Sunday became a bit of a Ti West-fest. After watching the nicely creepy House of the Devil, I just had to check out writer/director Ti West's follow up: The Innkeepers.
In contrast to House of the Devil, this movie is set in modern day at a Connecticut inn called the Yankee Pedlar. Interestingly, this inn actually exists and the movie was even shot there...though how much varies depending on where you read. The inn's site obviously claims the whole movie was shot there. This is also the 2nd film he's shot (maybe set?) in Connecticut, so there might be a Stephen King/Maine style relationship developing between the New England state and Ti. (Update: I just watched an interview with Ti West, apparently the crew stayed at the Yankee Pedlar during the filming of House of the Devil, and weird things kept happening at the hotel but he didn't have the idea to make the movie until a year later. Interesting connection between the two movies.)
The story here is that the Yankee Pedlar is closing (it really isn't, feel free to visit), and the two remaining staff members, Claire and Luke, are keeping up a largely empty inn. Outside of their rooms, there are only two rooms occupied at any given time. To entertain themselves in the off time, the two innkeepers are performing a live-in paranormal investigation to uncover the inn's haunted past. Specifically to confirm the haunting of the inn by a tragic widow named Madeline O'Malley who hung herself in the inn.
A lot of the movie is really just the two of them bantering and doing EVP sessions in various places during the night. The movie really takes its time getting into things, spending a lot of time just watching the characters' daily lives...guests checking in, forgetting towels, fangasming at a famous actress, being creeped out by an oversharing barista, etc. I really liked this, partly because I was expecting something to happen and when it never did, I started getting nervous. Also partly because it was entertaining. I liked watching the characters interact and actually got a feeling for them outside of the context of the movie. It was really good that they didn't take everything deadly serious, and neither did the movie. They felt real, which made it even better when the creepy stuff started to happen.
I really loved the way they approached the creepy things, because it was very suspenseful and discomforting. You spent a lot of the movie tensely waiting for something to happen, and when something did happen it didn't jump out at you and then cut quickly because it wasn't actually something scary, it was presented slowly and deliberately. You could see the thing coming into frame and KNEW that once you saw it, you'll wish you hadn't...but you just keep looking.
The ending sprint is a great, panicked payoff after the setup and development.
This whole movie was really well put together, it had some very funny bits and the characters were great. The horror elements were carefully placed, but the build up and atmosphere made them super effective. I'm definitely on the look out for more Ti West.
--PXA
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Horror Off-Season: The House of the Devil
The House of the Devil is a 2009 thriller written and directed by Ti West, starring Jocelin Donahue and Tom Noonan. The story is set in the early 80's, and feels like it could easily have been filmed then. Ti uses a lot of 80's techniques, and even shoots on 16mm film. This sort of dedication really makes the movie. When I first started watching it, I told people it was really good at being set in the 80s. A Haunting In Connecticutt is one of my favorite movies, but it's terrible at being set in the 80s. It felt so modern I just didn't get that it was supposed to be set in a different decade.
Between this movie, The Innkeepers(2011), and being on the horror anthology v/h/s Ti West has really been making a name for himself that is surprisingly unmarred by having directed Cabin Fever 2. And he deserves it, man makes a mighty fine movie. And this is his IMDB picture.
The House of the Devil's premise is a pretty uninteresting throw back to the haunted house/slasher movies it's trying to emulate. Our main character is Samantha, a "nice" college girl who's trying to find her own apartment because her roommate gets too much late-night nookie. To pay for her new apartment she takes a babysitting job being advertised by flyer on campus. The call is decidedly shady, but she takes the job any way. Even after meeting the person placing the ad and having him explain in the creepiest way possible that everything he said about the job until now was a lie.
The house is creepy, all the characters except Samantha and her roommate are pretty creepy. It's a little cheesy, almost, but still very creepy.
The movie builds nicely and then goes totally sideways with a great Satanic twist. There's nothing really remarkable about the ending, but it is gripping to watch. There's a lot that reminds me of Rosemary's Baby and When a Stranger Calls. The ending would be completely ineffective, and downright silly, without the great buildup and characterization from the rest of the movie.
It definitely moves slow, which lends to some of the early atmosphere building feeling like it's laid on too thick, but it pays off because it involves you in the story. This was a really nice throw back to early 80s movies, but with better quality and more interesting pacing. I thought this was a great movie, but it could definitely come off as too slow or too dull or too weird to some audiances.
If you like the old school, or really appreciate a good creepy slow burn without a lot of jump scares or gore, this is worth checking out.
--PXA
Between this movie, The Innkeepers(2011), and being on the horror anthology v/h/s Ti West has really been making a name for himself that is surprisingly unmarred by having directed Cabin Fever 2. And he deserves it, man makes a mighty fine movie. And this is his IMDB picture.
 |
| Where do I sign up to have Buckaroo Bonzai direct my movie? |
The House of the Devil's premise is a pretty uninteresting throw back to the haunted house/slasher movies it's trying to emulate. Our main character is Samantha, a "nice" college girl who's trying to find her own apartment because her roommate gets too much late-night nookie. To pay for her new apartment she takes a babysitting job being advertised by flyer on campus. The call is decidedly shady, but she takes the job any way. Even after meeting the person placing the ad and having him explain in the creepiest way possible that everything he said about the job until now was a lie.
