I see a lot of movies every year. A
ton. But this year I’ve decided I don’t see enough movies, so one of my
New Year Resolutions was to simply see more. And to write about them.
See, that’s the other half of the equation: I see a ton of movies, but
I write about comparatively few of them. There are a lot of reasons,
but they mainly boil down to the fact that I feel the  need to do long
form reviews, and sometimes – like in the midst of Sundance – I just
don’t have the time.

And
so was born this new blog! I aim to make an entry for every single
movie I see in 2010. Some entries may be very short, some may be
lengthy. Entries may take a couple of days to be posted. Let’s see how
long this lasts.

One
last  thing: one of my main objectives this year is to rewatch more
movies. I know this sounds like a strange goal, but there are films I
haven’t seen since high school, which means it’s been almost a lifetime
since I saw them. Recently I rewatched Black Christmas for the first
time since the 1980s, and I might as well have been seeing the movie
for the first time. I’m interested in getting a look at some movies I
loved or hated twenty or even ten years ago and seeing how I feel about
them now.

Let’s begin…

#50 Halloween (Commentary track)
1978
d. John Carpenter

I wanted to make the 50th entry in this blog something special, but then I got invited to do some on-camera interviews for an upcoming A&E Inside Story about the making of the original Halloween, so I had to fit this into my schedule to get up to speed.

Man, this movie is so fucking good. What was nice about watching Halloween with the commentary track on was that it allowed me to watch the movie as a piece of filmmaking, and not just through the prism of a horror movie. The images stood on their own, and Carpenter’s camerawork and the excellent editing really made a special impression. I think what gets lost in a lot of discussion of the original film is how simply well-made it is.

The commentary track on the Blu-Ray is fine, although I understand it’s a mash up of other commentaries. It’s obviously old stuff, since the deceased Debra Hill is on it; listening to her in the 90s talk with regret about spawning the modern slasher genre is interesting. I would love a new commentary coming from the point of view of Halloween post-remake. One of the things that Rob Zombie’s terrible version did is remind us what made the first movie special. By getting it so wrong, that film allows us to remember what was so right.

The Blu-Ray is gorgeous, by the way. Highly recommended and only about ten bucks. You can buy it through CHUD right here.