have shifted a bit. I think this might be better than I initially gave it credit for. Had a lot of fun with this one.

“What?!!! Scream 4? Are you crazy?” No, I really liked it! I thought this was a really good resuscitation of a good franchise. It’s hip to hate on Scream (which is kind of ironic when you think about it; I digress) but this movie delivered what Scream fans were looking for. Yeah, the opening got a little too cute, but the overall package was a fun ride and I really dug the reveal of Ghostface and the “reason” behind it. It updated Scream for a new generation while keeping the same feel of the original trilogy, and really, isn’t that what most horror fans say they want when these kinds of films come around? The only thing that I really wish they would have had the balls to do was kill one or two of the main characters. That would have put this film higher on my list, to be honest. Still, I liked it a whole lot. Scream is a polarizing property, so I can see if someone takes issue with putting it on a Top 10 list, but it’s my list, and I don’t care what you think

The original Paranormal Activity is pretty unassailable to me. It affected me on a fear level in a way no horror film had in my adult life. So I have a natural affinity for the franchise. Part 2 was a bit of a letdown, but PA3 did a really great job of recapturing, as well as possible, that initial experience for me. No, it’s not as scary as the first film, but I totally dug the simple changes (the oscillating fan sequences were outstanding) and found myself being surprised by what I was seeing. Part of the problem with any PA sequel is that audiences now anticipate every scare. They try to guard themselves against what they know is coming. PA3 did a good job of trying to switch up your expectations. It didn’t succeed every time, but it did enough to really please me. And that ending is so out there. Abrupt, and left many people unsatisfied. If the ending had somehow gone back to Katie in the present day I think it would have been more popular with fans. Still, it was one of my favorite viewing experiences this year.

I Was a Teenage Werebear, one of the Chillerama anthology segments, got my pick as the worst film of 2011. If that film had been rightly excised from any final version of Chillerama, this flick might be challenging for my #1 pick. It’s a testament to how good the rest of the anthology is that it can withstand the nuclear bomb of shit that Werebear attempts to deliver upon it. This is like a gross out horror fans Grindhouse. Adam Green’s The Diary of Anne Frankenstein and Adam Rifkin’s Wadzilla are the best entries, with Joe Lynch’s Zom-B-Movie wraparound not quite up to par, but fun. It’ll take a certain type of horror viewer to enjoy this movie because, honestly, the humor is pretty low brow. It is an anthology whose roots are firmly in the Lloyd Kaufman school of filmmaking (which the film proudly revels in; Kaufman Drive-In). It’s not for everybody but then again, Grindhouse wasn’t either. It’s a love letter to a certain type of horror fan and I predict that this movie will be for pre-teen boys what Troma was for us when we were kids. Each one of us still has that horror reptile mind lurking inside of us that Chillerama caters too. It’s totally alright to let it come out and play every once in a while. Show it Chillerama, just be sure to skip Werebear.

Pure, unadulterated style, and not much else. Watching Amer is like viewing Suspiria if it were hopped up on performance enhancing drugs. It is incredibly sumptuous eye candy and an editing aficionado’s wet dream. Shot as an updated, modern Giallo, there is an almost non-existent story. It’s about this chick who gets turned on all the time….and that’s about it.  In order to show you this, the directors utilize extreme closeups and rapid fire edits in a pretty incredible way. There is this scene where the main girl is taking a taxi to her house and it becomes this weird erotic sequence with a seat belt and the cab driver’s eyes. I can’t even really describe it because I’ve never seen anything quite like it. There is another sequence early on in the film with a young girl being hunted by her evil grandmother that is nothing but color and weirdness. Its got to be experienced. The film does sort of lose its charm in the middle and if you are a viewer who puts storytelling above all then this certainly won’t be for you. But it’s definitely the most eye-popping thing I’ve seen this year and has a really brutal kill at the end that had me squirming. Worth a look for style lovers.

A modern day Wicker Man. I absolutely adored this film. The premise involves a group of knights investigating a small village that seems to be immune to the plague that is ravishing the country side. Rumors say a witch (lots of witch movies this year, anyone notice that?) is practicing necromancy. Turns out to be something pretty much worse than that. Religious films, when done well, always hit a nerve within viewers and the sequence where these knights are forced to renounce God is absolutely harrowing. Just a powerful, powerful scene that I’d argue is just as good as the end of Wicker Man. Excellent performances (Sean Bean owns this old period piece stuff) and stunning cinematography, the only blemish on this film is the hokey epilogue. One of my favorite films of the year, for sure.

This has been another solid year for foreign horror. America has sort of had a renaissance when it comes to comedy/light horror but our foreign friends have continued to plumb the depths of darkness to make us feel all gross and disturbed. That’s a good thing! This one is about a secret agent who decides to torment a serial killer who murdered his wife. The performances are just out of sight, with Dae-Su Oh himself turning in one of the most unique and evil villains to come around this year. It’s just an incredibly well made film with some brutal acts of violence that ingeniously weaves themes of revenge and moral justice against their consequences. Watch this in a double bill with Dream Home and you’ll have yourself a great night at the movies.

I do have gripes with the tonal shift of Insidious’ last act. Personally, I don’t like it. But I can’t deny that this is the only film this year that actually had sequences that creeped me right the fuck out. That scene with the photographs and the old woman getting closer and closer? The demon in the corner of the bedroom? The head scene? Oy. It did not reach Paranormal Activity levels for me but it got close. Real close. The best scenes in this movie probably stand out to me more than any other horror film this year. I also have become a real admirer of James Wan’s use of sound in his films. I think he’s grossly underrated in that respect because his visuals get so much attention. He’s one of the few top tier genre directors working right now that really has a keen understanding of how important sound (or lack thereof) is to an effective horror sequence. I’ve become a big admirer of him in that respect. This one’s real good. Watch it with a female in tow and wait for the magic to happen!

