Beauty vs Beast: The Babysitter's Club

JA from MNPP here with our final Final Girl match-up "Beauty vs Beast" style before All Hallows hits us on Friday! Over the course of October we've paired off A Nightmare on Elm Street's Nancy vs Freddy, Scream's Sidney vs the boys Billy & Stu, last week the Torrances came out to play, and now... well there were Final Girls who came before and there were Final Girls who came after, but to my mind the clearest cut definition, the Platonic Ideal of Final Girlism, every box is checked with Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), heroine and survivor of John Carpenter's sleek nightmare Halloween.

Jamie Lee Curtis isn't the preeminant Scream Queen in many a fan's mind for nothing, but before I tilt the scales too far in her favor right here before the match-up let me make it clear that Laurie wouldn't work if she wasn't the immovable object meeting a truly irresistible force...

If the dance she danced was with a weaker partner (can you name JLC's character or the villain in Terror Train, for example?), and let it be said that the only movie character that's ever made its way into one of my nightmares is Michael Myers. That white mask haunting every corner of every frame, night and day-time, outside a window, behind some sheets flapping in the breeze, in every tan station wagon sitting outside your kid's school... the boogeyman is real, you guys.

poll by twiigs.com

You have seven days to carve your jack-o-lanterns, cut eye-holes into your sheets, and choose between the boogeyman and the babysitter -- have at it.

PREVIOUSLY Last week I asked you to pick between The Shining's Jack and Wendy Torrance - well we've found our way out of the hedge maze and just like in the movie it's Wendy that's our survivor, poor Jack left a popsicle in the past. Said Evan:

"Shelley Duvall is a Gumby-esque goddess. Her flailing around the Overlook adds a campiness that feels tonally detached from the rest of the film, but somehow still works."

Beauty vs Beast: Writers Retreat

JA from MNPP here with our third week's worth of Halloween-flavored "Beauty vs Beast" treats - today we're swerving away from Wes Craven's cadre of high school students in distress to hit up a whole different kind of Final Girl fight club: jump in the Snowcat, we're heading up to The Overlook Hotel to face off the ill-fated Torrances, Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and Jack (Jack Nicholson), with their snowed-in battle for little Danny's soul.

poll by twiigs.com

You've just got one week til the cold takes over, the elevator doors swing open, and the blood gets off on the second floor, so cast your votes and let us know which Torrance you feel for in the comments.

PREVIOUSLY You screamed, I screamed, we all screamed for Wes Craven and his 1996 slasher classic Scream - would Sidney whoop those bad boys Billy and Stu's butts once again? Naturally she did - four full movies couldn't keep our Super Bitch down, this was no contest. Said Tom:

"This is my 90's! Sidney all the way. She isn't the perfect innocent virginal girl most horror movies have as the heroine. She is probably just as disturbed as the villains she defeats. She fights the darkness inside and out. No wonder there was speculation that she would be the killer in Scream 4."

I Link You and Link You and Link You

You Should Be in Sweden attends the Stanley Kubrick exhibit at LACMA. It ends in June so go see it!
JazzT here's another enticing image from the exhibit. Oh Nicole. Any mask you'd like me to wear is fine
Pitchfork Another new David Bowie video starring an Oscar winning actress. Marion Cotillard instead of Tilda this time 
Mother Jones a 17 year old coder invents a program to block spoilers on Twitter
NY Post Producer Scott Rudin lashes back at NYT critic. These stories always embarrass me for the showbiz people - (remember when James Cameron wanted someone fired for the thumbs down on Titanic?). Being criticized is just part of show business. You always look silly when you freak out about it. It's an honor to be so well employed / watched that you are even susceptible to bad reviews, don'cha think? 

