If I Had A Voice I Would Sing

Hey:

Man, it’s June 9th. That just seems brain-breaking to me.

Also brain-breaking? How long it’s been since I last wrote something to all y’all. I really figured May was gonna be my “blab” month where I just shot my mouth of in short posts, probably frequent, about just whatever came to mind. Instead, I once again mentally out-maneuvered myself and apparently achieved an almost zen state of blankness? Lucky me, I guess.

I have always held off on writing posts in advance and then scheduling them. But seeing Graeme manage to continue to churn out so many posts on his personal blog despite all the writing that he does really has me reconsidering it. Maybe June is going to be the month where I try writing and scheduling posts in advance…or maybe I’m going to manage a new form of block to stop that path forward too? I dunno.

Anyway, I thought I’d at least get something out there to let you know I’m alive (and let me know it too)—I don’t especially feel inspired to talk about comics, so I’m just gonna shoot my mouth off about comics and other stuff too over several shorter posts (I hope). Let’s see how it goes.

The First Omen: This is the first movie where the trailers just sold me on it in I don’t remember how long. The first one I saw was that really fun ‘70s style trailer with the music amped up and great voiceover work and some kind of aging effect and it just worked.

And then the second trailer I saw was I guess the “official” one, where all the footage was reversed (set to Fever Ray’s “If I Had A Heart”) and that was just aces. I think I watched that trailer three times.

So amped for the movie, despite not being an Omen fanboy. (I saw the original only, I dunno, six or seven years ago or something—Harlan Ellison’s textual histrionics about the movie kept me away for way too long—and was kinda surpised by how much I liked it.)

But yeah, The First Omen—it worked. Kinda like Late Night With The Devil, the stuff I loved about it, I really loved but I’m willing to admit it’s not flawless. Director Arkasha Stevenson is the real deal, though, no doubt: part of what I loved about the trailer were these just perfectly designed shots—The First Omen is in the paranoid lady genre, and part of what’s so great about it is how it doesn’t overplay its hand with its “isolated American nun in a Roman convent where all is not what it seems” setting—or, rather, it uses the visual framing of the shots to overplay that hand: women framed in shots where their surroundings are ready to devour them.

Sadly, I was already spoiled on that amazing shout-out to Possession (and sorry if I spoiled it for you) but it was still amazing. I’m not sure how I feel about Nell Tiger Free—I kinda tapered off on Servant but I think a case could be made she’s better there than here—but I gotta admit she did a great job with that scene. To put it mildly, it’s a pretty safe bet that when an actor redoes a scene originally done by Isabell Adjani they’re going to get their ass handed to them on a plate. But I think NTF pulled it off.

The movie’s ending gets super draggy at the end—if there’s any genre that doesn’t need a seven minute set-up after the finale for a sequel, it’s the horror movie—and soured me a bit on the whole deal. No small part of me hopes Arkasha Stevenson uses this movie to get the gig adapting Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers, rather than doing The Second Omen (or The First Omen Returrns or whatever dum shit they’ll call it).

But whatevs. Good fun. Doesn’t talk down to the material. Dug it.

So, yeah. I started to write about another movie, deleted it, started on yet another movie, deleted that. Let me quit while I’m ahead and come back sooner?

I hope you’re well. Take care of yourself. It’s not always as easy as it looks.

-Jeff