2018: December 2nd

The B&W photography in this video is breathtaking. Directed by Katherine Dieckmann, who did a lot of the breakthrough REM songs back in the early 90s, with DP duties by Jim Denault, who, among many other things, shot more than a few episodes of seminal HBO series Six Feet Under and Carnivále,  this video blew me away. Sharon Van Etten's new record Remind Me Tomorrow comes out January 18th, 2019 omg Jagjaguwar; you can pre-order the record and stream Jupiter 4 and another track HERE, and keep in mind, that's barely a month away at this point.

Early last year when Oz Perkin's Blackcoat's Daughter hit Prime streaming, I'd been waiting for the film for what felt like forever. When I finally sat down to watch it, the experience was a touch anti-climatic because, well, I fell asleep. Now, this happens sometimes - more and more often actually - and I never blame the film. The fact of the matter is I wake up while it's still dark out and work long hours and I'm just not able to hang sometimes. But during that viewing, I nodded off, woke up, rewound and finished the film despite my grogginess. And as often happens in situations like this, the movie suffered for it. But again, I'm always hesitant to blame the film when this happens. What I usually do is put the flick on the back burner, wait a good long while, and then try again.



So last night I re-watched Blackcoat's Daughter - formerly titled February (which I think is a much better title, despite the fact I'm not sure why the school would be going on break in February instead of December) - and I'm not entirely sure I think my narcolepsy during that first viewing was my fault. The pacing is slow but that's not really a problem, as some of my favorite horror films are 'slow burns'. This though, I don't know. Maybe the thing that makes me less forgiving is the fact that there is one thing about this film that I think completely ruins it. I don't want to go into spoilers, but there's a casting issue that I call complete bullshit on; the kind of subterfuge that doesn't work at all but was done simply to add a red herring element and keep the audience in the dark until the end. Makes the film fall into the High Tension category for me, where no matter how much I did like about it - and there's plenty, including a pretty powerful final twenty minutes - the film will never 'work' for me because of the filmmaker's reliance on a contrivance that is beneath the quality of the rest of the film.

Oh well. It was very cool however to revisit this and realize that the main girl has gone on to become Sabrina! Very cool surprise.

Playlist from 12/01:

The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir
Judas Priest - Fire Power
Impaled Nazarene - Suomi Finland Perkele
Emma Ruth Rundle - Marked for Death

Card for the day:

And just like that, the cards reflect that after calling myself on my own BS yesterday, I had a killer 2+ hour writing session, made serious headway, and intend on doing the same today.