#nightstream

How are we now in the 4th quarter of 2021 already? In addition to Columbus Day (Oct. 11), Indigenous Peoples’ Day (Oct. 11), and Halloween (Oct. 31), here is what’s on my radar this month:

Movies: 

The Many Saints of Newark

The Sopranos was one of the greatest TV shows ever made! Hands down. Now, the unthinkable has happened: creator David Chase is returning with a prequel of the Soprano crime family in the late 60s NJ! Opens in theaters and on HBO Max on 10/1.

No Time to Die

It’s Daniel Craig’s last James Bond movie. I’ve been looking forward to this since it was originally set for an April 2020 release. Now opening 10/8.

Halloween Kills

2018′s Halloween sequel was the best Halloween film since the 1978 original. By setting the reset button on the franchise it was a gamble that paid off. I named it my #9 Movie of 2018. Now director David Gordon Green and star Jamie Lee Curtis are returning, along with John Carpenter composing an original score. Film opens in theaters and Peacock on 10/15.

The Last Duel

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have not starred in and co-written a movie together since Good Will Hunting in 1997. They collaborated on this historic drama with co-write Nicole Holofcener and Ridley Scott directs. Opens 10/15.

The French Dispatch

A Wes Anderson movie is always an event and this is his first live action film since The Grand Budapest Hotel! Opens 10/22.

Last Night in Soho

Edgar Wright is one of the most exciting directors of the last 20 years. He makes films that on the surface seem like parodies of their genre and then you realize he loves that genre and is making something exciting within it, i.e. Shaun of the Dead and Baby Driver. His new one is a horror-mystery in swingin’ 1960s London. Opens 10/29.

Music:

The Beatles Let It Be Special Edition

Last year marked the 50th anniversary of the final studio album released by The Beatles. To coincide with Peter Jackson’s upcoming documentary about the album, there are a number of special editions. I’ll have an album review up soon. Album release 10/15.

Lana Del Rey Blue Banisters 

LDR’s second album of 2021 will be dropping on 10/22.

The Replacements Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash Deluxe Edition

This year marks the 40th anniversary of The Mats’ debut album. To celebrate, there is a box set with tons of trinkets, demos, rarities, and live recordings. Box set drops 10/22.

TV:

Curb Your Enthusiasm 

The 2020 season of Curb was my #2 Show of 2020. Rumor has it, the new season takes place after the pandemic. Can’t wait. Season 11 begins 10/24 on HBO.

Books:

Dave Grohl The Storyteller

Grohl could easily write an entire book just about Scream...or Nirvana...or Foo Fighters...or his many collaborations with his musical heroes...or his music documentaries. But instead he has written his entire memoir in this new book being released on 10/5.

Film Festivals:

Salem Horror Fest (10/1 - 10/22)

This year’s Salem Horror Fest will have both in-person and virtual programs. Here is my recent Preview and stay tuned for coverage.

Nightstream (10/7-10/13)

Last year four distinct genre film festivals (including Boston Underground Film Festival) came together to curate a genre festival online. It went so well they are all back this year. Stay turned for my coverage.

IFFBoston Fall Focus (10/20-10/24)

This weekend, I decided to get into the spirit of the Halloween season by buying a five-movie access pass for Nightstream, a (supposedly) horror-themed online film festival founded during the more chaotic days of the Covid-19 pandemic. And although none of my selections were quite as… traditional as I’d hoped, they certainly sated my appetite for unique cinematic experiences.

Alien on Stage: In this documentary from first-time directors Danielle Kummer and Lucy Haley, a troupe of Dorset bus drivers turned actors take their stage adaptation of Ridley Scott’s Alien from their sleepy community theatre all the way to London’s West End (with more than a little help from an enormously successful Kickstarter campaign). While the amateur thespians’ plain, weathered looks and quaint, small-town mannerisms (even Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg couldn’t have invented fictional characters this endearingly quirky) threaten to make them easy targets for mean-spirited mockery, their infectious enthusiasm and obvious passion (particularly when it comes to the charmingly low-budget, do-it-yourself special effects) transform them into quintessential underdog heroes. Their gradual evolution from ordinary blue-collar workers into unlikely internet celebrities perfectly encapsulates the tribulations and triumphs of the creative process—the overinflated egos, the pre-show anxiety, and the transcendent joy of finally performing in front of a live audience.