Empire Dominic Cooper joins the cast of the new Dracula starring MNPP's favorite punching bag lust object Noted Homosexual Luke Evans. I'd be excited for this since I like looking at both of them but I'm so worn out on vampires. Which I never thought I'd say but here we are post the Aughts when vampires are more ubiquitous than they've ever been as if they're still trying to wrestle back the Ubiquity Crown from the hordes of brain-dead zombies who don't even know that they won some pop culture battle.
Electric has an infographic comparing The Great Gatsby to the wealth of the stars of the movie
Pajiba on Netflix's current strengths and weaknesses as it attempts to become both a distribution platform and a content creator 
Observations on Film Art Kristin wonders whether or not studios understand the power of fanbases and direct access to filmmakers they can get via Twitter and set visits and the like
In Contention Ben Affleck's follow up to Argo doesn't betray any steroided auteurly confidence. It's just another Denis Lehane adaptation of the novel "Live By Night". It's almost like something he woulda signed on for before Argo.
MNPP Today's mood via Barbara Stanwyck and Clark Gable 

Oh and Also... James McAvoy on the set of X-Men Days of Future Past via Bryan Singer's active picture-snapping Twitter account. He tweeted this one with a Pacino-style "Serpico!" descriptor. When last we left the X-Men they were in the swinging sixties and Professor X had just been paralyzed and hate yet to go bald. Here we are in the seventies I suppose though it's probably not worth getting hung up on time periods since Days of Future Past (one of the great X-men arcs) is all about messing with them.

poll by twiigs.com

P.S.
And if you still can't get enough of our "Greatest Best Actress Losers" poll, check it out: Tim, Michael and Glenn shared their individual ballots on their fine blogs Antagony & Ecstasy, Serious Film and Stale Popcorn.

Dear Ingmar...

Hi lovelies, Beau here with something that plastered a big smile across my face today:

It's a fan letter from Stanley Kubrick to Ingmar Berman. Text after the jump...

Click to read more ...

NYFF: "Room 237" Cult of the Overlook Hotel

Michael C. here with a look at one of the under-the-radar festival hits appearing the NYFF.

One of the subjects of Rodney Ascher’s Room 237 is convinced that Kubrick’s The Shining is the director’s thinly veiled confession that he helped NASA fake the moon landing. He admits at one point to wondering if his idea stretched plausibility, but he adds that any doubt went out the window when he spotted the image of the Apollo 11 rocket on young Danny Torrence’s sweater in a pivotal scene. What other explanation could there possibly be for Kubrick the perfectionist including such a thing?

This is the refrain all the subjects of Ascher’s documentary return to as they unspool their elaborate theories about the supposed hidden meanings of the horror masterpiece: Stanley Kubrick was a master, a control freak, a genius. Nothing ever found its way into his films by accident. To hear them speak, every detail, no matter how incidental, was one more ingredient in the filmmaker’s complex web of symbolism. Theories range from The Shining as a commentary on the genocide of the Native American, to a reading of the story as an allegory for the Holocaust.

By opting not to show any talking heads Ascher grants all the speakers equal footing, combining their words into an aural labyrinth of competing evidence. Some of their analysis is compelling. An attempt to map the floor plan of the Overlook Hotel reveals how rooms appear to shift and disappear from scene to scene. Other digressions are straight up kooky, as with the moon landing theorist’s proposition that the capital letters on a key chain marked “ROOM No. 237” are a subliminal attempt on Kubrick’s part to plant the words MOON and ROOM in the mind’s of audiences. (The film is too kind to point out they can also be arranged to spell MORON)

What keeps Room 237 from merely being an overblown DVD bonus feature is the cleverness with which Ascher uses the minutiae of the theories to explore the way our minds hunger to find meaning wherever we look. Our brains our designed to find connections, Room 237 says, and The Shining with its bottomless subtext, inexplicable imagery, and seemingly deliberate continuity errors provide a playground where such impulses can run amok.

At the center of the doc’s hedge maze of theories is Kubrick himself, still mysterious, still elusive as ever. Room 237 works broadly as a meditation on the relationship between artist and audience, but more specifically as a demonstration on the continued hold Kubrick has over audiences. Room 237 is a smart, engaging, often funny film. Should Ascher ever decided to apply the technique to other films I would be interested to see the results, even if another attempt may not work as well without Kubrick on hand to toy with our minds. B 

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