Dawn of the Ted

Not sure if people have seen this:

Nice! It reminds me of one of the most disturbing teddy bears in memory courtesy of Bjork and director Michel Gondry:



(Apologies for the ad.)

reminded of me of the Gremlins, especially the microwave scene. Need to see if Gremlins is on NetFlix.... ah

Iago: Yours wins for creepiest teddy.

Blur: Yes, there are definite moments borrowed from Gremlins.

Speaking of which, the superior second film has finally been announced for Blu-Ray. I cannot wait!


As you likely know, Gondry borrowed some of that imagery in the video from Neil Jordan's film The Company of Wolves. Which, it now occurs to me, I have not seen in a long, long time. I may need to fix that.

Mr. Fixit.

Have you seen Wolves and if so what did you think?

I found it to be a good spin on the fairytale classic. I liked the haunting undertones throughout, but I did find it a bit too psychedelic for my tastes.

Reminds me of a crude joke I heard:

Little Red Riding Hood is walking through the forest. Suddenly, a wolf comes rushing up from behind, grabs her and slam her into a tree. The wolf looks Little Red Riding Hood in the eyes and says, "I'm going to fuck you." Little Red Riding Hood replies, "Fuck that," points a shotgun at the wolf and says, "You're going to do as the story says and eat me."

/rimshot



(Actually, that may be a slightly poor choice of response!)

I was half expecting you to post your new bannination-smite.

That'll do.

That'll do, little bear, that'll do?

More zombie love:

Nice. It made me think of Night of the Creeps -- not so much the tone as the setting:

Now I want to rewatch Night of the Creeps.

Is that a bad thing?



A zombie clip that a local radio station uses endlessly as a "drop":

Has that zombie seen Cannibal Holocaust?

Did you ever get around to watching [Rec 2]?

Not yet -- I need to order that. I keep hoping for a domestic Blu-Ray release of both films, but it seems like a waste to hold my breath at this point.

Strange that Sony would not release on Blu-ray for North America. But even more frustrating is that you can get the film on Blu-ray in nearly every other region!

Well, they must feel that there is no market here, despite the fact that there was an American sequel. Granted, the film will not be a demo disc since it was shot on broadcast-quality video, but I made the mistake of thinking that Cloverfield would look no different in HD, yet that Blu-Ray looks very good indeed.

Fro the time being, I added {REC}2 to my Netflix queue so that I can at least see the thing.

Part 2 is supposed to pick up from where Part 1 left off. It'll be interesting to see if that works or not. I wasn't completely sold on the original. There is something about POV filming that takes me out of action, rather than put me in it. When I'm watching, I keep asking myself, "If I had a camera and was filming a raging zombie that suddenly decided to charge at me, would I really be that concerned about continuing to film?" And the answer is always no. From that aspect, I find the approach a bit too fantastical. Still, it'd be interesting to see how Part 2 turned out.

They did change approaches by going with a military group with helmet cams a la Aliens. I should have it by this weekend and I will let you know how it goes.

The best two POV/found footage films that I have seen recently are Trollhunter and Lake Mungo. I think that I already mentioned the former and why I liked it, but I saw the latter more recently. It puts an interesting twist on the genre by structuring itself as a real documentary about what happened, interspersing talking head interviews with the people involved and the footage that they shot. It works well, especially when it takes a pretty interesting twist part way through that makes you wonder where they are going to go after that.

I had heard about Lake Mungo and had wondered about it. I will have to give it a go if you also found it a success.

It was really interesting. Because of the structure, it was not particularly scary as much as it was diquieting. But well worth a look.

Did you see Trollhunter yet?