When I fired up Tucker & Dale, I fully expected to hate it. I had heard as much from friends. “Mat, you’ll hate this movie.” To be fair, it is not the kind of movie I generally go for, though I do have a soft spot for comedy horror (Love Joe Dante’s stuff, for example). I was completely blown away by this film. I thought it was one of the most clever, funny (I laughed constantly), and enjoyable experiences I’ve had with the genre. This is different from Chillerama in that it’s not a juvenile gross out flick. Instead, it’s a horror comedy that has a ton of heart and just so happens to have one of the most absurd premises around. The basic plot is a couple good natured hillbilly’s bring a girl who has been injured back to their house. Her friends think they are psycho killers and plot to rescue her, only to keep accidentally killing themselves in the process. It’s the mistaken identity genre horror-fied and it works perfectly. Anchored by a pitch perfect performance by Tyler Labine (he’ll get my vote for Best Actor at the Splatcademies, for sure) this is one of those can’t miss genre experiences. Horror trades in making its viewers feel bad/grossed out/horrified/scared, etc. We all love that experience. But it’s rare one makes you feel genuinely good. Tucker & Dale is rare like that. It deserves to be appreciated.

It’s only fitting that I include a television show in my Best Of list when I included one in my Worst Of one. There will be a large segment of horror fans that will cackle at this selection. AHS has already become one of the most polarizing things in horror this year. But in terms of what has captured my imagination and interest this year, nothing else come close. Yes, I know that Ryan Murphy trades is jumping the shark. I know that every week it’s the most batshit insane thing ever. But I like that. In a year that has lacked a big name film that has wowed the community, I’d argue that AHS has been that property. Every week I go in not knowing exactly what I’m going to get. I love all the weird ghosts. I love all their crazy back stories. I love the entire aesthetic of the show (Dutch. Angle. Heaven.). AHS keeps me enthralled week to week in a way no other horror television property has. Critics argue that it’s off the wall weirdness is its biggest fault. I argue that it is its biggest strength. Will it peter out in the 2nd season? Maybe. Probably, even. But I’m not worried about what the show will do next year. I’m focused on what it has done so far. And so far it’s been the most unique genre experience of the year. And you can’t tell me that the Rubber Man stuff wasn’t creepy beyond belief (Wish they would have left that a mystery into season 2.) Traditionally scripted shows are great (Supernatural is still good, everybody. Watch it.), but there is nothing quite like American Horror Story. And I’m gonna enjoy the hell out of it as long as I can.

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Overall, I’d say this has been a really good year. Give me a few months to think about it and I might even argue “great”. We’ll see.

P.S. I didn’t count The Killing in my final analysis, but if you want to count it, that would be in my Top 5, for sure.

Another year in horror has about wrapped up and so it is time for the obligatory “Top 10″ lists to start appearing. Though lists are pretty much meaningless, they are fun nonetheless and as I’m making my final preparations for the Splatcademy Award nominees, I figured I’d make a brief return to the site and mention the properties I thought were unforgivably bad. As I explained with last year’s list, it’s easy to pick 10 direct to video shlock films, but this list is more representative of films that really had no business being as bad as they were.

In making this list, I realized that, surprisingly, I was having a tough time finding ten movies I really, really disliked this year. It’s been such a strange year for horror. Not a whole lot that stands out as being either really bad, or really great for that matter. A lot of the films sort of exist in this weird “could go either way, I guess” category. In some respects, maybe that’s a strength? I guess the genre must have done something right if I couldn’t immediately name 10 things I just despised. That, or maybe I just lucked out by missing the garbage. Whatever the reason, here are the ten properties I think stunk up the joint this year…..

I actually enjoyed the theatrical experience of Creature. The film captured a 90′s zeitgeist that most horror films have only begun to broach. I suspect that you’ll start seeing that a lot more as 90′s teens grow into tomorrow’s horror filmmakers. That being said, the film is noteworthy to me for reasons other than the quality itself. No doubt, there will be those who enjoy it’s quirky charms, practical fx, blatant nudity, and gross out humor (the brother/sister handjob, for example). If you’re in a certain frame of mind, I can see one enjoying this movie immensely. But honestly, the thing is poorly made junk with one of the worst endings in horror history. The whole thing is amateur hour but it has that unique aspect of getting a mainstream release and so it has a certain aura about it. The vast majority of people didn’t see it in theaters, though. So unless you were one of those “lucky” few, Creature is probably gonna leave you giggling more at the terrible filmmaking than at the gross out humor.

I remember seeing trailers for this one back in 2010, I think. It looked pretty rad. Nic Cage and Ron Pearlman fighting witches in a period piece? Sign me up. The first scene of this film is also really good, so I was like “Wow, maybe this is gonna be a gem that was overlooked due to the irrational hatred of Nic Cage that people have.” Turns out, those people were kind of right. Now I like Nic Cage. I’ll watch any movie just for Nic Cage (Drive Angry was super fun), but when Nic Cage is bad, he’s really bad. I think he picks roles based on how much fun he thinks he’ll have making them rather than the quality of the project itself. Here, he gets to argue with witches and fight demons. Sounds great in theory, but the execution is so bland and uninteresting. It’s nice to look at, though, and has some stunning cinematography, but the the last act just falls apart and turns into a really terrible CG bitch fight. Ron Pearlman does himself no favors, either. This is a movie that had potential but squandered it on a stale script with wooden performances.

