2012: It's good that it was

so we're closing out the least productive year in the five year existence of this blog.

what can be said about 2012? a year defined by "Call Me, Maybe", Gangam Style (didn't know what this was until i saw some smart-ass middle school kid do it through the back window of the school bus i was stuck behind while in traffic. he looked me in the eyes the whole time while bearing his teeth. in my day, we just flipped people off, but okay), more right vs. left ballyhoo, the not-sure-if-wantness of Prometheus, mass shootings, the party ending for illegal downloading, nerds being moody over the Governor not having a mustache on the Walking Dead TV Series despite a strong nuanced performance from David Morrissey that was filled with desperation and menace, making the character something more than the grindhouse Lord Stingray he was in the comic, nerds being moody over the minute flaws in the otherwise class act that was Dark Knight Rises, nerds being moody about nerds being moody, still no release in sight for Bloodyminded's Within the Walls, a motherfucking hurricane, the Communion releasing A Desired Level of Unease which you should buy, viewing my first genuine snuff film, the concluding year to the decade long shit show that's been my 20s, rediscovering the splendor of Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness, not getting any closer to that threeway, recording my first power electronics album, getting this track there, Lean Cuisine Hot Sandwiches, a fucking awesome DVD presentation of a German Splatter Classic, discovering that _____ fucked ____ and writing almost 40 songs out of the tumult left in the revelation's wake, new porn infatuations found in Skin Diamond and Dani Jensen, family getting the shit knocked out of it and getting back up again, sharing the stage with Eyehategod, the Quay Brothers exhibit @ the MoMa....

so it was good, and it's good that it was.

merry 2013.

UU+EHF

We are the Sprocket Holes vol. 202: Top 10 DVDs of 2012

these are 10 films that i never got around to talking about on this blog. i went through some real shit this year, and just wanted to enjoy what i was watching without thinking about what i was gonna write on this fucking thing. slowly i got back into it, mostly just because it came naturally. anyway, here' the 10:

THE BUNNY GAME:

existing somewhere in the shared dreaming of a Japanese torture film and a Richard Kern art-fuck, Adam Rehiemer’s THE BUNNY GAME is the perfect film for every existential extremist.  

GOD BLESS AMERICA:

Bobcat Goldthwaite completes the joyfully morose triptych that began with bestiality (Sleeping Dogs Lie), continued with teenage suicide (World’s Greatest Dad), and now concludes with a cross-country killing spree in the de-fuck-you-lightful GOD BLESS AMERICA. 

HOUSE OF FLESH MANNEQUINS:

Italian Horror is back for blood with Domiziano Cristopharo neo-giallo; a not-so-fun-but-actually-kind-of-funhouse filled with luscious S&M, graphic murder, and cornea-segmenting cinematography that proves Spaghetti Splatter need not rest on its laurels anymore.

THE THEATRE BIZARRE:

the Grand Guignol inspired cinema-omnibus showcases the very best genre films has to offer all in one celebration. 

-         “the Mother of Toads” by Richard Stanley:  a slimy Lovecraftian walk-of-shame.

-         “I Love You” by Buddy Giovinazzo: an emotional annihilation culminating in a profane gush of murder/suicide.

      -         “Wet Dreams” by Tom Savini: a nightmare-totem of sexual mutilation.

-         “the Accident” by Douglas Buck: the futility of consolation in the face of childhood-eroding expierences.

-         “Visions Stains” by Karim Hussain: grotesquely poetic study of a young woman’s addiction to the fluid in your eyes. 

-         “Sweets” by David Gregory: hilariously detached comedy about food, love, and cannibalism.

WOUND:

a flipbook of unbound ID, David Blythe’s anti-social yarn plays like a full-scale deconstruction of the classic “woman gone mad” archetype.

WHERE THE DEAD GO TO DIE:

Call it A SERBIAN SIMS. A shockingly competent narrative buried beneath unpleasantly cartoonish CGI. Plays like the most fucked up underground comic book you’ve ever read.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN:

A film that will make you wish you could will your biological make-up into sterility.

 LIFE AND DEATH OF A PORNO GANG:

The “other” controversial roughie from Serbia is every bit as depraved as its more infamous cohort, but also much more nuanced, sexy, and fun.

