It’s common for films to be described as ‘breathtaking’ or that they ‘will take your breath away’. I’ve never had a film do that to me, ever. Not until now, anyway.
Anna Melikyan’s award-winning 2007 Russian film Rusalka did that to me just now.
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Horror. It’s difficult to actually even define what it actually is, and it overlaps into so many other spheres that it isn’t really easy to define what it is not. I’ve talked about a few horror-themed games, and I’ll be talking about some more later, so now is as good a time as any to talk a bit about it. Many of the masters of horror have managed solid efforts, without shocks, scares, or blood. When I think of horror, I think of it not as something that frightens us, but something that unsettles us. As you’re probably aware, Australia doesn’t have an 18+ rating for video games (though it does for other types of media such as films and publications). It’s not a stretch to see why. At the time the legislation was applied to video games, such games were the province of the young, and it is only recently that they’ve grown up, right? Wrong. From their inception, video games (particularly computer games) were played by all ages. As distribution of music (and movies and television shows including music) go increasingly digital and becoming more and more widespread, composers and songwriters are getting less money, not more. Is this because of wholesale piracy? No. It’s actually far more interesting than that. Okay, back on the topic of Australia’s proposed Internet filtering system, which is continuing to move forward. The films V for Vendetta and American Gangster from iTunes are now blocked to those who would purchase them but are a part of the trial system. Why? Because iTunes requires no more than a valid credit-card payment as a verification method for access to mature content. Does that sound like anyone we know? Destructoid makes a few observations on the death-toll of video-games (murders, suicides and so forth) [thanks for the link, Tigro]. I’m going to add a couple extra data points here.
I was working in film marketing and PR at the time, wrestling a startup towards commercial viability. The cinema-release was staggered across some months, in various Australian locations, and I must have sat down and seen the film, in the cinemas, at least 60 or 70 times as a result. The 1980s were a pretty good era for films that didn’t take themselves too seriously, and the film resonated rather strongly with audiences of the time. Off a 30 million dollar budget in 1984, the film raked in an easy 290 million dollars in cinemas, and another 132 million in rentals, never mind network syndication later on, DVD sales and all of that. The second film, Ghostbusters II, while considered by some to be something of a disappointment, still managed to do almost as well. After more than 20 years, there’s talk of a third film – a changing-of-the-guard piece, with strong hopes of landing Eliza Dushku (Buffy/Angel/Dollhouse/etc) in a major role – but in the meantime, Aykroyd and Ramis have put together a new part to the story, in the form of a video game, developed in conjunction with Terminal Reality. Loud. Very loud. Music. Effects. Explosions. By contrast the voices are soft. Much, much softer. You have to crank the volume up to get a good listening volume for the voices, and the – and I use the term advisedly – background music is loud enough to make the neighbours look up. Where’d the balance go? Netflix is down to the 10 semi-finalists of their Find Your Voice film competition. There’s only a few days left, and it’s a bit of a brutal popularity contest as it comes down to the wire. Sasie Sealy recently got in touch with me (and frankly, I should have posted about this sooner) about her semi-finalist entry, SARAHN_12. The short is virtual-environment related, haunting, and it quite grabbed my interest once I was finally actually able to get around to looking at it. 
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I’ve got a bit of a history with Ghostbusters, the film by Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Bill Murray.
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