Catfish + The Girlfriend Experience

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Alice Thirteen
Catfish + The Girlfriend Experience

Unorthodox relationship day! Corresponding with children. When society forces incorrect reactions. The facts have not been redacted. Privacy of documentary film subjects. Jumping the gun. The Catfish trailer. Applying skepticism to the claims of hoax and the idea of “too good to be true.” Suspicions. Is Catfish a hoax? Prank-u-documentaries. Camera work. Steven Soderbergh and The Girlfriend Experience. TGE. What does it mean to purchase a girlfriend experience? Steven Soderbergh’s career. Red One. What Red cameras and DSLRs mean for the future of film. Why show the two stories? Fucking gym memberships. Personal anecdotes about the inner works of the call girl industry. Continue reading →

Pulp Fiction + Sin City

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Alice Thirteen
Pulp Fiction + Sin City

Tarantino and Rodriguez, back to back! Pulp Fiction and Tarantino’s chapters. The popular appeal of Pulp Fiction. What nonlinear storytelling accomplishes. Separating character development from overall narrative. Simultaneous stories. Building up Marsellus Wallace. Quentin Tarantino and race relations! Soundtrack. The life and work of Julia Sweeney. Atheism! Learning through conversation. Noir characters in the modern world. The MacGuffin, The Maltese Falcon, and Plot Coupons. Robert Rodriguez and Sin City. Quest director Quentin Tarantino! Getting Frank Miller to sign off. The characters in Basin City. Do it cheap, do it smart, and fuck film school. Continue reading →

Killapalooza 10: Wishmaster

Posted on December 30, 2010 by Alice Thirteen
Killapalooza 10: Wishmaster

Wishmaster films 1-4. The return of Killapalooza! Where did it ever go, again? Further exploration of always being nice to films. An abstract conversation about Wes Craven using a film he produced as a symbol for his greater style on a whole. Where did they get all the answers? Robert Kurtzman. The greatest scene in Wishmasterdom. Tony Todd, Kane Hodder, Robert Englund. Lazy wish-granting. Why “be careful what you wish for” is a bad supernatural plot. Green shirt guy. Photos of you. Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies. Andrew Divoff as the Wishmaster. Wish-lines. Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell. Shitty Acid drumloops. Embarrassing. Getting sick. Wish specificity. An opportunity to freshly exploit an old power. The magic of the paradox. Wishmaster 4: The Prophecy Fulfilled. Using a campy mythos to talk about a serious subject. Where should the franchise go from here? Continue reading →

Altered States + The Fly

Posted on December 23, 2010 by Alice Thirteen
Altered States + The Fly

Mad scientists! Dubious science. What’s a spoiler? https://bing.com/images?q=ken+russell is what you need to know. Trying to figure out Ken Russell’s Altered States from 1980. Behind the scenes at Double Feature. Michael doesn’t know what to do! William Hurt. Blair Brown. Actors who could be your mom, naked when they were younger. LSD. Timothy Leary. John C. Lilly. What was the point of the LSD deprivation experiments? The longest WTF scene yet. Be afraid, be very afraid. David Cronenberg is Jeff Goldblum as The Fly! 1986 and the relationship between man and machine. Body horror – what is it, what is it used for? The fly as a metaphor for aging. The mental and physical transformation. Films without mercy. Continue reading →

Amelie + Martyrs

Posted on December 16, 2010 by Alice Thirteen
Amelie + Martyrs

Alice struggles to do the show. Why the sadistic pairing? Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Amelie. Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain. Learning about the french via film. Living your quirks. Genre bending and classification. A comfortable distortion of physics. The influence and absence of Marc Caro. Dominique Pinon and Ron Perlman. A different sense of dark comedy. Fucking and the french. Fucking is ok! The American taboo. Are the things Amelie is doing right? Is it ok to lie for good? The best use of the Amelie garden gnome. The influence of American horror on the french. French extreme revisited. Smashcuts! The Flying Tom Tom. Uncertainty. What does the ending of Martyrs mean? Rape/Revenge. Continue reading →