The house is creepy, all the characters except Samantha and her roommate are pretty creepy. It's a little cheesy, almost, but still very creepy.
The movie builds nicely and then goes totally sideways with a great Satanic twist. There's nothing really remarkable about the ending, but it is gripping to watch. There's a lot that reminds me of Rosemary's Baby and When a Stranger Calls. The ending would be completely ineffective, and downright silly, without the great buildup and characterization from the rest of the movie.
It definitely moves slow, which lends to some of the early atmosphere building feeling like it's laid on too thick, but it pays off because it involves you in the story. This was a really nice throw back to early 80s movies, but with better quality and more interesting pacing. I thought this was a great movie, but it could definitely come off as too slow or too dull or too weird to some audiances.
If you like the old school, or really appreciate a good creepy slow burn without a lot of jump scares or gore, this is worth checking out.
--PXA
Thursday, April 5, 2012
The Beerening: Review: The Alchemist's Heady Topper
Heady-Topper is a pure and beautiful exploration of American hops, with almost nothing getting in the way. The style, Double (or Imperial) IPA is defined as a strong malt backbone balanced by a high to absurdly high hop bitterness. Heady-Topper is really neither of those things, as it is not bitter and not malty. It's pure, unfettered hops.
The beer recommends drinking it from the can, so I had one from the can and then another a day later poured into a pint glass, and I can definitely understand the recommendation.
Aroma
Even from the small opening in the can the beer is overwhelming fragrant. Just a gorgeous collection of American hops, particularly the ones that smell like tropical fruits. The beer smells like oranges, and mangos, and tangerines. Very juicy.
Flavor
Taking a taste of the beer is a cool, smooth, explosion of hops. It's not sticky, or bitter, it barely tastes like beer. There's a small amount of a light grainy maltiness to provide a slight sweetness behind all those fruity hop flavors, but it's barely noticeable. The same flavor persists pretty much all the way through the can, albeit with a diminishing explosion each time you drink. What's interesting is that it doesn't get sweeter as it warms up, which is often the case with beers with really strong flavors. It keeps a surprisingly refreshing smoothness the entire can. At no point does it hint at its 8% ABV.
Body
The beer has a very light body but at no point does it feel thin or prickly. The carbonation is very light and just lifts the hop aromas out of the beer but doesn't try to make the beer feel fuller than it is.
The next day I poured the beer from the can into a pint glass.
Look
The beer is a little hazy, which is very unsurprising given how much hops are obviously in it. What is worth noting is how light it is. The color is a pale golden yellow more like a regular Pale Ale, or a Wit.
Flavor & Aroma - Part 2
When poured the effect of the beer is noticeably more subsided. It's still a wonderful, juicy, hop bomb but feels a little more dull. One advantage of pouring is that the aroma spreads out more, so it becomes a gift that keeps on giving. Since the hops have calmed down a little bit, the malt character is a little more present. It's still a very light flavor and is just slightly sweeter than from the can.
Overall
I am far more impressed with this beer than most other ultra-hoppy beers, which tend to feel very thick and bitter. This is so clean and easy drinking while also having a tremendous amount of flavor and aroma, it offers me absolutely nothing not to enjoy. It's not something to drink every day, besides its price point this amount of glorious hop aroma is too much to have very often.
But it's definitely worth it to find, haven't really had anything like it.
--PXA
Sunday, April 1, 2012
The Beerening off-topic: The three tier system and the rise of a craft
I think it's time we sit down and have a bit of a serious chat.
A bit of background
From 1920 to 1933 the United States was under a period of alcoholic prohibition. A result of the Temperance movement, the 18th amendment prohibited the production or sale of alcoholic beverages except for medicinal purposes. After several years, and the rise of organized crime, the noble experiment was abandoned.
Prior to prohibition the limited ability to transport beer prevented national distribution, as such there were over 1,500 breweries in the U.S. These breweries served small geographic areas and were often the only brewery in that area. Also, bars in the area were often either owned or wholly supplied by a single brewery.
In the 13 years prohibition was in effect, refridgeration technology improved quite a bit. This meant that beer lasted longer and could be transported further. When prohibition was repealed, the surviving breweries wanted to increase their range and influence, and also bars needed access to beer.
And so, the 3-tier system was created. Effectively, the system created Producers, Distributors and Retailers. A brewery was a producer and not allowed to sell to retailers, which is to say liquor stores and bars. Bars could now buy whatever they wanted from distributors and sell that to their customers. Neither bars nor brewers had to focus on distribution infrastructure as there was a whole other industry that was now dedicated to moving beer from brewer to customer.
What went wrong
Success, of course. Of the 1,500 breweries, only 750 or so survived the prohibition. By 1945 this number was down to 468 and in 1980 there were only 101 operating breweries in the U.S. How do you consolidate an industry that much, that quickly without a few major winners? It's simple economics: A product with less competition in a market does better in that market, and any company producing something invariably wants to produce more and sell more. Since brewers had to rely on distributors to get their products to consumers, it became the brewer's best interest that distributors not sell their competition.