Guillermo del Toro has sort of become unimpeachable to horror fans. In actuality, he’s only directed a handful of films and it’s debatable how “great” his canon is, but his name is everywhere mainly because he produces a lot of stuff. Splice, The Orphanage, Julia’s Eyes, etc. This movie was another one that had del Toro’s name plastered all over it. One thing that cannot be criticized is that del Toro stamps a distinct “look” on his films. I liken him to Tim Burton in that way. He’s always got great visuals and Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is no different. On a technical level, this film is aces. On a “Does any of this make a lick of sense?” level, it fails utterly. The acting is bad, the CG monsters look ridiculous, character actions make no logical sense….it’s a beautiful, but muddled, film made all the more disappointing because it has these effective moments wrapped around scenes of stupidity. This will probably go down as the biggest disappointment in horror this year. It’s another film with a neat premise that squanders it at every opportunity. We rightly criticize films that talk down to the intelligence of their viewers and Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark does that constantly (Hey mom, you don’t believe me? How about looking at this arm I smashed in the bookcase? k?). This movie was insulting on that level.

If ever there were a film that the anti-PG13 crowd could get behind, it’s The Roommate. Essentially a remake of Single White Female, this one stars a couple hot chicks named Minka and Leighton who start fighting with each other and, ultimately, try to kill each other. The problem you have to overcome when watching this is “Why am I not just watching Single White Female?”, a film that is better, has hot leads who don’t have no nudity clauses, and is willing to actually show the disturbing violence rather than cut away so the Bieber lovers can see the movie without their moms present. Leighton Meester does do a good job of being bat shit insane and she has that “crazy hot” look that you can totally buy, but the film just has no ovaries and gives you nothing to care about at all. You know every beat in this movie before you even start watching it and because the violence is so tame there really isn’t anything to be truly threatened by. A total snoozer.

Fired Superman as a private detective hunting down supernatural monsters? I was sold. Then I watched the film. Brandon Routh is a terrible actor. I said it. This is a movie that looks great because it’s Hollywood. In fact, if you want to see the exact same look, watch the television show Grimm. But the jokes fall flat, the banter between Routh and his dead partner lacks any sort of chemistry, and Routh himself  solidifies the main complaint against him as Superman: zero charisma. I’m watching these guys go through the motions and not giving a shit about any of it. And I like stuff like this. One of my favorite films is Cast A Deadly Spell, something I was hoping this would be in the vein of. Instead, there was no charm. Dylan Dog is the definition of cold, dead cinema. Full disclosure, I have not read the comic source material, so I have no idea how accurate it is to the spirit of those books, but as a movie, I recommend putting it on if you have insomnia. It’s a good cure.

What can be said about this that hasn’t already been expressed by the genre community? John Carpenter’s big return to feature length horror after nearly a decade away playing videogames arrived with one of the most generic, lame ass “ghost” stories ever. This movie makes The Roommate look like a new Charlie Kaufman flick.  Maybe time will be kinder to The Ward. I suppose it’s possible that horror fans collectively were just too amped up for the return of JC, but I doubt it. This movie came on the heels of Pro-Life and didn’t do much to make us believe Carpenter still had “it”. It didn’t help that Martin Scorsese made a similar film called Shutter Island that was a million times better (and still as predictable). The jury is still out on whether Carpenter can get back to making above average genre fare, but what we definitely do know is that The Ward certainly isn’t it. Shallow, boring, lazily filmed (Take a shot every time you see that corridor dolly shot), and predictable. Carpenter should have known better.

This is probably the one selection on my list that will have people going “You’re crazy.” I fully understand that there is an amazing amount of slurpage for this show (Though I have noticed more and more criticism of it as late), but I have been a critic of The Walking Dead television show from Day 1. And I will continue to be one until it proves me wrong. As I go through the list of things that sucked this year, the main theme seems to be a total and utter lack of creativity. Most of the films on my list are just mind numbingly dull, with story lines so generic and telegraphed that it feels like they were spit out by an internet plot generator. The Walking Dead is probably the apex of that. Do a drinking game to this show. Every time you predict the next “twist”, take a shot. Anybody who has spent anytime with the zombie genre will be dead before one episode is done. Now, to be fair, I’ve heard that the television show deviates considerably from the comics. I haven’t read the comics, I’m just critiquing the show itself. To me, it’s a boring soap opera whose story is hampered by the writers having to force every overly dramatic character into the stupidest scenarios possible in order for them to be in any sort of danger. The tension never feels organic in this show. It’s always “Um, better put in a couple zombies now that we’ve discussed the Shane/Rick/Lori baby drama some more”. It’s cookie-cutter nonsense. You are more than welcome to ride my bandwagon. There’s plenty of room. Just don’t get Tebowed.

I did a full review of this film awhile back that you can read here. It’s amazing to me that people thought that the premise of the original could be expanded in any meaningful way. I guess Tom Six did the best he could with the limited concept, by trying to make it a meta commentary on horror film viewing. Then simultaneously undercutting that entire message by deciding to go full Rob Zombie and giving detailed explanations of his characters screwed up childhood. Mr. Six, you never go Full Rob Zombie. There’s no coming back from that. This is another movie that is all talk and no substance. Hell, you won’t even get the extreme violence you probably think you will based on the bluster of Six and crew. Bullshit masquerading as art-house transgressiveness. Yawn.

