Organized by subcategories, CC looks at everything from 9/11 and JFK to The New World Order and Tupac. The accessibility of this tome comes from its setup. Each theory is explained; its truths and common theories spelled out. Under each category you’ll find a list of documentaries dealing with the subject matter. Carter’s lists are extensive as he leaves no stones unturned. Films range from the self-financed to Youtube uploaded. Much credit must be given to the author. It’s clear he has dedicated chunks of time to not just examining these entries, but also simply finding them.

While reading through, it’s obvious these films are not for everyone. But that’s the beauty of the book. The author gives us a synopsis and let’s us decide if this is something we’d like to examine more. It’s a wonder he’s able to maintain such an objective eye and even keel while delving into such wild subject matter.

As someone who has only casual knowledge of FEMA Camps and The Illuminati, this certainly whet my appetite. Conspiracy theories are often easily dismissed, but Conspiracy Cinema accomplishes something the best docs also will: makes us question. That, my friends, is the most important thing.

To read more about the bevy of assassinations and cover-ups, check out Conspiracy Cinema from Headpress.

What could have been a heartbreakingly poignant film about the Japanese oppression of indigenous tribes in 1930′s Taiwan, becomes an overlong exercise in distracting CGI and drawn out battle scenes. Which is sad, because the story being told is truly horrific.

Betrayal, self-sacrifice, and loyalty are all timeless themes presented here with melancholy beauty. Until a CG bird flaps by and causes an audible scoff from the audience. At times things get heavy-handed, fighting drags on, and it all serves to pull this emotional character study down.

WotR contains superb performances and a lush backdrop that’s sadly hurt by its length.

Speaking of MNPP, JA gives his thoughts on The Avengers in a review that captures my feelings exactly.

Meredith is also talking Avengers over at Badass Digest and has an insightful look at the unsung, human heroes.

Ian Grey gives one of the most illuminating looks at Black Widow and the weight behind the character.

And on a less Avenger-y note, Catherine, the Cinema Enthusiast, runs down her most anticipated summer releases.

There are two questions: what is the fourth dimension, and how does it tie into the movie of the same name? The fourth dimension is the existence of space-time. As we perceive the world around us in three dimensions – height, width, and depth – so is it theorized that a being from the fourth dimension could perceive time in much the same way. As humans, our view is limited and we are only able to see our current point in time. The future is a mystery to us; the past exists as only a memory. If a being exists in the fourth dimension, it would be able to view the passage of time in much the same way as we can view the three-dimensional aspects of the world around us. They would see what used to happen, what is happening, and what will happen, and understand it in much the way we understand that a ruler is twelve inches from point to point. That is the fourth dimension.

How does it tie into the movie? Surprisingly well. The Fourth Dimension is not a single narrative, but rather three short films. One features Val Kilmer as a motivational speaker (named, appropriately, “Val Kilmer”) and bounces between his current engagement at a community center and his nighttime activities with a young woman. The second features a Russian scientist who has discovered a way to view into the past and doggedly continues his research alone at the cost of his personal life. And the final film follows four young punks as they enjoy looting and frolicking through a town that has been evacuated in anticipation of a flood. There are no threads connecting these three films – no overlapping characters or shared moments in time – but they each play with the idea of the fourth dimension in different ways.

The first film starts with humor, which is an excellent way to tackle a heady topic. The motivational speaker Val Kilmer stands in front of a group of poor and desperate people and tells them that they must exist in the fourth dimension. There are shades of Frank ‘T.J.’ Mackey in Kilmer’s performance – down to Kilmer’s repetition of the phrase, “Oh momma, oh momma” – and anyone who attends the movie solely for the purpose of watching Kilmer cut loose will not be disappointed. His character knows nothing about the fourth dimension, but he understands his audience, and repeats nonsensical phrases with reckless abandon until the crowd around him picks up the chant. Is his character supposed to actually represent the actor Val Kilmer? Unclear. The quiet scenes between Kilmer and an anonymous girl with cornrows suggest a younger version of Kilmer that exists simultaneously with the adult motivational speaker, and Kilmer appears to reference his own acting career to others in the movie. “I was doing that, and now I’m doing this,” he enthusiastically tells two bystanders while on a bike ride. The first short film is absurd and not entirely coherent, but worth the price of admission for Val’s performance. If you are a fan of Kilmer, then you will go into the movie anticipating liking his performance and already knowing that you did; a bit of fourth dimensional criticism if ever there was one.