Stuck + The House of the Devil

Posted on December 9, 2010 by Alice Thirteen
Stuck + The House of the Devil

City dangerous vs suburb dangerous. Two films, each a play on the trapped-in-one-place mechanic. Michael Koester is not actually an exorcist. Based on actual events? Zeitgeist contributing to a movie’s success vs basing a movie on the current zeitgeist. Stewart Gordon and new homeless. Intentionally flat characters. Reactions to brutality. Director masturbatory slow motion. Dissection of slow motion violence. Brandi Boski is the worst human being alive (but Mena Suvari is a wonderful person). If you drive drunk, you are the worst human being alive. An example of Stuart Gordon at his best. Another way Ti West’s The House of the Devil could have ended (and why). What is city danger? What is a suburb? The devil. You don’t need any evidence to be based on a true story. You don’t need a true story to be based on a true story. You don’t need a story to be based on a true story. Groups of five. Bring on the tannis! Power plays. Tom Noonan as Mr Ulman. Ti West improves on the throw back. Resisting the urge. Continue reading →

A Fistful of Dollars + Gojira

Posted on December 2, 2010 by Alice Thirteen
A Fistful of Dollars + Gojira

Two more genres Double Feature will never be fully prepared to cover. Spaghetti westerns and kaiju (japans monster movies). Two foreign films that popularized their genres in west. The dollars trilogy. What is a spaghetti western? How you can tell when something is dubbed, even in the same language as it’s shot. Ambience in recordings. Ennio Morricone (aka Dan Savio) and what makes the score. Setting the tone for a spaghetti western. The town. The solution? Elimination! Mexican border towns. What other westerns were doing at the time. The morality of the man with no name. Toho Company. Ltd. The eras of kaiju. Adapting Gojira for American audiences. Varan the Unbelievable. The worst translations. Godzilla mythology. Continue reading →

Misery + Christine

Posted on November 25, 2010 by Alice Thirteen
Misery + Christine

Stephen King. Also, this is Double Feature, so Ayn Rand too. Alice’s homework. Misery! Barry Sonnenfeld. Marc Shaiman. Writing what you know. The romanticization of the author. The real world mess that is writing an story. Rituals for both romance and storytelling mechanics. What does Paul Sheldon tell us about Stephen King. Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes. Sheldon disappoints! Fuck honor, give me desperation. Just how crazy is Annie? Killing the Ahab. The Chicago suburbs. Get naked and get in that car. A taste of things to come. High school as seen by Stephen King. Buying cursed items. Explaining your own metaphor. The moment John Carpenter first appears. Radiohead’s Karma Police. Obscured by light. The car’s motivation. Spider-Man 3 is a bad remake of Christine. Continue reading →

Die Hard + Man on Wire

Posted on November 18, 2010 by Alice Thirteen
Die Hard + Man on Wire

Secret heist films that take place in famous buildings (and are based on books!) A tragic missed opportunity. iPads have chapters, Zunes don’t. Important information you miss out on when you don’t listen to Double Sleepy Naptime. Die Hard as a Christmas mood. The Nakatomi Plaza / Los Angeles Fox Plaza. Bruce Willis as John McClane. The other Die Hard films. Cowboys. The role of the men outside. Driving plot. Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber. Ode to Joy. Man on Wire against American art. Alice’s tattoos and piercings. Philippe Petit, the raconteur. A conversation about that probably shouldn’t be talked about or even acknowledged. Danger! Inspirational events. Creativity. Really smart people. Continue reading →

The Last Man on Earth + Deliverance

Posted on November 11, 2010 by Alice Thirteen
The Last Man on Earth + Deliverance

Two movies about isolation keep each other company. Logan Swanson and the Last Man on Earth. As good as it gets! The return of the public domain. Zombies in literature. Hanging out with Vincent Price. A bit about Will Smith and I Am Legend. What do you do when you’re the last man on earth? Do artists still create? Alice actually was The Last Man on Earth. The popular icons from Deliverance. The producer says “I bet you can squeal like a pig” has to go in the show notes somewhere. Feuding banjos / Dueling banjos. The survivalist movement seen previously in The McVeigh Tapes. Nature vs modern society. Resisting change. Being “one with nature.” What happened to Drew? Day-for-night in the 1970s. Xenophobia. Killing is still wrong. Continue reading →