Episode 230 Topics Include:
- "There's a church for that"
- The carpet incident
- This week in trailers: Iron Man 3
- The Walking Dead 3x02 (00:37:40 - 00:48:56)
- Dexter 7x04 (00:48:57 - 00:52:59)
- What we've been watching
- Featured Review: Dracula (1931)
Running Time: 1 hour, 52 minutes
Episode Songs:
Prisoner - Barbara Streisand
Lucky Ones - Lana Del Rey
This Podcast May Include Some Explicit Language
...It Also Most Likely Contains Some Spoilers
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haha, the discussion about Jesse's church was so funny. Jesse, it sounds like you're in a cult!! ;)
ReplyDeletei don't get all the hate for Punisher War Zone, i love that movie. granted i haven't seen Avengers, but in my opinion War Zone is the best Marvel movie.
defining horror is both difficult and easy, there are so many obvious examples that are horror, it's got necessary beats and recurring cliches maybe more than any other genre to a point where there's practically a subgenre making fun of horror tropes, horror can be so rigid, but then you got a handful of movies that blur the definitions the more you think about it. like Jurassic Park, Jaws, stuff like Evil Dead 2 or Dead Alive which aren't scary but instead funny and gory, so i don't know if being scary is a requisite at all. and filmmakers like David Lynch who makes some of the creepiest stuff out there like Fire Walk With Me, the final Twin Peaks episode, parts of Mulholland Dr., and i'd almost call Eraserhead and Lost Highway horror, but overall that's not horror as you'd usually define it. then there's different types of "scary," like jump scares are obvious, then there's gross-out, creepy/atmospheric, something that's upsetting or disturbing rather than terrifying, to the point that some non-horror movies are scary or have scary parts, like i think ET is pretty scary, ET's first appearance is so creepy and it gets so intense and disturbing toward the end, i'd say it has horror elements. i don't think people dying/being killed is a requisite of horror, like The Gate is horror but nobody actually dies in it, same with The Fly, nobody dies in that, either, except for Brundle at the very end but i'm not sure that counts because it's basically a suicide. i don't know. i guess it doesn't matter at the end of the day.
oh man, i know it's supposed to be a cult classic but i hate the Wicker Man, so boring, haha. i barely made it through it. i'd probably recommend the Cage remake over the original, the remake is equally terrible but in a different way and it's hilarious. Cage does die in the end like in the original if i remember correctly.
i'll definitely check out Julia's Eyes, i put it on my Netflix queue!! it's definitely on there, just not streaming.
I knew I couldn't be the only one who thought Jesse's church sounded kind of odd. I'm sure it's all completely normal, but the details make it seem so different, I think partially because of Jesse's explanation.
DeleteThis is probably going to sound REALLY insulting, but it's not meant to. Ross, I have a feeling that, as a fan of Punisher War Zone, you're most likely not going to care much for The Avengers.
I said this on the episode, but I think that the question of "What is horror?" is different for each person and each movie. In my mind there are some pretty cut and dry ways to tell if a movie is horror, but they're not easy to explain out loud. It's just a lot of feelings a movie gives me. I'm sure there's a way to "logically" explain what horror is, but I'm sure that many people would dispute it. When everything's taken into account, it doesn't matter that much, and it's something no one will ever agree on. I definitely don't think someone has to die for a movie to be horror, but that was an easy way for me to explain the differences in Jaws and Jurassic Park as I see them. The deaths are dealt with in such a different way in those two movies, which I feel sets them apart from one another tonally.
I really hope you enjoy Julia's Eyes, Ross. Be sure to let me know what you think when you get a chance to watch it.
i have Avengers on my Netflix queue, so hopefully i'll get to see it soon. i have no idea how i'll feel about it, i don't know what to expect. i'm not sure what you mean that i'll hate Avengers since i like War Zone, but maybe i'll understand after i see the movie, heh. i also love the first Iron Man movie and i liked Thor quite a bit, though, does that change things? my #2 favorite Marvel movie is the Ang Lee Hulk, for further context. i think Iron Man is probably the best from a filmmaking standpoint. anyway, War Zone is so good, i don't know, i love the tone, the look, how ridiculous everything is, i love how Punisher has an easy chair in the middle of his lair where he sits and broods, heh. and the part where he shoots a missile and blows up a dude.
Deletei didn't mean to say that what i wrote about horror was concrete or the last word on it, i agree that it's up to the individual person, i was just ruminating and writing kind of stream of consciousness on the topic. it's interesting how there are some movies that are considered indisputably horror and nobody would claim otherwise, like Friday the 13th is horror, end of story, no room for debate. but then are a lot of movies that straddle different lines in horror and that are blurry from a genre standpoint, and i can't think of many (any?) other genres that are as blurry as horror is in that way.
I'm a big fan of the Ang Lee Hulk movie, too. I just bought it on Blu-ray and most people scoff at me when I say I like it better than the Ed Norton movie.
