The Outlook Hotel

The major fault I see when I watch The Overlook Hotel is that it spends way too much time dropping unsubtle hints that much of Jack Torrance’s post-film tenure as janitor of the Overlook involved his being under the influence of Pennywise. Way too many red balloons floating around in the background of scenes for my liking.

[Via The Onion AV Club, via MetaFilter]

Yearning for Shoggoths

In the wake of Guillermo del Toro’s big night at the Oscars, here’s hoping someone will finally give him the money to show us his take on an Old One:

[From a New Yorker profile written when he was between films, having left the ill-fated effort to film The Hobbit and not yet turned his attention to Pacific Rim.]

Even though del Toro’s team had three months to experiment, the challenge was immense. The frozen city, for example, could emerge only after the artists had settled how the Old Ones moved, ate, and slept. “If you spend enough time strolling in the street—seeing a cathedral, seeing a door opening and closing in a building or a car—you understand the ergonomics of human beings,” he said. With a few key shots, del Toro needed to conjure, wordlessly, the lives of the aliens.

He could, you know. He really could.

Give him however much money he wants, send him off with Ron Perlman and Doug Jones and a bunch of creature designers to lead and see what comes back. Whether it’s a shoggoth or Baba Yaga or the ghost of Lobster Johnson or Hellboy in Hell, it’ll be worth seeing.

[Via Longform.org]