Shudder never ceases to amaze me with their original program, movies they make for that horror streaming platform. A Wounded Fawn could be called art horror. It could be called body horror and mindfuck psychological horror, because it is all that. Co-written and directed by Travis Stevens(producer of ‘Girl On The Third Floor’ and ‘Jakob’s Wife’), this little movie with only two actors most of the time, shows how you can get great movie with little money if the story and idea are alright. Story starts when Bruce(Josh Ruben of ‘Scare Me’ and ‘Werewolves Within’) loses at the auction for eerie statue. He then goes to dinner to a house owned by winner of the auction Kate(Malin Barr of ‘Honeydew’) and we find out Bruce is a serial killer devoted to some pagan deity which compels him to kill. Fast forward, Bruce takes our main character Meredith (Sarah Lind – ‘The Humanity Bureau’) to a house deep in the woods which previously belonged to Kate. Meredith sees women that should not be there, supernatural things start to happen, and then Bruce tries to kill her. End of chapter one. Why? Because then movie totally nicely surprises me turning from boring serial killer chase I thought it would be to mindfuck psychological body folk horror with Bruce paying karma vengeance for his deeds. Some parts are so poetical, so beautiful done with such colors that reminded me of Argento’s Suspiria by its beauty, not story. Also, the ending is so nice, and poetic justice never sounded nicer. Acting and characters could be better, but since this is mostly two characters movie, it doesn’t really matter. Good one indeed!
Kud Idijoti from Pula are one of punk bands that has influence on the lives of thousands. Legions of punk and, I hate this word, but I will use it, alternative kids from this region smiled, sang, drank, loved, hated and cried with their songs. Tusta and his band were voice of the generation torn by war, nationalism, hate, death and sorrow. This long awaited documentary finally arrived and played in theatre of our hometown, so it was great to be able to see it at last. The movie is in fact, in my opinion, more a documentary about the band Kud Idijoti themselves and less about Tusta, and the movie is broken in two halves. First half tells the story about the rise of the band and becoming one of the most popular bands in the ex Yugoslavia underground scene. The second half tells about the 90-ies, war and nationalism, the band´s struggle to be the voice in the darkness and because of that they became the target of the nationalist attacks, press silence, censorship and they played very few shows. Subsequently the movies tells private story of Tusta, his loves, life, work and subsequently premature death of throat cancer in 2012. This is a good movie, but there are some things that bothered me. First, former bassist Fric annoyed me a lot with his banter and too much egoism and talk about himself and his importance, the filmmakers gave him just too much space in the movie. Second, there could have been a lot more anecdotes in the movie about life and times on the road which would be great to hear. Third, there are many known and less known musicians, journalists and label owners talking in the movie, but along with their names, the filmmakers could also state who are they, what they do or similar, just write it along with their names. Fourth, I don´t like psychodelic light moments in the movie, at the end especially, if it was meant to be poetic, well it was not. But, this movie is a great documentary about us, scene and times we lived and still live. Tusta was man like all of us, with his flaws and virtues, but he influenced us to be better people, so we thank him forever for that.
The modern living has made us happy, giving us some of the newest technological discoveries and gadgets, that our grandparents, even parents never could imagine that will exist one day. But, it has also made us more complacent and more lazy because we are leaning on gadgets to pull us through our day, making our wishes true and lulling us in the false sense of happines.
Like everything else, the movie industry suffered too under the new technologies making internet pirates easy to steal movies, sometimes before they arrive in cinemas and uploading it on the web for everyone to have and watch. There is no righteous angel among us who read this, all of us sometimes used this pirated links and downloaded our movie or tv show, not to mention music albums.
When I was a boy, that was in the 1980-ies, there was one cinema in my hometown Čakovec, Croatia, called Dom(eng.Home) and I really felt at home there. We watched everything there except soft porn. We would see that too, but we werent allowed to. Since we lived in communist Yugoslavia, the school indoctrinated kids through cinema among other things, so they often took us there on Saturday morning to see some war movie about Yugoslav partisans, or some kid movie with subtle indoctrination underneath the storyline. In the evenings, we used to go see old Hong Kong karate movies or c-production of action and adventure movies. I still can remember the smell of that cinema, slight mix of cigarettes, stale leather, sweat and other nice odours.
Two events in this cinema stayed especially imprinted on my brain and memory cells. First, I remember my dad took me there to see Star Wars:The Empire Strikes Back. The cinema was so full that they gave us some old wooden extra chair and I sat through the whole movie on my dads lap and I was pretty heavy for a kid back then. Imagine the hard time he had holding my fat little ass in his lap for more than two hours. The second time was I went to see Karate Kid 2 all alone. The cinema was full of soldiers and gipsies and after the movie the gypsies were trying the moves that they saw in the film on the kids in front of the cinema, so I had to run home not to get my ass kicked.
Centar za kulturu(eng Culture Center) in my hometown nowadays
Then everything changed. Right in the middle of the main square of my hometown opened the new cinema/theater called Centar za kulturu(eng.Culture Center). We were shocked and could not believe our eyes and noses. This new cinema played mostly newer blockbuster movies and had wider space between the seats for your feet and it actually smelled good.
At first, we were very happy but there were times when a movie played in the old cinema that we really wanted to see, but at the same time something newer and more attractive was playing at the new cinema, so as we still can not be in two places at once, we decided that we go for the new cinema.
Then came the war and all that troubled and dark times, so cinema Dom closed its gates forever in the beginning of the 90-ies. Centar za kulturu still exists to this day holding many theater plays and of course showing movies, now in digital and 3D versions. We still go to the cinema but not as much as we used to, but we still manage to go see at least Star Wars, Marvel and DC movies. The modern age and technology progressed but also made us lazy to go see movies in the cinema. Do you guys still go to the cinema?
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 