The Late, Great Planet Mirth VIII: Image of the Beast (1980)

This review was originally posted on Swampflix.com on March 27, 2018. The rating was 3/5 Stars. Image courtesy of Swampflix Editor Brandon Ledet.

Welcome to The Late Great Planet Mirth, an ongoing series in which a reformed survivor of PreMillenialist Dispensationalism explores the often silly, occasionally absurd, and sometimes surprisingly compelling tropes, traits, and treasures of films about the Rapture. Get caught up in it with us!

Welcome back, dear readers! When last we left off, Patty (Patty Dunning) was watching her dear friend Wenda lie down beneath the blade of a guillotine at peace with her impending death and reunion with her savior. So after an impressive but very looooong opening credits sequence we pick up . . . in a pre-Rapture supermarket. A very pregnant computer analyst named Kathy (Susan Plumb) and her PMD husband are shopping for produce, much of which has big scary barcodes, and she picks up a book by Beverly Kay about the coming importance of computers. They get to the checkout lane, and their cashier is Patty! Hi, Patty! She asks Kathy if she really wants to buy the book, as one of the stockboys read it and said it was pretty scary. Mr. Kathy’s Husband immediately starts in with his “It is scary!” rapture eschatology, and the two women agree that they just aren’t sure. We then smashcut back to the guillotine, with Jerry (Thom Rachford) and Diane Bradford (Maryann Rachford) forcing her to watch. Sandy (Sandy Stephens)* begs her not to throw her life away as a headless mannequin is removed, and Patty is marched up the steps and given one last chance to take The Mark. Suddenly, an earthquake shakes the ground and all of those assembled flee, save for Patty, who is still strapped into the decapitating machine. She finally makes her decision, crying out that she will take The Mark, but there’s no one around to hear her. Tension builds as the mechanisms holding the blade in place move inch by inch as Patty tries to remove her bonds . . . but not in time. I wish we’d all been ready!

From the Archives (DIG) – LSU expands Film and Media Arts Minor into Major Concentration: Roster of instructors includes notable names

Looper, On the Road, and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter are just a few of this year’s film releases filmed in Louisiana.

Too late for yours truly, LSU has finally gotten around to offering Film and Media Arts as a major. This semester’s end will see the first generation of those graduates who chose FMA as a concentration, and while the rest of us with liberal arts degrees have had some trouble finding lucrative employment, this batch of alumni is heading out into “the real world” with high hopes and a better chance.

American Horror Story Master Post

Just a look back on the coverage that I’ve done for previous seasons of American Horror Story. Click through for recaps and reviews of seasons three and four, as well as other thoughts on the show.

Coven

1. “Bitchcraft” – aired October 9, 2013
2. “Boy Parts” – aired October 16, 2013
3. “The Replacements” – aired October 23, 2013
4. “Fearful Pranks Ensue” – aired October 30, 2013
5. “Burn, Witch, Burn” – aired November 6, 2013
6. “The Axeman Cometh” – aired November 13, 2013
7. “The Dead” – aired November 20, 2013
8. “The Sacred Taking” – aired December 4, 2013
9. “Head” – aired December 11, 2013
10. “The Magical Delights of Stevie Nicks” – aired January 8, 2014
11. “Protect the Coven” – aired January 15, 2014
12. “Go to Hell” – aired January 22, 2014
13. “The Seven Wonders” – aired January 29, 2014

Between Seasons

1. Getting Ready for Freak Show, Part I: Things We’re Not Excited About
2. Getting Ready for Freak Show, Part II: Things We Are Excited About
3. Getting Ready for Freak Show, Part III: Things I Want to See this Season
4. AHS Season 5 Theory (Long Since Disproven)

Freak Show

1. “Monsters Among Us” – aired October 8, 2014
2. “Massacres and Matinees” – aired October 15, 2014
3. “Edward Mordrake (I)” – aired October 22, 2014
4. “Edward Mordrake (II)” – aired October 29, 2014
5. “Pink Cupcakes” – aired November 5, 2014
6. “Bullseye” – aired November 12, 2014
7. “Test of Strength” – aired November 19, 2014
8. “Blood Bath” – aired December 3, 2014
9. “Tupperware Party Massacre” – aired December 10, 2014
10. “Orphans” – aired December 17, 2014
11. “Magical Thinking” – aired January 7, 2015
12. “Show Stoppers” – aired January 14, 2015
13. “Curtain Call” – aired January 21, 2015

 

From the Archives (DIG) – New Menu, Aesthetic, and Attitude: DIG talks to the man behind the kitchen window at the Club at LSU Union Square

The chef in his native environment. Photo courtesy of LSU Dining.

The LSU Faculty Club has undergone a minor facelift over the summer, and this semester premieres The Club at LSU Union Square, with a new menu to accompany its new name and atmosphere, sous chef Cody Grosshart is looking forward to a semester’s worth of work.

“They’ve definitely tried to make it a much more comfortable space,” Grosshart says of the restaurant’s minimalistic new feel, “They re-did the bar area for people waiting.”

Grosshart’s influences as a chef have been both various and numerous, and it shows in the menu that he helped compose for the new school year.

The Late, Great Planet Mirth VII: A Distant Thunder (1978)

This review was originally posted on Swampflix.com on March 16, 2018. The rating was 3/5 Stars. Image courtesy of Swampflix Editor Brandon Ledet.

Hello, dear ones. Can you believe it’s been over a year since we last checked in with Patty, the apparent protagonist of the Thief in the Night series? We were barely a month into the Trump Administration the last time I had the strength to watch one of these endearingly dated films about the Rapture, and as more and more bad news rolled in, I couldn’t find it in me to investigate further into the science fiction fantasies of the same group of people who put him in office, in spite of what their actual scriptures say about his kind (if you read Luke 16:19–31 and imagine anyone other than Trump as the rich man in this parable, then get out of your church because it’s lukewarm as shit).

