I love ASMR. I don't remember who I first heard about it from, but when they said that they got tingles watching someone talk I got really excited because I've tried to explain these experiences to other people for YEARS and no one really knew what I was talking about. I've accrued quite a collection of artists over the years, and it's gotten to be quite a big list!
Anyway, I thought I'd put the list of ASMRtists that I enjoy on here so that they're easy to reference. Yes, these are all youtube links. I got the tingles app, but not everyone is on there, so I'm just pulling from my subscriptions list on YT for now. Here they are presented in no particular order:
Obviously YMMV, and there may be some that I didn't include, cos well not everyone has the same taste. But these are my faves.
I love this movie so much.
Sometimes you just want to sit down and watch a man-hating ass film, and this one always does the trick. My favorite thing is that I get to say, "My favorite man-hating film is Mad Max: Fury Road (see also: all Mad Max films) and it was written by a man, so stuff it, garbage men everywhere.
I do think it's interesting how it quickly worked its way into the action-films-in-syndiation lexicon. I also think it's wonderful. Now kids who are bored and want to watch explosions on a Saturday afternoon also get a heavy dose of "men in power ruin everything, shoot them all" alongside the fantastic spectacle that is a George Miller film.
And what a spectacle it is. I am forever entranced by the editing work done by Miller's own wife, Margaret Sixel, who is better known for her documentary work. The cuts are lush, the colors, outstanding. There isn't a wasted breath, and that is in a film that has a surprising number of quiet, intimate moments. The dialog is that beautiful cowboy parlance of both high and low language, where one second a character talks filth and then next you are hearing high-and-mighty speechifying that does not feel out of place.
There is a fair amount of the camp/pulp that makes all four films great, including tight shots of different characters faces in heated moments.
The choice to go for fully practical stunts and fully realized settings, relegating CGI to the literal background of scenes was a genius stroke. Everything feels alive because everything is alive. The polecats are real, the car and motorcycle stunts are real. It lends an air of tension that films who rely too heavily on CGI for the action (every boring Marvel film) cannot attain.
The acting is perfect. The characters realized through their quieter moments. Max's psychosis is expertly brought to life both in his words and actions. Proclaiming "that's mine!" about his car in the middle of trying to help Furiosa, the wives, and the remnants of the Many Mothers get back to claim Citadel for their own.
I love that Immortan Joe is played by Hugh Keays-Byrne, who played Toecutter in the first Mad Max film. He is astonishing in both; bringing to life horrible men who cannot see beyond themselves and their lust for control and some semblance of power in a world falling into ruin.
And so now I want to go back and watch all four in sequence. I await the future films with excitement that is a slow burn. I know his films are deep meditations and that they take forever to get made. I am willing to wait a very long time for films that continue to be as perfect as these.
We've been on a bit of a kick recently with my favorite era of horror films; namely the mid-to-late-1980s through the early-to-mid-1990s.
I love this era because this is a time where the pacing is still deliberate, and the action is rarely frenetic. The films also tend to have an artsy bent, and are less reliant on jump scares so much as a slowburning sense of foreboding that I really enjoy.
We got to watch Candyman at the Alamo Drafthouse which was a delight. I love this film so much.
What I didn't realize initially is that Clive Barker wrote the story that Candyman is based on, but it makes so much sense! I don't think there's a Clive Barker horror film that I do not enjoy. And I just realized as I'm typing this up that both of the films I intended to talk about are Clive Barker-related, as Hellraiser was written by him AND was his directorial debut.
I love that Hellraiser is somehow doing 50 different things at once and still manages to clock in at a mere 90 minutes AND wraps up all of the disparate story parts in a way that doesn't feel contrived or tacked on. While there is a fair amount of gore, it mainly serves as a vehicle for us to imagine how awful everything must be off screen, rather than attempting to tell us that what we are seeing is the worst of it. (It reminds me of Event Horizon in that regard, another horror film I absolutely adore.)
I also love that the Cenobites are not actually the villains, Julia is. The Cenobites are merely a vehicle for pain. The same can be said for the Candyman. Our villain, in all honesty, is Helen.
Now all I want to do is watch/read all of Clive Barker's writing and filmography to see if this is a consistent theme; that the horrors are not the villains, and that the worst villainy comes from within ourselves.