Author: Anne-Marie Ormsby

Movie, music and book geek, and a writer of the paranormal thrillers Purgatory Hotel and The Tower, out now.

Facebook. Why is it so good?

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I was having a conversation the other day with an old old friend who I now only ever see on Facebook, due to the fact that I moved away from where I grew up. When we met up for a drink we ended up talking about Facebook…mainly about why he hated it so much.

It was the same sort of conversation I’ve had before where someone says they don’t understand how I can spend so much time on it.

Ok so i can’t join in on the baby and kiddie photos thing as I don’t have any and most of the girls I went to school with now have several children. I haven’t seen any of these ladies since we left school with one exception, so it’s odd to know so much about their lives even though I haven’t physically been involved in them since we were all 16.

My friend complained about how he had to keep reading updates about his friends kids and how he didn’t actually care about whether ‘Little Johnny’ had just had a bath or whatever. And I agree to a certain extent, it doesn’t change my day to know if my friends daughter has just smeared lipstick all over her cheeks, but it does make me smile. Just as I feel sorry for them when they post that they have been up all night with a poorly baby.

Just as it makes me smile when another friend will update to say she has a hangover or when I read a check in from one of my friend’s way down in New Zealand.

Without Facebook i wouldn’t know that a friend was on a beach in Australia, or that my nephew was in a restaurant in Notting Hill. Tiny details that wont affect my day, but it makes me feel like I am more connected to the people I care about.

Living away from family and friends can be lonely at times, but Facebook has always allowed me to feel like I am still in these people’s lives and they are still in mine.

I get to see the nights out my friends have without having been there, I get to see the places my cousins are visiting or living in without feeling the distance too much.

I like seeing what music my friends are listening to, what mood has taken them and what is inspiring them at that moment, because sometimes it inspires me too. I had a whole conversation recently with two old friends over a song that was posted. A song we had all danced to regularly on our teenage nights out. It was nostalgia and a virtual disco as we all rocked out to the same song with so many miles and years between us and those heady days of our youth.

In short I think Facebook rocks because it answers all the questions I want to ask people I  care about all the time…what are you listening to right now? What was the last movie you saw? What book are you reading? What did you do with your weekend? What do you ‘Like’?

I love it for the fact that even though my friend hates Facebook, it’s the only way I get to stay in touch with him on a regular basis and read about the things I don’t get to hear him complain about anymore. Because I’d rather hear about what my friends want to moan and vent about than not hear from them at all.  Because it’s human nature to talk about boring stuff and laugh about the mundane things.

Facebook rocks because I get to stay in touch with people i don’t get to see anymore.

And also because it’s how my husband found me……

The Art of The Motion Picture Soundtrack

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To me soundtracks have always been a huge part of what makes a movie great and unforgettable. I always felt more moved by the music or song that was playing in a scene, and I wonder if I would have cried as much at movies like The English Patient if the music had not been so beautiful. Music Scores have populated my CD collection since I was old enough to save pocket money for them; I recall getting the bus into town just so I could buy the Michael Kamen soundtrack to ‘Robin Hood; Prince of Thieves’, and not long after doing the same to get the soundtrack to ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ by Wojciech Kilar.

Initially my love of soundtrack music was due to having liked the movie, but I was also developing a taste for the composer rather than the movie it went with. I knew the soundtrack to ‘Betty Blue’ long before I was old enough to see it and soon was hunting out other soundtracks by Gabriel Yared such as ‘The Lover’ and years later ‘The English Patient.’ I was also very fond of Eric Serra after having seen ‘The Big Blue’, he went on to do other amazing works such as ‘Leon’ and ‘Goldeneye’. One composer whose soundtracks I loved so much was Vangelis. I had not seen any other movie he had done apart from ‘Blade Runner’ but I soon had a collection of his other soundtracks.

It was rare that I liked a soundtrack that had actual songs as opposed to a score. The first one of these I owned was Dirty Dancing (I still love those fabulous 60’s songs,) shortly followed by the soundtrack to Young Guns 2. I know, shameful, but i was a big Bon Jovi fan when I was a young teenager!. I think the next one i had put on my Christmas list was ‘Until the End of The World.’ An amazing Wim Wender’s film that i did not see for some years after I got the soundtrack.

Since then there have been a plethora of great movie soundtracks, my CD collection is still largely soundtracks and even in this time of MP3 and i-tunes, i still like to own the CD. I could do a huge list of great soundtracks but this blog will not include the music scores, I’ll save those for another time…..

Here’s a list of some favourites, click the movie title to link to viewing the rest of the soundtrack.