HUMAN CENTIPEDE 2:FULL SEQUENCE:

Tom Six cements his status as Neo-Torture’s answer to William Castle with this scatological slasher that draws from classic Ero-Guro as well as more atypical sources like Bad Boy Bubby. 

THE TALL MAN:

French extremist Pascal Laugier follows up 2008’s bile-churning chiller Martyrs with this moody thriller that is not at all what you expect. No where near as graphically intense as his previous film, but possessing all the organic twists and turns that made it more than just an exercise in brutal terror. Genuinely surprising, intriguing, and emotional.

We are the Sprocket Holes vol. 201

riny teviews;

BEDEVILED - 8 (hovering around a nine) / 10

not since Jack Ketchum's the Girl Next Door have i wanted a matriarch to die this horribly. what loathsome backward-ass fucks. blood-curdling revengerection cinema with attitude and aesthetics that should have been utilized for the updates to Last House on the Left and I Spit on Your Grave.

EXCISION - 9/10

the best kind of splatter films are the ones that don't seem to realize how fucking disgusting they are, either in ideas or actions. at any moment this could have veered into slapstick, but it just continues to grow more confrontationally misanthropic and singularly hopeless. fantastic performances, bewitching visuals, even the cameos don't come off as tacky as they would anywhere else.

I THINK WE'RE ALONE NOW - skin crawling / bile churning

if you're a emotionally dyslexic social leper who has recently discovered your undeserved sense of transcendental relevance has been no more than a tumorous delusion; this documentary will make you feel better about yourself.
  

Horror Movie Trailer for the week of 10/22/12

VISITING HOURS (1982)

DVD

Horror Movie Trailer for the Week of 10/15/12

THE OTHER HELL (1981)
DVD

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 71

Anti-abortion Tea Party congressman demands mistress get an abortion

 

"Mistress Abortion" sounds like a Cradle of Filth song.

Horror Movie Trailer for the Week of 10/8/12

BABY BLOOD (1989)

DVD

Swoon Swoon You're a Balloon vol. 3

Horror Movie Trailer for the week of 10/1/12

Sombre (1998)

DVD 

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 70

Students Make Viral Video To Protest Michelle Obama’s School Lunch Plan



The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 not only restricts the calories in school lunches. It requires students be given more fruits and vegetables and cuts down on sweets and fatty foods in cafeteria menus. 

 high schoolers limited to 850 calories in a meal at lunch...

read that again:

 high schoolers limited to 850 calories in a meal at lunch...

 they say the average person should have at least 2000 calories a day, but that's really bullshit... 12-1600 is more than enough to sustain a healthy diet.

sorry... i just remembered what country i'm talking about here. the land of the Cheese and the home of the Cake.

and no... i didn't watch the smartass viral video, because i'm not the least bit fucking interested in what a bunch of shitstick teenagers have to say about anything.

 "waahhh our SOCIALIFACIST FIRST LADY took away barely a quarter of our canned lemonade and french fries!  we aren't getting nearly enough freeze dried sugar venomed ketchup-caked pseudo-food at this glorified daycare center, and it's inhibiting our ability to pay even less attention to our studies! " 

shut the fuck up and read.

i gotta go. 

 

NERRRRRRRRD!!!!! vol. 39

DREDD 3D review in brief

equal parts 2000 AD strip, the Raid, and  Robocop 2, DREDD 3D is an enjoyable, well acted, competently constructed sci-fi action film that understands and adores the source material that made its existence possible. however, the filmmakers are only dipping their toes in the shallow end of the massive pool that is Mega-City 1. the one-day-on-the-job approach of the film's narrative is of course understandable; budget constraints forced the production designers to keep it modest, which has the upside of distancing this film even further from the monumentally execrable 1995 farce, but has the downside of diminishing the vast importance of Mega-City One as a character in of itself.

given the poor box office performance this weekend, a bigger better sequel seems highly unlikely. perhaps Judge Dredd was just not long for the cinema.

whelp, we'll always have those gorgeous 2000 AD collections. 

It's a Funny World We Live In vol. 15

Thirteen-Year-Old Facing Life Without Parole For Murder of Two-Year-Old Brother

 A few months later, in March of 2011, Christian’s 2-year-old brother, David, was pronounced dead at the hospital with a fractured skull, a brain bleed, and a bruised eye.  As Susana tells the story, she left Christian, David, and her other children home without adult supervision.  When she returned, David was unresponsive, but she waited for 8-1/2 hours before bringing him to the hospital, instead choosing to perform Internet searches on “unconsciousness” and seeking advice via texts to her friends.