Think about the beer delivery trucks you see on the road. How many have their own logos, and how many are just advertisements for "their brand". These are Miller trucks, or Budweiser trucks...not really just beer trucks. And they can do this because the effectively own the distributors.
Back in 2010 AB InBev, the company that owns Budweiser, tried to buy 70% of the distributor City Beverage. This is pretty bad already, but is made worse by the fact that AB InBev already owned 30% of the distributor. Luckily, this was widely regarded as a bullshit move and the state blocked the buy out. The matter is still under review, but this is highly indicative of the way the large companies behave.
Why it matters
Check it: Since the low point in 1980 the number of breweries in America has been increasing. Craft breweries have gained a ~6% market share in 2011, up .71% from 2010 while the overall beer sales have gone down 1.32%. Craft beer is still growing even while the industry itself shrinks. In order to continue to do good business, even major distributors have begun to carry craft beers. Obviously, a trend like this interferes with InBev's profits, and obviously they don't like that.
Recent articles in the Wall Street Journal have noted AB InBev's plans to recoup some of their lost U.S. market. Some of their plans involve funneling money into craft labels like Shock Top, and making malt liquors that aren't even beer. Disturbingly, is the decision to lean on major distributors that have begun carrying craft beer due to the increased demand for it.
The new head of Bud has said that since he shows 'loyalty' to Budweiser's distributors those same distributors should show 'loyalty' to Budweiser...by dropping the craft beers that are on the rise to sell more InBev.
How do you show loyalty to a distributor as a brewer? You're legally obligated to sell them your beer if you want to get it to people. Apparently by allowing distributors to acquire other distributors.
That's perverse. In the 3-tier system distributors are supposed to be the independent agents who provide the beers consumers demand. A producer like AB InBev should not have a say in how a distributor runs its business. If it does, how is it different than the brewery selling directly to the retailer?
If AB InBev does have this level of control over their distribution tier, it is unfair to the point that it should be illegal. Smaller brewers, people I know personally, are not allowed to dictate how any other business is run and AB InBev should not be allowed to do so in order to save their brands.
If Budweiser is no longer profitable it should be allowed to fade without interfering with breweries like Harpoon, or Oberon, or New Glarus, or Real Ale Brewing Co., or Alesmith, or Goose Island, or anyone. AB InBev should learn to make their money brewing beer people want to drink instead of punishing businesses who are providing that beer.
These small, local breweries are on the rise because they're making a product people are literally thirsty for and this massive international conglomerate is trying to legislate them out of the possibility of making a living just to protect a few fractions of a percentage of the market share of a company that sells 20% of all the beer sold on the entire planet.
Fuck that.
A bit of background
From 1920 to 1933 the United States was under a period of alcoholic prohibition. A result of the Temperance movement, the 18th amendment prohibited the production or sale of alcoholic beverages except for medicinal purposes. After several years, and the rise of organized crime, the noble experiment was abandoned.
Prior to prohibition the limited ability to transport beer prevented national distribution, as such there were over 1,500 breweries in the U.S. These breweries served small geographic areas and were often the only brewery in that area. Also, bars in the area were often either owned or wholly supplied by a single brewery.
In the 13 years prohibition was in effect, refridgeration technology improved quite a bit. This meant that beer lasted longer and could be transported further. When prohibition was repealed, the surviving breweries wanted to increase their range and influence, and also bars needed access to beer.
And so, the 3-tier system was created. Effectively, the system created Producers, Distributors and Retailers. A brewery was a producer and not allowed to sell to retailers, which is to say liquor stores and bars. Bars could now buy whatever they wanted from distributors and sell that to their customers. Neither bars nor brewers had to focus on distribution infrastructure as there was a whole other industry that was now dedicated to moving beer from brewer to customer.
What went wrong
Success, of course. Of the 1,500 breweries, only 750 or so survived the prohibition. By 1945 this number was down to 468 and in 1980 there were only 101 operating breweries in the U.S. How do you consolidate an industry that much, that quickly without a few major winners? It's simple economics: A product with less competition in a market does better in that market, and any company producing something invariably wants to produce more and sell more. Since brewers had to rely on distributors to get their products to consumers, it became the brewer's best interest that distributors not sell their competition.
Think about the beer delivery trucks you see on the road. How many have their own logos, and how many are just advertisements for "their brand". These are Miller trucks, or Budweiser trucks...not really just beer trucks. And they can do this because the effectively own the distributors.
Back in 2010 AB InBev, the company that owns Budweiser, tried to buy 70% of the distributor City Beverage. This is pretty bad already, but is made worse by the fact that AB InBev already owned 30% of the distributor. Luckily, this was widely regarded as a bullshit move and the state blocked the buy out. The matter is still under review, but this is highly indicative of the way the large companies behave.
Why it matters
Check it: Since the low point in 1980 the number of breweries in America has been increasing. Craft breweries have gained a ~6% market share in 2011, up .71% from 2010 while the overall beer sales have gone down 1.32%. Craft beer is still growing even while the industry itself shrinks. In order to continue to do good business, even major distributors have begun to carry craft beers. Obviously, a trend like this interferes with InBev's profits, and obviously they don't like that.
