Howling at MTV's "Teen Wolf"

Tyler Posey as "Eddie Munster"... I MEAN, "TEEN WOLF"! Have any of you been watching MTV's new series Teen Wolf? I thought I might give it a go as it premiered right after the MTV Movie Awards which we wrote up here (live blog) and here (fashion). I think with Mad Men missing from my summer schedule, I'm searching for a TV show worth writing about - not that an MTV high school show based on a cheesy 80s movie is equivocal but I was curious. I mean how long can the current vampire/werewolf craze last? Zombies reigned for nearly an entire decade of pop culture so perhaps this trend has got a few more years in it.

As with Game of Thrones I decided three episodes was enough before sounding off...

episode 1 (pilot) "Wolf Moon"
It begins, as many monster movies, do with an investigation: cops, flashlights, woods, dead body ...or half of one at least (ewww). We are then introduced to the lead character Scott McCall (Tyler Posey), who is shown shirtless fixing his LaCrosse gear. So he's already coded as "hot jock". His best friend Stiles (Dylan O'Brien), a cop's son, calls to urge him to sneak out and see what all this dead body business is about. Weirdly, Stiles has Scott who is a severe asthmatic, hold the flashlight while they run up and down forest hills in the pitch black. Pant pant. Cough cough. BITE BITE. wolf attack! Well, you saw that coming. The next morning at school there is this amusing but entirely implausible* conversation, as Stiles berates Scott for being such a nerd.

the writers of that 80s Michael J Fox movie, get a shout out but this is closer to borrowing a "title" than adaptation.

"Dragging me down to your nerd depths. I'm a nerd by association. I've been Scarlet Nerded by you."

The creator of the show cited Buffy the Vampire Slayer as an influence in a recent interview -- another reason I tuned in -- and in dialogue exchanges like this you can feel it reaching for the smart geeky pop culture fun of that classic.

But in no way shape or universe is a guy on a high school's #1 sports team who looks like this a nerd.

No that is not a key party invitation from a cougar. That is a sex talk with his mom! (Cuz, you know, people generally have those talks with their mom while dripping wet and wearing only a towel.) Of course the mom uses this opportunity to make an MTV in joke -synergy!

I'm not going to end up on some reality show with a pregnant 16 year old."

ANYWAY... I was talking to Joe after the show about all this sexiness and I said 'Remember in 80s and 90s movies how the people playing nerds were sometimes not regulation hotties who have personal trainers on speed dial.' And he says...

Oh, you mean the bad old days?"

So... uh, well, Joe won that argument.

Trust: I'm not complaining about looking at Tyler Posey. But when your casting director fills an entire high school with beauties, it's hard not to giggle at the conversations about who's hot and who's not.  There is one moment in particular in episode one that had me totally LOL'ing where I was supposed to be sympathizing: A super hot black girl (unnamed... this school is lily-white but for her) stares at the new girl chatting up the most popular couple in school. She asks Scott and Stiles why the new girl gets to hang with them on her first day and they tell her 'Duh, she's hot!' So basically three hot 20somethings pretending to be highschoolers are staring at three other hot 20somethings pretending to be highschoolers, whilst bemoaning their fate as the Unhot?

The things you're hearing are hilariously irreconciliable with what you're seeing. Hey, maybe the show is a sly satire on body dysmorphia?

But if there's one thing this show is not, that's subtle. [Lots more after the jump, including more Buffy comparisons.]

Click to read more ...

Green Lantern: Slightly Enjoyable, Enormously Dumb.

Imagine that you had the power to will anything into existence. Let your imagination run wild. What would it be?

Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) is given this infinite gift in the new superhero flick Green Lantern. This power emanates from a ring which is charged by the title object which is given to--- Stop. Stop. You don't need this exposition. Should you choose to see the picture, the complicated history of the lantern will all be explained to you in a lengthy prologue. Once Hal Jordan has entered his own movie, this lengthy prologue will be explained to him again since he wasn't there for it. He in turn will tell this crazy-ass story to his only two friends since they weren't there when he heard it. (If at any point, nature should call, feel free to answer. They'll repeat it for you.)

