* The trailer for M. Night Shyamalan's next movie The Happening is up, and man, it's a lot rougher trade than you might be expecting, particularly given the vague "natural disaster" pre-release buzz you've heard. Definitely check it out.

* And here's a not terribly convincing compared to comparable scenes from the likes of Cloverfield and the Dawn of the Dead remake but still fun clip from Diary of the Dead (via Bloody Good Horror).

* I really liked this passage from Joe "Jog" McCulloch's review of There Will Be Blood:

I'm sure it helped that I didn't see Day-Lewis as purely wicked until the very end; I've read some critics going on about the relentless evil of the character, which strikes me as silly and wrongheaded. I always felt that Daniel Plainview was human, if increasingly compromised by greed and loathing; even in the film's early segments he acts primarily out of self-interest, yes, but Anderson and Day-Lewis spend enough time on bits of character shading -- prodding H.W. into understanding his line of work, basking smugly in stopping that little girl's abuse -- that the character at least exhibits signs of adhering to some personal code of ethics.

Totally. Even the marketing campaign gives the impression that he's bad to the bone, which is a shame; it left my wife (who hasn't seen the movie) asking me "Does this movie even have a story, or is it just about showing what a bad person this guy is?" Kudos also to Jog for noting the more sophisticated use of landscape in No Country for Old Men as opposed to here in Blood.

* Giant Monsters Attack! lists the 10 weirdest giant monsters--believe it or not, they're not all kaiju!

* If you're looking for a nice concise history of horror films in the '70s and '80s you could do a lot worse than B-Sol's run-down for the Vault of Horror. It might be a little too concise--lumping those two decades together makes for some strange bedfellows and unfortunate omissions--but there's none of the mainstream-critic condescension or fanboy-"Our Genre" nonsense that typically mars these efforts.

* Matt from the all-too-infrequently updated British horror-review site Black Lagoon rises from the murky depths once more for a review of Cloverfield that loses me each time it asserts that the movie would be better without the home-video conceit. I admire his gusto for specifically questioning the validity of the "YouTube generation" tag mooted as a justification for this technique's newfound popularity (by this blog and others), but from where I was sitting the seen/not seen effect of the restricted narrative construction was what made the monster work so well.

* Finally, I love this exchange from Pitchfork's interview with the wondrous electro-pop duo Goldfrapp about their more subdued new album Seventh Tree:

Pitchfork: After the glamorous disco fantasy of Supernature, the new record could almost be called Human Nature. A lot of people are going to see Seventh Tree as a more personal and even confessional record. Does it feel more personal to you? Are you being any more direct? Or is it just another aspect of your character?

AG: Well, Supernature wasn't just a character and nor was Black Cherry, so that's slightly insulting...

Pitchfork: I'm not implying you're playing a role...

AG: Saying that you've got acoustic instruments and that's traditional and so people will think it's more intimate, that will always be the case. It's a more intimate sound, so it's going to sound more direct whatever you're singing about. I mean, it is a more personal record. But I think by the nature of having a voice that is more upfront and the way the vocals are set against the music, it's always going to feel more personal, even if the lyrics weren't, if you know what I mean? So it has it's moments of being more intimate or being personal, it's true. Some of it's confessional, but some of it is complete and utter gobbledeegook!

The idea that slick, sexy, glittery dance music is any less "honest" than stripped-down acoustic ballads is pretty...dare I say rockist?

Posted by Sean T. Collins at 5:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)