Recent articles in the Wall Street Journal have noted AB InBev's plans to recoup some of their lost U.S. market. Some of their plans involve funneling money into craft labels like Shock Top, and making malt liquors that aren't even beer. Disturbingly, is the decision to lean on major distributors that have begun carrying craft beer due to the increased demand for it.
The new head of Bud has said that since he shows 'loyalty' to Budweiser's distributors those same distributors should show 'loyalty' to Budweiser...by dropping the craft beers that are on the rise to sell more InBev.
How do you show loyalty to a distributor as a brewer? You're legally obligated to sell them your beer if you want to get it to people. Apparently by allowing distributors to acquire other distributors.
That's perverse. In the 3-tier system distributors are supposed to be the independent agents who provide the beers consumers demand. A producer like AB InBev should not have a say in how a distributor runs its business. If it does, how is it different than the brewery selling directly to the retailer?
If AB InBev does have this level of control over their distribution tier, it is unfair to the point that it should be illegal. Smaller brewers, people I know personally, are not allowed to dictate how any other business is run and AB InBev should not be allowed to do so in order to save their brands.
If Budweiser is no longer profitable it should be allowed to fade without interfering with breweries like Harpoon, or Oberon, or New Glarus, or Real Ale Brewing Co., or Alesmith, or Goose Island, or anyone. AB InBev should learn to make their money brewing beer people want to drink instead of punishing businesses who are providing that beer.
These small, local breweries are on the rise because they're making a product people are literally thirsty for and this massive international conglomerate is trying to legislate them out of the possibility of making a living just to protect a few fractions of a percentage of the market share of a company that sells 20% of all the beer sold on the entire planet.
Fuck that.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
What is Bro Horror?
In the Devil Inside review previously posted I used the term "Bro-horror", which I realize doesn't actually exist. But I think it should, so I should attempt to define it and explain why it's relevant to the discussion. ...bro.
There's an interesting parallel to literature where there's a genre often referred to as "Fratire" which is defined by the use of "Frat-boy" humor and focus on binge drinking and crude sexual humor. If you're interested go check out Tucker Max's book I hope they serve beer in hell or the film adaptation. Tucker Max is a deplorable human being, but I'll be damned if he's not worth a laugh.
Anyway, I'm not saying that these are movies that are for bros. This is is not defining a genre by the preconceived notions we might have about the audience. This is applying the stereotype to the material directly.
The stereotype I'm working with here is the college guy who calls all his friends "Bro". He loves his sports, wears polo shirts with popped collars and sandals. The guys with hopelessly superficial adherence to 80's macho attitudes, just mixed with the surfer stereotype's laid back but stubborn refusal to let anything get them down. This is the stereotype the internet loves to make fun of when we imagine people saying "Dude, that was a brotastrophy, bro" or "Broseidon, king of the Brocean". An absolute caricature.
How does that apply to horror movies?
The core engagement of a horror movie is to be scared, to be made uncomfortable by something. A good horror movie has to offer you something to identify with and emotionally invest in so that you can experience fear of something. There a lot of ways a movie can do that, but they all depend on you being involved in the story so that you're emotionally open and can feel the fear.
Paranomal Activity 1 & 3 are great at this. They create characters you can identify with, and place them in a situation where they're helpless and don't understand what's happening to them. The handheld camera style helps you buy into the realism of the story and suspend your disbelief so that you can share those feelings with the characters. Other movies like Insidious unsettle you: They create situations and scenes in which what you are seeing does not make sense. They're familiar, but not right at the same time, and then they give you a payoff by throwing something in your face and startling you, but not every time.
All this only works if you're invested. In the case of Paranormal Activity if you don't care about what's happening you're bored, and in Insidious you're annoyed.
Now, what about this bro-horror thing?
Part of the stereotype we're working with is a superficially macho refusal to expose "tender" emotions, like fear. Simply put: Bro, you can't be scared, that's just a movie, bro.
Bro-horror is a horror movie that at some level is mocking the idea of being scared of a movie. When I first said bro-horror in the other review I was talking about Stay Alive, which I admitted was a movie I really liked. However, the movie itself didn't think anyone watching it should be afraid of what it was showing us. It felt more like the movie was making fun of the idea that a video game could be killing people, and that it would be ludicrous for someone to be afraid of that.
Another aspect of bro-horror is schadenfreude, a German word meaning pleasure derived from another's misfortune. Slashers have always had an element of moral judgment, where the killer tends to first go after characters that display "immoral" behavior, but in the modern crop of these movies that's the entire point. You don't want to see anyone live because they're all terrible people. In I Know What You Did Last Summer, they got drunk and ran over a guy who then just got revenge killings. This creates an effect where instead of feeling horror at the death of other people, you watch the movie in order to see them die. When they die, instead of feeling the death had an impact you turn to friend and say "Aaaawww, DUUUDE! Look at that, bro!".
Often the kills are so over-the-top they're funny. They've taken the most superficial trappings of horror movies and draped them over top of usually a pretty dull premise, just for the purpose of doing a movie where you find creative ways to kill off the cast and have the audience enjoy it in a really similar way to watching stuff explode in action movies.
Quit harshing my buzz, bro.
