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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.151.146.78
Posted on Saturday, August 25, 2012 - 07:26 pm:   

http://grimmfest.com/grimmupnorth/

This looks like it's getting better and better - and the ticket price goes up in 4 days time. Get your early bird tickets now!
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.155.216.157
Posted on Saturday, September 08, 2012 - 10:48 am:   

http://grimmfest.com/grimmupnorth/


Looks freaking great!
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.184.109.149
Posted on Tuesday, October 02, 2012 - 07:05 pm:   

Is anyone from here coming to this?
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John Forth (John)
Username: John

Registered: 05-2008
Posted From: 82.24.1.217
Posted on Tuesday, October 02, 2012 - 09:12 pm:   

Not me, but do make sure you catch SINISTER and AMERICAN MARY, both of which are very good, albeit in different ways.
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 92.232.244.38
Posted on Tuesday, October 02, 2012 - 09:47 pm:   

No, I'm not either, Weber - sorry. Looking forward to the Halifax Ghost Story Festival in November though.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 82.145.211.130
Posted on Wednesday, October 03, 2012 - 12:20 am:   

I've got my ticket booked for tomorrow night - i've turned down 3 other places i could be. No way i'm going to miss any of it. I need some me time for a change.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 82.145.209.45
Posted on Thursday, October 04, 2012 - 01:05 am:   

On the bus home now from sinister and american mary. Sinister really lives us to its name. I can't remember the last time a film scared me that much in a cinema. I don't want to give away any spoilers so i won't say anything about the story - the performances are uniformly great. It manages to be scary, funny in places - his chat with the friendly cop in particular is a much needed release of tension. The characters are well drawn and feel real. An arguement between the central couple was a standout scene emotionally. Other than one or two scares that were too obvious and telegraphed, I can't recommend this film enough.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.184.110.113
Posted on Thursday, October 04, 2012 - 02:44 pm:   

American Mary was good, but in an entirely different way. Lots of disturbing ideas going on and in the hands of Cronenburg could have been a true masterpiece. As it was it's worth watching, but I was checking my watch near the end. 6/10 could be better.
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John Forth (John)
Username: John

Registered: 05-2008
Posted From: 82.24.1.217
Posted on Thursday, October 04, 2012 - 10:01 pm:   

I enjoyed AMERICAN MARY more, but SINISTER is a great bit of modern American horror. Agree that there were a couple of sequences that didn't work, but you're bang on about the rest.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.151.148.62
Posted on Friday, October 05, 2012 - 12:47 pm:   

3 films last night

Comedown - a group of chavs break into a deserted tower block to set up a transmitter for a pirate radio station. Once inside they find out they're not alone as a mysterious killer starts wiping them out one by one. A typical American teen slasher taken from middle-class surburbia and transplanted to a scummy set of characters in a London estate. There are jumps on logic and common sense that surpass the stupid behaviour in the films it apes. It looks good but the characters are so unappealing that you really don't care about them as they get slaughtered. Still worth watching but not one to try to analyse - 6/10

Cockneys vs zombies - fantastic. funny, gory, brilliant movie. I'll go out on a limb and say that this is a better zom-com than Shaun of the Dead. 10/10

Some Guy who Kills people - This is surprisingly intelligently made - and despite the humorous tone it has a fairly serious and engaging storyline that manages to avoid the cliche it seems to be walking into from the beginning. 9/10
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.149.34.98
Posted on Saturday, October 06, 2012 - 02:52 am:   

2.5 films tonight

Nightbreed The Cabal Cut - The first hour of this is actualluy o=pretty good - despite the second generation VHS quality of some of the footage. However I decided to go and watch Devoured on the other screen and wait fot the DVD release of this next year - where hopefully they have more of the picture quality issues sorted out. From the comments I heard from people who stayed for the whole film, it's a much better story than the original was.

Devoured - a slow burning indie flick about a girl's descent into insanity. An obscure little gem if I ever saw one. The central performance is rather good indeed and while the final twist is quite obvious the film is still well worth catching if you can. 8.5/10.

Grabbers - a cracking Irish monster comedy with fabulous special effects (especially considering the budget) and a great cast - including richard Coyle (Geoff from Coupling) and Russell Tovey (george the Werewolf from Being Human). This was a great laugh from beginning to end that even managed to throw in one or two genuinely tense moments.

