The Call of Cthulu
Movie: The Call of Cthulu (2005)
Watched with: Angelo and John
The last time I was in the hip happenin' Insomniac Video, I was looking through the Silent section and I saw this--
--and was kind of confused.
I'm no Lovecraft expert, but I didn't think he'd been around long enough for them to have made a Cthulu movie in the mid-20s (Wikipedia confirms--the story "The Call of Cthulu" was published in 1928, a year after Al Jolson's Jew in black face gave motion pictures sound).
Furthur examination revealed that it was in fact a modern movie shot on digital video but "Mythoscoped" into looking like it came from the 20s.
Having made a little silent movie myself, I was really curious. And since John's been getting into HP Lovecraft, our combined interest was enough to break our Hollywood Video routine.
They did a really good job of imitating that kind of Caligari-style experssionistic lighting, and I admired them for casting people who looked really intense and somewhat old-fashioned. That's particularly impressive considering it was made by the "H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society", and fan films so often are filled with goofy-looking dorkuses (dorkii?).
The sets were generally convincing, and when they weren't they were usually period-fake, so it worked. Same to the modelwork and stop motion, which they blended with the sets really well.
Some of the editing was a little bit awkward, particularly at the climax, which really needed some Birth of a Nation-style cross-cutting to make it more exciting, or for that matter, comprehensible.
All around, it was pretty cool. It was unprofessional enough for me to wonder if I could do better, but good enough for me to doubt that I could (at least, not without a bunch of other really awesome people).
I had fun watching it, and anything that makes you feel creative afterward has to be considered a good thing.
Watched with: Angelo and John
The last time I was in the hip happenin' Insomniac Video, I was looking through the Silent section and I saw this--
--and was kind of confused.
I'm no Lovecraft expert, but I didn't think he'd been around long enough for them to have made a Cthulu movie in the mid-20s (Wikipedia confirms--the story "The Call of Cthulu" was published in 1928, a year after Al Jolson's Jew in black face gave motion pictures sound).
Furthur examination revealed that it was in fact a modern movie shot on digital video but "Mythoscoped" into looking like it came from the 20s.
Having made a little silent movie myself, I was really curious. And since John's been getting into HP Lovecraft, our combined interest was enough to break our Hollywood Video routine.
They did a really good job of imitating that kind of Caligari-style experssionistic lighting, and I admired them for casting people who looked really intense and somewhat old-fashioned. That's particularly impressive considering it was made by the "H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society", and fan films so often are filled with goofy-looking dorkuses (dorkii?).
The sets were generally convincing, and when they weren't they were usually period-fake, so it worked. Same to the modelwork and stop motion, which they blended with the sets really well.
Some of the editing was a little bit awkward, particularly at the climax, which really needed some Birth of a Nation-style cross-cutting to make it more exciting, or for that matter, comprehensible.
All around, it was pretty cool. It was unprofessional enough for me to wonder if I could do better, but good enough for me to doubt that I could (at least, not without a bunch of other really awesome people).
I had fun watching it, and anything that makes you feel creative afterward has to be considered a good thing.
posted by Kane Lynch at
6:23 PM
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