The second film is the most serious and heartfelt of the three, and toys with the scientific concept of the fourth dimension in greater detail. A man who has invented a machine to peer through time lives on the top floor of a battered building in the projects. He was a renowned scientist who was given his country’s version of the McArthur grant, but it becomes clear that his life stopped moving forward after the death of his wife. He continually tries to use his machine to catch a glimpse of historical events, but the machine refuses to give him anything more than momentary glimpses at the periphery. Meanwhile, the girl upstairs is nursing a crush and trying to get him to come out for a cup of coffee. It is not exactly a new story to present someone incapable of moving beyond the death of a loved one, but given the context of the film (and the performance of the actors), it gains added power. More so than any other character in the film, Grigory has caught a glimpse of the fourth dimension. He is able to view the past, present, and future at the stroke of a few keys. However, his grief causes him to focus only one one aspect of time-space – the past, or more specifically, his past. It’s a bite sized tragedy with a scientific bent, and it resonates.

The final film is by far the weakest of the three, though not entirely without its moments. Four friends – youth with a chip on their shoulder and a desire to watch a small corner of the world burn – tear their way through an abandoned town. It’s a mood piece, much like many of the other films in the festival. With no real strong characters to latch on to, I just let the film drift lazily through its moods and enjoyed the fact that someone was wise enough not to try and stretch it into a full-length feature of its own. Solid acting, good cinematography, and no real script to speak of – whatever message this film had about the fourth dimension was lost behind the haze of been-there, done-that.

The Fourth Dimension may be strange and disjointed, but it is also ambitious in places and delightfully bite-sized in its storytelling. It may never see anything resembling a commercial release – and has probably limped its way onto the Netflix Streaming catalogue as I wrote this – but I found it strangely charming and it would probably be awarded the Bronze Medal in my own personal Tribeca award ceremony. The quality of the first two films – both as an absurdist comedy and a sad tale of love lost – cannot be denied. But don’t take my word for it – glimpse along your timeline to the point where you watch it yourself, and we’ll discuss (in the present) my past and your future. As I’m saying this, forget I’m saying this, but then, do it. Ok?

I went into the Tribeca Film Festival with an open mind and a large slate of films to see. As I mentioned in my review of Journey to Planet X, I find myself more interested in celebrating the good in movies than the bad, so even if a movie wasn’t my normal cup of tea, I was determined to find something good to say about it. Thankfully, Tribeca was very cooperative on that front. Almost all of the films that I watched presented me with something interesting to write about – even movies that were kind of jumbled, like Francophrenia or The Fourth Dimension, were engaging because of their messiness, not despite it. Some movies I liked more than others, but until the closing night of the festival, I did not consider any of the films to be a waste of my time.

Until First Winter.

I know that a lot of people will enjoy the film. The round of applause that occurred after the film finished did not sound, to my trained ears, as obligatory festival clapping. The crowd at the theater had just finished two weeks of a cinematic marathon, and at that point, I’m sure the audience would be too jaded to clap simply for the sake of clapping. So people will like it. However, I also counted no less than five people who walked out of the movie, and Tribeca general admission prices aren’t cheap. If you’re the sort of person who trusts quantitative data above qualitative, you have one (1) round of applause and five (5) people who gathered their belongings and quietly slid out of the theater. Weigh that as you may.

If you’ve been following the festival reviews, then by now you know that First Winter is a movie about a group of Brooklyn hipsters who survive an apocalyptic blackout. You are also likely familiar with the main character of a charismatic cult leader, played by a particularly un-emotive beard. I would venture a guess that there is an actor hiding underneath all that facial hair, but by the time the dialogue finds its way out, all that is left is a muffled, flat delivery, so I feel it is unfair to measure the performance of the man behind the curtain. These hipsters celebrate life and adhere to a new age spiritualism, all of which is tested when their food and supplies begin to dwindle. What will they do? Who will they turn to? Will they make the tough decision to limit their number of sexual partners to one instead of two or three? These are the types of real-world issues these characters face.