Did I mention Richard Briars was in Cockneys vs Zombies?
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.149.34.98
Posted on Saturday, October 06, 2012 - 02:53 am:   

Grabbers - another 10/10
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.129.62.23
Posted on Sunday, October 07, 2012 - 12:04 pm:   

Very quick rundown of yesterday's films before I have to run to get there for todays

Wake up and Die - a great start to the day. think of a very serious, naked and murderous version of Groundhog Day brilliantly played by just two actors in one claustrophic house and you're there. Only flaws in this was that the subtitles were written by someone who can't spell or use English grammar - and it could possibly have shed a couu[ple of minutes from the first half - just to tighten it up a little bit. 9/10

The Other Side - a short film - described in the programme as a homage to other slashers. Basically it was Switchblade romance but without the High tension (right down to the final twist0. Every shot and sound in this film was complete cliche. It had less orinality than any film I can recall seeing. Technically very well put together but from a storytelling point of view it was extremely poor. 3/10

The Devil Rides out - despite people's worries this has not been turned into a CGI fest. It looks as cheesy and hokey as every other Hammer film. This was severely let down by Patrick Mower in his Q&A after the film saying that it was Hammer's attempt to move away from horror and do a good film instead. We all know this one.

Before dawn - the first serious zombie film of the weekend and it's a good un. Focussing more on the breaking down marriage between the two central protagonists than the increasing signs around them of an encroaching apocolypse, this builds things nicely and gives us a believable pair of characters. Dominic Brunt makes us forget entirely that he's that nice vet fellow from Emmerdale. This is only let down by a weird mix of timeframes that the film is set in. The characters are using iphones which sets it squarely in the modern day but the TV is an old push button set with no remote control (therefore not a digital set) and when the guy from Shameless appears he looks like a reject from a 70's porn film. Nicely played and atmospheric enough to please though. A solid 7.5/10

Wrong house - interesting premise - overlong execution. 7.5/10

Cursed bastards - a mexican portmanyeau film that takes too long to get going in all three stories and despite some striking visuals - a devil that vomits eyeballs down a chimney so it can watch the people in the house was my particular favourite - fails to deliver. 5/10

Crawlspace - meh. 5/10

Gotta run.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.158.60.105
Posted on Thursday, October 11, 2012 - 01:25 am:   

Now that I finally have a few minutes to myself...

Wrong House - two dysfunctional families are lured to a viewing of an old farmhouse. Once there they find they can't leave. The road out leads straight back to the house every time. After an intriguing opening this meanders too much in its story of vengeful ghosts taking their dues from the families - both of which have closer ties than they suspected to the house. I may have enjoyed this more had I not received a text from my Divisional officer from St John telling me to call her urgently about a half an hour before the end of the film. Last time she did that, someone had made allegations against me (totally unfounded as I proved) that could have had me kicked out of St John. As a result I couldn't concentrate too much on the last half hour. After all that, she just wanted to know if I could give the divisional defib to someone that evening. Why couldn't she have said that in her frigging text the daft bint. I wouldn't have spent half an hour wondering what fresh fabrications I was going to need to disprove.

Crawlspace - Spoilers contained - an Australian thriller/monster movie/sci fi thing with elements of Dr Moreau and a dozen other secret research lab disaster films. The plot revolves around Eve who is seen at the start of the film allegedly suffering from amnesia next to the destroyed corpse of someone in uniform and a dead civilian. Cut to a military raid on the underground base because the experimental subjects have broken loose and are on the rampage. When the team of soldiers meet Eve we find out rather improbably that she is the ex fiance of the leader of the soldiers who he assumed had been dead for several years. He resolves to get her out of the base regardless of teh personal cost to him or his team. It all looks good and flashy but is all rather soulless and too far fetched. If you want the fantastical elements to work in any film, you need the mundane to be believable. This film fails entirely on that score. We're asked to believe that the military would send a soldier in on a mission to destroy his own wife who he thought was dead but they were using in secrert experiments. It turns out however that Eve was psychic and had just hhad a brain graft from an area 51 type alien and could now control people's minds and plant visions and even false memories. She wasn't actually his dead ex-fiance. That's good we think in the audience. That plot detail was too silly anyway. But then the film makers expect us to believe that if the Australian military doubt your loyalty they make you drown your fiance in a bucket of water and that was the fate of his actual ex-fiance for whom he carries the burden of guilt he's been talking about for the full film... I thought that test of loyalty only happened in old very bad jokes.

