Double Feature: Frankenstein (1931) & Dracula (1931)

So in an attempt to get through this scratch off poster of mine a little faster I've decided to double up on movies where time permits and doubling up is relevant, and there is no better pair of movies to start this with than Dracula and Frankenstein. Both films came out the same year, share an actor and producer, are based off classic horror literature framed as correspondence, and both Universal horror films. Its impossible to deny the influence both Frankenstein and Dracula had on the horror genre (having practically invented the mainstream perception of the genre) and on the broader industry.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

If you've been following this blog you may have noticed I did not publish a full post last Thursday. This was because I spent all my time before work goin off to guest co-host for CommTrack. CommTrack is a podcast intended to be synched with a film to hear the hosts chat while watching the movies. Kinda like a casual RiffTrax. Anyway I Co-hosted the most recent episode: Spirited Away so pop in your DVD, Blu-Ray, VHS, or however you keep your movies and click on over here to give it a listen. Anyway can't dwell on the fun stuff forever cause today's film was the 1930's version of All Quiet on the Western Front

The Circus (1928)

Genre is an interesting thing. There are very often blurred lines separating works into genre classifications. The more closely you examine any work the more difficult it becomes to lock it down to a specific genre. Very often this distinction comes down to a wishy-washy "I know it when I see it approach".

News

No post today was busy driving down to west-chester to co-host a podcast. Will link next week.

A Symphony of Horror

It's shocking how much things have changed since 100 years ago. Nosferatu is a 1922 horror film adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula that was entirely unofficial and unauthorized. Even Asylum's mockbusters (Transmorphers, Atlantic Rim etc...) don't have the guts to use identical plot and characters to their "inspirations". Aside from the usual adaptation changes of shortening and simplifying the original work the only things F.W. Murnau changed from the book original were the names and locales, and even then not very much.

The Pawnshop and A Dog's Life

When you go back far enough into the history of popular art you reach a point where works get increasingly hard to talk about due to the almost alien cultural context within which they were created and initially seen. This is not to say that art can't be timeless, many paintings, music, books etc... are received in much the same way now as they were when they were created, but many popluar works lose or change their meaning over time and this can be alienating. This is very evident when viewing the cinema of the early 20th century today. The tools filmmakers had to work with were more restrictive and that certainly does have an alienating effect, but there were also vastly different cultural expectations as to what moving pictures were expected to accomplish.

Beginnings of Cinema: 4 Silent films

This week is going to be the start of a somewhat new direction for this blog. I've been having some difficulty coming up with topics twice a week, and this hobby of mine isn't actually encouraging me to see movies I haven't seen or to reconsider movies I have seen. So what I need is some kind of guiding structure to guide my topics and push me to more interesting things, and I think I have just the thing.

Godzilla Vs. King Ghidorah (1991), Out of Sci-fi Schlok: Meaning

It's now Independence Day. What is a film blog supposed to talk about on Independence Day? Can I get through an entire post dancing around the obvious topic? I'm gonna try. I'm not really a patriotic person. I respect my country, the US of A, but boy has it been a difficult country to love recently, and it seems even suggesting that I don't love the United States gets a few raised eyebrows in my direction (seems a bit creepily nationalist to me). But there is one thing I unreservedly love about my country and that is that I don't have to. I am under no obligation to think that America is the greatest country in the world or that our nation's policies and activities are moral and correct. That is the freedom I like to celebrate every Independence Day. To that end I think it would be interesting to indulge my inner Godzilla fan and explore the political undertones of Godzilla Vs. King Ghidorah (1991)

A Defense of Shinji Ikari

Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of the most influential certainly one of the most successful and most important anime of the late 20th century. This is probably what led Netflix to obtain the rights to stream the anime internationally with a brand spanking new dub/subtitle translation. I imagine most people who read this blog are already aware that this new dub/translation has quite a few problems and there are some other related licenses Netflix didn't bother to obtain (notably the cover of "Fly Me to the Moon" that plays at the end of every episode). This essay is not about the new translation's problems those are well shared and known by this point, and while there are subtle nuances to the discussion that deserve a deeper dive, there is another Evangelion related topic that has been bothering me for far longer.