From the Archives (DIG) – The Desire for Something More: Louisiana filmmaker Zach Godshall talks about character

Zach Godshall on location filming Lord Byron. Photo Credit: Hilary Bronwyn Gayle.

Lafayette-born screenwriter and filmmaker Zach Godshall has a fascination with outsiders, opportunists, and amorphous and undefined aspiration.

When asked about the character motivations of his in-progress Depression-era project, Godshall said that the Great Depression inspires interest because of the great number of “desperate people looking for something to latch on to, people looking to take advantage of situations.” Does he see a connection between modern citizens, struggling to get by in a time of economic downturn? Is the Depression-era choice intentional? “It’s just that situation in general [that interests me],” he says. “Wanting to—you know—believe in something. And then [there are] people that are savvy enough to seize the opportunity. Opportunists.”

The Loft (2015)

This review was originally posted on Swampflix.com on March 9, 2018. The rating was 2.5/5 Stars. Image courtesy of Swampflix Editor Brandon Ledet.

Man, are we still making erotic thrillers? Is there even a place for them in this post-[insert your porn aggregator of choice] world anymore? I suppose we still are making them this decade, given that Adulterers was released in 2016, one year after today’s stinker, The Loft.

Based on a 2008 Belgian film of the same name and featuring most of the same creative crew (director Erik Van Looy and writer Bart De Pauw, who is solely credited on the original film and is one of two credited writers here), The Loft is about five men who use a single loft apartment to cheat on their wives. Vincent (Karl Urban) is an architect who retained the apartment in one of the buildings he designed for him and his buddies to have their sexcapades: possible closet case Luke (Wentworth Miller), whose wife requires constant attention due to her diabetes; Marty (Eric Stonestreet), who channels all of his pent up, frustrated heterosexual energy from having to play broad gay stereotype Cam on Modern Family for the past decade into a disgusting misogynist pig; Chris (James Marsden), a successful psychiatrist who is the most reluctant to participate in this adulterous venture; and Philip Williams (Matthias Schoenaerts), Chris’s half-brother, a cokehead whose new bride is the daughter of a wealthy magnate. One of these names is not (recognizable) like the others; Schoenaerts is apparently reprising his role of Filip Willems from the original film.

Hereditary (2018)

This review was originally posted on Swampflix.com on March 2, 2018. The rating was 4.5/5 Stars. Image courtesy of Swampflix Editor Brandon Ledet.

It’s no secret that I love horror movies. Of my top ten movies of 2015, 3-5 were horror (depending on how you categorize thrillers like Cop Car and Queen of Earth); in 2016, that was a solid five out of ten, and in 2017, six of fifteen. I even did a list of my favorite horror movies by year for the past fifty years in 2017, and that’s not even getting into my months-long Dario Argento retrospective before that. So it might surprise you to learn that I’m rarely actually scared by horror movies. We’re entering a new golden age of horror (both in film and in the real world, at least here in the U.S.), but it’s rare that a film manages to induce such fear and anxiety in the animalistic part of my brain that it manages to topple the wall of critical theory that usually takes center stage in my viewings. In essence, the value, entertainment and otherwise, that I normally get from a horror film viewing, is in the dissection of its component elements and its social statements and theses. For instance, as captivating as Get Out was, the rhetorical space created in the theater between me and the text was one of intense interest in and attention to the social criticism and symbology of the film rather than making me actually afraid at least until the arrival of those flashing lights at the end, when I feared our protagonist was about to be murdered by the police, as so many young black men in our country are every day. In the past half decade, very few films have managed to actually engage with my fear response over my academic interest “in the moment”: Don’t Breathe, The Babadook, IT, The VVitch, Raw, the aforementioned Cop Car, and probably one or two others that aren’t coming to mind immediately. That pantheon now has a new member: Hereditary.

From the Archives (DIG) – May the Road Rise Up to Meet You: Fourth Annual Irish Film Festival Features More than Just Movies

This weekend, Baton Rouge will host its fourth annual Irish Film Festival, featuring films both recent and classic that feature Irish mythology, the true stories of Irish immigrants to America in past eras, and reflect the modern Irish mentality. Sunday and Monday will feature single film screenings, while the festival’s first day, Saturday, will feature four full-length feature films that are paired with short films and other entertainment for a full day’s worth of cultural crossover.

Following a performance by the Na Cait Dubh Bagpipers at 11:45 AM, the doors of the Manship Theatre open at noon for the purchase of tickets, and the McTeggart Irish Dancers will follow the welcome speech and transition into the first set of films.

True Stories (1986)

This review was originally posted on Swampflix.com on March 4, 2018. The rating was 4.5/5 Stars. Image courtesy of Swampflix Editor Brandon Ledet.

The RedLetterMedia boys launched a new series on their youtube channel last year called Re:View, in which they discuss films that hold a special significance for them. One of the episodes I had overlooked on its original upload was their discussion of True Stories, David Byrne’s 1986 film that he wrote, produced, and directed (unlike Adulterers, this turned out to be a good thing) as well as starred in. It’s a forgotten gem, even among Talking Heads and David Byrne fans, despite being the origin of one of their hits, “Wild Wild Life,” as well as being the first major role for John Goodman and also featuring Spalding Gray and Swoosie Kurtz. I was instantly taken with the idea and searched for the movie online in the hopes of finding a cheap copy of the out of print DVD, only to discover that the Alamo Drafthouse was going to be screening it only a couple of weeks later, as part of its Essential Texas Film series. I bought tickets faster than you can say “this is not my beautiful wife.”