Hey! What about me? With 2009 marking the 20th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution that ousted the Shah and replaced the monarchy with a theocratic regime, it’s fitting Mongrel Media released Queen and I, The / Drottningen och jag this month, Nahid Persson Sarvestani’s 2008 documentary on Empress Farah, Iran’s exiled Queen, now living in Paris, […]
I’ve been sick with a wretched head cold for the past few days, hence the delay, but the time in bed (and dizzy spells) allowed me to gather a handful of films for this update which collectively illustrate the levels of originality, imitation, and nostalgia in contemporary horror. That’s a big statement, but it can be distilled into something very simple, if not streamlined.
One of the toughest nuts for screenwriters and directors to crack is making a story set in a post-apocalyptic world work. It sounds relatively easy: you start the tale when the landscape is eerily peaceful, and a handful of normal human survivors have decided to wander out into the open because they’re bored, some need companionship, a few have run out of food, or have acclimatized themselves to running around with a shotgun and extra ammo with a new daily goal of some sort.
It’s very strange to watch a series of films set in Berlin with characters living in the city or its suburbs, and yet there’s no effort by the director whatsoever to identify the city. How can you shoot a film in one of the oldest cities in Europe and transform it into a nondescript and rather blah metropolis?
October of 2009 will mark the 20th anniversary when East Germans were allowed to travel to West Germany after a lengthy ban, reinforced by the infamous Berlin Wall that was built by the communist regime to stop the flow of immigration into the West, as well as those escaping after the border was closed in 1961…
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