Buffista Movies 3: Panned and Scanned
A place to talk about movies--Old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
My oldest sister bought into buying comic books when we were in High School. This was back in the early '70's. Along with all the regular books, Marvel and later DC started putting out books that were called graphic novels rather than comics. Marvel had an excellent bunch of supernatural ones based on famous horror figures like Dracula, the Werewolf, even Frankenstien's monster. DC started Swamp Thing and Marvel countered with Man Thing. IIRC Howard the Duck spun off from Man Thing.
I got pretty caught up in them myself. Later she subscribed to Cerebrus and Elfquest, which I quite liked.
IIRC Howard the Duck spun off from Man Thing.
Yup. Actually, I ran across some of the books you're talking about when I was rummaging through my attic yesterday. Savage Sword of Conan, some Howard the Ducks, some of the others. All were black & white, large format books. They don't seem to be marked "graphic novels," but I remember the term being used when they were marketing them. Not that Stan Lee would hyperbolize or anything.
You know,other than The Last Unicorn when I was 5, I can't think of any movie that's truly scared me. I just don't think my brain is built for horror movie appreciation.
Seeing SUSPIRIA at 13 pretty much covered me on anything else, horror-wise. Disturbed happens - Selected bits of Cronenberg, IRREVERSIBLE, and TROUBLE EVERY DAY all have squicked me out at various points, but for out-and-out terrifed, nothing has equalled that first Argento experience. Once bitten; forever jaded. Only movie that ever put me under the seat at the movie theater.
The original film of THE HAUNTING did spook the crap out of me when I saw it at 10, though.
Not that Stan Lee would hyperbolize or anything.
Stan Lee on The Simpsons is one of the funniest things EVAH.
I just saw the new Manchurian Candidate, and it didn't suck at all. The way the storytelling's been updated from Cold War paranoia to War On Terror paranoia is very successful, I think. And Meryl Streep is just amazing. She has by far the most difficult role, and she just nails it.
I'm curious to see what the varying reactions will be, from both fans of the original and people coming to the story new. I found it very difficult to judge the pacing, because I wasn't waiting to find out what would happen. I was waiting to find out what would happen differently, and so there were sections in the middle where I wanted the story to just unfold already. But it's possible someone who didn't know the original movie wouldn't have felt that way.
Jess, whitefont if you have to, but I'm really curious - how do they justify the title?
Oh, and I'm also curious - did you see/what did you think about Truth About Charlie? I rather liked it myself, and thought the original was far LESS sacrosanct from remake than TMC (although maybe it's the casting of CHARADE that had people resenting the remake).
Jess, do they keep the creepy incest-yay vibe?
Well (waves goodbye to film cred once again), I've never seen Charade. So I liked The Truth About Charlie, but since I wasn't mentally comparing it with the original, the answer to your question is Not Applicable.
The title of the remade Candidate refers to
Manchurian Global, a bigass eeeeeeevil multinational corporation.
(Not much of a spoiler -- it's mentioned within the first five or ten minutes of the film.)
[eta: Robin, yes. Hell yes, in fact.]
Robin, I love that you asked what I was going to ask.