DeleteAllow me to point out that I didn't say you would "hate" The Avengers. With that out of the way, I guess...I thought The Avengers was awesome, but it's obviously trying very hard to be a crowd pleaser, which seems to me like it'd be something you wouldn't react to. From the conversations we've had about movies and what I know about your movie tastes (which are, admittedly, very hard to quantify), I can't picture you going ga-ga over The Avengers. Maybe you will and I just don't know what I'm talking about. I feel like you could make a graph measuring the tones/styles of all of the Marvel movies and The Avengers and Punisher: War Zone would be on the absolute opposite sides of the chart. I guess that's why I assumed you wouldn't respond well to Avengers. I'm very curious to hear what you'll think of it now.
As for Punisher: War Zone, I think it speaks volumes that you'd use the rocket disintegrating the parkour runner as an example of a pro on the positive side of the War Zone debate, whereas I always go immediately to that scene and how crappy I thought it was when explaining with some degree of hyperbole how horrible I thought the movie was to people. Maybe I take my comic movies a bit too seriously, but the brand of "ridiculous" that War Zone was is not how I want my Punisher movie to be. I easily prefer both the Thomas Jane and Dolph Lundgren movies to War Zone.
I think it's easy to tell when a film is trying to be funny or sad or exciting, but it's not always easy to tell when they're trying to be scary. A lot of horror movies have comedic elements to them, which blurs the line as to which genre it's trying to be. I think it's easier to determine whether a movie is TRYING to be horror than it is to determine whether it succeeds and IS horror. I was just having a conversation with a friend's wife last night about the movie Seven. She considers it a horror movie. I consider it a crime drama. Yes, it has a darker tone than most detective movies, but does that make it horror? I guess it does if you find it scary, but that's where horror becomes subjective.
This just occurred to me, but as a society we've created these subgenres of "romantic comedy" or "dramedy" for films with serious premises or messages which include comedic elements, but the same can't be said for horror. There's no "horrific comedy" or "scar-edy" genre terms in the common vernacular. Maybe that's what we're missing. Like Slither, Tremors, and some of the Friday The 13th sequels could be called "horrific comedies", but Alien, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the first couple Friday The 13th movies could be straight-up "horror". It's not like there's a hard line drawn that says a drama has to be 100% serious, so why isn't there more leeway for horror movies?
oh man, i want to get Hulk on blu-ray, too!!! :O i bet it looks amazing. totally better than the bland Ed Norton Hulk. NICK NOLTE!!!
Deletei'm not sure how to quantify my movie taste either, haha. i've been surprised at myself what i end up liking, though, so who knows, maybe i'll go crazy for Avengers. there have been a lot of movies i go in expecting to dislike, or even hoping to dislike since i'm such a curmudgeon, but i end up loving. never can tell.
i like the Dolph Lundgren Punisher, too, it's great, but i never got much into the Thomas Jane one. you should listen to that How Did This Get Made episode about War Zone, despite what Jesse was saying the episode is actually about how much everyone on the show liked the movie. it's one of the rare episodes of the podcast where they actually like the movie they talk about, and it's really interested listening to the director and what she had to say about making the movie. but yeah, the rocket launcher part, so funny. my other favorite part is when Punisher and Budiansky have just rescued the little girl in the FBI wife lady's house, and Punisher is holding the little girl in one arm and with the other blows off the head of one of the mobsters at point blank range with a shotgun and then Budiansky is like "GODDAMMIT, CASTLE!!!" hahaha. and i love Jigsaw. i like how the movie is both serious and funny at the same time. i don't know. i dig it. i can see how other people wouldn't, though, so it's all good. different strokes. i've never read any Punisher comics, so i have no idea what he's supposed to be like in the comic.
hmm, i like your angle on horror here, if it's TRYING to be horror. that's interesting. Seven is another blurry movie, i can see how it's both horror and crime and thriller. i guess it's horror-like because of the gore and it's almost a slasher movie. does Fincher consider Seven horror or a crime thriller or both...? i wonder if he even thought about it. that's probably the clincher for me with something like that, if Fincher was like "i intended it to be a horror film," then okay, it's horror.
i don't know why "horror comedy" hasn't entered into common vernacular, despite fairly big movies like Shaun of the Dead and Gremlins. horror comedy even has its own wikipedia page, listing movies going back to the 1920s! not sure why it's still a niche thing or why most people are still pretty rigid with horror definitions... i wish i had some answers!
Nick Nolte's speech at the end of Ang Lee's Hulk right before he bites the electrical cable is my favorite part of that movie! He's so great in that scene!
DeleteI've read a bunch of Punisher comics, but most have been the ones written by Garth Ennis. His Punisher MAX run is one of my favorite comic series'. It's obviously unbelievable because it's about a guy who kills tons of monsters and always gets away scott free, but it's done in a very realistic way and while it's serious, it's not overly dark. If Lundgren wore the skull on his shirt and were a tad more charismatic, that might be my favorite Punisher film. The Thomas Jane movie wins by default for me because it's not as nutty as War Zone, but it's definitely better (in my opinion) than Lundgren's.
*mobsters
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