Wrong Turn 4 is this years 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams.  It’s a film that feels completely rushed, with little or no thought towards making anything even half-way respectable. This one is prequel that shows the cannibal family inhabiting an insane asylum that a group of college kids end up staying at while getting lost in some snowy mountains. They then get killed by the cannibals. That’s it. This film just looks ugly on a technical level. Horrid audio issues, bad framing, nasty lighting, and winner for worst cast of the year by far. It also relies on CG blood and gore for nearly all of its kills. Did anyone want a prequel to the Wrong Turn movies? I think the franchise is fun, but it took a giant step backwards with this entry. It barely qualifies as a movie. Normally, something as bad as Tim Sullivan’s Field of Screams would be number one on this list. I mean, it would have to take a pretty shitty director to be able to top something like this….

That director would be Tim Sullivan. There is that old classic choice as to whether you’d press a button for a million dollars at the risk of killing someone, possibly close to you. I’d press the button over and over just to get rid of Tim Sullivan, family be damned. I’m convinced that this guy is single-handedly trying to destroy the horror genre. The anthology Chillerama is one of the funnest genre experiences of the year. Tim Sullivan does his absolute best to drag his talented buddies into the gutter with his entry. Werebear looks like it was made for three bucks. The humor is awful, the music is ghastly, the direction is non-existant. There is nothing of any value in it. Now, please don’t mistake this as negatively impugning Chillerama as an entire package. It’s good, and worth your time. But Tim Sullivan’s gay werewolf musical is atrocious. Like, it will make you want to break your disc in half and then castrate yourself to feel better. I can’t imagine what Adam Green, Joe Lynch, and Adam Rifkin thought to themselves when Tim Sullivan turned in his anthology entry. They were probably insanely excited about what they were putting together…and then they saw this. Oh to be a fly in the minds of those three. You know in their heart of hearts they curse Tim Sullivan’s name. This is so bad that I think it would be completely justified if they just flat out ended their friendship with him. Right there in the editing room. “Tim, fuck you, dude.” I’ve actually met Tim Sullivan. He was the definition of a pretentious cock and Teenage Werebear just oozes Tim Sullivan’s ego in every frame. It’s without a doubt the worst thing I’ve seen all year and I’m hoping that an old man with half a face delivers a box to me sometime soon. Apologies for any collateral damage

First off, I want to thank all of the Dead Lantern crew for putting in so much work this year. Deejay, Jeff, Steve, Tony, Jo, Lauren, Chris, Bryan, Ronin and all the other people who have helped us create this massive pod empire! It’s very much appreciated. Watching movies and doing multiple podcasts is crazy time consuming and all of you do it without complaint. You’ve all helped Dead Lantern become bigger than ever this year and it couldn’t have been done without you. So pat yourselves on the back, you deserve it!

I also want to give special thanks to our film crew. Deejay, Steve, Spooky, Jeremy, T.J., Ali, Jenny, Tina,  Brady, Jeff, Bryan, Tony, and the rest who will no doubt be doing a lot of hours for very little in return over the coming months. Filmmaking is even more time consuming than podcasting and I appreciate everything all of them do. We have a lot of cool stuff planned to show you (an Ancient Rome horror short is coming for Shivers Down Your Spine!) and we’re all very excited. And yeah, there might be another feature length happening here soon…

And of course, all you listeners. We’ve made some great friendships over the past couple of years and we’re all very humbled that you guys and gals keep coming back to listen to our shitty little podcasts and support our dopey horror movies. You guys make it all worth it and we’re excited to bring you all some rad content in 2012.

Now that the mushy stuff is out of the way, I did want to update you all on a few changes happening over the next couple of months.

• Cold Case Cinema will not be scheduling any new shows for November and December. We’re taking a much deserved two month break for the Holidays. We have 7 episodes in the can so you’ll still get new CCC’s from now until the new year, but we won’t be covering any current TCM flicks until January. Please feel free to continue to send in feedback, though! We’ll get to it in January.
• The Round Table will also be taking a bit of a break. This is the most intensive cast to produce because we have to edit down 5+ hours of content to around 90 minutes. It’s just too tough to try to get those out weekly, so they’ll be released sporadically. Maybe once a month. You’ll probably see one more before the new year.
• Dead Trax will probably continue to be posted (remember, it’s not in the feed) though maybe not consistently weekly like it has been. Though look for our upcoming Commando commentary track!
• Splattercast will continue as normal. We might be off next week for Halloween but we’ll be back in full force to do Noirvember. And don’t forget Deejcember, a month of shows programmed entirely by Deejay!
• Due to recent events, the first episode of SHIVERS DOWN YOUR SPINE might not be out on Halloween as planned. If not, don’t fear because it will be posted very soon! We promise!
• And last but not least, I’m gonna be taking a break from site blogging for the next couple months. I’ll still post when new podcasts are uploaded but I’m very keen on just taking as much of a break from Dead Lantern as I can for awhile. Sort of a mini-vacation for the holidays. So don’t think we’re quitting, just things might be a tad quieter around here beginning in November.

So once again, thanks to everyone who has made this year a big success for Dead Lantern. There’s a ton of great stuff coming in 2012, including more episodes of SHIVERS, the 2012 Splatcademy Awards, and possibly a new feature length movie! And of course, more of the podcasts that you’ve come to tolerate.

We appreciate all of your support.

I’m checking this out tomorrow night but it’s worth noting that something odd happened at the box office this weekend. Paranormal Activity 3 apparently smashed it. It’s rare to see a horror film do this much business in a single weekend, let alone the third in franchise it’s critics call a one-trick pony.

To put this in perspective, let’s take a look at the first 3 films in the Saw franchise, which most people agree is the dominant horror franchise of the past decade.

The first Saw made $103 million worldwide with $55 of that coming domestically. Paranormal Activity made $193 million worldwide with $108 being domestic. Also consider that PA was a word of mouth flick not given a traditional wide release immediately.