I just wanted to define an interesting phenomenon, not say these movies are bad. A bad bro-horror movie is that because it's a bad movie. There are movies I would say are bro-horror that I really enjoy, they've succeeded as movies. They're not scary or unsettling, so they're not really horror, but they are entertaining. I liked Stay Alive, Cabin Fever (even though it's really strange), Jason X, The Final Destination series, and other things along these lines. I even somewhat enjoyed the Friday the 13th remake.
Some of these are good movies, but they're not horror. They don't quite fit anywhere else, but they should have their own distinction.
--PXA
* image taken out of context from: http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=285 Please don't sue me, Scott.
There's an interesting parallel to literature where there's a genre often referred to as "Fratire" which is defined by the use of "Frat-boy" humor and focus on binge drinking and crude sexual humor. If you're interested go check out Tucker Max's book I hope they serve beer in hell or the film adaptation. Tucker Max is a deplorable human being, but I'll be damned if he's not worth a laugh.
Anyway, I'm not saying that these are movies that are for bros. This is is not defining a genre by the preconceived notions we might have about the audience. This is applying the stereotype to the material directly.
The stereotype I'm working with here is the college guy who calls all his friends "Bro". He loves his sports, wears polo shirts with popped collars and sandals. The guys with hopelessly superficial adherence to 80's macho attitudes, just mixed with the surfer stereotype's laid back but stubborn refusal to let anything get them down. This is the stereotype the internet loves to make fun of when we imagine people saying "Dude, that was a brotastrophy, bro" or "Broseidon, king of the Brocean". An absolute caricature.
 |
| Meet Chet and JR* |
How does that apply to horror movies?
The core engagement of a horror movie is to be scared, to be made uncomfortable by something. A good horror movie has to offer you something to identify with and emotionally invest in so that you can experience fear of something. There a lot of ways a movie can do that, but they all depend on you being involved in the story so that you're emotionally open and can feel the fear.
Paranomal Activity 1 & 3 are great at this. They create characters you can identify with, and place them in a situation where they're helpless and don't understand what's happening to them. The handheld camera style helps you buy into the realism of the story and suspend your disbelief so that you can share those feelings with the characters. Other movies like Insidious unsettle you: They create situations and scenes in which what you are seeing does not make sense. They're familiar, but not right at the same time, and then they give you a payoff by throwing something in your face and startling you, but not every time.
All this only works if you're invested. In the case of Paranormal Activity if you don't care about what's happening you're bored, and in Insidious you're annoyed.
Now, what about this bro-horror thing?
Part of the stereotype we're working with is a superficially macho refusal to expose "tender" emotions, like fear. Simply put: Bro, you can't be scared, that's just a movie, bro.
Bro-horror is a horror movie that at some level is mocking the idea of being scared of a movie. When I first said bro-horror in the other review I was talking about Stay Alive, which I admitted was a movie I really liked. However, the movie itself didn't think anyone watching it should be afraid of what it was showing us. It felt more like the movie was making fun of the idea that a video game could be killing people, and that it would be ludicrous for someone to be afraid of that.
Another aspect of bro-horror is schadenfreude, a German word meaning pleasure derived from another's misfortune. Slashers have always had an element of moral judgment, where the killer tends to first go after characters that display "immoral" behavior, but in the modern crop of these movies that's the entire point. You don't want to see anyone live because they're all terrible people. In I Know What You Did Last Summer, they got drunk and ran over a guy who then just got revenge killings. This creates an effect where instead of feeling horror at the death of other people, you watch the movie in order to see them die. When they die, instead of feeling the death had an impact you turn to friend and say "Aaaawww, DUUUDE! Look at that, bro!".
Often the kills are so over-the-top they're funny. They've taken the most superficial trappings of horror movies and draped them over top of usually a pretty dull premise, just for the purpose of doing a movie where you find creative ways to kill off the cast and have the audience enjoy it in a really similar way to watching stuff explode in action movies.
Quit harshing my buzz, bro.
I just wanted to define an interesting phenomenon, not say these movies are bad. A bad bro-horror movie is that because it's a bad movie. There are movies I would say are bro-horror that I really enjoy, they've succeeded as movies. They're not scary or unsettling, so they're not really horror, but they are entertaining. I liked Stay Alive, Cabin Fever (even though it's really strange), Jason X, The Final Destination series, and other things along these lines. I even somewhat enjoyed the Friday the 13th remake.
Some of these are good movies, but they're not horror. They don't quite fit anywhere else, but they should have their own distinction.
--PXA
* image taken out of context from: http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=285 Please don't sue me, Scott.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Horror Off-Season: The Devil Inside
The Devil Inside was released on Jan. 6th, 2012 in the US. It's a possession horror movie written by Matt Peterman and William Brent Bell, and directed by William Brent Bell. The duo's only prior collaboration was 2006's "Stay Alive", which is a bit of a guilty pleasure movie. It, like many other horror movies, failed because it didn't quite figure out how to integrate technology into a horror story. Horror as a genre hasn't quite figured this out, so I don't really blame this on them. I just bring it up to lend some context to saying I think Stay Alive had interesting visuals and concept but was pants-on-head retarded. It's very into the bro-horror idea that horror is sometimes funny because it's bad. With that, I find it very impressive that The Devil Inside is very much the opposite sort of movie.
