After two previous editions of
this on the original blog, it's now time for a third on the new one. In both
previous cases, with the intention of writing thirty one film reviews for
thirty one days around October and the Halloween season, it was surprising how
difficult and exhausting it was, but that I'm ready for a third says a lot of
how invigorating doing the project has been. It's incredibly fun for all the
work, because the hard work itself is pleasurable, the last two versions were amongst
the most read pages on the original blog, and because the subject itself is one
of my favourite things in life. An excuse to watch horror films is great, even
though I watch many of them over the year, and Halloween itself is my favourite
holiday though I never went trick or treating, and do not do a lot in terms of
celebrating it. It's past, the legends and the real cultural background of the
holiday, of the day the passage between the living and the dead opens up, has
always fascinated me. The supernatural nature of the holiday has grown on me as
I grow older, a period to think of the deceased and have them in your thoughts,
in all seriousness, and in a more playful way to revel in the gaudy Halloween
costumes and schlocky movies that get released
in October.
Obviously, the entertainment
comes from the gorging of horror films. If more can be added to this, I can
also use this year's project, in a fun way, to ask one question: what is the
point of writing a blog called Cinema of
the Abstract? Since this concept originated, years ago, on MUBI.com, I've had a lot of time to
think and write about this, but it's always worth asking the simple question
again so I don't make a mistake in having this amateur blog. Better know
there's a point to writing for the sake of it than end in a mess. Horror films
are probably the best way to ask this question. As much as it would be great to
see an abstract Christmas film, Halloween is one of the few holidays where
appropriate film viewing can be any horror film, supernatural movie or anything
that fits the mood of the season. The horror genre is also rife in the
unconventional, weird, and even the experimental and avant-garde. Experiments
with form have taken place, high concepts have been encouraged, aesthetic extravagance
celebrated, and in the lowest quality, incompetence can be just as peculiar and
inspiring as a viewing experience, providing one hasn't become comatose halfway
through the film as you were watching it.
There will be no Friday The 13ths, unlikely a lot at the
multiplex unless the popcorn is spiked with something illicit, and anything
conventional isn't going to be viewed. I can enjoy these films, if I wanted,
when I'm taking a break from writing the reviews for this project. Expect the
least conventional instead, with the same abstract rating although I will
change, just for this project only, part of my format style to reflect the main
question of the project. The main
question for the project can go as far as ask "why do I watch this sort of
film?' The kind of films I've been covering so far since starting this blog,
and writing about elsewhere online, in my own time and with pay, have been the
type of cinema I've become the most enamoured and interested in over the year
or so. Instead of boring myself, or pretend to enjoy or admire what I cannot
see virtue in, it's liberating to watch these peculiar, unconventional films
more frequently, and certainly, this project will be as much as celebration of
this fact as it is asking why this is the case. With that in mind, as
everything becomes a lot more macabre, the trick or treaters soon about to
knock on the doors, and the air of the ghostly and mysterious is felt as winter
soon encroaches, what a better way to be a site about abstract cinema then
celebrate a season, a holiday, that is all about the unknown, the out-of-sight,
out-of-body and supernatural?
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