Saw, of course, was a huge hit and its sequel showed that. The sequel grabbed about $148 million worldwide, with $87 of that being domestic. It’s opening weekend was about $32 million, large for a horror film, for sure. So how did PA2 stack up to that? Quite nicely. The sequel grabbed $177 million worldwide, nearly thirty million more than the highly decorated Saw 2. It also stacked up just about even domestically with about $85 million. It’s opening weekend put Saw 2 to shame with a haul of $41 million.

The verdict is still out on how well PA3 will do. After all, it’s only been out for two days. It could drop like an anvil next weekend. But if the $50 million dollar opening weekend holds, that puts it well ahead of Saw 3‘s opening weekend of $34 million (which was about the same as Saw 2′s opening with higher ticket prices. Part of the phenomenon of Saw was it’s quirky ability to open with complete stability over and over, which helped make it a venerable franchise). It wasn’t until the fourth film that Saw began seeing noticeable diminishing returns (though still hugely profitable in movie terms). To put PA3′s opening weekend into even more perspective, Green Lantern opened at $53 million. So it’s operating in superhero film range.

Let’s also not forget that though the budgets for both franchises are extremely small (part of the reason they are successes regardless of diminishing returns), the PA films are dramatically different from the Saw films. The first Saw and PA were dead even, right around a million dollars. PA2 stayed around that range whereas Saw 2 moved into the $4 million range. After that, the Saw films average $10 million for their budgets (with Saw 3-D coming in at $20). The Saw films also had massive marketing campaigns that probably added at least double to those production budgets, if not more. I think it’s safe to say, as of now anyway, that the PA films have been more successful financially.

So what am I saying? Well, it appears just based on numbers that Paranormal Activity could well be on its way to usurping Saw as the dominant horror franchise of this century. It has a long way to go. A lot will depend on how well PA3 holds over the next month. Is it front loaded, or is it genuinely scaring the crap out of people to keep word of mouth going? It would also have to hold up over four more movies. Can it make it? I dunno. But I was kind of taken aback when I actually looked at the numbers and compared the two franchises. Is Paranormal Activity actually more popular than Saw? To me, that’s weird to think about. The default answer would be “Of course not” but right now, I think the answer is “yes”. I don’t know if it will have the longevity of Saw, but it’s certainly on its way. There are so many variables (changing ticket prices, weekend competition, release dates, the zeitgeist), but the numbers right now seem to tell the tale. My review of PA3 on Monday’s Splattercast, by the way.

P.S. Can we please get an actual sequel to Paranormal Activity? I want to know what happened to Katie (and her boobs) at the end of the first!

I caught the first episode of Ryan Murphy’s new show American Horror Story tonight before I headed off to see Poltergeist. First off, this is exactly what I expected from a Ryan Murphy crafted horror story. Bizarre, artsy fartsy, unlikeable characters, extreme (for television) content, and a serious case of melodrama. In short: I totally dug it. This show is Nip/Tuck crossed with Bunuel if he was a 25 year old hipster into old Nine Inch Nails videos . The story follows a family of three who move out to California for a fresh start. Vivian, played by Connie Britton, catches her husband banging a college student after her miscarriage. Rather than divorce, they decide to start anew and try to repair their marriage. Of course they have a screwed up daughter who likes to cut herself and he is a psychiatrist who thinks it’s smart to have his patients visit him in his house. Speaking of the house, it has a history of its occupants murdering each other and, unsurprisingly for a Murphy project, shit starts happening immediately. Weird neighbors with “mongoloid” daughters (Jessica Lange actually calls her mentally handicapped daughter that), teens who want to shoot up their schools, naked men masturbating while crying, and capped by that guy in the latex body suit having sex with Vivian and impregnating her. Did I mention the old lady housekeeper might be a ghost and who appears as a sexy maid to Ben? There’s also an old lady monster ghost in the basement with razor sharp teeth. The first episode is pretty balls to the wall.  I’ve seen a lot of people criticizing the fact that the episode is just so wild and zany from the get go.  Personally, I thought it was a breath of fresh air. The conventional thing to do in a haunted house story is to build the ghostly activity sloooooooowly. This? S&M ghosts raping our main character in the first episode. You’re thrown right into it.

I thought it was really good and different. The style is gonna turn a lot of people off, I think. Jump cuts, multiple angles for simple lines of dialogue (edited together rapid style), and some very odd musical choices during certain moments all serve to create this weird sense of “WTF am I watching?” If Murphy was trying to make something unique and unlike anything else on television, he certainly achieved that. One criticism I’d have is that Murphy can’t just let a scene be a scene without putting as many curse words and “OMG I’M SO EDGY” face slaps into it as possible. I think every cuss word you are allowed to say on television was repeated about 10o times each in the first episode alone. Murphy’s trademark is being Jump The Shark All The Time. Nip/Tuck eventually collapsed under the sheer absurdity of its scenarios. That would be my biggest fear with American Horror Story. Can Murphy sustain the successful feeling of freakiness for a full season before everyone starts rolling their eyes? For what it’s worth, my girlfriend was genuinely creeped out by this show, going so far as to say it was the weirdest thing she had ever seen on tv and that she couldn’t believe that this was actually allowed on non-premium pay television. That’s from a non-horror fan. For me, I liked it. I’m genuinely interested in watching the rest of it. I loved that it just threw a bunch of wackiness at me and said “Process this…if you can”. A haunted house story with no buildup, I dig it! I’m afraid it’ll collapse under the sheer weight of its own zaniness, but hey, Nip/Tuck got 3 excellent seasons in before it imploded. If American Horror Story can get just one, I’d consider that a win for genre fans.