I recently listened to far too much of a conversation in a bar where a man complained bitterly about the stereotypes of the Brooklynite. He argued passionately that shows like Girls or Two Broke Girls presented the people of Brooklyn as unmotivated and underachieving slackers when, in reality, they were just as hard-working and dedicated as anyone else. First Winter is quick to present its characters as hedonistic and possessing the types of ideals that can only come from an indifference towards money. A few lines of dialogue early on suggest that the movie may be presenting these characters as stereotypes who will fall apart under the stress of the situation; at this point I was willing to give the movie the benefit of the doubt, as the pretentiousness of the characters could not possibly survive in a post-apocalyptic setting. And yet, their problems continued to be distinctly first world in nature. The group may be running out of food and firewood, but a great deal of screen time is spent portraying the jealousy of one of the girls that the cult leader is more interested in another girl during their threesomes. I still clung to a shred of hope. I wanted this to be satire; in order to enjoy the movie, I needed this to be satire. But the film’s ending suggests that the group’s new age philosophy is precisely what allows them to survive, which invalidates any of the possible commentary on their actions throughout. A group of unappealing characters who learn nothing and are rewarded for their hedonism; if nothing else, it makes an interesting companion piece to John Hillcoat’s The Road.

If not acting and story, then could the movie at least be pretty to look at? Not so much. This is the first feature of Benjamin Dickinson, whose background in music videos is painfully evident in the handheld long takes and closeups of the characters. This was the Drive or Shame school of cinematography, where languid shots are intended to be interchangeable with narrative. It is a crutch of independent cinema that serves only to annoy me even when done well; but First Winter is somewhat amateurish in its efforts, and in desperate need of having some of its fat trimmed. All issues with character and plot aside, the visuals are stretched at the feature length, and many shots end up feeling redundant.

As the credits began to roll, I found myself wracked with questions about the film. How had the commune managed to survive through winter on the one deer that they are able to shoot? What sort of additional food supply were they able to find? Why did they not, at any point in the movie, send someone out to look for help? As I asked myself these questions, I was struck with a realization: all of my problems with the movie amounted to the fact that I wanted more of the characters to die. It is not a comfortable situation for me to be in. I do not particularly want characters in movies to die, and I take no enjoyment in wishing that the entire commune had been devastated by famine and disease, even if that would have been the most logical conclusion. Rather than wish ill upon the Brooklynites, I find myself resolved to never think too hard about First Winter ever again. It is the one act of kindness that I can afford the film.

This post is about the Black Widow. While she’s a character I’m not really familiar with outside of the films, within the films, I never really cared about her.

Maybe it was never her “time to shine”? Or that other writers/directors were unable to effectively use Natasha Romanoff? Perhaps a bit of both, but the fact remains it’s the Whedon magic that makes her shine. She is intelligent, strong, loyal, and a clear badass. A little too Buffy-esque? My answer to that will always be a resounding “no.”

Fantastic side and background characters elevate this action film to something special.

Eye of the Tiger (1986)

Gary Busey is fresh out of prison and facing more danger in this vigilante action flick. The words Gary Busey and vigilante should be enough to convince you this movie rules. It also stars the most badass Dodge truck ever built.

Black Moon Rising (1986)

Written by John Carpenter and starring Tommy Lee Jones, this action flick has forgotten gem written all over it. Heist flick with a super rad rocket car. Watch this one now.

Rage of Honor (1987)

The last of the great Sho Kasugi films. If you’ve watched any of his other films listed regularly on NFF, you don’t need to be convinced. It’s awesome.

Grave Encounters (2001)

Great spooky found footage flick that delivers the goods, already reviewed here on Paracinema. I second the thumbs up and you can watch it now.

Sweet Revenge (1998)

Aww how about that? A romantic comedy for Mother’s Day. Directed by Malcolm Mombray (Out Cold, also covered on NFF!), and starring Helena Bonham Carter and Sam Neil. this black comedy is perfect for all the mothers out there. All the cool ones anyway. Two love scorned individuals get together for the sole reason of destroying those that have hurt them.

