Get Out (SSS 09)

Last Friday, Justin and I went to see Get Out, the new Jordan Peele horror/thriller movie. It was AWESOME. It’s a horror movie, but really more of a thriller. There’s not a lot of gore (there’s none, really). It’s just a mindfuck from beginning to the end. 

Anyways, I won’t say much about the movie because you should see it yourself, I stumbled across this podcast from the inners of a Reddit thread that Justin sent me about a plot point in Get Out this morning and was blown away at their critique and the little nuances they noticed.

I will not lie and say that I’m good at picking up on movie nuances because I fucking suck at it. So, when I listened to this podcast, Saw Something Scary by two gentlemen from Tennessee, I was floored by all the tiny things they picked up on. I tweeted at them afterwards and the one that responded seemed super cool, so that was neat.

I listened to their podcast about Rings afterwards, which they called (and I’d 100% agree) a “hot pile of garbage” and “a dumpster fire.” It was entertaining because that movie was an unnecessary waste of time and effort. 

As we speak, I’m falling down the Get Out article rabbit hole and listening to the Nerdist podcast interview with Jordan Peele. I’ll see you in about 3 days when I pull myself out! Until then, if you haven’t seen Get Out, GO!

Get Out (SSS 09)

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A really, really, really restful weekend.

I needed this weekend. After seeing a ton of shows these past few weeks, I needed a weekend off from dealing with any plans. J and I went to one of his childhood friend’s weddings on Friday night in Westchester, but we managed to be home by midnight (somehow!). It was a really pretty, simple wedding on the small(ish) side and we both had an awesome time. 

Then a weekend of nothingness commenced. We slept in on Saturday until 10-ish and then ordered in from one of our favorite diners and ate ourselves into semi-hungover oblivion. We spent the rest of the day watching Hush and a couple of episodes of Silicon Valley. And after we went for a painful run (french toast is not a good primer for running, FYI) before stopping off to buy a new kind of wet food at Petco (which my cat will totally not eat and will barely look at it) and eventually ending up at a bar to refuel and watch a basketball game. I started to kind of understand how basketball works but mostly I just watched the guys running back and forth in between bites of my rice bowl.

We slept in again on Sunday (though I admittedly did not sleep in as late, and I used the extra time to write) and made eggs and chicken sausage (and coffee, duh) for breakfast and lounged around for the next few hours. We watched the documentary The True Cost, which is a horrifying expose about the price that the poorest in other countries pay so we can buy a $5 tank top at H&M. Result: I’m halting my long-time obsession with cheap shit at Old Navy and expensive-except-when-on-sale shit at Gap. I’m OK paying more for clothing as long as people aren’t dying to make it. /end rant

We made a plan to meet up at the movies after I went to a yoga class and we saw Captain America. This really should’ve been called “Avengers 3″ as it was not solely about Captain America at all. And it was really long. I enjoyed some parts but watching a bunch of characters that you know won’t be killed off fight gets old really quickly. 

The night ended with Game of Thrones, which I didn’t really pay attention to. When I did look at the screen, it looked like a medieval version of The Walking Dead. 

I also finally bought a Roomba and although Playbill didn’t know what to make of it, she did enjoy the box and I caught this adorable shot. She totally has Pixar eyes. 

Throwback Thursday: RIP, Wes Craven. 

I found these photos in my Tumblr archive recently and thought they should be shared. These are photos from the time Wes Craven did a talk at The New York Times building during Halloween 2010, a few months before SCREAM 4 was released. I was excited but probably more apprehensive for the next, in my opinion unnecessary, edition.

This was a cool talk and my friend and I met him after briefly. I have a production photo of him and Neve Campbell from the original Scream hanging in my apartment now (or at least it will be, whenever I get around to hanging it).

The horror world misses you, Wes. 

Movies, Marshmallows, and Moving

I had planned on going to my first yoga class in three (3!!) weeks on Friday afternoon until I received a notification that there was a fire in the building. Well, damn. Elliptical in my building’s gym it was. 

The rest of Friday night was spent eating a delicious meal at Cascabel and watching Rosemary’s Baby with my dude. He really liked Rosemary’s Baby and I didn’t find it scary at all – just more silly than anything else. I was also admittedly falling asleep through parts of it. I just appreciated that they lived in The Dakota. 

On Saturday we went for a nice run, followed by a long walk back up to my apartment, and brunch at The Ellington. We both had some things to take care of during the day (I cleaned out my closet and reorganized the storage underneath my bed – score!) but we reconvened at night and watched Catching Fire (because he’s a good sport) and made s’mores in the microwave. Seriously, it’s the best snack ever.

Sunday was spent brunching at The Penrose with my friend Ben and then finding this $1,250 rare breed of short haired Persian cat in a pet store on the UES. That cat is huge and it’s only 5 months old. I know you shouldn’t get pets from pet stores, but he was SO cute. Should I put together a GoFundMe to rescue it from the pet shop? We went into the UES Housing Works where I bought a dress for a 1920′s themed seance party that I’m going to later this month and I saw the above dress which looks shockingly like Glinda’s from Wicked. I have no idea how much it is, but if you’re looking for a Halloween costume, you should totally buy it.

I hit up a yoga class on the UES afterwards (never again – the teacher kept the room freezing the entire time which to me is a big no-no), went grocery shopping, and started going through my pictures from Scandinavia. More photos to come, don’t worry….

A few weeks ago my dude showed me a trailer for a new foreign horror movie called “Goodnight Mommy.” It looks pretty freaky – about two little boys whose mother comes home from having a great deal of plastic surgery and her face is all bandaged up. They start to suspect that she’s really not their mother and someone more sinister. We went to go see it at the Lincoln Center Film Society – the same theatre that I went to see It Follows at in the late winter. It’s a super nice, but tiny, theatre.  I love going there. Anyways, I digress.