 

Until The End of The World

Highlights; Fretless – REM, (I’ll Love you) Til the End of The World – Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, Days – Elvis Costello

Pulp Fiction

Highlights; Lets Stay Together  – Al Green, Girl You’ll Be A Woman Soon – Urge Overkill, Son of a Preacher Man – Dusty Springfield

Garden State

Highlights; Let Go  – Frou Frou, Caring is Creepy – The Shins, Fair – Remy Zero,

Vanilla Sky

Highlights; Sweetness Follows – REM, Have You Forgotten – Red House Painters, Last Goodbye – Jeff Buckley. And the Sigur Ros Song that is not included on the CD – The Nothing Song.

Goodfellas

Highlights; Rags to Riches – Tony Bennett, Beyond The Sea – Bobby Darin, Stardust – Billy ward and His Dominoes

Cruel Intentions

Highlights; Colourblind – Counting Crows, Ordinary Life – Kristen Barry, Every You and Every Me – Placebo

Magnolia

Highlights; Wise Up, One, Save Me

LA Confidential

Highlights; Ac-cent-tchu-ate The Positive – Johnny Mercer, Wheel of Fotrune – Kay Starr, Hit the Road To Dreamland – Betty Hutton

Catch and Release

Highlights; Razor – Foo Fighters, My Drug Buddy- Lemonheads, There Goes the Fear – Doves

Sleepless in Seattle

Highlights; In the Wee Small Hours – Carly Simon, Bye Bye Blackbird – Joe Cocker, Make Somebody Happy – Jimmy Durante.

The Last Kiss

Highlights; Ride – Carey Brothers, Today’s the Day – Aimee Mann, Warning Sign – Coldplay

Comic Cool…..

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The Comic Book. For years their contents were the stuff of the small screen, Superman, Batman, Spiderman, The Hulk, all became fabulously successful TV series, even now they are still entertaining, perhaps for reasons of nostalgia rather than for the quality of the acting and special effects.

Over the years other big screen movie franchises have produced very good and also very poor comic book adaptations. The 80’s Superman was everything a family movie was about when I was little, a hero, a baddie, the world in danger and a girl that needed saving. I think Superman movies are the reason I fell in love with comic books and the movies that were created from them.

Tim Burton’s Batman was the movie that cemented my love of Batman and the reason I began reading Batman comics. And it also made The Joker my favourite comic book bad guy. The Batman films that followed wobbled in and out of entertainment, different directors and actors made the role of Batman become less of the batman I had in mind.

Reading comics such as Arkham Asylum, The Killing Joke and Judgement on Gotham (somebody PLEASE make a movie of that comic!) gave me a love for the darker characters that were Batman and Joker. While I will always love Tim Burton’s Batman, for me the best portrayal of Batman came with Christopher Nolan’s dark and epic Batman Begins. It seemed more styled around the bat flapping darkness of Dave McKean’s art, the creepy and twisted world of Arkham and its residents finally came to life in Nolan’s vision of Gotham. Similarly, when he made The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger’s Joker finally had the frighteningly insane edge that I had found in Grant Morrisons comic Arkham Asylum.

And it seemed that the cinema discovered the world of comics en masse. After the original Batman movies fell into the ‘Un-cool’ after the awful Batman and Robin, one would have thought comics books could slip back into the realms of geekdom again. But luckily a rash of adaptations sprung up, X-Men, The Incredible Hulk, Daredevil, Elektra, The Fantastic Four, Spiderman, and Superman. A super hero renaissance proved massively successful with a whole new generation and comic books became cool again.

Aside from the huge Marvel and DC comic movie franchises, the popularity of comics allowed for several other Graphic Novels to be made into movies.

Frank Miller’s Sin City was a long time favourite set of comics for me, and when i knew a movie was being made, I wondered how it could be done. One of the things I loved so much about the comics was the art, the simple images and basic colours that had a film noir quality to them. Robert Rodriguez’ movie was everything it should have been, visually beautiful, brilliantly acted. It was as though the pages of the comic had come to life.

Similarly Mike Mignola’s art was present in Guillermo Del Toro’s adaptation of Hellboy. An unlikely superhero though he was, the Big Red was popular enough that a sequel was made. It might not have had all the clout of the first movie but it was still a visual feast for the eyes with lots of the usual Hellboy humour.

Another very unlikey hero was brought to life from my favourite graphic novel by director James McTeigue with V for Vendetta. Written by The Wachowski Brother’s of Matrix fame, it may not have had the box office success of films like X-Men, it had a huge cult following. The faceless vigilante voiced by the fabulous Hugo Weaving was a dark hero, much like The Crow had been, meting out justice in a rather violent way. Revenge is always a great reason for amazing knife fights and shoot ‘em ups.

I’m not sure if it was my interest in Jack the Ripper or just my love of the graphic novel but I also really enjoyed The Hughes Brothers adaption of Alan Moore’s From Hell. Aside from an odd choice of casting Heather Graham as Mary Kelly, I liked it.

I can’t not mention Tank Girl, just because I think she rocks and Jamie Hewlett’s girl deserves to be more loved than she is. I liked the movie, not many others do, even Jamie Hewlett doesn’t like to talk about it, but I liked her, even though she was played by an American.