First up we have True Story of a Woman in Jail: Sex Hell (1975). I’ve seen plenty of Women In Prison flicks and honestly this one’s not too different. We begin with our heroines being booked into jail whereupon they’re subjected to brutalizing courtesy of the more experienced inmates. Soon they hatch a plan to bust out, and yeah, it’s pretty standard fare plot wise. Obviously the writers weren’t interested in doing any heavy lifting.

That being said Sex Hell is pretty damn awesome. Beautifully directed with great film stock, the film looks much better than most of its American, and certainly miles above it’s South American, competition. The women are beautiful and the characters are badass. It may be stereotypical but it works damn well and I found myself thoroughly entertained through its short run time. The direction is strong as well with great performances and a strong visual style. This one’s a winner and belongs firmly towards to top of the Women In Prison heap. Did I mention there’s pube pulling and gratuitous female urination. Yeah, there’s that too….

Next up we have Debauchery (1983), a film about a bored housewife that gets into extreme sex through a high class brothel. With a strong desire for new experiences and raw sex she embarks on a journey that she may never return from.

Similar to, though not as all encompassing as, The Story of O (1975), Debauchery is basically about domination. Specifically the domination of our main character by various men.

Debauchery lacks the fun exploitative vibe of Sex Hell, trading it in for a more serious approach. The film isn’t really sexy. It does push the boundaries of the no genitalia/pubic hair law in Japan to it’s furthest extreme but it’s used more shock than titillate. A scene involving Ben Wah balls and a lot of discomfort comes to mind. The film is more of a dark journey through the hell of sexual obsession than a fun roll in the hay. Our heroine embarks on her sexual journey by being raped and then bought by vicious men whom only want to degrade her. The film goes into overdrive when her husband’s friend buys our heroine and keeps her as his sex slave for days, steadily escalating his abusive behavior. I don’t want to give anything away but I’ll just say dark alley, plus homeless dudes and leave it at that. It’s a tough flick that would pair well with Hardcore (1979). Again, well directed and acted, this one has a more engaging plot and is certainly the better film of the two.

True Story of a Woman in Jail: Sex Hell and Debauchery are both superb releases with completely restored pictures and very informative liner notes. The films also show that Roman Pornos have more to offer than mindless sleaze. The are very different films that use sex and nudity in very different ways. The two are a great pair to show off what the genre has to offer to the serious cinephile.

LabSplice: Welcome to the first edition of the Paracinema Roundtable, which is a terrible name that I’m sure Joe or Christine will quickly improve upon. However, a movie like Cabin In The Woods deserves more than just one critic to tackle it, so instead they get three! Since I’m making the format up as I go, we’ll get Christine’s thoughts first. Just how broken is the horror genre now? I think Whedon ruined it for everyone else.

Christine: How broken is the horror genre? Man, that’s a big question. I think it’s evolved to a place where talented filmmakers are either lampooning or deconstructing the genre itself. Gone are the days of the TCM style grindhouse horrors, and the ’90s floating heads, and the ’00s tech-based nightmares. The genre itself is the subject matter. Cabin did a lot of things right in that regard. It’s a smart dissection of the genre tropes. It’s respectful to fans, and that’s a biggie. The whole “for fans by fans” thing goes a long way if it’s from a genuine place. Now, this is without a doubt a Whedon film. His fingerprints are all over it. Which is fine with me. I’m a huge fan of both he and Goddard. But that brand of (ugh, I don’t wanna say it) “Buffy” humor falls flat for some (I’m looking squarely at Dylan). It didn’t for me. So, yes, I also believe Whedon raised the bar as far as a quality story filled with intelligence goes. The stoner character, Marty, didn’t work for me. Fran Kranz is awesome too. I just didn’t dig the character. I did like the subversion and exploitation of horror film stereotypes though. I’m curious if that worked for everyone else.