Sunday's films

The Eschatrilogy - another serious zombie flick, made locally apparently on a tiny buget. It's a portmanteau piece that actually uses the format much better than Cursed Bastards did with a very simple framing story and clear transition between stories. However the first story is horrendously badly acted by all actors involved. The second story is slightly better performed but way to similar in storyline to the first. The third story improves again in acting standards but - aside from a mad priest making an appearance - the basic storyline was the same as the first two.
For the budget it looked very good but the performances in the first act, and the samey quality to the three stories let it down. I knew I should have watched Twisted instead. 6.5/10

Basketcase - believe it or not I'd never seen this before. Everyone here should know the basic story. I thought the effects were badly dated and they certainly should have stuck to puppetwork instead of trying to stop-motion animate Belial. I also think there's a deeply serious film in there somewhere. The central premise is actually deeply disturbing but because it's played too much for laughs it's not as good as it could have been. 7.5/10

Below zero - a story about a writer locking himself in a deserted abbatoir for a week to write a new screenplay. Creepy moments but as we know that everything that's happening is a film that he's writing, there's no narrative tension. Any corners that the characters find themselves in he simply rewrites. There are one or two moments where they become very playful with this concept, a few more and this could have been the clever and cool film it tries to be. As it is, it's all just a variation on "it was all a dream" and loses points for that. 6.5/10

Rights of Spring - This starts promisingly with a Children of the Corn type "sacrifice people to the thing in the fields to give ourselves a good harvest" plot intersecting with a bungled kidnap and ransom storyline but peters out pretty quickly after that. The ending was particularly bizarre with several plotlines not tied up (or even left ambiguous, just left dangling) and appeared to be a set up for a sequel by simply not finishing this story properly. Nothing new. A nice bit of totally unnecessary full frontal nudity gives it an extra half a point. This was the only film I was at that didn't receive a round of applause from the audience at the end. No one seemed to think it had finished even though the credits were rolling. 6.5/10

Him indoors - a short film with Reece Sheersmith as an agoraphobic serial killer. very funny and unexpectedly shocking. Well worth watching at only 12 minutes long it'll probably be on youtube somewhere. 9/10

Stitches - a killer clown film with Ross Noble showing excellent skills as the eponymous clown who dies accidentally at a 10 year old's birthday party and returns from the grave 6 years later to take his revenge. Some fantastically imaginative clown skill related killings liven up what could be just another generic slasher with a wise-cracking villain picking off teenagers. The umbrella death received a cheer and a round of applause. Easily the most bizarre and unexpected death in any film for the whole 5 days. Tommy KNight from Sarah jane adventures got to swear a little bit and act stoned (although not for long - that hash cookie he ate mustn't have been any good) but didn't demonstrate too much acting range different from his most famous character. Still he put in a decent enough performance and it would have been difficult to take the limelight with Ross Noble as good as he is - think Psychoville's Mr Jolly but more evil with a penchant for slaughtering teenagers and you're pretty much there. Very funny although there was no real tension and there was a fault in the sound on the last reel. Definitely worth seeing though. 8.5/10
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.158.60.105
Posted on Thursday, October 11, 2012 - 01:26 am:   

Horror film of the festival - Sinister
Comedy of the festival - Cockneys Vs Zombies. It's a shame it's going straight to DVD - it really deserves a cinema release.
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 92.232.244.38
Posted on Thursday, October 11, 2012 - 12:56 pm:   

Hey, Weber, glad you enjoyed the fest! Thanks for your helpful comments on the films. I know people haven't been commenting back on this thread but I'm sure they've appreciated your thoughts - I have anyway!
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 31.54.12.221
Posted on Saturday, December 22, 2012 - 01:57 am:   

Grimm Up North have an amzing line up over the next couple of months. Starting on January 9th with a remastered version of Repulsion and the British premier of Jennifer Lynch's Chained.

http://grimmfest.com/grimmupnorth/

Check it out, a great mix of classics and premiers on their way.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 31.54.12.221
Posted on Saturday, December 22, 2012 - 02:01 am:   

http://grimmfest.com/grimmupnorth/2012/12/4923/
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 92.232.244.38
Posted on Saturday, December 22, 2012 - 03:15 pm:   

The Lovecraft double-bill in March looks particularly interesting.

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