Episode 297 - John in Ireland

[kingstownted]

MP3 Direct Download

Welcome to our second listener-specific feedback episode. This time out we are blessed with luck of the Irish, our very own John in Ireland who has been a regular contributor to the voicemail line and forum. Always insightful, John called in to discuss a collection of topics in recent months which we have compiled together with Anthony and Ted's responses to deliver a guest hosted episode of the podcast.

Subjects include: commentary on the state of the Hellraiser franchise with a recommendation for the audio reading of Hellbound Heart by Barker himself, thoughts on the recent second attempt at Dredd on the big screen and how it captured the essence of what the character is meant to be, a full review of a 2012 Irish horror film Stitches, a discussion of the state of found footage as a genre and the inherent flaws it creates in storytelling, thoughts on The Shining and its related documentary Room 237, and a cutting summary of the state of The Walking Dead and the apparent lack of care by AMC to shape the narrative of its story.

We hope you enjoy the great collection of subjects and interesting insights from a favourite member of the horroretc community, and feel free to get your contributions in to have your voice heard and be a part of the show. In honour of John's homeland we close with a Gaelic greeting: "Go n-ithe an cat thú is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat" (loosely translated - "may the cat eat you, and may the cat be eaten by the devil"... hmmm maybe our Gaelic needs some work).

As always we welcome your comments: [e-mail]
Voicemail [phone]

[johnone]

Dear Horroretc

I wish to complain about this bonus episode . Having to listen to that hack John in Ireland for an hour with his idiotic opinions,,,( a voice mutters in his ear) ...yes I know I'm john in Ireland , I'm just hoping that by acting outraged that when the listers come to rightfully lynch me for hogging the podcast they won't realise it until I've made good my escape.

In all seriousness though , I just found this episode and all I can say is that I am touched and honoured that you thought my opinions and views desrved so much airtime...I just hope the listeners agree and if they don't , well I apologise in advance , they are just my opinions. In the meantime I will continue to send in the occasional review and thought as long as you want to listen.

Again thanks.
John In Ireland

(Although Tony , gotta tell you my wife is seriously getting worried with your thoughts on my accent )

[jamtomorrow]

Holy Hibernian horrorfest! John in Ireland talks a powerful lot of sense on most topics, and I always enjoy his addenda to any given episode, so I think he well deserves an edition to himself.
How about getting him on as a guest co-host?
Anyway, really enjoyable episode &'keep up the good work.

[thealleycat]

Thanks to HorrorEtc and John for sharing this. I really enjoyed the episode. But I liked the Jeff from SF episode, so maybe I'm out of touch.

[xtrialbyfirex]

May 1, 2013 23:46:01 GMT -5 thealleycat said:

Thanks to HorrorEtc and John for sharing this. I really enjoyed the episode. But I liked the Jeff from SF episode, so maybe I'm out of touch.

I enjoyed both episodes, I think John and Jeff are both great guests.

I'd disagree with John that found footage is a blight b/c of the unrealistic camera angels and stuff like that. IMHO that is nitpicking to an extreme. However, I'll readily admit I'm sick of them, but mostly b/c they're usually so cheap and look awful.

[kosayn]

Enjoyed this podcast. I thought John's theories about Walking Dead showed above average grasp of the kind of problems a serial TV drama can run into.

As far as found footage - sure, less and less of it is... profound footage. I didn't even finish watching The Bay. It did everything well in my opinion - except building tension.

I don't feel the same about the structure of found footage being inherently flawed, though. It is a shorthand, certainly - every found footage film has at least a little editing, and the idea is that presumably some eager film student came across the raw footage and cut out the hours and hours of non-activity to make something watchable out of it. Maybe they saw something on the news, and got all freaked out about it being connected, so they throw that in too. Then for whatever reason, they chuck it up on youtube, send a link to us, brought us a burned DVD, or whatever. Or maybe we're meant to think of ourselves as the discoverer.