Joe: I think one of my issues with the movie was that I wasn’t sure if it was meant to be a criticism of the horror genre or a love-letter to it. Since you asked how broken the genre is, I gotta assume that you took the message of the movie as cynical. I don’t know that the genre IS broken. It seems to me that it’s more interesting now than it has been since probably the late 70s. I feel like the internet has allowed for a whole new level of access for both consumers and filmmakers. It’s also allowed for a much audience wider net as far as foreign films, which has infused the American film industry with new and interesting influences that it wouldn’t have had fifteen or twenty years ago. Also when some of the biggest and most influential names in mainstream Hollywood are Peter Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro, it’s hard for me to see horror as anything but incredibly exciting right now.

To speak to some of Christine’s points, it definitely was a Whedon film, and that worked against it for me. Like she said, his style is polarizing, and I’m not a fan. I find that a lot of his work (Cabin included) is a little too impressed with its own cleverness.

I think Shaun of the Dead opened the door for the idea of deconstructing horror and breaking it down to its component parts, and while that movie was brilliant, I also feel the subject has been pretty well driven into the ground. I feel like Shaun of the Dead pretty well closed the book on self aware horror comedy. Everything that’s come since has felt derivative to me.

Which isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy Cabin in the Woods. Far from it. I actually quite enjoyed it and my problems with it were pretty small compared to the things I liked about it. Like I said, I didn’t see it as a criticism of horror (though I suspect that’s what it was) but a celebration of it. That I loved.

Before I wrap up on this response, I want to point out two things I loved the most about it. #1. Richard Jenkins is my homeboy. #2. I friggin LOVE grave zombies and I miss them. I have no problem with virus zombies, but I do so love watching a corpse crawl out of a grave EC Comics style. That made me giddy.

One question I would like to put out there for whoever. Everyone I suppose. When viewing the story as a metaphor, who do you see the “Old Ones” as? Who are these destructive Lovecraftian gods that will destroy movies if not appeased?

LabSplice: I had actually managed to steer clear of most Cabin In The Woods coverage, so I was caught off-guard by how much Jenkins and Bradley Whitford there was in the movie. It was a nice surprise.

I actually did not take the cynical viewpoint of Cabin - I thought it was a methodical dismemberment of the genre, true, but there was just too much fun being had by Whedon and Goddard for me to see malicious intent. I read in a review that Whedon calls this a “loving hate letter” to the genre, and that seems pretty accurate to me. Whedon isn’t mad at horror movies – he’s just disappointed, and gave them a spanking.

The thing that struck me is how Cabin In The Woods exists as a kind of anti-horror movie. When I think of horror, I think of low-budget movies made with no-name actors who don’t really matter, because the genre is the star. You can make these movies on the cheap and everyone goes and has a good time because, hey, dead teenagers. If you’re a particularly talented director, it’s a way to introduce the world to your particular visual style without needing a dump truck full of cash to get the project of the ground. Horror to me has always been the antithesis of high-concept. And Joe, as you mentioned, in the last few years we’ve gone from Shaun of the Dead to Tucker & Dale to now Cabin In The Woods, whose concept is so damn high as to make the whole thing delightfully unwieldy. Cabin is a movie with a lot of recognizable faces – even if they’re just of the “Hey, that guy, and also Sigourney Weaver!” variety – and an ambitious script. It definitely owes a lot to Shaun and Tucker & Dale for paving the way for more ambitious horror stories – or horrories, as nobody calls them.

I feel like I should also mention the Whedon thing – I love it. I love that he’s become Aaron Sorkin for the geek set, and that you can drop me into any two minutes of his movies with a blindfold and I’ll know Whedon had a hand in the dialogue. I’m sad that you didn’t like Marty, Christine. I liked him. To me, you needed a painfully self-aware character to make the whole thing work. Wasn’t Jaimie Kennedy the best part of Scream?

I wonder if the Old Gods exist in other movies. Like, if there’s a romantic comedy where the two leads don’t get together in the end, and the Old Gods destroy that world, too. I smell a franchise!

