Monday 19 November 2012

NARRATIVE Nowell's 7 key stages of slasher


Nowell’s book Blood Money (2011) is primarily concerned with a point on audience: that slasher movies were aimed as much at female as at male audiences. He also makes an incredibly useful analysis of what he considers the universal components of the early slasher narratives, listed below, also noting that films were given some differentiation + novelty alongside their redundancy by playing around with the ordering of these. Once more, Todorov’s notions influenced him.
Part One: Setup
1.Trigger: Events propel a human (the killer) upon a homicidal trajectory.
2.Threat: The killer targets a group of hedonistic youths for killing.
Part Two: Disruption
3. Leisure: Youths interact recreationally in an insular quotidian location.
4. Stalking: A shadowy killer tracks youths in that location.
5. Murders: The shadowy killer kills some of the youths.
Part Three: Resolution
6. Confrontation: The remaining character(s) challenges the killer.
7. Neutralization: The immediate threat posed by the killer is eliminated.’ (p.21)

21 Memorable scream queens

Not my list, but a useful blog post to help with your research; see http://www.buzzsugar.com/Movie-Scream-Queens-20062131.

Sunday 18 November 2012

REMAKES Mark Kermode's reviews-NoESt

You can find footage of his reviews of other remakes (TCM, LHotLeft etc) by searching or looking on the suggested video column alongside the following vid. No matter what franchise/idea you're working on, you'll find his reviews useful - eg, this one points up that the conflict/dis-equilibrium in the original film occurs only because parents lied to their children.

Here's another cracking quote from this:
Now what you get is Michael Bay's lot, the destroyers of all creativity in cinema, the jack-booted bank managers who just come storming through in the pursuit of a quick buck going What was the whole thesis of [NoESt] ... Oh! He's got a big claw! ... It's just this horrible reducto absurdium. In this, there's none of the [original's] coherence, the backstory is completely messed up. ... Its nastier in all the wrong ways. Its boring and louder.
He really doesn't hold back!

Mark Kermode's Doc Scream + Scream Again

Mark Kermode, Radio 5's famously-quiffed film reviewer, presented this doc some time ago, reflecting his status as a leading authority on the horror genre. A YT user has uploaded it in 5 parts (click on his list of uploaded vids to find the rest); here's part 1: