Notes from the Kraken: October

In All, Notes by Kyu

Welcome again to We Have Always Live the Kraken, a pop culture blog transmitted directly to you from the belly of the beast. Here in the Notes we’ll show you this month’s posting schedule, but first here are some thoughts.

Ah, Autumn. Cooler days, longer nights, leaves changing colors… that period when a young man’s thoughts turn to death and dismemberment.

That’s right, ghosts and ghouls, it’s time once more for the dreaded Killtoberfest. This year as I have every year at the Kraken, I will endeavor to watch and review 31 horror movies in 31 days, including a complete franchise. Follow along by watching each film and reading my review… if you dare!

I mean, why wouldn’t you, they’re only movies. Come on, dare already.

This will be my eighth year watching and sixth year reviewing, which makes this one of my oldest and fondest traditions. It also means there’s nothing else I could possibly call this year’s ‘fest but, of course, Killtoberfest: 666.

Are you excited?

This guy’s excited.

31 movies. 31 days. See you on the other side.

-Kyu

From the depths of the Kraken, here is what we are bringing you this month.

Killtoberfest 666 is still alive:

Follow Kyu’s progress on Twitter @insidethekraken.

David offers up his first entry in his How Haven’t You Seen That!? series as he takes a look at the anime Your Lie in April. Plus, who knows, maybe a second one as well if you are lucky.

We’re proud to present a new guest post by author Tenzytile, discussing Spike Lee’s new film, BlacKkKlansman.

Life in the Kraken is proud to present the premiere episode of a new podcast from David and Matt Morris, Endgame Content. Follow them on Twitter @EgContentCast and check out their Extra Life 2018 team page, where you can donate to help them support Children’s Hospital LA, at www.extra-life.org/team/EndgameContent.

Catch of the Week Month:

Each and every week the residents here in the Kraken will offer one recommendation for the week that we think you all would enjoy. It might be a movie. It might be a book. Who knows? This is your… Catch of the Week Month.

Kyu: I went into Mandy knowing almost nothing and expecting a crazy Cage movie. Unfortunately I also got a Panos Cosmatos film. I saw the writer/director’s first movie, Beyond the Black Rainbow, many years ago but it has stuck with me ever since. That film was strange and hallucinatory but also excruciatingly boring. Mandy is less boring but also a little less beautiful, I think. And founded on ideas that are more reductive and overplayed (a revenge story as a series of masculinity contests).

I admire Cosmatos’ work in many ways; he knows how to shoot reality in a totally unique fashion, and the acid trip sensibility of both movies is often gorgeous and impressively realized. But I still find them difficult to watch and not quite as rewarding as I could wish.

I figured out during the film that Cosmatos resembles no filmmaker so much as Guy Maddin, the Canadian auteur behind films like The Saddest Music in the World and The Forbidden Room. Both men are interested in creating dreamlike experiences, both are brilliant in their use of many technical and visual effects, both have spent their careers making pastiches of movies that don’t actually exist. Maddin makes silent films and black and white classics that never existed and/or were not nearly so surreal; Cosmatos said Beyond the Black Rainbow was based on the sci-fi VHS cover of a movie he never saw, and Mandy certainly feels like it’s extrapolated from heavy metal album covers and the painterly, evocative covers of old pulp sci-fi novels. The difference between the two is partly just that Cosmatos stays in the 80s and Maddin in the pre-WWII decades. But I maintain Cosmatos’ instinct toward languid, underwritten plots, toward violence, and toward discomfort makes his films much harder to sit through. If Maddin makes dreams, Cosmatos makes nightmares. During Maddin’s The Forbidden Room, an extremely dreamlike movie comprised of ten intercut silent movies Maddin wrote based on the surviving titles of lost films, I actually fell asleep and woke up later, not sure if I was still dreaming or if the movie was dreaming for me. In Mandy I felt a similar urge to sleep, but this time I resisted: like Cage’s wounded animal of a man after tragedy strikes, I feared what dreams may come.

It’s honestly very hard to correctly approach a movie like Mandy as a reviewer. On the one hand it is strange and unique and often beautiful and often hilarious, and you have probably never seen a movie quite like it. On the other hand, beyond that, the film doesn’t quite hold together, doesn’t quite say as much as I would like, feels somewhat unbalanced in its narrative and pacing. It is strange enough and good enough to be worth seeing as a fucked up, acid trip art movie; but it is also not the best version of Mandy it could have been, and those flaws are worth acknowledging.

David: You mean, besides The Good Place, because all recommendations should be The Good Place? (Did I mention it is back for its third season? Because it is, and you should watch it). Fine, something else then… This month I would offer up a qualified recommendation, since that is what we are doing apparently (and also you should just watch The Good Place). The MMORPG space is quite crowded and it can be hard for anything to stand out. That is what makes En Masse’s Tera so interesting. The game pulls its fighting style more from action RPGs than normal MMORPGs, which makes the combat infinitely more fun than most games in the space. The combat is complex and skill-based in a way that other MMORPGs just aren’t, with battles decided by your reflexes and skill. Add in that the game offers actual different play styles and classes that build upon the tank, healer, and DPS triangle of doom, and this game is loads of fun. Now why is this a qualified recommendation? Let’s just say everything that is not the combat is a bit of a mess. The UI is truly hideous, the servers can be kind of garbage, and some of the characters (and to a degree, art styles) are not, uh, for everyone. Plus, while the game is free-to-play, Tera a little too readily offers up loot that can generally only be used if an additional real money purchase is made, which feels a bit more predatory than I would like. Still, the game itself is free and the combat is fun, so it is a game that is at least worth giving a shot to see if it is to your liking, especially if you are tired of the same old, same old with your MMORPGs. Just make sure to watch The Good Place first.

That’s it for this month. Visitors to the Kraken will hopefully enjoy our festive October traditions, including free candy in the northwest ballroom, costume parties on Saturday nights, and hiding from the midnight carnival. If you pick a hiding place with a view, you might catch a glimpse of visitors from Octobers past marching in the carnival parade, all rags and chains and hollow stares… but take care they do not see you. Or next year you’ll be marching with them.