Christine: There is so much I want to say and my fingers won’t type fast enough. I guess I’ll start with the “Old Ones.” I didn’t really give them that much thought as I was watching the film. Afterwords I felt 2 things: 1) That was SO Angel season 5!, and 2) I’m glad it ended on a sour note. I like Joe’s notion of them being representative of something tangible in the filmmaking realm. Producers? Audiences? Who knows. It’s a cool thought though. Any issues I had with the film are so tiny they barely warrant mentioning. Sure I felt the Marty character was basically Shaggy. But I mean, it’s Whedon and Goddard doing Shaggy. I’m a fangirl. I might be playing it cool here, but I clapped when Amy Acker came on screen. I made an audible sound when Tom Lenk popped up. These are the reasons I wanted to avoid everything about this film. Whedon casts Whedon folks. I am unquestioningly supportive of Whedon alumni. I reveled in the callbacks and the payoffs and the Whedonesque gags. I know these elements don’t play to everyone, and at times I felt like I was inches away from scoffing at them myself. But that 14 year old girl still lives in me and she was raised on a strict diet of BtVS.

One final thought on whether Cabin was cynical or not. After mulling it over a bit, I’d say it was cynical. That’s not a bad thing at all. It may be one of the reasons I did respond so well to it. Had it simply been a wide-eyed “let’s do commentary on the genre” kind of thing, it wouldn’t have worked. In reality there was more of a balance. It commented on what’s “wrong” and celebrated what’s “right.” It felt almost like a critique with a solution. My squeeing fangirl side adored it. But the film fan portion was quite pleased as well.

Joe: This is a pretty good illustration of why I’m not really a fan of Joss Whedon. To me, he’s kind of like Kevin Smith. Not in terms of skill as a filmmaker (I’m not a fan of Whedon, he can clearly dance circles around Kevin Smith when it comes storytelling) but in so far as there’s this weird shorthand and inside cliqueness to it all. You can’t really have a conversation about something he’s involved with because there’s all of this information that’s only important to people who care about the “Whedonverse”, but when you try and have an outside conversation about the movie at face-value, it becomes impossible. There’s all this self contained enthusiasm about things that are only relevant to people participating in that fandom. I was in the Kevin Smith camp for a good portion of my younger years, so I get all of his little inside jokes and reverences to other things he’s done. But because I’m detached from that camp, I can also see how useless all of that is to anyone trying to watch a Kevin Smith movie from the outside.

Anyway, my point is that if Nathan Fillion had walked in front of the camera at any point, I would have just left the theater and asked for my money back.

For me, whether or not the movie was cynical has a pretty big sway on whether or not I actually liked it. Which is frustrating, honestly. The only way for me to enjoy this movie is as a big metaphor and commentary on film. As just a movie, there’s nothing really there. The movie makes no sense taken at face value. It’s clear from the beginning that we’re watching an essay rather than a movie. Which, the more I think about it, is kind of annoying and pretentious.

After doing some reading, I’ve come to learn that the movie is apparently a “response to torture porn” which Joss and Drew feel has ruined horror.

Well then fuck them and their movie. As I said, I think horror is great at the moment, and people who piss and moan about the state of horror (or really, anything) are counter productive. Things are AMAZING right now, both in horror and in pop-culture in general. We live in an amazing time and this movie didn’t make any move to improve things. It just complained about what they don’t like. That’s not helping or contributing. Christine said it was a critique with a solution, but I didn’t see any solution.

And honestly, I’m not even sure I understand what they’re complaining about. The quote I read said they were commentating about “torture porn” but the movie seemed to be complaining about slasher movies from the 80s. I didn’t really see anything about torture porn in there. That Friday the 13th slasher formula is basically gone (or, at least, relegated to direct-to-video horror for the most part) and the movies I’ve seen that people are calling torture porn don’t typically follow the slasher formula. If they’re complaining about torture porn, I missed whatever point they were trying to make. If they were complaining about slasher movies, then they might as well complain about Vanilla Ice and Cabbage Patch dolls as well.

Maybe I just didn’t get it.

Either way, this process has actually talked me out of liking Cabin in the Woods.

There were things I liked. I appreciated the fact that they told us right up front basically what was going on. We didn’t have to play that game of doling out a little trail of information to see if we can guess what the big twist was. They got that out of the way at the beginning of the movie. That was pretty cool. I liked the actors, and I liked the little tributes to classic horror movies. The scenes with the competing Japanese horror movie were great. I enjoyed that moment in the elevator when the virgin was staring at the surrogate Pinhead for what felt like five minutes. It made me want a really good new Hellraiser movie. It was funny enough at times, and I actually did like the stoner character for the most part. One thing that really bugged me though was how they showed the zombies attack him and blood spatter up in the air and they did their little lever pulling ritual with the blood and all, and then he’s still alive? They’ve got cameras showing five different angles on everything that’s happening but they just miss that he’s alive and hacking up zombies and rerouting electrical boxes?

