John Carpenter's "The Ward"
Posted: Fri Sep 17, 2010 3:05 amEscape from New York played first, to roaring applause when just about every name appeared in the credits.
What blew me away was the quality of the print....no scratches, specks, flickering,fades, anything.... then it was mentioned later that this was a Blu-Ray we were watching,
It doesn't occur to me that a blu-ray can be projected in a cinema, but why not, when you think about the resolution.... The darks, though, were very dark, whereas on tv, all the dark/light levels would seem more balanced. These are some pretty rich darks, too, so it looked great on screen.
Immediately after the movie was the discussion with Carpenter, hosted by horror director Mick Garris (involvement with Carpenter is that he got him to come back from self-imposed retirement after Ghosts of Mars, to direct episodes for Masters of Horror, which he created), who does what hosts do in this kind of thing, guide the conversation and eventually fielded questions from audience.
I thought I saw Fred Dekker in the audience, but I wasn't in the position to go and find out, but sitting a couple rows behind me was a Carpenter regular, Peter Jason, along with another actor, in a row of reserved seats. Afterwards, as Carpenter left out a side door with his group, I was able to briefly say hi to Garris and comment on Trailers from Hell, when he was met up by his wife Cynthia, who appears in all his movies (Susan Stern in The Stand, for example). Nice, polite, conversation was short and to the point, and then a few minutes later was Escape from L.A......
....still one my least favorite Carpenter movies, but in a theater there seemed to be a little bit more sense of fun about it. Too many convenient comparisons to Escape from New York, both in story and image, and the satirical fun was a little too broad to have any real bite to it, but the overzealous president was a nice creepy touch.
Strange, also, stepping out of that movie onto Hollywood Boulevard at midnight on a Friday Night. All the various L.A. riff-raff that was onscreen in the movie was all over the place.
Hollywood Boulevard has always been trashy and glitzy by day, trashy and low-life at night, but it seems to be getting worse, along with my getting older and having less tolerance of it. One thing IS gone from the 70's, though, and that was the rampant drug culture, prostitution and hustling all over the place, but the vices of the subcultures are still there, just with an added air of fascism thrown in (cop cars with red-n-blues everywhere).
I recorded 30 minutes or so of the conversation with Garris and Carpenter onto my camera (the visual part is useless), they spoke for about 40 minutes......when I have a moment or few, I'll transcribe some of what was discussed and come back with that.
OH... and here is the church exterior from Prince of Darkness, right in Little Tokyo, just off 1st Street on Judge John Aiso Street.
(Little Tokyo was neat, mostly little restaurants, bric-a-brac-y junk, clothing and couture, and one Japanese Toy Store (Jungle), which was fun to look at, but a little pricey and not really extravagant in their selection.)
