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."

Curio: Holiday Snail Mail

Alexa here. I did my part today to keep the USPS in business by sending out an armload of holiday cards. So for those who also take the time to send a greeting through the mail, and who aren't making personal greeting card appearances à la Andrew Lincoln, here are some of the more clever film-themed greetings available that don't involve Clark Griswold or Ralphie.

Die Hard, The Shining, Holly Golightly and more after the jump...

Tis the season for John McClane. Avilable here.

Click to read more ...

Team Top 10: Horror Films AFTER "The Exorcist"

It's Amir here, bringing you the second episode of this month's Team Top Ten. Last week we looked at the best horror films made before The Exorcist. This week it's time for everything that came after that seminal classic. Moreso than in the previous list, Team Experience members have agreed on canonical titles, barring an exception or two. This isn't to say there weren't any surprises. We decided against compiling a preliminary list of eligible titles before voting - precisely to avoid total agreement on our choices - and lo and behold, differences in opinion over what is considered horror lead to some major eyebrow-raisers; I'm already anticipating your comments about the absence of Jaws. But that's the fun in list-making.

Without further ado join us for the haunted house, serial killers, and terrifying isolation of...

The Top Ten Best
Post-Exorcist Horror Films

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 

More on The Shining

More NYFF
Lincoln's Noisy "Secret" Debut
The Bay An Eco Conscious Slither
The Paperboy & the Power of Nicole Kidman's Crotch  
Bwakaw is a Film Festival's Best Friend
Frances Ha, Dazzling Brooklyn Snapshot
Barbara Cold War Slow Burn
Our Children's Death March 
Hyde Park on Hudson Historical Fluff