The Devil Inside generally plays itself as a straight faux-documentary, using a seasoned professional cameraman as an excuse for multiple cameras. You can see them discussing setting up the cameras, and also they do interviews with various people they're following around. The director also records himself, which seemed a bit odd in the context and I could've done without those bits.
The basic premise here is that 20 years after her mother went insane and killed several members of her church congregation during a botched exorcism, Isabella Rossi travels to Rome with a documentary film maker to reconnect with her mother and attempt to understand her condition. We go with Isabella to an exorcism theory class at the Vatican, to a mental hospital run by the church, and to the apartment of 2 young priests Isabella befriends after the exorcism class. The class and the interviews with the 2 priests, Ben and David, are used to explain the rules of the movie's possession mythology.
Ben and David have actually gone rogue and are performing exorcisms on victims the church officially won't authorize an exorcism for, arguing that the rules make it impossible to prove possession without attempting an exorcism but preclude an exorcism without proof. We go with them to see an actual exorcism in progress on Rosalita, where they explain how they use medical science to track the symptoms of possession and progress of the exorcism. I thought that bit was very interesting, and I don't think I've seen a single other exorcism movie where the religious figures attempt to integrate and benefit from science. This is also probably one of the best scenes in the whole movie. They made a real smart decision to cast either a gymnast or contortionist in the role, and the positions her body contorts into are just unnatural. This is aided primarily by some pretty good practical effects, and one very short shot of CGI. There is another scene later where they attempt an exorcism on Isabella's mother that is also very good and tense but not as visually uncomfortable as Rosalita's exorcism.
After the unauthorized exorcism attempt on the mother the characters go into panic mode for a bit and begin to show signs of stress and uncharacteristic behavior. Even though the pace was good I didn't like this bit because it seemed like the movie had gone off the rails. Towards the end of the sequence the story's protagonist shifted from Isabella to Ben, but the documentary framing device remained on Isabella. I like that in principle, since they didn't compromise the character motivations for simplicity's sake. However, they never explained why they decided to do that.
I've previously expressed my annoyance at movies that try to be mysterious or edgy by not neatly tying up their plot threads at the end but actually just end up deliberately introducing something in the middle of the movie and never explaining why it's important. This movie is guilty of that to a minor degree, but it may be a casualty of the abrupt way they chose to end the movie which they may have done in hopes it would drive traffic to a website they advertise before the credits which probably extends the story. I haven't checked the site so I'm not sure if it was successful at all.
All in all the movie isn't nearly as bad as people seem to be saying it is. It does a lot of things right and delivers a pretty interesting story. It doesn't get so caught up in trying to be realistic and character based to be visually creepy. The ending was a bit of a disappointment, but I thought it was really entertaining. Nowhere near as good as Exorcism of Emily Rose, but way better than The Last Exorcism.
The Devil Inside generally plays itself as a straight faux-documentary, using a seasoned professional cameraman as an excuse for multiple cameras. You can see them discussing setting up the cameras, and also they do interviews with various people they're following around. The director also records himself, which seemed a bit odd in the context and I could've done without those bits.
The basic premise here is that 20 years after her mother went insane and killed several members of her church congregation during a botched exorcism, Isabella Rossi travels to Rome with a documentary film maker to reconnect with her mother and attempt to understand her condition. We go with Isabella to an exorcism theory class at the Vatican, to a mental hospital run by the church, and to the apartment of 2 young priests Isabella befriends after the exorcism class. The class and the interviews with the 2 priests, Ben and David, are used to explain the rules of the movie's possession mythology.
Ben and David have actually gone rogue and are performing exorcisms on victims the church officially won't authorize an exorcism for, arguing that the rules make it impossible to prove possession without attempting an exorcism but preclude an exorcism without proof. We go with them to see an actual exorcism in progress on Rosalita, where they explain how they use medical science to track the symptoms of possession and progress of the exorcism. I thought that bit was very interesting, and I don't think I've seen a single other exorcism movie where the religious figures attempt to integrate and benefit from science. This is also probably one of the best scenes in the whole movie. They made a real smart decision to cast either a gymnast or contortionist in the role, and the positions her body contorts into are just unnatural. This is aided primarily by some pretty good practical effects, and one very short shot of CGI. There is another scene later where they attempt an exorcism on Isabella's mother that is also very good and tense but not as visually uncomfortable as Rosalita's exorcism.
After the unauthorized exorcism attempt on the mother the characters go into panic mode for a bit and begin to show signs of stress and uncharacteristic behavior. Even though the pace was good I didn't like this bit because it seemed like the movie had gone off the rails. Towards the end of the sequence the story's protagonist shifted from Isabella to Ben, but the documentary framing device remained on Isabella. I like that in principle, since they didn't compromise the character motivations for simplicity's sake. However, they never explained why they decided to do that.
I've previously expressed my annoyance at movies that try to be mysterious or edgy by not neatly tying up their plot threads at the end but actually just end up deliberately introducing something in the middle of the movie and never explaining why it's important. This movie is guilty of that to a minor degree, but it may be a casualty of the abrupt way they chose to end the movie which they may have done in hopes it would drive traffic to a website they advertise before the credits which probably extends the story. I haven't checked the site so I'm not sure if it was successful at all.