I was expecting a deranged mother, or mother figure, tormenting two young boys. It was, in fact, the opposite. There’s some tension between the mother and one of the twins, Lukas, and she’s less than warm towards the other twin, Elias. She only serves breakfast to one child, only tucks one child in, and has no idea who her sons are talking about when they’re playing a game (the one where you guess what the post-it on your forehead says) and they say she’s a person with two children.

It’s odd. It’s really, really weird. And then things get graphic. There’s a considerable amount of blood and some gross action with super glue. I won’t spoil the twist – you can search Google for that if you really want to know – but my dude figured it out less than halfway through the movie and I didn’t think he could be right.

I spent some time Googling ‘Goodnight Mommy theories’ and I found some really interesting ones on Reddit (a site I never use, I swear). It made me like the movie more, despite the gore. Though I will reiterate, the trailer is 100% misleading.

If nothing else, this movie is really good birth control.

I saw this on Facebook today and it made me so sad. RIP, Wes Craven. 

I remember seeing him in conversation with a journalist from the New York Times about six months before Scream 4 was released. My friend and I met him very briefly after and I have a photo of him and Neve Campbell on the set of Scream that’s signed by him in my apartment now. 

I remember watching Scream with my best friend and her older sister when it came out on video (!) in 1997. I was 11 and we thought we should watch it in the dark. By the end of the first scene (RIP Drew Barrymore), we thought it was a good idea to turn the lights back on. I own all 3 Scream movies and I’ve watched them more than is probably normal. I remember sneaking into seeing Scream 3 three times. 

I’m watching the Scream trilogy this weekend with my dude in Wes’ honor (Scream 4 was a mistake). In case you’re looking for other Wes Craven movies on Netflix, you can find a list here.  

Watched the movie “You’re Next” last night. The first 20 minutes and the last 70 felt like they were made by completely different directors (is there backstory there?). 

Some of the dialogue was, as expected, awful, but it kind of turned into a feminist horror/action movie as it is revealed that the Australian girlfriend was raised on a survivalist camp in the outback so that’s why she knows all of these weapon and survival techniques.

I’d say it’s worth a watch if you can deal with campy gore and awful dialogue. 

I’d heard mixed things about Let the Right One In at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. This was brought over from Scotland and I’m always intrigued to see a film-to-stage adaptation that’s based on a horror movie. I’d seen neither the original Swedish film or the recent remake, but I really wanted to see this. It was on my short list of “Things To See This Season,” so Kristen and I ventured to Dumbo, Brooklyn on Friday night to rush. Rush was easy to get and cheap ($20!). We got coffee from Brooklyn Roasting Company next door and drinks at 68 Jay Street after. 

Let the Right One In was about a young boy who’s often bullied who’s life changes when he meets the new girl who moves in next door with, presumably, her father. 

Spoiler alert: She’s a vampire. But they fall in love. Her father, who turns out to be a man who’s in love with her (because she is, obviously, much older than she looks) and when he starts acting out when he realizes he might lose her, he ends up dead. 

The story is OK. It’s a very subtly frightening. it’s more eerie than anything else. There’s one cool special effect and one moment towards the end of the second act that made both Kristen and I jump out of our seats. It gets LOUD. 

The real star of this show is the staging. The staging (along with the set by Christine Jones) is stunning. The trees onstage (pictured above) are real trees too! The lighting (by Chahine Yavroyan) was perfect and beautiful too. I’ve talked about how I love Steven Hoggett’s movement and it was mesmerizing in this production too. 

Rebecca Benson (Eli) and Cristian Ortega (Oskar) are unbelievably talented and carried the show effortlessly.

Let the Right One In plays through March 8th. Check it out. 

Among other things I watched The Haunting when it came on the movie channels at my parents house this weekend. I saw The Haunting back in theatres in 1999 and loved it then, and apparently still love it now. It’s lacking gratuitous gore and torture porn of many modern day horror movies, and it’s a completely psychological mindfuck.  

This is the perfect movie for a rainy Friday or Saturday night, especially around Halloween. I highly recommend you find it on Netflix or in a not-yet-shuttered Blockbuster ASAP. 

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Scream 4.  I’m so excited.  I’ll admit that I was a little (a lot) skeptical when I heard this was being made, but after seeing the trailer, I’m stoked.  I remember when the original came out – I was ten and didn’t go see it in theatres, but my best friend, her older sister, and I rented it a year later (remember when it took a YEAR for a movie to be released on VHS?) and watched it in their living room, in the dark.  By the end of Drew Barrymore’s death, we were on sitting on top of one another and decided it was a good idea to turn the lights on.  I don’t remember when I saw Scream 2, but I liked it, and when Scream 3 came out, I was there opening weekend.  Of course, I was still underage to get into a Rated R movie, so my parents bought us the tickets.  Though we also had to have an adult walk in with us, though we didn’t know that, so we lucked out when the theatre employee asked the adult-ish looking people behind us if we were with them (we were not), they were apparently awesome so they said yes.

I saw Scream 3 in the theatres 3 times – I think that’s the most I’ve ever seen a movie in the movie theatre.  I eventually owned all three on VHS, and then bought the DVD box set when it was released.  I’m finally legal to see a Rated R movie and Scream 4 comes out the day after my birthday, so my birthday plans are set!  Screw the bar!    I just hope that there isn’t a shitload of gore like in modern-day horror movies.  I can’t stand that stuff. 

I have tickets to a talk-back at the New York Times building next week to listen to Wes Craven talk about horror movies just in time for Halloween.  I hope he discusses this a little bit!

Who else is excited?

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