Etain's Her Name, My Latest Flame

[handful_ofdust]

From the department of Stuff I’m Waiting For: Neil Marshall’s Centurion trailer is up, finally, here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiQCofKrYAI) and here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Zba6lg1Z9Y). I’ve already heard people decrying the fact that it’s told from the Roman POV—ooh, the Romans, those raping, murdering colonizers! Well…yeah. ‘Cause it’s a fucking Western, basically, except for the fact that it’s set in Scotland. Maybe someday someone will write and film a Western from the colonized POV, but no, hasn’t happened yet. Meanwhile, I can still enjoy a good Rorke’s Drift narrative when I see it, especially when it involves Olga Kuryalenko cutting dudes’ heads off.

Points, BTW, to the moron commenting, on the second one: I AM A SOLDIER OF ROME…AND I SPEAK PERFECT ENGLISH! Because if you genuinely can’t figure out that they’re using accent to denote linguistic/cultural distinction…yeah, whatever. Jesus, people are tedious.

Meanwhile, there’s also Devil, the Dowdle Brothers’ next film—yes, it’s being pimped as involving the currently leprous hand of M. Night Shyamalan, but if you’re going to be a turd about it, just don’t click (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUrUlnLOzlE). I will merely confine myself to remarking that A) he’s idea-generator/co-writer/producer, nothing more and B) it’s really cool to see Los Bros Dowdle attempt something done with such faux-Hitchcock/-Spielberg classicism, as opposed to yet another shot-on-video gem (their most famous previous outings were The Poughkeepsie Tapes and Quarrantine). One way or the other, this looks really fascinating—it seems to combine haunted house/possession tropes with the truly enclosed space of a stalled elevator, though there are enough perspective breaks to open it up without dissolving the tension. Reminds me just a tad of Vincenzo Natali’s first short film, Elevated, which I sometimes used to play in two separate classes per semester; ah, memories.;)

Oh, and in answer to readingthedark’s question of Saturday night: The smallest, most obscure formative fandom I was ever in—a fandom of one, basically—was for Samuel R. Delaney’s graphic novel Empire, which was a huge influence on my first truncated attempts at space opera. It came between Star Wars and Battle of the Planets, and (along with reading hot-mess “adult” weirdness like Creatures of Light and Darkness by Zelazney and Thorns by Robert Silverberg) really did a lot to break me out of the generalized tropes of mainstream media SF. Too bad I figured out pretty quick after that that horror was really where it was at, for me…

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know if it's so much supernatural horror as more science fiction, but there's a movie called The Objective by the writer and director of the Blair Witch Project. American soldiers are trying to find a religious figure that could help turn the populace against the Taliban, whilst investigating a radioactive heat signal that's been picked up on surveillance photos. I haven't seen it myself, so I apologise if it's not very good, but it does look interesting.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

I've wanted to see that for quite some time myself! I don't know if they ever got any sort of distribution deal, but it does sound really interesting, potentially.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I remember hearing about/watching the trailer for that movie, and I remember thinking the same. Then I never heard anything about it again.