So what does Hal do with this incredibly infinite gift? He creates fists, fighter jets, race tracks, swords, shields... the basic playthings of little boys. Hal Jordan isn't exactly gifted in the imagination department...

 Read the full review at Towleroad.

P.S. Honestly, I could have spilled 1000 more words. There is so much worth mocking. I didn't even space for The Watchers, or Mark Strong as Sinestro or how ridiculously overplayed and schematic the "daddy issues" were. And yet... I can't say it was painful to sit through exactly but for its just mystifyingly silliness... and I love the Green Lantern (one of my favs as a kid). As Katey said to me in the screening "Why did they do that to Angela Bassett's hair?" Oh, the unsolvable mysteries of Sector 2814!

Take Three: Boris Karloff

Craig from Dark Eye Socket here with Take Three. Today: Boris Karloff

Take One: The Mummy (1931)

Always the consummate character actor, Karloff gave us the most splendidly memorable characters. Famously one of the world’s biggest and best horror icons (along with Lugosi, Chaney Jr., Price and Lee, the frightful five), he played his beasts, ghouls and undead wanderers in exemplary fashion. Take his Imhotep/Ardath Bey, the titular bandaged one in director-cinematographer Karl Freund’s 1931 classic The Mummy. Ten years after being awakened by a group of foolhardy archaeologists Imhotep intends to revive his ancient Egyptian love Princess Ankh-es-en-amon with the help of reluctant modern-day babe Zita Johann.

Museum-based murder and an ancient parchment (the Scroll of Thoth!) cause all the the mummified mysticism. Karloff even has his own Pool of Fate (essentially a steamy bath/psychic porthole), into which he can see anyone and anything, anywhere; and via which he causes the remote heart failure of any old duffer who happens to get in his way. It’s all in the seeing here, all about the Mummy’s eyes. Karloff is given three intermittent extreme close-ups where he glowers into the camera, hypnotising us with his devilish ways. His eye sockets appear as black, lifeless voids into which his bright white pupils emerge through a trick of the light (director Freund was also a celebrated cinematographer). Imhotep is unnervingly memorable.

Take Two: Black Sabbath (1963)

Black Sabbath (AKA I Tre volti della paura or The Three Faces of Fear) was one of Karloff’s key later roles – and a horror-fan favourite. This second segment, The Wurdalak, of Mario Bava's 1963 horror triptych* sees a Russian nobleman seeking shelter in a cottage run by a family awaiting the return of their father Gorca (Karloff). The family fears he may be the titular vampiric creature come back to damn them all to hell or condemn them to a life of blood-lusting misery, whichever comes first. With ashen face and oversized follicle accompaniments (his curly wig, moustache and eyebrows deserve their own end-titles credit), Karloff stands out. And I mean that literally, as well as performance-wise; the star is seen standing outside peering in on the action much of the time. Karloff is also lit by horror-versed cinematographer Ubaldo Terzano in a different, far more singular way than the other actors are. The giddy weight of his presence perhaps aroused nostalgic creativity in Bava. Karloff, so familiar from classic creature features, appears like an ornery flickering wraith from a beloved bygone era.

Bava, like Freund, makes effectively chilling use of Karloff’s penetrating eyes. He knew that all it took to match Boris’ unique ability to transfix an audience with great, creepy eye-work was the requisite camerawork to capture it.

*Karloff’s performance is also notable for the fact that he appears as himself in the interludes, where he introduces the scary stories to follow.

