Our friend Anthony Crowley who has previously had a short story published with us is featured in the newest edition of Sanitarium Magazine.
We couldn’t be more proud of Anthony for his new success.
You can find him on twitter here
Category: The Republic of Shawntario
Standards of Living is a 2013 film written and directed by Aaron Mento. The entire film was shot on an iPad2 which is pretty incredible considering the final output. As a personal note, I couldn’t take a clear video with my iPad if my life somehow depended on it, so to see an ambitious little film like Standards of Living use it to film their entire movie is neat.
The story is about a failed comedian named Peter. He gets a phone call one morning from Mr.Randall and his assistant Stu. They offer him $100 to perform at a “private” function on the condition that he tell absolutely nobody where he is going.
Peter arrives at the house for the event and after an awkward exchange with Stu he is invited into the house. From this point on the story is properly set in motion and we are taken on a unique and trippy ride full of clever twists.
I have to say that the actor who played Stu sort of bothered me. Given that the film was made on a micro-budget I know I shouldn’t have been expecting Oscar worthy performances, but I found this one to be slightly immersion breaking.
I don’t want to slam the acting too much but I will say that it is one of the weaker aspects of Standards of Living.
The absolute strength of this movie is the script. Aaron Mento does a superb job of ensuring that dialogue never stagnates and characters genuinely react to each other. There were times when a character made some questionable decisions but it always felt authentic to the way that they had been written. Aaron also succeeded in creating a wonderfully weird and unique world on an absolute micro-budget. One of the sets is duplicated for plot reasons but the scripting ensures that it feels completely different. I would like to see what Aaron Mento is able to do with a real budget and some slightly better actors.
From a technical side there isn’t really anything that stands out about the directing but I found that to be another strength. The iPad 2 was used to create simple and seamless shots that have a nice natural flow to them. Nothing overly technical or artsy, but a lot of nice fluid simplicity.
Despite a few flaws, Standards of Living managed to keep me watching until the very end and these days that is a triumph. I couldn’t tell you how many movies I’ve turned off not even halfway through (or wished that I never started watching) lately.
Pros:
Excellent scripting.
Nice simple shots allow story to tell itself.
Music.
Very unique and original concept.
Cons:
Sometimes the acting is immersion breaking.
Overall, I recommend watching this film. I watched it after watching Dracula 3D and this was aeons better. Standards of Living is something that Argento wishes he made.
If I could give a small, witty blurb about this movie it would be this.
“Director Aaron Mento urinates more talent in a day than Argento has shown since Suspiria”.
You can watch Standards of Living for free at this link http://standardsoflivingmovie.com/
Hello Friends,
I just wanted to say THANK YOU! to all of our guests for making Women of Horror Week 2013 a huge success for us.
In no particular order I would like to thank
Danica Deering
Suzanne Bell
September Carrino
Chassity Merritt
Tabitha M
Kim Culpepper
L.C Fremont
Dusty Evely
Charity Langley
Renfield Rasputin.
We would also like to thank all of you for visiting our website and leaving encouraging comments for the writers.
It has always been our goal to create the type of community that fosters creativity and friendship among fellow writers and I truly believe we achieved that in the past week.
Thank you once again to our guest writers, it was an absolute privilege to have you share your articles with us and give us an insight in to your love of Horror.
Thank you also to our team of writers for contributing lists and reviews as well.
We now look forward to 2014 where hopefully we can do something like this again.
-Shawn
Greetings Friends,
Starting Monday August 19th we will be doing a Women of Horror Week. All week we will be featuring guest articles written by Women about the horror genre and why they love it.
We will also be reviewing horror movies featuring lead Female characters. Here are some of the movies we have planned for review
Martyrs, The Descent, American Mary, The Hatchet trilogy and The Evil Dead.
We will kick things off on Monday with an excellent article from staff member L.C Fremont and go from there.
We hope to see all of you on Monday and we are very excited for all of the fun content coming your way
If you have any suggestions for what you’d like to see, please leave a comment.
Recently, the great Renfield Rasputin wrote a piece in which he mentioned Horror as an emotion. I had never considered this before and found it to be a beautiful concept. I will touch on this some more today while sharing some examples from my life for context.
I previously mentioned that Evil Dead was the first horror movie I was ever allowed to watch. What I did not mention was the roller coaster of emotion that was my first viewing. I felt very uneasy and nauseous for most of the movie. When the terror really started to kick in I could feel my body get weaker and my heart beat faster. Why was this happening? This movie, these moving images on a low quality VHS tape; How could they produce these reactions? I think it was because of my life at that point. Let me explain
I grew up poor. I wasn’t “food stamp” poor(we don’t have those in Canada) but we were most definitely in the bottom rung of society. At the time my Mother was in the hospital battling cancer and a whole plethora of other health issues. (I know plethora means “over abundance”. Trust me when I say that this usage remains very accurate) My father was no longer able to work due to his own health issues. He suffered a heart attack the previous year. “But Shawn,” I hear you asking, “What the hell does this have to do with anything?” And to that I say “Patience, I’m getting there.”
My life at the time was filled with uncertainty and I was rife with insecurity. I was trapped at an age where I was too young to fully comprehend my situation and old enough to get the gist of it. Knowing that your situation is bad but having this odd understanding that it’s actually worse than your mind could fathom is a weird feeling.
All of that is what I felt when watching Evil Dead for the first time. Dread. Clive Barker described Dread as a feeling that your worst fears are going to repeat themselves. That what you are afraid of most is about to happen to you again. It sticks inside of you and you can’t get it out of your mind.
Watching Evil Dead, and the rest of the movies for example, reminded me of the helpless feeling that comes with watching your family deteriorate. The feeling of knowing that it’s only going to get worse. When I was watching Evil Dead, despite the fact that our circumstances were completely different I could feel for the characters. I could empathize with them. Their lives were turned upside down in moments and you knew it wasn’t going to get better for them.
Dread is a powerful emotion. It’s what kept me watching horror movies. It became addicting. It helped me understand and even cope with the losses around me. Sometimes when we are at our lowest, when things seem as though they can’t possibly get worse, it’s a realistic lesson that sets our mind at ease and not a sunshine and rainbows happy ending.
That was kind of depressing so I will say that at this point in my life I am very happy. I get to do what I love every day which is talk about horror with like-minded people. I’ve been fortunate enough to meet some wonderful people. Our writing team is full of passionate people and I love the fact that they chose to write for us and not another website. I’ve made friends through here. I don’t mean acquaintances, I mean actual friends. People I would have a beer with, people I would even consider lending money to and then harass every day until they paid me back. My life right now is great. I have a wonderful dog, an amazing cat, a beautiful girlfriend and a career. I owe all of that to horror and the feeling of dread. The emotion that comes from watching Horror.