October 2020

I avoided seeing Rocky Horror forever, mostly because throughout high school and college, I found all the attention-starved theater kids who worshipped it to be so irritating. Decades later, I can’t help but be charmed by how giddily transgressive it is.

oh no i lost ken twitter.com/KenHatesSoftwa…

Happy Halloween! Here’s the collaborative process behind @jenmussari’s terrifying custom lettering for Robtober 2020. v6.robweychert.com/blog/2020/10/j…

Every October, I make a schedule of dozens of horror films, focusing mostly on ones I haven’t seen before. I call it Robtober, only half-ashamedly. It’s fun! For the past few years, I’ve announced the schedule’s contents via blog posts with increasingly elaborate designs, effectively dressing my site up for Halloween. This year, I wanted to harness some of my favorite visual themes from horror movie marketing (such as posters and trailers), and distorted hand-lettering… See more →

When Melanie says to Sgt. Parks, “It’s not over, it’s just not yours anymore,” I so badly wanted Sgt. Parks to be Mitch McConnell.

I get that when your whole thing is solidifying minority rule for a generation, you spike the football on a night like this. But the spite here is still breathtaking. twitter.com/JudiciaryGOP/s…

Like all Dahl adaptations, this pulls its punches more than it should, but Jim Henson’s magic and the crazy camera work manage to make it truly special, and it’s miles beyond the atrocious Zemeckis version that came 30 years later. The experience was also elevated for me by watching it with my partner, whose lifelong idolization of the titular witches is morbidly adorable.

just once

during a debate

when a candidate concludes a statement

i want them to say

“we’ll be right back after these messages”

In my dream, @OfficialJLD and I were crushing it on a cover of a fake Replacements song, but our band broke up midway through. A+ dream, would dream again, no notes

The office politics themes and serial killer plot may be uninspiring, but Office Killer’s overall craft is very enjoyable. Though it doesn’t noticeably echo the self-portraiture Cindy Sherman is best known for, the cinematography is deliciously and unselfconsciously skewed, which, in tandem with the chamber ensemble score, lends it a peculiar elegance. The whole thing is pretty firmly dated by its pre-Y2K anxiety and the ostentatious graphic design of its titles (courtesy of Bureau),… See more →

Tales from the Hood’s vengeful ghosts aren’t nearly as scary as the real-world racism and cycles of violence that provoke them. The film’s portrayals of those social ills are anything but subtle, but they are nevertheless undeniably horrific.

Why in the world did it take me so long to see Street Trash?! It might be the most grotesque film I’ve ever seen, and its gleeful commitment to thorough vulgarity wouldn’t be a virtue if it weren’t made with such flair. It’s several steps above what I remember of the Troma movies, but doesn’t quite reach the bravura heights of Sam Raimi’s and Peter Jackson’s early splatstick gems. Street Trash is apparently also the… See more →

Neither the trailer nor writer/director Leigh Whannell’s bonafides in the Saw and Insidious franchises gave me much confidence that this Invisible Man remake would be any good, so its overall high quality is a very pleasant surprise indeed. Its loudest moments are its weakest, but thankfully it spends much of its time quietly plumbing the depths of Elisabeth Moss’s crippling PTSD. If there is to be a modern version of the scream queen, may Moss’s… See more →

The terrifying title lettering is a handmade @jenmussari special. I’ll share details soon about the super fun process of working with her. twitter.com/robweychert/st…

It doesn’t look like it, but this is a blog post! Personal sites are fun and I wish everyone had one. twitter.com/robweychert/st…

A little late this year, but here is my horror movie list for the month, all dressed up for Halloween. v6.robweychert.com/blog/2020/10/r…

Every October, I put together a big schedule of horror films to watch, focusing mostly on ones I haven’t seen before. It’s usually a mix of home viewings and public theatrical screenings, and the schedule is published both for posterity and for the sake of anyone who might like to join me. This year, sadly, the pandemic will keep me out of theaters, and guests won’t be able to join me for home viewings. But… See more →

Wrote a few words about Eddie Van Halen. v6.robweychert.com/blog/2020/10/e…

It’s the smile that always sticks with me.

There was no shortage of smiles in the flamboyant and hedonistic hair band scene that sprung up in the wake of Van Halen’s titanic success. And most of them were the devilish smiles of libertine young men who were delighted to be getting away with something: namely, overindulging in the intoxicants and promiscuity that were frowned upon by the priggish adults of the Reagan era.

To whatever… See more →

like when netflix adds christmas movies on january 1 twitter.com/MikeIsaac/stat…

Eddie Van Halen is dead. Long live Eddie Van Halen. I don’t know what to say. I’m crushed. twitter.com/RollingStone/s…

My annual roundup of @OIAF_Animation, with reviews of every short film in competition and embeds of my favorites. v6.robweychert.com/blog/2020/10/o…

I wasn’t able to make my annual trip to Ottawa this year for obvious reasons, but thankfully, in lieu of canceling the festival, they took the whole thing online, so I was still able to get my animation fix. Since all kinds of events have had to rapidly move online this year with wildly varying results, I kind of expected it to be a shit show, but with the exception of a few hiccups, I… See more →

Fifteen years with @chambermonster. 💗💗💗

I’m returning some IKEA stuff and it looks like I’m hosting the shittiest kids party ever