a couple of random treats

[ellen_datlow]

The Eerie, Bizarre Sounds of the Saturnian System

or what we've been listening to out there and for something completely different:

Attention shoppers. Here's the 2007 site and news for the deals that can be had at all kinds of stories around the US the day after Thanksgiving, the biggest shopping day of the year, aka Black Friday
Black Friday deals

Comments

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Given a choice between wandering around the Saturnian system with about a half-hour's worth of life support and wandering through any shopping venue on Black Friday, I'll take suffocation. Every year, I celebrate Black Friday by staying home and watching the best documentary about life in Dallas ever made (the original 1978 Dawn of the Dead, not the 2004 remake), because when I have to deal with the zombies at the shopping mall across the highway from me, I'm not allowed to shoot them in the head.

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

I rather liked the remake, actually. Not nearly as good as the original, but far better than it had any right to be. The opening sequences were actually more effective than almost anything I've seen in other horror films recently.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know: I'm fond of it, too, and not only because I've had a crush on Sara Polley for quite some time. However, the original does a better job of showing that there's precious little difference between the zombies in the mall and real-life customers who are presumably still alive.

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I thought the remake played things a bit too straight, aside from the brilliant closing sequence, set to Richard Cheese's version of "Down With the Sickness" The original beats the remake as social critique; the remake still scores, though, as a high-grade horror movie.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

LOL--thank you for that.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Back in the mid-Eighties, a now sadly defunct movie theater here in Dallas used to run regular midnight screenings of Dawn, and we had an audience participation crowd that made Rocky Horror look sick. Part of the appeal was that we encouraged improvisation (at one point in late 1985, we had actual standup comedians hitting the show in order to keep in shape, and I was constantly adding such nightmares as, when a character is forced to shoot two child zombies, "When I say 'clean your room,' I MEAN clean your room!") and partly because most of the audience worked retail in the Dallas area. Around Christmas, we didn't need to pay $3.50 to watch crowds of mindless zombies bashing on the doors in an attempt to get in, because we lived it every morning when we came to work.

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

Beautiful! Yeah, I saw the film as a midnight movie in the early '80s, too. First time out, though, I saw it with my dad during its original release. Man, was I not ready for THAT! :)

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Oh, I was. I still bawl my eyes out at the end of Alien, when the only interesting character other than the cat gets blown out the airlock.

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

There, there. He came back in the sequels... ;)

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

It wasn't the same. Besides, it's no worse than the computer majors crying at the end of 2001 when HAL gets shut off or incipient MDs at the end of Re-Animator.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

I loved Ripley as a character and actually thought everyone else was pretty interesting too.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's me inserting tongue so far in cheek that it's coming out my left ear. However, I'll stand behind similar statements for a lot of other films, and not just because I'm cheering on the tyrannosaur in original and 2005 editions of King Kong. (Discovering that Robert Bakker and I both cheer for the cobras in "Rikki-Tikki-Taavi" made me feel better about being a herpetophile, and I literally can't watch Valley of Gwangi without getting a big lump in my throat at the end.)

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

Agreed. One of the defining things for me about the first two Alien films (as opposed to most other horror flicks, including the later Alien movies) involved the vivid, memorable characters. Pity that so few filmmakers remember how important such things are!

[kaolinfire.livejournal.com]

Yes.