Take Three: Frankenstein (1931) 
and Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

In James Whale’s germinal horror film Frankenstein Karloff is introduced to us simply as ‘?’. He’s a mystery, an enigma: a monster! He’s a confused soul, a man made out of bits of other men, bad men. Karloff comes alive halfway through this epoch-defining original mutant anti-hero movie. He’s first shown via a shot of his hands (as he similarly was in The Mummy and, indeed, in Bride of Frankenstein – it seems to be a recurring trope); he twitches his fingers then rises to meet a world of fear and epic paranoia. It was simply a way of being and walking: arms aloft, that angular, towering body – matched with the bolt-necked, flat-topped patchwork head, fronted by that memorably permanent crestfallen expression. Karloff delivers a beautiful performance, inventively clumsy and expertly physical.

In the first film he was quicker, more erratic. In Bride – with nearly five years' worth of living with the Frankenstein legend surrounding him – Karloff appeared more at home, looser and familiar with the moaning and groaning through fields and ruins, but no less energetically committed. It’s like he dusted off the monster’s clothes four minutes, not four years, after first wearing them so well. As a result, one of Karloff’s monstrous turns can’t truly be judged higher than the other. They’re a complementary couplet, both eminently watchable and always fascinating. But Bride reveals more about the man within the monster. It's evident in the three instances where he sheds a tear. You see that those tears are born of loneliness: he craves companionship. You can feel nothing but vicarious sorrow when the third of his tears works its way down his scarred, sunken cheek.

We belong dead.

...the monster forlornly admits in a last, generous close-up from James Whale. Boris Karloff made this famous monster indelibly his own.

Three more films for the taking: The Black Cat (1934), The Body Snatcher (1945), The Sorcerers (1967)

"Bionic"

This brand new short film, from photographer/filmmaker Greg Williams (who won prizes a year ago for that Sergeant Slaughter short with Tom Hardy just discussed), gives newish meaning to the term Bionic Woman. The header says that a sex doll (played by French celebrity Zahia) exercizes her own free will... but it looks just like malfunctioning to me.

Bionic from Greg Williams on Vimeo.

 That shot of her with the banana is just painful (but funny), you know? Is it wrong to interpret her vacant eroticism as satirical commentary on Britney Spears's airheaded marionette carnality?

Android lovers are such a mainstay of science fiction, aren't they? Our two favorites have always been Blade Runner's Pris and A.I.'s Gigolo Joe. But maybe that's because they're two of the only ones in sci-fi movies. (Are they ever going to make a movie of Saturn's Children ... we're guessing no. Too weird and potentially NC-17)  We'll have cars that fly and maybe even teleportation devices before sexbots are a reality; sex is too complicated for scientists!

Speaking of Gigolo Joe... Williams shot Jude Law just last year for Madame Figaro.

We're always hoping that Jude Law has another Talented Mr Ripley in him. If so, when is it coming our way?

May Flowers: Eyes Without a Face (1960)

Robert G from Sketchy Details here. I'm drawn to the beautiful imagery hidden in horror films. There's something intriguing about the dissonance between something so beautiful in the middle of an otherwise disturbing feature. 

Eyes Without a Face is one of the more aggressive horror films from the Black & White era. The entire film concerns a doctor trying to restore his daughter's beauty after a car accident severely burned her face. He goes so far as to fake her death after a failed medical experiment to better control his wandering child.

Even with the graphic imagery and grave subject matter, Eyes Without a Face is ultimately a film about hope and the attempt to renew a young life. This is made quite clear in the funeral scene.

After all the guests have left, Dr. Genessier and his assistant Louise are left to tend to the large quantity of flowers left at the grave. The arrangements are traditional--white lilies--but seem unnaturally bright and alive against the foggy background.

Where Dr. Genessier is unwavering in his plans, Louisa is losing faith. She's the one who always has to clean up his mistakes. She loses her composure in the Genessier family tomb against a wall of perfectly white daisies. 

A slap across the face is all it takes to bring Louisa back to reality. Her patient, Genessier's daughter, deserves a chance to be beautiful again, just like the flowers at her staged funeral.