We are the Sprocket Holes vol. 200

very tiny reviews of some shit i watched this week;

BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW - 10/10

Hypnagogic cinema from the fizzing core of an acid drenched brain. coils like a python of detached retina around your head, holding you in place with painted static. you know something like that.

THE LOVED ONES - 8/10

like a John Hughes movie dreamed it was a Takashi Miike movie and then woke up to find out it was actually a Bustillo/Maury joint. see you in your nightmares, lover.

A DANGEROUS METHOD - 8/10

think of it as an introverted Cronenberg film. all the perverse fleshy goodness is there if you are daring enough to look for it. plus yeah.. spankings.

We are the Sprocket Holes. vol. 199

semi-tiny reviews;

KILL LIST - 10/10

a cold, brutal, intensely psychological, confrontationally nihilistic hate-fuck of a film. a slow-burn with an emphasis on the burn. can't recommend this enough.

the less i have to say about a film, the better it is. which brings us toooooooo;

EXPENDABLES 2 - 2/10

as someone who nursed at the muscled celluloid man-tits of 80's Action, these films should be the be-all-end-all of Reagonomics Rage Boners. why do they fall as short as Stallone's real height? i don't think it's because of their age, because it's a movie, and  you don't have to be in your 20s to fire guns at broadly drawn evil foreigners.

that's it... ANYONE can do what they're doing here. that's the problem. Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Willis, Van Damme, Lungren, Norris... for kids of the 80s they're the cinematic equivalent of our favorite super-heroes. they were more than just dudes shooting things, and that's all they are in the Expendables. there's NO imagination here. just a heavy reliance on past screen presences to carry the audience through an ultimately meaningless exercise. every 80s film cliche is rolled out not because they're beloved tropes, but because well, they HAVE to be there. the latent homosexuality (men fighting men to avenge the deaths of other men) is on display, so that's cool... and of course there's the eroticized final fight between our main hero and main villain. the heavy handed politics are mournfully absent, as that's the joyful ridiculousness of Stallone's 80s films (the Rambo movies and Cobra), the Death Wish sequels, Cannon Films and the like is equally derived from the macho conservative "re-fight Vietnam and murder hippies" revisionist fan-fiction of the scripts as it is the fetishized man-on-man ultra-violence. there's blood, but it's that CGI video game blood that evaporates when it hits the air.

the plot? Willis wants Stallone and his team of super-dudes and one sexy Chinese Girl to get a package that contains a blueprint (that's also a map i guess?) to a coal mine in Russia that contains weapons grade plutonium. they need this package so it doesn't fall into the wrong hand. well those wrong hands belong to Jean Claude Van Damme and his spooky neck tattooed Russian or Slavic or French semi-cultists. without spoiling too much, they get the package, begin harvesting the mine, and the Expendables have to stop them. along the way Chuck Norris pops up for no reason other than 80S (referring to both the decade and Norris' age), good guys hit every target dead on while the bad guys couldn't hit the broad side of dead elephant, and a pre-gaming audience of fat guys in track pants and Tapout shirts who think they're Brock Lesnar are all like FUCKYEAHBRAHREDBULL.   

i also have to mention that in the Stallone-script pantheon of stupidly obvious names, he may have outdid himself with Jean Claude's character. the character's name?

"VILLAIN" (pronounced "VILL-AYE-N")

i guess "A.N. Tagonist" and "Sir Evil McBadguy" were a little too subtle. 

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis are barely in it, and they just spit out bad jokes about the time they were in Terminator and Die Hard. and in a sign that tells you just how far Chuck Norris jokes have jumped the shark (i mean for those of you who didn't know that they were bad  rip offs from SNL's Bill Brasky sketches), when Walker, Texas Corpse makes his glorified cameo, much of it contains a Chuck Norris joke. for similar internet pandering, see "I'm the Juggernaut, Bitch!" in X-Men 3.
  
you know something... the Raid came out this week on DVD.

you should just watch the Raid. 

Fuck OUR Lives vol.1

click on the picture to see it move because blog is a fucking CUNT.

