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ChicagoBoy
Reviews
It Took Guts (1979)
Great Little Extra
I watched this as an extra on a movie titled NIGHT OF THE DEAD put out by THE ASYLUM and produced by an unknown company called CEREBRAL EXPERIMENT. We expected the usual behind the scenes extras but we were pleasantly surprised by something unexpected. This is a little video of maybe a film that was made by the director of night of the dead and also the man who played one of the zombies in the movie and also was the second unit director. It took guts was all about guts. It was about five minutes long and it started with Charles Schneider walking around aimlessly looking for something to do. He was so bored that he starts to bite himself and taste his own ear wax and do really unsettling things to himself until he eats his own insides. The music was not so great but I see from this IMDb page that it was originally put together with some punk rock song that was written for it. I would love to see it with that music. But it was still impressive, especially that the film makers did it when they were teen agers.
Hauru no ugoku shiro (2004)
Its Zen and beautiful
Hayao Miyazaki does not disappoint us with this visual masterpiece. Howl's Moving Castle is both an opulent feast for the eyes as well as a cleansing tale of good vs evil for the soul. But unlike in JRR Tolkien, where the line between good and bad is thick and easy to discern, in Howl's Moving Castle the good hearted characters can be threatening demons and the forces of ill will can be sympathetic figures of love and woe. It is distinctly non-Christian at it's core. I found this refreshing and frankly more like the inner workings of my own self, where the hero within must find the good and accept the bad in the same grasp. As far as art goes the film is stunning. I missed Miyazaki's wonderful relationship with food that was in Spirited Away (I loved how every character in that film was moved by tiny plates and giant piles of odd looking treats). This was missing in Howl's Moving Castle, replaced more by an obsession with architecture. But Miyazaki's brilliant mix of crumbling rot and bloom flowers was all there. Gorgeous vistas and quaint villages blend together with filth and decay so that they are all beautiful (as does good and evil blend so they are all as they should be). This is not my favorite of his films but it is an absolute must see for anyone who loves moving paintings and fairy tales bordering on the surreal.
Alien Abduction (2005)
A Weird, Gory Dream
I had the privilege of working on Alien Abduction. We had a tiny budget and we shot it in a week and a half. I love Sci Fi horror and psychological thrillers that are especially disturbing (a la Angel Heart, Sixth Sense and Jacobs Ladder). I think that Alien Abduction fits in at the gory, b-movie end of those types of films.
I hope that people can forgive the low budget look and see that Alien Abduction is very weird, disturbing and unexpected. It's not meant to be your usual science fiction film with high tech themes. It's more like a nightmare: Like a David Lynch nightmare. If you don't watch it through to the end you'll miss the best part of the movie so give it a chance to play itself out. Most of the reviews are damned good.
More power to the low budget world, (other wise we're stuck with a bunch of Ben Affleck movies and big budget sequels like Bridget Jones five).