Mad God: Developed by VFX wizard Phil Tippett (best known for his contributions to Jurassic Park and the Star Wars franchise) over a period of thirty-four years—and good Lord, is that effort ever evident in every single frame!—this mixed-media (stop-motion animation, live-action, miniatures, puppetry, and occasional CGI) masterpiece is borderline indescribable. Imagine if Dante Alighieri, Ray Harryhausen, David Lynch, Jim Henson, H. P. Lovecraft, H. R. Giger, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Ed Wood collaborated on a project after dropping a metric shit-ton of acid; that should give you at least some idea of what to expect from the tone and visual style of this cinematic fever dream. Tippett relentlessly assaults the viewer with surreal, abstract, haunting imagery: barren industrial wastelands and enigmatic ruins dripping with filth, entrails, and excrement—hellish monuments to decay, despair, and death. The minimalistic, episodic narrative is, of course, entirely allegorical—though I’ll be damned if I can discern any semblance of “meaning” after just one viewing. And to be honest… I have no real desire to fully comprehend it. Sometimes, attempting to interpret a work of art in concrete terms is akin to swimming against the current; in this case, I found it more enjoyable to simply go with the flow.

Code Name: Nagasaki - This intimate, innovative, genre-bending documentary chronicles a young Norwegian man’s efforts to reestablish a relationship with his Japanese mother twenty-seven years after she abandoned his family. Over the course of his journey, subject/co-director Marius Lunde, an actor by trade, inhabits a variety of roles and archetypes—including samurai, hard-boiled detective, demonic beast, and average salaryman—in a series of stylized, dramatic vignettes intended to symbolize his turbulent emotional state. This intricate interplay between “truth” and “fiction”—utilizing the artificiality of familiar cinematic tropes as a means of confronting very real trauma—elegantly ties into the film’s underlying themes. Lunde’s desire for parental affection is, after all, merely a small facet of his search for his own identity; he frequently muses that he feels like a stranger in his mother’s homeland, surrounded by people that superficially resemble him, but with whom he shares little of substance in common. Beneath its deeply personal narrative, Code Name: Nagasaki challenges the viewer to contemplate what ultimately defines a human being (Culture? Ethnicity? DNA?)—an existential conundrum that propels the movie into the realm of the universal.

Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes: From the surprisingly delightful One Cut of the Dead to the irredeemably disappointing Crazy Samurai: 400 vs. 1, Japanese cinema has become increasingly obsessed with 1917-esque “continuous shots” (or reasonable imitations thereof) in recent years. Although this sci-fi flavored comedy isn’t the best use of the notoriously flamboyant technique, it definitely ranks among the most clever, due to how seamlessly it marries craft and content—because the story revolves around “time travel,” it’s only logical to allow the plot to unfold in “real time.” The novel premise—a mild-mannered café owner discovers that he can communicate with his future self via an inverted two-minute video delay between his computer and television set, but must then perfectly reenact every predetermined conversation from the other side of the loop in order to avoid creating a temporal paradox (an unexpectedly complex meditation on the nature of fatalism and inevitability, considering the otherwise lighthearted tone)—lends itself to both humor and suspense, while the deliberately modest production values (a single location, iPhone cinematography, available lighting) prevent the filmmakers from letting their ambitions exceed their budget. Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes is the first feature-length movie produced by the Europe Kikaku theatre group; after such an impressive debut, I’ll be watching their careers with great interest.

Face your childhood fears with The Nurturing. My new horror short is now streaming for free. It’s only 7 minutes!

I directed from a script that I co-wrote with Michael Perkins. Anthony Gaudette, Marty Smith, and Hannah Fierman (V/H/S) star. 

After an injury lands Daniel back in his childhood bedroom under the care of his mother, his adolescent fear returns to haunt him.

Here's a little sneak peek of the animatic I'm working on about my ocs: Willowtail and Sabbatia! (bonus other random cats, Hazelpelt and Nightstream)

It's been a long, long time since I made my last animatic, but it's the first time I've tried to make a full-length one and about my original beans. (I'm super excited to have this complete soon!)

FSHG’s Top Horror of 2020

This list is not ranked, it’s simply a list of my favourite 30 horror films this year. Some of these titles also appear on my general 2020 favourites list, which isn’t sorted by genre. Again, like the other year-end list for film, this includes several titles from the festival circuit. Purists can whine all they want, there’s no set-in-stone definition for what should/shouldn’t be included on a…

~ Sweet Dreams ~

Oh boy this took me months but finally I finished them all. Cobsider these all gifts to friends/family.

Heavy inspiration from @fuyusfox ‘s Dream Rings

Ocs Used:

Spooky

Nightstream ( @juniper0817 )

Orion (brother)

Golden ( @royal-courts-palace )

Mudwhisker ( @mudwhisker )

Foxx ( @flyingfoxx13 )