And then of course there was Poltergeist! Our local theater is screening some famous horror flicks every Thursday this month and this was the first one on the docket. Unlike past old movies they’ve screened, like The Thing, I’m pretty sure this was not a 35mm print (If it was, it was a remastered, pristine version. It was totally clean). I’d guess this was a digital projection. There were zero scratches or marks on it. Other than the audio being quieter than I would have liked, it was a pretty perfect screening. The place was packed to the brim. So full that I’d guess it actually sold out. If not, then it was damn close. When the lights went down and the movie started there were still people standing around and struggling to find seats. I’ve always liked Poltergeist and seeing it on the big screen was great fun. It’s pretty clear Hooper didn’t direct this movie. Steven Spielberg’s mitts are all over this thing. Even when it ends, he’s tosses up ” A STEPHEN SPIELBERG PRODUCTION” before the credits roll (gotta make sure one last time that everyone knows his name, lol). Interestingly enough, though the film is rated PG, my theater had it listed as an R on their board. Rewatching it, I’m not sure the film holds up as much as it once did. Some of the scenes just don’t have the same oomph as they once did (such as the clown sequence) and the film’s last act destroys its internal logic. Act 2 ends with them getting Carol Anne out of the netherworld where her and the mother almost die. So what do they do? Stay in the house while Coach conveniently heads off to his job and leaves them alone for the night. It sets up the rollicking finish (by the way, the entire family gets out of the house without the help of Coach even though they are screaming for him to help. The magic of editing.) which is certainly fun but honestly, it’s pretty lazy screenwriting. Still, it’s a fun movie even if it’s twenty minutes too long and doesn’t make a lick of sense. That guy ripping his face off is aces.

Next week is The Shining. I can’t wait to see that on the big screen. That’s a quintessential movie designed and shot for the theatrical experience. Be jealous.

I really dug this season premiere. Sam and Dean don’t have much to do as it mostly focuses on Castiel but I liked that they completely changed your expectations. Instead of Cas as God as the main season struggle, that is solved by the end of the episode, it becomes Cas as an evil Leviathan. On one hand, I like that because it gives Misha Collins out of his stoic, emotionless acting and lets him get a little crazy. Plus, we’re not exactly sure what the Leviathans are and how powerful they are so the first episode hints at a good narrative thread that could be coming up. But it is a little disappointing that the Leviathans seem to be just inhabiting bodies instead of us getting any genuine Lovecraftian monsters. But we’ll see. I have a feeling we’ll see Lucifer escape the cage this season and our heroes will have to make some sort of deal with devil to figure out this Leviathan stuff. Which is good, I think, because Lucifer always felt like a genuine threat to me, whereas stuff like the Mother of All just felt like “We need another powerful entity”, thrown into the story. Supernatural continues to be a quality genre show but if you haven’t seen anything from Season 3 on, you’ll be completely lost in terms of the mythology. My recommendation? Go watch them. It’s a wonderful series.

Ringer is the new show by Sarah Michelle Gellar, who sort of disappeared after Buffy, deciding to focus on a couple Scooby Doo flicks and making babies. This show is three episodes in so far. The plot is insane but basically, SMG switches places with her successful twin sister in New York who just so happens to have not told anyone about her crackhead prostitute little sister. The twin then seemingly kills herself, leaving SMG to take her place and start a new life. Unfortunately for her, her twin wasn’t the good girl she made out to be. She’s been having an affair on her husband, has been transferring money into secret accounts, and has had a hitman try to kill her. So now SMG must try to negotiate her twins fucked up life while simultaneously trying to hide out from the cops who have had her under protective custody ever since she witnessed a mob murder. And oh yeah, the mob is trying to find and kill her as well.

The premise of this show is solid. It’s twist after twist. You never really know what’s going on. It’s been described as a neo-noir and that description fits it in some way. The characters, other than SMG aren’t really that interesting yet, but they’ve been giving hints that none of them are what they seem so maybe they’ll flesh them out more in the future. I like the show so far, but I can’t help but feel like this show will lose its interest in the coming weeks. Like, once the novelty of the situation wears off, is there going to be any “there,” there? It’s also filled with lots and lots of rich people melodrama, fashion, money, design, dinner parties, etc. So if that’s not your thing then you probably aren’t going to go for it. I’ll give it a few more weeks and hope it keeps my attention. It certainly has potential, that’s for sure.

I’ve been singing the praises of Mad Men since the very first episode. It’s easily my favorite show on television right now. It feels good to be a fan of something from the beginning and then to watch it become this really successful thing. One offshoot of success is that everyone will try to copy your formula. Hence, Pan Am. One of the novel things about Mad Men is the 60′s period of it. The fashion, the different culture, it’s the in thing right now. And c’mon, chicks looked smoking hot back then. Take a cue, ladies, you can be completely covered and gorgeous. Pan Am utilizes all of that. It takes place in 1962, when Flight Attendants were still called Stewardesses. The premiere is mostly just an introduction to all of the hot chicks in tight uniforms that will be the backbone of the show. One of em is played by Christina Ricci, which was weird, not because of the forehead, but because I wasn’t expecting Christina Ricci. There wasn’t enough to really give a lot of development to any of the characters, but you see bits of their backstories and to how they came to be on the plane. One stewardess had an affair with a passenger and now finds herself face to face with his wife. Another pair are sisters, one helped the other escape a wedding. The pilot is in love with a stewardess who happens to be missing. And the main plot of the show is we find out that one stewardess is a spy “Pan Am girls can go anywhere and talk to anyone without raising suspicion”.