It's a trick, certainly, to convince us that we're seeing rare footage of something out of the ordinary, and thus make us feel privileged to watch it. Call me a sucker but it almost always works on me, the same way a low-budget documentary usually does.

Many things shouldn't be done in found footage. Broader conspiracy plots shouldn't be followed right to their conclusions, just teased for the viewer's imagination to work on. That's why I loved Grave Encounters and The Last Exorcism, but thought Grave Encounters 2 was very lacking. Once you don't need your imagination anymore to figure out what's going on, I feel that any found footage movie will grind to a halt. The feeling that anything could happen just dies at that point, and suddenly the movie's plot becomes small and specific. It's a tough balance though, because relying on imagination and vagueness too much can make the movie frustrating.

There have been many bad attempts of late. Chernobyl Diaries blew a promising intro and concept by removing character interactions from the movie too fast. And there are many worse attempts. I actively want to forget watching stuff like The Tunnel.

But Cloverfield, Chronicle, Blair Witch, the first three Paranormals, REC... I think they all had mind-blowing payoffs that justified getting there in such a cryptic way. I think the subgenre isn't played out yet - it's just waiting for more great storytellers.

[johnone]

first off to all
Thanks for the kind words from everyone who actually said nice things both here and on Facebook , As I said I just hope i didn't ruin the episode for ye.

Secondly...Oh Goody an argument

Actually Kosayn and xtrialbyfirex

You see I think we actually agree...you both started off writing that you didn't agree with my statement and then you pointed out the same problems, If a found footage is well made and actually obeys it's own rules (again such as MAN BITES DOG) than great I have no problem but the problem is for the vast majority is they just don't..it It is just a lazy format to try to tell a really poor story ( And I happen to think Chronicle is a classic but is it actually found footage as it picks and chooses its moments of when it is a found footage film.) I'm actually kicking myself I didn't even mention the worst offender in my call and that was Apollo 18. (how the hell did NASA get the footage? They're using cine cameras with the apparent ability of never running out of film?)
Like I said if it's well thought out, well written or well made no problem unfortunately 95% of todays found footage simply isn't.

[hayden88]

Jolly good show! Thankyou Horror etc and thankyou to John in Ireland.
I have to agree about his statement on found footage movies. Sure there are some good ones, most notable to me being Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity 1 and possibly 2? But yup, just like zombies it has become such an overused cliche. Let's pray that some real imagination and inventiveness will make a comeback in horror cinema....soon!

[xtrialbyfirex]

May 11, 2013 0:47:19 GMT -5 johnone said:

first off to all
Thanks for the kind words from everyone who actually said nice things both here and on Facebook , As I said I just hope i didn't ruin the episode for ye.

Secondly...Oh Goody an argument

Actually Kosayn and xtrialbyfirex

You see I think we actually agree...you both started off writing that you didn't agree with my statement and then you pointed out the same problems, If a found footage is well made and actually obeys it's own rules (again such as MAN BITES DOG) than great I have no problem but the problem is for the vast majority is they just don't..it It is just a lazy format to try to tell a really poor story ( And I happen to think Chronicle is a classic but is it actually found footage as it picks and chooses its moments of when it is a found footage film.) I'm actually kicking myself I didn't even mention the worst offender in my call and that was Apollo 18. (how the hell did NASA get the footage? They're using cine cameras with the apparent ability of never running out of film?)
Like I said if it's well thought out, well written or well made no problem unfortunately 95% of todays found footage simply isn't.

Maybe I wasn't very clear I honestly couldn't care less if found footage follows it's own rules or is logical at all. I think that is expecting too much for movies that are usually straight to dvd.

Plus horror is 95% execution and 5% story (or in the case of a film like Suspiria it is 99.999999999% execution) so I honestly don't think telling a great story is first and foremost in a horror movie.

I hate found footage b/c they don't tend put much effort into making the film look good visually, have good acting, good music, or good effects and makeup. Plus I hate too much shaky cam.

So I guess we'll have to agree to disagree But again, good show John, and I'll be looking forward to hearing your next guest episode.