Casting Couch.

i've been thinking about the long gestating Hellraiser remake. the project seems cursed. don't feel like getting into it here.

i adore the first film and the novella Hellbound Heart on which it is based. strangely enough, i'm not opposed to a remake, cause there's a lot in the book that could be incorporated into a new film. sometimes i do fantasy casting, and i'm bored, so i'm doing that now.

for Rory aka Larry:

Chris O'Dowd

he's best known for Bridesmaids, but his work on the HBO show Girls shows that he can play up the loveable-but-vanilla type with a hint of desperate menace that will be unleashed once his skin is occupied by his sadistically hedonistic brother Frank.

speaking of which,

for brother Frank;

Michael Fassbender

cause he looks like the kind of guy who could get away with making his rape victim fall in love with him. speaking of which.

for Julia;

Natalia Tena

she rocks the shit on Game of Thrones as a Wilding with a heart and a mind, never-mind possessing a unique dark beauty that seems tailor-made for this sort of story.

now the tricky part.

 for young Kirsty (i'm keeping it Kirsty as in Larry's daughter because it adds an air of incest to Frank's advances no to mention more trauma when Larry is murdered)

i guess you'd have to go with an unknown, cause i can't think of anyone. she'd have to be pretty young, since the other actors are only in their thirties, but that would add a nice layer of pedophilia to the perversity.

now the fun part; the Cenobites;

i figured a lot of these characters would be stunt people in heavy FX, but for the two speaking cenobites

for the Female Cenobite

Kate Mara

so damn weird. so damn angry. so damn fffffffff. as Hayden on American Horror Story she almost stole the show. really though, i just wanna see her recreate the end of Hellbound Heart's first chapter.

and last but not least;

for Pinhead;

Ray McKinnon

this took me a while, but McKinnon can pull off the playful other-worldliness necessary to play the film's most iconic character. see his recent run as Potter on Sons of Anarchy. 

"Beauty finds refuge in herself"

The Strangely Uplifting Tale of the Cam-Girl with No Vagina

 

 

fuck your problems.

NERRRRRRRRRRRD! vol. 38

review (kind of): THE DARK KNIGHT RISES.

it was a little over 7 years ago when Christopher Nolan destroyed, erased, and improved the Batman film franchise with 2005's BATMAN BEGINS. in 2008, he furthered the franchise even more with THE DARK KNIGHT, giving us respectable and terrifying versions of classic villains The Joker and Two-Face. well here we are in 2012, and Nolan brings it all full-circle with THE DARK KNIGHT RISES; where the war on Gotham Batman fought so hard to prevent in the previous two installments finally comes to pass in the form of Bane, who is brought to a Francis Bacon/Industrial Death level of anti-life by Bronson's Tom Hardy.

  

there have already been millions of words put down about this film. I don't feel like adding to the pile, but i do feel like expressing how grateful i am to have just one of these three films in existence, let alone a trilogy of them. I've been a fan of Batman in all mediums for as long as i've been alive, but the cinematic interpretations always fell short, mostly because the "creative" minds involved cared more about toyetic production design and nonsensical music video tie-ins than they did telling a story, let alone transporting the audience into a place that feels real, thus enabling the viewer to care about what is happening, because something more is at stake than some brightly colored celebrity guest star who wants to kill Batman for some ill-defined reason. but in this trilogy, whether it's Scarecrow weaponized fear clouds or the Joker's random acts of violent-who-gives-a-fucks to Two-Face's mind-snapped rampage, the threats in these films are less about killing Batman and more about breaking not only his physical and mental well-being, but that of an entire populous. that tradition continues in this film with Bane, who (for a time) succeeds where the other villains were stopped short of succeeding; the symbolic and literal breaking of both Batman and all of Gotham.

 a lot has been made about Nolan's devotion to realisim, but what i think people don't understand is that this film's are not meant to be reality, or even that this could happen in our reality, but that the reality of this universe looks plausible within the confines of the world in which it exists. these things can't happen, but through studious dedication to bringing something to life, it looks and feels real and not like a cartoon or a video game or whatever (it looks as if this aesthetic will be transferred over to next summer's Superman reset Man of Steel, which judging by that character's wealth of abilities can either be a soul-stirringly pitch perfect dichotomy of ideas or an incalculable bug-fuck... but we'll see).

regardless of what the future holds for this franchise, it's my opinion that we have a solid series of films to hand our hats on. maybe it wasn't the Batman on film you wanted, but after induing years of sub-par cinema, it was the Batman on film we deserved.

enjoy.