It looks good, has a nice espionage angle, and those women do look gorgeous. I’ll keep watching, for sure.

$20 million dollars. That’s the rumored budget of this pilot episode. Outrageous for a television show, and unsustainable as far as profit goes (Each episode is reportedly $4 million buckeroo banzai’s). But Stephen Spielberg’s name is attached, and much like his other show this year, Falling Skies, Terra Nova is pretty bland right off the bat. Basically, in the future we have destroyed earth’s environment. So scientists discover a rip in time. That time turns out to be 85 million years ago. So they send back people to colonize earth (don’t worry, it’s a separate timeline) and give humanity a new start. They have this little colony which they call Terra Nova. Anytime anyone leaves the walls, dinosaurs try to eat them. There’s also this mystery of another colony that was sent through the time rift and why they hate the Terra Nova peeps. There’s a Lost style “WTF is Terra Nova REALLY?” angle that they set up. Meanwhile the other group of outsiders (which all seem to be minorities. I guess Terra Nova is white utopia, or something lol) has control of the mine that has the show’s version of Unobtanium (Avatar reference). It’s pretty much Jurassic Park meets Avatar meets Lost. Which is fine, I guess, but the show just recycles a bunch of stuff you’ve already seen before (How much do you want to be that that kids girlfriend he left in the future comes back and is all “WTF?” when she sees him with his new love interest? Didn’t take long for that kid to get past his girlfriend who he tells he’ll find a way to bring back “no matter what”. Love is fickle like that)

Dinosaurs. You want to know about the dinosaurs, right? I mean, that’s the ultimate draw of Terra Nova.  Just like Jurassic Park, the first dinosaur you see is a Brontosaurus type thing. Just like in Jurassic Park, there is T-Rex style dinosaur attack. Just like Jurassic Park, there are Raptor like dinos that attack a group of kids. What I was struck by is the shitty CG. For a pilot that cost this much money, and which was delayed because of the fx work, I couldn’t believe that I was watching SyFy level CG. I mean, it all looks like an expensive show…until you see the dinosaurs. Even Spielberg’s other show, Falling Skies, had better CG than this. I like dinosaurs, but I can already tell that I don’t give a shit about this show. I’ll keep watching if only because my girlfriend is interested in it. Maybe it will get better. It took a good two-thirds of the season before Falling Skies got interesting. Both shows suffer from the same problem: the characters are totally uninteresting. They are bland. Spielberg bland. My prediction is that Terra Nova will be seen as a big failure. I would expect a significant drop off in terms of viewership over the next couple weeks. We’ll see.

A couple of months back, the internet got a major case of butthurt when Netflix split its streaming and mail order plans and jacked up the prices by 60%. Everybody hates price increases but at the time, I said that Netflix’s mistake was in not adequately explaining why to its customers. I argued that simply rolling this out in a “better” manner would have helped the company save some face and maybe not put customers  in near suicidal states of anger. We talked about this a bit on Splattercast 238. Well, now that Wall Street numbers are in, Netflix’s subscriber base has dropped by over a million in some estimates and the stock price dropped like an anvil on Teddy Valient. Looks like the butthurt was, indeed, real.

So now Netflix shakes things up again with the announcement that they are splitting their business into two companies and renaming their DVD by mail service Qwikster. Before I get to that WTF moment, I will say that I do appreciate the mea culpa offered by CEO Reed Hastings regarding the uproar from the price increases:

When Netflix is evolving rapidly, however, I need to be extra-communicative. This is the key thing I got wrong.

That’s nice, and exactly what I said should have been done in a better manner from the beginning. Unfortunately, it’s a few months late and by this point, I don’t think there is anything Netflix can say or do that is going to appease the angry customers from a few months back. Once butthurt manifests itself, the butthurter will never stop hurting. It’s a Podcast Law that applies to all thing on the internet.

So now Mr. Hastings is out with a new plan. To create two separate websites, two separate queues, and rebrand Netflix, who made their name and who has become synonymous with mail order rental, as a separate company called Qwikster (while maintaining the Netflix name for streaming only). My girlfriend was quick to point out that this seems like a ploy to sell off the DVD portion of their business, which is probably where this will ultimately lead. Regardless, in the here and now, if you have streaming and dvd rental, you’re gonna have to manage two separate accounts on two separate websites. And the websites will not be integrated, which means that you’ll have to check twice to see if certain movies are available. Example:

Reed Hastings: ouch. You’d have to search the second place if we didn’t have it in the first place.

Non integration of the sites is a really stupid move. Customers are already angry about that and I don’t blame them. But hey, at least the guy is up front about it and isn’t dropping it on 24 million customers “overnight”. The obvious solution is that both sites need to be integrated somehow, but that won’t happen if, indeed, Netflix wants to ultimately sell off Qwikster. I’m not even convinced that streaming “is the future” when it comes to Netflix. The studios already hate them and content has been dropping out left and right. Have they shown any recent ability to provide quality content? I mean, I love watching Vampegeddon, but c’mon. I guess Mad Men is on there now. But it all feels like Netflix is in a slow death spiral. To be fair, much of it not of their own doing. Netflix is changing. People hate change.

Judging from the comments on Netflix’s blog, customers aren’t happy with having their queues split up. It’s an annoyance on top of a price increase many already found hard to swallow. If Netflix was hoping to get some good will, it looks like they failed.

Annoyance of two separate queues aside, I am intrigued by Qwikster. It should be noted that none of the new changes are going to increase prices again, but with Qwikster, they will start to offer video games for rental. Now, I want to see what the video game plan will be (ex. Is there a limit to how many games you can have in a month? Are the wait times for games going to be insane? Will it be a robust selection? etc.) but this might be a feature of Qwikster that supercedes any amount of annoyance factor that I might have with queues. Offering video games is a pretty big deal if they do it right.  And that’s a feature that doesn’t seem to be getting any play amongst this new round of butthurt.

