And we’re back! This time on High and Low (Brow) James and I are joined by a live studio audience named Kevin who was invited because he offered us pizza and bread sticks. Delicious bread sticks. Buttery foodstuffs aside, this episode’s theme is HP Lovecraft, an author both of us enjoy, but who’s works have struggled to gain mainstream acceptance and have had even worse results in finding capable, or even enjoyable, versions brought to the silver screen.
Rounding out the show we have our selection process for the next episode, and once again we provide a twist on it to help keep things fresh and exciting. If you have any recommendations for films we could watch for the podcast, or want to suggest a potential theme for us to use, feel free to email us and tell us your ideas. If you enjoy the show make sure to subscribe through iTunes or our RSS feed so you can catch every new episode. Also, please friend James on Facebook. Because it will frighten and confuse him.
One more thing, if you enjoy the show feel free to donate to it through PayPal in either a single installment or as a recurring donor. We’d love to upgrade some of our equipment and anything you donate will go directly towards us getting some decent mics and perhaps even pop screens that aren’t made out of cotton balls.
As always, thanks for listening!
Opening Music – Mother Made Me Do It by Mark Mallman
Closing Music – Okey Dokey by The Incredible Bongo Band
Well James and I got together over the weekend to record the latest episode of High and Low (Brow). We once again had a change in format (as is quickly becoming our format), but nonetheless we had a good time with our theme of HP Lovecraft. Haven’t done much with the audio file yet, but expect the episode to be up sometime this week.
Also, make sure to swing by RowThree.com next week to check out the newest episode of the Cinecast. We’ll be recording it on Monday night and the film we will be reviewing will of course be Where the Wild Things Are. But, unlike most episodes where it is just me, Kurt and Andrew, we will be joined by a special guest, Rian Johnson, director of Brick and The Brothers Bloom. Should be an interesting and fun discussion.
And once both those episodes are posted, make sure to keep an eye out for my reviews of several of the films that will be playing at next weekend’s Flyway Film Festival. I should be attendance for most of, if not the entire, festival and I hope to have reviews and some commentary from the event. And if things go really well, hopefully some audio interviews with several of the various directors, actors, producers and other luminaries in attendance.
Just look for this banner for any reviews of films that will be playing at this year’s Flyway Film Festival.
Just in time for our upcoming High & Low (Brow) podcast that will focus on two HP Lovecraft film adaptations, there is a new documentary devoted to him being released this week. While I am a fan of Lovecraft I’ve always felt he never has seemed to have received the amount of mainstream popularity he deserves, especially compared to other horror writers. He’s always seemed to be a bit more respected by horror nerds then general audiences, which is a shame.
Part of the reason might be that his stories tend to be a bit cumbersome to the uninitiated, with their flowery prose that is not often seen, especially from more modern authors like himself. His stories have also become rather notorious in Hollywood for how difficult they are to adapt, resulting in people being less impressed with his work by proxy and with a general reluctance from the studios to adapt his works.
Lovecraft: Spreading the Madness looks to correct these oversights and misconceptions on the man and his mythos, and they do so by rolling out an impressive group purveyors of the weird and wonderous like Neil Gaiman, John Carpenter, Guillermo del Toro, Peter Straub, Stuart Gordon, Ramsey Campbell, S.T. Joshi, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Andrew Migliore and Robert M. Price to talk about Lovecraft and his influence on horror as well as their own lives. Its an impressive group, to be sure, and I can barely contain my excitement at getting a chance to watch this film. While I won’t have time to watch this before James and I record, you can be sure within the next few weeks I will make sure to get my hands on a copy of this potentially fabulous documentary.
Unbeknownst to you my dear reader, James and I secretly recorded a podcast almost one month ago. It was meant to be a trial run before we recorded our first official podcast. So if you are a little confused by the episode numbering, don’t you worry, they should be far more coherent from now on, unlike say, James and my film commentary.
As you will quickly realize, we are still pretty rough around the edges, but I think this format has a great deal of potential. Feel free to leave any comments, critiques or suggestions to help improve the podcast. Hope you enjoy!
When I started writing TOO SOON, one of my goals was to revisit some of the movies from my childhood to see how they hold up years, sometimes decades, later. I did it once already with Alone in the Dark, with mixed results. I always had one particular movie in mind when I began; however, locating the movie has been particularly challenging. It’s amazing to me how certain movies slip away without so much as an IMDB entry, and others just won’t go away, like that last – and almost certainly uninvited – guest at your birthday party. And while I’ve been more than happy to be that guest over the years, none of it comes close to the happiness I felt this week as I was finally able to sit down and watch the 1987 classic The Video Dead.
Instead of simply reviewing the movie, I wrote a commentary while watching the movie for the first time in fifteen years. Even if you’ve never seen The Video Dead, you’ll be able to follow along just fine, as this piece is not only a blow-by-blow look at this forgotten zombie classic, but possibly one of the most in-depth pieces ever written about all things TVD. In fact, if I put the same amount of energy I put into writing this piece into my PhD work, I probably would have finished it years ago.
Despite the international entries into the genre, there is something deeply American about zombie stories. You can see how Edgar Allan Poe flirted with the idea in his work, and how H.P. Lovecraft hesitantly embraced it in his stories. Sure, at its most basic level, the zombie represents our fear of death and how we need to confront it, sooner rather than later; however, there’s something deeply troubling about fighting an enemy that is us, and no matter how hard you fight, inevitably, you will become one of them. And its lack of ideology makes it even more horrifying; the starkness in its complete lack of ambiguity is disconcerting for a culture who believes “there’s always a way.” There is no way to reach an agreement with a zombie, and they will not compromise; to end the nightmare, you must either become the monster philosophically or become the monster physically. This is why the best zombie movies are such downers, because by winning, the heroes of the story must lose, whether it’s their sanity, their honor, or their principles. This sort of resolution is what truly horrifies us Americans, and it is what good zombie stories do better than other kinds of horror stories.
The Video Dead effectively manages to completely piss on all of the aforementioned ideas. Normally this would bother me; however, the movie is so nonsensical and reckless, I can’t help but love it, flaws and all.(more…)
And we’re back! This time on High and Low (Brow) James and I are joined by a live studio audience named Kevin who was invited because he offered us pizza and bread sticks. Delicious bread sticks. Buttery foodstuffs aside, this episode’s theme is HP Lovecraft, an author both of us enjoy, but who’s works have struggled to gain mainstream acceptance and have had even worse results in finding capable, or even enjoyable, versions brought to the silver screen.
Entries (RSS)