There’s no point in nitpicking about that kind of stuff i guess though. Like I said, taken at face value, the movie doesn’t really make any sense anyway.

Well that’s a bummer. I shouldn’t have thought about this movie so much. It ruined it.

LabSplice: It sounds to me like we can all agree on the bits that worked. The references to other horror films – Pinhead, the Japanese organization – were pure gold, and we were all on board with the execution of the secret society aspect.

For my last thought, I’d like to focus on that last bit. I agree that horror is in a pretty swell place right now. One movie that I should have brought up was Eddie the Sleepwalking Cannibal, another horror/comedy hybrid that’s playing at the Tribeca Film Festival right now. Like the other titles, it walks a fine line between horror and parody. There’s no shortage of ambitious and intelligent projects out there.

That being said, I think there is some merit in Whedon’s takedown of torture porn. Not necessarily as a way of saying that horror is bad, but that horror audiences have changed. To me, what defines torture porn as a subgenre is the fact that audiences are no longer rooting for anyone to survive. People go to root for people – even the innocents – to die in delightful and creative new ways, and I’ve never really adjusted to that. I’m used to wanting almost everyone in horror movies to live and accepting the fact that some will die. I still find myself disappointed if a character that I like dies in a horror movie. And yet, there’s Jenkins and company watching the monitor, making bets, and grudgingly admitting that maybe they didn’t want everyone to die this time. They served as a kind of stand-in for the real-life audience, and when we saw how much they were enjoying graphic deaths, we kind of pause in our own appreciation of blood lust. That seems like kind of a subtle way of making a change, holding up a mirror to the audience and saying, “Who do you really want to identify with going forward?”

And the Old Gods – I actually liked them, if only because they gave kind of a reason for people to die horribly. If the stereotype of horror movies is that they are all about violence for the sake of violence – no longer revenge plots, as several authors in the last Paracinema issue pointed out – then what Whedon and Goddard did is essentially retcon (retroactive continuity for the non-nerds) the entire last 30 years of horror films to add a purpose to the death of the characters. Now when I watch a horror movie where someone is brutality slaughtered just because the audience wants to watch them, I dunno, get sewed together ass-to-mouth, I can at least tell myself that it’ll be another year until the Old Gods will destroy the planet. And that’s kind of ballsy. To retcon the entirety of horror films? Only Whedon would be so presumptuous.

As I said before, I’ll be the first to admit that it’s pretty meta, and more than a little unwieldy, but I loved it and having to defend why has only reinforced that position. I’m bummed that this conversation changed your mind, Joe, but I gotta admit, that makes me feel like we may be onto something here.

Honeymoon is a Slovenian documentary about an awkward dude that works for Japan’s 24 hour live pornography television station. Yes, it exists. Pick your jaw up off the floor and listen to these rules though. No below the belt nudity of any kind. Male or female. But it is legal for the dude to wear a modestly sized strap-on and have the actresses perform fellacio on it. Seriously, is there a law against an average size dildo? The camera guy performs all the acts with the actress, and in this case the dude looks like the Japanese equivalent of Stephen King. Yikes. The doc follows the dude as he gives his first try at directing the live action, and the hazing his co-workers give his flaccid attempt. Viewers call in and talk to the actress, asking her to perform certain acts for them. It’s interactive in a creepy kind of way. Our socially awkward subject reveals he only works in the industry to be close to the girls in the hopes of getting in on some consensual action since his only experience is with prostitutes. I think that last bit was supposed to be funny but rather I felt it was horribly depressing.

The doc is short, only 60 minutes, and doesn’t really get deep into the culture or lifestyles of the people who perform and work for the station, but it does provide a rare glimpse into a world I never even knew existed, and for me, that’s about as good as it gets for socio/cultural docs. An odd doc for sure and well worth your time if you’re at all curious or have any funky fetishes of your own.