I think customers are justified in being angry about being forced into managing two separate queues from two separate websites, but I’m cautiously optimistic about this new Qwikster thing. I primarily get my Netflix content via mail anyway and I’m looking forward to this game feature. In the end, prices didn’t increase or anything, and so it seems like we might all be getting a really great function at the expense of another minute or two of our times each day managing queues (Sacrifice some porn browsing, you should be fine). In the long run, I’m certainly concerned as a mail order user that Netflix is going to kick me to the curb by selling off to some shitty company who will then change rates and/or reduce selection. I think mail order users should be genuinely concerned about that possibility. But in the here and now, it might turn out alright. We’ll see. And hope!

This article is dedicated to Bryan from Drunken Zombie.

There has been much clamor over the past year about the inevitability of four 16 team Super Conferences. In the past year, teams like Nebraska, Colorado, and Texas A&M have all switched conferences signaling the start of a major change in college athletics as history and tradition are jettisoned for greener pa$tures. The  ultimate endgame of all this is that when the four super conferences are created, they will then opt out of the NCAA (A lot of people don’t know that the NCAA is a volunteer organization in that, the schools voluntarily allow it to police them and can snap their fingers and say “Fuck your sanctions” if they have 63 other schools having their back), keep all the money themselves, and get that playoff we all want started.

The driving force behind all of this is football. Or at least, that’s what we’ve all thought. But with the recent announcement that Syracuse and Pittsburgh are leaving the Big East for the ACC, and the new report today that the ACC is trying to round out its roster with Connecticut and Rutgers, the first conference to actively try to get a full 16 teams is the one conference nobody really regards as a football power. Pitt, Syracuse, and Connecticut, the two latter moreso than the former, are basketball powers. The ACC, of course, is home to North Carolina and Duke, and by extension has always been viewed as primarily a “basketball conference”. That’s not to say that the ACC is a chump when it comes to football, just that Florida State and Miami have been down the past decade and Virginia Tech for all their success, just isn’t a sexy program that garners the kind of respect that the ACC basketball schools command.

So I find it really interesting that the first conference to be proactive in getting 16 teams (the others have flirted with it in football, but have been afraid to pull the trigger) is a basketball conference. Make no mistake, Pitt, Syracuse, Uconn, and Rutgers are not scaring the likes of FSU, VaTech, or Miami. If anything, the football programs are gleeful. Why? Because the in conference football schedule gets decidedly easier allowing the big teams in the ACC to have a better shot at big bowl games and National Championships, while the basketball aspect of the ACC gets insanely stronger. Not only that, but it successfully stifles any attempt by the SEC to poach teams from the ACC and gives a big middle finger to Texas and their Longhorn Network.

Basketball has become the trigger that starts knocking the dominoes over, not football. As a devoted lover of all things basketball (way more than football), I find this to be an interesting angle of discussion in this football dominated world. I’ll be interested to see if the talking heads on ESPN bring this up at all during the next week or so.

Other thoughts

• What happens with Kansas when the Big 12 dissolves? My guess would be that the Big 10 will pick up Missouri and Kansas. Missouri is mid-tier successful in football and basketball, but Kansas is an all-time basketball program. That would be like Kentucky not having a conference. I would think that the Big 10 would jump on the chance to bring an all-time basketball program like Kansas into themselves because honestly, the Big 10 just isn’t a basketball power now that Indiana is nothing.
• Will Notre Dame be forced into joining a conference? Notre Dame places an unusually high importance on tradition. They’ve been basically playing the same schedule for a thousand years. But conference re-alignment is going to blow up a lot of their famous schedule and rivalries. ND is independent in football, but their basketball team is a member of the Big East, which is dissolving before their eyes. Would the Big 10 let ND in and give them a special exemption to keep that phat NBC tv contract? I don’t think so. ND is in a tough position.
• Who will the SEC add? West Virginia? Assuming that the ACC’s new 16 team conference holds together, who in the world is the SEC gonna go after? Texas would be the most prestigious, of course, but that Longhorn Network is a deal breaker in terms of a recruiting edge. Do they take a run at Missouri? It’s hard to see what “big time” splashy choices would be left for them to choose from. If they could make Texas their bitch and force their will on the Longhorns, that would certainly be something. But doesn’t it feel like the SEC, the most powerful conference in America, might be getting sloppy seconds? The ACC sorta punked them here.
• Oh, and poor, poor TCU. Those guys got fcked.

As can happen on the Splattercast, the best laid plans can and will go awry. This coming Monday, we’re supposed to talk about The Picture of Dorian Gray. We’ll probably still touch upon that. But Jeff and I both watched a couple of films that might warrant a further discussion. Jeff caught WOUND and I caught HEADER, two “extreme” horror flicks that have gotten some buzz. In the chat room, we decided we wanted to talk about the nature of “Fear vs. Disgust” in horror films and what they mean when watching a movie. Are they one and the same? Are they separate? How are these types of movies different and what does it mean as a viewer watching them?

We’d like as many views on this as possible. So please, tell us how you define fear vs. disgust and let us know what you feel the major differences, if any, are in a horror film. Ask yourself this: Why would someone seek out fear and/or disgust as individual things in a movie viewing experience.

You can leave a comment on this blog, or leave a question/comment on our Formspring, or e-mail us at splattercast@deadlantern.com

We’ll include any and all points of view on this subject.

Thanks!