The Birds: 1963 thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock
and starring Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy, and Suzanne
Pleshette. When the mischievous young
socialite Melanie Daniels begins a flirtation with Mitch Brenner at a pet shop, she winds up following him to his seaside home in Bodega Bay to play a little
prank. Once there she has his kid
sister, overbearing mother, and former lover to contend with. Also? Swarms of murderous birds. Gulls and crows and sparrows et al descend
upon the sleepy fishing town and for no apparent reason start attacking the
residents, seemingly with malicious purpose.
Suddenly there’s no safe haven, with birds infiltrating homes,
businesses, cars – how will they escape?
It’s like a
tense romantic drama set in a horror movie – I looooooved it. I want to be friends with the Melanie Daniels character and
learn how she does her hair and also how she manages to not scream when birds
are dive-bombing her glorious face.
Another Hitchcock film to add to your must-see list if you haven’t
already.
That Guy . . . Who Was In That Thing: 2012 documentary by Ian
Roumain and Michael Schwartz about the lives and careers of working character
actors. It features interviews with
Zeljko Ivanek, Xander Berkeley, Craig Fairbrass, Bruce Davison, Timothy Omundson,
and eleven other actors who make their living as supporting characters in
television and film. You may not
recognize the names, but you would probably recognize their faces – which is
the whole point. The actors talk about
the various career idiosyncrasies of the character actor: loving getting typecast or hating it, the
horrid process of auditioning, everyone does Star Trek, etc. It’s
okay. Mildly interesting.
Black Rock: 2012 horror-thriller directed by Katie
Aselton and starring Aselton, Lake Bell, Kate Bosworth, Jay Paulson, and Anslem
Richardson. Sarah (Bosworth) has invited
her friends Abby (Aselton) and Lou (Bell) to a fun girls’ weekend on a remote
island off the coast of Maine where they used to camp as kids, in hopes that it
will repair their broken friendship. But
they’re not alone on the island, and when a horrible accident turns The Others
against them they have to work together to survive.
It’s fine? Pretty good? Yeah. Fine, pretty good.
The presence of Bosworth had me concerned that it would be chick-flickish,
but it totally wasn’t. The conflict
between the girls made it more interesting, but there was also a The Descent element that felt perhaps
too familiar? Maybe? I liked the people involved, and it was
certainly more interesting and intelligent than your average horror movie of
today. It’s a what-are-you-prepared-to-do
kind of thriller. Not super gory but NOT
for the squeamish. The Big Bad turned
out to be utterly predictable but still interesting in the end. Fine.
Black Sunday: 1960 Italian horror film directed by Mario
Bava and starring Barbara Steele, John Richardson, Andrew Checchi, Ivo Garrani,
and Arturo Dominici. A Moldavian vampire
witch is burned at the stake with her lover, but not before placing a terrible
curse on the future generations of her family.
Skip ahead a few centuries and some nimrod bumbling around her grave
accidentally breaks the cross that’s keeping her body from reanimating and she
totally comes back to life and starts killing people. Great job.
I watched this only because I felt like I should – it’s considered a
classic of Italian horror and hugely influential to many filmmakers all over
the world, and so forth. I’m glad I
watched it, I did find it sufficiently creepy, but I don’t know that I would
seek it out again. Italian horror is
just not my genre. But if you’re into
that sort of thing, definitely give it a try.
Ghost Bird: 2009 documentary directed by Scott Crocker,
about the mysterious and elusive Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. Long thought extinct, the bird was supposedly
spotted in a remote area of Arkansas in 2004, and the news attracted expert
ornithologists and amateur bird-watchers the world over. After years of searching, no physical
evidence of any kind has surfaced. But if
the bird really is extinct it will hurt the local economy and could stop
funding for restoring wildlife areas, so the hunt continues.
It was kind
of cute, but couldn’t hold my interest.
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