All in all the movie isn't nearly as bad as people seem to be saying it is. It does a lot of things right and delivers a pretty interesting story. It doesn't get so caught up in trying to be realistic and character based to be visually creepy. The ending was a bit of a disappointment, but I thought it was really entertaining. Nowhere near as good as Exorcism of Emily Rose, but way better than The Last Exorcism.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
The Beerening: Scotch Ale + Brown Ale brewday
Scotch Ale Tasting:
Initial tastings of the ale are downright offensive. It tastes like cat urine. The first bottle is acrid, and burns all my senses. It's pretty awful. After a few weeks it's managed to upgrade itself to "bland", which still isn't too great to drink but at least isn't as awful as it used to be. Moving on from that, it went through a stage where it smelled really yeasty but didn't give up a lot of hints regarding the beer itself.
I was originally shooting for a very low level of carbonation to approximate English pub ales. After the first few tastings I decided to try to re-carbonate to a higher level of carbonation to attempt to make the flavor a bit less bland. I tried to add additional carbonation using pre-measured conditioning tablets. I opened every bottle, added 2 tablets, and quickly recapped using sanitized caps. I had a few gushers, which is probably similar to the mentos+coke effect and could have been avoided by putting all the bottles into the fridge for a few hours first. CO2 dissolves better in cold liquid.
After a week it was more carbonated, which helped the blandness but still tasted the same. Another week or so after that something odd happened...the flavors "rounded out", for lack of a better term.
What used to be really thin and sharp flavors, not metallic but with a bit of that character, became much warmer and everything seemed a lot more cohesive. It almost feels like I can actually judge it as a beer and not just relegate it to the bin of things that taste awful. I can't quite identify everything in it, which is still troublesome but I can definitely pick out a light maltiness with a toffee like body. Something in there is very similar to Werther's candies, but not quite as buttery. I definitely didn't manage to get the fruity yeast esthers I was trying for, which might have helped this beer a lot.
It's still a very light beer, which disappoints me because I really wanted something with more character and complexity, but it's actually shaping up to be something quaffable. I've learned a few things from this, even if the beer is less than stellar:
#1 I tried too many new things. All-grain, decoction, Belgian Aromatic Malt, brown sugar. I tried a lot of new stuff and I don't know what's making up the flavors I really don't like.
#2 My ability to hold a mash temp is freaking terrible. If I were to shoot higher to begin with or take more intermediate steps to maintain a temperature, I might do better.
Brown Ale brewday:
Moving on from that, I decided to step back and make a really simple beer to try to refine my technique. I also bought the Beersmith software, since I figure it could help me with some mash calculations.
I decided to shoot for a Brown Ale using only 3 malts, 2 hops, and a basic yeast I've used before.
This time, to try to mitigate that I wrapped the bucket tightly in a blanket. I also told Beersmith I was using plastic, so it could take the thermal properties of my mashtun into account while calculating my strike water temperature. Since the Scotch Ale was so bland and light bodied I decided to mash a bit higher as well.
Unfortunately, I'm still trying to figure out Beersmith's interface so I screwed up and misread the temperature and used a strike temp that was way too low. I wound up in the high 140's instead of the mid 150's, and realized I'd screwed the pooch. I pulled off a bit of my mash immediately and also added some additional water from the tap, totaling about 1-2 gallons of water, and boiled it. As soon as it was boiling I poured it back into the mash and stirred up, which got me to a lot more respectable temperature.
Even with the wrapping I still lost a decent amount of heat so I might need to upgrade to actual insulation, or just sack up and do an actual Coleman Cooler MLT conversion.
I just let the mash rest, and then lautered to another bucket. I managed to get about 1.062 gravity from my first "gyle". I added my sparge water and let it sit, then lautered again. According to my refractometer readings of the runnings, at 1.020, I could have kept going but I had way more wort than I'm actually capable of boiling so I decided to leave it be. Generally you can lauter all the way down to about 1.008 before you start extracting tannins. In all I collected 5.5 gallons of wort with a combined pre-boil gravity of 1.052.
In the past I've topped up my boil kettle during the boil to maintain volume, so I have to top off less once the wort is in the fermenter. This time I knew I had too much wort and wasn't going to boil off enough over the hour, so I got the 2nd largest kettle in my apartment and filled that with wort hoping the extra boil off would let me use all my wort. I followed my hopping schedule as advertised, with the only real exception being I tossed a few pellets into the secondary boil, which I started a little earlier than the primary boil.
Prior to this brew I'd built my own immersion wort chiller, basically following what this guy did:
It's really easy and really cheap, there is pretty much no reason not to do it.
I chilled with that, and it took about 15 minutes to get to a pitchable temperature.
Post-boil I had 4 gallons of wort and topped back up to 5.5 gallons and pitched yeast. My Original Gravity was 1.048
I actually brewed this on Dec 5th, it's taken me this long to get around to writing this. The beer is about ready for bottling, so hopefully this goes better than the last. The krausen has fallen, and I hope to get around to bottling this weekend.
