What did all the kids do this weekend instead of buying tickets to Grindhouse?  They weren't playing outside, it's supercold all over the country.

Maybe they were watching this shocking video of unexpected people singing unexpected vocals with the unexpected blessings of the original vocalist: Surprise!

Or perhaps they watched the original as it appeared in The Hunger: No Ice (but they may have been frustrated by the poor sound quality - buy the original)

Considered by many to be the first "goth" track, it's bass line is criminally underused by baseball players as their "I'm- coming-up-to-bat theme song."

I would absolutely buy the jersey of any player who used it. 

Over the weekend, this Monsterfest blogger took it upon himself to support his favorite genre with two unique new releases, one of them playing theaters nationwide (at least for the time being) and the other currently on the festival circuit and both well worth your time and money.

Don't listen to the haters, because Grindhouse really is 3+ hours of fun and a little something more unexpectedly thrown in the mix.  The Robert Rodriguez-directed Planet Terror is enjoyable for what it is and the faux trailers easily put a smile on your face, but Tarantino's Death Proof segment deserves to be considered a new classic.  Not only does it contain one of the greatest car chases in movie history, but there is a scene of violence that is so shocking and disturbing - and filmed so superbly by Tarantino - that it out-Argentos Dario Argento himself.  And to those who complain that too much of this segment is just boring talk, all I can say is that I'd rather spend another 90 minutes watching these likeable and interesting women gab on than sit through another empty exercise in zombies, explosions and shootouts.  Or Chocolat. 

Another female-oriented horror film comes courtesy of writer/director Douglas Buck and his remake of Brian De Palma's Sisters, which screened this past Saturday at the Philadelphia Film Festival.  The original is famous mostly for a shocking murder that occurs in the early reels and Buck's film repeats this classic moment; from this point on Buck takes the material and makes it his own. The film becomes a darker, more psychological study of the connection between women, absent parents and the manipulation of a male-dominated society. Buck's film has its own merits and is easily one of the few horror remakes made these days that justifies its existence.   

John Hughes: “How did I come to write Ferris? Well, let’s see. There was a writer’s strike coming up in a week and my agent called and warned me, so I thought, ‘Jeez, John, you better write something,’ and so I got this sentence… out of the ozone. ‘I am 17 years old and I know exactly where my life is going.’ And then I thought, ‘I am 17 years old and I have no idea where my life is going,’ and I thought, ‘That’s it!’”

“I called Ned Tanen at Paramount and said, ‘I want to do a movie about a kid who takes a day off from school and… that’s all I know so far.’ Ned knows me, and so he said, ‘Aw, go ahead.’ So I went ahead.”

Hughes whipped up a script in the week remaining before the strike. “It takes me about four days to write one of these things,” he said. Hughes would write for 20 hours at a stretch while sitting at his computer trying not to think about what he was writing, but instead “to surprise myself throughout.”

Ferris Bueller’s producer Tom Jacobsen attested, “The stories of John’s speed-writing scripts are all true.”

“I know how the movie begins, I know how it ends,” said Hughes. “I don’t ever know the rest, but that doesn’t seem to matter.”

Hughes added, “It’s not the events that are important, it’s the characters going through the event. Therefore, I make them as full and real as I can. This time around, I wanted to create a character who could handle everyone and everything.”

Sources:
“John Hughes’ Rational Anthem: I Won’t Grow Up,” Chicago Tribune, 6/8/86
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Production Notes
The Making of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off DVD Bonus Feature

While blow-hard movie executive Harvey Weinstein pretends to have some idea why Grindhouse didn't shatter box office records this weekend (and really, go here if you want to read the excess verbiage that fell out of his mouth like so many donut crumbs), I'm going to take this opportunity to pick on this misbegotten enterprise one last time before moving on to greener pastures.

Not by actually picking on it or telling you how bad it is, of course -- I would have had to actually sit through it to have that kind of knowledge.

Nope, instead I'm going to toss a few links your way that will keep you entertained in an old-fashioned manner without having to reach for the wallet.

So far everyone I know has said the best part of Grindhouse is the fake trailers that play between the two features. So here's some real trailers for movies. You just saved $11.00 and if you like what you see here you can actually watch the films themselves!

And if you like movies with dirt, scratches, no logic and retro-cool music on the soundtrack, check out these ancient scopitones and see where music videos came from.

Leaving the house to be entertained is severely overrated when you're a cheapskate like me.