There are so many comic book adaptations now, i lose count, a great deal of them don’t get the following they deserve, I liked The Punisher, but so many didn’t; I sort of liked Ghost Rider and almost nobody did; I hated 30 days of Night and yet so many people loved it. Comic movies like Ghost World would never be mainstream in the same way as Fantastic Four but then neither was the subject matter. However, comic fans always know the good ones shouldn’t be forgotten.

Comic Cool is still running at full speed with recent movies such as Watchmen, Iron Man and its sequel, Kick-Ass, Jonah Hex, The Losers and Scott Pilgrim Vs The World. And we have yet to see Captain America, Men in Black 3, Thor, Green Lantern,Wolverine2, Iron Man 3 and the much anticipated Avengers.

I honestly never thought comic books would storm the cinema in the way they have, making me realise I had been wrong all along about comics. They aren’t just the domain of geeks, they belong to everyone, or at least the geek that lives in everyone.

What makes a good Scary Movie?

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The close proximity of Halloween along with watching Mark Gatiss ‘History of Horror’ on BBC 3 has got me thinking about the great scary movies that we should all be watching this Halloween weekend.

The first scary movie I saw stayed with me for the rest of my life, one scene in particular presenting itself in nightmares. ‘The Evil Dead’ was and is my favourite Zombie movie; to be fair I don’t actually like zombie movies, all that eating of brains and insides just makes me feel ill, but ‘The Evil Dead’ has a great sense of humour about it and Bruce Campbell makes it totally watchable.

Beyond that I saw a variety of the late 70’s early 80’s horrors, one of which I have never heard mentioned when discussing movies, perhaps because it was so awful? ‘Christina’ i think it was called and seemed to be about a Frankenstein type experiment putting the vengeful mind of a introverted, bullied and facially disfigured girl into the body of a sexy beautiful woman. Needless to say, madness and murder ensues.

Hammer Horror never appealed to me, the pinkish orange of the blood never sat right with me, I preferred black and white thrillers such as ‘Psycho’ and comedy thrillers like Bob Hope’s ‘The Cat and the Canary.’

It wasn’t until I was 18 that I saw the movie I consider the scariest film ever. ‘The Shining’ and other paranormal horrors that followed seem to bother me more than any vampire, serial killer or zombie ever has. The desolation of the hotel, the endless long corridors of empty rooms stretching away in the cold hotel would probably send any one mad even without the help of murderous spirits.  The simplicity of a children’s ball rolling down an empty hallway towards the young boy is enough to raise hairs. These simple scenes, though creepy, are like warnings of the more graphic and grotesque scenes that follow Particularly, the scene in the hallway where Danny sees the two girl ghosts  inviting him to play with them ‘forever’ with a spliced frame of their bloody murder……I still have to look away at that moment.

If I have learnt anything about what scares me when it comes to movies, it’s that you throw a haunting from a dead child in the mix and I am going to have trouble going to the bathroom during the night. Japanese horrors used that imagery and back story to great affect in The Ring, The Grudge and Dark Water and while not as good in its entirety; A Tale of Two Sisters has a few alarming scenes thrown in.  The American remakes of these movies don’t quite have the same feel to them as the originals, however the sight of Samara crawling out of the TV in ‘The Ring’ or the vengeful blood soaked ghost of ‘The Grudge’ crawling down the stairs translates fairly well. Another spooky children offering worth watching is Spanish movie The Orphanage, with its unexpectedly disturbing faceless child ghost.

More mainstream movies that delivered in that area were the TV movie of ‘The Woman in Black’ (soon to be remade by Jane Goldman) featuring a ghost child who likes to throw balls and leave toy soldiers in peoples beds, and the 1980 George C Scott movie ‘The Changeling.’ Scott plays a recently widowed concert pianist who moves to an old house in the desolate Pacific Northwest only to find that something in the house is trying to get his attention. The use again of desolate wintry locations and the children’s toys add an effortlessly creepy tone to the movie.

Another parapsychological horror that slipped under the radar for many was ‘The Machinist’ director Brad Anderson’s early movie ‘Session 9’, about a group of men clearing asbestos from a derelict insane asylum.  English actor Peter Mullan does a fabulous turn as the foreman bothered by the asylums lingering inmates.

I deliberately haven’t mentioned some of the more run-of-the-mill horrors that everyone knows and loves; while ‘Halloween’ is still one of my favourite movies of its genre, I cant say it ever kept me awake at night. If you want more ideas for Halloween viewing, get onto the BBC iPlayer and watch the 3 part series ‘A History of Horror’, its a damn good look at the genre from the early black and white’s to the American slasher movies of the 70’s. Plenty of viewing material there to give you a Halloween scream.

I figure the scariest it can get for me is if someone made a movie about an insane asylum haunted by the ghost of a small child. Still waiting.