Halloween!

It's that time of year again! Scary movies and pumpkin in all of your food! What are you guys doing for Halloween?

My dad and I are planning on watching The Shining (it'll be my first time watching it). Aside from that, not too much planned. Probably "watch" the Sooners game (more like listening to my dad shout out the scores while I'm on my computer upstairs)

Awesome! I love The Shining! Have fun!

I'm not sure yet what I'll do. Probably just watch a bunch of movies.

A friend and I are hosting a halloween party ahhhhh i wish i could invite you all! we'd have so much fun haha

A lakehouse Halloween party would be so cool haha! Instead I'm probably going to just buy cheezies for myself and and take my youngest sister trick or treating.

yes it would! haha remember when we wanted to have a TLF convention xD

sounds fun! are you going to dress up? (2 years ago i dressed up and went with some friends and this lady thought i was their mom xD)

Nahh probably not. I have been mistaken for a parent one too many times and decided last year that it would be my last time dressing up. (I was a shield agent wearing high heels and sunglasses in the dark. that was not wise.)

Sounds like fun times for both of you guys!

If anyone has some free time I'll try to be on TLF a lot that weekend if you want to come chat! We could throw a mini chat party.

I found out that my dorm is showing The Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight on Halloween. I've never seen it but I always jump at the chance to watch a movie I haven't seen, especially on Halloween!

Well, after 20 years of living, I have finally seen The Nightmare Before Christmas. What did I think?

It was good and I liked it... but, not as much as everyone else seems to. I think it's just not my cup of tea, (I think) partly because I wasn't allowed to celebrate Halloween growing up, so Halloween stuff today doesn't really stick with me like it does with other people. The animation was nice (stop-motion animation has really started to grow on me recently and I admire the heck out of the effort). The story was okay. The characters were okay. The songs were okay (though "This is Halloween" is stuck in my head and will probably be stuck for a while). I liked the movie, just not as much as I think I should.

What do y'all think?

I actually didn't see that movie until last year, when I was 17. I personally loved it and it's grown on me even more since I first saw it.

Do I think it's worth all the hype? Well, not really, but I think the major factor in that is nostalgia, which you and I don't have for it since we didn't see it until we were older. I think people tend to remember it better than it is because of nostalgia.

However, that being said I really did love the movie. It does sort of have a nostalgic feel to it even though I didn't see it as a kid, probably because it's all about holidays and holidays are often associated with childhood. It's just one of those movies I could rewatch over and over. It's far from perfect but it's something I enjoy anyways.

Okay, I saw both ParaNorman and The Shining last night.

I liked ParaNorman! The animation was, as the 9th Doctor would say, FANTASTIC (as I said before, "stop-motion animation has really started to grow on me recently" and Laika Studios has some of the best stop-motion animation I've ever seen) and the story was pretty engaging. Some of the jokes were hit-and-miss, but my dad and I got good laughs out of it (and we cringed at the cringe-worthy scenes). I know I might get some flack (if that's a word) for this, but I think I like ParaNorman more than I like The Nightmare Before Christmas. But that's just me.

The Shining was just as creepy and scary as I thought it was going to be (which was a lot, but not too much for my taste esp. since I'm not in to scary movies at all). I can see why it's a classic. Though, I'm probably not going to rewatch it anytime soon. Not that it wasn't good or I didn't enjoy it, its just that I don't want to watch it again anytime soon. It is nice that I've finally seen it, esp. since it's also my first Stanley Kubrick movie. While I was watching it, I was sort of (not too much since I got "sucked in" to the movie) analyzing his direction to see what made him a good director and such.

Cool! You picked some good movies!

I've never actually seen Paranorman, but I set it up to record at my house and am going to watch it next time I visit. I've heard great things about it and am looking forward to watching it (I agree, the animation looks beautiful).

I know what you mean! It's an interesting movie. The thing I personally like about Kubrick is the atmospheres he creates. The funny thing about The Shining is that some of the character motivations make no sense, and the acting is hit or miss (I'm looking at you Shelley Duvall), but this is the one film where that actually works. Kubrick creates this amazing atmosphere of just pure weirdness and creepiness, and everything is just so bizarre and disorienting that all of the "mistakes" of the film just add to the disorienting atmosphere and make everything seem even scarier and crazier. Anyways I totally know what you mean about analyzing the direction; I find myself doing that a lot! But yeah for me personally the Kubrick movies have some great atmosphere, which honestly the music plays a huge part in as well.

For my Halloween week I watched four (technically three and a half) movies:

Jaws (which I had never seen I have no idea how I have lived so long and am even a film major and didn't see it until this year!). I really loved Jaws; it's definitely worthy of all the hype.

VHS: Ok so this was a random movie I just found on Netflix, but I'm really glad I decided to watch it! It was really terrifying, I think it may replace Blair Witch Project as the scariest movie I've ever seen! It was funny because at first I was thinking "Ugh, this is stupid, the acting is terrible, should I really watch this?" But it actually got better and better, and despite some stuff that could have been better, all around it was a very entertaining movie. The thing that really helps it is actually the found footage style. I'm not big on found footage, but when done right it can be very effective, and this film does it right. Also just the idea of the film (it is a series of tapes that show different scary or weird stories) is really creative. I loved the cool effects that came out of the VHS look they were going for. So yeah, terrifying, but creative. It was a fun experience, though I had a hard time sleeping that night

A Nightmare on Elm Street: Ok I actually tried to watch this but halfway through the video broke, so I guess I'll have to wait to see it another time before I give my consensus. I was enjoying it up until then, though.

Rosemary's Baby: This one was fantastic! It was so suspenseful and the acting was phenomenal! Oh gosh the end was so creepy, though!! I'd actually recommend this to you, allishmalli. I think you would like it. It's sort of like a Hitchcock film in that it relies on building suspense, and it builds up really well to an exciting climax.

Honestly, I am too much of a baby to ever watch horror films, but those all sound interesting!

So, I learned literally the day before halloween that we were allowed to dress up at work, as long as it didn't interfere with our tasks. Cue me scrambling around at second hand stores looking for a costume to wear the night of the 30th! I ended up finding a tunic and pants that looked vaguely jedi-ish and borrowed my brother's broken lightsaber and had my aunt sew me a brown strip of fabric for a belt and ta-da! Jedi costume in three hours! I'm surprised I pulled it off, but I got so many compliments at work and my supervisor told me i looked 'cute' haha. Also, because I've still got an "In training" sticker on my nametag, I got called a Padawan quite a lot, but it was great! It made working eight hours on halloween actually a lot of fun.

Here's my costume- they genuinely let me wear the lightsaber on the floor!

Love the costume SWA! You did a great job! And awesome that they let you wear costumes at your work!

Oh yeah, I used to be so squeamish about horror films but now that I'm a film major I don't get scared by movies as easily and spend most of the time just trying to figure out how they did those effects/camera angles Though there are still a few that legitimately scare me.

Starwarsartist wrote:

Honestly, I am too much of a baby to ever watch horror films, but those all sound interesting!

Typically, so am I. Typically, I have no desire to watch something that's going to scare me.

But, I thought since I suspected that I wasn't going to be doing anything for Halloween and I've heard The Shining was a classic and I was interested in watching it.

I think part of the thing that kept me from being too scared was (along with squeezing my dad's arm when things got intense) that I started analyzing the direction (aka reminding myself that it's just a movie) rather than totally getting sucked in to the point where I want to turn it off and hide under the covers for the next week. Plus, we were watching the TV version, so there were semi-frequent interruptions in the movie so I could take a breather after something intense...