5 things they taught me
In April of this year, I had the pleasure of collaborating with both of my local cinemas (Greetings! Story Screen Beacon) and a good friend (Alana Savchak) for a series of discussions involving five of the Guillermo del ToroX monster movies (stylized as MONSTER FLICK… take it?).
During the month, Alana and I showed the following films: Hellboy and Hellboy 2: golden army (in double function This went on until about midnight.) Pacific Rim; Blade 2; and Pan’s Labyrinth. Before you say, “What about water shape?!” I just reply that movie studios suck and they wouldn’t give it to us without an exorbitant amount of money. So we have shown Blade 2 instead of. If you want to ask why we didn’t choose Kronos or Devil’s backbone the answer is that we only had four environments to work with and we wanted to make some money from Story Screen.
It worked like this: after the usual trailers (some handpicked; we showed Konstantin trailer before Hellboy and Godzilla before Pacific Rim) the co-host and I stood up in front of the audience and presented the film. We’ll go through famous actors, terms, awards, and end with topics worth paying attention to. Several themes came up repeatedly: who could be the monster? What does storytelling mean within this narrative structure? Why do you love Guillermo del Toro? Ron Perlman? Some of these questions are unanswerable, but here are five things I’ve learned while hosting this Monster Fucker series.
1. Audiences love the metric (or Ron Perlman is just a big guy)
Before each film, we asked the audience two questions: Ron Perlman in this film?” and “Can we recognize Doug Jones? The answers were usually in the affirmative, and always elicited laughter, but it turned out that Pearlman didn’t make it to the top. Pan’s Labyrinth and Jones was not cast Blade 2. It was a great way to take the pressure off, to remind people that it was going to be fun, that there would be familiar touchstones, and that we weren’t standing there giving a weird lecture. Alana and I were there to facilitate discussion, not to teach people. When someone asked why del Toro dumped Pearlman so often, Alana pulled out her notes, where she wrote that GDT more or less said several times: I just like the man. He’s just a big guy.
2. GDT loves a clockwork leather daddy
They show up all the time! All the time. GDT loves clocks, gears and ticking, they are a must in almost all of his films. Hellboy there was Dr. Kroenen, who had a tick-tock heart. Captain Vidal of Pan’s Labyrinth always working on his broken clocks and even had his head office/base of personal operations at the mill, among the big lathes. And it’s a stretch, but Pacific RimX Hannibal Chau he had a lot of daddy’s cyberpunk energy that is at least side by side. (Also see Kronos for the GDT Leather Daddy movement.) Don’t believe me? Here is what our strange king had to say about Krenen, taken from an interview collected in Kunstkamera Guillermo del Toro:
“Oddly enough, I thought Kroenen was supposed to be sexy. And I know that an eyeless, lipless guy is not sexy, but I thought, “There must be some very, very, very perverted girl who would enjoy Kronen.” So I said, “For this, my tiny audience, we have to make it sexy.”
3. Pacific Rim good film
This is divisive, but I’m going to say that we finally learned about it in April 2022. Pacific Rim skeptics even abandoned their former opinions in favor of the truth, which is that Pacific Rim slaps. The soundtrack is superb, the plot is meaty, there are some absolutely stellar lines (“Anyone can fall” is Alana’s most obsessive piece of dialogue), and it takes guts to deliver a 20-minute backstory. slamming the title card and starting the movie. Everything about this film is about the emotional trauma of recovery; Del Toro has repeatedly said that he doesn’t want this film to be seen as a war movie, but as a chance to explore humanity on the brink of crisis. Even the ending isn’t about making the aliens fall into line, but more about sacrifice, loss, knowing when to give up and when to fight just to get through another day.
4. Everyone remembers it Blade 2 consideration
If you don’t remember it Blade 2 review, god, I want what you have. Primarily, Isn’t that great news posted an incredibly obscene review Blade 2 The author of which is the notorious Harry Knowles. I don’t use the term obscene lightly, the review goes into great detail on how Blade 2 similar to how del Toro gives a woman a head. Worst of all, it’s such an over-the-top critique of a movie that’s nowhere near as sexy as the first installment that it makes a fool of a movie that’s trying to entice audiences to watch it. Visceral character Blade 2 lies in cracked skin and mottled flesh, and not in the pornographic interpretation of cinematography, which, again, is clearly tame for del Toro. Much of the discussion has revolved around bodily horror rather than pleasure, but some have argued that the two go hand in hand. Well, del Toro is a brilliant little movie director freak, so who knows. Both things may be true.
5. Know your author
Showcasing five films over four weeks and coming up with new topics of conversation each time really highlighted the fact that one of the things that makes del Toro unique is his unwavering commitment to his own aesthetic, no matter what material he has to work with. Here is del Toro’s quote, again taken from his book:
“I didn’t make eight films. I’m trying to make one movie out of all these movies. For me it’s like gloomy house. I’m building room by room, and you have to take it as a whole. Does this mean that maybe Devil’s backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth make Mimic a little less creepy? I think so. Or the echoes of those can do Blade 2 more interesting? I think so.”
That was what I loved to explore in five films. We didn’t watch the films in chronological order at all, and through this piecemeal study of del Toro’s work, we were able to see kaiju structures appearing in Hellboy, think about how creepy monsters have changed over the course of his films, and how the character archetypes and actors that del Toro has used on numerous occasions have changed their approach depending on the film, or how they haven’t changed. The thought of showing one film was a great way to explore these films, and there were several people (thanks to Kevin for coming to every screening) who were able to really explore these topics with us by creating feedback. a series that was not only about Alana and me asking questions, but also about building a movie community in a small town in the Hudson Valley.
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