--PXA
Initial tastings of the ale are downright offensive. It tastes like cat urine. The first bottle is acrid, and burns all my senses. It's pretty awful. After a few weeks it's managed to upgrade itself to "bland", which still isn't too great to drink but at least isn't as awful as it used to be. Moving on from that, it went through a stage where it smelled really yeasty but didn't give up a lot of hints regarding the beer itself.
I was originally shooting for a very low level of carbonation to approximate English pub ales. After the first few tastings I decided to try to re-carbonate to a higher level of carbonation to attempt to make the flavor a bit less bland. I tried to add additional carbonation using pre-measured conditioning tablets. I opened every bottle, added 2 tablets, and quickly recapped using sanitized caps. I had a few gushers, which is probably similar to the mentos+coke effect and could have been avoided by putting all the bottles into the fridge for a few hours first. CO2 dissolves better in cold liquid.
After a week it was more carbonated, which helped the blandness but still tasted the same. Another week or so after that something odd happened...the flavors "rounded out", for lack of a better term.
What used to be really thin and sharp flavors, not metallic but with a bit of that character, became much warmer and everything seemed a lot more cohesive. It almost feels like I can actually judge it as a beer and not just relegate it to the bin of things that taste awful. I can't quite identify everything in it, which is still troublesome but I can definitely pick out a light maltiness with a toffee like body. Something in there is very similar to Werther's candies, but not quite as buttery. I definitely didn't manage to get the fruity yeast esthers I was trying for, which might have helped this beer a lot.
It's still a very light beer, which disappoints me because I really wanted something with more character and complexity, but it's actually shaping up to be something quaffable. I've learned a few things from this, even if the beer is less than stellar:
#1 I tried too many new things. All-grain, decoction, Belgian Aromatic Malt, brown sugar. I tried a lot of new stuff and I don't know what's making up the flavors I really don't like.
#2 My ability to hold a mash temp is freaking terrible. If I were to shoot higher to begin with or take more intermediate steps to maintain a temperature, I might do better.
Brown Ale brewday:
Moving on from that, I decided to step back and make a really simple beer to try to refine my technique. I also bought the Beersmith software, since I figure it could help me with some mash calculations.
I decided to shoot for a Brown Ale using only 3 malts, 2 hops, and a basic yeast I've used before.
12 lbs. US 2-rowSince one of my major problems has been holding a mash temperature I decided to use the same basic technique as last time and improve upon it instead of trying something totally new. In the Scotch Ale writeup I mentioned using an "improvised mashtun" but didn't really go into detail about that. My improvised mashtun was a ginormous nylon grain bag in my bottling bucket with a spoon wedged inside between the bag and the inside opening of the spigot. Even with the top on, the plastic is just too good at giving off heat to hold the temperature for the length of the mash.
2 lbs. Briess Special Roast
.5 lb US Chocolate Malt
1 oz cascade @ 60 minutes
1 oz cascade @ 30 minutes
1 oz glacier @ 10 minutes
Yeast: Wyeast 1272 - American Ale II
This time, to try to mitigate that I wrapped the bucket tightly in a blanket. I also told Beersmith I was using plastic, so it could take the thermal properties of my mashtun into account while calculating my strike water temperature. Since the Scotch Ale was so bland and light bodied I decided to mash a bit higher as well.
Unfortunately, I'm still trying to figure out Beersmith's interface so I screwed up and misread the temperature and used a strike temp that was way too low. I wound up in the high 140's instead of the mid 150's, and realized I'd screwed the pooch. I pulled off a bit of my mash immediately and also added some additional water from the tap, totaling about 1-2 gallons of water, and boiled it. As soon as it was boiling I poured it back into the mash and stirred up, which got me to a lot more respectable temperature.
Even with the wrapping I still lost a decent amount of heat so I might need to upgrade to actual insulation, or just sack up and do an actual Coleman Cooler MLT conversion.
I just let the mash rest, and then lautered to another bucket. I managed to get about 1.062 gravity from my first "gyle". I added my sparge water and let it sit, then lautered again. According to my refractometer readings of the runnings, at 1.020, I could have kept going but I had way more wort than I'm actually capable of boiling so I decided to leave it be. Generally you can lauter all the way down to about 1.008 before you start extracting tannins. In all I collected 5.5 gallons of wort with a combined pre-boil gravity of 1.052.
In the past I've topped up my boil kettle during the boil to maintain volume, so I have to top off less once the wort is in the fermenter. This time I knew I had too much wort and wasn't going to boil off enough over the hour, so I got the 2nd largest kettle in my apartment and filled that with wort hoping the extra boil off would let me use all my wort. I followed my hopping schedule as advertised, with the only real exception being I tossed a few pellets into the secondary boil, which I started a little earlier than the primary boil.
Prior to this brew I'd built my own immersion wort chiller, basically following what this guy did:
It's really easy and really cheap, there is pretty much no reason not to do it.
I chilled with that, and it took about 15 minutes to get to a pitchable temperature.
Post-boil I had 4 gallons of wort and topped back up to 5.5 gallons and pitched yeast. My Original Gravity was 1.048
I actually brewed this on Dec 5th, it's taken me this long to get around to writing this. The beer is about ready for bottling, so hopefully this goes better than the last. The krausen has fallen, and I hope to get around to bottling this weekend.
--PXA
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